Paradise

THREE

The Wolf's transformation was like the tale of Cinderella. At the clock's strike of midnight, when all the American dreams of Paradise turned off their bright lights and closed their curtains, when the dogs stopped barking, when the minivans and SUVs were all parked safely in their driveways, when children slept soundlessly in bed, The Wolf transformed.

But the clock hadn't struck twelve yet. It was ten-thirty on the dot and not all of Paradise had fallen asleep. The orcs litter the street along with conservative Christians, rowdy high schoolers, and noisy children on their bicycles because across the street, at the cheerful Burnsbys, was two police cars and an ambulance.

The police lights flash in my window like a distressed signal, casting colorful, dancing shadows in my room. I watch them dance across the bare ceiling, laying flat on my back over the covers, before deciding I'd draw them. Or maybe to be more exact, I mechanically decide I should draw because my will to pretend was drifting somewhere out in the ocean near Leo Carrillo Beach and drawing seemed like something I should do.

I feel an odd prickle as I sit up and dig through my backpack; a light honey-brown bag, bare, and tattered from all the times the orc had yanked me by loose strings and zippers. Inside is everything from school last semester, foreign, cold, and full of memories I was pretty sure I didn't want to remember. School is a blur and every time something brings it into focus, I get this huge wave of nausea and the monsters rear their heads with knives and I have to fight them with a sword.

Underneath the memories of school is a simple black sketchbook; the cover mesmerizing underneath the police lights like a rainbow shedding across the darkness, valiantly destroying it with a spreading curve.

Inside the familiar black sketchbook is Paradise, the very essence of it.

Paradise isn't exactly rainbows and sunshine, although it started off as one. When I first stepped foot on lawn of the beautiful, teal house, The Wolf kindly emerging from the porch with a bright lie of a smile, twelve-year old me had decided this was Paradise. It was the nicest place I'd ever been relocated and The Wolf hadn't been a wolf then. He'd been the kind new Foster parent with a weird mustache and a painfully bad sense of humor. He was cheesy, sometimes stealing his jokes right from the depths of Tumblr memes, and made chocolate chip cookies every Sunday for church.

The first pages of the sketchbook are bright and colorful (and kind of shitty because I hadn't learned about the importance of precision yet). Twelve-year old Lucky Grant had drawn the beautiful, teal house, making sure to catch the flecks of sunlight that painted the tudor roof and glossy wooden steps of the porch. He'd drawn the Leo Carillo beach where The Wolf had taken him for his very first birthday in Rolling Hills, dotting the sandy shores with the blindingly red crabs that were brought in by wild, unforgiving waves. He'd even drawn The Wolf, a portrait that detailed the lines of his face and warm smile. The portrait lay unfinished, his balding hair incomplete.

The next few pages are dark and Paradise becomes something different, something I recognized.

I can still feel the pain that had bled from the pencil as it pressed harshly on the paper, violently sketching the coat of fur that glistened in blood as The Wolf raised his snout to the air at exactly midnight, howling for me.

I feel the monsters rearing their heads then as I stare at The Wolf's eyes, drawn hollow and piercing white. The Wolf had no soul, not underneath his navy sweaters and khaki pants. He was one of them, living in the state I had just tried to escape. A shitload of something had taken him a long time ago and now he was dead, clinging to the wasteland of Paradise with his bare claws.

Or maybe he was always dead, simply here to be exactly what he was; The Wolf.

I have to skip a few pages then. I skip past drawings of the Orc, drawings of people I wanted to know, creatures I wish I could forget, years I wanted to erase, until I was on a page untouched by Paradise. A blank page.