Free Anthology Complex by M.B. Julien

wonder what may have happened, and as the
average human thinker would behave, I assume something bad happened.
     
    As I get closer and closer, the yellow police tape becomes more visible,
and then finally someone tells me that someone was murdered. Shot down. This
city gets more than its fair share of homicides, but I'm starting to believe
that death will never get old. No matter how many times you see a lifeless
body, it makes you think.
     
    I'm standing there looking at the man's face, at least they didn't mess
with that. Then I start to think of Joe, how even though Joe isn't dead like
this man, they both look the same. Their faces are so still. Expressionless,
emotionless. Sometimes as a child when my mother would make my father sleep in
the living room, I would walk by and watch him as he slept, and it always
scared me because he looked so dead. In some dark twisted way, how he looked
when he slept was exactly how he looked at his funeral to me.
     
    There was a time in my late teenage years where all I could do was think
about death, but I think we all go through that phase some point in our lives
and it hits us hard because it's such a hard thing to understand. What is
death? The obsession with death ate away at my mind, and it wasn't because I
didn't know what happened after it, it was because I knew it would have to
happen someday, and I didn't know when.
     
    I can't say that I've accepted death, but I am not terrified of it
anymore because as we all know there isn't really anything we can do to prevent
it. In ways birth is the same as death, but because our mind is in a fixed
position on life, I don't think we can ever perceive that as what it really
means. This damn fisheye view. It probably takes someone until their late
teenage years to question life and death, but I'm sure it takes everyone a
lifetime to accept death itself.
     
    I get to the front of my apartment building and I look at the flowers
Lynne is planting, and they are starting to die. Today I am surrounded by death
it seems. They are turning brown and look shriveled up. Now that I think about
it, I hadn't seen Lynne since that night she came to my apartment.
     
    As I'm about to open the front door I notice Claire's car in my parking
spot. I guess she's over for dinner. As I'm walking to my apartment door I hear
talking and knocking, and eventually I see Claire and some man standing in
front of Lynne's door. It kind of looks like that man who was here before, the
man who was banging on Lynne's door and disturbing everyone in the building.
Her ex-husband. But I can't be entirely sure. I nod at Claire and she nods
back, and then asks me if I've seen Lynne.
     
    I tell her I haven't seen her in days, and I ask if Lynne is missing?
Misused question mark. As I'm asking this question frames of that dream pass
through my thoughts. Billboard, have you seen Maria?
     
    Claire tells me that Lynne is fine, she tells me that she was suppose to
meet Lynne today to talk but she hasn't been answering her phone all morning
and she doesn't appear to be home. As her and the man are walking by to leave
the building the man tells me to let them know if I see Lynne, and then he
gives me a dirty look as if he is trying to turn that favor into a demand.
     
    After they leave I open my door and I go fill the fridge with my
groceries. The damn garbage can is full, so I go outside to throw it out. As
I'm walking I notice Claire's car is gone, and in the corner of my eye I see
Lynne's window curtains move, as if someone was checking to see if they had left.
Someone is home.
     
    I'm walking back to my apartment door and as I'm about to open it, I
instead decide to go see if Lynne is actually home, to see if anything is
wrong. I knock, and then I say it's me, I say my name, and she opens the door.
I jokingly ask her why she's been avoiding me and she begins to laugh, and
those bruises on the side of her face seem as if they were gone. I would kill
to see that laugh.
     
    I