Free Beast

by Suzanne Marine

  He leans into my ear piece again. Pauses. I wait to hear the next unpredictable secret, when he says it. “I love you Eloisa. You're the one.”

  His outbursts always surprise me. They arrive without foreshadowing, stunning and teetering me off balance. That's his charm, all lightness with lightning bursts of insights striking out of nowhere. A part of me melts, then a wave of fear undulates through me. This means it's all real. Everything I've felt inside is now on the outside, verbalized and crystallized beautifully on this day. No one outside of my mother has ever said that to me. I'm filled with awe.

  I stop, the bar is only a few steps away. Take my mask off to look at that angelic face of his. To cherish it, sear this memory into my brain forever. I kiss him unspeakably hard, mash my lips onto his, feel the current of energy run through me and into him. Love. And he smiles as the dust falls all around us.

  “I love you too,” I whisper tremulous as our foreheads touch.

  “What? I can't hear you.” He laughs out loud, joking, drawing me out to say it so others can hear. He knows I am closed and he is open.

  I hug him close and whisper in his ear, “I love you, always will, you don't know...” I can't convey in words how much and how far. How he'll always be a part of me.

  He hugs me tighter and tighter, so hard I can barely breathe, as if he's trying to press me into him to become one. To remove the barriers, the space, the clothing, the bodies holding our souls.

  MUFFLED BY THE DENSITY

  The young couple in the corner kisses passionately, unaware or uncaring of the fact they're in public. They grasp at each other desperately as if they haven't seen each other in ages, pulling and tugging and grabbing. Dying to consume and be consumed.

  The room is called “100 beings”. The eyes protruding from the walls and ceiling are of all sorts, Asiatic eyes, blue Caucasoid eyes. Eyes from those with brown and white skin. Those with yellow skin and black skin. But all are bright eyed and pointed in their gaze, following you wherever you move in the room. The ones closer to the couple watch them. The ones closer to me watch me. When Dr. M walks in, a few by the door twirl towards him, long eyelashes fluttering and fanning over intense pupils. They watch as we walk towards each other in the darkened room filled with pulsing blue strobe lights.

  We nod, wait for the other to speak.

  “What're the names of your children?” I want to probe further.

  He deliberates. “Christiana and Duke.”

  Waits two breaths.

  “Their middle names are Venus and Zeus. From old Greek mythology.”

  It goes over my head, I don't know the reference. “How old are they?”

  “In their early teens.”

  I watch his face as he speaks of his children. How his eyes get a faraway look as if remembering them walking, inquiring about the world, crying, seeking solace within his arms. Holding his breath as he watches them totter into the world, stumble, pick themselves up.

  Clay taking form through time under your hands.

  “I tell you their names because it's a matter of trust. You should trust me in return.”

  I bristle at the last part of his comment, how condescending it sounds, then dismiss it. I just can't be angry anymore. “I'm not saying I'm going to do anything, but if I do, do I have your word. Will you protect me, never give me up.”

  He nods, but it's not good enough for me. Perhaps nothing can ever be good enough because of who he is, what he represents. He studies my face carefully with a piqued curiosity as the eyes look on, laser focused on us now that the couple has left the room arm in arm as Jamie and I were the other day. I leave my face for him to study, don't turn away. I want to show I don't care what he thinks, but I wonder what he sees. Is it beauty, a personality trait. Is it fortitude or fear, is it disgust. Why do I crave his acceptance and respect.

  “I believe you're one of the clean ones.” His comment is all science and fact, disembodied from our current situation.

  I know instantly what he means. My skin doesn't degrade slowly like it should. Like it does for others.

  “You should hide this. Don't tell anyone.” He warns cautiously as he continues studying the hills and mounds of my face, the peach skin draped over them.

  “Why?”

  “It's never good to call attention to yourself. People might become resentful. Take things out on you.”

  I watch him watching me. It's something erotic and strange to be still and studied by a man, even one you're not attracted to.

  “You'll know if I do something and you'll know if I don't,” I say softly as he watches my lips move as if in slow motion, words warbled by the underwater density of mystery.

  A blue spotlight shines on my face, then plunges us into darkness. On, then off. I see his penetrating eyes, then sparkling black firecrackers as my eyes struggle to adjust.

  On and off.

  On and off.

  A deep, male voice in the next room yells for help, gasps, says he's having a heart attack. His voice falters more and more as he fades. Someone please help, I am too young. I am too young. And a door opens.

  I'm in a world of yellow rose petals, swirling, floating, falling all around me.

  A whimsical, never-ending shower.

  Saturated with humidity, the soft petals caress my skin fulfilling a craving I never knew existed. A crave for the delicate and beautiful.

  A mild, sweet, elliptical scent perfumes the air.

  A smooth, alabaster arm reaches through the thick flurry, holds my hand steady and leads me forward. I walk for an eternity, the arm stretching on and on through a millennia of petals.

  When we stop, I finally see who's at the other end, my mother. A young version in her twenties. The woman I've seen in photos of a life I never knew, the chapters before mine.

  We stand face to face, hands locked together, petals blessing our union.

  Her wavy brown hair tumbles to the ground, a crown of pink and white flowers hover an inch above her head, her brown eyes sparkle with life and wit. Her body and skin are dense and full, not brittle gossamer like the present.

  She hugs me and says very slowly, yellow is safe, remember that, yellow is safe.

  She walks backwards as she releases me, smiling then solemn, becoming slow-motion engulfed in a sea of roses, lost to a place I dare not follow.

  Through my tear-filled eyes, I see yellow smudges falling and slow curving. Smoke signals of sadness and confusion arise, drifting past comprehension.

  I pluck a petal from before me, rub the smooth, silky ridges of its flesh between my fingers, its life still voluptuous and coursing through its veins.

  I tear it in half to see how it feels to destroy. It's a feeling of ugly, of a body being devoured by flames.

  I awake with a stun. It's a still night. Sometimes my dreams are so vivid, as if they happened in real life. I look towards mother and see her fragile form under the covers. Her shallow breathing, the gray, thinned hair splashed across the pillow. Her bony hands peeking out from the blanket, uncurling from a fist to a flat palm.

  SLITHER INTO CONSCIOUSNESS

  The wise man/boy with the olive-toned skin from a few weeks ago is back. The face is exactly the same, a carbon copy, yet the aura of wisdom is missing from this one. His eyes are blank, a tableau wiped clean of its scriptures, no inherent knowledge passed forward at inception.

  If he had lived, perhaps he wouldn't have any inclination to dig within himself. No excavation for unearthed self-knowledge, no chance for ancient bones of the past to arise coarse and unyielding into the future. Rims, ridges, sharp-toothed edges minus any force.

  He has five toes on each foot, not six. And his lungs are mature-sized. Everything else is proper but for his liver, which is damaged from something I don't know. Dr. M says nothing as he works. It's as if he didn't know.

  How can one copy have that aura of wisdom, and yet another copy does not? The soul must be a unique imprint within each of us. I imagine it blushing and morphing in
to a mélange of soft colors and light and shadow, a special pattern of colored fingerprint whorls for each soul.

  When photographing the boy, I try to catch Dr. M's eye. And when I finally do, I look at the body, then at Dr. M and widen my eyes. I try to signal that this must be a clone because we've seen him before. But he looks at me blandly, blankly and resumes working. He either refuses to acknowledge what I'm pointing out or he doesn't remember. Memory can be a selective trickster. In my frustration, I drop some surgical tools on the floor on purpose, making it seem like an accident. They land with a loud, tinny clanging that reverberates throughout the tiled room and into the pipe of our ears. But he ignores it, continues on.

  He's cold as ice in this room and always will be. Would he sell me out if I told? Let me down, into a crevice in a no-man's land without a future. Be calculating and sociopathic about it or pretend he forgot somehow. The mind has a way of playing, hiding and bobbing, allowing you to rationalize and forget in a self-made concussive state.

  The ones who want to forget walk towards a pink, hazy sunset and settle and sink into a plush night of endless velvet. They never come up for air.

  Fingers trace my exposed hip. I feel it as an out of body experience as I emerge slowly, flooded with sleep, slowly coming up to reality. His palm cups the side of my face. He whispers, baby, baby. Gently coaxes me awake, covering my face and lips with tiny nips and kisses. As if we were animals sleeping in a hammock, wound up and cushioned by the warmth of our bodies. I suspend my sleep drowsily. He smells of warmth, familiar skin. My home.

  I want to show you something baby, he whispers.

  My eyelids slowly open from crescents to stars.

  He leads me out of bed. We walk silently through the darkness, the cold of the wood floors scorching the pads of my feet. We arrive at the door of the second bedroom, it's decorative ridges standing in shadow, regal and elegant. He opens the door, pushes it lightly, as if to say, here, take anything you want. He motions for me to walk through. Into the dark unknown.

  I walk five steps forward, carefully sensing the space ahead of me in my blindness. I want to be in the center of this world, the silk of my sleep slips off me.

  It smells of the old, cobwebs and stale trinkets. Then a hint of something indescribable... a poison, but very faint. Inedible. I reach to the side and feel a metal pole and tiny rudimentary squares with ridges. The room rests silent, pregnant with secrets. I think I smell creation, that dry, chalky smell of airy art studios.

  My senses murmur and thrum through my body and in my depths, nudge me with hints and presence, that sense of “almost”. Like when you walk alone on a sidewalk and suddenly feel a presence behind you, but no one is there.

  When he turns the lights on, everything strikes my eyes until they adjust. Stacks of papers. Bottles of dark purple liquid. A metal table with an arm. Small blocks with letters on them.

  It's an old printing press, he says. That's my secret. It's manual.

  I turn, speechless. The white light suddenly becoming whiter, thinner into an upper atmosphere.

  He walks to a stack and pulls a pamphlet off. Hands it to me. The most recent one, he says.

  The white cover is stark, almost empty, with a hand drawn purple lotus in the center and a title: Best Practices for Growing Lotus. Volume 8. It's in an old-fashioned font, nothing modern about it, simply an agricultural, earthy look.

  I'm confused, I had no idea he was a horticulturist.

  It's not about gardening, he says. It's a... secret... anonymous paper. No one knows we're the printers.

  We?

  He tells me it's he and his best friend, the one from Temple. It's given away at certain drugstores by code. People must request it at the counter by saying they'd like to learn how to grow lotus.

  I wonder why I've never heard of it. I filter through my history and realize with shame it's because I had no real friends anymore, no real network. Everyone had fallen away during the turmoil. My life was cloistered in work, home and mother. Isolated and sad, spinning round and round in a wheel with no way off. Until I met Jamie. Until he loved me and I released some of my worries and depression.

  He says they must use a manual press because the government tracks the number of printers and ink cartridges sold to people and government-sanctioned press. The ink he uses is a sort of organic, vegetable dye made by someone in the country side.

  My thin, milky fingers slowly turn the pages. It seems like a cartoon book with drawings filling the page and short sentences and paragraphs at the bottom. The first page depicts a drawing of a seed and a metal file with directions at the bottom. It says, scar the seeds by filing it down until you see the white meat on the inside. Do not file this white part. Scarring it helps it sprout and grow. The second page shows the seeds in a bowl of water, laying at the bottom. It says, soak in water and change the water daily. When it's six inches, it's ready to transfer. The third page shows the seeds in a pot with soil. Plant seedling in soil, cover soil with gravel, making sure the seedling peeks through. Fill pot with water and set in an area with strong sunlight.

  If you looked casually, it would seem rudimentary, childish. Something to not be taken seriously. But I look closer at the next page and see something horrifying and strange.

  The page shows a drawing of a man on a table, lying on his stomach, eyes round as saucers, mouth in a large o-shape and his tongue ramrod straight, sticking out. There are cell bars in the background and a gaping bloody hole in his back. A masked figure holds a fleshy bean in tongs. Blood drips off the tongs and down the masked man's arm. At the bottom it says, the government harvests body parts from living prisoners.

  The next page shows a drawing of a city, a downtown neighborhood with towering buildings. People stand on the streets overpowered by the buildings, a large ear floats in the sky. Everyone's words bubble towards the ear. At the bottom it says, the government listens to all conversations on the streets.

  The next page shows a drawing of a prisoner shackled to a wall and surgical tools laid on the floor. It says, the government tortures dissidents and investigative journalists.

  The last inside page simply shows a phone number.

  He tells me that he meets informants if he thinks they're genuine and if they mention the name of someone who previously informed. He believes most of them tell the truth. He tries to weed out the deluded ones. It's based on a gut feeling. His manner is light, cheerful, capricious. It doesn't match the seriousness of the subject matter in the pamphlet, which I find odd.

  I grow alarmed. What about your safety? Won't they trace the number to you?

  He says he buys a new temporary phone every month and pays with cash. It's untraceable. He thinks he's OK. This information needs to be told, he says. But again, his tone is not serious or full of righteousness. It's semi-humorous and tinged with a sense of adventure.

  I wish that his secret was something else. That indeed it was a storage room for his family's things.

  Fear is a coiled eel, rising and slithering into consciousness.

  INTO MY LIFE

  I see the boy from afar as I walk home from work. He's quite young, maybe four or five. He stands with his back against the wall, without a mask. His purple jacket is on the verge of becoming ragged, the cloth still has some structure but it'll slump any day now. His longish, brown hair flutters in the cool breeze that enters our city every year.

  In the distance, I see a protest crowd walking away, dispersing. Their colorful, glowing signs sashay left to right disturbing the dust, their loud horns and chants fade as they walk farther and farther away. The light orange strobes they carry shine through the dust in loud visual bursts. Anything to stand out from the dust and peripheral advertising. Justice for the poor! Justice for the working class! I assume the boy's mother or father participated. But he was left behind somehow, and now just waits there. No one runs back to find him, scared and surprised that they lost him. A horror grows within my gut, begins to blister open. I stop and watc
h for a bit, wait for someone to return for him. But the protesters are past the end of the block, past visibility. And no one comes back to check on him. He stands alert, looking for someone, waiting as people walk past briskly without noticing him. He doesn't move an inch, perhaps he's petrified by fear.

  I approach before someone else does, ask him if he's OK. He's quiet with big eyes full of fear and uncertainty. I remove my mask and crouch down to meet him at his level. I say, I'll wait with you until someone comes back for you, OK? He understands and nods his head ever so slightly. I sit beside him on the sidewalk, mask off and wait. I want him to be able to see my face if he wants to talk. I also want to show him in some small way he's not alone. He never sits down, he remains standing, hoping, looking out as far as he can into the dust. My mission is to protect him from scavengers and predators, those who want to harm the smallest ones. I know mother waits for me, but I can't leave him alone. And I accidentally left my phone at home this morning.

  Hours pass. He turns his head when he hears others approaching. Scans their faces to see if it's anyone he recognizes. I believe it's almost eleven at night. I'm nervous, but I don't show it. I say to him, I think you should come home and stay with me and my mother. It's getting late. You'll be safe and warm. And we can come back tomorrow to look for your family, OK? Is that OK with you?

  He looks into the distance beyond me with his brown eyes and impossibly long lashes, his gaze slowly moving towards my face as he calculates in his new, naive mind something no child should ever have to. I take his hand and we begin to walk home.

  I will let him choose what bed to sleep on, mine or mother's, so he feels some modicum of control. I know people feel more secure when they have some control over their situation. Mother will sleep on the other one, I will take to the floor. The scent of fried root vegetables with onion will linger in the air, invisibly snowing on all our belongings. Sounds of our apartment settling and groaning into sleep will trickle down our building. Footsteps will lighten into silence. And he will lie awake, stare into the dark, feeling out of time and out of space, longing to see familiar ground. Dreams of his mother's voice will become a nightmare when he opens his eyes in the morning.