Quiet of the Storm

*This story includes subjects of gore, violence, and abstractions of suicide. Please note before reading.

The wind kissed my arm like my Ma did on late summer evenings. Late summer evenings, like the ones where the moon was refracted in my window panes, or the ones when the horizon smiled with a pink dusted cheek. It was the kind of warm feeling that made you remember the cold. The sense of serenity I felt on those nights always prepared me for the sense of fear I knew I was fixing to have in my later years. Like when that big storm was coming, but all you felt was the wind brushing your arm and the clouded skies reflecting the light a little differently. 

Something about the smell of wind foreshadowed the impending fallen skies. It's how I felt when I saw the body, all crooked and mangled. She was young, a girl, I could tell. Her hair was matted and clumped, a lion's mane. Her legs were decorated in purple, blue and brown spots, bruised waxed apples. She was missing a shoe, so I could see her muddied toes. Reminded me of barefoot gravel walks home from the creek, buckets of crawdad in hand, on late July afternoons. She didn't smile quite the same as I did, with her mouth twisted. Her hair was the kind of blonde that faded and darkened in later years. My Ma always told me I came out like one of the surfer boys from California or what not. The sun had kissed my head through the thick skin of her belly. Now my hair is dark, with remnants of light, but only when my scalp is reminded of the sun the same way it was when I was in my Ma ´ s tummy. In my Ma's tummy, where my hair developed faster and better than the tunnels to my brain, which, I´ve been told, were not how they should be. I never heard the rain, nor any sound. Maybe that's why I didn't talk so well. Maybe that's why my Ma always looked at me the way she did, cause the doctors told her I was deaf.

So, just like my Ma, I bent down, grazing the back of my hand against the girl's cheek. Her dress reflected against her pale skin. Her mouth was open and she spoke in soft vibrations, words occasionally flying from her lips and breeding in the soft, bruised parts of apple skin. I bit into an apple once, and came out with a mouthful of worm. The squish of raw guts mushed with a waxy crunch. I remember the feeling between my teeth and my gums. Like how her skin fought so desperately to stay together, intertwined. I wanted to wrap her in twine, so her sourdough flesh would bake together and her body could keep its dignity. But still, her skin sloughed off bone, like ribs my Ma made me. The worms ate her insides and poked through pierced skin and her voice grew to be a stronger buzzing symphony. The kind of vibration that shakes the foundation of a house, a sensation I was familiar with. When the silence is not as strong as the wind against wooden beams, and the home moans and aches in a clouded sky. It was then in my nostalgic haze, I picked the girl up. Just like the way my Ma did to me.

I remember the day I found Ma. I wasn't sure when the rain started to pour the way it did, but I was certain of one thing. When it came, it started slow. But all too quickly the drops began to penetrate my skin and the hombre between the creek and the shore quickly dissipated. I didn't know when I was gonna make the journey home but I did know by the time I had decided, it was too late. When did the summer get so cold?

That moment pounded the roof of my mind, I didn't know why. Ma called it something like déjà vu. I smell it in the breeze, and see it in the trees dance. The sun was setting the same way it did when I was young, and the same way it will when the twine around my body bursts with expansion in me. I knew my tongue couldn't delicately paint words and thoughts the same way as others did. I could tell by the concerned gazes of strangers, when my mother inquired my young voice that went unheard by even my own ears. I could tell, most of all, by the disappointed tilt of my mothers head when we practiced enunciating her empty words. Pointing to her lips, as she pushed them open and closed in slow, gentle movements. When she completed what I assumed was a decorated sentence, she looked at me with thirsty and hopeful eyes. I didn't know what she said, but her hope was louder than any feeling I've ever felt. Hope that my vocal cords vibrate the way she wanted, because what mattered most was that no one knew. What mattered most was that the elegance of my speech hid the lack of hair in my ear canals, the bricked wall between the rest of the world and my voice. My tongue was just as eager as her gaze, so desperately I longed to speak the delicate prose that could never reach my ears. My mother longed for my speech, my voice to sing in vibrant hymns falling from the skies in powerful bursts, implanting themselves into the earth's crust. I longed for a feeling. Emotion. Understanding. To hear joy croak in windpipes and tears slide down slick cheek. I was certain the girl in my arms understood this. Her eyelids masked and her clouded blue eyes looked up at me. She, most of all, brought feelings. Understanding. Holding her made her my appendage, she needed not the convulsions of fleshy speech. Her subtle grin when I looked down insinuated her approval of my thoughts. She heard my voice, a feeling I never felt before. 

I remember the day I found Ma. I remember the feeling of chipped plastic in my hand, wrapped around tight wire. The rain collected in the bucket, and the vibrations that wrung through its volume was the only language I learned to hear. Standing in the rainy haze, I glanced desperately about. My senses were overwhelmed by the silence juxtaposing the wetness piercing my pores. I had no idea how to get home. Flashing through my head, was my moms hands writing cursive in the air. ¨Be sure,¨ her fingertips dancing in the oxygen ¨To be home before the storm. It's coming, and it's coming soon. I don't want you lost in the river.¨ Inhaled her words, and nodded eagerly. I must have exhaled too quickly, because the oxygenated prose never seemed to hit my brain. I was too busy, too busy thinking. I was well aware that it was on summer days like this, when that young girl in the woods would come out to play. It didn't look much like rain anyway. 

Holding her body in my hands was a hard task, but not because of the fullness of her body. Rather, Her body was light, despite the heavy consciousness I sensed in her. The challenge was the way her stomach protruded upward, desperate to burst. But, what was worse than the bloat, was her song. Her voice wrung through decaying fats and pore. It caused bits of her insides to fall to my feet, leaving a permanent trail in soil. I asked her to hush, but her gums jut out flapping wings, rubbing regurgitated flesh and seizing antenna. I ate a worm in an apple once. It wasn't as bad as the way my Ma always described. 

I remember the day I found Ma. On Wednesdays in June, a young girl found herself on my side of the creek. I didn't see girls too much, but I didn't see boys too much neither. But once I'd seen this girl, I knew something was special. So, on Wednesdays in June, I wandered to the creek with two buckets for crawdad catching. I imagined the girl liked crawdads about as much as I did, and she would be thoroughly impressed when I showed her how to catch them in the creek without rustling up the muddy bottom. You don't want to rustle up the muddy bottom. Then the other crawdads and creatures know you're coming. But every time I saw her gentle blonde hair being kissed by the moss tinted sunlight, I didn't know what became of me. The muddy bottom got all rustled up, and I couldn't do nothing but sit out of her sight, and watch the way she skipped about the wood and water. I guess I didn't know much about catching crawdads after all, just how not to rustle the muddy bottom. 

From where I found the girl, the walk wasn't too bad. About a mile or two. It was a perfect storm finding you, I told her with familiar hum. I didn't leave my house much, not ever at all. But sometimes when I'm craving a treat, I go out and forage for berries. My Ma didn't know much about teaching tongue, but she certainly knew how to satisfy it. When summer plants bursted and juices dripped from ripe cores, she sent me out so she could make cobblers. Now in my lack of listening, I never lacked watching. I was good with my hands, and I learned to speak in fast motions. I found the berries with great pride, and watched the cobbler making real good. I copied the same motions as Ma when she did them, so now that I'm old, I mimic them well. The summer air intoxicated me intensely, and I just needed my Mas cobbler. But to my surprise, I assume the girl has the same intent, and we met in humble adoration. I don't want cobbler much any more, but a pretty girl deserves it. I remember the day I found Ma.

The girl never came that day. It was a sense of relief and disappointment all together. She always made me feel a way, it was good. But I'm not quite sure it was allowed. I never saw many girls, or many boys. But I do know, on rare occasions when Ma took me into town, that something wasn't allowed. Walking through the town and locking eyes or waving to a kid about my height, and feeling my mom pull my hand so that I would be hidden behind her floral skirt and large bosom. I don't think watching the girl at the creek was allowed. So I never told Ma, but I always came home with my chin to my chest to hide my pink flustered cheeks. I always felt bad about my deceitful meetings, so on days the girl's feet were clean from the freshwater, my thoughts were a confusing combination of relief and woe. However, on that particular day, it struck a little fear in me, not seeing. But I buried that down in rotted leaves, planted my buckets on a grounded rock shore, and looked for a cretaceous tail. I noticed it got dark quickly, but in case the girl had decided to arrive late, I needed to stay just a moment longer. Just a bit longer. 

When I arrived home with my eagerly singing friend, the rain had begun. It fell on her tearing skin, I could tell it hurt. For the last bit of our hike my feet pranced in rapid pace, so that the increasing downfall didn't untie the twine wrapped around the girl's limbs. 

I remember the day I found Ma. That's when it started. The rain came down slowly at first. No worries at all. I always like the rain, and despite my lack of understanding of the sound of plopping drops, I always felt it. On my skin, in the subtle soft movements of the leaves and bark. It was the music notes between the lines, instead of the symphony I never heard. But boy, I could read the music of the rain. I forgot what my Ma had said about beating the storm, I was too busy feeling the sound of droplets disperse in water. It was when the rain came down hard enough to muddle muddy bottom, I decided it best to leave. I walked out the forest, unexpected for what I saw in the clearing. Poorly did I account for my umbrella of leaves above me, and when the trees no longer offered sanctuary, the rain blocked my view just like the walls in the cartilage of my ears. My heart sank quickly. I saw no right, no left, no direction but a rainy haze. I called out, but who could hear the sound from my mouth if not even I knew how to describe it? I dropped my buckets, and ran, with no direction or sense. Doing nothing more, than longing to see my mothers finger tips carefully touching pink lips, waiting for me with the same anticipating gaze. 

The girl was quiet when I opened the door, and by then the rain had fallen with more violent intent. Her voice has gone with the rain falling harder, so the waves from the rain came stronger than waves from her tongue. My house wasn't much, but I had built it with my own calloused hands. The woodstove was steel and rusted. Lighting it up with orange haze, I placed her body gently next to it. It was the warmth, I had hoped, that would alarm the voice inside her, enticing her song once more. It had resulted in quite the opposite. I saw her voice crawl in silence out of bruised skin. It crawled from her apple core, bursting the twine around similarly calloused bone. Leaving in a desperate manner, the arthropodic creatures fluttered off with buzzing wings and desperate paws. Her voice was the loudest I felt, till quickly the heat touched the iridescent skin, her song lit in flame. Fireworks of flesh from a torn body. 

I remember the day I found Ma. I remember only thinking of my mother. Not the girl at the creek. Not the crawdads hiding in decaying plants. Only the way she kissed my arms on summer evenings, or the way her cursive words intoxicated the air so I may inhale it, feel it within me. I yell out, moving my lips in the same pattern she had taught me. When I found her again, she no longer had the anticipatory gaze. It was empty. Eyes pasted open. Her voice, I understood for the first and last time. 

It was not long after the bugs left her body that the tears streamed down my face. She was gone, gone again. The very same arm that protected me from cruel public gaze, had pulled me away from her. I picked up her falling parts, and again entered the portal of rain. I found myself in the same scene, forested umbrellas protective again. The creek had risen with oceans from the sky. The bed was soft again, and mud rose and fell in a disarrayed pattern. So I walked, no fear of destroying the brown bed. I walked till water reached my hip, chest and neck. Till the water filled my ears like a sound I never heard. My mouth opens and closes like the way my Ma taught me. I know then, the more my ears flood, the more I fulfill her anticipating gaze. Pride, as the weight of my clothes and worn down shoes carry the girl's body, and the appendage that I am, into a muddy rustled creek. Crawdads picking at calloused skin.

I remember the day I found Ma. I found my mother in the rain. I saw her body, all crooked and mangled. Her hair was matted and clumped, a lion's mane. The matted knots were primarily brown, but with blonde streaks. The kind that faded with time. Her legs were decorated in purple, blue and brown spots, a bruised apple. She was missing a shoe, so I could see her muddied toes. Her stomach was sunken like her eyes. The blood of the clouds fought with the blood of her stomach, creating an eerie pattern. The branches that had so easily shaded me had fallen upon her breast, tormenting her insides. The storm was viscous as flame, throwing debris across the field and through my mothers heart. My flooded ears failed to catch her serenade of screams, music I know to only by sight. My mother never taught me to speak. My ears never learned to hear. But something we always understood, was knowing careful observation. We taught each other to watch. But watching was in vain when the blanket of falling rain covered up my mothers dying breath. I remember the day I found Ma, and felt like when I came home after peering at that girl who played in the creek on wednesdays in june. It felt like I had done something I wasn't allowed to. Stick through her heart, rustling up the mud inside her. Rustling up the mud, scaring the crawdads away. Gone.

I looked down, water in my vision but still I could see. She smiles at me. I imagine when the storm subsides, our bodies will be found mangled on the shore. The sun will shine the same, and our eyes will be pasted open in observation. The winds will kiss my bare skin, just like My Ma did on late summer evenings. Late summer evenings, like the ones where the moon was refracted in my window panes, or the ones when the horizon smiled with a pink dusted cheek. The only difference; the winds chilled kiss even in summer skies.