NOSEBLEED/CABLEJUICE - William Pauley III

7/30/2019 NOSEBLEED/CABLEJUICE - William Pauley III

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Nosebleed/Cablejuice William Pauley III, 2013

Published by Doom FictionLexington, KY

www.doomfiction.com

Printed in the United States

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NOSEBLEED/CABLEJUICEwilliam pauley III

I remember the nausea, then everything wentblack.

There wasnt a memory for days after that[maybe there was, but I certainly have norecollection of it now]. All I remember is theheavy feeling in my gut as I stared down at theworld [thousands of feet] below me, little houses

on the hill all looked like little pills to me, and theguy behind me pushing against my back. I was theonly thing standing between him and the all-American feeling of freedom. Freedom in theform of nothing, in a swallow, in a fall.

Ill be the first to admit, I was frightened. Days

before the jump we were all men - red meateating, fist pounding, beer guzzling men [wefucked our wives and came on their naked breastsevery night a game wasnt on, as man as it gets, bygod] but in that moment, standing up there inthe clouds [where man was never intended to be]

and looking down at the expanse of civilizationbelow us, and realizing in that moment too thatmankind are no more than insects [looking down

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at our anthills from the view of Gods eye waswhen I first felt the nausea swirl inside mystomach], we were not men, we were drones,robots, followers of the machine. Standing thereon the edge of the plane, as I was trying to getmyself to man up and jump, my knees buckled, Itensed up, and lost all memory of everything I hadever known.

In an instant, I was nothing.In the next instant, I was falling.Someone pushed me. Someone behind me on

the plane, another soldier [one that was eithermore man than me for his bravery, or less manthan me for his ignorance], grabbed me by thepack and shoved me out the back hatch with allhis might. I was falling. I knew that I was falling,but I felt nothing. I knew how fast I was

travelling, my body knew the precise moment toexpect full on collision with the earth below, butmy mind was wiped, tired, and traumatized. Icould not get my hands to pull the parachuterelease, to save my own life as much as I tried, Icould not think of a single reason to do so.

I continued to fall long after the other soldierschutes had all blossomed. The further I fell, thefaster I fell. My body became hard like steel, like

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an atom bomb dropped from a plane. In thatmoment I was atomic, delivering my own personaldoomsday.

I was a shell.I was delivering the weakest message from

God to the people of earth.I was absolutely nothing.The minute it took my body to jump from the

plane to collide with the earth felt more like hours,days maybe. I thought of everything and nothingall at once. I was scared, I was brave, I was

something otherworldly.When I hit the ground, it hurt, but not like itshould have. In reality, my ass and my bootsshould have both met the ground by passingthrough my flattened skull, but it didnt happenthat way at all. In fact, all I felt that day was a little

pressure on my face, enough to break the cartilagein my nose and cause a little bleeding. My face hitfirst, buried itself a few inches in the ground [Ilanded out in the dry cracked desert], and my bodyfollowed as it skidded out about one hundred feet.

Then my legs, which were hanging over my

skull like wicked tree limbs, finally fell to theground. A cloud of dust engulfed me.

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I wish I had a better explanation for it something interesting, something provocative,something that would help answer the manyquestions everyone had for me afterwards how Ican fall from a plane, speeding through the clouds,for thousands of feet, crashing into the earth atGod knows what speed, and come out with only anosebleed - but I have nothing.

Ive only recently remembered these details.Its been something like two months since the falland this is all thats come back to me. Maybe

something will happen, like a dream or a stumble[if I hit my head against something hard, thensurely I will remember, as it always seems to workin the movies], and suddenly I will remembereverything.

Until then, there is only this.

AM BRICKER CABLEJUICE1949

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CHANNEL//FORTY-ONE

When I looked out the window this morning Isaw an old man sitting out at the bus stop. When Isay old man, I mean a man of the age of eighty.When a man is eighty, he feelseighty. Hes an oldman, no two ways about it. Bones become weakand frail, legs walk slower, mouth talks slower,lungs breathe slower. Everything becomesdifficult. Even the easy things in life, like checkingthe mailbox, become difficult, some days even

impossible. A man longs for death at that age, andthe only good thing about it is that hes nearlythere, its within reach. Men are crumbling ogresat the age of eighty. I should know, Ive beeneighty twice already.

It took me an hour to get from my bed to the

window. Getting to the window from my bed in asingle hour is major progress for me. Seems Ivemastered the system. I have pushed myself to thelimit and now can fill my day with twice as manyactivities as before. Filling my day with activitieshas only recently become a concern of mine.

Before, I used to lay in bed most of the day, noteven getting up to shit or piss, Id let the nursesworry about it. I used to laugh about how long

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those gals had to attend college, how hard theydhave to work, just so they could wipe up someoneelses shit. Theyre all glorified janitors, babysitters.I dont laugh about it anymore though. Life, forthose people, is so short. Wasted time in a life thatshort is the greatest shame. Wasted time for a manmy age, a man of one hundred and sixty three,seems like itd feel the same as fifty pound weightsaround the ankle of an eagle, so I cant imaginehow it must feel for normal folk.

Im not saying Im not guilty of it too, cause I

am, and Ill be the first to admit it. Like I saidbefore, Ive wasted quite a bit of my life, nearly allof it, to be completely honest. Ive taken my lifefor granted time and time again, and Ive evenspent a good portion of it trying to end it. Mybody has been abused in ways that would have

killed any other man, I have the scars to prove it. Iused to think this body of mine was a curse, butnow I know its more than that. I kick myselfwhen I think of all those years I spent lying in bed,depressed as all hell, wishing I was just like themother folk, normal folk. Surely I was put here for a

purpose. Surely God had a reason for me.Okay, Id like to keep this here confession

honest, so to do that, I have to admit now that I

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really never have been much of a religious man.Im not entirely sure what I believed in before, ifanything at all, but if I dig real deep I can say thatI most likely always knew that there wassomething more to life than just living, fucking,and dying. There had to be. Even before I eversuspected my immortality [or what I assume isimmortality. Im getting older, my body is aging, Iam an eroding collection of bones in a thin skinsack, but I will not, cannot, die. Or at least Ihaventyet], I had this feeling of a higher being.

But what was that higher being and how did itrelate to me and my position in the world? I hadthis and countless other questions in my mind,always, even now, only now Im not too afraid todive into the unknown, just too old.

This reminds me, I was a scared child.

Everything from shadows to water, I feared it all. Iused to be convinced that the devil lived in myearhole [I swear to God I could hear the demonbanging on my eardrum every single goddamnelectric night]. I cant say it was the devil for sure,but something was in there. Something unnatural.

Maybe supernatural. I used to try things to drivethe little bastard out, weird things like sticking thesharp-end of a pencil down in there, or years later

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pushing a lit cigarette into it, scorching myearflesh. Ended up causing permanent damage tomy hearing [even to this day the world sounds likethe inside of a seashell to me].

Bricker, the demon used to say to me, Brickeryoure a goddamn wolverine. You cant teach your tricks toanyone. No, son, you were born with it. Youre a goddamnwolfcat.

I never felt like the demon really ever knewme at all. Of all the years, of all the tragedies, of allthe triumphs, I thought that damn demon would

have figured me out a little better than it did. Itnever felt real to me. At least thats what xxxxxxtried to get me to believe [I dont have a singlething to say about that man. I refuse to speakabout my encounters with Him. The man was afraud and I wasted a good portion of my life

pouring out to Him. I will not spend any moretime speaking his name and retelling his teachings.I wont have it].

I did, however, find it strange to be staringdown at a man, half my age, that caught my eyeinitially because of his striking resemblance to

xxxxxx. Could He have had a younger brother? Itseemed impossible given all I knew about theman, or at least very unlikely. Although I never

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saw xxxxxx as an old man [His appearance when Ilast saw Him was that of most fifty year olds] Iwas certain that this man, the one I was staringdown at through this nursing home window,could not have been Him. xxxxxx would have tohave been much older than this man. xxxxxxwould have surely been dead by now. No way inall of Hell that the man on the street was one inthe same. In all of Hell. No way.

I stood in the window most of the day. Theman never moved from his place on the bench.

Buses came and went, but the man did not budgefrom his position. I was convinced this was notHim, however, I did not look away from the man,even for a second, the entire day.

Only once did he move. Once. For a while Iwas convinced he had sat on that bench and died

there, perhaps frozen to death, or maybe his hearthad given out, I thought, but I was proven wrongthe moment he moved.

Yes, he moved.He looked up at me. He raised his head and

looked straight at me as I stood in the window

staring down at him. He didnt look around. Hedidnt catch a glimpse of me out of the corner ofhis eye. He looked directly at me. There was no

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emotion shown on the mans face, not from whatI could tell anyway [my eyesight is terrible, exactlywhat you might imagine from eyes as old as mine].I could definitely see the shadows that hung overhis eyes and across cheeks, and behind theshadows, although blurry, those eyes, the whitesof his eyes burned images into mine, specters,ghosts, they were all there, as they always were inxxxxxx.

His stare made me remember things andforget them again, all within seconds. So many

images, memories, reveries danced before myretinas. Then they were gone.And that was all. That was all he did from that

moment on, stare. I did not turn away. Invisibleropes of tension wrapped themselves tightlyaround our eyeballs, and our stares dared the

other to walk across the ropes, into the unknown.It was xxxxxx. It had to be.Then, for no reason at all, I fell asleep. I

wasnt even tired; in fact, I had just woken up anhour before. My eyelids grew heavy and I fell intounconsciousness all within a fraction of a second.

Clouds of darkness swirled around the room,opened its hot mouth, and took me inside it.

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The world would appear much different tome the moment Id awaken.

That night I dreamt about honeybees. In thedream, the honeybees were all disappearing,fleeing from their hives all at once, overnight.Complete and total abandonment. The only beesthat remained were the queen and the manyyounglings. No telling where the others had gone.

But I knew.

I knew because I had been to this placebefore, the place of erasure, of erased things.Colony collapse disorder, thats what they

called it. For one reason or another, an entirecolony vanishes. I thought about this as I slept,what it means to completely vanish from the

world and how something could leave everythingits ever known, the only place it had ever calledhome, for emptiness, for darkness, for completenothingness. I couldnt relate to the idea myself,but it made me dream of other humans and whatwould happen to them if they all had suddenly

disappeared, vanished, without a trace. Gone. Isuppose it would be much quieter around here,peaceful. That is, given what was left roaming this

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god-forsaken planet wasnt worse than humansthemselves. There are worse things than humans,after all, much worse. I had seen them, andunbeknownst to me at the time, Id be seeingthem again, here in this very dream. Or whatseemed like a dream to me then.

Soon Id be seeing everything again.Everything I had ever done, all the good, all thebad [some of the sins were unspeakably horrid,but I promise to be honest, no matter how terriblea person this makes me out to be] would soon be

playing back to me. Memories would arrive in theform of ghosts, and theyd vanish as quickly asthey appeared.

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CHANNEL//THIRTY-TWO

A memory swirled...I was standing in a familiar room. It was

dark and I was a much younger man then. Iremoved a handgun from the holster at myribcage; the leather shoulder straps were the onlyitem I was wearing on this particular night.Standing naked in the living room of my home,what once was my familys home [they had longsince left me by that point], I held the gun

nervously, with copious amounts of stress pullingat the tendons of my trigger finger in short, quickspasms. There were pictures staring at me from alldirections, my daughters, my wifesmy sons,my little boys eyes were looking straight at me.Goddamn it, if I knew that day was going to be

the last day I had ever seen him things would havebeen different. I would have been a better fatherto him, I would have been there every second, Iwouldnt have wasted so much goddamn timedoing other things, pointless things that meantnothing. I would have been better. But he was

gone, and my wife and daughter were gone too.I was a man, alone. When alone, Id drink

whiskey straight from the bottle and finger the

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trigger of a gun. A man is dangerous without hisfamily.

There was heavy rain that night withmighty winds that rattled the windows and shookthe doors, as if the storm desperately neededshelter, a way inside, to protect it from itself. Inthat way, the storm and I were one in the same.The rain fell hard against the roof and collected ingiant puddles out in the yard, nearly floodedcompletely. The rain reminded me of a time Iwouldve much rather forgotten, the time we [my

family and I] headed to the coast. For most,visions of the beach and family vacations weresweet memories, something cherished. For me itwas the physical manifestation of the darkestreservoirs of my mind, an actual place of fear. Noman should ever have to feel the pain that I have

felt there in that place, on that dark coastline.Images, haunting photographs, of my

family, of my son, my little boy, flickered behindmy eyelids like a horror film in an empty theater.The gun in my palm suddenly felt as if it wereholding me, and not the other way around. My

house also felt as if it were containing me ratherthanprotectingme from the storm in that moment.I was feeling paranoid and strangely

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claustrophobic and everything felt insane to me,unreal and cold. Unreasonably [I know that now],I felt the gun could cure these feelings, theuncomfortable sensation of strangulation. Turnsout, I was wrong, but damn if I didnt try.

When I opened my eyes, I noticedshadows dancing on the ceiling, watching as Iunloaded two bullets into my temple with the onlyinjury being a slight headache. They were tauntingme, taking shape of my every failure. I couldnteven kill myself. Even the biggest failures still

succeed at suicide, so where did that leave me?In that moment, I wanted to cry. I neededto cry, but the tears would not form. Sometimesits necessary to let emotions destroy you, to letgo, to lose total control of yourself. I could not. Istood there, shaking, nervous, frightened, all

under stares from the ceiling and the countlessphotographs hanging in frames on the walls. Itwas out of utter frustration that I shot the ceiling.Four bullets left the chamber of my gun andpierced clear through the roof directly above myhead. Rainwater leaked in through the bullet holes,

four constant streams pouring down upon thecrown of my head. The water was cold anduncomfortable, but also somehow soothing. It

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was nice to feel something different for a change,even if it was unpleasant.

The gun I was holding would not kill me,I knew that even before shooting myself with it. Iwanted nothing more than to die, but nothingwould end me, the gun would not fucking kill me.

I could kill others with it, I suppose, butthe only man I wished to kill [the man whomurdered my son, my little boy] may have wellbeen a ghost. He didnt seem to exist. All I knewwas my son was with me one moment and the

next he was gone. Hours later he was dead,murdered, but without a murderer. The cops foundnothing, no sort of clue, no finger pointing in anydirection at all. They shrugged their shoulders,told us they did the best they could, then gave up,leaving me and my wife and our daughter alone,

knowing that our sons killer was somewhere outthere in the same goddamn world that we wereliving in. Everyone became a suspect to me, to mywife. We were forced to live a life of unhappiness,to never trust another human being as long as welived. We got so caught up in it, in fact, that we

turned against each other. We began blaming eachother for our unhappiness and lost the only thingeither of us had left. My wife and daughter, they

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left me, here in this very room, years ago. Ivebeen trying to end the nightmare ever since. Butthis gun will not kill me. Nothing will. Goddamnedcurse.

Static swirled around behind my eyelids and soon othervisions would appear to me

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CHANNEL//FORTY-ONE

I was hoping there would be a way around it, away I could share with you my story and not haveto mention xxxxxx or His experiments, but Imstruggling. Im finding that I am wasting more ofmy precious time [time has never been moresacred to me than it has in the past day, with theold man sitting outside my window, ghosts in hiseyes and his constant staring. I cant even gazeupon him now without falling into tiny comas]

trying to find a way to avoid the man than I wouldif I were to just clench my jaw and let His ideasflow, in the form of words, from my fingertipsinto your skull. I apologize for the informationyoure about to sew into your mind. You willnever be able to un-learn this, it will forever be a

part of you. It is for this reason alone that I feelthe need to apologize. And even that doesnt seemlike enough, but its all this tired old soul can offerat the moment.

It wasnt long after I had fallen from theplane when I had first come in contact with

xxxxxx. I suppose I was sort of a celebrity at thetime, the media went wild over me. The worldcouldnt get enough of my story. I had been

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featured in all the big publications and even hadmade a couple appearances on television, whichwas a big deal at the time. I was looked at as somesort of hero, but not the type I would have beenproud to have been. No, I was looked at as somesort ofsuper-hero, some kind ofimmortal freak.

Airman Bricker Cablejuice: Worlds GreatestAnomaly, I remember one of the headlines read.Another was, Doctors Call Cablejuice a HumanGlitch.

At first I felt adoration from all the

attention, but that quickly faded as I soon becameknown as an error, an inexplicable mutant. Ibecame incredibly depressed and refused to makeany further public appearances or keep anyappointments with the media. It was right aroundthis time that xxxxxx found me.

To truly understand my state of mindduring that time, and why I would have everagreed to work with xxxxxx in the first place, Ithink youd have to have actually been there,standing in my very boots, having the world comedown on you the way it came down on me. I

became fragile. The only man in history to haveever survived free falling from such an incredibleheight [and escaping death with only a nosebleed]

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and there I stood, fragile. My body wasuntouchable, my spirit was shattered. Again, I wasa shell. Atomic, but defused. He showed up atprecisely the right moment, as if He were lurkingsomewhere in the shadows around me, waiting forthis moment to arrive. I needed desperately tobelieve in something, as I was discovering in thosemoments too that suicide was not an option forme [blood loss only made me nauseas]. xxxxxxgave me something to believe in, for a whileanyway.

He knocked on my door, I answered. Hestood tall, taller than me, draped in a grey trenchcoat and black wide brimmed fedora. He wascarrying a black briefcase in His hand. Heintroduced Himself to me and asked if He couldcome inside. I nodded and shut the door behind

him.You are a gifted man, xxxxxx said to

me, God has put you here for a reason.I am cursed, I said.He sat on the sofa and removed

something from His briefcase. It looked to be

some sort of electronic dial.

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Not a curse, a wonder, a miracle, Hesaid. You are exactly what I need. God doesanswer prayers.

He handed the dial to me. There wereseveral wires sprouting from the back of it. It wasblack with tiny white numbers printed around it:41, 32, 23, 14, 5. As I examined it, He told me itwould be a part of me, that I was the only onealive who could survive the procedure.

What procedure? I asked.He looked up at me with wet wild eyes,

seemingly swirling with blue flame.You are to become something of ahybrid, He explained. Through carefulinstallation of machine parts, already assembled atmy home, into your body, you will gain access to avariety of consciousnesses.

He paused and pointed at the dial held inmy hands.

This dial will allow you toswitchchannels, if you will, flipping back and forthbetween consciousnesses, living lives of manydifferent people all at the same time. Like some

sort oftelevision man, I suppose.What He was saying didnt make much

sense to me. Television itself was fairly new at the

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time, and somewhat magical to those of us whodidnt understand the technology side of it, so thethought of the machine being inside me, an actualpart of me, was completely unfathomable.However, given my fragile and somewhat brokenstate of mind, I found the idea of being able torun from one life to another rather alluring.

It didnt take much thought before Iaccepted His offer and agreed to go through withthe many procedures. After all, I was suicidal, andthe worst that could possibly happen was that I

would die, finally be allowed to die. I had nothing tolose and many lives [many escapes] to gain.However, I was foolish. There were worseconsequences than death, I would find. Soon, Idhave five different lives, all of them lonely, all ofthem terrifying in one way or another. And worst

of all, I was forced to live all five of these livesforever, until the end of time. Until my last breath,whenever/if ever that would happen.

The first operation transpired that night,the installation of the dial into my skull. He did itright there in the living room of my home,

without anesthesia or proper surgical tools. Beforethe operation, He asked me for a steak knife, aclaw hammer, and a handful of rags. As far as I

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know, these were the only tools He used to wirethe dial into my brain. He said it was the riskiestof all the operations that lay ahead of us, that allthe other components relied on the success of thisone particular procedure.

And it worked. Afterwards, I felt a newsense of being, I felt important, I felt as if I werecontributing to knowledge, to science. I felt like afuture man. And it brought me closer to God.There was finally a purpose for me, I thought, areason to live, a meaning behind my freakish gift. I

finally knew why I was placed here on this earth.It all made sense to me, and all this was realizedwithin those precious moments.

But as the operations continued, as Ibecame increasingly less human, God wouldprove to be the furthest thing from me.

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CHANNEL//TWENTY-THREE

Static. Static. Static. Static. Stat--The room was always cold, as if the

doctors were trying to keep all us cancer patientsfrom rotting, from stinking up the place.Chemotherapy felt a lot like a nursing home forsmokers in that we all had lived our lives suckingthe cancer from tobacco sticks [our lips wrinkledin long thin lines, our mouths looking somewhatlike an eyeball with ugly spider leg lashes

stretching from our lips across our even uglierfaces] and have all in a way graduated to this, tochemotherapy. Some become genuinely sad whenthey are told they have cancer and that they mustbegin treatment immediately in order to have anyreal chance of survival, others love it. Some of us

have waited for this moment all our lives. Cancerwas the ultimate pity; no matter how shitty of aperson you had been in your life, no matter howmany birthdays you missed, people you hurt,money you owed, all would be forgiven when thisone word was uttered, cancer. It was a godsend.

Of course, the only ones happy to hearthe news are just that, shitty people. Those of uswho have led shitty lives and have been generally

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shitty to everyone who had ever cared for us, weare the ones who revel at the thought of having adisease writhing around within us, eating away atus until there is nothing left. And not only did wehave a disease, we had thedisease, thecancer! Thiswas the biggest disease there was, the mostfamous, infamous even. I for one had never feltbetter than the day I was officially diagnosed. Iwas a snotty kid who constantly disobeyed herparents and because of that I grew up to be asnotty person who never had any contact with her

parents whatsoever. I had grown up to be anobody, and not a single soul gave a legitimate shitabout me. Not a one. But now I held the key, thekey to getting my life straightened out, the key toforgiveness and the ultimate weapon pity. Ifinally had an A-list disease, and it was about

damn time too.Immediately, I called everyone I knew,

my parents first. It was the first time I had calledthem in over twenty years. I didnt even recognizemy mothers voice when she answered the phone.She cried at the sound of mine. Twenty years of

absence, of silence, of pure abandonment on mypart forgiven after I uttered that one beautifulword, cancer. My father must have overheard the

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conversation, because at the moment I uttered theword he joined us through another phonesomewhere inside the house. They soundedscared, as if horrified at the idea of losing thedaughter they never really had in the first place. Iimagined them sitting somewhere in their house,in complete darkness, holding each other andweeping at the thought of my disease-ridden body.How dare they bring life into this world only to have it diein such a brutally violent way. They failed to protectme. I was secretly hoping after our conversation

was over, after they hung up the phone, that theywere sitting there in complete silence, blamingthemselves for my disease.

Before the cancer came along, I oftenwondered what my parents were doing, what theirlives were like now, if either of them were even

still alive, but never enough to actually make thecall to find out. Looking back now, Im not sure ifit was because I was scared, ashamed of myself, orif I truly just did not care enough to know. Itwasnt until after the cancer conversation, after Iwas sitting in the cold chemotherapy room [a

room that held only strangers] with not a singlefamiliar soul at my side, that I realized while wewere on the phone I never even asked how

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theyve been these last couple decades. They hadasked me about everything, they wanted to knowevery detail of my life they had missed. Hours ofconversation, all about me. I thought about callingagain, this time focusing one-hundred percent onthem, but just the thought of it made me anxious.I would not call them back, not until the cancerwould spread and I am given a death sentence.

I tried to imagine the disease growinginside my body, eating away at internal tissues theway a vulture picks apart the dead. I wondered

how advanced it would get, considering my bodyand the way it never seemed to give up, it wouldnever die. How far will the cancer spread? At somepoint the disease will have taken over the majorityof my body, and I will lay there on the hospitalbed with my extremities gone, left with only a

rotting brain, two bind eyeballs, and a mess ofhalf-eaten organs twisted around my oozing spine.At some point I will be more cancerthan human.

And. I. Will. Live. Through. It. All.I wriggled around in my chair, pulled a

blanket tight against my neck and closed my eyes,

feeling the chemicals as they rushed into my veinsand silently praying that it only makes thingsworse.

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Static filled the room, swallowed the strangers,then swallowed me.

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CHANNEL//FOURTEEN

And after a sharp quick sting of electricity, my mind wassuddenly somebody elses again

My brain was throbbing in pain, amigraine, a ticking time bomb that would neverexplode. It just kept ticking and ticking andticking. Tick, tick, tick. The pain resonated fromsomewhere within the five sections of vertebraebetween my neck and shoulders. I hopped in theshower thinking somehow it would ease the pain,

after all it worked wonders on hangovers [or soIve been told]. I didnt like to rely solely on drugs,medication. If there was a chance to solvewhatever ills I was experiencing in a naturalmanner, then I preferred to do it that way. Drugswere only a last resort. I laid in bottom of the tub

and let the water pour down on me from theshowerhead above, soaking into and pruning myskin. I was an old man then, so I dont know whatthat makes me now.

To my surprise, the pain did not ease, infact it had gotten worse. Much worse. The pain felt

as if it had kicked and ripped apart my brain. Ithought I felt the prying fingers of a fucking ape!The bastard was spreading apart the deep folds of

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my brain looking for mites, lice, or any othervermin that may have been living down inside.Pain radiated from the bones in my neck like athousand volts of electricity, the muscles runningthroughout my body had stiffened and made italmost impossible to move. I managed to takehold of my head with both hands, one on my jaw,the other on my crown, and I twisted my skull in aviolent rage. I meant to kill that fucking ape, butinstead I felt a sharp pain, and then I felt nothing.I heard the terrible sound of vertebrae slipping,

shifting, snapping. Immediately after, my worldwent dark.Blindness wasnt the only thing that

furious snap brought me that day, it also paralyzedmy entire body. Every nerve inside of me hadbeen severed, like I had blown the one goddamn

fuse responsible for my every movement. Fromthat unfortunate moment on Ive been nothingbut a lump, an immovable wad of lard wrappedaround a tiny skeleton.

A Spanish woman named Penelope cameto my aid every day after that, and she was at my

side almost every hour. The government pays herto do so. The government, ha!She was sent by thegoddamn government to spy on me, at least that

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was my suspicion. I didnt file my taxes for theyear 1978 [a long story that doesnt belong here.Im not even sure if I remember the detailsanyway] and theyve been following me ever since.She would steal from me! I could hear her quietlygoing through my things and the jingle-jangle ofher oversized purse as she scrambled for the door.That whore! Shed feed me too much. I was a fatbloated pig because of her. Every bit of 500pounds. She was trying to kill me!

In the twenty years that Id been this

lump of flesh and bone, I had nearly forgotten thebeauty of the world. Colors had faded frommemory. I could not see the detail in anything,only grey, and all my memories were draped in thesame lonely shade. I even imagined Penelopesskin to be absent of any pigment. Being blind was

maddening, however, it did help me to become abetter hearer.

Penelope would only leave me here alonewhen she thought I was asleep, so I pretended tosleep often. When the house was empty, I couldhear for miles. I could hear children playing at a

playground a block away. I could hear neighborswalking their dogs [their ringing collars] outsidealong the streets. Those moments when I was

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alone were the only times I ever truly felt alive,that some small part of me was still eager to live,desiring the fruits of the world outside the prisonIve made of my walls. But on this particular day,after Penelope left the house, I heard absolutelynothing but the humming static of the raincolliding with the earth. It was storming, and notjust a little rain either, a true storm, a dangerousstorm, the type that ripped trees from roots,houses from foundations, corpses from graves[violent storms often caused cadavers buried in

shallow graves to resurface, going on one finalride down the flood waters of the countryside andemptying over into some ditch or riversomewhere, never to be seen again. Or at least Ihope].

Thunder cracked overhead and shook my

home. Pictures on the wall vibrated and the samevibrations traveled up my spine and reignited aflame I had thought was long since gone. Chillsprickled along my arms and neck as I began to feelagain. Pain shot in long stems from my neck tomy toes and the feeling excited me to no end. I

was able to feel again! I wouldnt have been able tocontain myself if it werent for the fact that I wasstill immobile, a complete vegetable. Then the

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thunder cracked again and this time the vibrationswere so powerful that it caused my muscles tofully contract. I moved. For the first time in twentyyears, I moved [however only slightly]. My neckshifted and it caused my head to fall forward a bit.It wasnt much, but it felt fantastic, almost unreal.

Hope flooded my conscience as I waitedfor the next crack of the whip. The next boomingthunder was even stronger than the two that hadcome before it. My neck muscles pulled and slungmy head around like a slow moving planet

revolving around its sun until my face was buriedin the fatty pillows of my chest.With all the excitement of moving, I

hardly noticed my breathing had become limited. Iwas sucking tufts of skin into my mouth instead ofair. A fourth cracking thunder brought back my

eyesight [lightning illuminated the room andsuddenly I could see colors again, if only for asecond] and sent another jolt of pain down myspine, sending my giant body tumbling downupon the floor. My neck bent and snapped onefinal time as my head became trapped beneath the

mass of blubber that was my body.The next few hours were bliss [before

Penelope would find me]. The suffocation and the

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broken neck should have killed me, but instead Ilaid there in the floor, happy. The rain washumming all around me, as I was finallyremembering all the beauty of the world.

The earth would continue to spin,Penelope would soon find me and I wouldcontinue to breathe, the stars and the planets allstill had their suns and their moons. I would neverhave anyone or be anyone, but at least I was giventhis. I was happy in that moment, although I wasnot able to physically show it. The next day Id be

propped up close to the window, eagerly awaitingthe next thunderstorm.

Color bars filled my eyes and suddenly worlds were shiftingagain.

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CHANNEL//FIVE

I drowned my ears in static, sitting beneath thegiant moon on a night too cold to belong toAugust. My headphones served as both earmuffsand a way out, a way out of myself, even if onlyfor minutes at a time. Noise poured out of thefoamy speakers and burrowed deep into the foldsof my brain, electrocuting, burning memoriesfrom the inside out. I could not think [this was agood thing]. When I say noise, I mean just that

noise no music. I listened to sounds of lightbulbs breaking, ants marching, and animalschewing. Music could not bring silence. No matterhow mellow, it could not bring calm. Only noise.Only noise got me there.

I felt a vibration in my pocket. It was my

cell phone. The person on the other end of theline was trying to kill this moment for me, tryingto bring me out of my cold night terror blues. Ipretended it was supposed to happen, that it wasall a part of the experience, the experience ofsuffocating my brain, killing myself under the

bitter nights open mouth of spilling moonlight,overdosing on a field of vibrations with the entire

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universe as witness. But it wasnt working. I onlyfelt nauseous.

I checked my phone. My friend Kaylasent me a text message. It read, HEY BECCA,WHERE R U?

Electric drones straddled my eardrum as Iread this and I thought to myself how anyonecould possibly ever answer that questionaccurately. It was a good question, dont get mewrong, but even still, it was absolutely pointless. Iam here, thats where I am. Thats all I know. How could

anyone know any more than that?I am lost and I dont understand myexistence, or even how I exist, and the moon ishanging directly above my head, I responded.

I looked up at the sky. It looked like thecold glass wall of an illuminated television screen.

The stars looked like white noise to me. All in aninstant I found that my eyes are were suddenlydrowning in static as well as my ears. There wasno relief, there was no quick sharp pain or pinchto sever the nerve, only this, this endlessdrowning. Static filled my head, swelled it, but not

enough. It wouldnt break. I needed more thanthis to escape. I was still there, inside my body. Iddone everything short of getting down on my

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knees and begging to be taken away, for my breathto be stolen by the vacuum, to be completelyswallowed up by the ever-expanding static of thenight sky. I was playing with fire and purposefullyinhaling the smoke.

My phone vibrated again. Kayla said,FUNNY YOU MENTION THE MOON, ITSALL OVER THE NEWS TONIGHT.

I tried my best to ignore her, to continuewith my lunar suicide, but I found the messagetoo strange not to reply. I drummed my fingers

across my leg and thought about tossing myphone out into the dark ocean of tall grass thatsurrounded me, but only for a second. I refrained.

What do you mean? I asked.I buried my hands in my pockets,

frustrated at the entire universe, myself included.

There was a pressure in my skull, a pressure thatcould only be cured by death. Everyone I knewhad let me down, even my own body had failedme. I chose to pass on, to continue living life inmy next form, a form without thispressure, butI couldnt do it alone. Believe me, Ive tried, but

time and time again Id proved myself to be acoward. I was too weak, a complete failure. Timewould pass, every single night, failure after failure,

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and I would look up at the moon and the maninside would grin his unusual grin and stare downat me with crows feet clipped to his eyelids. Id besitting in a pool of my own blood, vomit, shit, andthe moon would just smile, laugh at my pathetic,useless existence.

I looked up at the moon with more angerthan hope. The noise swelled inside my skull, butnot enough. Nothing was ever enough. The coldstuck to the skin of my face like a thousand tinyneedles. I was feeling numb, but again, not

enough. The giant moon was full and bright andlooming. I continued to taunt it, to stare back at itwith eyes that were not only without fear, butcompletely filled with anger. I could not see theman inside that night. I wondered if I ever wouldagain.

That goddamn moon owed me this. Afterall, it was the primary cause of my cranial pressure.It had given me pain for all my twenty-eight years,and all Id done in that time was try to ignore it, ormore than that run away from it, but not thatnight. That night I was asking for it to finally put

me out of my misery.And it failed me, of course. Like

everything else in this goddamn universe had

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failed me. Tears were forming at the corners ofmy eyes. I couldnt handle any more of thepressure. I wish I could have fallen to my knees,pressed a loaded blue gun to the end of mynostrils, and pulled the trigger back, sending a coldbullet of relief straight through the pain. A oneway ticket out of myself forever. But I couldntand wouldnt. So many flaws.

My phone vibrated again. I wiped thetears from my eyes and checked the screen. Itread, NEIL ARMSTRONG IS DEAD.

I decided not to respond this time. I putthe phone in my pocket and laid down in thegrass, continuing to gaze at the moon, but notwith anger anymore. Id managed to calm myselfdown. If it took forty-three years for it to finallyget to Neil, then I guess I had around fifteen more

years of this at least. It wasnt the answer I waslooking for, but it was an answer nonetheless. Itwasnt an immediate reprieve of the pressure, itwas a prison sentence. But I wasnt angry over it.

Sometimes Id get so caught up in myown troubles that Id forget about the troubles of

others. There were other people suffering, not justme. I needed to learn to be more patient, moreconsiderate. The moon had a big job. Im sure it

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killed dozens on any given night, and I couldntguarantee, but Id be willing to bet that they allsuffered much longer than I had. I must havebeen close, to see the man inside as he stareddown at me from above, I must have been withinreach in those moments. But he was not there thatnight, and that night was all that mattered at themoment.

I took off my headphones.I could wait.I pulled out my phone and wrote back to

Kayla. I wonder if Neil got the chance to lookApollo in the eye tonight before he went?After a few seconds passed, Kayla

responded.YOU SHOULD COME OVER.Some of the pressure faded. I stood up

and walked away from the moon.

Static. Static. Static. Static. Static. Static. Static. Static.Static. Static. Static. Static. Static. Static. Static. Static.Static. Static. Static. Static. Static. Static. Static. Static.

Static. Static. Static. Static. Static. Static. Static. Static.Stati

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CHANNEL//FORTY-ONE

I thought I had awakened from my deep slumber for asliver of a second, but my eyes never actually opened. I couldhear sounds and movement as someone or something walkedaround me, tinkering with what sounded to be small metalobjects near my ears. No matter how hard I tried, I couldnot open my eyes. I assumed I must have still been asleep,still dreaming.

One final dream came to me

There was a room, a cold room with white tiledflooring. The tiles were stained pink from theblood running off the table located in the centerof the room, collecting in puddles on the floor.There was a body lying on the table, a mans body,but the head and been emptied [cut open like a

melon, the insides scraped clean out], so I couldnot tell who it was.

I was not in this room, or so I thought atthe time. I assumed I was dreaming of someoneelse, as I often do, but strangely I could not seemyself, even as I looked down to examine. There

was nothing, I was no one, or so it seemed.There was another man in the room, a

man dressed in all grey, his face hidden behind a

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surgical mask. His eyes were filled with white [noirises, no pupils, just white]. He held a large objectin his hands, a jar, half-filled with some dark bluecolored liquid. Something about the jar made himchuckle, soft at first, but escalated into heartylaughs, deep from the gut. He walked over to atray sitting on the table next to the hollow-headedbody. The tray was filled with what I assumed tobe the contents of the hollow-headed mans skull.The man in grey, still sniggering, proceeded tostuff the jar full of the bloody offal from the tray

in a violent and messy manner. The blue coloredliquid now appeared clouded and purple. A pair ofeyeballs, a tongue, ears, and a brain were clearlyvisible within the glass walls of the jar, allcrammed and piled on top of one another likecucumbers in a pickle jar.

Bricker, youre a goddamn wolverine. I heard avoice say to me. You cant teach your tricks to anyone.No, son, you were born with it. Youre a goddamn wolfcat.

The voice was not coming from the manin grey, the only man within an earshot of me,whoever and wherever I may have been. It was

the demon inside my earhole.The man in grey isxxxxxx. I warned you about

him. I told you not to share your gifts with anyone, you

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goddamn fool. You are a man, alone. Always alone. Peopleonly slow you down.

I could not respond, instead I thoughtabout the many lives Id lived and tried imagininghaving lived them alone, without a single livingsoul hanging around my neck at any point. Thedemon was right. Other people only made my lifemore difficult. All my sadness, guilt, andunhappiness stemmed from the loss of individualsI had allowed myself to get close to.

Your purpose was different than what you made

your fate, you realize this dont you? Bricker, you goddamnwildebeest, you are an error a glitch, but you are the onethat made yourself that way.

I wanted nothing more than to scream atthe top of my lungs. I wanted to ask the demonthe point of living five lives [or even one life, for

that matter] if I am meant to live them all inisolation, abstinent of love, of desire, of passion.What was the point of life?

You. Could. Have. Lived. Forever.Is life really worth living if you have no

one to be happy with, even if those short-lived

happy moments ultimately lead to massive periodsof great sadness?

Your gifts were wasted on human invention,

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Bricker. You and all the othersOthers? There are others? Others what?

Otherslike me? I could not physically ask thedemon these questions, but I soon found that Ididnt need to. The answers appeared to waitingfor me in the next room.

Bum. Bum. Bum-Bum-Bum.I heard the demon drumming in my ear.

The closer I got to the doorway of the next roomthe faster and more vigorous the drummingbecame. I felt a part of its song, as if I were

musical notes dancing atop the wicked beat.Youre learning secrets, dear boyI stepped into the room. There were four

other bodies stripped naked and lying on tables.Two were women, the others were men. Blooddripped from craters that used to contain brains,

eyeballs, and faces, and pooled on the floorbeneath them. It was the scene from Room Onetimes four.

Five immortals, five jars, five channels. Turnaround, Bricker.

I turned around. The man in grey, his

white eyes burning images into mine [specters,ghosts] was standing before me. It was xxxxxx. Heheld up the jar so that I could see it. The eyeballs

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inside were twitching, as if in REM cycle. Therewas a label stuck to the glass. It read,Channel//Forty-One. He chuckled, turnedaround and placed the jar on a desk near acomputer monitor. There were four other jars onthe desk, all sporting the same gory contents.xxxxxx pulled two wires from behind the monitorand pushed them down into the jar, channel forty-one, piercing the brain flesh in two locations,carefully pinpointed.

Once the wires were in position, He spun

His body around and pulled the surgical maskfrom his face. His mouth was open, He beganlaughing maniacally. Television static filled Hismouth, leaking out the corners and dripping downonto His chest. Splashes of it were spat from Hismouth with every wicked giggle. He held a finger

high in the air, almost comically, like a cartoon orsomething. A strange sensation of dread cameover me as I realized in that moment what wasabout to happen.

Bricker, you goddamn wolfcat.With one final snigger [the static spewed

from his mouth like gushes of vomit], he slammedhis finger down on the computer keyboard andinstantly the room disappeared.

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When I awakened, I found myself standing at the edge of aplane, dressed in full uniform, struggling to find the courageto leap

William Pauley III, 2013

NOSEBLEED/CABLEJUICE - William Pauley III

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Transcript of NOSEBLEED/CABLEJUICE - William Pauley III