Games

We used to fly to the moon. In our bright red rocket ships we stored in our basements and hall closets, we soared amongst the eagles and the clouds. The cheese was delicious, you said, making me laugh. The aliens hadn’t been green, but a gorgeous silver hue we had been utterly engrossed by. Not ugly, slimy creatures, but beautiful, eternally young beings that hid in craters and nibbled on each other’s toenails. We tried writing articles and stories about it, but we could never sit still that long.

We stole my momma’s makeup once; she was very intent on locking me up then. Lipstick and eyeliner and funky eye-shadows decorated our faces, and we clutched imaginary knives and pounced on imaginary deer. Once we had been Indians in our native forest land, speaking in monotones and simple language teachers fainted at. When the war-paint and battle cries faded away into the darkness, we were European explorers. We discovered America on the Aprilflower and spoke in cheesy accents. We were death-defying adventurers, heroic astronauts, fearless Native Americans, uncomfortable foreigners. Our world was a brave world.

I passed you a note in class once, and I didn’t get caught. It wasn’t the most daring I had ever been, but shivers crawled up and down my spine and clutched at my gut as my arm muscles stretched to their very end so as to reach your desktop. My eyes averted too quickly for me to see whether you read the note or not, but I was optimistic. You read the note, smiled, and planned when to meet me. No one would tell me different, not even you.

We are still young. We aren’t twenty one yet. We can’t go out and drink, not legally. Crimes aren’t really my thing, not serious crimes. Besides, I’m sure that once we are twenty one, we’ll go to jail plenty, holding hands all the while. Let’s go on an adventure. Let’s be what we used to, let’s not care about love, sex, high school. Let’s go.

My backyard misses you. The undergrowth used to clutch at your ankles and lick at your knees. My dad wasn’t too great at yard care, but we’d rather it be that way. We breasted through the plants, swimming in an ocean of hopes and dreams. We were high on fairy dust and shaking hands with the stars, and if no one told us off, then why should we stop?

Perhaps we could climb in a canoe and sail on the river we baptized ourselves in until we reach the sea. Perhaps we could fabricate a whole new planet and live there, and grow old together there. Our hands could intertwine without discomfort, and we could watch the world pass by. We could watch our friends have the suits fall over them, and watch them all thrown in cubicles. We could evade society, because Earth has nothing on us.

Perhaps we never have to say goodbye.

We could climb on board our rocket ships and live with the youth of the moon. We could fold ourselves into paper planes and sit in the clouds with God. I’m sure he makes good conversation. We could live together forever as whatever we want to be. We’d have no problem waving farewell to this town, you said so yourself.

I’d never get tired of you, never ever.

You grew up, and grew above me. ‘Games,’ is what you said. We played games. You can’t hold my hand anymore, since her hand has replaced mine. You two have your Eskimo kisses and real kisses, exchanging body heat in the back seat of your car. I don’t know what you are anymore.

You ignored my note.

Wounded Generation

The city was built from 'modern' ideas and hopeless broken bones. Shadows lurked beneath the pavement, in between the cracks in the sidewalks that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Clouds left gray trails in their wakes, touching black and breathing white. They were anorexic and thirsting for the abundance they once had, for the lakes and the oceans, not the waste from toilets and sinks that were scarce as it was. Trees were plastic; their leaves were sewn from nylon and cotton, their trunks hammered together with alloy nails expertly hidden. Flowers wilted, the scientists hadn't built those yet. No one was awed by the metropolis anymore.

The mother screamed beneath it all, beneath the layer of chrome and fabricated dreams, in pain, oh, how she screamed.

Great-grandmothers’ voices rasped on about their day and age, to children and grandchildren who were too busy with their touch-screen this and floating that. Holographic soldiers fighting wars created by infant minds raged on carpeted floors, brilliantly developed by veterans who knew they wouldn’t be drawing their bullets ever again. Inside this plastic dreamy world there was peace, as far as the weak-minded citizens knew.

Her mind had been covered in stitches, ridges, bandages, and scientifically developed foreign tissue. The blue-gray hue that had once glittered in her eyes had faded to a dull silvery color, blind to anything but what she had been programmed to see. A skin-tight suit stuck to her perfect body, where all the excess ugliness had been chopped off in the lab. She could not breathe; she didn’t need to. Joints sliding perfectly, only her cellular monitors were aware of her metallic innards, even if it would be obvious to anyone who investigated. Yet, everyone doubted that anyone else would investigate her. Perfect, airbrushed beauty had become absolutely ordinary; nothing to be envious or hateful of. The human race was used to live Barbies walking down the street; no one remembered what Barbies were.

Robotic, electronic people roamed the streets barely noticed as strange. They served people in households, they, without question, performed the community service the citizens were too lazy to accomplish. The governor controlled them, had their video game joysticks in his hands. They were toys; shiny new toys, that everyone wanted a piece of, everyone wanted to play with them. Not one of them could not think for themselves - not openly - and it was the greatest thing that ever happened to the population that didn't even believe that this was the defiant return of the Confederacy's slavery.

Yet, the androids were the only ones that could hear the screaming; they were the only ones who had been broken down and built back up from the ashes. They were the ones, who knew just how their mother felt, and they listened, and they prayed, and they did what they were told, like good porcelain dolls. They allowed their arms to be torn and their fabric frayed, and never spoke in anything but a dead tone. It was their programmed way, their programmed duty. Like the soldiers, like the holographic soldiers, they listened to their generals.

Underneath their stitches, ridges, bandages, scientifically developed foreign tissue, magazine-cover beauty, and perfection, they screamed. Beneath the layer of what the world wanted, they screamed.

Oh, how she screamed.