Castles: A Fictional Memoir of a Girl with Scissors

by Benjamin X. Wretlind

  I spent the next week in the hospital, probed and prodded, questioned and accused, harassed and humiliated. A police officer—who I think took a fancy to Mama—repeatedly asked about Michael. It was almost surreal the way the world looked to me, then: white, sterile, dashes of color thrown in like spilled paint. Nothing made sense at all.

  I don't think about my time in the hospital very much. I remember most of it, and what parts are missing—time that slipped through cracks to dissolve into nothing—I attribute to the pain I felt. I didn't want to live, at least not the way I'd been living for so long.

  On one of the occasions when Mama came to visit without accompanying someone in khaki or white, she sat down on the chair next to the bed and cried. I remember feeling the same as I did when I was six, watching a tear fall from her eyes when Grandma berated her for not caring about the cut on my foot. I didn't say anything to her at first, not because I was mad, but because I wanted her to cry.

  When she finally spoke, she struggled to get her words out. "I'm sorry," she said. It was enough for her to say just that. She whispered something I didn't catch and stood up. With a kiss, she left and I was alone with a memory that I keep clear today. I stared at the door as she walked away, wondering if I'd see her again. I know now that she had finally fallen to the pressure of motherhood. It only took her twelve years to do it.

  I returned home, afraid. I stood at the screen door for a while that first night and looked over the fence into the distance. I couldn't see the Bus in the dark, but I knew it was there, marking death like a gravestone. It hit me then that Michael's final resting place would forever be stuck in my memory, whether I liked it or not. I would always have that reminder of the night two lives were taken, and God wasn't there to clean up the mess.

  It wasn't until years later that I realized God wasn't supposed to clean up the mess. I was.

  2

  The first night after I returned from the hospital, I didn't fall asleep until well after midnight. I stared at the ceiling and tried to coax reason from insanity. I'm sure Mama knew I was awake, but she probably wanted me to have time to sort through my emotions. I thought I had enough time in the recovery room.

  The pattern in the ceiling blended together, and I found myself connecting the random splotches until I'd painted a scene of death, with Alfie caught in the middle. If I looked hard enough, I could see the dust eels eating his body, chewing on his flesh as he screamed. It wasn't long before the patterns started to swirl in unnatural ways, writhing around in the ceiling.

  I froze. It wasn't anything in the scene I'd painted myself that frightened me—I couldn't move. My body tingled, like I'd stepped out of a freezer and into the bright sun, my flesh on fire. I tried to lift my head, wiggle my fingers, move my legs; nothing worked. I couldn't even blink.

  The dust eels I'd drawn in the pattern on the ceiling grew larger. They squirmed and hissed, spit and snapped at each other, vying for space. There seemed to be hundreds of them, and although I couldn't take my eyes off the one area my eyes were trained on, I knew they had to cover the room.

  One of them dropped on my chest and I screamed.

  The eel thrashed about until its face was inches from mine. My heart pounded and breath quickened as the thing stared at me. Was I next? Was God here to clean up Mama's mess, or was there something more sinister in its motives?

  It moved closer. I could smell dirt, like burying my head in the desert. It looked at me with its hollow eyes, opened its mouth and spoke.

  "Do you think there might be something to your dreams?"

  I couldn't answer. My mouth—like the rest of my body—was paralyzed. In my head, however, I could make out words. I don't know what you mean, I thought.

  "The singing men. Why does one of them stand to the side?"

  I don't know.

  "Have you asked?" It slid closer then screamed. Other dust eels dropped from the ceiling until I was covered in them. I felt their bodies against mine, squirming around on top of the sheets and under my clothes. They were everywhere, and I was buried in the middle.

  The eel on my chest slithered up to my mouth. I felt it push against my lips, and as frozen as I was, I couldn't do anything to stop it. It pushed harder until my mouth opened in response.

  The damned thing was coming inside me.

  I don't remember how I ended up outside the fence, but it was then I finally realized everything was a dream. Reality had turned surreal, but I still felt the eel on my chest and at my lips. Its screams still rang in my ear, and I could smell the dust.

  I stood in the same spot where Alfie raped me, the night painted purple and speckled with stars. Rather than relive that moment, however, I looked toward the Bus. It stood in the distance—a glow-in-the-dark headstone where I knew I could find the answers to so many questions written in the wind. Dream or not, I was determined to understand what God wanted to say.

  Thoughts are magical in dreams; I floated to the Bus quickly and found the carousel of singing men. I saw Michael among them, oblivious to my presence. I wanted to talk to him, to pull him out of that line and let him know what had happened to me in the last few days, but something inside told me to hold my tongue. I was here for someone else.

  The man I'd seen stand to the side on so many occasions was next to me. He was taller than I remembered, and his face was freckled and pale. He looked toward the Bus and wiped something from a bushy mustache. There was so much familiarity, and I can't say to this day if I've felt more comfortable around another man. I watched his movements and studied his eyes.

  I learned long ago that there is commonality between all people. The nose might be the same, the eye sockets sunken a certain way, the hair cut in the same fashion. Some people stand like other people, while another's voice might be reminiscent of a past relation. You may not notice the similarities, but you register them.

  This man in the desert—more likely than not, dead like all the others in the carousel—reminded me of myself.

  "How are you?" he finally asked.

  I took my eyes off him and looked back at the Bus. "I've been better, Daddy."

  I opened my eyes in my room. The dust eels were gone, the ceiling nothing more than a ceiling and the covers I had on me at one time were in a pile on the floor. Sweat covered my body and my hair was pasted to my forehead.

  Mama was awake when I stepped out of my room to wash my face. The clock on the end table read 4:17. She sat on the couch, her eyes trained on the television set watching static. I knew she'd been crying.

  "Mama?"

  She looked at me and motioned me over to the couch. I wrapped my robe around me and settled in next to her. I was never as emotionally attached to her as I was to Grandma, but when she put her arm around me I felt all of my problems melt away—the dream I'd just woken from, the nightmare of the week prior, the loss of Michael—nothing mattered at that moment but the touch Mama had given me. I felt I needed to say something—talk about Alfie, about Michael, tell her that I'd seen Daddy—but the comfort of the moment was too perfect to mar with words.

  For the first time in my life, I fell asleep in my mother's arms on the couch.

  3

  Mama never talked about my relationship with Michael, the night I told her I was pregnant or what happened with Alfie. I think she assumed it was all her fault. To some extent, I believe that. After all, had she not kicked me out of the house I wouldn't have seen Michael ripped apart, and I wouldn't have lost my child to the violence of a person Mama should never have brought home in the first place.

  It wasn't all her fault, however, I knew that. I was the one who wanted Michael inside of me; I don't think he would have pushed the issue. I was the one who turned away Alfie when he first advanced; had I given in, he wouldn't have been so angry. I was the one who didn't realize at the time that I needed to clean up my messes rather than wait for God to send His divine broom.

  It was mostly my fault.

  We took our time bonding through the res
t of the year. The winter months brought with it an over abundance of rain and on more than one occasion, the roof leaked. Rather than get someone else to help, however, Mama and I did the work. We patched holes when we found them, fixed up the trailer as much as we could and took turns cooking dinner for each other. I don't think Mama had a boyfriend at the time, and in retrospect, I don't think she wanted one.

  There were many times I could have asked Mama about my dream, about meeting my father outside the carousel of singing men. Since Michael was in that mix, I imagined the carousel represented the ghosts of those who had gone before, perhaps devoured by the wind and the eels. Grandma did say storms were a way for God to clean up the messes left by other people, and I'd so far seen two bodies in the Bus. I slowly believed the men in the carousel were people Mama knew. How they got there, however, I couldn't say. It wasn't like Mama had talked to me much before.

  As the winter months turned toward the spring, I decided to ask Mama about my father. Maybe she could shed some light on the matter. For years, I had lived under the assumption that I had no father; I was a divine pregnancy. I knew that couldn't be the case and curiosity had planted itself inside.

  "He's dead." Mama was blunt, but in her eyes I could see she wanted to say more.

  "When did he die?" I wondered at that moment how far I should press the issue.

  "Before you were born." Mama stood up from the dinner table and took her plate to the sink. "Finish your homework before you go to bed, Maggie."

  That was it? I had trained myself to expect the worst—a fight maybe, or just some stern lecture on how I should stay out of her business. I didn't expect to be brushed off like that.

  "Mama?"

  She leaned over the sink and sighed. "We all have skeletons in our closet, Maggie. Your grandmother did just as much as me. Live with them and don't let them out."

  She turned from the sink and walked to her bedroom. For the rest of the night, I didn't see or hear from her. I was left alone with my thoughts and curled up on the couch later that night, wondering what skeletons Mama hid.

  The dreams that came in the night were unlike the others. There were no dust eels, no strange men singing songs in languages I didn't know. Daddy didn't come to talk to me and the Bus was noticeably absent. I never saw the castle in the sky that Grandma promised, either. The dreams that came that night were nothing, if not horrific.

  I stood over someone I didn't know, his body strapped to the kitchen table with duct tape. He was asleep and for some reason, it made me angry. Glass littered the kitchen floor, and I had to walk around it all to get to the drawers. I think I needed a pair of scissors and although the glass would have worked just as well, I probably would have cut myself.

  The man slept with his mouth slightly open, tongue buried far enough for me to look closely. I pulled on his tongue once with my fingers, but it managed to slip out and back into his mouth. The fight to get a good grip was fuel enough for me to be even angrier than I was, and I felt I had no choice but to cut the damn thing off. Eventually, I gave up and found a pair of pliers laying on the countertop.

  The man opened his eyes when I pulled on his tongue. I probably pulled too hard, too fast, but I was ready to finish the job, to cut out his forked tongue. His wide eyes stared up at me. He tried to speak, but the grip of the pliers kept his tongue in check. He mumbled something incoherent and screamed when I showed him the scissors. There was enough tape to keep his body relatively still, but he fought to get out.

  The scissors cut well, but the tongue was so rubbery it took a minute to get through the whole thing. About halfway through, I stopped. Blood poured out of the cut and filled his mouth. The occasional cough splattered some blood back in my face. The majority, though, simply spilled over the side of his lips while his scream turned into what sounded like a drowning cat.

  While the man screamed some more, I made the last snip. It was effortless at that point, and about an inch of his tongue remained in the grip of the pliers. He gurgled a few times—drowning, I think—then quietly whimpered. Watching his eyes was wonderful and enticing. I could read his mind, and I knew he could read mine. Grandma never told me how the simple act of cutting the tongue could make my juices flow and lips tremble with excitement.

  All she said was that my castle would grow larger.

  I slid my body on top of his and wondered what his tongue would feel like in the palm of my hand, rubbing against my naked self. I could guide it better that way—across my breasts, my stomach, my inner thighs and finally back and forth between my legs. I reached a climax just as the man let out his last breath and fell silent. With a shudder and loud sigh, I collapsed and kissed him, drinking the last of the warm blood pooled inside his mouth.

  When I woke up, I was naked and curled on the kitchen floor.

  Something changed in me that night, and I'm sure it has something to do with what I'm feeling now. Like I said: I think you miss something grand when you fail to look at the whole. All of these pieces of life are part of that whole, and it's such a grand sight to see.

  DUSTY

  1

  The school I attended as a teenager was a mix of those well-to-do folks, those in the middle class of everything, and the ragamuffin types that live in the park. Like many large-city schools, it's diverse. Such diversity breeds contempt, and that contempt breeds people with a strikingly low sense of self-worth who react to situations in ways that are often violent.

  I was thankful Justin wasn't one of these people. Aside from a fight with Michael and me over rights to the story of the body in the Bus years ago, Justin hadn't done anything remotely violent. He wasn't confrontational at all and was frequently a pushover. I often wonder if Justin would have taken to the stage of my life at all if Michael hadn't vanished.

  As we walked home from school, Justin threw rocks at the fence. "Do you think he ran away?"

  "Who?"

  "Michael."

  I swallowed. I know he didn't run away, but there was no way I was going to try to explain what I saw nearly a year ago to Justin or anyone else. It was a brick in my castle, no one else's. "No," I finally said.

  Justin was silent for most of the walk home. When we were about to part at the street corner, he looked at the house where Michael used to live. Dusty was tied to his chain in the front yard, sleeping under the shade of a mesquite tree.

  "Do you still walk that ugly dog?"

  "Dusty? He's not ugly."

  Justin chuckled and took a step toward me. He was so much taller than Michael ever was, and I found myself aroused by his closeness. "I think that dog is bad luck."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "He probably dragged Michael into the desert and ate him."

  I blinked as a rush of pictures I had tried to suppress was suddenly broadcast across my mind in vivid color: chunks of flesh flying, ripped from Michael's lifeless body by the eels in the Bus, blood splattered across the floorboard and staining the teeth of the creatures.

  I looked past Justin to the desert. The Bus was visible, enhancing every memory I had. I shook.

  "Are you alright?" Justin's voice wavered past my ears. He sounded both distant and hollow. "Maggie?"

  I slowly looked pulled my eyes from the Bus and looked at Justin. His lips were moving, words spilling out in a language I didn't understand . . .

  . . . until Grandma's voice took over. "He's out to get you, too, Maggie."

  I watched Justin's lips move with his tongue. The world around me seemed to disappear until there was only the warning.

  "Build your castle one stone at a time, but do it right."

  I couldn't speak. I felt hands on my shoulders, gently rocking me back and forth. All the time, however, I heard Grandma's words. "Are you listening to the wind, Maggie?"

  I wanted to break free of Justin's grip and run away, hide out in the desert and never come back. The more I stood there, the more I saw my world transform itself into one big mess. Grandma wouldn't leave me alone, and now t
hat my relationship with Mama was getting better, I didn't feel the need to hear the wind talk. I didn't want to listen anymore.

  I finally stepped back and turned away.

  "What's wrong with you?" Justin asked. His words were his own.

  "Nothing."

  "You were shaking."

  "I'm alright."

  Justin pushed a tangle of hair from my face and tilted my chin up. I lost myself in his eyes and shuddered. "I'm worried about you," he said as a gentle smile broke across his face.

  2

  Dusty pulled on the rope and led me across the desert. I didn't feel I needed to go as far as the Bus, so I took the easy route and walked him along the fence. Summer was close and I could feel the moisture in the air as we walked. In the distance, over the mountains, storms brewed. It would be a day or two more and the first wall of dust for the year would roll across the valley and through our lives.

  A few of the local boys were out, no doubt looking for mischief. They followed me on the other side of the fence, casting glances back and forth and whispering to each other. It was uncomfortable, but I wasn't afraid of them. I knew them from school, from around the park, from here or there. I could only put one name to a face though: Steve, a bully a year or two older than me. He was built, and I won't pretend that his good looks were lost on me. He was also an angry man, however, and that didn't appeal to me at all.

  "Walking the dog?" Steve called out from across the fence. I suppose it was a conversation starter, but one that could only lead to no good.

  I didn't answer.

  "Maggie. Can you hear me? I'm talking to you."

  I yanked on Dusty's rope and stopped. "I can hear you. Yes, I'm walking the dog."

  Steve walked over to the fence with the other boys and wrapped his fingers around the links. "What's wrong? Don't like talking to me?"