BASEMENT COMMANDMENT. Edited by Rowan Silva

“I don’t need that.”

“You cannot get to the graveyard at this time of the night.”

“I do not need your help; now that I have the picture of the book I feel strong. I go on foot with the lens, with the shovel. I will dig his grave, open the lid and take out my book. Then I will come back here with the book, the lens, and the shovel.”

He turned to the glass doors and walked to it, the doors slid back and he stepped outside. He looked around, neither the woman was there, nor the greedy air left any scent of her. He didn’t need the scent, he had the picture. He tightened his coat and put the handle of the shovel over his shoulder, a weak body but strong steps, holding on the picture of his father with a child in his laps, taken from the mysterious box of lost and found in his mind. The man walked up to the Milwaukee graveyard.

4

The Horse

Outside the building, a cold breeze of the end of fall twisting around her bare legs welcomed her. She raised her head to the night sky, the moon was going to hide behind some scattered clouds; she wished for snow then looked down at her car parked across the street, a red Mustang, old but the silver horse was still shining. The street was dead vacant. She remembered the psychoanalyst, “How can you be afraid of the darkness? You belong to the wild nights. That is the time when you can communicate with your real identity in a survival struggle against the circumstances of the dark side of Milwaukee if they surround you.” She entered the car, inserted the car key into the ignition switch, and turned it; the engine cranked but didn’t start. She looked at the gas tank gauge it was full. “My old horse I have not taken care of you well, I wait, be calm.”

She removed her hand from the key, “Don’t rush my horse, and let the night get longer.” She unfastened the safety belt, rotated back the car seat to a relaxing position then wiggled her back on the seating ridge to ridge to find a comfortable spot free of protruding springs. She laid, reclined the seat backward, crossed her hands at the back of her head, and watched the sky through the windshield. The clouds were getting thicker, no stars left, they were trying to hide the moon. “I hate the sun and the moon; make for me the darkest night.”

Out the window, a man appeared when the building glass doors slid open. She leaned forward; “Can I believe my eyes, the old man with a shovel?” She smiled, “Freedom at last.” She rotated back her seat, opened the glove compartment, took a piece of paper and a pen; depicted something on the paper and put back the pen. The dress did not have a pocket, tucked the paper in the tight cleavage between her breasts. “My faithful Old horse, take off even if it is going to be your last ride.” She turned the ignition, the horse whined aloud.

Soon for the second time, she passed the small area of the city that she had been living for years. The area restricted to a walking distance between her building and the psychiatrist office from one side and to the convenience store from the other side. Her tonight destination, the Botanist’s store, was about one hour or so driving distance. Although she had driven there in confusion only once, she could find her way with no problem. She rolled the window an inch down, the cold air guided her by the familiar smells of the streets leading to the store.

By the time, she had reached an intersection a combination of pictures and scents informed her of the right direction, she could sense to turn right, left, or go straight. She stopped the car at a stop sign, the last sign before reaching the dirt road in the outskirt of the city. She smelled a dustbin before turning into the last paved street and rats around it.

She turned left five minutes later she saw the dustbin at the left side, pulled over and parked her car across from the dustbin, let the engine continue revving. She looked through the window to the dustbin. The lid was wide open suspended at the back of the bin, garbage had overflowed, the liquid of the filth had run and stuck to the pavement of the sidewalk and the street. Smelly residues of dried liquid waste, oil and grease, permanent stains all around and the rats. They were devouring voraciously, leaking the dried streams, their appetizer. They were all over the place, the smaller ones were searching on and into the bin, the big ones lazy to jump up had marked their territory on the pavement, busy with the food until a bigger one would notice and invade to capture their lickerish territory. The gluttonous sound of their teeth chewing the dirt and the squeaking of joy were the only sounds of the city of Milwaukee crossing the street, they together with the smell of the dirt and rats passed through the gap in the window burned her nose, bothered her ears. “Thanks for more reasons to hate.”

She smiled of visualizing scenery in her mind: the rats were running and squeaking everywhere, a magnificent festival of glowing fires on the sidewalk and street. A huge fire up in the dustbin, jumping up and down of rats in the fire, the smell of burning dirty grease mixed with skin. The amazing show had started by splashing gasoline on them then a flint. The fire was burning them down, as a notion of the city people. The fat rat made a circle of glow, the mayor was burning. “All the Milwaukee on fire, the buildings, and the crowd. A gift of the squeaky night to me.” Her palm cupped on the gear knob, moved the lever gently, a few minutes later she was driving on the dirt road.

Felt cold in the car; she turned on the heater and put it to the full volume. The blow of hot air caressing her legs had a strange effect. Make her again to notice the lack of the panty. The hot air was coming from the lower heater close to the pedals. The sweat of her feet on the Y-shaped slippers was accumulating making her feet on the accelerator and clutch to slip up and down. The combination of hot air and dance of her feet on the pedals, friction between her massive thighs, brought her a lust had no memory of it in her mind. The secreted lubricant found it easy to stream down the smooth sweated thighs down to knees, and then lower to the calves. She pushed her foot more on the gas pedal, the silver horse whined, throwing back pebbles and stones on the dirt road in the outskirt of the city.

Some piles of soil had been dumped unexpectedly at the end of the dirt road blocking the entrance to the parking lot. She gradually added weight to her foot on the brake pedal to make a smooth stop before a mound. She came out the car, climbed up the mound, the empty parking lot, hidden behind the dirt mound appeared. At the end of vast concrete pavement the Botanist store was still lit. Some urge to urinate at the top of the mound, streams of another wild scent slipped along her legs, watched the liquid as part of nature with no shame. The fluid reached her feet, the greedy soil with hundred thirsty mouths, in a queue along the toes, soles, and arches, guzzled every drop, perfuming its entity with the long-time hope of the wild. The unsatisfied softened soil dragged down her feet inside, unable to hold, the thief stole her slippers.

She descended the mount. She found walking on the parking lot pleasant; looked down she was stepping on the harsh concrete and the weeds barefooted. She looked back to the dirt mound, noticed her red slippers were stuck in the soil at the top of the mound. Rough and partly spalled concrete squares were bordered weed-tufted in the gap between edges. She enjoyed the scratch of harsh weeds on her bare soles.

The heat in the car and the dance of the legs on the pedals had done the job perfectly. All the way on her legs from thighs down to feet was soaked with a bizarre combination of sweat and lubricant. As she was walking, the cold breeze was twisting around her claves, circling around the thighs, shamelessly going up and down, and then departed from the back with a heavy load of wild scents. The stream of cold breeze was dumping in progression its precious cargo along her way, making a tunnel of perfume behind, so intense that could distract a starved wild beast in chasing a prey.

A heavy look, she twisted on her heels in a sudden move, at far, behind the mound where she had missed her slippers, two glows of blue were gazing at her. “A human, a beast, or something that I do not know. Should I have the courage to walk there and take back my slippers from it?” She turned to the direction of the store, noticed a car was parked at the front of the store. As she was walking closer, it was a pickup truck with a cabin at the back. She looked through the window shield; nobody was behind the stirring wheel. She passed the truck, opened the door of the store, and entered.

5

The Empty Room

The botanist was sitting at the cashier; head down his index finger was playing with something on the cashier top. She walked closer; it was a dead bee. She stood by him waited for his attention. The botanist sniffed and raised his head. “It’s you again, I can call you my regular customer,” he said smilingly.

“This is only my second time.”

“Well, look around at the store, it is vacant.”

“So I deserve a good discount.”

“Of course you do. Especially, since you are wearing a swimsuit, I guess you really deserve a reward. How was the water? I see you are still wet.”

“What should I say? It is even strange to me why I have sweated so much in this cold night.”

“The other strange thing, you were not afraid to come here alone in this appearance. I should tell you something, people in solitude do strange things.”

“like?”

“I can show you something if you are not afraid of vaults.”

“It is just a room underground, isn’t it?”

“If I were an engineer, I would affirm you. Nevertheless, there is much more in that. It is where gods live. Have you ever thought of the original meaning of a vault: a chamber beneath a church or in a graveyard? Vaults were the worship temples of some believers. Alas, the men of truth were chained and imprisoned in their worship place to death; in the vaults. God lives underground, placing him in the sky is the politics of masters, as religion became so popular that myriad bowed in obedience. You may call it superstition which means the religion of believers in the past, who were killed in the battle of truth against lies.”

“Within twelve years of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, I was never taught of this conception in human mind.”

“So you speak with a different language. In that case, the translation is ‘dogs from the cellar.’ Men stayed for long in the isolation underground, cannot differ illusions from common sense. The only reality would be what they create in their mind. Down there, your deepest recollections of distressed childhood experiences find a way to funnel up and present itself as current reality.”

“And then?”

“You follow the inexplicable you don’t dare to think of upstairs.”

“Reveal your vault to me; I am not afraid of nightmares.”

The man stood up and walked through an aisle to the end of the hall where there was a huge freestanding storage shelf covering across the hall as an end wall. He went to the right end of the shelf, squeezed himself sideways through a narrow gap between the wall and shelf. She followed him in the same way. The shelf was stretched to the ceiling, only a dim light through the gap could hardly defy the darkness at the back. He switched the light on; it was a large area, quiet and vacant without any windows or doors.

He went straight to the far end corner of the area, stooped to reach a trapdoor cleverly camouflaged on the floor, pulled up the pull handle ring, and opened the door. He rotated the trapdoor about hinges and gently put it on the floor on its back. She went to the opening and looked down; a metal staircase was going down. “Let’s proceed,” he said showing the way down with his hand.

“Should I be afraid?”

“Don’t worry. All you see are legitimate types of criminal horrors.”

He went down the stairs, turned the light on. She followed him holding the handrail on the shaky metal staircase. There was a long corridor ran under store hall, a few doors were located along at one side. He opened the first door and went in, she followed, a huge area, the floor was filled with large flowerpots in aisles. She could see the remnants of dried flowers and plants on the pots. The floor of the aisles and all pots were hidden under a thick carpet of dead bees, in millions. The empty artificial bee hives were suspended from the ceiling over the pots area, aligned in rows.

As he was looking at the empty hives, said, “Have you ever thought why flowers smell good? The land plants evolved to flowering plants somewhere between 140 and 250 million years ago. The biological function of flowers is the reproduction, but it is not possible without the help of pollinators, the bees. The scent, a complex compound, emitted by flowers along with color is to attract pollinators. The problem was that bees had lived before flowers they didn’t need flowers. So my question was, and of which I could not free my mind, how flowers affected the evolution of bees to make them their slave workers. I posed a hypothesis: the volatile scent, which is a molecular compound, penetrates to DNA and alters the biology of the bees. Down there in their DNA had been a need for flowers in some hidden way, the scent activated, deciphered the code. The translation in our language: the bees remembered.”

He pointed to the floor, “The yellow and black carpet of this room displays the practice of trial and error leading to the failure of my hypothesis. The vegetarian bees died of hunger, never changed to honey bees. At the end, tired of one-year testing, I introduced the red-brown vulture bees for revenge; for sure they didn’t care for flowers, they attacked the plant bees took their flesh out through their eyes. I was watching their feast until they kill them all.”

“There is no horror in dead bees.”

“In a sense, you are right only if we are in a false belief that the notion of legality roots down in human biology. What if does proof of a certain hypothesis necessitate human samples rather than bees? In this case, the horror starts as you go further to prove your hypothesis in practice. To avoid any debate, how about visiting the second room.”

He passed her while she was staring at the floor substituting dead insects with humans in her mind, thinking of hungry vulture bees. She imagined the large open area before Milwaukee County Courthouse; people were running for life, climbing past the closed fences, angry men were following them with sharp blades in their hands. The people got terrified when reached the closed gates; streams of blood were running down the stone stairs before the Courthouse. At the end of the day, butchered bodies were left for the night devourers’ feast. As the sun went down, million pairs of tiny pinks were shining in the streets. Rivers of black were heading the area, squeaking. The rats were dragging the flesh out through eyes of corpses. The small ones jumping up the stairs leaking the clogged blood as an appetizer, the big ones marked their territory so that none dared to enter in the area of corpses of the biggest. “I see sparkles in your eyes,” She noticed he was looking at her eyes waiting for her in the corridor. She smiled to him. He opened the second door; standing on the threshold, she looked into the darkness could see nothing but could hear sounds.

He said with a low voice, “Before I turn the light on, listen carefully” She listened, a smooth rhythm with relaxing melody; sounds of a sad chorus.

“It is pleasant to ears; I guess you have trained some exotic birds singing.”

“Your guess of birds is correct, but what kind?”

With a smile on her face, she said, “I say you have trained some bluebirds to sing with this tune.”