In the Microscope
We looked closely...
having struck dynamo
an excitement scientific
among all the laboratorian
Aha...finally! a spirit
stuck...
in slide!!
an authentic sampling
cross section, aye
between glass
its parts wriggling
and jiggling
we see turning around
as little space allows
for what seem
like hands
face, feet!
a nose it has
elbows and
it kneels
it kneels!
deaf and mute
and we are also
in the microscope
gapping...
dumbstruck
09.17.2024
Grey area challenge @AJAY9979
This fool
Yes, I made mistakes
I admit it doesn’t look good
Not that my intelligence can be questioned
My heart vetoed my head
I registered the anomalies
as I was led down the garden path
See I hoped to be a sheep
blissful on some meadow somewhere
cheery in my ignorance
expecting the best to fall in my lap
checking in with the herd
keeping up with the fun
never missing out
posting the highlight reel
then came the wolf
see he lurks everywhere
even in your mind
I fell prey
living on the other side of the moon
cold truth knows no comfort
but I make my peace with it
It’s my deliverance
learn it for yourself
realize pain is universal
no one escapes
when the bubble pops
and you cant tell up from down
then it will be clear
there are no betters
whatever defences we set
cant outfox life
hungry we all are
man cannot live on bread alone
lets not make a meal of each other
Elesea in Dreams?
I hurl the entire can against the canvas out of frustration, splashing blood red paint against the floor and walls, crime scene style. This isn’t going the way I want. I need to check myself, so stop to roll a joint. No one smokes joints anymore, which is a shame. There’s something to the ritual of rolling a joint that’s as relaxing as the joint itself. I haven’t been able to paint anything in weeks and I’m getting irritated. I switch out my Cocteau Twins Pink Opaque for The Damned’s Neat Neat Neat. I need something more aggro. I briefly consider going next door to see if my neighbor has any blow, but decide to pop open another energy drink instead. Funny, all the sugar and additives in this gut rotting beverage are arguably worse for my body than a bump of coke. But nevermind that. How do I shake this creative block?
I abandon the project and take my joint down to the waterfront. That always calms me. It’s a gorgeous day, despite yesterday’s thunderstorms. Or maybe because of them. I normally produce my best work in the wake of turmoil, so I get it, I tell the universe. I find a place on the seawall to sit, extracting my earbuds so I can hear the ocean’s song. My Piscean nature compels me to the water when I need to self-soothe. I spark my joint and sit there smoking, watching the sun glistening on the water. I’m hushed by the collision of waves as the ocean exhales them onto the shore before inhaling them back into her depths once more. Slowly, the frustration begins to ebb.
I inhale deeply, filling my lungs and holding my breath at the top. I count to seven before fully exhaling through my mouth. I need to carry this feeling with me back to the art loft. That’s the problem. It’s easy to get zen while I’m sitting here, near the ocean. Then I go back into the city and something inevitably fucks me up again. I suspect that’s how life is in the Olde Towne for most of us. We’re all scouring the city for these precious, borrowed moments of tranquility. The OT is feral. I never expected to stay here after my mother and brother were killed in a partisan rebellion. But then I found my chosen family, joined the underground resistance, opened the diner, and. Well, here I remain. I suppose it’s as close to home as anything else I’ve ever known.
Why can’t I just live in this moment forever? Why is serenity so difficult to hold on to? I sigh deeply as I look at my watch. I’m sure Owen is fine at the diner alone, but he always gets nervous if I don’t make an appearance by late afternoon. It’s understandable. Sweepers lurk in every gangway; beasts of prey. You never know when they’ll strike, and I’m mouthy enough to get pinched. Especially if I encounter a Sweeper who’s feeling particularly self-righteous. Technically, the diner is on neutral ground, at least in tacit terms. Even so, as female-presenting, I can’t be too careful. One could argue that women get it worse than non-white men. The black and brown men are simply shot or thrown over the wall. Women, well. I can’t contemplate that right now. Nothing will push me from my zen place faster.
I perform seven final rounds of breathwork, scanning each chakra along the way. My third eye chakra and pineal gland are ablaze. This baffles me. My third eye chakra is my creative center. If it’s so damned active, why can’t I paint? I scan again. My root and sacral chakras feel slightly misaligned. This gives me pause. The root chakra is connected to security, safety; feeling grounded. Am I blocked because I suspect something sinister is about to go down? Of course, there's another plausible interpretation: the sacral chakra is tied to sexual desire. I hate to admit it, but I’ve been feeling pretty ungrounded since Naddy unexpectedly cut ties.
Whatever, doesn’t matter, I tell myself as I stand and stretch. I thought we were clicking, even though we only dated for a couple months. We had tons of mind blowing sex, but we didn’t spend all of our time in bed. We spent many nights talking until dawn. If I’m honest, I thought we were both catching feels. Admittedly, I have the tendency to over-romanticize things, and Naddy is an unapologetic cad. Still. Her absence underscores how special, how seen I felt in her presence. I honestly don’t think I had expectations or an attachment to any particular outcome. I think I’m just annoyed at being so abruptly and summarily ghosted. I feel like I deserved at least a Well, that was swell, but the swelling’s gone down, so I’m gonna bounce. Or something.
I try to shake it off. I take a few more grounding breaths before I leave. I hope like hell everyone will Namaste the fuck away on my walk through the Olde Towne to the diner. Crap, I need to hustle. It’s nearly quitting time Uptown. Within the hour, the OT will be flooded with Uptown sex tourists and pleasure seekers galore. Especially considering it’s Friday. Owen’s a fine cook, but his neurodivergence doesn't lend itself to people skills. Plus, this misaligned root chakra business has notched up my spidey senses. Better to be in the safety of the diner if things do go sideways.
I stick to the waterfront as long as possible, but I’m eventually forced to move through the more densely populated area of the OT. Three early bird Uptowners are walking in front of me, talking loudly and occupying too much space. I roll my eyes and inhale deeply. I’m trying to stay zen here - can everyone fuck off a little? I’m hoping the Uptowners get distracted, allowing me a moment to circumvent them unmolested. I’m still wearing my paint splattered coveralls, which aren’t very flattering. That should work to my advantage. Out of nowhere, a man on the docks with a wide, entirely unsettling, shark-toothy grin waves, calling out to the Uptowners in front of me, encouraging them to join him. The three men excitedly trot off. I hope they don’t make their way to the diner later, but realize it’s an unfortunately grim possibility. Can’t worry about that now. I seize my opportunity to make it to the diner instead.
I don’t know if I’ve spooked myself, or if there’s legit evil afoot, but I shift into hypervigilance mode. Better safe than sorry. I arrive at the diner just in time. It’s busier than usual, and Owen is on the brink of a meltdown. The moment he sees me, he darts from the kitchen, grabs me by the shoulders, and pulls me in for a hug. He’s not big on physical touch, so I know something is way off kilter. Damnit. I hate being right about the wrong things. When I ask him what’s up, he has some difficulty articulating, but nods to the table in the far left corner. Sweepers. It’s clear by their Sears suits and sense of entitlement; so turgid it permeates the diner.
I look around and note that my regulars are stubbornly planted and ready to throw down. Stonewall style if need be. These are my people. And they’ve got my six, whatever may come. My heart swells with pride. I love my chosen family. It’s times like this when all uncertainty fades away. I know that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be. Whatever that means, for whatever it’s worth. It must be worth something.
The Sweepers immediately start barking orders at me from across the room. I already want to punch the loudest of the three in the face. Namaste, motherfuckers. I motion at my coveralls and hitch my thumb toward the back of the diner, indicating I need to change, but will return in a jiffy. One of them grunts in disapproval, another grumbles something about the help, and the last makes a particularly inflammatory remark about needing to keep my kind in check. They’re just trying to rattle us, I remind myself; to keep us living in fear. Fuck. That. I think defiantly as I head to the back to change. I’ll choose dying on my feet over living on my knees. Every time.
I pop a xanax and a weed gummy before I head back to deal with the shit show. One of the Sweepers tells me I clean up real nice for an older broad. Un. Believe. Able. So we’re playing it like that, straight out the gate? Smiling with dead eyes, I ask what I can get them to eat. I try to choose my words carefully, to avoid invitations, but they find a way to work in Are you on the menu? nonetheless. I vomit in my mouth a little.
Miraculously, I’m able to maintain my plastic smile and reply, “I’m not on the menu, I create the menu. I’m the owner.”
But they already know that. They’re Sweepers. It’s their business to know who owns what in the OT. I tell them I’ll give them a minute longer to decide, then turn to leave.
The guy amongst them most bloated with privilege isn’t having it, “Hey, don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you. Bitch.”
There’s an audible intake of breath, followed by tomblike silence from the other patrons. Snap, one of my most fiercely protective regulars, looks at me, raising an eyebrow. He’s ready to cut a bitch, even at his own expense. But that’s too high a price. I won’t allow it. I nod slightly, letting him know he can stand down. For now.
The tension in the dinner is palpable.
I turn, widening my plastic smile and reply, “I’m sorry. I think you misread my name tag. It’s Elle. You know, like the letter,” I trace an L in the air with my finger. The guy looks like he’s about to burst at his bloated seams when I add, “It’s ok, no worries. Words are hard. I understand.” My saccharine sweet tone confuses him. While he tries to work out whether or not he’s being mocked, I turn and walk away, calling over my shoulder, “Be right back with that coffee.” It takes every ounce of self control I have to stifle a quip about how there are pictures on the menu in case the words are too big. I’m already treading a thin line, I remind myself. Except.
Except I’m not certain I care anymore. I’m fucking tired of their intimidation tactics. I walk into the kitchen to get the coffee and notice that Owen has switched from meltdown mode to ranger mode. He was a ranger in the special forces, some lifetime ago. He lifts the back of his apron so I can see he’s packing. If the Sweepers so much as lay a finger on me, they're dead men. That won’t be the end of it, though. It will only be the beginning. But that’s where we are.
I focus on my breathing while waiting on other customers. I reassure them that everything is going to be fine. I also want the Sweepers to know I’m not intimidated. And I’m sure as hell not responding to Bitch. They can suck my dick. The Sweepers are growing agitated. They’re talking loudly about how a woman’s only purpose is to serve her husband and raise his children. Typical inflammatory Sweeper rhetoric. I want to pour steaming hot coffee on their crotches. If I do that, they’ll attempt to haul me off. Here and now.
Owen will get his gun, Snap his knife and, if any of us make it out alive, our days will be seriously numbered. The Sweepers will launch a full scale raid, hitting not only the diner, but the docks, the underground, even the art loft. It’s too many potential casualties to contemplate. I can’t have that much blood on my hands. I realize that I’m standing there motionless, coffee carafe in hand. The bloated Sweeper is talking, but his words are muffled by the sound of blood rushing to my head. I want to eviscerate this sack of filth. I try to focus on my breath. I can’t ground myself. My hands are trembling.
“Hey! Are you stupid too? You’ve got one fucking job to do. You forget how to pour coffee?
I can feel the diners holding their breath.
I pour the coffee onto his crotch and, as he shrieks like an absolute girl in agony and disbelief, I smash the carafe into the second guy's skull, then use the broken glass to slit the third guy’s throat.
I shake the fantasy from my head.
“Hello? I said pour me a cup of coffee. Now, Bitch.”
I am barely able to steady my hand as I pour his coffee.
“There you go. Was that so hard?” He asks, before leaning over and smacking my ass.
Owen jumps over the kitchen counter and is halfway across the diner when, like a hero from one of those old Marvel movies, in walks Sydney. I almost visibly sigh with relief, but I can’t blow his cover. He’s been working his way through the Uptown ranks as our covert for months, and we need him to stay embedded. Fortunately, Sydney is a quick study. He reads the room, and calls to the Sweepers excitedly.
“Hey, guys what’s up?” He doesn’t give them a chance to answer. If one of these morons so much as looks at me sideways, Sydney might not be able to hold it down, “You gotta come see this. There’s a pop-up sex show on the docks. They’re picking guys from the audience and taking requests. Shit’s getting real!”
The Sweepers are all in. As they gather their cheap suit jackets to leave, the most cantankerous of the bunch makes eye contact with me and says, “Let’s go have some fun, guys. Service here is shit anyway.”
When the door shuts behind them, the diner heaves a collective sigh of relief. Owen approaches and asks if I’m ok. He was ready to kill them all, I can see it in his eyes. He would have eliminated all three before the first guy’s body hit the floor.
Snap lays a gentle hand on my shoulder in support. “Elesea, them fools are getting bold with the wrong bunch. I promise you that!”
I can feel it now with certitude: we’re on the precipice of a bloody revolution. Do or die.
A few hours later, Sydney returns and tells me it’s all been taken care of. I don’t ask questions. He insists on escorting me to the loft. Once there, Sydney leaves to catch up with a couple friends. He offers to walk me home after I finish painting, if he’s still around. I don’t decline, but forewarn him it could be a while. He copies that and takes off to do his own thing. I am immensely grateful for him, for all of my people. My tribe.
I rip a couple bong tokes and put on Love’s Secret Domain by Coil as I mix my paints. I work furiously, completely losing track of time. After I’ve filled two canvases, I stop to survey my work. The first canvas is a depiction of the diner. Owen is bopping around the kitchen in his headphones, cooking. Snap is sitting at the bar with three of his ladies, laughing joyfully. A few other regulars litter the background, everyone eating and talking amiably. Comfortably. As if they aren’t anticipating a scene like the one that played out today to erupt into bedlam at any given moment.
The second canvas is a depiction of Tangos, the underground French bistro that hangs my art. Pierre, the owner, is there, his kind, round face smiling widely; like it’s Paris in spring. That’s the thing about people who have everything taken from them and nothing to lose: they find bliss in the unlikeliest of places. If they don’t, if they allow the enemy to crush their spirits, then the enemy truly wins. Once upon a time, a night like this at Tangos would have been taken for granted. People in the OT don’t take anything for granted anymore. Moments like these, with friends, with family, are all we have left.
The diner, Tangos; the places are inconsequential. These places aren’t my home. These people are my home. I look down. One empty canvas remains. I pick it up and place it on the easel. I start painting with abandon, surrendering to the vision. It’s come to me in dreams. I know why I have resisted it, but I no longer can.
Right on cue, the titular track of Love’s Secret Domain begins playing.
In dreams, I’ll walk with you. In dreams, I’ll talk with you. In dreams you are mine. All of the time.
I finish, breathless, spent, and stand back to admire her likeness. The severe black bob that frames her exquisite, strong jawline. Her long, delicate neck and jutting clavicles. The mischievous glint in her dark, green-gray eyes. Her Mona Lisa smirk that always makes me feel like the secrets of the universe will spill through her full lips right into the depths of me. I can’t deny it; it wasn’t a fling. We didn’t meet by accident. Naddy is part of my tribe. That’s how the story ends. Or, more importantly, that’s how it begins.
“Come back Naddy,” I whisper to her likeness, to the universe, to her. I know she can feel me.
“Whenever you’re ready. I’m here. Come home.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TITLE: Elesea in Dreams?
GENRE: Literary Fiction
AGE RANGE: Adult
WORD COUNT: 2956
AUTHOR’S NAME: Ane R Key
WHY IT'S A GOOD FIT: I've written a trilogy of shorts, each providing insight into one of three protagonists of my untitled novel. Each short stands alone, so can be marketed separately, or as a collection promoting the novel.
THE HOOK: Sweepers from Uptown scour the OT for women and non-whites, eager to imprison, shoot them. Or worse. What they don't realize is that Elesea’s tribe is ready to throw down, Stonewall style. The resistance is drawing near, but it is anything but futile.
SYNOPSIS: Elesea runs a diner that operates as headquarters for an underground resistance in the OT. She's formed a tacit agreement with the self righteous, morally upright Uptowners that their secret police, the Sweepers, will leave her diner in peace so long as they are able to carouse on the docks of the OT with sex-workers. As tensions mount, Elle rallies her tribe. Yet, one key player is absent: Naddy, a woman with whom Elle had a brief but intense affair. Realizing that Naddy plays a crucial role, both in her life, and in the revolution about to transpire, Elesea sends out a psychic SOS, calling Naddy home. Will Naddy answer her call in time?
TARGET AUDIENCE: Fans of both the Marvel and DC universes, as well as Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, and John Burnside fans. People who enjoy stories of vigilante justice, revenge, and antiheroes. People who identify as non-binary, queer, or are otherwise disenfranchised. People who enjoy twists and creative, non-traditional literary fiction.
AUTHOR’S BIO: I am a queer, female-identified, feminist, anarchist, and creator. I am an educator, agitator, and fierce advocate of bodily autonomy and critical thinking. I am an avid reader, a polyglot; a lover of languages, literature, and learning. I have my BA in Philosophy and World Religion, and my MA in Education and TESOL. I am US born and lived most of my life in Seattle, Washington. I have also lived in Japan, Germany, and currently reside in Portugal, where I teach part time, and perform energy work, guided meditation and tarot readings part time. My free time is spent traveling, reading, writing, watching films, or at music venues. I am dedicated to the practice of yoga, and spend my time between embodied, meditative states of consciousness and liminal, disembodied spaces. I'm also the proud owner of the world's best travel companion, my dog, Chopper.
LITERARY STYLE: I create characters who challenge readers by defying traditional archetypes. I enjoy complex, interpersonal relationships, exploring, and subverting, concepts such as linear time, imposed paradigms, the patriarchy, and hetronormative assumptions. My favorite schools of philosophy are ontology and epistemology, and I find it interesting to weave threads of these philosophies into my work. I counterbalance these philosophical musings and reflections with rapid bursts of forward motion. I hesitate to refer to my work as plot driven as my first consideration is to the development of unconventional characters whom the reader finds inexplicably relatable. There is a fair amount of drug use and small measures of violence in my work, albeit none too graphic. Regarding drug use: there are far greater evils than drug use and, let's face it, big pharma and for-profit prisons are making a killing from the war against drugs. Rather than being gratuitous, I submit it as social commentary.
*Note: I am submitting the other two shorts, Samantha in the Red Dress? and The Devil in Disguise
Spooky
Black cats stalking
Helpless prey
Jagged nerves
That start to fray
Moon rays glitter
On the mud
Mosquitoes whine
Their quest for blood
What's that howling
To the south?
Bone-white teeth
And foul-breathed mouth
The veil grows thin
And creatures gather
Cruel, dark eyes
And sides a-lather
One false move
And they'll get in
You shiver at
Their awful din
The streets are full
With drunken goons
Made bold by liquor
Oh what a boon
With any luck
They'll take the heat
If demons come
And want to eat
The weekend beckons
On the morrow
But first, this night
Of deepest sorrow
For some will perish
Some will die
Their loved ones left
To wonder why?
The hundredth time
Or 'haps umpteenth
Bad omens on
Friday thirteenth
Tea And Stained Glass Sympathy
I am terrified to be vulnerable again,
Protests my soul’s
Battered child;
Can love erase the devil’s palm prints
Stitched around this limping heart?
I’ve tombed myself
In a sun jailed room,
Keyless cathedral
Where recycled trauma bonded visions
Flash digital scars,
Screening sympathy buried scenes
From my faded analogue life.
But I can’t deny
This charmed lapdog dance
Towards your dawning smile,
Obliterating parameters
Made of make believe ghosts,
Arm’s length darkness
And claustrophobic pinch
Entertained for far too long.
So paint lipstick love
Over stained glass sorrow
And let crowing demons
Be downed
And turned inside out,
Cutlass split bones
Now only bird picked memories.
To hell with fear’s straggling horrors.
Hold me.
Unlikely Angels
How, when Gods are so scarce, is there an Angel in every whorehouse?
It was not in her head. She was different than the other girls, and those differences kept her feeling like an outsider. Angel was always surprised and a tad apprehensive when chosen, which was a major difference in itself, as the others vied to be chosen, making themselves comparably “bigger” everywhere that bigness mattered in mad attempts at being picked; bigger boobs, bigger hair, bigger lips, bigger personalities, while Angel remained small, girlishly-figured (flat as a board, a carpenter would call it), and meek from the facts of it. Yet she was chosen, and frequently. In fact, the other girls would not have believed it to learn that Angel was the fourth highest earner of the sixteen of them. Yet it shouldn’t have surprised them. They, better than anyone else, understood the sheer number of pervs out there, and how many of those pervs desired youthfulness in a lover. With most of Angel’s customers it was the more youthful the better. Child-like was even preferable, which was poor Angel’s lot, her appearance being small, round-eyed, and submissive. And none of the girls would have guessed it, not even Angel herself, but Angel’s lack of desire to be chosen was actually an added temptation for the sordid sort she attracted.
Like the other cathouse professionals Angel had learned to discern those customers who were likely to choose her within minutes of them walking into the brothel’s front room, where the scantily clad girls awaited to serve them drinks, and to seduce them (and their billfolds) for the night. It wasn’t so much the pervs’ looks that gave them away to her, it was more how they acted. Some customers walked in like they owned the place, appearing immediately at ease. They were the regulars; the senior fraternity brothers from the downtown university, the half-sober vocational workers who didn’t want to go home to their nagging, never in-the-mood wives, and finally the hurried, desperate to be discreet professional-types… but none of those “normal” kinds, ever seemed to be looking for Angel.
Of all the names to choose from, for a job like hers.
No, the ones who picked Angel were the neurotic, weaselly ones, their eyes darting this way and that. That was how she could tell them, by their eyes. Her customers always seemed unsettled, and not with the nervous kind of jitters that a brothel can give someone who seldom frequents one, either. Theirs was not just a nervousness gained through lack of situational confidence. No, it was way worse than that. It was a nervous born from ineptitude maybe… or worse, from some prevailing odium which followed them around like that cartoon character with the dark cloud always above him. Nevertheless, these were not cartoon characters. Far from it. Her customers did not come to the brothel looking for a good time. These people, men and women, came with a different purpose; for the chance to be alone (if only for a short while) with someone whom they could control, someone they could dominate, someone they could show the very opposite of a good time. And Angel had the look they sought; that callow, guileless look these insecure types craved. Poor little Angel’s diminutiveness made her ripe for domination.
And it was not just men. Angel attracted women too; couples, lesbians, or sometimes even lesbian couples. Always the hard core lesbians. The “butch” ones. The cropped haired, masculine ones, and the ones who had begun “the change”. The scarred and breast-less ones who sought out a paid professional, as professionals lacked the option to back out after being introduced to said lesbian’s clinically contrived attempts at manliness.
Poor little Angel humored them all, best she could. After all, she was one of them; those diffident, nervous types. She understood them. There was empathy for them inside her, even as they hurt her. It was somehow in her heart to help them. Wasn’t she as meek and misunderstood as they were? Wasn’t she also bullied and looked down upon? Wasn’t she the eternal subject of humiliation, degradation, and lewdness? By God, didn’t she allow the most disdainful of them to have their ways with her, so long as it did not become too violent? Angel was so used to being pounded on from behind for long stretches by strangers with no interest in ejaculation that she had grown to expect it, and of having her tiny bottom slapped pink by a calloused, masculine hand as she was pounded, or worse, being sprayed in a golden shower afterward. But, “it was ok,” Angel always reminded herself while catching her breath, and while cleaning herself up, and while counting her money at the end of the night. It did not hurt that bad, nor for that long, and it was a kind of therapy she was supplying to them, the saddest and most destitute of people, was it not? It made Angel feel better when she applied a virtuous spin to it all. “It is not only profitable work,“ is what she often told herself after a bad night, “it is good work.”
Now then, with this dismal setting properly set our story may begin. Having read to this point you will not fail to understand Angel’s happy surprise at the prospective client who walked in early in the evening on this particular night and bee-lined straight for her. The woman was not at all Angel’s “type”. She was neither shifty, nor weaselly. Rather, this woman approached Angel’s corner table with a warm, friendly smile. She was singularly attractive, not young, but not old either. The woman’s make-up was as light as her perfume was. Her hair was pulled back and uncolored. Her clothing was of good quality, and was conservative in style. She had the refined look of a professional type, of a doctor maybe, and would have looked comfortable in a lab coat. And the woman’s demeanor was spot-on for her appearance with her naturally inquisitive eyes, and her shoulders confidently set, so much so that Angel’s hopes for the night actually rose. Surely such a woman as this had not come to her with degradative aims?
Angel’s instincts were only partially wrong.
”Hello! Angel, isn’t it?”
”Yes. Have we met?” Having chosen it herself, and having been decently raised, the name still left her a little uncomfortable to use. “Of course, Angel isn’t my ‘real’ name.”
The woman did not mean to cut, but her words were sharp, nevertheless. “I should think not.” The glimmer in the woman’s eyes vanished for just a tick, then was back, although stiffer. “No, we have not met. I am Beverly Vypont. I have a proposition for you. Do you mind if I sit?”
Curious, but also stung, Angel remained negligent with her invitation, exhaling a pointed and impolite stream of smoke in the woman’s direction while gesturing towards the seat opposite her own.
Beverly Vypont waited patiently for the smoke to clear before slipping properly into the offered chair. “I came by this afternoon and spoke with Carmen, your manager. She described you to me, suggested that I look for you.”
”Oh, how nice of her.” There was no emotion in Angel’s voice. Carmen had “recommended” her to this woman? So… this would likely be bad after all.
”May I explain my situation?”
”Sure. Why not?” Angel snuffed out her cigarette, the better to listen.
The woman paused, scanning the table as if for a drink. Catching the clue, Angel rose. She was, after all, a servant, if a barely dressed one. “What can I get you?”
”Whiskey. Neat. Thank you.” Beverly Vypont watched Angel circle the bar, liking what she saw. This girl Angel was just as Carmen had described her, youthful and pretty if a bit sharp featured. The girl wore nothing but a very short, scarlet negligee. The legs sticking out from below it were thin, pale, and a bit knock-kneed, but that was alright. It would not matter. Willingness was the key, and Carmen had hinted that this girl would brave just about anything. The whiskey Angel brought back was cheap, biting harshly at Beverly’s tongue, much as this mission did, but that did not matter, either.
”Now then. What is it you want from me?” Angel’s half-smile did not reach her eyes.
Right to the point, Beverly thought. Fair enough. “I need a woman for my son.”
Angel laughed dismissively. Usually it was the father with such a proposition, not the mother. “Why not just bring him in then, Lady. We’ve all done that trick here.”
Beverly Vypont was not laughing. “It is not that simple.”
Of course not. Angel cursed her bad luck. It was never that simple, not for her. “All right then, spit it out already. Why isn’t it that simple?”
Beverly Vypont’s eyes leveled on Angel’s own, looking through them into her very soul, striking Anne’s callous indignity a shameful hammer blow when she said it. “My son is dying.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Anne would have dropped her head into her hands were this Vypont woman not holding her hypnotized with her eyes. Could she never just get a “normal” guy?
“Dying can mean a lot things? What do you mean when you say it?”
”He is bedridden now, under hospice care. He has weeks, at most.”
”Well, how do you intend to get him here then?”
”I’m not. You will have to come with me. Carmen said it would be ok.”
Angel somewhat controlled her belligerence. “Carmen said? Screw Carmen, I’m not leaving here and going God knows where with some deranged woman who wants me to fuck her dying son!”
”I’ll pay you $100,000.”
Angel had been leaning forward over the table, the better to hear the woman’s whispered tones, but she sagged back now, her determination to say “no” whooshing out of her like air from a poorly patched tire. “$100,000? Jesus! Lady, are you batshit crazy? What do you expect me to do with him for that kind of money?” Her nosed curled with displeasure at the very thought of it.
Beverly Vypont refused to let this whore’s vile words rile her. ”I don’t know, honestly. I know he can get an erection, but I don’t know if he can feel anything… you know… down there. But he asked me for this, for a woman, and at this point I will give him whatever I can.”
Angel reached again for her cigarette pack. “What is wrong with him?”
”ALS. Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It’s a…”
”I know what ALS is. I’m not stupid.”
”Of course not. I did not mean to imply…”
”Whatever. Forget it. Fucking Carmen…. why me?” That last part was not intended to be spoken out loud, though it was.
”You don’t have to, you know? I can ask someone else.”
”For 100 grand? Not on your life! I’d blow a grizzly bear for 100 grand! I’ll do it, but sheeesh… it’s messed up, Lady.”
Beverly Vypont missed the attempted humor. Her reply was tight-lipped, and was spoken with a raised eyebrow. “You are talking about my child, ‘Lady’. And believe me, his life is much more messed-up than yours.”
”Oh! Yea. Sorry... though I kind of doubt that last bit is true.”
Having witnessed the worsts of God and man an Angel treads fearlessly forth, for in the darkest of pits goodness doth dwell, waiting to be awakened.
Beverly Vypont opened the door and waited, making way for a hesitant Angel to enter first. It was too large a room for a bedroom, though there was a bed in its center; the hospital type of bed with a button to raise its patient to a sitting position, and then to lower them again for sleeping. The bed was currently partially raised. The room was dark but for the soft, bluish glow of an electronic halo which encircled the headboard while somehow reaching without diminishment into the furthest corners of the room through air already weighted with the sickly odors of antiseptics, the odors and lights tangling together with the sounds of sucking oxygen and the consistently quiet beep of a heartbeat monitor. These were, Angel instinctively knew, the sights, smells, and sounds of an approaching death so close by as to leave her reverently docile.
”Christian? This is Angel.” There was obvious emotion in Beverly Vypont’s voice, enough to pull at Angel’s own heartstrings, dragging her into a fervent state as well. “She’s come for you.” The woman’s voice literally broke with that said. She backed quickly out of the doorway then, pulling it to behind her, leaving Angel practically alone in a room filled with fears.
Despite them, and with only the briefest hesitation, Angel tip-toed ever so slowly to the bed’s side. She had to see, didn’t she? What it was she was in for? He was truly little more than a boy. His head did not turn toward her as Angel came into his vision, though his eyes looked side-wise at her with something akin to terror in them. Angel understood that. She was afraid too. How to begin? What to do? How to do it? What if she hurt him, or unplugged something important? Hell, he might not even want her.
Angel started with the obvious. “Hi?”
He held a blow tube between his clenched lips. Her eyes followed its meandering tube down to a box that was connected by wire to another box which was in turn connected to an IV bag whose tube ran back down and into his arm. Rather than trying to reply around the blow tube the boy closed his eyes for a long second before reopening them, making Angel immediately aware that this was how he communicated, with his eyes. “Would you like to be friends, Christian?”
Angel was not sure how to feel when the eyes slowly closed and reopened. Part of her was repulsed, but a larger part was already reaching for the soul inside the boy’s emaciated shell. She could see it in there, hiding behind his silence, a young man as desperate to love as she was to be loved. “Good” she said. And she meant it. “I would like that, too.” Her smile wasn’t forced anymore. There was a chair beside the bed, so Angel removed her overcoat and draped it over the chair’s back, leaving herself in the same skimpy, silky red negligee she’d been wearing before, when Beverly Vypont had first approached her in the brothel. While beside the chair she sat down and removed the ridiculously tall shoes she’d put on for the ride over... anything to appear taller. Returning to the bedside she decided to make things easy. With either hand she pushed at the strings holding the “nightie” to her shoulders, letting it slide off and around her ankles so that she stood naked before him. She was pleased to see that Christian’s eyes widened again, but not with fear this time. They fell to her breasts, which was the only part of her he could actually see for the bed’s height. She giggled as his face actually blushed when he looked back up at her, his shame obvious in them.
”It’s ok to look,” she assured him.
And to show it was ok, she looked down too. It was her turn to be embarrassed. They were so small. Why in God’s name had the mother chosen her for this? Any of the other girls would have been better for this boy, though even as he looked there was a rustle of movement from under the bedsheets. They were apparently big enough. “Are they all right? They aren’t very big.”
The boys’ eyes closed and then re-opened, remaining on her body. She reached for his hand, finding it twisted, its fingers curled up tight as a rubber band, the arm it extended from pale, emaciated and weak. It was nothing for her to pick the hand up, as there was literally no opposing force, neither muscular nor gravitational. The hand was cold, so she gathered it up in both of her own, warming it, massaging it futilely in an attempt to relax what could not be relaxed. “You are so cold. Would you mind if I warmed you?”
The eyes closed and opened once more.
Letting go of the hand, she reached for his blankets, pulling slowly at them, respecting his shame and distrust. His body was wasted away, his ribs pushing birdlike against pale skin, their cage protruding overtop a starved abdomen, but there was nothing shrunken about one part of him. In fact, that part, being non-muscular, stood tall, swollen and purple with life. Ignoring it, Angel climbed in beside him, pulling the covers back over them both. “Is this ok?”
The boy’s muscles might be atrophied and weak, but there was nothing wrong with his skin, which thrilled at her warmth, and at the softness of her skin against his own. His eyes closed for a longer moment this time, and then reluctantly re-opened in acknowledgement. Angel rolled onto her side, so that she could see him better, and he her. She slid one knee forward until it rested gently atop his thigh. She had been with many people, and she was finding this one not so different after all. She could please him. It would be good work to please him. Who had she ever pleased who needed it more than this boy? She placed her hand on his chest, and was gratified to see his eyes close as her hand began to rub, massaging its warmth into him.
”You like that, don’t you?” There was no response from him, but she was not fooled. She correctly suspected that he had never been touched in this way. After a moment she allowed her hand to slide down to his stomach, and her thigh to slide up his until it touched his nether region, pulling an audible moan from the poor boy, followed by a puff into the tube in his mouth, which brought a beep from the box attached to the IV stand. This was going much easier than she could have expected. She blew lightly into his ear then, causing another moan, and another puff, and another beep. She whispered into his ear then, that thing every man wants to hear from a woman, “You are very big down there.” She wondered what it must feel like to hear that, and to be unable to respond? To be unable to reach for the woman who said it, unable to climb atop her at her invitation, unable to take her in any way that a man might take a woman.
In that moment Angel understood the mother, why she would go so far to give her son this, this… most beautiful of things… for this was, in it’s very essence, love... the joining of two into one. And in this moment Angel found herself loving the boy, her heart swelling for him and his condition, her throat choking for him, and her tears welling for him, almost as though he were her own. And in this moment, alone together in this room of death, and in this bed of love, wasn’t he was hers and no one else’s? And wasn’t she his, and wouldn’t she forever be his? Unabashedly then she went for it, going down and taking him into her mouth. If she would be the only lover the boy ever knew, then she would be a proper one! Through her tongue, and through her lips she felt the pulse of life in him, and she smelled the familiar smells of man and woman, and she heard both his puffing and the beeping of the infernal box through her own blood-stoppered ears, and as she felt his weakened body stiffen to climax she pulled away and climbed atop him, sliding herself onto him with her own audible moan. He felt good inside her, normal. Emaciated he might be, but he was a man, she was a woman, and they were meant to be this way together... only it was at that very moment that realization struck her.
Opening her eyes, she watched with an increasing curiosity as he puffed into the tube, inhaling through distended nostrils, exhaling through tightened lips. Like before, her eyes followed the tube down and around to the little white box which emanated its annoying beep with each of his breaths. Continuing on, she saw where the IV entered the box, and where it exited on the bottom side. And closer to his arm, with each puff of his mouth, and each beep of the box, she watched as liquid was pushed through the needle in his arm, into his veins, into his blood. His eyes were closed now, his body relaxed, the heart monitor sluggish for a moment before suddenly turning frantic. Oh, shit!
“Christian?”
Nothing. No movement. No tenseness, and only a limpness inside her. “Christian? Are you there? Open your eyes if you can hear me, Christian?” Despairingly she leapt, more than climbed, from the bed. What had she done? What had they made her do? What had they done to her? To him? On trembling legs she begged, “Christian? Please Christian, answer me?” And then more urgently, “I need you to answer me, Christian!”
Nothing. She screamed then, Angel did. She screamed, and she cried, standing naked and alone beside him, but the boy never woke, and the mother never heeded her calls, and God, as ever, ignored her, He having new and more important matters to address, and new souls to welcome…
She had chosen poorly, Angel had, both in name and profession. This loving humans is no easy task.
Good Mourning
Matchstick
To the earth
Awakens
Drowsy malcontents,
Hemmed around
Voyeur sun windows,
Melting dreamscape borders
Into rubber flower schmaltz.
Suburban plastic castles
Unearth
Salted slug insomniacs,
These blood eyed priests
Fidgeting with house keys
And empty hum of conversation,
Awaiting the carpool processional.
Somebody, somewhere
Motors changeover mantras,
Greasing streets
With commuting hell blues.
Lover: so it goes
It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Sinking heavy into a mood squatting cross legg-ed next to a giant pink elephant laughing “I told you so” under its breath.
We agreed: no strings. No attachment, no expectation. Just an occasional hiccups in time to escape the day-to-day. To remind us we are alive. And combatting the loneliness, the misunderstood, the human condition—and your wife.
Well, you’re not actually married now, are you. Common law, as they say. Is it the same? Can I escape the moral implications on a technicality? This time.
Am I wrecking your home. Am I that cold lonesome steel ball swinging selfish on a pendulum of desire and sin corrupting and inviting you into my very own Hotel California.
I hate that you smoke menthols. They are aggressive and only half committed. But the nicotine hits, and so it goes —
We are going down in flames. You and me. There is no other way.. The way you grab my neck and curls when you kiss me—
We are destined to burn in the path of a falling star.
Will the memory of us remain?
Our charred flesh is the undergrowth, and it is suffocating under the life of our last embrace. And the way you kissed me.
My heart is crying. And my soul is crushed. The constant pain of this loss wells deep in my eyes and my tears are acid.
I could have loved you forever.
I could have loved you. Forever.
In all the ways you needed love, I would have given it to you. I could have been your constant provider, and I wanted to give you all of me. And more.
I love you. But this is how it ends.
I can’t breathe. The despair of this heartbreak is killing me. Its knuckle-white grip is wrapped tight around my throat like a noose hung ready to stop the pain, But I can’t let go. So I hang onto the rope of you in limbo, but my hands are getting sweaty and I slip: hope has its back turned to me and it is moving further and further away.
I miss being in bed with you. Wrapped tight limb-to-limb within the core of your being where you kept me. Close . And I was safe.
But this too shall end. It is over.
And so it goes.