“Wistaria” BONUS

As compensation for missing last week and missing the deadline for today, here is a special extra bonus Wistaria entry. I know ALL of you are excited.

Cigarette Water

The taste of the whiskey burned my eyes. I saw everything in terms of onions. Isaiah was shirtless, lying on the counter with a cigarette in his mouth, unlit. The cartilage in my ears felt bruised. My skull was soft. He mumbled something and dropped his cigarette into the crevasses of his neck. The lighting started to be blue when the moon set. I had never seen a moon rise but I had seen hundreds fall below the horizon. I had been told there was a place where the moon rose and it was only there you could see it, because it came from the icy waters, led by pale white sea lions into the heavens, or whatever.

The house filled with water like an aquarium and we began to drown. Giant orange fish with gaping mouths sprung from the hallways. Sharks lurked in deep shadows. An oscar with holes in his head mimicked a flounder in his movements, all as painful to watch as they were to make. He flinched and sighed as blood and puss poured from the wounds around his eyes. I reached beneath the sink and grabbed a jug of bleach to chuck at him. The bleach swallowed his body in a Napalm cloud of silver.   

“Oblique, Oblique, are you okay?” Isaiah asked. He knelt to my level and grabbed my face. He was so tan and his skin looked charred and burnt. I turned away, trying to get away from his shiny, blistered flesh. 

“Who are you, who are you?” I asked. My mouth seemed to move long before the words were exposed. When he came to me again, his hand extended to show he meant no harm, everything was repressed into something like normalcy, or some vein of which I could handle without becoming sick or fearful. 

“It’s me, Isaiah. Are you okay? Maybe you should sit down, I’ll get you some water.” 

“Are you real?” I asked nervously. 

“Am I real?” He asked. He was confused. He went to the cupboard and found a glass and the faucet filled it with clean-looking water. 

“Yeah. I get visitors, a lot, but most of them aren’t real. They come back, now and then, but I can’t tell if they’re real,” I tried to explain.

“Oh, yeah?” 

“Yeah. The boy from the concert, Steve. He lies on the counter. And the fish come at night. And sometimes, outside my window, there’s a tiny girl taking pictures of me. When I drink coffee I have this horrible– this horrible dream that she–”

“In school you seem like you got it together.” 

“Are you real? I’ve talked to so many people and seen so many things– what makes me see all this? I try–” 

“Oblique, I’m real. Drink this. Maybe you should see a doctor, or something?” He offered. I shook my head vigorously. 

“I’m fine,” I assured. He sat down next to me.

“You’re not fine.” 

“No one can help me. I’d go to them and they’d turn out to be– or I’ve gone to them already– or– Don’t make me go!” 

“I won’t. Where are your parents?” He asked. 

“I’m not sure. I don’t miss them,” I said. 

“I wouldn’t miss mine. God, I wish my dad would just disappear, too.” 

“Isaiah?”

“Oblique?” 

“Where you get all them bruises? Mr. Abel?” 

“Yeah.”

“Does it hurt, I mean, does it hurt for him to hit you?” I asked, I touched the bruise on his cheek.  

“When I’m getting beaten, I hear a piano playing.” 

“Who’s playing it?” I asked. He looked up, his eyes were vacant and his mind was distant. 

“I never thought about it before. They’re very angry, though, and they’re slamming on the keys. It sounds like they’re taking a sledgehammer to them. But it sounds kind of pretty.” 

“Why does he hit you?” I asked, gently. He turned to me, at first his look was severe, then it melted into a sideways smile. 

“He wishes I was a crocodile.” 

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but immediately after he said it, the house transformed into an aquarium, again. This time, I was an oyster and he was a crocodile and we were lodged into the sandy bottom, while swimmers circulated like birds above us. He blubbed, 

“What’s your real name?” 

And I blubbed, 

“I don’t have one.”

“Wistaria”

 

The Aquarium

 

Through the walls I heard the deep systematic pounding of a bass. 

A beat. 

A rhythm. 

One boy. That boy. 

He played his music very loud from his garage. He blared his stereo, the whole neighborhood would echo with it. The elderly neighbors would get angry, but I sat on my porch and watched the notes buzz around the homes. The houses collapsed and shook under the pressure of such fiery words, the scales would drop, the frequency would rise and space wouldn’t know where to place itself in our streets. There’d just be emptiness at the bottom of the cul de sac. The only thing tearing through the layer of highly concentrated artificial apathy was the megalithic rap charging like the sky was raining bricks of cement. 

At night, it was better because it all looked like a movie set. The lavender bushes gently rocked in a breeze scented with laundry detergent. 

I went crazy thinking: 

That’s all they want you to believe. 

Then the music would

rock 

everything 

like an energy drink. 

Oh, caffeine. Oh, brittle, brittle highs. How we feel so empty and up when we’re standing completely still. I felt myself oozing out of my skin and crawling skyward like 99 luft balloons. Into those clouds that looked like Mount Kilimanjaro. 

Killah Man. Killer man. Kill her, man. Kill her, man. Kill her. 

Kill. 

Her.

Wolf. 

Those highs only angered my substitute reality and without ever leaving the safety of a cold leather couch, I was lying on mud, interacting with people I never met before. I knew their names, I knew their ages, I knew their faces like the stalks of long-stemmed roses. I knew their fatigue. Compassion, compassion. In a musty fog I saw all these widowers, dressed in black for the funeral, dipping a limp body into the water. Then I’d awake, realize it was a dream, and lie there waiting for something tangible to hit me. Punch me. Take an oar to a my temple. That was that music. His music.   

I heard it. It rattled me. I ran the front of the house and stopped when my stomach was caught by the frame of the window. I hung out and crawled to the roof. Sitting and watching the only boy who would play his music so daringly loud in his brightly lit garage at 3am, I felt so alive and real. 

He had a big textbook in his hand and was reading through it, or so it appeared. I watched him with a smile because he couldn’t see me, but I heard everything over the stampede of energized music, empowered with clarity, an immaculate understanding. The stars bounced overhead in the waves of heat emitted from the cooling surface of Earth, the rhymes electrified the air with anarchy. 

I saw his dad enter the garage, my chemistry teacher, with his belt knotted around his thick waist. He jutted his hips forward and looked down at this son. I hardly saw anything, just heard the music stop and the father crack the boy with the textbook. The boy’s head took the brunt, his neck bent sideways and he fell to the ground. His hands lifted, he pleaded.

No, Dad, no.

You are a disgrace. 

Please, Dad, please. 

You are not my son. 

Dad, Dad, stop! 

I am disgusted with you. You are not Isaiah, you are not Abel, you are not progeny. I will throw you outside. Let’s see how you do outside. 

Dad, they’ll kill me if I’m outside this late. Dad, please.

I will kill you if they don’t. 

As I paced around the empty house which hummed with unnecessary appliances, I felt like a fish trapped in an aquarium. Everything was blue and looked splintered by refracted light in the curvy, trippy swirls of water. I spun around the crystalized pebbles and passed the skeleton fisherman holding the sign “Beware!” I started to think about a boy I met at a concert who wore sunglasses even though it was night and we were indoors. The club was poorly lit and the carpeting was maroon. On the stage a charismatic woman wearing all black riffed with a throaty voice that sounded like cool gravel. A manic cellist played along side her, he had a long beard but was young and wore a navy sweatshirt from Harvard. 

The boy beside me turned out to be a man. He asked, “How old are you?” 

I said, “I am seventeen. How old are you?” 

I expected him to say the same. “I am twenty-six.” 

At that moment, in memory and in reality, his face (which before had seemed so perfect) began to degrade. The layers of skin decomposed, melted away like the powder on moth wings. Teeth, yellow as mucus, fell from his black gums. Before I could utter another sound or breathe another breath, he was a corpse lying on my kitchen table. Then he was nothing but a cup of coffee. Then he was nothing. 

I heard whimpers outside. I went to the door, then onto the porch. I saw a circle of long, reaper like shadows hunched over a dog. The shadowy gang. I entered the taboo outdoors. The grass had the sharpness and the softness of pine needles. Closer, I walked, towards the group of boys like bundles of blackberries, assaulting a little dog. It barked and yelped with pain as they kicked it and punched it and spit on it. I stood before them and raised my bare white arms. Instantly, on cue, they scattered, revealing not a dog, but Isaiah. 

  He shook and quivered and cried. When I knelt beside him, he struggled away, but his head was soar and he was curled into the defenseless roll of a caterpillar. 

“Shh. Shh. Oh, are you hurt?” I asked. He looked up and whimpered more, shocked and afraid, the words were scribbled haphazardly on his eyes. I saw the blood run down his nose and I took my sleeve to it. He jerked away. 

“Are you fine?” I demanded an answer this time and he hardly nodded in response. I became defensive and strong-feeling, as if a red tide was growing on my back and carrying me to shore unapologetic to any tyrant that happened to fall in my path. I dared Leviathan to return; I wanted to remove their masks, hiss at them. Some knew better than to deal with me when my fists were clenched and my jaw was locked tight with anger. I earned that respect, like a spider does amongst the flies. 

“You’re going to be OK, alright? I’m going to take care of you,” I insisted and I thought he heard. He eased and grabbed my hand and rolled into me, resting his almond-shaped head into the pit of my hip and my arm. He started to cry, a deep uninhibited cry.

Everything as if it was covered with 

oil paints 

nothing was real

only sequences placedtogether 

more or less for 

my amusement. 

My lips found 

  a 

  bright 

        lit 

        path 

           to 

           his 

           forehead, 

           and there I 

          pressed them, 

          until he stopped 

          shivering on that 

                            cold 

                 night. 

        night. 

night.

“Wistaria”

The Thing They Found In The Woods

 

Kurtis Wavra sat against a tree in the courtyard of Wistaria High School, curled up around a college-ruled notebook, scrawling a story with a mini-pencil labeled Asteroid Blues Mini Golfing. He nibbled its end with his jumbled never-bracketed teeth and continued onward into the exciting conclusion of one of his several hundred science fiction stories.

Left of him, resting in the yellow late October grass, sheathed in a bed of Saran Wrap, was a ham salad sandwich collecting ants. The bread grew soggy and began to relent to the way of the Miracle Whip-soaked chunks of ham: thus, the contents of the sandwich were oozing forth into the lawn. Kurtis, who hardly noticed the sandwich as food, found inspiration in what he saw as brain-like matter discharged from the head of an alien. He swiftly included this in his story. 

Resting on his right knee, carefully balanced, was his secondhand walkman, the headphones on his ears, blasting the theme music to StarWars. Kurtis turned off the music momentarily with the intent of changing the tape (he carried several in his backpack), but was stopped by the approach of his friend. 

“Hey, man.” Branden Cody came from the picnic tables. 

Kurtis removed his headphones in a flourish and gushed,   

“Just finishing up this story. This one, Brando– it’s perfect.” Kurtis waved his manuscript/ biology notebook. The pages were creased, torn, soaked in grease and dotted with spaghetti sauce. He gazed at it hungrily as if the contents held the meaning of life. He dabbed his lips with his tongue. 

“Is that so? What’s this one about?” Branden asked, taking a seat beside Kurtis on the lawn and helping himself to the wayward sandwich. 

“It’s about an EBE–” Kurtis began excitedly. 

“Whoa, whoa, what now? This is pretty good, by the way, kudos to Mrs. Wavra.”

“Thanks. EBE, Extraterrestrial Biological Entity. It’s–” 

Branden took the manuscript from Kurtis’ trembling hands and reviewed the prose. 

“Is this going to be anything like the ‘Man-Eater’s from Andromeda’ series, or the ‘Alien Mistress’ story about the guy having an affair with a Jovian entity, or the ‘Salamander People of Nebula Some Shit’?”

“Yes, slightly!” Kurtis snapped defensively. “However, Brando, I’ll have you know, this manuscript is altogether better than my previous attempts. I was merely stumbling in the dark–” 

“What’s different now?” 

“I have some pretty groovy inspiration,” Kurtis wiggled his eyebrows and took a clumsy swig of his chocolate milk. He crumpled the mini carton and shot for the trash can but missed entirely.   

“What kind of inspiration?” Branden quickly scanned the hexagon-shaped courtyard and found Oblique Ravel lying down, shrouded in her signature black sweatshirt, on the stone love seat beside the statue of Prometheus Polsin, the founder of the school. “Ah, Jesus, Kurt, Oblique Ravel? Is this just some fantasy love story where two antisocial nerds fall for each other over an alien?” 

“This isn’t some pointless drivel! I just joined this group, NICAP, and they have comprehensive evidence– EBEs exist!” 

“Yeah, but sometimes I wonder whether your brain exists. When are you going to knock it off with this Ravel chick? The girl’s name is Oblique, man. Have you even spoke to her?” 

“She doesn’t speak to anyone, Brando, you know the full hot order,” Kurtis said while protectively slipping his manuscript into his duct tape-lined backpack. 

“Exactly, man. That’s what I’m saying. We’ve known her all our lives, but have you ever heard her speak? Oh, dude, did you get the car?” Branden let his head rest against the trunk of the poplar tree. He placed a pair of sunglasses on the tip of his nose.    

“Totally, maaan, we’re going to riding in style. Ain’t no stopping us now. Wistaria is just the starting line.” 

“Wistaria”

The Spider

Sanity comes in slow and sudden bursts. The eggshell-white film against a noir ink silhouette kind of clarity is wrought of the typical mushroom shaped explosion: slow motion, lead pealing away from cars in strips like flesh. The thunderous awakening of consciousness, like the turning of October, is pronounced and impacts the eye with the jostling of a right hook punch. While leaning against the brick wall of the cemetery, with the smoke from the budding orange lily at the tip of my cigarette pouring into dusky sky, I felt more so alive and clear-thinking than I had ever previously expected to be possible– and without a trace it vanished, and I was left in the haziness of a ghost reality.

The evening before her sleep over with the gravestones, Oblique walked along the uneven sidewalk from her high school to the cemetery–directly. She followed familiar cracks in the pavement as if they were lines on a roadmap to her destination. It was the early moments of Autumn, the leaves had begun their descent from a vibrant green into yellow, eventually the foliage would deconstruct into various patterns of spiced orange and grenadine. The cool wind charioted scents that promised snow and rain, and its iciness, in contrast to the warmth of Summer’s death, slapped sickness into Oblique’s lungs. She expectorated occasionally as the phlegm hit her esophagus.

She came upon the graveyard and sighed, as if it were a usual costumer, or a parent of some kind. It was a small graveyard incased in giant brick walls. The grey brick, during the spring and early summer, was complimented by magnolias and oleander. Though, in September, it was absent of all foliage endowed with calyxes, yet it remained blanketed by the heavy leaves of willows and crazed, knotted oaks. All year long the wall was adorned with copper plaques which reflected even the dimmest light. The trees rose like pillars and were geometrically crosshatched by sunken logs. Oblique sat upon the wall and watched as the day began to close.

The warm light of sundown filtered through the trees’ branches like twisty pipe cleaners. Oblique heard whispers all around her, as if many voices were talking at once, and she surmised that the drying leaves, which were being gently swaddled by the wind, were singing one another lullabies about fairies and other fantastical creatures.

Across the street from the cemetery, she noticed, for the first time, a farm. From her positioning, hunched atop the brick edifice like a sweatshirt-clad gargoyle and her feet propped onto the gravestone of Boris Polsin, Oblique could see a few men in the farm’s dirt driveway. Their faces were darkened by the lowering sun, but their movements were apparent, and due to the hour, silence allowed their voices to carry across the empty road. They discussed various topics which Oblique could not understand, surveyed the darkening sky and laughed. One man’s laugh was incredibly powerful, and it shot from his mouth like a torpedo, then flew through the air like a tornado’s wind. Oblique could see the wavelengths of the laughing throwing the tree branches and wrapping them around the trunk, as if it were a May Day pole. The light itemized and became a honey-colored afterglow.

The men disappeared and soon, so did the light. The night was waxing, growing thicker and heavier with moisture. She still could not sleep, she just lay, motionless, amongst the leaves, wedged between wood and stone and brick. The moon hung low that night. It looked like the big, round mirrors of vanities. Its surface was streaked silver by fog; its light grew upon the copper plaques like multitudes of liquid gold.

The leaves that night looked and felt like shavings of rust. They smelt of earthen things and similar to most earthen things, were completely uncomfortable to sleep with, including the worms and roly-polies. Oblique was thankful for the sweatshirt because as the moon rose higher, the air sunk deeper into a cavernous cold. She looked over at the fog hanging in the farmer’s yard. Farm equipment, partially concealed by a fence, was still visible in the moonshine. The great arms of the machinery looked like the long necks of giraffes, it was some Frankenstein zoo. At a certain hour, she knew her only company in the cemetery would no longer be as simple as chipmunks and little squirrels. When she eventually fell asleep, she was warm.

The rustling above in the willow was what woke her. In fact, all the trees in the graveyard were creaking softly. What first appeared to be shadows behind stumps and the decrepit stone markers, began to creep and collect. It was obvious. The shadows swirled together into one mysterious entity, they blotted the blue-blackness with the overt color of ebony robes. Upon her face she could feel the rush of their motion, the flapping of their capes. She could smell weak formaldehyde and another, dubious yet undeniably chemical, scent.

Oblique heard the figures speaking, descending from trees and unknown, hidden locations about the cemetery. She was camouflaged by her herbal blanket, they had not seen her, and as well as she knew, she had not seen them. She only sensed them. She was only minutely aware of their existence only feet from her. The collection of caped men of the night was apparent. She heard the rattle of spray paint canisters.

With a gruff protest from the leaves, Oblique stood up and concentrated on walking. Sleeping on the tough soil made her knees feel crippled and her back had contorted into old pipes. She must have glowed like a light, or the moon. She preferred to glow yellow as does Venus, but that was really just one of her reoccurring illusions.

The boys had seen her all at once; instantly, they scattered. And when they scattered, it was like strands of black hair whisked away by a bitch slap breeze, or flowers of a black bough exploding– silently. In her chest, she felt a ripple of cold air and began to sputter. She was alone, again. She assumed they were all hiding, though, trying desperately to be shadows because for whatever reason they felt akin to them. Strangely, whenever she breathed out, she felt as though they could hear it.

She stood still for several minutes, imagining her eyes were glinting white like cats’. She could feel them panting in their darkened hiding spots. Oblique then turned away and walked out of the cemetery and into the town, noting along the way every methodical scratch of graffiti. The graffiti always depicted the same symbol. It was a warning, a law, a motion, presented in red paint, everywhere. And Oblique had disregarded all of it. She was their only enemy.