This doesn’t explain the scars but the man doesn’t want to ask anymore, doesn’t know how to ask anymore. And Saint Peter smiles and shivers and her scars break open to bleed.
She hands you the bag full of mushroom buttons and you take one. Then another. Two hours later your eyes have become gods sitting in the center of your head, and neither of you can stop laughing.
When you can finally breathe, chest aching, you say, “I think my mother will die without me,” and this is profoundly hilarious in a way that nothing has ever been and nothing will ever be again, hilarious in this cosmic divine way, which starts both of you laughing again, harder than before.
St. Peter keeps driving. The road is a slit throat; the road signs are open mouths. There is no past or future. There is nothing in behind, nothing in front. There is only the road underneath the wheels. Trying to imagine where you’re going would be incomprehensible, because it won’t exist until you step out of the vehicle, and the universe builds it in front of you.
Yet despite all of this, when the sun sinks, you grow afraid. There’s something about the darkness, the sharp white lines on the highway that reminds you what you’ve left behind. There is blood in-between your fingers. There are still pieces of wood in your hair. You wonder how long it’ll take before they move your mother from ICU to the psych ward.
There is a dark passenger sitting in the back of the van, rubbing the film of her hands, like a poison, across the glass.
Chapter Twenty
THE ROAD DIDN’T END, and neither did the trip. I became dangerous and started to ask questions.
“Where are we going?”
“My friend wants to meet you,” Saint Peter said.
“So she knows about me.”
Saint Peter lit a stick of incense and stuck it in her teeth like a cigarette. Rosemary and Sandalwood filled the van. She stretched in the front seat and her shirt rode up, revealing a wound right above her belly button. It was an old wound, the edges yellowed, scars traced and retraced, as if it’d broken open and healed several times.
“Have you ever loved someone so much that you mutilated yourself?” she asked.
I touched my stomach where I’d cut it with a dirty piece of glass.
“It wasn’t really like that,” I said.
Something popped behind the van, like a barrier breaking. Or maybe a flat tire, but no, the sound was too loud, too thick, and the van didn’t slow.
Behind us the dark waters rushed. The river where Charlie drowned was following us, sluicing down the highway. Nausea set in. It’s only the drugs, I told myself. It’s only the drugs.
“Where are we going?”
“Someplace you’ll be safe,” she said.
“You’ll have to drive faster than that then,” I said.
But she didn’t press harder on the gas pedal, didn’t speed us away from our impending death. If she looked in the rear-view mirror and saw rushing water, she didn’t let me know. She only leaned her head back on the seat, a band of sweat creating a halo around her forehead.
“When I first met you, you were shining,” she said.
I opened my eyes again, and could see horned faces forming out of the dark water. They strained their cheeks against the dark foam. I cowered into my chair and closed my eyes.
Maybe I should focus on something else.
“I’m sick of hearing about me,” I said. “Tell me about you.”
“I grew up in the Middle East, in a small fishing village. One day a man came to preach, but he had so many followers, they threatened to push him into the water. So I let him borrow my small boat to preach on so he wouldn’t drown.”
“And that’s how you became a Saint.”
“It’s how I fell in love,” she said. “I sold my boat and abandoned my home. My children. My wife. I threw myself at his feet and told him I’d be his slave because, without his light, I knew my organs would burst with grief.”
“Then what happened?”
“I left him because I met you.”
When I opened my eyes again, her head stretched across the road in a psychedelic blur. We passed a field full of shadow children dancing in a circle.
“I’m going to throw up,” I said.
“We’re almost there,” Saint Peter said.
Don’t focus on anything outside of the car, I told myself. If you focus on the blue Virgin Mary stickers on the dashboard in front of you and the torn up seats underneath you, then all of hell, with its screaming, nickering sea, might disappear.
The crosses faded from Saint Peter’s arms, and in their place, bloomed acidic wounds.
“Cignus said you went to my school, but I don’t remember you,” I said, trying to ignore the dark water in the rearview mirror, the blurred landscape shifting into a funneled dream.
But as quickly as it came, the river disappeared.
“I was different back then,” Saint Peter said.
I remembered myself back in Psychology class, right before I dropped out. I turned to the chapter on Paranoid Schizophrenia, expecting to find my mother’s photograph. Instead, I found this:
Auditory and visual hallucinations, such as hearing voices and seeing strange people
Delusions and paranoia, such as believing everyone wants to poison them
Difficulty forming or maintaining relationships
Disorganized thought patterns and confusing language
Messianic complex or believing they have superhuman powers
Suicidal thoughts and behavior
An irrational fear of humanoid monsters that crawl out of dead trees
A tendency to build Viking Ships out of junkyard scrap
Propensity towards a boring death by drowning
Attraction toward dangerous and selfish people - like artists
Guilt for something that wasn’t your fault that will follow you for the rest of your life
Blahblahblah. Just die already.
As the words mutated on the page, I tried to suppress my laughter, and started coughing. Jock Buddy kicked the back of my desk and told me he’d be fucking my ass in hell. I whipped my braid back in his face and told him I’d fuck his ass in the parking lot, but I wasn’t paying attention to him. Really, I was thinking about my family’s curse and how much longer it would be before it peeled back its foam lips and chased me down.
It wasn’t fair. Jock Buddy would probably ditch the sneer and end up with a respectable career in marketing, and I’d be hospitalized, psychiatrized, and chased down like a rabid dog whenever I ditched my medicine.
Maybe in a past life I could’ve used my insanity as a shaman or a seer. But this was America, sister, where the only acceptable form of insanity is religion.
That day after psychology class I went into the bathroom. A girl stood in front of the mirrors examining a bleeding cut on her arm. She was frail and tall, with slender and knock-kneed Bambi legs. She wore thick, cat-eye glasses and hid her face underneath layers of heavy brown hair. She was a tragedy really, the kind of girl who would probably commit high school social suicide before she even had a chance to open her mouth.
“You cut too deep,” I said.
“It wasn’t me,” she said.
“Also your mascara is running.”
I dug into my purse and found a pack of makeup wipes.
“Here,” I said.
She tossed her hair back. Her eyes were ghoulish, haunted. I’d seen eyes like that only once before, on a boy who couldn’t sleep without tracking dirt.
“I’ve been looking for you,” she said.
She gripped her cut arm, shaking. She didn’t take the makeup wipes.
My hand began to shake as well.
“Looking for me? What did you want?” I asked.
She smeared my face with her blood.
“Nothing right now,” she said, and left.
It’d been Saint Peter.
“How could I have forgotten?” I said.
That was where I recognized her from t
he night I found her tangled in lights in the artist’s yard. Who could blame me for not remembering? The blue-haired girl in platforms, with drugs in her blood and scars heaving on her skin, hardly resembled the trembling, creep-shouldered brunette I met in a high school bathroom.
“We’ve been together lifetimes,” Saint Peter said. “One day you’ll remember.”
This is how schizophrenia must work. It finds the white spaces and fills them in with rituals and astral logic. It reaches down into the dregs of the sub conscious and finds a broken girl who will look to you as her savior. What a pair we would make: the mad god, and her towering, bleeding saint. We could set up this van as a Tabernacle, and charge $20 for salvation and a t-shirt. We’d never have to get real jobs.
“Where are we going?” I asked for the third time.
“Somewhere safe,” she said.
Saint Peter pulled the van over on the side of the road. We tried to bed down in the back with warm blankets, but, of course, neither of us could sleep with the universe exploding above our heads, the horse-headed nebula opening its mouth to scream, the earth but a moist eye. St. Peter lay on the floor of the van with her pupils big enough for horses to run through, sweating all over. She stripped off her clothes and huddled inside a blanket.
The demon rested her head on me and her black hair spread out across my lap like a fan.
“She is a dark and pretty thing,” Saint Peter said, her chest heaving, each breath hissing hard through her teeth. “You should be proud to have her.”
Whether she spoke to the demon, or me, I didn’t know.
She unzipped the hunter’s bow from a suede bag. She opened a can of bowstring wax, but instead of applying it to her bow, she drew patterns in it with her fingernails. She hummed underneath her breath - gospel hymns - ones that I’d never heard before.
If someone asked me then why I invited the demon into my bed, or why I brought her with me as I ran from my childhood home, I wouldn’t have been able to say. She’d been chasing me my entire life, a night terror, the kind of monster, you can only hope, will terrify your children into obedience. But as I looked across the van at her, playing with Pluto by taunting her with the spiders dangling from her wrists, I only wanted to cling to her.
Right before sunrise, the demon, Pluto, and I went outside underneath the pale spatter of stars. We walked to the field off the highway. We were coming down from the high of the mushrooms. I grew sleepy and slow, my jaw aching. My skin seemed too heavy to carry anymore.
I almost expected the demon to burst into flames in the sunlight. But, when the sun hit her, she didn’t ignite. She closed her eyes and inhaled the light. Wisps of dandelions blew into her hair.
It could’ve been an almost romantic moment, but then I thought of my mother, alone in a hospital bed. I thought of plastic tubes snaking around her arms and tugging at her veins, while nurses drugged her with enough tranquilizers to make sure she’d never walk straight again.
“I’m a terrible person,” I said.
“Me too,” the demon said, “but I wasn’t a person for long.”
“I’m letting my mother die.”
“You could always go back,” she said.
A crow landed on the demon’s arm, trying to eat a centipede crawling in her hair. The demon grabbed the crow and twisted its head off. She ate it. She tore its wings off and pressed them to her mouth. Its body fell into the grass. Pluto jumped out of my arms and started to play with its headless body, biting it, circling it.
“Look,” she said. “I could be an angel.”
She rubbed the bloodied wings against her lips, her cheek. Underneath their black feathers, she smiled at me.
“You’re a monster,” I said.
“You thought you were the only one?” she asked.
I should leave her. I could push her down into the grass and jump into the van and tell Saint Peter to drive drive drive.
She tried to touch my face with the black feathers. I stepped backwards.
“Keep those away from me.”
Her smile faded. She dropped the feathers. They floated to the grass. My hands curled into fists. I’d raised them, ready to strike the demon.
I stared at them, taut with energy, as if they didn’t belong to me. She didn’t move to avoid an incoming blow, didn’t flinch.
“I’ve waited for you,” she said.
Slowly, still tense, I uncurled my fists.
She drew one of my shaking hands to her lips and gently kissed the knuckles. Her lips were smooth and dry.
“I came when you called me,” she said. “I took care of you.”
My stomach bottomed out when she looked at me. When she pressed her body against mine, my heart ached. She arched her back and I ran my fingers down her spine, each vertebra, one by one. I gathered her skirt in my hands and pushed it up against her thighs, squeezing until my knuckles turned white.
“Didn’t I take care of you?” she asked.
I kissed her mouth. Kissed her again and again, breathing hard.
I always thought she was made of spiders and chitin, rotten water, but I touched only cool skin.
The demon and I went back to the van and Saint Peter climbed into the driver’s seat. We arrived in the city in the middle of the night. It was not what I expected.
When You’re Asleep, You Never Know Where Your Hands Will Be:
A Play
CHARACTERS
MAD GIRL: a schizophrenic loser, late teens
THE SAINT: a self-harming art model, late teens
DEMON: a shadow whose reality or unreality is disputed, late teens
THE WITCH: drug addict, possibly reincarnation of Hecate, early twenties
PLUTO: a black cat, middle-aged
Act I
Scene One
[The stage is the living room of a dark, dilapidated house, owned by a diesel punk witch. The only light is the candle underneath THE WITCH’S face. THE WITCH sits on a burgundy couch in a nearly empty living room. The couch is her throne. A pack of dogs lies sleeping at her feet. There are machines, like industrial tubing, embedded in her forehead. There are machines hooked into the crumbling wall behind her.]
[Enter Stage Left: SAINT and MAD GIRL, who is carrying PLUTO]
MAD GIRL. (To the Saint) You told me we were going somewhere safe.
THE SAINT. Yes, but nobody can keep you safe forever.
MAD GIRL. I’m going to throw up. Get me out of here.
THE WITCH. You don’t even know where you are.
[THE WITCH blows the candles out. They are cast in darkness. There’s a soft grinding noise coming through the walls. MAD GIRL cries out softly. There’s a scratching sound like MAD GIRL is trying to tear the skin off her face]
THE WITCH. You shouldn’t be acting that way. You’re an old goddess, sister.
THE SAINT. She’s dehydrated. She’s malnourished. She hasn’t been awake for years.
THE WITCH. Why would you ever fall asleep?
THE SAINT. (Whispering) Please, be kind to her.
[MAD GIRL begins to weep. THE SAINT presses MAD GIRL’s face into her chest to muffle her crying. MAD GIRL’s body convulses. PLUTO jumps out of MAD GIRL’s arms]
THE WITCH. I’m getting sick of kindness.
THE SAINT. She’s not ready to accept this.
THE WITCH. Well how long is it going to take? I’m getting bored. I have neural pathways you couldn’t dream of, and you want me to just sit here and be nice?
THE SAINT. The plan was ruined.
THE WITCH. (Speaking to the invisible audience) I’m building a chaosphere out of used parts. I could destroy the universe, if I wanted to, but I haven’t found another I like yet.
[A soft blue light starts glowing from above, growing slowly in intensity, illuminating the entire living room. the sleepy dogs at THE WITCH’s feet begin to stir. They’re more like monsters than dogs, great black mastiffs with glossy fur. Their eyes are baby blue. Their claws are like glass. PLUTO lies among them. THE WITCH s
hifts on her throne, and, out of her lap spill eyeballs and little blue flowers]
MAD GIRL. (Whispering to THE SAINT) I want to go somewhere safe.
THE WITCH. (Overhearing) You’ll never find a place like that. Now be quiet, and pay attention. I don’t want to have to show you this again.
[The blue light gets brighter. The light reveals they’re standing in front of dark blue curtains. The curtains part to reveal a small, dark, empty stage]
THE WITCH. (To MAD GIRL) Where did everything go? You can’t come into my house and change whatever you want. Tell me what you’ve done!
MAD GIRL. This is the wrong play.
SAINT PETER. (Whispering to MAD GIRL) It’s only the actors who are wrong.
[MAD GIRL tugs at the SAINT’s jacket and at her hair. She’s never known fear like this.]
[THE WITCH stands up abruptly from her throne. Her dogs begin barking and eating eyeballs off the floor. She’s looking at the stage behind the stage. We cannot see her face]
THE WITCH. I did not cast you for this role.
[A soft blue spotlight casts down on the empty stage. DEMON appears to materialize on the stage from the blue light. MAD GIRL hardly recognizes her. DEMON is wearing gaudy bright red lipstick and a shimmering flapper dress. Her black hair has been tied in a topknot. The dogs keep barking.]
THE WITCH. Who let you in here?
[THE WITCH motions for her ghouls to head toward the stage. The ghouls writhe across the floor toward her, but when the demon holds her hand out, the ghouls stop.]
DEMON. I’m going to sing a lullaby.
[A microphone materializes on stage. The demon creeps toward it. Her motions are nearly too quick for the human eye, almost stopgap. She seems to walk through dimensions, flickering in and out of existence. She touches the microphone like a sex organ.]
We are Wormwood Page 10