A Summer Day ــ Short Story

 Today marked the first day in the second week of our annual summer visit. It changed, changed very much from those days I could remember. But  no, I couldn’t remember days, not a whole day anyway, just fast glimpses that flickered within my mind then went away before wrapping my hands around them digging for more depth, more memories.

    The first instance I entered the house, after one year of not seeing it; the little changes that seemed so natural to the inhabitants of the house took my surprise. Little details year by year, that must’ve been imperceptible one day, now swept away the place in my reminiscences, and the people within it. This year, gramps put a T.V on the table facing his favorite chair in the bedroom where he and granny stayed. I watched as she entombed herself beneath the many layers of quilts her bones incapable of taking the air conditioner artificial coldness whilst she repeatedly asked her husband to turn the damned TV off as her ears were fed up from hearing the reruns and he would either ignore her or tell her to stop controlling his life. I passed their room and advertisements were on. Funny! So funny how they seem to disentangle life’s deepest conflicts and true heart of suffering into simple products that buy you happiness. The toothpaste will get you the girl. Coke will make you dance. Soap will make all men want you and cologne will make women have hard time resisting your charm. And at the end, all are happy, all a smiling. I watched the sullen face of Gramps and the light in his eyes put off before the cheerful ads and the  irony overflowed my heart and I couldn’t resist smiling contemptuously.        

    At the end of the hallway, there was the kitchen where mom was standing under a cloud of smoke. Seeing me dressed up, she said, while stirring whatever it was in the bowl, “Where to miss?”

  “Going for a walk.”

   “Okay, just don’t be late.”

  On my way to the door, I saw my sister in the living room playing with my cousins; both toddlers whose mother left five months ago. My bag fell and when I bent down to get it, the youngest approached my face with his mouth still incapable of kissing, yet his almost-kiss had more purity and innocence in it than other thing I had ever seen. I kissed him back and wondered how any mother could do that to her child.

   In the sky, the sun was blazing and almost immediately, I was covered with beads of perspiration that made my clothes stick to my body. I had second thoughts about heading back home, but visualizing what awaited me of  dullness made me push my legs faster away.

   Before me stood a clothes’ store and just a glance at it told me that there was nothing there my parents could afford; and really, I took only twenty bucks with me, so anyways, I’d buy nothing. Still, I entered.

   It was a hobby I had, entering fancy places and acting like I had a mine of gold in my backyard. It wasn’t like I ever had dreams about these stuff, but it always amused me to see how the treatment changed when they knew your purse was full. I could act well. I knew how my posture determined everything. Using hands and especially pointers implies a feeling of superiority that makes people feel inferior to you and thus, hate you; but when you go ‘shopping’ in places like that, it was inevitable  to act proudly in order to gain respect determined by how much money is in your bank account, and since I had no bank account, I had at least to make them feel like I was a millionaire.

   I tried on a beige dress that had fake but beautiful jewelry all over it reflecting the lamp’s light. Looking at the mirror, some changes had to be made. I took off the rubber band and let my hair glide gracefully down my back; the shoes too, I threw them away for they didn’t fit. I saw the reflection and it was no longer me. It was someone beautiful. For the first time in my fancy stores adventures I wished I could own it. The price of it appalled me; it was what my dad made in a month. I hid it away and focused only on that beautiful reflection that I seemed to have stolen away from someone else, for it couldn’t be mine. Through my head, ran a million fancies, when abruptly I heard a knock on the door from the salesgirl that made my feet land back on the crude lands of reality. Embarrassed, I gave her back the dress tying my hair and wearing my shoes and the me I had  always been came back.

  I moved forward with a destination unknown. It made me insecure, walking without a target. Within the wide streets, I felt my skin melting into the particles of air as the y burnt in it. My eyes could determine no end to the way.

   I was snatched away from my thoughts by a smell of cigarettes that at first, I let pass unrecognized but when I felt the proximity of it was something I couldn’t neglect, I looked beside me. There stood that kinda guys you always seemed to instinctively avoid saying, “wanna talk a walk with me sweetie?”

 “You go to hell!” I sneered going further away. Going back home.

  I remembered the way he smiled and it made me nauseous. There was always something humiliating about a guy hitting on you; turning the person in you into nothing more than a body that would be rotten when your soul leaves it. Few tears escaped my eyes, and for some reason, the way back home was longer.

   I pushed the door open. No one was in there. It scared me a little but then I saw them all, in the bedroom, around the TV. Gramps was more  alert and granny finally awake; mom out of the kitchen and my sister sat beside her with the little boys on her lap. All were laughing. I couldn’t say happy. Laughter is a spontaneous act that has not the least relation with anything within you. You can laugh when you are happy, and sadness could never stop you from it. Nothing could. You laugh and have no control over it. I searched for an empty room and threw myself over the bed choosing to pass the rest of the day blissfully sleeping.  

To Catch A Thief ـــ Short Story

 For so many years, more than I can remember, I enjoyed the sight of people as they hesitate  near me feeling their pockets and a certain look of confusion accompanied b y the straying of the eye  colors their faces, as though doing some calculations within their heads before they either walk away or throw me a dollar or two, mostly, without even looking. They never do that for me, or for anyone like me, but solely so that they can be so full of themselves and before putting their heads over the pillows, use the missing dollars as a reminder of their act of benevolence. Often, I smile trying to hide my sardonic thoughts at their faces.

   Straying in every corner of this town, my home is always a sidewalk; and  I do not claim that I ever came close to liking it. It has become inevitable, people averting their eyes when they fall on me as though they fell on nothing, shouting at the top of their lungs within my head, “You are nothing!” And I look at that sidewalk and feel that somehow, everyone has rendered be part of it.

    I steal. And I cannot tell when it started for, like the sidewalks, it became part of me. Of course I do it for money, but I will not deny how enjoyable I find it. The rash of adrenaline as my hands pass swiftly over whatever they fall on then quickly hide it into the long sleeves of my only jacket; the fear of being caught that somehow, challenges me into doing it; and after it is done, the feeling I have when I own something I never got to pay for; all make stealing a source of momentary delight. But then, there comes this time when, before sleeping, I stand  defenseless before the guilt that inhabits the unreachable places within my soul. It talks  to me like an outer being using telepathy to inject something good within my filthy being that feeds on hurting others. I tried to quit. A lot. other rosy dreams of a happy conscience that permits sleep to pass through my eyelids without horrible nightmares fill me but quickly fall on nothing. I can never stop it. If not for getting money, then for its pleasure. And then I go and steal, and after that ephemeral happiness comes to an end, I feel self-dread overwhelming every empty hole within my being until it makes me want to peel my skin and get out of it. I crawl back to the sidewalks and feel their uneven surfaces scratching my back , they too, trying to torture me.   Conscience is not my only punisher, neither is it the worse, for as they, sometimes it “sleeps”. Fear never leaves.

  Today, while passing the fish market, I felt a couple of eyes  fixed on my back. Without looking, I ran fast as I could. This all was new to me. After many turns and desperate trials to escape, dirty hands got me.  They took turns punching me and I could feel the salty taste of blood all over my mouth. My head felt as though being twisted in a hurricane. Finally, they let me go throwing me into mud. My blood mingled with mud, The whole of my entity was in mud, And right then, the only thing I thought of was, “You came back to where you belong.’

Lighter Head

The boy at the cafeteria, he looks at me that extra bit longer. I tell him I want my coffee. He imitates what he thinks he normally is handing it to me with a pathetic smile that changes the moment I turn my back and then he starts staring again. The man at that far corner too, stares. And then, all of their eyes turn. Men look at me in a different way, I think, secretly smiling at myself, then fall into a seat.

    I spilled the coffee. Damn. I go to the bathroom to save what can be saved. I meet my reflection in the mirror, and out of the blue, I remember how I often amused myself imagining Brenda Thompson at high school bald. It made me laugh. I laugh now.. And, you are in there, at the top of my head. I laugh at you too, then laugh at myself. I laugh till the bits of my stomach hurt. I push myself against the wall and cry. You told I was nothing but something beautiful to look at. I take a second look at the mirror; I'm the same, just hairless.

Self-portrait with Cropped Hair by Frida Khalo

The Words above: "Mira que si te quise, fue por el pelo, Ahora que estas pelo ya no te quiero"

Translation:"look at what I loved you for, it was for your hair. Now that you are bald, I love you no longer"

Been a while since I last wrote a flash fiction

Dust

When you are covered with dust, you are less than human, Alejandro taught me.

And taught me that the rich people stole our money.

He taught me how to get back.

We were thieves.

   In our neighborhood, nobody owned a house, we all lived on the sidewalks. When it got so cold, we sew old rags and covered ourselves with them. Alejandro would always hug me to make me feel warmer. In Sunday evenings, we lit up some fire gathering around Gabriel who played his guitar and sang old country songs. He was a thief too, but always worked on cars. One Sunday he didn’t come. When I asked Alejandro he told me that a car had hit him and that the police hadn’t investigated because Gabriel was not important enough. I cried so hard I felt my eyes were going to come out of their places. When Alejandro saw me like that he pushed me to the ground. “Crying is for kids,” he said.

   Christmas was one day away; our busiest day in the year; all the wallets were stacked with money. Every year, we tried a new place. All of them were around our neighborhood and the people were not so rich.

 This time though, they were.

   The second we entered, I saw fathers and mothers buying kids my age pretty, clean clothes. For the first time, I felt ashamed of the dirt deeply buried beneath my fingernails and of the torn clothes I wore. I felt ashamed of my skin, of my hair, of myself. I felt I was cheap as dust. Alejandro saw me and his jaw tightened. He clutched my hand and said, looking ahead, “Come.”

   When we entered the shop all the eyes darted towards us; they totally stripped me of everything and I stood before them naked and felt them scrutinizing my nudity then thanked God I was not their child. I saw them moving their kids away wherever we passed like we were dirt.  Alejandro approached a blue sweater with Santa on. He asked a man who wore a uniform, “How much is that?”

He replied, “Nothing you can afford.”

  “I said, how much is that”

  “And I said if you don’t get out of here I’ll have to call the police”

  “Do they capture people who enter shops these days?”

  “If these people are like you.”

   I saw his hands tightening and the veins looked like they were about to burst.

   “Alejandro, let’s get out of here.”

   He stood for a second then towed me to the door slamming it behind him. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the man’s nose wrinkling in disgust.

   I hid my eyes with my sleeves and let my  bitter shame translate itself into tears. Abruptly, Alejandro let go of my hand and shouted, “Didn’t I tell you never to cry?”

   I removed the sleeves and shrieked, “You are a liar, I saw you crying when our mother and father died.”

  The face he always wore seemed to crumple down showing his true age, which was ten years younger than what people thought. In his head, he searched for words but could find none. His lips opened and closed on nothing then his face hardened again and he started walking away.

 I felt a soft hand on my back and turned to see an old lady.

  “Here,” she said, giving me a bag.

  I found the sweater in it.

   For a second it was mine. Its texture would cover my bones. I’d walk in it and all kids in the neighborhood would be jealous. I’d  visit rich streets and no one would be disgusted from me.

 Alejandro snatched the sweater out of my hands, and with it, all my dreams.

  He threw it on the ground and said to the old lady, “We don’t need anything from you.”

  We walked to the sidewalk. Not a word passed between us. But I learnt how Alejandro never cried.

    The muscles of his face were  all flexed, I heard them screaming, “We own nothing but dignity and tears are humiliation.”

   That day, my face changed forever, losing its softness and finally becoming like my brother's.

Purple Skies

With her fingertips, Eve traced the crow feet that dug deep around her eyes. Assisted by a mirror, she feigned a smile to see what affect that had on her face and couldn’t but put more powder after seeing how that facial expression emphasized the wrinkles that had swallowed her. She stretched two thick lines of red upon her lips then started turning around in front of the full-length mirror when a hoarse voice came shouting from the other room, ‘Damn it Eve, the plane is gonna leave and you are still getting dressed! Last month, we got on it by a miracle”

      Not because it frightened her that a shiver ran down her spine; more likely ,it took her by surprise. Instinctively, she hid the lipstick afraid Henry would come and throw one of his cruel jokes. A second thence, she regained her self-control and shouted back, “How many times do I have to tell you not to scare me like that. One of these days, you are gonna get me a heart-attack.”

  “And you are gonna get me a hemorrhage!”

   “Fine, just wait a second”

   “You’ve been telling me this for the past hour”

    “Perhaps if you just stopped shouting and gave me a chance to finish I’d be done by now”

  “Women!” That was meant to be audible by him alone, but seething as he was, it came out too loud for anyone in the house to hear.

   Eve could never  function under the least sort of pressure. While trying to fit in her make-up set into the bag, she wound up dropping everything on ground. It was quite a mess. “Oh God!” escaped her lips in a whisper. She was leaning down to get it but already, half of her body was twisted in the door direction where a fuming Henry was waiting outside. Waggling in her place, she decided she should get out of the room.

  “You know, I think it took the Egyptians less time to build the pyramids,” he said mockingly, “all three of them.”

   Quite used to it, Eve only said, “Can’t we just get it over with?”

  “You are telling me this?”

    He looked at her face and found no response, then silently bent down to carry the bags to the trunk of the car.

   In college, Henry and Eve were deeply in love and right after graduation the wedding was held in a small church assembling their closest friends and family members. They both worked in the same place, but a few months later, Eve discovered she was pregnant. Being her first pregnancy, it was the hardest and she couldn’t resume work. After the baby came, she was too busy to even consider any other thing. Two years later, she was pregnant again and with two little kids and a husband who came in the night, she couldn’t be anything but a stay-at-home-mom. It was only after her two kids left for college that she felt the unworthiness of her situation turning into a stay-at-home-no-one. Now, a grandmother of three, life had nothing else to offer.

    In the car, she leaned on the window letting her eyes wonder to the sky. The sun was about to rise. The sky had an eerie color, purple; and  she couldn’t remember the last time she saw a purple sky; perhaps she had never seen a purple sky. For a second, she saw her reflection in the rearview mirror but then looked back again. Clouds were strewn in disarray that she could find no definition to. She looked at Henry, brow-knitted, and tried to trace the Henry she married. Still resting on the window, she smiled for no apparent reason, closed her eyes and slept.

Strangers' Love

“Does it matter when you don’t care?”

The staircase shook under your feet, or maybe it was all in my head.  Wisps of your electric blue hair swayed with your care-free movements around the wrecked house. And I, quietly, sat on the ground.

“Does it matter when you don’t care?” you repeated.

“Nothing matters,” I said leaning my head on one side to take in your walking that resembled dancing in many ways.

“You are right, nothing ever matters”

“Do you believe in forever”

‘I belieeeeve…,”  you stopped on one step of the staircase shifting all your body’s weight on one leg while your eyes diverted to the right, “that…maybe, just maybe I’ll live long enough to witness my wedding.”

“You never told me that you wanted to get married.”

“Of course I want to get married,” you said matter-of –factly still dancing, “All women want to get married.”

“But, I think you told me you were different”

“You know what, I don’t know”

“Then you shouldn’t have told me so”

“And what do you think?”

“About?”

“You think I’m special?”

“Well, I’ve met you only three hours ago and somehow, you managed to make me break into a house, so I think in that you are very special”

“C’mon, this thing has been abandoned foe years”

“Still, it’s not ours”

“Blah blah blah, haven’t you ever done anything crazy?”

“I’m with you, isn’t that enough?”

  All the while, your eyes never fell on me. Soon, I realized that wouldn’t make any difference; the light came out of the window at a direction that made it impossible to be the contrary. But I thought that maybe  you could see metoo, like what happens with the moon and Earth.

“What are you thinking,” you said, now moving in circles.

“I think that we should get married.”

“Yeah?”

“Why not? We agreed that nothing matters.”

“Ohh,” you said almost groaning, “You are so pathetic.”

“And you are so wrong”

    I made out a sound of footsteps that only kept on getting closer and closer.

“Who do you think that is?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Didn’t you hear the footsteps”

  For a moment you stopped dancing and looked me in the eye, or so I thought, it was too dark to tell.

“It’s nothing,”  you said feigning recklessness and then the tone of your voice changed adapting panic, “just the owners of the house!”

I too panicked. “What should we do then”

“Run!”

We jumped out of the window  pushing our legs as fast as our bodies allowed. After some time, we both halted gasping for air. I sat on the ground and felt beads of cold sweat under my coat which made me take it off while your back was bent and the hair half-hid your face. The second we looked at each other, we were thrown into a fit of hysterical laughing.

I stood up, put my hands in my pockets. You looked surprised and somewhat sad.

“Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“Aren’t you gonna watch the sunrise with me?’

“I’m just too tired.” A yawn came aiding me. I stretched my arms and rubbed my eyes.

Still sitting, your face looked more serious than I  had ever seen it.

“Will you remember me.”

With the same seriousness I replied, “Forever.”

“Well then goodbye,” you said, already looking away.

“Yeah goodbye”

Tornadoes in Slow Motion

I always hated hospitals.

     Hospitals are where strong men moan. Hospitals are where everyone passes you by while you are sobbing rendering you invisible for the whole scene is a cliché. Hospitals are where doctors’ ears grow used to screams of pain. Hospitals are where some die with foreign hand in their innards.  

      I pushed my head against the wall tightly closing my eyes as they became too weary with the effort of staring at nothingness. Images kept on pushing themselves into my mind. I distracted myself following random trains of thought having railways melting into each other until I was led to the very one I had been a voiding.

   There is this point that stands as a red line; marking the end of life and the beginning of life as you never knew it. Some call it “turning point” perhaps because it turns everything upside down or maybe because it manages to turn people into other people. Life before it becomes a mere fancy you torture yourself trying to be alive in itــــa  world that stopped being; and after it, a nightmare you cannot accept that now, it’s way more real than you are.

     The atmosphere of unknowingly waiting almost suffocated me. Expectations are the inexistent shapes your eyes form in the dark. Believing they are true will only make you fall as you reach out to touch them. I never allowed myself to hope; my pain was doubled when it all turned out to be illusion; what came after was like watching tornadoes in slow motion. Deflecting myself from all that was impossible; you could hardly avoid what’s within you.

  No matter how much you prepare yourself, forming mental images, it always gives you this fierce shiver running down your spine; sometimes, like a punch in your. I took a glimpse of other people I vaguely knew trying to get in too. This was when I discovered the true horridness of illness. It bereaves you  from your identity until you become an extension to it, a shadow to its ugly face. People visit, not because of  ‘you’ but because ‘you are sick’ . All those who are sick, can be nothing more than sick people you ought to petty; you ought to look at to make you feel better about yourself.

Suicidal Martyrs

Falling is one thing. Collapsing is another. 

 

And then now, i know how it felt; having your life footsteps away and not being able to collect it. Self-inflected pain. Cutting your skin with the same razor blade, wanting so much to stop, and then, you don't. I wished I could blame it on someone else so it all wouldn't be my fault, so I wouldn't have to add layers of hatred towards myself to that already-rotten heart. 

Hope rises in vapors and slowly condenses and the time you reach out to take it, it disappears. Not ever existing, it not ever existing, you not ever existing, would have been easier. 

Blow after blow, and you ask yourself how much longer to bear. I was that thing boxers keep on hitting for training in order not to hurt a real someone. i was designed to take the punches and slowly swallow my tongue letting it turn into venom eating up my innards and go on hushing the screams. As life flowed, mine with tat rock in the stream nobody recognized. A Martyr I kept on whispering, a martyr was what I had always recognized myself to be. And if you were not a martyr, then i'd be nothing.

Bruises

Between every time you crashed my head against the wall and the other, there was this twinge of pain that rose at the top of my head and retreated again when you gave me time to breathe. I feigned unconsciousness so that you would leave me alone. I stopped my lungs from working until finally the door was closed.

A thousand different thoughts ran through my head. But, mostly, they were engulfing the fragile walls of desolation too strong for me to escape from. I felt the coolness of blood as it touched my flushed skin. I panted and sank into sobs, even though I felt nothing. There are these times when being is too tremendous for you to wrap your hand around it, so you let it escape the walls of the mind as a dream. Then only, the lines between reality and parallel lives become so strained with the effort of holding them each back. Eventually, it breaks, and nothing, nothing at all, stands as a boundary.

My mind swayed as a pendulum between the years and when eternity had seemed like a dream, it was only one day away. The memories fused with each other and I couldn’t tell years apart, and that made me cry even harder. I gave up remembering and went on counting numbers in my head. Still, I couldn’t stop them from recurring like fighting a flood with a ragged cloth and when you cover a hole with your thumb the water seeps through another and you then you founder. Fantasies bound to stay as thoughts were now confused with the past and I wondered, what the use of living is when all that’s left is not real. And is there a difference at all?

I heard footsteps impending. I covered my head wit the quilts and as though my thoughts were afraid of screaming, they too were silenced. Fear added extra strength to my heart that I knew the moment you start hitting me again it would totally collapse. Instead, you tenderly kissed my bruised arms. it was so vulnerable and the feeling of your lips was maximized. Then, only, I wished the repulsion in my heart would turn my hairs into knives killing you. The bruises would fade in a month, but the degradation always slaps you in the face.                                                                                                                                          

Always

Timelessness

In a spaceship
Faster than light
Time ceases to be

Ageless now
Thoughts intertwine
And will we ever meet again?

What do you think
When you are trapped
In a hurricane?
What do you feel
When you can't escape?

Squeaking rats
Just outside the window
Keep it close
And suffocate

Images communicate
Themselves to me
and I can't verbalize
What you are
So i condemn you
And you are not
You are naught
But still you insist
I'm just a lousr painter
I'm just a bad writer

One more sand grain
Still lost
In the whirlwind
Of timelessness

Mists

And then..... it leaves you wondering, what exactly are we? The sameness that forces us to writhe in pain. Agony, it moans with unfathomable names. 

   Disentangling the details, we are all that island of a person. The random scenes that cross the minds, behind them, there are secrets; there, we stopped to live and have yet to live in parallel dimensions when screams are still unheard. 

   we die. From our ashes, there rises another fire. Alone. Those walls of the grave, they smother me. Let the light find its way; but be careful, it might blind me.

    Quotes between the inner lines; Fresh air still hanging on the mists of the morning before the first yawns discard it, hazy memories intertwine. Identify me. Recognize the paleness of my skin. A dead soul speaks tonight. Bruised lungs crumble down. Bruised longs can't but feign oxygen. 

    I thrust the fangs and peel the skin away. I move them to my heart and let them linger there. 

"You can only take too much," I whisper. "You can only take too much."

Swaying

Me…..?

Is that you?

I thought I heard you sighing.

There was a time when I was just me, and me was I. The mirrors cast their reflections and now, I can’t hear my voice through the thousand echoes distorting my vision. And I’m only seeing damage.

I wish I felt guilty to stop. But when I’m this, I’m someone else. And there I am, lost between the shadows. Can you hear me? Please say no.

The faces fleet through the empty rooms, and through the holes in my cranium, I see them. My head falls back and the spider webs are woven upon my eyes. Blindness gives me more freedom to see what I want.

Don’t ever think you are virtuous, beneath the white thick covers, black is always lurking. Black is always there.

You asked me once why I’m sad. I hid my nakedness through a false sheepish smile using the usual excuse of, “I just didn’t have enough sleep last night.” You easily buy this. You know why? Because I and you are only slaves to rules; beneath your white, you couldn’t care less for me. And beneath the smile, I shouldn’t have lied. I’m sad because it’s easier to be sad. Gravity pulls me towards my gloomy core and I give in to it. And why should I fight?  Tell me now, why should I?

I searched for home and found it everywhere only because I’m in it.  I can’t be outside my skin and ......I can't stop hating it