Wings of an Angel (working title #1)

Something I wrote in Spring of 2008 for fiction writing. Its not done, but Im not sure how Id want to finish it.

"But Nature, spent and exhausted, takes lovers back into herself, as if there were not enough strength to create them a second time."
Rainer Maria Rilke, Dunio Elegies, Die Erste Elegie

Nighttime came upon them and the lights of each window became fickle of their luminescence, each falling dark and silent as the moon gained momentum across the sky. Street lights slumped on the side of the road, hunched over like shy strangers standing fifteen metres here and fifteen metres there. One flickered precariously, as if uncertain of whether to join the night or stand conspicuously amidst the stillness.

Two spirits appeared suddenly out of the night, a boy and a girl, made of mist, or of silvered ghostly air. Joined tenderly at the hand they strolled down the middle of the road whilst talking in whispered voices, for it was night, and night was the time of their secrets. The two wandered down the middle of the street, lost in the comfort of her hand in his, of his eyes on hers. The two broke their step and paused in front of an open field where sprinklers swept right and left, and right. She faced him and stood to her toes so her lips rested closely to his ear; one hand fell gently upon his chest as she told him something that elicited a faint smile, which, upon surfacing, caused the girl to take to a sudden run into the field where she began to twirl and whirl like angelic wind. Drops of water from the sprinklers came at her from all directions. She unveiled a smile a too big for the night and turned her face to the sky, twirling, whirling and spinning as a whirlwind of joy. She directed her prance to a spot within reach of a sprinkler which rewarded her presence with the light spray of cool Spring water. Scrunching up her eyes and thanking the sprinkler by unveiling a smile a too big for the night, she turned her face to the sky and continued her whirling and twirling. The boy came to her, and taking her hand, the two disappeared into the night to share more secrets, as lovers do.

~

A young boy laid awake, wrestling with passing nightmares. He stared out the window into the neighborhood of tired dreamers, through trees lining the street with leaves that limply dangled from their branches, wanting to retire to the cold asphalt below. His eyes caught and lingered on what he thought were faint silver streaks, moving, swirling, perhaps, upon the field across the way. Looking harder, he made out the wispy trail of angels - for angels they must be - gliding across the grass; of angels, whirling like a soft silver wind. The trail thickened briefly to take sudden form, but his eyes could not focus quickly enough, and the streaks quickly dissipated into the darkness. The boy closed his eyes and slept, comfort loosening his nerves.

~

The doctor leaned forwards and inhaled a line of cocaine from the corner of his veneered office desk. Sitting down, he reclined into the depths of his chair and picked up the folder of his newest patient. She was nineteen and was scheduled to pass in seven weeks time, on November 12th. Several patients had come and gone under his supervision, but this one was the only one who asked for moderate amounts of DMT[1] to be injected into her blood every night with the administration of her potent selection of sleep medication. He accommodated this request because he believed it was his purpose to make the end as comfortable as possible (he believed this was an important purpose); he was accustomed to give her, and all his patients, other things, as he had a closet stacked with tiny vials, the contents of which were the promise of temporary comfort. through escape.

It was a time some years ago, a time yet brushed under antiquity, when people had ceased to perish. That is not to say that no one ever died, since that was not the case. People still died from gun wounds and car accidents; most died from the new cancer. Others disappeared. But no one died from natural causes since medicine had made extreme advancements as to keep a majority of the world’s population relatively immortal. Aging had been cured. But those who died did so from the new cancer. And some disappeared.

The new cancer was not like the old. It passes, from one person to another, through touch, through intimacy, as it had been documented, so once diagnosed, patients were sequestered and isolated in dimly lit concrete rooms and attached to machines which assisted their last days of living. Each had a doctor, who accommodated their dying requests within reason, and scheduled a date for their passing, usually a period of 1-2 months ahead, no more than six, as required by law. People were once able to survive the old cancer, but the new cancer had evolved and become irrevocably fatal, killing all victims within two years time. No one has yet survived, so no one attempts to keep them alive. The government intervenes to orchestrate their elegant, quiet passing.

People also disappeared. As of now, no one quite knew why or how people disappeared, since it only began a year or so ago. The first such disappearance occurred in one of the remaining rural churches during a wedding. The groom had been diagnosed with cancer a month before, and it was known that he would die. His bride loved him still. They maintained an engagement of physical restraint, for the groom refused to give her the cancer. Only once had they broken this rule, in a small rural church, for an audience of close friends and family. Witnesses claimed they turned to a mist and then vanished. The incident fell under speculation until there were other such occurrences, at which point the people knew it to be something which simply just was, as they sky was simply just blue, and the moon simply just pulls the tide.

There were one or two theories percolating in the upper circles of politicians and scientists, but none had the resources to study these occurrences. There was only one noted and remarkable consistency, which was that disappearances always occurred in two’s. But people didn't seem to take notice or care all too much for that matter. Cured aging meant there was little space left, and each passing person left a little bit more room to be spread amongst the rest. And so people lived, elbow to elbow, as cancer claimed innumerable lives while the rest drifted sluggishly from day to day. They lived under much uncertainty as to where all would go from here, when the earth dried up, and hoped quietly for space and salvation.

~

The doctor walked quickly down the fluorescent corridor and his footsteps tapped off the concrete bricks that constituted the wall. He came to his newest patient’s door and stopped before it to remind himself to remain detached enough. He entered, smiling widely. “It’s time to sleep, but you should know that tomorrow there are a few tests we have to run, mostly for research purposes. But that’s it.” She nodded and stared up upon the ceiling, letting her mind go adrift. The doctor jotted a few things down in his notebook and pushed up on his glasses, but the patient spoke suddenly, but her voice arose gracefully out of the silence. and he flinched, pushing his glasses up a space too far.

“Are you the last person I’ll see?” He could not tell if it was fear in her voice, or if it was sadness or even hope? He could not tell.

He had been asked this question before, and for some reason he could never find the words he wanted to say, because they carried seeds of hope, an idea more cruel than silence. So he always looked them as straight as he could, right into their eyes, and managed a slight artificial smile, a silent affirmation that made him feel an empty discomfort in his chest. He smiled at them until they looked away or smiled back and it was usually enough, since no one had ever inquired any further.

“You shouldn’t smile about such a thing, Doctor. It isn’t very funny.” Her eyes grinned even though her mouth remained still. The doctor froze, caught quite off-guard. [How she had still managed subtle humor, he could not begin to comprehend.] Her humor (was it even that?) was strange in this dim concrete facility of death. At this point in his life, humor was even strange to him, the dim reaper of this dim concrete facility of death.

Still, he was accustomed to the death here – it was always quiet, and he always said a prayer and moved beyond it. His newest patient, however, elicited in him an uncomfortable feeling of disarmament, and he thought he knew why, but refused to think on it. Had he, it would have become apparent that it was her spacey removed air of a scarred idealist, and how she understood that she was to die, but her words still floated with touches of enchantment (oh, how he longed for enchantment but found it erased from time!). He would not come to admit it, but it may have been because her visage had lost its glow and become pale and thin with sickness, but held onto fading vitality, not through desperation, but with natural ease. And it was because the depth of her eyes matched the intensity of the black in her hair that he had trouble allowing himself to look into them. The doctor remembered this feeling and turned away, back down to his notes, avoiding her gaze so he could possibly find a suitable reply. [This paragraph is shitty]

“I wasn’t implying that it was…” Then suddenly, a soft pressure on the outside of his glove made his mind jerk back to focus, and his gloved hand now lay awkwardly trapped beneath the patient’s naked palm. The doctor lifted his eyes to her face, to find some sort of explanation, but found none as she just stared back with an expression lifted with slight amusement. The doctor could not react and her eyes enjoyed his utter confusion before finally looking away, she returned to the thoughts in her mind, where she retrieved a memory she believed to be relevant.

“So you’re like my guardian angel.” The doctor wondered for a second and then smiled blankly into the wall.

“I can’t be. I don’t have wings.”

“But you have needles and medicine.”

The patient and the doctor both smiled silently, neither looking at the other, just simply staring blankly into some unimportant spot whose blandness provided little distraction from their thoughts. After a minute the doctor said “It’s time to sleep.” He stuck a needle to her skin and pushed liquid into her veins. “Sweet dreams,” he said.

The patient watched him throw away the syringe, gather his notebook and walk out, but not before he delayed in front of the door and switched off the lights. The door closed shut and the sound reverberated quickly through the room, echoing thinly between the bare concrete walls. Lying in bed, feeling her body and mind beginning to fall away, she closed her eyes and resigned temporarily from the world which she would soon leave forever.

~

Four weeks had passed and his now fourth newest patient had requested that the doctor read to her before she slept. She asked to hear Hans Christian Andersen, Sir James Barry, and Wordsworth and he wondered if there was some dark irony in this. One night, as the doctor finished The Garden of Paradise and folded the spine closed, the patient, looking to the side opposite of the doctor, whispered that she had dreamt of him this past night.

“And what was I doing in your dream?” The doctor’s response was prompt and instinctual, but the girl spoke airily still.

“You were with me.”

He paused, thinking. “And where were we?” he said, with uneasy deliberation. "Here, in this room?"

The girl turned her neck, gazed up, past the ceiling, before letting her eyes slide shut. “No. Away. Somewhere away.”

“What did we do?” To this the girl had no reply, so the two sat quietly for a stretched moment that drifted perilously close to comfort, but the girl broke the silence before it could settle.

“Would you tell me when it snows? I would like to know.” She opened her eyes and turned her face towards the doctor. “I miss the snow. I wish I could remember what it looked like, how it blanketed the entire ground and how the icicles hung from branches of evergreens.” He said he would tell her, since it was late October and there was hope for snow before the twelfth of next month.

“Is it time for sleep?” And the doctor nodded.

~

The doctor arrived at his flat two hours after sunset, which was normal. Dinner was ready on the dining room table, and his wife came down in a bathrobe, sipping from a cup of hot water. She sat across from him and watched as he ate, asking him things like how his day was and inquiring about patients. The doctor responded vaguely and quickly, reciprocating by asking his wife how her day had been, which was all normal. But the doctor was eating rather slowly and his eyes never moved. They rested fixedly on some space in front of him.

“You seem distracted tonight. What’s the matter?” The doctor arched his eyebrows and sat holding his fork in midair.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just tired.” He lifted the fork to his mouth.

“But you’re always tired.”

“Then perhaps it’s finally catching up to me,” replied the doctor with a hint of sarcastic self-pity. His wife got up and retired without pursuing the subject further. The doctor sat still and could not finish his food, scraping what was left into the garbage, an epic waste. At that moment he began to feel and astounding amount of guilt, but it was uncertain as to whether it came from the wasted food or elsewhere.

~

It was the twelfth of November and the doctor prepared his oldest patient’s euthanasia. The method used in this case included three steps: first was the administration of a barbiturate concoction (~10 g) and an ample dose of heroin (upon request of the patient) injected intravenously, this was followed by a period of waiting, as to let the barbiturates slow the metabolism, and for the heroin to cause a sense of euphoria; the last step comes in three hours time if the patient is not already deceased when the doctor injects 20 mg of vecuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant, which finishes the process by inducing an easy death.

The doctor put on his protective attire (as the new cancer is contagious) and walked down the hall to the door, holding a photograph in his hand. He entered and stopped briefly before he said that it had snowed last night, right through this morning. He handed her the picture and she held it in front of her deep eyes, which now held the only sign of sadness on her face.

“It’s beautiful. Just like I remember. Just like before.” She smiled and looked at him and this time he could not avert her gaze. “Is it time to sleep?” she asked.

“Yes, it’s time to sleep. Are you ready?”

“No.” She replied moving her eyes back to the picture, still smiling. And for the first time the doctor could ever care to remember he hoped with all his heart. He hoped with all his heart that she was joking, even though he knew that she wasn’t. But he pushed the thought away with all the strength he could find as he handed her the potion, which she drank briskly, and injected the heroin. The girl’s smile vanished. “Thank you,” she whispered, her voice again intertwined with silence.

“I’ll be back in three hours to say goodbye. Have sweet dreams.” She was already mostly gone, but she managed to acknowledge his words with a faint smile that tore away the little which remained of the doctor’s composure. He walked quickly out of the room, back to his office where he vomited into the trash can underneath his desk.

He sat in his office chair, with his head resting on his two hands whose fingers pulled sharply at the hair on his scalp. A vacuum opened up inside his stomach and he felt the rapid deterioration of his sanity. He reached for the drawer under his desk and pulled out an old bottle of scotch of which he drank a full glass in hopes of calming his nerves, an effort only partially successful. Twenty minutes later his hands had let free his hair and his breathing had slowed, but an overwhelming feeling of emptiness ensued. He periodically glanced at his watch and became terrible agonized when only a minute or two had passed, instead of the three hours he wished would disappear. He did a line of cocaine, hoping to lift himself up, hoping that this was a temporary feeling, that it would pass by after a prayer, but no such thing occurred. When the effects of the cocaine settled in, he became distressingly restless. He paced around his room like a madman, talking to himself and looking at his watch, now every thirty seconds. He concluded this episode by jotting seven words down in his notebook, busting through the door of his office and running down the corridor to his patient. He entered the room and stood beside the bed on which the girl lay. Tears welled up in his eyes and it was in that moment he found the courage to let them fall. The girl, half-dreaming, opened her eyes and smiled. “Is it time to say goodbye?”

The doctor shook his head and said it wasn’t. He brought his bare hand down to the bed, and gently rested it upon the girl’s, touching her skin. Someone sighed. Goosebumps appeared on along her arm and time shivered. It is not clear as to whether the doctor had forgotten to wear his protective clothing amidst his turmoil, or whether he had intentionally forgot to do so, but he held her hand tightly in his. He felt the girl’s pulse begin to fade, his eyes stared into hers reaching as far as possible into their depths. Having given up, lost completely inside of them, he finally admitted in his heart all which he had previously denied. And at that exact instant, their two bodies dissolved into a silvered smoke, whose form lingered for a moment, before disappearing into the air, having gone away, somewhere away.




[1] DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) is a naturally occurring neurotransmitter produced by the brain during sleep as to cause visual dreams.

Circles

Here is one of the stories I recently completed in class. It's long (13 double-spaced pages), but it's not too terrible, and I hope that those who commit to trudging through it find it not to be merely a waste of their time.

Victor Roy

Circles

A silver Buick rolled down Thayer Street, going 30 past a speed limit sign that read 40, it wavered slightly out of its lane only to jerk back into position when a passing car gave an assertive yelp of apprehension.

“Be careful John! Why don’t you just keep your eyes on the road and let the three of us look for street signs.” Charlotte had spoken from the passenger seat as she began craning her neck and peering out the window to try and read the passing street signs, but even at 30, the car was going too fast and the signs passed by in a blur, the letters indiscernible in the darkness. “Why don’t you just ask for directions?”

John slowed the car to stop at a red light and looked around gleefully. “Bah! I don’t need directions, I feel like I was here just yesterday.” He pounded his hands against the steering wheel and turned to address the man in the rear driver-side seat. “Right Martin?”

“Yeah, just yesterday.” Martin sat with his hands neatly folded in his lap and looked out the window to survey his surroundings. “Are you sure you know where we are?” he added.

“Of course I’m sure, Martin, don’t be an ass. You take Thayer East for about three miles and then it’s a Left on Eastman and I can grab Reach St. from there. And I know you remember Reach St. That’s where that old strip joint used to be, remember we had some--”

“It’s green John!” John returned his abruptly hands to the 10-2 positions on the steering wheel and began studying the road like a calculus problem.

“Sorry honey.”

Mary, the slender figure sitting rigidly in the rear passenger seat, spoke up on her own for the first time that night by asking Martin, her fiancé of two months, “What strip joint, Martin?”

Martin turned to her and began in a steady, calculated voice to recount a highly abridged version of an experience he had there with John in college. “It was a long time ago, and we were only there because of some school event,” he finished. Martin rested one of his hands on Mary’s and said again, “It really was a long time ago.” He then looked into the rearview mirror and made sure to give John a very specific look, which either meant “shut the hell up,” or “I’m going to beat you.”

“When’s our reservation for?” Charlotte asked while checking her make-up in her compact. She closed it and started to put it back into her purse but suddenly seemed unsure. Taking it out again and giving her reflection another once over, she put it away, seemingly satisfied.

John eyed the clock and said, “Seven-thirty.” It was seven-fifteen, and the street-lights which lined Thayer became more and more periodic.

“Look John, there’s a 7-11. I need to use the restroom anyways, so while I’m inside, why don’t you just ask for directions?”

“But the restroom there is probably dirty. You could just wait for a bit, I’m sure we’ll be there only a few more minutes.”

“John!” The silver Buick veered across two lanes to take a sudden right turn into a cramped 7-11 car lot. The four passengers exited and John and Charlotte went inside while Martin and Mary waited out by the car.

Martin started to take Mary in his arms, but she turned away. “I don’t like them. I don’t like John. He’s much too loud. And Charlotte. Charlotte seems vain,” said Mary softly, stamping her heel against the ground. “We should’ve stayed in and had a romantic night together.”

“I know, I know. But when he called to say he was in town, I couldn’t say no. How about after dinner, we go back to the hotel and have some dessert ourselves?”

“Oh Martin…” Mary submitted again to his words and the two began to embrace and kiss until the door to the 7-11 burst open and Charlotte walked out to see them conspicuously break apart at her appearance.

“The bathroom’s out back,” she said hurriedly, as if needing to justify her sudden return. She made her way into the dark behind the 7-11 and when she was out of earshot, Mary spoke up.

“Why do you always have to be shy about us?”

Martin was used to taking the defensive with Mary and always ready to try and reassure her. “I’m not, honey, she just came out all of a sudden and I was surprised. That’s all. You know I love you.”

“You pushed me away! You always push me away!” Mary announced that she would be waiting in the car and Martin thought it best to simply let her cool down. He meandered around the empty parking lot watching the 7-11 clerk, adorned in a turban, gesturing and pointing to John, who had his mouth open and was undoubtedly confounded. Just as he thought it would be best to go inside to help, a shriek came from the back of the 7-11, after which Charlotte appeared, running out from the alley, crying and flailing her arms about like a rogue octopus. She ran up to a Martin and threw herself into his arms.

“Martin…oh Martin! You…have to…there was this…oh Martin!” Martin waited for her to regain a little composure. “Oh Martin…you have to help me! I was in the back restroom and…I put down my purse…and before I knew it a RAT…a rat came and took my purse and ran away with it!” By this time, Charlotte’s cries had drawn Mary out from the car whose face appeared to be tied up in a tight knot. Seeing Mary, Charlotte quickly dislodged herself from Martin.

“What’s going on?”

Martin shrugged. “I don’t know, something about a rat?”

John exited the 7-11 at that instant, initially looking rather embarrassed; an expression which shifted to concern in response to seeing his wife Charlotte so disheveled and wrecked.

“Where were you John? How long does it take to get directions to a lousy restaurant? Where were you when I was being attacked out here,” she screamed, somehow avoiding bursting into more tears.

Martin finally took it upon himself to tell John the travesty that had taken place in his short departure from the parking lot. John looked like he was going to say something along the lines of “I told you to wait until we got to the restaurant,” but Martin had the sense to give him that same very specific look, which John knew this time to mean “shut the hell up.” The two men ventured to the back of the 7-11 to see if they could uncover the mystery of the kleptomaniac rodent and return with the purse.

---

It was during college that Charlotte, John, and Martin had first made each other’s acquaintance. John and Martin had made the weekly ritual of having lattes over used textbooks and photocopied pages at the café. Once they came of age, they moved on to having Red Stripes at the jazz club where they eventually met Charlotte, a psychology major, who made young men hold their breath and turn blue when she sang. She performed a few times a month; sometimes she would ask men whom she eyed from the stage to buy her a strong drink after the show. By chance, one night she asked John to buy her a second strong drink, but it was an offer that started them down the line of volatile infatuation. “How’s that?” Martin would ask sometimes, as the two men sat at the bar; and John would reply while his eyes remained transfixed upon the stage. “You know. You know, I might love her.” John would say this as they both watched Charlotte cradle the microphone within her pale hands and swish her eyelashes out towards the room.

After college, the three went their separate ways, but John and Charlotte would oftentimes circle back to each other, caught in the comfort of familiarity, and after a few years the circles became smaller and tighter so they decided wed. “How’s that?” Martin would ask, and John would pause to take a drink. “You know. You know, I love her.”

John and Martin only talked about their relationships in short words embedded within shorter sentences. And they talked only every once in a while on the phone; letting their few conversations drag into the thick of the night. But that’s all they ever really required of each other. It was during one of their recent conversations when Martin told John of his engagement and that night they toasted to happiness. “To a long and prosperous life!” and Martin stayed silent as he heard this, allowing the message to echo within plastic receiver and resonate through the telephone wires which ran through the many miles of country and suburb between them; he thought perhaps that all the words over the telephone sound distant.

---

The area behind the 7-11 smelled dank, an aroma of sewage and feet. In college, Martin had once rescued a futon from a local dump; “one of those nice, smelly pieces of crap,” as John described it.

“It smells like your futon,” John said, as his eyes swept the ground and the sky for Charlotte’s purse, in case it had been a creature of flight that had committed the crime; and not a mere rat.

“Then you should hurry and find Charlotte’s purse, you dolt.” Martin inspected the corners of the bathroom and found nothing but grime and stench. “You seem looser tonight, John. Off-center. Loose.”

“Hey, found it!” John pointed to a small patch of bush on the other side of a low, wire fence. “No, no way. I’m feeling fine,” he said, the words escaping his stubble-ridden mouth in a quick exhale as he climbed over the fence with the grace of a man in slacks too tight in the middle. John retrieved the purse and decided to use the restroom, so he told Martin to go ahead to give Charlotte back her purse. “I hope she’s relieved,” John added before he disappeared behind the metal bathroom door. Martin began to walk back to the front of the 7-11 when he heard John’s thin muffled voice from within, “Let’s have a worthy dinner, Martin.”

Martin didn’t know what that meant and looked back to wonder if he should wait, but upon hearing Charlotte’s urgent voice from the front, he turned and decided against it.

Charlotte and Mary had been standing, talking on their phones out front. Mary called the restaurant to notify them of their late arrival and Charlotte phoned her mother and had been telling her of the entire affair with pronounced distress, asking that she cancel her credit cards immediately.

“Never mind,” Charlotte said suddenly, as Martin emerged from the alley way with a soiled purse in hand. “You found it!” Charlotte ran to him and gave him a quick hug. Mary pretended not to watch she hung up her cell phone with an audible click. “John always said you were the resourceful one,” Charlotte said after a moment, her eyes checking the contents of her purse. “It’ll be like old times tonight, with the three of together. And Mary too.” She smiled at Mary and Mary smiled back. After another moment Charlotte seemed to remember it was John the group was now waiting for. “Where did he disappear off to anyways,” she asked.

“He’s in the bathroom, wait, look, there he is now,” Martin replied, pointing to John’s emerging silhouette. Mary called out to them from the car; she had managed to get the reservation extended until 8:00.

“They can’t hold it past that,” she said.

John grinned at the good fortune. “That’s wonderful Mary, well done.” The foursome huddled into the car. Charlotte reapplied her makeup, John concentrated on the road, and the four sat silently, listening to 90’s love songs on a soft-rock radio station until the car came upon the interstate where they merged into heavy traffic, at which point John broke the silence with a loud “shit!” and a violent smack to the steering wheel. Charlotte turned the radio to the news, and the reporter told them that there had been a car accident some miles down the road. The skin around John’s knuckles stretched and paled as his the steering wheel again served as his whipping boy for the moment.

It was 8:15 when the traffic cleared and John stepped on the gas and drifted in and out of lanes. “John there’s no sense in rushing. We can just go and wait, I don’t think any of us mind terribly. It’s only Tuesday,” said Martin, leaning forward so his words might travel straight to John’s ear and more quickly to his sense.

“You know I hate it when you drive so fast John,” added Charlotte. It wasn’t apparent whose words had worked, or if it was the combined effect of both, but John’s foot eased off the gas and the engine roar diminuendoed into rationality. It was too late, however, as the sound of sirens and strobes of blue and red lights chased them from behind.

“You idiot!’

“Fuck!”

“It’s alright, it happens. It’s most likely nothing”

Mary said nothing however, and sat in the backseat smiling out the window. The officer walked to the driver’s window and he asked for license and registration. Looking back and forth between the documents and the noticeably aggravated driver, the officer also found it necessary to ask “have you been drinking tonight, sir?”

He had been drinking that night, but he managed to get away with it for the time-being as the breathalyzer cleared him a few notches below point oh-eight. Charlotte interjected and tried to explain that he had only a glass before dinner and is now driving them home, and that it was a good while ago. All this was said while she made sure her hair fell the right way down to her shoulders, positioning herself so he saw her at the best angle. She knew how to work the gestures and the precise muscles around her eyes, so her words seemed ever more convincing. The officer gave John a stern warning and a ticket and Charlotte was sure to smile at him and thank him for his kindness.

The Buick sped on even after the ticket had been administered, lumbering along with frightening momentum. The radio had been turned off when the car had been pulled over so now all that could be heard were the cold tires rolling vigorously against the asphalt and the steady hum and maw of the engine. The sound filled the air, it was the stuff that hung between them, which made up that space, and each sat in their own corner, suffocated by all that stuff around them. They retreated to within their own heads as to escape the density of the air in the car; they dove inside of themselves for refuge.

---

John had once called Martin and told him that he was sick and couldn’t make it to see him and Charlotte at the club. Martin was already there, already had opened a beer when John called, so he stayed and waited for Charlotte. She came in through the back and a path opened up for her, so that she may move wherever she pleased. On the way to the bar she greeted those she was familiar with, which happened to be mostly everyone. She came and sat down next to Martin, who felt the many eyes of Charlotte’s audience fall upon her chosen seat and the guest whom she graced.

“I’m a bit nervous; it’s a new act for tonight.”

“That seems rather uncharacteristic of you, Lotte.” Sometimes she liked it when people called her that.

“Do you want to go outside? I think I’d like some air.”

“Sure.”

The two stepped through the glass door and collided with a sudden easterly gust. Martin reached for a crumpled pack inside of his back pocket and took out a Zippo. The air reeked from the lighter, the liquid fuel he used for it was of the cheap kind they sell in big plastic bottles at pharmacies, and it stank the air like a gas station. Martin quickly lit a cigarette and put the lighter away, to the bottom corner of his pocket.

“It’s pretty cold,” he said. But it didn’t matter because she had grown up in upstate New York, by the lakes and the snow. He forgot that he knew this; he knew that Charlotte never got cold. She responded and told Martin that he was a pansy.

“Do you mind,” she asked, taking the cigarette from his fingers. Twice she puffed on it. She gave it back and there remained a little of her lipstick on the filter.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“No I only used to. Don’t tell John, I don’t know if he’d like it.” She looked up and down the sidewalk. “Where is he anyways?”

“Sick, he said he can’t make it. He wishes you luck.”

“Thanks.” She said it while looking straight up at Martin who allowed himself to foolishly think for a moment that the word was directed at him, and not John. Not much else was said, nothing of significance and after a minute or two Charlotte left to get ready, leaving Martin outside where he finished his lipstuck cigarette; he was happy that the wind didn’t extinguish it.

---

Dinner caused the group to emerge out of themselves into the spaces of each other. They began to talk about things accessible to them; such things were easiest to discuss: the Spanish menu, the paltry wine selection, the weather, the salad dressing. This continued through the meal, which had been pleasantly satisfying; the courses were flavorful and went well with the wine, a bold and spiced red which matched the pork and the beef and the sauce. When the food was gone off the table, the two men leaned back into their chairs with their drink; the ladies crossed their legs and slouched slightly over theirs. The things upon which they could speak grew scarce as what was accessible became used and the absence of the necessity to eat or choose food from menus forced them closer together. But the wine made the conversation at least manageable and John held his glass by the stem as he retold stories from college. “And Martin over here wanted to be a journalist. Can you believe that? He had some idealistic version of what the news should be like, some sort of revolutionary scheme. But look at him now; he’s a fancy corporate lawyer, so much for idealism. At least you’re clean though. You’re still clean, right Martin.”

Martin was clean, as he always was. He showered every day, meticulously disinfecting every spot, making sure every root of hair was shaved down to the very skin, that the parting in his hair was straight. It was his neat appearance which made him amiable; it was a good shell to have in an executive world.

“Yeah, I’m clean.”

John continued to linger long after dinner had been finished, returning to random reminisces. He recited stories about the jazz club, about Tuesday-afternoon adventures to the river, their New Year’s excursion to the city. Martin encouraged him by responding and engaging Charlotte, but he sensed that it was time to leave as Mary had grown steadily quieter at her side of the table, only listening and smiling, taking frequent sips from her glass, but never saying anything more than what a smile could say.

“It’s getting pretty late John. We should head back? I’ll go call a cab.” Martin stood from the table, leaving John, Mary and Charlotte staring at the cactus shaped centerpiece accompanied by an emptied bottle of wine.

“You’re really lucky Mary.” Charlotte eyed Mary examining her fully for the first time that night. “Martin is one of the best guys we’ve ever known. You guys will be happy.”

Mary raised and sipped her glass, smiling and thanking the two of them. She had taken the night to gauge her silent victory, a battle unbeknownst to John and Charlotte, but one the two certainly had lost. Mary noted the lines underneath John’s eyes and the roundness forming around his midsection and knew that Charlotte was no longer married to the young energetic man whom he once claimed to be. She had deduced that the stench of wine or whisky was one which frequented the air of John. She pitied her and her husband. She watched Charlotte and her compact, the lines that she tried to hide atop her brow. They were still both young and still both so utterly stuck, they had been for years. And by how they acted with each other, she could tell that they both knew this. These were Martin’s friends, and Martin had done better than them and had remained the clean, neat man he had been as a student. This was her victory at which she smiled as the night went ensued.

The four stood outside of the restaurant as the yellow cab pulled to the curb. Mary gave both John and Charlotte a brief goodbye and disappeared into the car, leaving little room for Martin to makeshift a farewell. Martin gave John an awkward hug which the latter may have tried to hold for too long; he faltered with Charlotte on deciding to give her a hug or a quick peck on the cheek, as they once did when he called her “Lotte”.

“So we’ll stay in touch as we do, eh Martin?”

“Yeah, yeah we will. You two take care and stay safe.” He didn’t know what else to say as the three of them stood on the curb staring at each other, not really knowing what the other was thinking or expecting. Martin motioned towards the car and bent into the seat and decided that there may be one more thing to say. “It was really nice seeing you guys.” The cab door closed and the driver turned out of the parking lot into the street picking up speed and disappearing behind more cars and buildings, away to the places in which they were most involved. John and Charlotte stood transfixed for a moment after the cab had left. They were caught too deeply in the present, astonished that they were where they were, and it became hard to tell from where the present had come; it became hard to remember the people that they were with each other. Such details were barely real only in memories, and seemed far too distant in all the stories John recounted through the night. As the cab left the four felt the air pour back into the space between all of them, whether the distance had come in years or in miles.

Charlotte and John walked side-by-side back to the silver Buick. John had taken out his key to open the car door when all of a sudden Charlotte shrieked and hopped to a stop, thrusting her purse several feet away. “A rat, that rat is in my purse! John that rat is in my purse. Do something!”

John ran over to the purse and began to kick it and stomp on it with relentless vigor. He struck the bag as if beating it would cure the world, as if it were his last, final act. The scene ensued for a frantic moment which came to a disappointing end when John ceased his outburst and realized there was never anything animate in the purse, which now to Charlotte’s dismay, looked more like a dead animal itself, sitting limply on the asphalt with its contents spilling out in every-which-way from its gut.

A Reprise

I apologise for my short absence from the blog. I've been waiting to post a story which I have recently written, but it is still undergoing some revision. In the meantime, I'll post something I wrote on a trip ('trip') in DC, which I must partly attribute to the fresh perspective given by an intriguing acquaintance of mine:

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August 25, 2007
Sunset
D.C. Mall

What am I, besides a mere translator. As I write, as one communicates , one simply narrates one's own unique experience, with all its idiosyncrasies, and tries to funnel it into specific words, to share with another individual.

As one person's single experience can be so vastly different, and is truly unique in its distinction of place and time, it is inevitably an anomaly.

So what am I if not simply a translator, what is language if not words specifically designed and crafted to reflect one's own personal anomaly of an experience. What am I, but simply a translator, an interpreter of self.

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I think I was reflecting on how one person can see something so differently than another, and how we attempt to share our experiences, of thoughts and ideas (all essentially experiences, either physical or mental) in order to find a piece of common ground with another. This intersection either resonates harmoniously or collides as something dissonant or incomprehensible to one or the other.

This most likely makes little to no sense, or may seem as something insignificant, but I believe that most discord arises from miscommunication or misunderstanding, as opposed to ill-will. As humans, we owe it to each other that in conversation, we give each others' words ample reflection, and attempt to understand them in terms of the individual with which we communicate. If we tie their words with their individuality, we may better appreciate what they have to say. Because it is no simple feat to translate down your feelings and thoughts into words. And it is no simple feat, as an interpreter, to find the source of each of the others' words within ourselves, as we are all vastly different.

It may help, however, if we keep in mind that we are all fundamentally human.

A Dinner

On a Friday night I found myself at La Petit Pomplemouse in a part of Beverly Hills which remains unfamiliar to me, even to this day. A woman who looked about my age talked at me from across the table. I could not remember her name; it was either Lindsey or Linda. But she had been speaking of her roommate for some time, and I was certain that her roommate was called Joanne.

Catching the waiter approach our table from the corner of my eye, I ceased poking the slightly undercooked filet mignon in anticipation of his brief intrusion to inquire about the quality of our meal. The waiter reached us and waited for Lindsey to finish her thought. He inevitably inquired and I told him the filet was very good.

Lindsey innocently pondered her response. “The food is absolutely marvelous, the swordfish is exquisite!” The waiter looked gleeful, and I knew he expected a handsome tip.

“Would you like some more wine,” and I watched the waiter pour Lindsey another glass. I looked at mine which was full save a few sips, and decided that it was best to finish the glass and perhaps another before I resumed eating. So I drank.

Lindsey talked about Joanne and her penchant for designing dresses made with hemp and her yoga instructor who is some famous guru in Los Angeles.

“And she’s wonderfully fit!”

“That’s incredible!” I managed with strained enthusiasm, even though I am quite sure that she had mentioned something about yoga and jute twenty some minutes ago. Another glass of wine confirmed that her voice was bit too nasal and gave me a slight headache that the next glass would ease. Needing a distraction from her voice while I finished the next glass, I watched her hands.

She gesticulated zealously as she spoke, even in the midst of cutting her fish into pieces the size of salt grains. Her hands wove about as a conductor and I watched them hypnotically. In my outrageous boredom, my imagination replaced her with Slatkin in front of the National Symphony in the glorious finale of the Shostakovich Fifth. She conducted with astounding vigor while the brass blew her hair out of its shapely form, baton in one hand, a glass of pinot-noir in the other. The audience stood and applauded with comparable intensity and she swallowed her wine and threw the empty glass into the crowd. The hall echoed with pleas for encore and she turned back to her orchestra...

“So do you think I should?” My eyes shot into focus and I lifted them from her hands, which now rested on the table in front of her half-eaten swordfish, to the beckoning expression upon her face, paused in time.

“You should if you want” A lifetime of losing focus in situations such as these had given me a ready well of ambiguous, universal answers that people like Linda find sufficient. “It’s really up to you”.

“Because Joanne thinks I should try South Beach again, but mother had an outstanding plastic surgeon that did her wonders. I actually think his office is in this neighborhood and I hear he’s a magician…” I decided that it was possible for me to resume my personal amusement, so Lindsey became a French pantomime with a rolled up magazine, swatting at a large fruit fly, in an invisible box.

----

She wanted dessert and I wanted to put myself out of misery, so when the overly joyous waiter brought her the black forest chocolate cake, he brought me two fingers of Scotch to wash down the evening. As Linda gawked at her cake, my eyes drifted several inches south of her face and rested upon the outline of her peaking bosom; I knew the glass before me held my official resignation from the rest of the night, so I lifted it to my lips.

“Excuse me,” My descent was temporarily thwarted by an English man in a tan blazer resting on arched shoulders; he wore it like a cape. “I’m so sorry to have intruded upon your dinner, but I had been sitting at this table earlier tonight and seem to have misplaced my keys. I was wondering if you had seen them.” I found his accent offensive but Lindsey looked up at him with attentive eyes, devouring his air of urbane arrogance, as if it were more satisfying the chocolate cake before her.

I saw his eyes drift to the same place mine had been a moment before, and this gave me a sudden involuntary epiphany: perhaps women are correct and perhaps all men are the same. But I turned my mind sharply back to the pompous muppet before me, reminding myself of how he interrupted my hedonistic binge. I studied him, sure to find other things which I found abhorrent about him.

“No, I don’t seem to see anything.” Linda looked around with more interest than warranted. “I do hope you find them though.” She smiled while her eyes fell upon him with a slightly seductive glint. He looked from a mile above her and their gaze met in a fleeting moment of tension; I hated him a little bit more.

“I must have left them at the bar. Thanks, though. Have a lovely night.” He pivoted with grace and walked over to the bar where he retrieved his keys and tipped the bartender with a bill received with professional eagerness. Lindsey started talking about her fascination with the British and I felt a sudden change of heart and asked for the check without any intention of leaving a tip.

Aaron Ellis

Twenty minutes remained before he wanted to be there and perhaps three kilometers of narrow dirt alleys and dimly lit road lay between him and his destination. He walked straight, with a light quick gait. His face looked forward, but his eyes darted about. A small parcel nodded gently as he walked, hanging from his left index finger.

Evening had come and gone and a still night slipped into the town. Strays barked and howled, devouring leftovers of supper which had been thrown on the streets. Echoes of inaudible high pitched words, cast in an oriental tongue broke the still night on occasion, ping-ponging down empty alley walls. He once passed a local, out for an evening stroll, who looked at him for only a moment - it seemed like a quick look of curiosity - before he returned his thoughts and glance to the silence of the night. Aaron, as he was called where once he lived, continued to walk; the route programmed into his step. He took no detour and never once changed his pace, pausing once, and only once, to kneel and fix the bow on the lace of his right shoe, a worn in (and almost out) pair of off-white cloth Vans.

Two rights and a left after tying his shoe, Aaron found himself at a heavy metal door, a few steps below the alleyway. A dirty sign with scribbled Japanese characters hung quietly above. He knocked. Four succinct taps rapped against the door and Aaron tapped his foot and moved his eyes from place to place, seeing everything but watching nothing. Footsteps from a man inside approached and the shutter slid open, revealing two squint eyes of a staunch Asian man. The eyes hid any surprise that may have arisen from seeing a character like Aaron at such a doorstep, knocking at such a time. A few words of serious Japanese were exchanged and Aaron then thrust his hand deep into the pockets of his narrow plaid pants, retrieving a crumpled piece of paper. His eyes drifted to the man at the door only for a second when the parchment left his hands. The shutter closed abruptly and after the sounds of chains moving and bolts retreating, the door swung open. The Japanese man led Aaron through a series of dark concrete hallways and down a flight of steps. A wooden door was thrust open before him and Aaron walked into a large basement room filled with noise and middle-aged Asian men exchanging notes of money. Each man in the room seemed to have a cigarette fastened securely to the corner of his mouth, the smell and smoke was thick in the air and Aaron coughed just a little bit when he walked towards a counter in the back of the room.

The rhythm of the room did not change with his appearance, but it was as if the atmosphere shifted to recognize the presence of an outsider. Thin and pale, youth still living within him, a loose purple shirt draped from Aaron’s shoulders and a black nylon sling held snug to his back; he carried himself like a vagabond cloud. When he walked his arms would swing loosely at his sides and when he stood they hung two or three inches too low. He stopped again in the middle of the room to kneel and fix the bow on his left shoe before he arrived at the counter in the back of the room.

The man at the counter looked up from his book and bills and asked a question to which Aaron responded by pulling out a wad of money and stringing together words of slow but sure Japanese. He kept rolling his balance from his toes to heels, rocking back and forth; with one hand he ruffled his brown hair and scratched his head. Two short braids, dyed red hung from above his right sideburns; the man at the counter glanced at these while handing Aaron his receipt, which he immediately thrust deep into his pocket. He turned and walked to another side of the room.

There was a small raised stage, a two foot square surface, in the center of the floor, surrounded by a large space in which most men stood, talked seriously, and smoked. People slowly started to gather around the stage, but Aaron knew he had five minutes at least before the match began, so he went to a far corner of the room to where a table sat accompanied by two chairs, one of which was occupied. The man in the chair was noticeably older than most of the others in the room, but still not too old. He may have been sixty, with a short gray beard and sunken eyes. Aaron came and sat across from him, placing the parcel upon the table, facing away from the man and digging into his backpack to retrieve a small notebook from his sling. Opening it he jotted a few things down, turning briefly to the older Japanese man to see if he had spelled something correctly. The man grunted with approval and looked at him with a dry stare.

The sound of a bell resounded from the center of the room and the stage was now surrounded by a thick crowd. Energy dissolved its way into the air, filling the room, resonating from the stage itself. Aaron thrust his things back into his sling and took out a pear which he began to smack away at. He stood, taking a few more bites, then throwing his pack over his shoulders and picking up his parcel he made his way to the center of the room. Slipping in and between the uncomfortable smell of smoke and sweat he arrived at one side of the stage, upon which he placed his parcel. Another harsh Asian man stood boastfully with his own parcel resting upon the stage directly across from Aaron, his eyes laughing at the stranger, feeling renewed confidence as he finished studying his feeble opponent. Both Aaron and the Asian, who stood across, unwrapped their parcels, revealing two wooden boxes, each with a small door. Aaron’s eye caught the sight of a moth fluttering its wings near a light which hung from the ceiling. The noise level raised a single notch and the crowd waited with palpable anticipation.

A bell rang and the crowd began to roar. The two men on the two sides of the stage pulled down the doors on each of their respective parcels and a cricket emerged from each, shuffling into the small stage, the scene weighing down on their chitinous shells. They advanced towards each other. Aaron glanced up at his opponent who felt his gaze, and if someone was looking very closely at the stranger, seemingly lost amidst the sea of Japanese, one might have caught the quickest of smiles.

Five minutes later a single cricket lay lifeless upon the stage while a ragingly insulted Japanese man fell to his knees and pounded his fists against the floor. Aaron was walking down the alley from which he came, parcel in hand, a sling full of money and a half eaten pear hung surprisingly lightly on his back. Aaron had not yet decided where he wanted to go as he turned left on to a street which he did not yet know; his eyes darted about and a thin smile came and left his face, lingering, perhaps, a bit longer than he had intended

.

Flying Thoughts

Whenever I fly I wonder if I am ready for death. I'm not quite sure why, perhaps it is when the prospect seems most real. Suspended in air as if by a thin wire, held up by two wings which seem so utterly minuscule against the vastness of the sky.

En route to Delhi from Kolkata the sky was crisp; clouds sometimes dotted, sometimes sheathed the space below. I looked north out my window, and after second-guessing my eyes for a few moments, I could discern the Himalayas in the distant horizon. Soon after i drew my hazy conclusion, it became unmistakable. There they stood, with streaks of snow and jagged rock, ages away yet impassive still. Only they had the majesty to tower above all life, to cast shadows upon clouds.

"I must apologise for the intrusion," I should say. "No man should have the audacity to consider himself above thee, superior to the power of nature."

Truth

It is impossible to decipher what reality is. Everything known to one individual, everything experienced by one individual, has been bent through the prism of consciousness. The processing of information automatically taints truth in the sense that we cannot comprehend truth beyond what is grounded in human understanding.

There is, somewhere, a greater truth. A truth that we cannot fathom, a truth that we cannot wrap ourselves around in order to analyze or discuss. Its just out there.

And I wonder how close I can get to it, how close can i come to the theoretical, physical, and mental boundaries of human capability. But, sometimes I don't know how begin. Perhaps my mind can take me there, but that seems counterintuitive.

I try to feel it I suppose. I try to sense all that is around me, all of my environment. How does one feel tangibility? I don't know, honestly. I just try to let everything around me soak into consciousness. I try to feel it for what it is, what is behind what I can perceive.

Reality is truly individual to each person, because each person deciphers and associates things differently. It is just all our understandings are grounded in human boundaries. Truth is a greater understanding of the universe, on a complete dimension we cannot understand.

Perhaps science and mathematics have shed lights on dimensions such as these; it sounds ridiculous, but i feel like perhaps they know what it is on a scientific level, but perhaps this level of understanding that I am implying is more of a philosophical understanding of such a realm.

Just trying to map the psyche and beyond.