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“Alas, for My Poor Heart” was a short-listed entry in our recently concluded 69th Short Fiction Contest, and is published with the consent of the author.
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Alas, for My Poor Heart
by Daryl Rothman
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….. A small shrine had gone up a week previous near the embankment across the street from my complex, adorned with weathered flowers and sodden candles and stuffed animals. Its presence had compelled me onto a more circuitous route each day to the park. This is not to confess my callousness; quite the contrary. So grievous a matter, the passing of a child, that I could not bear to think of it. If only I had. Hindsight, that most fiendish of prophets.
….. The kid swore it began with the exhibit. Our town presaged its arrival months in advance, with all manner of signage and adornment. Chiaroscuro. Darkness and light. Bold contrasts. I’d never heard of it. Their emblem festooned every wall and billboard, it seemed: Rejoice! emblazoned in crimson letters upon a black and white slate. Announcements permeated the local airwaves.
….. I first met him in the park. I’d been wallowing in my darkness, ever since she’d left, sweet Rosabel. We’d walked the park countless times, she and I, hands entwined, and now I tortured myself daily by continuing alone. Always possessing a fresh bouquet of red carnations, her favorite, which I purchased at the florist a few blocks away. I think I knew she was not returning, but I returned faithfully each day, carnations in hand, in case she did. An inscription on the plastic sheathing of each bouquet bespoke that selection’s significance: Alas, for My Poor Heart, read mine.
….. It was a Saturday, and I strolled leisurely, arms behind me, flowers in hand. It was a nice day. Warm, sunny, but the park was overlaid with towering oaks, whose shade steeped the expanse in sedating comfort. I spotted Harley Altman, a gentleman of seventy, who lived in an adjacent neighborhood but visited faithfully for his daily constitutional. We exchanged brief pleasantries, and he said he was on his way to the museum, to see the exhibit. He gestured at one of the park benches and chuckled. “No shortage of advertisements.”
….. Indeed: Rejoice! On every bench. I did not expect my own miracle. I headed for a far end of the park, remote from the more trafficked paths. The life had ebbed out of me since she left, draining me of all enthusiasm for even the most requisite and rudimentary of interactions. My existence more mechanical than manifest, the programmed executions of life’s functional requirements. My own puppeteer. I found a bench, and sat.
….. Sunlight drifted through the crucible of tree limbs, suffusing the space in uneven hue. A breeze swayed the branches, casting the path in dappled, dancing shadows, like stricken marionettes. I squinted against the glare. The splicing sunlight had bisected me almost perfectly, and I edged a few inches into full shadow, for greater refuge. I set the carnations beside me, and when I looked back up, my eyes adjusting, I startled to perceive the bench opposite me beginning to contort.
….. A woman, older, homeless, by the looks of her. Risen up, expressionless and blinking, beneath a camouflage of rags. I looked away at first, not wanting to stare, but then quickly returned my gaze, not wishing to offend with such obvious aversion. She was looking right at me, with lambent, piercing eyes, clarion blue within a sooted and withered visage, more venerable, I reckoned, than her years. The hands of time were unsparing. Shaping us more according to how, not how much, we’d lived.
….. “The eyes,” she said, her own still boring into mine, “are the windows to your soul.” Her voice gravelly, sepulchral, but strangely assuring. I smiled, but knotted up a bit inside. She’d spoken of souls before, Rosabel. Said mine was an old one. With each passing day, I understood this to be true. I was an old soul, though not an old man. Certain things had a way of calcifying a man.
….. I collected myself and glanced about. Two women with strollers on a nearby path. A kid kneeling before a dog, stroking its head. A fast-pedaling cyclist. At the far end of the park, a small gathering, at the center of which was a mime, attired in traditional black and white, with painted face. Juggling before a handful of gawking kids. I wondered who he was. Maybe he had another job during the week. Probably. Another job and a family and a home and when he was done miming, he would return home to his life, whatever it might be. I wondered at how adept I’d become at the mechanical orchestration of everyday life. Miming. Except, this was my life, none other awaiting my return. “Out, out brief candle,” muttered the woman on the bench.
….. My attention drifted back over to the kid and dog, which appeared to be in some distress. I arose and headed in their direction. He looked about fifteen, the kid. Maybe sixteen. Unkempt, dark hair spilled out from beneath a ballcap. Sunglasses. He was bent over the rather large canine, rubbing its belly while gingerly inspecting one of the paws. Once or twice, the animal would snort and jerk the limb away in protest, but the kid would stroke its belly and speak softly, and the dog would lower its head back down and seem greatly calmed.
….. “Is he injured?” I inquired, upon reaching them. The kid looked up at me, shielding his eyes, the shades clearly insufficient against the shadow and glare from which I’d materialized. Even behind the glasses, I read on his face an expression of considerable misgiving.
….. “She,” he said. “And yeah. She was limping.” The dog lifted her head in inquiry of this interruption. The kid resumed stroking her, and she lowered her head. The kid ran his hands along her neck. “No tags. She’s been wandering the park for a few days.”
….. “Perhaps you might post something online, or maybe put up some fliers. Maybe her owner has done the same.” The kid regarded me for what seemed an unusual extra moment or two, then gestured around us with his non-petting hand.
….. “You haven’t noticed? Fliers everywhere. Dogs. Cats.” He looked down. “Kids.” I swept my gaze across the park. Most of the lampposts were adorned as the kid had said. I furrowed my brow. Just how unwitting had I become in my melancholy? How oblivious to that world around me, since the one who was my world left? I visited the park daily, but hadn’t even noticed the benches being repainted.
….. “Maybe you’re one of them,” I swore the kid said, but when I requested clarification, he shook his head and refocused his attention upon his wounded charge. “I need to take her home,” he said. He glanced about the park. “But I’m afraid to leave her while I get my car.”
….. I motioned across the park. “I live close,” I said. “I can pull my car up.” I wondered in that moment at involving myself in this matter, particularly given that detachment which had by then become the magnum opus of my existence. Perhaps it was the earnestness in his voice, the concern for this wayward animal. My road was cast, lampless and gray, but not so, this boy. The light still flickered within him; the world around him still mattered. After regarding me a moment further, he assented, and thanked me.
….. I parked my vehicle on the street along the park entrance and went to help the kid carry the sizable canine. I learned that he delivered pizza as a summer job, but that his dream was to be a preacher. Not the phony kind, he insisted, who proselytized and brainwashed, but a good one, who believed in the light and love and goodness of each living soul. He practiced his sermons in front of the mirror when no one was home. When we lowered the dog into my back seat, she maneuvered into a sitting position and thrust her muzzle out the partway open window and sniffed. The kid decided to call her Rainbow. She would not be allowed in the house, so he would fashion a space for her in their garage, for now. His parents weren’t home when we arrived, and after I assisted him in getting Rainbow settled, the kid asked if I would visit the museum with him tomorrow. They were normally closed Sundays, but had made an exception, owing to the growing popularity of the exhibit. I hesitated. I’d involved myself to that point, granted, but parlaying it into another day, and an expedition, at that, felt a bit much. But the kid looked up at me with eyes as imploring as the orphaned animal beside which he knelt, and I reluctantly acquiesced.
….. When I picked the kid up the next morning and inquired whether his parents had questioned his destination and/or company, he replied in a disconsolate manner. “They didn’t even notice I was leaving. If they noticed, they didn’t care.” As he turned his head toward the window, a great sympathy welled within me for this youngster I’d known less than a day. “Maybe they’re like them, now,” he said. This time, I pressed him upon the matter. “Something is happening,” he said, turning back to me. “Something bad. People seem different. The same, but…not. And the missing people. The lost pets. Ever since the exhibit…”
….. When we arrived at the museum, the kid regarded me with a grave countenance. “Did you bring sunglasses?” When I said I had not, he suggested we go find a pair before going in. I politely demurred, and he shook his head forlornly. “You’ll see,” he said. “And it’ll be too late.” I was struck by the resignation in his voice.
….. Nothing unusual suggested itself, at first. Adults meandering slowly, some in small groups, some alone. The occasional child being tugged along, or admonished, or both. I hadn’t been there in years, and that had been with her, Rosabel, of course. She always saw the beauty in things. Helped me see it too.
….. Soon, I registered a funnel of patrons merging info the featured exhibit. Chiaroscuro, as the kid had said. Ornate signs at the exhibit entrance heralded its wonders, and beside these stood what appeared a guest curator, attired not in the standard issue sported by other museum staff, but modeling instead the motif du jour. Black and white. Shadows and Light. Rejoice! Inscribed, blood red, upon a dazzling crest. He exhorted the visitors as might a carnival barker. The kid swallowed, and put on his sunglasses. “Come on,” he said.
…..When we reached the exhibit, tucked into its own private wing of the museum, the curator greeted us most garrulously. “Come, come,” he said, entreating us with a grandiose sweep of his arms. “Father and son?” he inquired, but before I could politely correct him, he bent forward toward the kid and grinned most dreadfully. “Why the spectacles, lad? Don’t you want to get a good look at the wonders which await you?”
…..I cleared my throat, and his attention snapped back to me. “You know kids,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as flustered to the man—or the kid—as I did to myself. Regardless, my mission was accomplished, as the kid took the opportunity to lower his head, and slink on.
…..“I do, indeed,” the man said, straightening back up. “Full of spirit and wonder. Inquiry and conviction. Less readily persuaded than adults.” He locked his eyes upon mine. I flinched—at least, I felt like I had—and the moment seemed freighted with foreboding, as though something fateful was poised at any moment to occur. But I felt nothing further, and the man regarding me wore for the most fleeting of moments an expression of surprise, even aggrievement. But slowly, his lips twisted back into that execrable rictus, and he motioned me onward. “Enjoy the exhibit, sir,” he said.
…..I hoped I might, the kid’s suspicions aside. I pressed forward, excusing myself past a bottleneck of patrons, craning my neck in search of him. It was dark, a bit surprising, at an art exhibit. Surely the kid, if still sporting the glasses, was having an even harder time. The artwork suggested itself along the edges of my vision, but my obligation to the kid had intensified, and my focus remained upon locating him.
…..At last, I spotted him, at the far end of an aft room of the exhibit. I made my way over and stood alongside him. “This is the main room,” he said. “Look at the paintings, but not too long. Don’t stare. Don’t look in their eyes.” His apprehension evoked in me more empathy than alarm. “Watch the visitors,” he instructed. “Watch their eyes.”
…..Soon the room had filled, and we were pressed back, and everyone faced the wall opposite, marveling at the expansive work adorning it. The pallid light faded, so that the room darkened like a theater, and the backlit painting flared into greater contrast. I endeavored at first to regard it in oblique fashion, as directed, but then chided myself. He was a good kid, kind-hearted—as his benevolence to the dog bore testament—but a kid, nonetheless. I didn’t believe in fairy tales—nor dreams, nor nightmares, nor anything, beyond the gray and inexorable road to which I was ordained. And so, I looked.
…..When one has reached an uneasy détente with the world, remaining at arm’s length for as long as and as much as possible, he becomes more keenly aware—perhaps to the point of affliction—of his own internal rhythms. And in that first lightning strike of an instant, I perceived in the painting a disarming virtue which vanished, or obscured itself, before my I could register what I swore I’d just beheld. Something had suggested itself, inarticulate and seeking, taken residence ever briefly in that hollow of my soul, before alighting, unrequited.
…..It was striking, the painting. Bewitching and macabre. A study in contrast: black and white, shadow and light. An angel and demon, poised in eternal antipathy against the pitch and fathomless cosmos. The angel, cherub-faced but determined, harp in one hand, sword in the other, and directly opposed him, clutching his own blade but neck vulnerable at the tapered end of his adversary’s, a gargoyle of diabolical expression. Grinning despite his predicament.
…..I glanced at the kid, who still wore the sunglasses, but his attention was fixed on the spellbound visitors. They stared, hushed, as the curator made his way to the front of the room. He regarded them as one might a vanquished quarry. But his expression turned quickly magnanimous, and he held out his arms, as though a preacher to his congregants.
…..“My friends,” he said, “welcome to our exhibit. Precious few possess proper appreciation of the form. Of the power and mysteries it harbors. Though I must say, as we travel the globe, city by city, town by town, we are gaining more of a following than I ever could have hoped.”
…..I glanced at the throng of visitors. Their attention rapt. The eyes of the curator glinted through the darkness. He continued his sermon with unmitigated verve, and though it was suffused initially with refences to the form—contrasts, volume, composition—these terms were supplanted, at length, by more inscrutable descriptors. Resplendent. Revealing. Revelatory. Punctuated with the now familiar refrain: Rejoice!
…..If they had piqued my curiosity, they seemed to have evoked nothing short of wonder in the other guests. They were not so much gawking, as adherent. As though this man and the work which he homolyzed, had conferred upon them a profound understanding which until that precise moment, they hadn’t known they’d sought. Their attention roamed languidly between the painting and its patron, but my own returned at present to the kid, who had, almost imperceptibly, placed a hand on my elbow. “I’ve never stayed this long,” he said. “We should go.”
…..I’m convinced the eyes of the curator fixed upon mine as the kid and I slipped quietly from the room, as though marking us for a future time. A moment, I reckoned, likely to imbue most souls with a certain measure of apprehension, but once more, I felt no such thing. Felt nothing at all. A strange and phantom existence I had, by this time, plied. My only concern was for the kid, who craned his neck and peered at me most anxiously once we were safely outside. “Let me see you,” he said.
…..After indulging his scrutiny, we returned to my vehicle and headed back to his home. Rainbow would need tending. I anticipated a fervent solicitation of my feedback, but the kid remained quiet all the way to his house, his melancholy gaze fixed somewhere distant, perhaps a bearing he considered no longer to be. Only when I pulled up to his house did he turn to me with blearing eyes. “What do we do?”
…..It was the first time in the months since Rosabel’s departure that I felt the faintest flutterings of my intractable heart. The kid was beset—whether irrationally or otherwise, I was no longer certain—with a terrible anguish. Yet I remained unclear of the full nature of his alarm. “About what, exactly?” I quickly clarified. “Strange things, yes. I’ve seen them now. All the fliers. The exhibit. That man. But what exactly do you think has happened?”
…..“Go back to the park,” he said, simply. “Go back and sit and watch.” He eyed me intently once more. “You seem immune, maybe some people are. I would still wear sunglasses. But go back to the park.” He slipped from the car and shuffled toward the door of his home.
…..“Hey!” I called after him, and when he returned to the car, I told him to take my number and call me if he needed anything. He seemed greatly relieved, and registered the number in his phone, before heading back to the house. I decided to waste no time in heeding his suggestion, and after stopping first for Rosabel’s carnations, drove directly to the park. I set off upon the nearest path, noticing this time what seemed an even more copious layering of fliers than the day previous. I made my way to the same bench from the prior day’s visit, the relative seclusion once again preferable, this time owing not only my reticence, but desired vantage.
…..Once more, I was not so alone as at first I thought. The old woman was sitting up at her spot opposite me. Her eyes penetrating, admonishing, as though I were tardy in some agreed upon rendezvous. “Hello,” I said. A modest wind kicked up. Light and limb and shadow frolicked upon the pavement, but something else now edged into my purview. Another shadow, advancing toward me, and until that moment, something more innocuous I couldn’t have fathomed. Until that moment.
…..It was not my practice to deconstruct life’s pedestrian occurrences, but something unnerving and incongruous registered in the recesses of my reeling mind. Shadows. Cast by a person or object obstructing the source of light. Advancing shadow thrown by advancing person. But, no. Somehow, no. As I turned to regard in full the players in this strange reverie, man and shadow, my eyes narrowed at that which they beheld. It was infinitesimal, the distinction, but I was dead certain: the shadow, had cast the man. Shadows often presaged their sire, true, but it was of course the latter who compelled the locomotion of both. Not so here.
…..I knew the man. Harley Altman, from the neighborhood, with whom I’d conversed the day before. I semaphored him with a slight wave, and he regarded me devoidly a moment before smiling strangely and angling toward me. Again, his shadow preceded him. Not in the normal way, when the angle of the sun might cast one’s shadow well out before him as he strolls, but rather, Harley’s shadow turned before he did.
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through fog and filthy air.” The woman on the bench stared, rapt and unblinking as Harley’s shadow fell across the space between us, followed a moment later by Harley himself. I raised my head to greet him, shielding my eyes against the shadowed glare.
…..“Hello,” I said, extending my hand. I did my best to gauge the movements of both shadow and man, but both had drawn up in such proximity that they bled together in a most unsettling composite. Failing light and hedging darkness—a cheerless and unadulterated gray of unnerving indistinction. I felt the woman’s eyes upon me as Harley proffered his hand in return, but if I’d expected some jolt, a moment of reckoning of whatever nature, this anticipation was unrequited. No jolt and no reckoning, just a rather limp and clammy handshake—a tad curious on a warm summer’s day—but even this unremarkable, given Harley’s age.
…..I inquired if he’d enjoyed the exhibit and his previously languid gaze sparked and grew furtive. His grip tightened, and he pumped my hand vigorously. “Indeed, indeed,” he affirmed. He glanced about, then inclined his head toward me and whispered. “Have you seen it?” When I confirmed that in fact I had, he nodded, pumped my hand a few more times, then straightened up and stepped back. His eyes washed back to their previous glaze. “Rejoice!” he said. I squinted as his shadow and he executed a pirouette and ebbed away into the further recesses of the park. I grabbed the carnations and arose. The old woman had curled back up beneath her rags. I headed for my car, but reconsidered, and set upon a different path.
…..When I exited the park at this revised juncture, I traversed the two blocks further, towards the shine which I had since its appearance, been avoiding. I paused at the telephone pole, so veiled now in fliers as to appear constructed wholly in Papier Mache. Countless appeals for loved ones gone missing. Offering rewards. Imploring.
I stepped over to the shrine. Soggy teddy bears and withered wreaths. I unsheathed the carnations, knelt, and placed them gently. After a moment, I stood and as I did, glimpsed my shadow rising cartoonishly upon the wall. Whether it preceded me, I could not say. My reflection caught in the rumpled plastic of the sheathing, and I regarded my mottled countenance, and wondered about things which did and didn’t return.
…..A vibration jolted me from my ruminations and after a twinge of unease, I realized it was my phone. A text, from the kid. What do you think is happening? The sheathing crackled in my hands as the breeze kicked up once more. A foul wind. I replied that I did not know. I gazed about me, at the customary portents of a sunny, summer day. At once foreign and familiar. Another vibration now. Will you stay? If I was in that moment equivocating about a great many things, this was not one. I quickly tendered my reply, and a few seconds later, my screen illuminated again. Thank you.
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Daryl Rothman’s YA/Fantasy novel, The Awakening of David Rose [Evolved Publishing, 2019] was a winner in the Best Young Adult Fiction category for Pinnacle Book Achievement Awards. Daryl has written for a variety of esteemed publications, including Men With Pens, KM Weiland, CS Lakin, Carol Tice, Joanna Penn, Problogger and more, and recognitions include Flash Fiction winner for Cactus Moon Press, Flash Fiction second place winner for Amid the Imaginary, and Honorable Mention for Glimmer Train’s New Writer’s Short Story Award Contest.
When he’s writing, Daryl feels he is doing what he was meant to do, and recalls his earliest literary embers being kindled as a child by his father reading Poe, O’Henry and others to him and his brother.
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