The Vestibule of Love
I
Dark rumbling clouds.
Immense spilling of rain. Cold chilling winds. Moist damp smells. Grey concrete walls, with cracks and holes. The dwelling of cockroaches, the most rancid of homes. And Esias was standing under the canopies of a closed down theatre wearing a half soaked dark green dungaree with the word Giraffe sowed on to his left chest in white letters.
Esias was just a kid, across the street from his school, in a time when the color of grey was the color of the world and sunshine was but a thing in the past. Isolated from love and neglected by moral, and he was out of breath.
The siren had just ended its horrific snarl. The immense iron doors had echoed eerily when they had shut. The tardy guard stood ready on his post with his rifle close at hand. No one else was around.
Esias cursed himself for not being able to run faster than he had and now, due to his chubby self, he was faced with being late. This shot a shiver through his soul. For a brief moment he decided to go back home, but that would only postpone the future troubles that was heading his way. He sighed in despair and gained, involuntarily, eye contact with the tardy guard.
He was commonly known as Tardy and feared for his clear blue eyes, with their sharp pointing black pupils, and his non-emotional face and hairless skull. In his strong arms his veins flowed with cold chilling blood. His posture was threatening, his purpose likewise.
Esias swallowed in anguish as Tardy suddenly picked up his rifle and left his booth by the main entrance and walked rapidly over the playground towards the rusty old iron gate that opened with a creak, chafing its hinges, when he approached. With his eyes still fixed into Esias, and ignoring the rushing cars, he crossed the street hanging the rifle over his left shoulder and pulling out his baton. Esias could vision it coming down on him. He covered his face.
“No!” he pleaded.
Tardy froze with the baton in a striking position. His face still static. The sky in shifting turmoil as the rain kept pouring down. Esias held his breath and spoke:
“…father I’m sorry I was late…”
The clear blue eyes of Tardy rapidly turned white and his stale face, twisted in a fleeting moment of rage, as his arm came down like the hand of God. Esias fell violently to the ground, panting in pain. Blood emerged from beneath his hair like a stream coming out of a tangled forest.
Tardy kneeled down and took a firm grip around Esias neck and whispered:
“What were you thinking? You know I can’t treat you any differently.” Esias had no answer. Tardy sighed slightly and then stood up again and looked behind him. The surveillance cameras on top of the walls surrounding the school had most likely seen everything. Time was running out. Any further delays would cause complications.
“This aches me son, you know I love you.” and with that doleful declaration he pulled Esias up on his feet and together they safely crossed the street, walked through the mechanical gates and continued toward the obese grey concrete building and the two entrance iron doors of solid steel. There were no windows and the barbwire on the buildings ceiling and on the walls vibrated quietly in the soft, but rain stained, wind. Tardy peered at one of the surveillance cameras. It made a low buzzing noise.
A stark white sign had been nailed with fat bolts above the entrance. In black rusty letters it simply read: School. Esias sighed in anguish, despair and pain.
“Well I never expected to see you in here Giraffe. One of our most organized and taintless disciples.” Correction Counselor General Ennis sighed with an inch of woe. “Nevertheless,” he continued. “the punishment needs to be carried out.”
Esias swallowed some dry saliva as General Ennis gave a modest nod to his secretary, who supplied him with a red steaming hot iron. It sneered like a snake. General Ennis grinned and said:
“This will be your first tardy mark and it is going to stain a bit.” General Ennis leaned forward. “Try not to make it a habit.”
A moment of silence entered the room. Esias sat on his knees with his thoughts in a terrifying knot. General Ennis took the moment to roll up his sleeves.
”Now let’s get to it. Please put the rubber cylinder you’ve been supplied with in your mouth and lean your head against your left shoulder. You’re very welcome to scream. My office has been supplied with soundproof walls, so we won’t have to disturb any on going lessons.”
And Esias screamed.
Tardy had trouble controlling his emotions. He faked a sneeze and wiped his tears when he covered his face. General Ennis looked at him with suspicion, but made no comment.
II
Mrs. Creek had just ticked the last name in the register and left her place behind the pulpit. She smiled and gazed at her twelve juvenile disciples of mathematics and order. They all wore, as always, their dark green dungarees - the girls having a lighter colored version. No one made a sound. No one blinked. No one thought until they were told.
Esias sat in the back with a bandage that partly covered his head, forehead and right ear. On his neck he wore a square plaster. Beneath it an X had been burnt in. Esias wasn’t the only one who had gained a tardy mark. Many had suffered like him, many had died. He had only one more chance. Another tardy mark and Esias would be living on the bank of death.
“We have a new addition to our class today. Turtle, please stand up.”
And she did.
For a moment Esias forgot all about his troubles and stared at the beauty in her petit appearance, amber colored hair fixed in a ponytail and wearing a pair of intriguing emerald eyes. She smiled and it filled Esias veins with a soothing endorphin far better than the morphine he’d been supplied with moments ago when his punishment had been executed.
“The assignment I assigned this morning is due now. Please hand them in.”
All the disciples left their desks and went in a pre-arranged order to Mrs. Creek and her pulpit. With bowed heads they gave her what she craved. Esias had been given an extra hour to complete the task due to his meeting with General Ennis that morning, so he stayed put behind his desk. But there was another kid who didn’t move either. It was Possum.
Mrs. Creek smiled and the coffee stains on her teeth matched her brown dress.
“Possum. You haven’t handed in any work. Now why is that?”
He shrugged his shoulders and tried desperately not to break down, but his façade was slowly crumbling. His eyes gleamed with tears. His voice quivered as he spoke.
“I was, I couldn’t…”
Mrs. Creek, still with her frowning smile tattooed on her face, walked towards an intercom that sat at ease on the wall next to the morbid blackboard. Possum left his desk and cried with fear.
“No please Mrs. Creek don’t. I’m sorry.”
“You were all taught this schools policy and curriculum in the first year. Don’t try to tell me otherwise. In this institution we only say things twice and if someone happens to not pay attention the penalty will always reach that individual later.” Mrs. Creek replied.
“I did pay attention…”
“Then you know the penalty.”
Possum nodded and slowly sat down behind his desk. With a muted groan he then, like many others before him, accepted his fate. Mrs. Creek pressed a purple button on the intercom and said:
“Possum. Crucifixion.”
Esias closed his eyes and wished the day would be over. After a few hours the ghastly shriek of the siren confirmed his wish.
III
Never-ending rain, forever lasting cold and the gracefully grey sky painted the landscape around Esias as he walked home. He rubbed his icy hands muttering about the weather and his day behind his clattering teeth. His breath came out like white puffs of smoke.
“Hey Giraffe.”
Esias turned his head and saw the new disciple Turtle sitting on a half disintegrated stonewall surrounding a tender park. She smiled and once again it eased his inner pain.
“You don’t look like a Giraffe?”
“They wanted to remind me that I need to be tall and slim, instead of what you see before you… short and chubby.”
“What’s your real name?”
“Esias.”
“I’m Sam.”
“So,” Esias put his hands in his pockets trying to think of something to say. “well how come they filed you as Turtle?”
Sam laughed to herself and left the stonewall. Esias heart stopped beating for a second as she came really close.
“Lets go to the lake and I can tell you all about it.”
“I need to be home before dark.”
“Same here, let’s go.”
Esias and Sam left the concrete civilization, coughing cars and closed in vegetation behind them and made their way down to one of the few comfortably desolate places left in the world. It wasn’t a very big lake or a clean one, but it looked beautiful. Surrounded by hills and trees, located in a small valley that did not allow any tall buildings or chimneys to peek over the crest and ruin the view. The rain had become a slow dribble and the air was still chilled but bearable.
Esias threw a stone into the water and Sam fiddled with a straw.
“It’s the third time I’ve moved this year. It hurts.”
“I never moved ever in my life. That can hurt as well,” said Esias and picked up another stone. Sam continued to play with the straw wrapping it around one of her fingers.
“I’m glad I met you, but I’ll probably move again soon.”
“I could write.”
“Letters easily turn into a chore. I don’t want that.”
“Neither do I.”
There should have been some birds singing or maybe a chipmunk skipping about, but animals had become rare and replaced by better, and less environmental gadgets, such as the gasoline driven remote control. Esias sat down on the sand reflecting on this fact inside himself as Sam joined him.
“Turtles lay their eggs in the sand and when they are born they have to make a run for it to reach the sea without getting killed. Few turtles make it, and even the ones who do often meet their end in the water by other predators that lurk there. If they only had faster legs, or better equipped bodies, maybe they would stand a chance.” Sam sighed and looked into the distance with a dreamy gaze. “I’ve got dyslexia, so the name Turtle was given to me.”
Esias wanted to hug her and tell her how wrong they were but he wasn’t brave enough. So instead he shrugged his shoulders and said:
“You’ll be alright.”
“Thanks.”
That night Esias slept with dreams. He woke up the next day fully recovered and after swallowing a small dose of morphine the ache in his head and neck disappeared. With rapid movements he made his way to school without getting there late. He ignored his father, who stood on his post by the main entrance, like he had been told to do. But contrary to the other kids he showed less fear of him. To him Tardy was, inside the bleached walls of their home, a gentle caring man who performed his job with excellence - and maybe one day Esias himself would fill his shoes.
IV
History 101, lies 202 and the deceitful truth.
Colonel Davy Jones waved his metal stick as he spoke and explained the way of the world and the aspects of the past making it up as he went along. All the disciples listened carefully and tried to remember everything for the test that very afternoon. They all knew that each mistake would result in one lash of the Colonels leather whip that hung from his belt. And that a score below average would simply, like most things, end in death.
Here knowledge was illegal and what you remembered is what was praised. No one objected. The disciples who followed the rules and worked hard got their excellent behavior noted and they were, at the end of education before they were thrown off the precipice of childhood into slavery, given an unconditional diploma of praise and distinction. It would serve them well in the future and maybe earn them a better position along the production lines.
No one was allowed to fail. The rotten eggs were spotted and swiftly crushed along the path towards graduation at the age of sixteen. Society would no longer be bothered with individuality, knowledge or freedom. Or any other way of life or soul that could produce insurrection or the blessed utopia.
Esias sat behind Sam and although perfume and essence was prohibited he could still smell the vague scent of her presence. It was most likely the soap she used that breezed his way when she moved in her chair. Esias inhaled. He knew that he needed to pay attention, but the trance of growing love was too strong. Colonel Jones didn’t notice that Esias was drifting away into the land of dreams, but the surveillance cameras did.
A beep was heard from the intercom. Then a voice followed:
“Giraffe. Daydreaming.”
Colonel Jones eyebrows crumbled into one fussy line. He unleashed his whip and it painfully nibbled Esias left shoulder.
“Sir, correction noted.” Esias quickly replied and the remark impressed the Colonel.
“Very well, where was I.” he said and continued the lesson. Esias tried not to submerge into his inner mind again until the day was over.
Tardy sat at the kitchen table holding his fork with some grayish cold substance at the end of it. He looked tired, releasing an occasional sigh or yawn. Esias was masticating with a mind in turmoil. But he knew that it would be better to speak than to withhold any information. His father was strict and had firm opinions about honesty. None should be kept in the dark. So Esias swallowed his food and spoke;
“I’m in love.”
“No.”
Esias could not object to his father’s blunt attack on his revealed emotions. But he stayed quite and continued to eat. The room was cold and the wind echoed in the ventilation valves. Tardy sighed again.
“I’m in love father.” Esias tried.
“To whom?”
“Sam.”
“A girl from school,” Tardy paused, “or a boy?”
“A girl.”
“What’s her name?”
“Sam.”
“What’s she filed under?”
“Turtle.”
Esias father smirked to himself. He finished his plate and had a bit of liquid after which and left the table for his customary after dinner nap. He spoke while leaving the room.
“Stop.”
“Stop what? What do you mean stop?!” Esias shouted after him. “Love can’t stop!”
He remained alone in the kitchen. His somber plate stared at him. He heard his father get into bed grunting to himself.
“But it will always fade.”
Esias father drifted into sleep and Esias, not being able to stand the vacuity, got his shoes on and went to the lake.
“My parents does not approve of you.”
Esias sighed.
“Neither does my father,” he said.
“Why is everything forbidden? Whatever happened to joy?”
“Don’t know, it’s just gone. Like everything else that was once sacred.”
They held hands and sat, as they have done now many times, in their domain by the lake on the sand. Together they had sanctified this place. It was their church and their heart, and here only peace would disturb them.
“We should run away.” Sam declared with a terrifying seriousness in her voice. Esias bowed his head.
“Were can we go? We live in a cage within a cage.”
“Anywhere, my mother will do anything to… she will kill us both.”
“Death is always present. Always written and told about in poems and songs. The effect of love. The story of Giraffe and Turtle.” Esias kissed Sam on the cheek and they crept closer to each other.
“Why is love so wrong?”
None of them could answer the question and it hung in the air for a moment as the tap in the sky began to leak more and more until a tidal wave, it seemed, came bursting down. The sand moistened up and started to transform into mud. The light of the day turned into a gloomier shade and the young couple closed their eyes and tried to preserve the moment inside themselves.
They got up and walked away from their haven by the lake traveling into the surrounding woods towards home. Hums and whispers swept through the vegetation. Singing. A choir of clean breezy voices. Esias felt at ease. Sam shivered. Were did it come from? What was its purpose?
“Kids, this is a moment of veracity!”
The voice who had uttered the words was a crippled old woman in a wheelchair. She had no legs and her aura was saddening. But she spoke with a lucid and shallow voice, and her eyes gleamed as the gloaming came down all around.
Esias and Sam had first become very startled from the sudden appearance of this cripple, but she was so good in spirit that they couldn’t pause themselves from feeling safe and amazed. They listened as if enlightened or paralyzed by something magical. The rain stopped whilst the following words flowed:
“Fill yourselves with the love of each other, surround yourselves with the love of all. Everything not seen, things that have been. Let it drift through and combust anything stale, strict and empty. And I promise, with kindness, that the vestibule of love will appear.”
Esias said nothing.
“The vestibule?” Sam repeated and grabbed hold of Esias hand.
“Yes.” she said. “A vestibule, a doorway of light and shine surrounded by the chorus of angels. Harmonies of life and love. Compassion. Peace. A threshold to be crossed.”
Before Esias got a change to ask any questions the old woman had already begun her answer - as if she had read his mind.
“On the other side of this vestibule there is a land of green vast forests, clear blue sparkling lakes and flowers of all colors and creeds. Nothing comes in pain only pleasure and if true love is pledge the vestibule will close and entrap the lovers forever… in bliss.”
Esias and Sam, still holding hands, held their breath. The rain slowly came back and started to pour once again. The old woman leaned back in her wheelchair and just as she was about to leave them she froze and seemed to hold her breath, as if she listened for something.
“Heed,” she whispered. “Can you here the singing? Can you hear the choir of angels? How beautiful they sound.”
The old crippled woman slowly raised her left hand and pointed towards the lake.
“Go,” she pleaded. “Follow it. Find it. Enter,” she said and started to cough and put her hands on the muddy wheels of her wheelchair. With great difficulty she rolled away in silence, without any sign of departure.
Esias and Sam stood dazed and mute, finding only comfort in their jointed hands and the old woman’s words that were still ringing in their ears. The vestibule of love.
Esias listened, and indeed, he heard something calling.
Like being lead by a guide dog they were drawn closer, like in trance they transported themselves… in the hope of a better place to be they set out to find what the crippled woman had spoke of. And indeed she spoke truthfully. There, suddenly, in front of them - to the theme of music and notes of blithe - it existed.
The vestibule of love was resembled liquefied silver, like mercury, pulsating like an organ… like a heart in mid air a few inches above the moist ground. It released a sweet nocturnal scent and its magical appearance seemed natural in the dusk filled woods that surrounded Esias, Sam and this door. This path to a simpler life. A mantra, an illusion - dreams of love and peace.
And all they had to do was enter and their lives would be free of demons.
“I need to say farewell to my father.” Esias stared into the vestibules vibrating self.
“Yes.” Sam tore her eyes from the door so utterly filled with glorious escapism. “Let’s meet here tomorrow at nightfall.”
Esias agreed and they departed with a kiss. The vestibule slowly closed and disappeared, but its scent lingered for hours.
V
“Father.”
“Yes.”
“I will leave and I will not come back.”
“Is it about this love of yours?”
“Yes Father, it is.”
“I understand.”
“You do… you do do
you you do
Esias slowly woke up from his dreams feeling ruthlessly gutted. He tried last night. He was going to try this morning, but he knows he will not succeed. It’s fear of being hated. His father is a good man. He is. He has always taken care of Esias. He has always worked hard and truthful to be able to support them both. To say goodbye would be to stab him in the back. The gain of pain is the cost of loss.
There was a tap at his window. He saw nothing. The sun was still rising, the dark still holding on.
Esias…
“Sam?” he walked up to his window and opened it. The coldness of the morn struck his skin. In the light that came from his bedside lamp Sam’s face emerged.
“Esias… we need to leave now.”
“Now?”
“I told my parents. They went mad. Then… my dad he…” Sam was breathing irregularly. Esias was stiffened with confusion. “Let’s just go, now. Before it is all lost,” she pleaded.
Esias looked behind him at his bedroom door. On the other side slept his father, his only family. Outside the window stood his love and to the sound of a ripped soul he climbed out, into the air, grabbed her hand and ran as fast as he could - towards the forest, the lake and the vestibule of love.
Gleason was a man of good fortune, good stature and good looks. He was also a bastard. The husband of a deranged pill eating female and the father of a lovesick child. The proud founder and owner of Gleason’s Guns, Guns and Guns.
In his opinion that was just what the world needed, so that was what the world would get. Not only did his business go well, he made a bundle of cash as every hour and day passed on. Always expanding and evolving. Always on the move, from city to city, opening and adding another piece to his huge chain of stores and outlets.
Now one billions sold.
But today his spirit was low.
With grief, but high with rage. His only child, his emerald stone - his golden gun Samantha had run of with a filthy boy. This could not be accepted. This he would not stand for.
His wife, her mother, had lost it and screamed death to them both - but Gleason still being a loving man (a loving man with guns) would not stand for that. He slapped her, kicked her… shot her - in the leg. Not only would he not have a copulating child, he wouldn’t have a motherless one either.
He knew about the lake. Sam had told him about her excursions. Societies hard teachings of speaking the truth had paid of. Even the white lies were black these days. Gleason spat out his chewing tobacco and waited for them behind a thorn bush. He had two guns in his holster and a shotgun by his side. Far away he heard them approach. The sound of feet running, but also the sound of… singing.
“There it is.” Sam pointed as the vestibule appeared out of nothing.
It shone and sang. It rippled into completion. It grew and beautified. It extended its goodness like the arms of Mother Nature.
Embrace the grace.
They kissed.
They were about to leave, to go to another world. A better one. The vestibule smiled at them. It preached the ultimate escapism. It hovered closer to the two children tangled into each other, lips to lips.
Gleason rubbed his fore head.
He grabbed his shotgun. He trembled in his sniper position. His eyes saw the door, his mind would not accept it. Even worse he saw his daughter kissing this boy. The whore. He was a man of reason. A man of high stature and responsibility.
He aimed.
He was also a bastard.
“I will see you on the other side.”
Esias kissed Sam again and stretched out his hand. The vestibule clasped it. It felt warm, like wax. Some sort of force. A kind of gravitation towed Esias closer. His arm, his heart, his whole self slowly submerged into this gate. To another yet unknown realm. Sam was right behind him. She entered and started to be soaked up as well. The experience tingled her nerves.
Gleason aimed for his daughter’s head,
squinting his eyes and squeezing the trigger.
There was no pain and no confusion.
Everything was spinning but yet calm, but the bullet that Gleason had fired suddenly penetrated the moment and churned itself deep inside Sam’s chest, as she was dragged over the threshold of love - into the other side of the vestibule. This portal of salvation. The shotguns scream deafened Gleason’s ears as he became witness of his daughter’s death and disappearance like a drop in an infinite desert..
Inside the vestibule there was only peace.
Soft tender grass. A breeze easy for the mind. A view filled with rest. A scent of freedom. And Esias with his girl in his arms, alone with her death. Wasn’t there supposed to be no pain?
Sam opened her eyes.
“There is no pain.” she smiled. “I feel well.”
And they kissed,
as the vestibule closed behind them. Forever
4 March 1999 - 6 Jan 2000
Dark rumbling clouds.
Immense spilling of rain. Cold chilling winds. Moist damp smells. Grey concrete walls, with cracks and holes. The dwelling of cockroaches, the most rancid of homes. And Esias was standing under the canopies of a closed down theatre wearing a half soaked dark green dungaree with the word Giraffe sowed on to his left chest in white letters.
Esias was just a kid, across the street from his school, in a time when the color of grey was the color of the world and sunshine was but a thing in the past. Isolated from love and neglected by moral, and he was out of breath.
The siren had just ended its horrific snarl. The immense iron doors had echoed eerily when they had shut. The tardy guard stood ready on his post with his rifle close at hand. No one else was around.
Esias cursed himself for not being able to run faster than he had and now, due to his chubby self, he was faced with being late. This shot a shiver through his soul. For a brief moment he decided to go back home, but that would only postpone the future troubles that was heading his way. He sighed in despair and gained, involuntarily, eye contact with the tardy guard.
He was commonly known as Tardy and feared for his clear blue eyes, with their sharp pointing black pupils, and his non-emotional face and hairless skull. In his strong arms his veins flowed with cold chilling blood. His posture was threatening, his purpose likewise.
Esias swallowed in anguish as Tardy suddenly picked up his rifle and left his booth by the main entrance and walked rapidly over the playground towards the rusty old iron gate that opened with a creak, chafing its hinges, when he approached. With his eyes still fixed into Esias, and ignoring the rushing cars, he crossed the street hanging the rifle over his left shoulder and pulling out his baton. Esias could vision it coming down on him. He covered his face.
“No!” he pleaded.
Tardy froze with the baton in a striking position. His face still static. The sky in shifting turmoil as the rain kept pouring down. Esias held his breath and spoke:
“…father I’m sorry I was late…”
The clear blue eyes of Tardy rapidly turned white and his stale face, twisted in a fleeting moment of rage, as his arm came down like the hand of God. Esias fell violently to the ground, panting in pain. Blood emerged from beneath his hair like a stream coming out of a tangled forest.
Tardy kneeled down and took a firm grip around Esias neck and whispered:
“What were you thinking? You know I can’t treat you any differently.” Esias had no answer. Tardy sighed slightly and then stood up again and looked behind him. The surveillance cameras on top of the walls surrounding the school had most likely seen everything. Time was running out. Any further delays would cause complications.
“This aches me son, you know I love you.” and with that doleful declaration he pulled Esias up on his feet and together they safely crossed the street, walked through the mechanical gates and continued toward the obese grey concrete building and the two entrance iron doors of solid steel. There were no windows and the barbwire on the buildings ceiling and on the walls vibrated quietly in the soft, but rain stained, wind. Tardy peered at one of the surveillance cameras. It made a low buzzing noise.
A stark white sign had been nailed with fat bolts above the entrance. In black rusty letters it simply read: School. Esias sighed in anguish, despair and pain.
“Well I never expected to see you in here Giraffe. One of our most organized and taintless disciples.” Correction Counselor General Ennis sighed with an inch of woe. “Nevertheless,” he continued. “the punishment needs to be carried out.”
Esias swallowed some dry saliva as General Ennis gave a modest nod to his secretary, who supplied him with a red steaming hot iron. It sneered like a snake. General Ennis grinned and said:
“This will be your first tardy mark and it is going to stain a bit.” General Ennis leaned forward. “Try not to make it a habit.”
A moment of silence entered the room. Esias sat on his knees with his thoughts in a terrifying knot. General Ennis took the moment to roll up his sleeves.
”Now let’s get to it. Please put the rubber cylinder you’ve been supplied with in your mouth and lean your head against your left shoulder. You’re very welcome to scream. My office has been supplied with soundproof walls, so we won’t have to disturb any on going lessons.”
And Esias screamed.
Tardy had trouble controlling his emotions. He faked a sneeze and wiped his tears when he covered his face. General Ennis looked at him with suspicion, but made no comment.
II
Mrs. Creek had just ticked the last name in the register and left her place behind the pulpit. She smiled and gazed at her twelve juvenile disciples of mathematics and order. They all wore, as always, their dark green dungarees - the girls having a lighter colored version. No one made a sound. No one blinked. No one thought until they were told.
Esias sat in the back with a bandage that partly covered his head, forehead and right ear. On his neck he wore a square plaster. Beneath it an X had been burnt in. Esias wasn’t the only one who had gained a tardy mark. Many had suffered like him, many had died. He had only one more chance. Another tardy mark and Esias would be living on the bank of death.
“We have a new addition to our class today. Turtle, please stand up.”
And she did.
For a moment Esias forgot all about his troubles and stared at the beauty in her petit appearance, amber colored hair fixed in a ponytail and wearing a pair of intriguing emerald eyes. She smiled and it filled Esias veins with a soothing endorphin far better than the morphine he’d been supplied with moments ago when his punishment had been executed.
“The assignment I assigned this morning is due now. Please hand them in.”
All the disciples left their desks and went in a pre-arranged order to Mrs. Creek and her pulpit. With bowed heads they gave her what she craved. Esias had been given an extra hour to complete the task due to his meeting with General Ennis that morning, so he stayed put behind his desk. But there was another kid who didn’t move either. It was Possum.
Mrs. Creek smiled and the coffee stains on her teeth matched her brown dress.
“Possum. You haven’t handed in any work. Now why is that?”
He shrugged his shoulders and tried desperately not to break down, but his façade was slowly crumbling. His eyes gleamed with tears. His voice quivered as he spoke.
“I was, I couldn’t…”
Mrs. Creek, still with her frowning smile tattooed on her face, walked towards an intercom that sat at ease on the wall next to the morbid blackboard. Possum left his desk and cried with fear.
“No please Mrs. Creek don’t. I’m sorry.”
“You were all taught this schools policy and curriculum in the first year. Don’t try to tell me otherwise. In this institution we only say things twice and if someone happens to not pay attention the penalty will always reach that individual later.” Mrs. Creek replied.
“I did pay attention…”
“Then you know the penalty.”
Possum nodded and slowly sat down behind his desk. With a muted groan he then, like many others before him, accepted his fate. Mrs. Creek pressed a purple button on the intercom and said:
“Possum. Crucifixion.”
Esias closed his eyes and wished the day would be over. After a few hours the ghastly shriek of the siren confirmed his wish.
III
Never-ending rain, forever lasting cold and the gracefully grey sky painted the landscape around Esias as he walked home. He rubbed his icy hands muttering about the weather and his day behind his clattering teeth. His breath came out like white puffs of smoke.
“Hey Giraffe.”
Esias turned his head and saw the new disciple Turtle sitting on a half disintegrated stonewall surrounding a tender park. She smiled and once again it eased his inner pain.
“You don’t look like a Giraffe?”
“They wanted to remind me that I need to be tall and slim, instead of what you see before you… short and chubby.”
“What’s your real name?”
“Esias.”
“I’m Sam.”
“So,” Esias put his hands in his pockets trying to think of something to say. “well how come they filed you as Turtle?”
Sam laughed to herself and left the stonewall. Esias heart stopped beating for a second as she came really close.
“Lets go to the lake and I can tell you all about it.”
“I need to be home before dark.”
“Same here, let’s go.”
Esias and Sam left the concrete civilization, coughing cars and closed in vegetation behind them and made their way down to one of the few comfortably desolate places left in the world. It wasn’t a very big lake or a clean one, but it looked beautiful. Surrounded by hills and trees, located in a small valley that did not allow any tall buildings or chimneys to peek over the crest and ruin the view. The rain had become a slow dribble and the air was still chilled but bearable.
Esias threw a stone into the water and Sam fiddled with a straw.
“It’s the third time I’ve moved this year. It hurts.”
“I never moved ever in my life. That can hurt as well,” said Esias and picked up another stone. Sam continued to play with the straw wrapping it around one of her fingers.
“I’m glad I met you, but I’ll probably move again soon.”
“I could write.”
“Letters easily turn into a chore. I don’t want that.”
“Neither do I.”
There should have been some birds singing or maybe a chipmunk skipping about, but animals had become rare and replaced by better, and less environmental gadgets, such as the gasoline driven remote control. Esias sat down on the sand reflecting on this fact inside himself as Sam joined him.
“Turtles lay their eggs in the sand and when they are born they have to make a run for it to reach the sea without getting killed. Few turtles make it, and even the ones who do often meet their end in the water by other predators that lurk there. If they only had faster legs, or better equipped bodies, maybe they would stand a chance.” Sam sighed and looked into the distance with a dreamy gaze. “I’ve got dyslexia, so the name Turtle was given to me.”
Esias wanted to hug her and tell her how wrong they were but he wasn’t brave enough. So instead he shrugged his shoulders and said:
“You’ll be alright.”
“Thanks.”
That night Esias slept with dreams. He woke up the next day fully recovered and after swallowing a small dose of morphine the ache in his head and neck disappeared. With rapid movements he made his way to school without getting there late. He ignored his father, who stood on his post by the main entrance, like he had been told to do. But contrary to the other kids he showed less fear of him. To him Tardy was, inside the bleached walls of their home, a gentle caring man who performed his job with excellence - and maybe one day Esias himself would fill his shoes.
IV
History 101, lies 202 and the deceitful truth.
Colonel Davy Jones waved his metal stick as he spoke and explained the way of the world and the aspects of the past making it up as he went along. All the disciples listened carefully and tried to remember everything for the test that very afternoon. They all knew that each mistake would result in one lash of the Colonels leather whip that hung from his belt. And that a score below average would simply, like most things, end in death.
Here knowledge was illegal and what you remembered is what was praised. No one objected. The disciples who followed the rules and worked hard got their excellent behavior noted and they were, at the end of education before they were thrown off the precipice of childhood into slavery, given an unconditional diploma of praise and distinction. It would serve them well in the future and maybe earn them a better position along the production lines.
No one was allowed to fail. The rotten eggs were spotted and swiftly crushed along the path towards graduation at the age of sixteen. Society would no longer be bothered with individuality, knowledge or freedom. Or any other way of life or soul that could produce insurrection or the blessed utopia.
Esias sat behind Sam and although perfume and essence was prohibited he could still smell the vague scent of her presence. It was most likely the soap she used that breezed his way when she moved in her chair. Esias inhaled. He knew that he needed to pay attention, but the trance of growing love was too strong. Colonel Jones didn’t notice that Esias was drifting away into the land of dreams, but the surveillance cameras did.
A beep was heard from the intercom. Then a voice followed:
“Giraffe. Daydreaming.”
Colonel Jones eyebrows crumbled into one fussy line. He unleashed his whip and it painfully nibbled Esias left shoulder.
“Sir, correction noted.” Esias quickly replied and the remark impressed the Colonel.
“Very well, where was I.” he said and continued the lesson. Esias tried not to submerge into his inner mind again until the day was over.
Tardy sat at the kitchen table holding his fork with some grayish cold substance at the end of it. He looked tired, releasing an occasional sigh or yawn. Esias was masticating with a mind in turmoil. But he knew that it would be better to speak than to withhold any information. His father was strict and had firm opinions about honesty. None should be kept in the dark. So Esias swallowed his food and spoke;
“I’m in love.”
“No.”
Esias could not object to his father’s blunt attack on his revealed emotions. But he stayed quite and continued to eat. The room was cold and the wind echoed in the ventilation valves. Tardy sighed again.
“I’m in love father.” Esias tried.
“To whom?”
“Sam.”
“A girl from school,” Tardy paused, “or a boy?”
“A girl.”
“What’s her name?”
“Sam.”
“What’s she filed under?”
“Turtle.”
Esias father smirked to himself. He finished his plate and had a bit of liquid after which and left the table for his customary after dinner nap. He spoke while leaving the room.
“Stop.”
“Stop what? What do you mean stop?!” Esias shouted after him. “Love can’t stop!”
He remained alone in the kitchen. His somber plate stared at him. He heard his father get into bed grunting to himself.
“But it will always fade.”
Esias father drifted into sleep and Esias, not being able to stand the vacuity, got his shoes on and went to the lake.
“My parents does not approve of you.”
Esias sighed.
“Neither does my father,” he said.
“Why is everything forbidden? Whatever happened to joy?”
“Don’t know, it’s just gone. Like everything else that was once sacred.”
They held hands and sat, as they have done now many times, in their domain by the lake on the sand. Together they had sanctified this place. It was their church and their heart, and here only peace would disturb them.
“We should run away.” Sam declared with a terrifying seriousness in her voice. Esias bowed his head.
“Were can we go? We live in a cage within a cage.”
“Anywhere, my mother will do anything to… she will kill us both.”
“Death is always present. Always written and told about in poems and songs. The effect of love. The story of Giraffe and Turtle.” Esias kissed Sam on the cheek and they crept closer to each other.
“Why is love so wrong?”
None of them could answer the question and it hung in the air for a moment as the tap in the sky began to leak more and more until a tidal wave, it seemed, came bursting down. The sand moistened up and started to transform into mud. The light of the day turned into a gloomier shade and the young couple closed their eyes and tried to preserve the moment inside themselves.
They got up and walked away from their haven by the lake traveling into the surrounding woods towards home. Hums and whispers swept through the vegetation. Singing. A choir of clean breezy voices. Esias felt at ease. Sam shivered. Were did it come from? What was its purpose?
“Kids, this is a moment of veracity!”
The voice who had uttered the words was a crippled old woman in a wheelchair. She had no legs and her aura was saddening. But she spoke with a lucid and shallow voice, and her eyes gleamed as the gloaming came down all around.
Esias and Sam had first become very startled from the sudden appearance of this cripple, but she was so good in spirit that they couldn’t pause themselves from feeling safe and amazed. They listened as if enlightened or paralyzed by something magical. The rain stopped whilst the following words flowed:
“Fill yourselves with the love of each other, surround yourselves with the love of all. Everything not seen, things that have been. Let it drift through and combust anything stale, strict and empty. And I promise, with kindness, that the vestibule of love will appear.”
Esias said nothing.
“The vestibule?” Sam repeated and grabbed hold of Esias hand.
“Yes.” she said. “A vestibule, a doorway of light and shine surrounded by the chorus of angels. Harmonies of life and love. Compassion. Peace. A threshold to be crossed.”
Before Esias got a change to ask any questions the old woman had already begun her answer - as if she had read his mind.
“On the other side of this vestibule there is a land of green vast forests, clear blue sparkling lakes and flowers of all colors and creeds. Nothing comes in pain only pleasure and if true love is pledge the vestibule will close and entrap the lovers forever… in bliss.”
Esias and Sam, still holding hands, held their breath. The rain slowly came back and started to pour once again. The old woman leaned back in her wheelchair and just as she was about to leave them she froze and seemed to hold her breath, as if she listened for something.
“Heed,” she whispered. “Can you here the singing? Can you hear the choir of angels? How beautiful they sound.”
The old crippled woman slowly raised her left hand and pointed towards the lake.
“Go,” she pleaded. “Follow it. Find it. Enter,” she said and started to cough and put her hands on the muddy wheels of her wheelchair. With great difficulty she rolled away in silence, without any sign of departure.
Esias and Sam stood dazed and mute, finding only comfort in their jointed hands and the old woman’s words that were still ringing in their ears. The vestibule of love.
Esias listened, and indeed, he heard something calling.
Like being lead by a guide dog they were drawn closer, like in trance they transported themselves… in the hope of a better place to be they set out to find what the crippled woman had spoke of. And indeed she spoke truthfully. There, suddenly, in front of them - to the theme of music and notes of blithe - it existed.
The vestibule of love was resembled liquefied silver, like mercury, pulsating like an organ… like a heart in mid air a few inches above the moist ground. It released a sweet nocturnal scent and its magical appearance seemed natural in the dusk filled woods that surrounded Esias, Sam and this door. This path to a simpler life. A mantra, an illusion - dreams of love and peace.
And all they had to do was enter and their lives would be free of demons.
“I need to say farewell to my father.” Esias stared into the vestibules vibrating self.
“Yes.” Sam tore her eyes from the door so utterly filled with glorious escapism. “Let’s meet here tomorrow at nightfall.”
Esias agreed and they departed with a kiss. The vestibule slowly closed and disappeared, but its scent lingered for hours.
V
“Father.”
“Yes.”
“I will leave and I will not come back.”
“Is it about this love of yours?”
“Yes Father, it is.”
“I understand.”
“You do… you do do
you you do
Esias slowly woke up from his dreams feeling ruthlessly gutted. He tried last night. He was going to try this morning, but he knows he will not succeed. It’s fear of being hated. His father is a good man. He is. He has always taken care of Esias. He has always worked hard and truthful to be able to support them both. To say goodbye would be to stab him in the back. The gain of pain is the cost of loss.
There was a tap at his window. He saw nothing. The sun was still rising, the dark still holding on.
Esias…
“Sam?” he walked up to his window and opened it. The coldness of the morn struck his skin. In the light that came from his bedside lamp Sam’s face emerged.
“Esias… we need to leave now.”
“Now?”
“I told my parents. They went mad. Then… my dad he…” Sam was breathing irregularly. Esias was stiffened with confusion. “Let’s just go, now. Before it is all lost,” she pleaded.
Esias looked behind him at his bedroom door. On the other side slept his father, his only family. Outside the window stood his love and to the sound of a ripped soul he climbed out, into the air, grabbed her hand and ran as fast as he could - towards the forest, the lake and the vestibule of love.
Gleason was a man of good fortune, good stature and good looks. He was also a bastard. The husband of a deranged pill eating female and the father of a lovesick child. The proud founder and owner of Gleason’s Guns, Guns and Guns.
In his opinion that was just what the world needed, so that was what the world would get. Not only did his business go well, he made a bundle of cash as every hour and day passed on. Always expanding and evolving. Always on the move, from city to city, opening and adding another piece to his huge chain of stores and outlets.
Now one billions sold.
But today his spirit was low.
With grief, but high with rage. His only child, his emerald stone - his golden gun Samantha had run of with a filthy boy. This could not be accepted. This he would not stand for.
His wife, her mother, had lost it and screamed death to them both - but Gleason still being a loving man (a loving man with guns) would not stand for that. He slapped her, kicked her… shot her - in the leg. Not only would he not have a copulating child, he wouldn’t have a motherless one either.
He knew about the lake. Sam had told him about her excursions. Societies hard teachings of speaking the truth had paid of. Even the white lies were black these days. Gleason spat out his chewing tobacco and waited for them behind a thorn bush. He had two guns in his holster and a shotgun by his side. Far away he heard them approach. The sound of feet running, but also the sound of… singing.
“There it is.” Sam pointed as the vestibule appeared out of nothing.
It shone and sang. It rippled into completion. It grew and beautified. It extended its goodness like the arms of Mother Nature.
Embrace the grace.
They kissed.
They were about to leave, to go to another world. A better one. The vestibule smiled at them. It preached the ultimate escapism. It hovered closer to the two children tangled into each other, lips to lips.
Gleason rubbed his fore head.
He grabbed his shotgun. He trembled in his sniper position. His eyes saw the door, his mind would not accept it. Even worse he saw his daughter kissing this boy. The whore. He was a man of reason. A man of high stature and responsibility.
He aimed.
He was also a bastard.
“I will see you on the other side.”
Esias kissed Sam again and stretched out his hand. The vestibule clasped it. It felt warm, like wax. Some sort of force. A kind of gravitation towed Esias closer. His arm, his heart, his whole self slowly submerged into this gate. To another yet unknown realm. Sam was right behind him. She entered and started to be soaked up as well. The experience tingled her nerves.
Gleason aimed for his daughter’s head,
squinting his eyes and squeezing the trigger.
There was no pain and no confusion.
Everything was spinning but yet calm, but the bullet that Gleason had fired suddenly penetrated the moment and churned itself deep inside Sam’s chest, as she was dragged over the threshold of love - into the other side of the vestibule. This portal of salvation. The shotguns scream deafened Gleason’s ears as he became witness of his daughter’s death and disappearance like a drop in an infinite desert..
Inside the vestibule there was only peace.
Soft tender grass. A breeze easy for the mind. A view filled with rest. A scent of freedom. And Esias with his girl in his arms, alone with her death. Wasn’t there supposed to be no pain?
Sam opened her eyes.
“There is no pain.” she smiled. “I feel well.”
And they kissed,
as the vestibule closed behind them. Forever
4 March 1999 - 6 Jan 2000
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