Winter (657 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: Fiction
Rating: 2 on 15 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by drfeggphd (View user info) at 2004-12-21 09:02:08 EST
Crush.
Bones, teeth, red-red-red blood, heart, soul, dead-dead-dead and more blood, squalid
undercover river pulsing no more dark secrets and twisted energies. A fresh, clean sheet.
A mad flush of yes or no mushroom clouds turn with measured majesty, inside is outside, what a surprise. A black beetle hurries home on scarlet stone in hazy late afternoon, not sad at all. Dream fragments of forgotten songs.
The joke buries me, clutching, a succubus of manic eldritch laughter, machine-timed and echoing shadow memories through the labyrinth. Over and over and over. Endless time is mine, no time for ... anything. I loved and set love free. I know it won't come back to me. All I have is this.
This is truly mine, and I don't want this.
*****
The jet-whine of the spin-dry washing machine takes off, the vacuum cleaner throttles down like a Boeing coming home, as Maria does her thing. She's a full-service whirlwind. Yes, a man needs a maid—you were right, Neil. But Mr. Young, Handy Maid, Inc. wasn't what you meant, was it?
Maria has been keeping the house respectably clean for a couple of years now, and the price gets steeper every time, for every time she comes—a woman in my home, nothing more—I think again of the gravestone, a tasteful and shiny marble monument to sharing my life with someone who gave a damn about me. And every time she leaves I don't cry until she's gone, when I can be alone with my ghosts and my pills and my booze.
Framed in the glass French doors, the weeping cherry where King is buried waves its forlorn and naked tendrils at me, invoking familiar demons. One ghost watches with eternal tears in the long-ago November rain as I dig the hole for the other ghost.
To live is to be haunted, hunted; predator and prey, same as it ever was for the shiny, wet, meat-jewels of Indra's net, fisher of fantasy. Time has no meaning, pain doesn't feel a thing.
The cherry tree has grown much larger since that day; it seems happy.
And happily married memories, too, beaten into submission with Paxil, Valium and Glendronach, remind me somehow that it's soon the Christmas season. Christmas. Once and for a timeless time, that had meant a tree, and watching my wife put up the decorations, and helping with the lights in my mostly pretend-humbug way; gift certificates, fruitcakes as a joke, money for nieces and nephews, phone calls...
The phone rings. I head into the kitchen and pick up the cordless, expecting another wrong number or telemarketer.
"So, do you remember Ophelia," the warmly modulated voice asks, playfully, it seems.
"Oh, wow! Of course I remember you! I almost didn't recognize your voice!"
Memories invade again, lightning-quick and still un-exorcised. Ophelia had given King to me as a puppy, shortly before she left town and disappeared from my life. I'd never tried to track her down, to thank her, and.... King had lived almost 15 years, a very long life for a Chow. He had been a constant reminder that I wanted to thank her for such a wonderful gift, to apologize that I had never given her anything...
Well, there was that ironically impetuous single, red rose. We had been drifting apart, just as we had so suddenly drifted together. The rose had wilted noticeably by the time I got to her place, on the night that became our last. Ophelia took the rose and its mute eloquence and, the memory suggests uncertainly, put it in the freezer, thus completing the oblivious symbolism we would soon stumble through with unwieldy words. I may be leaving town for awhile, she says. She was so vague about where she was going and why and when, and I had thought I was respecting her integrity and independence by not asking. I left, that awkward night, without ever saying goodbye. Later, I knew I had made a mistake; that I had somehow failed, again.
I had learned from that mistake, though, and had done better with the woman who eventually became my wife. I discovered it wasn't really so hard to have an actual conversation, if I tried just a little. I owed Ophelia so much, owed her for King, and for over a decade of another woman's happiness, and my own. Now I struggled to find the right words, after all this time. I have always found this kind of thing to be even more difficult over the phone...
"So how are you?" she asks. I now sense an undertone of ... what? Angst, maybe. She had always been so secretive with her feelings, a slow river with surface ripples of casual diversion, her self-conscious laughter and facade of assertiveness, obscuring the depths. We were crazy in those days—maybe everyone was, then. I know now that I had loved her, but back then I could never say it, or even admit it to myself. And I know that had hurt her. And I know that you can't save a rose by freezing it.
So much to say. I don't want to blow this. The pink and blue pills keep me calm. I can do this.
"Yeah, I'm doin' pretty good. How are things with you? How'd you find me? Where are you?"
Stupid, stupid. No, that was fine. Damn these details, obstacles to what I want. Why do I get so flustered? Slow down. How can we get together, to talk in person? Focus on that. Is she single? Lunch at the Italian place downtown? If she's in town. That would work. I've been so lonely. Yes, I have a good feeling about this. Life gives you lemons but you get what you need. Oh, let this work out. I hope—
Maria screams. A startle-scream. Not a spider-on-the-ceiling scream, but something worse. Dammit, what now? I have a hard time doing two things at once but manage both to run back into the foyer and remember I'm on the phone. "Um, hold on a sec, okay?"
Metamorphosis. Outside the door the cherry tree has become a slender young woman. The emptiness of her eyes immediately draws first-impression attention away from her upscale dress—black Mock, black pants, mud-spattered ankle-length taupe twill coat; from long, dark hair, matted to her gaunt and eerily unfamiliar face from the late morning's rain; from the butcher knife in her hand—so dreadfully incongruous it camouflages itself—as her arm hangs, limp and innocent. Her left hand cradles a cell phone casually to her ear. This is the vision, the apparition: a brand new demon.
This unwelcome vision burns itself into my free-falling mind, so recently launched into a hopeful orbit, mission control still on the line and still glued to my ear; then the vision speaks into her phone—even as her eyes and mine space-dock together through the glass darkly—as the rapidly flat-lining voice in my own ear unites two worlds into an abysmal collision.
"Ophelia's dead. I'm her daughter. And yours. I just called to say ... goodbye."
After another phone call and the official questions and procedures, I sent Maria away. This was beyond her job description. It took a long time to get the stains off of the flagstone terrace. How could such a frail body have had so much blood in it?
*****
"And one beam of light is falling
From a single crazy eye
And it sweeps the inside sky
From east to right
Flaming heart burning out"
User Reviews
Submitted by satchel (user info) at 2005-02-08 16:36:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2005-01-03 18:04:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
This is amazing.
Submitted by drfeggphd (user info) at 2004-12-25 14:09:53 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Hey, thanks man. More praise, yes! And...
FIVE THOUSSAND HITS, babee! Read it and weep!
Best Christmas evar! Go me WOO!
I'll see you around on AIM, once I recover from
all this holiday stuff.
Submitted by Istaros (user info) at 2004-12-24 19:21:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
oh and it's good to see that you're back, baby, back!
here's wishin' *I* was back
Submitted by Istaros (user info) at 2004-12-24 19:20:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
this deserves all the praise it can get
i mean, it's more "conventional" than some of your other stuff
but it's written masterfully
"I loved and set love free. I know it won't come back to me."
is this a lyric?
the paragraph re: mission control and two worlds uniting was a work of pure art
Submitted by drfeggphd (user info) at 2004-12-21 18:01:45 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Well, that does it. I have researched it extensively, and I am forced to conclude that I may in fact be feeling something akin to pleased. Perhaps even ... quite pleased. LadyPlural has implied that I may be a fan! of hers! And ... she's a lady! And I'm pleased, apparently. How do people live like this? I'm turning off the computer now and I assume by tomorrow everything will be back to norml... and all these things I'm imagining ... big, even large or no, wait--giant-size!--yes, giant-size ostrich plumes; and, let's see ... lots and lots, bunches even, of grapes; and uh, many bananas; all kinds of fruit, really, and, um.... OK, well I may need some more work on my imagination skills, the important thing is ... I'm imagining things! I'm back! Baby, I'm back!
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2004-12-21 15:51:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
What?!?!
No fan of mine should EVER quit Ubersite. It just isn't fair, lowering my fan base to a negative 23.
That and you write sorta good sometimes. That counts for something.
Submitted by drfeggphd (user info) at 2004-12-21 14:31:17 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
wookie, are you okay, man? this one was kinda for you...
breath in, breath out, relax, the higher brain-functions will resume, probably!
GLALL, i've been sitting here laughing with my friend Bottle Of Wood Glue for an indeterminate period of time and i think the piano tuner is getting a little paranoid. thanks for trying, man
and everyone else:
yes, i'm dangerously close to feeling some kind of thing like ... pleased, or something.
probably now i'm hooked on this website thingy again. just when i'd almost kicked....
thanks so much.
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2004-12-21 14:11:09 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
!
Submitted by Kre8rix (user info) at 2004-12-21 13:18:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm amazed.
Very, very well done.
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2004-12-21 13:04:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Wow. Very good.
Submitted by GodLovesALittleLovin (user info) at 2004-12-21 12:12:44 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Took me three days to read this but i'm glad I tried.
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2004-12-21 10:03:43 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm speechless. This is haunting.
Submitted by BLITZKREIG_BOB (user info) at 2004-12-21 09:03:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
My love for you is like a truck...
BERZERKER!
Submitted by drfeggphd (user info) at 2004-12-21 09:03:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
A Man Needs A Maid is from the Harvest album. As one of my long-lost buddies commented once, as four of us maid-less guys were getting very stoned and listening to that album: fuck you, Neil. After intense debate, a consensus was reached: get more stoned.
Indra: Aryan sky/rain/thunder god, and Indra's Net ... each of us a jewel reflecting all the others...
The quote at the end of the story is from Flaming Heart, on the Meat Puppets' album, Too High to die.