The Electrocution of Benjamin Marks

Anyone can write a story. Stories are so blasé. Story-telling is the automatic response to diving three or four beers deep. You start rambling about the last time you had that much to drink . . .
Stories are also weak. They get trampled, squeezed, crushed, butchered to the point of dismemberment. The greatest stories have all been told and retold—occasionally by the same person—innumerable times, just like the story about the last time . . .
But stories are weak. Life shouldn’t be about stories. Art definitely isn’t about stories. It’s story-telling—that automatic response once you’re three or four beers deep—that is art. Good story-tellers are admired. Good stories merely are. They’re just there to be told.
Benjamin Mark was an excellent story-teller. Brilliant for his age. His stories moved people to love him, which is the general goal of telling stories. His own story, like all stories, isn’t especially impressive, but he always managed to present the details in a beautiful way. Despite the fact that all of his stories have been told before, he managed to turn them into sparks, beautiful sparks, hypnotic, fire-works of action and words. Something people liked him for.
There are an infinite number of types of story-tellers. There are just as many types of stories, but they can all be categorized and organized. They’re all either happy or sad, but story-tellers have infinite dimensions and ranges of happiness and sadness within them. They are the massy knot of all the stories they’ve told or considered telling. Occasionally even stories they’ve lived weave themselves into the tangle. There are story-tellers who paint with big bold strokes of detail, or craft a pattern, rhythm with words and phrases. Some position pauses mathematically, use driving calculations to push along some character or creature or thought. Benjamin was this calculative sort of story-teller. Really, he was a master of psychological traps. He knew when to say what to build and release tension, stir laughs and, of course, end. He spent the most time planning his endings.
The end was important because it had to be both subtle and satisfying. If the story didn’t accomplish something, there was no point. Likewise, if he ruined his tone or energy, he’d ruin the whole story. He strived for resolution. No more, and never any less.
For him, the story-telling thoroughly paid off. He felt that way until the day he died, and then he was far too distracted to be thinking about stories. His stories enabled him to lead a compressed life. Whether his very stories ended him, or were just a symptom of some greater symmetry is not meant for any story-teller to decide. It simply isn’t exposition material.
Benjamin Mark wasn’t especially attractive. He was as pale as the sun would allow, skinny to the point of androgyny, and his short, brown hair always leapt up in awkward directions, as if some current was running through it, magnetizing it in weird ways. Yet he was still popular, because of his skill in telling stories. He may not have been the most popular, but he lost his virginity willingly to a willing girl in eighth grade, and there were no repercussions. That must count for something. It definitely did in his high school.
How one seduces a girl in eighth grade, is far beyond the comprehension of most of us, but most of us see seduction as an instant process driven by some secret force. Benjamin knew that seduction was just a matter of telling the right stories.
He told stories about working for his father. Minimum wage is a lot in eighth grade, when an hour of work can buy a week of lunches. He talked about all the interesting people he met in his father’s bakery: the men with beards and tattoos; the women with gaudy jewelry, bulbous rings and shrill voices; the old lady who always gave him a tip; all buying his dad’s bread. He rarefied his position further by telling stories of how complicated the register is, and how stupid the customers are. How this one old Asian lady asked him to pick out change from her over-full coin purse. He mentioned secret ingredients in some of the bread, but stopped those stories short, leaving everyone hungry for more. Especially her.
Then he chose her, and told stories for her, the one with the hungriest, brightest imagination. He told stories that would make her laugh and maker her comfortable. These stories were pure fantasy. Magical lands where I love you forever and the like, but he told them well. And he listened like only a real story-teller can to her stories: fantasies even more deluded than his own.
One night they were in his room, but she was in a fantasy world. Which one, Benjamin couldn’t say. Stories are incredibly weak, but when given control, they run magnificently quickly. Three or four beers deep, this girl relinquished all control to some story in her head, and it ran her magnificently quickly.
Later on, after more nights like this, Benjamin had to start telling new stories. Stories about how she was so immature, she couldn’t keep up their relationship. Stories about how they were thirteen, but she expected to love him forever, and it was just crazy and unrealistic. He never complained. In stories, she was still entirely his.
There were more like her. There always are. Every good story is told an infinite number of times for a reason.
Benjamin Mark learned monotony early in his compressed life. He knew that school didn’t matter. He had work and women, and kept up with school. The first two years of high school were utterly indistinguishable, as the about a third of his junior year. He did well in English and history, being such a master of stories, and mediocre in everything else. Then he picked up a guitar.
He was terrible. At a party, with a girl, three or four beers deep, he had the electrified thing forced into his hands. He couldn’t make sense of what he was playing, but after someone forced his hands to hold and strum an A5 chord, it all seemed to feel right. Not good—it certainly didn’t sound good—or bad, but right, and that’s what mattered. It could never work as a story, but if felt right.
He bought a guitar, and it replaced the girls. Benjamin no longer noticed the monotony, for now it was comprised of an infinite stream of beautiful notes sparkling through the air. Even when the guitar wasn’t in his hands, he’d practice, run it through his head, and out his fingers. That music, every note, was beautiful not for how he presented it, but for its own ring. Its own voice.
Benjamin Mark became my story one hot day, when we were both three or four beers deep. He was over at my house, playing guitar. I streamed into his life with guitars and music; we played together. Benjamin was no longer terrible, but he wasn’t great either. He was having a very on night, but didn’t know it was because the outlet his amp was plugged into had a faulty ground wire. His whole guitar was electrified, pumping him full of current. As his fingers danced over the strings, I saw sparks leap from fingertip to string, shining like notes made briefly physical, floating in the free space of reality.
He unplugged the amplifier only to die. How it happened, I really don’t know. It doesn’t make any logical sense. The best explanation I’ve heard is that his previous charge drew the current to him, but that seems like a stretch. I think it was just his time.
Death by electrocution can’t be too bad though. So much energy bouncing around, the very force that makes hearts beat in such great amount, it’s lethal. Really, it’s not an unpleasant death. In fact, some have said it feels rather like an on night playing guitar.