annihilator (Chapter 3)

Sorry it's been a month.

here is chapter 2

I did not fall asleep again that night. Instead, I waited, staring at the ceiling above my head thinking how maybe this was a good thing. Maybe when the neighbors came to chop me up into little pieces in the middle of the night I would stand a fighting chance. Of course, no such thing happened. What did happen is that at around 6am, the police showed up at the door.

I listened through the door as Dawson and Raena answered.

They were wondering if the Twin Horse family had any information on my whereabouts.

“Of course,” Dawson said. “She’s here taking a little respite.”

“Alright,” one of the officers. “Do you mind if we speak to her to give her parents a little peace of mind?”

They certainly were not going to lie to the police. But I secretly wish they had. I had no desire to speak to anyone, much less the cops.

I slithered out of my room before Raena could pry my door open. I pushed past her and met the two young-looking police officers at the front door. One was a tall Mexican woman and the other was kind of a squat looking white guy with huge biceps inked down to the wrists. They both peered at me disapprovingly, though I could barely see their faces from the rope that blocked my view.

“I’m alive,” I groaned and considered using last nights am-I-being-detained joke again, but decided that cops rarely have the capacity for humor.

“You know your parents are worried sick about you,” the Mexican woman said.

I nodded with a sigh.

“You weren’t responding to their calls. Do you have a phone?”

I reached into my pocket and produced my cell phone, holding it up for all to see its black, blank screen.

“It’s dead,” I said.

The two cops exchanged glances and I wondered if they were gonna draw their weapons and cuff me. They didn’t though. With a kind of pathetic groan, the short muscular cop bobbed his head towards me with a fatherly frown.

“You’re an adult, you can do what you’d like, but for our sake, why don’t you charge your phone and let your parents know where you are,” he said.

“Aren’t you gonna do that?”

“I’m sure they’d rather hear it from you.”

They left, exchanging pleasantries with Dawson and Raena, and at last I was left unperturbed. For a long time I stared at the door, where they had been standing in the doorway. Raena and Dawson’s lives seemed to go on without me entirely. But I was staring at that little rope stretching out of my head. I was certainly tired of it, but it was also becoming a point of irritation. It always guided me back to that horrible house full of horrible people dead or alive. Without thinking, I turned to their kitchen, once the two of them had meandered off to their desks or wherever, and found myself rifling through their kitchen utensils and such before happening on a pair of meat shears.

I pried them open and held them up at my scalp. Just against it.

The blades propped the rope between them perfectly. If I couldn’t grab it, I would at least be able to cut it. Of this, I was certain, but for no particular reason.

The blades were cold against my skin.

I cursed my brother’s name and squeezed the handles together slowly.

“Hey!” Dawson cried suddenly.

He appeared at the kitchen’s opening. Eyes wide with fear, he lunged forward and seized my hands. My heart stopped, my body went rigid. I had felt this before. The hot breath in my eyes, the strong hands immobilizing me. And the desperate fear icing over my skin and nerves.

My brother was leaning over me, his body jerking into mine like death rattles, puking reams of white hot fire from my perineum up into my guts.

His breath reeked of vodka and acid reflux.

His eyes looked through me the way Raena’s did. Like he was seeing the world behind the world.

Like I wasn’t even there.

“It’s okay,” he gasped between huffs of trembling breath. “Don’t be afraid.” He winced with pleasure and I felt my stomach bubble and churn. I burst into tears beneath him and I watched tears water in his own eyes as he salivated. “Don’t be afraid. The pain is more meaningful than you think.”

And when I blinked he was gone. But I was sobbing. Collapsed onto my knees on the kitchen tile. The scissors were out of my shaking hands and back on the countertop. Dawson was stroking my hair and Raena had a hand on my back and on my face. They were telling me to take slow, deep breaths, but my lungs shrank in my chest. I cried harder still.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Dawson said.

I felt them exchange a glance, one asking whether or not they should take me to a hospital. I felt that exchange and impulsively tore myself away from them and dropped into a heap. I couldn’t move. Just like with my brother. Just like always.

A pair of big arms lifted me up and carried me, finally letting me down gently on the leather couch and finally my eyes cleared from the tears, leaving me a trembling, sniffling wreck. Raena brought me a glass of water again and Dawson handed me a small bag of spicy chips. I wasn’t hungry, but it wouldn’t hurt to eat something if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I could eat.

I peered past that cursed rope to where Dawson and Raena sat.

I hadn’t even put a knick in the rope.

I hadn’t even put a knick in myself.

“Would you like to go for a walk?” Dawson asked, suddenly. “We can all go for a walk if that would help.”

I opened my mouth to ask him how he was planning on getting out of work, but could only muster a pathetic squeak. Why not? It was a better idea than wasting away on that couch. I nodded.

“Wanna go now?”

I nodded again.

Raena helped me up this time. I expressed simply that I didn’t want to be touched by Dawson at that moment and he, for whatever reason, understood.

There I was with my water and my bag of Takis, hobbling over to the front door with a person on either side guiding me. My chest fluttered and my spine still felt like a lightning rod after being struck.

Dawson pried the door open and morning light flooded my eyes, blinding me temporarily as I found my footing out into their yard. I prayed my parents were away at work, not waiting at the windows for me to emerge like hunters stalking prey. The world slowly took shape as it became our little suburban hideaway in my eyes.

“What about your work?” I was finally able to ask.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dawson said. “I can be a little late.”

Raena said nothing. They guided me outside and my shaky legs began to stiffen. Breath now came easy. I felt real again as the sun in the cloudless sky began cooking my forehead. The rope leading me to my old home flickered with pulsing refractions of colors I had never seen before.

We made it down the street, away from my house so the rope was behind me. That was a nice feeling for a moment. The redundancy of homes, the endless printed copies, the reification ad infinitum. It was the same thing over and over, all basking in the same orange glow of morning sunlight, all families with the same goals and aims. Endless replication, infinite perpetuation. And it did seem to go on forever. Like the cul de sac might never end, like there might be nothing at the end of it, not for me anyway. A thing with no bottom, a true infinite regress. What did that mean? That nothing was really there at all? That all that matter was stacked up as a facade? Well, what hid behind it? Sure, there were the weird neighbors, the ones who spied on you, and the neighbors who had a boat and took ski vacations. But it was really all the same wasn’t it? The adventures they went on, the spying they did, that was all they could do to escape from the inevitability of their street being the end of all things real. And it looked so pretty at that moment. What a beautiful mythology to be living. Like the Hindu gods, like Christ.

In that silence, catching my breath and grounding myself back in the present reality, Raena spoke.

“What were you trying to do?” she asked.

“Raena,” Dawson said, his tone intended to shush her.

I chuckled accidentally. The question was almost more ridiculous than the answer. Besides, what would I say? What could I say? Would they believe me or would they 5150 me right on the spot?

“I don’t know,” I said finally. But when I looked up at her I jolted. She was staring right at me. Looking straight, dead into my eyes, unblinking. I gulped nervously and looked away. “Yeah, I don’t know.” I repeated for no reason.

“It looked like you were trying to . . .”

“Raena,” Dawson interrupted. “Give the poor girl a minute.”

Raena sighed.

“I just wanted her to know that I’ve felt a similar sensation before, that’s all,” she was still staring at me. I could feel it like summer beating down on my flesh. I decided to ignore it for the time being. But I wondered what the hell she could have meant. A similar sensation? She didn’t even know what was happening to me? After all, she couldn’t know about the rope. There was no conceivable way unless she too, was mad.

Then again, what the hell was I trying to do?

I couldn’t isolate the urge that had come over me. Like the compulsion to vomit, it was utterly uncontrollable. Like a second nature that had kicked in. The way a dead body makes a human naturally repulse. The way snakes make us freeze in our tracks. The drive to slice that string from my head was an uncontrolled act more than a choice.

I rubbed a hand across my forehead to feel for a knick, but there was nothing.

Imagine if I had followed through. I’m sure those scissors were close enough to have lopped off a layer of skin leaving a hole to drool blood down my face like some Carrie White impersonator.

“You felt a similar sensation?” I asked.

Raena looked at Dawson, who sighed. Then me.

“Maybe,” she said. Then bluntly: “What were you trying to accomplish?”

What was I trying to accomplish? I remembered the cartoon Anastasia from my childhood, when the sinewy Rasputin placed a spell on the movie’s namesake causing her to sleepwalk through pleasant hallucinations, which ultimately only brought her nearer to death. It would be nice to have someone putting a curse on me. I’d never been that important.

“I was trying to cut a rope,” I said before I could even register that I was speaking at all. I turned away, flushed.

The cat was out of the bag. I was certain I’d get 5150’d at that point.

“What do you mean?” Dawson asked, gently.

I decided I didn’t want to say anymore. I softly pried myself out of their grips and slowly began distancing myself.

“Can I walk alone from here?” I asked.

Dawson and Raena glanced at each other but said nothing. I watched them tussle with just body language. Dawson’s face started to form a definitive ‘no’ and Raena placed a hand on his chest, stopping him.

“Of course,” she said, then, turning to her husband. “We understand.” as if to say ‘Don’t we?’ and then she turned back to me with a grin and those empty peering eyes, seeing stars in other galaxies. “Come back whenever you want, sweetheart.”

As they turned away I heard harsh, snake hisses of whispers. I could barely make out anything they said, but I did here Dawson.

“She’s a danger to herself, we should inform the police,” but somehow Raena soothed his mind, and they walked away.

It seemed unnatural to leave a crazy person who just attempted scalping herself alone. I was crazy, without a doubt. But not crazy enough to think this fever dream of reality was anything other than that. As I watched them head back, something began crawling like ants under my skin. Something about Raena was making me queasy, but I could not quite put a finger on it.

So, I chose to ignore it, flipping around to return to my, now solitary walk.

I followed the same path I followed the last three days only this time with leisure.

Passed the Cul de Sac, passed the lonely park, made my way back onto Crenshaw, where I spotted a tiny old lady huddled up against a bus stop, clinging to three reusable grocery bags stuffed to the brim. I stared at her for a while. Something about the back of her gray little head, hovering over that hunched back was beautiful to me. I made up stories about her life. That she had a good one.

I don’t know what compelled me. I didn’t understand what compelled any of my actions until recently. But for whatever reason, I wanted to see her face. I wanted to talk to her and ask her about her world. What was it like to be so old and so used to this wretched planet with all of her horrible people. And how could all that weathering make a person look so sweet?

I crept up beside her, knowing I was being icky, but not caring. Her profile was just as kindly as the back of her head. Deep brow, with gray sprigs of eyebrows like whiskers. Smile creases like deep fissures in her face. And glowing turquoise eyes, mere slivers in her eyesockets.

I gasped audibly, choking my breath with my hands clasped over my mouth.

The lady turned to me.

I had seen her before.

She had spoken to me just last night, echoing my brother’s threats. A smile tore across her face like a slit throat, revealing uncanny white veneers bolted into her jaws. I pulled away, but was not able to look aside. Her slit gaze captured me.

Falsely hoping that my madness just twisted her face in my eyes to look familiar when it really was not, I forced myself to step into her bubble.

“Are you alright, sweetheart?” she asked me. That soft, familiar croak.

I forced myself to nod, repeating affirmations in my head as if I could cast a spell over this whole interaction.

You’re mad, this is a mistake. You’re mad, this is a mistake. You’re mad, this is a mistake.

And I began to believe it.

Soon, I was not covering my mouth in terror, my fingers were no longer inching up my cheek bones to shield my eyes. I was laughing. Just a gentle little chuckle. But the woman began laughing too, like a mirror flung forward in time to me as an ancient old madwoman, cackling at herself.

Cars whizzed past us, flinging hair in front of my face and obscuring her own. Our clothes rippled like sails in irons. And I simply couldn’t stop laughing. The madness overcame me like a blessing. Blessed insanity. But as soon as it arrived it was stripped from me.

“It’s not so bad,” she started through her continuing laughter. “Is it? Once you see one, you start to see the rest and you realize there’s no way around any of it.”

One what?

Her smile dropped and her head leaned forward as if to fall off of her shoulders. She peered up through her graying brow at me so that I could see little more than the whites of her eyes, with an expression that said: “You know what I mean.” Reading my mind. Prying into the private places that were supposed to be out of reach to all but me. And I realized she wasn’t looking at me.

She was looking at a rope, the one that connected her and I.

“When you can see the ones connecting you to dishware and photographs and bus stops you will understand,” she said, her voice low now as she stared up. “Until then just know, the pain is more meaningful than you think,” her smile returned, tears welling in her eyes. Her little old chin trembled as I gaped at her in petrified terror. I could see that history in the glistening whites of her eyes. Husbands, children, friends, memories good, bad or hideous all flashed in an instant on her face. “But if that doesn’t help, then understand, the depths of its meaninglessness are unfathomable.”

It was then that another shape made its debut in the theater of my madness.

A second string stretched out of my head, and planted itself directly into the center of hers.