"Building 414"
There exists in humankind certain curiosities not readily explained by the common laws of science and nature; nor do they conform to any law of contemporary observation. To a sensitive thinker, with proclivities toward the arcane, one would well view such curiosities as an opportunity for discovery, recklessly unmindful of the potential threat to his own peace and sanity.
Dennis James Laux

….. this maligned pathos that now stood before the boy restrained within a pen-like enclosure in no regard by any rational observation would never be considered human or wholly human. Yet this being carried a frightfully disquieting aspect suggesting it had entered this world in a manner not unlike the whole of humanity. The boy shuddered at this implication. Their eyes met just briefly and he reeled nearly losing his senses. In those eyes, he saw shame, remorse, ignominy, and unending loneliness. He saw the black sorrow of bright memories. He saw pain, loss, unrelenting misery, detachment and abject fear. Even more terrible these eyes showed the clarity of undeniable self-awareness and the awful knowledge that relief resides only in oblivion. The boy felt something, a cold cerebral displacement. Then the icy truth of revelation embraced him. The child’s unquestioned belief in a well-ordered universe eternally guided by a benevolent hand was at once irrevocably shattered now replaced with the grim reality of the uncertain and the insecure. Here was some ghastly allegory of humankind and the boy’s own image reflected in this bête noire’s suffering eyes seized him with such an infernal chthonian vertiginous horror he toppled forward striking his head on the very cage holding this aberration. A discomposing sensation of recognition, and more terrible, empathy, was met with an unsuccessful effort to deny such thoughts.
What stood before the boy was a cosmic abomination, a cruel cosmic joke and allowing this being to live another hour was crueler even still. His youthful curiosity, his heedless trespass had led him to the abysmal brink of sanity and save for the merciful intercession of a gravely concerned orderly the boy was certain in another moment he…..

From “Building 414” by Dennis James Laux

"Jennifer Irene"

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?"
Poe, 1844

We are all vainly aware, perhaps vaguely but undeniably so, that Death is looking for us, searching with an unrelenting dutiful purpose and just how close He is to finding us, no man can know. Such was my belief on that bleak moonless evening with its chilly intermittent rain, although hardly remarkable and seasonably typical for any New England early spring evening. It was April 27.
After years of struggle freelancing my photography, I was offered and readily accepted, a position as assistant art director with a small but growing Providence based advertising agency. As I have stated, it was April 27. At precisely 9:21pm my editor called down to the studio informing me, I had received a telephone call on the outside line. “This is Dennis Laux”, I said picking up the phone. “Hello Mr. Laux, this is Dr. Howard Waterman from Rhode Island Hospital, I wanted to let you know that we did everything we possibly could to….. “ Doctor”, I interrupted, “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about”. (moment)…. (moment)….(moment)….”You don’t know what happened”, he said. This was a statement not a question. (moment)….(moment)….(moment)…. “No”, I said. (moment)….(moment)…. “Mr. Laux, I am sorry to tell you this but there was an accident earlier this evening, your daughter sustained severe head and chest injuries. She died fifteen minutes ago.

“SHE DIED FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO.”

It is hard to explain how a simple English sentence composed of simple English words could so shake and change a man and I can only state that in that very moment the changes were immediate, profound and permanent. Death found her on an unremarkable early spring New England evening. It was April 27. My daughter was twelve. Today is her birthday.

Dennis James Laux, 2013