Candles for a Water Moccasin

for a Water Moccasin

  T.F.B

  By Tyler Brown (T.F.B)

  Copyright 2013 Tyler Brown (T.F.B)

  Sometimes I just find my little young self just walking around in a daze down by this creek of mine. The heat is thick the sweat collected on my bandana. The sun has beaten my skin red, the poison ivy has blistered my arms and there happens to be this ungodly pain just a plaguing my back. Now my twenty something years of age do not need the impression that getting over the half way mark of forty something. I just do not think my body could take it! See everybody’s body begins to react the same with a nice dose of robot work for it. It sure does! It has a set time clock, to fall asleep, to eat, to drink, and everything in between. Not me however, I never found none of these sheep style jobs good enough for myself. Sheep get slaughtered you know? I like to spend my days down by the creek, walking around in a daze….

  I like to tell myself I am ok! I usually am! Just not all the time. I hit my low points and I find myself down by the creek walking around in a daze. You probably wonder why I even come down to the creek do you? Well this is where I can find my inner peace, my temple, my place of quiet….Also I really like to fish!

  I mean I really love to fish! Something about finding a quiet little spot where I sit on my bucket and cast my line out into these murky waters. I listen to the sweet sound of silence, which if you think about it is the closest thing to death that exists. I bet it drives people crazy! Now it does not bother me, not one bit. I can enjoy the quiet harmless razors cutting deep into the ear drums of my soul. Those are little terrors to the lonely depressed sheep types but not this guy! Sheep get slaughtered you know? The sunlight likes to make cute little rays that fall through the leafy tree branches and make patterns on the creek water. Such a scene could make a painter’s hand twitch, a poets mind skip, and maybe it would drive that little Goth girl to stick the knife a little deeper next time.

  I guess it would make sense to actually tell you about the fishing process. Well I use two poles. One for with a bobber for my pan size fish, like crappie and bluegill. The other pole is rigged with a bigger hook to drag along the bottom of the creek for walleye and bullhead. Bullhead are these yellow and green catfish that usually infest these little creeks. They have the sweetest meat of any catfish in the world I swear! I also bring a bow with a nice special arrow to kill those pesky carps. No worries though the arrow is attached to a reel on my bow and after I shoot them I reel them in. Smoke carp like a nice slab of salmon and you get a tasty meal.

  A fine meal! A fine meal indeed! Finger licking good! Even those annoying carp bones! Do not worry! The bigger the carp the more likely that smoked meat with fall off the bigger ones. Oh I can taste the sweet juices from here! Nothing left but a nice skeleton to add to your private grave yard out back by the old shed with all the sheep bones. Yes sir! Yes sir! Sheep get slaughtered you know? Fish in general is delicious! Good for you too kid! If you catch and clean it for yourself. Not like that lame old sea bass you can buy at your local grocery store! Mountain Sores probably chalk it up full of those robot chemicals that rot and mutate your innards so one day when you’re walking down the west market on the night of The Purple Twilight you will feel your guts melt out of the bag of skin of yours!

  Wow I talk a lot! I can tell you stories upon stories of the fish I caught and make you heart wilt with the idea of my successes, but you will probably just find that ordinary. I do not like to tell ordinary stories. I do not find them to be practical in this world of ours. Everyone’s life falls into the crack that separates ordinary and strange. Most people tell the same stories and situations we all go through….and I hate it. Reality shows always got it right. A scripted strange life is what people want. Full of drama, nonsense, and the type of mental abuse that you could only read in letters from a porcupine!

  I have had many strange things happen to me out here. Sitting on this bucket, listening to the sinister silence, feeling the heat strangle me, letting the tension wrap around my brain, projecting my nightmares out in front of me like a movie screen. Once, I saw a large snake swimming out in front of me. It was dark and about two feet in length. The snake dove under water for several minutes. I felt bad for the snake. I’m sure it was dark under there and hard to see his prey. I wanted to get him some lights but before I could figure out how I could make a light under water he popped up with a bluegill hanging from his stretched mouth. You wouldn’t know it, but he brought that fish right over in front of me and went through the long task of trying to stretch its mouth over the fish’s body. Watching the snake trying to flop around made me smile inside. It was about that time I saw a large snapping turtle rolling its happy way down the creek. It made me wonder if it would get up on the bank and fight the snake for the fish. I bet the snapping turtle would bite that snake in two and eat him after the fish. Or he could wait till the fish was down inside the snake. Then the turtle could rip the fish out of the snake for a nice mushy meal!

  Now, if the snake was a water moccasin the turtle could die painfully. Now, the water moccasin is also known as a cottonmouth or by its Greek and Latin name hooked-tooth fish-eater. Cute little guy! One strike from that snake and the turtle could easily die! Unless the snake hit’s the shell? Now I feel Mother Nature herself would have made water moccasins smarter than that, but you never know with critters. I have never even heard of a case where a turtle and snake fought. Probably never happened but it totally should! I would be there! Yes Sir! Yes Sir!

  I love to watch these things, if existing or not. I forget about all the things that make me cry. Like the hands of time. Hearing the tick of the clock on a constant rotation makes me feel on edge and eager to do something stupid. I remember when I used to have all the time in the world and my life was great! I had friends, family, love, ambition, a future, and most of all excitement for the unknown. It can be crazy how one tragic event can be a domino effect on your entire life. Time used to be your friend, but time becomes your enemy and all these dreams and wishes that have flooded your mind will dry up like a dead crop and wither away into dust. Just like the rest of your childhood.

  It can make it easy to see the end of the bottle and hard to sleep at night. Hearing the tick of the clock just makes me angry! I smash every clock, every watch I own. I let the sun and moon give me the time I need. The time I need to heal and to find myself, but I am not a fool! I know the years slowly trickle away downstream like a fallen leaf in this creek. I know these things! I know! I just can’t seem to trickle down stream with it all. I just stay where I am at. I hate it! I hate it so much, but I cannot seem to move from this spot. That part of me is broken.

  Now I can’t tell you….I can never tell you why I went this direction and I don’t think I could find the right set of words to match the right set of eyes. Maybe I will never know. For tragedy did not make me this way. I just used it. You have to use everything to survive at times. Miracles or tragedies, love or hate. Only these ingredients make you human and whole. I can’t tell you, but there many ways I can show you but you are going to have to pick a better time because, I am fishing!

  Fishing could be my block, my escape, and everything I need to keep myself at bay, but that’s because I am the bear core of a man without the thickness in his skin to shield his world from this sickness. It has its wicked games during the purple twilight. I lost it all maybe, but I can rebuild, one fish at a time. Never criticize me please! If I could I would fish the world out of this creek with a big hook sticking out of the sheep. I would shoot an arrow through the beating heart. Sheep get slaughtered you know? Oh how I would laugh at the destruction I would cause. I would dance in the rain of its blood when the world stopped for a minute or two.
Oh how great that would be? I can never dream of a nightmare so fresh! Instead I just find myself walking around in a daze…

  Once upon a time I was fishing away when a man appeared across the creek from me. He sat down on a large rock holding an acoustic guitar. Yes sir! Yes sir! He was wearing all black with a fedora, silver chains around his wrists, his mouth was stretched in a large wide smile that went from ear to ear. A white tie hung down to his waist with gold buttons in the middle. Not a single word was spoken between us and we did not even acknowledged that the other person was there. Something was odd about this man. Yes sir! Yes sir! Butterflies seem to be flying around his head as if they were being pulled in by his gravity. He was an eerie man. I do not even think my twisted mind could make him up. His presence wasn’t erotic, but it was a sick pleasure.

  He did begin to sing….I guess. I never understood it. It didn’t rhyme or anything. He started saying, “Some mornings it can be like sipping a drink with a smile then later it’s like drinking from the neck to hide your pain. You smash that bottle and let the shards show pieces of your reflection. There was a time when the world was an open book, but you never bothered to finish the last chapter and you closed it letting the dust blend it in with the other useless files of your life. No one can tell you why or how, but you somehow created a defense mechanism to hide behind the little demons in your life. You used to blow them off, but the next thing you know they caught up to you and take all the love from you in one single mind rape. You wake up the next morning trying to remember what you did the night before but you can’t get past the vomit rolling out of your throat over all the bottles on your floor. Ashamed, angry, and even disgusted by what you become. You wait all day by the window remembering the days from before but you left that all behind you while you dig your nails into your palms, drawing the blood that inks your future. Reborn like a fetus choking on its own umbilical cord. Having the life beaten back into you on the purple twilight, feeling the world for the first time. You lay yourself with the wicked people you could never could lower yourself to. Scratches down your back never heal, as the smoke from the burning building sting your eyes. You would love to sew your eyes shut but you can’t use worms to stitch the skin together. So you try to blend in with the rest of the corpses, judging all the sores and count the drops of puss that roll down the limbs. You can’t take it. You never wanted the ruins, you wanted the garden, but never thought you could hate like this. Nails can’t peel away your skin and your fingers can’t tear out your hair. You can’t even bleed it out anymore. If you were your own mother you would have aborted this version of yourself. The last straw had been drawn, the line was made in the sand. No turning back now. You realize if maybe you were crazy you could have the fun you lost. The pleasure you desired may never come back. Till one day you find your skeleton lying amongst the other bones, glooming under the moon. A snake rolls through your eye sockets, building a nest where your brain used to be. Luckily you were by the creek, so the snake can find food but it can’t see without a candle. That’s all you ever wanted was to see through the dark. Find what you wanted before it was lost. The wax burned your fingers before you could find it. You have to lose who you used to be before you find who you really are, but if you don’t find it in time the world moves on without you and you’re just lost in the dark when the lights went out.”

  Before I knew it the strange man was gone. I was just sitting there staring into space. Suddenly I had the inspiration to go back home. I could take a shower, clean myself up and go back into the world! I could leave all of this behind. Yes Sir! But I won’t. By the time I stood up I wanted to keep fishing. So I did. I didn’t catch anything. My heart began to race. I threw my pole down and walked down the bank.

  Sweat poured down my face and the salty water temporarily blinded me. It felt good for some reason. Closest I have come to crying in some time. I just kept walking until I came upon a large sharp rock. I laid down pressing the rock against my cheek. I realized how sharp it was and I pushed it in. I forced the rock point into my face. It never drew blood. I backed out before it could. Ashamed with myself I bashed my head against the rock. Every time I allowed a couple seconds to see if I would start to bleed. By the ninth bash my scalp split and a roll of blood painted my face. I had to make it all go away, put it all away and make it bleed away.

  I let the blood flow for a good while. Occasionally I would smear some more of the fresh blood to paint my face. After a while all my problems went away I had forgotten all about the man singing a song. My problems seemed lost in the stratosphere. I began to walk back to my fishing spot, but my head was throbbing and I just kind of played with it. The blood has now caked my face and it’s itchy. Every time I lick my lips I taste copper. I saw a water snake swimming in the creek. I really wished it was a water moccasin.

  Now all I do is find myself lost in myself. Hilariously sad. Too much waxed burned my fingers and now I cannot even see my real prints. I really want to go fishing, but I have an appetite for sheep. Sheep get slaughtered you know? Do you know? I don’t even know because I just find myself walking around in a daze down by this creek of mine…