Fire Meets Gasoline : After Ashes

Chapter One : Welcome Sunlight

"Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, advancing a stage or two upon that road which you must travel in the steps they trod."

-Aristophanes

The warm night was melting my skin. The humid steps and swiftly eye movements and shaking made by legs tremble. The reddish and blue neon lights outside of the lousy club hardened my vision yet I still could see the fast lights of the cars just a few centimeters away. Until I found the shadow that was running away from me, it was him again, just like old times. 

    JOHN MCHALE. It's rather embarrassing to write in a journal again. Two years ago I made the decision to change some habits of mine, and one of them was to let go of this weird obsession to put all my thoughts on a piece of paper and just hope for the best. Thing is that time is a big window that brings in anything, even against our will.

Between those two years, I worked a lot, like a lot. To the point I would barely even stay at home, all so I could pick up the mess that was life there and finally be able to move out somewhere that I could reinvent myself. I chose Venice Beach for that. It wasn't easy to gather so much money to the point I was scared someone in town would find out and try to steal from me, thankfully I kept it all in the bank and when two years of work had passed, I had my suitcases ready. No one questioned me and my decision to leave, maybe because I didn't know anybody that could question it besides my mother.

My mother had her worries, it was understandable, her son would move out to a new city without knowing anyone. Although she was my mother and had every right to stop me from doing what I did, she didn't, instead she talked as long as she could about how I could always contact her if anything had happened. However, I was more worried about her than myself. You see, she lied when I had the car accident. Truth was that she wasn't out of rehab at that time, she was still a patient, well until she ran away just so she could visit me in the hospital. After those painful days, she returned and went into a deep program that she couldn't even make contact with the people outside the clinic. I was in fact worried she would somehow relapse, something she never got herself into through the two years I stayed with her, but the fear of opening the front door one night and seeing her on the floor with four bottles of whisky would always get into my head. She knew that one day I would eventually leave the house, and I knew that as well, it was only a matter of time for things to finally change.

The interview I had in phoenix didn't go well, and I was certain I had to do something about it. I found a job application for a secretary in this corporate building just in Downtown Los Angeles. It was surprisingly odd that the job just happened to be available for people with no exact experience, I didn't complain about the chance fallen on my lap, but thinking about it now makes me think I should've done that. The building was called 'The Red Flower', a corporation that focused on scientific and technological advancements. My curiosity took over me and when I was bored at work, I looked up their company and found some interesting stuff; the corporation took over heavy loss of shareholders all of the sudden, which led to them cut some works off for a period of time, it wasn't long after they all picked themselves up, I guess all of us have to do that some point.

Everybody that moves to LA has this vision that it will be the place for their new identity, a place in which everyone has one goal that is to become something, I was one of these people, and in some way still am. The house I was able to rent wasn't the best, it was only two small bedroom in which all had this light wooden floor with metal frame beds and light yellow sheets and an old wood closet; a light green bathroom with a decade-old bathtub, and this living room that was combined with the kitchen in which all were shadowed by the dark green curtains that blocked any sunlight to come in. It was a spectacle to see, knowing damn well I would have to do a deep cleaning later on.