Gloria sipped her mojito, and flipped on the sound system on her
private patio. Pink Floyd's mellow music poured out of the Bose
speakers.
She glanced at the big screen playing on her television in the room.
The sound was muted. It showed workmen wheeling barrow loads of
bricks. She gazed across the resort grounds. There were a four men -
two shirtless- busy building a brick wall at the end of the building
by the path to the pool and beach. Gloria stood up.
She walked like a somnambulist or perhaps a moth to a flame. Slowly
deliberately, yet at the same time in a seemingly random or erratic
path. She had left her terrace and now stood next to a pile of bricks
watching the men's back muscles and bubble butts bobbing up and down
as they worked on the wall with their backs to her.
She muttered, "Just another brick in the wall..."
By the time Rico turned, Gloria was gone. Or rather the human Gloria
was gone. Her robe lay strewn in the bushes, her glass was sitting on
the top of the pile of bricks, and her new form - that of a brick was
lying in the wet grass two feet from the pile of bricks.
Gloria has watched as time seemed to slow down and freeze. The
shirtless man with the broad shoulders whom the others had called Rico
had started to move, he had started to turn. A multicolored butterfly
hung in midair waiting for time to start so that it could close its
wings again and propel itself forward through the air. She felt a
great sense of sedentary sweep across her. She felt heavy as if she
had eaten Thanksgiving Dinner. She felt calm, not just calm - serene.
Gloria had a rock-solid feeling that this was the right choice. Her
skin seemed to tighten. Her body felt a growing intense heat within
her.
It made sense. After all, humans were just clay, and bricks were just
baked clay. Her mind seemed to be focusing on simpler concepts and
smaller words. Her thoughts seemed to move slowly as if in molasses or
perhaps wet concrete. She notice her skin was glistening all over with
intense perspiration. There was a hissing sound as all the water
escaped from her pores. A vapor cloud seemed to envelope her. The
robe fell from her shoulders. She was falling, but she feared no
breakage. She was rock solid. She was a brick. Literally, she was a
brick, and she was happy.
The frozen clock sprang back to life. It ticked. Rico completed his
turn and saw no one he shrugged, and went back to the wall. In ten
minutes, he was out of bricks, and returned to collect some from the
pile. He noticed the stray brick that had been Gloria lying a few
feet away, and he picked it up too. Then he knelt back down, troweled
some mortar and placed Gloria in her spot on top of two bricks and
next to another. There would soon be bricks on both sides of her and
on top of her. He tapped on her forcing the air bubbles out of the
thick concrete mortar and sealing her in place.
Gloria enjoyed being in Rico's powerful hands. She enjoyed the
security of being surrounded by other bricks of her kind. It didn't
occur to her whether they had been baked in a kiln or transformed. It
didn't matter, they were all just bricks in a wall.
Her thoughts of past and present and future seemed to fade. She was
just a brick, in a wall, doing her job. Whatever that was...