Flyblown and Blood-Spattered

by Jarred Martin

  Of course, my childhood was fine. The irrevocable, life-altering trauma I suffered didn't occur until I was an adult settling into middle age, but after, I was just as fucked-up as any child whose mother had dangled him out of the window of a high-rise apartment because he spilled grape juice on the carpet.

  Do you know why you are the way you are? That's the question. My answer, like the shittiest, most indirect answers always are, is in the form of a story.

  2

  This is the story of Roman Martel, mild-mannered business accountant for a mid-sized law firm specializing in real estate law. He is a white, protestant American, never convicted of a crime. He is neither prone to excessive drink nor is he a drug addict. He keeps his grass cut short and his hedges tidy. He is the definition of nondescript; characterless and boring.

  But just because he is a man bereft of dynamism, imagination, and a creative spirit, doesn't mean he is condemned to loneliness. No. Roman Martel has managed to attract a mate. Not some dubious, disarmingly-beautiful sitcom wife who folds her arms and glares at him in a perpetual state of aggravation at his bumbling antics, but rather the sort of woman who settles down with an accountant for a mid-sized law firm specializing in real estate law. Her name is Maddie. Together they have produced two children, both girls. Their names are June and Diane. Roman is a good father and has never touched their assholes or threatened his wife with a butcher knife in front of them so, as far as he knows, they will grow up to be normal, well-adjusted adults.

  In the limited imagination he possesses, Roman has achieved a pleasant sort of perfection. He has no further ambition beyond going to work for a required number of hours every week, working overtime when necessary, spending an allotted number of days on a modest vacation with his family every year, getting to church on Sundays, and paying his bills on time. He finds the best way to get through life is by keeping his head down, not making any waves, and shutting up and doing his job; and he would give the same advice to anyone who asked, not that anyone would.

  Roman is a man of duty whose life consists of fulfilling different roles such as: husband, employee, parishioner, etc. It is while acting in the capacity of father to his two children that he makes the decision to take them to a place called Planet Holiday. Planet Holiday is a theme park predicated on the concept that a magical planet exists where all holidays are celebrated every day, simultaneously: meaning that one could enjoy Halloween candies while singing Christmas carols with the Easter Bunny and then watch a demonstration of Independence Day fireworks.

  The idea to visit such a place was not Roman's own. It would have never occurred to him that his children might enjoy such a whimsical place, because Roman was so far removed from being a child he could scarcely relate to them. All he really understood of his children was that they liked bright colors, talking loudly, and running everywhere they went.

  But through the magic of television advertisement, the children became aware of Planet Holiday, and through their pestering, so did Roman. And so he would take them, he conceded. Roman understood that it was bad parenting to indulge a child's every whim, but he also knew that it was good parenting to make small allowances such as a weekend trip to a silly amusement park for no other reason than to see his girls happy.

  Planet Holiday is an obnoxious place to Roman, all bright colors and people screaming; there is so much going on he feels as though his senses are being overwhelmed. There are rides, the smell of dough frying, games, souvenir stands where he is forced by his daughters to buy T-shirts and plastic jewelry and stuffed animals- all vying for his attention at once.

  And, as if that weren't enough, his family is constantly accosted by employees of the park dressed up as different holiday characters; his daughters are frightened nearly to tears by a fat man in a Santa Claus costume, and then screamed in delight and hugged him moments later.

  There is a midget wearing nothing but a diaper and a sash that reads: Happy New Year! leaning against the wall in an alcove, smoking a cigarette. Roman's girl's want to hug him too, but he decides it would be a bad idea.

  Soon the kids are exhausted in a way that only children who have spent an entire morning having their senses bombarded with every sort of stimulation imaginable could be, and the family decides to visit one of the park's many theme restaurants.

  They are standing a few dozen yards from the entrance of a Saint Patrick’s Day-themed restaurant called the Shamrock Grille, when a morbidly obese woman on a motorized scooter falls to the ground, taking the scooter with her and spilling a large bucket of buttered popcorn onto the blacktop.

  The family of four stops to watch as a young man in a T-shirt bearing the legend: I survived the DEVASTATOR! Bends down to help the woman. An instant later, the bottom of the man's face explodes in a burst of red as his teeth and the remains of his jaw scatter over the asphalt with the woman's popcorn.

  The crowd erupts into a panic and starts to scramble in every direction. All around them people are collapsing. A man in a yellow trucker hat is holding his hands to his neck as it gushes blood out over his fingers. A woman leading her young daughter to safety by the hand turns and screams as she realizes she's been pulling a lifeless body behind her, and then she finds herself on the ground, struggling to breathe with a hole in her chest. A man is crawling, one hand holding a cell-phone to his ear, his white t-shirt is turning red with blood. Santa Clause is sprawled on the ground, unmoving, lying in a crimson puddle.

  And in the midst of it all, Roman Martel is standing, torn between fleeing and somehow protecting his family, paralyzed by a conflict of obligation versus self-preservation. But the conflict is short lived and in a split-second it ceases to matter. Nothing happening at Planet Holiday matters to him anymore because he is not there. He is not anywhere. He is gently bobbing on an endless black tide of nothing in an unfamiliar place; somewhere that will never be familiar no matter how much time he spends in it because he lacks the cognitive ability to comprehend this place, and if he did, he wouldn't be here.

  A young man named Gabriel Eberhard Lindsey, a waiter at the Shamrock Grille, had come in to work earlier that morning before opening and stashed a Remington 7mm rifle and a dozen clips of ammunition on the roof. He waited until his shift started and then preformed his job in a professional and courteous manner, never giving any indication that he was actually a mentally-ill person on the verge of mass murder.

  At 11:40 he told the manager he was going on a break. He then went up to the roof, uncovered his gun, and opened fire on the crowd below, killing 16 people and wounding 21 others.

  Because his name was Gabriel the media dubbed him “The Angel of Death” and he caught the attention of the entire country. Every newspaper and cable news broadcast was plastered with photographs of the young man in police custody, wearing his Shamrock Grille uniform, which consisted of green and white leggings, black shoes with gold buckles, a green top hat with a fake plastic shamrock sticking out, and a false red beard.

  Everyone wanted to know why he would want to murder so many people, and the only answer he could give was that it "seemed like a thing to do," so he had done it.

  Everyone in America was outraged and they despised him until another young man in a different state planted a bomb at his high school graduation 6 days later. After that, everybody seemed to forget about Gabriel Eberhard Lindsey and the 37 people he had shot.

  Roman Martel, who was the 11th person shot that day by Gabriel Eberhard Lindsey, and the 167th person shot overall that day in America, is now lying in a hospital bed in a coma. He had been shot in the head in a moment of indecision as his wife had been scooping up their children and taking them to safety. Maddie, June, and Diane all managed to avoid being shot by hiding behind a carousel.

  Roman Martel has been in a coma for five months, or long enough for there to be 3 more mass shootings throughout the country. The bullet has done significant damage to Roman's frontal lobe and a large portion of his skull has been Withd with a titanium plate. His
doctors have prepared his family for the worst, telling them he may never wake up, but if he does, he may be impaired to the extent that he may never be able to walk, or talk, or do much more than sit in a wheelchair and drool.

  During his first month in a coma, Roman has a lot of visitors, people that work with him at the law firm, people he knows from church, neighbors, etc. But after about three weeks they stop coming. People are busy and three weeks is a long time to keep visiting someone that doesn't even know you're there. And by the end of five months, his own wife is only visiting him twice a week for less than a hour.

  Maddie hasn't forgotten Roman, though. She prays to God every night for him to wake up. And maybe God heard her and decided that that was a good idea, and Roman should wake up, because he did.

  She is in the room when he opens his eyes, although she doesn't see it at first, she is reading to him from an issue of O Magazine, because the doctor had told her that hearing her voice would be good for him.

  Roman leaves the unnameable black void and settles back down into his body. All the sensation that comes with consciousness rushes at him like a flood: the shit and bleach smell of the hospital room, the blazing halogen bulbs above him, the uncomfortable narrow bed beneath him ...a voice. He knows that voice, but he has no idea what it's saying; it's speech is one long, uninterrupted slur of nonsense. As his vision slowly comes back into focus he sees a woman in a chair reading out loud from a magazine. This woman is familiar to him in some way that he cannot immediately place. He feels there is a word associated with this woman, imprisoned somewhere in the back of his mind. He listens to her unending buzz of verbiage for a few more torturous minutes. He feels the word struggling to break free. It is a word that describes who this woman is in relation to him. And then the word is loose, making its way to the forefront of his mind, rising through his unconscious like an air bubble in brackish water. It is a word he's never spoken aloud before, and rarely ever thought.

  CUNT

  The word is cunt. The thing droning away next to him in the chair is a cunt.

  He tries to scream the word but his mouth is packed with some kind of tubing taped to his face, so he is only able to mutter, “Ugghkkttt!” but that is enough to get the cunt's attention.

  Maddie Martel drops her magazine to the floor and rushes to the bedside.

  “Roman,” she says, “Roman! Oh my God, you're awake!” And she throws her arms around his weak, skeleton body. She lets him go and looks into his eyes, releasing a barrage of questions, “Roman, do you know who I am? Do you know where you are? Do you remember what happened? What's the last thing you remember? Could you hear us? Could you feel our presence in the room with you?”

  Roman can only respond, “Uuuugggghhhhttkktttt ggghhhhhttt ugggghhhggghh” But what he means is, “Get this fucking tube out of my fucking throat, you fucking cunt!”

  Maddie calls for a doctor.

  Later, the doctor is in the hallway with Roman's door closed, talking to a concerned Maddie. He is giving her what he calls, “good news-bad news.”

  “The good news is that your husband doesn't appear to be suffering from any major cognitive impairment; he's able to articulate, he has full control of his motor functions, his short-term memory is fine, although his long-term is a bit hazy, but we find that in a lot of cases it will return over time- how much we aren't able to tell- but you'll be there to help him remember, and that'll be good for him. I don't want to give a false impression here, though, he is brain damaged.”

  “Oh my God,” Mattie's eyes start to tear up.

  “Your husband has sustained very serous trauma to his frontal-lobe. There is significant scarring and a rather large portion of his brain is just... well, not there anymore.”

  “What does that mean?” Asks Maddie. “How is this going to affect him. He was an accountant, you know. Will he be able to do math anymore, or drive a car?”

  “Those areas of his brain will be unaffected,” the doctor says. “The biggest changes could to his personality. There are rare instances of patients with frontal-lobe trauma who experience mild to drastic alterations in their behavior. This could manifest itself in changes in his overall demeanor, or possibly in bursts of aggression or confusion. Some develop inhibition, a decrease in impulse control. But it's too early to tell, and he could just be experiencing agitation as an adverse reaction to his medication. Or it's his situation. The important thing to remember is that he's your husband, and even though he may seem a bit different, he's been through a very traumatic experience and you have to be patient with him.”

  “What did you mean by impulse control? My Roman doesn't have any impulses to control.”

  “Well, I wouldn't want to worry you if that's the case, Mrs. Martel,” he looks at his watch. “I've got to be going. If you have any further questions, I'm sure the nurse can answer them for you.”

  The doctor walks away from her. He has more terrible news to deliver to worried, and grief-stricken people, which is something that used to bother him when he first became a doctor, but now he likes to imagine himself as a mechanic for human beings. He feels a lot less emotion for sick and dying people if he just thinks of them as fleshy machines that need fixing. He had a mentor in medical school that explained it like this: “Getting emotionally involved with people in a hospital is like naming cows in a slaughterhouse.”

  Maddie opens the door and walks inside Roman's tiny room. He is fully awake now, the tubes have all been pulled out of his nose and mouth. There is still an IV with the needle stuck into the back of his hand. This bothers the hell out of Roman, but the nurse told him if he yanked it out again, they would have to restrain him. He told her she could yank his dick out and restrain that for him, too, while she was at it.

  Maddie approaches him timidly. This frail man with his thin wrists held back by padded cuffs attached to the rails on the side of the bed looks so different from her husband. This man has a permanently dour face like he's in the shadow of a black cloud that only hangs over him. She is more than a little afraid. Patience. That's what the doctor said. Patience.

  “Roman,” she says.

  His eyes light on her, briefly, and he grunts.

  “The doctor said you can come home in a few days, isn't that wonderful? You've been away so long, it'll be good to have you around the house again. I know the girls miss you, do remember the girls, Roman? June and Diane?” At the mention of his daughter's names she sees a little glimmer of recognition in his eyes. And in that moment, she sees Roman before the accident, the diffident, thoughtful man who always knew just what to write at the bottom of her birthday cards; the man who would wait patiently for her to read the last chapter of her book before turning out the lights so they could sleep at night. She reached down and took his restrained hand in hers.

  “I know that you've been through a terrible ordeal. I know that the hardest part is just beginning. They say you'll be able to walk again after a few weeks of physical therapy. But I just want you to know that I'm here, whatever you have to go through, I'll be right at your side. I love you, Roman.”

  “I love you, too,” he tells her and she reaches down to run her hand along the side of his face. “Now loosen these straps and I'll let you sit on my face, baby; stick my tongue up your asshole.”

  3

  He doesn't last long back at the house.

  To her credit, Maddie holds out longer than most people would.

  He spends his first six weeks back at home purposely knocking over furniture with his wheelchair and calling everyone he sees on the television a faggot because the plots are too hard for him to follow. He often has trouble remembering the names of his family. His children are terrified of him. The family dog, whose name also frequently escapes him, won't come near him and hides, whimpering under the coffee table with her tail between her legs when he calls her.

  He tells Maddie her pot roast tastes like a bum's wet asshole, even though it used to be his favorite. He laughs when she weeps openly at th
e dinner table and then he knocks his plate to the floor.

  The few times his daughters have the nerve to talk to him, he tells them to shut the fuck up; to keep their dumb, nosy, twat faces out of his fucking business unless they want a hard slap across the eyes.

  They are all relieved when his muscles are strong enough for him to walk again, because this means he stays gone a lot of the time. The first thing he does when he can stand is go to a tobacco store and buy a box of cigars, which he chain-smokes, one right after another. He sits in the living room and sucks down cigars and mutters under his breath about what a bunch of pussies and faggots Hogan's Heroes are. When he finishes a cigar, he tosses the wet stub onto the carpet of the sour-smelling, smoke-filled room, and chuckles as his wife scrambles to pick up the lit butts.

  When he is able to go back to work, he loses his job immediately by masturbating in front of a female intern in the stairwell.

  He doesn't come home for a long time after that. A large part of Maddie thinks it's for the best. She hopes she never sees him again.

  But he comes back, of course.

  He comes home late in the night. She is in bed and she can smell him come into the room. He smells like human waste and stale whiskey. She can see the orange glow coming from the end of his cigar as he inhales. She turns on the light. He looks like he's been sleeping outside; his clothes are wrinkled and filthy and he has leaves in his hair. He is not alone. Roman has brought someone back to share their marital bed; a wasted-looking whore with bruises on her arms and a mouth surrounded by herpes sores. Maddie guesses the girl is about thirteen. Only a few years older than their own children.