You didn’t, yet, see your mother.
You bent down to slip past the crime scene tape. Your rag doll father was visibly shaking with your every step forward. You barely noticed the plastic stairs’ familiar shift away from the foundation as you ascended them.
Your father closed the door.
You opened it.
Your father shrieked. Cocked his head toward your brother. Spoke to him in a voice not unlike that of Foghorn Leghorn. “I say, I say, I say, give me my bow and arrow, son.”
“R-ree-r-ree-r-ree-right away, d-dee-d-dee-d-dee Dad!” Off he clomped to the garage.
“What’s going on? Where’s Mom?”
He ran a stuffed cotton hand over his yarn-hair. “I say, I say, you know full well where your momma’s at, boy-ah! And now, I say, now you’ve come to do the same to us, haven’t you?”
Your brother clomped his plastic legs back over toward your dad and gave him the archery equipment. Your father tried loading the arrow into the bow, but his cloth hands had no fingers. “Damned, I say, damned arthritis.” Then he commanded your brother to call the police. “Tell Officer Collins that he, I say, he returned to the scene of the crime!”
“What crime?”
Your brother spoke up. His eyes were dull and lifeless, but somehow you had a sense he was glaring at you. “I kn-knew you w-were g-g-gonna try it,” he said, in his Porky Pig voice. “You were trying to k-kill our m-mother, that dee-dee-day in the bathroom. And the n-night you left the h-house, you dee-did kill her. You dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-did!”
This was some seriously fucked up shit.
Dad thrust his hand out toward you, as though trying to point. But, lacking fingers, it was a hollow gesture. “I say, I say, you even left a note claiming responsibility. I say, a note taunting the police. ‘Don’t look for me. You’ll never find me.’ Ha! Well, here we done found you all right! Found you, comin’ right back to where you did the killin’! I reckon you must’ve gotten hungry out there. Decided to come back here and beg for some sort of mercy or leniency or somethin’. I say, boy-ah, I cain’t figure you out at all. You is, I say, you is nuttier than a squirrel turd.”
You heard sirens approaching.
“I didn’t kill Mom!”
“They found, I say, they found your fingerprints on my shotgun. And that’s how she done kicked the bucket, son. We cain’t, I say, we cain’t even go back to the garage, because, I say, there’s blood still splattered out there where you shot her. How could you do this to me, knowin’… I say… knowin’ that I was the one who found my own mother dead? And now, I say, and now… this.” With that, Dad started sobbing. Instead of tears, thin, frayed strings started falling from his button eyes.
“This is fucked up. You guys think I killed her? I didn’t.”
Then you remembered a bit of conversation: “You wouldn’t bat an eyelash if a certain M-O-M did herself in.”
“Let me ask you. Didn’t they find her prints on the gun, too?”
Dad cleared his throat. Batted tear-strings out of his eyes. They drifted down to the floor. “Why, I say, of course they did, son. We all reckon that’s ’cause she was strugglin’ with you. And if you don’t mind me sayin’, I reckon, I say, I reckon you look like you’ve been through a tussle or two since I last seen you, boy-ah. Why, you can even, I say, even see where her nails must’ve raked your face as she struggled for her life!”
“She didn’t rake my face! Look, you’ve got this all wrong. Didn’t they even consider the obvious… I mean, didn’t they do ballistics to determine which angle the bullet came from? Didn’t they see the powder burns on her hands?”
Your Rag Doll Dad shook from head to foot. “I say, I say, what you drivin’ at boy-ah?”
“She killed herself! You don’t get it, do you? She was nuts and she was miserable and the only thing she had was us, and when one of us left she couldn’t handle it anymore and she finally listened to Mr. Suicide! He spoke to her and she finally said yes to him!”
Your father threw down the bow and arrow and started pelting you across the face with his stub-like, pillowy arms. “You is, I say, you is goin’ to Hell for lyin’, boy-ah! How dare you slander, I say, slander her memory! Your mother was a good Christian woman. Read the Bible more than anyone I knew. She wouldn’t commit that ultimate sin! Iffin’, I say, iffin’ that’s the story you’re plannin’ to try to tell the police, then I reckon, I say, I reckon you belong in the hoosegow! Iffin’, I say, iffin’ you want to run her reputation through the mud after you done murdered her, then I reckon you is no longer my son!”
“You know, that’s the good thing about being dead, I suppose,” your mother had told you. “No one can run you into the mud anymore, on account of it’s considered impolite.”
You turned toward your mannequin-brother. “But you remember… don’t you remember? We talked about Mr. Suicide. You, yourself, told me you were worried about how extreme her reaction would be, if I left. You must have seen this coming! We talked about how Mom and Dad could probably hear Mr. Suicide talking, but pretended that they couldn’t.”
You cringed when he shook his head. “I dee-dee-don’t know wh-what you’re talking about! You k-k-killed her, and now the cops are gonna come and t-t-t-take you away!”
And that’s when you realized the terrible truth. Your brother, too, had gotten good at pretending. Your mother was dead, and with the highest rung of the ladder now empty there was an ascension through the ranks. Your father was now at the top of the hierarchy, and his opinions now shaped the official version of reality in the household. And your brother moved up one step. Now he took your father’s place as co-conspirator to deny what was going on. He now was in cahoots with the conspiracy to look the other way, to pretend. Maybe he did this due to sour grapes for not being deemed fascinating enough for anything other than messenger duty for the Great Dark Mouth. Maybe he did this out of simple, dumb reflex. But whatever the cause, he was doing it. And this betrayal—the cruelest betrayal, not only a betrayal against you but also against truth—almost made you cry, right there.
The sirens got louder.
You sprinted past your brother, toward the garage. Turned on the lights. Two brightly painted wooden trucks (like those found in a toddler’s toy chest, only life-size) rested there. It took you a minute or two to find the spot where she’d done it. The stains were still on the white plastic door. They looked like dried ketchup. You walked toward them. Licked your palm. It smelled funny and tasted funny. But when you slathered it over the dried blood it took on a heavy red tinge and that made you smile: you finally had your passport. Now all you had to do was get to The Border Crossing.
The sirens now blared. Car doors opened and shut. You heard Foghorn Leghorn whisper to Porky Pig, who then whispered something to a man who sounded like Chief Wiggum from the Simpsons. “C’mon out of the garage, loony! You’re surrounded, nyah!” the Wiggum-voice said. “Come out, with your hands up!”
You looked out a window. Saw at least a dozen Tonka cop cars. Fell to your knees. Prayed to the Great Dark Mouth. “Help me… Help me get out of this.”
He didn’t answer. You knew that—from the garage’s shadows—He saw and heard you. But His mouth was elsewhere, attending to the needs of His other charges. Perhaps He was busy helping the Arab girl who wanted to achieve communion with Him, too. He’d spared as much time as He could for you, that day. You should have, indeed, realized at the time just what an honor He’d paid you simply by acknowledging you.
There was a six-foot-tall metal cabinet where your father had kept saws and hammers and wrenches. You opened it. The tools, too, were all plastic now. Large enough to be used by an adult, but otherwise looking like something out of a little boy’s toy tool chest. You threw some of them out so you would fit inside. They made scraping noises as they fell onto the gray plastic floor. You kept a hacksaw in your hand, though, for self-defense. Yes, it was plastic—but so were your assailants (and their weapons). At worst, the plastic saw woul
d prove as ineffective as a toy. At best, you’d be bringing a saw to a gun fight. Either way, wielding it was an absurdity. And yet, it felt better to hold on to it than to let it go.
You closed the door. It was a tight fit. Smelled of old oil. There were thin horizontal slits in the metal. They were your gills as your head swam in darkness.
The beauty of the blackness relaxed you. You decided to play a game. “I don’t exist,” you whispered to yourself. “I don’t exist. This cabinet doesn’t exist. This oil smell doesn’t exist. They’ll open this cabinet and won’t find me because I won’t exist. I won’t exist. I don’t need to go to The Border Crossing, because by sheer force of mind, I’ll make it so I don’t exist.”
A long time went by. You heard the whir of remote control helicopters overhead. You heard cartoon voices in all directions demanding you “give yourself up.” You chuckled. Little did they know that was the whole fucking point: to give up your very existence! You tried to block out all the voices. You were somewhat successful. In time, they all sounded like the murmur inside a sea shell. “They don’t exist,” you whispered. “I don’t exist. None of this matters. None of this is happening.”
You repeated such words (or similar ones) for a long time, and had almost succeeded in convincing yourself this was the case, when you heard the crashing of glass and a strange hissing. Moments later, all the doors came crashing down. You trembled. Heavy boots slapped against the garage floor.
“Don’t exist… I don’t exist… They’ll open this door and won’t see me here because I’ll simply wish myself into nonexiste—”
And then the cabinet door was flung open, and there was light—terrible, eye-aching light. There was light shining from the fluorescent fixtures attached to the ceiling, making you wince. There were puffy red cotton balls blowing through the air—tear gas. It wasn’t real, but it made you choke. Wheeze.
Their weapons could have a real effect on you.
A Fisher-Price policeman wearing riot gear, complete with gas mask, stood in front of you. You read the name tag on his uniform: D. Collins. Officer Douchebag Collins. He held his sidearm in his right hand. With his left, he turned on a long, thick black metal flashlight and shined it in your eyes. Not even an inch of shadow remained to hide in.
He spoke (in a muffled voice, through his gas mask) like Yosemite Sam. “All right, you lily-livered, pencil-necked varmint! I’m the rootinest-tootinest, hombre-shootinest policeman this side of the Pecos! Put down that thar weapon and get your belly on the ground like the worm you are!”
You stood your ground. Weren’t about to surrender when you were so close to oblivion. You especially weren’t gonna surrender to fuckin’ Douchebag Collins. You spied a pale sweet spot of plastic skin in between Officer Douchebag’s chest armor and helmet chin strap. You could aim the saw there and slaughter yourself a filthy little plastic pig.
But that would be squishy-gushy. The Mouth would not approve. You still had faith He would save you, as soon as He had time.
But you were so fucking tempted.
You flung down the hacksaw. Put your hands up. Then you heard a voice. You turned to meet it. A quartet of Weeble police officers rocked in place. One of them spoke (through his gas mask) with the high, nasally voice of Inspector Gadget: “Go, go gadget taser!” He shot the device and wobbled from the recoil.
And then there were two jolts, and there was shaking, and there were handcuffs. They’d caught you literally red-handed.
XVII
How can you describe the months that followed—months stuck on the border between the final two steps of the Three-Fold Path?
It was like rutting while on the verge of orgasm, but never being able to come. Derealization was only ever intended to be a way station, not a destination. You knew you weren’t crazy, but the Gift of Plastic-Vision might eventually drive you crazy. Strangeness was only palatable in small doses. Given enough time it became a sort of cluttered, disjointed ugliness all its own. A kind of ugliness that didn’t seem the slightest bit sexy.
And yet, the Great Dark Mouth saw fit to maroon you there while He, presumably, helped someone else.
You ping-ponged between cartoony courtrooms with plush, Cabbage Patch Kid-style bailiffs and cartoony jail cells with bizarre Japanimation cell mates. You inhabited a Roger Rabbit world that lasted ninety days instead of ninety minutes. The worst part was when you looked at the reflective metal surface bolted to your wall. (The jail gave you that instead of a glass mirror because they didn’t want you to break the glass and make it into a weapon.)
When you looked at yourself, you realized that you, too, were plastic. You screamed when you realized that. You felt foolish, after screaming. Why should the sight of yourself be exempt from the Gift of Plastic-Vision? And yet, the reality of your unreality struck you as a nightmare. You were a plastic dummy (like your brother), with yarn for hair (like your father) and vinyl clothes. The only relief (if it could be called that) is that you now understood where the rattling noise came from—behind your plastic glasses, you had a cartoonish mad man’s googly eyes. They rattled when you moved.
Ca-chink, ca-chunk, ca-chink, ca-chunk.
Why hadn’t you figured it out? The old man—himself a pilgrim stuck at Step Two—had even made mention of your googly eyes. But you’d paid him no mind. Hadn’t put two and two together. You’d been so foolish.
***
You, like everything else, were tangible. But you, like everything else, weren’t real. Honestly, it was getting to the point where you began to experience the nagging desire to once again look real. You felt ashamed as this blasphemy began to assert itself in your plastic brain. Yet it was there. Each passing day you whispered prayers to the Great Dark Mouth, begging for help so you could move on to Step Three. Each passing day, the Mouth ignored you. Each passing day, the notion of going back to the way things were before you’d ever heard of the Mouth seemed preferable to this place (this location, yes, but also this mental place) where you’d arrived.
You resorted to absurd hijinks to distract yourself from your dilemma. The judge was a fat Arab who appeared to you—through the filter of Plastic-Vision—as Mr. Potato Head. Once, when you didn’t like what he said, you got loose from the correctional officers and tried removing his mouth. It almost worked, too. You felt it give. If it hadn’t been jammed in there so tightly, you would have succeeded. That would have been a hoot. You couldn’t imagine what the court’s reaction would have been if the judge had suddenly (and to them, inexplicably) turned mute.
But as you struggled to pry the mouth from that six-foot-tall Potato Head, bailiffs and correctional officers fell on you. They had numbers on their side. Governments on their side. The whole fucking ladder on their side.
Your disruptions made an impression. The judge deemed you incompetent to stand trial. He felt you were crazy. So crazy, you wouldn’t understand the proceedings. You wanted to explain it all to him. Maybe fire your public defender. Represent yourself. Demand to subpoena Perfect Monsters and admit it into evidence as defense Exhibit A.
(Where had it gone? It had been in your backpack. You’d given it to the Lego Homeless Man. All you’d have to do is serve a subpoena on Lego Homeless Man. It would’ve been simple. So damned simple.)
These were the thoughts going through your head the afternoon that the judge decided you should go to a funny farm for a spell. “Just until he thinks you’re fit to stand trial, bro,” your lawyer (a Ken doll) emphasized afterward. He had the accent of a Southern California surfer, but at the same time managed to sound condescending. He used a speak-gently-and-slowly-to-the-lunatic voice. Then he grabbed one of your cuffed hands and gave it a cold, plastic shake.
Your lawyer disgusted you, and so you felt relieved when a clanging, scraping noise broke through the din of the courtroom and distracted your attention from him. A smiling statue of the Virgin Mary pushed itself across the polished plastic floor. You couldn’t see its legs underneath the blue and white robes. It seemed
to amble toward you on heavy, metal crutches.
It called out your name in a voice that sounded like Betty Boop’s. It looked and sounded happy to see you. Looked and sounded happy, in general. You couldn’t remember the last time anyone looked and sounded happy to see you. You couldn’t remember the last time anyone looked happy, in general.
You’d heard a voice that had sounded kind of like Betty Boop’s before, but couldn’t quite place it.
The correctional officers carted you away before the statue could reach you.
The last thing you noticed about the Virgin Mary was that her belly was round with child.
***
They didn’t take you straight to the funny farm. You cooled your heels in your jail cell for a few hours until they completed paperwork for your transfer. Your cell mate (a Japanimation race car driver) was sleeping. You’re embarrassed to admit that it was only then, when you had time to think, that the true identity of the crippled Virgin Mary dawned on you. And with the recognition came a deeper resolve. I must go back to seeing things the way I did before. I’ve been abandoned by the Mouth. I can’t continue like this. I would have liked to seen her—really seen her.
XVIII
Once upon a time you’d actually wished you were in the loony bin. You’d thought that you’d have rubber walls to bounce off of, and they’d be a comfort. That wish (like many of your wishes) had proven foolish.
The ugly truth was, the nuthouse wasn’t all that different from the jailhouse. In some ways, it was worse. The plastic pills, for example. You weren’t insane, so the meds had no impact on the way you thought or saw the world around you. But they put you to sleep. Also, you never saw any rubber walls in the nuthouse. If they’d had them, you wouldn’t have had the energy to bounce off them.
When you exercised your right to refuse medicine, the Potato Head judge signed a court order robbing you of that right. Then action figure orderlies held you down while Fisher-Price nurses started giving you shots instead of pills, because they didn’t want you hiding pills in your cheeks or under your pink plastic tongue. When the needles pierced your plastic skin, it didn’t hurt as much as when you saw yourself as flesh. That, at least, provided some small comfort.
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