Clouded Vision

**

Holly

I knew he loved me before he even saw my face. From behind, he was captivated by my shape. Over the past year and a half, it had softened and smoothed to that of any young woman. The dark chiffon of my skirt accentuated my hips, which were still growing wide. The pain in my chest and lower back confirmed my thin, pear figure was blossoming into what would seem a fertile young woman. Quite the contrary. I’d never bear a child of my own, something that still haunted my maternal disposition at the time. A child of the future that would never be. At night, all cats were grey but the feline cultivating in my mind and physicality were simply too black or too white. I couldn’t forget the past, and evening usually spent on the prowl for my generation were a constant reminder to put up a wall more often than not.

I had lost sight of my close girlfriend and youth who accompanied me on a night out. Confidants who more and more became security blankets. The comfort of bonds to the normal world that seemed to push me farther as I crossed the spectrum. Evolving from an assigned identity was as tedious as crossing the dance floor, searching in every dark sphere the promise of mutuality. My stalk drew closer towards his unaware prey; a hunter in the realm of casual sexuality. That night, spiked lashes lined my doe eyes which fell no shorter than the cliche “deer in the headlights.” Only Bambi bobbed her hair and jet black glowed almost blue in the view of a hell-bent Swiss Roadster.

“How do you do, baby doll?” I heard him ask from behind.

His proximity made me jump and put me into a rigid stance. As if his slicked long hair would tangle me into a slow constriction of lust or his arrow-collar would be sharp enough to pick through my icy disposition I learned to frost over when men spoke to me.

“I’m alright,” I started breathlessly, “I’m looking...”

He leaned forward, pressing me to continue, but when I didn’t he simply continued,

“Say, what’s a fella like me have to do to buy a pretty dame a drink?”

It took everything in my power to not tell him I didn’t know and that he had to go find her first. Or worse, my usual poison of choice. The confliction I felt in these rare situations of constantly budding romance is always cut short by a pair of sheers demanding premature cultivation. My flowers of longing growing stronger with each repression for my own safety. His tan skin stretched tight over a chiseled, square jaw; a quality I happily could say I never progressed to.

I thought I’d give the fool something to play with so I courageously replied,

“I’ve seemed to acquire a taste for a certain libation called a French .75.”

His eyes indeed widened as the dust fell from my shots fired. Prideful of my move, I allowed my gaze to full on meet his, a false hopefulness glazed over; something I was sure would send him in the other direction.

This man really was slick, I couldn’t tell you I had ever done that to a man before. I figured my painted eyes would glare him away, but to my dismay I saw something retreat back into his pupils. Like I had dropped a wish-less penny into a well, thinking the hole in the Earth to be dry, unresponsive. Only to hear on the moment upon turning to hear a deep, saturated splash.

His brown irises now challenged my own, the color of grey.

“Anything for you,” he said huskily, leaning into my ear.

His hand fell on the small of my back and a wave of foreign goose pimples caressed my arms. I tried to conceal my physical reaction and stiffened neck as his big hand gave a powerful but fondling push towards the direction of the bar.

His seeds of yearning were planted deep in the soil with my flowers I mentioned earlier. I knew once the proper fertilizer and watering was taken care of (for me the coupe, for him the rocks), the same sheers of reality would come snipping us apart. Severing the germination that rarely went as far as it even did that evening.

Robert, a thin, bright-eyed young man who was known to kiss other boys and steal his mother’s rouge, had supplied Rebecca and I with a small jar of the dirtiest gin to warm our bellies while we all got ready. I do love him dearly, him being a brother I never had. Though at that moment I hated him for giving me a liquid courage that would only increase now at the mercy of my suitor. “Just like a magic potion, you fill me with emotion.”

Louis Armstrong seemed to set the theme of the night as his song blared from the phonograph. I became infatuated with the sweet bubbles of my cocktail to avoid the hungry eyes which I knew were locked on my bee stung lips. The gold fluid flooded my mouth with a curious wealth similar to another mystery I carefully observed about the young man next to me with taut, olive skin; the large amount of big bills in his wallet I saw when he used one to pay for our drinks. If only that French .75 was loaded with a poison mixed with the sweet champagne that was enough to kill me right then and there.

“I was telling you earlier,” I hiccuped into his shoulder. Reluctantly leaning into him and allowing his embrace to support me now that I had not a single bar stool to do so for me. Colder, I agree, but indeed much safer.

“I came with a couple of friends, Mr. Marino,” I managed to finally inform him. He had been staring both amused and fascinated at me, an array of infatuation at something both delicately beautiful yet because so, pathetic. The breath of alcohol no doubt on me was as much as I could smell on his endless supply of chuckles in only my direct line. Either I was the only girl there worthy or the only one there at all to him.

“Holly, please, baby, call me Jack,” he insisted again.

“I simply must get back to my friends,” I whispered sheepishly raising my head from his shoulder closer to his ear.

I was at the Palace. Nancy begged me to take her to the high tea in the penthouse. My poor little thing. She cried for hours when I said we couldn’t. Mother said Paw couldn’t give us any more allowance. I was still pushing away the terrifying reality that was closing in on me. I went from the top floor to the basement; stifled in a tiny place with one cot for myself and a daughter who I never expected. I told him it really was impossible. I really believed he opened a door when I eagerly opened my legs for him. Unfortunately, I was too common to see that he was just like Paw: and in opening that door her made the two yearning, desperate windows carved in the high points of my face slam shut. And now, no matter how many boards I nail or how many bars I weld to my corners the gusts of the past never fail to easily make them swing open.

Over and over and over.

Shattering my psyche like emaciated egg-shells slicing my skull in the process.

The blinding lightening that quakes my body like electric white-hot pins and needles. The buckets of slush rain that flood every cranny and makes me wish it was only that relieving luxury of chilling me to the bone. No, this sleet pelts my brittle skeleton with hail from Lucifer that crumbles my soul like the columns in The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Sinking my into the darkest, dankest abyss far colder than that of the North Atlantic in the middle of winter. He built me up with the titanium as strong as Zeus himself. Polishing me with such care and gentle-handed skill. Only to push me into the huge edifice that seemed to come out of nowhere. Shoving me with sandpaper textured hands that I never would’ve recognized were the man I can never fall out of rumination and constant fascination. Right to my own demise, descending into something worse than my very own grave.

***

Sara

The whole place is a cotton ball; white carpeted floors even white walls in a few of the rooms. If you're lucky the sheets may be a pale blue as if the residents saturated their depression out into the sheets during their slumber. White tablets are dispensed all day. Smaller white sheets are written on throughout all ranks from the leader to the residents themselves. White-hot anger pulsated through the feeling of being trapped through plastic pens onto that same color. White.

White clouds keep curious eyes sealed from the outside world. In some instances, the windows are not only clouded, but encased in metal. White noise blares from the resident’s ears. A constant silence that penetrates the broken mind. A silence that is occasionally broken upon the entry of the leaders, or when a resident becomes too anxious.

Some are brought in for white lines, in extreme cases, but most just came in from white lies. All of us are trying to become white; to become pure, to become clean. The methods of purging are that of purging an illness, a flow. The whole place is a cotton ball.

That girl hasn’t visited me in ages. What was her name anyway? Good lord, isn’t that terrible?

I know—

I know—

She— she was born in the beginning of the year. She was the only one, pretty sure. Pretty sure. I was always better with dates than her father. Her father-

No, no. I don’t know.

He can’t be gone. Only hidden. Only hidden.

Hidden like her face. Behind a veil. A short, white veil. Lace on her head.

“Like all the other girls.”

(In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.)

We had our cake. Our cake, after Mass. But those Sundays never brought rest. Going to a new house of worship, eventually some “angel or laity” will spread a word. A word that incidentally wasn’t what those nosy bastards listened to. In a dead language. Over and over, without Grace.

It was not the Good Word.

It was not the Good Word. It was the word not spread, but scraped loudly across the streets no matter where we went. Scratched quickly, thickly over blackened toast the salty and succulent word for gluttonous ears that was not of a young Virgin. It was of an aging, desperate socialite who was impaled through her stigmata in a hasty attempt to gain access to a Paradise promised from sacrifice.

Yes. I bore but one child.

A child who could not be stifled by the piety of pure white lace that covered her face which would eventually show signs of what those kneeling beside us already knew.

It was not the Good Word.

The lace gloves hide veins and vessels of blood not yet spilled, not yet even matured to adulthood. Blood silently deemed damned. Veins were not everywhere on me. It doesn’t make sense. How did I get to not only this horrible place, but this time?

“Toast, Ms. Sara?” A cloaked figure asked me. How dare she?

I glared at her through the curtains of crow’s feet I don’t recall ever developing. I pursed my lips which were gated by further, deeper crevices. I spoke to no one here. For I knew no one.

“You must eat, Ms. Sara,” she continued.

I loathed how little respect this generation had: referring to a woman of my standards by my first name.

“I know you’re angry about your jewelry, Ms. Sara, but the staff and I have looked everywhere,” she told me, “The earrings are nowhere.”

I stood up from my chair pushing away the ghastly creature’s out reached hand. I knew they were playing games. Punishment. My penance is this entrapment.

“She took,” I croaked.

The unused voice was so unfamiliar to me. The even more foreign stoop I developed literally hung over me, forcing me into a shell which shambled over to the thing on the wall I avoided at all cost today. Or yesterday.

Yesterday.

The hummingbirds! My hummingbirds! The two small, ivory birds that kept me protected; my only companions in this strange realm of a limbo.

“This is NOT the Good Word,” I screamed, turning on frail, bare feet to face the nun.

Attempting to hurl my fists in her direction, attempting to finally fight back those people who sat in the monastery. Fat off the bread of Life, funded my followers just as trapped as I was now.

“Ms. Sara!” the white figure exclaimed in pity. She grabbed my arms as I crashed to the ground. Defeated.

Defeat. Again and again.

Stripped of everything, fallen in the street as He had, I saw nothing. I failed to see my surroundings as I gave in and fell under another white wing. Crying hysterically, I looked up. An old chick or duckling searching in the clouds and the sky above for a mother bird to come sweep me away or at least give comfort in this white, false sanctuary.

*

Nancy

He told me he would never leave and I know now he never did. Making himself into a God, he must’ve known that is how I viewed him. Expiration was not in our form of vocabulary when we were up in the clouds. The greys of yesterday have finally diffused, and the sky of the present moment stares at me with white accusing eyes.

Sinking deeper and deeper into the ground I still had no idea what time it was. It was either just before sunrise or just after sunset. Inky stalactites flee from the high points of my face. It had certainly been a long journey that seemed less and less worth the pilgrimage as time went on. If one’s worst enemy is themselves, how do we escape? Can we kill the monster in the mirror without touching his victim? Coming to realize that in my partner's death he took a small piece of myself when he fell. We were told that the feminine aspect of our being is usually the one that survives. The earth hugged his body in an eternal embrace and I packed flat stones over the fresh dirt. Not that I wanted to remember where he was, more so to keep him from coming back up. Every precaution must be taken. The past will be vengeful and it’s up to me to stay present. The scale may tip to favor my aura but what’s done in the dark always comes to the light.

From the time I was scheduled for my leap, the intuition of my next host was pulsating in every fiber of my essence. She was sensitive and docile. She had a need to please. I knew we’d be perfect once I got to her.

The Welcome Facility said she was still on her way before we made out Decent. Approaching the entrance, the glass doors swung open. The sterile, white walls and blue tile shine in all of creation’s glory. The stairway echoed as aides sprinted past me in each direction. Up and down, constant flow of life; the water and nectar providing energy to a flower by diffusing through the stem.

Almost to the top, I’m glowing with pride as I visualizer my being of energy supplying this new bud with her soul. She is my beautiful shell and it’s my responsibility to to bring her to life as our existence as one. The final step lowers to the speed of my pace until I was standing in front of her door.

I didn’t notice anything was wrong, so I reached out for the knob. Cries of agony flooded from the bright room and ricocheted down the walls off the stairwell. The mother’s pain told me the baby just about to be out, but to this day, I still wish I was more observant upon entering that nursery.

I saw a large, terracotta colored footprint in the farthest corner of the room. The curtains shivered side by side as the open window confirmed what until that day I thought was impossible.

Following the tracks with my eyes, I couldn’t find where they led to. My host was coming now and my partner was somewhere very near. I started in the bathroom with a large tub and a handicap toilet. I opened the medicine cabinet that revealed several prescription bottles full of tablets and pills. They spilled onto the floor creating a galaxy of chemicals and powder. Nothing.

The tube was empty, so I sprinted back out. I saw the head of the little baby exiting her mother. I knew too much time had already been wasted. I had to implant myself in the child before she was disconnected from her mother. I quickly dismissed my partner’s intrusion.

I took a deep breath as I pressed my back against the wall across the room from the bed. Shooting towards the mother and my host, I was too excited. I was too excited to grow with this beautiful child. To be together every moment of our life, enjoying everything that comes with being a female in this short existence on this planet. To brush my beautiful hair, innocent curiosity explored with someone we trust and like being around.

Although the average human comes out of its mother with one soul, it’s apparent all throughout time that some people have had some kinds of nature to their spirits unlike those around them. One’s soul can become many faceted or incongruent with its physical being. What causes this phenomenon may never really be answered, but there are theories that a soul is recycled until it fulfills its true purpose. A lot of the anxiety humans have is from the turbulence we have with ourselves internally. This is even greater in beings with a pre-exposed dualistic nature.

I hope one day I will make light or what is best for my host and I for just as I was to spring into her, a large, brownish orange hand emerged from under the bed. I tried to dodge it, it grabbed my ankle after I started to dive.

It’s dark and blurry now, but I know in this child, I am not alone.

***

Later, for all three women.

The Hospital shut down shortly after Sara’s own departure. Her back hunched over and slowly declined to the face down position she was found in. She was wearing jewelry no one had ever seen her wear in life. The hummingbirds she could find the day Nancy was born was just two unknown flights below her own grandmother’s bedroom. They collected what was left of her existence and flew away to a new sphere of consciousness.

“I have no one,” the seven-year-old girl told herself. No person, only a strange sum of money like the bills in her mother’s suitor’s fold was sent to a trust she’d know nothing of for a further 11 years.

“‘Yesterday’, Y-E-S-T-E-R-D-A-Y. ‘Yesterday.’” Nancy spelled for her second-grade teacher at the Academy.

“Correct, you may sit.” The teacher instructed.

Nancy gazed longingly at her teacher’s hair, a shade similar to her own blonde ponytail. She wished that after each class the woman or anyone would pick her up. She could smell her hair all the way to a place she could call home.

Only home never was; at least not one of comfort or even far from the building she simply had to go downstairs for school.

She liked school, but that was it. The hospital on the edge of the woods was maintained as a child’s home and school that seemed to back further into the trees. The primarily disease splattered though occasionally miracle sprinkled walls were white washed. Checker board tiling waxed. The only peculiarity was their uniforms. The white jumpsuit-like dress was reasonable, however if Nancy had not been raised only here she surely would’ve questioned the wings they tied to their backs made of clinging holographic fabric.

The teacher the stood up after a classmate failed to correctly recite the spelling of “tomorrow.”

“That is incorrect!” she concluded. She then reached under her podium a produced a small net attached to a long thin bamboo stalk.

“I’m sending you to Headmistress, so take this to the roof, Thomas,” she instructed impatiently, holding the butterfly net towards him.

“You may,” she continued, “try and catch some mercy up there, but not in my classroom, young man.”

Tommy was sitting in front of Nancy as she strained to see his face on the left side of the room. Though hard to see the wings unless directly facing a student’s back, she could make out one from his right side. He stood still several moments more all the while she gazing pityingly at him.