Oak Street is said to have four light poles in the town square that have never –since their initial setting in 1878, turned on. They hadn’t flickered, nor glowed, nor made any vague humming or popping noises to indicate they malfunctioned. There was no sign of their ever turning on or even being broken, until June 15th 1993 at around 4 p.m. (eastern Pacific Time). At first no one took notice. This could have been because of a variety of reasons: The weekly riots going on by the Swistle Opera house around the same time that day (Tuesdays were always riot day); Or another reason could have been how seldom people of Oak Street went to the town square. Since the town just a skip over– Palinchrome, had recent trouble with sewage, and plumbing in general, it was often left barren and so was the Square.
Either way, the subtle glow of these aged lights went unnoticed by the town. And as the days retired and the years took over, the four poles all arranged in their perfect envelope, shone brighter and brighter. 17 years later again by June 15th, all four had blown–along with the entire electric system of the town.
Some miles off, on Sycamore lane, third house down—the one with the ratty lawn, Emily Gil was blowing out stumpy birthday candles. The boy across from her had droopy half-lidded eyes, and Emily was furious. Most times the lids over her eyes crushed and curled into themselves and her small hands balled into taught fists. The weight of the world pounded their way into the gaunt hunched shoulders she hated. Emmanuel, the girl’s brother stared vacantly at her fuming face and tensed only the slightest. Most days he’d call to her, ask for her to calm herself. Today, their shared birth date, was the epitome of Emily’s hate for the world, for God, for everything. “Why pretend” she’d say sometimes, “Why pretend I matter!” then She’d look to the droopy eyed boy and curse him too. It wasn’t for his existence that she cursed him, it was for his silence. Instead of a reply, he’d think how young she looked when she was angry, how childish.
“When I leave” she started “I’m taking you with me.”
He nodded blankly at the frosted dessert, ignoring her statement. He never got a cake; he was allergic to flour.
“Did you make a wish…?” words he meant to say strongly but watched fall into an almost silence. Emily glared at him. She wasn’t mad at him, not him. The situation was what bothered her, the nonsense. There, in their dark loft of a room, in the dirt caked wood panels, they spoke their thoughts aloud because their parents’ opinions were worthless and always had been. They’d prefer not to let them hear anything.
From behind the paper the realtor deemed worthy of the title ‘walls’, Rebecca stood from her chair. The slam carried throughout the building. Both children shot heads towards the wall.
“Patrick.”
The woman, thirty-eight years old, with the mind of a child and verbal adequacy of a toddler, hadn’t spoken a single coherent sentence since her traumatic birth of the twins Emily and Emmanuel. Yet, That day, June 15th 2010, she called for her husband eager to tell him
“The lights went out.”
The teens crept out of their room, stepped slowly down the stairs, held their breath. They knew what Lucid Rebecca meant; flashes of blood, picking out glass shards, trimming unleveled hair to match where the locks had been torn. Lucid meant hide. The woman called for Patrick again and yanked her room door faster than the younger two anticipated. They froze. In her long nightgown, with her frayed hair, she looked at the wall ahead then at the staircase. Eyes never really looked as glassy in person as they did in comics or cartoons, at least not to Emmanuel. Then again, he hardly got to see his mother in person. The pupils in those absent eyes constricted small as a pinhole and roared to life, blackening a whole three shades, and gaping.
“Mom….?” Emmanuel let out like an idiot. He knew in an instant that Emily was staring at him, felt the holes burning his temples.
Anticlimactically Rebecca took a step back and stayed leaning on her heel for a long moment. Perhaps, they thought, perhaps she wasn’t adjusted to the light. This was of course wrong. Rebecca had a tall window by her chair that let in more light than the rest of the house. Light wouldn’t have fazed her in the slightest. Instead, she simply remembered something important: on Wednesday she had to check the lottery numbers. She had a dream about it. Then as quickly as they shriveled, her pupils swelled seemingly passed the confines of her iris. They were black then. Soon, without a word, she padded into her room and sat back in her chair, facing the window.
Though Emily had continued down the steps, Emmanuel watched the unoccupied space his mother was just in. It was at times like these that he reminded himself of her and her pitiful life. It was times like these when he realized that death was a gift and always had been. It was the escape from life that lacked the shame of murder and weakness of suicide. Times like these ruined the fine thread that held his life together, and also in some way kept him alive. After a couple of moments, Emmanuel would leave and his mother would forget having ever seen his face. Then some day off, perhaps three or four Emmanuel would lodge a knife through the pulse of his wrists and out the other end. This isn’t important just yet. But what matters is that it happened and for good reason.
On the ground floor, Emily shushed the boy before he uttered a word– before he had taken the last flight. She was calling their father, Patrick. When the recorded message stated that ‘unfortunately the person she was trying to reach was not available’, Emily sighed slamming the phone crookedly onto the receiver and ignoring the dial-tone.
“He’s probably drunk somewhere…” she muttered. He often was, drunk that is. To him Alcohol solved all the problems welfare and Medicaid couldn’t. It was a therapist of some sort, one whom he had daily appointments with at 4 p.m. making it completely viable for the daughter of such a man to assume he had gone “on a bender”. But instead, Patrick was dead behind the cobble walls of the historic Oak memorial. Neither child would find out the cause of his death nor would his body be found until several days past. When discovered, there would be no shoes on its feet, and no shirt on its back, only a small singed symbol gone unnoticed behind his ears.
Believe me I suck 