Bound Of Blood (Part one) Unedited

One day I will move away from these narrow little themes but in the mean time this is the second short story I am attempting.
I am using a different writing style this time the characters are less idealised so the writing is les poetic than the style I used in Vanilla.
This is also a very short draft that will be extended later so if it seems the story line jumps too much please be reminded that this is first draft.

For the first time in his life Sean Jason Rees felt lonely. It was not the kind of lonely he had become accustom to in his long years of solitary travel nor the kind of lonely that crawled into bed with you when the moon is split into pieces by the bars on your window.
No the loneliness that Sean felt today was a much heavier burden even than the chains and shackles that clattered about his feet as he marched in stunted steps along the grey tiles.
It was a loneliness reserved only for those who had known the agony and tenderness of love and as Sean felt the drag of gravity in his shoulders and the cutting stabs of fear and anticipation in his gut Sean feared that it was the loneliness that would last to that bitter end.
He tried to ignore the inhabitants of the cells on his way; they all had that look in their eyes, even those who had not yet become accustomed to their bonds. Like wild animals they paced the floors in their cells swearing revenge and resistance, and others beaten and broken sunken eyes and trodden spirited, cogs of the system.
But today as he clattered passed their bars he could feel them stare with that bitter foreboding penitence.
“Cleanly shaven I see… New fancy haircut I see, that aint gonna do ya no good out there pumpkin!” came the malicious cackle from the cell at the corner of the corridor.
The cell had been christened Toadsburry hall in honor of the grotesque scurvy in mate who claimed it. His name was Henry Killen and the unsightly disease that crusted his skin in welts and warts was how Africa had punished him for his crimes. It had been the trafficking of young tribal beauties to supply whore houses across the world that had won Henry his latest stint in cell block C. but it was the warts that had made this latest incrassation easy in comparison. Killen had suffered no nightly intrusions from “the lipsticks” and other prisoners treated him with the loaded respect one might afford a leaper.
Sean was sickened by the gangly man with his yellow teeth and poky face so he kept his eye fixed on the back of the warden that lead him through the prison like a dog on a leash.
They passed through gates unlocking and locking each as they passed them. They moved in a series of wining hinges and metallic banging.
Passing a priest Sean had refused to see or speak to since his introduction to the population, and now as Sean was lead passed the robed figure he was sure he could see regret in the mans face.
Another short way before they came to a big green steel door.
Sean felt his heart skip a beat as the wardens key found its place in the lock and turned with a loud click.
The interior of the room was starkly lit and sparsely furnished but he’s attention was immediately drawn to the glass wall on his left hand side.
She was there her eyes seemed emotionless….


She was careful not to wake him when she moved her hand from his little shoulder to turn the page. The small rasping sound of his breathing didn’t change as he shifted sleepily on her lap until he’s face was turned up towards her. He wrinkled his nose and she found herself smiling at the Angelic face of her sleeping son.
She had witnessed this sleepy oddity so many times in his childhood and yet it still pulled at her heart strings and made her want to hug him tight to her chest.
The tic tic tic noise from the wall clock filtered into her awareness suddenly and she checked the time almost in habit.
It was late, far past Christian’s bed time and she reprimanded herself for letting him have his way.
“He’s the boss” she thought too herself “and he knows it”
She lifted him gently into her arms and felt him come to slightly as she stood up from the lumpy sofa.
“But mommy I’m not even sleepy” came the groggy little voice close to her ear, and she smiled at how trained the response was.
Not bothering to respond as he had slipped back to sleep just as the words left his mouth she carried him along the hall to the bedroom next to hers to lay him down under the covers of the car shaped bed he had wanted so badly.
She kissed him on the forehead careful not to disturb him and start the argument for a place in her bed.
“I love you mommy” came the groggy little voice again as she moved for the door.

Everybody had said she was crazy when Naomi Silverstone announced that she was pregnant. At 32 she was one of the most sought after marketing executive in the country and there wasn’t a firm or product that wouldn’t jump at the chance to work with Naomi.
She was at the height of her career and yet her personal life had been less than ideal up until now.
A string of misshaped relationships had turned Naomi into a pessimist when it came to love and matters of the heart; and realizing she was not getting any younger Naomi made a visit to a fertility clinic where she chose an anonymous sperm donor and became pregnant by artificial insemination.
She was determined to be a mother and her lack of male companionship would not deter her from her goal.
Her pregnancy was without event and drama, as Naomi settled into a management position with a smaller firm that would afford her normal office hours, a day care facility and a shorter commute from the suburban home she had purchased, refusing to raise her child in the top floor apartment of the smoggy and uncaring city.
He had been born in January by caesarian section, Naomi would have none of the idealized drama that accompanied a natural birth and insisted that only her mother should be present when Christian was born.
Ingrid was possibly the only person who understood her head strong daughter and divined that Naomi’s insistence on privacy and simplicity had much to do with the perceptions outsiders may draw from her unwed status.
Independent and self assured as she was she was under no illusions as to the nature of human beings and would risk no scar on her dazzling professional reputation.
It was until Christian entered her life with little grace and was deposited bawling and wet into Naomi’s arms that everybody in the room realized that Naomi had finally found a man who could make her swoon.

Vanilla (Part 2)

Ahead in the street
She was wearing white I recognized the fall of fringe across her left eye and her confident gaint.
Parts of me wanted to touch her, wanted to dip into the soul of a woman so untouchable yet so painfully honest but parts of me feared that what I may find would tarnish the dazzling reality I had built for her.
I could write her an Olympian goddess in her white linen skirt that blossomed ever so slightly around her knees.
She could be my afrodity, an immortal perfection only she could do justice to, a Marry Magdalene perhaps, cloaked in secrets powerful enough to crumble the walls of faith.

No I would not touch her.
I dare not ripple the cesspool of captivation and poison it with the mundane.
I chose rather to walk in her shadows.
Hers a confident step that parted the pedestrians in her way like Moses parted the waters mine and uncomfortable duck and weave as I struggled to maintain the distance between us.
A distance so close that I could make out the fine hairs in her neck so close that I could smell the vanilla of her skin yet I kept her out of reach willing my finger tips not to reach out to her.

I checked the Knock-off again as the bar on the corner came into sight. 17:02
As I looked up she had stepped off the kirb stones onto the steaming tar to cross the street that lay like a ravine between her and amber light pouring through the windows.
The constant rhythem of the clack of her heals on the sidewalk paving quickened as she trotted across the black surface her white skirts trailing in the evening breeze she was a liposaner in a gracefull canter.
Splashed across the city noises.
Trucks
Cars
Voices
Foot falls
Sirens……sirens.
It was the human fascination with the macabre that dragged my eyes from the goddess in the street and searched the untidy maze of road and stone for the origin of the screeching scull splitting noise.
The damp mob on the pavement in front of me pressed me back as I found the electric blue flash of lights and the screech of tires and metal grew closer.
It showered her face in streaming blue light and for the fist time I saw vanilla display undisguised emotion but I was pushed further back caught in the retreating press.
I struggle against the bodies

I was afforded only moments to drink her up.
Only moments and I could drown in her eyes
I lived a hundred lives in the fall of her body.
It was seconds and my senses were grappling with the realization of her mortality, but my mind, my mind allowed me the stretch of a life time, one spent imprisoned by her embrace delirious from her sent my mind afforded me a thousand mornings with her a beautiful waste of time


The noise must have been unbearable it was the dull thud that boomed in my mind and paralyzed my body.
The police cars with their white and blue war paint ripped an open wound in the city streets. It was like summer lightning tearing closer to my vanilla.
It seemed that the city exhaled when the effort to swerve brought the car into a vicious velocity driven slide.
And then the thud.
I had tried to grasp her so many times but it was like trying to catch and hold onto smoke, perhaps that was why I clung to a bitter hope that she would evaporate ahead of the side long slam that must have broken her back.
But alas she would not be carried away on the chill that swirled among the high buildings.
No wind would sweep her away and perch her out of harms way

Her body was not twisted and contorted into the macabre puppetry of the pain her final moments must have afforded her.
I don’t know why I thought it would be.
The steam that rose from the road had swallowed her up as she fell and swept a curtain of ghostly silver across her face.
Her eyes were closed guarding the onlooker around me from pits of sorrow that swam in her hazel eyes.
And her hands, still warm in mine. Each perfect finger weaved into mine and I was a fool for imagining I could feel the blood pulsing through the fine blue veins underneath her cashmere skin


Peace.
There were no fancy words or flourishes I could bath her lifeless face in.
Her hair had come loose and the dark tresses framed her beautiful face the evening light burning red shards into the chocolate colors of her hair.
I understood now why people often revert to such an unimaginative cliché when revering to death.
Moments drew on and I felt the heat her hands dissipate and I held her tighter willing it to remain just a little longer.
People mulled about her I recall a paramedic check a pulls I knew he would not find.

“did you know her” it was a shout in a thick African accent from the medic at her other arm.
I don’t know how long it took me to respond because he repeated the barked question before I was able to stutter a reply. Was I crying?
“yes” it was weak and only barely audible over the voices and noises that amplified the horror of the scene.
“tell me her name”
Words that were never there died to dust in my mouth as I searched the Angelique face of a woman I’d never known.
I didn’t know her name, and yet I held her hand tighter willing the reality away trying with my every fiber to hold onto it at as the heat slipped from her hands and the sun kissed glow dissipated from her skin .
In desperation I reverted my eyes and searched instead for answers, or sympathy in the dark little face of the medic.
But I found another face nearby. In an ocean of curiosity and fascination he stood. Unassuming and sallow his shoulders were slumped.
It was the current of unmasked pain and open regret in the tearful grey eyes that made me let go of her.
I had intruded. Walked on holey ground

Vanilla (part 1)

Its strange how a great lie can be a great romance
how I can respect you more for your rejection.
and how your braver for not fighting for it.
this is vanilla

17:03 the time had seemed odd at first but it had been weeks since I hade first been witness to this intrigue and I had long since stopped pondering its significance.
It was no more than the metallic clatter of a door opening above the din of the evening crowd and she was there.
Back straight and determined she marched….no strode across the dimly lit room undeterred by the feathers of cigar smoke brushing the slight blush on her check.
She wore heels as always with her hair swept back into a twist, I divined that it was a skilled accidents that escaped the dark fringe from its pins and brought it romantically over her left eye.
Always the left eye.
She did not check her step as she grazed past the waitress tending my table.
Vanilla everyday vanilla.

“Your becoming a regular”
The busty waitress crackled, her voice grated.
Her face was pretty yet marred by hard years. The yellowy shade to the inside of her well formed lips belied years of cigarette smoke. Her eyes were smiling that forced dutiful smile.
Soft on the eye, hard on the heart, possibly trodden dreams of a silver screen like many her age in these parts of jozi.
Her long blond hair and impractical style for waiting tables and though her finger nails were clipped short one could see the glossy finish of a clear nail varnish.
Hers were the stories I lived for.
Everyone has a story, everyone has a battle and they wear them on their bodies like patchwork raincoats.
Out on the street a beggar wears the grace and air of a former life. His shoulders square and the fleeting flickers of pride in his sallow face tell of a man who hit the bottom harder because of the distance he fell.

I nodded at the waitress smiled and drew the glass nearer.
My attention momentarily wandering from the woman cloaked in vanilla to the bubbles bobbing in my beer. It took but a moment for me to find her a place.
Id type her in tonight.
Shed like that I thought to myself, Ill make her an actress or a cabaret singer in a smoky Broadway club.
She disappeared her long hair escaping its bonds as she turned on her heal and headed to the rowdy crowd near the bar.

When I returned to vanilla she had found her table, deserted as usual in an uncomfortable corner in the back of the pub.
The light was a smoky amber and for a moment I considered perhaps “the mistress of a gangster” but the thought left as soon as it came, their were no showy pretences of riches about vanilla she wore a classical class that oozed of pride, she was an effortlessly sexy but most of all she was mysterious.
And it was this brought me here every night with the blue collar crowd.

Her poise was not downcast but her chin was tilted only far enough to let the shadows cloak her eyes
Eyes that never scanned the room.
She knew he would come.

Serene I thought as my mind gripped at adjectives to dress vanilla in
She sat slightly sideways her legs comfortably crossed accentuating the curve of her calve.
Nothing about her was anxious or expectant.

7minutes latter he entered.
He entered as he always did, allowing himself the slightest pause to drink her in, always the phantom of a smile in his eyes as he spots her in the corner.

Ignorant of my movie star waitress cooing her good evenings at him in syrupy tones he begins the journey towards the back of the bar.
Journey…..
He wears the black linen of a well tailored suit only to mask the beat of his heart, is it anguish, is it fear, that implacable emotion that twitches the sinew in he’s square jaw. Implacable though it may be its not the twitch I noticed first.
As he comes shuffling through the crowd past my table I catch a glimpse of it again. Misty gray eyes swallowed in a strong draft of longing and sorrow.
There was no smells or distinctions about this man, tall undoubtedly handsome but simple.

If she had sensed his presence noting about her belied that. She sat still her chin still tilted hiding her eyes from me.
When he reached her table he pressed his right hand to his left breast pocket the effort was deliberate but not forced, and it gave me the idée that this man needed to force very little in his life.
Yet he came her with intention every night and night after night his intentions were the things that kept the synapses of my brain firing late into the night.

The waitress was back to clear my glass.
her body blocked my few of the couple in the corner as she replaced the ashtray and removed the foamy remains of the beer.
I shuffled uncomfortably in my seat, anxious be rid of the girl.
“another” the words sounded short and rude as I croaked them at her and I felt the temperature drop
“please” I added a bit to quickly and forced a smile at her.
With a difficult curl in her lips she shuffled of to the kitchen.
I didn’t notice the gentle sway in her hips as she weaved through the people in her way my attention was fixed on the story that refused to reveal itself in the back of the bar.

He shifted easily into the small chair across the table from vanilla, it was only then that she lifted her face into the smoggy yellow light and allowed me to see her eyes.
It was the moment I had played out in my mind each night for two weeks, the moment I could not write, single seconds that had afforded me countless rewrites and driven me to the limits of my abilities and instincts.
Something moved in those deep hazel eyes as they settled on the unassuming honest face of the man across the table.
It was torturously implacable and yet so intensely honest.
A remarkable unknown that had driven me to weave, destroy and rethink every web I had built for her.

They did not greet one another.
Not a hand shake nor a hallo passed between them. He simply sat down and met her gaze with his.
It was not a challenge nor was it a scrutiny.
He seemed to settle in her eyes.
Minutes passed and still they had no words for one another just an impenetrable stare.
Around them the pub seemed to heave with end of day relieve.
Some laughed and a group of businessmen near me toasted some recent success. My waitress fought a see of wondering hands with wavering patience to deposited my beer wordlessly on my table.
And yet Vanilla and the man sat lost in their own place oblivious to the milling push of humanity around them.
The cackle from the large woman in the booth behind them shattered the air and yet passed without a flicker of notice from the dark little table in the corner.

Minuets drew on like this.
Until as suddenly as she had come, she got up and moved for the door
The clatter again and she was gone.
Swallowed up by heavy hot air of Johannesburg’s nocturnal throbbing.

I watched him heave a sigh but it wasn’t relief. Perhaps self loathing.
As if on queue a mousy little waitress appeared at his table with a scotch glass. He nodded and smiled easily at the uninteresting little creature who scampered back to her post behind the bar and left him alone again.
He sloshed the golden liquid and ice around in the glass twice brought it to his lips and swallowed it with a single gulp.
He looked at the drained glass remorsefully as he held it at eye level propped up on his elbow.
I tested the water again and conjured up a world of industrial espionage as he placed the glass and a R50 note on the table. But dismissed it again as he passed me on this way to the door.
Deeper I thought to myself. Human, yes, and honest.
Unchecked unrefined and untapped the story that sat only tables away from me would not be tamed as easily and try as I may she would not let me dress her in the intrigue and flattery of a commercial best.
No Vanilla would be raw.

She was still in my mind when I left the pub. Stepping out into the smothering air I sniffed a futile sniff hoping that her scent my guide me.
But there was nothing.
Nothing more than diesel fumes and noise that crowded the narrow sidewalks of a changing city bursting at its seems with societal contrast.
I would try tomorrow again but I was starting to fear I was a fool and a brick wall.
I flicked a silver coin at the hobo with air and grace before moving the old Pontiac barracuda into the snaking traffic.


*******

By 16:30 the view from my office window had changed its face. October rains had thundered down on the tall buildings and dirty streets all day and washed the grime from old jozi leaving her smelling of sun baked tar and sulphurus lightning.
The evening sun was just starting to pierce the bruised clouds and shot shards of red light into the allies and windows of dilapidated buildings.
Street venders and beggars started to emerge from the cities wounds, they oozed from every crevice and unoccupied shelter.
Hobbling up and down the lines of parked German luxuries pleading for the copper stuff that rattles and jangles in the pockets of the bankers and brokers who poor through the turnstiles of the four giants of the economy.
She had come so far and she had seen so much, and yet her inhabitants carried with them the daunting premonition that the beast that stirrs below the vibrant surface may wake at any moment.

I stepped out into the streets, considered going for the Pontiac only momentarily before seeing the long line of red tail lights stretched out along commissioner str.
My city is bleeding I thought to myself and congratulating myself of my poetic flare.
Ill have to use that somewhere.
At a slightly hurried pace I set of along the bustling sidewalks feeling the city air seep in through my pores.
Today will be the day I was sure of it as I had been the thirteen days preceding today.

It was there but only for a moment.
My mind had not yet had a chance to process the broken pieces of an image and dismissed it almost instantly.
The knock off Rolex on my wrist grew heavier as I realized how late it was.
I quickened my pace and it was as I slipped between the throng and press of human bodies I saw it again.
This time the picture lingered long enough to scrape the confines of comprehension.

Ahead in the street
She was wearing white I recognized the fall of fringe across her left eye and her confident gaint.