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 screamed.
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 Justi
ce, 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.
LITTLE ROUND HEAD
Mother found me in the sun today and “woosh!” out she came on her fast legs when there were clouds and took me inside.
She wasn’t mad, but she held me against her fur and her tears fell, drip! drip!, on me and I started crying too because I was bad and didn’t want to make her cry. When she saw me cry too she kissed me and rocked me back and forth and she said my name, “Little Round Head! Little Round Head! What am I to do with my Little Round Head?” And then she sang me one of the songs I like so much and cleaned off the tears with her tongue. Later, Father came with food from down deep and he and Mother and me cleaned each other before we ate and I slept between them and felt safe.
I didn’t want to be bad.
Father and Mother played a game with me with sticks and bones. It was fun and there were songs to sing with the game and Mother and Father said the game was very old and the songs were from the Old Times. One of the bones was a head bone, and it was round and funny looking like my head and I picked it up and kissed it like Mother and Father kiss my head and called the bone “Little Round Head” like how they call me and I held it close like it was my baby.
Mother and Father thought that was funny and laughed, “Ha-Ha!” They held me close and ran their hands over my skin that doesn’t have fur like theirs to pick off bugs.
It is nice to be loved.
Father brought home a paper box with milk in it. When he comes home down the big pipe he shakes the paper box “wusha-wusha” so I can hear that there’s milk inside that he is bringing. He makes sound because I can’t see down the big pipes like he and Mother do.
Sometimes the paper box is covered with the sticky red food Mother and Father like, and they lick it off and I drink the milk inside and we pass the milk box in a circle so we can all have a treat.
Mother and Father eat the box when it is empty, “crunch-crunch,” because it makes them happy and I am happy when they are. I tried to eat the paper box once, but it tasted bad and Mother and Father laughed and said maybe when I am older I can eat the grown-up food they eat.
Father was about to eat the paper box when his eyes got big and he showed it to Mother and she said a whispery thing “pishha-pishha-pishha” and they folded the box and put it between them.
I asked what was wrong . . . maybe the milk was rotten and would make them sick. But they said, “No, No. Nothing is wrong, Little Round Head. You go to sleep now, and we will come sing you songs.”
I went because I wanted to be good. I heard them tearing up the paper box and I was worried that they would be sick and I would be all alone.
When I went to sleep I dreamed about the Bad Mother and the Bad Father. They are ugly mean things like giant babies, without soft grey fur on them like Mother and Father have, without the fur that I will grow when I’m big. The Bad Mother and the Bad Father yell at me and keep me in an ugly thing like a cage with wood bars. The Bad Mother and Bad Father burn me with little white sticks that they put in their mouths and make on fire before they burn me with the orange parts.
I start crying because I am so sad and hurt so much. But Mother and Father kill the Bad Mother and the Bad Father and take me away home.
When I woke up I was still crying, and my real Mother and Father came and held me close and said, “Shh! Shh! It’s only a bad dream, Little Round Head! It’s only a bad dream!”
They let me sleep between them and they sang to me and I had dreams about a dark place with shiny black stone steps going down and down to a place where I could play all the time and get my own food like Father does from the hunts.
It is a nice dream, and the Bad Mother and the Bad Father are far, far away.
Today Mother and Father had to leave me all alone, and I tried to show them I was brave. They saw I was scared, and before they left they gave me the head bone that I had kissed and they told me I had to be brave and protect it. They made a little body for the head bone out of straw and skin scraps so it was a doll now, and they gave it to me as a present. I was happy and I held the doll close so it wouldn’t be afraid and Mother and Father kissed and hugged me before they left.
I sang to my doll. I can’t sing like Mother and Father. Sometimes the words come out right, but most times they don’t.
When Mother and Father came back, they had cloth things that I wear with them. They tell me I’m getting big, and the cloth things that keep me warm are getting too small.
I say I want to have fur like them, and Mother and Father laugh and stroke the top of my head where I have the most fur and they say, “Little Round Head! You will be big enough soon!”
The cloth things are covered with the red wet food. Mother and Father put them in their mouths and suck out the red food, “shluck! shluck! shluck!” like how they sometimes suck food from the insides of bones. I take my old cloth things off and use parts to keep my doll warm. My doll is all bundled up to its little head bone.
When they are dry the new cloth things smell like Mother and Father’s mouths, and when I wear them, it smells like I am being kissed and loved.
That is the warmest feeling of all.
Father said I could go with him for food, that I was big enough and brave enough to come.
He made me hang on tight to his back, where there is lots of hair and skin, and he carried me through the tunnels. Sometimes there was water and Father splashed through it and I got wet.
Father caught two rats and “rutch! rutch!” he bit off their heads so we could eat them. But first he poured out the red food from where the rats’ heads were onto his tongue, because he knows I don’t like the red food yet. I tried once to bite off the head of a rat, but it bit me first and I cried and Mother grabbed the rat fast and smashed it against a wall and said words I didn’t know at it and it burned.
So until I am bigger Mother and Father will bite off the heads.
Father carried me to a place with a wall and he shoved against it, “thud! thud!” and it was a door that opened and there was air like outside. Then I saw an outside place that was dark and the ground was wet and had big stones in rows like teeth coming out of it.
I stayed close to Father, because I was scared of the new place.
Father crawled behind the stone teeth things and I crawled behind him. Then he stopped and smelled, “sniff! sniff!” and we crawled to one of the stone teeth that looked bright and new and in front of the stone tooth was a long mound of dirt that smelled fresh and different from the rest of the ground.
Father shoved his arm into the dirt and made a hole. He put his nose in the hole and wriggled into the dirt and dirt got shoved up as Father dug in and I heard noises like wood breaking and then Father came up with food and he jumped and stepped on the mound to make it like it was before.
He gave me food to carr
y. We went a little way, then I looked back because I wanted to see how Father had made the mound like it was before and I saw that the ground with the stone teeth ended with a big metal gate with spikes on top and past that was lights and buildings and houses. I remembered being able to see a place like that through a square hole in the wall of the dream place where the Bad Mother and Bad Father live.
I didn’t know places like that were real. And since the place was real, maybe so were the Bad Mother and Bad Father.
Father made a sound at me like a rat. He had gone far ahead of me. I hurried to catch up. We came to the door, and I saw that it was to a long white stone thing like a house that went into a hill. Father and I went inside and he pulled the door shut, and there were shelves near the door I didn’t see before, and on the shelves were long wood boxes that were broken and inside were bits of cloth and skin and bones.
Father said, “You were very brave, Little Round Head. I want to give you something for being so very brave.”
And Father put the food he was carrying on a shelf and picked up one of the long boxes and shook out the old rags and bone and skin and put the food inside it. Then he hunched down low for me to climb on his back.
When we got home we found Mother up high where the metal pipes are. When Father and I saw her there we all laughed because we knew she was scared and lonely and climbed up there so she can drop on things that come into our home and rip their backs out. Once she dropped on a thing that looked like the Bad Father except it had a yellow head bone that was metal with a light on the forehead. When Mother dropped on it, it screamed and the head bone fell off and the light made scary shadows on the wall while I hid. Later, I got the yellow head bone with the light so I could see in the tunnels better. The head bone was fun, but soon all the light got used up. I still keep it where I sleep, along with a belt the thing had that had lots of shiny metal things hanging off it that make a nice jangling sound when I shake it.
Stories From the Plague Years Page 11
