When No One is Looking

Leaves blow but stay with their branch. Children run steps ahead but always come back to the familiar hand. The good man leaves home at morning and comes back at afternoons end. The needle leaves the vein with a parting kiss and comes back when the mystic of the kiss has lost its sheen.

       They found it in mars. It was under the soil, deep under the soil. Piled over or hidden. They, the great they, drilled. They poked and prodded for something. The pigeon flicks the lever for the reward and what works works and he does it some more, right? They drill on Earth and found it could work anywhere. Something like that, simple conditioning. They plunged the industrial syringe and pumped the blood right out of the planet. Barrels were filled before they could tell a use for it.

       The story goes that there was an accident in a Martian warehouse. Crates toppled and barrels rolled and poured. The Warehouse workers are divided on the rest of the story simply because they no longer exist in any typical sense. We simply don’t know if it was the fumes or if by some other means it entered their blood, really it doesn’t matter because a use was found that day. Organic matters, matters of flesh, disappear. It is not destroyed, so they say, but it goes somewhere else. The warehouse was a total rapture scene. Uniforms crumpled into themselves. The workers became soaked piles of fabric.

       Demand went up immediately. Petitioners filled the streets. Propositions filled the ballots. The churches wept. Prisoners sweated.

       The prison problem started to resolve. The overpopulation behind bars was decreased. Putting the Mars syrup in them was unusual, but wasn’t cruel. It couldn’t even be considered a death sentence. Death was not a guaranteed or agreed upon result, just disappearance. If you can’t see the problem it isn’t there any longer. The strangest thing: it doesn’t work unless no one is looking.

       Now, as it effects myself. A drug. Not pure of course, or I would not be here to tell about it. Some go pure and go ‘there,’ but I haven’t strayed so far yet. The meddled stuff is where I stay. Return is possible. 

***

       The room is of wall stains and sunbeams piercing thin, lingering smoke. Blanca sits, smoking on the sofa across. She has taken to flicking ash between the cushions, it looks as it has been bombed. Her eyes are blue, all of her eye, a side effect. It’s a sort of beautiful side effect, that blue tinge. Its like the sky is trapped in the window panes of her soul. She finishes with her cigarette and executes it in the tableside ashtray.

       “Stop shaking your leg like that, it bugs me.”  She said with her lips alone, her teeth did not part. I could not stop the shake, my leg was possessed. “You look like a freak.”

           Her blindfold rested on her lap, mine bobbed on my knee like a buoy in storm-bullied water. Empty vials cluttered the coffee table. A pyramid of them was attempted and discontinued. Neighbored by two veteran syringes sat a filled bottle, the murk blue within took the sunlight and dragged it across the surface of the table. I asked, “Will you?”

         “You can’t?” She said, an unburned cigarette in route to her lips. 

         “I’m shaking, baby. Wouldn’t be good for me to handle sharp objects.”

         “You’re always shaking. How much is left of you?”

         “Enough. I’m all right. You’ll do it? You’re better anyhow.”

         “D****t, okay.” She pushed the burning end of the cigarette off and salvaged the rest. She has still got a good handle on her hands, but she’ll know the shakes when they come to her. My hands, my legs went about ten shoots past. Others can’t see it, but when the time comes to be alone it can’t be avoided.

It can’t be avoided because what was once there is gone. Hands, so familiar, disappear. Legs still carry and move, but they aren’t there either. In the company of others they take shape again. The junkie starts to count the hairs on his knuckles, not believing they can be his hands. He begins to shake uncontrollably to be reminded of their presence. Every movement is emphasized: The push of thumb to the needle plunger, the draw away, and taking the blindfold and binding it tight. The junkie comes back, his accomplices having left to do their own wandering for more and he looks in the mirror. He sees that his nose or his ears or more of his arm has gone transparent, are gone. He stays awake in a bed reeking of nervous sweat waiting for others to come so his nose or his ears or his arm will become again. He waits for moments like this, for moments bound to take more from him.

          Blanca, with hands so steady prepared the syringes. She was a nurse in some town at some time before. She tells me she was one of the nurses in assisted disappearance. Patients with the pains of aging and failing bodies, or patients with spiteful cancers had their disappearance arranged. In the company of their families she would enter and add the syrup to their blood. People would cry, and close their eyes, tears falling from the shuteyes. Just like that their person would be only the patterned hospital gown laid flat in the bed. Blanca says she’s tired of making others go away.

         “That should be good for you.” Blanca said and set the needle my way. It was half-full in the optimist’s eye, but in my eye there was a half missing. The needle bound for her arm filled. “And this will be good for me.”

         “Mine hasn’t got anything in it.”

         “Yes it does, what have you lost your eyes too?”

         “No I haven’t lost my eyes, smartass. I can see that its only half.”

         “If you keep going for the full plunge you’re not going to last much longer. Then it won’t matter if its meddled. You get what you get.”

         “Well I have every right to throw a fit.” I said. Blanca was a nurse at some time somewhere. Her eyes may have clouded since then and her lungs taken a blackening too, but that grand nurse knowledge hasn’t left her.  She knows the doses for return, and specially the doses for disappearance. “Fine, fine, it doesn’t matter. Perk up baby.”

         I got up from the armchair and took the belt from my pants. The belt held in my hand like a limp leather snake. I approached my blue-eyed companion girl and gently tightened it on her upper arm. Her skin still is soft, and so mocha, breakable and sweet, like a statuess of caramel. But no matter how gentle I play it, the belts got to strict her arm and force the veins to her surface. She hands to me her needle and I take and put it in her. “That’s it, baby.”

         Repeat for me. Less gentle. Rushed into my right arm, the one that has slowly gone away. It is there now, come back in her company and come back for this ritual, the junkie equivalent to praying or the counting of rosary beads. My needle tinkles empty on the table and we sit. The feeling of it is there, like a vacuum sucking behind your eyes, but it waits for the power draw. It waits until no one is looking.

         We watch each other now. The vacuum pulling on our eyes and the sense of a universe wanting us somewhere else can wait and it will. For an entire minute her windowpane eyes touch their sight onto mine and mine to hers. We are keeping each other here, in this room of wall stains and piles of cigarette ash.  

         Together, blindfolds come over our eyes.

         “I’ll be seeing you, Blanca baby.”

         “See you too.”

***

         Naked people in a plane anew. Naked people dance, smile in a plain anew. Sunlight caresses their skin and it chisels mountains from distant glowing fog. The naked people dance, free from cell bars. Others dance with bodies made perfect and free of other malicious cells. They smile and twinkle their blue eyes. They look and know. Sound is not and speaking is not. Some dance with Blanca, they know her and love her. They dance around her. Eternities of dance pass. The ground is alive, bodies sway like wheat in a farmland breeze.

         It is time to leave. The circle of dance around Blanca becomes far, the sun dark and the glowing fog too. The circle does not break. Blanca is far too. Calling is impossible. Speaking is not and sound is not.

         I awake in a room of wall stains and thin smoke lit by a dull sun. Blanca is only a blindfold on an ash sprinkled sofa.

Reviews

[Crusty Pizza Stain]

I think it was good, and the ending was perfect. Also, I'm think we might need to hold an intervention for you, pal.

[Chadvonswan]

Dude I don't even know what to say. . .
S**t. This is probably one of your most "out there" stories, but you wrote it in a way that is not too absurd and overly complex. I want some of this Martian syrup, man! Haha but for doodness sakes this was quite the tale. You have quite the knack for stories and narcotics -- a great combination for the Bridge. F****n Nice Write Man! Im jealous!! NOICE!! (:

[ZackOfBridge]

Woohoo! Glad you liked my return to sci-fi narcotics (: thanks for reading my pal

[Cor]

Wow...just wow.

I lack better words to describe how I feel about this.
The whole time the mystery kept me intrigued but the end just wraps it up every so nicely. Very well done! I enjoyed this thoroughly.

[ZackOfBridge]

Thanks so much for reading cor. I'll have to take a look at your words(:

[Cor]

Thanks! I don't have much yet. I need to dig through some books and add old stuff.

[The Twin Arenas]

Wow, I loved this. Intimidating.

the part about a caramel statue. the f*****g end of this thing. everytime i see ashes between couch cushions (often) from this day forward, I'll think of it looking bombed.

Well done, man. This is really great. You recognize the importance of where things sit.

[ZackOfBridge]

Wow, thanks man. I'm glad you liked the ending because I wasn't sure if it made any impact or if I had been to vague with background. Thanks again bud.