My Wife, Lost in the Wild

I pictured you arriving late and there was apprehension on all of the guests faces but I wasn’t worried in the slightest. They watched the clock and looked at each other, no words spoken and each one taboo. They would look upon my face to try and gain understanding for the circumstances, some justification for their concern but I gave none away. I took it all in. I was aware of the tension and invited it. I inhaled it and enjoyed the way it filtered through my lungs and into each of the smallest passages. I stared intently at the doors at the end of the building - if anything - inwardly smiling for the comfort and peace I knew given the place I stood.

You come through the doors smeared in mud with grazed knees. Past late and overdue, some of your clothes are torn and hanging off your body. Your hair is wild and unkempt, glued together in places in the formation of clumps. You’re barefooted. No make-up. Your fringe covers half of your face and you’ve given up trying to brush it to the side.

I wouldn’t want anything else.

People turn and look at you when you burst through the doors. They don’t recognize you. They don’t know who you are. Their eyes follow you as you walk down the aisle. The music man forgets to play the tune. You have a captive audience.

This is how my baby does it. Resolute and against all odds.

There is a story here but there is no need to tell. I don’t know it but at the same time I know it all.

Maybe your breathing is heavy. Maybe it is not. Maybe things have almost killed you. Maybe your steps are unsteady. Maybe you stumble as you make your way to me. Maybe you have endured the unthinkable.

Heartbroken, out of place, in disrepair, unwanted, troubled, lost, confused, guilty, odd. We've been all of these things.

Your eyes are on mine and mine on yours.

The rest. It doesn’t matter at all.

AFFINITY III

He looks at the screen hoping that enlightenment would come but once again there was no message. It frustrated him that things would have to be this way - this kind of one-way communication with his father. He wanted answers. He wanted to know everything, to know where he was going, what he was supposed to do, how everything would pan out. He wanted to be able to calculate all of the obstacles in his path and the difficulties he would face, that way he wouldn't feel as if he was always running blind, falling from one problem to the next, never understanding the purpose of it all despite this underlying desire for something he couldn't define.

He looks at the screen once again.

Still nothing.

In the absense of communication he would often spend time speculating about how he should go about things. He was doing this now as he walked around his apartment staring blankly through his thoughts. He would try to assume his father's rational point of view but always fell short. This was perhaps, that he was not the man his father was nor would ever be. His head was clouded, a jumble of interferring stimuli that tried to find solace in outlook, but the forces were always opposing and the result was a scaled down yearning propogating an unsteady forward step. He wanted more. He knew he was made for more.

Another glance at the screen is taken.

Again nothing.

He looks at his watch. The kids would be climbing now. Each one with a bag, up the tallest towers in the neighbourhood. They had turned into some kind of juvenile army over the years. One day he had been flying a kite as his father had instructed of him in the Eastern Bloc and the children had seen him and been amazed. They had never seen a kite before and were mezmerised by the way it hovered so effortlessly in the air, how it sailed around buildings. It was only made of two sticks, paper and string but could embrace freedom so simply.
He had gained a following that day and that was probably what his father had intended. Now there were hundreds of them. They came out of the urban jungle wide eyed and hungry. They sought something that previous generations had lost and though it dumbfounded him they were entertained by his projects. The projects became a replacement for being left to their own devices on the streets. It was like a cultural or drop centre. It was to become their new education.

He could see them now zig zagging up the emergency stair cases of adjacent buildings, each one carrying a loaded sack like a procession of ants in the night. The current project had been months in the making and he enjoyed the sentiment that it carried. They had spent the last three months collecting Tigris Corporation flyers and the children had graffitied them, each in their own way. Some with lipstick, some with horns, other with more defacing creative flair. On the back of each flyer was a message to the city, a stated concern, a hope, a prayer. They were written by people from all walks of life and demographics across the city. They had collected the messages from people on the street then transcribed them onto the backs of the graffitied flyers. The last step was to fold them into origame paper tigers.

He had a view of the whole city from his balcony. Tonight was a clear night with the haze wearing only thinly on the horizon. Every night he stood on his balcony he would ponder the city and all the unanswered questions in his head. He would look to an adjacent tower and always see a young woman that did the same. It gave him solace. He did not know who she was but watching her silhouette and the mystery of her form gave him an idea of some sort of innate connection.

The kids were on the rooftops now. They signalled to each other and proceeded to drop their loads until the blackness of the night sky was overcome by a swarm of tumbling tigers. People in buildings saw them and ran to their windows and caught them as they fluttered past. It was the first time he had seen so many people look out of their windows with interest, excitement, curiosity even.

A paper tiger lands on Miss Delaware's balcony and he watches as she picks it up, unfolds, and reads it. When she is done she immediately looks back in his direction and it is unmistakable that she is looking at him.

Whether she had read his specifically written message or not was irrelevant. Somehow though, he knows she has.

He looks back and checks the screen in his apartment.

Nothing.

It no longer bothers him. He will find her himself. It makes more sense this way.

Affinity II

In another room he is pacing. He watches her via the surveillance system, sitting as attentively as when the faces first started to flash up on the screen. This had never happened before. It had been four hours. The trawl had been completed three times. First the city, then the state, finally the entire country. Everyone has a match, he thinks. All that was required was change.
He re-enters the room with another man. As they enter the screens turn blank and Miss Delaware turns to them as if her moment had come. Her face was like that of a girl recieving flowers for the first time. Her eyes were large and full of hope. They were a fable realized.
They sit down in front of her with serious faces. Before speaking the unknown man unzips a black bag. This was the moment she had waited for and dreamt about her whole life. Now that it was happening, she expected it to be different.

"We do not have a match for you yet" the Affinity curator says. "What we can offer you is what is contained in this bag."

The world was different when Miss Delaware exits the palm of the Tigris Corporation. On the day that she had expected answers she had been given further doubts and questions. She hails a taxi and demands to be taken to her brother.

Outside the windows of the cab she starts to see things with new eyes. New emotions and thoughts are awoken in her and it feels like a fatal wound. She sees all the cracks in the city where they had been painted over and watches them grow as the taxi continues to the East Side.

A light flashes on her wrist indicating that she had a dozen new messages awaiting her attention but she decides that she cannot face them now. She already knows who they were from and what they would say. She already knows the congratulative expressions and remarks.

She looks down at the black bag that she had been given. The city had a soul and all it needed was to be unzipped. To join it or leave it, that is what they had told her. The decision was hers.

The East side was the roughest part of the city and more affluent parts liked to pretend it didn't exist. She watches the slow societal decay on its approach and contrasts it with the black bag that sat on the seat beside her. In the middle of both contrasting scenes was her brother. She knows that she needed to see him no matter what state he was currently in. He may provide her with some sort of answer or guidance.

She doesn't bother knocking when she reaches his door and instead swipes herself inside. Some days he was lucid and with it, other days he was nothing more than mumbling sloth in. Calling out to him and stepping over empty pizza boxes and an assortment of take out containers she hears the latter.

In the living room she finds him lying on his side with his top arm dangling off the sofa and onto the floor. Slowly he rolls onto his back and slowly addresses his sister.

"He-ey sis.." he manages, his eyes staring past her, bloodshot and vacant.

"Oh Si!" she says compassionately, sitting down and giving him a soft embrace. She places her hand bag and the black bag on the coffee table clearly in his view. As she leans over her to hug him more firmly he starts to reach for it.

"How are you?" she asks her brother. "Have I come at a good time?"

Si does not respond having reached the black bag and taken a firm grip of one of its corners with his fist.

He turns his attention back to his sister. The unbelief on his face heartbreaking. He does not ask what her sister is doing with this black bag. His sister can already read the question on his face.

"I know, I know!" she says. "I mean I don't know! I don't know! Oh, I can't..."

She feels tears well up somewhere behind eyes, as if pumped from an infinite ocean that was bound somewhere deep inside.

"They gave it to me today!" she explains. "Today I was supposed to find Affinity but I didn't have a match. This was all they could give me. They said it was the only way."

Her brother lets the bag go as if extending his arm to reach for it had taken too much effort. As he does this his head collapses backwards onto the arm of the chair, his eyes closed, a deep breath taken, before summoning strength and continuing again.

"Everyone says many things Sis" he says. "Everyone has an opinion about everything. Everyone wants assurances in life. They want answers. They want to know that everything will be okay. We pay for it. We pay for it everyday. They sell us what we want to believe and we buy it! And we will keep buying it. We will buy it until we are broke, until it has taken us over and there is nothing left and then we will be burried in the ground."

He looks seriously at his sister, the one who had always lived a virtuous life, the one who both inspired him and wordlessly criticized him for the way he had lived his life. He pulls out an unused cartridge from his pocket and quickly inspects the label.

BADMINTON MATCH it read and as he reads it, he rolls his eyes and decides that he should no longer buy assorted packs from the Chinese man in the next block no matter how cheap they may seem. He directs his eyes back to his sister and narrows them.

"Don't do it Sis" he says. "You are probably the truest thing there is. You are the truest thing I know. Do not open that bag. Take it back to whoever gave it to you. Otherwise, this is what you get."

He rams the cartridge onto his wrist which stimulates the clamping and injecting mechanism built inside. He writhes in a semi painful looking exstacy before exhaling hard and his body relaxing. Immediately after doing this he reaches into his pocket and finds another cartridge and clamps it down on his wrist and infuses the substance.

This one says THREESOME and he catches a glance of it just as the infusion process starts.

This will be interesting he thinks.

"See you later Sis. Come back and see me next week and tell me that you are not afraid, that you will swim in the ocean no matter how infinite and lonely it may seem."

And with that, his body is overcome again. He contorts on the sofa and then is released with laughter and heavy rapid breathing. Miss Delaware stays for several minutes until her brothers body is lame except for the signs of breath and pulse. He has a semi happy look on his face.


Miss Delaware arrives back at her apartment after nightfall. On the table in the middle of her living space she places the black bag and looks at it. She looks around her to see if anyone is watching but she is entirely alone. On the room function remote control she sets the function to "Oceans" and the walls, ceiling, and floors of her apartment become waves crashing on an undefined shore. She unzips the bag and fumbles through its contents. She reads the labels on the cartridges. KAMA SUTRA, DEER STALKING, COCAINE...
She looks through the bag at all the labels, each one speaking of an experience, some questionable, some desirable, but none that she deemed she wanted to experience artificially. She begins to cry feeling inept in all her lack of experience in some aspects of life, feeling alien when compared to what her friends and work colleagues were doing. In the process of questioning whether it was her that was abandoning her friends or her friends that were abandoning her, she raises the black bag and it's contents and smashes them onto the floor.
"To find your match you need to be more like your match" they had said.
Next she goes around her entire apartment and strips every wire that connected into every socket. She removes the communication device of her wrist and crushes it under her foot. She smashes every screen that fed her any image, every speaker that delivered any sound. She erases her social networking profile then smashes the hard drive as if sawing a body in two to release a soul. When her rampage is over she is so exhausted that she collapses on the floor. Her whole apartment is silent for the first time in as long as she can remember. There is no humming of machines, no clicking of information through electronic devices. No ones and zeros except for those that were jumping across the synapses of neurons in her head. Sick of her apartment and wanting to look elsewhere other than the destruction of her hands she makes her way to her balcony. Around her was a sea of towering buildings and flickering lights stretching as far as her eyes could see.

In the tower she sees him.

This was also the moment that the sky rained paper tigers.

Affinity

The thread of Miss Delaware:

In the moment, embracing the minutes and seconds, she looks down at her unblemished wrists. Out of the window and into the apartments they stare mesmerized by a cable fed kaleidoscope, they smoke away on balconies, consider love in barricaded bedrooms. She looks to a particular room on an adjacent tower. Today he is not there.

Her watch beeps. Rushing to mirror she adds colour and definition to her face. There is no need really, but today promised to be one of those days. It was a day to change all days that would come. It would make sense of the days that served as mere filler between such momentous occasions in life.

Swinging her handbag around her neck she exits her apartment and rides the grav-tube to street level.  She views the messages that her friends had recorded for her and sent that morning, little holograms that sprouted from her wrist.

“Can’t wait to hear about how handsome he is” they say.

“I’m so excited for you.”

“You go girl. Affinity to infinity!”

She hurries out the door and hails a cab.

“Tigris Corporation” she says.

The cab driver looks at her briefly through the rear view and nods.

“Affinity Division” she adds.

The mention of the Affinity Division causes the cab driver to double take. He looks at her with new eyes, intentions different. The very mention of the ‘a’ word was a catalyst for many emotions within people. It separated the haves from the have nots, it spoke of material wealth, hope, a ticket to a better existence - something out of reach for many people. 

She was a modest woman and did not mean to gloat. She already regretted the mention of Affinity to the man. She should have just mentioned “Tigris Corporation” and walked herself to the appropriate sector of the complex. 

She doesn’t want to make further case with the man but as she sits the holograms project out wildly in her face. Advertisements of holiday getaways on private islands, wedding dresses, sex parties and toothpaste. She was sick of all of the images and they were almost unavoidable, the world seemed to rotate around them.

“Can you switch them off please?” she says to the cab driver.

“But if off, your fare more. If on, your fare cheaper” he says.

“I don’t care” she says. “I want to live without being told how to live. I want a life that cannot be bought.”

The taxi driver laughs. “Yet you go for Affinity” he says. He flicks off the advertisement projection system angrily and rues lost commission and ambassador credits.

She notices a smudge on the driver’s wrist as he switches off the advertising system. She can tell that he was a user. It wasn’t the wrists however that gave it away. It was in his eyes, a slight and occasional vacancy. Her brother was the same. He had started at first recreationally, but now he was hooked. Rubbing out had become his only form of solace. The more he had, the more he needed. Soon he found more meaning in rubbing out than living life. There was little left. He went from one fix to another, the severity in coming down necessitating the next hit.

Along the western corridor traffic was slow. They slowed as they passed paramedics attending to a few collapsed pedestrians. One had collapsed at the bottom of an overpass escalator and his shirt had got stuck in the machine. The other had collapsed on the footpath outside a Mass Transit Shuttle stop. They were both young.

The cab driver shakes his head. “Aye-argh” he laments, his words sorrowful but also fearful and angry. “This is problem.” 

He flashes one arm around and gestures at the world outside the cab.

No one knew why more and more young people were falling dead seemingly without reason. Drug use was speculated but there was no direct correlation found. Some had a history of heavy drug use, others were mostly clean. Coroners reported that cause of death was by unexplained neurogenic failure to the heart. Their hearts had simply ceased to beat. 

She clutches her hand bag tightly as traffic returns to its normal pace. It was a straight run now and she was at once nervous and excited.

The Tigris corporation complex took up a large section of the downtown area with five sky scrapers arising from its base in the shape of a hand reaching out from the ground. Inside the Affinity Division she welcomed by a man in a tuxedo and a woman in a scarlet dress. They escort her to a private lounge where they pour her a glass of champagne. 

“This is for you on your special day” the woman says. She places the glass of champagne on the table beside where Miss Delaware is sat. 

They stand together with loose embrace and smile down at Miss Delaware on the couch.

“As you know Miss Delaware, we already have your details on our database.” 

Miss Delaware looks around for the voice that is speaking to her. The voice comes from behind her. She turns her head and notices another man in a suit, but this man seeming more official. He has just come through the door. He keeps speaking as he walks, his words as if known by verbatim.

“We know your activities, hobbies, likes, dislikes, humour, religious beliefs, moral outlook. We know your favourite books, foods, music and drinks. We know your friends, relatives and the people you avoid. We know your sleep patterns, your sexual preferences and appetite. We can even assess your propensity to change given common variables in life such as stress, time restraints, societal fads, movements and political climates. Our system is the most comprehensive on the planet. Just about everyone is linked to our social network. We have over six billion subscribers worldwide and five million alone in this city.”

He sits on the couch directly opposite her and looks into her eyes.

“Affinity awaits you. We will find your match. All I need first is the payment.”

She hands him her card. Fifteen years of hard work and saving since the age of eighteen. The payment is processed and he puts the computers into action and starts the trawl.

The man tells her to sit back and relax but she is mesmerized by the colours and flashes of faces upon the screens. She can’t help but think about all the people that she had never met in life because she had worked so hard. All of the people that she would never meet in life because that was the way of life in modern times. The faces flash up on the screen for only a split second each but in a strange way, she was knowing them all, everything about them, analyzed and critiqued, computed and permutated, vicariously through a system of machines. She sits there for hours. Face after face. Frame by frame.

The Best Valentine's Day Blog EVER!

Okay, now that I have your attention, I bring you an original short story.  
I dedicate this one to the lovely but elusive Mari Van der Vyver, who has the most amazing chuckle in the history of the planet, and needs to contact me ASAP.

Juliet, and Romeo

The bed was coercing their bodies together. It was an old lady that had grown up in tough times, witnessing all kinds of pains and hardships, and now in its old age desired only one thing – to witness love. The sag in the bed and resultant roll-together was that bad.

Ron is awake and clings to the side of his bed tightly. He knows that he must not wake her for if he wakes her, she will sigh and it won’t be any ordinary sigh, but a sigh that speaks of pain. It will be long and drawn out. It will be a sentiment alluding to all of Ron’s short comings and inadequacies as a man. They will be rattled off in exhaustive details, both exemplary and metaphorically, covered from every angle and perspective. Simply put, it will proclaim her unhappiness in their relationship and her bewilderment for volitional persistence with the current situation.

Ron thinks back to happier times. He thinks back to the beginning. She had been so beautiful and radiant that night on the stage. She had a light about her, her voice like innocent and transcendent yearns for love, their source completely pure. That was when he first saw her. It had interrupted his admiration for the Oxford grass on which he sat. He had never seen or felt grass that was so soft! So lush! He wanted to roll all over it, to body slam it, but he withheld such urges amidst the sophisticated crowd. He would only talk about Eliot or Lewis, the weather, Darjeeling first cut teas. He had researched such topics earlier and kept repeating them in his head.

She has her back turned to him as she sleeps. She had begun to lie like this as of late. Ron, while still clutching the bed edge, carefully turns his body over to face hers, his movements slow and laboured to minimize vibratory ripples through the springs. He looks at her brown mousy hair, long and wildly splayed on her pillow. He traces down her neckline to her shoulders, her night shirt wide at the neckline and nearly falling off, then down around her chest, each breath a small expansion, a gentle rise and fall. Longing and desirous for connection, he starts to breathe in time with her. Their chests expand together and then passively deflate. They share the same proximity, oxygen, life, and then let it go. Ron takes satisfaction in this. He desires to be one with her, that they would breathe together to make one giant breath. He wants to spoon her so that they would become one giant body, because he is convinced that life is better when two are one. Everything is stronger. It is the way things should be. Instead he clings to his side of the bed awkwardly, the distance between them a gulf.

Ron had not given much thought to fate and alignment of stars, but when he saw her for the first time he had felt an energy and connection to the universe, it sparked an instantaneous belief in such things. It was ironic and rational therefore that she was playing the role of Juliet in the play, the epitome of romantic love, her bare feet dancing upon this most amazing grass like an Eden, the beginning, where loves intention first set ablaze without defect. He could feel his heart pounding as if metronomic for the world, its pace perfect, to the rhythm of Romeo’s courtly strumming. And at that very moment her eyes did meet his in the crowd, a conclusion to all the tension and energy, an explosion of both metaphysical prognosis and resolve. They both knew that they would chance upon the same pub later, phone numbers exchanged. Through telecommunication they would build a bridge, from that bridge a bed, and in that bed sweet, sweet love.

Ron looks across the bed and sighs. Things were so good in the beginning.

He remembers the days and weeks that ensued where they both floated on clouds, the hand holding and skipping through Oxford’s leafy streets, the laughs, the banter, the joyous drunken moments of youth, a world seen through new eyes. But then came the cracks, at first small, minor complaints; mismatching musical preferences, hygiene habits, views on each other’s parents. Then the perfect world split open, minor grudges becoming full scale arguments, heated exchanges screamed at close proximity, doors slammed, toilet seats left up, food chewed too loudly and with an open mouth. Every action became symbolic of protests, cunning and suggestive. Deliberate. They would plot against each other silently but in each other’s presence. Hubris fuelled psychological voodoo, Jedi mind tricking, the atmosphere ominous and potent, a chaotic imbalance of Yin and Yang. 

Distraught, Ron starts to think about the story of Romeo and Juliet, his arm fatiguing as he does so. He looks for reasons, answers to how his relationship could fall so far from grace. Then it dawns on him. Romeo and Juliet were only together for days! All they knew were the initial moments of attraction! The lofty passion! Their whole relationship centred and ended in the honeymoon phase! They didn’t know each other well enough to hate! Their visions were clouded by desire, faults overlooked by lust, discrepancies trumped by chemistry! 

Ron’s eyes are opened wide with his epiphany. He sees everything clearly. The story of Romeo and Juliet was wrong! The real tragedy would have been if they had remained together! They would have learnt to hate their only love! They would have fought and argued then run back to their respective families, the Capulet and Montague feud newly replenished and inspired. This was how the real story went! This is the real tragic love story! 

Again Ron looks over at her sleeping placidly - the gentle rise and fall of each breath. This was her in her most peaceful state, she was harmless but still – Ron’s arm turning numb from its persistent grip on the bed edge – making him suffer. With Ron’s free arm he glances at his watch. It was past ten in the morning. She was so lazy! And still, if he woke her up now he would have hell to endure, she would moan and hold a grudge all day. She would complain of her robbed sleep, use it as an excuse for lack of shared chores around the house and would tell Ron that he was not sensitive or aware of her needs. Ron thinks of all her persistent complaints and nags. He starts to question the last time she said anything positive. He watches the gentle rise and fall of each breath and begins to detest them all. He detests her sleep. He detests her constant complaints, her selfishness, her dreams! He looks at his arm that clings to the bedside and starts to feel stupid for doing so. He shakes his head both at himself, her, and the ridiculous bed in which they shared. He lets go spiralling, colliding into her in the middle. Ron decides come what may. Awake the beast! Love is pain! Love is suffering! Love is a collision and then picking up the pieces of an ugly mess only to tenderly try to put them back together again finding the pieces too intermixed. He will give his all to her and love her despite her quirks, her defects, her verbal knives and belittling blows. He is a romantic and will therefore bleed for the cause.

And so on and so forth...