With Clayface Tornrow

With Clayface Tornrow

A thick stream of gray smoke disbursed into the air as he sighed and said, “man, that was crazy.” He sat on a stoop on the side of a convenience store, leaning with his elbows resting on his knees. Malakai stood directly over him waiting for him to pass the cigarette.

“Do you remember how I pulled out that rod? I don’t even know how I did it, it was like I just had superhuman strength or something man, I just…” Malakai motioned his hands as if he was gripping an invisible pole in front of him. “I just bent my knees and pulled and it just busted out man! As soon as I had it, as soon as I had it out I just dropped it…”

“Yeah I seen that,” he said. “I seen and I was like, damn…It looked like it was way too heavy for you to have picked it up. That was crucial; you got your props today. You got major stripes for that one.”

A light breeze fluttered through the midnight air. Malakai shifted his feet and reached for the cigarette that was almost gone. He looked at it for a second but then just smoked the rest and flicked the butt.

“I wonder if they made it.”

Malakai furrowed his brow and looked to the sky in response. Then he put his hand over his eyes and turned the opposite direction. “What were we doing?” Malakai asked.

“Free sailing,” he said. “You don’t remember?” He asked. “When I looked, right before it happened, we were at a hundred five, just over one hundred and five!”

Malakai grunted in disgust.

“C’mon man, we just survived a life and death experience! That’s the ultimate test of faith. Now you know you’re here for a real purpose.”

A passing car shone bright headlights that poured over the walls like a liquid phantom and vanished in a moment, leaving a brief red glare in its wake.

“Why do I let myself do this shit?”

“Why do you Malakai? C’mon bro you’re getting sentimental on me now? What? You’re mad about those two people?”

“I’m not mad, I’m just wondering where the hell I’m going with all of this.” He waved his palms up in front of himself. “There’s gotta be something else to do beside trying to kill myself all the time.”

He rolled his eyes. “When did you ever try to kill yourself, or anyone else? Who could’ve known we would drift into the other lane like that? It’s fate man, that’s what it’s all about, just fate. Nothing more.  People like you and me should be getting millions to do what we do! We test the boundaries and push the limits-you have proven your worth to this planet!”

They were silent for a moment, avoiding eye contact and spitting on the ground. Malakai paced back and forth, fiddling with his hands, looking for discarded cigarettes worth lighting up. He found one, burnt the end of the butt, and lit the tobacco. There were only a few drags. Malakai’s head snapped toward the street when he heard squeaking brakes. Once he heard the punch of an accelerator he knelt down under the cover of a thin tree. A police cruiser raced down the street leaving a trail of red following.

“He’s probably getting off his shift. Trust me; nobody’s going to find us. They’re probably not even really looking for us, there weren’t any witnesses.”

“There’s always a witness, you know that.” Malakai said. Then he smiled. “That was intense for sure. How did that pole end up on top of them?”

“Dude,” He finally stood up, and lifted his hands in the air to reenact the story. “We were going, drifted into their lane…”He moved his right hand slightly to the left. “They tried to swerve, that’s the last thing I heard before the bang. We must’ve hit the back of their car when they swerved, and they went spinning all the way into that sign. We hit that rail and stopped.” He studied Malakai for a moment. “You know that passenger was probably D.O.A, I mean that pole ripped straight through that side of the car.”

“Damn, we should’ve called the police. I didn’t even think of it.”

“Why you gonna call the police? Tell on yourself? Like I said, fate. If the police were meant to find them they did. Matter of fact, I actually guarantee they did-no way that totaled car is still on the road. Besides, it’s not even about them. We didn’t go free sailing to hit someone. We did it why?”

“Release and discipline.” Malakai said quietly.

They walked almost aimlessly, miles from home, knowing they weren’t even trying to make it on foot. They just had too much adrenaline-powered energy flowing through their veins. They noticed homeless people and graveyard shift employees and neither of them said it, but they both thought they were witnessing the walking dead. They were confident the look in their eyes was one of fearlessness in life and freedom, and seeing the dim monotony in the faces of others made them appear as a shining beacon of alert presence of mind; free of fear and acceptant of fate. They were living to be alive, and not to conquer self-denegation.

They walked until the crack of dawn, when the first beams of sunlight reach over the sky as a morning stretch, and the east side of the world begins to turn just a little purple. They stopped at a park and sat at a bench among the cool dewy grass. They basked in exhilaration and watched the world as it began to move faster and faster. It was still early and dark. 

When the squirrels began scurrying they started moving again. They stopped at a gas station and bought a burrito to split, then sat at a bus stop to eat and wait.

“Are you happy to be alive, Malakai?” Were the first words spoken between them in a long time.

Malakai waited a few moments before answering. “I don’t know,” he said, “I’m just here.”

“But the question is: are you happy to be alive? Look at it this way, do you feel grateful for every single breath you take?”

“No,” Malakai answered quickly and looked him in the eyes. “Why should I? I’m not rich, everything I ever had I had to struggle for, work hard for, or just take it. Life is fucked… why should I be happy for that?” Malakai stood up. “Why should I be grateful when I got to hustle for a barrel of everyday bullshit, and most of these people get everything handed to them?” He motioned his hand out to the road.

“You can end it anytime.”

Malakai sat down and stared down the street.

“It’s not due for another twenty minutes.”

“I ain’t gonna’ commit suicide man.”

“Why not?”

Malakai spit on the ground. His white saliva landed in a bubbly wad next to a blackened gum stain. “Sometimes I wonder,” he said quietly. “Honestly,” He spoke up a little, “sometimes I feel like maybe those people that commit suicide had it figured out. I mean, what in this world is worth anything anyway? Time is forever man, what on this planet can survive the test of time? Nothing. Nothing ever will. When this world is gone, what was ever here won’t even matter anymore, so it doesn’t matter. We all die anyway.”

“I guess… I mean I see what you’re saying, but doesn’t surviving that make you feel like there’s got to be something worth living for? Honestly, there might just be that one woman out there who’s meant just for you.”

“Bitches ain’t shit.”

“There might be one person who needs you for just one moment. Like, sometimes I think we might live a whole life of eighty years just for one conversation-one conversation, when you’re like thirty two. See what I’m saying?”

“I know!” Malakai grunted. “But is that worth all the lumps I gotta’ take for the other eighty years? Eighty years of crap to make some asshole feel better?”

“Man everybody has good days and bad days. Whose life all the way from beginning to end is all pain? We gotta’ maintain through the bad times and enjoy them good times when we got ‘em.”

Malakai sighed and rubbed his face. “Wish I could just get it over with.”

“Why did you go free sailing with me Malakai? I think you really do want to commit suicide! You missed the whole point of the exercise!”

“Release and discipline. I didn’t grab the wheel, did I? You’re the one who opened your eyes matter of fact.”

He sighed and shook his head. “You’re playing a dangerous game bud. I told you the whole point of free sailing is to gain a richer sense of purpose and appreciation of life through…”

“Release and self discipline.” Malakai said simultaneously. “I know.”

“You obviously don’t! It’s not a way to manipulate your true sense of reason, or a way to kill yourself without actually killing yourself. That’s like shooting craps with the purpose of losing! You can’t win out here if you’re always setting yourself up to fail.”

“I’m not trying to set myself up to fail, the universe is! God…” He paused. “Whatever God is, or why or how, but he’s either gonna’ have to face me or leave me alone!”

“You’re trippin’ if you think God is after you Malakai. We’re responsible for our self.”

Malakai stood and paced to the curb, looked down the street and didn’t see the bus. Then he walked back and sat down on the bench. The morning was still young and the first scheduled bus pulled up a minute early. He and Malakai boarded the overly air-conditioned capsule. Malakai almost cringed looking at the pig of a man piled into the driver’s seat of the bus.

His breasts protruded, sagged down his sides and lacked the support they needed to keep from beating against the rest of his lot. His body fat drooped heavily and exposed itself underneath his brown uniform shirt. The man’s body reached for the floor like he’d spent his life eating in a pool of dismay. He chewed on a pastry and allowed crumbs to cascade down his shirt, when he looked at them with dull gray eyes as they put fare in the machine and asked for transfers. Then he lazily reached and tore two small slips of paper off a rack, and handed them away with short, fat fingers. They walked to the back of the bus and sat facing each other. Malakai tapped his foot and rubbed his hands together anxiously before sitting back and relaxing his foot on the seat next to him. 

“What’s wrong Malakai?”

Malakai looked wide eyed with his mouth curved to the side. “Did you see that fat bastard? How’d he let himself get like that?”

He shrugged and said: “to each his own, I guess.”

Malakai shook his head. “I wonder what his purpose is.”

Nobody said anything for a while. They sat as the bus coasted through vacant stops, no other passengers boarded. The driver announced the next street by heaving into a distorted microphone.

Their stop was next. They had to travel to the east side of town which meant they had to transfer buses. Malakai didn’t pull the cord to signal the driver to stop. Instead he just stared through his reflection in the dark window facing him.

“What are you thinking, Malakai?”

Their stop passed.

Finally he spoke, using only essential bones and muscles in his face and throat. “I’m thinking of purpose.”

“Wow.”

Malakai cocked his head and looked at him. “What? I want to know… isn’t it my right to find out if that’s what I want to do?”

“But what are you looking to prove?”

Malakai frowned and lowered his eyelids. Furious anger protruded from his face. He turned his head to the front of the bus. “That I can be more than that.”

“Perhaps we have discovered the riddle of that man’s purpose.”

Malakai glared back at him. “Don’t try to be cute. Besides, I know you’re going to like this. Just trust me.”

“Where are we going?”

“A spot I saw a while ago. It’s a ways, but this bus will take us right there. Don’t ask questions, you’ll see.”

Malakai wore a confidently defiant smile. He sat with his back leaned against his seat, and his foot tapping anxiously in front of him. They didn’t say another word for the rest of the ride. After about thirty minutes the driver huffed into the microphone. “Warren Street.” Malakai pulled the cord.

The bus left a trail of warm exhaust as it pulled down the street, leaving he and Malakai on a quiet street with a shopping plaza on one side, and a park on the other. Malakai headed into the park. Dried twigs snapped and soft grass rustled under their feet as they walked in silence, Malakai leading the way. Scarce street lamps provided just enough illumination that they could avoid lumps in the ground that might trip them. Their footsteps seemed loud as thunder as they crashed into the silence around them. Malakai looked left to right as if he thought he was being followed, and occasionally behind, as if to make sure he wasn’t alone. They walked for what seemed like an hour before they reached their destination, which was a bridge forty feet above a trickling creek.

The water trickled slowly, as if it were trying to whisper secrets to the tree bark above, from the rocks below. The creek looked black as if it closed its eyes to sleep, but quick streaks of light made it seem like it was winking at them mischievously. They stared at the shallow pool from atop the bridge. For a long time they stared, marveling at the dark, murky mass; at its slow and constant energy of movement. The flow of the water seemed to be the vein of the park around them, without which the whole park would be left to dryly wither into sand and death.

Malakai climbed atop the raised brick ledge of the bridge.

“Well this looks like a lot of fun Malakai,” he said. “But this wouldn’t be my swimming hole of choice!”

“A fall from this height into those rocks down there would be fatal, right?”

He stood on his tip toes and looked down into the water below. “If not it’d be painful enough to make you wish you were dead.”

“But I won’t hit the rocks at all. I’m not supposed to die here.”

“You’re not planning on jumping, are you?”

“I won’t die; it’s not going to be that easy for me to get out.”

He sighed. “And what will it prove, Malakai?”

“You haven’t been listening.”

“Oh yeah, purpose. We all have a purpose, of course.”

“Well mine is to prove it.”

“And busting your head on those rocks will prove it, how?”

“I won’t. Busting my head on those rocks will surely kill me.”

“Not necessarily so.”

“If I don’t, I will have defied the laws of gravity.”

“People survive freak accidents all the time. You’ve seen the TV.”

“You’re making me lose my nerve to do this.”

“You don’t have the nerve to do it, I do.”



Malakai stood, feet together on the ledge. “Shut up,” he said. He took a deep breath and raised his arms out to shoulder level, as wings preparing to take off in flight. He looked only forward and up, taking only a slight glance over, at him.

He looked at Malakai with an indifferent curiosity, like he only wondered whether or  not he was going to be entertained. His jaws clenched and his eyes narrowed as soon as he noticed the slightest flinch in Malakai’s body.

Malakai leaned slightly on his heels, then leaned forward and bent his knees. His arms fell to his sides and he raised them again as he propelled his legs and thrust his body forward. The whole motion was one second frozen in time. His body sailed out a few feet into the still morning air, and the only sound was still the crisp water below, trickling along. Malakai never closed his eyes. His body broke through the wind for eternity. He gazed at the moving water as his body turned, his legs rolling over his head. Then he saw him behind the ledge watching. Then, that turned into the purple black sky. The sky seemed to stretch forever, as if some entity had swallowed most of the morning light. Then, the blackness began to drift, slowly, but almost only momentarily leaping, as if the universe had dropped him, and the world was rushing to break his fall.

Then he closed his eyes.

Cool blackness surrounded him. It was as if he had been thrust into the center of a vortex in the creek. The vortex stopped suddenly, and the cool blackness became a hard, freezing trench. The trench sank into him, pushing him as deep as the shallow waters would sink, its cold embrace as if welcoming him to stay forever.

Malakai opened his eyes to see a moving, floating darkness. There was nothing except a brown-gray distortion, constantly moving, like a plane nonexistent in time. It was almost a place found only between life and after life, a moving depth able to harbor only a slight consciousness of presence that would drift forever like a long dream.

Malakai drifted through this dream for another moment, until his chest began to burn for air. He jerked his body awkwardly a few times before rolling on his side and bending his knees. He thrust his torso out of the water with a huge gasp followed by a series of quick, deep breaths. He knelt, looking at the water which, from the top appeared to be a dirty, glassy fluid with mud and weeds in the bottom. He noticed he missed the rocks he had been prepared to crash into. When he looked up again, he realized he could only estimate the dozens of feet he flew through the air to avoid them, he knew only it was much further than he figured possible.

Dawn light had cracked the sky open when Malakai looked up. The park was covered in the golden blue color of morning. Malakai winced and touched the back of his head and looked to see blood on his hand. He stood up in the water, dripping and dirty, then he climbed out onto the bank of the creek and began shuffling slowly back to the bridge he jumped from.

He heard early birds chirping and the crunching of park debris under his feet. His eyes directed his path before him, but otherwise, they wandered off into a place unseen. They sailed past the horizon, as if they belonged to a man who had conquered the world and wanted more. They longed for a world beyond their grasp, but assuredly reachable in time. They moved fluidly ahead of him, never dwelling on, or darting from anything. They just absorbed the world around them as if they were waiting to see something more wondrous then the world could provide. 

Malakai didn’t see him at the top of the bridge, and he didn’t look for him either. He stared at the place they stood as they kept old promises made to one another in the past. For Malakai, it was to live, and quit seeking reasons for things beyond his control. And for him, to never ever bring this up again.

Malakai walked through the quiet park back to the bus stop, sat and waited. He didn’t shiver as a crisp breeze blew past his wet body. He just looked down the street in the direction the bus would take him, crossed his arms, and slowly tapped his feet.