by M. Matheson
REQUIEM
A Short Story
by
M. Matheson
Copyright 2016 Michael Matheson
ISBN: 9781311727664
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Persons described in this story are fictional. Any similarities to the living or dead are entirely coincidental. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please download or purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Requiem
Forty Winks for Jonah
As if it had fingers and a mind of its own, the wind snatched at the spiral bound notebook quivering in my hand; only a few blank pages left now. Writing is hard perched this high up. I wouldn’t recommend you try it. Even though fear of heights was never my problem, monsters were. Don't laugh. I'm deadly serious. When you've spent your life running from such a horrible thing, sitting twenty-eight stories up dangling your feet over the edge is no tougher than sitting on the sofa at home.
Now, there’s a novel concept—HOME.
This here is the final showdown, the last hurrah—winner takes all. The roll is about to be called up yonder and all that happy horseshit.
Let me introduce myself: My name is Jonah. Yes, Jonah as in the whale story from the Bible. Whether you attend church or not, you’ve at least heard of the story. I’m a twenty-three-year-old white male, and as in the Bible story, you could call me a reluctant pissed off prophet picking a bone with God. For a more detailed explanation on that point, read the book. It's not that long: Four chapters, forty-eight verses, 1320 words. Surely, this account will be longer. If you dust off Grandma’s bible and read it now, I should still be here when you get back, but hurry.
I started this account a dozen times and lost my nerve each time—afraid of what it might do if it caught me. Fancy my joy at finding his weak spot. Afraid of heights. Imagine that. So here I sit atop the Riverplace Tower. Jacksonville, Florida's tallest building until 1972.
My own little Shangri-La away from life’s daily torment and our own little OK Corral.
If I lean over far enough, I can just about make out the bus stop where my journey began. Just a little smudge in the distance.
And so my story begins.
Most folks are fortunate enough, I imagine.
Nursery school monsters and childish nightmares have faded into oblivion long before young adulthood comes along to swallow the remainder whole. Then, like lucky madmen they Toodle-oo through the rest of their lives blind to the terrors and mind-numbing grief that could have been—if only they could have remembered. Oh, they’re all still there, just stacked up stage left, growing dust and cobwebs, and waiting for the mental disease of old age to set in before dusting them off.
From what I’ve heard, some nightmares do come calling again, occasionally reaching out for another bite. So, imagine, if you will, having to live every sleeping and waking moment of your life with those things snapping at your heels like a swamp full of hungry crocodiles.
Such is my life. I’m not whining. It is what it is.
In a perplexing quirk of fate, the more insane among us never realize just how crazy we are. The numbers say that you the reader, one among six billion or so lucky others in this world, remain blind to the memories of your first four or five years. Not so for me. I'm not among those lucky ones; No sir. And, LUCK my friends is all there is to it. Hate to burst your bubble, but there is no Santa, Tooth Fairy, or Fairy Godmother to help you along the way.
In the cosmic crapshoot of things, your life does deference solely to the mercy of some galactic pair of dice. Who spins them? How the hell should I know? I do know this for a fact: as I broke the womb, I threw sixes, crapped out before I could even walk.
Insane asylums (hospitals to you more sensitive politically correct creeps) are full of the babbling and drooling mentally ill endlessly staring through saliva stained windows or pacing gray corridors spitting glossolalia until their voices grow hoarse. Oh, how fortunate; not a one knows their real plight, none scream at night wishing for a single drop of sanity to wet their tongue. Their sickness (the fall of the dotted cubes) has made them utterly blind to their predicament.
You see, I'm insane, and I know it.
I can trace every last broken glass shard of my torment, every fat scaly fistful of TWOS, THREES, and TWELVES jammed straight down my retching throat. Each and every moment of my existence is a frantic struggle just to suck enough air to survive.
Yet, cadres of so-called experts have all pronounced me level, straight and true—all fifty-two cards in perfect order.
Why have I not closed up shop, given in, and admitted defeat? I’m infected with a terminal disease at odds with my insanity. HOPE. Not the fresh fuzzy feel good kind. HELL NO. High expectations are a poison that makes this nonsense that much more evil.
I learned quickly as a child that if I dared speak my dilemma, someone within the wild parade of foster parents and other do-gooders feeling duty bound would cart me off to doctors, shrinks, acupuncturists, Yogis or other pseudo-professionals. Each one of those quacks slid back the curtain of my soul, spied my secret, peeked in at the sleeping dragon, and quickly shut the door. “I see nothing wrong. Get him outta here and stop wasting my time and taxpayer dollars.” They pronounced ME compos mentis: reasonable and sound.
So, I am writing this account before I...
Well, it's best for us all if there are no spoilers, and it's best for you to post a lookout after I'm—no spoilers—remember. REQUIEM seems a fitting title for my story. It feels right, I like the fit. A solemn chant for the eternal forty winks.
Showdown at The Riverplace Towers complete with assembled cavalry in the street below.
Every time I flinch or flip a page the crowd below holds their collective breath. ONE, TWO, THREE—Boo!!!
This is more fun than a sack of kittens and a ball-peen hammer.
~~~~0~~~~
Hot on my little tail it came, three days before my fifth birthday, slimy, kelp-covered, and gnashing its fangs behind me. It chomped at my flesh leaving saliva hot with disease drooling down the crack of my skinny little ass as I bolted from Ms. Wilkins Pre-Kindergarten Sunday School class.
No one believes me, though. Ms. Wilkins does, but she's not telling.
She seemed pleasant enough at first; I guess initially anybody does. But, adults don’t cover their whispers too well, now do they? Such offhand naïveté costs their young charges a lifetime of twisted emotions by nibbling at the tree of good and evil much too early.
They called Ms. Wilkins a witch and another name that rhymes with it. The taste of Ivory Soap still bubbles in my throat every time I think of it. Left a definite lifelong impression.
Those words pinged hot in my head, like an overheated V-8 cooling after a long run. Oh, how I wished I'd taken heed and refused to go into that class. I could have kicked, screamed, thrown a fit, bit someone, or grabbed the door jambs until Mom let me stay with her. But, that would have been so out of character.
Something in me must have been wired wrong from the start—you know. Since I failed to buy into the entire catalog of childish myths: Witches, Santa Claus, Tooth Fairies, and fathers. Perhaps my red wire got hooked to the yellow instead of green.
The instant that monster’s gleaming ivories pierced my flesh, I became a believer, though—Oh, yes. You can believe it—or not. It's a free world. I'll show you the scars and you can take a number downtown at Child Protective Services. They've heard of me alright and they too pronounced me safe and sound as El Capitan. The scars would disappear, though, every time a social worker examined me. But, I know you'll see them.
I believe in everything now, except fathers, of course. That�
�s the biggest myth of them all.
“Come back Jonah!” Ms. Wilkins cried, convinced more than anyone else of her own sincerity. Didn't fool me. It only took one glance over my shoulder and I shuddered down to my size ten sneakers. Ms. Wilkins flesh hung dripping like melted wax from the bones of her face exposing a skull as bleached white as if it had lain in the desert for years. Her hair turned to sparse wisps of fine gray string as her skull pushed through dead tissue. Then she laughed. Not a little harrumph, no, but a full throw its head back screeching.
Like a gunfighter bursting into a Wild West saloon, I drove through the swinging doors into the church sanctuary. The stupor of the crowd popped, like a drifting soap bubble, leaving only the dull hum of crackling speakers and the creak of swinging doors behind me. Vexation poured like hot acid from the preacher.
A purple-faced usher, his shirt and tie all askew, bobbed side to side down the aisle reminding me of the plastic punching bag clown at home in my room. He snatched at me. I ducked and weaved—a most excellent maneuver I'm proud of to this day.
I heard the crunch of the paper bag as it came from an oversized lady’s oversized purse. She tried shoving it over my mouth. My stomach flipped at the smell of her stale perfume. I batted the bag away and Fatty Usher caught me by my upper arm lifting me from the floor. The crowd couldn’t see my dangling feet and toes straining to find purchase.
“Calm down Jonah. We’re in church for God’s sake,” he huffed as he shook me. I could smell the greasy onions he had for breakfast. He was pissed and trying to hide it—after all, we were in church.
A Mardi Gras head supported by a stick man with a stiff collar peered down from over the pulpit. Two-hundred regular-size heads swiveled towards me in unison, four-hundred unblinking incredulous eyes above pursed purple unapproving lips.
The usher’s dirty yellow fingernails pressed farther into my skin. Probably give me cancer if I live that long. Shit! (I hope Mom didn't hear me think that) Give me back my stinkin' monster. I writhed in the fat man’s grip like a possum he had trapped
Mom smoothed her white pleated skirt and shuffled apologetically across the second row from the front. Popping into the center lane and gracefully recovering a stumble, she flushed red with embarrassment, anger or both. Her eyes pierced the heart of Fatso the Usher like gleaming stilettos impaling four-hundred ugly eyeballs along the way. A torrent of eye goo and blood flooded the aisles.
“Whew! That was close,” she said as we popped into the bright sunlight on the stone front steps of the church. With those words, I was sure she'd seen the real nature of my problem. If she did, she didn’t say, though. I want to think she was among the believers. There have been so few along the way. She pulled me to her side. Her arm closed around my shoulder settling my crackling nerves. “Let's get outta here,” she said.
I caught a gossamer glimpse of the monster’s tail over my shoulder, as it whipped, snapped, and reeled its way back into the sanctuary leaving behind it a trail of putrid green mist flecked with my blood. One more whip-snap, like the crack of a bullwhip, and I believed the thing was securely stowed back in the Sunday School room next to the crayons and glue.
The terror of that day was more profound than any I’ve experienced since, like the first high from an illicit drug. And, like the same, it stalked me, a relentless subconscious hum.
As I pen these words, a feathery breeze has kicked up, drying the cold sweat curling from my skin. When I'm gone, perhaps then you will all finally believe.
~~~~0~~~~
Mom waitressed at Denny’s in the sketchy part of town. The carpets were torn and the sodden grease smell burnt my nostrils. She worked for minimum wage and tips from nasty men who, while she poured them their coffee, leered into the false promise of her cleavage. She worked afternoons and evenings, six days a week, primetime for playing when you haven't yet hit kindergarten.
Supervised at home by an ever-changing carousel of teenage babysitters; Mom never trusted daycares. How's that for a bloody scrap of irony? If it weren't for subtle differences in the sitter’s hair, skin color, and tone of voice, every Brandy, Sissy, Kiera, Taylor, Emma, even a Shaniqua could have been die-stamped copies of the other. Ceaselessly chattering into cell phones, simultaneously tapping texts, and staring at the TV like vegged-out automatons. And, if I so much as put my slimy mitts on the remote, they would spit a string of pernicious and creative threats.
Visiting day here at Devil’s Island (so I saw it) was Sunday—Mom’s day off.
~~~~0~~~~
Jonah (my given name in case you forgot) and the whale had been Ms. Wilkins’ lesson for the day. She had my attention. I didn't squiggle in my seat but focused on her words and the flannel board in front of me. Like a tractor beam, I watched the flannel figures and her wrinkled lips form every syllable. Chicken bumps puckered on my skin, the air grew cold, and the room shrunk away leaving only Ms. Wilkins horrible face, the flannel figures, and me.
Blinking away tears of fright, I caught more than one glimpse of the dull spikes jutting from a bumpy upper ridge of a tail originating somewhere from under Ms. Wilkins dress. I scrunched fists into my eyes willing it to go away.
Even if she were a witch or the other word that rhymed with it, she could not possibly have a tail. Even I knew that. Yet, there it was swishing behind her polishing a spot on the tile floor.
Why weren't the kids pointing, laughing or running away? To this day, I never quite figured that one out.
Her left pupil poked through a spider web of red veins bursting through the surrounding white and pivoting towards me each time she spoke my namesake’s only title—JONAH. That eye made me think of a lizard I saw at the zoo once. It too had eyes that swiveled at the end of stalks on its head.
My little chair hummed from my electric nerves.
Ms. Wilkin's slapped her flabby thighs in time to the waves tossing the prophet Jonah’s ship. I swear to this day I could hear feet running on the deck. Spreading two fingers to peek, every child had a stone mask of horror on their faces, glaring at me as if I was the show.
Her gaze burned hot like the sun, she pointed a hot dog size finger at me as she fed the little felt man into the white-toothed mouth of the black flannel whale. She made ugly wet chomping noises and finished by crushing the flannel prophet in her fist.
That’s when I ran.
~~~~0~~~~
Standing there on the steps of the church with Mom, I wanted to run, but Mom pulled me close. Whenever I feel alone and unwanted, I pull out that memory. Often its all I have.
Shame seemed to emanate from my mom, and I was unsure why.
“Jonah, what in hell were you thinking?”
The words cut a fragile thread that held us together. It was more frightening than any monster. The awfulness of being set adrift and left utterly alone. I hadn't even read Mutiny on the Bounty—yet.
She pulled me along like a half deflated balloon bobbing at the end of a string. We crossed the street and took a seat in the wind shelter of the bus stop. Alone.
She was speechless. So, Jonah, what in hell were you thinking? became the last words she ever spoke. Yet, if you knew Mom, she couldn’t go a minute without talking, and here she was mute. As her body touched mine, I could feel it flinching like a bag of living sharp stones. I wanted to scream.
The city bus came charging towards us like a mechanical rhinoceros, fumes of diesel and dust rolling ahead of it. I watched it stop a block away at Lennox Street. Two grownups exited: one held a baby wrapped in a pink blanket and the other a brown sack celery stalks jutting from the top.
As it got closer, the bus' windshield seemed to grow to an enormous scale. Its big yellow headlight eyes were peppered with dead bugs, spindly broken legs jutting out in a hundred different directions.
Kids are accustomed to patterns. We crave routine. So, if anything is out of joint, we notice it right away. There was a small metallic clink. I'd never heard it before, and something small tinkled on the pavement behind the
bus and came to rest in the roadway. The front end dipped a quick curtsy. Mom stood and approached the curb. She let go of my hand, when she usually gripped it tighter. I guess she was still pissed. They say I'm fortunate, though.
Are you asking yourself how a five-year-old kid gets all this detail and insight? I'm big for my age, fifty pounds and nearly four feet tall, I can pass for seven or eight. Besides, I've had eighteen years to ruminate over every horrid detail. Believe me, I wish I didn't have the depth of insight I've been cursed with. And, as I said at the outset, you are the fortunate ones, insane as you all are.
Expecting to hear the hiss of air brakes—I didn't. The right front wheel of the bus, as tall as I was, hit the curb. My routine-loving mind expected it to simply carom away, and I suppose Mom did too. It didn't. Instead, it bounded up onto the sidewalk, like an overeager Labrador and wiped my mom away like an eraser on a chalkboard—only messier.
Mom's body, that's all it was (an unthinking corpse) by the time she hit the ground, churned under the chassis of the bus, catching on things hot and jagged, ripping free then reappearing farther back only to be sucked back into the mechanical riptide. As the bus passed by, running in slo-mo, I thought it looked a lot like that whale in Ms. Wilkin's story. What was left of Mom looked like a smashed flat cat before its had a chance to dry in the roadway, the kind you see in the at least once a week. Except, this was my mom. Tufts of stark white material from her skirt stood up like peaks of meringue amongst the gore.
I should have screamed, I guess, or sat rocking back and forth in a catatonic state for weeks or years, but I didn't. I was only five (well almost) and hadn't a clue what to do. There are no rules for how to react when you see your mother smeared across the roadway by a 165-pound Goodyear tire B305/75R24.5. Ground into the asphalt by a nineteen-ton city bus.
Even before the cavalry came, the monster reared back on its haunches and let forth a greasy laugh. I didn't stick around to get caught up in that mess and lit out down the sidewalk. The alley to my right was lined with broken wood fences and dented metal trash cans. Seemed a perfect hiding place.
My senses were flawless (for a five-year-old). There would only be a short amount of time before the child stealers showed up to shuttle me to some dungeon of a foster home (what’s that they say about hindsight?) ten times more hideous than the monster.
