101 Words

In writing I feel a sense of control over the world outside of me; the car exhausts and pop music and bills and work and leisure and food and family and friends and the musicians themselves and their image and my image and the ragingly disassociating internal conflict to determine whether the arrangement of molecules in that particular color and subtle variation is something I need or just want to possess, and the money and saving and spending on experience and prescriptions and alcohol and entertainment and sex and kinds of sex and the summer’s movies…and maybe not in hindsight.

Within the four corners, I fall prey.

The alpha—the predator, stalks silently with a hint of smug and sheer confidence. He pounces quicker than a cheetah. I try to dodge, but I’m not fast enough. He pounds his fist on my temple. I see stars and a blur of motion and color.

Coated in black and white stripes, the referee starts the countdown from ten.

Three, two, one.

The bell rings.

My opponent prances around with his bronze yet broken skin and fury red mane, while I lay limp, breathing heavily with a bleeding face.

KO.

Better luck next time.

His wife told him to kill them all.

“Don’t spare a soul,” she said. She sliced the meat, and a small amount of blood pooled in her plate.

He thought her solution extreme, but as he speared his salad, he warmed to the idea.

“What about the family dog?” he asked.

“I never liked the dog,” she shot back.

He liked the dog. The dog was nice.

“Maybe keep the dog,” he said, “but give him a different owner.”

“Do you really need the dog?”

She was right. Dog gone.

He went to the computer, and pressed delete.

Bloodless and efficient.

It wasn’t possible, yet there he was, standing on my doorstep. The knock, coming at such a late hour, had accelerated my heart rate. The sight of his face had stopped it. He pushed his way past, talking of traffic jams and jam donuts, his usual prattle making no sense in its ordinariness. I closed the door and watched him remove his boots.

“Forgot my key again,” he said, then saw my expression. “What’s the matter?”

“I never thought I’d see you again,” I whispered.

“I’ve only been gone a day.”

“No. It’s been a year. They said you were dead…”

He tasted magic in the air. It never got stronger, but steadier, like a beating pulse. He followed it, running. Through the park. Over two monitor lizards. And then it ended.

The taste ended at the water’s edge, and he knew he was too late. He thrust his hand into the algae-covered water anyway, a black hand at odds with his tanned skin.

Here, they called out to him, and he dived.

When he pulled her out, she was blue and cold. But her heart still beat. And when she coughed, the moon shone in her eyes.

The magic yet lived.

We spent our third date at his grandfather’s funeral and I quietly kept to myself while he offered our condolences.

At the ‘Celebration of Life’ dinner, his grandmother caught my eye from the other end of the table. She smiled and waved to me, ignoring the conversation around her. I smiled and waved back.

She then pulled my date aside and whispered something into his ear. Before she took her seat, she turned to me, grinned, and gave me the double thumbs up.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“She said, ‘Marry that girl. I want to be related to her’.”

Martin sat there staring at the key. It was like it was speaking to him, or somehow daring him. It sat next to the cedar box in his sister’s living room. “Look in the box when I’m gone,” she’d said. Cindy passed away last week from pancreatic cancer at 35. Her passing had been hard on him and he wasn’t sure today was the day to do this. He grabbed the key and opened the box. Inside lay a note that read:

When you find this my spirit will finally be free.

We were both adopted from different families. So what?