The Beaten

                                        Closure to a child's lost years, speak restlessly in riddles, and lost tales of forgotten rainbows. All to be revealed with opened windows blowing night air, trickling through bedroom curtains, into our past. Prayers of the dead echo maliciously throughout silent courtyards, held captive by the moon and existence. Endless despite multitudes enraged at their superiors. Inferiority and sweat awaits the burning anguish of daylight,..piercing dried flesh with toxic rays,.....bright red,... skin peeling on the surface of the wounded., souls crying out through labor of a weary existence.
                                  A temporary band-aid solution masks the few recent staggering years of alcohol and abuse. In a barroom where the hurt people subside,.. over pangs of the evening news,..or the reality of the I.R.S.,..auditing the helpless onto the required corruption of   financial bankruptcy,...drowning the pity in bourbon and whiskey,..then rising,..the morning like a fearless bastard stepchild mocking his own stupidity with the unknowing desires of his parents..
                                Out of time and sight in a western desert community. Where all residents abandoned their suffering identities a long time ago. Around where any wage is under the table,.. and honesty is some far off suburban picketed fantasy. A weekday,...the house was empty,.and still a long ways before nighttime. She set her gin and tonic on the living room table then laid her throbbing head down on the cool wooden floorboards. The house was helped furnished by an old work associate friend,..who was looking to get rid of a couple old things. She didn't care if the house was empty. Then it occurred to her that this livelihood was a dead end. A mistaken detour among the dust filled highway of indecision. Her two little girls at Summertime daycare,..and she,..already miserably drunk,..surrounded by her own misfortunes . It was Tuesday and she was already broke. It would be the normal routine of scraping along until the next feeble government check sufficed for a day or two of oblivion and generic groceries.
                                A truck stop diner aligned with fluorescent lighting and weak coffee kept the banished faces interchangeable to the uniformed waitress. A slice of apple pie before hitting the road. Personalities in this establishment were only temporary,..what was the point. The road sign was made in the early seventies,.and since then,.......... nothing. A family attempt at a lifestyle excluding poverty only robbed the out of town patrons of their own once inspired "luck",
                       She returned home to her cosy two-storey house in the middle of Arizona,..to her husband's day off filled with cheap beer and black and white television,.."Hey there honey,..what'd ya bring me tonight"?,..She passes him,.in no mood for this now (especially this),.into the bedroom,..pulls out a fat wad of singles from her dirty apron and meticulously places them under the blouses in her underwear drawer. She walks back out with her typical tired expression into the narrow hallway leading to the T.V. room to comfort her bored desperate husband. "Oh honey the boss was there today,..so I couldn't get ya anything". She sits on the cheap love seat beside him,.and stares at the television. He looks over at her and puts his hand on her knee,."So it's been one of those days huh?",..