The Night Spirit and the Alabaster Tent

In the suburban dullness of Silicon Valley, inside a middle class house with a brown lawn and broken tree lives an overweight, fifty year old engineer, slouching on his coach, his yellowed, strained eyes seeking solace on his iphone. He scrolls down his Youtube feed and has never felt inclined to spend time with his children because he never knew how to communicate with them and the children have long ago ceased to desire his company. Above him is a counter where sits a bourbon glass already previously refilled three times, and the plain house, assaulted by harsh bright lights, endures the noisy volumes of concert music, shrieking foxes (have you ever seen a fox laugh before? click now!), and Marvel clips.

In the house, there is his wife. A tall, severely introverted woman whose social hour peaks in earbuds. And podcasts. The daughters are unseen, closed off into their rooms. The older sister splayed on her bed argues with people on Reddit while the younger sister shakes her laptop screen and smashes away on LoL. Everyone has gone their separate ways..devices. Roald Dahl surely wept!

Now, sometimes all four members would sit in front of the tele and someone would slide in a movie disk and it'd begin playing. But even then, the teen would cough and go on her phone, the older sister on hers, and the wife naturally following suit, head between earphones. So the engineer is left watching by himself, oblivious to the loss of family time. None appear to be breathing. And despite the ricocheting sounds of machine guns and flying bullets on the tele, the screams of anime gore on the older sister’s ipad, and the Kpop dance sequence on the teens’ iphone, the invisible Spirit who sits on the cheap IKEA lampstand, sees the lineup as so so empty.

And the Spirit has watched them for a very long time. It knows that this family echoes families everywhere in this neighborhood, as it has looked into other peoples’ homes and always discerns in them the same root. The Spirit is fond of humans, and seeing their blank faces and their impossibility to change, its heart breaks. There is more to family than this. The Spirit touches their faces but its hands fall back, hurt. In despondence, the Spirit leaves the living room, traveling out to the stars in the sky where the world is far better and brighter from up high.

As if feeling the departure of the Spirit, the engineer huffs and switches the movie off. He heaves a sigh. Some things can’t be helped. Although he is sometimes startled by his own aggressive impulse to grab a bat and smash the living hell out of the television screen, toss out the cables and computers along with his daughters’ iphones, and live as some sort of Luddite minimalistic monk, he is used to this. Used to being alone and not knowing what the heck his silent wife is thinking, and the children keeping to themselves though secretly they are very dreadfully lonely.

Outside, the Spirit has floated up to the stars and greeting them in warm salutations, quietly whispers to them the tragedy down below. As the Spirit and stars converse, they settle on a beautiful plan :)

Inside the house, as the family continues with their immobile activity, the electricity is strangled. It chokes and then stops. All four family members look up from their gadgets as the buzz and noise clocks out. The stingy lights shut off and the whirs of the washing machine and fridge dies. The quiet is abrupt and awkward, as if embarrassed by the sudden entree. The skylight on the ceiling pours onto the family and furniture, a subtle, blue hue. The interior of the house cools into a soft moonlight. The walls are washed pearly white. They are inside a seashell, cast aside on a beach shore. The full moon shining its light through the conch. Or they're in a dark aquarium tank. A ship sinking under a finished storm.

The teen girl in her room pulls off her headset, gets up, and opens the latches on all the windows, swinging them out to breath in the sweet, rustic air of trees and wet dew that lovingly kisses her cheeks and permeates the house like a sage. The crickets creak out their full song. Her giggle is a little cry. Hand on her chest, she feels an unknotting in her chest and a relief in her head that she was unawarely deprived of for years.

On cue, the wife lights up pink, blue, and white candles, nods in approval, and sits among them like the silently efficient lady she is. The engineer fiddles with flashlights, teasingly shines it on his daughters. Like a schoolboy, he plays with the house cat in a game of chase-the-yellow.

The older sister takes off her glasses and rubs her tired eyes, stretches her back, rubs her arms, and goes to her closet in search for a cardigan as the temperature drops frigid. Pulling on a Narnia worthy fur coat, she does some massaging neck turns. Suddenly feeling alive and energetic, she then does a couple of jumping jacks, squat jumps, and then slides open the screen door and dashes her bare feet across the backyard with the teen laughing and tripping after her.

With the sudden turn of circumstances, the four gather back in the hallway. In a few exchanges of words and mutual understandings, they split off through the candle lit house, searching for materials needed to pitch a tent outside.

When the big tent is set and the overflow of blankets and pillows seduces the cat in, and the lanterns guard out front, the family marches in single file with each holding something essential. Clue mystery board games and fantasy books. Sketchbooks and card decks. The silent mother carries organic snacks in a picnic bundle of honey glazed yams, dried okra, brie cheese, fig jam, and toasted bagels. The sisters hold their steaming stacks of golden blueberry waffles, chocolate chip pancakes (more chocolate chip than batter), embedded panfried banana crisps, chopped walnuts, and fresh cold berries and kiwifruit aside on huge wooden trays. Warm maple syrup spills on all of the galore, accompanied by cups of almond milk and dark coffee.

"Breakfast at night..there are no words," the sisters think, and the cat regretfully sniffs in agreement.

The engineer father was the one who set up the tent. The tent was bought from Costco in family sized, big, green and orange. Costco is the man, man. The engineer father squats to inspect a beetle and munches on cucumbers for guilty free consciousness and feeds some to the cat who is also in need of nutritional balance. The silent mother sprays mosquito repellent on her lean limbs, lays out her mat on the grass, and solemnly does splits and somersaults and impossibly advanced yoga poses. She looks backs at the chickadees. The sleepy chickadees applaud back. The older sister is sorting out the food and cards inside the tent, and the teen who lifts the flap to the smell of waffles and is about to enter inside, glances up. Maybe she can spot a star.

The night is vast and its expanse empty, save for a dot of an airplane. The sky is bled dry and ugly. She is disappointed, but knowing it's the city, the city pollutants are probably to blame. She suddenly feels annoyed and childishly sentimental, like wishing for a shooting star. Wishing for a hopeful light in the dark. She declines her head and takes off her shoes.

Then the Spirit and its stars embrace her.

Her vision goes sightless. She panics as the night sky lifts her up. Like Peter Pan, like on a moon, she floats up feet first, and her body is flung upside down. She blindly grasps onto the flap of the tent but it slips through her fingers like wet glass as gravity kicks her up. Higher and higher up she goes, silently screeching her head off, the tent and her family on Earth shrinking until they disappear, her journey a whole torrent of riveting colors as the sky pulses and livens, blushingly offering her a million combinations of its mastery, until she is up in the blue white clouds and the night air and the massive yellow moon that stares. She is righted up and levitates in the moonlight, trying to regain her breathing.

"Maybe I've played too many video games," the teen thinks.

Then as her breath slows, a firefly lands on her nose. Spitting, she shakes her head and when the firefly whizzes and teases her in the face, it quickly zooms light speed away into the distance. It stops faraway on a flat cloud, a radiating circular glow. It beckons her, so she glides towards it. When she finally approaches, she sees its a tent. A small one just her height. Its cloth shimmers, an alabaster white painted in a sheen of gold. From the tent, it emits a warm, pleasant hum. She reaches out and peeks in. The gap is pitch black. Heart in her mouth, she drifts inside the void.

A sound of a swinging door shuts. She takes a sharp inhale in alarm and tastes fresh pine. How peculiar. A deeper inhale and the perfume of spicy firs and damp tree bark suggests a redwood forest is right in front. She enjoys this curious sensation, and when she steps once more inside the black fold, she feels gritty pebbles and stones under her feet. This is very odd. She's supposed to be catching up on the latest season of Killing Eve. Where in the name of Godfather is she? She was in a backyard and now she isn't.

Then the darkness blinks twice, and the great deep breaks open.

She stiffens. She had never met the stars. She had forgotten the mere image of them. 

But all at once, thousands and thousands of stars dazzle alight. Milky Ways and universes envelope her, heating her up. Floating orbs, exploding supernovas, orbiting planets and twinkling stars bob up and down, chase and tail back, bend and dance. Avoiding the blistering heat of passing fiery giants and supergiants, she passes her hand through swirls of midnight colors, mixes of dark blue, purple, and grey, ducks at stars whizzing past, and pokes at ones standing still. These ones are palm sized, cool and light when she holds one, and she slips a dwarf-star into her pocket. She is getting dizzy. Then an angel, no an elf, or a gossamer fairy, dipped in fiery white, approaches. It cups her cheek and kisses her and she feels a breeze, swirling her hair and playfully going around her in circles. Whispering truth and comfort.

Yes, comfort. It's comforting.

The Spirit smiles, tucks in her hair, and sends her back.

"Come in and close it.."

"Hurry, the wind is so cold.."

"Tam...Tammy...Tammy, wake up and play with me."

Someone is calling her name. Her older sister. Jace. Shaking her shoulder. The teen girl jolts up with pancake crumbs on her lips and forehead. She is in the Costco tent with the lantern and the spring cut grass outside. Books and artwork pages are everywhere. The tent flaps open and for a big man, the father gently slips in and picks up the round ginger cat drooling on its silk pillow. The mother tumbles headfirst into the sheets and grins, dirty leaves in her hair.

The time is 12:58 AM and the fun games of Throw Throw Burrito and Apples to Apples have just commenced.

Meanwhile, high above the neighborhood in the starry heavens, the Spirit and his stars revel at the sight of the growing number of pitched tents in backyards that glow, glowing inside with flashlights, laughter, dreams, snacks, and remembered stories.