Shackled

REMA

The eight-year-old boy twists inside the tornadic funnel of green ocean water. Trapped by the power of shimmering fury, globe-shaped bubbles from his lips rush to the empty space above. The savage water becomes more intense; the boy’s head pushes downward until it rests between his skeletal knees.

For a moment, the fury is calm. Suddenly, moving from the base of the funnel, a frothing mass of greenish-yellow, effervescent, water spirals upward and sucks the boyish body into the deep abyss.

Rema Swenson lunged forward to snatch her son from the water and fell forward on her knees. She opened her eyes and moaned. “Will this ever end?”

Clutching the arm of the brown leather couch, she pulled herself up from the floor of the reception room of the Arcane Studio. She inhaled deeply as though her breathing would change the intended consequence of her son’s final struggle against the sea.

In her resolve to destroy the dreadful image, she watched the rays of the morning sun drift through the window and frolic across the red tile floor. When they collided with the airborne particles of dust, she watched them change into shiny pieces of floating gold.

*          *          *

FELIC

Inside the Miami Canal Medical Clinic, Felic Ort peeked from the half-open door of treatment room #2. He swiveled his head around to be able to see if Dr. Whitetail was at the front desk. Not there? He stepped back and rubbed nervous moisture from his forehead.

After spending the past four days and nights at the renovated store-front medical clinic, he had devised a plan to leave without being noticed. The long days in the clinic were the result of his last Thursday night’s wild-assed experience.

On that evening, he had walked from Miami’s compound for the homeless to Harding Street and into Dead Man’s Alley to pick up food for the compound’s residents. The alley had a notorious reputation in the 1940’s as the dumping ground for the bodies of Miami’s gang–related homicides.

Felic Ort savored the praise from his peers and volunteered to go into the alley. It was a danger-filled mission where no thinking man would go after sundown.

He had waited in the alley’s entrance to muster up the courage to go inside. Before him stood the condemned, six-story Green Palms Hotel. The old hotel had dodged the wrecking ball for the last two years and was currently inhabited by rent-by-the-hour prostitutes and wayward alcoholics.