For my dad, who after death left me signs of Laura and L. who shared with me her thoughts and pens.
~o~
Looking out the window, the one he uses, the wind runs over my face and hair. I know this wind is from the woods. I can feel that it's swept over the dirt floor, through the leaves and branches before coming to me.
As it touches me, dusts over my body, I almost hear it saying, "BOB's coming soon. BOB's coming for his Laura Palmer." It's moving with his instructions over me. Making me feel dirty. Making me remember that it's his coldness I feel on my skin. The rough, liquid cool of denim.
At night I sometimes think I hear the wind calling out to me, asking me to come back to the woods. Sometimes it's low and roaring, like the start of thunder, its echos making sure I can't sleep. Like BOB. When it gets that way, I try to drown it out with music, with the fan, even if my room is already cold. Anything.
I wonder if mom and dad hear it? If all of Twin Peaks hears it but it's like white noise to them...?
'The woods are you.'
You are the woods.
O
BOB was inside me tonight. In my head. He let me remember. He likes how afraid it makes me. How good it tastes.
When this happens my mouth stretches. Layers peeling back to create a grin that covers what I really feel. The smile is there because he makes it.
This being takes me. Pulls me elsewhere, somewhere I don't know. Sometimes it's the woods.
Away from others, he likes to come outside and cut deep. I think he's cutting even deeper now because he knows about the baby.
When inside me he calls to the woods. Working my fingers, my bones.
How can I live?
There is no way out.
O
The leaves are gone from the trees. Everything is bare, though the woods are still dark.
I like it when the leaves fall, but it scares me when I hear his movement. When the darkness blinds me.
I hear him walking. Always following. I pretend I don't know.
When the woods are empty like this I think of how much I'll miss them. I think of how they'll be in winter, if I'm here, and how lonely they'll be.
I wonder, as I walk the passages I know, will they find me dead here? In this spot will I soon lie covered until someone happens to find me? My unseeing eyes last focused on the man who killed me.
I see them too clearly now.
O
In a dream my mother falls. Quickly rising and sinking. Like rewinding and fast-forwarding the same sequence on a tape. Over and over. Again and again.
I want to cry at first. I want to reach out and help her, but I can't. Something's forcing me not to.
In this cycle she starts to bleed, falling more roughly and in a fury. She can't stop. Her knees and hands red from blood. I scream for BOB to stop making this happen, but all he does is laugh. That laugh where he rolls his eyes to the back of his head and sounds like the dog he is.
My mother is falling, and there is a thing laughing. Laughing at his own jokes because no one else will.
Hours until I wake up.
O
One of my Meals on Wheels customers was just outside my house. She was walking in the dark on the sidewalk that leads to me.
Standing beside a table in the shadows, I happened to look out and saw her grandson's white mask. He was skipping, sort of hopping down the street. She was trailing slowly behind, the moon shining on her skin and hair.
The boy seemed happy, like he was celebrating something.
I didn't think she even felt like leaving the house...
O
In my dream the ground is white. My feet pass through sand, embers. The sky is as colorless as the terrain. There are no trees, save for the 12 scorched black in a circle, ominous against their backing. Wind skites ash in pools around my ankles, in the air. There is no sound.
I see and hear a blonde man in a suit. He's ranting, his jagged teeth visible. He is beautiful.
I go to him. He quickly turns from me to the trees, eyes squinted.
The wind has picked up, sending what looks like cremated remains in the air. Whatever it is, it's as dense as fog. He fastens his jacket as I stare. I can hardly see him now.
He looks back to me, takes a few steps forward to shield the wind. He leans in, points toward the trees and says something I cannot understand. Jumbled, backwards, like the others. Finally, I realize he's telling me his name is Phillip.
Frustrated, he takes hold of my arm and leads me through the ash swirling around us, thickest over our heads.
At the circle of trees, he stops. He looks downwards, nodding for me to do the same. I see a pit lined in white. Its insides black as the surrounding trees. Reflected on the surface of this black is red. The red of the curtains I've seen before in dreams.
Something comes over me, sadness, pain, fear, sickness. Makes me put my fingers over his jaw, over his face, clawing; placing my fingers on the smoothness behind his ears.
He pulls away, and blood is on his lip, in the lines of teeth. In the lines of mine.
"Uoy wonk I," he says, shakily.
I hear a strange sound after he's said this, like a wild animal. I don't know where it is. When he speaks, I forget.
"BOB." His face changes, shifts into a grin. "Derutcip I woh ton si riah ruoy."
He circles me. "Tnereffid er'ouy, arauL, tnereffid er'uoY."
"How is this. Is this me?" I ask him, wondering as I say them where the words come from.
"Uoy er'ouy."
"Is he me?"
"Ohw?"
"BOB!"
"UoY eb ot stnaw eh."
"I know. How do you?"
"Sgniteem."
I slouch down in pain, my wrists and fingers bent strangely. "Is it real or did I want it so much I made it?"
"T'nddid uoY."
"What am I going to do?"
"Wonk uoy."
"I know?"
"Wonk uoy."
~O~