Weekly Expression #4 TM

Synchronized

By Tomara Maitra

            She could hear the ocean, waves lapping a background tempo to the symphony of a myriad insects and frogs buzzing in the trees. Her toes curled into the wet sand as she looked from one screen of leaves to the next—a vine drooped covered in pale yellow trumpets, a bird flew overhead, calling with a staccato, high-pitched squeal.

            Temples throbbing from a headache she had harbored for more than a week now, Jessica turned around until she found the trail. She pulled the branches aside, put one foot in front of the other, and followed obediently. What else could she do? Bremman didn’t know what he was doing—this much was painfully clear. The whirring of the machines, the beeps, the buzz and hiss, the syringe— it was all a charade. No one went through that kind of hell just to be transported to…where? Africa? Jamaica? … a jungle. It didn’t matter what jungle. It was not what she had signed up for.

            Everything grew dim as she walked, all light from the grey sky blocked by trees. Sometimes the path was clear, other times she had to reach out, to shake hands with the jungle and politely ask for permission to pass. Mist trailed around her ankles, an over-eager dog as she pressed further under the canopy. Humidity sunk into her thin dress. Her hair plastered to her forehead, and the smell of wet, decayed leaves threatened to make her choke.

            “You’ll feel a little pinch…”

            Her memory of the size of the needle made her shudder.

            “What is that?” At least she had asked, tried to fight against the feeling of being a sheep led to slaughter.

            “Don’t worry about it, now hold this, there you go…and count down from ten, ready?…”

            She had only made it to seven.

            They were looking for it, searching for it, her whole life had revolved around this quest…but with a pinch and a word or two, she had been rendered unable to even recall where she was in the world. And what she was looking for was not in a jungle—of this she was certain.

            What did it look like? He could not say, but held up a smeary black and white image, the dark spot at the end of his pen resembling a small squashed plum. What was it made of? How would she know she had found it? How big was it, really?

            He didn’t like talking to her about the specifics. Jessica had the distinctive feeling that he had no idea. Why would she ever trust a man who knew so little and was so evasive? It was important, damn it! It meant everything, everything, and if they didn’t find it—

            Her nose came to within inches of the heavy-bodied spider. It bounced in the web, the strong runner lines becoming a trampoline. She screamed automatically, and her back-step brought her heel in contact with a raised root. She sat down with a thud, staring up at the acrobatic creature. He really had the web going now. In her panic she envisioned it launching itself from the center, straight at her head.

            Spiders are more afraid of you than you are of them, Jess, now come on.

            Her mother’s voice of reason inside her pounding head did little to sooth her. She scrambled backwards, her fingers discovering a long, thin twig. Something primitive inside of her took hold of her fear and shook it. Jessica stood with her dainty weapon in hand, her teeth clenched. The spider’s bouncing slowed, as though it knew the intimidation aspect of its defense was failing. Leaning from left to right, she focused on the thick lead lines of the web, and began to snap them from their bushes one after the other. The large gossamer umbrella began to fold in on itself.

            The spider, wise in the ways of graceful exits, turned a brilliant blue underside to her and beat a hasty retreat up one final lifeline to the branch above. It sat astride a leaf, its legs curling around the edges, and stared at her with what Jessica guessed would be eight eyes full of irritation. It took her several seconds and many gulps of air to work up the nerve to dive beneath the perched arachnid. Her fear materialized into a cold tingle down her spine, her headache blazing into colors behind her eyelids as she ran, stumbling, gripping her stick. The ocean grew louder, the pounding surf punctuating the throb of pain in her skull. Dark shadows danced with swirls of pale mist everywhere she looked. Soon the canopy up ahead let out hints of lighter sky. Jessica whipped the stick in front of her, daring any spider to dance before her wave of panic.

            With a terrified yell, she burst through plant life overtaking the last few feet of her trail. The saltwater smell drove her forward, the pain firing across her vision as she swung her thin weapon at non-existent foes. The beach sand was cold, hard-packed and squeaking beneath her feet. Jessica fell forward, her knees and hands breaking her descent as she gulped salty air.

            Waves of nausea washed over her. She tried to wretch, but nothing came. She concentrated on breathing, on not passing out, on withstanding the shards of hot pain that careened around her skull.

            “It’s there,” said a disembodied voice. She thought it might be Bremman, but in her state, it could have been her own thoughts trying to direct her. Trying to find her hope. She opened her eyes and raised her head. Hope was a terrible thing, and she did not know if she could afford to let it in. The ocean was turbulent and grey, capped with white, dangerous. She scanned the beach to either side, looking for her squashed plum. It could be so small, she knew, and so she would have to get up and look on foot. Why it would be on a beach next to an angry ocean, she could not fathom. But no matter how inane her quest may be, she had been sent here to look for it—to find it, of course, but the odds were not in her favor, she had been told. Still, she could look. Looking cost only time, and she had a little bit of that.

            “Three months, tops.” The voice again.

            Okay, yeah, thanks. But what else am I supposed to spend my time doing? 

            “Do you see it yet?”

            Jessica shook her head. Perhaps he was better than she thought after all. She walked on in the sand, the wind pulling at her hair, the call of birds sounding in the distance. He had been able to implant a speaker device, or something that he could talk to her through, something that read her thoughts.

            Wait, no, that can’t be right…

            She scoured the beach, her vision sweeping from left to right, searching, searching, until she rounded a point. Glancing up, she spied something glowing in the distance. Like a flashlight that had been pointed in her direction, turned on, and abandoned on the sand.

            Jessica ran towards it. Her brain sloshed inside her skull, the pain dancing now, spots forming even with her eyes open. She ran on with ferocious determination. The point of light was dazzling, drawing her to it, and hope began to burn in her chest.

            It was about the size of a small plum.

            Her feet squeaked in the sand as she ran, heart pounding in time with the thudding pain, her breath coming in gasps. The wind over the ocean gusted, blew up sand that stung her legs, her arms and face, and she had to cup her hands over her eyes, afraid to lose visual contact with the ember. It was so bright that it left it’s mark on her retinas. When she blinked, it was still burning there, only red against the black.

            Almost there, so close---

            Her feet tangled, and she tripped. She threw up her hands, felt the sand scrape against her palms and elbows and knees. Sputtering, spitting sand from her lips, she glanced up, squinted against the blowing wind. She had fallen only a few feet away. It remained bright, and now she could see a few tendrils of glowing light reaching out from it, the air bending near it as space seemed to distort near its edges.

            Jessica squirmed and crawled in its direction. She would reach it, she would have it, and no amount of pain would stop her.

            Though it did try. The pain of her head aching, the tingling bruising scrapes of her hands and knees from her fall, the scratch under her eyelids and in her throat from the airborne sand swirling around her—she crawled on in spite of it all.

            She had no other options, and nothing at all left to lose. Three months was not long enough, she needed more time. Much more.

            Her hand reached out, her fingers clawing at the air. The bending space surrounding the light made it difficult to judge the distance, and so she squirmed closer still, ignoring the rasping sand against her cheek and down her arm. She inched forward, this would be enough, only a few inches more, yes, yes, yesss….

            “And cut.”

            Just like that, the light went out. A cosmic finger had reached out and turned it off like a switch. Jessica gaped at the place where it had just been, blinked and still saw the echo of it against the backs of her lids. Opened her eyes again, despaired at its absence.

            “NO!”

            The ocean responded. The waves began to calm, and the wind whipping sand dwindled until only a few errant leaves were being pushed across the beach. It became suddenly so silent that she could even hear her hope crushing down inside of her chest. Tears of frustration rolled down her sandy cheeks. She allowed her body to relax, to let the disappointment settle in to her aching brain. Laying her head on her arm, she turned her head toward the ocean and watched the gentle lapping of water where, only moments before, waves had tried to eat the shoreline.

            So it was here, all along. Bremman had been right. And she had failed to reach it.

            Three months would have to be long enough, then. She knew she couldn't take any more of the pounding in her head. Even the drone of insect and frog chirp was starting to keep time with it.

            Taking a deep breath, Jessica closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the sounds of the jungle behind her coming alive. In her effort to escape her pain, she almost missed the sound of a stone scraping on stone.

            What on earth could that have been? She glanced around, noting only that the frog/insect cacophony seemed to be growing louder in the absence of the wind and waves.

            “She’s not responding.”

            How was he doing that? She began to sit up and rub her temples, shaking her head. She vowed to have her attorney look into illegal implantation, if there was such a thing.

            Again, stones ground against one another. It had come from somewhere in the ocean. She straightened and glanced out into the dark grey water.

            Yes, there was something there, a boulder that hadn’t been there before.

            With the sound of rocks grinding against one another, a second stone scraped up past the first, creating what looked like a step. Jessica stood and stared at the anomaly.

            “That’s it. It’s time to come back now. I need you to fight, Jessica.”

            “I’m tired of fighting,” she found herself saying. “And besides, there’s something in the water, Bremman.” She felt foolish—she had no idea whether he could hear her or not. Part of her was convinced she was hallucinating. It wasn’t normal, after all, to see a stone staircase building itself out of an ocean, leading up to nothing.

            Fascinated as she was with the stones popping up, one after another, it finally dawned on her that the tweeting and chirruping of frogs from behind her was more than loud. It was obnoxious.

            She tore her gaze away from the staircase, turned to look over her shoulder, and froze.

            Frogs and toads of every size and species were pouring out of the trees and over the brush in her direction. They hopped and trampled over one another, their toes sticking to the backs of their cousins. Throats bobbed and inflated with every synchronized croak.

            “Come on, Jessica!”

            Bremman’s voice cut through the throbbing frog chorus, and she turned to the ocean, beginning to run to the stone stairs. Something large and dark had begun to form at the top of the steps. Her pace slowed, though the frogs behind her continued to screech in ear-piercing unison. Pieces of dark and light, shards of sky, fragments of shadows began to coalesce before her. Taking the steps slowly now, she saw that the parts were forming what appeared to be the face of a clock. The roman numerals ‘VII’ formed in the bottom lefthand corner, and then the eight and nine. The size of the clock face was at least three stories high. Jessica continued to step up, her ability to tell what was going on was lost. It was possible that the journey had rendered her insane—that there had been no spider, no beach, no plum-sized shard of light.

            Perhaps there were no steps. They didn’t make any sense, and the clock certainly did not register as a realistic thing. Still, there it was at the apex of the staircase, and still tiny shards of light and dark pulled together out of nothing, forming it. Floating across the open ocean came a large ‘X’, and it squeezed in perfectly with several other shards, forming the ‘10’ place on the face.

            Jessica reached the clock in two steps. She put her hand against its cool surface, lifted it as the slender second hand clicked by. Absently, she noted that it was traveling counter-clockwise.

            “There you are.”

            She blinked. A hand came through, reaching towards her.

            “Come on back now…”

            She raised her arm and allowed the hand to grasp her wrist. It tugged, gentle yet persistent, until it had pulled her through the surface of the clock face.

            The ticking of the clock’s inner mechanisms. The alarm call of the frogs from the beach. The scrape of the stone steps.

            Jessica breathed in, and the stone steps ground against each other. When she opened her eyes again, she saw the respirator rise and fall. Turning her head, she saw a woman in a light blue shirt walk over to a machine, and begin flicking switches, one after the other. The frog symphony died off, little by little, until there was only the ticking of the clock left. Jessica watched as she realized it made perfect time with a blip on a monitor beside her bed.

            “Jessica?”

            She turned her head to the other side. Bremman. She remembered now—Dr. Bremman. She tried to frown, but found that her face would not obey. An oxygen mask controlled the contours around her mouth.

            He smiled despite her pain and confusion.

            “You’re going to be groggy for a while, and I encourage you to sleep, but I wanted you know… we found the tumor. The operation was successful, and the tumor is benign. You gave us a scare there at the end, though…”

            She squeezed her eyes closed in relief. Again the sound of scraping stone steps as she breathed in deep. They had found it, after all. And it had been cut out of her. ‘Cut’.

            “Glad  you’re back now,” Dr. Bremman said with a squeeze of her hand. “There’s someone here to see you..”

            Her mother rushed into the room, soft and warm, tears of joy, sideways hugs that smelled of lavender. On her mother’s blouse there was pinned an enameled brooch in the shape of a yellow trumpet flower.

            It was good to be back on this side of the clock.