Free Beast

by Suzanne Marine

  As we enter the home, she asks in a kind, but prying manner if there's anyone I would like to call, anyone at all. I say, no, without a beat and continue on to my room. I don't want to tell her anything. It's none of her business.

  Be yourself.

  Be self-aware and aware of other's intentions.

  I search for myself and find nothing on the shallow. I feel the seeds planted deeply within, but they haven't been watered in some time. Who am I, what do the seeds represent? And I find myself reacting to others to find a reflection of who I am, my value. Am I just a generic version of human without this reflection? Someone smiles at me in the hallway and I smile back. I was worthy of being smiled at. Someone turns away from me as I enter the family room and I hold myself still and shy away. I was not worthy of having attention and I am timid. It's a dangerous practice to cultivate your self-esteem from other's reactions to you. And that is not what grandma's notes recommend. But it's the easiest, laziest way. I don't know how else to start. Grandma says to set little goals for yourself. I just don't see any. Can waking up be a goal. Can eating breakfast be one, even if I'm not hungry. Breathing.

  I'm a nobody and aren't we all. What makes each of us so special. I'm confronted with this mid-life crisis of sorts, although mine is borne of sadness and humiliation.

  I am still young.

  I have to be OK with being a nobody, a vacant, undistinguishable light foot in this life.

  Is it special to just be yourself? Isn't that enough? Shouldn't it be? Logically, yes.

  But then I'm back to where I started... who am I. My sense of self has been denuded, stripped of specific highs and lows so it can't fit into the right screw hole, any screw hole.

  A finger without the raised identity.

  A tide of gray, flat emotions wash over my thoughts, a white noise terrorizes subliminally, deep, deep within. And any infinitesimal trace of energy and will vanishes like a desecrated, sunken spider web that can never be resurrected.

  I see a tiny hummingbird through the dirty window, it flashes ever so briefly as a sublime, new thought, and I just don't care to follow it with my eye.

  “You fucking bitch! You think you're gonna find a way, don't ya.”

  “No, no, honey... I didn't mean...” A staggering slam and a small cry. “Please... don't...”

  “You're gonna beg bitch. You don't know.”

  Sobbing, the kind that is thoroughly hopeless, bottomless.

  The emptiness bottoming out into a wasteland.

  We all hear their shouts in the wee hours every few nights. We pretend as if nothing's wrong at the breakfast table. They're the young couple at the end of the hall, in their twenties, and I suppose they stay together because they have no one else. Sometimes she cowers as prey, tip toes around him as they relax in the family room. Afraid of awaking the lion's hunger.

  It's always the same kind of argument. He wants to keep her underwater because she dared to shine or move in her own inimitable way. He punches to keep her ugly. But the blue-maroon bruises on her eyes and hands, the blue-grey mottling on her arms, the yellow-green puddle on her cheek accentuate her beauty, make it stand forward like a reverse Rorschach print. The watercolor splashes turn her into a beautiful alien, the kind that slowly morphs color and blends into fantasy worlds.

  We are in a house of healing yet no one says anything to either of them. Not the other women, not the older man who is already half a corpse, not safe house mother. They arrived a day before me so perhaps no one feels familiar enough just yet. Not me.

  She was the one who stared at my fingers that first morning. As if identifying another victim and I wonder what kind of person she is. The kind who feels solidarity with a fellow victim or the kind who thinks to herself, at least I haven't got it as bad as her. One is aware and open hearted, she can see the broader context in life without the corrosive ego. The other is in delusion but doesn't know it... spinning round and round, faster and faster on the rat wheel of life. She believes she will get somewhere higher.

  There's a silence for what seems many minutes. The coast is clear to go to the bathroom. The house has settled for sleep, but their shouting woke it. The bathroom is shared by all the women and only a few doors down. I should feel comfortable going at any time, but the shouting and anger loom as an undefined monster in the hallway, trapping me in my room. I dare not go out there when I know his fist is pounding... But now there's a fine quiet, like my memory of watching snowflakes waft slowly to the ground.

  I open my door and see the hallway light above cast it's phantom, long and stretched on the wooden floor, and begin tip toeing. It's closer to their door, and there's no light on their end, but my eyes sharpen to the darkness. My fingers trace the old, grainy, warped walls... one door... door two... door three... the next one.

  And I see her right before me in the dark, almost bumping into her. The weak light from my end of the hall stretches here faintly, illuminating her sharp features. The point of nose, the canyon angle of cheekbone, the V of chin, damp corners of eyes.

  Her mouth is an O, an empty train tunnel to nowhere.

  Sorry, I say, I didn't see you.

  Her eyes water and she looks away ashamed, the puff of black-maroon around her eye blending into the dark as if she were missing half her face. I smell it and look down. See the points of her fingers, the whitest tips, bent knuckle of her thumb. They cradle something curved yet smushed and dark, unable to catch any particles of light. The scent is of the sewer. Shit. I'm startled and stand straight. She must've shit during the beating, perhaps while naked, or perhaps he... I can't make any sense of it, my thoughts fly as a dizzy crown, round and round.

  I stand away from the door and motion for her to go ahead of me. She enters, I turn the light on and close the door behind her quietly. I stay there for a moment, eyes closed, listening, feeling, acknowledging. My aching heels bearing down on the floor. My hand on my heart, which is dropping and breaking.

  The toilet flushes soon after and I walk back to my room. I don't want her to have to face me when she leaves.

  The next day, I look her way briefly at breakfast, try to catch her eye. I don't know how to help other than to be a listener, some type of friend. It's my subtle way of seeing if she needs anything. I suppose if she does she would meet my eyes and smile grimly or nod her head ever so slightly. But she sees my glance, looks at her boyfriend who's busy cutting his food, meets my eyes again and tilts her head up while looking far off into the room behind us, chin jutting out. Haughty, cold, defiant. Towards me. As if I didn't exist.

  I turn towards my food, feeling a whisper of rejection infuse me. I guess it's her way of not wanting to be reminded of her suffering, that pain of being treated like an animal.

  It would remind her of the outside. That she can leave if she really wanted to. But she wants to remain a prisoner. Perhaps it is familiar and anything familiar is better than the unknown.

  The odd thing is... the emotions I felt last night and now crack the plaster, make me less of a prisoner of my numbness. Just a little bit.

  POETRY

  Darkness surrounds them. The man smiles, brimming with clever knowledge and mischievous thoughts. There is a lightness about his presence with a slant to the distant and remote.

  He lights a match between he and Danita. The light projects a warm glow on his white, curled mustache, his crinkled, brown eyes. The years in his skin sagging plump. And Danita... his large, brown eyes mesmerized by the flame. It burns down to the man's fingers, which snuff it out.

  The velveteen darkness obscures them for a few moments and the man lights another one. Again, they watch the flame, thinking their separate thoughts. The man feeling the lean to the unknown, where the pea of brain begins, those rough-torn, half-born thoughts. Danita feeling that the only warmth in his life comes from this lithe, shimmering flame.

  This happens three more times. The man tries to teach Danita something unspoken through this poetry of light and dark. Spark of light and b
lack. Glow and void. Eruption and ebony. Danita only understands the sound of match catching into flare, that rich brushing friction combusting into a burst.

  The man lights a bonfire. Danita sits nearby to keep warm through the stark, desert night, the sand in his shoes no longer bothers him. The man stands and begins to mince his steps in place. He closes his eyes, turns his head to the heavens as if to receive word. He begins to spin slowly with arms spread, his ragged, full sleeves sailing in the circular current, creating a wind tunnel to the cosmos. His longish, white hair flies up as he spins faster and faster in his dervish fever, searching for a release of his bad, for a touch of infinite. An aurora of the soul. He laughs and howls oval sounds long into the air, his voice bellowing and beckoning to the wisdom. What to do with this boy. Hand me a sign. What to do with my humanness. A knowing that the universe will shape them. You must believe so the door can open. The boy is a glimpse of twilight.

  And Danita... he turns to the inky, midnight blue sky. The stars are so bright and sharpened. Tiny, exotic animals bobbing high above. He has never seen them before. He thinks, I can touch them. He hesitantly raises his hand higher and higher to try. And I see his palm opening and stretching savannah-wide as I awake soporific and fleeting. Where are you Danita. Where has he taken you.

  A knock on the door. I open it and she stands there with a mini-book. One she recommended to me when we spoke in the hallway the other day. She loves romance novels, the novelty of dreaming and fantasizing about perfect loves and lusts that endure mountains of pain. I receive it graciously though romance is not my particular kind of book. It is old and worn, from decades’ past of being hidden in corners, under beds and in underwear drawers. Not illegal, but books are not normal in our society, only spoken of in certain quarters and company, especially romance ones. The cover shows a hulky, hard-chested male, his skin glistening with sweat and a young damsel in distress sheltered in his arms. She seeks solace in the crook of his trunk-like neck and shoulder, her bosom exposed and hands limp. I feel a pang of sadness. I thank her appreciatively. I don't have a gift in return other than to recommend a short story Jamie bought for me called, The Story of Your Life. I tell her she might find it at her bookseller, that it's about the past, present and future. Not a romance novel, but about how we don't know what we don't know.

  Somehow she has money to buy these luxuries that help her float away from her current existence. I ask her how her job search is going, that I must start mine soon now that I've adjusted to life in the home. She says she isn't searching really, her eyes looking astral and spacey. I wonder how she can ever take care of herself if she doesn't find a job. We can't stay here forever. Will someone somehow take over the slack? Who? She says she just doesn't have the energy and smiles a charming, breezy smile. She shows me her room, which is across the hallway, and it's filled with stacks of old romance novels, half eaten cookies on small, chipped plates, and I see a cup of water holding fresh flowers from the yard. I could learn a thing or two from her about enjoying life, setting yourself free to roam your fantasy. But I'm a tightly wound coil, anxiously wondering about my future. And she luxuriates, her curly hair springing up and away from her head, reaching into the provinces of lace, satin, and cream.

  One goal... find a job in town. Start anew.

  Second goal... start a flower garden. It will stand for beauty. It need not stand for anything practical. Only a jewel. A pretty face in life.

  Some of our sessions are emotional and others are dead, just words drifting invisible in the current of air. The emotional ones come about because someone exposes a hurt and has a realization about their past. And the dead ones, the majority of our sessions, are due to boredom. Most of us have already had our say, at least what we want shared with this public. I suppose the dead ones are a good thing for they are a sign that most of the big issues have been handled.

  I never say much, only that I'm trying to figure out my next chapter. I never say what state I'm from. My next step is to let fate and life have a say. I can think of jobs I could have or want, but I won't know what I will actually do until a job accepts me. Life is give and take. We're told to provide safe house mother's phone number as a reference for our past job instead of the government's phone number. That way we will never have a bad reference on our record when the new employer checks them. I've wondered who pays for this safe house, how it's funded. What is the system that makes it possible. But I just don't have the mental energy to pursue those lines of thought. It is what it is. I am here and I am a beneficiary. Someday perhaps I can pay it back, find the puppet strings to the plan.

  Today, the half-corpse man leans in towards the young man while safe house mother talks about meal plans and grocery lists. I ask her if she can get me some flower seeds, any flower will do, but I prefer purple or white ones. The way he leans in is like a lover and I'm surprised, though I don't show it. I always assumed they were father and son. But the father leans in closely, whispers something in the young man's ear, and brushes his sparse, dry line of lips ever so briefly against his ear lobe. I look away as I wonder if they came together or if they hooked up here. I hear someone mention we only have a few months here and ask what they do when they're time is up. safe house mother says that decisions are made on a case by case basis.

  I look up and find the half-corpse man studying me, isolating me in his gaze. He looks away when I notice but I can't help but feel small jags of chill as if a sharp-clawed lizard had crawled up my spine. Either fear or disgust. His thin, wiry body, his strained, ready-to-leap at you vibe... it's all a vessel for something that eats people up.

  WORDS NOW

  The man who lives down the hall, next to the couple, is a quiet idealist or escapist depending on your proclivities. He barely speaks in our sessions and when he does he utters phrases like “life is beautiful” and “we only need a simple life”. His back curves in on itself slightly as if he were going to crumple inwards. As if he couldn't stand tall for anything. His voice is a calm, sonorous baritone yet he usually speaks low and hushed and solemn. He's a thin, whisper of a man, half spirit, half flesh.

  Today he said “I submit to life and anything it offers me” as the sun lit up his profile, his black skin glittering like oil and gold, his night eyes surveying the group then downward, fingers resting on his knees. I noticed his pants fraying at the bottom. The young couple held hands, nodded, looked at him with awe as if seeing him as a sort of spiritual monk. The kind they want to learn from briefly and then go on their merry way. The half-corpse man snickered silently, as if this type of human had no worth in this world. safe house mother responded quickly and nervously, saying “yes, yes of course, whatever you feel is best, however we are not to continue with our spying activities, like in the past. This new life must be clean and sincere and free of duplicity.” He nodded in agreement while looking at his fingers, at his old weathered shoes with the soles pulling away from the body. I decided to call him “nothing man” in my mind. He wants to have nothing, to be nothing, just air and soul. And maybe not even a soul.

  The dreamy woman from across the hall tells me about music, how she believes it transcends words and images. She says that in her past life, before here, she made music compilations. They saved lives. People told her the music reminded them of how life was worth living, even through the pain, hardship and sadness. Someone was about to kill themselves, but the music stopped them in their tracks, made them rethink. She says that it's wonderful to know her work saved that person. And I thought... so what, why is death thought of as a bad thing. What if that person would've been released by death, out of pain and despair. Why is life celebrated and death demonized.

  I say to her blandly, that's good to know you helped.

  I'm growing more and more cynical by the day. I think of how death shouldn't necessarily be celebrated, but that it can be a helpful tool for some people. A tool to set you free. A tool that shouldn't be judged so harshly. She says she wants to do something just as important
, just as creative and helpful. She doesn't want to do work just to survive. I realize then that she has never been tortured, not by the government, not by life. She is so innocent. I nod my head and wonder who will give that opportunity to her as I place the miniature seeds into the damp ground then cover them with thuds of felted darkness. They will have to prowl and creep their way to the top into the light, into a world where a brawny wind or nibbling animals can take your life away.

  I hear a soft, grainy chuckle, like sand and rocks. I turn my head towards the source and see half-corpse man in his room, kneeling next to his bed. The door is ajar, as if a breeze blew it open ever so silently. I peek in from where I stand a few feet away, I can't help it, and I see him cutting into the young man's rib with a razor. The young man sits still on the edge of the bed, eyes closed, as his partner cuts a geometric design into his flesh. The blood trickles down and the old man licks it before it reaches the pants.

  I can hear dreamy woman in her room, humming and singing old love ballads to herself. Her melodious voice plays high and low about long lost loves and chance encounters.

  I step back in horror and the wood floor creaks. I didn't mean to pry, I was only going to my room when I heard the laugh. The young man's eyes blurt open and find me startled and frozen. The old man feels his partner's body stiffen under the blade, and he turns to see me scurry away into my room.