Story I wrote last night

The Warden


Standing on the top of an old apartment building, feeling low; she sings to no one. Not confidence exits her mouth, not sadness, not terror, just nothingness seeping its way through her larynx, out of her mouth to dance with the other waves of sound for a moment, and for an instant she feels good. She looks upwards to see the grayish green clouds overhead preparing, like her, to let go of something; condensation, or a lost memory still haunting her, creeping up through the mesh of her subconscious, talking, talking, talking, with the servants of the pyre. She starts to sweat, but she doesn’t know why, since it is sixty degrees outside. She takes off her sweater and continues singing lowly, hearing her mother yell at her: “you can’t sing, shut up!” Her mouth seems dry, as though she’s not drank a glass of water in days. Her sordid glare; the one to pierce through the walls of reality, they, too were drying up. Her eyes felt like they were moving around in cotton. She closed them to see the most bright, and most beautiful angel she’s ever even dreamed of. The angel talked with her for half an hour, it seemed, about nothing and everything, about the loss of her men, and the gain of her new found love in women. It was not a sin to be a lesbian, she asked the angel why. The beautiful angel spread its wings, flew to her, and gave her three beads, then disappeared swishing its green tail. She came out of her dream quickly, it hurt even, like when a car hits you from the back when you are out driving one day, listening to Tom Petty on the radio, and thinking that the word labyrinth is a word derived from the Greek to mean intestine. They would study the intestines of humans, consider this, she’s more into the high arts, Mozart, Munch, she especially loves the scream, for she feels that her situation must be parallel to the one in the painting, she’s screaming, no words, no sound, nothing comes out; but, tonight, she started to sing, and out came the most sublime sound she’d ever heard. Then she looks at the beads, rotated them around in her hand, squeezed them, to see if they were real. It hurt painfully bad when she clenched them with any strength at all. She continued to sing, and sing, and sing, and as though her voice was a heavenly catalyst, the sky turned blue, and the clouds disappeared. She thought about Erin, and how she always told her that the answers to the existential questions she was seeking, were outside, but when she tried to travel outside of her skin, to see the world, exposed, and without the slightest bit of distress showing in her face, she examined the world around her, she would always sink into herself, over and over again. Erin’s kiss was unlike any other, soft, gentle; unlike any man she’d ever kissed. Erin would take off her clothes for her when they were about to make love. Took care of her, if you will. And when she kissed her nipples, she would fall start to fall into the rapture, as Erin kissed her thighs, and then her vagina, as if to teach her that sensuality holds validity in this world. That without erotica, the world would be empty. She was empty, she thought, singing will do no good. She was thinking about drinking tonight, but the thought twisted like tumbleweed through the airs of the metaphysical. Nothing. That was the only word for it, nothing, nothing at all. But the sky was clear now, or had it always been clear; was she projecting the reality she’d become entrapped in. And her voice? Olfactory hallucination. They said long ago that her grandmother had been sick, spent some times in the institution. Sad. But not her, no? Never, standing next to her purse. Inside, the usual: money, tissues, tampons, a vibrator. But all was so transparent, yet now, as she gazes upwards into the azure sky, she feels the wind. She feels the noises of the airplanes, but she sings along to nature. Along with something, was that dream real? She looks at her beads. They are large, much bigger than most beads. One is green, the other is green, and the third is red. They seem to be covered in a thin material. I bet Erin won’t believe this. She frowns, the world frowns along with her, heaves a sigh. Erin won’t ever see the things that I do. Why can’t she see? Always my quest for belonging. But I do belong here, now. She gets up now, walks to the door, closes her eyes to see, and saw the angel, sparkling this time, perfect breasts, perfect hair. Wings, wonderful wings. She wanted to feel them. The angel told her to come near. To hear what she must hear; to hear answer the questions she’d always had about life. But the Angel shivered, the feathers fell to the earth, hot as magma around it, burned, withered and died that day; died in divinity. What was left was a green monster: huge claws, gnawing big teeth, a lashing tongue: capable of issuing words upon its subjects like nothing of this earth. The beast reached towards her, picked her up, and quickly and effortlessly pulled off her skin. Then the monster disappeared into the azure sky, laughing all the way, while she lay there dead, bleeding to death in the stairwell of her apartment building. She was found the next day, covered in blood, holding three glass balls tightly. The next day on the police report in the paper it said only, “Girl Slain.” She was news for a few days, people were asking everyone she knew. It was a mess for a while. But then, after those voracious days, she was nothing too anyone again, nothing at all.