Life, As It Is

May 25, 2018May 25, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

Rain bounced off the windows. Clouds hung low, caught in the last rays of the sun, burnt into a fluffy, coral color. Drops inched down the panes. Jeopardy was about to go into the final round. Alli and Ran sat in their usual position on the couch: Ran holding Alli and Alli leaning on her shoulder.

The show cut to commercials. Alli ducked out from under Ran’s arm and stood up, crossing the room, with her glass of rosé. She alighted by the windowsill, staring out at the pink and yellow tableau. The sky’s painting of a sunset. Alli turned the stemware with the edges of her fingers resting on the rim. The trees swayed in the spring rain. An advertisement for lawn mowers blared from the TV and Ran turned down the volume.

“What’s wrong?” Ran asked.

“I have to get over Nealy,” Alli said, still looking out the window.

Ran sat back. Her heart pounded but she said nothing.

“I’ve been carrying her around for too long,” Alli continued, looking over her shoulder.

“It’s understandable,” Ran got out.

Alli looked back out the window, at the water pooling around the storm drain, “I wonder if my seeing you is a part of that holding on.”

Ran muted the TV, “But I am here; she’s not.”

“You have me,” Ran spoke again, after a pause.

Alli turned back around, framed by glass, her silhouette framed by the window and graying sky, “Yes, but what if having you, isn’t allowing me to get over Nealy?”

Ran got up and put her empty glass in the sink, “You can’t live out your relationship with Nealy through me – we’re two different people.”

“I know that,” Alli seemed frozen at the window, wearing a green cashmere sweater, a button-up shirt and jeans, frozen in amber, “The rational mind knows – but the heart sees what it wants to see.”

Ran stop pretending to be distracted by the faucet, and faced Alli, “Should we take a break? See other people?”

Alli sunk inward a little. She looked down, but then looked up, right into Ran’s eyes, “That would be wise.”

Ran turned back to the sink, and wiped her hands on a dishtowel, “So be it.”

Alli opened her mouth to say something more but then closed it. She set the half-empty glass down on the windowsill and rose to go.

I am sorry that my motivations were so muddled, Alli thought.

Alli took her black overcoat off one of the wooden pegs in the hallway and left, walking out into the rain, toward her apartment. Ran, still inside, resumed washing the glass.

Music

Goldfrapp

Satin Chic [Through the Mystic Mix, Dimension 11]

You Never Know [Mum Remix]

Fountains in a Tea House

May 19, 2018May 20, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

The clouds above were roiling and gray. The wind tore through the trees, ripping off small branches. An untethered, rotted tennis court net flapped in the wind. Alli walked across the leave-strewn hardcourt.

A house loomed, lopsided and in disrepair. Alli entered through the familiar red door, swinging off its hinges, hanging by a screw.

She strode down the long corridor. The hall was lined with crumbling Corinthian pillars, some with whole chunks smashed out of them. The rest of the room opened out on both sides of her – broken windows letting in the cold, shattered mirrors, reflecting nothing.

Water from the afternoon rain poured down from holes in the ceiling. The cataracts framed the room, like the off-white pillars, stained with mildew. Streams sluiced through the ruined floor, irrigated by cracks in the tiles.

Nealy stood at the far end of the room, in her beige suit, smoking a cigar. She inhaled the exhaled smoke back into her nostrils. Her eyes glinted in the darkness at the far end of the room, away from the daylight streaming through the many gashes in the house – a sudden shift of light in the background, like the quick flare of flaming ash. Whorls of smoke twisted away into the blackness.

“Did you bring it?” she asked, spitting out a piece of tobacco.

“Yes,” Alli said, hefting the ax from behind her.

Nealy stood out of the way. Behind her, in the inkiest depths, in a shallow pool of water, was a blue and black beast, a cockatrice at least the length of a Winnebago. Its leathery wings unfolded at regular intervals, but it was wounded, conserving its movements.

“Get rid of it,” Nealy said. She turned away, toward the distant remnants of a torn-out window pane, taking a deep drag on her cigar.

The wyvern’s neck heaved in a useless bucking motion. Its teeth clacked as it opened and closed its jaw impotently. It couldn’t shapeshift anymore – it didn’t have enough energy. It was a dark avatar, frozen in that form.

The constant patter of water flowing down from the roof was all Alli heard. The whole house exuded the essence of soaked, dead wood, forgotten splinters. Alli smelled, at the edge of her consciousness, a bright, green whiff of Honduras. She raised the ax.