The Crucifixion

There were so many people, and everyone was moving.

They were yelling, throwing their hands in the air, and shuffling forward, trying to reach the man Pilate stood by.

Pilate stared out at us with an expression of despair.

Once already, today, the man next to Pilate had stood there. Pilate had sent him away, but now he was back, and the pharasees were shouting.

"Crucify him!" they yelled. "Crucify him!"

The crowd rumbled with these screams, and I wiped the sweat from my brow; the heat of all these bodies pressed together making me feel light-headed. I stared up at the man they screamed about, at the robe the color of the robes' of kings hanging limp on his tired body, the crown made of thick thorns stabbing into his skull.

My heart beat fast, imagining the pain.

Pilate was yelling to the crowd, asking what reason he had to kill this man.

The pharisees hollered angrily in reply that this man had claimed he was the son of God. I startled at this, stepping slightly back, and a man behind me slammed into me, giving me an angry expression as he pushed past me.

When I next saw the man, closer up, after weaving my way out of the crowd, he was covered in angry, deep and long cuts, all over his body. His back was bleeding, his chest was bleeding, his legs and arms were bleeding. He looked as if he had just emerged from a river of blood.

Two large pieces of wood, crossed, were settled on his back, and he was struggling to carry them through the city streets toward Calvary.

I could not imagine how a man so deeply injured that he looked to have been dipped in red paint could possibly carry such a weight on his shoulders.

I fell into the crowd again and walked alongside as this man struggled, and then he fell, and I felt as if I, too, might collapse.

He fell to the ground, his legs giving out under him, and the cross landed on top of him.

I barely stopped myself from letting out a shriek.

When a man, one I recognized, a man named Simon, was chosen from the crowd to help this man carry his burden, they picked the cross up together, and where the bloody man had lay, red covered the ground, like the sight of an animal slaughter. I covered my mouth and looked away, but moved forward with the crowd when the bloody man did.

A group of women stood near the bloody man and wept, their tears as numerous as the drops of blood falling from his open wounds. He turned to them and told them not to cry for him, but for Jerusalem, who had turned away from the Lord. I was shocked, and my own eyes pricked with tears.

At the top of the hill, a soldier went to the bloody man and offered him wine. The man tasted the drink and shook his head. I did not understand his refusal. Would the wine not help numb the pain?

They lay the bloody man on the cross and brought nails towards his outstretched left arm. My eyes widened, and I turned and walked a distance from the crowd. I could not watch a nail go through this man's flesh and bones.

But even from where I stood, I heard his screams of agony.

I sat down and folded into myself. A breeze went over my shoulders, and I felt my shoulders shake with sobs for this stranger being nailed to a cross and hung in the air.

I stood and walked down the hill a bit. I could watch no more of this.

When I glanced back up, I saw the bloody man hanging on the cross, all life gone from his body. A sign above his head read, "This is the King of the Jews."

And then a soldier stuck his spear in the man's chest, and I screamed in anguish.

Then the earth rumbled beneath me, and I was thrown off my feet. Fear seized me, and a boulder in front of me cracked in half.

I looked back up at the man hanging on the cross.

This man was much more than the King of the Jews.

© 2012

Dream Girl part 1

The door chimes behind me as I step into the store, the heel of my boot clicking on the linoleum floor. The boy behind the counter glances up and then immediately looks back down, and I notice a book in his lap. I walk toward the aisles and run my finger along the edge of the many records, flipping occasionally through a row, pulling out any that catch my attention and tucking them under my arm. When I've covered an entire aisle, I walk up to cash register and place all my records on the counter, reaching over to the candy rack and adding a pack of gum to my pile. The boy looks up and raises an eyebrow at all my records, but says nothing. He rings me up, the gum first, and I keep my gaze steady on his face as I open the pack and unwrap a piece, sticking the gum in my mouth and dropping my wrapper in the tip jar. He glances at the jar and looks back at me, his eyebrow raised again, but in a different manner. He looks unimpressed. I sigh, frustrated, and take my bag of records from him.

He didn't recognize me, of course. They never do.

I try. Every day I try, and with every one of them I think, "This time it will be different. This time, they'll remember me." But they never do.

I step back out onto the street and park myself on a bus stop bench, pulling my legs up under me and pulling my records out one at a time, taking a closer look at what I've purchased. I blow a huge bubble, and when it pops, the sound is accompanied by a voice, "That's a lot of vinyls you got there." I look up, startled, and a guy with messy chestnut brown hair grins at me, a gum smile; wide. Most people don't talk to me unless I acknowledg them first. And I don't acknowledge many people that I haven't visited already. "Yes," I say, uncomfortable, not sure what to do with my hands, suddenly. He sits down next to me, "You heading to Boston, too? Or just a stop on the long journey ahead?" I clear my throat, looking down at my hands, which are now clasped, and saying, "I'm not sure." He grins at this, "So just taking to the road then? Got your vinyls, got your feet, got a ride." He leans against the back of the bench and stretches his arms along the length of it, and I sit up straight and stiff, frozen, as his left arm is resting behind my back. "Don't need much else, do you?" He grins again when I glance at him from the corner of my eye. "I reckon you'll need a record player, though, or you won't have much use for those," he adds after a moment of silence. I tuck my hair behind my ear and murmur, "I have a record player."

"Oh yea?" I nod. He looks out at the road, and a breeze blows his hair in front of his eyes. "So you don't know where you're going...but do you figure it will take you farther from or closer to this record player of yours?" I'm silent for a moment, a little thrown off by the question, and I finally say, "I don't really know, I guess. I just..." I pause, and look away from him, to the front of the record store, where that boy is taping a flyer to the front window. I try to catch his eye, but the door chimes behind him again without his giving me a single glance. I sigh. "I just have to keep moving. I'm...searching." I don't know why I'm telling him this. I'm not sure if I'm even supposed to, although I'm not sure who will try to stop me. I just don't understand why this person is talking to me. "I'm Jacob, by the way," he says, sticking his hand out to me, a huge grin still plastered across his face. "What's you name?" My eyes widen and I stare at his hand, my thoughts screaming in confusion. I don't know what do to. No one ever talks to me out here, and the people I visit never ask for my name, as their mind usually connects me with someone they know out here. I try to think of it: my name.

Do I have one?

I think about making something up, but I'm really terrible under pressure when I'm out here, and I can't think of anything. "I don't think I have one," I tell him, finally, once his eyebrow has raised in response to my lack of reply. He laughs, "No name, huh?" This doesn't seem to startle him at all, instead, his grin– somehow– manages to grow even wider. He pulls his hand back and leans against the bench, his eyes narrowing, his grin shrinking, just tugging at the corner of his mouth like he's trying not to laugh. "Let's see," he says, and I crinkle my eyebrows in confusion. "No name..." he says, his voice trailing off, his expression focused. "Emanon. Nemano." He pauses anf glances at me. "Maybe one less letter?" I raise an eyebrow, realizing what he's doing, but say nothing. "Amone. Onema. ...Nonam." His face lights up, his grin back, and he claps his hands together, "Nonam! That's good. I like that. We'll call you Nonam."

"That's a terrible name," the words come out of my name without my thinking about them, I blush brightly after they've been said. He laughs loudly, "Well, dang! I thought it was pretty good." He pauses, and then says, "Eh. Doesn't matter what you think. I'm gonna call you Nonam anyways." I blush brighter and cross my arms over my chest, and he laughs, just as the bus pulls up. He stands up and offers a hand to me, "Well, come on, Nonam, we don't want to miss our bus. You've got places to go." I stand up, following him into the bus, and glance at the passengers, searching each of them for a neon. "And people to see," I murmur, and he grins before taking a seat and pulling me down next to him, and when he waits a moment to release my hand, I find that I can't focus on searching these people for neons, instead thinking only of the feeling of this boy's hand in mine.

© 2012

Circles and Squares

"I've been thinking about shapes," he said, and his voice scratched like the side of a knife slicing through a cardboard box. "Shapes?" I asked, turning the page in my biology book and scratching the lead of a mechanical pencil on a blank sheet of notebook paper, copying a definition I found on the page for the word "endocytosis" with my free hand; the one he wasn't clutching. "Shapes," he repeated in agreement, bringing my fingers up to his face and staring at them, holding them one at a time between his own fingers as he examined them carefully. "Shapes like these," he said, "The shapes of your fingers." I glanced at him and then back to my paper, dotting an "i". "My fingers aren't really shapes in themselves," I said, as he held my fingers in his own, his thumb laying across them as he drew the towards his eyes. "They're part of a bigger shape, really, they're part of my hand, which is part of my arm, which is part of my body."

"Squares," he said, not responding to my comment, "I've also been thinking about squares." I brushed my hair behind my ear with my free hand and turned pages in the glossary until I found the word "osmosis". "Why squares?" I asked, as he set down my hand and lay on the pillow in front of me, staring at my face from under me, his eyes wide with a strange sort of fascination. My eyes flew to him and then back to my paper, and I crossed a "t". "Boxes are square," he said to me, in the tone of a reminder, like this would clear up the significance, to him, of squares. "There you are correct," I agreed, nodding, brushing the pesky hairs back behind my ear. He smiled widely and reached up, grasping the stray hairs in his hand and then sitting up so that he could study them more carefully, his eyes ablaze with wonder. "Everything is kept in boxes," he said, pulling my hairs apart and holding each one up to the light which shone over my room, his eyes sparkling delightedly. "Now that, beg your pardon, I must disagree with. Everything is not kept in boxes."

"Everything important."

"People are not kept in boxes."

"People are not things. I said every thing is kept in boxes." I glanced up at him and a smile tugged at the corner of my mouth, despite myself, and his mouth fell open in joyful surprise, his eyes brightening even further, before I blushed and looked back down at my paper. "Osmosis is 'a process by which molecules of a solvent tend to pass through a semipermeable membrane from a less concentrated solution into a more concentrated one, thus equalizing the concentrations on each side of the membrane'," I informed him, keeping my eyes steady on the blue lines of my notebook paper as I wrote. "It's also 'the process of gradual or unconscious assimilation of ideas, knowledge, et cetera'," he replied, his smile huge as he stared at me. My head shot up and I stared at him, bewildered, feeling strangely ill, and yet giddy. I moved forward quickly and my lips touched his lips, like hand meeting hand in a ballroom dance; but it was only a handshake, I pulled away quickly, my heart offbeat, and looked back down at my paper, curling the end of a "g". He didn't move, only took my hand back in his and gazed out the window as fingers ran across the lengths of mine over and over. "It sure is wonderful here," he said, looking back at me, his eyes moving to my lips for a second before flicking back up to my eyes, a blush on his cheeks. "And you've only just arrived," I replied, the sound of his train receding in the distance as he traced circles on my palm.

© 2012

Relinquishment

"Listen," he said, and his voice sent shivers down my back, I squeezed my eyes shut. "Do you hear them?"

"Please."

I couldn't do this. I needed...I don't know what I needed. I couldn't think, not with him there. His presence seemed to suck away all my thoughts, so that all I felt; all I saw and all I smelled and all I heard, was him. He was everything and he was all around me.

"I–"

"Please," I said again, and my hands flew out to him and set on fire when they touched his. He went still. I tucked my head between my knees and slowly pulled my hands away, and one of his hands flinched, like he wanted to pull mine back.

"I can't," I whispered. I shook my head. "I can't, I..." He was silent, and I wanted him to talk, I wanted to reach out to him, I wanted to feel his face in front of mine. "Please go," I murmured, and he stood up. I squeezed my eyes shut again and pulled my hands into myself. He said nothing for a moment, and I finally looked up at him. His face was pain-stricken, he looked like he was staring at the dying body of his mother.

"I need you," he whispered. "No," I said, and my voice shook. I tried to keep my gaze steady on his eyes as I spoke, but I couldn't manage; the pain in them burned holes through my chest and it hurt, it hurt so much. "You don't."

He was gone, then, because he always did what I asked of him.

I buried my face into my knees and screamed, screamed, screamed; I needed him back.

© 2012

The Blue Box Answer

I filled the cup with water and set it on the table.

"Thank you," he said politely, and I stared at him for a moment before walking back into the kitchen and drying my hands on the dish towel. "What do you want," I said finally, not turning to look at him; with so little energy that the question didn't even sound like a question.

"Listen," he said.

He always started this way.

But it was unnecessary.

I was always already listening.

"Listen," he said again, his hand falling to the table. I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on the fridge. "I'm listening," I whispered, the anguish clear in my voice.

He was silent for a moment, and fear made my chest constrict violently as I waited for the sound of the front door clicking shut behind him again. "I need the box, Lenina." He stopped, and then added, more quietly, more sadly, "Please."

He knew I wouldn't give it to him.

It was the only thing that kept him coming back.

"I can't, Henry. You know I can't." And it was true. He knew as well as I did my inability to give him up.

People say that true love is being willing to let someone go. If this is true, then I guess I'm not truly in love with Henry, because nothing pains me more than the thought of his leaving forever.

Except maybe the look on his face every time he tries.

When the door does click shut behind Henry, I slide to the floor– I never turned away from the fridge except to glance, just once, at his Neptune-blue eyes.

Tears escape me, my sobs are dry and pathetic. My fingers curl on the cold tile and I ask myself what I'm doing with my life.

I stand up and walk up to my bedroom, to the chest on my bedside table.

I pull the key out my pocket and unlock the tiny treasure trove, and inside the blue box waits for me.

It, too, is Neptune-colored, azure satin coating the top and bottom. I wonder if the inside, too, is coated in the satin, but I don't open it to check.

I don't know what is in this little blue box, but I know it is my answer to prayer.

I run my fingers along the satin and a tear finally falls, staining the fabric.

I place the box back in my little chest and place my hand on the lid.

And I look out my window to see his silhouette in the distance as he walks away from me.

But he'll be back.

I turn back to the chest and turn my key in the lock, to protect my blue box answer.

© 2012

An Amnesiac & a Phantom

The tears fell down her cheek like sliding diamonds, and the wind blew goosebumps onto her forearms. It was startlingly quiet; so quiet the echoes of the silence made music in your ears.

He sat in a crowd of people, glancing up anxiously ever so often, every muscle in his body longing to stand up and walk away. A girl raised her eyebrow at him, but he made no eye contact with her, moving closer to the fire and staring at the ground.

She was barefoot, and the sharp rocks cut her feet as she walked, leaving a trail of bloodspots behind her. The air was freezing, and her teeth chattered as she wrapped her arms around herself.

He pushed up from the ground and turned from them, walking towards the magnetic force which pulled him from this spot. Away from the fire, it was devastatingly cold, and a shiver ran up his spine as he zipped his jacket and folded his arms against his chest.

She tripped over a thick tree root and fell to ground, the rocks cutting her knees. Blood got on her dress, and she pressed it against the scratches before standing up and walking again.

He walked without thinking, as if someone was calling his name and he was moving toward them. His shoes crunched on the small rocks and he heard the sound of the creek rushing in the distance.

She pressed ever forward, breathing deeply through her nose; her tears making the breaths shaky. Her feet stung from the cuts and she could feel sand implanting itself into them.

It was beginning to get dark, and he felt that he should probably turn back, but somehow, he couldn't. Something kept him moving forward, though he had no idea where he was going.

She heard footsteps in the distance, finally, making their way towards her, and she clasped a hand over her mouth and cried out quietly, joyfully, her tears flowing more freely; now tears of exultation.

He heard something like a voice up ahead of him, a quiet, gleeful noise, and his heart began to inexplicably pound in his chest.

She removed her hand from her mouth and broke into a run.

He heard footsteps in front of him, and something made him run.

She saw his shadow before his body.

She was beautiful and bloody, a white dress lapping at her knees.

She fell to her knees in front of him and reached for his hands.

He collapsed to his knees and felt his fingers intertwine with hers.

She leaned into his chest and let out a sigh of relief. "I missed you," she sighed.

He put his hand on her hair and rested his cheek on her head, closing his eyes. He did not recognize this girl, but there was something familiar in her touch.

"I missed you, too," he whispered, with confusion and relief in his voice.

© 2011

In Restless Dreams I Walked Alone

"In restless dreams I walked alone/Narrow streets of cobblestone" – Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel

It was cold and dark, and I was inexplicably tired.

I moved forward as if on a conveyor belt, only because I felt my legs moving, not because there was anywhere I wanted to go.

My footsteps echoed on walls that weren't there, and the wind whispered words into my ears, but they were in foreign languages, and my frustrated attempts to decipher their meanings were worthless.

I heard water in the distance, but I walked through a barren-looking city; with nature nowhere to be seen, and it didn't make any sense.

But I didn't notice the strangeness then. I just kept walking.

A banker pulled up in a long black automobile and his door flew off, hitting the ground with a thud and spinning along the cobblestone, coming to a stop at the sidewalk opposite the vehicle. The banker stepped out and pressed a button on his keys, and the door jumped up and flew back to the car, reattaching itself.

I cleared my throat, and the banker sent me a weary glance but said nothing, then setting off on foot toward the bank a few buildings down.

I brushed my hair behind my ear and looked at the ground, and when I looked up again, I was in a small town bursting with color, hooves clattering on the cobblestones and children shouting gleefully as they ran through the streets. People wheeled carts full of souvenirs and pastries along the roads, chatting loudly with each other or yelling out in announcer-esque voices what they were selling.

I was still walking, and I turned my head as I walked so as to see everything.

It was really quite a spectacle.

But I still felt exhausted, and the whole town only made me feel more so.

I looked down again, and when I looked up, I was lying in a bed.

It was warm and the covers dark brown, wrapped around me delicately. The pillow was soft and the matress comfortable.

But as I stared at the ceiling above me, sleep evaded my tired eyes.

I heard footsteps on cobblestone outside a window I hadn't known I had, and I turned to look.

I was so tired.

But I couldn't fall asleep.

© 2011