November 1st, The day of the dead, 2012


Crimesi suddenly rose from his pew. He began to walk briskly down the aisle. Many members of the congregation were giving him rude looks, but Crimesi tried not to notice. He was focusing all of his attention on the exit.


About half way down the aisle, he considered going back to his seat. He looked at the priest. The priest had obviously noticed him leaving, but he was ignoring his gaze. “Please turn to page 108 in your hymnbooks” he said loudly.


Quite suddenly, Crimesi felt separated from the church. He walked briskly down the second half of the aisle. The aisle seemed to grow longer as he walked. As the distance between he and his seat grew, he felt more and more eyes on his back. A cough echoed. The only person singing the page 108 hymn was the priest.


Finally, Crimesi reached the exit. He opened the door and walked out. When the door shut, Crimesi exploded into a sprint. He left the church. Crimesi wanted to get home as soon as possible.


Cars and Houses flew by. He passed a strip mall, and then a grouping of office buildings. Then he ran past a baseball field, which was followed by more houses.


Soon Crimesi saw the local park. He associated the park with the cemetery which was directly past it. Normally he would go through the park and pass the cemetery on the way to his house, but today he avoided that route. His father was buried in the cemetery. He didn’t want to stress himself more.


When Crimesi reached his house, he wasn’t quite sure what he should do. His mind was still detonating bombs of thought. He was thinking about the church, and the cemetery, and his father and himself. He considered milking a snake. Yes, that was always therapeutic. He began to bring a half filled vat of snake venom and his flute outside. But he realized he was hot and that he wanted to stay inside. He grabbed himself a glass of water. He drank it quickly. He sat down to do some work, but he was very distracted. Finally he sat down on his sofa, and began to meditate.


His mind was clear for some time, but then all his thoughts rushed back into head. Somehow he was able to clear them again. His mind was blank for a very long time. Slowly, he drifted from his meditation into sleep.


While he was asleep, he dreamed he was running away from the church. When he reached the park he turned away and took the alternative route he took earlier, but he ended up at the cemetery anyway. He turned around, and chose a third route, however yet again he ran into the cemetery. And then he turned around, but the cemetery in the opposite direction as well. Everywhere he looked there was the cemetery. Finally, He resorted to walking in hoping he could walk out the other side.


As he walked, the graves stirred. Bodies came up and began chasing after him. They were carrying knives. Crimesi jumped over gravestones. He fought off several ghosts, but they were becoming more numerous by the second. Twice, gravestones he was hiding behind lifted up to reveal a new ghost.

He headed for the exit. There were no exits.

He tried to grab at the ghosts, but he was unable to touch them. Then he saw his father. His father was less transparent than the other ghosts. His gleam was golden instead of the silver gleam the other ghosts emitted. He was very tall, and instead of a knife, he carried a sword. Crimesi considered pleading with his father, but he knew his begging would be taken as an insult. He turned around. He tried to run away, but the ghosts were caving in. They numbered in the hundreds now. As a final recourse, Crimesi tried to charm a snake. He didn’t know how this would help, but he proceeded anyway. His options were limited.


He succeeded in charming snakes, but the gravestones repelled the snakes away from the scene. The ghosts were coming closer: knives first.


He screamed: no sound.


His father then slashed his sword at him. In hit him squarely in the heart…


Crimesi Woke up.


Tears began streaming from his eyes at once. The silence in the house was torture to him, so he yelled just to see what it would sound like. He ran around the room, throwing things. They bounced of the wall. He threw them again. Lucidity flickered on and off, but he could not think evenly for longer than a few seconds. By now tears were raining down from his eyes. He began slapping the walls of the house repetitively. He turned on the sink and sprayed water across the room. A chair was ripped to shreds. A chandelier crashed down from the ceiling as a result of his fit. Glass sprayed everywhere. He threw the TV at the wall. It crashed. He threw it again. The screen cracked. Wires emitted rays of green and red light. The only part of the TV that remained unharmed was the shell. Control flickered back again. Crimesi grabbed the vat of venom and began to drink from it. He instantly passed out.


When he regained consciousness, a man had entered his house. His face was stern. He was tall. He held a sword. He recognized the man as his father. Fear and hatred radiated through Crimesi’s body. His father began to yell at him. His scolding tickled something in Crimesi, and he began screaming to block out his father’s voice. Next, his father began beating him with the back of his sword. Crimesi’s features began to mush together. He cringed. He tried to avoid the blows, but his father had cornered him. He was forced to take the beating. The whole time, his father was still yelling at him. The whole time, Crimesi was screaming even louder.


Crimesi tried to reach for the snake venom. He grabbed on to the vat. He drank it and passed out.


Blackness.


Crimesi woke again. His father was still beating him with the handle of the sword. He remembered to scream. His body had six distinct faces at this point. He resembled a cube. His father beat him on the head with the sword. His head spurted blood. It began to cave in and become one of the cube’s faces. He reached out and found the vat again. He drank it.

Blackness.


This time when Carmesi regained consciousness, he instinctively began screaming again. He looked at himself. His body which, in addition to being covered with bruises, was now also covered with rashes caused by drinking venom. Pain was flooding through his body. Sometimes it overflowed and gushed out of his body too. He reached for the vat. There was no venom left. He reached for his flute instead. He began playing with what was left of his head. He played loudly so that he still couldn’t hear his father, who was yelling louder than ever, and beating just as hard.


A snake could be seen out of the window dancing up from the sand. It headed for the door -Crimesi was a good charmer- The snake came to Crimesi. He ordered it to charge against his father. The snake obeyed. It began biting his father’s head. His father seemed unable to feel any pain. The snake bit into his father’s skull. His father tried to shoo it away, but he appeared less interested in the snake then he was interested in beating and scolding Carmesi as much as he could. Then the snake tried to bite into his brain. His brain, however, could not be bitten into. The snake kept biting, but its efforts made it weaker. Within seconds, the snake gave up. It left the house.


Carmesi tried to reach for the flute; however his arms were already too smashed into his body to reach out. He yelled at the snake, but his father beat his head again. His head just became another face of the cube. He could no longer speak.

He could no longer scream over his father. His father’s scolding shaped him into a perfect cube. He could no longer move or talk or think. Crimesi had transformed into ice.


The ice cube slowly melted away. The snake returned to the house and drank the water.