Dawn

By Xavier Cockroachal Damon

Dawn is the story of the man as he crawls through his, quote, life, close quote, through what he sees as an ever ugly world, encountering characters along the way, all of whom he very much wishes he had never encountered at all...except for one. The book begins with the man awaking on a beach, unsure of where he is. The man eventually finds his way back home, only to find he in no way knows the people inside and recognizes none of the belongings within it. At some point, he encounters a woman who is on a beach that is atop a cliff, the man having no memory of how he got there. But, who is she? Who is he? Through a wasteland, the man, he crawls, from nowhere to nowhere, sardonic commentary of the dark comedy of a broken record. Existence? Persistence? And on, he crawls, but remembers the one beauty as he does. Crawling and crawling, but leading to what...Where is it all going?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xavier Cockroachal Damon
• Release date: Nov 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215709061

Xavier Cockroachal Damon

I have written fourteen books, six under the name, Xavier Cockroachal Damon, six under the name, Aaron Aaronson, and two under the name, Mark Comstock. The books consist of novels and collections of stories and all have a lot of dark humor, often very dark. The books could be considered bizarre, outrageous, absurd and audacious. They are uncompromising, unconventional, irreverent and most definitely off the beaten path. Also, contrary to some reports, Xavier Cockroachal Damon is not the absolute worst and dumbest pen name of all time.

Book preview

The morning sun stepped out into the sky like an awkward child on their first day of school.

It nervously maneuvered its path around the clouds, fearful of the jeers and ridicule from those, dark and grey, stumbling through AM air, the in crowd of the night just passed. No love lost between day and night, and don’t believe what the night tries to tell you, a thinly veiled mask of supremacy refusing to give an inch. Both so dread when their paths must cross, wretched twilight, most wretched dawn, both are time nonexistent, a vacuum of separation.

Beneath the changing of the guard lay a man, personally of the opinion that both day and night could go fuck themselves, once again awaking to be raped by the morning air as it crept across his weary body with unfriendly hands, brutal and reaching with their own desire, its target just a piece of clay, a game, a toy.

The man pulled himself up and sat up from where he was lying upon the sand, eyes staring out at the sea, a seagull drifting in the morning breeze, the carpet ride of flight for which no wings were needed, flowing through the red sky, like a single snowflake caught in a breeze, and then, with a squawk wings were engaged and off it flew beyond the horizon, an eager morning tide crashing upon the ground, spilling its touch to the man’s bare feet as he sat upon the sand, sticking a cigarette to his mouth like a broken machine going through the motions. He turned to his right, his bag was still there.

A foghorn call stirred him from the half sleep he had not the sense to know he was in, a dedicated drifter of the sea passing through the morning’s mist, creeping across the ocean like a snail without ambition. Those ambitious snails, speed demons.

The man responded to full consciousness by looking down to his feet burrowed halfway in the sand. He looked down at his legs leading them there. There were three craters dug deep into the flesh of his right calf, encircled by red with gentle kisses, favors returned for the fiery assault upon the skin. And as he stared down at this, a first morning’s coherent thought muffled somewhere in his mind, ‘Where the hell are my shoes?’

He took a deep drag from his cigarette, releasing a puff of smoke sent to join the clouds but somewhere stalked and dragged into the humidity of the air. The thirsty sky was always dry, needing blood to pretend that it’s alive, and just like that the sky was struck by the dreams of a benefactor, deciding to give something back to the dead, to each and all, so graciously granted, a brand new water bed.

Man upon the sand was now man upon the mud, torrential downpours sweeping over in droves and buckets, throwing in even the kitchen sink which also sprung a leak, drenching the man’s cigarette to a shredded tobacco water filter, but what the hell, the man was thirsty too, though thirsty of a different sort, and at least he, unlike the sky, had sense enough not to spit it to the ground.

The man pulled a bottle of vodka from his bag, a bottle of vodka stretching the truth, more accurately almost a bottle of air, shallow stream clinging to the bottom, reduced to a plastic floor with a gulp. Oh crap, announced the man to the air, having just encountered the most egregiously vile of all resource depletions. ‘Where the hell am I?’ he thought to himself.

It was rain, the same as headfirst into a pool, drenching to the bone and then water damage to the bone as everything upon your person would need a summer week upon, not under the sun to make it to that damp, half dry state of in between discomfort. Of course, everything upon his person consisted of a sleeveless t-shirt and a pair of shorts. No shoes, no socks.

I mean I had shoes yesterday, didn’t I? What the hell kind of idiotic activities can a person engage in that would lead them to lose their shoes? I did actually have shoes yesterday, though, right? At least I think so. Mustn’t I have. I think. He said out loud to himself. Hmm, come to think of it, I actually, really don’t even know. Why did this stick with him? Certainly a valid question because unquestionably there were things that had transpired which he had no memory of having transpired during drunken nights, these things, they were so many worlds more bizarre than a pair of lost shoes, the fact he would in any way react to this, well, who can say.

The man shook his head and raised the bottle to his mouth, forgetting of course that it was now empty, though not technically empty in fact for his lips were met by a rush of water that had snuck in from the sky above, the man then slumping down onto the sand as it wrapped around his skin like a fat, sixty year old man upon a prostitute, and the water soaked clothes he wore clung to his skin with a heavy discomfort of abrasion like the sixty year old man’s father, also stricken with poison ivy, oak, and poison of his breath, waiting in line for his turn. Hmm, pleasant image indeed.

Where the hell am I? said the man out loud.

The man looked around, searching for landmarks, an action which yielded no presidents, so rule out Rushmore, no waterfalls, so fuck Viagra, pardon me, cheap, senseless, supposed slip of the tongue, Niagra. No, oh so big buildings, tourists snapping pictures galore as though they’ve never seen a structure bigger than their trailer, so he obviously wasn’t sitting outside Empire State, King Kong either yes or no intertwined upon it. No Sears Tower, no Needle frometh Spaceth eithereth. There was only the ocean and the sand, a distinction touching millions of corners of the globe, the world within a circle, an endless dissection of every direction.

Goddamn, stupid, fuckin, wretched world. Goddamn, stupid, fuckin, wretched, quote, life, close quote. He began to raise the bottle to his lips again, remembering the liquid he sought had already departed down his throat. Shit. He tossed the empty bottle to the ground.

Of course, there was a boardwalk, so that had to narrow it down, I mean it wasn’t like every beach didn’t have a fuckin boardwalk, boardwalks were mandatory, governmental decree, for when there was no boardwalk the sidewalk became the boardwalk, and when there was no sidewalk a piece of cardboard was tossed to the sand, a sign hung over it like a moron’s joke, ‘See this, this is the boardwalk!’, though the frailty of every joke is that never was it actually one.

So returned the sun to add the non-drying heat and discomfort to the inane, brief emotional breakdown of the sky, biding its time, counting the seconds of the impromptu downfall to reemerge into tyranny, the sun a bastard that bleeds as it burned somewhere deep within the sky. The man pulled out and lit another cigarette. ‘Where the fuck am I?’

Attempted recall yielded no elucidation. Yup, yet another one, in the endless stream of ones, another one of those nights. Sure as hell felt that way.

The man sat for a few minutes, trying to remember the night before. Nothing.

At this point, post whatever having whatevered, the sky running its gamut aside from snow, though I’m sure it tried, the assault from above reduced to only the air, dry ice sweating, there was only one thing left to do, find out where the fuck he was and make his journey home. Where, once there the man could then get really friggin drunk and then fall, falling really more his style, not drifting to sleep.

First problem of no other choice was a problem already penned, the not knowing as it pertains to where the hell he was, the man not even sure what state he was in, um, OK, figuratively and more importantly literally.

Finding a train in the blank space of your mind is about as likely as finding an oasis in the desert...Nope, no luck, the water was already dry.

The man began walking, leaving the heaving sea behind like a one night stand mistake who can’t get the point. I was drunk, OK, I didn’t know what I was doing. The waves crashed with the crackling ripples of the screams of the sky, a car into a wall, spouting the helpless words of anger, a bout of fury, the grumblings of the sea, forever churning, burning, swirling, spinning, too far in or too far out, so goes the curse of tides, as the ocean raged with a final crash upon the shore, then said no more, tame in the face of its own impotence, parting words to steps that trail away from its pendulum.

Everyone’s pissed off today, it seems.

The man found himself upon a street, cars occasionally making their way before him, the still of the air napping, napping even with its dead breath. The man had the foresight at this point, cars passing by, foresight and the man, frequent strangers, but here he did and so he checked the passing license plates. New York...New York...New York...Wonderful. The man was in New York. He assumed it was a part of New York City, that Godawful city in this Godawful world, but the place in this Godawful world which was the place within which he actually, word chosen carefully, resided.

The man turned to stare down both ends of the street. He spotted a subway stop. He walked to it and made his way down the steps within the early morning urine serenade. What he wanted he had obtained, a somewhat simple path to his destination, a path conveyed by a mistimed intercom, lips without allegiance to words. He walked down and stood by the track. As the only figure within the rather large room it really didn’t do it justice but justice it most definitely did not deserve, an airport beneath the ground, silo of the misbegotten, the D train, OK.

Moments passed, a screeching approaching from down the tracks, like the ruptured gears of a tank lost in the night. Then the lights appeared, like hands unraveling the darkness of the tunnel, the screeching grinding to a halt, suspended with a hum and then a beep and then the doors slid open and the man stepped in upon the train, floor red like the sky he sought to escape. Quite the stylistic choice for a subway train floor.

The man took a seat, one of many within the car, two figures the only population of this particular overcrowded world, too close for comfort from a mile away, one of them smoking a cigarette. The train rumbled through the underground. The man decided to follow suit and lit up a cigarette, as well. Sirens sounded just for pleasure, echoing beneath the earth, cries that met no rescue. And so the train glided, two other passengers within the car, too close for comfort from a mile away, but proximity was narrowed by the inching movements of one of the men, sliding nearer along the seats within half blinks of no control, face becoming clearer, body then slumping down onto the seat then onto the floor he tumbled and fell. And there he would remain, because it was then clear it was his wrists the brush that painted the floor. And now he was most definitely dead. The man took a deep drag from his cigarette.

The train screeched to a halt. The other man departed, doors closing, synchronized with his exit, and the other man turned and spoke something to the man though the man did not know what the words were and again the train it carried on, only the man within the car, um, and, well, of course the other guy who slit his wrists and was dead on the floor. Move to another car? Might that make sense? But the man did not. He kind of liked the décor, it gave him thoughts of that day when he might enter the same door. And on the train it rolled.

The lights above dimmed into darkness, then flared back, then dimmed slowly out again then roared back with a blade that sliced the pseudo night, the scream of the train barreling into darkness, collision causing flashback to the opaque sea, whitefaces pale as an albino’s eyes, so white yet blaring red within. They knew no bodies, nor form, nor voice, they only knew the air they floated within, psychedelic butterflies, peeling open into caterpillars, crawling across the skin...The man awoke. He turned and looked out the window, city skylights dulled by morning surroundings, passing before his eyes. The man looked to the floor, the man with his wrists slit was no longer there. The sun was bright so he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, it revealed actual houses outside the window, the train passing by above them. The morning sun was brighter now, carving through the window like a stalker with a blade. Eyes closed again...They reopened to find the man on the sidewalk, walking, the fade ins and fade outs of nighttime escapade, saving grace, he was heading home, soon to be over...‘So why did it ever begin?’

The wind blew against his face, a kiss from that haggard, morning beast who waits outside her house, scantily clad, the morning breath blowing from a retired whore to simply send you to bed.

‘My bed...My bed...My bed...’ No matter what tangents were so embarked, it always was the end of any night. After, of course, a date with a bottle.

The steps were few at this point, the man thinking back to the opaque wall of a broken, old ass eight millimeter, flashes poking faces within the air, dismissed as another pseudo dream.

Down the sidewalk the man’s feet tread, draining with each step, like a baby pool also draining, Tiny Tim within house or pool? Don’t want to get sued. ‘Um, pool is draining, what the hell could happen to Tiny Tim except not getting wet? What, does the little dude have fuckin gills?’ OK. No further proof needed, time to get