Vivid Stage

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It looked like a good Sunday town: Mostly sunny and with a hot afternoon, but the five dropout teens-Jimmy , Edgar, Lincoln, Frankie, Murray and me as an observer-had nothing to do but that particular idea of getting it easy for Palace game.

There was a town down there behind the San Bernardino county, which always living those eccentric people sending awry signals of being rich and alone in this world, and there was the event of the unleashed twist of the tricky knots.

Through the sturdy palms as if they were borne stiff out from the surface of the earth, they were watching like the eye-staring of mantis fly from where the five boys spotted along the washed down slope the aged woman.

“This is the mark,” Edgar said, who, suddenly, had emerged as the leader, even his stature of superman was just five inches tall. “We reach her below the crossing when she turns to downhill. That will be a hell of surprise and then we will weight over her fast. She will not notice who has hit her.”

He wore hard jeans and hunting booths. On the front of his T-Shirt, there was an ill-bred frog needed water and the back an obscured Ocean and below a message reading that will happen to you if you don’t save water.

“It cannot be permanent, right Edgar? We ought to know where she hides the money.”

“I know, you moron! Don’t you think I am a stupid?” Jimmy said loud, carrying all his body to right. “Geez! I think you are a kind of retarded Lincoln who has a volt between your arms.”

Jimmy was a skinned, red-haired young man, dressing a dirty pullover and shorts. His eyes were big and naughty, a kind of boisterous fellow.

“I make an observation, Jimmy. Uh, Edgar?”

“Please, Jim, don’t be hard on him?

“Oh, c’mon. Edgar.”

“I mean it, man. We’re all here for the gold.”

Lincoln smiled. He was a big fellow; he was not retarded or dull, but a kind of setback a paralleled being joining forces with Frankie or Murray, who both of them lay all the foundation of followers. Frankie was short, unceremonious, but friendly. Murray could be considered either obstructed or coward but rather arrogant and heroic. If you would ask him what that meant, he would not know.

The aged woman (by the way her name was Clarisse Bent) finally crossed the narrow bench of rock that separates the downhill and the layers of the road.

The clever boys, who were above the hole-in-level from the stream, seemed to have everything under the control. Edgar made the mark set and then he whispered.

“Now!”

They moved very fast. By this time the image of the aged woman perishing in those rushing seconds-much as consequence of motion pictures-they were ready to the kill.

Their presence has been hidden behind the flowery hills and what the follow it was just a second when the aged woman appeared. In another fraction of seconds, she gazed hopefully at the intersection toward the road below and then she looked at ahead of her. She began to step safely into the ground below just as the five young boys knocked her down as they had planned and it was done across the precipitous path with laughing and tiredly rhythms of their voices. Lying on the floor they tightened her up with a robe and they took her to a stable linking to the deserted land.

They closed every entrance.

All suddenly the afternoon’s sun stopped. And a cold afternoon surfaced. The sun was slipped behind fat clouds and during the half hour later they could do nothing that to wait.

“Let’s make her aware who is in charge.” Edgar had said it demanding food and entertaining.

They went to this big house that was belonging to the woman located several yards from the stable. Inside they watched every program on the television and they ate whatever the aged woman had in the kitchen.

Frankie went to the bathroom and did his things. For a long moment the nasty odor was everywhere in the house and the boys complaining and they did not allow him to return to the living room after he had finished to perfume himself and to wash nicely that damned bathroom.

Outside, the temperature had dropped more for their claim and what was clear enough for the coyotes and for the wolves in numbers to come out, but the young fools were not aware of that.

In the house, desolated by the main population, they were still sitting lazily in the living room area, waiting for the right moment to ask to the aged woman for her money.

They knew how. It meant. Edgar knew how. He had instructed them it would be as they saw it on the television. Believe it or not, they had been watching a lot of TV lately and there was the primary step to follow the big score.

Periodically by Edgar’s request, Lincoln showed up in the stable with one thing in mind only-to see how the woman was doing.

In the house, Lincoln had just reported what he had seen.

“You say what?”

“She’s all right, Edgar.”

In the stable, however, the aged woman had passed dead cold, and it reminded of the beholders nothing would be dead until she said otherwise and buried under the ground.

Ja! Ja! Ja!

“We are lucky to have made it through,” Murray said.

“Not yet, Mu,” Edgar replied. “But we’re close.”

“What time we’re going to make our move?” Frankie wanted to know.

Edgar looked down at his Wal-Mart cheat watch.

“Now!”

And they went through the front door. Outside, remarkably, the afternoon’s cold had gone, and the evening had that disparaged breeze which it intended to be a lovely evening purposelessly plundered from the few stars in the sky.

They moved directly to the stable as if it were belonging to them for generations. They looked like privileged kids, spoiled souls from the Private Circle Club, ready to surprise the world with a unique sense of adjustment but morally detached. A formula, I guess, of well-being and that have something useful.

They walked a little more in such richness of clamorous and at the same time of protuberance and tossing here and there their manners; they looked like a royal procession.

Frankie glanced into the pathway, flashing his eyes like a fox under the stars.

Lincoln unlocked all his stupidity by asking smart questions to Edgar like “Are we going to be rich? Are we going to be in the television?” But Edgar, who was patient with him, nodded him to shut his filthy mouth.

Jimmy was furious, looking out at the darkly face of Lincoln, the dry trail of that saliva of his lips left, and the old mucosa of his nose, and that polka-do-right grew.

“I’ll kill him if he does not shut up his filthy mouth!”

He would, but by Murray’s standard he was thinking of them would be holding. He had been watching him since they had come out of the house, and he had left him stranded in the middle of the middle.

“Where are the keys?”

“That door is open, Edgar,“ Frankie observed.

“That’s impossible, Edgar said as he’s carefully stepping beside Frankie.

Frankie didn’t move. He had been waiting who would step first. Well, it was Jimmy. He walked between them and pushed the door. The door accessed under his weight..

“Oh, for God’s sake! This moron left the door open.”

“I did not, Jimmy.”

“Is she still there?” Murray asked.

Jimmy flew toward Lincoln, but Frankie and Edgar held him. It was Edgar who spoke.

“Goddamn you, Jimmy!”

Edgar stepped in. A knife suddenly appeared in his hand. It was a kind of dark here. A bulb light illuminated this part of the stable.

“Frankie, can you turn the light of the main room?”

“Where, Edgar?”

“You chose this place. It will be on that side.”

Murray yelled. “I got it.”

And the light emerged.

No one moved yet. They looked around and then toward the rooms which there were several of them.

In the middle of the second main stable, there was the aged woman. She had been wrapped up with these robes that they made her impossible to see what was going on around. And most important cocked out all her circulation.

“Is she dead?” Murray asked.

“I will kill this moron if she is,” Jimmy said as he noticed the immobility of the woman. “He said she was all right.”

Edgar eyed at the woman, examining her very carefully.

“I think she’s alive. Help me to remove these damned robes.”

They did, but they had tightened her hands back, and there was the possibility she would not make it.

“Let’s talk it over.”

The new royal kid moved away from the woman to talk.

Suddenly Edgar felt somewhat dazed as they began to talk at once. They were loud.

“Let’s give her some water.”

“Water? She needs food!”

“What about saucy wings and crackers, uh, you fool?”

“Go Murray. Bring anything from the kitchen.”

“She is dead, man.”

“I told you we could trust this fool!”

Murray began to dart to the door, but there was an idea that had popped into his head. He turned, and when he was about to form word, he saw something. He saw the eyes of the aged woman’s open. Then she made a lovely blink, and then she closed her eyes again.

“What the hell!”

And then something else remarkable happened.

The robes started to move like snakes. It was starting with one end of its own root. Murray did not speed “look” because he was sure that was not real. He was so excited to believe it.

The robe now one of its ends was moving alone towards him. We must say the illumination was not for every corner and it came to be a tricky question for Murray.

“Hey, guys!”

“Are you still here, Murray?” Frankie said. “Go, man!”

“I have seen something.”

“What?”

“The robes?”

“What about it? We’re not going to wrap her with those damn robes, Murray. We need to give her something to eat,” Edgar screamed.

They turned their head to the site where Jimmy and Frankie and Edgar left the robes, especially Edgar.

The beginning of the robe started to move again.

They now ignored Murray talking nonsense with himself.

“Hey, guys!”

Murray reached a safe site, several feet from the other kids, who only God knows, were trying to figure out the situation, and they believed they would, a plan what they have in front of them, need it fast.

And there was the robe moving.

Murray had lost its presence. With curiosity he walked away from the boys, and he seemed to accept that human’s phenomena of wondering what really it was. As soon as he had gathered strength, who would have not been guessing such a lot of threatening would come, the robe indeed had disappeared.

It was not for long.

And there was the robe in its own instant robe’s trick, which it was gripping a giant garden scissors by their blades, and before Murray got into his head what it was, the scissors like two eyes had been removed, and the ball of rope was just two fingers.

The first cut was directly to his nose; the second to his lips; the third to his two ears; and the fourth was not fatal, but it was directly below the belly.

“Look!” Frankie yelped.

Everyone turned their head, and they could not imagine how that happened, and now the robe like a snake was hitting here and there Murray’s body

“What is going on?” Jimmy screamed.

They already got themselves in front the situation of Murray, who was running in circle and howling like a wounded hyena. But in any turn right or left there was the robe inflicting pain and flatly over his back now and directly to his ribs.

“Doing something, Edgar?” Frankie said, without understanding how a robe could possible do such thing.

“What I suppose to do, Frankie?”

“Do somethin’, goddamn it! You’re the leader.”

Edgar didn’t move; just as Frankie darted to the right where a series of carpentry tools were hanged up against the wall.

He took a machete.

“What are you going to do with that, Frankie?”

“Get that robe!”

Lincoln, back there, looked at them miserably. He began to doubt if he left the door open or not. He was sure he did not check the aged woman thoroughly and now he felt a little sorry for what he had done.

Lincoln turned his head toward the aged woman. There was no movement. She was in the same position.

While Frankie began to run after the living robe, Lincoln stepped toward the aged woman.

He stared at her.

No, it could not be.

There was a slightly movement from one of her eyes-a lovely blink, a king of funny thing. But Lincoln was not sure.

Behind her, below, there was the movement of her hands. Ah, you! The wrapped robe around her wrists began to lose. She turned the end slowly below, and she laid it on the floor, and then she made the robe moving around her.

Lincoln was not aware of it; he was staring at her, muttering that he had seen something in her eyes.

“Don’t fool me!”

And the begin-ending of the robe kept moving and now it laid in front side of Lincoln, and it came into view and Lincoln opened his mouth to call Edgar.

The begin-ending robe’s head struck directly to Lincoln’s mouth and deepened inside him.

In full length the robe backed up, and like a poisonous reptile it hit directly between Lincoln’s eyes.

Lincoln’s head jerked back with such impact, sending him a hundred of yards away.

As Edgar looked on, and a little lost, he ran to the front door.

And this particular moment, Frankie raised the machete to make a cut to the robe that was still punishing Murray.

He was able to cut the robe, but the robe had taken the shape of another robe.

Frankie cut this, too; and again, it appeared another robe.

And anytime he cut this robe’s end, which was fastened to part of the other ending, a new robe began to appear and to grow.

And suddenly, as if life had reached these cut robes, taking now the shape of walking human being, these robes had become body; nobody seemed to be attached to it. No arms. No feet. No stomach-just two robes for the legs and two robes for the arms.

They were shaking them open to show such reflexivity, and these robes began kicking Frankie.

At the first blows, Frankie thought he could manage with the machete, slanting the air toward them.

But that robes seemed to be so quickly for him.

The robes moved over here and kicked Frankie on his back over there. The robes jumped back over here again and then there and whipped Frankie’s behinds. The robes twisted to left and kept kicking him then, flashing it like a whip over the shoulders.

Frankie now backed up; but the robes were there, pushing him like a professional boxer.

Taking no more punishment, he ran.

Quickly, the robes started to jump and as if it were glue the robes stuck together, and when they had been folded and carried themselves to go around Frankie.

The robes caught him, and he would know it clean if he was unable to fight it, just as the robes would leave him alone.

Wrong!

The robes would not stop, so Frankie began to fight in circle; he grasped the robes. And like blades the robe had grown sharp steel of small blades and when he opened his hands and let it slipped before him there were no fingers and palms.

But Frankie was paralyzed as all his body aglow with pain and suddenly he froze.

And at the same time the robes’ elongated themselves until it became one and drew themselves out toward Edgar who was tearing wood from the wall to escape, and all his effort finally had come to an end.

The robes stretched themselves to full length in the middle of the room and embraced him. Edgar had come to realize there was no escape. And terrifying, he witnessed Jimmy being hit from above with the same ending robe.

“Wait, please!”

But there was no bargaining in front of the robes. No transparency of pity or mercy, as Edgar was witnessing Jimmy turning around and around in circles.

“Please, I beg you whoever you are!”

There was a ragged, obscene giggle from Jimmy.

And when those ending-end robes left him, there was nothing left of Jimmy.

There was a silence. The robes that were around Edgar lose themselves.

Now Edgar looked at the right side. Closing on the aged woman as she straightened up on the floor where Edgar and the others had tossed her.

She made a circle with her long fingers and the robes slowly began to move toward her and then they rested next to her.

Edgar had his mouth opened.

“Don’t you think you were going to make.”

So terrifying to speak, Edgar tried to find another way and he fell to his knees.

“Please, Mrs. Bent!”

“Please! Please! Please! It does not have name!” She moved close to him as her scrapping of the teeth got louder and louder. She stopped. She raised her arm. The robes now one began stretching toward her. “See, Edgar, you never thought about it, didn’t you? Ja! Ja! Ja! Oh, silly boy!”

She clapped her hands.

She stretched her both hands out at her sides to show to Edgar that they were empty. She began clapping them together in front of him, and then she drew apart to produce a rope between them.

This was short, and thin. It was one inch of length of soft robe.

“Please, Ma’am! Don’t hurt me! Please!

She closed her hands and brought them above her face, and then down now.

A double mixing robe was suddenly into view. Without touching the floor, the robe began to slap Edgar’s face.

Edgar jerked to right and left; but the robe was right there in his face, slapping it.

Redness came up from Edgar’s face.

Edgar began to cry. It seemed pointless to try and to avoid or to run or just telling her that he was sorry and he was regretting. The robe was there-slapping his face.

Edgar fell.

And then the robe was there too, slapping, and slapping Edgar’s face.

Epilogue

“Are you all right, Mrs. Bent?” a uniformed man from the local sheriff station asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“I will handle you to one of our paramedics. He will take you to the hospital. They will be able to examine you.”

“I am all right, Mr. Hayseed. Thank you.”

“Very well,” Officer Hayseed replied.

I nodded toward him and began to walk out, while I heard his partner said:

“Do you know who is she?”

“Who? Mrs. Bent?”

“Yes. She is the famous illusionist Margaret ‘Clarisse Bent’ Thompson!” T

“You are kidding me! I thought she was dead after that accident.”

“No! And there she is, and whatever has happened here nobody really will know exactly.

Across my face, I think a diabolic smiled drew in and out.

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