Monstrosity

by Laura Diaz De Arce

  My childhood is filled with the memories of their attempts to tame my nature. Mama especially tired herself out in the endeavor. They put me in structured activities to find a way for me to channel my energy elsewhere. These activities and lessons did nothing to sedate me: soccer, martial arts, violin, tennis, piano, etc. These activities only gave me more fuel with which to torment them.

  They tried to train my body to be less of itself. For instance, during meals I was strapped to a chair to make me stop fidgeting. I remember the coolness of my mother's fingers as she slipped the straps beneath my armpits. She was delicate, but not in a way that was concerned for my well-being. A withering presence was her nature; a nature that, looking back, I finally realized had been constructed to hide something else.

  Our battles came to a head on the morning of my first period. Until then I only knew that I had an energy, a fire within. I did not have a name for it; not even when it made my face flush and my pulse race. That was that day that I came to know it, as the blood trickled down my inner thigh. There was not much, I was only thirteen, but the glide of that droplet queued something instinctual.

  Rage. That was the heat beneath my skin. Anger so fine, so woven into my being that I knew that it was unnatural. This rage. This monster that slithered beneath me. That day I slammed a chair through our sliding glass door. I remember it shattering, the sound of it, the way the shards rained down like snow. There was not a scratch on me, my anger making me impenetrable. Who I was angry at, or for what, I cannot say.

  When I did that, when the glass door was shattered and revealed my nature, I could have sworn I saw it. In my mother's eyes, blue eyes that rarely flinched, was a spark of that same anger. Now that I think about it, the rage that resided in my being was perhaps something I had inherited. But she, she must have learned to control it at a young age; restrict it, coat it in clay, dirt and ice such that you would not know what simmered just below the surface.

  Eventually, I learned to hide it, at least to a degree. Still it ran like lava through me. I was always conscious of the monster inside. Beneath every disarming smile, coquettish laugh or downward-cast eye, it lay in wait, champing at the bit. Like my mother, I thought I had it under control.

  After a time, I went to University, and then off to a career in a distant and cold city. I had hoped the cold of this place would keep it hibernated. Things were smooth for a while, I did not think of it, of the anger pulsing in my being at every moment. My days were filled with work, with the everyday: picking up groceries, going to my job, keeping appointments. My anger would leap up at times, causing a tremor in my hands or a redness to my face. I could quell these bursts and it was fine. I was alone, but I was fine. I was surviving.

  That is, until I received the call.

  The police took months to conclude their investigation, in part because they had difficulty putting my father's body together. They did not even fully identify him until they had peeled portions of his face off the kitchen cabinets. Locals from a small town, the police had never seen such carnage and they needed to bring in forensic experts to recreate the crime.

  For weeks after, newspapers questioned and sensationalized what my mother had done. They were incredulous, for how could a small, quiet woman do that to her husband? How could she have wreaked such carnage only to then turn the knife on herself? “Hows” and “whys” that were never fully answered for the public, but I knew. I knew because it was in the depths of my own being.

  We both believed we had tamed the beast, only for it to come forth when we least expected it. It was then that I knew that I would have to search for a more permanent solution to my issue. If my mother, who was restrained to such a degree that her control appeared effortless, could not stop the rage inside, then what hope did I have?

  My forays into curing my condition started with meditation. Then home remedies and herbs. Then medications. Then alternating the three and creating hybrid concoctions until finally I was filling my days with every measure to keep the anger at bay. Separately or all in combination, I could still feel it — the raging hot anger in my veins. After a few years of futile treatments, I turned to religion, any religion. I did not find satisfaction, only a growing anger and unreasonableness.

  One fateful evening, while it was clawing at my stomach, I came across an article about Dr. Cecelia Travestere and her research. She had experimented in musical hypnosis, using musical chords to help animals —and then people— to regulate their emotions. Dr. Travestere recently had promising results treating patients with depression and alleviating hallucinations. I only needed to quell the anger, just enough to keep me going. I wrote to her and volunteered myself as a test subject that night.

  Dr. Travestere was quick to contact me. It later came out that various psychiatric associations had panned her work and she would not be able to fully fund her research without unpaid volunteers. I did not care about being paid. I cared about being able to live with this.

  Her office was in an all but little forgotten area of the city, surrounded by closed buildings and pop-up clinics. The facility itself was outdated, but clean. It looked to have been a former government office repurposed for this kind of one-on-one work. The bathroom was small and old, a foaming soap dispenser on a beige Formica countertop. The “rooms” were large, larger than necessary and carpeted with that close-knit deep blue carpet that you see in schools or DMVs. All of this was largely comforting, familiar. Dr. Travestere's assistant took my information without any commentary or judgment. I had pictured a sterile facility with white rooms and walls, but instead this could have been an impoverished doctor's office. It oddly set me at ease.

  Dr. Cecelia Travestere was just as unassuming. I had also pictured her as some distant researcher, as there had only been one blurry photo of her in the write-up of her research. She was much like the place — neat, if a little out of date. Between the loud pattern on the shirt visible beneath her lab coat, her decidedly oversized and highly unflattering glasses and her light hair pulled into a soft bun at the nape of her neck, I could have guessed any age from thirty to sixty and easily been off by twenty years. She was not cold however, not distant in the slightest. She smiled with an authentic warmth and shook my hand with care.

  Her assistant briefed her on my health and medical history and she nodded along. Finally, she turned to me and asked, “So, what is it you want to work on?”

  My mouth went dry for a moment. “I don't want to be angry anymore.”

  Perhaps it was a pallid white in the florescent lights or the dust from the carpet, but for a moment I could have sworn I saw it: Rage flashed in her eyes, and I knew she understood what I had meant.

  For the procedure I was told to lie back on a hospital bed in the center of one of the darkened rooms. From its patina, it was easy to guess that this used bed was a discount find. For a few minutes I contemplated this bed, taking in the slight rust and yellowed plastic on it. I wondered how many of her other volunteers had been on this same surface. I wondered how many hospital patients had been on it as well. And I wondered, rather morbidly, how many had died. This thought stirred up my anger and I had to breathe deeply to set it at ease.

  What I had read about her research had been lacking on details. All I really knew was that it was non-invasive and involved sound. More accurately, she explained, it involved music. Dr. Travestere had discovered a number of musical chords and rhythms that isolated portions of the brain. Her work involved using subliminal music as a way to soothe or stimulate portions of brain activity. This allowed subjects another avenue to regulate their thoughts and feelings long after they had stopped “listening”. My treatment was to come to this facility three times a week and lie down in a darkened room as they played specially prescribed music too low for human hearing. I would be interviewed on my state before and after as a way to track my progress.

  It seemed simple enough, harmless and a suspiciously all too easy solution to my problem. The rage sparked for a moment when this c
rossed my mind, but then I realized I had nothing to lose if it did not work. I lay back and closed my eyes.

  If you were to ask me to hum the melody that was played I could not. It does not play in my memory. I only have the faintest notion of what it was, like a bird seen from the corner of your eye as it flies away. Sometimes the click of a door or the strum of a harp or the shuffle of a shoe will seem to trigger a memory of it. But it's only the lightest touch of familiarity, and never feels quite right. I long to hear it, even now, but when I try to remember it, it is as if there is an itch deep in my ear canal that I cannot reach. I try not to think on it too much. At the time there was only me, the “quiet,” the hospital bed and the dark.

  What I can tell you is that the treatments worked. Even after that first session, I felt a lightness I had never had before. My anger had been subdued, and it only became more acutely obvious as the weeks went by. It was not simply that the monster in me had fallen to sleep; it felt as if it had been removed from my being. It showed in my relaxed demeanor, my languid poses and even on my face. My smile was no longer a futile attempt to conceal an inner tumult — it was authentic joy. My body grew soft, no longer firm in its tension. It was harmonious. It was a miracle.

  After a year of this heavenly peace, Dr. Travestere's study ran out of funding. She was to sell her building and was under investigation for unlawful research and at risk of losing her license. I was not moved to anger at this, such was the efficacy of her work. Nor was I even moved to resentment when I read that a colleague of hers had received a grant for a similar study.

  In order to continue my treatment, she was kind enough to give me disc with the music that they had been playing for me. I was instructed to limit it to three hours a week and to keep the volume down, just below hearing. She was very adamant that I not turn up the sound for any reason. With this disc in my hand and a promise to follow these instructions to the letter, I embarked on my own self-medication.

  This worked, for a time. Life without anger is a peculiar thing, for you become addicted to serenity and shun anything that may disrupt it. I stopped caring for things in my life. My work suffered perhaps, but because I had no intention, ambition or complaints I was promoted at work. I even began to date, but this was unsatisfying for me, although the men did not seem to care one way or another.

  After months of the same I felt it again, the little burn in my chest. It came suddenly and without full knowledge of why. All I remember is walking past a building and seeing my reflection in a glass door. There it was—the thing I had tried to keep hidden my entire life, staring back at me with my reflection. I began to panic and increased my treatments. Just an extra hour a week, and then two, and then three. Still, the anger did not stop. It came to pass that I was spending almost all my time listening to the music I could not hear to try and cage that beast. But it would not hold.

  Then I broke the promise I had made even further. I raised the volume just a bit. Just enough to hear it, hoping to drown out the sounds of my rage that had made my own skin untenable. Even now I cannot describe it. I remember it was a simple melody, hypnotic. The closest I can come to a description is that it was like delicate feet hitting the stage during a ballet. Rhythmic, drowned out by other noise. It put me at ease for a few blissful hours.

  My heartbeat seemed to mimic it and I found myself walking out of my small apartment into the street in a daze. Before I knew it, I had walked miles across the city in the dark into the heat of its nightlife. In the center of town on a busy street was a large, loud nightclub. The neon lights made strange patterns on the concrete and I followed, only to end up on the sidewalk in front of the place. Outside, as within, people where thickly packed together. The smells assaulted me: the alcohol, the cologne and perfumes, the sweat, the exhaust from passing taxis. There were speakers outside, blasting music, drowning out the peace I had found.

  I had forgotten the sound that had sedated me, completely and absolutely.

  The animal beneath ripped itself free of its chains. I heard nothing and everything from that moment on. Somehow the beat of the P.A. music had merged with sounds of footfalls all around me to create a strange new sound inside my head. Dr. Travestere's prescription music had been replaced in a single moment by something heavy and primal. I knew only the lights, the smells, the sounds, the rage. Everything became impossibly bright and loud for a split second. And then, all at once, it went black and silent.

  I do not remember much after that. There were screams, shouts and music of a rhythm I only partially recognize. There is still blood drying under my fingertips. There is the smell of it on my clothing and the taste on my tongue. Shattered glass is etched into parts of my body. There is a ripped arm, not my own, in my hand and a number of slaughtered bodies left around me. There is a tune I keep humming that I can't seem to get out of my head.

  So, what can I tell you of all that? Of all my work to contain my nature? I can tell you that I no longer crave a cage.

  Some Dreams Just Aren't Worth The Trouble

  She thinks about it. What is that word? It means the same as sweet. Oh yes. Saccharine. Sac-cha-rine. Sac -cah- reen. Lolita? Saccharine. Sweet, sweet, oily sugar. The ceiling, all of it dripping sugar. Mouthwatering, comforting, sticky sweetness. A candyland. The ceiling looked saccharine. That isn’t how you are supposed to use the word, she thinks. Well, who cares? No one is with her. Just the eyes of collected dead pigeons and the stuffed animals upon which she is lying. They, of course, would say nothing to contradict her; they would say nothing at all. Unless she was on a really messed up high or worse — then all bets were off.

  The ceiling looks saccharine, like it is dripping with candy. She almost opens her mouth, but she resists. Perhaps somewhere in her mind she realizes it is not candy but oily water leaking in from the room above in the abandoned and condemned building in which she is squatting. Her name: Emily. Sometimes she forgets it. Emily, sometimes like sugar on the tongue, other times it makes your tongue too full and large. The stuffed animals squirm beneath her in response to her own movements: Some of them are found, some stolen, and not one of them is in pristine condition. A beautiful girl of twenty-eight who still wears blonde hair in pigtails. Her mother used to call her her “little china doll” because of her perfectly smooth face and big expressive eyes.

  It smells in this building, but no one else is there to notice the scent of stale piss, shit, mold, and rotting wood. There is also a hint of sweetness to the air due to the sugary scent of decay from the dead rats and mice kicked to the corner. She has propped up the dead pigeons, maggots and all, along the walls so their dead eyes can keep watch over her. Emily lives as an echo in this place and in the world, all messed up, forgotten in her crumbling squatter's castle.

  Make no mistake, she is loved and missed, because to her family and friends she has gone missing. Emily just walked out the door one day in a partial cloud of consciousness with a pink bag of belongings (essential and superfluous), and hitchhiked the seven hundred miles to where she is now. Hell, Emily doesn’t even know the name of the city she is in, just that it has a lot of pretty parks. At home she is Missing and Presumed Dead.

  Today would be a nice day to take a walk, she thinks, when her high begins to come down and her energy comes up a bit. After a nap, Emily will get up, get pretty, and go for a walk. Maybe she will get something to eat. Then come home and get high. A productive day with no crime. She feels too tired and out of it to steal today, and she really doesn’t need anything. There will be plenty of food in the dumpster outside the Italian place on the corner. Oh, and the Krispy Kreme doughnuts thrown out at midnight.

  Who knows what time it is when Emily wakes up and rolls out of bed. Emily certainly doesn't. She goes to the decrepit shower and gets herself clean. Despite the grotesque conditions she lives in, Emily does her best to stay clean. Cleanliness is next to Godliness after all. She recites that saying over and over again and she bathes in the mildew-ridden basin of rainwater (except the clogg
ed toilet, she shits in a bucket). Emily repeats this saying both vocally and mentally in her mother’s voice. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Cleanliness. Godliness. Clean God. God Clean. Dog Naelc. Her head starts spinning and she throws up. Emily just keeps on washing, scrubbing hard with her hands until she is as red as a lobster.

  After a thorough washing, she pats herself dry with stolen napkins and dirty clothes. Emily prides herself on her forethought to have taken the cluster of napkins: That is to say when she is coherent. She goes to the mirror and brushes her hair precisely one hundred times. One, two, three, four... Just like she has been taught. She works for several minutes on her hair part and pulls her hair up into high, tight pigtails with fraying rubber bands. Emily knows they are ready when her scalp turns red. She slathers on some makeup: bright pink eyeshadow and blush. To match she puts on a giant pink monstrosity of a dress — all sequins, tulle, and pink. The dress is one of her favorites: She wore it when she won her third first-place pageant trophy, six years ago. Now it is missing half its sequins and sports torn tulle. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink! All pretty pink. Emily looks in the shards of mirror, still high, now clean and dressed, and thinks: Beautiful. Don’t forget the lipstick Emily! “Missing and Presumed Dead.”

  Of course, she is still too bombed to recognize that she looks ridiculous prancing and skipping down the street. Cute on a girl two decades younger, now it's just disturbing. But prance she does before all the gawking strangers. And it only feels better as the pick-me-up she took before she left, just a little, really more of a taste to that cloud nine feeling, starts to kick in. The stares, well they only validate how beautiful she is. Smiling and waving like a prom queen to anyone who looks her way, she graces the late afternoon streets. Emily, beautiful Emily. She imagines what they must be thinking about her: Oh, what a pretty young lady, Such a beauty, Well isn’t she just a peach, What a ray of sunshine, Must be a princess, Must be a queen! But you can guess what most everyone is really thinking: “What the...?”