Day 349 - Charleston Story

Charleston Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

A black 1930’s Ford Model “A” Maroon Sedan sat parked outside the church. It was late and the night was still. A lone streetlamp illuminated the church’s entrance. Inside, in silence he knelt and prayed. “Not all men’s actions are just. My sins were unavoidable but they were still my sins. My actions were not without their consequence and I must pay their price. Retribution can have honor and justice… But my actions were none of these. Mine are the evil things that men do…”

“Preludes of Music”

Frankie could hear the trumpet playing in the background – it was fast and upbeat, it was hot, it was lively like a Lindy Hop, or maybe it was the Charleston. His mind wasn’t on the music; he was focused on the blood on his fingertips.

It was a dark and smoky club. Most of the room was lost in shadows, but a few candles lit a few tables. And the faces could barely be seen. Lost in the darkness were the shadowy figures of the audience with their burning cigarettes.

Smoke was everywhere. Frankie wondered if they could see him, if they could see his sins. Hidden in the shadows was judgment, his eyes hidden in the dark.

Caprice was his girl. She was a dancer here at the club. Frankie didn’t know her real name. He didn’t want to know it. She could swing and she could sing. He loved her with all his life.

She had never seen him with blood on his hands. He was no fool. He knew that she knew there were things in his life that she was never going to acknowledge or ask about. And for the discretion she exhibited, it was his responsibility to keep those things out of her life. He usually had. But not tonight.

The smoke made everything look better, more romantic that it truly was. Frankie in his tailored pinstriped suit, with his fancy tie and fancy dark fedora. He spent more on one outfit than some men spent in a year. The smoke hid any stains on his clothes. He didn’t know there were any there. He didn’t see any. But he could see his fingers.

The music washed over him. The music washed over his broken soul.

The smoke crept over the room and the fog crept into his mind.

There, in the smoke, he saw it again, like he had seen before – the faint outline of a woman. He could see her hair and her smile, but he couldn’t quite see it all. What was she? Was she there to judge him? Condemn him? Was she his fate or was she one of the furies bent on revenge?

Frankie wondered if he was dreaming while awake or if his slumber had turned to reality. Maybe everyone in the club was fake and only the woman in the green fog was real.

He closed his eyes and he let himself drift away...

“Smoke and Ashes”

It happened so fast. It happened so fast. He didn’t remember it. The gun went off in his hand. It all happened so fast.

A dead body rested on the ground, blood leaking out all over, messing up the hardwood floorboards. A woman was dead. Her husband kneeled over her, holding his arms out in a loving touch, trying to hold his wife’s head as she died.

Frankie sat with the smoking gun in his hand while the other men laughed and smiled. He seemed to be the only one that cared.

It had been an accident. They were only supposed to be scared. They were supposed to sign the contract. They weren’t supposed to fight back. The gun wasn’t supposed to go off.

The smoke slipped from the tip of the cylinder and Frankie just sat there, staring. The smoke billowed out and rose in front of his face.

Somewhere, lost in the smoke, he almost saw something. What did he see? He looked and in that moment he saw what looked like a woman. But who was she? What did she want? Frankie did not know. Frankie watched her dance as the smoke dissipated. This mysterious apparition, this fantasy of all his vices and lusts combined, she danced and became something ideal. A symbol. Frankie thought about everything he could have loved and the life he had lived, if only things hadn’t turned out the way they turned out.

The woman on the ground bled. The man cried. And Frankie got lost in the smoke...

“Singing Songs and Dancing Girls”

The women on stage formed a kick line. They were wearing overly large flowing dresses, with lots of ruffles sewn in the skirts. It was sort of like the Can-Can, but it was something new altogether.

The men in the audience looked a little sad and twisted. They were rabid hungry beasts and there was sex for sale.

The girls danced and hearts skipped a beat. They were whipped into a near ferocious state. Sex was in the air. Everything was for sale.

The line dancers finished and one of them winked as they headed off stage.

The room fell silent. The room fell dark.

Then a curtain opened and one small beam of light fell center stage and there was suddenly a microphone there, waiting.

From the darkness Caprice began to step out towards the light. One leg became visible. The audience held its breath.

Caprice stepped into the light.

She sang a song of love. Of hope.

Frankie sat and listened, but what he heard was the saddest betrayal of love he had ever been a part of.

When she finished she smiled and winked at the crowd, but Frankie saw a tear. There was an incredible sadness that fell over the room. The audience was awash within its own loneliness. In a room of sloth, gluttony and lust, there was suddenly peaceful love.

Frankie waited and contemplated, not knowing what to tell her. He could ask her to come with him, but after what had happened tonight, he wasn’t sure he loved her anymore. He wasn’t sure he deserved her anymore.

He looked at his hands. He didn’t have the words to express what was inside him.

He closed his eyes. He wanted to drift away. In the fog he could see the apparition floating in space before him.

And in that moment he saw what he had become. He saw what he had been all along.

There were no words to apologize for that. He could only beg for forgiveness.

It was just an old photograph that had been framed. But it was so much more. It was a piece of art. It was a piece of his past, taken and preserved, perfected and presented for more than any of them had actually been worth. They were young and full of spirit and energy and promise. They were kings in the making, masters of the universe. They still possessed every bit of potential they had been born with. It was all still within them. Nothing had been broken or tortured or ruined yet. There was no hurt on their faces, nor regrets hiding behind their eyes. They were gods of the future, there was nothing before, there was only possibility ahead.

Frankie looked at him and his friends – his family, his loves. Maybe nothing had changed for them. Maybe they had all become what they were supposed to become. But Frankie couldn’t accept that anymore.

Frankie ripped the picture from the wall and ran off into the night, never to be seen by any of them again.