Apathy at Your Window is the blog for writer Wesley D. Gullett. This blog features not-so-mindless musings of a modern American Heathen. I will be posting fiction, non-fiction and poetry. There is currently no posting schedule but I may be utilizing one soon. If you would like to know when I post something follow me on Google+ or you can find me on twitter @wgullett or Facebook http://www.facebook.com/apathyatyourwindow
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
A Different Story
So would have Hawkins.
He was always with me for anything.
Don't get me wrong on this one. The kid was a great friend and I would have protected him to both of our deaths. That was the problem. No matter how either of us felt, we were side by side.
I guess that's really why we ended up together. Here.
We had plotted it for some time. We had prepared, planned, prepped, even got down to physical training so we could outrun our adversaries if the incident arose. Neither of us had been quick enough for what we ended up dealing with.
We were together, living in the beautiful and majestic American southwest. We grew tired of the atrocities that we saw impact the landscape that had been cultivated over eons and had just started to discuss doing something about it. We even followed Abbey's Monkey Wrench Gang and started to plant strategic caches and plot out attacks against key points in the terrain.
Honestly, most of it was just a loud, drunken chaos of he and I yelling at each other over the music at whatever bar we had picked out that evening. Aside from the caches and our newly acquired desire to exercise, each night after we had worked out, anyone in our town could find us at the bar. The cops in town had even grown akin to shouting at us from their patrol cars as we harassed the college students for never working for their keep.
This was our regular routine.
Until that night. That night where we finally left to enact one of our plans.
It was a small one. They had been building a new road up the side of the mountain. It would connect a suburb to the tiny downtown hub where we lived. A connection, though, that would change the economy and allow for a new mining industry to grow that had been started near the suburb. We were on our way to just pull out the surveyor's markings when we ran into him.
He was our town's newest criminal. A serial rapist. His picture had just been posted about town earlier that week. That's not to say the situation wasn't a dead giveaway. He was on top of his newest victim.
Hawkins ran up on him. I knew it wouldn't go well, he was a small framed man. He was definitely a scrapper but no match for the bastard, twice his size, that he ran towards. Nonetheless, Hawkins caught him off guard and kicked him right in his chest.
He fell of of the poor woman with an exhale of air.
It didn't take him long before he pounced from the ground on top of Hawkins and started to pummel him in the chest.
I felt for my knife on my hip. I had never used it before for anything but just skinning animals so as soon as I touched it, my conscience told me to leave it rest. I ran in and tackled the bastard into a puddle in the alley.
He and I were evenly matched. Same size. Same build. I think the difference that mattered was that I had grown up with an older brother, and Chuck liked to pick fights with me.
He swung at me. One. Two. Three times. The first and last connected with either side of my jaw. Luckily, that had always been Chuck's favorite move in a fight.
I shrugged off the blows like they were mere glances of a dagger against my iron shield and came in on top of him. My hands were clenched together and came down on his nose with the meat of my palms. I knew immediately that I had entirely separated his nose from his face as blood spurted all over my pants.
His surge of adrenaline must have kicked in as he tossed me away like a doll. I hit the ground on the opposite side of the alley and my head bashed against the back door of a pizzeria.
As he came running at me, Hawkins came in for a tackle like he was the game-winning linebacker and stole the bastards breath from him again. Hawkins stayed on top of him this time.
Hawkins had found a sizable rock in the alley and began to use it as a fist pack.
I joined in with swift kicks to the rib cage from my steel toed boots.
We would have him now. We would pummel the life out of the bastard and he would go to jail to receive the same he had felt so righteous about doling out in the months prior to our midnight rendezvous.
After a moment, Hawkins stood up and joined me. The fight had turned into a right proper romp. We made blood blisters of waffle iron markings in his forehead as our Doc Martens stomped down on his face. It was after that blissful moment of blood and boots that I kicked him in the ass and he flipped onto his hands and knees.
I'm still not sure how he did it but he survived the beating with enough wits about him to scamper into the bushes on his hands and knees. The only thing I can surmise now is that it was the red and blue lights that flickered down the alley that had scared the pathetic excuse for a man off and into the darkness that shrouded the bushes.
The cops came in on us fast. From both sides of the alley too. We were trapped. Not worried.
The first cop jumped out and cuffed us immediately.
We had been expecting as much. To go to jail as the two guys that kicked the ass of the serial rapist, that was something we had been willing to do. The ideals of our eco-terrorism had been long forgotten as we sat in the back of the squad car and waited for the cop to pop in and ask us how it felt to be the first people to pummel that bastard's face.
When he finally came in, we couldn't believe our ears.
"You two are under arrest for the rape and murder of this poor bitch in the body bag right over there. What the fuck do you two bastards have to say for yourselves?"
We were too worried and dumbfounded to even say a word. So he carted us off to jail as the real bastard probably laughed at us from the bushes he had hidden behind.
I'll make a really long story shorter. We ended up with a public attorney. The swine didn't do us a lick of good. He was caught up in the same hype we had been that night that we attacked the bastard and assumed we were just a couple more low lives that drifted in to ruin his hometown.
He did absolutely nothing to help us and everything he could to convict us. The blood on my pants was turned into the remnants of my befouling of that poor young woman and Hawkins' bruises in his chest had been inflicted upon him as the woman fought back against his restraining arms.
A week later, while the trial was still going on, the bastard's body turned up dead in the bushes he had crawled towards. We were charged with his murder and stories were concocted of how we had actually started a raping gang and he had threatened to turn us in and we tried to frame him on that night.
Now we sit in prison. Our faces smashed against the bars. I day dream of our caches and plans to destroy corporate America's controls on the beautiful backcountry destinations that had been sworn to being protection areas. Hawkins dreaming of 100 proof whiskeys and craft beers. Neither of us regretting killing that bastard ass rapist that never had a chance to do it again.
Friday, August 23, 2013
Monsoon Season
with the thousand shades of red
that dance within a campfire.
Their climbs protrude from
the fresh green junipers,
sage brushes and grasses,
like red waves over a green sea.
The hawks circle in the sky
like gulls above the ocean,
motionless and waiting for their chance.
In the distance,
the clouds are gray,
a dark, smokey shade,
they drop their waters
and hide the red waves behind them.
The desert is not arid and lifeless this year.
It breathes with the life of the ocean
and endures its scars.
Divided
What's the difference?
Every day is one step closer.
Like the glow on the floor,
Cracked through an open blind,
It all has to fade away.
The same song on repeat
you find new meaning each time it plays.
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Naknek, AK
I know I don't post too often but for the next 6-8 weeks I will be working in a remote village in Alaska. I will be cut off from the world and won't be able to post in that time. I'll be back soon.
Thursday, May 23, 2013
The Figure Part 1
Why the fuck, Maine?!
Fucking politics.
The dismal varicose veins of roadways spattered across America's soil had me in no mood for anything Duke was about to bring up to me.
"Sir!" He ran up to me, his voice high and loud. Very loud. Far too much cheer in that tone he had going too. The kind of tone that was enough to choke a man on his own whiskey. His hubris all stemmed from a low-rent county fair, it was just opposite the city from our hotel.
Shit.
In my childhood, this news would have excited me. My teenage hormones would have hit me with a hard on so stiff that I'd have found a half decent chick to bone all week long. Now, however, in the paramount of my writing career, and my mid-thirties, my brain turned strictly to cocaine, maybe even heroin, and the crazed story that would come from buying the drugs. Every one of the people I would buy from were the twisted personalities that erected the cavalcade of steel rails and rigged games that attracted all the local mouth breathers to what was pathetically dubbed the 'county fair'.
"You can go for your cotton candy and force fried foods deep into your gullet. I'm going for the story." I revealed a cigarette from my coat and promptly lit it as he reminded me of my publisher's commands to keep this young lawyer behind me at all times. Good damned logistics. I dragged my cigarette and swilled my lukewarm beer, "very well then, don't piss your pants, boy, because its time for you to grow the fuck up and I ain't about to hold your hand."
We hopped into the convertible Duke had conned out of the rental shack near the airport. He wasn't bad for a rookie lawyer but I could tell he and I were about to pop every damned cherry in one night. I sped off from the hotel parking lot and hopped a curb as I pulled two bones out of my hat. I smacked my lips down on one and through the wind that rushed down into the front seat, I lit it up with a crack of my Zippo. I held one out for the boy to snag, "you smoke any of this shit while you were in college?" Of course I didn't give him time to respond. I just snapped the lit on out of my mouth and tossed it into has lap, "smoke it or get your suit burned, you make the choice."
Who the fuck really knows why the publishers assigned this boy to me. Probably some kind of demented hazing they had been planning for their next new lawyer. They took a good man from my life, someone I'd considered a sidekick. A real lawyer, a true man. They fired him after he messed up an incident with a sweet and sexy publicist I'd chose to include in a story I had written up for small time publication while I lived in the Florida Keys. Apparently she wasn't too pleased that I had not refrained from changing her name, for artistic purposes, really.
The fair was exactly what I had expected it to be; the fattest men and women, children with high blood pressure and diabetes, and people so lazy they were abandoned all day in front of the same forsaken funnel-cake stand. The putrid smell of the fair gagged me as deep inside, that teenager wanted to come rushing out and find myself some strange lady to desperately try to impress as I regale them with made-up stories of war from my time spent in the military. I was a foolish little piece of shit. I looked behind me, Duke was following me like a drunk chicken, and swayed side to side each time we would have to stop in the crowd. I had all ready smoked the brains from his head and whiskey from the driver over really soaked into his blood stream.
My hound dog nose went right to work. Would it be PCP, cocaine? China white? The thought of what I could find was an easy distracting from the depraved sea of people that we swam. We quickly found ourselves in the seed backside of the county fair. We were in the dark alleys created by the campers and RVs that you dared not even look down as a child. That was where I found my people. The liquor slugging, rail snorting, pot smoking brethren that would get me my fix for the proper writing tools.
Duke's face was priceless as we approached a group of drunkards. His chin actually touched his chest and his skin as pale as an egg shell. Their radio blasted as they sat out in the chairs, a typical scene for me from my group of friends but Duke's lavish law school lifestyle had not prepared him from what we walked up on. I could smell the sweetened skunk odor layed thick in the air and I knew immediately that these would be the right people.
"God damn is it good to see some fine gentleman in this squalor they call a fair," I spat my cigarette on the ground and quickly lit another then pulled the whiskey out from my coat, "anyone care for pull?" They all took me up on my offer and I wasted no time as my bottle was spun around, "any you men want to make a little money and help another man out?" Their eyes stared right through me, "Jesus, have you all gone catatonic all ready? What hell did you take? I want some for myself and my colleague here."
They looked Duke over, he was definitely my weak link. I new the young blood could be my undoing on this adventure but he did have to be hot on my heels. Their eyes came back on me and obviously alpha male rose from his tattered lawn chair and approached me with his shoulders cocked back and a sideways stride. I assumed he hid a gun on his hip I couldn't see.
"Why'd we sell to a bloke like you? Bet you're a cop," his draw was definitely from the British Isles.
"Good god, are you Irish?"
"Accent don't mean a thing," now it was as redneck as the deepest Cajun.
"God damn, I know I"m not on enough drugs yet to be going this crazy. Pick a region and stick to it!" That was a a mistake. He picked slur of sounds that billowed out from his throat, I could only assume it to be Russian. "Come on! This is America and we speak English."
"Good on, ya."
"I'll be happy with Australian, so long as you speak fucking English!"
"Easy there, mate. You don't have to go mad on us," brave son of a bitch had the gumption to snag the cigarette right from my lips and take a drag. "How do we know you ain't know cop, undercover and here to bust the gyps that rolled in with the carnival?" He then pushed the cigarette back into my lips, he had soaked in enough slobber to disgusts a saint Bernard.
"Duke here is my lawyer."
"That's really going to help your situation, isn't it."
"Depends on if you would be offended on speaking with my very inebriated publication lawyer. You could really think of him as your human resources guy." I handed my flooded cigarette back to him and pulled out another, "in fact, seeing as he really is here more for you than me, it could really behoove you to have a nice long conversation with him while I finish my whiskey and get to know your company."
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
An Untitled Short Story
“Of course, Floyd.”
Friday, April 5, 2013
Lose Yourself in Every Moment
The white glow was shrouded,
Hidden by vermilion cliffs.
For hours the moon rose behind them
Until her glow lit the desert floor.
We sat in silence.
In awe as she became exposed.
The fire between us,
Bound to grow.
We passed the whiskey,
Shared a beer,
And lit a smoke.
No space between the two of us
But the rocks we hopped across
Right to the edge of the canyon.
The Colorado cried our names,
Louder and louder
As we approached.
Our feet rested at the edge,
I reveled in the moment.
The only sound,
The river below.
The canyon walls engulfed
In a sweet white light.
Pure beauty surrounded
Just the two of us.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Greatest Minds
Wanderlust is never broken.
Society will provide you
The brink
Of insanity.
Your mind torn apart.
Your life broken down.
Destroyed!
To mere scraps of paper
And simple metals,
All stamped with the faces
Of lost ideals
Proved to be best to hold.
To relish.
To teach.
There is nothing you need to do,
Nothing more than nothing itself.
Provide and cultivate
Only what makes you happy.
Dismantle and destroy the rest.
Write off the spawn
That creates the worst in you.
Grab your pack,
And meet me in the woods.
We leave tomorrow.
We walk
Until
We may walk
No more.
Flames of Discontent
Just move into the woods.
Darwin knew best.
I'll teach the world to be true,
They'll see what responsibility
Really means.
Provide your food,
Hunt,
Trap
And forage.
Fight for your water.
Truly nomadic,
Always on the move.
Following food,
Water,
Weather.
Most of the savages,
Claimed civil by society,
Will die.
Me and mine,
We,
We will make it.
Through the sunshine,
Monsoons and snowfall.
We will become
The truest of generations.
Providing no more dishonesty
Based on fear.
No more greed
Based off this selfish social structure
We will be together,
Selflessly providing for one another
And without the bother of
All of this
Greed
Hate
Selfishness
And suffering
Monday, February 25, 2013
What's It Worth?
I walked up on it in the park.
It didn't look like I had remembered.
The full, vibrant foliage,
It swayed in the wind,
Brown and dying.
The limbs and leaves
Crackled
Through the strain.
I swear that first branch
Was way
Way
Higher.
Now it dropped below my elbow.
It was broken half way and
Sitting on the ground.
The grass at its base,
As brown as the leaves.
Monday, February 18, 2013
The Gypsy's Songbird
The lone bird chirps
In the woods
Beside the road.
Cars rush past
All late for work
All oblivious.
No one knows
She's there.
No one knows
She sings.
No one but the wanderer
Who woke in the woods
As the bird chirps.
Somewhere out there...
It was a place that I had
Never been.
A quiet place, a place
Hard to find.
Like those you hear of
Or only read.
It was a place I'd truly
Never seen.
Discovered and shared by
Drifting friends.
Indifferent at first to this place
I had found.
But what was there and
What I saw.
It was a place I will surely
Find again.
Circled 'A's and Chaos Stars
Out there are a handful of kids making an immense difference in their communities. They're working at the grassroots level to take care of the less fortunate of their communities. They're out there running organizations like Food Not Bombs and starting programs like really really free markets, all-age venues, art communities, and public gardens. They're out there busting their asses to make our city more fun for all of us. They're also improving the lives of others with free handouts of food, clothing, books, music and more. These symbol toting kids are vital to the movement. They're the ones that are building the underground network of roots for our anarchic redwood forest. These kids doing all this good and being spattered with anarchic symbols are causing others to think, "does the bomb-throwing anarchist really exist?"
That's an open window.
An open window to expose the uneducated to a belief they may have never known they could even get behind. Yes, any one can be an anarchist. The ideals of living free of oppressive governments, laws and city codes, a place where people take care of themselves, their friends, and their family. Ideals that America was founded on, ideals every American, every person, wants for themselves. That is why this open window system is crucial. They see the circled 'a' accompanied with good natured people, instead of painted on our city's abandoned buildings, we will have the opportunity to educate. These peaked interest "converts" should be embraced, educated, and looked after, they will be important pieces to the puzzle when our time comes.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
The Westbound Train
My grandmother died.
It was not too long ago but I haven't seen her in over a year. If you wanted to be pedantic, I haven't really seen here since I was a teenager. Nobody in my family had really seen Granny since then either. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's before I'd grow into the man I am today.
Granny would never know me ever again.
The image she held onto of me, was a young twelve year old, boy, not the pierced and tattoo covered freak she had only seen at sideshows while growing up in Kentucky. Inevitably, I scared the living daylights out of my grandmother for years, just by showing up. Then I would remind her who I was, only to get a, "what happened?!"
She really was a sweet woman though. Not a mean bone in her body. Alzheimer's Disease has a pretty serious impact on the personality of its victims though. Unfortunately, Granny went from the sweetheart she was, to a rugged woman ready to run away or gun you down with words. She was a sweet old woman that took care of me when I was sick, taught me to sew and sat and laughed as Pa and I would try to play bluegrass music on a banjo and juice harp. She would bake biscuits with hot chocolate pudding drizzled over top of them for my cousins and I regularly. She liked to call it biscuits and chocolate gravy. All these memories of her would flash through my head and I couldn't stand the look of fear on her face every time I saw her or the disgruntled remarks to all of us.
It really made family gatherings hard.