—in the afternoon. I know right? like {hiccup} Oh my God. Haha!!

—Pooky, pooh, ooo what iss ittt? Hand me a tissue. Don't eat that—

—but we saw the Daily Mirror said "150 Strike Over Game of Brag"

He could feel something still. The snow, the damp, was creeping. He imagined his toes, same as his fingers, in slightest motion, walking-feet, white at the tips, maybe blue, or black even, like smokers'. Their consequences, of the Poor in judgement, and their lack, of Circulation. There was a warmth, too. He'd pissed himself, truth, and he knew that that warmth had already passed. It was another kind of heat rising. That which yields not from incontinence, but from ecstasy of the last thrusts of Life, the climax that is coming when suddenly frigid Death wills itself to finally, finally orgasm. He wasn't sure actually, why half-dead, he'd thought of sex. It'd been so long since he'd had his own hand, never mind, a woman. Yet fucked was what he felt. The temperature was numbing his body, not yet his thoughts, which strayed and roared like the stone lions in front of the Central Library, silently. No, sorry, he couldn't tell how long the body had been lying here in a foot of snow behind the park bench, waiting, for cataloguing. His eye lids lifted to the sky, bird's eye view, of the carcass in the landscape, folded and unfolded, like a claim ticket. It lies, lost. That was all he knew, though in his mind he kept searching the surroundings furtively.

He took something. Couldn't remember what it was, though. Of course, he'd got all the paraphernalia beside him now, still and mostly dispensed. The next of kin will inherit it, his legacy, in frozen assets and pins and needles, and empty shots.

(These thy gifts which we are about to receive...)

They will know this one died of overdose, of the excesses to which he was given, from birth and throughout the allotted shopping spree of growing up. And he wanted to be discovered: an Artist, manic depressive, rich and impoverished, fit to hang, a whole body of work, there upon the wall, framed and tacked. That was his profession. His work, he could see it, wallpapering the Capital coffin, a postage stamp for trade at the Metropolitan, the L'Ouvre, and all those places where bodies of ill repute are laid.

Blast it. Who will find this postscript? with his signature.

Bury me, please.

Bury me.

—Ho, ho! Bro, what we got here?

—What? Yesssss! Bum left some stuff. Anything good?

Light, light, a little breath, faint now. Smoke. Come closer, shadows of men.

A-amen, A-amen, A-amen, Amen, Amen

A-amen, A-amen, A-amen, Amen, Amen

Let me tell you something children

This little light of mine

I'm gonna let it shine

This little light of mine...

So goes the song, to the cradle of black people, the trodden brown hands in the ground, the specks of white rising up, the straight, the undefined, sung in solidarity. The protest placards and candleholders, that flicker, wavering in the zephyr. Balladry, it is, for the dance of life that grabs— by Jove that's not—

—Hey! Coppers! left, let's beat it.

A crushed remnant cigarette landed, moist, sizzled out, adjacent to his head, in the scamper and nothing to be done. Who will do a dying man a kindness and remove this stinking wet butt— ?

Hullo Darkness my old friend

I've come to talk to you again

Ahh, the face lifts itself in perpetual adoration. All tithings go to the holy church of Man. The entrenched milquetoast wants proper burial, palms pressed to the face, self-effacing. He would gladly forgo the biscuits dipped in tea offered by decorated pansies in their manicured gardens. Open the mound, like for the first snake bite, like it's the first time, Templar in the bush, with Dispensation. Or suck the bone dry, as a delicacy. Marrow after all is oddly enough, he remembered reading, believed to have been the "first" animal food in the human diet, buried like that, so that one must kill, and kill, and kill, cutting through flesh, muscle, tendon, and skeleton. He saw himself, drained, double crossed, deaf to Jesus Christ.

Bury me. Bury me with finality, if only like a turd in our global yard.

Bury me, he wisped through the thin crack in his teeth.

Mother Teresa, have mercy, she reached out from a sleeve, to pull. She had eyes like Saint Elizabeth, fingers like his governess. Her voice a creak in imitation of old floorboards upon a besieged pirate ship. There would be no mercy. The new cold draught stung, with contrast of subtraction. He remembered failing his arithmetic, confused by the minus sign. Fifteen lashes with the ruler, back in the day, though we no longer believe in corporeal punishment, do we?

—no sense in such a blanket goin' to waste now dear won't need it. Good wool, certainly can use it in this treacherous cold, somebody can, what's it to you now?

Thank God? He was not yet naked before the Lord. Shifting the corner of his coat was beyond him, there was not enough left in the tank, to move an elbow. Once he had filled the giant aquarium at Uncle Fredrick's, back and forth filling buckets like the sorcerer's apprentice, having devised a pulley system that required merely the lifting of a finger to adjust the tap and activate the crank. Leveraging imagery of the memory was too much nausea. He felt the first silent heartbeat. His first mature unexcused absence from the roster.

They pointed at him, small fry fingers on long arms. He heard the taunts in the halls. This is not an asylum. The broken leg was oozing blood, and he swore, a shattered femur would surely emerge at any moment. Like an ass he'd fallen over Miss Andrya's ankle, extended oh so delicately, gracefully begging to be looked at in nude silk stockings, envied by the ladies and caressed visually amongst all eligible bachelors, and he was a handsome nose, in a book.

Worm! flat upon his back unable to squirm against the giggles in surround sound.

—who is that?

—shit knows who

—wonder what his name is

—deadbeat, dumbass

—maybe it's Deadass, dumbass

—diddle off

Elementary youth, they ran on home, scattering in different directions, smaller than ever. He remembered the thin royal blue primer and his errors marked in red pencil.

Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, who's fleece was white as snow...? who sang him that as a babe? he could hear her voice, miles and miles away, her mouth expanding to full eclipse, echoes in a chorus. He remembered his mouth at the breast, and that blissful feeling of fullness, milky white clouds, and the scent of cookies in the cotton fabric.

His hair, once lively and ruddy as cinnamon itself, was white, fleeced, and against the drift it looked the color of yesterday's dog-walk urine. He couldn't see it, but in the fetid odors of the city, he could imagine it, pallid and as a squatter he knew it could just as well be human. The smell was, after all, his own, even Death was rejecting it.

01.17.2024

Banned-book Sequel Challenge @Prose

-----------------------------------------------

Sequel to Portrait of the Artist as Young Man, James Joyce, 1916. Protagonist Stephen Dedalus, as an old man, dying (having committed to suicide), lies behind a park bench, unable to communicate, but aware still of passersby and thoughts that surface. His one maniacal wish is to be buried. He has welcomed death, by his own injection. He rejects the idea of prayer, or God, and barely recalls his mother. No one gives a damn except to strip him naked of all his belongings. In the end, he is left, homeless, alone, ignored, yet leaving a body of work, somewhere, that he reviews in his mind as an obituary. As an Artist, he will be buried and unburied in endless cycle of exhibition. New snow blankets him, like a comforter, once again "faintly falling," as in Dubliners... a tribute to James Joyce's classic chiasmus.

But the Ii remains the same. Oh yeah, lowercase or uppercase, as if it matters— like it's the difference in standing between freshmen or seniors, or something evolutionary. I don't see it anymore as different, really, the chip. In freshman year (should that be capitalized?) I toyed with an idea for a philosophical blab book that contemplated differences between the (little) i and the I.

Of course it was brilliant shit. That's the way it is with things in the mind's eye. We see a thing as already polished. That diamond in the rough never got hewn, though. It was about the disconnect, or it was to be about the disconnect. I held possessively to the title, because a good title makes or breaks a work, right?

The dot on The i

—that was the title. The idea never graduated, and, and, the story morphed, or maybe it was i.

"Mr. Caufield? hi," I said. I couldn't get through the gate and up the stairs fast enough. It's hot as hell and anyway I hate when people watch me like I'm on parade. He's ok, though, I guess, so no sweat.

"Jenny, nice to see you, come on in. Come in," he said. He's wrinkled, worn, but just the same old Holden, with ideals. Weird, I know, he got married and has a girl now.

Turns out, we all recover from given Life blows and momentary infamy. Somehow, as long as we get up. He's living a quiet life, even with the book publishing, and multiple editions, and all. Now, you mention "Catcher" down the block, and almost nobody knows what the jackass you're talking about. Caufield says nobody reads anymore. That's not true, obviously, because I do. I even know the good ole Robert Burns poem.

I've read enough yarns to blanket the family my mom says, "...maybe, but just what did you understand, honey, I'll never be quite sure..."

I chose Jenny. I even looked it up. It means white wave. I don't know why but it reminds me more of extinction, than starting again. Something like a verb, rather than a noun, to jenny— it reminds me of the way an ordinary undyed waxed candle is snuffed half-way. It's like the variations on a theme of white, that never really is, white, I mean. It leaves that lingering trace, of the archaic poetry, in the un-scent-ed, and old smoke's tale. I feel those shades of gray, seriously, like a population of ghost sensations.

It's a shrinking population. White folk, I mean, are dying out. I feel kinda responsible.

"They're here!" Mr. Caulfield said, calling up the stairs. He was sort of an idol for us growing up. I'm not here to see him though. He's ok, cause he's not gonna say dumb things like "don't do what I wouldn't do." Life is not a game. He knows that. It's confirmation.

There was quite a fussing and shuffling as they tumbled down. They chose Seamour.

"You didn't look it up?" I said in disbelief.

"Nope, it just fucking fits. I mean c'mon, my parent's picked Tabitha, for chrissakes," you said clenching your lips together like its fact if you say so.

I've been whooped a few times with the Bible so I know that Tabitha is the one St. Peter raised from the dead. I guess it's trivia in the end. It's a cool name, though. I almost took it, but I didn't want them to feel all weird about it, like we were becoming mirror twins or something black lodge Lynchian.

I still feel odd about the clothes you gave me. It's not because these are thrift store. I'm glad to see them, though.

"Do I look ok" I said, tugging at the lilac floral hem a little. I ask this so often I've started leaving out the question mark. It's a hallmark of my insecurity--my social statement. I know they're going to say yes. I mean, it's Seamour, right?

"Did you put your soul strap on today?" they joke, and I have to smile, crookedly. My wisdom teeth have wreaked havoc on my moneymakers. Seriously, poor people used to sell their teeth so rich people could implant them. I'm not even sure there was good anesthesia back then. It's vile. Modern folks sell plasma. I knew a poor unemployed blind guy who sold his plasma so he could Uber his three-year-old to free preschool. It's called Head Start. There were too many on the bus for that one to be picked up.

"Yeah," I said. They've got work brand clothes on, with the goddam label on the outside. I hate that. I'm not even going to give that brand "name". Why, man? Why, I just don't get it would a company do that. Companies are run by people, though sometimes I wonder. Maybe it's like in that movie where you have to put special sunglasses on to see the Aliens. I suppose I shouldn't pay so much attention to labels, and names.

I know, I know, sticks and stones and all, but words and names matter. A kick in the crotch hurts even if it's tangential. I like Seamour, even if the name doesn't 100% fit.

"Are you sure you still wanna to go out?"  Seamour said.

Maybe that was the beginning, though it obviously started way before that. That's what they said, later, in the hospital.

"Yeah." I said. "Let's go."

[Chapter 1, in Sequel to The Catcher in the Rye.]

*Themes: being human; race, gender, age, self-identification, social anxiety

**Plot line: Two teens who question their gender identity unexpectedly find themselves expecting a child, and reconsider what it means to be human.

PART 1

We're in for now.

Times change in social details, dressing and appointments updated for the new agenda. Daylight savings has been extended, I mean that as a pun, a knockout averted from the bots up the hall. The bouncer robots haven't picked up on me yet. I'm in. I'm ok.

I don't know how much longer I can continue to fool them. There's something about being a plain white woman that is neutralizing. I remain, under the radar. Normal. Words flop meaning often. Take asylum. Once for the insane, now it keeps-in those that are tested and deemed to be un-touched.

"Janie, meeting at 6 in the gymnasium, right?"

It's Alec. His pitch a tad too high, he's always looking to me, as a lighthouse to the port authority, a safe near insider. There's a slight sweat on his brow, but he quickly wipes it in his shirt sleeve and hides the jog needed to find himself in stride with me from the left, behind. I am average, according to all statistics, height, weight, hair, complexion, dismissible in every aspect, near perfect Norm. Whereas Alec is short, heavyset, and always pushing his glasses up like he's competing with Sisyphus. I suspect he's unidentified preliminary borderline but wants so much to be in that he has managed to escape signaling and bouncing out. Luck, not effort, on his part, is at work. There is a disproportionate amount of monitoring outside, and things do get by.

The parameters of the institution are eating away at him. I can see the strain in the constriction of his suit, with seams about to burst. He wants so hard to fit in. He's trying not to breath too hard and relax his leashed mind over contradictions.

"Of course, thanks for reminding me," I say saving face for him, with my voice set to autopilot confidence, the tone I know is expected, and registered on the Checklist.

My response covers me, and him, guarding a secret edge between us, one which only I fully recognize and can articulate. His stress is such that he is turtled. If he could, I bet he would draw in his head and appendages in self-defense. It would get him bounced out immediately as a Bonk. So, this questioning-affirmation is his self-preservation. His thinking, if I'm wrong on details, we'll both be out, and there will be a life preserve to hang on to, maybe. He doesn't know that I am barely hanging on to Expectations.

He thinks I'm a sure bet. The Norm.

"You're a gem. No wonder you're on Responsibility 5."

He slows to compose himself, knowing that I have to move on, to make the clock. They've run the battery of tests on everyone on the inside. How Alec passed I can't say, but I catch my breath, too, knowing myself enough as I do. I'm always on the secret watch for others, like me. I tested free of any diagnosable abnormality. Not ADHD, not Autistic, not Paranoid Schizophrenic, not Bi-Polar, not Sociopathic, not Psychotic, by any given disturbance monitor. I've succeeded in keeping covert my abnormal memory, phonic and photographic. This is not a place where exceptionalism, in any form, is tolerated. This is an asylum for the purely ordinary population to dwell undisturbed and cohabitate in the hopes of reestablishing numbers of the Average Man.

Responsibility 5 is Roll Call. I earned this task by always being present, punctual, and at the front of the line. A veritable yes ma'am. I leveled the line of the lie detector test, and averaged through all the attempted trials given, like to rats in a lab. Tests for willingness to take tasty bribes, lazy shortcuts, etc., etc. My morbid attention to details has been unrecognized. The faked hypnosis has not been detected, and I have never revealed my uncanny ability to mimic gesture as well as sounds such as human voices, animals, and even electronics and incidental noises of inanimate objects.

Never let them see an introspective look in the eye, or a blankness that might be mistaken as such. Extroverted docility is the Expectation.

"Dr. Zbig," I say extending a hand expediently as I near the doors of the gymnasium. It is considered perfectly normal to herd us in here daily at prescribed times, always a little unpredicted, to keep everyone on their toes. It is a mental health check, not at all physical exercise as the room might suggest.

Robots strap sanitized apparatus to our heads as we sit in assembly seats, and automated checks are performed to identify any irregular brain waves.

Dr. Zbigniew knows my file. Seeing me, he does a visual scan and smiles antiseptically.

"Looking good, Janie. Looking good," he says pleased, and it's understood that he is talking about the order of the Institution.

I give a single silent nod. (Grandfather is on the outside, and as family he's all I've got, though I don't know any more if he's gone, and if so, how. Communication with the unasylumed is not allowed. Took some loop work for him to get me in for testing--Passing a must. Think only about breath, he'd said. It's what I call upon now at every check point.)

"Clipboard is on the platform. I've already turned on the Owl. If anything, state the code word, and it will activate back up automatically."

Zbig waves and strides further down the hall, a little too starched, a little too bland, and I can still see his white teeth flashing with indenturedness of a trusted servant.

I give another professional nod to his back. Cameras are watching.

The roster is a on a tablet, not the old school clipboard that used to be used when things were Backward, in the old Asylum days. It's digital, and in this way the central office can monitor in real time who I check off and precisely when. Order is important, for grouping input, data association. Responsibility 5 demands prompt computation since time stamp matters. I know, it's how I merited the position when Robin became patient No. 8.13B. That's B for billion. The slightest hint of deviation will send you out. Following directions is key. There are only 403 of us in the asylum.

The Owl is not a pet. In fact, no animals are permitted, except for lab work, and outside. Pet affinity is a negative indicator, leaning towards creative thinking like anthropomorphism, diminishing the standing of mankind in its special role and dominion which requires rational unsentimentalism.

The Owl is a stationary electronic unit that sits on the platform and scans activity during assembly, with an internal rotating camera, sending close ups for monitoring to the central office. It zooms on the slightest erratic movement, animated facial expression, or altered electrostatic charge of bodily tension. The reassurance is that they see you, and every flinch.

I look at the freshly washed morning faces advancing, devoid of anticipation, imagination, joy or fear.

I begin to checkmark:

Here.

Here.

Here.

CHAPTER I: STIRRINGS

I remembered seeing his face in the newspaper. Something stirred in me when I saw it. Not dissent, no. That was something I could not comprehend. Not then. But something was there. Disgust, perhaps. Or pity. Some revolting emotion that rose like bile and quickly sank back down into my gut where it settled for the next hour. By the time the clock struck 13, I had forgotten the source of my discomfort and moved to the telescreen, which was announcing the current standing of the war against Eurasia. Rations had been increased (praise Big Brother!) and Eurasian casualties were mounting. Victory was clearly imminent.

I turned off the TV that day feeling satisfied. But in my dreams— for rebellion always starts in the subconscious, buried deep below the rote societal rituals and self-imposed boundaries— I heard his name spoken aloud, from the mustached lips of the poster that hung over my bed. Big Brother.

Winston Smith.

When I awoke the next morning, I had forgotten.

There were, after all, larger concerns. Most notably, my job in the Ministry of Truth. A name change here, a date change there. So-and-so is no longer in the favor of the party, and of course we are at war with Eastasia, not Eurasia. What a foolish mistake to make.

There was always, of course, a lingering doubt. I could’ve sworn, just last night…

But such concerns passed quickly. My job of censorship and revision was no more complex or morally wrong than adding a period to a run-on sentence or adding a capital letter to a name. I was an editor. Such things were necessary.

At the end of the day, I’d dump the out-of-date papers into the Memory Holes and go home.

I always slept soundly.

That was the advantage afforded to me by conformity. I did not need to dwell on the moral quandary of changing history, or stress over the ever-shrinking rations. After all, Big Brother had our best interests at heart. And rations were always going up. War was always closer to being won. Wages were steadily increasing… as long as I kept changing the numbers to fit.

Life was good. Big Brother was good. Oceania was good.

But after seeing Winston Smith’s face underneath the headline “Traitor,” my dreams were never quite the same. Day after day, week after week, his face, his name, seemed to haunt me, for reasons that I could not comprehend. I began to call him my Dream-Self, since I could no longer remember why he seemed so familiar or where I knew him from. The newspaper from that day was long gone, sunk deep down into the memory hole. Both literally and metaphorically. My brain was built on short term scaffolding, suspended over an endless pit of long term memories that had sunk into oblivion.

In my Dream Life, as Winston, I saw myself doing things I’d never dreamed of doing. Evil things. Traitorous things. All with Winston’s face instead of my own. At first, I hated him. Feared him, and all that he represented. The dangerous potential that he spawned deep within my own brain.

It was worse than rebellion. Worse than a betrayal of my mind and government. It was a betrayal of my own sense of self. The man named Winston who haunted my dreams was middle aged. I was 25, only a step away from my school years. He was a dissenter. I was… well, at the time I’d convinced myself I wasn’t.

But the key difference between us was the most damning of all.

He was a man.

I was a woman.

How could I see myself in a man? How could I, even in dreams, walk in the shoes of a man nearly twice my age?

It was unnatural, surely. But it was also impossible to deny. Somehow, as imperceptibly as air making its way into a vault, I had become the thing I hated most.

A traitor.

For two months I lived with that vile knowledge. Never acting on anything, of course— I was far too much of a coward for that— but the feelings were there. Alongside a new, forbidden desire.

At 25, the societal pressure to marry began to ramp up. Neighbors, coworkers, family members… all of them would wonder how on earth a pretty girl like you isn’t married yet?

Of course, the answer was always… complicated. Pre-marital intercourse was illegal, of course. But it was pretty much an unspoken rule that it happened. Even the Thought Police didn’t enforce it. It was enough of a threat that we knew they could.

I had quite a few boys try to get away with it. I always vehemently refused. I wasn’t in the mood. I wasn’t ready. We needed to get married first… all excuses, although it took being a traitor to realize that. All my vehement refusals were not, as it turned out, due to my unsealing loyalty to the party.

I didn’t like men.

But it goes deeper than that, doesn’t it, Amy?

Yes. Much, much deeper. With each day that passed, my traitorous mind dove deeper into its self-exploration. All the boys I’d dated… I’d never loved them, had I?

No. I’d wanted to be them. I was jealous of their short hair, the flat line of their chest, the Bob of the Adam’s apple in their throat.

I remembered being seven years old. Holding my father’s calloused hand, looking up in awe at the face of Big Brother.

“I want to be just like him when I grow up,” I’d said. My father laughed.

“Well, you can’t be him. No one can— he’s beyond any other man, after all. But perhaps you’ll find a good husband. One who acts the way Big Brother wants, provides for his family. That’s as good as it gets.”

I hadn’t been able to protest then. Hadn’t been able to explain that wasn’t what I’d meant.

Now, here I was.

A dissenter.

And worse.

A queer.

It was a word I’d heard muttered before. The crudest of insults. There had been many men and women executed on just the rumor that they were queer. Sleeping with another of the same sex? Preposterous. Becoming the other sex? That was truly vile. I’d watched a man executed after he was caught wearing his wife’s clothing. They let his body hang, lifeless, in the square for months. They killed him in his wife’s wedding dress. She was killed, too, but was at least spared the shame and indignity of being left on display.

I’d cheered with the rest as his rope had gone taut. Now the memory of it made me sick. I was just like him. A queer. A faggot. Good for nothing except burning.

Given another year, maybe another two, perhaps I would have dissented. Perhaps I would have shorn off my hair. Perhaps I would have even done the unthinkable and slept with another woman. Maybe I would have died the same way Winston did— tortured into submission before being put down like a stray dog.

But I did not have a year. I had three months. Three months of limbo, of treacherous thoughts and tormented dreams, nightmares of being tortured by a man with a thick brown mustache and a handsome face.

It happened during the Two Minutes Hate.

I always screamed the loudest. I imagined I was screaming at myself. YOU WORTHLESS CUNT. YOU FILTHY TRAITOR. DIRTY WHORE. YOU SLIMY, DISGUSTING, USELESS QUEE—

And then the bombs dropped.

Just that morning we’d been informed that we were closer to winning the war against Eurasia— it was Eurasia again, I noticed now that the names had always been changing— and now the Ministry of Truth was in ruins. My skin felt like it was being bathed in molten silver. Alarms that I’d never heard before were blaring.

The unthinkable had happened. Eurasia and Eastasia had suddenly begun an alliance. We were fighting a two-front— maybe even a three-front— war.

And they had bombed us. The bastards had actually bombed us.

I remember being in some kind of flying vehicle— a helicopter, maybe, with blades that sliced through the air like butter, or an alien spacecraft, whirring like it was powered by magic. Then I remember soldiers yelling unintelligibly. Then I remember another explosion.

By the time I came back to myself, the only thing I could think about was pain. In my face. In my arms. My feet. My legs. I could see patches of black crust on my stomach. Every inch of skin was either bandaged, bruised, or oozing a nauseating mix of pus and blood.

It was then that I saw the doctor’s faces for the first time.

These were not Oceania doctors. Their eyes were thin, and dark. Their hair was neatly trimmed, but in a vastly different style than the men I’d known from London. Their uniforms were different.

I was in Eastasia.

A sequel to Of Mice & Men, by John Steinbeck:

...Wherein a young woman Leanne with Down Syndrome (unplanned daughter of Lennie) living with a friend (a parttime prostitute eerily named Georgette), becomes sexually aware Act 1, active Act 2, and subsequently pregnant Act 3. Abortion is illegal; and the friend hires a "midwife" for home delivery, and "termination" of the born disabled infant.

A Play in 3 Acts

ACT 1: SCENE 1

Friday night, Spring.

A shared flat in Los Angeles, dark, mostly bare-- one prominent window center, upstage. Stage includes scattered clothes and random paper debris, small table, a chair, lived in but not wrecked. Stage is lit only from window, shifting from twilight to moonlight. Naked overhead bulb with pull cord (functional) is off. Bedding, stage left, audience right...

Curtain rises on seemingly empty stage. LEANNE is lying flat in bed, still, covered by thin sheet. She begins to roll lightly side to side, moving her arms under the sheet across her body, and it is unclear if she is having a nightmare or is ill.

She begins to moan, as GEORGETTE enters the room from hall, stage right.

Drops her purse. Hurries to bed.

GEORGETTE [upset]: Leni! are you ok? ... what are you doing?! [yanks sheet off and pulls LEANNE upright.] Stop it! Leni, you hear me!? you stop that! What do you think you's doin'? [pulls cord on bulb flooding the room with harsh bright light]

LEANNE [sits on edge, holds her hand to her crotch, evidently pleasuring herself, without self-consciousness; face turns towards audience, with visible Down Syndrome characteristics, upward slanted eyes, round flat face, compressed nose] oo aagh

GEORGETTE [increasingly agitated] Ugh. STOP. You cannot be doin' this. Stop it! Stop it I said! [yanks LEANNE's arm away]

LEANNE [holds out device in her hand, tightly gripped, not perturbed] No, no, me.

GEORGETTE [angry] Ugh Oh my God. What?! What the fuck? my vibrat---!? how do you even --? [turns away, stage right, holds stomach and head feeling sick, and like remembering something] ...that was you wasn't it? when I had "John" over last night? Not the stray. The cat. Oh my God. Jesus Christ. Leni, you cannot do... you cannot do tricks.  [starts to sob]

LEANNE [not understanding stands, pulling thin nightgown down over naked bottom only by standing, not adjusting her clothes. Walks closer to GEORGETTE and stands at uncomfortable closeness]

GEORGETTE [distraught and as if no longer aware of LEANNE, sobbing to herself] ...I pay the bills. The fuckin' bill. I just pay... God damn it Leni, you cannot be copying. This is not... this is not... oh my God. [realizes something and stands, grabs LEANNE by the shoulders] This is not a game. You cannot be me. You cannot be like me! You cannot. You understand?!

LEANNE [surprised, mild mannered] you hurting me, ow, Georgie. You hurt me. [does not struggle from grip]

GEORGETTE [tightens grip, clenches jaws and gives a shake to LEANNE] You listen. Don't you ever let me catch you again? You hear?! and I don't mean with my... my toys. God. Oh, please!! [chokes up] Do You Understand? Tell me you understand. [sobs] --don't you ever let me catch you fucking around again. By yourself or god damn it, not with anybody else around. Man or woman or... oh my god. Just fucking stop. Stop. [Stops shaking LEANNE takes her vibrator back] Please! [more kindly] Please?

LEANNE [unperturbed] ok. Georgie, I'm hungry.

GEORGETTE [composes herself, rubs face, smooths clothes] Yeah, ok. Yeah, I brought us something. Go have a seat. [redirects LEANNE's body to bed. LEANNE sits on edge and waits. GEORGETTE heads back to the bag she dropped and begins to rummage for snacks.

[FADE TO BLACK]

It's going on 13 years since Gil passed away. He was our last connection to a past that wore itself for us like an invisible locket of childhood. Gil on one side, my big brother Jem on the other, lying right upon my heart. Atticus always said it's the unexpected that mortars men as kin, more than any blood. Guess that's the way we felt about Arthur Radley, too, our hidden friend "Boo," down the road. He was the kindred that came out from the shadow and saved Jem after the beating we took, costumed in the dark, stumbling home from that fateful Halloween school pageant.

Bob Ewell was an alcoholic, a physical and emotional abuser, but he wasn't an amnesiac. He'd no compunction taking his ails out on his daughter, or on our father Atticus, nor on us children-- bidding his time, as he had to, to divert suspicions. If it hadn't been for Boo overcoming a deep-set agoraphobia, Ewell would have broken bones in all three of us; me, Jem and Gil, and left us to bleed out. Revenge for the bad reputation that he'd brought upon himself, but which he'd blamed Atticus for, thinking he'd leverage social opinion and inferred racial superiority, to nurse what Atticus referred to academically as his "inferiority complex," meaning colloquially and more specifically, as perception of being "poor white trash." Like Gil said, an image Ewell had reinforced in himself, with loathing, and then berated his family with, as well.

I'd felt akin with Gil long before we'd taken those earliest vows, unofficially, with stolen kisses under the massive oak in his family's yard. Then some years after, we'd graduated and officially married, and had Alternia Radlee Finch Harris. So named, we agreed, to honor the memory of that summer that brought us all close together, him and me, and Jem; and our late housekeeper Calpurnia, and Atticus, may their souls rest in everlasting peace.

That summer turned to fall and drew us spiraling out of a dark- light ignorance and innocence, like the partitions of misunderstandings and misperceptions. I know that we were blind. We weren't blind in failing to see. We were blind in the glare of our own fears, projecting in flashes onto other people, and again by the fears reflected back onto us, from the eyes of equally fearful strangers. Trinkets of "knowledge" like that sparkle falsely and deceive us. We think we are learned, like when using big words, not quite fully cognizant of their meanings. Information becomes a collection, looked at, and not understood, not experienced. Something dead, even when living it, because we have labeled it, rather than identified with it.

Never did I suppose, since that time, that I would find myself caught up in that blaze again, and so isolated. Jem and his wife Angelica and their three children all moved to Canada years ago. We telephone a couple times a year, what with money being tight, and travel all the more prohibitive. We cherish the idea we'll one day have a small future family reunion. We'd thought maybe when Alternia has her children, though now that seems an eternity away. Maybe never.

Gil'd had a big heart, always. Too big, Alternia would say, in simplification, hugging the empty space in place of her father, when the doctor'd tried to explain the enlargement of the ventricles to her. He'd had a murmur from infancy, and it tore unexpectedly as he got older, a sudden gaping hole when he'd finished med school. Demonic twist of fates, he laughed, with a brave face. He said, "loving us was worth the pain," if loving us too much had caused the rupture in his aortic valves.

He'd held my hand so lightly from the hospital bed, weak and tender. "Don't go," whispered low when he wanted a word with Alternia. She was six, but old enough and wise enough to take things seriously, especially when he used that paternal voice. It reminded us immediately of me and Atticus, each of us precocious. How he knew then, I'll never discern, but something must have prompted Gil. He wanted me to hear. He said, "Altie, it is hard to be different; and impossible to be the same. Think of me in your trials. Have heart; and take care of your mother."

Maybe it's just the overlap of words, and definitions, that haunts me like in a crossword puzzle, and it was not at all prophetic. Just seems that way, in the blanks, now that Alternia is in juvey. She's seventeen. Eight more months and the rules would be different. They tell me the detention's for her own safety, for what she claims to have seen, not so much for the actual charges of possession and robbery, disputed. Nor for the assault she suffered, undisputedly. It pains me, for not having been more vigilant. It's as if a failing of my motherhood.

Maybe it was my fault for not leaving Maycomb. Maybe it would have been the right thing to do, by the family, to sell Atticus' house and leave behind the Ewell's and especially Mayella. Jem said the Ewell's had tainted the county for him and he was glad to get away--- to college out of state, and then out of the country altogether. Jem had talked a lot about Human Rights, and why he was following in Atticus's footsteps as counsel. He worked pro bono whenever he could, and we were all rightly proud. He'd never had much respect for Mayella, though. It was like he sensed she'd carried a sickness, latent, that which had progressed so detrimentally in her father. I confess I held it against Jem, a little, as though he had hardened his heart, unjustly, and I tried to keep mine open.

Psychologists claim that victims perpetrate, or perpetuate, their wrongs. Still, I thought it unfair to look down on her, her history being what it was. Bob Ewell, had long been a neglectful self-indulgent. It's hard to add the word "father." Mayella had been deprived of many things, foremost childhood, and parental love. I reckon I'd cheered for her silently when I'd heard she'd married Robert Farrow and that they'd had twins, a boy and a girl, and I'd lost track of them, in our own family plights. The little I knew from our catty neighbor was that after less than three years Rob'd left her, and that Mayella had picked up on some her father's habits, what with drinking and other rumored substance misuse, prescription as well as illegal. Maybe it'd always been like that, just better kept, behind curtains.

I had no idea of the depths of abuses. We hold "Mother" in such esteem. Reviled behaviors are incompatible with its definition. Men are as if always one step removed from the tie of paternity. Culpability is more easily placed, maybe on account of this doubt, for emotional or physical abuses, even sexual abuse. But how could a mother? ...a Mother.

Altie had been, with my repressed reservations, as well as charitable encouragements, friendly with the Farrow twins. She'd always been closer with Warren, than Cassidy, Cassidy being reticent in words and gestures, and quick to bow out of group activities. Our Altie'd no such reservations and wouldn't hesitate to drop in to visit Cass whenever she withdrew. It should have been a red flag, but it seemed an adolescent phase that Cass withdrew more, and more, and Alternia with her, pulling away from home.

It tugged at my heart that my girl was grown, and soon I'd be empty nesting, as they say. It did not occur to me that things were complicating, in ways that would subsequently implicate my baby.

She'd come back one night, not so long ago, and said something that stopped me in my retirement to bed with my books and chamomile tea.

"Wherever did you hear words like that, sweetie?" I asked her, biding some time to respond judiciously. My landed work as a real estate agent had prepared me for emotional data gathering, pitching and making a sale. I scanned her body language. I inferred she'd had a disagreement with her friends.

"um.. tonight... Warren said you were a 'butch-mom' when I left after our study group, Scout." Hanging his quote with clawed fingers. The teen's words meant most obviously to wound, instill doubts in the most vulnerable areas of stability, and pierce self-image.

She accepted my definitions and resource suggestions. I departed thinking of growing pains and could only wonder what was going through her mind. Again, I thought of Atticus always treating us as "reasonably thinking individuals."

When she came home a few nights after with a split lip, it was too late. Something had gotten out of hand, and it was spreading in the neighborhood by mouth. The stares, the whispers, the silence, the cold treatment, and the heated slurs. I suspected down deep, it was creeping up from the Ewell-Farrows. Our experience from the Bob Ewell/ Tom Robinson trial in our youth had prepared me to see it as an illness of humanity, nothing personal.

It was Cassidy who was in peril.

***

Author's Note: sequel to "To Kill a Mockingbird" ... in which the main character Scout, now widowed mother of one teenaged daughter, finds herself in the trial of a lifetime to stop the incestuous abuses of a neighboring mentally unstable Mother (Mayella Ewell-Farrow) against her children (Warren and Cassidy Farrow), and the wrath that incurs from inherent social needs, sibling jealousies, parental emotional ties; and community outrage.

The dreams only come some nights, but always leave a strong impression. Never the same, but always similar in nature. At first they were baffling in a benignly worrisome way. Not quite a nightmare, but certainly unsettling. The place is always different, sometimes occurring in a strange wooded forest, other times a teeming city that seems familiar by way of a recognizable landmark but not much else. In any case, the context remains constant.

So, in every version, Ralph starts in a comfortable place, a familiar place, like home perhaps. But then, for whatever obtuse reason not entirely clear, he must venture out to find someone in order to deliver a message. That is always where things get complicated. Because on the way to deliver the message, he gets increasingly farther from finding whomever he is trying to find and share it with. Getting lost to the point where sharing the message is not nearly as important as trying to find a way back.

The problem always starts with asking for directions. He has odd encounters with an ever changing cast of characters that point him in the supposedly right direction. Unfortunately, he only gets more lost, going increasingly wayward, off the beaten path.

They all seem so helpful! Obscure bit part actors from cinema whose names are hard to recall, the long dead headmaster from the academy, the new postmaster, a young girl he'd chatted with briefly at the market only yesterday, so many others. They all confidently give directions. "Just head up there and turn left, you can't miss it." That sort of thing.

Unfortunately they all direct him farther and farther from his original purpose. At some point the feeling of being too lost to continue is what will wake him. On opening his eyes, he typically takes a brief moment to realize that, no, there isn't a hole worn in the soles of his shoes.

At first Ralph assumed the dreams were about trying to find Piggy. During these nocturnal walkabouts, he routinely meets the living and those that passed. So why not wrap everything into a tidy interpretation that made sense even if it didn't offer any consolation? Ralph finally eventually decided that not knowing might be better. What would he say to Piggy anyway?

"Sorry" would not do much good for anyone at this point anyway.

Realizing that actually helped offset the feeling of being lost. Why not enjoy the journey instead of worrying about the outcome? Getting lost isn't so bad if you find an adventure and meet interesting characters along the way. So today, with that in mind, Ralph smiles as he rubs the Sandman's grit from his eyes.

He rises from the bed. It is chilly, but the sun will rise soon. There is time to sleep some more, but getting a head start on the day makes sense. From his last interview he knows the company will offer the management role. More pay for less hours. Sounds great, but after sleeping on it, Ralph has decided otherwise. He wants to stick with the union to protect his benefits. A management position doesn't offer that security. Besides, he needs to stay with his crew. They need him because he keeps the herd in line. He could always change his mind in the future.

He just hopes they will understand when he delivers the message.

(This is a prologue for a sequel to "Lord of the Flies". According to the American Library Association, "Lord of the Flies" is the eighth-most frequently banned and challenged book in the nation)

I used to walk home from school each day,

then report back to Pop, what I saw on my way.

I'd imagine all sorts of things wondrous and neat,

in my mind, with my brain, on old Mulberry Street.

But now if I tell him about all those things

There's simply no end to the trouble it brings.

I can't say a person's from this place or that,

and I can't ever say that they're skinny or fat...

Imagining things about genders or races,

or hair that might grow under arms or on faces,

why that might disgust them! It might make them sad!

It might even offend them, and THAT would be bad!

So what should I say about the people I've met?

The rules have changed, and there is no safe bet...

It's all so confusing, these pronouns and such,

(THEY used to be plural... it's all a bit much.)

If I meet someone new, and I ask where they're from,

or if they like movies, or if they chew gum,

their answers might lead me to see that we two

are a little bit different, and that just won't do!

It seems that the people in power today

want everyone else to feel the just the same way.

We all should be equal, yet still be diverse,

without seeing the changes they make are lots worse.

I once saw the milkman, in a broken-down cart

being pulled by a horse, and it warms my heart

to remember the things I imagined that day,

before the thought police took my stories away...

I imagined a Chinaman, eating with sticks,

(Some do, by the way; I can show you the pics!)

but they found it offensive, that one single line

and now no one can read those great thoughts from my mind.

The zebra and chariot, the raja with gems,

the mayor and aldermen, what about them?

Now I walk quietly and just stare at my feet,

and pretend I see nothing, on Mulberry Street.

© 2024 - dustygrein

-------------------------------------

The loss of classic children's poetry by Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) is not only heart-breaking, but feels almost criminal. I really detest that we are trying our best to whitewash history, and pretend that even the simplest of sterotypes are somehow dangerous for people to read or see...

(continuation of Naked Lunch)

and start occluding…

I can feel the shivers closing in, vaulting through virus variations like old-time kids playing hopscotch on the streets, picking up their mumbly-peg shurikens like dice, so they can toss the bones at evil strangers and spread the sickness far and wide, laughing and screaming all the while like Edvard Munch paintings come to life.

In the Zone these days, it’s best not to shiver without a mask on. You don’t want the prying eyes of those fussy-bucket samaritans to call the feds on you before you’ve scored whatever you Need to take the shivers away.

In my case, my mask was an old, gnarly tampon pad the color of dried vomit stretched beyond its limits over one ear and paperclipped in place on the other. I could barely see out of my smudged and scratched glasses, but that didn’t matter because the shivers had turned into deep contractions in my gut as I felt the Need bloom inside like an oriental sun.

This new junk on the streets was so strong it would pop your eyeballs out when you were feeling the high and then you’d be shivering and contracting as you felt it eke out of your system like some horrible, borrible partner in crime.

It was a crime: the Need. If you’ve never felt its pull, you didn’t belong in the Zone.

I ran down the alley and leapt over a construction barrier and almost ended up in the lap of old homeless geek named Sal, his face covered in bandages, scooping peanut butter out of a jar with his fingers.

His crib was made out of a shopping cart with a torn tarp over the back that somehow incorporated a rotting pink chaise lounge and a green sleeping bag, and he was wrapped in a dirty gray blanket that made him look like a deranged sultan.

I know street people, and Sal was a real asshole, but he wasn’t a mean asshole if you get my drift. He clutched the jar of nut butter tightly to himself and said, “Mine!”

“As it were indeed,” I mumbled as I passed Sal and made a beeline towards the alleyway downtown where my supplier hung, a chink named the Bluebonnet Kid (he got that moniker shaking down tourists wanting to go on wildflower tours in the spring, way back when the weather was predictable enough for that to happen).

Dr. Benway used the Bluebonnet Kid on those rare occasions when he visited Austin, and he kept him supplied with the best junk in town.

The Need was pulling at me now like a metal clamp on my ball sack. I had to stop for a moment and try to get a breath. I peeled away the tampon mask from one side of my mouth, and wouldn’t you know it that’s the precise moment when the heat showed up, lights and sirens blaring.

“Down on your knees! Hands behind your head!”

I took off as fast as my nubs would carry me, bullets nicking at my heels.

The world around me took on the visage of rotten ectoplasm. But I had an advantage: I could feel out both the heat and junk like a submarine with top-notch sonar. So I squirreled under prickly hedges and somehow got through a partially boarded-up window of a condemned building silently enough until I could hear the heat departing the scene.

Then I diverted around a couple more alleyways until, like dawn breaking over a bloody battlefield, I could see the Bluebonnet Kid, resting on a brick stairway playing “And I Love Her” on his harmonica.

So I stocked up on Benway’s latest, tamped down my Need enough to get a move on, and started towards the Western Lands.

Since the world moved on, men sometimes found themselves needing to be moved.

One such man moved no more.

What passed as whiskey slid from the dirty glass and down the throat of the saloon's newest patron. He placed his still-warm revolver on the scarred wood of the table and he grimaced at the blank expressions looking back at him. Relaxing in his chair, he stared at his audience.

A few lanterns hung from hooks above the tables, and the firelight from the hearth cast what should have been a warm glow across the room. The smells of a spicy stew, the sour scent of homebrew, and the coppery crimson odor of violence all mixed to create an unwelcoming atmosphere.

His gaze swept across every man and woman in the bar, and each pair of eyes turned away. One girl even made the sign of the cross, and he could hear the whispered prayer to the Manjesus.

Silence, except for the crackle of logs from across the saloon, was the only other sound.

He spoke softly.

“I’ve done what I came here to do. This man did what he came here to do.”

With that, he kicked the corpse on the floor.

“The killing is done, and you’re better for it."

The air was still.

"I’ll soon be leaving.”

A lone voice, barely more than a whisper, responded: “Thankee-sai.”

Stony faces and sad eyes turned away from the Gunslinger, and he poured himself another drink.

His hand almost didn’t shake when he reloaded his Big Iron, but no one seemed to notice.

He thought it would get easier, but the weight of every soul he sent on still threatened to crush him down more firmly to this earth, even as it spun beneath him.

It was an odd thing, that.

Even as he felt pressed, even as he felt held down by each drop of blood he shed, he knew that the world was moving on, but he wasn’t.

He was being held in place, frozen in a time the world had left behind.

The Gunslinger left a silver coin on the table when he finished the bottle.

He was weary, but resigned. With a sigh, he knew that everything old eventually becomes new again.

Calmly, he walked out into the night, continuing pursuit of the man in black.

_____

16 books by Stephen King, including the Gunslinger, are banned in Collier County, Florida.