Dream Resin
By: Janna Scott
Tags: Romance, Memories, Faith, Mental Health, Heartbreak

Chapter 2

Photo: Aaron Burden (Unsplash)

AFTERNOON

It really was — and she apologised for her lack of tact — that Mabel desired to come off the shelf.

That you can’t teach a man something well established, if he is in dispute with his own well being, was not the thing that bothered her. Everyone else was quick to label George unhinged when George was quick to blame the currents. ‘They do weird things to the soul,’ he declared at a most inopportune time. ‘And when the moon gets a hold of your sadness, it rapes you like a fish.’

It was his ire, as though she dared to harbour solutions.

Over-swayed principles, even at its worst, she was prone to lashing out. It was the drinking, mostly — he did it to intercept the ghosts — for Fisherman’s Bend cast many a shadow that even the bottom feeders refused to greet them.

Sequestered by chance, to be uplifted by the sea, they were damned by corporate diktat.

Less distractions embered like those of the city, where rubberneckers — simply by rubbernecking — infiltrated the ruse. In the middle of it all, as he unleashed a tirade, whilst his colleagues tried to hold some sort of resistance, none could, because at the heart of it — and this was true of the genteel that, amongst the moss, rocks fade with the tide — this much was obvious: brains didn’t melt unless they were burned.

Unto the fire — as if that would make a difference — birds a glaze with peril, Mabel stoked the pyre.

Pretty little fools, the doves cooed under the whimsy of a bloodshot gaze.

Cocktails were drunk with careless rapture, words uttered to illuminate the heart with astonishing vows that, were they uttered in the cold light of day, they would shudder at the thought that such vulnerabilities were exposed without judgement — they simply were. But that’s where it ended, she reasoned. Until the controversy began.

For scandalous appetites roamed.

Locals finessed their trees with spurious occupation, in clandestine congregation along the grapevine. Mabel refused to see the treachery, the way it moved so freely, but her perspective turned insignificant once the coterie caught wind.

At the behest of George, on the skin of his pride, she was to disembowel the sin with prayer.

On different shores, as though the flurry lingered — like ghosts from a haunted house — the way they stared across the roses brought her rancor forward. It was simply a fever shift, she averred, her breath alight with acid.

Some were less refined.

Under the veil of affability, they forced themselves in, with fettered brows, to proclaim that Mabel had ‘such interesting style,’ as they fingered the dust off the bric-a-brac.

As Maxwell trotted down from the gables to meander amongst the ‘guests’ — his coat in pristine estate — in his verve for the salted cod and caviar that awaited, suspicions arose, to the flair of on the shelf. To dissuade them, Mabel promptly feigned discord — in the way she kept a house since her husband died — and they were quick to escort their assumptions out.

On the verge of her porch — whilst Maxwell trotted back — she stopped where a feather roared.

Yet in the wind, a lack of spirit lazed, which Mabel was dubious about, given the nature of things. Amongst the hedgerows were cotton puffs of vibrant red and if it weren’t for the hint of Spring, thought Mabel, in her colours, even Mother Nature was prone to relishing gossip.

Did she dare look into the gables for a sprig of Maxwell’s happiness? Or was she to attend to George’s affirmations? The wolves don’t howl until the foxes weigh in on the truth he’d told her, and then the bough breaks.

Was she convinced or had he compelled her a victim?

As Maxwell yearned for the return of the spiders, trotting from beam to beam, Mabel fished for surprises but nothing appeared except the loop of George’s decay. If only the crows cawed in lighter tones, she mused, for tyranny turned the grief so prominent.

‘It’s the cracks that bring down,’ she began, talking to herself as she rushed inside the Church. ‘And then the rain falls and I can’t stop the tears.’

‘Can I help you?’ Pastor Gold asked as he cradled a stack of Bibles.

She must have looked strange — or did she look desperate? Her cheeks roared with confusion — for his collar was confronting. Dams arose, in the backlash of last night’s dream, to flood her breath and she didn’t know if the tears were meant to release her or if she was to believe in something other than misfortune.

‘Yes, perhaps you can,’ she blubbered as she sat down to relieve the strain.

He sat beside her, whilst she stared at the neon crucifix above a neon lectern, on the stage, where gold-rimmed speakers bled operatic Christian pop, as though he were some type of Rock God.

It wouldn’t surprise Mabel, considering the way he looked. She pictured a grey army cult, ladies that were bleached and rouged wearing an overthrow of Red Door perfume and rhinestone slip ons, a committed approach to faith, because well, it all made sense when Pastor Gold gave his sermons.

A brief whiff of his cologne — a touch of spice, a touch of wood — reminded her of George, at his most vibrant, back when they danced under a naked moon, the sky bright with her fervour, hearts awash with love, to the murmur of a quiet sea.

‘That’s when I liked him best,’ she confessed. ‘Sheltered from the gale.’

_

Read Chapter 1 here: https://medium.com/the-junction/dream-resin-701a51c31f13

Read Chapter 3 here: https://medium.com/the-junction/dream-resin-296163d311fa