A re-write of the first short story I wrote in 2007 while studying creative writing at the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico. Originally titled "The Orchestra of a Psyche," the story is about a disturbed individual who has rejected humanity (besides his roommate Bruce) in favor of life in a swamp, where Julius makes jewlery out of pig bones...
The Orchestra of a Psycho’s Psyche: Julius
Part One: A Shack in the Swamp
How are things going? I don’t know, things are going good. I wake up, I make coffee, and have some lunch during my break at work. I’ll pick up a sandwich or other take-out on my home from the factory. I chuckle to myself a lot and keep away from my roommate. “Hi Julius,” he says when sees me.
“Hello,” I say back and that’s about it. I don’t want to go home, I’d rather stay here in his rundown shack with this shadowy individual. I always feel like he’s watching me from the dark corners of my room at night – my mind has been known to play tricks on me.
My stomach turns and twists constantly. I hate talking to people but I suppose I’ve got sufficient social skills. Haven’t been thrown in the nuthouse yet, thanks. These maggots don’t know nothing, I keep my madness hidden well. Obsessed with people because I’m appalled by them, they’re just maggots squirming on the decaying meat of broken governmental systems and cracked social structures, long past their prime states. Every now and then my mom calls from across the country to remind me she loves me. I still don’t buy it. How could someone love a monster like me?
I’ll hang up the phone and go to the basement to get some work done. The only hobby I really enjoy is carving dirty pig bones into jewelry. I like to hunt the wild animals around – deer, pigs, ducks, and geese. It’s good cheap food and nature supplies me with an endless supply of bones to make into beautiful bracelets and necklaces. An unstoppable grin possesses cheeks as I skin the animal corpses…. Soon enough I start thinking about woman and sex and this causes the blood and thoughts to stir wildly and I can’t help but relive the endless beatings I endured as a child at the hands of a tyrannical father and a disinterested mother. Got to go get a cigarette and calm down.
Maybe women are just vases and men are the shelves on which to put their goddesses on display. I start to think humanity doesn’t exist anymore, the whole species has mutated into a heavy, rotting furniture showcase in a dusty store window. The business has gone bankrupt and the forgotten furniture is hosted by vanishing spirits and fading ghosts. We do nothing and we are going nowhere… the nature of humans simply repels me.
I don’t like most women. Not only are they mostly just vases, but the majority aren’t even made of glass but cheap plastic that’s difficult to break. You can throw them around and play with them like toys, and now most are worn out and used from years of child’s play. No, no, I want the ones made of pretty glass. The fragile beauties, the vulnerable ones – the weak women who don’t realize the astounding beauty they hold. If you’re deprived of self-esteem and held together by a unrealized ideal of perfection, then you are the type of girl I hunt like these creatures lurking around the swamp.
I like to get these Eves on my shelf, for a moment completing a gorgeous display, and then push them off and watch them shatter while never cleaning the broken shards, but instead I swim in broken glass. Love has no more place in this world, other than to be used as bait to allure a girl before she gets smashed into a million pieces.
I finish the bone necklace and vacate the basement. I expect to find my roommate in the kitchen but the boy can’t be found. With a grunt, I open the fridge to take out a slab of pork to throw it on a pan and then into the oven it goes. “Where could Bruce be?”
Looking down at the newly crafted piece of jewelry, I figure it could fetch me maybe twenty bucks – enough for a good bottle of cheap vodka. Other than a few dollars for rent, I really only need cash for alcohol. The gig at the factory handles what I can’t make through my craft revenue. Anything else can be stolen as long as I exhibit enough patience and strike when no one is looking. There is so much one can do so long as one knows for certain that no one is watching…
While eating, Bruce emerges, speaking from the shadows, “Hey Julius.” His voice is hesitant. “Is there any left?”
Into the darkness, I try to get a better look at the kid before grunting, “Help yourself.”
All I can see in the dim glow is his dumb smile as he loads up a plate of grub. Bruce maybe should be in school instead of this dump, but he knows better I suppose. “I’ve got to walk to town tomorrow,” I tell him. “Need to sell some work, put in a shift at the shop, and then grab some booze, maybe some gin…”
“Okay.” He lights a cigarillo before starting to eat. He puffs it a little then offers me one.
“No thanks,” I tell him. “How did you pay for those? You rob someone again?”
“Just hustling,” Bruce responds.
Part Two: Amongst the Maggots
I look at the ground when I’m walking around in public spaces. Gazing for mere interest at bugs and rocks at first. I like when the dry leaves crunch beneath my steps. Little natural designs and patterns enrapture my mind… but soon it starts to feel like I’m kicking in myself in the face so I look up when BAM! I suddenly see all those faces invading my vicinity on the town streets.
Demonic faces surround me, they’re so confused and distanced from their own true spirits that they’ve lost the ability with connect to anyone else. That’s when they come to town. They’d rather do that than feel too down about themselves. Come to town to buy something, see you in town to judge the other townsfolk… Anything weird or scary will be greeted with a perverted form of pity…
Always buying things… it seems like that’s all they do at all anymore. There’s processed grease melting their bellies as self-interest swarms the egotistical thoughts buzzing in their mind like a beehive, or better yet a hornet’s nest. They buzz, buzz, buzz away from the Earth’s beauty, from the flowers they were designed to pollinate. Humanity is no longer a species, we became an aggressive smelly electrical shit storm consuming the energy that remains in what is left of our cumulative spirit. A false sense of accomplishment and pride dooms the spirits within, who are attempting to urge our souls toward more noble endeavors… but their efforts fail inevitably in their futile pursuit of meaning.
My stomach churns, causing a burning sensation at the base of the neck. The more people I see, the more they make me sick as we’re herded by commercials into stores that are all owned by the same megalomaniac. Shit, I sense a panic attack coming on. I need a drink. The crowd around me turns into snakes and worms, evil creatures dancing along to the cacophonic bells of Hell. The maggots squirm into a fiery church, squished into demonic pews, singing loudly, “Praise the Establishment! Praise the Holy Establishment! I give my heart to Thee!”
A pig in priest’s clothing trades oinks for the audience’s coins. The anxiety is about to hit me, manifesting as a cold sweat. But that’s when I spotted her. The next beautiful vase to shove off my crooked shelf… a beautiful woman appears. But my hands are shaking. From under my breath, there is a whisper: “When that the poor have cried, I have wept. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff…”
The other faces surrounding us practically vanish when I approach her. I do my best to prevent these palms from quaking so violently, hopefully she won’t notice. “Are you interested in some handmade ancient jewelry?” I pull the necklace from my pocket.
She smirks and tries to walk away but I follow. “I made it myself, I did.”
The girl slightly scoffs. “So then how is it ancient?”
“It’s cheap, okay? What’s the difference?” I hold the item up so she gets a better look at the carved bones.
“How cheap?” she questions, giving it a more thorough inspection.
“I can see you like it.” I smile big. “Just twenty dollars, what do you say?”
She offers a certain stare I know too well and goes, “Um…”
Within five hours, she’s dead. And you know, with good reason, I’m sure of it. She was a wild one, and mean just like mother. I took the girl’s keys and put the body in the trunk while plugging away my shift at the factory. I hop in the car cruise home.
Part Three: Becoming Broken Pieces
Back at the house, I find Bruce in the dark, slightly illuminated by a television’s glow. I ask him to come outside so I can show him the body in the trunk. “Got another pig.”
“You killed someone again?” He hissed, angry.
“Didn’t you hear me? It’s just one of the pigs. This sow’s got a bit of money on her, don’t you want some?”
“Her neck is such a hideous dark blue,” Bruce observed. “Why did you do this?”
“Are you going to help move the body or not?”
“No, Julius, I don’t want any part in this…” He starts to move backwards into the darkness.
I feel my face getting red. “You can’t tell me what to do or how to live my life anymore, mother!”
Bruce takes the gun out of my pocket and point it. “You’re crazy!”
“You too, Bruce?”
He pulls the trigger and the mirror shatters. The gun was in my head the whole time. Now Bruce is dead, too. That was quick. There’s glass all over the floor but not much blood.
I get the pig out of the trunk and drag the corpse to my shed. The bugs throughout the swamp encircling us sing a symphony of chirps and buzzes and squeaks… This pork should taste good. And now I’ve got more bones to make some more pieces of jewelry to sell… Too bad about old Bruce, guess I’ll have to clean up the broken mirror all by myself… like everything else. “So falls the great Caesar…”
Written by BW Derge, All Rights Reserved 2024
© USA
This was a short story originally composed in 2007 called "The Orchestra of a Psycho's Psyche: Julius"
-
For more writing by BW Derge, check out the store.
