fluorescent embrace, like tiredness. His mother got very little sleep. When she did,
she slept on the couch, still watching.
Markus stepped into the front room. Next door, the neighbors were pulling into
their garage, in a very old, very rusted car. There was a domesticated species of bird
perched on the bird feeder. Markus pushed her away from the vacuum. Without
turning it off, he lifted it (wobbling) from the ground, and flung it towards the
screen. With physics to blame, he fell. The vacuum crashed
t h r o u g h
the television, sparking, as a whole radioactive generation came to an end (with
the shredding of wires, undoing internal projection). In silence, to the echo of
cracking glass, he landed, gently, on the couch.
::::::::::::::::::::
“This
is all your fault,” he said.
(I felt better about myself.
)
::::::::::::::::::::
“Are they telling us something?” Markus asked.
“They want us to go.” Into the dark.
So we went into the dark. We became familiar with dark places. Markus's
basement was very old. Destruction laced pathways to either side. Astringent powder fell from above. Dankness and dampness, the welcomers of memory, were, in their remarkably clammy presence, very prominent. Metal beams, irregular, kept the ceiling up. The naked underbelly of the residence (water heater, sewage pipes, bulbous, rusted tanks of metal) bared itself explicatively, and we saw. It was remarkably disturbing. Like being dumped in a bucket of cold water.
“What do we do?” he asked, depending on me.
“Just listen,” I said, because there was loudness here.
And we listened.
From all sides slowly, silently, they came, like a party of old men playing checkers, the sounds of sliding, an ominous undertone. Our God had forgotten to wear a condom; our world was a sick wormhole of semen. I knew then that hundreds of miles away old men in tall hats were shopping for
bags of chips and gallons of ice cream at bargain prices, purchasing swiftly, and with character, less the gremlins come for them. Arrogant creatures with two legs and no sense of gravity left sets of footprints
obsessively, for the sake of leaving. We'd come to it here, in the dark,
the collective. Lime built up mineral deposits. Gristly strains of gravel
collected. The first, with hands, and the other,
esophagi.
And then, gloriously, the basement became a mural. Solid color etched the walls. It had the texture of chalk, and it flaked, fluttering as it fell. Size became color, became shape became memory. A tree, resilient in the autumnal wind, struck out at oncoming change, xanthus against searing amber. Farm carts peeling were parked forgotten by the barn. There was a house, strong and proud; a swing; another barn. In the distance a snaking, narrowing path led to town, matted after years of beating. There were no animals. Flooding out, a purple wave, tinged different shades along the edge, overwhelmed regularity, and the scene changed to a beach, under the same sky, rocking in the waves. Flat sand and winds. Patches of trees, further up the shore, stood patiently growing; spread back to what might have been a forest. Golden dust sprinkled Flowing in the. Time, life, dust, ashes, ashes in the dust, flailing, it had scars and hands, faces, darkness. Sewing, with a needle. Old games old old games. It might have been artistic if it weren't so blatantly pathetic: a plea for ongoing sequence. The extrovert crying hydrogen tears.
It wasn't
a mural, it had
never been a mural. I
didn't know
what to
say
.
Big, big clouds stretched
all across a space resembling the sky,
and groggy rain
looked like
it was about to fall
No, it had a body,
and it
was standing
straight
up.
It had
two legs,
(one on each side)
as though it were looking to support itself, this shadow thing, scrambling from a platform unto us. Rasping breath escaped it, and laces of blackness collected. Golden rings glowed in the center. It stumbled, unused to existence. It was
a
stranger here, and we feared it. Feeble torso, failing body. It came to life, here in the stagger, and called to us weakly. We heard,
but we pulled away. It had no arms. It saw we had them, and strove, sprouting appendages. Two. Three. Off balance, it fell.
The floor
was not kind to frailty, as it was made of cement, and it burst to shadow. Black, sagging mist, groping. It called
to us, weaker yet, and we
pretended not to hear.
::::::::::::::::::::
"So you're here?" Trey asked.
"Obviously."
"Did you bring anyone."
"I thought I was bringing Ashley," I said. "Though apparently not." Up on top of the hill, Markus was already high. Glazed over, he stared,
fascinated, at the mystery that was heaven, heaven being somewhere above, if it was. Heaven reminded me of old, old questions. I stood for a while against a tree, thinking. Then, catching a leaf, I tore it in two. Night fell, a gradual dampening in the light. All existence follows the same patterns.
"Wait for me," I said. "I need to find Ashley."
"The sky won't wait for you," Trey said. "You know that."
"Hey man," Markus said, "stay here… we've got… we've got earplugs, and
whiskey, and a mag-nifying glass." He waved them. He had all three- though there were actually two magnifying glasses, one for each eye, glass goggles for ogling the sky. Ogling
is such a strange word. Its meaning escapes me.
"It's fine," I said. "She said she'd be here."
Trey shook his head.
"Sometimes," he said, "you really aren't such a great guy. Always ditching us for
girls." Sounding so adolescent, unsurprisingly, like a teenage boy, half drunk, wearing goggles and sitting outside on a hill to watch the fireworks. He fit in, irrevocably, with himself.
"It's fine," I said. "Sometimes I'm really
not
a good guy."
Don't be giving me your sympathy, he said. If you're going to be like that, just don't come back. We don't want you here. Inside, we know you're nothing but the shadow of a shadow. In the light.
"Maybe I'll come back," I said. I found myself wondering who Trey was. I don't think I'd ever seen him before.
::::::::::::::::::::
"It's trying to stand," I said. Markus was too afraid. In our dark the shadows moved. It had flesh of spuming ash. Its existence was agonizing pain. I realized I'd been here before, or it seemed like I had. I'd painted this scene before, so many times, without painting. And I knew this ghost. I'd shaken his hand.
Markus tried to run. I held him back.
"Can you hear?"