BASEMENT COMMANDMENT. Edited by Rowan Silva

“Tonight, you wanted to see me in the third room.”

“Yes, the whole thing was just a show for that. You are lucky since no hypothesis came to my mind. Now you show me the secret that you are hiding in your hand.”

“You saw it,” She blushed, gave him the piece of paper. As he was opening the crumpled paper, said to himself, “Watch out man for the scent.” She blushed again; “Still a ten-year-old girl in me.” He questioned as staring at the paper, “A man with a shovel?” he gave the paper back to her.

“A good omen to start the night.”

She went to the end of the hall where the silver bags had been placed. There was a new sign, “The main ingredient of the Miracle Fertilizer has been enhanced. The price of each silver bag is increased to 25$. It is not expensive; think of yourself as part of the process.” “What a strange reasoning to justify a price rise.” She bent to pick three bags out the basket while felt somebody at her back was looking at her. She turned back suddenly; a shadow ran and hid at the end of the aisle. She remembered the pickup truck parked at the entrance door. “The shadow person could be the owner of the blue pickup.” She took the bags and walked to the end of the aisle. Nothing was there but the ammonium smell of the silver bags. She went to the botanist; put the bags on the counter. He placed them into a plastic bag and said, “75 bucks.”

“Oh, I have forgotten to pick the ball of money off the floor of my apartment.”

“In that case, a new deal. I exchange the bags for something that you have.”

“What is that?”

“The piece of paper.”

“OK, if it is worth 75 dollars, I can draw many.”

“Not all at that moment. It is valuable.”

She gave her the paper, took the plastic bag, and left the store.

6

The Wild

The weather got colder; mist was gradually taking over the parking lot. She could hear the sound of the engine of the pickup car but could not see it through the mist. She thought the pickup managed to overcome the dirt mound and passed it. As she was walking across the parking lot raised her head to the sky, she could still see the shape of the moon through the mist, thick clouds were covering it.

The dirt mounds appeared to her as she was approaching the end of the parking lot, and something blue at the back. Getting closer, it was the roof of the pickup truck, the cabin. She got worried, looked back still the shop was lit, but continued her approach, slower. She started to talk to herself, “Don’t be afraid; remember what the psychoanalyst was telling you, you belong to the wild. The forgotten scenes come into light through the flashbulb of your fears. The frightful circumstance gives rise to a new association with the primitive one, though temporarily, ultimately the earliest always reassert themselves.”

“The running shadow behind the aisle, what if it is too much; the dread of an unknown is very different from the fear of an empty room when the one who closes the door is the one you can trust. My house, another empty room. Why am I so desperate to reach the lousy apartment again, passing through the long corridor of humiliation? Even the old man found his course of action. Who might ever want a smelly woman? I am not the ten-year-old girl; the poor little girl, still her heart is beating hard like a sparrow.”

She climbed up the mound, passed the low-level mist. The thick cloud in the sky was in an attempt to swallow the whole of the full moon, not successful yet. She stood with her bare feet on the top, looked at the end of the dirt road. The blue pickup with its cabin back door wide open was there and nobody around.

There it was the reality that you had anticipated but was hoping to evade, at last, was concrete and visible. She turned her body; still, the botanist was there. She could run toward the store, the entrance door would open; she would run to the end of the aisle, pass through the narrow gap and hide in the darkness.

She climbed down the mound, start walking back fast to the store. She was halfway in the mist to the store that her nose caught the smell of fertilizer, she looked to her hands, they were empty, must have dropped them somewhere. The intensity of the fertilizer smell was getting more and at the same time, she was catching another type of scent, something unfamiliar with a sweet taste. She turned around, a shadow was running to her fast, before she had time to do the right reaction, a man pressed a piece of cloth to her nose, took her neck, turned around her stood at her back pushing the cloth hard to her mouth.

While pressing the cloth to her nose, he slid and turned his arm around her neck, gripped her neck into his elbow, locked by the forearm. Her sudden involuntary deep breath of the wet material off the cloth caused her dizziness. The peculiar intense scent was burning her windpipe as going down, was filling her lungs. He pressed his body to the back of her, bending her backward; his hands getting the extra gravity of his weight pushed her nose to the brink of breaking. She was going to yield to the situation, as a prey trapped in the claws of a determined hunter.

The confusion owing to the sedative, stronger than opium, blocked the conservative control of logic, in return the blockage on savage emotions removed; the survival force of nature took over. The powerful emotion of revenge rose, filled her with a desire for vengeance, anger rivered into her veins, heightening her heartbeats; she felt strength in her hands, fingers. She held the second inhale, raised her right hand, which had been engaged in a vain attempt to free her neck, grabbed his hand with the cloth; clutched his fingers and twisted them with an impetuous force of her nature.

The prey transformed into a predator. Three snap sounds and then shout of the pain. As the piece of cloth dropped off the broken fingers, her nose refilled the lungs with fresh air. She did not waste time dealing with his arm around her neck, there was enough room for breathing through her narrowed windpipe. She drove out her left elbow, filled it with power, bent down her body down to get extra pressure from the ground, and then with a sudden move, hit her elbow to his ribs; muffled sounds of snaps. The man backed up a few steps; she was freed.

The fast circulation of her blood had consequences; spread the malicious inhaled chemical deeper into her brain. A malfunction in the gyroscopes of her ears; she had lost the sense of orientation; a free fall on the ground. First, her knees hit the ground, the numbness of the drug made her brain overlook the pain reports of the nerves, then her hands hit the ground, her head down, eyes blurred.

All she needed was two solid inhales of the fresh air. She could detect the man’s shadowy figure standing a few feet back; at the same time, a figure from another world was emerging in parallel into her mind. Something that had been suppressed was coming due to survival urgency. The man’s shadow faded into a specter approaching her from a white mountain, the snow had covered the ground white. She called for help in a strange language not familiar to humans. The disorientation in location overwhelmed with perplexity in time. She was sinking in the sweet ocean of illusions where she had belonged before among the circle of intimates.