Posted on by Lydia Ink

Normal

The word normal is overused.  And, by the way, ‘normal,’ should in no way cause anyone a sense of well-being or security.  In today’s world, normal means, ‘I have you in my clutches.’ 

Laugh, I don’t care.   I just want a cup of coffee and I’m on my way.  Yeah, look there, a young mom gathering up her kiddos because I’m talking too loud.  That’s okay too.  Keep them safe, mom.   

No, I have money.  Here it is.  I work for a living.  I’m not a vagrant.  Look, my clothes are clean, outside of walking through this city, and I managed to bathe this morning.  Okay, I’m going.  I’m going but remember–normal is deceit.   

You following me?  Well, don’t I’m not crazy.  I will not do something awful.  You cops are the ones that give me the most trouble.  I’m not in a crowd of thugs, so I’m easy to subdue.  If there were five of me, you’d just let me rant on and on, maybe even burn down a building.   That’s normal.   

Listen, I don’t care, seriously.  It’s that mom who just left with her kids–and it’s too bad it looks like she could use a cup of coffee-that I feel bad for.  But listen, I gotta go. My lunch hour is almost up.  I know I talk too loud.  But I’m not a bum on the street.  Besides, too many bums are on the street.  Seriously, where does all the shit go?   

Who am I?  Just a person, just a weirdo person, but a viable human being.  My parents?  Do I look too young to be on my own?  My parents are dead.  They were pretty sharp, my parents, and they got along.  I was a shock to them.  Seriously, I think they could read each other’s minds, so when they gotta around to making love, I just don’t think they thought of the consequences.  I’m surprised really, I survived the womb portion of my life. They grew things, you see, so they probably thought the entire process worthy of exploration.  If I had conversed–not talk mind you–conversed with them at three months, I might have held their attention but that didn’t happen.   

How did they die?  I didn’t kill them, not sure who did.  I was away at school, so they couldn’t blame me.   Later, I read the police reports. I’m sorry I did because there were photographs.  It wasn’t quick.  I mean, there was no love lost between my parents and me, but I was sorry they suffered like that. 

What did they do?  They grew things; I told you.  Grew lots of things.  I had a close call with one.  True, I shouldn’t have been in their laboratory put for Pete’s sake, I was their son and… curious.  Normal?  Hell, no, it wasn’t normal.  The plant was like their damn guard dog. I’d have been strangled where I stood if I didn’t have sense enough to have a pocket knife.   The thing was around my neck before I knew what was happening.  And do you know what they said?  They said that if the thing had bound my hands first, it would have succeeded.  They seemed disappointed, not that I had survived, mind you, but their growth hadn’t the sense to bind, then kill.   

Oh well.   

The plants?  No idea I was at school.   I got their money and their house up on Long Island.  I had that place demolished and go up there every once in a while, just to have a look around, make sure all the vegetation is burned to the ground. 

Don’t look normal at all, thank God.   

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Dead Today but not Tomorrow

So, I read today you are dead.

Are dead, and were dead, and was dead. Ah, the beauties of the English language. Each statement reflects for the audience who I am… well, to hell with them.

How long are we dead, Missy? A moment, a flash of time that encompasses exquisite pain and then–what? Do we remain in a paroxysm of memory or do we go blank after a sudden release?  And really, dear friend, what is worse?

Your obituary was brief; no viewing, no opportunity to submit to your favorite charity–the abortion clinic, the woman’s homeless shelter, or possibly the city’s club for user men. They put you in your grave and since weather permits a “brief” family ceremony at graveside, where the dirt hides their mess now. At last, my friend, your very own address.

And what is the funeral ceremony about? The children who don’t know you because you were unfit or broke or worse, deceived into believing you were too much of all the above?  What of your son, reared by your parents, the same parents who smiled at our girl scout uniforms and told us both we were communists? What would, will, shall, it be about?

And your “companions,” will they be there? Yeah, I know dear and so do you. If they slept with you, then they loved you, right? Tell me, did you ever get over that notion? You know, being able to brush your teeth, look in the mirror and say, ‘I am more than an easy lay’? Or did it ever occur to you sex, no matter how intense, is not love? Did they ever give you the time to figure out the mystery which was you?

Maybe. I don’t know.

Missy, I always thought you pretty; your smoke-blue eyes and blemish less ivory skin, even young as we were, I thought you pretty. It was always you who ran from the boys on the playground — they show you their crotch yelling, “sharpen my pencil, Missy, sharpen it for me.” On the playground, God help the early developed girl.

Later we watched the boys, who stood up straight for the blond prom queen’s father. While they fawned over future wives, they made sure you knew their intent; making you blush and me shudder. They snickered in their Christian youth groups and pondered about time with you. We fooled ourselves into thinking their gold crosses meant something to them. Raised right by proud fathers who knew best, the young beautiful sons made sure condoms were always ready in their pockets and roomy back seats. For justice’s sake, I wish them daughters with large breasts and low self-esteems.

Missy, I wait for the dead to tap on my windowpane, and for someone else to tell me their name. Today it was yours and in a swirl of a green girl scout uniform, hobo Halloween costumes and trampled prom dresses your blank, smoke-blue eyes, look back at me, no more questions, just perhaps surprise.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Into the Asylum

There are days I wish it were over.  I don’t want to know who I am and I don’t want to face another night.  It’s different when the sun goes down.  I know and they know and the world just goes on, ignorant.

When I was a kid, I would read every fantasy novel I could get my hands on.  I was the skinny kid saving his pennies for the dictionaries on Middle Earth and I was the kid alone on the playground acting out the last epic battle of good versus evil.

Teachers would pull my mother aside and tell her I made other children uncomfortable.  They told her the reason other kids picked on me and ridiculed me was because she allowed me to stay in my fantasy world.  I’ll give my mother this; as overworked as she was, she stood up for me.

Occasionally she would pick me up early from school, sign me out, and we would have ice cream in the full light of day.  I know that she felt it was us against them, but I didn’t know how many battles fronts she was fighting.

She didn’t come home one night.  They found her remains three months later, down by Navy Pier.  She didn’t die there.  The police still call it an open case.  The cops that investigated her murder even came around to check on me in foster care. I know she didn’t die easy; it wasn’t quick.

I was thirteen when she died, and foster care was one of the worst things that could have happened.  When they tapped on my window and I cried for help, my foster parents didn’t believe me.  At one point they institutionalized me for schizophrenic behavior.   That was worse because then the bastards could walk right in–the loons invited them in all the time.  Nobody questions why a homeless schizoid dies alone–they pack them off to cold storage with a shrug and a “too bad.”

Strange, though, the loons never turned.  Never.

I would have won if a weary old priest hadn’t heard my screams one night.  He didn’t believe they could crawl along the ceiling and hide in shadows, but he gave me a golden crucifix that has never left me. That stops them, scoffers be damned.

You don’t know how desperate and crazy you can sound when a white clad orderly is standing in the doorway with a straight jacket for you and one of the cursed ones is smiling at you from the ceiling; they would crawl around like flies.   I think many of the inmates went crazy after they arrived.

I sleep in the church’s basement now.  I do odd jobs, so they let me.  I sleep well there, despite the unbelief of the old priest who saved me.

I miss my mother.

I work hard to avenge her.  That’s what she did, worked hard.  Maybe it will all end with me.  Or end me.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

To Dread the Dark

We try not to think of it too often. It.
The situation was this… we pushed our limit, we overreached, we took out the part of us that God put in, labeled free will and we shook it liberally all over our skin, hair, hands and feet.
Don’t get me wrong, don’t think I’m one of those people who blame God for everything. We knew what we were doing, and we knew we really should stop.
But we didn’t.
I’m not sure how old he was or where exactly he came from. I know he was very old, but he was prodigiously strong. I understood his strength when I saw him, when my mind connected with my vision and nudged my soul (something I most assuredly believe in now, my soul) and said “the legends are true, the stories are at least based on fact and man are you in a world of hurt.”
Alex, poor guy, his mind didn’t nudge his soul and the legend, now a reality, which we went out to meet, snapped him like a toothpick. Sometimes on my better days, when I don’t see Alex gasping like a fish out of the water, I believe he had enough time to think, “I have a soul and I’m going to God and I’ll be okay.”
I really don’t know. On my bad days, I cry like a baby and go visit Alex’s Mom. She hates me but I mow her lawn and fix stuff around the old shack she lives in.
Please don’t think Dana and I ran, we didn’t. Dana lifted her cross and peed. I lifted my cross and felt something like an electric shock thunder down my arm and blow out my fingertips. For a minute I was ashamed because I had just finished a joint. How could this work, how could I keep this horrible monster at bay after finishing a joint?
He was tall; you know. Very tall and he had this ironish white hair that sort of matched the paleness of his skin. When Dana and I lifted our crosses (we pinched them from the old, tumble-down, Catholic Church that is there on Moore House Street), he snarled at us and for a minute, despite Alex all in a heap, I felt sorry for him.
How did he get that way? The same way we did; arrogant, stoned and seeking a thrill?  Maybe because he wanted to or maybe because he was ambushed. He circled around us but my days in the army settled that maneuver; I told Dana we needed to go back to back and keep him at bay.
Three hours until sunrise. Three hours with Dana’s wet pants dripping on dry leaves. It exhausted us; always looking down, looking up, Alex in a heap. Every noise we figured he was coming up from the ground or coming down from the trees.
You do not understand what it’s like, you never will, to dread the dark.
 

Posted on by Lydia Ink

A Tiresome Little Man

 “You are a tiresome little man,” I said.

He looked at me with hate and disdain but with the sure notion that he was on top, untouchable.  I felt for him; I did because even as I sat there I pictured him being hit by a bus or a meteorite.  Small in stature with a paltry excuse for a beard, the man’s watery, red eyes strained not to blink at me.   Here, at the bureau of motor vehicles, he was boss.  Any giant of a man or weary citizen who needed assistance would have to go through him and his rules first.

When I was sixteen, I was beautiful.  I went to a small high school in Washington state.  I was on the cheer-leading squad and had not failed in being elected to the homecoming pageantry.  Different guys on the football team, the basketball team and the baseball team asked me out and were perfect gentlemen.   I wasn’t flush with money, but I had a summer job at my uncle’s ice cream parlor and I raked in the tips during the summer months, cleaning tables and talking to the tourists. My parents were indulgent, so I spent money on what pleased or looked pleasing on me.

While being raped one summer evening at 16, the idea went through my head that I had been nice to all who knew me condescendingly.  As the air left my lungs while he flung me around like a rag doll, I had small visions of myself.  Minor flashes of memories being predictable, unimaginative, safe for people who wanted no personal challenges.

I felt the pain of being hit, slapped, choked and eventually violated in a way that made me wonder at the man’s rage, over someone like me.  His anger toward me was a pathetic, despicable, criminal act.  Terrified, cold, in enormous pain and for the first time inarticulate outside the sobs and cries I uttered, I connected with something inside of myself which now to me seems somehow wholly separate.

I saw in my attacker’s face the power he felt in his strength, in his ability to cause me pain.  I saw too that he felt himself untouchable.  When the switch blade bloomed out of his throat in a clean and gleaming silver slice, I could only look at it in a senseless stupor. The separated part of me acknowledged that a switch blade should stick out of his throat.   The man who had caused me such pain and humiliation had a look of dumb blankness on his face, then terror. When his blood pulsed out of his mouth to the beat of his heart. I had sense enough to squirm out beneath him, scraped, beaten and sickened.

To this day, I do not know who killed him.  The police asked if I had done it not blaming me if I had, but I did not kill the man.

My recovery was long because no one believed me when I said I wasn’t afraid to be alone or in gloomy places.  Everyone thought I was hiding, that eventually I would turn into a melting sobbing victim. the dark didn’t disturb me nor did strange men.  I went back to working at my uncle’s ice cream parlor the next year, but I stopped cheerleading and did not accept the homecoming honors; the idea seemed somehow too small, too narrow in scope.

“You are tiresome,” I said again to the watery-eyed man before me.

“You need three forms of identity and three letters that addressed to your house, they cannot be personal letters.”

“I lost my driver’s license, I didn’t commit a crime.”

“Those are the rules, and I’ll thank you for not insulting me.”

“Are these rules implemented to protect me or to protect little Nazis like you?”

“Next!  Number 312, please.”

His voice was high and strident, and I knew that he had dismissed me.  A shadow, a low thundering movement that chilled my back seemed to brighten the air similar to lightening in the stagnate room; this stagnant room housed the bureau of motor vehicles.

“Don’t kill him,” I whispered under my breath, just in case I have an avenging angel.
The little man behind the counter refused to look my way but blinked and peered for number 312.