"Two-Thirty in the mornin' & I can't sleep..."

This was about the eighth assignment from Fiction I Class. We were to write "a letter story" (not that the fiction program at Columbia thought enough of us mere freshmen to actually tell us to write an epistolary tale, but that bleeds over into a philippic I will undoubtedly add to this blog at some future time concerning creative writing programs in general, and more specifically, my thoughts on the two I have personally been part of.

As for this piece, the teacher replied to me with, "You shouldn't write about something as complicated as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

At no point in this tale is there any mention nor even hint of Hebrew-Arabic strife, and, in fact, since two of the characters have Persian names (incidental to the point of the story), I really wondered if the teacher had actually read the piece at all.

Alas! Not the first time i would clash with the heirarchy of academia, especially in those aforementioned two creative writing programs.

The story here was triggered by a writing prompt: What you do at 2:30 in the morning.

~*~

FICTION I
October 4, 2007


"Two-Thirty in the mornin' & I can't sleep..."

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Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2007 02:39:59 -0700
From: L. Zakariyya
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Salaam! Shalom! And all other manner of salutations, O Grim One, my brother from another mother.

Insomnia again, so I'm doin' what I do. It's 2.30 in the mornin' and I still can't sleep. At least the paranoia's subsided a bit; it's all just anxiety and edges now.

The front room here is cramped and stuffy and smells like rotting lemons. No one's showered in a couple of days, but then again, no one is complainin' since we all equally stink. Ghada comes from downstairs and complains in her motherly tone about how typing in this dim light is gonna ruin my eyes. I've got my little desk lamp on that spills a tiny circle of light on my desk by the Underwood typewriter where I've been hammering out the manifestos. She reaches up under the thick woolen lamp shade and twists the little black knobs until it clicks twice and the stuffy room is filled with dirty yellow light. She looks down at Syd on the floor in front of the couch and just shakes her head. That's about the only expression anyone ever has for Syd.

Syd pulled the ugly green couch cushions off the couch and laid them out on the floor. With a faded brown crocheted blanket tossed over the scratchy hounds-tooth cushions, he spread out on them about an hour ago and now he's passed out. He's been doin' dex for a couple of days and ate a bunch of valium a few hours ago. He was readin' and now Hitchhiker's Guide is folded open on his chest, rising and falling with his erratic pharmaceutical sleep. We should maybe turn him on his side, but it's not a priority on anyone's list. Kira was matchin' Syd's intake, but she's farin' better than he is. A short nod in the recliner, but now she's awake and all fidgety, watchin' some black and white movie on tv with the sound turned down. Neal's in the other room with El and Fen and a couple of others whose names I don't know. El & Fen. Yeah, that's really their names. 'S what happens when you're "in the field", as it were, as opposed to just holdin' the safe house.

We were all freakin' out just after they got here this afternoon because about a half hour later, all the cops in the world showed up outside. We all went into defense mode, but it turned out their target was the house across the street. They were bustin' some dumb ass with a meth lab in his closet. Kinda funny, when ya think about it. Not funny, ha-ha, but funny, like, well, like the sort of funny where cops are bustin' a meth lab when right across the street. Freakin' meth lab! There goes the neighborhood, right!?

After last week's Thanksgiving bombs--a dozen chain store coffee shops were all blow up within sixty seconds of each other, coordinated terrorist attack, the news called it. The brand name coffee stores were closed at the time, of course, it was a holiday, so there were only a few people injured by the blasts. One person died. Anyway, I digress. Constantly. But you know that. As I was sayin', after last weeks' Thanksgiving bombs, the cops are naturally a bit jumpy. Witness the heavy response to the meth lab across the street. Ironic place for a safe house so close to a cop show like that!

Some cat I don't know comes in from the kitchen and asks me if I want to join them. "Zak'?" he called my name a few times before I noticed. I've been typin' out plans and peakin' out the window between half-open curtains at the chem suits across the street and tryin' to ignore the commotion from the kitchen. Dorian, that's this cat's name, Dorian Gray, just like the book, he's askin' me if I want to join them in the kitchen. "What's cookin'?" I ask. He tells me. Kira jumps at the offer. Absinthe, speed, and now they're fixin' some hot knives to smoke some hash. Strange safe house we've got here, but it's never drawn any attention in three years. I guess all safe houses could say that; they're safe regardless of what goes on inside them until they get raided. I look forward to staying at a place where these sort of things are the standard behavior.

The blend of spice smells is odd, anise and sweet tar. I'd like to, but I need to finish the outline of plans before I get any more fucked up. Not that they shouldn't be, right now. Hell, most of 'em have just finished their end of things for a while, so it's a good time to celebrate, I guess. And a few of the others don't have to be clear-eyed until tomorrow afternoon when they take out the children's gifts. But my end of things has to get done right now. Guidelines. Projections. Organizin'. Mappin' routes. And a couple other things. One of which I have just appointed for myself; that's to be paranoid enough for the rest of us. We had the obligatory visit a few hours ago from the cops who said all houses had to be evacuated because...well, he didn't say aloud why, but it was clear from the chem suit guys across the street in their big trucks. Explosive hazard, they said, and I laughed behind my straight face. I spoke with the cop and told him my elderly grandmother was an ornery ol' crone and said she'd be damned if they moved her out of her own house and where would she go anyway if they did. He bought it with change left over and told us he'd come back if necessary. It wasn't, of course. They hauled off the poor dumb kid--not yet twenty, from the look of him--who'd been cookin' meth in his closet or somethin'. Who'd have thought? Right across the street! It's just a quiet neighborhood.

Anyway, the smells from the kitchen was enticin', but I had to pass for now. Even when I got through writin' up the guide for everyone, and mappin' the routes and placements and such, I still had to go over the various drafts we had for the press release and finalize it. Then there was the finishin' touches to be done on the gift packages.

Ghada comes back in and asks when the Hanukkah gifts are goin' to be ready. The hash smell clings to her beautiful dark skin and bald head and I tell her to just be patient. She abstains from the absinthe and wine, of course, the Prophet speaks against intoxicants, but somehow, by the measures of her mosque, such abstinence doesn't include Lebanese hash. She takes a look over my shoulder at the maps and things I've already finished and seem to be pleased with the dropoff locations. She tries to take a gander at the manifesto, but until I'm finished with it, no one reads it.

The anxiety in the house is turning to excitement. I ask 'em if I could get just a small toke of somethin' before I finish wrapping the presents and they head off to the kitchen and I push my laptop (and this email to you) away and peer out the window again. The last of the chem trucks pulls away and I sigh a deep breath of relief. I didn't want to leave my window seat until they were all gone, so I guess it's time to play Santa Claus.

Does Santa come around on Hanukkah, too?

This year he will, I guess.

Ghada brings me a small hookah and I take a few quick puffs. Plus one more thinkin' of my distance brother. Kira gladly takes over the hookah. A thank you to Ghada and I'm off to the basement where the Hanukkah gifts sit in wait. Even when I smoke hash or even opium I can't sleep.

Just like Thanksgiving, we'll make sure our light display is afterhours. Collateral effects are always a factor in any human endeavor, but our show is not meant to be waged with flesh and blood. The manifesto cries for something beyond that...I triple check the wiring and it is all perfect. The taggants and detonators and caps. Everything is ready. I sit down in the small concrete cellar and smile at my array of Hanukkah gifts to the world. A two dozen packages of T4. The canvas, brush and paints for our masterpiece of fire, glass and stone.

Our Christmas party will be even better.

This is what I do at 2.30 in the morning when I can't sleep--

--Mondays will never be the same,

L. Zakariyya, Nepenthe


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