Escape Goat

She grinned across the dark, smooth surface of the table and was asked slowly, meticulously, by the one opposite her, will you join our world and play our games? But there was no answer she could think to give, just a sudden gesture that caused a silent thumping sound as a body hit the oriental carpet and spilled its contents on ancient floorboards.

Timeless silence ensued. She rose and ignored the still figure of her maker beneath the table. Drawing her silken cloak about her earthly shape, and removing a pawn from the chessboard (just for better luck next time around), she sauntered out of the room, ignoring the expectant looks upon the faces of the old crones outside the door. "No," she said, gazing into the distance out a high window in the oak paneled hall. She closed the door behind her, letting her cloak trail behind her along the stone walkway. The sky opened then and sent water crashing to her feet. She licked a raindrop off her lip, and looked up; "No," she repeated, and spat the foul water from her mouth, rid her head of memories of that evil place.

She gazed out from beneath the scratching of woolens and watched the orange tunnel float above her from the basket where she lay. Windows lit the tunnel from one side far beyond her reach. Outside, a cold gray city was lit by a low winter sun. Flocks of birds wheeled high above the buildings. Rough and familiar hands gripped the wicker basket rim securely around her. From a doorway in the passageway, a woman emerged, rolling yarn onto a huge wooden spool as she walked. Her hair was thin and her eyes were a pale steel blue. She wore a brown poncho and sandals. The woman smiled at the man carrying the basket and stood for a while, blocking the light from the windows.

She found herself naked and cold, shivering in a deep stainless steel sink. She was held in the woman's firm grasp, pierced by her magnetic claws. Water was being poured over her head and soap was dripping into her eyes, stinging. She began to cry out in pain and fear, fear that the woman would force her to slip on the soapy metal, and crack her head open on the porcelain tap. The woman held her firm and glared sternly until she gave up screaming and just shivered there, praying for the end of this.

One day a lump of coal arrived somewhere in her stomach. She did not realize it until it was too late to protest its presence. She was sitting in a navy-blue car interior and staring out the window at the courtyard of a castle which appeared mysteriously as they rounded a bend. She was cold because a hole in the floor of the car. Sometimes the hole made her sick because the ground would move so fast her vision would blur as the earth sped beneath her. Now she concentrated on the textures of the gravel courtyard below, until her solitary reverie was disrupted by a hand on the car door.

Things were noisy from then on. The woman with the steel eyes entered first carrying the lump of coal wrapped up in a white cotton blanket. Eventually the lump must have fallen into her stomach, because she could feel it slipping down her throat for the longest time. The car then crawled, like a scaly-plated dragon with its heavy golden egg, out of the castle courtyard.

One house she lived in was big and gray and owned by a maple tree whose roots enclosed it in a basket in the earthy depths beneath. At night she would have adventures, climbing up and down the numerous staircases, one of which was inhabited by a thin filament of half-life which sometimes glowed pale in front of the moonlit window and shot shivers down her spine. Sometimes she lurked outside of bedrooms trying to hear the people speaking inside. She got lost sometimes on the wilder nights and curled up in a corner to sleep until morning shone its light into her eyes.

She mostly spent the nights in a room surrounded by lilac bushes climbing the trellises outside. Sometimes nights would be too noisy to sleep, and she'd travel to the grand ballroom where music played and people laughed. Pushing open the heavy doors, she'd stand in the dark threshold until some long haired bearded man might ask her to dance. Sometimes she might venture into the room alone to find her father, but he often didn't notice her, and someone would usually spill wine on her or burn her with their finger. She'd flee then out of the room, down the corridor past the sounds of her brother banging his head on the wall in nightmares once again. She could smell her skin burning and hear her cries blend in with the throbbing music, her body soft in the thick dark night.

Standing in the attic room, which was occupied by a thin and bearded hermit, she stared at a screen displaying a green oscillating wave. She entered the screen, and returned before anyone noticed she was gone. Inside she had encountered fear and power and death within the all-consuming moment of continuous movement, an unalterable universal circuitry. The feeling never left her. No one seemed to notice. And then she heard the clamor of her young friends below, calling to her to come outside and play. "No," was all she said.

Another house she lived in was damp and peeling paint between its dark shutters. She arrived in the back of a car without a hole in the floor, and the lump of coal, which had grown larger, accompanied her in the back seat to kick at her occasionally. When they arrived at the house for the first time, it was empty. They all sat on the front steps and ate cream cheese and olive sandwiches made from thick wheat bread. Her brother loved the bread, but she did not, so she stuffed it in a hole behind the nearby bushes. She and her brother ran to the back of the house and sat beneath the vast canopy of a spruce tree, laughing quietly and digging furiously in the mud.

A car arrived at last, and a man led them inside, where she was pleased to discover her room had been arranged in one corner of the house, with a view of the weathervane on the barn roof and lilac trees all around. This house, she soon discovered, was owned by a very old gingko tree which dropped stinking fruits on the front lawn during certain seasons when it felt the need. The gingko competed for possession of the house with an old maple and the big spruce. No one noticed the battle in which these trees were engaged. Their roots fiercely entangled beneath the house until the spruce tree died and had to be cut into bite-sized pieces for consumption by the cast-iron stove. This was accomplished one weekend when her alcoholic uncle came from far away to perform the delicate task. It was on that day that she lost her favorite stuffed animal out back in the field.

One spring, the maple tree just kept growing and growing, sap rushing in its veins, so loud that she could hear it if she put her ear to the bark. It grew to raise the corner of the house just enough so that marbles rolled along the floor of the upstairs hall traveled right into her bedroom and collected in a pile in the corner of her room.

© 2001 Koko Jaeger