Archive for category Prose

Halloween

This is an excerpt from The Light of Day. This is what Halloween should be like.

 

Beside the house and within view of the bonfire there were two long tables overflowing with pumpkin pie, pecan pie, stuffed squash, fried okra, mashed potatoes and the like. Around the bonfire there were dozens of costumed people of all ages, from babes in arms to those who came as Methuselah for lack of a costume.

They retreated to the porch where, in the shadows, they regained their anonymity and their voices did not carry. Here Chris and Mark rocked in the rocking chairs while Jeff and Alicia ate with their plates in their laps. All four watched the party quietly from their cloister, all of them seeing the party merely as a backdrop to the dramas that were playing out in their thoughts. All except Alicia, who had not shared in the trauma that any of the other three saw so clearly at that moment. Alicia studied the tragedies and passions of other’s lives, but she believed her own ordinary existence too mundane to be noteworthy.

Jeff finished his dinner and joined the other two in their quiet rhythm.

“I thought Greech said Benjamin didn’t like Halloween, but this is quite a party.” Alicia said.

“He likes Halloween. He just doesn’t like the way that it’s celebrated in Bradshaw. He doesn’t have much use for the city.” explained Mark.

“Has he ever actually set foot in Bradshaw?” asked Chris.

“I’m sure he has, just not since I’ve known him.” Mark smiled.

“I’m going to go dance.” Alicia kissed Jeff on the cheek and moved off into the light.

Jeff grabbed her hand as she walked away and let her fingers glide lightly over his. He watched her laugh and dance until his mind wandered and his gaze turned to the fire. He had never seen a fire like this. He had seen cooking fires and the fire in the stove in Professor Friedman’s office, but the bonfire was different. It was ten or fifteen feet in diameter and its flames rose as high as it was wide. When the burning material collapsed, or when Ichabod Crane or the Headless Horseman threw more limbs on the fire, a fountain of sparks rose into the air and were carried away by the tumultuous currents, and floated to the ground, their light slowly growing cold and dying before they reached their destination. It was beautiful.

The smell of burning wood and leaves that carried on the cool crisp October breeze forever associated in Jeff’s mind the smell with late autumn festivities. In later years the association would be free of the turbulence and anxiety of that night. Instead it brought to mind Jeff sitting quietly rocking while he watched the love of his life pick up a small boy, who squealed with delight as she spun him around and danced.

Ichabod and the Horseman along with a fabled long eared miscreant dumped bags of leaves onto the fire, sending embers, sparks, and entire burning leaves rushing into the air along with a roar of approval from like minded mischief makers and shouts of dissent from their more sober minded brethren. This abrupt, although brief, interruption in the general atmosphere of the festivities brought with it a corresponding change in Jeff’s train of thought.

Timeless Moments

The light filtered through the trees creating broken areas of light and shadow. The diffusion of light through the leaves lent a transcendent quality to the area closest to me. I looked further into the distance and the light became gradually murkier. It seemed cool, damp actually. This progression of light from diffuse to soft murkiness made me feel safe as if I was wrapped in a blanket or held in a lovers arms, content, secure, and timeless. A tinge of sadness reached my soul when I remembered this moment would come to an end all too soon. In a few minutes, an hour at most, the light will change and the moment will pass into a bitter–sweet memory with all the other timeless moments.

Park Street

Circa 1992

The heat was oppressive our bodies wet with blood and sweat the smell alone was enough to drive me insane. I felt her hair cool and soft, her flesh glistening and white , luna being reflected off the lake in autumn when the mist was rising through the cooling air. She looked almost angelic. I began to bite my way down her stomach to her thighs. I was tugging and pulling at her flesh with my teeth. I tasted her blood as it began to trickle onto my lips. Her finger nails ripped into my shoulders and I felt the blood running across my skin, forming a hot sticky pool on my lower back. She raised my face to hers, her eyes holding mine the air began to swirl slowly forming eddies around us as we were drawn into each other; Twisting and writhing caressing and tearing we did not become one, but rather our souls and bodies became entertwined perserving our individuality, and becoming indistiguishable from one another from the shear complexity of the patterns that were created. When I awoke we were lying apart. I do not remember the parting of our bodies and souls. I do not even remember if that magical occurrence was real or an ecstatical hallucination. I do not care to recall either. The death of anything is bitter especially when it is as sweet as the nights I spent on Park Street.

Emo? Pussies! This is old school angst.

I wrote this for my fresman english class at Georgia State before I transferred to SCAD. That would put the creation date around January of 1993. As always this is my shit, don’t steal it or I will sue your ass, unless you give me credit and a big fat percentage of anything you make. 

 I walkout of the blinding sunlight and into the dark, the smell of exhaust fills the air. It always seems damp down here as if there were an underground stream running directly under my feet. There is a stream, actually its more of a trickle of bleary eyed human forms stumbling forward to get a quick fix to satisfy their new found addiction, caffeine. The light, that escapes the surface and forces it’s way down this far, is dim and scattered, but it’s presence is one of the few ties to the world above and the reality I have come to know. The sounds that permeate the air are muffled and deep, in a word cavernous. There is the constant sound of heavy machinery on the street above that is occasionally broken by the sound of distorted voices filtering down from the surface to the grime where I stand. I like this place it hides nothing. It always tells the truth. The beams of the street above are not hidden behind colored metal. The voices that can be heard are only vaguely human as the beings that are creating them above are only vaguely human. This is the kind of place where I can watch the world, be myself , and enjoy my existence without the outside world shoving a lie down my throat.