Writers--J-Jim

Jimmy Willden is an award-winning writer and filmmaker. He is also an American musician and composer. After beginning his career in music in 1998, Willden has since forayed into the world of filmmaking, winning several festival awards as director and screenwriter. He is also an accomplished journalist.

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Echoes from the Room Beyond

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It’s a relic of a room. Midnight dark, but flickering in an orange and blue hue that casts in all different directions across a space that seems almost frozen in time by at least twenty orbits. While the door is always open, the air feels trapped and heavy by the weight of all of the memories that line the walls – mosaics of pictures, that are somehow worn within their frames, as if drowned by a whispering sorrow from long ago. The floor, covered in a dingy blue and frayed carpet, once soft and inviting, now crusted with years of dirt and no vacuum. Almost in a futile effort to hide the hideous, a somewhat newer rug lays over most of the carpet…it too now degraded and forgotten. 

In the middle of it all looms a large oak bed frame; designs carved into its ancient wood that was once surely inviting – now merely caked with dust. The headboard houses dozens of small drawers and two large cabinets – one on the left side of the bed, and one on the right. In the center of the headboard is a large mirror, dimmed by neglect; where specs of grime warp any reflection that may try to penetrate. 

There, to the left, is an old television, where a harsh light escapes its static screen. Within the dots of black and white and blue – swim faces – but only momentarily. As soon as the faces appear, they are all at once gone – swallowed by the ocean of static on the other side of the television glass. This blue glow travels across the room, casting shadows that dance on every wall, all in step…but to no discernible rhythm. An electric laughter from a long-ago sitcom crowd travels with the light, now to where it settles–

–Another door, cracked open just a little, allows an orange light from the room beyond to snake into and meld within the blue. Running water that echoes from the room beyond now – somehow sounds eerily similar to the already lulling sound of static. 

Next to the aglow doorway sits a large dresser, made of much more and much older oak than the bed before it. Layers of dust obscure any hint of wood that rests on top of this ghostly furniture…and lost within all the dust are countless rusted coins, all scattered about. Copper coins now green with age, and silver coins just the same. 

And receipts. 

So many receipts that date back within those twenty orbits, now crumpled and discarded, one on top of another. Receipts from long ago cafes. Receipts from gas stations and movies and so many hotels. Receipts from fancy restaurants and theaters and museums. Receipts from cardiologists and endocrinologists. Receipts from hospice care. Receipts from funeral homes–

–And there, in the center of it all, sitting perfectly atop the center of the dresser, is a jewelry box, inside of which hangs dozens of necklaces from generations long gone, and a small drawer at the bottom of the jewelry box slightly opened, where there rests a wedding ring, placed delicately out of sight – but not forgotten. 

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Bright Static

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I can’t recall if it was the sound that came first or the realization that there was even a sound at all – but at some point, just before the sun rose, I found myself staring at an empty pillow as the windows rattled from the tune of a heavy wind that whipped against our nearly two-hundred year-old home. The empty pillow, however, shows no signs of recent disturbance, which means he’s either been up for hours, or has never come to bed at all. Long ago, I stopped worrying much about which that might be, because, either way, the answer would still disappoint me. 

But right now, I’m shivering from the incessant sharp chill in the air, delivered, nearly unfiltered, through our nil-insulated walls. So, I force myself to sit up and quickly wrap the comforter around my shaky bones. Quietly, I step onto the wooden floors that moan, as always, beneath me. With the comforter draped around me like a shawl, I quickly scuttle across our bedroom to the door, which has been left unusually wide open. My eyes fight in vain to focus on the still dark hallway that rests beyond our bedroom doorway. I intently listen for anything, any sign, other than the violent howling outside, that he’s anywhere inside our beloved home. 

There’s nothing but the cries of the wind. 

I pull the comforter tighter around me and step out into the hallway, with one foot in front of the other, squinting my eyes in an attempt to desperately make out any sort of detail in the dark blue of morning against the lingering black blue of night. Somewhere along the way I find our boy’s bedroom door which is, as always, left open – just a crack. 

Our sweet toddler is in the throes of a fitful sleep. At some point in the night, he had kicked his blankets off and now they lay crumpled at the foot of his bed. In his only defense against the aggressive cold that’s invaded our home overnight, our sweet boy is now curled up in a pitiful, fetal position, with his hands tucked between his knees. And the poor thing is shivering. 

After I gently pull his covers back up and tuck them ever so delicately around his body, I find myself drawn to study him for a long moment, but really I’m just trying to swallow away the burning that’s rising from within. 

He promised he wouldn’t let this happen again. He promised me the boy and I would always, hand to God, come first. How many nights have I begged him to consider us before the throngs of others he seems to enjoy so much more than us? How many times has he promised he’d change, for the sake of us, for the sake of our love – for the sake of our family?

Downstairs, I discover the fire has long been out. Only the last wisps of smoke linger above the charred firewood in the fireplace. And, of course, the basket beside the fireplace, that usually holds our pre-cut firewood, is empty. 

The burning from within gurgles like a sickness in my stomach. I take a long, deep breath, an exercise I learned long ago that could curtail these episodes just as they begin – but this morning, the breath does nothing but breathe new life into the flames quickly rising up through my lungs. 

I exhale. 

And then I swallow. 

And then I turn toward that beautiful hunk of furniture he is so proud of. The brand new centerpiece of our home – a large, burgundy-wooden television set. It remains off, but I swear I hear it – a soft, electrical hum resonating from it. My father never trusted technology, and he swore that’s how he got the cancer that ultimately sent him to his grave last year. I’m not sure I believe the demons of modern society are what really did him in, or if it was the demons of his bourbon diet that truly got the best of him. Either way, may he rest in peace, I still don’t exactly trust the television set much myself, either. 

Outside, I find the first signs of light just barely peeking over the horizon, as I slowly approach the large mound of uncut wood stacked on the side of our home. Pulling the comforter even tighter over myself and my limbs just as a gust of wind cuts deep, I spy the ax leaning against the side of the house, at the foot of the mound of firewood; its handle just merely beckoning. 

I’m too tired, however, to even consider the job myself. Besides, it’s not supposed to be my job; that task belongs to him. 

I slowly turn and allow my eyes to follow the long walkway that stretches from our back porch all the way across the half acre of land behind our house before it arrives at the entryway of an old wooden structure that must be fifty years older than the home we call our own. After a moment, my eyes wander to the very top, where they finally settle, and focus, ever so hesitantly, on the white wooden cross that tops the structure – and in the early morning blue, the faded white cross seems to glow with the gnawing power of yesteryear. 

Then I glimpse it, the flickering light shining through a window of the old church, and – like a moth – I’m drawn in, and make my way towards the structure and open the old doors, which send a loud creaking sound echoing beyond me. Standing in the entryway to the house of God, my gaze follows the long walkway, until it befalls a single electric light bulb, which dangles above the altar at which I find him, buried in his writing. 

Husband.

“Daniel?”

I catch him, this man who swore to me and to God that he loves me and would put me before anyone else, effortlessly letting my utterance of his name float right past him. It’s at this moment exactly when I see it – my husband’s long shadow cast by that dangling light bulb, and this shadow travels all the way back to the very back wall of the altar and stretches up it and the walls behind us and towers incredibly large above us. 

After a moment, I allow my gaze to return only to him. 

“Have you slept?”

Daniel stops writing and lets out a sigh. Finally he looks up at me, his beloved wife of four years. 

“As soon as I’m done with the final draft, I’ll come to bed.”

“The sun’s already coming up.”

Devoid of much love, he just stares at me – through me – and swallows. After a moment, he merely returns to his writing and says, “I’ll sleep after this morning’s service.”

“Daniel–”

“--I’ll be fine!” he barks and immediately those flames burning up my insides ignite once more. My eyes are too heavy to do much else, so they just remain steady, on him. 

“There’s no more firewood for the fireplace,” I say. “Junior was shivering.”

But he’s back there, just swimming in his beautiful, poetic words of the Lord, his attention giveth only to his love of the Parish and the love he receiveth from them, leaving his beloved wife and beloved son cold and abandoned. 

“I’ll bring some in, in a minute,” is all he manages to say before he falls completely silent. But I see his brow, so furled from all of that heavy focus, as if the weight of the pen he wields is almost too much to hold. His lips move, dancing with the silent syllables of his God poetry – these words will move mountains; these words will heal wounds; these words will defy–

But there I see it, as I’m turning to leave; the flickering, electric light bulb. 

The bulb burns ferociously, causing me to wince and close my eyes. When I open them, my gaze is drawn back to my husband’s looming shadow behind him. Only now, there are two shadows, flanking either side of him. As the light bulb swings in place above him, the giant shadows seemingly dance a twisted dance just as the bulb flickers once more then returns to its natural, electric state. 

I leave. 

Back inside, I sit down on the living room floor, before our beautiful television set. As I reach up and turn the dial, the voltaic beast quivers to life with a loud buzz rising from behind the screen – or maybe it’s from the screen itself. Either way, the picture slowly starts to fade into focus, swimming in static and casting unnatural black and blue and white light across the room. 

The image is unnerving – but I can’t look away. 

Instead, I turn the dial. 

Again. 

And again. 

And again. 

Each time I change the channel, that haunting, constant river of noise seems to grow more violent, as the blue, flickering light luls me into a hypnotic rhythm. Somewhere along the way, I recognize the sun through our living room window, as it rises higher into the morning sky, only I can’t, for the life of me, pull my gaze away from the screen. Whatever programming that was once there is now completely long lost in an ocean of bright static. 

“I'm often asked if God has stopped speaking to us? The question, though valid, is a trite one, is it not?”

My husband, dressed in a brown and tan suit that allows the red in his beard its time to shine, stands once again behind the altar, eyeing his beloved congregation that sits in the pews before him; all of them effortlessly and magnetically plugged into his sermon. 

“While it's true, there are no such modern stories of a booming voice from on high, accompanied by all of that thunder and lightning we've all come to expect, God is still here. 

“While it is rare to hear and believe stories of late: of dreams delivered by the Lord meant to guide us one way or the other; God is still here. 

“And while the values of such messages may have been lost on us in this modern age, due to our very own mute years, God. Is. Still. Here. 

“So yes, while it might seem the Lord may have lost his tendency toward the dramatic, I still believe he is speaking to us, all of us, constantly -- and his message has never been clearer. The problem is we've all grown accustomed to the constant noise of our times, and silence scares us. 

“That's it, right there, isn't it? That's where God lives and breathes and speaks to and through us. Right there. In that elusive silence.” 

My husband eyes his beloved flock as he delivers his final point home in perfect timing. “It is merely our job to listen, and to discern the meaning -- of his whispers.”

My attention is torn from him as I feel my sweet boy lean against me and rest his small head on my shoulder. I’m overcome and kiss the top of his head, then slowly return my attention to my husband. 

“If you turn to 1 Corinthians, verse 2:14, scripture lays it all bare for us. ‘The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.’" 

At some point, my attention is once again drawn to the space behind the altar, directly to the dangling light bulb. It flickers, but this time, the light spewing from the bulb seems to twist and warp so unnaturally, like the lightwaves themselves are heavier than the air we breathe. I try to discern what’s causing this effect when I feel a slow pulsation rise from within me. 

I want to vomit. 

But I don’t. 

At least not yet. 

“Or as 1 John, verse 2:27 illuminates, ‘As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit--just as it has taught you, remain in him.’ 

“Or, rather, if you live in him, he will live in you.” 

As the light begins to flicker more, almost in rhythm with the rising pulsation, I turn to my beloved husband’s flock and study each and every one of them. Somehow, it seems as though nobody else can see this or hear this or feel this – besides me. 

His sermon is eventually drowned out completely as I continue to study the effects of the affecting light bulb above the altar before me. I feel its powerful vibration rattle within my chest. Then I hear it; that sound; that familiar, unmoving static. It’s floating in there, within the pulsation which has now invited the bulb of light to dance in its slow rhythm. The power of it is awful and awe-inspiring all at once. It hurts my insides until I cannot stand its influence any longer. 

So, finally, I vomit. 

The pulsation – the static – is all at once gone, replaced by a deafening silence. I can feel all of them, my husband’s beloved flock, all of their eyes on me, piercing through me, as I try to catch what little breath I have left. 

Then amidst all that silence, I hear it, my sweet boy’s voice, saying, “Mommy.”

“Mommy,” he says, full of so much love and compassion in such a way only a person unmarked by the evils of living can say. “...Are you okay?”

With the weight of the world on my shoulders, I slowly turn to my sole reason for living and try to smile. “Mommy’s fine.”

My sweet boy swims in bubbles. 

I watch as water gushes from that rusted, old faucet of ours into the bath, as the water edges ever closer to the brim. That gushing though, it’s hurting my ears. It sounds like roaring rivers. Or thunderous floods. 

Or static. 

Just as a little of the water splashes over the edge, I turn off the faucet. 

My boy, he gathers some of the bubble suds with his small hands and designs a beard on his tiny face. As he turns to me, he puckers his lips and says, “Do I look like Daddy?”

My sweet boy, he giggles. 

But I’m not at all amused by this. How could I be? So instead of engaging in his games, I take a rag and gently wipe away my boy’s beard of suds. 

But then I hear it, slicing through the silence; plopping. 

I turn to the source, the faucet; small droplets of water drop from the brim of it, and land in the water, causing tiny little ripples – which reflect the electric light in our bathroom in strange directions. I study a tiny little drop of water as it slowly pulls away from the faucet and falls and falls and falls, until it crashes into the ocean of bath water, sending slow ripples erupting from the crash site, spreading outwards forever. 

And then another drop begins its journey. 

The dancing reflections within the ripples in the bath water lul me once again, just as another drop drips from the faucet and falls, falls, falls. 

“Mommy.”

The drop explodes into the forever deep, sending fractured light into millions of different directions, refracting again and again until we are all consumed by its never-ending nothingness. 

“Mommy..?” 

As if I’d never left, I turn to my sweet boy. 

“I’m done, momma.”

As if waking from a deep sleep, I have to tell my hand to reach for the towel folded on the sink counter, and to tell my fingers to unfold it, and to tell my arms to hand it to my boy. 

After tucking my dearest angel into bed, I somehow found my way to our bed. I remember believing that a good night’s sleep could end this seemingly never-ending, emanating migraine. Instead, I’ve been laying here in my white night gown like a ghost for the past two hours, unable to break my gaze from the magnetic hold that whatever looms in the dark hallway just outside our unusually wide open bedroom door has on me. My chest is heavy, as are my eyes. I want to vomit again, but there’s nothing left inside me other than the burning knowledge that none of this matters any longer. 

I am empty. 

Yet fully charged. 

At some point, he comes into our bedroom and says something, but I can’t quite make it out. I see his lips moving, but behind the newly oscillating universe which has enveloped me, I don’t even try to discern his words. 

Anyway, they don’t matter much anymore. 

A little later, it registers that my husband has given up trying to speak to me. Instead, he merely removes his shirt and crawls into bed beside me. After he studies me for a moment, he ever so gently kisses me on my forehead, then reaches over to his nightstand, and turns off the lamp, plunging our bedroom into the deep blue-black of midnight. 

I close my eyes – and the only thing that changes is that deep blue evolving into just more black on black. Way off in the distant darkness of somewhere, I hear a drip. Soon after, another drip echoes somewhere so far away, it hurts my ears to hear it. I try not to listen, but I can’t seem to stop and I wait, and I anticipate, until–

Another drip drops and echoes.

Again.

And again. 

Somewhere swimming in my hypnotic, half-lucid dreamstate, the sound of the staccato dripping has evolved into something else; something more. Keeping time in that ever-steady rhythm comes a deeper sound; a thudding; a chunking; a chopping. I find my eyes once again wide open. The deep blue returns to highlight the dark black within our marital bedroom, as I merely watch my husband sleep. 

The television screen swims in black and blue static once more. Small faces are barely recognizable amidst the interrupted signal that sends the black and white pictures back into its twisted dance before me. 

Once again wearing our marital comforter like a shaw, I sit on the floor before his beastly burgundy television studying all of the dots dancing on the screen over smiling faces and sad faces and angry faces and hollow faces. I swear – these faces are all starting to merge into one, bright and electric face – but I can’t be sure just yet. For now, however, they are all singing along to that altogether beautiful pulsating rhythm, vibrating in and through me, just like the water droplets sending ripples through an ocean of bath water, just like all of those reflections refracting all the light that remains. I see it all. I feel it all.

Until I don’t. 

“Momma…”

I blink and look up beyond the blue static to find my beloved boy wrapped in his very own blanket shaw, once again, shivering. 

“Momma…I’m cold.”

In the backyard, with the sun once again just below the horizon as if it’s too afraid to announce the arrival of the brand new day, I stand beside the house, and find the ax right where I last saw it. It hasn’t been moved or touched, nor has the firewood. 

“I’ll bring some in, in a minute,” were the last words my beloved husband had said on the matter, twenty-four hours ago. 

This burning from within hasn’t slept at all, it was just quietly building in its intensity and now begging to be heard and to be felt in its entirety. I grab the ax, with my sweet boy standing behind me. I feel him watching me, as that burning rage from within finally finds its way to the surface and guides the ax high up into the air above me, with my grip tightening around its handle. I scream so loud my ears ring, and then the rage sends the ax violently down, slamming into a piece of firewood placed on the ground before me. The force of the chopping reverberates through the handle and right into my hands. I feel alive. I feel new – as the wood splits in two. 

I feel him when he stirs. His renewed energy alerts me that he’s awake, and I know exactly what woke him; the continued sound of chopping, which I’ve timed directly with all those electronic voices singing along to that altogether beautiful pulsating rhythm still vibrating in and through me. 

I feel him as my beloved husband rolls over in bed, only to discover my empty pillow. I feel him as he stumbles out of bed still enveloped in his sleepy daze, rubbing the crust of green sleep from his eyes, placing his feet into his slippers, and walking towards our bedroom door, which has been left unusually wide open. 

I feel him as he emerges into the hallway, and sees the shadows cast from the black and blue light dancing from our living room. And I feel him; I feel him as his eyes finally find me before the burning fireplace in my once white nightgown. I feel as he discovers the blood which has turned that nightgown a deep burgundy, much like his beloved television set behind me. I feel as his heart begins to dance with that beautiful rhythm resonating from the static behind us and I feel him shivering as his eyes find my hands tightly gripping the ax which, now, rests at my side. 

“Claire…” is all he can say. But I feel him as he follows my fixed gaze down to my gift; the answer to all of his prayers. 

“What did you do…”

At first, I feel him as he can’t bring himself to look at my gift for him. Instead, I let him see it all within my eyes; I let him see the reflection of our sweet boy’s blood. 

Finally, he collapses to the gift I’ve laid before him. He embraces it and cries out – and for the first time I see that his love for us was all at once true, but lost in all of his arrogance, and that this gift was needed in order for him to discover that love for us once more. 

The choir of voices singing that beautiful song of static intensifies as I finally turn to him and watch him cradle our beloved boy with so much love and devotion, mumbling to the Lord and to himself, “Oh. God. Oh, god. What did you do, what did you do, what did you do, oh god, what did you do, what did you do, what did you do, what did you do, what did you do…” 

Now this is the man I married. 

As the ocean of static engulfs us completely, my beautiful husband finally looks back up at me. And, finally, I see everything I’ve ever asked for from him, and more, right there. He hears me. He sees me. He loves me. 

This next gift will prove just how much. 

I grip the ax handle tighter, and then, become one with the faces in the static. 

The early morning sun shines brightly before me, as I slowly make my way down the walkway toward the house of the Lord. Still covered in my gift’s blood, and still dragging the ax behind me, I arrive finally, once more, at its entryway. 

The morning sun has lit the now empty church before me in beautiful bright, and I know what I must do. I journey down the middle aisle, through the pews, straight towards the altar. 

Overcome by the magnetic knowledge of the presence arriving before me, I drop the ax and collapse to my knees and prostrate before the altar. Before me, I can hear and I can feel it – as its powerful pulsating existence explodes into the here and now. I feel the warmth of something looming over me and the rhythmic ocean of static floods every aural fiber I’ve ever known. As I’m drawn to finally lift my head from the floor of the altar and open my eyes, I’m quickly overcome by the light of a tall, brilliant figure made completely of light which towers before me and is flanked by two giant shadows on either side of it. The pulsating static resonates directly from this being and It speaks to me through the static; a language I’ve quickly learned to understand. 

I recognize that much like the lightwaves that surrounded the light bulb during my beloved husband’s sermon yesterday morning, the lightwaves emanating from this beautiful thing are also warping, as if the being is manipulating space and time itself. I find that I can’t look away from it, only that I’m mesmerized completely by its complete lack of features. Where a face should be, there is only light that explodes from it with the brightness of a burning sun. 

As the wonderful chorus of unflinching power reaches its crescendo a sudden pop echoes throughout the old church, causing me to blink and for the pulsating static to all at once fall into an abyss of nothing, which allows an overwhelming silence to invade the space instead. 

When I open my eyes, a slow, horrible realization guts me from the inside out. 

Now, the altar merely stands empty before me; my gaze only finds the once illuminated light bulb now completely dark, just dangling, with a curious black spot resting at the center of it and a small wisp of smoke rising from the bulb itself. 

Suddenly, I’m so cold, as my bloodstained nightgown clings to my skin. 

I shiver. 

And I vomit. 

And I feel nothing. Other than the vast emptiness of the house of God behind me, with the center aisle leading directly to those old doors creaking in the early morning wind; just merely beckoning.