teen fiction author

Untitled as of yet

2011-06-20T14:38:00.001-07:00

Nothing on the face of the earth tasted better than a blueberry. The fact that it wasn’t technically the right season for blueberries didn’t discourage Tosha Avery’s obsession with the little round frits. That the cost for them out of season was absurd didn’t bother her either; she had a blueberry problem and proudly admitted it. She couldn’t exactly explain the attraction unless she wanted to sound insane in front of her friends, but it wasn’t the taste so much as the variation each berry offered from the one before it: they were not uniform in any way. The color might have always been a marbled mix of dark blues but the pattern was never the same on any two; all were tiny but some were full and round while others were small and ovalish. Even the colors inside were different, ranging from green to a mild white to purplish, the flavor range of the inner flesh going from firmly sour to sweet to bland mushiness, respectively.
But it wasn’t just that. It was the pop when she bit one, the dark, gritty seeds that caught in her teeth, how so many could fit in her palm, their ambiguous food nature: she could eat them for breakfast, at lunch, at dinner, on a dessert. They were extremely adaptable, something she could never be.
Tosha squinted at her homework, the five problems consisting of irregular shapes whose volumes she was expected to calculate, and sighed. When was she ever going to need to know the formula to figure out the volume of a sphere was 4/3πr3, or that a hemisphere’s volume was a sphere’s divided by half, or 2/3 πr3? It was highly doubtful she’d end up having a job where that particular knowledge was required.
Irritated with her own lack of an attention span, Tosha took her mechanical pencil and speared a blueberry from the bowl on the lamp table. It was more than likely unsanitary for her to keep up that practice but it was amusing in a stupid sort of way and kept her fingers from getting wet. She always washed her blueberries, but only because her mother nagged her to. It wasn’t as if a little leftover pesticide ever killed someone.
Thud-thud-thud.
“Daddy?” Tosha said hopefully, popping her head up to stare hard at the front door as the knob rattled and shook as someone outside sought entrance.
It could just be DJ. A quick look at the clock neither confirmed nor denied her suspicion. It was too early for Bernard Avery to be coming home from his most recent business trip, but also too soon for her brother to be done lifting like he always did on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sharon Avery was taking a nap in her bedroom. So who…?
The big red door flew open to reveal a tired, disheveled, but smiling Bernard tugging a suitcase and two briefcases along behind him.
“Surprise!” he sang, but as quietly as if he somehow knew that his wife was sleeping.
“Daddy!” Tosha shrieked, forgetting herself for a moment in her excitement. She vaulted over the back of the loveseat and ran into her father’s arms, pressing her head to his shoulder and breathing in the familiar, comforting scent of his favorite cologne and jacket leather.
“I missed you.”
“Missed you too,” she said, trying to worm further into his grasp and mewling in protest when he pushed her back and held her out at arm’s length. His eyes did something, a casual up-down search, that made her vaguely uneasy, but it was put out of her mind when she realized he’d said something.
“What, Daddy?”
“I said, what have you been eating since I last saw you? I swear you’ve grown a foot taller!”
Tosha laughed and batted his hands away. “I’m still really short.”
“But you’re still smarter than anyone else taller than you.”
The strange unease that she had felt before suddenly came back at the rippling mix of caution and admiration in her father’s voice; it sounded as if he knew something that she didn’t and was eager to share it, yet was afraid she would figure it out on her own.
When did that get so strange? she asked herself. Daddy’s always trying to protect you. It’s what he does.
In fact, if she would have taken the time to remember a little, she would have seen that Bernard took his job as a parent even more seriously than his meetings and various business assignments that took him away so often. He took special interest in her life, as he did now, letting her chatter away about school and what she had done with her friends while clipping leashes to the dogs’ collars, listening intently and simply nodding and making a noncommittal noise whenever she paused, and only asked her questions –and what thoughtful, deep questions they were!- whenever she seemed to run out of things to say. He was always the first to explain things to her, often going so far as to talk with her about the things that a mother normally covered: menstruation, drugs, safe sex, and even homosexuality. That was why when he didn’t advise her to change her guess on how many rabbits they would see on their walk, she knew something was wrong. Once she’d talked herself out so that she couldn’t get out another coherent word even with his encouragements, he was normally full of cheerful observations about the time of day and the weather and how such factors affected the habits of little cotton-tailed beasts.
“Daddy, are you okay?” she said when she had caught her breath. The fleshy web between her thumb and index finger ached where the leash had been jerked across it numerous times during their most recent rabbit chase. She had guessed three, since it was so early. He had dutifully guessed four, but only when prompted numerous times. That they had seen five thus far and were only halfway through their normal route and Bernard was still quiet worried her very, very deeply.
Is he mad at me?
“What? Of course I am.”
“It doesn’t seem like it.”
“Why would you say that?”
“You’re quiet.”
“And that means something’s wrong?”
“It’s different from usual.”
“How so?”
“You normally talk a lot.”
Tosha was both surprised and delighted when her father burst out laughing and tousled her hair, momentarily becoming himself again. “I guess I do, don’t I?”
They were home by then, the dogs panting and themselves hot and sweating despite the relatively cool air of the early evening. Tosha paused with her hand still on the doorknob. “So you’re sure?”
“That I’m ok? Yes.”
More cheerful by a wide margin than she had been in the two weeks of his absence, Tosha stepped into the house with Bernard behind her. She figured she would finish her homework –and the blueberries-, maybe cajole DJ into playing some Wii with her, and later on be extra-super helpful about making dinner and settling the table; followed by another walk, a few chapters of the newest book by her favorite author, plus an hour of watching TV with Bernard…well, her night was just being made.
Sharon was awake and waiting inside with plenty of wide, sincere, shining smiles and bear hugs for the both of them. Pleasant and hard-working wife that she was, she had already started emptying out Bernard’s suitcase, though she hadn’t moved it from near the stairs where he’d left it since he took great joy in popping his head up from behind the couch to blather on about his most recent trinkets.
Bernard froze when he saw it, pulling out of his wife’s embrace to stare with startling intensity at the contents which, disturbed from their neat, orderly stacks, seemed spilled out haphazardly. Again, Tosha felt the same sort of squirminess she’d had before when he first looked at her.
“What’ve you taken out?” he asked, trying to act casual but the corners of his mouth shook.
Sharon was confused. “I thought you’ve be happy to be home, so I didn’t want you to be bothered unpacking.”
He repeated, voice dangerously low, “What have you taken out?”
“I-I just started taking your clothes out.”
“Oh.” He relaxed visibly. “Oh, good.”
“Good?” Tosha echoed. Her heart was pounding in a way she couldn’t explain.
“Never mind it, okay? I’ll finish it.”
“But you leave again tomorrow!” his wife protested as Bernard zipped up the case to carry away to their bedroom. “You need to relax.”
“I’m fine,” he said at the same time Tosha said disbelievingly, “You leave tomorrow?”
He didn’t seem to hear, disappearing down the hall. Sharon stroked her daughter’s shoulder. “Your Dad is a very important man, you know. The company needs him.”
What company is that? Tosha fumed silently, slinking back to her chair in the corner, so intent on sulking not even blueberries could distract her. The facts were, she simply knew nothing about her father’s job, only that he went on many business trips and lately those trips were alarmingly frequent. Asking was no use. Bernard ruffled her hair and said he would tell her when she was older; Sharon explained patiently that the world was a complex place and Tosha couldn’t expect to understand everything; DJ ignored her, a task he found grim satisfaction within. Not knowing was excruciating.
But, oh well. At least there was always plenty of money.
By the time it was ten o’clock –her bedtime-, Tosha had accomplished none of the things she wanted. Her homework and blue snack remained unfinished and untouched; they went out to eat at the new Mexican restaurant in town so she couldn’t show off her polite helpfulness, and the waiter screwed up her order and she got in a fight with DJ; there was no Wii-playing, no walking, and no peaceful TV-watching. Actually, Bernard acted so strange and tense, almost eager in the eerie way he’d adopted, Tosha found she couldn’t read. The same sentence played over and over in her mind. And so it was almost a relief when Bernard retired to repack and sleep.
Almost.

The next day was Friday and Tosha, like any other teenager, just could not wait to be outside in the humid, rain-heavy air instead of the cool, slightly sterile school environment. Except, Tosha’s reasoning was different from most. She had no boyfriend, no weekend plans such as dates or getting together with the few close friends she had who understand she was innocent and naïve but also witty and kooky and possibly a little, well, wrong. She just wanted to get home. There was a throbbing in her gut, omnipresent, a gigantic bruise on her thoughts, plaguing her; it was like something bad had happened and she knew it, she just didn’t know it.
Maybe Mom’s dead. Or Daddy. Maybe his plane crashed. Or they could just be sick. Or maybe they’re both dead. Or the dogs are! Or…
The hysterical babbling continued all through the rest of the school day and long four-minute ride home. DJ happened to notice the uncharacteristic silence and it worried him deeply; he could not remember a time when his life did not flow along to the merry soundtrack of annoyance that was his sister. That there should be quiet now, etched so deeply in her face she looked almost old, especially when he had the funniest feeling in his stomach, struck him as being very…off. Not good at all.
Tosha dragged her feet on the driveway and garage floor, trying to keep the fateful moment of truth from ever happening, but all too soon she was inside and trilling her customary, “I’m home!” greeting call.
No response. Then…
“In here,” Sharon yelled, her voice flat and lifeless and terrified.
Tosha’s stomach cramped up. DJ stepped around her and led the way to the couch where their mother sat, knowing his sister needed protection now more than she ever had.
Dad is dead, the two siblings thought together, but the reality was much worse.
“I don’t know,” she started slowly, “if what I’m doing right now is right at all. I don’t know if it’s proper. I guess most people would do this differently than I will, but I feel my children have a right to know everything going on in their home because it effects them, too. Do you follow me so far?”
“A little,” DJ said doubtfully while Tosha adamantly shook her head.
“You will soon, I’m afraid. Your father is not…I mean, he…yesterday…” But no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t find the words. “I’ll show you then.” The suggestion was made with helplessness reverberating violently in the four one-syllable words; this situation was one she had never encountered in a parenting class or in any sort of magazine. She didn’t know what to do. She needed help from her children, but how much could she trust them with before it was too much?
“Show us what?” I don’t like this. I don’t like it one bit.
Her mother didn’t answer; she stood and walked into the kitchen and over to the cupboards near the dishwasher. Pulling out the drawer on top first, she took out a red, falling-apart book, and then opened the cupboard and lifted out two bags, both unopened and crinkly, completely clear without any sort of label, placing them on the countertop and lining them up in an almost obsessive manner. One bag contained pink-red, rubbery blobs and the other something triangular and thick, resembling pistachio cake.
Tosha felt sick, very sick. She had seen that sort of almost-rubber texture on food before, oh yes, oh jerky, beef jerky.
Meat.
“Oh good Lord, Savior, Jesus Christ and Mary and Joseph,” she groaned, pressing her hands to her mouth. DJ had evidently come to the same conclusion as she for he swayed on his feet and leaned forward, wearing a deer-in-headlights expression, wanting to look away but unable, curious despite himself about the objects of interest –and dread and horror.
The conclusion was, quite honestly, was very easy and straightforward. An idiot could have figured it out. The book was a cookbook. Obviously. It had the stereotypical plastic white ring binding holding it together, separators poking out the unbound side whose headings she didn’t want to read, didn’t, didn’t, didn’t, and finally managed to wrench her gaze away from the one proclaiming “Desserts!” to the cover, the red-checked picnic tablecloth cover with its almost laughable title of “Cook-Book” and the graphic of a man sitting in a tub of boiling water, the remnants of vegetables, onion peels and green carrot tops, and spice containers scattered all around the base. The man, the steaming man, was smiling.
That’s enough, she thought pleadingly. That’s a plain effing giveaway. Don’t, don’t, don’t.
But she couldn’t help it. She focused again on the bags, the mysteries of their contents suddenly fitting together in her mind without a doubt, leaving no questions as to what they were.
I thought of jerky and it it’s like jerky all right, just not beef. It’s human. Human, human, human. And if it was…jerky-fied, I don’t think it would be so red. So guess what it is, Tosha-bug? Raw, dried, human mean! Mmm! Yummy!
Shut up! She screamed at herself.
It was too late. The pathways were open and her brain was barreling down it at three hundred miles-per-hour, heading towards the finish line: the bread. The bread was possibly –perhaps undoubtedly?- made from a mixture of normal flour and ground-up bone-flour and bone marrow, like a giant in a gruesome fairytale would make, and she could see things in it now, chunks of things, something tannish. Skin, perhaps? Little balls of skin.
“Oh God.”
Darkness swallowed her whole, curling inky fingers up from the ground and around her body, her mouth, her eyes, pulling her down and down and down…

“Baby, wake up. Come on, sweetheart.” The palm of a soft, smooth hand tapped gently against Tosha’s cheek, a half-hearted slap sending desperate pleas for her to awaken yet vibrating with a fear of causing more pain than necessary.
It didn’t matter to Tosha. She was sleepy, so sleepy, drifting in an ocean of not-thought and not-feeling, not sinking down to the bottom but not rising either, eternally floating in peace where the dangerous memories of why she was in this state of numbness could not reach her; they were there all right, the memories, but the waters around her were cold and warm and shifting and pleasing and they ran over her face, tugging at her blonde hair, so much like her father’s.
Her father’s…
Her eyelids flickered in alarm. Recollections, dancing images of smiling men, men with pointed teeth in hot tubs of gravy, nausea, and blurs of red almost assaulted her, almost, but she willed herself deeper, until she could just barely hear the ticking of her clock and the familiar voice whispering to her.
The tap came again, even gentler this time. “Honey…”
“Not like that.”
Tosha twitched again, almost panicking, her heart beginning to flutter like a bumblebee trapped in a cup. DJ. She remembered…almost…Bernard…no…she didn’t want to remember.
The tap came a third time, but it was not a tap. It was a full-blown, angry smack delivered sharply to her cheek, clipping the side of her nose; it knocked her head to one side and for one blissful moment she was opening her eyes and looking at the hippy ceiling fan above her bed, all pink with white hearts, and thinking deliciously of how good it was to wake up from a nap so rested when the pain hit her. It burned like fire and was not limited to just the one side of her face, spreading out almost like a mask up over her forehead and to the roots of her hair, circling over both her eye sockets and trickling down her neck.
She sat up. “Ow!” she said accusingly, glaring at her brother.
“You’re awake now, aren’t you?” he said, a sentence that might have passed for an apology in his mind.
“What time is it?”
“Six twenty-three. Why? You gotta date?”
“Enough.” Sharon glared at them both. “We don’t need you two fighting like this right now.”
“What the hell else can we do?”
“Just wait, okay? Please? I’m not sure…I mean, I don’t know…Those things weren’t in the cupboard when I used it yesterday. I think I would have noticed. That means he must have moved those…his…stuff sometime in the night or early in the morning before he left. This could be a recent development.”
“That matters?”
“Yes!” she snapped. “I hope to God this is some cruel, sick joke your father is playing on us and I’ll bet you if it is he’ll come home next week shame-faced and apologizing, telling me he thought it was funny at first but didn’t think it would get the reaction that it did.
“But if it isn’t a joke, then I have no clue what to do about this. How do you deal with it when your husband is a-a cannibal? I don’t know. I suppose I’m hoping he hasn’t…eaten anything yet. Perhaps we can talk about this. Maybe I can get him to see someone. Maybe this is some sort of freaking, psychopathic midlife crisis. We can nip the problem in the bud.”
Tosha spoke slowly, trying to make sure she got the words out coherently because this was all so wrong and now down was up and up was down, so she had to be extra careful when she talked because what if the things she thought that made sense to her made no sense to someone else? “I’m pretty sure we’re grasping at straws here, Mom.”
“I know. I know. I know. Don’t you think I know? But what I’m saying is, I think we need to give this time. Don’t tell anyone. Just…try to ignore it. Don’t talk about it. Please. Please, do not talk about it, don’t even bring it up as a joke and ask your friends what would they do if this happened to them. Just…please. Leave it to me. I’ll figure out something. This has to end and I’ll end it, but you have to let me do it on my own, please.
“Okay,” Tosha mumbled.
DJ grunted, “Whatever.”
“Promise me.”
Though her children promised her, Sharon found herself worrying about it all the same. Well. Why not? Hell, what about this wasn’t worrying? It was something straight out of a dark, creepy novel, a mad scientist novel, a shipwreck story; it was something she felt Dean Koontz or Stephen King might have written. She had always found herself drawn more towards romances and light science fiction, to be honest. She didn’t know how anyone could deal with this, was supposed to deal with this. And if she was the adult, then how were her kids going to deal with it?
They didn’t.
Bernard was due to arrive home in exactly a week. A week. Just seven days. Less, because he always tried to arrange to come home sometime between the hours of early morning and when his children came home from school. So, say six-and-a-half days. Maybe six-and-three-quarter days. Six years would not have been enough time for them to figure out how to cope; six days was just an absurd amount of time, miniscule in comparison to what it could be but infinitely long, much too long, long enough for anything to happen, for everything to be thought, every scenario.
Tosha withdrew deeply. Very deeply. She did not speak, not even in school. When the issue was brought up to her mother within the very first hours of silence, Sharon offered, in a very seductive tone of voice, a voice Tosha liked to call the you’re-the-only-one-I-trust-enough-to-tell-this voice, that they had received some very bad news and expected her children to be shocked and withdrawn for quite a while, and just this once could they be excused? And so it was granted, but with it came a price. Word spread rapidly that the Avery family had encountered very rough times and, seeing as there were no specific details, it was decided without discussion that everyone should try to get those missing details. Neither Avery child was left alone. DJ reacted violently and, despite the school’s initial pardon for odd behavior in the aftermath of whatever the shocking incident might have been, was gifted with two detentions, one for yelling at a classmate and another for talking back to a curious but well-meaning teacher. Tosha, on the other hand, just tucked her head even further into her shell. She walked with her shoulders hunched, head forward so blonde curls hid her face, and spent every lunch hour in the library where, amazingly, no one seemed to look for her, not even her friends.
That was all just as well, she supposed. Her friends would want to get some gossip just as much, maybe even worse, than everyone else, and she didn’t know exactly how to fend her friends off. Strange kids who she would never see again, yes. Friends? Nope.
At home, the two teenagers spent nearly all their time in their rooms, DJ killing innocent civilians on some violent rated-M game and Tosha reading. Neither of them ate very much. They had no appetites. Such a response could partly be attributed to what they knew, but it also seemed like there was a certain smell in the kitchen and dining room now, a peculiar, earthy smell. It was not exactly sour or bad, but it flooded their mouths with saliva and not in the good way, not in the way that soup or their favorite food did; it was more like the rush of water right before vomiting.
On Friday, the very day Bernard was due to return home, Tosha’s closest friend, a tall and willowy girl named Leah Brown, cornered her in the library.
“Whadda hell is wrong witchu, girl?” Leah asked, sliding into the seat across from Tosha so the other girl couldn’t ignore her.
“What?” she replied blandly.
“I said, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“Don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, no? There’s a whole buncha shit goin ‘round datchu or someone in your frickin family got busted for something, or someone died, or you’re preggers, and I know sure as hell ain’t none of those things have happened. I bet it’s somethin’ worse than dat, worse than all those things combined. Now, are chu goina sit here and lie to my face and tell me nothin’s wrong and you just bein quiet because you wanta be and you got your mom in on the gig, or are you goina tell me what’s eatin chu?”
“I don’t…”
“Know if I can keep a secret? Hell, girl, then I guess you don’t know me.” Leah stood up to leave but Tosha snagged her arm.
Her heart was spasming and she felt like she couldn’t breathe, but this was it, this was her chance to get it off her chest, to share the burden with someone else. Forgive me, Mom.
“My dad…” she began.
Leah sat back down, her bluff having accomplished exactly what she wanted. “What ‘bout him?”
Don’t hesitate. Just say it. Just say it. Oh, hell.
“My dad is…a cannibal?”
“Eh, what now?”
“Don’t make me say it again,” Tosha begged. She felt like dying. And worse, she didn’t feel relieved at all. She felt bad and wrong and guilty; she had disobeyed her mother. She was going to go to hell. Honor thy Father and thy mother. Well. She hadn’t. And now…
Leah didn’t know whether to laugh or not. She had always known how screwed up Tosha was since they first met and the blondie asked her, by way of greeting, did she think that all the art of dinosaurs was a waste of time because no one could possibly know what color the giant lizards had been, but this was something she hadn’t encountered before in their friendship. She knew Tosha took medicine, three different pills actually, two every day and one every other day, for reasons she had never quite been able to figure out; pills didn’t get rid of randomness and an overactive imagination, did they? She couldn’t imagine any other reasons that bright, happy, B-student Tosha would need medication. Well. Here it was. The girl was psychosomatic.
Don’t encourage her, she told herself.
“A cannibal?”
“Yes!” the other girl almost yelled. Luckily the librarian had stepped out.
“Okay, okay. He’s a cannibal. Cool, dude. Now, about after school. Wanna come home with me and pretend to do some homework while we talk about Jason McDonald?”
“But…but…”
“Yeah. I know. Cannibal. We can talk about that too if chu wanna. But what about the homework?”
“Homework?”
“And Jason?”
“Jason?”
“Omygah,” Leah sighed. “Just, get on my bus, okay? We’ll talk.”
And talk they did. Or rather, Leah talked while Tosha listened and nodded and made uninterested noises whenever there was a pause and she suspected a reply was expected of her. She was trying so hard to distract herself, but she just couldn’t. She had caught DJ in the hall and told him she was going to be going to Leah’s house so he didn’t have to wait for her, and he had only nodded, feigning irritation at being talked to in public by his little sister, but he was not very good at hiding from her. She was not dumb. She could be very smart, actually. And she saw the doubt and confusion and concern in his eyes. She kept seeing it, couldn’t stop. He and Sharon would be home alone with Bernard for hours. Who knew what was being said? Who knew what was going on?
She certainly didn’t. And it felt like it would kill her.
After a time, she lapsed into an unbreakable, dazed speechlessness. By that time it was near seven o’clock and rapidly going dark; Leah gathered up her friend and her friend’s things, picking up the latter and almost picking up the former, shouting to her mother she was going to drive Tosha home and would be back in time for dinner.
Neither of them made a sound until the car had rolled to a complete stop in the driveway. Leah looked at Tosha and decided, this once and this once only, to humor the dysfunctional girl. “So, chu gotta be sure to tell me how this all goes down, chu get me?”
“Yes,” Tosha replied. The single word was like music to Leah’s ears. She cheerfully kicked Tosha out of her car and drove away merrily, whistling.
Bernard’s truck was not in the driveway. Looking around for it and seeing it was not there, Tosha realized she wasn’t surprised. Of course he would park some distance away and come back on foot. He always thought things through.
She did not drag her feet. She didn’t even walk slower than her normal pace. Even though her stomach was rolling and she was sweating, droplets of it rolling down her back and beginning to plaster her hair to her head, she knew the time for timidity had ended. She certainly couldn’t be brave or courageous about this, but she wasn’t going to be afraid anymore.
That was what she told herself all the way through the front door, the living room, and while she was poking her head around the kitchen wall to see if her brother was on the computer –a habit of hers even when she didn’t want to get online. What she saw would stick with her forever and ever and ever, would haunt her every time she blinked, between beats of her heart. The sounds were the worst, the monstrous chomping noises as her parents and her brother ate whatever they held in their heads, snorting and snuffling like animals, ripping away great hunks, pieces too big for their mouths so that little chunks fell away as they chewed; they would bend down and lick up the crumbs, grunting. Their eyes were glazed in ecstasy and they all looked happier, closer than she had ever seen them before in her life.
And on the counter, looking lonely and dejected and so insignificant, were the two plastic bags. She could not find the cookbook at first and then realized: it was sitting open on the table, at an angle where they could all read it if they strained their eyes. They were flicking frantic glances at it between gruesome bites, almost slavering on the pages.
Oh. Oh, oh, oh.
They were reading it, imagining they were eating the freshly prepared “gourmet delicacies” the book would teach them how to prepare and not dried, pathetic substitutes.
Tosha backed away and fled to her room, remembering only at the last moment not to slam the door. That they should know she had watched them was unthinkable. She jammed her hand in the rapidly closing crack, biting her tongue so hard it nearly bled at the pain, but it was almost instantly forgotten when she realized that they still might have heard the vicious thuck of door whacking at a high speed into hand.
She grabbed the lock in trembling fingers, knowing they could unlock it from the outside and get in if they wanted to, but she didn’t care. She didn’t bother turning the lights on; throwing herself onto her bed, she wormed under the covers and wrapped her arms around herself, rocking as best as she could while lying down, shivers racking her entire body. The fear was strong, more than just an emotion. It was a physical entity ruling her body, ruling her, and she could not fight its powerful suction dragging her closer and closer to the screaming black hole of insanity. As the minutes passed by, when she finally reached a point where she was unsure whether she was escaping or going deeper and not really caring about either, she fell into a dreamy doze where consciousness remained, sleepy but intact, and wished she could stay there for eternity.
The next few days went by in a blur. Tosha was aware only of needing sleep, of bathroom breaks that grew increasingly infrequent, and of the activities of her family. She could hear them going about their lives, walking up and down the halls, entering and leaving, opening and shutting doors. She hadn’t realized before that every door in the house had a distinctive noise when it was shut and open, different in pitch and tone from the other doors, but as she lay on her bed in a constant state of near-slumber, she discovered her brother’s bedroom door squeaked when opened and clicked when shut, and that the bathroom door made an interesting chkk. The front door, too, had a sound all its own. It whooshed. With every whoosh, she listened for the clues of murmuring and footsteps to figure out who had just come in. More often than not, it was her father. He didn’t seem to have to go to work, but he was still a very busy man, just as Sharon had told her.
As Monday came around, she heard Sharon call school and inform the secretaries she was sick and would probably not be in for the next couple of days. Her brother left. And then, in an unexpected turn, o did Sharon. Bernard did not leave, but he stayed in one place and that was fine with her.
She had made up her mind.
Tiptoeing, she rose from her bed and, while wobbling at first, quickly regained some control of herself and flipped the lock, pulling her door fully open. Tipping her head to one side, she listened for any sign that Bernard was stirring.
None.
Tosha padded into the kitchen and took a knife from the woodblock on the counter, slipping it up her sleeve with an expertise she hadn’t known was in her. And then she went to her chair in the corner.
And waited.
It did not take him long. He sat down on the couch, the only thing separating them being the table and a lamp. His smile was as radiant as it ever was but it did not reach his eyes. Instead, glimmering in the sapphire depths, was hunger. A distinctive blade-shape was marked out in his pocket, but it was on the side where Tosha couldn’t see it.
“I think you know what happens now,” he said gently.
“I think I do.”
And they went into the kitchen together.

Misunderstood

2011-05-27T16:23:00.000-07:00

The back of the classroom is where the misunderstood make their home: messy desks covered in graffiti, chairs permanently slanted from being tipped back, marred by scratches until their original color is no longer remembered, books and folders stacked on the corner, filled with ripped pages of failed tests, assignments marked with doodles instead of answers and the artwork of unfulfilled hopes and dreams. Nightmares breed in the last rows of desks, snarling out from wads of gum and peering around old, forgotten spitballs and paper airplanes. Mud always coats the tile floor as if proclaiming those who walk across it dirty and impure.
She knew she was impure. But the floor always mocked her.
“Megan?”
The inquiring adult voice from the front of the classroom startled her. She snapped her head up, wishing fervently that her slouched posture and bowed head and constantly twitching pencil had given the permission of being hard at work.
Unfortunately, it was not so. Every last head in the room was turned to look at her, some tilted, others bobbing up and down with exhaustion, still more utterly still as they waited for her to speak. The weight of so many eyes bore down on her until she couldn’t breathe. Rays of pity, disgust and simple curiosity narrowed into a single pinpoint that drilled into her forehead until her thoughts were simply starbursts of emerald and sapphire and deep amber.
“Megan, do you feel alright?” The voice from the front of the room came again.
Instead of acknowledging it, Megan let her gaze slip to the mud-slicked tile as if the grime would offer her some sort of truth, answer all her questions.
The quiet was deafening but she did not break it, choosing instead to let the bell do that for her. The sharp, clanging siren freed her classmates from their spell; as they one-by-one turned from her and gathered their things to leave, she sighed and sat back in her chair, trying to remember.
It was no use. Her head still spin. A low throbbing ache wormed its way up into her chest, snaring her heart in its thorny grasp.
Breathe. Just breathe, she pleaded with herself, feeling herself begin to slide away from the rest of her body. Footsteps echoed towards her and panic took burst open in her stomach like a flock of frenzied butterflies buffeting her with ruined wings, begging to be released.
Just breathe. Your name is Megan Cooper. It’s January 7th. You’re in Jefferson Elementary School, eighth grade year. She repeated the mantra a few times in her mind, slowly coming back to herself until, with a shudder, she ripped her stare from the muddy floor and looked up into the eyes of the woman who now stood over her, slightly bent over and one hand halfway extended as if she wanted to place it on Megan’s shoulder but feared of her reaction.
“Are you alright?” she asked again.
Megan moved a hand from her lap and trailed her finger around the edge of the desk until she found one of many splintered parts, pushing the pad of her finger onto it until the tiniest drop of blood welled up. But it was enough; the blood spread over her, reinforcing her armor, until the sympathy dripping from her teacher’s voice could no longer penetrate it. “I’m fine, Ms. Walker.”
“Are you sure?” Concern glimmered in every nuance of Ms. Walker’s expression, but Megan had already hardened herself to it.
“I’m sure.”
“Are you going to go to lunch?”
“After I get a bucket of water.”
Megan stood and grinned to herself when she was certain that all Ms. Walker could see of her was her back; it nearly gave her a serious case of the giggles when Ms Walker asked, baffled, “Whatever for?” She slowed and after biting her lip to control the laughter, replied calmly, “To wash the floor around the last row of desks. It’s always dirty. The janitors aren’t doing a good job and it bugs me.” And she walked out.
Amanda Walker shook her head and went to her desk to make herself a note to either call or email Megan’s parents with the worry that their daughter was possibly obsessive compulsive or not all right in the head. Little did she know that they already knew. And it had just been proven even more to them, for when they checked their mail in the morning they found their daughter’s second quarter report card.

Megan knew something was wrong the moment she stepped off the bus and drew close enough to her home to realize that the dark blur on the black wire table out on the front porch was a beer bottle. Her heart, or whatever shriveled remnant of that bloody, life-giving organ remained hidden in her chest, immediately sank. Her parents did not drink very often. In fact, her mother did not at all; her father had the occasional beer but never more than one at a time. The full implications of the situation set in and she hunched her shoulders, shifting the strap of her shoulder bag even further up her neck.
Dad’s home early. And he’s drinking. Without knowing how she knew, Megan was absolutely certain that she was the cause. Her head began to hurt. She stopped outside the front door and dug her nails into her palm, wishing the hard crescents would split her skin and draw blood but they were bitten down to the quick and too dull to do anything near the damage that she wanted. She bit her tongue then, harder than she had planned, and tasted the liquid copper of blood; swallowing hard, she gagged as the taste stuck in the back of her throat.
Maybe they would have gone somewhere and she could go inside and lock herself in her room while she tried to find a good excuse?
Encouraged by such childish thinking despite her mother’s van being in the driveway and her father’s truck being parked in the street, she pushed open the big red front door and slipped around it into the foyer. Keeping her eyes on her feet, she slid off her shoes and tucked them into their spot on the shoe rack, shuffling them around and obsessively straightening and restraightening until there was finally an impatient sigh from the couch in the living room and her mother’s voice, muffled by cushy fabric and distorted by weariness, told her to quit stalling and join them.
Megan took her bag to the red chair in the corner of the living room, protected on one side by a table with a lamp and a cluttered fireplace on the other; she kept her beg in her lap, pulled her legs up underneath her, and tilted her head forward so that her hair hid her face.
“What is it?” she asked quietly, knowing full well what it was.
Her mother exchanged a glance with her father. Both of them seemed to collect their thoughts, as if this was a momentous event that required much effort. They said together, “We got your report card in the mail today.”
“Okay. And…?” she trailed off. You shouldn’t do that, she warned herself, but then admitted that part of her enjoyed building up the frustration and tension. It was a dangerous game that seemed to require a little more every time until recently she had given up on controlling herself and just let the taunts and snide remarks fly as they came to her. I have to do it, she argued with the other half of herself. If I can feel it, I know I’m still alive.
“And,” her father said drily, making a very obvious effort to keep his voice low, “we’re very disappointed in you.” He pulled out the single sheet of paper with an overdramatic flourish, a wonderful magic trick that gave Megan a nearly overwhelming urge to clap. “A C in Algebra, a D in Social Studies, D in Spanish, F in Government, F in Science, and a C in English and in Literature!”
“Classes are harder this year.”
“They’re supposed to be hard!” her mother snapped. “And I’m willing to bet that your teachers were more than skilled enough to accurately explain everything so that everyone but you was able to understand. What were you doing when you were supposed to be taking notes? Drawing again? Passing notes?”
Who would I pass a note to, she wondered. I have no friends. “It just doesn’t click, Mom.”
“Did you even ask for help?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“Liar,” her father hissed.
Megan jumped up. “I’m not a liar! Pardon me for being stupid!”
“No,” her mother retorted in such a calm tone that Megan gritted her teeth, the scraping and grating giving her something to focus on while her stomach progressively dropped out of her body with every word that her mother spoke. “Being stupid is when you try to understand and don’t. You don’t even try, so you’re just a fool.”
“Good night,” Megan replied tightly, having had enough. She scooped up her bag and ran, knocking her shoulder against the pointed edge of the wall when she turned too soon to go down the hall. Swearing, feeling the tears start to rise and knowing they would choke her if she didn’t do something about it, she fumbled with her doorknob before her blurred vision cleared and she was able to yank it open and slam it shut behind her. Even though it was futile and her parents could unlock it from the outside if they wanted to, she locked the door.
Oh, God, she moaned, and then immediately hated herself for invoking the name of something she didn’t believe in. It was such a habit with her, even her classmates who didn’t believe in God would say his name sometimes, but she rubbed her hands over her arms to remind herself that it was a habit she had to grow out of.
The curtains were drawn and her room was a solid wall of shadows and dark, misty light that turned her pictures on the walls into empty portals that went straight to the Zone. Her desk was a monster, crouched and sleeping, the high back of the chair rising over it a huge spike, the bookcases on either side defining the entrance to its lair. She whimpered, groping around until she found the frame of her bed. The cool surface under her skin calmed her and suddenly everything slipped back into proper perspective; she inched forward four steps, turned left and took another step, reaching up with the ease of long practice so that the butterfly dangling on the end of the chain slid neatly into her palm. She curled her fingers around it and pulled.
“Click-click,” she whispered in time with it, closing her eyes just a millisecond before the light came on and would have blinded her. She blinked and looked around, taking in the whole room with a sweeping, casual head swivel that was over in a few seconds but took in every last detail. She sighed with relief that everything still seemed to be in its proper place. The clothes piled on top of her dresser had not been moved around; her stuffed animals peered down from their shelves, tilted at the exact same angles they had been when she’d left that morning to ride the bus to school. Her bed was still in its state of orderly disorder, pillow tilted towards the middle of the bed, upper section touching the headboard by no more than three inches. Outward appearances, however, were deceiving. Megan made her way over to her dresser and looked closely at the bottommost drawer, running her finger every so lightly across its surface until she felt something that wasn’t wood: tape.
She had read in a book somewhere, one by Stephen King but she couldn’t remember exactly which one, that a crazy woman had known her unwilling houseguest had been snooping around because he had broken strands of hair that she had taped across objects all throughout her house. The fact that her guest had been crippled and unable to get to upstairs did not deter her; she had placed the little hair traps all over the house. Megan had sworn to herself not to become insane like that, but had taken a page out of the crazy woman’s book and taped a hair across the bottom drawer.
It was an important drawer. It was where she hid her razors.
Having found the top piece of tape, Megan bent down until she was staring at the green paint of the dresser, eyes straining to find the piece of hair; she could have felt for it, but she had discovered from mistakes before that she might accidentally break the hair by herself without knowing it and then become paranoid for nothing. She finally found the shadow of the hair and then the unbroken hair itself. She sighed, feeling a heavy weight lift from her chest and then another, even heavier pressure settled upon it.
She repeated the procedure on her desk and found all the hairs still intact.
And then it was done and she was at a loss.
What do I do now? I’m not going back out there!
The stunned calmness she had felt reveling in the normalcy of checking her minitraps faded and transformed, a blaze of anger lighting up deep inside, expanding like a wildfire whipped out of control. Unable to hold it back, afraid of holding it in lest she find that it was the final drop that made the bucket overflow, she gave herself up to it as it ripped out of her heart and shot powerful lances into her fingertips, curling her hands into fists. She thrust her stubby nails against her soft skin so hard that she felt it crush violently against bone. Her legs cramped with the urge to lunge out the window and run until they gave out; she slumped down on one side to take some of the strain off of them but it only served to increase the muscle spasms, agonizingly reminding her that on her side she was even more defenseless than before.
“Oh, God!” she cried out softly, unable to give any fuel to the anger. It blinked out into a numbness that was somehow even more horrible. She ducked her chin towards her chest and keened quietly, rocking herself, the sound of her own misery mocking her for how long she wasn’t really aware of. There came a time when her throat was too dry to provide more than an intelligible rasp. The light from outside had faded, she could tell, the world beyond her curtains and mini blinds gone gray, but the light inside her room was a constant unchanging thing that flickered steadily as the fan blades went around and around and around like her thoughts, chasing themselves endlessly and always ending up where they had began without ever really having gone anywhere at all. Hours had gone by, she guessed. Hours spent wallowing in self-pity, and even more hours would have been spent lying motionless if it hadn’t been for the annoying nuisance of the human bladder.
She spent an uncomfortable hour trying to ignore it, timing the minutes all the while, sighing irritably as each one passed, and as the sixtieth one did, she gave in to the need and stood, unlocking her door and checking both ways like a kid trying to cross traffic before darting out the few feet across the hall, twisting as she entered the bathroom and tugging the door after her. She remembered only at the last minute to slow down and shut it as quietly as she possibly could. It was impossible to tell what time it was without a clock in her room; if her parents were sleeping any loud noise would bring them springing awake and bearing down on her with all their well-meaning parental regulations.
When she was through she gave her hands a quick washing and then just stood looking at herself in the mirror above the sink. And it was what she saw that finally made up her mind for her.
Megan’s hair was cut just above her shoulders, dyed a deep blue-black and fluffed out slightly, just enough to give her the impression of wearing a hat of feathers. Two vertical streaks, one electric blue and the other violet, split the black expanse on the right side of her thin face; a horizontal band of blood-red parted the other side. That one she had done herself and it was less than unprofessional; it had started as a squiggle and had gotten steadily worse as the constant daily shifting and brushing had dispersed the red until it was just a speck of something lighter in the dark locks.
Her face was pale as the moon, her eyes too big and too ugly, nothing more than flat blue orbs underlined by the smoky crescents of insomnia. Chin too sharp, cheekbones too apparent. She touched her ears and scowled at their size.
No aspect of her figure was special, but she did not care so much about that as she used to. It made this easier, not having a boyfriend who would miss her and her body when she was gone.
Megan held up her arms on either side of her and examined all the scars and cuts on their soft undersides. They were lined up neatly, side by side by side, close together and a stark reminder of a lack of freedom. Bars in a prison window.
The sight of them exhausted her. Sje rubbed her face. Soon, she consoled herself. Soon.
It wasn’t enough. She hurt so much, hurt so badly, that it was all she could do to make herself do this properly.
She took a tube of lipstick from the bathroom and –after a bit of self-debate- a knife from the kitchen. The oven clock proclaimed it was 11:00 p.m. And she was dimply proud of the exactness of the time.
She returned to her rooms, shutting the door smoothly, taking her time to get it right, but lost herself in the Zone somewhere after, setting the lock with a loud snick!
Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid! She waited, pulse rushing in her ears, not breathing, but there was nothing to indicate that she had been found out.
God!
Megan scrawled on the window in lipstick; she struggled hard to make the words legible but her hands were shaking so violently with anticipation that the simple sentence, just two words, made it seem as if she was drunk. She wasn’t, but she saw that her parents wouldn’t believe her even when the autopsy proved it, but suddenly that was fine. She knew. That was all that mattered.
“I’m sorry,” she read from the window, testing how it sounded and realizing too late how phony, how lame her note was. No one would ever believe she was sorry.
She was.
But she just wasn’t strong enough.
Megan sat down with her back resting against her bed, lifting the knife and bringing it up before her eyes so she could marvel at it. So smooth…so solid…it doesn’t change…I wish I could be like that.
She would be soon. From now on she would never have the chance to change again.
I shouldn’t do this.
But I have to.
And Megan cut herself.
The Zone settled down around her shoulders instantaneously, an enormous smothering blanket of utter bleakness and despair. It drank in the blood she offered as first sacrifice, demanded more. More. All of her.
And she gave it her all.
She cut again, longer and deeper this time, longer and deeper than she ever had before. The pain was excruciating and she choked out a horrified whimper as the blood came in a hot rush, pattering in her lap, dripping down in fat, full droplets all around her.
She carried the cut all the way down to her elbow before switching hands. It was harder –her fingers seemed to not want to work anymore- but the Zone slid inside her through the pulsing slash on her other arm and took the pain away.
Who am I?
Suddenly, she wanted to cry. Her eyes filled with tears and her chest hitched, the spasm resonating upwards and causing her throat to clench. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t. No one would think she was sorry. She mustn’t let them know she was.
Am I still me?
But who was I in the first place?
Megan snapped her eyes open. When had they closed? She staggered to her feet but they were the Zone’s now and the Zone said, you must stay, so she stayed and struggled and scramed.
“My name is Megan Cooper! January 7th! Jefferson Elementary! Eighth grade!”
I want to find me! Please! Let me find me!
She fought to rise but she was drowning, thrashing uselessly, and no one would ever rescue her.
“Megan! M-M-Megan Cooper! Eighth…Eighth grade!”
The mantra that had worked so many times before suddenly faltered.
Was there someone else shouting? Or was it the Zone welcoming her by shrieking her name?
“…I’m…sorry,” she burbled out.
And Megan gave in.

For a few weeks, Megan Cooper was the hot topic, the in-thing to discuss, more popular than she ever had been alive. Most agreed it was boy- or sex-related. Others offered insanity. Some called her an idiot and a select imaginative few made her out to be the victim of a clever killer who made all his murders look like suicides. The teachers grieved. Amanda Walker wept for the loss of a precious young life and prayed for forgiveness for having been so blind as to not see the signs earlier. And, of course, her parents blamed the other and parted; one went on to commit suicide themselves and the other to drown in drink, so much like Megan had, in the end, drowned in the Zone.
Eventually, there came a time when people stopped. They stopped grieving. They stopped wondering, stopped caring. Megan was discussed no longer, discarded like an old plaything.
And Megan Cooper was forgotten.
Because, no one ever remembers the misunderstood who sit in the back seats of the classroom.

Roses

2011-04-30T13:41:00.000-07:00

The air around me is wild and thick with the wind of a harsh summer to come, the grass freshly mowed and the backyard porch littered with
Abstract works of art from the children swinging on the ‘set.
The world surrounds them in a confined area. Never must they stray to the next yard, nor can they disappear from my sight; their confinement shows in the debris they have strewn in their attempts to create
A new world all their own.
Stuffed animals thrice, little girls of sugar and spice and everything nice, water bottles and bowls beside the closed sandbox.
Sidewalk chalk rules the yard in polkadots, wildflowers from some strange land.
The children laugh and play, cry and argue.
I grow tired of it.
Where are you? Where are your roses?
Is there anything here at all that will make me forget you, you who smiles, you who laughs, you who runs my world and fuels the turn of my planet on its axis?
This life could be ours someday, sooner or later, eventually or never, whichever you would choose.
We could be together someday, but the outlook on the future is not bright, as my magic eight ball eagerly informs me.
She has your roses; I do not.
She has your roses, she has your eyes, and your smile and laugh belong to her. I may only borrow them for a fraction of time on the occasional day when I can see you. She has your thoughts, she has your mind, but most important of all, she has your roses.
I want your roses.
But wait I shall.
Because there is a moment in this life, when we’re all fed up and done with the living and the dying and the struggle and the crying and the pain that rules us so, when all who are lost are found, and fate turns upside down, and the deaf can finally hear beyond the length of their ear the ones who pray for them
And the blind can finally see with who they’re meant to be, and it is this moment I wait for.
Because my eyes are opened and my heart is hoping that soon yours will be too.
So I wait for you and I hope the words you’ve said are true, because only thoughts of you keep me from yelling and shouting and breaking out and doing all the things I said I wouldn’t do.
The knife was my crutch and look at the all the scars my memories left for me to remember them by; and I find myself turning
And tossing when I try to sleep
And yearning for another glimpse of you.
You could be my crutch and you could save my life, and maybe someday there’d be a chance you’d want to keep forever the life you saved, until it took us both to the grave.
You dreamed you died, you dreamed she lied, you lit yourself in flames.
But you said, and I know this would be true, that I came and ran, and I burned up too. If you died, I’d go with you.
I think you can see and I beg that you do, that there’s only one thing I need.
Where are your roses?

More on Within

2011-04-25T18:19:00.000-07:00

I dunno what was up with my blog last time I posted. It wouldn't let me copy and paste, so I had to write everything out again..and I got bored very, very quickly. But right now I seem to be able to copy and paste so...here we are again, posting a little bit of Within, starting from the beginning, and we'll see how it goes.
The night. My night.
The moon, full and low, a gigantic dew drop amidst a piece of ebony velvet sprinkled with diamond dust, sent down brilliantly soft white rays that splashed against the skyline of the city, outlining silhouettes like spilled milk, dappling the bland gray structures like paint splattered on a canvas. The taste of it hung thick and heavy, static in the atmosphere but smoother, bordering on coppery, enchanting and sickening with the intensity of it, soaking into everything until every last aura was saturated with the sharp tang.
I could not have been more perfectly hidden if the city had been the rainforest, the shadows of the spindly tree branches, looking so much like outstretched monster limbs tipped with the last remnants of leaves for spaded claws, dancing over the natural pattern of my body, blending, accenting, cascading over me like no more than the loving caress of the stroke of an artist’s paintbrush.
The park at night was a haven for drunkards, for muggers, for all those who wanted to hide and were unwilling to do so in the black hole alleys where anything and everything ended up. It was a meeting place for gangs, for lovers who snuck away at midnight and ended up on park benches trying to swallow each other’s faces. It was the optimal setting for marriage proposals, for romantic picnics, for moonlit walks, the trees and trimmed bushes and trellises and flowers visible even in the dark, illuminated by the orange glow of streetlights placed beside walking paths, filling the air with half-heard murmurs and the perfume that only green growing things could produce, not a sweet scent but the smell of life, of promises, of things to come and cycles.
I fit not into any category. I was at the park out of necessity, not because this was the location I had chosen to drink and pass out, not because the park was so infrequently patrolled by police that I could easily have dug a hole and stashed enough weapons to equip an army –as I was certain several gangs had-, not because I lay in wait to ambush the old ladies, the young lovers, in order to steal purses and wallets and fancy articles of clothing and jewelry; I came not to see anyone that I was forbidden to, but instead to wait.
I waited. Always waited. It was not yet midnight. Once, and only once, the clocks in the three towers struck midnight –though one had a quirk that caused it to strike fourteen, and another to strike eleven twice- would I let myself move. In the meantime, I let my mind wander, keeping my ears pricked to detect anything that my eyes or nose did not register, possible but not plausible. I watched the swooping ghost of an owl rise from the grass where it had pounced, eliciting the high-pitched squeal of some unfortunate rodent, the cry of agony swiftly cut off as the hungry owl –not for much longer- swerved away into the sky; the sight of an owl in a city is not unusual, for barn owls will often move into any abandoned building that they can get their talons on, but the hunting time of most was later, two in the morning at the earliest, most often bordering on the twilight. That one must have had to hunt earlier in order to avoid competing against others of his species, against the early-rising hawks.
Envy broke through my body, painful tickles of it that seared my blood. Food. The stupid bird had food. I didn’t.
Soon, I consoled myself. Soon. Midnight.
How long until midnight? Time had long since lost meaning for me. Seconds, minutes, even single hours no longer meant anything; I could have counted them, forced myself to think, to judge by the moon, by my own internal clock, to leave my spot and find a clock, but it would not have changed anything. If anything, leaving my post would have deeply altered the schedule I had found and fallen into.
Every night at eleven o’clock in the evening, the thrumming of the clock towers would wake me from wherever I had chosen to sleep. From there, I allowed myself half an hour to scope out my surroundings, to check that I would not run into any unwelcome obstacles. Then, after I was satisfied, I made my way to the park, curled up under the same stand of trees every time, and waited for the clock to chime. From midnight to the moment when the sun crested the horizon...
A rolling burst of thunderous chimes suddenly shattered the stillness of the night; I leapt to my paws, near deaf to the alarmed half-shriek issuing from a person nearby, soon followed by nervous laughter as the foolish human realized its mistake.
Lifting my head high, I brushed the air with the quivering black nose at the end of my snout, breathing in deeply the scents of the city, not the night scents, the passion and the bitterness and the moon, but the always-scents, the sweat, the alcohol and bile, the grease of fast-food, sour fear, garbage, rats. Too many rats. Huge black and brown things the size of cats with slick, oily pelts infested with vermin, bearing tiny, scratchy nails that poisons and bacteria flocked to; much too many of them, and too brave, hissing at everything, peeling lips back to reveal teeth that gnawed through wood, concrete...and flesh.
But on this night, as on all the other nights, I was not concerned with the rats.
I turned my paws towards the moon and ran. The direction seemed so infinitely right, as if the moon were calling, but deep in the back of my mind the rational part of me acknowledged that I ran not for the globe hanging so tantalizingly in the sky but for the convoluted labyrinth of alleyways at the heart of the city.
No. Not the alleys in general. The dumpsters shoved up against their sides.
The concrete was rough under my paws, scraping my pads, wearing down my claws with every resounding click as they made contact, sending shivers through my toes, but I felt nothing, could not feel through the keratin, through the leathery, calloused bulbs and thick, cushioning fur on the bottom of my feet. There was no pain. There could be pain, and certainly would be pain by the end of the night, mainly that of sore pads and aching, exhausted muscles, but for the moment there was none and I was free, gliding through the night, breaking scents into puffs of particles that parted around my body and rejoined behind me again.
Freedom. I only ever knew freedom for a fraction of an hour in every twenty-four hour cycle. The taste, the feel of it, my fur flattened with the wind of my passage, the startled expression of the person who passed by, seeing me only as a flicker ghost, a shade of something no longer present, the buildings and stores and houses –the same, always the same. I could have told them apart if I’d tried, but what point was there in that?- flying by, offering vague flashes of dull color, the rainbow shades of signs, the glare from neon lights turning the odd passersby’s face in macabre splashes of scarlet and sickly green, the yellow of infected wounds.
There was nothing; nothing that could catch me, nothing that could reveal me, nothing that could hinder me.
Freedom.
But I squashed the joy, tempered it, shoved it down from where it chased itself in maddening circles at the front of my mind, raking mental claws through it, shredding it, pushing the little pieces into the crevices at the back of my mind, squashing them, encasing them in a thousand other thoughts that I ignored, sensory images, sights that were insignificant, snatches of things barely heard, just at the edge of my range, that meant nothing; I hid the freedom with the other things like it, packed them down beside my personal feelings and ponderings. They meant nothing. Worthless, distracting things that my body conjured against my will, that my mind processed though by that time I had often left the object of interest in the dust.
I knew I was missing something, plenty of somethings, filled with gaps, pocked full of holes like Swiss cheese, but I was not unfulfilled.
There!
Bracing against the hard surface beneath my feet, concrete but rendered spongy by the constant run-off, as the center of the city had been built into a shallow basin a full six feet lower than the outer edges, I forced myself to skid to a stop, breathing hard but not panting, not tired but simply excited as I always was when I reached this place.
Two large office buildings, shoved violently up against each other, were separated only by a foot of alleyway that, in comparison to the bulk I carried, might as well have been the width of a pencil. But there were ways, always ways, and this was where I had to be. People in large corporate buildings are wasteful. And the two corporation buildings, rising almost higher than the others surrounding it, thick and chunky like children’s blocks, were the golden entrance to the city within the city, the Aboveground Underground, the Maze. It went by many names to many different people, the police, the citizens, the mayor, the muggers and murderers and rapists, the rats and the starved, scarred alleycat, but I alone called it something far more basic, more…intimate.
My City.
And that's about four-and-a-half pages of the first chapter of Within. Hope you like. =)

Within

2011-04-17T18:54:00.000-07:00

This is just a little bit of the book I started writing about a month ago. I've written about 90 pages of it in so short of a time..so, here, and I hope you enjoy. =)
The night. My night.
The moon, full and low, a gigantic dew drop amidst a piece of elbony velvet sprinkled with diamond dust, sent down brilliantly soft white rays that splashed against the skyline of the city, outlining silhouettes like spilled milk, dappling the bland gray structures like paint splattered on a canvas. The taste of it hung thick and heavy, static in the atmosphere but smoother, bordering on on coppery, enchanting and sickening with the intensity of it, soaking into everything until every last aura was saturated with the sharp tang.
I could not have been more perfectly hidden if the city had been a rainforest, the shadows of the spindly branches, looking so much like outstretched monster limbs tipped with the remnants of leaves for spaded claws, dancing over the natural pattern of my body, blending, accenting, cascading over me like no more than the loving caress of the stroke of an artist's paintbrush.
The park at night was a haven for drunkards, for muggers, for all those who wanted to hide and were unwilling to do so in the black hole alleys where anything and everything ended up. It was a meeting place for gangs, for lovers who snuck away at midnight and ended up on park benches trying to swallow each other's faces. It was the optimal setting for marriage proposals, for romantic picnics, for moonlit walks, the trees and trimmed bushes and trellises and flowers visible even in the dark, illuminated by the orange glow of streetlights placed beside the walking paths, filling the air with half-heard murmurs and the perfume that only green growing things could produce, not a sweet scent but the smell of life, of promises, of things to come and cycles.
I'll post more later on, but this is the first couple paragraphs.

Carnation

2011-02-18T15:32:00.000-08:00

So, I wrote this poem last week. At school around Valentine's Day, people can order carnations and send them to others. The HOSA girls (Health Occupation Students of America, it's a program that helps students find jobs in the health career if they stay in it. I'm in it, just to try it) helped organize the carnations and everything, and as a gift from our teacher we were each allowed to pick out one flower. Basically, this is about my flower, who now sits on the counter in a purple glass of water.

Little flower, pretty flower
Humble carnation
I chose you not
for your floral scent
nor your long emerald stem
I plucked you from the bucket
but not for your curled leaves
or your deep-shaded purple petals
with their undersides of coral
No one else chose you
They went around
to select the brighter, the fuller,
flashing their gaudy pinks and yellows
and neon violet
I choose always what no one else wants
because they do not appreciate
the simple beauty

As the Days Fade

2011-02-18T15:27:00.000-08:00

Been a while since I uploaded a poem. Thinking soon I might also post a tiny bit -like the first few pages- of the book I'm working on. Progress is slow, but not entirely stalled. So, poem time!

As the days fade to dusks,
I can sense them coming:
hollow, bitter, empty husks
that set themselves to humming
a melody of the dead,
the dying, the gone, the done.
It is only by a thread,
my last little one,
that I am able to survive
in such a place of black,
where by no means do I thrive
and to which I shall never go back
if I should escape.

I See Her

2011-02-06T13:50:00.000-08:00

Not so sure about the title, but oh well.
I see her.
I see her in the light
of the sun, of the moon, of the night.

I see her face hidden
among tangled trees nature has bidden
to be bare.

She lies in wait in the rooms I enter,
lights flicked on by unseen
hands to present her.

She follows me where I pass,
not transparent gray but solid mass.

I can describe her
but there is no use in describing what others
perceive as a blur.

The eyes she has match her hair,
both dark brown with shine to spare.

Her skin is pale, milky white,
slender dove prepared
for holy flight.

She has blue eyes, green eyes, purple eyes.
Her hair is fair, now ginger,
my masquerader, master of disguise.

I see her.
She has a name.

I see her.
Can you?

What Do You See?

2011-02-06T13:49:00.000-08:00

My looking-glass poem. Haha. =) Something I learned in Sociology, that looking glass thing...surprised I remember.
What do you see
when you look at me?
I know what I see,
but what do you see
when you look at me?

Broken Wing

2011-01-28T17:36:00.000-08:00

The hawklet gazes up at the sky,
The others dancing far above,
Unaware of despair below,
Snared in their prison of joy.

The hawklet gazes up at the sky,
Feathers lying in perfect layered harmony,
But one wing lies askance.

And the hawklet watches
As it is left behind.

Unenthusiastic Miracle

2011-01-28T09:52:00.000-08:00

Title sucks, but I couldn't think of anything else.

I never used to be afraid of the dark,
But now something seems to have changed.

Such a miracle they expect me to be;
All I can do is feel my spirit
Flee from the light.

What they must think of me
I will never know;
Caught up in my own storm,
Held up in my own despair,
I cannot escape.

Bloody Outcast

2011-01-12T12:54:00.000-08:00

No one else may see them.
The classroom is full of bustle, the chairs filled with excitable bodies,
and the desks become platforms for everything but their intended purpose.
Everybody is here. The teacher is here. She talks. The others talk. But I don’t hear.
That is part of a world to which I don’t belong:
shared laughter and friendly arguments.
Papers are passed back; I reach for them, pass them back as well.
I flash my wrists both times, my short sleeves poor cover
for the marks of what I do to myself.
No one ever sees. Even when they are fresh and stand out stark, no one notices.
But I do.
I know every one of them. Every slash, every line, every name I have cut into me.
Many are no longer truly there. But I see them all the same,
truths of what I do,
truths of what I am,
reminders of many midnights spent with the familiar feel of groping
for a wad of toilet paper, the feel of blood at my fingertips.
I have branded myself many times.
Though they fade, they are still present, forever shutting me out from all the rest.
I know not what I miss,
only that I miss it.

Nightly Contemplation

2011-01-12T12:50:00.000-08:00

I guess for awhile what this poem and the next one are about might be a recurring theme.

I looked at the razor I held to my skin,
a thin leaf of metal with a sheen of rust, pressed between
forefinger and thumb.
The room was draped in shadows of ebony, the only light filtering in from
the window as cars passed by. Though the curtains
were drawn closed long ago, the amber light still penetrates.
In darkness, I am unseen;
in every flash of light, I am revealed. Guilt in the light is rampant, but I don’t know why.
I harm no one but myself.

The Thaw

2011-01-12T09:14:00.000-08:00

Just another poem I wrote during school awhile ago. This one and the one about obsession were written after reading a particularly romantic book. Yes, I am that impressionable. =) But oh well. So, enjoy, but don't get too used to the happier poems.

How could this have happened?
Once, there was only the dark.
A cold, frigid ice,
slowly cracking,
deadly wasters rising;
a chasm,
rotted ropes of a bridge above
that slowly frayed.

Once, there was only the ice.
Sharp, sheer ice. Jagged icicles,
fangs on stones and branches, and
bushes turned white.

Shadows. Gray splashes spread,
slippery, sparse as meltwater in a time-lost winterland.
Smears and streaks of shadow always,
but no shelter.

A frostbitten heart next to lungs like snowballs,
heavy and leaden with intent to cease operation,
encased in spears of icicle for ribs, made
everlasting pearl.
Antifreeze for blood.
Liquid indifference.
Nothing more
than pitiful, molded frost.

Frost from all things.
From grass, from dirt, from
roofs and concrete walls so like shadow.

Frost from unseeing eyes,
frozen glares;
hail-slicked words spoken.

Frost from neglect always. Formed of
lack of sun, of freedom.

Until eternity, frost, cold, uncaring, should have been all.
Freezing in self-harbored inhospitality.
But now...

Now, the thaw.
Drips and drizzles run from surface
to surface,
pooling together and fleeing down,
pouring like tears shed in frightened confusion.
The thaw robs my ice of its everlasting,
evermore, to the end of time.

Oh pitiful throes of miserable happiness,
the thaw has come.
And the cause was
a warmth, a love, a new and beautiful never-ending;
a joy, a sense, a thing a miss;
the cause was the smiles shared between,
all the secret glances between two,
the strength of arms folded up tight,
and the fragility
of a cherry blossom heart in
a place where delicate flowers thrive,
still new and dewy as on
the first morning
of life.

A tender kiss, a more passionate love in private;
a uniting of two seasons, a clash that fit just right.

The thaw is a spring of love to my winter,
a protective winter love to your spring.

The thaw,
quite simply, quite surely,
inevitably dreaded and welcomed,
is here.

Haikus

2011-01-10T17:59:00.000-08:00

So I've done my research on haikus. And really, I don't like how structured it is compared to freeform poetry and everything else. I also don't like how the number of syllables isn't really "set" because a the original Japanese versions had 17 moras, but a mora is not the same as a syllable. So I doubt I'll use this form very often -if I continue trying to do some poetry- but I had three already written and I decided that wasn't worth posting, so here are five of them in the boring, standard pattern of 5, 7, 5.

Waiting for you by
the white gates of forever,
thinking about you

Bright light in your smile,
hope glistening in your eyes;
I belong to you.

There is lightning in
the sky, but with you I am
complete, secure, safe.

Hawks do dance above,
flying warm thermals swiftly,
warm brown against black.

Silent forest pool,
light rays drifting down from trees,
leaves rustling softly.

Well-Meant Obsession

2011-01-10T17:41:00.001-08:00

This is another poem I wrote. It was last month, I think. Until today, it didn't have a title. I think the title implies that the sort of "love" the poem talks about could have a darker side. I say "I think" because I tend not to actually think about what it is I'm writing until afterwards. So, you decide.

Firelight burning bright;
the moon’s luminescent rays;
the stars in the sky, all the
candles on earth cannot outshine you.
All the pure waters and endless sky,
the green growing things, and beast large and small, will never be more important than you.

There are products of overindulgence
for others who have you not
I believe in nothing
but us.

There, it feels, has never been
a contented universe or a worthwhile existence
without you.

You are a sun. My sun,
the most brilliant of them all.
I can only hope I will be allowed
to eternally revolve around you.
Only you.

To bask in your glory! My darling,
I would give anything for this.
My precious,
things are too cruel for you.
I see your pain. I taste your fear.
Your inner sweetness grows bitter with
the mistreatment life has thrown at you.

Sometimes before full night, I look
to the skies and find
the fabled first star.
I make no wishes, and am inspired instead to
think of you as a similar pinprick of white light,
set off and threatening to be
extinguished
by the surrounding dark.

And I wonder
if the damage is reversible.
If only you have the strength to wait,
the other stars emerge.
You are not alone, precious one.

If there is only the one thing I believe in,
-you, always you, forever you-
then I lead it to
encompass all my wishes for you.
As long as our hearts beat, I will
wish. And promise.
I wish for your everlasting happiness,
for the darkness to lift its hold from you.
And if, on the chance, my wishes don’t come true,
which wishes inevitably never do,
then I shall come.

Call my name and I shall leave my orbit,
and come to you. For you are
worth eternities of wait; you are
worth thousands of miles spent on
broken glass.

I may be obsessed, I am told.
I am.

My obsession is with you.
You are the only of your kind.
You are the only one of you.
And you, my precious one,
are too wonderful to lose.

Red Parallels

2011-01-10T16:16:00.000-08:00

This is a poem I wrote at school today. I fail at poetry, but I always get drawn back to them.

Red roses. Green thorns.
In the garden,
innumerable hedges around the fountain.
Still night above;
breathless life below.
Parallels.
Red ball in the yard,
floating on cloud-soft shadow smudges of grass.
A road beside, the soft churr of an engine.
Red lights. Black metal mass.
Twin warning beacons, they
illuminate
old bench chairs on a lonely porch.
Red noise. Static.
Cruel laughter; gently-wept tears.
A barrier between felt and immunity,
separate sides
of which this abyss leads not to.
Red blood. Silver blade, ebony handle.
Crimson.
Crimson-stained.
Skin. Sleeve. Ground.
Parallels again.
Crescent moon, silver, haloed by frosts of stars.
Curved wound of scarlet above a bloody lake;
flecked edges where
droplets landed askew.
Drowning without water.
Nothingness.