The Grey Life

By Adam Wasserman

“O, to what malevolent, festering power will I attribute the terrible wrath that has been incurred against me? To which god of the earth, sea, or sky, to which calculating, demonic power of nature - to which enduring creature's scorn should I give thanks for the dark procession of statues that now encircles me like lions stalking the gladiator of Rome, for this monstrous tribunal of angels that stands now not far away? I can see nothing good, nothing whole. Everything is broken and silent. Stone and grey is my world, and yet I can still remember a place long ago that was not this dark.”

Such are the thoughts of David Berkowitz, an old and broken man living in an old and broken world who has finally decided – at the last possible moment – to try and face his past with whatever strength he has left.

His is a story of love, loss, and betrayal – and of never quite moving on. It also a story of one human being's struggle against drugs and insanity. Set almost completely in his college days, we experience with David the passion and folly of youth, of freshness and discovery, and the bitter taste of condemnation.

Will he finally be able to set the past aside and meet his own death with the peace he was always yearning for?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adam Wasserman
• Release date: Aug 4, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452384818

Adam Wasserman

Adam Wasserman was - like all human beings - born on Earth. In the years since, he has proved himself to be an avid breather. He also eats regularly.Since all humans look alike, it is hard to differentiate him from the rest. He is, however, easiest to spot when lying on a beach, subjecting himself to a steady stream of dangerous rays from Sol. Such behavior is illogical, a common trait among his species.Eventually, his body will wear out and he will cease to function. In the meantime, he keeps busy by publishing falsehoods in book form, which somehow he imagines others will find entertaining and instructive.Humans are, of course, a strange and unfathomable species.

Book preview

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Gyges the Terrible

Ms. Wellington's Oak Tree

The Politics of Consumption

Bringing Down the House

THE BUNKER SERIES

Thank You For Your Cooperation

Your Call Is Important To Us

Can I Be Of Some Assistance

Today's Edition

The Grey Life

Adam Wasserman

Fourth Edition, April 2015

Copyright 2006 by Adam Wasserman

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition

Chapter 1

When I was a little boy mother would sometimes allow me to escape our luxurious residence in Riverdale and her high-handed discipline and visit my Aunt Flora in the country. It was with reluctance, though, that she let me go. Aunt Flora was somewhat rebellious, even after the accident, and not well trusted in the family. Now that I know better I understand that of all of us she alone resisted the barbarous manner in which we were raised. That's not to say she was unaffected. Grandmother left none of us unscathed.

Mother referred to anyplace outside of New York as the country. Barrington, Rhode Island, where Aunt Flora lived, is not exactly the country, not even back then. From the few times I've been, and most of them when I was very young, I gathered that the townspeople were an opinionated sort of folk. They were decent to my Aunt, though, and spoke about her at least with compassion. Many thought she was simply retarded. They never spoke badly about her, it is true, but they often wondered to each other just what she did in that lonely old house into which few of them had ever been asked, and amused themselves with wild speculations that they regarded as truth.

Aunt Flora was married when she was young, soon after she left Arkansas, to an insurance agent from Baltimore named Charles O'Connor. That was 1963, I think. He was a handsome fellow with a clear sense of purpose and the potential for laughter. At least, that is how he appeared in the photographs. No one ever spoke directly to me about him except mother, and then only vaguely once when she was drunk and I had pressed her. She told me that Grandmother was vehemently opposed to the marriage. She told me it was because he wasn't Jewish and he had a dirty occupation, but I know better. It only took one conversation with Mr. O'Connor for Grandmother to realize that he would never defer to her better judgment.

But Flora felt something exhilarating and daring, something lustfully youthful, in the disobeying. For the first time in her life she realized she could make her own choices. To have grown up without even a shred of hope for herself, not even the knowledge that such hope existed, and suddenly here was this dashing, young man with a future offering her a way out. So she decided to marry anyway. From the house of Mr. O'Connor himself she rang her mother in Arkansas. It was, I know, the most exciting thing she had ever done.

Grandmother was outraged. She was, among other things, not able to understand why her children were fleeing like starved refugees from their places of holding. All of them, that is, except my Aunt Dorothy, and her fate was by far the worst. In Grandmother's warped and egocentric view of the world her children were abandoning her after she had raised them with care and love, after she had fed them, clothed them, educated them, and disciplined them appropriately. And they repay all of that by leaving her to rot in that maddening haven all alone with her idiot husband, as she referred to him, and the neighbors next door whom she detested?

Flora was nineteen when she married Charlie. They were joined at Martha's Vineyard in June, when all the trees are newly adorned in a fresh coat of green leaves and the land is healthy and vigorous. It was a small wedding, only a few close friends and some of Mr. O'Connor's family. They returned from their honeymoon in Barbados and in July moved into a small house in Towson, a suburb of Baltimore where Mr. O'Connor worked. Not beyond walking distance was Towson State University, where people the age of my Aunt Flora and older would in the fall be exploring the freedom of their youth. It was a romantic proposition for my Aunt and she could not resist. Sometimes, while her husband was working, she would stand on the outskirts of the campus, usually by the fence around the athletic fields, looking in, imagining what must be going on behind the thick walls and on the sharply green grass. In early August Aunt Flora discovered that she was pregnant.

One evening in early October, when the warmth is failing toward evening and there is something heavy in the air, Aunt Flora returned from one of her visits to the university and found the house where she lived strangely quiet. She called for her husband, but her only answer was an uncanny silence. Wandering aimlessly through the downstairs, she rubbed her belly and the precious package she bore, and as the sun lowered in the sky and the shadows lengthened it seemed that she had found herself once again in a strange land of fog and things that hide in the dark.

Finally, she reached the bedroom and peered through the shadows, expecting to find the soft eyes of her husband gazing lovingly back at her naked from their bed. But she found him instead strung up inside the wardrobe like a cow for the slaughter, his tongue blue and swollen and hanging out of his mouth a lot farther than it should have. And his eyes, his eyes! Staring at her wide-eyed with a terror that would remain forever. Staring at her and yet not really seeing, as it were.

Aunt Flora screamed and dropped to her knees, not understanding what exactly happened to this place. Grandmother rose up from the shadows by the bed and approached menacingly. Flora did not resist. With a duly calculated savagery - dim and distant she must have seemed - she began to kick her daughter in the stomach. The blows landed with heavy accuracy. I don't think Aunt Flora put up much of a fight. I think she just lay on the ground, not positively sure which was the greater, the physical or the mental pain, or even the completion of her estrangement from the rest of the world.

One of those kicks especially she remembered, because that's when she felt herself lose whatever it was growing inside her, like a piece of dead and unclean flesh that falls from the leper messiah on his final journey to his people.

Drusus laughed when I tried to explain. He thinks Grandmother was the most horribly evil person who ever lived. Perhaps she was. But if I've learned anything from my life I know that things are rarely as definitive as they seem. I knew Grandmother, and I know that she did not plot to destroy the lives of her children. Even if it was a terrible love, she acted out of love nonetheless. Like our own parents she wanted to raise them to live as she lived, to believe as she believed because the world is a terrible place and we have to learn how best to get along in it.

Grandmother believed she was helping Flora when she murdered her husband and destroyed her unborn child. The husband would have led her to the den of Satan and the child, well, the fruit of such an unholy union could only have meant trouble. So she did what needed to be done, quickly and without compassion. When it was over she carried Flora to the car and drove her to the hospital. On the way she spoke soothingly. It'll be alright now, dear, she was saying. The worst is over. But was it? Flora couldn't have known. She was entirely numb except for the tears. She listened dumbly as Grandmother described in maddening detail her husband's suicide and the unfortunate accident. And she repeated the words to the doctor, because the truth was by far much worse. After time, I think, she came to believe the story herself.

One of the earliest memories I have of Grandmother is from a visit she paid to us in New York around the time of the Carter-Reagan election. I remember because Grandmother favored the Hollywood actor. We need a change! she told mother in the car, waving an ominously skeletal finger in her direction. Yes, Mother.

Except the first time she stayed with us she slept in my room. I never minded, because on those occasions I moved into the basement where there was a television set. At the time to stay up as long as I wanted and eat whatever I could find in the kitchen was a real treat. Not that I was allowed to do any of these things. The few times I remember Grandmother coming I also remember mother telling me that I wasn't to leave the basement at night, not even if I had to go to the bathroom. And each time Grandmother left she would sit me down to chastise me. She would complain about how I didn't listen, about how I made her look badly. If I couldn't learn to behave properly, she once told me, then she just might have to send me away to Arkansas, to which I responded with a fit of tears and, throwing myself into her arms, a desperate plea to keep her good little boy in New York. I was five or six years old.

I never liked Grandmother. When my younger brother and I entered the kitchen to greet her for the first time she sat herself down at the table and stared at us with eyes clearly possessed, eyes that were of no color at all. Of course, I had heard, or sensed, rather, from those around me just how horrid she had become. At times after that she'd try and get me alone with her, but I would never allow it. I may not have been able to put it into words, but I could sense that there was something twisted about Grandmother. But she was able to get at my brother on several different occasions. He is still an unforgettable reminder of what could have been me. Grandmother gradually stole him away from us in quiet snatches, shy, and committed already to whatever doom she had made for him. And mother - well, she was upset that Grandmother was able to get inside her little boy, too. This was supposed to be her family.

Sometimes they would fight about it. Once I heard mother sobbing in her bedroom. I mustered enough courage to peek through the half-closed door and saw Grandmother holding mother's head in her lap. She was gently caressing the soft hair, her colorless eyes resting neatly on her daughter's tear stained cheeks. And for a moment, I felt a keen hurt inside me, to see mother like that. It's okay, darling, I remember Grandmother saying in eerily soothing tones. Patrick just loves me best.

But as much as I tried, and I tried very hard, to keep away from Grandmother, she managed to corner me that first night.

I was upstairs in my room alone when she walked in. I looked up with something like horror on my face, and I think she noticed, and it hurt her. She paused in the doorway, standing strangely crooked, a momentary look of pain passing over her delicately carved features, and then suddenly it was gone and she smiled.

Why, hello there, David. I always hated the way her accent twisted the a in my name. She moved into the room much more easily than someone would expect from a woman her age, and before I could react she had seated herself upon the bed beside me.

Hullo, Grandm'ma, I replied meekly, intimidated.

How have you been?

Good.

She reached for her big, black purse. Would you like some candy, David?

No! I answered quickly. Too quickly, perhaps, for her face darkened eerily. Thanks, I added, smiling sheepishly.

Humph, she muttered darkly to herself. She stood up and started strolling about the room, as if she were in a park or a museum, eyes flicking this way and that. I followed her carefully with my own eyes, and as I did I caught a brief glimpse somewhere in the back of my mind of Grandmother, late at night in my room, going through my things.

David, David, David, she muttered after a moment, and in an instant she had turned to face me. Her eyes were picking me apart. I looked quickly away, fumbling with my pajamas. All I wanted was for her to leave.

Are you afraid of me, David? she asked suddenly.

No, I answered, my lower lip trembling.

She smiled, but it was not a smile of warmth. Don't lie to me, David, she admonished sternly and took a dangerous step towards me from around the bed. I'll always know when you're lying.

Yes, Grandm'ma.

People who lie end up all alone, David. Nobody likes them. Is that how you want to grow up? All alone, with no one to love you?

I shook my head quickly, not even daring to answer with my voice.

She took another step closer. You don't know what it's like to be alone, do you?

Again I shook my head. Tears were welling up behind my eyes like a storm.

Another step. She was only a few feet away. That's why I'm here, David, to make sure that none of you, whom I love so very much, end up all alone in this cruel world. Your mother and your Aunt Flora tried to leave me alone. But I've forgiven them, because I'm their mother.

A tear escaped my eye and slid easily down my cheek. As it fell from my jaw Grandmother caught the thing with a strong, leathery hand. This is what it all comes down to, David, I remember her saying as she presented it to me. The tiny mound of wetness glistened in the fluorescent lighting on the pale, yellowish skin. I looked into those ancient eyes and for an instant it was not one woman who stood before me but rather the sum of a long line of insanity, from Grandmother's mother, to her mother's mother, to her mother's mother's mother, and beyond. And as I stood gazing into her face, trying somehow to understand her, she slapped me across the cheek with considerable force. I could feel the remains of the tear amid the bitter stinging. That's for lying, she informed me resolutely. I fled the room, too shocked even for more tears.

But there were the occasional bright moments in my childhood. As I told you before, mother would sometimes allow me to visit Aunt Flora in Barrington. There is one trip up to the country I'll never forget. It was the first time I realized that our way of life was not natural. One night at the end of February Flora called from Grandmother's house and asked if she could pick me up on her way through New York. I was six years old. No, not even. I remember sitting by the window of our living room, staring calmly over the street below. A small, yellow carry-on bag lay by my feet. I remember mother walking quietly into the room behind me, watching me with a strange look on her face, something bitter that rang with a deep streak of sadness. I saw her reflection in the glass but pretended not to notice. After a minute or two, she left.

The ride up to Rhode Island was quiet. Aunt Flora seemed agitated, excited, and at various times during the speedy, two-and-a-half-hour ride she'd break out with an angry curse or a bitter stream of mumbling. I didn't know it then, but it must have been Grandmother. Why else was the needle on the speedometer edging one hundred miles per hour? She was fleeing like a broken animal who, knowing she must return at the beck and call of the torturer, finds despair in the paradox of escape. She knew she was an agent of Emmanuel Goldstein, whose book Grandmother had, of course, written herself, and she felt agony and self-hatred tainted by self-pity and rebellion because of it. What a resourceless combination.

Aunt Flora lived in an old Tudor house on a quaint little street near the center of town. It was a large house for one person to live in, and I have no idea how she managed to afford it. She never worked much, except maybe at small secretarial positions throughout Providence, and none of the townspeople who were able to remember could tell me. I'll never forget the broad, tree lined backyard. I was often kept occupied back there for hours. Sometimes Aunt Flora would come outside and sit by the back of the garage with her head in her hands. She would sit under the ivy that was laboring toward the top of the steep, brick walls and watch me, but not in the same way that I'd catch mother looking at me in those years. Mother seemed always to be angry and sad at the same time. Aunt Flora would look on as I'd play my games with that same sadness, but there was also a subtle nostalgia in her pupils like the smell of wild roses in the wind. No, I was never bothered much by Aunt Flora's eyes, as gentle as they were, but sometimes they would infect me with her deep melancholy and I'd sit in the grass with my back to her, playing uneasily with the blades of grass until she had gone.

There were other times, though, when Aunt Flora would encourage me to continue with my games in greater earnest. Occasionally, as I was dancing through the yard or fighting off some great invisible monster, I'd catch a smile on her face that would provoke me to even greater feats of heroism. It was a rare smile, yes, but it was also one of the genuinely warmest forms of expression a sad, lonely old man like myself has ever had the good fortune to see. How big is it? she'd ask me as I defended her from some hideous snake-creature that had threatened without provocation. Fifty feet, Aunt Flora - no, more! And then she'd smile that wonderful smile and I'd only redouble my efforts.

But those were days when the sun was warm, in the spring or the summer. If ever I came during the winter the outside games were different and much less frequent. Aunt Flora didn't like me playing outside in the cold for too long because she feared I might get sick. So most of those winter visits were spent indoors looking out the window or listening to old records by a fire. And for the most part, this was how I passed the fourth week of February 1978.

I never liked Aunt Flora when she was upset. Her limbs would tremble, her eyes would grasp at the landscape, and at times she gave the impression that she was about to explode into a trillion bits of meaningless nothingness. I'd sometimes be left with nothing to eat. Not on purpose, I'm sure, but because my aunt had simply forgotten she was hungry. But Aunt Flora was calmer when we arrived at the house, and the next morning her disposition had improved even more. She even managed a smile for me from the doorway of my room. Later on, she cooked up eggs and bacon and hot chocolate for breakfast.

She showed me around the house. There were a lot of interesting things for a young boy to look at: giant fur rugs, old baseball cards, Indian mosaics, and other trinkets that confirmed the world had existed before I was brought into it. Flora had decorated her home well, had adorned the inside with a smoky array of colors you could taste. But color schemes and pretentious attempts at art did not interest me. I had an eye for the photographs, though. There weren't many, and what few she did have were of the same two people. She liked to ignore them, but my five-year-old mind was keenly interested in the still faces, one of which seemed awfully familiar.

Who's that? I finally asked her in the living room, pointing to an old, black and white photograph of a distinguished looking young man.

Who? Aunt Flora asked, turning around, and then she saw what I was pointing at. A brief look of pain agonized her features. No one, she told me coldly, and then she simply stopped. Her heart was still beating, of course, but her eyes glazed over and I guessed that Aunt Flora was somewhere far away, like mother had warned me sometimes happens.

While I waited for Aunt Flora to return I decided to look around by myself. It was only a moment before my youthful eye caught sight of the other captured face, this time encased in a gold picture frame on a table to the right of the fireplace. This was the familiar face, a photo of a young girl perhaps twelve years old in a plain dress. She was sitting in a high-backed wooden chair gazing meekly at the floor, her hands folded neatly in her lap. How curious she seemed. How old, as if the photo should have been dusty. Of course, at that age last week seemed long ago. But there was something misty behind that frame, and I remember thinking to myself that if anything in the world were older no one could remember it.

That, said Aunt Flora behind me, is your Aunt Dorothy when she was young, although she's older in that picture than you are now.

I started at the suddenness of her voice, but when I saw it was only my aunt I grew calm again. Turning back to the photo, I said, It looks so -

Old?

Yes.

It was a long time ago.

How long?

Seventeen years.

A moment of silence descended, and each of us followed our thoughts in virtually unrelated directions. After a moment, I said aloud, I've never seen her before.

Of course not. Aunt Flora replied strangely, taking me by the hand and leading me away. You're not old enough. We approached the front hallway where the stairs were. But before we left the room I caught my aunt stealing a glance behind her, as if to reassure herself that the faces in her living room were simply faces and nothing more.

Aunt Flora led me upstairs. She was quiet now, uneasily quiet, nodding meekly at the bathroom and the bedrooms and not even offering to show me what was in the closets. I was sorry I had shown her the picture. There was an ominous feeling emanating from her. I couldn't help but concentrate on it because there wasn't much to see up there, and even less that interested me. The atmosphere upstairs seemed to be sensitive to my intrusion. It had the guarded wariness of a place that is stuffed with secrets.

Directly across the top of the stairwell by a door that led into the guest room where I was sleeping there was a light gray, wooden wardrobe. It appeared sickly in a house that was overflowing with the rich textures of autumn. The keyhole was just above my head. I had to go by it each time I went in or out of my room, and each time that keyhole beckoned. Eventually, I stole a glimpse inside, but the darkness beyond was impenetrable and cold.

On our way back downstairs Aunt Flora noticed my lingering glances. For such a slow woman she was suddenly leading me quickly away. It seemed she was speaking before I had a chance to think about questioning her. Now don't you worry about that, David, she told me. I stole another glance behind. The wardrobe stared back at me blankly, a sleeping creature crouched on its haunches on the verge of waking. Then the stairs overcame my view. You've already seen too much for your own good. And, she continued as we headed for the kitchen, I don't advise your going near it again. There are monsters in there - big, fat, ugly creatures that are worse than the ones you pretend are running out back. And they're mean, David. Ruthless. They wouldn't think twice about gobbling you up for dinner! But don't you worry, she added, if you leave them alone they can't hurt you. The thing's locked, didn't you see? And with that she opened her cupboard. All the horror fell away and it was just me and Aunt Flora again, soon to be sitting by the fire in the living room sipping hot chocolate out of giant mugs and listening to Elvis on vinyl.

The snow started late in the afternoon of the twenty-eighth. As the evening got on, I could see that Aunt Flora was getting worried. There, she was trembling again, and weren't her eyes just beginning to flicker? She took her place by a rather large window in the living room, overlooking the street. From there she could watch the snow and wring her hands traumatically, sipping hot chocolate. A lot of hot chocolate was drunk that night, and I was thankful because it was one of those nights I didn't eat dinner.

The six o'clock news had reported that there was a huge storm at sea, a real Nor'easter from what I understand, moving westward, approaching the coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The weatherman in bellbottoms in front of the incandescent map had with a placid smile assured his viewers that only the tip of the storm would strike land. A couple of inches for the coastal areas that would melt by midmorning and that was all. Mothers needn't worry about getting their children to school, he told us. And fathers needn't worry about being stranded at home with their wives and children and a growing case of dangerously high blood pressure. He told us that, too, but in different words.

Despite his clammy assurances, Aunt Flora grew worried as the light faded from the sky and the snow started coming down more heavily, beefy flakes that appealed to me strangely. After all, when did good, clean snow that I could play in ever last in New York City? The snow had piled up more than a couple of inches before dinner, and by seven o'clock there were at least five.

It's not going to stop, I heard Flora cry to herself around quarter till eight. She was rocking herself like a sickly child in her chair, hot hands gripping her shoulders painfully and a cold mug of overturned chocolate lapping at her feet. She had wrung her hands red, and in the light from the street outside, as obscured as it was, I think I remember seeing little beads of sweat on her brow. I was crouched in the doorway, leaning against the frame, watching. My hands were near my face. I was probably pouting, too, but certainly not sucking my thumb. Mother had bitter tasting stuff for that. After a while I got up and ran away.

I wandered through the house, trying to forget Aunt Flora, touching this, touching that, until eventually I came upon another picture of my Aunt Dorothy. What a beautiful brass frame, and the same young girl's face. This time she was a bit older, perhaps nearing high school, and the face was colder. Blank, even, as if there were nothing behind it except a heartbeat.

I don't know exactly why Grandmother chose Dorothy. I think she was trying to make her strong. All I know is that Dorothy wilted in that harsh, Arkansas heat. Mother never liked talking about her. I know it's because she feels incredibly guilty. She treated her cruelly when she realized Dorothy would never fight back. She never admitted it to me, because always in her mind she was the proud martyr, but given how she treated her sons I know it to be true. Mother told me that Dorothy was odd and that she didn't want to talk about it anymore. Well, she told me a few other things, too.

When she was old enough to attend grade school one of Dorothy's teachers phoned the house. She was concerned, mother told me, because Dorothy had no friends, and wanted to inquire about her home life. Grandmother carried on such that the idealistic young woman was eventually fired. After that Dorothy was educated at home. She rarely went out, and when Grandmother wasn't lecturing her she was staring dumbly out a second-story window. I guess there was nothing to prevent her from losing herself in the abyss of silence she had opened inside. She was fading away, withdrawing into her own, private world. They all watched it happen and did nothing. And what world had she created for herself? No one can say.

When Dorothy was just twelve she had her first trance. She had been taking something out of the refrigerator when she simply stopped in mid-motion, staring off with pupils that were dead or made of glass. As if frozen, or time had stopped, she remained stuck until Grandmother slapped her effortlessly across the face. A bottle of milk fell from her twitching hand and shattered on the floor. What's the matter with you? Grandmother snapped. Clean that up at once! But Dorothy just blinked stupidly. She never realized what was happening. Once, mother told me, Flora found her in the bathroom with a toothbrush sticking eerily out of her mouth, her dead eyes fixed on the reflection in the mirror over the sink.

Dorothy was still breathing as I stood gazing that night at her picture, but the next she was no longer. The blizzard continued unabated, at times tapering off and then renewing its rage. Nature can, of course, be terrifying. So Aunt Flora could never have left, and all the phone lines were out of service. But I don't think Grandmother tried calling that night, anyway, although the blizzard turned out to be a magnificent excuse. When Aunt Flora spoke next to Grandmother it was a week later, and Barrington was sheathed not only in forty inches of snow but an inch and a half of beautiful ice as well. And sometime during the week they had buried Dorothy.

But I know now that Dorothy had died a long time before that, in 1955 to be exact. You see, her trances started lasting longer, arrived more and more frequently, until one day sometime around the time of year she died Dorothy fell into a trance from which she was never to emerge. Grandmother eventually sent her away to a state mental hospital in the middle of Arkansas somewhere, and what horrible things they did to her there I cannot say.

After the night of the first of March 1978 Grandmother's bitterness deepened. Was she punishing herself for murdering her daughter? All creatures die in some manner or another. Guilt? I never saw it on the woman's face, but perhaps. She did love her daughters, you see, although each in a different way she managed to destroy them all.

But I did not know any of this at the time, and I am glad I did not. After a minute I lost interest in the photo and wandered off again, this time heading for the stairs. In the patched darkness I passed the wardrobe, and a brief panic overcame me. For a moment, the thing loomed ahead and I thought I heard breathing inside. Terrified, I ran past it into Aunt Flora's bedroom. There I stood staring madly at the wall, following the shadows that shifted like phantoms, knowing that one of them was some monster's behind. But the fear quickly fell away, and I even felt brave enough to close the door. I walked around the place for a long moment, confused, bored, swinging my slim arms about me in the sea of darkness, of space. After a time, I found myself gazing out the window at the street below.

It was nearing nine-thirty on the first night of two long days, and the snow had gotten pretty high. Eight inches already, perhaps, and the dazzling snowfall only seemed to be growing heavier. The street was virtually invisible, the light from the street lamp a mere haze as the snowflakes, some as big as my hand, came shuffling easily towards the earth. But there was another light in the gloom, a light from the house across the street, and in the deep night I thought I could discern the vague image of a lonely face in a window upstairs, small and sad like my own, gazing with its own sense of wisdom on the world outside. And for a blinding instant it all seemed so suddenly familiar, as if I had been by this window before at this time of night thinking along relatively the same lines as I was then and seeing the same things.

Nothing more than a window in time, I guess, that for an instant had gazed upon itself.

Chapter 2

Perfect calm. That is what I have found after all. Many long years have passed since the time of the long ordeal. It was the time in my life that mattered the most, it seems, that set me inexorably on this path until now I am the man that I have become. For there is truth in the wisdom that a man is not entirely who he was until he is dead. Indeed, I can feel death hovering between the shadows somewhere close by, so dangerously close his presence is possible to mistake for violation. Of course, I may sense Azrael's interminable shadow because he is also come to claim the life of one of my dearest and, oddly enough, the last of the companions who traveled with me along that brazen road through destruction and rebirth. The one question that remains, though, after all these years, is why. Was the ordeal really necessary in light of the one mankind now endures? Perhaps there are not reasons for everything. Of course, it matters little now. Drusus is dying and I can feel that my time, at long last, is not far to follow. He lies alone in his house, where he always felt most comfortable, with only his rusty tales to keep him company. Alone, because Nancy died years ago, and here is a man who was never intended to endure solitude. He thrives in the presence of his fellow human beasts, such an exuberant and handsome young man, who eventually grew into a wise and handsome old man.

But he will not remain alone much longer, for I plan to go to him when I have finished with this nonsense. It is my opinion that, if he wants it done, the telling of this story is his duty. I do not think I can measure up to the task. Drusus remembers me when there was a spark of creativity there, but it died what seems ages ago. Just do it, he told me before I could begin to protest. You've said you have no stories. You've got one. He leaned closer, coughed painfully, and added, This is what you've been intending to do for some time. Perhaps. Perhaps I had entertained similar notions once, yes, but truly, I was never serious about them, and if you have any problems with what I'm going to write, Drusus, it's your own fault. It's what you're supposed to do, he told me in that pathetically exasperating voice of his. But all I am, all I ever was, is just another Joseph, a witness to somebody else's greatness. Drusus was always one to believe in supposed to or fate.

Of course, there is little time for distractions or digression, and I must hurry with this. I have locked myself and Angst in this house in Santa Cruz with food and drink for three months, with my computer, and next to me there is a gallon bag filled with three ounces of Northern Lights and a bong. There is no one left whom I suspect could disturb me, no family, no living friends except Angst. Of course, these are perilous times. I suspect my work will proceed reasonably quickly in the absence of interruption. When last I spoke to Drusus two days ago, he wanted to slip away and rest peacefully in Infinity, but I would not allow Azrael the pleasure. Somehow I managed to convince him to wait until after I arrive. Isn't there a price for everything?

But I am restless and still not entirely sure what it is he has talked me into. There are ghosts here, statues crouched around as if gathering and I know not what for. And these cackling angels at my back, how is it that I never managed to rid myself of them? Do I still live in fear? This is all so confusing. Everything has clouded over where I once thought I saw so clearly. Perfect calm? Can there be such a thing as lucidity when the vultures are plainly circling overhead?

Will there only be questions, to the very end, with no answers?

But there is also rebirth. Before the coming of the newness there must first be hardship, treacherous ordeals that eradicate what was before. Even for Creation there must first have been space. For men it is the same. Sometimes things must grow frightfully obscured before any clarity will emerge. There are rewards for enduring this subtle type of madness. Of course, the history of mankind has come to resemble a rather lengthy and compelling story, a serious pattern of switchbacks from upheaval to rebirth to upheaval again. From the womb of Earth towards mastery of his environment, from cultured beast to perverted moralism and now, sadly enough, to a meek attempt at something we aren't... and still the streets of the West simply reek of this fabricated morality. What sort of rebirth will embrace humanity this time? It is not for me to say.

There is so much that happened, and yet a proper beginning for this endeavor has thoughtlessly

Reviews for The Grey Life

[eheinlen_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As an editor, I had some structural and grammatical issues with this book, especially in regard to the author's lack of commas after prepositional phrases and his inconsistency in regard to his quotation marks. However, once I got past that, I found the concept and characters to be fascinating. The authors is, by far, a great storyteller and has the ability to draw you into his story. Great book, great author. I recommend this book!

[draak_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This is the story of David Berkowitz who while attending Johns Hopkins University fell in with a group of unlikely friends. There they do a lot of drugs, LSD, coke, and smokes a lot of weed. Life passes David by and he has done nothing with his life but it doesn't matter because David lives his life in the past and the girl he loved and lost. I really tried to like this book but found it tedious and confusing. I won this book from Goodreads.