Posted on October 21, 2009 - by Rasham
‘Do You Have a Gun?’ From the Chronicles of Ham
“Do you have a gun?” The unfamiliar voice of a man pierced the consistency of Ham’s thoughts which were entirely devoted to planning an escape from the jazz lounge that on this evening bore all the attributes of a funeral home during the memorial service of a dead comic: the audience looked as close to laughter as they did to tears. The ensemble around which the evening had been orchestrated was a sloppy combination of a drunken pianist, a timid drummer, and an Australian singer with a voice as shrill as the cry of a wounded kangaroo.
“Excuse me?” replied Ham, slightly perturbed on account of the odd request of this stranger. She quickly calmed when she noticed his eyes which were speckled green and well-defined by an attractive facial structure.
“So I can shoot myself…” continued the man, who smiled now, revealing a brilliance which seemed to ignite the secret vibrancy of his eyes: Ham thought she was watching them blossom, and knew instantly his intentions of courtship. She chuckled, realizing his sarcastic declaration of suicidal intent was in fact an invitation to seek refuge together, away from the sickening sounds of the band from down under.
“My name is Vaughn,” he extended his hand and Ham accepted it in hers. “Do you wanna get out of here?”
Ham was compelled to leave with him, she was usually accepting of well-solicited offers to thwart her self-pity. She glanced down towards the fresh ink stains on the page of her journal that she had mindlessly filled with scribbles: it read, ‘By concentrating my thoughts-overcoming a lack of self confidence(?), I can succeed beyond my expectations! Remember: it requires will power and energy to make a success in this life! Do not dwell upon the past: make the best of the present. Cultivate patience, natural talent, and I can, I will in the end lead a happy life! Be warned: be very careful in choosing your frie–’. She felt indebted to the edge of her tired pen having abandoned the last letters of the last word but she was looking at his eyes now, those green eyes which seemed to blossom in her presence. She closed the book and said, “let’s get outta here”.
Ham and Vaughn sat across from one another in the seclusion of a sleepy hillside overlooking the restless valley they had recently fled. He was as calm as the waves at the bottom of the ocean; his motives with Ham were plain and pure, like the taste of his skin after a midnight bath. He lacked the capacity to forge any sentiments: with her he hadn’t the heart to be anything other than in love. Within the eyes of Vaughn that night was born a new shade of green, one that glistened like a streamer in the heat of the sun. As for Ham, she had been romantically relieved of her sinful obligation to radiate extraordinary energies. But like an armed weapon, impending doom was certainly imminent, though for now she often allowed herself to believe that she would remain forever at the heels of Vaughn.
“You just do something to me”, Vaughn would say at the corner collision of two cobblestone streets, under the dim glow of a street lamp beneath his city apartment. Ham’s infinite span of whirlwind adoration for Vaughn would bubble in her belly and she would sometimes smile, other times cry, but mostly she would turn to face him in the middle of the avenue and garnish his face with a kiss.
And now Ham was facing the smears of cream-colored shadows which teased the sheets mounted over the open window, and the medicine was in her blood, and she was willfully slipping into a slumber soured by the scarcity of Vaughn. Her imagination drew a portrait of him standing beneath the dim glow of a street light, though he was wearing a top hat and leaning slightly against a metal trunk whose roots crept beyond the depths of the paved sideway. He was standing as if he were perfectly centered in the frame of a door, and when he saw Ham he tilted his hat with the tip of his finger and said, “you just do something to me”. Ham approached him and fell into his arms and he breathed her in deeply as if she had bathed in the sweet scent of some expensive perfume. And then the light cracked and she looked up to see black water tides envelop the stars, and Vaughn stepped away from her and seemed to be laughing, and she watched as his arms fell from his body as though they had been severed by a translucent swordsman; his eyes turned a cold color blue in mockery of the warmth he radiated before the incident. She glanced down at her leg; a hundred needles pricked its flesh and she screamed from the pain of it all.
“Ham, sweetheart? Wake up. It’s time to draw blood.”
She returned from her hallucination and pardoned herself from the presence of faceless souls trapped within the fabric of the hospital curtains. The nurses were all about and there was a doctor who was by her side with a clipboard in hand, the head of a clan of white coats who seemed sullen and only mildly eager to document her tragic story. “Tell us, Ham. What happened?”
It was a Saturday night and Ham was burning with the energy of a million angry bees. She raced along the city highway and crossed a bridge closing the ocean between them, and stood perfectly centered in the frame of the door, waiting for him to look in her direction. When disturbing the surface tension of a puddle of whiskey no longer sustained the fluidity of his thoughts he glanced up and saw her, perfectly centered in the frame of the door, waiting for him to look in her direction.
She smiled at the sight of those green eyes which always spoiled when she wasn’t near, though now they blossomed like a single stem through the white blanket of a winter’s snow. She rushed to his side and he took her body within his while the radio bellowed a love song from the past. “When are you two gettin’ married?” said the man seated sloppily on the stool next to Vaughn. Ham looked at Vaughn and together they laughed, producing a chorus of cheerful sounds which ripened to a kiss.
“You just do something to me,” he professed with modest sensitivity, while he brushed her hair aside and wet her forehead with the skin of his lips. Ham melted in his arms, and in his arms she stayed as they sank into a deviated state of the senses, swallowing the syrup of toxic liquids, meddling in the heightened awareness of their immense connection.
At home they prepared for bed as they had many time before, though Vaughn made it under the covers alone and too tired to wonder about Ham’s bathroom preoccupations. He slipped into a deep sleep as she stood before her reflection in the mirror and cried. Ham wondered about the mystical origin of her sadness; she knew she was severely famished in some way that perhaps only a high priest could diagnose. She felt powerless and full of power at the same time, challenging her echo to produce a thought so profound it would satiate her subconscious request for an out of this world affirmation. She loved Vaughn but about this side of her he knew little, as she kept it hooded within the depths of her tortured spirit. She saw her life with him as a quiet confirmation of an ordinary routine, where nothing extraordinary would ever gestate in the womb of their modern compound. She was confused, unhappy, uncertain, and then it happened that a bottle of liquid bliss unmarked and as unexplainable as her sudden peak of self-destruction fell into her hands. She unscrewed the cap, listened to make sure of Vaughn’s absence from the waking world, and stared into the long face decorated by glistening strokes of moisture from her tears: “here we go”, she whispered, and let the elixir fall into the pit of her stomach.
“I didn’t know…It wasn’t intentional. Did I have a choice? It felt as though it was something I had to do, a sacrifice in adherence to the forces of the universe…I don’t know, the end of so many things, the beginning of something new?…” She would answer this to the doctors who asked “why” and who eagerly aligned to meet the girl who arrived with a wrench in her smile and lacking the use of one leg.
Vaughn had brought her here in the mist of a gray morning when she had finally risen from the spell of the witch’s brew. He awoke next to her earlier that morning; she was as wet as the sand at the edge of the shore, and as diluted as a drunk after a weekend binge. He undressed her, placing her under a sheet of bath water after she had refused to respond to his aggressive attempts at reviving her consciousness. She was vaguely alert in his arms and he was vaguely aware of the seriousness of her condition except that he tripped over an empty brown bottle and knew she had taken too much. She was barely breathing and hardly able to move. He carried her like a child in his arms and into his carriage and they rode until they sat across from each other in the seclusion of a sleepy parking lot overlooking the emergency room at which they had recently arrived. He left her in the playground of her demented life after saying through a storm of tears, “I cant let you do this with me,” while he brushed her hair aside and wet her forehead with the skin of his lips. Ham wanted to melt in his arms but she was in such pain, and so instead she melted into the seat of a hospital chair and lowered her head as she was wheeled into the care of armed professionals.
She missed him dearly yet it was no wonder he left; having awoken next to a limp body he had experienced the fate of a man who awakens to the death of his one true love. Ham had done this to herself, from a place within her mind that only she alone could battle armed with her morbid will to survive.
“I watched the color of his eyes spoil and it hurt more than the pain of losing my leg a thousand times. With him I was like the sole pedestrian crossing an intersection when all the world had stopped; he made me feel so desired…what did I do? Where did I g—?”
“Thank you, Ham. Okay. She may never regain the full use of her leg, the nerve damage she suffered has caused the muscle to atrophy…”, the doctor at the head of the clan of white coats interjected, and Ham rolled her head away from the circus of suits and onto the smears of cream-colored shadows teasing the sheets mounted over the open window.
Streams of tears poured down her face; she said, “do you have a gun?”
“Excuse me?” remarked the doctor, slightly perturbed on account of the odd request of his patient.
“So I can shoot myself…” continued Ham. She chuckled, remembering Vaughn, and despite the void into which she had fallen, she thought she felt the color in her eyes blossom. She thought of him as she had in her dreams, laughing and without arms with which to cradle her, and she whispered into the stale atmosphere of the forsaken hospital wing, “I have underestimated the value of love; I am so sorry”. She emerged remorsefully from beneath the fabric of her quarantined gurney.
Thus began another chapter in the life of Ham, one prefaced by the loss of love, one marked by the struggle to relearn the simplicity of walking.