TALES FROM THE RED PLANET: Truly"Wet"

something to think about...

I am going to try to make this as fun as possible, maybe throw in a joke or two. I want you to leave here knowing that you learned something, and that now you can somehow better yourself or have more options. So, here’s the story it started like any other day of the week sometime in mid-September. Near the end of summer, It was cold outside and the air started to get that thick wet feeling. What is that wet? Can anything truly be wet or does it just have water on it? My air just caught in various amounts of water, what life left me with every breath I took pushing further through time.

I wanted to get out of that fucking house because I could not stand it anymore. My head burned and I didn’t know where else to go that night but you know what they say! Fuck it. I walked faster and the shoes I wore scraped loudly against the asphalt that the community would call “roads.” I looked down and felt my pockets for my lighter and I lit one up. The trees around me shifted with the smoke. I wanted to cool off a bit, the creek ran cold all the time here, but especially in winter. I followed the noises of water and wind through the trees as it got darker and colder, I was swept in by the incubus the lure of the wild.

I could hear my mom’s boyfriend yell out my name, and the flashlight cutting in the trees behind me, and the sun fell beneath the tree line and the beams of light poked further through every crack, and the silver simmer of eyes in the brush popped out. The sounds of something moving around the brush as the forest took over the sound of wind as it settled. I could hear footsteps behind me getting louder as they rushed to where I was just moments before. “Fuck! You little shit” he yelled, visibly frustrated that he had lost me again he slammed the flashlight hard against the tree leaving a mark and denting the metal tubing that held the instrument. It flickered as if in pain too. I tried calm breathing so he couldn’t hear that holding my breath and letting it all out slowly, and I slid my hands down to touch the forest floor. I felt a rock by my feet and I inched further to pull it into my grasp, and toss it away from me. Maybe I could scare him away. I closed my eyes to throw it hard enough that he could hear it and in that final moment a hand caught my wrist.

“You think you’re smart you little shit,” His hand tightened around my wrist and he pulled me back out of the ditch I had been hiding out in. Marcus was only a little bit older than my mom and my “dad” even less. I don’t know if he was even ready to be a man yet. He held me there on the edge for a second before letting go, he locked eyes with me, and then said nothing. He pushed me in front of him and then told me to walk and he will follow. We needed to get back before it got too dark, he hated this place. The soft crunch of leaves filled the forest floor. The pace hummed in rhythm with the noises of the wild life around us. Cicadas and crickets chirping as the night slowly began to arrive.

Our pace picked up more when the car was in sight, the lights were still on, he left it running I guess. I was an old car and he had tried to keep it’s shine even after all these years of use. I got back into the passenger’s seat. The two screens shifted their attention to us and he put in where we were going. The car still never felt old, and it still got updates over the air, most of the satellites now just transmitted whatever data would be coming from Ithaca, Mars. It’s silent wheels curled slowly around in circles and the blades in the wheels help pull the machine forward faster. It was silent and Marcus had decided to play some old music from the 60’s he would never shut up about how things were and how bad everything is now. The screen in the car flicked to the news and he tapped his fingers nervously at every sentence. These laws they were passing would make or break his career, and he knew it, we all knew it.

The house had a quiet haunting shimmer, like a mirage, the air of being alive felt too bourgeois, it had a waterfall. The car pulled up and we got out and it left to be with it’s clones doing work carrying people places that we would never see. He told me it’s how things were, and it’s not how they have to be but just because that’s how they’ve been made to be. I didn’t know what he meant. We walked further toward the door of the house and lights traced our movements, and these things were there to greet us before walking inside. They didn’t look human, their faces had been covered and the skin that showed had bits of metal. It’s face changed with a screen underneath the mask. Asking how I was and If I needed anything. I tried to stop looking at it, and my gaze locked with the eyes underneath. I felt the breath leave my body, my neck snapped forward and I felt more sweat drip across my back.

Marcus pushed me forward hard to get my attention and my focus on this shit that rich people do. He walked on, “did you see Janet anywhere I brought her son back, little prick.” The words were caught in the discourse of the party.