by Tess McInnis
“Were you there” I asked bluntly.
“Was I where?” he answered more serious than when entering.
“Were you there at any of these intersections in my life? I mean, how come I don't remember you?” I took a dare and looked up at his face for response.
“Are you sure you are ready for this? How much do you want to know?”
“Just tell me something true. Just tell me who I am.”
Doctor gentle-brother looks around the silver and white ridden room and finds a chair. He slides it to his ass and literally plops down. I expected a beer and remote control to appear in his hands. He sighed and began a story aching to leave him.
“You were five, I was three. Our mom was just a teen herself. She gave birth to you when she was only fourteen. For the most part gramma took care of us due to mom's mental issues. I don't remember a whole lot at that time either with exception to her wild ways. Her moods
Mom had some serious issues...passed them right along to you.” He says so matter of factual.
“Why don't I remember any of this....or you?” I said staring at a spider in the high corner of the room. Watching it's journey close in on me. Doctor gentle- brother continues.
“Much happened in the fall of your fifth birthday. Mom was pregnant again. The fights between gramma and her, her and the current boyfriend lead her to sink into a depression. That's when she attempted suicide” He was shifting in his chair. A man reduced to boy mannerisms now. His face was a tear afraid to fall. I forgot the spider and soaked in the emotion crossing from him to me in smoky remembrance. He was so small in this tale of his own childhood despair. His lip quivered to hold back his manhood pride, but I saw the reduction of the past and his own knife he was pulling out to show me. I butted in selfishly pushing him for my own feeding, “is that why I dream of a woman's blood on me?” He looked away to gather face before answering. He shifted forward in his seat with his elbows on his knees and hands to his face. Moments passed. I swallowed hard for him. The whole time my other mind thinking he was stealing the limelight from me. This was my show. This was all about me. I am the one caught in self loathing and hate for people. I am the one with bleeding. I am the uninvited in the world, the unnoticed...How dare he fall before me. I hardened my head with a strong clench of my teeth and allowed my selfish sick mind to speak up.
“I FUCKING SAID IS THIS THE BITCH BLEEDING ON ME IN MY DREAMS?” Loudly I spoke, and loudly I jerked my leg to kick him hard in the shoulder. And why not I agreed with myself, he owed me. He shows up out of no where like captain save-a-ho, pulls a priestly confession, and now I am to coddle his fucked up mind too.
“YES...It was HER BLOOD...” he yelled back kicking the chair behind him. His composure was back to man. I patted myself on the back mentally for that one.
He was pacing around to the other side of my bed with words cocked and loaded. I felt them coming and I deserved them.
“She didn't want us..no, she didn't want YOU” he spit the venom six inches from my face. I felt every ounce of the poison.
“WHAT...SO, SHE TRIED TO KILL HERSELF OVER HAVING ME?” I yelled back, not surprised by any of this. I was holding a 'go figure' attitude on a lid of life mourning, so what did it matter now. However, the yelling felt good...and necessary.
“It wasn't just that...it was everything. Mom ended up in a mental institution and gramma had to take care of us. And she couldn't...so, she gave you away....” and like that, just like that...came the formula for my every thought. Every action. Every curse I wore. I was never wanted to begin with. This was a pageant walk. A smile walking down the ramp waving to everyone while the whole time donning the fabric lapel “Miss unwanted”. I couldn't cry now. I left that for my brother, for through all his pain he became the doctor. He had filtered it sharply towards a positive goal to heal people. I granted him the award for meaningful human being. I would have admired him a little more but he was not the one given away. I felt a jealous veil punch me in the heart. While he was busy inside himself coming to terms with words I was watching the spider crawl across my sheets on a mission to find prey. How poignant it would find me. I lifted my bare leg out of the sheet to encourage it's feeding. And I was thinking...who the fuck gives a child away?
“Okay...let me see if I get this one right” I startled him back towards me. “Gramma gives me away and Mom dies?” my voice flat as one tire popped, three to go.
“No, she didn't die...she is still alive and now well” he says quietly staring out the window.
“Ohhh, so I get it...give the kid away so she could live, how fucking gracious of her” two tires popped.
“It wasn't like that, she was tricked into signing adoption papers by gramma and the family”
“The family? What fucking family? The only family I know is dead and gone...of course you knew that, you seem to know everything about my life and for whatever reason...so where the fuck were you?” pissed. Beyond pissed. Hating.
“Hey I was a child too...I only heard bits and pieces...you were like a ghost in our lives. All we had was her sister to tell us about you. She would share stories of this lost little girl who was related to us. This imaginary little girl. I always begged her for more stories, for the truth. I couldn't remember if you were real or not until I grew up...I tracked you down just a few years ago. I couldn't just barge into your life and say 'hi, I am your brother'...”
“no...no...you just waited until I jumped the edge...perfect timing Doctor.” Three tires down, one to go.
“I wanted to help you”
“Seriously? Help me? Get over yourself...you saw the opportunity to relieve your own past despair and get a few questions answered yourself. Or maybe you just needed to be free once and for all from the ghosts of the past” I chewed on hate. I chewed on red...on hurting him physically for the sheer gumption of standing before me here and now. Insane, raped and near murdered and he has the ego of a lion to bring it all down again for me. I wanted him out of my room, out of my life.
“Get out” I said in low growling. He backed one step, with still words begging say.
“I SAID GET THE FUCK OUT” I stared directly into his eyes this time willing mine to burn his blind.
“No one knew you would end up in a dysfunctional home...they didn't know they were alcoholics, you have to believe that....” He had said it anyways. The last tire popped. I tore from the bed and backed him into the corner. I was now wearing my color. Aiming for his perfect life face, his loved face, soon to let him feel what it's like to be neither. I grabbed a silver bed pan and with both arms gripping hard I took a batter's position and stroked. And again. And again. Blood red artistic on white walls, part his...part mine. Passing on pain is a messy business. He was crying with both arms up as his feet slid to the floor. The bed pan twanged three times before the music stopped. Ants had come marching in like little ants do. “LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE” I screamed over and over. “I FUCKIN HATE ALL OF YOU” kicking everyone who came at me. They were pulling at Doctor gentle-brother to get him out from behind the corner out of the blood. How ironic now he was the one in the corner covered in blood. I was chanting “do you feel my life now motherfucker?” The I.V. Stand fell over with ants and I falling to the floor. “do you feel my life now motherfucker?” Uniforms rushed in. Handcuffs on. LET ME OUT by Future Leaders of the World Familiarity smoothed my mind. I remember cuffs, the cold tight metal digging into my wrists. Sadistic nature of a uniform to click them tight. Handcuffs belonged to me. Handcuffs were an antichrist. I would not pray to God who allows flesh over souls to be humiliated. To be controlled by those clicks of metal closing in on freedom. Every living thing is a contradiction to what is real and true. Even truth is a lie, and in a lie can be truth. Every human is a cluster of oppositional beliefs constantly fighting within them. Daily they struggle for a better thought. I am over the line they fear to cross. Indifferent to anything but my own tragedies. I often wonder how others do it...how they contain the puss pockets from l
ife and just let them fester. Where do the black holes go? Is there an eventual purging for all humans? Or is life containment mastered by imaginary handcuffs on the soul? I am sickened by thoughts of conformity to go so deep in, there is no escape. No way to vomit out pain caused by others. To hold years and years of wrong doings is nothing more than a rotting corpse wearing a flesh coffin. I am thinking fast these things and layers of other things all while fighting the ant's sedation. I feel them cleaning me of color. I feel uniforms posed by the door. I feel the essence of Doctor gentle- brother in another area outside my room. I see ants talking. Busy little fuckers. My thigh stings and I use my doped up arm to try to reach it to scratch the new hump...and through half lid eyes, I see the spider run out from under my sheets and escape this madness...lucky little fucker.
I touch my face and it feels different. Thick and soft...but not a good soft, a crinkled soft. A weighted skin of crease and wrinkles beyond my years now. It is crepe-like. Mirrors fold down like theater curtains all around me. I don't want to look, covering my old skinned face with my hands. Eyes tight to the loudness of this world here. The mirrors keep coming. “Vanity” they cry. “Vanity”, they keep calling me that name. “Vanity come here...” I refuse to take my hands off my face, my lemon face expression frozen in fear of talking mirrors. I hear a small cracking, a slicing sound so evil it swallows my guts inside. The sound shoots like a spear, like the sound of a guitar string hitting the body of the guitar magnified by a thousand. I am still not looking. “Vanity...oh Where are you?” I know what the mirrors want...they will my reflection so they can laugh. I refuse to budge and the first sharp chard implants into my leg. I scowl in pain. A second one leaves it's post and whizzes by my ear taunting me to remove my hands from my face. I can feel each finger on my hand press deeply into my eye sockets holding them back, pushing them deep in. I will not look at an old me, they cannot make me. I was pretty once. I was so pretty. Hell is here in oldness. “Vanity...come look-see...” Another mirror scissor cracks and shoots a large triangle into the other leg. I scream but hold fast my blind position. The mirrors are laughing and singing “who loves you when your old”. I fall on my face, eyes still closed when another larger piece of mirror pierces my backside. Laying on my stomach face down...the ground begins to roll. It rolls. Like a wave, it is moving me like old dead wood on a low tide. I am gradually washing up and washing back in an imaginary ocean.
“Vanity...Love loves beauty” the mirrors tell me. I am still rolling but with a faster motion. And I am still eyes tight, hands tight to face. This is not happening I tell myself. And just like that I am completely rolled over an edge...landing hard into something waiting for me. I feel the sting from the mirror on my back when it meets the wood planks. Everything is quiet. A world here now without one inkling of sound. So quiet...dare I peek to see what has happened. I feel crowded in this wooden landing, my elbows touching something else wood. The mirrors are gone. I am certain to be okay. I slide my hands down off my face...open my eyes slowly...and there is a loud hollow slam! I am in a coffin...
DROP THE WORLD by Lil' Wayne
Scream inside and no one hears you.
Scream inside and no one hears you. Ever.
I wake to this mantra sweating and believing reflections now will kill me. I have spent a lifetime screaming inside. I have spent a lifetime looking at the same face undecided about the face coming back at me. Never could I convince myself I was pretty. My mother had told me otherwise. With the scissors coming in my room at night to cut up my hair while I slept. That mirror never knew what to expect in the morning. Odd in boy hood cuts, little girl dresses meant for wearing in young years, each day I knew I would be subject to more bullying. The strangest dream in real time is getting beat up in your front yard while your mother watched and applauded in a drunken stupor. Me on my hands and knees crying while a native girl sat on my back repeatedly punching me. Each day I would run hard and fast from the bus stop bee-lining for my sick home. The lesser of two evils. Some days I would make it in the door. Catching my breath, I would stand in the stink of the laundry room forever. Not wanting what was on either side of the door. The girls would wait taunting me to come out. And then there were the moments she would be in the darkest corner of the room waiting to push me back out.I could smell her, she could smell my fear. The stench of pee fused with alcohol would draw close and I had but little choice but to open that door and run right out into the fists again.“Git er” she'd say “Git er good” a cigarette of long ash clinging on her lip. I remember the seasons from my knees. The cold on my hands from winter, and how the punches stung more. The spring grass as my face planted deep impressions on the softness of earth renewing. The crunch of fall leaves meshing with my current head mess. It was the same. For years. Until she started to go blind. Where was my real mother, the other mother...in those minutes, hours and days simultaneously living in a perfect world far away. I was a fear child trapped in a nightmare and she was the beautiful social enigma with a secret never to be told.
KILLING IN THE NAME OF by Rage Against the Machine
The handcuffs were on one hand and sliding along the hospital bed. I had a free hand to reach over and discover this. I was once again in a different room. A different place. I realized they had returned me back to the kooky factory while I was sedated. I also realized why I was handcuffed. I supposed at this point, Doctor gentle- brother was going to file charges on me and I would be returned to prison. Why wouldn't he when every encounter sewn this result. Quizzes were streaming my brain and this was all a bad puzzle. Humans had returned me to the scene of the crimes, handcuffed to beat all and lest charge me with a crime. Typical for the world. I nodded in agreement to no one here. I felt conned by him, manipulated into reliving childhood terrors simply for his personal motives. I felt abandoned again. Abandoned. Odd word, it must be mine. Deathly quiet in here except for the clink of the handcuffs. I said “Abandoned” loud to see if someone would come. I said it again. No one came. My mind was castrated into a new mode of behaviors. Treat me like a criminal, I will be the criminal I thought. There will be no tears here. I am a rock. Deviance blanketed my spirit, and I was not tempered with a soft heart. I was not wounded in soul, I was not weak in will...I was dangerous. A mind flip. Killing in the name of...now you do what they told you, now you do what they told you.... One I am accustomed to all my life. A different woman completely. An armor hardened of situations forcing me to step up without fear. Living in drug world I had learned to handle myself. To do whatever was necessary for survival. I could deal with the baddest of the bad from boyfriends to police...police often being the worse. Nosy fuckers. They always told the story how they saw it. Not how it actually materialized. They only had partial sentences of truth and natch, I just filled in the empty spaces with what I thought should go there. “She wouldn't know the truth if it hit her in the face” one said. I remember him well. I remember thinking that was the pot calling the kettle black. Stupid fuckers. I want a cigarette, no I wanted to get high now. I wanted to give them the full version of my disgust for law. For their laws. They were so hungry for a haul, they were willing to take me on in a three hour standoff then. One girl barricaded in her home and a dispatch of numerous cars, officers laid out in fields with guns drawn...all for me. And for what? Something that wasn't there. I laughed as three officers buried their faces in my underwear drawer while another pinned me down by my hair to the bed. “Pick your favorite colors so you can wear them later...you fuckin' pricks” I said in demonic laughs. Every time I turned around, they were there. On my street, hiding in alleys, in my house and even pulling me over for a 'busted tail light'...it took three cars to do that ticket violation. They even pulled a 'wellness tenant check' to gain access legally inside my home, compliments of my landlord. My hate born from shitty parents had been unlocked by intrusive humans violating the privacy of my home. The sanctuary for my children's childhood memories. The armor crusted, and from the shield rose into a woman who would nev
er forget or forgive the stink of their badges. Behind the badges, were mere humans exercising their own egos, their own past wrongs or childhood trauma's, into a dance of dangerous proportions. This I know to be true, as I used to be one of their own.
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me, fuck you I won't do what you tell me....
The deity of Mondays. I believe it is Monday anyways. I have opened my eyes early because of the looming blackness of the day coming up from my stomach. It will only be moments before the mind gets a dose of fighting shut downs towards Monday. This is how I know it is Monday, I own Monday too. I own the day like a ritual satanic feast at hallows eve. It is mine. Sickeningly. In fact, I cannot do Mondays at all. My life has been an obstacle course to avoid doing Mondays. My mind has to stay in bed until the day is over. Even getting high magnified my ownership of the most horrible day of the week. Monday's mean crisis. I own the day for frightening beginnings of the school week all through my childhood. I own Monday's for the letting go of my father to his work week, leaving me at the mercy of her. Monday promises the pain, the stress, and the unknown overshadowing of events to unfold faithfully. All my years boiled Mondays to the bone. I have never witnessed a sun, felt only the wind and kept folded up inside until the day was over. Today is Monday and I cannot move. I am riddled with anxiety of an impending doom. Never answer doors on Mondays. Never go out on Mondays. Never talk on the phone on Mondays. Never work on a Monday. Something bad will happen. Theses things I have told myself each new week of my life. Sunday may belong to God. But Monday the devil peeks inside to see what delicious trouble can be spilled. A child is not equipped to dance with the devil's intentions. His eyes stare in hate into that child, and that child can see a plan brewing, knowing it's coming. A child wants for love, attention, and raindrops of smiles...yet, finds broken glass in her bed upon waking, on a Monday. A child wants to bounce like a cartoon character into the start of her day...yet, discovers one shredded dress on the bed and all other clothes missing. She must wear it to school...on a Monday. Yes, it must be Monday today...I am hiding somewhere else. Low in meaning, better to stay undone...