Elise in the oblivion, p.1
Elise In The Oblivion, page 1
Elise In The Oblivion
A Pulp Fiction Novella
By
Chris Gray
Copyright © 2018
All rights reserved
Contents
CHAPTER ONE Aloha `Aina
CHAPTER TWO The Oblivion
CHAPTER THREE An Average Friday Night
CHAPTER FOUR Moscow does not believe in Tears
CHAPTER FIVE Confronting Our Demons
CHAPTER SIX The Brotherhood Six
CHAPTER SEVEN Chinaman´s Hat
CHAPTER EIGHT The Sight of Blood
CHAPTER NINE A Dance in the Moonlight
CHAPTER TEN The White Rabbit
CHAPTER ELEVEN The Important Things
This book is dedicated to every one of the United States Marines and Service Members that I have ever served with across the globe in my career. All of you kick ass. Never forget it.
-Chris Gray
This book is a work of fiction. Though place names and organizations may exist, no part of this story is based on actual figures, events, or locations. No endorsement of this story by the United States government, United States Marine Corps, or any other organization is implied.
Enjoy, and be sure to leave your review Amazon.com – Mahalo!
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CHAPTER ONE
Aloha `Aina
E lise Thomas surely never thought that she would be living in military housing, let alone substandard junior enlisted stairwell military housing in Germany. It was hard enough getting used to being an Army wife, but living in the slums of the Hainerberg Army Garrison junior enlisted housing development didn’t make it any easier.
Yes, one could argue that Elise was lucky enough to be living in an incredibly beautiful, safe, and culturally rich part of the world. They would be absolutely correct in saying so. Yet, nowhere could be compared to Elise’s native Hawaii; especially the Windward side of Oahu, nestled in the green mountains where she had grown up.
Elise had been living in Wiesbaden, Germany for the last two years with her husband, Evan. Evan was a young Soldier, who had been serving out his fourth year in the Army, and recently had returned from a deployment to Afghanistan. They had one daughter, four years old, named Maggie, who was the spitting image of her father. She somehow had inherited his bleached blonde hair, juxtaposed to her mother’s traditional Hawaiian raven colored locks.
Elise was born thirty-two years ago on the Windward side of the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Her father, Kalani, was Hawaiian “kama’aina,” meaning a local, from the city of Kaneohe on Oahu. Kalani was a graduate of Tulane Law School in New Orleans, Louisiana. Tulane was where he met Elise’s mother, Anne, who had also attended Tulane at the time and studied liberal arts.
Anne later became a Louisiana southern belle socialite and cheerleader- turned – housewife – turned Hawaiian local as well. Kalani and Anne had been living back on Oahu for the better part of thirty-five years. Kalani was a partner at a law firm in town, and her mother’s duty was managing their five-bedroom home, nestled at the foot of the Ko’olau mountain range of the Windward side.
Elise, while not completely spoiled rotten, had been used to the finer things in life. As an only child pampered by her parents, she grew up having everything in the world she could have ever wanted, needed, or desired. Clothes, cars, jewelry, and most importantly for a family on a tropical island – air conditioning; although those can be pretty sparse on the rainy Windward side as well.
There isn’t even a German word for air conditioning. Well, maybe, in reality, there is a word for it, but since there are no air conditioners in Germany, there may as well not be one.
Elise learned this the hard way. She found herself spending her nights soaked in sweat, tossing and turning, wasting hours attempting to fall asleep.
It only gets surprisingly hot and miserable in Wiesbaden, Germany, a country known for the bitter cold of its winters, for about three weeks a year in the late summer. Those three weeks are as close as you can get to medieval torture. Though it might sound silly for a Hawaiian girl to have been suffering from an overdose of German heat, it was the unexpectedness of this discomfort that made it seem much worse.
Elise couldn’t get used to sleeping in the dank misery of base housing, no matter how hard she tried. It was so hot and humid in their tiny apartment, she could hardly breathe at night, even with four fans running at the same time. This was in addition to the fact that the walls were paper thin and she could hear the conversations of children, dogs barking, and televisions blazing at all hours of the night.
Elise’s husband, Evan Thomas, was a Specialist in the Army, stationed with the 55th Military Intelligence Brigade in Wiesbaden. Elise wasn’t exactly sure what he does at work, he was some sort of intelligence specialist is all that she knew, but she was also well aware of the fact that he loved his job and she respected that. Evan took a lot of pride in what he did, no matter if he couldn’t or wouldn’t share exactly what that was with Elise.
Elise didn’t mind that Evan wouldn’t share his work with her. The Army had been good to them thus far in the short four years she had been along for the ride. Medical insurance and housing allowance were included in the package, and though Evan’s junior enlisted paychecks were quite small, they were managing to get by just fine.
Evan was still very much in love with the Army. He had a heart full of “Hooah.” The term “Hooah” is a term of endearment, a battle cry for US Army soldiers.
Evan was a soldier’s soldier, a model for others to emulate. He was devoted, disciplined, and physically fit. Evan loved being a soldier almost as much as he did his wife and little girl. Sometimes the Army had to come first, that was the nature of the job, after all, but he did love his family above all.
Evan had gotten home from his Afghanistan deployment just in time for the dog days of summer. Evan and Elise didn’t have the typical post-deployment adjustment relationship problems that they had seen or heard that other military couples have experienced. They were happy and they trusted each other. Their daughter, Maggie, played a big role in that. The only problem that they had at the moment was the summer heat, and Elise’s inability to sleep through it.
Somehow, their four-year-old daughter, Maggie, managed to sleep through the night without a problem. She had a music box and a nightlight in her room which helped to lull her to slumber. Evan also seemed to fair fine with the misery, but he had just spent the last year in the desert sleeping in a tent or on the ground with several other men. He was more than happy to fall asleep beside Elise in his own bed.
It was an ordinary Monday night. Maggie had gone down at eight o’clock without a fuss. Evan had fallen asleep in front of television around eleven in his uniform, remote in hand, without even shutting off his Netflix.
Elise, as usual, couldn’t sleep. She was restless, tossing and turning as she had for the last two weeks. Finally, at around two in the morning, she managed to drift off.
She was amazingly beautiful, self-motivated, and hard charging young woman. At thirty-two years old, Elise was a mother and military spouse who had just endured a yearlong deployment in a foreign country with no family support, as her parents were a world away in Hawaii.
Elise had almost no free time and around the clock, responsibilities chasing after a four-year-old daughter and running a household while her husband was deployed. Yet, despite all of this, she remained extremely positive, proactive, and full of energy.
Growing up as an aspiring dancer and athlete, Elise had made it a point to go to the base gym and work out at least three times a week during the deployment, and she even went as far to set up a childcare exchange program with other Army spouses to make sure she had time to do so. The Garrison Sergeant Major ended up giving her a letter of appreciation for her efforts in a ceremony held in the lobby of the base gym. Her picture and an article about her efforts ended up on the base’s Facebook page.
Elise had long, dark hair, naturally olive colored Polynesian skin, and chestnut eyes – all courtesy of her Hawaiian father. Yet, she spoke with an accent so uniquely southern, passed down from her mother that there were moments it was hard for those that didn’t know her to understand her.
Elise had always dreamed of being an actress or a model, but most of all she wanted were to dance and sing. She grew up in the church choir, singing in church on Sundays, and on the stage in school plays almost every year. But, most of all, it was dancing that made Elise feel alive. She danced in local pageants, in plays, and in festivals. She won awards for her dances. Elise even choreographed an entire dance recital, some fifteen minutes in length, which she practiced almost every night. She performed it in front of her entire high school for Homecoming to rave reviews.
Dancing was a childhood fantasy that never materialized. Her dreams took a backseat to motherhood after an unsuccessful attempt at college at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, where she met Evan a little over five years before.
Evan’s recent deployment to Afghanistan put a lot of things in Elise’s life into perspective. It made Elise realize that she could accomplish quite a lot on her own. She managed to live abroad while taking care of their daughter without the support of her Hawaiian family. It was a full-time job, after all, being a mother with a deployed spouse.
Elise was finally sound asleep. She was so tired from battling the heat that the roaring of the fans from all sides didn’t seem to disturb her.
Only an
It was her mother, Anne, calling from a number that she did not recognize.
Elise’s grandfather, Kai, was dead.
She was at first in shock, standing quietly with the pop socket of her pink iPhone X clutched between her hands. Then, just moments later, she fell into shambles.
Elise began to sob. Her cries woke Evan who tried his best to comfort her.
Elise was Tutu Kane’s girl, after all. He had spoiled her from the moment she was born. One of the main reasons that Elise could have never pictured herself living in military housing was the fact that her grandfather and father had always ensured she had the best of the best.
Elise’s grandfather was against her marrying Evan. That was a secret of which Evan had never learned, and never would. Kai had worked hard to establish a nice life for his family, working his way from a tiny house at the hills of the Ko’olau Mountains of Oahu to a nice home in a wealthier neighborhood of nearby Kailua.
It’s important to note that Kai didn’t oppose Elise’s relationship because Evan was a bad guy, or because of the fact that Evan was a haole, meaning white boy, or simply because of the fact that he was a soldier.
The truth of the matter was that Evan wasn’t a bad guy. In fact, Evan was a great guy. He was a devoted father, husband, and soldier.
Elise’s grandfather, Kai, simply understood the reality of the situation. Army life wouldn’t be easy for her. He had been in the military himself and knew all too well.
When they met, Evan held the rank of Private in the Army, as a junior in rank as it gets. With a base pay of fifteen hundred dollars a month, he made less money than a garbage man – less money than the most junior garbage man in the lowest paying city in the world – or at least he felt that way at times.
Elise’s grandfather felt that there was no way that Evan could support her on the pennies he made. He had been a soldier himself during Vietnam and understood the struggle. Furthermore, Kai felt that there was no way that Evan could maintain the lifestyle that Elise was accustomed to, being an island girl and the daughter of a partner of a prestigious Honolulu law firm.
But, Elise was a stubborn girl. When she fell in love with Evan, after bumping into him outside of a coffee shop on the Kaneohe Marine Corps base with her girlfriends, his salary had absolutely nothing to do with it. He was young, cute, and kind. She fell in love with his Georgia accent, which complemented the New Orleans drawl she had inherited from her mother.
Elise wouldn’t listen to the pleas of her grandfather, Kai, or her father, Kalani not to marry Evan. They wanted Elise to have the chance to be the dancer she had always wanted to be. They knew that she had the talent and the drive to make it happen. Yet, by fate, she had become a wife and mother.
Elise hadn’t chosen a worse life with Evan. It may not have been the life that she dreamed of as a child, but it was a good life, none the less. She realized this as Evan held her and comforted her while she was in anguish over the news of her grandfather’s death.
It didn’t seem real.
“It’s not true,” Elise said to Evan.
Yet, Elise knew that it was true.
Evan comforted Elise for a few more minutes, then called his First Sergeant and asked to take three weeks of unplanned leave to go to Hawaii for the funeral. Having just come off a deployment with plenty of days on his leave balance, Evan’s command was lenient with him requesting the time off. Within minutes of his request, Evan’s Commanding Officer had already approved the leave request for him over the phone and the family was set and approved to travel to Elise’s Hawaiian home for the funeral.
Elise’s grandfather, Kai, would be buried at the Valley of the Temples Cemetery in Kaneohe, Hawaii, where all of the previous generations of her father’s family were laid to rest. The Valley of the Temples was an amazing, lusciously green cemetery on the Windward Side of Oahu, sitting at the foot of the Ko’olau Mountains. The Ko’olau Mountains were shaped like the back of a dragon, and on days when it rained, one could see hundreds of waterfalls cascading. It was truly an amazing place.
Evan and Elise booked the first possible flight to Honolulu from Frankfurt, Germany for the three of them, maxing out a credit card to cover it. There was no time for them to attempt to try to fly Space Available for free on military aircraft. The airline they chose was nice enough to give them a bereavement rate, but the cost was still well beyond the means of an Army family.
After traveling nearly twenty-four hours straight on four flights, the wheels of their aircraft touched down on Oahu at the Honolulu International Airport. The front hatch of the plane opened to the unmistakable aroma of Hawaii, and the tropical sunshine. Holding Maggie, Elise turned her head and saw two rainbows off in the distance. Thinking about the passing of her Tutu Kane, she suddenly realized that nothing in her life would ever be the same. Elise didn’t know just how right she was.
Elise’s mom, Anne, met the young family at the baggage claim of the Honolulu International Airport. Anne was fifty-six years old, yet dressed more like a thirty-year-old. She was wearing Kate Spade, Michael Kors, and Jimmy Choo. Anne was a grandmother, but she tried her very best to stay young and trendy.
Anne had Elise when she was twenty-four, following her husband, Kalani, back to Kaneohe after he graduated from Tulane Law School. Anne’s choice to abandon the South was rare, but not too rare for a Southern Belle socialite of her caliber. Anne had hardly left her Parish in Louisiana, let alone the state before she moved away to Hawaii for good.
Anne and Elise hugged for a moment alongside the luggage carousel while they waited for their bags, and then Maggie leapt into Anne’s arms.
“Welcome home.” Anne said, “It’s been so lonely without you guys here.”
This statement was a bit cliché, being that Evan and Elise had never actually lived on Oahu as a married couple.
It had been a long time, after all, since Elise had been home to Hawaii. In the year that Evan was deployed, she had not made a single trip to Kaneohe, which had upset Anne quite a bit. Elise and Evan just couldn’t afford the price of the tickets, and they were too proud to ask her parents for help.
Elise and Anne talked for a few minutes at the airport about what had happened to her grandfather. Tutu Kane Kai did not suffer. Apparently, he had a heart attack and died peacefully in his sleep.
Elise, Evan, Anne, who was carrying Maggie, turned and walked out of the baggage claim. Evan pushed an empty stroller while dragging a luggage cart loaded with a mountain of bags behind him.
On the way out of the baggage claim, Elise looked to the left on the wall where she noticed a digital advertisement. It was an ad for a nightclub she had never heard of before.
The ad was an illustration of a nine-story building, half aflame and half frozen, with two bikini clad girls in devil’s horns and tails on either side of it. There was one word written above in flame.
“OBLIVION”
Before she was married, Elise had been a major player in the Honolulu club scene. That behavior, in the end, contributed to her not finishing her studies at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.
