Through layers of sewer and concrete two hundred feet above Mioko's speeding train, Morris sat in the Chapel of Rest, hunched over his mother's coffin, speaking in muted tones. He unconsciously pulled at the pocket of his blue blazer, the stitching long since come unraveled.
"I've been trying to watch less TV and I'm still taking my vitamins and drinking the protein shakes like you told me," he said. "I even ordered that Magic Bullet mixer set I told you about. They say it's a 'Personal, Versatile Counter-top Magician,' but it's not the easiest thing to clean."
Taking care of his own physical hygiene was bad enough, but scrubbing counters and dishes. Every time he picked up a sponge it opened a black pit of despair; he so desperately wished she could come home with him again.
"Everything's changing down here, Ma. It's like a cosmic joke. As if the gods decided to forbid anyone over thirty-five from living in the Lower East Side anymore."
He told what was left of Geraldine Hacking in great detail about his impossible upstairs neighbor, the prick artist, and about all the rich brats Axlerod was leasing apartments to.
"You'll barely recognize the place now, Ma. I can hardly afford to go get anything to eat around the building anymore. And the way these kids walk around, their stupid phones and pads and talking top volume into their headbuds, as if they're god's gift to the planet. It's despicable."
He knew she understood him, when no one else could. Always had. The hardest part was having to leave her here.
Come back home to Ludlow. Please.
His lip quivered. Then he heard the funeral director’s voice from the other room and knew his time was short.
"I'll be by again in a couple days, Ma, I promise."
Seeing Morris walking through the front vestibule on his way out, the funeral director snapped into swift action.
"Mr. Hacking, we have to talk," the funeral director said loudly.
Morris ignored the pompous jerk, shaking his head as he shoved open the parlor door and walked quickly into the street.
But in his haste to leave, he’d forgotten to give her the most important update.
Axlerod had given him work, and it might just rid them of Dorian, that son of a bitch. Maybe then she could come home.
On the way back to the tenement, walking past CHP Hardware, Morris had a fantastic idea. He ducked inside.
Arriving home and dumping Super Glue from the paper bag, he smiled. The tiny cadaver in his freezer. What a brilliant idea. Just perfect. But he should have gone to a paper supply.
Goddamn it.
He moved to his workbench and started tossing aside newspapers and magazines. Until he found a little, soiled envelope.
It was just the right size.
Reaching the top step, Morris peeked over his shoulder as he approached Dorian's door. He knocked forcefully.
"Dorian? Hey asshole. You there?"
Morris waited, keeping an eye for anyone coming down the hall. All clear. He pulled the tube of Super Glue from his coat pocket. With a last peak over his shoulder, he twisted the cap, and emptied it into the keyhole. Turning quickly, Morris tried to contain his glee as he walked rapidly back downstairs.
But he stopped mid-step.
He was so fired up, he'd completely forgotten about the envelope. He raced back up, and was pleased to find the hallway still empty. He leaned over and placed the envelope below the front door, the penciled scribble "HELLO" clearly visible on the crumpled front. He stared down at it, picturing the prize inside. Maybe too long he realized as he pivoted back towards the stairs.
The last thing he needed was to get caught in the act.
That night Morris decided to celebrate his stroke of genius with a Jameson at Iggy's, but hard liquor was never really his friend, and after his third pour, everything got scribbled and names were backwards. He felt he was gonna piss himself every time he got a look from someone down the bar. He longed for nature. Pinecones. Trees. The deafening squeak of cicadas to drown out the voices. For time to stop being measured out in minute-by-minute increments of humanity. Humanity. What a horrible word. The scorning hordes crawling through the clammy streets, staring at Morris, outing him for the truth in what he was. "A loner," "a creep," "a waste of space." Their faces were colored with malice. He could tell. He could hear it in every look. How much they despised him. When it got this insistent, he wished he could be made of air so the sun would shine right through.
In their apartment, sitting with a pencil in his hand, scribbling another incoherent miniature stairway on the peeling paint across from his toilet, he wondered how long he’d had the hard wooden seat beneath him. Morris was unaware he’d walked home. He was past the point of pins and needles, so it had to have been longer than an hour. No more sound on the stairwell. Sometimes he'd get a lucky look at a big titter in a tight skirt through the peephole this time of night, but it was past that now, and the concentric stairwells in his drawing were starting to give him a headache. The blue blazer began to beckon from the closet. He wouldn't usually allow himself to put it on at night, because if she brought anyone with her he got scared and he didn't know how to make them go. So many souls in these splintered walls. He tried to mash the end of the pencil into a tiny knot in the wood, seeing if it would regain it's point, but only managing flaked graphite, descending to the floor in a rain of black dust. Try as he might, he couldn't push her off. Straightening, he fired his left then his right and he was up and off, lugging past his mattress, his toes doing their best to steady his hulking waver on the molding slats as he pushed on towards the far side of the bedroom and in towards her old Victorian dresser, he squeaked the top left drawer open first, digging in past the old photographs, the jottings from long decommissioned cruise ships, invite cards to the captain’s table and a couple of love notes she kept bound with a postcard, turkish stamps in the corner, naughty words he couldn't quite equate with her primness. Morris occasionally leafed through, but he was always terrified she was watching and would descend on him at any moment with the hairbrush.
He knew no matter how late it was, he'd better leave those alone, pulling back the dresser door, he noticed how neat her side looked next to his and he felt his chest constrict with his own pathetic inability to straighten his clothes and keep his shirts off the floor of their boudoir, he lifted out the navy cotton blazer, the stiff wooden hanger happy to greet his fingers, a creaking shudder welcomed him from the floor of the bedroom.
He could never mistake her footsteps.
Turning as the high pitched squeal started to hit his eardrums, he slid his hands into the sleeves and held them out to greet her, in the dim pixelation of blacks and browns beyond his bedroom doorway he could make out his mother’s visage along with five more from the other side, his stomach started to tingle then turn.
Fear.
It was too late at night, he should have waited till morning, her face was peeling, she needed her makeup, and the other ones, what he could see of them inside the shadows, were shifting their heads side to side so rapidly the sockets of their eyes and mouths formed stacks of gyrating black gashes, as he continued to power his eyelids and point his face into the darkness he felt her slipping to where the shadows started to blur, they were everywhere now, all around, too many to count, a thousand ants emerged from his scalp and scuttled down his shoulders towards the floor, they were on him now and their faces were ghastly, even with the gyrations he could make out the dark slits of their eyes, the gaping blackened mouths, he felt his legs buckle under, slamming the floor boards, his breathing clenched as they started to drag him hungrily sideways across the floor.
He finally forced himself to snap his eyelids shut.
His only hope, as The Unwelcome filled his head with a thousand swirling stab wounds, if he could just hang on until the first light started to spill through the windows. Fear was compounded by mortification as his bowels let loose for the first time in days, he reached for his shins and pulled them in close so that as little as possible of his skin was exposed to the seething black clouds of hungry ghosts all around.
How could he have been so stupid? Had he really forgotten to turn on a single light, he knew she hated that. She couldn't stand traipsing around in the darkness, especially not when the others were about.
Morris recognized yet again he was not only a failure as a human being, but as a son as well.
Then it came back to him.
And The Unwelcome and their black cloud abated.
The glue and the rat.
Success.
BEHIND THE KEYBOARD
Someone in my old Lower East Side tenement apartment didn’t like where I was parking my bike down under the stairs. They didn’t like it so much in fact they left me a little present. It was beyond horrible to find. And you’ll see what happens when Dorian receives his gift.
Getting sloppy in Lower East Side bars was a full time job for me at one point. Although I don’t think I ever got quite a lost as Morris did in this chapter.
Yours In The Chain,
Doug Karr
SPECIAL THANKS to my wife @zenmommas for years of support during the writing process, @ericvancewalton for his trailblazing, inspired collaboration and incredible guidance, @andrarchy for his mind blowing insight and friendship, @bakerchristopher for being an inspiration as a human artist and bro, @complexring for his brilliance and enthusiasm, Masie Cochran, Taylor Rankin and @elenamoore for their skillful help in editing the manuscript, and to @opheliafu for the fantastic illustrations she created exclusively for the novel's launch on Steemit and to Elena Megalos for her wonderful character illustrations. I’d also like to thank Eddie Boyce, Jamie Proctor, Katie Mustard, Alan Cumming, Danai Gurira, Stephan Nowecki, Ron Simons, Dave Scott, Alden Karr, Missy Chimovitz, my dad Andy Karr and late mother Wendy, and everyone else who helped lead me to this moment.
I am a Brooklyn based writer, film & commercial director, and crypto-enthusiast, my projects include @HardFork-series an upcoming narrative crypto-noir and my novel Dwelling will soon be premiering exclusively on Steemit, and you can check out more of my work at dougkarr.com, piefacepictures.com, and www.imdb.com/name/nm1512347
Please comment thoughtfully, up-vote and resteem and I'll gladly upvote your comments!
