Thursday, September 12, 2013

31_Anniversary

I wrote this piece of flash fiction about five years ago.  Maybe six.  I'm not too sure, but that's sort of the point.  The point is, and always will be, that some things stick in your mind and stay there.  No matter what year it is, what time of year it is, what day of the week it is, an hour or a millennium after it happened, you're always back there in that singular moment.  A part of me is kicking myself for not posting this on yesterday's calendar day.

The greater part of me knows that this is not about that day, but about every day after it.  It is about the anniversary of every day after, compared to that singular moment.  For a while that made sense, it seemed to fit.  Until, after a while, you start to wonder why you aren't comparing yourself back to other times, to other things.  And still, we don't have a good answer to that question.

Without further ado:

Anniversary

He lays behind her on the bed and pulls at her remaining feathers, whispering softly to himself with each pluck: “She loves me she loves me not...” She is brushing her hair, vaguely looking out the slits between the blinds into the morning sun. It is the day of the Anniversary and he can feel the tension in her shoulders, the apprehension in her spine.

“Are you alright?” he asks. She shrugs. Her face falls into a confused sort of frown. She stops brushing and looks down at her hands, unsure of what to do with them.

“Are you going out today or staying in?” she asks.

“Probably staying in. At least until it's over,” he says. She nods.

Outside the window the city is caught in morning gridlock. Cars snarl in the hot September air, spitting fumes out at the masses of pedestrians that weave between them. He has not been to the window to see, but he can imagine the same tension that is in her shoulders gripping the city, preparing to tighten and immobilize it.

“I hate watching the clock like this, waiting for it to happen,” she says with a sigh. He plucks another feather, twirls it between his fingers and then sits up.

“You'd rather be blissfully ignorant?” he asks.

“I'd rather go back to how thing were before it all happened,” she says.

“Blissfully ignorant,” he says.

“That was so long ago I don't remember what it was like,” she says.

“All you did was sit around with wings you never used singing songs you didn't believe,” he says.

She is about to speak as the clock strikes 8:45. In unison, the city's ten thousand church bells ring once, sending a deep shudder through the streets that echoes in every alley and every foundation.

The population stops in its tracks, the tension clamping down on every leg, every lung, pressing down on every shoulder. It is the Anniversary of the day the tallest buildings in the city tumbled down. It is the Anniversary of the day the angels started to lose their feathers.

She sits rigidly on the bed, staring out the window, waiting for a breath of movement in the stifling stillness of the city. He picks at his nails. Finally he sighs and plucks out one of her last two feathers.

“What are you doing?” she hisses.

“What?” he asks innocently.

“We're supposed to stay still,” she says.

He shrugs. “And you're supposed to stay quiet.” She glares at him. He rolls his eyes and walks over to the window. He pulls the blinds up, jerks the window open and leans his head out the window.

“Hey you all down there,” he shouts, “You're dead already, you just don't know it yet.” He pulls his head back in and turns around. She is staring at him, shocked and speechless. She opens her mouth but does not know whether to speak or scream. He walks back across the room and lays down beside her on the bed. He pulls out the last of her feathers.

“How in hell did you just do that?” she asks, her voice trembling between terror, hatred and fascination.

“You're like all of them, above and below. You're immobilized by your fear. You traded in your wings for this stillness and it killed you. You just don't know it yet. I'm too angry to be held down by that sort of fear, too angry at everyone else for falling into it.”

“You're a monster,” she says.

“And you wish you could be one,” he says. She looks down at him and then stands up without saying a word. She walks across the room and slams the door behind her as she leaves. He lays back in the bed with the very last of her feathers resting on his chest.

She walks back through the city to her own apartment. She packs only what she can carry and puts a note and a check on the kitchen counter for the landlord. She walks out into the September sun, past the frozen mobs, past the rumbling, idle cars and buses. She walks to the river and, when the city timidly starts to move again, takes a ferry to the other side, leaving behind the island fortress of skyscrapers.

On the mainland, she finds a bus station and buys a one-way ticket. She decides to head south, where the air is warmer, where things move slower and where people revel in their fear of God, death and change.

* * * * *

He does not watch her go but can imagine her storming through the silent streets, propelled by her anger. He picks up the last of her feathers off his chest and says to himself: “She loves me.” He smiles and rolls over, away from the window.

God might, but he does not blame her for being afraid, for being angry or for walking out on him. “She is,” he says to himself, looking at the pile of discarded feathers on his bed, “only human.”

- Kid

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