Give and Take

Michael Krakowiak

Give and Take

         A spiky-haired blonde soldier stares down his ebony-clad, silver-maned nemesis with a gaze as sharp and merciless as the edge of his colossal, violet sword. Once dear friends, as inseparable as twin flames born of a single inferno, now meet as bitter enemies on a shadowy, ruined battlefield as far away from their dying world as the two are from ever knowing peace while the other still draws breath. After an ageless silence, the two foes clash in a blinding storm of steel against steel, each strike an ember that fuels the fire of their very souls. Their blades conclude their song of clinks, clanks, whirs and zips with each combatant gasping life's very essence in and grunting out what feels like their dying breath.                             

Suddenly, the blonde soldier erupts with the color and energy of a thousand exploding suns and launches a furious flurry of slashes against his foe, each strike humming and glowing with a rainbow colored aura, leaving his opponent havenless against the onslaught. With his nemesis' flesh sheared like crimson silk ribbons, his rival finally falls and a mysterious green energy envelops the blonde soldier, promising a new hope for him and his doomed planet. "YES!" roars a red-headed, freckled youth, his sweaty palms and thumping heart exalting with a catharsis so pure it could only be achieved by flinging his iconic grey playstation controller after beating his favorite video game. An epic victory was won in the small upstairs apartment in Queens that day, but little did the fire-kissed boy know on that very same day his greatest challenge was yet to come.

         Supremely impressed with his recent triumph, the young redhead marches with his chest puffed out and his ego inflamed, like a proud lion after a successful hunt, from his room into the kitchen, where he spots his mother restlessly conducting her home-based business on the phone while grandma is almost finished baking some apple pie. His mother smiled at him despite being fiercely involved in what sounded like gibberish to his inexperienced mind, and such a warm, radiant smile in the midst of their chaotic life only served to reinforce his childish belief that his mother was as courageous, strong, and undaunted as some character out of the video games he played. Impossible as it is for anyone, especially a working mother, to actually possess all the traits that archetypical characters in epic fiction do, the red-headed boy's belief was bolstered on a regular basis as a result of his mother's ability to work, cook, clean, and still find time to hear him out and talk to him often. Even when her good-for-nothing, pig-faced, idiot of a boyfriend would attack the young child with a berserker's ferocity, enough to render him unconscious for minutes afterward, the young one would awaken to the sight of his mother attacking the boyfriend with a courage and selfless determination he had never seen in any other woman before.

"I wish she could just leave him right now", the little "champion" thought about his mother's domestic situation, but even his limited cognizance was capable of informing him that his mother would have to work even harder in order to eventually leave the villainous troll behind.

"It's okay, soon she'll be rich like she said she'll be and she can fly me and my brother right out of here. If anyone can do it, my mommy can" he mused in the confines of his own mind, picturing the great escape as he watched his baby brother entranced by some children's movies on the couch in the living room. He wished for it fervently, as if his mother, his brother, and he were destined to enjoy a sweeping conquest, a hero's prize, much like the one he'd just achieved moments earlier.

         "Hey Gran, what's that you're making?" is what the usual inquiry was around the kitchen, and this time "I'm trying my hand at apple pie, can't you tell?" was the response. The combination of apple, cinnamon, and fresh pie crust was enough to awaken a leonine hunger in him such that would match his post-victory posturing, but resist he would have to until it was finished baking. Of course, grandma understood the nature of a growing boy and offered him some leftover apple slices to hold him over until the "feast".

         "Here, you should eat these instead of the pie" cautioned granny as she handed him a bowl of leftover apples.

         "Huh? Why?" he asked, dumbfounded at the contradiction of granny baking a pie and in the same breath suggesting he eat something else.

         "Because fresh apples are much healthier, especially with the skin on them. The skin's where all the nutrients are. Remember, it's true that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Apples are life-sustaining in a way that no other food can match and..." her message faded as the young lad soon did what most kids his age would do when being lectured: daydream. After a few moments of fanciful respite, he thought back to how this dialogue all started.

         "Why do you bake a pie if you want us to just eat plain old apples?" he asked with a cocky smirk that suggested he knew he'd just snared some helpless prey.

         "The only way I can get you little bastards to eat fresh apples is while waiting for apple pie to finish baking!" she said as she laughed out loud, clearly being more casual with her grandchildren than most grandmothers would be. The little "conqueror" laughed along with her before sitting down at the dining room table by himself to whet his appetite on the crisp and succulent mixture of sugar and acid that would soon be joined by luscious cinnamon and pillow-light, fluffy whipped cream.

         It was then that his daydreams became nightmares.

         The veil of his fantasizing was pierced by a shriek so ghastly it shook him to his very core, one so blood curdling it made both his hair and his body stiffen in an instant. He darted towards the source of the howl, the living room, and descended upon a scene bathed in horror. His baby brother was clawing at his throat as a child possessed, his face transforming from shades of swollen crimson into nearly bursting azure, his increasingly vacant eyes scanning the room for solace, for hope, for help...all in vain.

         As if this wasn't jarring enough for the fiery haired youth, to his even greater amazement he beheld a scene unlike anything he was prepared for: his mother awash in terror, her eyes frantic and her entire body frozen with inaction.

         "Oh my God! What the hell am I supposed to do?!" she continued to chant as though she was ensnared in a panicked ritual, helpless before her darling son's vicious struggle for a single breath.

         Time slowed, space warped, and thus it was over.

         Awakening as if from a trance, the young one found himself standing over his coughing baby brother hungrily swallowing every gasp of air as though it were his very first. Quickly releasing his torn shirt, his mother leapt towards her precious child and wept as a result of what could only be a potent emotional cocktail of joy, relief, and instantaneous release of the overwhelming dread she felt moments ago. As he watched grandma join in the celebration, his mind was swarmed with the details of what just transpired.

         "What the hell did I just do?" he whispered as he glanced at his shaking hands and shredded shirt.

         The various sensations flooded his mind like a great tsunami, and it took all his strength not to drop to his knees at the realization of what he had just done. As he reflected back on the previous few moments, he remembers his entire body erupting with a surge of energy as if fueled by a supernova as he spots a fallen bowl of apples near the couch, leaps towards his sibling and lifts him up, turns him 180 degrees and upside down and then forces a fist against his brother's stomach. The resulting pressure instantly dislodged the slice of apple his brother was choking on, and his life was saved. What he failed to realize until later that evening was that his mother, in her panic, grabbed at him and tried to stop him, unaware of what he was doing, enough to tear his shirt nearly clean off his body.

         The subsequent catharsis nearly took the fiery young hero's breath away as easily as the apple did his brother's. How could his mother, long hailed in his innocent mind as an infallible heroine, crumble so easily? Be seized with such palpable terror when she should've sprung into action like in every other perilous situation? How could something as simple as an apple, meant to give life sustenance, just as easily threaten to take it away? Did all heroes feel so hollow after what others called an "epic victory"? Seemingly in an instant, an innocent, idealistic young hero has been stripped of the fantasies and ideals he's based his entire life on, left with nothing but a harsh lesson as to the true nature of the cruel world he's managed to escape until now: Reality.

         Such was the night I saved my brother's life. Though our family has lauded my deeds that day as heroic, even an "epic victory", it was a bittersweet triumph. While I saved a life, it came at the cost of the death of my childhood innocence and the dissolution of my vision of a matriarchal archetype. From that moment forth I realized that even epic victories can feel like tragic defeats, that no achievement is without cost, and that which gives can just as easily take away.