Author's Notes: I'm writing like mad, though I know I shouldn't be. At least I waited until my math homework was finished. I'm listening to poetry now and it's beautiful…
God! With the written word, would could want anything more?
And now for your poem:
"They sit in a rowoutside the kindergartenblack, red, brown, all
with those brass buckles.
Remember when you couldn't
buckle your own
overshoe
or tie your own
shoe
or cut your own meat
and the tears
running down like mud
because you fell off your
tricycle?
Remember, big fish,
when you couldn't swim
and simply slipped under
like a stone frog?
The world wasn't
yours.
It belonged to
the big people.
Under your bed
sat the wolf
and he made a shadow
when cars passed by
at night.
They made you give up
your nightlight
and your teddy
and you thumb.
Oh overshoes,
don't you
remember me,
pushing you up and sown
in the winter snow?
Oh thumb,
I want a drink,
it is dark,
where are the big people,
when will I get there,
taking giant steps
all day,
each day
and thinking
nothing of it?"
-"The Fury of Overshoes" By Anne Sexton.
6
Did anyone ever notice that Swartz contains the greatest beer drinkers from around the world, each country represented? We have Germany, supposed makers of beer, and Ireland, ethnically acclaimed most drunk citizens around the world. We also have America, land of beer bellied rednecks beating their wife and fifteen screaming brats in the trailer park, and Japan, known around the world for their finest liquor (I don't care, it's still fermented and that's beer enough for me), sake.
We also have the great warmongers of the globe (though I'm thinking back to World War two). We have two of the Allied powers, America and Ireland, and two of the Axis powers, Japan and Germany. We might even have been able to even one another out to some kind of historical moderation, but for the goddamn Germans and their Nazi spin offs.
SS is like a bad sitcom developed from one of Ed Wood's movies in Hollywood terms, if that makes any sense at all. Nazi's created the SS, SS in turn created Esset, Esset spawned their schools like Rosenkreuz, and Rosenkreuz spat every single one of their operatives out, agents of death and mayhem like us, like Swartz but a thousand times worse.
You see, Swartz has a mind of their own, a plan of their own, a destiny of their own. We have a conscience (most of the time) and could quite possibly live peacefully with the rest of society if Esset would just let their claws go slack around our throats.
Ruth once said to me, so very long ago, something about taking initiative. The words I can't remember, and I know she was referring to God's path (and my eventual one into the priesthood, if it ever came to pass), but the subliminal meaning had always interested me. Below those kind words had been sound advice.
"The world is going to fuck you over if you sit still and let it."
How could anyone ignore such wisdom?
So now I was taking the initiative, strangely craving beer (which I hate), and slipping and sliding my way to the church like a ninja on crack. The world surely felt like it was on crack. Crawford had slipped me a sedative earlier, but I managed to stay awake enough to get out of the house quietly after they'd gone to bed. Schuldig hadn't even moved when I'd unwound his arm and stuffed a pillow in my place. The shadows, though, jumped and shuttered and swam in my vision. I did not have long.
But I had long enough.
I am silent like the wind on the back of a freakishly black dove's wing, the red eye of God Himself in His house. She doesn't even notice the door when it clicks quietly shut behind me, involved in prayer.
Whore to the Devil, Incestuous Bride, Murderer of Childhood Innocence! How dare she pray here, ask for forgiveness here?
I smile despite myself, the softest of laughter falling like water from my lips. Oh God, I hadn't meant to do that…it isn't appropriate for such a solemn occasion.
"Sanctuary," I hiss, "Sanctuary, Sanctuary…"
She turns to me, a different face but for her eyes, and her smile. She always looked like she was about to cry when she smiled. I never understood why there seemed to be so much pain in her emotions. Didn't her marriage to God make her happy?
"Jei…You came," she says, voice soft and lilting, so remarkably like my own. I don't know how I hadn't thought of it earlier, but I do take after her no matter how much I despise her. Family trait, like the madness, is passed through genetic links and blood. It's why I've shed so much of my own with the idea it would keep me sane.
Now I just do it for fun.
"Do you think this place will save you, Ruth? Do you think God will save you?" I ask as I advance, the sound of my steps soaked up in the thick red carpet the color of blood. We had a red carpet in the church back home too…so red.
"I have sinned, yes, and I'm ready to repent for those sins." I don't know why, but I feel sorry for her. She, the woman who ruined my life, hadn't done it out of malice, not really. She was lonely, wanted her son back, and didn't understand that she couldn't just take things that weren't hers anymore. Her life before me had been so terrible that my sheer existence must've been the very stain she least wanted to see…
Why she had ever wanted me back, I never knew.
She extends her hands toward me, the scars of my first attempt on her life bright white against her flesh. I laugh and select a knife from the sheaths around my chest, step in closer and leer in her face.
The doors flew open and we both turned to see what was going on, the boy from before, the clawed one had kicked the doors open and was already moving down the aisle. I didn't have time to listen to his semantics…
Ruth's face when I plunged my knife into her was classic. I will always remember it. Her eyes widening so slightly, pupils dilating, mouth parting, then going slack as she slumped.
Tiger claws behind me shouted out a "Don't!", actually got close enough to try tackling me. I shove my dying mother at him and skate away with a brief cackle. He's torn between dropping her to go after me and waiting for her to finally die. If it was me I'd have left her and ripped my throat out, but he seems to have morals.
Crawford said I can't kill him, but I may certain mark him. I swoop down and draw my knife across the back of his neck. He screams and half-turns to fend me off, but I'm already on my laughing way out. He calls after me, curses at me, almost abandons Ruth to follow me…almost.
I see the car waiting right in front of the entrance, Schuldig sitting back and picking at his fingernails as it idles. I get into the passenger-side backseat as he rolls the engine over and stomps on the gas pedal. I'm still laughing, hysterically trying to breathe as I clutch my stomach.
"You know, Freud would say you had a mom complex," he murmurs and I'm reduced to silent giggles.
"He says that about everyone," I reply and wipe the tears from my eyes with my arm. My hands are still covered in blood.
"Crawford won't be amused."
"Yeah, well, not much he can do about it now."
Schuldig drives silently for a few minutes, smile gone.
"Hope you made the cell downstairs well…"
I know he put the child locks on.
NS
I must've fallen under the sedatives in the car. I woke up in the cell, briefly forgetting where exactly I was.
Now, though, I've decided that I'm back in the Esset training camp.
Or maybe I'm a Prisoner of War?
"Jei, you git, you let yourself get caught, again!" Tink mutters at me from the other side of the bars, "After all that time just waiting for the right moment, when it finally comes, you let yourself get caught by the enemy!"
"Since when is Schuldig my enemy?" I snap back. Across the room, Schuldig's head turns a little to look at me. He's obviously tuned me out completely to look so surprised at his own name. Tink just looks at me in that disappointed-mothering-way that makes me sick.
"We've been teammates for years."
"So why are you in a straight jacket, then, if you're such good friends?"
"Because I talk to you, when you obviously don't exist."
Tink laughs, "How can you see things that don't exist? What about the whole theory 'I think, therefore I am'?"
"Doesn't count."
"Why not?"
I grope for an answer, then turn away.
"Go away."
"What, no smart remarks from the almighty thinker?"
"At the time, no. Come back tomorrow when I've had a night to toss and turn over it."
/It's like listening to one side of a very weird phone conversation. No wonder you freak Crawford out. Is everything okay/ Schuldig's voice pipes. I send a searingly violent thought after him through the link and he pulls out with a curse. He's doubles over on the sofa, clutching his head and shouting at me.
"The mathematical equations of a polyhedron are to Dada as the cloning of sheep is to irony. The cloning of sheep in itself is irony, as all sheep are the same, as they follow conformity to the death. So if to say we may clone sheep, would it be just as philosophically easy to clone a human, given certain scientific allotments?"
Schuldig looks at me with a disgusted expression, storms up the stairs and slams the basement door shut, leaving me in darkness but for the glare of the computer screen he had been reading.
/Freak./
'Yes,' I think, 'But I do make perfect sense.'
NS
They think I'm asleep, but I'm not. I can hear the in the stairwell, talking, but I can barely ascertain if they're real or imagined. As tightly wound as I am in my jacket, it feels like the room is spinning…goddamn medications.
I hate God. Goddamn God. This is His great fault, my fuckup of a life, my brain hiccup turned lobotomy-fest. God-fucking-damn God. I'll kill him one day, I swear I will.
"He's obsessing again. It doesn't look like he's getting any better either."
"True, this is the worst one he's had since the amnesia. They're getting more and more frequent now."
"But he very rarely ever has minor ones anymore. Between the time of my arrival and now, he's only…fallen ill...a handful of times, and none of those were dangerous."
"That, and this time it was focused on Ruth. He's been after her for years, so naturally he'd have a bad reaction to it. I've taken a look and he's really confused about it. The meds aren't cutting it; we need to send him to a specialist."
"We don't have the time for that! We need to keep the team together. And if Esset gets wind of his defects now, they'll only replace him. After that, there's no way we can pull off our plans."
"But this is only hurting him! Schuldig is right! He needs help!"
"No. If we send him away now, they'll likely kill him. Don't you remember what they did to the impaired and sick? Don't you remember watching them tortured as a lesson for you not to follow their path, to fit into the system? He's never fit, and the only reason he's still alive is because Esset doesn't know. We need him around, he's our wildcard."
"He's insane, Brad, it isn't the same."
"He stays, period. Nagi, take first watch. And you, Schuldig, get some sleep. You look like hell."
"Well, if I didn't feel like a million bucks before…"
"I'll take over for Nagi after midnight. Now go. I've got work to do."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever."
"Goodnight Crawford, Schuldig."
The light clicks off, plunging my world back into darkness.
Fin Chapter 6
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Author's Notes: (sighs) William Carlos Williams is also a favorite of mine…
To My Readers:
Rori Barton: (smiles) (eats) Do you like Hamlet?