Oni_Butterfly
(1) Susan Combs
(2) Vodka Tears
(3) Alcohol Use, Death. It's either a High PG-13 or an R.
(4) Of course. Constructive Critiscism is loooooooved.
(5)
Was this place always so cold and empty?
Even in my childhood, was it always this desolate?
The thermostat reads 75 degrees.
My body feels as if it's 20.
Its the remains of her soul in the room.
If I concentrate, I can still see her body sitting
in front of the long emptied computer desk.
I had the chair burnt.
I didn't want her here to loom over
me with her indifferent expression.
I have tried to occupy this dwelling.
I have tried to make it my home.
But she is still here.
The house is always silent.
Deathly Silent.
So my imagination provides
conversation with the woman
I want nothing but to be rid of.
Maybe her ghost is still trapped in
the walls of this mausoleum, and it refuses
my requests for freedom.
When I wake in the morning,
my eyes adjusting to the light,
I hear the fleeting remains of
her shrill, reprimanding, voice,
demanding my entrance into the real world.
In the dark of night, when my throat
aches for a cold drink, I pass by
the couch, where she spent so many nights.
As I pass it I see the sheets bundled,
and soften my steps to assure her
slumber. I almost reach the
cooler before the image of her cold,
lifeless body spread out in the padded box
breaks through my hazed mind like a pick to ice.
I quickly return to find the couch empty and lifeless.
Sleep never returns to me on these nights.
When I leave the door, intent
on rescuing myself from the loneliness
I hear her, "Don't wreck that car!".
When I begin my dinner I hear her,
"You don't even know what you are doing do you?".
When I step from the shower I hear her,
"Don't get water on my floor, I just cleaned it!"
Her soul has left an imprint on this house
that will never be separated, not through any
amount of scrubbing, or washing. They have
joined together to create a being, solely
intent on destroying my sanity.
Sometimes, when I am reading, I can still
smell the cigarette smoke. The smoke, like
her, will never be free from this house.
When I left for college, the smell left
such an imprint on my senses, I had
to pick up the habit. The dorm rooms
were too nice, the air was too pure.
I could barely breathe.
I told her that once.
She replied that I should stop
blaming her for my errors.
I can still see her in front of me.
The cancer stick in one hand,
the computer mouse in the other.
As soon as her reply was done,
her attention turned completely
back to her game, the conversation concluded.
Once when she was intoxicated,
she told me she wanted me to be
independent, mature, and able to
keep myself under control.
I told her congratulations,
and she could spend the rest of my life,
paying my therapy bills.
She threw a coffee mug at me.
As I picked up the broken pieces,
I cried. Not for her, but the memory of the mug.
I had owned it for so many years,
and now it was gone, like so many other
things she stole from me;
my beliefs, my innocence, my childhood.
Now I stand outside the house,
swaying slightly in my step,
holding a bottle of vodka,
only a quarter full. I place the damp rag inside,
light it, and send it coursing towards the window
of my brother's room. My room was next,
then my father's room. In my high school years,
my mother and I were the only occupants,
but the rooms kept their names, even now.
Maybe we believed if we keep their names,
maybe their bodies would return to us.
Of course, these beliefs were in vain.
"YOU WERE NEVER A HOME TO ME!"
I scream in my inebriated state.
As I watch the ancient house, where
so many memories of mine were held,
I felt a weight lift from my shoulders.
Tears spring from my eyes, and laughter
rips from my throat, echoing across the area.
My body was frozen as I finally noticed,
her silhouette staring at me through the broken window.
She gives me a disapproving glare as if to say,
"You're doing something foolish again."
I finally break free of my hold.
"YOU WERE NEVER A MOTHER TO ME!"
Her image was lost as frame of the house,
collapsed into a fiery pile of rubble.
The firemen arrived to find me on my knees,
lighter in my hand, sobbing and laughing,
with Vodka on my breath.
(2) Vodka Tears
(3) Alcohol Use, Death. It's either a High PG-13 or an R.
(4) Of course. Constructive Critiscism is loooooooved.
(5)
Was this place always so cold and empty?
Even in my childhood, was it always this desolate?
The thermostat reads 75 degrees.
My body feels as if it's 20.
Its the remains of her soul in the room.
If I concentrate, I can still see her body sitting
in front of the long emptied computer desk.
I had the chair burnt.
I didn't want her here to loom over
me with her indifferent expression.
I have tried to occupy this dwelling.
I have tried to make it my home.
But she is still here.
The house is always silent.
Deathly Silent.
So my imagination provides
conversation with the woman
I want nothing but to be rid of.
Maybe her ghost is still trapped in
the walls of this mausoleum, and it refuses
my requests for freedom.
When I wake in the morning,
my eyes adjusting to the light,
I hear the fleeting remains of
her shrill, reprimanding, voice,
demanding my entrance into the real world.
In the dark of night, when my throat
aches for a cold drink, I pass by
the couch, where she spent so many nights.
As I pass it I see the sheets bundled,
and soften my steps to assure her
slumber. I almost reach the
cooler before the image of her cold,
lifeless body spread out in the padded box
breaks through my hazed mind like a pick to ice.
I quickly return to find the couch empty and lifeless.
Sleep never returns to me on these nights.
When I leave the door, intent
on rescuing myself from the loneliness
I hear her, "Don't wreck that car!".
When I begin my dinner I hear her,
"You don't even know what you are doing do you?".
When I step from the shower I hear her,
"Don't get water on my floor, I just cleaned it!"
Her soul has left an imprint on this house
that will never be separated, not through any
amount of scrubbing, or washing. They have
joined together to create a being, solely
intent on destroying my sanity.
Sometimes, when I am reading, I can still
smell the cigarette smoke. The smoke, like
her, will never be free from this house.
When I left for college, the smell left
such an imprint on my senses, I had
to pick up the habit. The dorm rooms
were too nice, the air was too pure.
I could barely breathe.
I told her that once.
She replied that I should stop
blaming her for my errors.
I can still see her in front of me.
The cancer stick in one hand,
the computer mouse in the other.
As soon as her reply was done,
her attention turned completely
back to her game, the conversation concluded.
Once when she was intoxicated,
she told me she wanted me to be
independent, mature, and able to
keep myself under control.
I told her congratulations,
and she could spend the rest of my life,
paying my therapy bills.
She threw a coffee mug at me.
As I picked up the broken pieces,
I cried. Not for her, but the memory of the mug.
I had owned it for so many years,
and now it was gone, like so many other
things she stole from me;
my beliefs, my innocence, my childhood.
Now I stand outside the house,
swaying slightly in my step,
holding a bottle of vodka,
only a quarter full. I place the damp rag inside,
light it, and send it coursing towards the window
of my brother's room. My room was next,
then my father's room. In my high school years,
my mother and I were the only occupants,
but the rooms kept their names, even now.
Maybe we believed if we keep their names,
maybe their bodies would return to us.
Of course, these beliefs were in vain.
"YOU WERE NEVER A HOME TO ME!"
I scream in my inebriated state.
As I watch the ancient house, where
so many memories of mine were held,
I felt a weight lift from my shoulders.
Tears spring from my eyes, and laughter
rips from my throat, echoing across the area.
My body was frozen as I finally noticed,
her silhouette staring at me through the broken window.
She gives me a disapproving glare as if to say,
"You're doing something foolish again."
I finally break free of my hold.
"YOU WERE NEVER A MOTHER TO ME!"
Her image was lost as frame of the house,
collapsed into a fiery pile of rubble.
The firemen arrived to find me on my knees,
lighter in my hand, sobbing and laughing,
with Vodka on my breath.
xgoblin
1) Sarina
2) Obsession & Demise
3) PG 13
4) Indeed
5)
The only thing this New Year brought was the ending of lives. The ending of my parent's lives, specifically.
I don't remember much about the evening. It was dark, and there was a conglomeration of noises coming from several sources that I now only fail to define. From the corner in which I sought refuge, the room was a mass of moving shadows; the voice of my mother and father against the voice of a stranger who seemed all too eager to silence them.
Details about what happened? I never give them. You can call that whatever you want; you can say it's too painful for me, too long ago to accurately remember or depict. I just know that it's in the past. It's history. I do not wish to resurrect it.
I've never had much time to dwell on the specifics, anyway. Immediately transferred into foster care, it was only a few days of being nothing but a number and another face to feed before the investigators on the case informed me that they had tracked down relatives of mine living in England. And that is where I went. I can't say I'd had reason to complain, what with the large stone house that they'd welcomed me into; which barely interested me compared with observing them personally.
Grandfather was quite a character, I tell you. Restricted to a wheelchair and forever attached to an oxygen tank, he spent most of his time in his study, reading about the human body; its systems and synapses and nerves and organs. Rarely did he speak, the words made painful by a plastic tube protruding out of his throat. Grandmother said he was a heavy smoker. Her attitude towards him was one of shame rather than compassion. She 'warned' him. Now she's got to 'put up with the man.' But I felt differently about Grandfather. I often sat outside those doors, my kitty, Cupcake, crumpled into a ball beside me, unaware of the isolated man that lived beyond the walls of the room.
You may be wondering a bit more about Grandmother. She was a lovely woman, really, according to anyone else's standards. Pressed my clothes for the early mornings, slaved over the evening meals that I never seemed to want or need; always a smile on her face.
But there was one thing that dearest Grandmother never quite found the time to pay attention to. And that was my mind. I initially figured this was alright; I shouldn't have expected a woman more than three, four times my age to show interest in my creations. What would a person of her stage in life have to care about the mind? She could barely wake hers up when the sun rose.
Yet, no matter how long I tried to rationalize her apparent ignorance of my work, it continued to bother me. It infuriated me, actually. She had no respect for the fact that I was forming words into a masterpiece far more intricate than anyone could ever begin to understand. Well, I suppose the rest of the universe could understand one thing - my growing wishes to free her of her Earthly duties as a surviving human.
The first few months of my transition living with my grandparents is when I began to realize how immense my dislike for Grandmother had become. She was forever watching me from the corner of her crinkled eye. From the moment I arrived in her and grandfather's home, she did nothing but shun my religious beliefs; my denial of food during holy fasts, my longing to create an altar in which to worship the Lord. Grandmother's materialistic self could use to do some worshipping. It wouldn't hurt her to cleanse some of that blackened, roach of a soul. She always wondered why the contents of her 'hidden' bottle of Tylenol were forever decreasing. If she had known the migraines that she had caused me, there would've been no more questions.
After my anger and resentment sizzled down into a concoction of pure hatred and desire to avenge, my mind quickly became disillusioned. I could no longer think in a positive way. I could barely concentrate. I began to talk to myself for lack of better companionship, but soon even that pastime turned into more of a nuisance than a leisure, as I began disputing myself and hating my thoughts more and more., as they became less of my own, more strange and obscure than I had ever expected them to become. It isn't uncommon for me to have a full conversation with myself, disputing actions and thoughts and everything else.
Grandmother had taken away my passion for all things except one - my passion for revenge; my passion to clear the atmosphere of her every fibrous cell.
Sometimes, when sleep was impossible during those hours of the night that were the most sufferable to experience, I crept into Grandmother's room to kneel beside her bed, watching in spite to see her chest still rising with each sucking in of breath, an insatiable screaming inside to just make the rising and lowering stop; to disrupt the cycle. Acute asphyxiation would've been such an easy task in such times; holding the floral printed bag of feathers over her disgusting face, just long enough to see her chest sit still, to know that her lungs were finally a broken machine.
One particular evening, however, my heart was especially making itself known to the ears that weren't in the mood for an orchestra of the eternal blood pumping drum. I knew what it was, of course, as usual. The pills? No, they were just my pastime; a distraction from the real culprit; a distraction from trying to attain household perfection; a distraction from trying to make Grandfather, Cupcake, and I one happy family - without that woman.
I obviously did not plan to do all of this Grammy exterminating on my own. That was what my darling cat Cupcake was for. We thought very alike, Cupcake and I. She was coated by a rich, black fur that I periodically took upon myself to style. Of late, I'd preferred a shaved Cupcake. Well, except for a marvelous little star design on her back. A beauty she was; a companion, really. I felt happiness as I spent time feverishly typing away at dialogue my dearest kitty would use if she could speak. Ah! I could almost hear her then...
"Etienne, could you possibly take a moment to assist me in negating the insect web under the stairway?"
It obviously was not Cupcake that I almost heard, but Grandmother. All the more thrilling, don't you doubt it.
"I'd like to assist in negating her," I shared deviously with Cupcake. With swish of her tail, she turned to look up at me with an expression that I shall only title 'agreement.'
We had pulled ourselves lazily out of Grandfather's study where I was writing, and trudged to the stairway to see what dearest Grandmother had in mind.
While nearing the stairway, I contemplated all the time that I spent going over my hatred for Grandmother. I was fully aware that I had developed a fleeting obsession - killing her was all that ever entered my mind.
Just the other day, the four of us (us humans, that is, and Cupcake) were taking a brief rest in the parlor to 'chat', as Grandmother preferred to call it. In reality, we had just been sitting around in upholstered chairs staring at each other; Grandfather and I tense at the threat of Grandmother's scrutinizing, Grandmother sitting upright and surely contemplating scrutiny, and Cupcake sprawled limply across my lap, waiting for whatever was going on to be over so that we could play...or scheme a bit more.
Grandmother had soon stood up to bring a few cups of her 'specially brewed' tea from the kitchen (the only thing 'special' about it, I'm convinced, is that fact that she laces it with Hydrocodone, knowing that Grandfather cannot be exposed to such a drug, especially in the quantities that she adds). This had given me just enough time to notice a candelabra on the wooden bureau; a candelabra that could easily have been knocked over onto the floor, igniting each splinter of wood and everything else in that house. Most importantly, it would ignite Grandmother.
But I had soon realized that that would've caused a very messy situation. I would lose all of my belongings, all of Grandfather's belongings, and maybe even endanger his or Cupcake's lives.
No; a fire would not be the right way, even if it meant not seeing Grandmother's permed, hairspray infested hair burning to a crisp, leaving her looking like a member of the Addams family, or a character from Tales from the Crypt.
Even though it was the present, I could not get my mind off of all the previous ideas that had come to my mind; asphyxiation, fires. This, well, this was much different. Much more easy to prove to be accidental. You know, a fragile old woman, spiders that refuse to surrender to the can of poisonous spray.
"I tried to stop her; I saw that it was a dangerous area to be leaning over the banister!" I was sure I'd say when questioned. Cupcake would've surely complied with a nod or a blink.
Yes, this definitely was obsession.
My final conclusion? No obsession would be conquered without the object of obsession first being terminated. And terminate that sickening old woman was exactly what I'd do. Unless, of course, Cupcake would help too. I had no reservations of allowing her to take as much part in the demise as she wished.
My mind came back to the present as I noticed where Grandmother stood on the stairs.
"Hmm...," I contemplated, "injury from falling... could this finally be the perfect solution to the malignant existence of Grandmother?" I had been waiting for the most convenient scenario to unfold in my mind for quite a while.
Twisted over the banister of the staircase - with such a quick, swift move of the arm, or a command to Cupcake, and all of it could be banished from our lives forever! This opportunity would not be refused.
My eyes slowly shifted to Cupcake, who had already been watching me for any sign that I wanted her to step in. And with that, I carefully lifted my pointer finger in the direction of the old woman (still engulfed in trying to murder the arachnids), communicating to Cupcake to do anything to distract her enough to fall down the steps to her imminent death. And what a sweet moment it was about to be.
My kitty, never letting me down, pounced right on Grandmothers toes, and from that second on it was as if time had reverted to slow motion. One limb at a time, Grandmother flailed in an attempt to regain balance.
But what could be done? She was old, her limbs tainted by osteoporosis, and mine too drained from prolonged 'grievance' of my parents that there was no way I could've stopped her fall. Well, that's what the rest of the humans would think, anyway.
And down the steps she fell, one after another after another, until nothing was left except her twisted corpse in the basement, for she had fallen through such a weak spot in the floor! Who could've dreamed of that one?! Not even I! Ha!
For one complete second, I swore her eyes looked into mine; I swore that I saw innocence - maybe even a devastated love! "Never mind," I sadistically decided. "It's just my imagination."
Looking into the hole left in the floor, there was nothing to do but laugh, and laugh I did; insanely, madly, for minutes on end! It was a deep laughter, not far from that of a thrilled child, just with much darker undertones. I threw my head back in this laughter, my teeth gleaming from the light of the candelabra, my hair wildly trembling about my smiling face. The deed was finally complete. The dream had finally completed its journey into the mortal world. Looking one last time into the newly created homely pit, my smile faded with satisfaction.
I covered that dreadful little woman's hole with a quaint wooden board and placed an attractive rug over her now eternal home.
"Come, Cupcake," I directed my feline child, "It's naptime."
After the slight recuperation of sorts with Cupcake, I made my way down the corridor to the music room, even though I hadn't gotten a chance to clean out the spiders from the rims of the carpet since the last time I ventured to where the piano was kept.
I couldn't help but question myself about why I did what I just had. Was Grandmother really that awful?
"She didn't understand!" I remind myself. "You're better off without her."
But I couldn't exactly be sure about this. She was the second; no, third person that I thought that I would be better of without. I am the one that stole the blade from my father's shed. He asked me if I'd seen it several times since he knew I took a fancy to it - I knew he was going to give it to me, but I just weren't patient enough. However, he was patient enough to never once look for it, never once suspect that it was the back of his own dresser that kept the thing. That's where I hid it; I knew it would be right by the doorway if the day came urgently - if the day came and I had no time to fidget in my own belongings.
I was finally remembering all of this; yelling all of this.
I had cornered myself in a part of my memory that I long tried to erase. I was finally beginning to realize what an awful denial I had been in the past few months. But believe me, I never meant to do any of the things that happened. I was a good boy. I don't do bad things. My parents were an implication. They were the only obstacles between me and my dreams of class and social stance. They didn't want to hear about my plans to hold rallies in town. They never had time to read my manuscripts. Those manuscripts would've gotten me places, I tell you. Places all over, high places. France, Germany, maybe even America. Everyone would've known my name.
My parents had other ideas.
Father wanted me to continue tradition working the family store. Let me share a bit of information with you, though. I have never been a traditional kind of man. I couldn't stand for that. So I made sure that I wouldn't have to. I imagine some would call that madness. But in my opinion, it was necessary.
It didn't matter to me at this point the specifics of what was or was not madness. In the flurry of a mere afternoon, little facets of my life that had once plagued me had now incinerated the rest of my life, leaving my mind drunk with emotions of guilt and fear and realization.
I had been in denial for far too long of the vile person that I really was inside. I looked at everyone in my life with such cynicism and judgment that I lost sight of the terrors that only I had committed. I had poisoned Cupcake along the way; oh, poor Cupcake. Such a sweet soul she once was, now only my feline mistress in crime.
And as if this realization had not been enough, I heard wheels rolling frantically on a hard wooden floor - Grandfather's wheelchair!!! Had he heard me talking all this over so loudly?
My heart began to pound - no - my heart went into convulsions as I ran in prayer that he hadn't discovered my sin. How could I not have thought of what to tell him?!
Sure enough, as I reached the bottom of the stairway, Grandfather's chair was there, rolling back and forth at the board and mat, as if to move it, as if he already knew what lay below.
A breathy, panicked "Grandfather!" was all I had time to speak before he turned in that chair, just enough for me to see his face. I had never experienced a fellow human's emotion as much as I did just then, looking at his face that was usually painful yet optimistic. His face sagged, his eyes opened, but just enough for me to see water pushing past their lids. His lips quivered; he didn't even know what to say to the perverse animal that he had once welcomed.
"I'm sorry, Grandfather, I'm so sorry!! She was on the steps, and you know Cupcake! You know I tried to help her, Grandfather!!"
But my pleading was of no use.
"First my son, now my wife! I never wanted you here in the first place! It was your Grandmother that always thought you were so special! God will damn you to Hell, Etienne! And you won't be living in this house waiting for it to happen!!"
Grandfather wanted to say more, I'm sure he did. His face was bright red, and his chest rose and fell at such a rate that it's a wonder he didn't have a heart attack right then.
I respected Grandfather's decision to not want me living around him anymore. I stood for minutes, watching him gasp for air and struggle to speak. I stood, watched, and did nothing to help him. Finally, he rolled away on that little chair of his to use the telephone. The only thing I knew for sure was that this was these were the last few minutes I'd have alone with him; the last few minutes before I was destined to face all that I had been hiding from for so long.
Within an hour, a knock at the door resounded, and Grandfather informed me, simply, that "it was time to go". I was forced away from home for yet another time in my life. This time all alone, in a nicer car, with a driver a bit too stern to honestly expect to be taken seriously. I wasn't informed of where I was going, but as long as I wasn't around that nauseatingly miserable face of Grandfather's, my guilt was kept at a minimum; my optimism at a fair constant.
***
I, myself, prefer late evenings to any sunny days. Well, come to think of it, I prefer being suffocated, or burned to death, or thrown down a flight of steps to any sunny days.
But regardless of any of that, it is late in the evening now, and I am absent of my usual cup of Vicodin laced tea (although I did manage to grab a several whole pills that sit in my lap next to my marooned flask of whiskey); I'm absent of my usual everything, really.
I've awoken in the backseat of a darkened car, somewhere in a town that I do not recognize. People in the distance are whining something about closure, something about finality, and getting rid of the evil.
If my life was a movie, now would be the time that my face would steadily begin to fade, glorified by it's knowing, Richard Ramirez - Night Stalker kind of expression.
Like a cure to the relentless disease; like the solving of a masterminded crime - this is the end.
This is the release.
I swallow.
My lap is empty.
And the television screen goes black.
-Last entry in journals found clutched in the hand of the deceased Etienne Olander, found
In parking lot of St. Mary's Psychiatric Facility, est. 1999.
2) Obsession & Demise
3) PG 13
4) Indeed
5)
The only thing this New Year brought was the ending of lives. The ending of my parent's lives, specifically.
I don't remember much about the evening. It was dark, and there was a conglomeration of noises coming from several sources that I now only fail to define. From the corner in which I sought refuge, the room was a mass of moving shadows; the voice of my mother and father against the voice of a stranger who seemed all too eager to silence them.
Details about what happened? I never give them. You can call that whatever you want; you can say it's too painful for me, too long ago to accurately remember or depict. I just know that it's in the past. It's history. I do not wish to resurrect it.
I've never had much time to dwell on the specifics, anyway. Immediately transferred into foster care, it was only a few days of being nothing but a number and another face to feed before the investigators on the case informed me that they had tracked down relatives of mine living in England. And that is where I went. I can't say I'd had reason to complain, what with the large stone house that they'd welcomed me into; which barely interested me compared with observing them personally.
Grandfather was quite a character, I tell you. Restricted to a wheelchair and forever attached to an oxygen tank, he spent most of his time in his study, reading about the human body; its systems and synapses and nerves and organs. Rarely did he speak, the words made painful by a plastic tube protruding out of his throat. Grandmother said he was a heavy smoker. Her attitude towards him was one of shame rather than compassion. She 'warned' him. Now she's got to 'put up with the man.' But I felt differently about Grandfather. I often sat outside those doors, my kitty, Cupcake, crumpled into a ball beside me, unaware of the isolated man that lived beyond the walls of the room.
You may be wondering a bit more about Grandmother. She was a lovely woman, really, according to anyone else's standards. Pressed my clothes for the early mornings, slaved over the evening meals that I never seemed to want or need; always a smile on her face.
But there was one thing that dearest Grandmother never quite found the time to pay attention to. And that was my mind. I initially figured this was alright; I shouldn't have expected a woman more than three, four times my age to show interest in my creations. What would a person of her stage in life have to care about the mind? She could barely wake hers up when the sun rose.
Yet, no matter how long I tried to rationalize her apparent ignorance of my work, it continued to bother me. It infuriated me, actually. She had no respect for the fact that I was forming words into a masterpiece far more intricate than anyone could ever begin to understand. Well, I suppose the rest of the universe could understand one thing - my growing wishes to free her of her Earthly duties as a surviving human.
The first few months of my transition living with my grandparents is when I began to realize how immense my dislike for Grandmother had become. She was forever watching me from the corner of her crinkled eye. From the moment I arrived in her and grandfather's home, she did nothing but shun my religious beliefs; my denial of food during holy fasts, my longing to create an altar in which to worship the Lord. Grandmother's materialistic self could use to do some worshipping. It wouldn't hurt her to cleanse some of that blackened, roach of a soul. She always wondered why the contents of her 'hidden' bottle of Tylenol were forever decreasing. If she had known the migraines that she had caused me, there would've been no more questions.
After my anger and resentment sizzled down into a concoction of pure hatred and desire to avenge, my mind quickly became disillusioned. I could no longer think in a positive way. I could barely concentrate. I began to talk to myself for lack of better companionship, but soon even that pastime turned into more of a nuisance than a leisure, as I began disputing myself and hating my thoughts more and more., as they became less of my own, more strange and obscure than I had ever expected them to become. It isn't uncommon for me to have a full conversation with myself, disputing actions and thoughts and everything else.
Grandmother had taken away my passion for all things except one - my passion for revenge; my passion to clear the atmosphere of her every fibrous cell.
Sometimes, when sleep was impossible during those hours of the night that were the most sufferable to experience, I crept into Grandmother's room to kneel beside her bed, watching in spite to see her chest still rising with each sucking in of breath, an insatiable screaming inside to just make the rising and lowering stop; to disrupt the cycle. Acute asphyxiation would've been such an easy task in such times; holding the floral printed bag of feathers over her disgusting face, just long enough to see her chest sit still, to know that her lungs were finally a broken machine.
One particular evening, however, my heart was especially making itself known to the ears that weren't in the mood for an orchestra of the eternal blood pumping drum. I knew what it was, of course, as usual. The pills? No, they were just my pastime; a distraction from the real culprit; a distraction from trying to attain household perfection; a distraction from trying to make Grandfather, Cupcake, and I one happy family - without that woman.
I obviously did not plan to do all of this Grammy exterminating on my own. That was what my darling cat Cupcake was for. We thought very alike, Cupcake and I. She was coated by a rich, black fur that I periodically took upon myself to style. Of late, I'd preferred a shaved Cupcake. Well, except for a marvelous little star design on her back. A beauty she was; a companion, really. I felt happiness as I spent time feverishly typing away at dialogue my dearest kitty would use if she could speak. Ah! I could almost hear her then...
"Etienne, could you possibly take a moment to assist me in negating the insect web under the stairway?"
It obviously was not Cupcake that I almost heard, but Grandmother. All the more thrilling, don't you doubt it.
"I'd like to assist in negating her," I shared deviously with Cupcake. With swish of her tail, she turned to look up at me with an expression that I shall only title 'agreement.'
We had pulled ourselves lazily out of Grandfather's study where I was writing, and trudged to the stairway to see what dearest Grandmother had in mind.
While nearing the stairway, I contemplated all the time that I spent going over my hatred for Grandmother. I was fully aware that I had developed a fleeting obsession - killing her was all that ever entered my mind.
Just the other day, the four of us (us humans, that is, and Cupcake) were taking a brief rest in the parlor to 'chat', as Grandmother preferred to call it. In reality, we had just been sitting around in upholstered chairs staring at each other; Grandfather and I tense at the threat of Grandmother's scrutinizing, Grandmother sitting upright and surely contemplating scrutiny, and Cupcake sprawled limply across my lap, waiting for whatever was going on to be over so that we could play...or scheme a bit more.
Grandmother had soon stood up to bring a few cups of her 'specially brewed' tea from the kitchen (the only thing 'special' about it, I'm convinced, is that fact that she laces it with Hydrocodone, knowing that Grandfather cannot be exposed to such a drug, especially in the quantities that she adds). This had given me just enough time to notice a candelabra on the wooden bureau; a candelabra that could easily have been knocked over onto the floor, igniting each splinter of wood and everything else in that house. Most importantly, it would ignite Grandmother.
But I had soon realized that that would've caused a very messy situation. I would lose all of my belongings, all of Grandfather's belongings, and maybe even endanger his or Cupcake's lives.
No; a fire would not be the right way, even if it meant not seeing Grandmother's permed, hairspray infested hair burning to a crisp, leaving her looking like a member of the Addams family, or a character from Tales from the Crypt.
Even though it was the present, I could not get my mind off of all the previous ideas that had come to my mind; asphyxiation, fires. This, well, this was much different. Much more easy to prove to be accidental. You know, a fragile old woman, spiders that refuse to surrender to the can of poisonous spray.
"I tried to stop her; I saw that it was a dangerous area to be leaning over the banister!" I was sure I'd say when questioned. Cupcake would've surely complied with a nod or a blink.
Yes, this definitely was obsession.
My final conclusion? No obsession would be conquered without the object of obsession first being terminated. And terminate that sickening old woman was exactly what I'd do. Unless, of course, Cupcake would help too. I had no reservations of allowing her to take as much part in the demise as she wished.
My mind came back to the present as I noticed where Grandmother stood on the stairs.
"Hmm...," I contemplated, "injury from falling... could this finally be the perfect solution to the malignant existence of Grandmother?" I had been waiting for the most convenient scenario to unfold in my mind for quite a while.
Twisted over the banister of the staircase - with such a quick, swift move of the arm, or a command to Cupcake, and all of it could be banished from our lives forever! This opportunity would not be refused.
My eyes slowly shifted to Cupcake, who had already been watching me for any sign that I wanted her to step in. And with that, I carefully lifted my pointer finger in the direction of the old woman (still engulfed in trying to murder the arachnids), communicating to Cupcake to do anything to distract her enough to fall down the steps to her imminent death. And what a sweet moment it was about to be.
My kitty, never letting me down, pounced right on Grandmothers toes, and from that second on it was as if time had reverted to slow motion. One limb at a time, Grandmother flailed in an attempt to regain balance.
But what could be done? She was old, her limbs tainted by osteoporosis, and mine too drained from prolonged 'grievance' of my parents that there was no way I could've stopped her fall. Well, that's what the rest of the humans would think, anyway.
And down the steps she fell, one after another after another, until nothing was left except her twisted corpse in the basement, for she had fallen through such a weak spot in the floor! Who could've dreamed of that one?! Not even I! Ha!
For one complete second, I swore her eyes looked into mine; I swore that I saw innocence - maybe even a devastated love! "Never mind," I sadistically decided. "It's just my imagination."
Looking into the hole left in the floor, there was nothing to do but laugh, and laugh I did; insanely, madly, for minutes on end! It was a deep laughter, not far from that of a thrilled child, just with much darker undertones. I threw my head back in this laughter, my teeth gleaming from the light of the candelabra, my hair wildly trembling about my smiling face. The deed was finally complete. The dream had finally completed its journey into the mortal world. Looking one last time into the newly created homely pit, my smile faded with satisfaction.
I covered that dreadful little woman's hole with a quaint wooden board and placed an attractive rug over her now eternal home.
"Come, Cupcake," I directed my feline child, "It's naptime."
After the slight recuperation of sorts with Cupcake, I made my way down the corridor to the music room, even though I hadn't gotten a chance to clean out the spiders from the rims of the carpet since the last time I ventured to where the piano was kept.
I couldn't help but question myself about why I did what I just had. Was Grandmother really that awful?
"She didn't understand!" I remind myself. "You're better off without her."
But I couldn't exactly be sure about this. She was the second; no, third person that I thought that I would be better of without. I am the one that stole the blade from my father's shed. He asked me if I'd seen it several times since he knew I took a fancy to it - I knew he was going to give it to me, but I just weren't patient enough. However, he was patient enough to never once look for it, never once suspect that it was the back of his own dresser that kept the thing. That's where I hid it; I knew it would be right by the doorway if the day came urgently - if the day came and I had no time to fidget in my own belongings.
I was finally remembering all of this; yelling all of this.
I had cornered myself in a part of my memory that I long tried to erase. I was finally beginning to realize what an awful denial I had been in the past few months. But believe me, I never meant to do any of the things that happened. I was a good boy. I don't do bad things. My parents were an implication. They were the only obstacles between me and my dreams of class and social stance. They didn't want to hear about my plans to hold rallies in town. They never had time to read my manuscripts. Those manuscripts would've gotten me places, I tell you. Places all over, high places. France, Germany, maybe even America. Everyone would've known my name.
My parents had other ideas.
Father wanted me to continue tradition working the family store. Let me share a bit of information with you, though. I have never been a traditional kind of man. I couldn't stand for that. So I made sure that I wouldn't have to. I imagine some would call that madness. But in my opinion, it was necessary.
It didn't matter to me at this point the specifics of what was or was not madness. In the flurry of a mere afternoon, little facets of my life that had once plagued me had now incinerated the rest of my life, leaving my mind drunk with emotions of guilt and fear and realization.
I had been in denial for far too long of the vile person that I really was inside. I looked at everyone in my life with such cynicism and judgment that I lost sight of the terrors that only I had committed. I had poisoned Cupcake along the way; oh, poor Cupcake. Such a sweet soul she once was, now only my feline mistress in crime.
And as if this realization had not been enough, I heard wheels rolling frantically on a hard wooden floor - Grandfather's wheelchair!!! Had he heard me talking all this over so loudly?
My heart began to pound - no - my heart went into convulsions as I ran in prayer that he hadn't discovered my sin. How could I not have thought of what to tell him?!
Sure enough, as I reached the bottom of the stairway, Grandfather's chair was there, rolling back and forth at the board and mat, as if to move it, as if he already knew what lay below.
A breathy, panicked "Grandfather!" was all I had time to speak before he turned in that chair, just enough for me to see his face. I had never experienced a fellow human's emotion as much as I did just then, looking at his face that was usually painful yet optimistic. His face sagged, his eyes opened, but just enough for me to see water pushing past their lids. His lips quivered; he didn't even know what to say to the perverse animal that he had once welcomed.
"I'm sorry, Grandfather, I'm so sorry!! She was on the steps, and you know Cupcake! You know I tried to help her, Grandfather!!"
But my pleading was of no use.
"First my son, now my wife! I never wanted you here in the first place! It was your Grandmother that always thought you were so special! God will damn you to Hell, Etienne! And you won't be living in this house waiting for it to happen!!"
Grandfather wanted to say more, I'm sure he did. His face was bright red, and his chest rose and fell at such a rate that it's a wonder he didn't have a heart attack right then.
I respected Grandfather's decision to not want me living around him anymore. I stood for minutes, watching him gasp for air and struggle to speak. I stood, watched, and did nothing to help him. Finally, he rolled away on that little chair of his to use the telephone. The only thing I knew for sure was that this was these were the last few minutes I'd have alone with him; the last few minutes before I was destined to face all that I had been hiding from for so long.
Within an hour, a knock at the door resounded, and Grandfather informed me, simply, that "it was time to go". I was forced away from home for yet another time in my life. This time all alone, in a nicer car, with a driver a bit too stern to honestly expect to be taken seriously. I wasn't informed of where I was going, but as long as I wasn't around that nauseatingly miserable face of Grandfather's, my guilt was kept at a minimum; my optimism at a fair constant.
***
I, myself, prefer late evenings to any sunny days. Well, come to think of it, I prefer being suffocated, or burned to death, or thrown down a flight of steps to any sunny days.
But regardless of any of that, it is late in the evening now, and I am absent of my usual cup of Vicodin laced tea (although I did manage to grab a several whole pills that sit in my lap next to my marooned flask of whiskey); I'm absent of my usual everything, really.
I've awoken in the backseat of a darkened car, somewhere in a town that I do not recognize. People in the distance are whining something about closure, something about finality, and getting rid of the evil.
If my life was a movie, now would be the time that my face would steadily begin to fade, glorified by it's knowing, Richard Ramirez - Night Stalker kind of expression.
Like a cure to the relentless disease; like the solving of a masterminded crime - this is the end.
This is the release.
I swallow.
My lap is empty.
And the television screen goes black.
-Last entry in journals found clutched in the hand of the deceased Etienne Olander, found
In parking lot of St. Mary's Psychiatric Facility, est. 1999.
C e r u l e a n
(1) Pen name? Cerulean
(2) Entry title? Snow
(3)Rating: T? I'll you make the final decison then.
(4) Can we comment on your work if it's published by us? Sure thing. It would be nice to have other opinions on it, too.
(5) Post here:
Snow is like little lights that fall from the sky,
Cooling the roads of the world,
Soothing the pain of the people.
Snow is like a cold finger,
Touching my heart and turning it to ice,
Making me remember, what peace is like.
Snow is like a gentle breeze,
Falling to my face gently,
Teaching me compassion in the midst of a harsh blizzard.
Snow is like me now,
Cold, calm, and dead,
That I whatever I was, whatever I touched, have become affected.
(2) Entry title? Snow
(3)Rating: T? I'll you make the final decison then.
(4) Can we comment on your work if it's published by us? Sure thing. It would be nice to have other opinions on it, too.
(5) Post here:
Snow is like little lights that fall from the sky,
Cooling the roads of the world,
Soothing the pain of the people.
Snow is like a cold finger,
Touching my heart and turning it to ice,
Making me remember, what peace is like.
Snow is like a gentle breeze,
Falling to my face gently,
Teaching me compassion in the midst of a harsh blizzard.
Snow is like me now,
Cold, calm, and dead,
That I whatever I was, whatever I touched, have become affected.
Lanarah
(1) Lanarah
(2) Forever Dead
(3) pg13 for violence
(4) feel free to say whatever
(5)
Blood in the deepest color red,
Stains a battle field, men forever dead.
Souls lost in times of need;
Gone forever, for others greed.
They have left the body alone,
Cuts and bruises, a broken bone.
Things far worse were also done,
All now forgotten, the battles begun.
Rage and hate, hurt and fear,
Screams of terror; do you hear?
Blood is gone, in the past
Battles ended, now at last.
But still the war is raging on,
Grass is colored like the dawn.
So much blood it's a matching red'
All alone, by men forever dead
(2) Forever Dead
(3) pg13 for violence
(4) feel free to say whatever
(5)
Blood in the deepest color red,
Stains a battle field, men forever dead.
Souls lost in times of need;
Gone forever, for others greed.
They have left the body alone,
Cuts and bruises, a broken bone.
Things far worse were also done,
All now forgotten, the battles begun.
Rage and hate, hurt and fear,
Screams of terror; do you hear?
Blood is gone, in the past
Battles ended, now at last.
But still the war is raging on,
Grass is colored like the dawn.
So much blood it's a matching red'
All alone, by men forever dead
