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Title: BLACK-EYED ANGELS
Author: Kim (dharmachick34@hotmail.com)
Catagory: Josh


"I jumped in the river, what did I see?
Black-eyed angels swam with me..."

           - Radiohead, "Pyramid Song"

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JOSHUA LYMAN/DREAM


There is the idea just before sleeping that all across the United
States of America right now people are lying in bed in the dark and
dreaming. People who have never known true fear or true pain, who have
never knocked on the door of Death or Despair or any of their kin.
People swathed in the raw silk of their private cocoons. These people
are dreaming.

I go to sleep to the lullaby of that idea and dream of being free of
scars, free of all burdens. Innocent. Forgiven.

Impossible.

*I dreamed a dream tonight/And so did I/And what was yours?/That
dreamers often lie...*

"In bed asleep while they do dream things true," I whisper aloud. "They
do dream things true."

Not even the night believes me.

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JL/DEATH


What do you fear most?

What do you desire most?

The endless, the end, the endless end, the end of endless...

It is death, the eater of souls. (Liberal arts education: like Judaism
and the Catholic Church, at its best only with last rites)

It is death, at last, the deliverer. The dark of her passing, the sound
of her wings, the peace of her presence that passeth understanding.

It is death.

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JL/DESIRE


"If you were in an accident, I wouldn't stop for red lights."

A strange taste fills my mouth as I watch her not meeting my eyes, and
it is the taste of want. I want her and more than that I want to know
that she wants me, loves me, needs me with that much strength, with the
momentum of a 1992 Volvo barreling through every stoplight on the way
to GW.

Just the idea of it makes me short of breath, not from desire but from
fear. Nobody loves that much. Nobody loves me that much. What would I
do with that kind of devotion? Only waste it, destroy it, fuck it up
with one of the monumental fuck-ups I'm so capable of producing. I
can't be trusted with this red-light-running love.

But I want -

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JL/DELIRIUM


The window breaks.

Your hand goes clean through and feels cold, like the glass was really
ice, like you've thrust your fist through a wall of ice, but the pieces
of glass on the floor shine silver in the artificial light and look not
like ice, but a broken mirror. There was a story, a Snow Queen story,
about a little boy with a bit of broken mirror in his eye...

The window breaks.

Pieces of glass scatter and you wonder in a detached sort of way what
it would be like to watch all of this rewind, watch all the tiny shards
spin back to their places.

The window breaks

with a crack, and a musical tinkling of spilled glass, and inside the
noise of things shattering you almost hear a high, faint laugh, like a
giggle, a crazy kind of giggle that you understand because it is the
only possible soundtrack to this scene. Go on. Laugh. Nothing's funny.
Everything's funny.

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JL/DESPAIR


One time.

That's all.

I swear.

On a Thursday night I reached for the TV remote on my nightstand and my
hand brushed a bottle of pills.

Time stopped.

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JL/DESTRUCTION


*You need to LISTEN to me. You have to LISTEN to me*

so lately i've been thinking about killing myself mr. president nothing
serious you understand it's just the occasional stray thought when i
get up in the morning and when i go to sleep at night like something
out of the bible "in your waking up and in your lying down" that's in
the bible right well that's death, death is in my waking up and in my
lying down

*I can't help you unless you LISTEN to me*

i mean everyone likes to think clarence the angel's going to come for
them but we know the truth don't we everyone who's stood toe to toe
with death knows the truth: that no one's coming

*You can't send Christmas cards to everyone, you can't do it! Forget
the SPR, let's get the IMF loans like we said we were going to*

we are on our own i am on my own at the end

*LISTEN to what I have to say about Didion*

at the end of the road i am alone in the dark

*and please LISTEN to me*

after all the bridges are ashes there is just

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JL/DESTINY


"How did that bullet not kill you?"

"Just lucky, I guess."

Lucky. Lucky is the quarter-millimeter between a bullet and total
irreparable arterial collapse. Lucky is Toby Ziegler's weird sixth
sense spotting you in a crowd of screaming, rioting people. Lucky is a
bright light on the operating table and a surgeon's skillful hands
bringing you back.

"Why am I alive?" you asked yourself almost every day, mostly silently,
sometimes out loud to the haggard reflection in the miror. And
Christmas, in the emergency room, "Why am I alive?" you asked Donna,
the words slipping out before you could stop them.

She tucked her arm under yours and said, "Because there are so many
answers to that question."

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FINIS

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and then there were none.

:-) Kim (dharmachick34@hotmail.com)