spark plug energy

there and then gone

static electricity

coursing through each vein.

they paint me

as

neurotic,

tell me i'm

hyperactive.

"shush"

when i speak

"sit down"

when i stand

"do your work"

they said

when i found myself

lost

in imagination.

i got tired

of being told

to stop

they had

the audacity

to unplug me

and now

they're wondering

why i

shut down.

It’s not fair.

I hit my toe against the leg of the table, feel the pain vibrate up my leg. Bouncing it against the wood until the pain becomes a constant din.

Paul and Ethan sit down. Like me, their eyes are red. Like me, they have been left hollow. In different ways. I lost a friend, and I guess they lost a son. But the results are the same: emptiness, anger, hopelessness.

I could tell them that he loved them. Because he did. But it doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t matter how much they helped, or how much he loved them, or how much they loved him. None of it was enough. And it would never have been enough. Because I didn’t love him enough. I couldn’t love him enough.

Aunt Tracy doesn’t know what to say. She seems uncomfortable. Maybe I shouldn’t have let them in. But I think I needed to.

They didn’t see him, though, not like I did. They didn’t see the yellow eyes or his frozen grin. That memory is mine. All mine. But even that is not what I see when I think of him. I think of punching him in the face. Of the fear in his eyes. The desperation. All the moments where I could’ve said something different, done something different. All the moments that led up to his decision. All the things I should’ve done instead.

That’s not fair, either, though. None of this is fair. There was no way to win. This is just one loss out of a million possible losses. A million ways this could’ve gone wrong and none where it goes right. No happy ending.

I wish Andee could see us. His revenge wasn’t on me. It was on everyone. It was a nuclear bomb dropped on a military base. Maybe it hit its target. But it destroyed everything around it along the way.

I don’t want to miss him. I want to keep being pissed at him, want to revel in my anger. I want to believe that this is karma.

But most likely it’s nothing. Andee’s dice got rolled and came up blank. The end.

He won. He got out. But my dice are still rolling. Paul and Ethan’s dice, they’re still rolling. And we keep getting the worst numbers.

“I guess we should go,” Ethan says.

Aunt Tracy shrugs, but she wants them gone.

“You can stay as long as you’d like.”

Ethan’s smile is tight.

“Thank you. But we should at least pretend to get some rest, right?”

Aunt Tracy’s laugh is nervous, quiet, short.

I want them to stay. I want to know that I’m not alone. Sharing my agony, even sharing it in awkward silence and coffee mugs that leave rings on our table, is better than knowing I’m alone in it.

But they get up. They leave. Aunt Tracy runs the dishwasher even though it only has three cups in it. I listen to it whir, listen to the almost soothing hum of machinery, the rush of hot water from behind a stainless steel wall. Cleaning away the evidence of tonight.

Idle Hands

You know what they say about idle hands. Devil’s best friend, and all that. My hands are never idle, constantly occupied, twitching with some imagined duty. The devil has no place within my fingers, no hellfire comes from my nails as I strip them down so near to the bone. Teeth gnawing at the strips of loose skin that hang listless from my hands, enamel grinding together in tandem with every tick and tock of the clock.

I do not allow myself to rest, to sink into that sloth that invites sin. As long as I keep moving, keep twisting and untwisting my fingers as if wringing out a damp cloth until it becomes as dry as bones worn down by the desert sands of time, I will stay safe, protected from the darkness within my skull. Tearing at the skin around my nails, picking at the flesh of my lips, anything to escape the sinful thoughts that plague me, the devil that has taken residence within my ribcage and waits, sly and oh so patient for any shred of inactivity to prey upon. Even in the hours before dawn, the hours of darkness when the rest of the world sleeps, I do not rest. I do not sink into the darkness, refuse to fall victim to the sinful dreams that plague my subconscious. As long as I am awake, I will not dream of soft skin, or slender hands wrapped in my long hair, or lipstick stains on my white church dress. Even now, while the rest of the house has the privilege of sinking into deep slumber, I will remain awake. Active. I do not get the luxury of sleeping. The devil is too close. His influence is too strong. If I fall asleep, he'll take me. Just like he took my brother last year. Father Henry said our family is cursed. My brother's suicide has left us in the shadow of the devil. The devil took him, snatched him away in the middle of the night.

I will not give evil the chance to do the same to me.

I’m in my room, knuckles white around the leather bound Bible, gold leaf lettering on thick brown covers, thin pages so easily torn by careless fingers. I do not tear it. Each sheet is lifted and set down with a close precision, creases smoothed out and pages never dog-eared. It is knowledge and power wrapped in synthetic skin, a testament to the longevity of faith. It is holy, innocent, beautiful, precious. All the things that I am not. I’m staring at it, trying not to notice the shadow upon my wall, a girl’s figure that hovers in the corner of my eye, tempting me to look. Forcing the hairs on my neck to stand at attention, the darkness that causes my eyes to drift, ever so slightly, to her. To the delicate curve of her body, the slight part of her lips, the wisp in her hair that I want to smooth down with my fingers. The girl on my wall is a real girl, or an echo of a real girl. Her name is Emily Baker. A good name, a holy name. The kind of name that makes preachers smile and nod, think to themselves her parents must be so proud. Not a name like mine, a name that makes teachers cluck their tongues and passerby turn their heads away in shame. For once I want someone to look at me, to smile the way that they smile at Emily. To look at me the way I look at Emily. Just once I want to know what idolization feels like, the soothing balm against the burn of scorn. I want to have someone look at me, and I want to be able to look back without fear.

Sometimes, even, allow myself to believe that Emily sees me. That when she catches me staring in church her smile hides the same forbidden desire. After all, I get no smiles from anyone. But Emily gets smiles from everyone, and so she can give her smiles out freely.

I save my smiles just for her. Cracked lips parting ever so slightly to reveal slightly crooked teeth. Emily doesn't have crooked teeth. Her teeth are straight. Perfect. But she seems to appreciate my smiles, as strained as they are. Of course, that is merely my wishful thinking. She doesn't know what a smile means. She gets smiles everywhere she goes. From her parents, from her friends, from Gregory Allen, the boy that everyone says is destined for greatness. Mother says I should find a man like Gregory Allen. He smiles at all the women in town, and all the women smile back. Including Emily. But the women don't smile at me. Except, of course, for Emily.

Smiles are love. But when she smiles at me, it is a different kind of love I crave.

I want the love of sin. Deep, angry love. Bitter love. Sweet like rotting teeth. I want to love a girl. I want to be able to stare at Emily for as long as I want without my mother pinching my wrist and calling me indecent.

She seems to love that word: indecent. To her, indecency is an all-encompassing form of evil. Murder? Stealing? Wandering eyes? All are indecent. My mother seems to thrive off of indecency. Weaponizing it to fuel her own piety.Through indecency, she can be noble… compared to everyone else. She can be a symbol of martyrdom, the angel that cuts off her wings to stay among her family. Laboring under the belief that she alone can cure my sin.

My mother is right. I am indecent. Sinful. Wrong.

Emily’s shadow is gone now; she was never here. She is a neighborhood away, asleep in her own bed. She has no fear of sin. She is perfect. I, on the other hand, am not. I see her on my wall every night now, a mirage of an oasis while I'm dehydrated in the desert. An intangible phantom of what will never be, what must never be. She is a mere personification of my ultimate sin, a mere projection of my guilty conscience.

Guilt, what is guilt? Is it the frantic beating of a heart, the dry patch on the tongue, the picking of skin, the fear of idle hands? Is it the shadow on the wall that looks a little too much like her, or the magnified voice of Father Harry every Sunday, the itch of your stiff dress as you sit, hot and uncomfortable, in the cold wooden pew? No. Guilt is not any of those things. The guilt is in my hands. Every time I pause flipping the pages of my Bible. Every time I allow my thoughts to wander, when my eyes glaze over, and everything is, for an instant, still— that is the truest sign of my guilt. The tell-tale heart that lives under my skin instead of the floorboards, forever waiting for a moment of weakness when I'll cave to the madness of inaction.

Idle hands are the devil’s best friend, and for that if nothing else I will never allow my hands to be idle, throwing myself into every task, tapping mindless rhythms on the school desks, picking at my skin, fists clenching and unclenching, hair pulled out one thread at a time, hands smoothing down the pages of my pocket Bible as I read and reread the lines, a futile attempt to convince myself of my own innocence. If I read them, maybe I’ll believe that they are true. Maybe I will find answers in old quotations, reprieve in these pages of history. Maybe there will be solace in the movement of my hands, the desperate movement of my eyes raking across the page. Maybe if I reread it again I’ll find what it is I’m missing, the secret to normalcy, to quelling the cruel desires that flood my heart. All that matters is that I keep reading.

Somewhere between these fragile pages I will find the answers I seek. The answers to explain why I love Emily the way I do, and how to rise above that wrongness. How to be more like her without liking her. Emily is holy and good and beautiful, and I’m just the girl who sits in the back pew in a futile attempt to escape my shame.

She and I are too different. And in all the ways that matter, too much the same.

Both of us are expected to be mothers. Wives, married to a man. Keepers of the house. Like our mothers before us, and their mothers before them.

Emily would be a good wife. A good mother. If only I could have been born a man, I could pursue her without shame. Without guilt.

God made me a woman. And as such, I am cursed by temptation, forbidden desires that pulse under my skin like fat worms clogging my veins.

Once upon a time, I tried to tear them out. Rip out the desire, the sin, with the tip of the kitchen knife that my mother uses to cut lamb. It proved sharp enough to cut through me. But I am no lamb. I am not innocent. And it could not cut deep enough to sever me from my sin.

Or maybe it was my fault. Maybe I didn't try hard enough. Maybe I didn't want it enough. Maybe my father is right, and I just want to be a sinner. Maybe the devil's already inside me, no matter what I do to keep it out.

Between my fingers, a page rips. Translucent paper crumbles between my fingers. One less page in the Bible. One more sin I’ve committed.

I try to smooth out the wound, but it remains just as broken. Just as scarred. Torn pages can't be fixed. Smudged ink can't be fixed either. Ink smudged by tears will remain stained. Never to form the words again. Words that could have saved me, maybe. My carelessness destroyed them. No more Psalms. No more hope.

I wipe what remains of the tears from my face. I do not want to risk destroying any more precious words.

I suppose it was inevitable. I am destined to destroy. After all, Desire gives birth to sin, and Sin invites Death. Isn't that what James 1:15 says: "Desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death?" My desire will only feed my sin. I can feel it. Desire is nursing Sin on its cruel breast, waiting for the day when it can produce its own poisoned milk and carry on its violent legacy.

I tuck the torn page under my pillow. Maybe there it will bring me the wisdom I need.

I'm too still. I need to get up.

My door creaks, but it doesn't matter. I learned long ago that my parents are heavy sleepers. That's why they didn't wake up when my brother turned on the car in the garage in the middle of summer and let it run.

They didn't know a thing until after the smoke alarms began blaring. Only after my brother's sin was complete, only after the devil began his raid on our home, did they stir from their rest.

It was their ultimate sin.

Idle hands are the devil's best friend. If my parents hadn't been so lazy, maybe my brother would be alive. Maybe the devil wouldn't have made his way into me. But there is no changing the past. Their hands were idle. Now they are stained red. I will not suffer that same misfortune.

Even if that means wandering the house at night, pacing in the hopes of outrunning the devil. He's only a few steps behind. I swear he's getting closer.

My brother set loose a demon, one that was invisible and yet always close. It took him first. If I'm not careful, it'll take me. Me and my idle hands.

If only there were some way to be alert. Every moment. Every day. The caffeine high without the crash. I can feel myself weakening. My eyes grow heavier every day. There's a line of crescent moons where I've pinched myself awake in math class. There must be a better solution.

These accursed hands of mine. One hangnail has begun to bleed. Another is hanging by a thin thread of skin. I pull that one off. I wish my hands looked like Emily's. I'm sure Emily's hands are never idle. I'm sure she's always doing something. Something good. Not like me. My hands have done bad things, terrible things. Like last month, after I dreamed of Emily. That dream left something inside me. I pried it out with my fingers, even while it dampened my sheets and lingered in my underwear. I think Mother saw the stains, although she never said a word. I could feel the shame. Even after I washed my hands every hour for a week, even after I scrubbed until my skin was raw, the sin had already burrowed itself deep inside me. A parasite.

Maybe that's the problem with my hands. It's the source of the rot, a fungus creeping up my fingers. Paralyzing me. A cancer that must be excised before it spreads. Maybe it began a month ago with the dream. Maybe it began three months ago when the first stirrings of desire kicked their feet in my gut, an unholy birth sucking away my virtue more and more with every passing day. Maybe it began a year ago with the death of my brother. Maybe it began four years ago after my father caught my brother trying on Mother's clothing. Maybe it began sixteen years ago when I was born. Maybe it began before that, when my brother was born. Maybe it's haunted my family for generations, like a defective gene passed down until it is given the chance to manifest.

Maybe that's the reason for the rot in my hands, cold and wet.

I see now what went wrong. When I cut open my hands, it was to bleed out the sin. But sin goes deeper than blood. Desire doesn't run in the bones, or the blood. It is a sin of the flesh. A primal, instinctive sin that creeps along the skin and makes its home, burrowing deeper and deeper with every thought.

Emily is back on my wall, and this time her shadow seems clearer. Solid. Real. A guardian angel telling me I'm on the right path.

I find my mother's knife again. She keeps it on top of the drawer of the cabinet. Her prized knife. Used only on holidays when we get the best meals. Usually lamb. My father likes lamb. My mother once made the mistake of expressing that lambs should be sacred. Not slaughtered for meat but kept as symbols of our faith. Innocence.

My father nearly killed her that day. And we ate lamb for dinner the following night.

It tasted like blood.

Maybe my father invited the devil in. Maybe my mother was right. Or maybe my mother was wrong, and that's why the devil came.

I've been looking for signs of the devil for years. I was trained for it in the church. And yet as much as I look at my parents, they show no sign of the devil's influence. They attend church. They discipline their children. They fulfill their roles with pride.

It doesn't matter where the devil came from. It's here now, and it must be exorcized. Expelled from the body of its host.

The knife is in my hands, glinting with holy light.

I bring it down on my hand. Not hard enough. The devil is restraining me, holding me back from my duty. I must fight it. Fight him.

I close my eyes and imagine I am staring into Emily's eyes. She is smiling. I can almost feel her hands around mine.

"And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell."

Matthew 5:30. She knows the words that I need to hear.

It is her who brings down the knife, not me. She has the strength I require, the conviction I lack. Her purity is what rids the last vestiges of sin from my fingers.

I am free. No more desire. No more sin. No more shadows on the wall. No more right hand.

My hand may be forever idle, but I will no longer be. The devil must find a new host, for I will no longer be his puppet. His hold on my family is broken.

I stumble up the stairs in a pleasant daze. I don't feel the pain. God has protected me from that. I've done what He would have wanted.

I take my hand with me, although I suppose it is no longer my hand. It's the devil's hand, consumed by sin. But I was strong. My hand may be consumed, but I am not.

I tuck my hand under my pillow next to the shredded page of scripture. Both are emblems of sin. Both are relics of the past.

I reopen my book, and I don't flinch when the blood kisses the ink. It's holy blood, blessed. No longer stained with sin. Instead it is a stigmata, a mark of the lord.

The blood does not smear the ink, but instead makes it clearer, black on red.

I watch the words and they watch me back. Like proverbs 15:3; "The eyes of the lord are in every place, watching the evil and the good." Watching me, the good. Watching the evil, my idle hands. Watching the sin shrivel up and die, scorched by the light of virtue. God's last blessing to me.

I close my eyes. This time my tears are controlled, tracing paths of creation rather than destruction. Freedom.

I find it hard to open my eyes, but I have no reason to.

At last, I can rest. No more fear of sin or judgment. Hell is a distant land.

Heaven, though, is close. I can feel it creeping up my right arm, glory spreading from the stump in unison with the blood soaking into my sheets. Salvation is merely pain by another name.

Sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

My sin never got its chance to be fully grown. But here is death anyway, waiting at the edge of my bed. Does that mean it was someone else's sin, not mine? Was it my brother's sin? My parent's?

Emily's shadow is back on my wall. She seems to move towards me, her figure whispering across the boundaries of reality. Whispering the secrets of the cosmos across the atoms of space between us.

It wasn't my brother. It wasn't even my parents. The sin was systemic, bred into us like a genetic disorder. Except it wasn't genetic, it was learned. The sin existed long before us, and it was woven into our souls by corrupted men and women. Disguised as salvation. Men like Father Harry told my parents what to believe, and we trusted them because men of God couldn't be wrong.

The original sin was in the pages of the Bible itself. Implying that Virtue could be plucked out of its context and replanted in a modern world, while other verses could be disregarded entirely. God planted the cherry tree in the garden of Adam and Eve, right next to the apple tree, and from the beginning we were taught to be cherry pickers.

Idle hands weren't the devil's best friend, then. The devil's best friend is blind faith. Didn't God Himself warn us against that? "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."

Religion was born a lamb. But eventually, men like my father slaughtered the lamb and ate it. God should be a lamb, but instead he's been made a wolf. Hungry. Violent.

Sin ate the fingers from my arm, gnawed on the fragile flesh of my palms. This bloody severance cannot be mistaken for virtue, I see now.

I am not a sinner. My brother was not a sinner. My mother and father were not sinners. We are all but lambs, led into the gaping maw of the wolf.

The sin is not what we do, but what guides us to do it. For isn't the serial killer guided by their own twisted morals? Isn't the bigot guided by their ancestor's teachings? History is the enemy of Progress, and as such it must be studied. Like any enemy we must learn its ways and find the best defense against them.

I force my eyes to open. Rest is easy. Inaction is easy. The devil's best friend is blind faith, and idle hands are the slave to blind faith.

If I rest now, I will be forever idle. Forever trapped by my blind faith.

I dig under my pillow and find the piece of me, take it from the devil's cradle. Not the devil's hand. My hand. I cannot ever sever it from me. No blade can cut free my own flesh. Rather than fearing it I must learn from it.

Emily's shadow is on the wall, urging me forward. In my bed lies the grinning devil, his arms like magnets.

In the middle is me. Pain begs me to crawl back to the devil. Duty propels me towards Emily. Towards the phone downstairs. Towards the numbers— 911— because asking for help is more of a virtue than any self-mutilation.

The world may look at me and see madness. But the true madness is the world that I've been trapped in. Weaving myself into a web of lies and shame. Simultaneously the spider and the fly. But no longer. The true sin lies not in individuality, but in conformity. And I've been conforming for far too long.

I will no longer be the fly. I’ll be the spider, weaving my own tapestry rather than seeking out someone else’s web. No longer ensnared in a false faith, but rather finding faith in my own way, through my own unique path.

I will be myself.

And I won't let anyone tell me that's a sin.

in youth we are taught to SAVOR

the BULB of burgeoning life.

AGAINST the advice of our elders,

we forget to relish our youth,

preferring resentment OVER

LAUGHTER.

we would rather HORRIFY

than LOVE,

rather disobey

than conform,

desperate in our innocence

to taste the forbidden APPLE

of adulthood

even if it causes us INJURY.

we are content to POISON ourselves

with a lust for the future.

we pluck the seeds of development

early

in an attempt to hasten

our bodies

towards the sweet freedom of adulthood.

readily, we IGNORE the responsibility

that falls upon our shoulders in the process.

and JUSTICE all too often

raises her SWORD to strike us down,

SCALE tipped,

but not in our favor.

in our rush to taste the FLAVOR of adulthood,

we have turned from grapes to RAISINS,

losing the substance that gave us our

vitality,

and set out to dry

in nursing homes and hospice care.

the world has shriveled us,

and thus our life is over

before we even let it BEGIN.

in our fear of youth,

we've started to understand

why our parents are AFRAID of age.

every PUPPY loses its energy,

every EAGLE goes bald.

youth is fleeting,

and the young are afraid of its

impermanence.

but age is eternal,

passed from generation to generation

like a cursed heirloom,

and the old are afraid

to acknowledge

that they're

just like

their parents.

ocean musings crash

in tandem with the water

salt spray tastes like tears.

she's cerulean,

her memory is rising,

tainting your thoughts blue

just like the sea's tide,

thoughts of her come with the moon

her and the sea, one.

she has become it,

where she was once just like you,

she is now ocean.

and you search for blue

*stumbled across this little tidbit in my saved drafts, I dunno what challenge it was from but it's here now, so enjoy! :)

you were

astrology

dancing among the stars,

your fate mapped out

in orbits and constellations,

consistency and security.

i was

alchemy

in its crudest form,

substances

thrown together

in the attempt

to create

gold.

but i remained

leaden.

you were

schedules and science

i was

improv and magic

and we

danced

until magic and science

became blurred,

both of us

occupying the space

in between.

we learned

to be more

than fact,

more

than fiction.

under the glow

of the stars

even lead can

shine.

Imagine, for a moment, that it is 1999. Amidst the vibrant movie culture of the age, films were investing more and more energy into special effects, music, actors... the average film cost about 53 million dollars by 1998, and many films far exceeded that, easily costing a hundred million dollars or more.

In the midst of this, there comes a new horror movie with a budget of 200,000-750,000 dollars— an order of magnitude smaller than other films.

The Blair Witch Project revolutionized horror with "found footage" style filming. The immersive experience led to many people questioning whether it was real or fake. Actors in the movie, in the promotional viewing, were listed as either "missing" or "deceased" in accordance with the characters of the movie. It grossed nearly 250 million dollars in the box office, rendering it one of the most successful independent films, and ranked 41st in the most successful horror movie of all time. The Blair Witch Project was proof that movies didn't need an exorbitant budget in order to be successful.

The Blair Witch Project revolutionized horror and blurred the lines between reality and fiction, and for that reason, it changed the movie industry forever.

i wonder often

about the locks that exist in the human brain.

safeguards against our own annihilation.

they say that if we were to

remove these locks,

we'd be able to bite with the force of a shark,

even if it broke our jaw with the impact.

we'd be able to fight with the fury of fire ants,

driving ourselves into the ground

with no regard for what might lay

underneath.

we'd be able to crawl like the earthworm,

even after being severed in two.

pain would be secondary

to the feral instinct within.

i wonder if

i smashed my locks

and blasted open that destructive door,

would i lose myself?

or would i be able to achieve so much more?

would i plunge my fist into the fire

and delight in the tickle of flames?

would i shatter concrete with the force of my fist

and fear not the breaking of bone?

maybe through this lawlessness

i'd find what i have lost:

assertiveness and strength.

for i dwell in cowardice

and exist in weakness,

locked inside the prison

of my fear-addled brain,

left to wonder

how the world would appear to me

if i were to be

unlocked.

i've learned to be

intangible

my actions are not my own.

i am merely a parent,

projecting their successes onto an infant

as it takes its first steps

into the unknown

and then getting angry

when it

moves away from me

into something else entirely.

once, i would have attempted

to grab it as it fled

fingers closing around a tattered sheath

of youth

and pulling it away to reveal

the monster it hides beneath.

a monster that looks a little too much like me.

once, i would have fought,

but today i can no longer see myself in my eyes,

today i can no longer feign my surprise

when my body

gets up

and walks away

leaving me on the bedroom floor

for someone easier to adore,

and I unwind:

out of touch.

out of sight.

out of mind.

from a young age i was advertised

using words i had not yet learned to pronounce,

the center of a hurricane that

whirled at a feverish pitch

i was trapped in the fervor

for academic excellence,

success, an intangible concept

that i did not yet have the coordination

to grasp.

like bundles of hay

the idea made me itch and burn

yet i reached for it anyway,

a tower built upon the letter A.

school made my nose run with possibility

and educators were running out of tissues

to wipe the mucus away.

like a baby

sucking promethazine

from a bottle

i was

far too young

to swallow compliments

but the pressure found its way inside me

like the books i carried on my back,

weighing me down

until the compliments

stopped coming.

but maybe this is

prometheus's gift:

like fire to the lowly,

sometimes allergy medicine must be

delivered upon unripe infants

to soothe their swelling egos

before they burst.