101 Words

The first peoples wrote their words backwards on the cave walls to be read from the spirit world.

We can see the letters in the light of our campfire, black etchings on water-polished sandstone, as we swig our Budweisers, light a few joints: just old high school friends getting high. Girl-talk, crude jokes, tales of sexual escapades—the bragging goes on for hours until we pass out.

Then, angry spirits emerge from the darkness to confront our trespass, slit our throats, and suck the dying light from our eyes.

In the morning, none of us dare speak about what we dreamed.

“Let’s go.”

Forcefully, persuasively, she drew me out of my cocoon.

Hopping into her neon green Mercedes—impossibly sleek and growling in anticipation of the night’s adventure—we sped into the city.

We sat on the edge of a skyscraper, feet dangling aimlessly as we watched lights twinkle for lives that were not ours, breathing in the cigar smoke as if it were oxygen skimming our eager lips. We cried to mourn our old, contented selves, and then she let herself fall gracefully from that tall ledge. I unfolded my soft, limp wings and followed her, knowing my metamorphosis was complete.

My mum leans over. Says, “I hope one day you’ll have a daughter as naughty as you!” I was five.

Fast forward.

Busy Saturday supermarket. My wild screaming banshee daughter.

Sat in trolley, pushed trolley, balanced on trolley. Fell off bloody trolley.

Octopus arms grabbed chocolate, sweets, razors, wine, kitten food, … anything in reach.

Tried calm voice, angry voice, threats, bribes, biscuit from bakery man, tuts from condescending old bag. No truce reached.

Shopping abandoned.

Manhandle hellion into car where she’ll quickly fall asleep with no remorse and no recollection of her carnage.

When she wakes, I will say to her…

The police questioning stretched on through the night. I wasn’t a key witness. I had been in the washroom and only heard the shots. Hear them still.

I left the restaurant alone and stood shivering on the sidewalk while the EMTs loaded the dead into vans. The wounded had already been ambulanced away, my dinner companions among them.

Years later, we decided to go for brunch at the same location. It was now a café with a sidewalk patio, wheelchair friendly. We could have eaten at the hotel, but this place was popular and only three blocks east into old town.

Everyone scooped up their drink when Neptune slapped his penis down the length of the bar. We gaped as he licked tourists’ nipples wet enough for temporary tattoos to stick. We—consenting adults in that public place—wondered who might be given private audience with the sea monster.

That was last night. This morning, in the shock-white emergency room with my overripe blueberry ankle, I caught eyes with Neptune again. No sunburned breast in his hands, but a fevered toddler and worry-eyed wife still in her house dress. No nod; no wink. Our sacred pact with deity: reverence here, silence now.

The big tech companies’ AI was now sophisticated enough to predict crimes before they happened, all with a simple retina scan. Babies were screened and sorted at birth, implanted with identification chips. The defective ones were sent off to rehabilitation camps never to be seen again, their parents’ memories cleansed of any recollections of birth by the government.

But somehow our son was missed. Presumably a bureaucratic mix-up. Now he roams the streets in a world without police, a felony looking for the right time and place to happen. Finally, his angry knock at our door. We are ready for anything.