Blogger Hell

1995 was truly a funked year.  And when I say ‘funked’ I’m meaning another word that is more appropriately placed.  When I think back to that year, I am awed by the fact that I and so many others have survived for the last 14 years.  We thought that life was challenging and looking up for us during the years of Presidency of Bill Clinton.  Then I turn 18 and I spent the first eight years of my adult life under the Presidency of George W. Bush.  So much has happened since 1995.  Since 1995 I have graduated with California State Proficiency, acquired an internship at Autodesk, hired and laid off by SEGA, combed through various jobs like Apprentice Electrician, House Painter, Guitar Builder, Retail Floor Salesman, Graphic Designer, and Coffee Barista.  I even worked as a recording artist and recorded a theme song for a casino with my friends.  What else has happened since 1995?  In 2003, Forever’s End, the All American True Heavy Metal Band, acquired me on their roster as Lead Guitarist and Backing Vocalist.  I never thought I’d even be in a band, let alone the definitive genre of music of my generation.  At least, that’s how I feel about it. So much has occurred in the last 14 years it’s easy to leave out a lot of what happened.  It goes with the territory that some stories are forgotten or dismissed.  There is one story, one memory, that shall not be forgotten.  I’m going to share it with you.

1995.  It was a warm and sunny day in mid-summer.  I was sitting by myself in my apartment, in the living room, watching television.  I could hear the sounds of birds singing lightly in the background of the TV glow.  The front door of my apartment was wide open, as it usually was on these hot days.  I could hear what sounded like kids playing outside but in the distance and not very loudly.  It felt good to have the whole house to myself.  I don’t remember where my brother and sisters went.  I know that they couldn’t be too far off.  I was enjoying the program I was watching when I had a feeling to get up out of my seat.  I rose from the sofa and turned off the television.  When the sound of commercials ceased and there was only a calm warm wind blowing I thought nothing of it.  What was it that I was sensing?  I started to lazily walk away from the sofa and towards the hallway leading to my front door.  It was then that I heard something loud and nearby.  Could have been as close as a street over from mine.  It sounded like a car backfiring.  Then I thought about that sound and quickly thought it resembled something worse.  I had heard many cars backfiring around my neighborhood.  This sound I heard was no backfire.  It sounded like a shotgun blast.  The idea occurred to me as I took my next few steps, that maybe this was a shotgun.  Maybe someone was shooting somebody in my street (visible from 3 stories up in an apartment building).  Maybe someone was being shot in an adjacent street.  I didn’t know for sure.  For the next two seconds I felt adrenaline rushing through me as I continued to think about this sound.  I wanted to be mistaken but I had to know and so I started faster for the door.  Each step I took morphed my assumption of the sound into affirmation.  Logic followed and I was asking myself as I ran to the front door, was it wise to go towards that sound?  Seconds later at the front door I made up my mind and that’s when I could hear commotion.  I was running at this point and about to go flying down four flights of stairs when in mid leap my mother’s boyfriend, Brian, also a good friend of mine, comes bounding up the stairs and stops me in my tracks.  He holds me back and keeps me from going down the stairs, pushing me back towards the front door.  At this point my adrenaline was running high and I fought with him as he told me, “Mark’s been shot.” and at hearing this I feel a surge of energy and I broke free from Brian insisting that, “there needs to be witnesses” and as I was prevented from running down the stairs, I went to the banister and looked down into the street towards secondary sounds.  The shooter was still in the building and we could hear him bounding down flights of stairs.  As I look over the ledge I see a big white truck with tinted windows.  As I look at the drivers side and realize I can see nobody inside, I get the feeling like someone is looking back up at me and that’s when the truck spins its wheels and goes down the street, around the building and out of my view.  I pull my head back in shock as I realize I am seeing the getaway car. Only a few seconds later after I stopped looking down in the street, other witnesses saw the shooter with a sawed off shotgun come out of the stairwell and proceed to chase the white truck down the street.  The shooter, as he escaped, pointed his freshly used shotgun at cars and anyone in the street as he ran by.  It was then that the terror fully came upon me and swallowed my adrenaline as Brian’s words were echoing in my mind.  “Mark’s been shot.”   I wasn’t allowed to go down to Mark’s apartment.  Paramedics were coming.  The sounds of pain and crying emanated from the walls.  My mother and our friend Rock was there, holding Mark and his wounds.  Mark was saying, “I’m dying.”  I bet the paramedics have seen horrors worse than this, but nothing was like seeing our friend Mark be taken down the stairs in a stretcher, his blood leaving a trail behind that would stay on those stairs for many years.  Mark was dead on his way to the hospital and after they resuscitated him he died again and he was in the hospital with a sheet over his head, dead.  I am still at home, at my apartment, soon surrounded by witnesses and we were frantically sharing information about what happened.  Who, why?  None of it made sense until we added up piece after piece.  Later, reporters showed up and tried to ask us questions.  We were no help.  Our only concern was for Mark and we had no idea at that point that he was pronounced dead.  His Wife and Son (a baby at the time) were notified that he was dead on arrival.

Quickly a rumor spread about his death.  Soon the world that knew Markus was calling him by his childhood nickname ‘Metal’ and they were saying, “Metal’s dead.”  Little did I know at the time the symbolic irony of that statement.  It was then and after that I was experiencing ungodly dogma towards that which I loved so much, heavy metal music.  I know for a fact Metal isn’t dead.  If anything, he’s alive and living in the same house with me.  I know he lives.  I went to visit him in the hospital shortly after he came back from the dead.  He wrote music.  He seemed happy in pain.  He seemed ready to live again.  Metal was not dead.  Metal’s dead only for a few minutes in the grand scheme of things.

During those minutes of being out of this world, Markus learned something when crossing the threshold and he returned to deliver a message.  You can look out there and see what happens to people when they have Death Experiences (nothing about Markus’ experience was deemable ‘near’), sometimes they come back worshiping God or get religious with their life.  Instead of all that, Markus came back to life and requested on behalf of the Maker of All that the hospital was going to put his leg back on.  At that point, dead twice and brought back, Markus was laying on a cot under a white sheet next to his dismembered leg connected merely by a sciatic nerve.  An unlucky janitor cleaning up blood from the floor was shocked when Markus’ zombified body arose from under the sheet and started making demands.  Believe it, as soon as they could, doctors were rushed in from around the world and began repairing his leg.  They put his leg back on, moving tendants, connecting muscle tissues, lining the bits of bone that were still left in his leg together in hopes that it would regrow.  These ‘Angels’ that pretended to be surgeons and doctors, did a great job by a standard that does not exist.  Ask yourself this, to this day, how many people do you know have had dismemberment of the leg and had it put back on?  Look to the Armed Forces and tell me, do you see people coming back from war with their legs put back on?  I have not.  I see prosthetics.

I don’t know the extents of what this means.  There has to be a reason that this happened.  There must be a way to rectify.  Doctors claim that Markus would have a better life with a prosthetic leg.  Every time he goes to the doctors to check up on him they insist that he let them take his leg.  Why?  After what happened, after the amazing miracle that occurred, why do they want to remove the leg?  Is it because they are in so disbelief of what happened they want to make it not be true?

In case you were wondering, that is why I say 1995 is a funked up year.

What were you doing in 1995?

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