Dad told me to turn the sound off the camera, but I pretended I didn't hear him. I like the noise it makes when I take a picture—snap snap! snap snap! It's like an alligator chomping on stuff. I aim the camera at another soldier and imagine my alligator biting his head off. SNAP!
The man frowns at me and says something loud in Chinese. Okay, it's not Chinese, Dad said, it's something else and I was gonna listen, but he said lots of stuff on the plane and I was really close to beating the final boss in my game so I kinda missed a lot of it. But that level was really really hard and I think it doesn't matter if I know what it's called 'cause it's not like I'm gonna talk to anybody! And we're going to three different places and I forget where we are today and Dad made me wear a dress. I'm almost ten and he's making me wear a stupid dress and pigtails, that's called child abuse.
So it's not my fault if I don't know what he's saying. But I do put the camera away in my backpack—Dad can make me wear a dress, but I'm not gonna carry a stupid purse—and smile my best little girl face at him. “Je suis désolée, monsieur!” I say as sweetly as I can without wanting to throw up. “Votre uniforme est très joli! Êtes-vous un général?” French isn't the best choice but it's way better than English. Dad told me to never use English if I can help it, and even then I'm s'posed to talk Canadian.
Plus my Russian's really bad, so I can't do that and Dad says that I sound like a drug dealer in Spanish, which isn't very nice and my step-mom hits him when he says it but I did pick it up when we were in Colombia so he's prob'ly right. But he sounds like he learned it in school so ja!
The guy's still looking pretty mad, so I sniffle. “J'ai perdu ma maman et je ne peux pas la trouver. M'aiderez-vous?” On the last bit, I start crying—really loud, with lots of tears and snot and everything—until I see the first woman with the same hair color as me and grab onto her. “Maman! Maman! Je veux rentrer à la maison!”
I keep bawling until the soldier walks away then run out of there before the woman can ask me any questions. Dad's waiting around the corner in our rental car and I jump in. “How'd it go?” he asks, driving off.
“Twelve photos,” I say, handing over the SD card. “And 600 bucks, please!”
“Mercenary!” my dad laughs, throwing me the money.
I stick my tongue out at him while I count my cash. “Sucker!”
Dad can spy just 'cause he loves our country if he wants, but I want a new laptop.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Unlike
Rukia is a magnet, a crude chunk of iron ore, a misshapen lump stuck all over with the needles of her memories. She wonders if others can tell, if strangers can see her bristling with silver spikes, if her former friends—now so far away—secretly understood the implacable push of their matched poles as they drifted away.
It took her so long to understand the truth
It does not matter. She lets the cruel laughter of her companions wash over her, the same way she barely registers her boyfriends' kisses and idle pawing. They are not her kind, these new comrades, nor even her opposites. They feel, and have, no affect. But better to surround herself with aluminum and lead than with nothing at all.
I don't want to be alone ever again, she said, and the people laughed and gave less than they took
It confuses Rukia when people speak of magnetic personalities as belonging to the popular, to the well-liked or at least the ones that they wanted to like them. She knows that magnets repulse as much as they attract. There might as well be a universe between herself and her own kind. But people forget simple truths for simpler aphorisms, Rukia knows. Her grandmother said that, often.
One good turn deserves another
Sometimes she has to shake paperclips from her fingers, yank her hands away from her fridge. If she concentrates, Rukia can raise the nails out of the floorboards, if only a little bit. More often, she finds herself coughing up bits of iron, aggregated from her food and concentrated in the back of her throat. She never bleeds anymore; instead, her blood hovers inside her wounds, too attached to her to leave.
We are like you, they said. We are people. We are your people. How we love to visit your world! So pretty. So full of life. So full—
Her grandmother warned her never to go into the woods when she was upset. “We cross too easily,” she said. “Our family has always been able to step across the space between into the lands beyond. We call them, and oh, how they love to answer. To pour sweet words into our wounds, and ask kind questions. To give us magic to make everything better. But the world doesn't work that way, my little Rukia. Their sweetness is that of barb-laced honey, their kindness a mask. And their magic is the magic of lies, of deceit, of ugly twists and nasty giggles. They can no more give real help than fire can quench your thirst.” And she promised to stay away, and meant it.
But oh! How the loneliness yawned within her that night. She ran out of the house and pretended not to notice when the cement gave way to a dense bed of pine needles, when the familiar trees grew strange. Emptiness is so hard to bear; how could she remember promises when the night welcomed her? They stroked her hair and sang lullabies—and if they cut her skin as they stroked, and if their melodies scratched at her nerves, well at least she felt something
Rukia sinks her fingernails in the current boyfriend's back and ignores him as he cries out in his sleep, holding him close. Her curse is her only shield—she feels them come nearer each time she is alone, creeping towards her with each silence, leaping over each empty space. Soon, she will not have to run into the woods to bring them to her. They will clamber over the border and latch onto her, claiming repayment for their favor, nibbling away at her until nothing is left. Though little enough of her promise remains unbroken, Rukia can try to keep that much intact. She must.
No man is truly an island, it is said. She wished she could believe it
It took her so long to understand the truth
It does not matter. She lets the cruel laughter of her companions wash over her, the same way she barely registers her boyfriends' kisses and idle pawing. They are not her kind, these new comrades, nor even her opposites. They feel, and have, no affect. But better to surround herself with aluminum and lead than with nothing at all.
I don't want to be alone ever again, she said, and the people laughed and gave less than they took
It confuses Rukia when people speak of magnetic personalities as belonging to the popular, to the well-liked or at least the ones that they wanted to like them. She knows that magnets repulse as much as they attract. There might as well be a universe between herself and her own kind. But people forget simple truths for simpler aphorisms, Rukia knows. Her grandmother said that, often.
One good turn deserves another
Sometimes she has to shake paperclips from her fingers, yank her hands away from her fridge. If she concentrates, Rukia can raise the nails out of the floorboards, if only a little bit. More often, she finds herself coughing up bits of iron, aggregated from her food and concentrated in the back of her throat. She never bleeds anymore; instead, her blood hovers inside her wounds, too attached to her to leave.
We are like you, they said. We are people. We are your people. How we love to visit your world! So pretty. So full of life. So full—
Her grandmother warned her never to go into the woods when she was upset. “We cross too easily,” she said. “Our family has always been able to step across the space between into the lands beyond. We call them, and oh, how they love to answer. To pour sweet words into our wounds, and ask kind questions. To give us magic to make everything better. But the world doesn't work that way, my little Rukia. Their sweetness is that of barb-laced honey, their kindness a mask. And their magic is the magic of lies, of deceit, of ugly twists and nasty giggles. They can no more give real help than fire can quench your thirst.” And she promised to stay away, and meant it.
But oh! How the loneliness yawned within her that night. She ran out of the house and pretended not to notice when the cement gave way to a dense bed of pine needles, when the familiar trees grew strange. Emptiness is so hard to bear; how could she remember promises when the night welcomed her? They stroked her hair and sang lullabies—and if they cut her skin as they stroked, and if their melodies scratched at her nerves, well at least she felt something
Rukia sinks her fingernails in the current boyfriend's back and ignores him as he cries out in his sleep, holding him close. Her curse is her only shield—she feels them come nearer each time she is alone, creeping towards her with each silence, leaping over each empty space. Soon, she will not have to run into the woods to bring them to her. They will clamber over the border and latch onto her, claiming repayment for their favor, nibbling away at her until nothing is left. Though little enough of her promise remains unbroken, Rukia can try to keep that much intact. She must.
No man is truly an island, it is said. She wished she could believe it
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Past Tense
He became a writer for the feeling of control, but look at this! His main character’s love interest, still covered with paper cuts from scrambling off the page, stretches a length of rope between her hands. She grins, lips red in a way that brings to mind unfortunate similes, and lovingly, caressingly, sweetly, wraps the hemp around his neck and yanks.
As he slips into the unconsciousness that precedes death, he is still grateful for two things: that he can no longer see the red heap that was his main character, and that he spent the advance.
As he slips into the unconsciousness that precedes death, he is still grateful for two things: that he can no longer see the red heap that was his main character, and that he spent the advance.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Illumination
They used to know that they had been turned into streetlamps, but after some time, the memories gradually faded, until the shadows that their light cast on the concrete were more substantial than their own pasts.
Every once in a while, when an old friend, an acquaintance, or just someone who reminded them of their humanity walked by, some spark of dim recognition rose within them, and the lights would flicker, the lamps swinging back and forth with faint creaking as the streetlamps quivered at the brink of memory. But always the brief awareness would ebb again, and they would return to amnesia, asleep without sleeping.
They knew, without knowing, which of themselves belonged to the transformed group, and they maintained a greater awareness of these compatriots. They were uncomfortable when the light bulbs burnt out in the other members of their group, and mourned, as much as they could, when they were replaced. They felt a kind of comfort in knowing that the others were there, without ever
Yet with each passing night, they forgot a little more to care about such things, and then they forgot to notice them, the last bits of sentience trickling away like grains of sand. Until one evening, when the moon and stars were so uncharacteristically bright in the city that the streetlamps were unnecessary, there was a strange sort of sigh in the street where they all stood, a rush of cold air and a heave of emotion. The passers-by, who had been laughing and talking, stopped and shuddered, the sigh registering only subconsciously, so that when a few people found themselves in tears they couldn’t say why, nor could their friends find any way to explain that they had felt the same.
This was of course because, in that moment—and strangely, all in the same moment—the streetlamps became truly unaware, with not even a light flicker in protest.
And the street where they stood soon became a street to be avoided, used only in emergencies and traversed at top speed in order to leave it again as quickly as possible. People found themselves huddling inside their coats as they walked on it, hiding from something they couldn’t name, a terrible, senseless grief overwhelming both because of its strength and its lack of cause. The street emptied, of people and businesses, and its length acquired a bubble of ceaseless quiet. The lights went off one by one, and stayed off.
The streetlamps might have been sad to see the people go. Or happy to be alone with each other. Or relieved to no longer be confronted with the evidence of their loss, lively humanity traipsing down the street, being alive without barely any notion of doing so. But they were none of these things, because they were—after all—just streetlamps, and perhaps they had always been streetlamps, just streetlamps who had only imagined a time when they breathed and laughed and walked under streetlamps as casually as people walked under them. Perhaps it was all a dream.
But it was not, and whoever they were—whoever they might have been. . .
They’re gone, forever, and soon the last light bulb will burn out.
Every once in a while, when an old friend, an acquaintance, or just someone who reminded them of their humanity walked by, some spark of dim recognition rose within them, and the lights would flicker, the lamps swinging back and forth with faint creaking as the streetlamps quivered at the brink of memory. But always the brief awareness would ebb again, and they would return to amnesia, asleep without sleeping.
They knew, without knowing, which of themselves belonged to the transformed group, and they maintained a greater awareness of these compatriots. They were uncomfortable when the light bulbs burnt out in the other members of their group, and mourned, as much as they could, when they were replaced. They felt a kind of comfort in knowing that the others were there, without ever
Yet with each passing night, they forgot a little more to care about such things, and then they forgot to notice them, the last bits of sentience trickling away like grains of sand. Until one evening, when the moon and stars were so uncharacteristically bright in the city that the streetlamps were unnecessary, there was a strange sort of sigh in the street where they all stood, a rush of cold air and a heave of emotion. The passers-by, who had been laughing and talking, stopped and shuddered, the sigh registering only subconsciously, so that when a few people found themselves in tears they couldn’t say why, nor could their friends find any way to explain that they had felt the same.
This was of course because, in that moment—and strangely, all in the same moment—the streetlamps became truly unaware, with not even a light flicker in protest.
And the street where they stood soon became a street to be avoided, used only in emergencies and traversed at top speed in order to leave it again as quickly as possible. People found themselves huddling inside their coats as they walked on it, hiding from something they couldn’t name, a terrible, senseless grief overwhelming both because of its strength and its lack of cause. The street emptied, of people and businesses, and its length acquired a bubble of ceaseless quiet. The lights went off one by one, and stayed off.
The streetlamps might have been sad to see the people go. Or happy to be alone with each other. Or relieved to no longer be confronted with the evidence of their loss, lively humanity traipsing down the street, being alive without barely any notion of doing so. But they were none of these things, because they were—after all—just streetlamps, and perhaps they had always been streetlamps, just streetlamps who had only imagined a time when they breathed and laughed and walked under streetlamps as casually as people walked under them. Perhaps it was all a dream.
But it was not, and whoever they were—whoever they might have been. . .
They’re gone, forever, and soon the last light bulb will burn out.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Life of the Party
A chunk of tinsel in her hair,
she works the room and doesn’t care
where she’ll end up when she is dead—
“I’ve friends on either side,” she’s said.
Half-angel and half-demonspawn,
she parties ‘til the booze is gone.
Then in the morning, eyes still bright,
she ventures out into the light.
Her suit fresh-pressed—it’s Kenneth Cole—
she squirms her tail out through its hole.
Her halo gleaming on her smirk,
she winks at God and goes to work.
she works the room and doesn’t care
where she’ll end up when she is dead—
“I’ve friends on either side,” she’s said.
Half-angel and half-demonspawn,
she parties ‘til the booze is gone.
Then in the morning, eyes still bright,
she ventures out into the light.
Her suit fresh-pressed—it’s Kenneth Cole—
she squirms her tail out through its hole.
Her halo gleaming on her smirk,
she winks at God and goes to work.
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