Day 155 - Embers Story

Embers Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Mae sat in the sand watching the remaining embers dance, a cool PBR in her hand. She wanted a cigarette. She needed a cigarette. She needed it bad. But she was quitting. Again. She was already stressed out enough, and was only making it worse by dwelling on the cigarette. But the ashy remains of a once great bonfire only served as a painful reminder of the chemical satisfaction she actually craved.

The sun had set hours ago. Most of her friends had left already. She too should have left, but for the fact that her ride there, Amy, was off down the beach somewhere with her dating partner Enrique. It was hard to call them a couple or him a boyfriend, but they were definitely something. They were much too friendly and touchy-feely to not be something. Amy was usually much more open and revealing when it came to her proclivities, and yet she was strangely silent when it came to Enrique. That probably meant she really liked him. But what it meant for Mae was that she had no ride home. Yet anyway.

Mae moved in closer to the fire pit, hoping to gain a little bit more warmth. She had brought a sweater to the beach with her, but foolishly had only worn a pair of cutoff denim jean shorts. She really hadn’t planned on staying as long as she had. She tried to take a drink from her beer and realized the can was empty. She wondered how long it had been like that. She must have been lost in thought and not have noticed. She thought about getting up and getting another one, but something kept her sitting there, staring into the glowing red.

She remembered a song from her childhood that was named something like “What am I doing hanging round.” It was a silly love song about a guy hanging around waiting on a girl when he knew his train was leaving. Mae felt like the singer in the song. Except that it would be a plane, and the plane didn’t leave for a few days. Still, she thought it was a fitting analogy. She had bigger things to worry about. She had job things and moving things and change of direction and reinventing herself things to worry about. She didn’t have time to worry about a guy. And yet and yet and yet here she was, waiting and worrying about a guy. Silly it may have been, but it was what people did. Nothing was clean and easy. There were no quick and total breaks in life. There were always sloppy transitions and grey areas and mistakes and regrets. She felt foolish, but she figured that was why people that wrote sad songs wrote sad songs. There was a lot of truth in a sad song.

People were supposed to act. They were supposed to tell each other things and they were supposed to act on them. She had never been very good at that though. She had tried. This hadn’t been a going away party, but it was pretty much a going away party. And she had told him. Everyone at work knew she was moving. Everyone. And she had given him a chance to say something or to act. And she was sure he wanted to, but for some reason was still too shy. So she had told him as best she could, and here she was drinking stale beers and watching a fire die down and waiting. She was still waiting. It seemed like she was always waiting. The night was getting colder and the fire was dying down. She could only wait so long.

Day 154 - Fallen Story

Fallen Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Olympos was an indescribable thing, although that didn’t stop the poets and the painters from trying. It was regarded as a place of beauty, high above and white like a snow-capped mountain, and home to the gods. The homes to the gods are always described as clear with bright white lights. But these were the words of people, the thoughts and perceptions of men and women. In reality, Olympos was an indiscernible thing. Man did not and could not possess the abilities to perceive or comprehend it, and they certainly didn’t have the words or ideas to properly convey and describe a home to gods and the deities that inhabited it. Man made legends and stories and told them in the only way they could understand, through personification, by making the gods like them. And in a small way, the gods were like them.

Zeus was no longer Zeus. He was a shell, a broken and wasted thing. At one time he had been everything – a king, a father, the sky and the supreme ruler of them all. He had been so many things. And in the blink of an eye it had all been forgotten.

As legendary figures go, Zeus had been seriously shortchanged and reduced in stature by the bards of history, turned into a sort of drunk womanizer, always cheating and having more children. He was the leader of the gods and the father of man, and yet most of the memorable stories started with him tricking some woman into bed. To tell the truth, Zeus was a bit of an alcoholic and was certainly an inveterate womanizer. But that was only when he was in human form and only when he chose to be, and really, it was just a recent behavior when considered from the perspective of all time. From a human perspective it seemed like that was all Zeus was, but a few thousand years is nothing when it comes to the immortal demigodery. A blink of eye for an immortal and a hundred years could slip by on Earth.

In modern times Zeus had discovered he had a real appreciation for beaches, lazy day lifestyles, and really couldn’t bring himself to care or interfere in human trivialities anymore. At one point it had been his thing to command the world and affect the facts of the average and ordinary. But it just seemed like too much work anymore. And it was pretty boring. There weren’t that many new things being invented by man. All the emotions were pretty much the same emotions and the interactions were essential alike. There were always a lot of fight-or-flight instincts and hunger and the drive for sex. It just got repetitive after awhile.

Zeus had gotten bored and closed up early and took off. He left his children behind and gave them a shot at running things for awhile. He embraced what could only be called a beach bum lifestyle. He let his graying beard grow long, put his hair in a ponytail, got a set of Hawaiian shirts, cut off shorts and flip flops for shoes. He had quite the tan. And he learned the pleasure of frozen tropical blender drinks. Suddenly, Zeus had become the walking epitome of a Jimmy Buffet song. He didn’t care. None of his new friends realized who he was and none of his old family was around to judge him. Still, it was a bit of an unbecoming life for the former head of Mount Olympus.

Most recently Zeus had been island hopping in Hawaii. There was something about volcanoes that reminded him of his former mountain home. He didn’t miss the Mediterranean, but did still have an appreciation for the rocking terrain. He had been awake for three weeks straight – sleep was pretty much a luxury activity anyway, and he had gotten into a running habit of not wanting to miss the sunrise or sunset. It was such a simple thing, and yet so beautiful against the water. He could have set an alarm, but found it easier to just sit on the beach all day and wait for the splendiferous skyline transitions to begin.

The sun was setting and a group of thirty-somethings had been on the beach all day. There had been surfing and parasailing and playing frisbee and volleyball. Zeus had watched them all day. They looked like very fun-loving people. Zeus could have gone to talk to them and maybe invited himself into their activities if he had wanted. He could be very charming when necessary. But he was also very happy to be by himself and be left to his own thoughts.

But there was one young woman Zeus found to be particularly interesting. She must have felt the same way, because right around the time the sun was going below the horizon she came over and invited him to their bonfire cookout. He thanked her and introduced himself. She chuckled at his name, but he swore he really was named Zeus, understanding fully that short of him throwing a lightning bolt or transforming into a bull, there was little chance that she would believe he was Zeus the deity from all the stories. He didn’t care. He didn’t need people’s faith anymore for him to get enjoyment out of life. He smiled and took her hand and let her lead him back towards her group. He told himself that it was about to become a very good night. Some habits, he found, did die hard.

Day 153 - Collapse Story

Collapse Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Cynthia had a very large problem – her world was collapsing. She had been cut off from her family and from the world around her and everything was falling apart. She lived alone in a needlessly grandiose house surrounded by a great number of possessions that did little to fill the void that had been left within her.

Cynthia Delius was a collector of archaic items, also known as a hoarder. Not in a dysfunctional bad way, but still, she saved too much and assigned too much value to it. There was a sentimentality to her that allowed her to appreciate the past and relics long forgotten, but also trapped her with an inability to move on.

In her younger days she was a bit of treasure hunter. She didn’t care so much for the item, but for the chase and the thrill of the hunt. She was the type to snipe items at auctions. But it meant she ended up with a broad and diverse collection, not all of it wanted or desired. She didn’t hunt as much now, and she had a much better appreciation for what she collected.

It had been years since she had seen her father, but she had inherited a good chunk of his worldly possessions a few years earlier. He wasn’t dead. He hadn’t died and left a will. After a lifetime of excess and indulgence he had taken a vow of poverty and left his family his possessions in a pre-death will. He didn’t actually believe in becoming poor, but took the interpretation that a vow of poverty was really a vow to share. While not the most traditional interpretation, it was seen as a means for him to improve himself, so Cynthia embraced and encouraged the idea. What it really meant was that she received a great deal of his worthless junk. He had spent a lifetime seeking power and in that quest had acquired a great deal. Now, as an old man, he passed that junk along to his children. Evenly distributed, of course. Some of her more jaded siblings assumed he was just too lazy to dispose of his things himself and selfishly freed himself of it by forcing it on his children. Cynthia, while not in much contact with him, still held out hope for the man, although she didn’t hold her breath while waiting.

With the demise of her father’s position of power, a vacuum had been created, one which the rest of her family scrambled to fill. Cynthia had no need for her brothers or sisters or her mother, or so she thought. She let them fight and feud and she focused on keeping her corner of the world in precise order. What she hadn’t counted on was the new order to things that developed. Her family had been well regarded and famous. Her family had been respected and feared. Her family had wealth. These were the things she had counted on continuing. What she didn’t fully understand was how much of the family really just meant her father. Her father had followers and investors and favor. Her father had a lot of things the rest of them did not. While her brothers and sisters fought for table scraps they failed to notice the cupboards were bare. Cynthia, too, had failed to take note.

And so the world crumbled around her. There was a void that no amount of possessions could fill. Cynthia hadn’t realized how important any of it would be. She took it for granted that things had meaning. But when no one knew or remembered or cared, all her meanings meant nothing to the outside world. The outside world forgot and inside her mansion, she faded. Life faded. Her possessions faded. Everything was a little bit duller. Everyday. She couldn’t remember the last time she had spoken with her family, but she knew it had been a long time. She wondered if their lives had suffered the same way hers had. She needed them but was unable to bring herself to reach out. She was afraid to leave her home. She was afraid to face a world that didn’t need her, didn’t know her. She had a mansion that was full of times and places forgotten, and she had always thought that would make her rich, but looking at them now, at worlds that time had passed by, they only made her lonely. She wondered where her father was now. She wondered if maybe he knew something she didn’t, and had gotten things right after all.

Day 152 - Nyepi Story

Nyepi Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Santos had lost his wife three months ago. He missed her tremendously. He was away on business when she became sick and by the time he returned there was little that could be done. Her fever never broke and she was barely conscious when he arrived. It broke his heart that he wasn’t able to say goodbye to her. It broke his heart that he had been so focused on his work. He knew that it would have made no difference, but he still couldn’t help but blame himself and think that his presence would have somehow made some bit of difference.

Three months later he was just as distraught and obsessed with her death, unable to accept that she was gone. His friends worried about him. His family worried about him. There was seemingly nothing that could be done for him – it was his struggle.

Santos began to spend less and less time with his family and friends. He became quiet and withdrawn. People began to worry. Santos needed help, but not the way his loved ones thought he did. He believed she was still there and there had to be a way to reach her.

Santos was a spiritual man, and he believed his wife to have been as well. He knew her spirit was out there, he could feel it. He sought answers wherever he could – from the church, from shamans and gurus. He wasn’t a man to believe in magic or mysticism, but he consulted them as well. No one was able to help him contact her spirit. None of them was able to help offer him any peace.

Nyepi Day approached. Santos became convinced he would be able to reach her. It was a time of peace and prayer and the spirit world would be close at hand. He was sure she would be there.

Santos went to the sea to be cleansed and to purify his soul. He took with him a picture of her and her favorite bracelet – a gift he had given her on their first wedding anniversary. Santos prayed for forgiveness. He prayed for peace and tranquility. He threw the bracelet into the sea and begged for guidance and a glimpse of his former love. Instead, he felt loss and sorrow and could find no sign of her or any attempt that she was trying to communicate with him.

His faith did not waiver.

Over the next several days, the ceremonies continued. Santos looked for her face in the crowd and in reflections. He was miserable; he felt dead inside.

A ritual was performed to vanquish negative elements. Santos drew a picture of his pain and burnt it. Deep inside, he still felt the pain of being alone. He surrounded himself with strangers, hoping to feel something. There were fires everywhere. People wore masks. It was as if the demons had awakened and the night was filled with danger. Santos prayed to God again. He begged for peace and forgiveness. He prayed that he be free from his hate and rage and resentment. Instead, he was left with an aimless feeling of blind hope, unable to feel anything but anxiety and despair.

Santos felt no purpose. He had no direction. He began to fast. He sat in a dark and empty room and cleared his mind and prayed. He gave himself up hoping that God would see fit to save him and fix that which was broken within.

Nyepi had arrived.

At sunrise the “Day of Silence” began.

Santos waited.

The afternoon came, and Santos waited.

The darkness of night came, and still Santos waited.

In silent prayer, he asked her for her forgiveness – for not being a better husband, for not being there when she became sick, and for not being able to save her.

In the dark, Santos began to see into his own soul. He had come seeking freedom from the death and the demon spirits that had filled him and instead he was face-to-face with them. And in the face of such terrors, Santos began to forgive himself.

The sun began to rise. It was a new day. It was a new year. Finally he felt some form of comfort. As he looked at the bright sun, he knew she was gone, that she had been there watching over him, but she had finally moved on.

He welcomed the new days that were to come.