If Angels Should Walk Among Us

Morgan Summers was a girl I met later that spring. This had been a dismal time in my life, so I refrained from many of the rock star parties of my yester year; I had established a routine of nothingness that really suited me well. In between the maughtnity of nothingness I was kept occupied by working a part time job in a shipping facility and taking a few classes at the local state college, I was still very green and naive and beaten down by the world and my experience in it.

I hated that tiny little state school mostly because it resembled an institution of corrections more  than one of learning. I would spend most of my time ditching class in order to attend various lectures and protests throughout the metropolitan campus. Truth be told I was very disappointed by my classroom experience there. I had joined a political advocacy group supporting Ron Paul in the spring of 2008, shortly after becoming a libertarian myself. The group consisted of politically aware social outcasts aka libertarians and disgruntled republicans who could no longer support Bush’s neo con regime. I had made it a habit not to go to class the majority of my professors were idiots and I had really only respected one. The only thing that I did make routine would be my almost daily trips to the supermarket. I would go at least three times a week and would spend the majority of my breaks gathering supplies. I would go and pick up all of the days necessities and a tall Americano served black and delicious by my favorite barista Rachel. Rachel was a classic Mexican beauty, with a magnificently hard youthful body and long silk like flowing black hair, beautifully complementing her green work apron.

Most of our flirtation spanning the month of February and Valentine’s Day that year which I had decided to half heartedly opt out of, feeling very much loveless. In many of the years past I would take a girl out either the day before or after to ease the loneliness of singles awareness day, but this year I would only commemorate the event with a single text message, “Happy VD, may it be curable.” She asked herself who needs love and opted to hang out with a male friend who happened to be a fruit. They spent the entire day together at a strip club called Boyz Town. I was glad that I hadn’t hung out with her that day.  The Majority of the time I spent with Rachel was over the phone. I would go out all night, drinking with my usual crowd until they all went to sleep then I would have drunken conversations with the only person I know who would still be awake at 6am on Sunday mornings due to her working at the coffee shop and having to be at work at 5am. Then during one of these conversations I asked her to tell me something about herself that I didn’t know and she didn’t respond, until the next time I saw her when I asked how she was she responded I’m tired, I was up late taking care of my son. Something that I hadn’t anticipated she was only 19, not that that was a deal breaker for me but it did add a lot of weight to an otherwise to an otherwise nonchalant and innocent flirtation.

Morgan had worked at the same grocery store as Rachel, and seemed to have been competing with her for my attention for some time. I would do my usual shopping there although being very selective of my purchases, making sure not to gather anything potential embarrassing. Every time I would see her there, which was really quite random she would stop what she was doing and meticulously inspect all of the items in my basket, so I would always buy organic. I made sure to only buy fresh milk, juice and a few days worth of food, a basket worthy of inspection. A co worker of mine had had a crush on her for some time, so I had decided that it would be best if I didn’t compete with him for her.  That Valentine’s Day I would spend alone with only my flirtation with Rachel, Zach would make a move on Morgan.

Every year the girl scouts would have their annual cookie sale, and my boss at the time, a little foreign man from Nepal would be their top salesman. I had always been against child labor, but I still hadn’t come to terms with buying girl scout cookies from a little man. Mass manufactured synthetic sugar products, packaged with the face of a million little girls and sunshine sold by middle aged men, and in only two weeks! I’ve always felt terrible for the boy scouts, it’s just not fair. Society will never accept the sale of boy cookies and you will proly go down as a freak if you tried to buy them, don’t ask me why some things just are. The boys left to fend for themselves while the girls make and spend millions. But my co worker has no such qualms, every year he would buy at least a dozen boxes of cookies and hand them out to all of the girls around town. His theory was women would love it because one it was a gift and two he supports to the girl scouts. I Guess.

One busy afternoon overworked and in much need of a break I went in the store to grab some cold caffeine and snacks. Just a few items then on the check stand Morgan was working, as I approached she sends me an open smile and scans my basket for information. Then as if thinking it were going to be a problem she told me she had received a gift from Zach, which I had already known. Then she had immediately followed that with “it was kinda weird, sometimes I see him around a bars and I think he likes me, but all my friends tell me not to date him.”

“So don’t date him.” I said

“I’m not.” she responded

The next week she invited me out for drinks at some Irish bar that she had frequented. It was the first opportunity that I had to see her away from work, which was nice. I met a few of her friends, actually I spent the first hour interviewing with several of them all thoroughly entertained by my presence. The second hour consisted of an evaluation of the mind, where the smartest of her friends would challenge me to a game of connect 4. It turns out that he was very serious about the game and about proving his dominance over me, so much so that he brought the game to the bar from home. He had studied the game and developed an entire philosophy about it. The philosophy of connect 4. It turns out he was the reigning champion and had brought his own game specifically for the occasion. He took the first game with ease, a trick that he learned from one of his books its only lasted about 5 plays. The second game lasted much longer, much more of a testament of wills, of which I eventually won. He refused to play again after that, and put the game away.

The night moving on and after gaining the approval of her friends we left the bar and Morgan spent the night. It was a grand drunken night and a much welcomed break in the loneliness and nothingness my life had become. We awoke early the next morning, where I would reluctantly take her to her tai chi class that she had promised to go to in her drunken state the night before. We approached the location of the class as she said

“I wish I was still in your big comfy bed”

“me too” I replied.

Morgan had been having roommate troubles all week and she was either being kicked out or forced to find a new roommate. It turns out that just a few days before I met him at the Irish bar he had gotten in a fight in their shared apartment, he was still wearing a hat that partially covered the stitches he had received in it. He had been thrown through a 12^th story window, lucky for everyone it was just his head that went through. But consequences were soon to follow, the window would be boarded up, which I used as a landmark as I meander my way through a labyrinth of seemingly identical high rise buildings. He would be forced to move and she started hanging out with me.

Morgan and I would always play a word of the day game, it helps break up the maughtyny of our customer service jobs or as I call it helpin’ the tards. First thing in the morning I would receive a text message from mo letting me know the word of the day, the objective of the game is to use the word as many times as possible throughout the day in conversation. A very entertaining game the word would be chosen on pure entertainment value. A few of my favorites were the word “word” (which can be used to agree to practically anything) for example a customer says “my package finally got there” I would respond “word” or a greeting “word up” or in the traditional sense of the word, word. Or the word “fresh” which she had an unfair advantage of working in a grocery store, everything in there is either fresh or not so fresh but my packages were still all referred to as “the freshest” all day.

Morgan had fallen out of touch with her family, including her sister something that we had in common. She and her sister had been put in foster care when she was 12 and her sis 8. Both of them were really close until her sis started talking with her parents again, and wanted Morgan to join the new found family of which Morgan refused. Her sister didn’t understand, because things had changed with her parents’ no longer on drugs or hiding it they wanted to make up for lost time, but the time hadn’t been kind to Morgan. Among all of the drama with her roommate, I received a phone call around midnight It was Morgan drunk asking if I wanted to hang out. I picked her up and she wanted to hang at my place, turns out her old roommate who was also drunk decided to stop by and be belligerent. When we got to back to my place we went straight to bed. She was a little tipsy and let her guard down, for the first time I noticed her hands were peeling and rough and touching sensitive areas.

“do your hands hurt” I asked

“sometimes” she responded.

“do you have eczema?”

“no I burned them.”

After finding out it was a burn it was the worst burn I had ever seen, most of her palm and some of her index and middle finger had been completely void of skin, where skin grafts would be placed to close the wounds. It had been three years since the accident and her hands still weren’t completely healed. While she was attending the School of Mines a prominent engineering school in Colorado, she was taking a course on geology where they had a rock tumbler. These machines are very large and are usually used to polish rocks and happen to operate at very high temperatures. She told me she remembers leaning over and putting her hands down, hearing the sizzle of searing flesh and then passing out from the pain. She awoke in the hospital a few days later and had to endure an excruciating 6 months of rehab to regain the full use of her hands.

She always wore a long sleeved north face jacket that covered the thumb and some of the palm so no one ever noticed that she had such wounds. In the only attire that made her feel comfortable, so she would even wear a jacket in unseasonably warm weather.  The other girls would make fun of her saying that the baggie  jacket made her look like a boy and that she had no boobs. When I told her there was nothing boyish about her she grabbed my hand unzipped her jacket and placed it on her chest and said “see I have boobs”  “yes……..yes you do.”

On that particular night she called me over more for protection and stability than anything else, and as she lay in my arms in her most vulnerable moment she let her guard down. She hadn’t been wearing any clothes and for the first time I saw her arms. She had the most beautiful creamy soft white skin of never being exposed to the elements and femininity, where I lay gently stroking her arms, I noticed another scar. We all have our scars, comes with the territory of being young post 9/11 America. She had noticed mine first, and had made many comments alluding to it. The first time she saw my tattoos she said “what would make someone want to do that to themselves.” Or when she would hear me speak about my family she would ask “what did they do to you.” Making me think wow it’s that obvious. Maybe she saw herself in me; I have a tendency to reflect, and maybe it scared her.

The scar on her left wrist was about 2.5 inches long cut right through the vain vertically. I knew exactly what it was and how she got it but I was pretty comfortable with her and I asked about it. She gave me a long winded, well rehearsed story about how she was working at 24 hour fitness and installing mirrors when one broke and a shard fell right into her wrist. She claimed that no one even noticed until she said something “um, a guys I think I need to go to the hospital.” She then looked down at the scar and would slowly run her index finger the length of it, a near perfect vertical incision explaining the need for internal stitches and how it didn’t even hurt. Then she pointed to the side a little at what seemed a parallel incision and chuckled

“That’s where it split when it was healing.”

I didn’t sleep much that night.

A few weeks later she was accused of stealing $500.00 from work after her drawer came up short. She was reluctant to tell me anything was wrong but I noticed a change in her, she was being watched. I also had the inclination of being watched and followed throughout the store, she was found innocent and they let her keep her job but that’s what you get when you work a shitty job, you get treated like shit; then one day she left, just like that, poof in an instant, she was gone.

Angie's Dream

"I woke up in the morning to silence, creepy silence. No one was home. I flicked the switch to turn on the lights but nothing happened. Pitch black in the apartment except for an eerie red glow coming from the living room. I walked out into the living room and saw the glow coming from the patio door. I slid open the door and walked out onto the patio and looked out over the railing to see a blood red sky. It lit up the whole landscape like a living red blanket swallowing everything it touches. I left my apartment and out of the building onto the street. There were no cars, no lights, no people anywhere. I checked my car and it wouldn't start. My parents lived only a couple miles down the road so I decided to walk down there. While I walked I couldn't stand the silence it was almost deafening, no birds, no traffic, a city of 80,000 people silenced in a couple of hours.

As I turned down the street my parents house was on I heard something. It stopped me dead in my tracks. It was like a high pitched but quiet screeching. The closer I got the louder it was. When I got there the house was gone. The house, the shed, the trees, everything except for the grass and a hole in the ground where the foundation once was. Just then the screeching stopped. I was scared I didn't know what to do so I ran. Less than a quarter of a mile away was the river valley I figured it would be a good place to hide. When I arrive at the tree line I found a trail and followed it down until it opened up into a swamp area. Up ahead the path reentered the tree line and standing right in front of it was a little girl. I froze solid I didn't know what to do. She started saying something but I couldn't hear anything. I was so scared shitless but I had to know what she was saying so I started walking toward her. Her words were almost hypnotic. Before I even realized, I had reached the other side where she had been but she was gone. She was gone but her voice was still lingering I could hear it coming from this building I used to play in down by the river when I was little.

It was just a foundation everything else was gone. I saw a door I hadn't seen before. It led to an elaborate system of tunnels, as I walked aimlessly through the dark cramped halls I noticed the voice had stopped. Even though there were no lights or lamps I could still see. I felt a tight tug on the back of my shirt, and heard the voice. I turned around and saw the girl standing in front of me screaming something but I couldn't understand what it was because she had no jaw. I screamed as loud as I could and asked, "What the hell do you want!" and I blacked out.

I woke up and it was daylight, I was driving with that little girl in the passenger seat. She smiled and I couldn't smile back because I had no idea what was going on. Next thing I knew another car careened into us, the car exploded on contact, I could feel the heat it felt so real. I could feel the skin on my face frying, and my legs breaking. Once the car came to a complete stop I got out of the car and realized I wasn't burned. I turned to see my body broken burned dismembered. I looked up and everyone was rushing over and someone came up behind me and said, "Now you know." I woke up for real on the floor next to my bed my hand bruised and a crack in the wall next to me.

This was a compilation of dreams I had that seemed all connected and felt unbelievably real. Every time I woke up kicking and screaming cold sweats, and scared out of my mind. These dreams and others like them haunted me for months, I stopped sleeping every night and was always tired. I was miserable and couldn't explain why they felt so real and why I was so afraid to fall asleep. I even got into nightmare on elmstreet movies because I somehow thought I could relate. The crazy thing about it all is when I had that last dream and in the end that voice said "now you know" I never had another one again. I dont even really remember my dreams since. I have no idea what it could possibly be."

Entering Into the Brave New World

It seemed as though Smiths luck had ran out long ago, having excelled at most everything as a child and now he was thrown into a world of few opportunities, and deemed a failure. It was the coming of the second great depression and even the capitalists began to believe that the system would collapse. To many it was thought of as the end of the world, but he had always known that they would not be so lucky.  If death would come to us it would be slow and painful, as countless people lost their homes and their pensions. This was a time of accelerated change that globalization had brought to America; with the rise of the multinational corporation none of us stood a chance.

As the corporations grew, they became their own entities, with their own interests in mind: to maximize profits.  The largest cost to a corporation became American human labor forcing them to turn on the American people. During the deregulation era of the Bush administration the Corporations grew into multinational entities. In order to maximize profits, American jobs were lost and many production facilities and call centers were moved over seas.  The American people were left homeless, jobless and hopeless by the bush administration, while the corporations grew to the largest in history, they ruled the global economy.

Soon after the job exodus of the 21^st century, credit began to freeze. A home purchased ten years earlier was no longer affordable on the wages of today, we were forced to keep up the same amount of production and make 40% less money with no pension. This is the brave new world. Many of the people who purchased homes in the last decade got themselves into what was called the sub prime mortgage meltdown. This was the practice of predatory lending, lending capital to people who couldn’t afford it then raising the rate of interest so that they really couldn’t afford it.

By giving our jobs to foreign workers the bush administration waged war against the middle class. Many of the labor jobs in America are held by Mexican immigrants and most of the better jobs reserved for those of us with an education were shipped overseas. We have continually had cuts in both healthcare and education, both falling drastically behind the rest of the world.  At one time companies would offer incentives in the form of benefits to attract high quality employees but that seemed a lifetime ago. Smith knew personally, he had been working for the last decade and never had a job that offered benefits affordable enough for him to obtain. We have lost our jobs our homes and our health, forced to take any job we can. Many people who went to college were promised better paying job and ended up with massive amounts of debt and working jobs in labor. The only difference is we get to wear slacks. Jobs in labor were becoming increasingly hard to find and increasingly more demanding of their employees.  With the massive scale layoffs the remaining employees had little solace. Yes they had not yet been laid off but they were forced to do the work of the fallen and were only compensated by retaining their positions, for the time being.

It has been said that the only thing we can count on is change. But in the 15,000 years of human existence we have never seen such dramatic change in such a short period of time. For the first 10,000 years humans tended to live in small clans where you would know everyone in your village. You would be able to learn from your trade from your father and you would perform your job until you were unable to do so. These would often be distributed by necessity and tradition, a fisherman’s son would also be a fisherman, there was little thought as to what one would do with their life and more production. Society no longer functions in this way. Most working people are being forced to find new fields of study and re enter the job market as something else. There is a dramatic loss of production when a society operates like this, instead of having very skilled artisans we have many unskilled, temporary employees.