Despite the awful pain I’ll be in at the time, I look forward to my last breath.
In my dream, I was aware of October. I can’t remember the substance of the dream, and I know there is a mercy to that. But I recall the impression of standing beneath a fantastically big sky, under trees so tall, they loomed in my sight as they’d seem to a toddler. I breathed air full of the smokeless burning of leaves rotting into the rich soil they blanketed. October died in my dream, made dim by those un-breathing shadows unique to corners of grey cinder block. Still sleeping, I knew on some deep level that this was Halloween morning, just as I once could know before waking that snow had fallen in the night.
My sleep was ripped like the skin of Keene’s throat, by a scream that woke me and threw me from my cot with the violence of a seizure.
Tuttle, in the cell opposite, crouched atop the steel sink in his cell. He screamed with all the strength of his lungs, all the volume of his barrel chest. His features twisted, as if his grimace would pull the corners of his mouth below his jaw. His powder-blue eyes bulged, and when my gaze touched his through the bars, the man wailed like an infant as he dropped to the cement floor with a sickening thud, more lifeless when he struck than was Catherine’s body.
The attendants rushed to Tuttle in less than a minute, along with the head psychiatric nurse, an ex-Marine named Richard who weighed two-hundred and eighty pounds. One held a strait-jacket, another had a hypo at the ready. But as they neared him, Tuttle rolled on the floor like an autistic child on the verge of exhaustion, mumbling or praying in a language of his own.
Tuttle’s monstrosity is unique, even here. Six foot three, with arms like logs, an IQ of about fifty, and the inability to come unless he snaps the neck of the prostitute he fucks. He had been a bogeyman of my youth, a monster culled out of newspapers into schoolyard folklore. A bogeyman I’d feared as a kid now lived close enough for me to smell the stink of his morning shit.
They had Tuttle upright now. The nightmare being of my youth was still bawling, pointing toward the door of his cell and saying, Kitty, kitty. Or maybe it was Kiddie, I couldn’t tell. His face was the color of turned wine and his mouth spilled frothy spit that mixed with the tears that leaked from his idiot child’s eyes.
Madness collects here, as if in a great battery or dynamo, and it arcs now and then in the minds of people like Tuttle. The bars hum with the threat of a discharge.
The wind surges. Over Tuttle’s quieting sobs, I hear dead leaves flying against the outside wall through the slot-like window of my cell. And although the window can’t be opened, I feel a draft coalesce around me and drift like river fog out of my cell. The tumours in my lower guts twitch like hatchlings.
Tuttle screams again, and covers his face with his blanket.
* * *
Three hours later, I sit in Doctor Johansson’s office, chained to my usual seat. For days now, in short sessions of less than an hour, we’ve gone over the particulars of my ten avengings . . . details that won’t help my twin in his portrait of me as a fascinating monster, but that will help the police, and perhaps the Anne Rule wannabes who’ll make meager advances dashing off my story for paperback houses.
Doctor Johansson has his files placed before him. I think I’ve partly figured out his system. The placement of files is like a series of Japanese fans, spread in semi-circles, slightly overlapping. His mind operates on many levels. He’s not the sort to impose phenomena into the linear formations that are the delight of the arrogant and stupid. He’s not afraid to use a maze-like model, or a model like a house of cards. I wish I had time to know him better.
He looks at a new file, not like the others: it’s stapled and has several differently coloured pages, white, pink, goldenrod, and blue. The folder seems unstable in my sight, as if made of television static.
—How do you feel, Dean? he asked, puffing on his cold and empty pipe.
—Fine. For the time being.
The draft came again, making me uneasy, bringing thoughts of Tuttle and his shrieking tirade. The eyes of my twin from behind the silvered glass seemed a fleshy, oppressive presence. The light of the last October morning I’ll ever see streamed from the window. Dust motes didn’t churn in the light, but seemed to stay almost suspended, despite the draft.
—From the time you killed Molino to the time you killed Catherine, how had you been handling stress?
He massaged his right temple as he spoke, the pipe nearly touching his wrist. Had it been lit, it would have burned him. Looking at the bowl, I felt the anticipation of it burning him, the involuntary flinch of seeing someone about to suffer pain. My spine compressed, my shoulders hunched, until a pulling changed the tilt of my vertebrae, so that the cartilage between them felt packed with shaved ice.
—What do you mean?
—Were you having sweats? Grinding your teeth? Stomach-aches? Shaky hands?
—Not as much as before.
The anticipation of seeing him burned personified itself, brought itself into being.
—And you felt better about the people you killed?
I tried to not pay heed to the tugging I felt on the chain around my waist, like a child trying to get my attention. It was very hard to stay focused.
—I’ve told you that.
The tugging stopped, and I heard the quick click-click like dog’s paws on the tile by my feet, receding as if the paws walked toward the door.
My shoulders fell.
—And better about yourself, too?
The paws ran towards my back, wide long steps like a high jumper going towards his mark. A weight thudded against my shoulders and a wet mouth pressed to the nape of my neck. Fever-hot hands gripped my collarbones. The warmth of moist palms bled through my jumpsuit.
Don’t scream. Don’t scream. Don’t . . .
—Yes, I felt better about myself.
I trembled like a man freezing from blood loss.
Ignore it. Ignore the little shit. He’s nothing without attention. Ignore him . . .
—Your cancer has gone into remission, Dean. Whatever internalized stress that fueled it is gone. The cancer has stopped.
Within a heartbeat, all I’d ever been and felt and tasted and done crowded through the doors of my consciousness. Blinders of perception ripped, awareness of everything sluiced into my mind, the inverse of what I’d felt as Evan died: an inward awareness, abrasive, wounding. Each thread and seam of my clothing itched. I smelled the oily links of my chains, the dust baking atop the buzzing fluorescent lights, the residue of nicotine in the long-dormant air filter. I felt the vibrations of the heating pipes, each nail of the fingers digging into my flesh, each tooth of the mouth, each nodule of the sliding tongue, each crease of the lips.
I heard the timber-creak of Doctor Johansson closing the cardboard file and the tumble of motes.
And like a crease of lightning against a pitch-black void, I felt my mind cracking and folding and crushing under its own weight as the gift of my mortality dropped from my grasp.
Because I knew then, and understood.
Doctor Johansson’s mouth cracked open, and the words he spoke struck my chest with a force that could snap my ribs.
—The court recommended you stay here
. . . I knew and understood.
. . . under our care . . .
I knew and understood.
. . . unfit to stand trial . . .
I knew and understood.
. . . incompetent . . .
I was going to stay here.
. . . medication . . .
And I was going to go mad.
. . . intensive therapy . . . No way out.
The tiny mouth detached from my neck and the spot where it had been felt cold and wet. Little feet scraped against my back and I heard faint laughter and felt the warmth of breath against my ear, felt the noose of flesh that had never lived tighten around my neck as little arms hugged my throat.
I screame
d.
Doctor Johansson flew back from his desk.
—YOU LITTLE SHIT!!! YOU BROUGHT ME HERE!!! YOU PLANNED THIS!!
My throat ripped within as I yelled and jerked in the rattling chair, trying to detach the little fuck from my back. I felt it drop off, then heard it run to the door. Like the hands of a diabetic going into shock, my mind grasped and clenched and groped as what I had wrought shivved itself into the core of my awareness.
The little being ran towards me again and its hand grabbed my hair. The thing hung off my scalp, dangling, jerking my neck to the sides, and Oh, God, why couldn’t I see it, like before? Why was it hiding behind the air, now? Why was it laughing like a happy child?
The door opened, I heard it over the hollow and hoarse sounds my torn throat made in lieu of screams, and suddenly Richard stood over me with three attendants.
—Get it off me, Richard. Please.
But my voice was too mutilated to be heard. Richard had a hypo in his hand.
Oh God, no.
I started crying.
A prick on my shoulder and a grey cloudy void.
* * *
I’m going mad.
I know this, for I have written this poem, and have only now discovered its last stanza.
It’s as if I’m going senile, parts of my mind strobe out, leaving holes in my consciousness. I’m aware of the hollow spaces left behind, like the soft sockets that mark where a tooth has been pulled.
The bars hum deafeningly with the madness of this place, and the barn-stench of psychotherapeutic drugs taints my own sweat now. The chemicals paint my mouth with a taste like burnt tin foil. I rewrote myself as myth, and all myths are defined by their endings. Warrior kings become great because of the final battles that await them. Killing avatars such as I, Grendels of this day, who invade the white-carpeted halls of those we kill, are defined by the normality that is restored by our capture and our deaths. By the catharsis those who drink of our fictions feel as they close the book or watch end credits roll. By our being invaded by the dybbuks that are our downfalls, as we are tormented by our suppressed selves. By our Others. The fiction demands it. I made myself a Trickster, and in so doing, I’ve been tricked. I am not Loki. In becoming an archetype, I am ruined by my own Trickster son whom I exiled . . . just as I, an exiled son, have ruined my father.
Why has my little victim done this to me? I try hard not to use its name, anymore. Because there’s a power, a magic, to Names that can make things real . . . imaginary things. Spectres can accost you in the broad light of day if you give them the right Name, even if you’ve made yourself an accosting spectre.
That’s the real question. How could he have done this to me? He’s a goblin. The Velveteen Rabbit told how things can attain the gift of life through nursery magic. The Velveteen Rabbit was given life for helping a little boy cope with sickness. My little twin, my Other, was brought to life through nursery magic, the same magic that turned me into a god over the smaller things I tormented. Maybe my little victim was given life for helping me endure my torturedchildhood.
Torture.
That’s the issue, isn’t it?
I tortured him, and this is his payback. His trick, as the dispossessed child of a dispossessed child. But he’s unfair. I’d let him go. I’d freed him long ago, and he won’t let me out of this place, won’t give me the peace of death.
When I’d come out from under Richard’s needle, I tried to cut my way out of here, a way cut out through myself. The one legacy from my father: the easy way out.
It was dark, and I was chained with my arms crossed when I came to. But it was simple enough to slide the links down to expose my wrists. I should inflict upon myself a Gothic end, poetic. What else should be expected of me, who, invoking the poetry of fiction, inflicted Gothic ends on others? I thought of Filippo Argenti, Dante’s enemy who, in Hell, went mad with anger and turned his teeth against himself.
I followed his example, and felt hot blood bubble into my mouth.
I spat out the skin of my wrists and sat on the bed and bled onto my blankets, so the sound of blood streaming on the floor wouldn’t bring the attendants.
Minutes later I heard a crash against the bars of Tuttle’s cell. (Could the little monster get through the bars of my cell?) Tuttle woke and started screaming again, blanket thrown over his face. Could Tuttle see it because he was a Fool? A Child? A Monster? Did all three masks he wore give him such Sight?
I was too weak to move when the attendants came into the hallway to check on Tuttle. Despite their coming, I knew I had a good chance of dying. But before they could return with the med kit, I felt pressure on my forearms, a small hand on each choking off the blood-flow to my chewed wrists.
The attendants saved my life. God damn them.
My aching wrists were then separated from the reach of my mouth by the thick canvass of a straitjacket. Undaunted, upon my return from the infirmary, I took another lesson from my poetic mentor, whose myths defined the killers’ myths I have used to define me. Dante wrote of Perdella Vigne, who, after a running start, smashed in his own head against the walls of his prison.
When I tried, a soft body placed itself between the wall and my head, clinging, perhaps, like a spider.
I’m sure my little victim didn’t mind the impact. He’s suffered worse under my rage.
I fell backward to the floor, as if pushed by a schoolyard bully.
My second attempt made quite a racket. The attendants came and bound me to the cot with restraints that look like seat belts. They took no chances, and left me in the canvass jacket.
And so tonight, I swallowed my tongue.
My victim opened my mouth and pulled my tongue from my throat. I tried biting the fingers, but my teeth passed through them as if they were clay.
My only hope is the cancer. But that’s a vain hope.
Because I think my little victim is my cancer, displaced in some ethereal way outside my body.
My miserable life when I was young gave birth to Piggy. Later, my miserable life gave birth to my cancer. They’re the same thing, products of my mind under like circumstances. And when I faced death born of my own pent-up rage, I created a third set of circumstances. He prompted me to seek the catharsis that would free him with a single whispered word: Why?
As I have been taking my life back by taking lives, Piggy has been taking back the lives I have stolen from him. Maybe that’s how he got a life of his own.
And a will of his own.
Oh, my. I’ve been using his Name, haven’t I? I couldn’t not use it forever, could I?
So this is Piggy’s revenge, as all Tricksters have their revenge. Or his Justice, perhaps. His hunger for the Justice of seeing me imprisoned and broken, as I had kept him imprisoned and broken in my mind.
At least I hope he’s done this out of Justice, or revenge, or rage.
I hear him now, my exiled twin, the click of his feet on the hallway floor. He passes through the bars like a whisper. He runs a few steps and jumps atop my chest, where my raw and aching wrists press over each other in their canvas sleeves.
I can see him, this twisted little creature taken from my mirror image. His ugly goblin’s face is like my own when I was a child, and like a child, I cry when I see him.
Because I am a child again. I have no freedom, I waste here in neglect. The strait-jacket is so much like the restricting snow-suit from so long ago, an embodiment of my prison I wear as a garment.
Just like old times.
I am a child again, and Piggy is smiling warmly at me, like an old friend. And grinding my stitched wrists as he does so, he rocks back and forth, as a toddler would, expecting to hear again a much-loved story.
I hope he has done this to me out of rage or revenge.
Because I couldn’t bear to think he has done this to me out of Love.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Marano is a former punk rock DJ, bouncer, and the auth
or of the modern dark fantasy classic Dawn Song, which won both the International Horror Guild and Bram Stoker Awards, and which will be reprinted by ChiZine Publications in 2013, to be followed by two sequels. For more than 20 years, his film reviews and pop culture commentary have been a highlight of the nationally syndicated Public Radio Satellite System show Movie Magazine International. His non-fiction has appeared in alternative newspapers such as The Independent Weekly, The Boston Phoenix and The Weekly Dig, as well as in magazines such as Paste and Fantastique. His column “MediaDrome” has been a wildly popular feature in Cemetery Dance since 2001. He currently divides his time between a neighbourhood in Boston that had been the site of a gang war that was the partial basis of The Departed and a sub-division in Charleston, SC a few steps away from a former Confederate Army encampment. He can be reached at www.michaelmarano.com.
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