Lunar Violet: Chapter 1
Content Warning and Foreword: Just don’t read this. Seriously. One night instead of venting into a journal nobody would ever read, I decided to channel my turmoil and restlessness into a work of fiction. The result we have here is the first chapter of a hopefully not ongoing series, which if I write another word of it will be an anthology of short stories chronicling the lives of the people that live in a small town with a population of exactly 26 people. I will repeat in clear terms that this is in no way autobiographical in any way. For realsies. Also this is my “After Hours” blog now, which means this is now the destination for everything I decide to put out on this site that I deem not suited for display on my main blog. You have been warned.
Well, I guess it started that one night. Yeah, that was about the time, I’ll start there. I found myself hunched over my desk, passively scribbling away under the soft orange lamplight. Since my chair faced out the attic window, I always had a clear view of my muse at night: the bare neighborhood streets, free from the burden of its residents. Streetlights hummed and cicadas sang, providing the soundtrack to my work.
I’m not sure why, but at approximately 10:33 that night I’d felt an incredibly strong urge to write. Just write. I hadn’t any particular ideas of what exactly I was to write, but I’d decided that I was indeed going to use a pen to create a story upon paper. And so far it was going spectacularly. I’d gotten off to a shaky beginning, testing out different ideas to see if any broad concepts could draw some inspiration out of me. A cyberpunk space romance, historical fiction comedy set in East Asia, so on and so forth. I’d eventually decided on “Effervescent Gamble: Furtive Adventures in Neo Tokyo”. I’ll be honest and tell you that I’d come up with the title before the concept, and at the moment was going through the tasking process of doing the name justice.
Upon realizing that I’d been sitting and thinking about not being able to think about anything for quite awhile now, I decided to quit writing. Again. Defeated, yet still stirring with my lust for creativity and self-expression, my next course of action was to rise out from my slumped position out of my chair, and subsequently fall face first onto my bed. As I rolled over to examine my ceiling as I often do, I was once again prompted by a sheet of paper taped up there asking a question I’d mulled over many a night: “Should I masturbate?”
I thought this through carefully, eventually coming to the logical conclusion that, since I had no desire to sleep or play video games or go find drugs, the best course of action would indeed be to masturbate. Yet the struggles of a young man such as myself are never so short lived, as I had no material with which to aid my impulses. You see, back in the early 2000’s, I did not have the infinite library of smut, filth and gratification that is instantly available to me today. The family computer was downstairs, and my mother was downstairs. You see the dilemma.
Anyways, my first course of action was to sit back up and crouch down at the bottom of my desk, sliding open the black square drawer containing my magazines and graphic novels. I pulled out all the novels that were especially more graphic than the others, and laid them out on my bed.
I picked up the leftmost one I’d put down after sliding the drawer back closed with my foot. Izuremata’s Muffin Appreciation Club. This copy actually had a signature on the inner cover from the author, which upon opening the book I rediscovered alongside the slip of paper that fluttered out of the pages. I examined the paper.
Main chick’s got huge tits, lots of sexy stuff. Got this signed by the legend himself at L.A., enjoy. ~ Dad
What the fuck. I decided to put the note back and pick up the next book. It was one of my old favorites, Danger Squid Girl 32. I flipped to the folded page and sank into the bed, sliding my sweatpants down to my ankles.
My door flung open, the knob kicking up dust and fragments of drywall as it crashed against the wall. My mom, Eliana stood in the doorway, panting.
I set down the book on my stomach. “I’m looking at porn, what do you want?”
“Keith, there’s been an accident, down the street.” She looked out the window nervously. “Your dad went out earlier, and he hasn’t come back, and…”
“If you’re scared that it’s him, just go yourself already. You’ll have more time to pay your respects that way before they drag him to the station and beat him to death.”
This visibly upset her. “Keith, that’s not how it works, and you know I don’t do well with this sort of thi…” As often happened, she wasn’t able to finish her sentence, the last few words painfully choked with pain and fear, frustrated tears building up behind her innocent amber eyes. Giving up all semblance of authority, she slowly walked over and fell onto my bed, exploding into a fit of rattling sobs.
This made me feel awkward with my Pokemon boxers bulging with the power of my raw, unbridled cock, so I stood up and pulled my pants back up to my waist before sitting back down and offering a confused, reluctant arm around her shoulder. “I’m sure dad isn’t dead, Mom.”
This did not seem to stop her incessant crying.
“Would it make you feel better if I went down the street and checked by myself?”
She collected enough of herself to tone the hysterics down to a helpless whimpering, punctuated by the occasional heavy sob, just long enough to give a simple nod and look of thanks. The facade collapsed immediately as I rose to adorn my silk, velvet bathrobe, adorned in gold on the back with the text “If You’re Reading This, Take Me Now”.
“It’s your dad, alright.” The officer took an apathetic glance at the smouldering wreckage before going back to scribbling in his notepad.
“What?!” You stare into the flames, eyes widening with confusion and disbelief. “How?! Look at it! Have you even checked?!”
He put his notepad into his pocket before turning to face me, leaning against the trunk of the police car. “I mean, I’m not about to just go in and check myself kid, fire is hot.”
“Then how can you know?”
“Keith, come on. There’s like twenty people in town, I checked and all of them are accounted for except your pops. And if we had a visitor,” he he said, pointing his pen at his badge, “I’d have noticed them.”
I cursed the abnormal population density. “I can’t believe it…” I slowly sank to the gravelly street, coming to a rest with my arms around my knees. “I knew my dad would die before I moved out of the house, but… I never thought about how I’d have to actually be there for it.”
“Let me tell you, kid, that really sucks.” He took a sip of his Red Bull and wiped his nose with the mittened hand holding it. “You’re an unlucky boy. My dad died from overdosing on tapeworm tablets while I was fucking a sixty year old prostitute in Indonesia during a college trip. I didn’t even have to deal with the guilt I would have had if cell phones had existed back then, as I would have no doubt received a text or call notifying me of my father’s death either while I was fucking her, or while I was sneaking out of the brothel.”
I ignored his words of comfort, staring deeply into the ember-lit tar of the street, blackened by the ash of the man who never taught me how to play baseball, which I used often to lie to myself that he was the sole reason I never got into sports.
The officer slowly eased off the trunk and crushed the can of Red Bull against his flat forehead, wiping the sugary nectar off his pornstache before tossing the can into the enormous fire, which persisted without anyone seemingly giving a shit. “Well, It’s getting late, it’s about time I was off.”
I finally looked up, catching his retreating gaze. “Wait, you’re leaving? You’re not going to call in anybody to put out the fire, or try and search for clues to make sure nothing weird happened?” I pointed to his coat pocket, rising to my feet. “I saw you writing in that notepad earlier, is that just for show?”
“I’m just the guy that makes sure we don’t have to get insurance involved.” With that word, he turned around and hopped into the driver’s seat before silently drifting away, out of my life forever.
I thundered up the porch steps, every essence of my being brimming with bitter, misguided determination. After flinging the heavy oak door open and storming down the entrance hallway, I turned to walk through the kitchen and sat down in the chair in front of the family computer, entering the password all in one swift motion.
Password123
Without a moment’s hesitation, I dramatically drove the cursor over the closest word processing application, double clicking and immediately doubling down over the keyboard as the document opened up, furiously drumming my sweaty fingers against the keys, the covers for some flying off in fragments as I channeled my overwhelming resentment into every word I recklessly strummed out. My hatred and remorse quickly began to weave an immense, artful tapestry of contempt for everything ever conceived or heard of. The computer began to levitate from the clock speeds of the CPU, struggling to keep up with the rapid output of pure, disgusting rage as I indented paragraph after paragraph of my deepest, darkest true emotions.
After I’d hit the 10,000 word mark after about three minutes, I minimized the window and opened up the web browser, navigating to the first hardcore porn site I could think of and smashing my head into the keyboard, and then clicking on the first thing my headbanging conjured up in the site’s search engine.
My senses were blinded by foul darkness and corruption, I channeled the dark lord himself through my numb lust as I ripped my pants off, gripping my member with the strength of a billion suns as I rubbed myself like a piston on steroids and coke to the senseless kaleidoscope of colors and moaning that my distorted state of mind perceived the smut as. Inside my brain towers collapsed, universes imploded, nebulae died. For that brief moment, I was a god. I looked over my vast domain, effortlessly comprehending and calculating every galaxy I cast my all-knowing gaze over. I witnessed civilizations rise, empires fall. I clipped my toenails and hurled them into the ether, my tremendous, ethereal biceps rippling with holy power. Distant solar systems exploded as I rubbed myself under my billowing toga, crying tears of blood and liquid gold, each droplet creating a universe as they fell to the bottom of the void.
At least, that’s what I felt like should have happened.
I solemnly trudged up the cement stairs, limply gripping the door handle as I pushed into the entrance hallway. I was going to go back up to my room to write some more, but my mother encountered me before I even made it to the staircase.
“What happened, Keithy?” She looked down at me with her innocent, hopeful eyes, soon to be weighed down by the weight of my next sentence. I could barely manage.
“Yeah it’s him. His charred corpse is probably still somewhere in the burning wreckage out there. I doubt they’re going to stomp it out anytime tonight.” Unexpectedly, I began to choke on my words as I struggled to get them out, tears welling in my eyes both from the weight of what I was saying, and the realization that I was in fact my mother’s child. Potent, fermented tears began to stream down my hot cheeks, and I backed against the front door, sliding to a sitting position as my arms went limp at my sides, allowing myself to finally dissipate my supply of all the built up tears from years of anguish and depression.
My keen mother Eliana noticed this, and walked down to the front door, crouching down to my position and ruffling my hair. “There there, Keith. It’s okay, I’m still here.”
This didn’t make me feel much better. In fact, I felt worse upon remembering that my father was actually the parent I liked more, or resented less. In a sudden burst of sad, angry and weirdly sexual passion I launched off down the hallway, pushing my mother aside as I ran up the staircase, going off to sulk and be edgy in my room as I often did. Granted, this time I had a really good reason to do so, which I often use to convince myself that I’m not a terrible person, even though deep down I know that I hated my father almost as much as my mother, and really just hated my entire fucking life in general but was too afraid of pain to just end it all and jam a kitchen knife into my fucking throat and die.