Bread and Water

REMINGTON GRAVES

My fingers had grown stronger and precise with the passage of time. The typewriter keys smooth to the touch. The machine emitted the subtle sweet smell of honey as its gears and levers had warmed from my hammering. The fog outside had taken hostage the trees and hills around with its heavy, cool slow breath. My thoughts crunched through the grass as they wandered through its blades, brushed up with blazing ardor through gnarled barked giants who posted watch outside my home, allowing the frosty film to ingest them as my body sat transfixed inside my home guiding their gentle gambol.

The Scotch began as a gimmick with me and the apparatus. I was the madman attacking, with grunts and tears burning as they rolled from my eyes, down the face no longer young, and unto the page that nestled with yearning, from the storm that brewed a thundering tempest atop a Remington Rand. The bottle lit the hallways of my aching body, keeping the demonic drivel, the lethargy, the quaking shakes pacified properly, the vertigo frozen in a frame. Each drink fueled the fierce desire to exorcise the wraith on to the paper. The long nights had made me a thirsting thrusting beast lost, and struggling through a quiet threshold. Years and ignorance laced in arrogant humility, had unveiled my Dark One–the panting fiend partly favoring the paranoia, a middle-aged man acquires from self-indulgent solitude.

“Are you ready for your dinner, Sir?”

“I am not hungry.”

“Surely you must have something to eat, Sir. It has been two days.”

“I said, ‘I am not hungry’”.

“Some water, Sir?”

“If I say,’Yes,’ will you leave me alone?”

“Of course, Sir.”

“Very well.”

The platter arrived carrying a pitcher of water and a loaf of bread with a knife in its back.

“Good night, Sir.”

“Good night.”

The quiet amplified the creaking of bending furniture. Shadows gestured a daunting doom. Soft fluttering began.

“Oh, you wanton seraphs, you sneering demons, what hour of this night shall I dismiss this mortal coil? What panting chamber music should ride the back of anxiety as it rears its blurry head while it approaches? Must I clamor to your God who is slumbering and dismissive? Shall I engage in half-severed soliloquy to fill this dusty, damp study? Yes, I am beside myself! Nonetheless, allow me to trek into the past. I have lo–I… came close to loving. Fiercely close! A nymph so nimble and so sweet by the sea. Freckled cackler running under spinning sun by the sea. No, I’m afraid not, there is no kingdom to speak of by this sea. Just her giggling and then her gurgling blanketed by foamy, hissing waves. I could hear it. By the grace of all that is unholy did Mozart’s “Serenade to the Winds”, in its glorious third movement, unchained the maniac. I glanced at my veins throbbing under the skin as the bassoons, and basset horns prostrated themselves praying for that lofty oboe to ascend in soft twirling, reaching with its fingertip, the clarinet, to touch my beaded brow as the horizon watched in silence. She gurgled and she screamed while my hands clamped around her slender neck and pressed her skull against the sand. I tasted salty fingers as she reached and grabbed and scratched and kicked. What was Amadeus thinking when he wrote that piece, I wondered as I winced the sun from my eyes. Little hands . . . like Mozart. Tiny frail hands had that never sought destruction . . . had never held a man in passion, a pistol in anger, caressed a cracked mirror. This must be what you want! Is it?! You perched upon your heavens watching men as they wail and their women as they weep. What do you know of love? Yes, maybe more than I. I know you wish to tire me! But what hath night to do with sleep?! I clamor chaos and eternal fright, fucked by the heavenly muse to venture down, the darkest descent and to remain there until I release this scorching seed! Yes. Yes, she struggled. Why were there no violins initially in that movement? Surely you must know. It needed those racing strings, did it not? And I need you, winged devils, to have watched us, for we did not really exist if you had not. What a show I displayed for you! Although that was not my concern at the time, for no true artist ever concerns himself with the pleasing of the crowd. Isn’t that—”

“Sir, is everything all right?”

“Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Your hands, Sir.”

“My hands?” I said as I beheld them covered in blood, blood that glistened and flirted with my eyes as the candlelight caressed its dripping surface. I have always thought myself having large hands.

“Shall I call for the doctor, Sir?”

“Doctor?”

“Yes, the doctor, Sir.”

“No . . . I have no need for a doctor. What I need is . . .”

“Yes, Sir?”

“To be left alone. Please. I beg you.”

“Very well, Sir. You mustn’t hesitate to call me at any given moment if need be.”

“Thank you. I will keep that mind. Now, good night.”

“Yes, Sir, good night.”

“Remember tonight . . . for it’s the beginning of forever.”

“Um . . . right, Sir. Good night again.”

“–Isn’t that . . . Isn’t that . . . Where was I? Where are the stars that marked our way? Let us go deeper into this greater pain, I know, it is not permitted that I stay. Now I hear symphony number twenty-five in G minor. Does it not sound like the pain of children stretched out into the cosmos and being bowed by a blistering desire to find the answer that riddles all riddles? Yes, I know, you will not reply. It is more entertaining for you to watch me question you, as I do. What was that? Was that a tapping at my window just now? Who on earth would be crawling around these hills at this Hell-forsaken hour? Come, let us not go off course. Her name? Well, of course she had a name. What sweet letters did come into union to bring her forth into being. Constance was the name given to her at birth. What do you mean, that’s not her name?! You’re right, Beatrice was her real name. How could I forget, she was my first. The catharsis to my monstrous metamorphosis. Yes, I did name my daughter Beatrice after her. She became a nun,my daughter, who knows why. I take suppose it was to let me know what little she thought of me. She became her mother, you know? A self-righteous runt of common blood. Comely flowers do grow even in the most festering parts of the forest, I suppose. Yes, yes, let us press on. Beatrice had grey eyes. She had green eyes. No, blue eyes, maybe. Do eyes change in color? Or was I simply hallucinating? No matter, her eyes did frequently exchange between these three shades depending on the seasons, depending on the garb. I first beheld those deceitful eyes at a masquerade at the Catapult Mansion, which was of invitation only. Her father was discussing his daughter’s capricious whims as she swayed beside him. She hummed a silly tune and smiled at me warmly and tilted her head to the side while drawing her strawberry blonde eyebrows together in bewilderment. She knew! She knew at that precise moment I did not belong. That I wasn’t like the rest of them. How did she know? She laughed when I told her weeks later how I set my sister’s hair on fire. Or when I broke the cat’s neck  to save it from pointless agony. She had to go, you understand? She had to go! She knew I was simply wearing this human suit to fool the rest of them. She could easily see through my facade.I knew that moment I loved her. And so with love, I had to give her the greatest gift I knew. So, here you are. You wait, amidst this tangling of thorns, to pry me forth unto the beckoning, the hunger, that vacuuming slumber. Give me a moment, I do not feel so well. Give me a moment, if you please. To sit. To catch my breath. I am not as young as I once was. Or resilient. Ah, there now, that feels good. Just a few minutes, that’s all I need.”

“Good morning, Sir.”

“What?”

“You must have fallen asleep on that chair, Sir.”

“Asleep?”

“I see you must have cleaned yourself up last night.”

“How do you mean?”

“Your hands, Sir.”

“Yes, my hands,” I said confounded.

“And you did not touch your food, Sir. I shall leave it.”

“Thou shall not live by bread and water alone, but by every word that proceedeth from the mouth of the machine.”

“Yes, sir, of–of course, Sir.”

∞