Snow

((excerpt from my fiction novel about the after life))

 Tom reached out his hand to push the large wooden door, the light increased followed by a flood of the most lovely warmth.  “It’s rather busy tonight? Isn’t it?” Eira remarked.  “There must have been a match” Tom said gesturing to a group of men in a combination of dark and light blue.  Eira smiled “of course”.  The pub opened up before them; a mixture or warm dim light and dark earthy wood.  The bras of the chair legs reflected on their faces and gave the stacked pint glasses and eerie shine from behind the bar.  The plank wood floor creaked quietly as they walked.  He offered her his arm as they mounted the stair case and climbed to the second floor.  As Eira reached the top of the first staircase she glanced in the grand mirror.  It had been ages since she had been in this place, but the mirror still looked as it had always been, it’s intricately patterned frame sweeping gracefully round; a pool of images swimming in a brass box.  She stood admiring the mirror when in the reflection she thought she saw...but she couldn’t have.  How tired she was and how her eyes plaid tricks.  She furrowed her brow.  “Are you alright, dear?” Tom pried “are you?” she laughed.  The circumstances were odd “just get me that drink” she continued.  They came to the second floor and walked to first room.  “Our normal table seems to be occupied” Eira said with the raise of her eye brows at the group of rather rowdy men, celebrating soberlessly.  Eira sat down at a table across from their usual and flattened her skirt against her knees. ‘Pint?’ Tom asked ‘yes that’s fine’ she smiled and Tom kissed her on the cheek before heading to the bar.  Away from Eira he allowed his anxiety prevail.  He couldn’t begin to fathom what had happened, how he got here or why.  He closed his eyes tightly trying to remember something, anything of how he ended up in this place, but it was all blank, all dark, with no reasonable explanation. “You alright there?” Tom opened his eyes to find himself face to face with the stout and greying bar man.  Tom dropped his mouth a bit, the man looked very familiar “yes, I’m fine” he finally blurted though his brain still churned wildly. “Can I get you anything?” the bar man continued, he too was confused, not by Toms look but rather his behaviour.  “Lager and a cider” he sputtered examining the bar mans kind blue eyes, his wispy comb-over and his deep wrinkles, “pint or bottle?” “pint” Tom replied thoughtfully “are you sure you haven’t had enough there?” The barman smiled at him “Not a one” said Tom now with a breathless smile.  He felt his heart pound like 16-year-old trying to buy cigarettes and yet still, this interaction was all so very mundane.  The barman raised his eyebrows and walked away to get Tom’s drinks.  Tom leaned with his back to the bar.  Pursing his lips he surveyed the room, it was all familiar but a strange feeling persisted inside his frame, it was all simply...off. “Good man” came the voice behind him, he turned back to the bar to take his drinks from the man “keep the change” he muttered as he handed over the a tenner “but it’s only 6 euros 50?” said the barman “how?” said Tom, the bar man tilted his head at the question then got him his change. Tom wondered hastedely back to Eira.  He placed the drinks on the table and sat down.  “You alright, love?  You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.” “sure, I am now” He paused and rested his elbows on the table in front of him “it’s simply” he paused again, searching for the words to express his confusion and apprehension “simply what?” Eira pried “you know these drinks were only 6.50?” he blurted out.  Eira thought confused, attempting to read his face “yes, and?” she said “it’s very cheap don’t you think?” she looked at him for a moment, then a thought jumped into her head “well sure it’s Wednesday, they do a promotion on Wednesday; 3.25 a drink or something.  Don’t you remember that, sure has it been that long since we’ve had a night out” she smiled at Tom “poor man” she said “we’re workin’ ya...” “sure I remember the promotion” he interrupted “and sure I remember they haven’t had that promotion in nearly 10 years” his eyes were pressed and his face serious.  Eira sighed with a calm smile “well, they must have...reinstated it” Tom leaned back in his chair and took a long pull at his drink.  His eyes wondered out the window steeped in gold holiday lights, it was cold and raining like mad. “But doesn’t this feel weird to you?” he returned his serious demeanour back to her “strange, out of place...like de ja vou” “...we’ve been here a million time befo...” “not like this, this feels wrong, do you even remember how we got here, because I don’t!” Eira looked away too roll her eyes “ok, Tom would you stop it, you’re starting to...”out of the corner of her eye she saw it again, so this time she looked harder.  In the mirror in front of her was the image of a young woman, with dark hair and a large smile, she sat cross legged at the table on the opposite side of the bar “...upset...” she continued distractedly, and as she said the word the woman tucked her hair behind her ear revealing her face in focus “...me...” Eira said breathlessly, every hair on her neck was on end and a chill crawled up her spine, clinging around her neck “oh, my god” she said “it...it can’t be.” She moved her saturated blue eyes to meet Toms “what? What is it?” Tom’s heart leapt with worry “Tell me I’m dreaming” she whispered “or is that the girl you fell in love with 15 years ago?” She moved her eyes back to the girls slender frame and glowing face, Tom’s eyes followed hers “...tis” he replied, “I think it is”

A very different tune.

::this will eventually become a dark comedy, this is part of the first chapter of a fiction I have been going on and off with. It is very different from most of what I write::

What is tragedy?  Corine sat in the third row and turned her head to Hero who was two seats down.  There was an ocean between them.  Hero’s eyes burned as grief crawled up her neck in red splotches that itched like a wool turtleneck and slid down her spine like sweat in august, settling finally in her gut, sick with rage.  Yet she didn’t produce a tear.  Hero’s eyes met Corine’s and offered a stale smile of comfort returned by rolling tears down Corine’s already raw red face.  Hero returned her focus to the front with a deep breath and a light clearing of her throat.  It had to be open casket.  Janice finished singing and sat down…It was now time, they were told, to say their goodbyes.  Chase, who was on Hero’s left stood up first and plain faced offered his hand and helped her.  Hand in hand they walked up to the front of the room to say good bye.  Hero hadn’t seen him yet and when her face met that of her dead friend she first furrowed her eyebrows and then buried her eyes in Chase, whose squeezed her arm tightly. Eventually she turned back her softened face, her breathing audible as broken exhales.  She reached down and stroked his cold forehead as others gathered around the casket.  Corine hesitated at the edge of the room, filled with something, she couldn’t be sure, but she thought it must be fear.  “Fear of what?”  Taylor asked “it’s not the dead ones you have to look out for it’s the ‘live ones.”  She looked up at him with open mouthed horror, “he’s dead Cora” He grabbed her with his whole body and held her tight as she sobbed “He was a good kid, he was a good kid” was all she could say with her mouth full of the shoulder of his shirt.  “Yeah, he was a good kid” he reassured, the embrace now broken he looked her in the eyes “do you want to go see him?” “no.” She said…”Yes” she corrected, Taylor nodded and lead her over.  Corine slowed her breathing and prepared herself for the coming moments.  Ever muscle taut as they approached the light pine wood casket.  She looked in, starting her eyes at his feet, he was wearing the grey suit, the one her wore to prom just the year before.  As her eyes moved up his body to his hands she squeezed Taylor’s grasp…His hands…those hands…Jordan’s hands…they still looked like his, like Jordan may have left for good leaving only himself in his knuckles.  They were stiff with rigor mortise and unnaturally folded together but they still looked like Jordan.  Here on his hands she stopped her moving eyes and stayed, she took a deep breath, it was definitely fear that was stopping her from moving her eyes.  Then she did, she had to.  She took a breath and layed her eyes on Jordan’s face: Grayish green.  Lips ripped and coated over with dried blood, sunken eyes that had been forced closed now relaxed slightly open, a slit of white showing between each lid.  This was reality, this was death with no sugar coating, no smoothing over, nothing gentle, no easing into it; the true rude unromantic reality of death.  He was dead and a part of everyone in the room was too.  Corine had seen death before but not like this.  She had seen easy death, expected death, death that was a breath of relief to the old and boney who met death with open arms, crawled into bed with it and gracefully sank into a deep slumber arm in arm with the reaper.  This death was uncouth, dirty; it snuck up on you and smacked you in the face without telling you why, this was a demise of impact that shook the earth, ripped up the front lawn grass, death that ripped life away with a jerk, like tarring a thread from a tapestry.  That crude unfeeling despair that is only understood as a tragedy. 

A little bit of something. In refrence to leaving Dublin

I knew I was at an American terminal the moment I reached it.  I knew this not only by the understated wall-sized eagle majestically painted flying past a background of American monuments, and the preamble of the constitution fluttering softly in calligraphy down the opposing wall. No, all of these things were forgivable, expected even, what struck me were the people.  On the floor in front of me were two women who were ‘full-figured’. I sat there sobbing eating my bag of chips and my heart broking a little more with the crunch of each flake.  A rugged man, whose skin seemed to be graying with his hair came over to one of the large woman sprawled on the terminal floor “Ya’ll have your passports?” he said scratching his army tattoos as he reached down and pluck one of the woman’s passports. “NA-OH!” She exclaimed “it’s a terrible picture of me!” My eyes slide over her in my displeasure, Americans are far too loud, it was something I had forgotten.   While feeling upset, relishing this annoyance I wondered how much the people in the terminal managed to look less like humans and more like a ball of play dough that had been violently flung at the floor.  My sadness had so quickly jerked to anger. “Com’on” the tattooed man said “its smokin’…wish you could see your bellybutton ring, though.” As my pride cringed with the seething urge to interject my heartless, if not overdramatic opinion; I contemplated how fitting that this place was called a ‘terminal’.

I was in for the long haul: the 17 hour flight to California.  On my 12 hour flight to Chicago I squeezed my way past a friendly haggard man, wearing round glasses and a button down T-shirt, on his legs were kyakies.  As is unavoidable on these trips he began a conversation with me.  I can’t remember what he began with but I do remember that I interrupted him in a conversation ending roar of sorrow, most of which came cascading through my nasal cavities.  The man offered some sort of confused reassurance to me calling on both the powers of metaphor and Kleanex both of which I refused.  The man, only slightly half heartened by my denial of his invitation to listen to him brag about his holiday turn his gaze to his knees and back around to the man who had sat down while I was sobbing.  I saw the middle man’s hopefully eyes slashed with sadness as the man in the aisle seat began to laugh unnecessarily loud at the in flight NBC sitcom on the headrest sized television in front of him.  ‘This poor middleman’ I thought to myself, strapped in between comedy and tragedy for the next bumpy 12 hour flight.