Pantomime
Marissa was looking out her bedroom window at something which had caught her attention in the backyard.
“Is it the hawk again?” her father asked from the doorway and laughed.
The child turned her head and nodded over her shoulder with a sly smile. She clearly wanted to play.
“Did you finish your homework? All of it?”
“Yes, I promise!” the ten-year-old said. And then she added with some anxiousness, “It’s almost evening. She won’t hang around all that long.”
“Mouse game?” Keith asked enticingly.
“Oh yes, please!” Marissa erupted as she raced to the aquarium that stood on a repurposed vintage typing stand. It held a little village of mice in so many shades: white and chocolate and champagne and cinnamon. Some were playing on their little circus toys while others slumbered peacefully. Most slept in packs for warmth but a few were loners and slept separately.
The child lifted the aquarium lid and quickly made her selection. “Amber! It’s your turn!” she told the silvery mouse. And before her father could say a word, she had run to the lidded mouth of the tube in the wall and popped it open. That tube ran on a stilted slope down from the rear wall of the house into the backyard like a little sliding board. Marissa reached inside and turned her mouse-filled palm upside-down and shook and down little Amber went, the poor thing facing backwards and clawing pointlessly at the smooth surface, wanting to go home.
Marissa quickly resealed the airtight tube lid.
“She’s on the leafpile by now!” Marissa practically sang.
“That’s nice of you to give them a nice soft landing. Does the hawk see her yet?”
“Oh yes, the hawk sees everything!”
“Is the mouse going to the little pile of sunflower seeds on the ground?” But father was curious now and walking towards the window. He stood behind his daughter to see the show for himself.
“Oh yes, I see you have arranged it beautifully. And the mouse is programmed?”
“Yes, I programmed her. Amber knows what to do, Daddy.”
Father had heard the hawk’s hunger bruited about the winter sky earlier that afternoon as he worked in his downstairs study. That loud “Keee-irr!”
of the red-tailed hawk was unmistakable.
Father and daughter watched as the perched hawk surreptitiously sized up the moment. She was rather well-camouflaged in the grey winter branches of a tall hedge denuded of almost all its leaves. Her head was tilted and her eye was burning with the image of the small morsel enjoying sunflower seeds on the walkway in front of the backyard shed.
Down she went, the canny predator, and it was over in a flash of flesh. They watched the gory business of the mouse being shredded to a series of bites.
“No pain,” the father said approvingly. “The mouse felt nothing.”
“Nope, Little Amber felt nothing. I made sure of that. She could never know what pain is.”
“Unlike the poor hawk,” father said. “Hunger is a terrible thing.”
“Well, there are hawks that are different, of course, Daddy.”
“Of course, silly. I’m the one who taught you that. Way back when…do you even remember?”
“I do, I do!” And the child laughed because her daddy had poked her.
“When’s Mommy getting home? Is she running late again?”
“Just a bit. If you had been wearing your halo, you would have gotten the message. There was an incident. Some horrible people attacked a few subway cars. But don’t worry. Your mother was nowhere near that. It just slowed down her trip home. Just a teensy-weensy bit.”
“More retrogrades?”
“I’m afraid so. That seems to be what the news is saying. But what do I always tell you? I mean when we talk about horrible things like this?”
“That the world is a more beautiful place every day. And it is, Daddy. I really believe that. And I want to help make the world more beautiful. It means everything. I’ve been thinking. I want to apply to the Respeciation Academy. I think I have the grades for RA.”
“I think you do too, honey.”
He was so proud of his daughter. This was the fourth child he had raised and he wondered if she would transition all the way to adulthood. His first son had left the household at twelve and chosen to remain that age. At least so far. His second child, Junifer, was still allowing her organon to age and was currently twenty-one. He realized he owed her a birthday card shortly. And Ruben, who came just before Marissa…well, he didn’t like to think about Ruben.
He couldn’t understand how any child of his could join the underground. He didn’t want to think of what sort of illegal, truly retrograde behaviors he might be engaged in. When he last saw the boy, he was seventeen. He had no idea if he had disengaged from aging or if he had completely recast his organon. He could look like anyone now, he could be any age.
Keith was forty-four. He just found that to be the age at which he felt most comfortable. He liked his dad bod. So he stayed there. He ran his fingers through his daughter’s blonde hair, then contoured some strands a little on her forehead as he looked into her violet-green eyes.
“Do you truly cherish the world, Marissa? All the little animals in it? And the work we can do to protect them from the old form of nature? That flawed programming?”
“Oh Daddy, I do. I love them all. They are so dear to me! And there’s so much to be done. I want to help them all. The predators and the prey both. All are deserving.”
“All are deserving, indeed. You will. You are wise. You do so well in your classes. I love you for trying so hard, Marissa.”
“Thanks, Daddy. I noticed you were noticing it’s almost Junifer’s birthday. Isn’t that exciting? We can have such a lovely party!” Life was wonderful, in spite of it all. He had turned away a moment and hadn’t seen the child slip on her halo. He watched a blue dot chase another blue dot around the tube that circled her head with its lovely blonde hair.
And just then life became even more wonderful as Rae came through the front door downstairs and giggled, “So what are we all thinking about Junifer’s birthday now? I hope she doesn’t have her halo on or there isn’t going to be much of a surprise party now, is there?”
Father burst out laughing as he swept his daughter up in his arms and ran down the stairs holding her to greet his wife, safely home from the war zone they called downtown.
But when he reached the base of the stairs he saw a scruffy looking man he somehow knew instantly was Ruben in his new metamorphosis. Although he looked nothing like the son he knew or thought he had known. And his wife was smiling in a way he had not known her ever to do before.
Then Marissa began to scream and both their haloes went red.
