Ken's Blog

“In a moment it’ll be my stop,” he said.

“Don’t you need to get ready to go?” she asked.

“It’s ok,” he said. “I can get out at the next stop. I’m really enjoying talking with you.”

She blushed prettily. “Does that mean you want to hear the rest of my theory?”

“Definitely. You were talking about demons, and desire.”

“Yes,” she continued, “I think demons use desire as a way to steal time. It’s their power. People’s lives generally move forward, until they meet their demon. The jealous demon takes that away.”

“Hmm,” he said, “Like demon alcohol, right?”

“Exactly!” she said. “The moment an alcoholic takes that first drink, life begins to stop moving forward.”

“I see what you’re saying,” he said, “After that, all the alcoholic does is circle around that bottle. The demon wins.”

“You catch on quick,” she said, giving him a warm smile. “Have you studied philosophy?”

“No,” he grinned, “But maybe I should. Oh wait, here we are. In a moment it’ll be my stop.”

“Don’t you need to get ready to go?” she asked.

“It’s ok,” he said. “I can get out at the next stop. I’m really enjoying talking with you.”

He waited on the platform, clutching the flowers he knew she loved. Three long weeks she’d been away, but now everything would be ok.

It hadn’t been easy at first. She was still traumatized by the crazy ex. He remembered how she’d held him when she talked about it, clinging to him for protection, like a frightened child.

The gun had been her idea. “You never know,” she’d said, “he could show up anywhere.”

It seemed a bit extreme to him, but he’d gotten it anyway, just to make her feel safer. “Thanks,” she’d said. “Not all men are like you. It’s hard to find a good one.”

The train was coming in now. He was glad he’d remembered the flowers.

“That’s the guy,” the officer said, “he’s got the flowers, like she said.”

It all happened so fast, his arms jerked back, the cold cuffs around his wrists, the flowers falling to the platform, the second officer saying “Check his pockets for the gun.”

Then he saw her, coming off the train. There was a strange man, one arm protectively around her.

“You don’t understand, officer” he protested weakly, knowing it would do no good. “I’m the good one.”

Gently she eased herself off the bed, trying to make as little noise as possible, not wanting to wake him. Her body was still tingling from their love making. She gazed down upon his face, so serene and untroubled, and remembered how, only hours before, she’d traced her finger across the stubble of his chin.

Silently she dressed, then took the key from her purse and laid it carefully on the dining room table. She thought about the shy look on his face earlier that evening, when he’d finally told her the words she had only half expected him to ever say, the words that would change everything.

“I love you,” he had declared, and she knew that this was not something that came easy for him. Their love making was different after that, fiercer, as though it really mattered. Afterward they had quietly drifted off to sleep.

She looked around the apartment, knowing she was forgetting something. Ah yes. She went into the bathroom and took one of the two toothbrushes out of the cup, the one he had told her was hers. She waited until she was several blocks away before tossing it into the nearest trash can.

“Friendship, that’s the important thing.”

They looked into each other’s eyes, enjoying the moment. He was glad they agreed about the friendship part, with so many things that go into a relationship. Not that he claimed to understand relationships.

Sometimes they would just talk, hours into the night. He felt sorry for people who didn’t have this kind of connection.

But it had been a long day, and they were both tired. They smiled at each other. There would be more time tomorrow to continue the conversation. “I’m sorry,” he said, feeling himself drifting off. “Guess I’m starting to lose it.” He was so tired, he might just fall asleep right here, sitting up.

The orderly came and gently took him by the shoulders, leading him back to the bed. “Until the medication kicks in, you can’t even try to move him.”

“What happens if you try to move him when he’s still awake?” the young doctor asked. It was her first day, and she was just getting to know the ward.

“Oh, you really don’t want to do that. He can get kinda violent. Might even hurt himself. Does everything he can to get back there, to the mirror.”

“Eternity is a long time,” she said, “you need to let her go.”

He looked down at the grave. “But she was here, she was real. I remember everything.”

“Yes, she was real, and you still are. And so am I. Come on, let’s go. This is no place for the living. You’ll catch a cold standing out here. You’re not looking out for yourself.”

He hesitated. “It’s just that I can’t stop thinking about her ghost. I guess you could say that I’m haunted by it.”

She thought about that. “I’ve had my own ghosts. And demons too. We all have. You just learn to live with them. We can’t get rid of them, but if we go about our lives as if they are not there, eventually they get tired and leave us alone.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand. I come here on purpose. Not to see her grave, but to see her ghost.”

She paused at this, and looked at him appraisingly. “I guess there are all kinds of relationships. How long have you been seeing her ghost.”

He shook his head. “No, that’s just it. What haunts me is that I’ve never seen it.”

“Demons are guys,” he insisted.

“Hmm. That’s not very open minded,” she said.

He shook his head. “I’m not prejudiced or anything, but when you ask me ‘would you date a demon’, the standard picture is the demon lover. That guy in all the stories. I just don’t swing that way.”

“Interesting,” she said, sipping her drink. “So you’re in a relationship?”

“Well,” he said sheepishly, “I’ve been meaning to tell you this. Actually I’m married. She’s my best friend.”

She laughed. “No worries, I’m married too. I guess we have that in common.”

“OK, what now?” he asked. “Buy you another drink?”

“You’re very sweet,” she said, “but I don’t think you’re my type.”

“Oh well,” he mused, “maybe you need a demon lover.”

“Maybe,” she smiled, “Gotta go.”

She was still pondering their conversation when she got home. “Hello honey. It’s your wife.”

“Hey lover. Out prowling again?”

“Yep, but nothing interesting. Found one soul just about begging for damnation, but he was kind of a drip, so I decided to take a pass.”

“I’m sure you’ll do better tomorrow. Now give me a kiss.”

The two women came together, and their demon kiss was filled with fire.

“Counting today, how many stories have there been?”

The monk looked up wearily. “I really don’t know, quite a few. All I know is, one is needed every day. It’s the curse, you know.”

The reporter looked skeptical. “You’re saying you need to write a story every day, or something bad will happen?”

“Something bad has happened, and not just once. It’s very specific. The story has to be exactly two hundred words long, no more, no less. If it doesn’t show up in the book, then the demon will come. And when she comes, there is tragedy.”

“Why two hundred words.”

“Look, I didn’t write the rules, I just live by them.”

“How do they decide who writes the stories?”

“Well, everyone used to take turns, because the stress, the responsibility, can eat away at you. But it takes a very specific talent. So now, only one writes. These days that’s me. That is, until I fail.”

“Fail?”

“You can only do this for so long. One day I just won’t be able to take it any more. Like what happened to Brother Frederick.” he said with a shudder.

“What happened to brother Frederick?”

“One day he counted wrong.”

Below the old stone church, in the small chamber, he’d arranged everything. The locked room was lit only by the five candles forming the apex of the pentagram. He gazed upon her alabaster face, almost alive in the flickering light, and thought back on when they’d met. “We will be together always,” he had promised, it seemed so long ago.

She had smiled, her eyes warm with love. “Be careful what you wish for, dear.”

What he was doing now was probably wrong, but a promise is a promise. The book had been very specific about the details. He intoned the latin phrase he’d memorized so carefully, eleven, twelve, thirteen times. When he spoke the very last word, the candles flickered, as though from a gust of wind, though there was no wind.

For long moments there was nothing but silence, and the stillness of the flickering light. Perhaps he’d done something wrong. Then she opened her eyes.

His heart leapt as she slowly turned her lovely head to look at him. She smiled, and now he saw the look in her eyes, so different, so cold. He shuddered as he thought of her words of warning, so long ago.

After she was gone, he took the pen she’d given him from its box. “Guaranteed to never stop writing,” she’d said, smiling, pointing to the label on the box. He’d thought that wasn’t possible, but then he used to think a lot of things weren’t possible. He decided to start writing to her, all the things he hadn’t gotten around to saying when it would have mattered. He began to fill page after page with his thoughts, feelings, dreams, places he’d hoped they would some day go together, things that frightened him, things he’d never said to anyone. Hours turned to days, to weeks. He neglected food and sleep — they would only slow him down. There was so much to say.

He was found slumped over his writing desk, hundreds of pages scattered around him, each filled with dense small writing. “Natural causes, I guess,” pronounced the coroner, shaking his head. The detective pondered this, as he picked up the small pen lying next to the man’s open hand. “Well, one thing I can say,” he said, running the tip across a random sheet of paper, looking at the clean blue line it left, “this pen sure can write.”

I’ve been thinking about a review I recently read in the New York Times of a book called How to Think like a Neanderthal. The book attempts to reconstruct, from available evidence, how Neanderthals might have thought about things.

One thing I learned from the review is that Neanderthals developed a very impressive technology to make the spears they used for hunting — both a way to create the sharp-edged spear-head, and a way to lash that spear-head to a wooden shaft (which is not so simple to do, given the materials available at the time).

Another thing I learned is that even though homo neanderthalensis spent quite a lot of years in proximity to humans (the Cro-Magnons), Neanderthal culture never adapted their human neighbors’ far better spear-making technology. If they had, their chances for species survival would have been much better.

Which leads me to conjecture that Neanderthals, in general, were not able to learn new technologies, whereas some particular Neanderthals, were capable of not only learning new technologies, but inventing them. In other words, Neanderthals had the equivalent of super-geniuses, so advanced that they could invent new technologies, even though their friends and neighbors were not even capable of imitating new technologies.

It would have been cool to meet one of those people.