My eyes work perfectly. Big, round, white, wet cow eyes gazing innocently at the whole world around me out the round of my skull. So even though I see things in the same way that normal people do, my mind operates completely different from the rest of society.
They call it: Assula Morbus. The ‘Splinter Syndrome.’ The problem is mental and has nothing to do with vision impairment. When I am under pressure…and my emotions go haywire, then I will begin to see things differently. The portion of the image in front of me that is of the most significance will be amplified and singularly focused in my mind, all other parts of reality seeming to quickly splinter away.
It was as if someone had thrown a framed picture they were infuriated by to the floor, the glass invariably cracking in all directions like a spider web, the picture tainted for all time. And you just can’t take your eyes away from a face staring back at you that once was whole, now only a fragment of its former glory. You wonder if you looked away from the fragment of that former image….would it fade away to nothing? Would you forget the image was there?
And once again it seems like a law that someone always has to be staring at me.
“Hey, son. You okay?”
“Never felt better,” I say, cracking my shoulder, which feels like it’s not even there. Thank god for anesthetics!
Lesson #1: Never give away when you’re in a position of weakness.
I’ve been here so many times I can’t even start to count. With what I do, the last thing I want is a history.
Lesson #2: Never use the same name twice.
“What’s your name, son?” Why don’t you just call me ‘son,’ considering you’ve got such a penchant for it, huh, Dad?
“Zachary Nelson.” Typical Bullshit.
“Well Zack, you’re going to need to tell us exactly what happened and then you’re going to have to fill out some paperwork for us and you might end up staying here for quite a while.”
“Thanks. That sounds great.” Dumbass. I’m outta here tonight.
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The cold night air stung against the fresh bruises on my face as I slowly made my way down the hospital fire escape. If anybody asked where I was yesterday, they could answer to my battle scars.
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The cold morning rain beat in rolling crescendos upon the white metal rafters of the towering Victorian home. I exhaled towards the horizon and the frigid air caught my breath up in a thick swirl of steam. But as I stared at it in awe, all I could think of was how much it made me want to smoke. Yet, feeling through the pockets of the hospital pants I had yanked, I realized how…empty I was. And suddenly I started to laugh; quick panicked chuckles which turned into maniacal giggling until a dead silence was captured in my throat by the sight of two pitch-black, crescent winter moon eyes piercing me with their dark gaze, even from the windows.
“Why weren’t you at school today?”
“I was at home. Sick.”
“What’d you have?”
“Oh, just a 24-hour flu. You know…but I’m feeling better now!”
I’d never be able to survive the eternal school day if I couldn’t phase out the minutes as the hands of the clock crawled by ever so slowly. Concentrating fiercely on the chalkboard, I tune out all the rest with a click of my mind. The letters on the chalkboard seem to fly together and out as if they were attempting to spell some sort of message: GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN! And then my mind hits the blacktop like a motorbike and I burn rubber like there’s no tomorrow ‘til the moment that I flip out of control, spinning, and I awaken staring up at the crimson summer sky, exhausted. The resonating shriek of crows will inevitably bring me to my feet as I begin to see the sun set and make my silent trek home.
“Oh, I didn’t realize a 24-hour flu could give you scars like that,” she said accusingly. Her icy stare chiseled into me.
“Hey, I got myself into this. I know I’ve said I’ll get myself out before, but I still have time!”
“I wonder what makes you so confident.”
Sighing, irritated, into the dancing night sky, I look away from her. Even though I know she is right. She’s always right. But that’s impossible. She can’t always be right. And I can’t always get second chances. I lay back and the cool rain washes over my shoulders.
“Hey, Ethe?” she mutters. “What if one day I come home from school and you’re not up here on my roof? What then?”
“We’ve been over this. If it ever happens, dig under our secret maple tree in the woods. That’s where I’ve left the remedy.”
“Okay, ” she says. Only she sounds as if she only half believes it could actually happen. But maybe she just doesn’t know how to handle it if it did.
She looks sad for a moment and I wonder if before I’ve ever seen her like this. She lies back against me and I hold her there, warm llama fur brushing against my face.
“The sun’ll rise soon,” she says. “You like sunrises, right?”
I smile and we lay there in the light rain and cool mists of summer. I don’t think I actually made it to the sunrise. Because sometime or other, I fall asleep. But when I awakened, Alice was her typical beaming self again.
“Hey, Ethe, you’re like a cat, you know. Always lounging her up on my roof, lazily falling asleep.”
I grin back at her, asking, “But the nine lives have sure come in handy, eh?”
She sticks her tongue out at me. “Meow.”
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I swirl the muddy waters with my feet as I noisily kick my way down the flooded park walkway. The rain is only a slight drizzle now and the sun is just beginning to appear from behind the clouds, giving a luminescent glow to the still waters left by the storm. Crystal twinkles in the water, like the reflection of the stars now absent from the sky. It’s as if something wondrous and magic is hidden beneath these waters and you could reach it if you simply jumped in and dived deep down to the pirate’s treasure at the bottom. I hear the rising sound of a slosh!, slosh!, slosh! following behind me and right as I turn around two wooly arms grasp me over the shoulders.
“Let me guess. Alice in her green llama wool sweater.”
“That’s riiight,” she giggled.
Now we don’t speak. We have a million things to say, but they can’t match up to the still, serene silence of the moment. The chirping of birds is all that can be heard, echoing beyond the trees and over the wet, awakening Earth.
I gazed into the silverdine pools, my stare unfaltering. Could this sickness only be translated through my rage? I wondered. A pulse rang throughout the waters as I commanded them into view, them pouring through my mind like a rushing river. And then the rest of the world crumbled into darkness and the glimmering waters slide like a trickling eternity. And then I…drown. I claw wildly towards the air atop the waters. I’m not Moses; I can’t part this morbid abomination. Because I suffer, is that why I can’t create something beautiful? When those who suffer help those like themselves, can the end result be something beautiful? Can they free themselves as well?
She was beautiful. I felt two warm hands making their way down my chest as she teasingly bit. How does she do that?
When I finally come to, see has stopped and is sitting upright above me, smiling. The sunlight flashing brilliantly behind her and the wind playing games in her hair.
“Welcome back to paradise,” she said. “A place where miracles are born and first sprout their wings.”
“I didn’t realize you were such a romantic.”
She laughs.
“Am I in heaven?” I ask, leaning in towards her.
“Now who’s the one being romantic?” she jokes, pushing me back.
I laugh with her and then realize that my body is wet and cold from head to toe.
“Wha—how did this happen?”
“Hey, I’m not the one who decided to take a dive off the coastline.”
“It must be hard, bringing someone back to life.”
She smiles softly. But then her eyes fall hesitantly. “I don’t like being praised,” she whispers. “Save it for a girl who really needs it.” She throws her hair back. “Not someone like me.”
“Maybe you could use it, but you just don’t know it yet.”
At that time, the image before my gaze dissolved into darkness save that singular girl whose radiant glow filled my mind and brought a warmth I had never felt before to all those dark spaces. Was this love?
The ocean melted before my eyes. Into the colossal blue it encompassed the rest of my surroundings until they swirled with the rest of the land, shrouded in darkness. As I reached for her hand and pulled her inwards, I could feel the warmth of her pulse palpitating up and down her body. She was brilliant, her radiant face eclipsing my mind like one of those rising Kenya sunsets you see on all those nature films. I moved in towards her and kissed her softly as we both reveled in the moment.
So why was this moment so perfect? For the first time in as long as I can recall, I felt peaceful. The tides had come to a still and I floated there, serenely gazing up at the placid sky on my great blue ocean.
It hurts to get a splinter out. So when my mind erupts like Vesuvius onto my susceptible and unsuspecting flesh, it burns like a sulfuric injection, twisting to the core. No one will ever see these wounds my mind carries. They will only see the scars carved across my body when she leans in and sees them like a maze, etched across the nape of my neck and down my chest. They are there to remind me of all those nights where I burned like Venus and didn’t make the time to open the cage and let that bird of rage soar out. I burned. I would never be able to live at ease. I would never achieve serenity.
Lesson #3: Never give her your heart.
“God! You are so damaged! Can’t you just find someone else to be your fantasy!?”
She turned and ran. Women who rage out of my life. The swishing of the ocean, rolling back and forth under the breaking waves. I fell back with a hard thud over the edge of the cliff side which loomed over the dark, wailing cliff face, standing with the most extreme of disciplines against the crashing waves. I laugh hard at the sky and then my throat begins to burn from the inside out my blowhole as I rain down my salty whitewater spray, coughing uncontrollably the whole time through. As I gaze there at the clouds racing by, the sky spins in my brain. My right hand is pinned down. My mind races as I begin to think: Paralysis!, but then I realize that it is only pouring blood. Down from my hand it rolls, coursing my arm in a cool crimson as I begin to uncurl my fingers and see the pearl at the center of my hand, shining there amidst a pool of blood. I smile at it and it shines back at me in reply. Is this what I had dived so deep for? Was this small thing worth such a struggle? I rub the jewel in circles with the top of my index finger and a river of blood courses down, encompassing it. My eyes gape wide as I scrub at the pearl, maniacally, vainly pressing to bleed it dry to its pale, white state of simplicity. I sigh as I stare at its now dulled, red surface that I have tainted with my curse I have once again passed on to another. Beautiful things can’t subside beside me. And those are the rules I’ve learned to live by. I throw my arm back behind me as I lie back on the ground and let the pearl roll lifelessly from my hand behind me. You get what you deserve. And that makes me a giver.
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The frozen night rain beat down upon the city as lightning violently echoed across the sky. The rains had been plaguing us for days now and their deliverance could only make me think they must stand for some omen, both great and terrible, locked away in the Dark Ages only to be released the day they could no longer be held down. We got clobbered. The streets and walkways. The storefronts with the lights inside that flicker but never dim. They now all appeared a faded shade of grey as I was walked down the old theatre district street of some classic black and white movie. The weathermen had said that the occurrence of these relentless torrential downpours would only increase as we delved further and further into the black heart of the monsoon season. The rain stains my dry, granite face in cold streaks as its warm flesh tones struggle to beam through like tiger stripes in the jungle. I am the tiger. The predator. The lone wolf. I roam these streets and back alleyways in the depths of the night, thirstily preying upon the bleeding heart of this city.
As if checking my hand in poker, I quickly riffle through the stack of photographs from my coat pocket. Handsome lookin’ fellas. That’s gotta suck for them. Not like I was worried. Like a snake sniffing out a mouse, I stealthily slip along this desolate maze of alleyways. Today is good. The weather will hide my steps quite perfectly. If you searched after me...if you really tried, typically you might find a trace. Now I was like a ghost on the wind. Unbeknownst to the outside world and utterly unstoppable.
Great things don’t have to happen in high walled palaces, moonlit balconies, or tranquil gardens. They could happen in the hell of night. In the pouring rain. They could happen right here. Right now.
“’Sup, Demon?” he said to me, from the back of the flooded alley, just now walking into view. “We’ve been…expecting you.”
“Have you now?” I inquire, attempting to hide my surprise with a grin. “Well, Sen, I’ve come to pay the pied piper and it looks like this time he went and put you on his list.”
I know them and they me. Words are no longer necessary. The havoc of the storm will decide our fate.
As the rain pummeled us from above, a gigantic bolt of lighting tore the sky in two. This was the signal. Ready, Set ,…
……………………………………………………………DeMoNiX!!!!!!!!!!
For a split second I saw the black, gleaming barrels of two of them raising their semi-automatics towards the sky, saluting their pre-assumed victory. In a torrent of the black waters cascading beneath me, I leapt from the flood and let hell rain voraciously in their faces. Between slashes, their blood oozed in gushes from the torn bone of their skulls, resonating over the waters in crimson swirls. I silently drop from above their corpses like a fallen angel delivered from mercy and into tainted Styx below. They couldn’t believe that I, someone as small as myself could be the demon they had heard about in legends. The someone who could be left utterly bled and wasted into the unmerciful hands of Death, yet would always come back again for encore performances. Well, that was exactly what I needed. The awe of this newfound realization rung about me in their muted horror. I let it sink it. Then rushed. The whites of their gaping eyes spread across my entire vision span as their breaths were quickly put out. I towered over all of them.
But they lie. Falling from grace can be as bad as falling from heaven. I was too surprised to feel the pain until I made collision with the Earth. I could already feel the burning of my racing heart as the bullet seared down the caverns of my body and I hit the cold, wet ground. When I panic, I usually laugh to take the edge away. What I was handed this time, was instead the muffled spatter of blood as it rose from out my mouth. My mind crunched out the nonessential spaces in the dark and I was able to see Sen, alone, looming over me, commanding, as I lay there, the rain pinning me to the ground like an insect struggling to scuttle onto its back again.
“Come, Demon. We both know you’re far too damaged to be even close to immortal. You’re just exasperatingly good at coming back to life.”
“That’s right,” I snarl, “As you say, it is my specialty.”
“You frik’n psycho. Well…MAYBE IT’S TIME SOMEONE TAUGHT YOU HOW TO DIE!!!!!”
He screamed at me, the words almost detonating up and out his throat. I had to slam my hands against the sides of his head just to suppress the pulse that was beginning to pound from within my skull. I squeezed my eyes to try to escape this scene. This horrible reality. Everyone screaming at me! Bellowing my name with serpent’s tongues!
BAM! KRAK! WHIIIRRRRRRRR
My eyes force themselves open like the doors to an air-tight cabin where the pressure rises too high. The darkness flees like a storm just passing over. The same sight as before. But just as suddenly, the image dissolves before my gaze, splintering to the floor in a hail of shattered glass. And silence was born. All to be seen was the oversized image of his shouting mouth, the teeth gnashing together against each other in a spray of saliva from the back of his throat. I steal the goal at the major league game and slam my fist right up that mouth, right through those teeth, them spinning off like naturals on a piano. My hand claws down into the throat and the tongue wriggles against my seizing grasp like an earthworm being pulled from the mud following a rain. SNAP! And the tongue goes flying out onto the floor. I can see its wet flapping up and down in those moments. Like a fish out of water, gasping for breath, it finally begins to still and curls up in its final resting place. And then….silence again.
And once again, silence gets snapped in half. The feel of cold steel singes its trail down the left side of my face and the warm blood gushes forth like a geyser in some old samurai flick. I laugh maniacally as I watch my twisting hand shrieking through the air and diving through his throat, both sides of the snapping vocal cords coming loose into the air and splashing blood like two eels trying to fly out of water.
Crashing to his knees in front of me, his body sways as he heaves to keep it upright. Even in death he won’t shut up. His trembling lips ring out his final curse upon me, even as the blood oozes from between his teeth and down his throat into the waters. His head spins lifelessly to one side and drops with a loud splash out of sight.
My hand is twitching now, yet its prominence is undeniable. As it begins to go numb, I can feel the warm blood coursing down in web like rivulets. Now who would ever say there was no solace in that? Like a rainbow rising from the ocean, bursting before the sun at the descent of the storm, I can feel a smile beginning to edge its way up my cheekbones. And as the soft fading rain trickles lightly against my forehead, I collapse into Mars’s dusty oceans and it all gets blown away.
