GOON

"Hands on the wall, now!" the officer demanded, the heel of his left hand burying the side of my face into the scathing red bricks of the alleyway. I slung my left elbow through the air about where I'd expected his ribcage to be. No go.

I was sixteen at the time but my baby face could have convinced you I hadn't sprouted a single hair below my eyelashes yet. By the time they got me into booking you couldn't even tell I had eyelashes. The glare on the finger printing screen cast the reflection of a monster where normally my irritatingly cherubic features would peer back. Made sense. I wasn't a cherub anymore. I was a monster. Bloody and swollen, cracked teeth with intermittent empty spaces. That's the way I should have looked. I smiled at my reflection, flattered to be such a creature, and an ogre grinned back.

-----

"You couldn'a paid four-hundred on the bond, Ma!" I screamed in the late night air after being released three months later, as I kicked at the locked back door to my mother's house. I banged and shouted over and over, spiting the neighboring houses that squeezed the privacy from my childhood home.

"Coulda!" she shrieked from her upstairs window. Her bedside lamplight was the only glimmer in the house. From its uninterrupted cast, I could tell she hadn't even gotten out of bed to respond. "I'm done wasting money on shitty investments, Carl. Get out of here before I send you back there!"

"Jesus Christ A’mighty, Ma!" I gave up my knocking, but shouted even louder. A chipped brown Hush Puppy pump careened from my shoulder. "The Hell!"

"Don't you do dat! Don't you take da Lowd's name in vain, y’understand me?" That got her off her ass. Nothing but a shadow stabbing from her window, a finger prodding toward me with every syllable she cast upon me, but I could feel her angry face--you'd know the one if you'd seen it--tearing me to shreds.

"Yeah, yeah. The Lord. Good ol' Lord. Be sure to thank Him next time you talk, Ma! We got so much to thank him for!"

"You get out of my yard!"

"You ain't got a yard, Ma!"

"I'm callin' the cops!"

"Call the fuckin' cops, I don't care."

"Why don't the both yous shut up before I call the cops, huh?" blasted some wannabe tough guy from one of the darkened windows staring down at me from the confines of their secret troubles.

"Why don't you come down here and I'll give ya’ reason, ya bitch?" I shouted toward the man, and anyone else. But I was already moving down the street, faster than my pride would admit.

-----

"The hell happened to ya' voice, Gary?" I asked, with an asinine smirk, lighting a cigarette in a living room where such was clearly not allowed.

My older brother Gary was every bit the diamond everyone had made him out to be, opening the door to his convict little brother at three o' clock that morning. He went to the window overlooking a convocation of garbage surrounding the cans where it should have been. He opened and jerked his head toward it, pulling me from my seat with his inherent authority. "Do that out the window, at least, you little good-for-nothing," he said without a tinge of disrespect.

"Out the window at least," I mimicked in the most highfalutin, proper tone I could muster.

"See, you too could learn to talk right if you tried," he teased with a smile I probably didn't deserve. "Why are you here anyway? Ma kick you out?"

"Na, didn't have to. She just wouldn't let me back in." I hocked a loogie into the street, loudly gathering it in my throat with a crescendo blast that echoed nastily.

"Mmhm," he said returning with a glass of water I hadn't requested, extending it toward me and insisting with a nod that I take it. I did. "Second chances aren't guaranteed, Carl. You shouldn't have expected to get a--what, fourth, fifth chance?"

"Yeah, yeah. I know. The first guy to ever fuck up, right?"

"You're a kid, Carl. You've got time to change." I turned to protest, but the sincerity and compassion in his eyes took me by such surprise, I went dumb. He cared. I could see it in his eyes, he actually cared. Holy shit, how long had it been since I'd seen that look? "You need to change."

-----

When the governor had instituted the "Supers" the scouts had gone after only the tip of the top. Trained officers with athletic background, such as Gary, were the ideal fit for the new outfit. For them, landing a college linebacker with a 3.8 GPA and a degree in criminal justice was like finding the Holy Grail.

Gary never had my sense of individuality, I think he would admit that, so finding himself in a position to become a valued, guided part of a greater whole was every bit as valuable a find for him as it was for the government. So he thought, at least. Guy like that would've been just fine any way he sliced it. The truth is, the only reason they started that program was because the governor was scared to death by the influx of costumed vigilantes running around thinking they were in a damned comic book. Worried people were going to cause more harm than good.

"I wanna see ya costume!" I garbled around a bite of cereal one morning that next summer. "What's it like? Ya wear the nut-huggers?" He glared at me from above his laptop, and tilted the screen even lower. He must've been working on some official business.

"You dooooo don'tcha?" I chuckled.

"Now as two words, please," he said with the patient irritation of a veteran grammar tutor.

"Don't you?" I reiterated with exaggerated enunciation and a hint of a British accent.

"Lovely," he glanced up with a pinched smile momentarily, then back down, "we'll make a lady out of you yet, Eliza." I had to work to not laugh at that, though I wanted to badly. Ever since I'd moved in, those moments when I could see him as a brother, not as some painfully righteous arm of the law, were so few. Even so, I wasn't going to laugh at a diss. He checked his watch, grunted, and closed up shop, crossing to the door in a flash. "

Time fo' ya--for your real life?" I taunted him once more for good measure.

"Mmhm. And you?" he asked, trying to resist the accusatory tone which belonged--and surfaced--in his voice.

"Gonna rob a bank or somethin' prob'ly."

He swung around and blasted me with his eyes. For a moment I feared my joking had gone too far, especially since I wasn't really joking entirely.

"Go-ing to rob a bank or some-thing pro-bab-ly," he said striking each consonant, especially the end "g"s, and stretching each vowel, for illustrative purposes only.

-----

"Villains" loved the fact that they got an official title too. The city was booming with them just as soon as the Department of Super Tactical Operatives formed. For every fresh crop of do-gooders itching to live out a little boy's fantasy, there were three times as many lifetime criminals with much broader delusions of grandeur and the lack of scruples necessary to stretch for that brass ring as long as they needed to, no matter how many convictions and masked crusaders tried to stop them.

"Last crime you committed was almost a year ago," the brute made the computer screen between him and me look the size of a saltine. He was the kind of guy you expected to have out in the mess, doing the work, not sitting here auditioning Goons.

"Yeah, but I took out a cop," I lied. He ticked his eyes up at me, reminding me not to bullshit a bullshitter.

"Not what it says here." He twisted his lips, flared his nostrils, grunted, and tilted to the side as if maybe... Then, he shook his head, lips tightened against his top gum line. "You just ain't right for this outfit, ok kid. Come back once you've done some shit, arright? Actually done some shit."

-----

I felt the baton whip the back of my knee cap and crashed to the ground, crumbling like the plasma screens I'd been carrying under each arm. I was almost as thrilled as I was in pain. Almost.

Finally, I thought, I'd have something to show on my résumé; some relevant, recent material for my résumé. I knew who to call for bail, Marty Hadlock. Couple of Goons I'd met told me that was the way to go: get locked up, call Marty, and he'd let you work off the bond, with interest of course.

"They give you your papers?" Marty asked, a stony face that moved slowly and monumentally as tectonic plates.

"Yes, they are all here." From his grimace, I saw that my brother's dialect coaching had already gotten the better of me and my thug-speak was deteriorating despite my efforts. He checked my file, breathed deeply through his nose as if he was already having serious doubts, then exhaled with his eyebrows bowing to inevitability.

"Well, two felonies, six total arrests since age thirteen... Hmmm... If they say you gotta be registered, you gotta be registered. Congratulations kiddo, you're almost a Goon. You know where the Office of Judicial Status Certification is?" he rambled off with unexpected clarity.

"Yes, I've been there." With my brother once, a few months earlier. Marty glared at me suspiciously, eyes that looked like they were capable of kicking my ass without the aid of the rest of his massive body. "I tried to cheat on my Goon Cert the first time," I explained with the best save I could conjure on short notice.

He laughed and slid the papers back to me. "Awesome. That's freakin' awesome!"

-----

Gang, Outlaw, and Offender National Registry. GOON. They didn't include the R. Not because they couldn't afford to make the stamp one character longer or because the R wasn't an important part of the equation, but because they wanted to make good and damn well positive that you knew who you were to them.

Through the window to the next room I spotted Captain Righteous and Lady Lightning--no shit, that's how they were legally referred to--waiting in line, smiling, laughing, with their florescent spandex uniforms glistening beneath the steady glowing bulbs.

The dim light above my line, not forty yards from the beloved masked defenders, flickered wildly in the grimy casing, as if weeping over its dead counterpart, the dust of which hinted a not-so-recent demise.

“Next!”

Captain Righteous had been gone for about an hour when I reached the head of my line, and some kid with blond hair--a sidekick I’m sure--was grinning his way to the front of theirs. The hag behind the counter on my end of the glass checked my paperwork, stamped my page without looking at my face, and shouted, “Next!”

GOON, the large red imprint reminded me, as if I could ever forget. But it's what I wanted. Right?

-----

I folded the paper into a tiny triangle and headed down the hall. The brightness shining through the windowed doors from the street felt daunting and cold. It wasn't for me. Not anymore, I knew.

"Well, I'll be damned!" I turned to find a grinning titan in an orange Lycra onesie and a yellow cowl that covered everything above his upper lip. This, I recognized after the initial shock, was Crime Crusher--I don't make these up, ok--from the news. He was the cream of the cream, the man for the job, let me tell you. If a big Villain had come down, he'd been “Crushed.” End of subject.

"Well, brother man, aren't you full of surprises!" Crusher said crushing me with a bear hug.

Holy...

"Gary?" I felt my face scrunching around my eyes in disbelief, as if the bridge of my nose had been sucking on a lemon. I still have no idea what he was saying as he, essentially, carried me into the next office, nor do I know how my hand wound its way to my mouth, pressing the triangle of judgment in for safe keeping, as I managed to submit a few mumbled "Mmhm"s of confirmation to whatever he was talking about.

There was a line in the room. I mean, there was a line, but Captain Crusher didn't know the meaning of lines. The girls at this desk were beautiful. Go weak at the knees, crash your car just to get a better look, fall to genuflect and propose as you pass them on the street kind of beautiful. Nevertheless, they crowded around to fawn over Captain Crusher, submission of facial features not necessary for a stud like him.

The garble of his voice finally cleared as he repeated to my awe-stricken ears for the third time, "Where's your paper?"

"Huh?" I felt my heart kick into a fury as if it was trying to pump up the evidence of my evil. "I don-- I don-- I do not have them," I said, my words and voice coming out like a Muppet, odd-sounding and teacher-approved.

"Who needs 'em, right, ladies?" he grinned a pair of alpine ranges. They laughed as if he was the lovechild of Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams, and passed a page across to me, never tearing their eyes from him. I scribbled away, unsure of what else I might do. In a flurry of movements, the page was slid across, spun around, hammered with a stamp, and pushed back to me. No questions, no credentials, no need. For a Super like him, he could've brought in Al Capone and walked away with a Super Cert. I looked down.

"DSTO APPROVED" with the governor's signature below. I turned around--I don't know, to run, maybe?--and caught sight of my reflection in the pristine white floor below, clean enough you could wash with it.

That guy looking up to me didn't look like a two-time loser from the ghetto. He didn't look like a monster in the making. He looked like Carl. Gary's little brother, Donna and Eddie's little boy. The kid who won the science fair in fourth grade.

Who knew that all along he'd only been one stamp away?

Carpe Damned

With the sort of self-propagation normally found only in lengthily-Latin-named creatures my Biology teacher used to hum about, the strata of irony frolic before my mind’s disbelieving eye, webbed together like a Mobius strip.

Some of the best years of my life were sipped away alongside a procrastinating posse of fellow ne’er-do-well would-be artists, on the back porch of a coffee shop named Carpe Diem; or if you’ve not seen Dead Poets’ Society: "seize the day." And, while we played chess or cards or did anything else to distract ourselves from the craving to create, we debated over what we considered life’s great ironies.

Yes, take it all in: at “Seize the Day” coffee shop my friends and I would distract each other from developing the abilities we were afraid we might actually have, as we bitched and moaned about the lack of opportunities available, and how ironic it was to have the passion and drive but no outlet.

And eight years later, as I grasped about for inspiration to help me write something during this tiny window of solitude I have today, I found it right where I left it. I can see the lot of us now, as if walking upon our ghosts: everyone’s tilting back in those plastic green chairs, wearing cigarettes as surely as arms, and as I pass by I see pride in their ear-to-ear smiles, as if they’re all thankful to finally see proof that the door can be opened--even if it wasn't large enough for us to all go through together.

Also posted at: http://sixsentences.ning.com/profiles/blogs/carpe-damned?xg_source=activity

Delusion that Beauty is Goodness

I remember the shoddy little house with chipping white paint, its rear half hiding a dingy rainbow of embedded mud specks, a lighter ambiguously brown elemental congress, and grass stains from an unwieldy lawn which must have attempted a takeover some time before. Somewhere close by there was a cemetery, or at least a field with lots of concrete that my brother and cousin could convince five-year-old-me was a cemetery.

Between the two eerily equipped locales was a hiccup of forest; to my adult eyes it would most likely be a cluster of trees, which I could perhaps penetrate from both sides with my outstretched arms while standing at its center. The shadowy secret beneath the ever-brown canopy was a godforsaken, one-man boat, half digested by the soggy black earth.

Though he must have only visited us for a few days, I remember my cousin joining my brother and me for a lifetime of adventures in that dark realm. We snapped "clubs" from trees for safety when exploring the abandoned pirate ship and we prepared for battle with the vampires who had trapped my father in his own trunk, dragging him into the undead.

Well, we didn't see him go back in; what's your explanation? And, in case you're ever in the same predicament, here's how we made it out alive: we recited Grace--Bless us, oh Lord--over the stagnant pool in the hull of the ship, thus producing enough Holy Water for an army of darkness.

I also remember the gorgeous, big-ass a-frame with the lawn-care crew, pool guy, and fully stocked bar; respectively, where I got my cigarettes, where I bought my weed, and how at thirteen-years-old I made much older friends. By the time we fled that a-frame for a split-level in a bigger city, I could aspire for nothing greater than to break out and conquer my own shoddy wonderland, baptizing myself in its waters and shedding the iniquities of far too much beauty.

Gary Got Us

I was lying on my back looking at the power lines coming from the abandoned old building we hung out behind. My hands groped at the air between my eyes and the wires as I pretended to climb across them. I was a spy for a minute there.

We were going into third grade at the end of summer and we could think of no better way to spend our remaining vacation than in a lot alongside an old building. There were four of us that day, sometimes more but it seemed a bit crowded because among us was Gary, Tom’s little brother; aka “Nerd-turd.”

Finally something happened--some infraction while we were playing spies or soldiers or something--and Oscar snapped. “Go the hell home and take your damn stupid son of a bitch brother with you! Jesus H. Christ, you stupid assholes!”

It was just me and Oscar after that.

“He takes that stupid asshole everywhere,” he would say--or something like that--from time to time.

Otherwise it was quiet.

The brothers, it seems, were not quite done playing with us. As we both lay, watching the sky, we heard from the roof of the old building, a horrible war cry of sorts.

Tom jumped down, satisfied to startle us. Gary, blissfully ignorant, went further. He jumped out and grabbed onto the power line. We shrieked girlishly, and waited for him to die.

We all had just assumed they were live. From then on Gary was ok.

The Land of Yousif and Shemin

This is an older short story I wrote after reading about a similar case that ended, to say the least, poorly. I tried to find the love story in a story rife with hate and I think I managed. Hope you enjoy.

Yousif felt tiny pieces of dust flying past his shoulders as he sat in the dirt. The rocks below him were now satisfactorily arranged; they were now situated to suit his purpose. The little boy stood, to improve his view of the imagined village he now ruled. The wind still blew, constant, but not intrusive.

Shemin watched him from behind a row of rocks where the young girls sometimes played. The size of the rocks hid them so well that they could wade, unobserved and unafraid into the pool of water which had stood for some time in this secret place. Shemin had always dreamed it was magic, a gift from above. This made sense to her, since she rarely had visited the Sea but remembered well that it was not so set apart and lonely as was this body of water. Though now she stood before a sea more vast than the Caspian; a magnificent neighbor to Yousif's grand village of pebbles and sticks.

Shemin's legs were covered with water stopping just below her knee cap. She backed into the water never losing site of Yousif and his village. The cold water, she thought, made it feel as if her legs had vanished from her body and traveled to some other place, free from the burden of her form. She wondered, now and some few times before, if she were to suddenly plunge herself beneath the water, would she too vanish?

The soldiers had come when they were both too young to understand why the adults of the village wanted the soldiers to leave. Yousif even now was envisioning the uniforms and prototypical, manly specters he once followed at the pace and distance of a keen and seasoned observer. They too seemed to be from a magical source; men of mystique and unwavering courage. They carried guns, but this did not give them the courage. What did?

A bottle cap drove through the central road of Yousif's city, steered by the thumb of the Creator.

"Stupid woman!" Yousif shouted for the driver who had stopped for an imagined old woman, congesting the main road as she feebly crossed. Even as youthful as snow, the young boy had the wherewithal to stop himself at this: Why should the woman be slow? Is she not my woman, now? He couldn't answer this question, so he imagined the woman had never existed and returned to his route.

Shemin was brought to attention suddenly at the cry "Stupid woman!" She had heard her grandmother called this before, others as well. She remembered a particular time when she imagined -- must have just imagined -- someone had directed this to her mother as they walked through the streets.

No, she had eventually reasoned, he couldn't have been talking to her mother; her mother never took note of the admonishment. Nor did they ever discuss it. Shemin would grow to learn exactly why her mother had never discussed it, and would eventually come to reason that the man had said this to her mother and every woman at once, no matter where he had cast it.

Her surprise at having heard that phrase amidst the tranquility made her miss a step, but she caught her balance. Locking her knees, her body sprang forward and then tottered to and fro briefly. Long enough, though, was the sound of this in the water that it drew Yousif from his puppeteering of this new world. In the way young children often do, he confused his game with the real world; was someone attacking his city?

"Little girl," said the boy, "I can see your leg!"

She too was lost in the world of her own device. "No you can't! They're in the ocean."

Excited to learn of the ocean, Yousif quickly forgot to command, and became the follower. "Is it a big ocean?"

"Oh yes. And, fresh!"

He stood looking. He couldn't remember seeing a little girl's legs before this. They were much like his he thought. Gentler, maybe, but similar. He scrutinized the thin, wet sticks from their bottommost cloak of dark blue to the white robe she clenched modestly around her thighs. He liked them, he decided.

Rules were nothing either young child knew of or could explain, though they were professional at breaking them. The customs of their tribe had been followed completely as long as they lived, and would do so after they died. As such, the rules would have to exist exclusive from the worlds these two brought into being.

As though expected, Yousif's britches were now pulled very high, marking his thighs to correspond with Shemin's. The cold water thrilled Yousif. A fish swam past his leg. There were no bottle caps or slowly-moving phantom matrons in this world. He liked that.

Shemin's uncle had a cackle which slapped the walls of every building in the village with echo. It did so now, shattering their playworld instantly.

Shemin gasped "I must go!"

"Will you be back?" Yousif was running parallel to her on the opposite branch of a v-formation from the pool.

"Yes, little boy," she stopped. "Will you watch my ocean?"

---

The next morning the wind was whipping, blades of dust and air. Yousif's village had fallen into the grip of this mighty wind. There were no rock buildings, no stick houses, and no bottle cap cars. He climbed onto one of the stones overlooking the ocean. It now resembled in no way the body of water he'd seen one day before. Instead it looked to him as unimpressive as it actually was; it was but periphery. There was no beauty in it.

Night came ending a day spent imagining himself and the girl swimming as fish through the legs of some mighty master. Her legs, again he thought, were so pleasant.

More nights would pass and the rocks he placed became bigger, the buildings he constructed became real. His interests too grew, right along with him until they and he were proper and trained. He became a young man. The ocean became little more than a memory. The legs of that little girl devolved into little more than an ideal and a secret he would cling to during the hours when the sun seared his weary, torn flesh.

He strolled home from work one evening with the thoughtless gait of cattle, the air growing as cold as it was dark.

"Little boy!" a whisper broke through the darkness.

With no time to process, he replied simply and numbly, as if only vaguely curious "Little girl?"

"Over here."

He ran to the sound. He looked around, unable to see anything but shadow. The girl, now a young woman, grabbed his arm. This was an unusual sensation for them both, as boys and girls do not touch.

"Is my ocean safe?" her voice was soft as he remembered, but severe.

"Yes, I guard it every day. I have lunch there. It's my secret place."

"And, your village?"

"Where have you been?" he said, forgetting what village she meant.

"We traveled to the big Sea. My mother my father and I went with my sisters. Only my mother and I returned."

With naught else to say, he asked. "Was it nice?"

"It wasn't cold like our ocean. My father and his wives were angry with me for wanting to bathe in it."

"Why did you go to the Sea?"

"My sisters and I were to marry." The darkness hid no shame.

"Then you are a wife?"

"No, I am a fugitive. My uncle, the elder, has decided that I must not have respect for my father because I did not want to marry the man he took me to meet at the Sea."

"You know you must marry who your father demands!"

"Please, don't be angry with me, I wanted to come back and play with you."

"I don't play anymore."

"You are angry with me, aren't you?"

He was. "I came back to play with you and you weren't there. You drew me from my village into the water and left me there alone! My neglect has left my village in ruins!" The memory came through rather than to him.

"Little boy," she whispered, battling feebly to stave off tears hidden only from sight. She paused, not for a response, but to regain control of her heaving breaths. "I'm very scared. My mother and I fled in the night. We traveled for years through the unknown desert. She is now an old lady and has little more life remaining." Moments passed as the boy digested this information. He thought the woman and girl were ridiculous to have expected any less from breaking the rules of society. He would have said so, but the girl said first, "Do you remember my legs?"

He did.

"No one has seen them since you. Since my birth, only you, my mother, and the fishes have seen my leg. I had always wished that one day we might be…" She had no rights, she knew, to even imagine these things that she had planned to tell him. For years, these criminal thoughts had run through her mind safe from observation, but now they were free. She felt more fear than she had felt since the night she fled with her mother, years ago. The darkness did little but increase her fear.

"I…" the boy wasn't sure what words he sought, though he knew what he wanted to say. The girl having surrendered more villainous words than he could devise gave him the courage to finish. "I would like to touch your leg."

She did not speak but stepped closer.

And, he did.

"Shemin!" a voice slapped the air. Through the black they could see the figure of command they had both learned to fear. Shemin's uncle being a head of the tribe and a man of great size, was generally understood to be as fearsome as an earthquake.

The question danced about Yousif's subconscious mind as to why he grabbed Shemin's hand and began to run with her, but he did. The uncle was now an old man with little mobility. He knew there were followers in his tribe with a vehicle, so he trudged through the village streets slapping each wall with orders.

"Shemin has dishonored herself, her family, and our village! Abdhul, Radjou, bring me your car! We must bring her to pay for her crimes!"

The two could hear the tribesmen rushing to the street. They could hear chaos, excitement, and suddenly a car engine starting. They felt ill immediately.

Years of travel had improved Shemin's endurance tenfold however this made no difference without the benefit of rest from her sojourn. She was tired and frail. Yousif had often wondered how such delicate pieces of stock could support any frame, even one so docile. Now, he saw, they could no longer do so. He snatched her waist to his body with his right arm, running all along. As he lifted her she clung to him as a daughter, frightened tears shoved into the merciful neck of her protector, the beautiful legs bent and clamped around his ribs.

Before him he could see the headlights rounding a corner some thirty yards back. Of course that was quite a jog for a young man carrying a young woman, but he knew it would be no matter for any vehicle to achieve this distance momentarily.

The light cast onto a wall to his left and crept to the right. His path tore off diagonally away from the light but he knew his chances were failing. Once more he looked to the wall, trying to see where his pursuers were. A shadow broke the beams as the brakes released a metallic yelp.

"Stupid old woman!" spat from all sides.

Of course, more patient, observant eyes might have seen through the years of travel and torment which had aged Shemin's mother so that she was little more now than a road obstacle. And, a wiser man certainly would have realized the difference between a woman wishing to hurry across the road more than her frail bones would allow and that of a woman who had finally discovered a way to enjoy the dictum of her society. She knew now that since a stupid woman was expected, even tolerated somewhat, she could likely be without blame for her fault, even if it prevented a mob from capturing its prey.

"Where are we?" Shemin asked as Yousif set her down. He was taking off his shirt. She had never allowed herself to acknowledge such, but she had often imagined what this might be like to witness. In the moonlight it was nicer than she had thought it could be.

The wind picked up and her robe danced within the gusts. Yousif was now naked. He grabbed her hand and she was not afraid, though she expected to be.

"We're where they do not know we can be!" he said intently.

She looked and saw the ripples from the wind passing through the reflection of the moonlight on the water. She followed as he stepped into the pool. The engine sounds were coming again.

Her pace quickened to the water as it lifted the robe from her body until she waded completely out of the garb.

Their naked bodies stood distant from their desert world in the arms of their ocean mother Shemin had known once before. The two heads floating above came together, facing.

"Are you ready?" he asked. She removed the remaining cloths from her face. The two locked eyes. The water pushed them even closer. Yousif was weakened by the unimaginable perfection of her face. The skin was so soft looking, the nose was just as his mother's, her eyes held the moonbeams from the water.

He had waited to touch her legs for years and knew the torment that each moment held all too well. He wouldn't feel that again. So, he cupped the back of her neck gently with his left hand and pulled her silk cheek against his gritty face. He couldn't imagine how something could feel so nice. But, he was glad he wouldn't ever have to try to imagine it again. He knew now what pleasure was. He had not spoken of and attempted to define, but had experienced in every sense true beauty. Her smell was washing off and though it was created from work and toil he thought he could wear it as a perfume if he were able. The odor which he knew had come from her pain and strife, and which even she would say was unpleasant, was to him more wonderful than a bank of flowers too magnificent to name.

He breathed her in one last time and pulled her body to his. He freed her sweet cheek from his only so he could enjoy the sight of her once more.

Then without need of talk or thought, the two vanished beneath the surface of the water to be where it led them: another world where only their legs had been brave enough to have traveled, a shallow pool of water with no natural claim and no right to be, or perhaps even a secret land where disobedient children became fish and swam away from the village forever. They needed only be certain of this: it led to one another.