DevilMonkey

Fireflies and Honey

Jimmy Johnson was born into the cold of a late fall morning, in his single mother's bedroom. Aided by his three aunts, with old rags and a tin bucket of warm water, he opened his eyes to a new world. He, his mother and his aunts all cried, each for different reasons. Thirty four years later, Slimmy J closed his eyes to an old world. Nobody cried.

Leonard sat on the hillside overlooking the park, finishing a half-pint of whiskey in the damp grass. The night was clear, he wished his mind would be that way. He'd come here many times in his years of homelessness. He always came alone--always, and only when he'd lost one of his friends. The park was as empty as Slimmy J's alley. And that's why he came here. He took the last shot of whiskey and, dropping the bottle, laid back waiting for the ghosts to whisper in his ear stories of a life past.

Out of the alcohol, upon the wind they came, and carried him to another hill, in another time.

"Look," Leonard pointed to a dot of star-like light, "it's a satellite."

Lauren looked in the direction of his finger. Her young eyes, much sharper than his.

"See it, moving across the sky there. It looks like a star."

"Oh yeah!"

He loved her enthusiasm. It reminded him of a place he hadn't been since he was a kid. A place where anything was possible, where imagination hadn't been dowsed by commercials, bosses, taxes, products... She lived in a place where dreams were as real as the blades of grass poking them through the blanket.

"What's a satt'ite?"

Leonard cringed. This wasn't going to be easy, "It's a machine that floats around the earth, like the moon."

"Why do they do that?"

He felt himself getting into a quagmire that would make Vietnam look like a lazy day in the park.

"People use them to talk to each other and to figure out where they are."

"How do they do that?"

He pondered a moment.

"Well, hold out your hands. Hold them up in the air."

She lifted her small hands and giggled.

He lightly pinched her left hand, "Imagine this hand is a mountain."

She giggled again.

He pinched her right hand, "Imagine this hand is a person on the other side of the mountain. Now keep holding your hands so they're lined up."

He turned on the flashlight and aimed it at her left hand, "Now imagine this hand," He pinched his left hand holding the flashlight, "is a person that wants to send a message to your hand. See, the mountain is in the way and your person can't see the light."

"Okay."

He held up his can of Coke and held it over her hand, "Now, imagine this is a satellite." He aimed the flashlight at the can, adjusting it until the light reflected onto her right hand, "See, I can bounce the light off the satellite, over the mountain, and your person can see it now."

"OH!" Her eyes lit up in a way the flashlight never could, not even the sun could.

As a teacher, he was happy she understood, but as a father, he was a bit saddened that he had stolen some magic from her.

"Are the stars satellites too?"

"No, those are suns. Some of them are much, much bigger than the sun."

"How come they aren't as bright?"

"Because they're very, very far away. You know how the lights of the city look small and get bigger as we drive closer?"

"Oh."

"If they're suns too, are there people closer to them, like we are to the sun?"

"There are so many stars that there must be other people around some of them. There are more stars than there are blades of grass on all of the earth."

He pulled a blade of grass from the ground, "If I just pull one blade of grass from the ground, there may be a bug on it, but probably not." He showed her the blade, free of any life, then pulled up a handful of grass. A firefly that had been hiding in the clump was startled, lit up and flew away, "But if I pull up a whole bunch of grass, then I probably will get a bug."

"Oh. Who put the stars and people there?"

His brain seized. There was no way he was going to try to explain even his own limited understanding of astrophysics to a five year old. That isn't what she was asking anyway. He contemplated telling her some crap about God or Nyx and the golden egg but decided the truth was always best, "Nobody really knows."

"Oh," she replied, with some disappointment.

"But you can believe whatever you want about that and it's as real as anything else."

Lauren concentrated on the sky. He could see the gears churning in her head. Several minutes passed with nothing but the sound of crickets and the occasional buzz of some winged insect zig-zagging past them. Finally she smiled, and Leonard learned the origin of all the stars.

It seems that a little girl was at a huge pond one night with her dad. She was playing in the mud and decided to make mud-balls for the fireflies to play with. She made many many mud-balls and her father poured honey on them for the fireflies to eat. Soon, all of the mud-balls were covered with an unimaginable number of fireflies and they lit up. The fireflies tried to get away, but were stuck to the honey and the balls ended up rolling into the pond and floating in the sea of night reflected in the water.

Leonard shook away the memory, sent the ghosts away. He gazed up at the night sky. The stars dimmed and brightened like fireflies in the midnight park. He didn't know whether it was real or the whiskey.

He held scant hope that some muddy little girl might be gazing back.

The Guardian Angel

The bedroom was nearly barren, nothing but brown carpet and white walls, with a single night stand. Peepsite didn't care as he lay in bed, settling down into the indent his large body had formed in the mattress over the years. He slipped his headphones on and they instantly filled his head with synthesizer music he'd fished out of some dollar bin at K-Mart. He smiled back at the Panasonic Girl staring at him from atop his cassette player. She was his "guardian angel"--she was the only woman, other than his mother, he really knew. She came from the cardboard backing that packaged his headphones and was as flat as his life.

It was because of a real girl, Wendy, that Peepsite had finally left school. She wasn't the only reason, just the last straw. It was Peepsite's sophomore year of high school. He was much bigger than all of his classmates, but that would have been true even if he hadn't been held back. By junior high, everyone had realized it best to just leave him alone, lest they end up a bloody mess like Danny had that one fateful day in fifth grade. Peepsite generally disliked his classmates, never forgetting the treatment he'd received all through school, and was mostly happy to be left to himself.

Still, he wasn't immune to the effects of loneliness. He was always envious of the guys he passed in the hallway, holding hands with their girlfriends, or guys getting love notes from girls in class. Sometimes he would see couples he knew from school just out at the movies having a good time, while he sat alone in the back, twitching in the flickering dark. Peepsite was a romantic, he might as well have been the Elephant Man.

He resigned himself to the fact he would be alone forever, unable to see a way anyone would change their attitude toward him. Thirteen years of school had conditioned everyone's attitude toward him. But he always held out hope when a new girl came to town.

Wendy's father was in the ARMY and she had lived all over the place--some places Peepsite had only dreamt of, others he'd never even heard of. She was a cute, thin girl with curly, mid-length blonde hair, large blue eyes, a constant aura of strawberry scent and a body that made good use of all three dimensions. Peepsite first saw her in history class. He was alone in the room and heard someone come in. When he turned to see who it was, she was sitting down on the other side of the room. She looked up and held his gaze for a moment and smiled, "Hi!"

"Hi," Peepsite said quietly, as his face contorted.

She smiled, but didn't laugh.

Peepsite grinned and nodded. He felt his face turning red, heating up. A conversation had never before started that well for him and he didn't know what to do next. He turned and looked down at his notebook until Mr. Pearson arrived and started class.

As it turned out, they had a few classes together. Though, Wendy had made friends with several other girls, she never treated Peepsite as badly as they did. Peepsite took this to mean she liked him, not just liked him, but liked him. He dreamed of sitting with her at the movies, holding hands, smiling. Or they would go to McDonalds and sit alone in a booth, their surroundings melting away around them--all that would exist would be him and her and nothing would be able to tear them apart.

One afternoon, Wendy asked him if he was going to the upcoming dance.

Peepsite remembered the last dance he'd been to. He had just stood there awkwardly, as though some sort of invisible shield made it impossible for anyone to come within twenty feet.

"No," he replied.

After dinner, he laid in bed cursing himself for not going. She was asking me to the dance! He thought, electronic Bach playing loudly on his cassette deck. Wendy consumed his mind as the hour grew late. He thought of her at home, laying in bed thinking of him at that same moment. What would he say to her tomorrow? He planned and re-planned, taking Wendy with him into his dreams, only to be interrupted by a pounding on the door, "Peepsite, turn that damn noise down! Some of us have to work around here!"

Peepsite walked the hallway to his locker the next morning, smiling brightly. Some of the other kids looked at him curiously. Others even greeted him. A group of Wendy's friends passed him, giggling. For once, he didn't think they were laughing at him. For once, he was wrong.

A few moments later, Wendy passed him in the hallway, holding hands with one of the football players. She didn't even notice Peepsite, as she giggled and chatted with her new boyfriend. The world seemed to darken a bit. Peepsite trudged through the rest of the day and was relieved when the final hour arrived.

He sat in his usual place, across from Wendy, in art class.

"You're awfully quiet today," she grinned.

"Oh."

"Is it because of Jeff?" her grin widened.

Peepsite's muscles tightened. His face contorted.

Wendy laughed, "You are so weird! Why do you do that?"

Peepsite raised an enormous pale fist and brought it down on the drawing table. The room instantly became silent and Peepsite rushed out to the hallway. A group of seniors, all wearing gym clothes, were out in the hallway pushing a smaller blonde boy back and forth between them. Peepsite recognized the blonde boy, but didn't really know him well. Everyone said he was gay.

"Why don't you pick on someone your own size?" Peepsite boomed.

"Why don't you mind your own business, retard?" One of the bigger boys replied.

Without a pause, Peepsite marched up to him and grabbed his shirt. He threw the senior against the lockers and drove his fist into his face, easily breaking his nose. The other kids scattered in all directions and Peepsite continued to pound on his unconscious prey until two coaches and the principal pulled him away.

Peepsite had lost all control, yelling "Fucker!" and twitching as they dragged him down the hall.

He was suspended for a month for the incident, and would probably be held back again. Peepsite decided he'd had enough, and never returned.

Dandelion Wine

Lisa sat at the window, her drawing pad sitting on her lap, softly illuminated by the Hummel lamp her parents had brought back from Germany. She sketched a dandelion with her colored pencils, bright and yellow, while her sisters, nieces and nephews drowned her father in animated noise downstairs. Quiet as she was, she wouldn't silence them for anything, it let her know there was life in the house.

The dandelion reminded her of her best friend Scott, the day they met in the park.

Scott had always been a sensitive boy. His grandparents bought him a plastic swimming pool when he was very young, before he was made to go to school. He never used it. One day, he went out to play, after several days of mostly constant rain. The pool was filled with brownish water and soaked leaves.

Scott found a stick and poked at the vegetation floating in the pool. A drowned mouse drifted out from underneath. With great urgency, he ran inside to the kitchen, to get his mother. He pulled on her dress, crying and pointing at the pool. She ran outside with him.

He pointed at the mouse.

"Oh," She said, thinking he wanted to splash around in the water, "I don't think you should get in the pool. That mouse might have had a disease."

"Get it out!"

His mother still didn't understand, "No honey, it's dead. Stay out of the water."

"Why did it die?"

"Things die, Scott. That's what happens."

He hated that answer. She was his mother. Mothers knew everything. She should be able to give him a better answer than that.

Scott never forgot about that mouse. When he would be sitting alone in the living room, sometimes he would remember it, floating in the water, never again to do the things a mouse did. Or when he strolled the playground during recess, alone because the other kids only made fun of him, he would think of that mouse, alone in the pool, never again to have friends, or be able to go home to its mother.

It was around the fourth of July, and Scott's stepfather had bought two bags of M-80s. Not doing a very good job of hiding them from a young boy, he stuffed them inside the coffee table. Scott found them easily, but didn't bother with them at first, preferring to help his mother in the kitchen.

One morning, watching cartoons, he noticed a popping sound outside. He peeked out the window, careful to not be seen, and watched Kevin lighting firecrackers. Kevin was one of the boys from school who would have nothing to do with him on the playground. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, piling plastic green soldiers on top of a firecracker and then watching as they were blown apart.

Kevin grabbed one of the bags of M-80s and a punk, lighting it on the gas stove. Outside, he threw out an M-80 and covered his ears until it exploded, echoing throughout the neighborhood. Kevin saw him standing there with the bag, "Are those yours?!"

"Yeah, want some?"

That was one of the greatest days of Scott's life, the first any of the other boys had accepted him. By the time the afternoon had rolled around, several neighborhood boys had collected around him, some even from the high school--the ones who always rode in the back of the bus. They set off M-80s throughout the neighborhood, in drainage pipes, in bottles, under the water. Each explosion was more impressive than the last. Scott was down to ten M-80s and everyone agreed the park would be the best place to detonate them.

At the last M-80, Kevin had an idea, "Let's get a turtle!"

Scott remained quiet. He didn't want to say anything to ruin his acceptance. Silently, he hoped they wouldn't find a turtle. But they did.

Scott became more desperate as they hauled the tutle to a tree.

"Come on, leave it alone!"

"Shut up! It'll be cool!"

One of the high schoolers found a rock and took out his pocket knife.

"No!" Scott screamed, then started to cry.

The other boys laughed at him, called him a sissy as they hammered the turtle to the tree. There, it writhed for a few minutes as the older boys shoved the last M-80 into its mouth.

Scott ran, leaving the laughter behind, unable to get away from the thought that the turtle would never again be able to do the things a turtle did.

After running until his breath was gone, he stopped near a girl, small and pale, picking dandelions. She looked up at him with large, green and unjudging eyes, "Hi."

A boom echoed somewhere in the distance.

"Those are pretty," Scott said, choking back tears, not wanting to reveal his weakness to the girl.

"They're for my aunt and uncle. To make wine. You can help if you want."

Scott sat down in the patch of yellow and picked dandelions. He pulled up an old white one.

Lisa smiled, "Those are pretty, too. But I don't think they can make wine with them. What kind of flower is that?"

"It's a dandelion, silly. They get old and die. That's what happens."

Lisa was saddened by this revelation. But Scott blew on the dandelion, sending tufts of white fuzz floating away on the wind, and Lisa smiled, realizing that was what dandelions did.

Anthony

Anthony lay naked in bed, stuffed between the red satin sheets like a bratwurst between two buns. The bedroom had no windows and it was black as pitch. Anthony hated it. It forced him to be alone with his thoughts. He looked at the clock, its faint glowing numbers flickering from being thrown at the wall too many times--4 am. It was a blatant smack in the face. He knew Lynda was cheating on him. He wished he knew with whom, so he could beat the shit out of him.

At some level, it seemed to him that he was possibly being irrational. But he pushed that nagging feeling away, buried it deep down in a pit of anger. That was his mother talking. He knew it, because that's what his father taught him. His father had never made a secret of his many, many mistresses. That's just the way it was. His mother either had to accept it as a fact of life or hit the road. She chose to stay, to raise her sons, to blind herself with a Valium habit, thankful when her husband was home, sitting in the Lazy-boy with a beer, a cigar and a Playboy.

It wasn't really cheating to Anthony when he screwed one of his waitresses in the back room after hours. He was just being a normal guy--just like his dad. The thrill of banging some bitch he barely cared about--tonight was Doreen's lucky turn--far surpassed anything Lynda ever did to him in that bland cave of a bedroom. As he thought about it, it occurred to him that she never did anything to him--it was always him doing it to her. That was part of the problem.

Still, she'd make a good mother and Anthony knew he would have to get her to marry him before he could really do what he wanted. That's why he kept his affairs from her, why he rushed home and was relieved she wasn't there, even though he knew it meant she was probably out with whatever cocksucker she was fucking. And why he jumped in the shower as fast as he could get his pink shirt, black slacks and gold necklace off to wash away the scent of stale cigarettes, beer and dried pussy juice.

He rubbed his eyes, he hated this thinking crap. He threw the covers off of him and went into the bathroom, flipping on the light so he could look in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, his dyed black hair tussled and his moustache moist. It never would have occurred to Anthony that framed in the mirror that way, he looked like a breathing mugshot. He always thought he looked fantastic. Besides, he'd never done anything illegal. Once, he'd gotten drunk with some friends and beat the shit out of some faggot. But he considered that a public service.

Anthony examined himself for places that might need more self tanning cream but couldn't find any. Lynda's cat, "Fur-fur"--white, blue-eyed and overweight--came in quietly, startling him as it rubbed against his bare legs. He reached down and stroked her gently, "I guess you want some food, Fatass?"

He opened a can of food and plopped it into a glass dish, leaving it on the kitchen floor for Fatass. He saw headlights moving across the side of the apartment building and recognized the sound of Lynda's car.

Quickly, he shut off the kitchen light and returned to bed. The anger welled up in his chest and spread to his arms and teeth, which ground together reflexively. He wanted to confront her, to make her pay for this blatant disrespect, but he also wanted to know who she was cheating with. Maybe if she thought he was asleep, she would give some clue.

The kitchen door opened, then closed. He could hear Lynda put her purse down on the counter. Take off her jacket. Whisper something to Fatass. He closed his eyes as he heard her approach the bedroom.

She didn't turn on the light. He could hear her take off her sandals and toss them in the direction of the dresser. She took off more clothes and sat on the bed. He could feel her close to him but kept his eyes closed, even though it was far too dark in that room for her to see anything.

He twitched reflexively when he felt her touch the side of his face. She ran her hand along his cheek, then to his hair. He remained still.

Anthony tried to detect any unusual scent. To notice anything strange as Lynda got fully into the bed and pulled the covers over her. She scooted close to him. Though not touching, he could feel her face in front of his, could feel her warm breath.

He opened his eyes and glared into the blackness. Lynda was oblivious, she could see nothing. Not his reddened eyes, not the rage that filled them, not the betrayals they hid.

Anthony could smell the perfume and cheap wine on her.

In the morning, he would beat her ass for it.

A Crack in the Alley

Slimmy J awoke from a dream of a time when he was a boy, sitting on the green sofa with his momma, watching the rain fall onto the city. It was the first time he remembered seeing rain and it was like magic, water falling from the sky. It was supposed to be sitting in the tub or sink, the toilet. Ever since that afternoon, he'd been fascinated with water. Walking home from school in the early spring, following rushing streams of melting snow. He liked to put bottle caps or anything else that would float in the streams and follow their path with the water.

As consciousness slowly dissolved into him like a stubborn chunk of snow overcome with water, he realized he was damp. It had probably rained overnight, and that's what caused his dream, he thought. His eyes were still closed, glued shut by discharge. He barely had the strength to get them open. He was starving and his body ached as it consumed itself to provide the energy for him to lift his head a few inches and look around. The alley was dry, he had pissed himself in his sleep again.

He knew he needed food badly, but there was no way he could summon the strength or the will to get it. He'd been in that alley for months, crawling around like a dog crippled by a car. He may not be able to feed his body, but he could still feed his habit. Weakly, he reached into his damp pocket and retrieved his lighter and a small piece of cellophane wrapped around a small rock. He put the rock into a broken light bulb lying in front of him and paused to summon the strength to hold it to his mouth long enough to smoke it. When he finished, what was left of the muscle in his arms gave out and they fell in front of him. As the euphoria took hold of him, tears streamed from his eyes, carrying away the crusted discharge like tiny bottle caps in a snowstream.

He heard footsteps approaching from the distance. It wasn't the crisp tap he associated with cops, cocky and purposeful. It was the slurred crunch of someone dragging the weight of life behind them like a shackled prisoner. Slimmy J tried to moisten his cracked lips, but his tongue was just as dry as they were, "Professor, that you?" He croaked.

"Mornin' Slimmy J. How you doin?"

"Oh, jus' fine. Jus' fine."

Slimmy J always said that. Leonard knew better.

"Wach' you philsophizin' about this mornin' professor?"

Leonard sat down a foot or so away from Slimmy J, where he could see him without having to move his head, "Aww I don't know. I gotta wonder about people. I think they're all goin' crazy." He opened a plastic bag with cut meat in it, "I got some food here. You hungry?"

"Say, that sure is nice, professor. I'm in bad shape here though. You think you could tear that up into small bits for me?"

Leonard tore the meat with his ashen fingers and fed it to Slimmy J, keeping none for himself. When it was gone, Slimmy J raised a shaking, ebony finger and scraped a bit of meat from his chin into his mouth with a yellowed fingernail.

"I know what you mean, professor. Peoples today walkin' around with bad feelin'. I got bad feelin' myself. I guess that why I'm here. But ain't none of them gonna be layin' in the alley pissin' theyself. They's lucky they got peoples carin' 'bout them. My only frien's you an' the rats."

"I s'pose you're right, Slimmy J."

"Peoples today don' care 'bout nothin' but theys televisions and telephones and telewhores."

Leonard tried to imagine what that last one could possibly be. As enticing as it sounded, he could make no sense of it. He sat quietly, watching Slimmy J as his speech trailed off and he fell asleep. His breathing was slow and shallow, his hair matted and graying. Even through the thick stench of urine, feces and wasting mucle, Leonard could detect a sickening musty sweet scent coming from the bone and sunken skin.

He recognized the smell. He recognized the appearance of a body being converted into cancer food. He watched his own mother die that way. At least she had a bed. But, like Slimmy J, she was so drugged at the end, it wouldn't have made a difference. Sitting there a foot away from this dying man, Leonard was taken back against his will to the moment of his mother's death. He sat on the edge of the bed next to her that warm spring day with rays of morning sunlight beaming through the open windows. The new air did nothing to remove the musty stench of cancer.

His mother had no final words of wisdom for him upon her death. She lay quietly in bed, her breathing growing increasingly laborious as if the tumors were growing in weight exponentially by the second. Each release of breath was trailed by a muffled gurgle bubbling from somewhere deep in her chest. Her eyes were open but Leonard didn't know what they were seeing. They stared into a place that could only exist in a cloud of morphine, casting a shadow somewhere in the twilight of death.

He watched her like that for several minutes until, finally, she took half a breath and managed a subtle gasp as if startled, but too weak to respond. She completed her breath and slowly it leaked away from her soggy, inflamed lungs, taking with it her life.

Leonard wanted to cry. He knew he should... everyone else in the room was. But he couldn't. All he could do was sit there, numb, holding his mother's cold, limp hand and looking at her sunken face. One eye was open, the other half so. Her mouth hung open. He wanted to reach into the air and grab whatever had left her and put it back in. But even if he could have done that, it was too late. Whatever it was had floated out the open windows with her final breath mixed with the new spring air.

Leonard patted Slimmy J on the shoulder, before shuffling off to let him rest, maybe forever. A tear trickled down the side of his face into his matted beard, clearing a path through the ash of street life to reveal a streak of pale skin, white as a new snow.