There is so much sound in my ears, pounding at my skull. Something sharp has stabbed into my shoulder and I feel my own hot blood pouring down from the wound. That side of my body feels like a sack filled with broken things that can never be fixed again. I’m spinning and my stomach is churning and a vague sense of gravity returns to me.
I am falling, strapped in my seatbelt and embraced by the ruined metal of something that used to be my vehicle. The front of the car crunches down against the asphalt and I have time to notice the engine smashing up through the dashboard. The windshield explodes, showering me with little glass raindrops.
One final thought comes to me then. I know M did this.
And then my world is all white and blistering and I know nothing more.
Part II: Unearthed
Chapter 37
Thorny Rose
There is only lamplight in my room. It is dim here and darkness tends to reign. I like the shadows. I feel safe in the shadows. The objects of my obsession look down at me from framed posters on the walls. Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, Albert Fish. They watch me as I sleep; my collection of serial killers with many pairs of curiously deadened eyes. I love to read about them. I love to learn about them. I lie on my bed and I twirl strands of my black hair around my finger as I read about cannibalism and mutilation and the soulless crimes of those special few who crossed the boundaries into the land of taboo.
My hand reaches out to grab my phone, the chipped black nail polish looking like tendrils of corruption, bits of it starting to flake off. I’d need a fresh coat soon. I touch the screen and I’m greeted with a familiar sight. Nothing. No text messages, no Facebook comments, no likes on my Instagram pictures. It’s like I’m the only living person in a world of ghosts, never noticed in my offline life or my online life either. Or perhaps I’m the ghost and the living ignore me because they don’t even realize I’m here. Sometimes it feels that way, like I’m flitting through an abysmal world where nothing really matters and the only destination in sight is a pit filled with swirling blackness and dying motivation.
There are no texts from Roman. There are never any texts from Roman. That cuts deeper than the straight razor ever does when I let it kiss my flesh. Does he even have the slightest clue how I feel about him? Probably not. I’m little more than a passing acquaintance, an extra that occasionally makes an appearance in the screenplay of Ro’s life. I never have many lines in that screenplay. I’m just background noise, the oddball in black with a secret crush that weighs her down and threatens to turn her heart into a blazing inferno.
Ro with his dark hair and thoughtful eyes. I’d like to kiss him and never stop. I’d like to feel his chest beneath my hands. I’d like to bite into his lip and draw just a few rubies of blood, just a taste, you know? Nothing bad. I just want to take in a little part of him so that we’ll always be together. United, like a knot that not even the most skillful fingers can undo. Maybe I’m a broken doll with a few mental cracks, but porcelain can be mended. Ro could do that for me. I believe that in the deepest recesses of my soul.
I roll from my bed and I crawl over to the full length mirror along the wall. My movements are languid, much like the slither of snake waking from hibernation. The mirror is shattered in multiple places. Many fist-sized indentations mark the surface of the glass, showing me so many different little reflections. I hate all of those little reflections, each and every one of them.
I try to smile, my lips curving and my teeth showing. I examine my own smile in the shattered mirror. It’s the grin of something alien attempting to mimic normal human emotion. It’s unusual and it inspires such a loathing in me. I cannot explain this. It’s always been this way.
Somewhere beyond the paper thin walls of this room, my mother is screaming my name. Her voice is hoarse, choked and warped by decades of chain smoking. She wants her pills. She wants me to bring her pain pills. Her fucking pills. Her goddamn motherfucking pills. She wants them. She needs them. Where are they, Rose? Where are they, you little bitch?
I take the special cedar box out from underneath my bed. I open it and take out the prize within. It’s my straight razor, stainless steel blade so keenly sharp with a carved ivory handle. It’s very nice. The craftsmanship is exceptional.
I pull back my shawl and expose my arms. The scars crisscross the pallid texture of my flesh like roadmaps leading to entirely new states of pain. Some of the scars are very old and others are new, still scabby and irritated. My eyes narrow to slits as the blade sinks in, that familiar sensation settling into this poor excuse for a husk that is my body. My eyes narrow to slits. My breathing becomes shallow. The sound of blood slowly dripping is soothing, pitter-patter it goes, kind of like a lullaby.
I cut long and I cut deep. I give it lots of attention. I try so very hard to cut out all the ugliness, but it always grows back. The petals of this Rose are meant to last, and the thorns can only do so much.
Chapter 38
Thorny Rose
I have a secret name for my mother. I’m good at keeping secrets. I have many of them. I do not think of her as mother, or mom, or mama. I do not associate her birth name with her either. It’s Rebecca, very mundane. The name I’ve labeled my mother with in my mind is Filth. She earns this title. She is a repulsive human being on the inside and outside. I think somewhere along the way the squalor she lives in started to infect her soul, eating away at it and making it equally dirty and foul.
I’m standing above her now, my hand outstretched with a few of her Oxycontin pills in my hand. It gives me time to study her. She has the face of a shrunken apple, tiny rotten crisps lining her mouth where teeth once were. They are all gone now; just jagged fragments of brown enamel remain, jutting up out of the gums like miniature spikes. Her eyes are always bloodshot and watching.
Her recliner is nestled into one of the only clear sections of the living room, bordered on all sides by stacks and stacks of junk that make up the hoard my mother has collected from yard sales and flea markets over the years. She feels comfortable in the kingdom of her hoard, a little rat queen with twitching cheeks and yellowing fingernails. She is watching television. She’s almost always watching television. She likes survivalist shows best, the ones that show men and women struggling to endure the unforgiving harshness of nature. She delights in watching the suffering of others, even if it’s just moving pictures flashing across a screen.
She takes the pills from my hand, those fingernails dragging against my palm just enough to hurt. It’s always intentional with Filth. Nothing is accidental.
She stinks of human shit. Sometimes she shits herself in the chair and wallows in it for awhile. She makes me clean the chair when she finally goes to bed on the ragged old mattress nestled further back in the maze of the hoard. It’s just one of her little games. It’s designed to humiliate me, to keep me subservient.
I fantasize about killing her almost every single day. I invent entirely new and innovative ways to do it. Maybe I could push down one of the heavy stacks while she’s in the chair and crush her beneath the avalanche of nicknacks. Maybe I could grab her by the thinning hair of her ponytail and slam dunk her head through the screen of the television. Maybe I can use my teeth tear through the loose, filth-encrusted skin that covers the bluish veins of her throat.
I fantasize about lots of things.
“Been pricking yourself again, Rosie? Those look fresh.”
I pull the black sleeve of my sweater just a little bit farther down to cover up the lacerations on my forearm. I hate when she calls me Rosie. She knows that I hate it. She makes it a point to call me Rosie every single time I’m forced to interact with her. Filth is very good at her little games. She has nothing but time to create new ones and sit on her ass all day while collecting worker’s compensation ever since she threw her back out stocking shelves at Food Mart.
“You know, I just don’t get it, Rosie. Got a roof over your head and a little tummy full of food that I buy for you, an
d still you gotta cut yourself up. Ain’t that just the weirdest fuckin’ thing?”
I do not reply. Her voice is grating and bubbly. It reminds me of sewer water gurgling up from a malfunctioning toilet.
“Ever since you slid out past my thighs I knew you were twisted up in the head, just like your Daddy was. He was all twisted up until the very day he died. Used to burn himself with cigarettes, I ever tell you that?”
Yes. She had told me that seemingly hundreds of times. I never knew my father. He died when I was only two years old. A cigarette dropped from his fingers in the little bedroom down the hall while he slept and the whole room had gone up in flames right along with Daddy. All that remained was his right foot burnt off at the ankle. The rest was ash. That room is still there, a charred ruin with the door nailed shut and blocked off from the rest of the house. It happened in less than a few hours. I guess the hoard was good tinder for the fire.
I try to change the subject.
“Is there anything left to eat tonight?” I ask, my eyes wandering over to the remnants of the frozen microwavable dinner that she has already devoured. She reaches down to pick up a little piece of chicken bone, slurping the marrow down past her warty tongue.
“There’s a can of Vienna sausages in the mini fridge back there. You can have that.”
The mini fridge hasn’t worked in at least seven years, some type of electrical issue. Filth knows this. I once checked the expiration date on that can of Vienna sausages. They expired exactly fifteen years ago. Filth knows this too.
“I think I’ll go for a walk.”
I like taking long walks at night. There’s one particular destination that I visit pretty often. It’s a special place for me. A secret place too.
“You do that.”
Filth pops the pills into her mouth and washes them down with a can of generic soda from Food Mart. She adjusts herself a bit in the chair, seeming to take careful care to rub her buttocks all around the material of the recliner’s seat.
“Don’t forget to scrub down my chair when you get home.”
I move through the maze of the hoard and I’m out the front door, the stink of human shit fading as I take in the freshness of the cold night air.
Chapter 39
Thorny Rose
I like winter. It’s December now in Rust Valley and the cold bites deeply. I’m wearing my big black coat with the hood that drapes down very low, almost obscuring my eyes. The freezing air feels good in my lungs. My breath is a spreading mist and I walk through that mist with each step forward. Cold tends to numb. I enjoy feeling numb. I imagine when you’re dead, you feel numb. Just cold and empty locked away in a box hidden from everything and everyone.
Sounds nice.
I’ve walked this same trail many times before, usually at night. It veers off from the highway and cuts into the woods. Trees with bare arms loom above me on all sides, the undergrowth scraping against my coat as I walk. The moon is full tonight and it cuts through the scraggly canopy above and provides me with all the light that I need. If my entire life was illuminated by nothing but moonlight I think that would make me very happy. Moonlight is all I need. More than enough.
This little trail through the wilderness leads to Legion Lane. It opens to a thorny clearing with a section of trampled down barbwire fence to separate it from the road. There are only a few houses on Legion Lane, most of them far apart. One of those houses is very important to me. It’s very old and time has not been kind to it. The back of the house is lost in a swampy area; almost like the very building itself is trying to return to nature. The house is not important to me. The person who lives in the house is, though.
It’s Roman Merrick’s house.
I come here all the time to this particular spot. I don’t actually go up to the house and knock on the door or anything. That would be weird. This vantage point gives me a perfect view of his bedroom window. There is no curtain up within. The foliage and brambles lets me stand here perfectly still, hiding in plain sight. I just like to watch. There’s nothing wrong with watching. It’s my little window into Roman’s world.
I deserve that much, don’t I?
Some nights I get lucky. I’ve caught glimpses of him changing, pulling his undershirt up over his head and shaking out that dark, wavy hair. I can just see the tops of his bare shoulders from this angle, everything else cut off by the bottom of the window frame. That’s alright. I have a vivid imagination.
During these rare, lucky moments, I reach down and rub at my crotch through the material of whatever long black skirt I’m wearing that night. I encourage the warmness that spreads down there. I tease myself until my inner thighs are sticky and I keep watching him from afar. These are our intimate moments. The cold air hardens my nipples beneath my shirt and I imagine what might happen if Roman looked out and saw me standing here. That might ruin things though. I feel closest to him when I’m just watching. There is no harm in watching.
A frown creases my lips because Roman’s window is dark now. He’s not home tonight. I guess his mom is asleep because the whole house is dark. I know his father works the grave shift at the American Legion downtown so he’s not here either. That’s discouraging. I was hoping for a Ro sighting tonight. It always lifts my spirits.
During the rare occasions when I run into him in town I try so very hard to be witty and casual around him. It takes incredible concentration to do that. It exhausts me, leaves me drained. Whenever I see him I must resist the urge to pounce and rip his shirt open and the lick the sweat off his chest. I can only really be myself when I watch him through his window. All masks cast aside, it’s a cathartic feeling.
I guess it’s time to walk back home now. Time to clean the scum from Filth’s chair and then return to my room and then fall down into slumber. Maybe I’ll cut some more of the ugliness out if the desire becomes unbearable. I’m about to turn away when something stops me dead in my tracks.
There’s a soft, haunting melody coming from the back of Ro’s house. I turn my head, struggling to hear it better. It’s coming from somewhere near the back of the house, the area obscured by swampy growth and dead trees.
It sounds like a lullaby.
It’s strange…because I hear the melody in my head just as much as I hear it in my ears. It’s like a siren song beckoning me closer. Could Ro be back there somewhere? It doesn’t sound anything like him. It doesn’t sound like anything I’ve ever heard before. It is both sweet and sad, infinitely powerful.
I should leave. I should walk home now. Instead I’m walking towards the source of that lullaby. My feet are moving and they almost don’t even feel like my own appendages right now. I push through the brambles and the twisted tree limbs. I have to kneel and lower my head in some places. It reminds me of the hoard maze at home. I must have stepped down into hidden water because my combat boots are soaked through. There’s a door back here. I can see it in the distance beyond the dying vegetation. I do not know where it leads, but the lullaby is coming from behind that door.
Thorns cut into me as I progress towards the door that leads down into the dirt.
I barely notice.
I’m used to the thorns.
Chapter 40
Thorny Rose
I stand before gnarled wood, a little door with a little lullaby behind it. It is wide but not very high. That’s okay. I’m not very tall anyways. Poison ivy curls all around the door, most of it dead and brown since we’re in the early months of winter. Once when I was a little girl I rubbed poison ivy all over my privates just to see what might happen. It became very itchy down there. I scratched and scratched until my fingers were all red and wet. I touched my fingers to my lips after that and sucked all the scarlet off of them. It was a learning experience for me.
I open the door quietly and step inside. This is an earthy place. It’s very dark and hard to see. I smell freshly furrowed dirt and the stinky odor of something dead and rotting. I smell blood too. I have a keen sense of smell when it c
omes to blood. Those smells are all on the surface, though. There is something beneath them all. It’s stronger. It’s the dominant scent in this dark and earthy place. I cannot place it. I cannot put a name to it. It’s like pressing your nostrils against a portal that leads to the unfathomable and inhaling until you explode from within.
My eyes are finally starting to adjust to the blackness. I walk forward, exploring a bit, and immediately I have to stop myself and take a shaky step backwards. I nearly stepped over the edge of a big hole in the center of the room. It’s slightly larger than a grave and it seems bottomless. How is that possible? Are my eyes betraying me again? They do that sometimes. Sometimes they show me things I’m not meant to see.
There’s dried blood all around the hole. There are gristles of rotting flesh too. Looks like some kind of animal flesh. That explains the smell of decay. Is someone buried down here? Maybe it’s a little cemetery reserved for one.
Everything is silent now. The lullaby is gone. Maybe it was never there at all. Sometimes there is a whisper in my head that speaks of dreadful things. It is always hushed and raspy. It always wants me to cut and slice and tear and mangle until my body is nothing but wet red ribbons. The lullaby sounded different though. I don’t think it originated in my head like the whisper did.
Dirt Lullabies Page 10