Chapter 1
I’m writing this as a warning to future unlucky souls that arrive here. To those who find this I’m sorry, to those who don’t find this I’m even more sorry. My name is Jake Tillman, I am a solider of God’s army and I died. The whole dying thing isn’t really what Hollywood likes to portray it. . Death is boring, unsatisfying, and disappointing. It is just instant darkness, no white light, no sweet harmonious sound from distant beings, nor an out of body experience. It is just like someone turning off the light in a windowless room. The only thing those religious cults got right, was there is an afterlife. There is only one afterlife and I will tell you something reader, it isn’t worth it try to live forever if you can. I preferred if I just died, then at least I would be at peace, no thoughts, no function, , no soul going to Heaven, no falling to Hell, no reaching the goal of Nirvana just the sweet satisfying end. When you die and then you unfortunately wake up, you will be caught in an endless war between the gods
When I look back, at the time when I was alive, a lump fills my throat. I miss being alive, I miss my parents, I miss my friends, and the person I miss the most is my girlfriend. The image of her long flowing amber hair dancing in the sunset still penetrates my dreams to this very day. I still don’t know if I should classify her as my girlfriend but I want too. I doubt she still thinks of me as her boyfriend, but it is one of those optimistic ideas that make being dead a lot easier to deal with. I also miss my best friend Scott. I see him every now and then even though we aren’t on the same terms as we used to be. Scott and I were friends from the very start in 4th grade. He was the loud talkative kid that sat next to me the quiet reserved student that seemed to have all the teachers thinking I was going to be the next greatest thing since sliced bread or something like that. Anyway, I soon came out of my shell with being friends with Scott, it was kind of hard for me to keep the tactic of being the kid that no one noticed with him being my friend. We became best friends by the end of 4th grade and soon were the talk of our class and our teachers. We were usually involved negative topics. Scott mostly did everything, I was just the planner. We kept our reputation through Middle School and High School. We were at every party and in almost every sport, Scott was into sports I was into academics, I was the reason Scott passed school. I ended up bagging the most beautiful girl in school, Jessica Hart. Her amber hair complimenting her strong hazel brown eyes. Her subtle curves showing the figure of an active athlete. The slender face only proving her beauty to everyone that laid their eyes upon her. She was my perfect woman, she had a strong independent personality with a undertone of sarcastic humor. I loved her, I was planning on asking her to marry me after our sophomore year in college. But death kind of puts the brakes on that whole plan. We started going out my freshman year in high school and made it all the way through tell my death. We were perfect for each other. She kept me at bay especially when Scott was around and helped me control Scott when he was about to do something crazy. Jessica is definitely one big thing I miss the most about being alive. I was planning on asking her to marry me after my Sophomore year in college, if we were still together. I wasn’t even able to finish my freshman year, we didn’t even make it to the campus.
I woke up in what felt like a cloud. The thought of the Tempur-Pedic beds popped in my head. I woke up disoriented and with a migraine that made my vision blurry. As my vision cleared I started to look at my surroundings. I was laying in a hospital bed with white sheets, white pillow cases, and even the whole building was white. I guessed it was a hospital because they always use white as a typical way to make the patients feel safe and clean. I then noticed that I wasn’t the only one in this building. There were hundreds maybe thousands more beds in this building. All the beds were filled making me think I was in the Boise Hospital. I looked over at the person across from me and my heart stopped. What I saw wasn’t a person but it was foggy shape of person. If ghosts were real my neighbor across the aisle was the prime example of one. I started to examine the beds more closely and I noticed that about half the people that were bed ridden, had a foggy human shape. I must be in a really bad dream or a one those haunted hospitals you pay to come see with actors that work for free. I laid down on my back closing my eyes, hoping that it was just some hallucinations I was having because of a concussion or something. I opened my eyes and looked at the ceiling and say that it was moving like there was a strong breeze running over the ceiling of the room. I turned my head and vomited bile onto the grass. I stared at the ground my eyes growing wide, I thought my head was playing tricks on me again, but as I kept focusing on the green grass beneath me, nothing seemed to change. It stayed the same no changes in the appearance, nothing!
I laid back down looking up at the moving ceiling trying to let my brain grasp on what the material above my head was. After a while I noticed that the ceiling wasn’t the only thing moving in the wind. The walls would sometimes fluctuate as if a gust of wind had hit the wall trying to knock over the obtrusion blocking it’s path. I turned my head and noticed that the wall was close enough for me to touch it. I reached out with my hand and felt the wall. The wall was a canvas material, which explained how the walls and ceiling moved. As I looked around more I noticed that there was a wooden pole in the middle of the aisle between the two rows of beds. It was holding up the triangular ceiling by a long metal pole running on the top of it. I closed my slowly trying to get a grasp of this new reality.
I looked around for someone that looked like a doctor or nurse, I was hoping those professionals were at least the only real thing in this bad dream. A women dressed in navy blue scrubs was walking down the aisle pulling behind her what looked like a baggage trolley. Hanging from the trolley was a white misty mass that seemed to flow backwards as the air came rushing by it. As the trolley came closer, I realized the suits were complete human body fully equipped with eyes, mouths, ears, noses, fingers, toes, and what looked like hair. The nurse stopped the trolley by a bed occupied by a ghost. The nurse walked behind the trolley as a suit started to lean towards the ghost in the bed . The suit tugged harder and harder against the trolley trying to reach the ghost. The trolley banged against the bed as the suit was at full stretch. It almost looked like a crying infant reaching for its mother. The nurse reached up with what looked like a tube magnet and placed where the suit was connected to the trolley. Once the metal tube touched the top of the trolley the suit lunged forward hitting the ghost with such force the bottom of the bed hit ground bouncing back lifting the ghost a few feet into the air. There was a bright light coming off of the ghost as it floated back onto the bed. The light faded away from ghost as it settled onto the bed. What happened next was a phenomena that I still don’t quite understand. The ghost started to become human. Within moments of the light fading away, the ghost started to deflate as if something heavy was pushing out all the air, there was even a faint whistling noise as if the air was coming out a small hole. When the ghost was completely flat the light came back, but it was quickly diminished as skin started to form over the flat body. The skin started to bulge out with muscle and organs as if someone was making a hot dog out of the skin.
I turned away before I saw anything else, the sudden urge to vomit returned back to my stomach. I closed my eyes and quelled the urge, but it didn’t help when a sickening sound of a metal rod being pushed through a vat meat filled my head. I tossed my head over the edge of the bed again and vomited adding to the pervious bile already on the grass. The sound, of what I guessed bone being formed, passed after a couple minutes leaving behind an satisfying silence but was quickly interrupted by the sound of bone being formed picking up again but it was in another bed. The nurse had moved down the rows of beds and had put the suits on all the ghosts. So they were all going through the process of becoming human. Soon the noise became unbearable, I closed my eyes tight and put my hands over my ears trying my best to blot out the ongoing noise of bone being formed. The noise soon took over my brain making it almost impossible to think of something to somehow drown out the sound. The urge to vomit came back again and I was about to let it out when a pair of hands touched me, on my forehead and another on my shoulder. Once I felt the touch of the hands the urge vomit disappeared. A few seconds later the noise of the bones growing didn’t bother me. They were actually turning into a soothing background noise. When I opened my eyes I saw a women in her early 50′s smiling down at me.
“ How are you feeling, Jake” the women asked? I stared at her for a moment the sense as if I was on a drip of morphine, I felt like I was out of my body looking down on the whole experience. With slow movement I trying pulling my right arm in front of myself to give the woman a thumbs up. But there was no thumb or hand to give that thumbs up let alone a harm to hold that hand. I stared at the empty spot my mouth hanging agape. My brain fight the senses of sight and touch. I still had the feeling of the weight of my arm on my shoulder and movement as if I was moving my arm up and down. But my eyes kept telling me that there was no arm, I started to get a migraine and I turned my vision towards the women in front of me. Trying to control myself from screaming I asked in a shaky voice,” Where am I? What Happened to my arm!?” I couldn’t control myself anymore I started to breath heavily and my eyes grew wide as the fact that my arm was gone hit me. She just stared back at me with sweet smile. I became furious with her, she was standing there smiling at me not doing anything to help me.
“ Where the hell is my arm,” I roared at her. She just gave me a sweet smile and rested a hand on my forehead. Almost immediately the feeling of being on a morphine drip returned back to me. I leaned back against the pillow and looked aimlessly at the ceiling watching it flow in the wind. The woman pulled her hand off of my forehead and then hovered over my eyes so that I was looking at her. I remembered how at peace I felt at that moment when I thought about my missing arm, it didn’t even bother me my heart beat didn’t even increase. If I was going to be killed at that moment I wouldn’t have cared.
“Alright Jake, I’m going to fix your arm for you so don’t worry, you wouldn’t be too useful to us if you only had one arm,” the woman stated.
“What’s your name,” I asked lazily?
“My name is Margaret.” She pulled back the blanket down to the bottom of my stomach. She then pulled back the sleeve of the hospitable gown to expose my nub of an arm. She placed her hand on the nub increasing the drugged state of mind. When she touched the nub an unbearable itch took over. I tried to move away but my body wouldn’t react. She started to slowly move her hand away from the area, I thought it was a trick of my eyes at first, but as she her hand moved farther away from my shoulder I realized that more of my arm was being formed. I stopped trying to squirm away and watched as my elbow, wrist, and finally my hand were formed. Margaret stepped back and admired her work on my arm. I moved my arm wiggling the fingers, flexing my muscles, and trying out my new joints. I couldn’t believe what I saw, there was no possible way that my arm was created out of thin air. This had to be a dream. Yes it was dream no way was this real. I’m going to wake up and find myself back in my bed and find that my arm was asleep. I thought of the 1970 TV series The Six Billion Dollar Man. I could hear the scientists voice repeating in my head “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him, we have the technology. . . We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man.” I chuckled softly as I imagined myself running with the fake moving screen in the background .
I stared the whole time as a stutter fell out of my mouth, “H. . h . .how did you do that?”
Margaret took my arm and felt all the bone, muscle, tendons, and joints. As if she was making sure that she didn’t forget to add anything. The way she was looking at my arm made me feel like my arm was a piece of art being examined by a famous critic. She stepped away from me and was rubbing her hands together as if she had a do some kind of compulsive ritual to complete.
“That always leaves a weird feeling after I use that power,” she mumbled to herself.
I look back up at her again and asked, “How did you do that, how did you recreate my arm?” Margaret just kept rubbing her hands together not even giving me a glance. “How the hell did you do that!?” I yelled at her this time getting frustrated with compulsive habit. I was scared, I all of a sudden woke up in what looked like a field hospital in a war zone, and my arm was gone, then all of a sudden some woman, I have never met, just recreated my arm out of thin air. I stared at her breathing heavily waiting for her to finish her relentless rubbing of her hands. She slowly walked to the foot of my bed where she finally stopped rubbing her hands. When she looked back up at me she was smiling.
“Sorry dear, what were saying?” she asked in what seemed like her voice that she used to talk to child throwing a tantrum. I took a deep breath and then asked again.
” How did you do that?” She tilted her head and smiled.
” Do what honey?” I stared at her with disbelief as I sat up even more and I put my new arm straight up in the air.
“How the hell did you make me a new arm,” I yelled. I glared at her still holding my hand high in the air breathing slightly heavier than before. She just smiled at me, walking over to my raised arm lowering it down slowly then pushing me back down against the bed. She stood straight up and interlocked her fingers in front of her giving her a kind of professional look to her. Margaret took a deep breath and looked back at me with a smile.
“Jake your dead,” she stood there for a moment and smiled at me and wide surprised eyes.
Chapter 1
I’m writing this as a warning to future unlucky souls that arrive here. To those who find this I’m sorry, to those who don’t find this I’m even more sorry. My name is Jake Tillman, I am a solider of God’s army and I died. The whole dying thing isn’t really what Hollywood likes to portray it. . Death is boring, unsatisfying, and disappointing.
So i realize now that I’m back in school, I haven’t had good idea for writing. It is really frustrating actually. I’m hoping when Thanksgiving break comes up I might come up with some brilliant ideas and post them. I feel kind of bad too because I keep getting emails to post in some of other peoples blogs and what you would call a contest. But I just haven’t come up with anything new and I really don’t want to put my crappy stuff in the contests. Well I just felt the need to post something so here you go. Oh and if you are looking for some new music check out my buddy’s (Kendall Sant) blog, he post tons of new bands that you probably haven’t heard of and he does a good job of describing what they are all about.
This poem starts with a wedding
A wedding for a friend and another
A gift of happiness and love for spectators
Two out of four sit in a hotel with the fifth
Not really being talkative
Just enjoying the company
The company of long friends
To many they are surprised
That we don’t follow the hollywood norm.
No littered beer cans
No remnants of a hired girl
Nothing to show but two messy beds
And three guys laying on the beds
Two with a computer
One with a notebook
The poems ends with the two out of four
Following the fifth to his new life.
Ink paints the surface and it is beautiful
The flow, The scratches, The finality,
The pen creates a work of language
language is beautiful
without language we are nothing
without language we don’t have emotions
we don’t have science, knowledge, morals
We are nothing but instinct driven
We are humans
But we are animals
We fuck, we kill, we eat, we survive
we are animals of logue
If we didn’t have logic
We wouldn’t be advanced
So why do people base logic
off a mythical being of creation
Are we scared
Scared of the truth, the utter truth
of nothing after death, of being alone
Well we are nothing but god-loving cowards
And I want to be brave.
Sudden Deaths, Sudden Births
Sudden revolving cycles
Circle of life is easier to say
Or so I heard from Walter
But I honestly don’t care
Kind of a load of Bullshit
But the more I think
The more I realize Walter was right.
Life doesn’t stop
Life won’t stop for me
For anyone
[I'm just the Mother Fucker
Who tried to stand still
On this damn hamster wheel
The one who was ran over
and has to catch up
But god damn us all
if I should do it again]
Relationships change people
Make both people different
But then again I’m still me
She is still her
We are trying to meld
Both our own ways
which clash and I fall back
not fixing anything
I stand to be one
One of many but one
I fall for the words
The words of many
But they are my words
My mouth is speaking
What comes into my heart
I scream for release
Release of the blissful
And I yell to the world
Use your soul
reach for the truth
Fell for the one
One truth of life
Our meaningful life
No God is here to save
Save the Faithful
Condemn the Unfaithful
We are on our own
So live life to the fullest
Or at least to your liking
stop following a business
And Follow Yourself
Hold your belief
And forget the one that Forgot.
A man stands alone on a white canvas
with his back turned to the world
Wielding only a brush.
He used his brush to color the world
Creating a cacophony of color and shapes
Moving, shaping, placing the world
to what his imagination could create
Calling forth the hand of fate
The hand of destiny
What others called the hand of god
The man didn’t stand alone
He was surrounded by others
that were taking over the colorful canvas
With their will for power,control, influence
Soon the others were taking over his image
changing the canvas to their imagination
The man’s grip began to weaken
his brush slipping
He gazed upon his confused, jumbled, disillusioned world
His form started to become part of the world.
Showing his impending fate
of being part of this forever riot
The brush fell to his feet
Creating his last image
His shadow that held him
That saved him to his self.
So I have been away for a week or so mostly because I moved to a new apartment in the town where I’m going to college. So that means no internet for me to get on my computer. I do have a smart phone but damn it takes forever for me to even try to put up a post or even a poem or story so yeah that is the excuse I have this week. On other subjects, somewhat related, I started school becoming a teacher/coach/ novelist. Hopefully it works out to where I get done with school in the next 4 or 5 years and I’m a qualified teacher and hopefully a better writer ha. Well thanks guys who all are reading my blog and my poems, don’t forget to check out the first chapter of my novel it is at the end of all my posts but I would love it if some you guys took sometime to read that chapter.
Justin
So this post really isn’t what I normally post it is a lot more about what is going on in America at the moment. I am extremely angry and annoyed with how are federal government is running lately. It is full of lazy congressmen who aren’t doing anything important with their seat as “our” voice in the house of representatives and the senate. They are not doing anything we are a matter of days away from being defaulting our taxes ( pretty much bankrupting our nation) and congress is still taking days off of work and not trying to push a bill through to raise the debt ceiling. I havent watched the new today so I might be wrong, but still doesn’t get rid of the fact that it took congress so long to do anything. Congress are the people at fault for why we are fighting the most ridiculous ” war on terror.” Congress is the reason why we are in a economic recession. Congress is the reason why we funding two sides of a war. Congress is the ones if we go into default is the reason we lose or standing as a world power. We, citizens of america, need to start voicing how the congress is putting America in such a bad spot as a world power. We need to stop blaming the president for something that he can’t control. He can influence and President Obama’s influence died with the elections of 2010.
I fell in the grass
Staring at the sky
Feeling nothing
Only hearing the echoes
Of chilling screams
Thunderous shots
I wasn’t scared
Or disappointed
There was no time.
I started counting
1 . . . 2 . . .3 . . .
But I never reached 4
A boot came in view
I tried to yell in rage
I was silenced
Echoes of screaming
Thunderous shots
I smiled with joy
It was what I wanted
And it happened
My vision blackened
My body stopped
My mind relaxed
And I laughed
