Part.1

Logan.

It was late. After 3:00 A.M. Only another two hours to go before his alarm would go off, heralding in yet another day of thankless work. It was his flip phone that had roused him. It had been buzzing incessantly for some time now. Logan wasn’t fully awake as he rolled from his right side onto his back. Away from the nightstand and away from the monetary disturbance. His mind still sticky with indistinct dreams he never quite remembered, like cobwebs you were never certain were there to begin. The half-conscious state left just enough room for a notion to slip through—a misgiving, really. The one he had been sensing with great unease and pushing to back of his mind for months now, perhaps longer. Afraid to allow it admittance, it waited for a time like this. Just before he awoke—just behind the mental list of the day’s tasks, the recollection of bills still needing to be paid, the vacancy of his savings account, the truck he loved and should probably sell for something mor economic. This morning, the notion found its way to the forefront of his mind and introduced itself.

Maybe this is not enough?

Logan’s own life—it had been good enough for him. He had tried not to let the things that damaged his little sister and older siblings during their childhood, damage him as well. So, like everything else uncomfortable for him, he pushed dismal and obscure things down, into depths he dared not go. He wasn’t familiar with Nietzsche, but even he knew well enough not to be a man who sought out darkness or who questioned his own humanity. He chose to see in black and white and took things as they came—good or bad. He didn’t necessarily believe in the evil of man but regarded it as a source of their actions. He accepted the idea of God and of Satan and avoided situations that would cause him the obligation of guilt. But that was as far as his belief system took him. He didn’t need it to go any further. To give him purpose, like other people did. And he didn’t need anger to drive him to be a better person. His siblings had enough guilt and anger to share. They even seemed to revel in it, wear it, be proud of it. Logan wanted no share. “Water off a duck’s back.” That’s what he’d say about things that would send the others in a tizzy. He was built different than them. Maybe because he didn’t feel connected to that part of their childhood? He couldn’t (wouldn’t) process mom’s slow demise. Or dad’s explosive volatility. Where his siblings felt what his little sister called “imposter syndrome” out there in the world, he felt comfort; in fact, Logan felt safest in the camouflage of vapidity.

But unlike others, Logan never felt he had anything to lose. Not before her. Not before Zoe. And not like Jessica. And she resented him for that. Jessica did. She resented that he had taken from her years that she could have spent preparing her for her adult life that were meant to be spent figuring things out. Herself out.

She had always put education first—until him. That’s one of the things that had drawn Logan to her, actually—her intelligence, ambition, her purpose. He hadn’t understood or felt purpose before her. And he didn’t know at the time that he complicated hers. He knew what he knew in his adolescent approach to love. That she was the ‘one’ (literally the only one) and might have continued to be had they stayed together. Because Logan was that uncomplicated. He was so uncomplicated that he thought she felt the same. But how could she? She was sixteen when they met. The same age as his little sister.

Jessica couldn’t keep her head straight during the whirlwind of their relationship. She wasn’t like him. Things didn’t fall into her lap. Nothing was happenstance. She worked for where she had gotten in school. In the community. She had appearances to keep up, church to attend, her mom’s confidence to sustain and convince she could handle everything. Friends to emulate. But that was changing.

First, her GPA dropped. There was no scholarship or family money to get her into the expensive universities her friends were attending. And she had lost her mother’s trust with the misuse of her time, the broken curfews, the all-to-obvious broken promise of abstinence until marriage. What was left was ‘making the worst of it’ as Jessica called it. But, paradoxically, had never felt more beautiful or thriven. On fire.

Something had awoken in her, and fuck it was exhilarating. Until now, she had been the good girl. The church girl. The smart girl. The sensible girl. Never sensual. Never the one to elicit attention from anyone, really. It wasn’t until recently that she had traded her oversized hair bow for high-waisted bell-bottoms and crochet halter tops, courtesy of her elder sister (the beauty of the family), married at eighteen, and now pregnant with her first child. Her sister and mother had always been at odds. Lisa never did anything right, and Jessica worshipped that. She wanted more of this—more than just another predictable outcome—gold star for another achievement. Another goal obtained—set by someone else. Everything had a ceiling she was discovering. So, what was the point?

Jessica took a job at the farm and feed mill on the outskirts of town to help pay for university That’s where she met Ben. She had known him in passing—it was only a town of fifteen-hundred people, after all. He was a friend of Logan’s. Not a close one, but in fringe. He was tall. Sweet. Pale. Cute. Funny. A shock of dark hair. The attraction between them was immediate. It was as if someone had thrown her into a basin of ice-cold water—the startling realization that it wasn’t just Logan she had been attracted to. It was the opportunity and license to fail. The potential and exhilaration to crash—to sabotage. To make mistakes and take consequences as they came. She had decided—against her mother’s wishes—she was going to take a semester off after high school. She’d go to parties. Try new things. Fuck. And not any of it with Logan. For, if she was going to burn for her own choices, then she would burn asunder.

He was barely into his twenties when he got her pregnant. Jessica. Now his ex. The first ex he ever had. His first real love—first girl. First person he truly disappointed. It was a one-night stand. She was high. He was drunk. She said she missed it. The sex. Being loved.

He thought if he convinced her, she would stay with him. They would be a family. She did keep It. He convinced her to keep It—It now being Zoe. But he didn’t keep Jessica.

Jessica had found Jesus again. She was back in church and, therefore, her mother’s favor. And along with God’s blessings came a man to redeem her tarnished character. A good man. A suitable man. A man who could provide. A man complete with a good, Christian upbringing, stable background, a family business, and no testosterone…but a man, nonetheless.

On the bright side, Zoe—the best thing to ever happen to him to that point. She had his bright, blue eyes. And her mother’s pale complexion, quiet nature, thick hair, and disappointment in him.

She had been “daddy’s girl” just up until the novelty of father/daughter weekends wore off and the existentialism of teenage-hood took its place. She had grown to resent him for the long hours. For the regret her mother carried. The disdain she exuded and overflowed onto the girl for reminding her of him. But Zoe mostly resented him for not being the dad that her stepfather had the resources to be. And it became worse after her stepsister was born. The ‘golden-child’. The child Jessica always wanted. Born with intent. Coddled. Fawned over by her parents. She now knew her own mother’s obsession with herself and disdain for Lisa. She didn’t want to admit it—but she understood.

Jessica: love of Logan’s life, a stay-at-home mother of his daughter, living less than six miles from him at this very moment, playing house (happily) in the bed of another man. “Ironic.” Is that the word? His little sister would give him shit for not knowing that answer.

Zoe, a daughter whose only tie to him was a surname that barely made it onto the birth certificate. Zoe, the daughter whose only fatherly support was a paper trail of child support. Zoe, who never saw her dad due to his work schedule and her mother’s incessant plot to cut him out of their lives.

He had never planned on going to college. He had never planned on anything. Everything he had just somehow ‘showed up’—offered itself in one way or another, then left the same way. Like “water off a duck’s back.” And this is what Logan had to show for his time here so far.

Maybe this is not enough?

He rolled onto his left side to stare at her in the dark. Even now he lay beside a beautiful woman who just ‘showed up’. And somehow, they had been living together for the last four years. They met on the job. He as a dispatcher for a logistics company. Her—working in poultry. It was hot at first. Like everything is in new relationships. But they both had been dumped and neither were much for playing games, so it made sense to stay together even when things kinda became flat. It was easy even. Monetarily appreciable. He watched the shape of her. The soft swell of her abdomen against the light of the window. Featureless.

In the dark he could still tell you that her skin was olive, as were her eyes. Her features were pointed and fine, whereas Jessica’s had been soft and rounded. Younger that Jessica by a few years. He could tell you this woman was a hard worker. Her favorite food is anything made with potatoes. Hates broccoli. Doesn’t like spice. Salt is a flavor. That she didn’t believe in any god except for the one that put that food on the table. Can bow hunt better than any man outside himself that he’d ever met. Loves Dukes of Hazard but had never seen Star Wars and didn’t need to.

What he couldn’t tell you is how she felt the day her little sister died in a car accident when she was just sixteen. Or how every miscarriage Logan and she had been through had changed her. He couldn’t tell you what her favorite season was or if autumn ushered in, for her, a feeling of excitement and change, or if brought up anxiety of the cold, dull solitude that it would soon be winter.

Shannon had always been a woman to him. Never a girl, like Jessica. He didn’t watch her grow up and then plateau into the person she was now. She had just always been ‘this’. Honest, loyal, predictable, hardworking. Salt of the earth. But bland. A shape in the dark against a window bright with moonlight.

Logan’s phone began to buzz furiously again. Shannon rolled away.

“Who the fuck.”

“It’s my brother.”

It wasn’t a question. And she was already asleep.

Logan crept into the kitchen of their doublewide. A gift from his boss. It wasn’t nice. It had a leak under the tub and the floor was soft in there. He had even stepped through it a time or two before he put down particleboard, just to cover up the issue. There were other usual things like mice, non-working outlets, poor insulation. But his boss let him do whatever he wanted with the place, as well as the property immediately surrounding the modular home. And it was rent-free—which made it good enough to stay.

“Hello?”

“Logan!”

It was Shamus, of course, the self-proclaimed black sheep of the family—a designation he fought their youngest sister for back and forth like a championship title belt with reckless acts that embarrassed the whole family, most especially the non-immediate ones. Both were brooding and aloof, but the difference between the two of them was that she couldn’t care less about what anyone thought of her—least of all family. And incidentally—that was what Shamus cared about most. Especially the opinion of their maternal grandparents. Nothing... nothing—was more important than family to Shamus. The Black Sheep were two sides of the same, cold coin—sedition and contrition—spent the same way. Worthless.

“Logan! I’m mom. I’m om my wayt pick oo up…” he was speaking unintelligibly. Slowly. It wasn’t unusual except Logan lived in Arkansas and Shamus had moved back to Nebraska.

Logan diagnosed the danger right way—Shamus was having an episode. “We gotta get mom. Mom doesn’t want be there, Logan…”

“Shamus! Stop! Where are you? Where is Carol?”

“Carol…” he repeatedly it with disdain. “Pffffttt…bish.”

Shamus.

Connie—Shamus’ second wife. A native American woman he had met in Nebraska after his divorce from Cherilee. Shamus had met Cherilee in Nebraska as well. A young, single mom. She was intelligent. She spoke Spanish as a second language. She had a beautiful smile. A beautiful singing voice. Loved music. Loved having fun.

So, when Shamus’ mother moved to Arkansas with Logan and their youngest sister, and he had decided to go too—he invited her. She refused. She wanted to stay near her parents, even though they had been disappointed in her for years as she had forsaken the path of the Jehovah’s Witness for the love of the man before Shamus. And she had lived a sheltered life until she had gotten pregnant with her daughter. She was doing relatively well on her own. Her parents were starting to talk to her again. Then she got pregnant with Shamus’ child, and she was on her own again.

For twenty-six years, she had never left the state. She had fucked only two men (counting Shamus) and ended up pregnant. Twice now. She never even wanted children, before her daughter, especially not out of wedlock… Realizing this might be her only chance to redeem herself as a woman, she agreed to go with him. On one condition. So, they married. And had four more children. But Arkansas was not easy on her. She often felt alone. She and Shamus fought frequently. She hadn’t any family nor many friends there. She gained weight. Being a mother of five small children, all born within proximity of one another was difficult at best. She hadn’t even fully matured. And no matter how hard she tried; she could not gain the approval of Shamus’ mother. She was even jealous of the relationship he had with his mother. She had never experienced that with her own—it was alien to her.

And for Logan and Shamus’ mom—it wasn’t that she didn’t like Cherilee. It wasn’t the fact that Cherilee (virtually) shared her namesake which that made things confusing at a very intimate level amongst family gatherings, mailing services, and had become a trite and sometimes inappropriate joke amongst friends. And it wasn’t even entirely that Cherilee didn’t have a maternal bone in her body, or that she had no passion for cooking, or was placating towards Cher in what was become a noxious exchange of barely friendly natter. It was that Cherilee didn’t love her son, Shamus. Not in the way she knew he deserved. Cherilee loved him in the way that was good enough for her…and for whatever reason, that is all that Shamus thought he’d come to deserve. Because on a regular basis, whether she realized she was doing it or not, Cherilee, blamed Shamus for her dissatisfaction with her own life—from which the course of trajectory had been set well ahead of his presence in it. But without anyone else to take responsibility for the roles unfilled by her daughter’s father and her own parents, Shamus was obligated to take those on.

Therefore, when Cherilee started taking her lunch breaks at home every day instead of with him at the poultry plant were they both worked to have “me time,” Shamus understood. It wasn’t until the rumors did Shamus become suspicious and need to see for himself.

Three times in his life would Shamus have a mental breakdown—that Logan knew of. Three times would he burn it all down, not calculating well the aftermath of that decision or how it would alter his and his children’s path from then on.

The time Shamus was roped into driving his mother to Nebraska from California was the first time Logan knew of. The man Shamus had come to see as his own father—best friend even—was battering his mother and the children they shared. Imprisoned in their home. He was forced to be the one who drove the car his brother-in-law had donated for their escape. The truth was it wasn’t just Cher, Logan, and their baby sister Maxine and her husband were trying to save. It was Shamus too. King had gotten him onto heroin. And Shamus didn’t take well to detox. The moment he could, he left. He was an adult after all. He made his way all the way back to The King of California.

Shamus doesn’t remember much about his second turn in California, away from his family, and alone with King and whatever cohorts, whores, and enemies King chose to medicate, lay, or betray in that moment. Because of this, Shamus often found himself prey to manipulation and coercion with dangerous conclusions. This is how he contracted Hepatitis C from his stand-in father figure—a disease that would take partial claim of King’s life before he ended it. A disease Shamus, himself, would barely survive.

Teresa flipped her hair back and rubbed her nose hard. King didn’t have the best cocaine. But he had a lot of it. And a lot more recently now that he had hired her and Shamus to cut it. Teresa was King’s longtime mistress—a woman King had been seeing concurrently while he kept Cher hostage and now that Cher was gone, she was his main squeeze.

Shamus felt guilty when he was around Teresa. He didn’t even like the woman, really. But wherever King, there she was. And always ready to party.

“Oh my God is that good!”

It wasn’t. But Shamus doubted Teresa would know what good coke was.

“Can you, please, do that somewhere else? I have a test tomorrow!” Teresa’s daughter screamed.

“Then go study in the room, Amber! God! You’re like an old woman!” Teresa laughed.

“I would but it smells like shit in there because you and your friends partied in there all last night! Remember?? You made me sleep on the couch! And that midget kept trying to touch me!”

Teresa started cackling. Shamus probably hated her laugh as much as daughter did.

“He’s not a midget! He lost his legs!” she was laughing so hard, she started coughing.

“Please, Mom! It’s important!”

Her eyes met Shamus’. Begging. She reminded him of Maxine, his younger sister. He recalled the many times she begged King and his friends for the same courtesy. He felt bad for her. Ashamed.

“Come on. Let’s go.” Shamus said, standing up.

“What?” Teresa asked, taking a sip of her beer, and still coughing.

“I’ll buy your drinks.”

“But King isn’t here…”

“Come on.”

He ushered Teresa up off the couch and toward the door. Before shutting it, he caught Amber’s gaze. She mouthed the words ‘thank you’. He closed the door.

King had become suddenly absent, though this was not necessarily unusual for him. He often disappeared for days at a time. But this would be the first time they went out together without him. Teresa convinced Shamus to go to their regular dive. She wanted to go there because she knew the other girls would stay away. He was hers tonight.

She had always had a thing for him. His fine, pale features, dark hair, and dimples typically brought women to him like flies to shit. Before Shamus had disappeared to Nebraska with his bitch mom, Teresa had often gone out with he and King and often she threatened the younger women with glares from afar. A while ago, she had even followed one woman into the bathroom, introduced herself, then the woman’s face to the mirror. Yes. Tonight, he was hers. And everyone there knew it.

They stayed until close; all the while Teresa plying him with alcohol until he needed to be carried to her little Mazda.

When they arrived back at her place, she parked in front of the beige stucco, two-story four-plex in a shit part of town. She shut off the ignition to her car. Teresa leaned back against the driver door, lit a cigarette, and puffed on it while she stared at him. He leaned back against the passenger door, fought bleary vision to see her. The orange streetlight that cut across the lower half of her face helped. She was smiling. Smoke leaking from the crevices of her teeth. Like a dragon. He returned her smile.

“What?” he asked coyly.

“Oh nothing.” She blew smoke. “You. I didn’t think you’d come back.”

“How could I stay away? This is where the party is at.” He jested.

They were flirting. He realized this. But his inhibitions were null.

“I hope that’s not all you came back for.” She opened her legs slightly.

Her ditzy, floral, babydoll dress barely covered her skinny, tan thighs as it was. Her lap was shadowed by the dashboard of the sedan.

She was probably an attractive woman once, he thought. Before the drugs and premature aging. Before the sun had taken its own tax.

“Come here.”

“Where?”

She sat forward, reached across the console, and grabbed the front of his short sleeve button-up. Teresa pulled him almost into her lap. Shamus grasped the dash to support himself, the stick shift boring a hole in his sternum while she shoved her lips against his. She was salty. He’d always remember that. Her other hand grabbed at his belt buckle—a commemoration trophy of sorts for his first year in California. King had bought it for him at the Tuolumne County fair. It was reservation silver. With a Native American Thunderbird in the center, inlayed with turquoise and coral. It was precious to him. He thought of King seeing him now, in this moment, with mild apprehension—if not fear. King was generous, but on his own terms. This wasn’t even his fault, but he knew that wouldn’t matter. If he caught them…

This wasn’t the first time a woman, even an older woman, had forced herself on him. Nor was it even a rare occurrence; in fact, the woman he had lost his virginity to a friend of his mothers. He was fourteen. He was thirty-seven. He never saw it coming. He had just flushed the toilet when she opened the door of the bathroom and closed it behind her. Much like Teresa, she grabbed him. He didn’t even get to zip after taking a piss. It was over in a matter of minutes. Maybe seconds. It was his first time after all. Then she left as abruptly as she burst in. Never said a word. And neither did he. When he emerged from the bathroom, she was sitting on the couch with his mom cackling about something on the television—smoking menthols and drinking screwdrivers. Ash all over the dark lacquer of the coffee table.

Mom never knew. Of course. And he never talked about it. To anyone. Not even to brag. Not necessarily because it made him feel depraved, or harmed, or because it was technically statutory rape. He just didn’t want the attention or fuss or to be seen as any more different than he already felt that he was. Things just went on as if nothing had happened. And it never did again. She had gone right back to never even acknowledging his presence like any other adult friend of his mother’s. Women are scary.

And that’s just what he was thinking now as Teresa unskillfully searched the inside of his mouth with her tongue. Even still, it wasn’t the worst kiss Shamus had ever had. He pushed her back to get some air back into his lungs.

“Woah-ho-ho! I’ve already had my tonsils removed. Thank you!”

She slumped backwards and bit her lip while smiling. He had sobered up some and thought that the lighting wasn’t doing her any favors in this moment.

“And here I thought I was the drunk one. We should get you upstairs.” He offered.

“Oh. I like the sound of that.” She giggled again as she put a foot up on the console.

Somehow, she had lost her sandal, and her toes were quickly edging across his thigh toward his groin.

“Alright you. Let’s get out of this car.” He reached over down by the car’s pedals and retrieved her missing sandal.

Teresa pushed Shamus against the door of her apartment.

“Quiet! Shhhh!” she giggled. “My daughter is asleep.”

She pressed herself against him.

“Come inside.”

“I should go home.”

“Nooooo. Come in and party with me.”

He knew what she meant. He weighed the pros and cons as she hugged onto im and swayed back and forth, humming. The yellow glow of her porch light was uncomfortably bright. She didn’t seem to mind the insects that bounced off them as they stood there. Flying termites, mosquito eaters, earwigs on the stucco. Then again, Teresa might be the world’s largest mosquito as he was sure the hickey she was working on was drawing blood.

Suddenly, Shamus saw someone standing in the dark of the courtyard. Staring. He slowly unattached Teresa from his neck but she wasn’t coming off easily so without thinking he shoved her. A little harder than he should have, gentler than he’d have liked to.

“Hey!” he yelled at the watcher. “Who is that?”

He walked slowly towards them.

“Shamus, who…”

“Shh!”

“You need something, buddy?”

The watcher didn’t move. His eyes large and bright against darkness. All of the courtyard was soaked in the yellow glow of the courtyard lampposts except one corner. The very corner the stranger stood in. Shamus kept his possessed gaze, approaching more and more slowly the more apprehensive he became. He stopped ten yards from the figure and felt that was enough. He could still only make out the man’s eyes, but Shamus could tell the watcher was taller by several inches.

“Listen. You…”

The man’s eyes disappeared for a moment and it startled Shamus, who took a step back. It somehow increased his overall sense of danger and unease.

“You need to get out of here.” Adding more fierceness to his voice, incidentally, caused him to appear more scared.

“Shamus, come back, please.” Teresa was sobering up in the situation as well.

He motioned for her to stay back.

“Look, guy,” He started toward the man again, “I’m getting pretty fucking sick and tired of this hide and go…”

Suddenly, the darkness flickered to light and Shamus stalled. He was five feet away from a lamppost that he swore used to a man suddenly. And face to face with the biggest moth he had ever seen. It was so beautiful, Shamus marveled. Yet he still felt terrified. Exposed. Still unable to unlock his eyes or move. He started to shake. His eyes filling with tears.

Teresa burst into laughter, jolting him back to reality. The massive insect slowly closed its wings, obscuring the eyes of its wings. Shamus’ functions came back to him. He wiped his eyes with his wrist.

“That’s the biggest fucking bug I’ve ever seen!” Teresa was unexpectedly right behind him now.

“Fucking hell! I was about to shit britches!” he said, making light of his own mortal terror he felt moments before.

“Let’s get high.” Teresa said.

The apartment was dim as they entered. Laughing at themselves and shushing one another. They searched for the living room light switch that seemed to change locations every time they drank.

“Shhhhhh…!” Teresa giggled drunkenly. “She’s going to yell at us again!”

She found the light. She put her hands over her mouth and snorted.

“Oh, shit! Turn it back off!”

Shamus flipped the switch again.

“What?”

“She’s asleep at the table!” she laughed.

Amber was slumped over her books. Only her shoulders visible above the yellow, floral vinyl covered chair.

“Aw, poor baby. I’m gonna scare her.”

Shamus scanned the room. He felt that unease again. The stove hood light was on, but the rest of the house was dark. He wondered if Amber didn’t intend to sleep in the bedroom, why hadn’t she chosen the couch again? Teresa crept toward Amber, looking back at him and giggling.

“Come on, Teresa, don’t.”

“Shh!”

She crouched low behind her.

“Time. For. Bed!”

She sprung up and grabbed Amber from behind. Teresa’s cheek was sticky as it touched the back of Amber’s neck. For that’s all there was. The chrome edges of the, once cream-colored, Formica table held a perfectly still pool of her daughter’s blood.

Teresa’s hoarse screams filled the night as Shamus approached the table from the side, giving it as wide a berth as possible in the small apartment. Teresa had collapsed to the floor and crawled to the loveseat where she crouched against its backside.

“My baby! My baby!” She skreiched repeatedly. Her voice filled with fear, anger, remorse.

Shamus stared at the inside of the girl’s neck wondering how this could be real. He leaned against the wall and slid to the floor. He felt both glad, and alone, that his family was miles away in Nebraska.

"I want to go home."

Part 3.

Brothers in Crime.

…to be Continued.

J.M.Liles ©️2024

A paper-thin promise of

Forever—

Cliché, a copy, mantra.

Forgotten connubial connotation—

To have, to hold, to possess.

The picket fence

Is a cage,

In which,

To forfeit

Your rights, Your thighs, Your identity,

Til’ Death—

Not age.

J.M.Liles ©️2024

I get sick a lot.

Sick of society. Sick of self.

It gets worse with age.

My body cannot handle

The density

The overwhelming

The proverbial

YOU.

Because you make me sick.

You

Who only bears

YOU—

Fruit

No labor.

You

Who do not mask

Your elucidations of

Far from free.

Take liberty

With guns.

Spread legs only

For deflowering

And if it were anything other than

Witless power—

We’d be One and One but

Transparent with phobia

Strepitous with ache for a better

Yesterday

When it was all take

No make.

Naked—

You make me sick.

With envy

That I don’t have phallic

Tendency

And whitewashed taste

Or think that everything BUT

Gray matters.

Gay is but a verb in your mouth

That still tastes

Somehow sour

To Salt of Earth sinners,

Who doesn’t like the sparkle of sugar?

You make me sick.

Because You think

I'm sick

To exist.

Rally

For Your

Existential crisis.

Midlife cries to

"Jesus" and an

Afterparty

With Dionysus—

Just to sow one last oat

Without Oh…

Because that’s Your right,

So long as You pay

Your penances

And pray the gay

Away

We cross lines

That are

Stenciled thin.

Barge uninvited in

To minds

Where we’ve always been.

You think,

Naturally,

We don’t fit

But if Gaia has anything

To say

It’s that the paradox

Is Darwin’s

And production

Limited

With nobody

Listening.

J.M.Liles ©️2024

No time for rest

Here comes the steady threat,

With broken bones

He built this throne

And there He hangs

His cracked head;

Stay unseen, stay unheard

When He has the urge,

For

To love Him

Is to Fear Him—

This Love

Is the sharpest blade,

This Love guts!—

With a different pair of hands

For a every different day;

Conquest is a crime

Of good intention

Apologies of

Repeat lines

Who never speak,

But for between the grind

Of jagged teeth;

The King is in recline

Felled by His own sword,

Gold in His veins

Diluted with

All-purpose shame,

This is the Dynasty He’s left—

A sprawling wreckage of Pain

A pitiful testament

Laid vast

In one Man’s name;

Here lied the King of California

Glassy-eyed

Sacrifice—

All His Dragons in His head;

Here lies the King of California

Alone in his La-Z-Boy, trailer,

Dead as his cigarette—

His legacy,

Lapsed cable,

Static on the tv set.

For all those whom my father hurt,

directly or indirectly–I am sorry.

J.M.Liles ©️2024

PROLOGUE

There are times when telling a difficult story could be likened to the peeling away of skin or a scab, but some go deeper—like sawing into scar tissue; these stories are accompanied by a sense of unease and unwillingness. For some, that unwillingness had little to do with much else than they’d rather leave it buried—like a bullet too close to an artery. They would rather not delve too deeply into the connotations, for theirs is a simple life unaffected by the ramifications this far. The difficult pieces were merely that—a single stone in an otherwise smooth path.

For me, I followed the path I first set foot on, growing used to stepping from one perilous occurrence to another. So many stones did I encounter, that it would appear that my journey were paved with cutting realities; and it’s not for pain or weariness that I’ve failed to record it until now, but for not knowing how to disclose it.

Where pain brings clarity, the feelings that I had during these times are not the same feelings that I carry now, and even that can warp certainty.

For that reason, I’ve sat with them—trying them out in different lights, wearing them about like a cloak to see how they fit at different times. Occasionally, I would peddle these stories to an interested audience only to find that the full weight of the truth… isn’t always best…isn’t always welcome even—it’s too heavy for those not prepared for its overwhelming weight.

I then curtailed the edges of fact or redacted some entirely to avoid unwanted penalties to my own character as well as those of others. I made the stories more bearable for you.

So, I am going to tell my story the only way that I can at this point: as an amalgamation of truths from others along with my own, compiled by a fearing and imaginative child; through the filter of a resourceful and knowledge-hungry young woman; through the teeth of a seething and angry dog of destruction; and as a recovering human, seeking the end of it all.

You will find no real names in this book. Some scenarios will be watered down, while others embellished to mislead for the sake of those who could be tarnished by its pages.

Why tell this story at all, then? Ultimately—to be clean of it. To be emptied. Having carried the various versions over the years, it has been as a blight keeping those parts of my past alive and writhing beneath the surface. I’ve come to realize that I could never be totally free without finally cutting it out and abandoning it forever to the ether; which brings me here:

Out of all the stories that I know, this one just might be mine…

Chapter 1

My Life as a Dog

It would’ve been a beautiful sight: softly swelling and golden against a blue sky. The wind was warm as it abruptly pushed dry grasses one way then suddenly the other, changing the color-tone of the hills like they were fabric, velvet. Again, it would’ve been a beautiful sight, except for the vast auto graveyard filling the valley; a spectacle in and of itself—stunning, in its own way.

To a small child, the steel monoliths seemed to stretch endlessly, but as these things go, a little vantage would dispel any such notion. Say, if you crawled carefully atop one of the rusted demigods, you would see the necropolis spanned only to the base of the next ridge—a quarter mile away.

There were flecks of paint, dark blue, stuck in the baby skin of my palms and knees. My shins were brown and orange with rust, scrapes, and blood as Kimo laid sphinxlike beside me, licking the bits of iron from me then his own massive paws. I tied my tiny fingers into the thick fur of the shepherd. The pungent smell of him filled my nostrils, but it wasn’t unpleasant; rather, it was reassuring. Even as an adult, I still find the reek of dogs ‘comforting’. If there’s a dog in your life, for me, that’s synonymous with a life being lived well.

Kimo had been the only pup sired by Jack, that King kept; an old black shepherd with keen, bright orange eyes—not unlike the rust on my chubby, child’s legs. Jack was now too old to be running around with the pack and stayed close to King at the wrecking yard office. Kimo was larger than his father—he was the largest shepherd most visitors to the junkyard claimed to have seen. King was offered money for him on several occasion, but he turned all bids down. Not because he loved the dog, but simply because he didn’t want other man to have what was his. He’d soon as shoot the dog himself than let another man take him.

The wrecking yard now had a dozen such German Shepherd dogs at any given time. Even now, several of Kimo’s own half-grown pups sniffed about and inside the doorless vehicle below us while others surveyed those surrounding. One pup gave a low, throaty warning; suddenly, the entire group of them raced passed us like sharks on the scent of blood. They emerged, juggling a rattlesnake and, incidentally, their lives before tugging it apart. Such was life here on the fringes. Wild. Brutal. Beautiful. Forgotten.

Kimo sat here beside me now as a sort of mercy provided of this place. I believed that. Not King’s mercy, for it was King’s own inattention to blame for Kimo’s close call. But rather a mercy only shown to those who were conditioned to never show, never need—but thrived under when given.

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The rancher could hear them screaming as he ran from the house to the basin of the hill where a single, small shed stood. Pressing the rifle tight against his chest, he ran as fast as his failing hip would allow. As he grew closer, the voices grew fainter. One-by-one, they went silent until there were more. It was then that he stopped suddenly, still holding his rifle close to his chest. The beat of his heart shook his whole body as he slowly settled the wood butt against his shoulder in anticipation. Stepping lightly, he approached the shed. He could smell the iron in the air.

Still keeping space between himself and the doorway, currently obstructed by a dead ewe—he adjusted his eyes from the bright sun to the depths of the shed, and there he could clearly see the blood-soaked demon, illuminated by trespassing sunbeams from old damage to the tin roof. The shepherd stared directly at him and wagged his tail as if waiting for compliments. He’d done good. He had killed them. Every last one of them noisy sheep. And the Shetland pony.

The incensed hobby rancher shot into shed, grabbed the sun-bleached, carved wood handle of the door, and forcefully pulled it shut—heaving the heavy, dead ewe with it. Quickly he slat-locked the door and listened. After a moment, Kimo broke the silence with an escalating, long, painful bellow that made the farmer’s nape skin to prickle. The man turned and ran back toward the house. It was high time someone did something about those Liles’ dogs before they killed again. Maybe next time, a person.

When the authorities arrived to retrieve the dog, he was gone. The rookie and deputy looked for him amongst the dead ewes thinking the gun shot, if as severe as the farmer had indicated, would surely have put the animal down.

Most of the livestock had their throats ripped open. Few were missing anything except their lifeforce. It looked as though the dog had killed for the sake of killing. One ewe’s head was bent backwards with the top of the head resting on its hindquarters, as though it had been peeled back to that point; from the other end, you had an almost clean look into its esophagus. The younger officer pointed out the absurdity, trying to seem tough, until the animal unexpectedly expelled aloud, baritone and breathy crow which spouted gore. Postmortem movement. He had studied it in his classes to get the badge he wore, but knowing the terminology didn’t help the young officer keep his last meal…only pay for it.

His senior, the deputy, ignored this and called him over. He guided the peaked rookie’s attention to a small opening at the corner of the shed. The young man wiped spittle from his chin and asked what it was—indicating the strange buildup clinging to the top of the tin. The deputy pulled the alien entity and it sprung open extending like an accordion made of fresh flesh, hair, and blood obviously fileted from the dog’s body as he had chewed just enough of the tin to then push his massive frame through the opening. The young officer lost the rest of his lunch.

Twice in a day, the dog had evaded death, but it had been over the past few years that they had received many complaints of a huge dog attacking livestock. They were sure it came from the only place within miles with shepherds and shepherds, mind you, with a reputation for their vicious entourage. Locals were terrified to go anywhere near the place, which seemed bad for business in the public’s eye—but for King, the deputy knew for a long time now, it’s exactly what he wanted. So, when he and his rookie partner did not find the dog’s mangled body—not along the road, not on the hillsides—it was last straw to drive to King’s Wrecking Yard to see if, by some ungodly marvel or utter demonic will, that the animal made it home.

“Stay with the car.” The Deputy told him as he slammed his own door.

King heard a voice and peered out the dust-caked window of the repair shop. The deputy had already made it halfway through the dirt parking lot before King flipped the switch from tormented, guilty, paranoid to self-possessed, indignant, and foreboding. He exited the building, shutting the door with a heavy swing.

“Afternoon, Officer,” he acknowledged.

“King.” The deputy nodded, watching his disfigured reflection get longer in King’s sunglasses.

A staple of his. Truth was though, King was an anxious mess most of the time, but his puffed-up bravado, dark tanned, muscular appearance, and sunglasses…they hid much of that…and honestly, as nervous as King was, the deputy was twice as much so for he knew, worse than any cornered, wounded dog—was an anxious addict of King’s magnitude.

“Here for a pickup? Little early.” King stated.

The deputy looked over his shoulder to make sure his partner wasn’t listening.

“We shouldn’t talk about that out here.”

He turned his attention back to King, squinting against the sun.

It was best to get the point as soon as possible as to diffuse the situation before King started creating scenarios in his head that weren’t happening.

“King,” the deputy looked about himself, “now that dog you got. The big one. Well, it butchered old Bill Owens’ flock. Even killed his goddamn pony.”

“A pony? Huh.” he almost sounded proud as he crossed his arms.

“Thing is, the Owens’ got grandkids and they’re all real upset right now that that dog is still out there. They’re gone want recompence.”

Though King remained wholly unchanged, the air around them stiffened noticeably.

“Now mind you,” the deputy offered, “they’re not asking to press charges,and it won’t cost you a dime,” he paused, “not this time.” But they’re gone wanna see that dog put down.”

“Put down, you say?”

King reached above his ear and found a Marlboro.

“That’s right.” The deputy replied.

King took his time lighting his cigarette, trying to calm his nerves. His face was as placid and unreadable as the stretch of highway that brought them here and it made the deputy uneasy.

“Did it happen to show back up here? The dog.”

“Haven’t seen it.” He blew two columns of smoke out of each nostril. “Could ask my brothers.”

The deputy looked down and took note of the blood trickle trail and large paw prints headed the way of the four garage bays.

“That would be good.”

The deputy saw a young dog peer around the side of the building. Another two shepherds slowly made their way to the covered porch in front of the office door from the opposite direction. One dog laid down, but all three dogs were at attention. Watching. Waiting.

“Uh huh.” The deputy thought a moment, probably weighing the various outcomes should he press the issue. He looked back up to peer at his reflection in King’s glasses again, then over his shoulder at his partner straining to hear the conversation from the passenger side of the black and white Olds.

“Alright then.”

The deputy started to turn away, feeling slightly vexed, he stopped. “Jus’ make sure you put it down, that is if’n it does show back up.” He said this standing with his gun hip pointed toward King, taking great care to not look the man in the eye again. He knew King didn’t like to be told, but the deputy had a job to do—his real job.

“Probably be a small mercy to the thing if’n he’s in as bad a shape as I think he may be. Owens’ are right, you know,” He started back to his car. “I’d be a might bit worried having a dog like that around these kids you got here too...”

King’s hand grabbed the deputy by the back of the neck, snatched his wrist with his other hand, and slammed the officer onto the hood of the car—it was hard to tell if the deputy was screaming from the surprise, the angle he was bent, or the scorching heat of the metal on the flat of his cheek. His partner stumbled out of the car and with a shaky hand, pointed his sidearm at King, who paid him no mind even as he yelled, “Let him go! Let him go now!”

It was then that the dogs descended—snarling, lunging. The young rookie pointed his gun at them, and they backed off, still snarling—pacing and looking for an entrance.

King continued to ignore the young man as though he were but a gnat in his orbit.

“I don’t like anyone telling me how to treat my property,” he gritted his teeth near the officer’s ear, “and I sure as hell don’t like anyone telling me how to treat my kids. Not you. Not any other pig. No anyone. You hear me? If you want to keep this arm,” King wrenched the deputy’s wrist backwards until it was likely to snap, “you will keep your goddamn nose out the business that’s not yours and just keep it to the business we do have. You got me?”

“Yes! Let me up!”

His voice was almost drowned by the barking.

“What was that?”

“Yes! Just let me up! Let me up!”

King flung the rest of the man’s body onto the car. The deputy pushed himself off as fast as he could. His face already had a red welt ready to blister. He held his cheek and got into the car. The young officer, still standing beside the door, confounded over what had just taken place.

“Get in the car, Dicky!” the deputy yelled.

“Well, ain’t we gonna…”

“Get in the fucking car!”

The young man scrambled back into the car as awkwardly as he had gotten out of it. The car lurched into reverse and completed a wide, reckless backward turn before switching gears, and speeding off down the highway.

King watched the deputy go until the dust had settled and he heard the engine no longer. He sighed, then turned and walked directly to the first garage bay. Stepping inside, he looked down at the huge dog, side heaving erratically, reaching for air. The dog, unable to lift his head, peered out the corner of his eye at King. He was dark with blood, impossible to tell how much was his and how much belonged to his kills. King stared at Kimo. Cold.

He started for the backdoor to the office as he said, “If you die you better crawl somewhere where I won’t fucking smell you rot.”

He opened the door and just before he slammed it, muttered, “Stupid, fucking mutt.”

Kimo didn’t die. That night, King gathered the dog up and carelessly threw him into the back of his Chevy short-wide. He didn’t make a sound. King then piled us kids into the cab. We were never alone with Mom. It was the rule. Even if King was out well past what should have been a normal bedtime for a five and seven-year-old. He kept us close.

The windows were down. The breeze that came in was hot. I could hear the whoosh of the cars passing. The sun still glowing low like an ember on the horizon while the pink sky was slowly forced down by a heavy, dark blue veil of twilight.

I peered through the back glass of the truck. I could see Kimo’s ribs slowly moving up and down with each orange streetlight we passed under.

“Turn around.”

I obeyed.

When we arrived home. Our house, in the middleclass Modesto suburb, looked like any other house from the outside—dirt yard, palms, stucco—but inside it was chaos. It was also hazy, thick with cigarette smoke and stale Budweiser that clung to the furniture, the brown and tan carpet, and stained near the tops of the walls yellow. Bubble-glass windows in the bathroom heavy with mildew, the windows nailed shut from the inside to keep the men of shadows out. No room unscathed from King’s paranoia or the holes it made every wall.

My older brother Logan ran to our mom as she opened the front door. I could see him waving his arms as he explained the situation and see Mom’s eyes growing incredulous with each small flail. She walked quickly towards the back of the truck.

“GET…” my mom stopped at King’s voice. “…back…in…the house.” She slowly backed away from the truck bed and turned back the way came.

“I’ll bring him in,” his voice softened, almost apologetically—like he was a normal father coming home from a rough day at work and had uncharacteristically lost his temper.

King lugged the dog into the house, into the kitchen, then flopped him onto the orange, 1960s metal and Formica kitchen table. Blood crusted fur, eyes caked shut. Mom’s hand covered her trembling lower jaw as her eyes welled up with tears uncertain that she was allowed to have. She stood frozen, unknowing what to do until King told her.

“Bring me the first aid kit.”

J.M.Liles ©️2024

Inside out

I walk this world inside out

And what does it matter anyway?

They couldn’t separate

What they’ve known to begin

What they know from pages within

Their self-hate, shoved in their face

By those comfortable in one’s own skin

“Pariah!

Riddled with sin”

I’ll be just as transparent as they are

Paper thin

In resolve—

Hollow souls

Holding no more than what they can

Comfortably and

Discreetly absolve

This score,

It gets old

You tell us that only we choose

But such is apathy

To believe you're throwing a rope

While holding the end of a noose

"The Choice is yours."

Translation: How tight do you want the cord,

Fool

Passively aggrieved

Passively shook

Passing without even a second look,

A second thought—

I prefer it that way,

Need your help

Like I need your version of hell

Surprise,

This is it!

Such a short distance we fell!

One plane

One life

One existence on the edge of a knife

Just move along now

You who are vain and froth

With anticipation

These glorified, ambiguous indignations

You see the world as black vs. white

As if you’ve never been rife with guilt

Or built to spill with lust

As you lay awake at night

Wondering what was in it for Jesus

No accountability

No blame

No compromise

No shame

Down...

Down…

Down...

Goes your waning light

Nowhere but back to dust

Hide behind your Eucharist

And mistrust of Self

Always in mire, your thoughts

As they all talk at once

Couldn’t pick out a clear voice

Or distinguish an individual thought amongst

Hive mind.

Gnashing teeth, mincing words

Legion.

You’re all the same.

J.M.Liles ©️2021

April 1, 2022

In the shower

First attack in years

Pressing face against tile

Praying to porcelain

Silent scream

Deafening emotion

Water beating

.

.

.

Down

.

.

.

Weaving around

The gentle swells of a small and

Knotted back

Chest heaving, hardly breathing

As I unbar

Air caught, at last

Forehead to basin

Both hands pressing

As if keeping this heart inside,

Like a storm

Pulling at the tethers of a memory

I have welcomed forgetting

Every moment weathered

Because some spiraling hope

A promise of a consistent state of being

Of finally feeling

.

.

.

Together

.

.

.

Without the arsenal of dope

This

Is

Not

Supposed to happen

Here’s the joke:

I have a cabinet full of

CAREFULLY

PRESCRIBED

ANSWERS

To help me believe like any of this

REALLY

FUCKING

MATTERS

For without

I don’t particularly have anything

On which to hold

Except doubt

Do I really need another friend on social?

Another idol? Boy/girlfriend?

Do I need another inspirational book

To tell me how to reach my life goals? (Goals?)

Because honestly

There just aren’t as many bridges to cross,

As there are to burn

Not as much to keep,

As there is to let go

Not as much to gain,

As there is that can be sold

In fact, seems—

Around every fucking turn

Every bend,

Something else to dread

Something else to break your heart with…

Yet another life lesson

LEARNED

Or tragic END

And I need more like-education

Like the world needs another lost cause

Or hole in His hands,

Like we need another self-satisfactory,

Spoken-word benediction (sans action)

Just to be able to sleep again

Why didn’t you leave us in darkness

In fabric laden with Stars

These are

The things that keep me up at night

The things that hold my breath prisoner

My thoughts, in my throat

By knife

And just like that, it’s over

Body unfold.

Gather self.

Stop the pour.

Towel.

Time to go.

Close the door.

Take your pills.

Hang-up self-will.

It’s a new day to chase the dollar bill.

Easy, when you have no more dreams to follow.

And, please, don’t forget to swallow.

J.M.Liles ©️2022

November 2006. Part 1.

I was twenty-five. I had just moved to Little Rock from Fayetteville, Arkansas a few months prior. The man I had moved there for had just walked in the door, still smelling of stale alcohol, stale cigarettes, staler ego, and…well he smelled like Midtown...let me explain...

There are a lot of interesting Yelp! reviews out there about Midtown (including my own if you’re interested enough to actually peruse them), but I will give you the gist here…

Midtown Billiards!—the bar no one wanted to admit they had ever been inside of, yet every local ended up at there at least once in their life.

Firstly, if you are the Designated Driver, you WILL find a new level of hate for people you did not ever think you were capable of; if you ARE NOT the DD, you will internalize that hate for yourself...here’s why: say you somehow managed to stay upright in the 2am line wrapping around the block and make it inside the establishment, then in some god awful turn of events, you've stayed for the ‘ugly lights’—you WILL leave broke even though PBR tallboys are only a buck-fifty; have several unintelligible and heated conversations most of which end in either a fistfight and/or needing a tetanus shot, a mystifying enemy alliance and/or making-out with a complete stranger who may or may not have a full set of teeth and needing a tetanus shot; you WILL also wait in line for the single-person restroom for no less than 30 minutes AND a stranger WILL be snorting drugs off the back of the toilet you are brave enough to sit on; you will leave without an article of basic clothing; if you’re smart, you will have the best burger of your entire stupid existence while finding both misery and comfort to be an impeccable blend of seasoning; there is a 50/50 chance you WILL leave your credit/debit card and open tab having to then return and quite possibly repeat all the prior events leading up until now...and seven days later, you will STILL smell like Midtown. Oh. And you’ll do it all on a weekday. Sound awful? It is. It was also glorious.

If you were not in the service industry, you likely found yourself at Midtown because of breaking up with someone, wanting to break up with someone, having lost your job, were about to do something extremely stupid and needed an alibi conducive to temporary insanity that locals would understand and possibly forgive…or if you had simply given up on life.

If you told anyone knowledgeable of Midtown that you actually enjoyed the place, you would be categorically an anarchist, sadist, or masochist and likely steered clear of. That's the sort of place Midtown was. Midtown Billiards!—when all other doors close, Midtown is there for you!...at least until 5am.

It was now 8am and my partner at the time just made it home after dropping off “a friend”. It is how is sounds. It was always how it sounds. To say we were in a bad place in our relationship would be criminal withholding.

December 2004. Kismet.

I met him on MySpace when it was still a social platform and cool to use pseudonyms and alter egos. I was living in Fayetteville with a divorcee named Deloris. I think she invited me there not only because she was kind and a true Christian, but because her ex-husband was still living in the garage and it chapped his ass to no end to have me there. at the time.

Edward along with his best friend Leo, who modeled every part of his existence and personality after the the good doctor Hunter S. Thompson, and who had purportedly “found [me] first” sent him my profile stating, “Look at this fucking muppet freak! Let's write her...” Which they did.

I was his type: young, pale, eccentric, redheaded (for the time)...a Gemini. Once they received the green flag—both fellas made the trip from the Rock to my town for a visit. We had such debauchery. Along with two of my friends, Angel and Goth Emily (our circles were wide those days and many of our friends had the same first names—it was easiest to address everyone per clique honorifics: Goth Emily vs. Preppy Emily).

We were all instant friends. And Edward and I, we were an immediate colliding of celestial forces. We had left the group to go for a walk. He had called us “kismet” then he kissed me.

We could not stay away from one another, as far as technology at the time was concerned. He was, by admission, obsessed. But as weeks passed and months surpassed, I rejected any idea of an official relationship due to distance and other developing interests. He was also nearly a decade older than I. It seemed like a barrier I that I was not sure I was ready for.

He was overly upset. Edward said it was Gemini in me—the chaos. He said it as a romanticized insult. I am not much for astrology and basing one’s critical thinking and emotions on such seemed ludicrous to me even then as a young person. I thought he was kind of lame in that way. Typical only child bullshit, I call it. He was also a bit stuck in the 90s with his big flannels and tapered jeans, a bad haircut, and huge Tori Amos fan. There was nothing edgy or hipster about him. Albeit he was educated, I'd say he was scared to use that education much to boast himself, never knowing if someone else in the room would be more knowledgeable than he. He was the sort who'd rather not try to compete and that way he couldn’t ’lose’.

So why was I even attracted to him? He was intelligent, charming, he had a fast talk and I liked it. And for all his wildcard egoism—I still found him exciting at the time. It was never love. There were times I thought it was love but it was never love...but at times there was need. Whatever, I was young, it was novel, fun, and felt a little dangerous.

We cat and moused for a few years like that. There were as many fallouts as reconnections, but he always managed to drive up on holidays regardless if he was mad or not. I'm not entirely sure what he got out of it those days. He would bring considerate gifts or take me to dinner. Almost like charity at times. I think those days was when he was most authentically selfless when it came to us. I think he was genuinely there just to be there and not to get anything.

We hadn’t talked for a bit when he asked me to come to Little Rock to see his band play. I had moved out of Deloris' place and in with my new roommate Goth Rachel (not Goth Emily, Goth Rachel). Goth Rachel went with me to Little Rock.

Edward was the lead singer of a local indie rock band at the time, Chimera, playing the iconic Juanita’s Cantina. I had never seen them play but I knew they were practicing a lot those days. I had only heard the song he “wrote about [me].” It was kind of dis, to be honest—calling out my supposed Gemini-ism and aloofness. It was exhilarating. And Edward had a new look. I admit I was swooning. He knew it. My friend knew it and hated it. She did not like him from the start.

Soon after, Edward announced that he was ready to “grow up” and he wanted to be with me. He asked if I would give it a chance. Even at my early age—I had been married before, and this ask of domesticity gave me great anxiety. I still had so much I wanted to do and experience that had been out of reach before, but he said he wanted to help me achieve those things, not hinder but be part of them. I gave in.

He he quit his band, had a huge moving away party (he had never lived outside the Little Rock metro area), and Edward moved to the much smaller, much more Conservative area and city of Fayetteville, Arkansas to be with me. I was surprised, scared, excited.

He got a job right away bartending at a country club and was looking for his own place while staying with Goth Rachel and I but it wasn't long before she decided she didn't like living there with him. It was a shock but it sort of worked out...except I barely saw her again. She must've knew something I didn't. In any case--Edward and I were happy...until we weren't.

The first time he dumped me, it was because I found out that he was pursuing his ex of seven years through MySpace. One of his friends told me, or maybe she did. Lucy—a pale, educated, redheaded Gemini... It hurt. We fought. He left and went to work. Then when he returned, he returned 'sorry'. That was the only time he would apologize for overstepping boundaries with other women. I imagine he had talked to Leo, our remote mediator some days, and Leo had told him to pull his head out of his ass.

Edward assured me he just felt lost and was homesick. He missed his friends. He missed being known. He missed the band. His mom. His hometown. She reached out and then they just kept talking. o his point—it was all online after all, and nothing happened. I understood, to a degree—though it did not lessen the hurt, but again, I could understand it. He needed to have more here than just me. He needed a hobby or to work on his relationship with his father.

Part of the reason he believed it was (again) “kismet” to move to Fayetteville was not just for me, but to repair the broken relationship with his father and stepfamily.

I met them soon after that. We had a pleasant dinner and conversation. We stayed over and I went to bed before the others.

As soon as I left the room, his father at once told him to break up with me and to pursue furthering his education—no mention of goodness of heart factoring in. The man told Edward he should go back to school and turn his Bachelors of Journalism into something useful within a graduate program.

I don't think we even saw his father after that, he had not much time for us as he and his wife were much too busy teaching at university, cultivating flowers, and their Pyrenees dogs; they were too busy for a long lost, adult-ish son who didn't meet their standards. Really, the only thing Edward and I truly had in common was the very thing that ended up destroying us in the end—a lot of family trauma.

He was the only son who had been rejected by his intellectually superior father yet again—to join a new family of academics; a family with two PhDs, and her two gifted sons while leaving his own son to be raised by a helicopter mom. And his mom meant well—she was also an intellectual giant, but much more superior was her ability to avoid holding Edward accountable for his actions.

An me? I was just a fucked-up orphan whose mother died the day before their 13th birthday...who had a heroin addicted, drug-trafficking father that I had not seen since I was 5, and I grew up in a rural cult... If that’s not disaster… For it's these very things that end up defining a large portion of a person early on in life, and unless we come to some form of agreement with our past selves, it can become our everything—all we can see, feel, do, know. The more we age and avoid pulling out the toxic roots, the more those roots wrap themselves around and choke out even the good things. Twisting, intermingling, eventually breaking us apart from within.

Most days, he and I we were good--we were good when we were sober anyway. The flow of alcohol swept us up and it that was every time. Jack and Coke was his drink and it turned him into a Hyde—a violent, narcissist, aggressor. Alcohol for me--it exacerbated shame, insecurity over my purported shortcomings, and essentially created a “Princess and the Pea” effect—where I felt everything he said (and meant) even on into later relationships.

It was as if he needed to inflict the same damage that his father had laid upon him onto me. The more he belittled me for my insecurities and ‘clinginess’, the more codependent I became, and the more it made his father right, causing him to see me as just an obstacle to get over, dragging him down lower and lower. I wondered if this was what happened between his parents--if these same dramas played out between them.

He said it was I who brought these behaviors out of him. That I somehow cultivated it with my naivety and presence. He also said that our age gap was glaring in intelligence, in life experience, and goals—he said, that he despised me.

The next time he ended our relationship, I found out that he had started a ‘thing’ with a 19-year-old girl he worked with. Contradictions are always good indicators of something being terribly wrong or as affirmations/vindication that the problem is not actually ‘you’. Like in the movie The Matrix, when seeing a glitch or experiencing déjà vu—I was realizing quickly, and to my horror, that the man I lived with and had invited into my life—this charming, witty, responsible, educated, industrious human who had pursued me for the better part of two years—he was in truth a callow, manipulative, petty, jealous, disloyal, and frightfully insecure person with an explosive, sometimes physically, aggressive streak.

I got the feeling that he had never been denied much in life and now he was in a position of forfeiting his freedom because he was stuck in a cage with me. The qualities that I had admired about him had another end—a pointy one. Using his quick wit and intelligence, he could rip me apart emotionally and mentally as swiftly and as deeply as any one person I had met aside from my fosters. And he was ruthless and fragile—anything could set him off if he were lubricated.

True enough is that we were bad for one another and probably always had been. Having ignored the initial misgivings and the red flags I had in the beginning leading up to this point, now made me really feel that “naive” shot he often took. It neither love nor “kismet,” it had been something else entirely dressed up to ‘make sense’ for him. The association with this place, with his father. His tenacious desire for me was rejection all along and it was rejection that made him abhor me now.

Amongst all the chaos—I fell ill.

September 2001. A Gut Feeling.

It was right before 911. I started having intense heart palpitations, gut churning, just FEAR. Immense feelings of FEAR. I’d black out and find myself in a corner with people coaxing me out or fetal on the floor. I know it sounds dramatic—it was. It changed my life. Sometimes I’d have multiple in a day and there was no apparent reason for them. Just a gut feeling that something was terribly, terribly wrong. Doom.

The first time I had one I found myself holding my head underneath a stainless-steel worktable smack in the middle of the lunch rush hour. The assistant managers were trying to calm me down while I hyperventilated. My coworker that disliked me most, took the tray I was supposed to be be delivering in a huff.

Sonic Drive-In was the first legal job that I ever had. I had started there when I wasn’t technically old enough to work, but my uncle and aunt who fostered me needed the money. I gave them my checks but pocketed all my tips without telling them—just like they pocketed all the state money they were getting for ‘taking care of me’.

Snow, rain, ice, 100+ weather, stalkers, garden-variety assholes…I took advantage of the laziness of my coworkers and did as much carhopping as they could afford not to do. I did this for years until the day I was finally able to run away home. Two of my older brothers were looking for a place to live but were low on funds—and it just so happened that their little sister had enough money to rent them a three bedroom house in a nice part of town just up the hill from her work, pay all the deposits and utilities—they just had to put their names on the documents. That day couldn’t have come at a better time as my uncle figured out that day that I was withholding funds. I took no greater pleasure than telling him he would not get a cent more from me nor would I be cleaning their house, doing their yard work, or abiding under the laws of their house ever again. Turns out, so long as they got my checks from the State—they did not try to get me back.

I was managing but I had developed a strange rash during the time of the first attacks. It had crept all the way around my midsection. Red dots turning into crusted, itchy scabs. I had initially supposed they were poison ivy, but it was winter. I did not have health insurance at the time, but it couldn’t be ignored. They had become painful.

The doctors diagnosed the rash as shingles and the attacks as a disorder caused by PTSD—panic disorder. I tried all manner of available treatments at the time, but it was booze that sent them into hibernation at the time.

September 2006. Congratulations.

We had decided to be roommates until he moved back to Little Rock. We were at our worst yet. He was out every night. I was out every night.

Most days my anxiety was causing me to vomit and feel ill often which was a surprise because I hadn’t had any attacks, not in four years. I felt alone and I was getting extremely depressed. I had started cutting again. I hadn’t done it in years. Like any idiot kid, I had started on the tops of my arms, which didn’t matter so much for me at the time because I wore arm warmers but in warm weather it wasn’t ideal. I wondered if I had tetanus.

I was working at JC Penney now and had been there for a few years. My coworkers were starting to notice I wasn’t the same. I didn’t talk much about my partner and, instead, relayed the health issues I was experiencing.

My boss put her hand on my forearm—unbeknownst her, below my arm warmer were evidence of last nights mental breakdown—I winced at the touch. She took me aside. Her normally jovial face was that of concern. She was a spunky lady in her late 50s, blonde, no taller than 5’2” with large white teeth in a very naturally tan, Cajun-descent face completely unashamed of sun, and wrinkles, and age spots. And the woman cursed more than any other older woman I had ever known. I adored her. She was also very perceptive.

She asked a few other questions about my symptoms and nodded thoughtfully during each answer. I was a full six inches taller than she, but even then, as we spoke, she still titled her head looking down her nose at me. She hated her reader glasses, but even when not wearing them, her mannerisms told you she owned them.

She squeezed my forearm tight—I could feel the scabs sticking to the arm warmer and pulling, reopening cuts that were only semi-closed and just starting to heal. Lowering her voice and raising herself on her tiptoes to be closer to my ear, she whispered, “I think you may be pregnant.”

My stomach somersaulted. All the blood fell from my face, pulling my heart into my stomach as it did. I felt feint. I, of course, threw up. It had not even occurred to me as a possibility. My boss discreetly told me to take the rest of the day off and get a test from an actual doctor. She told me where to go.

I gathered my things and headed for the exit of the workroom.

“JJ.”

I stopped. She approached me and lowered her voice again.

“I know things are bad. Even if you don’t wanna admit that. Remember there’s no shame in what you decide. Okay?”

I stared at her. Before this, I couldn’t have imagined not wanting my own child, regardless the situation. I had even judged one of my brothers for blindly going along with his ex’s decision on a potential abortion when she was pregnant with their daughter. I was so judgmental then. I had no idea about a lot of things.

“Congratulations!” doctor said. I stared at her. “Or not?” she offered.

I burst into tears. I told the doctor my situation. They acknowledged the nature of the relationship was not ideal, but they were more concerned if I were unable to stop drinking and potential feral alcohol syndrome. At the time, I thought that was an odd concern—of course, I could stop. I thought I could. I was scared, certainly—not necessarily of being a mother, but what his reaction would be.

I laid out all the facts. I was twenty-one weeks along. The pregnancy was definitely his considering the timeline. In fact, it must’ve happened close to the time he had moved in.

He was surprisingly calm about it. He was nice to me even. He laid down with me in my bed—he had been sleeping on an air mattress in the second bedroom since we split. I actually felt safe for the first time in the relationship—first time in a long time. I fell asleep in his arms.

I don’t remember the argument well. I do remember him telling me that after talking to his father, they had decided that I would get an abortion. That his father and stepmother would pay for it, and it was the best thing for everyone (and his future).

When I brought up my feelings, I was told I’d be ruining his life if I decided to keep it it—that there was no discussion. He went on to say that if I refused, he’d make my life a “living hell on earth just like it was for your mother”.

He couldn’t “deal” with my sobbing, so he left our townhouse and went out drinking with coworkers, already on standby from the country club where he tended bar to help him escape. He left me alone and scared.

I remember waking that morning to him entering the second bedroom. “Are you okay?” I asked his back.

He closed the door behind him.

He drove me to Little Rock, dropped me off at the clinic, and said he’d be back later. I watched him drive off in his Toyota Tacoma with the never-before-used bike rack, just standing there.

The next thing I remember after that is waking up in the after-care room—it was done, and I was in so much pain. He was there. He seemed different. Loving, even. Like a changed man. I remember crying tears of joy that he’d come back for me.

I’d find out years later that he met up with his friends back in Little Rock, making the rounds. His best friend asked where I was and when he’d nonchalantly told him, his friend nearly threw him out of his apartment—telling him he was selfish, and it was a vile act to strand me there alone going through this on my own. And as for his changed demeanor, this was just but his Dr. Jekyll—to play the caring, emotionally-intelligent partner to all who would care enough. Much of his charm was to ‘play’ the hero in public.

Things got better between us the next month as he was preparing to move back in November. He visited Little Rock a few times without me to see friends and My drinking had increased, as did the cutting. The surgery had done something to me emotionally. Changed me. I was losing weight daily.

I’m not sure how it happened but one day when he was in a good mood, he told he still cared for me still and suggested I go to Little Rock as well—that he thought, together or not, I’d have more opportunities. During our relationship, many if not all of my friendships had disappeared due to my unavailability and his lack of respect for them, so I felt there was nothing left for me here now and…it could be fun?

J.M.Liles ©️2024

I never thought of death as scary; life on the other hand…life is terrifying. Life is where every bit of suffering is.

September 2023. Introduction.

I was shamefully middling in my reaction for it wasn't the first time someone woke me in hysterics to the news of a relative’s traumatic passing. It also wasn't the first time I didn't respond as well as I should have to the grief of others. If any at all, my response was annoyed how the information was publicized, as much as when and where else it was publicized.

As I’ve gotten older, deaths in my family have become an overdramatization of situations. With each untimely funeral, we become more chagrined, more irrational (believing in curses and such), and more selfish.

It has since become my belief that many traumatic deaths were preventable and have been teetering on the ledge of the very same precipice for so long that most of us had either grown impatient in our watch, moved on, and/or accepted the foreseeable well before it ever happened; the shock, if any, was present simply because it hadn’t happened sooner.

And though there were a lot of cyclic conditions and responses here, I did have one that was a first: I didn't attend Scott's funeral—it was the first family funeral I hadn’t attended.

Truthfully, I had many reasons for not attending, both monetary and logistically. I also had my best friend in state—a trip that had been planned for months, almost cancelled due to COVID then last minute it was resurrected due to new information and regulations; however, these were not the responses that she wanted. My sister was angry. She was angry without saying why she was angry. She had made assumptions as to why I wasn’t there. She felt her trust had been broken by me a few times now.

"You were his favorite cousin!” It was more of an accusation than she had originally intended. I heard the shock in her own voice that she had said it, but they weren’t getting the apology from me that they wanted—the apology I am no longer capable of. Blame it on the 150mg of Venlafaxine I have been taking since the pandemic and my divorce, or the years of emotional, sometimes, physical damage that led up to that dosage that without, I would certainly still be having daily panic attacks, suicidal ideation, with the occasional nervous breakdown/life-spiral where I burn everything down with full intention of not coming back from it…and, of course, the deep well of depression that, at times, appears too daunting to emerge from.

It all wasn’t gone, by any means, and I knew it was there—waiting just below the surface like a Kraken ready to rise from its slumber within mere hours of a missed dose, and with titan power, could destroy everything stable achieved this far. It was that swift—the withdrawal.

Unlike the medications I had taken before this, which would take time to have negative effects in the event that a pill was to be missed; I was absolutely at the will of this supposedly non-addictive chem-cocktail. Being thirteen years without chemical dependency until now, I recognize the hypocrisy the old-timers had warned us of; I had traded one addiction for another—but I found the risk in my case worth it even with the obvious pitfalls should I become less than diligent. But at the age of forty-three I had arrived at a place where all things had found balance, and my thoughts were manageable. I had finally found a numb that was ‘comfortable’.

“You should have been there!" It was a text, but I heard the desperation regardless. She wanted me the feel ashamed. I didn’t. How do you tell someone that you had already grieved this person? This person who, by all standards, was still considered alive but hadn’t really existed for so long?

I had a flashback of my mother's funeral in 1994. I stood stiffly by watching the array of reactions, trying to figure out where I fit in—how I should be feeling in this moment. They later would call it shock, but I was aware. This was before medication, before booze, drugs, any chemicals (unless you count chugging Dimetapp and eating handfuls of Flintstone Vitamins—gee, who knew I’d become an addict?). Confused. Scared. Yet fully aware of the situation, I was.

I scanned each face; some were unfamiliar, though they seemed to have more of a connection with my own mother than I—at least in this moment.

My eyes met my cousin Scott's—blue eyes striking against the redness. His wet face appearing more angry than sad to me. He was a few years my senior and I feared him. He was not tentative about what he felt, nor would he hesitate to speak his mind or share his opinion—unlike me—who was so very quiet and timid outside of my conscious self; yet whose survivalist brain was never still long enough to allow myself to just experience a feeling.

"Why aren't you crying? Don't you even care that your mom is dead? What's wrong with you?" Scott's words wounded. Wounded me enough to carry that memory to this day; still lodged somewhere between the residuum of shame and the scar tissue of acceptance, like a neuropathic pain that reminds me it exists when the season is right.

I looked up to Scott as much as I was afraid of him. I wish I could have been as passionate and disappointed about ‘all of this’ as much as he was.

"You were his favorite cousin!"

"What's wrong with you?" That's what she really meant. What was wrong with me that I didn’t attend my cousin’s funeral. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t cry at my own mother’s. What was wrong with me that I didn’t experience loss the same way as they did. What was wrong with me that I didn’t understand how she felt. That was what she wasn’t saying. And the truth? Burial is for the living.

In my family, we’d rather be blindsided with grief instead of steadily awaiting the worst. That’s the reality of it though. For most humans in general, I suspect it is. As people we tend to turn our faces away from the constant heart break, feigning ignorance of even the most inevitable outcomes, or wastefully rushing through our emptions so we can just get on with it and our empty fucking lives where everything looks great. We do with hope that when the loss does occur, we will feel some of that devastation we shelved for a later occasion—grief we bottled and tucked away somewhere secret even from ourselves, that if found, we’d be surprised…rather than having been dragged through the insipid furtherance of heartache all along which tends to leave us apathetic in the end. Like me. ‘Ignorance is bliss.’

Call me callous, for it’s true, but it has long since been my experience that—if you’re paying attention—most tragedies these days are expected (normal even) and for those of us who’ve had it the worst—we want to hurt. We want to feel something akin to pain, so that we don’t have to instead feel shame at a time we’re more vulnerable to it. Creeping up on us at night when we question ‘meaning’ and such nonsense. We’re not monsters, per se, we’ve simply become so familiar with loss that we now realize everything is lost even before it begins…we’ve become accustomed to mourning existence.

I couldn't go to Scott's funeral because I couldn't mourn a death that was more of a mercy than the life he left, then watch the ritual of posturing that pretended it wasn’t. Such is shame and our own fear of being forgotten that it leads us to these eccentricities—but then again, I’ve been described as eccentric myself. My sister wouldn’t talk to me for months after, furthering my belief that none of us truly know what we’re doing with our time. Maybe it’d be different if I had gone to live with my sister all those years ago, after mom’s funeral, when given the choice. Maybe I would be different. Thoughts like these have a habit of consuming me of late.

June 1994. Part 1. The Sister.

It was two days before my thirteenth birthday. I had asked Mom if I could go with Maxine’s family back to Nebraska for the summer. I was eager to get to know my older sister better. She had long since been my favorite sibling, sixteen years my senior. I hadn’t been around Maxi much, not since I was five, when we left California. Having had a hand in keeping me ‘alive’ those early years in California, she was like a second mother to me, and I was excited that she had suggested Logan and I live with them. And though I knew we’d be safe there and probably loved; I wasn’t sure that was enough anymore. I needed a schema of what life there would look/feel like because things were much different for her now than they were when we were younger. Maxi was just starting a family of her own. I feared we wouldn’t be a priority. I felt that way with all my family those days. Except him.

My aunt and uncle, who were fostering us at this point, they were in disagreement with the plan to summer in Nebraska; mostly because we had become my uncle’s ‘project’. He hoped that we would stay with him and possibly he feared that this time away would break any of the principles he had instilled in us. Quick to manipulation, my survival tactic of choice back then, I knew that if I favored to asking my mother instead that he would not be able to contend with the wishes of a woman dying of cancer—not with all her immediate family around and having more say in our lives than he, though seemingly wanted none of it. This is how all my older siblings had come to here in the first place—all 6 of us gathered together for the first time since fleeing Modesto, to say their goodbyes to our mother.

1986. California.

Years earlier when we were still in California with John (my dad), it was essential to move regularly for his “job”. We moved often and sometimes we even moved without Dad; he’d have to show up later when it was “safe”.

My mom was swept off her feet when she first met my dad. He blew into town driving a yellow corvette (my mom’s favorite color), introduced to her by the town sheriff in that little Nebraska town. He was dropping off another shipment of Mexico’s finest sugar. He brought the party, and my Mom ate it up. She had spent the last year in a bedroom painted black, mourning her husband’s suicide. She had been married and a mother since she was eighteen years old now that she was thirty, she wanted to explore the parts of life she forfeited being the cheerleader, the good daughter, the smart one. She wanted to live dangerously. And she got to.

Other times we moved without Dad because he was the one who wasn’t safe to be around. Usually for only a night or so after he was having a particularly bad episode. I think Mom was less scared of Dad’s unpredictability and more scared of the certainty that one of her teenage sons would eventually kill him if the abuse continued. Both Owen and Shamus had pulled John’s own revolver on him multiple times by now. The same revolver he used to make holes in nearly every room in whatever house we were hiding out in at the time; the nights he had convinced himself that the shadows in his drug-decayed mind told him were real and coming to get him or take what was his.

I remember one night sitting barefoot sobbing on the stairs of a tavern between the top and bottom floor, men at the bar glancing uncomfortably up at my five-year-old self in my baby blue, flannel nightie. I watched Mom across the mountain road, snow flurries and wind ripping at her robe, crying into a payphone as her teenage children tried to convince her to come back inside and away from the call that would lead her back to him. I was scared because she seemed so far away in that moment, and I felt paralyzed there.

We’d all suffered John’s chaos in more ways than one, but the worst of which was how he had sucked the life out of her. He’d broken her in ways only she knew. Eventually, it took my sister Maxi and her partner Jack to get us out of there. Jack was a master mechanic who worked for my dad’s “front”—a wrecking yard in Modesto that John had bought with their inheritance— the money Mom had gotten from the death of my half-siblings father.

Jack traded work for a Chevette from my dad and rebuilt it as a project car. One day when my dad was away or maybe in a heroin coma, Jack handed my mom the keys and said, “grab everything you can in 30 minutes and go”. I watched from the dirty glass of the hatchback as he stood, arms crossed, leaning in the doorway as we drove away. A sentry standing guard.

I felt that too—and there have been plenty of times in my years when I felt everything inside of me say, “grab everything you can and go”.

June 1994. Part 2. The Pity Party.

Mom stared vacantly at me, or rather, the shell that vaguely resembled my mother did. Sallow, crêpey, soft, thin skin so smooth to the touch in was like the slickness of snake or tanned ostrich. Once rich, auburn hair that had lost all its “burn”—now dull, dry, breaking—like everything else about her. Her eyes so large and deep-set in their sockets that when her pupils shivered it was as though they were wild, starved animals pressing themselves in accord to the backs of dens.

My mother no longer responded in human language to us. The consistent pain, insomnia, starvation wouldn’t allow it. If her voice, mouth, and mind did work together it was saved for brief, banshee wails that no parent should have to hear in the depths of the night—that haunting cry of their child; not that of infant for mother’s milk or life, but their fifty-two-year-old daughter begging for their mercy and peace.

And here I was a vapid child who had grown so utterly numb of suffering that I thought this poor creature could still provide for my self-intent from their hollowed being. Her ribs were but a cage for me to escape—to get away from this…from them…from her.

Certainly, some wouldn’t blame me. For any child to be wanting of a normal childhood, an ordinary child’s birthday, a stable home environment with basic child and human needs met—that should be available by default.

I remember sitting at the dinner table eating what I realize now was “dish sink” dinners and ignoring my mother go on about children starving in other countries while we were being ungrateful, turning down food stamps because someone else needed them more, working herself sick. Even to this day, writing about this experience I feel privileged, selfish, ungrateful, and ashamed to be writing this at all. I question whether my experience is valid or if I’m just another poor-me in an entire country of self-pitying, snow-white ingrates.

The point being, I knew so little of stability, consistency, or normalcy at that time that when I had a transitory perception of it given by someone recognizing and addressing my needs, regardless if it was for their own self-satisfaction to feel charitable and nothing to do with genuine compassion, I was so overcome with greed that I was dead-set on keeping it…even as it advanced my apathy toward the more nurturing side of necessity. Nature was winning. I could live without love if it meant a full stomach and the occasional frivolity as well. As for the secret horror that I had been suppressing until now and only bringing to the front of my thoughts in the deep of night, was that if I were free of her—I had a chance.

The thought of not ever having those things— “normal” things like consistent meals, clean clothes, shelter and then going back to merely surviving as we had for the last thirteen years minus two days, this chance passing me by…I felt trapped. I felt trapped by my mother’s illness. By adults with selfish aims or ideas of what, how, or who I should be after she was gone—not just where. And I had no reference points for what was good and safe and loving… “happy”. I don’t remember feeling any of those things as a child. I remember strongly appreciating brief intervals of beauty and accomplishment. Of a job well-done. But that’s the proselytization again perhaps. That if I wasn’t putting effort into the things the adults around me thought I should be, then I wasn’t worthy. Knowing I deserved nurture—those parts of me just weren’t born or awake yet back then. They hadn’t had time to be. The person who would have given them to me had been dying since I knew her.

My Grandmother at least attempted a birthday by baking an angel food cake. She had forgotten, then was angry. She seemed angry with me. She always seemed angry with me. So, despite the heavy mephitis of death overshadowing the occasion, slowly permeating every memory made up to this time spent on that four-season porch. The hospice nurse looked over at those of us gathered around a small table with the makeshift birthday in full swing with a dour expression that matched both my own and my grandmother’s. My grandmother had often referred to me a such— “a dour child”—not realizing it likely was innate to her own genes. All the while the nurse was taking my mother’s blood pressure on the worst pullout couch-bed to survive 70s. That stiff, cream velvet with dark brown depictions of farmers and millers and pilgrims or some shit, I remember well. It wasn’t soft like most velvet but prickly and stiff and all over the couch was hard. “It’s made well.” My grandfather defended every piece of furniture they owned with such a clause. Essentially, if it didn’t outlast the aesthetic of the era, what value was it? In any case, they weren’t comfortable couches, and they certainly weren’t comfortable beds.

My older siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles—gathered there solely for my mother’s last days—sang the birthday song to me. I am not certain my mother knew what was happening as she lay there staring far through us—through me in my stupid fucking cone hat that made chubby cheeks on an otherwise slip of a child, look even more misplaced. And my thoughts? My thoughts were the same that year as any other…that every year I asked for a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, but every year I got angel food with white frosting and pink lettering. I hated pink. Ironically enough, my favorite cake as an adult is angel food with white buttercream frosting, I am allergic to chocolate, and now accepting of pink. It’s no black, but pink has its place. Maybe it’s psychosomatic? An atonement? Comfort? Maybe it reminds me of when we were, if not normal, at least whole. All the missing pieces still in place. Or maybe it’s residual indoctrination of what “a young lady should like”.

In any case, received no answer from my mother other than a strained whimper—a solicitation of sort, whether it was begging me to stay or relief that if I leave, then so too could she. Maybe my mom and I were not so distant or different from each other even then.

1993. Christmas.

It was to be, that my brother and I were selected by the school to partake in a program where teacher escorts (discreetly) took kids shopping for Christmas at Walmart. We were hand-selected by teachers to participate and given $500. The teacher would help us with the cart, do math, and make suggestions. I argued with my teacher until she gave in, allowing me to take some portion of that money (meant for clothing, toys, etc. for myself) and spend it on the most basic of provisions of food, socks, underwear, but also a “boombox” for Mom, who could no longer enjoy the entertainment system located in the living room far from her bed in our apartment. Mrs. Thompson started crying and as she had always been fairly stern with me during 5th grade English, I wasn’t sure at the time, but now I understand that she was crying for me.

Mom and I would listen to that boombox as I laid on her floor next to her bed. I couldn’t sleep next to her because at the time she scared me. I had watched Pet Semetary too many times not to associate her with the sister, Zelda. I even had a dream where Mom’s skeletal frame chased me down the narrow, windowless hallway of our apartment that led to her room. I felt ashamed and I hadn’t admitted it to anyone. She asked me before to snuggle with her, a rarity and treat in the past as she wasn’t an affection sort of woman in my memories of her. We’d drift off to her whale sounds, or ocean waves, sometimes Enya if she was feeling spicy. As soon as she was asleep, I’d unwind from her skeletal grasp and go back to sleeping on red shag carpeting, collecting all the Good and Plenty’s she dropped, making piles to pass the time. It was the only candy she could have to herself because there was no way we’d eat that shit. Christmas. It was to be, that my brother and I were selected by the school to partake in a program where teacher escorts (discreetly) took kids shopping for Christmas at Walmart. We were hand-selected by teachers to participate and given $500. The teacher would help us with the cart, do math, and make suggestions. I argued with my teacher until she gave in, allowing me to take some portion of that money (meant for clothing, toys, etc. for myself) and spend it on the most basic of provisions of food, socks, underwear, but also a “boombox” for Mom, who could no longer enjoy the entertainment system located in the living room far from her bed in our apartment. Mrs. Thompson started crying and as she had always been fairly stern with me during 5th grade English, I wasn’t sure at the time, but now I understand that she was crying for me.

Mom and I would listen to that boombox as I laid on her floor next to her bed. I couldn’t sleep next to her because at the time she scared me. I had watched Pet Semetary too many times not to associate her with the sister, Zelda. I even had a dream where Mom’s skeletal frame chased me down the narrow, windowless hallway of our apartment that led to her room. I felt ashamed and I hadn’t admitted it to anyone. She asked me before to snuggle with her, a rarity and treat in the past as she wasn’t an affection sort of woman in my memories of her. We’d drift off to her whale sounds, or ocean waves, sometimes Enya if she was feeling spicy. As soon as she was asleep, I’d unwind from her skeletal grasp and go back to sleeping on red shag carpeting, collecting all the Good and Plenty’s she dropped, making piles to pass the time. It was the only candy she could have to herself because there was no way we’d eat that shit.

No adult was around for us at the time. My brother Shamus lived in the apartment above us, but he was going through a volatile divorce and had his own five children to look after. Mom was so ill—so ill that I would help her to the restroom, check her breath at night, try to feed her condiments because it’s all we had. I was sleeping on her floor every night for a while. This is how it came to be that she was taken from us: my grandmother came to visit, not having been able to reach my mother by landline as our phone bill hadn’t gotten paid. I thought I had done something wrong. She opened the door and immediately she was yelling at me, at Mom. Grabbing things from the closet and shoving them in a bag. Then she left. Next thing I remember she was back with my aunt; Grandpa was carrying Mom one way, and I was being dragged the other.

1994. January. Everything hurts.

The next time I saw Mom was in January. She had said, “everything hurts” in response to me inquiry as to why she was pacing back and forth (this was when she could pace back and forth, or simply stand). We were speaking in the shadows of the four-season porch at my grandparent’s lake house. Christmas lights up and blinking on the tree in the corner. She loved bubble-lights—the dangerous ones that boiled water. The porch was second story and overlooked the lake cove. I think she always felt an attachment to water in general—the sound, smell, the sight of it. It’s where she wanted to be her last days—watching the birds at the feeders in front of the windows, cursing the selfishness of squirrels with the lake as a backdrop. She couldn’t have been more than 100lbs at this time, but she wore that awful muumuu anyway, looking like she was on a Florida vacation instead of dying in the heart of Arkansas. “Everything hurts—sitting, walking, standing, laying, being touched, being. So why not keep moving?” The ugly jewel tone, color block linen swished about her creaking ankles (a family thing—all of the women in our family seem to have ankles that “click”). She stopped to smile at me. It wasn’t a real smile, but it was still rare and the only time I remember looking each other directly in the eyes as we spoke and not because I was stealing Flintstone vitamins from the cupboard or something again. “I’m okay. I’m getting better.

1989. Stranger in the Driver’s Seat.

I was terrified of my uncle from the start. We met him as I was turning nine and my brother ten. In the middle of the night, my mom turned off the ignition of the van—the exposed foam of her bucket seat dry and crumbling as she exited the van. I was awoken by the sound of the door closing. I can still remember how loud those heavy doors were when they were slammed. The smell of gasoline, Virginia Slims, spilled Pepsi. The van was rust-red with the remnants of a blue and white, terribly chipping Navajo band all the way around the body. It had only the two bucket seats and the rest of the inside was royal blue velvet, plush walls and the most grotesque yellow, orange, but predominantly avocado green shag carpeted floor you’d ever seen. Not only did it look like vomit, it also closely resembled it in smell too; it was because of this that we occasionally added our own brand to the mélange. She bought the van for the sole-purpose of moving out of Nebraska, but when asked “where to,” she simply said it was “a surprise”. We didn’t think much of it. We were used to moving.

A man replaced mom in the driver seat—this long-haired, long-bearded, long-in-the-tooth snarling hippie (who could’ve been anyone and Adam but also maybe someone who knew our dad)— we timidly began our inquiries. Immediately we were told to “shut up and go back to sleep!” And no sooner had he put that creaky, rusted-out van into gear, driving for what seemed like miles, that he solidified himself as being someone to fear for years to come after.

They had found Christ in each other, my aunt and uncle, living in a community of displaced adults with all their children and her own two sons of a previous marriage. It was a lifestyle that suited them at that time and grown adults shirking responsibility in the 70s wasn’t anything original; in fact, it was a fairly redundant story for my aunt, though I imagine she was more level-headed than my uncle, wishing to use that hard-earned medical degree of hers and return to society at some point. For now, after her divorce from the boys’ father and the recent rejection of a woman whom she was madly in love with—this made sense to her…accepting the fate that had drawn them together.

My aunt was the third daughter (right after my mother) in an “honest” Catholic family of 4 girls and 1 boy, whom she didn’t seem to feel much attachment toward apart from competing for the role of “the good daughter”. She always had her own agendas and interests and placed those above her other siblings. Most of my mother and aunt’s side of my family had settled in the Midwest, the closest being a 15-hour drive from Arkansas, and my uncle liked it like that way, for it’s one thing to be a pretentious self-aggrandizer for a day or two out of a year for holidays and such—quite another to be capable of proving your superiority as a routine…but now we were ruining that for him.

My uncle, on the other hand, he was a drifter from Florida who dodged the draft by purposefully pissing himself. Son of a single mother with one brother. I don’t recall ever hearing of or seeing evidence that he had any former employment to speak of—he did not acknowledge the authority of anyone other than himself. He was a well-read, unsociable, disparaging man, especially towards his wife’s family: railroad workers, strong and outspoken career women, loud Midwesterners—a melting pot of commonsense, tell-you-how-it-is, salt-of-the-earth folk who couldn’t be duped by my uncle’s self-important, patronizing displays to which he lowered himself to their intellectual level for the sake of counterfeit comradery. They despised him often commenting, “There’s something about him that doesn’t sit right”.

My uncle, on the other hand, he was a drifter from Florida who dodged the draft by purposefully pissing himself. Son of a single mother with one brother. I don’t recall ever hearing of or seeing evidence that he had any former employment to speak of—he did not acknowledge the authority of anyone other than himself. He was a well-read, unsociable, disparaging man, especially towards his wife’s family: railroad workers, strong and outspoken career women, loud Midwesterners—a melting pot of commonsense, tell-you-how-it-is, salt-of-the-earth folk who couldn’t be duped by my uncle’s self-important, patronizing displays to which he lowered himself to their intellectual level for the sake of counterfeit comradery. They despised him often commenting, “There’s something about him that doesn’t sit right”.

He met my aunt at just such a time that a person of his nature would be appealing to someone of hers—he was younger, fun (or so she claimed), and there was a danger about him—perhaps what didn’t “sit right” with the rest of us is exactly what appealed to her…the sociopath. I am uncertain of whether she knew, but he would eventually confide in myself (at the time a young woman of fourteen) that he had attempted to murder his younger brother, leaving the boy brain damaged for life. I would hope that my aunt didn’t know, but two narcissists in a codependent relationship coming out of a final acid trip with both claiming to have seen God and to have been bequeathed with the most holy of hosts anointing upon them—told to go forth spreading his knowledge…I doubt that red flags could have been seen as anything other than just another sign that they were on the right track.

I imagine when my uncle was awoken in the middle of the night to fetch his wife’s heathen sister—recently pulled from the armpit of California and freshly out of a year of hiding in Nebraska from the drug trafficker that spawned her two-wildling children, randomly shows up in his town of Huntsville, Arkansas—to stay under his roof that his wife paid every penny for…I imagine he was pissed.

Not only did he have to host us for a few months, but we’d continue to stay with my aunt and uncle on occasion, mostly days when mom was in or recovering from chemotherapy or radiation treatment; then more often as her illness progressed—all the while against my uncle’s wishes. It took a while, but he did soften; it was gradual, but as he realized we were pliable young minds ever seeking approval, ready to work for it, and not just hellions sent to torture him—he did take special interest in us. We responded well to the reward-system he imposed. Having never won or gained anything in our short lives from compliant behavior alone, our little survival instincts had us all the more eager to please him. Coins, treats, praise… My uncle was doing a good job making us reliant on him, if nothing else. I think it gave him purpose; albeit he was a highly intelligent man, he was often running his social and scholastic coffers dry. He believed the world owed him something without effort or sacrifice—thus giving up his eternal track-switching, lifelong college student career while living off my aunt’s salary and obsequiousness to become our “tutor”. That last acid trip with holy ghost was bearing fruit at last.

June 1994. Part 3. The Funeral.

We left for Nebraska the next morning, my brother and I, along with our older sister. I remember how immediately uncomfortable I was there. My sister Maxi was a new mom, things smelled like urine from potty-training, there were small children which made anxious, and anxiety always makes me feel as though I’ve done a thing wrong even to this day.

My brother and I slept in bucket chairs in the living room. I was miserable. I laid awake most of the night feeling as though I had made a huge mistake. I’ve always been a particular child with separation anxiety and feeling no particular attachment to any one person any longer with this newborn apathy. What a conundrum, right? I’ve spent most of my life choosing, being and feeling alone. Despite being in a relationship or crowd of people, I can still feel completely outside of everything and at times this can either be a superpower or kryptonite. Even with my siblings, who have rarely invested much of themselves into me since Mom’s passing. Mostly they’ve just bailed me out of situations, never sharing their own thoughts or feelings, tribulations, what’s made them happy or upset—the things that round a person out. My siblings have always been 2D, and our mother—basically, a stranger to us all, she never offered false witness, but she certainly concealed much of herself from us; yet, because of how I am, I probably know her best in some ways, because in a lot of ways, I am her—having inherited that omnipresent and duplicitous character she maintained even upon her deathbed.

The phone rang early that next morning, and I already knew.

“Not on my birthday!” I shouted toward the kitchen where Maxi leaned on the doorframe, back toward me in her denim tuxedo, head bent down, hand clasped over mouth. I could tell by her stance. “Not on my birthday!” I screamed it again to make sure she heard me. As soon as my sister returned the phone to the wall, she rushed to me and kneeled like I deserved her attention more than she deserved a moment to mourn—the moment I stole from her.

“No, baby girl! No, it’s not on your birthday! Your birthday is tomorrow!” she wept. I had been so caught up in my selfishness that I forgot what day it was.

I was…I am…so selfish.

When Scott said, "What's wrong with you?"

I suddenly started to sob. Scott couldn't have possibly known that just on the way here, our uncle had told me that crying would be questioning God's will and ultimately a sin; however, that's not why I didn't cry until Scott’s accusation. I was crying because it was the first time someone had said it out loud.

After years of being misled, told God would heal her, that the cancer was in remission, that she was getting better, then going through even more chemo, even more radiation, that we we’re not praying hard enough, that mom was an unbeliever, more starvation, more disassociation, more nausea, begging her to eat, hearing her cry at night, isolation, from family, from friends, abandonment, being pitied, being bullied at school, being told “if your mom hadn’t met your dad, none of this would’ve happened”. After four years, someone said it out loud. That she was dead. And I was relieved.

J.M.Liles ©️2024