This blog consists of a few selections – mostly snippets (tiny pieces) of my writing ideas.
Enjoy!
– Untitled –
Her head, like equal halves joined by mirrored opposites, told her manner. One of her eyes, the left one, scoped the room confidently while the right one drooped every so slight. A keen observer, a counselor of all sorts of cognition, would recognize the skewed parallels in her features; each nuance, each shifting of expression; the imbalance.
With pupils clouded by years of blindness, Orlando could, by miracle, capture such modes – the sounds of her shifting steps, the cycles of her breathing; how certain vowels were slurred. Orlando knew that her outlet was the creative, a pianists, a writer of romantic poems, a dancer, and that her struggles were in her decisions- the same choices that drove her life of solitude up to that point.
(Orlando was, of course, aware that he, being of imperfect flesh, carried his own shades of betrayal.)
Foolish self-loathing never took root in his chest, it never had a chance to cast its shadow over the clarity of his world. In that period of his life, where the love of a woman was not yet felt, expressed or slaved over, his heart would cripple him like the disease that blinded his eyes.
“..the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and [that] thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past”
– Gabriel García Márquez
Dancers
Adorned in pristine bell skirts and white floral headbands, the ballerinas assembled behind a massive stage curtain, lowered. Two stood coolly, veering their eyes off-stage. Around them an assemblage of angelic dancers mingled in anticipation – bent torsos, loose shoulders, and hair parted straight. It was grace at the ready. A reflective prima ballerina stood tall at the forefront of her class; her every step, flow of motion, and posture unfolding in thought. With her initial pose set, the giant curtain began to rise to an ovation of theatergoers.
Monkeys
The tree monkeys giggled at their own antics. The first primate, in a dark blue t-shirt and shorts, covered his eyes, bored. Next to him sat two hysterical chimps bursting at the seams. The middle one of the bunch, the red shirted one, tried to contain himself but could not mask his cheery eyes. His face aglow. The third one, with elbows on bent knees, was defeated by his own hilarity. It was hard for the threesome, minus one, to keep straight faces. This shameless riot was caused, not by their infectious laughter, but by the poor soul behind the camera– a diminutive man speaking a choppy talk and maintaining an appealing grin; never keeping his bobble head steady– a mocked tourist with scrunched-up eyes.
Dead End Street
How many people do you know who live on a dead end street? I sometimes wonder if the person who coined that phrase “Dead End Street” actually lived on a dead end street. Our house, if you could see it through all the trees, rested on such a block. Visiting a dead end street would be like visiting the buried at a cemetery. For those unaware, such houses cast their own entity, like a foul stench. Some days I feel that house alive as if the walls were collapsing upon themselves or moving inward on me like a vice. Sometimes I would feel that I was born to die in that dreadful place. It was drab, gloomy and stunk of mildew in the mornings.
That house was a dump. Normal folks never live in a dump. Normal folks have gardens in their back yards, friendly neighbors, and fine plate settings. Normal folks have brightly colored walls, a pool in their back yard and an embroidered framed cloth with the words, “Home Sweet Home” near a sunlit window. But oh no, nothing like that in my dump. In my dump we did not have a single picture frame on the walls. Not one lousy frame! “Dump Bitter Dump” would be the words defining that house.
If unknowns meddled, our listless Fred, our brave mutt, would never bawl an alarm. It would simply amble up to the fence, give you a long, lazy look-over, before retreating back into the shadows.
“Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Invasion Of Gelna
Arious was quickly becoming a desert planet. Water, the resource by which its inhabitants survived, was depleting. Countless had died throughout the eons, and without the bountiful living water of Gelna- an oceanic planet overseen by a royal committee of elders and guarded by mind benders, extinction was certain.
Melvik, the last of the mind benders, stood atop the tallest peak of Gelna. His adversary Xathros, the chief prophet of planet Arious, along with his fighters, emerged from the ocean depths to face Melvik. Both sides awaited the setting of the belted moon. Once the night shrouded the landscape, the onset of war was to begin.
Melvik’s mind drifted into a deep, dreamlike trance just before the rivals positioned themselves in battle formation. In Melvik’s unconsciousness, a vision of a sword materialized. The sword was engulfed in white fire. From its point thunderclaps echoed across the sky. It was the power of the mind bender, and it meant victory for Gelna.
When darkness fell, Xathros’ men advanced. As the battlefront drew ever closer to the mind bender, a malevolence took root in the minds of the hurried combatants. Slowly the blitz abated. The war cries and hailed commands ceased forthwith. Bewildered, the legion’s front line staggered to their knees near to where Melvik rested in suspended animation above the rock.
At once, in one broad, graceful motion, Melvik’s weapon of fire slaughtered hundreds of Xathros’ entranced men. To the chief prophet, the mind bender appeared feeble after the killing, but Melvik remained strong due to the all-powerful sword he occupied: a specter in the eyes of Xathro. A sword with no material substance; real only in the sanctuary of Melvik’s vision.
Once the sun rose over the peaks did an endless waste land become visible to Melvik and Xathros. At a close distance, both combatants eyed each other with a measure of esteem. At once, just before they contended, strong gusts heralded the presence of Gelna’s royal order amid the fighters. The gallant struggle between the foes pleased the sovereign ministry. (Such nobility in the face of death was regarded by the populace as an honorable merit.)
Gelna thus declared an alliance between the two worlds. The inhabitants of Arious would be granted a generous amount of life saving water at the end of every lunar orbit. In turn Melvik was to be reunited with his mentors (those of long past who had endowed him as a mind bender, lord paramount.) in resurrected vitality. Peace between the races was forever established, and both planets continued in harmonious balance forever.
On The Other Side
In death I was alive. An essence enveloped by a light of love. I felt as a babe in the caring, protective bosom of its mother. It was love eternal. A divine warmth carried me, in gentle, invisible arms, into a fantastic scene: before my eyes the roaring rage of the sun, fixed in the blackness of space, appeared in waves of orange-red flames. Above me a choir of sweet angelic voices seductively called for me to retire to my celestial home. In a distance, an assemblage of familiar faces with fine white garments were stationed at the end of curved path. They summoned me with outstretched arms toward a broad, towering threshold; its massive gates opened. On either end, two majestic pillars of exquisite gold, reached high into the eternal obscurity of the universe.
Mad Dash
My pace was brisk and steady as my eyes darted uncontrollably in all directions. My right arm ticked as if held down and given electric shocks. (I heard of a neighboring fellow who actually bled to death when an old, brittle mouth guard was positioned incorrectly in his mouth.)
After being stretched out on a gurney, anchored down by boorish hands, my mind would let go of the brutality in free flowing imagery. Gently I surrendered- transfixed by the divinity of a white, domed light just above me. I was torpid, comatose and unable to feel the jolts that scorched my flesh. I drowned into its brilliance- the soft caresses that refreshed my eyes, flexed fingers combing my hair- as that of a lover.
But I knew, even in the highs of illusion, that I was dead: my carcass left bony and my brain butchered.
In the desolation of my cell, mute, with the orderlies devouring their rations, I managed to loosen some of the belts that held my body in bondage, until I was able to stand. The ankle chains were easily removed and so were the ventilation vents.
Scaling the outside gate was an endeavor- to climb it at my delicate age was a difficult task. Once I was over the razor sharp wire I pressed on with bleeding knees and elbows, the needle grass and hemp stocks that surround hindered my progress. The madhouse was now receding to the size of a dollhouse but in near ruins.
(I stopped and imagined normalcy: I, in the center of a busy city street, where anyone can be methodical in a sea of enigmatic faces.)
Leaving behind the nearly impenetrable sward, I proceeded into the edge of a wooden terrain at dusk. Shortly after entering the pines, a spell of fear and disorientation overtook me. I attempted to lean onto a tree, but collapsed instead. Everything was spinning. In a breath my thoughts became cluttered, unhinged from the phantoms in my head. I knew that soon the voices would take over with their whispering suggestions and soothing pleads- the familiar wily demons and benevolent cherubs that cycled within my mind through the years. Oh the pain, the cruelty.
I held myself up and faced the tall soldiers of bark ahead of me. Ruffled leaves lay unperturbed beneath my dirty, bare feet. I moved ever so slowly forward- my body, a stone weight; my brain, a storm of chaos. In my line of vision I saw, illusion or not, a path of pebbles that snaked into the uncertainty of the brush. In distorted double-vision, skewed in semblance and fading to black, I followed the track with a wry grin smeared across my face like a smudge.
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
– Ernest Hemingway
Bugs
(My eyes bulged, my skin crawled, my tongue drooled and my feet shook. My reality because a scene of cartoon madness where the knee-high crowd cheered at the antics of a furry, long-eared rodent: the same trickster that had moments before dropped a one ton ACME block on the head of a pudgy doofus holding a hunter’s rifler by his side. Or was it instead a facade of a hellish Serling episode where everything goes astray in the end?
My head was a hurricane. It was in an unreal world! An Oz where Alice fell down the rabbit hole only to reappear holding a half eaten carrot between its fingers like Groucho Marks.)
Bugs?
That sly wabbit with the sly smirk and cagey twinkle in its eye. No matter how fast it would run, that stupefied floppy hat kook had to snatch it because his gut was screaming for meat, wabbit chow.
But that stinky vermin had to be a mind reader because it knew the intentions of fat boy. He aimed his weapon left but the wabbit went right. He stepped forward and it swirl behind him, looked over his shoulder and flicked an ear. Thinking quick, Chunky hid behind a tree only to watch the crazy wabbit slap each of his cheeks rosy. Bewildered and dizzy, the gunslinger blasted all his ammo in the wind only to see bugs dive back into his burrow.
As a last resort, he shoved a handful of TNT sticks down wabbit’s escape hatch. He sparked each one, turned around, and covered my enormous ears. Bang! After the ash and soot settled, the dimwitted sap stood blackened with grime from head to toe; a trail of dark smoke fluttered from his scalp. That pesky rodent fooled once again. It had dropped all the dynamite down the back of his overalls before they went off. Ooh, and when that lamebrain tracker turned blood red with fury, steam blew out both my nostrils and ears.
In the end fatso chased Bugs up and down grassy slops to the setting sun; never catching the elusive bugs. (That’s…that’s all folks!)
copyright.carlosrios.2016
Carlos Rios (untitled) 