Impossible Knots

By K.P. DeLaney

Life in Sycamore is numbingly predictable until a tornado hits and the town falls suddenly dark during a heatwave. Damien, a young, struggling writer, starts to flounder while his love for Violet, along with his war with addiction, begins to rage in the abrupt darkness. When Violet takes off on the run, Damien is left in another menacing spiral, this time of his own mess. Finding comfort in the rain, and in the company of Alina, he attempts to piece himself back together. As the sweltering summer rolls on, Damien's world unravels further when he's urged to question reality on his path to getting clean. Impossible Knots explains the fragility of the mind when moments in life go haywire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098380113

Book preview

Dark.

1.

The clicking of his Underwood typewriter echoed in the dimly lit room. Although using a typewriter was tedious, he liked it because there was no room for error. It made him focus on what he was writing because once you punched a key, the ink was on the paper. It could not be unwritten. He welcomed that sort of challenge, like walking on a tightrope. He drank fine whiskey as words spilled out of his guts leaving him fulfilled and eventually tired. On certain nights he took a pill or two to help him fall asleep. Nothing too intense, a simple double dose of diphenhydramine would suffice. Unfortunately, that night he realized he was out of the beautiful blue pills that helped him sleep so he kept drinking whiskey and writing. Words kept falling so he kept writing… and drinking. It was as if the whiskey had lit his brain on fire and ignited his synapses. He stopped and hesitated at one point thinking it was way too much whiskey for a Wednesday night, but when the words were flowing and his blood was banging, nothing was going to stop him. When he reached for one more whiskey, he discovered that he had polished off an entire fifth over the course of the night. He wondered how he was still coherent but was not going to argue it.

He fell asleep and had a horrible dream about a car hitting a girl on a bike on his street, only it was not his street in the dream. It was the street he grew up on. The car that hit the girl was a white car just like his. Everything was a blur, yet it felt so real. He woke up terrified in a sweaty fog and he noticed a couple of blue pills on his nightstand. He must have gotten them from the store before going to bed.

He took a hot shower and readied himself for the day. He was going to work on stories at the café. After he got out of the shower, he went looking for the pants he had worn the day prior because he had only worn them once since their last wash. Usually depending on the pants, you can get several wears out of one wash. He discovered he had in fact put them through the wash. He thought to himself, Maybe I was not as coherent as I thought I was. Then he shook his head at the empty fifth of Knob Creek whiskey on the counter. As he approached his car, he noticed it was parked half on the driveway and half on his lawn. When he got in, he saw a bottle of antihistamines on the passenger seat tipped over sideways. There were blue pill capsules all over the seat. One by one they made a rattling sound as he dropped them back in the container with his nervous hand.

He looked around to make sure everything in his vicinity was intact. He sighed in relief, as it seemed to be. He waved at a gaggle of neighbors standing in a circle talking out in the street as he began to drive. Just up the street from his house he noticed Gerould, his grandfatherly neighbor had been attempting to crop his hedges, which looked to be in utter disarray. He gulped as beads of sweat began to form on his forehead. He cranked the air conditioner and adjusted the vents, so they blew hard onto his face. He proceeded to drive through town to the café to write.

2.

He started writing Heavy Orange, a love story about a boy and a girl who lived in an imaginary town called Orange years ago. In his head he was a novelist who had never completed a novel. He ignored that and wrote anyway, but he kept getting stuck and throwing it away repeatedly. Yet he could not give up on it. He would not. But he walked away from it once he got a job as a writer for the Sycamore Lake Chronicle, the paper-thin newspaper that was distributed daily to the wealthy homes that surrounded Sycamore Lake. The most difficult thing he found as a writer for the Sycamore Lake Chronicle was that things rarely occurred in Sycamore. The lake was a bowl surrounded by miles and miles of greenery. It was a summer town where people owned second homes. The winters were harsh, so by Labor Day the town was completely sober. He grew up there and was okay with it. He went away to college but returned. Everyone always returned. He could work from anywhere he wanted so he spent most mornings at Eden's Cafe, located right where the two streets that wrapped around the lake connected.

It was a Thursday, exactly one month removed from his thirtieth birthday and it was another thick hazy Sycamore Lake summer morning. The air felt like walking through a car wash, only not as clean. It had not rained in two weeks; the lake was frozen still with occasional blips from the life that existed beneath the surface. Porter, Damien’s best friend was playing chess against Ernest on his break during his shift at the bookstore. Ernest hung out at the café all day seeking out chess victims. He rarely lost a match. The bookstore was right next to the cafe, in fact you could access either from the inside ever since Franklin Scott bought the café and knocked a wall out. The morning rush of regulars was a little swollen for various reasons, most notably the free air conditioning. Martha and Claire Fairchild, twin sisters who had to be at least eighty years old sipped on black tea while playing checkers. They constantly bickered with one another like you would expect old twin sisters to do. No matter how warm the summer gets, hot beverages always taste good in the morning. Old Milton Brewer who was pushing ninety, sipped on pink lemonade beneath his fedora while his shaky hands struggled to write inside the lines of the word jumble he was attempting to conquer. It was good to see that you could reach ninety and still enjoy lemonade. Though it was disheartening to learn that there were no such things as pink lemons. Thomas Hassle and Zane Miller, two twelve-year old boys were drinking chocolate milk. Thomas was reading a comic book and Zane was filling in a mad lib and giggling when he read the funny words back to Thomas. Shae Middough was reading Curious George to her son. Shae had a hard luck story but overall, she was happy. Porter was waiting in line for coffee when he noticed her. She looked up from the book and gave a slight wave of her hand towards him. He smiled and waved back. Alina, the barista, floated about zigging and zagging throughout the room taking care of each patron. She was new to the café, but she seemed to be handling everything quite well.

Damien had been writing for the Sycamore Lake Chronicle for about a year now. And almost every day that year he went to Eden's. He ordered the same drink and sat in the same chair in the same front window so he could look out at the lifeless parking lot. He read various American literature when he wasn't writing, mostly short stories because he never had the time nor the patience to read long ones. He found comfort in the sameness. He ate things like croissants and other pastries that went well with black coffee. This particular day he was watching pigeons eat gravel out in the lot. It was July and the sun was so hot that the blacktop was a rolling wave. He was supposed to be writing a story for the Chronicle about the history of summertime in the town and the future happenings in the remainder of July and August. Instead he was reading his manuscript and growing frustrated at it. His attention span was short, he kept glancing out at the pigeons on the pavement and rereading the same sentences three or four times over before barely comprehending them. He grew annoyed and proceeded to the restroom to disrupt the flow of his annoyance. The room smelled of some kind of exotic familiar loveliness. But nothing you would ever use in your own home. He stood staring straight at the ridiculous floral pattern on the wall trying to make sense of the design as he took an eye watering orgasmic piss. There is no better feeling he thought, than the release of pressure. A feeling so good that moisture seeps from your eyes.

When he returned to his seat he noticed that the barista had refilled his coffee. He looked over at her as he took a sip gesturing gratitude with his eyes. She smiled back. He thought it was funny with her being new there that she knew he would want a refill. She was very pleasant; her voice was soft and kind. She was not young, but far from old. She seemed to have a perfect way about her. He would be lying if he said his mind automatically did not think about her in ways that he should not be thinking about her. Like the length of her blonde hair if she let it down. And what she looked like with nothing on in a dimly lit room. He was too shy though and would rather be invisible with his somewhat sleazy thoughts of her than to approach her and make things awkward. He gave up on his manuscript and diverted his attention to the pigeons, still pecking at pebbles in a now more crowded parking lot. The cafe grew busier as the humid morning dragged on.

As he flipped through the pages of Heavy Orange and read over sentences and notes that he had made about sentences, he grew frustrated. He looked at the two boys drinking chocolate milk and then over at Milton Brewer and then he looked at the twin sisters and their white scraggly hair, and then over at Liam, Shae’s son reading Curious George. His eyes were pinballs bouncing around a falsely lit machine.

He finished his coffee and ordered an ice water with lemon from Alina in attempt to calm his blood. He squeezed juice from the lifeless fruit into his tall glass of sweating condensation and then began writing in his notebook. Writing was the only spice he had in his vanilla life other than Violet. He wrote frivolous poetry as the morning crept into the afternoon and eventually went on his way. He grinned nervously at Alina and exited the cafe. He walked across the quicksand parking lot, and up through Main Street of the lifeless town, his mind wandering aimlessly about different things like if pigeons could swim and how he would not mind having a conversation, or several conversations with Alina.

When he returned home his house was dark and cool. The familiarity of it alone calmed his caffeinated blood. He thought again about the different faces in the cafe. The different ages of them made him wonder about how mystical life is. He looked at the clock and decided it wasn't too early to pour a whiskey. He pulled the thick pile of pages called Heavy Orange from his backpack and sat them in a neat pile in front of him. He took a sip of whiskey and then lit a clove cigarette. He took a hit off the cigarette and exhaled the white smoke into the surrounding air. Normally he didn't smoke inside but today he felt careless. He took the cigarette and held it to the corner of the manuscript pages, and he let the embers soak into the paper. It took little time for the pages to ignite. He held the stack as long as he could before the flame started to climb up towards his wrist. He dropped it into its own ashes so it could finish destroying itself. He swept up the ashes and dumped them into the waste basket on the side of his desk. He decided it was probably a bad idea to let it burn inside the house but it was too late now and he was still beyond caring. He opened his laptop and stared at a clean white page. He took another sip of whiskey and began writing.

3.

Violet found herself lonely that evening. She had felt that way more often than not lately. Was it because she was floundering through the age all her friends were getting married and starting families? She refused to answer the question and thereby give in to the bourgeoisie and let her life be dictated by time. Time controls everything. It’s the antithesis of freedom. The only time you can actually feel alive is when you forget about time and then the time passes and you're left feeling dead again. What she never realized was that she never could commit to anything. Deciding what to have for dinner was one of those unavoidable demons in her life. If she were to get married it would probably be to Damien she thought. She didn't necessarily love him, he was just someone with whom she was comfortable. He was really all she ever knew. Does love even matter so long as you’re comfortable? Her phone rang, it was Damien. She felt compelled to answer. But why? If she didn't necessarily love him why did she feel so compelled to answer?

She walked out of her apartment, down the steep dark stairway to the street. With each step the sounds of the bar growing louder. The dirty neon light puked across the sidewalk as her shadow followed her into the night. She lived above a bar called Rooster's and it was exactly the type of joint you would expect it to be with a name like Rooster's. She thought it was funny that all the time she had lived above the bar, she had never gone in for a drink. So she made a choice to change that. She walked in through the rickety door into the empty pour house. There were two people playing billiards, three others sitting at the bar by themselves, a couple in the corner unscathed by anything outside of one another and their cocktails and the bartender who looked worn. There is such a sadness to these places she thought and dove into a double whiskey, neat. The music was loud and from another era and not very good. The clanging of billiard balls startled her every time she fell into a thought. She asked for an ice cube, the circumstances of the sweltering summer called for it. Normally she would argue watered down whiskey is a waste of good whiskey. The ice numbed your taste buds masking the beautiful aromas and flavors that danced on her palate. She hated that, but tonight the cold appeared much more appetizing.

She struck up a conversation with the barkeep, her name was Bev, she had crossed paths with her quite often what with living upstairs and all but had never stopped to say hello or anything. As noisy as the room was she thought, it’s a wonder how she ever slept at all. She listened as Bev talked about her life, about a man she used to know. She sounded as if all men did her wrong and here she was in making a living serving drinks to mostly men at a bar called Rooster's. It was if she were an apparition. Bodies passed her by and no one ever saw her. It made Violet sad but not for Bev's sake, for her own. Her entire life had passed her by and what did she have to show for it? A job arranging flowers and an apartment over a hole in the wall bar. The sound of nothing pierced her. It was a lonely noise, shrouded in lonely lights, in a lonely room, filled up with the loneliest souls. It was as if you poured any empty glass into another empty glass. Still empty. Always empty.

Her phone rang again, snapping her out of the solemn residue that she picked up in conversing with Bev. It was Damien; she ignored it without thinking. She barely noticed Damien was in fact trying to fill her glass, he always had been. She had no excuse to be lonely other than the fact that deep down she liked it. Halfway through her whiskey she got up and put Bowie on the jukebox. The room didn't seem to agree with Bowie but it allowed it. She danced to Diamond Dogs alone, laughing in a room full of strangers. She finished her whiskey and ordered another, and then one more. Three doubles had her feeling warm and right at home. She walked outside into the thick night swaying side to side between each of the concrete squares that one by one made a path for her. It was dark but she was smiling. She walked over the bridge towards Damien's place. He was on the balcony having a smoke. He jokingly commented that he thought she had fallen off the planet, pointing out her ignorance of his phone calls. He acted playful like he wasn't bothered. But he was certainly bothered. She laughed and joked