The morning that Vincent was shot, he placed a large order of painting supplies.
Mysteriously, the gun that shot him was nowhere to be found and was not recovered.
The authorities or anyone else who accepted the suicide narrative have never considered how a man who had trouble feeding himself could afford a gun.
And finally… a deathbed confession in the early 1960s by the last of 3 brothers who admitted that Vincent was shot accidentally by him and his siblings during a favorite pass time of their’s, of teasing and torturing Vincent when they were teenagers.
As a side note: Vincent didn’t cut off his ear and give it to a prostitute either. There is an actual police report filed by Paul Gaughan, who was the only witness as well as a master swordsman… Besides being a wonderful painter and a world-class arsehole, it is considered a known conclusion by those who have studied the police report that Gaughan undoubtedly cut off Vincent’s ear.
The darkness arrives with the cold.
Winter reminds us of the death we fear.
Will it linger here forever touching us with her frost and ice?
Staying, holding, swallowing, and enduring permanence?
If you’re reading this, then probably not today.
The unknown is like that.
Like being born.
Born into fear.
Faith is the bridge.
” Everybody goes through life thinking they don’t have to live by any rules…
“I’m here ta tell ya, yur gonna have ta live by 2 rules.
“Everyone knows rule number 1. However, very few people know rule number 2.
“Rule # number 2 is never shit in your own nest. ”
“What’s rule number 1?” I asked.
” I’m glad you asked.” He answered.
“It depends on what you are. If you’re a criminal like me, then it’s never get caught. If you’re a civilian, then it’s some version of do no harm to others.”
I confessed. “I think I’m a civilian. ”
Jack smiled, ” For you, my friend, I think that would be wise.”
Neither one of us ever went back. I was 20, and Jack was 60.
I moved into the ground floor apartment at 77 Laxton with Al one floor above me and his son Mark one floor above Al; without incident.
After a few days, fears of running into Al faded into the distant foggy memories of past experiences.
I settled into a routine of shift work and Candice once or twice a week. She had a weird habit of calculating dollar value whenever we had sex. After she shared this tally with me the third or fourth time, I asked.
“So, you want this to be a hooker/john type relationship?” Then, the Candy experiences faded with Al into the mists of the past. Mark shared more Al stories with me, but I never saw much of either of them after that. I was asleep when I heard Al’s voice coming through my ceiling.
“I brought you into this world, and I can take you out! I will rip your throat out with my bare teeth!”
He repeated this a dozen times before I got up, dressed, went out my door, climbed the stairs, and kicked open Al’s front door.
Al slowly turned to face me. He was barely able to stand. Red faced in his underwear, drunk, and raged. He was holding a quart bottle of half consumed spirits. I walked towards him slowly, wagging my finger towards him and yelling. I stopped when I was right in his face.
“Al! If you don’t shut the fuck up and let me sleep I’m going to rip out your throat with my bare teeth… do you understand me Al?
Al’s eyes began to water. His arms shot out in an attempt to give me a hug. I stepped aside.
Finally, he said, ‘Dennis! Where you been?’
I burst out laughing and left. In that moment, Maltese Al was the loneliest man I had ever seen. I saw the price he’d paid for being a narcissistic abusive bullying cunt…
I moved somewhere soon after. I can’t remember the details. Wherever it was, it wasn’t with Maltese Al.
Mark seemed resigned to his fate. He cleared his throat…
“I was 4 and my sister was 18 months when Mom caught Dad fucking the 14 year old babysitter. She hit him over the head with a cast iron frying pan and gathered us up and took us over to our grandparents’ house.
“Mom went back to gather up some things between 2 and 3 in the morning when she was sure he’d be passed out from drinking. She was right. Al was unconscious in his underwear on the sofa.
“After she packed up what she needed, she went to the kitchen and got the easy-off oven cleaner. She pulled down his underwear and applied the chemical cleaner over Al’s cock and balls. She left the container on the table beside him. Al didn’t wake up for hours. By the time he did, his junk was swollen up to 3 times its normal size.
“Al drove himself to the police station… stood in the middle of the precinct… dropped his pants and screamed.
‘Look what that bitch did to me! Look what that bitch did to me!!’
“He told me he couldn’t have sex for over a year. He sold his part of his business for $750, 000.00 and fucked off to Malta. He bought into a Limousin business, and that lasted 18 years until someone cut his brake lines and almost killed him. He left Malta fearing for his life. The word was that his taste for young girls hadn’t gone away.”
“There’s something wrong with my father. There was something wrong with his father, too. His father lived in a cave in Malta for the last 20 years of his life. My grandmother delivered him a tray of food every morning until he died in that cave. This is my legacy. I don’t know if I have what they have or not.
“Wow! I don’t know what to say… but I do know that I can’t spend another minute with Al.”
“I get it. The bad news is that room I said you could have tomorrow… won’t be ready until next week.”
“Fuck!”
“I do have an alternative… There’s a 2 bedroom on the first floor. You can take it for $800/month.”
Dennis Mantin 
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