Left Hooks

The fist comes from the right this time, and I absorb it.  Our eyes are locked in a dead stare, neither of us even daring to blink because we know, on an unconscious level, that it could be the point in which the other one strikes and we're caught off guard.

I jab a couple small jabs from the left, just attempting to break his concentration more than anything else, but it isn't working.  A tight right hook comes at me, but it whiffs into thin air.  Now is my chance and I lay it all out.

A solid right lands directly on his face, two left jabs while I regain the momentum with another solid right. 

He falls back and I pounce towards him.  My right lands on his glove, but he is dazed.  He has regained his footing, but he took a couple solid hits that is sure to wear him down.

Our eyes have again locked in a dead man's stare.

A ding and it is the end of the round.

I drink my water and the sound of voices in the distance keep me company as I stare across the ring at the enemy.

Any other day, I could sit and have beers with this mother fucker, share stories of wasting money and women, but today we are at war.  I've got to get this out of my head.  Makes me weak.  This mother fucker needs to die.

I left that round with a big lead.  I can take him out in the next one.  The pain of those solid right handers have to be hitting him hard now that his adrenaline is coming down.

We get back up and the ding starts the next round.

He is playing it safer now.  His guard is up further, his face has been hurt, but that just means I've gotten him weaker.  Just have to wait for my moment to land another good solid hit.  He'll be done for sure.

I jab a couple quickies, again, trying to break his concentration, but his hands are planted.  His guard is secure. 

His jabs are weaker now, but my eyes aren't leaving his.  Fuck that.

I can see it in his eyes, they dart a quick little dart to my left hand before coming back to mine.  He's lost it.  His edge is gone.  Just have to wait for the perfect time.

A right then a left, my jabs are getting more intense as I try to break his guard.  I notice his right is flinching just a bit.  That's his weakness growing.  Just a little bit longer and he is done.

His eyes dart over to my left again and I force a right directly towards his face.

It catches glove and then I notice it - a left hook coming straight for my face.  All I can think - I blinked.


-Dustin S. Stover

All Encompassing Madness

"How does that make you feel?"

Well, how the fuck is it supposed to make me feel, doc.  I come to you for answers, not to question my motives.  Psychologists are such bullshit.  Give me the hard sciences, not someone to talk to me until I feel like crying enough to flood the Earth in some biblical, forty-days and forty-nights nonsensical way.

Fuck you, doc.  The shit happened and now it doesn't matter how I feel about it.  It doesn't fucking matter how I feel about it because I have to wake up tomorrow morning and go into work like every other damn day of my life.  I have to put food on the table at the end of the day.  I have to pay the light bill.  I have to do the same shit as everyone else.  How do I feel?  I feel like I need a mother fucking break from life.

"Norm, are you going to answer?"

"I'm figuring it out."

You condescending piece of shit.  You sit there in that chair and you ask me these simplistic answers, attempting to get me to dig deep for some answers through equally simplistic responses.  I know what you're doing, but again, it doesn't matter.

I  had damned dreams.  I had goals for my fucking life before shit hit the fan.  I wanted to make something out of my life and now I just wake up and feel like grabbing the fucking bottle.  

"It is odd, Dr. Shrellin.  I just don't know how life got to this point."

"Norm, I've told you before.  Just call me Alice.  I'm your friend, but let's talk about what choices you made to get here."

You're not a fucking friend.  A friend is someone you meet at a bar, someone you have common interests in, Alice.  I have been forced to come see you as my therapist.  Someone who I pretend isn't just as fucked up as I am.  But I know, Alice.  I know you hit that bottle like there's no tomorrow once you're done with your work day.  You've probably got escorts on speed dial, or hiding some inner lesbian cuckhold fantasy.  You probably have to smoke a thousand dollars worth of weed a week just so you don't get so pissed off you slam someone's head against a wall.

How I got here, though?  How I got here was fucking simple - I made choices.  I made the choice to drop what I wanted out of life because I played the safe bets and found excitement in the wrong places.  Well, all bets fail sooner or later.  That's how I got here.  Living with the failure of those bets, how the fuck do I deal with that, Alice?

"I'm not sure, doctor.  I mean, I kind of just floated along the river of life and now I'm waking up to where I've floated to."

Where I've floated to?  What the fuck am I even saying now?  I sound like some children's after school special.  What I've done is taken unfulfilling jobs because it is a paycheck, dated shitbags because they offered excitement in my life, and been completely unable to find a balance between those things and my goals.  That's what the fuck I've done, Alice.  And now I'm stuck being hyper-aware of my situation in life.

"So what do you plan on doing now?"

So yeah, after my wife left me for the younger, more exciting artist, that mother fucker, I went off on my boss.  Sure, maybe I even threw the phone book at the wall, conveniently placed behind his head.  Yeah, I probably caused a scene when I got up out of my chair and yelled the word fuck at the top of my lungs, which led me to the office and phone book in the first place.  Can you blame me?  I mean, really?

"I don't know, doctor."

"Well, how does all this make you feel, Norm?"

Again with this fucking question, Alice?  Can't you reword it with your fancy ass degree?  Can't you make it seem more interesting?  Can't you do something other than just fucking ask a question?

"Mad.  I feel mad."

-Dustin S. Stover

If you find my writing interesting and desire more of it then please support me by purchasing my collection of short stories on Kindle or Nook.

Surviving the Storm

One would imagine that after months, years, or even decades that we'd have gotten used to this. The bullets screaming far beyond our post and into the never ending abyss beyond us. I suppose that to an extent we have done just that.

Families no longer duck for cover. Families no longer cower in fear of when they will lose their mother or brother. Instead, they simply go about their business as usual, and yet, the bullets still whizz past into the abyss.

In a society that picks around the bloodied apples to find an untainted one, a society that admires when a building only has one hundred bullet holes in the outer walls, a society that finds it more abnormal to hear that you've went a week without losing someone you know then it would be little more than obvious to state that hardships are simply a way of life.

And yet here I am, again, carrying away another dead body from outside my front door. Carrying it around to the back, where places have been strategically designed to extract the lifeless corpses by specially appointed military personnel. You know the ones – the ones freshly recruited and sent into the city, having never seen the atrocities that have become such normal life.

I can remember a time before, though. A time in which the city hadn't been ravaged by greed, by the strongest enforcing their survival on those of us who would rather think about a way to make tomorrow a better place. Speaking such things out loud, today, would lead to a public hanging.

Still, I enjoy talking to the freshies. I enjoy hearing about their tales of life beyond the death. And this is why I carry the dead now, at dusk, with the little remaining sunlight bursting through the remnants of buildings and illuminating the dulled browns of the sand and the buildings that look as though they are apart of the ground.

“Good evening,” a freshy says with nothing but trembling nervousness in his voice.

“Another one to add to the pile here,” I push the wheelbarrow with a full grown woman, beyond skinny and frail from the lack of motivation to make it outside for food.

Of course, the government does everything it can to ship as much food to us as possible. It is there for the taking, but in order to obtain it one must dodge the metallic shards flying through the air so fast they cannot be seen. Some try it, usually the young and fast teenagers. Sometimes the elderly who have lived beyond their years and have decided their sacrifice would be worth it if only to save their children.

“So... Where... where did you get this un?” A strange accent, one I had never heard before.

“Out front of my shop. They post up down the road and wait for people to try to get into my shop for food and shoot them dead as they are walking in. I took the door off to let them get in faster, but then they stopped coming in all together – said it didn't make them feel safe to have it open like that – so I put it back up for them.”

“Strange...”

“Where you from, kid?”

“What is left of the USA.” The USA, much like here, was torn apart when both sides of the political spectrum let things get so bad they declared war on one another. Eventually there wasn't much left other than burnt down cities with two capitals on each side of the country. They simply declared it a draw, threw down their guns, and resorted to cyber warfare to sway support. They are still equal, but most of their citizens don't even have a computer any longer so it ultimately ends up being the rich arguing back and forth while every one else signs up for wars they don't understand. Just to keep food on their plate.

“Is it rough over there, too?”

“I thought it was. Until... well... I got here...”

“Yeah, things here are pretty bad. Get up closer to this wall. You're out there making yourself the perfect target.”

“Thanks....” His tone still shaky, like a glass of water in the middle of an earthquake.

“You get used to it. Say, you and your compadres want something to drink? Eat, perhaps? When was the last time you had a decent meal?” I was unlocking the back door and opening it up, holding it open so as to entice them on in. “Don't worry, I've got a deal worked out with both sides. They let me by for the most part. Can't say the same about my customers, but you'll all be safe.”

“Fuck yeah!” Another freshy jumps out of the truck, a sharp, tall girl who looked to be all of 19 years old at most. “I ain't eaten nothing good in a week.”

I prepared the two of them their meals, even threw in a couple glasses of the best wine I could muster up – admittedly, it wasn't anything of quality, but no one ever complains about wine after they've endured a week or two here.

The meal with an equally unimpressive bowl of pasta with some very bland type of white sauce. I did manage to get a shipment of Parmesan Cheese in. It adds just enough taste for it to be considered the best bowl of pasta in the city. That's what the sign on the wall says, anyway - “BEST PASTA IN THE CITY!”

“This tastes like shit compared to back home.” The female freshy piped up after devouring half her plate of food.

“Well, you're not quite home now, are you?”

“No. That's not what I meant.” She interjected quickly. “I mean, I just miss home. Fuck, man. I'm sorry.”

“It tastes better than I thought it would...” the young freshy, still timid and fearful, said.

“Look. I don't get my choice of ingredients. I do the best with what I've got. Here.” I hand them each a plate of a jello-like dessert.

“No thanks!” they both said quickly.

The sound of their truck, still parked out back, fires to life and takes off with tires squealing.

“Hey!” the female freshy says while attempting to lift from her chair. “Is that... is... that... our... truck...?” Her body falls limp, first hitting the table and then plummeting to the ground.

The male freshy's face had already landed square on top of the table.

I picked up the phone and dialed a series of numbers until the ring started. “Hello. Got a couple more.” I hung up the phone.

-Dustin S. Stover

Emotional Choices

Let me start a discussion about the justice system.

I've known, and seen, for quite some time that the justice system favors people with money - especially if the one with money is white, but there are some severe flaws in the judicial system for a number of reasons.

The first reason I will touch on is the most obvious, yet perhaps the most overlooked problem.  Humans.  We rely on humans, who are presented with facts, to act according to what they discover from a court's proceedings to rule for or against someone.

This is simple.  Human emotions, however, are extremely far from simple.  They are easily played and preyed upon - hence how Donald J. Trump became president of the United States of America. (Get as pissed as you want by this comment, but if you weren't personally biased towards him/the Republican party then you'd be shitting all over yourself like a newborn baby trying to figure out how people could have elected him, just like the rest of the world is doing).

I will use an example - I was called in for a jury summons.  The case I was summoned for was a shooting.  A young black man was accused (don't ask for his name as I won't ever remember).  Another person who was summoned, just as I was, began talking to me on a break between the attorneys interrogating those of us who were summoned and the conversation went pretty much like this - the person discussing it will me proclaiming this young black man as being guilty, absolutely without a doubt, he was guilty.  This was perplexing to me especially because there was no evidence presented.  Just a name of the accused and the crime he was being accused of.  Just that simple.

Even more than that, however, was the overly cock-sure attitude this person had.  Not only was he guilty, but the person in the room sitting at one of the tables - mind you, this is where the attorneys and the accused were sitting - was the one who got shot!  Now me being me, and always more interested in discovering what makes a person think the way they do, I continued to listen to this theory of his.

And boy, it was a baseless theory.  His entire theory was based around the young black man being on the road it took place on, and why else would he be there?  And that poor guy in the wheelchair!

Turns out that the poor guy in the wheelchair was defending the young black man as his attorney.

I have no idea how that trial played out.  I wasn't selected to follow through with it all, but the process of selecting the jurors and the interactions I had with the people there was enough to give me great insight as to how they choose people - which ones will be sympathetic to the attorneys cause.

And it goes even further than this.  I couldn't even imagine to deduce the amount of juries who have been persuaded to place someone in prison for a crime they didn't commit just so the attorney prosecuting can line their pockets, but I have no doubt that if there were a way to truly deduce the amount that it would be staggering.

That is just how it goes with human beings.  It is all just a show.  If you learn how to tap into another person's emotions you can convince them of anything - every war has been backed by emotions just the same as every homeless shelter has been built by them.  Every religion thrives because of emotions just as every decision we make is based on them.

Think about what you're going to eat for dinner tonight or tomorrow.  You run through a list of things to eat and you find yourself saying how you don't feel like making that or that food sounds good.  The very basis of what you eat is how you feel about the food - whether it is the process of making it discouraging you or the restaurant you choose being a favorite spot.

Even the political arguments we get into - if we truly looked at statistics then Democrats and Republicans would die off in favor of no parties at all, just people who truly wanted to make the country we live in better.  Instead we have Republicans relying on religion to gain support and Democrats relying on fear of the future.  Emotions and the emotions attached to what the party is saying.

Perhaps the only way to overcome the emotions when sentencing someone to 30 years in prison is to start by acknowledging how our personal biases affect us in every choice we make every day of our lives.

-Dustin S. Stover

Iron and Ink

Isolated iron is always cold.  Always.  Even on the hottest of summer days, heat radiating off the harsh metal, the sight of iron fills one's self with a cold darkness that captivates the imagination of some and fills another with desolate despair.

That was what filled his mind as he felt that painful heat through his work gloves, handling the huge iron beam thirty some odd stories above Earth's surface.

The pen always held such a warm and passionate feeling pinched between the fingers.  A universe of knowledge, passion, longing, lust, despair, and sadness she thought as she tried to push the keys on her laptop down in rhythmic fashion.

She couldn't find the words or passion or even a glimpse of that universe she longed for.

The philosopher in both of them begins to question why they are doing anything they do.  The reasonable voice knows they'll die if they don't - or at least be forced to find a new way to survive.

He takes the long drink of ice water, symbolic of the end of another torturous day of ten hours worth of heat - he had to sign on for that overtime pay.

The pay was great.  The pay is great.  The week is almost over and the pay is great - the chant repeated in his mind.

She held in her hand, between her fingertips, that old Montblanc pen she bought herself after her first big story broke.  She hadn't used it for years but believed it was the key to her next big ticket.  Of course, the doodles on her page didn't translate to her next big paycheck.

Before arriving home, he stops at a local liquor store to buy the beer that will get him drunk the fastest and for the least amount of money.  A necessity, he thinks, if he is to endure such coldness again tomorrow.

He rolls a joint before leaving the parking lot - this to prepare himself for all the commands of his wife once home.  He takes the first hit not long after he leaves the parking lot.  The first of many.

A page full of doodles lay upon the page as she brushes her teeth in an attempt to hide the smell of cigarettes.  Frantically, she sprays perfume and flushes the toilet to dispose of the butt.  A deep breathe fills the empty space and a tug to straighten her shirt sets her in motion to start dinner.

She peers down into the empty sink and realizes she forgot to lay out the meat for dinner.  Knowing it is too late to thaw now, she hits the number three on speed dial for takeout Chinese.  A distinctly American voice answers and she realizes her mistake - Chinese was four, three was the stress relief she was trying to give up.

He arrives home significantly more stoned that he wanted to be.  Trying desperately hard to hide it from his wife, he yells his hell while walking directly to the shower.

The shower loses him for far too long and his wife opens the door with hushed anxiety.  "Are you drunk or high?"

"Both," he answers while his wife shuts the door without a word more.

She springs to life when the door rings - perfect timing, she thinks as she ponders where she wants her story to go next.

He gets out of the shower and sees a notepad open upon the table, full of drawings and no words, next to a bag of Chinese food.  She is in the garage speed dialing number three.

-Dustin S. Stover

Kindle: Happiness in a Void of Darkness
Nook: Happiness in a Void of Darkness

The Explanation

I have always been terribly interested in why someone would cut themselves.  I suppose that deep down I understood it - a physical interpretation of the pain one feels inside, a frustration that needs an external release in some fashion and the pain doesn't run off into someone else's life.

I've just never been one to follow suit in that type of performance art.  My personal belief is that there must be some other type of expression that leads to far more productivity.  And, you know, not having to explain the scars to anyone else is always a bonus.

But, I suppose that in itself would be a test of sorts.  If a lover can see past the battle scars of externalizing an internal problem then doesn't that in some kind of way prove that love triumphs?

The hypocrisy, however, is hilarious.

Everyone has the problematic affairs that we are dealing with.  From the man who drinks incessantly to the woman who buys herself into ruin - or the woman who drinks incessantly and the man who buys himself into ruin.  It is all just a means to deal with the internal struggles of life's existential problems that no one wants to face up to.

And as I'm laying here, I grow increasingly tired, exhausted.  Like the life is just seeping from my veins.

I believed that if you had unlimited money then the world's problems didn't touch you, when I was young.  It was like the penguins having water just run right off their body.  A type of bullet proof vest that made it impossible for life's turmoil to trouble you, but that was just young naivety.

The rich find themselves equally as troubled as the poor, but that is also when it came to me that it isn't a class problem, it is a societal one.  A society that wrings the life out of every person placed as a cog in the working wheel can never have room for a society in which the human life has more value than the productivity of their job, and being rich still leaves no value in the individual's life - just a dollar sign sitting next to a name.

And that is why one must stand in protest.

As I'm doing now.

As my veins drip the remaining drops of my blood upon the floor, and with it my ability to be another cog in your systemic decay.

The systemic destruction of the human condition.

And this is my...
explanation...
for these...
scars...



A morbid short story by Dustin S. Stover

And You Said Life Would be Easy

There is a radical design stitched into the very presence of every human being. From birth we are molded into what others perceive and expect us to be, never fully grasping any individuality in those desires.

Then, as we age, we begin to understand the world quite beyond that in which we've been forcibly exposed to. Whether it be through television, music, the introduction of new people, books, or whatever other external sources that could influence our otherwise pristine conservation of familial and close proximity world's desires. The rebellion of such things is what begins that massive chasm of separation between the world of old and the world in which one creates for themselves.

Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean that the chasm always maintains distance. Most people end up conforming in massive ways – their rebellion of underage drinking and casual drug usage is found out to be the same coping mechanisms of their parents, the same ones that refused to acknowledge their own usage of such things at the same age. The conformity of finding a job that satisfies just enough, typically through the paychecks that come in from said job, yet leave the rest of life unfulfilled. The conformity of giving up on the things enjoyable in youth – the discovery of things outside the pristine world in which one was raised in.

Raise a glass to yourselves if you can pretend the satisfaction of such things is enough for you. Down the contents of said glass in an effort to dull the pain of pretending, go to tuck your children into bed, and proceed to post more pictures of what you made for dinner on social media in an effort to bring an encouraging vindication to your very conformed notion of what reality should be, all the meanwhile keeping that pristine barrier around your own children.

There are those of us who are philosophers, artists, believers that the value in our lives are created solely by the things we leave behind – not the value of ourselves, but the value of the things we do to make tomorrow a better place. We live and die by the sadness we're forced to face, clinging to the threads of life's fragility only because we understand that someone has to suffer the consequences of societal norms as a means to bring greater understanding to it tomorrow. We do that through our words, our paintings, our drawings, our songs, and any other means we can birth our pain and suffering into the world as a form of educational entertainment.

If love is but a mechanism to ensure a mating process, then an artist's pain is only a mechanism to ensure purity for a better tomorrow. The next time you see that painting that disturbs you, or you read a passing paragraph in a book, or you hear a song that hits an emotion you don't want to experience take it as a sign to pay more attention. The reason you feel the way you do about it isn't because the painting is ugly, those are easily ignored, it is because you don't want to face the emotion the painting is making you feel.

-Dustin S. Stover

And don't forget, if you want to support my writing then buy my collection of short stories.

Kindle: Happiness in a Void of Darkness

Nook: Happiness in a Void of Darkness