Taking Off (Short Story)

Not in any great hurry to climb the last few steps to the Alcazaba, Connie glanced routinely at her phone. What were her readers (her ‘Free Birds’ as she called them) up to?

Huffing, slightly out of breath from the ascent, a small smile appeared on her face as she drank in the perfect avatar of Harmony Mitchell. ‘That profile pic, tho!’, Connie digitally dreamed.

Harmony was in her late twenties, early thirties. Frozen in time; she beamed, toppling sideways onto a picnic blanket, with an avocado-greased butterknife in one hand, and a doorstop of arbutus bread in the other. Her hair splayed wildly into the face of her mischievous fiancé who was grabbing her playfully from behind.

Harmony was the one who had suggested Málaga to Connie. Not that there was any kind of rapport between the two, just a comment every month or so: a provocation. ‘If you’re anything like me, you’ll love it.’

Was it sad that Connie wanted to be exactly like this person? The woman had clearly already seen the world. She had long ago freed herself from the daily grind. She wasn’t living her life through Connie’s eyes like the rest of the Free Birds trapped at their office desks. Once in a blue moon, Harmony Mitchell cherry-picked some place that Connie would just love, and gifted it to her.

The high wind gusted at Connie’s hand now, threatening to rip the phone away and toss it off the edge of the yellow stone parapet, into the aloe vera rosettes and the rocks far below. Probably better to put it away.

She caught the taste of salt on the wind as she leaned out over the palace’s ancient wall. Inhaling greedily, she scanned the horizon, trying to find the most distant ship or yellow cloud that she could make out. It was October, but as she placed her hands on the fading stone, she found that it was still warm to the touch. Another glorious breath in; this time as if she were breathing in the whole sea, the whole port, the university, the whole city of Málaga far below. The wind rushed into her lungs and filled every part of her.

It was in these moments that she forgot. And what bliss it was to forget.

Down below her, she steadied the most amazing view of Málaga Port in a fancy new telephoto lens that she had just treated herself to. Breathing out, slowly, controlled, she took a few snaps.

Click, click, click. There. Carefully, she let the camera hang from her shoulders, and leaned against the millenium-old palace wall.

Her mind became pensive. This is what she did for a living: get away from the shitty real world, take nice photos of interesting places and write about them. Collect a tiny bit of ad revenue from links to other travel books. Enough to get by. There was a lot that one could complain about in her position, she knew. She’d never get a mortgage in this career. But at the same time, she had achieved some of the things that she had longed for most desperately all of her life: peace and freedom. Some people never got that far.

And to think - she’d laughed off the idea of Málaga at first. She almost hadn’t come. As it turned out, it wasn’t a dive for drunken English tourists at all. This old place was brimming with culture and history. Such a perfect choice, coming here.

***

The new inmate hadn’t met Scary Mary yet. Her real name was Mary Persephone Collins. As in, how her mother used to shout at her from one of the doorways along the row of grey, gunge-stained identical houses of her childhood to come in for her dinner on a black-cloudy, drizzly school evening: ‘Per-seph-o-nEEEEEEE!’ Those were the seventies for people who couldn’t afford to emigrate. You ran in for your dinner, not so much for fear of a clatter, as for fear your siblings would eat the whole lot on you. You blessed yourself before you ate - always. And then your mother clattered you anyway because it was a cloudy day and the radio wasn’t working.

No, the new inmate was one of these young things: she knew nothing of Scary Mary.

As a new inmate, incarcerated for the first time, this young thing was understandably nervous; out of her depth. She didn’t have anyone to protect her in here. She had no interest in being hooked up with cigarettes or cocaine. So, naturally, the first time that she was brave enough to leave her cell and attend a knitting class, she picked up her ball of wool and looked around the classroom, scanning the little institution of subjugated wool-spinners for some moral support: an ally. That’s how she spotted the cold-eyed, drawn-lipped woman in her late fifties (although prison made her look older) sitting alone at a table in the corner. Her head was down, revealing long strands of untidy greying hair, but her eyes were alert. Her back was to the wall. Her needles relentlessly jabbed a new garment into life.

The newby wondered what this cruel-eyed woman was in for. It didn’t seem likely that she was in on a drugs conviction; she was too isolated. The young woman herself had been caught selling cannabis to cancer patients who needed pain relief. Not exactly the stuff of a hardened criminal. Maybe this isolated, older woman could understand.

‘Murder,’ murmured a tattooed prisoner, struggling with a simple sock pattern.

‘I’m sorry?’ asked the new inmate as she was passing by.

‘Murder,’ Tattoo repeated. ‘You’re wasting your time.’

The young inmate sat herself down next to Scary Mary. Up close, it was obvious that the woman worked out her upper body every day. The veins were almost popping out of her.

‘She’s not lying, girl,’ Mary grunted in a smoker’s raspy voice.

‘Murder?’ the young woman asked, still not giving up.

‘You’re wasting your time.’

‘Well, I’ve got time kill.’

‘Is that so, Princess. Well, if you’re sure that Your Majesty has the time in Her busy schedule...!’

‘I just thought… Well, you seemed nice, and -’

Quick as a flash, Mary clamped her hand around the newcomer’s baby finger, keeping their hands low so that the teacher couldn’t see. Once secure, she began to twist the baby finger at an unnatural angle, causing the new girl to howl in pain.

‘Shut it!’ Mary commanded, icily.

‘Let go!’

‘I’m doing nothin’. And you’re going to make it look like I’m doing nothin’. And then I’ll let you go.’

‘But-’

A sharp, punctuated twist. Any harder and Mary would have broken the digit.

‘Okay!’ the newcomer squealed.

‘Control your breathing. Do it.’

In agony, the woman took a deep breath in. Her face screwed up in torment, but she didn’t make a sound.

‘Your face.’

‘What about it?’

‘You’re all wrinkled up. Smile!’

‘I’m in pain.’

‘That’s your own problem. I want them all to see that I’m doing nothin’.’

Resentfully, she pulled the bitterest grin she could muster. Scary Mary smiled at her in return.

‘You’re a sweetheart, love.’ Mary released her. Then, she paused, deliberately, expecting her visitor to scramble to her feet and bolt away.

To Mary’s surprise, the young woman stayed put. She did have a look of unholy horror on her face, but she stayed put.

‘Who are you?’ the girl attacked, keeping up the smile all the time, like a gingerbread house on fire. The tears were beginning to run down her cheek.

‘I’m a criminal, like anyone else,’ Mary responded. ‘Like you.’

This hurt. The young thing clearly didn’t consider herself a trafficker or a dealer, or whatever other name the Justice Department wanted to give her.

‘Like you,’ Mary repeated. ‘There’s only one way that I’m not like you, and it’s a simple thing. Do you want to know what it is?

‘I’m not pally with other criminals. I’m not interest in your gang, or your friend’s gang, or your dealer’s gang. I’ve been surrounded by pieces of shit since the day I was born, and look where it’s got me. I don’t need any more friends like you, do you understand? The only person I care about is on the outside - and when my parole hearing comes around, none of you are going to drag me down with you, and stop me from getting out. Are we clear?’

There wasn’t much to say. The young inmate nodded, hurt. She wiped the tears that had escaped from her, stood up and walked off.

Back with the tattooed woman, she stared at her ball of wool in hopeless silence. Tattoo whispered words of comfort: ‘Hey! Hey! Don’t be crying over Scary Mary. We’re not all like her.’

Mary (or Persephone, as she had once been called) attended only two classes in the whole week. She was quite content to stay in her cell the rest of the time. There was the exercise yard in the morning. Her cellmate ate with her and shared cigarettes with her. The only two things she ventured out for voluntarily were knitting, because she had been knitting all her life, and computers. Knitting, she could do in her sleep - her mother had made bloody sure of that. She could only type with two fingers, on the other hand. Yet all the same, she never missed her computer class.

She waited in line, even before the door to the class was opened. She wanted a seat in the back, in the corner. The guards or the tutor could always look at what she was doing - that would mean she’d have to do a quick ‘X’ out of all the windows she had open, and pretend she was learning Microsoft Excel. That kind of thing was costly. Once, she’d lost something that she’d been typing finger-by-finger for half an hour. But they rarely came and checked these days.

The prison was on a pilot scheme: very restricted access to the internet was permitted. No emails or social media pages could be reached from the prisoners’ network. No shopping sites, no games, videos or music, only sites that could be considered news or education were allowed.

But travel websites were considered journalism. They were allowed.

As Mary Persephone settled uncomfortably into her plastic chair in her corner, away from all the other inmates, she stared at the computer once again.

A few clicks, and she was on ‘Connie Flies Free’.

Persephone’s eyes began to tear up. She blinked furiously until the sensation backed off, then rested her head of greying hair in one hand. Using the other hand, she scrolled through Connie’s stunning pictures of Málaga Port, the glowing screen casting deep shadows into her wrinkles; exaggerating the age lines, and the crow’s feet.

After perusing the photos for a while, Persephone decided to sign into her Free Bird profile. Taking off one of those young things was harder than it sounded. She’d really had to get inside the head of the character. It was rewarding, in ways. A fresh perspective.

That picture mocked her, though. That perfect early-thirties magazine-blonde hair. The hipster supermodel goof posing as a boyfriend. Avocados - she’d never eaten one in her life. They were flown halfway around the world, for God’s sake! Just so that youngsters with more money than sense could brag about their cool health-kick breakfast on Instagram. Persephone’s mother had made porridge for her, all her life. She in turn had made porridge for her own daughter every morning. What was wrong with porridge, for Christ’s sake? Were her meals not good enough? She’d never had the money or the luxury to be spending the price of nine rolls of toilet paper on a single bloody fruit!

Persephone calmed herself. She breathed slow breaths. She tried not to think about being angry. She tried not to listen to that voice in her head telling her that she would never be good enough for her daughter’s love. No. The truth was, simply, that life had been tough. She had been too focussed on surviving each day while she was on the outside to really pay attention to her daughter. She’d closed herself off, grown cold to new or different ideas. And her daughter had learned never to expect a listening ear, never to expect comfort, no support in exploring the world, or discovering the woman she was going to become.

She hadn’t seen Connie in ten years. She hoped that one day Connie would understand why she had committed her terrible crime. Maybe one day she would even answer that prison phone call from her mother.

But for now, Persephone could at least feel grateful about her weekly computer class. She felt like she was learning about, and connecting with her daughter in a way that she never had in the flesh. She didn’t engage in online conversation. She didn’t do anything to arouse suspicion. Better this way. It was a chance for her to be a mother once more, if silently. To look on, to laugh, at her child’s exploits. To be proud.

Through the eyes of Harmony Mitchell.

***

Connie sat on a chilly metal café seat, in a plaza near her hostel. The moon was out. She was grateful for the warm burn of an outdoor heater - a tall slender metal pyramid that stood between her table and another.

On the table was a small complimentary dish of olives that she skewered one by one with a toothpick. She was enjoying them almost more than the patatas bravas that she had paid for.

On her camera, she was reviewing the photos that she had taken up at the Alcazaba earlier. There were so many good shots - she loved finding a location where good snaps were effortless, as if designed for photographers to come and find.

She pondered what she might write about Málaga. The usual, she supposed. The sights, the food. Top 5 places to visit. Not the history, though. Not the bloodshed.

A flash came through her mind - a terrible scene. She knew now that she had been hit often as a child. She knew her mother had got hit worse. In fact, she knew that for half her childhood, her mother had been sending her to bed early, denying her television or friends, in an effort to make it difficult for her father to punish her. But the great irony was, she never felt her father was evil - he was trapped. And she didn’t really remember being hit all that often. She remembered him talking in his quieter, happier moments about going on adventures and seeing the world. Bitter dreams disintegrating his marriage.

The flash came again - Connie closed her fist tight around the cold metal arm of her chair. It was the night that sixteen year old Connie had told him she was dating a boy. She remembered that night, sure enough. The rage in his eyes, the complete lack of understanding. Her mother had sent her to her room again, but Connie didn’t want to go. She was old enough to fight her own fights. But, no. Her mother won out. Connie stayed in that room awake, for hours, telling herself this was just one more fight. Just two more years, and she could leave home, and her parents could go back to loving each other and traveling and being happy again. She listened to the screaming and screaming and screaming until suddenly - no more. And that was worse. One was dead. That much she knew. And that was all she would know until the squad car and the ambulance arrived at the house, one to take her father away, one to take her mother.

She worked through the episode like her therapist had told her. Flashes sear like lightning when you are a trauma victim, and the memories feel so real. But it passes.

Recovering, slowly, she looked at the camera monitor once more. And… Wow. Oh, wow. Just wow. The memory, so real a moment earlier, faded back into the depths. She simply had to send this one to Harmony as a ‘Thank You’ for her recommendation. She had inadvertently captured a green parrot in flight with her final shot of the day. It was more perfect than she could ever have planned. It was a wonderful panorama of the coast from above, just as the red sun was disappearing under the distant hills; her unwitting feathery assistant caught in the moment of lifting off from a branch; wings spread, swooping, gazing forward at the endless waves, the glowing horizon.

She sent it to Harmony with a simple caption: ‘What next?’

Written as part of my Aug 18 Writing Prompt Challenge. The prompt which inspired this short story was "A prisoner attempts to communicate with the outside world via Facebook writing prompts " by Ronan O' Keeffe. Thanks for that, Ronan!

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