The remnants of the sun ignited each little vapor now, filling the room with the smell of old things that have fermented nicely with age.  Looks to him that she is only napping, with one leg laid over the other, crossed at the top. Alas, how delicate and tender are those feet pointing towards the bedstead? Without war or violence. Her head is a little ways bent, propped up by the oak edge of the bed frame. Her aegis rise and fall no more with her breath. The red mark which warps all the way about her neck reminded him of the Christmas scarf woven with the finest alpaca wool. The rush of the red blends nicely with the jade of the white of her immaculate, supple skin. 

 

This little piece of wonder shipped and carried all the ways over from Argentina was being displayed in window shops around the city. Children and young maidens would flock to them with wondrous eyes filled with adoration and a burning fire as desire, hot as the styx grass burning and red as their blushing. The epiphany of that moment of happiness, all the admiration in their eyes of piercing jealousy bothers not the most fervent desirer. Their impecuniosity is the only thing that bars them from tearing down the threshold held flimsily by a guard in his waning age of dusk. The tellers of the bank would recount the line of furry coats and sharp heels lining up in the grandiose of a hall with its garish chandeliers gleaming upon the sinned and their wives, and how the sinned looked like sloth that has recently feasted upon human flesh and has bits and pieces of it hanging between two molars. The wives would stare each other down in a race to show whose plastic lips sells for a better price at the butchers. Fatter, juicier, and naturally teaming with the libido of the maternal breast. 

 

The fluttering of the curtain slaps the back of the man, as if a frail attempt to protect her child, when the sudden gust would especially alter the course of the rioting fabric and scuff the side of his face, at which time, the man lifted the shadow from his eyes. He sat with his back against the window, a decision which he only have come to regret as his shoulders are drenched from the indifference to the splattering of the rain. Through the entirety of the storm, he didn’t move much, only fixed his ties and his gaze upon the girl in bed. 

​

The phone rang suddenly, and reeled back the burly man from his dinghy on the sea, wet from waves and contemplations. As he rose to meet the annoyance of intrusion. The doorbell rang clearly and loudly. 

 

“It must be the waiter.” 

 

He holds the door ajar, leaving a gap large enough only wide enough for his cheekbones which he jutted between the wood, and stares directly at the unfortunate lad. 

 

“Leave it at the door.”

 

The door shuts.

 

“Yes sir.” The boy relinquished control of his precious cart and turning for moment seem to forget something. “Bon appetite, Monsieur.”

 

Duffing his shoulder, Stanley rolled the cart and thought about his missing tip, and how he won’t be able to get the lamp fixed before next week.

 

 

With the annoyance dealt with, a cigarette is lit, rather not adroitly, and for this occasion only he knew that no one was watching, and that he could, so he carried on. His heart sank a little, after the satisfaction of the smoke has rolled over his intuition and has dragged him down along into the sand pit of mucky pains. The flimsy red hopelessly fought against the chill of the blue room as he now turned his scorn towards the whistling of the wind. He felt mocked, can any accomplishment be as great as the feats of my title, the nobility of my birth? No man or woman alive can match me in my nobility at birth. I sliced off the head of the stone-cold medusa and stuffed it with lies, sure you say that with it I won the hearts of my people through deceit, but mistaken not my name, for I am no pleb and I shall rule with grace until the end of time.

 

His thought went back to a time when the heat from the hanger bay scorched his skin and left marks of red spots upon his arms, and how he dreamt and longed eagerly for the blue expanse, the ecstasy of a summer day. It was also that summer when he fell, head over heels, for a girl. The girl next door, you know? That kind of girl. A girl who smiles at every silly joke he makes, even though it may not be sensible at that moment after one think about it at all. The type of girl who brings lunch to the hanger bay everyday and eats healthy for the sake of eating healthy. He would stare at her jaws undulating slowly, taking little bites of the food, and with grace chewed and swallowed. He took shame at first, wondering if she was creeped out at his advance, but he made sure to play it off, looking elsewhere, perhaps at the pile of wrenches and drills lying next to the mechanic who was fixing the pressurized landing gear. He had to make sure that equal interest is paid on these subjects of observation save it would warrant suspicion from his target.They sat in the circle, and because he had the duty to serve food for the class, he was always the last one to enter and by that time, no seat was open for selection. None of his classmates were the talkative type, so he would watch on and in a circle the lot would sit, staring at the grains of corn. His thought often flew to her, and he did it, each day throughout the summer. On the rare occasion that their eyes met, she would confounded and startled at the split instant, and retreat her gaze slightly and look down, and smile gently.

 

When he saw this, he dreamt of becoming a falcon, breaching the mirror lake, perching upon the pinnacle of the bell tower next to the town hall of the small town of his humble origin. 

 

Oh looketh the king of the menagerie. 

 

How formidable, and with what grace! 

 

Now that the blood had played its game of hide and seek and has relinquished its abode from her cheek,  he lifted the livid from the mattress and set her upon the floor, golden tresses and all. He lied down next to her. They both gazed at the ceiling. It was the last thing they did together. The coffering in the roof, with their golden lacings. The loud sound of the green fan above drowns slowly his thought as the marshes of Matilda would have done to its beaked creatures, swallowing them whole. 

 

Turning his body, he marveled with wild eyes wide open at her protruding cheek, cold as ice. He sighs at the eyelashes that no longer trembles ever so slightly in the winter air, shaking off the miniature fresh snow flakes that has now slightly stuck themselves each to their assigned posts.  Those eyes like amber on a tasteful nymph of her gracious disposition would have suitors lining up thousands mile long, with each fervently in love and waiting restlessly to parade their cornucopia. The wool spinners from their abodes upon the hill, would look down upon the commotion and remark at their naivety, and how they will each lose their mind when another creature of commensurate or perhaps greater fortune befalls upon him. 

All of the desirers of her love walked away with their drooping heads veiled in a curtain made by sorrow, who weaved the net with tawny seeds of regret and emerald leaves of jealousy.

 

When he was recalled to life, he was wistfully weeping. At the odd sight of timidness, he reprimanded himself for being too careless. Immediately, he took a sharp pivot to glance down at the position where she laid and was assured that she was still soundly asleep. 

 

“Wouldn’t want anyone disturb you? Now that would be very unfortunate.” He stretched the last syllable of the word bad as if he was about to follow it up with some explanation of its evil. Unfortunate for whom wasn’t determined. He carefully pushes her under the bed, the height of whose bottom to the floor fits the lateral height of her body nicely, as if by curious design, an artifact of the three furies.

 

No explanation were projected into the room before the door was flung locked. A few heavy yet muffled steps later, there followed a short pause,  then shortened and hurried steps, and finally the lock turned three times and all fell silent. The coat stand spirals back and forth, as the upright sentry, titter-tottering, marching as ordered.  They say that he has been in wars two, and had children none. 

 

“Finally he has gone, and no one to bother us here.”

 

“Hey old man, loosen up before the screw pops of your joint, ” the kettle rattles.

 

A wide guffaw was heard around, and near the cupboards, where ladies of china with delicate ceramic glaze laughing too, reserved and ever elegant. And the wooden planks roar with laughter, creaking under the weight the amusement above.

 

“Watch it lad, before it ends up you know where.” The paintings indignantly protests and performs their duty to watch over the furnitures from the first tenant.

 

“Look who’s talking, it won’t be long when you end up in some dumpsters getting back rubs from dirty little rats, ” the kettle rattles even louder now, and water began to seething at the brim, overflowing the water extinguishes the flame beneath.

 

The laugher subsided a little.

 

The portrait, spurned, retreats and is coated with a layer of frost and moisture.

 

The record player threw the blues record across the room, “what kind of musical scoundrel desecrates my body with this garbage,”  and proceeds to extract from shelf a heavily scratched recording of Waltz in C Minor. “To describe this masterpiece as a taste of the clouds fares poorly in describing Chopin.”

 

No one heard this and paying little attention to one another, everyone dwells in their rejoicing of their own new found freedom. Limbs were thrown in the air and under the magic spell of Bacchus, the young, the room fell into a state of wild fantastisme. 

 

The pillows embraced each other fondly, and began to tell each other stories about distant lands where the shape of their bodies are rectangular and the material jade weaved with reed, and supported by bamboos instead of down.

 

On the small stool was a lamp, rumored to be old as the first ruler of the Babylon. He never talked, and his seclusion drive others away and no one shared anything with the elder. He flickers often  and would be immediately be met with smack upon his head, at which moment, he would awaken from listless state and work again. During the fête, he again didn’t partake in the jamboree.  East of the sun, no one doubted a thing. Through it all, God hasn’t spoken a word.

 

When the rowdiness died down with tiredness of the spirit and boredom. Each appliance and object returning to sleep and the bed settee settles to rest, she was unable as she felt an inexplicable itch at her left heel, and looked down. 

 

What followed was horror and petrification.

 

It was a comb full of woman’s hair, neatly fastened at her feet. What frightened the lot wasn’t the ordered tresses, but the object to which it connects.

 

The shadow that has been just a moment ago left upon the room started to evaporate again, and rumors and cheap accusations were flung across like darts into each others corpus. The curtain pushed over the cup, who poured forth all of its anger on the notebook and rolled with fierce fire of anger down the windowsill and fell askew upon a book, projecting it tumbling off the table, and who, falling also with unavenged anger, tackled the cat resting on the table, startling it, spurring it on. The stud, piqued at this disturbance, growled at the shelf, jumped to a neighboring standing shelf, and from the stop, slid down its face, unhooking the latch and unbalancing its already poorly arranged contents, who at the command of the opening, all jumped courageously, following their leader in the fire of the battle, shattering themselves upon hitting the floor.

 

The night has fully veiled the sky, and the street lamps were hot from burning coal. By this time, the satyrs no longer roam the cobbled walkways, and scoff each other’s vanity as during the day.  Puddles of rain drains from the crevices between piece of irregular stones laid haphazardly on the street, supposedly by design, thought to grant it a natural aesthetic. The wet stones with their orange glow carries his footsteps towards the river bank only through a few minutes of promenading. 

 

He felt that the commotion of the night has become, by this moment, a little garish, and wishes to retreat to his chamber for further studying of his subject and thus after a stroll by the river, he decided against heading down further across the bridge towards the park. The groove across the river by this time is unlit, and totally submerged in the penumbra of the leaves. There are only beggars and the poor that meanders anyways. He returned to the hotel. The buses that occasionally passes stopped felicitously today.

 

“On or off, make your choice quickly.”

 

“On, please.”

 

The bus was not particularly crowded. All the seats were taken except for one, which is awkwardly crammed in and atop it sits a leathered bag, glaring with the smell of money, and a hand of a woman in her fifties with a checkered shirt who has decided to grant gratuitously her bag a seat for the journey. At the sight of this, he felt indignation, but with reservation, he requested to be seated. 

 

“Not from around here, are you?” asked the woman. 

 

“You could put it that way. I did travel quite a long way to get here.” Sliding between the back of the seats in front and her leg, he lowered his head touching barely the roof of the bus. The woman didn’t respond but instead felt discomfited by his menacing poise forced by the situation. 

 

“Do you work a job?”

 

“Well, you could say that.”

 

“Either you do, or you don’t. A person is either employed or unemployed and sitting ducks at home eating off of their parents.” She emphasized the p and some spit came out with her scorn. 

 

“Well, you see that I do not tire in the labor, nor bore in the performance. I do not profess myself as skillful but skilled enough.” 

 

“Skilled at what? So what do you do exactly?”  

 

“I am a poet.” 

 

“Like the dead. You lot wastes oxygen to loiter around the earth. All you do is eat and drink and grow fat from our tax money.”

 

“Dead in the inside, but immortal on the outside. More the merrier I might add, and I never refuse delicacies of the mind.”

 

He roamed the halls with its red, velvet soft, carpet bending around every corner he looks and set course for his room. He felt hungry, and assuring his body of its fulfillment in due time, he turned his keys.