Planets by: Tung D. Nguyen, Gouache, 2013.
Frozen in Time
by: Harriet R. Wheeler
John Montague cautiously sidestepped through the throng of sweaty swimsuit clad bodies, bumping and jolting to some new, unfamiliar club music. Young women in bikinis danced, glow sticks tied into their hair and looped around necks, wrists and waists, while most of the guys wore swim trunks and stiffly spiked hair. The whole yacht reeked of liquor and sweat. He tried to step carefully around the kids, but was knocked and jostled by their tireless dancing. A slap of long, straight black hair whipped around and stung John’s freshly shaven cheek, but his pale blue eyes were saved by his rectangular glasses.
Finally, he broke free of the sea of sweat and leaned over the hand rail to feel the cool breeze wafting over from Miami Beach. The design engineer breathed easily, calmed by the glitter of lights from the homes, and hotels encrusted the shoreline like jewels in the dark, their reflections twinkled off the waves. All John ever wanted for his daughter was to be normal and happy. He hoped she was enjoying her twenty-first birthday. He felt uneasy knowing she’d be gone soon to study fashion up north. Her happiness would be out of his hands then. After so many years, he didn’t know if he felt relieved or devastated.
He watched a little boat chug closer, and could make out the dim silhouettes of people preparing. There were two other boats, but from this vantage point they were obscured. He glanced at his watch to see that it was already time. A little radio strapped to his belt told him that the boats were in place, and told the DJ that the men on the boats were ready when he was. As John turned back to the crowd, the DJ let the music die down and picked up the mic.
In case no one said this to you yet: HAPPY BIIIIIRTHDAY CINDIE!” He was very dramatic, John marveled as the crowd whooped and roared. “A little birdie told me you like a good show.” With one hand the DJ started twiddling dials, and the beginnings of a new piece of music started to reverberate through the decks of The Marionette. The crowd whispered and murmured. John could feel their suspense hanging over them. He felt success brewing.
The DJ raised the mike to speak once more,” Cindie…THIS is for YOU!” He punctuated the air violently with the mic thrust high. White streaks screamed into the air and towered over the yacht, the heavy dubstep beat crashing into full force as the fiery chrysanthemums exploded above the crowd. The boat was surrounded by fireworks, roman candles, fountains, and every variation the Chinese firework company had to offer. He almost teared up at the gasps of astonishment when giant multicolored butterflies exploded and hung overhead, before gracefully dissipating into the night.
The entire show was timed to some band Cindie was crazy about, and the fireworks were choreographed to mimic the heavy base and beats. John wasn’t particularly fond of the genre himself, but he had to admit the company he’d hired really knew what they were doing. The blazing sparks shredded darkness from the night sky. Splatters of mardi gras colors played across The Marionette’s snowy hull. John felt pleased with himself, until the terrified screams split through the crowd.
The throng pressed closely around the scene, so that when John reached them he had to elbow half naked bodies out of the way.
Adrenaline boiled in his blood and his stomach went tight at the sight of his daughter huddled on the ground with her best friend, Andrea, who was using her pink hoodie to snuff out the crackling sparks that gushed out of Cindie’s arm. Melted skin hung down like Spanish moss and dribbled into the deck. Someone in the crowd vomited, followed by another. “Call an ambulance, a girl screeched!” Cindie wore stretchy armbands to hide where her prosthetics jointed to her elbows, and John grabbed Cindie’s arm and twisted it slightly toward himself as his fingers probed under the band for the off switch.
When he found it, the crackling died down and he held her to him, whispering, “Are you ok baby? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” sniff, “just scared. When the spark fell on me I thought I was going to get burned too.” She wrapped her functioning prosthetic arm around his neck and cried with the same hopeless abandon she did when she first lost her arms. John decided not to point out that on the bright side, she hadn’t been physically hurt. His company adhered to strict safety regulations, which ensured minimal flammability in the silicon skins they used. They could fix or replace the arm easily.
“Don’t call an ambulance! Everything is fine!” Andrea tried to restore calm before suggesting to the two they move inside. The party guests looked mortified by Cindie’s hysterical tears. Security hustled over, and a quick decision was made to pull back to harbor, to disperse the party.
Andrea wrapped her singed hoodie around the now solidified strings of silicon skin, as well as the circuits, and fibers of the damaged arm. Huddled around Cindie, the two took her inside the yacht, blocking the distressed girl from prying eyes. As she slid the glass door shut behind them, Andrea offered to go tell Cindie’s mother what happened. The three moved down a hall toward Cindie’s cabin before Cindie returned her hoodie to her. She pulled the bright pink hoodie around her black tankini, and zipped it up with a shiver.
She wished, as she jogged down the heavily air conditioned hallways of The Marionette, that she grabbed some pants, as her legs started to feel numb from cold.
When they were little Andrea dearly loved Cindie, but since her friend had been fitted with prosthetic limbs, she and her whole family changed. Cindie used to cry a lot back when it first happened, and even at the age of nine, it was hard for Andrea to deal with. She remembered the day she’d gone home crying, and begged her mom not to make her go play at Cindie’s house again.
Her mother chided her for being selfish, and convinced her that a good person would hang around and remain friends. Andrea was sick of being a good person. As the years dragged on, Andrea felt more like a caretaker than a friend, and she resented Cindie for constantly demanding emotional support. Andrea had even taken up wearing armbands over her elbows to help Cindie convince people it was a fashion choice. Andrea felt like she’d lost herself a few years ago, and she yearned for Cindie to go to school in New York. Then she’d finally be free to find out who she was and what she wanted out of life. Her mother wouldn’t be able to guilt her into being a slave to the spoiled brat.
The only control she had in her life right now was clenched in her hand, hidden in the hoodie pocket. She’d always been chubbier than Cindie, and had decided that controlling her weight might help her feel some kind of control. Like she wasn’t just a pawn designed to make other people happy. She rubbed her thumb over the bristles of the toothbrush, and wondered if the fact that she kept her dieting technique secret, might be a sign she shouldn’t do it.
The toothbrush didn’t give her the comfort it usually did, as she drew near to Mrs. Montague’s door. It’s a natural bodily function, she mused. It was the only thing in the world she could control, without someone butting in. How could it be wrong? Maybe once Cindie was gone she’d stop feeling like she was being dragged helplessly through other people’s lives.
She stood for a moment outside the door. Andrea always felt awkward talking to Mrs. Montague about Cindie. She wondered if the woman felt as trapped as she did. She tapped her knuckles on the door, and mindfully released the toothbrush, before pulling her hand from her pocket.
After some scuffling inside, Mrs. Montague’s tousled head peeped and squinted at her through the door which she seemed to use as a shield to keep Andrea out. “What is it?”
“Some firework sparks landed on Cindie’s arm and melted it. Her dad had to turn it off. She’s in her room. She’s pretty upset.”
The woman rolled her eyes, and the lines that trailed across her face since her child had come home with no arms bore deeper into her skin. Andrea felt like the lines on her face represented the cracks in the woman’s soul, spreading like an illness that went unnoticed while her husband found continuous success from his child’s trauma. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she muttered and snapped the door shut. Mrs. Montague turned to the middle aged Columbian buttoning his shirt on her bed, “It’s Cindie . . .”
“I heard,” he cut her off. “Your dressing gown is inside out, Margret,” he teased her. Her eyes snapped down to confirm. The inside seams of the ivory silk robe glared back at her from her sleeve cuffs. Margaret shrugged helplessly, and the lines grew deep around her mouth.
Sergio summoned her with a finger to sit beside him on the edge of the bed. She slumped down, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He brushed her mousy curls back with gentle fingertips and pressed his lips against her brow, “She’ll be gone soon and you will be free. Not much longer.”
“I’ve been waiting for so long. Now I’m just . . . I feel like I’m about to take a step off a massive cliff.”
“How come?” Sergio prayed that she wasn’t having second thoughts about running to California with him. “Cindie’s going to hate me for leaving her dad.” He noticed her looking at the photo of their family sitting on the dresser, John, Cindie, and herself smiling from a Hawaiian hotel pool. “He’s so blissfully ignorant, he won’t be expecting it,” she sighed. “When Cindie’s not here to keep John busy . . . I don’t know what he’ll do . . .” She rose from the bed and picked her dress from the back of a chair.
“At least you won’t have to deal with him after that. Once the divorce is finalized, you’re a free woman,” Sergio watched as she slipped into the green cocktail dress. Her long, toned legs taunted him as she turned her back to him and signaled him to zip her in. “Hey, I know!” he nuzzled her neck and slunk his hands around her waist, “When you’re done, meet me at La Muneca, we can dance all night. You deserve something to look forward to.” Margret reached her hand up and behind his head as their lips met. “I’ll see you there.” The twinkle he so loved crept back into her eye.
He watched her slide into her heels and tiptoe out into the hall. Sergio fished in his pocket for keys and waited a moment before making his exit from Mr. and Mrs. Montague’s cabin. He wasn’t worried so much for Margret’s sake. The sooner she got out of the marriage, the better. His job on the other hand, he needed to keep a little longer. For the past decade he’d been writing the software for Mr. Montague’s creations.
John had been dissatisfied with the unnatural prosthetics available for his precious daughter, and left his job developing robots for the oil industry. He made a killing designing functional and lifelike limbs, and created a disgustingly successful business. John certainly made life a lot better for millions of people, but his neglected wife was not one of them. She’d been sitting alone and ignored at that first Christmas party after Sergio joined the company. Miserable and alone, all she needed was a friend, and that was all they had intended to be.
Sergio was pleased to find that The Marionette had returned to harbor and swarms of drunken partiers were stumbling onto the dock. He followed the milling crowd to his silver Lexus and headed for La Muneca. Sergio’s position at Montague Innovations Corp. was fairly cushy. Despite being a lousy husband, John made a terrific boss. For this reason the two lovers had been very careful to keep things under wraps, until Sergio could get his resume built up a little more. He had always been interested in developing artificial intelligence, but it was the one thing a prosthetics company couldn’t offer him. His plan was to use his vast knowledge of Mr. Montague’s corporate empire, and design military projects.
Since he’d written the programs, he reasoned he could steal the software, and edit things just enough to use for military combat droids or other fun projects that he constantly dreamed of. He felt reasonably sure no one would catch him. One thing Sergio loved about La Muneca, other than the music and happy hour, was the valet parking. He enjoyed stepping out and handing his keys to the smartly dressed guy who would drive the car back to him on command. It allowed Sergio to imagine that he’d made it in life; that he was as successful as his brother at the country club joking with all the other fat lawyers.
Sergio pulled up to the front door of the night club, and was greeted by an angular valet, who appeared anemic against the rich, cherry red of his uniform. Sergio left the keys in the ignition as the young man opened the door and gave a small, courteous bow, which caused his glasses to slide down his long slender nose. Once Sergio was out of the car, Vincent slid himself into the driver’s seat. He pushed the glasses back onto the bridge of his nose with a bony finger. In the dark, the three disks of glowing blue light in the dashboard made Vincent feel like he was in the Batmobile.
He grabbed the gear shift and drove smoothly out of the entrance and deftly glided the car round to the parking garage across the road. That was the thing about this job that killed it for him. He wanted to just take these fancy cars and speed down the highway with the radio blaring. Instead, he enjoyed a vehicle for a few minutes, crawling at ten miles an hour so his boss wouldn’t get on his back. He couldn’t help but feel swindled as he stepped out of the little Lexus: it still had that new car smell.
“Vincent! It’s kinda slow tonight! How ‘bout you just go on home?” Vincent just nodded. There was no use asking to stay on. If Ted wanted him gone, it just meant he’d have to see if he could get some more hours at the bakery, or just skip some meals. When he got home he slid his books across the table to sit with the pile of disheveled papers and overdue bills. The table he uncovered was riddled with stains. He lifted a half empty coffee mug to reveal another circular stain, and set it in the microwave.
As the machine hummed and rattled heat into his drink, he ventured into the freezer, and deliberately started unpacking boxes of TV dinners. When he’d cleared a small tower out of the way, he reached to the far back and pulled out a small package. He placed it on the table and put the boxes back in the freezer. The microwave beeped and the door shot open violently when he pressed the button. He set the coffee down and sat down to carefully unwrap the layers of plastic. He paused to take a sip and burned his tongue.
On the table, like a freshly opened Christmas present, sat his most prized possessions. China white, with little crystals giving them a sugar coated appearance: he picked one up to admire it closely. Five dainty fingertips with blood red nail polish, on perfectly clipped nails, perfectly preserve since the day he saw her on the playground. He gently caresses the frozen skin with lust and admiration. He knew he couldn’t keep the kid,just for her perfectly beautiful hands. The whole city was hunting him down. Cindie’s photos had been featured on every news station, and it would have only been a matter of time. So he had done what he had to; a little anesthetic to knock her out, and a little saw.
He’d driven to a nature reserve, outside of town, and dumped her unconscious body on the side of the road at three in the morning. Sometimes he felt a little sad that the hands had to stay frozen. He wished he could flex the fingers and twist the wrists. But keeping them preserved was most important. There was an unforeseen benefit of course: They would never grow large or wrinkled. They would forever be perfectly small and dainty. The nails would never grow long and the nail polish would never crack or chip. As the little girl grew into an old woman, he would have the best part of that innocent child. Always.