Block Head

Kim heaved and dropped down the old cement block. It landed with a loud oomph against the frazzled carpet of her cramped bedroom. It was large and grey with hairline fractures running through it that seemed to leak rubble dandruff; shooting stars of dust and stone as it settled into the carpet. The block was hollow in two places through its center, which made it easy to grasp and carry. It must have weighed over twenty pounds.

In the other far off corner of her room Kim’s bed laid unused. Instead, she rested with her legs pressed against her chest, right up beside her new friend the block. She made brief glances towards her television, her book shelf, her video games, her record collection. Things she might do later to distract herself, or wake herself up. But for the time being she was content resting beside the overgrown paperweight, and after a few moments she even went so far as to lay her head against it and nod off to sleep, her back shoved against the cold wall in the corner of her bedroom. The light slowly shut out as the sun passed underneath her, thin orange rays reaching up like fingers struggling to clasp the sill. The daylight had tried not to leave, but the Earth turned its back and forced it away.

She could still feel the slightest tinge of dampness in the stone. She had let it soak in the river, down under the trees in the valley by the empty lot where she had found it. It had just been lying there. There was a harsh contrast between the dry dirt landscape of the fenced lot and the lush grasses and swamp plants growing just beside the neck of the stream. There was an old hanging tree which bent over the width of the small passing in the river, its tendrils skipping across the cool water. And it was under this tree that Kim had sat and brushed and scrubbed the cement block. She even left it to soak in the water overnight. When she had come back in the morning, she pulled it out and dropped it into the tall grass where it was left to dry for another two days. The blades of grass had brushed against it as the winds had blown by, painting green swatches along the sides. Like bright emerald scratches to cover where the filth had been.

Moments before Kim had taken the block by its two hollow sections and dragged it to the neck of the stream, she had brought it down on her boyfriend Mark’s head. It hadn’t landed with an idle thump, but with the loud cracking and bursting of his skull and his brain. A shower of blood had exploded out the side of his retarded head, where his right temple had been, and chump change chunks of gore followed in spades. Small fragments of bone left tiny cuts on Kim’s cheeks as they blew back at her, and she had stood over his limp, twitching body and caught her breath. She could feel her pulse echoing through nearly every part of her young body. Her frail arms had brought the block down on Mark’s head, and she had made herself a murderer. The stone block had an explosion of black blood running up every side of it, so Kim had carried the block down to the river, and she had scrubbed it and made it clean again.

Kim woke up, trapped in the dark. She made brief glances towards where her book case might be, and her television, the video games hooked up to her television, and even her records collection--fairly substantial for a woman in her early twenties. She looked past all of them and towards the bed in the corner of her room, the sheets probably still bundled into a ball of loose fabrics, although it was impossible to tell in the dark. Her mattress would still be slightly off center from the frame. The frame would be slightly off center from the indentations in her rug where it had always been before, like the indentation in the grass where the block had been left to dry. An almost ghostly of image of Mark was trapped in the corner of her brain, like his body encased in the gravel by the old fence in the lot. She thought about the river and the passing of fluids, the tendrils in the water like hands running over her skin. She thought about his dry cracked lips coming against hers, like where the old lot met with the lush grasses and plants beside the river. She thought about his fist coming down on her face, creating a hairline fracture in her jaw that still ached when she chewed. It was a lot like the tiny lines running through her new friend the block. She thought about the green swatches, haphazard lines along the sides of the grey brick like her fingernails digging into Mark’s strong upper arms. She thought about scrubbing the cinderblock, and she thought about how she had sat in the shower and tried to make herself clean for minutes, and then hours, and then more. Kim’s head pounded in rhythm to a thousand ugly thoughts. Ugly like Mark. Ugly like an old grey brick.