Cement Dreams

A Short Story by Matthew Szabo

Glancing at the training manual for the fifth time that morning, Macedonia looked out over the cliff's edge. People, thousands of them, crawled everywhere like fire ants, seeking food for the queen. "Despicable", muttered Mace, wiping the saliva dribbling over his bottom lip. "To return is unacceptable". These words rang constantly in his ears, threatening to drive him to the brink of insanity. What had Protractor meant?

Mace knew a return to civilization would prove disastrous, not only for himself, but for his family. Thirteen years ago, give or take a few hours, Mace had left that melting pot to seek a life of solitude as a Monk of Love, a secret society founded by himself and a now deceased comrade. He alone, would have to return to the place that took his honor without his consent. They tore it into four nice and neat strips, handing it back to him like a borrowed handkerchief. He fingered his feathery hair and the unshaven bristles above his lip and on the perimeter of his soft chin, instantly triggering the memory of Lily, that girl he left behind so long ago.

He never brushed the dark hair, or caressed the ivory-white sea of implacable skin. "Esteban knew nothing," he pronounced slowly to no one, letting the truth of those words sink deep into his pores, into his very being. He reached his hand along the length of the parachute, hoping to check the integrity of the ripcord just one more time, but then he stopped, abruptly. His thoughts had practiced today's performance so many times that he knew, without a doubt, that all would go well. Mace glanced one more time over the cliff's edge, focusing his fovea on what looked like a small child wearing a mariner's outfit. How he knew that, he could not say, even if there was someone there to talk to.

A crouch, a quick momentum, a fearless leap into the most unknown part of the known, and he was off. He sailed downward toward the buildings and people and carts and cars and coaches and bugs and books and schools and people and the little mariner and, most of all, toward Lily. The air was exhilarating. He felt cold, but not too cold. Wait. He didn't feel cold anymore. He felt so warm, warmer than he had ever been in the monastery. Warmer than the cotton blankets, warmer than the hot thing pushing deeper and deeper into this past, threatening to disintegrate again without his permission. His eyes were dry, his lips parched, his voice hoarse from silent screams of joy. Arms flapping as if he were flying, legs wriggling like a liberated night crawler, free of the dark emptiness in that wet, muddy, reeking soil.

In an instant, a moment of enlightenment, he realized the futility of his selfish independence. Why had he left those that loved him? Why did he run from the warmth of their loving cage? The thoughts prevailed over his logic, keeping him entranced on the idea. What if? What if he never left? Would he be married by now, a father with a white picket fence and a loyal beagle? Would he come home from a profitless day at work with unmarred joy, a feeling devoted entirely to his loving wife and son?

Mace cracked a small smile, not unlike that of a roguish bandit, leaping from town to town pilfering the booty of the fat capitalists and their picture-perfect families. He closed his eyes for too long, tasting the very thought of a family he never had. Yet, while a fantasy, for him the hope remained. Hardworking maybe, smart perhaps, but young, certainly. He would have all the time in the world. All the time in the world. His smile grew larger, not from the strength of the wind, but because he knew it would all work out. There was no doubt, no problem. He had taken care of everything. Sure, coming back to society would be difficult, maybe close to impossible, but that's what he did best. The impossible. No danger was too large for him. Nothing at all.

Her eyes. Those not too large, not too small, not too bright, not to dim, eyes. They would be his again. His own. The words delighted him. Without a care in the world, he cast his eyes downward again, for the first time in minutes. He didn't notice how close he was to the ground, or that he had deviated off-course by nearly two miles. Instead of a small park with soft grass, he would land on a pretty street lined with alternating pear and poplar trees housing twittering birds making songs.

What he did notice was the woman with the dark hair. She was walking underneath the trees wearing all white with a small black jewel on her neck. His heart leapt, not because of his proximity to the ground, but because of her blinding beauty. She was here, to meet him, to welcome him back to the world. He never noticed the man holding her hand, nor the bright diamond ring residing on her delicate hand. He was too busy thinking of the future, forgetting the past, and not paying much attention to the present.

A loud sound, nothing short of a thunderclap, echoed the city that day. Some say it was lightning, others say it was the local military base testing out a new weapon of mass destruction, certain to bring peace to the world. A Romantic poet offered that it was the sound of a lover's heart breaking at the sight of betrayal, and furthermore he wrote a simple yet emotional poem entitled "Falling Hearts" that propelled him into literary fame. But that wasn't the sound of a broken heart.

It was the sound of dreams, of hope, of life, of death, of children, of love, of a fence, of a dog, of the ripples in the pool, of the apple cobbler, of a black and white cat napping on the seat of a green chair in the light of an ever-fading sun...hitting a cement wall.