Marcel Unchained By Ray Nessly

Street mime in white face and white gloves, trapped in invisible box. Tip jar empty. Marcel’s solo-dancing the tango now, teeth clenching ephemeral rose. Passersby pass him by.

He shackles his arms and legs. Imaginary handcuffs, intangible chains. The padlock’s but a ghost. The blindfold? Real.

Master of silence, in bundle on sidewalk, struggling like Houdini.

Tap-tap down the sidewalk goes a cane, tap-tap against the tip jar, tap-tap against Marcel’s noggin.

“Ow!”

“Sorry ’bout that!” the blind man says, reaching into his pocket. He fingers his coins, finds just the right one, and plunks it into Marcel’s jar.

© 2014, Ray Nessly; First Appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Winter, 2014

Ray Nessly hails from Seattle and lives near San Diego with his wife and their two cats. He is forever at work on a novel: If A Machine Lands In The Forest. He hopes its publication precedes that of his obituary. He has been published in Literary Orphans, Thrice Fiction, Boston Literary Magazine, Apocrypha & Abstractions, MadHat Lit, Yellow Mama, Do Some Damage, and places nobody’s ever heard of.

Comments are closed.