It is rich black coffee,
Dark and warm and energizing
It is a woman
sitting on the back porch
of a house on a hill
gazing at a dogwood tree,
smooth pink and white petals
against a blue sky,
her milky pearl skin
reflecting the sun.
A bucket of beer on ice
she shares with her companion.
It is a late night drive,
Long and random and peaceful
It is a man
lounging in a woven hammock
hung upon his back porch,
absorbed in the sight
of rays of brilliant sun
kissing radiant pale skin,
singing a soft and gentle song.
A voice of silk and heavy cream,
like all soft and flowing things,
he shares with his companion.
She’s Mixed Media, by Julie Wells, Mixed Media, 2015.
Chickenhearted
by: Francesca Okoh
Look, I found him fast asleep
Behold cheer, giggle and jubilation echoes in the air
Prey alive like a dry tree at the sound of raindrop
Leaves dance in celebration, bursting and sprouting life
Suddenly at the sound of his footsteps
You seeped in their mind and overcame them
With dread, horror and fright
Their energy sapped and drained
Left disfigured and defeated
A thief you steal their peace
You creep in and devour them
Strengthening your control through lies
You built a stronghold – a giant cage and prison them
Today the prison’s gate is opened
The veil has been lifted
There are shouts of freedom echoing.
Revenge Has Just Begun by: Kristal Bautista, Unknown, 2014.
Schizo-Normal by: Crystal Joyce
My mother told me I would be murdered at the convenient age of 32. And 32 short years later, after I thought her to be at liar, she came back to kill me. I wasn’t bothered nor surprised that she kept her word, but the very audacity of that woman to admit that she wanted me gone, all while living, and as old as she was, was the picture of valor and stupidity.
She is what I sat thinking about, staring at a timeworn photograph of her leather clad face sitting adjacent to me, outlined in gold. Next to that one, sat a picture of the old woman’s shameless courtesan, my impression of him a reasonable one. The man’s head was literally shaped like a square, and he looked disgustedly starved. The old bastard looked like he came from the Cambrian Period and I could tell he had no backbone, which I suppose explains why he wore that cross around his neck. I’d found his photograph in a box of nostalgia and decay, and it was correctly labeled a false insurance of purity, Father David Martin Brennan.
I’d remember meeting him when I was around eight. He shook my father’s hand with his left, and took him for a ride in his tomato red TC Roadster, down Deidre Lane, the street of men with meaningless yearns and bare morals, who came and went from Carlene County, with one last obligated transgression. I watched my father smiling, gleaming, existing rush around the bend, dying and already dead. The sheer hustle of that old-fashioned exhaust split decaying leaves of every color into a rattle of tell all.
He came back without my father, trying to convince me it was a situation of abandonment, and I wanted to believe him, but mother’s embellished screeches revealed her elated delight that my father was now in the ground; and, when I failed to pretend convinced, it set in stone an understanding between us all, that we were now enemies, my mother nothing more to me than a pig in heat.
Streaked beautiful with death’s color of oil and smut, mouth and limbs open to a new kind of existence, he was found born again, but buried under the richly soiled earth in a grave of ants and maggots, giving them life and pleasure. His eyes still open for witness, had both awe to the purity of transition, but still a disdainful mortal touch that felt cheated out of living his human existence. I suppose his anger was still present because he took on the figure of a man. It had only been three short months after his murder that I’d found him not too far out of town in Cedar Woods. And to my delight the only thing my father left me was a request to make sure my mother lived in utmost misery.
I took her picture with concentration, staring out my window trying to trace the monument of her outline sown into the cedar outside. The day after she died I began to see it, her face now made of leaves and branches, drifted just close enough to observe me. Now three years from that day, in my 32nd year of existence, she had managed to neglect me from my entire home, all except the backroom, a guest bathroom, and an office. She’d almost managed to take up the entire house with three gun shots marking every transition she took.
I’d been arrested plenty times for allegedly shooting off the old Burnside carbine in the dead of the night, but that was mom’s way. Ridiculing me with fables of pity, she sent officials down trying to send me to a chaplain, providing me with the option of turning to God before my execution, but I flat out refused to see the man. I had no time to waste on something as uncertain as religion when the only thing proved to be true is death. I was ready for this execution, seeming that I and everyone have had millions before, and I could tell she was envious and ready to see me out of my human form as she chipped my shoulder blade with the hurtling of a brick at my body. I grabbed the brick and threw it back at what at first appeared to be nothing, but I could still envision the nauseating vile that seeped from her yellow encrusted lips, as she dulled over her clay colored smile of black and brown. Her smell, a thousand years of murdered bodies ripe under a vehement sun, the opposite of my father’s fragrance. The sight of her stabbed me through the temple and made each organ vomit, her presence the one of a filthy whore encased in suitable spew and manure. She charged at me, shattering a mirror that showed no reflection except my own, and I thought it strange because her presence was as real to me as if I were tasting her soiled and riddled goo of skin. She kissed my forehead and stuck her finger in my mouth, whispering to me how I’d die as I looked into her eyes, already too blind. Blazing with the popping of immense fire crackers, I heard not only three gun shots, but now a ceaseless infinite of blasts and roars, that were followed by the bleeding of both my ears. Her wicked laugh as she enjoyed this brought my organs’ bile up my throat and out of my mouth, and she took it in her hand rubbing it on every part of her skeleton, like a hot bath.
I didn’t love this torture of myself, but I refused to believe that something so vivid and tangible was just a fabric of a mind that functioned differently. She grabbed my throat and squeezed, and I could see the creases of her ugly face smiling in an upward direction, and feel the desert heat of my fiery neck closing, the only relief the spit fire of tears hazing from my burning eyes, which were even more ignited by the burning scorches of a dying flame in a desert-like sky.
Scripts of laughter and taunting wrote themselves on the walls, then splashes of curses and hexes, enchantments, jinxes budding inside my head until they spilled over onto the floor, wrapped me in their web of psychosis, with murmuring of how my father died a torturous death and Brennan reveled, hawking spit in his face telling him that I’d be taken care of. The story replayed with gaudy imagery, with the backdrop of twisted cedar and yellow sky that my father was revived in. My name continuously chanted, maybe a call of my mother’s final blow or from the external watching and observing. Voices raped, scratched their message, engraved it into my skull that my human life was not my best, that I was too naive to think that a mother would not classify as an enemy, that she wasn’t a part of the struggle for survival. They narrated cohesively, with the spewing of suicide, my mother’s spiteful voice singing me a curse at birth, and my betrayed confession of how I once loved her. The voices with a low rumble rose into a whine of protruding molten screams, all crying and impatient at my slow verdict to let them kill me. If this was a human mind, a mind split into two and at constant disagreement, then I would surely kill them both, because I would be streaked beautiful with colors of oil and smut, and I would give pleasure to those who wished to feast on my decaying flesh, and I would stare with awe at the transition of absolute truth, because when you are not human, that is the only life worth living. And when you are not human, everything is simple and everything does what it supposed to do. The flies were buzzing around my dead body, because that is what they were supposed to do.
My mother told me I would be murdered at the convenient age of 32. And 32 short years later, after I thought her to be at liar, she came back to kill me. Here in this pocket dimension between life’s transitions I dangle in pure space-time. My mother from another life is now not mine at all, but we are both just ground and earth. I feel matter that is no longer my own, mold and twist and cast into the next big thing. With this process that is anything but ephemeral, I am eager to start anew when my brain finally decays.
Over this illusion of time and reality, I mold into every type of living cell apart of the whole, but getting to visualize the entire process without the superior consciousness of a human, it puts me right back at dead, and my mother says it’s time to get up, because this dream has lasted long enough. I wake to her rattling my bones, telling me that I better make a goddamned good impression.
Pen and paper; cross and robe, Father David Brennan has come to perform a somewhat civil case of parting. He pisses on territory that’s already my fathers with the exhaust from his tomato red TC Roadster. With the shake of his left hand, he lies and spits in the face of every man who was foolish enough to assimilate to the cross of intimidation, and with his face, streaked ugly with the colors of a man who doesn’t believe in immortality his greed to gain just one more entity in his time, streaks my mother pink with blush as she is a dying being to.
My father knowing he’s alive, and was alive, and will be, signs the paper liberating him from grounded plights, and rushes around the bend all to be streaked beautiful with deaths color of oil and smut, and I, I will stay humbled here to carry out his request with the old Burnside carbine.
It was raining that day. It was always raining in Guadalcanal.
The rain fell in sheets from the swollen grey clouds that hung low in the sky. The ground was a muddy quagmire that sucked at our boots and churned like molasses as we trudged through the jungle. Palm trees taller than my grandfather’s barn broke the rain on their broad-leaved canopy, where the water would collect and fall to the ground in streams, hosing us as we passed under. The raindrops plinked and plonked on the steel of our rifles and helmets. Our uniforms were drenched and ragged, scarred with months of service. We Marines wore our weathered uniforms, like the badges we had yet to receive. The beaten fabric was the stained glass windows of our cathedral; the patches, cuts and discolorations reminded us of our struggles against man and nature, of our triumphs, and of our losses.
A bird burst from the dense foliage, startling some of the jumpier men. It wheeled overhead, squawking in the way those exotic birds did. I imagined what it saw as it looked down on us from on high. A line of helmets, islands in a sea of mud, distinctly separate, but bound together in purpose and direction; an archipelago of men.
I ordered the patrol to a halt and let the men take a breather. They conversed over the pattering of the rain, their attitude easygoing and lax. Patrols used to be a tense trip when the whole island was enemy territory, but now the Japanese were cornered and were on their last leg. My squad was on a routine patrol, opposite of the front, so the men took it easy.
“Fucking rain,” Harper cursed as he sat on a flat rock. “Think I liked it better when we were starving. At least we were dry,” he said, his strong Boston accent coloring his speech. “Remember when we were dry, Whiskey?”
Whiskey spat through the gap in his teeth. “Way I recall it,” he replied with a Southerner’s twang. “You was pissin’ your pants since we landed here. So no, I don’t remember when you was dry.”
“Sarge,” Harper said, turning to me. “Tell this Aryan here it was water. God damn mortar round splashed me was all.” Where Harper had dark features, Whiskey had straw blond hair and the brightest blue eyes I’d ever seen, hence the nickname.
“It was water,” I replied, never taking my eyes from the jungle. While the men lounged, I circled around, keeping an eye out; I was very protective of my flock; and, easy route or not, I didn’t slack. “Of course,” I continued, “could be that he pissed himself immediately after; Harper’s always been a pussy.”
“Thanks for nothing, Sarge,” Harper said dryly.
“Any time, Private. Any time.” Dirty jokes and insults were all part of our daily interaction. Some of us, like Harper and Whiskey, had been together since boot camp, and we had cultivated an arsenal of offensive humor and a thick skin to accompany them.
Not all of the men in our squad had been with us for so long. We’d lost almost half of our men in the first couple of months on Guadalcanal, and replacements didn’t arrive until just recently. Some squads were merged to compensate for the holes in our ranks, but one fresh face joined us. He was the guy standing apart from everyone else. His clothes were pristine and new, his boots had yet to be broken in, and his face was clean shaven. If he was a car, he’d still have that intoxicating new scent about him. A heavy pack radio weighed down on his slender frame. He wore round eyeglasses that he wiped and adjusted constantly; coupled with his timid behavior, he seemed better suited to accounting than soldiering. The kid even managed to make standing an awkward affair. Back home he’d be described as smart and sharp looking, but out here he was untried, a boy not yet baptized in the horrors of war. His name was Michael Reed.
Private Harper’s gaze fell on the radioman, and I could read the contempt that lay there. Reed averted his skittish gaze from Harper’s glower, finding something interesting in the mud at his feet. It was Reed’s first day with the squad, but Harper had preemptively decided to dislike him. The Bostonian complained when he heard about our new addition. We didn’t need a radioman, he argued, but that wasn’t what Harper was upset about. It wasn’t about the way the new guy looked, or that he was so green. We’d been fighting for two months and we already lost so many men. The war was just getting started, and none of us expected to make it out alive, let alone the guy standing next to us; especially anyone as green as four-eyed Michael Reed. Harper didn’t want another friend to lose.
I didn’t subscribe to Private Harper’s jaded isolationist view. I couldn’t invest in the idea that none of my men would make it out alive. That, and I liked Reed. He reminded me of that shy kid in class whose name no one was sure of, possessed of a quiet intelligence, polite and non-confrontational. A nice guy, I thought. Reed just seemed like a nice guy.
“Um, Sergeant, sir?” Reed said to me. He had to repeat himself since his soft spoken words didn’t carry over the sound of the rain. “Sir, will our route be taking us near the Japanese line, sir?”
“Japs,” Harper corrected.
Reed blinked. “Excuse me?”
“They’re called Japs,” Harper repeated, annoyance creeping into his tone as though he were explaining something rudimentary to an obtuse individual. Japs, nips, yellow bellies, these were the names we gave to our foe. It was a label denoting the inherent evil and unredeeming qualities of the men we killed. It was better to dehumanize them. It made killing them easier. Shooting a uniform weighed lighter on the conscience than shooting a face.
“And no,” Harper continued. “We’re not going anywhere near them, Private.”
“Actually, it’s Corporal,” Reed corrected.
“I don’t see any chevrons,” Harper replied.
Reed adjusted his glasses. “I was promoted yesterday,” he said, not in a boasting manner, but spoken out of the wish to be technically correct.
Harper looked at the radioman in disbelief, then turned to me. “Bullshit.” And there it was. He was looking for a reason to hate the kid, and now he’d found it. “How the fuck did this desk jockey get promoted?” Harper asked, spurred from his rock by indignation. “He’s been here for two days. Two damn days! We’ve been here for two months with no reinforcements, no supplies, no food, no fucking toilet paper, and this asshole is the one that gets promoted?”
“Quiet, Harper,” I cautioned, but the man didn’t hear me or wasn’t listening.
“I suppose I should be saluting you and addressing you as ‘sir’, huh?” Harper continued, directing his attention to the corporal, who looked as if he hoped that the ground would swallow him up. “Well, I’ll be dead before I do any of that for some pencil pusher that brown-nosed his way to a promotion.”
“That’s enough, Harper!” I cut in. I grabbed him by the shoulders and forced him to face me, and said in no uncertain terms, “You do not insult a non-com in my squad. Not in the field, and not openly. You got a problem, you talk to me in private. Understand?”
Harper’s jaw clenched. “Yes, sir,” he curtly replied. He looked over at Reed, who seemed embarrassed by the whole situation, and fixed him with a withering glower. It was easy to think ill of Harper in that moment, but you’d be wrong to think poorly of his character. He was always the first one to share his rations when we were low, and he was always pestering the guys about writing our wounded friends back home, or wherever they may be recovering. I imagined he grew up with a lot of younger siblings; he acted like an older brother to the guys all through boot camp. The emotional toll of losing the friends he looked after must have weighed heavily on his shoulders. I couldn’t blame him for pulling away.
An awkward silence fell over the group, broken only by the pouring rain, until Whiskey cleared his throat. “Y’all hear we invaded Africa?” the Southerner asked, changing the subject. “Looks like we’re takin’ the fight to Mussolini.”
Harper nodded, taking a seat on his lonely rock. “My kid brother’s shipping to England. Lucky bastard’s going to be dropping into Paris while we’re here drowning in Satan’s asshole. He keeps writing me, saying how he can’t wait to fight.” He shook his head at his young brother’s naivety. “The kid has no idea.”
“Dulce bellum inexpertis,” I said. Whiskey and Harper exchanged confused glances.
“Uh, Sarge,” Whiskey ventured, “did you just have a lapse of sanity, or somethin’?”
Corporal Reed smiled. “War is sweet to those who have never fought,” he translated. “Latin. From Desiderius Erasmus.”
“Pindar,” I corrected. “But that’s a common mistake.” Harper and Whiskey still looked confused, but Reed’s expression brightened, having found a subject of interest. “My father is a professor at Yale,” I explained. “He teaches Greek philosophy.” Reed looked impressed, while the others just shook their heads. “Did you ever study philosophy?” I asked him.
“No, sir,” the radioman replied. “I just like to read a lot, sir.”
Whiskey snorted. “Reed likes to read,” he chuckled, thinking himself quite clever. No one joined him in his mirth.
“Jesus Christ,” Harper lamented at his friend’s simple humor.
Reed wiped beads of rain from his glasses. “Sir, I’ve been reading Hemingway recently, sir,” he continued. “He came out with a book a couple of years ago, sir; For Whom The Bell Tolls.”
“Any good?” I asked.
“Has Hemingway ever disappointed, sir?” he asked rhetorically. We ended up discussing our favorite authors, novels, and poems while the others listened in. Harper looked like he was trying to ignore the whole conversation, but I noticed his attention drift in every now and then. Eventually, the subject shifted to films, and that’s when the other guys chimed in.
“Hey, Harper,” Whiskey called. “Rita Hayworth or Bette Davis?”
“Is that a serious fucking question?” Harper asked. “Rita-Fucking-Hayworth! Hands down.”
“Aw, no love for Bette?” Whiskey said with mock sadness.
The private shook his head. “Fuck Bette.”
“I most certainly would,” Whiskey smiled lecherously. “What about you, Sarge? Rita or Bette?”
“I’m a married man,” I replied neutrally, which earned me a few boo’s and jeers.
Whiskey turned his attention to the corporal. “What about you? Rita or Bette?” Harper shot the Southern boy a look that said he didn’t want the corporal in the conversation.
Reed shifted awkwardly, probably because he wasn’t used to these topics. “Um, wait, so you said you’re name is Whiskey, right?” he asked the Southern boy, changing the subject.
“It’s a nickname,” Whiskey corrected.
Harper smiled in spite of himself. “Go on,” he prompted.
Whiskey sighed. “My last name is Daniels.” Harper gestured for him to continue. Whiskey rolled his eyes as though he had to explain this many times and felt the novelty of it had worn off. “First name: Jack.”
“Jack Daniels!” hooted Harper. “Can you believe that? What kind of parent names their kid Jack Daniels? I’m guessing it was your daddy’s drink of choice when he was whipping you with his belt, huh?”
Whiskey splashed some mud on the private’s boots. “Anyone ever tell you you was an asshole?”
Harper laughed. “Anyone ever tell you you look like Hitler’s wet dream?” Even Reed cracked a smile at their banter.
“That’s enough, ladies,” I cut in; break time was over. The soldiers got to their feet and made ready to move out just as the rain stopped. A splash of sunlight broke through the clouds, the incessant rain disappeared, and the spirit of the place brightened up, as did the men. They prayed it would last throughout the day, but they all knew it wouldn’t. It was a blessing, one that we learned to appreciate, however brief.
I called Reed to the front as we set off. The radioman hustled, his boots squelching in the mud as he made his way to the head of the squad. As he passed Harper, the private gave him a mocking salute. “Sir,” Harper acknowledged as the corporal passed. Reed glanced back at him.
A thunderclap.
Reed’s helmet slipped forward over his glasses. Blood sprayed out from under the bowl of his helmet. The corporal fell face down in the mud with a wet smack. There was no heroism, no battle, no last words. He collapsed like a marionette that had its strings severed at once. That was how Corporal Michael Reed died.
It was a Japanese sniper that got him. The bastard was strapped into the palm tree directly above us. Why he was there and how long he had been waiting were questions we’d never have answered. It was just one of those things. We killed him before he got anyone else, but the damage had already been done. We’d lost another man, this time on a simple routine patrol.
We gathered around Reed’s body, shoulders and heads bowed by the weight of the moment. The blood spilled into the earth, drawing red rivulets in the mud that webbed out until it congealed beneath our boots, like a macabre map connecting points of weary men.
“I wonder who he would’ve picked,” Whiskey murmured.
Harper knelt down and removed Reed’s dog tags. “What the fuck does it matter?” he asked, an undercurrent of frustration in his voice. “He’s dead.”
A cloud crossed over the sun. It began to rain.
The sniper could have killed any one of us, but he shot Reed. No one said it then, but we all knew why he killed the corporal; Harper saluted him. The sniper thought Reed was the commanding officer and figured he’d take him down first. Instead, he’d killed some quiet kid, inexperienced in the ways of war, who just liked to read books. Harper couldn’t have known the sniper was there, but that guilt clung to him like a shadow.
I wouldn’t say any of us made it out of the war unscathed. There were those of us who never took a bullet, or a scratch from shrapnel, but we were scarred nonetheless. There was a piece of us we left in the jungles, on the sands of the beachheads, in the graves of our fallen, on the islands of the Pacific. For better and for worse, the war changed us.
Years after, I received a package from an old friend. It was a sunny day as I sat on the porch, overlooking my grandfather’s barn, the package held in my hands. The sender was Ryan Harper. Among the contents was a letter. “I checked out the book,” it read. “Not bad. I think you’ll like it.” It was a copy of Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.
The spine was broken in, the cover was well worn, and the corners of the pages were creased from being dog-eared. The pages were yellow with age and the edges were stained with flecks of coffee, giving the book a warm and traveled character. There was a passage written in Harper’s hand on the inside of the cover. It was an excerpt of a poem by John Donne:
Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee1.
Donne, John “From Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions: Meditation XVII.” Luminarium.Anniina Jokinsen, 4 November 2010. Web. 15 June 2013.
Self Portrait by: Giesa Branas, Acrylic on canvas, 2013.
Hands by: Allison Huffman
I remember the faint song humming in the background,
the smell of fresh coffee, eggs caramelizing in the pan
and the bacon oozing and popping grease.
The way her petite pale hand glides along the paper
grasping the pen as her wrist swirls and rocks
in a gentle motion while she writes down the orders,
those hands which had seen many things were wrinkled,
her nails coated with a beautiful teal, almost as blue
as the moon when it’s in full cycle.
She gravitates around the room, glancing at the cups,
checking to see if a refill is needed as she travels
the tables. She gives a playful smile as she passes
along to the kitchen. I can still remember
those petite, beautiful, wrinkled hands, those
I adored and miss dearly. Her voice
whispering the question, “What would you like to eat?”
still lingering.
For the Love of theGame by: Julie Brasher, Mixed media, 2013.
The First Five Years Are the Hardest by: Kate Carruth
1
On a beach, shells, stubbed toes, waves lazily rolling in to shore
laughing, running and carefree this was my first home. The sound of airplanes in the
air, the wakeup song of the soldiers on the loudspeakers.
Listening to the radio with little people; I am trying to find the little people in Mommy’s
radio but she doesn’t want me to look behind it or under it. I would really like to see the
little people again. I have seen Daddy take apart radios and maybe he took the little
people away? Daddy says the radios with little people in them are called televisions, so
our radio doesn’t have any little people. It’s OK, Daddy brought me a new tricycle and
that is more fun than little people. For now.
Riding in a car across country, the car is a new home or so it seems.
Grandmother waving and hugging, smells like cookies, a smile so big it can reach
around the country to all her grandchildren. Treasure unimaginable under
grandmothers bed, forbidden but I want to see, why shouldn’t I see them?
Boysenberries for picking and eating, in the woods, dark and scary but no boogiemen
(they’re under the beds). An indoor slide to the basement, Grandmother says it’s for
laundry. Uh, oh, another forbidden.
The world is full of unexpected pitfalls, and mischievousness. A visit, mustn’t touch,
mustn’t wiggle, sit still, keep quiet, home again and a run to a self-determined reward,
slide under the bed, find treasures, Grandmother is angry.
The grass is cool on barefeet and tickles. Sand under the swing is just right for
excavation and building, the swing is almost like flying, cool air rushes by my face and
wrinkles my hair. Now is the time for singing. Mama said to keep your clothes clean,
they are cleanest folded on the porch.
2
Another cross county ride, this time on a train. We sleep in a rocking chair and walk
unsteadily to another car for breakfast. Next stop, the Pacific Ocean and a huge ship to
travel on. Daddy is stationed in Japan and that’s where we are going. When next I visit
this country, I will realize that the very air smells different here than in the States but just
now I only know that Daddy’s here and the ground doesn’t move anymore. He always
wears his work clothes and he calls them fur pigs. They don’t look like pigs at all so I
think that is another ADULT thing that is hidden from children. Like curly writing.
Smiles are everywhere, I don’t know why but this must be a very happy place to live.
There is a lady who comes to play with me, she sings funny songs: mushy, mushy ah
no nay, it’s a telephone song. She makes me a Christmas stocking and it’s so pretty.
Papasan makes me a cupboard for doll dishes, he says he is honoring my Daddy who
helped him rebuild his house. Papasan’s house burned down one day, that is why it
must be rebuilt.
We are going away again, we are going in a big plane and it takes so long. When will
we land? This plane is bumpy, more rocky than the ship. I don’t like it much, this roller-
coaster in the air that makes my stomach jump, the sound that seems to be inside my
head, loud and growling and never ending. Silence at last and we can get off this ride
across the ocean. Meeting strange people, aunts, uncles, cousins. One cousin shows
me how chocolate milk comes out of a cow; they are brown and white. The black and
white ones make regular milk.
3
Another ride in a car, we are going to a new place to live, Colorado. We have a nice
house and Daddy comes home every night for supper. Mommy is tired a lot, she
watchers so-poppers and does cross word puzzles. If I am very quiet, I can watch so-
poppers instead of taking a nap. Usually I have to take a nap anyway and I don’t want
to. I can watch TV when I get up. I cannot watch Superman after Daddy comes home
because it’s time for supper.
Daddy has built us a new house and Mommy has built a little sister. Daddy just keeps
building and planting bushes and roses and grass and trees. Mommy says she is going
to send Grandma some of my sister’s hair, she says it a lot but doesn’t. I help. I don’t
understand why people say they are going to do something and get mad when
someone helps. It’s good I have so many toys in my room.
Where once Vikings ruled,
Kings and Lords presided,
an Island ensnared by the frigid Irish Sea,
white horses surf the coastal rocks,
veiled in Mananan’s misty cloak.
Scale Snaefell through wild heathers and golden gorse,
take a deep breath and awaken your senses,
smell the freshness and feel the peace,
atop the mountain spy the seven Kingdoms
Man, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Neptune and
Heaven.
Hidden secrets and mysteries prevail,
a place where Fairy legends hold true,
to speak ill of the little folk is sure to
bring suffering and misfortune.
Once majestic castle of St Patrick’s Isle,
home to “Moddey Dhoo,” ghostly black dog,
who prowls the passageways and chambers,
and guards ancestors’ pagan graves,
cross him and death they say will follow.
Thrill-seekers gather and gaze as motorbikes fly and spin
along the mountain passes,
rally cars slip and slide through glens,
others watch yachts race, as their sails catch the wind
upon the sometimes cruel sea.
Visitors climb the winding stairs of the great water wheel
the Lady Isabella,
Others take the electric tram to travel the coastline
or to the peak of mountains,
Children sit on the promenade amused by seals,
some ride the horse drawn trams.
Jewel of an Island full of beauty,
heritage so rich and full of mystique,
many secrets waiting to be told,
survived Vikings, battles and wars,
a place that holds proud and true.
“Bleep! Bleep! Bleep! Bleep! Bl–” – the radio clock makes itself heard, singing the same lines all over again. I land my palm on it, halting its flow.
“Friday, December twenty first, two thousand and twelve”, a monotone voice sprouts from the clock’s speaker.
I straighten myself up, landing my feet on the wooden floor, not yet recovered from Sandman’s dust. To make up for my abuse earlier, I turn on the radio with extreme care. The voice of a female newscaster speaks, now and then interrupted by static:
“On –, an asteroid– and– plotted trajectories, it will hit– major firestorm– . Leaders from around– funded Project Salvation, which will compose of two gravity generators named– to suspend Astrid 9 in place. Trained astronauts– land on it, plant– at weak points and–detonation. According to NASA’s– statement — by night of December 20th–, the explosion can be observed from Earth. However, the ten-year project has failed. An explosion has damaged– unknown– and the Mankind is disabled– alone the Eternity couldn’t hold–. Everyone– stay indoors. May– protect you.”
I snatch my jacket hanging on the door and the bunch of keys in the right outside pocket. In the garage, Stephanie – my green 2003 Land Cruiser – sleeps under a thick blanket of dust. She wakes up soon after realizing someone is behind the wheel. The garage door rolls up, revealing a scene straight out of a supernatural thriller. Houses belonging to the Hardys, Johannsens, Nguyens and McGarths now belong to nature’s white curtain.
No cars can be seen on the driveways or the street, except for a black baby stroller that slowly rolls by Stephanie’s nose. Motherly gusts are pushing it deeper into the heart of the neighborhood, conjuring leaf tornadoes to entertain the invisible offspring. A glance at my watch takes me back to the driver’s seat, prompting me to step on the gas and begin to head towards the only destination I can think of. As the main street comes into view, the stroller becomes whole with the fog.
~ o ~
Stephanie hums her sophisticated V8 symphony as well as ever, despite hiccups every few seconds or so. The left front wheel seems loose too, placing some discord into her performance. Or perhaps it’s just because she has sensed an accident involving her friends, a Corolla and a Sienna, just a few blocks down First Avenue.
More cars start to appear. And then endless more ahead.
The vehicles, some damaged, are left abandoned on the sides of the road, doors and trunks flung wide open. Houses and buildings with different names and services are tattered, now completely boarded up. Up above, traffic lights and street lamps illuminate this part of town with difficulty through the ghastly grey. Snow, leaves, and papers fly about, redecorating every surface with haste, vertical or horizontal, normal or shattered. The lack of human presence sends a chill down my spine and sweat to my palms. Perhaps I’m just one step behind, but soon I’ll be where everybody is right now.I only have an hour to go, I guess. Stephanie lets out a visible sigh as I press down the pedal, her left front wheel squeaking louder.
“Objects in mirror will no longer exist in view”, I mutter to myself as the car speeds through the once-bustling streets.
~ o ~
“Welcome to West District – A Historic Utopia in Modern Society”
The sign to my mother’s community provides a sense of pure relief. I’ve made it in time.
The metal merry-go-round still screeches after all this time. I see a 7 year-old me and the hazy figure of Mrs. Clarke showing me the reason behind the noise. She doesn’t care about tainting her ivory nightgown, lying down on the damp ground just to point out the rusty joints. God, I miss her kindness… and all those tangy and tender lemon meringues she made on my birthday. How I wish I could’ve learned the ways of making a red velvet cake, or just a muffin, to thank her. But wherever she has gone, another place or the other place, I’ll never know.
“Ooh, ooh, I know, I’ll just run home and call The Incredible Mechanic!” my squeaky voice echoes in the air. “The Incredible Mechanic” is the superhero identity I assigned to Grandfather, the family’s sole specialist in car restoration. I don’t remember much of him, except for the time Mother and I became the first witnesses of the flat line on his ECG at Central Hospital.It was a morbid start to my summer holiday that I’ve tried hard to forget. Come to think of it, the merry-go-round’s wailing is eerily similar to that undesirable, hospital-bound sound.
A startling “CRASH!” not far up ahead. Mr. Herbert’s pigeons must have flown into a window, thinking their homo sapiens father has bought them a brand new coop… again.
Now the high-school version of me and a couple of friends come into view. We were helping him clean up the mess in front of the house opposite Mr. Herbert – an IRS Agent, politician… or something – whose face and name are declassified by my memory. His window was reduced to a million pieces, all the shards diamonds in the grass. Its fate was similar to the vase of daisies now residing in my room, a long time ago an unwilling victim to Mother’s throwing arm after a quarrel with Father about “fractured fidelity”.There are more, so many more memories in the air around me, fighting for my attention. Once Mother’s house comes into view, however, all the merriment and melancholy dissipate. The same also happens to the ghosts within them.
~ o ~
Stephanie’s headlights direct me to the door. As soon as I know where to go, it’s time to give her the good long rest she has been waiting for. Just an anti-clockwise turn of the keys will do. I knock twice. It’s been a year and a half since my last visit, but still her house has undergone no change whatsoever. The same vines still creep about the porch, over the weathered Georgian bricks that glue everything together. The old-fashioned wooden door is now home to more chipped marks underneath. It’s no wonder why she chose this place – it was old-fashioned. Despite my constant disdain about the prehistoric atmosphere of the place, my mom taught me there is charm in everything the eyes can see. It seems that she speaks true as every inch of the house is coated with tangible warmth. It greets me as the door glides open.
Mother and Father approach to give me a hug, hints of a smile substituting for an emotional speech. Mother sets her glowing eyes on me, giving me a look as if she is waiting for an answer. I nod. She does the same to my Father. He also nods. Hastily retreating into the house, Mother says she will give me something that I like and urges Father to let me in, escaping the cold, white world. It’s strange, thinking how I’ve always wanted to be as far as possible from this place. For today though, returning to it isn’t a bad idea. Other people might have done the same.
Emerging from the kitchen, Mother presents three plates of her trademark hot, butter-laden and honey-coated pancakes. Father and I decide to jump in to set the table. We sit down and proceed to enjoy the fusion of heavenly sweetness and crispiness that only genuine homemade food can deliver.
Once the five-story tower of flour has been demolished, silence infiltrates the dining room. From under the table, Mother places three small jars in the middle of the table with a solution inside. I watch my mother pour hers, to the very last drop, into her drink. Father and I follow suit. Upon consuming the glass of water, I see through its bottom distorted images of my mother’s certificates hanging proudly on the olive green wall. “Excellence in Medical Studies”, “Recognition of Talent in the Fields of Pharmacy” etc., all the goodness that defines her occupation – Central Hospital’s head doctor. Being the experienced physician that she is, I believe that whatever happens next in her plan – it should be comfortable.
Only ten minutes to go.
Mother leads everyone upstairs. I choose to lie down in the middle of her bed, succumbing to the pressure on my eyelids. Since my vision is going dimmer by the second, I realize my departure will be sooner than I expected. I know I won’t go alone, but I just can’t shake the feeling, lying all by myself on this comfortable magic carpet. I call out to my parents.“Just a second, son”, Father answers.
Although their figures are blurry and seemingly weightless, I can make out that my parents are facing each other by the window. “I’m sorry”, Father says under his breath. Mother sniffles.
The wind lets out an unearthly roar. The ground shakes.
Then everything stops. A blazing beam of light descends upon the horizon. The brightness reveals two things about my Father – he is holding my Mother’s hands and a part of skin on his finger that is whiter than the rest. A ring used to be there. Contentment closes my eyes.
