obiwanjabroni

Part 1

The door closed with a rush of wind and a sharp sucking sound. The living room was dimly lit by a tall green lamp that did little to illuminate the darkness. Melancholy sounds of a soap opera permeated the room as a figure sitting on the couch watched the television set, eyes intensely focused on the movements of the actors.

He went directly to the table, walking on tip-toes to avoid making any noise on the grouchy old boards beneath the carpet. On his way, he felt a sharp pain in his left foot as he stepped down. Gingerly, he moved aside and looked at the crumbling, white ball that he had crushed. He kicked the ruined piece of rat poison irritably, watching as it rolled beneath a small, round table that held up a vase of dying lilacs.

When he reached the table, his hands busied themselves with sifting through the stack of mail, separating what was important with what was not on the mountainous pile of papers, envelopes, and stamps that lay strewn all across the table. His hands moved purposefully, holding each letter for only a few seconds before discarding it for the next letter that came to hand.

“It's laying on the coffee table,” came a voice from the living room.

A pained look shadowed his face for a moment before he regained his composure and scattered the neat piles he was stacking on the table. He returned to the living room, where Mother and Father were each lying in a different striped green sofa and gazing attentively at the performance on the television.

“It's right beside my glasses,” his mother said, with a vague wave of her hand.

Tight-lipped, he grabbed the unsealed envelope from the table and headed for his room. Before the door to his room closed, he threw his parents a peculiar look, one of the few that leaked through the stoic mask he had learned to wear inside this downtrodden gray rambler.

He sat down on his desk and carefully lay the envelope before him. The envelope was nondescript, except for a few beautifully formed letters that spelled out his name and his address. He traced the letters with his fingers, following each letter until the end, and then he brushed the jagged edges – the leftovers of another's clumsy opening of the envelope.

Finally, he reached into the envelope and emptied its contents onto his desk. His eyes followed the flowing script down the page, and once he was at the bottom, he returned to the top to read the letter again. At the bottom was a name, signed so that the “i” was dotted with a heart and the “t” was crossed like a smile. After fumbling for something more in the envelope and finding nothing, he left the room.

His parents were still watching television when he returned to the living room, and immediately noticed the picture that must have fallen from the envelope when he picked it up.

“I must have forgotten to put it back in,” his mother said. “She looks fat.”

Angrily, he snatched the picture off the table before his mother could reach for it, and returned to his room. He looked at the picture and smiled, and it felt like it was the first time he smiled. It came like sunlight to a face that had grown used to revealing nothing. He laid down on his bed, back against the wall. I miss you, he thought to himself. How terrible the accident. Why, oh God, why? Why do you create doves to be hunted by poachers?

He laid down on his bed with his left arm behind his head, tense body relaxed for the first time all day, and stared at the picture, smiling wistfully. And it was in this estranged room, with door shut and windows shuttered, that no one saw him rub his chin and wipe his eyes. And it was like this that he fell asleep fully clothed on a dampening pillow.

obiwanjabroni

Part 2

Not soon after he fell asleep, a harsh knock sounded on his door and before he was fully awake, it swung open, banging the wall so hard that the shutters, already closed, seemed to droop further. His mother stamped into the room, eyes alight with self-righteous anger.

“What was that about?” she demanded, waving her arm over his head.

“What was what about?” he said softly.

“I wanted to talk to you about that girl.”

“What's there to talk about?”

“You know, it's over now. You will move on, and there will be others. Forget her.”

“Maybe later, but not now. I'd like to be by myself.”

He turned his back to the door and his mother and retrieved the headphones to his CD player and put it on. Phil Collins's mellow voice began playing softly from the headphones. “Take that look of worry...” This was not a good song to be playing right now.

While he had contented himself with the task of ignoring her, his mother had not left the room. She was still in the room, and she only grew more angry as she watched the efforts of her son.

“Now you listen to me. I told you she wasn't right. Something about her didn't make me happy, and now look, she's disappointed you in the end. I told you, I told you!”

Despite himself, he responded. Because he had to defend the girl who wrote the letter; the girl who wrote it without knowing that an end was coming, without knowing that it would be the last thoughts he would ever have from her again. Only that and the picture she had taken a few days before.

“She never disappointed me. She made me happy. It's not her fault for this.”

“Then what's bothering you? You should be happy, then! You know, I never approved of this. She's just not right for you – and she's ugly. I mean, look at this picture...” His mother tried to take the picture that he held to his side, but he deftly put it in the pocket that he was laying on before she could touch it. His mother's cheeks grew crimson. “There's a fire that's been burning...” Phil Collins sang on.[/b]

obiwanjabroni

Part 3

“She's not ugly.”

“She's ugly and she's fat. I know what's best for you, and I'm telling you that you will forget this girl. I allowed her to have far too much influence on you, but that's going to end now.”

Each word left a welt on the open wound that was opened earlier today. Each sentence made him convulse, and with each passing insult, he felt the fire inside him grow; soon, it began to break through the walls of self-control that he had so carefully built within himself. “They can't turn off my feelings, like they're turning off a light...”

“She's not ugly. You are, you bitch.”

His mother's voice failed her, probably for the first time in her life. She only stared at the son that she thought she knew. But now, he appeared before her as a stranger; an outsider, someone she hardly knew at all. And in that moment, she knew she had to bend him, or he would be lost. She opened her mouth, fumbling for words, but he was not done.

“Every time that you insult her, every time you show how much you disrespect me, you are the ugliest bitch in the world. You think you know me? After all these years that I've been your son, you really don't know a thing about me. You pretend, because you're a hypocrite. You can't see that she's made me happier than I've ever been in my life. You can't see that she made me whole. All you could see was how it was not you who knew me or made me happy, and so you tried your best to ruin it. And now she's gone, and you think you can say whatever you want about her, and you keep trying to hurt me. And you expect me to respect you, to honor you?”

His voice had risen to a peak, and he realized now that he was yelling. He knew that the neighbors would probably be able to hear his cries, but at this moment, he didn't care. All he knew was that he had to put his mother in her place, that he had to defend the girl who had shared with him her last thoughts.

“No, you shouldn't expect much out of me, because I don't expect much out of you.” He felt shaken. He had never spoken like that to his mother before, and now that he had, he felt no regret. He knew that he had spoken his hearts, and the words rang true in his ears. He knew that he had crossed the last hurdle, and that he would never be able to go back to before.

His mother, by now, had found her voice again.

“You ungrateful, worthless boy! If it wasn't for me, you'd be out on the streets! I'm the one who gives you your meal! I'm the one who's had to raise you! I'm the one who provides you with a home! I'm the-”
“No,” he interrupted. “A house, but never a home.”

“You owe me so much that you'll never be able to repay me.” She never missed a beat. “If it weren't for me, you'd be like her! Gone! Worthless to us all! You're nothing but a waste of good skin, and you'd be worth even less if it weren't for me!”

He felt small suddenly. He turned away from his mother again, for the last time. Phil Collins still sang. “Take, take me home, oh Lord, 'cause I've been a prisoner all of my life...”

obiwanjabroni

Part 4

As the words fell upon him like acid rain, he turned further and further away from his mother, until all his mother could see was his back and a little bit of hair. It seemed to her like he was shrinking, and as he shrunk, his back hardened and changed color. The plain white of his shirt became the green whorls and ridges of a shell, and he grew smaller and smaller until he could be held in the palm of a hand.

And still the words lashed out at him, only now, it was being deflected by the thick shell of a turtle. Perhaps his mother began to realize that the sting of her words were lost upon the shielded thing her son had become. His mother only sharpened the blades and made their points finer, hoping to move her great oaf of a son. She had to make him see it her way. There was no alternative. But he would not be moved. And so she advanced upon his overturned body, with all of her son within, protected in that damnable shell. She picked up the turtle and flung it into the adjacent hallway.

The words came faster and faster, now, and his mother continued her relentless attack, kicking the shelled body again. This time, it tumbled and flipped, rolling over the crumbling rat poison, and, banging against the coffee table. His mother's glasses, sitting on the edge of the table, were knocked off balance and slipped off the table. His father, only now realizing that something had happened, made a half-hearted attempt to save the glasses, but they fell anyway, the lenses shattering on the floor.
Still, no movement came from the shell that now had flecks of white spattered across its underside and ends.

“No son of mine will go into the world so naïve! Fine! If reality doesn't matter to you, then you can leave and go find your future with her!”
She threw upon the door, and gave a final kick that sent the turtle shell skipping onto the lawn. And as she stood at the door, chest heaving up and down, arms straight and with hands clenched, she imagined that she heard a response.

“I choose to live in a world where love can still save us all. I choose to live in a world where magic still exists. A world where a word and a wish become a will and a way. And if that world is naïve, then I choose a naïve world.”

The door closed slowly.

The violence had not affected the CD player. “Take me home...” Sang Phil Collins longingly.

* * *

The next morning, the sun rose as it tends to do. A man came out of the gray rambler with a trash can. He walked toward the mailbox, intending to leave the trash can out for garbage collection, when he felt a crunch under his foot. He stopped, curious as to the source of the sound. He set aside the trash can and looked down at what appeared to be a turtle. The shell had been cracked when he stepped on it and a white substance had been smeared all over the shell so that it appeared silver. When he picked it up, however, he found nothing inside; and so he shrugged and tossed it into the trash can.