September 24, 2018 | Occasus | Issue 8 | Fiction
Letters to Mom
Iridescent. Amber scales in the sky glittered over the mountain town, day in, day out. Effervescent. Lemon trails of the sun lapped at the thick summer air, day in, day out. Click. Click. Wooden geta shuffled across square, concrete slates of road dividing the thirty houses into square, neat sections. The bumps and creaks of the one story family houses have started to make the types of sounds that only come from people’s mouths.
“Mommy?” Ken furrowed his brow and looked up to the sky, clouds and tufts of fur rippling in the blazing heat. Tufts of fur rippling in the blazing heat. Tufts of- “Ken, please. Stop. I told you, it is absolutely forbidden.” “I’m going. I want to meet the boy on the dragon. Imagine all the things he sees! All the places!” Azumi dropped his hand, tears welling in her eyes. Blink. Blink. She turned her head right, and down. “I’m begging you. Please, never meet him. I’ve only heard stories, and I don’t know if they are true, Ken, but I don’t want there to be stories about you.” “But, but. Stories are fun, right mom? You tell me stories all the time. I want to be in a story one day” Welling up again. “Not those types of stories, baby. Please. Promise me.” The hum of summer drowned out the noises of fabric moving as Ken crossed his arms. “I don’t want to mommy. I want to meet the boy up there, on the dragon. I see him every day. Why can’t I meet him?” You could taste the clouds sometimes if you climbed up on the roof. You could feel the cool moisture wrap around your body and softly caress you as they passed by. The children always wondered if the clouds came out the other side of the mountain. The mountain. Their little home sat on a flat piece of mountain, high up in the sky, but nowhere near the top. The mountain arched its back away from the village. It groped at the sky. It groped at the universe, it grew so monstrous. They called it Keeper. Or Keep for short. It never did anything to them, so they had no reason to revere it. They never did anything to it, so it had no reason to revere them. Keep softly fell across the sky, from east to west, every day. As the sun set, so did his tail over the horizon. Maybe he was chasing the sun, they thought. Maybe he was chasing the moon, they thought. His teeth sparkled under the powerful brightness of the sun. His red scales fluttered in the breeze like wind chimes, ivory tufts of fur lining his back, undulating like candy floss. Every now and then an ominous rumble echoed over the cliff-side as he sighed. “Mommy, do you think he ever gets tired?” Ken sat on the back porch, his little legs dangling off, toes tickling blades of grass as they swung back and forth. Like a pendulum swinging lines into sand. The summer hummed. “I don’t know sweetie. I think maybe Keep is getting tired of flying across the sky every day. I’ve never heard him sigh so much in –“ “Mommy, has anyone ever climbed the mountain to the top?” “Maybe a goat once or twice sweetie, but people don’t do that. People know better” “Mommy, did the boy in the sky-“ “Please”, she started. Azumi was kneeling on the verdant green, dress splayed out like a flourish of tissue playing cards. She was plucking vegetables from the ground. She was plucking vegetables from little stalks. She was glancing up every now and then at the orange tree in hopes maybe she missed one or two. Now she glared at Ken, fearful anger in her eyes. Fear for anger, and anger for fear. “Please stop daydreaming of catching Keeper. He may look like he travels slow, but he’s going very fast, Ken. You’ll never be able to come back down safely” Ken averted his gaze, down to his knees and his swinging feet. He felt the tips of the blades scrape his soles more intensely. He was sad for a moment. Maybe ashamed for a moment. Ken really did love his mother, but. But. But it was all he could think about. What it must be like to be standing on top of Keep. What his fur must feel like on your hands and feet and face. How hot his scales must be so high up, close to the sun. Or maybe they were cold, like shifting pieces of ice floating along his snake body. How big must his eyes be up close. Maybe Keep had seen the whole universe. Maybe Keep had been around forever. Maybe the whole universe was in Keep’s eyes. Ken kept busy most summer nights inside, folding. Maybe he couldn’t find a way back down once he finally caught Keeper, so he needed to make as many little letters as he could to put in his backpack to drop down to his mom.
Flumpf. He set the stack of origami letters beside his futon, laid down, and rolled over onto it. He turned a small, golden orange over and over in his hands above his head. He liked to pretend it was the sun, and his imagination carried him away on Keeper’s back. The boy in the sky never moved much further away from Keeper’s face. Maybe Keeper and him talked. They must talk about all sorts of interesting things, Ken thought. They must talk about all sorts of interesting things that I want to hear. Knockknockknock. It was startling, and Ken dropped his orange on his nose. Like when a yawn is quite strong, or the build up to a sneeze is too long, Ken’s eyes watered just a little as he scrambled over to his letters, and shoved them into his backpack. “Yes mommy?” “Can I come in? Tell you a story about when mommy was a kid?” “Okay!” Ken’s eyes crackled like fireworks. He would have been best friends with his mom if she was still a kid. He liked these stories. They were all that happened in this village. In this tiny, secluded- It wasn’t going to be like this forever, he thought. I’m going to get up there, and I’m going to meet him, and the days won’t melt together like they do anymore. It’s a peaceful existence. Months passed. Ken’s birthday passed. He turned 9 this year. The summer blared on. It hummed louder and louder each day. The sound of thousands of cicadas nowhere to be found. Ken knew that on his tenth birthday he would be ready. He snuck away from the other kids of the village every so often to climb up the mountainside.
It’s a peaceful existence. Months passed. Ken had walked up as far as you could walk before it became too steep to walk forward anymore. He had folded all the letters he could fit in his backpack, saving room for his favorite pens. He had two favorite pens. One had a small black fox in the middle, and read ‘Ken’ across the side, carved into the metal. The gaps the carving left were painted in with black paint. Carefully, meticulously, so there was no spillage, and the pen perfectly read ‘Ken’. It was a gift from his grandmother before she left the village. Maybe she’ll come back one day, but Ken grew more doubtful every day. For some reason it had red ink. It’s a peaceful existence. His most favorite pen was white. There were no designs on it originally. He drew a wiggly line on it when he was 3, in red ink. Keeper. Ken grabbed his backpack, unzipping it quickly to check. One, two, all the letters. Everything was there. He rustled through his closet for his favorite shoes. There. He hurriedly tied the laces.
“Sweetie, where are you going?” “I just want to play with the goats before dinner, mommy” Ken’s eyes shifted from the front door behind Azumi, to her eyes, to her shoes. “Alright. Please don’t follow any if one manages to jump over the fence and trot up the hill. Ishi will go catch him. That’s his job sweetie” “Love you, bye!” Ken grabbed his backpack, unzipping it quickly to check. One, two, all the letters. Everything was there. He rustled through his closet for his favorite shoes. There. He hurriedly tied the laces.
“Sweetie, where are you going?” “I just want to play with the goats before dinner, mommy” Ken’s eyes shifted from the front door behind Azumi, to her eyes, to her shoes. “Alright. Please don’t follow any if one manages to jump over the fence and trot up the hill. Ishi will go catch him. That’s his job sweetie” “Love you, bye!” He ran. His lungs filled with the moist, warm air. He held his backpack straps, and ran.
He climbed, and climbed, and climbed. A rough rock edge scraped the back of his hand as he reached up for a new stone, and blood trickled down his arm. He drew his knee up, and locked onto a higher rock. He climbed, and climbed, and climbed. He was careful to scrape the moss off of rocks before grabbing them so he didn’t slip. He couldn’t slip. He peered over the edge of his village. What was hundreds of feet seemed like thousands. What was thousands of feet became millions, billions, trillions. Ken looked up. He- he could touch it. It was right there. Thick tufts of pale, glowing fur in the summer heat grazed the side of the cliff. Ken shimmied. Closer and closer to the side, closer and closer to the edge. He reached his hand out, and felt the cotton hairs tickle his palm. It flowed like a torrential river in front of him, the village below. He squeezed his fingers together, and grabbed on. An intense pressure emptied his lungs, and twisted his arm until it broke. “AAAAAAHHHHH” It was like being hit by a train. That’s what it looked like. Being hit by an invisible train in the sky. Ken lost all feeling in his arm, but the fur matted around it, and locked him onto Keep. He cried, but he felt the fur on his face. The cool moisture wrapped around his body. It felt like the clouds. Clenching his legs together, and wrenching himself up with his remaining usable arm, he clambered up to the top of Keeper. Clack. Clack. Each scale was the size of his futon. The scales grew dimmer. The sun was beginning to set. Ken peered over the edge of the dragon. What was hundreds of feet seemed like none. He finally caught him. Wisps, tendrils of ethereal hairs painted the sky around him like algae strands to a coral reef, the amber scales clacking and humming as they shuttered up and down with the breeze. It wasn’t a peaceful existence, no. This. This was everything. This was true beauty. This was truth. The blush in Ken’s face began to match the colour of Keep’s scales the closer he sashayed towards Keep’s head. His entire body went numb. Cold. The space between his brain and his skull felt enormous. His heart sank. There, there he was. “No. Oh, no. Nononononononono-“ Bones dressed like him, tangled in fur. “no…” he trailed off, the air escaping from his lungs once again. He felt like maybe he should cry, but he couldn’t. The bones softly rattled as the breeze pushed and pulled the hairs every which way. Ken could see Keeper’s face from here. His reptilian eyes were a void. Globes of a stunning yellow, mirroring the sun, with enormous black slivers of pupils running from top to bottom. It looked as though a monster dug its nails into the summer sky and pulled down to let darkness in. Thick, twisted whiskers from his nose bounced off his unblinking eyes. Ken sat down. Ken laid down in the thicket of hair across from the bones. “Please mommy” The sun set. They descended. They descended fast. Freezing water smashed against Ken’s body, hurling him off of Keeper. Keep’s hair clung to him though, the way it clung to the bones. They descended. Ken’s folded papers got soggy. The ink from his pens painted the sea with black letters and unreadable words. A message sprawled across the waters – a letter to an ocean world that cannot read. An intense pressure emptied his lungs. |
MASON FRANKEL has always been interested in language as a form of art, and loves fiction novels, poetry, and even movie scripts; authors like Jonathan Stroud and Paul Stewart, poets like Keaton Henson and William Ernest Henley, and screenwriters like Max Landis have always been an inspiration for him. With his writing, he likes to explore creative ways to manipulate language, or the way we use grammar and structure, to more purely connect with a reader – to more directly express what is meant through the writing; further, his favorite types of fiction pieces have always been those that are vivid, imaginative, and otherworldly, so he is on a continual journey to create the best version of that experience. Screenwriting, novel writing, poetry, comic book writing – all of these creative endeavors interest him, as they all bring their own unique challenges and mediums through which to express and detail art. Ultimately, he just wants to create art.