Post by buffysmglover on Feb 18, 2008 2:58:20 GMT -5
I DON'T PLAN ON FINISHING THIS, BUT IF I GET AN URGE TO...
Chapter 1
It was 10pm
The night air beats gently against the second story window of the building, so gently, and it makes the mind of the man sitting just beyond the glass, the mind of the man whose life was ripped away one night many years ago, the mind of the man who is I, flutter past the memories of the dark times I have encountered and rest as it pulls into the short-running driveway of the softer, more joyful moments in life. Starting life. Coming out of the dark place that was my special spot in my mother. Being life. That young age when noone fears the world. There are no fears. Then there's witnessing life. Jack, oh Jack. Whatever happened to him. I couldn't stand to watch him go like that. The one thing that was born into my life and made me happier than anything else in the world. Brother Jack. It was after he entered, nine years after he entered my world, that the stranger in blue ripped him away, just took him. It was 10pm that night, and ever since my life has been filled with those dark places, dark corners, dark times. Where are you, Jack? Why haven't you found your way home?
Why do I sit here, doing nothing but typing? Jack, always Jack. The world should know. Know the pain I've felt, my mother felt before she passed. And why did she pass on? Jack, always Jack. Jack, whose sudden absense in her life filled her. The missing spot in her heart filled with worry, depression, and grief. The depression was a long one-- I speak of her depression of course, seeing as mine is still living and being passed on in these pages.
The room is a small one, filled wall to wall with pictures of Jack, Mother,and Me. Boxes of dross piled up around those. The chair I sleep in, dine in, and am sitting in now sits just in front of the window, a small desk with a type-writer being the only object to separate the two. It's the most I can afford, care to afford. Would anyone else feeling the way I do bother with trying to make a living? Why should I?
There is nothing less interesting than my living arrangements, so why not start the story about Jack? It was about twenty six years ago that I was being motioned into the living room of our old house where Mother lay in a gown on the hard wooden floor staring down at baby Jack in her arms. I sat down next to her.
"Mother, what's his name?" I asked hesitantly, not wanting to disturb her too much (she did just have a baby after all). I was very cautious about what I did, even at ten years old.
"His name is Jack, John. Brother Jack Sparrow," she said. "Would you like to hold him?" I wasn't so sure of my answer to this, but I said,"Yes," anyaway.
"You need to hold his head up while you hold him or he could be hurt," she warned while handing Brother Jack to me. It was relieving to finally hold the little devil that had caused Mother so much physical pain in the last nine months. To know that he was out and she was painless. Then it happened. The thing that I thought would mean the end of my would-be short-lived life. I dropped him. First his head. Then the rest of his body out of the shock that I had dropped his head.
"Mother, I am too sorry for words! I didn't mean to." I literally threw baby Jack at my mother and screamed. "Get him away from me before he is injured more! Keep him away!"
"John, it's all right," she said. "It was your first time holding a baby. I can undertand that. Just because you had a slip of the hand once doesn't mean it'll happen again. It's throwing poor Jack that I don't understand."
"I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt him or anyone else. I'm scared, Mother, I am. Scared of hurting others." Little did I know that in the near future, I would be the only one hurting.
"Just don't let it happen again, John. Would you like to try holding him again?"
"No. I'm off to bed." I jumped up, legs unfolding from around eachother and standing straight. I walked to my bedroom and that was the last Mother saw of me that night, and it was the last thing to happen the day Jack was born.
Something hit me as I awoke the next morning. Father had been helping Mother deliver Jack the night before, but he was gone when I finally entered. He never left without saying goodbye... that was until the night Jack was born. I got out of bed and lived the day as if it were a normal one... but it wasn't. Father was nowhere to be found and a normal day before today didn't include Mother giving all of her attention to Jack. At supper time, I asked Mother about Father's whereabouts.
" He's gone, John."
"But where did he go to, Mother? And why did he not say 'goodbye'?"
" He..." I could tell that Mother was searching for an answer. Why didn't she automatically have one? "... he left the house to head for a better place. Your father passed away, John."
"No. He couldn't have. He was just here last night. You're lying!"
" He is dead and we should speak of him no more!"
That was the first and last time I ever spoke to my mother about Father. I was afraid of what would happen. And even now, decades after the night Jack was born, I still have not found out where Father is buried.
I wonder if Jack even knew, or knows, what a father is. He never knew his father. I tried to help make up for that. We would play card games and go fishing and swimming all the time. I would spend every waking hour I could with Jack. We were so close. I remember one time when we were swimming in Mr. Colls' lake, and Jack began his long time span of asking those confusing questions all kids ask.
"John, where do babies come from?" he asked, making me cough up dark and dirty water. He was only three and a half years old, and I was still teaching him how to swim and holding him up before I would let him go on his own. I was only twelve! And not even his parent.
"Have you asked Mother?" I asked hoping he would lead me to a good answer.
" No. I feel better when I talk to you then her." Darn it! Then I came up with an answer I should of thought of sooner.
"Why is the sky blue, Jack? Nobody knows. Nobody knows why the sky is blue, and nobody knows where babies come from." Of course everybody knows where babies come from, but Jack doesn't know that.
"But I didn't ask about the sky, John."
"Well, maybe you should have because my theory is that when God sees how big a lady's stomach gets, he drops a baby from the sky, into the woman's arms so that she feels better."Was that the best I could do? Yes, actually, it was.
"Hmmm. You think I can learn to float on my back today?"
Everything he learned, he learned from me. To laugh, to play, to give, to share. On his fourth birthday, his wish was that everyone in his family celebrating his birthday would get to blow out a candle from his cake. He started handing out the candles from his cake.
"One to John," he said. "One to Mother. One to Charisma. One to Mr. Colls. Hey, there aren't any more candles!"
"You're only four, Jack. You won't be able to blow out a candle." Mother said.
"Well, here: I'll do you all a favor and blow out all of your candles for you. Savy?"
Yep. He even learned to do favors for people. The "savy" bit must be genetic from Father. He always spoke so differently then Mother and me.
Charisma was a friend of ours. We met her in Mr. Colls' lake. We would skinny dip so not to get our clothes wet, but that all changed when we got into the lake one day and was stunned to see a head bobbing up from under the water. It was Charisma. She is my age. I say "is" because we are still friends. She is my only friend. I wish I could say the same for her, but she's with another guy every night. I can't expect anything different. Women would kill for her looks, and men would kill to be with her. She's the only person who helps me stay alive-- figurativly. She thinks I can actually do something with my life. She is always trying to get me to sign up for irregular things.
Jack was very fond of her. We couldn't do anything without Charisma being present. When Jack was nine years old, he wanted to see a dance. Jack didn't have much experience with dance and may have not even known what he was asking for, only being three and all. He always felt comfortable watching people do what they do everyday. He would sometimes sit under Mr. Colls' old maple tree before swimming, just watching people walk by the front lawn. Then he would holler for me that he was ready to get in and I would come walk him to the backyard, where the lake was.
I thought being able to actually see a dance would be fun, but where we came from, we didn't have the chance very often. There was one place I knew there would always be someone dancing, even after the art of dancing died. I didn't feel safe going there alone at my age, so when Jack asked if Charisma could come with, I knew what I had to do, if not for Jack, then for me, so I could finally experience what happens when you break the rules... We were going to the one place Father went every Friday after work: Drinks For All. It wasn't a place that actually served drinks to all ages, but all were welcome... according to the sign in the front window. Very rarely did you see a person younger than twenty-two.
This was one of those rare occasions, as was obvious as we walked through the unsturdy threshhold that led to the inside of the musty, rotting building that I see every time I lift my head from the yellow paper of which I write on. Back to the story:
Chapter 2
The stranger in blue
The room was filled with jolly men and under-dressed woman twirling round-and-round the dance floor with not a care in the world. It was Friday, the busiest day for the bar... according to Father. Along the left wall of the square room was planted a bar with bar stools packed from side to side, all disabled of movment from the beaten, grainy rock or what some would call the floor. Spider webs decorated the ceiling, and, for those who stood so tall, decorated the customers heads as well.
We searched the room with our eyes, hoping to find a few empty bar stools. Once we did... once Jack did... we sat down. I'd almost forgotten why we were there, to dance. Charisma reminded me.
"Jack," she said," do you want to dance with me." She stood up and held out her hand. If Jack were a grown man, I would have taken this as odd; the man was supposed to ask the woman for her hand.
I looked over and saw a man gesture for a lass's hand. That was the way to do it. The man was wearing all blue, from the tip of the rich hat to the toes of the boots, which every man and woman in the room was staring at, trying to understand the panache' of how the stranger in blue and the woman danced. Even Jack, who had never seen real dancing, stepped away from Charisma and stared at the two as if he recognized the distinct patterns made by the dancers' movements.
The pain I feel comes back to me as I remember everything the stranger did and said as the song came to an end. If only but for one moment I could go back and stop Jack from ever uttering the word "dance." That is all I wish, for if I could do that, then the stranger shan't be able to do what comes next...
He stands with her in the middle of the room, the song just ending. He utters to her a few words that I now know as the words I live by: never stop searching. He turns to me. He turns to Jack who had unknowingly sat down beside me, dazed by the stranger's moves. The stranger then said something very confusing, confusing enough, in fact, that any man who tries to understand it may find their brain far from their head, which would make some men faint, but they will only faint after they see the distraught looks on the women's faces, and the faces of female will only be distraught because of the anger in the stranger's face, which was as confusing as what he said... his anger, that is, not his face, which now seemed quite ugly in both terms of attractivness and expression, even though some people may classify expression as attractiveness, but I don't. What the stranger said is even more confusing than the last two sentences, but I won't tell you what the stranger said to Jack because it was more confusing than these two sentences, and the stranger did talk to Jack, as a matter of fact, and not to noone in particular.
" We need to go." Charisma had just sat down beside me and she hadn't heard what Jack had been told. That was one of the last times I had seen Jack and Charisma together.
We were walking home. It was cold, so cold, and a storm was coming. The clouds overhead had become gray and depressing. Wind nipped at our clothing.
We were three blocks away from the house, just a few minutes away, when I realized that Jack and I were being followed. We had already taken Charisma home.
I grabbed Jack, the last time I would feel his soft child skin, and took off in a sprint. I heard his steps behind me as the man in blue picked up pace. The wind began to cut through my hair as I rushed to the house. The dark, bloated clouds let out their soft howl of accomplishment as rain began to pour from the dreary night sky. I warned Jack to close his eyes. This wasn't so that he wouldn't see--- any possible vision of the world was blocked by droplets of water that pierced the skin and penetrated the night sky--- but so as for the rain not to take comfort near his cornea.
The rain was coming down so hard that I didn't see the upturned cement block that I was running towards. I fell flat against the stone cold, well, stone, which is quite reduntant to say since stone would be as cold as stone. My grasp on Jack had fallen, and through the rough storm, I could make out Jack's figure running, or trying to run, from the man. I saw the taller figure grab that of Jack's and run off.
The next thing I can remember is waking up in my bed at home, soaking wet, not from rain, but from sweat. Mother told me she had found me outside in the front of the house unconscious. She made me tell her everything. I told her that Jack must not have known that he ran past the house. I told her that the man in blue was an appealing dancer. I told her that we'd already taken Charisma home. And I told her what the man had said to Jack. You remember the confusing two sentences, don't you.
Mother grieved over her lost son for eight years before she passed due to bad health and cleanliness. She died on the floor of which she had given birth to Jack on. I had been by her side, watching her life fade away.
" John," she said in a low, low voice," you must remember what killed me. You must remember Jack. He is out there, somewhere. Never stop searching, John. Never stop."
" Mother." She managed to distribute a last cough to the world before she left our plain. I layed down next to her, holding her hand and stroking her soft, blond hair. I noted every temperature drop by degree, keeping track of the death. And after an hour, it was obvious that I was not with Mother no more, but with the body of a once young, beautiful woman. It was stone-cold. There are those words again. Stone. Cold. I shut her fragile eyelids with my right hand. Now be the death of thy who is no longer. The death of the body, which comes after the death of thy soul.
She left the house to me, but I didn't want to live with the memories of what had happened. When I had enough money, I bought the apartment that I sit in now. Remember the one with the boxes of dross?
I heard a knock at the door. Opening it, Charisma stood in front of me. There she was in all her beauty. She nodded toward the boxes.
" One day, just you wait John Sparrow, one day I will have all of those boxes emptied." She lifted a flap on one slowly, gazing at me to see if I would hint at whether or not I approved her looking in the box. I nodded.
She looked down into the box. " Socks? You have socks in a box? That is such a bad thing that that it makes me rhyme just to say it. ' Socks in a box. Socks in a box.' It sort of just rolls off the tongue."
" Why are we discussing socks?"
" John, you need to know something, something very important." Charisma lowered her voice and I could imagine serious and dramatic music playing in the background. What could she have to tell me that was this important?
" Socks go in drawers!" She pulled a quick one on me. I actually thought she had a secret to tell me.
I threw myself on the bed and just laid there, waiting for something life changing to happen. Charisma started to whistle the tune to an old pirate song. I began to sing along with her wonderful, man-made song.
" Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me. We pillage. We plunder and don't give a boot! Give up me harties yo ho."
" John, if you don't know the words, don't attempt." She unstacked some boxes and opened another. " Does this actually fit you?" She held up one of my old baby outfits. I just laughed. " Not that I would think it's wierd or anything...
" John, go out with me?"
" Charisma..." I moaned.
" You never do anything, John. Get out in the world. Come on, now!"
" I've think you may have had a little too many before you got here. Where are we going anyways?"
" Drinks For All."
A few minutes later, I was being pulled into the bar. I remembered those men who stood so tall that spider webs decorated their heads, mostly because I had become one of them.
" Charisma," I moaned," you know I don't want to be here. I..."
" Drink this," she interrupted, thrusting a cold bottle of rum into my hands.
I looked at the bottle pleadingly, as if only it and I could work out a deal where I wouldn't leave the bar after having a few bottles. After no reaction from the inanimate object, I lifted it to my mouth, the scent of molasses just lingering at my senses. I leaned my head back and felt the cold stream of heaven evolve in me. Everything used to be so complicated, and then there was rum. I had never tried before this very moment, but I sensed that I had a liking of it. Father always came here... Thirst must run in the family.
" Good?"
" Let's dance."
" That answers that question."
I pulled her away from the stool she had been planted on, and we began to sway. I was lost in her fragrance, which smelled of mollasses, and I was lost in the scent of rum, which smelled like her frangrance. Her beauty had become part of all of my senses, my life, my moment. It was the rum I was smelling, her that I was seeing, and love that I was feeling. It had never been like this between us. Never. And I had to question if what I was feeling was the alcohol or really love. A wise man once noted that those with alcohol in their system don't control their system.
We twirled. We sprang. We danced. It was Friday night, and the bar was packed. It felt as if Charisma and I were in the middle of a world of passion on the dance floor. She came out of a spin and glided to the other side of the room. She leaped back towards me and I picked her up and jutted my head down, my face going from being even with hers to gliding down her body. This wasn't normal tavern dance. The rest of the drinkers gathered around. After a moment of silence, pure joy spread across their faces. They shouted at us, seemingly recognizing me, although I had never danced there.
The music, scents, senses, passion, ended. I brought her down.
" See what you've been missing?" She let out a giggle and we both started laughing. They entire bar laughed with us.
As we left, a man ran up to me.
" May I ask you a question, sir?" he asked.
" Sure."
" Why aren't you in blue today?"
THATS AS FAR AS I GOT. PRETTY MATURE WRITING IN MY OPINION.
Chapter 1
It was 10pm
The night air beats gently against the second story window of the building, so gently, and it makes the mind of the man sitting just beyond the glass, the mind of the man whose life was ripped away one night many years ago, the mind of the man who is I, flutter past the memories of the dark times I have encountered and rest as it pulls into the short-running driveway of the softer, more joyful moments in life. Starting life. Coming out of the dark place that was my special spot in my mother. Being life. That young age when noone fears the world. There are no fears. Then there's witnessing life. Jack, oh Jack. Whatever happened to him. I couldn't stand to watch him go like that. The one thing that was born into my life and made me happier than anything else in the world. Brother Jack. It was after he entered, nine years after he entered my world, that the stranger in blue ripped him away, just took him. It was 10pm that night, and ever since my life has been filled with those dark places, dark corners, dark times. Where are you, Jack? Why haven't you found your way home?
Why do I sit here, doing nothing but typing? Jack, always Jack. The world should know. Know the pain I've felt, my mother felt before she passed. And why did she pass on? Jack, always Jack. Jack, whose sudden absense in her life filled her. The missing spot in her heart filled with worry, depression, and grief. The depression was a long one-- I speak of her depression of course, seeing as mine is still living and being passed on in these pages.
The room is a small one, filled wall to wall with pictures of Jack, Mother,and Me. Boxes of dross piled up around those. The chair I sleep in, dine in, and am sitting in now sits just in front of the window, a small desk with a type-writer being the only object to separate the two. It's the most I can afford, care to afford. Would anyone else feeling the way I do bother with trying to make a living? Why should I?
There is nothing less interesting than my living arrangements, so why not start the story about Jack? It was about twenty six years ago that I was being motioned into the living room of our old house where Mother lay in a gown on the hard wooden floor staring down at baby Jack in her arms. I sat down next to her.
"Mother, what's his name?" I asked hesitantly, not wanting to disturb her too much (she did just have a baby after all). I was very cautious about what I did, even at ten years old.
"His name is Jack, John. Brother Jack Sparrow," she said. "Would you like to hold him?" I wasn't so sure of my answer to this, but I said,"Yes," anyaway.
"You need to hold his head up while you hold him or he could be hurt," she warned while handing Brother Jack to me. It was relieving to finally hold the little devil that had caused Mother so much physical pain in the last nine months. To know that he was out and she was painless. Then it happened. The thing that I thought would mean the end of my would-be short-lived life. I dropped him. First his head. Then the rest of his body out of the shock that I had dropped his head.
"Mother, I am too sorry for words! I didn't mean to." I literally threw baby Jack at my mother and screamed. "Get him away from me before he is injured more! Keep him away!"
"John, it's all right," she said. "It was your first time holding a baby. I can undertand that. Just because you had a slip of the hand once doesn't mean it'll happen again. It's throwing poor Jack that I don't understand."
"I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt him or anyone else. I'm scared, Mother, I am. Scared of hurting others." Little did I know that in the near future, I would be the only one hurting.
"Just don't let it happen again, John. Would you like to try holding him again?"
"No. I'm off to bed." I jumped up, legs unfolding from around eachother and standing straight. I walked to my bedroom and that was the last Mother saw of me that night, and it was the last thing to happen the day Jack was born.
Something hit me as I awoke the next morning. Father had been helping Mother deliver Jack the night before, but he was gone when I finally entered. He never left without saying goodbye... that was until the night Jack was born. I got out of bed and lived the day as if it were a normal one... but it wasn't. Father was nowhere to be found and a normal day before today didn't include Mother giving all of her attention to Jack. At supper time, I asked Mother about Father's whereabouts.
" He's gone, John."
"But where did he go to, Mother? And why did he not say 'goodbye'?"
" He..." I could tell that Mother was searching for an answer. Why didn't she automatically have one? "... he left the house to head for a better place. Your father passed away, John."
"No. He couldn't have. He was just here last night. You're lying!"
" He is dead and we should speak of him no more!"
That was the first and last time I ever spoke to my mother about Father. I was afraid of what would happen. And even now, decades after the night Jack was born, I still have not found out where Father is buried.
I wonder if Jack even knew, or knows, what a father is. He never knew his father. I tried to help make up for that. We would play card games and go fishing and swimming all the time. I would spend every waking hour I could with Jack. We were so close. I remember one time when we were swimming in Mr. Colls' lake, and Jack began his long time span of asking those confusing questions all kids ask.
"John, where do babies come from?" he asked, making me cough up dark and dirty water. He was only three and a half years old, and I was still teaching him how to swim and holding him up before I would let him go on his own. I was only twelve! And not even his parent.
"Have you asked Mother?" I asked hoping he would lead me to a good answer.
" No. I feel better when I talk to you then her." Darn it! Then I came up with an answer I should of thought of sooner.
"Why is the sky blue, Jack? Nobody knows. Nobody knows why the sky is blue, and nobody knows where babies come from." Of course everybody knows where babies come from, but Jack doesn't know that.
"But I didn't ask about the sky, John."
"Well, maybe you should have because my theory is that when God sees how big a lady's stomach gets, he drops a baby from the sky, into the woman's arms so that she feels better."Was that the best I could do? Yes, actually, it was.
"Hmmm. You think I can learn to float on my back today?"
Everything he learned, he learned from me. To laugh, to play, to give, to share. On his fourth birthday, his wish was that everyone in his family celebrating his birthday would get to blow out a candle from his cake. He started handing out the candles from his cake.
"One to John," he said. "One to Mother. One to Charisma. One to Mr. Colls. Hey, there aren't any more candles!"
"You're only four, Jack. You won't be able to blow out a candle." Mother said.
"Well, here: I'll do you all a favor and blow out all of your candles for you. Savy?"
Yep. He even learned to do favors for people. The "savy" bit must be genetic from Father. He always spoke so differently then Mother and me.
Charisma was a friend of ours. We met her in Mr. Colls' lake. We would skinny dip so not to get our clothes wet, but that all changed when we got into the lake one day and was stunned to see a head bobbing up from under the water. It was Charisma. She is my age. I say "is" because we are still friends. She is my only friend. I wish I could say the same for her, but she's with another guy every night. I can't expect anything different. Women would kill for her looks, and men would kill to be with her. She's the only person who helps me stay alive-- figurativly. She thinks I can actually do something with my life. She is always trying to get me to sign up for irregular things.
Jack was very fond of her. We couldn't do anything without Charisma being present. When Jack was nine years old, he wanted to see a dance. Jack didn't have much experience with dance and may have not even known what he was asking for, only being three and all. He always felt comfortable watching people do what they do everyday. He would sometimes sit under Mr. Colls' old maple tree before swimming, just watching people walk by the front lawn. Then he would holler for me that he was ready to get in and I would come walk him to the backyard, where the lake was.
I thought being able to actually see a dance would be fun, but where we came from, we didn't have the chance very often. There was one place I knew there would always be someone dancing, even after the art of dancing died. I didn't feel safe going there alone at my age, so when Jack asked if Charisma could come with, I knew what I had to do, if not for Jack, then for me, so I could finally experience what happens when you break the rules... We were going to the one place Father went every Friday after work: Drinks For All. It wasn't a place that actually served drinks to all ages, but all were welcome... according to the sign in the front window. Very rarely did you see a person younger than twenty-two.
This was one of those rare occasions, as was obvious as we walked through the unsturdy threshhold that led to the inside of the musty, rotting building that I see every time I lift my head from the yellow paper of which I write on. Back to the story:
Chapter 2
The stranger in blue
The room was filled with jolly men and under-dressed woman twirling round-and-round the dance floor with not a care in the world. It was Friday, the busiest day for the bar... according to Father. Along the left wall of the square room was planted a bar with bar stools packed from side to side, all disabled of movment from the beaten, grainy rock or what some would call the floor. Spider webs decorated the ceiling, and, for those who stood so tall, decorated the customers heads as well.
We searched the room with our eyes, hoping to find a few empty bar stools. Once we did... once Jack did... we sat down. I'd almost forgotten why we were there, to dance. Charisma reminded me.
"Jack," she said," do you want to dance with me." She stood up and held out her hand. If Jack were a grown man, I would have taken this as odd; the man was supposed to ask the woman for her hand.
I looked over and saw a man gesture for a lass's hand. That was the way to do it. The man was wearing all blue, from the tip of the rich hat to the toes of the boots, which every man and woman in the room was staring at, trying to understand the panache' of how the stranger in blue and the woman danced. Even Jack, who had never seen real dancing, stepped away from Charisma and stared at the two as if he recognized the distinct patterns made by the dancers' movements.
The pain I feel comes back to me as I remember everything the stranger did and said as the song came to an end. If only but for one moment I could go back and stop Jack from ever uttering the word "dance." That is all I wish, for if I could do that, then the stranger shan't be able to do what comes next...
He stands with her in the middle of the room, the song just ending. He utters to her a few words that I now know as the words I live by: never stop searching. He turns to me. He turns to Jack who had unknowingly sat down beside me, dazed by the stranger's moves. The stranger then said something very confusing, confusing enough, in fact, that any man who tries to understand it may find their brain far from their head, which would make some men faint, but they will only faint after they see the distraught looks on the women's faces, and the faces of female will only be distraught because of the anger in the stranger's face, which was as confusing as what he said... his anger, that is, not his face, which now seemed quite ugly in both terms of attractivness and expression, even though some people may classify expression as attractiveness, but I don't. What the stranger said is even more confusing than the last two sentences, but I won't tell you what the stranger said to Jack because it was more confusing than these two sentences, and the stranger did talk to Jack, as a matter of fact, and not to noone in particular.
" We need to go." Charisma had just sat down beside me and she hadn't heard what Jack had been told. That was one of the last times I had seen Jack and Charisma together.
We were walking home. It was cold, so cold, and a storm was coming. The clouds overhead had become gray and depressing. Wind nipped at our clothing.
We were three blocks away from the house, just a few minutes away, when I realized that Jack and I were being followed. We had already taken Charisma home.
I grabbed Jack, the last time I would feel his soft child skin, and took off in a sprint. I heard his steps behind me as the man in blue picked up pace. The wind began to cut through my hair as I rushed to the house. The dark, bloated clouds let out their soft howl of accomplishment as rain began to pour from the dreary night sky. I warned Jack to close his eyes. This wasn't so that he wouldn't see--- any possible vision of the world was blocked by droplets of water that pierced the skin and penetrated the night sky--- but so as for the rain not to take comfort near his cornea.
The rain was coming down so hard that I didn't see the upturned cement block that I was running towards. I fell flat against the stone cold, well, stone, which is quite reduntant to say since stone would be as cold as stone. My grasp on Jack had fallen, and through the rough storm, I could make out Jack's figure running, or trying to run, from the man. I saw the taller figure grab that of Jack's and run off.
The next thing I can remember is waking up in my bed at home, soaking wet, not from rain, but from sweat. Mother told me she had found me outside in the front of the house unconscious. She made me tell her everything. I told her that Jack must not have known that he ran past the house. I told her that the man in blue was an appealing dancer. I told her that we'd already taken Charisma home. And I told her what the man had said to Jack. You remember the confusing two sentences, don't you.
Mother grieved over her lost son for eight years before she passed due to bad health and cleanliness. She died on the floor of which she had given birth to Jack on. I had been by her side, watching her life fade away.
" John," she said in a low, low voice," you must remember what killed me. You must remember Jack. He is out there, somewhere. Never stop searching, John. Never stop."
" Mother." She managed to distribute a last cough to the world before she left our plain. I layed down next to her, holding her hand and stroking her soft, blond hair. I noted every temperature drop by degree, keeping track of the death. And after an hour, it was obvious that I was not with Mother no more, but with the body of a once young, beautiful woman. It was stone-cold. There are those words again. Stone. Cold. I shut her fragile eyelids with my right hand. Now be the death of thy who is no longer. The death of the body, which comes after the death of thy soul.
She left the house to me, but I didn't want to live with the memories of what had happened. When I had enough money, I bought the apartment that I sit in now. Remember the one with the boxes of dross?
I heard a knock at the door. Opening it, Charisma stood in front of me. There she was in all her beauty. She nodded toward the boxes.
" One day, just you wait John Sparrow, one day I will have all of those boxes emptied." She lifted a flap on one slowly, gazing at me to see if I would hint at whether or not I approved her looking in the box. I nodded.
She looked down into the box. " Socks? You have socks in a box? That is such a bad thing that that it makes me rhyme just to say it. ' Socks in a box. Socks in a box.' It sort of just rolls off the tongue."
" Why are we discussing socks?"
" John, you need to know something, something very important." Charisma lowered her voice and I could imagine serious and dramatic music playing in the background. What could she have to tell me that was this important?
" Socks go in drawers!" She pulled a quick one on me. I actually thought she had a secret to tell me.
I threw myself on the bed and just laid there, waiting for something life changing to happen. Charisma started to whistle the tune to an old pirate song. I began to sing along with her wonderful, man-made song.
" Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me. We pillage. We plunder and don't give a boot! Give up me harties yo ho."
" John, if you don't know the words, don't attempt." She unstacked some boxes and opened another. " Does this actually fit you?" She held up one of my old baby outfits. I just laughed. " Not that I would think it's wierd or anything...
" John, go out with me?"
" Charisma..." I moaned.
" You never do anything, John. Get out in the world. Come on, now!"
" I've think you may have had a little too many before you got here. Where are we going anyways?"
" Drinks For All."
A few minutes later, I was being pulled into the bar. I remembered those men who stood so tall that spider webs decorated their heads, mostly because I had become one of them.
" Charisma," I moaned," you know I don't want to be here. I..."
" Drink this," she interrupted, thrusting a cold bottle of rum into my hands.
I looked at the bottle pleadingly, as if only it and I could work out a deal where I wouldn't leave the bar after having a few bottles. After no reaction from the inanimate object, I lifted it to my mouth, the scent of molasses just lingering at my senses. I leaned my head back and felt the cold stream of heaven evolve in me. Everything used to be so complicated, and then there was rum. I had never tried before this very moment, but I sensed that I had a liking of it. Father always came here... Thirst must run in the family.
" Good?"
" Let's dance."
" That answers that question."
I pulled her away from the stool she had been planted on, and we began to sway. I was lost in her fragrance, which smelled of mollasses, and I was lost in the scent of rum, which smelled like her frangrance. Her beauty had become part of all of my senses, my life, my moment. It was the rum I was smelling, her that I was seeing, and love that I was feeling. It had never been like this between us. Never. And I had to question if what I was feeling was the alcohol or really love. A wise man once noted that those with alcohol in their system don't control their system.
We twirled. We sprang. We danced. It was Friday night, and the bar was packed. It felt as if Charisma and I were in the middle of a world of passion on the dance floor. She came out of a spin and glided to the other side of the room. She leaped back towards me and I picked her up and jutted my head down, my face going from being even with hers to gliding down her body. This wasn't normal tavern dance. The rest of the drinkers gathered around. After a moment of silence, pure joy spread across their faces. They shouted at us, seemingly recognizing me, although I had never danced there.
The music, scents, senses, passion, ended. I brought her down.
" See what you've been missing?" She let out a giggle and we both started laughing. They entire bar laughed with us.
As we left, a man ran up to me.
" May I ask you a question, sir?" he asked.
" Sure."
" Why aren't you in blue today?"
THATS AS FAR AS I GOT. PRETTY MATURE WRITING IN MY OPINION.
