Free Beast

by Suzanne Marine

  We unfold our beach blanket and lay it on the powdery, white sand. I remove my clothing down to my marine blue bathing suit. I've already covered myself with the supra Nano-sunscreen. Jamie says it isn't enough if we lay on the beach all day. I lay on the blanket, and he pulls out a small triangular device, a miniature pyramid. Lays it by my side, near my stomach, and turns it on. It covers me and the area around me with a clear dome that will protect me from the sun. When his dome touches mine, they become one large dome. I'm amazed I've never heard of such a thing.

  I see the sun's orange circle through my closed eyes. Feel the heat prickle my skin, bake the marrow of my bones. Hear the ocean's heartbeat. I try to read one of his books but slide into a calm, restful sleep, one I haven't experienced in a long time. My body flowers open in the full sun. It is a paradise, a letting go of everything that has braced me closed, worried, sclerotic.

  When we awake, we walk to the ocean and wade into the crystal-clear water slowly. The cool water warms to our bodies perfectly. I wrap my arms and legs around him as we float, our bodies slippery sliding against each other, the clear, blue-green waves lapping gently against our shoulders. I dip my head back into the water as he holds me, feel the ocean water enter my ears, bathe my scalp making my hair cool and slick. We are floating water babies, inflated with a carefree happiness. Buoyed by this gift of an experience. I soak up his smile, his crinkling blue eyes that mirror the sky, all the love between us filling the pod's amphitheater, this timeless daydream. Nothing between us and the sun.

  He traces my body with the full wing of his hands in the semi-shade of our bedroom. They glide over me softly, fill every shallow concave, encircle my bony, cup my softness. He learns and memorizes my body's topography, and I lay there dreaming away with closed eyes, letting him, succumbing to his curiosity. How is it to be this languorous all your life, to only be filled with love and sensuality in your soul and thoughts. To have the layers of oil and water within you suspended into one, to only be this. The rich have the luxury of being only themselves no matter the circumstance, to never want to be anyone else. Never hide parts of yourself to garner acceptance. I know we accept each other as is. I am so rich in this.

  He shows me the small town on the other side of the pod when I feel it before I hear it. The pressure blooms inside me, in the air hovering just above my skin. A ferocious force zooms invisibly and silently in the maze of streets. Pushes my insides into a cramped, pretzel pose against the walls of my flesh. Fast mechanical fun ride, exhilarating and terrifying. An ear-ringing, high pitch pierces for a second then an eerie deaf silence mushrooms, where you have a chance to fill with empty infinity - right before everything fragile breaks and bursts with crackling sound. Windows explode outwards, loose stones fly into the air, the ground jumps and shakes with thunder as if a giant fist pounded on it to make a point. Jagged glass pieces cut my face. I don't feel pain, only warm, thick blood trickling, growing, sludging. And the smell of iron drifting up my nose. I grab his hand tightly, don't want to be alone, want someone to be a witness to this shattering. It spreads the experience out, makes the load bearable and not too unbelievable.

  People run down the street screaming, but I can't hear anything. Either from hearing loss or shock. I only see open, maroon mouths and startled, googly eyes darting crazed this way and that. The thick whip of hair as they turn and run. The street empties as we stand in the epicenter, everyone has left for the resort side of the pod.

  White hot, blank staring.

  Empty street and mind.

  Seeing, but not registering.

  What was that... Peace and quiet settle around us like the sound of a heavy blanket falling on you in the dark.

  He says he thinks it was terrorists from the hot land, a noiseless bomb. Trying to send a message of some kind.

  At the office building across the street, an eagle statue stands wingless. Its wide, opened wings have crumbled into piles of craggy concrete bits as if anything that stood out was doomed for paring.

  The red cross sign of the pharmacy has blown out, red and white glass puddle under its empty frame. Inside, the drugstore items are de-puzzled everywhere, pieces and parts of a whole flung out randomly. Let's find some bandages for your face, he says. I look into a cracked mirror and stare at the long, diagonal slice on the lower half of my face as he rummages for alcohol and cloth. It's deep and will definitely leave a scar. I'm not a vain person and now is not the time to examine my face, but a part of me stands still in meditation, in an out of body experience as I mourn the loss of my beauty and normalness. I will now be described as the one with the scar on her face, not with brown hair and eyes, not thin and pale, but cut and scarred. A deep, crimson line once crossed my face and divided it in half. I'm someone a bad thing happened to. Be courteous and don't ask, don't stare, don't wonder if she's over it now. If someone sees her as beautiful. In the eyes of the beholder.

  We patch it up matter of fact, going past what it could mean for my face. The one facing the world and judged by society. This is not the time for such concerns.

  We stand outside, blind under the striking sun, its heat slowly warming us. If you only looked at the expansive, bright blue sky you would think it was a hopeful day full of possibility. The kind where you wake from a dreamy sleep, look out the window while lying in bed and wonder what you'll be when you grow up. Or the kind where you walk with energy and purpose, get things done as the brisk, fresh breeze sparkles across your cheek. But down here, devastation litters the land. Strange solitude lingers with the utter quiet of everything dead around you. There is not even the undercurrent buzz of air or burrowed insects.

  I see some brooms flung onto the street. We pick them up and begin to sweep the glass and stones out of the street. It's an automatic thing, a way to bring order out of disorder. To better your surroundings amongst the chaos.

  A way to have dignity regardless of the situation.

  An old bearded man with oily, unwashed hair saunters out of a building, bewildered and dazed, eyes adjusting to the light. How did he get to the pod? Was he a stow away? He notices our figures, my mummied face, and stares. Comprehends what we're doing. He says, man, I'm not picking up a finger unless someone pays me, not doing a thing 'till I got something in my hand. He turns and walks down the middle of the street whistling and lazy walking, not fazed by anything he sees. His heart and mind are focused inwards, blind to the destruction. Not a human. Like an animal.

  I'm filled with fury, how do you find your way out of anything if you don't do it for yourself, if you wait for an external force to reward you, nudge you forward. At least try. This is what I want to believe. That we find a way in life because we try. That good luck or bad luck have nothing to do with it. I don't want to really know.

  ETERNAL ZENITH

  The first few days back I floated on flights of fancy, effervescent hopes, lovely memories. I flew myself higher and higher into dreamy orbit. Nothing could fail, nothing could fall.

  But now, I'm sobered, saturated with an ambivalence towards the world we live in, slowly filling with resentment towards the oppressive dust and the physical and emotional fallout it has wreaked on us all. An emptiness has taken over me as the business of life occurs, slowly erasing bit by bit the lingering memories of sensuality and beauty and love. The humid air, the forever blue salted water, the giving cushion of sand, hot breath of sun on the skin. Strands of hair floating in the light breeze, body lolling wide and surrendered in an afternoon nap. His cool skin against mine. The humbleness of giving yourself to someone.

  Anger flares within me from time to time. All of us down here, struggling, trudging along under showers of dust. Children who only know the world through gray lattice. Why can't we all enjoy a bit of sun, a bit of holiday and solace in the ocean. Why is that only reserved for the ultra-rich. Why are we trapped in this god forsaken city. Why are we enclosed and ostracized like diseased animals. The anger grips me then slowly gives way to hopelessness and despair that pierces an
d twists because I've experienced the pod, which has reawakened a longing in me for a world without dust. A longing that was hidden away and forgotten while my relationship with Jamie sprouted and bloomed. Did I feel this intensely before Jamie or are my feelings more intensified because of my time at the pod?

  I can't tell Jamie any of this. It would only make him feel bad, as if his gift were a poison. It isn't of course, it's just a very bittersweet candy that's smooth, succulent, then tart. Sandpaper acidic as you get to the roughened core.

  I don't know how much to tell Jamie. About the dust and its effects. About how no one really knows how bad it really is. How it slowly kills most of the poor and middle class, anyone who can't afford a heavy-duty mask. I want to be eloquent, tell him in a controlled way that shows I know what I'm saying. But if I told him now, it would spill forward in a nonsensical jumble, full of emotion and sadness, making me seem crazy and uneducated. Perhaps it would be no big deal to anyone with money because they wear expensive, air-locked, nonporous masks that cover the whole head, because they may not care about the rest of us. Perhaps I'm making it an unbearable burden for nothing. I play mind games with myself over this, viewing it from different octagonal angles, the prisms relaying me in different directions, so much I no longer know where the uncolored center is.

  If I told him to not tell anyone, his intention would be to not tell. But I know how humans are, we promise not to tell but it dribbles out by accident. Or the secret is so tantalizing that we tell someone then ask them to not tell anyone. There's that nagging tickle to unburden ourselves. I worry about him accidentally telling his parents, who are intertwined with the government. What would happen to me then? This isn't a small mistake we could recover from. It's a life altering mistake. One that could kill me or if I get a lucky break send me to jail for life.

  I'm caged in a trap I signed up for. I don't know how to escape so I bury it within my gut. I hug my old, tattered bag on top of it to smother it, but it wants to live. The truth always fights to breathe.

  Mother was in hysterics when she saw the bandages. I was honest. I calmly told her about the bomb, most likely planted by terrorists from the hot land. I was fine, I said, it's no big deal. I didn't want her to worry about my face because that would mean I would have to worry about it too. I would rather forget, move on in a hurry as if it never happened. Then I told her about the sleek ride to the top, the humid, salty, ocean air. How the marine blue, serene ocean swallowed us up. How we floated to our hearts content. How sparkly the white-hot sun was, almost like a god. I worry about her telling friends, neighbors or others at the temple. I've sworn her to secrecy. We are not to know how amazing it really is, how easily the ride spirits us to the top. Not our class.

  I told her because I knew she'd enjoy my descriptions, she could live through me to relive her memories of the sea. Dissipate into her own version of the pod. A part of me has a finicky worry she'll accidentally tell someone. Then the lie would have to expand and include others. I'd have to say the trip was OK, that mother's mind and sense of reality are worsening, that it was a life or death trip. I had fun, but if I had another opportunity I wouldn't go because the trip was so incredibly frightening. The lie would get larger than me, beyond anything I could control. Mother's dementia, her fractured phrenology, worsens day by day, and maybe it wasn't very smart to tell her. But I sacrifice my security so she can enjoy her memories, which are made more vivid by my experience and descriptions. Besides me, this is all she has left in the world. And it is sacred to her.

  I want to tell.

  I want to tell.

  Tell. Everything.

  Achingly so.

  Unbraid everything I know and have seen, splay it out plainly, comb through the stories, set them straight. Let the darker inside strands see the light of day. Telling is a form of freedom from the edified scriptures that govern us, a quiet belligerence against the futures that have been set.

  Boosted by the thought of letting it all out, I want to run through the streets in bravado, give it a go, push myself into the future we all want, but there are the dust and crowds, the cruel repercussions - all the hurdles that keep us in line like electric shocks in steely animal experiments.

  Instead, I run free in my mind, speed through it all the way to the paradise and heaven that is sky. What I remember of it through hazy memories coiled in the brain. That vast blue dome witnessing our childhood promises and secrets and fascination. Eternal zenith.

  THE NEXT JUMP

  An arrow whizzes sharply past my hood, way too close for comfort. A group flashes past me, pushing me to the side roughly as they sprint and leap forward after their prey.

  They are urbunters, short for urban hunters, and they hunt urban game for food. All the ownerless dogs, cats, pigeons, plump rats, and crows that wander our city streets so freely, as if they owned it. This includes any pet that has escaped. It's a way to survive the streets and poverty during these times. Long haired animals are especially prized because it protects the animal's skin from the dust better than short hair. I've read that damaged, peeling animal skin tastes extremely bitter.

  They've trapped their prey in a dead-end alley; a tall, mangy, dirty-white, unshorn poodle dog. It barks ferociously at them as he's cornered by a crowd of four hungry men wearing flimsy masks and old, droopy layers of stained clothing. The poodle stops barking, looks the men in the eye. The men return the direct stare. No sentimentality emerges, only pure survival instinct then an innate understanding of the death that will come soon. That smash of a head-on collision. One man raises his shoulder high as he pulls back the arrow in the bow. It hits the poodle's side, and he staggers and falls zig zag in defeat. Dark, beady eyes glassy and frozen, open mouth snarling in its last breath. The stick of a tail limps bit by bit, vertebrate by vertebrate.

  Another man carries the carcass over his shoulder as they march past me with the blood trickling down his back, the arrow jutting out awkwardly towards the sky as a punctuation, a salute. They'll barbecue it outdoors or butcher it in someone's bathroom and split the proceeds.

  It's absolutely disgusting to think of. Something like this would have never happened a few years ago. Guns are illegal, but people fashion arrows out of anything and everything. People will do anything to survive. Even the unthinkable. We are mad now, mad to survive at any price. It is evolution purling in motion, knitting something new and barbaric in our story as time moves to the next jump.

  BLACK ROCK FALLING

  A nine-year-old boy lays before us. Pale, bony, excruciatingly emaciated, with a freshly bruised eye and ribs. Murky, watercolor ponds of maroon, blue and black. Old yellow-olive bruises dot his legs and arms. Dried, blackened blood lays crusty and matted on his short, light downy hair. He bled out from a blow to the head. This was no school fight, but rather a story of abuse gone out of hand. A growing, molesting, immolating rage that had no place to go but towards him. Perhaps he stood for a quality the attacker hated within him or herself. Or perhaps the attacker ignorantly took his/her frustrations out on this little one. A rage of impotence. A fight to remove demons. Projection of the most violent kind.

  He is crystal clear on the inside. Shiny and pink and youthful. No sign of environmental damage. I don't understand how people are increasingly resistant to dust. Is it something that happens with time or is it something some people are born with. Is this evolution in motion. I'm beginning to suspect I'm one of those. I haven't detected any minute signs of premature aging or skin thinness on my face, not after these past couple of years. No flaking or the minute beginnings of translucent ghostliness. If it's true, I am truly gifted during these times. But there's no way I'd know for sure unless I cut myself open and found glossy, plumped organs pumping along.

  A ruby circle marks his left hip, raised and puffy, not flat like the tattoos I've seen before. Perhaps it is a burn mark, a scar from past abuse.

  Dr. M prods at the liver. He straightens, peers at me slightly, then uses an instrument to tap lightly
on the top rib, as if he's testing it to hear how hollow it is. I look into his eyes and hold steady to confirm I understand. He looks down, taps the third rib down, then the eighth one. When he looks at me I hold his gaze. He points to a cord of artery leading to the heart and says, as if he's teaching me, this artery leads to the heart, it is a type of heart road, you can see it's healthy and isn't hardened. When he says “heart road” he taps on the heart once. He points to another slack artery and says even softer, this particular artery is always 8 o'clock from the shoulder, this one is healthy although unusually wide. When he says “8 o'clock” he taps it once.

  I understand now. It dawns on me in a shudder, in a tower of black rock falling on me.

  Our eyes meet and lock in a vise-grip. But I need to look away as my heart pounds manic, as thudding footsteps patter in my ears.

  138 Heart Road at 8 o'clock.

  PART 2

  QUIVERS AT ONCE

  I tell mother before dinner that I have an urgent errand to run. She tries to stop me, tries to discover what it is. I say I have to get a new shirt for work and that it's important I find it tonight. I grab a dinner roll and put it in my inner pocket. She watches as I lace my combat boots, shaky, crackling with hidden tremors and fault lines, knowing it's a lie but also knowing I won't tell her. She can only wish me well as I walk out the door, wrap her prayer wings protectively around me as I depart into the world beyond.