“A cat is a puzzle for which there is no solution.” – Hazel Nicholson

This piece will be my next full length novel. This is the first chapter as sort of a teaser, let me know what you think.

The Sestina

Part One: Pantoum

Chapter 1: Life

—in the sunlight, terrible, raw, the gold—

—Atlanta and New York are still in darkness. Police suspect terrorists
to be behind the bombings yesterday afternoon. The destroyed power
plants have left both cities without electricity. The current death count
is 45 in Atlanta and 23 in New York. Many citizens are leaving
their homes until the incident has been resolved. We will continue
to bring you updated information concerning these bizarre attacks.

I flipped off the TV. The screen snapped to darkness leaving a
momentary crackling sound in the air. My finger lingered over the
cushioned red button. The world around me ceased to turn, frozen on the
axis of time. The uneasy sensation of disbelief chilled my bones. My
brain fumbled with each thought in a way that forced me to doubt my
sobriety.
The only thing in the realm of my experience that
surfaced was a memory. It was a surreal snapshot of the past: packed
into a middle school auditorium, the thick breath of thousands of
teenagers, a larger-than-life screen and a sudden string of images,
each one depicting giant flaming buildings tumbling to the ground in
slow motion. In the back of my head something screamed, “April Fools!”
but the word that spread through the crowd of kids like meningitis had
a flavor of fear: Terrorists. Even then terrorists sounded like a word
untouched by emotion, terror isn’t what I felt, I felt numb.
Now,
twenty years later, history had looped in on itself, a dark spiral
filled with politics, guns and wars so far away from home people forgot
they were real. Every normal worry in my life stepped back. My plans
for Friday night became instantly inconsequential. On September 11th my
parents picked me up from school early. Now, I was the adult and unsure
what to do.
An irritating beep ripped me from my intensity. I
picked up the phone from the coffee table. A tiny white envelope
blinked on the screen: Meeting canceled.
I set the phone down. Some
selfish part my psyche cursed the United States for ruining my day. The
U. S. A. with its damn fragile freedom and democratic ideals that have
to piss off so many people.
I got up from the couch. I kicked old
boxers and T-shirts out of the way, threading a path across the living
room to the desk. An old pizza box crunched under my careless feet. I
took a pile of junk mail off of the black leather chair and dropped
them on the floor. My desk could have been a place of worship. Unlike
the rest of the room, it was spotless. Its steel edges looked like
polished mirrors and the sepia wood glinted with recent wax. The black
screen of my computer curved slightly in a panoramic kind of way,
immersing me into the realm of cyberspace when the world fell away .
I pressed a finger to the screen. It blinked blue for a moment before
saying, “Welcome Trent.” It flickered again, accompanied by a slight
whirring sound. A number of programs winked and zoomed around me. “You
have heard the news?” The voice asked me flatly.
“Yes,” I replied in a similar tone.
The computer paused, as if considering my answer. Sometimes it felt
eerily human. Before I could dwell on that thought the computer clicked
again, “What can I do for you?”
“I should work. Pull up the file on Dr. Abbass.”
An image flashed up on the screen. The man had skin the color of melted
sugar and small black eyes. A pair of silver spectacles balanced on his
long, almost Roman, nose. His dark hair was slightly unkempt but cut
neatly short around his ears. His lips smiled at something other than
the camera. His bright black eyes sparkled at something other than the
flash. I studied the man for a moment before scrolling down to his
biography on the John Hopkins’s alumni website. I opened another file
and began dictating notes, “Extensive background in neuroscience,
studied under the prestigious Dr. White. Multiple papers published on
biofeedback techniques and even more obscure ones on the physics of
brain electricity. While completing his residence in New York…” I
stopped. The images from news channels screamed in my head. Black
devastation, charred wreckages, covered in smoke, choked by its own tears, a city still haunted.
The static visions smothered me. Being submersed by them hurt my chest.
I got to my feet. “I have to get some air,” I said over my shoulder. I
grabbed a faded leather jacket and tugged it over my shoulders,
slamming the door behind me.

The air felt surprisingly brisk
for a Texas October. Her black heels clicked along the sidewalk. The
sleek downtown buildings loomed above her. Normally, the sunlight made
them look bright and promising, now they felt like enormous giants
preparing to step on her.
No normal lunchtime bustle today. Every
Dallas businessmen walked with subdued motions between the car lots.
Awen stopped at a crosswalk. The little white man, forever trapped in
the black box, blinked at her. She felt as powerless to run away as he
looked. She shoved her hands deeper into the pockets of her silver
jacket. Her head ached more than ever. She tried ignoring it, squeezing
her eyes shut as she paused at the next corner. A black shadow moved
over the sun. The darkness felt heavy against her eyelids. She opened
them again. The sidewalk turned from a path bleached white by
intolerable midwest summers to a lonesome path, spotted with cracks and
grates. The grinding sounds of traffic echoed between the towering
buildings. She stopped, staring at one of the city’s bronze statues. It
was of a man, standing, facing the street. He wore a suit and smiled.
In the shadows he looked frozen, covered in a molten metal, his chest
paralyzed and eyes glued open; imprisoned and unable to scream.
The
bank across the street had a screen reflecting the news. Awen paused.
The images of burning buildings raped her eyes. They called to another
memory in the back of her mind, waiting sullenly behind a locked door.
Awen quickly turned her head and kept walking.

In 2016, NASA
received a grant specifically for lunar expeditions. A team spent six
months in preparation. The exploratory unit called Praeconis took off
to set up a stable environment on the moon. The hope was to use
Praeconis to establish a precedent for colonization.
By 2018, the
United States government labeled the Praeconis expeditions as a failure
and cut the funding for further colonization projects. The facts
surrounding the suspension of the grant were vague at best. Perhaps it
was the number of “accidents” that happened or the death that finally
resulted. A rumor leaked from the scientific community that astronauts
refused to participate in the Praeconis projects. Whatever happened to
stop the lunar colonization, the government never wanted anyone to find
out.
However, even a failed experiment has something to teach.
The existence of H3 (a hydrogen gas) was discovered in large quantities
on the far side of the moon during Praeconis’s last voyage. Some
scientists claimed that this form of hydrogen could stop the energy
crisis.

The small gold letters stating the hours of operation
glinted at me in the sunlight. I pushed the door open with my shoulder.
The repetitive news images scattered light across the linoleum floor. I
dropped my head to block their message.
I caught sight of her
sitting in the corner: tall, willowy, blonde hair like a gilded frame
around her face. Her green sweater matched the swirl of Verde in her
hazel eyes. A book, submissively lying before her, absorbed her
complete attention. An untouched cappuccino sat by her elbow, the white
froth peeking over the ceramic lip of the cup.
I walked up to the
counter. The girl behind the cash register had a pierced nose and
red-rimmed eyes. She sniffled. “May I take your order?” she asked,
dropping her chin and not meeting my eyes.
“Hmm. A mocha would be fine.”
She just nodded. I could see the roots of her hair where the
self-inflicted dye-job ended. I leaned against the corner, trying to
create a suave silhouette. The coffee girl showed up with a mug in her
hand. She met my eyes this time. “Aren’t you part of the book club?”
I twitched the corner of my mouth, fast enough to make my smile seem more like a muscle spasm. “That’s right.”
“You know,” she drawled with a slight East-Texas twang. “They canceled
it today…” she flicked her wrist, covered in plastic bracelets,
towards the television. She opened her mouth but her eyes glazed over
and forced her to close them.
“Do you know someone up there?” I
asked, hiding the edge in my voice. It sounded sweet to her but
underneath raged a journalistic tendency searching for the right story
angle.
“N-no,” she answered. “I just—its so horrible, all those people.”
I nodded my head and patted her hand sympathetically. I reached over to
snag my coffee cup. Before I could escape back into anonymity she
looked up at me with her wide blue eyes, coated in mascara. “Do you
think its… terrorists?” There was that word again. She must have been
about 17. I flashed back again to the stink of middle school fears.
“I’m sure we’ll know soon,” I answered gently. I escaped with my drink
to warm me from the October chill still etched under my jacket.
I
moved slowly to the corner of the shop. She sat underneath the large
window with backwards lettering: pohS eeffoC. The afternoon sun shot
through the glass to create a glimmering halo around her face. Her
fingers flinched nervously on the tabletop. I noticed the soft olive
tone on the backs of her hands and how it carefully offset the pink
suppleness of her palms. Her fingers were not long and slender. Instead
they had a masculine and almost intelligent quality with their quick,
sharp movements. She used her clear-glazed nail to pick away at a scab
on the back of her left wrist. Once she tore the protective covering
off of the wound in one long chunk, she twitched, as though she never
anticipated the sting of sudden vulnerability. Her absentminded
behavior, sainted in the drooping sunshine, halted as she sensed my
approach.
“May I sit?” I asked her, dropping my copy of Metamorphosis on the table to punctuate my question with a period.
She paused and looked up at me, steel ringing behind her eyes. “Of course.”
“Its Awen, right?” I asked her.
Her blonde eyebrow arched in answer. “And you are Trent Seisyll, frustrated novelist.”
I slipped into the chair across from her, landing more heavily than I intended. “Journalist,” I corrected.
“Same thing,” she quipped. Her eyes passed through me to the screen of devastation.
“Aren’t you from the coast? Was any of your family affected by the power outages?” I forced myself to sound casual.
Awen was an enigma I wanted to unwrap. Quiet and thoughtful, she
attended my book club religiously. She looked almost fragile with her
thin frame but something about the cut of her jaw and the sharpness of
her eyes revealed a harder core. Her hair, like sunlit honey, hung in
long curls down her back. I’d often tried to speak to her but she
melted into the afternoon like ice cubes in summer lemonade. Now, on a
day of destruction, I finally speak to an angel.
“None of my family
live there any more.” Her eyes remained glued to the scene over my
shoulder. “When they showed the footage in my office, no one rose up, not one stood, we just watched in silence until they switched it off.”
I listened to her voice. It had that same sing-song quality when she
talked about literature. I spoke up, “You think it will start another
war?”
Her stare snapped to my face as if noticing me for the first
time. The glinting blade of her sneer cut into my heart. “No,” she
answered sharply. “It has to be an accident.”
My cynicism gave way
to incredulousness. “What, a few massive explosions just happen to
black out two of the major cities in the U. S. and you think its
coincidence?”
Her narrowed eyelashes cut me off. “Let’s hope I’m right.”
I paused. My eyes dropped to the book beneath her fingertips. The tiny
black letters on the sallow page reminded me of little ants devouring a
beach picnic. “You came for the book club?”
She shook her head.
“No, I just wanted to continue with my normal routine.” The words
sounded more like an admission of guilt rather than a statement of
fact. She shifted into another train of thought. “You read it?”
I nodded.
“Tell me, thwarted novelist, what do you have to say?”
“Well,” I paused with exquisite timing. I focused on Awen and gathered
all of my charisma. Nothing could beat a great performance to escape
reality. “The thing about modern writers is that they can flaunt their
insanity and instantly vault to fame (or infamy, their choice). They
don’t even need talent; as long as they figure out a unique analogy,
they can scribble their delusions down word for word, then bind it and
call it Art. The Yellow Wallpaper is a perfect example of this.”
I
stopped. Awen continued to watch, her fingers curled in anticipation
around the handle of her mug. Her eyes opened like blank sheets of
paper, ready to be written on. I trudged on.
“Russians are
particularly good at translating a life of bleak depression into an
equally bleak and depressing novel. The brilliance lies in his analogy.
The giant roach of Metamorphosis repels and disgusts us. Of course we
as humans are innately twisted so this cements our interest. But
interesting is a adjective contrary to the point of hilarity, for this
book, since nothing actually happens outside of the listless litany of
woes both boring and foreign. The reader only puts up with this
nonsensical torture because they expect something magical to happen…
like why our antihero has become a particularly nasty insect. But
no—instead, the cockroach dies a tedious, long-winded death.
“The
fact is, this whole story runs nearly parallel to the sad, deranged
little life of the writer: a lonely, depressed man writes a book about
being lonely and depressed then dies. The End.”
I sipped my
over-priced, diabetes inducing drink as I concluded. I waited for the
inaudible applause. My eyes found Awen’s earthier ones.
“So,” she responded. “You mean you could do better.”
“That’s not what I said,” I snapped.
“Obviously, your jaded concepts need to be taken with a grain of reason, but your deeper point should be considered viable.”
I felt like someone had pressed the mute button for the room. She
continued, “The point about the author’s brilliance being in the
analogy has merit. One can argue that the presentation was dry and
forthright but so was the content. Perhaps the writer purposefully
asserted his plot in this manner… to heighten the atmosphere. We can
squabble until doomsday on the definition of Art, the opinions on that
topic multiply like rabbits…. I will agree, despite your negative
feelings about the veracity in the artistic nature of the novel.”
Her words stung like rubbing alcohol on a wound: sharp but immediately
fading into something cleaner. I nearly lost my voice. When I caught
hold of it, words tumbling out of my lips, it surprised both of us.
“Would you like to go to dinner with me, tonight?”
“What? Dinner? Oh no, I’m not—“
“I meant, so we could talk more, I just thought it might—“
“Trent, its not you, I just, I’m not really…” She got to her feet. “I
should get back,” she said, turning her back on the cold coffee left at
her place.
I sat, still and shocked like someone had thrown ice
water over my head. Of course, I yelled at myself. The timing is
completely inappropriate. Just my luck. I finally get enough balls to
talk to her and the walls of civilization crumble .

The milky coolness of ice cream trickled down her fingers. Thick black
sunglasses hid her pale eyes from the heat rising off the tarry
pavement. The bus pulled to a heaving stop in front of her bench. The
doors slid open, revealing three metallic steps into a world of
air-conditioning.
“Gettin’ on, Missy?” asked the heavy-set driver in his back-country wheeze.
She studied the man behind her visor of invisibility. With the
calculating movements of a bathing cat she let her tongue slide over
the edge of the frozen yogurt, manipulating the creamy substance into a
triangular shape. She shook her head.
The old driver stared at her
a moment before pulling the lever to collapse the door. The engine
coughed politely before struggling back to life. As it pulled back from
the sidewalk, a tiny bell chimed. The woman turned her head, her eyes
following the figure quickly exiting the coffee shop. A smirk
materialized at the corners of the woman’s cold lips.