The Hour Is Late (709 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryLabels: myfiction
Rating: 2 on 3 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Razor <Jeremy_21117.at.hotmail.com> (View user info) at 2004-04-25 23:51:00 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
"Did you hear about that kid from North Dakota that got his arms ripped off by a piece of farm equipment twelve years ago?"
"What? I was only nine..."
"True story. He regained consciousness because his dog was licking his face. He realized after a minute that he didn't have any arms... so he staggered to his house and turned the doorknob with his mouth. His mom and dad weren't home, so he had to call someone. The shitty thing is... if you ignore the fact that his arms had been ripped off at the shoulder and all... the shitty thing is that his parents had a rotary fucking phone."
"Rotary?"
"Yeah, a rotary phone. The kind that you have to spin around in a circle to dial each number. He grabbed a fucking pencil with his fucking teeth, and used it to dial his fucking cousin."
"I thought you said this was in North Dakota, not West Virginia."
"Oh you're REAL funny. You know what he did next?
"Uh..."
"He climbed in the bathtub and wedged what was left of his arms up against the sides of the bathtub so that he wouldn't get any blood on his mom's new carpet. At the hospital, the doctors were able to reattach his arms. Now he's running for the state Senate."
"What's your point?"
"YOU CARE SO LITTLE ABOUT YOUR GODDAMN LIFE THAT YOU GOT FIRED FROM YOUR JOB AT FUCKING PIZZA HUT "
Alex sighed, paused the video game he was playing, and looked over at his girlfriend.
"Baby, listen..."
"DON'T YOU LISTEN ME I DON'T WANT TO HEAR YOUR FUCKING EXCUSES "
"Should I even bother speaking or are you just screaming at me to keep from getting rusty?"
Sarah sat down on the couch next to Alex and buried her face in her hands.
Alex waited for her to start talking. The seconds ticked by, stretched into an uncomfortable silence. He glanced at the paused game, and back at Sarah.
"Baby, look..."
Sarah looked up and interrupted him. "Fine. Talk. But you better make it good."
"OK. I was at Burger King the other day."
"Burger King?" Sarah asked incredulously.
"Just hear me out. I was getting a Whopper, and there's this black chick at the register, right? So she takes my order, and I give her a twenty, and she kind of counts my change out. You know what she says?"
"No..."
"Have a nice day."
"So what? They always say that to you."
"She didn't say it to me."
"But you just said..."
"She said it THROUGH me. She didn't even know I was there. I could see it in her eyes. She was looking right through me. She hated her job so damned much that her personality was just... turned off."
"OK, but..."
"The worst part of the whole thing was that she must have been thirty years old. So, for like a week, every day at work I just watched my coworkers. Everyone just walks up to their tables and they smile, and they laugh at their customers' jokes, and they just act so HAPPY, meanwhile inside they're feeling shitty because maybe their boyfriend just dumped them or they've got fucking hemorrhoids or whatever. But they can't just go and SAY that, you know, talk about how they REALLY feel, because then the customer would leave them a smaller tip or maybe even go complain to the manager."
"Honey..."
"That's why I stopped going in. I can't work at a job where I need to be FAKE just to make money. I need to find out what is REAL."
Sarah stood up from the couch and patted her distended stomach. She spoke quietly.
"Alex, THIS is real. I'm due in three months. Which means in about eight or nine weeks, I'm going to have to go on maternity leave. And after that, we're going to have to pay for day care when I'm ready to go back to work. And I just don't make enough for you to stay at home and take care of the kid."
Alex stood up and put his arm around Sarah's shoulders, rubbing her belly with his other hand.
"I just need to find out who I am."
Sarah leaned into him and bit his ear.
"Don't spend too long figuring it out. You know, if you wanted to go back and finish college, we could make do somehow."
Alex stepped away from Sarah and turned around. "Please... not college again. I don't think I can take it."
"Well, I don't want to spend the rest of my life living in a shitty studio apartment in the worst part of Chelsea. Think of the... hey! Where are you going?"
Alex was gathering up his jacket.
"I just need to take a walk or something."
* * *
Alex grimaced and pulled his jacket tight against the bitter February wind. Even at this late hour, there were people all over the streets. Here in Chelsea they moved quickly, avoiding the eyes of their fellow passers by.
He shook his head as he let his feet carry him along. If there are over eight million people in New York City, why the hell do I feel like I am all alone?
He had intended to tell Sarah about the piece of paper in his pocket, but somehow when the time had come, he balked. He pulled it out, then tucked it back in his pocket and instead began to read over the brochure they had left him with.
---
What is the U.S. Army?It's having individual strength and the support of an unstoppable team. It's you at your best. With training, technology and support, you will become stronger, smarter and better prepared for the challenges you face. You will gain invaluable skills, experience and the opportunity to use them while working in a challenging environment.
Being a Soldier also means upholding the ideals set forth in the U.S. Constitution, and becoming a respected part of your community. You will discover a life filled with adventure and meet other smart, motivated people like you. Because the strength of the U.S. Army doesn't only lie in numbers, it lies in you, An Army of One.
If you want to stop thinking about your future and start living it, you're ready to become An Army of One.
---
Earlier this afternoon, sitting in the recruiter's office, he had nearly signed the enlistment papers. He told them that he had to talk it over with his girlfriend.
The real truth was, while he knew that he needed something, he wasn't sure that the army was the RIGHT something. That was the problem, nothing ever seemed to fit. And with all that shit going on over in Iraq, it seemed like the army was not a very...
"Hey Shugah, you lookin' for a friend?"
Alex looked up, startled. He had nearly walked right into a hooker. He smiled.
"No thanks, I got a friend at home, if you know what I mean."
"She don't have to know about us."
"Sorry, I'm not interested."
Alex took stock of his surroundings. He had walked, of all places, to Times Square... the one place in New York aside from the Statue of Liberty that you were least likely to find a real New Yorker - unless that New Yorker was there to take money from tourists.
He looked up at the glittering lights and the giant television screen. It's all fake... New York isn't bright lights and big stars, it's shitty one room apartments where the radiator doesn't work most of the time and you have to buy bottled water so you don't feel like you're drinking copper.
"This will all come tumbling down!" a hoarse voice shouted from next to him.
Alex turned, startled. An old man, dressed in tattered brown robes and carrying a staff, was looking directly at him.
"What did you..."
"The Hour Is Late! Repent, for the end of civilization draws nigh! Those who come to accept the word of the one true savior will be spared, the rest will burn in the flames of judgement!"
Alex rolled his eyes and made to turn away. Before he could, the old man grabbed him by the shoulder and pressed a pamphlet into his free hand.
"Thanks, but no thanks."
"Free yourself from the blinders this corrupt society has put over your eyes! Only by allowing yourself to learn the truth can you become one with that which is REAL."
With that, he was gone. Alex watched him walk away into the distance and then remembered the pamphlet. He opened it and began to read.
Minutes later the army brochure fluttered away forgotten into the night. Alex stood in the middle of Times Square, tears flowing down his cheeks. Finally, the truth.
* * *
"No. Absolutely not."
"Please, can we just talk about this?"
"Look Alex, I am not going to another one of those... those... freaky religious ceremonies."
"Baby, honey... come on. They're not 'freaky religious ceremonies.' I wouldn't want to go to something that sounded like that either. They're just meetings."
"If by meetings you mean sitting down to listen to a bunch of bullshit about Philip Glass and how he will lead the chosen few into the dawn of a new millennium, then yes, I guess it's JUST a meeting."
"Honey, look at what has happened to me in just a month. I've got a job, I quit smoking - cigarettes AND pot, and... I've even started showering every day again. I feel better about myself and the world than I ever have before."
"You also don't have any time for ME. You're at those meetings four times a week... shit, do you realize I'm far enough along that I could give birth to a baby that would live tonight? If I did, would you find time for HIM?"
"Of course I would find time for him. You don't understand, I walk through life now and everything I see is different. It's like this has suddenly thrown things into three dimensional relief when up until now I've been looking at a two dimensional picture."
Sarah turned to face Alex. The look in her eyes was dangerous.
"Would you say it's a matter of focus?"
Alex jumped up, excited. "YES! Focus! That's EXACTLY what I'm talking about."
"Sit back down and let me tell you a little about focus."
"OK."
"You remember how when we met three years ago I told you I had just gotten rid of some bad friends?"
"Sure."
"And how I've refused to ever tell you anything about them?"
"Of course."
"We were heroin addicts."
"HEROIN?"
"Yeah. Heroin. See, the interesting thing about heroin is, it provides focus in your life. I know it sounds wrong, but hear me out."
"When you're a heroin addict, everything you encounter, no matter how pedestrian, seems like a new experience. You get your paycheck, and it's not just money - it's paradise for another week. Mealtime, bedtime, anytime - it's all new and it feels fucking GOOD. And it provides a kind of armor against the difficulties of the world. For me, it was my way of coping with the fact that my mother died before fifty thanks to a couple of cancerous cells in her cervix."
"Focus is everything. Picture two people standing next to each other in the grocery store. One of them, an economics professor, sees the inevitable forces of supply and demand, supply chains, and a global economy causing the price of his favorite brand of peaches to rise by a nickel. The other, an embittered housewife, sees nothing but the latest task in a never ending cycle of drudgery."
"But they're both just looking at some peaches. Human beings are defined by what their focuses are. When a new, exciting way of looking at the world suddenly appears in your life, it can seem like everything you saw before was shallow and incorrect, and that this fresh new perspective holds all the answers."
"They never do. The truth is, the world is scary and nobody has the answers. Some people never worry about it, because they just accept what their parents taught them. Others, like you, float through life scared shitless, until someone comes along and presents the world to them in a fashion they can accept. And then they just stop thinking, and go through the rest of their life content that they know exactly what's going on because they have FOCUS now. They've got the TRUTH."
Alex looked at her, mouth wide open. At last he summoned the courage to speak.
"So what do you do?"
"Accept the fact that you will never know anything. The answer isn't going to come and hit you in the face. It's not going to be presented to you in the form of a pamphlet in Times Square, or sit encapsulated in a clever short story, or in the Bible. We, as human beings, can never know for sure that we've hit on the truth."
"So do I just go through life not KNOWING anything for sure? How are you supposed to CARE about anything?"
"You don't know anything, whether you're willing to admit it or not. It's not that you can't care about anything. Figure out what things in life are important to you, and go with them. But never get so focused on any one thing that you forget about everything else."
"I.... I guess I never thought of it like that before. Tell you what... why don't I skip that meeting tomorrow and we'll go out and get some Indian food?"
"Come over here and give me a kiss. It's late."
----
User Reviews
Submitted by TheToddfather (user info) at 2004-07-11 15:38:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice work. I thought this was going to be some finding myself in the Bible story. Whew...
Submitted by polly (user info) at 2004-07-11 15:04:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i liked that whole peaches thing.
Submitted by Fenrir (user info) at 2004-05-18 08:01:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
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