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Chapter 7
Time off has only made me more paranoid. I hide away those things but I find I get up at night and sneak them out and look at them like an inmate sneaking contraband. It just eats at me wondering what they are like a pesky little mouse nibbling at a hunk of cheese. The mouse is Kane, these things, these "memories" or whatever they are, and my sanity is the cheese which is slowly being devoured. It just bugs me to no end. I can almost remember something lurking behind those objects in the box but not quite, it's like looking through frosted glass, you can see some vague shapes moving around on the other side but you can't make out the faces of the people those quivering shapes belong to. Sometimes I lose track of the time and I look up to see that morning is yawn awake and I haven't even slept yet. Jenna tries to ignore my behavior but I catch her looking at me concerned sometimes. I know she isn't blind, even I can see the circles under my eyes, the little blood shot veins, the way I move around slow because I feel exhausted most of the time. I try to close my eyes and make the questions stop nagging at me but they don't want to listen. I grumble and roll around until Jenna is annoyed and takes her pillow to sleep on the couch. The dog next door barks non-stop like a skipping disc and only adds to the frustrations. I get up and almost don't realize it. Sometimes I feel like I am a robot and my actions are just broken repetitions. I reach onto the shelf in the closet where I put the little carved box. I open it as I have done over and over and over again and I study the objects inside. It is as if they posses me. They have something to tell me but I can't read their words, they must be written in some unknown language. Maybe they mean something to Kane.
I don't know why I think that, it is impossible. Kane doesn't exist therefore he can not have real physical objects that mean anything to him. My head is heavy and weary and stupid random thoughts pop in here and there but not the memories which belie these objects. I study the battered photograph, the small chain, the silvery shiny Zippo, and the blue button. None of them tell me their secret. I close the lid and trace my finger along the rough carved "R" on the box. At last I gripe at the thing and put it back on its shelf. I flop back onto the bed and squeeze my eyes shut. Sleep, damn it! I try to shove thoughts of Kane and these objects out of my head and concentrate on relaxing. It's not easy with that noisy canine barking at shadows but if I try really hard maybe I can tune him out too.
I wake up to find that it is after two in the day. I feel much better and I guess I managed to fall asleep sometime last night. I find Jenna in the living room. Her blanket is crumpled up at one end of the couch and her pillow is slouched at the other. She sits cross legged on the floor in some cute little jean shorts and a tank top. Her photos litter the floor and she picks one up and pastes it into a huge book with decorations and stuff. Oprah is on the t.v. but it's muted and the oldies station plays on the radio. I look at Oprah as her mouth wags up and down wordlessly. The Beatles on the radio sing: I get by with a little help from my friends, yeah I get high with a little help from my friends…
When Oprah moves her lips it makes her look like she's singing that song. I laugh and startle Jenna who drops her sticky photo.
"He lives!" She teases.
"Something like that."
She picks up a picture and shows me. It's a school photo and I look really goofy, red hair, freckles across my nose, a stupid looking smile.
"Who's that cutie?"
"I had hair…" I rub my head and we both laugh.
Later that evening Jenna insists that we get out of the house. This is mostly for me because as I said I have been hanging around here driving myself (and Jenna) crazy with those mysterious pieces. I try to whine to her but it doesn't do any good. Jenna does not allow whining in her house. She drags me out eventually and we go down to the local fair. This is all her idea. Normally it would be fine but as of late I would rather be a hermit.
Kids run past and blue and pink cotton candy clings to their fingers and lips and orange tickets trail out of their pockets. Teenagers walk around like they are forever cemented at the hands, hips, or lips. Jenna looks up at the Ferris wheel with a child like grin on her face. Thus I am dragged to this too.
"Try to relax and quit scowling…" She swats my knee as we go around on the Ferris wheel. I try to obey her and loosen up. I guess I make a weird face because she cracks up at me. Her laugh is enough to generate a genuine smile from me. She fakes a look of shock when my lips remember how to curl up into a smile. Then she decides she should make all kinds of silly faces. Soon she does make me feel better and we go around on the Ferris wheel and shoot dumb expressions at each other. We get off of the ride and laugh like kids and Jenna wipes tears away from her beautiful eyes. I notice we receive a few odd looks from passerby. They are probably wondering what she is doing with me, ha-ha.
"Let's go on that one!" I think my wife has digressed to age eight or nine. She looks up excitedly and hops up on her toes. I see what she sees but my look is more pensive.
"The Ring of Fire, no…let's not."
"Come on Glen, it looks fun!"
"It's like a Ferris wheel on speed!" I watch the thing loop around crazily. "You're going to dig your nails into my arms and scream while I'll just have a heart attack and pee my pants while zipping around at a bazillion miles an hour at an insane height! That doesn't really do it for me somehow…"
She pokes her lip out in a pout.
"No whining, and that's your rule, gotcha!" I am triumphant and I make a point of looking smug about it.
"It only applies to you." She nudges me with her elbow and grins up at me.
"Who made you the boss?"
"You married me didn't you?" She giggles and holds her hand out and admires her ring.
"You go ride it and I'll stay down here planted to the ground like a big tree and watch you." There is no way I am going on that thing. She can drag me into a lot of things but that is not one of them.
"No, it's okay. I'll just have you win me a prize."
"I thought I was the prize." I kid her and wrap my arm around her small shoulders. We walk around and watch people here and there. Some of them give me a second glance as though they know me from somewhere. Maybe if I scowled at them it would click, but I don't. It's good to be Glen. We get some food that I will probably regret later and then, before we leave, Jenna stops at a booth where she wants me to win her something.
"Look, isn't it cute?" She clutches to my arm and points to a big pink teddy bear. "Aw, it has a heart on its belly and big button eyes, it's so cute!"
Button eyes. I blink at the bear that hangs up in the small tent. The man with the apron leans over with some plastic balls in his hand and talks fast at us, three shots for two dollars. Those eyes…button eyes…the crazy buzzes and bleeps and whirs of the rides seem to blend together with the voice of all the carnies who yelp at people and harass them to play their games. The laughter and shouts of children, the pop of balloons, everything swims around in my head. The bright colors of tents and the lights that strobe like electrical gummy bears all fade and suddenly things are dark…and I boil in anger.
He makes me so mad sometimes I can't see, I can't think, I can't even breath he enrages me so. He seems to do everything just a bit better than me. He always one-ups me, always. She always favors him over me. I get in trouble when he does something wrong. All he has to do is point a finger and deal out blame and it is I who am dragged away to be welted and beaten, bruised, demoralized, dehumanized, and he is the one whom she pours her affections over. She could give me a drop once and a while, just a drop of her love but she doesn't. Instead I am left wilted and withered like a parched, arid, tongue in danger of being dehydrated to death. There is no drop of water to keep it alive, not even a fleeting mist.
You're the bad seed, why can't you be like your brother?
I am not my brother. I am not him. If he wasn't here then she would have to love me I suppose. I creep from my bedroom in the deep, dead, dark of night. Some may find a mortuary at midnight a scary place but I like the strange shadows that play on the walls, I like the sticky hot air that wafts through the hallways, I enjoy the startling creeks in the old floorboards, I relish the paranormal sounds that seem to groan through the house like trapped, tortured, tormented cries. I tiptoe to the room that is across from mine. I peek through the cracked open door and see him curled up in his bed. The covers are pushed down and wadded up like he's kicked them off in his sleep. His pajamas are pushed up showing his calves, ankles, and feet and his shirt is rumpled up showing his belly. His arm cradles the teddy bear he always sleeps with. I push the door open and it sighs with a creak and he stirs a little like a sleeping cat when you poke it. I pause and wait for him to settle. Her rolls over onto his back and his foot twitches and he opens and closes his mouth a couple of times and makes soft smacking noises. I climb onto his bed ever so quietly and study his face. His dark red hair is fanned back from his forehead and stands straight up in a way that looks almost funny. I straddle his body and watch as his eyes dart back and forth softly beneath his closed eyelids. His breath comes quiet and steady. I can feel his foot give another twitch and he curls that stupid teddy bear closer to him.
Tomorrow is his seventh birthday and I know mom is going to make a big fuss over him. I can just see it now. I may as well be invisible. My rage courses up and down my nerves like electrical currents pulsing over wires. I watch his sleeping form and imagine what would happen if mom was not able to celebrate her favorite sons' birthday tomorrow. A smile curls my lips and I feel pleased and even excited as I think of what I could do to him. I could kill him easily. I could smother him with his pillow and he would never know what hit him. I could grab the chord on the blinds and wrap it around his neck and watch as his eyes fly open and bulge with struggle. I could watch as his lips turn blue and I could listen to the harsh scratch of his breath as he tries uselessly to fill his needy lungs. I can picture all the little veins busting in his eyes and filling those shiny orbs with blood, contrasting with the bright green of his irises. They would be like two wonderfully sick Christmas ornaments twitching in his head. His body would thrash for a few moments but he would grow weak and dizzy as his life seeps out of his body like puss oozing from a festering wound. The last thing he would see before his eyes flickered out like sputtering light bulbs would be my face plastered with a wide gap-toothed grin, the last thing he would hear would be my laughter at his demise, the last thing he would do before he died is to realize that finally he has lost and I am the one in control for once. I would feel so alive…and he would be so dead. I consider this option but that may be too good for him.
I scan the dark shadows of the room. On his nightstand is an old coal-oil lamp. Mom has them all over the house. Now that would be much more fun. I could swipe that old lamp from the table and crash it into his head. He would be covered with shards of glass and flammable liquid and blood and then I could ignite him. I could smell his flesh cook and his hair sizzle and listen to him scream as he bubbles and boils and burns like a dirty hog roasting over a fire with a spit up its ass. His bed would become a fiery grave, a hot flaming casket, and I could sit in the light of his death and watch the dancing flames consume him until their hunger was satiated and nothing is left but his charred, blackened, bones. My older brother lit up like a fourth of July fire-work, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you!
I lean to reach for the lamp. It would be so easy. I have a book of matches stuffed in my sock and it would take only one blazing little head to carry out my plan. I always keep my book of matches close. I have a love for fire, I watch it dance, I watch it eat, I watch it destroy. I stop suddenly, my fingertips just brush the pale glass of the coal-oil lamp. I am distracted by that battered little teddy bear. For as long as I can remember he has had it. He used to carry it around constantly but the last couple of years he has semi-retired it. Now he only sleeps with it or drags it around and wipes his nose on it when he's sick. First I will ruin this stuffed little beast. I pull it from his grasp and dig the matches from my sock. It will not be as fun as if I was doing this to my brother, because it can feel no pain and its' plastic eyes can not look back at me with an expression of fear, terror, or final surrender. But that will come into my brothers' eyes after I finish with this creature and start on him. I tear off one of the bears' unseeing little eyes. I strike the match and love the sound it makes, first the scrape and then the slight sizzle as its' head blazes. I watch the flame so bright and beautiful before my eyes. It doesn't matter how many times I behold this simple thing, it is always a wonder to me. I wait until the little flame nearly licks my fingers and then I touch the fiery stick to the bears paw. It starts to smolder and smoke and finally the flame consumes the fur and then bites down to the cottony flesh of the toy. I shake the match out and watch the poor little bear burn. The fire quickly moves up its leg and the dirty blue ribbon around its neck starts to smoke and burn. Suddenly I am tackled to the floor. I was lost in the flames watching as they consumed his friend and I lost my focus. He punches me in the face and then grabs his bear and smacks it with his hands in a desperate attempt to quell the consuming flames.
"What are you doing!" He screams at me and slams his teddy bear violently into the floor. The flames begin to subside. I feel nothing but rage at him, he was not supposed to wake up! He was supposed to never wake up again! I run at him and tackle him hard like a lion throwing its weight onto its prey. We both fall into his nightstand jarring the lamp. It topples over with a crash. The oil that was left in it sprays across the floor and baseboard. The two of us fight and struggle and bang into things until we are pulled apart by our mother. I look up to see my father grab a blanket from the bed and stomp on the fire which spreads from the little bear to the oil that spatters the wood floor and baseboard. He manages to stamp out the fire and stands over the ruined blanket and wipes his brow with the back of his hand. He turns his green eyes to the two of us.
"What were you two doing!" He demands. Moms' scream trumps his stern, if not a bit exasperated, question.
"You!" She grabs me and hauls me up. It is me, of course, it's always me. My father looks at me severely and then turns this look to my older brother who has lifted up the blanket to find his bear in ruin. He cries and sniffles his nose as he gingerly touches the blackened remains of his stuffed friend.
"You killed Jake!" His voice quivers as he looks up at me. I can see the bitterness flash in his emerald eyes. At least I managed that much, at least I took something away from him. My mom is in a rage at me and she kicks me with her bare feet.
"Honey, don't…" My father tries but he never gets anywhere with her. She is crazy when she's angry, and in that we are alike, but in that way only. She hauls me into her bedroom and goes to the closet and I brace myself for another whipping with the infamous belt. This time it doesn't hurt as much though. All I have to do is bring up the image of helpless little Jake burning and the hurt look in my brothers eyes, and some of my pain lessens. As the belt whacks and bites my bare skin I uncurl my small hand and look at the object I have saved there: A large blue button which was formerly an eye. Black threads cling to it like torn optical nerves.
"Glen, Glen, are you okay?" A distorted voice calls out to me through the fog. Someone is shaking me. "Glen?"
I close my eyes and open them and am disoriented and confused. Jenna is here and she is tugging on my arm. I follow her to wherever she takes me and find it is a bench. I sit down heavily and she looks down at me with her eyes that swim with worry. The noises are driving me crazy all the sounds and music and laughter and voices…
"Are you okay? Glen…"
I take a deep breath to try to regroup but I feel that each day things slip further and further and I feel more and more out of control of myself.
"Baby, don't cry." Jenna slips her arms around my big shoulders. I didn't even realize I was crying, but she's right, I am. Tears slip and slide down my face. What am I doing, I'm cracking! I don't know why, I just can't explain, sometimes I feel like I am becoming a stranger to myself.
Let me know what you think, I hope you liked it.