Today

Today, if you’re here and aware and reading this, you are not in Heaven. It can feel like Heaven, sometimes, just like it can feel like Hell, but don’t worry. You’re not in Hell, either. You comprehend; you have a consciousness. You are not one with Him, and you are not one with the Fire, still a distinct voice in the chorus with your own set of stupid, petty, human problems.

You haven’t shed those things. It’s OK; most of us never do. Most of us covet identity, for even the self that we hate is a self. We both have selves, but don’t confuse that for history or memory. We don’t know if we were spouses, or generals on the opposite sides of a war, or even alive in the same era. We don’t even know what we looked like; every day, our selves try on different costumes. Race is fluid, so is sex and age. We look different nearly every time we wake up next to each other, speaking in different voices and languages, but the selves are the same, and that’s what’s important.

We are two children, today, and we speak French. You are a boy with bony knees, and I am a girl with demon-red plaits to her shoulders. Eggs are for breakfast, set on twin platters along with toast and bacon in the kitchenette. Our wardrobe contains two sets of clothing; we dress in the uniforms as if for school, but the door to the sterile white-painted apartment has never opened. Instead, we settle in to watch TV; outside of what we can devise ourselves, the small screen and single channel, always on, are the only form of entertainment available to us. We pull our blankets from our bed and fashion a shared nest on the floor to view a documentary about parakeets.

“When I was alive,” I say, twisting a braid around my finger, “I think I had a parakeet.”

“You sound like a parakeet,” you scoff, mocking my voice, screeching like a jungle bird. Furious, I throw myself at you and drive my heel into your stomach, scratching at your eyes with my fingernails until I draw blood. Braying wounded sobs, you run to our room and slam the door.

I do not see you again until today. We are two balding, paunchy men past our prime, and we speak Latin. Our breakfast is wine and a small wafer of bread apiece, and when we open our wardrobe, long robes greet our plucking grasps. We don’t turn on the TV yet. Instead, we return to the bedroom to have sex. Sometimes, this never occurs to us; sometimes, it’s all we can think about. We seem to enjoy the act more when we are both male.

“When I was alive,” you say later, lying with your head in my lap as we watch true crime together, “I think I murdered someone.”

I kiss you. I tell you that you’re forgiven, for everything, forever. You pull me to the floor and while police sirens blare over dramatic reenactments and bystander accounts, we make love a second time, and fall asleep folded in each other’s arms.

When we wake up, it’s today. You are a young woman with thin hands that tremble, and I am an old man. We speak Chinese; rice for breakfast, and our clothes are identical grey uniforms with standing collars. On TV, there’s a movie about a hideous hunchback who rings bells in a stunningly beautiful cathedral.

“I think,” I say, “that when I was alive, I was lonely.”

You don’t speak to me. You just cry, chasing the tears from your face with those quavery fingers.

You will not look at me again until today. We are two women in middle age. There is no breakfast; we speak Swahili and wear long, loose dresses. We have sex, and stay in bed, and never watch TV.

“I think that I was jealous, when I was alive,” you murmur, staring at the ceiling. I ask if you are jealous now, and you laugh, because jealousy requires others, and there is only us.

Today, we are both men in our early twenties, athletic and toned. Breakfast is copious amounts of liquor, and we speak English and wear jeans and university t-shirts. On TV, there is a chess tournament, and we track the moves, calling out what we think the next ones should be as though it’s some red-blooded rowdy sport. We trade clothes and laugh at each other, because the alcohol is making us stupid.

“I think that when I was alive,” I slur as the pieces slide, “I was betrayed.”

Your drunken smile fades, and you grow somber, staring at the glass you turn in your hands.

There’s a flash of comprehension, a strike there and gone. For an instant, self is also memory, and history, and we blanch and recoil. We cry, we rage; by the time we have come to blows, we’ve forgotten why, but I am winning. My knees press all my weight into your chest, and my fists pound your face to a bloody and featureless mash.

For an hour, you whimper. When I can’t bear the sound anymore, I go to the closet and find the toolbox we have never needed before, feeling the weight of the hammer in my hands. I’m spared the worst of tasks when you finally fall silent. I leave you lying against a backdrop of television static as I stumble, alone, to bed.

Today, your body is gone, but the carpet is covered in soft fine dust. I am an infant who cannot reach the closet or the table or the TV, and I speak no language. I crawl in circles, wailing endlessly, and no one comes.

Today, if you are here and aware and reading this, you are not in Heaven. If you have a consciousness and a self and you comprehend, please come home, and bring what was stupid, and petty, and human.

Today, I weep, suck famished on my fingers, and search for any sign of you in the static.

TITLE: Today

GENRE: Speculative/Surreal

AGE RANGE: Young Adult, New Adult, Adult

WORD COUNT: Around 1,600 Words

AUTHOR NAME: Alexis Wright

WHY THE PROJECT IS A GOOD FIT: Written in second person in the heart of the COVID Pandemic, this piece is a heartfelt plea for connection with a like soul. It is meant to sound like a letter or a prayer, and the appreciation that even when it’s not ideal, a resonant connection is preferable to a void.

HOOK: Residing in an apartment that is not Heaven or Hell, two souls grapple with the dull grind of routine while their identities shift each day. Through the petty childish fights, wordless tears and lovers’ pillow talk, can they reconcile their similarities, or will they fall to their differences?

SYNOPSIS: The narrator, a soul, opens the piece by explaining to a second soul that they are in neither heaven or hell, and that everyone clings to identity, because at least it’s something. The narrative cycles through a series of “todays”, in which both souls are present but waking to new identities, ages and languages each day. Each day they watch something on the television provided in their apartment. On the first day, they are a male and female child who watch a documentary about parakeets. On the second day, they are both male monks who are lovers, and watch a true crime show. The third day, they are an old man and a young woman who watch “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. On the fourth day, they are female lovers who remain in their bedroom all day and never turn on the TV. The fifth day sees them as two young males who get drunk while watching a televised chess tournament. The second soul admits to the narrator that in life, he betrayed the narrator. A fight ensues, resulting in the death of the second soul, and the isolation and desperation of the narrator. The narration takes on a distinctly pleading tone, begging for the murdered companion to return, and we learn that the narrator has become a helpless infant unable to partake in the routine without the slain second soul.

TARGET AUDIENCE: Every human who knows what it’s like to desire the company of an enemy over the horrible silence of loneliness (and appreciates a surreal and lyrical voice.)

BIO: Alexis Wright is a violinist, writer, and mother who lives in Michigan. She writes poetry and short stories and is working on her first novel.

PLATFORM: Twitter is @ladywithviolin

EDUCATION: Alexis Wright has a BA in Linguistics from Michigan State University.

EXPERIENCE: Alexis was published in the Towerlight student literary magazine at Hillsdale College. She is a two-time attendee of the Clarion Young Writer’s Conference. She is a freelance writer and editor for various online publications.

PERSONALITY/WRITING STYLE: Alexis vacillates between lyrically poignant and irreverantly humorous. This particular sample veers toward the former. She aspires toward eventually striking a balance, and being known for clarity and beauty of language without taking herself too seriously.

LIKES/HOBBIES: Alexis is a violinist who performs and teaches. She reads fiction and nonfiction voraciously and parents her three young children (all under four) very privately, so as to respect their agency in an increasingly online and exposed world. She writes like her life depends on it every day, because language arts are her first love and her true love. She sews and cosplays, enjoys cinema and fashion, studies world languages for fun and has had an enduring interest in dinosaurs and whales. She’s autistic, but prefers that others don’t get too hung up on this fact as it’s only a small portion of who she is. She feels the same way about motherhood, which is exhausting, but does not and SHOULD not define a woman’s (or writer’s) raison d’être.

HOMETOWN: Holt, Michigan

AGE: 33