A Chance Meeting in a Dive Bar

It had been a very long day indeed, and the only thing I could bring myself to do was sit at the bar, elbows sticking sickly to the counter, and drink away the paycheck I hadn’t made yet.  Wasn’t going to make, in fact, as of an hour before.

Or maybe it was three hours.  I really don’t know how long I sat there, listening to the clinking of glasses being washed because they’d been idle too long.  No one ever came to this particular bar on purpose, and I’d always wondered how it managed to stay open but never cared enough to ask.  Anyhow, the bartender was a burly Eastern European with an ill-fitting handlebar mustache and the only words he knew in English were ‘beer,’ ‘whiskey,’ and ‘on the rocks.’

I started roughly when the door opened, like one snatched from a dream a moment before hitting the ground.  Perhaps I had been sleeping.  The interloper took a seat beside me as I tapped the bar and watched my tab grow.  I lit another cigarette and inspected it as the bartender emptied the ashtray.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” the stranger said softly to the counter, “but I could really use one of those.”

I slid the pack toward him without a word and drained my glass.  It filled itself again as if by magic.

“Thanks,” he said, just as quietly, and produced a shiny new lighter from his coat pocket.  I couldn’t restrain the sidelong glance I gave him then; not only was he one of those smokers- the kind who make such a habit of bumming that they carry their own lighters- but it looked like something he’d lifted from somewhere expensive.  He certainly didn’t smell homeless, but he would have fit right in among the brown paper bottles and aluminum fireplaces.  I’m not one to judge, though, especially since my drinks were on the house that night.  I wasn’t looking forward to the house discovering this fact.

The stranger ignored- or didn’t notice- my expression and fiddled with the lighter, doing the basic sorts of tricks one learns to impress girls at parties.  He sighed, and sighed again; it was getting on my nerves.  How dare this stranger come into my bar, and sigh like he owned the place?

Finally he ordered a complicated-sounding drink which, in light of the language barrier, turned into a dark beer and a shot of cheap whiskey.  He dropped the latter, glass and all, into the beer and threw it back.  As he set it down and motioned for another, he said, “Would you like to know what I found out today?”

Try as I did I couldn’t bring myself to care any less, and I told him so.  He looked me square in the ear canal and declared, “I found out today that I am mad.”

I made a sound, somewhere between a laugh and a snort, that tickled my sinuses and made me cough.  “Did you, now?”

He nodded seriously.  “You can imagine my surprise.”

I met his eyes over my drink and grinned.  “And who told you that you were mad?”

He sighed, deep and mournful, examining his hands on the counter without really seeing them.  “I suppose I’ve always suspected.  It’s hard not to wonder, isn’t it, when you see the mistakes you’ve made and the messes you’ve gotten into.  Gotten other people into.  I never meant to hurt anyone, really,” he insisted, and looked at me sadly, “I thought I could do a good job.  I thought I had done.”

“Who have you hurt?” I asked, fearing some sort of civic duty would soon be forced into battle against my hard-won apathy.

He motioned around the bar.  “You, the bartender….  You didn’t lose your job because of the argument, you know.  You lost it because there’s someone else in line, who will work harder and for less.  You lost it because that’s how the world works these days, and it’s all my fault.”

Without taking my eyes from him I made a mental note of everything visible on and about my person.  Sure, there is nothing unusual about someone newly unemployed finding comfort in a bottle, but had I said something?  Had I done something to reveal the fact?  The whiskey had finished warming my gut and begun work on my brain, and I couldn’t be sure.

“Or the bartender, here,” he continued.  “It’s my fault he’s here.  He doesn’t want to be, I assure you.  He wants desperately to be home, with his wife and daughters.  They live in Kharkiv, you know, in eastern Ukraine.  All five of them share a two room apartment on Karl Marx St. near the English school when the girls teach.  He sends money to them every month so they don’t lose the apartment, even though he’s had to sleep in the bar for almost a year.  His oldest is having a baby, but she’ll miscarry soon.  That’s my fault too.”  He hung his head, “all of it is.”

I could lie.  I could say with dead eyes and a straight face that I was wholly, completely unfazed by his words.  I could convince you, too.  I glanced at the bartender, who continued absently to clean, gazing at a discolored snapshot taped rudely above the register.  Ah.  “Well, that’s a sad story, alright.  Why did you do it?”  I could tell another lie; I could claim I knew why I kept egging him on.

“I didn’t mean to,” he shook his head, “it just sort of… happened.  Everything was going great, life growing and cultures flourishing, and then….” He sighed again- goddammit- “…then, It all went to hell.”

“Well,” I said, against my better judgment, “maybe you should fix it.”

He clucked his tongue and shrugged.  “It’s not so easy though, because I’m mad.  If I wasn’t, I suppose I could fix it, but…” another shrug.  Silence prevailed for a time, and I told myself I would stop tormenting him.  I did.  I swore I would leave him alone, or change the subject; anything to keep his mind off his psychosis.  It takes some digging, but there is a moral center in me somewhere.  “That’s why,” he continued suddenly, “the world is like it is.  That’s why it’s crazy:  because I’m crazy.  Any creation is nothing more than a mirror of its creator.  I’m mad, so it’s mad.  Maybe that means I couldn’t fix it…” He lost himself in thought.

“But if the world is crazy, and you’re crazy, then you are only crazy in comparison with an insane world, correct?”  Sure, I have a moral center, but sometimes it gets a bit… distracted.  I barreled on without awaiting a response.  “So that means you’re perfectly sane!”

He shot me an odd look.  “I don’t think you quite understand.  The world is mad because I created it, and I am mad.  A rational mind cannot create that which is truly irrational, and vice versa.  The only way you can judge the logic of a thing is to compare it to what you consider logical.  All I had in the Beginning was my own mind, and that mind was- and still is- stark, raving mad.”

“The only thing that’s wrong with your mind is that you genuinely believe you created the world!”  I cried triumphantly, throwing back another drink.  His eyes grew dark, but I was too drunk to care.

“You don’t believe me, then?”  his voice carried as much hurt as anger.  I just laughed and shook my head.  “How did I know you’d lost your job?  How did I know about our friend here?” he gestured to the bartender, who mistook the motion as a drink request.  The stranger tried to deny it but the bartender ignored him.

“I’ll tell you how you knew: cold reading.  Ever hear of it?  It’s what psychics to do fool the gullible.  They generalize, infer, and make claims that cannot be refuted for one reason or another.  Simple to do, really, because people are, as a rule, stupid.”

He chuckled then, and patted me on the back pointedly.  “Yes, I suppose they are.  But, hypothetically, what could I do to convince you?”

“You could end the world,” I suggested.  “No big, fiery balls of doom or anything, just uncreate it.” He pointed out that, were he to end the world, I would also no longer be around to convince.  “You could change some major part of history.  Make it so that World War II didn’t happen, or something.  Or would I have not realize anything had changed?”  He shook his head.

My pack of cigarettes had long since disappeared, but suddenly a lit one appeared in his hand.  “Hey, why did you bum from me if you had your own?”

He shrugged.  “It’s a good way to start conversation.”  I couldn’t remember hearing the soft fizz of the lighter, or the click of the lid as it shut, but I chalked that up to the alcohol.  I asked him for one, and he obliged, producing an already lit cigarette from… well, I can’t honestly say where it came from, although I was watching him at the time.  It made me uneasy; there was an aura of self-assurance around him that hadn’t been there before.  He suddenly looked purposeful, almost sinister, and I couldn’t explain it.

Out of nowhere I said, “Sober me up.”  At no point had this thought crossed my conscious mind, but it left my mouth and I immediately wished it hadn’t; he smiled as I dropped my head to my arms.  “I just spent the last several hours getting delightfully hammered, and then I go and ask god to sober me up.  You’re right, the world is mad, and so are all the people in it.”

I’ve been drunk more times than I can count.  Slightly fewer times than that I’ve played the ‘am I good to drive’ game, the answer to which should have probably always been ‘no.’  However, when I’ve been drinking and I begin to contemplate sobering up, my brain likes to play a game as well:  it swears up and down that yes, I absolutely am.  It convinces me, too, until I stand up or get pulled over, or wake up the next morning and realize I don’t remember driving home.  The feeling I had in the bar that night was absolutely, unequivocally, without question not the same thing at all.  Because you see, I was an alcoholic back then.  Still am, truth be told, but that is irrelevant.  I’ve dried out and cleaned up several times over the years, sometimes for months at a stretch.  That is what that night felt like.  Not withdrawls, not the shakes; every cell in my body began a melancholy chorus of ‘How Dry I Am’ like they tend to do when I’ve been oh, so good for oh, so long and just one won’t hurt, now will it?  To celebrate the parched and barren but morally upstanding citizen I’d become.  That night, as I sat next to the creator of the world, I felt the bored, apathetic tug of the ground beneath a wagon I hadn’t been aware of boarding.

“You win,” I muttered, and skulked off to the bathroom to splash water on my face.  The stranger mutter something that sounded like ‘What difference?’  as the door closed behind me.  As I stood in front of the cracked and dirty mirror it occurred to me how much money I’d spent, and how difficult it would be to remove myself from the bar without owning up to it.  I stood there for some time, staring at myself and trying to think.  No option presented itself, so I shrugged and walked back out into the smoky bar.

“Where did he go?”

The bartender stared at me uncomprehendingly and gestured toward the row of shots in front of my spot, and he didn’t stop me as I headed outside, forgetting my lighter and coat.  I went to the next bar, and the next, and the next, looking for god.  That sounds silly, but I did.  Each time I had one drink, and each time I left without paying.  No one stopped me.

I’m still looking.

Prelude to a Sociopath

This may have been a bad idea.

It seemed funny at the time, although I’m not sure why anymore.

I read in a book once, can’t remember the title, that if you make a suicide attempt you have a free pass out of school for a few months.  School’s not that bad, really, just boring.  This seemed like a good idea at the time…

But the knock at the door wasn’t my mom, and I can’t get the belt untied from here.  I hope she comes home soon.

God, this was a really bad idea.

When I came home, I was still laughing. A brand new house, factory sealed and ready for inhabitants.  Even the water was hooked up and working, which made it that much easier to loosen the seals and flood the place.  Thousands of dollars worth of damage~ they may have to tear it down and start from scratch.  We almost got caught, too~ the rent-a-cops pulled up just as we were booking it home.  We had to hide in the little fort we made, dug into the ground and covered with camo net and branches.  We could hear them screaming into their radios, calling for backup while they tried to figure out how to turn off the water.  Fucking pigs.  Make ‘em work for their paycheck, instead of sitting in their patrol cars jerking off to kiddie porn.

Will was supposed to help, too, but he wasn’t home when we went over to get him.  Oh, well, next time.  We will definitely have to do that again some time.  Much more entertaining than tomato sauce on the stucco-

 

Why are the lights on?  The parents should have been asleep ages ago.

I closed the door behind me, quietly, trying in vain to get to my room before they heard me.  Not that it really made a lot of difference~ we stayed out until all hours of the night on a regular basis, and they never cared so long as we didn’t get into trouble.  And since we never got caught, we never got into trouble.

‘Chris?’

Shit.

‘Chris, honey, will you come in here, please?  Se have to talk to you about something.’

I stuck my head in the doorway, looking pointedly annoyed.  ‘I’m really tired.  We were running.  Can this wait?’  ‘Running’ was free running, or parkour.  It involves scaling buildings, jumping from one to another, and most importantly knowing how to fall.  Some friends and I had taken it up recently and it made for a wonderful excuse whenever I was out late; since most of these sorts of activities constitute trespassing they have to be done at night.  To this day I have no idea, given how strict my parents were about everything else, why they were always ok with this particular hobby.

They were both pale, sitting stiffly in their chairs, hands folded in their laps.  Mom looked as if she’d been crying.  I mentally ran through the list of things they might want to discuss~ books and movies I shouldn’t have, things of questionable legality they may have discovered.  I’m pretty good at covering my tracks, but you never know.

‘Sit down.’

I didn’t move, except to shift the backpack I always carried from one hand to another.  I made my face expectant, with a hint of impatience.

They were silent for a moment, and my stomach tightened.  For god’s sake, get on with it.

‘Honey, it’s Will.  They- his parents found him about an hour ago….’

 

I don’t clearly remember going to my room and barricading the door.  I do remember my father pounding on it with a force I didn’t know he possessed.  ‘Chris open the door.  Now.  We need to talk about this.  You need to talk about this.  OPEN THIS DOOR.’

I didn’t, of course.  I was shaking uncontrollably at this point, unable to move even enough to take off my jacket let alone walk the hundred miles to the door and somehow get it open again.  Not that I would have anyway.

 

They decided to station themselves in the hallway, taking turns muttering useless clichés about how all things work together for good and other such drivel.  I’m assuming that’s what they said, anyway.  Moments, or hours, or days passed before I was able to put on my headset, the soothing sounds of black metal pummeling my eardrums.  I’m sure I thought about something, I’m sure I cried.  I’m sure I was hungry at some point, and needed to pee, I’m sure I picked up my cards and started to practice some new techniques I’d learned.  This last, at least, I know for sure because it was weeks before the blisters and gashes healed enough for me to pick them up again.  I must have shuffled and cut and dealt and fanned for days.

 

After a while, I don’t know how long, I did leave my room.  The parents had left for work, and the brother was… well, no one cares where he was.  I certainly didn’t, so long as he wasn’t where I happened to be.

The hallway to the kitchen seemed much longer than it had even when I was small.  There was a small plate of food in the fridge~ an uncommon display of consideration on the part of my mother.  I ate without heating it up and then, still more than a little dazed, chose the strongest belt I could find in my father’s closet and shut my door.

That’s how Will had done it~ with a belt.  He was much shorter than I, though, and the rod in the closet wasn’t high enough for me to swing properly.  I racked my brain for other options.

I must have gotten angry then~ angry at Will, at myself, at anything that was handy.  The usual stage of grief, I suppose, only this, too, is merely a black period akin to those during a night of especially heavy drinking.  I needed new furniture though, and new clothes and the window had to be replaced.  Everything had to be replaced, so thoroughly had I destroyed whatever was unfortunate enough to find its way into my hands.  My parents were not pleased, but they said nothing.  I suppose they were preferred the destruction to the anticipated alternative.

 

The worst part, though, was the coming weeks.  Everyone tiptoed around me as if I’d been the one who tried to off myself.  I went with some friends to visit his mom.  She was an understandable wreck, but we all were, I suppose, so we just sat there in our mutual grief and played the game, saying the things we were supposed to say and leaving when the script ran out.  Thing is, I don’t think anyone- even his mother- was taking it as hard as I was, myself.  But maybe that’s an arrogant thing to say.  I don’t care.  I’m still pretty sure it’s true.

After the funeral I started spending more time with my brother and his friends.  Mindless conversation with people who hadn’t known Will was vastly preferable to being around people who had.  But one can only stand mindlessness for so long, and gradually I retreated into myself, into my books and cards.  I made a point of showing up to church functions, not that I was given an option, but suddenly the absence of connection to these people and things that had once been so important became painfully obvious~ to me, at least.  I don’t want to say that part of me died with Will.  That’s overly dramatic and ridiculous.  But the thread that joins people is fine and fickle and that had snapped with the belt when they cut him down.

I’ve always been very self-aware.  It’s a bit of a weakness, in a way.  Anything and everything is examined and analyzed ad nauseam in even the most insignificant of situations and this tendency took hold of my mind with such force that even had I been so inclined I could not have controlled it.  I was not so inclined, as it happened, and after some years of dedicated effort the effects began to show, if only to me.

Everyone has a moment of crisis in their lives, a moment that alters them irreparably.  Most people don’t encourage this change.  Most people don’t decide in advance who they want to become, what path they wish to take, at such a young age.  Who they become is usually a by-product of years of living, not the result of a carefully executed methodical formula.

‘You do like her though, right?’

Shrug ‘Yeah, sure.  I mean she’s hot and all so, why not?’ I grinned.

‘So ask her out.’

‘I don’t want a relationship, though.  You know that.  I’m going to be a bachelor.’

‘No one said you had to marry her.’

I laughed.  ‘Well obviously.  Ok how about this:  I’ll flip a coin.  Heads, I ask her out.  Tails, I don’t.’

Lucas laughed too.  ‘Oh, that’s real nice.  Alright, go for it.’

I flipped.  Heads.  I grinned and dialed her number.  ‘Hey, Sarah, it’s Chris.  I was just wondering…’

‘She said yes?’

I rolled my eyes.  ‘Of course she said yes.  Who do you think you’re talking to, here?’

‘I think that’s worth at least one man point.’  Years ago the 4 of us- Lucas, Dan, Mathews (whose first name was Jerry, but because of me no one in the youth group at church called him that) and myself- had developed a point system based on the manliness of a given act, covering everything from casual asides to sex and whatever else came up that seemed manly.  At any given time everyone was certain that he was winning.  What they invariably failed to take into account was that I never lose.  Not that it made any real difference, and no one got anything if they won, but even so.

‘1?  What kind of shit is that?  It’s worth at least 5.  I’ve been messing with her for weeks now.  One minute she thinks I’m in love with her, and the next she’s in tears.  I could call her back and say ‘o by the way, I’ve been fucking your sister for the past month.  We’re still on for Friday though, right?’ and she’d cry, maybe, but she’d be there.’

‘Dude, that’s kind of fucked up.  I mean, you’re treating her like shit.’

‘O i am not.  Just having a little fun.  I’ll be nicer now that we’re together, I guess.  Maybe.’ I laughed.  Lucas shook his head.  He didn’t approve of my games, but that’s because he couldn’t play them.  He’s always the one on the leash, bending over backwards for a girl who would, in all likelihood, leave him for me if I so chose.  I wouldn’t do that, of course, because he’s my friend.  But if not for me they always leave him for someone else.  Always.  I would teach him how to play, but… well, if I did that I couldn’t manipulate him as well.  And really, with someone like Lucas, if you’re going to spend any kind of time with him, you really have to know how to maintain control of the situation.  Otherwise he throws a fit when he doesn’t get what he wants, and you have to try to pacify him… He might as well be a girl in that respect.  So I don’t teach him, and he complains that I’m mean to women.  Maybe I am, but I tend to look at it as a social experiment.  I like to see how people react under different circumstances.  It’s research.

The problem is, sometimes I get sucked in.  Every once in a while I realize I’m beginning to genuinely care about the person and it’s a struggle to regain control.  I have to distance myself, disappear to think, to read, to contemplate, and then I can return, once more in full control.  Women don’t tend to like this, and despite my mastery of the art of lying occasionally they suspect that I’m not telling them everything.  I always have to laugh at this, later, because if they were aware of the full scope of things they know nothing about… Well, I won’t allow that to happen.  And all you need is a little doubt.  They can catch you red-handed at something and with a few choice words and some Oscar-worthy acting you’re not only back in their good graces but usually they’ll give you a few extra brownie points to boot.

In this way I can maintain a relationship for exactly as long as it suits me.  The desire to appear ‘normal’, to avoid drawing attention to myself, demands that I have the occasional girlfriend.  Appearing normal is of the utmost importance.  Moderately preppy clothes, hobbies and interests that, while not strictly common, are not seen as deviant in any way, a solid group of friends with varying degrees of insight into who I am beneath the bullshit~ such things are indispensable.  I have, of course, made mistakes in regards to who I share my real passions with, but no mistake is so grave that it cannot be managed and eventually rectified.

For instance, only a few people know that Machiavelli’s The Prince and The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green are my bibles.  These are the philosophies that have shaped my life, because during my months of introspection, it was these works that seemed to be the most truthful, the most real, and the most conducive to my eventual rule of the known world.

This, of course, is my ultimate goal.  I have conditioned myself to be a man of power, and so shall I be.  And if not the world as a whole, I will undoubtedly rule my corner of it~ this I can guarantee.

The Circular Ruins: a weird little story inspired by a neat little building

Here is a link to some pictures of it, in case you’re interested. 
And now, the story.

The air inside was warm and moist and earthen, instantly commandeering the chill that had taken up residence deep within his bones.  He stood at a window, rubbing his hands together absently and admiring the winter skeletons of a garden of Babylonian proportions that lay nestled within the confines of the circular structure.  Behind him, the wind whistled and cried through the entrance, its door torn rudely away by those who had come before; kids, seeking respite from prying, authoritative eyes or, like him, world-weary travelers with no home to claim.  He wondered idly where the others were as he wandered through rooms and halls arranged in a labyrinthine line that bespoke of far more numerous years than his.  The craftsmanship was admirable, and he stroked the walls to tell them so before pursing his lips and banishing a family of dust from its home on a recessed windowsill. 

Night bore down upon his new abode and there was nothing to be done for it but sleep, for he had no flashlight and only a handful of matches to light his last few cigarettes.  Light one he did, and found a cozy corner in which to curl up and convene with the darkness, resolving to tidy up a bit once it made its inevitable retreat.  Let no man say his vagabond existence denoted uncleanliness as well.

As promised, the sun streamed in and onto his face at its allotted winder hour and he rose, still somewhat groggy, to bathe with melting snow and the remnants of a bar of scented soap he had swiped from a restaurant in the town now hidden by dainty little hills.  Once clean, he set eagerly to the task of exploring, discovering with joy a walled-in staircase that led to the upper floor.  This was much more to his liking, devoid as it was of the filthy decorations of late-night revelers who had no business in a place they could not properly appreciate.  Dipping into his precious supply of soap he cleaned the cataracts from the windows, and made himself a comfortable nest of the stubborn vines and grasses that had grown into the stone and withstood the harsh weather. 

He caught some mice to eat, apologizing profusely all the while and swearing to look after their offspring in their absence.  Hoping they understood he made a fire in the chilly hearth and ate, glancing with shame at the confused little chirps issuing from the wall.  In the waning light he stoked the fire to keep it burning through the night and sat back to admire his new home.  It really did look much better even than it had when he arrived. 

He awoke a few hours later to the sound and stench of fire.  He leaped to his feet and prowled about the building, having first concluded that his smoldering pile of coals was not the culprit.  Eventually he decided it had been but a dream, inspired perhaps by a chimney clogged from long disuse. 

The next morning he again cleaned himself in the snow, quick and shivering.  He paused, however, at the threshold and stood there, naked and confused, staring up at the building:  the natural cover of snow-choked green and brown was gone, and in its place rose a third level and a peaked and neatly shingled roof.  He shook his head uncomprehendingly and went back inside.  “I must have been overtired,” he told the mice, “I didn’t realize this place was quite so big!”  They laughed at his expense and he joined them, wiling away a handful of days in much the same manner.

His little friends alerted him to the next change, as they led him around in search of food that was somewhat more abundant than he had supposed.  The door through which he had initially entered had at some point been replaced neatly on its hinges and securely fastened.  This put him on guard, concerned as he must always be of eviction from a residence he should not maintain, but he found no one. 

The mice, for the most part ignored these inexplicable and sporadic alterations to their space.  Once, he noticed the litter of bottles and cigarette butts had been mysteriously replaced with the accoutrements of a caretaker; cleaning fluids, buckets, mops and brooms stood where the careless decorations had formerly greeted him.  The days had lengthened by this point, and the time during which the sun was allowed freedom from the clouds had as well, and he worked long into the evening, doing his best to restore the place to its former beauty.

A small family of cats joined the little party, and the kittens delighted in terrorizing the mice until their guardian put a gentle stop to it.  They sought food as a group, venturing out beyond the thick stone walls for things that had begun to grow, and the skeleton garden became, slowly, a plentiful one by means of seeds and cuttings gathered by the man on their expeditions.  He went sometimes to the village to beg for change, with which he bought mild and meat and bedding for himself and his friends and, on those rare days wherein he collected more than was needed he bought a book, which he would try (or rather, pretend) to read aloud as the kittens nestled and played around him.

This was his life for many months indeed, and he smiled with pleasure at his home and that which he had made.

Then, out of a sky that was a steely grey rather than the proverbial clear blue, the war came.

He heard it well before he saw it, as is often the case with such things, but he knew it for what it was and gathered his friends together in the basement he had recently found.  They cowered together and mewled more in confusion than fear, as the shots and rumbles rolled up from the village and screamed past above them.

The bomb awoke him with a rattle of teeth and bones and foundation; it was so near, so terrifyingly real and he cried, and did not venture up again until the food had disappeared and the land had long since grown eerily silent. 

The village- his village- had vanished.  It was as though it had never existed to begin with; no rubble, no shell-shocked homes hiding the frightened living and peaceful dead, no gardens or streets for them to line.  In frustration and anger he cried again, and then returned to his home to bury his face in warm vibrating fur.

But- what’s this?

The cliff in the hills where once had stood only a serene view of the nearby forest now held a new building, fashioned in kind with the old and connected to it via  a bridge that led to a second-story door for which he had never been able to ascertain a use.  Right where the bomb might have fallen all those weeks before, but he had heard no construction or voices save his own.  His structure appeared different, as well, and he had missed all of this inexplicable newness in his haste to survey the post-war landscape. 

The door to the new addition was ajar and he roved around inside, finding the remnants of a life hastily fled.  Clothes in crumpled bedside piles; food, half-eaten and long cold; an unknown brand of cigarette left to smolder itself into a pillar of ash.  As he stood an pondered this strange tableau he heard the siren.  It pealed up from a distant city and was joined by others, farther on, and suddenly he understood.

He felt guilty; of course he did.  These were other people’s homes.  But he gathered up his cats and mice all the same -the prospect of a real bed was simply too delicious to forgo- and then he waited.  Perhaps the ghosts would return at the first siren, fully-fleshed, to resume their retroactive lives, and maybe –just maybe- they would welcome him, as he would undoubtedly welcome them.