I'M NOT DEAD: The Journals of Charles Dudley Vol.1

by Artie Cabrera

  “Come on, go away,” I said hurrying her away with my eyes. “Go die somewhere else.”

  And then she collapsed to her knees.

  Goddamnit.

  She needs help, Charlie.

  I grabbed a coat from the closet and ran out to her, wrapping her shoulders in it. She didn’t resist me when I took her by the hand and brought her to the porch.

  “You’re safe now, it’s okay,” I told her, warming her frigid hands between mine. She seemed so vulnerable and weak, lost as a child abandoned in the dizzying maze of a shopping mall parking lot.

  When I asked what her name was, she couldn’t respond, but the hospital tag on her wrist read:

  NEW YORK HOSPITAL - QUEENS MENTAL HEALTH CARE–JANE DOE – AGE 24/25

  Shit, that nut house is only six blocks from here.

  “Do you speak English?” I asked. “I have to take you inside, okay? It’s cold out here. Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you. My name is Charlie, me llamo es, Charlie, okay. Can you understand me?” I eased her into the house, into the living room where I gently laid her on the sofa.

  “Dusty, go to your room,” I told him. He simply shrugged his shoulders and marched back up the stairs thinking nothing of it.

  She might’ve broken her ankle, I thought, briefly examining it. Her foot swelled into an ugly red balloon, and she winced and cried out in pain at the slightest movement.

  “I’m sorry the place is a mess,” I said returning from the kitchen with ice in a dishtowel, swiping my pity party leftovers from the coffee table and onto the floor—a dirty magazine, bong, and the perfect empty beer can pyramid I built the night before.

  “This should help bring the swelling down,” I said, resting her foot on a pile of cushions. I found myself trying to ignore the curvy nude body parts that showed through her rags.

  Jesus, man. Really? I’ve been alone way too long now.

  She was prettier when the fear began to fade from her eyes, and it wasn’t just because she was partially nude and squirming in pain on my couch.

  I couldn’t ignore the beauty behind the busted lip and blackened blue eyes when she looked at me like a wounded creature expressing her hazy gratitude.

  I melted.

  This was some sick fantasy playing out before my eyes. The Hero saves the damsel in distress, and she offers herself to him in return. I couldn’t ignore feeling somewhat aroused and yet disappointed with myself.

  Jane had calmed and attempted to speak. Her voice was soft, but faltered.

  She couldn’t recall anything before just standing there in the street, as if she just had woken from a spell. Possibly memories too frightening to want to remember or volunteer, I suppose.

  “What… happened?” she asked, trying to regain focus.

  “You’re asking me?” I smiled.

  “I…I don’t know. Where am I?”

  “You’re safe now. Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of you—we’ll take care of you,” I promised as Dusty greeted her with a teddy bear he found in Kate’s room.

  “It’s okay. Go ahead. Take it,” I assured her to, and she did—hesitantly.

  I didn’t want to pry more than I should—she made me nervous.

  “You can stay the night, if you want, and we’ll try getting you home in the morning,” I said, but she was already drifting, whispering something that sounded like “that’s good, butter,” with the bear comfortably clenched in her arms.

  “That’s good butter?”

  The sun had set, and that was my cue to batten down the hatches. I’d become paralyzed at the thought of the Deviants making their rounds, and I wanted to run to my tub and hide, but didn’t.

  Tonight, they didn’t come—no monsters, no voices, or any helicopters flying over the house—only Jane remained.

  THE COLD SNAP

  Thursday, January 2nd, 2014

  6:48 a.m.

  It’s another day, the sun is rising over Queens, and Jane Doe is getting cleaned up in the kitchen. Time to start on breakfast.

  It didn’t look like much, but SPAM and potato chips had become the staple breakfast for us in the household. I’m beginning to think the dog eats better than we do. Cooper gets the Sirloin Steak in a can courtesy of Alpo, and we have potato chips.

  What’s good for the dog couldn’t be that bad for us, right? No one had to know.

  Jane hobbled around, pale and looking like she could use extra meat on her bones. Even so, she was a knockout and more so in my overgrown Jets jersey and sweat pants. A woman in sweats is sometimes sexy and godammit, I love the Jets.

  I am so disappointed in myself.

  The way her reddish hair fell over her eyes every time she tucked it back behind her ears and smiled, eased my concern that she was a lunatic.

  I watched her every move, trying to find the crack in the glass, but she was so soft and almost perfect.

  What’s her story, Charlie? Detox? The crazy house? Attempted suicide? Homicide?

  I knew it was only a matter of time before the reality came crawling back in and she started falling apart again, so I didn’t bring it up—still, she made me nervous.

  She must’ve clipped the bracelet when I wasn’t looking because it was absent from her wrist. She knows I know now. What was she trying to hide?

  I told her Dusty was my son and his mother recently passed away from an illness. Which is why he was the way he was—difficult, doesn’t talk, and urinates on my furniture.

  I also had an innocent habit of changing the subject whenever she’d inquire about the iron bars on my windows or the dead bolts on the doors or why Dusty was wearing girl’s clothing and his room was pink.

  Fat flurries of snow hurried past the living room windows. It was the first snowfall this year, and I proposed we migrate to the porch to sit among the debris from the house with a juice box for Dusty and spiked coffee for ourselves. My guest has cut into my drinking time, and it was way past happy hour.

  I kept my eyes peeled but good ol’ Cooper can sense the Deviants’ presence minutes before they can be seen.

  Dogs are good like that. I wish I were as vigilant—or sober.

  The pinwheel I stole from the Sweeney yard kept Dusty occupied most of the time on the porch.

  He can sit, hypnotized by the wheel for hours and didn’t like me much when I pried it from his fingers when it was time to get him cleaned up and ready for bed.

  “I should get going,” Jane said as the day dimmed, rising from the lawn chair carefully balancing on one foot without falling over.

  “What? Don’t go. I mean, going where?” I said, almost feeling relieved she’d soon be gone.

  I also realized I’d be alone again and the mystery girl would be back out there with the wolves. It gets dark early these days. The sun sets by 5 p.m., and then the guests arrive.

  “I think I have to go back to the hospital,” she answered, searching for a reason the way someone would look around the room for misplaced keys.

  “Why the hospital? Are you okay? Is it your foot?” I asked.

  ‘‘No, I’m okay. I want to get my stuff. I should go back,” she said, but there isn’t a reason good enough for anyone to go anywhere around here if they didn’t have to.

  I helped her back into her seat, “No, you can’t. I mean, it’s dangerous out there.

  Dangerous because it’s a long walk to the hospital, and you should rest your foot. It’s getting late, and we can always get your stuff, tomorrow, in the morning.”

  “Tomorrow, are you sure?” she asked, looking hopeful.

  “Promise, maybe, I don’t know—whatever.”

  The night came and went without a hitch. Jane slept 16 hours, and she never mentioned the hospital again.

  TOUGH LOVE

  Saturday, January 4th, 2014

  My mother passed away from ovarian cancer in the summer of ’93, and I will never forget how hot it was that afternoon, 97 degrees in the shade, to be exact. My father was too stubborn and cheap to buy an
air conditioner.

  His theory was if we left the front and back windows of the house open, we had cross ventilation and that should’ve been good enough for us. The same went for the Buick.

  With forty-plus friends and relatives crammed in together, the three fans propped in the living room pushed and recycled hot air, creating a circulating wall of body odor, cheap perfume, scotch, vermouth, and cigarette smoke throughout the house.

  The only time you get the Dudley family under the same roof with each other was when there was a new member of the family or one less.

  We’d spend our time exchanging awkward small talk and making empty promises of “catching up.”

  At Dudley family gatherings, the women would congregate in the kitchen to prepare the food and trade the latest gossip on their degenerate husbands.

  The men would go hide in the garage to drink, talk sports, and complain about how much they hated their wives and kids until the novelty wore off. Then they started turning on each other.

  At least the women had the decency to do it behind each other’s backs and didn’t wreck our patio set.

  You can count the seconds to when the men started beating their chests and started slinging shit at each other.

  Someone would storm out of the house in a drunken stupor with family in tow, ranting and raving about kicking someone’s ass and hauling off in their automobile.

  The arguments were always about money, because my uncles were compulsive gamblers and frauds. It seemed like the rare occasions they did come around, it was to mooch and fleece my dad of his savings.

  The biggest problem with my uncles was that they suffered from memory loss whenever my father would bring it up.

  “Hey! Fuck you, pal!”

  “No, fuck you!”

  “Go fuck yourself!”

  “I’ll kick your fuckin’ ass!”

  “I’m getting the fuck outta here”

  “Good, then get da fuck out, ya bum!”

  “Where’re my keys, goddammit?”

  “Woman! Kids! Get in da fuckin’ car! We’re leaving!”

  My father’s side of the family couldn’t care less about my mother, and to them, a memorial meant a free lunch and a doggy bag. My uncles were alcoholics and chauvinistic slobs. My aunts were emotionally battered and repressed Suzy homemakers, while my cousins followed by example down the same greasy Dudley slope.

  The last thing I needed was to hear about someone’s carrot cake recipe or the size of some new intern’s tits at my uncle’s jack-off job.

  This wasn’t a social call. Fuck your cheap condolences and shallow tears, assholes.

  I learned how to play their games, as I got older, managing to detect those who were full of shit or genuine like Tommy Maroni—he was my father’s wingman at Clinkers—the neighborhood watering hole.

  He stopped by the house after my mother’s funeral but didn’t stay very long. He never did when the cave dwellers were around making asses out of themselves. He was an honest man and never minced words with anyone.

  “Your mutha, she was a bewtiful woman. Its’a shame, ya know, God bless her soul. May she rest in peace. Call me if you need anything,” Tommy offered after prayer and left.

  I accused my mother of being many things: frigid, indifferent, and detached. I accused her countless times of not giving a shit about us and not standing up to my father who would go ballistic and beat us.

  Nothing was ever good enough for my father. My mother’s cooking could’ve been better, grades could’ve been better, the way my brother and I did anything could’ve been better. The way we spoke to him could’ve been better because as long as we lived under his roof, things always needed to be “BETTER.”

  I still didn’t know what “better” meant in his eyes, and now I wonder how he felt about the empty seat at the dinner table because my mother didn’t get “better.”

  I don’t know how many nights I stood awake wondering why my father couldn’t die instead. He was the bad one—he was the monster.

  Anger is a funny emotion.

  I had to bury my mother and pack her personal belongings into boxes and into the attic on the day of the service…at my father’s request.

  My father didn’t curb his behavior one bit after my mother died. He mourned by hitting twice as hard and drinking more. My brother Stewart cried himself to sleep almost every night after the funeral service, and my father made no effort to comfort him.

  My brother cried for days when his hamsters died the year before. (I told him hamsters were not equipped to swim, especially not in the toilet when you flushed it. They have small arms.)

  “Mommy’s not coming back, Stewart,” I’d sadly remind him, rousing him into a tantrum and panic.

  “Momma’s, gon’ wake up, Chawwrlie! You see!” he’d shout, so certain and innocent. He couldn’t accept the reality of our mother’s death at his age and would wait day and night for her to come walking through that front door.

  “No, she isn’t coming back this time, Stewart. Not anymore.”

  The house became nothing but a soulless and dark tomb since Stewart and I left home —old, decrepit, and miserable, just like my old man.

  CARPE DIEM

  Monday, January 5th, 2014

  My therapist recommended keeping a journal of every little thing that crawled in or out of my head. She said it was like peeling back an onion. Yeah, the more you peeled back, the more it stunk.

  I despised writing, and my therapist accused me of making mountains out of molehills, so I got a new therapist who accused me of the same thing.

  I made fun of Morgan for keeping a diary in her dresser because I thought diaries were for little girls who liked to write about the boys they liked at school.

  If my dad had any idea I had a journal he would hang himself because crying is for pussies and diaries are for girls. I can hear him now: “Are you a faggy sissy boy? Are ya’ writing about your “feeeeeelings?”

  I had to keep logs once my memory started to slip after the accident.

  I had little yellow sticky notes systematically placed all over the house to remind me to do the simplest tasks: Take my medication, take the laundry out of the dryer while Morgan was at work, and pick Kate up from softball practice on Tuesdays at five…or was it Wednesdays?

  It began with a grocery list of self-improvement jargon that evolved into drawing little caricatures of the monumental assholes in my life with little blurbs above their heads and an occasional arrow through their faces.

  Morgan bought me this leather bound journal for Christmas last year. She had to prove to me keeping a journal didn’t have to mean you had a vagina, wore pink ribbons in your hair, and talked about boys.

  No, this was a man’s journal, a journal to be proud of—a thick black leather-bound book with a silver lock and key, and the words CARPE DIEM etched across the cover in bold letters. This journal is the single most important thing to me now in case I don’t survive this FIRST CIRCLE bullshit.

  This is my life story.

  I hope someone comes across this book someday and sees what an asshole I have been and that I am sorry. If THIS is karma, then she is a bigger bitch than I thought.

  Fuck you, karma.

  LOVE AND OTHER CALAMITIES

  Monday, January 5th, 2014

  I made an oath not to have sex with Jane no matter what happened. Somehow, we became bedfellows after a few short nights on the couch. And with my back starting to spasm, she offered to massage it.

  Who was I to say no?

  No matter how she made me realize how lonely I’ve become, there will be absolutely no sex involved…I guess there’s no crime in cuddling.

  Twirling her hair and an innocent kiss goodnight was within the boundaries as we discussed as long as it didn’t go any further than that.

  And who was I to say no? Well, no…

  All I needed was for Morgan to find out I nailed someone on our bed other than her while the world was ending—and someone who was c
onsiderably younger than she was. I would never hear the end of it. Then again, I don’t know if she’s even alive. Oh, Christ, how could I even think that?

  The fear of being alone has clouded my judgment and made me vulnerable. Look at me, running into someone else’s arms when the going gets tough; I miss Morgan and Kate so much. God, I miss them so much.

  The men in my family had every despicable rationale for fucking the pain away. My uncles were notorious for dipping their “pens” in the “company ink” and squandering money on whores and gambling. A fight with the wife leads to fucking whores from the bar and kids getting on their nerves leads to fucking whores at the office. When the bills piled up, they were off to Atlantic City for the weekend with the whore who does the dry cleaning.

  When monsters attack, that leads me to screwing the weirdo dressed in hospital scrubs I just met outside my door in the dead of winter.

  DEATH RATTLE

  Monday, January 6th, 2014

  3:06 a.m.

  There’s that sound again.

  “Dusty, did you hear that?”

  Dusty, Cooper, and I were up late having a midnight snack in the kitchen tonight when I heard what sounded like something dragging their fingernails across the side of the house.

  This was no Deviant. It sounded just as big as a rhino, if not bigger. We sat still in the kitchen quietly following it with our eyes—slowly from right to left then left to right—and then BAM!

  Its growl was a deep low resounding rumble, rattling and snarling like a bull ready to charge and plow through the walls.

  Cooper went berserk, barking, and lunging at the back door. Whatever it was, reached the end of the driveway and let out a deafening roar that had us scattering around the kitchen and running into the living room for cover.

  It was quiet for a minute before the beast returned, slamming into the side of the house while we crawled for cover underneath the furniture. Dusty and I curled up into balls underneath the dining room table holding our knees to our chests. Dusty clasped his hands over his ears and eyes when the colliding bangs came.