Free Beast

by Suzanne Marine

  I vaguely know the address. It's downtown where there is an assembly of restaurants and shops. I wonder what we'll say, how we'll break the ice. Why does he want to meet? I don't know if I'm crossing a good luck or bad luck threshold of some kind. I feel the pivot point, but towards what?

  I arrive at 138 Heart Road and look up. It's a giant electronics store. I open the large, shiny glass door that lights up with various brand logos. The cavernous store is a warehouse divided into sections. I go through the maze of twinkling merchandise, cheerfully fake demonstrators and aggressive sales people. I look for a dark eyed man with a dark mole on the apple of his cheek. It dawns on me that he's planned this for a while, all the way back when he flashed me. My excitement and the bright lights overhead dizzy me or maybe it's my fast-walking through the aisles in a suppressed panic looking for a black dot in a sea of faces. I am a rat in a maze of some kind I never asked to be part of, one I was never bred for. Where is the cheese. Where are the traps and stings. The hive of busyness, the jostling crowd hungry for the latest and greatest, the tinny ding-dings from a multitude of devices, the rainbow colored, blinking graphics on glass screens, the dialogues echoing from actor to actor; it all swirls my head and distracts. Jars my thoughts. I intended to be calm and collected.

  I see the mole from afar, a punctuation hovering in this painting. It's on a dark haired, middle-aged man with slightly stooped posture. He's viewing a life-sized hologram platform that projects an emotional soap opera scene pregnant with tears and rants and stubborn defiance. Arms crossed to protect. Eyes pleading for redemption. This new model shows off how realistic the technology has become, how real the actors seem, as if they were in your living room acting before you. I approach from behind and stand next to him. He doesn't turn to look, just knows it's me.

  He points to the hologram. “It's very deceptive. Seems real but it isn't, don't you think?”

  We could be uncle and niece shopping together. Two bland faces in the crowd being viewed by the store's security cameras overhead.

  “What about the store's cameras?” I ask under my breath, looking at my feet.

  “I've learned they're broken and will be fixed tomorrow.”

  He continues with a ferrous strength in his tone, “I don't like this model, too expensive.” He turns to me, and we look the other over. It's the first time we've seen each other’s nude faces. His nose is knobby and fleshy, the dark, hooded eyes brood, and the wrinkles have settled in for the long haul. His body is medium weight, not too thin, not too heavy, mushy from years of mental focus at the expense of the physical. His olive-toned skin reflects a sallowness in the bright lights. Mine must look shocking porcelain white. His eyes heed the wormy scar on my face, studies it without pretense or guilt.

  He motions to the towering shelving behind us. We walk to the row behind it so we can hide from plain view while we browse the racks of films and games for sale.

  “Do you know how to use the dust?” He asks.

  “What do you mean?” Is he talking about how to make money off the dust? Is he trying to sell me something? I feel dense, I should understand.

  “Have you noticed anything about it?”

  “Of course.” I have to speak in code with him out of caution. “We both know... what it does.”

  “What do you think it does?”

  “What do you think?” Why do I have to be the one who says it? Is this a test of some kind. I don't know if I'm tripping into a trap, being set up. We both want to telegraph something, but not be the one to say it.

  “Have you told anyone?”

  I turn to him appalled and frightened. “No! I would never.” My wall goes up in an instant, I'm now fearful and don't trust him at all, not one bit.

  He walks a few steps away and points to an adventure film placed in the hot land amidst all its violence. “This one's too ambitious...“

  I follow him to consider it. The cover shows a pair of yellow jaguar eyes high in the night sky surveying dry, parched hills. A crawling hump in the shadows draws its attention.

  Silence fills the space between us. I imagine it as a separate incorporeal being, combing through our intentions.

  He waits until the mood settles, “You should find a way to tell people. What it really does. So the public knows.”

  I'm incredulous. He is awarding me the job of doing a public good, of informing the masses. Importance and pride take ahold of my ego very briefly. But then I am angry. “Why don't you tell? Why do I have to?”

  His eyebrows raise as he turns to me. He's surprised by the firmness of the question, the anger and rebellion behind it. His body leans back in surrender, his face turns away in shame. “I don't have a good reason. Other than... I have a family and... a home... It's too risky.”

  “I have family too. And a life too.” I may not have his assets, but I have someone I value.

  “But you're young, not tied down. I know you only have a dying mother.”

  I'm not surprised the government does background checks on its employees, but I'm surprised they shared this information with him. “So, your conscience wants to put me in danger. What if this is a test of my loyalty? How would I know?”

  “It's not a test. I can guarantee that. But I have no way of proving it.”

  I think about how the poor and expendables end up doing the dirty work. Things in the shadows of those who are not so poor, of those facing the light of the public and fronting the secret deed. And we're only protected as long as they stand there. Once they move away for greener pastures, we are exposed and vilified for being the baddest seed, a rancid soul. We are persecuted, the ones who absorb tsunamis of misguided fury. The black sheep of society.

  “Why did you choose me?”

  He hesitates, faces forward away from me, begins speaking in a quiet monotone, “Because you are unassuming, small. Nondescript. Not spectacularly beautiful or bright or talented. A nobody without any ties... just a grunt working in the background. Nobody would suspect you, a faceless face... one of many working to survive.” He pauses, “And one of the masses who can help the masses.”

  A wall of hurt slams into me when I hear his honest, cutting words, stated ever so clinically. I want to say, you don't know me, I am a human being, not a type. I am an individual. YOU DON'T KNOW ME. Tears begin to creep out of the corners. But I stop, compose myself. Become stony and haughty, with a sheen of salt water diluting my eyes. His profile turns towards me, his eyes watch my reaction with dispassion. I am an experiment to be studied and measured.

  I turn to leave, the hurt and anger and shame bubbling, when I think of something. “Do you know who Hitler is?”

  He pauses, surprised, and looks me in the eye, steady, full of intent, observing the salt water. “Do you know what a slave is?”

  I know about slavery from fantasy movies that intimate and imply, but never announce. But now I know from his answer that it was real, like Hitler was.

  My heart drops, disgusted with the world, with him, with life. With myself. I ache to leave it all behind, to unknow. I gird my stormy emotions in, make my face cool and robotic void as I turn and walk away. The blinkery noise of the store flies overhead, lifting higher and higher as my world expands and shrinks and quivers at once.

  THREE. C. J. NINE

  What did you expect, I chastise myself. I never expected to be insulted, told I was a nothing. I expected some sense of him reaching out to make a connection, build camaraderie. Kindness. A human touch. I should've never expected such a thing. Always expect nothing from others, I remind myself. People are never as good as you wish. They always let you down.

  I rush down the street towards nowhere. I need to think, be alone to process my thoughts and feelings before going home. I stroll along the river, looking downwards, hunched over to avoid clouds of dust. The downtown lights twinkle otherworldly through the gray. The water's scent of moss and dank where old and new ferment hovers around me. I see a tall, muscular, solid man a short distance ahead. He looks
out towards what can be seen of the water's dark line, that far-off horizon, wearing a gray jumpsuit and most surprisingly, no mask of any sort. I'm about to walk past him when he grabs my arm. I leap back panicked, and when I look up I see frightened, apprehensive eyes. Startling electric blue.

  “Food?” He asks in earnest. “Food? Food?”

  I point back to Heart Road, “Restaurants are over there.”

  “Food?”

  He doesn't understand. I reach inside my pocket and offer him the roll, my dinner. He claws at it quickly, takes a bite. It's tough in texture and substantive, full of oats and sinewy strands of fiber, the kind mother makes to replace an actual meal, so he chews and gnaws. I could walk off, but I stay and watch, fascinated. He looks down on me blankly as he chews, looking vaguely familiar, perhaps I've met him or a relative at the temple. The elongated nostrils and sloping jawline are so very redolent. That line of cheekbone migrating towards his bald head... I flip through my memory for a look. After he's done, his demeanor switches quicksilver. He turns his head alertly to survey the downtown neighborhood beyond us as a dog does when he's onto a new, provocative scent.

  He grunts under his breath, “In line. In line,” transmuting before me from a placid, lost giant into a sturdy man with something rigid spiking within him, steely hands fisted at his side.

  “Do you mean the inline skater twins?” I ask shakily. I fear the white fists, but I don't want to insult him by running away. The twins host an extremely popular show. Everyone watches their intricate, awe-inspiring daredevil tricks on laser propelled skates. They are the talk of the year.

  He remains stoic and stiff, at the ready, doesn't know what I'm talking about, has no clue. An empty slate without carvings.

  “Three. C. J. Nine.” He says repeatedly as if I knew what that meant. “Three. C. J. Nine.” The words bark out in clumps between pauses.

  “Sorry, can't help you. Don't know what you mean,” I say as I back away. I don't turn my back towards him, I worry about not seeing what he'll do next. I back away, then turn and run. When I'm far enough away, I look back and see him watching the busy city, repeating those words in a demented machine fashion, a dumb mind cover.

  I've seen him before... Rumor and shade eclipse my thoughts, a faint sylph surfaces, tumbling and quickening. At work. On the table with his chest sawed open.

  First, he was fat, whale-like. Then he was fit and strong like today. Two of him. Now three.

  LIGHT DEFYING GRAVITY

  I'm not a country person, I didn't grow up knowing the view of early morning fog on a country road. My only memory of it is from a school trip we took to a farm to learn where our food came from. It was a study in orderly abundance, of carefully groomed existences designed to unselfishly birth forward all their gifts. The manure scent possessed our thinking, but the farmers moved as if it didn't exist.

  The country of today is nothing like the past. Settlements and farms dot the landscape here and there, but the crops are scrambled, haphazard. Sickly small, wilted colors of brown yellow earth. If you viewed the land from above, you would see piles of razed earth and make-do settlements. Rotted and patched tents, listless, thin people lazing about, small curved tubes of squirted shit, scampy, bony animals sniffing about as if they owned the place, and babies in soiled, sagging diapers squatting and holler-crying their physical discomfort. They're not used to the pain in life that we all endure, but they will eventually learn to accept it, become numb to it, like the rest of us. That's what it means to grow up - every year we accept more discomfort and pain without crying.

  This is what we've degraded to, evolution reversing on its tracks.

  The people here refuse to move to the city. I understand the fight, the defiant rigor in setting your own path and agenda. But the price they pay is in the lack of money, jobs, adequate shelter and healthcare. The state government has placed healthcare facilities in the city, saying that is where its money is spent most efficiently. We are in a state of emergency, they say. If you choose to live in the country, that's your choice, you're out of luck. Country society is so disconnected from us, so much so that I find myself wondering if we even speak the same language even though I know logically we do. It's just that with the smudged faces, the tattered clothing, the shitting in holes in the ground, the pungent, offensive aromas.... these are the walls between their nightmare and ours. They seem nude, raw compared to us, whether or not they're actually clothed. Clothing and masks enshroud us as we move about outside our homes. They're flesh is exposed to the breath of air, our voyeuristic peeks. Bright, blinking signs and shrill sounds bombard us at home, attempt to snag us through the dust. They are surrounded by low level hums of scraping, digging, trudging. A howl against the moon.

  I admire their courage and grit because I don't have it in me. I assume many of their young adults have escaped to the city because I only see the elderly, middle aged and some small children. Not many in their teens, twenties and thirties. We don't have it much better in the city because of the pollution and tight living quarters, but it's a step better than this. The young move to the city at the expense of their health, although they don't know that. They willingly feed themselves to the city's grinding machinery, its system of wages and debts and aspirations. The rat wheel we tire ourselves on. And of course, the dust that will eventually kill us all as the government stands by.

  Mouths need to eat. Spirits need to find their way. Callings need to be uncovered. All the destinies we yearn for in our twenties. You do what you need to do.

  Then there are the gated communities to keep the savages out. The clean country air is a tonic and the well-moneyed have the resources to feed themselves and have items delivered regularly. These deliveries are black market of course, not condoned by the government as it looks the other way. The wealthy can live as they've always lived, insulated and unmoved by external factors. I know this through Jamie and his insider knowledge of how the better half live. I don't want to take anything away from them. I just observe, take the information in, wishing it for myself and mother so we can have some semblance of stability. That is all.

  The country air whips into the car as we drive to his parents’ home. It quick floods my emotions as we glide on the mostly empty road. The political class are the only ones allowed to drive cars. And his beautifully sculpted car floats us closer and closer to his childhood home. I close my eyes and focus my senses on the feel of cool air moving over my skin. I notice how the smell of crisp, clean air has virtually no scent. It's the smell of nothing, the perfect balance of light and dark, wet and dry, heavy and weightless. And the sun sparkling bright through clouds. It's so unspeakably normal, a day I would have taken for granted in years past. I ask him to open the roof. I stand through it, climb my feet onto the shoulders of our seats so I can lie backwards on the roof as the car drives. I hear him laughing, telling me I'm crazy. The cool air ripples right above my body, my shirt flutters, my hair is pulled wild and taut in all directions. I hear the low croon of the robo-trucks that drive past in the other direction. I could lift up like a kite catching a breeze.

  The freshness, the sun peeking through my thin, closed eyelids, through the crooked, old tree branches we drive under. It all tells me I'm free. Taking a ride. This is what I want. I am a girl. A normal young woman. Just getting older and older as the year’s pass.

  And I suddenly wonder what it is to be a woman. Is it when I have children. Is it when I'm married. Is it when life becomes adult sober and heavy. When one doesn't laugh easily any longer. Is it when puberty has finished its job. When life has engraved itself onto your face. Is it when I am strong enough to believe in myself. I am twenty-four years old, I am in love, have an OK job, a loving mother, my brain, my thoughts and feelings, my health. This is all I own. What I am.

  When does real womanhood begin? I feel powerless a lot of the time, like a girl growing older in someone else's world, bound by something not of my making. When do we mentally become a woman or man. Does being a
woman mean accepting your circumstances.

  What does it mean to be a real woman.

  My mind's eye pauses, tells me it means to have my own world, be a creator of my own destiny to the best of my abilities. Even though I start from nothing or a deficit depending on how I view my life. Making decisions that take you one step in the right direction.

  And then...

  A woman is someone of gravity who is still able see the light.

  I search for this light defying gravity within myself and come up empty handed. I only find a gravity graffitied by sorrow, cynicism and wishful thinking, a gaping, insatiable black hole swallowing more and more and more. But I can feel dips of light and air spilling over me as the car zooms us forward. I try to know it, inside out.

  His parents are kind, smiling and fattened by good living. Their spacious, white home stands regal and proud with tall, grand pillars. Everything about their home and lifestyle exudes a cool beauty. The kind felt when standing next to a tall, beautiful, angular model when you are a short, rounded dumpling. The kind felt when speaking to someone with impeccable vocabulary and presentation when your accent is clunky thick from the backwaters. Their home is the kind that doesn't seem to smell even when cooking delicious, full-flavored food. Where specks of dust don't seem to deposit anywhere.

  They don't mean to stare when Jamie introduces me, but they snatch small glances at the scar on my face. I understand, it's a normal, human thing to do. And later when I'm alone with his mother in the kitchen waiting to bring food to the patio where we're perusing Jamie's childhood photos, she mentions in a kindly way that maybe aesthetic surgery might help reduce the scar, not that it bothers her and it shouldn't bother me if it does. I say honestly and humbly that I don't have the money for it right now. I intend to say it in an unemotional, matter of fact way, and I'm certain that my tone conveys that. But she reacts strangely and says, yes, it's difficult, but people should save for things they want. She says it as if I had hinted that I wanted their financial assistance. I don't want anything from them, yet shame drenches me to the core, shows on my flushed face and slumped posture. Maybe the wealthy always believe someone wants something from them. In a feeble response I say, I agree, people must work for what they want. And I go on with renewed vigor once I've gotten my footing, once I've remembered what Dr. M said to me – I say that I only rely on myself, no one else. I make sure to look her firmly in the eye when I say that. I don't want her to have the upper hand on me, to make me feel I've done something wrong when I haven't. I don't know if her reaction was an accident or purposefully done to place me below her. Nevertheless, I want to show her I have a stony purpose within me. She cannot make me feel less than, like Dr. M did.