the life and lies of massie block
and didn't you know? – her heart was broken long before you entered.
or – how massie block came to extinction
When Massie is three, the only memories she has of her parents are loud voices and razor blade sharp tempers. They fight almost daily as she looks on from her dolls and puzzle pieces. Whenever they fought a bubbly liquid with a bitter smell and a pretty luminous fluid would be drunk. It was called alcohol, and she would remember the smell and the unhappiness that came with it for the rest of her life.
And one day when Massie is ten, her father leaves. He is angry and sad and disappointed and she can see this all in his eyes. There is a suitcase by his feet, his forehead creased in stress. It will be the only image Massie will think of when thoughts of him arise.
His sweaty palm grips the door knob and he's turning it and opening it and about to leave and –
She can't let him go.
Massie's on him in seconds, her ballet dancer's feet off the floor, her thin arms hanging around his neck almost in a prayer. She squeezes her eyes shut and she begsbegsbegs for him to stay. She promises him she will be good for him, she will be the perfect daughter and she will never let them fight again. Of course, he hears nothing.
He pries her arms off him, gently and looks down at her in pity. He's leaving and she wants to scream. She should have known, nothing she would do would ever be good enough for him.
She's always too late.
And she swears to herself she will never beg for anything ever again.
-x
-x
-x
When she's fifteen she breaks her heart.
Except not really, it's already far too wounded to actually be broken again.
Derrick Harrington is the star goalie and for some strange reason he's into the girl with the uncaring attitude and upturned nose. Massie, underneath rosy blush and false eyelashes (it's a shield, her armour of choice), wonders why he's into her. In her fifteen years she's stuck around for she's brainwashed herself. She is worthlessworthlessworthless, wrung out and way too young to feel that old.
He asks her to the spring fling dance.
With thoughts filled with suicide and the smell of blood under her nose, she says no.
It's instinct to protect herself from impending hurt. Instead she deflects the pain to Derrick and in return they never speak again – too humiliating and too embarrassing for both to deal with.
When she thinks of him, months after the dance…
I could have loved you once, she thinks, but you could never have loved me.
And it's not the first, but maybe one of the biggest lies she's ever told herself.
-x
-x
-x
Massie is a doll and the doctors are behind the curtain, pulling her strings; controlling her. She takes the medicine behind closed doors, behind cupped hands, behind scowling lips and swallows to the taste of bitterness and salty tears.
She is a living dead girl (a heart with a barely there beat) and hard plastic eyes that seem trapped behind a film, like a dream (she used to have amber eyes).
Locked behind facility doors and her presence shadowed by parental lies she waits for nearly a year. If she isn't crazy yet she might as well be now.
Glassy and lifeless and forever trapped in a nightmare, she wonders how her life will end.
-x
-x
-x
She's seventeen and she is the Earth's daughter now. It's an open casket funeral and her body lies pristine and polished. Somewhere Massie laughs at the scene. She cannot believe they have painted her nails and curled her hair.
That's how much she was worth.
They bury her in a dress the colour of the sky. They bury her in full makeup, dressed up. They would never stop playing with her, would they? She was their doll; she did their every bidding. In some ways it was good to be dead.
Her death was the only thing Massie had ever chosen. She'd hung herself with bedsheets from the facility she was staying in and no one had a say in it. The decision was all hers. She was smiling when she died. Looks like their guinea pig had found a way out of their games.
She's upset over her dress though. She wants to scream. Didn't they know everything would deteriorate under the ground?
They acted like top shit on grassy hills, but they were nothing compared to the dirt and soil under the grass. Down there everyone was the same, everyone was bones and rotting flesh and moth eaten cotton rags. Nobody was special.
When they lower the body some of the funeral attenders swear they can hear the sound of laughter.
-x
-x
-x
Its five months after her death.
Derrick Harrington walks along the deserted beach, stretched a few miles from the grave of Massie Block. He scoops sand up in dry hands and lets it fly away, carried by a breeze. He imagines Massie would have liked this beach.
She would have liked being free.
He never really knew her, did he? He remembers vaguely of her being the most beautiful girl he'd ever met. He wanted to get to know her. He'd asked her to a dance and she'd turned him down.
And –
Why is he crying?
He has no reason to cry. But he's doing it; sobbing gut wrenching loud unmanly tears for no reason at all. If his father saw him, if his friends saw him, what would they think of him? But right now, standing hunchbacked over the sandy turf, the sun setting in a rose-blush hew in the horizon, crying seems like the right choice.
It feels good.
So he cries for Massie, he cries for never knowing what to do, he cries for the things she will never do. He cries because someone he knows and maybe could have loved is dead and there is nothing he can do. And isn't that the worst reason to cry?
He stays on the beach 'til the sun has settled beyond the horizon and it is just him with the light of the moon. He's stopped crying by then, sitting peacefully on the turf, absentmindedly running through the sand with his fingertips.
With a fluid motion he pulls his shirt and jeans off and wades through lukewarm water. With nothing but the moon's reflection upon still water he swims until he cannot remember anything. Floating on crystalline water, gazing up at the night sky, a ghost of a smile flits across his face.
It doesn't matter that Massie's dead because everyone is dying along with her.