Freshened – Episode Summary – March 19, 2015

Freshened

  1. Freshened
  2. Episode 1: Henry Peck meets Sheena; Earthly Address
  3. Episode 2: The Date, Sausage
    1. Epiphany
    2. Epiphany Vignettes
  4. Episode 3 – The Date, Dinner, Wine, Woman, and Shlong
    1. Vignettes 2: Sheena Teasing, Prickly Pear
    2. Hemingway: Moment of Truth, Then he was gone
    3. Epiphany – Aperitif: Bathtub, Immodest
  5. Episode 4 -Return to Pete Street: Saturday in the Park: Be Bold, Brawny Man, 4 bullets
  6. Episode 5 – The Dogs of Warped & Star Wars Bar
    1. Defeat at the Foot of Pete: Jim, Sherlock, Scooby
    2. Return to the Scene of the Princess: Return to the Bar, 3 Bullets
    3. Be Careful What You Ask For: Happy, Fish Epiphany
  7. Episode 6 – Wake Me Up
    1. Shibumi: Onomatopoeia, Rigt
    2. Diamond: Mama Mia, Big Al, Little Nick
    3. You had me at Prostitute
  8. Epilog: Reconcile, Confident

Margaret Sayers Peden: The Search for the Perfect Translation

Margaret immersed herself in her work and the translations that emerged reflected the original authors written in Spanish complex tragicomedies made accessible to readers of English.  She captured the essence of sorrow and death, history and ancestry in vivid poetry.   Margaret taught that you have to scrape off the words, get down to an under-level, that’s where the meaning is, below the words.  Her translated characters speak as they would have had they been born to English and their authors likewise acquire a style in their transformed tongue that is true to what they say or are trying to say.

Ms. Peden’s methods included:

Rewrite:

  • Rewrite five to 10 pages of a work in Spanish at a time
    •   using a combination of both Spanish and English
  •  Return to the beginning and revise
    •   look up words not understood
  •  Revises again

By the time each book is published, she has pored over it numerous times.

Aphorism: You can’t commit the sin of improvement.  If it’s a bad book, it has to be a bad book!

Translating a work is a constant solving of puzzles.

She does as much as or more research than academic writers and critics for the works because she must learn about:

  1. the book’s historical and cultural contexts
  2. the way the Spanish language is used in those contexts
  3. the specific vocabulary and voice of each author
  4. the voices of all the author’s characters

Peden is today the most accomplished active translator of Spanish-language literature into English.

Peden mused that our Western civilization came to us in translation: the Greeks, the Bible, all these things.  She has gained a greater tolerance for elements of other cultures she might have felt impatient with before. But Peden added perhaps the best part of her journey has been the relationships she has gained — with her authors, with translators and with other readers who love and respect good literature as much as she. “I’m lucky, the people I’ve met,” she said.

Extracted from The UncarvedBlog by Ken Chawlin.

Freshened – Diamond

Fight at the K.O. Corral

At the edge of madness you howl diamonds and pearls.

He finally found it – happiness!  Henry Peck walked on a cloud.  Every day was sunny.  Every problem was a challenge.  Every dull obstacle was a bright diamond.  Sheena balanced Henry’s paranoia with her present moment living.  Henry countered Sheena’s reckless spontaneity with his past life regression.  It was a match made in – another world.  What could possibly come into question when you finally find the answer?

They were moving in together.  Henry would sell his big suburban house, the one he raised his family in, and move to the little house on the left on Pete Street.  The first order of business was to get rid of stuff.  There was a lot of stuff, a lot of memories, not all bad.  Actually, there were few memories that made him feel bad.  There were mostly good memories that made him feel bad.  He felt loss with latter.

The only thing to do was to get rid of everything.  In Henry terms this meant putting everything from family albums to light bulbs in storage.   He stopped for long periods in his packing and thought about the past as he came across mementos.  These character came alive as the dusty objects touched reached up and touched him with memories…

Mama Mia’s Lousy Words

Henry picked up a shoe box.  It was full of letters from his mother.  He re-read these letters with amazement.  Even though English was her second language, her written word were perfect and her gentle script communicated her genuine love.  Her spoken English, however and for whatever reason, was memorable.

At Thanksgiving, she would call for a toast.  She stood gave a similar speech every year.  Her speech always ended with the same words.  Mama said, “Me rather be with all of you than with the best people in the world”.

Mom’s language was her own sort of creole, made up of two languages mixed together and, when spoken, gave unpredictable results, using a word with the best guess but wrong meaning.  Henry remembered one time she was consoling a young pregnant family member on the realities of natural child birth.

Mama said, “For each my children was born at home with no drugs because it happened so fast.  I screamed and I screamed…the neighbors could hear.  And that was only at the conception.”

Christmas was always another story or rather the same story at the Peck house.  All the uncles and their families came to Henry’s parents house: Filet of Moose Face.  Every one would eat their fill and the uncles would overfill their drinks.  By the dessert time they were plowed.  The dessert, jellied moose nose, was so prized the uncles pulled their guns to get a single munch of moose goo.

Gun fire erupted and the police showed up.  All the neighbors stood in their doorways observing in disbelief the annual Christmas spectacle (not to mention the occasions of child birth and Thanksgiving).  Henry’s father and his uncles were paraded out each wearing a kind family man’s uniform: pleated and cuffed sharkskin slacks, suspenders, no shirt, and a hat, either pork-pie or fedora.

When the police asked Mama for a statement about the rumpus, through her tears she said, “Mi Familia become wise guys because a nostril.”

Big Al’s Blousy World

In another box, Henry found some accounting ledges, tax statements, and a business card: Fashion World Enterprises.  Oh yeah, Henry’s first attempt to go out on his own.  A partnership with the irrepressible Big Al.

Big Al always answered the query, “How are you?”, with Perfect!  Whenever he was going out catting around, he would first tell his wife he was with Henry.  The next day he would contact Henry and let him know that he was with Henry that late night.  Henry was always his cover.

Big Al did as he pleased.  When Henry met with him on matters of their partnership, Fashion World Enterprise, Big Al usually dictated their agreement.  When discussing the business card, Big Al suggested adding the slogan “We’re into women’s blouses”.  This is one time Henry prevailed.  The company slogan became, “We’re Tops – And More!”.  But as a general rule, Big Al said “Agreement is just for show”.

Little Nick’s Mouse that Whirled

Nixon is listening…what channel?

You’re not paranoid if people are really out to get you.

Let’s rob a bank.

Diamond’s aren’t forever.

Where’s Diamond.

Is that her whore name.

Recovery

 

 

Henry and his buddy, Big Al, would sell women’s apparel in beauty shops.  Why not?  Women with money go to the hair dresser every week.  Women cannot resist new clothes.  Women won’t pass up a bargain.  Research, done!  What should we call this enterprise?  Fashion World, done!  What would be our slogan?  We’re Into Women’s Blouses!  No.  We’re Tops & More!  That’s the ticket even though we were only into women’s tops.

Fashion World was great idea.  The guys bought seconds from shady dealer, after paying a franchise fee, and sold them on a consignment basis.  The two erstwhile entrepreneurs had a piece of paper that sealed the deal with the supplier and a handshake agreement with the beauty shops to secure there inestimable future income.  Things were looking up until…

Sometimes start-ups are slow to show profit before they stop altogether.  In some stores, there were marginal sales and shop owners paid agreed remuneration.  In other stores, there were significant thefts and the shop owners wouldn’t pay for the loss.  It was what happened with the supplier’s store that cost Fashion World the most.  The franchiser started to send too many of the worst sellers too often, and none of the best sellers at all.   Finally, all contact was lost.  Henry and Big Al’s business was hung out to dry, their blouses twisting in the wind.

Always learning the hard way, if they learned anything at all, the dynamic duffuses sought to sink more money into this ship by borrowing and finding a new supplier.  The kind of money they needed to finance the risk they propositioned wouldn’t come from a bank.  It could only come from one other place.

They started seriously talking with small loans outfits.  They began jokingly discussing with each other robbing a bank.  There talks sounded like they had merit – on a wiretap.  One of their prospective financiers was mobbed up and Fashion World had stuck its big toe into a whole new world.

 

 

Freshened – Shibumi

When Quotable Quotes Quoted are Questionable.

When confronting someone, honesty is STILL the best policy – only if you STILL have too many teeth.

Shibumi!

That’s the onomatopoeic word to describe what Henry felt as his sternum impressed his backbone.   With Sheena suctioned to his chest, Henry opened his eyes wide and quickly shut them.   What hath God wrought?  Henry’s pedestrian mind’s eye may have seen this sight in the abstract but it was being driven home in the concrete.  In addition, she was babbling.

“Sheena, what are you saying?  Fish?  What are you doing?”.  Wet?  And then the words a man had never said to a woman, “Get off of me!”

For the first time in their short courtship, Sheena responded catatonic.

Henry needed to do something, think of something to break the spell.  Maybe he should shock her back.  Maybe he could make her laugh.  Shibumi?  His thick psyche presented a questionable quote for this conundrum.

Henry somehow remembered, that in the obscure spy novel Shibumi, author Trevanian has his protagonist Nicholas Hel remark to a young lady on what he considered to be an indecent pose.  He would try it.  He would have to code switch his diction into that of an educated sophisticated speaker.  No small feat here.  He would have to paraphrase the passage into what might be rated a hard R.  Blame Sheena’s silence for, once again, Henry saying something stupid.

Henry impersonated the faux spy Hel, “By the way, can you stand a bit of avuncular advice?” Blink once for yes, twice for no.

“It is a sartorial indiscretion for a young lady so lavishly endowed with…” he wasn’t sure how to continue, “nether-hair as you, to wear no shorts, and sit in so revealing a position.”  Henry gulped.  His failing courage now as disjointed as his conjugation.

He was getting through!  She did not speak and she did not blink but somehow his lost-in-translation presentation of another’s well formed passage made…her skin crawl.  This was good.

Henry, encouraged, continued, “Unless of course, it is your intention to prove that your endowment is natural.”

Sheena’s right arm proved every bit as powerful as her left.  His orthopedic discrepancy now perfectly aligned as his numb skull leaned and attempted to kiss his right shoulder.  His next intended sentence slipped through his lips along with an ample, light viscose liquid and a slight, dark sticky venous discharge.

She’s baaaack.  Sheena’s momentary cerebral depression subsided.  Henry’s extended deflation excited.  They went at it, how might one say?

Shibumi.

Freshened – Be Careful What You Ask For

You take my breath away

A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou – but not necessarily in that order.

Birds sung this sunny morning outside the middle window at 8D Pete Street.  Yesterday, Henry had his safety on.  Last night, Sheena had her groove on.  This morning, knee-ther had nigh-ther.  Darkness may hide our flaws for the moment but the light frees the eyes to see all.  Today, the sight twice blinded by the night, would be one of those days.

Henry Peck was dead – to the world.  Sheena Waderwicz was from another world – one might say.  She never allowed her sense to be overruled by sensibility but that didn’t mean she wasn’t occasionally sentimental or sensitive.  What was it that Henry was going to say before I slapped it out of him?

Sheena had seen him put a in his pocket yesterday, a note with a pocket full of meaning.  She must see it.  She must know these last words he had for he.  Still sans a stitch, Sheena slipped from the sheets, straddled her pal, and slithered up the bed, foot to head.

The sudden movement and soft contact stirred Henry, but not to complete consciousness.  His eyes never opened but he thought he knew what was up.

“Let’s wait a while, I’m sore,” he lied.  The likely reason for his disinterest was his flagging energy rather than his floppy excuse.

“You’re sore?” shot back Sheena, at once disbelieving and indignant and actually sore.  She continued, “Rest easy cowboy, you deserve it.  Don’t mind me.  I can do it all.  I’m here to please.”

With her last words, Henry quickly deflated back into his dream world.  Sheena had advanced stealthily and commando on her belly from the perimeter, to his weapons cache, and now she hovered above the single snoring sentry.

Still straddling, she quickly placed each of her knees on each of his shoulders to gain advantage.  Sheena rendered her objective helpless and, this time,  handcuffs need not apply.

A sudden chill came over the intrepid hero.  What will happen next?  If I don’t complete my mission before Henry opens his eyes, he’ll see me in a whole new light!  Sheena’s concerns were valid.  Henry had never even seen beneath Sheena’s clothing, let alone further.  They were in complete darkness both times they were intimate.  Yes, there was a giant lech in this pint size gigolo that expected him to search and debauch.  But there was also the adorable dolt of decency that implored him, unsuccessfully, to hide his eyes at the site of a cleavage dip and avert his gaze when the wind turned a skirt up.

Henry’s dueling gland Joes courted their arguments while decency rested.  Questions such as: What is descent?,  What is fashionable?, and What would Larry Flynt do?, swirlled around Judge Henry’s crowded cortex.  A split decision usually yielded.  A compromise between lechery and decency.  Henry kept one eye wide shut.

Fortunately, for Henry’s other cheek, Sheena didn’t waste a penny on his thoughts.  This person persisted in her persevering pursuit to pick her partner’s pants pockets, the pleats plainly posited on the bedpost post-night.  Doesn’t this guy ever change clothes?  Although, she did notice that these wear-and-wear abominations were crisply clean – like new.  The plastic tagging barbs wiggling, still alive and well, their feelers made Henry’s frightening fashion even creepier.

Start with the back pocket.  Wrong…just a receipt with her address in her handwriting…oh yeah.  Next, the right front pocket.  Oh yeah, didn’t need this for last night.  Important progress!  Finally, she found it in the other back pocket.  The yellow sticky epiphany written in the supernatural script of a cartoon canine.

Sheena exhaled open mouthed and collapsed onto Henry.  His chest  collapsing undo her sudden distress.  The sticky note falling from her hand, the words whispered from her lips…

“Fish don’t know that they’re wet.”

Freshened – Return to the Scene of the Princess

A Crazy Little Thing Called Deja Vu

Love is lovelier the second time you mistake it.

Henry entered the Star Wars Bar with his hands full.  In his dominant right, he held the sticky note epiphany he would quote to Sheena.  The weaker left hand shook with the menacing Ruby.  His stomach would not cooperate for long so he planned to quickly lead with his epiphany and end with his lead, in the way redneck Virgil had earlier intended for his beloved.

Sheena, cleaning glassware at  the bar, looked up expectantly.  When she saw the revolver, he froze.  Stepping around the bar, his lover charged him like a drill sergeant.  At arms length, Sheena drew back her left arm and slapped Henry with inhuman strength.  He had the snot literally slapped out of him – his left ear careening and almost touching his shoulder.

Flustered.  Henry’s neck tried to assume its former and natural alignment.  That pulsinng left hand pushed and pointed its pistol parcel at the princess.  His memorized sentences, like his senses, shaken and stirred, poured silently forth from his lips along with his spittle.  The sticky note, still clinging to a single thumb,  before letting go; forsaking him; his left leaving him without words.  This bird would have to ad-lib his swan song.

“This revolver has three bullets in it,” said Henry.

“I know what you’re going to say,” replied Sheena.

Sheena reached out with her right hand and grabbed Henry’s gunned hand.  She pulled it towards her and rested it, pointed upward, under her left breast.

Henry was reminded of Sheena’s penchant of dressing for comfort.

Her frightening left arm raised.  Henry flinched.  She moved it slowly but deliberately this time.  The hand fell gently, lovingly on Henry’s ear.  But it seemed to grow angry as the unvarnished nails dug into his scalp and began to pull his head down hard but towards comfort.  Simultaneously, her right hand covered his left.  Her thumb spooned against his trigger finger, with each conflicting digit seeming to await the resistant head’s descent.

Looking down into the hand gun’s cylinder,  Sheena confirmed its brass content and calculated its bullet count.  She raspfully whispered a query.

“So, who’s the other one for?”

Freshened – Defeat at the Foot of Pete

Defeat at the Foot of Pete

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs – perhaps you don’t understand the situation.

The rusting tin integer wasn’t worth a penny but it cost a total zero his eroding thin sanity.  Hovering ghostly above, the penumbra of a missing “1” gloated.  Cruel consequence had its fun with the fragile and pointed a single finger to the imagined ideal of fairness.  But life lessons were not completely without purpose, that’s why they’re called lessons.  Duh.

What is a life lesson?  Cribbing from Winston Churchill: It is like a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.  Henry Peck believes and preaches that there is an epiphany inside each life lesson. Au contraire says a doubting Thomas (Cruise).   Quoting from the movie A Few Good Men: Should we or should we not follow the advice of the galactically stupid?

Henry found himself laying in the sparse grass on the sharp gravel shore of Pete reservoir.  At last consciousness, he heard a gunshot.  Blackout is the first refuge of a coward – unless there’s a place to hide.

As the gnats about him needled his scalp, he poked even deeper into his memory.  The hostage crisis started coming back.  He remembered awakening to a horrid stench.  It wasn’t the dreadful smell of death – it was the much greater stench of the dead guy’s still breathable shirt.  Implausibly but not impossibly, Angry Man had shot himself first.  The simplest logistics escape some of our most well intentioned plans.

If a paramedic had examined the two bodies lying in the Pete street apartment, he would have found no viable heart beat.  This is a true statement except for the fact that an ambulance was never called and Henry wasn’t dead. Henry’s clothes were soaked with blood from the erupted head that rested on his sunken chest.   At first, he wondered why no one called the police at the sound of gunfire.  He concluded that in this part of town the sound of a gunslinger was more frequent than the sound of a robin singing.

Henry did not wonder why the two targeted women were gone.  He did wonder why the “Ruby” revolver seemed to be cradled in his palm.  This reality prompted him to action.  He pushed the still steaming stink stack off.  Knowing he could not go out in broad daylight looking like he just left a slaughter house, he walked to the closet to look for a change of clothes.  What he saw took his breathe.

On the left side of the closet, hung dozens of identical shirts.  These shirts still had all of their tags on them – unopened Christmas gifts often revealed family ties.   Henry loved and wore these same shirts – except they weren’t exactly shirts. They were 2-in-1s.

A 2-in-1 is: a sort of dickey that has taken hostages: the original false shirt-front with a reluctant collar sewn on,  an innocent sweater vest wishing it would have completed the weave and finished cardigan, and two pathetically short sleeves that only a bastard design would claim.  Henry mused, That sweatshop Bangladeshi seamstress should be working in America.  Probably is.

Improbably, on the right side of this fashion faux pas, hung a long row of identical trousers.  Yes, they were Dickies – fourteen pair of pleated, cuffed, four pocketed khakis.  Also with tags.  It looks like Virgil laying over there had some pretty good fashion sense even if it was an aberration.  Henry loved and wore the same style trousers, too.

So, except for the sanguine hue, Henry wore the exact costume that a man whose brains could fit in a Lite beer can would literally not be caught dead in.

So, laying on the shore, Henry imagined he remembered all this.  Continuing his recollection, he did remember changing into the clean clothes and emptying his crusted pockets into the clean ones.  He didn’t remember removing the tags and he couldn’t remember anything after that until he woke up here on the beach.

But now, upon further thought, since he found himself in the same clothes he’d been wearing and near the site of the traffic jam, he was afraid to trust this last surrealistic memory.  He had no evidence he could point to and corroborate the haunting events that occurred after returning to the main road.  Henry again had to consider whether he was going mad.

Henry would not leave this place until he got a sign that verified his madness or his sanity.  He stood up and looked around.  The deserted shores of the reservoir sustained no life worth living.  Yet, he spotted what looked like a fishing pole propped on a rock a few yards away.  Walking to it, Henry had to wonder who would leave a working rod and reel cast into a fish-less tank – or who put it here for him to find.

On a whim, Henry picked it up and hopelessly started to reel in the taut line.  Wow, I caught something.  Like a little boy, Henry reeled and tugged and reeled and tugged as if he had a whopper.  He performed these theatrics even though there was no struggle on the tackle – only weight, dead weight.

Henry’s mouth fell agape at the sight of he catch. It was a dead animal – part of a dead animal.  Henry’s mind raced back to the scene of the traffic jam that occurred here not that long ago.  The realization that the catastrophe had turned to tragedy lay at his feet.  The public servants at the seen did not do their civil best.  Expedient, not expert; they were insensitive, not compassionate; they were irreverent, not fervent – the firefighters dumped Bullwinkle, with a wink, and without a second thought, into the drink.  The nearly severed nose pulled off with a single Henry tug on the fishing line.

This was the sign Henry needed to begin to resurrect belief in his sanity.  Though salivation had commenced, he would have to leave this near jellied delicacy for the appreciative carp.  Those nutrition-less bottom feeders had the ravenous appetite of ten Henrys for this carrion carryout.  It would be the death of them.

Henry watched the oily mouths pursue the goo,  wiggling out of the water, continuing over the rocks, and on to the chum.  In pursuit of their desire they would die a terrible death, even for a carp.  This sight struck Henry with insight.  He had an epiphany.  This gem had to be written down before he forgot it.   As he raced across the rip-rap, he turned his eyes back one at a time towards the morsel he left wharfed.

Henry wrote the sage adage on a sticky note and jammed it in he pocket.  He excitedly jumped into his car and cursed immediately.  There was something in the driver’s seat that bruised his butt.  Reaching under himself he retrieved a gun – a revolver,  the erstwhile suicide maker.  It was “Ruby’s” revolver – blood, brains and three remaining bullets.  Now he was sure he wasn’t crazy.  But if all of what happened was real, mostly what he remembered of the night with Sheena, he would rather be crazy than sane, dead than alive.

 

Freshened 4 Mistaken

Sheena beat Henry with a tease only, but now it came time to terminate…the tease. She had fun. Not like the first time way back when. The first time she teased a man like this she nearly tossed. The power of her sexuality never tested until that first tease test. It marked a demarcation between girl and woman, between victim and villain. Now she teased her men, sometimes beatings sometimes worse, just to watch them clench. She smiled as Henry unclenched. Sheena was not alone in her wonder and fascination with the male of the species. Men puzzled women. Give men what they want and they leave in triumph. Withhold it and they stay in hope. She never knew why this worked but it did.
“Can I offer you a drink? Wine?” asked Sheena.
Her relative non sequitur returned Henry from his temporary confusion.
“Yes, do you have Green Eyes Pinot Noir?” asked Henry. I knew she was kidding about the beating all the time. He checked his trousers, first back then front.
“Did you mean to ask, ‘Do you have Pinot Noir, green eyes?’” answered Sheena, still teasing. “No.” she continued seriously, “I don’t drink red wine. It turns my lips blue”.
Is that how you do it?
“In fact, I don’t drink any grape wine. It weakens my inhibitions…”
That is good to know…that she knows of such things.
“But I do have other types of wine – fruit?”
Each word she spoke dropped sweet potion in Henry’s senses. Each gesture she made worked to further entrance him. Sheena excited his thoughts, accelerated them. He recollected walking into the room fully alert. He remembered that distant moment but now his senses raced as she teased, then pleased him with her kind regard. Now, he slowly but consciously wanted to give in to the abandon her potion offered up.
Abruptly, Henry snapped back from his ruminations to a terrible sound. Sheena screeched a short sturdy stool across the bare floor. Henry looked preoccupied to her, so she recruited her three-legged helper to assist in scaling her tall, lean fruitful rack of wine. Taller now, she perused the slender necks. She twisted them with purpose. He listened to the lilt of her indecipherable comments. He couldn’t be sure of her whisperings. Were they for his ears or for his imagination? Sheena continued her murmuring, her mouth sometimes moving close in, her lips changing color as the ambient light diffused through and upon the curved surfaces.
Is the Princess from Pandora revealing herself unknowingly?
Suddenly, Sheena spoke, “I have a nice raspberry. You surely won’t be feeling any pain…after a couple of pours”.
So are you back to teasing me with a beating?
“I have a nice hibiscus. It helps to regulate body temperature”.
Is that regulation voluntary or mandatory?
“I have a nice prickly pear”.
Indeed!
Sheena interpreted Henry’s choked response to mean ‘Yes, I would like to try them…or rather it’. Sheena grabbed the “Cactus”. Surprised by its color, the rich fluorescent purple spirits evoked romance and nostalgia in Henry. She poured…the flow more like nectar than wine. The long stemmed exquisite promised gratification in the purest sense. The Crystal clarity and veiled motives contrasted, as enchantment always presents.
Sheena placed a glass in Henry’s hand. She placed the cork behind her…this bottle’s destiny already determined. Perhaps Henry wished his near future were as obvious.
As Sheena advanced, Henry noticed the current cork in an extra-large…a giant’s wine glass. 750.milliliters, filled with 751.milliliters of normal sized wine-corks. The fresh soldier laid atop this monument to merriment. Knowing that Henry watched her, she straightened and turned like a ballerina, ready to begin her next part. She approached Henry with her stemware held delicately between the thumb and forefinger.
“Enjoy” said Sheena, sitting her glass on the table beside his and then reaching across to pinch him.
“Ouch, what was that?” said Henry, sipping and squirming.
“I wanted to see if you were still breathing”.
Indeed.
The moment of truth came. Sheena took his hand and led him to the shiny middle door, the door closed and between the whips and the sausages. Henry, in stride, said he didn’t think he was up for this. They both stopped. Sheena pulled something out from her somewhere with her left hand. She bent at the waist, reached around, and tucked it into Henry’s right pants pocket.
Looking down at the skin of Sheena’s briefly and slightly exposed lower back, Henry chuckled nervously as he recalled some vulgarity about ‘bad girls bending at the waist’.
“I know you’ll do fine,” assured Sheena as she straightened.
In the bedroom:
Everything proceeded in a normal, consensual fashion until Henry blacked out. When he came to, nothing was normal or consensual.
Henry awoke from unconsciousness. His eyelids seemed glued together and he heard terrible sounds and he felt wonderful things and he couldn’t move but he was being moved. His eyelid muscles pried at their restraints. They stretched a bit and would have admitted light – but there was none. He screamed so that someone somewhere would hear him but the sounds of that night in that room drowned out his pleadings. The wonderful and cruel sensations continued. Almost imperceptibly, a warm liquid began to drip down on to his face and began to free his eyelids.
Henry’s eyelids stretched again and cracked the blindfold. He sensed something or someone above him. His distended senses could only guess at what was happening to him. A spinning, alternating light source clicked on and allowed his vision to begin functioning and his mind began to interpolate the scene above and before his eyes:
It’s a cat with a rat squirming in it’s mouth and animal blood is dripping on to my face.
Henry blinked and refocused. The terror rose up in his throat even as the rest of his body vibrated with unimagined sensations.
Now, instead, he sees a bear with a salmon flailing in its jaws and an ocean of blood is gushing down upon him.
Henry realized that neither of these things was possible and he lets his eyes take another look. He saw clearly now and was not relieved. It was neither a cat nor a bear. It was Sheena. Sheena held something between her blue lips and gripped it in her ivory teeth and the thing was moving and blood pulsed from it.
It was a beating heart.
The Morning After
A solitary cobweb floated in stealth, moving with the subtle breezes generated by movements of things below. The attachments it formed kept it from escaping. It submitted to contentment in its corner…and existed long because it could go unnoticed. A fragile existence may continue for a long time but it can’t continue forever. A fragile mind can be led to believe almost anything continuously.
The bright sun reflected off a shiny surface into Henry’s face. Where was he? His eyes were sealed shut but he sensed the light. He could not open his eyelids…again. He remembered something about this…was it a dream? At this current moment, Henry felt his arms pinned at his sides and tasted grit in his teeth and he inhaled dust. He was buried alive.
But wait…he could move his head and there was light shining on his eyelids…he was breathing. Yikes, he had heard about this – commercial organ harvesting! The horror of this thought caused him to force his pinned arms from his sides. The hopelessness of this mutilation caused him to cry in futility. But wait…
His tears moistened his eyelids. His eyes peeked through the gauze of crusted sand. He was not in a grave. It was a bathtub. Dirt didn’t cover him. Grout and broken tile covered him. He had not lost any organs…except maybe his mind.
Looking to his right he saw a large hole in the tiled wall; a head size hole; a Henry head size hole. How did this happen? He wasn’t bleeding. His didn’t even have a headache. He simultaneously smelled and saw the reason his skull didn’t crack. Thank god for mildew! He must have crashed his hard head into the soft wall and it gave way. Questions remained, but for now, by the nature of the sounds coming from the adjacent room – the bedroom – he had better, exit with extreme haste.
Something slept, something, in there. It should simply be Sheena or Princess Na’vi or whoever she really was, but no human snored like that. No human could make that vibration continuously both in and out. That deep and satiated resonance next door could tell him something about what happened last night but he wasn’t sticking around to ask questions. It was time to go full coward.
Henry climbed out through the bathroom window. Tumbling on to the porch, he regained his feet in one hysterical gymnastic motion and, it seemed, neither foot touched down again until he was pressing one of them on his car’s accelerator. Now that he felt in control, his curiosity forced him to look back and up to 8D. He squinted through crusted eyelids to look at the middle window. It was dark and blue and there was no movement. No silhouette projected itself against the sheers. Henry turned away and sped back toward his lonely planet.
Watching from the window, a woman stood motionless and immodest and smiling confidently.

Freshened 3 Taken

Sheena beat Henry with a tease only, but now it came time to terminate…the tease. She had fun. Not like the first time. The first time she teased a man like this she nearly tossed. The power of her sexuality never tested until the tease test. It marked a demarcation between girl and woman, between victim and villain. Now she teased, sometimes beatings sometimes worse, just to watch them clench. She smiled as Henry unclenched. Sheena was not alone in her wonder and fascination with the male of the species. Men puzzled women. Give men what they want and they leave in triumph. Withhold it and they stay in hope. She never knew why this worked but it did.
“Can I offer you a drink? Wine?” asked Sheena.
The relative non sequitur returned Henry from his temporary confusion.
“Yes, do you have Green Eyes Pinot Noir?” asked Henry. I knew she was kidding about the beating all the time. He checked his trousers, first back then front.
“Did you mean to ask, ‘Do you have Pinot Noir, green eyes?’” answered Sheena, still teasing. “No.” she continued seriously, “I don’t drink red wine. It turns my lips blue”.
Is that how you do it?
“In fact, I don’t drink any grape wine. It weakens my inhibitions…”
That is good to know…that she knows of such things.
“But I do have other types of wine. Fruit?”
Each word she spoke, a drop of sweet potion for Henry’s senses. Each gesture made, a motion of entrancement. Sheena excited his thoughts, accelerated them. He recollected walking into the room fully alert. He remembered that distant moment but now his senses raced as she teased, then pleased him with her kind regard. Now, he slowly but consciously gave in to the abandon her potion offered up.
Abruptly, Henry snapped back from his thoughts. Sheena screeched a short sturdy stool across the bare floor. Henry looked preoccupied, so she recruited this three-legged helper to assist in scaling her tall, lean fruitful rack of wine. Taller now, she perused the slender necks. She twisted them with purpose. He listened to the lilt of her indecipherable comments. He wasn’t sure of her whispers’ intentions. Were they for his ears or for his imagination? Sheena continued her murmuring, her mouth sometimes moving close in, her lips changing color as the ambient light diffused upon them.
Is the Princess from Pandora revealing herself unknowingly?
Suddenly, Sheena spoke, “I have a nice raspberry. You surely won’t be feeling any pain…after a couple of pours”.
So are you back to teasing already?
“I have a nice hibiscus. It helps to regulate body temperature”.
Should that be voluntary or mandatory?
“I have a nice prickly pear”.
Indeed!
Sheena interpreted Henry’s choked response to mean ‘Yes, I would like to try them…or rather it’. Sheena grabbed the “Cactus”. Surprised by its color, the rich fluorescent purple spirits evoked romance and nostalgia. She poured…the flow more like nectar than wine. The long stemmed exquisite promised gratification in the purest sense. The Crystal clarity and veiled motives contrasted, as enchantment always presents.
Sheena placed a glass in Henry’s hand. She placed the cork behind her…this bottle’s destiny already determined. Perhaps Henry wished his near future were as obvious.
As Sheena advanced, Henry noticed the current cork in an extra-large, a giant’s wine glass. 750 milliliters, filled with 751 milliliters of normal sized wine-corks. It sat atop this monument to merriment. Knowing that Henry watched her, she straightened and turned like a ballerina, ready to begin her next part. She approached Henry with her stemware held delicately between the thumb and forefinger.
“Enjoy” said Sheena, sitting her glass on the table beside his, then reaching across to pinch him.
“Ouch, what was that?” said Henry, sipping and squirming.
“I wanted to see if you were still breathing”.
Indeed.
The moment of truth came. Sheena took his hand and led him to the shiny middle door, the door closed and between the whips and the sausage. Henry, in stride, said he didn’t think he was up for this. They both stopped. Sheena pulled something out from her somewhere with her left hand. She bent at the waist, reached around, and tucked it into his right pocket.
Looking down at the skin of Sheena’s briefly and slightly exposed lower back, Henry recalled some vulgarity about bad girls ‘bending at the waist’.
“I know you’ll do fine,” whispered Sheena as she straightened.
In the bedroom:
Everything proceeded in a normal, consensual fashion until Henry blacked out. When he came to, nothing was normal or consensual.
Henry awoke from unconsciousness. His eyelids seemed glued together and he heard terrible sounds and he felt wonderful things and he couldn’t move or stop moving. His eyelid muscles pried at their restraints. They stretched a bit and would have admitted light – but there was none. He screamed so that someone somewhere would hear him but sounds of that night in that room drowned out his pleadings. The wonderful and cruel sensations continued. Almost imperceptibly, a warm liquid began to drip down on to his face and began to free his eyelids.
Henry’s eyelids stretched again and cracked the blindfold. He sensed something or someone above him. His distended senses could only guess at what was happening to him. A spinning, alternating light source allowed his vision to focus and his mind to interpolate the scene:
It’s a cat with a rat squirming in it’s mouth and animal blood is dripping on to my face.
Henry blinked and refocused. The terror rose up in his throat even as the rest of his body vibrated with unknown sensation.
Now, it’s a bear with a salmon flailing in its jaws and an ocean of blood is gushing down upon him.
Henry realized that neither of these things was possible and he let the eyes take another look. He saw clearly now and was relieved. It was neither a cat nor a bear. It was Sheena. Sheena held something between her blue lips and gripped it in her ivory teeth and the thing was moving and blood pulsed from it.
It was a beating heart.
The Morning After
A solitary cobweb floated in stealth, moving with the subtle breezes generated by movements of things below. The attachments it formed kept it from escaping. It submitted to contentment in its corner…and existed long because it could go unnoticed. A fragile existence may continue for a long time but it can’t continue forever.
The bright sun reflected off a shiny surface into Henry’s face. Where was he? Eyes sealed shut but he sensed the light. He could not open his eyelids…again. He remembered something about this…was it a dream? At this current moment, Henry felt his arms pinned at his sides and tasted grit in his teeth and the inhaled dust. He was buried alive.
But wait…he could move his head and there was light shining on his eyelids…he was breathing. Yikes, he had heard about this – commercial organ harvesting! The horror of this thought caused him to force his pinned arms from his sides. The hopelessness of this mutilation caused him to cry in futility.
His tears moistened his eyelids. His eyes peeked through the gauze of crusted sand. He was not in a grave. It was a bathtub. Dirt didn’t cover him. Grout and broken tile covered him. He had not lost any organs…except maybe his mind.
Looking to his right he saw a large hole in the tiled wall; a head size hole; a Henry head size hole. How did this happen? He wasn’t bleeding. His didn’t even have a headache. He simultaneously smelled and saw the reason his skull didn’t crack. Thank god for mildew! He must have crashed his hard head into the soft wall and it gave way. Questions remained, but for now, by the nature of the sounds coming from the adjacent room – the bedroom – he had better, exit with extreme haste.
Something slept, something. It should simply be Sheena or Princess Na’vi or whoever she really was, but no human snored like that. No human could make that vibration continuously both in and out. That deep and satiated resonance next door could tell him something about what happened last night but he wasn’t sticking around and ask questions. It was time to go full coward.
Henry climbed out through the bathroom window. Tumbling on to the porch, he regained his feet in one hysterical gymnastic motion and, it seemed, neither foot touched down again until he was pressing one the accelerator. Now that he felt safe, his instincts forced him to look back and up to 8D. He squinted through crusted eyelids to look at the middle window. It was dark and blue and there was no movement. No silhouette projected itself against the sheers. Henry turned away and drove back towards his lonely life.
Watching from the window, a woman stood motionless and immodest and smiling confidently.
After dalliance, sitting in the park – bold
Henry sat on a park bench near nowhere. His intact head still spinning from the night, a night that just ended this morning, a head that must never have been quite intact. Henry reflected. Was this all a dream, a nightmare? Take stock. You don’t have a mark on you. No blood…no stains…of any kind…no signs of struggle. But there is this powder on your clothes. Your presence in that bathtub. Still, he thought, these images swimming in his head must be delusional.
Henry chewed his nails. Yuck! Now disgusted. What’s under my finger nails? More powder? No. It’s yellow, flaky chips. Oh, no! I swallowed that lead paint…and I’ve also got a piece stuck in my teeth.
Henry used a piece of cardboard he found in his back pocket as a sort of floss to remove the paint chip. But this chip wasn’t quite the same as his erstwhile finger food. It was more like…shell? Yuck again, what kind of slimy thing crawled into my sleeping mouth…a SNAIL? Oops. The only other way a person would swallow slime – willingly and joyfully and expensively – is in the form of a French appetizer. Something must have happened…
It’s still a dream…has to be. Paint clips and snail chips could have come from who knows what or where. My unconscious mind worked them into the dream. Henry convinced himself. It was the most obvious or, at least, easiest explanation. He saw himself returning to his safe, unremarkable life, post nightmare. Satisfied, for now, with his shaky assessment, he streched back on the bench, picked up and crossed his left leg on to his right knee and closed his eyes, exhausted.
What now? Discomfort between his legs. Something in my pocket making me uncomfortable. Henry uncrossed and reached his hand into his right pants pocket. His shaky assessment vibrated…then vaporized. Sheena put this in my pocket last night. It was part of the dream. But if I’m holding it, looking at it fully awake, it’s not a dream. He reached into his back pocket to retrieve his floss-er. 8D Pete Street.
Henry stood resolutely. I’m goin’ back in!

Return to Pete Street
Henry caught every light on his rampage back to Pete. He violated every law that got in his way: moving, non-, even warnings. At the swamp, the short cut, the road was closed and he was rerouted back to the main road.
The heat of the day suited him and he left the windows open and the radio off so that he could ruminate. No more nice guy. No more manipulation. He was intent on changing his life. He would not be a fool. He would act boldly, bold no matter what threat emerged. Enough is enough. Bring it on!
The tenements curiously welcomed Henry back. Their cookie cutter arrangement, sweetly allowed him to relax and slow his heart down so that he could boldly go forward where he had fearfully just lef. Henry regained his alertness just in time to realize his vehicle had arrived at – 8D. He swallowed with difficulty and remembered his reflux pill before stepping to the muddy parking lot with resolve.
The impressions under his step were the same but he wasn’t. Same distance, same destination, same dilapidation greeted him but not with the same intimidation. The first apartment would appear familiar and therefore was unseen, as were the next two. Henry stepped on to the forth and final porch, egged on by an inner voice encouraging boldness…but he wasn’t deaf. He was not hearing voices now, he heard voices.
He heard screams… They were doing something to Sheena! Quickly followed by louder screams.
“Leave her alone” Henry sputtered.
The screams grew even louder. They weren’t screams of terror. But someone was doing something to her. That’s all his mind would allow him to conclude…for the moment.
“Open the door. Sheena, are you alright?” Henry pleaded.
That last scream was much louder…and different? But familiar.
Henry boldly stepped forward to…bang on the door? Knock it down if necessary. Before he made contact, the door disappeared and Henry saw a hulking neanderthal head, an undersized white cotton sleeveless chest hair revealing shirt, and a pair of arms the size of legs. Brawny Man? Looks like Brawny Man, the lumberjack, two ply paper towel mascot?
“What are you looking at” said Brawny Man.
“Nice shirt” said Henry. He was petrified and yet he craned his neck looking inside for evidence of Brawny Man’s signature red plaid flannel shirt neatly hanging from a log fixture or axe handle .
The big paper towel mascot lifted a huge-leg-fist menacingly.
Henry boldly closed his eyes and hollered, “Wait, stop!”. In that instant, his mind raced with thoughts but they were not thoughts of death or dismemberment. They were inappropriate thoughts for, at least in this the instance. No, they were weird thoughts, in any instance, about Brawny Man and how he had PC’d over the decades – for the worse. Brawny Man’s clean shaven face with the styled coif was not as manly as the mustachioed, needs a hair cut John Holmes look alike. Henry, however, did concede his approval of Brawny Man’s return to the ‘Virgil’s got his wifebeater on, looks like Helen’s gonna get taught a lesson tonight!’ A-shirt…just before reality hit him.
Instead of being punched out, a jolt to Henry’s right shoulder twisted him sideways. He peeked out of one eye to see that he was still standing, and alone on the 8D porch. Not for long.
Bam! Something rammed Henry from the the back and opposite side, twisting completely around and causing him to fall on his face inside Sheena’s apartment. Fortunately, she had added carpeting since his last visit, yesterday. From a prone position he half raised his head. Just beyond his nose were ten toes, ten painted toenails and two legs, two too white legs. Henry’s gaze crawled up Sheena’s legs halfway, then stopped. There it is…the shirt, Brawny Man’s signature red flannel shirt.
“Sheena, why are you wearing that man’s shirt” asked Henry.
The looked down past her folded arms with a look he had never gotten from her before.
“You’re not Sheena” said Henry.
“Who’s Sheena, A-hole” chorused three different voices in a single volley, including the personage formerly known as Sheena.
“What are you doing here?” asked Henry.
“What are you doing here, A-hole?” came another volley, this time more staggered, nerves tensing, vocals chords taut.
An identical vulgarity, in practiced harmony…they gotta be family. “I…” began Henry.
“Shut-up” came an angry man’s voice.
I know, you A-hole.
“What are you doing here?” said angry man.
In dawned on Henry that someone or something was mistaken and angry man was not going to give Henry’s little dog brain enough time to figure it completely out.
“Look, you’re mistaken. I’m here by accident” explained Henry. Didn’t convince anybody with that one.
Angry man was getting angrier staring at the back of A-hole’s head and A-hole’s head was staring at the thighs of his estranged wife, who was glaring at the couple’s teenage daughter. A Mexican, er, white trash stand off seemed to be congeal as Henry calculated his poor odds of fleeing this scene.
“Oh, sure, it’s an accident,” began angry man sarcastically. “You were just collecting bottle caps in the parking lot and tripped over a dead animal and stumbled into a fourth floor apartment and fell on top of my wife”.
“That’s not what happened” whined Henry.
Simultaneously, the family members rolled their eyes, each with a different take, smirk and vulgarity forming on their individual lips.
“Doesn’t matter” barked Angry man, “Nobody’s leaving today, by mistake, accident or grace”.
That’s an interesting way of putting it.
It dawned on Henry he literally fallen into a hostage situation. Although, he was figuratively in a world of shit, he remembered his almost forgotten vow to be bold. He watched TV. He would negotiate his way out of this situation and, as an after thought, he might save the lives of these fine…a…ladies.
Henry turned on to his back, to face his captor. Woooah daddy. We’ve gone from a paper towel lumberjack to Deliverance. Stop it compose yourself. Think. Get him talking, keep him talking, until we can be rescued.
“That’s an impressive gun” said Henry.
“It’s a revolver” countered Angry Man, never taking his focus off of his wife.
“Of, course. It’s well maintained I can tell by the shine of the plating”.
“It’s never been out of the case” sneered Angry Man, still focused, “I bought for one reason, and this is the occasion”.
This isn’t working. Try some other approach. Henry watched TV and remembered the History Channel’s programs on the JFK assassination. Jack Ruby used a similar revolver to take out Oswald.
“You know Ruby…” started Henry.
“What about my wife” snapped Angry Man, breaking his focus, now leaning in toward Henry.
Angry Man’s wife intervened, “Stop it. I never saw this A-Hole in my life until just this minute”.
Satisfied that his cheating wife’s veracity would suffice, Henry stupidly continued, “Ruby…”.
“Ruby is her whore name” screamed Angry Man.
Ruby, addressing Henry, clarified, “I’m not a whore. I’m a call girl. There’s a difference you know”.
Henry, addressing Angry Man, meekly, “So what is your wife’s given name”.
“Ruby May” Angry Man almost choked as he said her name.
The quiet in the room, permitted by the three now vanquished voices of the adults was punctuated by the resonant sobs of the teenager who had led her father to her mother’s affair. The daughter’s piercing anguish ignited her father once again.
“Alright, ” said Angry Man, “There are four bullets in this revolver. One for Ruby May. One for Jesse Pearl…”
You two should be shot.
Angry Man finished, “…and One for me”.
Henry was confused, “Who’s the other one for?”

Epiphany at Pete Street swamp
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