Childhood Memories, A Poem

Hatred courses through me
Like the California Wildfires.
The taint of reading
About the children's suicide
And the Pain they've endured
Flashes me back
To the days of my own
Suffering and humiliation.

The times were less then,
The days seemed shorter
And the hatred infinite.
The children drew their power
From my naivete
And turned it all back on me,
Whisper campaigns
In the old child's way
Following me like flies,
Constantly buzzing
And tearing my attention
Away from those
Who deserved it most.

These harsh words,
About my size
And about my preference,
Were wolves of grammar,
Gnawing at my
Pride and self-esteem,
Until nothing else
Was left in my place
But an insecure child
Frightened to be outside
Or communicate with others.

My friends were my toys,
Bits of plastic
Imbued with thoughts
And feelings and souls,
Entire communities of them
Existing purely
On the power of
My imagination.
I was a superhero,
A god manipulating
The good guys
Into confrontations
Where the bad guys
Always suffered as I had,
And the heroes
Always saved the day.

On particularly bad days
The villains would die,
Limbs rent from
The injection molding
And sent flying,
Old toys meeting their end
And making way
For a new input group.
The life cycle was short
And replacements
Were a beg away.

But when I would leave
The pain would return,
And a turn of the corner
Would bring my happiness
Crashing down.
The neighbourhood kids,
Intimidated by intelligence
And frustrated
By unimaginative lives
Would torment me
And humiliate me
And turn my life
Back in to
The hellish world
I frequently knew.

I see a new generation
Coming up as I had
And feeling the pain
As I have felt.
I want to reach out to them
And guide them
As I wished to be guided
Or give them
The tools that helped me
Endure the pain.
But I can't.
This type of pain,
As I know from experience,
Is a personal matter,
And learning to live
With what they've done
Is a part
Of growing up strong.

Some people can not.
Some people have seen
And felt too much
And in their eyes
Life is pain
And death is the excess
They've been longing for
So they indulge.
I can not nor will not
Hate or judge them.
The people who drove them
To their untimely graves
Need to suffer
As we have suffered.

And once more
I am reminded of
The ineffectual concept
Of Karma
And how "What goes around
Comes around"
And realize
These bullies and their ilk
Get what they want
One-hundred percent
Of the time.
And I weep for the future
Of not just America
But the world.
For in seeing what I know
Is coming of age
I know of our
Downward Destiny.

On The Subject Of Funerals, Part 3: Going Down.

It took a minute or two for my breathing to slow down enough to talk. By that time, we were already on the highway, doing 70 miles per hour in a 45 zone. In retrospect, I'm amazed we weren't pulled over.

I thought of the situation back at the graveyard. Was everyone okay? I know Lilly and Vincent were dead, but did anyone else survive the onslaught? I felt immeasurably sick to my stomach, and I think this time it had nothing to do with being concussed. My guilty conscience at running away from the massacre was tugging at me, telling me in no uncertain terms...

"We have to go back..." I started, but Jim cut me off before I could start to explain.

"Like hell. Did you see that? She tore Vincent's fucking head off!"

"And it's still in the bed of the truck, yes I know!" I contested hotly, "But the fact of the matter is we need to stop that... that... whatever that's doing it! We need to make sure everyone else is okay! And we need to get a policeman or a SWAT team or something!"

"And why exactly would we have to go back there for that?" He countered. He was already on his third cigarette since leaving the cemetary. I couldn't smoke, my hands were shaking too badly.

"I don't know, I just... I just know it. We have to go back, baby," I added calmly. The shaking had spread from my hands to the rest of my body by the time I had finished talking, and it was all I could do to keep myself from throwing up again out of fear. Still, I have a pretty good sense of right and wrong, and I knew, in this instance, that I was right.

Jim was quiet for a minute, concentrating on maintaining his hellish speed, until he finally slowed down and pulled off to the side of the highway right in front of a grocery store.

"Are you sure, baby?" He asked in an ominous tone, staring at me with a face that registered both fear and anxiety. “I want you to think really hard about this, and tell me it’s the right thing to do.”

Lilly and Vincent dead. Mrs. Carol back from the dead, killing en masse. A whole funeral’s worth of possible casualties. Run away. For fuck’s sake, tell him to step on it and never turn back around again. Tell him to grab his stuff and we’ll move to Samoa or Fiji or somewhere! Just don’t say...

"Yes," I replied with certainty.

Idiot.

"Then we'll need supplies. You mind if we make a stop by my place?" he asked.

"Ummm... What?"

"I am not going anywhere near that thing without packing something, and I'd feel a lot better if you were packing too, baby. I've got a few guns my dad left me in his will with the ammo for 'em and a machete in the garage. Which one you want?" he added quickly with a glance in my direction.

I paused, the prospect of using a weapon turning over in my mind. I’ve never fired a gun before, but I was pretty sure I could at least point it in the right direction if needed. But a machete? I knew how to handle a big knife well (being raised by a professional chef will do that to you), and even though I was scared shitless about having to use it, I preferred the devil I know.

I turned to Jim, still shaking so much I was practically vibrating with fear, and said, “Machete.”

He nodded curtly, pulled back into the travel lane, and floored it to his house. Ten minutes later we got there.

He took the shortcut in, squealing around corners and barely missing the cars parked along the side of the road. He even gave his elderly neighbour down the street quite a turn, almost running her over and causing her to curse at us in a choked voice as we sped past. The last I saw of her was a middle finger in the rear-view mirror.

Jim was already unbuckled by the time we got in his driveway, and he dashed off without saying a single word to me. I hastily hit his garage door opener a split-second later, and waited patiently for the archaic machine to spring to life and let me inside. In the meantime, I looked around Jim’s yard; he had spent an awful lot of time out here, planting shrubs and meticulously edging and trimming his yard. The man lived for working outside, and it certainly showed.

At last the garage door went up enough for me to enter, and I did so rapidly, keeping my eyes peeled for any sign of the afore-mentioned machete. I spied books (many of which were so peeled and faded from years outdoors that you couldn’t tell what they were from the cover), old issues of home improvement magazines, tools and machines, and at last, a tactical machete sitting on a shelf above the washer. It was high up, but one of the boxes of faded books proved to be all the stepladder I needed to fetch it down. 

As I felt the cool plastic handle in my hand, I heard an extremely loud noise that sounded like two pieces of wood being slapped together. And at that exact moment, what little colour I had left in my face drained. I know that sound. Oh please dear God don’t let it be what I think it is. My feet started to move me without my consent, running through the door in the back of the garage into the living room.

Nothing there.

I tried the living room (“Jim?”), the kitchen (“Baby, where are you?”), the dining room (“BABY?!”), the guest bedroom (“JIM?!”), and the hall bathroom (“ANSWER ME, GOD DAMN IT!”), and found nothing out of sorts. 

It was when I took my first step in to the master bedroom that I knew what happened. The master bathroom light was on. He never left the lights on, and was meticulous about that fact. A sense of cold dread swept over me as I stole in to his bedroom, creeping past the bed that we shared, past the dresser I picked out, and past the closet full of the clothes that still smelled like him. Creeping to the door to the bathroom. I peeked my head around the corner and almost collapsed on the spot.

Jim was in the bathtub with the clear curtain liner drawn. You could still see the fragments of his skull sliding down the tile behind it.

I fled from the room as fast as I could, blindly running in to things along the way, until I managed to make it to the living room. I finally collapsed on to the couch and drew myself up in to a ball as the tears started.

******      ******      ******      ******      ******      ******

Day faded to night as I lay there on the couch. In my head I was recounting the times Jim and I had jostled with each other for the mirror in the bathroom, the times we would make dinner for one another (I did most of the cooking, but the man was a genius when it came to grilling and steaks), even the times we were making love. And that’s what it all boiled down to: I loved him. I had been vehemently opposed to telling him before, but I did. And now I couldn’t.

I don’t know how much later it was that I got myself off of the couch. I slowly approached the master bedroom again, taking care to look for anything out of place. Nothing was wrong in the room itself, aside from an open shoebox on his bed still housing one of the guns and two boxes of ammunition. I turned away from it and went to the closet. And as I closed it, I felt my guts wrench even more. Too painful, too soon. 

Also, too necessary.

I moved on to the bathroom and braced myself.

The bathtub was the same as I left it, with Jim’s corpse huddled in the corner opposite the tap and surrounded by the curtain liner (presumably so as not to have left a mess behind himself). I looked around the bathroom for any sign, anything he might have left me to tell me why. I needed closure, almost craved it at this point. As I turned around, I found what I was looking for: a hastily scribbled note sitting on the counter by the sink. I picked it up and read:

“Thomas,

I didn’t do this to hurt you, baby. I did this because I can’t deal with this shit. I can’t deal with dead people walking, and I can’t bring myself to kill someone. Take the guns and run away, baby. Go. Save yourself. I’m saving me.

I love you. Have since the moment I met you, and will forever in heaven.

-Jim Hollister”

I set the tear-stained note back down where I found it and slid to the floor, my back braced against the sink cabinet. I hated myself right now, more than I ever have or thought I ever would. I killed Jim, I thought. I pushed him in to going back to the graveyard, and he couldn’t cope. Jim was my life, he was everything I’ve lived for since the divorce and the coming out to my parents, and this is how I repay him? I’m not worthy of his love.

Despondant, pissed off, confused, and miserable, I lifted myself from the floor. Misery and fury coursed through my veins, and (at least in my mind’s eye) I heard the most peculiar sound...

Snap.

I strode to the shower, threw open the curtain, and picked up the gun from the bottom where it had fallen out of Jim’s hand. After wiping the gun off with a hand towel, I closed the curtain for the last time, grabbed the box off the bed, and made my way back through the house, closing doors and turning off lights as I went. By the time I got to the garage door (shoving the machete in my pants as I got there), It was so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

The truck turned over obligingly as I cranked it. I pulled out the driveway, put the truck in drive, and sped off to meet my death.