On the Edge of Wakefulness, Part 2
Chapter 24
Pain stirred Todd out of his snowy, death-sleep in the forest. It was a slow cutting in the center of him, stretching into his limbs. Then a violent spasm of his stomach jerked him into full wakefulness, getting him to toss everything inside of him. He tried to lie back down, get back to dying, except his body wouldn't let him. It turned in on itself, every muscle, every organ, every cell burning for "h," for ... salvation.
Groaning, he dragged himself up and leaned against the icy tree, unquestionably alive. He didn't know how long he'd been out here. He was wet, shivering and in excruciating pain, needing the Princess, bad. Oh death was near, but instead of being sweet and dreamy, it was going to be slow, miserable and ... fucking real. He hugged the jacket to himself, trying to get warm.
He took a step, then another.
"God, please end this … oh fuckin' hell..."
"Now, Son, what fun would that be? It would cut short my intense enjoyment of you."
"Fuck you ... just fuck off ..."
"I wish I could, Son, but see, I live inside of you ... I am always with you. You will never be rid of me. So continue on, please. Let me see you in celestial, glorified agony."
"Haven't you done enough, you bastard?!"
"Never ... I will never be done with you."
Listening to the desolate howls of wolves in the forest, Todd looked for the way home, so he might find peace again, to sigh and barely breathe in that dreamlike state that teetered on the edge of life. Maybe this next time he'd take enough so he wouldn't have to breathe anymore, so he would forever be a forgiven child, silent and still and safe in the cupboard.
He needed Brandy ... to at least be near her, to be near what she did for him, what she does. If he wasn't going to be able to get his hit, maybe at least he could remember the peacefulness just by being near her.
Todd trudged on, seeing city lights ahead, moaning at the thought of going without the Princess, "You've abandoned me ... why can't you end this? Why ... why ..."
"No, Little One, you have so much left to do. So very much ..."
"Like WHAT?! To see more of who I am with that psychiatric rape? To see more of my history?! To repeat it?! To repeat it against my children?! Against my wife?!"
"No ... to let yourself be loved, to love yourself and those around you, to live."
"I hate you ... I hate you, spirit ... because you are nobody and you are powerless, useless in your sweetness ... useless in your boundless love ..."
The cold was relentless, the night sounds terrifying. Everything looked the same, trees, still more trees, snow ... more snow ... and the blackness above. He tried not to think of the hospital, tried not to think of Téa's screams nor of Brandy's soulless stare from the fire escape, but above all, he tried not to think of a needle in his vein saving him, saving his essential self.
But the thoughts kept at him: the pinch of the spike, the feel of the plunger under his thumb, the sight of his blood in the barrel, the rush ... the more-than-orgasmic flow of loving heat throughout his body, the slumber in an Angel's arms that only heroin could give him. His stomach cramped again and he bit down to stop from vomiting again.
Once recovered from the spasm, he continued to walk, thinking he was seeing bats and owls and rodents and other kinds of creatures. And he thought they were watching him, hooting at him, howling and snapping and laughing. Messengers of the devil, of Satan, Todd thought, rubbing his head, his eyes. Soon, one of the creatures landed directly in front of him, startling him. It was a massive brown-black owl, boasting spread wings edged in silver, sharp yellow eyes and a knowing glower. He thought it grinned at him and he thought it said something ... but then it flew away, flapping up onto a branch above him.
Shaking off the image of the owl, Todd stumbled along until a screechy voice stopped his movement.
"Well aren't we pretty tonight?"
He couldn't see where the voice was coming from, but then he did. It was the owl.
"Pretty, pretty boy. Aren't we pretty?"
"Go away."
"What's the matter, you scared? Afraid of the dark, Pretty Boy?"
The owl hooted at him and seemed to chuckle, but Todd kept walking, the owl flapping above him and following him.
"You're going the wrong way, Pretty Boy."
"I wanna go home. I hear the highway ... I know what I hear." What he also heard was his own voice, shaky and frayed and childlike. His steps were getting slower. His wet clothes were getting unbearable. He was so cold, he was almost hot.
"The highway," the owl argued, "to Llanview might be in the direction you're going, but the Highway to Paradise is the other way. Turn around, Pretty Boy and go back into the darkness."
Todd knew what he was seeing wasn't real, couldn't be real. Owls don't talk, they don't make promises of salvation, they don't guide kicking heroin addicts out of forests ... or into them. It suddenly then occurred to him that maybe, in fact, blessedly, he was dying after all, and god fucking damn it, he was going to die insane. He pulled the jacket tighter and looked at the starless sky above him and heard his own fast breathing.
He huffed, and was beginning think it wasn't so cold... skin strangely heated now, the walking maybe heating him, thinking he should drop his jacket, take off his shirt, spread his arms in the new warmth. He was sweating even.
But he didn't drop anything, just kept walking until he reached the road.
Cars went past him and he kept walking, blindly propelled by his need, his cravings, madness. Someone honked their horn at him, forcing him back towards the side of the road, having wandered onto the road itself. After a while, even his all-consuming desires weren't enough to keep him on his feet. He dropped to his knees and clutched his belly, rocking himself in grotesque agony. He knew there was only one answer to his sickness though so he got up and walked more, heading to the city lights.
"This is the wrong way, I told you."
"I wanna go home, I wanna see Brandy, I wanna be near her."
"Brandy? What about your wife? What about ... Téa?"
"Shut up about Téa!"
"Ohhhhh yooo hooo... TÉA! OhTÉA! Loverboy doesn't want to be near you... nooooo ... he wants his whore! La dee da!"
"Shut up ... shut up ... you don't know anything. I can't be with Téa ... I can't be with her. I ruined her. I used her. My angel, my beautiful angel..." He started to cry, but quickly stopped it, rolling his eyes back at the pain suddenly running through his legs, forcing him to stop and rub his thighs, his knees; there weren't enough places to rub the hurt out, there wasn't enough rubbing that he could do. The shivering wouldn't quit, making him hotter, making him think once again that he should yank his jacket off. He couldn't tell if he was hot or cold anymore.
"'My angel ... my beautiful angel,'" the owl jeered. "Grow up. She knew what she was getting into with you. She knew the moment she walked through your whore's door. Hell, she was already ruined!"
"No, not by me, not by me."
"Maybe not by you, but maybe by the whole state of New York! What do you think she was doing out there ... all alone ... after she left you during your hostage trial? Praying in church? You think she was going to mass? Kneeling at alters?"
"Please shut up..."
"Oh yeah ... your 'Angel' was in New York ... getting laid by every man she could get ahold of because YOU hadn't been able to RISE to the occasion! HA! Come on ... go the other way ... go back inside the forest where you will find Paradise."
"You aren't real. This is the drugs ... yeah ... this is me NOT on drugs ... that's what it is. Go away." It was all too hard, though, and he dropped to his knees again. He was hot now. Sweating, shaking from being overheated. He stripped his jacket off. Looked at the road ahead and thought of just lying down. Let himself be roadkill ... yeah ... yeah ... and he thought about taking this shirt off because he was still so… hot.
He finally lay down on the black ... and hoped ... hoped ...
Just as a sleep started to take hold, he was shaken hard, shaken awake. A deep voice called, "Hey! Jesus! I nearly hit you! Get up!"
"Go away ... get the fuck outta here," Todd mumbled, peeved at the death-sleep interruption. He'd been comfortable. He'd been ... peaceful.
"No way. Come on ... get in the back of the truck. You'll die out here. Hey, is that your coat?"
"Go away ... go away ... go away..."
"You look real bad ... you want me to get someone? Maybe I should get someone."
The man had long black hair and dark skin and when Todd noticed him at last, he thought of Brandy. The hair ... it was the same ... similar. The physical reminder of her ... was like her reminder to him to breathe, a delicate plea ... to breathe.
"Get in my truck," the stranger urged, "you want to go to the city?"
Todd nodded slightly.
"I'll drop you anywhere ..." The man helped Todd up and helped him back into his jacket. Tried to get him into the passenger seat but Todd refused. He climbed into the bed of the truck. Once on the road, Todd slid down, leaning against the cool metal, feeling every bump, every jog and turn; he threw up over the side of truck a few times and then he huddled inside again, still not able to escape the owl's voice, the owl's taunts.
"Pretty Boy," it said, as it flapped next to him, sounding more like a parrot than an owl. Moose, reincarnated.
"What do you want from me?" Todd asked, his voice straining with intensified pain.
"I am the voice of your Reality. I am the voice of Death. Specifically, yours. Just say the word and I will point you in the right direction."
"I don't understand."
"You want to die yet you go to the city. I was leading you back to the forest ... where you surely would not survive the night. You want to die ... yet you accept help from the Indian. I will lead you to your Death. Yet you do not follow me."
"You're not real ... you're not real ... I'm not real anymore ... I'm nothing."
"Follow me."
Todd groaned, hunching over, holding his head in his hands. Then he started to laugh at the irony of everything; how his only salvation could cause him so much pain, so much misery. But it was worth it.
When he dosed up, it was glorious, the complete absence of sound and noise and twitching and hurting and everything. And it was only then that he could feel what it was to be alive. Near enough to death so he could be pulled back and breathed on, breathed for ... to feel what it was to be a man again, to feel a woman on him, to feel skin and heat ... and love. And it was only then that he could feel a child's peace as he nestled in his mother's arms, as he smiled at her music, at her lullaby for him.
And this was given to him by Peter.
Peter, the one who took away everything, was the very same one who had finally given Todd a sense of everything through the drug. Of course, Peter's involvement in this gift showed itself in the deprivation of the heroin. Being jerked away from the Princess sunk him to depths lower than hell, beneath hell. To lose the peacefulness was far worse than to be deprived of it when one never knew what it was, never knew its true brilliance. Control ... this was all Peter's control over the Princess ... his control over Todd.
Fucking irony.
He closed his eyes, feeling like he couldn't breathe. It was strange, the owl, the way it spread its wings and chortled and told Todd to jump out of the truck. Kept pointing to the highway and yelling, "NOW!" every time a truck approached in the opposite direction. "It's so easy," the owl assured Todd. "To be run over in the highway by a semi is a quick death. Trust me... I know."
"Shut up ... just shut up."
Then the owl would hoot and holler with laughter at Todd's refusing to jump, refusing the quick death.
Before long the truck containing the Indian, Todd and the Owl of Reality, hit the city of Llanview and, when stopped at a light, the Native-American man stuck his head out the back window, asking, "Name the place, man."
Barely moving, Todd said as loud as he could, "Sixteenth street and Llanview Boulevard. Please ... please .."
"You live there? Someone's there for you?"
"Yeah ... my sister ... she's there ... my sister," he said softly, drowned out by the few cars on the road at this late hour. "My sister," he said to himself.
"Ok. Man ... sure hope she'll be there," the stranger said as he shut the window and drove on.
Todd thought about his Brandy, his Johnny-girl ... Johnny-jump-up-and-taste-the-hell. Worried about her. Thought of her small body, of her voice and the way she would sometimes stand looking down at him with her mouth twisting to the side as if not knowing what to do with Todd next. "Can't stop the sun!" she'd say at his pissiness, at his depression.
He spread his arms, making like a snow angel. Felt that dark night sun on him.
Instantly, his thoughts drifted to Téa and he tried to shut them down. But he couldn't quiet her cries in his head that he'd heard when he booked it out of the hospital. Sadness laced those cries ... emptiness ... like the howls of a lone wolf. The sound was like the cry of his mother the night she caught Peter with Todd, the night she learned of THAT abuse, the night she left him to be further degraded and ruined and destroyed.
A noise hit him, a static. A blankness, trying to think of the day after she left. And the day after that. Couldn't. Great lagoons of blankness. Until he ran away to see her. Then nothing again. Then the rape and all the rest was history.
He heard his mother cry many times. She would hold Todd as a child, bruised and cut from yet another beating. She had tried, he thought. She had tried to help but she was helpless ... so she hid in a bottle ... hid in her bed ... hid in alcoholic numbness.
And Téa ... she tried, too. And so she screamed as he'd left her, running away from himself, from the child in that hospital, abandoning him the way his mother abandoned Todd. Flip-flopping ... flip-flop ... slippers down a hall, slippers carrying her away, the way Todd's boots pounded on the linoleum, carrying him away from the violence to seek peacefulness.
"You're innocent, Téa," Todd groaned, "You didn't abandon me. I abandoned me, THEY abandoned me."
The truck came to a stop somewhere near Sixteenth Street and Todd climbed out of the truck, earlier than he was supposed to. He ignored the pleas of the Native-American dude and soon found himself wandering Llanview's darkest city-forest: the streets of the unofficial red light district where everything is available, where the worst degradations can be bought ... where the ruined are at home ... where the forsaken commune in their own self-abandonment, in societal abandonment.
Todd walked close to the walls, close to the windows and storefronts, not looking at the few people still out, shivering with pain and cold and deprivation. With strange heat. The night was wearing on him and he needed to get well again. He didn't remember Paulie's number ... couldn't remember it. He scooped up some snow and ate it ... letting a little melt in his mouth.
Todd walked hunched over, his stomach and insides burning, aching. He had stopped several times ... once to vomit, seeing blood in the liquid. What was there even in his stomach to get rid of? But something was always there to come up.
"I am Reality," the owl would remind him as it stepped alongside Todd. "I am what you really want. Ha ... ha ... Pretty Boy ... Pretty Boy."
He couldn't walk anymore. And he didn't know where he was.
So he slipped into a space in between two brick buildings, a space too small to be an alleyway, too wide for a crawlspace.
There was warmth there. And quiet and it wasn't as wet because snow didn't get into that space. And there was a warm column of air coming at him, didn't know where it came from, but it felt real enough and he let himself live in it for a while. And at least he knew he was somewhere near his Johnny-girl, his sister-whore.
"Is it okay, here?" he asked the owl. "Is this the right place? I'm home, you know. I'm home."
The owl was silent, though, spreading his wings and clicking its beak at Todd. But soon the owl agreed, "Yes. You're in the right place." The creature blocked the light from the street and blocked the warm wind from escaping, blocked cold wind from coming in, or at least it felt that way.
"Yessss..." the owl sighed, "Paradise ... it's so very close ... now."
"Nothin' hurts me ... nothin' hurts," he mumbled as he huddled against the bricks. He slept. It wouldn't be long, he knew.
"Kyle, come help me," a woman said. "Oh ... dear Lord ... how long has he been out here? I've not seen this one before. He's freezing. Hurry with the blanket."
Something roused him out of nothingness. Weight fell on his shoulders, warmth. And he knew he was shivering violently.
"How long have you been here, Little One?" the woman asked.
Todd tried to look at her, thinking she was the spirit, thinking, hoping. Maybe he'd not been left. Maybe she'd come to him ... but his eyes kept drifting away from the picture of the woman's wrinkled soft skin, her short hair, her yellow wool coat. It all kept fading. He dropped his head back down and squeezed tightly against the protection of the brick wall behind him.
"Let me help you, sweetie, let me help you up," she said. "I'm going to take you to our shelter. Are you sick?"
"Forsaken ... left behind, there's nothing ... nothing," he mumbled, pressing his body against the bricks, his knees up. He closed his eyes since it was pointless to keep them open, since they refused to stay focused on any one place. He felt somebody pulling him up, though, moving him.
"I think he's an addict ... must be kicking 'cause he's a real mess," a male voice said. "Bad night for them."
Then the woman tried again with him, "I'm Sister Rachel Bronson and this is my friend, Kyle ... we're going to get you out of the cold. There's another storm coming in. Keep walking with us ... keep walking."
Todd had no choice but to take steps forward. Blinded by his sickness, he was helpless, he was dying. He told her so.
"No, no, you're not dying, sweet thing, it feels like it but you're not. Come with us. We're going to get you warm, get some hot liquid into you, get you out of these wet clothes... let you sweat this off. It's going to be hard. You try to stick it out the best you can."
"No hospital ... no ..."
"No, we're not taking you to a hospital. It's the shelter, always open for lost souls. There are a couple more men like you there. Can't get their fix because of the snow. What's your name, Angel?"
He tried to look at her because she sounded like the spirit and he sort of smiled, or at least he thought he smiled, "You? I know you?"
"Call me Rachel. What can I call you?"
"I'm nothing ... nobody ... I don't have a name," Todd mumbled, his voice barely coming out as the chills were so bad.
"Ok, I understand ... but you're not 'nothing' ... not to me."
He didn't know how many steps he'd taken, how long he walked with these strangers. Soon he found himself inside a place, much warmer, and he could see rows and rows of cots with people on them, beneath blankets. Most were asleep, some were sitting up and talking, others just stared. He was particularly aware of the musty smell of snow-soaked people and old wood and of his own stink. He could hear the cry of a child with unmet needs. He was sure it was a little boy crying and he tried to look for him as he was being moved through the room. A boy ... that boy ...
"He's crying," Todd said sadly, "he needs something ... is someone hurting him?"
"No, dear," the Sister answered, smiling sympathetically, "That sounds like Damien. He's probably angry that his little brother took his truck from him. Boy, does he throw a fit at that! He's here with his mother. The boy will be fine. Don't you worry. You just think about getting better."
"Better ... better ... I need my shit to get better, I need a hit, you got some of that?"
"No, sweetie, no."
The sounds faded away, the crying boy vanished, and Todd found himself in another warm place, in another room with three other men. Two slept and one tossed and turned, that same one groaning and whimpering as he fought with himself, fought an unseen demon. Something hit Todd, something scratchy, and he could taste water in his mouth and then he was throwing it up and moaning and wishing he wasn't alive any more.
"I told you, you should have listened to me," the owl said from the doorway. It had followed Todd from the streets, from the space in between the buildings.
"It's alright, Little One, it's okay," the Sister then said. Todd grabbed onto her arm and looked into her eyes, asking if she was the spirit, but he knew that his words didn't come out.
The woman smiled and rubbed his hair back. "It's a bad withdrawal ... heroin is painful that way. The coming off of it wrecks you something horrible. Can you tell me the last time you used, dear?"
"I don't know," he said, surprised that he heard his own voice. "The forest ... snow ... where is Brandy? Where's my sister?"
"You have a sister, Angel? Was she with you? I can try to look in the shelter for her, if you want... her name is Brandy, you say?"
Todd started to cry because the woman wasn't getting it. He was hurting and he needed Brandy to lie with him and Viki to comfort him and Téa to love him, and he was so sorry for what he did ... but above all he needed the heroin again. He needed the dope badly.
He tried to get up and his muscles were cramping and his stomach was twisting ... deep inside of him ... he was dying, he could feel it.
"God ...," he groaned, hunching over, vomiting into a bowl the Sister had for him.
"Hopefully, this is the worst of it," she said. "Tomorrow morning you should feel a bit better. Depending on how long you've been off. Where have you been, Little One? Your clothes are soaked right through. Kyle, go upstairs and pull some dry clothing, and more blankets. RUN. This one's near hypothermia."
Todd dropped back onto the scratchy wool and curled up, trying to appease the fierce pain rumbling throughout his body. He ignored the hooting owl in the doorway, Peter's jubilant laughter and Téa's crying. He ignored the calling out of Starr. She kept saying, "Daddy! I found you! I'm going to keep you! POKEMON!"
"Keep me, keep me," Todd mumbled as the Sister took off the wet clothes, stripping him, just letting her because he was too sick to fight the violation. She then piled blankets onto Todd, as she waited for the return of Kyle.
Naked now, shivering violently beneath the blankets, every bit of him clamored for the drugs. Warm wet towels were on him, wiping him down, cleaning him up. Dry clothes were put on him, then blankets once more, like he was a baby ... and he felt some water being dropped onto his lips and he was being told things and asked things and he knew he was answering, but he had no control over what he was saying.
One thing he did hear or thought he heard was himself saying was how sad he was, how afraid. And then he could tell the woman was praying with him and he thought of Rebecca and smiled at that, at the remembered innocent little prayers, at her sweet hope she once had for Todd before she grew afraid of him, so deeply afraid.
Then the woman left him to his sickness.
He tossed and turned on the little cot; slid to the floor, with his head and arms on the cot, only able to keep still for moments at a time, unable to sleep, unable to stave off the illusions that played with him.
Then he would climb back onto the cot again. And he cried and he moaned and threw up into some red plastic thing and drifted in this sickening, unpleasant high, in and out of consciousness, in and out of nightmares. He shuffled to a toilet and more came out of him, the cramps mind-numbing, forcing agonized sounds from his throat.
Back on the cot, his muscles jerked and seized up. And then he grew too hot and kicked off the blankets leaving him in the borrowed sweats and shirt and seeing the white of Hell, kicking, kicking... in some shelter, he realized, he understood, kicking next to some other losers, other junkies who happened to have fallen on hard times, not able to get to their connection in the snow ... not able to get hooked up on this night.
You ... you have forsaken me.
"No ... my Son ... my dope-fiend Son, I am waiting for you. SHE'S waiting for you in all her whiteness, in all her blessedness, in all her warm and mothering powdered-ness. I will be sure you get to her. Remember that it is only I who loves you. It is I who will deliver you to your mother's love and devotion. I am the one who is your Savior."
You help, Daddy ... you help me, then. Do what no one else can. And then tell me what I have to pay.
What you want, baby?
To be continued….