Dream of the Serpent

by Alan Ryker

  I hated them. I hated them so much.

  Reading those stories was the opposite of motivational. I knew that I couldn’t be like those spunky, vivacious, inspiring burn victims. The fire hadn’t burned away my brittle sense of entitlement and complacency, leaving me with a diamond-hard sense of urgency and resolve to live my life to the fullest, so that my prior state should be considered more handicapped than my scarred one. If one of these people had been a little bitter, a little angry, a little crushed…If their frustrations hadn’t all been overcome, their every disadvantage turned into an advantage, maybe I could have taken from their stories other than a now concrete understanding of my own shortcomings. I had previously suspected my pathetic nature, but I had no true point of comparison. I could try to convince myself that no one could withstand what I went through and emerge from the ashes a phoenix rather than more ash. Now I knew. These people didn’t just get back to their pre-burned state. They became better. They were tempered in their flames.

  Fuck them, and fuck me.

  I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. And I didn’t think I should feel guilty about it. Because guilt wasn’t just one more negative emotion to add to the pile, along with despair, frustration, anger, sorrow, mourning, and simple, mind-destroying pain. It would be bad enough just adding guilt to that list. But guilt was an amplifier. Guilt told me that all of those feelings were my fault. Those books implied that I chose those feelings, that I chose to allow my scar tissue, my lost fingers, and my nightmarish face to control me. Those things were real. They weren’t figments of my imagination. The people in these books were positively solipsistic, a word Madison taught me when I went on one of my ego trips.

  If I had total control over those things, it was in the way the existentialists described. I chose this life because I chose to live it. There was always a way out. No one had to live in a world of atrocity. We chose our world. One bullet, one pill and vodka cocktail, and we could reject it.

  So if I was responsible for my pathetic existence, it was because I was too scared to off myself. I’d rather haunt my parents’ house, a specter of what I’d been, a living reminder of my dead future, bringing sorrow to us all. No one can live with the dead without living as the dead.

  So fuck those Pollyanna freaks and their uplifting messages that ground me further into the ash bin. Fuck them.

  But it was good. I laid the books out where I could see them, where I could see the smiling, shiny, patchwork faces of the heroic authors staring out at me, challenging me to be heroic. It was good to know who I really was, to lose the last of those illusions, to be able to let go and sink and sink and maybe find bottom, now that I saw how deep I already was.

  I laid back on my bed and stared at the row of book covers, then pulled out my phone.

  I feel shitty.

  It’s a shitty world, Madison replied.

  What are you doing?

  Disappearing.

  I wish I could.

  You have pills. Take one. Take two.

  Then I wouldn’t have any later. They’re strict.

  So responsible. Let me take them then.

  Would you?

  No. Not yet.

  Where are you?

  Some bad place or another.

  That could be anywhere.

  Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell.

  As far as she’d slipped, she was still miles above everyone else. An ache suddenly wracked every cell in my body. They all screamed to be near her.

  Come back to me. It’s not your fault. I love you, I typed. I stared at the words, the truest ones I’d ever thought, and then I watched them disappear a letter at a time as I hit the delete key.

  My last illusion was that she might come back if I asked. I knew she wouldn’t. I knew it deep down in the same place that made me stare at the people on the covers of those motivational memoirs, the place that knew I deserved all of this. But I couldn’t hear her say it.

  9

  Obviously, an unsustainable tension was building in the house. It was a bubble, growing bigger and bigger until it had to burst. My mother responded by growing more manically helpful every day, trying to prevent the growing catastrophe with love and care alone, which, of course, only spurred it on faster.

  It was morning. The capacity of my bladder had grown huge, because I hated to leave my room for any reason when one of my parents was home, and one of them was always home. But I had to piss upon waking. I was heading back down the hallway to my little refuge when my mom called out from the kitchen, “Cody Bear, do you want some breakfast?”

  “No thanks.”

  “I made toast and eggs.”

  “No thanks.”

  “How about a bagel?”

  “No.”

  “I picked up some of those frozen toaster thingies you like.”

  I continued towards my room, not answering, keeping my mouth sealed tightly shut for fear of the tone I was about to take.

  “Cody? Cody? Toaster thingies?”

  “I said I don’t want any damn breakfast!”

  Boom boom boom. My dad was awake and in the kitchen. He stormed up to me, breathing hard, eyes wide. A decade disappeared. After having wasted away in hypermetabolism and atrophy, I was even skinnier than I’d been in high school, and with scar tissue curling me forward and to the side, I was again shorter than him.

  “You don’t talk to your mother like that.”

  His lower jaw jutted forward, begging to be punched. My right hand clenched, my thumb trying to wrap around fingers that weren’t there and pressing instead into my slick, numb palm. I started shaking. So much rage filled me, and the only pressure release seemed to be in my eyes, and I couldn’t let that happen. I nodded once and turned away.

  “Apologize to your mother.”

  “Honey, no,” she said, standing behind him, pulling at his tensed shoulder.

  “You’ve been running your ass off to cater to him and all he can be is rude. He’s going to apologize.”

  “I shouldn’t have pushed. I’m sorry, Cody, I just worry because you’ve gotten so thin.”

  “No!” my dad shouted into the side of my face. “You don’t apologize to him.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said, turning fully away to slink back to my room.”

  “It’s okay, Cody. I understand.”

  “No, it’s not okay. Do you see what you’re doing to her? Do you see how much weight she’s lost? Do you know that when one of the therapists or doctors tells us that you refuse to do your exercises or refuse surgery, do you know that she can’t eat? That she can’t sleep? And that she spends every moment she’s not working trying to think of ways to make you happy?”

  My rounded back turned to him, the tears spilled out of my eyes, pooling where my cheeks pressed against the inside of my silicon mask. As he let loose the torrent of resentment that had built in him for me not being the brave, angelic burn victim he’d read about while I was in a coma, each phrase nicked the thin thread of my self-restraint. I didn’t have much anymore, and each insult he hurled at me, each guilt trip he laid on me cut away at it until I spun around.

  “Fuck you!” I poked him in the shoulder and he pulled back a fist. “You want to hit me?” I laughed. I laughed as hot tears filled my mask until I yanked it off, splattering them on the hardwood floor. “Do it! You think you can do worse than this? Try. I fucking dare you. I fucking want you to!” I pushed my face up to his, and he backed up, his mouth hanging open. “Do you really think you can even hurt me? Beat me to death. Please. You think I care? Look at me!” I used to wear T-shirts, but I couldn’t lift my arms high enough to put them on anymore. I ripped my pajama top open, sending buttons ricocheting through the hallway.

  His eyes opened wider as he looked at the thick bands of scar tissue gripping my chest like an impossibly tangled knot of red, fleshy ropes. Some that had been recently shaved down seeped. I tried to straighten my neck, pulling my head to the left, straining and straining against my sca
rs and finally giving up in vibrating failure, letting him take it all in. “Your stupid fucking books…Fuck them. Fuck those people. What do I have to fight for? What do I have?” I roared at him, begging him for an answer. The question had been running through my head on repeat since I awoke, and though I’d hurled it as a weapon, now, after asking it of someone for the first time, I prayed he had some answer. “What the fuck do I have left? Tell me!”

  He stared at me, mouth working, and then drooped, covered his face. His anger had passed. But my anger…My anger was the same as my sorrow was the same as my despair was the same as my frustration. It boiled, and as it boiled over I felt good. I felt relief for the first time, until I looked into my mother’s face, collapsed in on itself in a wet twist as she tried to hold my father up.

  She said, “Your face…”

  I started backing toward my room. “I’m sorry,” I said to her. “Why did you make me do this in front of her?” I shouted at him, but he didn’t come from behind his hands. He hid there. I saw then where I got it from.

  When I’d made it inside my room, I stood with my back pressed against the door, shaking. As I lifted my mask to my face, blood fell in a stream, pooling in the semi-opaque silicon. I went to the mirror. My right cheek had ripped in my screaming. I wore a mask, but my face itself was now a thick, immobile mask, better at hiding my emotions than expressing them. My mouth didn’t stretch far enough for a scream without an hour of warming up. The thick, inelastic scar tissue pulled the ragged edges of the tear back, revealing my teeth even though my mouth was clenched shut with molar-pulverizing force.

  That’s what she’d meant by, “Your face.”

  It never ended. There was no catharsis, no relief, no righteous, triumphant moment. Life was a constant, humiliating crawl on hands and knees.

  There was a soft knock at my door.

  “Honey?” she asked, checking to see if I’d realized yet what I’d done to myself.

  “Coming.”

  I slipped my feet into my shoes so that my mother could take me to the hospital for stitches.

  * * *

  They mostly left me alone after that. It would have made for tension, except that I stopped leaving my room when they were around. I’d listen carefully before making food runs to the kitchen. They wrapped up my meals in tin foil. I felt bad, but it was nice to have breathing room.

  I’d acted unfairly, but I tried not to think about my parents. The problem was that I didn’t have much to think about that made me feel any less terrible.

  The one thing I enjoyed doing was talking to Madison, but she was slipping further away. I didn’t feel so bad about her debased state, except that she couldn’t keep it up forever, and I knew that she’d either drop out entirely and I’d lose her, or she’d pull things together, get sober, get her head straight, and then realize I was her albatross and move on.

  I think I must have really still loved her, because I think that’s what I wanted. She could still emerge from the ash anew. Unfortunately for me, I was the ash.

  Around noon I texted her, You up yet?

  I’m awake. Not vertical.

  Me neither. How are you today?

  Pretty shitty. You?

  Thinking a lot. My heart rate spiked. Madison was like a timid forest creature who’d wandered into a clearing, but would bound away at my slightest misstep.

  That’s the worst. I’d stop if I were you, she said.

  I’ve been thinking about you. You need to stop doing this to yourself.

  Have my parents been bugging you?

  No. What?

  People have been saying they’ve been coming around, looking for me. The Dorset brothers say they’ve been by a few times.

  The Dorset brothers were scumbag trustfund assholes who dealt drugs to other rich kids just for kicks. I’d met them a few times at Madison’s friends’ parties, and I really didn’t like them, or the idea that she’d been hanging around with them.

  You haven’t been going home? I asked, imagining her in one of the brothers’ beds.

  Not for awhile.

  Maddy, this is insane. You could have an amazing life. Don’t throw it away.

  She was always quick with a reply. Her phone was constantly in her hand and her nimble fingers tapped out messages as fast as most people could type. So when several minutes went by without my phone buzzing, I knew I’d pissed her off or otherwise scared her away. In rereading my last message to her, two things jumped out at me. The first was how similar it was to what my parents and doctors were saying to me. They had no idea what I was going through, seemed to believe that I wasn’t smart enough to know what I’d lost, so their bromides were transparently Pollyanna-ish bullshit.

  But then I tried to put myself into Madison’s place. I tried to imagine a hurricane of guilt that roared so loud it drowned everything else, and that ripped up everything that had once seemed important, exposing it as silly, ephemeral nonsense. Her whole life might as well have gone up in flames at the same moment mine had.

  The second thing I noticed about my message was that in talking about her life, her future, I’d left myself entirely out of it. I’d accepted my place as a ghost. Had she noticed, and did she view it as rejection? Was it possible that she was staying away because she thought it’s what I wanted?

  I almost started tapping out the question on my phone, but then stood creakily from my bed and looked in the mirror at my scolliod posture and the patchwork of inflamed flesh pulsating around the edges of my mask. The truth was apparent instantly, but I didn’t look away. I stared at myself, reminding myself of what I had become, how lucky I was that Madison would even text me when it must have brought images like this to mind. Slipping my phone into my pocket to keep myself from hurling it at the glass, I nearly laughed at the idea that she was staying away because she thought I was rejecting her. It was amazing, the kind of delusions a person could build up to protect his ego. Some part of me still saw myself as the tall, strong, handsome man I’d been, the one who was ready to conquer the world. I took my mask off and got closer to the mirror. I needed to remember. This needed to go deep, deeper than third degree burns. This thing before me that could never be seen without invoking overwhelming feelings of pity, disgust and fear, it was me. The pain and the limitations were with me all the time, but what needed to stick, and what hadn’t yet, was this. People didn’t see the pain. They saw the monster. If I could just internalize that, the confusion would end. The expectations would end, and the inevitable disappointment. Things would hurt less.

  * * *

  That evening the doorbell rang. The doorbell had stopped ringing. People called my parents, or pulled them aside when they saw them out. My parents passed along a lot of well wishes. But those well-wishers never came around, which I was glad for, except that if they couldn’t bear to face me, I wished they’d just stop pretending they cared at all, so I could stop telling my mom, “Oh, that’s nice,” when what I really thought was, “Fuck their frightened pity.”

  I listened closely, and though only a rumble made it down the hallway and through my door, I thought I recognized the voice. When I heard footsteps coming my way, I clutched at my mask, reassuring myself that it was there, then opened my door.

  My mom smiled at me from the other end of the hallway. “The Barrington’s are here to see you, if you’re up for it.”

  I shrugged, nodded, and followed her out into the living room.

  David stood broad and strong as ever, but with a stiffness about him that emanated nervousness instead of the usual confidence. Susan was even thinner and paler than usual. They both looked up at me after just a fraction of a second of hesitation. After a suspended moment, they smiled and relaxed slightly. I was confused, because it wasn’t just that they were happy to see me. They looked relieved. Then I understood that they probably had been nervous about having to react positively to my face, regardless of its grotesqueness, and then they saw the mask, which freed them of that polite responsibility.


  So much of standard social interaction is based on custom. Throw off one thing and no one knows how to act.

  “Cody! It’s so good to see you again,” David said in his booming voice. “I’m so happy to see how well you’re recovering.”

  I took his proffered right hand in my left and nodded and smiled for an instant, but the pull of flesh along my mask reminded me that I didn’t need to pretend behind there.

  “It’s good to see you, too. And you, Mrs. Barrington.”

  She took my left hand in hers, not as locked into the sacredness of the handshaking customs as her businessman husband. Her thin hand bones were as frail as her smile.

  David jumped into the space left by his wife’s silence with awkward gusto. “We’re sorry we haven’t been around, but we thought you were probably enjoying a bit of space after the scrutiny of the hospital, and we’ve been dealing with some problems of our own.”

  “Why don’t we sit down,” my mom said, guiding us into the living room.

  Mrs. Barrington finally found her voice, or an automatic compulsion took it over, and she said, “You have such a lovely home, Jody.”

  “Thank you. Would you like anything to drink? I can put on some coffee.”

  “That would be great.”

  Our home wasn’t lovely. My parents were neat people, but the furniture was old and nothing matched. My dad had finally entered the new decade and gotten a forty inch LCD television to replace the bulging tube TV, and it had a place of honor as the room’s focal point. This was all very different from the Barrington’s home, a small mansion where the living room didn’t even have a television, because the purpose of it was hosting and conversation. The family room, theater room and game room, however, all had huge televisions.