Chapter 2

This chapter relays the events that actually occur as they happen from an unbiased third person perspective.

Chapter 2:

 

 

The sky makes known its distaste for the poor mans ploy. It is angry although it will not strike the sea or the land with cascading abuse. The pools that abound with anticipation and reside within the clouds stay covered on this epoch of deceit. Approximately 4 P.M. the scab of a man, with those revealing scars and frail teeth, the kind of teeth that seem to be actively choosing to disintegrate to avoid further abuse, flails sporadically in the ocean, upsetting the glassy surface. His pleas of death and despondency ring more true to his life than his current situation. The fish pay no mind. Subtle superiors must never dabble with the fate of lesser beings. The lone ears worth receiving this drowning mans cry dash frivolously among the pale cut glass. They scale along the grey beach; the chrome monster now roars against the vertical climbing cliff that presents their estate with such mindless scenery. Next they pursue the oceans horizon with vigor. They attack. They attack knowing it will not be reached, knowing the horizon is endless, the vision real to sight but holding no tactical appeal, knowing it will never come, yet they attack. A small child, a boy with excited hair that displays its dusty brilliance this way and that among his pale white scalp is the first to spot Wood.

“Daddy you see that?” With wonder his eyes mimic Woods every gesture, outlining pruned hands, travelling up and down the angled path of the mans arms as if he could pull him from the water with sight alone.

“Daddy! Daddy! What is that? See that? Huh? Daddy?” Not daring to remove the gaze he has so instilled on that grey-boned man, that shriveling skin of a dying fruit, he calls to his father repeatedly and excitedly.

“Yes son.”

His voice is dead. As the young boy with the heavyset figure and round hands continues to dance and sing at his discovery, a slow vein flows larger amongst the temple of the strong-chinned captain. The river of blood gains visibility an inch below the well-groomed hairline and weaves through a valley of skin and bone, much like the strong river cutting its legacy in the canyon, before climbing out and fading back into ambiguity. He sternly stands as stoic as stone at the helm of his chrome castle. These two make up the entirety of the lonely boat.

“Dad just look! Please it big! It huge!” Whining now, a tone that his voice has mastered, he pleads. Glaring darts at his young, plump passenger the man with the metallic chin now aims those piercing barbs at the oceans abyss. He swivels his head, as if the weight of that chin throws of his balance, his bottom-heavy skull taking a second to reposition itself. Finally the darts hit.

“Well I’ll be…” His mumble retreats.

“See it? Huh? It big. I said so huh?”

“Quite.”

The boat whips violently off track, the horizon still waiting, saying it will wait for them until they meet again. The horizon is as coy as Wood. Sliding amongst glass, carving through the now fracturing crystal surface the glimmering beast with its chrome-chinned captain pursues a now reachable frontier, the waterlogged Wood that wavers in waves. Drunk on mouthfuls of seawater the man with myriad faces washes close to the now obtainable vessel.

“Grab the life vest and toss it overboard.” Says the chin to his slab of a son.

“I gots it.” Dashing over, stumbling with irrepressible excitement the young child squeezes his grubby fingers tightly around the merciful life vest before chucking it overboard.

“Dad it’s a guy! A guy and he drowning!”

“I can’t believe you saw me! Thank you! Thank you! Oh heavens bless you!”

The stone grey man in dirt-brown, soaked rags exclaims. He clumsily climbs, with no assistance from crew, over the edge of the coy, slippery beast. Falling then flailing as if he were the catch of the day, Wood gasps for oxygen. Stone-laden silence engulfs the air, seconds, tens of seconds, up to a minute. The boy with candy bright eyes just stares mindlessly. He moves to touch then flinches. Surely void of ever catching such a formidable creature his young mind, engrossed in protective adipose tissue, cannot grasp this image. Lateral the star-struck youth, his father stands indifferent, almost condemning.

After seizing air with dying lungs vigor, the sopping new sailor now hesitantly bides time, as if anticipating an interview. Understandably growing vain of confidence he glances hastily for anything to lean on, a chair to support him, a partner in relief from the back of the hollowed beast. Alas nothing within reach serves to aid. Rather he sits lethargic with back against the boat siding, the same siding that seconds ago seemed a castle wall in its impenetrability. He dashes from eye contact. Confused by an excessively hostile welcoming he mutters a faint question.

“Repeat boy.”

“A towel by chance? Anything available?”

Glancing from large father to short and stout son he chatters his request. His joints resemble a dark sea blue while the extent of his limbs mesh unnoticeably between purples and murky greens. The lone beacon of color that illuminates his smeared canvas is the rustic white paint job of his severed and now visible bone. A tremendous chunk of flesh goes uninhabited along the length of his forearm. The bone, thick below the elbow fades naturally at first then violently loses mass until again regaining proper structure on the southern tip of his right arm before once again crawling under leather skin. The edges seem gnawed, even containing remnants of teeth markings as if an animal feasted then fled amongst a willing participant. He dances this arm, moves it jaggedly to and fro, retreating its presence only to immediately regret the retreat and attack once more.

“Tow…Towel.” The large boy coughs out between heated breaths and tender steps. A look of painful gratitude and discontent is exhibited across the warped beauty of a wooden face. It is a look that the child seems to know far to well. He cringes at it and bows away.

“Thank you again, dear lord. A life-saver you are sir.”

“What are you doing in these waters boy?”

“Beg pardon sir. I was fishing you see, I had a big raft, well not big by the standards of this boat, but big for me, made of old tree you see, and it was swallowed by the waves as an appetizer before the entrée, the entrée being myself sir. Yes I fed the sea, I fed the fish.” Chuckling and shaking the man with indented, hollow eyes, peers into the face of refinement and authority.

“What tickles you son?”

“Ironic? I fed the ocean. Me, the fisherman.” With irony lost upon audacity Wood waits for another short tongue-lashing.

“I see that cut. Stop flashing it. You should go to the Hospital. I’m sure you know your way. We’ll drive ashore.”

“Sir” begins a dead man gaining composure. “May I be so crude as to propose, if you will, maybe a rather more pleasant solution on my behalf? I can tell, sir, with your gold-trimmed sailors cap, that you are a man not of mere wealth but sense. You know you are killing me. Send me to the trees before the infirmary! I would rather chance a meeting with the reapers scythe beneath the decayed limbs of a sycamore than bear even the stench of the far more grotesque atrocities that man is all to common to find in todays emergency establishments. The roach’s sir! Amongst the slimed leafs and succulent forest floor the roach’s would pay no mind to my limp decay as they would mistake me, most likely due to my unkempt faculties, as a fallen, limp-sogged tree branch, yet in the hospital! In the hospital they would feast! Oh they would eat like kings upon castle hills! My bones would be picked dry even; oh how they crave the crunch of mans anatomy! I would not be the only special of the day good, great sir. The beds teem with sickly carcasses biding time, killing time, until they can reserve a bed of similar rot across the street from worms. The roaches need not me, but their numbers are so great, their hunger as desperate as the vermin people that line the streets of our cities now that in due time they would touch me sir and I would touch them.”

Now close to the feet of the captain this scrap heap of a man pleads with those eyes, those eyes resembling nails pounded between wood. Seemingly pleased with his performance, after adamantly terrorizing the innocent youth, he now waits motionless.

“What kind of man do you think I am? The…”

“Yes” intrudes deceit “Yes my place is out of order. I despise it, sir. My indecency that is! I gaze upon your house as ants gaze upon streetlights and people upon stars and I feel warmth. Warmth has not graced this shriveling flesh in a life’s time sir, maybe two lives considering the span of longevity my class is commonly abiding to. I just pray for the chance meeting of that warmth again, I pray to your god that is! The righteous god! I starve as well with my own family. Please provide your lawn sir, lord, landlord. Please! It would be equal to dozing off on a cloud, the same type of cloud that eagerly awaits rainfall so as to wash away the crude caricature of vulgarity I have become.”

Closer he stoops like a beggar seeing opportunity, seeing a passing stranger glance at him and knowing maybe, if he just gains proximity to that chance soul he can recover again the means to sin.

Consuming every word that was uttered by the beggar with a stoicism that cringes statues, the tall chinned man merely peers now into that horizon like the chance soul, the passing stranger, knowing if only he could reach it, if only he can avoid averting his gaze from that unobtainable bliss, he can escape.

“Sir...” utters despair. Looking at his son now, this painting of a man provides no semblance of universality, camaraderie or even the faintest façade of parenthood. He seems to only distance himself from the infection that is the poor, that is his son, that is mankind.

“Daddy. We can help. Mom say help is good.” The beaming child ranges from an affectionate gaze at the wallowing embarrassment that almost sticks to the beasts back and an equally hesitant gaze at his own father.

“We will make room.”

“Thank you! Oh heavens! Oh how they rain their mercy in your form!”

“Down guy. The strictest orders of your brief stay will be decreed to you upon our arrival ashore.” 

“A million times I’m thankful sir. I know every decree will be of utter reason.”

The faint man now sprawls graciously on a cushioned seat at the stern of the once again wailing monstrosity as it crunches glass beneath its feet. He sits with a pleased demeanor albeit a fairly perplexed one. The resolute captain of the metallic monster, after agreeing to harbor Wood and before re-immersing himself at the wheel, looked innately not at the pudgy smile of his ecstatic son but at the quite, sleeping, dreaming vapor.

 

 

Author's Note

I appreciate any and every comment from a reader both positive and negative.