by Ka Newborrn
The chill spread down from the windowsill and permeated the kitchen space. Gladys turned her body to face it directly.
"I live with the course of sorrow I've set. I can't erase it. But pain doesn't have to be a part of our reality anymore. We can be the source of each other's happiness, if you allow it. Or you don't ever have to see me again." Calvin refused to budge and looked away.
Gladys burst into tears. "I hope it doesn’t come to that, Calvin, because I love you. I always have. I’m going upstairs. And when you’re ready, if you’re ever ready, I'll be waiting for you.” She turned away and started to climb the stairs.
She hesitated and lingered at the base of the stairs, hugging her elbows as she suddenly remembered her manners. “Do you feel a chill? There are blankets in the cedar chest. You know where the food is. Help yourself to anything you need.” She shivered and ascended the staircase. Her silhouette grew transparent and gradually faded away.
Calvin held onto his stubbornness for as long as he could, but the tears still came. He was angry with himself for being vulnerable and weak. He stalked to the cedar chest and angrily snapped open the latch. As his fingers explored the piles of wool and cotton blankets, they came across something furry at the very bottom.
He pulled out an old-fashioned, fur lined parka and held it up to his cheek. The softness was comforting. He pressed it to his nose and was instantly reminded of his mother.
He was three years old, and they had shared a hug. He knew he felt love for her in that moment. He was too young have to have collective memories. No one taught him how to love her. He was too young to understand the profundity of dependence, so his love wasn't contingent upon necessity or desperation. It was inherent, a genetic truth. A gift from Jana, or perhaps from her mother. It did have a scent. Gladys was right.
He put on the parka and looked towards the top of the staircase. Woodwinds, triangles, wind chimes and bells melded into a harmonious wave and cascaded down the icicle steps. He took a step forward to listen, and in doing so he felt more assured.
He climbed to the top and found himself alone in a ceilingless room with four walls. Three of the walls were filled with books from the floor to as far as his eyes could see. He was certain that they piled onwards towards infinity. The fourth wall was bare except for a pair of ice skates tied together by the laces, hanging from a white door in the center. Calvin swung the ice skates over his shoulder and opened the door.
He was standing amid a mountain range lined with snow-capped evergreen trees. A frozen blue pond curved along the length of the range where Linden and Gladys sported furry parkas and ice skates.
For the most part they were graceful. Gladys skated forward and Linden skated backwards. His hands occasionally gripped her waist for balance. They remained upright despite a few stumbles, laughing. The sun beat down on their bodies and illuminated their hair. The wind flushed their cheeks to a rebellious shade of red.
“I can do an axel jump!” Gladys’ breath was frosty as she playfully pushed Linden aside. He fought to keep his balance and watched as she skated ahead. She was focused on her goal and determined to gain her momentum.
A pack of six wolves strutted purposefully past Calvin toward the shelter of the evergreen trees. The Alpha proudly carried a fresh kill of antelope in its mouth, trailing blood on the white carpet of snow. The members of the pack followed closely behind their leader. They had survived throughout the winter with barely a scrap of food. Now they smelled the blood of bounty and were anxious to have a taste.
The baby of the pack tried hard to bring up the rear but was sidetracked by the scent of the air and the excitement of being wild and free. His eyes squinted in the sun and turned towards the shade. Then he saw Calvin. He stiffened, pointed its ears and locked eyes with him.
Something in Calvin’s gaze compelled the wolf to abandon the pack for a moment. Calvin was perfectly still as the baby wolf walked towards him, circled him and cocked his snout in appraisal. Without warning, it charged at Calvin and knocked him to the ground. Calvin screamed for help. His heart seized as he brought his hands up to protect his face. The wolf, however, was relentless. It wagged its tail and mercilessly attacked Calvin with a barrage of licks and kisses.
The wolf’s mother noticed that her baby was missing. She looked over from her place behind the leader of the pack and saw it frolicking with Calvin. She gave her baby a menacing growl of warning. The baby wolf brought its tail between its legs, feeling the sting of its mother’s reproval. He gave Calvin one final kiss and trotted back, slightly embarrassed, to his rightful place before the pack disappeared into the shelter of the trees.
Gladys spun into a perfect axel and landed gracefully on her feet. She held up her hands in triumph and skated back to Linden. He scooped her up and whirled her around. They kissed.
Calvin laced up his skates and carefully skated towards the middle of the ice. His grandparents waved and backed up a few paces in order to give him space.
He charged the ice to gain momentum and speed, then lengthened his stride and shifted gears to skate backwards. Blind spots were irrelevant, as were vestiges of fear. Eyes fixed on the highest peak of the mountain, he leapt into the air at the precise moment and spun. Icicles lit up his peripheral vision like jewels in a tiara as he landed smoothly on the ice.
“Bravo!” Gladys brought her fingers to her mouth and blew a kiss. Linden whistled and threw a red rose at his feet. “Rosa Hispida!” he called out.
Calvin skated to the rose and picked it up. It was deep and dark with luscious drops of dew. Bowing deeply, he pressed his nose into the tender bud and breathed in its perfect aroma.
ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA
2002
Hans
He was tried as a minor and released from prison eleven years later. To celebrate his newfound freedom, he took himself out to dinner.
When he arrived at the upscale Anaheim restaurant, he felt bombarded by the penetrating stares of onlookers. At first, he thought it was paranoia. Then he glanced across the dining room and saw his elementary school psychiatrist, dressed in full Kente garb, dining with her husband.
He removed the steak knife from the table and slipped it quietly into the pocket of his pants before standing up to leave. In line at the coat check, his fourth grade teacher wriggled into a full-length ermine coat. Hans abandoned his jacket, made a beeline for the door and fled to the safety of the valet stand outside.
Forever and a Day Legs emerged from the passenger door of a white BMW. Hans watched in horror as Officer Murano linked his arm protectively around the waist of his grandmother's home health aide and handed his keys to the parking attendant.
He fled to the shelter of a hole-in-the-wall corner pub. A female bartender on the shy side of forty slapped a napkin down in front of him. He ordered a bourbon Manhattan and watched her prepare the cocktail on the metal bar top. He told her she was beautiful. She smiled and refreshed his drink. He fingered the knife in his pocket.
He disposed of her mutilated body at the side of a lonely road an hour later and wiped the knife blade clean. His eyes rolled back with the euphoria of the moment. Consumed by a bloodlust he had never truly realized, he continued to drive around until he found himself in Los Angeles outside another dive bar.
Recoiling at the sight of an overweight male bartender with rubber bands in his beard, Hans stood up to leave. At that moment, a young woman opened the door and stepped inside. Hans sat back down as she approached the bar. The bartender slapped napkins down in front of them.
Unblinking icebergs stared at the young woman. “What’s your name?”
“Odette."
“Bourbon Manhattan, straight up, and whatever Odette would like.”
Odette ordered a drink. Hans tried hard to look charming and fingered the knife in his pocket.
TRANSIT
2002
Ester
She couldn’t see through the cloud of ash swirling around her. Her fingertips were nearly frozen, but
she could feel fragments of life beneath them. Some of them pulsed slightly. Others were necrotic, reeking and still. Her hair was heavy with ice. Her throat was raw. Her clothing was wet and tangled.
Everything shifted abruptly, as if suddenly moved by an unseen lever. The temperature warmed slightly and the darkness subsided a little bit. With the slight increase in temperature came the exposure of random vignettes in tiny windows. A fairy princess in a nylon nightgown waved an aluminum foil wand over an audience of dolls. Giant toads lurked in the distance. Scorpions mated in the corners.
When the motion stopped, the enclosure opened like an unsealed tomb. She leveraged her palms against it and hoisted herself upwards. When she had crawled away, she found herself lying she found herself on top of a carpet of moss at the edge a freshwater pond. It was surrounded by patches of blackberries. A wintry mansion loomed in the distance.
She checked for broken bones, stood up and shook frozen twigs from the folds of her gown. The hummingbird was secured at the base of her throat. The spotted owl was perched firmly on her right shoulder, holding a bright star in its beak.
The fresh water sparkled between her fingers as she cupped it into her hands and drank. She plucked blackberries from the vines and cried with relief as their sweetness moistened her tongue. Illuminated by the owl’s lantern star, she made her way carefully ahead.
Toadstools and moths littered her hair as she abandoned her pumps in the brambles and walked barefoot towards the stone facade. Gargoyles snarled menacingly from the spired roof and guarded the turrets. An oversized jackdaw supervised the weathervane but offered nothing in the way of welcome.
She hunched in the frame of the heavy, wooden door and slowly pushed it open. Barren stone walls flickered in a dimly-lit corridor flanked with iron torches. Her bare feet were cold against the stone floor. The air was thick with dust.
Her breath was visible as she walked down a long corridor into a slightly warmer room. The cobwebbed wainscoting was dressed with massive oil portraits of veiny gooseberries and orange pomegranates arranged among folds of dark velvet.
A canopied, black wood bed was dressed with ivory sheets. Fragrant white blossoms floated in a bowl of water on top of an old table. Black grapes and blood red apples attached to clusters of dried green leaves rested on a tray. A panorama of mirrored wardrobes and steamer trunks lined the perimeter.
The spotted owl rested at the base of the massive bed as she opened one of the wardrobes. Hooked inside the door was a silk nightgown that smelled of the white blossoms in the glass bowl. She peeled off her dress and slipped her arms into the loose bell sleeves. Then she nestled among the sheets and bit eagerly into an apple from the tray of fruit.
A large grey spider in the corner of the ceiling paused from her handiwork to acknowledge her. Ester nodded in greeting and admired her flaxen web.
She felt her eyes clouding over with opiate sands. Unseen hands stroked the length of her body and pinned her against the mattress. She struggled to leverage herself against the bed.
Above her head, the ectoplasmic canopy quivered to the edges of the square ceiling and shrouded it in black tar. The tar cleaved into quarters and melted down the sides of the four walls, exposing crumbling mortar and rats.
The tar spread to the center of the floor, where it coagulated and rose upwards into a gooey mass. It seized the bed with powerful fingers and held it, suspended in the air. The walls curled down into petals and shook the room furiously, hurling the portraits, table, steamer trunks, and mirrored wardrobes into the mouth of the calyx.
She wrapped her legs around one of the posters and climbed towards the canopy. She could see that the calyx was using shards of wardrobe mirror for teeth, and that it was hungry. Very hungry.
The owl flew to Ester’s shoulder and buried its face in her hair. Her body waved like a pennant as she gripped the canopy and clung for her life. The jagged teeth came closer.
The spider waved frantically from a large web fastened securely to the remnant of the ceiling. UP HERE ESTER was spelled out across the length, its flaxen threads contrasting sharply with the tar. The spider crawled above her head and lowered a silk rope. She grabbed it and climbed, taking her place in the web between the spider and the spotted owl beyond the reach of the petals.
The calyx was using a pair of black grapes for eyes. It smiled at her lasciviously, revealing its jagged teeth. She screwed her eyes shut and nestled deeper into the web.
It chuckled softly, causing the web to rock back and forth.
“Join me.”
She stayed where she was.
“Pity.” The calyx pouted. “Guess I’ll have to find someone else. She loves me.”
A petal detached itself from the stone flower with a dramatic crack, causing pieces of the remnant ceiling to crumble and fall in slow motion towards the gooey mass of tar.
“She loves me not.” The left corner of the web loosened from the ceiling as a second petal detached. The trio scrambled to the right.
“She loves me.” Black grape eyes glinted contemptuously as the third petal crumbled away.
“She loves me not.” The web detached completely as the last petal fell, sending Ester, the owl and the spider directly into the jaws of the calyx.
She screamed with rage as she lost sight of the owl and the spider. The bloodied fingers of her left hand clung desperately to a mirror shard tooth as the open palm of her right battled the advances of the calyx’s spiny tongue. She eventually succumbed to the violent shaking.
Everything went white.
“The woodcutter’s wife sent them into the blizzard for four-sided snowflakes and waited until they were deep in the woods before she got the munchies and ate the sourdough breadcrumb trail they made to find their way back home. Then they found a goose skating on the ice with a submarine sandwich in its beak. They started skating with it. They laughed and sang and danced and shook their booties and the goose quacked and sang and danced and shook its tail feathers and had a good time. It shared its submarine sandwich with them. When the sun set and they couldn’t find the trail of breadcrumbs leading back to the house the goose wrapped its wings around them and they slept in the warmth of soft down. When the sun rose they walked and walked and walked and walked and the goose waddled and waddled and waddled and waddled until finally they found their way back home. The woodcutter’s wife looked pissed because she thought she would never see them again, but then she saw the goose. She looked at the goose and the goose looked back at her and her mouth watered because she was really, really greedy and she praised the children for bringing such a fine goose home for dinner and told them to start the fire and the goose looked back at the children, so they did. The woodcutter’s wife hung a cauldron on top of the fire and told the children to hand her the goose and the goose looked back at the children and the children yelled, ‘No way, lady!’ and pushed her into the cauldron instead. They boarded up the doors and windows with the pile of cut wood at the side of the cottage. She tried to step out of the cauldron but she couldn’t because it was too narrow and she was too fat because, like I said, she was really, really greedy, so she burnt up in the fire and they smiled and the goose smiled and spread out her wings and they climbed onto them and flew off into the clouds to the McDonalds fly thru and they ordered Happy Meals with extra fries and they were really, really, really, really happy and they said, ‘Goose, will you be our mother?’ and she said, ‘Of course, my darlings,’ and that’s how Mother Goose got her name.”
“Lies.”
“It’s true.”
“Then what kind of submarine sandwich was it?”
“Why does it matter?”
“’Cause it does. So what kind of submarine sandwich was it?”
“Ham.”
“Cousin’s?”
“Who cares?”
“I still don’t believe you.”
“I’m just trying to make you feel better. It’s not my fault your mama’s never home."
“Go aw
ay. I'm tired of your dumb old stories. They make me want to punch through glass.”
“Did I make you mad? Do what makes you feel better. I’ll carry your rage.”
✽✽✽
Her cheek shifted against something cold. When she opened her eyes, she was sprawled on top of a glass sphere. Murky green smoke shifted inside.
She plastered her eye to the surface. A woman emerged as the smoke cleared. Her caramel brown skin was illuminated with touches of bronze and flushed with hints of carmine. Her spiraling coils defiantly at her shoulders. She was crying out for help and struggling to free herself from the restraints that bound her ankles and wrists to a steel table work table. A man held a knife to her throat.
“I promise it won’t hurt. For long.”
His lips curved into a smile. His eyes were unblinking icebergs as he unfastened his pants.
She pounded away at the surface until she smashed it with her wrists. Ignoring the pain and throbbing, she pried her way through chunk by chunk. The owl flew to her side, flinging dust and droplets of tar from his feathers, and immediately started to peck at the glass in assistance. The man looked up in lurid rage when he saw them. Water seeped slowly through the opening.
They continued to pry and peck until the globe cracked in half and the man was swept off of his feet. Enraged, he swam towards Ester as water poured through the crevice. The owl flew to the woman’s side and pecked at the restraints. The woman fainted with relief.
Waving her legs, the spider led them to a raft with the words, THIS WAY GUYS woven in block letters along the length. Working quickly, she crawled to the edge of the raft and weaved a silk rope across the water.
The owl broke through the restraints, lifted the woman in its beak and flew to the safety of the raft. Ester lunged for the silk rope, but the man was faster. He clasped his hands around her neck and squeezed until the moonstone hummingbird left an imprint on her bruised neck as the silk rope swung back around and stuck to the side of the raft.
