the.veil

In a small fishing village outside of Manila, in the Phillippines, a small boy bends and wraps small dark fingers around a hammer that his father is using to repair the thatched roof of their hut.

As the scent of dried fish oil fills his nostrils, his eyes glaze over like polished coal.  Quickly fading sunlight gleams off of the soulless onyx eyes but does not penetrate.  The emptiness is within and without and allows nothing to pass the threshold.

His mind is no longer his own, no longer what you could call a mind at all.  The substance of gray matter remains but the brainwaves cease and the thoughts turn to dying and lost, useless fired synapses, like a lightning storm that never bears rain. He moves and acts through sheer primordial mechanics.  His bare feet shuffle through the dirt, dragging him inside, and toward the corner of the hut where his mother is crouched.  Her back is to him as she cooks their Sunday feast of boiled tubers and sea kelp.

She only glances over her shoulder when she senses him come in.

”Wash up and tell your father to come in for dinner, Mauriso", her voice intones sweetly.

She is one of the lucky ones. She is spared the unmatched fear that accompanies seeing the face of death, your face in mute horror reflected in shiny black eyes. The pain impulses in her brain barely register the strike as the stone head of the hammer buries itself deep into the cradle of her skull.

By the time her husband's pained howl storms through the sun baked village, there is nothing more than matted hair and clumps of flesh in a liquid base of blood, where once there was the head of a mother and wife.

_________________________

The sounds of Central Park float through the open shutters of Britt and Kevin Harrison's loft on the Upper East side of Manhattan.  Car horns honking and a dog barking somewhere in the distance harmonize with their daily ritual of bickering over breakfast.  Their days, filled with avoiding each other, scream of loneliness.  Only two years into their marriage they sense the weakness in the last remaining leg they lean on to keep their union intact.  More and more often throughout the day Britt’s mind allows itself to ponder the what if…

What if she hadn’t been born?

“I’m going to be late!”  Kevin calls from the kitchen, the red doors of the cabinet framing his pent up aggression.  He stands, impatient, hands on his khaki clad hips.

“What is taking so long?  I can NOT be late for this presentation today Brittany!  This is going to make my career!”

He only uses her full Christian name when he’s on the edge of boiling over and berating her with his words.

Still, she doesn’t respond.

Kevin’s black slip on dress shoes click-clack on the hardwood floor of the hallway, and ricochet off the exposed pipes and brick in the loft.  It was a short order task for the realtor to convince Britt and Kevin, a young couple at the time, that the shabby conditions were chique; that lived-in and worn had personality, the new retro-modern.

The door to the nursery stood slightly ajar.  Kevin’s hand pressed hard and fast against the peeling paint and swung the hinged wood wide. The black soled dress shoes scuffed the hardwood floor as Kevin stopped firm in his stride. Brittany stands, with pink bundle of life-draining joy in hand, on the terrace overlooking the park.  The feigned smile that plasters her face, through hardships and bliss, was nowhere to be found.  In its place was a vacant stare.  The blank canvas of Brittany’s face held nothing familiar to her life-long love.  Kevin stood transfixed as his stomach knotted like tree roots

Her lips were moving, slightly, but he could not hear if she was actually speaking. Kevin forced his limbs to respond and took a step forward.  “Brittany, what are you doing with Anna Lee?”

Britts lips kept moving, but she only continued to stare.  Only, she wasn’t really staring, he noticed.  Her eyes were black.  Like the shoe polish still sitting opened on the kitchen counter.  It was as if she was in a trance.  Lips moving slowly, soundlessly.

Another few steps toward the terrace.  Kevin moved slowly, unsure of whether his wife was even aware of his presence.

Anna Lee stirred in Britt’s arms, then settled. A few more steps.

“Sweetie, what’s going on?  Are you feeling… sick?  Just come here.  Put Anna back in her crib and come talk to me.  I’m sorry for yelling.  The presentation can wait, I’ll reschedule. Just come off of the terrace before…”

He realized, from this short distance that Brittany’s lips weren’t just moving, but that she was actually whispering.  It took him a moment of intent listening, then he made out her words.

“What if she hadn’t been born?  What if she hadn’t been born?”

His wifes rumination over the birth of their daughter played on her soft pink lips like a scratched vinyl recording.  He had never heard her actually vocalize what he had many times pondered; what he had suspected that they both wondered.

“Britt, sweetie… come here.  Come to me.  We will be alright, we can work through these problems.  I’ll see a counselor like you asked.  I’m sorry sweetie.”

“I love you.”

Her lips quit moving.  Her eyes fixed directly, unmistakably, on his eyes.  The corner of her mouth curled up, just a modicum of a smile. Kevin screamed, and lunged forward, the last three steps to his wife…

As she tossed their pink-wrapped, unwanted, often unloved, bundle of hope for the future over the iron railing of their seventh story loft.

Kevins arms grasped at air and came up full of the same.  The world around him went hazy as he saw, with tunnel-vision, his daughter plummeting toward the concrete avenue below.  All sounds washed out of his head, leaving a piercing tone to pang his eardrums. Even the screams from the alley across the street, the car horns blaring, and the small explosions from impacts throughout the city went unnoticed.

He could not take his eyes off of his daughters tiny lifeless body, now surrounded by a crowd, aghast, looking over the child and then up to his face.  Back and forth, as if they were watching some macabre tennis match, while they tried to make sense of the scene. Had he thrown her? Was it an accident?

His heaving chest pressed hard into the faded green iron rail, and his arms hung limp over the side. His fingers still twitching, trying to grasp a swath, a stitch, of pink crocheted baby blanket.  

Behind him, his wife stood motionless, unmoved by her act of infanticide.  Her lips no longer moving, her eyes stained black from her iris to her soul.  

Slowly, her husband's body straightened, erect.  The ink-black heels of his dress shoes pivoted, toes turning to point at his wife's bare feet.  Her head swiveled left, towards Kevin's face, as if directed by mechanical controls deep inside her neck as her empty eyes met his face and the void of his coal black. lifeless eyes.