Her parents lived across the dead end alley behind their house where the tall orange security lights never failed to smolder in the night air. Her sister and her dead-eyed hammerhead of a husband lived two houses away. From his porch, one could sprint to her sister’s front door in less than thirty seconds by cutting the sharp angle at the edge of the block then vaulting over a slatted fence. The Kellie Family Compound, the square end of the street was referred to by the surrounding neighbors who never had much of anything to talk about unless they talked about the Kellies. One of only two non-Kellies residing within the boundary was a sought after lawyer who had won a whistle blower case against a local meat packing plant years ago. He employed her sister as his only secretary for fifteen years. The final piece to this residential puzzle lived across the street from Marcus’ home, mowing his lawn daily, only rarely stealing a public glance across the street at his ex-wife’s house and her new husband and their newborn daughter.
The sludge of time reminded him that it would never matter if he made it out alive or if he someday met a cold painless end somewhere in the glimmering citrus night behind his house. The farther the scale of time lumbered into the unknown distance, the more the intrigue piled up as a conical shaped heap added to daily and hourly by the pendulum swing of his wife’s increasing dependence on her mother for support and tactical advice. It looked like the work of a gravedigger. But he still had his jobs. He still had his escapes. He could always depend on the panther to deaden the gloom.
She discovered ways of frightening the animal once it found him. She discouraged the beast by inventing tasks that were immediately crucial to their survival. More than once after twenty or more hours in the service of criminal children, he found himself unearthing trumpet vine from under the home or scraping the paint from an entire length of windows or trenching a drainage ditch near their neighbor’s fence to prevent anymore runoff from his tilted back lot. Anything to keep his eyes open and perhaps trap them with hers and use the ocular vice to crack the barrier she felt he had been constructing for months to keep her out of his sight.
Verbally, they could only slash and hack at one another as they moved through the house. Derision cleaved the air at every turn from every angle. Both postured and paraded on a perpetual warpath through the shifting terrain of the struggle, tilting the house from corner to corner. He could find no sanctuary in the creaking boards and yawing picture frames. She had marshaled her senses to detect the slightest hint of asylum among the dwindling free space within the walls. His freedom had become a distant dream and her idyllic hopes of a beautiful family life had packed their things into the same train on which they had arrived and they left without any recognition that she had done her best to accommodate their needs. They left her holding her child, trying to imagine some contrivance to keep them here if just for a few more days or hours.
The sludge of time reminded him that it would never matter if he made it out alive or if he someday met a cold painless end somewhere in the glimmering citrus night behind his house. The farther the scale of time lumbered into the unknown distance, the more the intrigue piled up as a conical shaped heap added to daily and hourly by the pendulum swing of his wife’s increasing dependence on her mother for support and tactical advice. It looked like the work of a gravedigger. But he still had his jobs. He still had his escapes. He could always depend on the panther to deaden the gloom.
She discovered ways of frightening the animal once it found him. She discouraged the beast by inventing tasks that were immediately crucial to their survival. More than once after twenty or more hours in the service of criminal children, he found himself unearthing trumpet vine from under the home or scraping the paint from an entire length of windows or trenching a drainage ditch near their neighbor’s fence to prevent anymore runoff from his tilted back lot. Anything to keep his eyes open and perhaps trap them with hers and use the ocular vice to crack the barrier she felt he had been constructing for months to keep her out of his sight.
Verbally, they could only slash and hack at one another as they moved through the house. Derision cleaved the air at every turn from every angle. Both postured and paraded on a perpetual warpath through the shifting terrain of the struggle, tilting the house from corner to corner. He could find no sanctuary in the creaking boards and yawing picture frames. She had marshaled her senses to detect the slightest hint of asylum among the dwindling free space within the walls. His freedom had become a distant dream and her idyllic hopes of a beautiful family life had packed their things into the same train on which they had arrived and they left without any recognition that she had done her best to accommodate their needs. They left her holding her child, trying to imagine some contrivance to keep them here if just for a few more days or hours.
Edit 11.2.2018