Life, Lies, and the Little Things

By Brandon Mason

A young, successful lawyer faces an unexpected reality after his compulsive lying comes to a disturbing end. This existential crisis begins an elusive, often painful, journey of self-discovery that delves into the relativity of time and freedom, the permanence of balance and love, and maybe most importantly, the limitations of good will and honesty. An unlikely friendship and spontaneous encounter with an unprecedented perspective test the possibility of complete honesty, or better yet, if possible, the significance of its appeal. Life, Lies, and the Little Things pushes the boundaries of the traditional novella, remaining short enough to keep the casual reader fascinated until the final page, but containing enough depth and development to leave lovers of literary fiction re-reading again and again. This read delicately balances the philosophical and thought-provoking with pure, page-turning fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brandon Mason
• Release date: Oct 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310691058

Book preview

Life, Lies, and the Little Things

Story by

Brandon Mason

~~~

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2015 by Brandon Mason. All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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 book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 1

I sat in a tepid, dark space, contemplating the ever challenging task of deciding what to write about. Of course, I was conditionally faced with the equally unnerving dilemma of whether or not anyone could feasibly give a damn about what I had to say. I hadn't been able to bring myself to play in several days, which seemingly deemed the pen to be my only escape, through torment or salvation. The attempt to narrow down emotions and experiences into something as tangible as consonants and vowels, or ink and paper, seemed almost vain. Yet there are countless stories begging to be told, over seven billion living, breathing ones today, each one unique, yet equally valuable. The weight of them all, and the prospect of failing to do them justice, seemed, and quite frankly still seems, unbearable. Through all my anxiety and self-doubt, I recalled that I could not abandon the lonesome, searching souls. By nature, I would be neglecting my own self. As I stared, rather expressionless, at the blank paper before me, the familiar sound of the repeated clicking of my pen penetrated my train of thought.

Click, click. Click, click. Click, click.

I immediately thought of Waldin.

Such a similar sound had once unconsciously, yet so significantly, altered the course of his life.

There are few things that come more naturally to us in life than lying. We lie as soon as we realize that obscuring the truth often leads to a multitude of benefits, starting with our parents’ attention and ending with our positive reputation after we pass. We lie almost exclusively out of self-interest, yet occasionally we lie for the sake of those we truly care about, or at least we tell ourselves so. It is a common perception that a person’s intellect can be most accurately measured by their ability to lie—their competence in the art of deception. It is also a fairly shared opinion that lying, whether to one’s self or to others, is the source of all iniquity and the gravest form of betrayal. Though I see it is not my place to impose a judgment of acceptance or rejection on either thought process, their tandem beckons a rather interesting question about human intellect. On a simpler note, for one reason or another, we all lie.

I lie.

Waldin lied.

Waldin lied starting at a young age, primarily in order to spare his own image and that of his family. His experience in school was less a learning venture, and more a constant attempt to blend in and appear normal, when he was nothing of the sort. He lied about his parents’ jobs, sometimes claiming they were a salesman and nurse, at other times a teacher and engineer. In reality, his mother and father were in and out of multiple blue collar jobs their whole lives and sacrificed immensely in attempt to write a different narrative for him.

His parents lived vicariously through him, but not in an overbearing soccer mom or an elitist alumni—set on his kid going to his alma mater—kind of way. College was never an option for his mother, who—after her single mother finally stopped taking her pills—had to play mom for two younger brothers, one of whom couldn’t seem to keep his veins clean. While most girls her age were just trying not to get pregnant, she already had two kids at home, who she was barely older than. She lived her youth in the brief lulls when stomachs were full and everything wasn’t intolerably filthy yet, indifferently smoking a cigarette or flipping through endless pages of shit she’d never have. One day she was a teenager; the next she was twenty-three and nothing had changed except for the death of her mother, which at that point was barely a change at all. And then, of course, she met a young man who had been working at the factory since his awkwardly large frame could lift fifty pounds of nails. He was five years her elder but the constant stress and chain smoking left them equals in appearance. Waldin came along only a year after they met, and before either of them thought about school or a real career, they were working overtime to pay for diapers, not classes. As soon as they could, they committed themselves entirely to ensuring that Waldin had, at the very least, an opportunity to be as free as they never were.

They couldn't manage to send him to a private school, and, trust me, they would have if they could have, so they made damn sure they gave him the closest thing. They put him through it all—the summer arts programs, rhetoric classes, cello lessons, a new Rosetta Stone every year through high school, club sports—and he lied through each one. They were reluctantly forced to settle for the best charter school they could find. It was small school on the west side, populated mostly with the kids of the city's elite and business owners, who were too progressive to send their kids to private school and shelter them from the real word. One can imagine how well Waldin got along with a bunch of rich kids who wanted to be down to earth and tolerant, minus the whole poverty and trying life experience part. All of his friends had far more than him, materially speaking, yet appearances never revealed their socio-economic difference. He took two buses and a train across town to school, from 7th grade through high school, and never got jumped or mugged, or even hustled for money. It's funny how being completely broke works out sometimes.

Naturally, he concealed the fact that he hated the school and its meaningless politics, and, to be fair, in his more ignorant days he was rather indifferent to it. In retrospect, he always felt guilty for his parents giving so much of themselves for things he never had the heart to tell them he didn’t care about. Waldin lied daily in school, with cliché, premeditated answers, and became an expert at telling people what they wanted to hear, which was rarely the truth. He lied during high school when his father fell