Meg Sefton's Blog, page 64

The Land of Absolutes

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Chimney Pot Papers, woodcut Fritz Endell,1919, flickr

There is an interesting place called the Land of Absolutes. I would like to be able to tell you about every aspect of this land, but alas, for the storyteller to be heard, she must be believed. I will provide a sketch along with an example family from the town to give you some rough idea. You will hardly believe it. It is better than a ride at Disney.

In the Land of Absolutes, there is nothing in between. There is no person that is in between. To live in Absolutes, you must be so tall, you are the tallest of humans who have lived on the planet, or so small so as to be the size of a little mouse. If you are going to be fat, let’s do this right, round yourself out, roll around like Violet Beuregarde! If you are going to be skinny, be invisible when you turn sideways. When you yell, yell all the way, when you talk gently, talk so soft that someone needs to get right up to your mouth to hear you. They might not even hear you at all!

When you are political, march every day for your cause. Carry signs. Bash people over the head with them. Punch the opposition. Carry weapons. Go to jail. When you are apolitical, sit at home and stare at the dust particles filtering through the air in a shaft of sunlight slanting in. Count the particles. Make note of them. Make a chart. Compare the number of particles from day to day and see if the numbers correlate to anything. Leave your tvs alone, a sad gaping eye in your living room. Pretend the outside world does not exist. Order your groceries delivered, your clothes, your shampoos and soaps, your sex toys, your love, your religion, your peace. Be quiet and uninvolved. Keep to yourself.

You know what people do when they aren’t either all the way tall or all the way short? All the way fat or all the way skinny? All the way political or all the way uninvolved? They can’t exist long in the Land of Absolutes. Imagine it. Where are they going to find clothes? How are they going to find food? It’s either packaged for tiny mice sized people and twig people or huge tree sized people or barn sized people. When the in between people are out and about in the Land of Absolutes, they get bashed over the side of the head or swept along in the latest political riot. When they knock on the door of the apolitical they never receive an answer. There is a hush still as the grave.

The “in betweens” as they are known are really tourists, looking for a place to exist. They make do. Often, they are observers. Actually, nowadays as migration patterns have set in and people move from town to town looking to escape Absolutist policies and public life, they have founded communities for themselves. It is not possible for In Betweeners and Absolutes to cohabitate or be in relationship. Their separate communities, with guards and their own fly over helicopters, curfew hours, checkpoints, ensure there is some measure of peace. Though sometimes there is an attempt to mingle.

I tried mingling once, getting out there. I wasn’t finding anyone in my community with whom I wanted to settle down for a while. I wasn’t looking for a Bond, which is what they are calling it nowadays. More like something a little more tuned down. A Mutuality with Happy Consequences and Occasional Challenges But Overall Happiness. There is a kind of person I always tended to be attracted to in the Absolutes and that is the tall tree-trunk kind of a person with big opinions, someone political and passionate, who does not get their love in the mail. I met him in a town square one night at a rally. He was so gorgeous. And so ambitious. Nothing he did was halfway. How very Absolute of him. I was attracted immediately.

What I didn’t know about the Land of the Absolutes is a rule that applies to them: All things must be done absolutely. As an example, what that means in family life in the Land of Absolutes is a strict obedience to the rules laid down by an iron fisted matriarch or patriarch from time immemoriam.

On our first date I ate at my new love’s house. The family was served plates by another family who worked for them, some of the thinnest people I had ever seen. I have seen needles thicker. These thin people laid plates of meat, potatoes, and vegetables in front of us. It is amazing these thin people made such gorgeous, delicious looking food. It looked like food they never ate.

We commenced to eating. Now, I happen to love potatoes. Imagine my joy when a white, fluffy potato was found in front of me, next to the succulent meat and buttery vegetables. I lovingly lavished it with butter, salt, pepper, sour cream. I was starving. I took a bite, looked around and smiled, just in case I needed to say something or listen. But everyone was eating. I took another bite, and another, and another! I ate it all! How tasty!

Suddenly, there was a dead silence, no clanking utensils against plates, no scraping with the labor of cutting meat, not even the tinkling of ice in a glass. I looked up. They were all staring at me! These huge people! What did I do?

“We eat everything in rotation here,” said my love. “This is crazy, the way you are eating!” he crashed his hand down on the table so the dishes and utensils clattered. He was yelling and I was scared. When he had been yelling about politics or people he didn’t agree with, other people, I had found it funny. Now, it terrified me. Everyone in the room was huge, staring. Their heads barely fit under the ceiling. I marveled at the table. How did they find enough wood to build it? “You will fill all up on your potato and won’t have room for the other things on your plate! Are you even sane? Do you even know what you are doing? Are you even a grown up?” There was growling then and leering, baring of teeth. I backed slowly away, and made it through the door. I ran all the way home, I don’t know how. I am hardly an athlete.

In my own house later, the moonlight shifting through windows in a room I’m sure contained dancing dust particles, I pulled out the photo album of my childhood. I flipped on the light and turned to the page of my three year old self who had buried her hands deep in her birthday cake. She had stuffed her mouth and the icing had stained her lips blue. Her head was tipped back and she was smiling. Her mom was holding her on her lap and smiling. The dad I knew who took the picture was smiling as well. Though you cannot see him in the picture, I know he was there and how he looked at his little love.

 

semaphore

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Massimo ankor, flickr

How to explain the skinned elbow. It wasn’t like the time Miska hopped up on top of the bar to dance and had fallen, some of the guys coming to her rescue.

No, this was Berta home alone with her frozen dirty martini, underestimating her body’s ability to absorb the alcohol on no carbs. But also, self medicating when her midlife boyfriend reunited with her and her fear of abandonment set in.  Overweight, middle aged Berta, divorced from a 20 year marriage to a doctor, grateful for a man’s expressed interest in her even if it was only for the easy sex. And it was always hard for Berta to know the difference: Was he just interested in the sex or did he have a truly vested interest? And did it matter any more? Was she supposed to care?

How to explain the lose skin at her elbow when she showed for girls night out. An hour before, standing at her sink, a sudden sensation overwhelming her and a slow, slow tipping of her body like she had heard cows tip at the slightest pressure at night while asleep. She couldn’t stop herself. She tried, but she kept going down, to the kitchen linoleum, her midlife boyfriend having told her only hours before it made him really hot to watch a woman emerge from a bathtub. She had been secretly grateful he had yet to see her creaking up to standing from her townhouse tub and she had wondered what would happen when he finally witnessed it.

She had lain on the kitchen floor when the dirty martini laid her low. She absorbed the humiliation. Of course, she would never tell. But what if she had been forced to alert someone because of broken bones, or worse? She would have rather died. And she thinks: She probably just would have died. Before calling. Before texting. Just died.

My Second Self

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Twin Trees by Ivan Constantin, flickr

The rooms of my townhome were lonely when my son left for university, those rooms absent of his intelligent yet feral boyishness, the male version of everything I could possibly pour into him in the time available to me. Yet he had always been his very own person. He had his own humor, his own style, his own way of seeing the world, his own way of moving through it.

On the day he left, I had put everything I could of mine into his car, everything he cared to take – my old guitar my parents gave me years ago, a clothes’ steamer I had just bought for myself but that he liked using, food, drinks. I stood with my dog on my balcony while he drove away. I cried while descending on me was a new feeling, something alien and unwelcome.

The only other times I had something close to such a feeling was several years previous, a month after separating from my husband, having scrambled to get funding to rent a loft apartment. How empty I had been. And I slept on a pile of comforters in my bedroom until my furniture arrived. Years later, the sense of emptiness returned when I was diagnosed with cancer. The loneliness of treatment was immense and impenetrable, like a silent judgmental father, watching, waiting, providing no answers or guarantees.

In summary, as I sometimes saw it on my darker days, the middle years of my life had seen me without my spouse, without my health, without my son.

I felt sorry for myself when my son left. I considered myself to be dull and banal for even feeling this way while I also thought of my son driving away to be with his friends. I looked up “empty nesting” on the computer and found descriptions of the dangers: depression, weight gain, loss of purpose, a messy house, a messy appearance.

I would have to force myself to do things, no one would be around to know if I cleaned the kitchen, made my bed, even fixed my hair and makeup. I would be doing things only for myself. And like many of my friends, I had grown up within a subculture of expectation. My ex had always told me, in criticism, that I was “externally motivated,” never one to do much unless someone would be around to witness the outcome.

That night, I closed down the house, shutting the downstairs bedroom door, the door to the room that I had thought to make into my study one day but it was still a bedroom. I wondered why I even bothered to close the door. But I always did that, even if there was no reason to protect someone’s privacy or keep anyone away. I generally liked closed doors inside a house. On the second floor, I turned off all the lights except for one I kept on through the night, one beside the sofa. I turned off the electric fireplace and blew out the candle.

On the third floor, I closed my son’s bedroom door and my own bedroom door, settling into a night in bed beside the blue light of the computer, a somewhat sad state of affairs maybe but it wasn’t so bad either. There was no one to consult with and I could watch whatever I pleased, or browse the web, or write a story if I couldn’t sleep. I could stay up and leave the light on until all hours.

Before I knew it, the hour reached midnight and I was hungry. I pulled on a robe over a matching gown, a set I had bought as consolation for seeing a child off. I slid my feet into house slippers, also a recent indulgence. I would make cocoa. I hobbled down the stairs on arthritic knees made worse by the chemo of years previous.

When I reached the second floor, the floor housing the living room and kitchen, I spotted something surprising, just out of the corner of my eye. I could have sworn it was a woman, tall and blond, large and solid, stepping down the stairs to the guest bedroom, her hair brushed back like mine, her elbow bent as if she were carrying something in her hand, a hot mug of tea or milk. She looked just like me, I mused, for a moment.

I scurried to the landing, there was no one, nor were there signs there has been anyone. But I could swear she was wearing my peignoir set but in a darker color, the other set I ordered, and she wore slippers, like mine. Was she carrying a cup of cocoa?

I summoned my dog to accompany me to the first floor, but she stood on the upper level and watched me as I motioned for her. I relented, going on, making my way down.

I opened the first floor bedroom door quickly, as if to quell any dread or hesitation. But there was nothing. No one. I checked the front porch. It appeared someone had been sitting on my outdoor sofa, though that happens sometimes. People will come and sit there because they find it inviting. I arranged the cushions back to where they were.

I checked the garage. It was open. I had left it open when I went out to do errands earlier that day! Anyone could have easily accessed the house!

Yet if anyone wanted to harm me, they would have done it by now.

I closed the garage door. Maybe whoever it was had appreciated the extra toothbrushes and toothpaste, the towels and soaps I kept in the ground floor bathroom.

That I wasn’t more bothered puzzled me. That I actually was more interested in being of use to someone, more interested in that than in my own safety alarmed me slightly, but actually not that much.

What had been the most painful thing, years earlier when I landed in my empty apartment midlife? What had given me the sense of landing in a painted concrete mausoleum? What had made me feel dead and ineffectual, invisible to the outside world, no more use than a corpse? That sense of my own disconnectedness and uselessness! No one needed me!

And now, someone needed me!

I wondered if she would speak to me or at least write to me if I jotted down some questions. I threw a load of towels in the wash so they would be fresh. I began a loaf of bread.

It was about 1 a.m. I lay down on the sofa. I awoke to the alarm I had set for the rising dough.

The woman was sitting in the chair opposite. She had been watching me doze off, my small dog in the crook of my arm.

My dog began to growl, a sound she rarely made. She wasn’t much of a watch dog. And how had she missed this woman coming into my living room?

“Who are you?” I said. “What do you want with me?”

My earlier thoughts about helping her were displaced by my current alarm at her proximity. She had come into my space when I was vulnerable. What had she planned to do? I had thought she was exactly like me, but on closer inspection, she was much younger, she could have been my daughter. She could hurt me, I thought. She looked physically very strong.

She brought her hand to her mouth, mimicking eating. She wanted the bread I was making.

I had her lie down on the sofa while I put the loaf in the oven. Her hair was fine and long like mine had been at that age. She had no ring on her finger though by the time I was her age I was married and pregnant.

“Where is your family?” I said to her, hovering over the couch like an attendant nurse. I handed her a cup of juice, leftovers of my son’s favorite drink.

She drank but did not answer, only laid down again. When the loaf made a hollow thump under my nail, I took it out of the oven and wrapped it up in a tea towel. I handed it to her, along with the bottle of cranberry juice. She took it and went downstairs but by the time I hobbled down to the ground floor, she was gone, leaving the front door open a crack, the same carelessness I had shown in leaving the garage door open.

Who was she, this young woman who didn’t care to close my door or care what I wanted, who didn’t speak?

I checked the toothbrush in the bathroom. She had used it. I could smell the shampoo and soap, sense the dampness of the room.

She had left wearing my gown and robe, a pair of my slippers. I remembered the story of a friend who had previously been homeless, how he was forced to move from place to place at night so no one was wise to him. Why hadn’t she stayed? Did she not believe I would protect her?

Yet I felt less lonely. Less useless. Less dead. I would leave the door open a crack for her the next night. The morning after, I bought more flour and yeast and oil. I would add cranberries and nuts to some loaves and cheese and herbs to others. Maybe there were other homeless people who wanted my bread, others who could use it to stay full and warm at night. I stocked up on gallons of juice and water.

At the oncologist’s that afternoon, I was told my recent test showed rampant issues.

The cancer had returned.

Very soon, I would die.

sister

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girl, before 1823, public domain, Barbara, flickr

Sister, do you remember when, scared in the old manse in Texas, you and I whirled and whirled through the hallway during a thunderstorm? Do you remember when I left you in the hall so I could go find our mother? I remember what she said to me when I entered her dark room: Where is your sister? Why are you not taking care of her? Why did you leave her alone?

Sister, do you remember when, many years later, you held my hand while I had my hair buzzed off? Do you remember when I was sick, when I had cancer? Do you remember going to my appointments and asking questions when I was weak? Do you remember begging relatives to come to my surgery when everyone seemed to have better things to do? Had I died you would have arranged my funeral, you would have seen me honored.

I wanted to say to our mother then, when I survived: Here is my sister, Mother. She has taken good care of me. She has not left me alone. I will always be in debt to my sister. She loves me. And I love her.

for National Siblings Day, April 10, 2019

wife of the synchromystic

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Traveling Museum of the Paranormal and Occult, currated by Dana and Greg Newkirk

Linda was new to it –  goblins, Bigfoot, ghosts, witchcraft, Tarot cards. She had married into it. She had met Rob at the seminary where she had served as a secretary and he had been a student.

One day, when they were home and he was studying, they received an email from an old friend who had begun to coin himself a synchromystic: Things were suggesting themselves, said his friend. His friend had received a note from a man describing beings in his yard, beings with big large eyes, beings similar to a sighting reported fifty years ago at another location but connected to it by an underground cave system.

That night, she baked sugar cookies in the shape of large domed heads using shiny licourice pieces for eyes. She cut plump three toed feet to signify the prints the writer of the note had seen around his house. When Rob came into the kitchen and saw what she had done, he smashed the cookies with his fists, despite the hot pan. This was serious, he said, and he was going with his friend to check the cave where dark shapes had been seen.

She actually hadn’t been aware she meant it in fun, though maybe she had, she couldn’t be sure now. Certainly when he was buried in studying predestination, atonement, salvation, sanctification, she was on more certain ground and she understood him as well, so much like her father and her father’s father. She wasn’t sure what had happened, and she didn’t relish finding herself in a cave with his newfound zeal.

The next night, she did find herself in a cave where the locals said dark beings emerged from an old defunct mindshaft. She was there, in her old hiking boots and a sweater, the air having been cleared with sage and an evoking call to the goblins. What in the world would her father have said? He had died and was lost to her, she acknowledged to herself with a great sadness like a hole opening up in her and swallowing all thoughts. It was the strangeness of this that made her miss him most and the unexpected turn of her marriage.

They sat at the lip of the cave overlooking a drop down into the trees. And the light was fading and all the familiar sounds of her Kentucky were being parsed for hints of the extraterrestrial, the alien, the spiritual, whatever wanted to speak. It was decided she should participate in the “Spirit Box,” the thought being she was a virgin to the process and would have fewer preconceived notions. She would wear noise canceling headphones attached to a constantly scanning radio, the idea being that spirits use electronic frequencies as a means of communication.

Rob had developed a hardened expression for her since he picked up on the idea she might be making fun of him. He had not smiled, except around his friends. He had rarely touched her, except to help her climb. Would he be pleased she was helping? She was not sure. She was worried of course, and felt a tightening in her stomach. How about what my stomach is communicating to me? She wanted to say to the cave of men but of course dared not.

“It will take a while to get used to this,” instructed Rob’s friend who was holding the earphones. “Listen for a while before letting us know what you hear. If something or someone is trying to make contact there will be a pattern.”

Of course she was somewhat familiar with this, having transcribed many meetings as a secretary, having taking dictation. She appreciated that she was given the opportunity to wait before being expected to report.

The headphones descended, soft and snug around her head. It was cool outside and she had worn her hair down, a light jacket over her sweater, jeans. In a way it was like hiking and camping, no different than when she was in high school with her friends and they scared each other with stories and local legend. But had they really believed anything then? Or was this just an excuse to scream and hold hands and hug and share a time which was fast disappearing before them? Adults doing this voluntarily doing this struck her as odd and slightly pathetic.

Then she heard it, a voice from the Spirit Box that sounded strangely deep and resonant, like her father’s. “Kill,” she thought she heard it say. “Kill him,” it said. Then: “Kill Rob.”

She took the headphones off and trembled. She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said.

“It’s a little disorienting at first,” said Rob’s friend, but just try it one more time. “It would be really helpful. It’s ok if you feel a little bit apprehensive, it’s normal.”

She relented to having the headphones slipped back over her head, having caught a glimpse of Rob’s hard, foreign stare across the cave, illuminated by the lantern. He had never looked at her like he did now, like he might murder her.

There was silence, on the headphones, only static like white noise, then a loud booming voice: “Kill him!” Then more static. Then at last an unmistakable instruction: “Push him out!”

It was her father, warning her!

She stood up, walking over next to Rob at the lip of the cave overlooking the drop. She did not let on. She had the Spirit Box attached to her jeans with a clip and the soft headphones covered her ears.

“Kill him!” commanded the voice. “Kill him before he kills you!”

“Dad?” she said. She saw Rob’s face grow even angrier, his brow furrowing deeply, his jaw set. She was still making fun of them, pretending the spirit of her father was contacting her.

He reached for her but his friend put a hand on his shoulder to stop him and shook his head “No.”

“Kill!” said her father. “Now!”

Rob’s eyes glowed and burned. He wanted her to die.

Without warning she shoved his shoulder and using his surprise to her advantage, pushed. He fell from the mouth of the cave and disappeared, screaming, down, down, his friend, in shock, holding her arm, lest she fall after him, the white headphones glowing around her neck like the primitive necklace of a matriarchal tribe.

bird in the throat

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photo by Aimee Vogelsang, unsplash

The frozen ones were being filed into the main waiting area of Sister Anne’s Home for the Elderly, some walking, some riding in chairs like long expired royalty, irrelevant, abstracted. It was luau day and leias were draped about residents’ necks some of whom experienced this as a niggling irritation of plastic on flesh, others, oblivious in wool – blankets and cardigans – despite the Florida heat outdoors – felt nothing and waited for food or for relatives to leave and tv programs or afternoon naps to begin. Sister Susan draped their regal and melting stone frames with plastic flower necklaces stabbing them with her brilliant toothy smile, willing them to life if it killed her, her five inch silver cross dangling over where her belly would have held a baby and where Mary held the immaculately conceived baby Jesus.

Greta, frozen despite herself, was not dead yet she wanted to scream though all she suspected that emerged from her throat was a panicked cheeping, the cry of a desperate baby bird. How ineffectual and undignified! And in her younger days, her long, toned legs, swaying to cheers with her girlfriends on cool high school football nights, their skirts moving in unison with their steps, their hips, their impossibly high kicks. How glorious it had been!

And yet, here was Sister Susan approaching her with a bright fuscia flower leia. “You bitch!” she cheeped at Sister Susan when the nun automaton helped straighten her hair after the plastic flowers had caused disorder.

In Greta’s room, far away from the deceptively bright and clean area open to visitors, Sister Susan occasionally neglected Greta’s sheets, taking advantage of Greta’s inability to communicate. When her sheets stank of urine Sister Susan would taunt her: “Little baby! Helpless big grown up baby!”

Stick ’em in the left side, stick ’em in the right, come on mighty Vikings, let’s fight, fight, fight!”

After the games, under the bleachers, Konrad Bengston, the cardamom smell of him, like the woods, overnight summer campouts and fires, bracing green pines closing in and watchful. Konrad’s strength a match for the trees themselves.

There would be Hawaiian pizza for luau day, the sickly sweet smell of canned pineapple and cheap ham, combined with the smells of bleach and buckets of purple industrial cleaner splashed on the floor, swished around with a dirty string mop. The surface effect suggested cleanliness. The reality, microscopically, and in most every sense, was squalor. In a deeper spiritual sense the walls cried hypocrisy, the cries of those who died at the hands of the neglectful, the killers of the barely living, murderers of faded daisies almost dead in a glass.

A stranger had started to visit Greta on these once a month occasions of a Hawaiian fete, a man claiming to be her son, but she knew it was not her son, her Bernhard, her Teutonic knight, assisting her after Jurgen’s death. The strange man had abducted her and moved her to Florida, far away from her beloved Minnesota. He said it was about the  warmer weather, the ease of finding an affordable care facility. Stranger Bernhard, a vaguely familiar person on the surface, with a character made menacing by its strangeness. Imposter Bernhard.

She had begged him, imposter though he was, not to place her at St. Anne’s but he had told here he couldn’t manage work and caring for her. She had broken down crying on the day he dropped her off. She had pulled at him, gripping his arm while the nursing attendants freed him from her deceptively strong hands.

Desperation, fear, has its own strength, she mused later as she remembered pulling Konrad Bengston from the cracking ice with a long pole, and she, laid out like an angel, distributing her weight evenly, stretched towards him. The joy of seeing him horizontal on the surface when he pulled himself out made her cry. And the two of them rolled away from the gaping maw of his near death and ran to her house which was closest. It was a happiness like no other joy short of giving birth to Bernhard, now lost to her.

The imposter sat before her, waiting distractedly for his Hawaiian pizza while he tap tap tapped on his little phone, such an undignified activity for a man of his age. This supposed Bernhard. The real Bernahd had been the child of Greta and Jurgen Hoffman, Jurgen the man she married at the urging of her family, the more fit Konrad having been called away to war.

Greta had no words for the Bernhard she labeled Bluebeard given the sonorous tones of his voice, the blue shadow of his presence, dark and imposing. “What have you done with my son?” she demanded every time he came to visit though what came out was “Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!” Helpless immature avian cries.

“Now, now,” he would say, patting her had, his fatuous gaze mocking her.

He might as well have put a wiggling worm in her beak.

The tomato sauce on the pizza had a heavy smell, like salt, like blood. It was the same tomato sauce they used on the spaghetti for the theme Venice Vacation and the meatloaf for Southern Style Summer. Bernhard would never have eaten such things yet there was this madman, shoveling a huge piece of pizza pie into his his eager maw, grunting and nodding as he chewed. Trying to feel jovial about Hawaiian Holiday? Or in actuality feeling jovial? Were his teeth filed to points like her picture book of Bluebeard from her childhood? Was his face blue with a dark tattoo? She shuddered at his thick fingers grasping for his second slice. She couldn’t watch him.

“Eat up, Ma,” he said, smiling, some stray sauce lingering on the corner of his mouth.

“I wouldn’t trust that one,” said Ruth, the ghost of a resident who used to organize pinochle when they lived on the lower floor that housed the more independent residents. Ruth as a ghost was a bit like Ruth as a living person. Greta could hardly tell the difference apart from the skin peeling at unexpected places, the edges of her face, the top of her hands. She had a habit of peeling it away with her nailed hands, as vain in the afterlife.

Ruth sat in the empty chair beside Bluebeard and played with his hair.

“There’s a breeze in here, Ma,” said Bluebeard, unwittingly reacting to Ruth’s phantom fingers. “Here, let’s get you covered up a bit more,” and he reached over to pull her shawl up higher, up to her ears so that the woolen scratchiness felt like a brillo pad  in the close warmth of the room.

“No!” the tiny bird screeched, scrambling to fly loose of its fragile cage, its heart pounding against her delicate frame. He would kill her! He wanted to kill her! Smother her. Then he would take her money. What had the man done with her Bernhard?

In legend, Bluebeard was serial killer Gilles de Rais. Did serial killers spare their mothers? A man who tortured then sat on child victims, laughing as they died could scarce be counted on for an moral scruples whatsoever. Then again Gilles craved young flesh, like the craving one develops for veal once it is savored.

Bluebeard sat down on a highbacked wooden chair across from her, a medieval carved piece likely donated and a mismatch in the room. It sat in the center of everything, dark and imposing among sun washed beachy themed low uphostered pieces. It held the whole of his frame quite comfortably. He propped his feet up on the low, scuffed Queen Anne table, something Bernhard never would have done.

“Maudit!” screamed Ruth into his ear and pushed her peeling hand against the toe of his boot. Accursed. She spoke in her mother’s tongue when alarmed.

Bluebeard shifted and uncrossed his legs, removing his feet from the table, not letting on the unexplained force against his foot. A madman gives nothing away.

The first time he came to see Greta at St. Anne’s, Ruth mockingly genuflected at the doorway, and when he sat, genuflected deeply on her wobbly old phantom knee, the flesh flaking, her eyes cast to the floor. “That’s not your Bernhard,” she said to Greta, at last looking up, grinning, “that’s the man who ate your Bernhard.”

He folded a second piece of Hawaiian pizza and shoved it into his bearded face.

She sometimes prayed Konrad had died in war. She didn’t hear from him when it was over. She prayed this because to die with dignity for one’s country was preferable to dying like this, this wasting away, this humiliation.

And she was ashamed to admit to herself she didn’t think much of Jurgen, her husband. Bluebeard did have some of his features, though in mock exaggeration, his bulbous nose overwhelming the lower half of his face or at least putting up a stiff competition with his full red lips pursing out between his beard and mustache. In Jurgen, such features had been more subdued, refined though otherwise Jurgen made few impressions in his life. Not much of a physical man, he was mild and quiet. She wondered sometimes if he knew she had been secretly in love with Konrad. She had no way of knowing. Maybe Bluebeard was her punishment.

“I can make this bastard go away,” said Ruth, “at least for a time! I’ll scare the shit out of him!”

“Cheep! Cheep cheep cheep!” she said laughing and slapping her knee. What a pair they made, a bird and a ghost!

Had Ruth known her in high school, she would have participated in the dirty cheer her friends chanted in the locker room after the game, all of them passing around cigarettes and flasks, doing up each other’s hair, falling out laughing:  We are the best team all the others suck! Let’s go mighty Vikings rah rah fuck!” 

Before she became a woman with a bird in her throat she had taught Ruth the dirty cheer and Ruth did the cheer moves for her right there in the common room. And Ruth added her own words now on special days like luau day, shaking her imaginary pom poms and bopping Bluebeard on the head with them: Mighty Ruth and Greta all the others suck! Old ladies rock the world, rah, rah, fuck!

the language of flowers

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The Language of Flowers, or, floral ensembles of thoughts, feelings, and sentiments – Internet Archive Book Images, 1869

She knew she was getting over him when she threw his shriveled dead flowers in the trash. They had been drying in the sun on the bookshelf next to the window. When she had received them she put them in a cream china vase, a wedding gift from long ago. She had received a life and home from someone else back then as a bride and now in her townhome life of temporary lovers on the outskirts of town she received flowers not from a husband, but from a friend who is a man.

She put the flowers in one of her favorite vases and displayed it on the black table in the middle of her living room, taking a picture for him, showing her friends and her sister. She then moved the flowers to the top of the fireplace where it half obscures the tv and she welcomes the intrusion. That was before he came over for the last time.

When things began to fall apart only a week after she received the flowers, this the landmark of their three months together, she moved the flowers out of her line of sight, over on the kitchen counter, though at that time the flowers were still opening and drinking in water. She kept them there because she didn’t know if the man would call again. She couldn’t bare to get rid of them altogether. Maybe there was still hope. She called him. She received no response.

She moved the flowers over to the window, on the bookshelf, an out of the way place. But she couldn’t throw them out, not quite yet. Soon a pizza box was set beside the flowers in the box, a used box which needed to go out with the garbage. Dried flowers drifted to the kitchen floor, a floor which needed to be swept and mopped. There were a lot of things she needed to attend to after the breakup. She tried to reach him again, No response.

She replenished her kitchen with the little money she had left, picking up a basil plant she loved to have on hand, a little indulgence. The  bag clerk at the store had asked her what it was and sniffed it deeply.

At home, the woman put the basil plant next to the vase of drying out flowers, on top of the pizza box, its simple plastic container holding a plant that would last her the summer.

The man’s flowers dried and drifted down. They became ugly.

She watered the basil and put some fresh leaves in a dish to make it more flavorful.

Someone else called her and showed her kindness, another man. She felt: What usefulness, drying flowers? There is no call.

She threw out the dried flowers into the plastic bag in the garbage container and shoved them down so their stems broke. How much she had felt for this person. Tomorrow she would clean out the vase. Tomorrow she would put soap into its creamy cavity as well as warm water.

Maybe when she got her house cleaned up and her sink fixed she would make a meal for  the new person. But for now she would let him treat her. She would leave her house behind for a couple of hours. And she would try to forget about this man, whom she loved.

She held the vase and felt its coolness in her palm. Its smoothness was like a good love that should only hold living things. It was a beautiful vase she got for her wedding many years ago. It had always been one of her favorites. It didn’t matter it had served another purpose in a previous life. It was still hers. To do with as she saw fit.

International Women’s Day

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German poster for International Women’s Day, 1914. The poster was banned in the German Empire.

A little less than a week after International Women’s Day, I still would like to participate by re-posting a story of mine about a woman’s abuse by her significant other. This is a critical topic at a time we are recognizing women’s rights.

I think I am going to read this tonight at a local reading. It fits the word requirements. And I also think because of its detailed dialogue and descriptions it will be easy for an audience to follow.

Thank you for following my post, the link is listed below. If this is a repeat for you: I have made improvements. Thank you for your support and for reading.

 

via the pleasures of not stirring

Die, Chanlina

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Rob Potter, unsplash

Sometimes when we get together at “Mommy and Me,” we talk about what happened that summer at the beach in that huge house by the ocean. We usually don’t refer to many of the details directly, they are still puzzling, and painful. We just laugh and talk about what a pain it is to potty train our little ones when toilets are known to haunt. “Isn’t it hard enough?” One of us we’ll sort of do a faint little laugh, more from relief that we are acknowledging something difficult than experiencing something that is genuinely funny. At that point, there is usually more grabbing for the wine or extra food, depending upon one’s choice of comfort.

Talk to any one of us individually and you will witness for yourself the fracturing nature of a shared experience, a shared experience of encountering unexpected darkness. You will witness pained expressions and hesitations and the trailing off of answers and explanations of events.

But first, let me start by orienting you to what things were like when we were younger. Do you remember playing a slumber party game called Bloody Mary? You probably played it gathering round the bathroom mirror with a friend, candles lit, spinning and chanting louder and louder Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary! And then looking for a glimpse of the terrifying witch in the mirror. What’s more you could be maimed, have your eyes torn out, appear on the other side with the witch, go insane, die. Dare you summon Mary Worth back from the afterlife? The mirror was her portal.

I don’t know about your slumber parties growing up, but at our slumber parties, we had one person who knew the rituals and the stories about spirits who could be summoned, who passed things along to us and told us what to do. For us, this person was Aideen Campbell. It was Aideen who told us about the witch Mary Worth. We didn’t have youtube and Instagram, we didn’t relay messages and pictures and information that way. We only had word of mouth and the more connected you were, the more you knew. In my group of girlfriends which also included Mandy, Heather, Rachel, Courtney, Julie, and Shannon, Aideen was that source of information.

Besides that, Aideen was different than the rest of us. For example, her mother was busted for shoplifting even though her father was as rich as Croesus. While it appalled my mother, a proper southern church going lady, it made Aideen all the more intriguing. Aideen’s mother had gone to jail! My mother’s friends never did anything by comparison. Their excitement over the least little thing was depressing.

All of us hung on every little thing Aideen said. What’s more, she wore makeup before any of us was allowed to, smoked, got access to booze through her older sister, had boyfriends first, kissed them, did other things too, things we knew we weren’t supposed to do. So when Aideen also showed us, at our hang outs and get togethers, things that were new and unfamiliar, things like Bloody Mary, she had us spellbound. When I told her our youth pastor said “do not turn to the spirits of the dead,” because that’s what it says in the Bible, she laughed, little puffs of cigarette smoke escaping her nose and glossy lips.

“That girl isn’t a Christian,” said my Mom to me once after she found out who all was going to one of our parties.

“She goes to the Catholic Church,” I said, which was true. Aideen said she went with a family in her neighborhood because her mother and father never did and she wanted to go.

“She’s not baptized and confirmed,” said Mama. “That wouldn’t even pass muster for most good protestants.”

This was back when the fashion icon was Madonna, the pop singer, and all of us wore rosaries with our bustiers or tshirts and mini-skirts. Sometimes it didn’t even seem to matter, all the rules of the church. We only relied on each other for the real spiritual information, the real spiritual access and experience.

My mother was forced to give up her principals when she was diagnosed with cancer. Her hold on me loosened, whatever hold she had by the time I was twelve and going into the seventh grade. When I was asked to go to the Campbell’s beach house for the summer, she gave in rather than completely agreed. She knew girls from other good homes were going there too so that gave her some comfort.

When I was packed and ready to go, my mother held my hand and made me promise to be good. “I’ll be praying for you,” she said. “Maybe you can find a church to go to there.” My father hugged me, told me not to worry about Mama, she was sick now from the chemo but she would feel better and starting to heal by the time I was home in the fall. He told me what Mama couldn’t say: Have a good time.

Mr. Tommy the Campbells’ driver picked me up first, then Mandy, Heather, Courtney, Rachel, Shannon, and Julie. I felt closest to Mandy, who went to my youth group at the Presbyterian Church. After picking all of us up in the family van, Aideen told us there was someone new who would be joining us, someone who would begin school with us in the fall.

Her name was Chanlina Chea. Aideen told us that she and her mother fled Cambodia when her father was killed. Chanlina had only been a baby. We didn’t know much about Cambodia, only what our parents happened to mention when they were talking about Vietnam.

Chanlina’s mother was going to drive her to the house and we would meet her there. She and her mother are very close she said so it was a big deal that she would be allowed to come at all. When we started asking questions, Aideen just rolled her eyes and put on her headphones.

When we got to the huge old beach house mostly hidden from the road by trees and dense tall bushes, Esmerelda, Aideen’s childhood cook and nanny, came out to greet us. This, we all knew, would be the extent of our adult supervision. And Mr. Tommy had a gun, we all knew. He was there to protect us, to drive us around and peruse the grounds.

He was a strange man who rarely spoke, but he made us feel safe and we didn’t feel we had to change who we were around Mr. Tommy. Looking back I realize he was a long suffering servant of Aideen’s parents though of course he was not unpaid. His gifts in return, were silence and loyalty.

Esmeralda was her own bird. She was gentle and animated and fawned over us and insisted that we eat what she provided, and always second helpings. She was a kind and sweet woman and I never asked myself at the time whether she had a life of her own outside of our activities.

We brought our things in and Aideen directed us to the basement, a huge lounge space her parents had let her decorate and furnish as she pleased. She had painted the walls purple and on top of that had painted huge magenta flowers with thick twisting vines. There were two long pink velvet sofas with all manner of pillows and our beds were tucked into walls, like little caves, and hidden by sheer curtains tied back with muslin bows. The basement had its own kitchen and bathroom. The only thing Aideen didn’t include that most of us would have was a television set. Instead, she had bookshelves built in.

“I don’t watch television here,” said Aideen and grabbed a book and sat in an egg shaped rattan chair that was suspended from the ceiling. She spun it around with her foot. Chanlina was already in the basement, we had greeted her when we made our descent. She sat in the other egg chair on the opposite side of the shelves. She laughed and spun too, like Aideen.

Someone turned on a jambox, played a cassette – The Cure, Duran Duran, The Motels. Aideen passed out the beers she managed to smuggle away as well as packets of cigarettes. We opened windows high up on the wall facing the ocean and heard the waves crashing against the beach in the black night.

“We’ll go out later,” said Aideen, “when the moon rises.” She liked to turn her head when she smoked and let the smoke out so it rose in slow curls.

We pulled each other up to standing and danced in the candlelight to The Motels’ song about a never-ending summer. None of us said it but we were all watching Chanlina to see how she fit in. Would she dance like we did? Would there be something odd about the way she behaved? Could she laugh and have fun? She seemed to be having a good time and she had a nice way of dancing, like a fluid sea creature. She was more womanly than most of us who sort of bopped around. Aideen picked up a pillow and swatted her. Chanlina laughed and picked up a pillow from the couch and hit her back. Good sign.

We went outside. The moon was a huge yellow disk hanging over the undulating waves. We ran down to the water and splashed each other though no one was swimming. It was hot so we didn’t care we were wet. We walked along the beach, shining our light on sand crabs and the occasional jellyfish. When we got back to the shore in front of the house, there was a fire in the middle of a circle of Adirondack chairs. Mr. Tommy had built it for us and left us a cooler of drinks, along with a table loaded with supplies for s’mores. We loaded up wire coat hangers with marshmallows along with plates of graham crackers and Hershey bars. We grabbed Cokes and took a seat.

“I’ve asked Chanlina to tell us a story,” said Aideen when we settled in and began to toast our marshmallows. “It’s probably the weirdest story I’ve ever heard.”

The fire crackled and the breeze lifted our hair and brushed our cheeks in little puffs. The moon was brighter and higher in the sky and cast an eerie glow on the sand and water.

Chanlina began: “This is a story about a girl who haunts school children in Japan. Have you heard of it?”

We shook our heads no, all except Aideen.

“A boy that works with me and my mother in the restaurant, he told it to me.”

The waves came up gently on the beach, crashing on the shore in tiny claps. Chanlina’s black hair and dark skin set her apart from us. Her accent leant her an air of authority.

“If you think you are ok, you are probably wrong,” she said. I wasn’t really sure what she meant by this. Was this generally the way someone in Cambodia started a ghost story? Or was she just saying something from her own personal experience?

“When I was a baby,” she continued, “my father was killed for wearing glasses,” she said.

We remained silent, and still, not quite knowing what to say.

“The government in charge thought he was an intellectual. They thought he would question them and cause problems. Many people were put to death for wearing glasses.”

Of course, we had never heard of such an absurd, random way to die.

“Now my mother and I live here. We live alone.”

Aideen lit up a cigarette from a pack she kept in pocket, punctuating the silence with the little “clink” of her lighter.

“The spirit ghost of Japan is named Hanako-san. Her story shows anything can happen to anyone.”

An old couple walked up not far from our circle and nodded and waved. They were wearing tennis shoes and knee high athletic socks and floppy hats. They asked us how we were and we told them fine, thank you, like we had been taught.

When they passed, Chanlina continued. “Hanako-san died when she was hiding in a toilet stall at her school. She was playing hide and seek with her friends. Americans dropped bombs on her city. It was World War II. Everyone in her city was killed.”

For some reason, I thought of the hair floating down on my mother’s shoulders after a few weeks of chemotherapy. I always tried not to think about what would happen if my father’s chipper predictions didn’t come true and instead my mother died.

“Remember Ms. Bray showing us a film of the mushroom cloud?” said Aideen. Ms. Bray had been our history teacher. “Remember when she told us that the ones who were vaporized had their organs boiled? Their bones turned to charcoal.”

Mandy and Heather put their marshmallows down on the ground. The rest of us were holding onto our coat hangers awkwardly, the marshmallows forgotten. Only Courtney was loading her graham crackers up with melted marshmallows and chocolate.

“To this day, the spirit of Hanako-san haunts the hallways of schools in Japan,” Chanlina said. “but especially the bathroom where she died.”

“I told Chanlina we’re going to summon her at the Devil’s School,” said Aideen. Aideen was the only one who wasn’t making s’mores. She was always on a diet even though she just turned thirteen and didn’t need to be on a diet. She was smoking again, and smoke trickled through her nose.

“The Devil’s School?” said Mandy. She was often intent on keeping Aideen in check or at least asking the necessary questions. No doubt, she would write about this later tonight in her journal.

“Annie Lytle Elementary,” said Aideen, practically smiling, “Or, as it was known back in the day, school number 4.”

How strange to have schools known simply by numbers, when all of them now are given names. I thought of other times when people were given numbers instead of being spoken to their names, like in the Holocaust when each person in the camps had a number emblazoned on their arms.

“What’s so special about it?” said Heather, trying to sound cool, taking a cigarette from Aideen and pretending she knew what to do with it. Her ratted out short red bob and kohl eyes made her look like a slightly more punk Mollie Ringwald.

“I know this one,” said Courtney, having stuffed a large portion of a s’more sandwhich in her mouth. She was trying to talk but her words were coming out funny and we laughed. When she had swigged down some coke, she said “The principal was a cannibal and ate kids.”

“Well, you would know about eating, now wouldn’t you?” said Julie. We fell out laughing.

“Is this going to be really scary?” said Shannon nervously. She picked up a piece of her hair. She always twirled her hair when she was nervous or thinking about something, like an essay on a test. “Maybe I’ll stay here tomorrow.”

“No way, Shannon.” said Aideen.

“I’ve heard you can hear kids screaming,” said Courtney. “And there’s a tree growing up through the auditorium floor where the roof was burned away by a fire.”

Aideen picked up a coat hanger and slid a couple of marshmallows on the end. She told me once she liked to burn them because that took away some of the calories. I had no idea if it was true, but she was always skinny, so there was the answer I guess. “Tell us how we summon Hanako-san, Chanlina,” she said.

“Well, we have to go to the girl’s bathroom,” said Chanlina, “to the third stall. Then, someone has to knock three times on the door like this,” and Chanlina wrapped on the armrest of her Adirondack chair three times. “Then you sing this tune…” and Chanlina sang a song to the tune of a nursery rhyme: “Hanako-san, Hanako-san, would you like to play today?”

Chanlina was quiet for a bit, letting us think about this.

“What happens next?” said Rachel. She was a little more matter of fact about things, not easily caught up in emotion.

“If you see Hanako-san, who wears a red skirt, white blouse, and her hair tied back, she will grab you with her black fingers and drag you down through the toilet and into hell.”

We were quiet and still for a moment. Even Courtney stopped at this, hesitating mid re-load of a marshmallow onto her coat hanger.

“Oh yeah, right!” Julie said, breaking the silence, laughing. She never believed anything about bloody Mary or anything. In fact, she had said she hoped to see Mary in the mirror one day. She’d like to kiss her shriveled up witch lips.

Shannon was laughing too but quieter, nervously, the clump of hair in her fingers going at a furious pace twirling around and around.

“I don’t believe in hell,” said Rachel. “I think we all just disintegrate into the ground. We don’t go anywhere.”

“But what about heaven?” I said. I couldn’t think like this. What would that mean for Mom?

“Heaven neither,” said Rachel. “Nope.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Aideen. “We’re all going to meet Hanako-san third stall bathroom toilet, tomorrow, Devil’s School.” And she grinned at us, pulling a burned marshmallow from her hanger and putting it in her mouth and licking her fingers.

“Whatever,” said Rachel, pushing herself up from her chair. “I’m going for a walk.”

“Oh me too!” said Julie, always looking for the slightest opportunity for mutiny as long as fun was involved.

Shannon stood as well, probably wanting to get away from the conversation around the fire. And she also probably knew there would be light, simple chatter between Rachel and Julie, nothing too challenging, though Julie could be a bit harsh.

“Enjoy,” said Aideen. “We’ll be praying for your souls,” and she laughed.

The next day, Aideen made good on her promise and had Mr. Tommy drop us at the abandoned school. It was beside a highway overpass so that the passing cars and trucks made loud swooshing noises. It was encompassed by a chain link fence and had the appearance of a sad, old person, dripping with dead vines, the few hollow windows not boarded looking like eyes and the entry a gigantic black maw. The front was graced by huge white columns whose tops were weathered and grey. The old brick of the walls was blackened in places, red still in others, in some places nearer the earth painted with graffiti, some pornographic.

An old man sat on a crumbling step. He was thin and shriveled and wore a baseball cap and long pants and long sleeves though it was ninety degrees. “Death tryna’ come out of this here place,” he said, wagging a finger at Aideen. How would he have known she was the ringleader? “But death, he ain’t never getting’ out. That’s ‘cause death, he locked up in there.”

“We’re going to summon a spirit,” said Aideen.

The old man just looked at us as if we were barely visible to him. “You ladies, I’m Alfred, but I can’t be helpin’ you none.”

“I’m not sure I want to go in,” said Shannon, predictably. I didn’t want to either, truth be told, but I wasn’t going to say anything. I could always count on Shannon to say exactly what she was feeling.

“Here, hold my hand,” said Mandy. And Mandy grabbed her hand but waited for someone else to take the lead.

Aideen and Chanlina went first, walking past the old man on the steps, followed by Julie and Heather and Courtney, Mandy and Shannon, then me and Rachel.

Our feet fell on a disintegrating wood floor once we were past the peeling threshold. It was dark in the entry even though it was bright outside. We turned on the flashlights we brought from the house.

“This way,” said Aideen and we crossed through a hallway where the sun shown in through huge gaping spaces where windows once were. Tendrils of vines pushed in the openings like fingers. Plaster had fallen away from the walls, exposing brick underneath. Trash and debris lay at the bottom of the walls and in the corners. And on all the walls were scribbled layer upon layer of graffiti, up to the ceiling in some spots.

“The whole building feels like it’s crying,” I said.

“It’s practically shouting,” said Julie.

“It looks like homeless people have been here,” Mandy said. There were piles of tins and broken bottles.

At the end of the hallway was a concrete stairwell that looped back on itself. “The bathroom’s up here,” said Aideen and began to climb.

“Wait!” said Courtney. “I think I hear screams! Shh!” and she put a finger to her lips. We stood still. Nothing. Then she began to laugh. “Just kidding!” she said.

But Shannon wasn’t so sure. “Shouldn’t we call Mr. Tommy on the walkie talkie?” she said.

“Shannon!” scolded Aideen.

When we got to the top of the stairs, Aideen disappeared into a pink door frame, though the paint had worn off in places. The girls’ bathroom. Leaves had fallen in through the smashed windows and filled the sinks and floor. The once white walls were gray with mildew and in places the plaster had come off, revealing the brick beneath. The stalls teetered on their hinges and a couple of stalls didn’t have doors. We stood in a little entry area, all eight of us packed in and not wanting to go into the space between the line of sinks facing the toilet stalls.

“I don’t even think a ghost would want to hang out here,” said Courtney.

“Spirits are everywhere,” said Chanlina. “But they won’t speak unless we speak to them.”

“Rachel,” said Aideen, “Since you don’t believe in all of this, why don’t you call on Hanako-san?”

“This is so stupid, but ok,” she said, shuffling through the leaves. Wind blew through the palms outside the window and we could hear the clacking of the long fronds and also the mournful sounds of cars whooshing past on the highway.

“Don’t forget,” said Aideen, “third stall.”

Rachel turned to us and put a flashlight under her face, rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue. We all laughed of course, though a bit quieter than when we laughed at Courtney’s prank on the stairs. Well, everyone laughed except Shannon who was by now frozen. Mandy was quiet too, probably out of respect for Shannon.

“You have to turn out your light,” said Aideen.

She turned her light off and Aideen motioned us to turn our lights off.

Sunlight filtered through the broken panes of the window.

Slowly Rachel knocked on the stall door. Knock, knock, knock. Then she sang: “Hanako-san, Hanako-san, would you like to play today?”

We all stood there for what felt like an hour but it was probably a few seconds. No sound, no slowly creaking stall door, no ghoul in a red skirt. Rachel did not get dragged down into the toilet and to hell. Rachel shrugged her shoulders and shuffled back through the leaves.

Then there was a loud pop. We screamed. The door from the third floor stall opened and smashed into the sink, breaking the porcelain.

Shannon wailed and shook. Mandy put her arms around her. The rest of us silently quaked in fear, huddled together tightly.

“Should we get Mr. Tommy” I said, my teeth chattering with the words.

“No fucking way, Lisa” Aideen lashed out but I felt something desperate in her words.

We waited again.

Nothing.

“This place is falling to pieces,” said Julie, breaking the silence. “What a shithole.”

Heather chuckled.

“Yeah, and not a thing to worry about,” said Rachel even though she didn’t sound as confident as before. She broke away from the huddle to stand closer to the door frame where she placed a foot on the tile wall and stretched her leg, affecting nonchalance.

Our exit from School Number Four was more somber than our entry had been, though we were mostly relieved the ordeal was finished and there was probably nothing to worry about.

Still, something had happened.

“Do you think that door was bound to fall off like that?” said Courtney, “Or do you think….” She didn’t finish her thought.

“I was actually hoping to meet her,” said Heather. “Personally, I think the door crashing scared her.”

No one laughed, not even Rachel and Julie.

“Well, thanks for the memories, Devil School,” said Aideen, spreading her arms out as if she was making a speech. She began to sing: “We love you Hanako-san, oh yes we do. We love you Hanako-san, and we’ll be true. When you’re not with us, we’re blue. Oh Hanako-san, we love you.” And her song reverberated off the disintegrated, graffiti walls, a faint echo returning to us.

At the bright threshold, the old man in the baseball cap sat on the stairs. “I done told you now, chillrun. You done seen death. I can tell. You scairt!”

We let his chiding follow us out past the chain fence where Mr. Tommy waited for us in the van. None of us spoke then or later that night as we quietly put on our pajamas and crawled up into our beds so strangely nestled into the wall.

In the dead of night when the only sound was the surf lapping up on the shore in little claps, there was the loud crash of the bathroom door against the wall. A dark figure, Chanlina, stumbled out and stood in the middle of the room weeping.

“Chanlina, what is it?” said Mandy, emerging from her bed, trying to put her arms around her to comfort her. But she jerked away.

“I want to go home!” Chanlina screamed. “Take me home! Mr. Tommy take me home!”

No one could figure out what had happened, only that something had happened in the bathroom. We all asked her questions and tried to get her to calm down but she kept getting more frantic.

Aideen went upstairs to wake Esmerelda and Mr. Tommy. We fetched Chanlina and stood in the kitchen and told our caretakers what had happened that day, about the story Chanlina had told us and what we had done at the Devil’s School.

Chanlina sat at the table, inconsolable. Esmerelda brought her milk and buttered bread, but she would have none of it.

Chanlina went home to her mother.

As the days and weeks past, the beauty of the beach and monotony of the waves took away the strangeness of our summer’s beginning, like a water’s current softening a sharp rock. Although I felt guilty for putting Chanlina out of my mind, it wasn’t long before the eight of us were back to the way we used to be before a stranger was in our midst. And since we left off pursuing ghosts, the last time we would ever do this, I thought more about my mom and actually felt compelled to read from the little Bible she gave me and say a prayer for her. According to Dad, she was doing better.

When we got home in the fall, we received word: Chanlina was dead. She had fallen into a coma and doctors could not find the reason.

One night, she just slipped away.

First published in Demonic Household. Under the title: Hanako san of the Toilet.

Eastertide on Old Cheney

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Raped house by Florian L., flickr

At Eastertide when the moon sets over the lake of Old Cheney Highway the Easter bunnies walk out of the bougainvillea on their hind legs to join the risen ones, ancient and young, to dance noiselessly, to gape in windows, to eat candies, and murder the complacent. The undead hoard: former humans and creatures, witches, natives who were infected by white men, criminals, slaves, children who worked the celery fields, babies murdered by their mothers, drug addicts, the mentally ill, the homeless, death row inmates electrified at the Florida State Prison. Many had grown up with songs of Easter, the trappings of wealth and elaborate parties and champagne. Some had not been as privileged and had grown up in meaner states. None had been missed or glorified or given their due. No, quite the opposite. They pop open plastic eggs with gummy fingers and drop chocolate candies into their maws and tear the heads off of candy bunnies and chickens. Nom nom nom they say, chewing. Nom nom nom……If a concerned homeowner comes out to protect his property, they make short work of him too. Nom nom nom…..blood mingling with chocolate dripping down chins. Most people know on Eastertide to stay indoors at night on Old Cheney Highway. And the alligators are there to help if a project seems too big, storing flesh under the banks of the lake until it rots. Nom nom nom…Don’t be a hero on Old Cheney the evenings at Eastertide. Nom nom nom……nom nom nom…..Stay inside and eat your candy Easter morning.