Incalculable Zen

[Brodi Andrews]

Life is about the pursuit of faux-Order. You know this and understand this and you accept this; embrace it, even. But you realize that the world is in a constant state of decomposition. Breaking down. Degradation. Chaotic elements wearing and tearing down the walls of the belief that Order can be maintained. Time is delayed, though. You age. People die. Chance gives you the winning lottery ticket or a painful death.

Faux Order to hide Chaos.

You live with this false belief in Order. You know it is a mask and you cling to that hope - that faith- so it will blind you into believing you're in control.

You are in control.

So you follow your schedule. You go to class. You do your homework. You distract yourself with your own pursuits. Yoga. Check. Vegan diet. Check. Science. Check. Her. Check. Kyle. Che-

Time delays.

Kyle doesn't pick up his phone when you call him between class. You ignore the sign telling you that calls are not allowed - evidence that Order is just a disguise - and you toe the line of chaos by calling. Checking in. But Kyle doesn't answer. He always answers. He doesn't answer today.

So you step further into Chaos by forgoing the warning bell telling you that you are late for class. You delay. You hide in the broom closet and call again. Twice. Three times. A fourth. Nothing. No answer. A message machine that doesn't show signs of personality. Just a generic message telling you to wait for the beep. Cold. Precise. Kyle. Beep.

Now you are worried. You go further into your head and try to come up with any clues to why the call is not being answered. You come up with nothing. No last minute meetings. No late lunches. Kyle was off his schedule. You are off your schedule. Order is being pulled from the wall and you are now seeing the ugly wall in front of you.

You do not like what you see.

You call Kyle's work. You call his associates. You call your moms. You call until your phone tells you that you've run out of answers. So you get angry and hit a fist against the broom closet's door. You don't teach it a lesson. You don’t fix the problem. You only hurt your hand.

You sneak out of the closet and slide your phone into your jacket. And then you dive fully into chaos by moving the opposite direction of your class. You see a few Villains on your way through the hall, the last lingering occupants who don't seem to care they're late, and they don't open up to you as one of their own. You are not a bad kid. They know this. They actually tease you as you move to the parking lot and they move off to smoke in their territory.

You get in your station wagon. You sit in your station wagon. And then you drive your station wagon. You drive over the speed limit because you have already broken Order and the crumbling pieces on your lap are just chaotic shards. You worry. You let your imagination get the best of you. You wonder if Kyle had another seizure. You wonder if he had an accident. You wonder if he...

You wince at the thought of a new cycle.

Cycles. Ordered Chaos. It was ordered because it had a beginning and an end. Kyle's mind would find a new adaptation and the man you have grown to know would change. And sometimes these changes would have defects. Illnesses. Rage. Depression. Voices. Paranoia. A brain that miswires itself without realizing that the brain has reason why not to 'cut corners' for better synapsis time.

You're home. It's not home. It's Kyle's home. You have a room. But that doesn't matter now because you are running into Kyle's home and using Kyle's key that he gave you. Through the door, down the stairs, and into the living room.

Order. Ordered books on the shelves. Ordered paintings on the wall. Clean. Precise. Angled properly. Nothing wrong. Nothing chaotic. A domain of Order.

You continue your search and you are rewarded when you find the Chaos that had smuggled itself into the home. Blood on the kitchen floor. Blood that leads you to the bathroom. Knife on the carpet. Locked door with lights shining through the frame.

You call out for Kyle and he tells you to go home. You knock. You beg. He curses. He cries. You break down the door.

Your hand and shoulder hurt now.

And then you see Kyle. Father. Strong. Sturdy. Tough. But he is not any of these things at the current moment. He's huddled in his pajamas, clutching at a gash on his arm. He's whimpering, shaking. Cold? Fear?

Red eyes. Check. Sniffling. Check. Crying. He's been crying. And you approach with that observation only to be told to go to hell. You try to get closer but he pushes you away until your side slams into the corner of the sink.

Your hand, shoulder and side hurt now.

And you cry out, hissing through the pain. But this proves useful because Kyle is now staring at his actions in horror. He babbles an apology. Tries to explain himself. Explain that its another cycle. That he had bugs in his arm and he needed to get them all out. That his meds were poisoning him and making him have erectile dysfunction. Explain through tears. Trying to order the Chaos that comes when a new cycle begins.

But you silence him with a hug. And he embraces that. And you hug him tight and whisper that you're going to make things right. That you'll be there for him. And that just brings choking from his throat as he buries his head into your shoulder.

You've reversed the roles. Father and son have no meaning here.

And oddly enough, that's okay. This routine is Order. It begins, it ends, and you know it will begin again soon enough. Order within Chaos that is wrapped in Order.

You don't even tell Kyle that today's your birthday.

[Brodi Andrews]

The movie was terrible.

But then again, you weren’t worried about the movie. Instead, you focused on the girl next to you who groaned with every cliche lined dropped by the English actor trying to show off his best ‘Texan’. You watched her from the corner of your eye the entire movie, your body in that faux-relaxed state that you’ve perfected during years of acting like you understood yoga --

You don’t understand yoga. You don’t understand yourself.

-- and you succeed. She didn’t seem to notice. You got her to laugh a few times during the movie. You got her to smile - you smiled. You both lived that cliche moment of reaching into the popcorn bin at the same time only for your hands to meet. If she realized that you planned the entire thing, she didn’t let on.

You appreciated that.

You appreciated her... which was the problem, because you weren’t sure if kissing during the movie was what she wanted. Or if it was what you wanted. You felt awkward, which wasn’t new, but this was much easier when someone else had led you --

You were always making decisions. You are tired of making decision.

But now the movie is done.

You leave the movie. You leave the mall. You get in your station wagon with the tied on bumper and leave the parking lot. You pop in the cassette tape filled with country music. She states she never pegged you for a Garth Brook’s fan. You aren’t. She’s onto you.

You drive and she says it is still early. You know it is still early. But then you realize that the statement of itself wasn’t a declaration of fact but merely a sharing of an observation that one could use for an idea --

You have an idea.

So you drive and you talk and she doesn’t seem to mind that you’re going in the opposite direction of school. She doesn’t mind that you end up in a parking lot near the Galaxy Girl Park -- you can’t help but note the sheer cheesiness of the name -- but you do park and you’re silent.

But then you talk.

You talk. And you like talking. You’re awkward at it but she makes it feel less awkward. And then you kiss -- and while the kissing makes you feel awkward again, you have come to realize that awkwardness can be good. You like good. So, you two kiss as if this was a G movie towing the line near PG. And you’re fine with that --

Your beeper goes off. And you hear her let out a groan along with you. You press your forehead against hers before you bring the beeper up. A squeeze of the sides illuminates the screen and Kyle’s number is there along with a code.

Four numbers can ruin a date. These four numbers prove that.

2498

Kyle was sure his food was being poisoned.

You close your eyes and try to force a grin to hide the sheer frustration. She stops you. No faking, she says. Just truth.

So you are annoyed. You say you are annoyed. And then you start up the car, pull out of the cheesily named park and your PG movie, and you head down the road. Back towards the school. Back toward acting like an adult.

She tells you to go to the hospital, though.

She wants to see your reality.

[Brodi Andrews]

Kyle is missing.

You hear these words and the first thing that strikes you is that you aren't surprised. You feel no yearning questions of how. You understand how. A man with an IQ above two-hundred and fifty and they had hoped to keep him locked in a room made by men on minimum wage? Held locked away by electrons that Kyle had used to make tinker toys when he was three?

Oversight on your part.

No, surprise isn’t with you. So you just stare at the empty room where Kyle had slept. His bed was made - Of course it would be- and the desk was clear. He probably dusted by the looks of it, as well. Methodical until the last. Perhaps a lingering bit of his old persona giving one last ‘hurrah’ before being swept away to make room for the new.

You hear words about how Kyle had opened the locks by reprogramming the remote control. You nod along as they explain how they found an open window on the third floor that was near a drainage pipe. They talk about how they found footprints on the ledge. You ask about cameras and they explain Kyle had somehow shorted them out briefly.

You try to hold yourself together as the nurses and doctors speak with you. You do an okay job. You do an okay job because this is how you function. You use that facade of responsibility all the while you tremble under your skin over the monster at the end of the book. The only difference being that you know what the monster looks like. You know his voice, his stare, his subtle gestures that don’t entirely go away when he changes from one Cycle to another.

Kyle. Or Evil Kyle. Or Insane Kyle. Or Angry Kyle. Or Violent Kyle. Racist. Bloodthirsty. Diabolical. Villainous.

Funny how you always think of the worst situation. Every change holds a new possibility, and you can’t help but dread that the next Cycle will bring on the next Faultline.

You sign some documents that you don’t even read and make some calls to Sarah. You explain the situation and she wants you to come back home. You don’t know why she wants you back home - it wouldn’t help things - and you tell her this. She gets tripped up on her words and then confesses to you being a teenager and not, in fact, a nursemaid.

You hang up. And you add a finger to the one hand count of how many times you’ve ever done that to her. You try calling Kali but she doesn’t answer. Work. Secret. All that stuff. You even debate calling Abby but your finger just hovers over the dial button until you just stuff the phone away into your pocket.

Kyle. Kyle was gone.

You walk through the halls and your head is starting to hurt. And you don’t know if it is because of all the stress or the fact that you’re trying to put your head into Kyle’s. You are not smart enough to catch him or find him. You know this. No one is. And that is both annoying and reassuring. You are like the rest of the gold fish trying to understand the professor’s lecture which is Kyle’s mind.

You exit the hospital and you find yourself in your station wagon. And you sit. You don’t want to just sit but that feeling is outweighed by the feeling of not wanting to drive. So you just sit and stare out the window where snow had started to fall. And you can’t help but say out loud that this was not how it was supposed to be.

Maybe you mean life. Maybe you mean parenting. You hope you mean the holidays. You hope you mean spending the holidays with Kyle and going through the tradition. Going to temple, saying the words while going through the motions of normalcy. This wasn’t how things were supposed to be, no. You were supposed to find this life easier. Simpler. This holiday? Joyous with a slight chance for holiday miracles.

You press your forehead against the steering wheel and you close your eyes tightly. You want this all the change and return back to the old Cycle. The last one. You were used to this and you preferred this and god damn it.

God dammit.

You hit the steering wheel because Kyle isn’t anywhere close enough to take its place. You pound on it, cursing like your more rebellious days in California. The station wagon shakes slightly from your onslaught. Or you like to think so. Most likely, if this was a trailer, people would still be willing to go ‘a-knockin’'. You let this immaturity go on for a solid minute before you return to just staring. Calm. Silent. In control.

You are in control.

Remote control. No cameras. Window open. Pipe to climb down.

You stare at this puzzle in front of you. Your mind tries to envision the breakout. You walk through the entire scene and you try to go further. You try to progress farther in the mission once you get to the window. Yet... something doesn’t match up with the scene and the character.

Kyle had broke his arm when he tried to climb a ladder a year ago. Fear of heights mixed with poor coordination. And you can’t help but wonder if all that has changed. If Kyle had somehow had that all erased... yet, that leads you back to the scene. In your mind, Kyle is no longer scared. No longer poorly coordinated. He gets to the window but... years without exercise makes it impossible to climb down. Especially when it's snowing. A fall? Yet no signs of a fall.

You narrow your eyes before just pushing the door open and climbing out. You move briskly back into the hospital, scanning faces of doctors and nurses as they pass. You open room after room, pushing your way through secure locations and ignoring the threats of police intervention if you don't turn back. You pass one filthy hallway and another and another, scanning the faces of anyone near you before suddenly stopping.

Clean hallway.

You frown, arms crossing over your chest as you stare at the contrast. Folded sheets carefully placed on roller beds. Hospital equipment organized by name then by prescription dosage followed by ‘amount of use’. No dust. No blinking lights. No urine on the floor or smear on the wall.

You stare at the back of the man dressed in the Orderly scrubs. His head was shaved but the build was there. You step to the side and watch the man stands near a hospital bed left in the hall, a sleeping patient in it. Said patients medical chart in hand.

You step up next to Kyle. The Kyle with scrubs slightly baggier than they should be and now bald.

You remain silent as Kyle continues to scan the medical chart as he doesn’t acknowledge your presence. If your life was poetry, that would mean something significant, you are sure.

You hear the sound of running behind you and you turn just as two cops round the corner. A nurse follows shortly behind them and points towards the two of you. Kyle turns his head towards the commotion, furrows his brow, and then holds up the chart to inform the nurse that the patient was being misdiagnosed and that he wished to leave now.

You can’t help but sigh.