Posted on by Lydia Ink

Immortal Spaniel

Maudlin music and anything less than red linen made for soft people she felt; yes felt, which was beyond knew and just before faith.

In oneself.

Her red, the blackish kind, hung in curtains and blocked out the sunlight opening only to rainy days.  Contentment blocked the wants of the world.

The world bloomed red in small startling places and she searched for the sear and pucker of the color in the dead of winter.

This proved effective in drawing her attention away from the doggish way he looked upon her.  He had a spaniel she liked and wished was hers.

But he wasn’t hers (the spaniel) the spaniel was his, but she ignored that fact.

Well sheltered within the stonewalled cottages described as farmhouses and which stood as manor houses they lived their lives.

The walls encompassed them and there they searched for red and a chance; she in hers him in his.

The spaniel was immortal and sighed often.

Magicians, outlawed and not allowed through the gates, directed witches to fly over their stone dwellings spelling out smokey threats over the sky.

The breeze, constant and often stiff did away with their threats by sunset so the lack of fear thwarted any sense of time and the idea of rushing headlong into passion.

What could an immortal spaniel do but sigh?

He (not the spaniel but the man who could waltz perfectly) thought of tempting fate with this or that bauble of love but without the magicians and witches no ruby red stone could be obtained to move her.

In this stonewalled place he only had his merit and his face. He was determined to surprise her with a perfect waltz later.

A curt nod only she gave him when they met upon the cobbled street. She, always with her eye on the corner of a stone building looking for red and wishing the dog was hers instead of his.

What could he do?  Learn to dye the world red?

Understand her?  No, that’s when love fled.

Then one autumn’s day their eyes met over the scarlet rose of fall.  Embolden he walked to a stranger’s garden gate and bent his head to smell the flower and block her gaze.

He turned to see her staring out upon the horizon.

“Stay,” he said, “and the dog will dance until you see the famous scarlet sunset.”

The dog appealed to her, twitching red orange sparks around his silky long ears.

She petted the dog and watched the sun heat the earth which caused the wind that brought the clouds all pink and red.

Clasping her waist he whirled her round, and the dog barked and gamboled about their feet.

And they built a stone terrace that connected their stone houses and invited the neighbors to watch the sunset pink and blue and green and silhouetted spaniel dogs and autumn’s roses red.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Her Sister’s Room

Wandering into the room, with chores and small goals on her mind, the mistake was made.  She was usually so careful, but even the best of plain girls make mistakes.  Her error when through the doorway became apparent when the air became still, hushed and in between that hushed era and the next noisy moments (the scraping of chairs and clanking of metal upon metal) she lived years of revelation and revulsion.  Life folded out before her, sighing, full of regret and self-incrimination.  It was as if she had already lived through the consequence and looking back to the day her life changed.  She was beyond the belief of her own existence.  How she could have been so careless, so absent minded regarding her own health and psyche in that brief eternity she knew would follow her forever?

With the first harsh word that sounded like a scrape upon an old blackboard, intentional and mean-spirited, her mind went from realization to self preservation.  What did she think she was doing, what right did she have?  That grating voice, the voice her sister reserved for only her, sounded like a rusted gate slamming shut against all freedom.

Her sister and her friends, all beautiful and flouncing when outside and before crowds of admiring, small town fans had crowded into her sister’s room.  Her sister’s room; off limits to such disasters as she.  When indoors, behind the secret keepers of wood and curtains, the darlings of old church ladies and weak old men grew fangs and gained a foreign language.  The door to her sister’s room hid sibling’s vices.  The quick squashing of ill rolled joints smoldering between prettily painted fingertips, the slush of clear filmy liquid capped with rusty sounding metal lids was quickly stuffed away behind flowing, bright material that draped her sister’s room.

She often wondered if her sister appreciated the royal hang and drape of her room or insisted upon the princess material she might hide and secret away the reprehensible thing. The latter assumption was a now fact as she walked mindlessly into the dark den.

She and her sister had separate rooms and upstairs away from her parents.  But the second story was no stopping point for those who were limber and in on her sister’s secrets.   The laughter, the hushed moans, and the sharp whispers to “shut up if you want to do this again,” that only she could hear and her parents never fathomed.  She kept her distance and played her music to silence the hissing laughter that leaked from the thin slits that illuminated her sister’s bedroom door.

And now she was in her sister’s room, in broad daylight, with only a direction from her mother to take her sister’s bedding to the charming side of the family.  Cream and red with bits of stylish black woven into the six hundred thread cotton sheet.  She herself had white by her own insistence.  What a thing to think at a time like this.

Makeup smeared and a masculine chuckle and she did not want to look up–if only she had thought if only all of her sister’s friends weren’t standing around with smiles as diabolical as demons.  She felt her stomach lurch when she heard someway say cover him up.

And then a faint call, a singsong wavering request from downstairs.  She was to come down and help with chores and leave her sister alone with her friends.

She brushed past her mother’s smothering smile, while feeling like the last person in the world.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Upon the Cliff’s Edge

Why the cliff’s edge? Because the contemplation of death from an armchair is a cheat. I stand physically alone upon this literal precipice.  The expanse of water to the horizon inspires my soul just as the 18th-century poets, whose enlightenment looked upon impossible physicality as the block that whetted the edge of their ability; I too aspire to to their aspirations.

The sound of such a mighty force of water and gravity upon the shoreline relaxes the tension across my shoulders inexplicably, but the jagged rocks below, visible because of the height and abruptness of the drop, causes my heart to pound.  My blood surges to my fingertips and I totter upon the edge, not wanting the pain, not wanting the end of my known existence and yet upon the edge, regardless.

No, I have no unfaithful lover nor am I being forced into distasteful existence; I am contemplating my death.  Suicide?  No.  Even as I weave upon this edge, I cannot force my foot forward to test my ideas of continuance.

The whine of my little dog, well back from the edge, brings me out of my own thoughts.  I step back, catch my heel upon a thick piece of turf and stumble.  I cry out and my inner organs sink into watery fear.  The only earth to catch my forward fall is the jagged and rocky strip of land that meets the sea far below.

Such a comfortable existence the lady had are the murmurs of neighbors, who scurry about with their daily and mundane tasks.  Her beauty they will say was unique and even a reality to the contemplative man. Why go to that damned cliff’s edge, why take the chance that so many warned her against?

Instinctively?  Yes, with a will to live I twist and grasp at the long shaggy turf while my feet entangled, kick against the air as if that element may solidify in pity toward my plight.  As I dig my fingers into the grass and hear the growl and whine of my little rat terrier, I laugh even as my hip and waist slide over the edge.  The warm, light, wool walking skirt wraps around my calves and the pointed tips of my walking boots slam painfully into the crumbling cliff face.  Still laughing, I dig my fingers into the turf which loosens from the ground. Scrambling for a small foothold, but hampered by my clothes, the weight of my body works against the desire of my mind.

I stop the struggle and look into the wide, fearful eyes of my little white dog.  There is a moment when I know both of us think the same thing… what will he do without me?

Ridiculous, isn’t it?  Did Adam and Eve despair about the garden when the angel with the flaming sword stood before the entrance of their once quiet domain?   What a damnable question to ask when what they wanted was their own empire.

“I’m so sorry,” I gasp at the canine face which only knows loyalty and yaps and whines knowing its world has now changed.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Love’s Trouble for Me

I worried after I fell in love that I would lose my edge. Edge is everything in my business. Love blunts every edge; I don’t care who you are. It’s cruel if I don’t stay sharp, razor sharp. Taking a swipe at someone while something blunts my edge? Well let’s face it they suffer. If I’m not hampered by the preoccupations of love, that swipe is painless, goes without a hitch, you’re dead before their mind can reach pain.

Yes, I’m a professional. It take care of the business in a quick and professional.

I was in love once before, years ago when I was young. I mean, you know love. I can’t help what I am, I can’t. She didn’t understand, and she moved to Milwaukee. It devastated me. I think disappointment gave me my edge. I wanted to hate her, I really did but I couldn’t. Years later I had a job in that area and I looked her up. She was still fine, and she seemed happy. I said hello, and she seemed edgy, a little scared but okay. Next thing I know she’s in Green Bay, then she’s in St Paul and divorced. I called her a year later; you know just to check on her, make sure she was okay. She was in Seattle. I point blank asked her if she wanted me to look up her ex-husband and she said no. She was emphatic about it, so I didn’t and I won’t. She’s in Tokyo now, seems to be doing all right.

I met my new lease on life during an emergency room visit in Chicago. One of those big hospitals. I had run into a little problem in New Albany, thought I was okay but I started running a fever while vacationing in Chicago. I love that city; Chicago. Anyway, I met Alice there.

Alice is tough as nails and hates her name so I call her Honey and Babe and things like that. She’s an emergency room nurse and man, some of the stories she tells makes my skin crawl. I mean she’s seen shotgun wounds, and people beaten to a pulp. Then there are the car accidents and the scum of the earth who hurt their kids. I was in tears one night; I don’t know how she stays sane.

She’s beautiful too. Clean. Her hair is always glossy and she doesn’t fan out on the makeup; a little liner, when I’m in town and she puts on a little mascara, a little lip gloss. I can still see a few freckles across her nose. So sweet, so dedicated.

I, of course, tell her I have no family. I’m not an idiot, I keep her well protected. I am human; some may doubt that but I am human. She loves to read old novels and I’m understanding why. I like The Portrait of Dorian Gray and The Invisible Man–man can you imagine how I can relate?

Posted on by Lydia Ink

NO!

In the wild whirl of the wind, her white blond hair whipped and lashed her face unmercifully.  I could make out her features; her eyes wide and her black brows knotted in unnatural contortions upon her alabaster face.  Her expression was that of anger and fear.

We were sinking you understand, drowning, and this woman looked as if to be fighting the strands of foaming water that the sharp winds flung into the atmosphere.  The very tips of the salt water were tangling their undulating and ever moving tentacles about her thin wrists and exposed neck.

Ah, the horrible beauty of it!  I was dying too, there was no hope for me but rather than spending my final moments cleansing my soul before God, I was watching this creature struggle against the agony of death in a way I was certain no other human being around her was doing.

She was outraged.

Outraged that such a thing could be.  Angered that death would be so presumptuous as to think her beauty, her effervescence should pass away without being arrayed in a long life of adoration.  I believed in that moment that if her life had been spared she would have thought nothing of gratitude even into old age.  Her hair, white blond, her skin flawless her bright blue eyes flashing.  Oh yes, she would have had all the men mourning and the young wallflowers weeping at every entrance she cared to make.

And there we were, me a common sailor watching her spend her last strength to rise defiantly amongst the storm and turmoil that mocked all who cried out to God.  She would not be mocked, even in her terror, her voice was loud and piercing and as her still slippered feet seemed to lift beyond the clutches of the lightening gray water, I heard her last word, a commanding No!

As her rebellious and deep throated word echoed out upon the water a gust of wind, so sharp and so piercing it seemed to split the water before her, pummeled into her breast and pushed her into the cleaving waters of the cold Atlantic.  Her hands claw-like stretched out grasping at nothing but what would slip through her fingers and she was gone.

My only thought was not to be pulled down with her.  To die, to take my sip of cold salt water, but not to die with that expression of defiance before me.  I lifted myself up and away.  I looked about for any sorrowing features that struggled against the pull of the inevitable.  Yes, perhaps a human face that looked about at the last for humble companionship in the meeting their maker.

I awoke in this bed, in this hospital room amongst the coughs and sobs of those who called themselves survivors.  Those sorrowing for their loved ones, those who still seemed soaked from the storm and sodden by their struggles.  All except one.  One young man who shook and shuddered and mumbled into his bleeding fingers.

“Don’t tell them I pushed her, please don’t tell them.”