He wanted to go to his fence and look for Lisa, but he knew he wouldn’t. Not today; today he would change that oil in the truck and mind his own business. He could get the truck fixed up in time for a game on TV, close the windows, shut the curtains, and let the house swallow him even if it wanted to spit him out.
The coffee was hot, and the breeze smelled like gasoline. Craig grabbed the bag with the oil in it and flung it across the yard. He picked up the biggest crescent wrench he had, grabbed his sunglasses, and headed out the gate.
There was a hole in the fence that protected an abandoned building. Craig had been driving by this building, eyeing the building and spying on it, for a while now. He had an itch for the windows in this building, and today seemed like a perfect day to get rid of that itch. Crawling through the hole he looked around. Even if people were walking around Feline Street nobody would care; in this place, apathy was king. If you weren’t messing with their stuff, they didn’t care. ‘Just leave me and mine alone’ was the general rule.
Breathing out and rubbing his neck with his wrench, Craig took one big swing at the first window. The noise of the shatter, the look of the glass flying everywhere, was the very first satisfying scratch Craig had felt in a long while. He walked through the broken window found a smaller window and shattered it also. Craig went from room to room breaking every single window he could find. He wanted the glass to cover the floor like sand. He wanted the broken pieces in his nose, on his clothes, and he wanted to breathe it in and coat his skin in it.
Up the stairs Craig went and found more windows and mirrors. Craig never broke the mirrors; he used them to watch himself break windows—to watch his swing and see his form. He was a batter, and he was going to make that ball fly.
Occasionally, Craig would stop, look out the window, and listen for cop sirens. There weren’t any. At one point, there were a couple cholos watching him with great interest, but Craig knew they wouldn’t call anyone and wouldn’t go near the crazy white guy.
Room after room and window after window, Craig broke them all until he reached a little room. There sat a terrified Iggy.
“Dreadlock Guy, where’s the dreads little man?” Craig smiled at Iggy and swung his wrench. He had no intention of hurting the homeless bastard, but it felt good to scare somebody. With the window breaking and the fear in Iggy’s eyes, Craig could almost feel the blood rushing through him. His blood had turned to sludge a long time ago, and now it was raging through his system.
Iggy stood up slowly. Then, like a monkey, he jumped on top of the cabinet and crawled out of a broken sky light. Once on the roof, he looked over at Craig and said absolutely nothing. He just ran. Craig looked at his wrench and decided it was time to go home; the itch had been appeased.
Back in his yard, Craig put his wrench back in place and smiled at it. There was a lot he could have done today, but he was grateful he chose chaos.
Lisa
In the distance, Lisa could hear smashing. The sound of something smashing was echoing around her apartment, and it kept crawling up her arm and into her ear. Somebody was breaking something, lots of something, and not too far from her either. She looked at her shoes and thought about going to find what the noise was. She was curious about the who, or the what, was doing the smashing, but satisfying the curiosity meant shoes and that meant outside which she was still procrastinating on. Then, another smash came. That’s when Lisa couldn’t help it anymore, she had to go look.
She found Craig; he was walking through an old building smashing all of the windows. Lisa perched herself on top of a dumpster and watched him. She didn’t feel horrified by what he was doing. She often wondered why an old building like this had no broken windows. She herself felt like flinging a rock through one. Lisa thought the smashing was a great idea.
Being raised in The Grey, Lisa was used to not having privacy. All the Mothers always put the children together. There were Mothers everywhere, which meant eyes everywhere and there was no use in trying to be sneaky—sneaky wasn’t allowed. Sneaky behavior meant that you were not following orders and that only led you to where the naughty girls go. It wasn’t until now, in this apartment, that Lisa had space to herself. A space to breathe, think, rage. Now, she understood privacy and the glory of having one’s own space.
Watching Craig bust a window, smile, bust another window, and smile again seemed intrusive to Lisa. She thought she was viewing something she shouldn’t, but he was doing it in a public place, and Lisa couldn’t help but want to watch him and hear him. The sound of the glass shattering was amazing—better than music, better than laughter. The sound of the breaking glass was everything The Grey wasn’t. It wasn’t organized, it wasn’t clean, labeled, and explained. It was screaming; the glass was screaming and that noise was addictive to Lisa.
Then, Lisa saw Iggy scurry across the roof of the abandoned building and out of sight like a cockroach. And me without an apple, is all Lisa could think.
Rafael
Rafael watched his mom drink coffee, sip after sip and foot tap after foot tap. He knew he could walk out and leave his mom to her coffee and the blank wall, but the little boy couldn’t do it today. Wandering off on her was getting harder for him, and he didn’t understand why. He was stuck between wanting to wander the world and wanting to protect his mom.
He didn’t understand wanting to protect his mother. Protect her from what? In his PJ pants and bare feet, Rafael went to the front window and peeked outside—looking for clues, looking for a way to understand. But, he couldn’t understand the normal world, so understanding this not normal feeling along with his fractured comprehension of everything and everyone seemed impossible. He gave up and laid down under the kitchen table where he could see his mother’s legs and tapping feet.
He saw her hand coming at him with a cookie—not a word, a sound, nothing… just a cookie. Taking the cookie from her hand, Rafael felt a love for his mother he couldn’t understand either. Sitting up, he kissed her knee and laid back down on the cold kitchen floor. She never twitched, moved, or even acknowledged his kiss she just took another sip of her coffee.
Rafael put his feet on his mother’s feet and felt the warmth of her skin. He had never done this before; this was new to him. Like an experiment to help him understand why he loved her so much, and why he wanted to protect her from something. He knew why other kids loved their mom’s. He saw it at school—their mom’s hugged them, their mom’s held their hands and laughed with them. Rafael would watch the other mom’s, and then look at his mom; he knew she was different. He knew that because she was different, he was different. Together they were their own island of different and nobody ever bothered to understand them.
Rafael took his feet off his mother. He decided that he didn’t like the feeling of skin on skin. They didn’t smile at each other. They didn’t hold hands in public. That wasn’t his mother. Rafael got up and sat on the kitchen table, pretending to look out the window while he peeked at her. What did ‘mother’ mean anyway?
All Rafael knew was that he was with her before he could remember not remembering. He wasn’t sure how he got here or who put him here. He knew because he was told that she was his mother and that his father was not to be spoken of or asked about. If he asked about such things, which he didn’t, he knew she’d never give him an answer anyway. Rafael, in his little boy mind and in the simplest ways of thinking, wondered what his origins were—how he came to be. All he knew was that they were different, and today… today he chose to be by her side and protect her because he knew that she had chosen to stay by his side and protect him. Peeking at her one last time, Rafael wondered what planet they were from.
Lisa
On TV, when someone wanted to get a group of people together they had a party. Watching Maggie pour coffee and pretend-smile at people had Lisa wondering how she would ever convince this woman and Craig to her house for a party. Lisa wasn’t even sure what people did at parties; she’d never been to one and she had never had o
ne.
Maggie glanced at Lisa and Lisa waved. She was determined to at least have a tiny chat with Maggie on this ugly morning. Lisa woke up feeling that she needed to give Maggie some words of encouragement. She needed to say something soft and cuddly to base their friendship on.
Maggie was cleaning tables slowly, deliberately, and almost calculated in the way she walked and wiped—calculated not in the cleaning itself, but in the placement of herself in the room. Lisa wanted to just yell at her to sit with her for a second already, jeez woman! Simultaneously, they both glanced up and saw Iggy walk by.
“Where is he going?” Lisa asked Maggie. Lisa knew that Iggy went everywhere all the time—there was no plan… at least it didn’t seem so.
“Ese pobre vay a donde dos lo manda,” Maggie sat at the table across from Lisa’s—close enough to speak softly and rest for a bit without being too close to the spider. Lisa thought about Dios, or God, or Jesus, or whatever they called this tortured man. Why would this man send Iggy anywhere? Why would this man bother with Iggy?
Lisa cleared her throat and sipped her coffee, “I think he’s looking for something…buscando algo?” Before leaving on her mission, Lisa was given a month’s worth of Spanish classes. She was never told why, only that she needed to understand and speak basic Spanish. This shocked her because she had never left The Grey and didn’t know other languages even existed. She knew there were other life forms outside of The Grey, but didn’t know they spoke; and if she had even pondered them speaking, she wouldn’t have thought about them speaking in different tongues.
Maggie looked directly at Lisa. Lisa got the distinct impression that maybe Maggie was picturing her pounded onto that cross like the tortured man.
“Es verdad…busca sacate,” Maggie said before getting back to work. She didn’t acknowledge Lisa again after that. Lisa could not understand why Maggie never said goodbye—why she would always just walk off and dismiss you without saying a word. This pissed Lisa off; it was basically insulting, yet she felt that she wouldn’t and couldn’t change Maggie’s ways.
Maggie’s comment about looking for grass sat on Lisa’s thoughts. Was Iggy earnestly looking for grass? Why grass? Maggie wouldn’t say something like that offhand; she wasn’t that type. Maggie never wasted words. The “Why, why, why of grass” is all Lisa thought about as she walked down the street. She wanted an answer to why Iggy wanted grass and what he would do with grass once he found it.
Iggy wasn’t like other humans; he was more insect-like than human. He possessed a dark outer skeleton, quick darted moves, and a busyness that humans didn’t have. Humans all seemed to have a lazy sway to their movements, but Iggy was quick like a fly.
As Lisa continued down the street, she knew how crucial it was for her to start getting some answers; the only trouble being, she didn’t know how to ask the right questions.
Craig
Craig watched the sun set on another work day. It was just like every other day over and over again. Most people had a family to come home to at the end of the day, which made all of the day’s bullshit worthwhile. Some people had a spouse or even some pets that made their home feel like home and not some place to sleep and shit. Looking over at his house Craig knew his house was just a place to sleep and shit, nothing more. It was worn out and over it. The house was a direct representation of himself, and Craig knew all too well that his ‘over it’ was showing badly.
The problem was that Craig didn’t know how to fix it, and the bigger problem was Craig didn’t want to fix it. Apathy was warm, fuzzy, and comfortable for Craig. He could stick to apathy until his end. Taking a drag from his cigarette, Craig thought about his end. When will it come? Will it drag out? Will it be over quickly? Will there be large amounts of pain? Craig romanticized himself wrestling with death, challenging it to a battle of strength. There would be no pleading for his life. There would be no sadness. He’d tell death to fuck itself and fight.
With a weighted sigh, he sat down took another drag. There would be no battle. There would be no challenge. He would go to death with the same amount of apathy that he lived his life with.
“I’ve never tried a cigarette before…it looks painful.” Looking up, Craig got an eyeful of Lisa. Impossibly skinny, she represented a girl who had never gone through puberty.
“Sneaky aren’t you…” Craig acted annoyed, but he didn’t mind her being there this afternoon. He couldn’t understand why he acted annoyed even though a small chunk of him was glad to see her. Lisa sat down on the tired grass in front of Craig’s house.
She couldn’t find a reason to smoke. Most things humans did, she could think on and come up with a reason why the person keeps doing it. She could stretch and scratch, then an understanding of why people did certain things would come to her—but smoking was not one of them. Of everything she had seen on the internet and TV, smoking was one of the most confusing. It was fire on a stick; the person sucks hot poison into their lungs. Didn’t it burn? It looked painful. It looked like fire in a throat, and yet when people sat smoking they looked the most relaxed and usually deep in thought. Maybe it was a form of mediation—to feel the burn and smell the smoke. Maybe anxiety was released through the embers?
“Cigarettes seem masochistic… smoke in your throat? Painful, but full of pleasure? I don’t get it,” Lisa looked at Craig and waited. He knew she expected an answer. Craig put out his cigarette. He was busy pondering death and now she stuck this idea in his head. Craig spit on the grass and hobbled up from where he was sitting, “It’s nothing more than the continuation of a habit.”
With that, he gave Lisa a pat on the head, went into his house, and continued the habit of being Craig.
Lisa
Lisa sat in Craig’s yard for a while, wondering where she would get grass. What kind of grass? Were there different kinds of grass? It was all so stupid trying to find grass for this insect man, but there was no other way.
“Such bullshit,” Lisa mumbled to herself. Iggy wants grass and Craig was the second person today to walk up and just leave without a word of goodbye. On television, people hugged goodbye, waved goodbye—something to signal the end of the conversation. But, not these fuckers. Lisa looked at the sky; it seemed endlessly sunny and grey—a contradiction to what color it was supposed to be when sunny. The sky should be vast, blue, and full of possibilities. Here on Feline Street, possibilities were laughed at. There was no room for big blue.
Lisa hesitated getting up. She found herself pretending that Craig’s house didn’t sigh with every breeze and that it had a beautiful garden that was an unexpected escape from the dull of Feline Street. It could be a delicious green garden full of flowers and banana trees where you could read and drink while swallowing the sunlight. It would be a subtle place to heal in this chunk of cement wasteland. But instead, Craig’s yard was just more wasteland. The people on Feline Street have let their indifference for beauty spread itself like a virus. It was all ugly, no matter how much beauty it was capable of.
Lisa got up and headed out of Craig’s yard, full of apathy herself. She had caught the virus.
Maggie
Her eyes were tired, so was her back, and so was her throat—maybe everything was tired. Maggie drank her hot tea and decided it was definitely everything on her that was tired. It wasn’t just her eyes, and it wasn’t just her back or her throat; it was everything. Every eyelash, every tooth, every beat of her heart was tired.
The tired was making Maggie less fierce towards Lisa. Her instinct was to hiss and arch her back at Lisa—to show Lisa that she was the dominate female, that she would make the rules, and tell her what to do, but it wasn’t happening. The tired crawled up Maggie’s back and settled into her brain to the point that she didn’t have the energy to be fierce. The young Maggie would watch Lisa walk down the street towards her, and prepare her blade to cut. This Maggie, today’s Maggie, was too tired to bother. There just wasn’t enough energy in her anger.
Maggie sat up…damn it. There
was usually energy in her anger, it just wasn’t in her today. She hit her fist against her chest. She still felt. She still had the fire, it just wasn’t there today. Today, the fire was small. Today, the fire flickered. But it was there, the anger could still roar with heat and the flames could still sting. “Si….yo si….” Today… well, Maggie just couldn’t. Today the tired hung on her; it grabbed at her, wrapping it’s claws into her skin and make her swim in sleep.
The sleep dragged her down lower and lower. Maggie wanted to show herself that there was a flame, there was fight left, just not today. Today the sleep would have to win. Sleep could win any war. Sleep was the biggest weapon of all. With every sleepy breath and every flicker of color in Maggie’s dreams, the idea that Lisa might be a friend stirred. The concept, the theory, and the visualization that maybe Maggie could let the trust of the tired take over and consider Lisa a friend instead of enemy crept into her subconscious.
But, the ‘not-sleeping’ Maggie longed to cut Lisa up, get her to confess her secrets, and explain why she wanted to befriend Maggie. The ‘dreaming’ Maggie was more of a tired old woman who wished for somebody to trust. A tired old woman who just wanted to rest, but that was only the ‘today’ Maggie. She told herself that today she would allow such thoughts to taint her dreams, but tomorrow she would wake up and hiss. Maggie would make the choice in her heart to be fierce, if only the rest of her body would listen.
Lisa
Sitting in the back alley of the grocery store, with a bag of apples and hope, Lisa was questioning her planning skills. She was questioning her organizational skills, her clothes, what she had for lunch, what kind of apples she purchased. She felt unhappy with just about everything at this point, so she sat there with a bag of apples, disappointment, and whistled. She had just learned how to whistle, and it seemed like a better choice than what she’d prefer to do—like drive to this place called Vegas, wear a small dress and dance with strangers, eat steak and cake until she felt sick, and break things… lots of things. She wanted to walk down the street and break every car windshield and every window she saw. She could leave the street covered in glass until it sparkled. Lisa loved this idea!
Starburst book 1 Page 11
