Som

Som

The tower was bent to the side atop the castle, like the hunched back of a tired old man. From the leaning balcony, transparent like the rest of the structure, she watched me through her silver telescope. The palace appeared to be made of glass, but once I had made my way past the thousand sticker bushes to the ironically welcoming yellow dirt path and entered through the sheer door with the golden knocker, I felt the cold of ice.

It seemed impossible that the building could remain intact on this the brightest day I had ever seen, the sky shining a sapphire blue and the sun pulsing like a living organ, but I knew that if I began to doubt, the structure would of necessity melt into a sad memory of could-have-beens. I could still see her from the ground floor as I looked upward to the tower, her glittering, diaphanous dress folded under her legs as she sat on the floor. She waved in a wild, two-handed motion, that I could only just make out, and I aped her silly gesture back.

The sun is barely awake when my radio alarm screams out some death metal noise from the alternative station: “Through my anatomy, dwells another being/Rooted in my cortex, a servant to its bidding.” The guitars and drums and voices screeching, wrenching me from sleep like a man pulled out of a bar to be folded into a trunk. I turn off the alarm and get out of bed.

The water of the shower hits me like a thousand 5mm bullets expelled from a shotgun two inches from my face, alternating between too cold or too hot, the pressure too hard, and the sound hits my ears even louder than the so-called music, soundtrack of my life. I force myself into my suit like a body bag and loop the 100% silk noose around my neck, slip my feet into shoes that pinch at the toes but make me look tall enough to be threatening. The coffee pot burps out the only thing between me and the five-story drop to the pavement, and I pour it down my throat as though it doesn’t taste like a corpse’s backwash. The drive to the office is like a ride across the River Styx, and I don’t have a coin for the ferryman. At work, I watch people ultimately more interesting than me act as boring as motionless twigs, like they know I’m watching and want to curse me out in the only way available. For lunch, I have a hot dog that was probably made out of shit collected at the dog park across the street. I watch early afternoon soap operas about some woman’s sister seducing their mother’s aunt’s girlfriend’s husband in Spanish with terribly-translated subtitles, because that’s the only kind of show Keiko, the big boss, will watch, which really makes me wonder how she got to be manager in the first place. More watching, boring as ever, making me wish that that guy’s pen really was a knife like the new guy kept claiming so that we had to sneak a closer look and practically had the cops called on us. The drive back full of road rage, random, balding, middle-aged men calling me an asshole and flipping me the bird, until finally I reach my apartment. A yogurt, because it’s easy and I don’t care, and some cop show that pretends it isn’t science fiction with a PC-selected cast. A run, because it’s finally late enough where I won’t be bothered, except by muggers, and another aching shower. And then, bed.

This is my life- a dog’s life- a bitch.

Finally, I fall asleep.

The height of the stairs was uneven and there was no railing, and the steps continued upward to almost eternity, as though they had once belonged to the Tower of Babel. They too were of ice, and I wondered how I could possibly reach the woman at the top, up all of these stairs, without slipping, to become a fiery stain in this colorless place. It was the sort of risk a person has to take, every voyage between lips and breasts a danger that must be faced, and I drew my sword, the gold and silver glimmering testament to honor earned through adventures braved and certain death overcome.

I stabbed the blade downward on the third step up and kept myself from falling to the ground by holding tightly onto the jewel-encrusted hilt, gems my mother had given to me before my first quest for protection, the sweetest protection found only in a mother’s infinite affection toward her youngest child. I drew myself upward to that third step and drove my heel sharply into the wall until the indent was deep enough to hold me steady, before withdrawing the sword and penetrating another step, as high up as I could safely reach. In a series of slow then sudden motions, I carried myself and my blade upward, the progress slight but irrefutable.

Throughout the endeavors, I could feel the glowing eyes of the woman as she waited, patient but concerned. I could nearly hear her gasping with each hazardous step I took and knew that I must succeed, for I was her only hope of salvation.
The cacophony of beeps is even worse than the fingernail-on-chalkboard music of the previous morning. I can’t find the snooze button quickly enough, so I pull the clock’s cord from the wall too quickly so that a few sparks fly like they always do when you’re impatient with appliances. It’s early, earlier than usual on account of an early meeting, possibly for layoffs, and with my luck lately, I’ll be the first one to get sacked.

I take a shower so cold the first few seconds feel like plunging into a lake mid-February, the chill cutting into my chest like a cleaver, but it’s the easiest way to wake up South of drinking ten cups of coffee. When I step out of the shower, I stand still on the floor mat for two, three minutes and let the cold air cling to me before drying off. A different suit because that’s what they expect at the office, everyone breaking their bank to give the company a good image, and this one smelling of old age and death on account of me buying it cheap at an estate sale. The tie my ma sent me for getting this job, her optimistic and thinking it’ll be a good move for me, even though it’s the kind of work I can do in my sleep. I down the first cup of coffee while standing in the kitchen like it’s something stronger and pour a second into a travel mug because it’s getting late and there’s nothing worse than being late to your own execution. I’d expected the road to be clear this early but the freeway is a sea of red lights like Satan’s eyes, with exhaust fumes threatening us all with carbon monoxide poisoning. I reach the office just on time, the last to arrive, and listen to Keiko dribble on for an hour and a half about cutting costs as though I used any equipment outside of my own eyes and hands. The new guy looks nervous, fidgety, like he knows he’ll be the first to go when we can’t find any way to save money. The rest of the day he talks to me like I’m his therapist or something, talking on about his fiancée and his rent and how he can only have a weekend off for his honeymoon, and I’m pretty sure I’m not looking interested but he says I’m easy to talk to anyway. At some point, I have a bag of chips from the vending machine, but I mostly work straight through the day because I can’t afford to be laid off. The commute back is slow because it’s raining and, though it rains most of the time here, people don’t know how to drive in the rain and hydroplane into inconvenient delays. When I get home, it’s already late, so I eat a banana, do a few weights and go to bed.

At last, I came to the top of the stairway, sweat beading on my face and hands, and catching the light in tiny prisms carried by the ice. My sword had grown cold from the ice and I rubbed my hands together a few times and blew tiny clouds of warmth into them. Now all that stood between the woman and I was a thick block of ice that served as a door. The woman leaned into the block and her starry blue eyes looked through the distorted window into my face, her mouth moving to make words lost in the small void. The gold of her dress appeared to be alight, with so many sequins reflecting the light of the now-setting sun.

“Stand back,” I called to her, though I was certain she would be unable to hear me. I took my sword between my fists like an oversized knife and pierced the block of ice as deeply as I was able, before removing it again with the greatest amount of effort, and repeating the actions anew. The wall was thick but I knew that if I continued my endeavor and followed it to its conclusion, I would soon be rewarded with the presence of this magnificent woman with the enthralling eyes.

It’s sheer luck that wake’s me up, the devil’s luck, early enough to make it to work on time. Idiot that I am, I forgot to plug the alarm back into the wall after my tantrum yesterday. I don’t have time to shower, put a dab of cologne that smell’s like my Uncle Joey after he was embalmed on my neck, and grab three packets of instant coffee. On the road, I consume the packets, pouring them into my mouth and chewing the powder into joe, driving as fast as I can manage with every other idiot slowing down to gawk at some poor jerk with a flat, on his cell phone, probably to Triple A because no one knows anything about cars anymore that isn’t paid to. A few minutes late, I go into the office to find the new guy crying in the break room, not the sniffling, might-be-allergies kind but the kind where he might be laughing except he doesn’t look happy, with snot running down his chin and his face suffocating red. He tells me he’s been laid off and a lot of other things that I don’t really listen to on account of being late and not really caring, but for some reason this guy thinks we’re buddies or something. I go clock in and when I come back, this guy’s still talking like I never left. I give him a whap on the shoulder because, what the hell else am I supposed to do?, and he says can I meet him for lunch. A guy really does have a knife in the lobby today, so I have to go take it away from him and get the cops involved, which leaves me with enough paperwork to keep me busy all month, but I still have a hotdog with the new guy because he’s still in the break room when it’s time for lunch. And he’s there again when I clock out at the end of the day, so I give him a ride home, only traffic’s a bitch so I end up with this guy for another two hours and he wants me to meet his fiancée when we finally do get there like we’ve bonded and become something and she insists I stay for dinner, which consists mostly of fat in its purest form. I tell the guy that I know a guy if he needs help with a job, because I don’t know how else to get out of there and these people talk as if there wasn’t enough CO2 in the world, and he hugs me. Honest to god. And then she hugs me and he gets teary again and it’s all a lot like that Spanish soap Keiko watches everyday at lunch. Finally I get out of there and make it home. I take a shower like a hundred bees stinging me into pain, then numbness, and the feeling of their arms goes away. Carefully, I plug the alarm back in and thank god it works, set it to go off on the alternative station, and hope that something half-decent wakes me up.

The woman stood back with her hands clutched tightly to her breast as I broke my way through the final inches that separated us, the ice splintering aside in a silvery dust. A smile the glistened pearls welcomed me into her empty room, the balcony I had seen her waiting at for so long, just beyond us, opening into the clear night with a thousand pulsing stars and the full, bright moon. The woman laughed and took my hand, kissing it beneath her perfect lips, pressing tightly and ending with a small exhale of sweet breath.

“You’ve finally come,” she said, rubbing my dry hand against her soft cheek, melting away the dead skin into smoothness as though her face itself were cream.

“I’m sorry it took so long,” I replied, taking her cheek into my palm like the sweetest wine in the humblest of gauntlets.

“But now.” She giggled, covering her mouth with her free hand coyly and casting her eyes downward. “Now we will never have to be apart again.”

I smiled back at her and felt my entire being soaked through with the warmth of her glorious presence. The aches of my journey dissipating and the sweat of my climb evaporated effortlessly. “Never again.”

“And that man?” She asked me, suddenly concerned with tears welling up in her ocean eyes like a storm at sea, beautiful but foreboding.

“Him?” I said, and I took her into my arms, the scent of her hair wafting upward wonderfully as though somehow she had hidden an entire garden of flowers within her curls. “I think I’ve proved I’m the stronger man, don’t you agree?”

“Mm. Yes.” She burrowed her face into my chest playfully. “But at the end there…”

“It wasn’t enough, my love.” I kissed the top of her head, tasting honey in the wavy red of locks. “He wasn’t kind and all the rest of the days were so severely misused as to be rendered meaningless.”

“Thank god,” she whispered.

“Thank god,” I repeated.

Thank god, I think, and I reach for my death like a five-year-old to a bag of chocolates, happy with the sweets, and to hell with the outcome.