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Letters to Kalen
#1
He came back to the warehouse soaking wet.

There were leaves in his hair and his hiking boots, no matter how clean or waterproof they seemed to be, most assuredly squeaked and squelched right until he took them off along with his socks and left them at the door. Clothes were discarded along the way to his room. First his coat, then his shirt, then pants, and no boxer briefs so it could be presumed that either Elijah went commando that day or finally had the decency to protect his modesty long enough to put clothes back on in his room.

And he did, eventually, put clothes on.

He came back out in pajama pants and a tank top, feeling a dull ache in his muscles and a stiffness in his bones that only came from someone who knew good and well that they were going to have a headache and a need for chicken noodle soup the next day. Whatever the case, he had a grin on his face still- his constant companion. It was off to pick up his clothing- pants then shirt then coat and then socks and shoes and toweling off the trail of water he left getting in. It was like letting a wet puppy into the house and it just made a mess everywhere.

Clothes were dropped in the nearest thing that looked like a washer (except the coat, of course, his jacket wasn't machine washable and was beat up enough as it is. A little water won't kill it.)

So there he was, waiting for laundry to do as laundry does- wash itself and hope for the best. Elijah turned around, heading back to his room. Carefully, the young man retrieved a rather intricate box from underneath his bed. He sat it carefully on the nightstand. He took out a clipboard first from the drawer in his night stand. From the box he retrieved a piece of paper, no lines and a decent weight. Not cardstock, but not linen either. No, it felt solid. It felt real. Elijah chose his paper carefully but he was still trying to get the feeling of things. Trying to wrap his mind around language and this? This was a time where he needed language.

He retrieved a pen, something antique and expensive and something that Kalen had given him that Elijah had <i>just</i> managed to fathom the value of. Something that astounded him to say the least, a tool that he now wielded a little more comfortably. With little fanfare, the soggy young man started to write.

---

Kalen,

There are things I want to tell you. There are things that I need to tell you, but I don't have words for them, not when I need to say them. Not when I want to say them, I get tripped up and all I can think about is how desperately I don't want to be a disappointment or how badly I'm going to screw up or how scared I am of whatever has gone on in the past or what was yet to come.

I used to do this with Alicia, because there were things we needed to tell each other, but at the time neither of us had it in us to actually come out and say what those things were, but that information was important. Important enough to share. Important enough to make real. To put pen to paper and draw it into the world we live in because writing it gives it form and speaking it, defining it gives it meaning- whatever it happens to be.

I'm not here to tell you that I'm scared, but I want to tell you about some of the things that I'm scared of, things I have full intentions of facing down. There are things I want to tell you, but when the time comes I don't always have the right thing to say, so I'm writing you a letter. I figured that this would be easier; putting what I'm saying to paper makes it a commitment. It makes it real. It gives a part of myself that is tangible because it gives thoughts a form. I like writing letters, and I haven't done it since Alicia left.

She didn't take her journal back, and I feel wrong for having it. I don't read it anymore, and I thought about tearing out her pages because it didn't feel right to have important parts of her that I no longer had the right to see. This letter isn't about Alicia, but she colors it. She was important to me, and the person I am is colored by what I did to her.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you about me. Things I haven't told you about me. My dad says he wants to visit at some point, but I don't know where I'm going to send him. I still maintain an apartment with Jenn, mostly for her sake but also because I need a place to have one night stands and I don't feel comfortable bringing people to fuck over here. It feels a little like sacrilege, like I'm being disrespectful to the whole mentor/student dynamic by going out and bringing strangers here. This is probably where I could tell you of all my various romantic escapades, but that's something I'm saving for a different letter. I also feel weird telling my mentor about my sex life. I know we're both aware that I have one, but it seems odd to discuss my various lusts, feels dangerous now because there's secrets I know I need to keep.

I wanted to tell you about the last time I shot up. I'm not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed either. I know why I did it. I was at a party, it was after I drowned, after I died, after the world became too much and every wall growled threats that were guides that I didn't understand. I was hearing voices, threats- I wanted it to shut up. I'd been stealing my mom's credit card for months; she never noticed when a few dollars were missing from the account. Dad didn't know she had it, so she didn't ever say anything to him about when things went missing on it. She paid it off every month. It was one of those things she never seemed to notice.

I've done it two times. The first was almost too much, but I found out that you just have this moment when you're starting to feel like the world becomes a thin point and you have euphoria and then just nothing. It's what I took when I didn't want to feel anything. It sounds weird, because now I want to feel everything, experience everything- good, bad, whatever. I need the experience, enlightenment comes from understanding. Sometimes, the only way you can get something is to live it. The last time was at a party.

It's always at a party, I've found. It's always at a party and it fucking kills me because during those times nobody noticed anything. I could show up and nobody realized I wouldn't sit by a wall and nobody noticed that I was talking to things that weren't there. Maybe people did notice and just thought I was tweaking out. That wouldn't be too inaccurate either. Jenn and I took the whole me dying thing differently. She found God. I found other shit. Kind of a rift, but I remember her turning me down to go to this party, so I went with Megan.

Meg's my dealer, or she was for awhile. Hooked me up with a guy named Nines at a house party Megan invited me to. She said it was impolite to deal at someone else's turf, and Nines was the kind of guy that you didn't move in on. Megs wasn't stupid. Anyway, I got to this place and all I could hear was wailing, screaming, crying and loud thumping music and the whole place smelled like booze and something quietly rotting. Maybe that was just my imagination. The walls looked like they were decaying, falling apart. The room was crowded beyond crowded. In hindsight, I'm not sure if I was actually looking at the physical plane. It was hard to keep the two straight during that time. Sometimes, it just happened. Sometimes, it was easy to think I was crazy.

I was three weeks off from eighteen, so I meet Nines and I don't know how much he sold me but it was whatever two hundred would get me. The place was just awful, just intense and it felt like suffering and I wanted it all to stop. I remember the minute that I felt a needle in my arm; I'd always had good veins. the people at the blood institute always wanted me to donate, said I was a dream to work with. I don't know if I can actually donate blood anymore, but I figure I can. I'm rambling. There's this moment when your nerves feel like they're on fire and it feels like heaven. I wasn't doing anything but I remember feeling lightheaded, feeling my brain start to slow down and letting the world melt and everything felt like heaven right until it was too much. Right until I could feel myself slipping, could hear the world fading out, right until silence.

That was the worst part, that part when I knew the world went silent and the part when I knew everything that I dreamed about- that Nothing of a void could be creeping in and the world would fade into the kinds of waking dreams I was trying to forget.

And then the world came back. It came back hard and I threw up and I was panicking because I couldn't move my arms because apparently I had to be strapped down or something because they were afraid of fuck if I know. I might fall off the gurney? I might be violent? I remember my heart pounding. I remember feeling like shit, but not like death like everyone says you will when someone sticks you with naloxone because I have died before and this was nothing like it, even if I'd felt that before. Even if I got close, I know what it is supposed to feel like.

The doctor said I'd apparently taken close to 400 mg. Apparently, that's a lot. I had no idea, I just thought I should take all of it because it would make the world go quiet. I kept having to be reminded of how badly I didn't want silence. About how sound could captivate and give meaning. I don't know who called my mom, or how she worked her voodoo to get me out of the hospital. Dad was out of town doing something with the construction company.

She didn't look surprised that I was there, or why I was there. She just looked like she was inconvenienced, like this was just something that interrupted her weekend. We got in the car and everything hurt but I was alive, and I kind of liked the fact that I still hurt. Mom told me in no uncertain terms that we would not be telling my father about what happened. She didn't talk to me the whole way home. It's weird because I want her to be happy, but she doesn't ever seem anything other than bemused. Mom drove me to the ER three more times that year for various things. Those are other stories, though. Me being reckless and stupid and wanting to numb whatever the fuck was going on. Not owning up to reality and consequence.

I just wanted the world to be quiet. Sometimes, I still wish it would be quiet, but I realize that I can't stand being alone. I've always had ghosts or the spirits or whatever, even if they're in passing, there's always someone there. The idea of being truly alone scares the ever loving shit out of me. I won't keep going, but yeah. That's something about me that's important, something I wanted you to know.

Had fun tonight, played tag, got stuck in a tree, kissed someone because I felt it was the only acceptable response to said someone's presence. Sorry if there's water in the hallway, I'll clean it up but I might miss a spot. Tree climbing is exhausting.

Until later,
-Elijah


---

He waited for the letter to dry, for the ink to be at a place that it would not run risk of running. Then, carefully, Elijah folded it into three pieces and sealed it carefully. The letter was then addressed: To Kalen and slid under his office door.

After that, Elijah went to bed, face first into his mattress surrounded by paper and pens and stories.
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#2
Another letter finds itself slid under Kalen's door, but this time it was there in the afternoon.

---

Dear Kalen,

I wanted to tell you about my first love. It wasn't a woman, or a man, or really even a person. The first thing I remember actually having strong, unabashed affection for was Maya. She was an ancient Yorkie with hip dysplasia. I say that I loved Maya first and not my parents because children think of their parents as gods when they are young. Infallible. Omniscient. Omnipresent if you considered around the corner as a presence. This isn't a letter about the perceptions we have of our parents when we are young, this is a letter regarding love and loss.

It's funny how I'd almost forgotten about her, wondering if this is the act of love fading or time robbing us all of our memories; things become hazy, but some things are difficult to forget. I suppose that, in time, all things will fade or be distorted by time. Like the blind woman in Red Dragon when she was talking about a predatory cat- time had diluted the image of the animal so much that she wasn't sure what a tiger or a cougar or whatever it was didn't look anything like what an actual predatory cat looked like. I'm getting off topic. Maya didn't bark a lot. I remember that she didn't bark very much and was more prone to licking people half to death than eating a pair of shoes.

We got Maya when we put my great grandmother into a nursing home. Apparently, she'd gotten all of her shoe chewing out of her system because Nana Poirot was pretty insistent that she lost more pumps to that damned thing than any of her other dogs combined. Maya smelled like cigarettes when we first got her. I remember that much. I was little, I don't really remember an age but I remember carrying her around like a security blanket and she just seemed to tolerate it because little kids don't know how to be gentle with things. I remember trying, though.

It never dawned on me that Maya was old until she died. I was six when we had to bury Maya. Children deal with death differently than adults; when they're young enough, they don't understand euphemisms for death. My dad told me that Maya was sick and we lost her. Later in the month I got the flu and was convinced that if I did not stay with my parents at all times so they could find me, then I would get lost like Maya was lost. I think it's funny, not in a laughable way but in an odd thoughtful way, that we got Maya from a woman who was put in a place where our loved ones just wait to die. As an adult, I don't much care for nursing homes, mostly for selfish reasons. If push comes to shove, I'd appreciate it if my loved ones smothered me with a pillow instead of putting me in a nursing home. Now, i say this, but I probably don't mean it. I don't want anyone to go to prison on account of me having an inappropriate relationship with my continued existence. We're not here to talk about that, either. We're here to talk about Maya.

My mother explained, later, that Maya had died. Her body stopped working because she was sick, and then she was not coming back. She tried comparing Maya to the TV I knocked over and broke in the living room. The TV was broken and could not be fixed. It would not be coming back, it was gone. I found it odd to compare Maya to the television, because I didn't miss the television. Dad missed the television, but we got a new television and everything was fine. We tried to get a new Maya, but everything wasn't fine. We couldn't get another dog, because other dogs weren't Maya. They didn't do the same things as Maya.

Maya was not a television set.

Eventually, I missed Maya less. I found other friends. I think I missed Maya because she was a real, tangible friend. Your parents aren't your friends when you are a child, they're your parents. Until school started, my friends were largely imaginary or incorporeal. Sometimes, it was hard to tell which was which, but Maya was alive. Flesh and blood and wiggly. Anyway, that was Maya.

Anyrate, on a vaguely related note- while we're talking about those no longer living- I'm hitting up an estate sale this weekend. I don't know what I'm looking for yet, but I figure I'll know it when I see it. I promise I won't bring home a piano (that's going somewhere else), but if you want to join me I'd love the company.

-EP
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