Jan 19 21
As it rounds the corner, the headlights of the White Van, the one with the rope and Tiger Beat magazines under the seat, throw swelling chainlink and rhododendron shadows across the middling suburban white house.
By a swing-set, among the tall black/green azaleas with pink flowers, there is a werewolf. He is not funny; he is perhaps ridiculous in his trite torn blue jeans, but behind his yellow eyes he is seething. His thoughts are of the type which any group from any age, would execute him for.
Inside a few locked doors a boy is standing in a shower in his mother’s underwear. There is no mercy inside the house or outside the house — except perhaps in the touch of the warm water and the momentary solitude of the small steaming room.
From a closet next to this bathroom, a muted rustling can be heard. Within, on a hanger, is an empty dress with long lace sleeves performing a sort of horrible semaphore.
In the dark of the crawlspace under the house is a formless creature. The boy has seen it a few times in different shadowed corners. It resembles a fat man’s belly without the rest of the man. The boy wonders, when he eventually leaves the house for good, whether it stays or comes with him. It feels of him somehow.
At a bus stop, the next morning, pausing from an attempt at forging his parent’s signature, the boy can see a witch in black coat and hat with a green face, staring at him, half concealed by the back edge of his neighbor’s garage. At the boys feet is a single white crocus pushing up improbably through the scant snow and dirt. He looks at it earnestly trying to keep his secret, harborless questions at bay.
By a swing-set, among the tall black/green azaleas with pink flowers, there is a werewolf. He is not funny; he is perhaps ridiculous in his trite torn blue jeans, but behind his yellow eyes he is seething. His thoughts are of the type which any group from any age, would execute him for.
Inside a few locked doors a boy is standing in a shower in his mother’s underwear. There is no mercy inside the house or outside the house — except perhaps in the touch of the warm water and the momentary solitude of the small steaming room.
From a closet next to this bathroom, a muted rustling can be heard. Within, on a hanger, is an empty dress with long lace sleeves performing a sort of horrible semaphore.
In the dark of the crawlspace under the house is a formless creature. The boy has seen it a few times in different shadowed corners. It resembles a fat man’s belly without the rest of the man. The boy wonders, when he eventually leaves the house for good, whether it stays or comes with him. It feels of him somehow.
At a bus stop, the next morning, pausing from an attempt at forging his parent’s signature, the boy can see a witch in black coat and hat with a green face, staring at him, half concealed by the back edge of his neighbor’s garage. At the boys feet is a single white crocus pushing up improbably through the scant snow and dirt. He looks at it earnestly trying to keep his secret, harborless questions at bay.