Kaleidoscope by Erika

It was strange how quiet it was in those streets in the evening, how terribly sad.

It almost seemed like a film, like the cameraman was about to call for a second take. There was something so heavy around the corners of the apartment buildings, especially since most of them were broken, scrappy and slightly down at the heel, like most of the residents, nothing special.

And as Charlie walked around she thought about all the wonderful memories, about how sweetly her children had played in the green trees together, because they had believed in all kinds of spirits and superheroes, but none of those really existed and here was Charlie and yes she was healthy and she ran and even went to the beautician but age came down on her hard just like everyone and gave her a lesson in humility, that’s for sure. But it was ok, she could accept it, she was happy to be alive.

Sometimes she thought about James, her older son, and how serious he had been as a boy. He had run with all the other middle schoolers but since her father had given him a Nike shirt, a green one, he had felt especially obliged to run fast and thinking back he felt bad after all the rejection she had endured from her father in a silent but devastating way she felt that somehow she had passed it on to her son and instead of enjoying his childhood he somehow he felt this sense of responsibility, and even when she had taken them for soccer try outs she felt it was very important even if she couldn’t afford it because the soccer team was the ticket to ride as far as meeting all the little rich brats of the town and she knew and wanted him to intgrate and not be left to the side but it made her feel sad because they had tried out under the rain and she hadn’t had a car back then so they had all rushed home on their tiny little bikes and she had given them a warm bath but she felt that she was really alone with them and unequipped to be a mother somehow, missing her old life. But she loved them in such a terrible way and even if she had never cooked she did her best and made soup and nice things to eat. She wasn’t so manic about housework though and had been quite embarrassed when they had removed the kitchen and all the scraps of food from under the oven were revealed as she hadn’t had a proper vacuum cleaner to suck out all the garbage as at that time the children had been wild and had been at her wits end most days, and only one day she had been sick but they had cried so much that she had to get up and they wet their beds and fell off their bikes and James had jumped for a ball and got caught on a wire which had bruised his neck and thank God and then his in-laws came loaded with food and she was very very tired all the time and the idea of working was stuck in her mind and when the children were nine or ten she went to work only an hour as an English teacher and once she had told them to go to a friend’s pizza place and she had found them at seven pm outside because they hadn’t had any money and she had felt very bad.

She had begun to work and so she would return at nine every night but she was proud also because she worked always also in the summer as an English babysitter and she took the kids with her and was very very proud almnd also the kids were and they did sports and she was a good mom and loved them more than life itself.

But that night, it was broken and unpleasant and quiet except for the strange sounds that came out of the ground, maybe it was the electrical current and the sidewalks were mostly bumpy because of the trees growing out of them and there were the signs of a lot of road work and interruptions but there were hardly any people, only a few here and there with dogs, almost everything was closed and it seemed kind of like a comment on her life, like all the good days were over and she really had nothing left to do at all but grow old and count her memories and take her vitamins and remember when she used to be beautiful, or at least when she had been young, which was the same thing.

Fuxia reigned. yes, she had, until Frances came in a yoga trance and messed up her planet and now Fuxia had been forced to materialize and come down to earth sometimes as a really sexy lizard with boots but in any case she was sick of the human race, they were weak and she didn’t want to save them, but she had her orders from other dimensions and so when Frances had been catapulted into her planet with all her trauma and mixed up feelings and had been sloshed around in the half of Oracle 54 which was made up of water and memories and confusion, Fuxia had been roused to come down to earth because Frances was a sign, a sign that things were really in a bad way, that the emptiness and confusion and all around desperation had because so emininently palpable that she had to somehow act.

That evening, a man at the traffic light saw someone in the rain, seemingly a violet-fuchsia colored reflection which shimmered and shuddered in the streaks which lapped and caressed his windshield but then again, maybe it was just the rain or maybe it was the beers he’d had at Luigi’s or maybe simply it was because he missed her and he wished really that there could be a woman around, but when the light changed colour he realized it was just the beers and then the rain was coming down pretty hard and he was tired of everything more or less and he was hungry and he wanted to go home and heat up a couple of frozen bagels and put cream cheese on them…

Rain, reign, rain….something about the rain really does conquer all, and that evening there was a fuxia rain, in fact it was Fuxia who was the rain, she had melted into all of the people and all of their desires for love and fantasy and rainbows and spirituality and escape had just been pulled out of them right into the ground because love does this for everyone, it eventually takes away everything you thought you had, but anyway Charlie didn’t even know that any creature called Fuxia existed or even could even partially exist, but she did think it was strange that the rain seemed to have a kind of pinkish sheen, but perhaps it was just the neon lights reflecting, but then again there weren’t a lot of neon lights in that little town in Idaho, but it didn’t matter because really she wasn’t paying much attention because at the end of the day she was always tired really, and of course then she had to go home and change her clothes and she had to realize that she was depressed because she missed her kids and her boyfriend was far away and maybe he didn’t even love her, but then again it was raining and the best thing to do was to snuggle up with a carton of Hagen daz in front of the tv and watch Jerry Springer reruns and forget that she had ever been in love or even ever had a dream, because you have to be like a child again because children don’t even ever dream, they just are and in the end she was going to be a little child again because she was tired at the end of the day, ..

Fuxia had melted into the ground and ceased to exist but unbeknownst to everyone her spirit rose up like a kind of neon fog and went back up to Oracle 54 where she could play with all the unhappy spirits of everyone, like tortured souls locked up in a marble. As you could see with your naked eye in that cold, muddy, plain town in Idaho, there was little hope in the universe…

But the rain came down soft and sweet like liquid candy, the colour of little girls and ponytails and unicorns. And the hot pink fuchsia gave everyone reason to smile, like rainbow or a compliment you don’t expect…