Stolen Time Shined Up (#2 Fiction)

Six months ago, Sheila pressed her nose to the glass door of her neighbor’s house and saw spinach crepes cooling on the white marble island, a vase of fresh dill in the windowsill, and brightly colored modern art hanging on every wall. She squinted, barely holding it together, her mind looping through time, and there, seated at the dining room table, were Dovah and Nisbet, their rock hard bone structure bathed in light, their eyes locked. Nisbet gestured to a bottle of wine on a silver tray, dismissively, like an international playboy who had already had his fill of the good stuff. Dougal, their twelve year old son, glanced up from his studies and began to debate his parents about the rising income inequality in their city, bemoaning, with heartfelt conviction, the indignities suffered by the unfit, specifically the increasingly cautious manner in which they were forced to creep around the land, hesitantly, like toddlers afraid of being thrown off balance.

The three carried on talking and laughing, ushering in one topic of conversation after another, until the sky became streaked neon; then coffee was served and sipped while Dougal played his fiddle. Nisbet rose and took his son by the hand and Dovah led the two in a new boot-scoot dance that involved a lot of hip swiveling. They were all pale as moonlight and had porcelain skin; each one had a unique milk glass shade of greenish-blue eyes, so large they were nearly doll-like. Their happiness was palpable—they were people who went about living life as if the rules and laws didn’t apply to them.

And that is how they had existed in reality, not just in Sheila’s vision. They took risks, playing an ongoing game of who-scores-first with the guards, who were intolerant of any form of disrespect. Under threat, the family ceased leaving their home for the three months preceding Sheila’s sighting. One dark night, no light at all in the sky, the couple jolted awake to the blaring of country music laced with the script of how to shape a moral life. They were taken by brute force to the unknowable zone where people disappeared.

The next morning, after watching six guards pile into a Jeep and drive off, Sheila stood at the glass door, peeking in, crepes on the counter, dill in the windowsill, art on the walls. Seated at the table, calmly embracing his pain, Dougal leaped to his feet, raced to the door, and head butted Sheila in the stomach, crying out, I don’t care about other people’s rules. But he was infested with them; wiggly as lice, they were stuck in his head, body, and skin. There was no way to sweep them under the rug. The rug was a mess of the boy’s blood, Sheila noted. Blood had seeped from his skinned knees and pooled in his socks. More than anything else, his blood made him unfit: he was a bleeder bred from bleeders.

With the lumpy familiarity of a scared boy gripping her middle, Sheila had a brief memory of her son at the same age, so she indulged Dougal with a mighty hug. Through the thin fabric of her floral cotton dress, she felt the flow of intense connection vibrating between the two of them and, immediately seeing past her own pain, formulated a plan to make the unwelcome feel safe.

Sternly, without using any words at all, she propelled Dougal up the slight incline to her home, convinced it was the right decision, and hid him behind the heavy drapes of her own dining room window.

Giddy from going down the rabbit hole, her mind crowded with thoughts about the despicable guards who restricted her life, telling her whatever version of the truth they wanted her to believe at any moment, Sheila strode back down Red Hen Lane, to the end of her property where the dilapidated barn bordered Dougal’s home. His house would not change hands, would not be occupied by the so called brave and loyal; the extent to which that was true was completely dubious in her mind. Already, there was so much change in the wrong direction.

The house symbolized the power of belief, the dignity of people of value. Sheila raised her hand, her fist a spike of light. Then a flash whisked skyward as the brittle wood barn took to the flame—ecstatic pulsing heat, and the house evaporated into the firecracker sky.

Months later, retaliation: McTavish, his skin gray and striated, emanated from an oak tree. One slash to Dougal’s neck with the box cutter soaked the blackberry bushes carmine. Change happened anyway, without Sheila’s permission. And Sheila’s house was cold and lonely once again.

The second time I stumbled it was at the edge of the woods, over Nisbet, Dovah, and Dougal. The blackberry bushes burgeon with fruit from March thru November. In winter, a cave is formed by ice coating the thorny branches surrounding the block. The gold block shines like a compass within.