by Malik Will
Deep into the night, Daniel’s mind travels back to a familiar place. But this time, the scene starts where the dreams usually end. It takes place back at that baby’s crib. Daniel’s mind has known these stories for far too long. So, as the gunman gets closer to the baby’s crib, his body’s temperature slowly rises, and his eyes tremble under the lids. He is, in a sense, preparing to awake. But this time, on this day, he doesn’t.
This time, the dream doesn’t stop. And so the gunman aims as the baby plays. He slowly moves his finger until it touches the trigger. The baby cries. But it mustn’t be scared ’cause tears are pleasant to the gunman. They give him joy and provide solace.
The gunman moves the barrel closer and closer to the baby. The baby cries louder. The heat from the barrel is evident. It induces sweat from the baby’s scalp. It’s nearly touching. The baby feebly moves his arms and legs, attempting to flee from the gunman. But he is a newborn and there will be no running today. There will be no avoiding his fate.
Just imagine a cute chubby baby panda bear lying on its back. It’s really cute and it’s even more adorable because it’s so chubby and fat. Now, imagine that the panda is so fat and little that it can’t even roll over from its back. Now, of course, it tries and tries, moving its little arms. But this is to no avail.
Even the gunman notices the cuteness as the baby cries. He finds it adorable. The gunman even smiles. It’s a menacing grind. Then, at that point where you think life’s horrors have reached their peak, the gunman places the sweltering hot barrel against the baby’s leg.
The baby’s screams turn frantic. The gunman’s eyes are steely and focused, just as they always are. Oh, the venom that lies in both pupils. They could tell a story on their own.
The baby’s screams are long-winded. But this is not a cry. This was a plea. The baby is saying, “Please! Please!” He just can’t speak it. He is too tiny.
The gunman presses the barrel further down onto the baby’s leg harder and harder. He muses about whether or not God hears the sizzling of the skin. I’m sure he does. It’s a crackling noise similar to the sound of bacon frying. But it’s a slow crackle, so it’s more like a sheet of paper gradually being balled. After a few minutes, the cries of the baby suddenly cease.
He just lays there with his eyes open, blinking every third second as his arms shake back and forth. It is now apparent that the baby’s mind has traveled far from the horrors of his crib because he now is trapped in a seizure. The gunman notices this also and strokes the baby’s head with his palms even as he holds the hot barrel on the baby’s leg. But the baby’s mind left us long ago. The gunman lays the gun in the crib. With both hands free, he picks the baby up and holds it in his right arm and strokes his head with his left hand while softly singing a nursing rhyme. A rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. The baby seems to be comforted by this as it shakes less and less. Soon the shaking stops. Now calm, he lays his head into the chest of the gunman.
The gunman smiles once again as he removes his left hand from the baby’s head and goes into his back pocket. He looks down at the baby. He notices how the baby sleeps with such joy.
He is amazed at how peace can be gained at such a time. He smiles for one final time and whispers, “Rest well, child,” and pulls a pocket knife from his back pocket. He gives the baby a sweet, farewell kiss right on the top of its forehead. After a second or two, he plunges that knife into the baby’s back.
Though, the baby doesn’t move. It’s hard to tell whether or not he has left this world for another. He is motionless as his eyes lie closed. But for good measure, the gunman slowly twists the knife causing blood to pour onto his hands and chest, and, eventually onto the floor.
It pours out so fast that the sound of it dropping to the floor is reminiscent of the spilling of a glass of water. With the blood of that child plastered over his hand, he ensured that it could never be referred to as the beautiful dead.
There, he caressed the child’s cheeks, smearing blood all over that peaceful face as he menacingly whispers in his ears, “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Daniel awakens to the sound of a familiar voice. That old woman always seems to be there when he needs her. She whispers, “It’s okay, Daniel. It’s okay.”
Daniel is disoriented, moving his head back and forth as the woman attempts to calm him.
“It’s okay, Danny.” She clenches his hand. “It’s okay.”
But Daniel is, of course, fussy as he sometimes is after a dream. “Why the hell did you wake me?” he says.
The woman disregards Daniel’s tone. “It’s time for work.”
He wipes the right side of his eye and looks over to the clock on the nightstand. There is a cup of water blocking his view. “Well, what time is it?” he shouts.
“Its 11:25 p.m.”
“Oh, crap!” He jumps out of the bed and runs into the closet to search for his work uniform. In 30 years, he has never been late. That is, until today.
A short time later, aboard C114, Daniel carries on just as he’s done for years. It’s the beginning of his shift, so there aren’t any passengers yet.
The single mom is always the first person to enter C114. But her stop isn’t until Hickory Street, which is five minutes away.
In this time, Daniel plays the radio as loud as he wants. This day isn’t any different than the others. So, with his eyes forward, while his mind travels, he sits there with this vacant stare as the priest reads scripture to his congregation through the radio’s speakers.
“Today we are in the troubling of times,” says the priest. “And given the horrors that our people have seen this year and in past years, mankind’s likelihood to gain doubt in to things that he cannot fully understand is proliferated. And that doubt is pursued by the enemy, and sometimes—” The priest pauses for a second to clear his throat. “Sometimes, it is more necessary than ever, to take a step back and read from scripture.”
Daniel’s eyes are vacant, but this giddy smirk gradually appears across his face. And it grows bigger and bigger as the priest continues to speak. “Please turn to mark 13:23.”
The radio becomes silent as the priest waits for everyone to ready their bibles. So, in turn, the streetcar becomes a dead silence. All that is heard is the sound of the metal wheels thumping down on those tracks, over and over and over.
The priest begins to read. “Take heed, I have foretold you all things. But in those days, after tribulation…the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give light. The stars of heaven shall fall. And the powers of heaven shall be shaken. Then shall thy see the son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.”
Daniel’s smirk is still visible as the priest’s voice fades into the background when he lowers the radio. The streetcar is nearing Hickory Street and it’s time for the single mom to board C114.
She climbs aboard the streetcar, carrying with her a large black garbage bag. Daniel can’t help but notice. “What’s in the bag?”
The single mom pauses for moment and looks down into the bag. “Just a few of life’s accumulations.”
Daniel turns back and looks inside the bag as she holds it open. He notices shiny clothes and dresses that look as if they were made for royals. “You’re not throwing that all away, are you?”
The single mom, somber, smiles. She closes the bag and ties it into a knot. “No child, I’m just going home.” She walks down the aisle as Daniel watches from the train’s rearview mirror.
The happy drunk is the next to board C114. His mind is wandering back to yesterday. He became consumed with the single mom’s words. As a matter of fact, he’s thought about nothing else since. Something in her words held him captive. The questioning of life and all its wonders paraded through his spirit.
The drunk sits at his usual seat in the front. But with him, he carries a small spiral notepad. Though, nothing has been written on it.
“What you got there?” asks Daniel.
The drunk holds the notepad steady wi
th both hands, while tapping his thumbs repeatedly on top of the pad. “You ever noticed the beauty in the small things?” he says as he taps with tremendous aggression.
“Things like what?”
The drunk holds the notepad up high. “Look at this. You ever notice how clean and perfect the paper is? I’m saying, let’s say I scribble a bit on it. It becomes used and nobody wants that, right?”
“Right.”
“But let’s say I go ahead and rip this paper out. Then it’s like brand new, right?”
Daniel responds with simple nod of the head.
“You ever wonder why we can’t be brand new like that? Like a sheet of paper.”
Daniel swallows his spit and pauses to think for a moment. He has known for far too long of questions like this. Similar questions have boggled his own brain until it found its way onto his tongue to speak. “That’s just what it means to be a human,” says Daniel.
“How you figure?”
“Well, have you ever been in love before?”
“Many times. Many, many times,” the drunk says with a smirk, showing off his small number of teeth.
“Well, what’s the opposite of love?”
“I don’t know, hate?”
“Its pain,” says Daniel. “The opposite of love is pain. They go hand and hand. Like gumbo and rice or like, it’s so beautiful how they both play off one another because you cannot truly have one without the other. They’re so in sync that you’d think pain love loves and love loves pain.”
The drunk cuts in, “How so?”
“When you love someone and they look you dead in the eyes…dead in the eyes, and they tell you they don’t love you anymore, what’s the first thing you say?”
“Well, I’d want to know why.”
“Will why change anything?”
“No. It won’t.”
“Will it make her love you again?”
“No.”
Daniel turns around with his brows raised and exclaims, “Well you might wanna ask yourself, why the fuck does why matter?”
The drunk smiles and places his notepad into his back pocket. “Hey Daniel?”
“Yes?”
“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”
Daniel looks forward and laughs as the drunk leans his head against the glass window next to him and closes his eyes. Soon, the streetcar slows as the lovebirds stand outside, waiting to board C114.
They’re always the last passengers to get on and every time the door opens, they’re always kissing and staring into each other’s eyes with such reverence. Sometimes they even hold up the streetcar when doing that. It’s like when they’re together, nothing else exists except them. Everything else around them disappears, even the sound of an eighty-ton streetcar tumbling down the tracks.
But this time as the door opens, there is no touching. There is no kissing. There is no staring into each other’s eyes like the fate of the world depended on it. There is no embrace. They just, simply walk into the streetcar and take their seats.
Daniel looks at them through the rearview mirror. Both of their eyes are devil red, and even though they repeatedly wipe them, the dust the tears left is still palpable.
The drunk briefly opens his eyes and notices the angst of the lovebirds. He grins and quietly mumbles, “There is a God after all.”
Daniel focuses his eyes back on the road. He thinks for a second of what he should say. He muses about how he could fix whatever that plagues them. “How could this be? What did it take for such a union to be broken?”
It pains him. But their union encompasses more than just him. It includes all the passengers aboard C114. When the lovebirds are broken, it in turn breaks something in the others as well. So for every tear that drops from their eyes, it falls directly on foundation of their souls. And in this moment, in this second, they all sit motionless, watching as it all overflows.
For the single mom, the lovebirds are what could have been. If only he would have seen her for who she truly was; if only he hadn’t of touched those girls like he did; if only she hadn’t said those nasty things, but it was so painful.
For the drunk, the lovebirds are what never was. They are nothing but a mere fantasy about the truest form of love, and their pain solidifies all that he believed. But the truth is sometimes a double-edged sword. So, for every question it answers, it slowly stabs the place from where the question matured.
For Daniel, they are everything that was: quiet reminders of the past. They are a time capsule in the flesh where he sees all that he was and all that he could have been. Though Daniel has, for so many times, been so many people, that even when he hides, more than one shadow always accompanies him in the light. And, he knows. So all he can do is ride that streetcar just as he has always done as he discusses internally the sequences of life. But that will soon end as he focuses his attention elsewhere—on something outside of his mind. Outside of the streetcar. It is, a figure standing in the middle of the tracks.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Words of Him
