Ghosted
Sweat glistens; she smiles down at me. Eyes locked, hips rocked, we fight the air-conditioning, wrestling in tangled linens. She laughs, I flip her, she's pinned. My breathing changes and eyes glaze; she smiles, nodding, tells me to, but I'm already there.
Whitewash rolls down, but we will never have a picket fence. Her lips part in matching smiles. The bruise on her thigh is a beautiful contrast to the cream of her skin and on her skin.
Adele says we've gotta let go of our ghosts. That’s truth, but these ghosts in my sheets are a haunt I welcome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk4BbF7B29w
Sisters: An Unfinished Random Flash Fiction
The monitor has kept a lonely vigil on the nightstand. Its green, and sometimes red, bars of light have blinked intermittently for nearly two weeks. The volume is turned off, though the residents in bed beside it wouldn’t know the difference. They lay inert beside its quiet pleas—bodies and breath reeking of the same substance that recently occupied the empty bottles littering the floor.
Neither is much to look at. The wife—we’ll call her that, for they are legally married after the common-law variety—is rather large. Her thin, unkempt hair fans across the pillows of her fleshy cheeks, puffy lips hiding dark, spotted teeth. Her pink, wrinkled chemise stains beneath the underarms and her hefty legs tangle in the rank sheets.
Beside her lies the broad form of her husband. Though not as corpulent as his wife, he bears it more awkwardly. His arms and shoulders are thin, but he packs more in his gut and cheeks and ankles. He is also rather hairier; the short stubble of his head extends toward his eyebrows, and down his back. An empty liquor bottle rests against his chest. He strokes it mindlessly with his thumb, a smile on his lips; sordid dreams flitting across his barren mind.
The monitor gives a sudden, silent scream as the bars flash to maximum capacity. Green. Green. Red. Red. Red. All five blink in rapid succession. The monitor seems to buzz and shake with the effort of waking its owners. The wife twitches and begins to stir.
Down the hallway, at the microphone end of the monitor, a girl crouches against crib bars, fingers to her ears.
“Hush, hush,” she pleads with her infant sister, “you’ll wake them!” Her knees are held tightly to her chest, tears in her big, somber eyes.
The girl is no more than seven, perhaps eight years old, though she is small for her age. Her body is as pinched and thin as her parents are large and obtuse. Her wispy-fine hair is mouse-brown and matted, and she reeks of urine. Reaching into the crib, she tenderly lifts out the shrieking bundle. Even so, no one has taught her to support the neck, and the baby’s head lolls back. The infant shrieks louder. Terrified, she pleads again— “Hush baby!”
She cradles her sister like she’s seen other girls do with their dolls. Girls whose dolls are exquisitely dressed, pushed along in pink little wicker prams. She rocks baby girl, back and forth, back and forth. Still, the girl screams on, inconsolable.
Fearful, the girl looks about, grasping at a bottle on the shelf. It is empty—only a dried milk residue remains—but she puts it in, desperate to quiet the shrieking. For a moment it works, baby girl is content to suck on the dry air of the bottle. But her empty belly aches with the rush of air and the crying intensifies. Laying the baby on the floor, the girl rushes through the doorway to get to the fridge, when from the other end of the house, a roar.
“Fer gods sakes, shut ’er up!”
The girl flinches visibly and hurries back to the room. At the end of the hall, an argument ensues.
“It’s yer turn.”
A whiny voice answers. “I went th’ last time!”
“No yeh didn’! Yeh jes’ slep’ through me gittin’ up!”
Their voices grow louder and louder through the thin walls.
“You son-of-a-b—! You say that every time!”
“I don’t! Ef’n yeh ever got off yer own lazy ass, yeh’d know!”
She screams at him in return, a high, angry shriek, and the sounds of a scuffle ensue. Profanities rain through the walls and the whole house shakes at the meeting of these two behemoths. Baby girl screams on, where she’s been left the floor. Her sister sobs quietly, crouched, hiding behind a threadbare armchair in a corner of the room.
A few loud thumps, a final shriek and the door flies open. Hair ratty and frizzed from the tussle, the ogress emerges from her cavern, jowls quivering with rage.
She hurls a final insult behind her; “son-of-a-b—!” before stomping down the hall. Her fury is brought to a halt on finding her infant on the floor. Her face slackens into an expression of dull stupidity as she puzzles over the marvelous event, when suddenly the pieces click.
“Lena!” Her patience is razor-thin. “–Lena! Where is that little b—!?”
Timidly, Lena emerges from behind the chair, thin arms across her chest, shielding herself.
“There you are.” Her mother grimaces. “What you been doin’?” When Lena doesn’t answer, she cuffs her across the head. “You been wakin’ her!? Huh? You been wakin’ her ‘cause you know we already en’t gettin’ no sleep!? You little b—! Answer me!”
Lena glances down at her squalling sister before replying. “No’m. Jes’ tryin’ to shut ’er up.”
“Liar!” Her mother slaps her again, before turning her attention to baby girl. Lena takes the opportunity to scuttle back to her place behind the armchair.
“What Lena been doin’ to you, huh?” she smiles emptily down at baby girl. Lifting her up, she presses the child against her bosom. “Shush, shush, baby.” Lena watches jealously from the corner.
Alternately rocking and bouncing, the woman works to console her. Rock, bounce, pat. Rock, bounce, pat. At moments, the newborn pauses in her crying and allows herself to be consoled. Then, remembering her parentage, the wails begin afresh.
“Agh—jest shutup!” The woman’s jaw quivers angrily. “Well—mebe you’re jest hungry!”
Rummaging in the cupboard, she hastens to mix a few ounces of formula and puts it in the child’s open mouth. Though hungry, the child gags on the cold milk, crying louder. Her small, wrinkled face is a crimson red-verging-on-blue. Rock, bounce, pat. The mother goes through the motions of consoling her child, though inwardly her corrupted heart dwells on the offenses against her. An abusive husband who forces her to care for their children alone! A willful daughter who purposefully awakens her sister. An infant who won’t stop screaming. All of them, conspiring to wrong her. Her mind picks over each damning evidence.
A dark seed of hatred, already well-established, takes firmer root. Her stained pink chemise slips off her shoulder and those wretched, rotted teeth grimace as the infant scorns her attentions.
Rock, bounce, pat.
Rock, bounce, pat.
Five minutes pass, then six. Each second is an eternity beside those ear-splitting screams.
At eight minutes, she tries burping her, changing her, feeding her again. After each failure, her fleshy face darkens, and her mind grows more embittered.
‘All I do is care for ‘em, hour after hour an’ this is my thanks.’ She thinks savagely. ‘I hate ‘em.’
Rock, bounce, pat.
Rock, bounce, pat.
Behind the chair, Lena tries to stifle a miserable sob.
“Lena! Git out here!”
Reluctantly, Lena creeps out from behind her perch.
“You woke ’er, so you c’n take ’er. See how you like it!”
She dumps the child unceremoniously into Lena’s arms and retreats into the hallway. The thin walls no longer hold back the tide of noise, however, and the alcohol has worn its way into a pulsing headache. She hovers there for a few minutes ‘jest to teach Lena a lesson,’ before marching back in to pull the baby out of Lena’s despairing arms.
Rock, bounce, pat.
Rock, bounce, pat.
Rock, bounce, pat, shake.
At first, it’s just brief jounce, enough to scare her quiet. Then, as the screams crescendo and the injustices against her culminate in the woman’s small mind, she shakes the child harder. With a final thump on the thinly carpeted floor, she begins to scream herself.
“Shutup! Jest shutup!”
This time, baby girl listens.
CHEMICAL REACTION
“911 What is your emergency?” The stoic female voice crackled from a cellphone speaker.
With trembling hands, thirty-nine-year-old Megan Lowry’s finger fought to lower the sound on her Android. She had dialed 911 after clearing her head, trying to absorb her current situation. Holding the phone close to her mouth she whispered in high pitched staccato breaths. “Hello? You have to help me! I’ve been car jacked!”
Lit solely by her phone, Megan lay balled up in the dark confines of the trunk of a car, her own car. A bag of groceries she had just purchased were spilled open behind her. She could feel the moisture on her back from crushed eggs. Several bottles of
Vitamin Water rolled whenever her car made a sharp turn. A tire iron beneath pressed into her hip. The smell of carbon monoxide lent a weight to the hot air she took in with every panicked breath. Megan fought an urge to cry. She whispered again into the phone. “Please, you have to help me.”
A robotic voice replied. “Try to remain calm. What’s your name?”
“Megan. Megan Lowry. I’m locked in the trunk of my own car.”
The voice registered a slightly more human tone. “Megan, I’m Sheila, I’m here to help you. You say you’ve been abducted, yes?”
“Yes. Yes. I stopped for groceries. I was putting them in my trunk when someone attacked me from behind. I was struck on the head. I woke a minute ago in the trunk of my own car!” With her free arm she felt for the walnut sized bump on the backside of her skull. She rubbed it, too scared to feel the pain.
“Can you speak up, Megan. I’m having trouble hearing you.”
Megan dared not to. “I can’t. I don’t think he knows I have my phone. I don’t want him to hear me.”
“Okay, okay. I understand. Tell me what kind of car you have, Megan.”
“A Toyota Camry. 2001, White. Please help me.”
“White Camry. Toyota. Got it.”
Desperation clung to each whisper. “Can you send the police? Can you track my phone?”
“That’s what we're working on Megan.”
“Hurry, please!” Her voice breathless now.
“I need you to focus, can you do that, Megan?”
“I can try.” Her whisper squeaked.
“Do you know your license plate number?”
“Yes. KEMY5T3. California plates”
“K-E-M-Y-5-T-3, is that right, Megan?”
“Yes. It’s…” Megan stopped as the car came to a halt. Perhaps her abductor heard her, Megan couldn’t be sure. “Sssshhh! Be quiet. We’ve stopped.”
Megan heard bells begin to ring in a back-and-forth cadence. The rhythm was familiar to her. The next sound confirmed what she suspected. The sound of rumbling thunder caused the whole vehicle to vibrate. She couldn’t see it. She heard the rolling freight
train lumbering through a railroad crossing. Megan knew of tracks on the far side of Glendale that ran North and South. She now believed she was heading East out of Glendale towards Pasadena so she couldn’t have been unconscious long. It took a solid three minutes for the clickety-clack of the train to pass and the warning bells to fall silent. She guessed the barrier lifted when she felt the car jolt forward and the tire iron dig into her hip as she bounced while the car crossed over the tracks.
From the trunk, Megan felt her car bank, taking on an incline and gaining speed. She was certain they were on a freeway entrance ramp curving to enter a stream of California traffic heading for God only knows where.
She whispered again. “Sheila, we’re getting on the freeway. I can feel it.”
“I’m here, Megan. The highway patrol’s been notified. We already have an Amber Alert out.”
“An Amber Alert?” Megan’s unease pinched her stomach. A thousand panicked thoughts filled her head. “He can read those signs too. Won’t he wonder how it was reported so fast? What if he figures out I have a phone? There’ll be no way for you to find me.”
Sheila attempted to reassure her. “We’re using our Enhanced 911 system. We’re already triangulating your location through the cell tower your phone is using. We should have your approximate location momentarily.”
Megan hissed. “Approximate? I need you to find my exact location now!”
Sheila returned to a professional tone. “Megan, focus. You’ve got to keep your wits about you.”
Megan snapped back. “I’m sorry, Sheila. I don’t get car jacked every day; you know?”
No answer came back. “Sheila?” Worried her tone offended the operator, Megan shook her phone, frantic to get a response. “Sheila?” Again, no answer. She felt the car slowing down. She heard horns honking outside the car. The blaring sounds seemed to echo and bounce back upon themselves; then muffled, as if they were in a tunnel.
Megan whispered a single word. “Bridge.” It was the only answer she could think of why she lost her connection. There were no tunnels she knew of near Pasadena. There were a number of bridges crisscrossing the freeway. Megan could tell the traffic must
be moving at a crawl under a bridge, or a series of bridges.
The point was moot. Her phone had no signal. Megan felt a pang of abandonment, a loneliness not dissimilar to the one she felt about the divorce she was currently going through, but given her present situation, much worse. She was beginning to think maybe whispering wasn’t the best strategy. Megan thought maybe to start
yelling. Perhaps someone in the slow-moving traffic would hear her. She could kick the trunk hatch to attract attention.
Before a decision could be made, Megan heard the sound of a siren in the distance growing louder and getting closer. For the briefest of moments, she wondered it were the police coming to her rescue. Maybe they triangulated her location. Maybe they set up a roadblock to slow traffic. Maybe the Amber Alert worked after all.
The many maybes were answered when the siren blared past her and drowned out like a dying cat just ahead. The smell of gas fumes, oil and radiator steam entered her confined space. From outside, Megan could hear the electronic garble of emergency radio calls. She visualized an ambulance arriving at a terrible car accident on the freeway. They must be passing the scene and looky-loos brought traffic to a crawl. She wanted to scream. Fear held her frozen in place. Megan felt the fractional G-force as the car accelerated and traffic resumed its normal flow. Megan whispered. “Sheila?”
Silence hung in the air. The bars were empty. She couldn’t connect with a tower. Megan held the phone in two hands, her thumbs went to work. She decided to send a text. But to who? Megan scrolled through her recent contacts. There was her boss at ChemGen, Mike Rafferty, useless for the most part. Then her current boyfriend, Nelson Wickland, patent attorney she met at a ChemGen conference; Nelson was arranging the legal papers for a new chemical compound the pharmaceutical would be releasing revolutionizing cancer treatment. She met Nelson over a month ago. She had been sleeping with him several times and he was the first man she shared a bed with after her separation from her ex. She wasn’t in love, but she was lonely. She needed the feel of a man to hold. Nelson was, intelligent, successful and a gentleman. Then she saw Jake Lowry’s number, her soon to be ex. Megan would never have left Jake had she not found evidence of him cheating. Receipts from hotels, motels, romantic restaurants, a cabin in Big Bear, sexual texts on his phone. She was deeply hurt and divorce at the time seemed her best option. She exhaled and text what might be her final message.
It was to Jake. She figured a fifteen-year-old marriage must have meant something. Megan remembered the instant chemistry they had when they first met at Stanford. Her text explained her current situation clearly as possible, ending that if she survived this encounter, they might give it another try.
Two bars blinked on and off on the phone like the pulse of an emergency room patient crashing. Megan hit send. The message buffered trying to connect with a faint signal. The wait seemed endless. Then the bars went solid. The text stopped buffering. It got sent and the phone vibrated. Caller ID read, 911. Megan answered in a whisper. “Sheila?”
“No, Megan this is Officer Lancer with the Barstow Highway Patrol. Sheila connected us when your signal returned. We have a good idea where you’re located. Are you injured?”
She whispered. “Other than the bump, I’m not injured, but the road we’re on now is bumpy as hell.” She stopped. The car began to slow, gravel could be heard crunching beneath the wheels then went silent at full stop. Megan's heart raced. "We stopped!"
The engine shut down with a sputtering cough. She heard the driver’s door open with a popping creak and felt the car jostle as the driver climbed out. The door closed with a thud she that she could feel in her chest. She rolled on her side, shoved the phone in her pocket and faced the trunk latch.
The phone was her lifeline. She would protect it until the end. A key jostled outside. A click. The trunk sprung open. A flashlight beamed in her face. She tried to glimpse the car jacker’s face. Her kidnapper lowered the light.
It was Nelson Wickland, the man she had been sleeping with for the past two months. “You? Nelson, what the fuck are you doing?” She started to climb out, a raised revolver stopped her forward motion.
“Your phone, Megan. Give me your phone.”
Her phone? No way. Her phone was Sheila. Her phone was Highway Patrol. Her phone was GPS, her only way to be located. “What phone? I don’t have a phone.” She tried to look incredulous. “What I have is this nasty bump on my head, thank you. Why are you doing this?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. Now give it.”
Megan shrugged holding out empty hands.
Nelson’s voice went grim. “Don’t make me hit you again. Phone.” He pocketed the light. Both were now bathed only in the red of the taillights.
“Nelson, I swear…” She couldn’t give up so easily.
Nelson chuckled. “Megan, you just text Jake. I can’t believe you suggested a reconciliation.” Nelson held up his phone, it showed her text.
“Jake? How...?” She stopped her question mid-sentence. Megan was a Stanford University graduate. It took less than a second for her to compute the scenario; Jake and Nelson are conspiring to kill her, but why? Fifty percent of community property? They’re both successful men. It made no sense. Then it hit her. The patent. Megan’s contract was written where she owned a percentage of any of ChemGen’s products she helped create. If the divorce went through before the patent was signed, Jake got nothing.
“Jake will be along. We’ll meet at our rendezvous tonight. A cabin in Big Bear. Now give me your phone before I beat it out of you...” He raised the gun again. “…Or something worse.” He held out a hand. “The phone.”
Megan hoped Sheila or the Highway Patrol cop was catching all of this. This was the final string of hope left on a tenuous safety rope. The man she married for fifteen years and the man she recently began sleeping with have plotted to murder her. The biggest shock was understanding the two men must have been lovers for some time. Which is why she never found whoever the "other woman” was.
Megan looked at the desert expanse where the car was presently parked. It was as fitting a place as any to match the hurt flooding over her and drowning her sense of self. She noticed the bars on the phone were blank. The battery near dead, the signal once again dropped. She had no idea if anyone heard anything. She held the phone out with great reluctance.
Nelson snapped it from her hand, shut it off, dropped it, crushing it beneath one of his twelve-hundred-dollar Oxfords.
That was it, he might as well as stepped on her heart. All her lifelines were cut. Megan was truly alone. She cowered elbow up, as Nelson slammed the trunk shut leaving her in choking darkness. She felt Nelson climb back into the driver’s seat. The engine hesitated to turn over then a wisp of carbon monoxide leaked through the trunk floor. The car began to move. Megan felt every bump on the desert road leading back to the highway.
From the interior front cab Led Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused began to play loud. Megan guessed Nelson found her CDs in the driver’s console and was playing her 70’s song list. The percussion from the speakers throttled against the back seat making Megan feel each beat of bass like a small gut punch. Her favorite band now sounded like a death march dirge.
Music has the capability of dredging up memories from the mind’s deepest recesses. In the darkness, Megan’s thoughts drifted from her claustrophobic fear turning to early days with her father. He was the reason that rock ’n roll was as much a part of her DNA as her hazel eyes.
Professor Connor O’Conner, a science teacher at Stanford University, single father to a precocious, outgoing young Megan O'Conner, raised her to be independent, curious and an audiophile of 70’s music. If Classic Rock were the only category on Jeopardy, Megan would have been grand champion.
He also fueled her love of science, the direction her career took. He taught her simple experiments like how to make invisible ink from lemon juice, create a fireworks-like show in a glass filled with olive oil, water, and food coloring. Megan was not like most of the neighborhood girls her age who experimented with make-up, lipstick, and eye shadow.
She was eight when she got her first chemistry set. Nine when she almost set the house on fire mixing potassium permanganate crystals, glycerin, and water. Despite that, her father never scolded her. He just asked her to think. Always think.
He’d playfully tease her saying most little girls were made of sugar and spice and everything nice, but she was different. She had her own special chemical make-up, equal parts Boron, Radium, Iodine, Nitrogen and Sulfur. At that age she knew he must be joking. The elements that made up humans were simple, Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Calcium, Phosphorous, Potassium and Sodium. It wasn’t until she noticed the symbols on the periodic table that she understood her father’s joke.
(B), (Ra), (I), (N), (S). Brains.
Long ago he taught her to always rely on intellect. It’s why she became a chemist and a damn good one.
Megan snapped out of her reverie returning to her present dilemma. Zeppelin was still playing loud from the front cab. She got to work. She felt underneath for the tire iron wedged beneath her, taking the flat end, used it as leverage to pry open the rear taillight panel, timing it on each musical downbeat. She popped the panel, pulling the light from its mount. Stretching the wires, she brought the bulb into the tight compartment illuminating it like a Halloween haunt.
The music track up front changed. Golden Earring’s Radar Love thudded through the rear seat. It was to this rhythm that the car seemed to accelerate, and Megan got busier.
She reached for the grocery bag contents and began to forage. Picking up item after item, some she’d keep, others, toss in a corner. She found what she needed. 8 ounces of
olive oil, a shaker of Extreme Hot Cayenne Powder, a lemon, a bottle of Windex, black pepper. Megan found a funnel near an oil can where she stored the vehicle’s emergency equipment. She grabbed two road flares. She was ready to build her final defense.
Megan used the flat end of the tire iron to tear through a road flare. She grabbed the funnel, shoving it into the bottle of vitamin water. Into it she poured the contents of the flare. The Potassium Nitrate, Polymeric Resin and Strontium Nitrate would dissolve in water, while filtering Potassium Percolate into a crystal. She
needed something to sift out the crystals, but what?
Megan removed her bra as if she were Houdini escaping from a strait jacket. Using one of the brassiere’s cups, she poured the contents from the bottle, straining the liquid in a corner leaving only the Potassium Percolate crystals behind which now needed to dry.
She did this by utilizing the bra’s other cup allowing it to absorb any liquid. She reopened the Windex bottle, added the crystals making sure nothing touched her skin. Megan had just fashioned her own bottle of MACE. With the crystals the potency of this homemade pepper spray was multiplied threefold.
The music stopped. Nelson called out from the driver’s seat mockingly. “Honey, we’re home!” It was time to ready herself. The trunk ’s smelled like a meth lab crossed with a Chipotle restaurant. Megan hoped the fumes hadn’t seeped into the forward compartment. She knew this would have to be a complete surprise when they opened the trunk. There would be no testing of the spray lest she blind herself.
Megan turned her body to face the trunk latch, placing her feet firm against the trunk’s rear panel behind the fender. She lay in the cramped compartment like an astronaut in a capsule awaiting launch. She felt down to her side to make sure the second
flare was in place and within reach, as well as the tire iron. Igniting the flare could turn the flammable pepper spray even more deadly. She pulled the lightbulb from the wire plunging herself back into darkness. Megan gripped the spray bottle with two hands and readied for her defensive assault. She gave one final whisper, “C’mon. Bring it.”
The white Camry, rear right taillight out, sat idle outside a lone cabin. Jake stepped out from inside onto the porch. Nelson climbed out and the two men approached each other hugged, then kissed. Megan couldn't hear what they were saying. They turned their attention to the trunk. Noticing the rear light was out and exchanged glances. Jake inserted the key. Nelson raised his gun. Both stood at the rear ready to open the trunk.
The car's license plate, illuminated by a tiny bulb read, KEMY5T3 or “CHEMISTRY.” The very thing that brought them all together. Now all three awaited the outcome of the coming chemical reaction.
Prone To It
"I wonder how many passwords I may be able to guess with personal answers," I wondered aloud.
"...Now why even say that? I'm paranoid about anything I've ever posted online whenever you talk like that." Her unnecessary reply cut me.
"No, no, no - not like that. In the... I wonder how much of people, are people, online. You know?" I waved my hand in dismissal at the miscommunication.
[You always switch styles so fast. How did we go from hacking to how comfortable people are to be themselves in spaces you know relatively little about?]
Her blank face, like many, mirrors my confusion - or, highlights the difference between dismay at missed connections and dismissal of miscommunications. Let me try again.
"I'm not being... I mean, I'm not trying to be confusing. What I'm saying is, I just wonder which places and who feel comfortable enough, in today's day and age, to be really vulnerable. Like, in a safe way. When I say safe, I mean they won't become like, dangerously viral or have to join one of those support groups for people who have become viral. I mean, everyone we know in real life is naturally so interesting. I can't imagine they're hard to find online." Over animatedly, I wave my hands along with my speech in hopes I bridge the gap better with more body language. Layering!
[You love layers in fashion. Is that manly? Is that masculine, or feminine, or do you, 'not care'? I know you don't care, but others do. I would pay that some thought.]
"Yeahhh, I still feel like you hit the blunt and it hit you way too hard back." She smiles at me and leans in to me. "It's nice to be with a himbo sometimes, I love the way you look when you talk like that. I just wish it wasn't on such bizarre things sometimes. But that's what makes you, you, and I love you for it, too." Wrapping her arms around me, she squeezes me tight.
"I am not a himbo - I am a lady," I retort, in my black beater tank, farm-grade men's jeans, name brand (discount store) boxers... and sports bra, and ladies' socks, and women's glasses. Rule of three, babes. "I just performed a mental check. I am wearing at least three articles of women's clothing. I do not understand how that does not translate to you."
[You are so artistic!]
"Oh. Can a lady only describe herself in extremely convoluted, irritating, nonsensical, illogical, 'all looks like a scene from her life exactly', 'always comes off like a stream of conscious attempt at being deep', way, and come off Patrick Bateman in real life?" Her tone shifts to harsh from the previous soothing lilt.
"Yeah, babes. Prone to it. I also do not know if that aspect of me is changeable. I do not enjoy it myself, remember that." Mean tone, flat voiced reply.
"Like if I interviewed the American Psycho, you'd hit every mark except for you're like..." She gestures strangely with her hands. Not one to be gesticulative, I pay closer attention to what she says next. It will matter, I know that much. "...like... kind've - well, not in a rude way? But also like, the stereotypical snowflake. I have never met someone so sensitive yet so insensitive to how sensitive they are as you, while also being so vain the main way you chose to convey yourself was in a sort've interview structure. With two of yourselves."
[You are ill with many things.]
"...Okay. Anyways, want to take guesses on when the world figures out it needs an AI-backed translator for different communication styles? I really do feel that would be the single greatest shift in communications globally."
"No. Wanna hit this?" She leans up with the blunt.
"We'll do both," Is this the part of my personality that people tell me is 'steam rolling'? "Or - no, you're right. Lemme hit that. Fuck, I love a good legal state."
[You'll love feeling anxious afterwards. You wish it was lavender so bad.]
"Wait - no, I'll just get anxious." I pass the blunt back to her, unhit. "I've had enough already,"
"You had a puff that I don't know you even held long enough to get anything from." She stares at me deadpan.
"Okay - sure. Okay, yeah, you're right." Getting my gumption up, I grab the blunt back, and puff away at it.
[Too wishy-washy to not annoy her, too cowardly to admit I just don't want to. Malleable. Is sloth not a sin?]
"Does this count as sloth, babes?"
"Now how are we talking about sloths?" She caresses my face.
"Oooh... I don't know, now I see I'd rather speak about the beautiful woman in front of me." Tender Aphrodite... release me...
[What was your first thought, again? Where did we start?]
(Oh shit, haha, I stone you too when I get stoned?)
[Shister, shpace, please.]
(Are we not irritating?)
[We is only spoken as misery loves company. I am not irritating. I can see you irritating most of the world, though, sonny girl.]
(Sonny girl? Did you mean sunny girl?)
[Girl. Look how you are dressed. I said sonny instead of sunny for a reason. You also can't hear the difference when those words are spoken - you always make your own joke openings without realizing how they fall back on you. Given that, I still said what I said.]
(Alright. So. Back to reality. Let's work on making me less paranoid, right?)
[ ]
(Et tu, Brutus?)
[ ]
"Want to watch that one space time movie? Or, any move about time and space? Any sci-fi movies you like?" I ask her in a daze, her sweet, sweet arms around me sedating me.
"Um, not really."
Stigma
As far back as I can remember, I've always had this vague notion that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Something I could never quite put my finger on. Yet it was there, lingering in the background. A subliminal message playing on repeat my entire life. I've no idea where it originated. It's almost as if I came into this world feeling inherently flawed. An obscure birth defect, prominent to everyone but me.
Whatever it was, most people took notice. And much like having a huge stain on the back of your shirt. It isn't until you catch everyone staring that you become aware of it's presence. Though to this day, not a single person has been able to articulate what it is they find so terribly wrong about me.
Wish it Were Different
Mom,
I'm sorry, from the bottom of my heart, for the pain I've put you through. Your first born succumbed to the pleasures and tragedies of the world. I've been addicted to horrors. My heart has only known pain and disappointment in the face of love. I've had no choice but to make solitude my best friend. How terrible it is to watch your child suffer, unable to do anything for them. You taught me kindness, compassion, and empathy, so I know you've felt my pain as if it were your own. And knowing that breaks my heart even further. I promise it was never intentional. I hope you never know just how awful I feel knowing you've suffered because of my actions.
I've gotten through unspeakable battles that you will never know about, but understand that I have become stronger because of them. I am wiser and even more compassionate from those things, and it is from your example that I was able to emerge from hell with even more love and empathy for the world. I hope that makes up for all the pain and tears that have fallen because of me. I hope you understand the love I feel for you even though you couldn't be there to help me or hug me when I needed it most. I cry every night hoping you don't hate yourself because of that. My son, your grandson, will be stronger because of it all. All because of you. I love you so much.
Love always,
James
Tides and Wells
I know they can't even be an ounce, but the weight is so much more.
Two five by seven glossies, printed in a tourist trap kiosk. I paid a far higher price than I should have, but the cost hasn't yet been tallied.
Money is a tide, but memory is a well.
Wells sometimes run dry.
Her well isn't as deep as it once was.
I'm stricken by how much she looks like her grandmother. What strikes me even more is the possibility that she'll live as long.
I'm ashamed to admit that I hope she doesn't. Her independence is already gone, her mobility a thing of the past and her thoughts have started trailing after.
My great-grand was with us into my early twenties. She lived long enough to wither on the vine, mind as sharp as a razor but a body fragile as glass. When the light in her eyes began to dim, when her memory began to slip, her body had already started to go. It was an easy thing for her to follow.
My mother's mind started slipping by inches, and her body has declined by miles. Now it's a race to see which one will be gone first.
She knows she's in decline. She's fighting it, but she's losing.
Dialysis starts soon.
I took her on a bucket list trip last week; we originally had it planned for late summer.
Late summer will be too late.
The water was too cold, but she went anyway. She'd never stepped foot in the Caribbean, and now she has.
When I told her about the trip, the first thing she asked was if she could swim with dolphins.
"Absolutely you will," I told her.
And she did.
She hates having her photo taken, so while she was distracted with my step father, I moseyed over to the photo center.
She never asked what I had in the bag.
Two photographs, professionally captured, have her kissing or petting her very own personal Flipper. She watched that show when she was a kid, and half a century later, she finally got to swim with a bottlenose.
When it's her time to go, I'll probably be tasked with building an electronic photo reel. It will be hard to do, because she avoids cameras when she can. She always has.
I knew when I bought these pictures that eventually they'd be displayed in memoriam.
Carrying these photos back to my hotel room, I know they can't even be an ounce, but the weight is so much more.
The Unwanted Inheritance
It started with nightmares. Blood-curdling screams that would jolt me awake in the dead of night, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets as memories and fears that weren't my own clawed at my mind. Images of war, of violence so horrific it seemed beamed in from another plane of existence entirely.
At first, I thought it was just a phase, night terrors brought on by stress at school or the pressures of being a teenager. But the nightmares only grew more vivid and persistent as the years wore on. By college, I was avoiding sleep entirely, living off caffeine and adrenaline as the waking world became a sanctuary from the psychological torture that awaited me each night between the sheets.
It wasn't until my psychology elective that I began to untangle the knot of intergenerational trauma that had been passed down to me like a curse, striking at me from the grave.
My grandfather Ian never spoke of his experiences in World War II. According to family lore, he had been captured and held in a prisoner of war camp for 18 agonizing months, enduring torture and deprivation that marked him permanently, though you'd never know it from his stoic silence.
When he finally returned from the war, his own father was so traumatized that he could barely look at his son, the living reminder of the violence and fear he had endured on the frontlines. And so the psychological scars went unacknowledged and unprocessed, packaged up like a ticking time bomb to be passed on to future generations.
My dad jokes that the reason he had kids so late in life is because he spent his 20s and 30s trying to outrun the ghosts of his father and grandfather. The substance abuse, the self-destructive behavior, the inability to form real emotional bonds - now I recognize these were his ways of coping with the ancestral cloud of trauma and disconnection that haunted him.
And I inherited it all. The night terrors, the emotional numbness, the feeling of always being on guard, waiting for the next mortar shell to drop on me at any moment. This was my bloody genetic legacy, an unwanted inheritance of psychic injuries incurred before my great-grandparents had even said their marriage vows.
I fought it as long as I could, wrapping the pain up tight like my grandfather had done and shoving it deep inside where it couldn't be explored or excavated. But the nightmares always found a way to bubble up, threatening to swallow me alive in the process.
At my lowest point, I found myself drunk on the bathroom floor at 3 AM with a bottle of sleeping pills, seriously contemplating ending the cycle of intergenerational trauma through the most permanent solution. And that was my wake-up call.
There are resources out there to begin the process of generational healing, even for those of us who feel irrevocably damaged by the traumas of our ancestors. I started seeing a trauma counselor and joining group therapy sessions with others who carried their own inherited psychological wounds.
I'll never forget the first time I met Jacob, a young man whose grandfather and great-uncles survived the atrocities of a Nazi concentration camp but never opened up about the soul-scarring brutality they experienced. Jacob and I became accountability buddies, checking in on each other's progress and emotional state while we worked through EMDR therapy and family mapping exercises.
With the group's support and my counselor's expert guidance, I began to unravel the heavy cloak of trauma, allowing the light to pierce the darkness I had been living under for so long. I started practicing mindfulness and meditation to find stillness and separate my own identity from the intergenerational pain.
The nightmares persisted in the beginning, with vivid flashes of images and sounds that made me jolt awake in a cold sweat. But I learned grounding techniques to ease the anxiety spirals and remind myself that I am my own person, not just an avatar for my family's tragedies.
As the weeks and months passed, the nightmares slowly started losing their grip on me. The visions of war and violence faded, replaced with more abstract fears and half-remembered fragments. Some mornings, I would wake up and realize with surprise that I had slept through the night undisturbed, with no memories of dark dreams whatsoever.
With that release of the nightmarish visions, I felt myself becoming lighter somehow, less weighed down by the unseen baggage I had been carrying for so many years without realizing the burden. I laughed more easily, took more emotional risks by opening myself up to others, and discovered newfound reserves of creativity and ambition that had been locked away by the traumatic inheritance.
Jacob and I still keep in close touch, meeting up for a hike and outdoor meditation whenever we're in the same area. We often remark on how our friendship formed from the mutual goal of healing from generational trauma, but now our bond transcends that psychic scar tissue. We are who we are because of it, but no longer defined or imprisoned by it.
My story is not unique, unfortunately. According to research, trauma can be encoded into our DNA and passed down over multiple generations through cellular memory. Many of us may be walking around haunted by nightmares and neuroses imprinted on us like scratches on wax from experiences that predated our birth, feeling the pangs of fear and violence that scarred our ancestors.
But just because these unwanted inheritances get passed down to us, that doesn't mean we can't begin the process of healing them. What my grandfather and father and so many others of their wartime generations couldn't do - open up the traumas and allow themselves to feel them, metabolize them, release them - is still possible for us.
It takes courage, patience, perseverance. It takes being willing to feel the weight of atrocities and psychic injuries we never experienced directly but which became entangled in our cellular code. It takes a village of support, of shared empathy and mutual dedication to doing the shadow work and bringing light to what has remained cloaked in darkness for so long.
These days, I sleep through the night more often than not. And on the occasions when I have a nightmare that summons those ancestral agonies, I don't panic or try to stuff them back down. I allow myself to sit in the discomfort for a while, grounding myself with deep breaths and mantras to remind myself that I am safe, that those horrors are in the past. And then I release them back into the ether, more convinced than ever to continue doing my part to cauterize the generational wounds.
We can't keep passing down this heirloom of unprocessed trauma to our descendants like a sick inheritance. We have to be the ones to stop the cycle, to un-inscribe the nightmares from our DNA, to remember the light and the warmth of our shared humanity.
It may take generations more of mindful effort to heal the intergenerational trauma on a mass scale. But we are the ones with the opportunity and the obligation to step into that light, one cautious but determined step at a time.
Required
Due to the unbalanced nature of Daniel Moors' testimony, when the drugs had been almost absent, it was readily apparent that psychological dependence had set in. And at the moment he had desperately needed his vice.
However the young man had luckily had enough lucidity to not antagonize the officers or much move when called for a disturbance in the estate.
Due to his incoherence, his erratic behavior prior, due to the fact that the younger brother was petrified with eyes blown wide and drenched but otherwise uninjured on the patio a social worker was called in.
The parents had lost control. Realized so months ago when their son had punched a wall in an exhausted, irritable state one night.
And as it stood had no means or authority as parents to have corralled destructive behavior and violent language.
Olli had become something of a doll, otherwise unaccounted for in matters of the house, in the instances Daniel sober or not deigned to notice him. Sometimes he was in a hugging and crying mood. Other times he was in a venting mood.
He screamed at ten year old Olli on such occasions.
It was scary.
Even though his screams had demanded him to stay there, in one place, far from him while he was so angry.
His eyes had learned to track the movements of those bigger. Take mental note of how they paced, how long their strides, how measured or how agitated.
And from the very start he'd not trusted Dr. Eddal. Hadn't wanted her there.
From the start a requirement to shelve the entire ordeal as resolved was for the parents to submit Olli to a counselor for care.
Specializing in abused children.
She'd been used to horrible. And in some occasions yes, the children did turn into statistics into her mind.
She could only hope every day, try a little harder every day that those ill-suited tracks of thought never showed.
Dr. Eddal first consulted with Olli late at night, not long after Daniel had been detained and formally registered into rehab. Rather than her regular office it had been in a hospital.
The parents or Uncles, the adult family members were often the most common culprits. But there were always the times-- where, "the brother in his stupors would talk in coarse language, extort the child, blackmail and demand from the child to keep his silence."
"We do not believe physical force was applied."
"Marks designated to be 'with intent' are few and far between. Most if not all are now old and partially healed."
She answered his questions.
She asked her own, of how he felt of what he liked and who he liked. What did he do at certain times of the day and when he ate. How was school? There had been a note that he tried out for his basketball team and had been a rat in the Nutcracker show that winter.
Eddal did her utmost to reassure he was a person. A valued person who'd been undeservedly mistreated. In a way no one deserved to be treated.
And with time, in their eighteen months together she hesitated, but ultimately decided that it wouldn't be unprofessional if he considered her a friend.
If it meant his fear of adults all but faded.
Once he'd graced her with his voice, well, she certainly laughed a great deal. She clapped when he showed her the steps for the rat's solo in the Nutcracker. She listened as rules were enforced and the candy and cookie jars were placed out of his reach.
It was a transitionary period: from indulgent negligence to authoritative.
She reminded him it was out of love. She reminded that it was his decision and his alone to see Daniel, to contact his older brother-- his older brother with an illness who had hurt him, who had known so to some level-- when it was safe. Safe for Olli physically and safe for Olli mentally.
She only saw him twice-more after the eighteen months were up.
Three years later and she'd have to correct that.
Setting her purse on the seat beside her a coffee mug had been slid into her hands.
"Thank you ma'am," Daniel said quietly.
Olli had allowed his brother to borrow his phone to call for a consult.
The boys' parents were at the moment, at Olli's school for a conference about recent behavioral issues. Before they were to realize the younger son had set them up to leave.
"Everyone else thinks I was hallucinating what I saw on that road. I'd be a little less pissed if they at least gave me a chance to speak."
"I'd read about that in the papers. You claim to have seen--"
"A ghost maybe, best way I could think to describe it when my head had been cut clean through with my windshield mind you."
Daniel Moors was terse but otherwise composed. He kept his temper and sighed out his frustrations.
"So," he continued with an obstinate shrug, "I hired three high-school freshmen. Okay, two freshmen and my brother."
[R E D U C T E D]
The first time I saw the young man, known as [R E D U C T E D], subsequently known as ‘the patient’, was when he was brought to me in handcuffs. He had an air of gloom I have yet to see in any of my patients. The photo that was shown to me and the man in front of me were like 2 different people. His lush brown hair had turned white and his attractive face had become skeletal.
The first week was spent without much progress. Most of the hour went on in an absolute silence and observation as he seemed to search the room. As if looking for something hidden. Occasionally he would listen to non-existing sounds and tremble. As it was my job to determine if the patient suffered from a mental illness or if he was sane enough for imprisonment, I decided to give him the time he needed to open up.
On the second week, he seemed to get more comfortable and started to open his thoughts to me. He spoke of the night in the woods and the horrors that had made the headline news that next morning.
His opening statement was, and I quote: “There are things in this world, doctor. Horrors beyond our wildest nightmares. And I have seen one of it.”
I pondered if those ‘horrors’ were manifestations brought on by stress or perhaps a genetic predisposition towards schizophrenic disorders? I don’t remember his parents mentioning anything about ancestors with similar disorders. But who knows. Maybe it happened further than the family remembers.
The patient continued by stating how it all begun during an intoxicated round of truth or dare. One of the victims, known as [R E D U C T E D], subsequently known as ‘victim one’, took out a piece of paper and dared him to read from it. He continues by recalling that he found the page strangely old looking and hideous. There was a text written on it in red ink. The patient questioned the victim what book this was from. But victim one simply told him it’s from some old box he found in his late grandfathers attic. It sounded creepy, so he brought it on the drinking excursion.
So the patient read from it a sentence, one he can not remember, as it was in some foreign language. But as soon as he finished the words, a lightning struck near them on the ground. He swears that he is not lying when he describes it as green and almost soundless. His blood analysis seems to confirm that the boys were not on any kind of mind-altering substance, safe for beer. A greenish black smoke rose from the place of impact and started taking on a human silhouette. From it formed a creature of grotesque shape. The patient seemed to sweat profoundly upon remembering. He describes it as, and I quote: “Barely looking humanoid, with a strange demonic twisting on it’s skin.” If one is to imagine his hallucination, the face only contained a mouth with rows of dull teeth, outstretched in a spiral towards the height of trees. Its hands were intertwined appendages of what he only described as, and I quote: “tentacles from an octopus.” Hysteria soon erupted between them. Screaming and yelling. Only victim one, that brought the page, seemed to bow to the ground for the creature. The creature grinned from one earless side to the other. That is the last thing the patient is able to recall before waking up in that same spot, with a knife in his hands and surrounded by the dismembered bodies of his friends. In a more grotesque manner than any horror film he had ever seen.
After this couple of weeks, it is my professional opinion; after spending all this time with the patient, to declare that the man known as [R E D U C T E D] to be psychologically insane and should be put under immediate supervision.
From some deep part of my mind, I have also decided to include a piece of unrelated information. In spite of the new heating installed in the office, I could feel a cold in the room as the patient told his story.