I almost talked myself out of writing this post, a piece describing the work that has led up to this moment, the release of my new novel River of Blood. It has taken so long to get here. Years. Aside meeting my wife and the birth of our two children—to whom I’ve dedicated the novel, it became the preeminent detail in my life from the moment the vague idea came to me in 2015. Like that black t-shirt that somehow always reappears in the closet for a decade, slowly changing from pristine pitch to vintage charcoal and fraying seams, the story tumbled through my thoughts and hounded my weekends as I scrambled to meet my self-imposed deadlines for serializing the damn thing on this site.

That’s right. After the first seventy-some-odd pages, I began serializing this story here before I even finished, before slaying the many plot monsters I had conjured. A harrowing journey for certain.

I remember the first few days of writing when I failed to recognize the possibility that this thing could escape the tenuous restraints I had imagined for it.

It will be a short examination of free will and determinism. A novella in the vein of Jim Harrison.

The beast outwitted me. A story I originally estimated could land at a hundred pages left a crater in my life over five hundred pages wide. How the hell did this happen? I had the basics of the story strung with perfection and exactitude. A crystal beginning, middle, and end, only the tiniest of details needed to bind them and release it into the either. How could I have known the reproductive possibilities of those details? The collective genitalia of these details whizzed like servos and the hutch of my virgin cuniculture burst.

It took me five years to gain control.
​

It’s too much. Too much for me to process all at once. The kids and I have only been in the house for a month. I’ve only known Jim for a month longer than that. You all warned me. You all heard the rumors. But I wouldn’t listen. He was everything. Kind. Dashing. Good job. This beautiful home he refurbished with his own hands endeared him even further. He and the kids hit it off as if we had been together for years. He’s a gifted storyteller—that should have been my first clue! Karen, my oldest, loved his yarn about how the upper floors of the house burned in the sixties when two star-crossed teenagers tipped over a lantern in the attic. “They died in a fire as hot and tragic as their love,” he would say. So disgusting now to remember it. But that’s where it all connects, you see? I get it. It’s implausible. Impossible. A mental fabrication. A figment of the trauma. But that can’t be! I saw her! The alarm woke me and she was there under the smoke detector above the kitchen table. Her face besmirched with char, hair burnt to the scalp, bra and panties still smoldering. I screamed in harmony with the siren but as Jim and Karen crashed naked and panicked through the door from the garage, she vanished, leaving me in the vaporous shock of his betrayal, my ears ringing in a jagged, deafening silence.

​What’s the goal, though?
Later, back in the confines of the garage, Ollie and Hicky and I drank. This foray into their mission had fostered a pinch of camaraderie between myself and the crew. I had labored with them that night. I had participated. Now the beers had me curious about PLA aspirations.
You guys aren’t delusional as far as I can see. But you know these operations won’t stop wars or death. Any media attention you receive is one sparkle in a bucket of glass.
Ollie’s response felt rote.
Good argument. One that I’ve had with myself many times. Ya know, once I broke free of the violence, I stepped back and saw what I had done then I saw the consequential violence around me like ripples around rain drops.
Hicky shook his head at us. I did not come prepared for a poetry contest, fellas.
Then butt out.
You see, Tower, my guilt broke me. As far as I could see, the only way forward was an ironic reversal of sorts.
So you’ve performed some sort of metaphysical accounting of your sins and hope to alleviate your guilt by subtraction?
Sure.
What happens when you zero out?
Who’s to say I haven’t already, Tower?
You have done a lot. The LAPD armory. Those tanks in Russia…
And a fuckton more. Maybe enough to zero out. Maybe that’s why yer here. Maybe the violence owes me something now.
That’s a lot more anthropomorphizing than I’m comfortable with.
Old habits.
Look, I get it, Ollie.  As an endeavor to atone, I see how one might be tempted. But your enemy is colossal. Immense. Bigger than anything. Bigger than everything.
Hicky pointed the open end of his beer bottle at me. That might be the point, Tower.
I used to feel that way.
Ollie laughed at me. There’s a pile of dead cops that says you’ve felt that way recently.
This is not a debate I wanna have right now.
Hicky straightened himself and pointed the bottle at me again. You said the enemy is colossal, Tower. You’re right. But only out of dumb luck. The enemy is gargantuan only because the enemy is in your own head. It is your head, your mind. And we both know that one mind contains the entire universe. The enemy is not the state or any singular shitbag like Cruz. They are vines to be hacked down on the journey, my friend. I think maybe you know this. The proximate obstacles are hurting you right now is all.
Proximate obstacles? That’s some pretty heavy shit, Hicky. And here you thought you weren’t a poet.
I’m an empath. It’s a curse. He paused for effect. Please don’t kill me.
This sent Ollie into violent amusement that bent him at the waist.
Cute, I said. You’re real cute.

A white raptor wing stretched from horizon to horizon. Uncle Frazier sat on the dead oak trunk, kicking at a column of red ants flowing just out in front of his foot. I think I should take time off, Uncle. His head bobbed at the sound of my voice. Not a nod. Just movement in recognition. He wiped the apple juice from his knife across a dirty pant leg. I already told you what I think. Yeah, you did. Don’t do it; you had a whole bunch of time, kid; I know it don’t feel like it but you did. He tracked the cloud from end to end with his eyes then gave me a serious glance. Go back to school; forget about anything but the present and buckle down. I wanted to point out the paradox in his worry over my future as he pressed me to stay in the present. But I could see that was exactly what he was contemplating. I wasted so much, he said, I wasted a lot of time not sticking it out when I was your age, boy. I get it, Uncle. You better. He handed me half of the apple and I took a bite. I don’t have any left, he said, all I can do is commandeer yours, you see? I hear you, Uncle. If you’re not careful, you wake up one day with memory of the time you spent and none left to spend on anything that means anything, you see? I see. You better.

​

They killed a dude in front of my kids last week. The guy was standing in the street with this short aluminum bat. He was yelling and pointing the thing at them as if he knew each of them by name, had some unrelated beef with each of them. Before I heard the commotion, I had been sitting in the living room of my de-electrified house. Bored out of my mind, waiting for Cheryl to drop off the kids. I was gonna meet them at the curb so I wouldn’t have to argue with her about why the electricity was shut off. I was waiting at the front window, amusing myself with a flat raisin between two peanut halves, imagining it was a burger. A fat juicy angus patty burger. Then the shouting started and I made my way to the street with my neighbors. There he was. Nothing but a pair of gym socks and the bat. We all jolted back when the cops unloaded on him. It took a few moments for me to realize Cheryl’s sedan was first in the line of cars held back by the emergency vehicles on the other side of the intersection. She’s right. The neighborhood really has gone to shit.

The stink. The dark. The weight. The moment it creeps in I let it pass and I am vapor. Until it returns again. And I let it pass again. This black is comfort. Ubiquitous. Swaddling. Like a bag cinched around me. Restraining me. Restricting possible explosion. This comfort develops opposing valence when it happens to speak. I wish it wouldn’t. The fact that it whispers doesn’t help.

i wonder why they put you here?

where is here?

you’re in the singles. you must be special.

i suppose that makes you special too.

syllogisms? i should have known. i have already misled you.

hm?

i know who you are. everyone knows who you are.

who am i?

you’re the American. the cop slayer. asesino de poli.

catchy. who are you, mr special? who do you slay?

i stole a lot of money from the wrong person. then i tried to move that money through the wrong people. then I answered the wrong door. much like you, i am struggling under the weight of my own decisions.

that could be said of anyone in here. we’re not so special after all.

now, now. maybe i’m not that special. i’m rotting in here because someone—a very specific
someone—wants me rotting. you are here because everyone—aside certain people in the government—wants you dead.

you know an awful lot about me. how is it you speak such good english?

a leftover from a complex childhood.

too many riddles, special. i’m  going to sleep.

you will grow lonely very quickly in here, cop slayer.

 
The black was here before this place. Woven in a different texture. It’s face pressed against mine like Uranus against Gaia. I was sick then. I have no idea how long I had been there although my memory of how I got there is clear. Clear as hotel mirrors. But those memories don’t linger now. And they didn’t linger then. My hands cuffed behind me. Bound to a chair. My lips cracked. My teeth loose. No sleep. I had lost weight. I had no idea if Penrose was in the next room. I had no idea of there was a next room. I had no idea if this was a place with rooms.  Throughout my life I wondered how I might endure this sort of confinement. Many times and places, many scenarios and people bore odds this might happen to me. It happened to others. People I knew. People I heard about. No need to wonder anymore. I was holding my own.

I’ve always had a knack for focused resistance. Endurance is a hobby.

Then someone opened that door for the last time. Before this they had forced liquefied nutrition down my throat. Poured water over my mouth with haphazard aim. This time things changed. Removed from my chair. Dragged. A hallway. A doorway. New air. Humidity. Heat. Urban osmyrrah. The hard rug and rumble of a vehicle. Traffic. Speed. Things had changed. I shrugged the persistent time travel brought on by the jostle of the road. Bullets. Fists. Broken bones. I kicked them aside. I caressed the movement of the wheels beneath me. The darkness squirmed. The black struggled. But I held tight.

Until I couldn’t. Until it was cleaved from my grasp as if my fingers had gone with it. The light pierced deep. Burning. Cauterizing. Blood from the glare would have consoled me. The grating flame brought only anger. The gradual materialization of heads and faces hovering over me stoked my anger further. But I wouldn’t thrash. I was more than aware of the futile rewards of thrashing. I closed my eyes in an effort to reconjure the darkness.
Another chair. The cuffs rearranged through the splat. Dirt beneath my naked feet. I smelled flowers. Cleaner air but still pregnant with heat and moisture. Tropical. My closed eyes proved a delinquent replacement for the bag and I slowly allowed the light its due.

 
i wonder if i’m headed for the same fate as you, cop slayer.

…

we’re both facing oblivion, cop slayer. but i’m nagged by this feeling that maybe my fate is worse than yours. you have the luxury of staring it in the face. squaring up to it like a bull.

…

i on the other hand might live in fear, i think. even if i live through my sentence, life outside might be even worse. at least in here i have a reliable compass. i know the possibilities. still very dangerous but much simpler. out there, it could move on me at any moment at any time. do you know how fortunate you are, cop slayer?

fortunate? wanna know what would be fortunate? not having to listen to you equivocate things you don’t understand.

enlighten me.

…

​as you can see, cop slayer, you are able to tumble off to sleep at a whim while my anxiety rattles this cage. i think i’ve called it correctly. you are a most fortunate man.