beautiful. intense. dreamlike.
untitled
acrylic on canvas
16″ x 12″
work in progress
still very much a work in progress. but i’ve been posting too many pencil sketches. wanted to post something with colour even though it still has much to do. hope it’s still enjoyed as it is tho!
I can honestly say this story took more than I thought it would, in many ways. I won’t say anything other than: Please read on…
~~REQUEST
Good stuff (wo)meng! Here’s a challenge for you; Come up with a piece that starts off with someone (male or female, doesn’t matter) tied to a chair and having no memory of how they got there. As their grogginess clears, a vaguely familiar man/ woman standing by with a pair of pliers asks them if they are ready. Additionally, somewhere in the story the person bound to the chair must ride a donkey cart. This action must be somehow pivotal to the plot.
~~
~Just One Ride In A Donkey Cart~
1
Awareness is sudden. Strictly sensory. Like being born.
Consciousness seeps in more slowly, nudging the knowledge of self as separate from everything. Pain accelerates the process. Then I am me, fully sentient and alert. Training so ingrained that even now, with agony cloaking my skin, I do not let my eyes fly open or my breathing change more than I’m sure it already has with my awakening. I calm my mind so that my other senses can feed me information clearly. Simultaneous messages swarm in: The smell of blood, metallic and strong and mingled with my own sweat; pain in my upper left shoulder where something is lodged, sharp and splintering, probably wood; my body position is cause for concern – I’m tied to a chair, my torso strapped to the backrest, my arms stretched behind my back and bound at the wrists, my legs tied together at the ankles, and my thighs strapped to the seat of the chair– which feels like wood. My body weight sags forward pulling the cloth around my torso tight, but it hasn’t started chafing my skin, and my muscles are sore but not cramped, so I haven’t been sitting here like this for very long either. I’m dusty. I’m thirsty. I smell shit – not of the human variety. I can smell the probable makers of the shit as well- chickens, pigs, and… maybe horses. But I don’t hear them. The air is thick and sound is muffled, the slight pressure on my ears telling me I’m in an enclosed space. No light filters through my eyelids.
And overlaying all this sensory processing there is a familiar urgency; an internal panic – FIND HER! FIND HER! FIND HER! – an instinct so primal, so part of my consciousness that it registered not in those words nor fully formed thoughts but a focus of self fused into my cells and firing my guts. It’s been taking too long. The longer it takes the more fucked this will be. The more likely that… My brain whimpers.
I hear my own breathing.
And then, less than two feet away, someone else’s.
Despite the pain, I’m only partially injured, so I remain calm. In this moment, it doesn’t matter that I don’t know where I am or how I got here. It doesn’t matter who this person is- person, singular- standing there, breathing softly as they watch me. It doesn’t matter that I’m slightly woozy. I am alive. And I know who I am. I open my eyes.
2
I do it slowly, blinking more than I need to, feigning that I have only just become conscious. Light slithers into my eyes, faint and grey from various slits in the wooden shack that I can identify as an animal shed, seemingly abandoned. I lift my head as if it is weighed down by a wet fishing net. The face is familiar but I can’t place the name. I know that I know it though. And I know that I should. And I know that that face should not be a threat. But right now that face is attached to a hand holding a pair of pliers ready and waiting.
“Are you ready?”
Just a whisper from the dimness, but for the first time I feel a pang of alarm and in a split second my brain floods with mental screams –
NOOOO. I know I was so close. SO CLOSE. I can’t be caught. I can’t be stopped. I can’t stop. I won’t stop. I’ll kill again if I have to. I’ll rip the throat off this fucker coming at me with my own teeth if I need to. I have to find her. I WILL find her.
– before I can steady my mind again.
My brain decides after that long second that the tone and the intonation do not indicate a threat.
“Are you ready?” comes the whisper again.
This time there is a subtle tremor there, slight nervousness mingled with pity, all lacquered with resolve and caution. And an accent. Venezuelan. Caracas maybe.
My answer is, following suit, a command spoken just as softly, “Wait.”
I lean back slowly and sit straight, taking a deep breath, all superfluous actions that allow me to flex and position my muscles for maximum leverage without detection… and give me time to think.
Relief comes with recognition. How could I forget that face, that voice? Working beside me for days now. The investigator. The only person who was helping me.
Helping me find her…
I remember the end of our last conversation. I need to get the fucking splinter out my shoulder so we could move on. We were so close. We need to hurry. All the time I had been unconscious was time away from searching, from getting back on track, from finding her, from rescuing my daughter… before…
“I’m ready.” I whisper viciously, “Get this fucking thing out. I’ve wasted enough time.”
“Only an hour,” the answer comes.
A pause. A hesitant step forward. A hand braces itself against my bunched muscles. Another pause.
“This is going to hurt.”
“No fucking shit?!” my sarcasm grates out. “Get it the-fuck out, for fuck’s sake. We’re wasting time.”
Another pause.
I grit my teeth against the impatience spewing out of my soul. I breathe deeply and make a move to control the situation.
“Why did you tie me up?” I ask innocently.
“Because you told me to!” Voice defensive.
“Did I?” I croon in a soft threat.
“Yes!” Panic creeping in now. “Yes you did. You said you might pass out and that I should drag you in here, tear up your shirt and tie you up so you wouldn’t attack me if you woke up in pain while I… uh… while I took this out.”
“And you did.” I say.
“Yes! I did everything you said! Everything you told me!” the end of every sentence pitched high in accusation and fear.
I look up and lock eyes steadily with her and enunciate each word carefully. “Then. Do. What. The. Fuck. I’m. Telling. You. To. Do. Now.”
She does.
3
I sag on the edge of my bed, hands fisted, yearning for my daughter to run into my room and throw a dirty sock at my head.
She’s been missing for two days.
The police are ‘investigating’- code for holding press conferences, a pappyshow to pretend they are treating the daughter of a soldier the same as they would treat any other citizen… and they are – they’re scratching their collective fucking asses. I don’t expect anything else, of course, I was born and raised here. I know how the shithole works.
I’ve been discharged for a month. They know me well enough to know nothing will matter to me until I find her.
I’ve just come home to pack. I now know that she’s been taken to Venezuela on a boat with four other girls her age, five prostitutes -two from Columbia and three from Morvant- and two seven-year-old boys from ‘some bush part of Trinidad’. The man who had told me had been sure that was the correct information. He should have been. He was the local contact. The fucking supplier he called himself. He was most unwilling to talk to me, of course.
I have always been admired, however, for my skills of persuasion.
I am not sorry or concerned to hear on the radio now that a local businessman is missing. Strange, this sudden succession of missing people. The news-houses must be making mas. They will never have a close to this story though. He will not be found. His remains have been thoroughly disposed of. I can see, in memory, my hand extended, scattering ashes, and I smirk as I realise that it can honestly be said that the fucker has vanished into thin air.
4
It’s been an hour and twenty-one minutes. My shoulder is still stiff. My face is stone. But I’m moving again and that’s all that’s necessary. The part of me that’s heard too many of these fucking stories says it’s been too long. Four days and fifteen hours. And an hour and twenty-one minutes out of that had just been fucking wasted, just fucking lost, and for shit. And being who and what I am, I know how that kind of time can change everything. How five minutes could be the longest and most important time you ever had. A soldier knows the value of every second in a fight, on a mission, in a war. To me, that hour and twenty-one minutes, a period that for most people isn’t even half a movie, could mean the difference between my life and my soullessness. The riptide of frustration, despair and rage laps and sucks at my concentration and shaking it off is like flaying my skin.
But I’m on their property now and it’s not going to be much longer.
The investigator might not be used to violence but she’s good at what she does. From her I know they have an eight-acre layout here, lots of trees and bush surrounding a medium-sized holding-house with one road leading in and out. I’m heading in through the bush from the opposite direction – much less accessible and much less used. I’m getting closer. The meagre trail is getting more and more obvious. In some places there are even slight footprints on the dry dirt. But the light infiltration into this jungle of vegetation has not changed in the past half-hour as I had expected. I begin to wonder just how much clearing could be left around the building. Of course the less clearing there is, the easier it is for me to get close unnoticed, but it also means the harder it is for me to see anyone who may be running guard duty – just too many places for concealment. But a gun in hand tends to make some people arrogant and in this business, in this place, arrogance is the norm. It’s likely I’m the only one who is even considering concealment. That doesn’t mean these assholes don’t have little traps and triggers, maybe even cameras about, and I’m being as careful as I’m being quick. The investigator managed to salvage a few of my little toys that got thrown in the melee and in my pocket is a beautiful work of scientific art – a controller made to interrupt electronics. You just can’t beat the Chinese.
There’s a sudden spike in my system and all the hair on my body stands up, my scalp and all prickling. I stop and crouch in swift silence, eyes and ears alert. A minute and then two and then five go by and still I don’t see, hear or smell anything new. My panic-driven impatience starts a siren’s song in my brain but I’ve been hunting for too many years. You learn, sometimes the hard way, that instinct is a sense all its own and sometimes the most reliable. My recent reminder of how true this is is a fresh frustration.
I wait.
And finally my other senses catch up. One pair of soft-soled boots is tramping the earth coming from south-west of my position. A brisk pace, heavy steps but well spaced – a big, tall person then, with somewhere to go but not panicking to get there. My eyes confirm this as the sound’s source appears, walking in a line parallel to me about ten feet to my right. The requisite gun sleeps at the hip. He’s muttering to himself and his louder words spear the distance ¡Qué maricón de mierda! ¡Maldito pato! Something about a fucking faggot. He’s walking with purpose as I had assumed, which posed both an opportunity and a possible problem. He’d be distracted – always a good quality in your prey – but his absence would be noticed if he was on an errand at someone else’s command. I almost growl at my own momentary indecision. And then I feel a tiny smile in my eyes. The fucker is turning to a tree and unzipping his pants. His only commander at the moment is his bladder. I wait till the noise of his piss hitting the dry bark can cover my approach. I sprint on my toes towards his back and before the yellow stream has time to fizzle out, his neck and spine are no longer aligned. If I’m on my own and going in silent I always avoid bloody kills. I move with studied swiftness now, pulling a pre-knotted rope out of my rucksack; looping it around the asshole’s body, groin to opposite shoulder; swinging the other end over a strong, thick branch at a good enough height; pulling the deadweight carcass until it flops over the branch; manoeuvring the rope back off it; keeping calm when it snags on the bark; catching a cigarette lighter as it falls from a pocket; manoeuvring the rope more; and then swiftly re-wrapping the rope and putting it back into the rucksack.
Then I crouch, ignoring the twinge in my muscles, and wait for five more minutes before the silence of both instinct and environment free me to continue.
5
I’m standing on foreign ground, dressed as a civilian. My Spanish is a choonks above basic and that’s enough to get me what I want – an investigator with a reputation and a tongue for both my language and the local variety of Spanish. I’m on the side of a crowded street, a bustling market scene right out of a Caribbean painting is behind me and if it weren’t for the language difference, I would have thought I was still in Trinidad. Those colourful pictures never reference the colourful smells though, and while such torture is a mere irritation, what bothers me is having one of my senses rendered utterly useless in a place I am unfamiliar with. The only benefit to this place is that my dark skin is inconspicuous; it seems every African ever dragged to Venezuela decided to breed in this city alone.
Just as my limited patience threatens to desert me, I see a figure across the street looking at me questioningly. I don’t bother to waste time with cautious prevarication. What I see fits the description I was given and I stride across. I watch her try to hide the fear in her face at my approach. Civilian clothing is as good as a sheep’s skin right now. Nothing can hide my lasered rage at this moment, but I try to put her at ease as quickly as possible.
“Tengo la mitad de su dinero en mi mochila. ¿Habla ingles? ¿Si?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I was told you’re the best investigator in the city for this kind of thing. I hope this is the truth, especially at your price.”
“Yes”
“Let’s go then,” I say, appreciating her brevity.
She walks and I follow, a path clearing easily as people see me and move aside. Within seven minutes we turn a corner and it’s as if someone switched off a radio full of static that I wouldn’t have noticed was on if I hadn’t been deliberately picking out snatches of conversations to get a feel of the local accent and dialect… and also just in case someone just happened to say something… anything that sounded relevant.
In the sudden sound bubble the whisper of our footsteps is crisp.
“You are… not what I was expecting from the message that reached me,” she says softly, her accent clipping her words over her shoulder.
She doesn’t wait for a response as she rounds another corner and quickens her steps. The ground now is just dry dirt, evidence of the season. I keep a foot behind her as she explains softly why they told me to go straight to her, “street name” – ElInvestigador. Ironic, but I suppose it works for her. I hear the information only as a means to confirm she knows what she’s talking about and that she can deliver the services I need at the pace necessary. There’s a car at the end of this track that she says is hers and I speed-walk toward it. She gets the message and jogs to keep up. Three minutes later we’re bumping along a dirt road leading out of the city and toward the trail the fuckers who have my daughter have left behind.
6
A dark green two storey warehouse sits innocuously ten feet from my crouching form bathing in the afternoon sunlight as if it isn’t the be all and end all of my existence. In the seven minutes I’ve been watching, no guards have come into view or hearing. With the size of the building that means the one watch dog is taking a permanent nap on a tree limb in the bush behind me. My muscles are itching to move but this arrangement is just too suspicious. There should have been, at the very least, one other guard securing their immediate perimeter. I strain again to pick up any sounds from inside but it’s useless with my bare ears and I feel a fresh pulse of anger surge through me over my lost equipment. It’s quickly squelched as my brain moves back into planning, which for me consists of selecting from a menu of suitable pre-determined tactical combinations. My body moves into action upon selection.
I move through the trees in a running crouch for a final perimeter check. There is no change. There is no one outside. There is no sound coming from the trees or from the one service road leading to the one visible entrance – that entrance being a large sliding door that can accommodate a transport truck and probably does on a regular basis by the looks of the tyre marks. There are no windows, only slim ventilation blocks near the roof. Right now, those blocks are my aim. I need to see what’s inside; I need to know what I’m up against. The blocks are about eighteen feet up. With my height it’s a manageable reach. I slip my rucksack off against one of the side walls and get my shit out and ready, grateful that this, at least, survived. I shave two seconds off my sixteen-second best assembly time for this model and, with my back to the wall to maximise my field of vision, I send the snake-cam up swiftly and hold my breath for the five seconds it takes to reach the right spot. And as I adjust the angle I get a bird’s eye view of everything I wish I didn’t have to see.
There are twenty-five cages set neatly into five rows. Most have no people in it. There is activity in one of them. I scan the open floor plan for any other movement but there is none… not even in the other occupied cages. So I swing back to the action and zoom in and it takes my brain a sickened second to process an image that explains the words of the now-dead guard. And possibly also his choice to leave his partner alone while he went a distance away to take his piss. From my overhead view the side profile of a seven-year-old boy, one cheek pressed to the ground, the visible cheek a bruised and swollen water bag, peeps out expressionlessly from beneath the thrusting body of what I know to be the second guard. One hand palms the little boy’s head, fingers twining into his afro. The other hand is out of my sight, probably braced against the dirt-packed floor to support his large muscled body. For just a moment I picture myself sending a silenced bullet into his spine then I scan the room again, my palms sweaty as I search for her face among the other prisoners who are all curled up as if bracing against the action in the little boy’s cell.
And then, there, in one cage, I see my daughter’s arm extended. Her palm, the back tattooed with my initials in a heart, is wrapped around one of the bars locking her in. I get a mental flash of her shaking it in outrage and I feel a shudder of pain and an electric rage of my own. I swing back to the muddafucking shithole who will be dead soon. His thrusting has increased pace and it ends suddenly, almost as if I had actually shot him in the back. I watch as he catches his breath and stands. I watch as he zips his pants. I watch as he walks out of the cage and locks it. I watch as he takes the time to say something to the little boy who has moved only to curl into himself. I can see the sneer in the tilt of the asshole’s fucking head. I take the moment to swing back to my daughter’s cell. She has barely moved and I look away quickly before my focus is broken and my body starts to shake again. I swing back to the asshole but the fucker is done taunting. He’s all business now as he walks to the back wall of the warehouse. He lifts a container and proceeds to empty the clear liquid inside onto the floor. By the time he starts cutting into one of the aisles between the cages, I’m retracting the snake cam and stuffing it ad hoc into the rucksack.
I break another record as I assemble my gun.
I run to the front door and pound on it, using my deepest voice to imitate the dead guard. From this close I can hear the asshole’s muffled voice asking why I’m not using the pass code. I yell that something’s wrong and tell him to hurry the fuck up, asking how long it takes to fuck one tiny boy. I hear him say something to the effect that he lasts longer with one boy than I could with five whores and my anger pulses through me as I crouch, waiting for his approaching footsteps to reach the door. My finger is already on the trigger as I hear the electric beeping of the pass code being entered. He swings the door open, eyes focused where his partner’s would be and before he has time to blink there’s a bullet lodged neatly in his skull. I don’t even take time to be disappointed that I couldn’t torture the muddafucker first. I lodge the boot of his fallen body in the doorway and push it in behind me before I race to my daughter’s cage, the smell of the gasoline feathering up my nostrils. My heart pounds, pushing my relief and fear and pain alongside my adrenaline. I reach to her cage and her name whispers past my lips. I break the lock and push open the cell.
Her hand remains locked around the bar.
I know then that I am too late but for once my soldier’s brain is superseded by a parent’s hope. I drop beside her, her name tripping off my tongue like a mantra. I reach out and put my fingers to her throat, insanely hoping for a pulse while I look at her fingers frozen tight around a metal bar. Her throat is still soft, as are her arms and legs and torso which bears the hole which killed her. But her eyelids squeezed shut, are as stiff in rigor as her fingers frozen tight around the metal bar. I stop touching her as my body slumps, my knees an inch from my daughter’s body lying beaten and shot on a dirt floor. I stare at my baby, her body curled in death as it had once rested safely in my womb. I stare at my baby. Dead. Her hand frozen around a metal bar. Her hand, tattooed with her mother’s initials. Her hand with some muddafucker’s skin under her nails. I stare at my baby as my brain sluggishly accepts not only her death but the fact that, as the degree of rigor tells me, that death came only a little over an hour ago. I stare at my baby. Dead. With semen dried on the skin beneath her soft linen skirt. And as my grief wells, as my rage threatens to burst my skin, I wonder why the earth does not shake beneath my feet. Why there is no thunder booming in fury. Why the air is not swirling with my wrath. Why the world is not stopping in outrage and mourning. Why my lungs are still slurping air into themselves. Why I am not dead beside her.
My brain registers, just barely, the sound of the little boy whimpering a question somewhere beyond this death cell. But I do not care. Not really. I stare at my baby. Dead. Dead knowing her mother had failed her. I stand, not daring to touch her anymore- not worthy to touch her anymore. I turn and walk away. I walk like a lead machine through the aisles, my soldier’s brain back in charge because there is nothing else there. The smell of gasoline permeating the air makes sense as I feel the dead guard’s lighter in my pocket. It makes sense as I walk around the few cages with the dead bodies left behind to be torched along with this holding house which somehow they know has been exposed. Bodies with semen on their thighs – discarded merchandise serving one last use before disposal. Merchandise deemed unfit – too weak after their shipping or – as I consider the skin beneath my daughter’s nails – too untameable. I hear the little boy whimpering to me. But he is alive and I cannot bear to look at him, even as I open his cage and use my phone to relay new instructions to the investigator. He stands before me, this seven-year-old, not knowing what to do with his freedom. I turn my back to him and go to my daughter’s cell to sit and wait beside her body. Beside my daughter who was alive just an hour or so ago. I stare at my baby as this little boy, still alive, sits next to me quivering. I stare at her with the knowledge that even though I will kill these fuckers, it will not matter, because she is gone. The little boy, still alive, says nothing as he shakes beside me, his fingers, with someone’s skin under his nails, gripping his upper arms as he holds himself. I turn to him and behind his eyes there is a faint confusion when I laugh and blurt out the most absurd thing I never thought I would say if ever I sat next to my daughter’s dead body.
“I don’t think I like donkeys anymore.”
7
I’m getting impatient. The car is out of sight behind us now. We’re heading toward a track the investigator says is only accessible by foot and donkey cart. We’ll be taking a donkey cart because that is what most locals do on that track. We’re dressed as locals to this area, my rucksack hidden inside a battered crocus bag. The very thought of using the cart galls me. I’d be faster on foot. But she says that until we pass a certain point, going on foot will raise eyebrows, which of course will negate any advantage in time. So I temper my irritation and take a mild comfort in the fact that at least I’ve made good time thus far and that the plan is clearly mapped from here.
My impatience is building again prodded by a sudden panicked flash of intuition that says to forget this fucking donkey cart shit and just run the rest of the way. We’re trying to manoeuvre around another cart coming from where we’re heading. The driver is some fucking ass who keeps trying to push us further to the edge of the track. His amigos find this very amusing. It’s not a cliff but it would be enough of a tumble to fuck up this old pile of wood I’m in and while the investigator is trying to negotiate reasonably I focus on controlling the urge to blast their faces off. Finally she tells them, in not too polite Spanish, to move their fucking cart because we’re in a hurry and it’s important. Apparently this is also amusing. I turn my head and fix my gaze on a rundown little shack about thirty feet off in the bush just so I will stop visualising my fist reshaping this fool’s face. And then he makes a fatal mistake.
I see these pitiful fools jump out of their cart one by one, the leader asking the investigator something like “What right does a whore have to talk to him that way, and if she’s in a hurry she can get a quick hard fuck…”. I tell her to drive the cart forward and ignore them but she whispers back at me, anxiety creeping into her voice, that the donkey now refuses to move. The men surround our cart taunting us, attempting intimidation, looking at two women in a cart and seeing only available flesh to sink their pricks into. The one closest to the investigator reaches for her hand to pull her off the cart. His wrist is broken in my palm before his sentence is finished and his nose bridge is deconstructed before that first scream of pain trails off. I push the investigator down as I jump off the cart to put the other two idiots out of commission. The last man, the quietest friend, tries to brawl and as I land my final blow, his body jerks back and slams into our donkey. And everything goes to shit.
Our donkey, agitated with the commotion, fights to be released as the investigator fights for control. I see its misstep coming and shout to her.
“Jump down now!”
She does.
And unlike me she’s on the safe side. The donkey’s hooves slip and although I duck out the way, I’m not fast enough to evade the fucking cart which slams into me and sends me tumbling with it on top of me. There’s a burst of pain in my shoulder and another in my head and as my body gets sandwiched under the fucking cart I hear the wood splitting. I hear my flesh tearing, I hear my equipment breaking, I hear the investigator screaming. But most loudly I hear precious time flying by with the blood singing in my ears.
As I push the cart off, I see the investigator running down toward me. She’s swimming in my gaze. I assess the damage to my body and I know that in five minutes I’m going to black out. She reaches me as I stagger to my feet.
“Get my bag.” I say as I move forward into the bush.
I hear her pick it up and run back to me.
“Listen to me carefully.” I say, my voice scratching an escape from my throat.
I tell her as fast as I can what she needs to do. And then my knees buckle.
“Drag me if you need to, we’re not too far from it.”
“Yes… Okay” I hear the fear lacing her words.
I try to say something else, relay some other instruction, but my tongue is heavy now and my brain processes only that time is moving by, wasted. The pain slicing my muscles and pounding through my skull is nothing to the torture my spirit feels at this moment as I sway forward on my knees seeing the earth come up to slap my face with the knowledge that with this – for this trivial fucking shit – the most important part of my life may cease to be.
THE END
Copyright © 2013 Reina Rodriguez-Cupid. All Rights Reserved.
To keep the ball rolling, I’ve decided to periodically post pieces I’ve written in the past once they adhere to the dictate that they be requested stories.
So this post is the first of that kind. It was a step in the process of getting an interview for a copywriting position.
(P.S. Yes, I got the interview and the position.)
~~REQUEST:
In not more than 200 words, write the dialogue: “Strange Person at my Open Back Door”.
~~
~ Strange Person At My Open Back Door~
SCENE ONE:
FADE IN:
INTERIOR: DARK ROOM, DIM TABLE LAMP ON TABLE STREWN WITH DOCUMENTS AND BANK STATEMENTS.
Camera pans across papers on desk highlighting the words: ‘Account now empty’, ‘fraud’, ‘false identification’. Shot widens to whole room.
[Man stands looking bewildered, unkempt.]
MAN’S VOICE NARRATES
Ten years. Married for five. No children. Primary school teacher. She cried when she found out she was barren. What was that doctor’s name? Love…love her. Life together. Ten years. Lies?
[He picks up page and reads:]
“Wanted for fraud.” “Fifteen years.” “Real name unknown.”
I’ve slept with her. Ten years. My mother’s funeral. My brother’s wedding. Know her. Love her. So long.
The mole at her nape her hair almost covers.
The scar behind her knee from the swing in primary school.
HOW?!
[Camera pans to clock on wall showing twelve minutes past five.]
She’s late from work again. What…
[Footsteps outside.]
WOMAN’S VOICE
Babe! Why is the back door open? You taking out garbage? You would not believe my day! If you hear what those little children did today…
[Man turns his head, drops hands, looks confused.]
FADE OUT.
©2011 Reina Maria Rodriguez-Cupid. All Rights Reserved.
So it’s been quite a while, but, I’m finally able to post the story based on the very detailed and interesting scenario requested by my first visitor – namesi. So namesi, just for you, (and hopefully the pleasure of all other visitors) here is my very first requested story which I have entitled: the campout… I hope you enjoy the reading of it as much as I enjoyed the writing.
~~REQUEST:
hello reinawords, this sounds like a really interesting idea. i have a story for you. it has to be comical. a young man, X, who has a strong phobia about insects. however he has never revealed to this to friends. they would only know that his house is always immaculately clean and he has no lawn or house plants. they never figured anything into this. on a long weekend, these friends decide to go camping and they invite X who would have declined except a particular woman, Y, whose attention he has been trying to get for some time, will also be there. Somewhere in all this, there must be an old man with arthritis. His arthritis must play a significant role in the story. i would like to see where this could go…
~~
~THE CAMPOUT~
ONE
Ysandra sat at her grandfather’s feet, as she had for the twenty years since she was three, listening to him weave yet another fabrication of his favourite theme – How I Met Your Granny – while her grandmother sat doing her crossword and intermittently steupsing (with a secretly pleased smile) at her husband’s whimsy. In this version grandpa swore that his heart was gone the first time granny walked past his office, swinging her hips and swaying her backside and bouncing, he said, every straight male heart on the street. Then , he went on, she had turned his way, a smile about her lips, her dreadlocks flowing down her spine (he was poetic, her grandpa), and as he heard, in his mind, Maxi Priest singing “just a little bit longer, baby” she opened her beautiful full lips and said…
“What de ass yuh watchin mih so for, preppy boy? Fix yuh tie an mine yuh business!”
Somehow this version seemed to Ysandra to be the most probable yet.
She wondered, as she often did lately after grandpa’s stories, if a man would ever long for her as her grandpa did her granny.
TWO
Grandpa: Ysandra, where you say you going?
Granny: Solomon, yuh brain is a sieve? De gyurl tell yuh twenty time dey campin up in Matelot.
Grandpa: Is your fault, woman, distractin me with yuh sexy dress…
Granny: -steups-
Grandpa: (to Ysandra) But why allyuh choose to go on a weeken it goan rain so bad? Yuh know how dem road is…
“Is dry season grandpa, de reports say is sun till nex Friday”, she said.
Grandpa: Chile, dem fools ever know anyting? Lemme tell you sumting… You know how long I have artritis?
Ysandra sighed.
Grandpa: Is tirty years now. I was still young and strong and I ups and get artritis, couldn bend to plant good on a evening again. And I use to wonder why… You know why it happen chile? (Voice lowered with reverence and solemnity now.)
And while Ysandra mimed he continued.
Grandpa: Because it was time for my power… every weakness brings a power… and mine was to know the mood of the skies.
Granny: -steups-
Ysandra sighed and just said “Okay grandpa.”
Grandpa: (continuing as if uninterrupted) And I tellin you, my bones say we goan get bad, bad rain…
“Well Matelot far, so we go be good grandpa.”
Grandpa: I doh tink so…
“I’ll be careful grandpa.” she promised.
Grandpa: (ominously) Famous last words…
Granny: -steups-
THREE
The sun was stingingly hot, the air blowing alternately dry and humid.
It was going to be a squeeze; a torturous, three-hour-that-would-feel-never-ending squeeze. Especially if this Xavier fella was the tall, strapping one from the lab she thought he was – the one who seemed to not like her at all. Ysandra sighed mentally, almost amused at the lengths she would go to for a good four days and three nights of camping…
Sleeping under the stars, breathing real air and hearing… only the sounds the earth had made before people spoilt the symphony. (Clearly she was getting as poetic as her grandpa.)
What was so bad about being sandwiched between two fairly attractive fellas for a few hours anyway?
And, as Xavier finally walked through his ugly, sterile concrete front yard, Ysandra smiled. The poor man might be stuck in a horrible concrete cage… but he really was good-looking. Maybe close contact, good conversation and a smile would warm him up. Although, she mused, with the steaming weather he would probably be more than just warm considering his long-sleeved jersey and long khaki pants stuffed into tightly-laced, heavy duty boots.
Xavier: Hey! Sorry I take so long eh, I… uh… forgot to turn off the gas and… uh… pack a few things.
(Ysandra thought “Nice voice too…”)
Alex: It’s cool, we have a good enough start.
Abeo: Yeah, dat and she does drive like she drag racing anyway.
Ysandra laughed, “Abeo, you should talk…”
He just sat still next to her with a comical expression of faux innocence.
Alex: Thank you eh! I doh know who he tink he fooling. De trunk open Xav, jus find a spot for your stuff.
Denise: (Hanging her head out the front passenger window) It should have space nex to de big green bag…
Xavier: Okay… … … Awright, let’s go.
And with Denise on co-pilot duty, Alex drove off as Xavier and Ysandra negotiated their bodies into a semi-comfortable compromise.
FOUR
It took her an hour to realise that she had been wrong. Xavier was indeed the fella from the lab. He was indeed tall and strapping. And it was indeed a tight squeeze in the backseat.
But he liked her. Plenty.
As Ysandra thought back, she realised she must have been misreading his silences in her presence; he just wasn’t a talker. His words were always measured, as though he had learnt to be as careful with the power in them as with the power of his body – and his hands – his hands which were enticing to her: strong, clean and large with short, neat fingernails; hands which had been deliberately gentle, but not weak, when shaking her own. She wondered why he had never approached her. They worked in the same building and even had a mutual friend in Alex. It seemed strange that only an hour before she hadn’t even been sure she could fit his name to his face. Especially since she was now considering seducing him. She wondered if he was so measured and composed in sex.
They talked about work. He spoke of the lab and she of marketing. They talked about meeting Alex. He of their first joint experiments in a UWI lab as partners, which, of course, had been close to flawless; she of their days in secondary school and the unlikeliness of the friendship – languages people and science people were supposed to be enemies. They laughed and they flirted too, just a little, but enough to make Alex peek into her eyes in the rear-view mirror, a clear question in her eyebrow. To which Ysandra replied with their coded nose scratch – I liking it so far, I want to see where it goes, what do you think? Alex’s broad smile didn’t need a premeditated code for translation and Ysandra was comforted. Alex had known him a while and she was more meticulous in her choices for Ysandra than Ysandra was herself. She smiled. A small smile, but one that held volumes of sexual intent.
FIVE
The last stop before the last lap was a small specialty camping store in Grande Riviere. Abeo said they sold the best coal and the best homemade pumpkin wine. They also had a little outdoor terrace for a last lime before you drove off to your favourite spot behind god back in Matelot.
The terrace was simple and sumptuous, secluded by lush bougainvillea that seemed untamed and reminded Ysandra of her own. The round tables speckling the terrace seemed like little booths unto themselves each surrounded by a different combination of plants and trellises, the whole setup giving semi-seclusion within semi-seclusion, yet still open to the air and sky. It looked to her like everything beautiful in the world.
For some inexplicable reason, Xavier hated it.
The man screwed his face as soon as they arrived and proceeded to squirm and complain for the entire hour they stayed – even though Abeo had scheduled the stop for two. The only thing that redeemed his surliness was that even in his mysterious discomfort, he still tried to flirt with her, the result an almost comical mix of smiles and grimaces, subtle touches and sudden winces. He wouldn’t say what was wrong but she got the feeling it had to do with the profusion of plants… which made it all the more inexplicable to her.
Piled back into the stuffy, cramped confines of the car he relaxed. Denise took the wheel and set a cautious pace on the labyrinthine asphalt. The conversation flowed easily again, jokes and teasing flying every which way carrying the last two hours on light wings. As the sun dwindled away, carrying with it the heavy heat, she began to feel the tender loosening of tension that came with escaping concrete and crowds. She breathed in freedom. It smelled of leaves and earth and lady of the night. She felt it seeping sweetly into her system, both calming and invigorating. Her smiles spread wider, her laughter came more often and her eyes sang siren songs Xavier’s way. And he was happy, ready and willing to dance her tune. By the time Abeo told Denise where to park, Xavier seemed ready to melt at her feet.
But as they unpacked the car and arranged their site, she saw the ease drip away from his quickly tightening shoulders and the laugh lines disappear from a mouth that seemed to become an increasingly salty prune. He tried to maintain the levity in his tone and the others were too excited and engrossed to notice the discrepancy but it was glaring to her. More than once she could have sworn she saw him forcing himself to breathe. And more than once she saw him restrain his progressively jumpy muscles. She pondered the mystery as she set up her barbecue pit, glancing in his direction often.
Abeo and Alex set up their tent with the ease of two experts and then helped Xavier with his. She and Denise, as usual preferring a bed under the sky, opted for padded sleeping bags, so by the time Abeo, Alex and Xavier were done, the two of them had already started flaming the stuffed potato in skin and chicken drumsticks that she had brought in her cooler for their first night dinner. The butter and seasonings and the sweet barbecue sauce flavoured the air and the energy around their little campsite. Xavier, sitting beside her, laughed and chatted easily, but she could feel the tension in his body, in the way his thigh muscles remained bunched next to hers. Sitting so close she could turn his way and smell a faint tinge of masculine deodorant, tangy and pleasant but almost lost beneath the pungent, oily bug repellent that he seemed to have lathered on both his skin and clothes. She was glad the smell of the food and smoke was stronger and wondered how she would stand it later if she decided to make a move. But when he turned to her to smile at something she had said, and she saw the genuine affection so clear in his expression, she estimated it would be worth it.
SIX
Dusk was long gone before she realised the electricity in the air was not just her wakened hormones buzzing along her skin. The sky, earlier a velvet indigo skirt studded with diamonds, was now red and bright, clouds hanging heavy and huge. Her mind, of course, replayed her grandfather’s words, no longer with patronizing amusement but with a swirling sense of unease she felt in her stomach.
They were still out around the barbecue pit, the vibes too engaging to abandon for sleep. The little cups of citronella candles that Xavier had brought sat in the shallow wells that perforated the circumference of their site screening mosquitoes and creating a gentle halo in the earth. From time to time one or the other of them would cast their eyes up, but, as if not acknowledging the shift in the sky would somehow hinder the rain, not one uttered a word.
Soon enough though, the wind spoke loud enough that they could no longer ignore her.
Ysandra sighed. “Denise, I pitchin my tent, you brought yours just in case ent?”
Denise: Yeah… I was just tinking de same ting…
Alex: Good ting we find dis spot oui, cuz I know some places we woulda have to worry bout flood.
Abeo: True. Talking bout dat babe, help me take out the candles nah, no sense in them getting soak and spoil.
Xavier: (looking at Ysandra) You need help with your tent?
“Sure.” She said. “We can do mine then help Denise finish hers. Save some time.”
They pulled out her tent and started the setup.
Xavier: (whispering to her confidentially) How bad you think it goan rain?
Ysandra, seeing the now-familiar anxiety clouding his face, sensed the chance to work out the source.
“With how red those clouds looking, I think it goan be real heavy. Like Alex said though, dis area shouldn flood. Xavier… tell me someting… I realise you not big on de whole camping and outdoors scene… but what exactly have you so tense?” she asked.
He stared at her for a moment, looked away and then back at her, seeming to debate telling the truth.
She smiled and asked gently “If you doh like outdoors, what make yuh come camping of all things?
He stayed silent.
His eyebrows hitched as his lips curved into a wry, almost self-deprecating smile that teamed with his direct gaze to say that he knew she knew the answer.
She blinked.
Then she let out a little laugh and said “Wow… I doh remember de last time I feel to blush so.”
He laughed; a gentle genuine sound.
Xavier: Maybe I’ll tell you why I hate camping so much, but only after our first date…
At that she laughed, loud and clear, amused at the audacity of the words paired with the shyness of his expression. She shook her head then she looked him straight in the eye.
Bold and confident and not a little seductive, she leaned forward, put her hand on his chest and, in a low voice, smiled “We’ll see.”
He blinked.
He remained in stasis as she sauntered away to help Denise.
She smiled to herself when she finally heard him laugh out loud behind her as she and Denise finished up.
SEVEN
By the time the deluge actually began, they had already been huddled against the cold in their respective tents, faces poking comically through gaps they left in the zippers so they could keep up the conversation. Xavier’s talking hole was by far the smallest, his lips and one eye alternatively featured depending, ironically, on whether he was talking or listening. Ever so often Ysandra was sure she heard a spray of compressed air coming from his tent next to hers. The rain ensured she got no whiff of what he was spraying but her libido whispered the hope of musky cologne. On the third spray though, her mind reminded her of the strong smell of bug repellent on his skin. And just like that her brain screamed the answer to his tension, his dislike for outdoors, his discomfort by the plants in Grande Riviere, the uneasiness about the rain, his fully covered outfit in the hot sun, the excessive bug repellent, his sterile yard, his job in a lab… all of these and more, little blinking arrows…
THE MAN FRAID INSECTS.
She sat stunned. She gaped in his direction through her talk/peephole. The conversation washed down the leather of her tent along with the rain, unheard and unnoticed as she stared at his one eye tennis-balling between Denise and Abeo. He put his lips to the hole and said something that made Denise and Alex laugh, Alex pushing Abeo aside to shout something equally hilarious through their port. When Xavier’s eye came back to his hole, gaze directed jovially at her, she was still gawking blank-faced. Immediately he tensed, his eye becoming wary, eyelashes unmoving. A question flickered across the brown flecks of his iris and then, as if he knew that she knew, his eyelid lowered as if to hide his shame from her scrutiny. She felt the disconnection severely. His withdrawal stung her skin and she realised her misstep. She had not meant to shame him at all, phobias being no alien to her. She, who had an irrational fear of flying (pteromerhanophobia, as she had learnt it was called). It was just such a surprise to her, what with his size and general command of himself – and of course her inherent bias with her lust for nature – she had fallen into the easy trap of stereotypical surprise that this man had a fear… she was ashamed of herself. She heard the bass of his voice rumble.
Xavier: Okay people, I tink I finally feeling sleep creepin up on me. And I rather be awake when de sun up dan to be sweating inside dis tent.
Denise: Good point… I ain feelin de sleepiness yet but we have de perfect weather for sleepin… I might knock out as soon as I close my eyes.
Alex: Denise you does do dat anyway…
Abeo: (chuckling) She could sleep standin up if she eye close long enough.
Denise: -steups- (laughing) Whatever… I notice is perfect weather for twenty toes too, so allyuh could hush… I goin in. Night everybody!
The goodnight chorus went in a round. Ysandra plotted her time and ten minutes later, at Denise’s first customary snore, she slipped out into the rain. Her boots waded on the mud and her naked body shivered under her huge black plastic coat. For a moment she closed her eyes and bent her head back letting the rain massage her face with wet fingers. Her mind flitted across her grandfather’s prophetic arthritic joints and she thought that, for all the excess of drama, the man had been right about the rain. She slopped across to Xavier’s tent and shook it gently, whispering his name, to no response. She couldn’t hear much over the rain pounding on every surface, her hood included, but she sensed he was still awake.
She shook again and whispered to where she gauged his head would be, “Xavier, I’m standing naked in the rain… Open your tent before I catch a cold.”
She saw the tent shake as he bolted up, heard the entrance zip whoosh and then saw his eye looking up at her. His eyebrow lifted.
Xavier: You’re not naked.
“I am, underneath this coat,” she retorted quickly. “And it cold out here. And just a little bit wet too. Just open the flap a little more. I’ll leave my boots outside and step in.”
She could see his attraction for her building desire in his eyes, not quite chasing away the wisps of shame and reticence, but overpowering them enough that he did as she asked. She slipped barefoot into his tent, graceful as a wood nymph.
“I’m sorry,” she said simply. “It just took me by surprise when I realised.”
He sat quietly, looked at her and then looked away, not bothering to feign ignorance.
“I have pteromerhanophobia.” she blurted.
Xavier: What? I know it’s a fear of something… but… uh… … … no… never heard of it… What is it?
“I have a phobia of flying,” she answered.
She rushed on, “I hyperventilated once just standing in de airport watching my aunt walk into the tunnel to her plane. It’s absolutely irrational. The statistics for death by plane accidents are a minute fraction of death by car accidents. I won’t bore you with the numbers; the point is I know them. Logically, I know the odds of something bad happening is tiny, and it still doh matter.”
She took a breath, sighed and continued, “The point is if anyone understands… I do… and barely anybody knows about my thing. I don’t like anyone knowing. Not even Alex knows and she’s been my best friend for about, what… twelve years. I’ve never told anyone because I had no one to tell who would understand.”
Her eyes lit up, excited.
Xavier: Wow…
He said the word on a breath of wonder and a tinge of relief. He touched her face.
Xavier: You always so… bold… so in control… I woulda never thought… (voice trailing away as he realised he was making the same presumption she had.)
He shook his head and his low chuckle rolled quietly between them.
“Dis trip must have been… must be a nightmare for you. I’m beyond flattered now… I’m… in awe…” she said softly. “I doh think I could go on a plane for anybody, especially somebody I doh really know yet. I’m… in awe.”
He smiled shy but happy, with a humble pride.
Xavier: I’ve been… doin exercises to deal wit it and… well it’s been gettin a little better… in a way… sometimes. In any case, it was worth a try to get de chance to know you.
His hand stroked lightly, gentle and sensual across the contours of her cheeks as she smiled with mischief and sweetness twining in her eyes.
“You don’t know me yet, Mr X.” She smirked.
He laughed softly and she leaned forward to meld her smile to his.
EIGHT
As dawn slinked through the cloth of his tent and the music of the rain and the forest mingled with the cadence of his breathing, Ysandra felt pure harmony lying there pillowed on his chest.
She murmured into his dreams, “I’d get on a plane for you.”
The barest smile whispered tenderly across his lips and his hand came up to lightly stroke her hair.
THE END
Copyright © 2013 Reina Rodriguez-Cupid. All Rights Reserved.
This blog is an experiment in writing, connection and entertainment.
Sometimes people just want to read a specific kind of story.
Sometimes people just want to read a discussion of a controversial issue from several angles… or just one.
Sometimes people know how they want a story to end or how they want it to begin.
Sometimes you want to just read…
This blog is for you to read as much as it is for me to write.
This is how it can work between you and me: Send me a topic, a title, a beginning or ending sentence and I will write you a short story or a poem or an essay… whichever you desire.
The creativity goes both ways here.
you ask, i write…
Est. 2010. Queer & Transgressive Close Readings from the Ungovernable & Dangerous Margins
YAH
give me a title or give me a topic... i'll write you a story
youaskiwrite 