Night’s Lost

The air is heavy with mist; it holds the moonlight like particles of dust and chills through autumn jackets and settles like dew on exposed skin. The street lamps struggle to light the empty streets. The bars have let out and the late night socialites have found their way to beds. Inside the bowels of this city the dim lights outside the door of a gothic church land upon a crumpled mass.

Against the grey brick walls and the sharp angular lines of the building she appears to be a collection of blankets donated after hours. But the heels of black boots peek out from beneath her woolen coat, red curled hair swirls each time the breeze finds its way to the doorstep. She is folded with her legs curled toward her belly, the collar of her coat tucked close around her ears with whitened fingers. Her left hand resting on the door base, as one would caress the remains of a loved one long gone. And every few minutes the sound of her breath can be heard echoing in the archway as if to say: “I’m still here.”

Funeral Taxi (working title)

Jacob Hughes was buried in an oak coffin painted glossy black; his family sent him off with a champagne toast.  His daughter Elizabeth waited at the grave site until her family had piled into the shiny black town cars; she sipped from a bottle left by the forgetful or careless parents of the man in the ground.  She called a cab as she crossed the graveyard, dew left from the morning gathered at the soles of her boots, crept up the cuffs of her black pants.  She leaned against a nearby tombstone and lit a cigarette as she waited for the cab.

When the taxi arrived twenty minutes later she stashed the champagne bottle behind the grave. As she opened the door the smell of orange peels and burnt wood greeted her. She slid across the seat so she could see the driver. She lit another cigarette and rolled down the window. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“No miss.” The driver’s accent placed him in sub-saharan Africa. He smiled a lot, revealing exceptionally white teeth against the contrast of his dark skin.  “Where to?” He asked as he put his blinker on.

“Lake Harriet.  Just drive around it.”  She took a drag of her cigarette.  “I’ll tell you when to stop.”  She exhaled and tapped the cigarette against the glass.

The next few minutes were silent except for classical music in the background and the occasional laughter that entered through the open window as they passed nearby parks.

“Is it beautiful where you’re from?” Elizabeth watched the driver.

He smiled. “Oh yes miss, very beautiful. It looks like paradise.” He paused briefly.  “Inside though, it is hell. Too much anger and too much suffering has made it paradise lost.”

Elizabeth watched him for a few moments before returning her gaze to the window to watch a child play frisbee with a golden retriever. “I thought people only gathered in graveyards to bury people in the movies.”  Elizabeth inhaled and blew the smoke out the open window; she let the cigarette butt drop from her fingertips.

“Was it your friend or a family member?”

“Father.” Elizabeth replied without turning her gaze from the window.

“I’m so sorry.” The driver peered at Elizabeth in the rear view mirror. “I also lost my father when I was young. He was killed.”

Elizabeth looked at the driver. “I’m sorry to hear that.” She lit another cigarette and was silent for a while; she just watched the scenery of spring by the lakeside pass by. “He killed himself.”

The driver looked in the mirror again. “That is a great tragedy.”

“Is it?”

Halo

This is an old piece, slightly revised. Open for comments. I still feel it misses something…

I rise from the pew to mouth along to “What Child is This,” also known as “Greensleeves.”  And I think it both brilliant and tragic that someone turned it into a Christmas song.  Nonetheless it’s beautiful, and sad–not sad, solemn.  I can hear the voices of my Grandparents.  My Grandfather is standing to my left and I glance at him out of the corner of my eye.  He’s here tonight because he believes.  He believes in the man pinned above the pulpit on the back wall, or would it be the front?  I wonder if He enjoys people staring at his suffering, worshiping the image of His final moments, nailed bleeding and beaten onto a cross.  My Grandmother is here because I think she believes.  She used to be Catholic.

I lost the silver cross my Grandparents gave to me for Confirmation.  I lost it—in a mall.  I’m here because they are here, because the candlelight service on Christmas Eve in the small town where my Grandparents live is a tradition I have come to love.  We sit back down onto the crimson tweed cushion that covers the hard wood of the pew.  The lights begin to dim and I can see the alter boys with the long brass lighters. They will light the candle of the person at the end of each pew; and we all pass on the flame of our candle. Tonight I don’t know if I want to be here.

~~~~~

Two weeks ago he died. Home to Colorado. That’s it, that’s where it ended.  We had to fight to get the autopsy results.  His sister first said it was a brain aneurysm.  The night I found out I fell, crouching with my arms around my stomach. Like that’s where he lay.

~~~~~
I tip my candle toward the flame of my Grandfather’s, then tip it toward my brother’s.  He is here because we all are, because it’s tradition.

~~~~~

Two weeks ago I was surrounded by hysteria.  There were those in denial. They screamed about how it wasn’t fair.  Not to them.  How strange that they projected his death onto themselves.  It wasn’t fair to them?  I was upset because he was dead; he is dead. Max doesn’t just die!  But I guess he does just die.

~~~~~

All the candles are lit and we stand to sing “Silent Night.”  My favorite Christmas song.  Looking out over the dappled candlelight, I’m moved at how beautiful the faces are.  They are flawed, and they are beautiful.  Why are they here?  My uncle is here because he thinks he believes.  So is my mother.  My father is here–he’s here.

~~~~~

I think how funny it would be to see him now, in this particular moment.  I think he would appreciate it.  He doesn’t agree with the worship of the man pinned above the pulpit.  I could see him holding a green hymn book, wearing his torn suit.  The one he ripped up for a prank on his neighbor, telling her that her dog had attacked him.  Max.  Eccentric and smart, probably too smart.

A week ago, we found out there were high amounts of opium in his blood.  He knew what he was doing. I kneeled onto the roots of a very old and large tree by the lake the night I heard about his death, tears running like a cliche down my face. As I tilted my head back to see the moon could feel the wobbling halo start to slip.  Twenty-two years old and I’ve lost it already. It didn’t hold innocence, or even faith; I suppose it held the denial that people die, that they leave you forever.  The day the autopsy report was released I felt the halo slip right off and clang to the ground.

~~~~~

And as I stand in this church on Christmas Eve, surrounded by hope, I can feel the weight of loss above my head.  It bears down on me a little more everyday.  I wouldn’t trade it. The friendship–or the pain.  Not for all the halos in the world.  I almost pray to the man hanging above the pulpit.  But end up staring at Him.  He didn’t have one either, just a wreath of thorns.  And I think of all the suffering of the world. Suffering as a symbol of faith.

~~~~~

It was too much for him.  He went out the only way he knew how, the only way he wanted to.  Maybe the urge was becoming too much again, and he didn’t want to put anyone through it, put himself through it. Maybe we ignored it.  Last time I saw him he was thin, paler than usual.  I never saw track marks–or he wore long sleeves.  Maybe he was sick.

~~~~~

As the candles are extinguished, I slip mine into my coat pocket after the wax has dried.  Tonight I will walk home with my brother, father, and uncle.  We will walk under the snowflakes, gliding to earth.  Every Christmas Eve we walk to my Grandparents’ house through the snow.  Every Christmas.  And I wonder–for just a moment–if maybe the snow is a gift from the man hanging behind the pulpit.  And I wonder too, if I might even find my halo–or my wreath of thorns–among these people, who are here for a reason.

The last candle is put out and the congregation begins to shuffle out of their pews.  As we walk up the aisle, my Grandfather puts his arm around me.  I never told them I lost my confirmation cross.

The Underground Time Continuum (tentative title)

She dropped it down a gutter one day.  And realized as soon as it passed her finger tips that she dropped the wrong thing.  Once something is floating through a sewer system there’s no getting it back.  At least not in any condition that would make a person desire to keep it.  Some people throw things away.  Jillian lets them drop.  She watches them slip further and further from their starting points, closer and closer to the ground, or the sea, or the metaphorical manhole that is her mind.  Although this particular sewer isn’t metaphorical at all, but very real.  Located on the corner of University and Drifter Street, in the business district of a small city.  Jillian had moved to said small city four months prior to the gutter incident in hopes that it would do her well to be away from most everything familiar.  Instead, she worked at a café near a bookstore she frequented, but never bought anything.  She worked at a restaurant where she ate half off.  And she searched for jobs that would lead her to a career, ones that utilized her over-priced education and could actually pay the bills.  Because no such job existed as of yet, Jillian worked 70 hours a week to struggle.

Jillian was slipping.

When a ship begins to sink, you empty it of all unnecessary (or all not absolutely necessary) items in order to slow, or potentially halt, the sinking process.  Jillian was simply emptying the ship.  She decided to rid herself of a watch.  This particular watch had no significant value except that it was always seven hours ahead of her own time, and had been since the day that Jillian fainted and fell into the sea.  And lived.

The problem is multi-fold.  Ever since the watch decided it had it’s own thoughts about time Jillian has been unable to keep time.  Any time; without the use of her mobile phone, which gets its time via satellites that she has been assured are not only accurate but infallible.  She is simply a drifter in the worst sense of the word.  Be a drifter, yes, but never be simply adrift, was her motto.  However, since the incident with the sea, Jillian had been wandering.  Just in her head at first, becoming increasingly unsure of where she wanted to go or be; then one day she began to physically wander.  Jillian was and still is lost.  But she dropped the watch hoping that it would help her gain some perspective, though she never understood the connection between the wandering and the watch.  It should, however, be noted that the watch refused to change times.  If Jillian turned the little knob to the correct time, the hands just spun ahead seven hours.  It was for this reason that Jillian held onto the watch for as long as she did.

It crossed her mind that the watch was foretelling something, her death, or her re-birth perhaps. But after an unconventionally long time Jillian gave up on the watch and figured it was well out of order and let it drop down a sewage drain. She immediately regretted the act, and she did not regret very much. Now watch-less and quite alone Jillian stood and stared at the timepiece splooshing toward something, she couldn’t know what. Minutes passed as she looked down the grate into the underbelly of the city. And as she stared she saw the watch pass by her eye over and over again; she stood upright and said aloud: “Fuck!”