An Imaginary Odyssey

O Muse,
Goddess of Adolescent Theatricals.
Lady of the great, linoleum halls
Who fills its countless dark vaults with valuable treasures
Of knowledge and secrets buried away in binded sheets and plastic canvas.
She who decorates the barren fortress
With colored parchment with news from the Gods,
Who summon the mortals with their booming voice
That washes over the kingdom of Encino High,
Crackling as does the lightning of Zeus.

Sing through me, Muse, and tell me the tale
Of a contagious whisper that spreads over the land
At rapid pace and with growing detail
Of wondrous feats and gasping despair
That each man’s tale becomes greater than the next.
But sing to me, Muse
Only the truth that occurred
To the young maiden Bree Bukowski,
Daughter of Bernie,
A noble and wise man who fights for justice through law,
Who is called to action by the deafening chorus of sirens that pierce the ears and hearts of men.
He who chases flashing beams of red light and kneels by victims hospital beds,
With tears in his beady eyes, paperwork in his dominant left, and a shaky stylus in his eager Right.

Bernie’s beloved child, however,
His only daughter to give away to eligible suitors, although many did not try to court,
Seemed as an apple that had fallen many miles away from her father’s tree.
Shy and solemn,
Bree dared not to approach any stranger in the castle’s courtyard,
Nor stare into the curious orbs of fellow scholars other than those twitching eyes of her father.
Not that she admired the view of her shambling feet, gummy against her spongy sandals,
But that the horizon above her was painful to take into frightened eyes.
Ears that had learned to loathe the cackle of laughter ushered by rose-tinted lips, the endless Snorts that followed her every step, and the constant whispers that created a breeze that Tousled up the heads of hair that encircled the unfortunate maiden.
Young Bree was rejected by the damsels who found praise in Aphrodite,
And the sons who charged ahead up and down the tours of the fortress, with bellows in the likes Of warring Ares, simply pushed through her as she drifted about.

Caught in a web of isolation,
Bree’s only protection from the Spider of Darkness that loomed beside her,
Was a cocoon that followed her as a shadow would on a sunny day.
Wherever Bree voyaged, whether it be the top of the world’s highest peak or the nearest disposal container, It trailed her in It’s invisible air vessel.
She christened It “Alex”,
Because she decided that something so powerful that derived from her endless imagination did Not have to be subjected to such a simple thing as gender.
Alex was the only thing in the world she could talk to.

The sun had ridden its golden chariot to the top of the heavens, and there it rested to shine over
The famished scholars, who bustled their way into the court.
Cows and swine had been slaughtered to feed the masses in a thick braise,
The unused remnants put outside into a silver altar, a sacrifice for the God of Disposal.
The students flooded through the arches and charged the tables,
Fleshy hands tingling for juciy meat and clear bottles of liquid as sweet as nectar.
Amongst the soaring numbers of crumpled linens, worn forks, and dull blades,
All toppling over and joining the ranks of feet,
Nobody noticed little Bree sitting solitary, adjusting her slippery spectacles as she nibbled at her Share of the slaughter.
Each table in the dining hall was assigned to a certain ranking,
The prosperous Lords with their wealth and good fortune had an abode reserved near the Kitchen.
The middle men who auctioned off narcotic leaves from secretive farmers were placed in the Middle of all the action.
Bree deposited herself in the back, a table where little sunlight fell from the glass portals.
But the shadows in front of her gave her company, for their sat Alex, comfortable and at ease,
Conversing casually with Bree as meat dripped from between loaves of bread.

“You sit here and make me intrigued,
I could never concoct one of your wonderful tales of mysteries and the beyond, my fellow bard,
And yet you are a fragment of my imagination. How can this be?” observed Bree.

“I only say what you desire me to say, friend.
For example, just now you wanted reassurance that we were friends, and so I told you we were.
Part of you is the bard speaking so lovingly. You have just not found it in your own voice yet.
At least that is what you desire to think, I do not know if it is the truth.” stated Alex

“If only people could see and hear you, and not me,” declared Bree.

“Then I would only be a reflection,” responded a smiling Alex.

Bree blushed at the space of emptiness before her,
But almost immediately the sweet facade was intervened by a much more menacing scene.
Bill Hughes, fifth youngest son of Robert,
Plagued with the torment and teasing from four older brothers,
Bill had a sick fascination with battle scars and wounds, and enjoyed being the cause of them.
To his storm blue eyes, he was a hunter in a land of farmers,
A primitive man, who did not tolerate the weak.

As it happened that Fate decided to play with its puppets a little different,
And made it more than a coincidence that the disposal containment Bill yearned for
Was neighbored to to Bree’s fare.
As Bill approached, Bree’s attuned nose detected the musty odor that breathed from his clothes,
And her nose twitched and itched as a rabbit’s would.
Her eyes’ tears were as salty as seawater.
With the snap of Fate’s fingers, Bree’s lungs rippled
And head became heavy with air.
Her sneezed echoed across the hall,
Shook the table,
Wrenched the lass’ head with a quick snap,
And struck the arrogant hunter with the force of Odysseus’ bow.

Bill Hughes straight countenance turned sour,
Wrinkled and pinched, with his tongue releasing itself from its pungent jail.
Bree stared in complete horror, suffocating her mucky nose with a napkin.

“What the hell? Gross!” Bill bellowed. Several tables peered at the sudden spectacle.

Big shouldered and buff, Bill sauntered to Bree’s place,
Stricken in an eternal gasp, eyes wedged shut,
Bill examined Bree’s face that radiated fear, and he began to leer.

“Don’t you have something to say to me? Huh?” his warped mind began tinkering with the Situation at hand.

Perplexed as a mouse in a cage,
Bree had no intention of looking at the alley cat before her.
Thoughts blustered about her mind,
Her prayers halted her logic and judgement,
And every memory of a democracy was blanketed by the fear of harpy calling her name.
“I…..I…. ummm… uhh..” Bree’s tongue squirmed as a mere worm in her mouth.

“I’m.. a… loser?” Bill’s warm breath struck Bree as sharp as icicles. “Don’t you think I don’t know you. You’re that girl who can’t talk, am I right B-B-B-Bree? Haha!”

Bill’s vision of tyranny quickly turned to sudden hunger.
His keen snout immediately traced the warm breeze of stew,
And when his tree-stump legs pivoted, he could see a fresh, unspoiled meal
Across from Bree’s own, an act of kindness that she ordered every day for her one friend.
Bill’s dirt-caked hands jarred towards the reddened platter.

“N-N...no…...No!” Bree seemed to sputter as if she was being drowned in the depths of Poseidon.

“Whatcha going to do, Mumbles? Is your little invisible friend gonna take it from me?” Bill taunted With his spearhead dipped in poison.

A wave from a black ocean came crashing down upon the little maiden.
Whatever had she done to deserve this boy’s wrath?
Why was she cursed so that her words fell like dead leaves out of her mouth?
Her elfin hand curled into a tight fist,

A breadth away Alex hissed “This is not your strength.”

Bree chose the other side of the fork in her path,
And with any might she had stored in her chest, she leapt as a tiger
Striking Bill Hughes and giving wings to her extra food.
She felt the clobber up through her arm, coiling like a snake, and then another time
Bill’s jaw dropped and his blue eyes flashed lighting. He pulled back, but could not steal away.
He thrusted her forward, but Bree’s arrow arms,
Pulled at his trouser compartment
And hacked at a piece of paper she found. The pieces fell upon her feet; a tragic snow.
For a brief moment, against the clatter of chairs and the gulps of the crowd surrounding the odd Couple,
Both of them dived into each other’s eyes,
Foraging for answers why but neither finding any.
Bree saw her reflection for the first time,
In Bill’s eyes, but is began to get obscure,
When pools of droplets welled of in Bill Hughes eyes. They trickled down his cheek, leaving the Deepest scars he had ever known.
Bree looked down, and discovered that there had been red ink scratched into words on that Parchment. To this day she still does not know, but part of her heart ripped alongside with it.

Bree was summoned to the dungeons hastily by the Gods who watched.
In a reclusive, cold room she waited in silence,
Her pamphlet brought her no comfort.
Alex stood as a guardian behind her, watching, in disappointment.

“You had your chance to be better than him, to be better than his actions.”

Bree’s stomach tossed and turned like a ship lost at sea,
A sea monster lurked in her soul.
There was no use in weeping or sniveling,
Or to give an apology that a broken heart cannot deliver truthfully.
She looked beside her and saw her reflection, but their was no mirror.
Another maiden, the same age as Bree,
Sat at her wooden prison making her journey through the two endless hours,
But without any parchment, or story,
Or a friend to move through time.

Bree searched for Alex, but It had left the dungeons.
She was left to her own thoughts to consider what was at stake:
Do I stumble my way down this rocky path of my voice,
Or do I only converse with myself for the rest of my life?

Bree sighed and closed her eyes.

She closed her book.