by Tess McInnis
ANGELS by Within Temptation
Doctor gentle brother danced into the bleak picture I was living in at around noon. His face annoyed me. Always smiling. Always assuming the connection between us was as blood in one vein we shared. He would enter the room in awkward steps mimicking family, pretending to be a doctor. Immediately upon seeing him, I would squint my eyes and grit my teeth. I would clamp down on my mouth because I needed to keep my words intact there. And here he was again, the bearer of some weird news meant to soothe me. Contempt. I felt contempt by his body standing before me. I had tried to rationalize these feelings but given how definitive men were in my world, he was just another violation of my space.
“Hey, looks like you have been doing so much better this last week, making progress I see” and he winked. He fucking winked. What a moron I thought.
“Hey, progress....yea for me” I said sarcastically back with a cocked head.
He screeched a chair across the room, pulled it around and sat cowboy style in front of me. “What are you doing?” I asked with a disgusted tone and continued “you...are like...in my personal bubble...back off” He scooted a foot away. I was thinking ' not far enough, how about right out the door.'
“Are you ever going to be nice to me?”
“define nice”
“I just thought we had worked through some of these issues between us and could come to a common ground with each other”
“I am not common”
“This is know....but I would like for us to at least be friends”
“Why? What's in it for you?”
“Maybe I would like to be included in your life at some point...maybe we could reconnect...family is important support system” I started laughing at him. Not just a small laugh, but a belly laugh. The audacity of this human to come at me with a comment like that stirred my guts uncontrollably. I shook my head and continued to laugh.
“Well, I am glad you find this so funny” he said insulted but unsure.
“No, what I find funny is you having such nerve to push the ole 'family support system' in my face like a medicine I need to take to feel better” I felt the words forming lives within my mouth and laying like planes for take off on a airstrip.
“You don't think family is important in your healing?” he asked in professional repertoire.
“Newsflash baby, it was my family which is responsible for this fucked up head” I twisted and turned my face into his, thinking here we go again. I wonder which knife to pull out of my soul. I remembered a specific one and decided to go with it. “ Where was my family when our dirty old perv of an uncle was molesting me? How many years was that? Huh? How many years did he get the go-ahead to take his monster dry hands and run it all over my body? I guess you haven't had to worry about an old man's tongue going inside places where they shouldn't.”
“I didn't know about this...” he stuttered, looked down.
“Oh bullshit....everyone knew he was a pedophile, all the family knew it. Our dear mother knew most of all. And how do I find this out? When I refuse to go stay with him. On that day I tell her everything. I tell her of these things he did to me. She don't believe me. She sends me anyways. Would you like details of that weekend?” I felt my face long and the skin dropping. I was aware of my own stupor.
Perhaps shame carries a face of it's own, and for a lifetime. Dr. gentle-brother got up and went to the window while wiping his brow in unison. He was quiet. Just calmly staring out into the abyss of the odd world. Long minutes of thick air between us. I was wondering if I should continue my heartless attack on his genuine attempt to be family. There was history here, but it was all wrong history. My whole life was a dysfunctional game piece in the land of humans.
“I was a child” I said softly to the air.
“I am sorry it happened” he said to the air.
“ You know the worse thing about it all....aside from the years of fear, the moments of sexual playtime, or even not being believed by my own mother. The worse thing about it all, is I found out he had done it to her too...she knew. Still, she left me in his care. She called me a liar. She stood there while I begged. She beat me when I refused to go. She fucking knew.”
“You know, I cannot explain our mother's actions or even begin to understand her thinking. I have spent years trying to figure her head out. I do believe she may be sick herself.” he stated as matter of factual.
“you think?” I snapped in quick.
“See, here is where I tell you to let go...let go of this past you grip so tight too. However, I understand you more and more with each disclosure. I am ill from these incidents. I am consumed with grief for what has happened to you...even in here.” He was full of introspection as he walked the room, fidgeting with the largeness of the picture of me. He continued sadly, or in my eyes, sadly continued, “ How could our lives be so different under the same woman? Why has your life been a series of repetitive pain ...I wouldn't believe any of this had I not witnessed the continuation of such forces myself. I am beyond sorrow for you....but I do understand you now.” He turned and knelt before me, touching my knees with his hands. Tears melted down his face as he looked up at said “I am without words” Tears belonging to him laid rest like raindrops on my gown. They came from his eyes, but these tears I owned. Like red, like the pee smell, like Mondays....one more knife became mine in this moment. I realized the tears of those who cried for me. I was overwhelmed with guilt. Before me was a man who saw me. Who cried for me. Was there others who have done the same? As he sat in silence, I pushed my mind to remember any good memories where a man has drawn my name in his heart by tears. Throughout the years, did I grace the soul of one to the extent of moments of weeping for me. I stood up and made my way to the opposite side of the room. I wanted to disconnect from his lifeline he had on me. Save my mind. No, stay without my mind. I couldn't take a chance. I left him to himself, as I disappeared out my door, hugging myself all the way down the hall. Loose ends. Loose ends. I woke up with those two words. I could hear a motorcycle off in the distance, voices from the hallway and my own breathing....heavy with burden. I am fucked up. My brain is processing an abundance of memories at a rapid rate. Flashes of my life jolting like judgment day before God. I turn placing my back solid against the cold wall. I feel fear. I feel like a child in the dark waiting for the boogieman to rise from under the bed and pull me down. I feel anxiety. Worried about a man coming to “get me.” One is my rapist, one is my lover. One is my lover.....I remember. I jump out of bed and stand in the middle of my room I just stand there. I don't know why but I do. I am hot, so very hot. Dizzy with recollection of the day which brought me here. Love on a river edge, silently waiting for the melting which never happened. He never showed. In our creation of us, I had told him repeatedly 'there never will be another after you...you are the last man I will ever try to love' and I meant it. He never showed. I fell to the floor in awe of my memory. I laid in fetus position trying to find the path my mind would go next. To what was there....anger, sorrow, hate, love... I was without reaction. Numb. I had waited for him. He never showed. My eyes didn't blink. My body didn't move. I stared at nothing in particular. I decided not to cry this time. In fact, I felt Rage speaking silently to me. She was saying “stay fucking tough girl, go to this..”. I understood this voice well. I knew the person inside me who came out to play evil amongst evil doers. Amongst men. Once more she was surfacing to make sense out of life. It is easier to come to terms with scabs when you pick at them like you mean to. Like nothing gives you more satisfaction in the whole world then digging away at an old scab for the bleeding. It is pleasurable then, to do all things in a hardened heart, then to fall away as pitiful. Of all the colors of my personality, Rage was the one which saved me. I could become anything with her stirring inside me. Weakness was not in her vocabulary....or her actions. I laid on the floor and thought about this other woman inside me, willed myself into character. Tough bitch was back. I felt under my dresser for the cig's I had
hidden there from the ants. I lit one up. As I did, tough bitch brought back a night to remember. Not the rape, not the murder....after all, what did I care about that? I had been manhandled most of my life. No big deal. More juicier than laying open for service by a monster, is driving the chair through his eyeball....ahhh, I was guilty as charged, (actress speaking). One giggle for the unforgotten scene. I took a long hard drag and smiled for the bliss kissed by vengeance.
ANGELICUS by Delirium
Cracks in the wall waiting to be whole again. Eyeballs blinking, shifting left to right, right to left. One set of eyeballs fused with horror in a painted wall. They are mine. I am the wall. No hands, no body, only my eyes look upon fragments of lost life in here. The room breathes, I do not. Sheer unsettling dread binds my human flesh inside drywall. I am prisoner in this wall. I feel the screaming of my soul as it begins to fill with evil occurrence. Eyeballs blinking, shifting left to right, right to left....terror swallows me here lest it be forever. Morbid strangeness of ticking scenes I am chained to witness. The despair of many time crusted man hands continuously working the wall of my imprisonment. Each touch burns as if hell has opened up on me. I see one mother in the corner laying on the floor in a pee stained house dress amongst her own vomit. I see another mother slicing her wrists, fleshly as the razor goes. Both are laughing unaware of the other. I am aware of all. Sins of my mothers are mine. I see no love here. Edged between another wall is a form begging shape...stretching outwardly it moves like a baby in womb. Born instantly, is my rapist, my murderer. He is laughing as well. Pain burns my eyeballs, I am blinking as fast as I can to keep up with all of Satan’s wishes. I beg mercy. I beg God. No answer. The sin circus continues, speeding up, getting louder, hands grabbing faster...and my eyeballs now have no lids to close from this. Walking through walls around me like the dead are old lovers, crying children and thick remorse of a dripping past. All is shown to me...every little detail of my earth time. They all arrive with knives. Even shapeless forms not known by me are gripped with the sharp point of metal. The mothers get up in unison, in trance as the carry their knives ready to use. And it begins. The stabbing, the stabbing, the stabbing...into the wall of me. Into the soul of me. I am screaming but no one hears. Even the man hands are donning knives, taking turns as if it were a sport of a game. I am not forgiven, this is hell. Knives deep driven and twisted. Knives of red with their own laugh. Escape. I cannot, I am only a soiled wall with eyeballs. An accident of life.
Drenched by my own sweat, I sit up fast and exclaim 'there is no God'. I am yelling this. God is merely a fairy tale. Like all the other famous fairy tales, he was created to show a point to living. Grace the world with conscience, dance within the circle of morality. I have been jumping this circle all my life. A little on the inside, much on the outside....a warped line dance given to a simple heart for the temptation. Yet, God moves through my cells begging me to come back and believe in something. Cling to him, he says....cling to this unknown higher power which will absolve my dancing in and out of the circle. I am sitting where I am most comfortable. In this darkness. The fairymare cannot have me tonight because my mind does not care. I am not frightened. I am only waiting the next one, or the next day...whichever bestows my presence first. Whether I am asleep or awake, it is all the same. I am stuck in grip of time without definition or form. Without meaning. Just madness. Utter madness. Even when I am not 'doing time'....I am still 'doing time'. A body walks around this room pacing for no other reason than it has nothing better to do. Only temporary files in the head to pop up and go back in again. 'There is no God' I say again, as I pace the room in a straight line, back and forth. I am thinking about wants, wishes and desires...I have them, but they cannot surface into joy, into manifestation. I pace. This is my funny thread with God. My whole life I have only tasted bites of the 'good pie', but never allowed the whole damn pie. I laugh to myself. I can't have it. I am silent, standing in the center of the room still talking to the air. I begin the self loathing strings, and I begin to hate again. Everything. Everyone. How low can I go this time, I whisper to the wall, can I go low enough this time to end it for good. My self talk is of sad revelations I have torn at for decades. I cannot stop the process once it unravels. I find a corner and sit as if to disappear completely from this room. Repeated jabber of hate thoughts falling fast from my lips leave me rocking in rhythm, playing with my hair, and contemplating. In the back of my head a little picture keeps presenting an option for this madness. I keep seeing the syringe. I keep thinking about this syringe. I don't know where I got it or what is in it....but the needle is there for the taking. I keep rocking. I throw up into my lap. I flick the vomit chunks off onto the floor paying no mind to what just happened Somehow the word needle makes me sick. I don't care. I am too busy on hate road to stop the car now. Two hours into the drive, I decide my ass is cold and hurts. I will finish my loathing from the bed. I take sour chunks of me-vomit with me to the bed. I lay on my stomach, pressing my head into the pillow with my hands in a tight attempt to snuff my own light out. My left hand delicately fondles the pillowcase...and finds the syringe. Drip...drip....drip....I am holding the syringe up to eye level, peering inside to the pale yellow fluid, watching it drip. I am trying to figure out what sweet honey it holds. More so, I am trying to figure out where I got this delicate little beast of fun. I will be leaving this facility soon. Only because it was another woman in me who created the “beautiful veil of wellness” to the ants and doctors. I should have been an actress, I tell myself...still caught up in the yellow ocean of this needle. It occurs to me my brain absolutely remembers that night. One of completeness,and without mercy where I unbridled fury upon the world ...or at least that Gary Busey motherfucker. I know well the brain mush in my head. I know how to come up with a different personality for any given moment of need or desire. I laugh and think of the hand written note I used to keep on my refrigerator... “as a man thinketh, so is he..” I thinketh I have too many fucked up thoughts I say to no one. In that medicine room of death, after the beautiful carving of the deepest red into his evil flesh came my fire. Rage was the girl in motion. I am positive it was Rage who went digging around in the medicine cabinets just like my rapist-murderer had. And it was Rage who discovered an abundance of juicy combinations of just the right stuff for this syringe. Now I hold this secret amongst many others. I hold what I know. Lovingly, I put the cap back on the needle and put it to sleep under my pillow.