Abyss part 2

“You get very affectionate on these existential trips of yours.”

“Why did you do that?” I can’t stop shaking; my stomach still burns with cramps of long-since gone agony.

“I did nothing Calvin,” he whispers, the skin sagging around his red eye. “I’ve already told you I’m no more than a visual representation of an abstract-“

“You fucking killed her!” I reach out and grab his dismembered neck wringing it viciously as he ejaculates spurt after spurt of blood. Hot and sticky it runs down my naked legs, dripping from my toes. It flecks onto my cheeks as I strangle myself, not caring how much it hurts, not caring that I can’t breathe, that my cheeks are burning, that I’m losing consciousness within a word of lost consciousness. Blacking out within blackness. Dying within death. 

“Calvin…stop…” he begs between gasps, struggling for breath. The air rushes around us, tears streaming down our faces, falling, falling, falling

Somehow he twists underneath me and I twist with him until his stump is facing me dead on and with a clench and a squeal it’s a torrent, a typhoon, a hurricane of blood so intense that it knocks me backward several feet, my hands gripping nothing.

My throat opens inviting the thick, slimy substance. I gag once, twice, finally retching all over myself. It drips down my face as I gasp for air, my breast heaving for oxygen, burning for a gulp of sweet relief. I put my head in my hands and wish for death. For the pounding to stop. For the pain to cease.

I fall in the fetal position for a few minutes. The blood and sick drips away and is instantly swallowed. This must be what it’s like to be born. Falling away into a world that makes no sense, dripping fluids and naked. Struggling for the smallest amount of air. Struggling for some semblance of comfort and reliability. Dragged into a world without the reassuring walls of your previous existence. Except this is different. Backwards. Somehow I’ve been wrenched back into the uterus.

His voice drags me out of my stupor. It grates like hot coals on the end of a burning, serrated dildo being forced inch by agonizing inch into my skull. A flash of a daydream or maybe a memory (who the fuck knows anymore?): an extremely satisfying pop as I stab the syringe into his eye. James screams and screams, begging for mercy as I find another syringe and even the other eye out.

“Time’s running out Calvin.”

“I don’t want to talk anymore. Leave me be.”

“I wish I could but unfortunately we seem to be somewhat chromatically challenged at this moment. You need to sort this out and soon.”

Maybe if I ignore him he’ll just fade away. It’s all in my head after all. I control what is here and what is not. Focus on emptiness, focus on solitude, focus on nothing.

When I open my eyes his eye blinds me once again, his face inches from mine. “We need to talk this through Calvin. Before it’s too late.”

“That’s all you ever want to do and none of it ever fucking helps! You just confuse me more and more. Why can’t I just float away my days in this hole? What’s so dire we need to fast track our way through all this bullshit I call a life?”

He slowly flips until I can only see the back of his head. “Someone’s trying to kill you Calvin.”

It’s hard to conceptualize the idea of your stomach falling as you’re falling, the idea that, although externally you’re plummeting, emotions still have a way of manipulating your insides. Somehow my guts transcend the usual 9.8 meters per second squared the rest of my body has become accustomed to.

“You can’t know that,” I finally manage to choke out, “You only know what I know and I know there’s no one trying to kill me.”

An audible sigh so intense the falling head visibly shakes. He slowly flips back, facing me. He seems older, the skin sagging around both eyes, wrinkling, practically oozing off his forehead and cheeks. His hair seems thinner and no longer hints of age but screams it in bright waves of deep white.

“You’ve known all this for awhile now Calvin. You know the truth. You know about the drug you’re addicted to. About the memories implanted by people with selfish agendas, people who don’t care about you yet say the right things to keep up appearances. But you gave up. You can’t know the truth because the truth has been stolen from you, altered, transformed and left to breed with other memories leaving you with half truths and whole lies, unable to differentiate what’s real from what’s invented. You can’t trust yourself. Confusion led to…there’s parts of your life created so well you actually believed you were that person. That hideous murderer. You became what they said you were.”

I’m tearing my hair out, scratching at my cheeks, confused more than ever. Nothing makes sense. “What are you talking about? Who did I murder?”

“Anger led to depression, depression led to apathy; apathy led to a complete shut down of all your faculties. A self-inflicted coma. You did this to yourself Calvin. You shut yourself away from the world that hurt you so much. You simply…gave up.”

And for the first time in my life I allow my mind to open. I allow myself to remember, to recognize that I did have a life however pointless it may have seemed. I remember dark black walls. Walls that brooded and sobbed and cursed and screamed endlessly. I remember the solitude, days upon days with only James for company and then only for a brief moment. I remember reading a lot; books James would buy me, on philosophy, Greek myths, psychology…

“He became my only tie to the outside world. The man who killed my mother and put me in an insane asylum.”

“The man you think killed your mother,” Jiminy whispers.

“Fuck you. I know what I saw.”

And then I look down and realize I’m naked. Have I been naked this entire time? How could I have missed that? Have I become this oblivious to the outside world? So oblivious that even within my own mind I fail to recognize my surroundings? What is a person like me capable of?

“How long was I in that room Jimney?” My home was the third door on the left of a long, echoing hallway in Timberlawn Mental Facilities, adjacent to the water fountain.

“I’d say about three years. Before Kristin circumvented the system and had you stay with her. Do you remember meeting her?”

I did. I was fifteen; she was almost twice my age. It was my first day at Timberlawn: James’ new private mental health facility. “I remember he’d been telling me about it for years, that one day he’d take me away from the padded rooms to a place where I can be normal again. Where I can talk to people and get my life back. Honestly, I can’t say I ever believed him. But sure enough after five years at Reinfeld State he and five other psychiatrists declared me legally sane and put me in his care. He even went as far as adopting me to insure that he was my definitive primary caretaker. Wasn’t too hard it seems, it’s not like there was a line or anything. And who better than a man with the means to, in the eyes of the state, give me the best treatment I could get?

“But, if anything, there it was worse. Much worse. There I knew I could leave but he wouldn’t let me. I was rarely allowed to walk in the courtyard and then it was supervised by orderlies (some abominable dochebags) and always alone. Before I saw a slew of doctors, all trying to poke and prod at my brain and figure out why I was so fucked up, but at least there were others. I was prisoner twenty hours a day in a room beautifully decorated with leering, black walls and filled with toys and books and games, everything a boy should want. But fuck did I hate it.

“I forgot what the point in all this was…oh…yes…Kristin.”

It felt odd meeting her for the first time. She’d only been the work of fiction before, hearsay, some fantastic phoenix I’d only heard myths of.

“James brought her in to stare at the crazy boy. To show her what she’d be working with as a psychiatrist. I was…a specimen. The Boy Who Killed His Own Mother. For some reason she kept coming back. I guess she felt sorry for me.”

I shake my head and my stomach swirls and bubbles with shame. No wonder I kept forgetting. No wonder I let my life slide away from me. No one wants to remember how pathetic their life is. We block out the mundane and focus on the prominent, so much so that our lives are shortened significantly. My life seems to be a string of tragedies held together by pointless boredom.

“Two years later she took my virginity—Jake the orderly…wait…Jake. How could I forget about Jake? He snuck me cookies when I wouldn’t eat and brought me my first joint outside in the courtyard when I was sixteen. He just stopped showing up one day. Kristin let me know…he died. I didn’t even ask what of…I just…forgot.”

I wipe my trembling hand across my forehead and it comes back wet with sweat.

“I asked him if I could please see Kristin for the night. He’d been watching me for years now…I guess he trusted me, I wasn’t even allowed to talk with the others. Orders from James. I couldn’t be trusted. But he understood, and he brought her to me. She wore pink pajama bottoms and a green and white-checkered button up t-shirt. Not the sexiest of outfits but on her…”

“You’re starting to ramble. You’ll be telling me the color of her underwear next…I’m sorry Calvin but we have no time for mindless memory expeditions. We need to get back on task to why you’re here. What was the incident that drove you into your mind?”

I open my mouth to speak but Jiminy shushes me. “Listen,” he whispers.

And I hear it. From somewhere far, far above me comes the slightest whisper of sound. Words float back to me, disjointed, nonsensical, in other words: the usual.

“Please Calvin…don’t make me…I love you…wake up…I don’t…but if I have to…just give me a sign…I won’t tell…you asshole…I love you…I’ll make you…please Calvin wake up…Wake up!” It’s Kristin’s voice, somewhere up there, far away.



Another series of explosions and I’m lying in a hospital bed, Kristin’s hand in mine, her sitting in a chair next to the bed, snoring. Half off her lap sits her purple photo album, slowly slipping to the floor.

“Kristin? Baby? Wake up.” I nudge her slowly. Her eyes flutter open and she looks around, confusion contorting her face, as if unaware of where she is. Then her eyes open, recognition blooming into relief.

“You’re awake!” she cries embracing me in her arms and dropping the album to the floor. Showering me with kisses, her lips leave behind small pools of spit that encircle my face.

“What’s going on? Where am I?”

She stands up and runs to the door, slams it and turns back to face me.

“You did it again…I don’t think I can save you anymore. We have to run. There’s no other way. The cops won’t let you stay this time. They’ll send you to the gas chamber for sure…I don’t want to think of it. We can run away, I have money. We’ll sneak out the window, climb down the pipes and just run okay?”

She runs to my side and falls to her knees, her eyes brimming with tears.

“What are you talking about…slow down who are we running from?”

“The cops!” she screams. “You have to remember what happened! For Christ’s sake you didn’t even get the drug this time Calvin! Think!”

“What drug Kristin what the fuck are you talking about?”

She gets up and begins pacing chewing the end of her thumbnail all the while.

“I thought for sure the exposure therapy would work…I thought you’d remember. Or at least stop forgetting Every Little Thing.”

I sit up, fed up by her obscurity, and scream: “Stop! Just stop! The next thing you say needs to be exactly why the cops are looking for me and why we’re running. Nothing else okay, or I’m gone.”

She arches an eyebrow while staring at me in my hospital gown. “You’re not gonna run in that.”

“Don’t test me Kristin.”

She takes a breath and says: “I sort of forced you into reliving one of the most disturbing moments in your life last night. For good reason though!”

I remember the woman in bed fingering herself.

“I thought, maybe, if you could remember what it was like when your mother use to…you know…rape you,” she whispers this last part, “then maybe you could get past it, finally embrace it as a reality, and stop letting the world pass you by. Remember things. And finally get you off the Midozolam.”

“But my mom never raped me Kristin. We’ve been over this shit over and over again-“

“No time Calvin!” she interrupts.

“But what the fuck are you talking about! None of that makes any sense! What’s this Mido-whatever shit?”

“Only the drug you’ve been addicted to since you were like five! You’re sleeping medication, the one my father gave you to cure your insomnia, the same drug he began using to make sure he could control you. You see one of the side effects is temporary amnesia. You won’t ever remember taking the drug because you forget everything that happens a few hours right before it is administered. Always orally, always right before you went to sleep.”

I try to remember going to sleep and I come up with nothing. Fifteen years without dreams—yet another extraordinary case of complete, willful ignorance.

“He was using it to make you forget what he wanted you to forget, even to try and hide the fact that he killed your mother-“

“That asshole!” I scream. A fierce explosion of rage shoots through my veins and missiles through my brain giving me a head rush equivalent to what I imagine a good dose of meth must feel like after three days without sleep.

“I knew I wasn’t crazy! If he wasn’t already dead I’d kill him! He took my fucking life away!”

“You already did,” she whispers, “a year ago, when he found out we’d had sex. Scott told me James knew, that one of the other patients had heard us through the walls, that he was livid. I hid behind the door to his lab and watched as he dipped a red, soiled rag into a bottle of sodium fluoride and went on to tell you every fucked up detail involved in the killing of your mother. The way he walked in on the two of you in her bedroom, her riding you like crazy, and he just couldn’t take it. They’d been seeing each other for almost a year and he never had a clue. He snapped and stabbed her to death right in front of you! You ran out the door, covered in blood, and when he went to go after you he saw you slip into a neighbor’s house. His original intent was to give you the drug and make you forget but you got away so instead he called the police and said it was you. You were taken into custody although he screamed and hollered that you were sick, that you needed your drugs, that you’d die without them. When the withdrawals hit they had no choice but to put you into his care. He used your extreme convulsions as an agitator for some twisted aversion therapy meant to bring you excruciating pain any time you thought of your mother or what happened that night.”

This is all too much too fast. I touch my ear and expect my hand to come back dripping with blood. My brain feels like pancake batter slowly being poured into a searing hot pan.

“When he finished he beamed at you, a smile gushing with fierce animosity. A smile I’d never seen on my father. You just stood there for a second, shaking and staring off into space.  He lunged at you with the rag and attempted to secure it over your mouth. You’re eyes turned red as the powder fell into them …and then…its all a blur now it just happened so fast. You tackled him onto the table and held his own hand over his mouth until his eyes rolled back in his head and he started coughing blood…”

Her voice has begun to tremble. “I swear baby I had no idea he was trying to kill you or I would have done something sooner. There have been stories of psychiatrists using sodium fluoride as an improvised form of quick lobotomy…still horrible…but…” I want to put an arm around her and tell her it’s all okay, but what right do I have?

“You told me you didn’t know who killed him,” is all I’m able to say. Asshole upon asshole, I’m on a roll.

“After…the incident…the withdrawals hit again. The very mention of your mother actually triggered them but after the murder…er…incident…they were much worse than normal. You had a few seizures and smeared the floor with his blood. I never knew there could be so much...” she pauses here for a few seconds staring off into space, tears spilling from her eyes, and then continues: “I saw you struggling, I had to help. I grabbed your medication and forced it down your throat, killing the memory of my father’s confession. There was no other way. The nurses…they said you might never wake up, and when you did….I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you. You’re all I had left.”

I put my head in my hands and capsize the reservoir of tears bleeding from deep within my heart. So many lies, so many parts of my life made to disappear. How pathetic are you when you need another person to explain to you your own life story?

Through blurry eyes I see Kristin grab a tissue and blow her nose. She wipes her eyes and sits back down without offering me one.

“There were other reasons too,” she says in a completely collected tone, as if we’d just finished discussing the basics of Andrew Jackson’s sociopathic tendencies and how they relate to Geoffrey Domer, a topic we’ve often exhausted. 

“You’d committed murder twice now Calvin, they weren’t going to just leave you back in private custody. My father willed the practice down to me and I was put in care of you but the vultures were circling something fierce. You’re a psychiatrist’s wet dream after all! A man so completely detached from his present he has willed himself to forget almost every moment of his life! Holy shit are you fucking kidding me?! And delusional to top it all off!”

She’s pacing and rubbing her head, staring down at the floor and talking fast. I’ve never seen her like this; she’s teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It seems insanity is contagious. 

“I had no choice—I had to lie to you and keep feeding you the medicine I knew was the very root of your illness lest they realize the truth. You don’t belong in jail Calvin. Much less a government run mental facility. It’s not your fault you’re this way. Luckily for you his death had the tell tale signs of a suicide and the only known witness had a well documented history of chronic memory loss.”

She stops here and takes a deep breath, her entire body shaking.

“So, once the riff raff finally backed off and the calamity died down I decided enough was enough. I had to fix you, no matter what. I came up with a treatment, one I was sure would work: make you remember by exposing you to the very things my father had attempted to make you forget. But…it backfired.  You went crazy, couldn’t handle what you saw, and went into convulsions.”

She stops pacing and stares out the window to my left. Noises belonging to worlds I imagine couldn’t possibly be more fucked up than mine filter through walls white with disease.

“It was Scott’s idea to bring the gun, in case you tried to hurt us again.”

“I’d never hurt you baby. Never.” Except…that isn’t true.

“You blackened my eye once Calvin,” she whispers, not daring to meet my eyes. “A few days before the treatment…I was trying to get you to remember how your mother abused you…it’s my fault, I see that now. I pushed you too far.”

Shame envelops me in its clammy clutches, tickling my ear with its own sick satisfaction. This is what I’ve sunk to.

“And…although Scott warned me…I did it again. Oh Calvin I’m so sorry! This is all my fault but I didn’t know what else to do!”

“What are you talking about Kristin? What happened?” Except by now I’ve remembered. I remember the gunshot, the hole in Scott’s head, the crying silhouette.

“You killed him baby. You killed Scott.”

Cold sweat slides down my neck and into my hospital gown. Everything inside me constricts and burns. My memory tells one story with crystal clearness…but Kristin says another. And suddenly I realize the power she has over me. She could say anything…and all I have is her word over my insanity. It could all be bullshit…it could all be lies.

“I need to be alone for a second.” If she doesn’t leave soon I know I’ll start screaming.

“No Calvin absolutely not, no way. You’ve been lying here for a week! By now they’ve found the fingerprints on the gun.” I never touched that gun. Holy shit what have you gotten me into? “If they’re not already waiting for you outside this door they will be soon.”

“Please Kristin I need a moment-“

“No we have to leave five minutes ago-“

“Fucking leave me alone!” As far as I know this is the first time I’ve ever yelled at her. There’ a flash of something, come and gone in less than a second: her face darkens and pulls into what looks like a snarl before collapsing and draining completely.

“Okay Calvin. I get it. It’s a lot to take. Ill give you five minutes okay? Then we have to go. No excuses.” Her lips caress mine like slimy tentacles and her tongue attempts to break past them but to no avail.

Currently she disgusts me.

She places a hand on my cheek, sighs heavily and says, “If you only knew just how much I love you baby.” She closes the door on her way out.

I waste no time brooding and spring out of bed, tearing IVs out of my arm without a second thought. There’s nothing left for me here anymore. I have less of a life now than the day I was born.

My feet fall onto the photo album. Kristin and I stare back at me, smiling with ignorance. I consider looking through it one last time, but times already wasting, so I kick it across the room without a second thought. 

After putting on my clothes and swiping a stack of rubber banded hundreds and a blank prescription pad from Kristin’s purse, I break the safety lock on the hospital window and climb out onto the ledge. The wind smacking against my face is laced with vigor and ecstasy and fills me with joy.

I stare out over the parking lot and watch as the concrete splits open into a wide, gaping mouth lined with jagged teeth into which cars and ambulances and people fall to their death, their screams instantly swallowed, and I smile, imagining that it’s calling to me, beckoning me into its cavernous gut. The gutter to my right leads me down, down, down until I’m weightless and staring at a melting decapitated head.

“Welcome back,” says Jimney, his skin now tearing off in chunks and leaving behind broad patches of pink flesh.

“I’m very impressed,” he says as his right ear comes detached and flies up into oblivion. “You’re transitions have become fluid, you’re memory is almost in tact…for whatever good that’s worth I suppose.” He smiles and the skin on both cheeks rip along his dimples. Blood leaks down his chin.

“What’s happening to you?”

He crosses his eyes in a comical fashion, staring at the remains of his nose, and says, “Whatever do you mean? Is there something on my face?”

“You know what I mean smartass. You’re falling apart!”

“Merely symbolism my dear Calvin. But we digress; I believe it’s time to wrap up this oh so riveting journey to the center of your insanity. What happened after you ran away?”

I try once again to flex my brain but all that comes back is a series of disjointed images, all blurred together and warped as if painted by a victim of cerebral palsy.

“I can’t remember…I jumped around a lot…I think. Kristin had left me with over five thousand dollars, a golden ticket for all the prescriptions I could get, and a jumbled mess of a mind. It didn’t take long before I forgot again and began binging on everything: women, drugs…violence. With her prescription pad the women lined up to jump my dick. I remember the last one: a heavyset chick named Helga. She smoked Luckys, wore wool caps and cotton sweaters over tights in the middle of fucking July, wrote folk songs and had a hankering for Ambien. I met her outside my motel one day and-“

“Get on with it Calvin. We don’t have all fucking day,” scowls Jiminy, his left eyeball popping and spewing black gunk onto my chest.

“This went on for about three months…and then…something happened. I can’t remember what exactly, I just know it was something…” my mouth goes dry and shivers race up and down my spine, “something…horrible.”

As the meat flecks off his cheeks, leaving behind gaping holes underlined by crisp, white teeth Jimney says, “Looks like we’re going to need a bit of assistance.”

His whistle shoots bits of flesh from his lips that fleck onto my face, and almost immediately Iddy returns. Its body glows a daunting, pristine almost yellow. It swirls and swirls as it reaches me, already smiling with carnivorous delight.

“No!” I scream, trying once again to run in my frictionless world. Some people never learn.

“You have to!” yells Jiminy, the light emanating from his eye now blinks on and off like a flashlight whose batteries have neared its end. White skull peers out from random spots on his head where his scalp has come loose, his hair now only thin wisps of cobwebs. Blood runs from his forehead in rivers down the few strands of tendons and scraps of flesh holding stubbornly to his cheeks.

“No! I’d rather not know. Not like this! Stay the fuck away!”

But Iddy is not one to give in to protests. Its body splits down the middle creating two clouds each with its own pulsing red eye. The grains stacking on top of each begin to move sinuously morphing into two long snarling snakes. They stare at me a moment, their mouths lined with yellow razors, dripping with yellow grains, and each lunge for the veins in the middle of my arms. Their teeth feel like millions of tiny rotating saws as they burrow within my veins. Somewhere far away I can hear myself screaming. The pain itself makes me moan but…I’m enjoying it. Pleasure bright and beautiful pumps into my veins and shoots through my body giving me a boner; permeating, it builds and builds until I feel the skin rip.

Blood shoots from both arms, briefly conforming to the snakes’ relentless wiggling, and finally blasting off into the oblivion above me in twin torrents of carnal majesty. They burrow and burrow until only their tiny tails are left flapping against my arm.

I can feel myself turn inside out, my body sucked into my wailing mouth, and suddenly

I float in limbo, my dick tugged by an invisible force. As something dripping wet circles around it and begins to rub itself against me, I moan in ecstasy. I twitch and sputter, my toes and fingers curling. I can’t feel much, but the pressure’s good nonetheless.  She cries out: “Fuck me! Oh god fuck me so good!” Two legs materialize on either side of me and I rub them gently, feeling the smooth skin as I dig my hands under her velvet nightgown and wrap them around the bulge of her ass. My eyes roll back in my head as I squeeze and sink my nails in. I can feel her hands against my chest, her hair as if falls over my face and tickles my neck, her lips as they crawl over mine tenderly, her tongue as it expertly wraps itself around mine. I open my eyes in time to see my mother, her face at once tender and vicious, loving and bloodthirsty. I want to scream but it feels so good, I don’t want it to stop until I look again—

I find myself in a dirty motel room, the walls covered in shit, a headache pounding at my temples like the hand of God himself beating against my brains. The girl riding me wears a blue wool cap that matches her blue eyes. Her nose steadily drips blood, mixing with some yellow residue. Outside I can hear the roar of the ocean, the waves crashing in time with her jumps. She isn’t my mother and the realization fills me with a wave of relief, which is quickly replaced with rage. I grab her by the waist and throw her off of me; the thud as she hits the floor headfirst instantly makes me giddy. I spring from the bed, the giddiness intensified by a sudden head rush, my fists a blur as they descend upon her. Cracks and screams harmonize beautifully as my knuckles connect with her jaw, her cheeks, her eyes. Blood spews from her mouth and speckles my cheeks as she screams and screams—

I find myself ankle deep in the sands of time, one foot struggling to find solid ground, the other twisted beneath me, enflamed with agony. Her thigh feels doughy and morphs beneath my fingers as I claw at the bleeding gash I’d ripped open moments ago. Laughter echoes in my head, escaping in frantic, sporadic bursts mingling with her misery: a falsetto of grief underlying a chorus of ecstasy. She looks back into my eyes, the bloodshot eyes of a man strung out on Ambien, Vikadin, Percoset, and a healthy dose of Zanax, a man sleepwalking through life, drool falling to create little pools of insanity, and with a scream drives her heel into my nose, shattering it. I scream and fall back as the tide sweeps in and envelops my body, the sand now mud clinging to me. Focus! I tell myself, She’s getting away! But this time I won’t catch her, this time, the muck won’t wash off, this time I’m caught. Confirmation occurs in the form of a dainty figure just beyond the sneering glare of the moon, hidden in shadows, it approaches my whore and embraces her. She collapses onto it, wailing so loud I’m surprised this is the first person we’ve seen. I get up and begin limping towards them, my mind set: I must kill them both. And then, in a flash of miscomprehension, a knife shimmers, catching the far reaches of moonlight it strikes my whore over and over again, her eye exploding into a geyser of blood, spurting on and off like some vicious strobe and drenching the figure striking her, her screams finally silenced. The guttural wretches that fill my throat take their place; I vomit and vomit, sand and pills my only sustenance, they become my floor as I struggle to crawl away, fear strangling me mercilessly. This isn’t what I wanted, the bleeding mass mere feet from me, that isn’t how this was supposed to end. I can hear the displacement of sand as the figure runs towards me, it drowns away the crashing tide and echoes and echoes in my brain. My heart beats to its footsteps threatening to explode when a hand reaches out and touches my naked shoulder. It turns me around and I’m staring at Kristin, her green eyes piercing mine, her face covered in blood. “You almost let her get away you idiot. I had to do something,” she whispers…and my reaction is to punch her in the face. She yelps in surprise as I turn around and try to limp away, watching as, in the distance, a blue wool cap lying a few feet from me is wrenched away by an onslaught of sea. Blood and tears drip down my face as I feel her arm wrap around my throat. She yanks me backwards and I have just enough time to stare at her monstrous snarl before she strikes down the hilt of her dagger

I emerge this time crying, shaking, and miserable.

“Congratulations Calvin. You have reached the end.”

A smiling skull with yellow, jagged teeth and a sliver of vertebrae stares back at me. The strobe in its eye blinks on and off fast enough to hurt my eyes and warp my brain.

“But I’m still so confused, who’s trying to kill me? Is it Kristin? What happened to the dead girl and what was all that talk about self-actualization? I’m no better off now than I was when we started for fuck’s sake!” I glimpse red grains falling behind me and turn in time to see Iddy (his body now glowing red like dried flecks of blood) morph his right hand into a saw blade, each tooth vibrating as he slowly moves towards me.

“Okay, fine, just let me out then. Jiminy? I said let me out goddamnit!”

But the skull only laughs and begins to sing, all the while Iddy, its face once again that of the monstrous ghost from before, inches closer, his saw whirling faster with intensity.

“When you wish upon a star

After drinking at the bar

Turns out you’re already high

You just need blood



Stumbling across the street

Here a prostitute you meet

Within lies insanity

You just need blood



Dear sweet Calvin you will see

What it means now to be free

Out of shackles into chains

You just need BLOOD!”



Iddy finally reaches me; his saw inches from my fingers, and begins to laugh, a sound guttural and horrible. “Please, just let me out, please.” As if in response, Jiminy’s eye blinks once, twice, and finally goes out.

“Here at the bottom

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em

It’s the end of the line

Come on Iddy let the blood fly!”



With that said Jiminy explodes into a cloud of dust as Iddy’s handsaw gingerly touches my fingers and begins to cut, the pain excruciating, coming from two worlds. The blood gushes forth and spills down my hands.

“Wake up Calvin!” I hear Jiminy’s disembodied voice cry out, except it isn’t his voice, it’s Kristin’s and holy shit the pain as Iddy makes his way through the skin and begins attacking bone. Below me oblivion opens with blinding white light and I’m vaguely aware that my finger hangs by a thread of skin, my brain exploding into worlds of color. 

“Wake up!” screams my blood as it pours out of me; “Wake up!” screams my fingers as they’re ripped away; “Wake up!” screams my world until



I wake with a start and find myself in my old motel room; the walls still brown with decrepit despair. To my left sits Kristin, tears rushing down her haggard, pale face. She wears no makeup, her hair caked and messy, covered with brown stains. The pain comes back to me in a rush, my fingers on fire, and I scream as I realize that it’s Kristin sawing away at them, ripping through them with every slice. Rip, rip, rip as she saws methodically, wailing but not stopping, crying but…smiling, grinning as she cuts through my index and middle finger. My eyes water and consciousness wavers…but no, not again.

My body spurs itself to action; before I know what I’m doing I grab her hand in mid stroke and rip the saw out of the indention of blood and tendons, screaming as I do so: “You stupid fucking bitch what the fuck are you doing you fucking cunt-whore lookatmyfuckingfingers youstupidstupidbitch!”

She looks up at me, her eyes wide with surprise, her mouth working up and down, her throat struggling to make words.

“I…I’m sorry,” she finally yelps, “I…didn’t know how to…wake you up…its been…days.”

I struggle not to look at my hand, but curiosity overwhelms me: it’s a mass of blood and bone, my index finger hangs by a thread of skin right above its second knuckle, which rips away with agonizing slowness as I raise my hand, falling to the bed where chunks of flesh and bone sleep comfortably. My middle finger has been cut in several places, the tip ripped open to reveal a complex web of tendons, the bone peeking out just above the second knuckle.

My stomach clenches around nothing and cramps for relief. Vomit pours from my mouth all over Kristin’s lap, but there’s something different about this world. It’s crisper, I can smell the acrid, metallic stench of blood drenching the shitty motel room I woke up in, I can taste the stomach acid cascading from my lips, I can feel the scratchy linens dry with what could be come, I can see Kristin’s hand as it moves towards the dagger sitting on the night table.

In mid wretch I tackle her to the floor, gargling behind torrents of vomit as I land middle finger first on the puke green carpet ripping it clean from my hand with a sickening crack! that fills the room.

I scream again as the dagger falls off the night table and lands inches from Kristin’s head. The saw in my right hand somehow finds its way to her throat.

My left hand in agony, tears running down my face and vomit dripping from my lips, I stare down at her, at the love of my life, now replaced by this contentious, murderous harlot.  It almost feels good to be naked on top of her again; the pressure against my dick threatens to get me hard, except the fireball that was my hand is an ugly reminder of what she’s capable of. “I can’t believe you were trying to kill me. After…after…everything. You use to be the only person I could trust!”

“I was trying to save you! To wake you up baby! Come on, you know I’d do anything for you, anything. I’ve done…horrible things for our love, don’t you accuse me of being anything but hopelessly, hopelessly in love with you!”

“And this is how you show me that? By cutting off my fucking fingers?!”

“I cut that girl up for you, I saved you from going to jail AGAIN! If it wasn’t for me following you over the last few months you would have killed her and left her sitting there in the sand for everyone to find. I clean up YOU’RE fucking mistakes! ME! No one else and you accuse ME of trying to kill you! Look behind you; look at the bags full of that stupid fat slut you were fucking! You think it was easy loading the both of you into the truck, bringing you back here, cutting that bitch into little pieces, serving you food and water and changing your underwear over the last three days! Fuck you Calvin! Fuuuck you!”

I turn my head and catch a glimpse of several huge black Hefty bags before she lunges out from under me, her hand reaching for the knife. The saw presses itself into her neck drawing blood. She squeals and lays back.

“Please, please don’t kill me too. You need me baby, how do you think I found you? You think they just let you use prescription pads willy nilly? The only reason you got those pills was because I approved them when the pharmacy called. I knew exactly where you were at all times which means the cops can’t be too far behind. “

But I don’t hear any of this; one phrase bounces within the recesses of my mind struggling to attach itself but failing miserably.

“What do you mean ‘don’t kill me too’?”

She blinks at me, her face flush with color. “Oh, come on, you have to have remembered by now Calvin! I mean shit, I thought maybe this time you had come around for good…you killed them all baby. Scott, the fat slut…your mother.”

My heart bleeds and stomach clenches once more; my groin pulls up into my guts, suddenly I can’t breathe.

“No, no…I didn’t do that. I remember for sure now, it was Jiminiy, uh, I mean James. It wasn’t me, it wasn’t, it wasn’t-“

“Come on! Think! You really believe he could have gotten away with that? Killing your mother and pegging it on her son? He was the primary suspect, they did everything, DNA, fingerprints, the works, but it was you Calvin. It was you all along.”

My mouth runs dry, my breathing comes out in spurts, it feels like a cold hand has clenched itself around my heart, squeezing without mercy. “But…you said…”

“I said what I thought you wanted to hear, what I thought would cure you. I implanted the memories you have in your brain a long time ago; using the drug continuously to make you forget it was I telling you. Eventually they assimilated themselves in your subconscious beating the short-term memory loss the drug causes. This was all after my father tried to kill himself. “

“James…tried to…what?” The hand holding the saw begins to shake violently.

“He couldn’t handle the lies he told you, the aversion therapy he forced on you, the horrible things he did to you. He felt responsible for you mother’s death, thought maybe the pills had warped your mind.”

“But…but,” I stutter, trying my best to think clearly, “you said he was murdered.”

“Because he was Calvin, murdered by you! He died in anguish trying to help you! If it weren’t for your lunacy he never would have gone off the deep end. If we’d never had sex he might have been able to keep his work unbiased. I blamed you for a long time baby, especially when I thought he’d never make it. But it’s okay he’s still alive! He’s just in a coma, we can see him today if you like! Let’s just get out of this room, okay, please?”

“No!” I scream, “Nooooo! I didn’t kill her, you’re lying, you and your dad, both of you are fucking liars!” Spit falls from my pulled back lips into her eyes. “You killed Scott and Helga, your father killed my mother, I did nothing, you’re just trying to confuse me! Fuck you and your father, may you both burn in hell for what you did to me!”

I press the saw into her neck with every intention of slicing her open when she screams, “Your mother never touched you!”

I gasp, the wind knocked out of me once again, a single tear falling onto her cheek. “Wha…what?”

“More implanted memories, my father’s idea. He thought, if you had a reason for why you killed her, maybe you’d be cured; maybe this monster inside of you would just…die. My experiment was meant to further that catharsis, but it didn’t help, you killed Scott and later that woman and imagined it was me. Please Calvin, let me help you, I’m the only one left who can.”

Nothing makes sense, just when it almost did; I’m confused again. “Then everything you told me was a lie. EVERYTHING! How the fuck do you expect me to believe you now? HOW?!”

There’s a knock at the door followed by a nasally voice: “Hey! Is everything okay in there?”

“Mind your own fucking buisness!” I snarl, not daring to peel my eyes away from Kristin.

“I’m calling the cops! You better stop what you’re doing in there cause they’re on their way buddy!” Footsteps grow fainter and fainter as he walks away.

“Just look into my eyes baby, you know that I love you. You know all I want is to save you, please get off me, let’s talk about this like adults, let’s work through this, I’ll help you, I swear I will.”

My head swoons, maybe from the massive blood loss, maybe from the shambles of my mind struggling to connect but failing as they always have. My body relaxes and I start to pull my hand away. I look into her eyes as I do so, and I know I’ve made the right decision.

She smiles, her eyes twinkling, as she grabs the dagger and lunges for my neck. I raise my left shoulder, screaming as the knife goes in, tearing the skin like paper. I shut my eyes tight and my hand works of its own accord, lightening quick it finds her neck and begins sawing. Skin gives way to blood, surging forth to embrace me with loving warmth. Her screams soon turn to gurgles as I saw past the meat, tearing vertebrae, knowing she’s dead but unable to stop. I saw and saw, the blood squirting onto my face, sobs poking at my throat as I slice through the very arteries of my heart, until I realize that I’m sawing carpet and collapse on top of her, exhausted.

I don’t want to get up, I want to lay here, with Kristin’s body beneath me, forever, but I know there’s still work to be done. After several minutes I finally raise myself onto my hands and knees and open my eyes.

Her head stares back at me, speckled in blood, almost beautiful with vigor, its mouth open in a silent scream for the rest of eternity. Grief knocks at my heart, but I need to know the truth. I need to find James.

I try to stand but my ankle screams in protest, not to mention the dizziness that over takes me as the blood runs down my arm and drips from the tips of my fingers. So I crawl, and, favoring my right hand, drag myself to the night table, where I see a big purple photo album labeled Memories.

It crashes to the floor with a thud when I overturn the night table, sinking in the pool of Kristin and I’s blood. I open the cover and flip through dozens of smiling corpses, hoping for any clues of where he could be. I turn and turn, finding nothing, trying not to linger on the pictures of Kristin and I, until, finally, I see two photos on the final page.

The first is a picture of James, lying in a hospital bed, his eyes closed, tubes running in and out of his body. The caption below reads: Daddy in a coma.

The second is a picture of a coffin, the top half removed, lying amongst orchards. The caption reads: Daddy’s Funeral.

I throw the book across the room, put my head in my dismembered hand, and cry, while, somewhere deep in the back of my mind, Chessy laughs.

Austin, TX

August, 2009-October 2010