CURSE EXCERPTS
I am a secret…
“…I find the most sensible manner to preside over such emotions, is to…simply entomb them, by accomplishing the exact opposite. For they are not cognizant of it, Charlotte. They do not reside with us any longer…they’re…gone…perished under the ground — dust in the hollow air we breathe. They do not stand guard over us, for I’ve identified with forlornness for a long time now. For I would be cognizant if. . .she were here with me.”
His words were but a delayed murmur, as though there was a hesitation in his statement, a hope, or a promise to be proven otherwise; his gaze distant and dull, until all distorted, until pain bled out of him. “Her presence was more vigorous and spirited than the paint that besmirches the canvas, for I painted her for years! Years of my lamentable life, only for it to morph grievous! For now she’s gone, still, gone, and there’s…there’s nothingness. Nothingness to fill in the gorge at my very core, consuming me alive like a horde of dreadful maggots! Even the most puissant, bloody stained paint could never fill in the canvas within me, for I have attempted as much to no avail.” he snarled, and clenched his eyes harshly, barricading a betrayal of his own. “And yet, their energy…their soul…can slink into your veins, rake your flesh in the most salubrious, most torturous manner…reviving you.” He let out a gleeful chuckle to himself, but his face turned stern right after.
She clasped his hands in hers; they felt cold, rugged to the touch, skin dry and busted at the knuckles. “What hides beneath this mask of yours?” she asked with intrigue, a longing to perhaps unravel him further, but he turned his head away in shame — somehow tamed by the sincerity of her words, somehow able to be cracked open by her raw serenity.“How are you with secrets?” He smirked, as tears scarred his cheek.
She smiled at that, cupped his face and skimmed the sadness away with loving fingers. “I am a secret, James…”
Somethin’ in between then. I’ll take that.
“Hmm…you’re quite complicated, though.” He cocked his head, eyeing her stern. “Not hungry…not thirsty…” He chuckled faintly and she tore her gaze away, suppressing a snort, but he didn’t miss the crease that formed at the corner of her lips, encouraging his presence to linger further. “What could I offer ya then, instead?” he asked, shrugging broad shoulders. “It’s early enough for a cup of coffee, if ya’d prefer that. Or are ya the tea drinkin’ type?”
Her features softened, her ribs bruising in all her restraint not to laugh at his ridiculous pestering, and yet a stifled titter escaped her. “Are you the harassing type?” she returned the query, and he leaned against the wall with arms crossed, assessing her quietly.
“No.” he replied, his voice low, promising sincerity. “I ain’t. Never been. I apologize if I’ve given such impression.”
“Well, you wouldn’t need to apologize to me if you weren’t that type to begin with, for you are, harassing me.” she snapped, and he arched a brow. “You are harassing me by coming into my property, trespassing it with your, your —” He arched it higher as he anticipated her insult with great intrigue. “Your mammoth sized being! Trampling over said property, breaking into my barn while I work, delaying me mucking and feeding my horses with your inappropriate proposals, and, and just…just standing there like you don’t have anything better to do than irritate me! At the very least, you can grab yourself a pitchfork and pick up horse shit!” She huffed, flustered, and his brow began to slowly lower.
“Alright.” He shrugged again, and she blinked at him stupidly.
“Alright what?” she asked, and watched him near the stall. She flinched when he took off his coat, and he, alarmed by her frightful reaction and the hand that jolted to her gun, slowed down his movements. He then placed the coat over a hay bale, unbuttoned his cuffs at the wrists and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows.
“I’m gonna muck some horse shit, to expedite the matters, and hopefully, after that, ya may get an appetite after all.” He smirked, groping the pitchfork from the ground, and distanced himself from her, sensing she needed that.
Her eyes grew wide, and mouth parted for objection, but no sound came out of it. She simply kept watching him, march into Ol’ Tucker’s stall and dig the fork into the straw, picking up a glut of manure. She kept her hand at the gun on her hip, not leaving sight of him. His vest was stretched taut across his back, almost violating every groove of muscle. She looked away, set her eyes at the manure, disinterested, repulsed, wounded.
“This is ridiculous.” she muttered through clenched teeth, and wondered whether she could get away with another murder.
“Tell ya what.” He chuckled. “Haven’t mucked nor shoveled shit since my twenties, I reckon. Perhaps, it is ridiculous indeed, but, somehow I find it worth it.” he admitted, tossing the manure into the barrel.
She tipped up her face, and scrunched it. “So I reckon you must be someone too important to be shoveling shit.” she jeered, and he sneered at that, paused and gave her a sidelong glance over the stall’s door.
“Wouldn’t say too important. But perhaps too occupied with more important matters.” he replied, lingering his gaze upon her a little longer, just enough to capture the attitude morphing her features again. Beautiful in all their anger and confliction.
“Same difference.” she said snidely. “You have someone else who you think is less important than you to clean your horse’s mess.”
He lifted the pitch fork, ready to counter that statement. “No. In fact, I ain’t got no horse of my own no more to clean after its mess.” he said, and tossed another load. She watched the sticky fibrous hard lumps float midair and crumble upon their descent. “The one ya saw and helped me save, is from the stables.”
“I see.” She nodded gravely. “Then, I reckon you must not hold horses in such high regard to think of them as more than just a means of transportation.” She poked him further, as if she still held a pitchfork herself.
But he snorted once more at the assaulting statement, somehow expecting it. “I reckon you must not hold me in such high regard to suggest I’m one of those yokels that rides their horses into the ground.” He paused the mucking, dug the pitchfork into the straw and rested his hands on the handle, jaw fastened upon his knuckles, gaze pinning her numb.
She swallowed, her hand still hovering over her gun. “I don’t know you, sir. I don’t hold you in any regard. High, or low.”
“Somethin’ in between then. I’ll take that.” He smiled, dreadfully charming, and she tore her eyes away from that, too.
Nollaig Shona dhuit.
The boy sat up straight, gnarling his hands upon his legs as he waited for his father to return. Marlena’s arms around him, encouraging that blood-curdling patience. “Mam, is this really for me?” he asked her, rather baffled, and Marlena chuckled, but her voice appeared suddenly coarse.
“Yes, my love. It’s only for you.” She smiled to him, and met Seán’s affable gaze, marred with anticipation in turn.
“Aye! For yer a big lad now, and a big lad such as yerself, a mhic, deserves such mighty gift!” Seán said, and slowly knelt back down before the boy’s widened gaze, filling it up with his lanky broad frame, attenuated by poverty and hardship. “So, this is for ye, me lad. From mam and I.” He choked and handed him a parcel, cocooned carefully with brown wrapping paper.
The boy hesitated briefly, as if cognizant of the struggles that sealed the gift, but couldn’t help his excitement, and so reached with spread out fingers and open palms to clasp it. His eyes flicked upwards to them for a last confirmation, and they nodded back to him with encouragement.
“Take it, lad. It’s alright.” Seán urged, and the boy smirked to himself, and groped the parcel. Upon letting go, his hands instantly dropped with it in all its hefty weight, and his mouth parted in a gasp of surprise.
“It’s heavy!” he exclaimed, rather earnest, and began to gently graze his fingers along it, clasp the seams and charily tear them apart, stopping every few minutes in a shock that overwhelmed him.
Marlena rested her head against Seán’s, and tittered at the sight. “I think he will be blown away.” she whispered, and Seán chuckled.
“Aye.” he soughed, and took her hand to kiss again. “It was a great idea ye had, a ghrá.”
“We had. We, Seán.” she corrected, and drew his face towards her. “I love you…”
“I love you, Marlena.” He looked at her stern, the soft lilt of his accent engraving within her heart, and she clung onto his words, for somehow they had never sounded so true.
But the boy suddenly screeched, pulling their gazes back to him, and they found him cupping his mouth in awe.
“What do you think?” Marlena asked, as the boy merely blinked at the gift, now splayed upon his lap. “Do you like it, love?”
The boy swallowed, slowly lowered his little hands and clasped the leather bound notebook with absolute caution. A charcoal pen was jutting out of its spine, and he slightly prodded it with a forefinger. A black line coated the pad of it, and he blinked at it, stunned.
“Open it, laddie!” Seán buoyed up, and the boy, smiling, clasped the thin strips of leather that were wrapped around the notebook, and unfurled them, until the leaves loosened and sprung out, wide open, upon his lap. Vacant sepia pages bared to his flared gaze, and he flicked through them, until he reached the very beginning, bold letters stamping the start of it. Marlena’s fingers were now laced with Seán’s, squeezing tight, as the boy read out loud.
“For all your adventures, yet to come. May you draw your happiest of memories. Nollaig Shona dhuit. Merry Christmas, ár chroí.”
Five hundred dollars.
“I’m…sorry.” he said sheepishly, and reached for her hair, gathering it into a fist as she kept on heaving, and regurgitating. “I didn’t mean to show ya that, but his ranch was listed there.”
She cried, unable to erase the gruesome image that was nailed within her eyes, and as she lifted her head and wiped at her mouth with a handkerchief he provided to her, she stared into the empty void. “I need something to drink…right now.”
He nodded, rushed to the cabinet, and fished out his finest bottle of whiskey, then handed it to her in great haste. “But go easy on it. Since, ya know, y’ain’t much of a drinker.”
She gave him a stink-eye, pulled out the cork and tipped the whole bottle over her face, lips greedily wrapped around it, throat working hard to drown the image of his sin.
He blinked at her, calculating the milliliters she had cost him already. “Easy, woman.” he soughed, but she kept on drinking, as tears coursed down her cheeks. “That stuff’s expensive.”
She unlatched, at last, and exhaled heavily. “I’ll reimburse you with five hundred dollars once you hang me. Don’t worry.” she said smartly, and he couldn’t help but grin at her wittiness, or stubbornness, or something along those lines.
“Then I reckon, I’ll still be underwater by ten dollars.”
You turned your thoughts into the forest itself.
“I understand the beauty of death fairly well. It doesn’t nauseate me. Quite the opposite; this rare phenomenon stirs my curiosity.” she countered, and tip-toed towards him, as he watched her in horror, her weightless fleet gliding across the ground, until they stopped, and she knelt beside him. His jaw lifted in apprehension, as her gaze saddened upon the assault inflicted upon him.
“Does it…”
“Don’t you remember when you once were young? When parents forbade you to do the unthinkable. Chained your hands and feet, so you could never run out and witness life…” she said, fingers gliding against his face, as James watched her cautiously. “Like a little bird whose wings were clipped. Whose whole entity was confined in a cage, when there was a whole forest outside, ready to be explored!” She frowned, and he felt his chest ache for her, but said nothing. “But you always knew…that you couldn’t. Were never able to. So you turned your thoughts into the forest itself.” she cried silently, and he opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t.
She stood up, embraced herself with quivering arms, and caressed her shoulders. “You see, my father has been in control over my life, and doesn’t know where I fly at night like a little bat.” She giggled to herself, and he narrowed his eyes, darting it back at the woods. “This is my little secret; where he, or his guards, could never find me. It’s a wonderful playground for the mature child. The lagoon is shallow. I can walk through it, without ever fearing of drowning. This place feels oddly alive, breathing…and I’ve lived too long in that prison not to escape to it.”
Even if a touch shall be fated corroded.
She trembled, realizing where it all could lead to, and yet somehow unable to make it stop, unable to flinch a single muscle, for every muscle had already tensed up against the wave of ecstacy that was about to collide upon her. He pressed the cigarette back on her lips, and she nursed on it in hope for guidance. “Somehow, I necessitate you to be.” He let go of her, parted a few breaths between them, and began unbuttoning his cashmere shirt, letting it drop behind him. “I have beheld you in more ways than not, and while I am not bearing the appearance of a muse, but the dregs of a man’s morphed identity, a corpse still lively pulsating, I long for you to behold me, in turn.” He took another step back, and she watched as his body, olive-tinted and lean muscled bared to her against the candlelight. His fingers worked on the studs of his trousers, then cotton undergarments, disposing of them in an almost painful haste. He stood there now, in complete vulnerability, as she took him in.
Her gaze lifted, noticing his eyes hollow in a tangible shame, one she felt in turn. “Betray to me. What am I?” he asked, and she gaped at him blankly, the question puzzling her. “Am I…worthy of attention? Am I worthy of…affection, even if a touch shall be fated corroded?”
She cleared her throat from the burden of smoke, and trembled out a riposte. “Yes. You are beautiful.” she said, and tears coursed down his cheeks, as though in denial. “You are a very handsome man.”
Shave his belly with a rusty razor.
“Ya dimwit!!” The soaked sailor clasped Jesse from his coat, lifted him up and slammed a brutal punch into his face as he watched quietly from behind him.
“S…sorry…sir.” Jesse whispered, and winced at the harrowing pang of viciousness that cracked his nose askant, and as he blinked through the haze of intoxication and spat out blood into the burly man’s face, he realized, to his further misfortune, it was precisely the same sailor that called him a “dimwit” right after he almost rode over him with his wagon.
The man growled with all three teeth, threw Jesse across the table, and bunched his fists in anticipation for Jesse to fight him back, as the whole saloon teemed with other sailors and fishermen cheering their fellow seaman on.
“What will we do with a drunken sailor?
What will we do with a drunken sailor?
What will we do with a drunken sailor?
Early in the morning!”
Jesse floundered in a ground of shards and crested vomit and sticky liquor, and clasping his bleeding nose, he slowly pulled himself back up to his feet, sniffing the blood back inside. Swaying still, disoriented, he struggled to find his balance, and stood there like a ragged effigy. His ears ached, and head throbbed, sucking in the clamor of tunes from around him as they still chanted in mockery.
“Shave his belly with a rusty razor
Shave his belly with a rusty razor
Shave his belly with a rusty razor
Early in the morning!”
He lit up a cigarette, languidly inhaled the smoke in deep intrigue as he observed Jesse’s torn-up boots pulled over his tattered pants, and the legs that nervously trembled to stabilize himself.
Jesse kept standing, but there were hands suddenly, he felt; ones that reached for his back and shoulders and pushed him forward in what appeared to be a clearing of space. He stumbled towards there now, arms thrashing around to find something to grip on, until his blurred vision fixated at the sailor launching straight at him.
Seized in a breath, the man grabbed him from his shirtfront, and meted an eddy of strikes against his face in unremitting fury, then tossed his wobbly body back onto the ground with a laughter of victory everyone praised. Jesse snarled to himself, spat out blood and bile, wiped it all from his face, and turned his gaze over to him who gave him a grave nod.
“Put him in a long boat till he’s sober
Put him in a long boat till he’s sober
Put him in a long boat till he’s sober
Early in the morning!”
