V
The Father hadn’t budged, and he hadn’t managed an inch of sleep either. He sat now as he had all night, leaning against his son’s door, flicking through some old photos and clinging to his wife’s favourite blouse. It’s funny really, how back then, he didn’t much care for it, and he was never really shy of letting her know. And she too, in telling him where to shove it. And yet now, that fiery discourse was the one thing he longed for most, especially on nights as cold as these.
He turned his ear to the door to listen to his son sleeping, but it was difficult through the stacks of wooden planks that boarded it shut. He rested his palm on one of the planks, almost catching a splinter. And though his every desire begged and pleaded for him to tear it off and let the boy free, he swallowed the urge in a choking gulp and instead used the plank to leverage himself back on his feet, wiping away a tear as he shuffled down the dark corridor towards his bedroom.
He stood there in the open doorway, staring at the mattress on the floor, and at the crumpled sheets that were comfortably strewn about the bed, looking as if someone had taken their time to rouse from a lazy Sunday morning. Staring at the bed as he was, he could see his wife so vividly, rolling about beneath the blankets, and kicking at the sheets as if she were trying to push herself up and along some imaginary sandy bank, away from the rising tide of wakefulness, as obliging waves crashed upon her once quiet and sleepy shore.
He could see her as if she was actually there. The marks in the bed and the folds in the blankets and the sheets, they were as she had left them, the very last time that she had slept there. He could see her, even though she wasn’t there; even though she hadn’t been for such a long time. He could see her. He could see her as plain as he could see himself; looking sickly pale, malnourished, insomnolent, and delusional, in his reflection in the glass above the bed.
He could hear her too, cursing the sun, and moaning as she rolled about; but not in some torrid infantile manner. She moaned playfully as if she were merely stretching out and limbering her voice, as she did with her kicking legs.
The room was how she had left it, and he hadn’t touched it since. And it was a stark contrast to the mounds of bloodied towels, sanitary pads, and torn sheets that were piled in the laundry, reeking of dried vomit and excrement; and to the heap of dirt in the back garden where her body lay - buried carefully by their daughter, not far from her side.
He could see her - though she wasn’t actually there.
He could hear her - though the voice he was hearing was probably his own.
The Father went into the kitchen and poured himself a coffee. It was cold and bitter, and it had a pungent aftertaste that was like a mixture of detergent and rotting egg. It might have been made a day ago; it could have been over a year. Its taste though was no worse than the life of which he was attired; the life that hung off him like worn and stretched elastic; that reeked of abandon and disregard, and that was piss-stained and soiled with woeful defeat, and hermetic, self-loathing depression.
He stared down the hall, at the piles of splintered wooden planks, panels, and floor boards, nailed across his son’s door. He felt as if his heart, though he couldn’t hear it beating, was safe and sound, away from the death that continued to plague this town; the very same death that conspired with one’s heart, and abducted everything that mattered – all that one loved.
And though it tormented him, keeping his boy imprisoned with no doors or window - deaf to his condolence, and numb to his paternal caress - he had no choice. Death had already claimed so many in this town. It had taken every child, every dear pet, and nearly every other lover. This boy was the last child alive, the last child born out of love but enveloped in a father’s fear; kept close enough to be guarded, cared for and watched over, yet far enough for The Father’s love and compassion, to do him no harm.
Drinking his cold, fetid coffee and staring at the wooden boards, he imagined his son sitting on his bed, still but awake and with little joy on his face, for he feared the contrary would surely arouse Death’s regard. He thought of him instead as mute and dispassionate; as existing, but without any thoughts or feelings whatsoever. He thought of him as like an ant or a beetle, in the appearance of a boy.
He imagined him sitting on his bed without any desire to move, or any thought of feeling trapped, imprisoned, or in any way missing out. It brought The Father little joy to think of his son like this, but it brought him little worry either. And either one or the other, as was proverbially said, might well arouse a cursed and deathly suspicion.
He imagined the boy safe and sound, as a ward of his fearful state.
But behind the planks and wooden boards, behind every hammered nail, and behind too, every lock and chain that girded the bedroom door, inside the room with no way in and no way out, there was no boy. He wasn’t on the bed like his father imagined him being. And he wasn’t under it either, as would be the second place that anyone would ever look. He wasn’t hiding inside his wardrobe, and he wasn’t tucked behind the empty bookshelf. He wasn’t sulking behind the door, and he wasn’t anxiously pacing in any part of the room, left and right, and, back and forth.
In a room with no way in and no way out, The Young Boy simply wasn’t there.
And The Father stood lifeless, sipping his coffee, without any way of knowing.
VI
“My testicles itch,” said The Ringmaster. “They’re too close together. No, this won’t do, not at all.”
Wearing mauve, Lycra pants, and an orange bathrobe, The Ringmaster strutted back and forth on a makeshift runway outside his carriage door. At both ends of the runway, and stretched along both sides, stood his ten whores, each holding a large mirror in their hands. The Ringmaster flung his robe backward, keeping it as such with his hands anchored to his hips. He squeezed his buttocks tight and pushed his crotch outwards, swaying to and fro in front of each mirror, and ogling himself, just as every woman he encountered most certainly did.
He shook his head in disapproval at one mirror, before turning his attention to another. But in each, he found an obvious and apparent err, either in the way the mirror was being held or in the glass itself.
“This can’t be right,” he said. “You’re holding it wrong.”
“I must be,” said a bearded whore, angling the mirror away from The Ringmaster’s every facial objection, and hoping to hell that he’d just choose another. “I’m sorry, Master. They…”
“They look like squashed peas,” shouted The Ringmaster, swaying his hips left and right and examining the petite size and peculiar shape of his testicles.
The bearded whores all looked at one another. They each knew more than they were letting on, but like condescending mothers, they each turned to The Ringmaster and smiled, assuring.
“No,” they all said in unison. “That’s not true.”
“My love,” said Delilah, laying down her mirror and coming to her lover’s side. “The mirrors are obviously broken. Trust me when I tell you this,” she said, sounding as if it were patently true. “This is not in any way an honest reflection of your...stature,” she said, cupping his crotch with a wide berth, and widening her eyes in adamant surprise as if she had just found a wad of cash. “There is nothing small about you,” she said, laying a soft wet kiss on his upper lip.
Her beard tickled.
“All these mirrors are broken,” he shouted. “Who’s been fiddling with the settings of my mirrors?” he said. “Who?”
“My love,” said Delilah, stroking his hair to calm him down.
The Ringmaster huffed and puffed, and he sighed and stamped his right foot several times, digging a hole in the sand with the pointed end of his boots. He settled, though, deflating his bad mood.
“Are they really big?” he asked, staring innocently at Delilah.
“Enormous,” she said. “Obscenely large. Believe me, it’s all anyone can see when they look at you. They’re wonderful,” she said, cupping his crotch once more.
/> “Still,” said The Ringmaster. “They itch. It’s the pants. It has to be the pants. Do we have a different colour? And a smaller size,” he ordered.
“The woman,” said Delilah, her voice sounding like a cupboard being dragged across a wooden floor. “Is she…staying?”
“Why, my dear Delilah,” said The Ringmaster. “You’re not jealous…. Are you?”
It was hard to see behind her prickly beard, but Delilah was gritting her teeth and struggling to smile. She tried to think about something innocuous, something she could easily feign interest in. She thought about the tea The Ringmaster loved to drink after sex, and how it tasted like toe sweat. It wouldn’t quell, though, her quaking, jealous rage. Then she thought about the things she had to do, and didn’t want to do, but did anyway, because she loved him; more than he could ever imagine. She thought about all those things that she did; the things where she smiled as she did them. But nothing was coming.
“Well?” asked The Ringmaster, provokingly.
Then she thought about The Ringmaster’s daughter; that ugly, dim-witted, and needy fucking cripple. She thought about how much of her own life had been spent attending to her like an unwanted pregnancy; picking up after her, looking out for her, and towing her along like a sack of soiled garments. And yet, no matter how many times she left her behind - stowing her here and hiding her there, and stripping her of her metal braces - like a mouse that won’t drown, or a dog that won’t move on, time after time, and attempt after exhausted attempt, that goddamn cripple always found her way home. And each time, Delilah would feign concern and panicked delight. And each time, she would wear the same smile as she did now.
“Not myself,” she said. “I think only of the others. The poor girls.”
They both stared at the other nine whores who, hearing the conversation and its earnest tone, huddled together like frightened sheep, each trying to work their way into the middle of the group and abscond from what felt like, The Ringmaster’s awakening to their uselessness and inevitable and heartbreaking eviction.
“Would she even have a place? Think about the poor woman. She’s just lost her child for goodness sake. She’ll be whimpering on your ear from here to eternity. She’ll bring down the mood, you know she will. And she has that strange colour. They all do. I’m only thinking about her mind you, and the other whores of course. And well…” she said, pausing to run her delicate fingers through her thick beard. “What about your daughter? We have to think about the poor girl, and what something like this would mean. She could get confused with another woman coming in, especially one who has lost a child, and will no doubt cling onto anything that is not hers. And after all, she already has a mother who cares for her,” she said, thinking of herself and almost choking on her vomit as she did.
“I’m her mother,” said The Ringmaster. “My daughter knows this. I’ll make sure the new whore knows it too. You have nothing to worry about. You’re still my number one,” he said, kissing his favourite patch of prickly hair on the side of her face.
“Master,” said Rex, stumbling through the encampment with a pair of Lycra pants in his deformed, wretched hands. “Plum would look wonderful on you,” he said.
In her carriage, The Young Cripple stood in front of her mirror practicing her curtsey, and her womanly handshake, if that’s what people here preferred when they met. It was difficult, though, with this horrible metal contraption tied to her legs. It looked as if she were growing out of mechanical scaffolding, but scaffolding that bent and twisted from her ankles up to the tops of her legs, so that her buttocks almost sat on the sharp edges of the metal contraption like a corrugated seat. If she were to sit on the ground and lay her legs out flat, the contraption, and her legs mind you, would look like a metallic sea, with each twist and fold, looking like a set of waves, pushing from hips, down to her toes. And though there were many twists and bends, still, her legs moved in a robotic fashion, and something as trivial as a curtsey, was almost impossible, and was almost insulting to have to witness.
“Good morning,” she said to her reflection, pretending it was somebody else. “Do you have a personal relationship with Light?” she asked, gently lifting her hand forward to offer a pamphlet.
This was where she would have liked to have curtseyed. Others would do it right at the start, after saying ‘Good morning’, or even just before. Most would save it for right at the end. That was tricky, though. You had to time it right, just before the door got slammed in your face, or else you’re just giving good manners and common courtesy to a door. The Young Cripple preferred, though, just as she handed the flyer.
“Do you have a minute to take about the Light, The Sun of God?”
In her head, the person smiles, hugs her, and says yes. They then take her into their house and offer her some yogurt; either that or some fancy cheese. They talk for some time about salvation and Light, and The Young Cripple talks about her personal experience, and how she overcame the worst possible adversity, just by letting The Sun of God touch her skin and warm her heart by believing. Then the person offers her some tea, but not the kind she normally drinks, this tea tastes like things that might grow in a garden, as opposed to what can be collected from a horse’s brow. And then in her head, the person becomes her mother, and she invites her out into the garden to run and play, and The Young Cripple is dubious at first, and a little embarrassed, but when she looks down, she has legs like most normal kids. And they run and they play, and her mother promises that if she really wants, they can stay.
“Soldiers of Light, front and centre,” shouted Rex.
Torn from her wonderful daydream, The Young Cripple stared at herself once more and the joy drained from her face. She looked as she always did, like a box that had been trodden on, and left out in the rain.
“Lord take me home, take me home, take me home,” she sang woefully. “Lord, listen to me, please. Make my home anywhere but here.”
She stumbled outside, arousing the annoyed awareness of her fellow troupe, they, bugged and perturbed by the sound of screeching metal, and worn and rusted hinges. At the centre of camp, by the old diseased tree, The Ringmaster stood on his small podium and addressed his people.
“Let me be brief,” he said, holding his right hand over his left breast, and his other, clutched around his sparkling cane.
The troupe all moved forwards, bunching together like grains, escaping from a small split in a sack. Scampering between the legs of one and all was a tiny monkey that made its way to the front of the crowd and onto the podium by The Ringmaster’s feet, tugging lightly on his coattails and begging to come aboard.
“I can’t stress how important today is, not just in terms of our performance, but in the good that we can do in this town, and of our responsibility - of the great burden we bear, as carriers of the Light. We are where we belong right now, where we are meant to be. The seed of purpose,” he said rousingly, swaying his chest left and right as if his sagging breasts were fog lights, guiding lost vessels away from the rocky shores of their own inevitable and invincible self-sabotage. “In you,” he said, speaking to all but heard by all as if each were the only one. “In you it has been sown,” he shouted. “And it flowers, and it blooms. And I can see before me, a garden of Light, and one of purpose, and belief.”
The troupe all smiled. Their teeth were all worn and crooked, and for many, their mouths looked like poorly stacked bookshelves. Still, when they smiled as they did, there was genuine warmth and kindness that radiated in such a way that it was hard not to want to be involved, and to smile too.
“Each of you carries the Light of God in your heart and in your eyes. We go into the dark now, where we can assume that there is no Light, a place where Light has never been. But these people are men and women just like us, and just like us, they cannot exist without Light, for Light is everywhere, and Light is in everything. It is our work,” he said pausing, clearing his breath and then composing himself. “It is your work, to scour through their
infinite dark, and find that infinitesimal flicker of Light within them. It is your work to help them to see the Light, and to douse that Light in the accelerant of your loving kindness. Today is the day; a day of love, compassion….of Light!”
“Love Light, Love Light, Love Light,” chanted the troupe, stamping their feet as if the earth were a great drum; and beating their fists into the air, as if they were smashing through an invisible wall above their heads.
“One more thing,” he shouted, catching all of their attentions. “Open every door, and close every sale. Every rejection you get is the moment your sales and your pitches begin. There is only yes. Every no leads to a yes. Every locked door has a well versed and compassionate key. I expect a hundred percent conversion. You are beings of Light. I expect nothing less. If you miss one conversion…just one” he said, mimicking with thumb and index finger, the most insignificant of amounts. “Do not expect a place for you here. Don’t waste your breath on an excuse or an apology. Don’t expect me to care or to give you a second chance. For if you cannot see Light in another, then you have lost the Light in yourself, and you are void. You are nothing! But for the rest of you, my victors, my warriors, my Soldiers of Light, today is your day. Go out there. In the name of Light, The Sun of God, go out there and give love. Give kindness. Give Light. Use whatever means necessary. Always be closing. Convert every sale. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”
The troupe all chanted with him, their faces beaming with persuasive energy. The Ringmaster smiled as he watched his troupe aroused with loving compassion. From upon his podium, he waved royally to his amorous army, sending kisses from the palm of his hand as they turned to march out of the encampment.
“Father.”
It was The Young Cripple at the top of her stairs. Though she could climb them easy enough (easy, but painfully slow and with enormous difficulty), getting down was always a tricky affair, and one that she could not muster on her own. She held onto the broken doorframe, swaying like a mechanical flag in the wind. And surely this was how this poor broken door had ended up this way, with its rusted and worn hinges not nearly stern enough for The Young Cripple’s desultory and discourteous wobbling.
Her voice made The Ringmaster tense, but he stopped and turned nonetheless.
“What?” he said, not looking in her direction.
“I can’t get down,” she said, “not by myself. Not without falling.”
The Ringmaster inhaled profoundly and exhaled expressively.
“OK,” he said. “Hurry up.”
The Young Cripple smiled. Her giddiness almost had her careen over herself and end up wasting her father’s thinly spread patience. She smiled, though, not because this mean brute that she called ‘Father’ was finally paying her attention, no, not that. He was an ass; a complete buffoon. And he was a mean, stupid, so-and-so. No, she didn’t smile for him or his attention, and how he carried her like a shit-filled bed pan. No, she smiled because today she was sure she would finally make a friend.
“I’ve been practicing,” she said, “all morning. Do you want to see and hear?”
The Ringmaster was kneeling before her with a spanner in his hand, tightening the bolts on the metal contraption that kept her legs upright. He grunted once or twice and shook his head in annoyance. “Hold still,” he shouted, wrenching the bolts around and around so that the contraption pulled tighter and tighter on the young girl’s legs.
“Ouch,” she said. “That hurts.”
“Don’t complain to me. It’s for your own good. You think I like having to do this every morning? Especially after you go and loosen it every night. You don’t think I know it’s too tight? You don’t think my fingers know this? You don’t think they hurt? You don’t think, do you? Little beast.”
“I’m sorry, Father,” she said, bowing her head submissively. “You’re right. One day though when my legs get better…”
“That day’s not today, so focus. Don’t be the stitch in my side all the time, goddamn it. Stop! Slowing! Me! Down!” he said.
“I wrote another story,” she said, taking a small crinkled paper from her pocket to show her father.
The Ringmaster tore the paper from her hands, looking at it as if it were a stain on a perfectly good garment. He spat on the paper and tore it into tiny shreds, and then rolled the shreds into a ball, and then swallowed it. The Young Cripple bit her lip. She looked as if she had sucked on a dozen lemons, but she wasn’t about to cry. She’d learned that lesson already.
“What have I told you about writing that filth? Well? Tell me goddamn it.”
“Stories are no good,” she said.
“Your stories are filthy and arcane, they are blasphemous and evil. There is only one story, that of Light, and The Sun of God. You wanna tell stories you little bitch…then tell that story. That is the only story that matters; of Light, compassion, sacrifice, and loving kindness. The Sun of God, The Sun of God, The Sun of fucking God,” he shouted, smacking the side of The Young Cripple’s head with the ball of his palm. “Get it through your thick, dim-witted skull. Light is love and love is Light. The Sun of God, The Sun of God. Say it with me,” he said, gripping the girl around her throat.
“The Sun of God,” they said, over and over, in unison.
Both shook fervently – he with command, and she, with fear.
“That’s right. The Sun of God is everything and there is nothing more. Do you hear me?”
The girl nodded her head.
“There’ll be none of this story business anymore. Your mother taught you in all the wrong ways. She gave you the wrong kind of hope and the very worst kind of encouragement. If I have to,” said The Ringmaster in ardent threat, “I’ll make her go away for good.”
“No,” said The Young Cripple pleadingly. “Please, I promise I’ll stop writing stories, I promise, from now, only The Sun of God, only The Sun of God. Please, don’t make Mother go away, not again, please…”
The Ringmaster turned prudently. His silence was agreement. The girl knew this, but she knew to leave it at that, for there was nothing her father hated more than needless whining.
“Hi, do you have a personal relationship with Light?” said The Young Cripple, smiling as she hobbled along, practicing her introduction.
The Ringmaster turned to his daughter and watched her struggle along the stony path. Each leg had to be heaved with such intense vigour for her to move along, inch by painful inch. He stood in two kinds of awe; on one hand, partly impressed by the ingenuity of this mechanical contraption, and on the other, greatly disgusted by his daughter’s intent to go on. As she hobbled beside him, he looked at her and smiled. She smiled back. And then he kicked one of her legs from under her and she fell flat on her face.
“What doesn’t kill me….” he said, walking off with a smirk. “Monkey, come!” he said, clicking his fingers. The little monkey climbed his coat tails and scampered up on his hat, curling its tail around the brim, helping to shade The Ringmaster’s eyes from the morning sun’s strong glare.
The Young Cripple dragged herself to her feet and spat a mound of dust from her mouth. “Hi,’ she said, waveringly as she fought to find her balance. “Do you have a personal relationship with Light?”
VII
The Young Boy crept slowly beneath his house, pushing himself along with his legs, flat and outstretched like a squashed frog. There was little wriggle room between his body and the rotting beams above; just enough so that his right ear scraped but didn’t catch, on protruding nails. He was no amateur, though. He had made this escape enough times now so that there was a permanent channel where his body dragged, which ran from below his dresser to the laundry door, which had been bricked over some years ago. The thought of escaping was far direr and exhilarating than the act itself, which was barely a challenge anymore, and hardly much fun.
He always liked to lay still for a while, in the mound of dirt beneath the sofa in living room. It had become something of a ritual over the years but
now, it was just something that he did without any thought, or any good reason whatsoever.
When he was really young, when something like this was more of a challenge, he would escape most nights at around eleven, or a bit before midnight. He would lie where he lay now, completely still, making sure he was breathing as quiet as possible and, pushing his body up so his right ear pressed against the wooden floorboards above, he would listen to his parents talking. He was a lot smaller back then so there was more room between his right ear and the many nails that stuck out, like jagged hairs in an old man’s nose.
Mum and dad’s favourite show started at twelve, but they’d get the sofa ready a few minutes before, and they’d sit and talk, about anything really, but differently to how they talked during the day, and a lot less condescending than when they talked around him or his sister.
The Young Boy could never really explain it. They just sounded different, as if they’d stopped all of a sudden, pretending to be grown up and so serious-like. They spoke just like kids. They talked about all the things they wanted to do, but they didn’t ruin it like most grown-ups did, by saying all the reasons why they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, or most definitely shouldn’t; like when The Young Boy had wanted a puppy, for instance, and there were a thousand reasons why it was impossible for them to have one, or his sister, before she got sick, and how the only thing in the world that she wanted was to ride a pony on the moon - but that was just cute and silly, and eventually mocked with belittling half-assed laughter.
No, at a bit before twelve every night, they didn’t speak like that at all. They sounded so confident about the future and so unaffected by all of the bad things that were happening right now. And when they weren’t talking with passion and colour about which room they wanted to paint, or where they wanted to put up shelves, they were all nostalgic, talking about how big the kids had grown, and how far they’d come together in such a short time, and how time itself, felt like it had flown by, and yet, at the same time, how it always felt like it had been forever.
The Young Boy never really listened to what they said as much as how they said it. To him, it was like listening to a song without knowing the lyrics. And he’d lie there each night, with his right ear pressed against the wooden beams, smiling to himself and wishing he could be there, sitting between them on the sofa. Now, though, as it had become an irrational habit, like picking his nose, or in the odd way that he held a fork, he lay still, beneath the living room sofa, listening to his father snivel and weep.
In the distance, he could hear bells ringing, and it broke him from his usual stupor. They rang three times and by the third, he was already out from underneath the house and hiding behind a pile of rubble that partly blocked off the side entrance. The crazy neighbour was out again looking for one of her cats. It might have gotten lost, or gone on an adventure, or it might have crawled somewhere to die. She paced back and forth on the road in front of her house, opposite where The Young Boy hid, hunched over and patting her old and crooked knees, calling the cat’s name over and over.
“Ti-ti-ti,” she said. “Come to mummy, Ti-ti-ti, come to mummy. It’s din-din time. Come on Ti-ti-ti. Mummy loves you.”
The Young Boy knew the cat was dead, it had to be. Nobody spoke like that anymore. Nobody said that word, not without someone dying, or something breaking or being taken from you. It was like she didn’t even know or she didn’t care. She was either stupid, stubborn, or just downright ballsy, standing up to Death like that.
Still loving….
Even though…..
The Young Boy snuck along the verges and shrubbery of his neighbour’s yard that were as grey and smudged as the sky, the clouds and the sun, and sketched as crudely as the sidewalks, the bitumen, and all the cars and people that travelled upon them. He ducked under his neighbour’s window, stopping briefly to listen to her bickering with herself over what volume the television should be on.
The argument was completely one sided. It wasn’t too long ago though that there was a combatant, and most of the time an instigator, to the bickering. Theirs was the kind of fighting that cleared trees of nesting birds, and like a contagious laugh or a case of the flu, inspired others into their own frustrated nit-picking, nagging and needless squabbling.
And the woman, Anna, revolved around the one spot like a planet, or a ball on a stick, as if she were gravitating toward some blistering ass whose ignorant opinions and pig headed decisions were, after all these years, the only memories she had been able to keep of the man she once loved.
So she bickered alone, her part at least. His couldn’t be heard outside her thoughts, but at worst, could be imagined, or at the very least assumed. She was so good, though, anyone would think that she was an artist, and not some inward thinking lunatic, if at all they are two separate things.
She knew her part off by heart. She knew everything. She knew his every sly and sniping insinuation, and to her logical defence, his every bigoted and sexist rebuttal. She knew everything he would say he had done, and everything that he’d have no recollection of doing. She knew every one of his arms and munitions; his every poor excuse and defence. She knew his every scour, her every flinch, and their every disquieted pause. She knew just where to draw the line, and she knew exactly when he would cross it. She knew when to sit on the corner of the bed, and she knew which corner to always sit on. She knew when to sigh in defeat, and she knew which fingers to push into her temple. She knew each word of his drivelling apology, and how to shrug off his delusionary condolence. And she knew, just as much as everything else, how far he would go to make his point, and she knew just as plainly, how much farther she would have to travel, for him to make a pitiful and incredulous amends.
And of him, of the man she had spent the entirety of her life loving, this was all she had. So in her bedroom, she swung like a pendulum, moving on the balls of her feet, on light feet, back and forth like a fighter, as if her lover’s memory were some creepy insect that she was garnering the courage to squash. She didn’t though, and she probably never would. She hadn’t the will to stamp him out. In the back of her mind, she knew that as dirty, diseased, and disgusting as this one particular memory was, it was all that she had. And to be without it, meant to be undeniably alone.
As she wept into her clutching hands, The Young Boy continued his escape, creeping low behind every bush to avoid detection. The town was always so busy in the morning, regardless of what day it was. It was as if the whole world woke up every morning and hurried into their cars and then all rushed downtown, expecting everything to be changed, hoping for a miracle that something would be different, anything.
The Young Boy had forgotten how people were before. He sort of remembered, but he didn’t know if it was a memory of something he had seen, or whether it was just something he had thought about so many times that it had stuck. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the things one remembered doing, and the things one spent a lifetime wishing could have been done. Memories were like that - as believable as they were fictitious.
There was one road in and out of town, and it was seldom used. At the start of that road, there was a sign that read ‘Emergency Exit Only – Door Alarm Will Sound – Do Not Obstruct’.
The Young Boy ignored the warnings and made his way onto the road, his eyes set on the massive tent whose point stuck out like a glimmering diamond amidst a bedpan of cigarette ash and diarrhoea, and his only thoughts were of escape.