“It's supposed to be incredibly religious, I get it, and very beautiful, but honestly, I can't find anything religious or beautiful about actors carrying crucifixes all over the stage.”
— Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Little, Brown and Company, 1951.
MAhogany'sㅤㅤRoleㅤ
i. Prologue
OVER IN THE DISTANCE of the Albemarlian winter grounds, his father walked around from side to side to check if some pests had broken into the secret shed buried in sight by a ring of shining fallen plant litter. It had since been a long walk from there, so he was worried something may have either broken the things inside or just dirtied them. The fall season was coming after all.
But after a while, it became hard for his pupils to keep glancing at those trees. The time it took to get burnt into his macula was only finite. So he turned behind him to look at the home he lived with his family. Hopefully, the porch didn't hide too much of what was inside as he was craving for some minute details. However, slightly over to the left, he saw his boy. He was holding a book with one hand, but it was as wide as a gaping wound. One could see the white line splitting its spine from about a cornfield away. Its upper section was bleeding but at least it was the cover's fault. It had a splash of bright red turned mahogany—where The Catcher in the Rye is written in bright yellow—while under it was a white flame. Walking closer and closer, he could discern what looked like a carousel horse-drawn like a wayang puppet. It was one sight that many may try to point their finger at, but at the same time, it's impossible. It didn't help either that he was still a bit too far away to read the black text at the bottom. To cope with the strangeness, though, he needed to let his thoughts out.
"…What in the hell is he reading?" The man muttered—his voice quietly softened by the falling snow. It was quiet. Quiet enough to hear the flapping of butterfly wings that had been too late to hibernate.
Meanwhile, the son flipped the book over since he was merely taking a peek at what was on the later pages. But thankfully, when he returned to where he had read before, he had caught the sentence where he had ended.
"It was icy as hell and I damn near fell down I don't even know… …what I was running for just felt like—"
But like the butterfly, he was doomed. He had been too late. His father had caught him like a CCTV in a crime scene.
"Hey, Carney!"
"Huh?"
"Carney!"
"Oh, God… What does this guy possibly want from me?"
And that guy calling just there in the distance… was my father.
"Hey, Carney! You mind meetin' me 'round our homestead whenever you've got a spare moment?" He yelled.
"It's icy as hell, Dad! What'd you need even?"
His tone was unidentifiable in a particularly inconsistent way as if he was longing for something. Was he sad? No, I doubt it; his tone was also vaguely indifferent. Relieved, maybe? Tired? Doesn't matter much, I suppose.
"Remember when you asked Dad about this town?" he replied, letting out a sigh as if he was running out of breath. Then it seemed like he coughed as hard as he could.
"Dad, I don't think you're okay. Go get a nice drink or something."
"Don't worry 'bout it. It's just that the winter ain't helping my lungs today."
"The cherry pies might help!" I shouted more loudly
Though I was compelled to go and find out what the matter was he made it seem like this "talk" wasn't germane to anything I was doing then. Or at least what he'd think. Caulfield warned me of my fall when he didn't know where to go either on Route 204. But I couldn't risk him knowing what I was looking so I naturally waited there for a long while—head empty—before I came to my senses and shouted at him to come back 'cause he was too far away to be polite about it and also to stop looking at the mahogany trees that were lined up perfectly like a checkerboard.
"Dad, you're not gonna make me slip a thousand times to get to you, will you?"
Call it callousness, and you'd probably be right. Apparently I'd left him waiting long enough for him to think that he could clandestinely finish a cigar in time. When he finally reached the back porch and sat down, he was still halfway done. Upon noticing me he gestured awkwardly and tried to hide it and avoid attention, but deflating as soon as he realized he didn't have Phoebe Caulfield to warn 'em. Not that it mattered to me as much as he would have thought, though—but the smell of sweet boiled tart mixed with ashy bones of the tobacco didn't mix well.
"Hey… Carney. …ya—" he said, a little inarticulately, before I interrupted him: "Wait, hold on, Pa. You were… puffing a cigar?"
"Well, champ. Your old man's need to find himself leisure. I mean, you won't tell your Mom, won't you?"
"No, no. It isn't anything to fret about. So, what about Mahogany or Grenzeville you wanted to tell me?"
I decided to not voice my humorous thoughts about whatever this "leisure" of his was supposed to be. Well, it was much more important than that, anyway.
He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. "Well, Carney, before I tell you that, I want you to know that all this, and a bit of that, is gonna be yours one day," he said pointing downwards onto the porch floor and westward where the cherry farm was, inundated by the sugar cubes on the blueberry sky.
I chuckled, surprised and sounding almost monotone. "Isn't that old news, Dad? Not to sound pretentious, though."
"It's alright," throwing the cigar onto the grass.
"You know how when kids grow up and they've just been told of what their parents are gonna give them? Not that it always happens, no, but it's frequent enough to have this thing or a notion as you put it that is built around it," he said, tone almost heavy. "And frankly, someone in this position like I am, putting whatever he's known for, Ma. have their faith slipping away over time. Though, it may seem unlikely. That place I put here in Mahogany was too much of a motivator, but it's already been a while. But, I have doubts about'cha Mom."
"Dad, I can tell this self-doubt. If it helps, your names I'm also proud of. And don't worry too much about not only Mom but us too. You've done a lot—"
"Carney, this ain't about me as much as it is about you," he said as he poked me lightly on the chest. "You're, well, a son. Christoph and Francesca's youngling. It was my duty to show you the ropes, to teach you our ways. But from vomiting on your brother's pizza to now, you've got to improve. You have to show me, alright?"
"Yeah, I know about the title of yours. Wasn't our goal to raise our funding so I—"
"Could go to college, like the good ones in Charlestown? You can get a well-paying job after that. I mean, we've got the money and it ain't too far. Maybe you can go to Boston and become one of those pretentious Ivy League graduates," he interrupted me, laughing softly, but not that I had anything important to say.
"Well, since then, it's become more'n just a way of doin' things. It's a whole lifestyle now, for me at least. We didn't get here by blowing smoke up Mr. Nathan Miles' ass or doin' somethin' equally foolish for years. Nope, but we did get here 'cause we busted our behinds and to show us that we're gonna sacrifice a bit of ourselves to somethin' they've made. And even if my dedication to Grenzeville starts limping, there'll still be something I'd leave other than my own corpse. Now, Carney, let me ask ya something: what's it mean for you?"
The question felt like something a Harvard student would ask in their essay but then after a split second it felt like it was something I could easily answer. But it wasn't easy for me to get there 'cause my mind was in denial. I didn't want to admit it, but I did. "Dad… I ain't tryin' to be selfish, but even though I've been right in the thick of this whole religious… thing, I'd never thought about going to college. Hell, I ain't know an Ivy League was an option even. So, what'd that mean for me?"
He coughed a little before he spoke, but he looked nowhere as dismayed as I expected him to be. "Well, that's it. Your faith to keep doing what you're doing was mainly the thing I wanted to keep me, your mother, and your brother going. And that's why you'd have to put more faith in, you know? And that's what it should mean to you, that you should let what I've got going already to eventually get you going to follow my path. It's what Miles says; it's what everyone around here says."
It was all too sudden for me to process instantly so I just smiled. But before I could actually be happy I'd one more thing to ask.
"Wait, Pa. So does that mean I'm going to college or am I gonna be the Keeper of the town?"
"Well, Carney, it's best that you put that as yours. Responsibility? Yours. It's your task to find that out first. If you let anyone tell what'cha do, then, well, good luck on being truly happy in your life. Find out the things that work for you, even if it means chasin' something 'till your feet snap. I mean, that's how we in Mahogany got a start. Y'know mahogany trees aren't supposed to grow here deep in Albemarle, don't you?"
"Oh, shoot. Yeah, why?" I had almost forgotten about what I'd brought him here in he first place.
"They need to be out in the sun all day. That's why they're dark. If snowing like this, they bleed and die. That's why they're red. If they get too cold they bleed a little. Miles' Dad liked the red color so we leave them here before we get their wood."
"Okay, Pa," I said while my eyes rolled like a log on a steep slope.
"Looks to me you ain't like the color. C'mon, it's Miles. You don't disrespect him, especially his Dad."
"That ain't what I mean, Pa."
"Remember about the faith, Carney."
"Not to judge but how'd they get the trees here and plant them?"
"He knows a guy from Guyana. That friendship didn't come from nothing either. His father worked hard to be able to start a community here and eventually get the wood, and Miles built all this. And that brings us to you. Miles told me that He won't have any children so either you or your brothers will help him in the future. But that's your choice."
"How about you, Dad?"
He looked at his cigar and then at me while raising it a little bit. "I'll go with whatever as long as you think is best for you. I'm already his assistant, ain't you remember?"
"I do, yeah. You tell me about it everyday. But I kind of wanna keep it now. I don't want to pass it down to my kids."
"You're the last generation, Carney. Your brothers too in fact. Miles told me."
"Oh well. I ain't want kids anyway. But why does he tell you and not me?"
"He will one day when I'm not here for him to pass a message anymore. For now, you just need to listen to what I say."
"Okay."
"Well, don't let that come to naught. Now, let's go eat those cherry pies your Mom made."
ii. Dedication
To all human beings waltzing in the Backrooms.
"Truthfully, I never was intrigued by anything physical since Earth was formed." — The Temporal Yellow
Chapter 1: Mahogany's Role, Part 1 "A Cherry Farm"
I WAS THE FOLKLORE that never arrived in the state of Albemarle 'cause a few months after I was born, the paint of our bungalow which was previously a refuge for Confederate soldiers started to rot and it wasn't long after some black mold spread through like an expanding, woven fractal and we had to sleep on another person's mattress. When I was old enough to realize that it wasn't a parasitic act from Pied Piper I was still asking about it, to the annoyance of others and especially my brothers.
"When you're done rambling about that, the town's children would finally return," they always say.
The twilight is the story, for I'm the light.
Growing up, I had two siblings: Fred and Jordan. They're each two and five years older than me and of course, they'd taunt me often, calling me the "first demon" that our mother brought which was supposedly me—"the Thirteenth Windmüller." I'd admit it was funny to look back then but that didn't help me getting all disparaged for no reason 'cause they somehow made the mold have something to do with it too since it happened right after I came out of the womb. But when they'd call me that too loudly and the echoes bounced from the cream wallpaper too many times, which sometimes they did, my father, Christoph, would pinch their ears tightly until they became lukewarm roses as God's will. You don't insult someone's surname even if theirs was yours especially if that name crossed an ocean. Our forefathers had come from Lower Saxony—even if it was higher up north than Saxony—to here in Albemarle.
I rarely paid attention to their punishments but when I did it'd often nearly make me get the boot too for laughing at them, And sometimes I couldn't hold my fun so I'd also get punished but for a different kind of nonconformity when I probably played around with a ball and shattered jars and vases in the process where the pieces made the carpet into tetanus-causing cactus. They were all over on the kitchen counter 'cause my mother spends her day getting cherries from the farm we have across the town and making desserts out of it. Most of the things here save for Interstate 40 were and still are owned by us Grenzeville Children of Ezekiel, the people of Mahogany. If it was the summer I'd go help her. And that was when the red orbs would saturate. It's a four-hundred-yard walk to get the cherries to our home so she had me to help her carry since her arms were war-torn. Or at least that was what she said. We were self-sufficient mostly so our fruits didn't have any arsenic in them. But to be real it's probably 'cause we were too lazy to walk nine miles southeast to Durham for just some fruit. But if we're talking about tobacco some people like my father would leave town for days just to buy the cheapest cigs. If they had continued for far longer we'd sink the ground from the heavy smoke that I'd treat as the black plague.
Apart from that, the isolation had at first sucked out the jello-like worms of my brain from a syringe, and the community school wasn't better either. The children there eat their boogers and chew their pencils and I never got along with them. Summer vacations were just shifts: I had to go with my mother even on Saturdays and Sundays. I'd be damned if I went like this for another six to five years from missing out on those religious and fancy dinners they were holding every month or playing with my brothers or friends. They'd keep putting up posters and signs saying Be one with the community for Grenzeville's greatness in these ceremonies. Every time I see them it does not help with my spite either.
I remember on the first few days I'd sleep at about three in the dawn so I could have an excuse to avoid greasing my elbows, 'cause picking cherries, for me, felt like I was assigned by God to individually check for the forbidden fruit. The knocking on my door would usually wake me up when I was only asleep for an hour or two. That was how early you'd have to get up in the morning if you ain’t want to waste those precious little, sour flesh to rats. I'd always be intentionally half asleep so she wouldn't walk me there because half-sleepers would half-ass their jobs; she also had a pet peeve for that. She'd always figured it'd be better if I didn't come than to be present there and not do anything.
When this thing I've got going worked for a little while, I figured that I could extend the number of days I did it. In that time, cherry trees, inundated earlier with white petals in blossom seasons, began to gray and turn into round reds, as days turned to weeks. Nevertheless, being traditional farmers doesn't mean we were simple-minded—because frankly—my parents were clever. I didn't notice at first: they'd put coffee in my breakfast brownies and give me orange-flavored energy drinks. Then, they'd stay up all night scrutinizing the doorway to my bedroom to catch any noise I'd make playing my Nintendo. And, one day, they eventually caught on.
It was a Friday night. I thought a session of fun would be fitting to start a weekend. I'm in my bedroom, nothing in sight other than the flashing screen of a gaming console.
"C'mon, c'mon!" I loudly whispered as I was playing.
I was covered by a thick blanket, so I thought the threads of wool would barricade the sound from emanating outside.
"Carney…" both my parents exclaimed.
"Oh, shoot! Good God!" I whisper-screamed, as I rushed to hide the device under stacks of baskets.
While the door visually blocked the revelation I so squeamishly locked, the sound snitched quietly as the blanket switched over to my parents' side, betraying me.
From then on, I couldn't crawl under their floorboards again. That my subterfuge was no longer foolproof is a Lorem ipsum; and my awake eyelashes, still covered with eye poo, gone too obvious. And it was without no punishment for my dishonest slickness, for I had to collect more cherries than her, so I was even more damned than I was going to be in the first place. An Oregon cherry I became, as toward the sunsets and sunrises after the incident, the water balloon that contained my anger burst from the relentless Southwest heat. I repeatedly disturbed my father when he was writing for the town's news—of which its most captivating headlines were cats stuck upon twigs. He blatantly developed a mutual feeling, one where we hated each other but he wasn't bitter enough to be virulent since his two-decade-long experience in the local town's newspaper kept his job from getting burnt. A man of strong will, he is, ‘cause he lay no hands on me. On the other hand, however, my mother would hit me on the wrist with coat hangers for all those hitting with typewriter keys I did; it was certainly one thing, but because she served as a nurse in the boondocks of Đồng Nai her accuracy was on point. And he likely saw it, so he thought it'd be better if he just became an innocuous castor bean. And like the rudimentary cavemen they are, my brothers tittered in the audience seats. At those junctures, I felt like closing the curtains for good.
He'd go on for three nights—he’d enter my tight-knit room of several toys and devices like they are amalgamated to form a community; no longer wound up like a spring, he’d blather about anything to make me happier; sometimes, even, he’d somewhat impact me; and the fruit sweat was starting to cool. On the last day, however:
"Why'd you still down?" He asked, concerned and flustered, but blaséd.
I attempted closing the dam to hide my exclamation: "Nothing, Dad."
"Well, looks to me that'cha still got shampoos on your eyes."
"What does that ?"
"Well, I'll tell you what. It's that li'l waterfall on your cheeks."
"Can't help it since I keep helping on the fields."
"I know, but just 'cause you feel it, don't mean anyone else feels it. I'm not going to bore you with 60s cherry-pickin'; it's that you've got to get goin'."
"How, though?"
"You're… a sloth, Carney."
"I am?"
"Yes, and you can't do nothing about it."
"That isn't right."
"Oh, Carney. You're gon' find soon enough that it's not about changing as a person, but it's about picking all the good cherries in 'em."
"No, no. There's a little bit of blood on your wrist, Pa."
"There is? Must be cherries. Don't worry about it."
"You sure, Pa?"
"Mhm. All's good."
"Why am I a sloth then? That ain't good."
"Wipe your face first, it's chippin' your chin away more than a mouth breather."
He wipes away my face as if he was carving Mount Rushmore.
"But…"
"But what? I've told you not to breathe through your mouth, I can still see it's receded," he says.
"Just tell me about the sloth, please."
"But you've got to listen to Dad. I can tell the last two times I talked to ya, it seems like it passed your left ear and went out on the right."
"Okay, pa. I promise I will listen."
"Well, alright. Let me tell you this. Y’know how sloths are lazy'n 'n' all? But, they're not just that. Every animal has their positive side, and for the sloth, it's their patience. When you come out there, patience is like a McGuffin."
"Go out where?"
"Everywhere matter of fact. But, for now, at least, it's right there.
"That's the farm, right?"
"Mhm, but the farm ain't everything, nor is it the only place you'd go. There's a lot more cherry-pickin' to do in life. But you have to do me two favors: one, Dad wants you to show that you're making progress."
"Do I get to go to college?"
That's for another day. But for now, you should go to sleep. It's eight o'clock already."
Unlike the two other talks I had with him, he didn't kiss me goodnight or show any warmth, but as if I was a four-dimensional being, I could see his complicated sigh of relief as he was closing the door behind. And in the following days, all I heard from him were footsteps and wood creaks, staying silent 'till I'd prepare my tarnished, green, leather boots, when he'd simply say, "Embrace the sloth, Carney!"
I became a model after some reassurances; even I was partly involved in making desserts from the cherries. The goodness was felt, knowing that my mother would smile at even the sight of my presence. It was like chipping away minutes or even hours—its repetitiveness wasn't of no concern, because it's just like surgery. One moment you're awake, and the next, you check the time and it's already four o'clock. And when we're done, after the Walk of Fame to the bungalow, the sky's already pitch dark. And because of the blankness of rural forests, especially the ones beside the Flint residence—one of our close neighbors—where like infinite space, anything that could be there would be there.
"You've been watching The Exorcist too much," as repeated by my family. But I could've sworn some Prussian haints—some of whom may be disgruntled relatives—to turn haint blue's light vibe to a darker, Prussian blue. My later phantasms were weirdly consistent, almost. I'd still be thinking about that long in the tooth. But, Fred, who woodworks with my father not too yonder from the farm, would seriously convince me to hurtle toward one if I catch one again as a sick joke. The only problem was that, to his vexedness, they appeared as bright, smiley faces without anything it would be otherwise attached to. So, how would I even attack one? While it may have been the midnight oil I've been burning that keeps it lit, some were as far as Durham. I kept being bothered about it, like the black mold thing all over again, though I could fight back if I wanted to. And I did, though we were far, far too old to fistfight about it, so I needed to prove them wrong.
"Hey, Carney. Don't stick your ass too deep into the bushes, alright?" Fred said sarcastically.
"Hey, don't swear like that! And I'm also a grown-up now; I don't care!"
"Shh! Don't disturb the Flints, they're probably asleep by now." My mother ironically shouted upon hearing the ruckus.
We kept walking, though I never saw the face. I was sure it heard our conversation ‘cause this walk in particular was the first one in a week where I didn't see it. However…
"Mr. Gregory Flint's garden is creepy, doesn't it?" I said, to stir the topic off course.
"Don't judge other people's property, Carney. How would you feel if Mr. and Mrs. Flint started commenting about our home?" My mother replied.
"Sorry, Mom. I was just saying—"
And there it was: a glow. I suddenly glanced at it. It was roughly behind the corner. Though I didn't see the actual face, I could tell from the reflection from the odd, yellow wall of the Flints' residence.
"Carney? What are you even looking at?" Fred blatted.
Like a scarecrow I couldn't do much other than exist. The thought of jumping toward it flowed into the Atlantic. But, I quickly grabbed it before it could drift far away enough. I knew it was going to exacerbate the situation even more, but I decided to do it.
I quickly rushed for it, numbed from the conscious world—I even forgot about swinging my arms as I was running.
When I’d realized what I was doing the house's corner was already too big to go 'round it. (Crack!). My sight was tainted red.
My foray had gotten me a horrid cut that barely missed my left eye, running through the tear trough. The ground below was tainted with cherry juice, and it went until my tongue. But this time it was iron and irony-tasting.
While gnarly, I still had to go with my mother—seeing as it was a gnarly time too to discipline me for being ignorant. And as well as my brother, so my motivation to go was unprecedented, there wasn't a dog in that snitches-get-stitches fight. He and I never brawled while working, however; perhaps all the warm air was all sniffed by the canines.
The small flap of skin that hung over, although slight, was more freakish than the nose's node. Fred had the cringe job of snitching it; he almost killed me by vomiting at my face.
And when three weeks had gone by when the cut had scarred, it was time for a talk. I'd gone every day there and stayed 'till the night owl came except for Sunday—the day for a half job. My mentality was that I should've been getting something better than cherry cakes, which I'd be a nitpick about 'cause how often I got it for a sugar crush. Gotten tired, they'd offer me even more bakeries as if Mr. Murphy had come to town or something, and that would lead to the same outbursts. Their sighs of relief turned to shit!-here-we-go-again faces, as I have my joy was put into comatose with the job taking over. The bellyache made them offer the green doughs for their final dun; I hotheadedly declined, however. It now felt like a mundane scientific paper, and a Sitzfleisch was now a craving for my buttocks. However, I've never gotten a chance to talk, and I was reaching the top of a firework trail. The only way of relief, as I saw it, was to simply run away from home and stay in one of the Grenzeville cabins with bedrooms of constant crackling of bedbugs, probably the worst of what Albemarle could offer. But, no deterrence was going to make me do an adult's day's work. So, for two days, I conceived a plan. Being less than five feet, I could narrowly fit through the frame of the only window of my room. And continuing the strike of convenience, the crushing of wood chips by the upper jamb nor the wood creaks would be heard even if you were to put your ears on the doorknob, as it sat on the opposite side of the room.
Seemingly nullified of retaliation, my parents haven't paid close attention to me as of recently. Soon, it was the cherry-picking season. At around midnight when the parasites were waiting I lifted my feet slower than their walking speed and made my way to the window. I couldn't care less if the Devil's Tramping Ground were following my trails, but I might've been cursed the childhood scares of haints from the Treachery hit by speeding cars on the small roads. I began to make my way to a camping trail that was near the main gathering, where an abandoned trailer sits upon there. The outside was covered in sticky vines as if it’d already been digested by a cow and its walls were that of Swiss cheese with dimples. However, when I glanced at it through the top edge of a hill—fully expecting Cinderella the housemaid—I saw her with glass shoes. The inside looked like something a disgruntled yuppie would enjoy his rural life in, though there was a subtle, rotten smell that probably slipped through the ventilation shaft. But, anything was fair game, and when I closed the almost collapsing door, I tiredly jumped to the mattress.
At that moment, my river of adrenaline was leveled by the mushy landslide of its lather-like texture. It felt like a ready bathtub rather than a bed, so it was no wonder the bedbugs weren't here: they'd all drowned within the balloon-like pillows. Yet, I hoped I could've complained about its softness further because I could've sworn I heard footsteps calmly hurdling toward me. The workers had cleaned up the landslide too fast, and I was struggling to find a place to hide. The bed had no space under it for me to hide with the monsters, nor were there any cabinets I could hide in. The only option I had was the unnecessarily long curtains that were adjacent to the bed, so I tried hiding in the corner of the bed while I was blanketed by it.
But, thankfully, the footsteps stopped at a considerable distance—
(Knock, knock!), "Anyone there?"
"Wait, what?" I thought to myself.
Either the knocking on the door was from Bigfoot or her feet were like one.
It was the familiar voice of Jem "Londoner" Tarling, an assistant to the organization's leader, Nathan Miles. She came from Western Mississippi and moved here, disinterested in having Vicksburg put on her death certificate, to Durham then worked in a church before coming here.
I covered my mouth to hide my breaths as if the magic cloth of invisibility wasn't already enough. Because she was in her late forties, I could lie there thinking there'd be no wood to creak and rat me out. For almost half an hour, I tirelessly switched between squatting and standing up to make sure her similarly slick nature (to my parents) wouldn't catch me like a deer hunter.
Still paranoid, however, I tried making no noises when I went to get some rest, though I ended up waking up some would-be owl prey. I'd admit, though, that the mattress was like a Z-drug for me because when I was already half-asleep, I'd forgotten to turn off the cabinet lamp. And then, I wondered how Madam Tarling didn't notice it was on, but I've already gone too far into Dreamville to connect the roads.
Chapter 1: Mahogany's Role, Part 2 "SHORT-TIMERS"
"Community service ain't enough for him, huh? You want a life sentence?" I heard in the distance.
The air was tenderized, and levitation was like a sense; I couldn't pick up the heavy leaves foliage even if I lay prone. Of where I am was no question: it was the cherry farm, but its trees' trunks were elongated, but with their officiousness still there. Plump and succulent. Grenzeville looked more saturated. I thought: A qualm would be appropriate. It'd be good if that was true for longer, but it was then disturbed by a vulture. A calling. Did the jaunt have holes punched to them? Because where I had walked a few droplets ago, there was now a cottage. I went inside—it was as barren as my predictions—and there I went outside. To my inelegance, on the last step, a plank creaked, and a search and destroy captured me. At least use a handkerchief instead of rope.
A sentence woke me up, as it was rejoicefully uttered: "Jem! It's been a while, isn't it?"
More unusual things were brought in, however: Other than her prissiness gone, as if it ended up on the news about the Taco Bell Strangler, there was the smell of teen spirit saliva that tainted the mattress and I'd got a wet, niffy cheek. When my nonexistent eyelid opened, I saw the door bashed open. There was a line that ran through the wall beside it, with some wood dust on the floor.
Sleep-thinking, still drowsed but alarmed. "Miss Tarling… Is that you…?" I thought with ants in head like a TV static.
Before my arm had woken up, two shadows walked past, as if intentionally taunting or startling me. And the latter worked; I quickly realized it was Tarling's, and crushingly, my mother, with her lineamental bun.
I regretted not asking my father about his time with the Marvins and Arvins and how he escaped blitzes; it would've fared well for me. So, without holes in a Whac-A-Mole, it seems like I was going to get showered in hammers once I got past the ear pinching.
To soften up whatever she had left, I simply went outside and waited there, rigidly with my lips sucked. It seems like Tarling had sucked up all of my mother's attention through the straw of time; it also felt like hours before she finally waved a sarcastic goodbye and turned toward me. She probably made up in her mind: This little whippersnapper's chose bedbugs over sugar for friends.
The walk wasn't anything heartfelt either—no advises, no sunrises—it had rained all week, and the clouds aren't seemingly content yet. But, with the tensing up before, I walked as if my legs had braces instead of my bitter teeth. I didn't eat too much slices, though caries don't make you feel like falling through the ground to disappear completely. I'm like a captured Fritz awaiting the sound of a single bullet.
One step, I counted, then again. After that, however, I stepped on a puddle—then I felt something crawling in my shirt. It was a spider. Most kinds that are brave enough to approach me are the ones that'd make an on-the-fritz bite at you and run away. There was another this-little-whippersnapper thought again—I could see it through, with her imagining it on a faint throne—but as she caught wind of a black dot on my chin, she looked at it like a hyperbole, as if it was a Mephisto.
"What are you doing?"
I looked at her, then on the juices of the spider ironed by the heavy drops, then back on her. So that the insect won't foreshadow my fate, I waited 'till the rain washes away the thought in her mind. The odyssey stood still after that.
At home, when she slowly takes off her Calvin Klein, all I needed and hoped for was an anti-climax. Popping veins in my head, and with tingling hands, I jackknifed like a drunk truck toward my room and waited.
When the record player had already became a ceramic plate, she finally but unfortunately went into my room. I had it overly locked threefolds: two latch locks and the knob, though its protection lasted as long as an eggshell. You could've told me that I was going to be a bloodied photograph in the newspapers tonight, and I would've believed you—with her tone in the conversation with my father that I eavesdropped, a sarcastic turned serious one, about how the me-becoming-a-bum-hillbilly prophecy was true.
Footsteps came again—like Miss Tarling—but now instead with the anger of a disappointed mother. Extra loud, metatarsals more frigid. It wasn't an amble nor was it a long haul, and when she got to my room, moments later, she had already stood up right next to me when my head ran empty.
"How many times… do I need to tell you?"
I mustered up all my emotional strength. It occurred to me that something had gone wrong: Her voice was like a slab beaten down by the shoes of laughing bargoers, and a sinkhole underneath those mockeries. I tried not to show empathy toward her; she had treated me like a chattel, so I was like a now free fugitive that ran from Virginia to Pennsylvania and to Nova Scotia (through Montreal) that has returned. And I wished all the cherries were burned down and their souls left to rot.
"What's wrong?" I replied heavily, hoping to deter the debacle.
She then sat on my bed beside me, and like the creak that happened afterwards, she said:
"Either you make this an ultimatum or not, but I won't care, Carney."
"No, Ma. I— I want to know."
"I give you time to think."
The burning thought of the cherry farm came up again. I looked at the fire, then to her chin, then back to my lap. It felt like being the culprit in a police lineup.
"Many people dream about work as little as three times as hard as you. Some can't even dream it."
She now treated me as if I was a malady. I was disgruntled but sorrow. The air around us began to feel like a descending elevator—an invisible weight that would eventually crash upon you.
I was sure I didn't fully grasp the scope of the situation, so I chose to use my convenient deflection skills to absorb the fall, but regretfully so.
"You've got a stain on that checkered shirt, Mom."
"I don't want to hear anything else. Please, Carney."
"Why?"
Her kids-being-kids belief dissipated away, and the look on her face didn't do me good either. She lifted her legs, put her crossed her arms, and her head sloped downwards. A subtle snivel I heard. The thought of the cherry burning stuck out in my mind, and it punctured out, and so I was there: waiting in grips dotted with spikes. The weight of her Sisyphean turned Promethean task, carried by a tear, and soaked by the mattress.
"Mom, why'd you cry?" I let go.
I prayed to God to let me wipe the tears away, but now chained by the fabric that would painfully remind me of the bitter taste of the cherry. She had the stance of a last trench soldier, and her time in Vietnam might've toughened up her shell, but it was me. I was the redear of her story. My strongest bones couldn't stand again, to pick more cherries, from the droplet that contained all of the rainstorm's drops.
A few reconsiderations were made during the moment of silent that followed, trivial to major, but my mother had the former, which was her decision to leave now or later. Eventually when she did, the room was so quiet the fireflies in my ear have hummed, hungry for a noise. But the thought of that couldn't cheer me up, torn apart 'till I had to be bed-ridden.
That twilight, when the tears had hardened, I went to the bathroom to wash my feet. I'd forgotten to coming back home—"that could've made her even more angry," I thought.
While only a one and a half hour nap, I had two dreams shoved in a tight space like a grazier's pig farm after a months trip to Cancun. I'd dream of falling into vertical portals stacked onto each other like cakes after I'd done a sin, and this time wasn't an anomaly. The other one, I was walking on the outlines left out from the ceramic tiles of my floor, as if they were threads, carefully so as to not fall and fuck up with a wheeze.
Some languid sounds of two confidant voices came before the tiles while in the middle of my business. It probably came from the back side of our porch, and when I almost tipped over the accent table after sauntering like an asinine Charlie. I looked over past the wall, swag, and window: Both my parents, their hand and intergalactic problems propped under their chin, were standing idly overlooking the forest where the mold came from.
"What're they talking 'bout?"
It seemed like there was no dollars to get if I eavesdropped them, so I intentionally took a loud step, though not loud enough to make it sound like an accidental, explosive whiff. They, after all the problems and sloths, surprisingly welcomed me softly—my mother especially seemingly having a one-eighty. Now, with only two fates, dream one or two, I just need to pray I don't end up like the first-dream version of me, falling even further.
The winded path that stretched beyond Albemarle that divided the forest into two stood far but overshadowed by the perspective of two of my parents. I quietly greeted them:
"Hello?"
There was no choice but to disturb their only time of intimacy since their groove-driven college days; shared trauma does bond people, I repeated in my mind after what I've said. My father whispered to his right, to my mother, if the continental missiles and helicopters were coming for him and not me. With a slight moue-y smirk, her face's aurora casted, I doubted my decision to I've came in the first place. But, because I was caught a third time, an apology was needed to at least injure her murderous intentions.
"Am sorry, Ma."
"Why're you so sudden?"
Hard feelings were shouldered back by the disconnectedness of her reply. Maybe the old, evening the score trick, making a inapt compliment more random than television ads, could make peace in the eve.
"You got too much time flirting with your boyfriend?"
What the hell was that? It was my ears's job to see what he'd just said but my vision was still like a NatGeo camera zoomed into a predator and it felt as if I stood up too fast. The room went silent I've realized and by the time she sounds I would've already started a multinational food company. I waited more and more, 'till my ears was painted white. If everything had endings, this must be a one-of-a-kind, I thought. I tried moving my knees that were poured with cement tried to break away. And a buzzing, white paint drop fell into my eardrum. It felt like I've finished Have A Cigar.
Instantly the ramblings were over. She now spoke in a soft tone unlike a keyboard whose wheels are sprung back and forth which she sounded like previously; I'd guess the electromagnets finally knew where to go. Where to go in the semi-conversation was up to me now.
"Mom, you're alright?"
"What do you think?"
"I'll just go then…"
"No, no. It's fine."
"Okay."
I wandered clumsily like a one-wheeled bulldozer and landed sandwiched in the widened space between them. Their domination intimidated me and wiped away all the new-couple-on-the-block vibe that was there when I first walked in with clean feet. Now that I think about it, there was no point to wash it anyway—I'd done got outside on the porch again.
"So, how's you and her?" My father retaliated, still uncomfortable with the flood in my bedroom.
I was still a little bit drowsy, my breast covered with saliva from the nap, so I said, "Mackenzie? She ain't like me back."
"No, what?" He said in confusion with a crumb of laughter and disappointment.
"Okay."
"Okay what?"
"No. I mean, I don't know."
"Go take a nap after this, but I'm talking about the banter you had with your Mom last night."
"Eh? Oh, yeah."
I'd somehow mistaken "her" for a classmate of mine instead of my mother. Despite my corpse being taken back, I had to return to limpness when she looked at me with the same video-surveillance-look she gave when I was caught.
"Are you alright, Carney?" Said my mother.
"Uh, yes."
Thank God after all of that I didn't have to go through another yipping.
"Don't just skip over the classmate thing." My father interrupted me viscerally in my cavities.
"Oh no," I repeated in said cavity.
"Why not?"
"You embarrassed?"
"No, no."
"C'mon, Carney. I get it. Don't worry 'bout it."
"You're gonna say how I'm still eleven."
"We were worse. Me and your Mom go all the way back."
Here comes the sun, its ubiquity parallel to love-rambling in my family tree of cherries, like the bond of veins and arteries. Although I'd give him credit: I'd never heard of this before and I can feel my legs crossed from admitting that I was interested.
"We were neighbors back on Abe Street in the 60s. You remember Abe Street?"
Ancient houses back on the street named that because of a puny bullet had flew past me over the years landed with little fuel. It was the first taste of my mother's citifiedness, subtle from the erosion of landslides of cherry soil; it was where I'd visit our grannies (from both of my parents' side) for Oktoberfest and Thanksgiving and Christmas, but now it's turned into a hospital for cancer patients. They lived as neighbors 'till my maternal grandmother passed away from cancer and they all sold their homes for almost half a million dollars. A few years later, all my grannies died. I still miss the wise slices of brownies.
"I do."
"Yeah, we met there. As neighbors."
"You're worse than middle school couples, is that?"
"You could say I was desperate. But that desperation was passed to the circumstances. Then after that all of us were desperate."
"Y'mean Vietnam-level desperate?"
He looked at me as if I'd done a wild throw that brought us whitetail antlers. There's nothing in the world that'd make him smile more than coincidences.
"Mhm. We-uh, disagreed each other at first like siblings. And that slowly turned to something. But unfortunately there was no Romeo and Juliet. Ya just picture Cupid growing a tree instead of an M16 rifle with a 5 point 56 millimeter heart bubble."
"A little too much, maybe?"
"You get the point, Carney."
I was awakened a little bit again after he coughed louder than mice's footsteps in the attic as he finished the sentenced. The soft sticks of the cigarette pack on the porch ran out as he let out the last puff, and so he went to throw them out and left my mother and I alone like an irate bull and a peasant gladiator and he was the chains that held the beast, or not hopefully.
He then cleared his throat and spoke, "Remember that book you were readin' a week ago?"
My iris widened and there was a sensation in my eye that felt like it'd shot up forward and the muscles in it tightened and stretched. Like a sudden blast of a river stream I was drowned in goosebumps when he told me about it. To be honest, though, I'd forgotten the name of the book but I knew it was bad. I knew it was supposed to be kept off from anyone 'cause I remember I'd gotten the book from an older kid or from some sort of lost area in the school. Either way it was definitely not having a birthday gift spoiled to the celebrants.
"…What book?"
"Y'know when we were sittin' outside?"
"Yeah, yeah. That book, yeah…
"Never knew you liked reading."
"I know, Dad. I'm sorry about messing your typewriter."
"Hey, don't apologize to me. You already did, ain't it right? But I suggest you say sorry to Mom right there," he chimed as he turned toward the entrance door to our home from the porch. Wait, did Mom disappear?
"Hold on, where's Mom?"
"The kitchen, probably."
"I'm still nervous about it…"
"Aye, keep your chin up, Carney. You wanna read that book again?"
"I forgot where it went, though. It wasn't that good of a book anyway."
"You look a bit enticed reading it, ain't you? C'mon, let's find it. I'll show ya somethin'.
He went to his room which was down the hallway while I galloped fast. You know that incentive to just disappear from the person who gave you a bad look? 'Cause there I was trying to nudge my way to be in front of my father so he could tuck me away with his shadows 'cause I didn't want my mother to see what I was doin'. Before I could step into the room he excused his way in and dashed to then kneel down on his cabinet. What was on top of it contrasted its insides which had of what seemed to be oddly shaped books tightly stacked together on the corner and filling like a quarter of the space inside. Square, thin, and with plastic covering them. Maybe he squished them too hard.
"What's this supposed to be?"
He exclaimed, "Vinyl!" As he showed one of those books with both hands pinching the upper corners. "I got this one from an old store back in the Durham."
The cover had a factory with its four giant chimneys spewing smoke out and a blob of pink flying between the ones that are on the front side of the building. It just looked like what old and greedy businessmen would build in people's backyards. Clouds indistinguishable from the black smoke. Although the Industrial Revolution could've started from this exact place the streets below were as empty as wheat farms after they'd moved to the machines. Well, definitely didn't expect those things to be on a book cover. Didn't help either that it'd no text in it.
"Is this a Newton textbook?
"Thank God it's not. Let me show you. Here, Dad will let you open it."
It was smooth that you can hear the swishes from across the Atlantic and there was an opened flap on top. A black disc encased in a clear plastic sleeve with a sky blue sticker on the center and to the left a dog weirdly howling like a wolf in broad daylight. I took a closer glance at the fluff of its hair and the smell of old rags shot up my nose and when I tried getting rid of it he took it away from my hands gently before I could hear footsteps coming from the door.
"It's your Mom."
There weren't anything to sit on so I just stood there awkwardly like I was a janitor in the CEO's office. Sound of wind coming through the window as the curtains unfurled. I focused on the fading yellow color of the fabric and arrows pointing upwards scattered like polka dots, separated by darker gold stripes. But before it could stop flowing as if it was a scroll I could hear the door swung open.
"What are you two doing in here?"
"Hey, Ma."
"What?" She insistently asked. "Chris, what's with that? Are you trying to get Carney to step off further like you did with me?"
"It's nothin'. Don't talk 'bout that in front of him. We're trying to find this little man's book."
"Where did it go?"
"Still ain't there. He looks a bit sad about it."
I got a little bit thrown off by that and offendedly whispered, "Dad!"
"Don't worry, she ain't care about the book."
"Mom, can— Can I ask you something?"
She spoke disagreeably, but with the tiniest crumb of interest: "Sure, Carney,"
"Are you still mad at me?
"Well, what do you think?"
"I'm sorry about last night…"
"It's okay," she confessed as she raised her arm to hide her slight smile with her hand.
I tried making the silence that was gonna happen after that by asking her something that'd steer it off. "What was you and Dad talking about before? I never got to know why you left the city for Vietnam and then came to Mahogany after that."
"You'll understand when you grow up. But for now, you should go help your Dad tidy up that mess he did."
"Is there like something I can't know?"
"It's a tricky to answer," she reluctantly said as she was leaving for the kitchen. "Just listen to Mom and stack those up."
There was a burning sensation of my stomach acid that compelled me to find out what it is. But then again, she had indirectly shot an arrow of insult and reckoned me as a merely unwise child that should not know any better than playing and studying. The discouragement far outweighed it, though I decided to place it in a Pandora's box for safe opening later. And whatever later means I feel would not come too soon in the future 'cause somehow she didn't mind about this collection of his that was just lying in his bedroom.
"She doesn't care 'bout this?"
"Yeah, it's somethin' dad's obsessed with since high school. That's why I ain't mind you reading that book you got."
"Huh, what'd you mean?"
"I know it's got some stuff in it."
"No, no. Please, Dad. I can't do this right now."
"It's fine, Carney. As long as you keep in your faith, Dad is not worried too much. At least you're reading, ain't that right?"
"Yeah… Sigh, it's alright. I'm sorry for everything too."
"You can rest for a few days. I can see you're exhausted. Dad doesn't want you giving bad impressions on your birthday."
"Wait, really?"
"Why not? I'll ask your Mom later. Now, listen to your Mom and tidy these up."
Chapter 1: Mahogany's Role, Part 3 "Habenaria"
I returned with my mother after a few months had passed since my birthday and went on a morning walk again. There was still a piece of cherry-flavored diabetes inside A crash that coincidently preceded Green Ramp. All the roads even the mushy and muddy ones where you'd find a sea of worms living under them led to makeshift memorials made of star banners spangled around electric poles. The morning smoke, crushed under the light air above lay on the ground, as it condensed my lungs as if it was from a cigar and my eyes were watery.
Nothing changed even though I was already twelve: Rural life will never change unless you find gold or oil. All we found, however, were medleys of ways to celebrate God. Southwest of the farm there's an English-colonial home that was usually for rendezvous and a semi-restaurant that was only for the Ezekiel people. Anyone other than us who merely passes by would leave with a feeling that they were almost to be decapitated by a priest, especially toward the rap head and the negative creep youths.
My mother with her arbitrary overprotectiveness covered my eyes whenever it glanced at the mere shot of the plastic-encased flowers that lay.
I was "too young," she said.
Her hands might've covered my face but my ear was as bright as day but as dark as Flint's garden. I'd not like to have my head spiked over a cross and acted loungingly like Cromwell's so I just tucked it under 'till we arrived at the haunt and prepared our leather clothing so the juices wouldn't stain a perfectly bleached shirt.
Unluckily for me the familiar face of Tarling was chiseled behind the employees-only kitchen door as if the customers weren't employees already. Like the equivalent of your mother meeting her friends in a Sears, she greeted us and I grabbed the already running out baskets stacked on top of each other while I waited for the two to talk and talk since they were in the unbreakable bond of shared trauma. A perfect time to walk outside and look at the clothed sunrise and pretend to have started work. I went outside. The sun looked like a salted egg yolk and grayed whites. the clouds, still with veins and proteins try to miserably protect it. And then the wind blew them over and I was blinded 'cause I was staring at it. Immediately I caught a glimpse of a person sitting at one of the back porches of the residence with a stogie. I could subtly tell that it was Andre. One of the folks who was originally born here in Grenzeville and/or Mahogany.
Two days from the date seven years ago when I was seven I remember during a gathering like the one happening later I was chomping on baked potatoes as fast as the monsters that would catch my brothers when they were paying hide-and-seek in the middle of the woods. Soft, airy, light. It was easy to swallow like mayonnaise. But I was too fast. I remember it more vividly than the day Grandma died. And when something is light it ain't mean it is nothing. It still had something. So off they go to my throat and hang in there. I tried to cough. No air came out and only a gag did. I breathed and only the heavy feeling you feel behind the tongue came out. At that point it was like a rock. I could've swallowed Mount Rushmore and it would be less solid. Andre saw through my struggle from the comfort of the barbecue and quickly ran to hug me. I thought I had died and everyone was going to hug me as a final goodbye before I went to the clouds where outsiders wouldn't go. But then I was slingshotted down back to the Earth by my torso. Too early, ain't it? There was a massive chunk of potatoes on the grass right in front of where I stood. Everyone gave me water to drink and after that it was only my mother's words that could tell. The hide-and-seek was probably canceled, as my parents didn't want to risk another one (or two) of their children dying.
Despite all that I had forgotten his last name even though I could taste its sweetness and saltiness on my tongue so I just ignored him lest he notice me and say hello like he does with everyone. He'd always do it even toward someone who served him pancakes one time. Who knows, maybe if he carried me through the Cambodian jungles and crossed the ocean to that Malaysian or Indonesian strait I would then remember his last name, but I wasn't too worried so I kept walking around myself and slowly turned to the meadow for the smoggy air. That was when I heard a voice from afar.
"Hey, where you goin'?" He shouted and yelled an inaudible sentence.
"Already?" I yelled in my heart.
The crickets rhythmically chirping in the grove surrounding us didn't help either, though I assumed he was trying to make small talk. I don't think in that distance a small talk could stretch just enough for us to hear each other. It was a little tantalizing in a good way.
"You's still a little kid, why are you still riding with those?" He said with sarcastic dismay but left a little chuckle at the end to soothe the rough edges out.
"What's the matter?" I screamed as quietly as I can.
The lever inside my head hadn't clicked yet—ain't know what he was talking about. For a good minute. There was a pause, but fortunately, no reserves were there. His tone could tenderize everyone.
"That li'l thing on you!"
I realized it was the baker's apron that I'd taken and worn instead of the one that was sticky and with dark spots tainted with pulp and cyanide.
"Did your father teach you anythin'?"
"You mean my Mom?"
"Same thing, I reckon. I suggest that you pull those things off. It's just desperately hanging on there."
At this point my grumpiness toward his voice far away made me feel I was half deaf and had reached the tipping point.
"Isn't it too late?"
"Well, tough luck, then."
Even though I had gotten caught dirtying a perfectly good apron for no reason I still tried to hang it as if it was as clean as a screen whose plastic cover was just peeled off. I went back to the restaurant and put it off to hang it on a rack. But despite looking like her face was spiked by the numbness of the conversation with Tarling spotted me: a speck of dust under that plastic, and scolded me. Seemed like season two was happening.
"Ma, it ain't no problem. I can just clean them later."
"What if Madam Tarling needs it?"
"She already got one."
"You'll never know if someone needs another one."
"It won't take a while, I promise."
"No."
"Why, Ma. Didn’t you want to keep off being like Cassandra?"
The light coming from the door leading to the porch was obscured as the words left my lips. So still a shard of darkness goes noticed. A figure. It was Andre and his shit stacked six feet five high.
Superficial things turned irritation don't go well on my skin. I didn't know what compulsion pushed me into the hole of a swear jar but it was likely that, so I retracted back and went on. I've become sick of the injury from the tear burn so I pushed aside the cherry stain on my apron and my heart and greeted him to please my mother.
"Hi, mister."
He went to put his pipe on the order station without any regard to me as if the smoke had gone to his ears instead of his lungs.
"Carney, I know you want to go clean that and ignore me. But I don't think Andre's on your side either," she said with a wit stain.
"Fine, I'll just do it now."
"Then you're going to be late with the cherries."
"Oh my God, please just wait a minute."
I hurried toward the balcony where Andre had been before. I was forced to. The option other than the hose right by the balcony was the kitchen. Even though some may need their eggs in their gut, I didn't want to poison everyone at the dinner with tapeworms. Now it's just a matter of him interrupting me and talking about how to condition leatherware and leather boots like Bubba Gump if he was a hipster. A few footsteps in front of him. He was checking something on his flip phone. They were rare. I doubt he'd greet me at all so I just confidently walked by him. This was probably the first time someone went by him without getting a box of chocolatey words; my proudest title so far. When I got to the grass there was little to do other than scrubbing the surface with my hand as non-gently as possible. Eventually the stain faded out surprisingly. I didn't have soap. At this point I was getting too full of myself and thought I could rid away of the slight hue discoloration left. I scrubbed for a good several minutes, and such a little thing made my legs feel like it was spiked inside and out by a cactus.
Like the cut on my face which I could still barely see, Andre went up to the balcony with a soap. Fuck. I said it even though I knew he could've heard me. With that much attention to his surroundings he could find the Holy Grail. His eyes were as big as Fruit Gushers. I guess he was there for just a smoke. The ashtray on the porch fell as he tried to put the big block of tobacco of his, and the huge crack with jagged wooden grains that could bury the ashes under your vein. I immediately ran to pick it up. The grass looked as dead as snow on a broken TV.
"Here you go, mister."
"Boy, you forgot about the hose."
"Huh?"
The sillcock was still on and the water flowed like the notes to pay for the electricity bill.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!"
"It's all fine. Just turn it off."
After all that I tried going back to my mother. He stood right where the door frame was so I had to squeeze in. My mother wasn't there. Wood creaks behind me.
"Your mom's outside, by the way. She's still talkin'."
"Yeah, I figured, mister."
"Before you leave, your dad's got something to tell you."
"Dad? Why are you telling me and not himself?"
He crouched down and the fragile old wood creaked again. Can't anyone fix this place?
"Well, your daddy's kind of adamant about telling it himself. And don't ask me, ask him."
"Why, though?"
"I don't know, I'd already told you should ask him."
"What does he want you to tell me about then?"
"Nah, nothing. Just inheritance stuff."
"…"
"You know what that means?"
"No, mister."
"Basically he's gonna give his stuff to you when he gets all old and coughing every day."
"Why is telling it now?"
"No idea either. Go ask him. I'm on the same side as you. He should've not told you this early."
"Can't you tell him to ask me directly?"
"I did. But he's more hotheaded than a blister."
"So, what inheritance he'd give me then?"
"You'll become the Keeper here. Just like him."
"Didn't he want me to go to college and get a job in Durham?
"I don't think Miles would like that."
"Oh, okay. I guess my job in the future's pretty cool. I'll go now, mister."
"No, no. Come back for a second."
"Why is this important?"
"You'd be working for Miles."
"That's nice."
"You're the last person I'd expect to work for Miles," he laughs and scoffs, "but just do your job well. He's probably telling you now so you'd be prepared."
He then picked an orchid from his pockets and handed it to me as if it was something everyone conveniently carried in their pants.
"What's that, mister? You're carrying flowers in your pants now?"
"It's for garnish. Cassandra's been using these to juju up the clam chowder."
"Well, your wife definitely needs your help, mister. Also, is there some black magic in the chowder?"
"What's up with that? The only thing black is the dirt on the petals, ain't it right?"
"You don't clean them when you put them in your mouth?"
"Of course we don't, what’d you think?" He laughed sarcastically.
"Only people 'round here eat flowers, ain't it?"
"We smoke them leaves a lot, though. Here." He hands me the orchid he was holding."
"What for?"
He turned away to put his spring roll of burnt leaves on the ashtray. I never got a reply, perhaps because he was distracted.
The orchids I doubt were a gift, however. But I chose not to abstain and put them in my pockets and dirtying them up and went to my mother. I kept some on my palms to inspect. Some petals were intertwined and some were surpluses, but those xanthous ones were handpicked carefully with attention as if he was doing it for the adornment of his home or something. Unregretfully, once I saw the details, my arms and my pupils reflected the morning sunlight more than a few seconds ago. I threw them away and they sunk below the soft and gnarly soil faster than a boat anchor.
At that time there was the faint hint of a shadow behind me and I thought nothing of it and believed it was just the ashes of wind. I look back.
"What the, Andre?"
"You know these flowers are especially strong in the winter. No good in trashing them."
"I only threw a few, some are still here in my pocket."
"It's fine, I didn't say you couldn't throw it out. It's something we do."
"Is it like tradition for it? I'm still learnin'."
"Yeah, I guess you could call it that. We do that especially with orchids."
I knew those orchids were not native here with those odd petals. "Did they come from outside the North?"
"Nope, they aren't the usual bloomers you see in people's backyards; they came from the east. They're called moth orchids."
"Long journey for a flower huh? How'd you get them?"
"Found it in the garden, but they're still the same with other orchids. Don't get too excited. It's like you and me. Your journey to get this title ain't different from McVeigh trying to bomb people or Bill Clinton climbing to become the president. It's still a journey. But if you just went away before you'd just end up in the garbage can. Which some people end up in. Stuck being trash 'til they go to the ocean that is retirement homes. You wanna end up like that?"
"I see my Dad every day lookin' happy and sad so I guess there's a middle ground. Half trash, half human."
Then he slung his back backward and then he stared downward diagonally at me like a Disney parent.
"It isn’t like that, really. Everyone's human, nobody's trash. It's their manner that may be trash, or they are treated like trash. That's what is different from Clinton and McVeigh. If you're trash, then that makes me trash. We're the same in the eyes of God. We're sinners, who have sinned over and over again. That makes us inferior to that garbage by that corner right there. But God's the only qualified judge for us, and he ain't see us as that. Spoiled trash like the government sees us as if we're trash. But He sees us as his creation. With potential. So, are you the spoiled trash for yourself, or are you a creation of God?"
"I'll think 'bout it, but for now, I guess I'm okay with it."
"Think about what, Carney?"
"How Miles works, that's all."
"He's a complicated man; I ain't betting all my chips for ya. But good luck nonetheless."
"Carney, it's been half an hour, where are you?" The air in the distance shouted at me.
"Thank you, mister. For the orchids, yeah. I'll be going now. I'll give ya the cherries if you want."
"No, no thanks. I've gotten enough of that. You can call me Andre, it's fine for me."
I retracted and went to my mother. The sun's still looking like an egg more than ever. Hopefully we can have a get-together later at night with everyone; Cassandra's been cooking for two days now. Especially the oysters and their yolk-like flesh. I wish the Atlantic was by our doorstep. Every day 'till I go to high school I could have them for dinner.
Chapter 1: Mahogany's Role, Part 4 "Entanglement"
"Carney, your brothers are already in their suits. You better wake up!"
My pillows were all gone and my desaturated blanket that had this tribal, kaleidoscopic pattern my mother got from an antique shop was clenching me like a cobra. I could have sworn it was Sunday.
"It's still the weekends, Ma."
"It's important, Carney. We have to go."
"What are you talking about, the schedule nor does Miles say anything about it."
"You don't remember what happened four days ago?"
"World Trade? The ceremony was a few days ago."
"No, Carney…" She spoke so softly I couldn't make out my first name. "Just get ready and be quick."
The calendar that was a dust away from falling off the bedside counter read Saturday. I ain't wrong about it still being the weekends at least. The sun was already blaring as if it was midday already and when I stood up feeling like I was going to go to the cherry fields again. It's been years. Then there was a running stream of water that came from the bathroom. Why does everyone here treat their sink like a field of wheat? Before I could try to turn it off I realized I almost forgot to flip the calendar. The hard paper rolled back and it read: S-E-P, sixteen, 2001.
I could sense that a figure was standing behind me, Jordan. Then he subsequently and snobbishly mocked me when he passed by the door. "What're you doing? Is the calendar your soulmate or something?"
"Give me time God damn it, I'm still a quarter awake." I looked slightly above.
"Hawthorne died and he's expecting prayers. You're here just slapping ass."
Ah, so that's what happened. Sorry for forgetting the funeral, Mr. Hawthorne.
"Oh, fuck you. Let me have my moment. Also the tap's runnin'."
"Your Mom didn't close it for you. She didn't want to get her hands dirty."
I went to the bathroom and I was immediately brought to a Four Seasons, oddly austere and pristine. They were arranged like we were going to rent it out for a month. I went to the sink and splashed an ocean of water like I wasn't also wasting it but it felt like I didn't anyway. Fully awaken. Enough energy to pick up my toothbrush. Swinging it back and forth, staring blankly at the mirror version of me. A dark faint spot faintly appeared behind the tip of my ear. I was startled somehow. The white noise accompanied by a river stream blanked out and it was utter silence. Unable to freeze or else I would be unhygienic. Am I risking my heart for the cleanliness of the facade?
Returned to bed, crashed upon it and I felt never more bonded with something or someone. But all that disappeared. It seemed my room was where Mom put all the dust from the floor, with the sunlight casting rays penetrating through the box pleat curtains. Or it was just too bright. I looked out the window when there were shadows cast on it that seemed humanoid and when I took a quick look a part of my cornea was burnt and there was a black dotted spot that etched into my vision for the next fifteen minutes. It was more visible when I blinked fast. With that in mind I don't know how and why people were outside their porches already; I could barely see it from the distance since I would actually burn my cornea if I stared longer. They were dressed as if they were attending their wedding ceremonies and I felt a little bit of embarrassment after searching through my wardrobe and only finding a bloodied suit that was definitely too small to fit now. Wait, blood stains? What the fuck! Did I just kill someone?
"Jordan, why's there blood here?" He was munching on a sandwich staring off at the window like his eyes were black holes. Do I need sunglasses like it’s a hearing aid or something?
"I don't know, I should be asking you."
"Argh, why did I even ask you anyway."
"Must be that one time your nose bled so much you felt dizzy."
"You're just making stuff up now."
"Why would I lie? That spot looks as big as a stabbing wound. If you murdered someone I'd immediately kill you right there."
"Jordan, I don't have time. Ask Mom if there's anything I can wear."
I immediately went back to check on the wardrobe. Clothes folded like messy ocean waves from the times I also had to scour for a polo that I liked or fit with the colors of my mandatory cross pendant. You had to use it or else Mephistopheles drags you into the underworld under your bed. That's what Miles said. I once didn't care and my parents didn't let me eat dinner and breakfast. In the middle of the fuss Mom was making I noticed a coarse suit. It was as brittle as sandpaper when I barely touched it from afar, kept away by the sliding closet door.
"Ma, wait, I found it!" She didn't come at all. "Jordan! Where's Mom?"
"She's outside already."
"You didn't even call her?"
"Mhm. I'm not your bitch."
"It was a favor. Oh my God, fine. I found it already, alright?"
He told me again to be quick and that had been like salt and pepper now. Somebody's have to put other spices to make it interesting and I've gotten bored. Subsequently, footsteps faded out and the switches were turned off; it seemed Jordan had gone out already. The house felt more damp when he closed the door. I had to be fast. I quickly dressed and got into my death shoes. A pair of black Nikes. It was the only Nikes in town, I'm pretty sure. The skies made me feel like I was in a marble and the clouds faded away with the winter. It's still spring and summer and it's already this hot. When we got to the car before I could get the chance of finally not breathing in snow there was a slight feeling that my armpits were damp. I forgot to put deodorant.
Too late now, I guess. "Don't worry, the A.C.'s on," he said.
Well it didn't matter if it was blasting at hurricane speeds or turned off. I ended up ignoring it and looked at the houses passing by at speeds that made it look like mere lines. Why did we drive in the first place?
"It's already ten, would we be late?" My father harshly asked and turned toward my mother as if he tried to subconsciously answer my question.
"Just drive, don't focus on the time." My mother replied.
Jordan, Fred, and I were in the backseat and awkwardly tried to not stare at each other knowing that the ghost of Hawthorne could haunt us if we were to even acknowledge that we were late. I guess Mom and Dad are getting amnesia tonight. 'Cause it felt like my bones had folded in my sleep I tried stretching my legs and when I pushed on my father's seat there was a crunching noise. A sheet of paper perhaps. Before I could reach for it the church was already shining darkly through the window.
When I still felt like the car was moving my mother had already gotten off. I followed her and my father inside before almost getting my fingers sliced off by the annoyingly scrawny entranceway. It was a stark dark when we opened the door. Still, however, with the sun rays shining through the stained windows that were already darkening from rust. Hopefully it can hide away the circles of sweat that have reached my shoulders. We stuck out like a cyst but when the shame kicked in when the big doors opened we immediately sat down on the only seat that was left. Nobody stared at us fortunately. There was one thing, however, that didn't feel quite there. It was already full and how the people outside before came into the church was another sack of beans.
A church service was to be two hours long so I had plenty of time to find comfort on the wooden seats that had little bumps to make your ass last shorter than the rotting paint on the outer walls of the church. When the pastor rose he told us to pray. I felt everyone was moving their arms up and when they were praying I tried to knock myself back down into dreamland by resting my crossed fists. But Jordan slightly to my wrist and I took it as a sign to stop. It only went on for a good fifteen minutes. It usually lasts longer. The disappointment kicked in and there was a slight grumpiness that hopefully no one noticed. Until a hand reached out to my arms. It was Andre, nestled between my father and Tarling. Oh, shit.
"Carney, Carney!" He whispered.
"Mister?"
He took a cross pendant from what I assumed was his pocket. I dragged my hand around my neck and the only bump was my Adam's apple. I had forgotten my cross pendant.
"You forgot this?"
"Yeah, um. I'm so sorry."
"You're lucky nobody noticed."
He handed me it as if I were a sheep who was putting on a wolf mask in a pack. Cough, cough, cough, I heard. My Dad tried to be silent and closed his mouth, but it still sounded like blood was gonna come out. When the pastor had finished praying I saw him with his eyes bulging out his cheeks and it moved ever so slightly at us. Fucking hell when he stared at our section: I felt my chest was going to be ripped out and my heart chewed faster than it could beat. They sat down as calm as ever but my legs were trembling so I think I stood out. Both Jordan and my father stared at me as I sat last.
"Where did you get that?" My father told me.
"What?"
"That pendant."
I thought he could hear Andre whispering but I guess his coughs were too loud. "Andre gave me."
"Where'd he get it?"
"I have no idea. You ask him."
"He might've saved your life."
"Oh, come on, Pa! Why do I need this anyway?"
"Weird people are gonna catch you the second they see you didn’t wear it. Won't even take them a second for them to find out."
"That's something Fred would say."
The whole church thing lasted for about an hour. We left on foot and there was no homeschool today. We thought the church would be a great free parking space. My father also wanted to create a makeshift Netherworld portal in the garage or something or whatever he's gonna make there. We walked homeward to our paint-stenched bungalow and the sun had orange zest sprinkled on it and it was more laid back and easier to see. I washed my legs and feet and went on to my beaten Playstation. I forgot how it even got here. My brothers were all in the restaurant helping with the tables and overturned fabrics while I sat at home in case the portal brought my father into eternal damnation. And I was right: He called me while in the middle of a game and his coughing was loud so I didn't respond this time. The niche game had the title Grand Theft Auto so I just turned off the television. I don't want the police to be dismantling the license plates of our car back in church. The stark white of my room bleached my hand and the wind of the air conditioner swept it away while my body was solid like mini icicles in a freezer. My feet were the only limbs attached, warm from the wool of the carpet. I barely stood up to open the door and help him.
Its coldness made my birch door and froze it to mahogany. When it opened the air outside, warm from the oddly quiet machinery from the garage, made me colder for some reason. I came out like I had frostbite in my eyes as if Mom was cooking curry now. Maybe that's why he's been coughing all August. Left, a wall with white popcorn, somehow shiny and still a little wet; right, a black void and the wireless stove with black glass, and the only things were four white rings and the blue LEDs of the moving dishwasher; and U-turn, a cacophony of mismatched colored boxes on rusty metal racks and Dad with rainbow wires and their twisted inner copper sticking out on his hands and some lodged into his nostrils. The fingertips and nails looked gray and black but more worryingly his nose had a little dark red spot as if he’d just eaten a handful of volcano rocks. Before him was a block of nuts and bolts with a shopping cart-like handle; heavy smoke with heaps of ashes where it came from accumulating on the floor and painting the naked concrete. It looked like a shitty automatic stroller.
"What's that supposed to be, Pa?"
"It's a surprise."
"Oh, just tell right now. It's probably for washing the dishes or something."
"As much as I resent your Mom for buying that shithouse of a washer, it is not, Carney."
"It's great, alright? Life's already hard enough. So, what is this thing you've been cooking up?"
"A lawnmower, actually. Grenzeville's turning into the Amazon if I don't make this. Our grass is already pretty tall."
"Just get Mom to buy them from the furniture store down in Durham."
"That woman's done bought enough stuff! Her spending's almost a thousand dollars this fall."
When he turned around and I was trying to come up with a throwback, "Hold on, what's that in his back?"
"Wait… is there a little bit of blood on your shoulders."
"Ah, the handle was pretty sharp and I just happened to walk by. Don't worry."
"Your face looks pretty covered in smoke…"
"I…"
(Thump!)
He came down upon the floor to smell the perfume-smelling ash on the floor like it was some Colombian cocaine. Perhaps the smoke from the mower was too much but not a dozen packs of cigs—he was perfectly fine with the former. So I went and grabbed his head by the neck and turned him over so he wouldn't overdose. Glitters of burnt dry wood float away from his cheeks as if trying to run away from him. There was a sense that I had to slap him cheek to cheek twice in a row to wake him up. He'd been doing this for years and never once did he catch wind of what had happened just a handful of breaths ago, and every time his chest was turned upright and then yanked to the left it'd wake 'em. Though one thing's for sure, my family, let alone myself, never did it on the floor.
And never did I go to the gym or nothin', so I risked tearing a fiber in my arm just holding him up like a tree trunk covering my cave hole. If he falls, we're both dead, and he's about seventy pounds heavier than me. One, two, three. I lifted his head then his neck and with that his back followed suit. One, two, three four, I switched my arm for my leg to keep him from falling face flat on the floor again. At that moment I stuck up my finger as close to his nostrils as I could: There was a little bit of an exhale on the right one. I probably still had quite an evening to spend. I jerked back my leg and pushed his belly; one, go; two, go; three, tuck his hand away; four, switch; five… Then I tried to lie down for a while but my senses were not working and I ended up liquifying my mushy but flaky brain from smashing my head too hard. Gravity fucks people hard.
It's been over thirty seconds and he's yet to open both his nostrils. Shit.
I pushed with whatever were my arms and legs at this point at his center of mass. His face slouched toward the unpainted, rough concrete with tiny blood drops that dotted his skin like it was acne, and the tips of his beard painted gray from aging and ashes, and a slither of crimson red. All I could do was put a dirty, blackened towel from a small barrel to cushion him. This is fucking humiliating. Deviating from that single meant I had to waste seconds worth more than Bill Gates' stock, and his limp body went up, down, up, down from me trying to raise and push him mid-air to give more momentum. We reached the couch and despite the Italian leather I had to disperse the dust everywhere to filter his nasal hair. Rotating, shaking, jolting. No increases in the market—I felt like I had all my life savings on American Airlines and saw everything had collapsed. Please, Dad, don't make me ever forget more things. It is already too hard for me to even stand up.
Though I sprinted carefully I tripped on a carpet thread just as I grabbed the handset, partially snapping the telephone cord. I went back up to phone Mom. The rubber buttons better not get fucking stuck. Winds carried the flow of the air conditioner from my room and froze me but wasn't sufficient; my skin, hair, and nose kept running. Cold and hot, at the same time. Everything tasted like salt and wet as the sands of shores, granular milliseconds felt as long as what the ringing would normally buzz and drag on at a constant note. My lady, hurry up and pick up the damn call!
"Carney, hello?"
"Mom, come here right now. I don't have time. Just come here!"
"We barely have any gas, we can't reach the nearest hospital!"
"It doesn't take that long, please ma."
Okay, okay, are you using the telephone behind the microwave?"
"Why in the hell is that important? Just come right down, come on!"
"Carney, we're going to get wiretapped. Don't tell me you called nine-one-one."
"My God, that doesn't matter. Dad's limp, he's barely there!"
"…"
"Test, test, hello? Ma?"
The buzzing continued as melody-like whirls of crashing and fiery airplanes over the ocean.
At this point anything was a help: Putting smelling salts on snuff spoons that would look like I was trying to get him high from actual cocaine would be fair game. I dragged him down to the floor and all the tendon-snapping effort was crashing down, useless and worsening the fearful thought of a bleak augury. From what I can remember, you've got to press down hard on the chest. Chest compressions, yes. SPRs. I crossed my hand as if I were praying and stretched it out and thrust repeatedly—pressuring with the upper part of my wrist. That was what I could remember from the School of Ezekiel Youths. And so because I wasn't too sure I switched pressure points on my hand between each compression. The bottom joint, the entire palm itself, fingertips, and even knuckles.
Cascading noises from the littlest optimism I had on the right side of my brain sang I'm Only Sleeping while the left side screamed of murder: Wake the fuck up!
Suddenly the flows of strings and a flap of flesh were muted by striking against the room. She knocked and punched and tried kicking down the mahogany door like it was made of toothpicks. It sounded unnervingly sharp like Nicholson barreling down his axe upon the door and shattering it to turn his spouse into a decapitated, doused corpse. In this case, though, the corpse is Nicholson, and we're not trying to kill anyone. We had a mutual, vomit-inducing conclusion, that we had to call an ambulance from here. There are barely any telephone lines in this area that are connected to the city, but if the government can wiretap us through the one underground phone line about a spiderweb thick in circumference that we never use, we can speak a word or two with the Telephone of Death.
"Carney, don't call the ambulance here."
"It's either us running out of breath dragging eighty kilos of dead weight to the city or Dad!"
"We still have a bit of gas, we can just drive to the mall fifteen minutes away."
"Please, please, can you just call them, Mom?"
"No, you do it!"
"Wait, what for?"
"Carney, they rang up. Tell them, tell them!"
"Yeah, I know. Which mall are we going to?"
"Procul Village!"
"Procul Village Mall, we're going there right now. Nineteen seventy whatever Yellow Ford Escort. We can't drive to the hospital. He's collapsed in the car!"
The operator blew a static hurricane over the phone like it was his first day and was trying to figure out how to run from the winds.
"Okay, honey, can you check if he's still breathing for me?"
"CXL, nine, seven, ten…
[…]
…He's breathing but it's going away!"
"Help's on the way, alright? Stay calm and(static)panic—"
…
"Ma, I think we should go."
"Go get the keys."
Chapter 1: Mahogany's Role, Part 5 "Subsequent Escort to Vegas"
They supposedly made it to the aisle when I was still tying shoelaces on my cream-colored-due-to-wear Sneakers and now I feel like a tumbleweed in a Californian ranch. Even my brothers aren't this impatient. She had left them back in the restaurant and they were coming on foot. The third time's the charm but it's been four times my father's a strong man and pneumonia got him like three times by now and they all went away after a week but it took Miles triple the time to cover the costs. Funny how this hospital has the cheapest medical bills you can find in Durham and it's still three digits. Anthrax may take a blow in the United States but the hospital visits are the quakers of its pillars.
I still had to show up to the waiting room which I'm yet to stumble upon within the crisscrosses of the hospital's filthy clean white halls. The front lobby had hallways everywhere on the sides and behind the front counter; they could've put a hole in the ceiling and put the Alzheimer's treatment there if they could. I went inside all of them and I probably looked like Vincent Vega in Marsellus Wallace's home. I checked up on the section where the halls were partly painted red like a spiraling ribbon, and there it was. The pharmacy's there too. Why the hell would anyone put the medicine in the most tucked away area of where the front counter was? I saw her familiar pony and went to sit 'cause my back was already strained from being hunched back to reach my shoe. There was a decrepit-looking, doddery hundred-year-old man with bloodshot eyes standing right beside me and there were barely any seats left for me in the whole waiting area. It was just the ones by the wall for janitors and one which I was sitting on.
The air smelled of cucumbers and dust and a slight tint of mint along the way from the cough syrups. The clock struck two; there was a louder click but it continued to act like it was just a metronome. I'm not even sure if anyone can read it properly. The fluorescent lights felt like today was the perfect day to annoy Carney Windmüller out of the hundreds of people who had waited here by screaming and buzzing at his ears. I've traveled miles and I've yet to be comfortable, especially with these seats that have unnecessary holes punched into them that stab your ass for no reason but to make sure you suffer more than the cancerous patients. Ain't empathy enough already?
I could feel the tendrils of her hair brushing off my shoulder and her head slumped over the stainless steel scraper-like headrest. The old man to my left had his mind rotted by the white noises and coughing and he snoozed. So there was a window that I could use to escape the full yet empty room. I whispered to my mother that I was going just in case she was a quarter awake and I subsequently went to the bathroom near the ramp they had dragged my father in to lock him inside a metal cage. Not a few seconds later when I tried waiting inside one of the stalls I saw through the mirror that the black suited-robots with red ties which were on the reception desk had gone away and put on those triangular things that said ON BREAK on the counter. The loudest footsteps were the ones that came from outside but they were shined by the summer sunlight so it wasn't that nearby. Those air conditioners that are placed on top of the glass entrances I guess could conceal my shadow. I ducked when I took more U-turns that were needed to go up like a quacking duckling crossing the Vegas strip.
There were plastic chains that escorted any children that would invade the diagnosis rooms and make the strokes worse, though they were like churches in Paradise. They didn’t prevent any wrongdoings and it’d be more fitting if they just put a sign that said ‘’Come look here!’’ I went up immediately to check the rooms one by one. The rattling of the rusted wheels of his apparatus crackled like the floor was covered in glass shards was a good estimate of where he went; there was a door at the end of the corridor. A room painted with a vibrant cream paint. The door had a small opening that I could see through and so I did and there sat the doctor in his ketchup-stained white coat and someone with a haircut that looks a bit like my Dad, but it's like, uncanny for some reason. Perhaps the brownish-black color didn't go well with the green wheelchair, or the fact that he's on a device like that in the first place. It was like seeing my brothers under probation, although I do wish they were.
His legs were as shaky as the Ring of Fire but when the doctor's lips moved and he dropped his pen on his hand onto the table my father became a stone sculpture and all the sweat that rained down from his hair dissolved him like acid rain and I felt like my feet were on fire from kneeling for to long.
They stood still for too long so I just headed out and I won't get caught by an overseas spy. Some family of fifteen hundred were in the lobby and the ramp was literally out in the open and I couldn't escape. No wonder we waited so long. Even from behind the wall where I walked in some could probably see me, especially the kids on their tablets drooling by the glass door. I walked down the small hall and tried acting like an unassuming patient walking down the stairs, but just before I could pass through the area where people could see me, a gang of two boys, one toddler, and a girl who was the tallest of them all and was holding a baby appeared and started playing together with an elf doll. Either I pass through them and get away successfully since they'd cover my silhouette if the parents didn't pay attention or I look like Manson trying to drag them away.
Father Miles chose none and decided to make all the kids collectively stare down at me when I scurried down the ramp. They followed my ears like the moon and I stared at them indirectly through the corner of my cornea. All I thought was how I'd rather have them as my classmates than the ones I have now, but I still think they should just die if their existence was purely to be unsettling little pricks. And then all of that disappeared. When I tried getting a look at their face, which I didn't manage to get a good hold of, their motionless state made the air around them enter their lungs too much and now they become the air themselves. I looked down and where they had stood there was ash on the floor that marked their footprints. They looked engraved. Fast, fast, fast. They're gonna catch you Carney if they found out about the shit you left on the floor. But thankfully I only got a few stares and nobody pointed a finger at me.
My mother bobbed her head around trying to distinguish between me and all the sleep-deprived people. I'm pretty sure she saw me before I could even turn around the wall that hid the smell of diarrhea. Half of the people from before were now gone.
"Where've you been?"
"The toilet?"
"It's been three hours since you left."
"What? It's only been fifteen minutes?"
"It's already three o'clock. I was just about to go find you."
"I disappeared for that long and you're just trying to find me then?"
"I slept for two hours last night, Carney. You know Mom is a heavy sleeper."
"Ma, you were not asleep before."
"Either way, there's no reason to be in the toilet for that long. What were you doing? Did you bring your Nintendo?"
"No, I don't. That's why I'm about to ask what the time it is through on your phone."
She shoved the screen up to my face. Indeed it was 3, but it was almost 4 by now at 3:37 p.m. We waited for about four hours, or at least, she did. I only waited for one and a quarter somehow. The walk between my seat and the upstairs room wasn't a marathon to me like the grandpa previously beside me. I checked the clock on the ceiling and the shorthand was almost pointing at 4. I left at one. Possibly I had just lost track of the time and that loud click came from the hands striking three instead of two. Or I fell asleep on the ramp right there and nobody decided to wake me up and get rid of me. Or I just fell asleep and dreamt about those nasty schoolchildren. The ticking became louder and louder and it was as if the clock was growing ever closer and its numbers twirling like little fractals in a space that could only fit a large revolver or two. Tick, tick, tick. When it grew further and it felt like it was creeping up behind me I got bit by a tick. What in the fuck was that?
"Ay, Carney. Where's Dad?"
"Fuck you."
They walked a marathon and they still had the energy to prick me like the pricks they were. It was after that the ticking became louder again but this time it was my Dad. He smacked on their shoulders and looked at them like they were time-travelers while I was here having skipped over an hour by just slowly walking down a slope. We immediately left the hospital and Dad was looking all happy like the cocaine rush had overwhelmed him before—at least all that walking was wasted. They might've done that out of spite. We got back in the car and I felt like CIA agents were watching us at all times due to the unrecognizable license plate. Even though the sky was already orange my skin almost turned red from the lava above so we got ice cream at Darwin's Muffins along the way. My Dad bought three for himself and I used my pocket money to buy one vanilla flavor with two cinnamon sticks as long as chopsticks that almost poked both my eyes when I tried eating it. When we arrived my eyes were like the eyes of that old man from before.
Now back in the freezing forest of the countryside against the volcanic sky now covered with a slight layer of ash, my brain was spiked by the coldness while my sweat flowed harshly. We took turns washing our feet and my brothers returned to their rooms.
"Carney, mind checking the shed for Dad?" My mother yelled with her Californian accent.
I hadn't done anything today and I didn't feel like it but I was bored anyway. So there I went to check a shed that was not too deep from the forest so I just brought a flashlight and prayed a mayfly wouldn't sting me and I'd scream like I was chased by Albemarle's Nightstalker.
Specks of dust and mosquitos flew like noise in the air and the static of snapping branches and dried leaves made me feel like something's gonna pop out like a colorful advertisement. Something did come out eventually and it was the shed. Not that vibrant, though.
The jagged walls of peeling wood made it look like someone had been hung here and got slowly sliced in half by a chainsaw alive, or something like that. I still had to inspect every inch of it as told by my father even if a Medieval executioner lived in the area. Apparently this is where Miles kept his preservative stuff since it stank of rotten wood and a little bit of skunk shit that painted the exterior walls. Thankfully no scent of acid would knock me out. Before this when I was in the bathroom I was told to specifically check if the labels had been torn by rodents or not, so I just made sure they stuck and had enough glue on them so that they stayed sticking. I was somewhat curious, however. WOOD PRESERVATIVES was too vague of an indication of what was inside and there was another label—paper disintegrated and covered with mold—behind the barrel that maybe could tell me whether the things inside would kill me or not. I caught a glimpse of the letters …senic but I heard some rattling behind the walls and I was scared a squirrel would scream and tell the hornets to collectively disembowel me with their saw chain-like ass spears so I just ran with my flashlight on. The trunks passed like floating pillars in an infinite void and if I stopped they'd grab me and drag me down.
I came home to the rotten smell of blood-red cherry wine and smoked; rich-flavored plastic of Hawaiian spam sandwiches; and burnt wax. Everyone was facing behind the front door so all I saw was my father and his plate with everything on them. Not the candle, though, they'll poison him further and he may be naive enough to snort ash but not soot. Breadcrumbs circled his plate like a golden ring—it seemed he chose to destroy his throat rather than his lungs with the friable, rough surface of charred bread. I saw that they had left all my dinner rights for themselves since the only plate left that had stuff on it merely had one of those spiked eyeball-like olives. This has to be bullshit. I didn't do anything. It was equivalent to getting coal on Christmas since kids who misbehave usually get this punishment and I'm not surprised. I didn't do anything apart from running in a forest, not a private school hallway. Try going into a Japanese forest as a German grown-up in folklore. All of you will starve like butterflies in the winter.
But then I realized there was a plate on the shelf right beside the door with four sandwiches that had leftover chips on it. Jordan looked back while taking a sip of the cherry vomit.
"I knew you'd be all grumpy so I put yours there so you won't see it for a good while."
"Yeah, thanks a whole lot."
I took one of the dirty stools we never clean that was for guests and tried to be nonchalant about whatever Jordan's ulterior motive was. And when I was about to be the statue in a family it seemed like nobody had spoken about anything for the entire span I was gone, including my father's diagnosis. The secrecy kept by the doctors shouldn't extend beyond households and that might’ve prevented people from rotting away like lawyers and be as miserable. But in the end, they're not. So I whispered to my mother to ask him about it 'cause I wasn't sorry-assed enough to ask after getting messed up by my brother.
"Alright, so. How has your day been? Did the doctor say anything?"
"It's, well…"
He stretched his nostril and sucked in his lips.
"It's alright. The doctor, um. Yeah. It was like pneumonia but it's not too, you know, bad."
"You've been coughing ever since our honeymoon. Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yeah, yeah. It's whatever. It's probably asthma or something."
We all stared into the darkness in his pupil and he scratched his head to disperse it away. He doesn't even have asthma and the only things he inhales are tablets and tabloids. The Summer of Love might be in Cali but love's ubiquitous and addicting so even mushrooms grew in Vietnam.
And his love for acid matured and so it evolved into cigarettes, bringing us to enjoy them too, or at least, using us to help. Fred sat near the front door and grabbed one of the packets.
"Dad, you should probably get rid of these. I don't think Mom even wants us listening to your records, let alone this," he said as he tossed it. A burnt cigarette fell out of it and at this point, I'd have the risk of getting the whole house burned down by that single stick of dried leaves to be the most of my worries.
"It's alright, Fred. You guys shouldn't be too worried about me. We've got other things to worry about. Dad's been through this about four or five times. And Dad will be fine," he exclaims after taking some Ayahuasca and stripped all his angry sweat off. "So, uh, Carney, could you pass those for me?"
Before I could reach for the pack my mother slapped both of our hands and it fell onto the plate and now we're eating nicotine for dessert.
"Your coughing sounds like you're going to spit blood, and you want a smoke?"
"It's nothing. I've smoked for years and it's done less than shrooms.
"Your damn lungs, Christoph!"
Though that wasn't even directed toward me and my father sat on the opposite side of the table, I still took a deep breath to make sure I didn't have pneumonia too.
"You'll understand if you try it."
"This is serious, honey. You're underestimating it."
"Look, 'cesca, I'm not sick. This ain't nothing but a cold for me."
"If you're gonna lie, then it's fine. It's your loss so I don't care."
"Alright, alright! I'll think about it."
"No, you can't. Do it now."
"I've been doing this for years and you're tellin' me to stop now? How about those times when I went to the hospital? Those times I'd smoke? Did you tell me to stop, or did you only put them kids away? Did you care about me? Did you, Francesca?"
"I've since had enough. You're getting sick too much. Yet you didn't give a shit! I was the only one who cared. Even you couldn't bring yourself to give a fuck. You kept smoking those packs; you kept buying Montecristo and Marlboro's in Durham, wasting our shit; and now we're here. I know you care about us, but you have to at least give a shit about yourself. What would family be worth if you yourself can't see them? Touch the love and blood they give? Hear their feeble voices, the ones that you brought into this world? What would you feel if you knew you'd feel those for the last time?"
He points at the cigarette butts that dropped on Marshall's plate of breadcrumbs and discarded pickles.
"Don't pretend like this is the Grim Reaper. It's not. Those times that I was sick, I recovered. I can beat them. Don't pretend it ain't, lady. I'm not gonna be all crying on an ocean. All of you will! Hell, why should I even care when I'm not gonna get to feel the way you feel later anyway?"
He raised his voice a bit and it seemed he was gonna go to sleep alone before my mother. The chirping and rustling outside stopped. The biggest of animals and the smallest of plants froze in the late winter snow for a minute.
…
"Honey… what'd make you say that?"
"Well, Dad, um, I don't think you're fine." That sentence had been inside me since the box was smacked out of my hand.
"Yes, I am, Carney. I'll always be fine. Nobody here gets fucked over ever."
Everyone furrowed like his big red nose wasn't already mocking enough. Many sins were committed in this moment.
"You remember what happened to your mother? No, we can't do this. You can't talk about how nobody here gets into trouble because of Miles' father's blessings. No, that's not it, honey. Our actions have consequences. Him and God don't intervene on that. And if you don't open your eyes and finally admit it, I don't know what will happen."
"The kids, Francesca."
"We've already done too much shit in front of them to quit now. Please, Christoph, be honest with me. Are you okay?"
"No."
"Did you have an infection?"
"No, surgery is not an option."
…
"…Cancer?"
I felt my innards had come loose and fell onto the floor like chili while I kept chewing on the now tasteless balsamic glaze. Fred was just fiddling with his fork and Jordan was busy swirling the wine around like he was M.J.
"Well… what'd you think?" He bobbed his head in approval and gave a sarcastic smirk that hid a thousand tears behind it.
"What stage, Christoph?"
"Like, stage four. The doctor said it was inoperable."
"No, no. We can't do this. We have to get a second opinion."
"Lady, I got tested by an oncologist in Durham. Next thing you know we're goin' to the CEO of cancer to have his view on this."
"Christoph, be serious. Tell me more."
Her eyes were as dark and red as a beetroot and the tears at this point had dried up.
"I remember the doctor said I was gonna survive for another two years with treatment. Best case scenario I get three."
"Chemo?""
"No. They recommend immune o' therapy or whatever it's called. They told me I had a weak immune system."
"Are you sure Miles would be able to pay all this?"
"Yeah, why not?"
"Christoph, you've never seen healthcare prices. We don't have good insurance."
"We do. Miles is our insurance. Hell, might as well go to Charlestown. They have better doctors."
"No, no, no. It'll be an out-of-pity gesture."
"So? Ain't it better than having me rot for a few months? He's our boss anyway."
She bit his lips as hard as she could 'till I felt it was gonna bleed out. To my left and right my brothers were just staring down the whole time and fiddling with whatever crumbs they had on their plates. Then my mother joined me in the stare-down contest.
"Fred, Jordan, go back to your room and sleep."
She specifically pointed at me while only pointing her lips at my brothers. "Carney, study your Bible."
They both left but I stayed for a bit to help stack the dishes into the sink for later cleaning. It was what I did now instead of the cherry farm. Miles had other members do it since he finally found out child labor was illegal in the States.
When I reached the sink I for a second didn't know what to do so I just turned the heat on to the maximum so vapor would come out and make some kind of charade within the silence that was sporadically broken by my mother hyperventilatin' and my father tutting. Should there be enough smoke perhaps they'd tell me to stop and resent my quirkiness. Both stopped eventually and the kitchen was like a nestling ground for crickets and there were mosquitoes everywhere that they hadn't here before. My parents stood there more still than the chairs. All that white smoke had calmed them instead.
After a couple of spins with the soggy, rotten sponge all around the plates I went to leave them and my parents to drown within the white noise now plaguing the chirping that was fading away. I could even hear the awkward foottapping of my father from the inside of my wardrobe. So for now I had to bear the tension that'd split like a tectonic plate while I was here reading about Mene, Mene or whatever. It repeated like my father's humming when I took a peek from my door. He probably saw me spying on them and so he stopped moving completely. I went back to check on the half-ripped Bible I was reading that only had Revelation, Daniel, and Isaiah. The other pages with their edges glued onto the gauze acted like sharp knives that'd cut your finger like a chainsaw if you grazed over it. For God's sake how long it took for a party to speak, and it was muffledly uttered by my father: "So, what now?"
I was curious so I opened my door again but this time ever more slightly.
"Aye, Carney. Come over here."
Oh, damn. I guess the unnecessarily placed shadow castpon the hallway got me. Some things never change, I guess. They'll always catch me rebelling.
My father calmly said something to me as if he had just smoked a blunt. Don't know if that weed's enough to cure the cancer. "You finished studying?"
"Almost, yeah," I replied.
"Sit down, Carney."
When I was walking I could see at the corner of my eye that was still wet from my tears my mother sat with her arms tucked in her thick, wool sleeves. She had eye sweat of her own even though it was snowing outside.
"You're going to college, ain't that right?"
"I don't know. Mom hasn't said anythin' about it."
"Well, I want you to. We talked about this before?"
"How about Fred? Jordan? Why they don't go to college, Dad?"
"They don't need college to succeed. They've gotten their roles and Marshall's getting this house. Jordan's building his own. You'll go to Campbell and you're going to get a degree. I'll negotiate with Miles."
"But why? Also, didn't you say I was going to Charlestown?"
"Remember when you vomited all over Jordan when we took you to the slaughterhouse? Even bloodless carcasses made you whimper like a li'l girl."
"Christoph, cut that off! Carney, we want you to get out of here," my mother cried. "This place isn't for you."
"Why? I remember Mister Andre telling me I'm inheriting all your stuff. Why is it on Fred and Jordan now? Wouldn't they own the farm and restaurant only?"
"You're not old enough yet, Carney. Your Dad and I will think about it."
"Why are you telling me this? Mom? Dad? Isn't it too premature?"
"Some things don't have an explanation, Carney," my father opened his lips before pouring Jordan's glass into his. "You just have to say 'fuck it' and ride along."
"Carney, tell your brothers to come here. You can go back to reading."
The way my mother told me after brushing off a sin like it was overgrown grass. My father had completely disregarded my question and just took a sip of the homemade fermented wine then spitted it out 'cause he was still coughing. The drool and liquid coming off his mouth looked like coagulating blood dirtied by saliva. Wiping it with a napkin didn't rid of the red stain away from his gray-bearded chin. Going back to my room the smell may have been swept away from the currents of the air conditioner but the disgust of the sight was left as I left the conversation when it was still open and slept. The only thing that'll make me sleep at this point is the daily visit to the restaurant and we're gonna have clam chowder tomorrow. What a weekend.
Chapter 1: Mahogany's Role, Part 6 "Through a Glass, Darkly"
On Friday we went to the farmhouse eastward of the rendezvous where Miles lived after we had visited my father. We left him at the hospital in Charlestown and we were gonna get some first-aid antibiotics after I've gotten a blessing from Miles just in case he developed an infection. This is my third ever time seeing him in my life—the first time was when I was baptized right after I was born; and when the ceremonial mourning for Waco back in '93. I don't know what made him send his assistant instead of showing up himself to lead the ceremony for Heaven's Gate and 9/11 but I guess that's that. They were the only times I felt something for people outside our community but that had to be swept away since now I was about to go get a blessing from him.
I was gonna leave town to go to Campbell and you can't have bad air in your intestines after or else the optimism disappears. But the wind that came after what had happened the week before had me too lethargic to do anything other than spend my days at home sleeping. If I had spent any longer outside, next thing you know my corpse is found in a Dartmouth college dorm 'cause of all the bad luck that the blessing ain't shoo away.
A certain patch of the sky was clear while everything else was shrouded by floating wet cotton with their underneath dirtied by dust and pathogens. The sun shined desperately and a gleam of light passed through the hole like it was a flashlight. We could feel the grass that stood within the light was more animated and rustled louder than all of the ones shrouded in darkness combined. Heading right was a concrete pathway that led to his home; it wasn't even connected to the small road and we had to dirty our shoes from the still mushy ground 'cause of the rain that night. I looked toward my mother and felt I was gonna get baptized a second time. But she knew the acid in my stomach was leaking so she further stretched the gaping hole where the viscera was coming out and reinforced the idea that Miles had a guillotine in his armoire. Oh how I need holy water right now.
"When you go inside, remember to shut up unless he asks something to you," my mother forcefully murmured at me.
"If He asks you a question about me, do I answer?"
"Yes. Anything about males. Your Dad, your brothers, et cetera, et cetera. Don't expect me to answer it for you, it is how it is."
"What if he addresses you?"
"You can hypothetically answer but don't. Mom will do it."
Even though those words have been uttered 'till they had become the ticks of a metronome I still had to repeat it in my mind. Important guy, questionable views on women, blah-blah-blah. Just act like you're meeting Lennon, Carney, but don't go wild like McCartney.
So came to the point where we walked inside and I felt like I was a rockstar. Or at least a rockstar inside the White House. Both the mistress that greeted us and the ground dressed in black and white and the air smelled like a newly opened book you just bought in the Library of Alexandria. She would be perfect as a background animal in a documentary about Antarctica the way 'cause of the way her maid's dress was knitted.
But when I took maybe about three or four steps into the building suddenly it smelled like a skunk had shat all over a carpet far away. Perhaps they were cleaning it so I tried ignoring it.
Right in front of me there were fancy bifurcated stairs that led to the second floor, though this one was pretty small. The doors behind it were placed too close to each other and it looked like a Monty Hall but behind every door is just Mr. Fletcher's garden. They were pretty close to me so I'm not sure why I hadn't noticed them until I focused my eyes on them. It had all kinds of ornaments and sculptures carved into the wood. Popcorn ceilings are as rough as mountain ranges. I guess he just likes the style. Either way I had to shut up my mind too in case Miles bashed my head open and saw the curses inside. His office I could remember was right by the front door and it had an unreasonable height that stretched until it reached the roof tiling. He had a balcony that was probably in his bedroom that directly watched his desk lest it gets infested by rats like his home or even the town have moles. My mother and I stared at each other when we turned our heads and the wall revealed what was inside after a decade of not being here. An office chair the size of a pinball machine facing the opposite direction gloomed the space with its peeling layers of leather. Two massive shelves overflowing with books whose covers are blanked out overwhelmed the puny, ten feet long desk like a pack of wolves looking down at a skinned, Alaskan rabbit. Shoot, even the wolves were bleeding. A pile of books stripped away of their colorful, hardback dress laid on the floor, lifeless and covered in oxidation.
The table had these lines of white powder and those small straws you use to sip coffee, and the smell from before punched me right at my nose. Looks to me that table was where it was from. But I just shut that away 'cause I was talking about Miles's home and so I just took my eyes off of that. Sometimes I can't help but get into someone's business but remembering it was him I'm minding I'd probably get my ears chopped off instead of getting it pinched. Yet with all this mess Miles was still in his room smoking as told by the mistress.
"He'll be back soon, don't worry madam," she told my mother. Did he learn a lesson from my dad's inoperable lung cancer?
Although previous meetings took place in that very office, we were instead invited to go upstairs into a new room of his where guests probably go nowadays to see him. On the ends of the hall some windows overlooked the sky and looked like paintings as if the view outside was one of those wallpapers you see in kindergarten murals. Even at six o'clock it was Prussian blue; the sun looked like it was eclipsed by Saturn with all the scattered light from the Swiss cheese-like clouds now about to rain signaled by echoing thunder and lightning. While that was happening the hallway we were in stretched beyond what the facade could contain. Windows didn't help either—they just made it look more impossible. And with the view it was like seeing donkeys on acid unfurled 'till their bodies' a yard long. A tiny familiar fragment while the entire jigsaw board looks like Salvador Dali's restaurant checks.
It took us around thirty seconds to get to his room and as we arrived he was still missing. My mother turned over to the lady at the same time I did too since we were offended by the lie. She had a short stature and it was very noticeable, and because of that, we knew we hadn't seen her. I looked down at her nametag and back to her shining white smile. Though my mouth was open I told her silently from my heart: Francesca, can you not murder me in my sleep if I don't wait for Miles for a minute longer? Her bulging eyes failed to reply despite sharply focusing on my mother and I.
"Sorry, ma'am. Father Miles is currently busy. Can you wait for fifteen more minutes? You can stand here while you're at it."
She tottered away and when the seconds grew and grew it felt like the walls were gonna cave in on us. I rue missing days for the cherry farm. If not for that I would've been guaranteed the house and saved fifteen minutes right now. But I guess that wasn't needed 'cause I saw the lady talking to someone hidden by the wall of the office. She came back to us again and like a penguin she called us out like she was our waddle and the distance between us and her was great enough that she should've known that her words weren't gonna be heard. When she got close enough we heard the words "Monsieur, Monsieur. Your guests have arrived!" Miles, I know you're already de luxe; you don't need to shove that up our guts more than you should. We heard three footsteps each interval coming from the staircase and the last one sounded like thumping metal.
A shadow of a head glided from the last step of the staircase and onto the floor we were on as the lady reached her hands to the yet-to-be-seen figure. The floor creaked loudly even though before when we were climbing the loudest noise we could hear was our heartbeat. A balding scalp. Gray hair wrapped around the edges like mirrored leeches. Before I could blink an eye the lady was now already approaching us and an old man stood watching us. I could barely discern the features on his face but I knew it was Miles. He had a twin brother but he passed away five years before I was born so it was not him. So there he was walking with a cane though it looked like it was just for cosmetic and that he chose it purely because he was aging. My mother walked to him bowed upon him and kissed his wrist. The lady did nothing and just stared. That reassured me that it was perfectly okay to just stand still like her. Right when that thought crossed into my brain the laser that shined from Miles' rotting but still sharp eyes burned through my face. My reflex shut off and so I simply went straight at him and bowed upon him. But I didn't kiss his wrist, obviously.
My mother came back to the end of the hallway where the door we were gonna enter was and I followed her. The lady directed as and grabbed a keychain with keys crammed like bones in a catacomb. Miles reached his hand forward to prevent us from entering first as he walked toward the door as if we were Vietnamese spies. After minutes of greasing our feet, we entered the Oval Office. The smell of concrete dust and freshly painted walls. He could've tucked the paint buckets behind the giant wardrobe against the wall. There was a giant window across the room. A chandelier hung so close to the unwieldy coffee table and sofas on our right-hand side. Sitting on the sofa the cushion was as plushy as that bed I secretly slept on the van back when I ran out from home. Should it be softer we would've fallen into the Earth's core. And so I looked up and Miles was standing like he hadn't seen an outsider in a century with his flawlessly circular eyes looking into my core. How did this lad rot away this fast?
The lady from before lowered her legs looked up at him and whispered something as he reached down to hear her. Then she quickly went outside and slammed the door like it was her own home. Miles just stood there without moving a single hair of his like he had any, to begin with. He continued to stare at me. My breaths kept getting quicker and quicker and now it was as fast as my heart. Okay, Carney. Stop thinking. What am I even thinking? What are you thinking? Miles's gonna kill you. Chill out.
He moved his arms in perfect motion without momentum and went to sit across where we were. When I tried to move closer to my mother she also began to get nearer too. She could not share her trauma with anyone.
"So, what brings you here, Francesca?"
"Father, my son here wants to go to college when he's graduating. Christoph and I discussed this already and we've decided to send him. Now, we, as a member of your community, want a final say on this. And You, Father, you shall be appropriated to possess that final say."
"Wait, Ma. Dad wanted me to go—"
"Just go along with it, Carney," she whispered.
It has long since she had to talk like a seedy, pseudo-Shakespearean poet so I almost didn't catch what she said.
"I'll be back," Miles replied.
"Thank you, Father," she said as she was gonna turn and hit me again.
He stood up and walked to the window that was now pitch black with his arms crossed behind his back. Walking side to side. Repetitively. Sickening. There was a mirror in the wardrobe that I hadn't noticed and he uncomfortably stared at it for a good minute. Blinking as fast as he could. He closed his eyes and took heavier breaths as the static white noise grew louder and spikier. His head jerked up and down suddenly. Twitching like a tree creature. It looked like he had swallowed something after that. I looked to my left and my mother was praying. Wait, am I supposed to pray too? When I saw that Miles had opened his eyes I immediately prayed too. But without a direct jab at me.
"Carney, you should lower your head even more."
I could feel my mother was gnashing in grimace.
Five minutes of whatever paranormal stuff he was doing the air kept getting denser and I had to breathe through my mouth. The decrescendo-ing beeping of the air conditioner filled the room as it was turned off remotely. Even when the room got hotter the air didn't stop obesifying. He finally went to sit down this time like a normal human being and prayed. Instead of bowing he raised his head toward the roof and mouthed his prayer. To tell my mother to read his lips was impossible 'cause I nudged my knuckles into her shoulders and she wasn't budging. Finally, he took a deep breath and looked at us again. Now he was looking at my mother's soul.
"Don't go to Durham. Although it's not too far from here, Francesca, I want you to know that Campbell's the best choice for him."
"It's more expensive, Father."
"Do not be concerned. I can handle it. But Carney, don't feed into the lies they give you. You're an Ezekielian child. You have to remember that."
"Would he be alright?"
"Yes, but you'd have to take precautions. I'll give him a flip phone for him to call you with. Tell him to take a photo of where he is every time he goes somewhere. And you, Carney, you have to go back here every semester break. I'll have your parents drive to your campus if you don't. You can come again tomorrow at the same hour as today."
"Thank you so much, Father."
They both simultaneously bowed down at each other. My mother's face crashed by tsunami waves of dread and terror.
"Hey, uh, Father. Has anyone here gotten to college other than me?"
"I did. I was in Dartmouth. The degree’s within the cabinet there. But if you're talking about the people who went into college while also being here, it's just you and Chester. He dropped out after a year. That… is why I'm not too worried about you especially when Campbell is a Christian college. But, I want you to make sure that you're caring for your health and your family back home. Most importantly, however, be aware of what they're teaching. Don't give in to what they believe. Does that sound feasible to you?"
I metamorphosed into my mother—erased all doubtful and disrespecting thoughts for a mere response. "Yes, Father. Thank you."
"You can leave now. My assistant will give you some drinks if you go to the end of the hallway."
"Thank you, Father." My mother and I said at the same time.
When he closed the door and I looked at his face it seemed he had gotten sick of something that I wasn't sure of. The sudden punch of hot air from outside knocked me out and chilled both of us and I had goosebumps not only from the cold but from his face. We thought we were gonna go inside but the lady came out the door first and stopped us from doing so. She had closed the lights and the room remained void before handing us two champagne glasses with identical liquid. Her smile was sarcastic almost. Teeth all white, with eyes just desperate to be wide open. I immediately went to gulp it down from the heat since it looked fizzed more like soda than actual champagne. Upon realizing what I was doing my mother straight up grabbed the stem and some of it spilled all over my shirt.
"What in the hell are you doing?"
"This is soda!"
"What the fuck are you talking about? Give me that!" She cursed me and successfully snatched it out of my hand.
"Mom, don't say that in Miles's home!"
"You've spilled enough wine in this place already. You're stained!"
"Just try it!"
She took a sip worth a nanoliter.
"What'd I tell you?"
"It's alcohol, Carney!"
"Wait, wait! Try mine."
"Fine. Go drink that whole thing, I don't care if it makes you fat." She said as she rolled her eyes after downing half of what was inside. It felt as if she knew it was soda the whole time.
"Yeah, whatever. That's probably more important than getting the pills for Dad." I told her.
"The what?"
"We're gonna go to the pharmacy, right?"
"Oh shit."
"Hey, Mom! Don't say that in Miles's home."
"As long as he doesn't hear it, I don't care. Here's the keys, Carney. Start the car. Give me the glass, I'll return it to the mistress."
For some reason they hadn't turned on the street lights yet when I saw through the sidelight. Just a void that you'd fall through forever if you stepped outside. The winds blew over the door as heavy as my mother when I'd not go to the cherry farm and I put my legs on where the ground was. Mud and worms crawling to my feet desperate to get out. Grass just barely hanging there. Though it looked like a hurricane when I was fully outside it just felt like I was on a breezy beach. A sharp needle from the sky pierced through my scalp. It was gonna rain soon. Hastily unlocked the car and put it into the keyhole. It won't turn. Shit. Please just budge your piece of shit key. The sharp raindrops grew in numbers and it got more painful every second. I guess pressure distribution doesn't exist.
When I was still trying to turn the key over I heard some intangible screaming from behind me. 'Till I heard something cohesive. "Carney, get an umbrella!"
"Mom, it's only a slight drizzle. If you wait longer then it's gonna get worse!"
I crawled to the backseat and she ran toward me and I felt like she was gonna ram into the car like it was clean glass. The window layered with grease and sticky pie filling could only give me so much. Outside the raindrops blurrily raced onto the crack below before they were knocked off by my mother's violent foray into the car.
"Why didn't you turn on the car?"
"I—"
"Give me the keys!"
Before she could grab my hand and search my palms for the key she finally realized that it was dangling in front of her. When the car turned on the wheels screeched not even seconds later like they were emitting smoke and we drifted further into the gloomy bliss of careless wildfire. Any second now we'd hit a tree or a stubborn deer. I tried getting rid of that thought by distracting myself.
"You think we can get there in time? I want to talk with Dad."
"We can come anytime. Mom already made a request to the hospital. We're getting there around twelve or one at dawn."
"Why are we goin' to Charlestown anyway? Ain't Durham closer?
"Miles told us to go there instead of Durham since he had connections there, and it didn't help that your Dad and I went there to get another opinion, so it turned out like this. Mom is just concerned, Carney."
I hesitantly replied "Mom, you're kind of like Fred…" It'd probably become a botched attempt at lightening the situation.
"I get it, but in these times, optimism isn't always the answer. You can ease it but without stitches, the open wound would still hurt you no matter what. You have to be concerned too and go through that pain you get for being bleak and blunt. You have to get the stitches. If all you do is numb your pain with a smile, all you will get in the end is a dustpile. Listen, Carney, I know it's hard. But Miles will help us, and we will work together. We will get through this as a family. Just take a rest for now, okay? You'd need it."
"Y'know, I'm probably just gonna try to fall asleep for a bit. It's gonna take ages getting there."
"Okay, but you still need to help Mom when we get to the pharmacy. Don't make me pour an ice bucket on you."
"Okay, okay. Jeez, Mom."
"Carney, we're Ezekielans, remember what Miles told you. You shouldn't say that!"
"Sigh, not this again."
"Look, I just want the best for you, alright? You can lie down for a short while. I'm just going to wake you up once when we get there."
"Would it take years when we get there, though? I don't think I need this short nap if it doesn't."
"It will feel like years if you don't. Just close your eyes and sleep still."
There was an empty letter that had been sitting inside the seatback pocket for years. Its rigidness now softened from rubbing the foam so much that it's probably gonna crumble into organic waste if went through the post office. I grabbed my pencil case which was on the other seat and used a barely running pen to write on the sheet of paper inside. If another second passes without me falling asleep it's probably best to just assume I wasn't going to. But when the ink had run out my eyes were slowly sinking into blackness. I'd noticed that I only finished one paragraph before it felt like I was gonna die from lethargy if I did another stroke with the pen. The only thing that was moving at this point was my own eyes and the passing objects out the window darkly. Beaming streetlights and faint, cherry-like flashes from the radio towers turned into spheres. Floating within Las Vegas.
My eyelids slowly and jerkingly closed like a one-way mirror before the glass of the lens was darker than the view. It had a blackout too and the white noise of the static of the rain poured. I took on a fetal position 'cause I could easily close my ears and the car was small. And yet the letter still somehow through the gap between the seats, perhaps I was juggling too much. I'll find it later but for now it's time to roll my eyes like a vinyl. Hopefully the comfortable sleep lasts for years 'cause my ankle's starting to get ant bites.
Chapter 1: Mahogany's Role, Part 7 "Carney's Oration"
I remember a few years back when I woke up in the middle of dawn after I visited my father for the last time. I couldn't tell if the sun was setting or rising and there was no way of telling anyway though: The mattress I had since my father was born had gotten black mold in it so I just put it up sideways blocking the window. My bedroom was moist and somehow my medium-sized shelf and record player, with a miracle like a house balanced on a needle, didn't get wet. Or so it seems I'd gotten a bit of an obsession with records since I honorably left college but progress is still needed 'cause I still stack them with their front cover facing forward. Scrambling while I kicked my legs to get off of my blanket which probably had gorilla glue in it. I took off to make sure my bedroom's surfaces didn't need a wipe. Thankfully it didn't. I was still concerned with something but I don't know what it is.
It had been weeks since it was there so even if North Korea nuked this frail little town I wouldn't notice all the people getting boiled and skinned alive, so just to make sure that wasn't it, I went outside to the kitchen where we had a window that despite its size had a good view of Mahogany. So much so it had become a lens. You could have eyes as small as microwave buttons it'd still be too small to gauge it onto the glass. It felt like directly staring at the bulb of a flashlight and there was a bit of a reflection on the wall behind me. The light had now cleared up and there were patches of green and blue. Hills protruding out of the ground like pimples. What perfect hemispheres they are. Carpet-like grass. Unless the fallout had covered the ground with uranium soot there was probably nothing to worry about.
I went to the woodworking station just outside that had the last of Miles' mahogany logs to cut. Apparently he had some of his money bet on Lehman Brothers but when it went bankrupt a year prior it'd been too tendon-snapping to keep buying them so now he realistically could get black walnut. A downgrade for him for sure. But it seemed his dad's legacy didn't influence him that much as it did to us and now the stage at our new outdoor rendezvous sat motionless with snapping and precarious plywood swinging ajar unfurled, broken in columns and only attached by the surface. I mean we don't have anyone moving in anymore so it was just for impressing the depressing. He had brought me into the stage a few weeks ago and it wasn't looking good back then either. The only difference you could tell was probably the color of the grass and it was like that ever since my father passed away.
It was a shiny but cloudy day in February just a few days after my birthday when we returned with meds for him like any other day. You might expect me to say something about what happened right after but I'm remembering this as I'm looking at a sky of ocean waves with accumulating foam, caressed by the ever so slightly flickering and creeping sideways beacon of barely orange and blue sunlight. Just with all those things in your brain's nerves, you may see later why I couldn't grasp it as tightly as I wish I could. But bare with me here like I'm bearing myself to just stand here and wait for my eyes to get tired again.
We were out there driving 'round town and next second I was scratching the paint of the wall 'till it became jagged like a set of a mummy's nails. Then nothing. The nothing-but-black-static-noise kind of nothing. The constant humming of the blue LED line stretched for infinity and my breaths kept getting longer before I felt my viscera had fallen out of my body and just a skin shell standing there. There I stood with my mother and we were the castle's keepers overlooking the king's corpse with an arrow on his head—a deadly blow. But 'cause I wasn't in a ventilated and unnervingly clean room of a hospital, shrouded in nothing while we could only see our bodies and the contraption-like bed he was on, the wind right now just kept making humps of air throughout my body. Like someone was trying to get me off there or something so I'm gonna be fast.
We were there waiting for him to somehow wake up and ask us to turn off the AC. There I sat. I'd not cried in years but I shredded a tear, afraid to be a mere martyr. Seconds turned to dozens of minutes. We hugged each other and we were like a fixed knot. The air around me vacuumed. I can only remember what happened after the bed had been emptied and the sheets changed from brown to gray. We were gonna have the funeral immediately after and when they'd done the deeds back in the hospital Miles had called. Bring him back to our place right now he said. He'd sent a van over to the hospital like a hearse was gonna drown him in debt and it made me feel uneasy knowing a kidnapper van with a dead body inside was driving 'round the road on witching hour. I was separated from her since I had to be at the back to watch the coffin. She spoke with the driver and I could tell from the first syllables that it was Andre. I still can't comprehend why someone like him was a night owl.
Right as we arrived we were told to leave the van immediately and return to our homes to sleep for the next morning's ceremony. Miles was there when we arrived at the gate. All I could remember was whatever he was saying was drowned in the clanking of rusting steel rubbing each other like a fork scraping on a ceramic plate. He had to anyway or else Andre would let us sleep in the van ‘cause then I didn’t know if we were joining my father for a measly twenty hours or our limbs were gonna get dissolved in our stomach acid shot up into our bones from the hours of going back and forth, splashing and bubbling.
And so when we got out we weren’t even burning the midnight oil anymore, we were just thrusting sticks that’d been burned into ash at the lamp hoping it’d be lit from the friction. Before the sun came out and raised above a hill. It darkened everything and the pitch-black silhouette of the house shined darkly. Transparent as a politician but memories as clear and distant as the social ladder.
But after all that, everything from now I could probably tell you the different positions of the dust that was on the table, the gunk on the kitchen top, and the creases of the mattress on my father’s bedroom that now a storage area. We were tired and all we could do was crash down while our brains were still trying to figure out shit. I was in my room taking a nap at that point and couldn't think of anything. People say that some things are no-brainers. They were wrong. Everything is—or at least—that was what I was. Just a lifeless chunk of meat and bones on a tight mattress barely held up by a strand of protein stabbed everywhere by thin and soft needles. Barely breathing. Ultra-processed melodies of thoughts like the goo of factory spam—just physical enough to touch but way beyond what nature could conceive. One so twisted that God and Miles's father have no hands in its creation or its consequence. Straight impossibility, which was what I hoped for. I prayed to whoever was in the skies watching me to help me sleep and forget everything: That what had happened was nothing but my brain getting grounded into a patty and the reality that it captured was mixed and mashed beyond distortion.
Yet my eyes were still yet to be tired like how I am now. Going back to reality I jumped to our bungalow from where I was looking at the stars which were about gonna get turned on. Twilight was about to begin so I went inside where the windows were barely closed off and it was still midnight inside. With only a small window to light up the kitchen and the dining table, I closed it off and just sat there. I scurry my way to the chair at the far end of the table. It was where I'd hung the envelope a few years back, where my father used to sit during dinners, and I went to get it hoping the things I remember were still of fine wine and not just vinegar. Collecting dust 'till it was immovable. When I peeled the tape the glue had specks of dead skin and hair trapped in it, as if the gravity had also faded during the years. I'd put it there when the week-long ceremony had ended and we were sent home to grieve. There remains torn pieces of velvet fabric sticking on the wall which came from the flowers we'd gotten over those months after the funeral—stark reminders of now hollow sympathy. We'd still get them occasionally but at that time it was probably compulsory to send in flowers to us; there were enough plastic flowers that it was practically acid rain. If you don't send in flowers your colleague might die too type of incentive.
But then I'd remember that all of the people at the funeral had bawled like a stormy night. To say it's the same incentive isn't a stretch either but I don't want to sour the tears more than I should. The skies were white like the snow was boiling and compounding together, dense within the ever-present source of light emanating from all directions. For me, at least. Everyone was humped and their heads turned to the ground, just ignoring what was in front of them. I was getting pressed on while the four hundred or so people gathered in the graveyard stood suited in their void-colored attire. An inch of color, in one's eyes or body—of joyfulness from celebrating his life and not mourning the loss—would be spilled over like blood when they get axed in their head. So there I stood there behind the gravestone, clutching whatever loose rocks were there with one hand and the letter I tried gripping as tightly as I could while not creasing it on the other hand.
And now flashing back to the kitchen I'm holding that very piece of paper but now strapped with peeling tape behind it. However, if I gripped it too strongly the glue might stick to my hands and tear it apart. I breathed heavily, but it wasn't those kinds of deep breaths you take when you're about to do something in front of a crowd. It was one deeply rooted in gut-wrenching paranoia, leaving you soulless after you've done it. Not that it mattered now. I finally took a glance at the first line which until now was just a blob of black ink 'cause I wasn't focused on it yet, like how I did when I read it in front of the whole town. My eyes were sore 'cause I'd scratched it and there was a reddish ring of what feels like peeling skin but there were no excuses. I had to do it. Nobody else could. I don't know how but my brothers were suddenly behind me, instantaneously materializing behind me, blending within the thin air of the land, and they just stayed there while I was reading it aloud to the crowd. And there I got to the first sentence, and the next, and so on. It'd read:
Aye, Dad. Just writing this in case I remember bringing it to you.
I know you're probably wondering why I have this for ya but I'm just bored. If you're wondering why just know that I'm with Mom in the car. Y'know how dark it can get inside so I say why not? I forgot to bring my Nintendo anyway.
I can see through the window that there are signs saying we're passing by Interstate 40 right now; it'd be hours later when we arrive in Charlestown. But at this point, it's just passing by so fast that my mind can't process them fast enough. I wished for the opposite for this situation too, like, your situation right now, that you're in a hospital bed and hours away from home, but for now I'll think about the red lights beeping on and off on those giant highway signs. They kind of remind me of cherries too, not gonna lie. If I could reach them with my hands and move as fast as they looked like they passed through the window I would just give this letter to you, but I dunno, that's just an empty dream and all I can do is try to remember later to check the back of the seat when I wake up. Hope you'll be awake, though, if I'd even remember to bring it to you, 'cause when you're reading this it'd probably be morning by now and I'll be joining Mom in the restaurant or maybe pick some cherries here and there for old time's sake, even though it's just a few years ago since I'd stopped. I'm not too interested in that, though, so I'm not gonna talk 'bout it much. I'll see later on but for now, there's nothin' to be concerned. Don't worry about me forgetting you just 'cause like: I've forgotten a bunch of things. That ain't it, no. I know you have worried much ever since but don't be! One page of this paper here just doesn't have much space.
Even if I was assigned to keep the lions out of our home, I'd still think about you; as always, Dad. Maybe I'd get killed for that but it's worth it, aha. I hope you'll recover from this after a few months though. Don't worry about us. All you need to know is thinking about it makes me daydream all day from dawn 'till midnight, like, visiting you and just overall missing you. The house's pretty empty without you, just that it's really quiet. But not too much, I don't think. Mom's still bantering about Fred and Jordan being goofballs in the house and it's just missing those times where your calling finally stops what they were doin' or talking about. I'm at least privileged enough to still be able to hear that—the very same voice—not only in my mind but just hearing it through my ears—my eardrums vibrating. Though that's for another time 'cause I have an appointment with Miles again tomorrow so I'd not come. You can call us anytime, though. Just don't use the hospital's telephone, or at least, that was what Mom always tells you I think. The CIA agents will catch us before we can get to you.
Well, seems like there's not much space left. You can probably see it's just close enough for this sentence. Know that, even if they catch us, it'd seem like I won't be awake if that happens haha. It's like the AC in this car has Xanax in it so I'm gonna go take a short nap now. Goodnight from a distant past, Dad.
That was the only part that I'd vividly recount saying at the funeral. Bittersweet subliminal. There their eyes looked like perfect Tahitian pearls fitted in a ring of spume. The smell of melting snow from the heat of March's coldness layered like strata on top of the fresh dirt and grass—a little muddy and sharp as if newly cut—eviscerating my nose 'cause the rush of coldness through my nostrils was numbing it too much. I could sense the ground sinking below me to bring me down with my father who'd probably hug me while I was reading it, but all I could feel around my body was the tugging of my winter jacket and its buttons tied too tightly.
But what am I to do other than read the whole piece? It's whatever. I just felt pressured, I guess. I've got a feeling nobody paid attention anyway. There's always another page to flip through. Just let me forget it. Oh, wait. Walls of text shine through the translucent wood lamina, like little splashes of black strokes and dots through the lens of cataract. I just remembered something 'till now: There was more handwriting on the other side. Though the paper wasn't definitely a scroll I didn't know or even remember I'd written that much. It was invisible, maybe 'cause the light was barely going through the window. Flipped the page and it was like half of what was on the other side. The paragraphs smacked in the middle, space surrounding it. Just floating amidst the emptiness.
Yeah, I couldn't sleep yet so I was just checkin' what I'd written. Just wanted to continue on that Miles part 'cause I don't really understand it—probably just Miles being paranoid.
There's something that Like, do you get that sometimes? That feeling when you think about him? I know we had a conversation like years ago about whatever our dedication was into this but I guess there's a weird sensation in my stomach that Miles is a weirdo, like how he's been pretty lately. Not necessarily licentious, though, I don't mean that. But I guess it still gets me thinking about him. Firstly I don't like how mom's so adamant about giving you antibiotics, which, well, to be honest, isn't something you really need. And mom's usually not like this. She’d never want to do something unnecessary. Second, he wants me to go to college, but at the same time, he doesn't want to. He's talking about their teachings, this and that. And third, he wants you to go to a Charlestown hospital but yet, he doesn't want us to stay there? Keeping us driving 'round North Carolina 3–4 hours, heck maybe even 5 if the interstate's jammed.
I guess that's how I'd put it, my view toward him now. You know what he's like. Hell, this might be what your mind's thinking, just that it's speaking to you through my voice. I'm trying my best to contain that feeling but it's hard for me so I'm just gonna write here down, where someone could read and relate. Which is you, Dad. You won't tell Miles, won't you? Overall I'm just really paranoid about it 'cause this feeling has since been, how do I put it? Burning? I guess? Well, I'm getting tired now. You can see the ink on the paper's starting to fade 'cause the pen's running out too or maybe I'm just pressing the ballpoint too gently. Either way, the AC and the coldness—I could barely handle it. Hopefully you'll be able to read this when I get to you.
Oh, shit. I see why it was hidden among the tape now. I folded the letter so that you could only see the sweet talk and goodbyes of the last paragraph, tucked above and glued by the same, fading and almost peeling tape from before to be kept away for years to come. Perhaps it'd be better if it was also brought down if the house's torn down for my mahogany wood-selling shop when I've become a seedy, middle-aged businessman like Miles right now. Just don't hit me with another depression—I think that's already fulfilled. But I'd admit it's gone through phases and after years all those sunrises and sunsets I'd graze upon between the window panes like looking through a rifle's scope, magnified sunlight burning my iris. At least the pain would be burnt away and what's not to be grateful about that? Now it was a new day in Mahogany, Albemarle. The sun will always be blue and the grass will always be green.
With all that aside I went to the woodwork station that was in line with that weird shed I visited when my Dad got caught in Guantanamo Bay. The prison's finally closing and I'm keen. I just wanted to forget all those things right now so I went outside to take a morning walk. But even that had to be disturbed by my mother, as always. She had woken up early, probably to chat with Tarling and Cassandra or something in the restaurant.
"Why are you here walking around like a scarecrow with legs? Aren't you supposed to be in the restaurant today?"
"Well, Jordan told me to take care of you. I don't know why you're asking that again—you know I already told you I'm not that great of a cook."
"You made one of my tart recipes yesterday and you did pretty well. Your brothers were just joking around, you already know they're like that and you're still shocked?"
"I don't like cooking anyway. I was gonna go to have another sleep before the sun rose. I just wanted to check around if anything was different after, well, y'know."
"Oh, what is up with you today?"
"What? I'm just feeling a bit, uh. It feels a bit empty."
"It is, isn't it? Oh, of course, Carney. Your brothers are in the restaurant right now. Just go help them. I know you can."
"Even if I could, I don't want to. It's just something else. Honestly, Mom, I don't want to talk about it."
"It's been years. You have to accept it. We're Ezekielans after all."
"That doesn't really justify the loss. I mean I can still remember even the texture of the paper on the lectern when I stood on the stage. Like the words and stuff too. 'I'm sure you're gonna be alright, Dad.' I know you were not there. It's more difficult for me to just let it vanish into memory. You didn't really have that memory in the first place, Ma."
"I couldn't handle it, Carney. You know I was throwing up in the bathroom. I was there vomiting my guts out. If I can move on from that, you can."
"It's still a bit hard for me."
"Mom wants you to remember that he won't be tortured by the famine that God will give us. He's living in peace and prosperity. Because we…?"
"We, the Grenzeville Children of Ezekiel, are the chosen ones; we would be the saviors of the damned? Yeah, whatever. Ancient words."
She nodded but it seemed she hadn't caught what I said after.
"You're just starting to memorize it, huh? Have you been reading that manifesto in the restaurant?"
"I guess you could say that."
I'd never heard of it 'till I got out of college and I was handed one of them and turns out every adult had it and it was the "bible" everybody brought during ceremonies. 'Cause of that, there was no chance I could make the teachings into my head. The winter had ravaged too desperately and the worms crushed into juice and the butterflies left.
"I'm worried that you're not interested in Miles's teachings. I know what Campbell taught you. Knew I should've given you the book earlier."
"Mom, it's okay, alright? I dropped out like you asked me to. I memorized a bit of it already. What more do ya want from me?"
"You know the book word by word?"
"No. Unlike the message words don't last years. I only focus on the important part."
"The message may last, but the words are as equally important."
"It ain't too big of a deal, Ma. You don't need to lecture me about it again like I'm still sixteen."
"Carney, it doesn't hurt to memorize more of it. Just stop by the restaurant and help your brothers with cleaning. On top of that, Andre and Cassandra need your help too."
"Just let me rest for a bit. I'm not waiting 'till the sun is already on top of us."
I walked through the grassy carpet of the hills and it felt like I was gonna sink into the earth. The winter's almost here so I'd need to get ready for the snow. Clanking mahogany wood. Like stepping on carbon powder to sharply cut diamonds I had to endure my mother's footsteps along the halls on the makeshift bed I made a few days ago as she was cooking her lunch and getting ready to go to the restaurant. The rurality of life never stops 'till you find gold or oil. It was all the same even after years and now I was just gonna continue to read it when my shift was gonna end shortly. The restaurant, still with fans that could fall and turn someone into a blooming onion, continues to spin. I've read Miles's book for hours and it's making me dizzy. My thirtieth birthday's in two days and I don't want to feel like shit when celebrating so I just made my way to the back to check the freezer.
My brothers were there on their iPhone 3G's they somehow bought from a store and they were chitchatting like static droplets of rainwater. But among the static, there was a short window of clarity that galvanized me. As if a soft thunderstruck and cushioned by a lake. Fred mentioned Miles. I guess when he said it they just decided to stare at me 'cause I had something to do with it so I just stared down to reflect their gaze away since I'd no business talking about Miles. And there was Miles's manifesto right under me with its crimson leather cover and the gold-colored title with a barely readable fancy font facing them like a femme fatale. I need to wipe their thoughts away.
"What's up with Miles, guys?"
"Oh, nothing. That book looks ridiculous. Well, often a cover is all you need to know a shit book," Jordan ridiculed. He opened a random page and elbowed it away but 'cause he took no effort in that the book just spun around and moved an ant's length.
Fred took it and played it around like it was a piece of his chewed gum. "Feels flimsy, yeah. You could pull it a little too hard and it'd just tear."
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Blabber on and go on with the circle-jerk competition. See if Miles would be happy 'bout this."
"Miles definitely didn't make this but he would hire someone to make shit like this."
"Why are y'all so adamant about Miles? Did one day everyone just think he was Jefferson Davis?"
"You didn't catch what he said about the shooting yesterday. Me and Fred went to talk with him about building another shed for whatever he was keeping in barrels since he was building it right on where I used to cut wood. Seems like he forgot we were even there and started talking shit about the guys who got shot."
"Yeah, no, I don't read newspapers every day. What did he even say anyway?"
"Typical Miles stuff. You know him."
"He's bluffing."
"He ain't."
"Why're you making this personal for me?"
"I'm just tellin' you."
"Since when is this thing 'round Miles been going? He's weird, yeah, but I ain't think it's that much of an incentive to be disapproved of him."
"You forgot he pulled out the funds you needed for your tuition?"
"Yeah, okay, Rockefeller. No need to get there. It ain't his fault that the therapy costed at least a college campus."
"It's something else. I don't think you're ready to hear about it yet since you're here kissing his ass because me and Jordan were talking shit about that book."
"Big deal guys. Should've prepared to close this place than go through whatever that was."
"I don't know, you do it. We were waiting for you to finish that shit you were reading. Andre and Cassandra are done with the kitchen cleaning and the tables I don't think we need to since I already wiped it down a few minutes ago. Doesn't help only a few people came today either."
"Okay."
There was a giant switch in the back of the building that I had to turn off every time we were closing around the afternoon. I found that out when I started working here when I returned as a dropout like Mr. Andre and even after years I still couldn't figure out which switches do which. Just hoping that one doesn't leak gas out the pipes and Chernobyl our ass. When the door opened the yellow tint of the fluorescent lights didn't help either 'cause it looked like mustard gas was leaking everywhere. The carpet stank of moldy rainwater and the smell shot up my nostrils like grenade shrapnel. Power outlets are uselessly dotted throughout the walls like the aftermath of a paintball game. Seems like the recession hit Miles hard since it looked like he'd bought an abandoned furniture store stripped down its viscera and used its bone fragments to reconstruct it.
So when I did turn off the switches the light from the room would dim a bit before completely turning the place into the breadthless void of Mr. Flint's garden. I hurried my way into the door but the walls were intertwining like it was intentionally there to just make exiting harder than working in the cherry farm every day. When the buzzing lights kept getting dimmer and dimmer the sun outside seemed to shine brighter and brighter before the door decided it was a good time to close and creak slowly as if it was the devil's twitching legs when he walked around his Tramping Ground. Before he could make another step it was now pitch black. I'd scurried enough and it felt like I was standing right by the door. I reached out my hand. Nothing, air, nothing. To my left was peeling wallpaper and snapping wood veneer underneath it. There was nothing that could show me where the door was.
I'd forgotten to bring my phone and I was there tapping my pocketless pants like I was about to beg the worker for a free meal. But even if that ain't my intention a laser-like beam of white light suddenly shined through. It didn't shine anything but a small dot at the end of the hall that was the door. And another beam appeared and these random pairs of chopsticks decided to guide me. I looked behind. Two small dots. One slightly higher than the other. There was a slight feeling that something was penetrating through the blanket of darkness like some kind of pizza slice under those dots. They looked more like a set of eyes than holes in the wall. No way in hell a hole would be that close. What sounded like jelly splashing onto the floor shattered the silence of my footsteps. Just hang on there before I slam the door and slice your ass in half, whatever you are. But it just stood there. The light as still as the fizzle noises, unlike the screen noise of the pitch darkness piercing through the wallpaper. There it seemed perfect to just leave whatever that was alone. The blade of grass barely touched the sole of my shoe.
Blue skies passed through my arm hair. Then it felt like something was pinching my shirt. It was like someone was trying to drag me back in to turn on the lights. I kicked my leg toward whatever was behind me and suddenly it just pulled down as hard as it could and I nearly fell onto the floor. The door was left open before I slammed onto the ground, nearly hitting my head on the concrete that was partially covered by grass. The fuck was that?
It felt like it was getting heavier and heavier and I couldn't get up after ten seconds. Seconds became minutes. I put my hand on my scalp and there was nothing but hair and the skin didn't feel like it had been bruised. It did sting a little, however. I scrabbled over back to the restaurant to try telling my brother if it'd made a bruise or not, but my legs decided to cramp at that moment. The muscles hardened like hot glass, with pockets of meat left inside, melting and twisting like nylon threads—nerves pulled and snapped as if they were hair—and I'm just there trying my best not to crawl like an animal and also minding my steps carefully to ease the pain. I feel a certain lightheadedness on the back of my head and yet the sun was shining through a cloud so there wasn't any heat. Blurring. I couldn't hold it and I let go. The ground and the blades of grass flowed through my face. And there I lay, just no energy left, and don't tell me I'd not turned off the lights yet.
Chapter 1: Mahogany's Role, Part 8 "Blood Shots"
Awoken by the whirling wind which was coming from outside a window, I felt the soft and sagging ground that was now under me, but I wasn't wet and my clothes didn't seem to be dirty either; it didn't sound or look like it was raining. Pain pulses through the back of my head like a whirlwind and so I yawned, opening my mouth as wide as possible to get rid of the headache temporarily. Nonetheless, the cherry plant ain't bloom at all and what fruited was only an inevitable cold that felt like was creeping closer and closer. Swirling 'round dices. I was tempted to fall asleep again but that'd just make the worm in my gut move faster and heat my forehead from the friction.
Perhaps this cold sweat wrapping 'round my head, trickling down sideways could make me feel better but it'd be hard though 'cause something was burning in my stomach. Not that sensation when you're just feeling bad or like when the acid inside you dissolves your flesh into a foamy milkshake of blood and gelatin; it's more comparable to when gorging some burning charcoal up and the little sparks it'd make bounces throughout inside the gut. I don't know what's happening right now but that's the way I'd put it. Even when something's definitely wrong I couldn't point it out even if you have me at gunpoint. Nevertheless, I could tell you one thing: The paranoia that it's about something that's far away from here. That something—it could be a person too and I'd not know—is coming and it's coming here. I have no idea. So there still with my headache pounding and glowing like a dying star I got up from my bed to check the windows for anyone. Suddenly I could hear clanking right on top of me, just at the level where my head was. And crush! An instant rush of freezing temperatures on my feet. It was a plastic bag with mostly melted ice. What's this even for?
It was just silent white noise save for the wind 'till now and when that fell it opened up a gate and there was a rush of more noise, becoming louder and louder as though some other powerful deity won't want me to go to another round of sleeping. To my right, I could hear breathing from the kitchen and when the wall disappeared into the right side of my eye as I peeked through the dining table, there stood Fred and he was pouring himself a bit of wine in a plastic bottle. With the fridge wide open. Barely with anything in it but ketchup and leftover marinara sauce. He didn't seem to notice me at first 'cause he turned to the fridge and so I called him out for being a sociopathic introvert.
"What's this wallflower doin' here with refrigerated wine in a Dasani cup? You're gonna put yourself in it now?"
"Haha, yeah, yeah." He looked like he was about to say I know what you're thinking from his joking tone, but he continued, "I'm trying to enjoy myself, Ma. You can drink your cherry wine and I'll too."
"I was just thinkin' that you were too quiet. So, why are ya here and not Jordan? Where'd he go?"
"Not really something I know 'cause he only said he'd be back soon, but he told me he was getting something for you and that he had a meeting with Miles, and Mom was also joining him so it'll take him a little while. After he said that we tried finding you and not even a minute later we found you splat like a dead worm on the ground. You were still kind of awake so we got you into the car and basically dragged you here."
"Wait, how did you even carry me?"
You didn't even realize you were still like, half awake?"
"No? I can see this ice pack's barely solid anymore. Means it's been a while since then."
"Well, we thought you hit your head or something."
"You didn't think callin' the ambulance? Like at all?"
"Why would we even?"
"How'd you supposed to know if I've gotten a concussion or something? You're lucky I even woke up."
"Unfortunately."
"Did you skip everything those Charlestown doctors advised about?"
"I'm surprised you even remembered me and Jordan going there with you."
"Yeah, I'm not surprised either if all this's how you gettin' back at me: By leaving me there to bleed in my head."
"Just be mature for once and be grateful you're even talking to me right now. Go take some Ayahuasca and sleep again."
"Hold on there. There's something I want to tell you."
"What is it?"
"It's just a thought of mine."
"Is it about Miles? I know you were pissed off there."
"No, I don't think. A bit related to him, I guess."
"I don't even know a single thing about it, Ma.. Jordan was the one who told me about it and I pretended to know something I didn't."
"No, Fred, there's just something weird goin' on that I was thinking about."
"You've said the same thing twice now."
"You know that feeling when you feel like something's coming?"
"It's written in the manifesto? Did you even read it?"
"No, I don't think it fits with this butterfly I've got in my gut."
"Just tell it."
"I wished I could, but I can't really explain it. But where it comes from, it's far from here. Probably not in Albemarle. I don't think it's gonna be from Carolina nor Virginia nor West Virginia nor— whatever. But I know it's not from the States. And it's coming here—to Mahogany.
"It's probably the Mexican cartel. They're getting Miles for the meth he stole, then you for smoking it. You should be even more focused on that manifesto you're infatuated with.
"You're not Jordan."
"I got that joke from him."
I'm being serious right now, Fred. Please."
"I don't know but you've been acting like Miles lately. Quiet and paranoid; quite paranoid. Yeah, that's what you are."
"'Quiet,' says you."
"Hey, Carney. I'm worried about you, alright? Just stop reading that book in your past time, maybe even reading one page less per day could help."
"That doesn't really help either."
"We have even more problems than this."
"Yeah, I shouldn't have woken up to waste my time over this."
"It's not like that, Ma.."
"You're not serious about this at all."
"There's one thing I want to show you to cheer you up, maybe even make you forget this. Just follow me."
He went straight down the short hallway and it seemed like he was gonna go to his room near the end of the hallway where my father's orb pondering room was since he didn't look to be stopping anytime soon. But as soon as he put his hand on the handle of the door he just looked around and didn't step foot in it at all, just checking the area if his Pulp Fiction posters were hung directly on the wall without a cover. He just ambled straight up—without hesitation—to Dad's room and nonchalantly turned on the lights. Didn't even bow down at first but I'm getting out of hand. I followed him with my fists tightened 'cause I was just feeling uneasy. Doesn't help either that it smelled of stale cherries and sweaty elbow pits covered with dead skin that looks like eraser shavings. You could see the dust floating around like white noise within the room, so saturated it was like a blank picture frame and the seemingly frozen state everything was in simply didn't add up in my eyes.
"You're not even gonna help me here?"
"How am I supposed to anyway?"
"Move out the boxes over here."
It was as tall as a Michelangelo statue but weighed as much as paint and the boxes above my head looked like it was gonna fall. For some reason my flight or fight adrenaline rush still struck me like a truck and when I thought I was doing well at carrying them all they just decided to collectively fall together on top of my head and my ankle was stacking a container on a needle.
"Don't call anyone a wallflower and then act like a girl carrying those things. There's still too little space for me to even touch the cabinet."
"You're quiet loud today."
"It's what it is," he said as he grunted, carrying some boxes, "Now go move this here."
There was a window right beside the large cabinet that was blocked by the boxes earlier. When we got to move them outside the room was still like if some stormy clouds had leaked inside through the glass and curtains, electrifying our eyes and itching everywhere else in our body. So there he was standing at a barely big enough spot where he threw all the stuff onto the front of the door so I could push it outside, and as he got off after a while being there it was as if it was his little bamboo sanctuary with tall boxes as the stalk and ripped parts of the cardboard sticking out as the leaves. He turned to take a look at me to probably see if he was the only one with watery eyes and he scrubbed his panda-like face to get rid of those black rings of dust around his eyes.
“What’d you lookin’ at me for?” I laughed.
He stiflingly groaned, “You’ve got a wet cloth? Don’t even think of grabbing that one from the dishwasher.”
“Yeah, I think you should clean those black spots there.”
“Actually, never mind. Let me go get it myself; I don’t trust you one bit. Just take those boxes out I haven’t put out yet and unlock the cabinet.”
“Where’s the key, though?”
“It’s still there hanging in the keyhole probably. It should look all rusty but oiled.”
“You use it often?”
“No, I haven’t even used it since months ago.”
“What’re you so curious about its insides?”
“Just open it when you find the key. You'd probably remember it.”
He took off running despite having a corporate discussion with me for a minute and having to handle those spicy fumes in his tears, kicking all the boxes and waking the wind up with the gritting of the rough sliding. There I carried the last six or so boxes to the bed that was gonna sink anytime and surely the key was there. It immediately swung open as it was locked like it'd been waiting stagnant years for someone to unleash it thereby exposing what was inside and some PVC sleeves were blanketing it. I barely touched it as it glided down onto the floor softly like a waterfall. Jagged lines of mismatched colors stacked upon each other, edges of what looked like Styrofoam sleeves sticking out, and about a dozen thick lines within the cascading river of vinyl records. They were books I'm pretty sure. I scoured to find those books to see if my old book was there through the sleeves gently in case one of them was a disintegrating, original Beatles record. Pulled a bunch of them 'cause I couldn't fit my fingers to grip onto the book. Michael Jackson lying on his shoulders. Only one record stuck out to his left and it had Ringo Starr with what looked like a skinned midget on his lap trying to escape by pulling itself forward with his thigh. Now I see why they put a lot of boxes to block anyone from seeing this.
Before I could grab the book, Fred immediately teleported onto the front of the door and he was still scratching his eyes. Thankfully he didn't see what I saw or else he'd need to clean his eyes again.
"Why do you have that many records on your lap?"
"Nah, nothing. Just trying to find that book I had like years ago."
"Catcher in the Rye?"
"Wait, what? How'd you know that?"
"It's over there on the far right side. Did you even see it?"
"No? How did it get there anyway?"
"I found it outside our porch lying, like on the table and just assumed it was yours. It was all wet and it looked like even with a hair dryer it probably won't dry. I mean, I couldn't get it from the bathroom without getting caught even. So, I just kept it here with the covers up, and Dad didn't pay attention to it either. This isn't your first time seeing Dad's records, right?"
"I ain't know it was this much. I remember only getting to listen to a few albums and that was it."
"You feel like a kid again?"
"I just wanted to see if my old book was there or not. Y'know it's been lost for years."
"How did you even get that book anyway?"
"They had a ton of these old books in the back rooms of the library and stuff. I just thought it was some ancient Chinese legend from the cover."
"No wonder you were a sailor as a kid. You could've surfed through all those swears you said."
"You weren't any better either."
"I mean, you weren't even trying to be discreet about it."
"Wait hold on there. Let me sift through these."
"You want to play those in the record player?"
"Do we have time?"
"It's only five in the afternoon."
"Aren't we supposed to help them build the stage?"
"We don't even have that on Tuesday."
"Yeah, forget it. I'm just gonna take the book and leave this be."
The book was still barely unloosened and so I jerked it back and forth 'cause I didn't want the spine to snap and the book mutilated. Still somehow intact and the words barely changed. Smelled of vanilla and, well, old rags still. I opened a random page and when this part especially that was smack at the start of the book—not even the fifth page of the book—and it was as if it was budging me to read that specific page. The word icy superimposed on the paper stood out like it was magnified fifty times more than the other. Just by reading the sentence my legs were softened and my skin crawled around too much. Drowsily skimming over like I was a college admissions professor scrolling and rejecting applications.
My eyelids closing in further and further down. The lights slightly dimming. But then when the feeling of jerking back up hadn't even crossed my mind yet I could hear the door getting swung open as if the FBI had a warrant on us and we were hiding the meth inside the books that’d been cut out. But if I were to express that concern, I might get slapped with a last warning and be sent back to religion school again.
"Oh, Jordan's here."
Carrying about a dozen plastic bags of cardboard boxes, he had the door on life support as he held it open and the bags were barely holding on. Getting less and less opaque by time and stretching as far as it could. It looked like the veins in his arms were about to pop up and leak blue-colored blood all over the floor but I guess that's what you get for leaving someone to bleed in their heads. When you hide something it'll come and bite you in your skin eventually.
Fred turned to me and murmured, "Clean all this, I'll talk with Jordan for a minute."
"What, no? You created this mess, you do it."
"Not now, Carney."
His eyes were unfocused as if gazing at a white space exacerbated by colorful hallucinogens. Two crevices on under and atop his eyes. Shell shocked by the loud bang of the door that probably sounded like a pipe bomb to him.
I nonchalantly closed the cabinet and tossed the book aside before stacking the boxes back up, spreading 'round the dust everywhere and some got into my eye. Sting like a million bee stingers float in many within the wind. The air quickly dispersed away and when all the dust had hit the floor all I needed to do was move the remaining ones that were stacked outside. Haphazardly putting it wherever it fits. If some were small enough to fit inside the nooks and crannies of the floorboards I'd probably store them there too 'cause Fred can just take the blame for it. My knees were gonna shatter at this point. Squatting with your legs wide apart doesn't improve your balance, so when I stood up, it felt as though my bones were untangling like I'd been sitting all my life and was standing for the first time. And so with my curiosity burning like a decades-old oil rig I riffled through the pages. Something about the Disciples, Jesus, and stuff. Didn't like Jesus, didn't like the Disciples. Whatever. It didn't take me to read a quarter of the book to know I didn't need to. And now that I think of it I'd probably gotten the book 'cause I was mad about going to the cherry farm and I needed to get back at them.
Right down the hallway I could see them in the kitchen talking. Or are they arguing? Fred's doing exaggerated hand gestures and I couldn't see my mother at all. No sounds of her, no nothing. I could definitely tell they both were talking but it was like static to me. No tone, no words. It's like guessing a song's melody from the sound waves. And remembering they'd talked about Miles a few hours ago, I was gonna be nosy about it and rightfully so—if it goes too far and the blasphemy gone too much might as well say it directly in front of him. Before eavesdropping them I hid the book under a huge stack of boxes on the corner of the room blocked by the bed and wardrobe. Didn't know why but I just felt like it.
With the mindset that if I stood as still as possible I'd be invisible to everyone I just went there and tried to be casual about it: Got a cup of glass and poured some water from the tap and whatnot. The countertop was ruined by the giant pile of plastic bags and it was such an eyesore I'd completely missed the stream that'd been flowing for a while—just repulsed from the sight. Like a car crash but instead of human flesh and metal parts lying everywhere on the road, it's the thought of having trash tossed around carelessly on perfectly green grassy knolls. We'd never used plastic bags 'till now, or at least, I haven't seen this many of them in one place. Adding more trash into the ocean as if salting an open wound, I could barely see what looked like cardboard boxes and more plastic packaging inside through the translucency of the stretched plastic layers. A few stuck out. Green leaves, white stalks, and one with a black, crystal-like abomination underneath. When the dust settled down the smell of the room intensified like the banging was so strong it'd caused an earthquake. The butterfly effect takes in and a tsunami hits Albemarle. The smell came like an ocean breeze from afar and I could tell it was from that one bag of those weird black crystals. The weight of what was inside the bag became clearer and clearer and there were some gray variegated throughout.
"Are those oysters?" I pryingly interrupted them. It was a bit justified 'cause it was like sidelining paparazzi. It was just nonsense for my pixelated ears.
But as I said it the tone of the conversation started getting clearer and clearer and it went from chaos into calamity. They both were now arguing and it was a car crash for me so I'd need to focus on this.
"Okay, okay, Jordan. I've been telling you this since the beginning. Where's Mom?"
"Told you she was in the restaurant! Are you deaf?"
"No. Why did you even bring them here?"
"I've got one word for you, Fred. It's Miles."
"What does this even mean? What is he trying to do?"
"I told you already: Don't ask me. He was blabbering about this plane in Australia that crashed a few hours ago and now he told us to bring all this here!"
Plane?
"You literally just said Miles told you to bring it to the restaurant."
The thought of the plane flew by faster through their minds than a Concorde and I had to stop it from being ignored, maybe using financial issues to stir up the conversation too.
"Wait, wait. What plane? What are you talking 'bout?"
"You haven't heard the news? Some plane disappeared four or five hours ago and apparently Miles took it as a sign. Even Jordan here seems fixated with it.
"We've got more problems than a damn plane! How are we gonna recover from this? Y'know that our budget's tight?"
"Yeah, tell that directly to Miles. I'm as clueless as you, and I don't think Jordan even knows what he's talking about."
"I asked him about it, alright? He showed me some pictures and there were these stars or some shit. I can't explain it—here let me just show y'all."
It was as if he had his phone turned on all this time 'cause as soon as he said that he pulled it out and immediately the image was there. Some plane's cabin that looked like a theatre with its red seats and curtains hiding the galley. I was thinking that Jordan was bullshitting like he always does but it took me a second to see splotches of stars just awkwardly placed randomly on walls, seats, windows, whatever. I tried to relate or compare it to something but I couldn't. My fingers didn't know where to put it and it felt like if I even tried it'd suck me in like a black hole and bring me to interstellar space or something.
"Carney, what's taking you that long?" Fred disturbed.
"No, no, Fred. I can feel him 'cause I also lost my shit too when Miles showed me the pic."
"Why are you two makin' a big deal about this?"
Jordan looked at me as if he was gonna give the comeback of his life but deep down he looked petrified and his eyes were still like concrete, "Wait, Carney. Go get your manifesto and skiffle through that one chapter about that prophecy."
"What, why?"
"Not the time, dude. Not the time."
I hastily made my way to the garage and shuffled through some old tools to find the car's keys, the same Ford Escort my mother used to drive me and my brothers to the hospital before retiring it and giving it to me and my brothers to share when I returned from college. There was a pile of tools desperate not too fall off the workbench, and because we sometimes put the keys there, I'd need to pick out a small piece of shiny metal from other metal pieces. I'd honestly prefer finding a needle in a haystack 'cause at least it stands out better. So there I was manhandling hammers, nails, and rusty saws just hoping I'd not get tetanus from all this. As the smell of metal that was on my hands became more potent over time, it ain't looking good for me. The seconds had gone by and with this restless gremlin, Jordan here waiting to get what he despised the most.
I could hear Jordan calling out to me from the kitchen, muffled by the metal dust around the air. When the dust settled down once again it became more clear: "Carney, what's taking you so long?"
"The keys not here, Ma. You can lend me a hand at least."
"Fred's done found it already!"
"What?"
"Come here!"
With all the swingin' 'round it was really dizzying and I could barely walk normally, let alone find a specific stroke within about twenty or so scribbled pages distracted using my eyes that was rolling. It felt like I was just hit by a rubber hammer and I hardly even reached the kitchen while standing up ordinarily and I had to somehow skip through the floor as if the room was spinning slightly. I asked Fred to throw it to me from afar and just immediately went in to find it in case I'd need to black out. Page 6, Chapter 2: The Prophecy. The last generation shall observe the melting of stars and when the time comes they shall gather around in an outdoor setting. Leader of the Ezekiel's Children accommodates every soul that is present to prepare them for the divine afterlife; for the damned who do not participate, they shall be left to perish on mortal Earth to be melted with the devilish stars that pollute the earth, the seas, the skies, and space. This is it. I pointed it out to Fred and it just seemed like he couldn't bare the shock anymore and had to pass the defibrillator to someone else.
"Wait, wait. What does he even mean by that?" He concerned.
"He told me we were gonna have a ceremony tomorrow. That was it."
"I was too tired to even continue the discussion so I just told them to help. "Alright, I don't know anymore. I'm not feelin' well right now so you both better go help Miles get this stuff to the restaurant quickly."
"Oh, now you're telling us to tidy this all up. Why don't you help us then?" Jordan angrily replied.
"My head is killing me, alright? And not to mention that all this, it's your fault. Try helping me for once."
"Dude, fine. Just make sure you help us prepare all this for tomorrow with Mom."
I felt like if I moved a muscle my entire body would come crashing down and collapse into little bits and pieces, but fortunately, though, I didn't have the energy to do so. Planning to just skip over the whole day I turned off the alarm clock so I could take a nap for longer 'cause my brothers would rarely go out their way to shake me when I'm not awake. All I wanted and could was to blink and nothing else—and please, keep it that way so my eyes would get tired. It was finally the time that I got a good four-hour afternoon nap after a while, I thought. There was nobody in the house to wake the floorboards up and kept my sleep deep but dreamless like a surgery but you could feel how long you were lying in there and not just instantly waking up after putting on the mask. Long enough for the pillows to wrinkle your arms but short enough that the comfort doesn't turn to boredom.
With that aside, though, I'd woken up to the imprint left behind by the orange light from the sunset. Vibrant but matte, blinding but enticing.
Bits of dead skin and dust littered the floor as I was getting up to grab a jacket to help my Mom in the restaurant. Maybe even Miles if I'm lucky—but at the same time—I don't want to for some reason. I got that out of the way and went head-on outside to take a fifteen-minute stroll before the sun turned off and Bigfoot dragged me into the shadows of the trees, head-heavy and fluid swirling 'round in the brain. The snapping of the dry leaves still somehow had that crisp with the melted snow inundating it. It was early February so for me it wasn't that hot, but my arms felt like two icicles barely hanging on so I cupped my hands and exhaled out some hot air to at least blunt the tip. Orange skies, black clouds akin to smoke from a factory. I mean, it looked like the cover of the album I took a close look at before. Picturesque though eerie. If I had a camera right now it'd be hard to choose to take a picture or not, but I'd need to get that out the way 'cause it was gonna be dark soon and I'd need to help them do whatever Miles told them to do. Like small pebbles on an interstate.
As the path of trees was disappearing to the left I could see the flickering fluorescent lights hanging by the walls of the restaurant. Every time I went there was in a car so the walls kind of blocked the view, and now when I had a panorama of it I wished I could just toss it away for the deer in the forest to feed on it like a pest. It looked like shit basically and it wasn't like how I remembered it. Warped planks of mahogany, unfit for the coldness. What'd left of the aspect of its roof was the belfry, left standing and that was to just hold up a sign with the town's tree icon carelessly brushed on it with peeling black paint. There was a wooden stick on what I'd assume was the spire-like the sign wasn't enough to say that this place is a church turned crack house and this was the place I'd need to spend overnight at just working. I better get rewarded death or something 'cause that's the only way I could save up my energy.
If the annoyance of wasps came from their buzzing only they'd be perfect as a replacement for the lights we have here. When I reached the porch that looked like any other suburban home would have there was a slight scent of tobacco that was either lining the crevices of the door or what was inside was flooded with tea cured over fresh tobacco. Either way, I'd need to check 'cause I can't let anyone share the same ground as my father.
A rush of hot and cold air swept through me. The sound of sizzling and jumbled calling while my eyes cried from the fumes. I could see Andre clearly over there trying his best to guide the kitchen but it seemed more like he was trying to control the shape of a smoke, with trays upon trays of food stacked on everything. Tables, counters, and even chairs. Cassandra walked around and counted all of them with her unnecessarily tangled pigtails almost brushing over the food and salting it with her dandruff. Tarling's yelling, only distinguishable from her accent, prompted Jordan to spoon up some creamy soup that had these black spots on it. I was at a considerable distance so they must've been a little big and not to mention the screaming and chaos around was audible. God knows how ear-piercing it'd be if I was even to take one step closer. But it was for my family and the community, and also Miles, I guess. I turned right to wear the last apron that was probably left for me and got to the kitchen. Feeling like an intern it was not easy to nudge in the middle of a disorderly orchestration, with my hands grabbing on the surface of the counter as if there was a handle there, maybe waiting if someone would let me do anything. Though I'm pretty sure I was just overestimating my importance there. I kept off any eye contact but still kept my eyes and ears open for business by just standing here. My socks had gone wet from the heat and my shoes at this point needed to be cleaned with detergent. After minutes being there I'm not even sure if I wanted to help or not 'cause I feel like I'm standing in between. If there was a word between yes or no like how middle is between start and end, that'd be how I describe the outcome. It wasn't maybe 'cause you still had to choose between yes or no: Maybe yes, maybe no. It's whatever. But when that rambling of a daydream I heard something in the distance.
"Carney, Carney! Can you hear me? Are you even there? I've called you three times now! Move, Ma.!" Fred called out as he was wiping his sweat with his arm.
"What?"
"Just don't keep blacking out! We still have a lot more to do!"
"Yeah, yeah. I know."
"Have you even started doing it yet?"
"No? You haven't told me to 'till now."
"I thought you knew? You even said it seconds ago!"
"Y'know, just tell me the thing you wanted me to help with again. I'd admit I'd been dozing off before."
"Go help Cassandra account those trays of food there outside and put them in the warming oven when we get to dessert. But wait, before you do that—speaking of desserts—help us make the cherry pies. We're short on that right now."
"No, you don't want to see my cooking let alone have everyone eat it in a special ceremony.
"Just trust yourself, Ma.! We don't have much here!"
When I turned back I could see from the corner of my cornea that Cassandra was there tip-toeing around the tables with her pen and paper, writing everything down as she passed every tray of food and drinks. Barbecue, oyster soup with fava beans, Kool-Aid mocktails. Everything Obama wants in his final year of presidency's White House party, except for the cherry wine disguised as Chianti. That wasn't important 'cause I'd assume she was doing just fine knowing that. Though she's in her late fifties or sixties, you could mistake her for a hippie from her red hunting hat she stole from Caulfield. If any other old ladies wore that they'd probably look like babushkas. But 'cause she's not, she doesn't have her face covered with a headscarf despite her quietness and being Andre's mistress—I don't remember the last time I've had a conversation with her. If Fred was an old woman they'd be like biological twins.
She was three-fourths of the way done, and with only the oyster soup and drinks left, it wasn't too hard to count all the bowls and glasses. I glanced at her briefly since there wasn't anything my attention could catch. It was like when you're in a waiting room and all you could do was stare at the helpless people sleeping with their heads drooped like statues of fallen dictators. Not intentional, really. Sometimes it's just ain't your fault that you did something—it's the things around you that is. But punishment gets everyone in the end, either they're at fault or not 'cause she noticed that I'd glanced a bit at her and she probably took it off as a sign that I was gonna talk to her.
"Hey, Carney! How's your Mom doing lately?"
I wasn't feeling like talking at this point 'cause my sweat was running faster than the Hoover Dam, and even if one drop fell onto these drinks, they'd be poisoned.
"Oh, hi madame. It's nothing much. She's the same as she is here."
"Right." She nodded as she seemingly side-eyed me. Not in a way that'd seem obvious that she thinks my mother was like an alligator in a public jacuzzi, but it was like she had something she reluctantly needed to say.
"What's wrong, ma'am?"
"Oh, nothing…! I just wanted to make sure you were fine. I mean, you are, right…?" She curiously chirped. It was long enough to make me go back stacking those trays up.
"Yeah, of course. As always."
"Well, let me just do this first, alright? I have something to tell you."
"Eh?" I exclaimed, turning my head at her. I was in the middle of the work since I didn't think the small talk was gonna be long forgotten. But it seemed she'd been with Andre for too long now to keep her reserve.
"If you feel bored, I mean, why not, right? Now, how many have you stacked, Carney?"
"I'm carrying these four. I think that's enough for this 'cause they're practically done."
"If you ask me, isn't it weird that we're refrigerating iced drinks?"
"I'm sorry, madame. But what?"
"We should've made this at the ceremony."
"It's good to prepare it first if I'd guess what Miles would think. He could just get someone's truck and transport it all to the outdoor stage."
"It's what Miles wants us to do."
"Yeah. I mean, we're following him. Of course."
"Well, that's the thing. I'm going to explain to you tomorrow."
"I dunno, ma'am. Something's not right."
"There! There in lies your answer."
"What?"
"Something is not right about that…!"
"Okay…?"
"There's not much time to explain everything, but one thing I do have one thing for you. Meet me before the ritu— I mean, the ceremony starts."
As soon as those words left her lips it was like she had all the atoms in her body decay spontaneously. I tried to reply 'cause it was my first time seeing her like this but she just left me there like she tried ruining the one-in-a-lifetime scenario. The strong stench of roasted garlic cleansed the dirty vampire saliva away. We didn't have time anyway so I just quickly stacked the trays on the racks, putting them up on a cart we use to carry customer's orders and dirty kitchenware on. Sometimes we use it for both simultaneously. I could almost taste the overripe cherries by its syrup's smoke when I passed by.
It was gonna be a long day and I was told that we'd be up all night if that wasn't made obvious already by the almost blinding fluorescent lights. Still buzzing and occasionally flickering like the one outside. After about five or six hours and many drinking games, we finished up with a tray of cherry pies we doused its dough with a bit of vodka we had left. I don't know if children were allowed to eat them later, but that wasn't our problem so we just made our little ceremony on the porch drinking whatever alcohol was left we'd used in the goods we made. The overlooked darkness of the same forests where the UFOs kidnapped the Roanoke people. After everyone had left and Mom left to clean up the house at around four in the morning—while I was on the verge of sleeping on the flea-infested chairs—my brothers woke me up all drowsy and drooling on the wood planks below. The black static behind them didn't deter them from potentially getting mauled by bears, and because I only drank a couple of shots, I was the one driving. It ain't a long drive either. It was purely done so that these two drunk men don't wander into the trees and die in a cave or something, while a worm makes a cocoon inside their nose.
I guided them to the car while they were still puking out their saliva on my arm and their shirts, locking the door swiftly like I was in a poorly-written horror film. The way I carried them felt like their legs were barely made out of bones. One by one, I seated them into the car and my hair stood up every time I heard Jordan's footsteps coming from behind me. He's almost six feet high, and just with his shadows alone I was gonna get my father's M16 rifle and blow whatever this being's head out into a big red jelly of bloody processed meat. While I didn't see it, I could sense that it had some Daliesque, featureless face with deep black apertures—artificial and as if it was intentional mutilation. All robotic and clueless, but unlike us. More often than not, that's enough for it to get under your skin and then peel the skin off to crush the alien. Quirkiness equals disintegration.
The streetlamps boxed the serpentine road with its lights: The contrast between the black static and the twisted coalescence of the artificial houses—molded in a constant state of muddled maelstrom. But then again, there are people named John Smith or something living in these buildings. Since there was no way I could drag their lifeless bodies to their bedrooms and not get an apparition, I just turned the car off and rolled the windows slightly. The AC was already not working anyway and we slept there 'till God knows what time.
I awoke to a shiny overcast sky that reddened my eyes, and the sun was right above us like we were at the equator. The car radio read three in the afternoon. People were probably preparing for dinner already and we were lying in that puny car like triplets in a tight womb. Marshall and Jordan are still yet to wake up and probably complain about the hangover for the rest of the day but I only had a minor pulsing sensation in my head. I guess the shots needed to swirl somewhere and it went to my brain. When my eye poo sprinkled down and I could see without feeling like I had sand in my eyes, it was we'd fallen down a hill and somehow landed upright. Greasy windows covered in dirt and trash scattered on the left side of the car. Paper, pens, soda cans, and beer caps. If I even slightly sloped down when I was asleep, I would've woken up needing stitches. The rear-view mirror was tilted, and when I grabbed to reach it I saw a figure walking down from the restaurant. At the back of the head I'd assume was a donut bun slightly poking out as if a giant bruise. Swinging back and forth as it swung its arms stiffly. Shit. It was my mother.
I turned to my left to shake Fred so that it wouldn't look like we'd taken a dozen fifteen-minute breaks, and he opened his eyes like he was awake the entire time. We both struggled to reach the backseat let alone wake Jordan up. Even if an earthquake was opening up an interdimensional hole in the middle of Albemarle, it'd only make him slightly open his eyes. Fred sat there motionless after putting in unnecessary effort and 'cause nothing worked I went to start the car and drive closer to my mother, probably still wondering if her kids had killed each other in the car or left for the forest to get mauled by a bear.
It took about half a minute for me to get close enough to see her face. After we stopped I rolled down the window to show her that Jordan was actually dead and still with saliva flowing on his chest. Since Fred was now directly facing her I was hesitant to let him do the talking at first. I'd seen him down half a bottle of Jack Daniel's the night before. But he didn't look out of the ordinary apart from his straight hair gone messy, and I didn't really have time to stop him either way so he needed to fulfill his role as a big brother by unwillingly taking the responsibility. Though I was literally there in the driver’s seat probably looking like I'd failed a DUI test on a military checkpoint, he'd still get the blame even if he was in another coast. I rolled down the window more and she was looking around the car. Confused or just blinded by the sight of it.
"What are these three drunk men doing here in my car?" She groaned.
"Mom, Mom! I can explain.
"What did you do the night before after I left?"
"It was a long night, remember? Even Andre and Cassandra went to drink with us."
"It's already in the afternoon. The whole town is preparing for the ceremony tonight, and you're here with Jordan and he's still hungover?
div style="text-indent: 2.5em;">"Are we gonna change our clothes or something?"
div style="text-indent: 2.5em;">She looked down and grabbed her everyday shirt, "If Mom's wearing this to the ceremony, that jacket can stay, okay? Just drive to the abandoned stage we have just by the northside meadow."
"You're driving?" I interrupted Fred as he was gonna say something incriminating.
"No, just let me in. You made me walk about two miles and you need to pay Mom back for that.
When the awkward squeaking of the leather paused every soundwave that reached us, we were at least expecting Jordan to scratch his head while half-asleep or something. She reached her hand over to his forehead and it was like her skin wrinkled immediately from the sea of sweat that was flooding his body. Her mere presence probably made his spin pull all the water 'cause when I went to gently tap his jaw, it was like he'd been sleeping in a sauna all night long. It was just bones and it was still hot. Sensing he wouldn't even wake up soon she raspingly yelled directly at his eardrums. As he turned over again, all I could do was just let out a morning yawn having that drop of grasp on reality to see that Mom was tickling his personal space.
"Ma…?" He roared his morning voice, the walls still flaky from all the vodka he downed.
"You better wake up, Jordan. It's about three in the afternoon now."
"Mmm, okay…"
"We're preparing for the ceremony tonight. Everyone's already there."
Soon after she said that, it was as if his brain got the signal for a nuclear strike and he sprung up, almost hitting his head on the frame of the window.
"What?" He blurted.
"C'mon, wake up."
To make sure he wasn't gonna think about lying down again, I pushed the gas pedal like it was a steroid syringe. Newton likely got Jordan flying into Venus when I accelerated 'cause it felt as if he was getting tossed around like a rag doll, and it seemed like the winter melted away from all the friction. There wasn't any speed limits here anyway so as I channeled our German automobile DNA as we were floating past the potholes and puddles dotting throughout the thin asphalt. The sun reached the spot where the clouds weren't there and it somehow became colder. The gas clouds on Venus absorbed every bit of heat. When we reached where the town ended and there was nothing but trees and muddy pathways save for this road we were on, she abruptly told me to park the car on a small clearing that led to some stepstones. We got off and approached the entrance: A gateway you usually see in cemeteries that was covered in foliage and overgrown vines, flanked by rotting wooden fences. I looked back at her to ask if we were getting sacrificed on a bonfire or something, and she was struggling to pull her jean pockets to get something out of it. It felt like spring was passing by as she was scrabbling to get it.
I was a bit annoyed by just looking at her, so I just took a look around the area to make sure I wasn't getting axed in the head when I enter it. Apart from the Ford Escort, it looked exactly like where the old shed was on but with slippier mud. The last time I went here for some construction help a few days ago and now they transformed it into the Amazon; or maybe they just cut down some boughs and put it to cover the sight and smell of rotten wood. I approached it to see if it was that bad but it was like searching through a needle in a tumbleweed. There were these puny, thorn-like branches that shoot out from the branchlets and it felt like shoving into a mace—spiky in and out. When I reached out and got all that out, there was a CCTV camera that was probably put there just so I can accidentally shove my face through and get a scar again like what'd I did on Mr. Flint's wall years ago. Thinking about it, though, the thing I saw a few hours ago kind of looked like the one I saw that one day. It peaked my curiosity to see what the gate and mother nature kept locked. Maybe they're hiding that thing—the camera behind the apparition. I could hear footsteps and some chairs rattling. Children crying and screaming. Crackles of fire. My hands covered in tar and there was a soft, almost jelly-like squish when I grabbed another picket 'cause my grip was loose but my eyes open.
I jolted my hand out like I'd touched a mummified corpse, and so I took off running to my mother. I swear if this lady ain't done yet. The vibrant, almost fake grass cleaning my shoes was the only thing that'd distract me from remembering the texture of whatever I touched was. Do not look at your hand, Carney. Do not. When I looked up, however, I could see that they were talking to someone by the gate. As soon as she bowed, this man, Miles, pushed his head forward like a giraffe and he turned left to where I was. The leaves were covering him except for his head. A bodiless head. He now had white hair and I guess he didn't comb very well. There were random strands of hair that'd be standing as if he was the Statue of Liberty. My mother never ran as fast as she did ever—especially after she had her midlife crisis—and just grabbed me with my hand and pulled me in front of him like I was still eleven, looking possessed as I was staring at the monster behind the bushes of a person's garden.
He stared at me for a good while, before moving his lips silently and opened the gate wide for us. The way it wobbled so carelessly in the wind; anyone could've entered in. I heard a few weeks ago from Jordan he heard some noise while setting up the tables there, so that could mean something.
Before I could think further, Miles interrupted after a long stare. "Welcome in, Francesca."
Chapter 1: Mahogany's Role, Part 9 "The Ceremony"
We didn't mind him that much as when he immediately went back inside, we squished our way in simultaneously. My back got scratched by a loose nail on a stone brick. Amazing. And now suddenly, there was some popping noises that sounded like a smoke grenade getting thrown around. Confetti dirtying the ground as the smoke fell from waterdrops coming from the leaves above. I looked to my left and right and it was like the tables and chairs stretched on for eternity. There was a horizon—but I guess it's probably just the February fog. I went to check the grassland where the sage stood that was on the other side, blocked by the hedge that was decorated with real and fake flowers. You could see that the real ones were starting to wilt. The last time I was here they weren't looking great either. I was expecting they'd hid the construction stuff behind it, and so I went to check and the grass was less saturated than the ones outside. Unnatural patches of more vivid green, covering up the trails left behind by the wheelbarrows. As I expected, there were some equipment sticking out through the black fabric that covered the sinking stage, so I went to check them to see if the bolts were tightened properly. If I were Miles, I wouldn't want to hear clanking metal during his speech 'cause then everyone will think the stage's gonna collapse into pieces. I'm not sure if it's gonna be some grandiose, Met Gala party or just a little speech performance, but either way, it'll probably kill a whole lot of time.
The sunlight lost track of me and it was almost pitch dark behind the stage. It was small but it felt like I was trapped inside, but meanwhile the sun's shining and the birds were still chirping. I squatted down to check if the wheelbarrow could still move without the axle being rubbed against the rust since it'd rained heavily on Friday, and it didn't help either that Miles hated when people worked overtime. We'd been told to just leave everything immediately and go home when it's already sunset; no matter what we were doing, we needed to just get out of there and drop all the things we were holding. Hammers, crowbars, screwdrivers. Everything was given to the grass. I'd assume that it was just because he wanted to make it so that we'd immediately resume our work we'd done the previous day without scrambling to find the items. So I naturally scanned through the grass to find out if the tools were rusty or not like I was in an archeological site, hoping I wouldn't touch some gnarly roots with rotten, mushy fungi wrapping around it as if it was a snake. But I could sense some footsteps that was coming from the opposite side of the stage, toward me.
I looked up and I couldn't feel anything. Getting ripped apart by a gorilla still wouldn't distract me from the euphoria.
It was like my skin had been cut off and my muscles were exposed to the air. Nerve endings sticking out but they'd gone by the wind with loose feathers. Wings as white as the sun but it was overcast within the shadow floated nearby and a figure stood in between—it didn't look like it was attached. I took a crouching position to get a better look at it. A slender figure. All matte-black skin like a mannequin wearing a skinsuit, but it looked more like it was nude since there weren't any visible seams. Its was headless and instead it was just a chaos of black smoke, sparkles, and sparks like the ones you see coming out of a campfire. I could barely discern the littlest bits behind the jumble: Rings within rings circling each other. All were aggressively dark, like it could've been a black hole shaped like a wheel. It was all just black and white, but it felt like it was dotted throughout with bloodshot eyes 'cause the amount of time passing by right now was enough to boil my blood.
Then when I felt like it was gonna charge at me and cleave me with its wings, as I was turning my head behind, this frail-looking woman stepped up and brushed aside the monochrome angel like it was her child. Still shrouded in darkness, her peacock-like wings, or at least that was what her costume had, penetrated through the black surface of the grass and it was like someone had done a paint job. There was a slight distaste in her face that was casted onto mine—a look of having to travel hundreds of miles on foot without breaking a sweat. She could've came from Roanoke and time traveled into 2015 out of any year she could've picked. Her eyes turned into two black marbles that were about to pop out of the socket. Though she was three yards away, it was like she was whispering to me as her lips moved.
"Get out of here before the invisible air hits your mouth."
I slightly furrowed my eyes, and it seemed the two were offended by it. The angel on the left looked dead straight at me—before he was just looking forward and gazing at what I'd assume was nothing—and two holes at about where the eyes were supposed to be at opened up. Two bright laser-like lights shined into my cheeks. I got blinded for a split second. All I could see was just patches of random colors you'd sometimes see when you close your eyes, but it got burnt into my eyesight. I looked up to the sky and it was approaching sunset. The shutter speed of my eyes were as fast as shuffling through polaroid photos.
I just had to ask them 'cause all of this was like an earthquake in the East Coast. Really rare but it happens, just that when you come across it, it'll make you feel like everywhere you go is a death trap; and so I went on the direction of where they'd gone to check if I was safe to go outside and act nothing had happened without anyone noticing. I was in someone else's land after all, and when that someone is Miles, you'd need to be more cautious. I kind of jogged my way there since I was still out of breath at this point, but when I turned right to peep what was outside between the leaves and the stage—tucked away just enough to not get seen—I heard the slightest rustling. They were footsteps that was coming after me. Before there was a chance to turn back and maybe avoid getting snatched by some weird, probably biblical beings, I felt a bump and it was, well, my mother. She almost got knocked to the ground even though I was just floppily standing there. A toddler would've made me fall too.
"Oh, Carney! Didn't see you there. Also, what are you doing?"
"Nothin' for you to mind about. Come on, Mom. Let's go ask if the food's here yet.
"What? We've just been preparing it and I tried finding you. They were wondering where you went since about three or four hours ago.
"Four hours?"
"Yes, you heard what Mom said. Where did you go anyway?"
"No, I don't want to talk about that. How has it been four hours already?"
"I don't know, try asking yourself that."
She turned to what was behind me and it was as if she gonna point at me for slacking on the job. Like, lady, I don't even know that'd arrived.
"Look, they're done with reheating all the food we made, right? Then it's all fine"
"Carney, Jordan was mad that you weren't helping. Look, I'll just tell him Miles told you to check the construction equipment."
"Yeah, sure. Like that guy wasn't sleeping like a pig in the mud."
"C'mon. Carney. Just get up and help with the decorations."
The whole time I got back she was side-eyeing me, going back and forth placing the LED lights and signs and whatnot. Knowing that the disapproval was crawling my skill, it was a surprise that the sky had turned pitch black and some of the brightest stars in the sky started lighting up dimly. It didn't help either that it was all placed in this one giant they’d also gotten out of the reefer. They'd parked it dangerously close to the entrance door, looking like they were trying to ram it to the stage and stop the ceremony 'cause they blew their minds out with whatever things the cartel smuggled in. After we were done, we were just there to wait for Miles.
And I guess I needed to take the chance to take a look at how the several hours of waiting 'till sundown transformed the whole place. All spectacles and stuff like that, with LED lights hanging on poles stacked in rows. There were about four hundred seats facing the stage and another at the sidewalk café-like area that was a transition between the entrance and the stage. Each for everyone living in the town. We sat at the front since we were basically the closest to Miles I guess. There was a section on the right side of the stage opposite of the dining area where the buffet was. Everything was lined up in rows and rows of stands. The pasta was at the front and sitting like miniature Kansan fields, while the fried chicken and mediocrely cooked steak piled up at the back like a cone. We didn't cook like three-fourths of what was here at the restaurant but I'd assume the other folks from other parts of Grenzeville worked on shifts or just cooked these in their homes.
So aside from that, we just ended up talking with each other. Jordan calmed down, accepted that he was just as lazy as everyone else, and that was it. Our hands were holding wine glasses, sleeves tainted red from all the spilling, and our legs were resting on chairs.
The decorations seemed to have cleared off dust that you'd sometimes see when you use a flashlight in a dark forest. It was like a little pocket of civilization—hedonistic abundance—in the hell of twisted trees and rotting animal corpses. But suddenly, there were thumping noises that echoed through the lands as if we were in some sort of gigantic room. I could feel that the stage lights were shining behind me and my head was eclipsing it, turned back to the extensive forests. They were like the sizes of a football stadium but still, it felt like the size of a national park if compared to the small venue that we have here. If it rained, we'd just need to take shelter under the trees since Miles wanted to cut costs and decided to not install some pergolas. As soon as he crossed my mind it was like he could read it. Everyone got onto their seats properly and I ended up sitting at the edge with Fred to my right.
"Good evening, Grenzevillians!" He bellowed. The mic got a little too close and it looked like he was gonna swallow the whole thing.
There were these speakers my father would probably use to play his records on back when I was still picking cherries. I guess they pulled it from the truck but these were the first time I'd seen it, 'cause it wasn't there before. Did I blink a bit too slow or something? The whole stage became lively and the decorations just materialized as he was walking up there. But I'd need to get that out of the way, and so I kept looking at the tree symbol we had as our town's seal and the words Be one with the others for everyone's sake, superimposed on the circular border. It'd been covered up by him even if he'd used a cane to help him stand up. His eyes were like little black holes dropped on a white ring. Those two flaps of skin old people usually have reaching down from the nose to the edges of their lips flapped around as he sniffed. I remember Fred had joked about how Miles couldn't handle the garlic fumes and that was why he didn't cook the things himself. He didn't remember it, though, but I'll just trust myself.
Meanwhile, Miles just stood there with his hands on the lectern. His eyes searching the audience for anyone who'd not attended and I looked at the row in front of me. It didn't look like anyone dared to breathe so their nasal hair won't move. I felt a finger rubbing against my thigh, followed by whispering. Without moving a strand of hair I turned my eyes to the right just enough to see that Fred was also in the same statue-like state, talking with Jordan to his right too. I signaled my disapproval by furrowing a little since I was so focused on Miles. Maybe they'd also assume I was confused and hopefully they'd tell me what was going on. He leaned a little to me and tried whispering me something.
"The good part's about to start, dude."
I didn't dare to reply. Miles turned to our section as soon as the whisper left Fred's lips, and eventually jolting his head again and looked at what was in front of him. A line in the middle of the seats that separated us into two, staring like a maniac who'd just glanced at his next victim. He opened his mouth, uttering with his teeth alternating between his real, yellowish, rotting ones and his veneers.
"So, looks to me all of you are all eager. Let's start with the feast first for tonight."
The entrance to the food area probably could only fit five people on its width, and all four hundred of us had to get the food somehow. Since we were sat at the front, I'd gotten the food earlier than the others. We still needed to help the elderly to get the food, though. There were these racks underneath that had large and deep trays of more food than what was on top, 'cause as long as the buffet stand was, it was definitely not enough to feed the entire town. Some helped and became volunteer waiters but surprisingly it didn't take the whole night to give everyone the food, and the dinner had started. I'd already grabbed my plate that had all the protein. Steaks, crawfish, barbecue everything—a caveman would gobble up if he time traveled to a buffet. When you work tirelessly overnight you'd search for some pleasure; if you don't maybe you'll steal something, and maybe that something is an axe and you're gonna put the hatchet down someone's throat. I eventually spat out the steak juice since it was just nasty to think about that while eating something that's basically a sponge that squirts red liquid everywhere. Otherwise, the food ain't that bad. It was at least better than Golden Corral, I'd admit that. It didn't change my taste buds for the better or anything, but it helps with my craving for food after all this time. I guess the decorations and lights made up for it since you always eat with my eyes first. Sometimes the cover alone is enough for you to make a judgment.
When it felt like I was gonna get poisoned from the frozen-tasting crab soup, he called all of us to get back to the stage area and watch him do the usual speeches. It was like the millionth time he was rambling about Grenzeville and how we were the righteous ones, and so I just scanned into the dark pupils of the forest to look for anything interesting for my eyes to grab onto. Hopefully he doesn't notice I wasn't a sentient robot.
The whole thing went on for about an hour and a half. When everyone started to realize that he was finished and that we could move again, I stood up to look behind at all the people there. It just went on for as long as the blackness of the night, and it was already an hour before midnight. Maybe the ones in the back were gonna get devoured by some weird fungi Lovecraftian creature like those in Miles's manifesto. I guess he was reading my mind at this point, 'cause before I could even feel the plastic empathy for everyone there, he told everyone to go into the forest and find fallen branches and twigs. Sharing ain't enough after all—getting beat down as a higher-up is the only way for fair equality. I began to see that everyone was putting it all in this one spot between the forest and the seats, and minute by minute a circle was forming. It wasn't long after that the leftover wood we used for the construction was put into this pile of branches and dried leaves, stacking them like they were boy scouts making a tent. There was this pile of wooden planks that came from the shed as told by the sign that was left there too. I don't know how it got there first and foremost, but I guess we had to use it anyway. When we were finished, it looked like if you scale up a campfire, it'd would probably be the same as the finished product. When I put my last handful of muddy leaves, they finished a ring of stones and pebbles that surrounded the whole thing so that the chairs probably wouldn't catch on fire. I'd guess this was the highlight for tonight, but since I didn't really mind what Miles was saying back there an hour ago, I just went along with it.
Miles approached us and yelled us on a megaphone to gather around in an oval since there wasn't enough space for a circle. But there were hundreds of us, and it looked more like a long rectangle at the end that stretched 'till they reached the mid-row seats. Mind you the field that we were in was almost the length of a football field. I was beside Andre and Fred, with the three of us being far enough so that if the pile caught on fire, we probably wouldn't feel the heat. It'd probably take about ten seconds to run from where we were to the pile.
It took about fifteen minutes for him to walk with his cane slowly, and as he reached the last row, I could see him reach under the three seats the seemed to be glued together. His hand made me think he was holding something that resembled a large machine gun. Wait, is he gonna shoot us all?
I felt like my heart was gonna break free off my arteries and just bust out my chest. I looked to my left where Andre was, and he wasn't doing anything. That was a breather 'cause if there was something odd, he'd probably be gossiping with his wife beside him. If I caught him doing that, I'd rather just risk getting picked apart into medium steaks and my juices drunk by bears in the forest than being turned into Swiss cheese beside a comically sized campfire. When my goosebumps were flattened and my hair settled onto my skin again, I noticed Miles was now fiddling with his cane trying to hold both it and the other thing he was gonna grab.
Like those people in patriotic posters with the bald eagles and Uncle Sam superimposed on the American flag, he pulled out a flamethrower. It slowed him down a bit but it wasn't long after he stopped right on the ring of stones, kicking it for some reason and turned at us as if he was gonna say something. He just stared at everyone, or at least he was trying to make it look like he could scan everyone's faces to see whether anyone hadn't showed up again. Then he turned toward the pile. My brain was munching on popcorn while my heart had gone AWOL. As he raised the flamethrower and the fire started to blast out and lit the thing up, I felt a falling sensation—like the weight on my shoulders was uplifted and put down by a crane. There was a moment of ethereal serenity and my eyes closed. A shallow pool of distilled water that extends beyond the horizon. Exposed to the warm and welcoming sunlight. I'd been standing for years and it was the first time I'd laid down on a soft mattress.
But I was wrong about the heat not reaching me. The sun made me practice for an eternity of hell by shedding more of its light onto my body, and I couldn't do anything but stand there. A fade of orange on the right side of my vision. I then opened my eyes. The whole thing got engulfed in flames and the pile of wood silently screamed in pleasure and they let out a relief from pain; one that wouldn't have been if they'd melted to burn and suffer further. The stars that were on the edge of the fire wobbled as if it was a passing black hole, while the grass lit up by the light and the wind. We moved a little bit to the left 'cause the fire was now getting blown over, and we didn't want anything bad in this ceremony. Little imperfections sometimes create perfection without anything but themselves anyways. Miles shouted at us who were near the fire to chant Be one with the others for everyone's good and sake. One by one everyone was chanting it while facing the fire.
It went on for about ten minutes before Miles told everyone to hold hands and we closed our eyes to pray. Nothing but silence and crickets getting overwhelmed by the burning. My father was right by me when I was praying. His hand felt my shoulders, and my heart settled. All I was thinking about was the fresh winter air where he'd walk and look through the mahogany logs while I look at the butterflies who were late to fly east where the coast was and fall into the snow. The ground was dry but it was like the snow had just came for this moment and melted into the soles of my shoes to remind me of those times. The fire quickly boiled them as the prayer ended, however, and everyone returned to their seats to leave the pile to pleasurably burn.
It was about half an hour past midnight and it was like I'd just taken a sip of coffee grounded out of gunpowder. If a bear was gonna charge at me, it'd be a fair fight. I sat down and I was ready to listen. He went up to the stage slowly again and reached forward into the mic.
"Ladies and gentlemen, how are we feeling tonight? Good? Bad? Certainly it's not bad, is it?. Now, it seems to me everybody in Grenzeville and Mahogany is here. Well, let me tell you all this. Even if one of you didn't come here, we would be doomed the plan for God that has been promised to my father. Although you could see that there's about, how many, twenty to thirty seats behind the last row that are empty, they are not empty. They are there to provide the necessary needs for the ones who could not be here for tonight. Our loved ones who had fallen. Our own people who had been detained by the unjust outsiders. This ceremony is dedicated to everyone here and including them who has ascended and taken off their mortal-selves out of their body. And to the outsiders, we are not perfect. They look down at us. They think they are better than us. But tonight, we shall wait for when the angels come to bring this field up into the heavens with our fallen ones. We shall prove to them that they are below than us. That they have been lied to their entire lives. That we are the right ones, the righteous ones. A few days ago, I had seen a vision about a terrible upbringing that will come down onto this land and curse everyone who does not have the same fate. But do not fear. I will remind you again that, if you are here attending this ceremony, you will ascend and you can meet with the people you miss the most. So, ladies and gentlemen, to prepare your souls for that, let us go to the final course of tonight's feast. Every tray on the buffet has been filled with this special dish that will solely accompany you as we wait for the ascension. Take generous amounts of them, as many as you like. If you do not consume enough of it, your soul will not be able to ascend to the sky. It would not have the energy. Do not be wary if it is foul tasting. It is better than joining in the fate of the Earth and the demons that inhabit it. Go get it now before they get cold from the winter winds, and once everyone has gotten a portion, you will eat it together at the same time!"
I stood so still that there were little bugs that'd crawled into my stomach when I was focusing on Miles. I just couldn't get myself from eating whatever it was. Maybe I was too full? Or am I just suspicious of him? We queued up to get the soup and he was right: Everything was just the same dish which was oyster soup. There were stacks and stacks of plastic containers that looked like it'd melt 'cause of how hot the dish could be, but when I took a portion for me to probably eat a little and throw it away for the grass to eat, it was cold. They'd been sitting out for that long? I guess I didn't pay much to what was going around me when I was getting branches to burn. And that fire was still burning 'till now, and I was tempted to just put my soup on a stick and push it into the fire like a marshmallow.
We sat down near where the exit was since for some reason people didn't want to sit there, and we just waited for Miles to tell us when we could start gobbling up the soup like we were excited to in the first place. He wasn't gonna announce it anytime soon, I thought, so I just excused my mother and brothers myself.
"I'm gonna go take a dump in the forest. My stomach feels weird right now."
"You're not even waiting five minutes?"
"No, I've got a weird feeling, alright? Didn't you and Jordan have a weird feeling too?"
"Yeah, whatever. You can go," Jordan interrupted and went back to gossip with Fred.
"Be back in at least five minutes, Carney," my mother continued.
"I know, I know. Just let me go already.
Before I could even take a step from the table, Fred yelled, "Don't forget to get some of the napkins from the box, dude."
We awkwardly stared at each other, and it took so long that his eyes began tearing up. Then everyone just started to look up at me, but I exited from the entrance gate to avoid all that. I'm not in the mood to talk right now.
Somehow Miles didn't notice me when I grabbed some of the napkins and put it in my pockets, going deep into the forest to make sure nobody was gonna notice me using a tree as a makeshift bathroom. Since I was wearing my everyday clothes, it was better than weddings with proper bathrooms 'cause I was usually forced to wear belts and tight pants. I took a look at what was behind me and there was nothing but bushes and trees extending beyond the touchable horizon, and looking at it for longer would probably summon a demon that'd grab you by your legs and drag you into the never-ending hell. The seconds ticking felt like minutes when I was trying my best not to tumble down while squatting. It could've been maybe thirty minutes that I was there. I needed to get back fast.
When the trees started to reveal the entrance, it was just pure silent. I went to the restaurant thinking maybe they were praying for the meal and that I'd been late, but… I was too late.
My table was empty. My mother and my brothers were gone. The others weren't empty, however. But they all were unconscious. All of them were folks who I didn't know that well or just weren't close to my parents save for Mr. Flint and his wife.
The smell of vomit and diarrhea permeated throughout the air and the leaves that flapped around didn't help with containing the putridness either. I grabbed the leftover napkins from my pocket to cover my mouth and there was wet manure leaking out and falling from the seats. Bodies lying over pools of vomit, while their clothes bathed in the brown stink like pigs playing in the mud. Everyone I knew—my mother, Fred, Jordan Cassandra, Andre and his wife, Tarling. They weren't there. I searched through the entire dining area while I kept tripping over cold and lifeless bodies that laid beside the plastic containers still with the soup inside, and all the smell got through the napkin. I'd stepped on everything repugnant that I had seen before, just the amount that was different. If the hell Miles was talking about wasn't made of fiery lands covered in lava, then this would be it.
Have I been doomed with the same fate as the Earthlings?
I contemplated about drinking the soup. Maybe I was already in hell and that was the only way to get out of it.
Just ahead of me was another entrance to the stage area, and so I went to check it for the last time. It was intact. It felt like I was returning back to listen to what Miles was gonna say again. I was scrambling there wishing to return just a few hours ago. I got the wish. It was like I could just hear what he was speaking about. Then I heard footsteps. coming from behind me.
"Good evening, Carney. What brings your ass here?" I heard from behind. It was Miles.
I turned to him and my shoulders were about to be mutilated from the weight I was carrying. But as soon as I did, he was pointing a shotgun at me. I was right after all. All I could do was just grab onto dear life and stare at his deeply sunken eyes. He was twitching, and all those sudden movements made me feel like in any second now he was gonna pull the trigger on me. I teared up.
"Miles… What happened to you?"
I said as I slightly shook my head.
"You are a goddamn traitor, that's what you are. I thought you would come back. I thought you were as faithful as your father. You broke our only promise!"
"I…"
"Don't you dare say anything. I will make sure your head gets blown off into chunks of meat. That way the police wouldn't identify you. Everybody will forget you existed, you rat. I gave you everything!"
"I was just… going to the forest. I already came back here. The reason you're even pointing that at me is 'cause I'm not a traitor.
"Shut the fuck up! Get down on your knees and face the bush, you insignificant defector. You were the serpent in Adam and Eve's. I should not have let you go to Campbell."
"Wait, wait! Miles! I'll drink the soup! Please just listen!"
"You said drink?"
"Yes, I'll eat the soup if you just let me out to the dining area."
"You still have the audacity to try escaping? I will send you to the yellowish hell I told all of you morons about if you don't shut up."
"Okay, okay. I won't. Please just let me eat the soup. That's all I want. That's what you want, ain't that right?"
"Come follow me to the stage. If you turn anywhere to your left or right, even an inch, I will shoot you."
I was running out of breathe despite the walk being just a few minutes long. When we got there, he shoved me to where I'd seen the two figures from before. The grass blades cutting through my face. I felt like it was gonna be just black forever. He's just gonna gun me down and that was it.
"Look at what's behind you. Yeah. Everybody that you love. I saved the most loyal ones for the last."
It was a queue. Everyone was sorted alphabetically. Andre, Cassandra, and Tarling. They were all tied by their hands and knees, while their mouths were sewn off by more rope.
"I left a barrel of arsenic right under here, and you'll be joining them. Get some time knowing each other more before you pass out. I have tossed the soup you wanted there. Share it with the others."
The hell I won't do that.
Andre had gotten the rope that covered his mouth a little looser it seemed. When Miles went to probably get more bullets, he murmured something.
"Carney, get that axe over there and run from here once he's near. We'll shield you."
"What? No, no. Andre. Please.
"We've lived a long life. That's all. You're still kind of young, y'know that right? Chuck that axe down the guy's throat when he's up in the stage sawing his shotgun. We believe in you."
"Why can't I just cut the rope and free you now?"
"It's either us four dying or three. You never heard of adrenaline, haven't you?"
"Sir, it's not the time! Please, I'll just start hacking down that rope."
Then there were footsteps coming our way. It was the loudest ever sound I've ever heard.
"Do your thing now, Carney. Do your thing. Get around us when he tries to shoot you."
When I saw the shadow of the shotgun to my right, I immediately bolted like I was chasing for the monster that I'd seen as a child. Now I was hunting him down. I plunged into his torso and blood splattered everywhere. And then again. Bits of his gut came out and he vomited out blood. I just got the axe out of him and I just ran. My legs were weak but I didn't care. The wind kept on blowing my hair. I went pass all of them. I kept running with my axe and I just hoped he'd sawed his shotgun and he couldn't shoot me from far away. But how about the three of them?
It felt like I was running for an eternity from the stage to the dining area. When I went out, I could feel a loud bang. It was as loud as a bomb. Then another shot fired. Then I heard a woman screaming that sounded like Tarling from behind me. Then, well, another shot. I just kept running at that point. Weirdly, the fourth shot… It just felt like peace when it pierced through my ears. It was like someone had poured cold water into my ear canal, and now I felt nothing. I felt I was ascending almost. It was peacefulness. I felt like I'd been grazed by Dionysus. But I just had to keep running and running. Until I reached a hill.
I kneeled down and closed my eyes for anything to just rip me into pieces now. Anymore tranquility, my brains will explode into jello. All I could do was just pray. Pray to God. Miles's father was long gone and so I finally didn't mind him for once. It felt as if I'd avenged my family by murdering someone twisted. I clasped my hands and I lowered my head, praying like how the folks did in Campbell did.
And so I just thought about everyone that I'd loved and hurt. And my father came to mind. There was nothing to lose now that I was with him. Just that I just wished my father was just with me right now. I wish I could be holding hands with Dad right now, and instead of praying about his absence, I was giving thanks to the sky about his fourth recovery and all. But a wish is a wish. All I could do was finish off the prayer and nothing else would fruit. So I just took a glance up to the stars. I saw him among them. The sky just took him and that's all I could be thankful for. Doesn't matter if he was just another splash of paint in the infinite canvas, or how small and short the love is. It still is love and time and length doesn't say what it should be. That's why I can't reach you with my hand, Dad. But at least I can still grab onto you, old man. As always.
I laid down and closed my eyes to sleep on the grass. When I awoke, the slight wetness of the long melted snow became softer and wetter. I looked up, and the sun was a buzzing fluorescent light. The air around me was yellow, and it looked exactly like the restaurant's maintenance room.
"It is blindingly bright, with an ever-present source of light emanating from all directions as a result of an abundance of dense, boiling matter compounding together.": The Whole by Egglord1
"Blank picture frames and the seemingly frozen state everything was in simply didn't add up in my eyes.": Level 12 by ALwaysWand3ringg.
"The contrast between its dreadful dusk, as far as my eyes can see, and the twisted coalescence of its artificial buildings, molded in a way which no plausible explanation can be given, results in nothing less than a constant state of muddled maelstrom.": Level 9 by OGominho.
Background Image (Unsplash license), edited by the Main Author: "photo of brown wood slab" by Joel & Jasmin Førestbird.
Images Contained in the Cover (Unsplash license), edited by the Main Author: "Butterfly in Winter" by Arpit Dhore and "Untitled Image" by Valeria Bukina.
Image Contained in the credits section, edited by the Main Author: "Vintage Butterfly Illustration" posted by Julie J taken from a drawing of a butterfly in Nearer my God to Thee.
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