Fluke

Entropy

Hang in there, Baby…

…was much more than a poster of a cute kitten dangling on a rope and life-motivational quip for Dimer. This morning was extremely important. And she wanted to believe that she took that particularly sage advice more to heart than anyone ever could. Including that fucking kitten, who because of her complete and total exhaustion, she interpreted as the true bard behind the message.

Nineteen-year-old Dimer was programming.

Coding her ass off in her loft.

She was fixing a virus, a special code, that she had spent the last few months creating and then selling. A virus she believed up until this very morning…was perfection itself.

It was tough, and each time she thought for sure that it was over, that she was going to fail epically, in-between her feverous keystrokes, she would steal a glance at the poster. Staring at it, as if she was missing something. Something way more important than she could fathom. Then, that damned kitten’s determination inspired her and she’d breathe deep, figure it out, and instantly return to her laptop, clacking away, causing her cheap fold-up makeshift desk to buckle and sway under her confident keystrokes.

It was an extensive code, and Dimer was exhausted, verifying it line by line, character by character, expending just as much energy at searching the words on the screen, as she was typing. Her black hair, still hidden in the shadows, was matted to her forehead and there were endless trails of black mascara etched onto her cheeks and neck. Her eyes were red. She was crying.

This latest excursion started over an hour ago, when her brother came over and told her that because of her code, they were all fucked, and after Dimer’s hollow denials of anything being wrong was horribly shattered, she’d been at this Herculean enterprise ever since.

“Dimer. I have faith. You’ll get it.” A young man’s voice behind her said, and then sighed. “It’s going to be okay. Right?”

Her response to him was the same as it had been since he began asking that question.

Silence.

She didn’t respond when she confirmed that her code failed. Nor did she respond when he continued asking her, and she sure as hell didn’t acknowledge him that she was almost done. There was nothing more important than the program she was fixing.

Lives depended upon it.

Sometime during Dimer’s spree, her fingers cramped up and they started bleeding, and now, the blood obscured the letters of her keyboard. Her gallows-humor found that funny, and she chuckled whenever she looked down. But neither the cramping nor the blood-stained keys stopped her from typing throughout it all.

And with one final keystroke, she was finished. Again.

Dimer yawned.

It compiled perfectly. She had never seen that kind of success on the first compile. She did it again. She wanted to be sure.

There were errors this time.

There were so many errors that she couldn’t count them all. She was devastated. She had never failed on this level before. It couldn’t be real. Dimer didn’t want to believe it. It worked perfectly last night, and nothing she changed would have caused this many errors.

Dimer took a breath and waited for several moments, staring at the screen, hoping it would tell her something. It didn’t, and on instinct alone, she disregarded the errors, typed ’run’ and her finger hovered over the enter key.

She believed she’d done it. She didn’t care what the errors were telling her. She knew the moment her finger fell upon the key … it would work. It would fix everything. She was nervous. Her fingers recoiled into her palms. She hesitated and her hands made little fists. She was having second thoughts. Was her code shit? Like that asshole launderer told her.

She didn’t care. Dimer’s eyes closed, and reopened. Staying awake was hard, but this was it. She was done. Dimer made her decision. She was laughing. Softly at first, then it became maniacal.

“Dimer, any luck?” The same voice asked.

She caught herself. She sounded like a cheap villain who just caught the superhero in a well-devised trap. That wasn’t this though, she thought. She started laughing again, like a normal, teenaged girl. She looked around, glancing again at the determined kitten, then at a slightly charred Christmas antenna ball rolling around on her desk…

…and with one final sigh…

…Dimer hit enter…

#

…’cause it was a basic fundamental fact, or opinion if pushed for sources, that waking up was the same as breaking through into another plane of existence. Leaving your original world for another. One that in most cases, would place upon one the need to adapt or to all out change.

Waking up, for Mary, meant leaving those special blissful wishes in dreams for the harsh complicated reality of the world. And like most, it began with a sudden sound, erupting loudly. The alarm on her phone blared for exactly six seconds, and during those brief waking moments, Mary’s beautiful porcelain-like face was frozen in a state of desperation and confusion — wishing for that special bliss of dreams to spill into this harsh complicated reality.

The alarm blared.

Mary never pressed snooze. She never ignored it, and she never allowed it to continue past exactly six seconds. She also never had a desire to change the default sound to something more catchy; an action most undertook as a means to individualize and reflect their personality. For Mary, there was no such intimacy. And even though she had nowhere she needed to be, it went off promptly at the same time, in the same manner, every morning.

Six seconds were just upon her.

For Mary, it may as well have been hours. And every morning, for as long as she could remember, she spent that six seconds analyzing her waking state of confusion. Analyzing her life. It confused her, and for the briefest of moments, she doubted her life. None of it was real. This wasn’t real. But her flirtation with self-doubt never lasted, and just as her six seconds were up, she shut the alarm off. And in a practice honed to perfection over the years, she discarded Dreamful Bliss for Complicated Reality. And Mary did it with a smile, forcibly etched upon her face.

Mary possessed the most perfect pair of Victorian nightstands. One was a shade of antique white that was a tad too dark from all the repeated oil rubs that Mary insisted upon it. The other, on the opposite side of the bed was teal green and it too suffered from a bit too much care. Nestled upon Mary’s side nightstand were two eight-inch, ornate black hair pins next to her phone. After silencing the alarm and forming her smile, Mary’s hair pins were the next action on her task list. She quickly disappeared them into her flowing blond hair, creating a perfect bun, preparing herself for the meaningful work that was in store for her. Her house pumps were exactly where she left them last night, producing a perfect forty-five-degree angle, heel-to-heel. And her June Cleaver apron, her unofficial uniform, which she’d been told, made her look like she was stepping onto a period-piece porno fetish set, was laid out on the Champagne Chaise.

Meticulously planned, it was a morning not unlike every other.

Even Skunk, Mary’s current boyfriend, whom she once referred to as her ‘living dildo’, with his bare hairy chest, obscenely tattooed arms, neck, and half a gorilla leg sticking out from the silk bedsheets, had its place on Mary’s list, to quite literally…

…ensure her world.

She said that out loud once. Months ago, she was hosting a masquerade ball, and everyone in attendance questioned why someone like her … would be with someone like him. Her unfiltered response baffled those who questioned their pairing. But Mary laughed it off as if it was a failed joke and moved on. Mostly because even she didn’t know what she meant.

Routine was how Mary needed things. How Mary kept things.

Two and a half minutes had elapsed since Mary’s alarm went off. It was time for her chores. Her make-up came next. It didn’t take long: a couple of quick flicks of the wrist, and she now possessed red lips, black eyeliner, and a very soft shade of blush on her cheeks. She was right on schedule, and the next to-do, took her outside.

Mary made a beeline for the front door, climbing down one of the two massive grand staircases, passing an over-abundance of standard hallway pictures of her children — two older teenaged twins, a boy and girl, standing emotionless and far enough apart that one could drive a truck through. In front of them, a smile engulfing most of her face, was the family’s little demon, dressed in her latest princess outfit. The plethora of pictures hanging on walls and sitting upon furniture was similar in all aspects to most homes with a brood, documenting every single eye blink of the three children and their growth.

Also spread all over the walls of the house, and drastically clashing with every other inch of Mary’s home, was an excessive amount of spackled, white spots.

Once outside, the greenness of the grass would give most people pause and convince them to move onto other things, but not Mary. Even though the grass was as green as the Emerald City, and probably could go a few more days without being watered, that wasn’t Mary’s way. It also wasn’t her way to hire and pay fancy lawn-cutters to do this chore. Watering the grass was the third of forty-one tasks of the day. So watering the lawn is what she did. Five feet to the right of the front door, hidden within an ornate box, was the worn-down green water hose. She grasped it firmly and started watering.

This was habit.

This was rote.

And for that, Mary sighed, and smiled.

That smile grew in size at the sight that caught her eyes as she passed her daughter’s window. Crystal was nine years old, and in her mother’s eyes, a more perfect thing did not exist. Mary was ahead of schedule, and she guessed that the grass could go another few moments without being watered. This was a special morning — it only happened twice a month. So Mary didn’t see a problem with stealing a few moments for herself to watch as her joy skipped back and forth in her room, taking clothes out of her dresser and folding them into her suitcase. It was her father’s weekend, and Mary could tell that Crystal was super-excited that she was going to spend it with him. She normally was.

The arrangement didn’t bother Mary. It was a perfect solution to an imperfect situation.

She even kept the smile going as she watched that young twenty-something bitch Melinda jog past her house with half her ass desperately attempting to escape from her booty shorts.

“Fuck you, Melinda,” Mary whispered.

Melinda didn’t know it, but Skunk once told Mary that Melinda hit on him. Mary knew Skunk was full of shit and there was no way that Melinda would hit on his useless ass, but, Melinda, she just had one of those faces …

“Hi girl,” Melinda screamed to Mary from across the street, preening and waving ridiculously as if she was vying for beads in the French Quarter. It didn’t take long and she disappeared up the hill, getting lost in the Mediterranean and Spanish architecture and vainglorious landscapes of the massive mansions that lined the street.

Yep, things couldn’t be better. Mary was off to a good start this morning. Tasks were being started on time, and the morning, it was just beckoning to be conquered. This was Mary’s life, it was habit and it sure as hell was rote…

…but it did bring a smile to Mary’s face…

#

…it was Jane’s apartment, a fact Jane did not allow Bud to forget now that he was moving in. As if all the stuffed animals weren’t enough to keep him well-versed. Yet, it was not Bud’s excessive misunderstanding of personal space that was prevalent at the moment. Bud’s eyes and mind were laser-focused on one thing, and one thing only…

…a simple brown leather bag placed in the center of Jane’s apartment.

Jane’s place was a second-floor shit-up, directly above a Korean barbecue joint that Bud was absolutely positive, cooked each and every single animal in his girlfriend’s prized stuffed-toy consortium. This was another thing she wouldn’t let him forget: his animal/Korean jokes were incredibly racist and insensitive. For Bud’s part, he would argue that if someone was racist, or a comment-racist, they would automatically be insensitive, and she didn’t need to belabor the point. That condescending attitude always went over so well with Jane. Their bickering had been a recent development. Jane, as she had explained on numerous challenging occasions, was, going through some shit, and Bud, well, as he’d been told, never really had it in his make-up to be the most understanding of a motherfucker. He was trying though.

Bud grew up rarely, if ever, failing, which made him unduly confident and narcissistic. It wasn’t that life was handed to him per se, but Bud grew up rich and handsome, and life was handed to him. So, him being stuck in Freud’s psychosexual Genital Stage, never accounting for others, could be laid directly at the feet of his loving parents’ status quo dichotomy. Bud’s loving Ma and Pop started out in life very poor, and once they became rich, neither wanted their children to suffer the childhood they’d had. Bud’s life was great — exclusive private schools, working car, continuous peer admiration based solely upon his looks and fancy bling, all of which allowed him to usurp the responsibilities as the de facto leader amongst a group of Breaking Bad assholes. Also, he had a beautiful girlfriend. So, witnessing someone going through some shit, and serving as their counter lever, was not a particularly strong trait to be found in Bud’s wheelhouse.

Jane, well, she was the yin to his yang. Having been accused by everyone of being born middle-finger first, she supposedly started out life by purposely, and with deliberate intent, causing her mother to demand three episiotomies, not only because of Jane’s big-ass baby head, but because sometimes, Jane just got to kick a bitch. In the gut. From the inside.

Bud loved the hell out of her. He just didn’t know why.

Jane was also a junkie.

A fact Bud could not escape.

Especially when she made her junkie demands, like the one taking place right now. At one time, Jane would demand that Bud never watch her get nice, and she would make a point of going into a bathroom or some shit to get totaled. Then there were other times where she completely forgot that rule, and would pop and top, right in front of him. Like right then. Bud could hear the familiar rip of the first ziplock, and then the other. And since these were his drugs, he knew each baggie contained exactly one pill.

A Red One.

Or, a Blue One.

She popped both of them. He didn’t have to look at her to know that. He couldn’t look. Not at this precise moment. There was something much more demanding of his attention.

Bud was trying his damnedest to not take his eyes off the treasure that was the brown leather bag: the one he’d been staring intensely at from the moment they arrived.

Earlier this morning, when he picked the bag up from Dimer’s loft, he was insistent to the rest of his Breaking Bad assholes, that he be the one to keep an eye on it. It not really being the brown leather bag, but the treasure that resided within, which was now in the center of the floor. And so, following through on his promise, he watched the thing without fail. He stared at the goddamn thing like it was a child’s blinking contest. He almost succeeded. And he would have, if it wasn’t for the stuffed Koala on the night stand, which somehow, because of its mirror-like button eyes, forced his eyes to glance repeatedly at its soft, fluffy, silky, two-tone coat. The one that Jane repeatedly, and way too often pointed out, had awesomely beautiful silver fucking flecks.

Bud blinked and quickly returned his gaze back to the bag, just as Jane drifted off into her Red and Blue high…

#

Having absolutely no concept of what time it was when he crawled out of his deeply earned slumber, Herb’s lack of sensory knowledge never extended to the hotel he was in. Not on this special day. It was a Hilton. Herb’s recall memory would come back slowly. It would just take moments and he would immediately remember that he wasn’t at one of those cheap ass Inns. He never used those on this special day.

He had had a good night. That, he remembered without much effort. He could also remember that he was in a smoking room. But he got that from the smell, and the shit cleaning job, which bothered him to no end.

It was the only thing that got his goat: the way these motels disregarded cleanliness because of the expectation that a smoker wouldn’t care.

Smokers, hell, he’d join a movement demanding more respect if he could. But he knew that was unlikely. No one gave a crap about smokers anymore. Even if you tried your damnedest to not let the smoke affect another. A fact compounded by the stupid-ass look on the clerk’s face when Herb asked for a smoking room. Javier, as the name tag said, looked at Herb like he just asked him to suck his dick. Judgmental assholes. It was the only thing that got his goat.

People don’t smoke anymore. That’s what Herb told himself in order to keep from kicking Javier’s fat clerk-face in. People also don’t body-shame anymore.

Herb had been watching a lot of streaming docudramas and talk shows. He’d also been reading a lot. They’d say shit like that on the shows that he streamed. It’s not their fault, he remembered them saying while he was waiting for who-the-fuck-knows.

Herb chuckled and remembered. He found it funny that he could remember a Stop Fat Shaming article he read at the dentist’s office, but then forgot that it was also the day he had another man’s arm down his throat, ripping pieces out of him. The Dentist. Not some weird inner body-slasher person.

No, it wasn’t the fat fuck’s fault…

…it was bad gut bacteria.

Misleading calories.

Depression.

Herb listened to shit like that now. He knew watching those streaming shows and reading an over-abundance of news was going to make him a better person.

Yep. That is what Herb thought…

The room wasn’t neat when he walked in.

It was neat now. Herb liked neat rooms. Herb liked neat. Neatness was an outward reflection of being a better person. That may be utter bullshit, and any streaming show or news article would dispute it, but Herb believed it was true enough. There was a gum wrapper six feet and three inches away from him. He didn’t remember it being there when he walked in and he didn’t pick it up now that he saw it. He just chose to stare at it. Herb stared so long that it looked like he was trying to will the piece of trash out of existence and the room back into cleanliness.

He continued his staring contest at the thing while he sat at the foot of the queen sized bed, and without taking his eyes off the gum wrapper, Herb slowly pulled a cigarette out of his shirt pocket.

It was a Marlboro.

He liked the taste of Marlboro. It was his favorite. He liked the way the cigarette paper exploded red when he lit it. The way it felt when the smoke rolled down his throat and into his lungs. Yep, he loved his Marlboro. It calmed him. And for every second that it was on his lips, he knew that the calming effect of the nicotine, the tar and the plethora of deadly fucking toxic additives that made up his cancer-causing shit stick, was making him a better person. He closed his eyes and took another drag, opened them and looked six feet, three inches away from him for the gum wrapper.

It was gone.

It never existed.

It did exist. It was there. It had gone.

Probably. No. It was there…

…and now it was gone. And Herb knew, he knew he was a fucking super hero.

The bar ho sleeping in the bed behind him, the one that looked a great deal like Mary with brown hair, the one he fucked into unconsciousness — she was the reason it had been a really good night. She knew he was a superhero when she brought him drink after drink. And if she didn’t know it when she came back to the hotel with the smoking room, she sure as hell knew it now.

Herb took another pull of his cigarette and switched partners in his staring contest. This time an old foe returned. The ugly-assed-drapes. As he stared at them, settling into his calm, he recalled old memories that he both hated and loved.

Herb sighed, took another toke of the Marlboro and smiled.

“Sense memory,” he said, causing him to sigh again.

It was the only thing that got his goat.