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Short Stories
View From a Frame
The morning light crawls across the marbled floor with great trepidation, for the curtains have not yet been fully gathered and pulled back. High heeled foot falls encroach upon my morning quiet, just as the sun’s reaching fingers pull at me. Stretching my lined and crusted skin, I am reminded that I will have to be mended before I am placed with the others. The hesitant, deferential footsteps come near enough for the heavy spring fevered breath to be heard. The woman’s eyes narrow as she reaches up, handkerchief in her grasp to stem the determined rivulet of sweat making its way to the bare collarbone. I can feel her eyes trace along the cusp of my raised skin, drawn to the crimson that so strikingly dominates my limited horizon. The woman places her handkerchief back within the folds of the broken clasped, weather worn purse that rests against her thick skinned hip. The people, depicted in an oily sense of static remission turn away from the woman. They roam through the street that my skin so stoically permits, after all I did not have a choice in which story my skin has to tell. The woman treaded closer, at an angle suggesting she was about to inhale the sulky evidence that I had been there so long. Cosmos of the long residing dust sighed, they ached to be lifted into the tepid air by the woman’s salty fingers and clammy breath. At that particular stagnant moment, my guard, and perhaps my jailer lifted his eyes from the book he was only pretending to read. *** Charles held his book high and close as if every pore on his nose had requested to mingle with the words that could never really be squeezed. Rectified. Or cleansed from the page. Mont, as he was known to the other guards, was not of the same mind as the pores rooted on his snout. Mont’s eyes were not resting on the words before him, but just over the bind where both sides of the book met. He watched the woman step closer to the painting. He could see that she was sweating with the poise akin to an elephant, with her great trunk dripping towards the brush strokes. Mont, simply grappling for something to shorten his time spent in the gallery that had long ago ceased to draw people to its doors, put down his book in search of how to approach. *** Any moment now my guard would advance, ending the stillness. It is only that stillness within my frame that can allow for the woman’s bloated feet to tread forward. I shall not linger here as the guard and the elephant woman converse. How have I lived so long, since first brushstrokes invoked breath and colour onto canvas? I close my eyes to the empty tide of gallery faces. As I turn to join those that have already begun walking down the cobbled street; the people that live only in the mind of my painter, I see outside of my frame both sets of eyes that lack such understanding. Such stillness can not be held between the slippery fingers of this world, it cannot be understood as I have. The End
Henry In the Wall
Why all of these days where that cold satisfaction never comes to those that reside and die, and fuck under the bridge of our society? The cold faces that trundle around street corners, pretending not to notice the absence of your arm, of your right eye, of your stationary state of mind. You kicked the habit of visiting those women a long time ago, yet they still limp to your doorstep with the moon caressing their holy backs. Henry always said that they would dry you out like a slug left out in the sun. And maybe he’s right, because they just keep coming back. You lock the door, you lock the door, you lock the door. Three times, but in this god damn place it’s never safety you feel. It’s those eyes that watch from street corners, under bridges. You see them, you feel them, even from the four walls of your apartment. Time has slipped through the walls to the neighbor with her kid, to the neighbor with his wife’s legs spread, and to the mouse that eats away at everything that once was good. What was good? Mom driving you on the outskirts of the city, singing songs that she had once heard as a young girl in Mississippi. The old man pretending that he had been good at something. Pretending that you had only been a translucent dream on the outskirts of a wave. Nobody answers, so you tumble down into the night, dodging the holy backs, the old men with their guts, and the kids smoking their sad yellow teeth. You make it downtown. You know nobody has heard that song that plays in your mind. Around and around the song plays. It was not a song your mother heard as a girl in Mississippi. The streets have no time, but the time it spends disappointing those that are limbless. Walking into the pawnshop, the man looks at you with institutionalized eyes. He has seen the streets destroy minds that were once full. The man had seen souls disappear in a society that has no home. What was it worth for you to look at him? With the sleep hanging off you, like the filth in the gutter. When he hands you the gun, he asks no questions other than that which his eyes beg you to answer. Where has the time gone? Not to the holy backs, the cold waitresses, the men that unzip their pants in the dim light above the department store. Skipping out on the man that once held your secret in his disastrous eyes, you’re back on the street with its blameless rats, its assorted cockroaches, and gravely fondled nuns. Under the bridge you could always hear the women humming themselves to sleep. They could not close their eyes without hearing the cars above. The cars that carried the dying children, the soot covered men, and the presumptuous bag ladies. In the cracks of the concrete beams the cockroaches would chortle at your eyeless sockets. They never worried about the holy backs and their restless constitutions. It is good, after all, that you left that place. What would it mean to disappear within the mind of another? To be nameless in a hall of white, where only the ageless pull you by the hand. Time escapes you as your feet follow the lines on the pavement. Your toes balance on concrete that does not move. Walking along, eyes of skirtless women, and noseless children swallow your face whole. A small meal for the hungry, as they don’t know that you are lost. Slouching in the alley, you scrub the dirt into your teeth. The holy backs will no longer bother you as you return to the apartment. They can no longer pluck their plastic fingernails into your mind’s eye. Henry was right, Henry was wrong. It no longer matters. He disappeared with the men and their black coats last winter. Why are you kidding yourself? We all know Henry died. He did not die as the children die, under blankets of down. The mother with her face in her hands. She has realized that all that once mattered has now become empty. Her husband will turn to his business, and the gum under tables, or the man next door. The neighbor will not speak of their tiresome habit. Henry died, you who know best how Henry died. You take a breath of air. You wander once again into a night that cares for nothing. Seething children sit on street corners, betting who can steal the most with their soft lips and open eyes. It’s been a long time since you stole anything. Climbing the steps of the apartment, you run into the woman that moans late at night. This time the only story she can tell is with her eyes. It is not worth saying anything. Both of you are dead. You left the door unlocked. You feel the worry that old men speak of, but is there really anything to steal? Maybe paint, if only they could scrape it off the walls. What would mother say? This is not the Mississippi that she thinks of. This is not Mississippi at all. Here the wet air does not pool on honeyed skin. There are no songs playing for the eyeless, no gardens, no churches with spineless priests. Ten Hail Mary’s. Ten Hail Mary’s. Ten Hail Mary’s. You could whisper them in the night. But hail Mary’s don’t count as currency here. Your eyes watch in the bathroom mirror. You are not you, you are not Henry. The Henry that rots in the walls. Henry, don’t you know you are starting to smell? Raising the gun to your head, you stare blankly. The man who watches himself die, does not exist. He died a long time ago. Your finger contracts and the gun clicks. The gun clicks and the bullet is released. Lying on the floor you wish that the lights would stop glaring through your eyelids. You can still smell Henry. His flesh that used to smell like Dove soap and cigarettes. You do not walk down the white hall; there is no one to call back at you. You once lived under the bridge where nothing was holy. You were driven out by cockroaches, holy backs, and old men that only see drizzling rain, even on the warmest of days. Lying on the bathroom floor, everything is still. Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Close your eyes. Death only comes to those under bridges. Yet you remain on the floor, your good eye watching blood fill the cracks in the tile. An optimist would expect you to get up. But Henry was right. You never knew how to clean yourself up. The End.
