Archive for June, 2010
Schooling Valdan Mechaieh
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
It was a balmy afternoon on the sands of Newport Beach when Valdan Mechaieh–playing hooky in the month of May, his seventeenth birthday–first sensed his ice soul.
He’d been in science class with Dr. Wall. That bloated blimp bastard had actually tried to make him study for and retake a test Valdan had failed. He’d mentioned something about the behavior patterns Valdan used today would be harder and harder to break in the future. That old fart pretended to care but didn’t know a damn thing about his life. He told the old man that he hated science because it was pointless and he would never use it in his life. Besides, he’d show that stupid jerk: He’d make a life for himself without him and his stupid science.
Valdan had involuntarily leaked a few tears and asked to go to the locker-room restroom, at which point he grabbed his gym bag, ducked out of school and puttered his moped out to Newport. The Pacific waves were a sedative. Wind rippled palm leaves overhead. A couple on the pier talked in low tones of white hills like garbage trucks. A bus screeched to a halt on West Balboa Boulevard. Bell chimes announced someone shuffling inside the 7-11. Sailboats scraped their hulls against the marina.
A trickle of sweat slid down the crease of his spine. He arched his back a little so his Black Flag T-shirt wouldn’t cling.
All sound ceased… but for a final wave clapping the shore. Not even the slightest of breezes stirred the palms. An icicle crept down where the sweat had trailed. Mechaieh shivered. He flicked icy half-pellets stuck to his forehead. The pellets sat on his towel like the half shells of albino ladybugs. Mechaieh had not puzzled out their essence until they melted…. Waves clapped the shore, the bus pulled away, and boats again scraped the marina.
Mechaieh lay on his towel, trying to recall what he’d been thinking when this all occurred, when he’d received this gift, this sensing of another soul. Valdan’s grandmother, a Jew of the more Heterodox variety, once explained there were thirteen souls for humans to discover. Was this the fourteenth?
Mechaieh sat up. Now he had something to use against Dr. Wall! He’d freeze time, go look up the answers and then fill out a test. That’d show him mastery.
Zero
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
“Three …” she said, staring out the window. We could hear the first distant cracking noises. It was going to hit hard.
“I feel pretty calm,” I said, which immediately made me feel jittery. Ann nodded agreement, but wrapped her arms around herself as though she were cold. I wanted to get up and hold her, but I was afraid to move, as though sitting completely still was somehow going to keep me–or us–safe.
“Two …” Ann said. The floor began to vibrate very faintly, and then the walls, and then the air. Everything seemed to be humming, a high-pitched, brain-penetrating sound.
What do you do in the last seconds? Do you prepare yourself, relax, try to be at one with the universe? Do you scream at the sky and say No, no, no! just to show that you aren’t going willingly? Do you cry? And in that last breath of time do you celebrate everything you’ve done, or let yourself admit that it hasn’t made any difference? But then, if you celebrate in your last moment, maybe that’s the–
“One …”
The whole room began to shake, and a washed-out, violet light grew outside the windows, making Ann and the furniture and the the motes of dust trembling stuck in the air all look flat and sharp. I finally came to myself and realized I was pity partying through my last moment when the one person who meant the most to me in the world was only steps away. I lurched out of the chair and reached for her, thinking maybe it was somehow not too late.
She turned toward me, and her eyes went wide. She opened her mouth to speak, but she only got as far as “I …”
Then it hit.