Moment Before

She sat on the velvet couch.  For its age, for the number of times it had been picked up and moved across the country, the shape of its cushions and arms had held up nicely, all of them still firm and plush but for a bit of fabric worn down on the edges of the armrest.  She remembered its position in each of her many houses and the particular walls over the years it had been pressed up against; its presence being one of the few constants in a life full of change. 
She sat on the velvet couch.  She was aware of her body and the constant tingling.  Unlike when her arms  fell asleep, the sensation now was lighter. It felt like she was being lifted, as though her body was slowly rising, winning the fight against gravity like a helium balloon. 
In direct contrast to this sensation, the parts of her which touched the couch, the back of her legs and back and butt, they all felt heavy and organic.  It was as though roots or thick curling vines had grown out of her and merged her body of flesh with the wooden legs of the couch and she had become part of the plaster walls and found a new home in the cracks. 
She was both floating and grounded, tasting salt on her lips and smelling sugar.
The tabletop lamp beside her was on and glowing, it seemed as bright as the sun. Even though there was no other source of illumination in the living room and the curtains were drawn against the night sky, she could see every color and shape that decorated the space.
She looked down at her lap and at the black a-line skirt which covered her ample white thighs.  She saw the tiny mesh of the material and the faint way it reflected the light like a moon.
She saw everything at once and in perfect detail. The pale pink walls trimmed with a golden wood along the edges, the narrow planks of the hardwood floor below the Persian area rug and all the tiny scratches on the ground. The glean of the coffee table just a foot from her knees and the few streaks left over from the last time she windexed the glass surface. 
It all shone in the light of the single lamp, all of it amplified by her intensified perception.  She sat with her hands on her upper thighs and noticed the sweat on her palms, smelling lightly of iron.  The tingling had gotten stronger, lifting her up and up and up and that sense of earthly groundedness kept her planted.
She sat on the velvet couch.  The dark blue curtains were mostly drawn, just a crack between the two panels was open in the center, perhaps just an inch wide.  The night outside seemed slightly pale and she wondered how close it was to the full moon. 
She sat there waiting as the clock in the kitchen ticked rhythmically, the ticking ringing against the walls in great booms and crashes, both lulling and jarring. The constant sound seemed to come quickly and yet an eternity would come and go between those ticks and tocks. She would notice the delicate trail of a cobweb in the far corner of the ceiling and remember a long ago birthday party of a long-lost friend and she would hear the songs of long ago, long evaporated from public memory. Then another tick would crash down, wrapping around the walls and pounding down on her flesh.
She sat on the velvet couch. Moments of her life flashed through her mind like a mashup of moving images and slides that moved at such a rapid pace she rarely noticed their presence until it was gone and she saw some other scene in her mind.
In the space of one tick of the clock she would see dozens of memories, perhaps more as they merged and shifted together, becoming new moments of recognition.  A bright blue car on a gravel driveway, her sister running down the carpeted hallway of their old home and falling at the edge of their bedroom door, a scene of herself in bed with her first love.
She saw words and old thoughts which had long since changed.  The fights and the kisses and long drives across the country with views of wheat and birds and landmarks never seen again.  The moons and road signs which she once noticed, the lines in books and magazines and the long steaming baths she once had every other day.
The room was glowing brightly, her body was shining, tingling, flying away, growing heavier and deeper and merging easily with the contents of the living room and flowing down into the foundation and then past all that cement and steel into the rocks and dark pungent earth that had supported her life.
She sat on the velvet couch knowing that soon he would come, she could hear his footsteps on the sidewalk, he would be there soon.

The Girl Who Could Not Be

There was a room with a small source of light coming in from a narrow window facing east. It was six in the evening but the sun was still shining out there strongly, as though it refused, just like my children, to go to bed. There was too much to see out there, and the plants needed the light too. Lydia liked those bright red geraniums blooming in her window box.
My mouth was open, I was laughing or breathing, moving in some way that left my mouth exposed and open. I felt something strange, a particular foreign pressure inside and I knew, I knew a bee had flew in.
It did not fly out. Even though there was no mirror and I couldn’t see it on my tongue, I knew it was there, laying still. I watched myself as though a spectator, aware of every muscular movement and thought. Though I watched from the position of an audience member, seeing and feeling in parallel realities.
I watched myself walk up to the man in light colored pants beside the window. He was holding a small plastic cup filled with dark red wine, the kind of cup used in gallery openings. He had a sweater draped around his shoulders. As I walked to him, I noticed he was talking to a man dressed just as he was, holding his cup in the same way. I walked towards them without hesitation and asked calmly, keeping my mouth open while doing so, to extract the bee.
The man, the first one I had noticed, did so easily, using his thumb and thin pointer finger to dip into the darkness of my mouth. He pulled out the bee and looked at it intently as he held it up to his face, letting it catch the light, though I could not tell if it was alive or dead.
As I turned from him, I wondered aloud how many bees fly in and out of my mouth without my realizing it. As I spoke, I pictured myself in bed in a dark room, only my face exposed while a pile of blankets swamp the rest of my body. I could see my open mouth, my wide mouth like an unguarded fortress. How many things go in and out? How many things fly from its space, those sentences dripping with unintended inflections and complaints? How many things go in and out when I’m not paying attention?
I wondered for a moment, realizing that there were too many to count, and then walked on, forgetting.

The next morning I walked into the sunshine, surprised by its strength. I held my car keys ready in one hand, the bright shiny silver of the key poised, alert, waiting for the perfect fit of the hole, just a moment until it could slip inside and be of use.
I let out a little excited wail as I felt something land on my naked shoulder. I turned to the source of the pressure, finding a bee perched beside me, fully intent on coming for the ride.
“Little bee!” I shouted mildly, “ahh!”
I pushed him off my shoulder with a gentle nudge of my finger, feeling something insect-like on my skin, a kind of cold, pokey sensation that was so small, so soft.
“Have you thought about the ‘word?’” my friend asked as we slid into the car and heard the click of the seatbelts from our trained hands. “Sometimes it’s all about the word, like, maybe you don’t want to ‘be.’”
I stared though the window, turning my wheel with practiced motion, seeing the blur of the neighborhood houses as we began to move.
I nodded, my mind racing. How many times was I afraid to shine? To dance, to sing until the heavens could find me with delight in my eyes? How many times was I afraid of my own absurdity, my thoughts and comments? How many times did I stifle my whims and hide in my room, saving the best parts of myself just for me?
Yes, I thought to myself, I am afraid to be. And yet I could not say it. I couldn't allow my mouth to open and let the words come flying out.

Home

Hey, this is home. I think this is home, I wonder and heave as I stare at a strange shape that seems to breathe with dark smoke, pulsing, expanding and contracting. Eyes like windows. Doors that open with each inhalation. Home. A twisty multicolored spiral ending in pools of black water. I can see the nostrils, flaring. This beast. A wide mouth with wooden doors and thin glass panes. A painting in the living room that looks at me with wide questioning eyes. I stare back, unblinking, who are those pale women in straw hats? Their skin smells of roses and oxygen-filled water.

Home. At least that’s what I tell myself. If this is not home, then I'm lost. I’m an orphan in a cold world that smells of dark gray and burning charcoal. Was there another? Another place that could have burned with memory and scandal? I can’t remember where home used to be, how it spun or smelled, if there really was one that had a different sort of beast in it with scaly flesh and a cold double tongue to wipe me clean. Home. A place to hang my feathered hat, the resting place for my heart, waiting, beating for a cavernous chest in a messy underwear drawer...

I have plenty of hearts. Some rapid, some barely a flicker on the tin drum. If this is that place, the place of the beast, the place with my waiting heart, well, then this is home. Isn’t it? I look for my hat, that pale gray wool one my grandpa gave me. I grope the hooks on the wall, searching, finding only peeling wallpaper. Forget the hat, I might not have a head.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I had to loose my head to get here. And what about my heart? Is that a muscle with two important valves that pumps blood through a corporeal body, or is it something that looks like a leaf plucked from a clover, used to signify the presence of certain emotions usually linked to reproductive drive and familial relations? I don't want to rule out the possibility of having one, but as far as I can tell, I may have lost my heart as well.

I thought I had dozens, but I grip my chest and find just a cold hole. My fingers are sticky and I see dark footprints leading towards the basement. What part of me sees with no eyes? Don’t loose your head, don’t loose heart, or sometimes, take heart or use your head. These old axioms offer their council, written down on the back of a napkin like driving directions obtained at a Denny’s from an old trucker sitting at the bar over his Grand Slam and black coffee.

All I am sure of is that it got hold of one of us. And all I can say is “it” because I don’t have any other words to use for what “it” is. How can I think with no head? Even if I had a head, would the words be meaningful or hollow without the heart guiding them gently like a Sherpa swathed in wool? Empty I say. You could drop a coin through their vowels and never hear it hit bottom, just wait for it to come out the other end and put out a Chinese man’s eye. (Lucky fellow has a head.)

You can give me a good scrubbing, but I'll still need that head. Strip the flesh right off my bones with one of those metal wire brushes used for scrubbing oil stains off driveways, I’ll go on, but the head...I’ll always long for, always lament the loss of the head. Like the scarecrow, I’ll get torn apart by flying monkeys for the chance to think deep thoughts.

Still, who was worse off, him or the tin man? Ah, if I only had a heart! I’d be tender, I’d be gentle and awful sentimental regarding love and art... But somehow, I adapt to the loss. How often it is like that. We think that we’ll simply die if it comes to this or that, then this or that comes and we go on, altered but still in motion.

For example here I am, wherever here is, (It must not be home, I’ve searched the underwear drawer and under the bed, but still no heart...) My fingers do the seeing, my toes the thinking. They stamp out my thoughts like an ecstatic mime desperate for an audience. The crowd claps and it seems the theater seats are almost full and I am encouraged to go on, flopping like a fish when my legs go numb and the toes are mute.

There’s my grandfather in the front row with his crooked banana of a nose, clapping appreciatively. Naturally he is biased, and at this point he is the only one enjoying the show. The hecklers start booing and howling, “Off the stage!,” which is bad enough, but to my embarrassment my grandfather tries to defend me, “Hey, you should do so good, with no head and no heart!” He is still yelling at the crowd when the proprietor hooks me with the curved cane and I convulse spasmodically, looking more than ever like a speared salmon. He drags me off stage and leaves me in the gloom behind the curtain, tired out from my elephantine efforts.

This place, with the smell of spilled soda pop turning acrid like vinegar and peanut shells and stale popcorn, is this home? It seems plausible enough as I have been here for a very long time listening to the mice scurrying over the rumpled heap that I generally regard as “me.” There may be a hat here somewhere, on the prop table perhaps, and hearts were broken over there, just beyond my reach under the bright lights. Maybe not real hearts, but pretend hearts, which must hurt as much as the authentic versions because actors' tears have stained the wooden planks of the stage leaving it splotchy and discolored. When you have it, you have to work it to keep it, and if you haven’t got it you pretend to work it until you have it. Very simple. But now it seems that I’m being pushed out with the rubbish by a custodian wielding a shop broom, and no doubt this bright revelation will be lost.

I just got to know the world of the damned. It’s colored like a rainbow and the red moves with flames. We drank rank tea with scaly men, men with rubber skin and yellow eyes. Men with white long beards and penises that dangle to their knees. They gave us tiny cucumber sandwiches on embroidered napkins. They were gentlemen until we started to sway. Then the trouble began. The sweating. Didn’t I mention that I get in trouble? Haven’t I been in trouble before? This was no worse.

Getting on in the place that night, with those scaly men, getting up on the shiny grand piano. And I, the singer for eternity. They sang along, crying, their tears pouring into their empty floral tea cups. They gathered what fell, then drank it once more, sharing their cups among themselves. Sipping ceremonially, just tiny sips. Salty. A gift from the body in this place of electric rainbows and flaming rivers. Tears that sprouted a heart which grew full and round and vibrant, booming with a resounding thump like the cry of a war drum. Music crawling its way up a multicolored twisting spiral ending in pools of black water. My men, swaying and sweating, a dozen sweet hearts restored to their abode in my chest, and if they don’t have me, then they are orphans in a cold world.

Wait. The bare breasted women in straw hats have come to roost like a flock of swallows under my eves, protected by my sheltering consciousness. They have all come home to hang their hats in my head. What place of rest do I need? What sanctuary that is not in me? A wide mouth with wooden doors and thin glass windows. Geraniums in terracotta planters. I deal with the cold. I am the beast, so that my people can hang their hats and warm their hearts around my fire. It’s not much, a small barony in an abyss, but hey, it’s home.

Letting A Butterfly Go

It was a trailer that sat alone in a big dirt lot off of Grand Avenue, not too far from where it intersected with Riverside drive near the corner of the Lake where the old Machado house still stood hidden in a thicket of eucalyptus and pepper trees. From there to the ALANO building it was a short walk, and due to the lack of many other buildings, one could easily have supposed that the trailer was somehow officially connected with the ALANO club house, but this was not the case. The only other structure within close reach was a small shabby liqueur store to tempt the alcoholics on their way to and from meetings. A gravel road adorned with no trespassing signs ran from Grand Ave. along the side of the trailer and continued down as far as the lake where a loftier private residence was tucked behind a gate to protect it from the riff raff that congregated a half mile in front of its door step.

Jesse had once lived in a house further down Grand Ave. under the shade of the Ortega mountain range in Lake Land Village. There, for the majority of his life, he had dwelt with his mother and stepfather and two half sisters as a ghostly remnant of his mother’s past, haunting their wholesome attempt to build a family. He had been partially allowed to be a part of the new family life but at the same time he had been isolated from them by his origin and was permitted to drift in his own private life, mostly unsupervised, and occasionally reprimanded for his boyish exploits. His stepsisters brought their friends to the house in those days and he had been warned not to tease the little girls who were only two or four years younger than himself. At that age, however, two years younger may as well have been a decade, and four years a century, for while he was already stealing nudie magazines from the liquor stores and smoking cigarettes and throwing rocks at passing cars, they were running around barelegged in the front yard chasing bubbles and skipping rope.

Back in those days, the oldest of his two sisters, Morgan, had two companions that accompanied her most often, June, who was knitted to Morgan at the waist, and Lane who drifted about the other two like a lost butterfly. While Morgan was short and thick with mouse brown hair that made her seem as if she had been forged of clay, and June was about as short but less thick than Morgan, Lane was tall and skinny and fair haired. Jesse interacted with them minimally, either to quarrel with his sister or to trade them pogs for their lunch money. When Lane switched schools and vanished, he hardly noticed. That was in the time when they still lived in the house with its yard behind a brick fence. Then over the course of five years his mother’s drinking grew out of control and her husband threw her out and eventually Jesse and Morgan, now in high school, followed her to the trailer that sat under the blazing sun beside the ALANO club.

It was there in the trailer that Lane re-emerged one hot September evening alongside Morgan. It was a Friday night and both Morgan and Jesse had been permitted to invite a friend to spend the night. The girls would take the bedroom usually split between brother and sister, and the boys would stay in the living room. As in days of old, his mother had warned him to stay away from the younger girls, but it was no longer because she feared that he would tease them. She had a whole new set of concerns that, whether she knew it or not, were well founded. (Over the summer, Morgan and June had tagged along with Jesse to parties where they lost their virginity in a drunken revelry that left them stained with guilt. The two girls were avid Born Again Christians and Straight Edge punks by the time school started in the fall.)
Morgan led Lane to the room and played a Violent Femmes CD. Lane asked if they could listen to a Rage Against the Machine album that caught her eye. Morgan told her that it belonged to her brother and added,
“Besides, Rage Against The Machine sucks, Lane!”
Then she went to start her laundry in the old Kenmore on the back porch and left Lane alone in the room.

Jesse was waiting for his friend Brian to arrive so they could take a long walk down the dark wasteland of Grand Ave. and smoke marijuana and come back after his mother was asleep and try their hand with the girls. He came into the bedroom where Lane stood in her short cut off shorts, vintage polyester blouse and tattered flip flops. Her legs were long and pale, her hair long and blonde. While he dug around in the pocket of his leather jacket to retrieve his Zippo, she asked him about the Rage Against The Machine CD that lay by the stereo. She picked up the case and told Jesse that she loved Rage Against the Machine, even if every one else was into punk rock now. She asked if he still liked them. He said he did. There was something in the way that she spoke to him, without guile, without hope of looking cool. She still talked as though she were a little girl with no ulterior motives. She looked at him as if he were equally innocent. He was sure that she knew he was something else, but she looked at him and spoke to him with trust, like a little bird walking into the mouth of an alligator.

She started talking about good and evil, offering theories and observations, asking him his opinion. She used big words constructed in proper sentences void of slang. The way she spoke was more alien to him than the off color topic she wanted to explore. Drinking her in with his eyes he felt a stirring in his chest, a sort of painful ache.
“You’re pretty, but weird, you know that?” he said to her. Her look told him that by now she did know, and that knowing made her uncomfortable and proud. Then she asked him if they could play the CD so he put it on for her.

Later, after their walk Jesse and Brian lay sprawled on sleeping bags in the murk of the living room They snickered at the snores that drifted down the hall from his mother’s room. Brain, who had hooked up with Morgan once during the summer, said,
“Dude, I think your Mom’s asleep. Let’s go see what the girls are doing.”
Jesse imagined creeping into the bedroom and finding Lane in his bed. She would lie there and accept whatever he whispered to her and do whatever he wanted. He knew it with certainty and felt the aching in his chest again, remembering her wide blue eyes trained on him, the CD clutched in her hand, the instant warmth she had offered.
“No man, I promised my Mom.” He said.
“What?” Brian laughed, “So what?”
“So if she finds out, I’m out of here.” He answered truthfully, although he wasn’t worried about that at all. It hurt him a little to say it, because no one could tell him what he could do or couldn’t, and that was part of his cool.
“What?” Brian asked and his voice revealed his disappointment not only in the way the evening was panning out but also in his companion’s possible act of obedience.
“Just forget about it.” Jesse told him. “I’m tired anyway.”
And he rolled over and pretended to be falling asleep even though the room was full of an agonizing tension. He thought that Brian would say something else, but he didn’t, and, after a while, the tension began to fade and Brian’s breathing slowed down and he too rolled over and adjusted his pillow and soon he was making the deep snorting noises of a sleeper.

Jesse lay still and awake, awash in a bath of conflicted emotions. It would have been nice to touch her, and now he looked bad in Brian’s eyes. But for better or worse, she was unlike himself and his sister and the rest. He felt that she should be allowed to remain that way. He knew that a butterfly’s wings should never be touched. If they were, it would be unable to fly ever again and it would be a butterfly no more. It was a little sacrifice that he made, lying there in the dark of the trailer that stood by the ALANO club, a sacrifice that would keep her from joining them all down in the heavy muck that was confusion and regret and sorrow. Lying on the sleeping bag thrown over the worn carpet, by the couch with broken springs, in the trailer on Grand Avenue, not far from the old Machado house, he let a butterfly go.

Yossi and The Little Girl

“Daddy, daddy!” the little girl called. Her little legs took her across the marbled-covered living room floor. Her feet slapped against the floor as she waddled, she was only a couple feet high, having taken her first breath only 18 months before. “Daddy!” she called. Her mother smiled and knelt close to the little girl, “that’s not daddy, his name is Yossi.”
The mother and daughter had just moved into the condominium complex a couple of months before, the little girl did not have a father, but somewhere, amongst TV shows and the greater collective unconscious, she had quickly learned about daddies. The middle aged couple from across the street, Meg and Yossi, had invited them to spend the afternoon and the mother and young daughter were guests for a Sunday barbecue. It was a sunny day, the sun being the reason the older couple had moved from Boston to this southern California town, a town they always said resembled New England, with its mature trees and charming downtown. They had come here twenty-three years ago, bringing with them their two young daughters.
“Yossi, Yossi! Look at me! Look at me do this!”
The man looked over and smiled. He was a short, stout man with olive skin and a barely-there white beard that he refused to completely shave. His legs and arms were slender and muscular, but his belly was full and round and extended from his white polo shirt no matter how much he exercised in the evenings after work.
“Yossi, Yossi!”
There were different impulses moving through him, happiness and annoyance, tenderness and humor, they were all moving because of the little girl. There were five other adults in the house: Meg, the little girl’s mother, a man named Vince (Meg’s friend, and Marylyn and Ruth (another mother and daughter, but aged 55 and 84). The little girl called to none of them.
“Yossi! Watch me do this!”
He was not used to this, his own wife did not talk to him this much. He was not used to such overpowering innocence, such unobstructed attention and unashamed requests for love. His own daughters were grown, they had moved out of the house years ago and he and his wife had created a new home, a place of sophisticated style and marble and hard edges. It was clean and uncluttered, it was obvious that children had not lived there for many years. The only trace of his daughters was on the cluttered piano, an instrument not used for music any longer, but a place for a multi-leveled arrangement of picture frames that held the images of the two daughters: first as little girls playing with dolls, then as teenagers in pretty dresses, and then as young women. Long ago he had held them, protected and comforted them. But it had been many years. They had stopped turning to him so long ago, even before they left his home. They were his blood, but they were all strangers. Once, he lived with little girls that wanted to sit close to him and be picked up, but it had been so long. Now, he preferred a clean, quiet house. A home without dog hair, without anything that required much of his time or attention or worry. Now, here was this little thing, this little girl, barely two feet tall, who called to him constantly. Whether he was outside tending the barbecue meat, whether he was in the kitchen or sitting on the couch, the little girl kept calling his name, she kept running to his legs and hugging him. He smiled, slightly embarrassed by the love.
There were no toys for the little girl, but she wandered around the small downstairs and found the extra room. The door was open and she walked onto the plush gray carpet. There were a couple of piles of paper on the floor next to the couch and there was a mesh bag full of neon green tennis balls. She went back to the living room, carrying her find. Like nothing was ever more interesting, she pulled out the balls one by one.
“Yossi, look at me do this…” and with her little arm, she threw a tennis ball across the room and then ran to retrieve it. She ran back to him, a smile of achievement on her face as she hugged his legs.
“Watch me do this…” she threw another tennis ball and went after it. The adults sitting in the living room smiled while a barbecue smoked on the back patio.
“That’s good,” he said. He smiled, laughed a little, liking the attention, and at the same time a little unsure of how to react. He had forgotten people could love so openly. The little girl ran back to him and raised her hands, “Can I sit on your lap?”
The hamburgers were ready. He picked her up and sat down, he gave her some small pieces of meat and he held her while she ate.

Rye

I saw the little boy coming up the crowded blocked-off street. The street was lined with fruit stalls and vegetable vendors. Swarms of people gathered around the sample booths with their little bowls of toothpicks, others walked hurriedly with heavy bags on their shoulders, moving quickly to their waiting cars. I had seen the boy’s dad a little while earlier, a sweet man I had worked for during a summer of transition and pickle-making. We talked briefly when I waved to him, he told me his wife was teaching a pickling class on the other side of town and he was here with the kids. I saw a child on his back, a little girl with blonde hair I had never met. On the flickering out-reaches of my mind, while I nodded and smiled and asked more questions, I wondered where the little boy was, the one I had first met by chance in Mexico, at a bus station in Chiapas during the only time I was ever sick on the road. His mother had given me charcoal tablets to ease my stomach, but they did not work on the long, curvy road to the Mayan ruins. I had recognized them from Santa Cruz, and as I locked myself into the small bus bathroom and looked out the open window while beads of sweat dripped down my cheeks, I imagined myself working for them when we all returned to the place we called home. And so it happened, I had spent a summer cutting green beans and making strawberry lemonade and listening to the Spanish oldies station with the other workers in the kitchen.
Three years later, Todd, the man with the green eyes, one of which had a large brown fleck in it, and the little girl on his back, stood before me. We talked a little while longer and then they left, blending in with the crowd. Twenty minutes later, I saw the little boy. He appeared like Moses parting through a sea of adults. He was only as tall as the waist of the many adults that he passed, but he moved through them assuredly on the platform of a small scooter. He held the metal handle as his foot leisurely kicked the asphalt below for a little more speed. He rode with open eyes, looking in all directions at once, waiting for an energetic pulse to grab his attention. I stood behind my wooden table, laden with green soaps and incense, I watched as he approached and passed me. He stopped a couple feet away and watched an old white man in a wheelchair communicate with the black man that pushed him. The old man had had a stroke and spoke in long extended syllables and consonants that echoed through the market. The little boy watched the exchange. He watched with total attention, as though these two people were all that existed. The black man secured a bag of peaches onto the handle of the wheelchair, then began pushing it though the crowd. The little boy watched them go, he stared at their shrinking backs for about five seconds and then he got on his scooter and followed them. The wheelchair stopped in front of the ice cream booth and, through the crowd, I was just able to see the little boy standing a couple feet away from them, absorbed with curiosity. A couple grabbed my attention and I turned to talk to them about soap. Some minutes later, as I put six dollars in my black change purse, I looked up and saw the little boy approaching me once more. He looked at me and I waved.
“Don’t you remember me?” I asked. He shook his head. “Your name’s Rye, isn’t it.”
He smiled slightly, “yeah,” he said with curiosity, “how’d you know?”
“I used to work with your parents in the kitchen… actually, I first met you in Mexico, in the bus station, but you were even younger then. Do you remember going to Mexico?”
“Yeah, I remember Mexico, but I don’t remember you. I remember standing like this,” he stood with his arms at his sides and made his back very straight, like a wooden solider, “I was standing in the back of a truck like this,” he pointed to the truck behind me. “I was standing like this and I was smushed in between big plastic things filled with water.”
I nodded. He smiled slightly, then began to walk away. He walked his scooter to the sidewalk, just a couple steps behind me. There was no one on the sidewalk. I watched him ride away, a little boy totally open to the mystery surrounding him, engaging and disengaging as the impulses ran though him. He moved on, knowing no limits, lacking any hesitation.

Mr. Money

He was named after his father’s love of finance. He was born with the scent of dollar bills on the floor and he was bathed in the hope that he would grow to carry a pungent-smelling leather briefcase and that he would wear slick tailored suits and that his stomach would never know hunger. His father believed in the power of personal perseverance, in dreams that start slow and turn softly for years until a boiling point is reached and then, then the fire is hot and the market is screaming for action, then is the time to lay with a mighty hand what has been stewing in the dreams and guts and labor of the self-made man. His father read to him in the womb. As his mother slept with a belly full of movement, his father read the financial journals and he read from the texts of economists and he spoke of the hopes for his unborn son.
When he was born, they cloaked him in new dollar bills and they used hundreds to stuff his pillow. They hoped the scent alone would be enough to drive him, they hoped it would provide subtle traces along the path, leading him like a keen dog down the long road to financial fulfillment.
And like a star in the distance, he followed the path laid before him. With nudges at his feet and trashings when necessary, he stumbled along the road sprinkled in gold, always with the vision of more to come. He groped at the doors of Wall St. With a puppet’s obedience, he studied the same men that his father had studied and he read from the same journals. Together, father and son, they spoke the harsh language of commerce. Its brutal and gray forms covered the light whisperings of daises and shadowed the color of twilight. The path to money left little room for swing sets and girls, the quest blinded him to the flower-scented sex, deafened him to the language of music and imagery.
When he was old enough, he moved into the corner office of a building that nearly reached the clouds. In his softer moments, when the world still lay in a blanket of blackness and when the army of immigrant cleaners had finished their duties, he dreamed of leprechauns and he thought of the empty sounds within bank vaults and heard the orchestra of cash registers. He ate all his meals while watching the minute movements of the city below. The yellow cabs veered and curved through traffic, he could hear the sirens scream with the hysterics of new mothers, he could sense the disconnected wandering of the people a thousand feet below and he watched it all with a thread of indifference. He preferred the cool, regulated world of his cubicle, where the TV brought him all the news he needed, where the computer was an extension of his mind, providing him with every fact he could hope to discover. This was his home, his sanctuary of eternal fluctuation. He would wake every morning with a new set of numbers, a new outlook on the day that would determine all his decisions, each and every correspondence.
When she came in, the only woman that ever punctuated his leather-smelling sphere, he hid himself in his papers, he buried himself in the world of numbers fearing the waft of her perfume. It was the scent of tigers, the smell of domination in silk sheets and lacy panties. He would not look up, he would close the blinds to his office, shuttering himself from the small world on Floor 708. In one week, she undid all he had learned. With the curve of her back, she released the rope that had tied his mind to the desk and to the numbers and to the bidding men half a block away.
He felt the sound of the jungle roar deep in the hidden caverns of his chest. He imagined doing what he had only seen on his computer screen. He saw himself twisted in the white of her flesh. He saw his hands ripping the fabric of her tight skirt. He imagined screaming, unleashing the desire that had taken twenty-seven years to build. The numbers on the screen began to blur, red and green numerals mixed, blending into geometric bodies of heat and power, struggling to accumulate more with their union.

The Tunnel And The Light

Most of all, he didn’t like the edge because of the loud noises, the thumping, the screeching, the banging, the tremors that made it seem as if the whole tunnel he had just dug out would come crashing down upon him, something which very rarely happened, but every once in a while it did.
Back in the heart of the world, things were simpler. There were more people, and they all crossed paths so often that it was easy to forget which tunnel you had dug and which tunnel had been made by someone else and it really didn’t matter, because they were all about the same size and they could trade tunnels any day, any hour, and all tunnels ended the same place anyway, or very similar, and there was food in all directions, plentiful and available. But all the food was known and safe, and he wanted something else, even if it meant enduring the loud noises.
Because here at the edge, there were hardly any people at all. Every once in a while, he would run into an old tunnel left behind by some other loner that had come before him, maybe one that came back with treasure or maybe one that never came back. Out here, he was on his own and he had to mostly dig his own tunnels, and the soil itself was harder and darker, and he didn’t really mind any of that but he did mind the noises, because, after careful consideration, it had become clear to him that the noise could only come from the great Demons that lived above the earth and the thought of it made him tremble and his nose got cold and still and he looked down at the dark soil and tried to think of other things.
When the thought of the Demons came upon him, then he momentarily accepted that maybe it was better to stay where the family was, where the known world was, maybe it was better to stay where there were plenty of people and plenty of tunnels and no loud noises and maybe that’s where he should go and all he would have to do is to follow his own tunnel back to its source, and pretty soon the noises would fade away into memory, and, all of a sudden, there would be another one like him and then another, and there would be more tunnels and the only noises would be the little scratching that he recognized as the scratching of other people, digging away and eating and digging some more.
The vision of resting there made him think that maybe he was crazy to be out here, that he should never have come out all the way to the edge, but as much as these thoughts crowded into each other and as much as it was tempting to be back where it was safe and familiar, he still kept on digging, he still kept on going, and the noises kept on getting louder. He ran into a big white rock and then another and he noticed that the roots were shorter here, as they trailed down knotty and hard from the top of his improvised passageway, and there were areas where the soil was very thin, thinner than he expected, so thin that it was almost impossible to make a tunnel through it because everything would just crumble back into place, and then he would run into soil that was almost as hard as a rock, and he made his way around these obstacles the best way he could, for he had many tricks at his disposal, and many different ways to face the hardships that were present here at the edge of the world.
But he knew it would soon be time to come out, for it was no good to have come all the way out here and then not see the light, for time was composed of periods of darkness and periods of light, and you could stretch the darkness for a while and you could wait until you felt tired or until you felt like eating something different or simply until you wanted to be warm, but, sooner or later, you had to rip up through the soil and push your nose up and face the light, and then, bask in its magnificence, and know, for a single clear moment, that you had gone somewhere, and you were now there, and your nose was warmer, and your eyes would grow wide with the momentary understanding.
There was no use putting it off for too long, he would have to do it sooner or later. He found a place where the dirt was not too thin and not too hard and he started to dig up, up towards the surface, and the noises got even louder, and it sounded like a hundred people dying all at once, like rumbling explosions that threatened to break the world in two and leave him naked in the midst of thin soil that flew in all directions, with no roots or rocks to grab onto, and no dirt floor on which to land. But he kept on digging up, inch by inch, while great waves of fear made the effort even harder. Eventually, the roots shifted aside and he pulled on some of them and pushed up, and dug some more and then the light hit him, hard and blue and bright and his eyes got wide and teary and his heart beat hard and the noise was deafening but he didn’t care, he had come all this way, and he wanted to see what was here even if it meant the end of him.
It took some time for his eyes to adjust but then he saw them, the big Demons staring down at him from an inconceivable height. They were hideous and gigantic and they were made of light in many different shades and they moved slower than he did but with a significance and a power that he found terrifying. He slid back down the way he came, shaking with terror, and he waited there, maybe they would go away soon and then he could look outside again. He pushed his nose out for a bit and looked up and he saw the gigantic forms of light once again and he pulled back further and waited once again. They had to go soon, if they wanted to kill him he would already be dead, although he knew that he had no way of knowing what their true purposes were, he just had to wait and wait and wait.
After a long while, he pushed his nose out again and there was single demon there, glowing above him like a tower of rainbow light bathed in blue and yellow, and the strange being was just standing there and he looked up at it and he couldn’t tell what was his face and what were his eyes and what was his nose, but he was sure that it was looking down at him from the great heights that he inhabited. He looked up at the Demon and the Demon shifted slightly and moved just a little closer and he ran away once again.
In the comfortable cover of cool darkness he waited some more, hoping the strange Demon would go away like the others had. As he waited, the noise was becoming deafening, more terrible than ever, and it came in great waves that made his tunnel shake and little rivulets of dirt would come pouring down upon him, threatening to end his adventure suddenly with a single explosive fade out made of root and soil. There was very little buffer of soil to hide him from the terrible noise, so it washed through his tunnel like dark clouds of poison gas and his whole body was shaking and he knew he had to escape soon or he would go mad.
But he had to look outside, at least one more time, and so he did and the Demon was still there, still looking down, and he thought he knew then what were his eyes and they were staring right at him, and he was going to pull away again but the Demon didn’t move and it was so still and he could almost imagine that the Demon was like him, maybe a bit like him, maybe not so different, maybe somewhere behind the Demon face, there truly was something that was not so bad, not so evil, not so terrifying… but then a new wave of noise came and he ran down the tunnel because that had been too much, he had gone too far. The noise was still making the tunnel tremble as he ran and all he could see in the darkness before him were the Demon’s eyes and all he could remember was the moment when he thought, as he looked into that giant strange being, just for a second, that maybe he was a Demon himself.
The others would think he was crazy, and maybe he was. At least now he knew why the people never ventured so far out to the edge of the world. More than death, more than pain, more than hunger, it was terrible knowledge that waited here, in the fiery eyes of a Demon, in the crushing noise of its giant black wings.

Dance

Thump, thump, thump, thump, the beat crawls along my skin as the taste of sugar rolls down my throat. Jump into this moment, as it jiggles by with each second, as sugar mixes with blood, as beats mix with sounds and my fingers press life into springs and plastic. It dances with the lightest of steps, on the borders of my mind, on the whispers beside my ear. The rhythm encompasses my body and sends small shivers of chills up and down my arms. My hips want to move with each hard beat like grinding upon my lover’s hips to thrust him deeper within me. The sounds resonate on the top on my head like raindrops. The strange, fascinating noises tantalizing my eardrums, almost teasing them, making them want more.
My hands search for the right keys to press. Pressing the black squares, trying to form words as my mind reacts to the music, the rhythms, the never-ending cacophony of noises being emitted from the speakers and being injected into my brain like sperm being ejected into the womb. The top of my skull feels open and vulnerable as if something can fall directly into it, or perhaps escape out of it, like some strange creature from regions best left forgotten. It seems that I am separated from the fingers that type these words on the newfangled keyboard. I feel a sense of being disconnected and it takes several moments for my thoughts to reach my hands.
I want to dance. But not with my body, well, not with what I have come to know as my physical body. I want to dance with that invisible part of me that I know is in there somewhere, yearning to come out. It wants to dance. It wants to be free.
The instruments strum and pound as I scratch my face. I have suddenly become itchy. I feel tiny bugs on my skin that probably don’t really exist. Invisible bugs dancing on the soft surface of my skin, brushing across the air, making me itch. The invisible bugs dance like there is no tomorrow. They only dance in the nowness of the universe. A rhythm only heard by them and no others.
I take a deep breath. My spine burns. The flames are dancing up and down my spine. They lap at my bones like logs burning in a fireplace. The flames consume me. Hotter and hotter I become. My spine feels like the stick skewering a kabob, holding meat onto the wood so it won’t fall into the flames. It burns hot, but does not get charred.
Again, a deep breath. Don’t forget to breathe. You mustn’t forget to breathe. The breath carries the life force into our bodies, sending it deeper and deeper into our core. The shadow of the witch on the wall stirs her brew. Toad’s eyes and lizard gizzards. The shadow of the crown looks like a witch. A benevolent witch. Not a mean one at all. A cute little Halloween witch with a black cauldron.
My fingers don’t want to type words any more. The invisible core within me wants to dance. It wants to dance the eternal dance that it has always been dancing, it was just never able to come out, never able to come out and dance. It was like a young girl at a school dance that just sat in the chair in the back of the room, too afraid of what other people might say about her if they saw her dance. Too afraid to ever really be herself, to be free enough to dance her own dance.
Now, the invisible part of me will no longer sit quietly in the back of the gymnasium worried about what others will think. Fuck them. They don’t know the feeling. They will never know. Perhaps they do know and they just don’t want me to know. People can be mean like that. They want to keep everything for themselves and not let others enjoy things like dancing. They laugh and point. Fuck them.
I will dance.
I will dance like the flames and the bugs.
I will dance my invisible dance that only I know I am dancing.

The Pool Builder

She was the pool builder, imagining their shapes into being. One strange structure rose high above earth and sea level. Like giant seashells turned inside out and formed into shallow cups, several pools rested upon staggered towers pouring water from one level to the next, like a psychedelic sea inspired garden fountain. Another was set deep in the earth in an L formation. She dreamed them, forged them out of nothingness and swam in their tepid waters testing the designs, searching for the one that most pleased her. It was an endeavor to create a home for her soul, a shape more familiar than the primordial womb. A body harmonious with her being in which she could dwell. And she could dwell in no other place but these that she had created. To step out was unthinkable, perhaps impossible. In any body that she could create, she could swim freely. Beyond that she was restricted. Her appearance could change as easily as that of any pool she could inhabit. Most of the time she was invisible, as crystal clear as the waters through which she wound her way. In other moments, she was a translucent maiden with long flowing golden hair, barely more perceivable than a ghost lingering at the edge of a pool, gazing out at the wider world.
Her agent in the walking world, in those domains which existed without her effort, was called White Wave Of Love. She was of elfin stature, petite and wiry with big brown eyes. Her hair, long and straight was the color of polished mahogany. With an ever merry smile given freely, without reason, she moved briskly about. Hers was a great capacity for action and movement. She was the hand of the pool builder, able to move and arrange things outside of that watery world.
One day, the pool builder surfaced to peer at the world beyond. In the distance she could sea the real thing, the wild and raging sea. Walking steadily towards it was none other than White Wave Of Love. The pool builder called out to her trying to summon her, but white wave plodded on as if she could not hear. Her countenance was dismal, her shoulders slumped in resignation. The pool builder boiled with frustration. For a moment she imagined that she could leave the pool and grab the other, summoning her attention at last. It could not be however, and though the builder strained at the edge of the pool, White Wave took no notice. She walked on, crossing the sandy beach until she had reached the foamy shoreline. There she at last collapsed upon her back and lay motionless. She stared unblinking across the dunes of sand, her face resting in its moistened grit.
The tide began to roll in, slowly at first, overtaking her white sneakers and socks. She never flinched. Not even the slightest tremor or twitch disturbed her body as the waves lapped at her denim skirt reaching up to finger her white blouse. She had become as heavy as a lead statue. From the pools edge, the builder could feel all that White Wave felt, a deep and hopeless depression. A sensation of parched hollowness beneath the ribcage so strong that if felt like a physical illness. It was beyond doubt that love had left her and she was allowing life to leave her as well. From where she lie she was swallowed piece by piece by the rowdy sea. The pool builder saw through the stoney eyes of White Wave as the water tugged her away. With a sense of severe aggravation, she slipped back into her pool to swim.

The Hidden Group

She sat with two long metal poles in her hands, knitting on the subway. As the emerald green yarn glided effortlessly through her fingers and the needles, she occasionally raised her eyes and surveyed the semi-full car. It was just past rush hour and there were enough orange plastic seats available for everyone, although a single man in a black leather jacket stood by the doors, waiting for the next stop. Sometimes she looked up at just the right moment and could see through the window another speeding train. It was illuminated in the dark underground, full of people like her, moving at the same velocity, though the same territory. They were so close in those moments, she could almost make out the title of a book that a young man was reading, she could feel the sadness with which a middle aged woman looked out the window into the tunneling darkness. They were so near, yet, they were on a slightly altered path, just a hair’s difference than her own at that moment, but within a matter of minutes, the trains would curve and they, all of them, would arrive at completely different destinations.
Her knitting needles moved quickly along, moving more out of habit than intellectual direction. Her mind wandered as her slender fingers moved… what neighborhood was she under at this moment? What moved in the night? She imagined a young black woman crying as her lover turned and walked in the other direction. She imaged a man holding onto the leash of a large white dog, walking slowly as the animal stopped every couple of feet to smell a bush or wall. Maybe there were couples walking arm and arm down the city streets, watching for the taxis that rounded corners without mercy. She imagined it all as her body was transported further by the second.
The high rents of the city prevented her from living there. Her destination, her home, was in the industrial wasteland that clung to the edges of the city like a lingering cough. The void, as it was called, stretched for miles. Warehouse after warehouse stood like lifeless block soldiers, one after the other in dutiful formation. Their shapes were the only remains of a once thriving port…that, and the air of ghosts that sometimes moved between the buildings on cold, quiet nights. She lived there, in a huge warehouse with thirty other people. They had come together like an army of grateful rats fleeing the city, happy to have a place to call home. There were other communities of squatters in the other buildings, little communities of young artists and travelers and hobos. All of them kept a low profile, keeping up the appearances of decay from the outside; they let the plaster fall, they let the weeds continue to grow, they let the scattered trash mount and add needed color to the land.
But once, she had defied the normal code and she had taken a midnight stroll. A mile from her home, she saw the white lettering of a banner flapping along the side of a warehouse and the constant thumping of drums. She remembered that travelling shows and groups would occasionally rent the warehouses from the city. She had her explanation, but she still walked towards the building. The resonant beat matched the time of her steps. There was a glimmer of yellow light coming from the huge sliding metal doors, someone had not shut it all the way, or perhaps had not known to close the latch. She came closer and curiosity compelled her to look, she approached soundlessly and put an eye to the slit with a faint tinge of guilt that excited her even further.
Inside, she saw a long line of drummers forty feet away. They were topless and sweating, each man’s firm chest glimmered like moonlight on a dark pond and she beheld them in awe. A dozen arms raised in unison, then came down, beating the taught skin of their drums with such delicate precision that it seemed as if the earth would open with the sound of their demand. A cold, icy wind brushed past her back. The night covered her in its dark wings, its hard kiss stayed firmly planted on her shoulders as it pressed in on her heart without mercy. She stood, barely breathing. Her hands were numb and her nose was stinging in the wind, her lips were nearly frozen in an inbreed expression of ecstasy, awe, and fear.
The women were naked, save for the black lines and dots that decorated their skin. There were at least twenty in a large circle. Their arms were free and they swung wildly with grace, creating long streams of golden light with the flaming poi. Their faces were alive with flickering shadows and their hips moved like spiraling snakes on an ecstatic journey though time. And although their arms moved unhindered through the air, their ankles were tightly bound in thick silver cuffs. There was three feet of thick metal chain that separated each leg and each woman was connected to the others at her sides by another six feet of chains. They moved in slowly together, closing the circle with each careful step, each foot moving in precise time with their men who watched attentively from behind. Each drummer seemed intimately connected with a dancer, each dancer was held firmly to the woman beside her. As a whole, they seemed bound beyond matter and the surrounding walls, held tightly beyond the flesh of their bodies or the fictitious borders of their minds. Their eyes were half-closed, almost droopy, but their bodies appeared fully alive, moving with a knowledge that seeped from a deeper brain, from the hidden consciousness that flowers while the machine clocks off. They moved with the force of moving planets aligned with many suns.
She watched through the crack, wondering what they would do if she was caught. Maybe she would be cuffed by the ankles and forced to serve them. Would she be kept in the lion’s cage, a mistress to all, licking the beads of sweat off their skin through the black of night? Would they paint her in stripes and teach her to move like a serpent with legs? Would this group become her village? Her tribe? Would she take on their scent and comb their black hair? Surely they came from a place of pure blackness, a world were sounds take the shape of colors and movements light the night with their brilliant vibration. She watched them, knowing that this was the dominant force in the world, that everything else was a shadow, a long distant relative that perhaps had a memory of where it had deviated, but had no idea how to retrace its steps, to find itself once more. She heard the clang of metal on asphalt and turned to see a single sardine can tumbling in the wind. Above her, the lights of the second-floor came on. There was a silhouette in the window, a slim man with a long head of black hair piled in a bun atop his head. The man looked out into the night, to the small group of stars that flickered softy though the sky. A rock came towards her, a small pebble landed at her feet. She looked up to find its source, the man in the window was watching her, the tables had been turned.

Demons and Passengers

The creatures were lined up in three rows, each a little shorter than the one preceding it, so that their formation was pyramidal, pointing straight toward the relic. A large milky white stone, the relic was as tall as three men standing upon one another’s shoulders, making it just slightly taller than the creatures themselves. A bell was struck and those in the short row nearest to it lowered to their knees and knelt before the stone, and when they were all bent to the earth, those in the two rows behind followed suit. One of the creatures stood behind all the others, posted at the mammoth double doors at the end of the chapel. The doors of gray stone, etched with swirling designs, had been opened, and the creature stood guard ensuring that they remain so until the ceremony was complete. Like the others, its face was waxy and featureless, its forehead broad and flat. The bald head was webbed with traces of the blue veins just beneath the thin skin. Its flesh was pale and glossed over with a silver sheen. The tip of its scimitar was planted in the crevice between cobblestones on the ground in front of its clawed feet, its long sharp fingers were knotted as they rested firmly over the hilt. Light shone through the windows beyond the relic, passing through shards of stained glass of black and white and crystal hue. The bell was struck again and the creatures began to hum all together. Ahead of them, the stone glimmered faintly as though a light were flickering from within its opaque depths. Slowly and silently, the creature which stood at the door lifted its blade and eased its way towards its prostrate brethren. The hem of its own dark robe brushed softly over the ash colored stones of the floor, making a whispering sound whose warning was drowned out by the humming. With a growl, he leaped over the first row and landed for an instant with both feet upon the back of a startled creature kneeling in the second row. Then bounding gingerly forward, it drove the great scimitar downward into a creature that knelt in the center of the third row. The humming ceased, broken apart by startled cries that sounded like giant icebergs tearing the hull of a metal ship. A murmur of alarm and confusion boiled over. Those creatures nearest the attacker spilled away from the murder like the waters of a stream parted by a boulder, scrambling upward and outward at once to see what had landed upon them. There was a shout of,"The Elder, the Elder is slain!" as the assailant pulled the bloodied blade up and out of its victims bony old back. It wiped the steel clean upon the old creature’s black robe and the Elder fell over sideways and lay in a crumpled heap. Another creature flung itself recklessly at the murderer in an attempt to grapple the blade away, but the guardian of the door cut it down with hardly an effort. In a swift sweeping motion, the blade slashed across the belly of another that rushed at it from its right. The robe of that other parted as a male human tumbled out and hit the ground trembling. It was he that had absorbed the blow and blood was soaking through his white garments causing it to cling to his wounded breast. The creature that had housed him beneath the folds of its robe had a moment to cast its eyeless face downward, regarding its lost cargo with shock before attempting to block the attackers next blow. The one who had been the guardian threw the other creature back with a forceful shove and buried the point of its great scimitar into the center of the man, nearly cleaving him in two. The creature that had harbored the man shrieked, doubled over and collapsed.
Another of the creatures from the furthest row had come fully to its feet and while many of the others were following suit, this one threw back its robe, revealing a pale haired woman. She sat within a concave space in the creatures center, hanging over its sexless pelvic mound so that her legs dangled between the larger ones of her carrier. The interior of the creature was a nearly perfect throne, its flesh encased ribcage opened around her head like a crown of antlers, and delicate tendrils reached from its own heart, pulsing beneath thin membranes of flesh above her head, where they rested upon her temples and snaked over her shoulders to touch the bare flesh over her own heart .‘Cardea! Stop this! What are you doing?" she cried.The one who had been the guardian pulled back one half of its own robe and revealed its passenger, a pasty man with dark circles under his eyes. He was fitted within the creature just as she was within hers, but he gazed absently with wide unseeing eyes as if he were asleep and dreaming. A trickle of clear saliva slid its way out of the corner of his gaping mouth."Cardea! Cardea!" The woman screamed at him to no avail. "Cardea control your demon! See what you are doing! Cardea!"But the creature only dropped the robe and let it cover its inactive occupant up again. Raising its blade, it took one step forward, then another, and another, closing the distance between them. The room was swarming like an ant hill which has had water poured over it, but the way between them was clear. The woman screamed, her voice cracking, and the strange reverberating voice of her creature bellowed in unison with her own,"Cardea! Do you hear me?" She and the creature in which she was perched held their ground as the killer closed the last little gap between them. A great noise thundered through the air, silencing all other sounds, as a gun was discharged. Cardea’s creature stopped mid step, the crown of its head suddenly absent. Under a rain of blood and guts, the blade slipped from its grip and clattered upon the stones. Then its towering bulk toppled over, lifeless.The doors had been thrown open and one of the sentries from the hall stood a few feet within the chapel, a smoking hand cannon held in its claw. A man with a bristling red beard leaped out of its belly and tore across the room. His vacated creature trailed close behind him. He looked up at the woman sitting in her demon, her face streaked with tears. He offered a hand to her and she came down from her creature. The man kissed her forehead, his beard brushing her face like the needles of a young pine tree."You’re alright then?" he asked her and she nodded. "The Elder." she said and they looked to the heap beyond Cardea. Together they rushed to the Elder’s fallen demon. Two more creatures strode over and gently rolled the large body out. The woman pulled open the robe, revealing a withered old man with long white hair, the top of his head matted with blood. Most of it had been spilled from the pierced heart of his demon, but his own skull had been cracked by the deadly strike. A sob caught in the throat of the white haired woman as she stepped backward. The bearded man stood behind her and gripped her arms to comfort her. A ring of creatures gathered about the Elder. More poured in through the opened doors of the chapel. An unrobed creature pushed its way through the crowd. Its passenger, a young flaxen haired man with thin and wiry arms, was clearly visible."There must be no crying here." He commanded. "All of you, retreat to your chambers for silent meditation. Only the heads of The Order should remain to help me to tend to the fallen" Slowly the mass began to shuffle back out the way it had come.The bearded man spoke up,"With your permission Reverence, I would like to conduct interviews in the great hall to ascertain the direct nature of this tragedy."The blonde haired man looked down from his seat at the other. After a pause he asked,"Aram isn’t it?""Yes Reverence.""So long as they are conducted quietly, one person at a time, then you have my permission.""Yes Reverence, I understand. It will be so." Then Aram turned the woman around to face him."You will be first Roan. Meet me there when you have collected yourself sufficiently." He gave her arms another squeeze and she nodded. Then they parted. He took his seat within his demon and strode out with the others.
Roan however, waited until she would not risk being trampled. Then she walked on her own two feet with her demon following several paces behind. She walked all the way to her quarters. The distance was greater than she had remembered. Years had passed since she had last walked it herself rather than relying on her demon. She supposed that this was the case for most. At the doorway, she paused to observe her demon standing tall and silent as a phantom, still dressed in the black ceremonial robes. Silently, she willed her demon to open the door and together they passed into their private chamber. Inside, Roan opened a small chest that sat upon her vanity. Within it, three vials remained undisturbed, held snugly in place by a sponge-like padding. There were empty indentations in the padding where the fourth, fifth, and sixth vial had been stored. Quickly she closed the chest and locked it with a brass key. After stowing the key in the pocket of an old coat hung within her wardrobe, she summoned her demon and took her place at its core. Back in the hallway she willed her demon to hasten the pace. She took care that they were not seen, turning once into an adjacent hallway and ducking into a doorway, and waiting there until the approaching footfalls echoed away into the distance. At last they reached the door that she sought. She silently willed the demon to lay its head against the door and through it, she listened to be sure that no one stirred within. Assured that the chamber was empty, she pressed the door open with her demon’s clawed hand and slipped inside.
Cardea’s bed was unmade. The wax of a candle had been spilled onto the floor and left to dry among cast off shirts and socks. A plate of partially eaten food stood upon the night table. There, near the plate, she spied what she was looking for. An emptied vial. One of those that she had given to him. Her demon snatched it up from the nightstand and deposited it in her own hand. After a careful search, she discovered the two remaining vials; one under the bed, another by the wash basin. Fingering the last vial, she recalled standing in just that spot, watching Cardea splash water over his face. She had offered him that first vial then."What’s this?" he had asked, taking it from her."Something that I mixed up. Something to ease your burden." She had told him.When the three empty vials had been placed into their spaces in the chest upon her vanity, she locked it and hid the key in the old coat once again. She smoothed her hair and checked herself in the mirror."Now, Aram, I have collected myself." She said quietly, her hand pressed upon the box. Then she mounted her demon and made her way to the Great Hall where Aram would be waiting. Any trace of guilt in her face could be hidden by sadness, any trace of shame could be hidden by despair. Her path was clear. Nobody would ever know what had really killed the Elder. Nobody would ever know that an attempt at rebirth had ended in destruction, that a simple wish for life had ended in sudden unexpected death. Nobody but Roan and the demon that carried her in its entrails, like a microbe of flesh in a giant body of stone.