The Poisoned Ink Well

Sunday, May 02, 2004


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Life with Artie (a true story) A. P. B. (his initials)




My baby and I were sleeping when he came in drunk looking for the car keys. His eyes were wild and he looked like he had been doing crank, crack or some other disgusting toxin. He came in and he pulled me out of bed to help him find his keys, but we couldn't locate them. He got angrier and angrier at me and he was yelling and calling me a "fucking cunt."

He picked up a shotgun that was sitting in the corner by the front door and he ran at me with it. He held it over his head and he backed me in to a corner with the blunt end. I was on my knees, and I was covering my head with my hands, and he acted like he was going to bludgeon me to death with it. I begged him not to kill me and I told him that I didn't hide the keys.

After awhile he let me get up and he kept demanding the keys. We looked for them as he carried the shotgun waist level and held it on me the entire time as we searched through the house. I was crying, and I was sober, I had just woke up, and it was 6am. I hadn’t even had my coffee, yet. He started getting madder and madder because he thought I was hiding the keys, but I wasn’t and I didn’t know where they were.

He aimed the shotgun, and he held it on me, and then all at once, he threw it off safety, and he cocked it, and he pointed it at me again. I thought, oh fuck, this is it, I'm dead. He was going to shoot me. The baby was still asleep in the next room. I wanted so badly to get the baby, but I was afraid that he would shoot both of us.

He started running across the room towards me and I had to think fast. I thought if I went out the front entrance and into our courtyard, someone would see him from the hotel next door, and then if he shot me in the back,he would have to keep on running and the baby would be safe. I really wanted to get my baby out of there, but I couldn't.

I ran out the door and he followed me and I could feel the butt of the rifle close to the small of my back. When I hit the bottom steps, he turned around and ran back into the house. He grabbed the baby out of his bed and held him up by his leg and pointed the gun at him and he told me to get the keys or he was going to “kill the kid” or “kill the little bastard” as he called him because "he wasn’t his son and he didn't care if the little motherfucker died."


He held the baby up high by his ankle, so that I could see the shotgun aimed at his head. The baby started crying and it was pissing him off. I was so scared and I didn’t know what to do. I ran and I grabbed my Mother who lived the down the street. We wanted to call the police but we were afraid that, that would only escalate things. We finally talked him into handing us the baby back.

I was still afraid to call the cops because we thought he would kill us all. I waited an hour and I snuck back over to the house and I peered into the window and I could see him passed out on the bed. He was snoring loudly and the shotgun was laying on the floor. I eased open the window and I climbed into the room and I retrieved the shotgun. ( I was determined that, if he was going to kill me, it wouldn't be with that gun) I noticed the keys on the floor under the bed and I got them too. I took his shotgun to the pawnshop and I pawned it and I used the money to buy gas for my car, so that my son and I could leave him forever. We sped out of town with out looking back.




@}---------


This Is Final


When we all do that final

nod

At the end of life

hooked up to a
morphine
d
r
i
p
.

That over half of us reading

THIS

L o n g e d

for

(and I ain’t naming names)

For most of our adult lives.

Then we won’t appreciate

IT

As much as when

we were younger

and nodding

OUT.

And we won’t remember our younger years

Only the moments in between

WAKING

And


falling asleep.

Oh never mind…


this is your brain on

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
(((((SNORE)))))

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