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Investigators say that immediately after their final dinner alive and together, and not a lost moment later, the family arose in customary order from their carefully dictated places at the table to go their separate ways along their personal nocturnal paths. Beyond that, not much else was known. As the evening progressed, every possible re-construction of the events of that night was exhausted and discarded because none of them provided an explanation contemporary or popular enough to merit approval. One investigator, in particular, remarked to his partner that he wished the sole survivor of the domestic catastrophe were old enough to speak, while everyone, in general, crossing each other’s trails during their own wanderings about the home, just shook their heads at the wonder of it all. The first investigator’s partner, seeing everyone’s reaction, felt that they were shaking their heads not at the wonder of the mystery left in the house, but at something else, something horrible created as a by-product of what they considered elemental in all of their lives. Whatever it was, it hung over them all, yet – and this was the true mystery –yet, it hadn’t claimed them the way it had claimed this family. But it could – at any moment. This thought struck him with such force that he pulled himself up short after bending over to examine an unlikely clue, and stood very still, hoping that maybe the debris of the disheveled domestic atmosphere that they had discovered there would settle and everything would be made clear, orderly, and familiar to them again. He shuddered, realizing the fruitlessness of such hopes, and made a note to CLL WFE N KIDS as soon as he could, but this note would soon be lost amongst the hundreds of other bits of useless, everyday information he was forced to record as he passed through the house.
That more of the men didn’t feel the same way was a mystery in itself. Maybe they did, but it just took them longer. It was inevitable, wasn’t it, considering the time spent in the shadow of such a disaster? After the initial discovery of the crime, the investigative team had set to work searching for some set of clues to a crime that seemed to have neither prelude nor commission, just an aftermath. The more time the investigators spent in the house that evening, the more the scenes permeating the air that the family and the house had breathed together began to permeate the newcomers themselves. One by one, each began to feel a hint of familiarity. Certain points in the house began to act as a match placed against a candle, igniting a flame that illuminated recessed alcoves of their minds, exposing forgotten or ignored scenes of their lives, recalling them, unbidden, to their memories.
Yet, whatever the men did come to feel, it didn’t make any lasting impression. The ingredients were there. As they found the paths that the family followed to their final resting places, they found something so familiar that it was routine. Routine, that is, until it just stopped, like a watch that had wound down, ceasing movement, suspending time. Of course, time didn’t stop there, the family stopped, or better yet, the family was stopped.
Even their final actions, attenuated into eternity, were so routine, so calmly domestic, that the investigators felt that no misdeed had been done in the home - and that they had arrived too early. It seemed as if they had arrived at the exact moment before the crime was committed, in time to witness the hand that had struck the family down in the very act. As they came upon each corpse, the investigators held themselves in check, standing, waiting for the crime to occur, like waiting for a frozen frame to come to life as the movie reel begins to roll, while the only action to begin was their own movements about the house. At times, they were no longer the audience viewing a screen, but part of the scene itself. In an eerie dislocation of time and space, they would become both mystery and detectives, both quarry and pursuers. It was at times like these that certain men among them had to gain control of their perceptions and separate them, suppressing the illusion that they were arriving to commit the crime rather than arriving to discover it.
It was all there, but it was nothing at all.
It was little enough that the investigators missed – or refused to see – the key explanations. The daughter, for one, was heard to speak out. She dared to attempt to break into the parents’ isolation, which had already begun there at the dinner table. Why must it be this way, she has asked. A very strange question for times such as these. The question was so rhetorical that no one sitting at the table paid it any attention. They ignored it so fully, that with no one willing to receive the interrogation, the investigators found it still hanging in the air above the table when they arrived hours later. The first to find it there noted its presence and shared its discovery with everyone else, at which time it was totally misinterpreted as an interrogation of fate made by the innocent victims whom they found one by one, in their dispersed final resting places about the property.
The only one at the table apparently willing to admit that the fatal doubt had been voiced was the baby, who began to cry, in gasping sobs, tears running through the pot-luck that had formed on his face during the course of the meal. Mother’s talk did little to soothe him, as she wiped his cheeks and mouth, completely forgetting the question that had just been raised. So she wiped his face, clearing the leftovers there, but fighting a losing battle against the steady stream of tears, resigning herself to the punishment that was her life.
While the mother resigned herself to her resignation, the father got up from his seat at the table and noticed that damned question still hanging over everyone’s head. In a grand effort to dodge it, he ducked a little too much, then having to place his hands on the table to steady himself and regain his balance. He shrugged and said to the baby, Everything comes out the same shitty way in the end. The baby, being addressed in such a direct manner, stopped crying and fixed him with big, blue eyes full of wonder. Unable to hold his gaze steady in one place for any length of time without getting dizzy, the father broke the stare that he was exchanging with the baby and, taking a deep breath, straightened himself and walked out of the room, the silent curses of the daughter snapping at his heels.
Later, investigators were led to his body by a long, electrical extension cord which they followed from an outlet above the kitchen sink, through the wide entryway, out a large sliding glass door and onto a pool-side patio. The first investigator to arrive at this scene of the scene of the crime thought that he had stumbled on the most remarkable find of the evening. He walked casually over to where the father sat beside the pool, his left arm resting on the table beside him, the tips of the fingers still caressing the volume knob of a portable black-and-white television that was at the other end of the extension cord. The father’s right arm hung limply over the side of the chair, a newspaper held precariously in the fingertips of that hand. From all appearances, the father, his ample chin resting on his chest, was nodding off to sleep, with his lips not yet fully pursed enough to receive the first snore from within. Even from a distance, the investigator could see the television’s glare floating in the liquidy reflection across the narrow slits of the father’s eyes, the heavy eyelids not having fallen all the way closed. The investigator, marveling at how anyone could sleep through what had happened there, moved to the man’s side and gently prodded him in the fleshy upper arm, just below the shoulder. The slight movement caused the newspaper to fall from the father’s hand, and the headline that was then revealed there provided the investigator with an explanation for why the man’s body felt so stiff beneath his prodding fingertips. RIGOR MORTIS SETS IN, the front-page headline read.
Later, in a small breech of confidentiality, the investigator confided to the distraught neighbors what he saw there on the patio. The television had been tuned to an all-night news station that re-broadcast the world’s anguish every half-hour, repeating to the man what he must have already remembered reading in the newspaper. As the father’s body was discovered, the station was airing a short dislcaimer spoken on behalf of everyone in the nation, deploring the state of modern society and denying any responsibility whatsoever for the domestic tragedy which the detective was currently investigating – live footage of which, viewers were promised, was soon to follow. The editorial, the investigator later told neighbors, would make a befitting epitaph for the family’s final resting place. The neighbors agreed, in the absence of anything better to inscribe on the family’s tomb, and ordered the words that the investigator had heard over the television incised on the headstone financed by a suitable corporate sponsor.
After the father and daughter had left, the mother was reminded of the baby by its insistent cooing. She closed her eyes and wavered to and fro in her chair, keeping time with some beautiful hymn in her head, blocking out the baby’s intrusion into her salvation. When she was finished, she felt as if her soul was bathed in a purifying light, almost a flame so warm she felt. She picked up the baby, as an afterthought actually, and floated toward the living room on a cloud of sanctity. She checked her progress only once, to exchange a crucial glance with her daughter. Yet, the glance and its moment passed, the three generations present in that moment were there together more than at any other moment before. The mother turned, rejecting the opportunity and continued on. Sinner, she hissed inside her head at her daughter. I would understand if you were in my situation. Yes, that is different. Everything is excused if it were me, for I alone am saved! Yes, then I would understand, and as she thought this, she realized something very peculiar. I am all alone, but even now nothing about the events so far that night seemed important. Once in the living room, she placed the baby in the playpen and situated herself in the very chair in which the investigators found her body later that night, playing audience to a never-ending sermon broadcast by groups of self-proclaimed prophets of God, who blessed the millions which gullible viewers were sending them for their limos and facelifts.
As the detectives pondered the mother’s corpse and the coroners declared that the father had drowned to death while sitting beside his pool, investigators found the body of the teenage daughter in her upstairs bedroom. She had gone directly there from the dinner table and immediately had begun to exhale the heavy fragrance of her dreams. She, for her part, had bitten her lip after she had spoken out so boldly at the dinner table, sensing some grave error had been committed. She had had to clench her teeth and fists when her father had risen and had threatened to launch into one of his discourses before he left the room. His leaving without having said a word to her angered her as much as his staying and saying something would have, so she slapped the table, rattling the dishes, and shouted, I hate all of you, which was the closest she had ever come to a term of endearment. On her furious way out of the room, she bent over the baby and with one wipe and a little twist of her hand, brushed away the tears on his cheeks and the snot under his nose.
Concentrating so on the baby’s well-being, she had to make a strong effort to shake off the burden of the question hanging over the table, but shake it she did. With an urgency which with she did nothing else, she climbed the stairs to the second floor, putting a dozen steps but at least a hundred miles between herself and them. When she reached the upstairs landing, she stopped and looked back to see her mother absent-mindedly carrying the baby with her as she passed into the living room, stopping only long enough to exchange the rare, but crucial glance with her daughter, then continuing on, resuming her feigned ignorance of her daughter’s expectance of forgiveness at the top of the stairs. She saw the baby stare at her from over her mother’s shoulder and then from the playpen where he had been unceremoniously dropped by the older lady. The daughter, having been taken aback by the momentary look of tender recognition in her mother’s eyes, regained her usual angry poise, and stormed down the hallway to her bedroom, slamming the door that hung too loosely on its hinges after being slammed this way countless times before.
She screamed inside herself, What have I done so bad to make them hate me so much? Explore an act of love with another, which they don’t know anything about, which they taught me nothing about? They taught me nothing, they offered me nothing! How else was I supposed to grow? To fly? I love what he is because he is all I truly have! I hate what they are, the false glamour of holy words spoken by devils and lofty ideals of self-proclaimed geniuses! I wish they were as dead as they seem, she raged. And as her rage was slowly spent, she cried within herself, They just don’t get it, they never will! I am all alone!
When investigators first entered her room, here again they thought they had found another sleeping form. Her dreams had overflown her solitary mind and were floating languidly in the air. Their pungent odor forced the investigators to cover their mouths and noses, and even then they instinctively held their breath as long as they could. One of them thought to open a window, but was quickly reprimanded by his superior. They might need these fantasies as evidence, he was told, so someone was also ordered to get a bag to put them in, before they were scattered beyond reach by the errant draft sliding stealthily in from the hallway. Before leaving so that the lone officer could begin the work of collecting the daughter’s dreams, the man in charge found the power button on the stereo that was pumping music through a pair of headsets and into the girl’s head. Being a parent himself, he pushed it, cutting off the unintelligible noise.
The daughter’s dreaming came to an abrupt end with the cessation of the sound in her ears. Her eyes flew open to reveal a group of strange men in the room with her, but who were as unaware of her as she was aware of them. In her usual way, she focused her thoughts, the way she had to do whenever she first awoke, and tried to remember what had happened before she had fallen asleep and allowed these strangers to get so close to her without being alerted by their presence. She remembered having stormed down the hallway after being rejected by her mother. She remembered slamming the door and throwing herself down beside her bed. Once situated there, she had closed her eyes and had inhaled the air of the room, exhaling some of her fantasies in exchange. Somewhere in these dreams was the answer for which she searched, the resolution to her dilemma. She only had to flush out the beast with which she struggled, make it show itself. She closed her eyes and began her search.
When she opened her eyes, rather than seeing the beast before her as she had expected, she found that she was surrounded by it. Before her lay a deserted street bathed in the blood-red light of a bonfire, the smoke of the nearby inferno stinging her eyes and burning her throat and lungs. When she inhaled, the glow of the pyre grew brighter as if stoked by her breath. Despite the burning sensation in her lungs, she held her breath in check, stopping time as long as she did so. Finally, she exhaled the smoke that had invaded her lungs and felt an unreal dizziness come over her.
When she opened her eyes, rather than seeing the beast before her as she had expected, she found that she was surrounded by it. To her left, her bedroom door swung silently, ominously, invitingly inward to reveal the hallway beyond. A malignant wind caressed her face with its tainted, humid touch as it entered her room from the lower level. A sickly, crimson fever had invaded the walls of the home and concentrated its energy at its worst in the family room. The daughter lifted herself up and drifted down the hall. From the head of the stairs, she could see the mother below, sitting motionless in her place. Descending, she noticed as she neared the landing, that the mother sat oddly, her head slumped lifelessly forward on her chest.
The mother had seen her daughter make her descent downward and she smiled at her. The daughter showed no sign of recognition. The young girl crept forward, afraid of waking the dead, and moved to see the mother’s face. She was afraid to move closer, afraid to do anything at all; as if she knew how to do anything anyway. The daughter leaned closer and a lock of hair fell across her face, covering it partly in shadow. She brushed it back easily, before the mother had a chance to do so. The mother was trying to examine the living daughter’s face as hard as the daughter was trying to examine the dead mother’s. The mother wanted to speak from this strange isolation in which she found herself imprisoned, all alone as she suddenly found herself. She wanted to tell the daughter so many things, but the intimate moment came to an abrupt end.
The father, having navigated his way inside for some now forgotten reason, sniffed loudly, announcing his presence. Seeing him standing there, anger eclipsed the visage of bewilderment on the daughter’s countenance. Oh no. Here it comes, he thought. And it did come. Do something, she shouted accusingly. He cast his glance downward, as usual, and said, Everything comes out the same shitty way in the end. The daughter balled up her delicate fists and hit him in the chest repeatedly with an exasperated howl, and then she turned and ran back upstairs. The father, surprised by the feel of her touch, walked dreamily back to his pool-side domain, trying desperately to remember why he had wandered into the house in the first place. As he sat back in his seat and reached for the volume knob of the small portable television, he thought, Here I am again out here. They don’t have the worries that I have. I am all alone.
Back upstairs, when she opened her eyes, rather than seeing the beast before her as she had expected, she found that she was surrounded by it. The daughter knew that it was left to her to stop the madness, to seek out and destroy the monster before it claimed anymore of the family. With luck, once vanquished, she could even force it to give the mother back to them. So, without delay, she embarked upon her search the moment she entered her room.
She began the music in her head and sat on the floor beside her bed, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath of the air in her room. Before her lay a deserted street bathed in the blood-red light of a bonfire, the smoke of the nearby inferno stinging her eyes and burning her throat and lungs. The fire! That’s the key! I can control it, she realized. When she inhaled, the glow of the pyre grew brighter as if stoked by her breath. Despite the burning sensation in her lungs, she held her breath in check, stopping time as long as she did so. Finally, she exhaled the smoke that had invaded her lungs and felt an unreal dizziness come over her. She breathed expansively, over and over, needing the courage which the fire gave her. She was afraid to stay in one place too long, but she was equally afraid to continue her journey, so she stayed there, breathing deeply.
She felt herself able to float ever so lightly. She toyed with the bonfire before her, sometimes its master, sometimes its servant, feeding it when it threatened to die and taking embers from it to light other. And still she inhaled, playing tricks with time, stopping it, starting it, all the while losing herself as she became almost as light as the malingering smoke. She wouldn’t stop it unless it stopped her.
Her play ended when several men entered her room and began rummage through her personal belongings. Seeing her own body below her, beside the bed, she received the first indication that she was separated from her rightful place. She inspected herself, sitting there with her eyes shut, sitting in peace, and for the first time in her life she admitted that she was beautiful, contrary to what she had always been told. She could sense the emotions her angelic face aroused in the men standing around her, even though they themselves denied what they felt. Some of them desired her sexually, while others longed for her tenderness, longed to gather her in their arms and hold her so that she could hold them in return. To them, she mattered, as she had always mattered, and the realization made her feel so free. She became free of the prison which she had built for herself, and felt it. She felt real love for the first time.
Suddenly, she longed to fly away, to discover old places – and new ones too. She wanted to gather her family out of their individual, self-imposed isolation and share with them her new world. Yet, she knew she had to wait. There were strangers in her home, and she sensed danger. When they finally left a lone man in her room to collect her mischievous dreams, she braced herself to make an escape. Her chance came when the man opened the window, against orders. She and several hundred of her lighter fantasies slipped out the window and out over the rear of her house.
Behind the house, she could see, a man floated atop the water of the pool as leisurely as she floated in the air. She looked more closely and saw that it was her father swimming there. She wanted to go to him, to speak to him, but as hard as she tried, she could not close the distance between them. In fact, the more she attempted it, the farther apart they grew. Swiftly, she felt an invisible force draw her steadily away, and she called to her father for help. She stretched out her arm, reaching for him in desperation.
When he glanced upward, he saw his daughter floating above him. It seemed as if she were trying to come to him, and he told himself that that was what he wanted more than anything in the world. He realized that she could not bridge the gap between them, and this made him feel lonely again. If she couldn’t bring herself to him, as strong-willed as she was, what could he do to help? When she reached out to him, he reached out to her also, carefully treading water, but he soon concluded that this too was futile. As she flew farther away from his outstretched arm, he turned his hand over, palm outward, sending her the best farewell blessing he could manage before restarting his swim in long, slow strokes. Everything comes out the same shitty way in the end, he thought to himself.
Throughout his nocturnal swim he liked to alternate style without any particular pattern in mind. His only purpose was to swim. He normally alternated between is characteristic strokes, long and slow, then stopping to float in ecstasy, barely keeping himself above water. As the night progressed, he increasingly immersed himself in his swimming, savoring the undulating world, afloat atop his dreams. He drank it all in, gulping more frantically with each swallow. When he tired, he would stop momentarily and re-gather his composure that had been scattered about in his haze. He continued on in this manner all evening, apart from the brief intrusion of the episode with his dead wife and daughter.
When he felt he had rested enough, he would commit himself to the swim anew. First, the long, burning strokes, then the trance-like voyage on a hazy sea, far away from all of his problems, from away from the troublesome real world. As he swam, the woes coming to him from the television faded into the background of his consciousness. If their noise returned, he swam all the more harder to make them go away. The last hours of his life became nothing but a repeat of the same cycle, until he swam into oblivion, too exhausted to save himself from drowning. This is how the detectives found him, drowned, sitting in a chair beside his swimming pool.
The mother, finally tiring of all the rude coming and going of the strangers despite her protests, politely waited for everyone to leave. She checked the television monitor in the meanwhile, waiting for her salvation to send her word. Her whore of a daughter and her useless husband aside, she would soon be free with the assistance of a distant redeemer whom she had never met, but promised her the world. No matter to her. She was justified, whereas the others were not; a useless drunkard and an addicted harlot. Hers was not infidelity; it was salvation from them both. That was the difference – a simple matter of perspective. Her actions were justified because they were hers. Any one else in her place would have been no less than a sinner indeed.
As soon as she felt that everyone was gone, she got up from her chair before the television, smoothed her skirt and walked out of the house, still imprisoned like the rest of her family, in the isolation they had created for themselves. On her way out the rear, she passed her husband. She bade him good-bye, telling him that she was leaving to seek the company of the modern self-proclaimed prophets of God on the television because certainly they understood she was saved and everyone else was damned. But he didn’t seem to hear, being so pre-occupied in whatever it was that he was doing. No matter. She continued on her aimless way.
Back inside, the baby watched his grandmother leave, following her course as long as he could. He placed his face against the side of the playpen to watch her go, leaving it pressed against the bars until they left red impressions in his forehead. He lingered there, after she had disappeared from his view, then pushed himself backward, into the middle of the crib. Lying there, on his back, he pulled his left foot up before his face and absent-mindedly contemplated his tiny toes, wondering when his time would come, when the despair would overcome him too, so that he could join all the grown-ups in playing their silly games.
END
