I Remember Chocolate
Fiction by M Teresa Clayton
It's midnight, the last of the chimes on the old clock has rung out its final count and here I am. Here. In this place of all places to be, I am here, where there is no sound but for the last resonating remnants of the old clocks final chime.
I counted them, one by one, twelve even and beautiful taps upon the chime. Each chime resounding E major to perfection and the echo of each strike limited to a mere second before becoming lost in the silence of the room. The room is alive; breathing out with each chime and then inhaling the sound, or perhaps consuming each as one would consume a morsel of chocolate.
I remember chocolate.
I take a deep breath and watch the candle's flame move towards me. I breathe out and observe it reaching out to the other side. Why? Why is the flame so curious about my inhalations and yet so fearful of the exhale?
If I look away, it begins its dance upon the wick setting everything in the room alive with movement. The shadows partner up with the other elements in the room and they tango across the floor like two passionate lovers, while the other shadows dip and rise and contort in a morbid minuet.
Morbid. How can a shadows dance become something so morbid?
It reminds me of the shadows behind the shade that was drawn behind the window in the apartment directly across from ours.
From my bedroom window I could watch the two lovers caress and undress, fall onto their bed and engage in some activity that looked as if he were killing her, one thrust at a time; her back arched in agony and her head thrown back, mouth open in mute screams...
Then it was over. He would arise and walk out of the room while she would wrap herself in something not unlike a long shirt with a tie at the waist. Her hair looked frightful; I thought of Medusa and her head full of snakes.
He returned and she would move further away so that I could no longer see her. He sat on the bed with his head in his hands.
Suddenly he looked up. My eyes followed him as he went to the far wall and opened the door to the outer hall. I knew because the light from the hall made the shadows seem more lifelike. Another woman entered the room and I could make out their angry exchange. She swept her hand across the top of a table sending everything reeling to the floor.
For a moment each item remained suspended in air. I could make out the bristles on the brush, the red color within an opened lipstick tube, the reflection in the mirror... The reflection in the mirror!
The man stood up and reached out to her. There was a snapping sound; a clapping sound, yet, his hands were waving in front of him as if he were trying to shield himself from some awful blow.
The color red was no longer contained in the tube of lipstick. It was sprayed onto the shade where the light highlighted the density of each splatter. Something drew my attention away from the shade itself and to the man who was falling toward it. One hand higher than the other in some mock finger-painting on the window canvas, the swirls and trails beneath his fingers leaving a surreal image upon the shade before his form fell below the window and I could no longer see him.
The woman in the nightshirt stood very still. Both women stood very still; their images not unlike store manikins. Neither moved and I waited and I waited, careful not to move.
The clock in the hall let out one lone belch of a ring. It was noticeably lower in register than the normal E major. I don't remember ever hearing it bong this low.
Immediately, my attention is directed to the window across the way once more as the two women leave the room and close the door behind them.
I instantly dropped to the floor and crawled to the door, cracked it opened enough to slither through into the barely lit hallway. I heard them giggling. Who was I hearing? One was the familiar laugh of my mother, the other was strange to my ears.
I leaned tight against the wall and moved slowly, making sure not to create a creak upon the floor beneath my footsteps. I turned toward the staircase and looked down to the foyer, but I saw nothing.
I turned my attention back towards my parents bedroom and carefully made my way to the door. On the knob of the door was something wet. I could not focus in the darkness there to see what it was. I tapped on the door before gripping the knob again and hearing the click that told me it would now freely swing open. And, open it did! There in the dim light I could make out the heap of a man, unmoving, lying upon the half hanging shade that was finger-painted a bloody brownish red that smelled of musk and something... metal.
The floor of their bedroom was strewn with sheets from the bed, lamps turned over, make-up, her brush and hand mirror... her hand mirror that once reflected something just as sickening was now reflecting the pale fear that was my own face.
The confusion did not have time to truly register before I felt the blinding blow to the back of my head and then, darkness. As I slowly began to regain consciousness, I looked up at two women who were in an embrace one would expect to see a man and women engaged in. The kisses were deep, passionate, filled with sexual excitement. It was unequivocal, unambiguous, absolute.
"Mom?"
The strange woman looked at my mother. "You know what needs to be done."
"I can't." My mother answered ashamed. Ashamed.
"I'll take care of it, then."
My body limp, she lifted me high and then out over the rail from the second floor balcony and let go.
I felt myself falling in slow motion. Falling. The chandelier was lifting higher up into the ceiling. I had never seen the chandelier from this perspective before. I could count the vertical spindles on the descending staircase and I think I saw a mark still visible from an accident I had on those very steps several years ago. I wondered for a moment if I could stop the fall. The face of the woman with her demonic smile next to the white face of mother, frozen in horror but without any indication of remorse.
I hit hard. I could no longer feel my body. My vision was blurred but I could make out a steel gray pistol being wiped clean and placed in my own hand.
The pistol was now in my own hand. But why? I just wanted to understand. I wanted to know why?
I made the word out with my lips with no voice to accompany them. Why?
My mother turned her head, "Go ahead."
With that I heard the combustion of bullet meeting brain, my brain. There would be no why.
It's midnight, the last of the chimes on the old clock has rung out its final count and here I am. Here. In this place of all places to be, I am here where there is no sound but for the last resonating remnants of the old clocks final chime.
I counted them, one by one, twelve even and beautiful taps upon the chime. Each chime resounding E major to perfection and the echo of each strike limited to a mere second before becoming lost in the silence of the room. The room is alive; breathing out with each chime and then inhaling the sound, or perhaps consuming each as one would consume a morsel of chocolate.
I remember chocolate.
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