Diminuendo

 

 

Loch Raven

 

 

The funeral went as jaggedly opposed to life as one might expect.  Shards of guilt and sorrow pierced the collective familial breast, and the few friends that were present, cried more over that than they did over the loss of Loch Raven.  She was a tragic character, so wrong for this world, so profoundly unable to exist easily in it.  She was a beautiful little mermaid, half girl, half fish, made for water, living in the dirt.  That she’d chosen to end her life, “this atrocious absurdity” as she’d referred to it, almost fit, almost but not quite seemed the natural order of things.

 

Her father, Cormac, was torn asunder, absolutely devastated, but unable to cry.  He sat in silence, his mind like parched, cracked earth, desperately in need of a hard rain of understanding.  But even if torrents of it fell this instant, he wouldn’t be able to absorb but a few drops.  Most of it would run off and be as wasted as his ability to see what Loch Raven had needed all the years of her life with him.  And as impossible as it would have been for him to have provided that, due more in part to her innate defects than to his lack of understanding or ability, any wholehearted attempts might have meant something to Loch Raven.

 

Cormac’s bride, Serena, sat by his side, just as petrified and ashen-faced as she’d been at their wedding a little over a year ago.  Her mind was almost but not quite as susceptible to the takeover of dark forces as Loch Raven’s had been.  And so Serena was ever fearfully watchful, yet preposterously so, because she really was bereft of any ability to do anything about it, to save herself from even the whims of another person let alone the powerful forces of mental darkness.  Yet it was this very architecture of her helplessly splayed-out soul in conjunction with her striking beauty and intelligence that made people want to rescue her, just as they felt compelled to try to rescue Loch Raven.

 

Cormac and Serena met in the town library.  And although it was far from love at first sight, they were both in need of companionship so defaulted to seeing each other regularly.  Soon they’d fallen into a convenient pattern that colored over the reality of their situation.  Cormac had begun to think Serena suited him nearly perfectly, although he hadn’t thought to analyze why.  Serena, for her part, thought Cormac’s big, blank love would camouflage all her imperfections and she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to get out from under his undying loyalty.  Naturally, they decided to get married, never mind that it’d only been three months to the day and hour of their meeting at the library.

 

The wedding had gone as awkwardly as one might expect the joining of two virtual strangers to go.  It took place outside Cormac’s rickety old house with a handful of family members present.  Serena looked her petrified and ashen-faced self and the guests looked bemused.  Only Cormac and Loch Raven looked the kind of joyous one would expect at a wedding.  Loch Raven was positively glowing.  She was perhaps the only one of the three that saw clearly how much she had in common with Serena and therefore why it was that Cormac was marrying her.

 

Serena had not been as equally enthused.   In Loch Raven she saw every thing in herself that she despised.  She was more in tune with this strange girl than she felt comfortable with and she could feel the sickness that heavily clothed the girl.  It wreaked all too familiarly of the demons that tried to suffocate her own mind from time to time.  And in her opinion, a twenty year old should be out in the world making her own way just like she had been forced to do by her father.  So when Loch Raven had tried to involve Serena in her life, to comment on her artwork, to listen to her music, to help her settle on a career, and that sort of thing, Serena had been genuine and forthcoming but had mostly shied away from interaction.

 

Serena remembered now how the two had discussed the blankness of Cormac’s love and how it rendered him powerless to be of any help to either of them.  Loch Raven expressed her concern that the falling down house was haunted and was controlling them, trapping them all, and would hold them hostage until they died.  She said she felt that as long as she was under her father’s care here, she would come to ruin.  She’d asked what Serena thought she should do and Serena had recommended what she, too, wanted to do but felt powerless to do under Cormac’s roof.  Serena had held Loch Raven’s shoulders firm, looked deeply into her eyes, and told her to run far away, to just do it, to seek out a community of like-minded people, of artists, of musicians, and to let the common desire of this community fuel her desires to be and to do all the things she wanted to do and be.

 

Now Serena sat in a sorry, cheap plastic folding chair in front of the closed casket that held Loch Raven’s mutilated body and she understood with perfect, unrelenting clarity why she had killed herself.  She saw everything with perfect clarity now, just a little too late.  She saw that Loch Raven had held up blind faith that she would be a bright spot in her life, that she’d be an inspiration to her.  She’d hoped that since they were both artists and musicians that they would become allies and start something up together.  She’d hoped they’d band together and break free of the spell in their heads, the spell in her father’s house.

 

Serena looked up at the portrait of Loch Raven that sat atop the casket and an unforgiving bolt of realization ramrodded her body.  She knew the baton had been passed and that she was next.

 

Fini

 

PHOTO CREDIT

Portrait from http://www.umo.com/images/BaggotAudienceGirl01302005fromSH.JPG

 

 

Missalister’s “Diminuendo,” copyright © 2008, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#130 – Wedding.”  Click here for more on prompt #130 from other Sunday Scribblings participants

 

Invitation Touch And Go

Note:  This piece was “penned” in celebration of B-Movie Zombie, Poe Ballantine, whom I have just recently discovered, if you can believe that.  I still can’t. 

 

 

“…oh me, too, Honey,” Kylie cooed in my ear.  Then she teased me with a kiss, kind of brushed my neck with it, and rolled quickly away from me.  I knew what was next so I started my legs going like I was riding a bike, fighting, forcing my way through the knots of sheets.  By that time Kylie had already swung her legs gracefully over her the side of the bed and was well on her way down the hall to the kitchen to make coffee.  I was supposed to have grabbed her by now and dragged her laughing, mock-fighting back to bed.

 

Finally I break free from the sheets, but my excitement is seized up by a falling-off-a-cliff feeling of fear.  The bottom of my stomach drops out.  I feel myself breathing hard, fast.  My eyes pop open.  I look around, panicked.  I do a cursory surroundings check.  Seems I’m lying on the very edge of the same old ratty mattress as always.  One more inch to the right and I’d have hit the floor.

 

I look over at the part of the floor I can see from here.  The carpet is nasty, stained.  And the whole place stinks like the cramped, musty basement apartment that it is, only with the added offense of mounds of cigarette butts doused with cheap, red wine.  I squint up at the filthy, narrow basement window that’s barely eking light through, as if sunshine cost money and this place isn’t worth much.

 

Still a bit foggy, I look to my left for Kylie.  But all I see is a couple of Hustler magazines lying on her side of the bed and I realize…  Shit.  That same piece of crap dream again.  The usual tortured, mental tail-chase follows, the one that always starts and ends with the question of why I’ve got to keep rehashing something that was bound to crash and burn and I knew it the whole time.  She’s been gone almost two years for crying out loud.  Started another life, a better life, with “a real man who actually has his shit together,” I think is how she put it.

 

That reminds me, shoots a bolt of adrenalin through my body, like electrocution.  Work!  What about work?  Electrocution or a dead-end job, both are death.  Electrocution’s just faster.  I realize my thoughts have drifted again.  Work!  What time is it?  I look around panicked again.  Where’s the clock?  It’s right where it was when you went to bed, you moron, I heard myself think.  “Shut the fuck up,” I said out loud.  Ah!  6:03 a.m.  Still enough time…

 

Wait.  I don’t hear the usual traffic noises.  I think…yes, it’s Saturday.  What the hell was I drinking last night?  I look over at the nightstand and see a Mason jar half empty with Thunderbird.  I shudder.  Christ.  Alright, well never mind that.  Knowing it’s Saturday, I actually feel a spark of enthusiasm now.  I swing my legs over the bed like a girl, mimicking Kylie’s sweeping, legs-together swing and pussycat touchdown, and I say to her, wherever she is, “HA!” 

 

I think, on this auspicious occasion, in honor of my delayed death sentence, I’ll go down to Connolly’s, get a table on the dock, and work on my novel.  Which isn’t going so well is it, Asshole? came from my internal heckler.  I didn’t bother answering.  I went to the bathroom and on the way out happened on some jeans on the floor and a shirt that didn’t smell too bad.  I put that stuff on, grabbed my laptop and headed out the door.

 

Connolly’s was pretty much as I’d imagined it.  I managed to get a table fairly close to the water and I’m sitting here with a cup of the world’s second- or third-best coffee, working on chapter six.  Life is good.  Then I begin to realize that the sound of a small airplane I’d been hearing was getting mighty close.  I look up and holy shit!  It’s a Lake 250 amphibian practically on my head, throttle back, gracefully losing altitude on its approach to a water landing.  I haven’t seen one of those planes in years! 

 

Whoever the pilot was greased that beauty onto the water, like the water was hot, flat tarmac, and right away gunned the throttle and the sweet little plane angled easily, powerfully for the sky.  Magnificent sprays of water flew out behind it and back to earth.  Gorgeous!  Several minutes later I see the same plane come back around again and I realize the pilot’s shooting touch and gos.  My emotions went crazy.  To laugh or cry? 

 

My first emotion was pure joy, a sense of freedom, as I involuntarily jumped up from my chair feeling like the possibility of flying bodily right then was real.  But it was only my spirit that flew off, leaving my sorry ass behind.  Then came the sadness.  I remembered way back before Kylie, I remembered the pilot I’d dated for a year or so, and how she’d given me a few flying lessons.  Those were some of the best times of my life, and I wondered what the hell?  What is this life I’ve been leading?

 

The pilot of the Lake 250 would come around for several more touch and gos, as I tried to make sense of my emotions, as my heart alternately soared with its arrival and graveyard spiraled with its departure.  What is this about?  Near as I could tell, it had something to do with freedom, with a person doing what interests them, doing what’s exciting…  What do you do with an invitation to fly free when the only thing you’ve flown solo is a kite on a string?

 

I sat there on Connolly’s dock like an idiot.  Oh, you’re just now noticing your low IQ? my innards sneered.  “Wiseass,” I snapped.  All I could think right of now was a conversation I’d had with a chick on the train about a year after Kylie left.  The memory of it flooded my head now…

 

I’d been sitting on the train for only twenty minutes of the one-and-a-half hour trek to work, to drudgery.  It was about 7 o’clock on a Monday morning so I was particularly morose, but I was making the effort to work on my novel, the same one I’m working on now which, as you know, isn’t going so well.  Then this really cute, perky chick got on at the second stop, and nobody, not even I, could have failed to notice her.  She lit up the train.

 

I remember looking up and dropping my mood, but only for the brief time the initial shock of her pleasurable appearance affected me.  The train was packed, but everyone cleared a path for her.  She ended up nearest me and I remember doing the right thing by offering her my seat.  She accepted with a smile.  I gave her a nod, grabbed the nearest pole and looked away, irritated that I’d allowed myself to succumb to ancient social mores.

 

At first the sunny chick had just sat there and messed with the stuff in her backpack, some scrawled-on notepads, a couple of books.  Then I felt her looking at me.  Soon she’d begun talking to me.  I wish I could remember now exactly how our conversation went, but roughly it went something like this…

 

“What do you do?”

 

I turned to her and feigned surprise, “You talking to me?”

 

“Well duh,” she said, her eyes twinkling into mine.

 

“I write manuals,” I droned, and looked away.

 

She seemed enthused, “Yeah?  Like how-to manuals?”

 

“Product manuals,” I said coolly.

 

She perked up all the more, like it was a big deal, “Hey, now that sounds interesting!”

 

I stayed monotone, “Oh it’s a real thrill, thoroughly titillating.  Yeah.”

 

She laughed, and said, “C’mon, tell me, really.  Do you freelance or work for a company?”

 

I leaned toward her and asked, “Did you ever see the movie “Joe Versus the Volcano?”

 

“Yeah…” she looked puzzled.

 

I leaned closer to her and continued in a low rasp, “You know that dark grey, dank scene where Joe’s walking from his piece of shit car toward the dark grey, dank building he works in?”

 

“Yeah…” she answered, scowling now.

 

I told her, “That’s me, dragging my cement feet on the beaten-down, tired-out dirt and asphalt, stomping down that same pretty lil daisy, day after day after day.”

 

She loved that, could barely contain her amusement, and exclaimed, “Yeah, but Joe also propped the daisy back up one day and quit that toxic environment with its mind-bending, buzzing fluorescent lights and that insane drone of his boss on the phone, “I’m not arguing that with you, Harry!” then she cracked up laughing.

 

I withdrew back upright, disappointed I’d not upset her peace of mind and quipped, “Ah, right, but that’s for people with guts.  Plucky people like you.”

 

She laughed again, “I’m not plucky, I just look at everything that catches my attention as a personal invitation from someone important…”

 

She felt the train slowing and looked out the window, “Oh!  My stop.”  Then she looked back at me and picked up where she’d left off, “…someone I really care about, so naturally I owe them the decency of a reply, ‘Yes, I’ll do something with what I see in front of me, or no, I won’t and here’s why…’”

 

“Fascinating,” I deadpanned.

 

The train’s brakes screeched.  When it had come to a stop she stood up, slung her backpack over her shoulder and teased, “You can have your seat back now.”

 

I rolled my eyes and sat down as she walked toward the open train doors.  She stopped just before stepping out onto the platform, looked back at me and sing-songed, “Good-bye, ‘Joe’!”  She winked at me and was gone.  Then I remember huffing and just going back to the writing of my novel that wasn’t going so well.

 

Fini

 

 

PHOTO CREDITS:

 

Tom Hanks as Joe in the movie “Joe Versus the Volcano” snagged from http://www.videodetective.com/photos/029/001229_2.jpg

 

“Dead” employees walking from the movie “Joe Versus the Volcano” from http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/volcano.jpg

  

 

 

 

Missalister’s “Invitation Touch And Go,” copyright © 2008, was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#129 – Invitation.”  Click here for more on prompt #129 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.

 

The “L” in miracle

 

It’s the last mile of our long run training.  Julie and I are pushing it.  New friendship, new conversation, possibly a new time record for our 10K.  One more incline to push us closer to depletion before the last speed flat, the supreme  test of our hearing, our ability to pick out the whisper of our will to win amidst the screams from our bodies to stop this nonsense and eat, drink, and be merry.  I’d been mostly deaf until Julie.

 

On intuitive cue, we glance at each other.  Sweat whips off our hair.  And there’s the fire, in her eyes, in mine, determination equally matched.  In a flash I get a hit, feel a glow of gratitude, of Fate maybe changing its mind about me and maybe starting to deal me some good cards for a change.  In just three months Julie has become the best friend and running partner of all time.  The other shoe may drop as usual, but I’ve learned to ride the good wave while it’s under my feet.

 

We reach the top of the incline and there’s that glint of old, from childhood, mirrored back to me from her eyes.  It’s the fully understood but unspoken dictum that allows for the unleashing of all-out friendly fire, matching physical challenge for challenge, wit for wit.  I give her the half-smile and abbreviated nod of agreement.  In unison our heads sling sweat back around, our brows knit, and we pull the last reserves of strength up and out of ourselves to open up full bore on the straightaway for the last half-mile.

 

I’m going all out.  Julie’s right with me.  I wonder if she’s holding back for my sake.  I kick the thought out of my head.  She’s just screwing herself if she’s not giving her all.  Just worry about you, just kick ass.  By the time we cross the line, my thoughts are right, and we’re together.  We check our watches.  44:17.  We did it!  We’re ecstatic, arms up, slow-running, jumping, skip-dancing.  We trot out the cool-down squirting each other with water.  We bend over laughing and recovering and back up again, throwing our heads back to get the wet hair out of our faces. 

 

Then Julie stops.  Her face clouds.  She squints at me, “Is that an ‘L’ on your forehead?”

 

Shit.  I walked out the door this morning without putting on the make-up that covers it.  I try and make this as easy as possible on both of us and I make light of it.  I shift into backwoods, “Shur is, ma’am.  Ain’t you never seen a loser before?”  I laugh.  Julie just looks at me, aghast.  I clear my throat.

 

I tell her, “Ah, Julie?  You know, I got a buncha marks on me—physical and mental battle scars, tattoos, scars from removed tattoos…  All of that.  It’s not a big thing to me.  Is it to you?”

 

Julie dropped her gaze from my forehead to my eyes, which were begging her to get off this and onto something else, to please not ruin this runner’s high, this time-shattering victory.  It’s still god-awful early to be up on a Saturday, but it feels great, and the day is shouting possibilities at us, or it was.

 

Her eyes registered something between disbelief and pity.  I hate that.  Then she spoke, “Ah no.  I mean normal scars, no.  What is with that ‘L’?  Are you OK?”

 

Anger jumped up in me from the black place.  The “L” was a personal thing, like all the scars and tattoos, never meant to be gawked at with slack jaws exaggerated, never meant to be scrutinized and judged with holier-than-thou eyes and minds leaping blindly to way-out conclusions.

 

I checked my anger before speaking, but from fight or flight, my mind had already made its time-honored choice to fly, to drop this friendship like a rock and just run rejected back to my apartment and lick my inevitably reopened wounds.

 

“Julie,” I said, “Look.  Yeah I have a history, and no I’m not OK, but I’m not the kind of ‘not OK’ that I see reflected in your eyes.  I’ve leveled off.  I don’t do that anymore.  I get along just fine.  Listen, I need to get to the post office and the bank before they close at noon and I have to…”

 

Julie interrupted, “No, Nicole, you’ve got me all wrong!  The not OK part of you must be misreading the not OK part of me.  Nobody’s OK.  Everybody’s got their shit to deal with, even the ones who look like they don’t.  I like you.  We click.  I’m asking about your wellbeing as a friend.”

 

I put my arm around Julie, “I’m sorry…  Thank you…”  We hugged then got coffee from a park vendor.  We walked to a bench overlooking the water and I told her about my teen years, about the scars I made out of self-loathing, out of the volcanic stew always red-hot and roiling, waiting for prime conditions to erupt and ravage my mental landscape again and again.  This went on, but lessened each year, until thirty-two, until a too-good-to-be-true Thad.

 

I told her how I made the “L” out of a jumbo paperclip in abject despair after Thad dumped me, and how, right after I stuck it in the fire and then onto my forehead, I got an intuitive hit that with that “branding” I’d just changed my life for the worst forever in a way I’d never changed it for the worst before.  I felt like that was the end of the line, that I’d lost all hope for myself, and in so doing had just approved an irrevocable contract with the universe to deal me losing hands for as long as I lived.

 

I panicked and prayed to a God I remembered praying to as a child.  I tried to make another deal.  I said if God would revoke the loser contract, I’d never make another mark as long as I lived, in Jesus’ name I pray.  I never felt sure that He revoked it, but I wasn’t entirely sure He didn’t, either, so I held to my half of the bargain.

 

Julie put her arm around me.  We looked at each other and knew the other half of the bargain had been kept.  Julie gave me a shove and deadpanned, “It’s a miracle you didn’t stamp yourself with an expiration date.”

 

Fini

 

 

 

PHOTO CREDITS:

 

Runners are from Getty Images

 

The poster from the 2000 movie, “Loser,” was snagged from http://www.impawards.com/2000/posters/loser.jpg

 

 

Missalister’s “The ‘L’ in miracle” was spun off the Sunday Scribblings prompt “#127 – Miracle.”  Click here for more on prompt #127 from other Sunday Scribblings participants.