Safety First

"Hey!" said Mrs. Johnston, "You could've turned!"

"Just a minute," said Mr. Johnston, his hands grasping the wheel of their Benz like his life depended on it.

Mrs. Johnston eyed the approaching traffic, waiting for her husband to make the turn out of their driveway. "There, right after that red car!"

"No, I can see another car coming after it."

"But you've got enough time, that other car is a good distance away!"

"Yes, but it's still there."

The red car passed by. "Now's your chance!"

"I can't. That other car, it's coming closer."

"But its four blocks down the road!" she said, accentuating every syllable with her arms.

"Now it's three. Then two and soon it will be right here in front of us."

She tried to frown, but Botox prevented her. So, she blinked her eyes while pounding her fists on her thighs.

"I'm just trying to be a safe driver."

"But what's unsafe about making a turn when there's a break in traffic?"

"Anything could happen."

The car in question chugged by.

"That car could've lost its brakes and come barreling right for us. We could have been in a terrible accident. We could have been killed."

"But it didn't lose its brakes!" she said, ripping her fingers through her coif and massacring every curl.

"Well, it could have."

"Are you out of your mind?" she said, decorating the windshield with missiles of spit.

"No, it's just that safety reigns supreme when I drive this automobile."

"You're making us late for our dinner with the Millers!"

"Well, we certainly wouldn't make that dinner if we were dead, now would we?"

Tears plunged down her face, turning her mascara into long black snakes racing towards her chin.

"Charles."

"Yes?"

"The street is completely empty now. There are no cars coming towards us from either direction. Turn."

"I can't."

"Why not!" she said, grabbing his arm and shaking it.

"Because sooner or later, another car will come."

"Well of course another car will come! It's not like we have the only one on the road."

"That's right, and I don't know if the drivers of any of them have been drinking or taking drugs or anything else I don't have any control of. This is the safest way. We have to stay here. We have to wait."

"Wait for what?" she said, screeching so loudly that dogs began barking.

"The right moment when it will be safe to turn,” he said calmly patting her hand. "Now I know you're worried about our evening out. You have spent half the day getting ready for it. But, I'm sure the Millers will understand us being a little late."

"A little late?" she said, her voice a menacing snarl. "Do you realize that we would be there right now, but because of this bizarre notion of yours, we're still in our driveway?"

"Well, you could always go inside and call a cab."

"I'll do no such thing! It wouldn't look right if I did that while were you here. The neighbors would think we're quarreling."

"Then wait for the bus,” he said smiling already sure of her answer.

"Not in this outfit I won't! I look too good to be on the bus. Every derelict in the world would be asking me for change. Then I'd have to walk, and these shoes aren't comfortable for anything but sitting. Besides, I refuse to arrive alone. Appearance, Charles. Appearances."

"Then sit back and relax."

"Relax?"

"Be patient. I'll know when the moment comes."

"Well, when will that be?"

"I don't know, but at least we'll be safe. Isn't that what counts in the end?”

“I’m going inside to call the Millers,” she said.

“No, I think you’ll be safer here where I can keep an eye on you,” he said locking her door with the driver’s side lock.”

“Charles!" she said frantically trying to open her door.

“You’ll be safer this way and that’s what counts.”

“But Charles, just a minute ago you told me to go inside and call a cab…”

“I changed my mind.”

“No Charles, you’ve lost it.”

“Actually Evelyn, I think I finally found it.”

“But what happens if…”

“Hush, now dear….there’s nothing to worry about…,” he said patting her hand again.

So, they sat there until the windows of the car fogged up and everything around them turned into mist, as they waited for the time to come when everything was safe enough for them to journey down the road before them.

A Good Day

Mona hadn’t bathed in two weeks, and had only reluctantly forsaken the constant comfort of her well-worn pajamas for her less assuring jeans and t-shirt. Getting dressed was a hateful necessity reserved only for buying groceries or going to funerals. Her neighbors were nosy and she wasn’t in the mood to get into another screaming match with them about her going outside half-dressed, so she’d put on her jeans to appease them.

Just the same they were stiff with body odor and stains, which Mona considered a personal thumb on the nose to anyone who cared. Besides, she didn’t have anything else to wear. Her other clothes weren’t safe anymore and had been stored outside in the garage, where the vermin could have their way with them.

Mona’s hair hung in long impossible knots so snarled that she’d broken combs in two in her attempts to fix it Now the remnants of those broken combs decorated her hair with plastic rainbow teeth.

Because of the prying eyes of her neighbors, she’d become accustomed to living in dimly lit rooms. Now her vision was restricted to what little of the world she could see through the permanently narrowed slits, which had once housed luminous, hopeful eyes.

The morning sun infested the walls with angry fingers summoning Mona to her bed. Now was the time for sleep, when the safety of darkness succumbed to all the things she sought seclusion from and the only safe place was beneath her moth-eaten blanket until darkness returned, enveloping. Though in truth, nothing could protect her from the onslaught of perniciously happy people whose aim in life seemed to be making her see how truly miserable her life was.

The phone rang. It was already beginning.

“Hello.”

“Hi there, my name’s Bob from the Mayflower Life

Insurance Company.”

“Go away Bob…”

“Ma’am, if you’ll just give me one minute…”

“Razor, I think I’ll use a razor.”

“Hello?”

“Looks like it’s gonna to be harder this time, gonna have to cut through scar tissue to do the job right.”

“Uh, I’m sure you wonder what will happen to your family in case something happened to you...”

“I’ll have to soak the skin really good to soften it before I start cutting. Ever slit your wrists, Bob? I’m an expert. I’d love to show you how it’s done properly…”

Click.

Mona smiled as she reached for the tattered notebook on her nightstand table. She put a check on the blank page.

One.

Soon this page would be full of checks just like all the other pages of all the other notebooks that towered up from the floor like dozens of wobbly columns.

She went back to sleep, but as always her rest was interrupted by someone knocking at her door. Mona opened it only enough to admit a shadow and nothing more.

“Go away.”

“Hi, my name is Crystal, and I have an offer you won’t believe...”

“Crystal, the only thing you could offer me is your head on a spike.”

Mona smiled as she watched the woman run away.

Two.

It was going to be a good day.

The Good Wife

Marla’s final descent began five years ago. That was the night Jonah told her he’d been cheating. She remembered how he said he still loved her and wanted to work it out. The other woman hadn’t meant anything to him, but had only served as a rest stop from the same grey paved road he’d traveled everyday with her.

Things would be better now. Amazingly, he’d realized that love was more getting sex whenever he wanted it, and that Marla was indeed, a good wife.

She remembered how surreal it had felt hearing his confession, along with all of his words of reclaimed love and devotion. The day had begun so differently with a more lingering good morning kiss from him than was usual and a day full of errands. Now it had turned into a soup of betrayal, begging and burnt chicken.

Jonah said he’d be waiting for her upstairs, presumably to physically show her how sorry he was. Marla smiled through fierce tears. How stupid could he be to think that sex was the way to heal her from the deathblow he’d dealt only a few hours ago?

She didn’t want to follow him. She didn’t want anything, but to lose herself in the awful mall painting his mother had given them on their last anniversary. It was a wash of muddy colors that perfectly depicted the murkiness of their relationship.

Marla remembered how she’d stood at the bottom of the staircase before ascending. Now she had reached the bottom of that same staircase again. She looked at Jonah remembering how the realization had come in that moment, five years ago. The many ways of dying and death can come in slow easy steps until you’re so completely removed from yourself that you don’t recognize yourself anymore. Words can kill.

“You killed me Jonah,” her eyes said even as she smiled in silence. “You killed me and you don’t’ even know it.”

“What shall we do today?” asked Jonah absentmindedly.

“I have no idea,” she replied. “I have no idea about anything at all.”

The Spectator

Celia clicked off the TV. The memorial service had been an abomination of art direction, meant to confer the idea that the mourners felt a connection to the corpse. She was certain most hadn’t known him, with their choreographed crying fits that only seemed to take place when a camera was nearby.

“So much for that,” she said taking another drag off her cigarette. “Top of the world Monday and dead on Friday.”

She looked at her watch and then out the window. Time had rushed through the rain washed streets of the boulevard leaving sparkling trails of glistening garbage, which soaked pedestrians hopped over to avoid homeless vets.

“Bet none of them realizes how good they’ve got it. That fool on the TV would give anything to be alive enough to be that wet and miserable.”

She stood watching them until the rain stopped and the hide-and-seek sun bashfully appeared from behind a cloud illuming the city from darkness to shadows.

“What next?” she asked sinking back down onto the couch. She wondered if the coverage of the services was finally over and the TV stations would return to the hours of mental mush meant to distract the bored from their boredom.

No such luck.

On every channel she clicked there was another moderator discussing the importance of the corpse from birth til death and then back again. Other channels carried rebroadcasts of the festivities filled with even more extreme close-ups of botoxed babes who hadn’t seen their twenties in thirty years but clung to the idea of everlasting youth.

“You probably think I’m jealous. What a joke. You’re nothing but a bunch of rotting old broads with big pocketbooks and nothing else better to do,” she yelled at the screen.

The hype hadn’t died down by the time night returned the noonday shadows to blackness. Celia continued to watch the news, now transfixed by lurid details of fatal habits fed to her in sound bytes by those who had known the former demigod. Apparently, he’d had a penchant for headboards, bondage and recreations of hell in torch lined dungeons. After he’d become famous, he’d dismissed all of his family and friends and replaced them with those he’d hired to execute his wishes.

Celia’s stomach howled like a lonely wolf through the slush of perversity blaring back at her from the TV screen. She’d forgotten to eat and it was past midnight. Her legs ached as she stood up for the first time in hours.

“I’m so grateful I never bought into such folly,” she said shuffling into the kitchen for a bowl of cereal. “What a wasted life...”

After brushing her teeth, she looked into the mirror. The ceiling light cast a shadow across her face that caused her cheekbones to look pronounced. She struck model poses until she noticed that no matter what she did, her eyes looked empty, almost soulless.

“Time for bed, I guess,” she said still haunted by her reflection. The words, “you can’t take it with you. You can’t take it with you,” echoed off the walls as she pulled back her sheets.

Then she lay down on her bed unaware that this could have been her last day because tomorrow wasn’t a guarantee, while taxicabs and sirens echoed in the distance.

Osyei

Hope is not a harmless thing. It can move mountains of trouble, pulverizing them to bits at the moment of its birth. Joyous tears, moist with anticipation, trickle down like sparking reaching fingers, yearning and hungry to replenish the soul. You are the gift hope gave to me. I leap with elation. I yelp like a wolf eagerly calling her comrade. Join me in joyousness until sorrow turns to dust.

Osyei (pronounced ooh-dew-gee-guh-dee in English) is the word for hope in the Cherokee (Tsalagi) language.

Feathers

Photograph by Federico Erra

It started with the birds. They fell from the sky like heavy black rain littering the ground. The media gave explanations that didn’t make sense, yet there were those who willingly believed them, because that’s what some people always do. Others became frightened as more and more reports of natural creatures doing unnatural things continued. It was as if they were simultaneously abandoning ancient voices to spread destruction from one end of the earth to another.

Had the birds been scared or had they simply forgotten how to fly? There were no easy answers as some continued to wonder while others clung to normality in desperation for something concrete. In time, the government took over the giving of answers until the memory of birds and birdsong had completely disappeared. Nothing had happened because there was no such thing as a creature that could fly.

That was the time before and all mention or thought of the time before was banned now that Mother was in charge.

There was no reason to worry. The skies were completely empty now except for the occasional cloud, but no one took the time to notice such frivolity. Pleasing Mother was the only joy. No one saw her except for the photographs displayed around the  of encampment and inside every pod. Each day, she welcomed them in thunderous tones to hear the latest news the world.

“My children, the world is yours and you are the worlds. You are my children and you belong to me…”

For some reason, Harold found it difficult to focus on his work of loading and unloading empty boxes at the depot. Though he had taken his daily dose of Forget-Yourself pills, a wisp of something kept dragging him back to the time before Mother had come. He tried to fight it by repeating the words he’d been forced to suckle since Day One; “Memories are my enemies. Memories are my enemies. There is nothing but Mother. Mother is all.” But nothing worked to erase it.

His wife noticed something off in his expression when he entered their pod that night. She didn’t ask him what was the matter. She didn’t ask him anything at all. Well-trained wife that she was, she knew that Mother was the only one allowed to ask questions. Instead, she sat down and waited for Mother’s voice to tell them it was time to go to the rationing center for their evening meal.

Harold barely ate any of his daily allotment of bean curd and was scolded by one of the elder children for showing a lack of gratitude to Mother. The elder child forced him to chew every bite of his meal while loudly berating him.

Harold’s wife said nothing as she continued to eat. She didn’t look up or take notice of what was going on, but neither did anyone else. It was more important to be grateful to Mother.

“Mother is your friend and provider. She is the reason we are here. Mother loves us.”

After doing his duty to Mother, and once again attempting to impregnate his wife, Harold lay in the dark thinking about the wisp of the thing that had haunted him throughout the day. He didn’t know what it was. He only knew that it must have been something from the time before. He knew it should have scared him, but it didn’t. Harold also knew he couldn’t tell his wife, since it was a spouse’s duty to report everything to Mother. Besides, he was her third husband in five years, so clearly she had no qualms about dispatching him and allowing Mother to provide her with someone else.

Harold continued to concentrate on the delicate-black luminosity of the wisp, which glided above him. Sleep finally overtook him encircling him with wisps of memories containing faces, words and abandoned dreams. He slept satisfied for the first time since Mother had come and awoke in his still-darkened pod with images of fluttering wisps still circling overhead.

As he stepped out into the damp morning air, Harold looked up at the sky and smiled. Then he took a deep breath allowing his senses to awaken from the dead place Mother and Forget-Yourself pills had sentenced them. The air smelled sweet, and though Harold did not know what it was, it pleased him, just as the wisp of memory had pleased him. He did not care that others saw him or would view him as a blemish that required removal. He inhaled the air so deeply that he sighed, and then he did it again and again, until a sound rose his throat and forced itself free.

“Caw,” he screamed, before laughing for the first time in years. “Caw,” he screamed again, knowing that his wife would become an indifferent widow once more. Would others hear? Would they remember? Would remembering make a difference?

“Caw, caw, caw, caw!”

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except this moment and the delicate-black luminosity of a wisp. 

A Bird Lies Sleeping (Ghazel)

There’s an inside of me and an outside of me.

  A bird lies sleeping in the driveway.

My dreams live in-between, beyond the taint of truth’s caress.

  It is not willingly there, but was snatched by an unseen hand.

Sometimes I pretend I’m someone else when no one is looking.

  Looking at it, you’d never guess it was once able to fly.

My hands reach out hoping to touch more than mist.

  Its body is skeletal, but it’s wings remain.

Walking on pavement makes my feet long for softer things.

  It looks peaceful, even though it’s a crumpled heap.

The sun is so bright that it burns my eyes, yet I continue to stare.

  What made if fall? Was it the wind or did death catch it in midair?

A more plausible version of myself would understand.

  The bones aren’t white, but red. Its talons point like Pavlova’s toes.

When I smile, it’s always because I’m happy.

  Did something so wonderful ever realize that it was so carelessly free?