“Honey! I’m home!”
“We lived on that island for, I don’t know, 5 years, me, Jacob I. and the kid.”
“The cat,” I clarified (for the reader). “Broken Heart.”
“Yeah, that one. That was before I met Philip Stymie and moved to another island. Same house, though — I just moved it through space. I could do that by that point.”
“The wisteria… helped?”
“Sure did (!).”
“Tell me about Stymie, then. He was a different species. I mean, he wasn’t like Jacob.”
“No, he was different from me. Had the 2 eyes instead of the one. I was a pure bred. Jacob was half alien half human, with 2 eyes still below the third. Broken Heart was both animal and tiny in a similar way. We were happy. But perhaps… we were too similar in the end. Jacob moved to the peninsula; figuratively fell asleep for years and years, maybe at the castle but maybe all over the peninsula — the peninsula itself. Eyes (species) sometimes have a tendency to do that: drift off for a large amount of time, doing nothing, at least on the outside. Inside we still have a rich and vibrant life. I’ve done the same.”
“You are figuratively dead?”
“Could be. Listen do you want some more lemonade? How about some pear juice?”
—–
“We never did build that castle, Stymie and I. But we had a heck of a moat.”
“Now maybe things have changed.”
“Maybe so.”
—-
“Where were you happier, Eyela? Can I call you Eyela?”
Leila thought it over and decided to say yes.
“Thank you. It’s the same house, the same structure I understand. But different islands, different men. Did you have a cat at Viterbo?”
“No. Broken Heart went with Jacob I. They were more a couple than we were. That was always the case. The weed drew them together. The high grass.” Here Leila/Eyela puffed an imaginary doobie to emphasize her point.
“Yes, I remember hearing about that. So… you were happier with Stymie?”
(to be continued)
Sunklands 