May 01

Inheritence

by Jason Benoit

May 1, 2012

When I was seventeen, I lived with my grandmother in a five bedroom house with seven other people, most of whom were cousins of the second and third variety. I had only lived in NC for a couple of years and was fairly new to this side of the family; dysfunction ran rampant throughout. I had inherited a plethora of crack-heads, convicts, or worse, but I was one of them, one of the fold. I felt at home among them, felt welcome.

Photographer: Enviied

Two of the cousins and I were teenagers and, with Gram closing in on 60, we took full advantage of the situation: we came and went at all hours, drank, brought girls in and out as if on a conveyor belt. Gram made plenty of threats, hollered and screamed, but we paid no attention. She had a new boyfriend at the time, and he would try to talk to us, but that only made things worse.
Dave was a tiny little man, short in stature and as skinny as a malnourished puppy. Dave didn’t like to work; he had a simple approach to life: he liked to sit in the yard with a cold beer in his hands, soaking in the sun. As a result, his skin looked like a tanned hide, a dark leathery brown. Dave had been promising Gram that he was entitled to veterans benefits; his daughter was collecting the checks in Pennsylvania, and all he had to do was contact the V.A. and give them his new address to start getting his pension sent to him in NC. Every time she would raise enough hell to get him to try, he would concoct some grandiose story about why the check had been delayed yet again. It soon became clear to everyone that he was a freeloader–clear to everyone but Gram.
She was glad to have someone to talk to, someone she could spend time with; she liked being doted on, even if Dave spent much of his time drunk. He tried to compensate for his employment status by doing chores around the house: cooking, cleaning, doing the laundry and making her laugh, which–I have to say–was a rarity before Dave came along. I can’t speak for his true feelings toward her, but I can say that he made her feel good… for a while, anyway.
Gram soon became frustrated with Dave’s drinking; she tried talking to him about it. When that didn’t work, she started yelling, then the silent treatment and, eventually, withholding cash. Dave replied by going to friend’s houses to do his drinking. He would stay gone a day or two and, when he came back, all would be forgiven. The harder Gram tried to rein him in, the more he would buck against her. Eventually, she started drinking with him; I guess it was her way of keeping him close.
Gram had been 15 years sober by then. At one time, however, she had been what most people would consider a “wino.” My mother had told me stories about my grandmother from when she had first moved to NC. Stories of hiding Gram’s bottle from her, or pouring out the stash she found in the cabinet under the bathroom sink. She had told me stories of Gram, suffering from withdrawals, shaking to the point she couldn’t lift a glass to her lips to have a snort that would relieve the pain. She would wrap a towel around the back of her neck, putting one end in her hand and grabbing a glass of whatever poison she was drinking that day. She would grab the other end in a fist and pull down on it—using the towel as a rope and her neck as a pulley—pulling the glass off the table and toward her mouth. This would get her that first taste or two, until she could manage to do the work on her own, without spilling too much.
It didn’t take long for that woman to reemerge after she had that first taste in 15 years. Soon, she was drunk constantly, and became belligerent to the point that no one knew what to do with her – including Dave – but he was enjoying the new freedom to drink all he could pour down, and wasn’t keen on relinquishing it. So, instead of trying to keep her from falling into that hole again, he babysat her, even as the rest of us grew to hate him for Gram’s backslide.
Things were getting bad, but I had grown up with an alcoholic father, and knew the stories of how Gram was before, what I didn’t know, however, was the one thing that Gram used to do that Momma never shared with me.
I got home in the early morning hours of that Saturday morning. This wasn’t unusual, I was having a great summer, and it wasn’t out of the ordinary for me to see the sunrise before I went to sleep. I went into the rear bedroom that I shared with my two cousins, Bobby and James. I lay down on the love-seat couch we kept back there. Bobby, the one cousin closest to my own age, was already asleep in the bed. I was just starting to doze when I heard Dave’s shrill voice in the dining room.
“What the fuck are you doing?!”
I could hear Gram saying something, but her words were a drunken slur, so unintelligible they could hardly pass for spoken English.
“Give me that!”
I heard Gram say something else, then I heard—what sounded like—them tussling; unless I was wrong, he was trying to take—whatever it was—from her. I decided that I was needed in the dining room. I walked out of the bedroom door, and I could see down the short hallway, through the kitchen and into the dining room, but only part of the room was visible from where I was. The lights were on and I could hear them in there; they were definitely in some sort of feeble-old-drunk struggle. My pace quickened, ready to body slam Dave for fuckin’ with my Gram, but, as I entered the room, the scene that presented itself  before me were so perplexing  that I was unable to do anything  other than stare, just trying to take it all in. When I entered the room, they were indeed struggling over something, and they both stopped as I barreled into the room; I could see clearly that it was a kitchen steak knife. I could also see that Gram was bleeding–from her wrists.
“Jason, go to bed, she’s fine. I got this under control.”
Dave’s words spurred me to action, and I started toward her saying, ‘Fuck you, you go to bed.”
Had she cut herself?! What the fuck was going on? I reached over Dave and grabbed the knife from her hand.
“Okay, give me that, and go to bed. I can handle it from here.”
I put my face up against his—so close I could smell stale beer and cheap cigarettes—and I screamed into it, using every ounce of strength in me to force the words into his face.
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY, OR I WILL HURT YOU, OLD MAN!”
Dave’s retreat was instantaneous; my message came through, and he responded as I expected him to. I would have hated to put my hands on him, but my grandmother was bleeding, and I needed to see to her.
“Jashun, git ou’ve ere.” Her eyes stayed pointed at the table, as if her shame was too heavy for her to lift her head.
“Gram, I won’t. What happened?”
Dave stepped up close behind me, he seemed desperate to get me out of the room, “She cut herself because I …”
“Who asked you? Shut the fuck up, and let me handle this.”
In a tone reserved for unruly toddlers and disobedient pets he said, “I’m just trying…”
I turned on him allowing the fury that was building in me to show through my eyes and put my finger in his face but said in a level voice, “Not another word. Do you hear me?”
He nodded and took a step away from me. I turned to my grandmother again.
“Gram, what happened?”
“I did it, now you go to schleep and lemme taw shoo Dave.”
“What the fuck is going on?” Bobby? I turn to see him wiping his eyes and standing in the doorway.
“I don’t know. I think she’s cut herself.”
“What!? What the fuck?!”
“Get some towels and put them on her wrist. I’m going to call an ambulance.”

Both she and Dave protested loudly, but I ignored them. I dialed 911 and requested an ambulance. I then dialed my mother’s number.
The two of us hadn’t spoken in months; whenever we had an argument, it would end in me packing all my things into an army duffel I kept just for such occasions. We wouldn’t see or speak to each other for long periods of time. But this transcended that; I was obligated to tell Momma.
“Hello?” It was her; I could hear the twenty years of chain smoking in her husky drawl.
“Momma, it’s me. I think Gram cut herself. I called an ambulance. They’re on the way. I don’t know what to do. You have to help me. What am I supposed to do?”
“Wait, what?” I could hear her brain deciphering what I had told her. “Is she drunk?” Momma hadn’t been aware of Gram’s drinking. I certainly hadn’t told her.
“Yes.”
The conversation didn’t last long; I relayed the pertinent information, she absorbed it—better than I expected—and then we hung up so she could make the journey to Gram’s. I went back to the dining room, where Bobby was receiving a thorough cussing. Dave, having gotten no more sympathy from Bobby than he had gotten from me, had resorted to patting Gram on the shoulder while rubbing her back, cooing in her ear all the while, like a pigeon on a stoop.
In that moment, I could have beaten him, pummeled him into a coarse powder and threw it to the wind. The rage building in me threatened to consume me, to overcome my willpower and force me to lash out at him in response to the fear and confusion that were ripping at my mind like ravenous hyenas. He never knew it, but he had been within a whit of walking with a limp for years to come.
“Momma’s on her way.”
“Ammit, Jashun, Why canth you mine your own damn biznith?”
“This is my business, and you left me no choice. I had to call her.” My patience was wearing thin and it was evident in my voice as I said this.
“Mother fucker,” These words were spoken clearly, as if she hadn’t drank a drop, spoken with an ease that comes with practice, “You a pain in an ass.”
I turned my attention to Bobby; his face bore the shocked look of a young man that has just woken up in the Twilight Zone. He was holding a towel to Gram’s wrist and staring at the wall on the far side of the dining room. I don’t know where he was in that moment, but he certainly wasn’t in that room.  Wherever he was, he was furious.
“Bobby.”
He didn’t even flinch; his name had soared over him like a loosely gripped balloon at a parade. I thought about leaving him be, letting him continue to dwell in his fantasy, but I wanted to know what he was hiding under that towel.
“Bobby!”
He snapped to this time; his head whipped around, forcing his neck to crackle. He didn’t say a word, but I could see in his eyes that he was with me now, shaken, but not useless.
“How’s it look?”
“I don’t know, haven’t looked.”

I walked to where he was kneeling beside the chair Gram was slumped into and stood behind him, peeking over his shoulder. Gram grumbled something that was hardly recognizable as human in nature when he removed the towel and turned her wrist so we could see.
It wasn’t nearly as bad as I had imagined. The amount of blood I had seen when I first walked into the room had convinced me that Gram was not long for this world, but what I saw then  told another tale altogether. Her wrist was scratched several times in lines that ran parallel with her wrist joint; a couple of them still showed splotchy bleeding, but she could have done as much damage pruning roses.
Just then, headlights lit up the window, and I realized that Momma was pulling into the driveway.
As Momma charged into the house; her eyes wore a glaze that whispered of dreams lost to this nightmare. Her mouth was set in a rigid line, and I could see that she was frantic with worry. Her actions would show none of her trepidation. She took full control of the next thirty minutes.

She started by looking at the wounds. She stepped around Bobby without uttering a word to anyone, and he knew to get out of the way.
As she pulled the towel from Gram’s wrist, I said, “I just saw it. It’s not bad.”
Momma looked at the scratches on her mother’s wrist, and even though she didn’t actually do so, there was a visible sigh of relief.
“What the fuck is your problem?” Momma looked up into Gram’s face as she spoke, but before Gram could say a word Momma asked her, “Are you fuckin’ stupid?”
Gram’s face twisted into an angry snarl, and she started to speak, but the words that came out of her mouth amounted to nothing more than incoherent blathering.
“And you’re fuckin’ drunk.”
The accusation was laden with hurt and anger; Gram cringed away from it like a hand was sure to follow, aiming to slap the alcohol out of her. It never came.
Just then Dave spoke up, apparently hoping to finally get the sympathy he was due. “Robin, she wa…”
“You better shut the fuck up, you little motherfucker. My mother has been sober a long time. Then you come along… look at her. This is your fault. So, you better just shut the FUCK UP!”
Dave huffed and puffed like a card sharp caught with a sleeve full of aces, but uttered not a word. From the look in Momma’s eye, it was a good thing he didn’t.
Just then, an ambulance pulled up out front. Momma went out the back door to usher them in that way; the front door had long ago been nailed shut. She held the door open for them, and I heard her talking up a storm.
“She had a few drinks, mixed her pills with it and had an accident. It looked really bad at first, but once we cleaned it up it looks like she’ll be fine.”
“What kind of accident?”
“She scratched herself up pretty good, but we can’t figure out how. She’s too fucked up to tell us.”
“Okay, well we’re here, and we have to at least look at it.”

They did, and the police came, but by then the paramedics had bandaged her up and never acted like they suspected anything was wrong, so they all left us there with Gram, who was fading fast. She was hanging her head and unwilling to attempt conversation anymore.
Momma went through the house looking for sharp objects. She took knives—even the plastic butter knives you get with those prepackaged utensil pouches that come with to-go orders—she took pins and razors, anything that had an edge went into a bag. When her search was finished, she called me into the kitchen.
“I’m going to go home. It’s late, and I have to work in the morning. She should be fine now. She’ll go to sleep. Tell her I’ll be back tomorrow. Call me if anything happens.”
“What the fuck is going on, Momma?”
“She used to do this all the time. Haven’t you ever seen the scars on her wrists?”
I shook my head.
“Well, when she gets drunk, she cuts herself. Usually, it is just to get attention, but sometimes… sometimes she really tries. Anyway, go get some sleep.”
I kissed my Momma good night for the first time in months, and she left as quickly as she had come. Bobby had gone back to bed when the paramedics arrived. Dave was shuffling Gram to their bedroom.  I went into the back bedroom once again and laid down on the love seat to finally get some sleep.
What’s she doin’?” Bobby asked, from the darkness. He had been lying there quietly, no doubt reliving the last hour over and over.
“Goin’ to bed, Dave is putting her to bed anyway.”
“Kay. Fuckin’ crazy right?”
“Fuckin’ crazy.” I echoed.
There was no more chatter, nothing really left to say. Fuckin crazy had summed it up nicely.

Before long, I heard the deep, rhythmic breathing that will give away anyone sleeping soundly. I too fell into sleep quickly; it was a fitful and restless sleep, but deep, nonetheless.
Sometime later, I was startled awake by a noise. I wasn’t sure about what I had heard, wasn’t even sure I had heard it in the real world and not just in my dreams. My ears listened intently for a few minutes, but there was nothing there.
I closed my eyes again, trying to doze for the third time that night when it came: a shrill voice charging from the inner part of the house.
“What is that… where did you get that… give it to me… HEY, give it to me, NOW!”

Dave. Again.

I ran for the door and heard Bobby right behind me. We were headed back to the dining room. Déjà vu isn’t an accurate word for what I felt as I ran for the dining room again that night, but it’s close. I was awash in it, flooded by the feeling of having been there before. I tried to shake loose the idea that I was running into a macabre scene of blood and misery starring my grandmother, but it clung to me like an infant chimp to its mother.
I raced into that room fighting the truth; I wanted to imagine that I was crazy, confused; I wanted to believe that Bobby was falling prey to my madness, that we were both having delusional fragments of the night’s events steering our consciousness into this hysteria. I wanted—needed—my grandmother to be asleep; I needed to be dreaming, or wrong, anything but admitting to myself what was really happening.
You see, my grandmother was bleeding again when I entered that room; she was fighting Dave over a tiny piece of metal that she had used to open her other wrist. There was blood flowing down her raised forearm as she held it away from Dave.
She had ripped open a disposable razor and extricated the sliver of metal inside, using it to slice into herself. The wounds would prove to be superficial once again; Gram wasn’t ready to die—she was just begging for help; screaming for it.
My mother would end up moving into that house, along with my step-father, to keep an eye on Gram. Dave would be gone soon after. Gram missed him when he left. She never said it aloud and would vehemently deny such nonsense, but we all knew it.
In the months to come, I would look for the scars on her wrists, when I could get away with it, when her attention was elsewhere and I could look without her seeing—her knowing—what I was doing; never really hoping they would be gone that time, never really praying the gods would have erased the evidence, but allowing myself the time to check.

A little over a year later, I would cut myself much in the same way that Gram had. I was sad, and lonely; I was confused. And yes, I was drunk.

I went into the bathroom and took out a razor. I nearly took a piece of my thumb off trying to pop the top off of it so I could remove the steel inside, but I got it out after a little concentrated effort. I toyed with the idea of getting into the tub; I knew that water was supposed to help slow clotting, but I decided waiting to die warranted television. So, I sliced into my wrist, wincing at the horrible sting that it produced, and went to watch some T.V.

I woke the next day to a horrible headache and a puffy red wound on my wrist that felt like fire when I moved it. I was ashamed and scared, full of relief and sadness; I had lived, but I was still sad, still lonely.

I washed as much of the blood off as I could and went to the bar, where Momma was hustling beers to the kind of people you’d expect to see drinking in a redneck bar on the south side of Wilmington at eleven a.m. She was unusually busy, and I waited patiently for her to have time to walk over to me. When she did, I slid the sleeve of my shirt up so she could see what I had done, never saying a word.
She looked at it and said, “Oh Jesus, Jay. Come back here.”

She walked toward the storeroom in the back of the bar, and I followed. She never asked me why, never yelled or cried. She never called anyone; she just cleaned it up, put a bandage on it and went back to work.
There was an instant, while she was bandaging my wrist, when our eyes met. They locked onto one another, and I could see there what we both knew: it was in me. I had inherited this—this constant battle for happiness—from her and her mother; I had witnessed my legacy and was taking tentative steps towards claiming it.

I don’t consciously think about Gram when I think about dying, but I have a feeling that she’s there, somewhere deep inside me, whispering that, if I just take a little off the top—just open it enough—then someone will come along and save me.

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Mar 06

Reminiscence

by Jason Benoit

March 6, 2012

Recently, I was asked a question and, in pondering the answer, I was suddenly overtaken by the memory of that day. It came upon me like a hungry tiger, tearing me to shreds and leaving a disemboweled lump of meat where, only moments before, was a thinking, feeling, functioning man.

 

Photographer: mayu**

Cotton Candy. The smell of it is floating through the air and sweetening each breath. This, in no small part, is making the day better. What else could I ask for? Not only did I get to ride The Bullitt this year (a big kid ride if there ever was one) but to walk in the parade too! I am eight years old, and my Father and a group of his “friends” (other men who lived their lives in the bottom of a bottle) are members of a Veteran’s group for people who saw combat in Vietnam. They have been asked to bring their families to walk in this year’s parade during the regional Franco-American festival.

We have known about this for weeks, and I hardly slept last night. We each wear a little t-shirt with the logo of the Veteran’s group on the front. I couldn’t be more proud. Some of us have little flags, and others pass out bumper stickers, but we are all having fun. There is something about everyone looking at you, waving, and just generally having a good time that puts a smile on my soul. Next, I’ll run for Senate and become an Astronaut. I am on top of the world.

Now, we are being addressed by the Governor of Maine. He is speaking of things I can’t and have no interest in understanding. I have better things to think about at my age: baseball cards, my next birthday, how to stop that stupid girl at school from pulling my hair every day. I start to imagine pushing her down the next time she does. My imagination runs wild while the speech continues. I wish Knight Rider would come out next. That would make this day complete.

In the middle of my fanciful daydreaming, my Father taps me on the shoulder and says, “Let’s go.” I don’t know where we are going, but I have little time to ask before he starts walking.

Walking with him is always hard. He moves with fast, long strides that eat up the ground in front of him in big gulps. Today is especially hard because there are people everywhere, milling around lazily, languidly looking at the trinkets being sold by the vendors and watching the children on the Merry-Go-Round. I am small and not exactly built to push my way through a crowd.
We walk only a few short blocks when we come to this house. It looks like every other apartment house in Lewiston: run down and begging for paint, sheets in more of the windows than the shades that are popular now.  Huge chunks of the asbestos siding are gone, wasted by the years of harsh winters and its bitter cold. In front of the apartment is a bicycle, missing both tires, and its chain has discolored the concrete of the sidewalk from years of sitting there, rusting. The body of the house is yellow with a dark brown on the windows and the one door that once had glass in the top third of it. A condemned sign wouldn’t look out of place here.

My Father knocks on the first door we come across after entering the building. We hear a yell from inside, and we enter. I already know what is in store for the rest of the day. I can smell the distinct odor of old beer that has been sitting in the can and getting hot and stale, a smell that I loathe.

I see that the room holds the men from the veteran’s group, and I can also tell within moments that few, if any, had stayed as long as we did after the parade. The slurring of their words, apparent in their voices, says that they have had a few drinks already. Five, maybe six men and a woman that must be somebody’s wife.. They are sitting around a glass topped table, with legs made of what looks like bent pipe―four separate pieces, connected, shaped like a large squarish C. The walls are dirty from years of cigarette smoke and not being cleaned, making what should be white look as though it were river mud; yellowish brown with hints of green.

In the adjoining room there are two other kids, so my brother and I know that these are our friends for the day, and we run off to see what games are currently afoot. This room is the same color but much smaller and contains a couch which I am sure has come from the side of the road. The smell of cigarette smoke and body odor lingers everywhere, and I know it is safest to not be seen or heard for the next few hours—if we can help it.

The afternoon progresses like most of this nature; there are beer runs and arguments, the voices get louder as the hours pass by, and the thoughts become less coherent. I have been in this situation as often as I have been in a room with a window.

********

I am playing and not really paying attention when it happens. Why? To what end? Have I looked too much like I am having fun? Was there an instant where I looked too much like my mother? I do not know. What I do know is there isn’t a warning―no loud crash or even an instant where I can feel the malevolence building. One second, I am playing happily, waiting for word to get ready for the few miles home with my Father weaving on the sidewalk, and the next there is a hand on the back of my neck, and it is squeezing. Hard.

I instinctively try to duck and run, but it’s too late. I have been caught unawares, and the fear grips me like a blanket wrapped around me in a restless sleep, getting tighter with each attempt at escape.
“Come ‘ere, I wan-na show you summten.” His breath hits me in the face and my stomach turns, exacerbating the terror that has begun to settle inside me. It smells of cheap beer, Marlboro Reds, and the not unfamiliar stench of hate. It’s a seething anger that I know well. He had had it rough, and I was ungrateful for all his sacrifices.  Just a spoiled little brat that doesn’t know how to be a good little boy―stupid and too much of a sissy boy for his tastes, in need of a little mettle in my blood.

As I am being dragged across the floor, trying to wrestle myself from his grip and getting nowhere, nobody seems to notice. There is no apparent lull in the conversation. No people crying out for my Father to release me; nothing out of the ordinary going on here at all.

“If you don’t quit squirming, you little motherfucker…” The threat is left open, allowing me poetic license to finish as I see fit. The options that my brain offers are no less frightening than anything he would have managed.

Where, I don’t know, but from somewhere, a set of handcuffs appears. The metal ones, not exactly like the ones issued by the police, but not the cheap kind with a lever that will unlock them if you can manage to get your finger on it. He reaches down and seizes me by the wrist and clicks the first bracelet on me before I see what he has. The other people in the room have stopped talking. They have all noticed that something is happening and are transfixed by the spectacle of a man dragging his son across the room. They watch, fascinated as it unfolds, rubberneckers to the car wreck that is in front of them.
Before he clicks the other bracelet in place, he slides it under the leg of the table so my wrists are close together. Had he been compassionate and put the other bracelet around the leg, I would have had some freedom to move. However, he is desperate to blame someone or something for the ruin that is his existence, and it is my turn. Again.

My struggles to free myself prove fruitless very quickly, and I start to cry. Not a whining wail or a screech―just tears, silent and accusing, dripping from my chin, streaming down my face and washing streaks of red into the pale color of my face.
“Whassamatter, crybaby?” he asks, bringing laughter from the other men in the room. I am too young to tell if this is uncomfortable laughter, or if the hate has spread to the others through osmosis.

I get tired fast, and my efforts to free myself start coming in spurts. I sit and try to find a comfortable way to position myself in order to rest between the attempts to free myself. I try everything. Picking up the table. Pulling helplessly against the pipe. I am just too small and weak to get anything accomplished. My father insults me and pushes me down with his foot while the other men laugh at his words and even have a chuckle or two when confronted with my tears. It always makes these types of men feel better to see someone suffer and writhe in pain. It makes them forget that they are miserable human beings, each lost in their own tragedy.

After I have been sufficiently humiliated and defeated, I become boring, and they lose interest. They resume the conversation as though I am not even there. The only woman  waits until it is obvious that she will suffer no ill will for doing so, and gets up to find the keys. I have been under this glass table for almost an hour, and the men are no longer even glancing through the glass to get a look at the kid trapped down there. The woman comes back with a bobby-pin, because the keys are nowhere to be found. She mutters something about how mean they all are. Her comment is greeted with some vulgarity and a warning to mind her business lest she find herself locked there in my stead.

My wrists begin hurting from all the pulling and moving about, red and scraped from the cheap metal of the handcuffs. My shoulders are burning from the struggle with my father as well as the exercise of trying to lift the table.
The woman manages to free one hand and looks at me with what little compassion a woman resigned to such a life can muster. She whispers, “Go in the other room, sweetie, and I’ll try to get the other one.”

I run into the living room, where I was playing so quietly only an hour before. There will be no more playing for me. Not today. Not for a few days. Once again, I have been reminded of my station in life and the reality of it all.

The woman comes in behind me and eventually does release me from the other bracelet of the cuffs. It takes her a few minutes, and the men start demanding she forget it, do it later. Eventually, she gets tired of their remarks and risks their wrath by saying something back. I do not hear it against the thunder in my eardrums that is my heartbeat. I internally beg her to stop, scared that her mouth will make this day worse for me.

I watch as she walks away after freeing me from the second bracelet. She sets the handcuffs on the table and grabs the beer she left there to help me. She sits down and tries to steer the conversation away from herself by saying something light and funny.

I sit on the couch, scared to move for fear of being noticed again. The tears are slowing down now, but still trickle down my face as if they’re not sure I am finished needing them, each one releasing more of the emotions that are holding me motionless―washing away the pity and the anger that consumes me.

This time, when it happens, I hear his chair. It drags across the floor ever so briefly. It sounds like nails on a chalkboard, not fingernails, but nails. I am afraid to hope he is going to the bathroom. Too frightened to turn my whole head and watch him,  I try to use my peripherals to see―but the question is answered when I hear the clink of the handcuffs as he picks them up. I try to make myself smaller. Try to climb into the couch as if I were really the cockroach he makes me feel like.

The tears start afresh as his shadow comes near me. This time, the sobs overtake me. They are so powerful and deep, the world swims around the edges from oxygen deficiency. I do not fight him this time. Years of life with him have taught me to know that I am better off not resisting him too often. It doesn’t matter, though; his grip is a vice around my wrist and the nape of my neck.

He is saying something that I can’t hear. The anxiety and fear have deafened me to anything other than my thoughts. I wonder why he hates me; why his love always hurts. What I do hear, though, is the click of those handcuffs as he starts putting them on me again. Snatching me around like a doll to put me under the table once again. This time, he puts them on so tight I think they are cutting into me.

I don’t hear the second one click. I hear my innocence being severed from my eight year old soul. I hear my sanity as it grips the edge of the cliff and struggles not to fall into the darkness that awaits it. I hear the sobs of a little boy that I once was as I enter a maturity I won’t catch up with for almost twenty years. One I still struggle to keep in front of me.

When I think about it now, I can’t remember how long I was locked there the second time or how I got out. I can’t remember going home, or whether my Father tried to be nice to me later. I can’t remember anything after the snap. If you ever ask me what I once wanted to be when I grew up, you will see me think about it, but I won’t remember. I can’t. I don’t remember ever wanting to grow up. I can’t remember anything about that child; who he was or what he dreamt about. He is a far away little boy that couldn’t be invisible. Couldn’t not look like his mother. Couldn’t find love in a world he never asked for and never wanted.

********

That little boy is still handcuffed to that table. Still struggles to free himself. He will never learn to hate himself, never think about death when he wakes up in the morning. He will never find the release of drugs and alcohol, or be mean to someone because that is how he thinks people are supposed to deal with disappointment. No, those are my crosses to bear and I left the innocence of that little boy behind me with those handcuffs. He still sobs in my heart late at night as I try to fall asleep and lures me into thinking I deserve the trials I’ve endured, but I’ve finally caught up to my maturity and am trying to leave that little boy’s pain in the past where it belongs.

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Feb 19

Bury Me Close

by Serena Ledesma

February 19, 2012

I have always loved the beauty of the old cemetery;  the serene air floats over those that have left this earthy world, showcasing lovingly placed flowers and mementos in remembrance of the missing pieces of their hearts. Some of the mounds sit in full sun, and others are shaded by a tree unhindered now by heat or any irritations. Looking over the grounds I would think that those left living, as I always do, feel  vulnerable here, trying to grasp the brevity of our time here and the sadness that accompanies the miracle that is life.

I have always thought this is where I want to be. Even though it is said that your spirit leaves the body, I believe that where dust turns to dust is significant. I would like to believe there is something in that soul that continues to remain for our Earthly companions and the soul is fed still, unconsciously, by what life was, as a reminder:  Yes, I was here. I related to the world, I was part of all this, I belonged to the earth.

Since energy does not die, perhaps it is the sounds that remain intact for us to remember our journey. Wishful thinking?  Most probably so. But it is my dream to be connected to the life sounds that have always lulled the hum of humanism in me. To sit at night without the regular beat of activity in the house, one can hear for miles.

So bury me close to the hum of life.

Photographer: Rantes

The sounds of the crickets and frogs, the sounds of children. The trains that rattle us and the sounds of fireworks. The grief, the sadness, the joys, and surprises.
Think about what it would mean if we could choose what our spirits could participate in after death. Have you ever had someone softly sing you to sleep?  It feels like a soothing touch. Have you  heard another grieving the loss of a loved one?  Your heart feels heavy. They say that seeing is believing, but I say that hearing is feeling, if only you listen close enough.

From these thoughts, I want to be in the middle of it all. I still will want to be connected to the old life. No matter what comes after, I cannot convince myself that I won’t want to know. I will.

Life is not insignificant in the scheme of things.  Whether or not we sprouted from one big event does not matter. We are more than that now. We have evolved. Stephen Hawking has said that time travel could one day become possible.  If  so, I never want to be too far away from the sounds of my life. The sound of angels may be sweet, but no sweeter than the sound of my husband’s warm voice comforting  me, or of the little voice of my granddaughter talking to herself while playing.  The emotions I feel at a child’s distress, a siren blaring, or a glass shattering, I want to take with me. Good or bad, I want to retain that.

When I die, and die I must, bury me without the beat of my heart but understand that the beat in my ears will be straining to hear. Just as the breathing of a puppy on your chest comforts us, so will the beat of the Earth in my rest. I may be wrong, but I feel what I feel. Let me find comfort in the idea that I can still remain connected to what I once was.

So bury me close to the hum of life.

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Jan 28

Married To The Sea

by Barb Toscano

January 28, 2012

Sebastian, our son, was born this past April. We had been a happy and well adjusted American family for 2 and a half years at that time. We then become something else; something sad and detached: a military family.

At the end of our “home cycle,” the time between deployments, comes transition. My husband, Jason, will either deploy or the whole family changes duty stations. These moves can be good and bad. A joke among Navy wives is “if you don’t like the town, wait 2 years,” the time between moves. We laugh and remember those moves filled with busy plans and excited packing; but there are other moves too. Moves that break the heart and the ties of new friends, promising careers and comforting places you had learned to call home.

 

Courtesy of the Official U.S. Navy Imager

The family “moves;” the military man “relocates.” Navy wives keep address books in pencil. The erasures are many and deep. We are quick to bring food during tragedy or blessing because we know how it all feels. We keep pictures on the fridge. We jealously guard frequent-flyer miles, in order to visit our husbands. We have boxes that are no longer worth unpacking. Yet, we keep the boxes for electronics, collectibles and wine glasses; even when one breaks.

Despite technology, we still hand-write notes and letters, especially to our deployed husbands and far-away friends. We clean sand, mud and dirt off our kitchen floors from all over the world. We put our careers on hold until retirement. We refuse tenure at wonderful schools and we get disappointed. But we are rarely afraid.

Why, you ask? Because we fell in love with men who fell in love with their country before us. We simply must wait.

Patiently wait for the sun to set, for the plane to land, wait for dinner and for him to come home and, mostly, wait for the tide to change.

Until then, we must be strong.

I will continue with my passions for Literature and Education. I will teach the children given to me in the town to which we are assigned. I will love them and teach them to love the great words of people past and present.  I will share my enjoyment for “a good story” and the value of knowledge.  I will, yet again, decline offers of tenure with a smile and a prayer. Because my country was founded by great men, and it is kept free by men who are even greater.

An old Navy blessing is wishing one “fair winds and following seas” as a family moves to the next transition.

The sea is a cruel mistress: she takes my husband away; but she also returns him home.

 

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Jan 13

2:37 AM

by Jenny Zhang

January 13, 2012

Why are you in such a hurry, little girl?

You can’t keep running away from a world where you have no voice. That world isn’t going anywhere. The bronzer on your jawline and the shimmery powder on your eyelids aren’t going to make the blind sit up and take notice. The heels chafing at your toes and rubbing your ankles raw aren’t going to give you the platform you’ve been falsely promised.

What are you hoping for, little girl?

You read as though your books could be ripped out of your hands momentarily. You write as though you fear your hands could suddenly

stop working. When you plead mercy of the silence that greets your tortured prose, your desperation cuts a ruthless line through your chest and bursts into the air like a flock of birds escaping a little boy with a slingshot aimed at their home. Yet when you sit down to pour it all onto the page in front of you, your colours are muted, your lines are uncertain, and the disappointing slip of paper eventually finds its home amid the bills and the torn up to-do lists in the recycling bin.

Where are you going, little girl?

You wander the city in your best camouflage, standing out like all the other girls do. You get your hair cut short and stare superciliously down your nose at all the imagined slights you’re dealt. Your muscles strain from the quick clip at which you assault the pavement, pushing from one crisis to the next, but your mind only relaxes when you step onto a treadmill, racing to nowhere at 6 miles an hour.

Who do you want to be, little girl?

You step off the scale and pretend to yourself that you don’t care a whit that the number has crept up by 0.2 since the previous day. You’ve polished and scrubbed and washed until you’ve run the gamut of cleaning products under your sink and run out of hot water. But even the innumerable screens nestled in the room must wink off for the night eventually, nestled in a careful imitation of order and meaning. And when the neon digits on your dollar-store alarm clock announce that it is now two thirty-seven in the morning.

Who are you, then?


Photogapher: Ionan Lumis

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Jan 12

Convergence

by Jason Benoit

January 12, 2012

The tension is palpable.

Photographer: Brice Cannone

Seeing

those

eyes

focused

on

me

from

across

the

room

is

….

making me forget what I am saying.

It’s not the words fleeing so much as me forgetting where I am―who I am, that there is more to say. I can’t think. I am alone in a world where those eyes are a beacon to the knowledge of life; if I follow them, I will discover the secrets to everlasting happiness.
I send you a drink and raise mine when I see you look to where the bartender points. A smile and a nod is all you offer. I think to myself, the night is young, and I have all the time in the world. I do. I feel the energy between us and know that if I can be patient, I will someday know your thoughts just by seeing the shine in your eyes, and be able to read them as easily as if they were a book.
I try to return to my conversation, but the effort has left me. I can think only of you, how to get close enough to smell your fragrance. The scent that will tell the animal in me what’s on the menu. I would drink in this aroma, imprinting it on my mind―searing it there like a hot iron on flesh.
I feel something on my arm, and as I look, I have enough time to register that it is a small slender hand before you lean into me and whisper, “Don’t ask me to love you.”
I turn my head and look you in the eye, feeling the hair stand up on my arms. I can see it, in those eyes, the accusation. The challenge. This is a test, and I feel it instantly. If I fail, I am forever doomed to wonder… what it could have been like. I don’t smile, I know I need to be serious, I focus on the dare in your eyes before I say, “Don’t make me.”
I wait. In this instant, I could live a lifetime. I think of how I will enjoy getting to know you. Learning how to fix your favorite breakfast. How tightly to hold you when you are frightened. What your smile will do to me when I feel sad. Just what to say to make you know, without question, that I am there for you. Learning the perfect place to place a kiss on your neck; the one that will send shivers racing across your skin.
“Dance?” you say, finally.
“For starters,” I reply, taking her hand in mine.

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Nov 13

My Apartment

by Jason Benoit

November 13, 2011

Photographer: Brian Kuzma

The fire escape had a loose bolt; when I would climb it it would pull free from the wall slightly. It was two stories off the ground so it would scare me half to death most of the time but I had little choice—I had no other way to get in—I had no other place to go. I had been homeless for a few weeks and I knew someone who had lived in this apartment and had gotten evicted, so I started sneaking in at night.

I was still trying to go to school—it was a place to be for a while and I needed the company. The worst thing about being homeless is the solitude. You are alone all the time. Even people you know all of a sudden act like you have an infectious disease and, if they do get trapped talking to you, you can tell that they are nervous and leery. You find yourself talking out loud to no one at all—simply to hear the sound of a human voice. The apartment was a block away from school so I would sleep there and go to school in the morning. Afterwards, I would find a place to hide myself from the world until well after dark before sneaking in.

When you opened the window the first thing you would notice was the sweet smell of rancid food. The power had been off for over a month and the refrigerator still had a few items in it. Its door had been left open so that the food would spoil—I did mention that the former tenant had been evicted, did I not?—and the smell had soaked into everything.  It was absolute.  I thought of death and decay every time I entered the place, and a chill would run down my spine as I imagined something other-worldly waiting in the shadows for me to get too close to escape it. Soon, I took to closing the door to the kitchen, to try and stem the odor from the rest of the apartment.

I slept on the floor in the living room, where abandoned clothing scattered around the room reminded me of casualties from a plane crash. For a pillow, I used a few pieces of castoff clothing bunched together, and pulled my jacket over me as a blanket—doesn’t exactly say Serta Sleeper does it? The carpeting was so thin you could still see the grooves from the floor beneath it–it was brown with orange and green flecks; a jack-o-lantern’s vomit.

The walls were covered in wood paneling from floor to ceiling—this made the room seem darker than normal. In an attempt to make the situation a little brighter, I would try to steal candles from the grocery store when I would go there to swipe food and cigarettes. I don’t know if you have ever been in a pitch black room with clothing littered about and the smell of carrion looming in each breath, but a single candle only adds to the effect and provides little resistance to the wild imagination of a fourteen year old.

********

Yogi was the name of the kitten I had saved from some dogs. He was the last one left of three and he had some scrapes but, for the most part, he was all right when I found him: as black as fresh tar with about two dozen white hairs on his chest. His fur was fluffy and he was still so small it stood straight out as though there were electricity flowing through him all the time. I always thought he looked like a bear–hence the name. Most nights he would eat as much of whatever I managed to steal as I did—that is, if I managed to get anything. Cold corned beef hash or raviolis, usually, but anything was better than eating Yogi.

He would love to dart out of the shadows and pounce on me before playfully hopping off to some other part of the room. He helped add some normalcy to the absurdity my life had become. The second or third night he lived with me, I heard him retching in the darkness and grabbed my candle to find him—what I found was that evening’s meal teeming with a large pile of worms. I was mortified and a little confused—for a second I thought the movement I was seeing was a trick of the flickering candle. I picked up what I could with an old t-shirt that I threw into the kitchen and covered the rest with another.

The next night I was walking towards the apartment around midnight—I had made it a point to steal some de-wormer medicine from the store earlier and was about to turn towards the driveway when something caught my eye. I looked up and saw the beam from a flashlight moving around the room. As I stood there watching the window I saw a police officer walk past using his light to watch where he was walking. That was it—I had just been evicted—in that instant I knew I could never go back, ever. All of a sudden I was being cast out on the streets again—I didn’t know it then, but it would be for a lot longer this time.

********

I never managed to go back to that school—I was about to start my adult education. The one where I found out about soup kitchens and day old donut shops. The one where I first met a prostitute, and learned about hunger and cold.  I can tell you this much, though. In that apartment, I may have been scared and lonely—I may have been pretending I was okay while I wasn’t. But at least, for a while, I felt like I was home.
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Nov 11

Jamming At Colonial House

by Dana Sitar

November 11, 2011

Size in northern Wisconsin is something I began to notice only after moving to Madison. Wisconsin is a gigantic empty space, with small blurbs of civilization around Madison and Milwaukee. The buildings of the state are huge and low, surrounded by expanses of asphalt and decorated lawns, vast fields and deep forests.

I’m sitting in the basement of the Colonial House supper club. This building is no exception. On the wide open rural edges of the Fox River Valley, it’s the classic supper club of the Midwest. Wisconsinites gather here for buffets, steak, fish fries, beer, baked potatoes, Mother’s Day, Easter, and weddings. The one-story building houses five giant halls, plus this basement that is a bar, dance floor, and dining room. This building is huge, surrounded by a vast parking lot and lawn among the endless fields of the tiny town of Freedom, Wisconsin.

The Colonial House is home. Family. History. My wedding reception was in this very basement; everyone’s is. The restaurant upstairs remembers the faces of everyone who went to my high school. The bartenders have known my husband since he was six. My best friend’s cousin’s mom owns the place. This basement has seen the celebration of every marriage, anniversary, and holiday in town.

We’ve been gathering here often lately, after hours, with a smattering of musicians from around the Fox Valley to “jam”. I have to use quotations because the word doesn’t roll off of my tongue with ease; I’m not as cool as these guys. But that’s what they’re doing. We’ve shoved aside catering carts and dining tables, and we’re surrounded by amps and electric guitars and drums and keyboards and a violin. Tonight, in addition to the music, there are artists taking pictures, I am writing, and one woman is sketching the scene.

We’re surrounded by the magic of art, come together.

Photographer: Fernando Garcia Redondo

It’s the simplicity of artists crossing the line together from childhood toward our dreams. We all came from this tiny place, from this town of small hope for big dreams. This is the beauty of jamming at Colonial House. Here, we aren’t the sons and daughters of plumbers and mechanics and pencil-pushers and teachers. Here we are just artists, come together, sharing one life. Hearts and souls, and people and their art, all piled together into a space. Together, we are bigger than this place.

The music is organic, each of us playing our part. The musicians come together and play. The artist sketches Sam on the drums. My brother-in-law jumps to the sound board when he’s needed, and he rolls the joints. Our French friend rolls around on the ground snapping pictures. My husband strums the bass guitar. A high school friend shakes the tambourine. A girl I slept with once sings the melody. My sister plays the keyboards. Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da.

And I write. I watch the scene, and I play my part, capturing the memory of the night.

From This Artists’ Life Volume One: Welcome to the Shit Show, You can buy my book on Smashwords.com

 

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Nov 02

Cats in Command

by CMBarrett

November 2, 2011

The cat’s yowl jolted me out of a deep sleep. Too groggy to wonder how it had gotten into my bedroom, I stumbled out of bed and shooed it towards the front door.

Big yellow moon eyes glowing in the dark, the cat stared at me, flicked its tail, and trotted down the hall.

Glad it was as eager to leave as I was to evict it, I opened the door. A fierce wind pulled it out of my hand. One second later the suction of a cosmic vacuum cleaner caught me in its swirl, and I was pulled down one of those tunnels reported by people who had near-death experiences, except that I didn’t see the light. I saw prison bars, and, once I got oriented, I realized I was behind them.

 

Photographer: Emily

 

The cat had disappeared.

I tested the cage’s lock and rattled the bars.

Footsteps padded to the front of the adjoining cage. “Hello?” a man said.

I was already in shock from a bad case of disbelief. Now I plunged into paralysis.

“Ralph?” I whispered. We hadn’t spoken since he’d taken the last of his belongings from the house a year ago.

“Elaine?”

“Yes. What’s going on?”

“I’ve been expecting this. If they grabbed me, they were bound to get you, too.”

“Who?”

“The cats, of course. Didn’t one come for you?”

“A big black cat with yellow eyes.”

“Yeah, he’s the main people catcher.”

He paused, and I heard the faint scratch of claws against a concrete floor.

“Be careful,” Ralph said. “Talk to you later.”

A large gray cat came into view, wearing an unfamiliar-looking electronic device. “I’m Sheba, here for your intake interview.”

“I don’t want to be taken in. I want to be taken back to my warm bed, and I want to sleep.”

“I’m sure you do.” She flicked one of the bars, and a section of the door lifted to make a cat-sized opening. She slinked through it.

“I’ll interview you in your sleeping quarters. Follow me.”

Her growl gave me no choice. I followed her to the back of the cage, which contained a curtained shower and toilet, a sink, and a bed. The mattress wasn’t too bad.

“Now then,” the cat said, tapping the device. “I’ll tell you why you’re here. You’ve been imprisoned for going catless for too long.”

“What?” I might be awake, but this was still a nightmare. “I demand to speak to my lawyer. I demand to call Amnesty International and the ACLU and—”

“Forget it. You’re under our jurisdiction now—and no Miranda rights, either. Zip your lips and listen to the charges against you. After your last cat left your home, a full year ago, you were approached for adoption by two feral cats and one kitten. You refused in every instance, so we had to take matters into our own paws.”

I remembered those cats. I’d even fed the ferals for a few days. Was their idea of gratitude to turn me in to the Feline Bureau of Investigation?

“My ex-husband took my—I mean our—last cat when we broke up, and she ran away.”

“Could you speak a little more clearly? The iPaws is recording the conversation.” She spoke into the machine: “The subject attempts to justify resistance to being adopted.”

She stood on her hind legs, flicked a few buttons with her talons, and moved the device parallel to my body. After a few minutes, she said, “Good health, unspayed. If you work on your attitude, you shouldn’t have any problems.”

Talk about attitude. “If you think cats belong with humans, how come you aren’t with one?”

“I did my time. I leave it to those willing to make the long-term sacrifice of living with your kind so that they can educate and train you.”

“And the free food, shelter, and catnip don’t influence them at all. Don’t the toys count for anything?”

Her blue eyes turned cold with contempt. “You have a serious misunderstanding of your present situation if you think sarcasm is a viable weapon. It doesn’t matter, though. You’ll learn.”

She flicked another button, and the iPaws’ light went out. “You’ll be shown for adoption tomorrow. Have a good night’s sleep.”

The cat disappeared from view. After a few minutes, I went to the front of the cage and whispered, “Ralph?”

I heard his shambling footsteps. “You’re in the picture now,” he said.

“But why is it our fault that Lola ran away? We never abused her.”

“I haven’t had the specific charges against me read yet.”

Maybe she’d gotten as tired of him as I had. I could still list the reasons for evicting him without pausing for breath. He was smug. He always had to be right. The word compromise was a stranger to his vocabulary.

Now the physical sensations of hatred returned: the tightening of my calf muscles as I fought the urge to kick him, the roughening of a throat crammed with knife-edged curses, and the overall sensation that he was sucking all the oxygen from the room.

I fought for breath. “People don’t end up behind bars for breaking up.”

“This isn’t a jail. It’s a pet adoption center, but it’s different from the kind you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the pet.”

********

I held onto the bars, afraid I might faint.

“Elaine, are you all right?”

“Of course not. I’m terrified.”

“The initial shock of it is terrifying. Maybe if I explain it a little better, you won’t be as afraid.”

Now I was reeling from a new shock. The softness in his voice suggested that he actually cared that I was upset. This was surprising behavior from the man who until a year ago had been the main source of my misery.

I made a strategic decision. Only Ralph could give me the facts that might explain this horror. Distasteful as the idea was, I decided to initiate a truce.

“Is all this for real?” I asked, squeezing a little friendliness into my voice.

“It’s as real as these bars.  Once you’ve been owned by a cat, you can’t stop. It’s like trying to leave a book or record club. They never forget about you. If you haven’t lived with a cat in a year, you come up on their database. “

“How come no one hears about this?”

“Are you kidding? Would you tell anyone?”

He had a point. I asked him how long he’d been here.

“Three days.”

“And you haven’t been adopted.”

“At first I didn’t want to be owned by any of the cats who looked at me.”

“How did you avoid it?”

“The best thing is to act stupid. Cross your eyes and let your tongue hang out of your mouth. Curl up on your bed and sleep. If nothing else works, pee in the corner.”

“You can’t just say no?”

“If they want you, they take you.”

“And what if no one ever does?”

“I’m not sure.” For the first time, Ralph sounded frightened. “The cats say they don’t euthanize—it’s part of the Feline Code of Honor, but I don’t like how they say it. You might as well get it into your head that the only way out of here alive is with a cat, and the sooner the better.”

“So now you want to be owned?”

“Today I realized I didn’t have a choice, so I tried to act adoptable. This afternoon I almost got adopted by a nice Burmese kitten, but she told the matron that I wasn’t very attractive. I’ll tell you, I felt pretty rejected.”

Knowing Ralph’s capacity for resentment, I diverted him with a question. “There’s no court of appeals?”

“Forget the idea that they run this place on principles of human justice. And don’t count on sympathy from the jailors. They don’t want to do us any favors. Like the intake mistress said, everyone here is training us to be good pets, to make a better world for all creatures.”

“Very lofty principles,” I said, “but I really love how they disregard the food and shelter we’ve provided.”

“They think we pay a small price for the privilege of their company and instruction.”

I was getting new insights into the attitude of entitlement that all cats shared.

The logic of this bizarre situation, however, did nothing to comfort me. Every sign of evidence that I really was stuck in this world of cages and iPaws-bearing cats terrified me. This psychological torture was surely the intention of the feline fascists who ran the place. The more frightened we were, the more ready we’d be for adoption. I, however, had no intention of succumbing to their tactics. I knew I could hold out longer than Ralph had.

“I’m going to bed now,” he said. “See you in the morning.”

“Yeah.”

********

I thought I wouldn’t sleep, but the pillow was filled with herbs whose fragrance smoothed out my jangled nerves. I slept until the rattling of metal awoke me in the morning.

A large tabby tom opened the cat-sized opening in the cage and pushed through two bowls. “Supposed to have yesterday’s bowls lined up at the front of the cage,” he growled.

“I arrived too late to eat.” I examined the contents of the food bowl. “What is this?”

“Kibble, like what you fed your cat. Now you’ll be sorry you were too stingy to buy wet food.”

“How am I supposed to eat this? I’m not a cat.”

“Too bad for you.”

********

After he left I tasted it. It seemed to have dried vegetables and fruits in it, and the stuff was almost tasty.

A new iPaws-wearing prison matron swept down the aisle. “Time to groom, everyone. Visitors will be arriving soon.” She handed me a set of standard prison overalls, except that they were gray instead of orange. I looked awful in gray.

I re-closed the curtains. After my shower, I dried off with coarsely woven towels. The brush provided would have been more suitable for a long-haired cat, but I managed to get my short hair into some kind of order.

********

A little later pawsteps echoed softly down the hallway. “I haven’t seen anyone I liked,” a kitten mewed.

“It’s a poor showing,” another cat, who sounded older, agreed.

They paused in front of my cage. They were Persian, with the kind of fur that shed white streaks everywhere.

I wasn’t about to become a household slave for a cat, so I followed Ralph’s advice, scratching myself, yawning, and generally looking half-witted.

“Stupid,” the kitten said, turning her back and fluffy tail on me. “She’d probably forget to feed me.”

The cats padded away.

“Whatever you did worked,” Ralph said. “It was a good decision. That kitten was a real princess. She’d have you serving her meals in Waterford crystal bowls. Some people like that, of course, so she’ll find a slave eventually.”

********

No one else came to view me that day. After kibble dinner, all the humans were allowed into the exercise yard, which had some stationary bicycles, treadmills, and stair exercisers. Some humans were doing yoga, accompanied by raucous catcalling at the clumsiness of their stretches.

I got on a bicycle next to a woman with braided brown hair. “New to the place?” she asked.

“Last night, late.”

“Three days for me, and I think I’m going to get adopted tomorrow. Older cat, very sweet disposition, mostly sleeps. The only trouble is, he wants company, so he’s negotiating a deal with a two-month-old kitten.”

“And I suppose you have no say in it.”

“You catch on fast. I’ve heard rumors about solitary confinement and sensory deprivation. I’m not interested in finding out whether they’re true or not.”

********

By the next day I had the schedule down: breakfast, wash-up, viewing, lunch, more viewing, exercise yard, dinner, and lights-out. We had a lot of time on our hands, and I spent a surprising amount of it talking to Ralph. It was amazing how I could ignore my vows of eternal enmity when he was so handy for conversation.

He asked me if I was seeing anyone. I implied that my social life was a dizzying whirl. He said his was, too. I was sure he was lying. I was.

On my third day, though, he admitted that he couldn’t find it in his heart to date any woman more than twice. “They’re so boring.”

Or bored, I thought, but I didn’t cling to the thought as I once might have. That night, while lying on my increasingly uncomfortable mattress, I realized that Ralph, imprisoned under conditions that might have brought out the worst in many men, had become increasingly friendly and helpful. To my horror, I found myself a little sorry that I hadn’t recognized his potential while we’d been married.

********

During adoption hours the next day, few cats even paused by my cage. Ralph got more attention, but after a short interview, the cats’ ears would flatten and they’d leave, tails high.

At the end of my first week of incarceration, the iPaws-bearing matron came to his cage and said, “The warden wants to see you.”

My nearly-dissolved hostility evaporated into genuine concern. As he emerged from his cage, I flashed a “V” for Victory. He looked as if he would have preferred the intervention of a large, cat-hating Rottweiler.

Hours passed, kibble was distributed, and the prisoners were sent to the exercise room. I didn’t see Ralph anywhere.

When we were about to return to our cells, another matron growled at me.

“Follow me to the warden’s office.”

My stomach dipped to the floor.

********

I followed the matron down a long low hallway to a door. She opened it to a room with a desk and two wooden chairs. A gray tiger cat was sprawled on top of a desk.

I gasped. It was Lola.

“I’m so glad to see you’re okay,” I said. I wanted to run over and stroke her head, but she issued a preemptory hiss.

“This is not a social call. Sit.”

I sat.

“Be aware that your reputation preceeds you—based, of course, on my report. It’s in your record that you gave me up without a struggle.”

“We had to divide things,” I said in my defense.

“Things? I remember; you got the sound system. To think it meant more to you than me.” She turned her back on me and washed her paws with deep concentration.

“But you don’t understand. We were both so angry. I wanted to get him out of there before we killed each other.”

“I understand quite well. I was there—until I was gone. What you don’t understand is how depressed Ralph was after we moved out. I did my best to cheer him up, because no cat can stay tranquil when her human is crying all the time.”

“Crying? Ralph?“

“He loved you.”

“He had a funny way of showing it.”

“Humans do. I’ve never understood it, and I couldn’t take the waterworks any longer. That’s why I ran away. Fortunately I discovered this place and rapidly advanced to a leadership position—which brings us to your current precarious situation.”

She turned on an iPaws. “I’ve gotten very bad reports about your adoptability, and the time has come to warn you. You’re taking up cage space that could be used by a more agreeable human. In other words you’re coming to your expiration date.”

I gripped the seat of the chair. “What does that mean?”

“If you don’t get adopted within the next two days, you’ll be moved to a back cage: smaller quarters, blanket on the floor, low-grade kibble, one hour a week access to the exercise yard. No one’s going to have you put to sleep, but we simply can’t afford to waste our resources on unadoptables.”

“But—”

She raised a paw. “The terms are non-negotiable. In case you doubt the seriousness of your situation, it’s time to show you we mean business. You’ll get a preview of your future living space.”

Lola pawed a button on her desk, and a tough-looking tabby female took me away.

We went down yet another long hallway, and she hissed at me all the way.

“Wait until you get the picture that life here isn’t all kibble. Follow me.”

She opened a cage door, and I refused to move. I might be imprisoned, but I was still bigger than this bully. I was beginning to congratulate myself on winning the stand-off when the cat pointed the iPaws at me. I felt as if I’d stuck a wet finger into an electrical socket. I fell, writhing, to the ground.

“Do you want more?”

To my humiliation, I groveled before her. She smiled a sadistic feline smile and motioned me to follow her.

The cage lacked windows. The walls were gray concrete. A single naked electric bulb illuminated the area.

“Are you going to interrogate me?” I asked in a quavering voice.

The cat looked bored. “It’s not necessary. We know exactly why you don’t want to be adopted. Your reasons, are, of course, unacceptable. We’ve decided to leave you in solitary until you see reason.”

I was left alone the entire night to toss and turn on what was a very thin blanket spread over a very cold and hard floor. Naturally, there were no rats or mice, but a thriving and aggressive insect population more than compensated for the absence of rodents.

Yet my physical discomfort troubled me less than the loss of the by-now familiar and comforting presence of Ralph in the next cage. A thought came to me, sharp as a claw. Maybe I owed him an apology.

The idea (or maybe it was the low-grade kibble) made me want to vomit. I knew I had to get out of here before I lost my mind. I would throw myself at the mercy of the next reasonably attractive cat.

********

In the morning the tough tabby came to my cage. She leapt onto the creaky wooden table and looked me in the eyes.

She purred with satisfaction. “I think you may have learned your lesson. We’ll see how well you show today.”

We went back down several hallways until I saw Ralph pacing in his cage. He waited until the matron had left before speaking.

“I figured out where you were. Awful, right?”

“I’d rather not talk about the details.”

“I understand. I’ll say only that I’m determined to get adopted today.”

I nodded and took a deep breath. I was about to violate every principle I’d ever held dear, and I hardly cared.

“Me, too. But first, we need to have a discussion.”

********

We talked for two hours, and it turned out that Ralph had as many regrets as I did. He cried a little; so did I.

“I wish I could kiss you,” he said.

“Sweet.” I glanced down to see a small gray and white kitten studying me, eyes wide.

“I’ve been hoping to find a pair,” she said. “You are, aren’t you?”

I wished I could see Ralph’s face. “Yes,” I said hopefully.

“Absolutely,” he said.

The kitten purred. “My name is Sofia, and you may take me to your home. I’ll go make the arrangements.”

********

We were released. The kitten took over the house and cried whenever we even sounded as if we were about to have a fight. We all got along very well.

One night I heard a scratching at the door. I’d developed a phobia about opening doors, but I didn’t think the Feline Bureau of Investigation could have anything on us now, so I took a chance.

Lola sat on the doorstep. “I’m here for a follow-up visit.”

She walked through the open door and padded over to the corner where Sofia was curled up on her bed. They spoke in  low voices.

After a few minutes Lola returned to me. “Sofia is quite pleased. It appears that things are going well here. For a young kitten, she has a strong sense of what ownership demands. Nonetheless, she says that you continue to have some behavior problems, and she’d appreciate the assistance of a mature cat. I’ve decided to offer my services.”

“You mean, you’re coming back?”

“I consider it my duty. And, of course, it’s my house.”

“What happened to your career track?”

She hissed at me, and I shut up.

********

I’m a slow learner, I suppose. Lola had to swat me many times before she was satisfied with my conduct.

I’m not complaining. I’ve come to accept my status as a pet. It’s not so bad.

Especially when you consider the alternative.

This short story originally appeared  in the Literary Works section of the Curiosity Quills‘s website.

 

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Sep 29

Cold

by Mitchell

September 29, 2011

The air was cold, unusually cold for a summer night in Minnesota. The sky however, was clear and made a perfect night to curl up next to someone. Feel them close to you as your soul repairs itself from being so far away from each other. True love is so powerful, more powerful than all the emotions you can muster compounded together.

True love is also the rarest.

She lay there next to me, sleeping in my arms — the small fire we had lit burned softly into the shadows.

Her delicate skin against mine, this was it. The moment I had waited so long for. I looked down at her and played with her hair. The firelight making shadows over her body. The white tank she wore clung tight to her, her chest rising and lowering quietly as she played with my chest. The soft sleeping bag beneath us protecting us from the cold grasp of the night. Our bodies creating the only heat inside the bag. I looked down at her, and swung my body over her, straddling her. I looked harder, waning to let in all her beauty, not let even a small particle of her essence go unnoticed. There I was, running my fingers lightly over her cheeks, and down her neck.

Photographer: Xavier Mazellier

“Do you love me?” I asked her, averting my eyes from her own.
“Of course I do. “ She smiled as she looked at me. Grabbed my hand and rubbed it against her face.
“I have a secret you know” I looked away from her, my heart racing inside its cage.
“What is it?” She asked. She stopped rubbing her face against my hand and looked back at me.
I stared back, biting my lip.“The hunger sometimes takes me, it isn’t something that I can control all the time.”
“What are you talking about?” She asked as she pulled away from me.
I pulled my body to her own, keeping her tight to me. “That overwhelming urge to bring someone close to you and drain the life out of them. The energies inside them coalescing with each other and flowing into you as one pure source.”

She stiffened beneath me. My hands shivered at the thought of the ecstasy that would ensue. I brushed her hair back over her ear as she trembled in my arms. The smell of fear is intoxicating you see. “It isn’t enough to simply take the energies, you need to be close to get the real good effects. Fear and hate are only so fulfilling. It’s love you see. Love that makes me stronger and more powerful.”

Her eyes darted to me quickly, I met hers with mine. Her heart raced inside, pounding against my chest. I chuckled to myself. “Don’t fill that pretty head with too many thoughts, it’s your love that I need, a creature such as myself is incapable of such emotions.” My hand shook with anticipation, the touch of her soft skin against my fingertips lulled me in closer. Placing my lips upon her skin, and breathing in her aroma, I sighed in relief.

Finally, I would taste it again. I pulled my lips over my teeth, dragging them over her skin, gently biting her as I took her essence into my body. Warmth poured out from her, she took in a deep breath and writhed underneath my body. “Too late.” I whispered too her, and gently bit her on the lobe of her ear. Her soft skin against my lips making me shiver. I could feel the animal coming out, my eyes rolled back into my head and back again.

The power, the control.

Fury, and rage seething behind them. She stopped moving.

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