Chapter 1 of my story: Black Sticker over Luna

In the beginning, there was darkness. It, like a thick fog of smoke, or glass even, filled (as if a cup, or a fishbowl) with darkness. The shapes of fire hydrants, chimneys and civilization, are all being hugged by this being that is darkness. One would think of the sun about now.
He cut through it. His cane his lead, his quivering legs following. With each step, he may be the beginning of a statue, or he is crumbling into the concrete ground. From any angle, you cannot tell if he is emerging from the floor from a statue or retreating into one.
This is how it went: His cane skips along on the concrete, creating a steady rhythm with perhaps the stars, which his neck is angled up towards every 6 or 7 steps. What could he be looking for? His beard, waves of cotton hanging off of his chin. Clunk, clunk, clunk. The stars in motion, the moon at a loss. Walking along the sidewalk, hugged by the darkness, as if a parent seeking a child that slipped past sight and sound- aha! Emerging right through the roof- there it was. But, of course.
Looking up to the iridescent, milky-glowing sphere, he himself is redirected. The rhythm stops. The soles of his feet are frigid, no longer moving. Looking at her, the moon, he images her bulbous crater face to be tangible. He can feel in his hands, (rubbing his fingers together). He imagines he could dislodge her from the empty black curtain- and simply roll her across his wrinkled, rough knuckles. It could be that easy.
Where little girls will crowd around- large ovals for mouths, tongues lolling at the agile crater coin doing aerobics across his knuckles. But, it is just a magic trick. And then, clever the old man is, he will, with an abrupt and subtle movement, make the coin disappear. Right into the gap that is air. While immediately after, the little girl’s faces would all draw down to the degree of painted-on melancholy clown faces. The red, white and black paint bleeding from their tears, streaming down their faces- water-color paint thrown in their cheeks- creating a masterpiece of sadness. For the children, there are no comforting embraces to give them solace- just thousands of scrambling hands, like wild flies trying to connect in the darkness. An echo of gasps.
The little girls don’t gasp because the coin has vanished between the bony fingers of a man on a street with a cane; but because they have lost the stable exit and motion of their breath through the vacuum of darkness. The frame of the man’s nose is no longer illuminated and familiar by shadow. This reminds the girls of the subtle, but ever-so-present sound of static silence after the television goes off in the living room of their parent’s activity. When hearing the electricity sucked away through the sigh of the television- the feeling that enters their empty bellies in bed- the abrupt feeling of sudden loneliness- grinding in their bellies- begging their buzzing minds to turn off so the moment will release them from its frightening grip. This is that feeling- it reminds them of the sensation of putting their hands under their beds at night, the openness of space that lays there- while they believe that something just might yank them into a twilight zone. How unstable their legs become in the darkness, as they try to ignore the quivering of their knees as the bathroom grows miles away in the black. This is what it feels like to be alone. In this moment, no lullabies fade with them in the background so that silence is now the most painful thing they know.
He looks up from a long stare, releasing his hand from her curtain. Lets the reality of it all settle down- like wild pin balls ricocheting in all directions, he waits for them to calm and fall back into their organized sections, barring their interaction from each other as he knows what happens when he doesn’t. He is tired. So he gives her one more long look, one he can carry with him for hours afterward, like the white lights when closing one’s eyes too tight. But with her outlines instead. He looked at the moon tonight, and in this moment, at this point in space, the world changed.

Light Bulb Head

“Dad, is that a light bulb in your head?”
“What?”
I had to stop to think about what I had just said. But I was certain.
“A light bulb?”
“Above my head, eh? You, mean, is something brewin’ up in the old noggin?”
I looked at his eyes- to see the little glints of flickering bulbs, like dying Christmas lights flickering right below his eyelids.
“Eh, no all I got is a cellar door in here- not opening any time soon.”
Then he yawned and poured himself another glass of some age-old whiskey he’d been storing in the cupboard, “It’s gonna get cold tonight.”
Grey town could thank my father for every spark in a dark hallway, and for the caution glows in the streets. Without that caution, every one could have remained cooped up in their homes, feeling the nuts and bolts and crevices of their houses in blindness. They would be colorless; you can’t see color in the dark.
“No, Dad. I’m sure I saw a light bulb.”
Imagine fog hugging each and every nook of a little town, add a little bit of romance like the waters of Venice and the accordions of Paris and then you can feel exactly what I do when it turns dark. They were blurred little fireflies lining our streets in desperation; pushing their light through the inconsistencies of the fog. These light bulbs, assembled by the hands of my father have such a specific destiny that they don’t dare try to be anything else, or try to burn out.
Minutes later, my father descends to his room. I sit in the front room, by the cabin door and I stare at the sad fireplace- dusty not from ashes, but from neglect. I say a little prayer for the fireplace, patting him on the back and then I lay supine on the floor- staring up at the ceiling. My father had gotten carried away with his light bulb invention.
He dyed the thin, fragile glasses with different colors so that when he flipped the switch, a rainbow would appear, adding a little bit of color into the living room when it was so dark outside.
I was convinced that what I’d seen behind his eyes that night was not an idea, but something much more permanent and obstinate. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I’d learned, after hours spent with a paint-set that when you mix all of the colors of the rainbow together, it all just turns into a dead brown.
I heard a scuffle downstairs where my father was sitting at his desk- amidst the myriad parts of the light bulb inventions, little springs and feeble metal pieces; the intestine of the light bulb. I looked at him, and I could see the glow from the very back of his head, not the front and not from the top. It wasn’t an idea, it wasn’t.
Suddenly, there was a buzz, like the sudden movement of a thousand bees against a window and all of the lights in the house went out. In the dark, you can’t see color, so I had to feel for my father in the dark mess. He was bent over his desk and breathing lightly.
I whispered his name softly, but I knew not to interrupt him. Maybe it was an idea. He was a blinking warmth in my arms, slowly growing cold. I saw the small flickering glow behind his eyeballs thumping, pulsing desperately, with all of their might to keep alight. But I knew, as I knew dad’s invention like the contours of my own face that there was no use. The lights could only do so much for so long.
I couldn’t help but think that maybe he should have stuck to making airplane models or writing plays trying to reignite a new, modern appreciation for Shakespeare, but he got stuck on light bulbs. He was consumed by them; he let them keep him up at night, trying to find different shapes for them, spending his days installing them in another person’s home and finding new placement for them in assignments along the streets.
I held him in my arms as the one light bulb he neglected to do routine maintenance on finally, without another fingerprint or twist or blinking glow, died behind his eyelids. He’d felt the screws loose for a while, and we both knew there were no more ideas flickering in his head left.
We had a power outage in the town for 3 entire days. It took 5 electricians from outside the province to finally repair everything back to normal. I thought maybe they could make the living room lights sit appropriately in such a way that they could actually form a rainbow hue against the window. But the electricians, educated and experienced, chuckled and reminded me that when you mix every color of the rainbow, it always, without a doubt, no exception, turns to brown.

Anaconda Woman.

We saw her bundled up in a cape of brown and black in the corner of the street. The lines of the sidewalk were unforgiving, holding onto her with crooked intentions. We didn’t know what to say. And if we did know what to say, we didn’t know how to say it. She was a fountain of flaws and drabs. I noticed her fur jacket in reluctance, somehow giving her this solemn and classy edge that now, plastered in a heap on top of her, just couldn’t save her from her losses.
“What’s wrong?” we asked her. Her muffled tears could only make their way to the drainage line beside her- it had never been finished. I’d heard people complaining about this before. But somehow, it was providing her with a portal for her tears, so I guess there really wasn’t much to complain about.
I continued to contemplate putting my arm around her, but something inside of me resisted. I believe it must have been the way the black jacket cascaded clouds of arsenic-filled smoke around her.
Then she screamed with all the ardor and fervency inside of her belly, the very bottom- where germs and viruses hide.
“Oh, you! You can never understand- the plight that I live with- my imprisonment here! I could tell you- but no. No-no! You must never understand!”
I’d seen a flick of her pupils in her cries as she flailed her hands around her head like a misplaced halo and called attention to the little pearl rings on her fingers.
I waited in the wake of her outburst; waited for the black waves around her to recede into a constant, soft rhythm.
Then I told her, “Miss, I beg your pardon. But you are seated quite uncomfortably on the floor. All you have to do is get up.” I had said it gently, but for some reason, it might have sounded like I was an officer dressed up in blue and white, demanding her to follow a system and coercing her to follow my corrupt direction.
She shook her head with even more violence. “No, no, no. But you can’t. But you can’t.” It was as if a lopsided, drunk giraffe with 5 necks took over her body and stood up, pulling his heads in all different directions that she finally made it up to her feet. She was barefoot. I hadn’t known that. I tried to reach for her hand to help her but she refused.
As she walked to the end of the street, I saw a white glow coming off of her body. It was so white that the moon couldn’t find the right way to sit on her skin. She was completely bare. Yet, every time that she cried, the black and brown crawled back around her like a ignominious, slithering anaconda- snapping at the passers-by all the way home.