He, the boy, was already out of his seat, ready for his regular after supper program. She, the mother, was, an embodiment of habit through and through, sitting across from the boy, staring at, what seemed to her, an insurmountable amount of food that she had hardly touched.
“I am tired mother,†he said in his deliberately quiet voice.
She didn’t even look up and as usual the boy took her silence to be a response, yet one not specified to be approving or disapproving, but merely just a response. Not for one second did the boy believe that he fooled his mother into thinking that he went to sleep so early every night. But what did it matter to him? Once his bedroom door was closed and locked and he was comfortably sitting on the edge of his bed, leaning his eye onto the eyepiece of the telescope, no other world existed, none other than the one across the street.
The telescope that had become the boy’s vessel to a new obsession was a gift. His father left it for him, a man that he had never seen. No photo’s existed, and according to his mother, no memories either. Pointed downwards, toward the illuminated street, the telescope sat facing the bedroom’s only window. The bedroom itself was newly furnished; a space filled with a new used mattress and broken clock along with no objects of childish desire. The street was lit, with a warm light that breached the bedroom’s windows with a yellow embrace but the sky above was dark, for the streetlights that flooded the city, also erased the stars that dotted the sky, leaving only the black dome that had neither beginning nor end.
Looking through the telescope, the boy could see the bar that tonight seemed to host an appropriate level of boisterous activity. The bouncer stood guard as always, both hands in his pockets and just like every other night, the bouncer was wearing his black t-shirt and black jeans. Despite the fact that the night air had become chillier recently, not one night passed where the boy was not able to see the tattoo on the bouncers left bicep. In lieu of this tattoo, the boy had given the bouncer the name Isabelle. He couldn’t figure why there was a heart around it however, who could love someone named Isabelle?
Isabelle’s gaze shifted, eyes staring to his left at an odd man who was walking up the street. His face was young yet he barely had a headful of gray hair that frizzled and shot in directions with an electric disorder more congruous with his youthful face. As the odd man stopped in front of the bar, a puzzled eyebrow rose on Isabelle’s face.
“Sorry, sir. But I can’t let you in. We are full tonight.â€
The odd man straightened his hunched back like an animal rearing up to intimidate and replied with both words and gestures of rabid and primal fervor that seemed to extend from further beneath his disheveled exterior, “It’s cause of how I look, isn’t it you fucker?â€
“Alright, keep walking. I don’t have to deal with shit like you.†As Isabelle finished what he was saying, the odd man leaned in close to his face, breathing heavily, releasing the scent of alcohol; something that Isabelle had already figured was churning inside the odd mans stomach. Somehow he knew, although its effects were lost in the maddening mystery the man’s face.
Then, with a sudden explosiveness, the odd man jabbed away with a knife, irregularly hitting home with blows that were as sporadic as a cornered animals swipes and claws. Grabbing whatever he could of his punctured torso, Isabelle fell onto the ground, kissing the street. The odd man scurried away.
The boy knew that Isabelle was not dead, he couldn’t be. His eye left the eyepiece and his body carried him onto the streets outside. Naked feet slapping on the asphalt, he hurried over to the motionless Isabelle. A pool of blood was already collecting beside and beneath the body, of what seemed to the boy now, that of a different man, one that he didn’t know. The blood was not bright red like his own when he had a nosebleed, instead, it was deep and thick, and flowing onto the black asphalt, it became even darker. The boy shook him but the man made no sound.
“Wake up. Wake up…â€
The man slowly came to his senses and turned his head just enough to see the boy. But the man nothing. He only stared at the boy with eyes that spoke a language the boy had never heard but knew. The boy ran into the bar and said that the man out front was bleeding and the bartender ran out along with a couple of regulars. Before long, the red and blue flashers, atop the silent ambulance and two patrol cars, flooded the warm yellow lights.
Long before the cops and medics arrived however, the boy had already gone back inside his house and was now sitting across from his mother, whose eyes were devoid of presence, glazed with a disgusting nonchalance.
“What the fuck did you do? Those lights better not be for you.†She was smoking, puffing away, and the thick gray smoke that suffocated the air in the room made the boy choke and cough.
“Nothing. A man died.â€
“Who? Do you know this person?â€
The boy looked angrily at his mother and replied that he was just a man who worked at the bar. He noticed that she had eaten half of what was on her plate ad like usual; the rest was going into the trash again, buried by all the stubs and ash from the cigarettes she devoured.
Her eyes had a glint of interest that became more apparent as she worked her way through her next wave of smothering questions, “The bar? Was it the bouncer?â€
However, the boy did not see his mother’s lively expressions. All he saw was smoke. His gaze shifted towards the tacky patterned kitchen floor tiles where the smoke did not reach. But the tiles themselves, transfused a sickening mood. His head began to spin. Beneath the painful white light from the fluorescent bulbs, rays that seemed to infectiously penetrate the clouds of smoke, the boy spaced out into a dizzying mental void. So he got up and ran back to his room and as he ran, he could hear his mother, but his coughing that rang in his ears muffled her words.
He locked the door and sat again on the edge of his bed, facing the telescope. He had puked before, but this vertigo, it only made him feel like he had to, the vomit never came. Fearful and frantic, the boy looked around for something, anything. Then, glaring at the telescope, he realized that he didn’t want anything in his vision except nothing. He can’t be dizzy if he sees nothing. With a weak push, the boy shoved aside the telescope and kneeled on the floor and rested his head on the windowsill and stared upwards, towards the blank black dome. And it was in this moment that he was reminded of the entirety of what he had seen that night. Wrapping his arms around himself, the boy began to cry, his watery eyes still fixed on the dome above, trying to look past the blurry black liquid in his eyes.
Still sitting in the kitchen, the mother listened to the second knock on her front door. She was already on her eighth cigarette. Another knock. They can wait. Instead of smoking it, she let the cigarette burn until it reached her fingers. She hardly endured the pain and let go quickly, letting the bud drop into the ashtray that had, by now, collected a substantial pile. When she finally opened the door, some of the smoke escaped. An expected face was before her and all she could say was nothing, she stood in silence in preparation for what was to come.
