First chapter – if you want the prologue, it is here. Enjoy, s’il vous plait. :)
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Firesale
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That’s right, ladies and gents,
Step right up, feast your eyes
Upon the spectacle, the rare honest lament,
In its own habitat, to our surprise!
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Everything must go!
Half price on dignity and decency!
Self-esteem is at an all-time low,
With no commitment down and no responsibility until infinity!
~
But that’s not all! Call now and we’ll include “Artists Gone Wild”
(for the sake of art, of course) absolutely free; a great gift for your child!
(She had to learn some day; it is timeless nonsense:
Teach her to be a victim by teaching him to abuse substance.)
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Here in Collegeville, we skull only the finest angst,
Distilled from the purest confusion, no contentment added (dissatisfaction guaranteed).
~
So come visit us downtown; we’re located in the middle of our own filth,
Next to the foul language and across from any sign of happiness!
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Chapter 1: A basement.
The day had gone cold like last night’s dinner. He hadn’t eaten anything since he’d moved in, and yet he’d still determined to prepare his meals on a regular schedule. It’s the way Mom would have needed, he told himself. Such superficialities were fast becoming his only scrutable link to the life that had left him behind. Ennui should have set in by now, but that would have required him to care, an ability which had continued to elude him despite his honest attempts otherwise. Called to detachment, he lived as a new man – minus the fictive resurrection or rejuvenation, and substituted for the inevitably slow abasement of college.
All his life, he had listened to stories about fulfillment as an insincere utterance which had taken root in the archaic dreams. “All his life,” had affected him in ways too complex to quickly understand or comprehend. His chest wracked in the purest combination of sorrow and anger, one he had known before, as he pulled the carved maple box from one of five green plastic moving containers in the otherwise empty northern corner of his basement dormitory. His hands moved slowly across its cherry sunburst décor; his eyes followed the waves of yellow, orange, and red as they faded into the black nether regions of the box. It reminded him of fireworks, of concert lights flowing in sheer brilliant spectrum across a humid summer night…of the sunrise that had changed his life.
Indeed, it was not the sunset that had taken his father from him, but the man may well have combusted to shed light for the world in William’s child-eyes. He thought, as he always did, to focus back on the night before, as if some clue had floated under his previous retrospection, but to no avail. Thus, the pictures that greeted Will as he cracked open the box once more assaulted him with a cruel irony: in the dark, he had seen his father, and in the light, he was gone.
This twisted perception had plagued him for the latter half of his life, but he finally came to admit that the gloom was beginning to throttle him. He had been in college for less than a day since he had said good-bye to his mother, Leanore, and yet he had found no peace in this place, which she had so often touted to him as “one of the pinnacles of his life.” He pictured her face for a moment; there always seemed to be a smile present across her Greek features, when he didn’t understand how she could, or even should, be happy. He felt as if he was the most prominent reminder of the greatest mistakes of her life. His mixed feelings played havoc with his current reactions – I want to be near her, but as far away as possible, at the same time. He grabbed his coat, a strange garment which had little to no actual resistance to wind or weather, but was still a possession he loved for its similarities in texture and odor to his family’s pug, Icarus. With both the coat and maple box in hand, he stepped across his threshold, locked his door, and proceeded to walk to Jameson Park in patterns wrought of discontent.
The trees had begun to turn against the earth, rebelling in a brilliant palette that could strangely belie the pure abundance, or complete lack, of passion. On the one hand, the colors were mesmerizing – they danced in the gentle wafting of the breeze, promising life after loss with lips painted bright oranges, reds, speckled browns, and the fading remnants of a living green. On the other, Autumn was certainly a season of dying, and wasn’t it simply a masquerade of the senses? Even blood that flows out of a body tells the vivid crimson tale of departing life….
The fact that life had kept coming back year after year halted his logical assault before it began. He found a beaten bench to rest upon, its molting structure supporting him like an ancient bird’s nest. Within this temporary sanctuary, his attention turned to his maple box, once again. His hands trembled as he lay them across its sides, finger by finger, then palms, and lifted its lid with a lingering creak.
Inside was an amalgamation of items that pitifully reconstructed his childhood. The back of one weathered Polaroid revealed a deceptively basic identity to the scene kept faithfully on the other side. He read softly, “August 31, 1993…Willie and E. with Icarus.” A familiar chill began simultaneously in his shoulders and the apex of his spine, working its way down his back as if it were late for some dire appointment. It may as well have started in his fingertips, however…the short summary contained a rime as potent as the ample glass of scotch he knew to be in his father’s hand at the time. “E.” was the only name his mother had ever offered to Will in satiation of his paternal curiosity, and even that was not often bestowed verbally. As a young child, he had not even begun to understand the ramifications of such detachments in a family, much less in a singular descriptive phrase. As a growing man, he still had trouble registering how his mother could have placed so much enmity in a single letter.
Logically, at some point, his mom and dad had to have been in love. He had often examined a space in his consciousness that housed his preconceptions of love, and refused to believe that he could exist for any other reason. His eyes slowly crossed the event horizon of the photograph’s edge when he turned it over, washing his world in acquainted tears. William searched for the love in his father’s countenance. It was there, in the way he rested his hand upon his son’s dusty blonde hair. It was in the way his mouth was edged in a smile, as if to say that he lived for such silent, secret joys as sitting on that rustic couch and watching his family delight in everything he had to offer. “That birthday didn’t seem nearly as special to me at the time,” he wept quietly and bitterly. As he reclaimed fallen moments in this practiced, almost ritualistic fashion, he understood that love had existed. However, this only seemed to add to these days when he posited existence to be an indefinite disappointment. This overwhelming assessment stretched and sealed itself across the entirety of his principles.
“Principles…,” he muttered under his thoughts. “I must have stolen them from somewhere.” He chuckled at the ironic resolution that once again sobered him from sorrow, because he had come to fully believe that they couldn’t have been a gift from his parents. His mother had kept him in the shadows of his father, deciding that seven-year-old William didn’t possess the mental fortitude to deal with the truth of his dad’s disappearance. At the time, he hadn’t known any better. He hadn’t known death before…he hadn’t known the necessities that so many eras had instilled within society. “All her lies couldn’t dismiss absence…couldn’t break the silence,” he spat. “Thanks to her, death will never mean a damned thing to me…” He suddenly realized that emotion began to stir him in uncontrollable cycles. With that disturbance in mind, he reluctantly decided, as he had many times before, to wash his hands of it.
“Speaking of the dead, I wonder if Jasper’s back, yet,” he murmured to himself. He’d been perched on his claimed park bench for over an hour by the time this wayward thought hit him. Jasper Ellis Lyle, or “Jazz” to the multitudinous girls he managed to mistreat on a regular basis, was the other inhabitant of Brighton Hall’s single basement room. William could not bring himself to think of Jasper as a roommate, but not out of some self-righteous indignation as to the caliber of his character.
William had been in their room a couple of days ago, sorting out where he was going to put the two guitars he had brought with him out of his collection. He’d barely laid his two-tone gold and white Strat in its black corner stand when the improverbial rap sounded at the door. The rhythm of beat boxing lazed around the corner, following Jazz’s smooth gait as he slipped into the room to grab his wallet and a few other pieces of minutiae. “Yo dawg, how’s mah boiiiii?” It occurred to Will that Jasper had most likely practiced that particular sliding movement to the point that he could probably stride right up the wall and be done with it.
He thought about the question for just a moment too long, and realized that he wouldn’t have the proper response if he’d searched for another week. “I’m well, thanks. How’s life treating the illustrious Jasper Lyle?” The beat boxing stopped and was replaced by muffled tittering as Jazz turned to face him. He silently chuckled at the one-two combination he’d just thrown. He didn’t figure the youth to be the sort of person who could afford expensive words, and what little he knew about Jasper told him that the fellow hated being referred to by his original name in public, much less in front of any number of girls. Will’s expression betrayed slight surprise at the upper corners of his eyes when Jazz fired right back without pause. “Man, if I wa eny betta, I’d haf ta be twins…den, I’d haf ta keel mahself fo bein so daaaym sexay!” His entourage broke out in the laughter of approval, which he apparently collected without movement and used to fuel his almost superhuman ability to disappear as abruptly as he’d arrived. William found that he both completely admired and despised that quality, simultaneously.
The simple fact was that, out of the week of orientation that Sanford College had planned, it was obvious that Jazz had spent most of his time in various female dorms instead of his own. William had used the week to move his room from home, as a sculptor would delicately relocate artwork across his studio. All Jasper had brought to the room were the remains of food purloined from other people, and miscellaneous undergarments of origins that didn’t require forensic inspection to discern.
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), but I would also appreciate it if you would take the chance to come and vote for my poem. You can vote and read all the competing poems from 
