Yacob

The normal clink of the iron bars closing behind Yacob was the final sound heard by his ears for a while.

Everything else blurred into a distinct humming, a humming people hear right before they go off to the location they wish never to meet again. Yacob had that humming, that gut feeling, that zoned out mind numbing feeling.

No one came to pick Yacob up, the heavens were opening, thus family and friends used the slickened old Crossroad as an excuse for Yacob to return home alone after three years. But Yacob didn’t need anyone there, because an old familiar pull of home leads him down the badly built car park of the state prison and to the old post sign bus stop. Where it didn’t take long for one to pull up, empty of people for fear of ex-cons; protective plastic barriers for the driver.

The 10 dollars given to Yacob became 6, he would need a bus card to get the cheaper rates. That required a bus to town, a bus going the opposite direction. For now, Yacob tugged at the familiar pull and it tightened and twisted into a guilty knot, watering eyes with pinprick pains.

Leaning his forehead against the humid window gave relief to his grief headache but only made certain memories spin around and around like a dancer on slick ice.

It reminded him of the night before everything happened. In that emerald green and velvet hotel room, structured with golden trim. It had taken so long to save and even longer to be known enough to gain access to the most exquisite of hotels.

The Jade was the best. And they deserved the best, Yacob had promised her the best and only the best for the final days leading up to the qualifiers.

The silk sheets, firm beds, and exquisite food would have given them a good rest from constant training. It was a treat, a refresher, something to enjoy Tabitha.

After hours of ice dancing, the two had been left sore and exhausted. That lactic acid pulsing through their muscles, and so Yacob was right about the separate firm bedrooms and their silk sheets. Only the best comes from exhausted people obtaining a superb sleep the night before, exhausted bodies pushed by sharp minds. No pills this time to help the struggling sleepers.

Tabitha did not need to know?

Pills that weighted down Yacob’s backpack. The angles above knew and so they fluttered their wings in a guilty humming against Yacob’s ears.

Those pills last a long time, so long, well into your set on the ice.

Yacob could see them clearly then, the feathers brushing his ears, the soft hands holding Tabitha's head in a mocking gesture. Wings extended everywhere, curling up nostrils, poking ears, grazing skin; and the soft multiple eyes of a strange angle wept with some eyes and stared with knowing with others.

Yacob said he would rather go on the ice slightly tired than high.

Your dreams and mine, both, hinge on my promise to you and the angles in the heavens that listen. I promise Tabitha, I won’t take those pills.

Yacob had sat in his own jade room with golden trims, for hours. There is no rest for those afflicted by the angle of sleep. For they brush metal feathers across your cheeks, jolting the body from the slumber.

Good because I have a feeling about this set. I have a feeling about tomorrow like angles and God has blessed tomorrow and is watching it with excitement.

But Yacob was tired and those pills just sat there, burning a hole. Heating up by the starring fire of angles and Yacob together. Yacob was just so tired and the angles metal feathers were so sharp, so those little pills slid down a dry throat and the jade and gold spiraled into a slick oil painting of one. Walking the room to the firm bed proved harder the longer it took, thus having a break was needed.

One that took against the winter window, but leaning only made the spinning worse, and yanking back only leads to a headfirst slump backward.

The ground is firmer than the bed anyway.

This time, however, yanking one's head back from the dizzying realm, only revealed a preferable empty bus isle.

“End on the line. Jade Rink,” the driver half turned with a crinkly look and grey watchmen eyes, “figured this is where you would want off.”

Yacob slid between the chairs and slunked to the front, only to see Snow Rink in bright blue plastered across the rink's exterior.

“Name change?”

“Yeah, after you left and when the reporters and hassling community remained”

Once off and once the driver stopped talking the doors slammed shut behind Yacobs back. So close that his jacket was slightly caught, but not caught enough to stop him from walking free. A little snip, a sting, the bus driver wanted a little revenge but wasn't man enough to say or do anything more.

The car park had changed over the years, with some new plants and spots but overall the skeleton of a simple car park remained the same. Three double parking rows with a snaking flow. It was empty, and Yacob knew that a tournament must have happened the previous day, that was the only time people took a break, to celebrate.

I promise you I won't do it. I won't make that mistake again. You can trust me. You trust me?

I trust you.

The doors still slid open with the typical thunk of old age, the lights, however, had a new tinted blue flavour to them. New bulbs to go with the new name. New snowflake patterns and periwinkle accents scattered the walls, the old lockers to the right of the reception now were a stainless white.

In front of the half, wall reception laid three new wooden benches, they use to be a rusted metal, and behind the half wall of the reception, in front of the rows of rentable skates, a familiar yet older face. Significantly older, related by blood but not her, she was gone.

“Miss G?”

The woman yanked her head back in shock, quickly to disgust.

“It’s 6 dollars to rent skates.”

Yacob palmed the 6 dollars down on the reception table at the same time that blades were thrown.

In the icy silence that followed, Yacob sat on the new benches and laced up the skates. Out of the corner of his eye, seeing the distinct movements of someone putting on their winter coat.

Yacob glides from the bench, as though already on the ice, and pushes through the wonder door to the left of reception. Only through excitement does Yacob tumble to remove the blade cover, on the final tumble he slightly hops. Although to him it feels like a leap, a leap of freedom, back into the cocoon of a protective mother.

Ice thuds and metal sizzles as Yacob glides effortlessly back home onto the ice, back to the center. In the center where the first position is taken, arm stretched to the heavens the other down to hell, eyes softly closed feeling the chill in the air. A small glance to the left and Yacob has returned. The ethereal music fills the room and out of the corner of his eye, he sees the daughter of the reception woman. But the ethereal music feels lulling and the face that should have been so clear was hazy and oily from the long-lasting effects of nighttime mistakes from the curse of addiction.

Music stops. There is silence. The spotlights flicker like fuzz in his vision and the oil painting of Tabitha smiles from her mouth but not her eyes, the smile for the people and the windows of disappointment for him. The music starts, filling everyone's lungs in excitement.

Yacob begins.

This time the dance is structured and fluid, not like before when he felt as though his body and soul were made of cotton.

Yacobs moves in sync with the ice and moves in sync with the oil memory.

Here comes that move. Just a simple parallel spin. Oil is slick. And as the set gets further and further in, the fuzzy lights, the ethereal music, and the blurring oil partner start to merge into one.

Yacob can hear the slice of flesh and the thud of her skull, but Yacob pretended it was only someone dropping their ice skates on a hard surface far away from him.

There were people screaming at Yacob to stop, but Yacob kept going.

Spin after spin.

Jump after jump.

The oil and fuzz and ethereal kept merging until slicker blood grasping at Yacobs skate yanked him down to be beside Tabitha. The angles calling him to bare witness, as the fuzzy light in her eyes faded, her oil form turning into something solid, leaving behind not music but screams of horror and a slick red staining perfect ice.

Yacob, reliving all, woke up from the reoccurring nightmare. Thinking to awake in his tiny cell only to be harshly reminded of the ice beneath his hands, thighs, back, and skull.

An angle of doom stood over, in all her looks she was not Tabitha but Miss G but Yacob could only see Tabitha but could only hear Miss G.

“I…”

“Don’t Yacob. There ain't nothing you can say that will ever fix this. No amount of apologies, charities, donations, or years of sobriety can ever make this okay,”

Tabitha spat with disgust in such a Miss G way, in Miss G’s voice. Vile and poison were Miss G’s words. It was almost like there were two Tabitha’s, Tabitha Tabitha and Tabith Miss G, one hovering behind like an angle, watching with a million eyes. The other a fire that pierced the soul of Yacob.

Yacob couldn’t help flicker between the two beings.

Turning her head away to the celling Tabitha Miss G spoke.

“We got it painted after you were sent to prison for murder,”

Spinning on her skates to look up at the marvel ceiling and away from the hell floor, Miss G said the words Yacob feared the most.

“There ain't nothing child, nothing that you can do. You know that right? Pfft, course you do!”

Spinning back Miss G became a blackened angle with ash wings and black tears. The angel of death looked over him and with disgust shouted with her whole body the next words. Wings flared and fingers pointing to his blackened soul.

“All you had to do was not take the pills. You promised,”

You did.

“Nothing in your goddam life can ever bring back her life. No amount of redemption will ever be enough because there is no fucking redemption for this. You KILLED my daughter Yacob, your drugs were more important than a life, her life. Look at her, look how beautiful she was. Now, pft, by now shes probably some blackened skin, bones and bugs. LOOK AT HER!”

He did.

There she smiled on the roof, in an orchestra of white, blue and gold. A heavenly angle, forever bound to watch over the ice that she passed on.

“What can I do to make this better Miss G?,”

“Nothing,”

“please Miss G,” through chocking sobs Yacob uttered his final words, “I never got a chance to make amends Miss G, you never came to see me, how could I, please tell me what to do, Im so scared,”

Miss Tabitha G leaned down over his fallen body and placing two hands upon the frozen ice, one on each side of his head.

“I already told you there ain't nothing you can do, even if you did do something. It would never be good enough, even death ain't good enough,”

Sliding her hands to gracefully cradle his fallen skull Miss G spoke as Miss G. Not as Tabitha Miss G or as angle Miss G, but as Miss G.

“You should pray my love. Pray that God gives you a better life in the next one,”

Yacob vigorously shaking his head silently pleaded please and no to the deaf Miss G.

“Shhhh sweetie,” was whispered ever so softly by Miss G, a shivering sensation she sent through those words.

“You should also pray that in your next life, God puts you in a country without a death penalty,”

Miss G stood, stood as though she hadn't just been leaning on the ground with a killer and stoically turning, she slid off the ice.

Upon the closure of the reception door from which she slithered into.

The lights proceeded to go out.

Leaving Yacob cold and alone in the dark, such as a clique. With the bound ice angle watching over from a heavenly throne.