Lockdown Tales
David Antrobus Posted on Wednesday, May 27, 2020 at 6:18PM 
Grey skies and this endless loneliness and the mad subliminal chatter of our frightened species are wrapping me in a blanket woven by a slow beast named despondence. Friends who are suffering, everywhere, all around. I feel like the jaundiced eye of a human hurricane of pain. My calf seized today as I walked the streets, so I lurched like something contemplating raw brains, and I passed a store that blared: BUY SELL PAWN and I read it as HI, HELL SPAWN. On the way home, I had the radio in my car tuned to Jack FM, and I noticed that BTO's "Taking Care of Business" is almost the same song as "Keep on Rock'n Me, Baby" by the Steve Miller Band. Classic rock is weird. Or maybe it's me. I kept my eyes level, so no one knew I was screaming behind my mask.
***
He is in the living room pretending to watch that dumb tiger show on Netflix but I know he isn’t really watching as he’s waiting for me to say something he will decide is stupid or disrespectful to him so he can hurl a pint glass at me or worse get up and come at me again even though he said he was sorry last time the time when he broke my nose which still hurts and I can barely breathe through it and yet if I go out on the balcony for air he’ll notice me again and plot something else if only out of boredom because he isn’t going to get better or kinder and oh my god what will I do I haven’t even told him about the baby bump which he just assumes is my new quarantine weight and what will set him off next I know what will set him off as he already said he’d rather kill me than be a father as his dad was a total cocksucker and this life is getting so dark and scary.
***
Outside, the bat is tracing a toddler scribble in the waning light. Felipe Ortega is an old man and it takes him time and effort to move from the window, put on his shoes, and shuffle outside to the step so he can lower his creaking frame and try to read the story of the bat. His face is a landscape of fissures, but an uneven smile cuts across those deep lines when the bat flits close enough to raise a few cottony wisps of Felipe’s remaining hair.
“You keep on doing that,” he croaks, and then turns to add an aside to María, something like, “See that crazy little sonofabitch? He’s enjoying his damn self.”
But he’s forgotten again. María isn’t there, and Felipe’s smile withers on the rough bark of his face.
The men in the baggy white suits took her days ago and reassured him she’d be cared for, but Felipe can’t forget how her whole chest seemed to clutch at the air for sustenance, how panicked her dark brown eyes were, locked on his, deep in their folds of skin like besieged fortresses.
Was she asking him then and is she asking him even now to defy them?
Defiance happened to be his shtick when he was a young punk. He god honestly doesn’t know when that candle guttered. He ran a few things, brought pride to the hood, cut a few corners, but far fewer than those who walked the cold panelled hallways in those mansions on the hill.
The bat loops and swoops and once again almost brushes him. Felipe wishes he could move like that: abrupt, like a hot needle, stitching the wounds of the world.
Night is coming, they won’t let him see María, and suddenly, as the bat shifts course in the cooling air, he is gut-deep afraid like he’s never been.
*
Image © Rebecca Loranger
Reader Comments (4)
As always, David, it isn't just the full landscape you mold, it's the staccato, grabby phrases in your stories, however brief the tales may be: "I kept my eyes level, so no one knew I was screaming behind my mask." "His face is a landscape of fissures..." "...he is gut-deep afraid..." Years ago, I stole a word you used in one of your stories for a tiny flash piece I wrote because it was such a knockout. (it was the word 'alarming') I've never forgotten the power of the brief sharp tap of description - and that's thanks to your writing, my friend.
Jo-Anne
High praise, and thank you. I do understand that feeling, when an unfamiliar word or even a familiar word used in an unlikely place can make you draw in your breath. I love those moments, and you can't imagine how happy it makes me that someone can get that feeling from reading my work.
Beautifully written as usual. I really loved the way you used the lack of punctuation to crank up the tension. I think you captured the thinning hymen that separates sanity from the abyss, with crystal clarity. Lockdown is ‘alarming’ and terrifying, especially if you experience it through my eyes. Nice one Daw and a superb graphic from Rebecca.
It's always difficult to tell what works and what doesn't, so thanks for the feedback on the lack of punctuation in the middle piece, Gordon. And yes, that fraying sanity was what I most wanted to convey, at least in the first two. And perversely, some kind of comfort (of the "we're not alone" variety).
Yes, that image is lovely, isn't it? She has an amazing photographic eye, and who knew southern Ontario has skies to rival our Western ones? And those trees. As she says herself, they're oddly reminiscent of the Serengeti!