A Tree’s Parade

A parade, something loud and with directed movement yet a pending chaos, made the streets swell with activity and a host of roasting smells, a sea of faces both tragic and hopeful. Everyone somehow blended in. I was walking along, found my way to an urban forest near a college campus and a little house, and came along a path, alongside which a tall white tree grew. This tree was unusual because it was transplanted from marshy Mississippi terrain 100 years ago by a very rich woman who could not part with the site of the behemoth. Sadly, the tree hadn’t thrived in the northern reaches of Kentucky until recent days, long since its benefactor, of sorts, passed away. The branches were spurting leaves fast enough to stand still and watch it happen, with little flowers rolling out as the finale. Nothing like this had ever happened to the tree. The roots were taking hold, that’s how one passing voice described the phenomena. I was stunned in my tracks and forgot what I had been doing or where I was going, content to bask in this natural wonder for an equal number of years it had found no release.

Death By Spike

Four of us stood in a metallic neon-lit elevator, waiting to descend the ten floors. We had been watching one woman on the veranda of the top and tenth floor grill steaks for some massive party of meat-eaters, smoking cigarettes and holding glasses of champagne. We were making way to the dining room, staring blankly at each other, looking down at one another’s high heels, giggling. I watched the large tray of meat in the frizzy-haired woman’s hands, some of which had tiny hair follicles and an oozy sanguine. Green and red and furry. One steak on top began to squirm and pulsate, we watched furrowed. Soon it slid straight to the floor near the square outline of feet and began prodding itself, slumping upright as if with a face turning around as if with eyes to see its surroundings. In sloppy thrusts it pulped towards the elevator walls and, like a slug, climbed with a trail of greasy muck. It caught a speed, crawling up the walls to the elevator’s ceiling, four women hypnotized by the movement of part of a dead beast. Its hair follicles plugging to the walls and sitting still, turning around. At its finale it almost began inching onto the frizzy-haired woman’s foot when she took the spike of her heel and destroyed it with one violent stab in its center. “If it wasn’t dead before, it is now.” We lit her cigarette and exited the elevator.

The Hall

I walked into a bejeweled hall, whose ceilings were so limitless a new world with a new sky was lit. Banisters of gold flanked muralesque windows. Mahogany pews with crystal ashtrays at each end rested in brass stands. Spidery decorative plants in silver containers were arranged geometrically at this point and that. Important looking men and women with furs and tuxedos, specially tailored hats and hairstyles, disappeared down other avenues of the hall, entering and exiting mysterious doors. Walking past the bank depot, I found a cafe with a bar in the open air of the great hall.

Dressed in a suit and tie alongside two or three other men, my grandfather stood at the bar with a stiff whiskey, hat cocked towards his brow. He was forty years younger, I could see most of the black in his hair below his hat line. The eyes deeply set and mischievous sans the wearing of age, brow sleek, one fastened up as if with a hairpin. He looked from his drink and towards the young woman walking to the bar. Before any words could be spoken he took my hands and began dancing around the cafe’s tables. I laughed, gracious about the gesture, whispering, “be careful, a table behind you,” but it didn’t matter. With the devil’s grin he laughed intimately and kept us going. He knew what he was doing, dipped me a few times without a threat to a hair on my head. Claude was a ballroom dancer from heaven and, regardless of the layers of my dress, he gathered me unruffled and moved us silently and quickly from corner to corner. Twirling me towards the bar, we bowed to one another and he gestured towards the bartender to put anything I wanted on his tab. Winking, he put his hat back on, gathered his coat and walked away.

Upon recognizing where he was walking to, I thanked the bartender and my high heels clicked towards the outdoor pool’s entrance. The pool was a big cerulean blue in the center of a walkway of cement. Three or four elongated steps spanning the width of the courtyard whisped to the dip of the water. On the steps were sunbathing chairs, where I found Claude in a big white robe looking in his briefcase. Upon closer inspection it was full of cash. He looked up at me, concerned and determined. Immediate coherence led me to conclude he was being followed. He closed the briefcase and handed it to me, winked once more, derobing and dived into the water without a splash to follow.