Malakai

A pitter patter can be heard from a bedroom if you are half asleep, noises seem to manifest deviously in the darkest of hours, like mice that have come out to play, measly undertones of un-magical or mystical proportions which we never seem to notice under the sun.

little clicks, minor pops, a misconstrued inhale a misinterpreted footstep all products of our own existence, and then with the lights off and possibilities on those noises morph into concepts, a thief, a murderer, the devil, Satan himself exhaling hot fire onto your neck causing your veins to throb uncontrollably while your mind turns logic to fallacy and peace to malice. It’s nothing, there nothing there, there’s never anything there, but that doesn’t matter does it, as one would rather be faced with an abominable truth than a tear jerking possibility.

Unless there is something there, someone to be precise, the woman slowly tip toed out of her bedroom crouching slightly in fear and peered into the nursery of her 8 month old child, there she was nesting comfortable in a pool of plush pillows and infantile thoughts, she looked ahead and saw that the window was open with the brisk breeze of night causing chaos amidst the drapes. She closed the window and returned to her chambers lovingly codling her paranoia within the reach of her warm embrace. Perhaps she had forgotten to shut it, maybe her spouse wanted some fresh air, maybe a strong gust of wind blew it wide open, more often than not these are all probable occurrences, until they are not, until a creep dressed in black watches over your baby with a blank look on his youthful face wondering whether or not he should touch it absorbing its short lived innocence, until your wife goes to bathroom in the middle of the night to pee just to find someone peering through the shower curtains and raping her violently before sending her back to bed and giving her a kiss on the forehead while her husband snores obnoxiously as he drools on his pillows, until a wandering teen finds himself tumbling around your backyard just to spend the night passed out on a bench swing. Most of the time this is not the case, most of the time your paranoid, most of the time the creaking you hear is a rusty pipe or a moldy door hinge not the sound of your teenage daughter’s head being bashed through the basement window as her perpetrator prepares to defile her bloody remains at the back of a paint chipped van. Unless it is. Until it happens. The woman crawled into bed and wrapped her nimble arms around her husband’s waist , he awoke slightly and gave her a light kiss on the forehead before going back to sleep. When the woman finally shut her eyes and began to snore ever so slightly a creature slid out from beneath the little baby’s crib, his hands where worn with splinters and plastered with soil, his face stained with paints of the earth and his eyes, freakishly large and blood shot, he glared at the child in discontent, jealousy almost, he reopened the bedroom window and leaped onto the soft grass of the front lawn. The woman awoke again and creeped into her daughter’s room once more, nothing again, her worries wrongfully laid to rest.

Malakai. A living ghost surrounded by those who mourn in the death of his conformity. A king in a sea of peasants, yet a peasant in a sea of glorified slaves, an insecure rebel to put it best. Malakai walked through the wood, every so often and found things inside it which he used to give his life profound meaning, as he refused to participate In the superficial conquests of a young adult male while some cliff dove Malakai sat quietly in the rain, thinking about nature and its despicable constituents, he did this often, everything could be made into a metaphor, the falling of leaves as a measure of passing time, the rings which formed at the core of weathered oak like lines on the faces of elderly, and him, himself, Malakai, a boy, a creature, could be compared to… nothing, as objects and nature are often characterized in overly simplified generalizations, fire was hot, ice was cold, soil was dark but Malakai, Malakai was everything and nothing simultaneously. His favorite thing to do was break into home’s, he liked the superficial security that came with being a brain dead suburbanite. He would walk around beige den’s and inhale generic brands of air freshener and fabric softener that would diffuse into his cells and warm his cold aching flesh into a comfortable oblivion. He would peer into the bedrooms of the inhabitants and watch them as they slept, sometimes he would steal things, little things that couldn’t be traced, a shoe lace, or a sock , or a piece of cutlery, souvenirs from his various ventures into the mundane. He would keep them all in a moving box with the words “Malakai’s Treasures” written on the side with a black sharpie.

Malakai was a photographer but like most artists he was forced to sell his labor at an astonishingly low price at a grimy mattress factory. Malakai had developed a daily routine that was rarely disrupted, work, sleep, creep. Everyday Malakai would leave work at 5pm and take a nap until 7, after his nap he would put on his favorite black hoodie which he matched with black shoes and black sunglasses and creep. Malakai liked taking walks around the city during the early hours of the night, he didn’t enter a house before 3 am when it was quiet and nobody would detect his presence.

There was one home in particular, 2246 Retallic. It was a glorious home. It was the architectural embodiment of the American dream. It had a white picket fence that was so bright it almost seemed luminescent, a cherry red door with a gold plated doorknob, eight windows at the front of the house all facing the front yard which cultivated an array of regular plants, it was all so ordinary, it was all so wonderful. The house was painted white and had a flag pole. Every morning at 8:30 the lady of the house raised the flag as her husband saluted it on his way to work, probably real estate or marketing or something of that caliber, and then there was Theo. The one who dripped conformity and was a direct by product of generation X, it was almost as if he had been cultivated in a lab or a work shop. Theo was Malakai’s most fascinating subject. He would often observe him from the memorial bench which was laid in copper stone across the street from the house. He was so productive, constantly engaged in a never ending cycle of obligatory duty, playing sports or doing homework or making presentations or going to church. He was so busy, and he seemed incredibly happy, all of which was coming to a gruesome end.

Malakai went home and switched on the television. Every square inch of his walls were covered in abstract shots of Theo. One of his nose with the sun beaming against the side of his face , one of water dripping down his mouth, another of his back on an early morning jog shiny from all the sweat. All black and white, all incredibly specific, it was like a pieces of a puzzle, Malakai liked all the tiny individual constituents which came together to form a glorious product of their mutual emergence. Malakai wanted to know more about Theo, he wanted to understand him, he seemed like nothing more than a template, a stencil, a clone of sorts, But Malakai saw something else. He saw a darkness that could only be detected by a creature who possessed it himself. He wanted to know what it was and in particular how to bring it to the young boy’s attention.

He walked through the park’s botanical garden one day at noon when he spotted someone peering in through the bushes. Another. A parallel. He looked back but she looked away. He continued his tour of the garden’s and could feel subtle glimpses at his persona being made at lightning speed, he looked back, she looked down. He continued his journey wary of a passing spy in his midst, he looked over his shoulder, she was looking into his eyes, stabbing them with knowledge and profound perception, the kind of look people use when confronting issues of blurred morality, it was like she was trying to make sense of the logic that was this young man’s existence, was he good or was he bad, perhaps he was neither. She smiled slightly then walked away, as if to confirm a conclusion. Malakai went on with his tour, trying to bring out smell in scentless flors, sniffing them for minutes on end in hopes that a cascade of odor would eventually come rushing out of the plant due to ample arousal, it always worked, after enough time was spent courting the fragile creature a scent would always emerge, He thought of roses and jasmine’s as whores, overwhelming the senses with malignant perfume upon a single whiff, idolized for their innate lack of complexity, or deceptive exterior.

He left the gardens and casually walked through the park at a remarkably slow pace, and yet somehow he felt as if he was faster than everybody else, the woman who jogs with her dog, the man screams at his spouse the old lady reading a newspaper and shaking her head at the gradual digression of mankind. and then he was there, a being which was voluntarily disengaged with conformed aspects of reality, he was not jogging, we was not reading, he was not stretching or buying food or comatose, lost in an epic train of thought, he was merely existing, breathing, wasting his time, he did this a lot, but perhaps he was the only person around him putting his time to good use in a never ending state of productive standstill.

He walked to Theo’s home that night and watched from the memorial bench as he did pull ups in his doorway. A girl walked out of the home, one which he both did and did not recognize, that’s until she glanced at him slightly, it was the woman from the botanical gardens. Emerging from the home of his un inspired muse. Did she know who he was, who was he to know? Upon catching sight of him she paused in here tracks, laughed smugly, got into her car and drove away, she looked back in her rear view mirror and then to the road. Her existence was an anomaly just as it was the common denominator which bridged the gap between the lives of these two men, a strength which could push together two instinctively opposing forces, to allow for just the right amount of chaos to form in between , all he needed was an effect, a profound effect, a manipulation.

Malakai laid in bed that night with a picture of Theo’ jaw clasped gently within his grip. He thought about the powers that be, and weather perhaps we were all prophets, some of us god, but none of us men.

Malakai made his way to one of his many jobs that morning, he was a cashier at the local grocery store, a woman had been walking up and down the aisles for hours seemingly aware of that fact that they could not provide her with what she wanted. In the end she picked up a stick of gum and slid it skillfully into her back pocket, Malakai saw this happening but was reluctant to stop her in her tracks, she looked back at him, it was here, it was the ghost woman, she unwrapped the gum as she left the store and laid a strip seductively on her tongue before chewing it, she got in her car and drove away, as an image of his face in her rearview mirror appeared more distorted than it had ever been before. Malakai was lost but also comforted by her awkward yet simultaneously logical ascendance.

Malakai sat on a rusty bench on the top stand behind a harrowing crowd. He watched his muse play a game that he did not quite understand and ate food that he did not quite comprehend. The ghost woman sat a few steps down, her soil stained skin being nourished by the sunlight. Malakai looked down at the woman and took a picture of her temple, he then took one of her ankle and her collar bone and then her fingers and her back, she grinned slightly with every passing snap, as if she was sitting right next to him and could clearly hear each individual clip emitted by the convenient contraption. She looked back ever so slightly and then left just as abruptly as she had manifested.

Malakai watched Theo play with more disinterest than he ever had before, something was missing, a curiosity a misinterpretation of his complexity. He looked more closely, trying to find something, a glimmer, a fire which once raged with discombobulation and dangerous potential was now nothing more than rising smoke from damp bark. Malakai left the stadium and thought about Theo, or lack thereof. He then thought about the ghost woman, who lived in his house evidently.

Malakai began to look outside of his windows for signs, signs of love of life, of the confectioner’s glorification of the human condition, only to find dismay and hopelessness in the superficiality which humbly inhabits the souls of men and the sleeves of women. He walked around his apartment asking questions to the air, addressing inanimate object and hollering at the changing scenery.

“What is all this?”

“Am I recognized under the eyes of god?”

“And if so, as what?”

Malakai looked at himself in the mirror. And wondered consciously, perhaps he was being fooled, perhaps the ghost woman was a manifestation of his being in attempts to gratify his existential perception or to give his life meaning of mystical proportions. Perhaps everything is just a joke, just an illusion and all that he spent the entirety of his existence mocking was the purest form of reality there was.

Malakai went to sleep that night and dreamt about theo, he was laying in bed next to him telling him about the stars and the moon.

“Where are you from?” said malakai

“space” said theo

“what planet” said malakai

“none” said theo

“what do you mean” said malakai

“space as in, a nothingness which is inhabited by none other than its own prevalent lack of existence” said theo

“What do you mean?” said malakai

“We don’t understand so we define incorrectly, but that doesn’t matter, as for a definition to be valid

all it must do is exist, I am a boy, but without a definition I am space”

“but I can clearly see that you are a boy, if that weren’t the word there would just be another to take

its place” said malakai

“surely” said theo

Malakai was suddenly floating in a sea of shooting stars looks down on the earth like a god of sorts, next to him floated the ghost woman where Theo had previously laid, she looked into his eyes once more and began to degenerate, as her eyes melted off her face her, body began to swirl in distortion until she was sucked in entirely into the darkness which surrounded her. He heard loud vicious screams emerging from small pockets of surrounding space like bullets tearing through pulled fabric, it was strange, the calls seemed to be very focused in particular areas as if her voice were poking tiny holes in the surrounding nothingness and whispering malignant cries for an unruly freedom. Suddenly what looked like an amputated finger emerged from the surrounding space about a meter away and slowly traveled towards him in a dramatic fashion. He stretched out his arms so that it may float inches away from his quivering flesh. He slowly brought his palm to a close so as to grab it, as soon as the flying piece of gory remains fell into his reach, he woke up.

Confused but relatively unaffected by the dream he went for a walk. After a half an hour of aimless commute he sought refuge under the cool canopy of willow trees arranged in a circle in a sort of sermon type manor. He laid comfortably with his head resting carelessly within his palms and looked up at the sun through yellow tinted cracks within an otherwise green universe, like rebellious pockets of light desperate to communicate profound messages to members of an ever growing cult. The trees whisked inwards as if to protect him from an ultimate truth which would require his subjection to the sun’s desperate ray’s. They didn’t look too worried though, they knew that shade was a convenience that most didn’t need to be drawn into, a convenience that we subconsciously chose. The sun now beginning to dim as dusk approached allowed the leaves to slowly retract in relief, one less living soul to scuffle about. Malakai got up and cleaned himself of and just before he took his first step he saw her there, standing curiously, self satisfied and grim, she waved at him he waved back, he began to approach her but halfway there she waved at him again, this time causing him to stop in his tracks, he observed the strangeness of her hand, one of her fingers appeared to be slightly darker than all the rest. Completely blue as if it had been struck repeatedly by a hammer, this was strange as the rest of fingers appeared to be fine. She glared at him with wide eyed disinterest and disappeared into a crowd of children hurdled around an ice cream truck, he ran into the mob grabbed her shoulder and turned her violently to face him, only to find that he was looking into the terrified eyes of an 11 year old girl, he backed away confused and in shock, he saw a swarm of vicious mothers headed his way shouting “pervert!” “creep!” He lifted his hood over his head and swiftly made a run for it, he got into a parked cab and asked to be driven home.

Malakai laid in his bed and observed the dimmed images of his previously adored fixtures which now seemed misinterpreted by his fanatical mind. A seed harvested by an unknown yet consciously identified creature whose manifestation could be only be explained by a man on the premise of a psychological breakdown or breakthrough. It was up to him in the end. Was he going to break down, or break through. Malakai dozed off amidst his quest for a conclusion and found himself once more floating through what could only be defined as a habitual anomaly, space. He tumbled through the vast nothingness in search of an answer, a clue, something which would lead him down the path of premeditated self discovery, a blurry image began to transcend in front of him. The woman appeared once more. He instantly looked down at her hand to see what had become of it. She was missing a finger. Suddenly he felt his left palm begin to tingle, as he lifted it to observe its actions, it started throbbing violently followed by intense jerking and wild swinging, it then began to vibrate immensely until he could no longer feel its connection to the rest of his body, then, suddenly it stopped and its connection restored. The woman looked at his hand curiously as if she herself was immersed in the same dream laying in bed somewhere just as confused as he was. Her image began to distort as it had before, she swirled around again into an unknown pocket of oblivion letting out the same helpless screech. The noises followed, pin pointed to particular locations followed by an abrupt pause. He saw something; it was coming towards him at the same pace as the finger he saw in his previous dream. This time it was an arm, a soft brown dainty arm which looked somewhat familiar. It floated slowly through space and stopped a meter away from where he was. He reached his arm out once more and grabbed it violently so that it would not escape him, just as he began to examine its being, he woke up.

It was 4:44 am. Sweating profusely and having trouble breathing Malakai wanted nothing more than to get out of bed and search for answers, his whole body quivered with hopelessness, he got up and took a shower. he sat helplessly on the ground inhaling every staggering drop that hit his fragile frame. He began breathing heavily and could feel his heart racing and his soul illuminating at the thought of his profound decent into the unknown. His face beneath the douche in hopes that the treated water would work wonders on his mind and body freeing him of the burdens of a haunted solitary existence, it hadn’t, and as he closed the shower door and wrapped a warm towel around his waist he found he was no more than a disheveled corpse just as he was before only now reality seeped from his pores in the form of water, as he drifted into an alternate plane where his dreams converged and made a mess of his reality.

Now a fallen star, Malakai sat on his bathroom floor and thought about the happenings that had turned his life into one which he no longer recognized. He thought he would go back to the place, the place where it all began. Malakai sat at the memorial bench right across the street from Theo’s house and observed the actions of its inhabitants. Mother would leave the dining room and walk into the guest, father would remain in the den smoking a cigar and making demands of mother. Theo sat up in his room and paced back and forth memorizing notes from colored cards. Everything seemed rather ordinary, he watched for the ghost woman, expecting her to appear somewhere within the fascinating display of mediocrity, but she was nowhere to be found. After 20 minutes of watching Malakai noticed something strange, a flicker beaming out of the side of the house, as if someone was turning the basement light on and of continuously. He got a little closer to confirm he wasn’t imagining the sight. He slowly creept up to the house and laid on his stomach looking into the window. The glass was blurred so he couldn’t make out a clear image, he slowly pushed it open, he peered through and his heart stopped. There she was, her magnetic eyes looking right into his. Her finger flipping the light switch up and down, her face was expressionless she simply starred at him as the lights flickered. She turned on the lights and left them on for a while, she then proceeded to slowly walk towards him, without blinking even for a moment. She lifted up the sleeve of her black hoodie and revealed her arm which was completely blue and black due to the fact that it was seemingly drained of blood. She then pulled down her sleeve and smiled slightly before running up the stairs and switching off the lights behind her. Malakai thought about what had happened on his walk home. Her amputated arm and finger found him in a dream, which mirrored her lifeless dead flesh in real life. He went to the house searching for an answer but found he had more questions now than he had ever had before.

Malakai sat on the chair next to his bed, shaking, restless, he resisted sleep as he did not want to dream. He wanted to forget, to forget about all that had happened. After a lifelong search for the mystic horror that would lead to his escape from the grim reality of his mundane existence he now wanted nothing more than to bask in the uneventful realm of society undead.

Now blissfully slipping into a sudden meditative state, he felt his eyes lids being pulled together like two opposing poles. His arm dangled heavily over the side of the chair. His mouth opened slowly as he inhaled viciously as if he were storing oxygen. He awoke, within his dream. Once again he was floating within a never ending monstrosity of paranoia which had now morphed into a sea of doubt. He noticed the stars as they whizzed by, each one faster than the one before it. There was no sign of something bigger, a planet, a galaxy, a moon, soon the hope which rested within the glittery flicker of mobile combustion was no longer of comfort to the boy as light, when familiar, might as well be dark. He spun around in attempts to enjoy the experience, forming his own oasis within an arid mass which was benign but crept whispers into every portion of his being, it was as if he was being betrayed by his own form, as those who bear heavy souls often divorce themselves from the physicality of their being, leaving behind a bitter and futile corpse, plotting against you in distaste. He whisked and he whisked and he whisked some more, he twirled and he spun until he could spin no more, then once more, an image began to formulate in the distance. It stopped, it wasn’t the ghost woman it was Malakia. There he floated, fleshy and warm, smiling into a horizon of aspiration. Malakai, confused by the image which resembled that of a deceased soul which had found peace on the other side, look down at himself, he stared at him arms and compared their state to that of his parallel. His hands blue and black, his feet in the same battered condition, a pool of water appeared at his feet, concerned he looked into it, only to find an alternate which accurately reflected the state of his being. The face was long and bony, blue in some regions, black in others, the eyes colorless, translucent, reflecting the darkness of space. Malakai looked up and saw his parallel waving kindly as he drifted further away, Malakai waved back for reasons he did not fully understand, he watched the wide eyed young man sink into the darkness until he was no more than a glimmering speck, then he just disappeared.

Before Malakai could process any of these events, he felt a warmth rejuvenate his palm, it was as if the blood had rushed back and concentrated itself in one region. He looked over his left shoulder and there she was, in the same form, dark, thin, watery eyes. She clasped his hand gently and lifted it towards his face. He felt the harsh nature of his creation, a weathered surface which appeared silky smooth. Suddenly a small twinkling star grows substantially in size and explodes in catastrophe, what was previously space was now a hospital, a woman was giving birth, Malakai felt something pulling him towards the floor, then suddenly, in an instant he was sucked into its surface. He was in a strange place, he was under water, but able to breath, the room was painted a fleshy red, with lines of even darker red tint branching across its walls, the walls were closing in on him, and when they finally engulfed his being he found they were squishy and moist, it felt familiar. A sudden surge of white light blinded him as a harsh and cold gust of wind caused him to panic, he let out a large cry and was wrapped in warm linens. He was handed to a beautiful woman who rested him gently within her warm embrace, she was of his rare form, as was the girl who huddled into a blanket and slept gently on her other arm, her vision paced between me and the ghost woman, she seemed happy. She gave the woman a kiss on her forehead and then did the same to me. Suddenly we were back in space, the woman still supporting our fragile frames on her bony flesh. She smiled at each of us and then lowered her arms allowing us to float into oblivion. A single tear fell from her black eyes as we drifted further apart, still wrapped in our respective cloth. It seems the ghost woman was a sister or a friend, and it seems that we were both decedents of the same mysterious anomaly, something other worldly, something unidentifiably devious yet simultaneously holy.

As I floated through the unknown I couldn’t help but think about Theo, and how perhaps he was a tether, and that perhaps my fascination was misguided, and that its possible that he was a lens which allowed me to focus on something much more profound than the art of profanity. That of an origin story, one which may or may not apply to all those who mirror my earthly exterior, but one which was discovered by me, Malakai, through her, the ghost woman, magnified by a boy, Theo and ultimately catalyzed by desire, want, and a crippling earth shattering fear of mediocrity.

I may or may not awake from this dream, and the means by which I was transported to this space is still a mystery, perhaps through death, perhaps through reincarnation, perhaps as a product of fate, perhaps as a question that is not meant to be answered. For now I remain, floating through something that I cannot identify accompanied by a kin who I cannot replace. There’s still something there something in the distance a glimmer different from that of a star, and I have no desire to explore its contents or fetishize its being. I like it here, I think ill stay.