cannibal carpet

Louise dropped onto the soft carpet of grass that covered the hill on the southern face, letting the folds of her white eyelet lace dress land gently about her, which contrasted nicely, she thought, with the saturated green of the ground. She gazed about, her eyes level with the tops of the few hundred gravestones of fallen civil war soliders that stood at tired attention in roughening rows, casting diagonal repeating shadows. The sun shone down on her face, the warmth kissing away the pervasive chill in her bones. A fact unknown to her, this was the highest point in Brooklyn, and when the sun shone in November, the warmest.

Louise had been coming to this spot regularly ever since Ward Jenkins had gotten married and went off on his African tour honeymoon with his socially ambitious and, she opined, commonly pretty new wife. It had been three months now since they left, and Louise was charged with the general upkeeping duties of the office as well as the house, including the feeding of the three macaws, two cockatiels, one african grey, and that damned loud cockatoo that always sounded like it was being tortured.

Aside from the cockatoo's screams, it was lonely and dark in the first floor office. She looked forward to the afternoon light that would stream in through the stained glass windows in the foyer. Her days and nights melted into each other eventually, and sometimes she didn't speak to a single soul for a few days, in the back-and-forth from her apartment to Ward Jenkins's. It got to the point where in the mornings, when she unlocked the front door, she would pretend that things were going on exactly as before, with Hilda the housekeeper bumping noisily around in the kitchen and Ward sitting contentedly at his desk eating his daily breakfast of grapefruit halves with the serrated spoon. That was when she decided she'd better get out, and one day, found herself on the hill in the cemetery.

She imagined, with a revolting, leadened feeling in her stomach, Ward and his new wife touring the pyramids, smiling and happy and sickening. And his wife was just so... boring, thought Louise. At any rate, Ward could be so self-centered and moody, and maybe they deserved each other. He'll probably make a terrible husband, she thought, as she brought her gaze down to the ground, picking at the little blades of grass, tearing their innocent, young bodies in half in undeserved cruelty and throwing them back onto the earth where, certainly, the soil would swallow the dead matter and the grass would grow strong from feasting on itself.

trials

Every year around the same time, Chloe made the trip down to Miami to visit her parents. She only saw them once a year, owing to the fact that if her family was to maintain some semblance of, well, family, the duty rested upon her shoulders to show up for Christmas. This was because her parents never came to visit her in New York, for all of the five and a half years she had lived there. Her father detested the city, having grown up among palm trees and sunny open spaces in Florida, and also having developed a severe case of claustrophobia crawling through pyramids on an Air Force tour in Egypt in the 60s. Her mother made verbal promises to visit, but unfortunately she had that dreadful combination of being a persistent procrastinator and non-commitant.
As such, every year, the month of December meant having to arrange for the trip: buying the plane ticket, shopping for "New York gifts" of which her family members were fond, but which had to be non-liquid, unbreakable, and not too heavy, stuffing said items in her suitcase, and then the pleasant experience of LaGuardia Airport on December 22nd.
She dreaded the whole process every year, but she had to admit that once she landed at Miami Airport and the doors of the baggage claim slid open before her, the rush of warm and humid air signaling that she was home for Christmas, it was worth it.

Chloe vs. The Raccoon

Through the fuzzy darkness, Chloe strained her eyes to see the clock. 2:36 am. Damnit, she thought. Maybe it's too hot in here. The entire bed felt too warm, her body heat having transferred over the course of the past few hours. Tearing the bed clothes off of her legs, she cursed that raccoon intrusion incident that forced her to shut her windows every night since then.

[Back in the Spring, Chloe had made the mistake of leaving her bedroom window open, which was located on the fire escape. This being Chinatown, not only was her apartment not furnished with an oven, but it also lacked window screens. She never saw the thing, but evidence of the raccoon was everywhere when she returned home late one night. Sooty footprints betrayed its run of every square foot in her apartment... it trekked across the white bedspread, overturned the bookcase, splashed around in the toilet, then rummaged around the papers on her desk before going on its merry way back out the window.]

Aside from the uncomfortable temperature, something else weighed on Chloe's mind. Jenkins. It was one of those names that's common in theory but rare in practice. She couldn't shake the memory of the events earlier that day at the cemetery, and, feeling that there must be some depth to the story, she resolved to look into the matter more thoroughly in the morning.

It's so damn hot. Then, Chloe remembered an old trick. Flipping the pillow over, her cheek met its cool underbelly, and she fell asleep.

the meeting

It was again that time of year for the trip to the cemetery. Autumn, Chloe's favorite season, had settled in with a whisper, scurrying the dead remnants of summer's growth over the earth. The air was chill, and it tore through the buttonholes of her cardigan as she pedalled fast, careening down the slope of 5th Avenue, past Union and 1st, then up, and then down again.

The sun had already begun its descent into New Jersey, but it was still bright in a clear sky, and Chloe had a few hours yet. She was always late, even to her own planned-upon outings. At what point will she finally change her ways? She imagined she'd finally learn, someday, to be one of those who always arrives early, calm and collected, having perhaps spent the past half hour at the bar with a scotch, or having taken a stroll in the nearby park. Chloe always envied those people, as if this issue were something she couldn't actually, easily, change (she couldn't).

Having finally reached 25th street, and nearly run over twice by speeding Mack trucks, Chloe arrived at the iron gates of Greenwood. They towered over her in all their Gothic glory. Locking up the bike, she crossed the pathway and headed straight for the first grassy hill. Days on end of nothing but hostile pavement made the soft earth seem cloudlike under her moccasins. It gave way to her weight, and felt natural, serene.

Having walked ten minutes now into the vast graveyard, Chloe realized she hadn't seen another person since she entered. Looking around it appeared deserted, and she figured that maybe it was too chilly a day to be out at a cemetery. Maybe she shouldn't be here, either. The sun was ever descending, and the cold ever more biting. (Of course, she forgot her coat.)

A sudden gust blew over the tops of the hills, and among the whirlwind of leaves, a flash of bright green. Chloe turned her head quickly to follow it, and watched a green parrot alight on a low branch. Of course, everyone knows the story of the green parrots of Greenwood. Sometime back in the 70s, someone at JFK opened a suspicious crate, letting escape hundreds of exotic monk parrots, who eventually found their way to Greenwood, where they made the cemetery their home.

The wild bird looked at Chloe with the one-eye bird stare, cocking its head to one side, then took flight towards a mass of trees around a mausoleum at the top of a nearby hill. Chloe followed, thinking with slight amusement that this scene would be a nicelead-in sequence to a horror film.

Nearing the mausoleum, she noticed the door ajar, and the bird, peering down at her, sat atop a cornice above the engraved name "JENKINS." She craned her neck to better see inside the cavernous space. It was dark, and a hint of stained glass light shone on the floor. As she drew closer, she could feel the damp, cold air.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Startled, Chloe jumped, turning around abruptly.

Elderly and staring with uncomfortable intent at Chloe, she wore a fuchsia silk dress with covered buttons, her hair pulled back neatly, a cashmere coat over her shoulders, with a bouquet of peonies in both hands. She stood still, feet clad in black pumps planted equally firm in the soft ground.

"Oh! I'm so sorry. I didn't realize anyone was here..."

"Do you think that means you may go barging into strangers' resting places? For shame!"

Chloe clutched at the camera strung about her neck.

"You young people are always coming out here, up to no good with your cameras and such nonsense, making pictures where you oughtn't."

"I'm very sorry..." As Chloe started walking away from this horrible situation, the woman held her pose, turning her head to follow Chloe with her eyes, until Chloe was just beyond a large old tree. After about twenty uneasy paces, Chloe turned to gaze back at the woman, and she hadn't moved an inch, rigid as a gravestone.

Poor Peeved Phebes

Phebe was pissed. "I can't believe she did such a terrible job. I mean, I went through all of that pain and the hair is still there. It literally looks like I never had it done."

Just like every second week of the month for the past three years, Phebe had been going to the same lady for a Brazilian wax at a clandestine, semi-questionable top-floor salon in Soho. All of their services were dirt cheap but generally they did a good job, and Phebe was always happy with the quality of Helena's Brazilian wax services.

"And of course, this had to be the time that I get it done the night before I leave on a trip to the Bahamas with Steve, when it's really going to matter. Now what am I going to do?"

"Poor Phebes," thought Chloe. "She really got the full wrath of the bikini wax gods this time."

Of One Ward Jenkins

In the summer of her 27th year, Louise came to know one Ward Jenkins, Avian Pathologist of Greenwood Heights. Having just completed a short stint as an assistant gardener, Louise took a receptionist position at Mr. Jenkins's home practice in his Victorian mansion, which had been passed down to him from his great grandmother Cecile Jenkins.
When, on interview day, she ambled up the wooden steps and met the eyes of Ward Jenkins, she sized up his dapper countenance, with dress shirt and tailored pants, and instantly detested him and his kind. That too-sure-of-oneself attitude, conventional good looks, inflated ego. She could tell right away.
The interview went well, even though she couldn't stand the the thought of working for this man, or boy, really, and since no other jobs turned up, she reluctantly accepted his offer when he called the next week.
Her desk sat awkwardly on the parlour floor, just to the right of the front door. The dead birds were usually carried in shoe boxes, or sometimes still in their elaborate cages, by their teary-eyed owners, who demanded answers as to why their beloved birds had crossed over into the world of the dead.
Louise would come to learn that Ward, just one year her senior, was highly regarded in town as an exceptional professional in his field. He gave speeches at seminars almost every week, and received numerous accolades for his research. Aside from his professional success, he was wittily funny, kind, and off kilter in an approachable way. Needless to say, everyone in town loved him, and Louise detested him even more, for his success compared to her lack thereof.
Ward Jenkins had decided upon his life's work early on, at the age of eight, when, one sunny day, his pet cockatiel named Marty had begun making choking noises in his large domed cage. When Ward came to see to his precious Marty, the poor bird abruptly released its foothold on its perch, and for the first and last time in his glorious, pink-feathered life, Marty fell through the air to the bottom of the cage where he lay motionless, breast side up, curled and twitching talons in the air. Apparently, little Ward Jenkins screamed with such wild, helpless despair so loudly that he gave his grandmother Cecile, upstairs sewing in her bedroom, a heart attack.
After the funeral, Ward gave Marty the Cockatiel a proper burial as well, sobbing in fear of what other misfortunes the world would rain down upon him. He wanted answers to explain Marty's death, but Avian Pathologists didn't exist in those days, and that fact fortified Little Ward Jenkins with the resolve to help others who had been through what he had been through.
When Louise learned his story, her hard heart developed a soft spot for Ward Jenkins, and over the months, it grew. One day in the Spring, Louise came down into the basement examination room, where Ward was hunched over the carcass of an Upper East side socialite's deceased macaw. Under the solitary yellow light triangle of the ceiling lamp, she caught his warm brown eyes, shimmering the reflection of parrot blood.
From then on, Louise could think of nothing other than Ward Jenkins, star Avian Pathologist.

Queen Louise / Windy Hell

Louise, Queen of Greenwood, sat serenely, ringed fingers pressed firmly together on the armrest of her high-backed chair. It was an antique, from her Great Aunt's estate, once commissioned by some King of Belgium. Through the large window of her living room, she gazed below, surveying the roofs of all of those who lived below her; which was everybody in a 50 block radius, hers being the highest dwelling, a 5th floor walk-up on the tallest hill in Brooklyn next to the the old Victorian cemetery. High and mighty, she reigned over that Windy Hell, seeing all the way to the sea and its ships on her throne of mahogany and velvet.

Louise wore only the finest silk blouses and cashmere skirts from Bergdorf's, bought for her by her Great Aunt back in the 70's when she was still a young and beautiful woman, all now threadbare and moth-bitten but still luxurious on her skin. In the quiet of her palace, the hostile wind that swept unrelenting over the land battered the hanging Swedish Ivy on her wrought iron balcony, so hard that that it knocked impatiently against the glass of the french door. She wished that plant would just finally fucking shatter that glass into a thousand shards and land in a crash of crystal upon her impeccable varnished wood floor, so that the whirl of dead leaves would barge in with the wind and take her with it, back out over the lowlands, the roofs full of satellites and cell phone towers, through the street canyons alongside plastic bag tumbleweeds, down the hill, out to the sea.