RAVELLED

    RAVELLED

    © Hein Mönnig 2012

And so the eternal question was not, What would you do with a drunken sailor?
    Rather, it should have concerned drunken parents.
    And the question, horribly and simply answered, was, Nothing.
    A little girl of seven, puny of muscle and slight of frame, was certainly not capable of going head-to-head with two drunken buffoons.
    So, she waited. And suffered.
    And suffered.
    It's funny how resilient the human body is.
    Essentially, the thing does not wish to die. This was a basic principle the inebriated oafs understood without understanding, grasping the concept slyly and twisting it to their perverted satisfaction.
    So they gave a little water, and even less food.
    You see, gentle reader, the body will survive for quite some time without organic nourishment, reverting to consuming itself first — muscle tissue, body fat, that sort of thing – until the desperate inhabitant looked like some badly dressed refugee from an alternate-reality televison show called Anorexics 'R Us. Or something like that.
    But water, now. Ah, the water.
    The body needs the old aqua to cement the synapses, let the juices flow, the enzymes do their thing, let the electrolytes keep the current going.
    So the drunken parents gave her just enough water to keep the neighbours, welfare workers and cops away.
    So it went.
    For some time.
    An endless time.
    She slept, fitfully. Jerking in troubled sleep, like a dog chasing and catching an elusive rabbit — and discovering, upon cornering the beast in a darkened cavern, that it could transmogrify into a were-bear, fangs clad in fur and sweat pants and boots, drooling for the taste of Little Girl.
    Not sleeping, she would daydream.
    Daydream of toys and school and frocks.
    Dream of days free of the constraints of her little cubby hole of a room, squashed in under the roof, not even an attic's attic.
    They gave her very little to assuage the pain of hunger, the boredom of timeless staring, the  pondering of life's wilful cruelties.
    Thinking themselves most witty, and recognising that winter would endanger the child, and thus, possibly them, they gave her some rags with which she was to fashion clothing.
    From bags to rags.
    From old T-shirts, to tatters.
    From ancient pants, to barely-there scants.
    Oh, how they guffawed at their redly-shining humour in forcing the threadbare and barely-there on her.
    Armed (a most ironic word, as you will see, Dear Reader) with one needle and some thread, the girl was tasked with making sure she survived the unheated winter's enclosure. Materially, an orphan, as it were.
    Oh, how the dullards guffawed at their self-perceived geniality.
    She wept as she slept.
    Weep and sleep.
    Sleep and weep.
    A charming little rhyme, to be sure, but not so comical in its execution and experience. Fitful sleeps, they were, filled with most strange nightmares and fanciful turns.
    Of which, the little phrase of Down-Twist-Left-Pull, then Down again featured most prominently in her nocturnal judderings.
    Down-Twist-Left-Pull, then Down again.
    Down-Twist-Left-Pull, then Down again.
    Dream of the There-Not-Here.
    She would wake, blood on her swollen fingers, sweat on the brow, tears drying to salty crusts on her wan and sunken cheeks.
    Blood, sweat and tears.
    The funny thing about a cliché is this: It most often based on historical fact or occurrence. Over-used and historically abused, yes; the bane of language teachers and writers everywhere, dreaming of originality.
    But, sometimes, the cliché just works.
    Down-Twist-Left-Pull, then Down again.
    Down-Twist-Left-Pull, then Down again.
    Blood, sweat and tears.
    Dream of the There-Not-Here.
    Blood, sweat and tears.
    Dream of the There-Not-Here.
    A doggerel rhyme that dogged her, waking groggy, exhausted, in pain.
    Even a cruel universe has a saturation point, the point when, offered another helping of Random Suffering topped with the cold gruel sauce of Wanton Sadism, it has to say, No, dammit, I'm full — time to set the metaphorical dials to a tightening of the waistline. Let's flip that coin one more time. And, should it fall on the other face then, the Door B would open...
    Even bad jokes get old.
    And so, as the waif threaded with bleeding fingers, awake and not awake, the magical alchemy of Blood, Sweat and Tears took hold in the fabric of space and time, her face and grime, and the shredded remains of cotton, velvet, horsehair, crimplene, wool, nylon and plastic forming the girl's sparse nest in the Attic of Attrition.
    Blood, Sweat and Tears.
    Down-Twist-Left-Pull, then Down again.
    Blood, sweat and tears.
    Dream of the There-Not-Here.
    So the cast-off fabrics were infused with the girl's secret secretions, and her somnambulistic hands groped and wove in the Down-Twist-Left-Pull, then Down again, Down-Twist-Left-Pull, then Down again.
    The dypsomaniacal duo became suspicious when, upon clattering down the metal dog food bowl with scraps and a puddle of mouldy water outside the cranny's door, no furtive and trembling hand was heard to reach through to play Go Fetch.
    Pressing ruddy ears to the door, they noted with slight puzzlement merely a very soft rustling.
    With fuzzy minds occupied by the lure of the next refill, they gave it no muddied thought for the next few days.
    Silence and inaction again when they slopped some more food at her little door, days hence.
    Fearing the possible disposing of a cumbersome little body, and possibly deodorising the enclave of putrefaction, they eventually broke into the upstairs closet to find —
    Well, nothing, save the bare floor, her dirty pillow and hole-ridden foam mattress, some scraps of off-cut material strewn hither and yon, and the wide-open window (set too high to safely climb down from, set too far from other's homes for desperate cries to be heard).
    And as their rosy and vein-ridden knuckles grasped the sill of the window, they espied in the slightly hazy distance, with a fresh sea breeze valiantly trying to waft away the stench of grog clouding them, a wondrous sight.
    Actually, a sight that turned their alcohol-swaddled stomachs. The kind of sight that approached you with upturned chin, a bright eye, and steady voice, rumbling, This is pretty much the end for you, is it not?
    Oh yes, indeed.
    For, in the aforementioned breeze, about half a football field's length away from them, was The Girl, kneeling precariously on her patchwork magic carpet, milling her arms slowly, deliriously, as if wading into the airy streams of life.
    So many uncertainties:
    Her frail frame, ragtag shorts and shirt flapping in the sea smell, barely able to remain upright on the carpet.
    Afraid.
    The wondrous carpet, strips and blotches barely holding together by ragged sleep-walker's stitching.
    Fraying.
    The misty skies, open, endless in front, with no parent or bed or food bowl in sight.
    Fraught.
    Free.
    And so, as our little girl wafted frailly on and into a nebulous future, further and further from  her related unbeloved, you, Dear Reader, wish to know:
    How did it end?
    Did she make good her escape?
    You know, I wish to believe so.
    And I know that you do, too.  ▣

The Weight of a Soul (2)

The Weight of a Soul (2)

    © Hein Mönnig 2013

She weighed on him.
    As he sat on the edge of the unfinished bridge, he thought of the burden of memory.
    That night.
    The car.
    The rain.
    And so she was gone.
    Afterwards, he had stopped working on the bridge.
    It could not be completed without the resident engineer.
    Yes, he did find it ironic. Engineers, the eager beavers of humanity, building and constructing and fixing things.
    He had not been able to fix this.
    So, on many nights, he walked alone, to his bridge.
    The incomplete shell of a dream, with a ragged edge poking into the night sky, skeletal ribs of steel bars and concrete arcs peering into the void.
    He would stand on the uneven rim, peering into the insoluble vista, calculating the speed of a fall required to end it all.
    The weight of a bridge.
    Hundreds of thousands of tons.
    The weight of a man.
    Less, in every way.
    Durable, permanent concrete.
    Soft, brittle flesh.
    The moon shone on him.
    The night air shimmered, currents of cooling streams competing for flight paths.
    And as he stood on the edge, a breath of air touched his face, stroked his closed eyelids, and the gleam of moon and stars gave his shadow a slow ripple.
    He raised his palms slowly to the skies.
    His shadow behind him hinted at a crucifix, ready for the spilling of life.
    Just before he fixed his hands in their final position of finality, the moon softly kissed his eyes, and the night air stroked his lips, and she was with him.
    And he remembered.
    Her tilted head and berry-brown eyes, quietly laughing with him in his often-public silliness.
    The slow, warm pulse of life in her throat, delightful when he touched her there, gently.
    Her silky wrists, where he would plant a quiet kiss before cupping his mouth in her curved fingers, inhaling her.
    As her presence wafted over him — a quality no quantity of heavy steel and concrete could replace — he sank on his knees, silent tears gathering on his lips.
    And as his body added a little more weight to the massive half-bridge, his soul lifted and flew, weightless, caressed by moon and stars, the plumes of night air, and the sweet whispers of her eternal, soulful, infinite lightness.

The Weight of a Soul (1)

    The Weight of a Soul  (1)    © Hein Mönnig 2013

And so the writer sat, back to the wall in his favourite corner, scanning the coffee shop's clientele for random inspiration.
    Yes, all the regulars had shuffled in as soon as the waiter with snake-like hips had swooshed open the sliding doors at 9 am — the vacuous hipsters with their gleaming Apple Macbook Air notebooks, desperate for a skinny latté with free order of public Wifi; the belligerent, boot-wearing builders who, routinely, would appropriate at least two or three tables for the public spreading of blueprints, and the rather loud spreading of blue epithets regarding their contractual bosses; the over-Botoxed matrons with frozen foreheads and dead eyes, gleaming under highlighted tresses whilst they scanned the pump-wearing competition with self-righteous disdain.
    So much sarcastic material, such little time.
    He had filled tomes, novels and epigraphs with much maliciously merry analyses of such creatures he beheld surrounding him now. In fact, he was a human parasite, feeding voraciously on the pathetic poltroons that offended his sensibilities.
    But none he scorned as much as himself.
    What price, a man's soul if it be fed from the bones and remnants of another's?
    As he spooned another 5 grams of brown sugar (the "healthier" alternative...) into his long Americano, he considered the mutual obsessions with mass – how the ostentatious rich would glory in the ordering of a 500g steak, as opposed to the humble Joseph Soaps with their 75g steak rolls, the prancing models who wiffled and squeaked in feigned horror as  another sliver of buttered croissant slid down their silky gullets, the builders who were of the manly and joint opinion that no single beer of 350ml would cope without the buttressing company of another ten.
    So much weight, such little substance.
    So much calamari, crayfish and sole — such little soul...
    He chortled mirthlessly, silently, at his tiny pun.
    And as the writer sat in his corner, collecting silly and superficial images for his next socialite's novel, his soul leeched from his cranium – not because it wanted to fly as free as a bewinged beast, but because there was no weight to tether it, no mass in venal veneer, no gravitational pull of a solidifying sphere.
    As a writer, he appreciated paradoxes.
    And his skeletally-thin soul wafted off, he felt its ghost weigh down on him – an Ersatz replacement for happiness, success and meaning.
    The weight of a best-selling novel? About 400 grams.
    The weight of a soul when it has gone?
    Like a black hole, it weighed all and nothing, simultaneously.