Little Piggies

The storm rolled past, rushing the scent of stockyard butchery and the misery of dying swine through the air like Superman chasing a villain. No one harkened to the reverberating howl of frightened animals finally realizing that their long journey from sow’s teat to crowded transport trucks, had come to its end. Everything had been fixed so that they couldn’t flee the agony of being gutted with nothing to veil the pain. There was no iconoclastic army of socialist hogs to save them, and then rewrite the rules of who governed whom. There was only blood, death and a new existence bound by shrink-wrap with the steady drone of music designed to lure shoppers into purchasing what they couldn’t afford.

Maryann stared at the plate of pork ribs before her and smiled. “Best sauce ever,” she told the waitress. “If that recipe doesn’t make you famous, nothing will.”

After paying her bill, she walked down the footpath that took her from the diner back towards the heartbreak of her empty home. Going out had become her way of escaping the ghosts of old arguments and pleadings for love that still echoed from the walls and floorboards. Even though she had felt trapped in her marriage to Derek, she was now caught in the dilemma of mourning its end. She hadn’t felt equal to his feelings from the moment he’d first shared them. Instead, she’s settled for a dollhouse existence of masked feelings and static smiles, until finally, the fear of spending the rest of her life like a frozen pillar of a retired saint, had overtaken her, leaving her thunderstruck and hungry for something else.

The hush of the early evening tide gentled James to sleep, even as the faint echo of a cabaret singer from a nearby bar danced across the ancient timbers of his room. It had been a good day and he had earned his rest. He did not dream about money or fields of wheat, but of a myriad dancing cleavers all chopping off the heads of his more demanding customers at the butcher shop. He woke smiling and ready to face them again like a lion on the prowl.

Penny put on her waitress apron, though both mind and body begged her to go home. It had been a long day at the mill and now she was here serving plates of grease and wilted lettuce to the hungry and cheerless. She had gone outside during one of her allotted breaks to escape the grease pit and the constant needs, burps and complaints of the faceless throng who came and left without retreat. The extra money of her second job beckoned her back inside, even though her feet throbbed with every step. Between orders of prune Danish and shredded pork, came the images from the night before when her children had delighted to the fake-cockney strains of Dick Van Dyke in “Mary Poppins.” Those cherished moments thrust her to the next table, the next order and hopefully a good tip for her efforts.

The sea rushed in, wildly attacking the shore as another herd of swine was transported on another truck on their journey to oblivion. 

Maryann turned off the light; finally ready to succumb to the quiet mastery of sleep. Perhaps she would call Derek tomorrow and perhaps not. The past clung to her with needy hands and the future was still too new and uncertain to rely on. James trekked down the early morning streets to the stockyard, past the booths of those he had added to an imaginary blacklist because of their unwillingness to cut him deals, to inspect a shipment of fresh meat. He would butcher the carcasses of hogs, count his money and smile at old women he would later butcher and count one-by-one like sheep before falling to sleep. Penny peeked into the bedroom of her sleeping children, almost too tired to walk the few steps to her bedroom. For some reason the childhood jingle of “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary” repeated in her mind as she undressed and readied herself for bed. A flash of moonlight lit her room as she stood in front of the mirror. A youthful smile crept across her face as tiny feet journeyed across the carpet to stand beside her. She patted the tousled head of her youngest, and they stood together in silence. All was not right with the world, but it would have to be good enough for now, she thought. 

“What are you doing up so late?” she whispered, breaking the silence, “its time for all little girls and boys to be asleep.

“But I’m a little piggie momma. Oink.”

So another day began and ended as the storm rushed in and rushed out.

Stingray

Sam hadn’t left his room in days. The real world and the World Wide Web had pooled into a horrific throbbing soup and there was no escape from the thrill of exploring the snap-crackle scenery of broadband land amid the thumping grunge of suicidal genius gone wrong.

There were no paparazzi at Stella’s door, but she liked to pretend they were there every time she navigated her way between rollerblading delivery boys, drunks and the rest of humanity’s carrion that littered rain-soaked Manhattan streets where bulls and bears wrestled above subway steam. She smiled at no one in particular trying to ignore the flash of non-existent light bulbs and journeyed on.

Somewhere deep in the ocean a male stingray bites the pectoral muscle of a female stingray to get her attention before inserting his two claspers into her valve. There is no love in dark waters. There is only salt, the slam of quick easy death or sex.

Between games of fantasy and war where he terrorized multitudes, caused riots and departed as a warrior king, Sam looked out of his window waiting for Stella to appear. He knew her schedule by heart, in the same that he knew every line and intricacy of his favorite retro sci-fi television show.

Stella eyed a bracelet in the window of shop she would have dared to enter if her fantasies were real, and she’d had the temerity to audition and win a televised talent show. She didn’t even sing in the shower but only silently mouthed words that no one but an audience of tile-covered eyes could hear.

Somewhere in the French Quarter, a shop sells stingray leather without awareness of the magnificence of underwater realms, and lost lovers who nibble and stab at each other before parting.

“How are you today,” says Sam, between bites of his Mars bar and a shuffle of his feet.

“I had a good day, I guess,” Stella answers, “American Idol is on tonight, do you wanna watch?”

And so it goes, while somewhere offshore a female stingray, long-abandoned by her lover gives birth to her brood and swims on.

Rabbit Ears

Mary didn’t regret anything she’d done in any aspect of her life. Dancing across memories wearing chrysanthemum shoes, she sidestepped the dead and dying with equal conspiracies of artificial tears. At least this is what she told herself as she walked from room to room tiptoeing across the grasping hands of sunlight burning color out of old carpet.

She felt no grief. There were only moments of fantastic jubilant doubt that brought everything into focus and then back out again, as if there were rabbit ears from an antiquated television set attached to her life. She didn’t make any adjustments, but instead accepted the view she was given without question. Sadness was not her enemy and happiness was not her friend, since neither could be trusted to remain for more than a brief stopover before retreating.

After picking up a discarded pizza box, she remembered how its arrival had rendered smiles and satisfaction just the night before. Now, with its contents consumed, it was destined to join the rest of the world’s discards where garbage grows in fields of wild, odd decaying weeds.

The photograph of a runaway child stared at her from an empty milk carton. It would join the pizza box on that forgotten bit of prairie where Natives once danced and died not so very long ago. She studied the child’s face; the ink grey smile didn’t betray an inkling of what was to come.

Mary closed the garbage bag as the whistle from the steel yard went off. Its shrill song momentarily shattering the stillness of agitated mental journeys. The cold frost of the morning air thrilled her. Hope was due for a visit. She could feel its approach from just over the horizon.

She put the garbage bag on the curb. The devil was in the details and sorrow would not be welcome at her door today. She would leave it where it was and run towards the first glimmerings of beckoning possibility.

Passage

Fading into wallpaper on a Friday afternoon with the sweet serenade of evening traffic roaring, she stood listening to Billie Holliday sing about lynching and lost love. The awful truth of low-hung branches weighed down with bodies that swayed back and forth above approving eyes made her want to disappear further into the world of faded paper flowers and stripes. She zombie-wandered through passionless landscapes attempting impossible escapes, and failing. Orchards of odd fruit followed forcing her to succumb to the inevitability that suffering occurs, was occurring, had occurred and there was no eluding it.

But she had forgotten something, love existed in Billie’s melody and it was not completely lost, because it loomed, just over there behind the torn corner where the cobwebs blossomed like hands. Some lover man who called every woman “baby” and some god-blessed child wearing a torn petticoat smile-giggled, as they waited discovery.

After returning smile-for-smile to them, she floated on hand-painted bird wings to roam through royal climates without the limits of kings or pawns. Then the bird dipped down and she splashed through aquatic realms where one reality diffused into another. He was there. The one she loved. The one she had tried to escape by pushing herself away from him and his done with being a bachelor rose-colored promises. Her suspicion had ebbed enough to stand free of plaster fantasies. It was time to build something together and learn how to hope. She would take baby steps for now.