in the garden i did no crime - isabel ash

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<center>And all these questions I ask myself. It is not in a spirit of curiosity.
I cannot be silent. About myself I need know nothing.
Here all is clear. No, all is not clear.
But the discourse must go on.
So one invents obscurities.
Rhetoric.

- Samuel Beckett, <u>The Unnamable</u></center>
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New York.


There was only one end to all the madness. The solution had been staring her in the face all this time, taunting her from the uppermost shelf of her bookcase. The book had been abandoned for five months by now. Since then, chaos had torn through the careful balance. A power struggle had shook ancient monarchs from their thrones and placed new, green kings upon the throne.

She had promised him to hold off as long as she could. In turn, he had promised to accept the consequences that such a dangerous decision would bring. While another world was afire with civil conflict, the waking one carried on obliviously. It was only a matter of time until things began to bleed through. By then, it would be too late. There would be nothing left for anyone to do. The otherworld would hemorrhage.

It was a beautiful day. From the high, square window above her bed, the sky was a flat blue. It bore no bad omens in the form of dark clouds in the shapes of falling sparrows or pagan runes. Instead, the sun high above the house filtered its light in unfettered. The frame of her window projected the shape of a cross upon the surface of her comforter. All its sides were the same size and in alignment.

She had not been raised to be a religious creature. No, science. Science was the one true church. It required no faith, only the memorization of specific formula set and a steady hand. Yet, as she stared at the cross upon down squares, she couldn't help but feel something stir inside her. Shoulders folded in and hands dropped to fold over the undeniable curve of her belly. Twenty weeks to the day. She was larger than most women in her gestational week. Her stomach churned with a life of its own. Angles rather than curves would in turns pop out from beneath the stretch of her shirt. Head bowed towards the unfamiliar icon, that cross.

Forgive me for what I'm to do, she whispered to no one at all.

Turning from the window, she reached high and dragged the book from the shelf. It should have been covered with a subtle, grainy layer of dust. The book should have already adopted a faint, unused scent. Yet, it was as new as the day she received it so long ago. Settling the dark oiled spine in one palm, Isabel thumbed through the pages. In a blur, everything returned to her. She had kept a record. In her spidery script, the world began. The pages would not run out. The book would always threaten to fill, but daily new pages were built in. How exactly so many years had been allowed to be contained by the spine was a mystery. It was what made the book enchanted rather than common.

Shuffling to her desk, she turned to the very end. Fingers lifted an ink pen, modern with its ball-point tip and narrow tube of black ink, from the jelly jar that rested at the corner of the narrow roll-top. Thumb depressed metal mechanism with an efficient click. Already, she felt accomplished. Already the world was righted. Drawing in a deep breath, what would be the last page was turned. Rather than write upon the back of the white, unlined sheet she moved for the back cover of the leather journal. Digging the metal ball of the pen into rich material, she began to write again:


When I was a little girl, I always used to steal the royal pairs from decks of cards. Red or black, King or Queen, spade, club, diamond, or heart: no one was safe. My fingers and child's eye were indifferent.They were all beautiful. No, more than that, they were desired. I wanted to possess them rather than admire from afar, from the random surfacing from the deck.

I am no longer a girl. I have grown into myself and into my unfolding destiny. I realize now what must be done. So be it. To the deck, I return. I write myself from your minds and your hearts, my royal flush. I am not your Queen. Only the numbers are to know me now. Into the narrow, leaf-lined canals I go. Into the great unknown. May my unraveling be the thread that ties everything back.

Signed,
Isa--