Category: Story
Il Promoteo
| Il Promoteo |
| Birth of the child… |
| Ralph Pitre |
- Sangre Carmesí
Maribel couldn’t stop looking at the massive red stain, she didn’t feel like crying except to stare and tell what she saw. As if she wasn’t, for now, Grace’s granddaughter, just a witness… later she would cry.
It was a crimson red spotlight. The only real light in the apartment was a dim yellow lamp on the desk away from the open window. However, there, at the window, the blood, still glistening as fresh paint on a broad canvas, was filling the room with a ghastly red glow; the wheelchair, the floor, the walls around the window, covered in blood; a blood red spotlight.
After racing back across town to the apartment and fumbling with the keys, Maribel finally opened the door to find the crimson stain spotlighting the empty wheelchair by the window. “She was gone, my grandmother was gone. The window was open, the wheelchair and the floor around it covered in blood. I call her every night after I get home from visiting her every evening after work like I did tonight but she wasn’t answering. I was worried so I came right back over.”
“I called the police.”
Detectives Gentile and Espinoza stood over Maribel seated on the sofa across from the window. CSI was still working the room and uniformed officers were canvasing the building.
Gentile looked back toward the window… Sounding like sheet metal hanging from a cord banging up against the concrete wall, damn dog incessant barking.
“And the aide?”
“How did you know she had an aide?”
“Your grandmother’s an invalid, I would assume she has some sort of aide.”
“Machaela, is here during the day, everyday.”
“I’ll need her contact info.”
“OK…”
“Go ahead, you were saying?”
“Well, Machaela is a good woman you know.”
“I’m sure she is but go on.”
“Well as usual, last night Machaela left as soon as I got here. I stayed to make sure Grandma ate something cause she wouldn’t if we didn’t make her. All she’d have is a cookie from the tin which she does anyway late at night after I put her in bed. I can tell when she gets out of bed anyway, finding crumbs on the floor leaving a trail to the window where she likes to put herself in the wheelchair, she can’t sleep, she gets bored just laying in bed alone so she gets up, Machaela has found her in the wheelchair, asleep by the window covered in crumbs. I can’t imagine who would want to hurt her, she has nothing of value except what’s of value to herself. She really is so sweet, I can’t imagine…”
“Does your grandmother have anybody in the building or the neighborhood she doesn’t get along with?”
“I doubt it. She spends her days sitting in that wheelchair, it’s how she gets around the apartment, rarely using the walker. She stays in the apartment, sitting by the window looking out on the street, peeping into neighbors apartments in the building across the alley.”
“Maybe somebody didn’t like her looking out the window, they didn’t like what she might have seen.”
“It’s a good neighborhood, nothing really bad ever happens here. What could she have seen.”
“We’ll canvass the neighborhood,” Gentile turned to Espinoza, “maybe she saw something in one of those apartments she shouldn’t have.” Standing and pointing towards the window Gentile says, “Like what’s that little building on the roof there with the skylight, is that a penthouse apartment? If you could call it that?”
Gentile noticed the penthouse the moment he walked into the apartment. A ramshackle outcropping, a bad idea that became the building’s architectural cancer, simply ugly because someone decided they wanted to have a penthouse apartment.
“She did tell me about something strange she saw in that apartment. I never thought anything of it, I thought she was making it all up. I was traveling so I never saw but I called every night and Machaela didn’t seem to bother to look but my grandmother saw a man, a very large green man. The first she saw him lying on a table, connected to machines and tubes and wires like he was in the hospital, but the green man never seemed to move she said, didn’t seem to be alive, I told her that it is was probably a mannequin. But she insisted it was man. She said there was a doctor there too. He opened and closed the shade and did other things on the machines, she told me that during the day they would pull back the giant shade covering the skylight, that’s when she saw him, in the sunlight in the middle of the day.”
“Well I’m sure someone else must have seen it too. We’ll have to…”
“There are no apartment windows on this side of the building.”
“Excuse me, who are you?” A small well built mature man walked into the apartment.
“I’m the building manager, Benny.”
“There’s not one other window on this side?”
“No, all the apartments have windows front and back, nothing on either side wall except for Grace’s.”
“You know who manages that building across the way?”
“I manage it.”
“Perfect, well then I guess you’re gonna escort us over there aren’t you?
“Yeah, sure.”
‘That damn dog was getting louder. Too damn early dog just barking away like that!’
Grabbing a flashlight, Gentile walked to the window.
“Anybody put a flashlight down into the alley yet?”
“My grandmother said the green man opened his eyes.”
Turning back to Maribel, “Wait, so he was alive?”
“I don’t know I told you. I always thought it was a mannequin or that she was seeing things, I told you I never saw the green man, when I got here from work to check on her yesterday the skylight shade was closed. But she said the green man opened his eyes and looked up at her and she kept saying that for days after that the green man would stand looking up through the skylight, looking at and the doctor finally noticed and frantically pulled the skylight shade.”
Gentile looked out through the window at the covered skylight then down to the alley. ‘Like the dog was gnawing at something, it was growling furiously and barking like a machine gun’, but he couldn’t see the dog or anything, garbage and boxes lots of boxes, otherwise the alley was clean.
“Does a doctor live in that penthouse apartment, Benny?”
“No, he’s a scientist I think…”
“A scientist? In Brooklyn?”
“Yeah, Brooklyn’s got scientists…Fil, Filiberto’s his name, he’s got two roommates or regular visitors who stay often, one’s an IT guy and the girls’ a lawyer.”
“Well, lets take a walk Benny.” Gentile led them out, “Call me when you guys are done we’ll be in the other building.”
- Il Cane
In the alley between apartments, walled off from the outside the dog barked with increased anger, screaming, until Gentile walked up to the wooden wall, touching it gently, as he would. The dogs snout brushed against the wall, sniffing heavily, whimpering… suddenly started to bark, roared viciously. Gentile backed away, “I love dogs”, he said.
“And he loves you,” replied Benny, Espinoza snickered.
“They always do, lets go,” he motioned.
- Il Prometeo
“Come on we’ll take the lift.” Benny wave them both on the lift, “Its slow and creepy but it won’t kill your legs like those stairs around us. Cracked marble steps, each feels like they was made for a giant.”
“Excuse me mister Brooklyn scientist”, Gentile exclaimed looking up the elevator shaft. “Living in a penthouse apartment, is that expensive?” Remarked Gentile to Benny.
“Well its just an extension of the seventh floor, a separate staircase down the hall from the seventh elevator landing but its nothing more than an isolated shack on top of the roof, so no, not expensive.”
“How old is this building?” Asked Espinoza.
“What is this an open house?
“Just asking.”
“Very old,” continued Benny. “Before most buildings in this part of Brooklyn were built. It was a private home at first, called Il Prometeo, after that one owner turned it into an asylum before it was turned into rentals in the 30’s”.
“The Prometheus?” Said Espinoza.
“Correct! You know Italian, Detective?”
“You know Italian?” Repeated Gentile.
“When my wife and I traveled to Italy a couple of years ago and already knowing Spanish I was able to pretty much able guess my way through Italian.”
Approach the stairs to the penthouse. He’s not renting any Apts, the whole building is silent…
Upon beginning the climb up the short flight of stairs a terrible cluster of screams and a roar rained down from the penthouse. Guns drawn and Benny ordered to get back downstairs, both detectives jump up to the short penthouse landing and straddle the penthouse door. Into his police radio com on his vest Gentile, whispered forcefully for backup and received no answer. A moment and Espinoza stepped back, facing the door and kicks the door down, bursting in to the room. Sudden silence. A small room, a waiting room, a chair, a couch and coffee table and a kitchenette to the right. A man cowed in the corner to the left between the wall and the end of the couch, shaken with fear. He said nothing. Espinoza pressed the wall to his back as he slid across to pull the man along the wall and out of the apt. “Get downstairs and wait, help is coming.” Pushed down, the man hurried away.
Silence. The silence that comes with the realization that you’ve waded in too deep and no amount of swimming would get you back alive. Lilly stood with her back against the entry door, Fil sat on the floor below the living room window closest to the bedroom watching Meier as he stepped slowly toward the bedroom door. “I can hear him, Fil.”
“Fil what have you done?”
“What do you mean, Lily? It worked. You said it would never work, that I couldn’t make it happen and I did.”
“This doesn’t mean it worked. This is worse, worse than it not working at all. That thing in there – “
“My proof.”
“You’ve created a monster.”
“It was just hungry.”
“And when it gets hungry again? What then? And you Meier. Who are you, Igor to his Frankenstein?”
“What?”
Knock at the door…
When she arrived detective gentile was there, about Grace. You mind if I look in the room, the spare room, its the only room visible from her apt. Well there a lots of apts visible across the alley. True and I’ll check those soon enough but the only window visible from her window that has its shade down is the one in this apt that has its shade pulled down and from here I don’t see another window with a shade pulled. Well sorry if you had any real valid cause to enter you’d have a warrant. Excuse me detective mind if I pass? And you are? None of your business really but friends of this apts tenant. Sorry. They close the door upon entering. They moved onto knock on other apartment doors.
Noises from Fils apt.
Detectives break the door down. The door to the room opposite the entry was beginning to shatter. A great human-like angry growl comes from the room…
The Monster reveals itself disappears, struggles to be one or the other… There is blood everywhere… Grace Harold everywhere…
beats his way out of the apt… climbs to roof from where he falls
The monster was being kept in the spare bedroom…visible or invisible, conjured or manufactured in a 3d printer from vegetable matter?
- La Vita Dopo
Dr Scoma, the late shift pathologist, alone now for years, after having been married for fifteen…surrounded by death…muses that here is an opportunity to make life…
Vitto left so many notes, a detailed Bible of his ideas, called Il Prometeo, all that went into creating this thing and his diary. Makes me wonder what triggered everything. Did he find the building or did the building find him. Vitto moved into the building to complete the project, an idea he’s been working on for over twenty years. He needed the sun, and the rain, everything needed to create a being.
Strata, an adopted child.
History of Il Prometeo, the house, how, why and who built it?
God the absent father. Never around when you need him always there to beat you down whenever the stress of existence beat him down. God! Come back, God…the being that created and nurtured his child grows tired of parenting and leaves behind an unfinished creation.
Dr, what is this thing? A thing. A being of some sort. I don’t think Fil had any real idea of what he was doing. That device, what was it? A 3D printer actually. A what? Yeah, believe it or not, that’s what it is, a room size 3D printer. Didn’t know they came that big. Well they make them big enough to build houses. Well think of it, any assembly line robot is a 3D assembly machine, just doesn’t produce the material for assembly, a 3D printer does but even then it has to be given the molecular elements to produce the material to eventually “print” the object in addition to being given the actual design in an understandable language. That’s really the genius here, he devised a plan, a design for an artificial human, whose brain was part of the whole body, not centralized in the head but a hive brain where each body part, each molecule could think for itself a being that would produce an output, basically telling the printer how to complete him. He had hundreds of drawings and papers detailing his plan, a notebook filled with his intentions…but his problem was the monsters mind and soul…it had neither, at least not at birth. The soul and the mind, the brain are products of age, development and experience…molded and sculpted over time to produce a mind, a soul, a self, which the monster had none of. All beings are born infant, almost incomplete.
He plans with a friend to steal the evidence of the case. What does it matter, after the case is closed, there’s no one to arraign, no charges to consider, everyone related to the case is dead…once the case is officially closed the evidence will disappear into a locker…I’d have to leave evening behind, the job, my life…
The Dr muses, perhaps the key is creating an infant…not a full grown being.
Just finish your report Alex, so I can finish mine…
And the evidence?
Lock it up
Gentile, we gotta problem. Crain was working the evidence locker that day when two men, dressed in black, go figure, showed up with the precinct Captain with a Federal court order looking for what evidence was left of the Frankenstein case. (Made sense). But it was gone. Not all of it, just the most important part. Strata called it the head, the device spider shaped with a metal head and a thousand eyes and six extending arms. Captain was pissed, so were the Feds but they weren’t showing it. Immediately the captain personally organized a team to look for Strata the obvious choice for the felony having left for vacation three weeks prior then calling in his final notice that he wouldn’t be coming back. Once the captains team had arrived at Strata’s apartment the new tenant had already moved in…
How the hell did anybody find out about the case anyway. That was quick. Usually most cases move up the food chain unnoticed, just paper work to be stored but this… every agency, has a snitch working both sides feeding the right people the right information. Fucking federal vampires everywhere keeping wraiths at bay waiting to suck some info up their way.
At the TSA, what a beautiful child.
Alex vacationing in Maldive, beach combing with an infant tucked and sleeping in a forward carry pouch, surrounded by young girls admiring the child…
Months pass, the Dr had retired and births a child with a young man. You think they’ll let us get married in this country. You haven’t even asked me. Will you marry me?
Players:
Victor to Vitto or Bittor or Vincent or Filiberto (Fil)
Lily or
Meier or
Alex to Zeus Strata
Notes:
How was Grace kidnapped and why bludgeoned. Vitto had never killed another person.
Remove the bludgeoning. Strangled from behind, put in a large sack. No, Adam learns to slip out of the studio. Sees him prowling the studio and the green man watching her.
The concrete walls were reinforced with a later of heavy steal liquid alloy and concrete, the windows and skylight covered in retractable steel outer shutters and yet Adam figured his way out to get to Grace.
Changes: Adam can see in the dark. how Grace is killed and taken by Adam a cat bringing its owner a present after Adam overwhelms Vitto and goes directly to Grace. Adam has already installed a tracking and homing device that triggers Adam to come home but doesn’t work. Adam inadvertently kills Grace and brings her home as a gift to Vitto all bludgeoned and limp. Adam treats her body like any other piece of meat when he discovers that’s all she is and wonders if Vitto is the same. Adam begins to tear Grace apart, confused that she is like Vitto, yet like the meals he has been given but the taste is different, his first taste of meat that Vitto tries to take away from him. Efforts with a tranquilizer weapon fail. Adam realizes that might be just as tasty and as one would encounter a hungry tiger, Adams seems to show anger and chases Vitto out the door; thank God for steal.
rarely allowing a visitor and most often it was Lilly, his girlfriend who would visit. It had been weeks since Lilly did so at his request and now he was asking her to come he had something important to show her. Fil sent Meier to pick her up. What’s he want to show me Meyer. I’m not sure how to explain it, if he even wants me to, but he never said not to. is this another prank you two have screwed. Ohhhh I wish it was. Tell me Meier. I think you can wait…its important he show you, its important to him, that he present it plus you’re a lawyer. You both are in trouble again aren’t you? Well its hard to explain, just keep an open mind.to pick her up. What’s he want to show me Meier. I’m not sure how to explain it, if he even wants me to, but he never said not to. is this another prank you two have screwed. Ohhhh I wish it was. Tell me Meier. I think you can wait…its important he show you, its important to him, that he present it plus you’re a lawyer. You both are in trouble again aren’t you? Well its hard to explain, just keep an open mind.
Do you know a Grace Harold? Well she’s a tenant of the building across the alley. Ohhhh really? I don’t know her. Well she’s missing and we’re conducting an investigation. From which apt? That one up there with the open window. Well maybe she ran away? Maybe, but she’s eighty and wheelchair ridden for the most part. Ohhhh I see. Just asking if you might have seen or heard anything suspicious last night. Ohhhh no no I didn’t, I’m down the hall you see. Down the hall from what? Do you know the guy who lives in that apt? Um…
Fils focus lost in a void spoke up and said, “we went all the way, its gotten out of hand.”
The door to the apt they first knocked on across from the suspect sit opens. You guys knock on my door? Gentile goes to her while Espinoza continues with the old lady.
Fil lived alone…technically, in a shack the owner called a penthouse cause thats what it was, a one bedroom shack on the roof. A living room, which he pretty much lived in, a small kitchen and a bathroom in between. The bedroom, he didn’t sleep in his bedroom. This was a rare rooftop apt with a skylight in the bedroom doubling as a studio. Once was probably a former tenants if not the original owners studio; being the polymath, the studio was his except now, it was a nursery…Fil stood against the door to the studio, back to it he turned pressing his ear to listen and he could hear the man quietly sobbing, groaning as if in deep pain.
Maria Matthias / La Vida De La Dona
Maria & Matthias
“Dando y dando, palomita volando” if you receive you must give,
comparte el amor
I will take flight as I grow with my wings of great integrity to share all I’ve learned with the world…
“Si querida.”
“Que Papi?” Maria, laying on the grass, looked up toward Father…
“What will I learn, Papi?”
“Todo querida. Con Todo el cuerpo…”
For how long?
“Siempre. Por siempre…”
“And who will I share it with?”
She wonders and looks at Matthias.
So often she wondered of him, Matthias and their change…
He stood at the dock and
Wondered at the shore line of the coast that
Looked out into the great sea
Wondering of his home…
“Your greatest love.”
Memories…
And she longed for…
All that she left and was…
All she had known, wanted and who?
Alone…she longed for all she promised herself, those she dreamed of and still dream of…
Maria…Maria was her name, Maria Agatha… the Latin form of Mary taken from the Hebrew Miryām, a name under much debate. Many believe it to mean “sea of bitterness” or “sea of sorrow”, sources cite the alternative definitions of “rebellion,” “wished-for child,” and “mistress or lady of the sea.” The name is borne in the Bible by the mother of Jesus, the son of God. It is not what she imagined and would not imagine the thought for years. Maria was just a young girl and the only male presence in her life was her father who could never entertain any sexual urge or thought to satisfy Maria. She was not even a woman yet but the presence of Matthias would begin to change those thoughts, make her see, make her aware of the woman present and call it to attention, call her to appear and wonder of her needs, desires and questions that would have been answered with the help of a mother who was never in her life.
Matthias… his name was Matthias, “gift from God,” typically given to the much desired first born son of a Christian family. Matthias therefore usually has a healthy sense of self-worth, strong, independent and self-assured. Matthias’ mother had become a Christian while her husband, The King, would lead his people in the war against Portugal, as she became the traitor, embraced Christianity, converting herself and the child and naming him as such to earn and satisfy her weaker religious needs.
Maria, born upon the death of her Mother, Don Lilo’s wife, Agatha ..Maria never had the chance to caress her mothers breast. Suckle a toast to life from her mothers nipples, salute the abundance a child should expect, instead she found her own way. Loving her Father but needing a mother. Agatha died at the violent hands of strangers, pale white men invaders in Africa during the Portuguese occupation of Mombasa. Mombasa, where Matthias’ Father, The King Ruled. It is where they both promised each other to care for the others current child. And it is why Lilo is recognizing Matthias’ arrival. For Matthias would become King after his Father, the King of his home, a just man who was deceived by the Portuguese into giving away his peoples land.
Maria imagined she could see the coast of Africa across the sea from where she lived with her Father in Catania. Their home sat on the edge of a stream that flowed into the Mediterranean.
“Tell me again Father where he will be coming from?”
“Over the horizon, we can’t see their home from here where he will be coming. The land he will be coming from is distraught. The Portuguese have landed and are taking their home from the people. Matthias will stay here until it is safe for him to go back. Until his Father the king and his mother can be found. Until then he will stay here with us.”
All of Maria’s Father’s offerings to her, friendship with Matthias she cherished most though spoke the least about, to whom she would never pledge her love and instead waited too long.
“In a city deep in Africa. along with his people, he battles the Portuguese for control of the land he is king of.”
“But if it’s his land why are the Portuguese fighting for it.”
“Because the Portuguese believe they can manage it better.”
Maria looked back at her Father. “Matthias’ Father must submit or battle for control. I’ve known the king many years.”
“The world would in times of strife, help with the cost of influence whether invasive or persuasive changing your home because the world can and truly believes their way is the right way, and they violently force their way, insisting… out of fear that their way may not be the singular right way, their way enslaves you.”
“It is greed Maria. In a world where people often need help, a much stronger aggressor often becomes invasive in the effort to offer help and instead becomes the aggressor and uses the weaker to feed off.”
“Feed?”
“Yes feed. People who believe and feed off the weakness of others as nourishing…There are those who believe the guidance without question.
“The world angers me, Maria.”
“Why Papi?”
“So few are satisfied with what they have to live the rest of their lives but always want more for the express purpose to oppress others who don’t have and never have had enough.”
Don Lilo was often heard commenting with other statesman about the Portuguese interest in Africa, “we battle the white man to influence and control all of the other black influence.
Their friendship was established quickly, soon after Matthias’ arrival from the near Mediterranean shores of Africa soon after they were introduced. Matthias traveled with his Mother away from what would become Kenya after the colonial period, his father a tribal King fighting the Portuguese.
Don Lilo’s house sat along the river, so quiet a visitor would barely notice that it was occupied.
Old, unkempt, so loved and lived in, the house, a young woman given to laying about in the sun, by the pool waiting for her lover to be free. Maria and Matthias became the best of friends until they aged to include the thoughts of lovers… a matter of time until those thoughts bore fruit, set root and sprout quickly to become lovers.
Maria the love of innocence in sync with the innocence and love of a child in Matthias who would become a King yet the darkness of truth whirled in their heat, a wheel of fortune spinning with choice.
Regret, at so young an age, is regret unto oneself…one looks at how brief life is and regrets the unfortunate choices made as battles lost without ever having fought them…
I will learn so much from you…I will learn so much from you likewise and we both will learn so much from each other…
“Maria, baba yangu amekufa.”
“I’m sorry Matthias? Did you say? Your father – ”
“Yes, my father has died.”
“I’m sorry, Matthias.” She sat up, having laid down on the warm sunlit green grass.
Matthias, the dark haired, handsome Moor child, she’s grown so fond of, who stayed and Don Lilo adopted until he had grown into a young man, Matthias he was called by his family, so fond he was of Maria and knew for so long ago as she matured into a young woman, who amused her in youth, long before Baldo, never could…even though Matthias was looked upon as suspicious by so many. Maria noted his dark skin as others noted and became apparent to others who worried some without cause.
“When did he die?” Said Maria.
“A communique your father handed me, from my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Really, your mother? She’s been found?”
“Yes, una carta. A note from my father before going into battle and another from my mother that she came out of hiding and found notes from my father letting my mother to whom he left me with and where. After that I was easy to find, but for the distance she traveled to find me was great. Did you know your father was a warrior, he fought along side my people, alongside my Father, Maasai Warriors for the Portuguese.”
“My mother angered my father by giving me a christian name in addition to a warrior name.”
“Then your father as a Somali Warrior must’ve had a warrior name. What is your warrior name?”
“My father did and I do. My father divulged it to me when I was very young, long before I understood the purpose and it’s meaning. A small piece of paper he entrusted me not to show to anyone, even my mother but I want to show it to you.”
“Yes Matthias I love that you entrust me.” She felt queer but refreshed. For as long as they had known each other, been together as friends, they were on the verge turning of mind to become adults and were sure they never would. They would always only be friends the rest of the way. War, death and family commitment would force them apart.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Of you? Yes.”
“You will keep my secret.”
“I will.”
“My Father called me Simaloi.”
Maria held the small note written in Swahili on a thin sheet of bark held close and carefully to her breast.
“What does it mean, Simaloi?”
“It means no matter how difficult my challenge is, I am capable of completing it by being exceptional, my quick wits and my tremendous adaptability to various powers. Which is why I am always needed! I have a special talent of coping with all hurdles that make me indispensable.”
“I don’t know much about my Mother, she died soon after I was born. My mother, Consuela was a distant cousin of your Father’s.” The weight of her sadness came washed over her again as it had so often before but knowing of Matthias’ happiness…
“Matthias?” Maria looked up….
She had been laying on her blanket on the grass and looked at Matthias…
“My father has died.” His voice had lowered to a whisper…In the few short years they knew each other, in those few short years.
Don Lilo cared for him, and Maria came to love him.
“My mother traveled far with her aides and she told me the sadness, far from our home, Abiba.”
“It isn’t so but I always imagined this was your home, I feel we came to be as…one.”
“I will miss you Matthias.”“I will miss you too Maria.”
…she longed for…
Her father, Don Lilo…the day before his death upon which he left her a trinket and a thought of defiance, “Dando y dando, palomita volando”…he sang as she danced roundabout his guidance…once he was everything to her but she never really knew him. And now there was only darkness…then Lilo gave way Matthias and they danced about in looming desire…
Matthias was already gone and age distanced them more. The world had changed and she sought more and looked where never expected.
They are a couple in love they became older and their love became real though unsure. She was fascinated by his physique and him with hers. Time limited, his mother coming get him.
From afar she could see him talked at a distance she could see him talking to his mother.
This is something both expected and dread.
Maria, she watched Matthias walk away, a kiss unkissed, a touch untouched, a desire or undesired…Matthias looked back as mother tugged…
Matthias was raised in the house of a Spaniard, in the arms of their love, he walked away from her, feeling her release she watched him as he walked, along the river bank away from the bridge and… as if he missed the crossing then walked up to the foot of the bridge, looked the length then looked back at Maria. She was going to be different, grow different, become important and it was time and though they didn’t hear a call, it seemed they were, as if they were.
“Matthias, do you believe in God,” she asked.
I dream of God and yearn to sleep when awake to open the caverns of God when I sleep. I know God is there but I can never find God. I love to talk about God. The mystery of God is that there is so much to know because there is so much mystery. Simply put, God has created us and yet we really don’t know why.
Caverns?
Yes, God’s presence is deep, almost unknowable, deep, but look often, look often and the walls will open, you will become aware.
Have you been there, to God’s Caverns?
Not yet, but I dreamed that I had dreamed of them, one day, I will find my way there.
Tell me about the Caverns of God.
God is not a person, a being that you can categorize.
But the Cavern’s?
God lives no where but is all over, to behold, to have a presence
For a moment she tried to imagine his thoughts.
I have been there Maria. Gods Caverns. How? But you say it can not be categorize, God has no home. But I have seen it. Not in a dream but not asleep but and expanse of being I don’t understand but that I don’t clearly.
Matthias, I didn’t know that you were so aware of God.
He looked confused by her query.
True, you and I have never spoke of this but I have thought of God often. I spent many years as a child. I don’t know when I started. One day I was aware of these thoughts. I talked to the Catholic priests and the Priests and wise men of our Tribe not so much to follow but to learn why. To know the purpose.
Come Matthias his mother called. It is time to go.
Maria watched from a distance, the child with his mother, they talked and she felt their loneliness invade, a darkness from without felt clouding her sight of him.
Don Lilo watched from an upper floor window as Matthias walked away. When they were gone Don Lilo walked to Maria seated by the pool.
“I will miss him father.”
“I will miss him also, Maria.”
“Why does he have to go.”
“His mother needs a man for the house. For Matthias it is that time. He has become a man, that man needed to assume the duties of a man, a King, to carry on his father’s wishes at which his mother will be come disappointed when he becomes a man and that King he must and not son she can’t have.”
“And why do you not need a woman?”
“Yes. Your mother. Your mother died, you know that. I decided that after your mother I would prefer to be without a woman. Maybe one day long from now, in a different place as different people and in a different way, you and Matthias will meet again.”
“What way will that be, Father.”
“Ese es el futuro, mi Palomita, no puedo decírtelo.”
Maria relates her yearn her sadness for Matthias silently telling her father nothing about her feelings, her concern for Matthias.
Conversation among soldiers about the growing world… Not enough of the world no matter the shape for every animal, man, woman or child…
Viejo Mundo / La Vida De La Dona
Viejo Mundo
Part 1
“Hurakan…”spoke El Cacique. “I can smell the water of the great sea burning”… said El Cacique…
“The dead…”
“To speak of the dead is wrong…”
“Men of no color?”
“Men of any color?”
Canimao and his men gathered the remains of the men of no color, the men of no color, who suffered the storm…
“They are dead and deserve rituals of their dead…”
“They are dead, Cacique,” said Canimao… “We do not know their ways…
“Nor do we know their intent… They consume without the intent of nourishment…
Canimao…since you will explore where they come from… It is your choice…
We will…gather their remains from the beach and ready them for transport…It is a long journey and I fear we will know what we fear to know…
The fear of where these men come from…
Return them to rest…
I fear they will come back…”Cacique shooed them away….and to himself he spoke.
“We arrived to this world too late and the world will return us too soon…
They’re hunger is like the heat of an angry fire…
The fear is they are seekers of desires, of lonely people who never stop looking for they know not what they seek…
Their desire, their urge is insurmountable… a mountain never to be looked upon or climbed upon…”
Canimao and his men gathered the bodies…
They had been laying dead for days after the storm and Canimao and his men found their bodies while gathering supplies for their own expected journey across the great sea…
The great sea was tormented…inundating them with a great wash…
Canimao climbed out of the boat and let the cold of the great water wash over his legs. Looking back across the sea where so much of their lives had been spent in the recent months of their voyage. Here they arrived to find and explore the land of men with no color that would bring them to the land of the men they sought, the men who died in a terrible storm that lashed the shores of Canimao’s home land. Saddened by the lost men and their failed quest…Cinimao’s quest succeeded with his warriors quest to bring them home.
Canimao gathered his warrior’s and searched for the items of the lost men. They were pale men challenging what is known by the people’s bohiques, surmising the dead man’s origin and considered adding the found men to return them to their people and their land…
Canimao’s spear, tethered to his waist, a shield held in his arm, six warrior’s, all exhausted from there long trip, still healthy and fit but thinking of rest and hunger. They found a place to camp among in the tree, hidden from view of any natives. Finding their bodies laid about the beach, Canimao asked his people for volunteers, to help gather their bodies and things then try and transport them all back to their homes, a dangerous and great distance away…The dead men were sailors from a land over the horizon. A consult with the chiefs and bohiques led them to understand where the pale men were from.
Canimao once heard of people like them who’s color was pale compared to him and his people. Their home, a journey long and far away on the great water and much preparation would be involved.
Canimao, I have heard of these men but have never seen them, they are explorers of riches and only riches, they seek wealth from others to add to their wealth as their own. Your quest is your own but know their lust stains them as blood. But know the consequences of your journey.
In the year 1491, inhabitants of a land far across the Atlantic, arrived on the shores of Portugal. Canimao and his crew arrived in a large seaworthy vessel with the personal belongings of the men they found after having succumbed to a terrible storm off the shore of Canimao’s land. Each, equipped with survival pouches, and information describing the men whose lives they tried to save; men who arrived across the ocean in a land they believed was in Portugal
“Canimao, how will we find those who knew those men?”
Shaking his head side to side, “I don’t know yet, we don’t know the language, who the men were, I don’t know how but we shall try with their goods of trade.”
Canimao and his crew disembark from their sailing ships and scan the forests perimeter, looking for signs of life while dragging their boats up from the waves onto the shore. They quickly unloaded the boats of their goods and packed the remains of the men of no color, the items that were theirs and lay them beside the their own and the lay down to relax and rest and ponder their journey. They had After some thought they will walk along the edge of the forest without delving too far from shore prowl along the forests in search of someone who might help them find the origins of the men they helped. They do this without calling attention to themselves. Skirting along the edge of villages they judge who they will try and communicate with… They watch the daily lives of the inhabitants of this new land and they wonder…
His name was Lilo, by age, young but much older in spirit so much so they all noticed… Canimao especially took not of his will and his demeanor though and they didn’t know each other’s language and seemed to talk easily..
Canimao knew to show Lilo the items he brought to represent the men who he returned across with them…
Lilo one of them and understood them to be the men testing the waters for a great voyage…
They meet a boy during the effort to find food, a boy Lilo from Portugal was curious and very helpful helping..Lilo is able to help the men escape from near capture of the colonialists who were gathering funds and supplies for the Kings mission to find more of the world and it’s riches…
Lilo helped gather the few goods needed by the visitors to start their return journey across the waters to their lands.
What is left is still to be had… To be taken and will be the claim of the northern European over the original black men
Six other able men and six able men who died as a terrible storm lashed the shores of Canimao’s home.
The world is finite despite the belief of many…
Maria & Lilo / Padre
La Vida de La Dona y El Cuerpo del Cacique
“Dando y dando, palomita volando” / remember that you have to die
Don Lilo, long delayed a much needed journey back home to Genoa… “Dando y dando, palomita volando”… he recalled the days of life together with his daughter before the dilemma of wealth and the cold indifferent world that had come between them…”you were a free bird once and yet, you chose jewels of iron to bejewel yourself in tarnished glamour.”
Don Lilo had come into money, after selling off his small but successful shipping concern in Genoa to Baldo and The Church. Moving to Málaga, with his daughter Maria, Don Lilo continued to manage shipping details of the business while he set his daughter free who then turned against him, broke his heart to be an elitist socialite. Don Lilo unhappy with the wealth bestowed upon him sought to give Maria the rich life he felt she deserved…the life that would eventually drive her away from him…and to Baldo.
Don Lilo was openly against Maria’s relationship with Baldo, who was more than fifteen years her senior, too old it seemed, to pique the interest of such a young and innocent girl, but the glimmer of wealth in a big city became the draw and her comfort. Though in doubt, she longed for the hope she imagined upon agreeing to marry Baldo…despite her father…and the awareness that her self-imposed ignorance resulted in Father’s death.
The sound of duende filled the air as he walked alone in the streets of Málaga after drink and celebration then sadness, the cries and sound of anguish and tragedy from an open window came the sound of a gypsy song… death in the guise of familiar faces from the darkness of la cantina. A night of misery that caressed him in fear, the two men came to him as he drank and as festive as they were they wondered who he was, where he came from, why he was here in Malaga… “you sound Genovese, si, why are you here?”
“My daughter…”
“Su hija, si, bella, si….
“Es bella.”
“Let us drink with you, liven your misery, jest with us until then, until your misery is gone.”
And they did, their familiar faces became darkness without jest, death was their friend to introduce to Don Lilo…The men hovered and laughed over Don Lilo’s bloodied body, his eyes and body deflated of its soul, the shell collapsed of structure but longing for Maria…the two men walked away with death having spoken it’s orders and carried out.
Don Lilo dragged his limp and beaten body back to the Last Cantina he visited; by the time The Crowns soldiers noticed and identified the body and his importance, he had died from the assault. An inquest ordered by the court found no suspect… before Maria left for the new world and had lost interest…
duquende
remember that you have to die
To see the darkness…
after the light
haunts the light and remains always there…
Even in the light there is darkness without expectation…
There is never only light…
But when there is no light there is darkness…
Before the light there was always and only darkness…
Light must rest from questions of the darkness…
Darkness by default questions existence itself…
Darkness is why…
It is assumed that only the light consumes energy but darkness is the energy…
It is a side that seems to deceive…
But in truth is honest, almost to a fault…
Its feared because it represents as unknown as the truth really is…
What we perceive as the truth is an assumption and accepted without question while darkness is questioned and preferred but humankind doesn’t ask but more often questions the light assuming the answer and fears the darkness because it’s questions answered…
Darkness has its consequences as all do, always ask a question or be taken a fool…
Alone on the ship Maria travelled and pondered all she left behind and the fear she sailed into, so much of it hers but the fear of others…. They were upon the Lord’s bounty the Lord’s beauty… Have we been offered enough?
Balbo had insisted she bathe herself in a complex skin bath to lighten her complexion… Her skin was too dark her mixed heritage was showing through.. She would have to change to fit by his side, otherwise…
Maria speaks to traveling holy man of the military…The world is finite despite the belief of many throughout… What is left is still to be had… To be taken and will be the claim of the northern European over the black men
Drool
A black man walking with a cane, boards the subway train struggling to move along but still standing walks to a seat nearest the door with his back to me. Mostly I saw his hulking physique trying to find comfort in his position. I could likewise see him via reflection through the subway train glass and he still adjusted side to side to be comfortable. He slouched forward and seemed to drool from underneath his hood, the drool falling forward coming to a rest. As I continued to watch his body slouch even more until the hulk he seemed to be disappear within his clothing that folded accordingly. I watched the man as his clothing folded in on itself. And out from underneath the mass of clothing he was appeared a squirming caterpillar-like being. And then the train filled with other pedestrians…
The Exploding Man – The Christ Conqueror
Joshua, made his way to the end of a railcar,
where the other sardines were packed…
His anger rose to emanate the heat coming from his body,
as if the warm cinders within generated,
a rising heat to burn and become a fire…
clothes shed in seconds to reveal
a God
distraught with all about
to wreak havoc upon all sinners…
God has spoken
and there’s more to do.
The Path – December 1892
IMAGINATION AND OCCULT PHENOMENA —
William. Q. Judge
The faculty of imagination has been reduced to a very low-level by modern western theorisers upon mental philosophy. It is “only the making of pictures, day-dreaming, fancy, and the like”: thus they have said about one of the noblest faculties in man. In Occultism it is well known to be of the highest importance that one should have the imagination under such control as to be able to make a picture of anything at any time, and if this power has not been so trained the possession of other sorts of knowledge will not enable one to perform certain classes of occult phenomena.
Those who have read Mr. Sinnett’s Occult World will have noticed two or three classes of phenomena performed by H. P. Blavatsky and her unseen friends, and those who have investigated spiritualism will know that in the latter have been many cases of similar phenomena done by so-called “controls”. Others who made no such investigations have, however, on their own account seen many things done by forces not mechanical but of a nature which must be called occult or psychical. In spiritualism, and by the Adepts like H. P. Blavatsky and others, one thing has excited great interest, that is the precipitating on to paper or other substances of messages out of the air, as it were, and without any visible contact between the sender of the message and the precipitated letters themselves. This has often occurred in seances with certain good mediums, and the late Stainton Moses wrote in a letter which I saw many years ago that there had come under his hand certain messages precipitated out of the air. But in these cases the medium never knows what is to be precipitated, cannot control it at will, is in fact wholly ignorant of the whole matter and the forces operating and how they operate. The elemental forces make the pictures through which the messages are precipitated, and as the inner nature of the medium is abnormally developed, acting subconsciously to the outer man, the whole process is involved in darkness so far as spiritualism is concerned. But not so with trained minds or wills such as possessed by Madame Blavatsky and all like her in the history of the past, including the still living Adepts.
The Adepts who consciously send messages from a distance or who impress thoughts or sentences on the mind of another at a distance are able to do so because their imagination has been fully trained.
The wonderworker of the East who makes you see a snake where there is none, or who causes you to see a number of things done in your presence which were not done in fact, is able to so impress you with his trained imagination, which, indeed, is also often in his case an inheritance, and when inherited it is all the stronger when trained and the easier to put into training. In the same way but to a much smaller degree the modern western hypnotizer influences his subject by the picture he makes with his imagination in those cases where he causes the patient to see or not to see at will, and if that power were stronger in the West than it is, the experiments of the hypnotizing schools would be more wonderful than they are.
Take the case of precipitation. In the first place, all the minerals, metals, and colored substances any one could wish for use are in the air about us held in suspension. This has long been proved so as to need no argument now. If there be any chemical process known that will act on these substances, they can be taken from the air and thrown down before us into visibility. This visibility only results from the closer packing together of the atoms of matter composing the mass. Modern science has only a few processes for thus precipitating, but while they do not go to the length of precipitating in letters or figures they do show that such precipitation is possible. Occultism has a knowledge of the secret chemistry of nature whereby those carbons and other substances in the air may be drawn out at will either separately or mixed. The next step is to find for these substances so to be packed together a mold or matrix through which they may be poured, as it were, and, being thus closely packed, become
visible. Is there such a mold or matrix?
The matrix is made by means of the trained imagination. It must have been trained either now or in some other life before this, or no picture can be precipitated nor message impressed on the brain to which it is directed. The imagination makes a picture of each word of each letter of every line and part of line in every letter and word, and having made that picture it is held there by the will and the imagination acting together for such a length of time as is needed to permit the carbons or other substances to be strained down through this matrix and appear upon the paper. This is exactly the way in which the Masters of H. P. B. sent those messages which they did not write with their hands, for while they precipitated some they wrote some others and sent them by way of the ordinary mail.
The explanation is the same for the sending of a message by words which the receiver is to hear. The image of the person who is to be the recipient has to be made and held in place; that is, in each of these cases you have to become as it were a magic lantern or a camera obscura, and if the image of the letters or if the image of the person be let go or blurred, all the other forces will shoot wide of the mark and naught be accomplished. If a picture were made of the ineffectual thoughts of the generality of people, it would show little lines of force flying out from their brains and instead of reaching their destination falling to the earth just a few feet away from the person who is thus throwing them out.
But, of course, in the case of sending and precipitating on to paper a message from a distance, a good many other matters have to be well known to the operator. For instance, the inner as well as the outer resistance of all substances have to be known, for if not calculated they will throw the aim out, just as the billiard ball may be deflected if the resistance of the cushion is variable and not known to be so by the player. And again, if a living human being has to be used as the other battery at this end of the line, all the resistances and also all the play of that person’s thought have to be known or a complete failure may result. This will show those who inquire about phenomena, or who at a jump wish to be adepts or to do as the adepts can do, what a task it is they would undertake. But there is still another consideration, and that is that inasmuch as all these phenomena have to do with the very subtle and powerful planes of matter it must follow that each time a phenomenon is done the forces of
those planes are roused to action, and reaction will be equal to action in these things just as on the ordinary plane.
An illustration will go to make clear what has been said of the imagination. One day H. P. Blavatsky said she would show me precipitation in the very act. She looked fixedly at a certain smooth piece of wood and slowly on it came out letters which at last made a long sentence. It formed before my eyes and I could see the matter condense and pack itself on the surface. All the letters were like such as she would make with her hand, just because she was making the image in her brain and of course followed her own peculiarities. But in the middle, one of the letters was blurred and, as it were, all split into a mass of mere color as to part of the letter.
“Now here,” she said, “I purposely wandered in the image, so that you could see the effect. As I let my attention go, the falling substance had no matrix and naturally fell on the wood any way and without shape.”
A friend on whom I could rely told me that he once asked a wonderworker in the East what he did when he made a snake come and go before the audience, and he replied that he had been taught from very early youth to see a snake before him and that it was so strong an image everyone there had to see it.
“But,” said my friend, “how do you tell it from a real snake?”
The man replied that he was able to see through it, so that for him it looked like the shadow of a snake, but that if he had not done it so often he might be frightened by it himself. The process he would not give, as he claimed it was a secret in his family. But anyone who has made the trial knows that it is possible to train the imagination so as to at will bring up before the mind the outlines of any object whatsoever, and that after a time the mind seems to construct the image as if it were a tangible thing.
But there is a wide difference between this and the kind of imagination which is solely connected with some desire or fancy. In the latter case the desire and the image and the mind with all its powers are mixed together, and the result, instead of being a training of the image-making power, is to bring on a decay of that power and only a continual flying to the image of the thing desired. This is the sort of use of the power of the imagination which has lowered it in the eyes of the modern scholar, but even that result would not have come about if the scholars had a knowledge of the real inner nature of man.
Entonces, El Dolor de Los Ninos
a young girl in a delivery room. old and painted dirty white, peeling, the large industrial windows filthy, without shade revealing everything in the room to the world outside. the view to them is of factories and an industrial gray colored sky. the girl lay in a worn and stained hospital bed, her legs held up in stirrups. she cried. a steady stream of tears and sweat flowed from her forehead and legs; there was pain. a pair of hands. the surgical gloves covered in fresh blood as they manipulated a long pair of forceps extending from the girl’s vagina.
the pain is greater, sharper and more exact in location. she tries to be strong but can’t. she sobs and turns away from the rage but the pain is too great. blood and death dominate…
we see a child in waiting, playing with others in a white room. the children are all half formed. without gender. hairless and incomplete. as they play, one is summoned a sound. the others stop playing and watch. the one called steps up to a wall of white drape. it spreads them apart and steps through. looking forward at an endless tunnel, lit by an almost blinding white light emanating from within the walls, seeing a brighter source of light emanating from what seems like it’s end. A turmoil of light and shadow erupts from the point of light. it grows dark… red. the red rushes up to the formless child, as if the walls were made of linen and cotton, soaking up blood. the tunnel, now shaded in an angry red, begins to bleed, dripping down upon the child, and soaking it, red. it turns to where the curtain wall should be, but it is not. The child turns back and before it stands a figure. a tall white phantom masked figure dressed in a long white robe, its eyes hidden by a surgical mask, untouched by the red that is filling the tunnel. from under it’s clean white robe, the figure reveals a long metal instrument with a shining blade at its end. the hands of the figure are thin, almost skeletal covered in blood. looking up at the figure, the child’s mouth is open wide, it’s solid black eyes glisten with tears of terror. the figure rears it’s instrument back and high up, then brings it down upon the child’s head. the child lay dismembered on the floor. the figure walks away.
the girl sits on a bench in a park area across from a school. there are children in the school yard playing. first and second graders. the girl watches them. her eyes still. she watches as the children are then herded back into the building by the teachers. she stares at the door they had just entered when another child steps into view. it is looking at her. but she can’t see what the child looks like, silhouetted against the blinding white light of the sun. but from what little she can see, the child has no hair. the arms short, the fingers short, almost non-existent. the arms thin. the ears small. the feet small. the clothing it wears sparse and torn. the child turns away from her and then runs into the school.
in her hands, the girl holds a black leather bound book. the letters on the cover are gold but we can’t read them because her hands hide them.
Passed this point, to get passed this point…
That’s what she thought… get passed this…
Then Inez’s life would be at rest…
She had imagined, a journey upon a sea of black…
Nothing where she imagined the shore to be…
The children she left without a care…without a life…
Sobbed within the darkness of the waves…
Lost as a child…
No Mother…she thought, never found…
No Father, never sought, just as lost…
She pondered the emptiness of her imagination as she held remnants…
Inez examines a young Puerto Rican woman showing scars…
The scars of a badly performed abortion evident…
Surrounded by the memories of children aborted…
Washing up on shores of living limbs…
Reaching out from the depth of misery and sorrow…
Inez awakens…
Perhaps, sixty years of age…
Home alone… the room is black and all she can hear is the dark of the night…
A home she purchased alone years before…
Using the wealth she gained as a doctor…
Performing abortions…
She had been married but Charlie, her husband, aptly died while they were still in medical school….
The house sat on ten acres of land surrounded by hundreds of acres of protected park land…
She lived alone as she had always with a daughter, Alma, a few pictures on the wall showed the girl was in her twenties…
Inez’s hand moved quickly across the page as she wrote her notes to recall…
The other hand held the probe of the stethoscope bell against her chest…
Catching the resonant beat of her heart…
The only light in the room was an old desk lamp…
Darkness surrounded her….
A thumping sound came from the basement…
Inez looked down the hall at the dark stairwell from where the noise came…
The noise continued as she stepped down to the basement…
Holding the bell shaped probe of the stethoscope to her heart…
She walked down the stairs approaching a thumping, dull wooden sound…
The sound of dull objects pounding on metal…
Down in the basement she turned on the light…
Revealing an expanse of priceless artwork…
Passing it all she walked to an open large, heavy wooden door at the back wall of the basement…
Musty air exhaled to escape and mingled with fresh air in the rest of the basement producing a queer smell…
She reached up into the darkness turning on the lamp that hung from an old mangled wire….
The noise continued as she approached the room at the back wall it was coming from…
Lining the rotted walls of the unkempt secret room were a series of old wooden file cabinets that bore a likeness of a the city morgue…
Row upon row of the dead were kept in coffin draws…
Rolled out when needed like files in a filing cabinet…
It sounded as if an animal was in the cabinets and were daringly trouncing about inside…
An animal?
What kind of an animal would get into this room? Rats!
She had rats!
Damn it! she thought…
The pounding continued until it came to settle within one of the draws…
She listened carefully trying to pinpoint the source…
Sounding as if the animal were running from draw to draw and settling…
The arrhythmic pounding seemed to be coalescing into the heartbeats of many coming from a single draw…
Inez stood before the draw listening to the slow, muffled drumming…
Holding the stethoscope probe to it and listening carefully…
As she had done so often when listening for the heartbeat of a child in it’s mother’s womb before…
Hearing the soft heartbeat thump, thump, thump…
An animal?
She ran into the main basement room, found a hammer and a screwdriver…
Inhaled a deep breath and counted down as she pulled the draw back quickly…
The fetus folded, lay still, dead and moist: Aborted… one would assume…
Threw herself away from the draw, ran out of the room and locked it…
Stepping back from the door, her eyes fixed on it’s stillness…
Pressed the stethoscope bell against her chest, listening to her heart…
Haunted…
Standing at the wooden door of her basement…
Listening, as the draws alone opened one by one…
Listening as the sound of whimpering children’s hearts murmuring filled the room…
She imagined the death of her husband the moment she let him go to find his end and her freedom…
Raising herself from his death as she let him die…
The door resonating, pounding the door from the other side of their existence…
“You have hurt us…” they said.
“And we will hurt you…”
Helena Montes sat in the kitchen nook beside the bay window. Sipping coffee she read the newspaper. The morning sun streamed through the trees. she wore a stethoscope around her neck, the sensor plate in one hand pressed against her chest.
She dressed. She slipped her long ageless supple legs into the stockings. She dressed in a short blue dress.
She pulled the Mercedes out of the driveway and streaked down the road, driving across rolling hills and farmland.
She drove into town and parked the car in a municipal parking lot at the entrance to town. She strolled through town, greeting friends and townsfolk as they met her happy smile and returned the greeting.
She walked into the bakers shop and stood on line with a few others. They greeted each other and talked. Helena purchased a dozen rolls and bagels and walked out.
She walked into her office greeted the nurse, Robin, a young newlywed living in town.
Helena examines a Puerto Rican woman with extensive scars from a bad abortion.
“Alma, go see your mother…”
“How would she know…?”
“Your dreams are the result of your own life… there is so much to learn from her…”
“But I love you so much…”
“Do you Michael?”
“I do… That love no matter how real or sincere doesn’t result in the relationship we have…”
“There are so many assumptions to consider…”
“Don’t you recall mother?”
“I don’t…”
“You called me…”
“I recall falling asleep in the rocking chair, having a terrible nightmare…”
“Really? Why?”
“Mom, you always wanted me to have a child…
A husband…
Listen to the order you prefer,
That’s not what I wanted… do you recall?”
“I don’t…”
“Mother, are you alright?…
Mother, this isn’t the life I wanted, this is what you want…
You wanted us to marry and have a child…
I’m not even sure I even want to be married at all or marry Michael…”
“I wanted your life to be the life I wanted for myself when I was a little girl…”
“And now, this is the life you wanted?”
“No, I never had a life that I could grow from…I had to choose my life along the way…
No directive or guidance…No one was ever there for me… To accept the choices made for or left for me…”
“Which is the life you now want me to have with which to have my child…the life you imagined for yourself you wish for me without a say?”
“No Alma…”
“You already have chosen that existence for me…”
“There is so much joy in giving birth…to nurture….a man can never have what you can…”
“Mother, I don’t want that, I hope to have what I want.”
“But you do…”
“I why would I want what you feel I should?”
“Don’t you also wish for the child to have a life with a mother who wants the child as well?”
“No mother.”
“But you will Alma…”
“Like you wanted me?
“Of course, love…”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes…you have doubts?”
“About you and my existence mother?”
“I had a dream, a nightmare of children hurt and in pain, they knew nothing else…
“They expected nothing…”
“They lived in that very moment…”
The love they needed was forever to be one of sorrow…
They stood about waiting…
Watching, knowing where the children were going and rising from the black ground…
And they could see nothing they would want of birth…
Imagine the life they were becoming a part of not being the end result of their birth…
They imagined more so but they couldn’t turn back…
They couldn’t turn back the life offered was one they couldn’t turn down…
But live it as is best and worse they could imagine…
Nothing to fulfill, nothing to chose but accept death and fall where they must…”
“Do you understand what you are, Alma?
You are the child of a woman whose wrath is the scorn and hate of others…
You are the child born of a woman who blamed and aborted the children of others for her childless life…
Aborted the lives of others out of vengeance…
Realized she could steal another’s to have her own and rid herself of a useless man…
Having a child is the joy of seeing it appear from the womb, the joy of watching that child grow up.”
The child poured forth, its birth, its spirit now free of any restriction of any afterthought was lost…
As if to stretch and awaken from a deep sleep…
To rise from a sleep that was never complete…
The children, risen from their sleep angered to rise…
Risen to become anger from a sleep of hate
Alma calls from the room…
The sores erupt as births…
The emergence of a child born, from the body of its mother…
Blind from birth…
To be born like cancer, to be born from death…
These children are triggered to fruit by the very death of its mother…
I am a child of misery poured forth.
Looking in the mirror, Alma’s puss filled sores cover the whole of her body…
Embodying the dead children, becoming a mass of ill-formed arms, legs, heads, eyes and mouths from the fetus’ of the children she aborted…
Witnessing the army of ill formed children rise up from the open land around her…
A woman stands across the field watching…
A child speaks, the wraith, speaks as the the wraith form for the woman who watches from across the field, and was a patient of the doctors.
This child appears from the composite of aborted fetuses that embodies Alma… the children aborted are the victims of Inez who are the deceived minority patients, convinced to abort what they thought were deformed children, only to satisfy the animal within her that sought to restrict other minority women from having children… her anger was deep…why should she not have a child.
Having killed her husband, we learn that Inez killed her husband believing his impotency kept her from having children….
But it was her that was sterile…
The anger drove her to open a practice in a depressed neighborhood where she performed abortion after abortion…
Killing the children she could never have…
She re-imagines the sensation of life within the mother’s belly…
Quivering with anxiety dying in her hands…
While still within the body of the mother…
Alma, is a stolen child.
Alma knows now that she is not her mother’s true child, but a child left and disposed, a replacement for her mother’s twisted dreams.
Alma had been summoned by the ghosts of those whose suffering and death we’re not allowed to live because of her mother’s quest for sacrifice, a more suitable punishment for a vengeful woman, who cherished her daughter more than anything else in the world…
Alma, finally consumed by the dead children, consumed…
The mass undulates in the bed…
As her daughter calls as if from far away…
Inez runs off down the steps… She slips and gets hurt…
The house shutters, the floor shakes, the walls quiver in a giant wave…
The faces of children suddenly appear from the fabric of the wall…
As if they were pressing through from the other side…
She runs for the exit door…
Grabs the knob…
The little hands reach out and grab her, pulling her down…
She yanks at them, pulling the door off of it’s hinges.
She falls back to the floor and looks out through the door, across the field…
An army of children appear, standing in line across, like land mines laid across a field.
Inez rushes the door and charges through the army of children…
She runs out onto the field where an army of angry of children, who slowly sink into the ground, dragging her with them…
The house weakens and is consumed by the Earth, then falls into the darkness…
Punishment for the divine…
Broken Slate
Miguel lost count of the number of times he awoke each morning before sunrise and sat at the edge of the bed, his hands gripping and pulling at the mattress, stomach heaving with nausea waiting for the sun to rise as if it would bring any solace. His hands pushed down, straightening his back. Both legs bounced in place, each to a different rhythm, shaking the bed hard enough to awaken his wife Maria. Maria lay on her outstretched arm night gown falling limp to that side, flowing like white water over her exposed ample breasts. Maria watched him for a moment then crawled over to Miguel on all fours, draping her arms gently over his shoulders, pressing the back of his head to her bosom. “Miguel”, she said. Her voice like a child’s, soft and sweet, soothing.
“Te puedo ayudar, corazon? What’s wrong?” she asked.
“It’s nothing,” he said.
Maria rubbed the back of his head with her breasts. His eyes closed. His legs stopped bouncing. His breathing slowed and his grip on the mattress loosened. She kissed his neck, in a line to his ear. His head fell back deeper into her bosom. She pulled away from him and crossed to the other side of the bed. Miguel fell gently back onto the bed. Maria lay on her side. Miguel turned over and stood on the bed on all fours, looking at his wife.
“Make love to me, Miguel.”
Miguel looked at her for a moment. Then all at once he felt a rush of pressure throughout his body. He weakened. His heart beat relentlessly. He grew dizzy.
Miguel is a young Puerto Rican, living in Brooklyn with his hardworking loving Papi, a proud mother, married to a loving and doting wife and father to a five year old girl, seems discontent and wonders why. Miguel has a good job that pays him well, working with Papi at the moving company, and comes home everyday to a happy clan. He participates in many familial and extra-familial activities, but still feels empty. Like butterflies fluttering in his empty belly.
Miguel stands alone in the backyard of the tenement they live in. His Papi had long ago renovated the back courtyard before the family had moved in, before Miguel was born. Miguel was born into and played in it all his life with his friend Andy. He recalls his childhood. The new world the backyard had become for them. The fantastic lands that each corner and brick planters had become in their imaginations.
As always he could feel the ground tremble underneath. He always believed there was something under the slate courtyard; as a child he imagined a great dragon, as an adult he often imagined it to be just water. He stood on the cold spot, that stretched across the yard, and lay his head down on the ground, as he did when he was a child (flashback), and pressed his ear to the cold stone to listen to the dragon roar.
Miguel talks with a neighbor from the other building that shared the courtyard. They whisper about the old man in the rocking chair, who is always at his window, looking down on the yard. Papi often visits the old man, but rarely talks about him. Mommy knows little about him.
Miguel talks with his friend, Andy, about their childhood and the games they played.
MIguel tells Andy he is considering breaking the slate to open the ground. Andy thinks he is crazy.
Cold night. Misty. Miguel awakens to the roar of the dragon in his head. He can’t sleep. He walks to the window overlooking the yard. Then prowls the apartment, listening to the others as they sleep. Miguel steps out and goes down to the basement and takes the sledgehammer from his Papi’s tools, sacred tools that were once used to build the yard, which he would now use to destroy it. He goes out and listens to the court yard ground. The fierce rumble below his feet. He finds the loudest point and begins to beat the ground there.
Papi is asleep. He awakens, realizing the danger.
The neighbors awaken calling out for him to stop the noise. The old man watches. He stops rocking. Papi comes rushing out, but not before Miguel breaks the ground.
“What have you done? What have you done, Miguel?”
Papi stares at Miguel, his face quivering, exasperated.
“What good have you done by destroying the courtyard? By exposing the water?” Papi looked Miguel in the eyes. Miguel’s eyes dribbled with tears.
“I don’t know,” said Miguel. “I don’t know, Papi. I guess there is no good in what I have done. But I don’t do it to achieve anything good.”
“Then what?”
It was there and I knew it. But I needed to see it. I needed to see that it was there. That it really was just what I thought it was.”
“Mi hijo. No te entiendo. What did you think was underneath?”
“Water.”
“Agua?”
Miguel walks away leaving everyone baffled with an answer he certainly feels is sufficient.
“Agua, Miguel? Bueno, entonce . . . then what?”
Miguel stepped through the door into the basement hallway, and was gone from sight.
“Miguel! Answer me, carajo!”
Papi immediately begins to repair the courtyard.
Miguel takes vacation time from work. His wife is a little upset about that. She would rather they had gone away. It is a waste of time sitting around the house drinking beer, sleeping, eating and watching your retired Papi repair the courtyard.
The following Monday, Miguel calls into work and tells his supervisor, Papi’s closest friend, that he will not return.
The friend rushes over to speak with Miguel’s Papi. Miguel watches from the window as the two talk outside. He can’t hear what they are saying. The friend leaves. Papi then enters the building. Miguel could hear through the daytime silence of the building Papis heavy footsteps sound louder as he neared the top floor where Miguel and his wife lived.
“Miguel!”
Miguel sat at the kitchen table drinking beer. Papi found the door unlocked and stepped in. Miguel greeted him with delight. Papi was angry. He then berated him for being so lazy and taking advantage of the family’s kindness to him.
“I didn’t ask for it,” said Miguel.
Miguel continued to spend his days at home, mostly alone. But often walking to see old friends down at the old social club, where the Latin music rippled through the summer silence, keeping everyone up until late at night. During the day he often sat alone outside on the stoop drinking, then at the end of the day greeting his family as they arrived home.
The family, distraught and angered over Miguel’s sudden breakdown.
Miguel would spend his evenings alone in the courtyard, standing over the freshly laid slate, and then walk the presumed path of the underground water flow. It flowed toward the old man, who sat still at the window, in the dark, looking down on the courtyard.
The next morning, breaking his two-week-old routine, Miguel stood at the point of the flow where it met with the wall of the old man’s building. Everyone came to him to wish him a good day, even Papi.
After everyone was gone, Miguel walked outside of the building and followed the assumed flow of the brook into the street, then through and out of the neighborhood.
When the family returned home that evening, Miguel was gone.
As time passed for them, they all believed Miguel was gone for good.
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