Friday, December 19, 2014

Daria’s Revenge and the Legend of Freezer Man




He lives in a freezer. The freezer is located within a deli, “Zurie’s” on Hudson Street in Manhattan, not so far south from Hell’s Kitchen.
He is a strange tiny man and those that know him or knew of him simply call him, ‘freezer man.’ 
That bad man.

-Tash Zurie-








Then

In toward the center of a perfect afternoon a man named, Pike, stopped within the Hudson Deli for his usual lunch, two thick slices of Danish Dill Havarti, slightly warmed under the broiler and a cool glass of Piesporter Goldtropfchen.

He shivered constantly. 

Tash Zurie, the Jamaican waitress who worked one day a week, offered a tattered orange Afghan. This was a day that may have squeezed itself in when no one was looking, a surplus of twenty-four hours when unusual types of lower fourth dimensional occurrences might take place. 
His shaking made Tash uneasy as she smoothed the brindled fringe of colored tassels.

Rumors ran rampant Tash Zurie had mastered, mojo. She spoke in a low type of canted utterance.
She was guided in movement by an unseen push, a presence in her person that made her seem noble, almost benevolent.
Tash Zurie also worked as a seamstress in a small Laundromat not far from the deli. She chalked sidewalk signs during the summer in front of local businesses along Hudson Street. She possessed an almost surreal talent and the lilt of her singing as she drew, haunted the stoops along Hudson with a personal type of charter.
She cleaned homes and delivered groceries as well. 
Tash was almost reptilian in her deliberate motion, always pausing before finishing a gesture, smooth and serene with no wasted effect.

Before

Pike had been a member of the Hellfire Club, a reputed lodge of the Freemasons of which he was Grand Master. He’d manipulated political elections for personal gain and ruined many careers of those that had crossed him. Pike never married, but years ago a woman had lived in his home for a period of time. 
She was an artist whom Pike had met one night at a lodge ball, her name was Daria. She’d been invited by lodge members to display her work, Pike had initially been attracted to her dialect. 
She was Jamaican and quite beautiful. 
He bought four of her paintings that very evening. 
Pike pursued her for months, but Daria felt a strange energy about him, an aura of seething, an occulted type spirit or negative energy, he kept it barely hidden she felt, as though he wanted it on the ‘edge’, or displayed. As time and days went along, so did her apprehension, it seemed unwarranted or mistaken. Pike became a facet, a path for her to explore with alacrity, she was young and there were many ports of opportunity. 
Eventually, after numerous attempts to attract her, she relented and in a few months found him a pleasurable enigma. Daria abandoned her tiny apartment and moved into Pike’s lavish townhouse. He built her a studio in a corner room with sky lights that opened to the roof. She painted for hours in the loft listening to the city below, thankful for her nest above it all.

Things seemed to be better than Daria could have imagined. Pike was attentive to her needs and for a long while she'd forgotten ever doubting him. He would ask her to read aloud to him while reclining in a massive chair with his eyes closed. He wore a strange smile about his face, as though a game, or a surprise was on the way. Her voice seemed outside of her own body, as though some kind of delay had been employed and they were both being read to by another. It was unsettling to her, but at the same time mesmerizing, an orchestration of the ‘moment’ by unseen forces. She read from books that had escaped the razing of Carthage by the Romans, words that by themselves carried spells of ages and created an entire atmosphere within the universe of her own mind.




Today

Pike sat at that tiny table within the windowed alcove of the deli. The table he’d wait for indefinitely if it weren’t available. 
He never spoke much. 
It was known by now what he’d eat and drink. His needs were minimal, but he drew attention, as watching a dark sky, waiting for that first peal of thunder.
He sat, hovering over the melted Havarti and treasuring each sip of his sweet German wine. It was late this afternoon and sun slivered through the window just below his eyes. A ceiling fan turned slowly with a creak at each revolution and tiny specks of dust rode invisible waves of its creation.
The deli would close in half an hour. The odors of cooking were receding into the passing of this rare day. His shiver seemed to increase, and the tremor toppled the jelling Havarti from its fork perch. 
Tash Zurie raised her arms, the Afghan hanging between her hands. 
“Would ya need a cover deer ta keep deem shivers away?” she asked, and the sun cut the two in drastic contrast while those pins of dust hung in orbit eddies, pushed by the off kilter fan. 

Pike's eyes drilled the stark window as all took place in a continuous whir.
Cheese crept then plunged past the back of his tongue and beyond his throat, bulging the esophagus and causing Pike to wince in an almost smile. The bulb of wine, rose, its stem pinched between thumb and forefinger in a pulsing tremble. It waited there, until command drove it toward his mouth. He gulped the tepid wine as the small blanket and Tash Zurie splashed their presence within his periphery. His lips parted slight as a crack, the lump sliding its way down in a slurry toward the stomach.
He swallowed and placed the glass neatly near his fork.
“If it makes you feel better,” he rattled, cleared his throat, then began to shiver again.

Before

After the passing of a few months, Daria found herself pregnant. It seemed a natural progression, a passage, a time that had been pre-determined just as the changing of the seasons, but now and then she seemed outside her self, separate at times from her own mind and body. Surely she was being drawn to a dark place and all roads lead back to him, but she told herself she was wrong and truly believed it. She forced ‘good days’ on herself, despite the negative underpinnings. She painted and escaped to the edges of imagination, sometimes feeling most of her inspiration coming from this bursting evolution within her belly. Daria floated through these days, oblivious to the passing of time and enveloped in her colors passing along the face of canvas.
And on an afternoon that found her sliding between consciousness and creativity, voices, below her, rose as unwelcome energy. All at once the sudden pound of the city below mixed with the urgency of this muted conversation.

 That was the day Pike sent her to a hospital in upstate New York. She’d been drugged for weeks with subtle opioid teas consumed regularly. Months went by and whenever she attempted to ask questions she was met with kind smiles and powerful drugs. She felt the baby kick at times even when unconscious and in different worlds within her mind. Occasionally she would wake long enough to gauge her predicament, but her body seemed not to be her own. Pike was there at times behind different faces, his, but evil replicas.  Daria held to a rock in a corner of her soul during mindless storms, days were grey pictures in their rumpled passing. 
She woke suddenly in the middle of a day, an empty afternoon, lucid and warm, she reached for the familiar mound of her belly and found a collapse. Gone. And somewhere within her mind and body, drugs or mercy enveloped Daria, she howled in that room and never left. Outside the brick walls, a tiny blue wren bound her anguish within its own imparting lilt.  
Pike sold her paintings at auction and sold the baby to a human trafficker.

Today

The Afghan was lowered across his trembling scapulas and he cringed. The Havarti slowed to a clog in his throat and he muffled a scream.

Pike shrunk beneath the orange knit blanket. Tash Zurie spoke to them both in a low murmur, she undulated in a tacit pattern. He coughed, his eyes peeled along her body and over went his wine glass, just a thunk, the remaining gulp a ragged half-moon across the beige cloth.
“Der, deer now, ya get smaller, and Tash put yaway.” She smiled a sweet bright smile.
Pike froze and got smaller. 
There was nothing he could do, his days of twisting fates had come to this, a malevolent finish scribed by an overworked Jamaican waitress. 
Pike could no more see over the former tiny table, the seat of the chair splayed out in front of him, shockingly expansive. He was grabbing his throat, croaking like a baby bird and out popped a minuscule point of Havarti cheese. He reeled back on his hands, his little red face gulping in utter awe. 
Tash, bent at her waist and scooped the Afghan. He looked up at her as she cradled the diminutive bug of a man, his angry words spiked the silence, he tried to get to his feet and Tash pinned him to her palm with a smooth index finger. He thrashed and spewed. Again, came her spontaneous smile

Tash Zurie placed the little Pike into a darkened corner of the freezer within the Hudson Deli. He was completely aware of the moment, the quiet, the cold and the karma. He felt the dark and at the same time, the careful handling of the frail fraction of himself. In the moment before the door closed, Pike tasted the last of that wine and Havarti within a nervous burp, a puff in a cloud of frozen air. For a time he pushed his way around in the black cold, the interior fan rattled within its frame, matching the cadence of the outside ceiling fan. Of course Pike had no idea the universe in all its benevolent parity was simply maintaining balances within itself on behalf of its many soul children.

He braced himself, still in disbelief, stumbling in the dark, crunching the ice with his tiny feet, he began to repent sincerely as we all do when all seems lost as it now was. He felt his way back to where he’d been put, sure that mercy might reign from her sweet heart, that door would open, warm air would rush in and she’d not hear his laugh. But the universe knew, the creator of all balance, the mediator justified the moment and the cold found its way, slowly sure and complete.

Outside the Zurie deli, Hudson Street held its charm within the city, its secret was so small, but important to the variance of colors rendered there amongst the others. No bricks in walls more important than the others, no leaves with less purpose amongst the trees in the streets. She labored in love on her knees by the stoop, tips of soft chalk blended with the pores of the Belgian block. Those that passed by, stopped and stared as long as the sky allowed, temporary art outside his favorite flavors, the Zurie Deli, last home to him.
A chalk likeness of her Mother, near the deli in the summer, in the street, beneath where he’d walked on his way inside.

Daria’s Revenge.”  These words below the art would relent, inevitable under rain and the traffic of feet, but Tash would return in moments she’d spared, by her box of chalk fingers, Mother would reappear, there, through the splendor of her daughter’s soul.
 And as days filled new years, Tash Zurie would repeat that quiet chant to herself.
Come home now mama, come home. Bandulu Babylon gone to bloodfire, come home now mama come home.”









The End




GJH 10 

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