Anima

A story by Keith Croes

Soft tugging and his head bobbed backwards. The scissors ground through the curl that swept from the thicket on the back of his neck, the snapping hairs falling on her random wind before the rising metallic whistle of the blades. Her random morning wind beneath her jagged sky. He was chilly under the towel draped over his bare shoulders. Chilly and sleepy as the scissors snipped from one side to the other across the base of his neck.

-- This is a hard life for you, she said. Her voice was as if he stood far enough from a dragon to warm himself on the searing breath. Stood on her mountain with his back to the conflagration. Knowing, throaty power barely at bay.

The curl had always bothered him in college. Now he preferred short hair. It was in the Bible somewhere, how a man should have short hair.

-- Close your eyes.

She passed in front of him, darkening the dark behind his eyelids, working the comb in both directions away from his part.

He dozed with clicking full in his ears. Then the scissors and comb were in his hand.

-- Do not look back.

He stood and shook out the towel, black locks like tossed bugs that would soon wash against the rocks, then groped down behind him for the khaki shirt. With the towel doubled, he daubed at his neck and shoulders and made his way through the gray jutting crags down the slope to the prefab, wondering that there was no path, no sign that he had ever trod there.

No sign of anyone. Stubborn, stony ground, her wind, her rain eradicating every trace. Day by day he was a transient, leaving nothing. She allowed him the prefab, the half-cylinder of curving corrugated metal.

Around midday she sent the boy.

You have touched me, here is your debt, he imagined her saying. He lay on his bunk, staring at the rough, rippled ceiling. The room was bright. Perhaps the rain would hold off.

The child was scrabbling before the open door. Tot sounds. The low wind fluttered around the room.

-- And then you take a great, big buncha powerful stuff -- explosives! And WAH-WOOOOOOM!

A rackety handful of small stones slapped the floorboards near the doorway, a neck of dust stretching up in the sparse sun, drifting in. Smell of dirt roads startled by his old Chrysler, fat Michelin's plowing up the Nebraska farmland. windy laughing light brown hair next to him, cornsilk fine. Bleached jeans. His hand amazed at its acceptance against the taut clean breast under the dirty T-shirt.

Thunder.

He stood and cupped his dick through his pants, rearranged it. Time to go.

-- Hey, me too!

The boy's arms latched onto his leg. He headed left and down. A path as wide as a good state road. Same old dying snaking trunks on each side, reaching.

-- Wait up!

He walked. Same as he always walked, finding a stick that could be a sword that could be plunged into a dragon's heart. Not yet. No use doing it now. The boy ran burbling from side to side, mountain on the right, valley on the left.

-- Hey, I love you, Dad!

Crunchety-crunchety. The boy caroming off him, singing. The barkless stick in his hand. A kind of smooth pale wood.

-- And we're surrounded! But the enemy -- ho, hoooo! Little do they know. We've got the super power thingy -- grenades and x-ray vision! Stuff like that!

Here. He made the first arrow, scratching it in the dirt with his stick. Kept walking. The second arrow. Kept walking. The third arrow. Down the path, down, until he was walking up. An arrow pointing back at him. The second arrow. The first.

He used to turn around, try again. Try, try again. Scratch new arrows. Come up against four or five rows, rows of arrows pointing down. Down the path. The seamless turnaround path.

-- Ha-ha! Woooooooo! Let's go home!

The boy followed like a pestering bumblebee up the hill, tiny pumping legs circling and weaving. Leather belt around the tiny waist missing the back loop of a new pair of jeans dirty at the knees, folded up twice blue-gray at the cuffs. Plaid flannel shirt tucked in by a careful mommy. Neatly trimmed hair midnight black not a week from the barber's chair, the striped pole twirling, swirling itself up forever up.

Near the prefab his eyes swam, his hand seizing the misrouted belt, a clutch of jeans. The boy easily up to his shoulder.

-- Wooooooo! in his ear, then trailing off quickly to silence, the random pounding wind, the silent groping body disappearing behind a long low crop of angular rock, serrated gray down the bank.

Her random screaming wind down the mountain.

He lay on his bunk, his boots an arm's length away, feet itchy in wool socks. Five empty bunks around him dark behind the bolted door against the darkening sky. He unzipped his pants

-- I cannot come now!

"I can."

Bonnie Hilyard in the back of his Chrysler. Maybe throw in a little Susan Edwards. A brunette and a blonde, eager little heads, hungry fearless little lips. The wind pawed at the door, spread and crept up the metal roof, regrouped, shook and pummeled the first sheet of rattling rain.

That's it, Bonnie. There you go, Susie. Rain harder now, thunderous walloping splashing rivulets in the wrinkles of the roof, the ricocheted spray an aura around the prefab allowed its hold on the side of the mountain, a deafening white fuzz on the metal beneath the dark swirling thunderheads, swirling up the peak forever up.

Five empty bunks frozen in the ice-light flash through the windows, sky-ripping thunder. Take it. Take it.

Take this.

The rain slowed, quit. He lay on his bunk, itchy feet rubbing one against the other. No trace of the bodies after a day or two, five patches of charred ground washed down her ragged slope, burnt flesh like black bugs at the base of the rocks for a day or two, a sooty smelly scrum and gone. Cut pointy hairs still under his shirt collar, itchy.

He slept until he woke, then finished off a can of beans. She didn't come that night and he missed her.

There were three more afternoons of petulant storms before she came again as she always did, at night, seeming to knock politely at the door before entering like a projected dream. Always different, this time an aging cinema queen in sequins, still pulse-quickeningly sensuous, wide hips and a swell of belly curving out of her crotch, huge breasts wondrous in their girth and firmness. She sat in a chair across the table from him and made a face. He was drinking gin straight from a white foam cup.

-- You shouldn't treat our child like that.

He swallowed and shrugged.

"I'm a lousy father."

-- You're a soldier.

He snatched nonchalance out of the air as a snake tongue spears the telling aromatic molecules.

"Why do you say that?"

-- You were all soldiers. Sent to kill me.

"I'm still a lousy father."

-- Oh, I don't know. She rocked from side to side and pressed her grasped hands into her lap. I think you could be a good father. You just need someone to bring it out.

He tipped a fast warm wash into his mouth, felt it spread.

-- You shouldn't drink so much. Pouting red lips centered in soft curling blonde.

"Why not me?" His rough fingers snagged around the cup on the table.

-- What?

"Why didn't you kill me?"

-- You were...the strongest. There's more food now. But I still might kill you. I can kill you at any time.

He sat shirtless and tilted a plastic bottle, filling his cup with a noisome gurgling.

"Plenty of gin, too."

-- Here. She stood, her hair falling forward, and thumbed each thin strap over her shoulders, peeling the top of the tight dress down with sparkles from the bare incandescent bulb behind her, almost silhouetted through his droopy eyes, her nipples dark dots. Why do it yourself when I can do it for you?

They made love. As always it was everything he'd ever wanted.

Morning fought inside a hazy bag, punching out of an old song. Ring around the rosie, pocketful of posie, ashes, ashes...

-- We all fall down!

The down was a squeal. The sun only came in the morning, angling full of motes through the back windows. Clanking and clinking. The kid's near the sink. All's right with the world. Snapshots as the eyes open only for moments. There he is under the chair, bent over a rung, reaching. There he is sitting an arm's length away, picking his nose, smiling. There he is flat on the floor rolling something toward the open door, something like a coin. There he is near the foot locker.

-- We all fall dowwwnnn!

A small black box with its limp appendage dangling between his fingers.

"Hey, get away from that!"

Sweat gave his bare feet a biting traction on the floorboards, the odd sharp stone plunging in unnoticed, cock flapping against his thighs. The boy's startled face inches from the exhaling slam of the foot locker, a fistful of kicking jeans out the door into the chilly morning.

"This is me!"

Sharp stones sticking, embedded in his soles, unnoticed. Marching up the path to the end of the prefab, valley on the right, serrated rows of tundra-gray rock down down. He held the boy dangling from his outstretched arm toward the mountaintop.

"This is me!"

The arm and the boy passed across to his side, ready to fling the strong smooth arc, out sailing out. Were there piles of little bones down there? Spatters of ragged jeans and flannel shirts washed against the rocks? He bowed, down down, and the boy lowered to his hands and knees in the dirt.

"This is me." Choking, barely audible.

He dropped, sharp stones embedded in his knees, unnoticed. The boy in his arms. Hugging, life against his life.

"This is me."

The random wind pulsed.

A cry tore from his solar plexus, brought him to his feet and the silent groping figure of the dark-haired boy flew, disappeared among the toothed rocks in the valley below. He ran.

The first hot cylinder of licking fire brought him to a dead stop, a chunk of flesh folding back from his great toe. The boiling lance leaping from the mountain's summit cooked the meat of his chest for a moment, a red searing blinding path wilting back the hairs under his upstretched arms. He fell back, crouched and sprang, little blood tracks sprinting in zig-zags, batting eyes full of afterimages.

The mountain took a breath.

Almost to the door, behind him a whooshing crackling descent to the side of the prefab, popping sound of vaporizing dust, shriek and groan of expanding metal, his naked shadow before him, leading him frantically inside.

Sprawled on the floorboards across the odd sharp stone.

-- I love you!

A debt or a gift? All the same. Head craning around, he watched the glowing red spot on the wall shrink and fade. Creaking and snapping.

Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

He crawled to a bag beneath the head of his bunk, pushing his boots aside, and reached in for a first-aid kit, smiling.

With the tinny blood-taste of canned fruit in his mouth, he walked gingerly down the turnaround path before the afternoon rain. She spoke to him.

-- Why do you do this?

"Someday I'll catch you napping."

Parry parry thrust with the barkless stick. His toe throbbed.

-- I want you to stay. I want you to want to stay.

"Why?"

He felt her retreat and return with anger.

-- Are you a soldier?

"All men are soldiers."

-- You would kill me as you do our son. Flat. Emotionless. He could feel her worry.

"I want out."

-- Not always.

He carefully etched an arrow. Kept walking.

"No, not always."

-- You are safe here.

"Right." Another arrow. One step. Two steps. There. A turning. She laughed.

He strode past the arrows, parry parry thrust.

"Will you come tonight?"

-- Why?

"I want you."

Retreat. Return.

-- Yes.

The twisted trunks reaching.

That night she knocked and entered, a skinny redhead with boyish hips and tiny butt. While he was in her from behind, watching the puckered anus, the flesh of the buttocks inflated like yeasty bread, grew mushy to the touch. He leaped off the bunk and she swelled and sagged and rolled to face him, gross tits jogging on bloated rolls of fat speckled with black-haired moles, a grin of rotting teeth and patchy beard, sick sparse scraggy hair and a man's voice.

-- Interesting.

"What is this?"

-- You tell me.

He stamped his foot and turned away, swallowing vomit.

"Get it out of here!"

Obnoxious chuckle. The mouth opened in an 0, a waggle of tongue at the bottom.

"Get out! Out!"

Gleeful insane laughter passing his shoulder and cold stubby fingers snaking around for his penis, squeezing. The smell of infection.

He crashed into his bunk amid the five empty bunks.

"Never do that again," he begged, and the laughter echoed. Rumbling chuckling thunder.

WAH-WOOOOOOM!

Day to day he was a transient, leaving nothing, even his waste washed down her mountain, cleansed. He could scratch a line on the path now, back off a ways and leap into the turning, land where he left, seamless.

His palm sought the back of his neck. Ashes, ashes.

A long running charge and up, the ground passing below, seamless.

-- Why do you do this?

"I want out."

-- Tonight you will not want out.

"Tonight's tonight."

The boy had love in his eyes day to day, the sing-songy carefree face irreverent as the random wind held in his hands until he found the eyes. He killed him once, maybe twice and then not again.

-- I love you. Her grasping ass grinding back.

"I love you."

Feeling the curl that always bothered him in college. One more haircut, a long tedious process packing the plastic explosive beneath the ledge of rock, his seat at her summit. His barber chair. One lump at a time. One final lump and the detonator, a small black box with a dangling antenna. He climbed, clutching a flapping towel, comb and scissors knocking in his shirt pocket.

"A man should have short hair."

-- Why?

"It's in the Bible."

-- Come, come. Impatiently.

He looked out on the land and it was a jagged womb, a serrated maw of morning valley shadow.

-- Do not turn around.

Shouldering out of his shirt he backed up until rock met the bend of his knees.

-- Close your eyes.

A voice like warming his hands on a distant volcano, terrible power barely in check. The scissors and comb rose up out of his grasp. He shivered, drawing the towel around him.

-- It is a hard life for you, she said. Throaty rumbling fire. But sometimes you like it, don't you?

His hand slipped beneath the stone seat, the small black box embedded in a final plastic lump, unnoticed. Ashes, ashes, swirling up forever up like the barber pole on a side street of a small town in Nebraska.

He dozed, clicking full in his ears. His fingers used to twirl against the curl, trying to straighten it. Tossed black bugs fluttering off the towel and the climb down through the pathless crags, her huge gray fangs.

-- Do not look back.

As if he'd never been there before. Not a trace on the stubborn ground. Not a trace of anyone.

Ashes to ashes.

His thumb released the safety of the transmitter in his pants pocket. Cut pointy hairs under his collar, itchy. He felt an imperfection on the face of the button. It may be years, years before anyone comes, and suddenly he thought of the boy and of her not coming night after night and of the five empty bunks.

THE END

MORE STORIES BY KEITH CROES

keith@croes.com