After eons of being
battered against the hard edge of a stationary continent, a handful of shells
had been reduced to nothing more than grains of sand, slowly inching their way
towards the shallows with the unending rotation of the tides and the moon. One
particle of sand found itself washed forward on the weight of a lumbering wave,
it careened through patches of kelp and seaweed until it hit a great pillar
upended in the shallow water. The wave receded, and the curious particle of sand
found itself left high and dry, stuck to the pillar. The sand tickled the legs
of Leon Van Damme as he stood knee deep in the cool waves of the Pacific. With
the sweet, cool air swelling inside his lungs, and the salt from the wind
catching in his nose, Leo could barely believe that he’d actually arrived. His
toes slowly dug their way deeper into the wet sand, as he turned to look back
over his shoulder at the Ray’s Liquor box, which sat lightly on the hard sand,
only a few trinkets from his former life to weigh it down.
A day earlier, Leo sat
in the dingy tri-county airport, which was still not far enough away from
Castle Apartments. He zoned out, his eyes tracing the aerodynamic curves on the
jetliner outside, when the volume swelled on a television that was mounted
crookedly on the opposing wall. First catching the concerned look on the face
of an airline employee, Leo felt the cold vein of fate creep up his spine, as
he focused on the dusty screen. A middle-aged woman with shoulder-length brown hair
addressed the public, the news station logo spinning on its axis, the words “BREAKING NEWS” splayed in crimson red across the bottom of the screen. Her voice was deep, and
her attitude professional as the footage cut to the headshots of two people Leo
recognized. One was an Irish woman he remembered from Castle, the other a
blurry shot of a man with only the word “Cleake” to distinguish him. The woman,
Sile N’Bhroin had been stabbed multiple times by this Cleake person. The
newscast then cut to a surly old black man standing in front of Castle
Apartments, who explained that the two were neighbors in the same building. A
frigid shudder violently rocked Leo where he sat; the icy chill had settled in
his veins and began to solidify in his gut. That could have been him, thought
Leo, as he looked skyward and kissed his thumb, then throwing the sentiment to
the Heavens. He praised whatever Gods there might be for adorning him with
enough strength to escape the satanically twisted, cursed walls of Castle
Apartments.
After his flight landed
in Santa Barbara, Leo found himself hailing a cab in a numb stupor. Arriving at
the cheap extended-stay hotel where he’d shipped his boxes, he found himself
being haunted by one box in particular. The box stood out, “THE PAST” scrawled with
sharpie onto all sides. Grabbing the box in a bear hug, Leo sprinted out of the
hotel and down the beachside road that lead to the local pier. He ran,
careening past gorgeous girls wrapped in exquisite color, past gray haired men
with surfboards and tan lines, past happy children spinning barefoot in the
sundrenched grass, he picked up speed as he reached the long weathered pier.
Sweating, Leo threw off his old tweed jacket; catching the wind it tumbled over
the edge, liberated, it swept down the beach in the salty wind. Leo reached the
end of the landing in a frenzy, almost plummeting over the guardrail with the
momentum. He dropped “THE PAST” at his feet. As he looked west into the heart
of the late-afternoon sun, Leo reached into the box, and pulled out the first
thing he touched. It was the retro-style alarm clock that he’d kept at his bedside
for the entirety of his sentence at his old apartment. Thinking back on it,
this crummy red-plastic clock had been first thing he’d bought for room 1011.
Tossing it up and down in his hand for a moment, mulling things over, he reared
back and lobbed the clock into the absolving waters of the Pacific, screaming like
an nineteenth century exorcism, Leo howled, “THAT’S FOR SILE, GODAMN IT!” Again
Leo reached into the box this time retrieving his Atlantic City souvenir
ashtray, the edges of the cheap plaster were chipped, and the image was faded.
Without half a thought he chucked the ashtray as far as he could, Leo watched
as it hit the crest of a wave in a pathetic splash and begin to sink into the
indigo water. Leaving the heart wrenching scream for the sadly departed, he
muttered “that’s for the damned who can’t escape Castle. That’s for Cleake.”
Leo continued throwing the
contents of his past into the ocean, each item representing one of the sad lost
Lonelies from back east. Taking a horribly scratched Sting single in his hand
like a Frisbee, he threw the thing towards the ever-loving horizon – an unending
slew of curses towards Devon Tresp accompanying it to the deep. Finally Leo
reached the bottom of “THE PAST,” and deliberated over the last two items. The
first being his favorite Hula girl lamp that danced when you turned in on, the
second being the old cracked New York snow globe. Holding the snow globe in his
hand, and feeling the cracks with his thumb, Leo resolved to lob it, and keep
the Hula girl. Raising the globe back over his shoulder to launch it far out
past the pier, he lost his grip, and it slipped out of his hands and crashed to
pieces on the weathered boards. Kneeling down to pick it up, he found that the
skyline was intact, but the glass dome had finally shattered, and the little
people of mini-Manhattan had been liberated from their endless winter. Leo held
the little island up to the sun, and observed the little pieces of silver
confetti as they caught the light, and filled the little town with a brilliant shadowless
glow. “Never mind,” thought Leo as he placed the snowless island back in the
box, next to the Hula girl lamp. He picked the box back up and headed back down
the pier, determined to make it to the ocean himself. He kicked off his ratty
old loafers and felt the warm California sand under his heels, recognizing that
his own dome had been shattered, and now all that was left was brilliant
sunlight, and the mirrors that caught its reflection.
So there Leon Van Damme stood
– up to his thighs in the rising tide, watching the sun begin to dip over the
horizon. The last tendrils of its fiery luminance held onto the sky, pulling
every color in the known world over the edge with it. Turning his eyes skyward,
yet again, Leo could swear he heard the word “Amen” come whispering across the
darkening waves, he laughed under his breath, a smile growing from his chapped
lips. “Amen,” he whispered back, as he loosened every muscle in his body, and
fell backwards, arms spread-eagle, into a passing wave. The cool water washed
over his craggy features, his gray hair, and his smiling face, as he sank to
the sandy bottom. Finally Leo was completely engulfed in the all-forgiving
water.
Emerging with a gasp, he ran his fingers
through his hair, and shuffled through the shallow waves towards his box,
turning at just the right moment to catch the last glimmer of the sun as it
ducked entirely over the edge of the west.
THE END.
