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Enigmatic Dystopia
Mel Maichack

On The Wrong Side
Al Griffin

Clarence woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. He didn’t know it yet, but those around him did. Even those who had no idea what to do tried to help.

Clarence was not aware of the usual sounds outside his window. The bird song in the trees did not drift in. Sam, the cat, meowing at the back door for breakfast brought no smile. Jeri’s loud music brought no complaint. His own bedside radio jumping loudly into the morning news and weather brought no quickening pulse.

Clarence sat up stiffly, turned to put his feet on the cold tile floor, stood and staggered forward. He walked across the bedroom, through the door, and into the hallway. As he passed through the kitchen, he looked at Jeri bent over the sink scrubbing on a dirty skillet. He spoke to her; she never heard him. Jeri never acknowledged Clarence.

At the back door, Sam the cat did not sneak past his foot as usual and go inside. Instead, Sam crouched and hissed with his ears flat, drew back from Clarence’s foot as he stepped close. Clarence puzzled about that, then walked down the driveway.

A man devoted to a paper-and-ink tradition in the new digital world, Clarence sidestepped the rolled newspaper at the end of the drive, didn’t stoop to pick it up. When Jeri finally did several days later, it was but one in a large, soggy pile. By then, neither she nor Clarence cared about the news of the world.

When Clarence stepped on the morning bus, no one spoke, no one offered a greeting, no one acknowledged his presence. Like every other morning on the morning commute, not a soul noticed that he was on the bus. Clarence found an empty seat. The woman next to him pulled her sweater tightly around her upper body, shivered against the cold. Clarence just stared straight ahead. Half an hour later, when the bus hissed to a stop at Main and 13th, Clarence, lost in what passed for thought, did not move. He would not be in the office this morning nor any morning thereafter.

Jeri arranged scrambled eggs and toast on two plates. She put the hot skillet in the sink, carried the plates to the table, added silverware and napkins. She spread strawberry jam, sprinkled salt, checked the clock, called her husband. She started to eat without him. She had things to do, after all.

Halfway through her eggs, her toast, her tolerance, she gulped at her coffee and scraped the chair back across the hard floor. She leaned out the kitchen door into the hallway, yelled loud enough to wake the dead. No answer.

Jeri heard the radio still blaring the news and weather. As she pounded down the hall, she expected him to be lost in thought while steaming shower water poured down his back. When she turned quickly at the bedroom door, she stepped on Clarence’s hand. She fell hard beside him. She shook his shoulder, yelled and cried. She called her best friend, Tammy, who lived across the street.

Tammy was a nurse, but she was not a lifesaver today. Tammy’s husband, Charles, followed her into the house, up the stairs. He knelt beside Clarence, but he was no lifesaver either. Jeri tried calling 9-1-1, got a recording, was told to wait.

Clarence woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Now Jeri knows it. And Tammy knows it. Sam the cat knew it. Now the undertaker knows it. Clarence, unaware which side he was on, continued about his routine, alone, on the wrong side.

The Ghosts Carved In Alabaster Stone
Icarus

I gaze upon the heavens,
Where phantoms of my past love ones are carved in alabaster stones.

Ancient lamentations haunt me in the void I reside,
The one I dare not any one traverse,
For it’s where I’ve bathed by their wailing cascade,
Of which I chose to bare to atone all of my wrong doing I’ve done to them,
Sadly not even their cries of despair can wash their suffering I wear on this flesh of mines.

I watch as their hands desperately reach to me,
Hoping to calm this aching soul of mines,
Yet, I stand on this precipice,
Staring at them with heavy oceans in my eyes,
For I am far gone from salvation reach,
Not even the gales of helium can lift me to such height.

How cruel the heavens were to bestow me with love,
To be filled me with such innocence,
Just to watch it greet death with open arms,
As I cradled its cold silhouette form while I weep frantic tears.

Why must I be the bearer of these tears?
When all these tears only hold grief,
Not the harbingers of rebirth.

Now all I can do is stare at the eyes of everything I lost with hollow eyes,
Only to feel their disapproval bathe my skin,
A agony scorn I dare not wish to bare,
Yet, these are the eyes I must endure since their passing,
As their memories of me succumbed into the oblivion,
For these are the apparitions chiseled into the purest stone,
The softest marble that haunts me for eternity.

You can find more of Icarus here!