Chapter 1: Tomorrow Is Another Name for Yesterday

Charlie Kogburn, a licorice whip of a figure, was a sensible man in most ways.  He was not extravagant in dress or décor. Kogburn blended into the background of life. Even people who were relatively close to Kogburn could not remember the color, make, or model of the car he drove, and that was just fine with Kogburn, who preferred to go about unnoticed.

Long ago, Kogburn gave up wearing anything that would call attention to himself. He was a fan of Punk music and all its descendants. He had worn punk inspired t-shirts with various sociopolitical statements on them, and even to this day, he fancied wearing ones that told the establishment or so and so to fuck off, but it was an attention-netter, and attention was something Kogburn didn't want.

He didn't mind people who were centers of attention. He enjoyed bathing in their overflowing personalities. When he was comfortable, he'd crack jokes or relate a story he thought amusing. Even then, he was careful to edit himself. Kogburn tended to tell tales about things most folk might consider somewhat sordid, such as, little known facts about serial killers, his Aunt Mabel, who claimed to be a tailor, but was really a prostitute and practitioner of bestiality, and humorous episodes he experienced after ingesting various hard-core drugs. These tales either bonded him with the crowd (which was rarely) or sent them scurrying to other rooms in the wake of polite excuses (which was mostly what happened).

Kogburn prided himself on the fact that he didn't spend much money.  He rarely ate at restaurants or bought frivolous decorations for his apartment. There was not one picture hanging on any wall. For a couple of months after moving in, he contemplated hanging something up. He thought about hanging a Van Gogh print, but Van Gogh prints had become somewhat common. He liked Gauguin's approach to the human form and his use of color, but he wasn't sure if decorating walls was the right thing to do. He thought about hanging a velvet painting in his living room because it seemed so tacky it was almost artful. Kogburn contemplated several other ideas, but in the end he decided to leave the walls bare. Everyone had their walls filled with decorations. What was the point of it all?

He had taken a week off from work to get his head together, Yes, head together. In the day dreaminess of the afternoon, Kogburn drifted off into a semi-conscious meditation-like state. So deep was his mind travel that he was brought to an interval where he was suddenly aware of the words, "Getting my head together," and instantly knew it was a euphemism for something far more problematic and insidious than he was fully prepared to face. He laughed at the thought of the words, which in light of the situation, were further proof of his lying to himself and actually believing the lies. 

But things had been changing. In the past weeks, a voice of truth had been rising up in his thoughts like ghost fog on a morning lake. "I can't even fool myself anymore," he thought with an honesty not experienced in a decade and a half.  

His entire body felt hot. It was moist and sweaty. Salty beads dripped from the tip of his nose to a small puddle on the floor. His skin felt scaly and itchy. He vigorously scratched both forearms, and luckily, felt relief. But then he felt his insides getting cold. It was like his arteries and veins were freezing into rivers of ice. All he could do was tremble and put forth a wager in his mind, "Should I gut it out, or should I try again some other time?"

He had used forty hours of vacation time for this purpose, and it would be the second time in three days that he had tried but failed. He was halfway through his vacation week. If he was going do it again, it had to be now. For Kogburn, time was a terrible thing. It wore on him like elements beating down an abandoned house. He still functioned, still lived his life in an outwardly normal manner, but he was losing connection. He was dying from the inside out, and he knew if he could not break loose from the tentacles, he would fall into nothingness.

He weighed his options. This wasn't the first time. He even prayed for help, though, for the most part, he was godless. He wished so badly to announce that he was back among the living, not existing as a disembodied soul slinking from shadow to shadow. He wanted so badly to return to those he loved, to feel and be loved, to the be the person he once had been, to return to the things that had become so foreign and far away. He wished so badly to put an end to the misery, but it was quickly becoming apparent that it was not possible. His blue button down short sleeved shirt and the parts of his chino pants that touched his body were covered in dark stains of wetness. He hated seeing himself like this. It was bad reminder. If nothing else, he'd do it just to stop himself from looking like a broken down dirt bag. Someday would come, but for now, he was off to the closet where, way deep in the back under clutter, was the wooden cigar box, and inside, the tools that would take him to sweetest salvation any human could ever know.