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I have murdered.
I have taken his heart, held it in my grasp, and slowly closed my fingers until the pulp of his crushed organ leaked from my grip and dribbled to the floor.
I have done this. I have, but I do not know how. I have been careful. I have fought my nature. I thought I had won, but the whore’s legacy is too strong.
My mother. Whore. She used and connived and grew old years before her time. She used, but she used no one as badly as herself. I see her in my mind’s eye, looking ahead, looking back, stepping on the peddle as her future and her past read empty, taking her life, taking my father’s, on a manic high. They died half a mile from Mercy Bend, her home away from home. They should have kept her. They should have locked her in, but it was me they grabbed after my parents died. Me they held and jabbed and stabbed while they tried to reconfigure my mind. They failed. I still own her mysterious eyes. I still possess my father’s troubled soul. Now I have murdered. In time, they will know this too.
#
Mysterious is not the word. She is not mysterious. She is not alluring, but I cannot leave her alone.
She has a library desk set among other library desks, always alone while the others commune. She is plain, withdrawn, distant, and pure.
I am a factory dog. My job is the placing of one part on a passing spindle every five seconds while the conveyor moves along. Five thousand seven hundred spindles pass me each day. Five thousand seven hundred times my hand places a plastic part upon a spindle and my eyes watch it disappear beneath a metal guard as the spindles continue on their circular path. I place each part without thinking, without knowing. My hands are fat and gross. Sometimes they have minds of their own.
This is my life. I count the seconds as they pass, yearning for another spindle to ease by, for with each spindle I am closer to freedom. My day passes in a dreary monotony of noise, the tang of oiled air, and the endless conversation of sports and sex and mortgages.
I am no intellectual. I pretend and I play and I struggle in my attempts to impress and improve. I try and I have tried, but my mind does not grasp the intricately worded arguments of the greats.
My body? It is cast and created for my job, spread wide to fill the seat provided for me, overflowing its confines. I will not mince words. I am honest with myself. I refuse to lie. I am fat. My body is a short sloppy blob of flesh held together by pale thin skin. There is little to me but a heavy carcass wrapped around a complacent mind. I have few desires and fewer ambitions. I am not content with my hand reaching from bin to spindle five thousand seven hundred times a day. I have never been content. This, too, defines my life. I have nothing except porn, masturbation, and thoughts of her; yet I return to this room, sit in my chair four or five hours each weekday. I read the words of great men and pretend comprehension of thoughts and meanings while my ears listen for her step. I burn for a glimpse of someone with eyes so pure.
#
I am not my mother.
I fear I am.
I have used and broken a man as surly as she. Unwittingly, but this is no excuse. My crime is greater than hers. She destroyed to a purpose. I have destroyed without knowing, without caring, without trying. Mine is the guilt of complacency and carelessness.
What did I do? I have dressed severe. I have been aloof and distant. My scars remain uncovered, testaments to my cowardice on that long ago day when my courage failed and the barrel wavered. Her whore’s eyes remain in my face, but they peer from behind dark lenses, partly covered by long hair.
Could he be drawn to my hair?
My singular sick vanity is my hair. It is long flows brushed and combed. I comb and brush long hours each day. I leave my desk almost hourly to ensure each wisp has not defied my exact placement. Scabs break beneath hard-driven bristles. Sometimes a little blood flows, but my hair is precise. My vanity. My one obsession. Perhaps his downfall.
I thought they were safe, all those men who desire my mother’s eyes. Independent of means, I found this place to fill my hours. I have read when I desired, filling my mind with the words of those who seek wisdom. The reading, the words, give me no solace. At times anger fills me, consumes me. I rise and attack my madness, burying it in work and lack of thought. I fight my anger, force it back into the vast cavern of my belly until I spew its malevolence from my vagina with my monthly flow.
They should have been safe from me. They came and stared, one young man every half year or so. I knew them and knew their plan. I am plain, verging on ugly, and the once exotic parts of me have hardened into harsh lines of self despite. They come and they stare. They decide if money is worth marrying and screwing the wreck that is me.
For most the answer is no. They stare and they ponder. They move on. Some few remain for a while, those who are foolish, those who treasure money over peace of mind--but he is different. He will not leave.
#
This is my dilemma. I love and I know not why. Her appearance is grim. This is harsh but it is honest. My one virtue is honesty and I will not compromise it for the woman I love. Her clothes are stark unattractive coverings shoving the watching eye into some far distant corner. She is hard to look at, hard to see, yet she could be less than ugly. Sometimes I have fastened my gaze upon her and seen a woman approaching thirty. She is plain of feature, using neither artifice nor Revlon. She does nothing to present herself, refusing to hide the scars beneath her eyes. She will not look into the faces of those nearby. I thought her shy over her scars, but I once saw her gaze long into a mirror, smiling with secret satisfaction at her visage. Even then, even at that time of secret unseen lust, I did not know their color. Green, brown, pale blue, her eyes remained and remain a mystery, a sight I have seen but not understood. Her glasses are tinted dark, small, narrow, perched challengingly on her nose, but I have seen her eyes. I have seen them, and I have seen her breasts and her hair when I approached and asked.
She rose from her desk and moved with tight bound grace to the shelves, reaching high to bring down a writing of Kant. She handed it to me. Our fingers touched, sending a jolt through the tendons of my hand, leaving my skin and flesh and bone sensitive and pained. The book fell, striking the floor with a papery clunk, ripping pages and binding. She said nothing. She bent, kneeled, retrieved the book. Her hair scented of fresh scrubbed soap. She was there, crouched on knee and toes before me, submissive in posture. Waiting. I looked down at her, cherishing this opportunity to stare, and I saw between the strands of parted hair a scalp red and angered. Tiny bits of discarded scab and dry blood were captured in thin strands. Her blouse gaped at the top. Small, cigarette scared, captured in a too tight bra, her breasts waited for my touch. She peered up at me, her dark glasses fallen slightly down her nose. She rose and I jerked my eyes from her innocence. She pushed her glasses up, adjusted her blouse. Her still face looked at the book with irritated disapproval. She looked at the loose binding and torn corners, and then she handed it to me one more time, taking care of my grip before she withdrew her hand.
I watched her walk back to her lonely desk and pictured an angry hand jabbing a sharp bristled brush into her hair and scalp until skin weakened, broke, and bled. I imagined cigarettes pressed between thin lips, a draw of smoke, a tight smile, and then a quick gesture before lit end met pale flesh. I looked at her and saw a string stretched tight across a violin’s bridge.
#
He has been here too long.
I do not know him. He has been a silent presence pressed into the wood of his chair. I have seen him, dismissed him, placed him into the huge category of people who do not exist. I heard his voice at times. I heard him dispute and debate. I saw him grow quiet, silent, a withdrawn presence, a child trapped in a room of adults. I dismissed him as unimportant. He was nothing, a pretender to a mind. I dismissed him.
I am blind and cruel and own little compassion. My memories and resolve have been a sharpened spoon, digging and prying, feeding me to the empty void until I became nothing but a stretched skin over a few brittle bones, a hollowed shell of anger, walking, speaking, caring not where I walked or to whom I spoke.
He had been for--a time. I do not know if he had been a presence for days or months or years. He was there and I saw him. He spoke to another, said a few words when asked an opinion. His answer was short and apologetic, almost silent, yet I heard him speak and I saw the others. They regarded him with respect, almost awe.
I kneeled at his feet and saw him. I stared past the darkness of my lenses and saw hungry eyes fastened on my worthless breasts. He looked in my eyes. He started, a guilty expression crossing his face. His gaze quickly withdrew. A flush colored his neck.
And this is where my fault lies. This is the beginning of my downfall. Curiosity. For the first time in a decade a man became real. I refused to watch him, refused to look upon him with my mother’s damnable eyes, but I did look. He did see. His corpulent eyes, buried squints between folds of flesh, caught mine, were held, and I knew he was lost.
#
Daily, I returned. I studied works and I studied her. I spoke of her, heard of her, and wished for her to look up from her desk, to walk over to me, to speak my name. I was fascinated, infatuated. I lusted and sought and was ignored. I did not exist. I had no heartbeat, no breath, no presence.
She is plain and severe and her dark glass visage decorates my every wall. She is forbidding. I want her and I am not alone. I have seen her followed by others. They look at me with warning and threat, young men of height and brawn. They watch; they warn, and I smile. They are soon gone.
My hands are unnaturally strong.
#
He did not know. He was blind, preoccupied by the pages set before him. His life must be pages. My life is pages. I am surrounded by pages. My eyes have stripped his pages, unbound that which was once whole.
Pages. I glue bindings and reattach the torn edge. My one art and skill is the taking of a damaged sheet and making it once again complete. I am obsessed with completeness. This is one area where I am victor, where I am safe from her bile, from my mother, the high priced manipulating despicable whore.
I remember feeling safe. I remember youth, then she died, taking him. I learned the truth of my being, the truth of my begetting. I learned to doubt and question and hide. I learned to bury myself in Mercy Bend’s sometimes dusty, too little room, surrounded by books and orderlies and impersonal doings. They gave me drugs, tied my hands, and I cursed my mother.
My father? He had the making of me. He gave me his weak infected soul. My heart is encased by pus, buried beneath his disease. I am sickness. My white corpuscles are dying. My antibodies have fled. I fear to touch others lest my corruption spread, and so I touch myself, rape myself, trying to tear my father out. Failing.
The Man? He sits in his chair. Daily. Reading. I catch him studying my eyes. He smiles and is lost. He loves.
I have feared this. I have failed again. I remain untouched, have not touched, a virgin of mind in a self-violated body. I have listened too closely, looked too often, and he is trapped within my claws.
#
I have followed her. I think she knows. She has seen me when she shops and when she walks. She has seen me, and she has not seen me at all. Her dark glassed eyes cross me, pass me, dismiss me. I am nothing, nobody. She sees me and does not know I am. I snap a lens and have one more picture for my bathroom walls.
What have I seen? She is a woman alone. She is a woman complete, needing no one, nothing. Her home is small, her car is old, rusted with age and miles. She needs no people for she has pets. I once walked inside her home. The door was ajar. It swayed in the breeze, gently opening for me, inviting me. I crossed her threshold and entered.
Five cats roam through her house. They have five bowls. Thucidides, Pericles, Ramses, Augustus, Maximus, each bowl inscribed with silver pen. The bowls are unused; clean, pristine trophies hanging upon her living room wall. Cat food lies spilled on the floor. Her cupboards have stains of smeared blood. Razor blades rest beside her phone. She has no toys, no men, no porn. She is pure.
I left, thrilled with my crime, remembering adrenaline when I once helped steal a dead man’s shoes.
#
I own five cats. I have fed them and vetted them. Cats invade my home, an ongoing motif fighting stark white walls.
Five. The number rolls in my head, refusing to be denied. Cats die. My cats die, and I replace them, feeling nothing, caring nothing for the one gone or the one new. One cat leaves. Another enters. I give him the name of the dead, a name sullied by my indifference.
I cannot love.
He does not know. He remains pressed into the grains of his seat, a corpulent figure larger within than without. He does not see. I have allowed my eyes to touch. I see adoration in his gaze. I know the horror of what I have done.
#
I have never loved before. There has been no wife, no children. My father is unknown. My mother is a distant name, gone before I turned four. Hooker, streetwalker, any man’s toy, she stained bricks and glass and diamonds red. Bullets broke her, broke the window and display. She fell inside and bled.
But I have known love, have made love. Fifty times in five years I have paid my dues, have coupled in cars, behind bushes, and once in a dirty yellow walled room. I have known women and found them more elastic than real. Their romance is imagined. They seduce, lie, grasp, and steal. They are tawdry filth encased within pristine skin—-but she--she is broken strength, battered armor. She is pure. Her eyes heal—-heal me; they promise salvation for my soul.
#
Another month has passed. I have traced him. I found his home. In the early hours of morning, on Tuesday during the month of May, I visit his curb and lift one black plastic bag, leaving one of my own.
Later, cats surround me. I sit naked on the floor. His garbage surrounds me. I discover emptied trays of frozen dinner. I find rags and bags and used Charmin. I find discarded books, magazines of science, and I find a hundred pages of naked women doing things I do not know. I picture him, stroking, stroking, looking while he thinks of me.
I find these things and a touch of light rests upon my soul. I find these things and I rejoice in power--and then my soul plummets into the clutches of Satan. My soul is blackened, stained by the sin of my mother, by the weakness of my father. I cry my first tears in twelve years. I lift a cat and gouge my belly with his claws.
#
The television is before me. Sound off, bodies twine, silently moan. The woman kneels, takes him in her hand, kisses.
I picture her face, picture glorious eyes looking at me, lips opening--.
I moan and turn off the DVD. She is pure and I am sullied. A cesspool, a sewer, I exist to move parts and dream of her. I look at my hands. Strong, capable, surrounded by suet. Thick. Guilty. They should be removed.
I take the DVD. Broken. Trashed, followed by printed pages; a thousand women gone. Her purity still adorns my walls.
I tie the bag and take my women out to the curb. It waits for me there, a letter on the ground. Her name, her address, spilling from a dog opened bag. I grasp and read and know she has been here. She has seen me, has known me. She has thrown her purity on my disease.
Oh God! I am no longer alone.
#
I sit amid garbage and read. He has written a letter addressed to me. Love. Devotion. His words hold no life. They are dark and slow.
How long? Five years. He has nurtured hopeless passion years longer than I have known. He gazed at women and dreamed of me. My crime, my sin, occurred before I knew.
Somehow, I have possessed him. I have ripped his heart from his body, stolen hours and years from his life. I have murdered his chance for happiness, for fulfillment.
I know not what to do. His words are filled with passion and despair.
DEAR GOD! I AM NOT MY MOTHER!
I am not! I swear to God and to all the other powers there may be, I will not lay victims at my feet. I will not smile at men I have crushed.
I have pureed his heart. I have shriveled his soul. I have murdered. I have done this. I admit my sin. I admit my crime. I repent and accept the price conscience demands of me. I will give myself to him. I will give him my arms and my lips and my body, refraining not from any part in the play. Numb of life, empty of meaning, I will lay for his love.
A knock. He is here. He enters and I lay back, dressed in cat fur and scars and blood. I drop his letter, open knees and hold out arms. He smiles grim, is soon unclothed, and then I am buried beneath fat, smothered and raped. I am willing. I scream. He enters, finishes, and then his powerful hands caress. They stroke damp thighs, bleeding belly, scared breasts. His eyes are dark. He whispers mother and whore. I shudder and weep for my murderous crime. He touches my face, my neck. I cannot breathe. I shudder and shake. He rides me again. Groans. Screams. I cannot breathe.
#
She lays beneath me, still, pale, eyes wide. They are green and brown and smoky blue. I look at her and love and curse. I look at my hands and weep. They are fat and gross and have minds of their own. I hate these hands, hate their strength. I hate them almost as much as they hate whores.
I look at her and weep because I am still alone.
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POSTED: May 3, 2006
Copyright ©2006 by Author
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