THIS YEAR.
“ - still searching for Mendoza and Mansone, ages thirty-three and thirty-six respectively, who broke out of Sing-Sing a week ago. If you have any information - ”
Click.
“ - Halford on defeating incumbent President Lee, how do you expect things will be different upon assuming office? What do you think will change? What do you think should change? Is there any way to turn back time?”
The TV whirs like a fly that doesn’t stop buzzing in Donna's ear, carrying images of a world gone mad. It doesn’t help how she's feeling, not one bit. Why should she give a shit about the general election or the by-elections or the public? She’s got more important things to be dealing with. It’s just white noise, is what it is, is what it’s always been, and it adds to her frustration like cooking oil over the broiling, torrid flames of her heart.
“Do you hear yourself? Really, do you?” She chafes the sides of her neck with calloused palms. Matteo stands in the doorway, looking at her dumbfounded with those big, black eyes and that stupidly round cherubim face. Part of her wants to beat it into crimson charnel, and another part wants to smooch and cuddle it until the world fades away. Between her fingers is the menthol cigarette which tastes like fetid garbage wafting into the forest of her lungs. She hates how fake it is, hates how sick it makes her feel.
He slams his fist against his palm and signs a bit more, bending joints. From the outside looking in, it's gibberish, incomprehensible, uncanny. But she understands, she always has. She's the only one, of course. She knows what he’s saying - and the knowledge drives her up the goddamned walls.
“I - we did not get put in lock-up just for you to turn around and feed me that horseshit, Matteo. We did not spend all that time, all those years, wasting, fighting just TO NOT FIND HIM -“ she spits, the wrath of a woman scorned coursing through her like blazing hellfire. And when the hellfire cannot be contained, when the heat sears her bad enough to make her cry, she throws it at the wall to her right, tears welling from her eyes. The plaster dents and becomes a cradle empty of nothing except dust motes and wood particles that spiral out from the mold of her jagged knuckles. She stares knives into the dent, breathing heavy, pretending that it’s Sophia Runnells, it’s John Dempsey, it’s Carlos Witter, it’s Jamie Priest and all the other walking dirt stain-excuses for human beings who treated her like a maggot. It makes her feel better.
“I believe the American people shouldn't rely on patriotism to get by anymore. The country’s heart has been stripped of its warmth and replaced with its sorrow. The ripples of the past continue to be felt today, and will continue to be felt well into the future, but that does not mean we get to bury our heads in the sand, people.“
Then she turns back to Matteo, and she remembers that he was there too back in the early days. He'd helped her and fought her battles alongside her. Everyone else treated her like a maggot, but Matteo - her stupid, beautiful Matteo - he helped her become a butterfly.
"We must move forward.“
“They took our baby, Matteo. Ours. They -” She takes in a sharp breath before exhaling, then a couple more for good measure. Inside each breath are all of her years and all of her history, laced with cordite and gun-smoke and leather. It all floods back into her psyche, grounding her. He looks at her, and points downwards, upwards, crafting shapes and building narratives with every noh-theater gesture.
She acquiesces, “I know. I know. But you weren’t there, Marcos. With all due respect. Sorry. You weren’t there when I held him in my arms, when I saw his face and his eyes that were just like yours, and you weren’t there, and I just -“
She’s interrupted before she can say anymore, airflow cut off by his corded arms and his armor-like chest. The hug is so tight she feels like she could burst like a zit, like her eyes could pop out their sockets, like she'd leak out the way ice cream melts under a sweltering sun - and she welcomes it. She lives through it, craves it, allows it to fill the cup of her soul.
“Gods may walk this earth but we cannot subject ourselves to their whims. Paranoia cannot be the rule of the day anymore. We cannot forget who we are.“
The heartbeat of the city slows down, as if lulled into a trance. Lights flicker to a standstill. The grains in the hourglass pause in mid-air. In that quiet in-between, Matteo and Donna embrace, a pair of bodies seeking warmth in the concrete winter, groping for innocent songs.
THE LAST YEAR.
“Slow down, baby. Turn it back. You’re over-selling it," says Donna.
Matteo frowns in response, but alas, it must be done. He lets go of the dead brunette with the brown blouse and the matching high heels, her body becoming laid bare on the floor like unfolded origami. The woman is covered in hot red blood - not his - and there’s a smile on his face as she lies there beautiful and pure, an angel fallen from Elysium, never to be picked up again. The others gawk, their eyes shimmering with the frenzy of madness, fingers curling onto things that aren’t there. He knows they’re just attentive audience members. They’re not captive, they’re captivated. The white-and-black face paint is only just now beginning to feel thin against his face.
“Take this,“ says Donna, sweet Donna, the girl next door, manic pixie dust and chrome tones on two slender legs. There she goes, sprinting out of the wreckage of his dreams. Along with Matteo, his dreams have been rebuilt now, sculpted and fancied: into the greatest show on God’s green earth, the traveling circus of Pantomime and Poppet. That's what the press started calling them, after they finished up in Raleigh, then went on a spree in, Georgia, then took their bells and whistles to Virginia, before finally reaching the coveted frontier of the East Coast.
She tosses him the duffel bag and he lifts it with ease. Good on him for getting a gym membership at every city on their East Coast tour of frenzied rebellion. It’s no strain at all. None of this is.
From up ahead, a glint in the dark. “Fucking stop right there -“
The officer doesn’t get the chance to say a word. A bullet made from nothing, shoots out from nowhere, silent but deadly violence held in Matteo’s hands, and the man is gone. The pig got up off his seat too early. The curtains haven’t even drawn. He was a heckler, that’s what.
Then Matteo trips and the duffel bag drops and its innards spill out on the floor: juicy intestines of green-soaked goodness, of dead Presidents, of Franklins and Nixons and Roosevelts.
“SHIT! Fuck it. Come on, we got no time, let’s go babe, LET’S GO - “ Donna screams.
He considers his possibilities for a moment, but only a moment. She’s always been better at withstanding the heat of a job, always been the more decisive. That’s why he loves her. There’s nothing to shy him from the order, nothing to make him stop. His gut tells him not to go through the fire, his head scolds him like a third-grade teacher walking around her classroom, thick stick in hand. But it doesn't matter. For her he’d murder galaxies, stuff their bodies in barrels, then light up the fucking kerosene. Not even the trail of the broken and bloodied and battered and bruised that he leaves in his wake could make him stop. All those people, he thinks, they're just footprints in the sand, waiting to be washed away by the tides of time, braying down before to they’re swept under the flood. Just like him. Just like the rest of us.
That’s all this is, at the end of the day. Ziggurats and pyramids and Babels built for skies we could never belong in.
They’d make it out of this. Yes, he thought. The blood wouldn't drown them. It wouldn’t. It wouldn’t.
THE ONE BEFORE THAT.
He repeats the thoughts like a prayer and hopes that it'll be louder than the sirens coming down the street.
Donna Mansone takes Matteo's hand. It ripples like a fresh bronze livery under the New York sunset. The seat of the pick-up feels rough against her backside, and the dirty laundry’s a poor excuse for a blanket, but it makes do. She’s not concerned about that now. No use worrying, might as well spend your twenties roaring.
She looks to the sky, sees its golden glow, then looks back to him. There he is, she thinks. There’s his face, contorted with a wonder so brilliant and bright that you’d be a dumbass not to love him like she does: with all her heart and all the stars there ever were. His body is cotton against her soft skin, the stuff dreams are made out of. Together they are specks, swirling infinitely in a petri dish where the experiment is one big, practical joke. But a joke’s gotta make you smile at some point.
And so, there they sit, laughing, grinning, loving however they can. They watch the sunlight go down, down, down, until they fall asleep along with it. Every piece and shred and tear sucks back into the face of the Earth until the sun is barely a bonfire lighting the tall trees from behind.
THE ONE BEFORE THE ONE BEFORE.
“I’m gonna count down to one. At one, you’re gonna drop the gun and hand me the money over the counter and we will be on our merry way. If you don’t do that, or either of those things, then you will be on your way to a different kind of exit,“ Donna says as the man in front of her fidgets and shudders like a tongue in a hurricane with a nail running through it. Matteo watches. She’s stupid. That’s what. They’ve never done this before. They’re just teens. They were gonna get themselves killed, he knew it, he just well and truly did.
“YOU BASTARDS -“
There’s a sentence in the making there but its construction is halted by a woman who cuts through it with all the finesse and poise of a ballerina, flipping over the counter, faster than a speeding train. There’s viscera and his hand is gone, it’s flopping like a dead fish on the floor, but Matteo ignores that in the face of true beauty, why wouldn’t he?
“Oh my god oh my god oh my god,” the man goes, monk-like, repeating panicked drivel, scarlet fountains painting convenience store walls. The words echo like church bells. Echo like the words his step-father muttered when they found her. Echo like his footprints as he walked over from Geppetto’s Toy Home to Mendoza Glass. Echo like his mom, on the floor, blood pooling from her head, saying words but not meaning any of them, not knowing any of them, all meaning lost, all sense gone. 'Matteo tulong, tulungan mo ako, tulungan mo ako,' she had said to him softly in endless hoarse whispers, her native lexicon growing tiny and weak with every escaped word.
Echo.
Echo.
Echo.
Stop.
Matteo looks at Donna - his Poppet. The dance is done. They needed to get gone. But in that moment, the white noise of the world strips itself away, the lights dash and get filtered through pristine black and white. In that moment, there is a promise made: I’m going to marry her one day.
He’d say the words if he could, if his throat could move past warbles and soft moans. He’d ratify it and make it law and make sure that everyone who didn't follow it got bludgeoned until they became paste.
But he doesn’t, of course.
THE FIRST YEAR.
“We’ll make it out of here, you know,“ she says, dangling her favorite puppet, making it frolic, caper and sway all the woes and worries away. It’s got rosy cheeks like Rudolph and brittle limbs made of dead wood. "We’re not tied down to this place, to this country. These strings can’t hold us forever.“
She turns to Matteo. He’s a little stinker, but also got the streaks of a winner. She’s puzzled by him, finds him weird, but in a cute, boyish kinda way. She saw him in class at first, in the school neither of them really like, with all the other smelly and braindead fourth and fifth graders. Somehow she could tell he was different from all the other kids. Not a word out of his mouth but his gaze gave her a glimpse into a universe of pretty skies and vibrant deities and men who are truly men, women who fall for their man and together they’re led into that beautiful dream, that promised place.
Outside their window, the skies are gray and the buildings snag themselves on the clouds which pop like pimples, leaking the wetness we call rain. She imagines it filling holes, dredging up waste. She imagines the rain lodging itself into the pores of the world, so that the next time things go pop, it becomes a flood so bad not even Noah could build an Ark for it.
She’s broken from her spell by a nudge. A look down, and there’s his open palm. She smiles in response and takes it back, letting the warmth become part of her. Her dad would call her back soon for dinner, and Matteo’s mom and his bitch of a step-dad would do the same. But for now they would sit, they would wait, and they would listen to the rain.
“I had strings, but now I’m free,“ she sings, childlike and wondrous, making the puppet dance in tune, “there are no strings on me.“