Mylonite and Tomorrow

© Jan. 21, 2018. All Rights Reserved.

Pinch me. On my noteworthy journey, I see a trampoline on a rooftop, two-story building where a cage surrounds the upper section to protect participants from falling to their promising death. I’m across the street, walking on the sidewalk with black binoculars wrapped around my neck, a black and white, long-sleeved, zipped up, plaid jacket, a black, leather belt with silver studs, tattered, blue jeans, and black tennis shoes. I’m holding a camcorder where I record the aesthetic buildings, only to see two strangers kissing.

Needless to say, I’m marginalized like a piece of gelatin. People of all shapes and sizes appear happy and I remember them like the latest facial recognition software. Even the few little people I see around city appear happy, holding hands with someone near and dear. Like my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, great, great grandparents, and down the entire ancestor bloodline, they’ll eventually get into a scuffle and that’s the end of the story. It’s no different and why should I stand out from the competition?

I’ve seen my love read, write, and speak fluently in two different languages, formally and informally. A prolific reader, she is, reading a dozen stories within twelve, astounding seconds, unconsciously write with perfect grammar, sentence structures, and storytelling, which exceeds the planet’s expectations, and effectively speak slang, just as much as she can read and write in cursive. Rumor has it that she can speak in every language known to humankind, including the lost ones, for she often uses archaic words nobody comprehends at the end of her intellectual conversations. Like pure poetry, a single word she may utter articulates her emotions, ideas, opinions, factual statements, and sense of humor with ease, which can cease deep-rooted rivalries, permanently.

She’s so social, that there’s rumors that she’s a mindreader of some sort. She has sympathy for the socially awkward, but it’s all a dream. Yet, again, I awake in my bedroom, imagining the same woman, practically idolizing the perspiration dripping from her hair follicles. My dead skin cells are reborn if they ever so touch her exfoliated skin. I’ve never seen this woman in my life, so why does my night terrors taunt me when we could be polar opposites? My reveries befriend my dreams, but my dreams, I still can’t control.

In front of me is a poster of a half-naked blond, swimsuit model (where the cosmography desperately flirts) nailed to the black, plaster, glazed wall, to my right side, there’s a mini-refrigerator, and to my left side, there’s a silver, flat-screen television sitting on a black dresser with a clean fish tank in the background. In the fish tank, there’s a Florida box turtle (who is consuming an earthworm), a black and white, ocellaris clownfish, and a goldfish. I rise up to turn the air conditioner on, then from upstairs, I hear my name being called, “Giovanni! Giovanni! Get up here quick!” That raspy voice startles me, sending me the urge to walk the opposite direction, but I rush up the squeaky, wooden stairs from the gloomy basement.

I open the door, seeing a blinding, white light flash in my eyes in my very presence, then feel cold water splash across my face with such an impact that I nearly fell backwards down the stairs. Guffaws rise across the living room as my eyes then see Jess, a 22-year-old sound designer with black, long, curly hair and a one-sided braid on the right side. She has brown freckles holding a sanguine flashlight. Jess has a black cardigan, blue jeans, and black tennis shoes while Larissa, a 19-year-old, over-achieving brunette with short, curly hair, thick, reading glasses, blue overalls, and black jack boots. Larissa has an Associate’s Degree in Fire Science at the University of Petunia in Afghanistan, a Bachelor’s Degree in Radiation Therapy at the Gifted College of Russiaville, a Master’s Degree in Film Studies with a minor in fashion design at Italy’s Golden Elites, and a PHD in Psychology at Vellia College New York.

I’m humiliated. None of these entities are my friends, but I eye at a birthday cake as they proceed to laugh like it’s their profession. Beside the blue cake, which says, “Happy 18th Birthday” are many pieces of confetti in Rolling Hitch Knots. Larissa then says, “Blow out your candles grown man.” Jess says, “Wait! Let me take a pic with birthday boy first.” Larissa says, “Giovanni’s an adult now and right now, he’s hungry. Isn’t that right?” I then say, “Uuumm.”

Jess says, “Hurry up already and make up your mind. Giovanni’s my homeboy.”

I’m handed the professional cake knife, but before I approach the circular glass table, all of the lights turn off. Jess utters, “Make a wish.” Theres eighteen lit candles extending out of the cake. As I blow out the candles, the light flickers on and off, repeatedly. Everyone looks on the opposite side of the closet where my intoxicated mother is, wearing a tye-dye shirt, blue jeans, and black tennis shoes. She laughs with wobbly legs in the dark until she falls, crashing onto the black, leather couch. Thus, I blow out the candles, then cut the cake.

My mother jumps over a 6 foot, circular, beige bean bag and the milk-white leather couch, screaming, “Happy Birthday” in a joking manner.

Oh, the laughter haunts me. Then, the ground floor shakes. Dishes fall out of the cabinets. Pictures fall from the walls. Dressers fall over. Everyone screams rushing to the floor. It’s an earthquake, but gladly, the place isn’t fully destroyed.

The Following Day

The moment I awake from my mattress, which is sitting on the black tiled floor, I receive a text message. I rise up to check my black cell phone, which is sitting on a tawny dresser. The text is from Jess, which reads, “What up? Tell your moms that I’m clockin’ in at seven tonight.” I text Jess back, “Got it.” My mother opens the basement door, then limos down the stairs with a right anterior cruciate ligament, which feels fractured when she puts weight on it. Practically deveining me with her stare as if though I’m phytoplankton, she groans while refraining from using profanity, then speaks, smelling like strong liquor with vinegar, “Who you textin’?”

Silence remains on my mouth like trying to hear a headless maggot in a forest fire. Her body has the stench of three cadavers in a sewage, but maybe I’m exaggerating. Take my word for it or take a sniff. She reaches the bottom step, walks over, then says, “I’m just messin’ around. Ain’t nobody tryin’ to look at your phone.” She then looks at my screen, laughs, then says, “I’m going to need you to do me a favor. I need some money to get groceries. I know you’re trying to save up.” In response, I say, “I don’t have that much money. I only have twenty dollars.” She takes the money from my hand, saying, “Thank you.” I head upstairs as she says, “I need to wash up. When you’re ready, take out the trash.”

After drinking 3 cups of water from the kitchen, I dump two, black garbage bags into the dumpster. The moment I make my way back, my mother says, “Did you check the mail?” “You never told me to check the mail,” I say. She yells, “I did! Don’t worry about it. Just help me move this couch.” “I can do it myself,” I say, then she responds, “I don’t think so. That couch cost me two thousand dollars,” she says. First, I close the front door, then get on the left end of the couch while she gets on the opposite side. She says, “Lift it from the bottom. Go.” Together, we both lift the couch from the middle of the living room near the burgundy, draped curtains that block the view of the balcony. She asks me, “Do you like the couch over here or where it was better?”

I say, “Where you just moved it looks great.”

“Just great,” she says, then her cell phone rings where she rants for approximately five minutes while I stand. I attempt to head elsewhere and she calls me to say, “Did I tell you to move? We’re about to get this house together and we’re working on your room next,” then speaks to her caller, “Let me get off this phone. I know you have an appointment.” After chuckling, she ends the phone call.

I receive a text message and she slaps me before yelling, “Come on, Giovanni! We have to clean up around here! You can’t be textin’! You had all day to do that! Tell whoever you’re textin’ that you’re busy!” “Okay,” I say, then look at the phone screen, reading, a message from Helen, saying, “I’m going to kill myself.” How do I tell Helen that I’m busy? I text the words, “I’m helping my mom move heavy furniture around right now. Can you refrain from killing yourself in about an hour?” Before I can press the send button, my phone rings and it’s an unknown caller, saying, “Hello. Is Benedetta there?” Thus, I take the phone away from my ear, saying to my mom, “Someone wants to speak to you.”

She takes the phone from my hand and speaks, “Hello… You have the wrong number. “Can I have my phone back,” I say. She responds, “Not until we’re done cleaning. What are you doing that’s more important than your personal growth?” Luckily, no random person texted me a naked picture while my mother has my cell phone. I say, “I just wanted to let them know I’m busy.” “They’ll know when you stop responding. Jesus, stop frowning. What type of job are you going to get frowning all the time. Even a garbage man has to smile and be social. I shouldn’t have to answer phone calls for you to set up your doctor’s appointment. When I was sixteen, I had my two jobs, a house, car, and a girlfriend that I had to spend time with. I even had to finish high school to receive my master’s degree in Social Work. Get your shit together or get out of my house. God gave you a stigmatism because you weren’t paying attention to your surroundings. Now’s the time to focus or you’ll be blind. I never had a stigmatism because I read my Bible. Jesus died for our sins,” she yells.

I have foreknown forethoughts about the things I’d like to do to my mother. A paintball gun aimed at her is foolish a water balloon being thrown. I’ve wanted her dead for a long time, but how precious is it to have a mother so beloved by everyone else? She exits the front door after putting on her long-sleeve, black, fleece jacket with a detachable hood, then greets the neighbor who exits his apartment, saying, “Good morning.” He says, “Morning. Did you hear the ground moving last night?” Benedetta says, “I was just about to ask you the same thing. I woke up at two o’clock in the morning thinking I was the only one seeing the ground move. I had to get out my Bible and start praying.” He says, “I know that’s right.”

Just when I thought she left, she enters the living room again after telling her neighbor to take care. Benedetta says, “Help me look for my keys. We’re going to watch some movies when I get back, so think about what movies you want to see and I’ll pick them up. Don’t choose that Satanic crap that your brothers are all hooked up in or I’ll kick you out like I did them. If you no longer want to speak to them, I understand and you don’t have to,” she says.

2 Hours Later

Benedetta enters the front door, then removes her jacket. “Put in one of the movies. I picked up some food because I ain’t cookin’ tonight,” she says. Curiously, I ask, “Which movie,” then she interrupts, yelling, “Any movie!” I just insert a comedy movie into the DVD player, turn the projector on, and cut the light off. As soon the screen is on the main menu, she says, “I’m scared. Aren’t you scared of this movie?” I ignore her, then there’s a knocking on the front door.

My mother opens the front door and it’s my brother with his clothes drenched in rain. He stutters, saying, “Hi. I thought that I’d stop by to visit.” He’s not even wearing a jacket and I received no warning of his arrival. Immediately, I head to my bedroom and my mother says, “Giovanni. Go make your brother some popcorn. Did you get a job yet?” “I’m still working on it,” I say. “You have your Bachelor’s Degree. Don’t let these people with no degree beat you. Both, you and your brother need to pick it up.”

I’m simply distraught. The movie plays while the popcorn is popping and already, she pauses a scene where the main character is having lesbian sex, saying it’s a sin. Why does she press the play button? After cooking the popcorn, I pass my Benedetta and my brother a bowl of popcorn, then make my own. My brother says, “You’re missing the movie,” which frustrates me, so I finally get done making the damn popcorn for myself and my brother doesn’t want to watch the movie by heading toward my room. My mother says, “Aren’t you all gonna watch the movie?” I say, “I’ll…” My Brother interrupts, saying, “It’s boring.” “Y’all missin’ out. Mister film major needs to lose his degree.”

I walk into my bedroom and there’s a knocking. My brother says, “Hi” while waving his hand horizontally. He then says, “Can I enter your room,” where I say, “Sure.” I’m texting my friend and my brother says, “You should smile more. Maybe if you smile more, you can get a girlfriend, a job, then you’ll get a place to stay. You don’t have it rough.” “You don’t know what I go through,” I say. He says, “I’ve known you my entire life,” then says, “What were we talking about?” “How much you like popcorn. I’m going to watch this comedy special that’s playing in the living room. Do you want to watch?” He says, “No thanks. I remember what we were discussing now.”

I step around my bed to close the closet doors and hide a voodoo doll that’s in a black, fishnet bag behind several white, transparent garbage bags full of clothes. The doorbell rings and that’s the moment I look at the time on my cell phone, seeing seven o’clock. Jess made her way back to the house, but my brother talks, “I never wanted to come over here. Back at my place, I have a homeless friend who I constantly have stay over and have to kick him out whenever my mom arrives. Why’s my mother hold onto my money when I’m a grown man? I should be able to purchase any foods I want. We’re all going to die anyway. I don’t know what healthy foods to pick out. I came over here just to speak to you and sometimes, I feel like I should’ve just stood home with my friend. You make me feel like I should commit suicide with how depressing you look.”

I look at him and say, “Nobody told you to let him leave your place. It’s cold as Antarctica’s ass cheeks and you decided to let him go. You was the bully back then.”

He yells, “Why are you arguing! I hope you do go into the military and you get shot dead! I’m going home!”

I yell, “Fuck you,” hoping he searches online who has the largest penis in the world and it turns out that an infant does, then the feds deliver him a cock sized ass whooping throughout his life sentence.

He runs toward me, the kicks me in the chest. As I fall backwards on the bed, he strikes me continuously in the body region where I gasp for oxygen. He then walks away, stops his movement, then runs toward me again, but I move my body to the right with my left foot extended in the air, and he trips falling into the mahogany entertainment system, breaking the black, flat screen television. Flashbacks of when he’d pummel me every day occurs while I suffer from a convulsive groan. Jess (who has green and blue, long dreads, rushes in my room to see my brother resting in the shattered glass. He has a bloody forehead.

Jess screams as I put on my black, leather jacket. My mother arrives in my room and I exit the room before grabbing a book bag, which includes my cash and birth certificate and social security card. Thus, I slam the front door shut.

30 Minutes Later

Where I sit on a bench outside of a mall, I’m consuming seasoned French fries and cheesy beans, which has the aroma of fresh, mushroom pizza in a bowl. A photogenic, desi woman with long, black, curly hair and a pink rose poking out of the top right section approaches him. She has a red bindi, two, authentic, small, silver, round piercings on both sides of her nose, perfectly aligned from both corneas, red fingernails, two golden bangles on both sides of her wrists, a purple, laced shawl, a laced, black, pencil skirt embroidered with red and pink floral designs, and purple tennis shoes with a dream catcher design on both of them. Her smile is extraordinary like finding living fish in inside a volcano. She says, “Excuse me! I couldn’t help but notice what you’re eating and was wondering which store did you go to?”

There’s a small, round, silver piercing in the front section of her tongue. I say, “Postasia’s Burgers. 2486 North Six Port Heights on Main Crestorfield street.”

She says, “I was going in the right direction then.”

I say, “Yeah. That’s what I did at first. I just followed the smell.”

“Yummy,” she says as if she wants to taste the food that I’m eating.

“You want to try some,” I ask.

She responds, “No thanks. I’m on a diet,” walking away taking two steps, then returns, saying, “That’s so sweet of you! You didn’t have to!”

She grabs some French fries and a separate burger I’ve not eaten, then sits on a bench. While she eats, I try to get to know her, “What’s your name?” She says, “You’re not from here, are you?” A scrawny thuggish man walks by the bench and says, “Gotta lighter?” I nod my head horizontally as she says, “No, Devonte! You know I don’t smoke!” Devonte says, “Is he bothering you? You want me to handle him?” She says, “We we’re doing just fine until you interrupted. Why don’t you go and smoke somewhere else?”

I utter the words, “I’m going to get going.”

She then says to Devonte, “See what you did? You scared him! You always do this to me!”

Making a right turn around the corner of a rundown hotel, I then walk away into an alley, but as I walk, from behind me, I hear a glass bottle shatter against the black, concrete ground. Devonte has an intimidating look of rage as he walks forward, eventually saying, “Stay away from my bitch! You got that!” “I’m leaving,” I say, but he pushes me into a brick wall where my forehead hits hard. He lifts up his shirt, draws out his handgun, then, beats my face with it. Thus, he aims the weapon at my bloody forehead as I gasp for oxygen. The woman runs from behind Devonte, screaming while I’m on the ground, defenseless.

Devonte says, “Stay away from my bitch! You got that?”

“I said I’m leaving!”

Devonte shoots me in the left kneecap. Blood leaks on the ground while I scream in excruciating pain. The woman screams, saying, “No!” Devonte pushes the woman to the ground, then shoots me in the left clavicle. It rains and Devonte says, “Stay away from my bitch,” shoots me once more in the same area, then says, “Don’t bring your ass round here anymore!”

Devonte says, “Come on,” then the woman rises. He holds her hand, pulling her from my blurry vision. Then, an earthquake shakes the ground. Devonte yells, “Oh shit” while the desi woman screams. I hear running footsteps on gravel, but I can’t run anywhere in my physical condition.

2 Hours Later

I awake, naked in a bathroom full of cold water full of ice cubes and white, lit candles surround the bathtub. A blond woman with short, straight hair and a black bathrobe positions her right index finger above her mouth while her left palm blocks his mouth. I was simply trying to breathe. I hear footsteps against a wooden floor and they’re not hers. The bathroom door opens by itself and the woman looks behind, saying, “I’m glad you could make it. Say hello, Gregory.” There’s nobody behind her and I hear nobody saying hello. The woman then turns back facing me, saying, “And your name is?”
I say, “I’m…”

As much as I try to think of fake name, she interrupts saying, “Giovanni.”

“How’d you know that,” I ask.

“Gregory knows everyone who enters this house. Stay still. Before you leave, you’re going to be feelin’ one hundred percent.”

I say, “Thank you for picking me up, but I should really be get going.”

“Gregory says he was friends with your father,” she says.

I try to rise from the bathtub, but my injury drives my body back down into a resting position. She says, “Take it easy. I’m not going to hurt you. By the way, my name’s Tomorrow.” My cell phone levitates from the kitchen sink hovering above my shoulders. She passes me a white dry towel where I dry my hands, then grab my cell phone to see my mother attempted to call me 55 times and sent me over 9 text messages where the most recent one says, “You’re never to step foot in this house again and I’m putting an end to your cell phone service, so while you think you had it hard now, the real world will kick you right in the ass!”

I check a message that Helen sent me, which says, “I’m worried sick about you. Why won’t you answer me?”

Suddenly, I try to text back, saying, “I’m doing okay,” but my message is invalid. Thus, on the cell phone, words form as if though I’m texting it, reading, “Just go away.” The message sends and I see the response from Helen, reading, “What the hell has gotten into you? First, you wanted nothing but the best for me and now you want me to go away? Go fuck yourself!”

I nearly drop the cell phone in the water from how enraged I am, saying in agony, “What the hell did you do!”

She says, “I didn’t do anything with your phone,” then temporarily looks to the left, saying, “Gregory, did you mess with his phone? Gregory says no. We were standing here the entire time.”

“Get me out of here,” I yell.

The woman puts her right palm over my mouth, then says, “When I shut the door, your body will be one hundred percent. One. Two. Three.”

She leaves the bathroom and the door shuts by itself. After I lower my cell phone on the toilet seat, my injury isn’t painful anymore. What just happened? I stand on my two feet moving my left leg above the water and touching my left clavicle. I no longer feel a wound, then look in the mirror, seeing that the wound is gone.

I step out of the bathroom, cautiously looking around, wondering if I should run out of this place naked or search for clothes. A record player plays from the living room, which startles me, so I dart my head around. Nobody is in the living room, but the record player is moving by itself. I hear several disembodied voices say my name, “Giovanni!” Then, a bedroom door pops open and it’s Tomorrow, but this time, she’s firmly holding a beige dress shirt and black dress pants on a wooden hanger.

Tomorrow says, “I know you don’t plan on running out there naked with your package out.”

Sarcastically, I say, “Not any time soon.”

“Your mother just wanted you to have a backup plan. No she didn’t,” the voices say.

I say, “Thank you.”

She says, “No. Thank God.”

 

3 Years Later

I’m in a bathtub and Tomorrow opens the door, saying, “My marvelous, marvelous Giovanni! I need those incendiary powders made by tonight. Everyone’s doing their part. Gregory is on the look out and I’ll bring in the bait. It’s go time! Let’s do this!”

Tomorrow covers her yellow, spaghetti strap with a black pea coat, then exits the house. 30 minutes later, I receive a text message, letting me know it’s time to go outside. Trying not to slip on the black ice, which covers the concrete steps, I walk down, then toward her black convertible. She opens the trunk and there’s a rolled up Indian rug that she wants me to carry into the house. I carry the rug wondering what the hell I’m going to look like if someone sees me struggling to lift what feels like dead weight. What if I slip on the black ice and the body rolls out of the rug? There’ll be witnesses everywhere and I’ll effortlessly make the cover of the local newspaper.

The rug is heavy, but I lift it up, nearly falling backward before Tomorrow catches the rug by her lonesome and sits it in front of the door. Gregory opens the front door, then I position the rug into the living room. The front door shuts after Tomorrow locks shuts all of her car doors and locks them. Thus, she rolls the rug until it’s flat where a naked male is in an unconscious state.

I sit slumped down in a wooden, rocking chair, smoking a sweet cigar while Tomorrow walks over to kiss me on the lips. She moves backwards with a smile as the defenseless victim on the floor is getting his hands tied shins his back and ankles tied together with a thick rope by Gregory.

The victim wakes up and Tomorrow has on a black mask as just as I do. She slaps him across the face, then says, “A or B. A, you empty your bank account or B, your joint-stock company will be no more.”

The victim tries escaping the ropes, saying, “What the… Who the hell are you? How did I get here?”

She refuses to answer his question, takes the cigar out of my mouth, where wisps of smoke wander around the place. Then, she positions the cigar in her mouth while opening a steel, silver cooler to grab a cold beer. While I watch her temporarily remove the cigar just to drink from the beer, I grab another cigar, which sits beside an ashtray full of cigarettes on a black nightstand.

After rising from my rocking chair, I strike him in the mouth. As much as he desires to cover up the wound from his bottom lip, he can’t. Then, I look into his brown, leather wallet, which is sitting on a rectangular, glass table. The victim’s name is Jeffrey Manomark who is 5 foot 4, 156 pounds, and in grave trouble.

Jeffery weeps, then screams desperately for help as I drag him into a bedroom where the air conditioner has been on for nearly 2 hours, colder than the negative 5 degrees from outside. “Please! No! No! No,” Jeffrey screams, but his words don’t save him. There’s a silver, stainless padlock on the top closet shelf that I grab, then place in a black, fishnet bag. Thus, I swing the weapon at his jaw, dividing his top, right canine tooth from his mouth as blood follows. Blood trickles down his mouth with the mixture of saliva while tears run down his fearful eyes.

Sarcastically, I then say, “Smile more. It’ll ward off the evil.”

I then kick him in the testicles and wonder which one of his testicle hurts the most. Jeffrey squeals in a tone that I favor, then grunts in a shaking motion. His body hair reaches freezing temperature and his nostrils stick against his flesh, making it complicated to breathe.

Great. Tomorrow arrives saying, “What a strong man I have,” then says to Jeffrey, “That’s more than ten seconds I gave you. Make a choice. A or B.”

Jeffrey says, “Fuck you!”

I kick him in the testicles once more, then put him in a supine position, holding his back upwards with my right knee pressing down on his spinal cord. He yells as Tomorrow grabs a dirty, white rag with brown and grey stains from the bathroom tub, then heads into the black, bedroom dresser, opening the bottom drawer to take out black tape. She stuffs the dirty rag in his mouth, then wraps the tape around his mouth approximately four times. Suddenly, it feels more peaceful. Yes.

Constantly, she walks backwards and runs forwards, kicking him in the ribs and testicles. The victim cries uncontrollably. Although he cries with his hands tied behind his back, I won’t let go of his arms. Then, I stretch his arms in an upward motion to the point where I hear bones crack. Thus, he screams. Tomorrow then says, “A or B!”

I say, “Gosh. If you empty the man’s bank account, that ruins his business altogether and if you ruin his business, he has to find another way to make money.”

Tomorrow says, “Don’t give him the answers. Jeffrey has to think for himself in life or he’ll never succeed like you.”

I say, “I would’ve never succeeded without a hand from you.”

Tomorrow says, “You’re strong and have survival instincts. Maybe you forgot how things were before, but I remember just like yesterday. The balls you had to survive under your living conditions weren’t as good as his.”

I say with a serious voice, “Does that make it right to punish him?”

She says, “Fuck yeah, dude,” then laughs.

I laugh along, saying, “This motherfucker should’ve never fucked with us fuckers!”

“B,” Jeffrey yells.

Tomorrow removes her black, leather, studded belt, the swings it at his body approximately twelve times, yelling, “Don’t yell at me!” Jeffrey suffers several welts on his body and a bruise mark on his right cheek after I strike it. He bleeds profusely from his bottom lip. Tomorrow says to Jeffrey, “Act right because Gregory is watching you.” She leaves the room as I follow her. Thus, the bedroom door slams by itself and a silver lamp flickers on and off by itself.

Jeffrey panics. A glass of ice, cold water tilts over the dresser, landing on the grey carpet.

Gregory picks up a keen knife, which is slid from underneath the door. Jeffrey looks at the weapon levitating toward him. Nobody is in sight holding the weapon, so Jeffrey screams. The light turns out as Gregory launches the knife into Jeffrey’s body three six times, his face, twice, and his right shin, once. Jeffrey suffers eternal bleeding.

In the living room, I receive a text message from Helen that reads, “Call me.” Immediately, I call her and hear Helen softly say, “I love you.” Another individual with a deep voice says, “Leave my daughter alone, you nigger.”

“I’m not black dumbass. Call here again and I’ll murder you,” I say before ending the phone call.

Tomorrow says, “But you are black.”

I say, “How could you hear that conversation. He was speaking very low.”

“Your friend loves you. Wanna be her savior,” she says?

I say, “No. I’m done with her. I’m just done.”

Tomorrow says, “Take some time to think about it while I check up on Gregory. Gregory! Gregory!”

“Sure,” I say.

She walks down the hall and stops, saying, “Mommy got you a treat. Giovanni! Grab the treat that’s in my purse!”

Her demanding voice makes me follow her command. The moment I unzip her, purse, which is made out of leopard skin, I see a black and tan poodle barking. I take the poodle out of the purse, eyeing the vacant hall. Her malicious smile is behind me. She grabs the poodle, saying, “Thank you,” then speaks to Gregory, saying, “There’s more if you keep it up.”

In awe, I stare at the poodle being devoured by nothingness, yelling for someone to save him. Blood drips down to the white, tiled floor and the blood is the same color as Tomorrow’s living room curtains, which drapes down the floor. I take a seat, suffering from a flashback of Benedetta half naked, wearing a bluish-green, laced bra and black pantyhose, saying, “Here. I’m done using the computer” Benedetta hands me my laptop back and when I shut the bedroom door to sit down on my bed, type in the URL, I notice that she’s been on lesbian porn sites. After making a disgusted face, I delete the the URL history, then look at the pictures section in my documents noticing my mother posing naked, revealing her buttocks. Immediately, I exit out, sit the laptop on the bed, and sit back, trying to breathe. The moment I exit the flashback, another flashback occurs, but this time, it’s of Devonte saying, “Stay away from my bitch! You got that?”

I grow impulsive, heavily breathing, wailing against the pillows on the couch. Tomorrow walks by, snapping her finger louder than a police siren and hypnotically, I pause. Tomorrow then sits beside me, wrapping her right leg around my right leg, then wrapping her arms around my neck, saying, “That’s better. That’s why I love you, babe. You always know when to do what’s best for me. I just love you.”

Her last sentence echoes in my ears, repeating in her ethereal voice, “I just love you. I just love you. I just love you.”

She proceeds speaking, “What’s on your mind, hun?”

I respond, “I think you’re ticklish.”

The Following Day

I’m wearing a black mask, a black hooded sweatshirt under a black trench coat, black, medical gloves underneath black, leather gloves, leather pants, and black hunting boots on a rainy Sunday night. In the backyard of a bungalow, I wander, seeing that the bathroom window is closed shut with the lights off and the door open. From looking through the bathroom window into one section of the hall, I know there’s nobody around. Even if curtains blocked my view, I’d hearken to where the vigilant homeowner goes daily, just to pry the window open by first inserting a utility knife in the gap between the sash and frame. Then, I position the knife around the opening of both sides of the window, remove the utility knife. Then do the same thing with a putty knife. I position my black flat bar where the sash meets the window sill, tapping it with a black hammer around and lift the window up after slowly pressing the flat bat downward on the bottom angles of the window.

Slowly, I make my way into the gloomy bathroom, closing the draped, beige curtains, which were on the sides. Then I lightly walk toward the door, peeking around both sides. There’s nobody in the hall, then I see a bulldog that walks nearby until I rest a piece of seasoned steak on the wooden floor. The homeowner’s bedroom door is wide open with her black, flat-screen television turned on, mounted on the plaster, red-brown painted wall. A separate room is closed, so I check the living room where a paralyzed female with long, curly hair is sitting defenselessly in a wheelchair. She has a blue blouse under a grey jumper dress with black stockings.

Slowly, I walk backwards, moving into the bathroom and stepping into the bathtub with a handgun, which has a lovable silencer kept in his back, right pocket. I then hide in a supine position with the handgun held upwards. The separate door opens and it’s an 8-year-old boy in green pajamas with black, horizontal stripes, holding a half eaten black, ceramic bowl of disgusting oatmeal and a panini sandwich. The anonymous boy leaves the wooden door opened enough for me to know that the handicapped woman and the boy are the only two currently in the bungalow.

The boy says, “Mommy. You dropped your steak.”

The mother rolls her wheelchair around with a confused look on her face, then sees a shadow come out of the bathroom. I then step out of the bathroom as her opened, bedroom window allows the air to lift the bottom section of my trench coat. I shoot the little boy in the back of the head with no remorse, cherishing the moment blood squirted from his stupid head. The bowl falls to the carpet, cracking. Afterwards, the mother screams, but not too long, for I shoot her in the right lung. Her head rushes down to her cleavage area as blood trickles down her wound.

I walk toward her as she struggles to breathe, but I recline the wheelchair with my physicality. I slap her repeatedly as she cries, then push her handicapped ass out of the broken wheelchair. Her voice rises 8 octaves when I yank a handful of her hair from her precious scalp. She bleeds from her scalp, slowly struggling to crawl away with only her arms. Her legs are motionless.

Yes, I laugh while placing my right foot on top of her left ankle. No longer can she move further away from me like having a couch leg stuck on a cat’s tail or holding a worm in the palm of my hands. Her fingers linger as she sails against the grey carpet. I remove my right foot only to stomp against her left ankle, dislocating it. The exhilaration I’m receiving calls for a beer I’ve not yet drank.

Oh, her sexiness leaves me no other fucking choice. No woman would want to accept me unless they’re old as shit, a cheater, have an immediate family, or some other bullshit pattern leading to me wanting nothing to do with them. After tonight, I’m a motherfucker. I reflect on how I deflowered Tomorrow 3 years ago, then realize how lucky this crippled bitch is.

I rip off her jumper dress, then remove her blue blouse with my body weight positioned on her. She tries fighting back, but I smack her arms to the carpet, repeatedly, then slam her head against the carpet. Thus, I unzip my pants and penetrate her lazy ass with my 9 inch penis.

It’s Monday fucking morning and I reflect on how I committed a diabolical murder. First, I penetrated that slut from yesterday, then I stabbed her in the body region sixty five times, the face 92 times, and the right shoulder twice. After so, I decapitated her dumbass son’s head with just a knife, then put his head in a living room fish tank where goldfish roam. Other than that, I suffer from the random thought of how a witch in the past cast a spell on my brother that forces his eyes to roll in the back of his goddamn head randomly like he’s a zombie rip off.

I’m crossing the street. That’s something my brother most likely would have to worry about. Damn! Tomorrow is on the other side. Befitting. Her name sounds like heaven. She smirks and tells me to walk with her so that we can chat with friends. During the walk, there’s yet another flashback on when I say, “God doesn’t like it when you cheat.” Benedetta responded with laughter, saying, “Everyone’s been saying the same thing for years and nothing’s still happened. God who?” It wasn’t only thirty seconds later that shirtless pig spoke about me needing to join a church, then spoke about Jehovah being the one and true God.

Tomorrow can stop my qualms. We enter a mall where she hugs a woman I recognize. For fucks sake! I smell imminent depression. It’s Jess with black, curly hair a blue tank top, black and white camouflage pants, and black hunting boots. Jess says, “Well, isn’t it not Tomorrow’s husband.” I say, “We’re.” Tomorrow interrupts, “Dating. We’ve been in a relationship for about about a year.” Jess says, “I see. And he still never popped the question.”

I say, “I can,” then Tomorrow interrupts snapping her finger, saying, “My future husband knows exactly the right time to say whatever is on his mind. He knows exactly what I’m thinking, so popping the question will not be a problem.”

“Where’s your husband,” I say. Jess says, “His name is Devonte. We’ve been engaged for 3 months, got married in Vegas, and two years later, here I am now. He still does everything a man should from being my personal chef and spoiling me if you know what I mean. Devonte’s out with the boys right now.

Immediately, I walk away from the discussion, but tomorrow looks at me as I try to turn my face away. I can’t move my face and body as if though someone or something is controlling me. I then gain control, moving slowly, but the telekinetic power is too powerful. Tomorrow says, “Leaving so soon? Helen is stopping by in thirty minutes to talk.” That’s my online friend who I’ve never met in person. How is Tomorrow friends with Helen, so out of curiosity, I ask, “How do you know Helen?” Jess says, “Including your mother.”

“Stay away from me,” I say.”

Tomorrow says, “Just where do you think you’re going?”

I immediately run after yelling, “Get the hell away from me!”

A few out of approximately fifty five strangers from the cafeteria laugh directly at me as if they’ve been watching me for years. I hear one stranger say my name in a whisper, then two other strangers talk about Satanism at a table as if nobody would care about their discussion. A black, portable, two-way radio transceiver turns on in from a stranger’s front right pocket, saying, “Suspect is at the centerpiece. I repeat. Suspect is at the centerpiece.”

Helen arrives with a similar electronic device and she says, “Copy.”

“What the hell are you doing here,” I say.

A hyperventilated Helen says, “That’s no way to keep a woman. Tomorrow, you need a real man. Don’t settle for this soft piece of trash.” Jess, Helen, and Tomorrow laughs. Thus, I run away knowing that telling people about my experiences will get me put in the crazy house.

I rush out of the cafeteria, bypassing three female mannequins, exiting the back door of the mall. There’s nowhere to go, but a hotel. There’s nobody to trust. I could be gruesomely murdered in a hotel. My best luck is to live in any car. Shit! My car is at Tomorrow’s house.

No matter what, I don’t stop running, but constantly hear voices haunting me, saying my name, “Giovanni!” The voices even laugh and groan.

I cross two streets, turn a right corner, then head to Tomorrow’s house. Loud gunshots wander across the neighborhood. I shut the front door behind me and grabbing a handgun from on top of the dresser in her bedroom.

Then, I position the handgun in my front, right pocket, heading outside, toward the blue car. After opening the car door, I take my gun out of my pocket, and place it in the passenger’s seat before lowering my haunches. I shut the door, then speed down the road, going 45 miles per hour, nearly crashing into a parked car.

My heart pounds rapidly as a flashback occurs. I see a thuggish man with a black durag sit down in an English classroom beside me speaks to me, saying, “I can hook you up. What type of bitches you into?” I reply, “I’m…” he interrupts, saying, “Your ass ain’t never gonna get the bitches like that. You see that he, she or whatever it is sitting at the far right corner? That’s your type. She’s told me she’s a hermaphrodite.”

In response, I think, but refuse to say, “Was that before you had sex with her?”

I see a nerd talking to his friend, saying, “I don’t like my mother.” The thug who could be Devonte’s brother gets involved saying, “I’ll beat the shit outta you. Always respect your mother. My mother would’ve beaten the shit outta me for saying that.” One female student sitting in the back of the class says, “Just let it go.” The thug yells, then exits the classroom slightly before the boring teacher arrives.

20 Minutes Later

I’m in a hotel bedroom and sit on the bed with the handgun aimed at my forehead with my face lowered. The disembodied voices followed me, still communicating to me. One voice says, “She knows where you are.” Another voice says, “Nobody cares.” Just when I lower the gun, it fires on its own, startling me. I turn around seeing a bullet hole in the ceiling. The top drawer from the tawny dresser opens, revealing a Holy Bible, but I turn away from it.

A knock is at the door and I rise, positioning my weapon in my right, back pocket. Slowly, I walk closer, eventually looking in the peephole to see a blond hotel maid in her late 20s with a ponytail. I open the door, then see that it’s Tomorrow in my presence. Thus, I slam the door, grab a black luggage bag and open the door again. Down the hallway, I run while receiving a phone call from Tomorrow.

When I pick up the cell phone, she says, “Hey sweet cakes.”

In response, I say, “What the fuck is going on?”

She says, “You have two eyes. Tell me. You don’t have the strength to kill yourself. Kill me if that’s what makes you comfortable. What I want you to do is walk back over here and kill me.”

“Are you crazy,” I say, “Everyone’s watching me.”

She says, “You’re a coward. When you grow some balls, go fix me a sandwich.”

I say, “Just stay away,” then end the phone call.

I block her phone number while running pass Jess, who says, “Catch ya later, champ.”

While rushing in the parking lot, I see a police officer step out of his car. It’s Devonte, who says, “Woah! Woah! Woah! What are you up to running so fast out of a hotel? You wouldn’t mind if I check your license and registration?” I say, “Motherfucker! I remember you.” Devonte says, “Keep remembering. Now, show me your fuckin’ license and registration! Don’t move!”

I immediately move to the left side, grab his arms, positioning them in the air, the headbutt him three times. Thus, I shoot him in the heart, twice before rushing in my car to drive away from the scene. I just kill a cop and now I’m going to go to prison when the surveillance cameras identify my depressed face. Beside a local park, I stop the car, then ain the gun toward my right cranium, shooting myself dead.

 

 

 

 

Wick Yonder

© July 2, 2017. All Rights Reserved.

Wichita, Kansas
6 Months Old

Midnight at a local gas station, Mia (6-months-old is strapped to a booster seat with ocean blue diapers) taking shallow breaths with perspiration on her worried face. The inside of the car is 87 degrees from the scintillating sun in the aestival blue sky while the windows are closed. She’s thirsty as she eyes her father (who wears a black business suit) pumping gas into the car with a gas pump. As if though the gas pump is her bottle of milk, she cries. Thus, the father opens the right side of the back door and puts a pacifier in her mouth, just to shut the door again. A heartbroken Mia remains silent, but stares at her father in unforgivable rage.

Suddenly, Mia’s father encounters a stranger, that permanently traumatized her. A gorgeous, blond woman with black face paint and long, curly hair walks by wearing an exquisite, white wedding dress. She makes a flirtatious smile at Mia’s father. A mixture of confusion and shock is etched on his face. The anonymous woman proposes, lowering to the concrete ground, then reveals a black wedding ring box. She opens the box and there’s an expensive wedding ring encrusted with diamonds.

Nearly crying in tears of joy as if though she personally knows him, the anonymous stranger says in a soft voice, “Will you marry me?”

With utter repulsion, the father nods his head and says, “Is this a joke?”

The anonymous woman rises to her feet and walks backwards. She reveals a lighter and ignites it, which causes his convertible, red car to catch on fire. Thus, she runs as fast as she can in a wedding dress as he screams for his screaming 6-month-old. He burns after attempting to open up the front door to the driver’s seat before it catches on fire. From inside of the car, Mia watches her father gradually burning in excruciating pain as if though time is playing with her mind. His raspy scream echoes nonstop in her sensitive ears as the gas station explodes.

Sunday

There’s a blood-red lemon sitting on the kitchen counter, the stove is set to 350 degrees, and the area smells like dead cadavers in Daytona Beach, Florida. It’s unfortunate that Mia is alone, and she never sleepwalks. Her bedroom window is left open as the breeze caresses her skin. Suddenly, the alarm on her black cell phone startles her from sleep. She ends the alarm on her friendly device, then encounters a quick flashback of explosion that killed her father. The only thing she sees is fire and the sound of his screaming voice calling for her. Then, the flashback leaves.

Mia tosses her yellow cover across the room, sitting at a 90 degree angle with her knees slightly bent upward. Then, she darts her head around her surroundings. With her back slumped down against the wall, the window shuts by itself. In despair, her tears appear like ashes, running down her cheeks. She wipes her tears with her palms, then smells a seasoned turkey (with garlic powder, onion powder, salt, and pepper) cooking downstairs.

A tarantula is on her purple dreamcatcher, hanging on her black, bedroom wall, which has willow tree designs. Calmly, she places Sylvia back into her tank. She slips a violet spaghetti shirt over her green bra. With her black panty showing, she exits the bedroom, sluggishly walking toward her bluish-green slippers. She looks at the grandfather clock, which chimes 8 times. Swiftly, she puts on her slippers, then heads downstairs.

On her way down, from her peripheral vision, she spots a dark figure exiting the gloomy living room. The dark figure rushes into the kitchen. The windows showing her welcoming neighborhood teases her to escape. Thus, leaving Sylvia behind, she runs out the front door, desperately screaming. Her voice echoes, but her body fades.

Distressed like it was her birthright to escape her house, she’s in the living room near the stairs. Clearly, she recalls running out of her cottage. It definitely wasn’t a dream. After turning off the stove and wiping the blood from the contaminated lemon, she disposes of it. Mia sits on the stairs crying like usual. Eventually, the grandfather clock chimes 9 times, and she’s late for work as a local marriage counselor. Sylvia eyes Mia from the top of the stairs, then crawls back into Mia’s bedroom without her noticing.

Mia’s black cell phone rings beside her and she answers it, “Good morning. This is Mia…”

In a deep, manly voice, an anonymous client says, “I know who this is! You’re late again! I don’t know how you manage to keep your job at this company, but I’ll be going over your head and making sure that you never work here again! Me and my wife will not be coming back! This is unprofessional! Have a blessed day!”

Mia sits her cell phone down thinking about the uxorious client’s voice she recognized. With forlorn eyes, she then pulls a handful of hair strands from her scalp. It’s clear to her that she cannot return to work tomorrow. Only then does the front door opens by itself. The doorknob loosens and drops to the wooden floor. She hears footsteps leaving the cottage, then sees the front door slam close.

Monday

It’s 6:00 A.M. and the weather outside is unknown. There’s no television, no computer, and no cell phone where Mia is. In a small room with milk-white, brick walls, she is wearing a straitjacket. Like a magician, she effortlessly frees her arms, then does handstand push-ups with her back near the wall. There’s a white mattress beside her and a surveillance camera above recording her every move. She hears an alarm and sees blue and white, flashing lights come from the camera.

She hears the sound of rattling keys as the door knob twists. The door knob then opens. Two, brawny, male nurses (with chiseled features transparent from their white suits) barge into the room. She’s nowhere to be found. The nurses are dumbfounded by her mastermind escape.

Tuesday

There’s blue, fluorescent lights attached to the whitewashed, brick ceiling. Nurse Morelrike, (a brunette with short straight hair and blue eyes) injects a syringe into Mia’s extended, right arm. Automatically, Mia feels the pain trespassing into her sensitive skin. A squeamish Mia looks away from the syringe; with her opposite hand, she has a tight grip on her left knee.

Nurse Morelrike says, “Your mind will thank me later. Morelrike has been around for over two centuries and you’re the second person to escape. Next time you think about escaping, think about how much longer you have to stay here and the privileges you’ll lose.”

“Thank you… Hey… who was the first person to escape from Morelrike?”

“She never told you?”

“Who?”

“You have a sister who got released early for good behavior. Her name was Arabella.”

Sarcastically, Mia says, “What did this Arabella do?”

“She stood on the roof of a 3-story building committing indecent exposure.”

Concerned, Mia says, “I was raised an only child, so I would know if I have an evil sister or not.”

“Our records don’t lie. Maybe you were adopted.”

The two brawny nurses (Valentine Bosnia and Carlos Sherri) enter the room. Nurse Bosnia is chewing on a whole vanilla wafer. Nurse Sherri accepts an extra vanilla wafer from Valentine Bosnia’s hand. Carlos stuffs the vanilla wafer in his mouth. Then, they put a straight jacket around Mia’s body. Mia’s vision gets very blurry and she gets exhausted, feeling like a zombie.

“From my twenty-two years of living, I have never once heard about me having a sister. I’m not adopted. Bye.”

45 Days Later

Specifically, Mia abhors the anonymous client who made over a dozen complaints against her. Her dissatisfaction doesn’t show. Fortunate enough, her past clients became great friends with her on a personal level, which alleviates her pain. There’s a glass, oval, dining room table with two couples sitting in comfortable, gold and white thrones. A clean glass of red wine is in front of every guest. When she enters the kitchen, both of the couples smile with reverence.

Theophilia (a corpulent 25-year-old with a black ponytail) wraps her arms around the back of her wife’s neck. Halona (a 26-year-old blond wife with an athletic body), then cuddles with Theophilia as a separate couple at eye level are profoundly envious. Holly (a scrawny 19-year-old with a crimson, bob cut hairstyle, black sunglasses positioned above her eyes, a green and black, beaded necklace, and a red, velvet, immaculate dress) glances at her boyfriend. Estevan (21-years-old with a brown afro, fringe hairstyle, and a black business suit) lowers his head in shame.

Estevan says, “How romantic.”

Holly smacks Estevan across the back of the head. Theophilia smirks while Halona chuckles.

Mia speaks, “I’m glad you all could join me tonight…”

Holly interrupts, “Ma’am, the honor is all ours. There’s no telling what you had to go through to prepare such a grueling feast.”

Theophilia speaks, “What Holly means to says is…”

“Thank you,” Mia interrupts with a soft voice.

Estevan speaks, “I would like to make a toast to my best friend in the whole world, Mia!”

When Estevan grabs his glass, it tips over. Red wine spills on the glass table, then drips onto the shaggy, grey carpet. Without words, his girlfriend’s glare is the sign of a breakup. Halona widens her eyes. A worried Theophilia searches for an expression on Mia’s face, which never shows. Mia refuses to show any vulnerability with her emotions.

Halona, a chronic smoker takes out her cigarette and says, “I would like to be excused. I have to use the washroom.”

Mia stares at Halona’s cigarette and gets yet another flashback. This time, she remembers seeing the inside of the car burst into flames and the agony of burning alive while hearing his father squeal. The suffering returns like a recent moment, but it was so long ago. She escapes the flashback, then feels the temperature on her forehead, which is approximately 87 degrees. Quickly, she gets dizzy, but refuses to sit down.

“Not so fast. We can’t leave Misses McDowsky to clean up this mess by herself,” Theophilia says.

Mia’s migraine worsens, but no emotion shows on her beautiful face. Nervously, she shivers when she heads to the kitchen to grab a clean, yellow rag. A flashback of when her father sees the woman proposing occurs. Once the flashback leaves, the faces of her guests are aimed her direction with concern. She attempts t remain as calm as possible.

Mia says in a calm voice, “Please. I don’t want my guests breaking a sweat. This is your night to enjoy. Don’t worry about the mess. It’ll be all cleaned up by tomorrow.”

Estevan’s cell phone rings. He slowly picks up the device. Mia notices the name “Bella” as the caller. Mia leaves the living room to head into her bedroom. She reflects on what Nurse Morelrike said, “Our records don’t lie. Maybe you were adopted.” She reminds herself that the odds of her having a sister are slim.

Living Room

Halons whispers, “You ever notice that Mia’s been acting strange lately?”

“It can’t get any stranger than clumsy Estevan over here,” Holly says.

“I think we just need some candles to lighten the mood” Theophilia speaks to everyone, then to Halona, “Pass me that lighter.”

“Don’t burn down the place,” Estevan whispers.

Again, Holly smacks Estevan across the back of the head. Halona chuckles as Theophilia searches in the kitchen drawers for candles. So far, she sees no candles. After cleaning the mess from the table with the dry, yellow rag that was left on the kitchen counter, Theophilia then cleans up the mess on the shaggy carpet. Thus, she throws the dirty rag in a white trash bin. At the bottom drawer, she sees candles, then takes them out. Gleefully, she places three candles on two window sills and seven candles on the oval table, before lighting them with a lighter.

Theophilia takes a seat and returns the lighter to her partner. The moment Mia enters the living room, her head darts around in horror. Her past is coming back to haunt her again. The flames from the lit candles bring vivid memories of the explosion at the gas station. She tries to hold her ears, but the flesh from her body burns so deeply that her hands wander. With a shrilling scream, which fails to absolve her of guilt in her father’s death, the burning torture allows her to sit on her knees. Her flesh turns to the color of ashes and everyone panics, rising from their thrones, sharing a mixture of screams and cries.

Theophilia and Estevan runs toward the front door, but are stopped. The presence of Mia teleports in front of them. She levitates a fire in front of the front door and windows, which causes the fire alarm to turn on. As Estevan recoils, Theophilia screams before being strangled. Mia looks away as if she’s disgusted by the fire, which runs through her flesh onto her squealing victim. Theophilia drops in agony and dies, which causes Halona to make a shrilling scream.

Mia hears a disembodied voice of Nurse Morelrike whispering, “What did you put in her! Nooo! Stop it! You’re going to kill her!”

“You’re a freak,” Estevan yells, “Get away from me!”

Mia then hears the disembodied voice of an anonymous doctor whispering, “This will be my finest monster.”

Holly runs upstairs with Halona as Estevan throws several glass plates. Her body absorbs the plates, then she continues running toward Estevan. He runs upstairs, but she burns his right ankle with a tight grip, which makes him fall in despair. Then, after taking a couple of steps up, she takes another grip on his family jewels. He screams to his torturous death.

Upstairs, Halona shuts Mia’s bedroom door and tips over a white, wooden dresser in front of the door. Sylvia is on the dreamcatcher, which makes Halona scream. Holly open up the bedroom window, but sees the face of Mia glaring through the dead trees. Thus, Mia strangles Holly with flames bursting out of her palms. Before she can cause more damage, Holly lowers the window onto Mia’s arms. Holly falls to the floor with blood pouring from the burnt section of her neck.

Holly struggles to talk, but coughs up blood as Halona speaks, “Don’t die! Don’t die! Don’t die!”

Swiftly, the bedroom lights flicker on and off several times before remaining off completely. The sound the bedroom window shatters. Halona screams like she has an extra lung. Mia turns back into human form, dragging Halona’s lifeless body down the hallway. A trail of blood leaks from her victim left on the white, tiled floor. Halona’s back is left resting slump down against the whitewash, brick wall beside the top step to the stairway.

Approximately 3 hours later, Mia walks downstairs in a white wedding dress. There’s no corpses to be found. The distinct smell of blood is no more, but it smells as if though Mia recently bought her cottage. Yet, catching her attention, Estevan’s cell phone is on the living room table ringing. She turns the cell phone over to the screen view and the caller reads, Bella. Gaining curiosity of who Bella really is, Mia reads Bella’s past messages that were sent to Estevan.

Bella and Estevan’s Texts:

Bella texted, “You up for a movie tonight, cutie? I love you so much.”

Estevan texted, “How about strip poker. I should be arriving home from work early.”

Bella texted, “Come to mommy. What she doesn’t know won’t kill her. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

Estevan texted, “It’ll only save my relationship.”

Bella texted back, “What are you waiting for then? I’m your Arabella.”

A Pop-Up Friend

© June 4, 2017. All Rights Reserved.

Ensnared in a vow nevertheless,
I met a glowing, foreign heart,
Fluent at the notion of silentness
From an erased start.
In cursive, eyes are written
With subliminal messages within.
Hearts draw sounds unseen.
My confidence is fiction
When metaphorical souls intervene
Like a cliche prediction.

Confidence never spoke my heart,
But my body language was misread.
Skim pass my scribbled heart of art.
Challenge my satori as a talking head.
I scurry spectacles narrating the days.
Recording her pink, fuchsia appliqués
On her laced, bluish-green blouse, cut…
Down to her purple jeans and black shoes,
Etched with arrows, aimed at a debris hut.
Publicly, she speaks on the live news.

Her trendsetting, cascading, blond hair
Encircles the air, which brightens the sun.
Redoing her best-selling nightmares,
She owns a vocabulary beyond a million,
Entitled a name of omitted values.
My migraines are connotations of clues,
Sketching her beauty sleep while I clean,
The alphabets around the forrest’s run.
Breakfast by her debris hut is seen
When she awakes to a hum undone.

A blurry treasure chest with gold coins,
Is beside her breakfast with a billet-doux.
I’m not in sight, but each eye joins,
Drawn to the art from a bird’s eye view.
A lull in a thunderstorm paints dead trees
As she rises from her sore knees.
The watercolors are sarcastic.
Screaming echoes pass the hinterlands.
It’s a pop-up book I paint; pages are thick.
Chapters are torn with revised homelands.

The pop-up book chants while I sleep
Till I close it; those lyrics weren’t mine.
“She’s inside,” the book says. It’s cheap,
The price I’m selling it. It’s yours to define.
It doesn’t sell. Unanswered questions turn,
Into an outlining of lessons to learn.
If I’ve written it, I can unwrite it,
But the original stories appear.
I’m idolized and privileged to outwit.
The book’s words, I overhear.

“Read me tonight,” the book yells,
Writing itself with turning pages
As the darkness approaches with spells.
The book is remarkable like theatre stages
With hours in one act till the end.
Confusing readers to comprehend,
The book announces it’s aging fast.
It all makes sense, for a friend’s near.
No one reads the book; it’s the past,
Unlike many books you don’t have to fear.

Step Fathom

© Feb. 15, 2017. All Rights Reserved.

Hiding inside of her zipped, black, winter coat, Lunaria wears a tiny hour glass as a gold pendant attached to a stainless chain. She has black and white, camouflaged jeans and black cowgirl boots. While her puffy hair remains attached to her scalp, her hair strands moves against her walking direction. Her black cat (Zoella) meditates in Indian Style with her furry neck extended out of her black, leather purse. Bypassing several frostbitten cadavers, Lunaria ambles up a narrow, spiral, and icy stairway, attached to an unwelcoming mountain. The unsettling view below are massive vessels that appear like ants the higher she walks. Zoella hides her face in the purse as the wind proceeds to blow and the surroundings turn to pitch dark.

From the midst of the mountain, she makes a sharp right turn into a gloomy cave where slaughtered, decomposed cadavers parts surround the entrance. The strong wind blows from outside leaving a cold temperature in the cave. She keeps a deathlike stare at half of his frostbitten face. Reluctant to step closer, Lunaria smells his horrible odor. Zoella exuberantly sticks her black and white face out of the purse, and turns her head in utter disgust. The vagrant is scrawny and shirtless in his mid 30s, sluggishly, nervously walking out of the darkness. He is legally blind in his right eye.

In tears, begging with a stuttering lisp, both of his hands are positioned together, “Plea-plea-plea-the… I h-have no money to t-th-urvive. I b-beg of you. Plea-the help me.”

Lunaria responds, “It’s not up to me. You know the rules.”

Veins protrude from Cyril’s body as he argues, “B-b-but…”

“No is my final answer,” she says.

Cyril gets curious and asks, “How did you find me? Why are you here?”

Exhilarating Zoella, a sarcastic Lunaria caresses the back of Zoella’s head while saying, “You reek so bad that Zoella smelled you here. I couldn’t possibly repay her.”

“You know I can’t leave thi-th cave. If I leave, I’ll die. I’ve lived in this cave for 5 year-th…”

“And? My forefathers died trying to leave this place I bet they died by a creep. That creep looks something like you. I don’t deal with myths. There’s hidden artifacts worth a fortune in this cave somewhere and I don’t have time for your games. Tell me where the artifacts are.”

“You’ll never find them. I’ve hidden them well.”

Something odd occurs. Like human instincts, Zoella nods her head sideways. Cyril stares at the cat in complete awe. A confused Cyril wonders if Jesse nodded her head sideways was a coincidence. He’s in a predicament where he wants to leave the cave, but fears to.

Lunaria aims a handgun at a defenseless Cyril and says, “Don’t worry about Zoella.”
She aims the gun at his forehead. They hear a startling loud sound from a vessel 17,000 feet below the cave. The noise causes Cyril to fearfully speed into the darkness. Knowing there’s cobwebs and spiders surrounding the place, she shoot the gun in a standing position. She turns on a her gun-mounted flashlight that’s attached to her handgun.

Simultaneous to the flashlight producing crimson, spatial brightness, Lunaria hears the sound of running footsteps in front of her. Two, deranged girls speed out of the darkness, drenched in sweat, blood, and distress. A frightened Lunaria nearly drops her handgun as the two screaming girls speed through her physical body, jumping out of the cave, off of the mountain. The girls disappear in midair as the vision fades.

The closer she walks, the closer his crier is. The temperature changes from cold to extremely hot inside the cave. It’s approximately 98 degrees inside. She questions why the mountain still has its natural form throughout all of these years without melting. Her skin itches from the various toxic gases wandering the area. The coughing is so hard that it’s hazardous; she runs out of the hot section of the cave to breathe. Then, she slips off her winter coat before returning into the darkness.

Causing Lunaria to dart her head around her surroundings, she hears disembodied voices of defenseless women. The women are squealing while being lashed at with durable, black, leather belts. Never has she been more afraid in her life, but the prestigious reward of the artifacts is still on her mind. The thought of the reward disappears when she runs out of breath. Thus, she can’t fathom how a miserable Cyril lived in this cave for so long without committing suicide.

Lunaria stares at the disgusting sight of the roach-infested surface with the light beaming directly upon it. Dust falls from the deteriorating area above her onto her face. She wipes the dust from her face, then desperately gets on her knees to crawl. Zoella is inside of her purse that’s strapped on her back. In the crawling position, there’s little air to breathe for. When she rises her head, her flashlight is beaming on Cyril, sitting in a corner.

Cyril screams, “Pl-pl-pleeeeaaaa-ttthhe! Pl-pleathe! No! Don’t kill me! Pleathe! I kn-know you. You-you’re Lunaria!”

She rises to her feet to breathe and the temperature is once again cold. The bugs annoy her, so she shakes them off of her body. Zoella licks the neck of Lunaria. Lunaria uses her hand to brush off several bugs that crawled on Zoella. Then, she caresses the back of Zoella’s neck.

Lunaria has a horrible flashback of when she was 9-years-old. Two teenaged boys stand above her; she’s a in a supine position as the boys threaten her. 15-year-old Singleton in all black attire and a black and white, camouflaged ski mask is holding a keen knife. Singleton laughs at Lunaria’s tears and laughs harder when Jonathan (wearing a black robe) makes a malicious smile. While they stand, Esprit, Lunaria’s older sister (who is 12-years old) is staring at the entire event. Esprit is sitting calmly on a wooden bench with a newspaper in her hand and refrains from telling a soul about what occurred.

Jonathan yells, “Get up or I’ll stomp your head through the concrete! When I stomp, I’ll sell your body like your sister.”

The moment Lunaria rises half way, Singleton pushes her to the ground, saying, “If you rise, I’ll stab you with this knife, then I’m datin’ your sister!”

Jonathan laughs, “No! Esprit is mine!”

Lunaria exits her flashback and covers her head like she’s suffering severe head trauma. Blood then leaks from the right side of her abs, seeping through her black sweater. She lifts up her sweater and sees the remembrance of her stab wound. Cyril has a look of confusion on his face as she aims the gun toward his direction. She fires the gun. A bullet hits his right pinky. He screams as she aims the gun at his forehead.

3 Days Later

On a mahogany table, Lunaria is in a white bathrobe, consuming cereal while video chatting with Esprit. Zoella walks circles around her cellphone. Zoella then squeals, running off of the table. The kitchen light flickers on and off, then her bedroom light flickers on and off. A petrified Lunaria darts her head around her surroundings. Her living room, black, flat-screen television cracks on its own as if someone swung a sledgehammer at it with all of their might. Thus, Lunaria panics, screaming as she nervously rises away from her video chat conversation.

She screams again, but louder before a concerned Esprit asks, “What’s going on over there?”

Esprit hears the sound of her baby sister throwing plates from the table. The sound of Lunaria’s fish tank on her kitchen counter cracks. Esprit screams at her computer screen in concern, but then remains silent. She sees a gigantic dark shadow that’s on the wall choking her baby sister with one hand in the air. Lunaria is struggling to breathe and break free, but her neck snaps. Esprit is speechless in too much trauma to move.

Boise Scape

© Oct 24, 2016. All Rights Reserved.

Behind his back is a looking glass.
In front of his chest is a woman’s head.
On both sides, there’s a casket.
The woman looks up with missing teeth.
She bleeds from her closed mouth to the grass.
Laughing gas is in an hourglass, but she’s dead.
She drops to the grass as if from his armpit.
Shit! He reeks, and the dead is beneath.

He’s starving. He walks and sees a window.
A rattlesnake bites his right mastoid bone.
He’s too narrow-minded to care,
But he walks during the humidity.
No rain, but lightening in the desert. It’s see-through.
Down, he sees the woman’s gravestone.
Her name’s unknown; that keeps his stare.
Air is dead. He can’t see.

Damn! He awakes with cruel flashbacks.
It’s the Summer Solstice. He’s in a circular pool.
A bridge leads to a basketball court,
Which is in the center.
He tries to think, but he can’t relax.
Half-naked women stare at him as if he’s cool.
When he steps out the pool, he’s no longer short,
But the wind unnaturally feels like winter.

He questions his name and all he knows.
He’s surprised it doesn’t snow. Clouds fade.
Two years pass, and the dead woman is forgotten,
But he sees an elderly woman nailed against a clerestory,
In the position of the Messiah. Blood shows.
She’s naked. He runs like he’s man made.
He reflects on being a one percent, cool has-been,
Fainting with the breaths of an allegory.

His memory’s back. Footsteps shake the ground,
But he can’t move. He has a blackout.
Fear troubles him. He awakes to run away.
Tomorrow’s turning around, but he’s running.
Confused, he can’t hear a sound,
But jolts pass a woman he can’t live without.
She’s engaged at a cookout. He won’t stay.
It’s a normal day when his life’s cunning.

Morbid Solace

© Sept 7, 2016. All Rights Reserved.

Unlike quantitative awakening, the insurmountable underbelly of the carnivorous country has no comparison to the oppressed assailant committing the most gruesome murders. Opposite of an egalitarian society, that’s an extensive, provocative story Ashima is yet to discover. In this bustling town of “South Doubt Town,” it’s not too far from the rebarbative “Doubt Left Slums,” which is a 2 hour drive North. In “Doubt Left Slums,” there is an underground church and mosque. There are gangways to four dehumanizing “Doubt Town Prisons” in the unsanitary slums connected with loony bins; the names of the facilities are “East Doubt Town Prison,” “South Doubt Town Prison,” “West Doubt Town Prison,” and “North Doubt Town Prison.” Captivity is an understatement for anyone tormented in “West Doubt Town Prison,” which is a disguise as a concentration camp on the inside. In “West Doubt Town Prison,” the police will maltreat the inmates with thousands of horrible experiments that feels like perdurable violence.

While the four prisons are in the slums, there’s one humane prison in the city called “Doubt Town Rehabilitation,” where inmates can take private and group classes to learn independent skills, anger management, physical activity, music production, and more. The inmates are trusted with a guarantee of leaving the prison in 3 months after being sentenced. Inmates have the option of staying in their luxurious rooms, to meet with other inmates in their rooms, or to meet with other inmates outside. On Ashima’s side of the street, there are red-brick buildings with extensive, impregnable walls. Various pediments with gargoyles are attached to the buildings for sightseers. The slums is on the parallel side of the street with mud brick houses.

Recently, it was sunny with overlapping clouds in the sky, and now, it is snowing in the windy weather. There are electrical wires underneath each numbered, concrete block, which can paralyse possible lawbreakers through the power of a watch. Corrupted cops wear futuristic watches on their wrists with a monitor on their screens to see which lawbreaker are being paralysed. Also, on the watch, there’s a special, red button in order to activate the wires. There’s a keyboard to select which block can paralyse the next lawbreakers.

The brunette, Ashima has straight, brown hair, ending at the back of her neck. During a flurry of snow, she jostles through an inevitable crowd of pedestrians. The pedestrians pass her from another side of the street, and like a man-made woman, she bypasses fresh, delectable fruits from windfall. Then, she rubbernecks at a 13-year-old, blond girl with chapped lips and gimcrack teeth; the girl is wearing a winter, pink, zipped-up manteau over a violet muumuu with black, floral embroidery. The poor girl decides to sleep in the bitter cold with a wool blanket on a milk-white bench, and her face directed to the east. Like a horrid nightmare, Ashima has a flashback of being 13-years-old in a high school bathroom. In the middle stall, she sits on a toilet seat, which is wrapped in toilet paper. She moans in excruciating pain until a bloody, stillborn baby (with congenital disorder) falls into the toilet. When she rises to look inside the toilet, she cries.

She then hears another females voice, “Girl! If you don’t hurry up, I’m kicking this door down!”

A mortified Ashima yells at the female accustomed to bullying her, “I had a miscarriage!”

The bully laughs and sarcastically says, “I’d lower my tone if I were you! Your mother should’ve had a fuckin’ miscarriage! Think of it this way. You wouldn’t have this wonderful experience if you weren’t here. I don’t want any other stall, but yours right now! Hand me the toilet paper, so I can write your name down, call it the honor roll, and take a number two. Speaking of number two, that’s exactly what you smell like. You sound like you’re having an asthma attack.”

Slowly, Ashima rises from the toilet seat to yank the toilet roll from the silver, steel, toilet paper holder. With the full roll of toilet paper, she wipes between her buttocks. A mixture of brown and red dung is on the toilet paper roll when Ashima takes a disgusting glimpse at it. She stands on top of the toilet seat to see her rude bully laughing. After squinting her eyes, like the paragon of confidence, she drops the roll of toilet paper partially in her bully’s hair and forehead. The bully screams for her life as she rushes to the mirror to glance at her horrible face.

“Thank me later,” Ashima yells.

Ashima frowns from reflecting on her severe, traumatic experience, and her facial expression remains when a barking bulldog lopes her direction. A man holding a leash pulls the dog away from Ashima. She attempts counting to ten to calm herself down. Only when Ashima sees a yellow cab around the corner of the street, she calms down. A bleak gust of wind occurs. As she raises her hand, which is silhouetted against the burgundy night sky. Among planets, there’s a parade of stars, which appears small, but Fomalhaut temporarily catches her attention.

A yellow cab stops by the consummate beauty, Ashima. A charming, swarthy, 22-year-old hackie (with a mini afro and maroon sunglasses) confidently looks her direction. Enamoured of the hackie with a chiseled body, she easily blushes, averting her eyes, and attempts to hide it by covering her face. Tantalising her with his charm, the bloke smiles at the rear-view-mirror. He grabs a red, disposable, plastic cup of hot chocolate from a black cup holder, takes a sip from a bluish-green straw through the lid, and puts the cup back. There’s neoclassical music playing from a local, radio station. She glances at the wing mirror as she opens the side door to the backseat. Ashima lowers her fanny, shuts the door, feeling like she’s in a pedicab.

The puffy-haired dreamboat greets her, “Merry Christmas. Are you in the Christmas spirit?”

Knowing well that she performs puja everyday, she coyly replies, “Merry, Merry Christmas. My day is a blessing in disguise. Drop me off at the nearest gas station.”

After pausing to speak, the bloke says, “Okey-dokey.”

The light signal turns green. Assuming she has a treacherous mind per sê, the hackie immediately drives straight pass an intersection. Ashima glances out of the right side of the window realising she’s in the slums. Misfortunate civilians (all wearing black gas masks due to the air pollution) are gathered around a nearby contaminated lake full of trash. The civilians share a single shadoof. Few dæbbawalâs ride bicycles; on their heads, they balance grey trays full of burdens of lunch boxes. A confused look grows on his face from Ashima’s unpopular choice in her destination. He thinks about the shimmering, Indian wedding dress, and leather, black boots she has on, and how creepy she seem. Also, she has on a silver lehenga embroidered with crystals. Black, velvet houppelandes are attached to her dress. Any old local gas station isn’t on her mind; the gas station she favors has black, gas pump nozzles, which are the shape of life-sized bats. A daddy long leg spider crawls from out of her cleavage, to the front seat. Ashima is reticent.

1 Month Later

Outside, it’s a humdinger of a forest green sky with languor. In the forest, an anonymous, harum-scarum person walks, crushing a sliver of branches with a kitchen knife. He has on all black attire; a black, hooded sweatshirt, vest, gloves, jeans, a breathing snake used as a belt, and shoes. No one sees his face, but hears his footsteps. It could be just an animal with a quixotic fantasy of eating her, (Emily) a small town, Korean girl in a trailer home thinks. She glances out the window to see a deer pussyfooting out of the bushes, then positions her her head down on her fluffy, yellow pillow.

Still, Emily is alone while someone watches her. The time is 5:55 P.M., and it’s pitch-black outside. He eats raw, bitter berries that are on trees while he waits for her to exit the trailer. When the stalker hears the sound of the doorknob twist, he clenches his knife and darts his head. How the stalker wants to be inside to play with her cascading, blond hair. He wants to break an analogue clock, use the hour hand as an arrow, aim it with a bow, and shoot her.

Finally, the dunderhead exits the trailer in a black kurta and bright turquoise, churidar pants, embroidered with purple rose designs. Emily’s perceived to be a docile leader of ignorance. She pats a white-tailed deer with her 12-year-old hands. The deer doesn’t make the slightest movement. The stalker stares at her as if Cupid brainwashed her with cupidity.

Immediately, leeches magically appear around the white-tailed deer and blood is dripping down the helpless deer’s skin. An eerie scream erupts from the deer while standing on his back legs. The insufferable force of the deer causes her to fall backwards into a pile of murky mud. The turquoise fingernails on her left hand scrape against a concrete ground (buried under the thick mud) picking up a clump of mucky mud. Thus, from the hard fall, Emily’s index finger rips off, causing blood to leak. Grime is on the back of her wrists and churidar pants. Deeply, she moans.

It rains as the frightened deer runs wildly into the forest. Making a mewling sound, Emily looks down at her wet pajamas. She thinks about how her parents will kill her when they find out she exited the trailer. Appalled after a tall shadow from behind her presence shields her, Emily is disoriented with a temporary, blurry vision. She darts her head around and makes a shrieking scream, which is simultaneous with the sound of thunder.

Emily struggles to run, but the livid stalker effortlessly clutches her left hand, carrying her like a valuable handbag. To stop her loud screaming, the stalker makes a ferocious assault. Dislocating Emily’s maxilla, he forces his right knee into her precious face, then tightly ties both of her hands behind her back with a double knot. He upends her empty pockets as if she’s a birdbrained hag. Then, he drags her body closer to the trailer as she covers her black eye. The extra length of the rope is used to wrap around the doorknob of the trailer.

She can barely move, but finds the awareness to scream. Her scream doesn’t affect his mind besieged by beastly creatures. The stalker returns from the forest with a gasoline container. Like she repeatedly had a nooner in front of her jealous boyfriend, the stalker pours gasoline on her and around the trailer as she pulls the rope. He then pours the leftover gasoline into her eyes.

Worse, while she’s blinded, the nightmarish stalker taunts her with the knife by rubbing it against her chest. Thoroughly, he cuts downward upon the flesh, approximately 5 inches. An echoing scream escapes her mouth as blood drips to the grassy section of the ground. Gruesomely, he lunges the knife into the same wound, cutting down until he etches zigzag wounds upon her abdomen. The stalker walks away with the bloody knife held to his unseen face. A mile away from the scene, the stalker rubs the blood from the knife on a thick tree trunk, which says, “We’re Even.” Leading to an explosion, the anonymous madman returns to the scene, so he throws a lighter upon the trail of gasoline. It’s a vindictive murder for the police force to attempt to unravel.

2 Months Later

“In the past two weeks, I’ve been trying to raise my blood pressure after visiting Doctor Everhecks. She’s nicer than anyone I know. She told me I have to be careful about what I intake because the wrong ingredients can make me feel very fatigue and cause me to faint. Hands down, if it’s about improving my health, I’m all over it, ” a distraught Dīafair says with gruff voice and a cigarette in his left hand.

As if Dīafair abhors platitudinous advice, he ignores a Sawson’s infallible message on the speakerphone. As he rests his head against the headrest of his convertible car, he lights the cigarette with a red lighter. Wisps of smoke wanders the area and exits the lowered front, left window. He grabs his cell phone (which is on speakerphone) from the passenger’s seat, and exits his car. By overhearing Sawson’s advice, she seems to have a deleterious influence. He tosses his cell phone on the concrete ground, and it breaks into pieces. Heavily, he breathes uncontrollably as if the white T-shirt he’s wearing should be a handkerchief.

In his right pocket, he takes out a pocket knife, and gently moves it in the midst of his buzz cut hairstyle. He climbs on top of the car, and sits on his knees. His fingers shake, then he lunges the knife into his heart. In excruciating pain, he screams. Blood leaks down his shirt to his blue jeans. With his left hand on the top of the car, forward, his body moves. Blood continues to leak and covers the top of the car.

Seconds later, he loses strength in all of his limbs falling forward. The knife drops to the side. His forehead smacks against the steel cover of the top. It now looks as if he intended to hug the car. It takes 5 seconds for him to slowly position his body around while grunting in agony. After removing his plaid, black and white gamucha from around his head, he wipes the blood from his fetid wound. Again, ever so patiently, he grabs the knife, and slits his throat. Finally, his eyes shut and excessive blood leaks onto the windshield of the car.

Shuang’s House

It is Thursday. The time is 8:00 A.M. and Shuang is in the kitchen removing a pot from a steel pot rack hook. 1 of 8 pot rack hooks dangle from the stainless, steel wall-mounted bar as Shuang places the pot on the counter. She opens the top drawer and takes out a keen knife, which shows her reflection. Beside the plate, she firmly seizes a chicken by the neck, pressure’s his body on the counter, then chops his head off. Immediately, she allows the chicken blood to pour in the bowl.

Her looks can oust a goddess from a throne. She’s a desi woman dressed like a gothic Hindu. She wears a ghunghat around her head, a lotus in her dark, wavy, brown hair, a bindi on her forehead, black eyeliner, and three, golden bangles on both wrists. When she raises the knife, she sees her black, immaculate, chiffon anarkali. The top part of her anarkali is made out of fishnet and embroidered with red roses.

Of suī generis beauty, her daughter (Ashima) is dressed as a gothic hippie. After a makeover, she has long, silky, curly, black hair. She has on a red and blue, tie-dyed t-shirt with a green, purple, and pink mandala design in the middle. Also, a golden astrolabe is a pendant attached to a golden chain around her neck, and red, fishnet sleeves are underneath the sleeves of her t-shirt. Attached to a silver, studded belt, her black, palazzo pants has red zipper designs surrounding the upper section.

Approximately five revered shanta paintings are on a plaster wall. The right side of the wall (which is closest to Ashima) has a murti of the deity, Durga. Ganesha (the destroyer of pride, vanity, and selfishness) is on the wall (meditating in the state of nirvana) in front of a golden background. In another painting, there are many watercolors with Shiva meditating in a heavenly palace. There’s a painting of Krishna on a lake and a painting of Saraswati with two of four arms holding a Saraswati veena. A silver chandelier is a few inches behind her.

Athaliah, her adorable, black kitten hides behind the television and urinates. The nothingness of entertainment on the screen is appears more important than her kitten. After impulsively squinting her eyes, she proceeds to channel surf in the living room, until the batteries die. When she tosses the remote control on the far right end of the leather, beige chaise longue, her kitten runs into her bedroom. Shuang nods her head sideways and walks into the living room to turn off the television. Sitting with her legs crossed and bent, Ashima shuts her eyes.

Off of the chāise longue, Ashima, the ailurophile rises and walks near the right corner of the plaster wall, where a linen cupboard made out of black oak wood is. She passes a sliding, glass, patio door, which is in front of milk-white marquisette curtains. Athaliah snags the curtains as Ashima glances. The breeze of wind greets Ashima’s curly hair as she lays her eyes on her silver, custom-made laptop, which sits above a rectangular, wooden table. Her laptop can electrocute anyone if the wrong password is entered. Beside the laptop is a silver Asherah pole.

She looks pass the 6 feet deep pool that’s on the side of her balcony. The balcony is guarded by a 5 foot, transparent, glass wall with crystal dollar symbols as sturdy balusters trapped inside. On the far end of the balcony, there’s a silver keyboard attached to the glass wall. Beside the keyboard is an upside-down detachable microphone on a silver, circular, magnet, which is attached to the ceiling. On the bottom of the microphone, there’s a square magnet piece, which attaches to the ceiling magnet. Like a eureka moment, Ashima cherishes the bucolic view, looking off the balcony, then moves the fruit of one of a dozen tamarind trees. The beauty of the opulent neighbourhood puts a perfects her smile.

Ashima looks down 15 feet below at a fishing spider, beside a concrete fire pit. Where hundreds of fish swim, the fishing spider is amazingly walking on the water of a swimming pool. As a blue and black, spotted poison dart frog hops from the water, a ravenous osprey descends from the ocean blue sky, speeding pass three rows of gorse bushes to devour a goldfish and a clownfish. After devouring the ephemeral lives of the fish, the osprey ascends to the firmaments. There’s a swing set in the middle of the pool with metal swing beams, touching the the concrete ground. Ashima levitates to 1 of 5 red, residential belt seats attached to durable chains and sits on the third seat. There’s waterproof headphones wrapped around the right side of each chain. Also, there’s a projector behind her, which shines onto a flat section of her mansion for her to enjoy watching a movie. Below the illuminating light from the projector, there’s a veranda made out of sapphire. Cayenne pepper plants are planted on the sides of the walls. In the center of the plants is a silver, concrete path. Gently, she holds onto the chains, swinging back and forth for a thrill.

As she digs in her right pocket to take out her cell phone, she records the flying ospreys passing the swing set. A turquoise butterfly flies across her right shoulder while a rare butterfly with what appears to be diamond wings lands on her left shoulder. Astounded, she captures the butterfly while turning her cell phone to her smiling, photogenic face. A lovely sight of herself can be seen kissing the butterfly on the cell phone screen. She then ends video and levitates back on the balcony.

Ashima looks at her laptop, slumps down in a milk-white rocking chair, and clicks on a chat app. Her ebullient friend (Shanta, an up and coming guide book writer for Ireland) automagically pops up on the screen, in a cubbyhole. Shanta is dressed like a punk rocker with freckles. Of skin-deep gorgeousness, Shanta has on a backwards, black visor cap, short, green hair, a coquelicot, ruffled blouse, and a green and black tartan skirt. Shanta’s appearance disseminates the knowledge that she is indeed a tomboy.

Eagerly, Ashima sends her recently recorded footage to Shanta’s cell phone number. Shanta has a handgun collection beautifully displayed on a mahogany bookshelf. Shanta notices her cell phone making deep breathing sounds from someone engaging in meditation. As her friend looks at the video, Ashima smiles from her own vanity. Her friend also smiles while walking outside. Ashima is reminded that Shanta’s neighborhood is coequal to hers after seeing mansions made out of ledgestone.

A jovial Shanta amusingly sticks out her mulberry tongue to bite a sugary olykoek, then cordially speaks in an Irish lilt, “Haigh. I didn’t know tamarind trees grow where you live.”

Joining her hands in a prayer position while bowing her head, Ashima greets Shanta, “Nämêstā.”

Shanta greets for the second time, “Nämêstā.”

Humorously, Ashima says, “Can you keep a secret?”

Her vivacious, best friend responds, “What a stupid question. I’ve been keeping your secrets my whole life.”

A vainglorious Ashima says, “I stole some seeds on my trip to Africa. I ran short of money for souvenirs, so I had to take something with me. They’re quite a beauty, aren’t they?”

Shanta’s jaw drops, then she sarcastically says, “I’m so jealous. I decamped all around Ireland, so you can’t prove to me your country is better. I’m going to have to borrow your seeds. What are you going to do if you get caught?”

Calmly, Ashima says, “I never thought about that. The neighborhood loves me around here. I give some people free fruit and we’re all good. If you come to Doubt Town, the sky is a different color every hour. Without a clock, we know the precise time depending on the color and hue of the sky. I’m waiting for the blue sky to change. It’s beginning to look like Ireland.”

A smirking Shanta changes the subject, “There’s this story across the web about an anonymous man who allegedly stabbed himself in the heart with a pocket knife, then slit his own throat in his garage. His body was found in vegetative state on top of his car.”

A reticent Ashima stares at the computer screen while struggling to believe Shanta’s egregious malarkey. Shanta’s face is serious, and Ashima’s eyes grow enormous. Ashima believes the information, then feels gullible. Every week, Shanta jokes about someone dying. Her best friend, Shanta never needed acting lessons to trick her.

Ashima says, “When did this happen?”

“It’s all over television. It all happened yesterday. The police are supposedly making a thorough investigation and aren’t going to release any more details to the story just yet. It sounds fishy,” Shanta says.

With a preconceived idea that Shanta is telling a fib, Ashima says, “Yes. I’ve been channel surfing and didn’t see anything.”

“Mavourneen, that’s because I’m lying. Haha What are you gonna do ”bout it? I can kick you so hard, your children be born with knock knees,” Shanta says.

“Keep it up. You almost had me there.”

Shanta says ‘Don’t bullshit me” in Irish, “Nà bi ag iarraidh cluain an chacamais a chur orm.”

Ashima (an aficionado on idioms) talks and gets interrupted, “You always do that! You know that’s all Greek to me! I’m not bull…”

Shanta removes her baseball cap to put on a black cowgirl hat and smiles, saying, “Howdy!”

“You play too much,” Ashima says.

With the laptop levitating in front of Ashima, she walks pass the living room, making her way into an enormous, dingy bedroom. Protruding from the plinth block beside her bedroom door are three authentic bullets forming a triangle, symmetrical to the plinth block on the parallel side. After she closes the door, she bypasses a black linga. Then, she removes a black, laced bed sheet, which is over her comfortable, window seat. Lifting the cushions of the black, leather couch upward, the couch automatically converts into a mattress. The mattress sits in front of a fish tank with a silver, flat screen, waterproof television inside. As goldfish, clown fish, and starfish swim, a second, flat-screen television above the fish tank plays on the black, plaster wall. Around the wall-mounted, flat screen television, there are 30 monitors currently recording every angle of the mansion, which produces a glowing red color in the dark.

Above a black printer, a caressing wind from a spinning, black, wall-mounted fan in her closet blows onto her as she sits on the mattress. The fan has a realistic tarantula on the inside; the tarantula’s head twists at a 360 degree angle while screaming as if though it’s being bitten. There are 8, metal blades designed as the tarantula’s legs. On the floor, behind the wall-mounted fan is a baseboard heater. Slightly above the fan is a black, programmable thermostat. Ashima snaps her fingers and the burgundy curtains open by itself. The window reveals the sunlight and the view of an ocean with the background of a pink sky. Then, she allows the laptop to magically sit beside her.

There are ugra paintings surrounding all four sides of the walls. Her all-time favorite ugra painting with elephant tusks made out of picture frames is below a hung dreamcatcher. The picture frame is embossed in gold inverted cross designs. On the picture is the Hindu goddess (Kali) in front of a Venetian red background. Kali has four arms; he has a sword in one hand and a slaughtered head of a demon in the other. If it wasn’t gruesome enough, Kali is stepping on a bloody corpse.

Beside her double, closet doors, there’s a mini refrigerator full of organic fruits and fresh water bottles. In the freezer, there’s a handmade dessert for later. The dessert begins with a baked cookie dough shaped into an edible bowl, attached with red food coloring on fondant. Above the bowl, there’s an edible, chocolate lid, which also has red food coloring on fondant. Inside the bowl, there’s marshmallows, chocolate strawberries, caramel, sliced apples, sliced watermelon, almonds, and vanilla ice cream.

On the right side of the mini refrigerator, there’s spicy popcorn in a circular, transparent candy dispenser. On the right side of the candy dispenser, there’s pure water in a water dispenser. Seemingly, her bedroom comes nothing short of paradise, for on the right side of the water dispenser, she has her very own claw machine, which glows in the dark. There are rows of red, bold words, “I Love Me!” surrounding the machine with the digital time in the transparent, bullet-proof glass. Inside the claw machine, there’s 100,000 yen, 20 gothic polymer dolls, and 6 of the latest video game systems. On the right side of the claw machine, there’s a white trash bin.

She presses a remote control and her double, closet doors open, revealing her expensive gothic, hippie outfits hung on mahogany hangers. Below the clothes on the left side, there’s a washing machine and a dryer. On both ends of the closet doors, there’s mahogany shelves full of expensive shoes every woman would die for. On top of the wardrobe are bottles of perfumes, boxes of makeup, and many colourful suitcases. Behind the wardrobe, there’s a spiral stairway leading upwards, attached to a slide on the right. She presses a red button on her television remote control, and her entire wardrobe moves blocking the stairs and slide.

Ashima imagines herself eloping with her date and says, “I have a date later on. My raja is going to kiss me when I’m a beldam.”

“Keep going,” a jaunty Shanta says.

Before Ashima can continue speaking, her doting mother, Shuang, knocks on her bedroom door. Ashima sighs at the skylight, which reveals a pink sky. Ashima makes a gesture by pointing her index finger at the screen, saying, “Excuse me for one moment.” Ashima opens the bedroom door to see her mother with the same face of nirvana. Shuang is holding a plate of food and a flask of pure, iced water. On the right side of the plate, Ashima sees a salad with sunflower seeds, olives, sliced apples, cucumbers, tomatoes, and salad dressing. On the left side of the plate, she sees salted and buttered rice, scampi, cheese steak, and an oatcake. The plate levitates from Shuang’s hands and follows Ashima one step backwards into her bedroom.

“Thank you, “Ashima puts an olive in her mouth and says, “You’ve outdone yourself. Burning the midnight oil as usual. I’ll cook tomorrow. Take a rest.”

4:00 P.M.

Ashima (a blonde with long dreadlocks and exfoliated skin) raises her right hand, and a yellow cab stops in front of her. It’s the same hackie that she saw a month ago. The bloke nervously removes his maroon sunglasses and is amazed by her dreadlocks and dyed hair. Embarrassed, she cracks a smile and opens the side door to the backseat. She hears neoclassical music playing from the radio, enters the cab, and shuts the door. Inexperienced at talking to attractive men, in a timid voice, she greets him.

“Hello,” Ashima says.

The bloke says, “Good afternoon, mam. How was your weekend?”

Ashima responds with a smile, “Absolutely wonderful. All weekend, I kept thinking about a charming man. I’m one word shy from love.”

The bloke then says, “I wonder who that could be. Where are you off to.”

She asks, “Do you know where Bad Marki’s is?”

4:32 P.M.

A suicidal pigeon is in the street as the cab car speeds by. Ashima, an animal lover tells the hackie to stop the car. The hackie refuses to listen as his loud music plays on the radio. Escaping death, the cab runs over part of the pigeon’s tail. The lucky pigeon speeds in the air hovering, flutters it’s wings. Two feathers from the pigeon’s tail wander the windy sky.

After reluctantly paying the hackie, Ashima opens the side door, and exits the cab. She’s fearless as a peacock spider speeds pass her on the sidewalk. Down a darksome alley, few apparitions of deinotheriums are visible wandering banyan trees on a bayou. Some apparitions wander through the banyan trees and the outside wall of “Bad Marki’s” chophouse. Several prostitutes around the corner of the street stare at a disturbing event. Ashima forms a perfidious smile, rubbernecking at an elderly man wailing with a lacerated forehead.

Approximately 10, loquacious, pro-choice protesters indulge in stoning the defenceless, drowsy man. Half of the disgraceful windbags panic; they run away when they witness the apparitions of deinotheriums wandering their direction. The elderly pro-life protester is trapped between a black dumpster and a restaurant wall. As blood from the elderly man’s face continues to leak to the pavement, one truculent, pro abortion protester wallops the elderly man in the forehead with a rock, two measly times. After a militant police officer presses a red button on his watch, 9 pro abortion protesters are shocked on concrete blocks they run on. The pro abortion protesters fall on the ground, paralysed. Ashima glances behind her at a speeding limousine which glows in the dark to the color green. Seven, golden, spiky buttresses have intersecting arches, and under each arch is a humongous door. With the aroma of fresh frangipanis, she crosses a bridge made of igneous rock and covered with bougainvillea. The bridge arches over 8 inches of cold water. She enters the “Bad Marki’s” frou-frou chophouse. The elderly man is dragged down the alley of banyan trees, where it would be a mystery to discover his body.

4:35 P.M.

A brunette waitress has a diamond-encrusted tiara and a Roman Goddess ponytail with braids encircling her noggin. Setting an intimidating presence, the waitress has an immaculate, white, toga dress. She ushers Ashima to her rosewood table. Ashima looks at the waitresses face and foresees the waitress dead. In Ashima’s vision, the waitress is in a supine position with a bloody toga dress in a dumbwaiter. Oddly, there’s blood splattered on a smoke detector across from her, down the hall.

Awkwardly, in great sadness, Ashima stares at the waitress, walking away. In the middle of the table, there’s a transparent, burgundy jar of pignuts. The pignuts surround 6, red roses, which are tied in a red, grosgrain ribbon. Around the ribbon, there are three, white, beaded necklaces wrapped around. Seven, rambunctious children run pass. A solo artist is singing while playing the cello extemporaneously; children are gambolling the area, cheering for the female performer. The performer is wearing a sequinned, red, wrap dress and black, ankle boots. Suddenly, the chophouse isn’t the best in town.

Looking familiar to Ashima, an anonymous vagrant in her mid-twenties glances at few happy customer’s demoralising smiles, in front of Ashima from a table. Just from the hobo’s revolting odor, the hobo abates her bliss. The hobo has (tousled, blond hair, a diamond-encrusted chakana pendant, a discolored, black, button-down shirt, and blue jeans) no meal on her table, and gets glared at when she’s caught glancing at Ashima. While Ashima looks at the Bad Marki’s menu, the hobo puts on wireless earphones. Ignoring the rambunctious children, the hobo watches a movie on a golden, glow in the dark television above the table. The television has a screen on both sides.

A obsequious waiter speaks with a sonorous voice, “Hello. My name is Trey and I will be your server tonight. Are you ready to order?”

Before responding, Ashima has a disturbing vision of a squealing Trey with a gash across his forehead and being crushed in the scrotum with a socket wrench by a dark figure, “I’ll have a glass of water with ice and a sliced lemon on top. Give me a minute to think about my meal. Someone else should be coming along.”

Two plates of hors d’oeuvres and iced water with a lemon on the top magically rises through the table on each side. Ashima checks the time on her cell phone, and the time changes to 4:36 P.M. When she looks at the television screen from the hobo’s area, there’s breaking news that interrupts the movie. The waiter walks away from the table as the solo artist gets done singing. Ashima sees two people get on the stage. They mention their names, but doesn’t hear a sound coming from their mouth. One woman sings playing the violin while a man plays the drums.

An anchorwoman (looking as old as Methuselah) in a black business suit speaks as subtitles appear on the screen, saying, “Good morning. Welcome to ‘Bad Marki’s Breaking News.’ I’m Pam Honer and today’s story is unbelievable. Two months ago, a Chicagoan by the name of Dīafair attempted suicide by stabbing himself in the heart and slitting his throat. His body was found on top of his car in a vegetative state in his garage, which is where over one thousand pounds of uranium ore minerals were found. While investigators think that the crime scene may have evidence of an attempted murder, they weren’t able verify this. There was no DNA proof from anyone else at the crime scene. Dīafair’s mother has seen her son’s failed suicide attempts many times in the past. On one morning, when she noticed that her son was showing signs of getting impulsive over the phone, ending the phone call after trying to tell him that she loves him, she went into mother mode. Dīafair’s mother instinctively called the hospital, and he miraculously survived the attempted suicide. After Dīafair’s body was rushed to the hospital two hours after slitting.”

Ashima puts on wireless earphones and hears the old hag sounding like a humble worshipper of a higher power, “Dīafair is a survivor with a loving mother. He is diagnosed with sleeping corpse syndrome after repeatedly mentioning his brain isn’t functioning. He’s mentioned that he feels no heart beat and has immortality. Dīafair is here live to share his thoughts.”

The camera cuts to a Chicago park. With forlorn eyes, Dīafair stares directly at the camera. Dīafair has on a black hooded sweatshirt made out of jean material. Attached to the bottom of his drawstrings are silver, inverted crosses on both sides. Also, he has a black, leather, studded belt, black jeans, and black, cowboy boots.

Then, the interviewer, Pam listens to a harelipped Dīafair as if though he has a sound mind, “I’m dead. I’ve died seven times. My first death experience was when I died by an aneurism at age seven. There’s no heaven. There’s no hell. I thought I was a priggish God, but now look at me. Foresee the havoc after defleshing my heart.”

Dīafair sticks out his transparent tongue (with steel spiderweb designs inside) as Pam makes an inquiry, “What advice would you give everyone hearing your story?”

A tetchy Dīafair responds as many viewers attempt to live vicariously through his stress, “Nobody is hearing my story. I feel flames and hear haunting voices. I am a lyrical profiteer. My voice sounds undeniably and utterly reprehensible. I can’t ever be seen again. My dreams are gone. My doubtless mind should’ve doubted long ago, and it would’ve saved me from the embarrassment of performing at concerts. The crowd booed and threw objects, but stupid me told the band to keep performing. I don’t know why they kept booking us.”

What Shanta said wasn’t a furphy, but a fact. Ashima removes her earphones reflecting on the joke Shanta made earlier. Her appetite is spoiled, but the stomach of the hobo growls. The lugubrious music leaves her frowning. Gleeful children frown when they glance at her facial expression. She calls Shanta on her cell phone and the call goes to voicemail.

She speaks, “Hello. This is Ashima. That cruel joke you made earlier about a guy slitting his throat in his garage was real. Call me back.”

45 Minutes Later

Introspecting about why her date ditched her, a saddened Ashima is at her table alone with a belly full of nosh. Looking down at the bread crumbs, salad dressing, and leftover rice pilaf, in deathlike silence, she has a tummy ache. On the parallel side of the table is a mouthwatering meal on a plate. The plate on the parallel side has three chicken wings, three steaks, two egg rolls, two roasted potatoes with hollandāise sauce, mulligatawny soup, a haggis, a habanero pepper, a quesadilla, and an organic, mirabelle plum. A tear trickles down her left cheek.

From another table, the hobo looks at her at eye-level. Just when it couldn’t get worse, the hobo removes her earphones to walk toward her. Although Prisha’s mouth is closed, Ashima can smell Prisha’s breath. A more distinctly repugnant smell surrounds the restaurant when she stretches her arms up. Children look her direction in deep disgust.

With a husky voice, a famished, low-spirited hobo supplicates Ashima for food, “Hello. It looks like you need a little help eating that meal. I have no change and am starving. If nobody is going to eat that meal, may I please eat it?”

After recognising the hobo as her high school bully, Ashima has a flashback the hobo’s voice, “I’d lower my tone if I were you!”

Ashima exits her traumatic flashback. She now has a timid look as she faces her high school bully. Ashima then shakes in rage as the hobo looks confused. Then, Ashima calms her nerves and remains silent. She lowers her head as the saddened hobo watches.

The hobo says, “Did I say something wrong?”

“Not today. I’m waiting on a date,” Ashima replies, inadvertently shredding tears from her eyes.

The hobo says, “You’ve been ditched. You aren’t going to eat that food, are you?”

With a tinge of anger, Ashima responds, “Bon appétit.”

“Thank you,” the hobo says.

Like a ravenous Bedouin, the shocked hobo sits down to consume the exquisite meal on the plate, but gets questioned, “What’s your name?”

Peculiarly talking herself into hyperventilation, Prisha responds with trauma, “Prisha. I wouldn’t mind hearing yours either.”

She responds, “Call me Ashima and we’re fine.”

Prisha nods her head vertically, “I saw you look shocked at the television screen. It’s really sad how life goes. I used to know Dīafair as a teenager. I was 16. He was the quiet kid hiding peacocks in a large black bag as a loud radio played. No one could hear the peacocks’ call for help. He butchered the peacocks with an axe on a farm. He caught me peeking at him behind a thick tree trunk. I’m sure he butchered more.”

Making a perfidious smile, a plainspoken Ashima gulps down spit from hearing how Dīafair butchered peacocks. As an animal lover and vegetarian, Ashima is disgusted with Dīafair. Ashima wonders if Dīafair ever spoken to her. She has vibes that Prisha is a mealy-mouthed person.

Ashima sneers at Prisha, “This Dīafair guy sounds like a loose cannon. Cut to the chase already. Has he ever spoken to you. Did he put a gas mask to next to all of his victims in the crime scenes? How did you…”

Still talking rapidly, Prisha interrupts, “Become poor? My mother was a drug lord in Guatemala worth over a billion dollars. I remember looking out the window to see helicopters and hundreds of police cars. Next thing I know, they ransacked the place and arrested my mom. They took me on a helicopter ride here. And no. He didn’t prefer masks. That’s all I know about him. Dīafair never spoke to me. He stared at me. I noticed him staring at all the women. He would say few words to men in a soft voice.”

A skeptical Ashima picks marijuana from inside her hair to smoke it and sarcastically says, “Nothing like Doubt Town. You seem to have a huge chip on your shoulder. My mother is a infamous con artist.”

Perspiration forms on Prisha’s forehead, she slightly shakes, and her speech speeds up, “No, really. There was a time I could afford anything I want as a teenager. I always saved my mazuma.”

Ashima questions Prisha, “Mazuma?”

Prisha responds with an unforgettable stare that can be an urge to steal Ashima’s money, “You know. Spondulics. Moolah. Cash. I always saved my cash, but my mother got arrested. I made a bad investment on mazuma with drugs. I never knew my mother.”

Ashamed of Prisha, Ashima lowers her head, saying, “That’s a really bad investment. I have no pity for you.”

Prisha talks slower and makes a spiteful remark toward the dirtbag, “I’m obviously aware of that now…”

Rising from her seat, Ashima takes a chicken wing from Prisha’s plate and says, “Lend me your ear. You’re beating a dead horse. Enjoy your night.”

Irritated from Prisha, Ashima walks far back, pass a natatorium, making her way to the women’s washroom. While Prisha glances at the obstreperous children, two stout men in their mid-thirties approach her. Prisha is nervous and speechless. Nobu, one masculine man (with black braids and a black business suit) moves a chair beside her on the left side. Nobu then sits down in a position opposite of what the chair is use for. The other man (José) has a silk, black top hat, a toothpick between his lips, and a black business suit. He stands behind Prisha with both of his arms on her stiff shoulders.

“Cough up the money,” a horrid Nobu calmly says.

An irksome José angrily says, “All of it. Hypothetically speaking, you’re a bitch.”

Before noticing a loud groan as Nobu twists Emily’s arm backwards, Ashima walks out of the women’s bathroom while talking on her cell phone, “I know you were joking about earlier, but what I’m saying. … I’ll call you back.”

“Leave her alone,” Ashima yells as if Nobu and José burnt Prisha’s raiment.

After levitating a wine glass, Ashima uses her power to whack the glass against the table. The table lurches forward; luscious glass of effervescent wine breaks and crimson liquid spills on a black, shaggy carpet. Ashima’s face is as brave as if she has two obedient black bears beside her on a leash. The terrified violinist and drummer stop performing as everyone stare in awe. Ashima’s foul threat causes Nobu and José to run away from the scene. Children stare in shock. Glass is all over the table and milk-white, shaggy carpet.

The waiter returns to calmly say, “I’m not paying for this.”

Ashima looks directly at Prisha and says, “We got off on the wrong foot. You can stay at my place.”

Still, everyone else in the chophouse are watching Ashima and Prisha. Prisha looks as if though it’s a superfluous offer. She wonders why Ashima would want to have Prisha living with her. The overwhelming news causes Prisha irregular breaths. Prisha is elated.

Ashima says, “Chop-chop. I’m changing my mind in five… four… three…”

An astounded Prisha smiles, rises up, and hugs her new friend, stammering, “I’m truly grateful.”

“First impressions matter,” Ashima says while pulling out and opening up a small box of breath mints.

Ashima glances across from the violinist and drummer. There’s a mangled infant confined in a vending machine and anonymous adults don’t notice. She recently scared off two goons, so she can’t possibly be hallucinating. The utter sight of the vending machine makes her sick. She covers her mouth and vomits in a trash can.

Shuang’s House

It’s 7:03 P.M.. Prisha cherishes the cool temperature from the air conditioner as if though she was going to be a victim of hyperthermia. Prisha then darts her head around the picturesque living room. She sees Athaliah and fearfully hesitates to move. The utter sight of the kitten makes her move backwards.

Ashima asks, “Cat got your tongue? You were talking earlier.”

Prisha focuses on Athaliah and says, “I’m allergic to cats.”

As Prisha has a hangdog expression, Ashima speaks, “If you don’t like Athaliah, I don’t like you. I’m not getting rid of my kitten for you. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you plan on staying here. I’m not dealing with any hissy fits.”

“I love cats,” Prisha politely responds.

“Now, that’s what I love to hear. I’m just pulling your leg. Take it with a grain of salt.”

Prisha follows Ashima into the kitchen and she’s overwhelmed, especially after seeing Shuang. Prisha has a flashback of when she was 17-years-old stealing garlic bread from a bakery display rack with 6 shelves. A male cashier in his mid-twenties chases her in the rain as a crowd of laugh. The cashier follows her across a street and grabs her right hand. She nearly falls and the male holds her with tears running down her cheeks. The cashier forces her into a nearby eyesore of an apartment building in the hallway, where he legally chops off her right hand for stealing.

Over twenty, sadistic people watch Prisha squeal from the intense pain as blood squirts from her wrist, onto her blue, sublime maxi dress. On the right side of the bottom of the dress, there’s the design of the face of a woman peering into a mirror in a dark room. The woman has black, wet, long, curly hair, and black eyeshadow seeing a distorted face in the mirror. Out of all of the people watching, Shuang (in a black, silk, tunic dress embellished with red rose petals and pink crystals and black flip-flops made of alligator skin) walks toward Prisha. Everyone turns silent. Shuang firmly holds Prisha’s arm as Prisha glances at a tied white ribbon on both of Shuang’s wrists.

Prisha frowns at Shuang’s face, but Shuang closes her eyes. Shuang places Prisha’s bloody hand back to her chopped off hand. Immediately, Prisha’s hand attaches to her arm and heals. In great disbelief, Prisha moves her right hand as everyone watches in awe. Shuang smiles as Prisha runs out of the house.

Prisha’s awkward flashback ends as Ashima smirks in her face. The aroma of baked, chocolate cookies wafts from the kitchen. The anxiety of Ashima being a possible serial killer haunts her. It’s predictable for a stranger to lure Prisha into a home and kill her, but it’s a worthwhile chance she’s willing to take. Unbelievably, Ashima is giving her a place to stay. It could just be a cruel prank.

“It’s a small world,” Ashima says, glancing at Athaliah, then at her mother.

Under a dull, kitchen light, Ashima says, “Mom. Prisha is my friend. She has no parents…”

“We’ve met. Fine,” a pie-eyed Shuang interrupts her daughter, and crosses her arms, saying, “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

An embarrassed Ashima says, “Gosh, mom! How much did you drink?”

“Watch your mouth! You and your girlfriend can do whatever. Just let me sleep,” her mother says and flicks off the light switch.

Prisha is stoked, forming a believable smile as if Christmas comes every day. The first thing she thinks about is what room she’ll sleep in. The second thing she thinks about is how long she’ll live with Ashima. Ashima has the same look that she did when she first saw Prisha. They’re surprised Shuang doesn’t think the kitten is incapacitated.

A startled Shuang jumps up when she sees her black kitten, then says, “Athaliah scared the crud out of me. What’s wrong with this world?”

Prisha says, “It beats me.”

“You have to use your loaf,” Ashima says to Prisha, then points her finger at her mother, saying, “Exhibit A.”

“Pipe down! Exhibit B. My levelheaded daughter,” Shuang says, pointing at her daughter, who metaphorically shrinks into rebirth.

Prisha notices that Ashima’s mother has baggy eyes. Shuang enters her bedroom as her farouche kitten heads into Ashima’s room. Shuang shuts her bedroom door. Prisha walks to the beige chaise longue in the living room and sits down. Ashima sits on the white, marble countertop and the dull light turns bright. As the air conditioner behind Prisha relaxes her, Ashima stares.

“Why did you do this for me,” a frantic Prisha asks.

Ashima says, “I’d lower my tone if I were you!”

Shuang yells, “Lower it fucking down!”

Finally remembering Ashima at 13-years-old, Prisha listens to Ashima speak, “I felt bad. I’m making up for all the bad things I’ve done. What happened to your father?”

With a sad reaction on her face, Prisha hyperventilates from talking too fast, saying, “I’m sorry. I’ve done bad things. You’re not a bad person at all. This chakana pendant is the last thing my father gave to me before he allegedly shot himself in the head. I was 10 when he died.”

Relating to what her new friend says, immediately, Ashima says, “Same.”

7:26 P.M.

Outside in a dark alley, Dīafair is (wearing a black cloak, black jeans, and black boots) resting in a prone position. He is in front of a wheelchair on the disgusting, roach-infested ground. As if a hacksaw is lodged into his right tibia, he screams for help several times. Eventually, a curious greybeard (wearing a grey hooded sweatshirt with black drawstrings and wrinkled, blue jeans) walks with a silver, knobbly walking stick nearby. Peering through the darkness, the greybeard sees Dīafair on the ground, writhing in intense pain.

The corpulent greybeard refuses to walk in the alley and says, “I’m calling the hospital.”

Dīafair engages in a preliminary talk to eventually murder, “I was robbed! I can’t feel my leg!”

The vigilant greybeard dials the number to the hospital as he talks to Dīafair, “I can’t risk anything in this neighborhood. I’m staying right here.”

Dīafair struggles to crawl as the greybeard talks on the phone, “Hello. I would like to report a robbery…”

The petrified greybeard pauses his speech while keeping meticulous attention on Dīafair. A fearsome Dīafair looms through the darkness (with his hands in rubber, white gloves) aiming a handy gun at the moronic greybeard’s chest. The gun is the color of beautiful oxblood. He shoots the decrepit greybeard in the pelvis before forcefully dragging him into the darkness. A trail of blood leads to the revolting sight, which physically feels like an hour-long, torturous event.

Dīafair is in a jovial mood as he glances at a black cat on a windowsill. Dīafair shoots the greybeard in the left patella. Dīafair positions his gun into his right, back pocket with a lust for sadism. As the greybeard suffers involuntary body movements, Dīafair enjoyably thrashes him with a knout. Approximately 12 indelible welts are on his selected victim’s face; his victim moans profusely from the irrational punishment. Proceeding with the nefarious act of this gratuitous murder, Dīafair gives his defenceless victim 45 welts on the back.

4 Days Later

Prisha says, “I can’t see myself getting mad enough to punch someone in the face. It might hurt the person.”

Surprised at Prisha’s comment, Ashima says, “That’s the point. Did your soft side come from your mother? Pretend this punching bag is the bill collector and punch him in the face.”

From the computer screen, Shanta makes a waggish remark in a dark background, “The bill collector is my boyfriend!”

Continuously, a callow Prisha punches the silver, impregnable punching bag with all her might. Prisha screams and Shanta smiles. Striking the punching bag assuages her depression. Prisha stops punching when she hears the basement door open. Footsteps run down the mud brick stairs before the laptop eerily judders. It’s the excursionist. It’s an upbeat Shanta standing on the bottom step. After making a confused look, the moment entices Ashima to hug her online friend.

“How did you find my house? I thought you lost your passport,” a stoked Ashima says.

After making a laughable face as if Ireland wishes to extradite herself, Shanta chuckles, saying, “Presto! We finally meet. I used your IP address.”

A puzzled Ashima’s jaw drops, then she asks, “What a surprise! What did you do to my mother?”

An orgulous Shanta giggles, saying, “I thought you’d be happy to see me. Your mother was more than friendly. I helped her bake cookies earlier. She’s outside checking the mail. Shuang knows how close we are.”

“Prisha nervously glance at the exit, stammering, “I don’t think I should be here anymore.”

Ashima turns her head to Prisha, saying, “You’re staying with us.”

Shanta forms a malicious smile and gives a baleful stare at Prisha. She then gingerly draws out a handgun, and aims it to Prisha’s face. Cringing away from Shanta, a discombobulated Prisha screams as if she has a baby with shoulder dystocia. Her frightened face looks as if she witnessed someone excavate her mother’s grave sight. While convulsively sobbing, she struggles not to blink. Prisha suffers lightheadedness.

Prisha begs for her life, “Please, don’t kill me!”

Ashima walks behind Prisha and slaps her on the buttocks, saying, “I always loved your big ass. You want to trade? If you trade me your ass, I won’t let my girlfriend kill you.”

In vexation, Prisha stammers from the ghastly event, “You all are freaks!”

Ashima and Shanta laughs. Frolicking around like snot-nosed kids, Shanta bites the edible gun and rolls on a pool table, mocking Prisha. Ashima’s legs become weak from the hilarity, and she balances herself by holding onto the pool table. Prisha stares at the mockery with an unforgiving grin. As if she could put a restraining order against the Gods, Prisha walks upstairs to the exit.

“I beg your pardon! Be careful who you know! You can stay over,” yells Ashima.

A stylish Shanta has a backwards, black baseball cap with a black squatchee and, black, leather, visor brim. There’s interconnected triangular-shaped panels. The panels are black leather followed by authentic diamonds inside rubber material, which is covered with black fishnet. The snap buckle is a magnet. Between the layers of triangular-shaped panels and the polyester material on the inside of the baseball cap, there’s cotton.

Shanta has short, straight, orange hair with pink earphones attached to her ears. She has a peach spaghetti strap, turquoise bell-bottom jeans with skull designs, and pink tennis shoes. Then, she sits on a wooden stool. From her baby pink, wool purse, she takes out a charger and charging her cell phone without plugging it into an outlet. The charger has 98 percent battery life and her cell phone has 36 percent battery life. She then plugs her charger into a nearby outlet and the charger’s battery life turns to 99 percent. On Shanta’s cell phone, it says it’s 2:30 P.M..

She glances at a live, broadcasted documentary show with many bleep sounds in it. The show is about the four “Doubt Town Prisons.” In the “West Doubt Town Prison,” starving inmates are nearly suffocated repeatedly in a pool four 24 hours a day. Resulting in many dead inmates, victims have their hands and legs tied together while security officers force them into the water for approximately 5 minutes. Once the inmates get air, they have 45 seconds to rest.

Shanta exits the app screen as Ashima asks, “What’s that you’re looking at on your phone? More IP addresses?”

Shanta immediately stops laughing, saying, “Cut the crap! We scared her good. I did my damnedest pulling off that act.”

“It was my idea,” Ashima replies as Shanta twirls with her black chignon.

A velocipede is in the dark corner of the wall where the face of an eidolon (named Pam) trudges, rubbing on the right handle. Pam is wearing a butterfly hennin. With nocturnal vision, Ashima can see a crying baby behind Pam, trapped inside of a brown crate. Shanta stares in awe as Pam’s face disappears, however, her bare feet are visible. Her feet walks to the pool table, which is when the eidolon fully disappears. The eidolon reappears sitting on the pool table with a mi-parti dress. The sumptuous mi-parti dress is alabaster on the left side with baby pink and alabaster stripes on the right side.

It’s 2:33 P.M.. Athaliah is sitting a foot away from a litter box. Prisha walks upstairs into the kitchen, and notices Athaliah walking away from the familiar smell of feces. When Prisha looks down, she realizes there’s a chopped, bloody index finger from a right hand in the litter box. She makes a shrieking scream.

A concerned Shuang rushes into the kitchen asking, “Can you keep it down?!”

A nervously shaking Prisha points at the bloody finger with watery eyes. Shuang’s eyes widen, for a couple of seconds, then she darts her head to the sight of the balcony. Representing an ominous presence, a crow is sitting on the rectangular, wooden table, staring at Shuang. Prisha exits the kitchen to look at the balcony. The crow flies to the firmaments.

Shuang says, “We’re being watched.”

With adrenaline pumping, Ashima races Shanta up the stairs to the living room. The doorbell rings. Ashima and Shanta are confused. Shuang speaks to Ashima, “Wait here.” With a motherly instinct, Shuang walks to the front door and looks in the peephole. She sees cumulonimbus clouds producing hail. On the door steps, there are 4 rows of 8, lit votive candles being blown out by a gust of wind. When she opens the door, there’s a putrid smell. Magically, there’s the right leg of a headless, eviscerated victim tied to a black handrail. The left side of his torso is burnt. She screams and slams the door shut.

Ashima rushes to look down the hall and her mother walks back. “I told you to stay where you are!” “Is everything okay,” Ashima asks. She receives no response, seeing from her peripheral vision. Pam is in a black robe standing in front of a hearth where an infant whines. A maddened Pam holds a stake in the air with both hands, and forcefully lunges it downward. The vision fades away and Ashima sees the television where the hearth originally was. Prisha then glares at Shanta as if the index finger in the litter box is a prank. Prisha’s shocked face doesn’t change.

At 3:33 P.M., the same crow lands on the edge of a rooftop. As disembodied voices importune Dīafair to kill the crow, he patiently watches his prey. He stomps on her as if though she can be reduced to powdered gelatin. Blood squirts from her body, and he gloats over her. After touching the blood, he smears it on his face. An omnivorous Dīafair picks up the mawkish crow, and swallows it without biting. After a recent dinner of eating chicken, the crow tastes like a slimy, maggoty amphibian.

Dīafair has a flashback of a fortuitous event. At the age of 6, he had an unattractive unibrow and an authentic, black, handwoven, hooded djellaba. He was at the once ungoverned land of “Doubt Left Slums.” In “Doubt Left Slums Park,” an indefatigable Dīafair chases Aniya with a black screwdriver. Aniya’s a scrawny, 7-year-old girl on a bluish green bike with a silver, leather knapsack strapped to her back. The numskull is pedalling extremely fast, so Dīafair runs across a hill as a shortcut. He then kicks the bike over, which causes her a hard landing in the grass.

Before whining, a dazed Aniya sees blood oozing down her right knee and wrist. From writhing in agony, blood smears on her white crew neck t-shirt onto her blue jeans. Treating her like a dedicated slob, Dīafair silences her with indelible stab wounds from a crimson bradawl. After making one felicitous attempt, he lunges the screwdriver into her face 29 times. Aniya’s cheekbones are removed from her mangled face with 3 inch wide cut marks intersecting at the jugular. With his hands, he aggressively gouges out her gorgeous, copper eyes. By countlessly stabbing her left hand, it detaches palmer aponeurosis. He aggressively does the same thing to the right hand, staring at her blood like it’s red henna.

Deliberately, Dīafair gloats over her deceased body. As if though there’s the slightest sign of her life, he squats down to stare at her closed eyelids. It’s like a horrible experiment. Dīafair stabs Aniya’s right shoulder blade with the bradawl. Until the shoulder blade isn’t a part of her, he passionately stabs it.

The thrilling flashback ends. From his right pocket, he takes out a crumbled guide book to Ireland called “Ireland World” by Shanta Spells. Even when he skims through the voluminous writings, it appeals to him. Quickly, he notices that Shanta isn’t fluent in tautology. Dīafair sees the pages burn. The guide book feels like steaming hot brew at 185 degrees for 3 minutes. He groans from the pain. Then, he removes his engagement ring, steps on the edge of the roof, and drops it.

4:01 P.M.

Ashima is sitting in the back of a pickup truck, which has the designs of textured mahogany. She gropes pass hundreds of authentic crystals in Shanta’s baby pink purse. Out of the purse, she takes a doll (with long, curly, black hair) staring at her with enormous ocean blue eyes. The doll has a black shawl wrapped around a black tank top, with a purple miniskirt, and black heels. As Ashima smiles, Prisha looks through the back window as if Ashima’s holding a frivolous doll. To Prisha, the doll appears to be impervious to logic. Ashima then glances at Shanta (the driver) with a smirk. Shanta looks back, but Prisha advises her to focus on the road.

“Leave my doll alone,” Shanta takes a cigarette from her mouth, sarcastically screaming.

Wisps of smoke from Shanta’s cigarette rushes to the back of the pickup truck as Ashima asks Shanta, “What’s your doll’s name?”

Shanta says, “Petunia! She used to have a boyfriend named Ashmaam. That skinflint braggart was an independent, male witch, (working at two jobs). He was the assistant manager at a tanning salon and hypnotherapist, but I lost him a year ago.”

“Oh, no! Men can be pigs. Petunia is a beautiful name,” Ashima says to Shanta, then speaks to Petunia, “Hello, Petunia.”

While speaking in an ethereal voice, Petunia’s mouth moves and eyes blink like a human, “Hello.”

A wide awake Prisha turns around overhearing the conversation between Ashima and Petunia. It all makes sense now. Ashima is a daayan. Prisha gets freakishly nervous and wants to jump out of the car. She realises that the car is going approximately 55 miles per hour on a narrow road. The car is on the side of a mountain.

“Well done. What’s on your mind,” Ashima sarcastically asks.

Petunia speaks, “Dīafair is watching you.”

Ashima mumbles, “Smart aleck.”

With widened eyes, Ashima suffers from unfeigned nervousness, dropping the doll. When Ashima darts her head behind her with an eerie glance, Prisha is a frightened believer of the supernatural. Ashima looks to the left side of the road, seeing gorgeous women in sumptuous, Minoan dresses. Two teenage boys are catcalling her as she holds a white sign with red letters that reads, “Right Turn to West Doubt Town Beach.” Above the harassed woman, there’s a marquee that reads, “West Doubt Town Beach.” As Prisha drives into the “West Doubt Town Beach” parking lot and finds a parking spot, Ashima puts Petunia back in Shanta’s purse.

Prisha admits, “I’ve never been on Mount Fable before.” I heard many stories about it.”

Shanta says, “We’ll contact you after you get off the ride.”

Prisha thinks about how naive she was to live with Ashima and says, “I don’t have a cell phone. I’ll just meet up with you two here, in the same spot.”

Creepily, Shanta smiles and softly says, “That’s not how things work around here.”

Startling Shanta, an excited Prisha screams, opening the side door. After giving an uncomfortable look to Ashima, Prisha rushes to the beach to dive in the ocean wearing a blue bra and blue swimming trunks. Hundreds of black pyramids are in the background of the ocean, which is symmetrical to golden pyramids on the far, right side and milk-white pyramids on the far, left side. Shanta smiles at Ashima. Ashima hops off the back of the pickup truck. Publicly displaying an antiquated love, as if Shanta finished enumerating her every accomplishment, Ashima holds the back of Shanta’s neck, passionately kissing her.

At a far distance, an abandoned white cat wanders the beach. Ashima and Shanta stare at a panting Prisha running out of the cold ocean, half-naked. Ashima’s attention is stolen when the cat runs to her. She gently pats the cat on the head and back.

Ashima speaks to the abandoned cat, “Aaaawww! You’re adorable. I want to keep you.”

Her girlfriend says, “You have a cat already.”

With watery eyes, Ashima argues, “But Rubie doesn’t want to be alone.”

Rubie jumps into Ashima’s arms, purring in her right ear, and licking her right cheek. Ashima can’t resist Rubie’s affection. She notices Rubie’s eyes turn black and hair raise up at a 90 degree angle. Like a vampire, Rubie bites Ashima on the left side of the neck. Ashima screams and throws Rubie into the air 6 feet away. After Ashima rubs on her wound, Rubie shows her fangs and runs away from the scene.

Prisha runs toward the “Mount Fable” rollercoaster, 5 miles east of the “West Doubt Doubt Town Beach.”

As if Shanta is standing right beside her, Prisha hears hears her voice, “Don’t run.”

Walking the rest of the way to “Mount Fable,” Prisha turns miserable. Once she sees a line of thrill seekers in the car barn, her face grows in fear. “Mount Fable” has a car barn with holograms of several creepy spirits in Minoan clothing, vanishing around the area. One hologram is (Ophelia) an elderly lady with a grotesque face, burnt, short hair, and a burnt left arm. Another hologram is (Kanishia) a cute, brown puppy, often running, jumping, and barking. The final hologram (Jester) loiters the area. Jester is a milquetoast, teenage boy hiding a sword behind his back.

Each spirit scares Prisha, but she awaits to experience the front of the rollercoaster. She rushes to sit in the tarantula, buckling her seatbelt, and lowering her black shoulder harness. Already, she has a death grip on the shoulder harness. The seat beside her is empty. At 490 feet in the air, the rollercoaster starts at a rapid, forward speed. Before heading underground, the ride prepares the thrill seekers for a 510 foot free fall to the left side at a 45 degree angle. Horizontally, the ride speeds clockwise 6 times while under an underground cave, then speeds pass 13 interlocking loops. Just when Prisha thinks the ride is over, there is a lift hill at 620 feet on where she regrets looking down at the ground to see nearly one-fourth of “West Doubt Town Beach.”

Prisha is exhausted. A dizzy Prisha feels like an autistic skateboarder being shocked by a stun gun, then 200 pounds of deadweight falls on her. Somehow, she keeps her equilibrium. Ashima and Shanta are nowhere in sight. Based off of her worried face, Prisha regrets knowing them.

Like unrequited love, Prisha hears Shanta’s voice as she darts her head behind herself, “Keep walking straight.”

Darting her head around her surroundings, a frightened Prisha gets scared, hearing Ashima’s angelic voice, “Don’t be scared. We’re here to help you.”

Behind Ashima, there’s five strangers on both sides of a volleyball net playing volleyball. Prisha walks straight ahead until she sees Ashima building a sand castle with her bare hands. After the tiring walk, Prisha faints on her time-consuming creation. A frustrated Ashima screams with grin, then power walks to the nearest porta-potty. When she finds the blue porta-potty, she shut the door behind her, screaming 60 seconds later.

Ashima rushes out the porta-potty and Prisha, (who is resting beside a pansy on the hot sand) asks, “Did you wash your hands?”

“Sarcastically, Ashima says, “I wonder why you were screaming Ashima! That’s right. I had another miscarriage! Would you like me to dump my dirty hands in the ocean?”

“Great. My friend had a dead baby by the man who ditched her at Bad Marki’s. Go ahead. That’s the Holiest water on the planet. You’re so not touching me after this.” Shanta says.

As Ashima runs into the ocean, Shanta listens to Prisha stammer, “I used to have a cat just like your best friend does. Her name was Wavy. I was ten with the house to myself. I remember sneaking in the refrigerator to get drunk. I returned to the living room to watch T.V., only to see disgusting evidence on a black nightstand. I then saw a bloody Christmas card with Wavy’s teeth beside it.”

Shanta tries to relax Prisha with words, “Chill. I fancy you have too many horrible stories to enjoy a great moment. I know Mount Fable shook you up a bit. It shook me up when I first rode it.”

Prisha gives her a look of agreement and stammers, “Just one question. If you’re dating Ashima, how did she get a dead fetus?”

Prisha is absolutely shocked as Shanta explains Ashima’s condition, “It’s a hugger-mugger. Ashima has a rare condition where she gives birth to children without sexual intercourse. Like every six months, she produces a new fetus. The next one could be a crying baby. She’s had this condition since she was seven-years-old. I’ve agreed to support her.”

Prisha’s mind is full of questions as she stammers to say, “I have so many questions now.”

Shanta says, “My answers are exactitude. I have time.”

A worried Prisha rapidly speaks, “How are you sure if that’s really a condition? How are you still with her after all of this time? Did you know that Ashima can speak to dolls?”

Shanta laughs and sarcastically says, “Slow down. You don’t need the whole megillah. I have stick-to-itiveness. Ashima and I have a gruelling relationship. What was once a pipe dream turned to reality when I met her. Ashima is with me because I’ve learned to accept her integrity. With great honour, I say that I avoid hullabaloos about our relationship at all costs. We can both speak to dolls. I have the power to revive the dead.”

“You won’t avoid this hullabaloo. Tell me the fuckin’ truth already,” Prisha says.

The scintillating sun disappears and Shanta’s powers invite a sullen sky as she angrily admits, “Someone made sexual advances on Ashima and had sex with her against her will.”

1 Hour Later

In a stranger’s kitchen, a petite, 34-year-old woman named Blessica has burgundy earphones on. Dīafair (wearing a black, wool frock coat) makes an astonishing effort to methodically walk in the living room undetected. He watches the busty nincompoop cook french fries in a silver, metal pan. As if though Blessica is a houri, Dīafair ogles at her body. Dīafair stares at Blessica’s burgundy, laced panty under her black pantyhose. He looks upward to Blessica’s burgundy, laced bra under a long-sleeved fishnet shirt. Right on the area of Blessica’s actual heart, she has a tattoo of a heart organ. On the left side, the tattoo shows a female angel pulling on her superior vena cava and on the right side, the tattoo shows a gothic pinup girl pulling on her pulmonary artery. A horrified Blessica hears someone breathing behind her, so she darts her head. A shrieking scream erupts from her mouth at the sight of Dīafair flicking the light switch off. Although it’s dark, still, she grabs the handle of a pan to throw where she last saw Dīafair. French fries and hot vegetable oil flies across the area as the pan cracks part of the floorboard.

Simultaneous to a girly scream erupting from 7-year-old Jollibee’s bedroom, the light coming from underneath a bathroom door turn off. Blessica’s qualms magnify with the assumption that her daughter is in danger, and she panics. As if someone poured itching powder into Blessica’s shoes, she unwittingly runs to the front door. The front door is where an unseen Dīafair patiently stands with a knife. Blessica gets stabbed in the gut twice as she moans from the intense pain. Blessica then realises that her scream frightened her daughter, Jollibee.

Blessica falls to the wooden floor with a crying scream, “Run!”

With no remorse, Dīafair passionately kicks Blessica in the stomach 14 times as she attempts to crawl. Her fingers linger as Dīafair drags her into the living room with rubber gloves underneath newly bought, black leather gloves. A trail of blood follows Blessica, and he tosses her defenceless body over a separate kitchen countertop (made of seleno silestone) where an ocean blue ceramic bowl sits. Giving her a concussion, Blessica’s half-dead face smacks against a red lacquer box with black polkadots, before touching the white, tiled floor. Her bloody, lower, left, central tooth falls out.

A horrified, 7-year-old Jollibee walks out of her bedroom wearing white, grey, and black camouflage, skinny jeans. On her thighs, there’s the designs of tiger claws under tiger scratches. Appalled, the wannabe neurologist sees a 7-foot-tall stranger glaring at her. As Dīafair glares at Jollibee, she glances at a trail of blood from the front door, leading to the kitchen and screams until she loses air in her lungs. The distinct smell is awful, especially knowing that it’s her beloved mother’s blood. Thinking that her mother is dead, she rushes back into her bedroom, slamming the door shut.

Dīafair unbuckles his leather belt, and lashes the belt at Blessica’s buttocks 23 times. He notices welts forming from her precious area that only men dreamed of going near. Out of satisfaction, he strangles Blessica around her neck with the belt until he can feel her lifeless body. Effortlessly, he moves the refrigerator forward. Dīafair opens the refrigerator door, places half of her body into the refrigerator, to where he displays her buttocks in the kitchen.

Lovella, a wishy-washy 9-year-old (with short, straight, green hair) is in the bathroom tub weeping behind transparent, peach-colored curtains. She’s sitting in the warm tub with her legs slightly bent. Water drips from her wet hair and face into the tub, so she attempts to stop the sound by catching the water from falling. She even silences the sound of her breaths.

Dīafair opens the bathroom door, flicks on the light switch, and sees nobody through the curtains. He heads into Jollibee’s bedroom, then catches a lamp that’s thrown at him. As she runs, Dīafair throws the lamp back at her, causing it to break against the back of her neck. Jollibee falls to her mattress, crying. Yucky blood runs down her neck, ruining her yellow coverlet, which seeps down into the mattress. Her sister, Lovella, grabs a white, wash towel, rushes out of the bathroom, then runs to the front door.

Lovella predeceases her sister, Jollibee. Once Lovella opens the door, she gets shot in the cranium as if though she is a blind caregiver. Lovella’s killer is disguised in all black attire, blending in with the darkness of the night sky. Simultaneous to Lovella falling to the floor with blood squirting from her cranium, Dīafair strangles Jollibee against the milk-white, horizontal blinds, behind the clean window. As Dīafair proceeds to strangle Jollibee like she could be a future, promiscuous babushka, he thoroughly cuts 5 gills on both sides of her cheeks with a bloody knife. Her gills are 6 inches long. Jollibee simply cannot breathe, and dies after hearing the gunshot that killed her trifling, best friend. Who could Dīafair be conspiring with.

45 Minutes Later

Dīafair is in a white van following a police car down a road. On the left side of the street, there’s Ukrainian woman named Marianna riding behind a man on a black motorcycle. Dīafair takes his hands off of the steering wheel to stare at the police officer ahead. As he stares, his steering wheel turns to the left by itself, crashing into the romantic couple. His left headlight shatters as the couple falls on the road with the motorcycle. Marianna bursts into tears with a death grip on her broken, right ankle. Her husband screams. Immediately, the police officer stops his car and exits.

Officer Fullox draws out a handgun and accosts Dīafair, “What the fuck are you doing? Step away from the motorcycle! Put your hands behind your back! You’re under arrest!”

Calmly, Dīafair has his attention on Marianna with a zipped-up, black, leather jacket wrapped over a red girdle. Her partner stops breathing. Dīafair gazes into her frightened, forlorn eyes, then glances at her violet lips. Officer Fullox approaches him. Dīafair glares at the officer.

Dīafair mumbles, “It was an accident.”

Officer Fullox says, “Lay on the ground!”

Dīafair lowers his head to his chest, raises his right hand up, and extends his index finger forward. By itself, the police car slowly moves down the road. The frightened officer turns around after hearing his car moving, then hesitates to chase after it. Dīafair draws out a handgun and shoot the officer twice in the middle of the spinal cord. His attention turns to the crying, defenceless widow.

Marianna moves backwards slightly by pushing both of her hands against the ground, but again, she holds onto her right ankle. Marianna screams to the heavens in severe pain. With Dīafair’s right foot, he stomps on her chest several times before standing on the palm of her right hand. Louder, Marianna moans, but her deceased husband is unable to protect her. Patiently, he stands in this position for ten seconds as she desperately begs him to stop. Then, with his left foot, he stomps on the ligament between her right wrist and bicep four times. Her dislocated right elbow shivers as as she holds onto it with her left hand.

Making matters entirely worse, cruelly, Dīafair jumps in the air with his right knee extended, and lands on Marianna’s ligament between the right wrist and bicep. An exhausted Marianna squeals in excruciating pain as her right wrist slightly bends the opposite way it was meant to be used. Dīafair stares at Marianna’s husband like an insignificant vagabond. Several times with both black boots, he stomps on the face of her husband to make sure he’s dead. Marianna screams as Dīafair stands over her delightful body. She watches her husband with tears running down her cheeks.

The Following Day

From a dark room, Dīafair (wearing a white dust mask) watches Marianna (a hafiz) sitting in the dark closet with her arms tightly tied behind a brown, wooden chair. Favoriting the pain from her broken, right ankle, (which feels like a piercing saw is lodged inside) she moans with the incapability of touching it. He turns on the kitchen light, and returns into the living room with a ceramic bowl of sliced pineapples. With a silver fork, he sends the pineapples to her mouth, but Marianna is reluctant to cooperate. Tightly, he squeezes her sore throat, and she opens her mouth in just enough time for him to place three slices of pineapple in her mouth. In an effort to prevent her from spitting, he covers her mouth. She willingly swallows the pineapple slices without knowledge if they’re poisoned. Dīafair removes his hand from her mouth.

After picking up a black G-clamp from the floor, he positions it around her head. Gradually, he twists the handle of the G-clamp, which allows the screw to move closer to the right side of her temple. The movable jaw touches her temple and she squeals as blood eventually pours from both sides of her temples. Allowing her to live through the pain, he twists the handle of the G-clamp the opposite way. Then, he throws the object against the plaster wall, which makes a dent.

Marianna speaks, “As-salamu-alaykum.”

Dīafair smirks, reaches in his right pocket to take out a syringe full of heparin. Swiftly, on Marianna’s right wrist, he injects her with the drug. After holding the syringe in her wrist for 30 seconds, Dīafair drops it. He grabs her by the hair, and effortlessly drags her out of the closet. Marianna kicks over a black soldering station that’s sitting on a grey hassock. The back legs to the wooden chair break as Dīafair drags a screaming Marianna toward the hall. He lets go of the chair and she falls backwards, smacking the back of her head on a silver pull-down ladder. The awful landing causes trauma, but worse, her face falls from the impact of the pull-down stepladder. Her right eye nearly lands on a wire nail, which is standing upward in a stabbing position. By the hair, Dīafair drags her behind the couch.

The way her back slams, it nearly snaps her spinal cord. He throws the bowl of sliced pineapples on her body causing it to break. Then, he suffers an urge to cause her more pain. Dīafair burns her upper lip with a black soldering iron until blood drips. She has a blurry vision as Dīafair stands over her defenceless body.

Dīafair patiently watches his victim catch her breath. Before placing Marianna’s body on the hassock, Dīafair then heads into the closet to yank a thick, white rope from the shelf, and ties it tightly around her annoying mouth. She bites the rope, but is unsuccessful at freeing herself. Then, she suffers from muscle spasms in her left shoulder. The sight of her suffering makes Dīafair smile.

North Doubt Town Highway

It’s 7:00 A.M. Shanta recently dyed her hair red and made it into a ponytail. She is driving a pickup truck while wearing a yellow tanktop, pink, pelagic, swimming trunks with Vishnu on the front, right side, black, fishnet stockings, and yellow sandals. Ashima sits above the trunk seizing a 9 foot long, wooden, ocean blue surfboard. Ashima has on a laced, black tank top, a sleeveless, burgundy, cardigan sweater, blue, polyester shorts, and black tennis shoes purfled with blue. The sirens to a police car turns on with red and blue oscillating lights. Shanta slows the car down and stops on the right side of the highway. 28-year-old Officer Acherhecks parks in front of Shanta’s pickup truck and exits the vehicle. Officer Acherhecks shoots Shanta’s front, left car tire. Shanta yells in rage as Ashima screams. Prisha steps out of the car onto witch grass, wearing a sleeveless, black, silk button-down blouse, tight, blue jeans, and black tennis shoes. Prisha has an unforgiving grin on her face.

“We didn’t do shit Acherhecks,” Prisha yells.

Officer Acherhecks speaks to her friends, “License and motherfuckin’ registration! Step out your goddamn vehicle! Face the vehicle and put your hands on the hood. I’m searching everything!”

Shanta says, “I know my rights and that’s illegal. I’m reporting you.”

Officer Acherhecks chuckles and speaks as if perfidy is written on Shanta’s face, “Try me.”

Shanta responds, “You’re a bullheaded, lunatical, abject wiseacre.

Ashima steps off of the trunk and Shanta exits the driver’s seat. Everyone faces the car and put their hands on the hood. Officer Acherhecks forcefully handcuffs Prisha’s hands behind her back, then lowers her head onto the hood. He handcuffs Ashima’s hands behind her back, then Shanta’s. The contemptible libertine returns to Prisha and positions his crotch against her bunghole with great élan.

While Officer Acherhecks speaks, he reaches for his car keys in his right pocket to scrape it on the car hood, “Why, if it isn’t Ashima, the daughter of my old comrade. It was just a friendly fire. My bad. I run this town. You all are going to North Doubt Town Prison. One minute in this prison could be your last. I suggest you follow my orders now if you want to get out early. On this day, this frivolous vehicle is officially impounded.

A furious Ashima weeps as Officer Acherhecks ransacks the passengers seat of the truck. He takes away Prisha’s brown, suede purse. Officer Acherhecks then head in the back of the pickup truck and raises the trunk. He sees a deceased Marianna with a decapitated head. Countless stab wounds are on her face with few deep cut marks, allowing part of her encephalon to hang out. Officer Acherhecks jumps in in horror screaming.

“It looks like I’m the new town hero.”

North Doubt Town Prison

It’s 7:36 A.M.. Infuriated inmates are constantly yelling with profanity, striking the walls, and shaking the bars. Other than the fact Ashima is in cell block (3519) with Shanta and Prisha, she’s in abject pain knowing other inmates are. Like every inmate, she wears a baby pink uniform. The entire prison peculiarly smells like burnt urine in a reeking pigpen of cadavers. Ashima sits on the top of a bunk bed with her girlfriend, Shanta. On the bottom bunk bed, Prisha slumps down with her back against the concrete wall. One bald-headed inmate named Gene stands motionlessly facing the vile sight of a bloody corner of the walls. Gene’s hands are behind his back and, he’s as silent as a ghost town. 4 of 5 other men are participating in stomping on a burning, white t-shirt. 1 man watches the burning of the t-shirt while making an offensive rap.

A male inmate with dreadlocks is walking in the hallway as many inmates in cell blocks spit and taunt at him. Shocking everyone, the inmate stabs Officer Cramp with a handmade, contaminated poniard. While the Officer Cramp gnashes his teeth together, he bends over to shield his left hipbone, but the damage has already been done. Then, the inmate stabs the police officer again. This time, the inmate stabs him twice in the jugular. Blood oozes from the surprised police officer as he searches for air. Officer Cramp falls to the concrete floor in a puddle of blood.

A 36-year-old Sheila with short, grey hair accosts Prisha, “What are you here for?”

Prisha responds, “Corrupted ass police!”

Shanta says, “I was driving my girlfriend and buddy to the beach until Officer Acherhecks stopped my truck. The next thing I knew, there’s a dead body in the trunk. I don’t know how it got there.”

Ashima says, “He killed my father ten years ago.”

A suspicious Sheila talks with a shocked face, “I killed officer Acherhecks was two years ago. He harassed me ever since I was seven. It wasn’t until I turned sixteen, I got a gun with the purpose of taking his life away. He was with his 26-year-old wife and 9-year-old son as I stood behind them. I shot him onto a railroad track and a train ran him over.”

Wholeheartedly disagreeing, Ashima responds, “You’re lying. I saw Officer Acherhecks. My girlfriend and best friend was there.”

Sarcastically, Sheila says to Prisha, “I can’t prove you wrong. You have two eyewitnesses, so I think that’ll turn out great in court.”

Parallel to Ashima’s cell block, Mâtar (muscular with a grey beard) is the only inmate in cell block (3520). With a bunk bed and a silver, flat-screen television in the background, a standing Mâtar sits down to meditate on the roach-infested floor. He has his eyes shut and legs crossed. Gruellęssa, a spirit of a 7-year-old girl (with curly, black hair and a black cloak) appears behind him. He has a flashback of crushing a brick on the kitchen counter with a sledgehammer, only to dump it in a bottle of milk. Forcefully, he makes Gruellęssa drink the chemicals in the bottle and the she stops breathing. 10 seconds later, she starts breathing. Mâtar has another hapless flashback, but from a point of view angle. From Mâtar’s flashback, he sneaks behind Gruellęssa in a hospital bathroom to strangle her with barbed wire. Deliberately, he beheads her with a keen knife, hides the head in a silver suitcase, then stuffs it in a beehive. She falls to the white, tiled floor with blood pouring down her sore neck.

Every soul in the prison turns silent in fear. Mâtar disappears from the cell block, but it’s how he disappears, which is a mystery. Everyone staring at Mâtar blink at different times, but once they blink to once again see, Mâtar is gone. Hundreds of rumors build about the 999-year-old, legendary “Godhead” Mâtar.

From cell block (3519), Sheila (with gangrene on her filthy feet) speaks, “I’d stay away from Godhead Mâtar if I were you. Anyone to ever speak to Mâtar died within one day. He has mystical powers, but nobody knows why he stays here this long. He’s been in prison for over 800 years.”

Prisha says, “I heard about him. He killed his wife and daughter. Is it true that he returns after twenty-three mere hours each day? He returns because he feels guilty.”

Sheila responds, “And you are?”

Prisha says, “The name is Prisha.”

Sheila challenges her with an argument, “In here, your name is Prey!”

Gene whispers, “Please, don’t fight.”

Sheila, the hellcat strikes Prisha in the face. Everyone except Gene, Ashima, and Shanta cheers on the violence. A shocked Ashima watches Prisha swiftly kick Sheila on the left side of the marrow bone. Prisha jumps onto her enemy, which causes Sheila to fall backwards, landing hard on her back. Prisha and Sheila are scuffling on the floor, pulling on one another’s hair. Prisha positions her entire weight on top of Sheila, and thunderously strike her in the face nine times. Shanta feels relieved while watching Sheila getting ineffably pummeled. Bruises show on Sheila’s face, then blood leaks from her lower lip. Ashima jumps from the top of the bunk bed onto the floor.

Whispering again, Gene shivers while saying, “Stop fighting.”

Five of the male inmates in Ashima’s cell block pummel a hapless Gene until he is unconscious. Gene’s right palm gets stomped on so hard onto the concrete floor that it bleeds. His bloody handprint is on floor resting near his battered and bruised face.
Shanta notices Officer Dixon (23-years-old, blond hair, and skinny) with a numb face walk by. Officer Dixon stares at the recent death of Officer Cramp, then stares at Gene.

Officer Dixon announces, “You three girls are free to go!”

8:40 A.M.

Dīafair is in the backyard of a cottage desperate to get inside. He seizes a keen knife. With an effort to remove sections of paint between the window and frame, he wriggles the knife deliberately on all four sides. Then, Dīafair inserts a putty between the window and frame. From a large, black, pulley bag in the grass, he grabs a thick, wood block and sledge hammer. The wood block is used to put against the edge of the wooden portion of the window. He whacks against the wood block with the sledge hammer and the seal created by paint breaks. A black and tan Rottweiler named Toxy runs to the window Dīafair looks through. After grabbing a black pry bar from his black, suede haversack, which is strapped to his shoulder, he places the wood block under the window frame. Then, he gingerly lifts the pry bar up on the bottom edge of both sides of the window.

Peering through the window makes Dīafair feel like he compromised with his next victim after beating him senseless. Dīafair stares at his victim (a shirtless, 8-year-old Ben), as if though he’s studied his sleeping pattern for centuries. It’s his fateful choice to eradicate Ben sleeping in a celadon green sleeping bag. While Toxy silently sits motionless, Dīafair lifts up the window, and sneaks into the living room. He looks at a black, flat-screen television hung on the plaster wall that reaches his height. There’s a silver stepladder on the right side of the wall.

As Dīafair stands above his prey dilly-dallying about how he’ll murder Ben, automatically, the sprinklers from outside turn on. Dīafair imagines rubbing on Ben’s black afro. Ben’s afro is as soft as sheep’s wool. Dīafair then thinks about holding Ben hostage. Aroused by Dīafair’s breaths, Ben’s eyes widen to see a smug look over him. Once Ben witnesses his destined killer standing over him, he shudders with horror, making a shrieking scream.

Ben sees Dīafair wearing face paint. Dīafair has thick eyebrows shaped like arrows and countless, black, broken hearts on the left side of his cheek. More odd, there’s black paint entirely on the right side of his face. By pretending that Ben is a prosecutor prodigy and a hangman living a double life, it’s a pleasure for Dīafair to plunge the knife through his victim’s right retina. Ben makes a desperate, loud cry as blood squirts from his unrecoverable eye to Dīafair’s thrilled face. When Dīafair proudly lifts the knife up, he notices Ben cover his eye with both of his hands. Dīafair plunges the knife at Ben’s left wrist to hear him scream. Unfortunately, Ben runs out of breath and gets stabbed on the left side of his temple. Inflicting more pain to Ben, Dīafair manages to stab him in the face 16 times and in the stomach twice.

Dīafair sees Miranda (a 6-year-old, brunette with straight hair and too much makeup), peeking around the corner of the kitchen. Her torso is hidden, and her eyes widen in horror from witnessing her older brother’s dead body. She bellows as loud as possible and runs revealing her unzipped, milk-white, leather trench coat, covering her brown, sequinned, spaghetti strap. Dīafair can clearly see her brown pencil skirt and black, high heels. Dīafair reluctantly chases Miranda and picks up a blue bicycle pump to throw at the back of her head. Miranda reaches for the back of her head, screaming in agony. Simultaneously, he hears a girly scream behind him while Miranda slams and locks the door.

Dīafair darts his head around and sees a screaming Marisa running to the front door. Marisa is another 6-year-old brunette, but with short, curly hair. She is wearing a shift dress with black and white polka dots and black, leather riding boots. While Marisa makes several failed attempts to open the front door, Dīafair’s attention leads to the bathroom door. The bathroom door opens. Adrien, a concerned, 25-year-old, brunette mother (with a bluish green bikini and blue, boot cut jeans) exits barefooted.

When she looks in the living room, uncontrollably, she cries while walking at the sight of her son’s dead body. Adrien sees Marisa standing on the balcony and climbing on a black rail. As Toxy calmly stares, Dīafair walks from behind Adrien and plunges a knife on the toe of her left foot. Blood spreads from her toe. While screaming in excruciating pain, Adrien swiftly falls, to the point where few of her tears have a steep fall. Adrien cannot fathom why anyone would seek to murder her. Eagerly, she holds where the stab wound is located. A startled Marisa turns around to witness her mother being murdered. Loudly, Marisa screams as Dīafair takes out a sledge hammer from the left side of his back pocket. Marisa feels farrago of rage and horror; Marisa stares at Dīafair mercilessly whacking her beloved mother in the forehead approximately five times. Like another coon in the forest, Dīafair has no pity for Adrien.

Marisa bends her knees in a jumping position, but a bullet flies into her forehead at a rapid speed. As her body falls backwards onto a circular, glass table, blood squirts from her face onto a sliding, glass, patio door. The glass table shatters as Dīafair physically turns Adrien’s deceased body in a prone position. With great pleasure, Dīafair then uses the sledgehammer to whack her in the haunches three times and position the weapon back in his back, left pocket. He walks into the bedroom Miranda ran into. He kicks open the door and sees an empty bed with white bedsheets. Pass the violet, sequinned curtains, there’s an opened window beside the bed he looks out.

Dīafair makes a right turn to another bedroom, hearing breaths coming from a closed closet. He walks to the closet as Jesse fearfully peeks through. She stops breathing out of hope that he won’t think to open the closet doors. Causing Jesse to scream, Dīafair stands in front of the closet and kicks down all four doors. The blond-haired Jesse runs out of the closet wearing a black wrap dress and black slippers.

With a sledge hammer, Dīafair whacks Jessie on the right side of the rib cage. A moaning Jessie falls near the bedroom door writhing in agony while holding on the right side of her rib cage. Dīafair then positions the sledge hammer in his left, back pocket. He bends her right pinky backwards until it dislocates. Then, he seizes a 50 pound dumbbell from the ground and walks to a desperate Jesse’s crawling body. Approximately 12 times, Dīafair whacks Jesse in the spinal cord with the dumbbell, which results her puking blood from her mouth. Once, he whacks her in the occipital lobe with the dumbbell.

There’s the sound of screaming and cowgirl boots clacking against concrete steps. An anonymous figure effortlessly carries her victim by tightly clutching Miranda’s scrawny arms behind her back. Miranda has a lacerated forehead. The front door opens and Dīafair hears Miranda’s crying scream. The figure with brown, cowgirl boots walks beside a deceased Jesse. Instantly, the figure drops Miranda onto the floor beside her deceased sister. Miranda grieves for her sister.

While standing behind Miranda, Dīafair tickles her. Forced laughter bursts out of Miranda to the point where she cries, writhing in pain. The blood of her sister is on her clothes. With one hand, he squeezes Miranda’s neck, then slams the back of her head against the plaster wall. A dent is in the wall. Miranda is dizzy. The dark figure which Miranda has yet to see the face of applies black tape around her mouth.

Miranda passes out from the lack of oxygen, but that doesn’t stop Dīafair from experimenting with her body. He picks her up with his grip remaining on her sore neck, then walks into the kitchen. Swiftly, he turns on the faucet and places a white, rubber sink stopper above the drain. Before the cold water brims over the sink, he turns the faucet off. He forces a defenseless Miranda’s face into the water for 35 seconds. She struggles to breathe with a failed attempt to remove his hands. Suddenly, all movement stops in her body.

2 Hours Later

Making her entrance into the park, Ashima is texting on her cell phone. Temporarily calming Ashima, her girlfriend has her left arm wrapped around the back of her neck. An irate Prisha follows the couple and kicks the silver, poultry, netting gate. The netting gate glows red once the sky turns black with the view of constellations. Ashima screams as if though her toes are amputated while she walks on burning coal. Immediately, she stops screaming, pauses her movement, and aims her eyes at the firmaments. She shivers as her worried girlfriend removes her arm from her neck.

Shanta asks, “What’s wrong?”

Ashima envisions a moaning man named Chester in his mid-forties in a dark room. Chester is wearing white underwear, tied on an ironing board with two, thick, black ropes. Dīafair is standing beside the ironing board wearing all black attire; he is wearing a ski mask, a sweater under a winter coat, leather gloves, jeans, and boots. He holds a hot iron over Chester, lowering it on his victim’s chest. Louder, Chester screams.

Ashima escapes the vision and complains, “I’m perfectly fine. Dīafair is everywhere. There’s no way Acherhecks is dead.”

Prisha slumps down on a guitar-shaped bench the color of peach, which is above wood chips. Then, Ashima’s girlfriend sits down at the bottom of a yellow, glowing playground slide with a banana milkshake in her right hand. Shanta sips from her red straw and receives a brain freeze. Immediately, Shanta rises up and runs around the pink, glowing monkey bars, panting. Prisha laughs at Shanta.

Ashima walks back and forth in the sandbox, then levitates 6 inches above the ground, pouting, “Petunia said Dīafair is watching me. Acherheck’s murdered my father and there’s nothing I can do! I tell you, I was framed! I have a future! I want my name out of…”

Prisha says, “We’re all in this together.”

Shanta stops running and lowers her head as her girlfriend yells, “There’s no we. We got my father killed in the military. We got us arrested. We got my mind into thinking I could tame you.”

Prisha says, “I’m not a good friend.”

With a wry face, Ashima speaks, “You can say that again.”

Shanta says, “My girlfriend should’ve left your empty-headed arse out on the street for how you treated her. You don’t pay the bills.”

Furiously, Prisha yells and draws out a pocket knife, “Why are you two always picking on me? Is there a problem?”

Sarcastically, Ashima pretends to have an earache while covering her ears, replying, “Gosh! You must’ve loved being in prison to want to return! When I met you, I swear I could’ve mistaken you for a gambler in an orphanage home with your mother’s expired food stamps!”

Prisha says, “I’m not the same person I was years ago, but you won’t push me around. You never had to live my life.”

Ashima has haunting flashbacks as she angrily speaks, “When I was three months old, my father took full custody of me. He bonded with me on a black canoe at midnight. It was the beginning of Valentine’s Day, and he told me, ‘Grow up.’ He then swam away while I cried for three days straight until a helicopter could find me.”

An intimidating glare grows on Ashima’s face, but quickly changes. At distance behind Prisha, Dīafair’s face appears in the bushes. Ashima screams loud. Prisha fearfully drops her knife like a klutz, and darts her head around. Seeming like an awful joke, Prisha sees nothing behind her, but willow trees behind bushes. Judging from Shanta’s confused face, Ashima could very well be hallucinating.

“Bitch! Stop that shit,” Prisha yells in vehement rage.

Ashima makes a serious face, saying, “I saw Dīafair behind you.”

Ashima, laughs and says, “You’ll see your dead father next too. I admit it. I don’t know how you do it. Tremendous work in the work ethic you put into pulling off your little magic tricks. I’ve been trying to fall for your jokes all day.”

Shanta ignites in anger and yells, “You’re really smart!”

As Ashima speaks, her own, unforgivable eyes could grind Prisha’s teeth into dust, “I’ll see you later. Shanta, let’s get out of here.”

Ashima’s House

The time is precisely 11:11 A.M.. In Ashima’s bedroom, Shanta’s mouth is full of spiciness, after eating popcorn from a candy dispenser. Ashima’s eyes are fixated on Shanta’s goofiness. The taste is too much to handle for Shanta as she rushes to drink from the water dispenser; her mouth is under the faucet as she forces pressure on the lever. Ashima turns her head and rests on the couch, watching the daily “Bad Marki’s News” on television. Once Ashima sees Pam, the reporter on the screen, Shanta grabs the remote control to turn the television off of mute. She grabs Prisha’s chakana necklace from her white dresser, snaps her fingers with her right hand, and the lid to the white trash bin opens by itself. Ashima throws the necklace into the trash bin next to a transparent container full of hard-shelled capsules. Her girlfriend stares at the container of medicine like a bomb is inside and laughs while taking out the necklace.

In a silver business suit, a saddened Pam speaks into a black microphone, “It’s a frightening day for Doubt Town. At approximately 7:00 A.M. this morning, a taxi driver was found dead in the driver’s seat at the ‘Runner’s Edge Gas Station’ 5 miles from ‘Loco Street’ in East Doubt Town. Sixty-nine stab wounds from a screwdriver were found in his mouth at the crime scene. The name of the victim is Demetrius Breaks, who could only be identified by his driver’s license…”

Shanta yells, “Sweet Goddesses. That’s the taxi driver you had a crush on.”

Ashima nods her head, whispering, “I’ll live.”

Shanta smiles and says, “To hell you will! You have me. Demetrius died not too far from the haunted “Grey Demon Archipelago.” I have to take you there. I traveled there alone when I was seventeen and stood there for three days. I couldn’t sleep due to constant screaming sounds of trespassers being tortured. The voices weren’t as terrible as nits being in my face. The nits were everywhere. Grey Demon Archipelago contains nine, abandoned islands with dead trees. In the evening, the trees will turn invisible and there’s an old folklore that if you ever run on any of the islands, (Ghoullazān) the dragon will consume you. Ghoullazān the giant dragon has a rat’s head, a snake’s mouth, a tarantula legs that are strength of five tigers, black bat wings, and a scorpion’s tail. Always carry your own water on the island. There are known to be invisible leeches in the water that will consume your insides after you digest them.”

Ashima nearly barfs from hearing the story, “No thank you. I’m staying away from that place.”

Grey Demon Archipelago

It’s 11:50 A.M.. A polygamous family is crying in a small room, handcuffed to a wooden table. Nadia, a 38-year-old, mother is a brunette with short, curly hair. Through the blood which is smeared against her face, there are wrinkles. Her watery eyes blends in with the snot from her nostrils as she gets whacked with a black tire iron by Dīafair. As Mark, her 22-year-old son beside her cries, Nadia falls to the brown carpet unconscious. Dīafair glances at her tie dye, red and pink bikini and red trousers.

Causing it to dislocate, Dīafair then whacks Mark in the right shoulder blade four times with the tire iron. Mark screams writhing on the floor in excruciating pain while his two conscious mother’s watch. Linda, a 37-year-old (with brown, long, frizzy hair, a pink t-shirt, jeans with zebra stripes, and black tennis shoes) recoils back from Dīafair’s presence. After rushing on blue brass knuckles from a nearby, wooden table, Dīafair punches Linda in the face with his right hand. Uriah, a 39-year-old (with a black ponytail, a yellow, high waisted dress, and black heels) strains her right wrist by pulling from the handcuffs. He forms a malicious smirk. The sound of 12 gunshots are heard while Ashima exits her vision.

1:05 P.M.

In a local supermarket, Ashima mindlessly sits in the front of a red shopping cart with her arms cheerfully raised. With force, Shanta pushes the shopping cart, causing it to speed down aisle 3. Intentionally, Ashima knocks over several rolls of toilet paper while screaming. She smacks dozens of boxes of tissue off the shelf, then catches her equilibrium while rising to her feet. As the shopping cart speeds, Ashima kicks over several boxes of cereal, and turns around to see her girlfriend performing a somersault.

Shanta has on a black, hooded jacket with the furry, white design of a gigantic cat on the back. On the hood, the mean-spirited cat’s head is visible with green eyes. Two of the cat’s gigantic, front legs are used as drawstrings. Customers gawk at her as she ignores her surroundings. Happily, she skips toward the speeding shopping cart.

1:25 P.M.

The closet light flicker on and off repeatedly, then the light remains off. An agile Ashima runs into her bedroom screaming and dives on top of her bed. A screaming Shanta dives on top of Ashima, causing her monitors to jitter. Shanta sexually wraps her legs around Ashima’s chiseled abs. Passionately, like Shanta shares an inseparable bond with Ashima, she kisses her on the lips, while fondling with her hair. Then, she locks her eyes on Ashima. Shanta blinks. Startling the couple, the sound of Shuang’s scream comes from behind Ashima’s closet. There’s loud, thumping sounds.

Ashima grabs her television remote beside her. Shanta crawls off the bed as the double, closet doors open. Automatically, Ashima’s wardrobe moves to the right side of the wall, revealing a large, darksome room. The couple witness Shuang motionlessly on the shaggy, brown carpet as a dark figure at the top of the spiral stairs vanish. Panicking, Ashima runs toward her beloved mother.

Ashima speaks to her mother, “Who did this?”

Before Shuang loses her pulse, as if though she read a fantasy version of Shanta’s oeuvres, she exhaustedly utters, “Prisha.”

In bereavement, Ashima darts her head at Shanta, turning livid, saying, “We need to find Prisha. A.S.A.P..”

With a sly glare, Shanta draws out a handgun and aims it at Ashima’s chest, yelling, “You need to call the cops!”

Ashima yells, “What the…”

Before a heartbroken Ashima can finish her sentence, Shanta Spells pulls the trigger. With a swift groan, Ashima falls backwards to the floor, beside her mother. Shanta squats down with a concerned face as if though she’ll perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation on her. Ashima is left to struggle for necessary breaths alone as her deceitful ex girlfriend giggles in utter exhilaration.

A sentimental flashback manages to give Ashima a peculiar look. Sitting on a white canoe with her mother, she patiently holds a silver fishing rod, giving a tired glance to her smiling mother. Weight attaches to the fishing rod, which causes Ashima to nearly fall off the canoe. The canoe slowly sinks. Shuang’s smile turns into concern as Ashima attempts to reel in the heaviness. Once Shuang wraps her arms around Ashima’s body while struggling to levitate, dangling out of the ocean on the hook, is an ancient guillotine. They look at the guillotine in awe.

Ashima exits the flashback just to get shot in the left clavicle. Returning to another flashback, she sees a black man’s bloody ankles nailed on the trunk of a tree. Beside the tree trunk is Athaliah running on the train tracks. As soon as Ashima opens her blurry eyes, in a supine position on Shuang’s bed, she sees a deceased Prisha with a lacerated forehead. Prisha is facing her. Ashima attempts to groan, but her voice is suppressed by the thick, black tape wrapped around her mouth. Maddened, she watches Shanta’s swift shadow exit the room. The room temperature is below zero due to the window being left open, and Ashima’s body is completely numb.

Ashima attempts to move from the bed, but realises that her wrists are tied behind her back with a thick rope. Startling Ashima, Shanta appears on the side of Ashima with a screwdriver. After tying separate ropes to the knot behind her back and positioning them around a white headboard, she sits on top of Ashima’s body with both of her legs wrapped around. Shanta gently positions the tool under Ashima’s jaw, and pressures it against her flesh, harder by every second. Ashima attempts to squeal as if though Prisha can wake up from death. She kicks against the bed with her feet, and attempts physically forcing her ex off of her with her body. Blood leaks from Ashima’s jaw down to the red bed sheets.

On the floor, Shanta grabs Shuang’s red, right, high heel, and says, “Voilà.” She lunges the tip of the heel into Ashima’s right shoulder, then chucks the heel against the plaster wall. Joyfully, Shanta skips out of the room in a mocking manner, and slams the door shut behind her. Ashima’s vision then becomes clear, but she cannot cease her tears. Her body feels weak; she attempts to break the rope free from the headboard, but her effort is to no avail.

2 minutes later, Shanta returns into Shuang’s room with an extension cord and lashes onto Ashima’s body and face for 3 minutes straight. While Ashima gnashes her teeth in excruciating pain, a string of spit oozes down onto a yellow pillow case. Ashima’s voice turns frail behind the thick tape, partly sticking around her mouth. Welts surround her body and face, but that doesn’t stop Shanta from approaching her soft lips.

It’s dawn. An appalled, 7-year-old boy trudges through the woods, (wearing a black hooded cloak) clutching a twig in his right hand. He sees a traumatized Ashima sluggishly shielding her bosoms. Bruises cover her entire face and body with bloody wounds around every area. She fears the young boy. Although both of her ankles are sprained, she uses both of her legs, and her fractured, left arm to push her sore body backwards. Her right arm is dislocated. She screams as a large shadow behind the boy appears.

Heavily breathing, the dark figure shivers, patting the little boy on the head. Next, the dark figure extends his index finger to direct the boy away from the scene. The boy runs as Ashima makes a failed attempt to crawl away. Her path is blocked by the tall man with a blurry face, a black cloak, and black, leather gloves. She faints from the sight of his face.

Part, Whole, and Her

© Sept 2, 2016. All Rights Reserved.

An unapologetic fussbudget scorned in a gazebo,
Dies as a graybeard.
The tides wash away his body,
But his final words remain the same,
“I don’t want to live anymore.”
The tumor is gone, and his body is below.
His past is feared.
Hearing the sea, his life isn’t free,
And he loses memory of his name,
Alone offshore.

That was the story of her father’s carcass.
This is the story of my obsession.

Fearlessly, love her dearly.
Clearly, you’re really pretty.
Silly me. As I utter this freely,
Gorgeous, I kneel for you ideally.
Rapidly hugging my transparency.
Evidently, you share my integrity.

Hurry, my lovely self of mortality.
Reality is my apology.
Momentarily, I’m happy.
Rarely running down an unleveled sidewalk. I’m free,
Gently, holding her purpose purposely.
Nearly cornering my shadows, I grab my car key.

I’m part, whole, and her. I’m part, whole, and hero.

Bravery is me, but secretly, I worry,
As early as morning. Lazy.
Crazy till it’s late, and I sleep easily.
See? I’m awakening from a whispering sea,
Forcefully using my energy.
We sleep on marquees and ride freight trains for free.

Carefree and gutsy, I’m intoxicated royalty.
Loyalty to harmony, I memorize his last breaths. Adorably,
We are strictly meant to be.
Obviously, separation from myself is offensive to me.
We can see him standing in a boat at night in the sea.
Horribly, we run to be free. It’s me.

For Anna

© Aug 4, 2016. All Rights Reserved.

Part 1

Fathom how she can slumber in the
Susurrus of your speckled tears in the
Tempestuous wind, yet you’re lulled by
Her blissful content.

The overture of our companionship
Awaits, but my dignity is hushed
Before your presence.

Bypassing your eminence in
Acting, from the amalgamations
Of your ethereal words, I swoon,

With reveries that you’re blushing,
But I dare not to hug you. I can give
Roses tourette’s, but you’re Godsent.

I’m quarreling with my conscience of
Squandering your valuable time from
A dunderhead like me. It’s intense.

Gingerly turning the sharp corners of
A platonic heart is a thunderous rejection.
Perhaps, you’ll notice me soon.

Part 2

Much to my desires, I recall no obsession for
Anyone like you. Solemnly swearing, my only
Nightmare is your elation excluding a
Disconsolate me.

Empower yourself unattached, but
My conceited nightmare jauntily
Dances with verisimilitude.

When delighted, you smile, but I
Expect your wry face when you know
I’ll love you in your dotage. I’m sincere.

I admire the thought of when the
Warmth of our breaths intermingle.
You’re lovely.

My beloved, I’ll caress your voluptuous
Body as you feel the winnowing from
Our protection. Your life, I intrude.

I can’t approach you. The effort
Of how I nudge your shoulder is
Beyond angst, but I mustn’t disappear.

Part 3

Surprising you are my expectations. I duly wait.
My qualms remind me you’ll be unflattered,
Let alone trust my greeting as I stammer
With perspiration.

Lacking bleary eyes, I travel the outskirts
Of town to observe you. Indeed, I’m an
Aficionado of you.

With a sunburned neck, I observe your ambidextrousness
In the Summer drought. You’re effortlessly stretching
On a two-story balcony.

As you wear an exquisite, red bra and panty embroidered
With laced, floral designs and emblazoned with studs,
I ogle at your cleavage. Sweet love deprivation.

Perfect! You’re a 5 foot 6 brunette with a 34C
Breast size, 120 pounds, and 16-years-young.
As the tears gush out of my eyes, I’m not blue.

My suī generis love, your perfect smile can
Transmogrify into a flirtatious snigger.
Please, don’t laugh at me.

Part 4

As you lip-lock the past, I’m still waiting. Teetering
On my uncooperative legs, I’ll swig the poison in
Your heart with a golden amphora, and
Festoon it with love.

My tableau of serenity is forsaken by your significant
Other, so I douse your body with my blood. I saved
My love in the hospital.

Relieved that I saved the quintessence of life,
I expect no favors. I beg of you not to faint
Again, for I’m enamoured of your breaths.

Still, you’re not acquainted with me. I’m in deep melancholy.
I simply can’t introduce myself, and still, you’re not
Acquainted with me thereof.

I see the fading bullies you face in high school for being a
Transgendered woman, and I deliberately, single-handedly
Handle them. I’m mentally stable.

With dwindling depression, I’m reluctant to cordially say I share
Your sympathy. It’s me sneaking starry love letters in your book
Bag and lunch box. Your troubles are missing in a thousand deaths.

Part 5

Today, I mournfully observe you wearing your black,
Sequinned spaghetti strap, bell-bottom,
blue jeans with black puppy
Paws as designs.

Walk in those black, high heels. The adversity
On your worse day allegorizes my ambitions. My
Fun-loving woman, I’m always vigilant.

Follow the trail of love letters to gillyflowers, which conveys my
Everlasting love, and sense my ephemeral life lurking in your
Deepest demands.

The nostalgic memories of you sucking on a pacifier
Comforts my soul. Nuzzle against my face, and veer
Not like me. For you, I abandon my bloodlines.

To scald your breast milk on my tongue
Is a sensational moment for a masochist
Like me. My time is well spent.

I dream of showing you the world
Without insecurities. Promise me us,
And I give you preplanned dreamlands.

Part 6

As much as I adore you, I find new ways to adore
You everyday. Born in a town where it’s illegal to
Talk over ten seconds in public,
I overthink about what I can say to you.

Yet, I see others unworthy of your time.
Collin, spewed through a straw into
Your edible lunch in the cafeteria.

He wore a black undershirt with grey cargo pants, and black
Boots. Undeniably, I followed him home to shoot him
Through the front window.

Passionately, smile when you hearken to his death over the intercom.
I blink not when I watch you articulate the next love letter hidden
In your locker by your secret admirer. Think about me anew.

I watched you bash your head on the bathroom mirror until you bled.
Angie, your bully (with a yellow tank top and green khakis) screamed at the
Sight, dropping her cup of coffee. Angie then invited guffaws. Oh, the hysteria.

Lacerations cross these forlorn eyes. There’s despair in the
Temperature, but for you, I activated a bomb in Angie’s car.
I stress to wonder if you’ll see me tomorrow.

Part 7

Two days later, verily I lynch two police officers from a
Marquee on the highway. They mocked you for extended
Time just as the school principal did. For you, I stabbed
His face on a stove top burner.

Then, I tossed his grubby fingers under the kitchen sink.
It’s a gentle touch of alleviation. It’s the least I can do.
Now, everyone’s in horror and trepidation.

It’s more complicated for you to date. The suspicion of my uprising
Crimes are on the loose. Eventually, you find dates, but I
Needlessly wonder if I’m meant for you.

The penumbra of your gifts are an inspirational enlightenment. Unbeknownst
To you, my heart throbs fairly fast. Adamant of not conforming, I observe
You with honor, wondering when we’ll meet each other.

My heart is your bastion of harmony as I dwell in the memories
Of you straying pass majestic landscapes. I cuddle against the wind
Of your movements, inhaling a higher emotion.

Your peripheral vision won’t capture my patience.
As you discover a love letter in your bed, I count your breaths,
Overwhelmingly, you smile. Smile anew.

Eidolon Trails

© Apr 2, 2016. All Rights Reserved.

Mimic the silent, kenspeckle twin
In revolving doors,
Smiling, ensorcelled by the habiliment of an eidolon.
Not Debra. Daunted by eidolons, she runs unto the elevator,
As a stalwart Daisy in the lounge asks, “How have thou been?”
The caliginous elevator ceases on nine floors.
Darn. She ruined her outfit. Moron!
Her right sleeve ripped from the door. Grrr!

Debra. Debra.
Quotha, thine sister’s waiting.
… Waiting in Baghdad, Iraq, lo.

Dear Nadir,
Don’t just leave me here.
Dear Nadir,
Don’t just leave me here.

Only one thing alike.
They like to like at first sight.
Debra was born a different race,
Racing for the resemblance of Daisy,
But her unjust friends ridiculed her off her old bike.
Her own lifelike grin haunts her through the night,
As if it molested her birthplace.
One thing’s for sure. She’s not crazy.

A childhood’s lorn, yet anon found.
A womanhood beloved for rejectamenta.
Debra’s partaking in nightmares of a soul asunder.

Dear Nadir,
Don’t just leave me here.
Dear Nadir,
Don’t just leave me here.

Behind Debra, a lad has long, black rat-tail hair,
Blue swim trunks, and a white towel.
He whips her upon her derrière.
Imprints form under her blue miniskirt,
Covered with flowers. She gasps for air.
He ogles down her bosoms of style,
Athwart from a grabby portrait of Lamia above a chair.
An engagement ring’s on her necklace. He’s a flirt.

Alas, he osculates at the air. “Pervert,” she screams.
After slapping him athwart the cheeks as if a sweven,
He covers his bruise from the plight of rejection.

Dear Nadir,
Don’t just leave me here.
Dear Nadir,
Don’t just leave me here.

Panicking, Debra runs unto her hotel room, alive.
She locks the door shut and flicks upon the light switch.
The living room’s ignored.
She’s in her bedroom staring out the window,
Long enough to see a camera in a beehive.
In her black hijab, she can feel an itch.
She thinks, “Daisy and her chum can’t be on one accord.”
The insufferable summertime turns unto snow.

An invisible finger taps on the vent.
Debra darts her head to the closet.
Slowly, the closet door shuts when she turns around.

Dear Nadir,
Don’t just leave me here.
Dear Nadir,
Don’t just leave me here.

Startling her, the living room lights flicker on and off.
Debra glances out the window.
The beehive is an affable, little lass’s purse.
What awaits her is an impenetrable language.
The door opens as Debra holds a bloody, lorn cough.
As Debra weeps, Daisy teasingly walks slow.
The window shatters anent as the night gets worse.
Her sister knocks and knocks, but there’s no privilege.

Daisy. Daisy. Thee sister uses a handkerchief.
Debra faints while Daisy weeps seizing a knife,
Before slitting her own throat unto her demise.

Dear Nadir,
Don’t just leave me here.
Dear Nadir,
Don’t just leave me here.

Her father steps on the black and white, tessellated floor, appalled.
He stands over a deceased Daisy as if she’s asleep,
But hears Debra coughing in her bedroom.
A nit flies between her lips.
He opens the door seeing her prognathous jaw. He stalled.
There’s flashbacks of framing Debra like a creep,
With narcotics upon two occasions of doom.
Ruing a day after a day, his heart skips.

An old video tape plays in his mind from a T.V..
It’s Debra in her bedroom whispering in her sleep.
There’s thumping sounds; she’s awakened by rattling darbies.

Dear Nadir,
Don’t just leave me here.
Dear Nadir,
Don’t just leave me here.

I dress for formal occasions
And recite speeches in the mirror,
Like a perfectionist.
Bliss was longed.
My father (the sheriff) has two wives and no sons.
He abhorred us sisters. It’s a blur,
Compared unto his abusive wives being pissed.
I heard it all; I was wronged.

For hours, he was pummeled and yelled at,
For engaging in sophistry and denying septentrional love.
Yet, Debra lacks knowledge of her biological mother.

Dear Nadir,
Don’t just leave me here.
Dear Nadir,
Don’t just leave me here.

Behold! Debra’s rising,
But there’s a pain mayhap attacking the sheriff.
He’s having a heart attack,
And his daughter’s face is numb.
Unto the ground, he sees a smirking offspring.
His body trembles, then turns stiff.
There’s shallow breaths. … She stomps his eyes black.
Blood leaks from the ceiling landing upon her right thumb.

Eclipse Eyes

© Dec. 6, 2015. All Rights Reserved.

Autopsy. Autopsy.
She has an eclipse fear.

A face in the shadows.
A tank top attracts a killer bee.
A mini-skirt with a so-so pose.
All in blood from the killing spree.

Autopsy. Autopsy.
She has an eclipse near.

A look from her family.
Grins drip and drips drop.
She lost her virginity.
The condom slides for a stop.

Autopsy. Autopsy.
She has an eclipse roll.

She would say you’re moving her.
She would stay a label.
A molested number.
Forgetting. You’re capable.

Autopsy. Autopsy.
She has an eclipse soul.

Protruding from her head,
A bullet on a bird,
With long teeth, dripping red.
This night’s absurd.

Autopsy. Autopsy.
She has eclipse eyes.

Who committed the murder?
How’d the bird get in her head?
Did she have a lover?
She always wanted to be dead.

Autopsy. Autopsy.
She has an eclipse prize.

A noose on an umbilical cord.
Chromosomes turning red,
On the bird explored.
The bird’s chirping in her head.

Autopsy. Autopsy.
She has an eclipse size.

The silhouette of the sun,
Brightens to sunshine,
From the gunman’s destruction.
Then, comes the moonshine.