Cemetery Strike

by Christopher Orza

  I leaned against the second floor platform, a hammer and crash cymbal splitting my head. There needed to be more to life if there could ever be this much pain, I thought. But there wasn’t more. There wasn’t anything.

  I put my hand around my own throat to choke myself dead. All it did was send a drill of pain into the two horns that still kept growing out of my skull. I had no choice but to keep breathing.

  When I finally opened the door to the apartment, Crystal Meth stood there like she’d been waiting for me. She said, “You goddamn mutherfucker.”

  I walked passed her to the bedroom. She grabbed my shoulder, spun me around, sending a whirl of pain into my nerves. When I stopped, the whole Earth changed its orbit and I fell into the wall.

  She said, “You’re a real mutherfucker coming in looking like that.”

  Normally I would’ve said, “And you’re a fatherfucker. And the chip in your tooth is frowning at me. And that other gap in your teeth, where the one’s missing, that’s a physical manifestation of who you really are.” I didn’t say any of that, though. I just held onto the wall so I could stay up.

  She said, “You can’t be here looking like the devil’s brother. CPS is making unannounced visits so I could get my son back. I need to have my boy.”

  “Then you should clean this place up,” is what I should’ve said. But I just let her argue. I couldn’t talk because my heart had migrated to my brain and was beating it into the front of my skull.

  I made it to the bed, all with her asking which dealer smacked me up. I closed my eyes, but the pain wouldn’t let me sleep. I pretended to sleep anyway. And then, after forever, it finally worked. Real darkness came. Throughout, I kept having the same dream of stacking what looked like short, glass straws. I’d wake up with the pain splitting day into night, and I’d fall back asleep to pile up more glass cylinders, counting them like money.

  Crystal bounced on the bed and asked, “What are you doing?”

  Stacking, I tried to say.

  “Sorry about before,” she said. “I’m tense. With the kid coming and being hungry all the time with no appetite. I’m sorry. I could make it up to you.” She rubbed my back.

  Not now. I’m busy.

  “What happened, babe?”

  I’m stacking.

  “Stacking what?”

  In one pile:

  Plastic vampire teeth.

  Bodies.

  Masks.

  Another pile:

  Days sober.

  Chicken broth.

  Work.

  Another:

  Piles of sex.

  Crystal Meth.

  Blue smoke.

  A stiff arm with gold cufflinks wiped away all the organizing I’d been doing in my sleep. I woke up in the dark, sat up.

  Minutes. I was stacking minutes so they could add up to something.

  A cut of pain slashed into the horns on my head and all the glass vials shattered. I turned over and felt like throwing up again.

  “You’re burning up.” Crystal touched my cheek. It felt nice, her cool hand against my fiery skin. She said, “Want me to get you a drink?”

  “You’re only kind when I hurt,” I said.

  “I’m trying to help.”

  “What about all the yelling?” I said.

  She actually looked pretty sitting in bed with her tan top and short shorts. She said, “Doesn’t this make up for it?”

  “No.”

  I still needed a cold drink. So, dressed in the same clothes that I’d been assaulted in by the two brothers, I left the apartment, blood stained on my chest, piss dried on my groin. As I walked out of the building, onto the street, and into a corner store, Crystal pleaded for me to come back.

  At a corner store I bought the orange juice with the money card that addicts have to use, the one with every restriction possible that basically only lets you buy food or use mass transit. After swallowing an orange juice and a handful of aspirin, I still felt the same. I still had the headache. I still had horns. I still had nothing. And, I’d tried to choke myself to death.

  With death on my mind, walking, I ended up at Woods Edge. It was so quiet inside. I hopped the gate like a sloppy Spiderman.

  For some reason I ended up standing next to Brother One and Brother Two’s dead father. Even in the open air, the cemetery smelled of death. I thought of the Chinese delivery guy’s broken surgical mask. Broken, beat, or bleeding, like everything else in my life.

  I kicked the dead man. It had to be someone’s fault, what happened. I kicked him again. The more I kicked, the more my brain sent electric shots of pain through the rest of my body. The more my brain hurt, the more I kicked. After a while I could feel my head swelling. I fell onto my hands and knees.

  A metal cross rested at the old man’s head, the type you jam into the dirt by a headstone. It had a sharp, hollow tip, like some kind of strange gardening tool, or more like a huge needle.

  I had no idea what I was doing. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe I wanted to breathe in the old man’s death. To choke on his death. I don’t know. But I picked up the cross, held it like a knife, and stabbed him in the chest. Then I sucked in on the top of it, inhaling deep.

  As I exhaled, the world faded to a crisp dimness. Stars swirled down from outer space as little flames of light, squiggling in the air, writing nonsensical magic. One tiny star morphed into a lightning bug and left a trail of beeping light wherever it flew. I looked at the light until it meant something. In big flashing letters, if you looked close and added up all the spots, it said, “Life.”

  I blinked a thought. I understood something. My head felt perfect. I didn’t need anything. I had it. I had it all along.

  Then the high really hit me.

  Music started, blasting me forward. It sounded like rock with a hip-hop beat, and it was loud. The ground pushed up at me and then flattened into place, like god shaking out a rug. With the place flattened, I could tell I was in an orchard. A stone orchard where they grew bodies for the taking. Each stone had human roots, and each set of roots had lungs.

  It came to me that I could inspect myself to see if I had become clearer as well. Looking at my hands, a speck formed between the lines of my fingerprint. It grew and grew until I couldn’t hold it anymore. As I spread my hand away from myself, a pink person twirled off of my fingertips, jumped to the ground, and faced me. It was a ballerina. She looked at me and curtsied.

  “You’re mine,” I said. I didn’t want her to become invisible like the stars and headstones. I wanted her to stay.

  She smiled. “I’m not you, silly.”

  I backed up. The grass rose from under her, giving the ballerina a forest stage where she could teach her stories. With the music now changed to orchestral sliding strings, she danced, seducing butterfly shadows that flapped all around her. These pieces of night aimed to bother her, but she danced with them, showing the blackness how wonderful it could be.

  “You’re perfect,” I said.

  It made her stop to look at me. It made everything stop. The music. The stage. Her dancing. I shouldn’t have risked disturbing her.

  The ballerina stood right in front of me. She smiled and pulled down the neck of her leotard, showing me her cherry nipple.

  “It’s okay,” she said, and disappeared.

  The rest of the night I spent giggling, chasing iridescent drops of floating water, and intensely loving the smallest sensory pleasures, like humming until my chest floated or eating gourmet air.

  For me, especially that first time, huffing was a utopian mixture of heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, Vicodin, and Jesus, all without the hangovers or prayers, of course.

  In the morning the sun burned open the sky, shooting away darkness. I lit a cigarette for real.

  Sonny’s voice said, “John? What the hell are you doing?”

  Reality reversed itself into me. A vulture opened its mouth and I walked out.

  “Why are you up there?” Sonny said.

  I looked arou
nd. I was sitting on top of the trailer.

  Sonny said, “I think you might have a concussion. Get down.”

  I stood up, jumped to the ground, landed on my feet, but fell anyway.

  Sonny helped me up and soured his face at me. “What are you doing here so early? What’d you hop the gate?”

  “I got here early,” I said. “Had to chase some maniac out. Got him, though.”

  Sonny was shaking his head. “I’m gonna give you the benefit here, John. But from this point on, don’t come in my cemetery without me, no matter what you’re doing. I can’t have any repeats of what happened yesterday.” He rubbed his face like he was putting life back in it. With his hands down, I could see how old he really was. He said, “I was up all night thinking of what happened. I can’t help but feel responsible.”

  “Don’t even worry about it. I’m great. Couldn’t be better.” And I couldn’t. I had my high back, and it was better than it had ever been. And it was all mine. A supply laid at my feet, out in the open, where no one else knew to look.

  “Well, it shouldn’t have happened like that,” Sonny said.

  “I’m fine. Trust me. I’m actually glad it happened. Last night helped me figure out what I want. How I need to change some things with my girlfriend.”

  Sonny said, “You gotta have the right person to love. That helps. A lot.” Then he went on to spill his brains to me. He brought me inside the trailer and made bitter coffee, handed me a cup, and watched me until I took a sip. He told me about his sick wife. That she’d had cancer on and off for longer than some people are alive. Sonny was all over the place, telling me how his father helped build the unions, because the men were working themselves to death in the factories, killing themselves on the docks. He said, “We needed unions back then. Now, they’re nothing but power and greed.” Sonny took a sip of his coffee. “You should go home, John. You’re wearing the same bloody shirt as yesterday. And you’re practically sleeping in your chair.”

  I took one last sip of coffee and stood to leave. I had an urge to talk to Crystal. To explain to her how good life should be and how we both needed to be better at it.

  “Before you go,” Sonny said, standing up himself, rushing to a cabinet. “Wear this.” He threw a black shadow at me. I caught it in my stomach. It was a baseball cap. He said, “Put it on before you cross the gate. You don’t wanna scare any kids out in the street.” The hat had the Woods Edge logo on it, the one with a golden tree swirling and reaching into the sun. I put it on over my horns and walked out of the trailer.

  ––––––

  When I got home Crystal immediately accused me of cheating.

  “Where the hell have you been all night?”

  I curled my lip like I couldn’t believe she was accusing me of something. I said, “I went to get juice. Then I walked around. It made my head feel better.”

  “You didn’t walk around all night.”

  I looked right at her. “Yes, I did.”

  “Who are you fucking?”

  Her finger stabbed at my face, accusing me of one wickedness I’d never actually done.

  I said, “Just ‘cause I’m smiling doesn’t mean I’m fucking someone pretty.”

  Which made her say, “Pull down your goddamn pants.”

  It’d been two weeks since we’d had sex, the longest I’d gone since court-ordered rehab, so I dropped my pants, pulled her in, and turned her ass toward me. But she spun back around and knelt on the floor, like it was my birthday. I closed my eyes, waiting for her warm mouth. She grabbed it…and nothing. All I heard was her sniffing my penis. Then she put her tongue on it, but just to taste it for some other girl’s juices.

  She got up. “I don’t know what the hell you’re up to,” she said.

  “Leaving your dry ass,” I said with my jeans still at my ankles. I was pissed off, standing there with my dick in my hand, after expecting something good. I had more to say, too, but before I could explain myself, really say how much I wanted to leave all her period stains, someone knocked on the door.

  “Pull up your pants,” Crystal whispered through her teeth.

  Of course, I pulled them up.

  While I buckled my belt she answered the door. An old woman in an old woman business suit stood there, her hand resting on a boy’s shoulder.

  “Hello.”

  Crystal held the door in her hand, her mouth open the way it should’ve been circled around my balls.

  “We’re here for a supervised visit. This was one of the suitable time slots that you recommended. You remember, don’t you?” The old lady, Miss I know Your Government, stretched her neck to look all around the apartment, inspecting the place. She looked around like a sitcom mother-in-law, already disappointed with what she saw.

  Crystal still hadn’t invited them in or hugged her son. Actually, she hadn’t even looked at him. She just stood there, dumbfounded.

  I said, “You wanna come in?”

  “Thank you,” Miss Government said, taking off her jacket.

  Still without touching her son, but finally connecting eyes with him, she said, “Are you hungry? I could get food.”

  “We’re only here for an hour,” the lady answered, and the boy just smiled.

  Crystal walked around the apartment picking up bras, used dishes, ashtrays. I looked all around for something to entertain the kid. One of the only things I’d brought to the apartment, a box of books that belonged to my father, sat by the TV still sealed with packing tape. I thought I could look through there for at least one book that’d be good for the kid.

  I opened the box and looked inside. All the books were either about angels caught in cosmic cycles or wormholes that led to different dimensions. None of them had pictures or rhymes or anything appropriate for children. So I got a different idea.

  “Hey kid,” I said, “I have a fun game we could play.”

  His eyes lit up. They were still the sad eyes of a boy with no confidence, but they lit with hope.

  I took the box of books and dumped them out. Sitting on the floor, I said, “Let’s see how high we can stack these before they start to fall over. We can have a contest. Whoever’s pile falls over first gets to knock down the other person’s pile.”

  The kid was smart. It didn’t take him too long to figure out he should put the heavier books on the bottom. And it didn’t take him long to know that knocking down the other tower was just as fun, if not more fun, than winning.

  A tower of books leaned into me and I pretended like it knocked me over. When I did that, the boy laughed like crazy until my Woods Edge baseball cap tumbled off, showing my demon horns. I swear I could feel the two bumps swelling as the kid gazed at them. Quickly, I fumbled for the hat and slammed it onto my head, sending throbs of pain all over.

  In the moment that my lumpy brain was exposed, I worried that the kid might’ve seen me for the monster that I was. But that didn’t happen. No. The kid saw devil horns on a man he’d just met, a man associated with the mother who had abandoned him, and, when he looked at me, when he spoke next, he just said, “You’re okay,” meaning, “You’re still okay.”

  Then, as if wanting to move away from that slight mishap, the kid handed me a book to start my pile for another round. I pretended it weighed too much and dropped my arms to the ground.

  “You’re funny,” the kid said.

  “You’re funny,” I said, poking him in the belly. I couldn’t believe that I’d just been about to storm out of Crystal’s apartment for the last time. I looked over at her and smiled. She was wiping down the kitchen counter, watching us, smiling back. The kid was the best thing about her. Him being there even made her seem prettier than she actually was.

  Good things like that never happen to me in bunches. Think about it. I’d found huffing––a drug that you didn’t have to hurt anyone (alive) to use––and I’d found a little person I could relate to and care about. I had everything. At that moment, anyway. And, now that we’re at it, now that I’m making
these grand explanations, I guess I’ll tell you: the kid is the reason I’m doing all this–– the reason I’m finally ready to make the killing stop. After what happened, I have to.

  So, still playing with the kid, I decided against breaking up with Crystal. I didn’t have anywhere else to stay, anyway. Stacking those books, I thought of how to get things right with her. I didn’t want to share body huffing with her. For one thing, it wouldn’t have been nice after all her time sober. Also, it wasn’t very believable. But I had to tell her something about why I was out all night. I couldn’t think of anything to tell her, though. I needed more time.

  “Time’s up,” Miss Government said, already moving closer to the door.

  Different thoughts competed for space in my brain. Huffing. Children. Crystal. Thirst.

  When the kid stood by the door to leave, that’s when finally Crystal touched him. She gave him a hug, his arms dangling at his sides. I reached in to ruffle his hair.

  “When are you coming back?” I asked.

  “Well,” Miss Government said, “he can come for supervised visits every week until we begin the next stage, which will hopefully come very soon.”

  “Great,” I said.

  “Yeah, great,” Crystal echoed.

  As soon as their backs were turned, Crystal closed the door and snarled at me. The quiet apartment right away stunk of her fishy vagina.

  Without even looking at me, while walking away, she said, “When are you gonna pack your shit?”

  My whole life I kept all my shit in boxes, and every time, as soon as I unpacked and decided to stay, someone told me to pack up and leave.

  Chapter Five

  After getting kicked out of Crystal’s apartment, I carried a clumsy box of books straight to my PO’s office. I had nowhere else to go. And, I had to immediately report to him if I lost my job or place of residency, anyway. If I didn’t, if he found out before I told him, I’d be in direct violation of my parole. Obviously, this was when laws like that still mattered, before I started the drug apocalypse that now hangs over our world. So I went straight from Crystal’s, even though I had something much more soothing that I could’ve been doing.