MarkCleaveland.org

End.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If so, this is later in the cycle. Let’s say story 5 of 6 — right after “Lisa and her reflection.” This one is a bit rougher than the other two, but they are getting cranked out in real time, warts and all. Again, more meditations on emotions out there… Probably related to trust, since that is what I am reading a lot about these days. But let’s see where these stories go.

He was in his father’s apartment back in the city. It was the same basement apartment he had known his entire life – the window in the living room at head level (now that he was grown); his father’s recliner across from the television; the small circular throw rug; the shadowed corridor going into the back where there was his childhood room and his father’s room. Only all of this was quiet. It was the middle of the afternoon, and Sebastian had stopped by to pick up a collection of stones saved in a small boxfrom when he was a kid. He had moved out the year prior, moved out to his studio apartment where he thought that he might just grow up and become a painter – someone who saw…someone who really and truly saw. He prided himself on that. “Me, I am someone that sees. I really see things.”

Only this is what Sebastian saw in that moment. He saw himself cradling his frail father’s body on his lap. Again and again, he saw himself pass his hands over his father’s blank face, the rough unshaven stubble that covered sunken cheeks. He had no way of knowing when his father had died. He hadn’t been by for weeks. The doctors would say it had been a heart attack. But why then had his father been clutching the locket, the one with his initials on it: William Right? Sebastian had never seen the locket before, and opening it up, he saw a small photo. It showed his father as a young man. A smiling young woman beside him and sitting on her lap a child. He assumed it was himself. 

That was it. That was all that his father had left him. A photo that he had never seen, and yet here he was sobbing his eyes out, cradling this man who had done his best. He had done his best. Hadn’t he? Hadn’t he done his best? Again and again these questions swirled around Sebastian’s head, until he wasn’t sure if he was asking about his father or about himself. Had he? Had he done his best? No, he hadn’t.

Sebastian was back in the tunnel. All was dark, and all was silent but for the two large eyes – cat-like and staring at him unblinking. 

“I tried. I tried so hard to hold on to them.”

The eyes continued to stare at him without emotion.

“Didn’t I?”

Sitting in the dark before the dragon’s eyes a flood of memories passed before Sebastian’s mind. The memories swarmed and soothed. They probed and constricted and coated. There he was holding Lisa’s hand as they walked along the piers of the bay. There he was laughing with his father at a night baseball game. And even ever so faint there he was lying down as a small child, and a woman was leaning over to kiss him on the forehead. He had to hold on to this. Without these who was he? What was left? “It’s just you and me boy,” came the voice of his father. 

Another voice, though, spoke. It spoke from the blackness that surrounded Sebastian, and it had no location.

“It is time to begin.”

“But I don’t know how.”

“Become the dream.”

The eyes stared at Sebastian unmoving and eternal.

“I don’t know how.”

“You do. Speak the words.”

“I don’t know.”

“What are the words?”

Once upon a time, Lisa and Sebastian had gone out to see a band together. Lisa had gotten pretty in a new dress, and Sebastian had put on his nicest shirt. They had arrived at the venue a little bit late, and it was crowded when they arrived, so that they had to stand towards the back. It didn’t matter for Sebastian, because he could see over the crowd. But he could tell that Lisa could not see, and as the crowd jostled, he became more and more angry, until an older dude had tried to push past them, carrying two drinks in his outstretched hands. Some had spilled on Lisa, and the next thing Sebastian knew he was pushing the guy in the back. 

“What the heck, man?”

“You got a problem?”

“Yeah, I got a problem with you shoving through!”

“I said excuse me, asshole.”

Sebastian felt a tug at his sleeve.

  “Sebastian, hey.”

“No, this guy can’t do that. Not on your dress.”

“Look at me. Look at me.”

With that Lisa had reached up, and cupped Sebastian’s face in her hands.

“Sebastian, hey. Come home. It’s ok. Let’s have fun.”                      

Then she had taken his hand and led him to another part of the crowd. As simple as that. This is what she had done for him.

From the present, Sebastian saw Lisa. There they were at the club, and her hands cupped his face as she looked up into his eyes. He saw her eyes concerned, but confident. He saw her mouth move, and he heard again the words.

“Are you ready?” asked the dragon.

“Yes,” uttered Sebastian, “I am ready.”

Once upon a time, the coiled serpent of dreams convulsed in its slumber. It rolled and coiled within the bones of a city that lived its life far above on the surface. There was a bay and a river, and buildings, and buildings and streets, and streets and unknown to all, underneath them the serpent with scales as thick as centuries and talons as sharp as truth held a young man in its grasp, held him and dug into his skin and pulp; peeling away and peeling it gave no heed to the young man’s cries, just as sleep does not care for the awakened. Slicing and cutting, its talons dug and dug, casting away layer after layer until all that was left was a small boy-like doll made out of straw. And then with a call of fire, the serpent engorged even this – though the boy pleaded and begged, pleaded and begged, before calling out to please stop, that this was enough.

“What are the words?” called the fire.

“Please stop. I am ashes, only ashes,” cried the many voices that were Sebastian. The voice of his father. The voice of his friends. The voice of a mother he had never known.”

“What are the words?” demanded the fire.

At that moment, an ember was born that rose dancing within the fire. The smallest of embers, colored like a rainbow, beautiful and pure. In the fire it grew, even as the multitude of voices continued their pleadings.

“What are the words?” pleaded the fire once more.

“Come home,” whispered the dream. And it was Sebastian’s voice that replied. “Come home,” whispered Sebastian’s voice. Then stronger, “Come home.”

And with that, the dream floated and shimmered color, and gathering speed it rose up through the tunnel it went. Faster and faster, bursting out into the light of the late morning. No one in the city saw it pass by far overhead, like a small star. Not the cars that continued to honk or the people who rushed this way and that. None of them saw the dream that was Sebastian arch over above on its way to possibility. None but one – a trumpet player standing by his window with his  instrument to his lips saw a glint of color reflected on a glass pane. He paused his playing, squinted out at the morning skyline, and then for some reason that he could not explain, he smiled, before continuing to practice his music.

PART 4.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If so, this is later in the cycle. Let’s say story 5 of 6 — right after “Lisa and her reflection.” This one is a bit rougher than the other two, but they are getting cranked out in real time, warts and all. Again, more meditations on emotions out there… Probably related to trust, since that is what I am reading a lot about these days. But let’s see where these stories go.

The Dream

A hot summer day. The road is narrow and rises and falls through farmland. Corn and soy. Silos and the faint smell of rich manure. The young man reaches the crest of a hill and stops. Off in the distance and below we make out a few buildings: a steeple, a town water tower. He unslings a battered, leather backpack and crouches there on the side of the road next to it. Reaching in he pulls out a sandwich, takes a bite, and continues searching his bag with his free hand.

There is a crunching sound behind him. An old Chrysler pulling off to the side of the road. A young woman’s voice comes through the window.

“You lose something?”

The engine cuts off, and a door opens and thunks closed. The figure comes between the young man and the sun. She is looking down at him. A simple sundress. A tangle of back-lit, curly hair.

“You want a ride somewhere?” She takes in the half eaten sandwich. “Come on, let’s get you something to eat.” 

They walk back to the car, and she throws the backpack into the back seat through an open window.

“I’m Katie.” She looked over at him and smiles, “My dad’s the judge in town.”

With a crunch the car pulls back out on to the asphalt and recedes down the road. From his seat the young man looks out and sees a lone tree in the middle of a passing field. Crows stud its branches, fluttering and calling.

“Boy! Snap to. I’ll ask you again. You running from something?”

The young man is standing before a heavy, well-polished wooden desk. Bookcases line the walls. Heavy drapery. A single lamp lights the room. The voice belongs to a red-faced, crew-cut man sitting behind the desk.

“Katie, run along and get us some tea.”

Katie’s presence heads for the door.

“And tell everyone to wait until we get this sorted out.”

He turns his attention back to the young man.

“So, let me ask you again, boy. You running from something?”

“Not exactly.”

“You got family?”

“No.”

“No sir.” The man leans back in his chair and the heavy drapery behind him… did it flicker? Was there a red glow behind it?

“Oh, you got family, boy. You think you can escape that?” He reaches out and picks up a framed photo from his desk and heaves himself up from his chair and walks around the desk.

“This here was my boy. My boy before he left. Burned in a fire. Was his own damned fault. He should have stayed home.”

As the judge speaks, his voice rises.

“How dare you stand here saying you don’t have family.”

With that the judge holds out the picture frame under the young man’s face, tapping at its glass with a finger. The young man, looking  down, sees the name “Sebastian” in block letters at the bottom of the frame. But where there should have been a photo is a black hole. And something was moving. Something was writhing up from the hole.

The young man is in a field. Planks of wood are in a pile beside him. Posts are pounded into the red dirt and scraggle of grass.

“That’s right, boy. It needs to be as high as we can make it.”

The judge is with him, standing back with his hands on his hips. Sebastian hefts up a board, and, placing one end against a post, hammers home a nail.

Thwack. Thwack.

“Why are we doing this again?”

“Better safety than love is what I was taught by my old man. We wouldn’t want anything sneaking up on us.”

Thwack.

The young man goes to the other end of the board, and raises it into place.

“By the way, Katie’s awfully glad that you stayed. I’m glad too, boy. I knew you wouldn’t leave us.”

Thwack. Thwack.

Katie’s figure rises above him, walking up the stairs. Lithe and attractive.

“I knew daddy would like you.”

They are in a barn next to the house. A broad yard. A flagpole. And it is late summer dusk.

At the top of the stairs there is a spare room, with wooden slats for a floor. A light bulb dangles from a long cord over a cot on a metal frame. A single wooden chest and mirror. That and a small 4 x 4 paned glass window looking out over across the yard.

Something thumps in the chest.

Katie comes in close to the young man until he can feel her heat and hear the rustle of her dress.

“So, what do you think? Can you be happy here?”

The chest violently thumps over and opens.

The young man jolts awake. He is lying on his back on the cot, but still fully clothed. Several moments pass as he stares up at the cobwebbed ceiling. Moon light is all that illuminates the room’s interior. The mirror. The upright chest. His backpack on the floor beside the cot.

He lurches up, walks over, and crouches to look out the window. Something had awakened him. Some memory. Some thought.

Outside the yard, lit up by the moon, sprawls before him. He can see the parked Chrysler car and the large farmhouse with its broad apron of a porch. The dark branches of the shade tree. The moon lit grass of the yard. Pearly tracks that came from this way and that, and that seemed to converge on the screen door at the side of the house.

Then, out in the farmyard he notices movement. A dark mass emerging from the house. Another, and another. The bumped skin wetly mirroring the moonlight. One after another, slug-like creatures silently streamed from the house. Searching blindly, as if sniffing. Gathering in the yard a communioned mass.

Mesmerized, the young man watched as the large creatures jostled and writhed over one another, until as if on command, and as one flock, they settled and turned toward the barn. A chorus of whisperings came from them. “It’s just us, boy.” “Can’t you be happy here?” “We’ll make you so happy here.” A jumbled and murmured chorus rippling with the mass that streamed towards the barn. Skin and voices, but no mouths. 

“You will never.” “You. You know that you made her leave. You made her leave, boy.”

He heard them now in the interior of the barn below. Heard the unctuous sounds of their bodies. A slick, oily sickening that rose up the stairs and burst into his barren room. They were upon him. Wet enwrapment. Soothingly wrong hugs. The slug-like bodies bulged into the room and streamed over him like so many hands. Like so many memories. Like so much guilt.

“You made her leave,” they slickly whispered. “You did that.”

Only now the voice was different. It was that of a woman, and the creatures were the tentacled arms of a cephalopodan creature cradling and caressing him, squeezing, enveloping and suffocating.

“We had a deal. You, you would hold on to me. Hold on to it all.” The tentacles lapped and coiled around the young man, both threat and comfort, licking and gripping this Sebastian, for it was Sebastian, who was both in the room of the barn and here, back under the sea. “You made me leave.” “You agreed to hold on to us.”

Sebastian watched. He saw the room with the slugs streaming over and around him. He saw himself fetally cowering there in the barn, and he saw himself cradled and kept in the sensuous arms of the octopus. But despite these horrors, another vision appeared. It grew and grew and came into focus even as the other two dreams dissipated from view. This is what Sebastian saw.

PART 3.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If so, this is later in the cycle. Let’s say story 5 of 6 — right after “Lisa and her reflection.” This one is a bit rougher than the other two, but they are getting cranked out in real time, warts and all. Again, more meditations on emotions out there… Probably related to trust, since that is what I am reading a lot about these days. But let’s see where these stories go.

Sebastian sat in Lisa’s room. This was a different room than before, and she was packing a duffel bag. 

“Sibby,” that’s what she had taken to calling him. “Sibby, don’t you want, I don’t know, something more? I don’t know what it is, but I just know that I need something more. I need to individuate. I need an identity.”

Sebastian sat there on the floor with his back against the wall. He smiled slightly, which was an expression he made more and more these days, even when he wasn’t happy, and looked down at his hands. Lisa was off to a boarding school, and he, Sebastian, was not. He, Sebastian, did not want to hear this language from whichever latest therapist Lisa was being sent to . He, Sebastian, didn’t want something more. No, he didn’t want anything more, and he was pretty sure that he was in love with this girl, Lisa, who was packing her bag in preparation for her life. He didn’t say anything. After all, what was the point? Why tell her about the anger that burrowed into his soul like a growing mass of worms.

***

“Huh?” Sebastian broke from his memories.

Before him the tunnel split into two mouths. Two pits lit back and forth by the dusty beam of his flashlight. The tunnel branched, with one track continuing to the right, and another, picking up and starting down to the left. This didn’t make any sense.

Sebastian flicked his flashlight first in one direction and then the other. One set of parallel paths disappearing  into one mouth and another into the other. His flashlight flickered back and forth.

Once upon a time…

“My gosh, stop it!” Sebastian called out loud, his voice echoing down the tunnels, and then under his breath, “Just let it go.”

On a whim, Sebastian chose the left tunnel. Why not? He was up for trying something new this morning.

The last time that Sebastian and Lisa had spoken, it had been an argument.

“How could you understand? You’ve never had to worry about anything!”

“I worry about you!”

“With what? I thought you were Miss No Empathy. Isn’t that what this latest therapist of yours told you?”

 “Don’t you dare.”

“Isn’t it? The masks you wear?”

“And you? What about you?”

“Me? I’m the one holding it all together. Me!”

 “Uh huh. Is that what you tell yourself?”

“Oh, here it comes. As usual.”

At that Lisa screamed. “Is this how you want me to be?! Does this make you happy!?” She swept her arm across her dresser, sending makeup and bottles of perfume flying across the room.

They both stood staring at each other in the gathered up the weight of a funeral home from the too-rich floral of perfume.

“Sibby, you were supposed to be the one that saw me.”

“Yeah, I see you alright.”

Lisa fetally crumpled to the floor, her body against the wall of the room. 

“I can’t bear this. I can’t bear this.” She said this over and over, while she rocked. “I can’t bear this.”

Sebastian stood up and walked to the door. He paused, taking in Lisa, her discarded self slowly bumping against the wall. He shook his head and walked out. The last words he heard from behind him were, “I will never forgive you. Never.”

Once upon a time Sebastian sat on the ledge of the water tower. He was tossing pennies over the ledge. It was the afternoon after his father’s funeral. Lisa’s father had reached out, somehow hearing the news from within whatever life he led now, and he had paid for all the expenses no one thinks about: the pickup of the body, the storage, the cremation. 

Sebastian sat there up on the roof, up on the water tower, the city sprawled under and before him. With each toss of a penney, he was telling himself that he was purging a memory. There was Lisa at the airport returning from one of her trips to Europe. She was beaming, black hair, eyes bright, a black newsboy cap on, and hugging a large box wrapped in silver paper – a gift she had carried through customs and metal detectors and across an ocean for Sebastian. 

Toss.

There was Lisa sitting in the passenger seat. They were on their way down to her father’s beach house. Sebastian was driving, and Lisa was laughing because they had stopped to get fried pickles. She was holding up a long sliver in wonderment, and then she was playing music from her phone. She would turn towards him, suddenly singing right at his face. He swatted, but she dodged and continued to sing, and sing, and sing. 

Toss.

There was Lisa reaching across to hold his hand as they walked down the street. Sebastian had felt embarrassed. It was a sunny day, and the street there in that part of the city was cobble stone, and she held on to his hand, and she wouldn’t let go. His hand. The hand of the son of a father who fell asleep in his recliner. She held his hand, then smiling she had taken earbuds from her purse and placed one in her ear and one in his. “Listen to this.” And mixed in with the city sounds. Mixed in with the pedestrians and cross walks and bikers and cars and storefronts, and a mother who had left, and a future-less boy – mixed in with this, Sebastian heard Lisa’s voice through the earbud. “I recorded this for you,” she said, here, beside him. And as they walked down the sidewalk, down to the bay and along the piers, Sebastian heard Lisa’s voice through the earbud signing a song. He heard it as a gift given. Over and over, she had given herself to him. …And he had not seen. For all his watching, for all his claims of being an artist, a painter, someone who sees — Sebastian had not seen.

With that last thought, Sebastian reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold locket. He looked at it, passed his fingers over the engraved initials, “WR,” and then with a heave, he had thrown it out into the city.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Sebastian out loud. His flashlight was dimming. He banged it a few times against the palm of his hand, and each time the beam briefly brightened. But with one, it gave out altogether. 

“Just my luck,” Sebastian muttered. He shook the flashlight a few more times. Did he have extra batteries in his backpack? Of course not.

“Screw it,” he said and tossed the flashlight aside. It honestly wasn’t that big a deal. He could just pace himself stepping across the ties of the tracks, and it wasn’t like the tunnel went anywhere but one direction. If he were careful, he should still make the exit in an hour, tops. Pacing just so, he could perfectly step from one tie to the next. So that is just what he did.

Step. Step. 

From one tie to the next. 

Step. Step.

But something had changed. The dimmest of glows. But a glow that somehow did not light the tunnel. A wavering just on the periphery of his… Vision? Memory? Awareness?  

Step. Step. 

Yes, there. There was something up ahead, down in the tunnel and approaching. It slowly grew, formed, and rolled towards him. An undulating and pulsing sphere of color, like a jelly fish floating in the ocean. Colors spreading and dissolving, ebbing and brightening. The object approached Sebastian and then slowly bobbed past, continuing up the way from which he had come, becoming smaller, and smaller, until once again Sebastian found himself in the dark.

“Come on, Sibs. Pull it together,” Sebastian said to himself.

He had heard that prolonged time in the dark could mess with seeing things. The nerves in the eyes firing from boredom and making their own visions like a kid taking markers to a barren wall. He rubbed his eyes and continued.

Step. Step. Step.

Only now the darkness, itself, was sliding. Sliding smoothly past him, as if it were some sort of corporal skin. It glistened darkly like some unimaginably large serpent. And as it slid and heaved past, the dark began to flicker to life with a speckling that resembled dusk fireflies spread across a summer field. And yet somehow the darkness continued to coil and slide past him unilluminated. 

Sebastian had never seen the aurora borealis, but he’d seen photos, and that is what he felt he had been transported into. The walls slid past. The fireflies glowed, and one after another were born the colored jellyfish-like blobs of living color drifting past him. 

“How does this make sense?” Sebastian thought.

It didn’t, so best to keep walking. Maybe it was fumes from some long-ago discarded oil barrels, or something.

Step. Step.

But now the tunnel convulsed, and ahead Sebastian saw a pin prick of light birthed. It grew and grew and grew larger still, and Sebastian saw it take on the shape of another pulsing and undulating ball. Only this time as it grew and as it approached, it filled the entirety of the somehow still black tunnel.

Sebastian stopped and braced himself into a crouch. The form filled every aspect of his vision, and his last thought before it swept over him was, “Why does these things always happ…”

PART 2.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If so, this is later in the cycle. Let’s say story 5 of 6 — right after “Lisa and her reflection.” This one is a bit rougher than the other two, but they are getting cranked out in real time, warts and all. Again, more meditations on emotions out there… Probably related to trust, since that is what I am reading a lot about these days. But let’s see where these stories go.

The sounds quickly muffled and then separated themselves, leaving behind the crunch of Sebastian’s feet. At first the tunnel’s walls were damp and trash-littered — old tires, plastic buckets, newspapers and cardboard, and more mattresses – but soon, as the light of the opening receded, the leavings of others ceased. Sebastian had once been taken snorkeling in the ocean, and the sensation was like that – a transition from the lit surface with its rocking commotion into a quieter dimworld, a dimworld where the familiar embrace of a mind waited.

When? When had absence become such anger? That is what Sebastian asked himself as he now bent over his backpack, pulled out a flashlight, and cast a beam of light into the tunnel’s depth. The light jerkily brought into view the curved walls that were darker in places from damp, the ceiling, blackened from years and years of train soot. Then the beam of light disappeared forward into emptiness. The tunnel itself had room for two tracks, but only one remained. Small stalactites whiskered from the ceiling looking like hair, while the regularly cadenced arches that had been used to support the tunnel made Sebastian feel like he was walking through some sort of trachea or into one of those mirrors at the clothing stores that repeated the reflection into infinity. There were mushroom-like mineral growths on the ground, and the track continued beyond vision. 

Sebastian set out, and with walking he thought. He had felt it for years, building and growing inside of him. Like a hook embedded somewhere inside tugging and tugging. It had been there even when he was a kid. Something wriggling and dangling.

He and his dad had lived by themselves back then. Well, not so much themselves as Sebastian by himself. His mom, he couldn’t remember her. She’d left before he was three, and it had just been him and his dad. But really most of the time it had been Sebastian by himself.

“You’re all I’ve got, boy,” his father was fond of saying. “I knew the day that you were born that you’d never leave me.” 

Most nights his father would fall asleep with the television on, sitting there in his recliner. Sebastian would clear the bottles and the plates, and then climb up the fire escape to the building’s roof. There was an old wooden water tower there with a ledge that ran around its perimeter. Sebastian would climb up its metal ladder and sit there on the ledge, taking in the lights and buildings that spread out before him. All of those people. All of that light out there, living some sort of life. Each light another path, another possibility, and another memory.

***

For example, here was Sebastian sitting with Lisa on the floor of her room. This was before her parents became divorced Lisa’s father was Sebastian’s father’s doctor, or therapist, or something like that. He had taken an interest in Sebastian, and often included him with his own family’s trips and gatherings. 

On this day, Sebastian was over for a cookout. But right now, Lisa was showing Sebastian a game about plants and zombies. She had a computer on her lap, and she was hunched over, intently looking at the screen and explaining how the plants were used to block the zombies. In the game the zombies would try to cross the lawn, and different kinds of plants could be moved to slow them down: peashooters, exploding potatoes – and the zombies, some had buckets on their heads, some pushed bobsleds. As she spoke, Lisa expertly positioned plants as the hordes descended. The game was totally random, and Lisa loved it. She’d started that afternoon afternoon by playing him a song that showed a singing cartoon of a dancing sunflower plant:

“There’s a zombie on your lawn,” sang the bobbing, animated sunflower plant, “There’s a zombie on your lawn.” 

Lisa had a chocolate bar in one hand as she excitedly talked, and she would occasionally take a bite. Between them wrappers strewn here and there. But Sebastian wasn’t really looking at the game or at the chocolate. He was looking at Lisa. Hair falling forward; fingers intently moving, shoulders shaped just so. Eyes forward. At that moment, he had never been happier, there with his friend, seeing her excited and completely engaged and including him in how it all worked. 

Later that day, they went up to the roof of Lisa’s building. It was dusk, and Lisa’s father and mother had lit a small fire pit that they arranged in the middle of a circle of chairs. They gave Lisa and Sebastian marshmallows that the two of them roasted on long sticks. Lisa talked the entire time, slouched back in her chair, legs crossed in the air in front of her, head back, and inspecting each marshmallow just so. Sometimes she would hum the sunflower song, and sometimes she would explain why one plant was better than another. Sebastian had watched this family. The parents, reclining in wooden chairs and holding hands, Lisa their loved daughter with them, the sun setting. Sebastian had taken it all in and known that this was what he wanted.

***

“Bull shit,” said Sebastian back in the tunnel. “Get a grip.”

He hadn’t felt it then, though, the hook that pulled him out to the streets every night. He hadn’t felt it in that moment. So, when had that started? Sebastian didn’t know. After her parents had gotten divorced, Sebastian had begun to lose track of Lisa. Oh, they would see each other. They even dated in there for a while. But it was as if he could no longer actually bring her into focus. She wasn’t around during summer. He was no longer invited by her father to spend time with his new family.

“It’s just us, boy,” said his father.

Another night, and now Sebastian is 17 and sitting on the ledge of the water tower. It is his usual spot, but now something encrusts him. Something has moved between him and the lights of the city that spread out before him. “What is happening,” he murmured out to no one in particular.

PART 1.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If so, this is later in the cycle. Let’s say story 5 of 6 — right after “Lisa and her reflection.” This one is a bit rougher than the other two, but they are getting cranked out in real time, warts and all. Again, more meditations on emotions out there… Probably related to trust, since that is what I am reading a lot about these days. But let’s see where these stories go.

Sebastian considered the tunnel entrance in front of him. It gaped. The old train tracks disappeared into its maw. 

Once the tunnel had allowed trains coming from the lower city to engine up a shallower grade and carry commerce up to the heights. Engineers had made their plans, and workers had dug away underground, one team starting from below where the river met the bay, and another starting from here. Over two years they had dug away in the dark, shoveling out load after load of dirt. When the tunnel was completed, trolleys would use the rails to take people out to the horse racing tracks or commuters from one part of the city to the other. Small freight trains would carry up goods, and the tracks, like arteries, connected and branched out, bridging over the river, converging on the beating heart of the central station, and glistening out along the bay. That time was long ago, though. Most of the tracks had been ripped up. The bridge that had crossed the river had been demolished in its middle so that on either end, the tracks ended in space, and the city’s station had been torn down and built over with new buildings and roads and new lives.

The tunnel remained, here in front of Sebastian. Graffiti covered its entryway – bulbous letters and shapes. The outline of hands, a caricature of an octopus passing a cigarette to a deep sea diver. Sebastian, himself, had contributed some of this paint. There. It was partially painted over by a large vibrant arrow that pointed into the tunnel along with huge letters that spelled out “Butthole.” But there. There were the rainbow scales he had spent nights spray painting. 

He’d had in mind one of those flying snakes from Aztec mythology, a quetzalcóatl. It was the same night that a large group of his artist friends had decided to hold a free-the-city celebration at the tunnel’s mouth. They’d all worn masks, and beaten drums, and started bonfires. The cops had been called in to break it up, of course, which eventually they had managed to do, but not before the event had become a cause célèbre. Counter cultural types from all over the city had converged on the tunnel, and the party had gone on for a good week. Sebastian hadn’t really cared. He’d spent the entire week obsessively spray painting rainbow scales along the exterior and into the interior of the tunnel, because when he was a kid, Sebastian had pretended that the tunnel’s mouth was a dragon’s lair.

“What an idiot,” Sebastian thought now in the present, standing before the tunnel.

He looked over his shoulder, and then turned to take in the scene from his memory. Lisa had been looking down from there, the low street bridge that passed nearby over the tunnel’s mouth. They had stood there, side-by-side, looking over the concrete and brick guardrail, and the city’s buildings rose up behind them. They were considering what the dragon might look like. A rainbow for scales? A furred head like a lion? Was it grumpy? Was it sleepy? Did it come out at night and fly through people’s dreams?

 “Maybe we *are* it’s dream,” said Lisa. “Maybe it is sleeping until…” She trailed off.

 “Until when?” asked Sebastian.

“I don’t know. But I think it is dreaming. Dreaming us. Right now. Right here. And it is in there sleeping until the real world needs him.”

“That’s silly.”

***

Sebastian brought himself back to the present. What was silly was the situation that he found himself in. Why did this stuff always happen to him? It had begun simple enough. He had been out with friends. Well no. Wait. Back up. 

These days Sebastian lived in a small, one-bedroom studio apartment. It was his bedroom, his studio, his kitchen, and his bathroom. Or rather, the bathroom was one floor down at the bagel shop. Sebastian had lived there a good 10 years, now, ever since moving out from his dad’s apartment to become a painter. At least that is what he told himself. Most of the painting he did now-a-days came from the odd jobs working with crews renovating other people’s apartments and businesses. It wasn’t exactly visionary, this kind of painting – walls and trim, but it did just barely pay the bills. 

So, last night, Sebastian was recounting to his friends a conversation he’d had that day with a client.

“So, I said, you would like the window trims in fuchsia? Why yes mam. And then, and then she said oh not that fuchsia but this one in the magazine. And I said, but that’s not fuchsia, mam. Fuchsia is a kind of plant. This here, this is more a sage green. And she said, no, she didn’t want sage green, she wanted fuchsia.”

Sebastian’s friends had cracked up at that, especially when he had told them that this particular client was also opening an art gallery. 

“To keep herself busy. That is what she actually said.”

“Oh my god. You are kidding, right?”

“No. No. That’s what she said.”

The group had burst out laughing. 

And then somehow, they had gone out hopping from bar to bar, then stumbling from bar to bar, until the evening had given away to that time of night when dumpsters carry malice and windows get thrown open by voices yelling for them to shut up. People are sleeping! Which only made them laugh all the harder. How they had ended up at the gallery, no one knew.

“God, I have to pee so badly.”

“Just go out here.”

“Oh my god, are you crazy?”

Sebastian was the one who had pointed with what had seemed incredible logic that there was sure to be a bathroom in the gallery, and if he got in, he could let them all in to use it.

“Go ahead, Sib.” 

“Do it.”

“Yeah, she does want to help the arts.”

So, one crashed window later, Sebastian had found himself in the interior of the building. The others had chickened out, like they always did, but he knew they were outside, ready to run if anyone happened by.

“Oh my god. I can’t believe he’s doing this.”

“Sib man, he’s crazy.”

“Has he always been like this?”

***

Like this? No. Sebastian had not always been like this. Once upon a time, Sebastian had not been like this. This would be burned away, for this was not Sebastian, but he did not know that yet. 

What he did know is that day after day something was cramming and squeezing out his present so that he couldn’t connect the dots. Or rather, it was as if all he had were the dots. He knew all about pointillism in painting, but weren’t all the points supposed to add up to something? He was a young man on the verge of 30 with each day echoing the next,  like the night-after-night walks he took through the city – so many late-night walks with his headphones filling in the sleeping brownstones and tall brick building; the music filling in the stilled and barren playgrounds; the music filling in the lone figure who was always just ahead but gone when the corner was turned. 

One night he stopped to watch a group of men, oddly at 3 am, playing soccer under lights. Shift workers, no doubt. They moved this way and that in some strange and quiet dance, quiet because the music filling his head coated it all. He had turned away and continued his walk, the lights of the streets like so many vertebrae of a gargantuan whale washed ashore and now eroded away into these bleached bones of avenues and alleys.

***

“Stop it!” said Sebastian in the gallery. He pushed the thoughts from his mind and cast his eyes about. 

The gallery resembled every work site he’d ever been on. Plastic drip clothes, sawhorses, all the tools of the many renovation jobs he had been on since dropping out of high school. Along one side of the room, though, he saw a set of stacked canvases leaning against the wall. No harm in checking.

He strode over and flicked one canvas after another, letting them drop to the floor. Horses in a pastoral setting. Red-coated men on a fox hunt. An ancient Grecian temple sequestered in a grotto.

“Crap. Crap. Crap. Why is the world overflowing with so much junk?” Sebastian muttered. And then he stopped.

The painting was a still life. Nothing special. A tabletop with several pieces of cloth draped and bunched. It was clear that the painter was especially proud of their ability to paint folds, and it was also clear that this was why the painting was here, stacked with the other hotel lobby-quality works. But it wasn’t the cloth or the precious folds that had caught Sebastian’s attention. It was an object off to the side. An afterthought. It was a small gold locket. Just that. A small gold locket with the initials WR engraved on it.

The next thing Sebastian knew, he was unscrewing a can of turpentine and dumping its contents over the pile of canvases. He pulled a lighter from his pocket, and as simple as holding hands, as simple as trust, as simple as a pair of eyes meeting another – as simple as that, he tossed the lighter on the pile of paintings, turned, and walked out of the gallery. 

That night as he walked home through the city’s streets – alone because of course his “friends” had panicked – he could just, just barely feel something. It was as if the lights and shadows and rarely passing taxis were the cloth from the painting, folds and layers, and there was a true form underneath there somewhere. He was so close at that moment to feeling it. It was there. He knew it. There in the shadows of the conically capped water towers on the roofs of the buildings; there in the quiet storefronts; there even in the street grates. All night he walked, feeling his way like a dog on the scent. All night, just like every other night.

***

The buzz of his phone is what wakened him the next day.

“Sebastian man, you’ve gotta disappear!”

“What? What are you talking about?” A dreamless sleep still lingered over Sebastian.

“You’re lucky the whole place didn’t burn down! Just the inside torched. But man, what were you thinking?! You left your lighter there. You know. The one with your name on it!”

***

So, here we have Sebastian standing in front of the tunnel’s entrance. He has a backpack at his feet, and he is considering the shadowed, graffiti-covered mouth in front of him. He knows that during the colder seasons, the tunnel is a popular location for the city’s homeless, and it shows. Around the entrance are two waterlogged mattresses. There are tin cans, old blankets, and the charred evidence of fire pits. And yes, it smells vaguely of urine. Any chance that anyone’s in there? He doesn’t think so, not at this time of year, but who knows.

Sebastian’s plan, as much as he has one, is to walk down through the tunnel to the lower city. And then? Well, he’d see. He had always wanted to take a hitchhiking trip. See a bit of the world. Keep himself moving. Keep walking. Who knew. Maybe he’d meet that dragon.

Taking a deep breath, and smiling with that old memory, he shucked his backpack over his shoulder and entered the mouth of the tunnel. Oddly enough, as Sebastian began his descent, he heard someone practicing a trumpet from a window up and behind him. That and the morning cars rushing over the nearby bridge. These were the sounds that sent him on his journey, along with a vision of two friends who once imagined dragons.

THE END
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If so, it is the very first story. So, let’s say story 1 of 6. This is a younger girl than the Lisa in “Lisa and her reflection.” Back then obstacles were puzzles to solve. Like last time, I’m going to chunk this across a few posts. Bear with me! There are some more meditations on emotions out there… and I will return to them. But right now I’m trying to listen to something a little different.

The sun had set, and the sidewalks were empty except for the cats that slipped away like shadows. A few grownups still clanged into stop signs and fell into subway entries. Since they wore such dark glasses, they never knew when it was o.k. to remove them. Lisa, though, was not afraid of the dark, and besides she was busy thinking. Trolls are difficult to deal with. She had handled them fine before. This wasn’t the first time that Sebastian had been taken off by them. In fact, she suspected that Sebastian actually enjoyed this getting kidnapped and being rescued business. But, well, trolls were trolls, and Lisa knew that she needed to think things through, which wasn’t easy given how her feet hurt and her stomach grumbled and the two words in her mouth felt like soggy cotton balls.

The trolls in Not lived close to the river, and as Lisa walked toward in that direction, she could just hear the night peepers calling out, “Here? Here? Here?” and she could see the arch of the bridge that vaulted over the river, and every once and a while she caught the flicker of a bat flitting after night colors above the streetlamps. The city’s buildings, though still large, began to thin out giving way to small courtyards, corner shops, and even parking for cars. 

But what Lisa was doing more than anything was listening because you needed your ears to find the trolls. And before too long she heard it, a music mixing in with the calling frogs and the passing cars: the wildly beating ruckus of the trolls. It was the kind of music that if you weren’t careful would make you start tapping your foot, then snapping your fingers, and the next thing you knew you would be dancing all night until you happily collapsed in the morning. And as Lisa walked toward the music, following her ears, she could feel her steps lighten and her fatigue flow away. 

Down an alley she went beside a convenience store and up ahead she could see a line of them. Trolls hunched over and waiting to be let into in a small black metal doorway that was hidden behind a dumpster. Standing at the door was a large potato-like shape wearing a black leather jacket and smoking a cigarette. Trolls knew that they shouldn’t smoke, but they did so anyway.

“Oh, hey Lisa,” said the troll at the door in his deep voice. He smiled with his mouth of jumbled-up teeth as he looked down at Lisa. Behind him the wall throbbed with the music coming from inside. “I thought we’d see you before too long,”

“Hm, mm-hm,” said Lisa.

“Yeah, he’s here. Go in…” and just as the troll was moving to let Lisa pass, he stopped. 

“Wait a minute,” he rumbled. And with that the troll’s large smile became a frown, and he bent down to look at Lisa more closely. “What did you say?”

“Hm, mm-hm,” said Lisa, and then continued, “mmm-hm-hm.”

The troll stood back up and began to scratch his bald head.

“You are Lisa, right?”

“mm-hm.”

“But you don’t talk like Lisa.”

“mm-mm.”

“So, you can’t be Lisa. This is a problem.” 

And with that the troll shouted angrily at all of the other trolls who were waiting in line, and they went gibbering off into the night. Then the large troll sat down on the curb by himself and started mumbling in his deep voice that blended in with the shaking of music coming from behind the door.

“If Lisa looks like Lisa but doesn’t sound like Lisa, then maybe she’s not Lisa. Yes, that is right. But then if I do not talk, then I am not a troll. But that’s not right. But if I do not look like troll, then I am not a troll. That’s right. Unless, I sound like a troll, and then am a troll that does not look like a troll. But Lisa does look like Lisa.” 

And as if just to double check his logic the troll looked over at Lisa, who stood patiently waiting, moving her head a little bit back and forth in rhythm with the beat coming from inside the door. She was thinking if only she had her words, then there would not be a problem here.

Eventually the troll heaved himself back up.

“O.k., we’ll try again.” He looked expectantly at Lisa and slowly said, “I say: Oh, hey Lisa. And then I say: I thought we would see you before too long. Then you say…” He looked desperately at Lisa.

Lisa just sighed, and leaning down took off her right shoe. She thought she would need this, and she reached in and pulled out her lucky penny, which she held up and dangled in front of the troll.

“Ah, you have a lucky penny like Lisa. But I am not falling for your trick this time. No way.” He turned his back on Lisa, and stared at the metal door.

Lisa made sure to keep her eyes off of the troll. She balanced the penny on her elbow, and with a quick move of her arm she caught the penny in her hand. The sound of this made the troll look back over his shoulder. So, then Lisa took the penny and flipped it up in the air and the troll’s eyes watched it go up, and his eyes watched it go down.

“Hmm, but maybe the trick won’t work this time.”

Lisa balanced the penny on her nose.

“Beside this Lisa maybe isn’t even Lisa.” 

And now the troll was turned back around and watching the coin move this way and that, until finally Lisa stopped, and once again dangled the coin in front of the troll.

“Um, maybe you let me try and play with the penny, not-Lisa. Yeah? O.k.?” and the troll held out his leathery hand. 

Lisa tilted her head to one side, as if thinking, and then dropped the penny into the troll’s out-stretched hand. 

And then, just like that, the troll began to shrink. Like a deflating balloon he shrank, and as he shrank his voice, for he was speaking, got higher and higher, and he said, “Ha! I knew you were Lisa all along. You didn’t fool me. No way!” But soon all that was left on the sidewalk was a brown seed about the size of lima bean, and next to it was the shiny, copper penny. 

Lisa reached down and picked up both the bean and the penny. The penny she put back into her shoe, and the bean she put into her pocket. She would plant him back in some dirt beside the river later. It worked every time. Trolls loved lucky things, and if that lucky thing was your birthday, well… Give a troll a real birth date and you can make them as old or as young as you wanted.

With a determined sigh, Lisa pushed open the heavy, metal doors, and was hit by the loud music that came from within. It made her hair stand up, and her feet tap, and inside was a large dusky room that was filled with trolls. There were trolls swinging from a chandelier, and trolls sitting under tables. There were trolls doing somersaults on the floor, and trolls sliding down the banisters that led up to a balcony. Everywhere there were trolls, and everywhere there was mischief of one sort or another being made, and at the far end of the room, up on a stage musicians in tank tops, sunglasses and black hats played out the music that filled the air.

Lisa knew just where to go. She turned to the steps, and, avoiding the trolls who were bumping down them on their bottoms, she climbed to the top. There along one wall was a sofa. And lying on that sofa, asleep, was a boy, a boy named Sebastian.

Lisa walked over to the sofa and knelt down beside it, and then leaning in close to Sebastian’s ear, she let her two words whisper out, “Come home.”

Sebastian’s eye’s fluttered open, and he looked up at Lisa and smiled. “I knew you’d miss me,” he said. Then looking out at the room he said, “They’re kind of crazy, but they are my friends,” and saying that he stood up and stretched, and Lisa stood up, too, and Sebastian said, “But it would be nice to get back home. Can you take me back?” Lisa nodded, and took Sebastian’s hand and they started to walk down the steps. 

But suddenly Sebastian started, ran back up the steps, and came back with a small furry animal cuddled in his hands, somewhat like a hedgehog only soft. “I almost forgot this. It kind of belongs to the King. The trolls and I sort of borrowed it because it looked so cute.” With every breath from Sebastian’s speaking, the animal pulsed out a soft glow, and he scratched it gently behind its head. “It’s called a Verb, and it likes to go between things and connect them up. I’ll give it back to the King tomorrow, o.k?”

Lisa rolled her eyes and nodded. She once again took Sebastian’s hand, and walked him home. And the next day they took the Verb back to the King, and all of the colors were quickly latched back down to where they belonged. The grey was pulled down from the sky and stapled on to the roads. New colors were grown for the flowers and glued back on. And everywhere, like birds migrating home after a long winter, the colors drifted back, until soon you forgot that they had ever gone missing. And yes, when the Verb was returned to the King, Sebastian and Lisa recovered her suitcase and found Willy just where Lisa had left them there on the counter next to the salt. 

In fact, Willy and the old lady had become friends, but Lisa was always careful to keep her new collection of words closed up tight whenever they went to the shop for ramen because some day, she wanted to use them to create a garden. A garden that would be just for herself and maybe someone of her choosing. And that is just what Lisa did, but that is another story.

PART 2.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If so, it is the very first story. So, let’s say story 1 of 6. This is a younger girl than the Lisa in “Lisa and her reflection.” Back then obstacles were puzzles to solve. Like last time, I’m going to chunk this across a few posts. Bear with me! There are some more meditations on emotions out there… and I will return to them. But right now I’m trying to listen to something a little different.

By this time the sun was starting to fall back to earth. Lunch had come and gone long ago, and Lisa’s belly grumbled. Still the streets twisted and turned. Closer, but still out of reach, the tall tower of the King raised itself over the roofs. It glistened with scales like the skin of a fish and usually this made it look like a rainbow, but today the tower was so bright that Lisa could not look up without blinding herself. It was like trying to look up at the sun, which is something that you shouldn’t do. 

So Lisa kept her head down and walked on down streets and around corners. Her feet hurt, and her arms ached from pulling the suitcase. People, wearing their sunglasses, bumped into her because now was the time that grownups poured out on to the streets on their way home from work. They crashed into light poles and collided with the sides of buildings, and Lisa had to dodge this way and that. The exhaust from the cars made her throat hurt, and her eyes felt dry. She wondered if this meant that their color had gotten lost along the way – dark brown circles lying somewhere on a sidewalk, stepped on and swept up, and she wondered if this was why as she walked on deeper into the city the store signs made less and less sense to her. Mixed with words were lines that she no longer recognized.

“It’s the words,” said Willy.

“What?” said Lisa as she pressed herself against the brick of a building and waited for a group of shambling grownups to pass.

“The words that you gave away.”

“Oh. Right. More will come. They always do. It just takes a while.” Lisa was looking right and left and trying to figure out which way to go.

“I’m hungry,” said Willy from inside the suitcase. 

Lisa sighed. She was hungry, too. And lost. And as dusk draped over them, she began to worry about the trolls, because everyone knows that night is when trolls become tricky. Already the streets were clearing and the swallows were out, darting this way and that, in search of dinner. 

Lisa watched them with longing, and then said to herself, “O.k. If I were food how would I find myself?” She closed her eyes to think over this problem, and just when she did so her nose twitched. And then twitched again. Lisa opened her eyes. Yes, most definitely that was the smell of food, and not just any food, but the most delicious food: rich broth, slurpy noodles, shavings of greens, and sliced egg. 

Lisa closed her eyes again, because sometimes when you are lost with your eyes you can get found with your nose, and she began to walk this way and that, following the growing odor. She used one hand to feel the rough sides of buildings and the other to pull her suitcase, and after a few moments she heard the jingle of a bell on a door, and opening her eyes found herself outside of a noodle shop that was stuck all crooked like a loose tooth in the middle of a block of taller buildings. And not only that, but directly across from the noodle shop, like Jack’s famous beanstalk or like the world’s largest tree, rose the tower of the King. In the falling light it was silvery, and rising up with it, like tethers for a balloon, hundreds of ladders disappeared up to the very, very top.

Lisa gulped.

“What’s wrong?” mumbled her suitcase.

“Nothing. Mind your own business.”

“Scared of heights?”

“Maybe.” 

“Well, forget heights. I’m hungry.”

Lisa turned away from the tower, and walked into the noodle shop. The door jangled shut behind her, and now the odor of broth and noodles was so strong that her mouth began to water. She could hear bubblings and sizzlings, and steam poured out of a window beside a swinging door that led to the kitchen. Lisa took Willy out of the suitcase and propped him up on the counter and then climbed up on to a stool. Soon an old lady who was somehow both round and crooked at the same time, a bit like a fluffed up bird, slowly waddled over to them. She wore an apron and used a broom like a cane. Up on her stool Lisa was taller. 

“We would like some noodles, please.”

The old lady cocked her head to one side, and then reaching into her apron pocket she pulled out a set of teeth that she put into her mouth. 

“Eh?”

“Noodles. We’d like to order some noodles please.”

“Yes, we do have nice noodles!” and with that the lady pulled her teeth back out, stuck them in her apron and began tiredly to sweep the floor around Lisa’s suitcase.

Lisa looked at Willy, and Willy, sadly frowning and propped up on the counter beside a salt shaker, stared back.

“O.k., o.k.” said Lisa, “Don’t worry, I’m on it,” and with that she turned to the old lady. 

“Excuse me. Maam?”

The old lady paused in her sweeping, reached into her apron, and put her teeth back into her mouth.

“Eh?”

“I could trade you a few words for some noodles. My friend and I are very hungry.”

The lady’s eyes brightened, and she rubbed her hands together.

“Yes, I do love words, especially the words of children!” and with that she dropped her broom and began to rub her hands together. “Are they fresh?”

“See for yourself.” And with that Lisa hopped down, opened up her suitcase, and stepped back.

“Ohhhhh” clucked the old lady. And then, moving surprisingly fast the old lady rushed at the suitcase and began to peck away at that suitcase like a hungry chicken. 

“Hey!” shouted Lisa.

Words flew this way and that. And Willy, propped up on the counter stared sadly at the whole scene.

“You stop it!” shouted Lisa, but now the old lady was knocking over tables and chairs as she shuttled about the room pecking up the words that had been strewn about. And before you could say, “I like cucumber sandwiches,” the old lady had flown from the room and into the kitchen, and all that was left were the overturned chairs, stools, and the hinged kitchen door that swung slowly back and forth. 

Lisa stared at the room in disbelief, and then she knelt down beside her empty suitcase and began to zip it back up. As she did so, she happened to notice two gleaming spools under the counter – two words that had fallen there and escaped the old lady’s pecking, so she reached out and grabbed a hold of them and popped them into her mouth for safe keeping. 

Just as she did so, Lisa heard a noise, and turning saw the kitchen door swing open. The old lady, once again moving as slow as could be, and breathing heavily, waddled out with a tray. On the tray was a steaming bowl of ramen. Lisa silently watched, feeling the words in her mouth like two marbles. The old lady creaked over to the counter and stopped. Lisa stared at her, but the old lady just stood there with the tray. Lisa took it and lifted it up to the counter where Willy sat propped up beside the salt shaker. The old lady turned and began to waddle back to the kitchen.

“Mmm-hmm,” said Lisa.

The old lady stopped, cocked her head to one side, like a bird, and then reached into her apron pocket for her teeth. 

“Eh?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You’re welcome, dear. We do have nice noodles.” The old lady once again started walking, but then stopped and turned back to address Lisa.

“Oh, and forget the King. It’s your friend Sebastian who needs finding, not the King. And Sebastian is always with the trolls.”

Once again, the old lady started walking, and once again she stopped.

“Let the walrus finish his soup. I’ll take care of him until you get back.”

Willy, with the bowl of ramen in front of him looked sadly uncomfortable at this news, and Lisa looking fondly at him said, “Mmm mm hm hmmm, hm-mh?”

“Why am I always so sad?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Because this is the most delicious ramen in the city, and I can’t eat it. I’m just a stuffed animal, you know.”

This made Lisa smile, and she was still smiling when stepped back out on to the sidewalk and the door of the noodle shop jangled shut behind her. As she walked away, she saw through storefront window her abandoned suitcase on the floor and poor, stuffed, sad Willy propped above it, on the counter, staring at the bowl of ramen that steamed away inches from his nose.

PART 1.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If so it is the very first story. So, let’s say story 1 of 6. This is a younger girl than the Lisa in “Lisa and her reflection.” Back then obstacles were puzzles to solve. Like last time, I’m going to chunk this across a few posts. Bear with me! There are some more meditations on emotions out there… But right now I’m trying to listen to something a little different.

Once upon a time in the Land of Not there was a boy named Sebastian and a girl named Lisa. This was long before they were grownups – before the days of rain that turned the streets into rivers and before the dragon came that dreamt their dreams. Back then baked ducks, glazed brown, still hung in the windows of the restaurants, and packed in the lots between city buildings, teenagers clustered on the handball and basketball courts. Planes passed far, far overhead and cars honked on the roads, and out by the river that flowed into the wide bay, in the spring time, the frogs whirred out “Here?Here?Here?Here?” among the reeds while worms worked to freshen the soil.

Now, as is well known, the Land of Not is like a stained glass window – all blues and reds and greens – broken bits of rainbow each and every one, like polka dots on a pair of rain boots or triangles on the fabric of a dress that ripples back and forth with each step. At least that is how the nights were worn in the Land of Not. Days contained their own color more like the settle of a blanket that has been lifted, shaken and floated back down on to the picnic grass; and it was the job of the King, of course, to keep the colors – night and day – assembled just so. From the yellow sun flowers bunched with purple irises in the buckets at the street corners, to the yellow taxies slipping through the streets, to the purple, white and blue graffiti bubble-lettered and arched across the train tracks, to the pink flip-flops flung by the door, it was the King’s job to keep each color in its proper place.

Well one day the trolls came and took Sebastian away. They left behind some doll clothes stuffed with straw and an apple for a head, but Lisa wasn’t fooled, and not long after this there was a loud crash, like a glass accidentally knocked from a table and shattered on a hard floor, and the colors of Not began to quiver, and then they began to peel up and zig this way and that, like grasshoppers startled from the tall grass. Grey lifted up from the streets, and drifted in long ribbons across the sky. The purples and yellows (and oranges and greens) of the flower stalls flitted away like flies down to the river where they were gobbled up by the frogs. And then slowly, ever so slowly, like water emptying from a tub, all of the colors began to become lost in a glare that hurt the eyes. You see, the light of the sun had no where to go, so it crazily bounced – off of mailboxes and windows and the backs of cars, and people wore sunglasses that were so dark that they walked with their hands out-stretched to feel their way around. All except the children. They squinted and did their best to really look at things the way they are. But doing so made their eyes water so that it looked like they were crying, even though they were not.

It was Lisa who set out to see what could be done. “I’m on it,” she said to herself as she stepped out of her door and on to the street. “I’ll find Sebastian and set things right.” She pulled behind her a suitcase on wheels that was filled with words that she had packed like spools of thread, and in her right shoe she kept a lucky penny that was dated with her birth year. Far away down the long street that sloped to the bay, so small as to be like a pea, the Queen of Not spun on her pedestal. She longed for the sea, the Queen did, and all on journeys, whether by sail or by foot, blew her kisses. Lisa stopped to squint and to waive to her for good luck before turning and disappearing around the corner deli. It wasn’t the Queen that Lisa needed to see, but the King, and he lived in a tower that was in the very middle of the city.

As Lisa hopped from one curb to the next, pulling her suitcase of words behind her, she sang a song from her collection that went like this:

There’s color in the sky.
There’s color at my feet.
There’s color in music!
And it’s the King of Not I’m off to meet.

There’s color in my should that makes me, me.
There’s color in play that won’t go away.
There’s color in words, ya’ better believe
‘Cause its’ the King of Not I’m off to meet.

Now, as Lisa was singing and skipping along the sidewalk, pulling her suitcase behind her, she happened to pass a storefront window for a wine shop that made her stop and stare. Inside the window was a stack of bottles next to an igloo that was made of styrofoam. Cotton was spread to look like snow, and the window had been frosted to look like winter. But it wasn’t the winter scene that caught her attention, although winter in spring was very strange. No, it was the walrus that was propped up beside the bottles. It was made out of plastic and stuffing, and was the saddest walrus that Lisa had ever seen. It had one button for an eye and a patch of dried glue where the other button had once been, and its mouth was a frown made with a black marker. Lopsided, it lay beside the igloo. 

Poor walrus. Lisa stood and stared with pity, and the walrus stared sadly back. Finally, taKing a deep breath Lisa said, “O.k. I’m on it,” and walked into the shop, and moments later when she left, her suitcase contained fewer words, but more walrus – a walrus that Lisa had named Willy.

Willy and Lisa continued on their way to the King’s tower. At cross streets Willy would mumble out from the suitcase, “Look both ways,” and Lisa looked both ways before crossing. Sometimes she had to make a detour around a tipped trash can, and sometimes she had to give her suitcase an extra tug in order to lift it over a curb, and when she did so, she would hear Willy give a grunt. Overhead the sun beat down, and the glare beat up, and the colors darted and floated about ever more, and Lisa wondered at how the city stretched and stretched in all directions.

Just then Lisa happened to pass a small park with a bench, and since she was tired she sat down to rest and to think things through a bit. And this is how her thinking went:

If I had wings
I would fly from here to there
And if I had tires
I would roll from here to there
And if I were a troll
I would stomp from here to there
And if I were Sebastian
I would disappear from here to there.
But I’m not. I’m Lisa

While Lisa thought these thoughts, she was looking at her feet and wiggling her toes in her shoes, which is a very pleasant thing to do after a lot of walking, and while she was wiggling her toes and thinking her thoughts she heard a sound. It was a strange sound that went with a strange sight.

Across the park was a small playground, and sitting on a swing was a little girl. She had shoulder length hair and a sticky face and she was holding on to the chains of the swing with both of her hands, and looking at her feet which were kicking this way and that. After kicking for a few minutes the girl would get very still, bunch up her face and yell, “Weeeeeee!” That was the sound that Lisa had caught her attention, and after watching the girl for a moment, Lisa got up from her bench and walked over

“My name is Lisa,” said Lisa. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Zixuan,” huffed the girl before scrunching up her face tight and shouting, “Weeeeeeee!”

Lisa took her fingers out of her ears. “What are you doing, Zixuan?” asked Lisa.

“Swinging.”

“Ah,” said Lisa. 

She stepped back to watch the flailing little girl and after waiting through another yell she said, “Would you like me to give you a tip?

“Sure,” said Zixuan. She slid down off of the swing and walked dizzily over to Lisa.

“Woa!” said Zixuan, “I’m dizzy!” and this made her laugh

Meanwhile Lisa had knelt down and opened up her suitcase.

“That’s Willy,” said Lisa, “He is a Walrus that I rescued,” and moving her hands through her spools she strung together a phrase that she hung around Zixuan’s neck like a garland. 

“Do you like it?”

“I do,” said Zixuan, who was now looKing down shyly and twisting one of her feet in the dirt.

“Go try it, and see if it helps,” said Lisa.

So Zixuan ran to the swing, and scooted herself back on to its seat. And this time when her legs moved, the swing began to sway back and forth. It rocked higher and higher with each pass.

“I’m doing it! Look Lisa! I’m doing it!”

But Lisa had realized that it was getting late, and so she packed up her bag and walked away from the park with Zixuan sailing into the sky behind her 

“You were born pumping,” said Willy, and Lisa thought to herself, “Yes, I was.”