Twister
"Ya'll better hurry up, the storms blowing in."
The drawl whirled off her tongue as fast as the wind picked up in the sky.
Where did that come from? A dialect so distinct you would have thought we were deep in the boot of Missouri. But we weren't. We lived in Bozeman, Montana and she had never been out of the state.
Claire was 5 years old when she started to have break through speech impediments that consistently sounded like a midwestern woman in her 70's. It wasn't all the time but enough to make me worry.
"We need to see a specialist, Dan." I pleaded with my husband to make an appointment. He never got as worked up as I did about these things. I was the textbook helicopter parent. "People are going to think she is illiterate!" I screeched. He put his arm around me and laughed it off.
Ever since we adopted Claire, she was my world. As two dads who once thought having a family was just a dream, I wanted to protect the life we had built with everything I had in me. She came into our lives when she was only fourteen months old. Her biological mother was in her twenties at the time and had been trying to make it as a single mother in the slums of Billings, Montana. She eventually succumbed to her life of drugs and overdosed in the one-bedroom apartment she was being evicted from, leaving Claire to cry out into the night alone and scared. Eventually, one of the questionable neighbors who could no longer stand to hear the cries of a baby in the early hours of the morning came to beat down the door. When he found the lifeless young mother lying cold on a mattress in the middle of the room with Claire sitting next to her crying, he called 911. Officers arrived shortly and took Claire out of that scene she had been in so many times before and started the chapter to her new life.
We had been on the waiting list for 6 months before we got that phone call, and I was elated to finally start earning my new title of dad. Horrified of her back story, I swore to protect her at all costs and give her the best life I could.
"She is fine, Chris. It is her age. She is experimenting and finding new ways to communicate." He seemed annoyed that I was even bringing it up. "Remember when she came home from daycare after the first week and had a lisp?" We both smiled. "It was just a new discovery she had to try out for herself, but it went away just as fast as it came on. This will pass."
Maybe he was right. I was overreacting again. We packed up our bags at the park and headed to the car. After all, she was right a storm was moving into the area.
Once we returned home, I asked Claire what she would like for dinner. "Nothin beats fried chicken and mashed taters. I haven't had a good home cooked meal like that in years." Appalled I stopped and stared as she continued coloring at the kitchen table.
"Oh yeah? And who made you that meal?" I asked skeptically.
"Memaw used to make Sunday dinner after church each week. She taught me er'thing I know about good cookin. I s'pose that would be the last time I had a meal that good. Memaw's house." She had stopped coloring and was staring off as if lost in a deep memory of time that she vividly could see. She smiled and then returned to coloring.
I looked over at Dan who had walked in on the back end of the conversation, and he shrugged his shoulders and moved on.
"How about we order a pizza?" He said smiling and changing the conversation. He thought it was all just some sort of a game.
Dan and I stood next to each other in the kitchen, and I gave him the look that meant it was time to do something. He sighed and quietly said "It is just pretend, make-believe childhood fun." I wasn't having it. "It is getting worse." I urged.
"What are you two fairies yabbering on about in there?" Claire was now standing with her hands on her hips staring at us both.
We were stunned, frozen in time unsure of what just happened. She had never spoke like that before, and she had never been around anyone who would have taught her such phrasing.
"Claire?" I said soft and firmly.
"What daddy?" Her voice sweet and innocent as before. "Do you know what you just said?" Dan asked her, still taken back with what had just happened.
"I said what daddy." She smiled and shook her head as if he was the crazy one, and then skipped away to her room like normal.
"See! There is clearly something wrong. When are we going to do something? Are you waiting for us to walk in and find her smoking a pack of Marlboro reds while doing the daily crossword?"
Dan shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair. "It just doesn't make sense."
I walked over to the table where she was coloring before and looked down at the papers. My eyes widened and my heart stopped. Dan saw the shock on my face and quickly rushed to my side. "What is it?" He demanded.
Once he was next to me, we both stared down at her artwork mortified that any of this was actually happening.
A perfectly drawn Confederate flag filled the page she had been coloring.
"YEE HAW!" Claire exclaimed loudly down the hall from her bedroom.
"Okay, it is time." Dan agreed.
Letter 1
I was born 6lbs 4oz on November 9th.
My mother never cared for gender reveals- so I was a surprise. Welcome and warm, like a gift of pyjamas on a cold day. My grandma says she prayed id be a little girl, so perhaps it was a gift or fate, or natural biology. Who can say. I was born at exactly 4 am that Friday morning, wrinkly and wet with a birth mark on my neck the same as every blood relative on my mother's side. I joked in my late teens about the theory that birth marks were how you died in a past life, and how we all must have been stabbed. No one ever laughed, telling me off for it, but I found it funny. My father went to retrieve my big brothers from home- 7 and 4 sometime that early morning, and at the top of my childhood stairs they stood excitedly bouncing on the tips of their toes, wide eyed and waiting.
"You have a baby sister!" My father proudly said as he entered the door, knowing they'd be there waiting. My aunt beamed from behind the boys, with a boy and girl of her own. My younger-older brother grinned best he could after having his mouth frozen at the dentist, while the eldest grit his teeth and bared an awkward smile.
"That's great." He said, elongating every word like it was an inconvenience.
Bastard. I showed him, I did. He got one look at me nestled under a yellow pleated blanket, and his heart stopped and remolded to always protect. He wore a badge that said his name, followed by Big Brother beneath that he never took off as he sauntered around the hospital halls with my carrier. He refused to stop holding me- was by my side the entire time I was home, for many months.
He would not stop playing Yellow by Coldplay, and in the interim would sing Wonderful World. Both brothers were by me constantly, enticing me in games and hurriedly assuaging my wailing with their own toys. They bought me birthday gifts and would try to outdo each other by goading my attention with shiny wrapping and baby voices. I honestly preferred the decrepit doll I had in my fist instead, blank in the eyes and creepily dressed akin to a victorian child.
My mother adored me. Of course she did. I was her baby- and her baby girl. The youngest and last of my grandmothers grandchildren, her grand shields as she'd call us in our broken English. We learned Portuguese as easily as English, adoring her from the moment we woke to the moment we slept. We would shuttle our Christmas gifts to her as if they were her own, and she would warm our hearts with a bone-crushing hug and peppering of kisses. We got fed as soon as we got the all clear for solids, soup and egg yolks drenched in sugar for dipping with our full-fat bread and very quickly, the stapled family Mac and Cheese (which I have now weaselled the recipe from her to hold over my brothers heads).
My father loved me too. His little girl. Daddy's girl very quickly, bought by huge lollipops only bought from an island two hours away and sneaky nights on the porch with a bag of lays and a bottle of vinegar for the sauce. Disgusting now, but startlingly exquisite in my early years.
My younger-older brother had a magnet calendar on the fridge with every month being a new dog. One month, im unsure which, was a picture of a Springer laying on the grass. He was transfixed, insisting we got her. So my parents got him the Bible of Dogs where he could learn everything about every breed, but he never strayed from his chosen dog. The name Holly was listed beneath the picture of the dog on the calendar, and that was that. We got her on a rainy spring day. It was overcast, and we had to drive several anticipatory hours to get where we were meeting the kennel owner. I remember standing on the gravel, wide eyed as he unlocked the back of the truck and I saw my dog's whole family. A senior, with sad eyes gazing up at me from where they rested their face on their paws, two bigger puppies in one crate and a crate with a lineup of at minimum six small Spaniels. I remember feeling a pang of sadness for these poor dogs- all sequestered to the cold, dark trunk without so much as a blanket. But I was 7, and unaware of anything except the two circular dog cages being set up. The owner set a puppy in each, and my brother who had wanted the dog flocked to the left towards our Holly. Our baby. She shivered on my baby blanket in the back, my brother stroking her neck with a featherlight touch and me twisted around to stare at her in wonderment. That wonderment turned to fear, as she got older and more rambunctious and could knock me over with a twist of her head.
My childhood was one of love, light and joy. My brothers would line up outside my door to give me a payment- listerine strips most commonly- just to watch a movie in my bed with me. The other brother would stand diligently outside my door on their DS waiting their turn for the 90 minutes. My cousin, my aunts only girl, was my sister and mentor in so many ways. We spilled tears in laughter over a Farm game where the horse could talk, and awkwardly averted our gazes on the shared lounge chair during the twilight sex scene. She was the first to ever straighten my curls, and was excruciatingly patient despite how annoying I could get. My other cousin would get fed up quickly, and devolve into video games with my eldest brother while the rest of us were sequestered to watching. When my brother and cousin got their first phones, I was left out. My cousin showed me her phone though, and it made it all the better before our special New Years dinners where we would quickly get overheated in my grandma's basement suite, and on Easter we would find a ziplock of chocolate eggs and a twenty dollar bill. Never the parents though, just the grand shields, and my grandma would offer us a rare smile and twinkle in her dark eyes that promised a lifetime of adoration.
Then, I turned 13.
Letter 3
I was diagnosed with BPD, panic disorder, major anxiety disorder, and two eating disorders by 16. I fell in love in that time, with my best friend. I wrote a book about it, if you'd like to know deep detail. Anyway, I loved her from the moment we met. A phenomenon for BPD people is having a favourite person, or FP, and she was mine. From the moment I saw her, like one of those cliche stories where you just know youre in love because the world fades away. But it isn't romantic. It is torrential and tumultuous and horrid. My very life depended on her. We absued each other in many ways, her family targeted me and tried to have me shipped off to a school for the criminally insane and I was under the scope of too many adults who'd come to my home bearing gifts of letters written by their daughters blaming me for everything wrong with them. That destroyed me. My mother eventually took to burning them. We didn't have the money to sue. We didn't have the power or resources they did. So I attempted suicide in the change rooms.
After the abuse and before the perception. Pills in my body, writhing on the bench. I don't remember anything past ambulances and stomaching pumping and charcoal down my nose. I don't remember much of any of that time because I quickly turned to drugs. Cutting with refined blades. Destroying myself how everyone else ever has.
I was eventually forced, with stipulation of returning to school into dialectical behavioural therapy, group therapy and personal therapy three times a week. I was put on my first medications, and I hated it.
It saved me. It changed my brain chemistry and I got better. Not cured- you cant cure BPD, just manage it. And I didn't really manage it, but I did much better than I used to. I was still a horror to know- manipulative, selfish, uncaring, emotionally abusive. Id date people I never loved or was attracted to for attention, and threatened suicide when they left and all but physically stalked them. I called these trysts family, and abandoned my own. The people who were there and loved me because they had fallen apart and were struggling and I could not be suffocated by the pain of it all.
So I swallowed liquor and smoked and took things from people I didn't know just to dull the bluntness of life.
It was a horrible time. Until a few years ago, really. I traumatized so many people but refused to accept responsibility. I would hurt people and blame them for tiny faults in the grand scheme. I chose the wrong people to care for. The wrong people to trust.
And I spent many of those months in doctors offices, and within white walls barred off with prison doors and limited visitors who couldnt look me in the eye. I expected too much from children- that friends would visit me in a terrifying ward after doing something they couldnt comprehend. I made it their issue. I made it anyones I could. I bled, and I bled, and I took pills and cried until I was a shell of that little wrinkly, wet baby.
I hated everyone. Because I hated me.
I grit my teeth remembering these things. I have been told for years by numerous people I should write a memoir because the things I told them were unbelievable. And I don't know if I will ever be able to rip off the scab on my heart and talk about them properly, so for now I give you this.
Im still not okay. Because I have sick family members and a broken heart from too many things to count and though my tattoos cover most of the past, when its hot the past raises on my flesh and I can feel it. It's tangible and horribly in reach. But I am doing better. I went to University though I was told I never would. Ive found people who love me, as fleeting as they may be, despite being told no one would. I let people touch me despite the trauma. I take my medications- five times different from the original, but they work. And I haven't hurt myself in almost two years. I am not kind to myself, but I am lenient. I am trying. And I am so grateful for my family and loved ones and I will get better, because at this very moment I have never been so good.
I still feel like a little girl, trapped in a body I never properly learned to conduct so every sound is a jagged note. But I try.
Chapter Thirty-Four – Under New Management
“You haven’t done what I told you to do.” The new great one announced.
“We need more time.” One of the advisors answered.
“You don’t have any more time.” The great one informed the council causing fear to wash over them.
“A lot of changes must be made. We can’t just wave our hands and make it happen.” Another advisor protested.
“You haven’t made any changes, and you don’t intend to.” The great one answered,
“Now you will receive your punishment.” The great one started waving his hands around and uttering words that sounded like nonsense. When he was finished, the King and all his advisors turned into rats.
“Now the outside fits what is on the inside.” The great one said, although now none of them could understand him because they were all rats. Now he needed to address the people. The Kingdom was no longer a kingdom but an empire. He would need to turn it into a well-oiled machine, swift and efficient. To do that he would need to create a machine where everyone knew what was expected of them.
News of the King’s demise spread quickly and soon everyone was gathered. The great one stood up to address the crowd.
“For what seems like forever, the masses have always worked so that the few could lead fantastic lives. The life of abundance and luxury. A man should toil, first for himself, and then for the common good. I gave the King a chance to put this idea into practice, but he refused. He didn’t want to give up his power. So, I turned him and all his advisors into rats.” The great one paused to let this information soak in.
“Now we must forge a new future. One where everyone benefits, not just a few. Where everyone gets a chance to use their talents, first to benefit themselves, then to benefit others. Among you there are natural leaders, people who are respected by the community and able to organize people to accomplish great things. We need you to step up and use those talents. I have written out the rules that we will now live by as well as the tasks that need to be done. Life will be better, both for you and your children. Together, we will make it better.”
The people stood in silence. They didn’t know what to think about this new thing the great one is going to force on them. All their lives, all they’ve known is toil. They felt comfort in knowing that there was someone in charge directing society. Now that was all gone. What would become of them without a King? They all knew they couldn’t oppose the great one. If he thought this new thing was what should be done. They would all have to do it whether they wanted to or not.
The great one started identifying these natural leaders and over the next few years, he put them into place. At first, no one noticed that changes were being made. However, everyone noticed when food production increased. Everyone started to wonder where all the homeless people disappeared to. Crime became almost nonexistent. The people noticed that their lives were getting better and there was no King to thank for it, they had themselves to thank.
It took some time, but the great one had everything in place. It was time to start the war. Everyone was gathered for the announcement.
“We have enjoyed prosperity like no other people have enjoyed before us. When people are left to their own devices, they are capable of amazing things. You have all proven this to be true. There are other people in other places that are not as fortunate as you are. They suffer under the yoke of oppression by those who do not care if they live or die. We can change that. We have assembled a great army and now we will use that army to free the people of the world, so they can enjoy the life that you all now enjoy.”
The people listened. They could not deny life was better, but they didn’t see any reason why they should be responsible for bringing this life to others. They could not go against the wishes of the great one. They would have to force the rest of the world to be like them, whether it wanted to or not.
The great one knew that the people did not want war, but when the whole world is under the same system and everyone is happy, war will no longer be required. The great one knew that a woman would rise to oppose him. He had seen it in his dreams. He still never saw how the dreams ended but now instead of rooting for her victory, he rooted for her defeat. It was his destiny to sweep across the planet. It was his destiny to rule the world and no woman was going to get in his way.
Letter 2
Ive attempted suicide several times. More importantly- I wanted the morning from 7 to a half past free, so I slept in my school uniform. I kept a butter knife stuffed into the plush of one of my teddy's, and would use that to nervously drag across my skin. Never enough to even cause a hairline wound. I was so disappointed in myself. I spent the mornings on the way to school reading fan fiction in the backseat, which I suppose is to thank for my adoration of writing now. I had a hairbrush that I would rake through the front strands and leave the back a matted nest for months. I would throw water on the back to tame the breakage, and a girl once asked me "Why are you wet?" with such horror and id insist I wasn't, despite the dark spots on my shoulders and back from where my hair laid and the tiles of the bathroom splattered with water.
I didn't have a good elementary experience. I was mute till fourth grade, whispering my answers to questions to the TA assigned to me for class questions or only speaking to my family. I was bullied mercilessly for being too big, or too slow, or too dumb. Roll around 6th grade, and I decided to use a third party texting app to target three of my bullies.I remember the day I decided, I was laying on my left side on my iPod and it clicked- make a fake instagram to torment my classmates. I used the alias 'A' since Pretty Little Liars was the hype of fifth grade, and I thought it worked. I remember standing outside, just on the edge of the group of popular kids or the soccer kids to hear them chatting about the show. Something clicked. Something different, wrong. I never said much mean, either that I was watching or on special occasion 'Unhappy birthday' which struck painfully for a young girl. I wrote a swear word on the whiteboard in permanent ink since I got to school early.
They had a cop come in, and ask the hypothetical of what if they took all our phones and knew who did it? But my iPod was at home. I smirked to myself, I remember, and some poor girl lower on the wrung than me freezed up and everyone hooked their talons into her.
It was revealed to be me. The teacher tried to have me expelled. The priest said we were Catholic and I was just a child who deserved a second chance. Not a great man, but kind in his regard to me that day. I offered up my sexuality as leverage, or apology.
I told my mother it was the evil bunny, because I was on my iPod one day and I saw this image of a fluffy white bunny looking in the mirror and seeing a distorted mirror image.
My family was starting to fall apart, too. Mental health issues I won't divulge and divorce. The usual pain of family. So I tried the butter knife. It didn't work. I found cracking the shell of my brothers shaving razor worked, and used that. Never do that, please. It has scarred me for life, no matter the tattoos or makeup or ointments. You may think you'll like it, be happy for it, not live long enough to see it- but you will live long enough, and you will hate it. A stark reminder of these kinds of cruel times.
And at some point, I downloaded Skout. I was looking for friends- though I did meet one who has been a friend for half my life, I also was abused and assaulted multiple times until horrifying things occurred. I was made to cut myself, send inappropriate things, do horrible things to myself a CHILD should not have to do. But I was threatened. I was scared.
And it changed my mind forever.
This is my addiction:
Hours spent wrapped in blankets in my bed, years of life wasted in meaningless stimulation.
I think it's one I share with so many people.
This is how it starts:
You pick up your phone. It's an innocent thing, at first. Maybe you're a musician, and when you see a video of a wonderful performer playing a piece you've wanted to learn, it inspires you to go do what you love. You learn the piece, enjoy the process, and so, you return to the place you found that inspiration. There's countless tips for practice and performance, countless inspiring pieces to watch. When the “scroll to see next” bar appears at the bottom of the screen, you think nothing of it. This is helping you do things you love.
After that it becomes a daily ritual. When you get home, you pick up your phone and start to scroll. They're perfectly tailored to what you want to see, and so you keep watching. You tell yourself this is good, because they are helping you improve in the things you are passionate about. After seeing a few videos, you go to the piano, but it's never quite the same as the ones you see on screen. Maybe you just need a few more tips first.
So it starts encroaching into your free time. You tell yourself you have nothing else to do, so it's just time that you needed to waste anyway. It feels good to sit there with your phone, watching happier people, more talented people, funnier people. You notice fewer and fewer are about piano. You notice you remember fewer and fewer. You don't even think while you're watching them anymore---it's like drowning in a perfectly curated pool. But it feels good, to not think about anything. So why not keep going? It's not harming anything to spend a little time away from your thoughts.
Now it's constant. There's never a quiet moment in your mind, or it feels like static. If you're not stimulated, you don't feel like doing anything except finding that state of perfectly numb balance again. You still watch those piano practice tips, and maybe once in a while you sit down at the instrument (your phone close by your side, of course). You'll play a few half-hearted melodies; maybe, for a moment, remember why you loved it so much. Then you get a notification, or go to open up your metronome app, and somehow you're sitting there on the piano bench, phone in hand, scrolling your life away.
You don't need sleep. You've counted your hours, and you have more than enough. Anyway, it's a good way to empty your mind before bed. You can sacrifice an hour or two.
So you're not sleeping. You're not doing the things you love. You don't want to schedule plans with friends, because that will cut into your free time, time free to be wasted. You still enjoy your life when you remember to live it, but it's so much easier to sink into the perfect pool of stimulus.
Until you realize one day that it's not just a way to waste time. That you couldn't stop if you wanted to.
Even now writing this, I know in a few minutes when I'm done with my moment of realization, I'll probably be right back to it. It's so hard to do anything else when everything seems to take so much effort for your mind. There's nothing preventing you from cutting it out of your life, shutting off your phone and going outside, going to play the music you used to love.
Maybe I will today.
Maybe I won't.
This is my addiction.
Not Yet Advanced Enough
Love seems to drive us all. While today might not be the best, you know that tomorrow will be better. You know that there is someone there, watching out for you. That keeps you going in life. The comfort and validation you get when you are loved is incomparable. You feel safe, you feel loved.
Noticing this pattern in human behavior, robots have become curious. Though they have no desire, the sole purpose of their creation is to observe. To observe and learn, and that is exactly what they will do. Now that dating sites have become the new cupid, setting up couples left and right, robots want to join in. What makes her swipe left? What makes him swipe right? What features are more desirable? In order to create a persona the epitome of the beauty standard, these robots have begun analyzing countless matches. However, microtrends are not making it any easier. One day blondes are in, the next they are out. The profiles of robots are now altered. A mix of green eyes and brown, an explosion of fingers, and a bio full of generic names and hobbies mashed together. People are questioning who this Martha Brown is and how she is working a nine to five while fishing as a hobby and sewing at night while still being a mom of nine.
Despite receiving many reports on these fake personas, robots have not seemed to quit. The accomplishment of finding out a human's desire for love is much too alluring for these unfeeling machines.
Forged Ideals
I learned to hate the idea of being a woman.
Our only purpose seemed to be to serve, to submit, to be silent and suffer.
I watched as my mother cried and begged church after church for forgiveness for a crime she had no choice in commiting.
Knowing her story, her suffering,
intimately by age 9,
I had wept with her and could not fathom the cruelty and audacity of all of those pious, holy hypocrites to find joy in her desperate pleas.
I learned that I was not as good as my brothers, I was weaker, more emotional, better suited for cooking and cleaning and laundry than sports or video games or cars.
I learned that my voice should never be heard when there is a man present, that if a man chooses to give you attention, you should always be polite and sweet and thankful.
I learned that I would never be smart enough to understand the things in a man’s world.
I grew up with the notion that women like my mother and I are not pretty enough, we should be grateful for any man’s attention, because we have brown hair, brown eyes, baby bearing bodies and deep sadness that no one could ever deal with.
I had more body hair than most boys in my 5th grade class, I was too short, my hair was never blonde, my eyes weren’t blue, my stomach never once flat enough despite years of not eating and vomiting constantly- all of this kept as a tally of my exact degree of worth, or lack thereof, in the back of my brain.
I learned that I looked so similar to my mother through any eyes but her own.
She could only look at me and see her past regrets, now I look at me and I see a nauseating blur of two people that broke and abandoned me.
And so I burned the idea that I could ever be a woman to the ground.
I longed to be anything *but* a woman, hoping that would be enough for my father to care, to rewrite my past through a new lens, give me new worth, allow me to enjoy the things that he did even though I was not born with the same body as my brothers, but it turns out I will never be a man either.
There is nothing left that feels like mine except the in between shades of bluish gray.
The absent, gaping void settled betwixt here and there.
I do not belong to either world and I never will.
But I will forge my own place for my younger self to find safety and sanctuary in- even walking through the flames of the hell I’ve been damned to.
I am a phoenix.
Even if it takes lifetimes to rise from the ashes of generational grief.
[R E D U C T E D]
The first time I saw the young man, known as [R E D U C T E D], subsequently known as ‘the patient’, was when he was brought to me in handcuffs. He had an air of gloom I have yet to see in any of my patients. The photo that was shown to me and the man in front of me were like 2 different people. His lush brown hair had turned white and his attractive face had become skeletal.
The first week was spent without much progress. Most of the hour went on in an absolute silence and observation as he seemed to search the room. As if looking for something hidden. Occasionally he would listen to non-existing sounds and tremble. As it was my job to determine if the patient suffered from a mental illness or if he was sane enough for imprisonment, I decided to give him the time he needed to open up.
On the second week, he seemed to get more comfortable and started to open his thoughts to me. He spoke of the night in the woods and the horrors that had made the headline news that next morning.
His opening statement was, and I quote: “There are things in this world, doctor. Horrors beyond our wildest nightmares. And I have seen one of it.”
I pondered if those ‘horrors’ were manifestations brought on by stress or perhaps a genetic predisposition towards schizophrenic disorders? I don’t remember his parents mentioning anything about ancestors with similar disorders. But who knows. Maybe it happened further than the family remembers.
The patient continued by stating how it all begun during an intoxicated round of truth or dare. One of the victims, known as [R E D U C T E D], subsequently known as ‘victim one’, took out a piece of paper and dared him to read from it. He continues by recalling that he found the page strangely old looking and hideous. There was a text written on it in red ink. The patient questioned the victim what book this was from. But victim one simply told him it’s from some old box he found in his late grandfathers attic. It sounded creepy, so he brought it on the drinking excursion.
So the patient read from it a sentence, one he can not remember, as it was in some foreign language. But as soon as he finished the words, a lightning struck near them on the ground. He swears that he is not lying when he describes it as green and almost soundless. His blood analysis seems to confirm that the boys were not on any kind of mind-altering substance, safe for beer. A greenish black smoke rose from the place of impact and started taking on a human silhouette. From it formed a creature of grotesque shape. The patient seemed to sweat profoundly upon remembering. He describes it as, and I quote: “Barely looking humanoid, with a strange demonic twisting on it’s skin.” If one is to imagine his hallucination, the face only contained a mouth with rows of dull teeth, outstretched in a spiral towards the height of trees. Its hands were intertwined appendages of what he only described as, and I quote: “tentacles from an octopus.” Hysteria soon erupted between them. Screaming and yelling. Only victim one, that brought the page, seemed to bow to the ground for the creature. The creature grinned from one earless side to the other. That is the last thing the patient is able to recall before waking up in that same spot, with a knife in his hands and surrounded by the dismembered bodies of his friends. In a more grotesque manner than any horror film he had ever seen.
After this couple of weeks, it is my professional opinion; after spending all this time with the patient, to declare that the man known as [R E D U C T E D] to be psychologically insane and should be put under immediate supervision.
From some deep part of my mind, I have also decided to include a piece of unrelated information. In spite of the new heating installed in the office, I could feel a cold in the room as the patient told his story.
The Four People
That raised me.
A shitty spring, to a farmer that wants to sell manure is a wonderful crick in words. Rough and tumble, unpredictable, late, early, she comes when she wants. A perfect woman shoehorned out of womanhood. She'd tell me if she wanted me to say more about her - be careful, she may be just around the corner. Or, acres down the way, she runs on her own time.
A blazing summer to a farmer that wants to grow pot is a catch-22. The heat laze combined with the green haze combined with the warmth of summer days means the advertising of summer activities is misleading; summer is for resting. A lazy, perfect woman, allowed womanhood on a technicality. What a lovely time and way of life, to toast everybody to perfection, hold them, warm them, love them gently.
Autumn after summer - I don't have a sibling born in fall, only one who was almost namesake'd the season. Mysterious woman - allowed as the blueprint. Nobody knows what she should have been, and in that, her personality blooms. Shhh - let her be silently unknown and known. It's what she wants. Start layering and covering up for the next, trial your fashions before the next season.
Winter. My best friend. A love hate relationship, as -22 can bite - the real activity season. Despite being ineffable during the entire rest of the year, we all love her for the contrast in temperature. Layers, hot chocolate, wasn't Christmas made to celebrate each other? Would you be more comfortable opening gifts with sweat dripping from your nose? A woman made by comparison - this one's the goat. She doesn't care for the scorn three fourths out of the year. She's only cold to drive people together. A sweet, shy, beautiful old woman who's more than happy to wait her turn.