Flashlight in hand, I unlace my bloody boots and set them aside before opening the back door, weapon raised. I let the door touch the frame softly, as Eileen would want me to, then I move slowly through the house, panning for intruders. When it’s clear, I grab a stack of towels from the linen closet and head back to the garage. I spread them out on the ground so I have a clean place to walk to retrieve our belongings, a couple of weapons, and my brother.
Once I’ve brought everything inside, I lay precious Corbin on our couch. My nerves catch up to me, replaying the feat I just overcame, and the magnitude of the task before me. I crack open one of five remaining beers from Eve’s dad’s twelve pack—which is warm now, but I don’t care—and I sit beside him for a moment, remembering the sound of his soft breath . . .
I erupt from the couch and head out back.
I do my best to view this objectively, surveying the landscape for the best burial site. But everywhere I look, Eileen’s garden patches occupy the space.
Eileen’s garden . . .
My eyes travel to the particles that remain from when I’d kicked the tomato at the wall. Tears want to come, but I refuse to let weakness deter me from doing the most important thing I’ve ever had to do. Instead, I let rage rise in me, a great, red geyser. I chug the beer until it’s gone, then chuck the bottle over my fence as far as I can throw it, followed by shattering in the distance, and an uproar from the infected.
I inspect my hands, the throbbing that grows from the torn blisters when I focus on the pain. I’ll have to wrap them before I dig again. Then, I remember the bottle of Vicodin in Eileen’s medicine cabinet from when she broke her wrist last year. I’d taken a couple here and there, but was careful not to take too many and alert them to my obvious need to be as high as fucking possible, as often as fucking possible. The last thing I needed was for them to kick me out when I had nowhere else to go.
When I get to the master bath in their bedroom, chill bumps rise on my arms. I shine the flashlight around, sensing a presence in the room. I check under the bed and in the closet, but there’s no one. The only presence I find are the ghosts of my parents lingering in their clothing and their belongings that will never touch their skin again.
In the bathroom, I push the shower curtain aside, ready to shoot, but the shower’s empty, too. Releasing my paranoia in a breath, I open the medicine cabinet and shine the light on the labels. I find the Vicodin, unscrew the cap, and swallow three of the six remaining pills, then grab a package of gauze bandages to wrap my hands.
My stomach is empty, so it doesn’t take long for the throbbing in my hands to subside to the drug, replaced by a sad euphoria. I finish off another beer, and another, and when I’m in a better, numbed place, I wrap my hands with bandages, and head to the garage for a shovel.
While I’m there, again I see the taped box of family keepsakes. This time, I pick it up and carry it to the yard. I can’t open it yet, but I will . . . right before it’s time for me to leave.
So happy Corbin had been able to help his mother plant pumpkin seeds, plastic shovel in hand, digging up dirt by the teaspoon. I find that shovel against the garage wall and hold it tightly, until I toss it aside, like a childhood dream. And entire childhood. A child.
I choose the space beside their pumpkin patch and attack the soil, tossing clods of dirt everywhere. But after a few minutes of that, I realize I can’t keep up that pace, and I steady myself. Not to mention it’s easier to refill them if the dirt is all in one spot.
About an hour into the first one, I stop to rest, polishing off another beer. Then, I dig all night, until the early light of dawn paints the horizon, and then the sun moves halfway across the sky. I want to quit, but a screaming inside of me says: you’re going to do this, goddamn it. It’s the least you could do. Don’t you dare fucking quit!
Drenched in sweat, and scorched by a lifetime’s worth of burnt calories squeezed into the last twenty hours, I move on to the last, tiny grave. There’s no reason I should still be upright. But it’s my sweet brother’s final resting place, and I refuse to fail him on this one if it’s the last thing I do. Luckily, defiance is one of my strengths.
I chew up the last three Vicodins with my last beer, and rest for a few minutes for the first time in hours. From that desolate daze, I gather my last sliver of strength and will myself to rise again. I dig until I can stand in the hole up to my waist, then climb out on unsteady feet and stumble inside.
From the fireplace mantel, I remove a picture of us from last year. Eileen had to bribe me with new clothes to get me to go. And then, I refused to smile. But there’s little Corbin, grinning that brilliant baby smile that could tame the wildest, raging seas . . .
I break the glass and remove the picture, shoulder his little backpack of toys, then crouch to scoop him into my arms.
When I get him outside, I kneel at his graveside, then sit for a moment with him in my lap. “I’m so sorry, little brother.” I uncover him, kiss his cold forehead, and cry. “I’m so . . . so . . . sorry. I love you. I hope you knew that I loved you!” I hold him close, like I should’ve every day of his short life. If only I’d have known . . .
I hop down into his grave and lay him gently on the soil, and with one last kiss, I weep as I climb back out again. I gather a few of his toys from his bag and encircle him with them. His Mr. Potato Head, the last toy we played with together. His Spiderman and Batman action figures, and his stuffed puppy. Then I place our picture on his chest, above his non-beating heart. There I’ll be, too, until the moment I die . . . which surely isn’t too far away.
They didn’t deserve this ending, especially Corbin, so young and innocent, with his whole life laid out before him . . . Now, only four shovelfuls, and he’s erased from existence forever.
And then, it dawns on me: this is my punishment, my karma, here and now. Taking my own life would be a luxury I can’t afford, a gift I don’t deserve, for a debt long overdue. So, maybe I’ll live, if that’s what’s right, no matter how much it hurts. A living dead chick among the undead . . . we’re one and the same.
The stench in the bathroom is unbearable. I gag, almost puke, but the thought of losing my last beer and pills makes me keep it down. Holding my breath, I head into the bathroom again, take Eileen’s feet, and drag her out before I exhale. I can’t look at her. Her body is as stiff as wood, and the unnatural, cold, hardness of her makes me wish I let her hug me more, when she was soft and warm with life.
I drag her to her grave, and roll her into it. She lands with a thump, and for a second I stand there, staring at the back of her head. I consider trying to turn her over, but decide I can’t bear seeing her face anyway. I want to remember her as she was when she was alive. As she was the last time she told me that she loved me, when I didn’t say it back.
“I’m sorry I didn’t say it back,” I cry. “I love you, Mom. Okay? I always have. I always did. I love you so much. I always will.”
The anguish intensifies with each shovelful of dirt, and I’m struggling to hold it together. A lone blue jay perches in our maple tree, whistling a contradictory song, a machine gun of happiness in a morning that came, despite the promise of eternal darkness the night before.
But I know the truth. This day is nothing but darkness in disguise.
“Shut up!” I rip the pentacle from my neck in a moment of realization. There was never any protection. All the years and spells, the chants and potions, all the nights praying to a Goddess who was nothing more than an apparition. An extension of my own, screwed up mind.
“Shut the fuck up!” I hurl my necklace at the bird, who flaps away, as the sounds of the dead beyond the fence grow louder.
I barge in through the back door, ready to get this over with. I just can’t anymore. At the bathroom again, I take Henry’s feet and pull. He’s heavier than Eileen, and my energy’s spent, so it takes everything I have left to get him down the hallway, through the living room, and into the yard.
In the end, his b
urial plot was free. And I’m sure he’d be happy to know it was at home in his own back yard, instead of with millions of others in an expensive-ass cemetery. Though, if he knew it was me who buried him—who buried all of them—it would break his heart forever.
With another summoning breath of strength, I roll him into his resting place and kneel. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper, more wetness dripping onto the freshly unearthed dirt. “I love you, Dad. I always have. And I’ll miss you so much. I hope that, wherever you end up, you’ll forgive me.”
And something tells me he already has.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I tear through the kitchen, searching for anything alcoholic that might be hidden there, but I find nothing. Until my gaze lands on blood trails from the bathroom and down the hallway in front of me, right past Henry’s bottle of hundred-year-old scotch.
I guzzle it until my whole face, sinuses, and esophagus are ablaze, then head to my room to search for any weed I may have dropped. First, I search my desk, but all I find are crumbs. I pause at my dresser drawer, knowing the toll for opening it—how many more blows can I take?
I don’t want her, the familiar voice in my mind echoes as I open the drawer. After a hasty shuffling of its contents, I yank the drawer from its place and smash it against the opposite wall.
“Let’s hear you talk now, bitch!”
I send the next one crashing into the ceiling fan, shattering the glass covering, and the next across the room at my snow globe collection, and the next, and the next, wherever they land. I abolish the remnants of my existence, and collapse in a wailing heap in the middle of it all. Blood from a scrape drips down my arm, and my bruised knuckles throb from whatever it was I punched.
Through my watery veil, something catches my eye. I forgot I’d hidden it in my pants drawer. I pick it up and my stomach flip-flops in response, like it does every time I’m about to fry balls.
“Not yet.” I tuck it away in my pocket and rise from the mess, stumbling to the kitchen to consume more scotch.
With trembling hands, I take a cup from the cabinet, fill it with water, and gulp, only now realizing how thirsty I am. I consider eating, but decide it wouldn’t be possible, even if I tried. Instead, I sit at our kitchen table, butcher knife in hand, and open the box of cherished family heirlooms.
Regret is swift when I pull out the baby blanket I remember Corbin swaddled in as a newborn. The cartoon giraffes, zebras, and elephants were always too smiley, but even more so now. I remove it from the box and set it aside gently, then bypass a stack of baby clothes I can’t look at, to a manila folder with my given name on it: Grace Anne Chang, followed directly beneath it by female, age 10, and my birthdate. I don’t want to see what’s in this folder.
So why do I open it?
Because I’ve always aimed to hurt me in the worst possible ways . . . that much hasn’t changed.
As I skim my file from the last facility I was in, where they shipped me after my psychotic breakdown when Aislynn died, a few words stand out like neon lights: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, rape victim, Borderline Personality Disorder, candidate for alcoholism/addiction, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, Emotional Detachment and the list goes on, and on.
Eileen and Henry knew how broken I was. But they took me home anyway. And after years of maltreatment on my end, taking my pain out on them, they continued to take the abuse, giving me nothing but love in return. Always.
Something pops inside of me, the pin being plucked from a grenade. I’m watching myself from outside of me, screaming so that my lungs might burst and my skull might shatter at any moment. I help it along by banging my head against the wall, five, ten, fifteen times, but it’s not enough. I curl my shoulder around the stock of an AR-15 and blast holes in our already-shattered home, but that’s not enough, either. Nothing’s enough to fix the things left broken.
Ears ringing with pain, I remove the bottle of Stuart’s acid from my pocket. All it takes is a drop, he’d said that night, before dispensing one drop each on our tongues.
I squeeze until there’s nothing left, mouth flooded with liquid gold, and I chase it with the last of the scotch.
It starts as a metallic tickle in my jaw, then a full-body yawn turns to tremors. In minutes, the room changes shape and color, and auditory hallucinations start. I’m tripping hard, descending into unknown territory.
I float through the door, to their graves, to dump the contents of the Family Keepsakes box over them. A belated apology that will never be heard, and never be enough.
And then, I’m in the garage, rifle ready, opening the metal door to my hungry audience. The recoil knocks me off balance, but I manage to regain my stance and fire again, followed by staccato explosions of heads. Like a vintage horror slideshow.
I climb into the front seat and fumble with the door locks, the key in the ignition, while they surround me on all sides. I put the car in reverse, rolling over a few, trying to make my body do what it should to operate this thing when it keeps changing shape.
But what am I doing?
The thought is faraway, but the ending is near, inevitable. The crimson mouths of the dead, doused with liquid rubies, foreshadow a sad end, where life was the gem.
Colors, patterns, sounds play with my senses as I drive, everything sparkling. The streets are whitewater with human sharks, and we’re the bait, floating on a raft. One of me shoots, and the other me floats around them, dipping my fingers in the warm stream. The dashboard lights flash like a video game. Is this a video game?
You’re not even peaking, yet, Ophelia, Stuart says in my mind. Just wait. You’re about to go on a journey through the motherfucking cosmos.
Stuart, you’re . . . dead. How are you talking to me?
But he’s gone, and reality flashes for an instant. It flickers like a dying bulb.
My hands hold a steering wheel and Suki. They’re covered in dirt, and blood. The world has ended. I’m frying cosmic balls.
My thoughts echo in my head like tin cans on a string, relaying messages from here, to the beyond, and back again. I’m in the sweet purgatory between death and life, on the fence with black all around me. Which side will I fall into?
I’m at a destination. The building hangs over me like a flower on a grave.
That’s why I’m here: her grave.
The things they did to hurt her before that.
I load my weapons carefully, my movements leaving golden-trailed tracers. The concrete ripples like high tide, and there are bodies on either side of me. Wading in it. It’s okay if I drown, though, because I’m already a ghost. I’ve always been a ghost.
I give it gas, swerve around the piles and swarms of them to bust through the fence. They follow me in, so I stop and lean from my window to fire, jolting back like I’m made of rubber.
But I’ll be damned if they’re going to kill these fucking perverts before I get to them. I adjust my grip and take aim until my AR-15 is empty, then I toss it aside and continue with an AK. They drop like a carnival game, shots fire behind me, and more fall, then there’s a sting on my shoulder—hot at first, then cold.
“Don’t kill her,” someone says. “We can use her.”
And I fall from the SUV window onto the pavement.
Someone scoops me up into strong arms. “Welcome to Y, sweetheart.”
TWENTY-NINE
“I remember her,” a voice echoes from somewhere beyond the stars.
THIRTY
Hands everywhere, fire in my veins, and between my legs. Sweat drips onto me, teeth bite me, and fingernails claw my skin. Searing pain between my shoulder blades.
Darkness.
THIRTY-ONE
A curtain drops in my mind, letting in a trickle of light. It shines on my naked body, aware enough to know I’m fucked. Wasted. Gone. Possibly dead, but just too high to realize it yet.
Or maybe, this is a room in purgatory and I’m awaiting my judgment.
Then, I vaguely remember the sensations of men . . . co
ming then going like waves in space, each shooting star crashing into the next. A whole universe of scented, flavored pain, soaked in pleasure.
One of them pricks my arm, releasing me back to the cosmos before he fucks me from behind. And with that prick I welcome this terrible state of oblivion and bliss.
How did I get here?
I’ve been in this room forever.
Did you really die, Evie?
Yes.
And my parents? My little brother?
Yes. You buried them. Blisters of truth rub against the ropes you cling to.
One of them turns me over in the darkness, holds my head down. Somewhere far below, he enters me, and there’s pain—so much pain—but a wall of sweet pleasure blocks it.
“I remember you,” he says, thrusting into me, scraping his nails down my back. And when I cry out, he bites me, chokes me, cutting off my air supply. “I used to fantasize about this every day,” he growls, squeezing my left breast as he hammers into me. “Especially those two times I handcuffed you. I almost fucked you right then and there. I should’ve. Vincent, right? Grace Vincent?” He thrusts hard and deep. “With the attitude?”
“Yes.”
“Yessss. You’re my little slut now, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, you are,” he says into my ear. “And you like that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Dysphoria and Grace Page 13