The Balloon Letters: Ibrahim

"My father calls me 'youngest son.' He says it with a tone of disappointment, a tinge of shame. His deep voice practically hums with his dislike of me. He won't look me in the eyes and, for the past five years, he won't say my name.

"Its Ibrahim, though my younger sisters call me 'Ib.' They are the only good thing in my life and they will be married out before too long. Mariam will be sixteen soon. Father has already started the bargaining process for her, as if she were a piece of particularly choice meat. It was the same with Farah, my older sister.

"She is the reason my father calls me 'youngest son' and my mother no longer looks at me. Farah, beautiful and radiant as the coming dawn. I couldn't let them kill her. I could not follow them as they dragged her through the streets, screaming for her blood. They called it an 'honour' killing, but there was no honour to be found that day. Only my sister, dead. And I am alive because I am a son."

Mariam and Jinan clambered into Ibrahim's room, their sandaled feet slapping against the stone floor and echoing down the hallway. They held their breath, trying to keep their hearts from leaping out of their chests. Ib was acting oddly lately. He always grew more quiet this time of year, but this silence was punctuated with odd and jumbled bits of nonsense.

He looked at his sisters and smiled. They reminded him of Farah so much. Even now, five years later, he felt the spasmic ache in his chest for her. He still heard her pleas for mercy as they stoned her. Her cries to God as the lash settled across her bared back.

Sometimes he woke up to her screams, his tears streaming down his face. Looking at Mariam and Jinan only strengthened his desire that nothing like that happen to them. Looking at his slip of paper, he silently pleaded that someone, somewhere, remember Farah after he was gone. He could not bear the idea that she be forgotten after he had left the world.

He stood and wrapped his arms around his sisters, holding them close. His father had finalized Mariam's engagement to a man three times her age; the brother of Farah's husband. The brother of the man who forced his sister to undergo circumcision and had her murdered when she was raped. A man who beat her every day for not providing him with a son. He would not see Mariam be killed and mutilated by the brother.

He grabbed his pack, a small black balloon hed been given after a trip to the city inside the front pocket. He would take his sisters some place where they'd be safe and he would send his love, and pleas for forgiveness, for Farah to the starry night sky in a tiny black balloon.

The Meaning of being the Fat Girl

Fat Girl means Easy.
Like cookies left on the counter.
Like chips with a Fourth of July hamburger.
Like "There are starving kids in Africa, clean your plate."

Fat Girl means Low Self Esteem.
Like lower than pond scum.
Like lower than the molten core of the Earth.
Like so low I've discovered new fossils.

Fat Girl means Voracious.
Like I'll gobble your dick up like a hot dog.
Like I'll do whatever kinky shit you want if you promise to love me.
Like please love me.

Fat Girl means Easy.
Like I'll never find it anywhere else so what does it matter if you care?
Like "You're gagging for it, aren't you whore?"
Like "Sex Equals Love."

Fat Girl means Food.
Like Hell Yeah, I know how to cook!
Like I'll have another serving of dessert, please.
Like I'll have what he's having and double it.

Fat Girl means Eating Disorders.
Like I haven't eaten in two days because I can't stand myself.
Like I have thrown up three times for one plate of food.
Like I am binge eating because I am starved.

Fat Girl means Disability.
Like I can't even leave my house because of the anxiety.
Like I can't keep the razor from my skin because I loathe this body.
Like every day feels like an affront to God because I've created a new definition of "imperfect."

Fat Girl means Shame.
Like "You should be ashamed to be seen in public like that."
Like "That's never going to fit you."
Like "You'd be so pretty if you lost weight."

Fat Girl means Choices.
Like I choose food as a weapon and a comfort.
Like "If I stay this way then I'll be safe from being raped."
Like "If I stay this way I'll never find someone to love me."

Fat Girl means Horror.
Like being raped because you are "Easy."
Like being humiliated every time you try to look pretty.
Like so much disgust aimed at me I can hardly breathe.

Fat Girl means Self-Loathing.
Like looking at your reflection and wishing you could just cut it all off.
Like looking at your reflection and wanting to slit your own throat.
Like telling yourself that you couldn't possibly be worth anything.

Fat Girl means Back-handed Compliments.
Like "If only you'd lose weight, you could be so gorgeous."
Like "How much weight have you lost?"
Like "I think this would look good on you, even though you are bigger."

Fat Girl means Easy.
Like I must be dying for the attention.
Like I must be too stupid to realize you'll never love me.
Like I must be easy because who would actually WANT me?

Fat Girl means Pity.
Like who wants to be the fat girl?
Like who could ever possibly want her?
Like "Wow, I feel sorry for her."

Fat Girl means Nothing Fits.
Like being told "We don't have that in your size."
Like being forced to wait in Victoria's Secret because the cashier thinks you're too fat for that thong you're purchasing.
Like everything looks like it was made for a woman thirty years older than me.

Fat Girl means Never Being Comfortable in Your Own Skin.
Like no compliments are ever sincere.
Like no matter how pretty you feel today, you're not.
Like you will never be pretty.

Female Liberation: Part 1

In rolling red script
the declarations proclaimed that a
woman's life was profane. With
sadistic glee they began the purge,
chortling in delight as they
raped, pillaged and purged.

Some they kept alive, for how
else would their population thrive,
but it was decreed that no
female babies would be kept
alive. Mothers, sisters, aunts,
daughters and friends were
each dragged away for no
other sin than that of being womankind.
The smoke from the pillars
let off a dark and foul stench,
tangled with cries to "burn the
wretched wench!"

The gallows bowed under the
weight of so much female weight.
The ones to be kept were corralled,
collared and caged. They were
given numbers instead of names.
The were fed, but they were
starved. They were kept healthy for
breeding and when a woman was
deemed infertile she was
executed with no remorse.

For a century they were enslaved by
the men in power. For a century they
struggled. (All the centuries of female
liberation and female power shattered.)

One night, in the quivering darkness, a
woman, once named Amira now called
number 27, prayed to the goddess, her
tears pleading.

"O great and wonderful goddess, please
send a one who will save us from this
hell. We are faithful to you, please be
faithful to us as well." That night
the Goddess heard, as if for the first
time, the cries of the harmed. She
wept at the chaos caused and the
cruelty of such caustic laws.

So, when the breeding season came,
she caused a soft rain to ensure
feminine seeds. Her magic was gentle
and pervasive, calming even the most
hostile of the delegates.

The Boundaries (Trigger Warning)

I have no sexual boundaries. No idea what a healthy sexual relationship entails.
So when you touched me, sliding your hand up my leg, I told myself that I was...
Overreacting
Being stupid
You're my friend
If I didn't want it, why didn't I get out of the car?

My stomach clenched. I felt sick for the rest of the day.
You told me you were just teasing me. You meant nothing by it.
You said we were just friends.
I tried to establish a boundary; this far and no further.

I told you,
"I'm married."
"You're sweet, but you are a little out of my age range."
"Even if I were free, I wouldn't be interested."
But I didn't tell you "No," and I didn't get out of the car.

The worst thing in the world was realizing that my body was reacting,
in ways I never wanted it to,
in ways that make me feel sick to my stomach,
in ways that it shouldn't have.

You said it was an accident when you poked me in the breast.
You called me out on putting my hand in the way of yours.
You asked if I was nervous about being in the car with you.
You said it was all fun and games.
You were the one who said that "No" meant "No."

But I didn't say "No," did I? I tried to say it in ways that wouldn't hurt.
I tried to say it in ways that made it clear.
I tried to avoid hurting YOUR feelings, while you invaded my personal space.

And it was my fault, because I didn't say "No."
You took my silence as consent, when it was really no consent at all.

I have no sexual boundaries, I belittle myself into thinking its all in my head.
Because that's what I've been told my whole life.
My silence is taken for a "Yes" while my heart keeps screaming "No."

Losing My Religion

I am defying gravity.

I glance out the window of the Greyhound Bus. We’ve been broken down in a small town in Kansas for an hour now. Everyone else has gotten off, for one reason or another, but I’ve stayed put. My mind has been too focused for me to pay attention to anything else.
I am running away. I am seizing the day; I am a million choices and chances packed into a tiny suitcase. I am doing the impossible.

“It’s going to be another hour before we’re able to get moving again, miss. Do you want to take another bus?” a portly gentleman with a pocket watch smiles at me. His eyes sparkle out from the wrinkles and his moustache curls at the ends. He almost reminds me of Santa Claus, but this is a bus not a sleigh and its July not December.

“It’s bad luck if you don’t finish a journey the way you started it.” I reply, smiling. I must sound crazy, talking about luck when mine has already been so dreadful. This is probably my fault. Momma always said bad things followed me like fleas follow a hound. Momma also said that it was bad luck to start something and not follow it through to the end.

The bus driver shrugs and goes back to the front. He looks back at me for a moment, before shaking his head and climbing down. I look back out the window at the endless fields and dust. I suppose they call it the Dust Bowl for a reason.

Thinking of Momma makes me feel mildly ill. I can see her face, bruised, and her once brightly colored tourmaline eyes dull and sunken. She was scarecrow thin, her calico dress hanging off her bony frame. She kept pressing the rolled up twenties into my sweaty palms, whispering so that he wouldn’t hear her. All her years of taking in laundry, baking bread, wiping bottoms; all of her dreams being pressed into my hands. All of it rolled into a coffee can she had hidden under our porch. I just looked at her, uncomprehending.

“Livy, you have to take a chance.” She had whispered. “This is your chance, take it.”

“Momma,” I replied, confused. “What are you talking about?”

“You can’t stay here forever. You were born under a good sign, Livy, make the most of it.”

I wipe a stray tear from my cheek. I wonder how angry he was when he found out I was gone. I wonder how long he made her stand, tied to the whipping post. It is too late for guilt. It is too late to turn back. She wouldn’t want me to do that anyway. She wouldn’t want me to feel guilty, it isn’t as if I didn’t ask, beg, her to come with me.
I am powerless to change anything at this point. I am several hundred miles away from the back woods and dirt roads of Shawnee.

I am tired. The exhaustion of my frantic escape takes up physical weight at the marrow of my bones. I rest my cheek against the smudged glass and stare up at the perfectly empty sky. It is the bluest sky I’ve ever seen and I wonder if things change color when you are free.

A girl, about my age, climbs up and into the bus. She has short flaxen hair curling perfectly around her heart-shaped face. She has opal eyes that glitter with unsuppressed joy and anticipation. She awkwardly lugs a big black suitcase. It reminds me of a coffin and I want nothing to do with it, but I still stand to offer her a hand.

“Can I help you with that?” I ask, stretching out a hand to help.

“Its ‘may I help you?’” She replies, letting me grab the handle. “You certainly can help, but the question is will I let you help?”

“Obviously you will let me, as I just did.”

She smiles, little crinkles appearing on her nose. She has a smattering of chocolate colored freckles across her nose and cheeks. She is a hand shorter than I, but she carries herself as if she were a giant, proud.

“I’m Sadie.” She says, wiping her hand on her jean shorts before extending it to me.

“Livy.” I reply, shaking her hand. I think, after I take her hand, that I should have wiped my hand on my jeans as well.

“Short for Olivia?” she asks, settling herself into a seat across the aisle from me.

“Short for Olive.” I say, looking at the gray-green top I am wearing.

“Ah. Sadie is what my mother always called me, but my name is actually Seraphina.” She wrinkles her nose, as if she has just tasted something sour. “I prefer Sadie.”

We sit in companionable silence for a moment as she adjusts herself. She looks out her side of the bus, wrinkles her nose again and looks back at me. She seems to be sizing me up, her eyes drifting over every detail of my outfit.

“Where are you going Livy?” she asks, turning so that her back is pressed against the bus wall.

“Headed up to Maine, possibly taking the first boat I can find to Europe.”

“Maine, huh? That’s where I’m going. What’s in Europe?”

“Life.” I reply, a small smile creeping onto my face.

“Life?” She cocks her head to one side and ponders my expression.

“Well, a chance for a life, I suppose.”

She looks at me, quizzically, but doesn’t ask anything else.

“Why are you going to Maine?” I ask, mimicking her posture and positioning.

“I’m going to be a teacher. An English teacher for Miss Abernathy’s School for Girls.” She says this in a pompous tone that makes me laugh. “It’s very fancy, you know.”

“I wouldn’t know fancy if it bit me.” I say, honestly. “I grew up in the back woods of Oklahoma.”

“Ah, Oklahoma! I have been through there. I have recently come from Utah.”

“What were you doing in Utah, if you don’t mind my asking?”

She gets quiet. Her eye color shifts, ever so subtly, and for a moment I wonder if she will begin to cry. Just as I am about to apologize for being so nosy, she smiles and gives her head a saucy shake.

“Why, living the American dream of course!” she says, brightly. She shifts in her seat so that she can look out the window and that ends our conversation. I don’t try to engage her again, instead tugging my small bag closer to me and leaning my head against the window again.

The bus driver huffs and puffs as he climbs back into the bus. He is followed by two or three other people, all lugging awkwardly shaped suitcases. An old lady in a pink hat and sunglasses plants herself in front of me and a man, whom I can only assume is her husband, plops down beside her. As he sits he expels a small amount of gas, leaving me breathlessly nauseous.

I try to be inconspicuous as I carefully move from my seat. The last thing I want is a confrontation over bodily functions that can no longer be controlled. With a small smile I look at Sadie, half pleading with eyes. She seems to catch my drift and, taking her suitcase, follows me to the very back of the bus. We sit across from each other, staring out of our respective windows as the bus finally starts and toddles toward an exit ramp.
Mostly we stare out of the windows, trying to soak in all the different scenes flashing past us. Every hour or so Sadie asks me a question about Oklahoma and I ask her a question about Utah.

“Is the Great Salt Lake really made of Salt?” I ask, sipping a cola. She laughs at me and takes a bite of her sandwich.

“It isn’t ‘made’ of salt, but it is the largest salt water lake in the Western Hemisphere.”

“How do you know so much?” I ask, accepting a bite of her turkey on rye in exchange for a sip of my drink.

“I read a lot.” She replies, shrugging. She smiles between bites of her sandwich, pulling off chunks for me. I offer her my other bottle of cola, but she waves me off and just takes another sip out of the already opened bottle.

In Indiana we are stopped for routine maintenance. We leave the bus and find a tiny motel room. Collapsing on the beds, we sigh in unison, which makes us giggle.

“Did you have a boy back home?” she asks, turning on her side and propping herself up on her elbow.

“No.” I say, shaking my head and staring at the ceiling. “You?”

“Yes.” She whispers. She rolls back onto her back, her silence tearing at my heart a bit. She has the bruised look Momma used to get whenever he came home after drinking and whoring.

Without thinking, I reach my hand out and take hers in mine. And we just lay there, holding hands as if we have known each other forever. We fall asleep that way, not caring that our arms go numb from hanging off the bed.

In the morning we board the bus and race to the back. I win and we trade suitcases for the day. Inside her bag is a diary, which I don’t touch, and miscellaneous clothes. Under the clothes is a layer of books. Encyclopedias, a dictionary and a couple novels. She smiles at me and winks, holding up my own diary. She opens it to the first page and I don’t stop her. I suddenly feel lighter. As if her reading my words validates me in some way. I feel like a bird about to take off for the first time.

I let her read about the beatings, the rape, Momma’s bruises and the roll of twenties that bought my freedom. I let her read about him and the whipping post. I let her read about my own Sadie being buried before her first birthday.

She never says a word, reading quietly. Every now and then she will look up at me, a knowing smile gracing her face. The smile is tight, but kind, as if she has become too brittle to really smile.

“Well,” she says, after another hour of silence. “Aren’t you going to read mine now?”

“I didn’t want to intrude.” I reply, lamely.

“And my reading your diary wasn’t an intrusion?” she replies. She pauses a moment, before adding, “Are you mad?”

“No, actually I’m relieved. I’ve never been able to tell anyone those things. Not even Momma, even though she knew.”

“I want you to read mine, then. Maybe it will help me as well.” She makes me promise that I will, then turns to watch the Indiana countryside roll by the window.

I slip my hand into her suitcase and retrieve the diary. It is a better quality than mine, with a fine leather cover inscribed with the name “Seraphina.” I am afraid to open it, afraid to read what this young woman, this stranger, has felt. To read what she has believed, what she has done.

With a deep breath, I open it to the first page.

“I am dying.” It says. “I am wilting, like a flower in a too sunny window box with no water or love.”

She lets me read. She lets me read about her forced marriage to her mother’s cousin, a man with two other wives already. She lets me read about her love for her younger brother who has gone off to Vietnam. She lets me read about a daughter she didn’t even name before she fled. She lets me read about a young man named Carson, a man she loved enough to run away for, a man who abandoned her in the mountains of Colorado.
When I come to the end, I find a pen and write her a note.

“Freedom is riding a Greyhound bus with a stranger who becomes a friend.”

In Pennsylvania, Sadie gets off. She doesn’t say a word, but she waves goodbye as the bus pulls away.

I open my diary to write and find a note of my own. I smile and twist to catch one last glimpse of the beautiful young woman who just stepped out of my life.

“Losing your religion isn’t always a bad thing, sometimes it is a new beginning. And love is becoming friends with a stranger on a Greyhound bus.”

Insubstantial

You raped me.
Not in the physical sense.
Not in a way I could fight back.
No, you broke me in ways that don't show.
Ways that aren't visible on skin.

You shattered my confidence.
You raped me, without laying a finger on me.
You butchered my self-worth.
You devastated my sense of self.
And then you had the audacity to say,
"I love you."

You belittled me,
brains washed clean of independent thought.
You forced yourself on me.
You made me so sick of myself.

I took up the alcohol and the knives,
razors and sharp points.
I tried to dig you out, bleed you out,
force you out.
The words building up the revolution inside me.

I took the medicines.
I took the beatings.
I took the starvation and the fear.
I let you drag me to the point of desperation.

You can't see the scars you left.
They lie to deep to be found by mortal eyes.
But you didn't have to touch me to rape me.
You didn't have to raise one finger to mutilate me.

All you had to do was say three simple words.
"I Love You."
That was the sharpest knife of all.

You said it so rarely, I craved the cut.
You showed it so little, I was dried out.
You expressed your, twisted, sense of affection
through spankings and prayers for my soul.
By lies told in such a way to wound,
told in such a way to twist and snap my everything.

You seem confused now, confused as to why I refuse
to have anything to do with you.
You claim innocence, when your tongue's poisons were
deadlier than a viper's.
You claim to still harbor some affection for me.
You never knew me. You just knew the ME you
tried to force me to be.

I'm not a toy. I'm not a doll you can play with.
I'm not a tool to be used in the creation of some
outermost monstrosity. I'm not your plaything.
I'm not a child any longer. I'll no longer be brittle.

And I will no longer be raped.

The Birth of Hope

It was a flicker.
The tiniest spark.
It was almost snuffed out.
So fragile and vulnerable to the chaos outside of it.

Though it was tiny, it grew.
Though it should've wilted it bloomed.
It swelled with life, refusing to be snuffed out.
Though fragile, it grew armor to protect itself.

It was attacked.
It was trampled.
It was raped and pillaged.
But it was not diminished.

They tried to kill it.
Destroy it.
Break it.
It fought back, with teeth and claws, with everything it had.

It surpassed the cage built to stop it.
It flowed out and swiftly flew up, freed.
It grew until there was nothing left to stop it.
Though fragile, it bloomed into something beautiful.

The spark gave itself a name.
A name so that none could deny its existence.
A name to grow and flourish in the face of resistance.
Hope.

The Harlot's Blush

It is impossible to say how long they had been insane. The madness was a black pool in which they had, long, been drowning. It was toxic, yet it seemed to give them an almost ethereal loveliness. A tainted beauty enveloped their house and clung to them like so many flecks of ivory colored mud.

He had been a soldier. The blood stains of war could be seen beneath the slowly cracking facade. He lost himself somewhere in the torn jungles of a foreign land and between the legs of a beautiful, young, girl with soulless eyes. His infidelities, to both his wife and himself, often stirred the fires of madness to the point of a break. He would fling himself into a scalding tub of water and scream at God for just a moment of peace. When it had passed he would remind himself that God had died, with him, in those war torn jungles long ago.

She had been a victim of incestuous desires, forced to run from her home to escape an older brother. She had run as far as her twenty dollars and sixty-two cents could take her before she began hocking the only thing left to her. She married the first man that asked and lied, saying she was eighteen. She was his wife, a leash on the madness, already creeping in, until the war. Everything changed after that. While he was gone, she took a lover and began to drink. The scars building on her arms and torso were just to bleed, not to kill. There was no one there to care.

After another fifth of whatever alcohol she can find, she stumbles into his arms. He is shaking and whispering. He looks afraid, as if he were a wounded rabbit being hunted by something more sinister than a fox.

"God is dead. He died between that girl's legs in those forsaken jungles. What a waste. What a tragedy." He whispers into her tousled amber hair as he plants a small kiss on her pale earlobe. He is speaking nonsense, he always does after the nightmares begin. And they always begin this time of year.

~~~

The couple next door have finished moving in and are having a celebratory dinner. They invite their neighbors, though they feel uneasy around them. They can sense the wrongness beneath the calm, everyone can. At first the young wife pleads with her husband not to invite them. There is something there that makes her frightened. Proper etiquette and good manners win in the end.

The evening begins, quietly, with a few casual drinks and pleasantly neutral banter. It grows into a robust game of chess, unwitting pawns in the world of questions. It fades into a hulking paranoia, and resentment, as the guests are politely introduced to the door. Good nights and good byes are given and received as they part for the night.

~~~

The paranoia sits on his chest as he tosses and turns. He must have the beautiful young woman next door. She is perfect, so wonderfully fresh and new. He must have her. His wife doesn't matter, she doesn't even compare. The young woman next door is all that matters.

He watches her, day after day. He follows her as she walks home from the store. He memorizes her curves as he stalks her. He is waiting for the moment to take her, the moment where she will be his alone. He waits, patiently, for a year, writhing in the heat of his lust and the agony of his madness.

He takes her. Takes her just as he did a young girl in a foreign country years ago. He strings her up and rakes his hot hands over her body. He says he will take his time, enjoy her, but impatience is a cruel master. It drives the knife into her writhing body over and over. It is impotence and rage, tempered with insanity, that drives the knife. He can no longer satisfy his wife or himself. Not since that girl in the jungles where God died. He can no longer be a man.

~~~

She finds him in the shed in the fenced-in backyard. He is wallowing in blood and praying to his crucified Madonna. He is crying and has cut himself. She finds his severed manhood lying beside the young neighbor's wilting corpse. Gently, she lifts it from the dirt floor and places it in an empty firefly jar.

She goes to him then. She kneels beside him and takes his head into her lap, caressing his tangled hair. She pries the knife from his hand and twines her fingers with his. She bends over him to kiss his cheek, all the while murmuring words of comfort. She imagines a crown of thorns on his beautiful head as she slits his throat.

She ties him up beside the neighbor woman and begins to devolve into her own wickedness. Her eyes glitter with hatred and insanity, the madness a poisonous balm to her breaking heart. She hums an off-key melody as she lines up jars. They are mostly empty, but in her mind they are holding the parts of every man that harmed her.

She croons, softly, to his body as it, too, begins to wilt. She glances into his tear-bright eyes, still wide in shock at his sudden demise. She sings to him, as if he were a sleepy child. Brushing a stray wisp of hair from his face, she pats his cheek.

"A beautiful forest, a sea of green, nestled at the foot of the mountain. God stands within, laughing at the rotting demons strung amongst the autumn leaves. Their eyes cry out and ghosts weep, quietly. No mortal loves his life in that forest.

"You look so peaceful," she whispers, caressing his cooling face. His eyes seem to be screaming at her. "so calm and beautiful. You didn't have to take her when I would have given myself up to your knife. Was my blood not perfect for this exorcism? Was my heart not beating for you as the blade graced your throat?

"What a waste. What a tragedy. What a beautiful blush the harlot has upon her snowy cheek. She fell in love with you, even as you wielded your blade against her. She parted softly with your name, a hallowed prayer, upon her bloody lips. She was a rose and you stole her petals, a goddess in flesh and you freed her from imprisonment.

"What now, my husband? What now, my love?"

She sees him stir at these last words. A strangled scream escapes her mouth as he sways toward her. His hands, once secured, now reach out to choke her, to deny her breath. She claws and gnashes her teeth, sinking into his cold flesh and tearing it. She hears him howling, like a werewolf, his screams beating against the drum of her skull. All her struggle is in vain.

~~~

They found her with her own hands wrapped around her throat. Red teeth marks and torn flesh lay in abundance. The two bodies, hung from the rafters, seemed to be in a lover's pose. A bloody heart was drawn on the wall behind them.

When she was revived all that could be discerned from her garbled speech was "heaven." They led her away from the scene in a white coat, given to her by the nice man also in white.

What they could not understand she knew all too well.

She had tasted heaven in her final scene.

The Moment

When I was young there was a lot of stress in my life (there is still a lot of stress in my life). Back then I didn't know how to deal with it (who am I kidding? I still don't know how to deal with it!). I was self-destructive because it was a way to express the turmoil inside me. I was cruel to my body because I perceived it as my enemy. I still perceive it as my enemy, sometimes. Depends on my mood of course.


My step-father's mother used to cook all the time. I don't know if she still does because I am not in contact with her really. She used to fill my plate to the brim any time I was there and I would be told to eat every bite because "there are children starving in Africa." God, I must've heard that SO many times. This, and my growing dissatisfaction with my appearance, ushered me into what I call the "bulimia stage."

I could never finish a whole plate. Ever. I would try, valiantly. But I just couldn't do it. At first I smuggled food in my napkin and excused myself to the bathroom, where I would dump it in the toilet and flush. This quickly got old. I could only carry so much in my napkin, after all.

That's where the moment happened. That moment when I realized that my aching stomach could be purged and then I'd eat more and purge later. I could eat everything, clean my plate and be free of guilt for those poor starving African children or Chinese children or whatever starving children. It wasn't truly a waste, because I did eat it. I just threw it up later.

I did this off and on for a few years. I didn't become what one would call a "full-fledged" bulimic because you can tell when I've been throwing up. The pressure is too much for my poor blood vessels and they burst when I throw up. In my face. So it looks like someone splattered my face with blood or that I suddenly have bloody freckles. This can also happen in my eyes (which I discovered when I was in high school. Rather unfortunate experience since I looked like a demon for a week or two).

Sometimes, though, when I became ridiculously stressed I would throw up to feel better. It was like purging out all the stress building up inside of me. I didn't do it often, but I always felt better. Even now I will sometimes force the point if I feel sick to my stomach. It's not hard.

The difference between now and then is that I don't need to throw up to feel better about my stress. I may still need to if I'm sick (which is the only time I'll push the proverbial envelope), but not to deal with the stress.

I tried to commit suicide at seven. Don't ask me why, because I can't remember. I just know that I was too afraid to continue living and I was so tired of everything. I overdosed on my inhaler. That wasn't the first time.

For that particular incident, I was punished. The head pastor at the church we went to told my step-father that I was in rebellion and needed discipline. I received a "spanking." For the record, I don't disagree with spankings. I am for a good spanking (both for discipline and sexual pleasure) in certain cases. I believe you should never spank a child in anger and that you should never use anything besides your hand. You feel the sting, if you use your hand. You can gauge how much pain you are delivering and I feel like this makes the difference between abuse and discipline. Personally speaking, of course. I was "spanked" with a switch by a man who enjoyed wielding it a little too much.

I became very good at lying about my overdoses. They were "accidents." Even the one time I emptied an entire inhaler, with my step-father in the room. I did this by sitting close to the speakers of our radio/tape player/record player while he was listening to a tape and waiting until it grew loud enough to cover the sound of the inhaler. I explained them all away. And they never did me any good anyway.

As I got older I realized that killing myself by inhaler was a bad idea. All it did was make me shaky. So I decided to cut my wrists.

We lived in a house by this time. A beautiful house, really. My room was the master bedroom upstairs (as my step-father changed the basement into another level of the house), complete with my own bathroom. Perfect for a teenage girl! One day, I locked myself in the bathroom, sat in front of the door and tried to drag a knife across my wrist (which I now know wouldn't actually work). I didn't even get so far as cutting, because the phone rang at that moment. Heaven only knows why I had it with me.

It was my best friend, Jo. At the time, I took that as a sign from God, because she said she didn't know why she was calling. She just suddenly had a bad feeling and called to see if something was wrong. I cried when I told her what I was trying to do. She talked me out of it and that was the end of that.

I am actually surprised that I didn't start cutting sooner than I did because of all the pent up anger (at myself, at my mother [I'm not mad at you anymore, Mom], at my father, at my step-father, at God, etc.), stress and previous suicide attempts. It just makes sense that I would cut. In the scheme of things, anyway.

The first time I cut myself on purpose, I was at church. My boyfriend (My Edward Cullens, if you will) had just broken up with me. This was a boyfriend I was keeping secret from my friends at school because he was eight years older than me and he was a convicted child molester. Actually, I was doing a poor job of keeping him a secret. I had mentioned him to a couple friends and they freaked out (rightly so, I might add). They told me it was a terrible idea and questioned my sanity (once again, rightly so).

I lied and said I had made it up. He was a hypothetical boyfriend. Well, I guess I'm admitting that he wasn't a hypothetical. He was real. And yes, you were right. It was an awful idea. I'm sorry that I lied about lying, but panic set in and I hate conflict.

It wasn't so much that he broke up with me as it is that we decided to break up until I turned eighteen. Oh yeah, I was sixteen (a week from seventeen) when we met. Seventeen when we started dating. I, foolishly, believed I loved him. He was the only guy who seemed actually interested in being with ME not my BODY. He liked me for me, or so I thought. And things went way further with him than they should've.

I was devastated when we broke up. I hid myself in the Sabbath School room (because I was a Seventh Day Adventist at the time) and took out a little pocket knife a guy friend had given me for protection. I was wearing a skirt that day, with shorts underneath. I pulled up the skirt a little and sliced at my inner thigh until I saw blood. My ex came in right after I had put the knife back in my pocket.

He asked if I was okay. I lied and said I was fine, though I had been crying. He said we were still going to be friends. A week later we were going out again.

Dating him was self-destructive on three fronts:
1. I started cutting because of it.
2. I pushed myself, sexually, even when I knew I wasn't ready for it (and I knew he was a bad idea).
3. I was only dating him to get my step-father's attention.

We dated for another two weeks before I found out he was cheating on me (had been the whole time, by the way) and I broke up with him. Again. He came over to my house and tried to seduce me back to him. He played a stupid ICP (Insane Clown Posse) song while we were in his car. We made out a little bit, but I didn't say I'd go back out with him. Despite my "love" for him, I couldn't take him back after the cheating. Also, that ICP song was INCREDIBLY stupid and un-romantic. Bad choice in seduction music, dude.

He's in prison somewhere. I think.

I cut for a time after that. I cut until I was nineteen, if memory serves. Secretly, of course. And I attempted to convince everyone that they were cat scratches. That didn't work, by the way. Everyone tried to stop me, to their credit. I finally quit because I knew I couldn't keep doing that to myself. I also knew that my ass would get kicked if I continued. Plus, right around the time I finally stopped I "ran away" from home to deal with my issues. Which also didn't work.

A few major reasons for my various amounts of self-destruction:
1. My emerging sexuality. I'm bisexual. Anyone who has read my blog knows that (or my dA journal). Anyone who knows me personally should know that. But I was very closeted at the time because of my step-father, because of my God, because of my church friends, etc. My desire to be with a woman sexually was reprehensible according to my beliefs. Another portion of this was my realization that I was not "vanilla," not just bisexually. This also seemed to clash with who I "was."

2. I was surrounded by death. A lot of my family, friends and people I knew were dying all around me. It was terrifying. And disheartening. It is rough when you have been to more funerals than you ever been to weddings or baby showers.

3. My step-father was abusive. Still is, but not to me and his ways have become more subtle. We carried on an emotionally incestuous relationship for most of my formative years. He was also physically and emotionally abusive to me and my brother. My own inability to protect my brother from him played a big role in it too.

4. I was being sexually abused. By several different people and for far longer than I should've been. Sexual abuse is usually perpetuated by someone you trust and know. My ex-boyfriend was only one perpetrator of this.

5. My step-father was emotionally distant from me. Looking back I realize that I just wanted to feel like he loved me. I know, now, that he probably never did. Which stings. I was trying so hard to get his attention. I was trying to get any kind of attention from him. Anything would've been better than nothing.

6. My mother was sick (I don't blame you anymore, Mom). A lot. My mom has a lot of health issues and sometimes she wasn't there when I really needed her. It wasn't her fault, but it pissed me off as well as depressed me. I have always had a close relationship with my mom, her being unavailable when I felt like I needed her was disheartening. Plus, her almost bleeding to death on our bathroom floor from a horrific miscarriage didn't help matters. Every time she got sick I was afraid she was going to die and I'd be alone with my brother, sister and step-father. This was combined with my desire that she die so that she wouldn't be in pain anymore, which lead to a tremendous amount of guilt. Why would I wish my mother dead when I loved her so much?

7. I was desperately lonely. I had friends, but they weren't around all the time. And I felt like I only had the one really close friend, Jo. I was also desperate for any sort of validation. Which is another reason why my step-father being so emotionally distant was destructive for me. I craved validation that I was pretty, smart, etc. That lack of validation has embedded in my brain that I'm useless and stupid so that, no matter what anyone says, I can't believe it.

8. Abandonment issues. My father and I stopped talking when I was thirteen. I sent him a letter telling him I never wanted to talk to him again, that I hated him and it was his fault my Memere was dead (she had died three years prior). His acquiescing to my demands has always felt like abandonment. Part of me wanted him to verbally slap me and continue writing me. I didn't actually hate him. I just missed my grandmother. And I was angry at her for dying, for missing so much of what was to come. I was angry that I didn't get to go to her funeral. I felt like she had abandoned me. My dad had abandoned me. My step-father was emotionally distant and my mother was physically unavailable. I just felt abandoned on all fronts.

So, what was the point of all this you may be asking? I don't know. Maybe it's going to help me realize that I don't have to be self-destructive to deal with my stress? Maybe it's a way of working out externally what has been going on inside me for years internally? Why post it?

Because it is part of what will eventually be written in the book of my life, when I am old and gray. Because it is who I was. I don't need pity, I don't need the attention. Not anymore. I just need to get it out of me, like I have always needed to get it out of me. This is a lot better than a knife, or throwing up dinner. Plus, maybe there are people out there who will read it and be able to diagnose what is going on in their lives too. Help them to see that you can come away from all that crap mostly intact.

Do I have scars? Yes. I have lots of them. I do not cover them up and I am not ashamed of them. They are what has made me, ME. I would not be Sarai if not for the scars that have built Sarai.

Hidden Messages: Part II

Ripping of clothing echoes,
adamant cries for help,
paralyzed by fear and pain,
echoes of darkness close in.

The Dying Embers: Chapter 4

Chapter Four: The Ending of All

For years no one knew what had happened to Cassidy Todd. His family offered to pay money for someone, anyone to find him. Only Zara knew what had happened and she alone knew where the body was hidden. Pain tore at her every waking moment, every night she couldn't sleep because of her nightmares. She became thinner and thinner, denying herself food. Her mind was being eaten away with the knowledge that she had destroyed the one thing she had loved.

She would follow the paths through the woods to the place where she had placed Cass, talking to him and driving herself insane with her memories. Even Jordan left her alone now, not even he derived pleasure from kicking a dog when it was down.

Then, one night as she lay in her bed, she heard the sweet laughter of Cassidy. She could hear him calling to her, singing to her. Teasing her into moving. She followed the sound to the edge of the creek bed. There she saw Cassidy's sister, Anna Sophia, the female version of her brother. She stood on the other side of the creek, dancing in the soft light of the stars.

"Zara, dance with me!" she called, her willowy spirit floating and twisting in the savage wind.

"No, no. Please, don't do this to me." Zara mumbled under her breath. Tears began to fall. Then she saw Anna Sophia moving across the creek, as if she was walking atop the water. Eyes wide in terror, Zara began to move backwards, staring at Anna Sophia. Anna's mouth was dripping with blood, her ghostly blonde hair floating about her face. Anna had died a year before her brother, murdered by her lover.

Zara's soul quaked at the beauty of the ghost girl. She longed to be like the apparition before her, she was tired of her guilty insanity. Her soul had been murdered by her own hands, by her own faults and failures. She could feel the tears falling faster as she watched the girl dance around her. The girl's face was beautiful despite the blood that dripped from her face and hands. She held the image of her brother's crestfallen head in her palms, taunting Zara. Zara couldn't breathe, her mistake burning into her weary mind, stealing all her hope of ever living again.

"I've come to claim revenge for my brother." Said the specter. She was smiling, the blood oozing down her face. Zara began to shake, her heart beating furiously in her. She looked down to see a knife, covered in blood. It was the same one she had used to kill Cassidy. Trembling, she took it in her hands and then thrust it deep inside of her chest. She could feel the sharp pain of the knife burying itself in her broken heart and then it was over. Zara's body lay in the emerald grass of the quiet place. Anna Sophia's bloody mouth, smiling above her. Dooming her to an eternity in misery and loneliness.

The Dying Embers: Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Zara backed away, slowly. Her fear of Mr. Jordan was apparent. Seizing her arm, he fell upon her neck, kissing her with savage and cruel lips. Struggling, she broke free and ran from him. Deeper and deeper into the sullen forest she tread, his whip are her heels.

Out of exhaustion, she fell to the ground beneath a quivering weeping willow. A creek sped past her and, in despair, she claimed unconsciousness.

Mr. Jordan, being out of breath, came upon Zara's limp body and was glad of the solitude. His way was cruel and when he had finished he slunk back to his cabin. For a lengthy time Zara lay quiet. Wishing for the pain her body was feeling to cease.

She managed to crawl back to her hovel and, in pure agony, fell upon the corn husk bed. When the cheerful sun arose, Zara was pale with fever and chilled to the marrow of her bones. She prayed for death to come, but it didn't. She cried out for someone to save her from her anguish, but no one came.

Then, slowly, she began to concoct a plan to exact her revenge on Mr. Jordan. She would murder him. And no one would ever find out. Yes, that's it, she would kill him after torturing him for all the torment she had suffered at his cruel hands. And when Mr. Jordan came again to claim her, she was ready.

The Dying Embers: Chapter 1

Chapter One

Zara Todd was washing clothing in the backyard of the Todd Plantation. She had lived on this land since she was born. The willows were the only witness to the events of the day. Cassidy Todd, the only son of the master, quietly slipped out the door. Not a sound came from him as he tiptoed behind Zara. She hummed as she hung clothes on the line, her mind on the golden sunset above her.

"Ah ha!" Cassidy wrapped both arms around Zara's waist and lifted her off the ground, spinning about.

"Cass, don't do that! You done frightened me near outta my skin!" Zara turned and smiled at the young man behind her. His honey blond curls encircled his head like a halo. His deep brown eyes were like melted chocolate, they could see to her very soul. She loved him more than any other.

Cassidy gently pressed his lips against Zara's, taking in the sweetness of her mouth. She was like a sweet rain, her voice and mouth like smoky vanilla. He couldn't imagine loving anyone quite as much as he loved her. His fingers tenderly caressed her black curls, loose and flowing in the autumn breeze. The willows danced about them, their graceful branches tossed about on the wind. Pulling away from their kiss, Cassidy took Zara's hand and led her down to the creek. The suns rosy glow hovered over the silently flowing water, only broken by the stony bottom.

"Promise never to leave me?" Cassidy held her to his chest, his heart beat combine with hers.

"Can't promise nothing like that. Don't got no power over whether I leaves or stays. You know that." Zara tried not to cry, but it was truth. As a slave she had no rights of her own. Her mother and father had already been sold away, why shouldn't she be next to go?

"I will never let them sell you away from here. I couldn't live without you by my side. I love you with so much of my heart that virtually none is left to give."

Lifting her face up to his, Cassidy smiled. He knew that he could get his father to do anything he wanted. He was the only son; they had to give him his desires. The dying embers of the sun slipped over the horizon and the moon arose from her bed. A silvery glow encompassed the world inside the willows, a world that only belonged to the lovers, oblivious to everything else.

The moon was high as Zara tiptoed back to her shack. The stars glowed as bright as the sun. She was afraid that someone would be awake and realize that she wasn't in her cabin. The cabins were checked twice a night to make sure that no slaves had gone missing in the night. For some reason, the slave driver hadn't checked them yet, because the door was still closed as she had left it earlier that morning.

As she opened the door it was as if she was in a dream. Mr. Jordan, the slave driver was sitting on her cornhusk bed, his eyes bright in the darkness. As if his eyes were that of a tigers, they smoldered hazel in the heat of the room. His hate was apparent, as was his lust.

Where have you been? You were supposed to be here an hour ago. His voice caused Zara's blood to run cold, a prick of fear at her back.

The Dying Embers: Prologue

Prologue

The moon caressed the gentle waters of a rustling creek. The watery bed broken by stones and the decaying body of Zara Todd. A silvery sweet glow reflected the eyes of the young slave girls violently green eyes, wide in the horror of her last breath. A feast for the scavengers, her corpse devoured by the bugs and wildlife. Yet, her eyes remained glossy and intact.

The quivering of the restless breeze stirred the weeping willows of the plantation. A noble house, once inhabited, stood motionless. As if it had never been touched by evil or murder. A girl could be seen wandering in and amongst the willows, barefoot and bloody. Her black curls matted with blood, leaves and the earth to which she was married.

For a moment, she stopped. Waiting in the silence for some sign of her lover, long gone from the place. Her violently green eyes were sunk deep in her thin face. Her, light, cinnamon-colored skin glowed iridescent in the light of a fiery moon. Her dress, caked in the blood of her struggle, hung loosely from her bony shoulders.

Slowly, she knelt beside the body that had once been her own. Her trembling fingers brushed the cadavers face, tears chorusing down the specters own face. Gradually, her eyes searched the horizon, haunted by an undeserved fate. Then, from deep within the soul of one unjustly murdered, came a scream. The screams of anguish flourished and echoed in the silence of a callous world. The willows trembled with the pain of the sound and, in the echo; the blood of a lone traveler was turned to ice.

Warily, the lone traveler crept up to the place where the apparition lay. Stretched over the corpse's body, the phantom wept tears of ice and blood. Her eyes remained ajar and flooded by her tears. Hearing a twig snap, her violent green eyes turned on the stranger. In that moment, all that entertained his mind was to escape his peril. Yet, in that moment, his peril became reality. When the spirit arose, he was dead upon the fallen leaves of autumn. Blood covered his body, the ghostly girl's mouth dripping with it. Gently, she smiled at her victim. He was not her original prey, but the randomness of the violence eased her tortured soul. From then on she devoured all that strayed into her path.

Empty World

The world was empty.

The world was empty, cracked like egg shells without their yolks. The bodies were the only flora, bloody flowers dotting a blackened landscape. White hands, thinning to skeletal limbs, rose up from the ground, stretching toward an unforgiving sky. Roads were paved with blood, everything completely destroyed in the wake of catastrophe.

The world was empty, raped of all her natural beauty and humanity. The sun burned above, a hot red cinder poked into the eye of God as he looked down. A blossom of rot and evisceration bubbled up from the earth, soaking the atmosphere in crimson and black. Oceans overflowed with the destruction man had caused.

The world was empty, broken beyond all repair. The moon passing above turned, forcing it's white gaze somewhere else. Stars burned themselves out, overwhelmed with the end of time. And the end had come, come so thoroughly and quickly. Everything dessicated in its wake. Forgotten by the universe as an ever spinning sepulchre.

The world was empty.

David Simmons: Chapter 4

David Simmons, Patient No. 10120230344. Age: 24.

He heard her screaming, heard her crying. He had tried to get someone’s attention, but no one would listen to the crazy man. No, no one would listen to him. He could hear her cries of anguish drifting through the vents and he couldn’t do anything to help her. He cried, slumping against the door to his room, pounding against it uselessly, begging for someone to listen to him. He was cried out, his voice hoarse and almost gone, when they found her. He knew that they had found her, because he heard a doctor call code.

He pulled his knees up to his chest, wishing himself elsewhere. He pressed his puffy eyelids together and pretended he was back in his library, his safe haven. Even there he could hear her crying for help, pleading with him or anyone to rescue her from what was coming. In the end he could do nothing, he was helpless and, for that, he could never be forgiven.

Laughter filled his senses, tugging on him and calling him forward. He couldn’t resist the honey and sugar of those voices, the honeysuckle of those laughs, they were gently pulling him toward them and pushing him past boundaries that could never be re-crossed. He didn’t care, he loved those voices, could drink them in like cool water from a burbling fountain. He opened his eyes, staring into a face carved out of ivory, with eyes of bright sapphire. This face was happy, a beautiful smile filling every piece of sculpture with sparkling light. He turned slightly, his gaze falling upon another face, this carved out of ebony, with white eyes circled by dark emerald. This face was sad, as if every part had been wept over by the sculptor and forever changed because of that sorrow.

They were as different as night and day, yet so alike in nature. Like sisters torn apart by their secrets, but the laughter remained, pulling him away and down a row of books. Further and further he went, dancing and whispering to the voices ahead of him. They kept calling him, kept laughing, honey and sugar. As he got closer the voices began to fade, one voice filled with dissonance and bitter-sweet memories.

“No! Don’t go, please! I’ve finally found what I want, please don’t leave me now!” He called out, again and again, pleading with invisible beings that no longer laughed and now only cried.

“I cannot stay, I cannot go. What am I to do? What am I to do.” A voice filled with smoke and air, sweet and sour, kept crying out to him, stretching out invisible arms to hold him.

“Hear me! Come to me! Take me with you! Please, don’t go!” He stretched his arms out to take that voice into himself, to hold it. As quickly as he came, he was back in that tiny white room with the sound of bustling nurses and screaming patients. All alone with a twin sized bed and his few books, he was still slumped against his door. All cried out, he shed a few more tears, tears for a woman who was dead and a woman who could not stay with him.

Gabriel Caine: Chapter 2

Gabriel Caine, Patient No. 21200057342. Age: 26.

He was the scarecrow, a sacrifice to the gods of hate and pain. He writhed on the twin mattress, soaked with sweat and memories buried too deep for words to find them. He had stepped into that world where he no longer knew himself or anyone else around him, he was only a scarecrow, crucified to his post and abandoned in his field. Worn emerald green stones belonged to the road that twisted about the countryside, full of crossroads and demons, saints and sinners lost on their way to Hell’s Court. He belonged to that world; the one that raped the innocent to keep everything in balance, the one that shattered itself and spun out the colors of reality into pools of paint and rain-water. He knew that the roads and crossroads were only figments of frustration in his twisted realities, but he still tried to follow them with his eyes, still tried to leave his post to walk those beautiful and rough stones.

The doctors told him that he would be fine with therapy. What did they know about him? What did they care if he was ever whole again? Had they ever seen the Night of Eve, when Hell’s Court brought the sacrifice to the crossroads and left her there? Had they ever heard the moons of Catalysis and Neptsis screaming in their orbit, ghosts of his reality? No, they hadn’t. They said those places and those things didn’t exist, but they seemed so real to him. Maybe he was crazy, maybe it was just all this horrible illness that had taken control of him. Or maybe he was right and he was that scarecrow, chained to a wooden stake, awaiting the next sacrifice at the crossroads.

The one thing he had never understood was why? Why did they sacrifice at the crossroads, what made them leave one of their own to die for all of them? How was that fair? And how did he fit in? Why must he stand as witness, as a helpless man captive to a will beyond his own design? He just couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand to watch as girl after girl was sacrificed, couldn’t stand to listen as day after day the moons cried out for one another, lost and drifting on an endless sea of sky and space.

Sitting up, he shook himself and tried to focus, he could hear the nurses making their rounds, could hear other patients crying out and banging against their padded walls. Maybe the screaming of the moons was just the cries of disillusioned people, trapped within their own heads and trying to escape. Maybe those girls that he watched die were just young women he had read about in the newspapers back when he had a job and a home. And a wife. This last he thought of reluctantly, as if conjuring her name and image would send him back to that god-forsaken post.

Since he was already beginning to think of her, he let his mind wander to their last days as man and wife. She was crying that day, the day she left him. Her arms were full of another man’s child and another man’s love. She couldn’t stay, she said. She couldn’t watch him destroy himself any longer. So she walked away, still holding that other man’s child and that other man’s love. She had never really known him, he decided. Had never really forgiven him for being himself. And, in the end, who else could he be, but himself?

He stopped the rest of the oncoming flood, before it began to breach the dams he had built for defense. He didn’t want to overindulge his memories, which would only leave him with an ache in his heart and his empty arms. Damn her. He had loved her, had tried to give her everything he could. Why hadn’t she seen that? In the end it had always come down to the fact that he could never be what she wanted him to be and the “real” love of her life was waiting with open arms and an open bed.

Well, that was fine. Who needed her anyway? He didn’t need her. The sounds of patients and nurses with carts full of medication faded into background noise as he settled into the sound of an imaginary piano playing Beethoven. His fingers moved in time with the music, grazing chords and keys like he would a lover’s curves. Beethoven was really all he had left, he supposed. At least Beethoven would never ask him for a divorce and then give birth to a child that would never even be his.

He supposed a lot of things, thinking too much for his own good, really. Even Dr. Samisen said so. Why not think though? He was a poet, a philosopher, an intelligent man with a good brain for thinking. Why shouldn’t he try to figure out the world that was so cruel to him, try to figure out the world that resided behind closed eyelids and broken psyches? He had a right to think, just like any other Joe on the street. So he would think, he would lapse into that pool of memory and epiphanies and trains of thought, then drift away on whatever might decide to command his attention.

He liked that pool, that place behind his eyes, within something deeper than his soul, the part of himself no one would ever know about except him. The place that housed that world that forced him to stand at his post, to keep record of the girls that traveled on the back of the wind into the Mirror of Eve. God, he thought, why do I keep coming back to this place? Why do I do this to myself over and over?

And with that thought, he found himself at his place, dreaming of another young woman’s death.

She stood, lifeless, at the crossroads. She was drowning within herself, breathless and frantic. All she could see was the broken white rose lying at the center of the crossroad. All she could hear was the breaking of a thousand hearts. She could not feel, the mirror in front of her bearing no claim of her existence. She remained, doll-like, at the point of intersection, frozen in time without a soul or a heart to hear her silent screams.

The emerald green blocks of stone were worn and cracked underneath her bare feet, the green darkened over time. The Mirror of Eve sparkled violently, glittering and blinding, but empty of any reflection of life. Behind the girl was a wide field, charred and blackened by time and in the middle of the field stood a scarecrow, his old grey hat pulled down over his eyes.

The moons stood side-by-side, one about to fade below the horizon of endless azure sky and the other rising to greet another day of night. Lower and lower sank the one, a shining ivory disk against the bruised and battered sky. Higher and higher rose the other, darker than ebony, its face etched in blood and tears. An intense black emptiness filled the sky until no light shone but that of the bleeding moon, only its crimson stained the wretched night.

As the suffocating darkness surrounded her, the brighter red light fell upon her chest. For a moment time stood still and only the red light seemed to move. The light took on a life of its own, its fiery fingers moving up to the girl's throat and its hand moving as a lover's over her pale face. The light morphed and transformed until it had the shape of a man, its hand continuing to caress the girl's face. As it passed its hands through her snowy curls, it began to dissipate, changing the girl's hair to a rosy pink, then fled swiftly upward. Leaving the girl behind, lying dead at the crossroads, a white jasper lily in her hand and an onyx dagger plunged into her virgin soul.

The scarecrow, in his blackened field, was the only witness, the only eyes to see the death and hear the screams. From one violent green eye fell a broken tear, his sadness hidden partially by his dark hat. He did not move from his field, or move at all, remaining frozen at his post. He only wept, a silent witness.

Quietly, the girl's body withered, burning from a fire within until all that remained were dust and ash. These were picked up by the wind, fleeing the place on her back. She fled to the Mirror of Eve, it now opening, as a door, to her remains. On the other side she was once again transformed, shedding all the pain of living like a winter cloak. She seemed to glow, ethereal and unbroken. She looked out of her mirror, seeing with new eyes all the emptiness of the place.

The scarecrow watched as the Mirror shattered, sparkling like millions of fiery stars upon the emerald stones. As the pieces faded into nothingness, the moon began to cry, blood and ice falling like daggers to the earth. Everything stood in silence. All that remained of the girl was a broken white rose, a white jasper lily and the onyx dagger, stained with the blood of her virgin soul. And these were consumed with fire and bloody ice so that none may know of the rape of the lifeless girl at the crossroads.

The Scarecrow's Dream: Prologue

The room went quiet. So stiflingly silent, it was going to drive her crazy, drive her past the edges of the clear road.

"Please," she whispered. "Please, don't leave me alone, don't leave me here." She pulled her knees up to her chest and rocked back slightly. She could barely breathe, barely move and they were going to leave her, leave her in this prison dressed up to look like a safe place. Her voice took a razor's edge, she screamed, "DON'T LEAVE ME HERE!! YOU BASTARDS, COME BACK!"

Then everything was alive, the air filled with angry whispers and violent cursing, they swirled about her, pushing her down. She fought against the white strait-jacket with those horrible red straps, fought against the urge to cry out. He would come, if he heard her screaming. He would laugh that disgusting laugh, then he would force her legs apart, forcing a dirty sock in-between her lips and he would give her reason to scream. The voices buzzed all around her, buzzing inside her head and her mouth. She didn't dare un-clamp her teeth, or open her eyes. If she did, the voices would find shape, they would find weight and breathe. No, she couldn't let them escape, couldn't let her fears take form, or truth find her. She had to stay, imprisoned by white and red, held captive by the ghosts and the voices and dreams. Dreams that made no sense to her, but had a life unto themselves. A reality that grew and bled, a world that cried out to be opened by her, only opening up that world would make her disappear.

From the little window in the door, he watched her struggle against nothing. It pleased him to watch her struggle against the strait-jacket, like a butterfly trapped in its cocoon trying to release its wings and fly away. Nevertheless, he had that little butterfly, she belonged to him now. He was the spider and she was a butterfly trapped by silk and red ribbons. Soon, very soon, he would feast on that little butterfly, trapped by webs of her own design and struggling against her own mind. And she would be delicious.

It happened in Indiana

"I'm a prostitute and proud of it!" scrawled in burning letters across her skin,
bruises forming blue and purple spiders that can't scatter away from the light.
Tied to a filthy bed, naked and dying, she can't even avoid soiling herself.
"You can't ever get married... You can't ever undress in front of others..." the
words filter through the unending pain and the torturous days and nights.

The stench of urine and feces permeates her dreaming, the taste of shit in her
mouth makes her gag. Why do they hate her so? What did she ever do to
deserve this abuse? She is shaking, so hungry for real food, hungry for gentility,
hungry for escape. Could she run? Could she escape? Could she convince
someone to help her? She is terrified, because she hears them coming, like
thousands of venomous snakes tasting her fear, eager for her blood, for her pain.

She is swollen, bruised by the forced violations. She is naked again, their leering
eyes dancing over her skin, over the burns and wounds. They are laughing at her,
laughing as her abuser forces her to push the bottle further up. What will happen
next? More scalding baths? More salt in the wounds that they inflict? Or will it be
another forced tattoo?

Is this to be her fate, to die on this filthy mattress, locked in a cellar, in the dark?
She cries, cries for an imagined baby and a mutilated body, for burns and bruises,
for her sister and for herself. Forced into a tub full of scalding water, salt
viciously rubbed into the burns, skin falling off. Her bones jut out at odd angles,
the result of malnutrition. Welts from the belt rise to the surface, eager to show
themselves for what they are.

A 16 year old girl; tortured, submitted to a sexless sex crime and other horrors,
lies dead on a soiled mattress in the dark. The words "I'm a prostitute and proud
of it!" burned into her stomach, a 3 scarred into her chest. Bruises like blue and
purple spiders scattered across her pale flesh, naked and eyes fixed on oblivion.
Her name? Does she even have one? Or is she just a dead girl from Indiana?

Soliloquy

The straps of her black satin bra fall off her shoulders. Her breasts flow over the lace edged top, ivory silk etched in china-blue. A sparkly pink and white thong, the only thing she ever bought from Victoria's Secret, is stained now, but she cannot decide whether to leave it or not. A soft pink knit sweater lies in a crumpled heap across from her, one sleeve hopelessly torn. Her black skirt sits beside her, but she can't make her hands reach for it.

Slumped against a dingy white plaster wall, she feels like a marionette without strings. All her limbs are broken, at least they seem that way. Try to stand, force her body to move. She struggles to breathe, her lungs feel as though they have collapsed. Her bones feel brittle, her body feels hollow, carved from the inside out. She knows, if she stands, she will fall apart. She can't run, can't face the truth and she can't hide from it either. She cradles herself, remembering and cursing herself for the memory.

She stands, moving mechanically. She sleep walks home, a zombie. She peels away the clothing and climbs into the arms of the porcelain basin. She makes the water as hot as she can stand, scrubs until she is raw, endeavoring to erase the night's cruel stains. But nothing purges her body of the violation. Leaning against a wall, she sinks down, allowing the torrent to cascade over her and flay already frayed nerves. A silhouette of herself stands to accuse her, lacerated by thoughts and memory.

She notices the bruises, spread out like an intricate maze of purples and blue across the map of her skin. Head in hand, scorching tears trail down her cheeks, knees pressed to her chest. The water has turned to ice, her lips are turning blue, but she can't seem to make herself care. She turns off the water, watches as a lost watery trickle of scarlet is sucked down the drain. Exhausted, she shivers and wishes for strength. None comes, not even the mechanical strength that brought her home.

She falls asleep in the tub, dreams of what happened and all that has passed. She tries to pretend that it was all a nightmare, tries to prove to herself that it never happened.

But, when she opens her eyes, the proof lies all over her.