Writer's block

Yeah, I have it. Big time.
She's right.

These days, part III

My father fell on his face on the owner's lawn as we tried to get out. He lost his glasses in the grass so we had to look for them. We couldn't leave until we found them. When we did, I put them in my jacket pocket. We got out on the street and started making our way through the scarcely lit village. It was passed the bend when my old man collapsed. Fuck! I pulled him up and we went on along the dirt road. A few yards further he fell down again. He let go of me and I obviously couldn't keep him standing with one arm. That's when I heard him hit his head on the ground. That's when I got scared. I tried pulling him up, but he fell down again. I started yelling at him. Started telling him to get up. He couldn't even say anything.

It's funny how we were out in an open street, but everything just felt so small. It was just him, me and the ground. Every time he banged his head on the ground, things got darker. Every time I heard the sound of his bald scalp against the rocky, dirty road, I got angrier, I got more scared. By this time we were both covered in mud and blood was smeared on our jackets. His head was bleeding. He was passing out. I turned around for a second to see if we dropped anything. Well, that wasn't of much use, as it was almost pitch black, and I was a little drunk. I turned back to pick him up and I saw him lying in a ditch on the side of the road, curled up in a fetal position. I turned him over and asked him what was he doing.
-Leave me alone. I wanna sleep.
-The hell you will!
I started pulling him off the ground but it was almost like he didn't want to get up. I started slapping him on the face and punching him in the stomach to wake him up a bit. He didn't want to get up. He was delusional. I asked him who I was. He didn't know. He started guessing names - names of old time friends he had probably known for more years than I've had to live.
-No, God damn it, I'm your son! Now get up and let's go home.
He mumbled something I couldn't make out so I kicked him a couple of times. -Alright! - he said. That last kick was enough. Don't make me hit back!
-Then let's fucking go, you sack of shit. I can't carry you.
-Alright!
-Alright?
-Alright.
-Are we going?
-Yeah.
-Alright.
We took a few steps forward, a step to the left, a couple of steps to the right, and repeated the sequence. Both of us were showered in blood. He was bleeding from the concussions to his head. He was bleeding out of his ear. On to his shoulder, on to me. Then he tripped and I dropped him.
-Fuck! You're gonna crack your skull before I ever get you home on my own. Come on old man, on your feet and let's get moving.
-What are you guys doing? - I heard the voice of a couple of local gents.
-This is my father. He's drunk. Help him get home.
-Who is your father? Who are you?
-This is my father, Hadnagy Nandor. I'm his son, Laszlo. Let's get him back to the asylum!
-Holy shit! It's Nandi! Kid, go to the administrator's house. Tell him we need to get him up there and clean him up.
-Can you guys bring him?
-Don't worry, go!

So I ran to the administrator's house and knocked on the door. I told him who I was, what the problem was. He said he'll get on it. I ran back to my dad and found him being carried up the hill to the institution. As I got close, one of the people there pushed me away and told me to fuck off.
-What the fuck is the matter with you? That's my father over there.
-I don't care. Back off.
-Are you fucking retarded? Step aside.
I almost got my ass kicked if it wasn't for a few fellows who I've met earlier and had recognized me. We got my old man up to the infirmary and a nurse washed him up. I turned to wash my hand when I saw both my arms covered in dirt and blood. I though "Jesus fucking Christ, I'm a mess!" So I cleaned my hands and we took my dad to his room. That's when it turned out my dad never got permission to have a visitor stay there with him. I had to go. I argued as much as I could with them but when they threatened to call the police, I had to bail.

I could still catch the 9:30 trip back to my town. With still some money left, I decided to crash this Halloween party in VHR. The plan was to have a couple of drinks and cool down. There was no need for a costume, I was covered in blood! It was a weird party down there. But I honestly couldn't give a fuck after all the shit I'd been through all day. At one point, after I got really drunk. This Frankenstein's bride-looking bitch bumped into me and we had a few ugly change of words after which she must have hit me or something. I got mad and walked towards her, demanding an apology. Some of her friends tried to flank me and after I pushed one of the away with one arm, and tried to fend against blows and prodding with the other, the DJ jumped up and pulled me aside, asking me to behave. Fuck you guys, it wasn't my fault, for all I know. I would've fucked somebody up if they didn't leave me alone.

The next day I called my dad. He was in a lot of pain. He figures he hit his head on the ground one too many times and he bled inside his head. The blood then exited through his ear instead of building up in his brain. Good news, I guess. Then he told me he broke a few ribs. Oops, one too many kicks, I guess. He said he'll be out of the woods if he makes it past Sunday. I asked him to tell the staff I'm sorry if I got out of line. I told him to get well. And I asked him about the money: apparently I had a lot of bills on me, all smeared in blood. The locals picked those up from the ground when they carried him back to the home and they gave the money to me.
-Keep it, he said.
-Thanks.

There's something I need a little cash for. It's been waiting for months and everything seemed to have been "more important" that it. I'll spend it on what's most important to me, now that my father's blood is on it.

These days, part II

I had known right from the start that visiting my father meant getting drunk and having a good time with my old man. That's why neither of us held their liquor. After finishing what we had to drink in his room, we went out to the village. We snuck out the gate in the back of the institution and made our way down the hill on which the whole facility was rested. The locals were still staring at us. I thought that's usually the case in a village or small town. Everybody knows everybody, so they always take a good look at people they haven't seen before. But then I noticed my father's behavior deteriorating somewhat. Maybe that's what people are looking at. The only explanation I could come up with at the time was that he probably had a few drinks before I arrived.

We got to this fancy little pension down the road from the nuthouse and went straight to the bar. After a beer or two, we decided to have dinner there. While we were waiting for our food, my dad was going on and on about how the government had skimped out on his welfare checks for almost two years. I wasn't in the mood for the same old rhetoric I've heard a million times for the last few months, so I asked him to skip to the point. The point was that he had busted enough balls to get his request approved for the money the state owed him. A modest four-figure sum in Romanian currency, the money was more than enough to put a smile on the face of a sick old man who had food, shelter and medication all covered. Ah, so part of the reason for my being there is revealed. He got hold of some money, paid off his debts and wanted to have a good time with close family. Makes perfect sense, but knowing my dad, that's not reason enough for such hasty hospitality.

Meanwhile, our meal, some mititei and fries, arrived at the table. Being Hungarian, we didn't talk much while stuffing our faces, but you gotta know me, you gotta know my dad. I finished my plate quickly but I can't say the the same for my father. You see, he doesn't have any teeth. I can't remember how he lost them. They were either all knocked out or removed due to health hazards they might have posed if they were rotting. I really can't tell. He got that way around the time when we didn't talk much, after my parents' divorce. So I'm sitting there, drinking my beer, and my dad's just looking at half a plate of fries - the harder, drier pieces. I asked him if I can have them; yeah, I could.

During the next couple of drinks, I raised the question that was in my mind all day:
-Old man, I'm no simple-minded bastard. You didn't ask me to come visit you so we can have lunch and get silly. What happened? What's the matter?
-You're right - he said. Now listen son. I've lived a long life, full of dangers and wild things and stupid shit. I've got a long line of ex-wives and whores who either want me dead or wish I was back. I've lost a lot of friends. The ones I still have, God bless! I have three kids who I barely talk to. Your half-sister's married, doing alright. She still hasn't made me a grandfather yet, but that's okay...
-Yeah, you've told me.
-...they don't need me around. Your half-brother turned out to be a dumb fuck. He's not too bright, not too strong, and they're not exactly gonna make it anywhere if her mother keeps fucking it up for the both of them. And then there's your sister. She's the worst disappointment ever. She's a rotten slut who's never been too far from dumb pricks. Now she's a thousand miles away. Forget about her.
-I know. It's a damn shame.
-But you're my forth kid. I can always count on you. I was very uneasy all week until I heard you on the phone, saying you were on your way here.
-What's going on?
-Three weeks ago I was walking down the steps from the old cafeteria to my room when everything started going black. My head started ringing and I felt like the world started spinning around. I thought that was it! My time had come. I fell on all-fours and crawled towards the dorms. It was dark. it was cold. There weren't many people outside. I was so frightened I couldn't even yell for help. Then one of the guys came up to me and asked me if there was something wrong. All I could do is nod my head. At that point all I saw was a few spinning specs of light.
-Damn.
-It only lasted a few minutes. Later the doctors weren't able to figure anything out. But I think I know what the problem was...
-I think it's something with your brain (and by then I had realized that it's likely that these are some of the last beers I'm gonna drink with my old man).
-Probably, yeah (his answer didn't agree so much to our so-called diagnosis, as to what I've written in the parentheses above).

It was almost instantly that we got passed the fear and the sorrow. And any bitterness that would've crept up from our stomach was drowned in plentiful brew and various spirits. We somehow ended up at a household where it turned out the man of the house used to know my father a long time ago. We sat there and got drunk until it started getting cold outside. It was time to take my father home. I looked around to see if we didn't forget anything and then I tried to help my dad up. That's when I realized he was too drunk to walk. Things were a little blurry for me too but I vaguely remembered him telling me that except for last night, he hasn't had anything to drink in five months. Shit, this is gonna be rough, I thought...

These days, part I

I'm gonna write this down here because there's really no other place to put such a story. This is the tale of the weirdest day of my life. What's so weird about it? The fact that I had a lot of bad things happen to me and I'm left with not even so much as a moral to all of it. No new knowledge can be extracted from such an experience. No problems solved, no wisdom gained, no insights benefited to the intricacies of human life. Although I took part in all this, I really felt like only a spectator to the horrors unfolding in front of our eyes.

It all started this Thursday evening. My friend Tom, and I went out in town for a couple of drinks. We were celebrating his spending time home, since he goes to college in a different town and he got really homesick. We went down to my favorite pub, VHR, but there was an entrance fee since a local band was playing live there at the time. The fee for the two of us was about the same as all the money we had so we decided to go to another place, Tranzit, and be back after the show's over. That's when I got a text message from my father, asking me how I was. After I replied, he called me and we started talking on my way back to VHR. He asked me to go visit him on this weekend and, without hesitating, I said yes.

Now I guess a little background story is in order here. My parents divorced when I was about four years old. The reason was my father's drinking habits, his constant cheating on my mother, and his abuse of virtually everyone's good will. After spending a few years on the bottom of the bottle, constantly moving from one shit-hole to the other, he decided to get clean. The only thing my dad ever feared was death. That's partly the reason why he asked me to visit him, but that was also the reason behind him apparently taking medication that would've left him dead in a few hours should he touch alcohol. He's off those now, but meanwhile he ended up in a madhouse, because the booze had wasted his mind and that was probably the only place in the world that would take him in.

Apart from hanging out with Tom, I had no plans for the weekend, but as soon as I accepted my dad's invitation, other people started asking me if I'd do this or that with them on Saturday. I told them "no can do, my dad needs to see me." I figured he was in trouble, it's not like him to call me over there like that. So, Friday rolls by with me having to tell more people that I'm not available for the weekend. No problem, I passed down a couple of invitations to go drinking, an invitation to another town, and I was asked if I'll be at the Halloween party in VHR on Saturday. I thought "fuck it, I gotta go see my dad."

Saturday morning I took a one hour trip out to the village where my dad lives. Since it was All Saint's Day, the micro-bus was full of people going to the countryside. Just my luck. We were cramped inside the vehicle like sardines in a can. When I got to my stop, my dad was waiting for me at the side of the road. It was a one mile walk to the asylum during which we each had two beers at two different locations. Yeah, that's the countryside for you! My dad kept going on and on about the life in the village until we passed the gates to the nuthouse. Then he gave me the grand tour of the institution.

First up was his old quarters, in the main building. I saw a lot of different people there. From mildly disturbed to cretins and completely retarded, all kinds of mentally ill folks turned up on the halls to see a new face. They wanted to get to know me but my dad quickly dispersed them with a few slaps to the hands and the face. He introduced me to his old roommate, a guy who spent eight and a half years in prison for various offenses. He showed me a tattoo on his arm and said that the guy who did it was only fourteen at the time. He told me the guy's name, Eperke, which translates to little strawberry, obviously a street-name. I clearly remember that name from when a friend of mine had his garage looted by some punks from our neighborhood. Small world, I thought. My dad and I went on to one of the rooms in the geriatric ward. The walls were padded with white ceramic tiling. The room was lit with several neon lights. The bright colors of gray hair, cement, tiling and whitewash seemed to contrast very sharply against the odors of thirty-or-so mentally ill old men.

As we passed through the buildings, my dad introduced me to a lot of staff, and patients who were more on the normal side. They all seemed delighted to get to know the young man my father told them about. It was a cheerful little trip down to the back of the facility, where my dad's current quarters are. I met a deaf-mute gentle giant. I was told he had tremendous power. He can carry two sacks when just one is heavy even for two men. But if you hit him, he cries. His parents, if he had any, must have really fucked him up. One of the crazy people tried to open my backpack when I wasn't looking, so I slapped him on the hand. He covered his face and started yelling. What a sight that was!

We finally made it to my dad's quarters, a cozy little room that resembled a student dorm more than anything else. There was a desk with a lot of shit on it, some closets and stuff, a table and a couple of stools, a couple of beds, a bunch of posters with naked women on the walls and a single window, facing the open landscape. We sat down to eat and have a beer. That was when I felt I had truly arrived...

Phalanx

(Pamphlet V)

Here is where he thrusts
His mighty flaming tongue
Across a hollow bone

Here is where he pulls
Her undemanding mask
To pools of steaming gore

Here is where he kills
My vision of the world
Supplanting it with yours

Oblivion

Behold the wings I spread and how they cover up the stars,
Unfolding them I fill the bleak horizons up with scars
Through which I bleed to other worlds where I'm to lay my seed;
I take to flight again tonight to satisfy a need...

The shadows on the cemetery walls bear witness mute:
Anointed by the harvest moon your body is the fruit.
I come to pull it from the Tree of Life from which it hangs,
And fill your soul with dreadful venom dripping from my fangs.

No more to see the light of day, you're trapped in slumber deep,
I rise as smoke from burning worlds to take you in your sleep...
And as I drag you down beyond the silence of the grave,
Nobody hears your cries or comes to try your soul to save!

As demons feast upon your body's tainted carrion,
You suffer without end inside the dark Oblivion
Where, always falling deeper down, your soul's forever lost -
You played with fire all your life and now you pay the cost!

Prophecy

Deeds of reason will become as dust
As passions and love that flow with blood,
Will stand still and dry.

Neither thought nor feeling emanates
As the Word utters itself.
The spoken spell reveals its essence
In a self sustaining singularity,
Through which a body can take shape
Into a being perfect in every aspect of its
Non-existence

Can you hear it?
Can you feel it reaching out?
Can you see it breaching
The barrier of the stars?
Like an ancient wandering comet,
It soars across the heavens,
Tearing them asunder,
Bringing them to the ground at last...

As above so below!

When the light of the suns extinguish,
It will relinquish its tail from its mouth.
Breaking the torment of the cycle of life,
It will spread its wings again,
In the endless ways of chaos.

When every orifice sings overflowed
With every dying fluid,
Drowning every aspect of fatherly creation
In blood and semen vomit of never grateful whore,
The deeds of prophecy will become as gold;
As passions and love that dried with blood
Will solve and be swallowed by the Sea.

The spoken spell reveals its essence,
Be the first to hear the last...