Seeds

(It's coming)
(It's coming)

And you walk past three different sandwich places
And you think about that time
In the little manufactured home
In the orange groves
The sandy front yard
The way it smelled like rot and swiss cheese inside
Somebody told you it was a chemical they used in making the house
Somebody told you it was formaldehyde
(But isn't that what they pickle the frogs in
In high school?
This wasn't like that)

Anyway, you were visiting relatives in Florida
It was a horrible time, you remember tension
Your dad, mom, a grandfather and one of a succession of wives
Everybody so weird and uncomfortable
No one able to say their feelings

You remember your grandfather
Laughing
Using some weird trick to hurt your fingers
Something he learned in the Marines
Out of nowhere
Why would he do that
Insecurity, maybe
Something about your youth really pisses him off

Late that night you're trying to sleep
And suddenly it's there with you
A demonic presence
For no reason at all
(You weren't thinking about demons)

Out of nowhere
A fault cracked open
In the foundation-stone of your mind
And the gate swung wide
And there it was
You were raised to believe hell wasn't real
Your people didn't teach fire and brimstone
Only love and gentle disappointment
But there was definitely

(It's coming)

There was definitely a demon that night
So close
So present
So happy to be here
So pleased by your terror
The abject shriek in your mind
The perfect silence
As you tried not to wake your parents up

There was definitely a demon that night

It took hours
Or maybe it took all night
To come back from that
To close the gate
To decide that wasn't real
It hadn't happened

Over a long enough period
Anything can be rationalized
Anything can be explained away
Anything can be forgotten, mostly

You saw visions other times
Once, after you'd stayed out all night praying
You saw the prophets
Looking down on you from heaven
But that was when you were trying
That might have been psycho-somatic
You're not sure about God, after all

But you weren't trying at all that night
And you have a nagging sense
There might be a hell
Contrary to what you were taught
Love seems rare in the universe
And pain seems common

There are images you can't get out of your head
Not just the stuff everybody thinks about
Genocide and torture
It's not a theodicy problem
It's the comical, idiotic stuff that you can't shake:
That guy who got boiled alive in the oven at a canned tuna factory
Or — as a ragged ex-divinity student asked once
When you were pontificating about God's great mercy,
If only one asked for it —
"Do you really think the children who died in abandoned refrigerators
Didn't pray?"

Anyway
It always seemed like
(When you looked back on it)
Like there were only two possibilities for that night
Either you had a psychotic break,
Er somehow
You'd slipped the surly bonds of earth
Put out your hand
And touched the face of hell

All this is why you don't have anything to say
When your boy tells you
That he is seeing cracks in reality

Or that he doesn't like to be alone
That's why he's always watching those dumb YouTube videos
If the TV's not on, he feels like someone is there
Someone is watching him
This sounds like the kind of thing a kid would say
In a Hollywood movie,
In a Very Serious Voice
But he says it kind of casually
Like it's just a normal explanation
Like demons are just something you live with

You want to protect him
Like that old TV show where William Shatner
Switches places with his kid
(And how the hell would that even work?
Does the kid go to the office every day?
Does he learn accounting?)
To protect him from the playground bullies
Who are supernatural
And never get any older

But first
How can you protect him
When you believe him?
Either you're crazy
Or there really are demons
And a gate to hell
That sometimes gets left open

And second
Maybe those demon bullies from the Shatner movie
Are onto something
Never getting any older
Because it doesn't really matter
If you could protect him from bullies
And tuna ovens and refrigerators
(And schizophrenic breaks)
All those exotic horrors

Because you can't protect him from the inevitable
The obvious
The mundane disappointment of life
Every year there's another flavor you can no longer taste
You think maybe it started with sno-cones
Strawberry wafer cookies
Fried chicken
Coke
Those things that used to give you so much pleasure
You really tasted them

But
If the young kids of today will allow you a metaphor
From another time
The grooves in your favorite song get worn down

That song you loved in high school
Driving around with your friends late at night
No parents
Slight tinge of sex laid over everything
Not knowing you'll listen to that song a thousand times
Washing dishes, or changing a diaper, or doing data entry
Until the memories are all smeared together
It's like the heat death of the universe
With all the energy uniformly distributed
And nothing has any more intensity than anything else

Being young is the best part of life
If he's not enjoying that, well...
It doesn't get better

But what if there was a way to get that back
Is what you started thinking
Not too long after your kid
Started making creepy announcements
About the malevolent presence hanging around the house

(Which you are pretty sure he does not mean
As a metaphor for abuse or neglect or anything)

You start putting out feelers
The way people do
Try to make contact
The way people do

Maybe you post on internet forums
Or maybe you just staple flyers to
Creosote-sweating telephone poles in your neighborhood

You make clear you just want to have a conversation
Make clear you just want to understand
(Jokingly promise to leave the holy water at home
But you both know holy water only works
If you believe in God
And that's not where you're at with this
You've got a different religious framework in mind)

The last sandwich shop before the train station
You swing the glass door open
Let the cold air blast in behind you
Go to the counter, give an order
Sit down to wait

It's not too long before you're joined
That presence is so familiar
Feels like it's clawing at you
Hungry to tear you open
Skull first
(You come to understand
Over a couple of Cokes —
Fizzing and sweet and so alive in your mouth —
That it's nothing personal
The terror that's being inflicted on you)

"What do you want to know?"
It asks
"And, before you answer, let me ask you this, too —
Are you sure you really wanna know the answer?"

"What's out there?" you ask
Screwing up your resolve
"What's beyond this life?"

Like breathing on coals
The grey eyes glow red for a moment
"Hell" it says

"That's all?
What about heaven?
Redemption?
Reunion with the ones you loved
The journey back to God?
All that shit?"

No answer
"For how long?"
The red glow
Flares bright
Then slowly fades
But never quite disappears

"No," you say, angry now
"I reject hell
That doesn't make any kind of sense
To punish people forever
For the sins of a finite lifetime"
"No one said it was a punishment"

"But why?
Why any of it?
Why... eternal torture?
Why not heaven?
Why not eternal happiness?"

"Son —"
The red eyes burned bright again
"Is that really what you want?
For your best life to be out ahead of you
In some hazy future
Do you want to live on a fuzzy promise
Of scraps of happiness
From the table of some god who tortures you
For no reason
By making you endure a shittier life
Before providing relief?
So cruel
So unnecessary

"Hell, though
Hell is committed
To giving you your best life right now
What if I told you
This moment right now, however shitty it is
Is the pinnacle of your experience
What if I told you"
"But"
"You are destined for hell.
You can't change that
But this moment?
It's a... a reprieve
A fleeting chance to taste sweetness"

"But that's not true — life's not sweet for everyone
Not even for most of us, maybe"

"No — it's a mixed bag for sure
But i promise
In your memory
It will seem sweet compared with what comes after
The trick is keeping that in mind
Right now
In this moment
No matter how bad it is"

"What about kids who are born with severe birth defects?
Who are born for a short, fast life of pain every moment?"
"Sometimes they are more or less comfortable
Sometimes their grief-stricken parents stroke their hair
In hell
That never happens"
"But"

"My old friend —"
(Those eyes burn almost kindly
As it puts a hot ashen hand on your shoulder)
"Squeeze this life for all it's worth
Do not look to the future for comfort
Be present where you are
Eat these fries
Do something you like every now and then
Laugh at dumb jokes
Love some people
Overall, my old friend,
You have it pretty good!
Bear with the pain
See it through to the end
I promise you
It only gets worse
And that's our great gift to you"
It stands up, takes a few of your fries, and stalks away into the night

So you go home to your boy
He's playing video games in the living room
Something with trippy colors, abstract swirls of light
So beautiful
You bought that for him
That beauty
Those exploding digital crystals of color

He tells you
In that casual way
That when he plays this game
He sees the cracks in the universe
You don't say anything
But late that night
When he's having a nightmare
From which he never quite wakes
You adjust his blankets
So he can be a little more comfortable
And for a long time you sit at his bedside
And stroke his hair
And watch his small chest and fall
As the seconds pass
And ebb away into the night