The Birth, A Bizarro Tale

By Luke Ahearn

"Ahearn has created characters as impoverished as the desert shantytown they inhabit and yet, somehow, out of this loveless, hopeless landscape, has drawn up from the depth of the human spirit — fiery hope and unexpected love.

As brutal as a Tarantino movie and as tender as a sure-fire chick flick, A Birth traverses loneliness that doesn't even know that this condition has a name, let alone that it could change; ugliness that permeates every corner, and the utter absence of humanity — and out of this barren land mines the human heart for inborn capacities for survival fueled by love and garnished with hope. The results are characters to care about and journey with in their oddball road trip into redemption.

Bring on the sequel!"

- MaryEllen O'Brien, M.A.
Author, Clairvoyant Metaphysician
Energy Healer and Teacher
San Francisco, CA

• Language: English
• Publisher: Luke Ahearn
• Release date: Jan 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310999093

Luke Ahearn

I have been a professional game developer since 1992. I have functioned in lead positions; designer, producer, and art director on 9 published game titles and many unpublished titles. I have published 9 books on game development and many of them are in second and third editions.

Book preview

A Birth

Luke Ahearn

Copyright © 2012 Luke Ahearn

All rights reserved.

Distributed by Smashwords

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

ISBN-13: 978-1470082666

ISBN-10: 1470082667

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

DEDICATION

Julie, Ellen, Cooper

Curt and Helen

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to my editor

and to Jim Riordan at Seven Locks Press

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Part One

Apathy

Desperation?

Part Two

I Was Born

Return Home

Home Sweet Home

Another Body

Right Off, I Am Screwed

Shit Time

Still No Rocky

Doctor Your Wife Called

Doctor, You Are Full Of Crap

Spam

Darkness And Panic

Determined

On Track

And On Track

Now What?

On The Road Once More

Part Three

The Longest Walk Of My Life

The Embrace

The Best Chapter In The Book

No Return

INTRODUCTION

There is no way to introduce this story. It is a journey you must make, a tale you must read, what you get out of it will be invaluable and your own.

This is a long rambling tale I heard years ago while on the road. I want to tell the tale as accurately and unaltered as possible, drawing no conclusions nor making any judgments for the reader. But there are a few things you need to know about my approach to writing this book. First, I detest the condescending habit of writers of trying to overly illuminate or educate their readers. I will leave it to you to take what you will from this tale. But there are some liberties I had to take and decisions I had to make.

When it comes to time and chronological order I rearranged and consolidated parts of the tale for clarity. I had the luxury of asking questions pertaining to past events and outcomes as the tale was told, jumping in time when needed and revisiting events. I also was able to, over time, gather more of the details of the teller's early life, and finally I was forced to choose between one version of an event and another. After careful questioning I feel comfortable with the version I have chosen. As a result you will read a tale that is told more chronologically and flows more smoothly than in previous tellings, and one I believe is as accurate as possible.

I also loathe writers who inject themselves into the story as if they are part of the story. This trend has become even more noticeable to me in the dying mainstream media. Maybe it is just my observation that this has really gotten out of hand, or maybe it has always been this way; no matter, I didn't write myself into this tale. I told the tale to you from the teller as I heard it, thus the first person. It is the teller's voice, not mine.

A final thing to keep in mind: when the narrator speaks of things such as his town, school, or home — you will have preconceived notions about these things. I assure you, even the most spartan, austere, and wretched visions you may have will most assuredly not match up to what is being referred to by the narrator. In most cases, town means a few trailers in the desert and school means a smaller, hotter trailer with a few kids in it — and home — well that is a term not even in the universe of the narrator. Home seems to be a thing the narrator never experienced as most of us do.

Here is the tale. Get comfortable and take it in.

Luke Ahearn,

Monterey, CA

PART ONE

APATHY

I don't remember shit about my childhood. Or maybe I remember it all. It was so empty and boring that one moment was the same as the last and the same as the next. It was all heat, hunger and nothing else. It was like living in the desert, which was exactly where I was. A big, fucking desert with no oasis in sight. Had I known better I probably would have killed myself, but I was born with the switch still off. I had yet to give a shit about anything because I didn't yet know shit.

I guess my life started to change when my parents died, that was the first thing different enough in my life to form a milestone in thought. Before that, a blur, after that memories and feelings both good and bad, but mostly good. Let's just say my story starts at that moment. But the switch wasn't really on yet. I still didn't give a shit about anything. And it stayed that way for some time.

My past — barren and nothing sums it up. But that short phrase can't begin to describe the impact of such a long prison sentence. After my switch was on, that's how I thought of my past — a long prison sentence. I am still amazed I didn't kill myself. I mean now I couldn't let my time piss by moment by moment, day by day, week by week, until the years are draining out of my life...it makes me want to fucking puke and beat the shit out of someone. So how do I tell you volumes of wordless shit that comes from absolutely nothing? I can't.

But if you want an idea of how it was for me growing up, go and find a place you are uncomfortable in, so uncomfortable you just hate it. You hate it so much you can't think of a more miserable place to be. You start off mad and after a while you will just want to kill — yourself or anyone that happens by. But you have nothing you can do with your deadly anger. Maybe you turn it in on yourself, maybe others if they come around, maybe you hold it all in, or maybe like me you just don't feel it at all until one day when it hits you. When it hit me, when the switch was on, I went crazy for a bit.

I guess that sums it up. I survived because the switch was off. I didn't know I was in prison. I know now, now that the switch is on, I couldn't do that again, not even close to it.

So everything in the early years of my life was a fucking bore. A lot of nothing — very long, very quiet, very hot days with nothing to do and nowhere to go. But after my parents died and before the switch was really on, I started to come out of the haze and consider alternatives to how I was living. Some of those alternatives included crime, drugs and suicide. Being the empty bastard I was, I chose to do nothing for some time longer.

*

So I came home from school one day — I was a senior, and the house was empty. Being a senior meant nothing to me. I am not even sure what would have happened the following year had I returned to school. Probably nothing. I had been attending the tiny school for years and was 26 when the death of my parents caused me to stop attending.

School? It took me a longtime to realize that I wasn't ever at a school. There was never homework, tests, functions — nothing! The school had no name. I think it was actually a day care for kids of some nearby mine or farm. I never found out.

School was a small house miles from where I lived and miles from anywhere from what I could tell. The building was a rundown old house in the middle of nowhere. For all the years I attended all I did was sit and stare half the day, eat what I could find (which was usually scraps left by the six or eight other kids in the school) and then start the long journey home.

The kids were always changing — a perpetual group of kids that were six to ten years old. It was never the same kids. The teachers changed as much too, always an older lady, always disinterested in being at the school and always ignoring me. I don't know what they thought of me.

I was told once I was a freshman in high school, or should be, and that was only a few