Alice-Tales of the Free

Chapter 1

         There was little to be said that had not been said before about the blue skies and the hurried look of the trees as they flew by. Alice looked at them, surrounded by a metal coffin of cacophony, sedentary in a flowing vein of life. A large amount of invasive noises made by the wind that came rushing through the small crack in the space between the backseat window and car frame made her slowly grow deaf. She turned away from the vicious pounding sound, filled with tears and salivating with the promise of release in the form of an emptying of a bladder. As her delicate worn-down callouses scraped against her ribs, her breathing grew shallow. She slumped in her seat, breathing in and out with as much force as one could have used in that simple task needed for life.

30Everyone was startled by the sounds emitted from the back. They turned around. Mother and Father were talking only briefly about the reflection that their faces made in the windshield, a fleeting image in the midst of the ones that had already been talked about. Sister was sitting next to Alice, absentmindedly touching the worn pages of the journal that someone had given her in a moment of hurried abandon. They were only a few seconds too late.

         By then, Alice had only muttered one utterance, “Here.” She rolled her eyes above her head to deliver a terrible ripping puff of air, and had slowly began her journey elsewhere. On foot of course, she carried her body across the plane, her socks in one hand and her shoes in the other. The veins in her wrists, having been cut off of all oxygen as she lay on the floor of the car, stood out like blue rivers against areas of land covered in white sand.

         Swerve, dash, trip, fall. Mother screamed. “My baby! Shall we stop the car?” Father wiped beneath his glasses, preparing himself for the burial. Shaking her knee gently, he whispered: “If only you were here, my gently dying mound of feathers. If only you could be here with my baby.” Sister was still in her trance, blood now marring her pages with red. She was always the dying bird. That was never inherited; just shown. The dying bird’s mind was gone.

         Alice looked, found, came, conquered. She looked from everywhere at once, as if she was a million little ladybugs placed all over the world, with the same line of vision. She had learned this in kindergarten, but only slightly. Through playing with the blocks she had come up with a way to shorten her life and extend her demise.



Chapter 2: Breathy Motions

2004



         I have always been fascinated by the physical manifestation of emotion, the internal (or perhaps external) hum of the universe made semi-tangible through mechanical processing. When I was little, my father would do a seasonal experiment for me. His rough hands would cut two rectangular pieces of plywood. Wrapping worm-like wires around the now cross-shaped mechanism. Placing it in a field, the sun handing down its rays in a blind show of affection, as birds stared at it quizzically with their beady eyes, filled with wonder and excitement at the idea of a long, skinny worm, never-ending. This copper wire cross would sit in the field, connected to an amplifier. My father and I would lie in the grass, his large hand enfolding my small one, listening to the hum of the galaxies, the occasional meteor shower, or the moon’s breathy motions. I felt so connected to myself then, feeling me as a small babe, wrapped snugly in the chasms of a black hole, a shooting star. I was lying in wheat, cattails, and long grass, listening to the mechanical representation of the universe.          

         My father would later (it seemed endlessly later, millions instead of a couple of years) come home from work, after having kissed me goodbye all those years ago, his whiskers scratching the dimple of my cheek. He would have a harrowed look about him, still quizzically bird-like, but with a weary taint.

         That all changed with the seasons themselves. Soon, he was gone. He left with his plywood, his crosses, and his wire. With him went a sense of wonder that had always plagued and blessed me. I no longer was interested in the moon’s reflected breath. I sat in the middle of my field, our field, hands over my ears, cold biting into my elbows, eyes shut, not speaking, no longer laughing. It was night as I moved slowly into darkness, realizing that there was nothing that I could do to stop the beauty and the terror from slipping from my organs and veins.

I became blind, deaf and mute. Not by my own devices, as you would most probably like to think, but by the intense external circumstances that sickened me, poisoned my insides, then my outsides. My mother, now no longer the shining moon that I had always adored, a marble statue, was the distantly glimmering star, sick and not caring to implode.

         That weary taint was the only thing left in the living room from his smoke and formaldehyde-like drink, and my mother clung to it. She would sit in the living room, deaf in a way that was possible to me, the silent mouse, and the moon’s vibrations, drinking the formaldehyde. She never knew that in a moment she would be lying waist deep in a pool of her own vomit; she never knew much at all.

         My total incapacitation left me lying on my bed, feeling the quilted edge of my pillow. I was a hairless mole rat, moving amongst the dark beauty of my own imagination. My life flashed before me, like a memory once forgotten, but now would never be again. I hoped that one day I could hear music. Hear the vibrations. I realized how little I loved my parents when I could see them, how much I loved them now, and how little the sound of my life meant when I thought that my parents no longer loved me. My love made me shiver, and then burn. Lay down with me, said God, said the Universe.

         I clung to my realization that there was something to be explored in lack of sight, hearing and talking. I realized that nothing that would be put in my mouth would be mundane; in fact, nothing would be mundane. My anger, as though a defeated samurai, had retreated to the dark gluttonous caves in the back of my brain. I loved the possibility of my own life flashing before my inner eyes. It helped me to grow into a different being, a sightless wonder. The crosses flashed in front of me; I became a born-again. Of course, no one could listen to me shout my praise to the Lord. Shouting praises was overrated anyway. I was a silent preacher.



         

                                                 Chapter 3

         “I am no longer mine own.”

         These words were repeated over and over as Alice looked at herself, swollen belly, naked veins, and stretched breasts. The record had left its solid steady rhythm, and now was starting to become a chant, a mythical chattering of witches’ cauldrons and bubbling brews. She went over to it, small hands shaking with a kind of vulnerability only seen in babies; she lifted the needle.

         Silence.

         Needle. ‘It seems like such a simple, careless word for something so dreadful,’ she thought. ‘Like a nursery rhyme, it seems to resonate with the sickly sweetness of a horrifying medicine.’  She was startled by the sound of a bird hitting the window. She did not look, but merely crossed herself, hands sliding in the air around her nude, pregnant body.

         It had happened so quickly. The jerk, the small squint. Immaculate conception was not as happily administered as it would seem. The image of herself and her body seemed almost contrary to what the storybooks had shown her. Mere propaganda, she realized now. She had given her home (her shelter, rather) to a few invisible doctors who worked with meticulous carelessness on her body. They had not done anything, but had danced around her, prancing, with malicious grins on their wide faces. She had shivered, felt a presence mystify her being, and then it was over. It was over? She had only scratched the surface.

         Her belly swelled with the powerful presence of Christlike goodness.

         “Godliness is what you have always wanted to achieve,” they had told her. Now she was locked in a small, dank room with no water. Only bread.

         She only left her room to use the bathroom; the bathroom was a small hole outside of the house. She also conversed and prayed with two old nuns of the covenant. Laughter was a ghost in this hole in the universe. Peeled wallpaper was candy-coated and sickening. She knew her purpose, but the purpose penetrated her like a needle, a needle that was nonexistent at conception but purely defined in the aftermath. The aftershock. She chastised herself for that internal remark, her palm against her forehead, vein popping out of her temple.



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This is a work in progress.