Of Muted Cries and Light

Of Muted Cries and Light 

I'm unable to look at her, bringing my stare through the window to the right. Another day in the city. The streets are wet, but not from rain. Rubble scattered. Lined down the streets in sinuous mounds. Like small graves. Serrated bricks and chunks of cement shift from the mounds as the earth shakes from another blast rocketing off in the distance, handfuls of gravel tumbling behind before settling into place on the cobblestone floors below. No one pays it any mind. Sparse sections of people casually drift by like ghosts, winnowing through the remains of this city, unaware of the damage, accustomed to it, the landscape refined into this pile of debris. And I can’t help but think how similar we are. 

I clench my hand, hidden beneath the table. The hand is gone, replaced by a pile of mutilated flesh hung crooked from the wrist, two bone fingers left there, pointing back at me in an accusatory gesture. That’s just how they are now. This hand is my memory, my scar, my trophy. She’s watching me stare down at the hand, I can feel her.  

“How’s that thing doing anyway?” she asks.  

“Fine,” I mumble.  

“Sure,” she replies, bored. 

I move back to the window, sucked into the chaos of the outside world. Small fires in the distance, behind the torn buildings. Smoke in the air. The rattle of gunfire ricocheting through an alleyway to the left. Tucked behind a pile of rubble across the way, a young boy plays with a ball through the tumble of broken parts. He can’t be more than nine or ten, sandy blonde hair, bright blue eyes. Smudged with grime and dust from the crumbling buildings surrounding him. But he’s all smiles. Another boom drags off somewhere, and I’m brought back to this place. Back to the little bar with this person who can’t stand me now. 

Her auburn hair is pulled back in a taught ponytail, dark brown eyes like two hollow marbles, staring straight ahead as she absentmindedly chews on a piece of bacon from her jumbled Bloody Mary that’s piled high with an assortment of vegetables and accessories. It’s a drink of ridiculous design, out of place in front of the backdrop of Melinda with her Kevlar vest and cutoff sleeves. The small tattoo on her upper left arm is still red and swollen, the fragmented words blurred. But I know what it says, and what it represents.  

“You know, for what’s it’s worth, Eli, I’m sorry,” she says, “I’m sorry it has to be this way.” 

I break, my skull splitting as her words ripple through me. She scratches the inside of her forearm, the thin marks from her nails puffing up. She would always do that, and it would irritate me to no end, but she would ignore me and do it anyway. Now it’s funny, funny how I miss it. I can feel the palpitation from the tumor in my own arm. I cradle it and hunch over, face turned. Trying to hide from her.  

“Why don’t you just get rid of that thing?” she asks. 

“What?” 

“Just chop it. That thing has only brought you grief.” 

And I can’t argue with her there. But after all that's happened, what's transpired, I have learned to embrace this hand. It’s a part of me now, this poison. This curse. And like her reddened arm, I have learned to live with it. And to cherish it.  

“You hear me?” 

“Yes, Melinda,” I say. 

She chews with her mouth open. “Just saying.”  

She’s so cool I don’t even recognize her anymore, the woman I once knew no longer there, in her steed this proxy that sits across from me in this dingy little bar on the edge of the city. This person in her camouflage pants and canvas boots and starched vest with her maiden name stitched on the upper left pocket. Her battle name. Her number. The thing that will identify her when they eventually find her scorched corpse. But for now, here we are, and I just want her back.    

I hesitate, the nerves twisting in my stomach. “And I’m just saying, Melinda, you should come back.”  

“No can do, buckaroo,” she replies casually. 

I don’t know what I’m doing; why I called her, why I met her here. I’m not sure what outcome I was expecting. I only know what I had hoped for, and it wasn’t this. Because what I had hoped for was just a dream. What we had between us so long ago, gone now, the safety of our limbs together, intertwined as one, us as one, pulled apart by this city, like a child’s grasp ripped away.  

I bring my attention back out the window. A sickly dog limps down the street headed toward the alley, its gait slow and painful. And the kid’s out there still, happy as can be, ignoring the dog, focusing his attention solely on the ball; the crumbled world around a muddled silhouette. My shift back to the bar.  

The bar itself sits in the middle of the room to our left, its circular design curving through the place, the manufactured wood bloated, split at the tops. The gruff looking bartender sees the lull in our conversation and leans over towards us, his bald head glistening in the saturated light overhead, small cylinder grenades that line each side of his vest rattling gently as he gesticulates towards me. “Another round?” he asks.  

An empty shot glass next to a half bottle of beer sits on the table in front of me. “Sure,” I reply.  

“Will do,” he says as he turns his back and fixes the drinks. 

I glance at the pistol shoved in the back of his belt.  

Melinda says, “Hitting it hard these days, eh?” 

“No.” And my voice is so small in that place, the words lost in the stale atmosphere. 

Melinda sucks her teeth and leans back, the vinyl creaking as she pulls her elbow up behind her on the booth. “Sure,” she says. 

I lose myself in her, caught in the memory, embedded in the small moments we shared. I see her tired face in the morning, hair matted to the side. She smiles with a stretch, a strand of light snuck in through the window, dust mites suspended there, peppered around her face. And she tells me that of course she still loves me, and I’m ashamed I even asked. Then she pours the milk and sugar in her coffee first. Sucks the spoon with a slurp. These are the things that used to bother me. These are the things I miss. She takes an hour in the bathroom getting ready as I hold my piss. Then kisses me goodbye, but not on the lips. And it’s at that moment I knew. I beg. But she doesn’t care. Then she moves out, and takes just about everything with her but the couch. Cut to six months later, and here we are. After months of pleading, she finally gave in and agreed to meet with me. And now she won’t look at me. And I can’t look at her either. 

The bartender drops the drinks off before disappearing back behind the bar. There’s a small bug floating in the shot glass, one wing frantically jutting back and forth, spinning the tiny creature in a circle. I shoot it down, chasing it with a sip of beer. I bring my eyes up to meet Melinda’s. “I just think you’d be better off if you’d come home,” I say.  

She rolls her eyes. “Jesus, Eli, we’ve been through this.” 

“I know, I’m just saying.” 

“And I’m just saying, you don’t have any control here anymore, Eli.” 

As if I ever did.  

“I know, I’m just worried for you is all.” I pause. “As a friend, at least,” I add. 

“Sure, buddy.”  

“I’m just concerned is all.”  

She leans in, hands beneath the table. She takes a sip from the straw in her messy drink, then brings herself back and lets out an obnoxious belch as she pushes back against the booth. “No need to be concerned there, Eli,” she says. “What you should be concerned with, is what side you’re really on.” 

And there it is. It’s the same as it was six months ago when she first left; the same conversation, the same argument. She wants me to join her.  

“You know I can’t do that,” I say.  

She shakes her head, disappointed. “Of course not.” 

“I’m sorry.”  

“Yeah, sure.” 

I bring my gaze back out the window. The dog lies there pushed up against the brick wall of the alley, motionless, its final resting place a bed of black garbage bags and a pile of vomit from the bar next door. The blowflies have already arrived. I peer across the way. The little boy is crouched now, fussing with the ball on the ground. Or with something anyway.  

“It’s been good for me, Eli,” she says.  

She scratches at the arm. I trace the arm, up to the little puffed tattoo. ‘Join, or Die,’ it says. How nostalgic. How wrong in so many ways. The mark just missed. But she’s so proud of it, I can tell. “What we’re doing, it’s good, Eli,” she says. 

And she believes it. She believes every word that has been crammed into her, suffused with her now. And as much as I long for her, I feel sorry for her. I feel sorry for the words she believes, the things she trusts now. I should tell her the truth, but I’m not sure how. Never did I think she would be broken the way she has, but here she is. And she’s embarrassed by her soft tone, her sudden change in cadence. She’s been trying to hide who she truly is, tucked away beneath that uniform, hidden in her coordinated suit. And for a moment she slipped, and she knows it. She tries to bury it, leaning back and clucking her teeth casually. “But you know, your loss I suppose,” she says. 

“Yeah,” I reply.  

Maybe she’s right. Maybe being on no side at all is worse somehow. Caught in the middle, sinking down. Maybe I should join, try and help. After all, this world took my hand, so maybe I should repay it with a disfigurement of its own. Scorch this whole place down, burnt to a crisp, nothing but ash remaining. And my mutilated hand. My hand like the landscape of this place.  

“I don’t know what I was thinking.” 

“Heard that before.” 

“I just care for you, Melinda. I guess I just want you to know that. And I’m there. I’m here now, and I always will be.” 

“Too late, Eli.” 

“Yeah?” 

She shakes her head. “I can’t, Eli, I can’t do this anymore and you know it. I won’t do this anymore.” 

There’s something caught in my throat. I hold it down. “I know,” I say, ashamed, “but you can’t blame me, can you?” 

“No,” she says, “I can’t blame you, Eli.” 

I ease with this. At least she understands. She’s not all gone, the woman I once knew, once loved. Maybe there’s still a chance. Maybe she’s not completely lost, and somehow, I can get her back. I can’t give up just yet. I can be there for her, like she wanted, like she had asked me to do so many times before she finally broke. I can be there. I’m here now. Maybe we can salvage this wreckage, and everything will be okay. I’m going to tell her. I’m going to tell what I was planning on telling her before her pugnacious stare ripped the gumption from me, and off I retreated. I’m going to tell her everything now, and it will all work out. We’ll be back together, and live happily ever after. And everything will be okay.  

Tell her. Tell her. 

I lean in over the table. I can smell her heavy musk, her perspiration, the spice from the empty Bloody Mary on her breath, the metallic ash smeared on the side of her cheek. Dog shit on her boot. I move in closer. That cold face stays on me. But I can see the softness, lurking somewhere behind that off look she gives in return.  

“Melinda, I…” and I stop there. 

She scrunches her nose in distaste. “What is it?”   

I see the little boy outside, back upright, smile collapsed. He’s holding something in his small arms. But it’s not the ball. And I don’t recognize it, can’t comprehend it with its strange curvatures and sleek chrome design. It’s something foreign to me. Something alien.  

A flash of light.  

The window shatters. 

I yank my body back, arm raised to block the glare from the blinding light. I wait for it to settle before I return back to the bar. The bartender’s right arm is gone, replaced with a mist of blood and bone and flesh that holds there in the light before gradually drifting to the floor. Then he stumbles from behind the bar like a drunken patron, falls to his knees with a confused look on his face as he peers down at his phantom limb. 

I focus back to Melinda. She wears that same look swathed across her face. But she doesn’t move. She’s frozen there, a hole in her chest. A seared hole. A seared hole. A small strand of smoke listing up. And I can smell the charcoaled flesh. Then she tips over on her side without a sound, and stays there like that.  

A light breeze pushed through the busted window. The little boy is gone, the streets quiet and still. Another echoed boom rumbles. A dog barks. Faint sirens in the distance. The trickles of blood slide from the vinyl seat, dripping onto the linoleum floor below, seeped out from Melinda’s slumped body. I guess she’ll never know. And my open wound will never heal. We’ll just chalk the loss with the rest, put it up there with my hand. Another tragedy. Another day in the city. Business as usual.  

The sounds of the sirens grow, my muted cries carried along. I bring my attention back to the bartender. He’s lying there on the floor, back pushed up against the bar, his achromous stare fixed on the empty space that once held his arm. I return a hapless smile, and ask for the check.