Unrealized

Unrealized

Alan Thomas

An unusual noise woke Lisson West. Muffled trumpeting broke through his sleep, startling him. The sound stopped. Lisson sat up, listening for something behind the silence. Eyes scanned the darkness, imagining an impression of the strange noise.

Again, he heard it, echoing down from the floor above. The building he lived in was always uninhabited at night. Moving his long, spindly frame up the stairs, he peered down the hallway. Sonorous, intermittent blaring came from the hallway’s end, the corridor glowing in the early morning twilight. Lisson nervously approached the room.

A slashing line of pale light, contrasted by shadow, divided the floor before him. Lisson walked cautiously inside, crossing a threshold that exploded through previous limits of perception. It was a meticulous storage room; there were cleaning items, mops, and brooms stored neatly in the corner. Large brown boxes stacked perfectly against the walls. He wondered if an obsessive-compulsive janitor was trying to scare him.

Opening a small closet, he discovered something unexpected. Lisson's senses crawled out of their former selves. Staring up at him inquisitively was a tiny, gray elephant in a round cage. Cramped within her enclosing, her trunk curled against the wire of the cage. The elephant wore an unusual diamond ring, as if her trunk were a finger. Lisson kneeled down towards her, fascinated by the unique creature.

:::

Grayson Andrews sat at a bench overlooking a Zen garden. It was a bright Saturday in early spring. As an architect, Grayson naturally noticed form. Looking down into crisp white sand, he saw patterns of circles inside circles. He imagined their lines expanding infinitely, slicing through him and all else, leaving everything separated from itself.

Visitors strolled down the sidewalks; he noticed people for the wrong reasons. A sickly looking man was walking alone. To Grayson, the man looked like an old dehydrated raisin, struggling along on rotting toothpicks. An overweight couple, walking hand in hand, like two unwieldy mountains suffocating a small valley in between. His thoughts were often critical; he was particularly hard on himself.

He leaned his wiry muscled frame back to lie down, resting his silvery head of hair on the bench. Grayson's forty eight year old body was a sturdy but weathered vessel. Within him, there was a growing preoccupation with things not being right.

All his adult life, he had been estranged from his parents and his two brothers. More troubling to him, his wife had died of cancer almost one year before. Construction of his last building was completed just as the cancer destroyed her; he had been unable to work after her passing. He hated the building like a loathed enemy; his emotional energy was now a tightening knot. Stretching out on the bench, as if on a gurney, a casualty of a vicious internal war. Grayson opened his eyes to the skies above.

The view was a panorama of azure blue and weightless forms of clouds. Picking out a cloud, he fixed on its image. It felt too asymmetrical; it reminded him of his own face. His mind deployed a small brigade of robotic hummingbirds that swarmed in the electric sky. They hovered over the helpless clouds, awaiting commands to manipulate and restructure the distorted forms. Grayson gave the order to compact and compress. To stretch and lengthen. To add whiteness and to smooth edges. Make things as they should be, he thought. When the birds' work was done, he melted them into the clouds, adding a metallic silver that sparkled in the sunlight.

:::

At thirty one, Lisson was unmarried. He spent some time with friends, but this was typically unfulfilling. More often, he was refreshed by absolute solitude. Now, however, his guest was interesting company.

Lisson knelt down towards the tiny elephant in the closet, he saw textured skin that was a faded coal gray. He wondered what moisturizers could do for her. The cage was a bit larger than a basketball; spaces between the wires were quarter sized. The door on the front of the cage featured a sturdy lock, although Lisson didn't know the whereabouts of a key. Joking to himself, he thought that all things must come out of the closet, so he carried the animal back with him downstairs.

He lived and worked on the second floor, most of the space was his art gallery. The elephant's eyes watched him intently, as he held her cage. His hands were calloused and skilled, the hands of a sculptor.

Lisson’s gallery was a spacious room with views of city life. Windows were ovals, allowing the building a visual breath of things beyond it. Inside the gallery, ten years of painting and sculpture. The paintings were bright and abstract. Uncommon sculptures rose several feet from the floor: A pensive looking meerkat with wings. A giraffe with a head of a lion, with black steel-polished shotguns in place of legs . A bible with half-melted wax androids crawling desperately out of it. A skeptical gorilla with a question mark instead of a head. Animal intuition filled the air of the gallery.

:::

Grayson thought of his childhood. A vague, persistent sadness had always plagued him. Remembering the other children, as if they had sprung from the fountain of youth itself, blissful droplets of optimism. Somehow, he had extracted a melancholic energy from the same fountain.

Grayson had designed many buildings, but was unable to do so after his wife passed. Throughout her sickness, hope within him was smothered, as if giant hands pinned him to the ground. The cancer was a merciless, uncompromising force. Surprisingly, when her condition worsened, her spirit became exalted. She understood something that Grayson did not. As she surrendered her last breath, she had moved beyond fear, arriving at a sublime peace.

His last creation harbored his torment. The building somehow had an animate existence, a consciousness of its own. A familiar chill as he pictured it; windows like knowing giant eyes staring back at him. Eyes with sharpened vision cutting concisely through the murkiest soul. Grayson knew they could see through him.

He obsessed over the building. 848 Renaissance Avenue was a blending of red and brown brick. The building was rectangular, but not angular. The rounded corners hugged the façade; no sharp edges. Grayson believed it remembered him; it knew his weaknesses.

:::

Preparing to open his gallery, Lisson was unsure of what to do with the elephant. He took her to the back room of his studio living space. Placing the animal down, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to get her to drink water. Lisson marveled at the diamond ring on the creature’s trunk; her kind eyes reflected a glint of light from the ring.

Throughout the day, he interacted little with his customers. Standing before a window, looking outside, his face wore a buoyant smile. The skyline was a patient progression of clouds with incandescent silver linings. Lisson’s mind began to open to extraordinary insight; each moment now proclaimed a new significance. He started to see things as they truly are.

A few customers moved about in the gallery. A middle aged, balding man studied the paintings. They were surreal abstractions: thought provoking but awkward shapes on canvas. An elderly couple walked between the sculptures, patiently observing the unique renderings. Each of the customers harbored an unseen force within them, a mysterious, hopeful energy.

The elderly woman curiously approached the winged meerkat; the stone piece stood three feet high on his hind legs. She leaned her fragile frame towards it, running a paper silk finger over the sculpture. It reminded her of a stretched, perceptive looking squirrel. The skin of it was a pale, cold stone, but the woman knew a deeper truth. Beneath the exterior, the atoms within the creature were vibrant; millions of years of creativity bristled. Subatomic particles inside him danced in patterns of intelligence. An entire universe beyond the surface of things was alive.

As the day collapsed into evening, the customers had come and gone. Lisson checked on the tiny animal, now increasingly frustrated being confined in a small, round prison. With the tip of her trunk, she reached through the wires in an attempt to release herself. Clearly, the lock would require a key. Lisson was unsure of the best way to free her.

After placing the cage on the bedside table, he lay down in bed. He noticed the elephant’s agitation; she would not be sleeping. Speaking in a calming voice, Lisson tried to assuage the anxious creature. She had intuition of events in the near future. He stared impatiently at the steel lock on the front of her cage. Eventually he became weary and fell into the depths of sleep.

:::

848 Renaissance Avenue was unnervingly soundless on a Sunday morning. Grayson was in the electrical controls room, on the bottom floor of the building. One year ago to the day his wife had passed. Since then, a brutal spiral progressively imploded his spirit . He recalled that someone lived in his building, but this was of little concern to him.

Grayson perspired; his pulse was murderous. Emotions overpowered logic, turning cannibalistic within him. The building had a demonic soul, he felt certain. It sensed his unwanted presence, and sadistically squeezed his internal organs. Grayson attempted to concentrate only on wiring the explosives. A menacing force, he feared, was gutting him from the inside out. The building he created was taking him apart.

A tear descended from the slope of his face, landing only a few inches from the wiring. Hands trembled, teeth were firmly clenched, and he blinked incessantly. He glanced ominously at the detonator. Grayson now experienced the unimaginable terror of ending his life.

Completing his task, he took the detonator and moved towards the glass door near the building's exit. He allowed himself one last chance to see the sun again. Perception felt eerily distorted. Time, at once, was a volatile acceleration and a languid hesitation.

Not far from his feet, a bright object on the floor sparkled, as he bent to pick it up. Grayson was stunned by what he found: it was the diamond wedding ring he had once given his wife. He clenched the ring desperately in his sweaty fist. Moments later, he looked up, noticing a figure approaching his building’s entrance. Distance closed between them, as the man came into focus; the man was returning to the building he had recently exited. Grayson noticed that he was carrying a cage with a small elephant inside.

As Lisson approached the entrance to the building, he saw Grayson through the clear glass door. Now, Lisson knew the connection between this man and the animal. The elephant was a hopeful reincarnation of energy that her husband did not understand.

With one hand, Grayson tightened his grip on the diamond. It cut into his mortal flesh. The other hand held the detonator, as it shook with uncertainty. Lisson smiled as he walked, holding the elephant high like an exalted gift. As Lisson arrived at the building’s entrance, he saw that Grayson did not share his enthusiasm. With just enough force, the last movement of a finger depressed the detonator button. In a matter of moments, existences were obliterated.