The Big Bopper

1
I sat there outside, and lit a cigarette.  I didn’t get much outside time lately.  I’d been here for three years now, locked inside my mind, for what she had done.  I missed the sun and the sky.  Of course, this was the first time in a week they’d let me out, for good behavior.  What does that mean anyway?
I was fingering the healing stove burn on my arm when he came to sit down.  He was young; I used to be young… He had brown hair and green eyes.  Skinny, just out of college.  I looked away from him, feeling guilty of an accidental stove burn.  It wasn’t my Fault!
“Hey Buddy.” The gentleman said sitting across from me with a tape recorder concealed in his pocket.
“Don’t fuck with me.” I murmured glaring past him not making eye contact.
“Hey, now, relax, buddy, you’re ok.  Don’t worry; I won’t f-f-mess with you.  I promise.”  He gestures with open palms and ‘reveals the hidden’ tape recorder. “I just wanna ask you a few questions.”
I growled at him, and asked him what was in it for me.  He tossed me a carton of my favorite cigarettes, and a three-liter of Cherry Coke.  I sighed heavily, unwilling to speak.  I nodded instead.
He hit the “record” button and spoke: “test, test, 1, 2, test, -”
“I’m sure it records, fucker.” I snapped, interrupting him.
He smiled, saying “0124782, Dr. Hans Schieren, patient 10642-2329, Dennis James Horue.  Can you please identify yourself?”  He asked addressing me.  I flipped him the bird.  Sighing he continued, “Ok, Dennis, can you tell me how you met Sheila Dean Bensko-Tarsitano?”
“You mean you want me to tell you how I met that sweet little heart-breaker?”  He nodded.  I smoothed back my curly, brown locks, and lit a cigarette.  “It was September, I was almost 24, and I worked as a cashier at the grocery store.  I checked out Ms. Bensko-Tarsitano, and she slipped me her phone number.  I went out with her, we married and well, you know what happened 16 years later.”  I threw up my hands in rage.  “Why do you care?” 
“We just want the truth, the straight story.  Can you tell me more?”  I looked away and tried to urinate.  They’d let me go back to my room then.  I wouldn’t be forced to sit here any longer.  “It’s ok, buddy, take your time.  You don’t have to do anything but this today.”
A cloud cast its shadow on the table, I watch the sun beams appear and disappear with great intensity.
Sure, I remembered Sheila, but my pet name for her was Sadie.  I remembered her, 5’6”, medium length red hair, green eyes.
I remembered kissing her for the first time, I remembered laying in her bed in the early morning before we got up, not wanting to move because I was warm and comfy.
I remembered the day we met. I was standing there at the check stand really having a bad day, I’d cut myself on the brown paper bag, and it hurt, my car didn’t wanna start that morning.  Somebody had stolen my lunch.  I’d just bought a new video game, and couldn’t afford to replace it, so I was starving.
I remembered her body as she walked into my line.  Her legs stepping deliberately, her breast hiding behind a black shirt, and her bottom behind jeans, (she bent over long enough to get a package of candy, really showing off her ass.)  I remember licking my lips, like a damn dog.  I think she saw me do it, but she never did tell me. 
She put her candy, along with a jug of 2% milk and a box of cereal, onto the conveyor and then flipped her hair back like a movie star from one of the black-and-white classics.  My mental jaw dropped, I wanted to jump the register and hump her, as that body was pressed up against the candy.   My hands in her silky smooth hair… I bit the inside of my lip.
“Hey, Buddy, you ok?” the man said to me, startling me from my day dream. 
I looked at him with narrow eyes.  “Who the fuck are you anyway?”
He smiled, “I’m Dr. Hans Schieren, and I was just wondering if you were ok.  You kind of looked like you were spacing.”
Sighing, I told him, “Thinking, fuck off.” 
I remembered her voice like I remembered my mothers.  Sadie’s voice floated that day in the grocery like a sparrows.  It was soft and gentle, and sweet and I wanted to play it forever in my mind.  I remember when she first spoke to me.
“Hi, how are you today?” I asked, as was customary for me to do. 
Giggling, she replied with, “Gee Whiz, guy, I guess I’m doing fine, but shucks it sure would be nice to meet a swell guy like yourself.”  I couldn’t tell if she was being serious, or she was fucking with me, until she winked at me and passed me her number. “I’m Sheila, and I’ll be home tonight.” She said slipping her candy in her pocket and carrying her cereal and milk in her hands, she walked off without her receipt and without paying.
I looked down and realized she’d stiffed me!  She handed me her number, didn’t attempt to pay because I didn’t ring anything up.  “Damn it.”
2
In my cell that night, I lay in bed, and thought about my Sadie.  I hadn’t thought about her since her actions put me here, and it was nice to think about her. 
I got off work that night and called her up, and said, “You stiffed me.”
She giggled, and said “yes sir.  I did.  Do you want me to pay for it?”
I looked away, embarrassed.  “No ma’am.  I’d like to take you out tonight, but I’m broke til payday, but I can invite you to my home and cook you supper.” 
She gave me her address and I picked her up, she was in pink Chantilly lace.  Her hair was in a pony tail.  I almost couldn’t keep my eyes on the road.  When we finally got there, I don’t remember making supper or eating.  I remember wanting to push her against my fridge and doggie style.  I remember wanting to hold her over my table and my couch and I remember swallering hard a few times so I was careful not to burn anything.
After supper I remember clearing the dishes really quick, not like me at all.  I guess I was trying to impress her as she sat in my chair, even though the couch was there and let me sit on her lap, cus that’s my chair.  I remember picking her up and putting her in my lap after teasing her a bit. 
I remember wanting her.  I wanted her so bad.  I wanted to see what was under that lace, pull her hair down and lift up that lace and slip inside her and take her like a virgin on prom night.  I remember getting a hard on.
Lights out was called and I was tired, but I had to stay awake.  I lay there shivering.  I was cold but being on suicide watch I wasn’t allowed anything I could hurt myself with.
I’m not suicidal, I promise.  I didn’t even cut myself or hurt myself on purpose this week, I was just helping out in the kitchen and burned myself.  I hate this place.  I knew that the guards would be in for bed checks and I was gonna be there and be given a damn pill.  I don’t wanna sleep this is bullshit; I’m a grown ass man.
I thought again of my Sadie that first night, I remember getting a hard on with her sitting on my lap she knew I had one.   She ignored it though.  I grinned smelling her deeply and as I close my eyes now I can still smell her sweet perfume. 
That night so vivid in my mind I can feel her warm skin against mine, the television displaying inaudible pictures of god knows what.  I don’t remember the television getting turned on.  I don’t remember if she said it or I did, but one of us asked about the television.  I remember being very dazed and if she had wanted to sleep with me she could take me.  Hell, if she had wanted me to smoke a joint and have anal sex I would.  I was just so enthralled with her it sort of scared me.
See, I’d never had a girlfriend, or really been close to girls.  Granted, I had, had my fair share of sex, and girls, but I’d never trusted them.  I don’t know why I didn’t.  I just didn’t.  I guess, in hindsight I should’ve known to trust my instincts and not trust anybody.  I’d had some issues with trusting people in the past, my brothers, and my friends….everyone.  I guess that’s why I’m always so bitter.
The next thing I remember she was gone, I was alone in my apartment, with this hard on, the television on and my best jacket was gone.  I got a phone call from her that said “I’m home, thanks for supper.”   I got up and showered and went to bed, I just couldn’t believe how dazed I was.
A big, burly man came into my room and looked at me, “Dennis, you’re still awake?”  He addressed me by name; we’d known each other intimately for almost a year now. 
“James.” I grumbled.
“You know you’re supposed to be asleep.  Am I gonna hafta get ugly and give you a pill?”  His southern drawl was that of a stoner footballer and I liked it, it gave me a feeling of safe whimsy.
I looked at him, and in my child-like innocence I said, “Yes.”
“Are you gonna be any trouble?”
Again, my child’s innocence got the best of me, “yes.”
He climbed on top of me put a muscular arm to my chest and held me down.  He forced my mouth open, and dropped a pill down my throat and then closed my mouth with his fist that was attached to the arm on my chest.  He messaged my throat, for me to swallow, with his free hand.  I managed to kick him in the nuts, one of his knees had rolled off my shin and I wriggled it free.  He forced me to swallow, and watched me close my eyes.  He waited a few minutes then got up off me and turned towards the door. 
I had been lying, so I jumped on his back and started biting him.  I grabbed him and whispered, “Didn’t strap me down.”  He grabbed me and wrestled me to the bed and strapped me down finally and let my blanket lay disheveled at my feet and walked out the door, ordering for a nurse in the morning to check me out.
Grinning wildly I passed out.
3.
I woke up remembering my encounter with James.  James is a night orderly, he made his rounds to check on patients to make sure nobody was dying and over the last few years we’d begun to talk. 
We had started talking mostly because he had come in one night quietly thinking that he was going to be bitched at by me.  I had been in a particularly sore mood (it was the anniversary) and he simply said, “hey, my name is James, I’m the new orderly, I was jus’ wonderin’ if you were alright.  I’d heard you were unreachable.”
“Who the hell said I was unreachable?”
“Sorry, no matter, nothing…” he had trailed off.  I realized that for being such a big boy, he was a whimpering, timid fool.  That was when I knew I could trust him.  If he was this timid around me, he prolly wasn’t gonna tell anyone anything I (or anyone else for that matter) said.
In my late night talks with James, I had tried to tell him about how crazy I was.  He had never believed me, so every few weeks I knew he’d forget to strap me down, so I like to prove to him that I really am crazy. 
The morning nurse that James had called for had already come in to check on me before I even awoke from my dreamless sleep.  
I can remember waking up all of my life to nightmares, my body pouring in a cold sweat, the demons of my nightmares still huddled in the shadows of my room.  I can remember being so glad that I had survived the night.
Today I awoke surrounded by blue shadows being cast from the morning sun.  I was on the shady side of the room, so I don’t get much morning light.  I awoke dripping in sweat.  I was panting so hard I thought I might’ve had a nightmare but I couldn’t recall what was in my dream last night.  I can recall what was in my dreams the first time I’d had sex.
The first time I had sex, I was 15.   She was such a great gal.  She was 5 foot, 5 inches; blond, blue eyes.  Oh my, was she a pretty little thing.  She was my first, and I, hers; and we’d been best friends for almost 5 years when we had finally decided to sleep together. 
Her name was Jenny, and she was born and raised in Werselen, Germany.  She had come to America with her folks and I had fallen for her and we’d been inseparable ever since.  So, the night after we’d had sex the first time, I had a dream.
I found myself in the nurses’ office at school, and she was crying on the bed.  I walked up to her, and she said, ‘leave.’  I was stupid and went to her and held her.  I remember this distinct sudden pain in my stomach, and this ripping/sloshing/tearing sound coming.  I remember looking down and with horror, I saw our daughter eating me alive.  I saw her blond hair and blue eyes and the birthmark on her back, and she had eaten a hole out of her mom, and was beginning on me.  I remember the look on Jenny’s face.  It was full of fear and hatred.  When I woke up the bed was covered in sweat, and my phone was ringing.  I picked up, and it was Jenny’s mother.  “Dennis, there’s been a terrible accident.”
She had been in an accident involving the kitchen butcher knife and her stomach.  She had committed suicide.  I remember crying hard when it had happen.  I remember dreaming so much of my Jenny the first few years after that had happened.  I remember getting questioned at school by the councilors and being badgered by them. When they’d asked me for the hundredth time what had happened, I finally burst out crying and said, “I fucked her.”
The official death certificate said suicide but I’d know she thought I’d gotten her pregnant.  I wanted to kill myself.  I begun to have dreams about her, and when I awoke, I could hear the faint sound of baby cries, or I could almost see her image in my room. 
Just before graduation I lost my mind.  It was 3 years after she’d passed, and I had begun some college course work after school, and was on my 3rd year of college for a psychology degree, and in my senior year of high school.  My dreams were more intense then they had ever been previously and it bugged me.
I don’t know why it bugged me but it did it really bothered me having such strange dreams.  Dreams that almost came true; dreams that were so lifelike they scared me. 
A plop of a plate in front of me had startled be back to the present.  Breakfast: I had toast and some jam, then I was pulled when it came time for eggs and sausage.  I’m glad I didn’t have to look at the sausage; I don’t like meat, not anymore.
The Doctor, from yesterday, had pulled me from breakfast to talk again.  I showed him my burn, as per request.  It’s not healing very quickly. 
“Dennis,” the doctor began, “can we please discuss your wife again?”
I looked at him, blankly, and began to think of my life before she came into it. I remember actually having a life.  I was 24, and I was free.  I had my own apartment and car, my hair was long and my body was lean. 
The day I met her I can remember waking up that morning not having had a nightmare.  I went into Ollie’s Room.  Ollie was my roommate, and I remember looking at him, “hey Ollie” I said.  Ollie looked at me and I said, “Yes, it’s breakfast time, are you ready?”  He appeared to smile at me, as I picked up the flakes and pinched them to the top of the bowl.  Ollie swam up and started munching
“Blub, blub, blub” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
You see my best friend and roommate, his name is Ollie and he is a Telescopic Eyed Gold Fish and he’s 6 inches long.  He’s a big boy, for a gold fish, but not for a Koi

…  Now, I’ve had Ollie for almost 2 years.  We’ve been inseparable; he likes music in the late evening to sleep by, and some TV. time and even a little bit of light for about two hours during the day.  He prefers to listen to Johnny Cash over Johnny Horton.
Now, just because Ollie is my best friend doesn’t mean I was a weird kid, it just means I didn’t get along with anybody, I didn’t find it important to have friends, and besides who would want to be friends with me?  I convert music on my time off and work as a cashier.  I don’t trust people much anyway.
“…people used to beat the crap out of me for just walkin’ by them.” I began.  I had started speaking in my dazed state. I figured if I was going to talk, he’d really wanna hear everything. “Them people I thought were my friends beat me and kick me just for being there, I’d be walkin’ in the hall and they’d walk by do that whole head bob thing at me and rear back and punch me as they walked by, or push me against the wall.  My friends were bastards.”
“You seem to have an accent I’ve never noticed before.”
Heading back to my dazed state; I began to think again.  I remember the drive over to my job that day I met her, I had a 6 hour shift.  I remember that car of mine not wanting to start.  “Aww come on, John; please…oh please, oh please, oh please start.”  It grumbled and tried, then stopped.  I began to get frustrated and wanting to cry.  I was gonna be late if he didn’t start soon.  “John, please.” I cried.  He grumbled, and then rumbled to life.  I popped in the tape, and music began to scream to life in the car.  “Thanks John.”
John is an old man, and he’s good guy, I can’t much complain about him not wanting to start, the only thing keeping him together is bubble gum and bird shit, but not for long, I’m gonna have the funds to start the overhaul.  I should be going on vacation after this pay check comes in, that way I can take him apart and clean him up, and get him purring again for our trip this summer to California. 
If I seem to be thinking of my fish and my car as animate objects with personalities and thoughts it’s because I have a large expansive history with them.  See, that car I’d found with Jenny when I was 14.
Jenny and I’d found him in an old barn.  That barn had been on a property that I know had been abandoned 30 years ago when the market crashed. 
The particular property had once belonged to the Roland’s.  Barbara and Ben Roland had the biggest crop of racing horses this side of the Mississippi River.  Ben Roland also farmed for quite some time before he and his wife started raising horses. 
I had heard all my life that the Roland farm was the best producer for miles around. 
We’d hopped a fence and snuck into that barn, when it had started to rain.  Her blond hair stuck to her neck and I was soaked.  I dug in my pocket and found a lighter.  I had been stealing lighters from my step-daddy since I was 12, and I had been sneaking smokes since I was 13.
She pulled our cigarettes from her pocket.  She was one of the few girls I knew that wore jeans and a tee shirt everywhere she went.  Her perfect little butt accented in those jeans.
My momma was so pissed when I came home late.  But it’s been years since she really cared about me.  My adoptive mother, Lynda had told me all of my life that I was the adopted child that nobody wanted and not as good as her children.
Carole, my mother, whom I’ve been in contact with since I was old enough to write, had been born and raised as a poor farmers daughter in California in the 70’s.  She’d been impregnated by a surfer out there in California and she moved to Dyess, Arkansas when she found out she was with me.  My daddy had been gone since then.  When I was born, momma lived in a one room shack with a guy that hated her.  He beat her and kicked her and when my momma was hospitalized for her injuries I was shipped off for the boy’s home at 6 months old.
When I was adopted by Lynda and her husband, Jimmy, who would soon die of cancer, it seemed like a match made in heaven.  They were already the parents of 3 girls, and they wanted me to make their family perfect.  Then Jimmy died.  I was 3 when Jimmy died, and it broke everybody down, and Lynda told me I was the man of the house. 
That was until 6 months later she married Gerald, who took me as a threat and began to beat me.  I was no longer the man of the house, Gerald was.  When he got Lynda pregnant they moved us kids down to Texas where his family was, and we moved in next door to his parents.  That was when I began to be the adopted kid.  That’s when nobody liked me.
So, as Jenny and I were in that barn, sharing a cigarette, I knew what it was like for these poor folks that’d lost their entire livelihood.  This poor slat-wood barn, the stalls were being eaten away real bad and the floor was covered in dirt and old hay.  It looked as if part of the floor had been weathered away by a storm or two in its time.  It was almost beyond repair.  I looked at Jenny, and told her, ‘Let’s live here.’
“It seems silly to me now, to think about that,” I began again, talking once more to the doc. “But I loved her, she was my world.  I had never had much growing up but I wanted her to have what I never did.”  I paused, wiping away a tear.
“Who are you talking about?” the doctor asked.
“Jenny! Haven’t you been paying attention damn it?”  I cried.  Pausing reality, I came back into my memories of my Jenny, she came up to me and held me tight, and I held her.  We came back every day to clean out the barn and it was on the third week, when we had started to fix the floor and rake the hay out that we found the car.  It was a cream colored, 36 Hudson Terraplane.
It was when we’d found that car that she started to hold my hand, and she began to bring clothes and things from her house for the window coverings and the like.  I found an old couch, and stole some wood and a mattress from my step-dad’s job.
I had begun to live in that barn.  We’d gotten a lock from the store and some old kitchen supplies.  After school, we’d walk home to our barn together and she’d make supper for me and I’d clean dishes, and one night, after supper we were in the hay loft just staring at the stars in the modified sky light and I asked her to move in with me.
She looked at me and said, “Denny, what’s wrong with you?”
I choked out a cough, “what?”
“We are 15 years old, how is it that you can live here by yourself, and you think my mama and papa will let me live with you.”
“Cus your daddy told me you could if I was careful.”  I told her smiling to myself.  I’d asked him sometime ago, the last time I was over.
Looking at the Doctor, stepping out of my memory I could almost see myself crying.  The Doctor looked at me, and passed me a lighter and a pack of cigarettes; you see he had to take them because I’m still on suicide watch.
4
 “Dennis?”
The Doctor looked at me as I shook like a leaf trying to hold back my tears.  A plate with a burger and fries showed up while I was smoking.  I stayed in my silent stupor and pushed away the burger. 
“Dennis?” I repeated, mocking him.
“Dennis, will you please tell me something.”  The doctor replied seeming to desire for some sort of help.
“Something.” I glared at him challenging him to say it.
He sighed, and I grinned.  “Why don’t you eat your lunch, while I read over these notes?”
“I. Don’t.  Eat.  Meat.”  I said poignantly growling and narrowing my eyes.
“Can’t you just eat the bread, and French fries and cheese?”
I picked up the burger and looked at him smiling, “You want me to eat the bread, the cheese and the fries?”  He nodded.  “Even though everything has touched the meat?”  He nodded again seemingly unfazed by what I had said.  I threw the burger against the wall and flipped the tray of fries towards the burger.  I began to growl and point to the dirty wall, “I don’t eat meat damn it!  Not since her god damn it!”
5
I awoke in solitary.  I hate solitary; those bastards stuck me in here for refusing to eat again.  It’s not fair; I should be allowed to not eat meat, because I don’t.  I can’t.  I looked away from myself in the shadows of the moonlight. 
Looking back on my life I can see this pretty little girl that I love.  I still love her, and I guess I always will.  That Sadie, that girl of my nightmares and my dreams had such a hold on my life.
I remember waking up the day after we met and having to see her.  I called her while I was still in bed, and that’s not something I do often, and she said, come over.  I remember getting out of bed and donning jeans and an old shirt, and walking to her place.  I remember the house, a two story, with four bedrooms and a two and half bath.  It was situated at the end of a long walk and had a yard full of trees and there were bushes pressed against the garage.  It had windows and white columns, and it looked almost like an early American colonial.  On the inside, it was set up like an old farm kitchen.  There was an array of kitchen and butchering knives and a set of metal hooks designed to hold animal carcasses.  I first saw those and I thought, ‘must be an old styling, American gothic.’  There was a drain in her floor, and I thought, ‘it’s an old house.’  Her kitchen looked as though it belonged to a farmer’s wife, big, deep cabinets, and big basin sink, huge ovens and a big, massive hook. 
To be honest her kitchen scared me.  I was afraid of those meat hooks and the butchering knife.  Why does a little girl need such a barbaric kitchen?
I remember coming around her house that morning, and knocking on the door, and almost being mauled by her dog. She had a German police and grey wolf cross.  That dog was massive, it was lanky and long, it was built for the kill.  It was vicious that first time we met.  He had snuck up behind me and I screamed, she opened the door and said, down.
Down?!  She said down.  Didn’t scream it, didn’t yell it, just said it.  She didn’t even raise her voice and the dog was off me. 
I got up and brushed myself off, I still had muddy paws on my back, and that dog was sitting by Sadie panting.  I took a step closer to her; he leaned down and snarled at me.
She whistled and said simply, “no.”  The dog sat next to her panting again.  She had him trained.  He had to be an ex-attack dog. 
Looking at her, I smiled sweetly as I could, “Hello.”
She looked at me and smiled, “Wananchuchu, Mouki, go lay down.”  The dog left her side and went past me sniffing me as he passed and wandered off.  My jaw dropped as I watched him, she snapped me back to her attention.  “I’m sorry Mouki is so protective.”
“What did you do to him?”  I asked almost out of body.
“He was trained as a pup to protect me and I told him to go lay down.”  She said as she turned to go in, and I followed her, we sat in the living room on the couch.
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him to leave it and pay attention.”
The door opened and redirected my attention to it.  That doctor walked in.  He asked if he could sit in the chair he’d brought. 
“No.” I told him, “Sit with me on the bed.”  I grinned.
He did as I had asked.  I felt so powerful and proud of myself for being such an ass.  I was beginning to hate him.
“Dennis?”  He asked.
“I’m pregnant,” I stated as a matter of fact, “extremely pregnant with information that you want to beat out of me.”
“I’d never beat you.  Why do you think I’d beat you?”  He asked seemingly so concerned.  His eyes reflected his concern.
“Why would you ask that?”  I leaned back confused.  “That file on me tells you everything!  Why do you even bother, just label me criminally insane and go about your business.”  I slumped down on the bed to the point of lying down in a ball.
Instantly he sensed something.  “What’s the matter Dennis?”
“Please go away.”
“Dennis, I could get fired for being here after 9pm, but I care about you.  I need to know what happened.  I don’t want to read it from your file, that’s why I am compiling my own research, trying to appeal your case.  I don’t think you belong here.”
“What the hell are you talking about?  Why the hell would I get out?”
“I’ve been watching you and I don’t think you belong here.   I just need your help.”
Looking at him through tears I asked him, “What do you need?”
He turns on his recorder, I didn’t see him do it, but I had been watching him for a long time too.  He had brachial palsy of his dominate hand.  He couldn’t move the arm, but he could put it places.  He often did it so smoothly you didn’t notice.  I knew he’d had it because, when you’re a loner you tend to watch people.  See, I did a lot of watching people.  Dr. Schieren had brachial palsy and he was a college graduate.  He had a lot on his mind, a new wife, maybe a baby.  He didn’t let on to it, but when you watch people you can tell.  I sat up.
My mom is pregnant.  I know, from her writings, but she can’t tell me.  She’s afraid; she tipped me two months ago.  She’s afraid to get me attached to anything outside; she doesn’t think she’ll ever see me again.  Her letters talk about getting together with me again; seeing me, being near me, maybe living with me.  I highly doubt that will ever happen.
“Dennis,” he began, “I need you to tell me why, when you were found covered in blood, all you did was rock and cry?”
I flashed on that horrible night, screaming in pain, the blood I could smell it again.  The horrible smell; the horrible feeling of sticky and dread.  I tried to scream; no words came.  I tried to scream again, nothing came out.  I began to shake in horror, and I felt a sharp pain in my arm and I began to get very sleepy and calm.   The Doctor began to speak and I knew he was saying something but all I got was sound waves and fluffy words.  I collapsed on the bed the room spun and I was gone.
6
Dreaming, I could remember walking in on a day when she wasn’t ready for me.  I saw her on the back porch smoking a cigarette.  The house smelled like bleach.  That dog, Mouki, I learned his name was, was passed out asleep, which was odd for him.  I stood there at the back door and watched her smoke her cigarette, and saw that her jeans were torn at the bottom. 
Wondering I began to feel the wind blow as I opened the door.  She jumped and I knew she knew I was there.  I snuggled up behind her and took her cigarette and began to smoke it.  I could taste it, it tasted like blood.  Why did it taste of blood?  I had thought.  I took out a cigarette and began to smoke one.  I stood there holding her.  Her body; so cool against my skin.  I was so happy to have her near to me.  I couldn’t wait until she turned to kiss me.
Instead, her words began to breathe against me.  “Denni, darling, burgers are for supper.”
I awoke, and the image stuck in my mind.  Burgers.  Meat, bloody, raw meat, stuck in my mind.  A flash of blood, the taste on my lips and my tongue began to make my stomach curdle.  I ran to the bathroom, I threw up, I was hugging the toilet with my violent heaving, and I began to cry.   My stomach hurt with each forceful blow.  I was cry thinking again on all the meat she served me. 
When I had learned what she was doing, I couldn’t believe that she had been so cruel to me.  To serve me meat and to feed me….to feed me…to feed me such…such…meat.
I sat back against the floor, and looked at my hands as they shook.  I was shaking again and I knew it.  How could she?  I crawled and leaned against the door frame of the powder room.  The floor was cold, the single window made a pale blue light splash across the floor.  The light was pale, the moon was full.  Peering at the window I saw a bit of dew splattered across the glass, however it was not reflected in the floor.  A calm peace came over me and I breathed a sigh.  I was wide awake now, I didn’t want to go back to sleep.  I didn’t want to see her face again.
I was terribly in love with her.  When I married her, we hadn’t had sex yet.  I had been living with her; I remember, a year before we married.  I can remember sleeping with her and wanting her so bad.
I remember the smell of her hair, the length of her body, the warmth of her close to me.  I can remember snuggling close to her on those jersey knit sheets.  I can remember pulling her bottom close to me just so I can feel her near.  I can remember asking and begging to see her naked, or even to shower with her.
There was a knock at my door.  I looked around and looked at it.  Did I really hear it?  Am I going crazy?  Please don’t let it be her.  The door opened, and a voice squeaked in the blue room, “Dennis it’s me.”  The doctor appeared at the door and came in and came to me.  “I saw that you had gotten up, and was wondering if you were ok.”
I nodded.
He leaned down and sat next to me. “Holding up the wall?”
I nodded.
“Have an episode?”
I nodded again.
“Wanna talk about it?”
“You wanna watch me throw up?”  I asked addressing him looking at him.  I grinned.
He chuckled.  “I got my recorder, what you thinking about?”
“Sex.”  I nodded grinning, giving him an eye.
“I don’t swing that way.”
I grinned, slipping a hand towards him, and thinking about nothing.  For once I had nothing to think about. 
“Dennis, would you like to talk?”
I looked at him in the moonlight, longing to taste him.   “About?  Remember my stomach condition.”
He looked at me and he seemed to tease me as he winked seductively, and said, “Tell me anything, you want me to know about you, about your life.  I don’t care what you tell me, you need to learn to trust me, and if we talk you’ll begin to trust me.”
I began to ponder what he said and as I did, he began to get up.  I didn’t understand why he would get up, or even want to befriend me, because I knew he was only going to treat me like a slave once he knew what happened.  I didn’t trust anybody.  So I took a deep breath and sighed.  “I don’t trust you.  I don’t understand why you would bother to help me.  I shall however begin, but you are just like all the others.”   I sighed again.  “I was born, I lived and I died inside when I found out what she was doing.”
“Hang on, Dennis; I don’t wanna hear that same old story again.”
Looking up at him he was sitting in a chair in front of me, he had my cigarettes in his shirt pocket.  “I’ve told this to so many people and nothing happens.”  I motioned for my cigarettes.
Ignoring me, “I want to know everything about you.  I want you to answer me 5 questions in detail, and then we’ll go have a cigarette and get a drink.  If you can do me this I’ll do you that.”
I sighed.
“Good.  What -” he paused, “I don’t know what to ask now.  I have your undivided attention and I can’t think of anything.”  He sighed, looking down.
His uncertainty angered me.  Knowing I couldn’t have one, I couldn’t feel the smoking slowly killing me, angered me.  It frustrated me I hated it.
“What do you like?”
“Huh?” I asked him.
“What are your passions?”
“Nothing, I have no passions, my life is a lie and I don’t know anything about myself.”
“I don’t believe that, that’s not an acceptable answer.”
“I don’t.  I used to passionate about Jenny, and about music and my mom and cars and my fish, but I don’t know about any of that anymore.  I’m not avoiding the question, I just don’t know.”
Sighing, he looked at me, “we’ll have to come back to that.”
I began to ignore what he had to say; “I’m sorry I hate to be rude, I don’t want you to think that I’m just doing this for a cigarette if I don’t know damn it, then I don’t know.”  I interrupted him to say my peace, then stood up, and grabbed the cigarettes and climbed into the window.  I begun to fiddle with the window knowing I couldn’t get it open.
He pulled a key and opened the window so that there was just a 20 foot fall from the window to the ground. 
“Thanks.”  I lit a cigarette.  “I hated my childhood.  My friends were assholes.”  I let slip some information and passed him back the cigarettes.  He sat in the window with me, with his feet wrapped in my mine and a hand on the bar next to the window, in case I fall, he could catch me.
This room was designed for the criminally insane.  It had a safe toilet, and it was designed not to come up.  The sink was the same, no exposed edges or sharp corners.  I could easily turn the sink on and flush the toilet.  I couldn’t drown myself if I tried.  There was a door without a handle that closed off the bedroom from the bathroom.  The window stood 4 feet off the floor; it had an odd 6 inch window sill, so one could easily sit in the window.  I found it fairly easy to climb into the window mostly on cloudy nights or rainy days.  The bed was a mere over sized pillow on the ground.  It wasn’t a bed with box springs lifted from the floor or anything like that.  The floor was poured concrete the walls cinder block.  The door to the hall was a heavy concrete door, heavily padlocked and had a small window with mirrored glass so I couldn’t look into the hall.  The room was sound proof, so I could scream all night long and never disturb my neighbors to the south and north.  There was a small closed circuit camera in the corner on the ceiling so that, as doc said, people could watch me.  This was my isolation room.  I had been living in this room for my entire 3 year stay, ever since I had been sentenced to life imprisonment.  “I had never been popular with the kids even when I was young, I think I had one friend, and that was Jimmy.
Awww,” I sighed, remembering Jimmy.  “Even then we weren’t friends long before he turned his back on me when I needed him most.”
7
The day I met Jimmy, I was sitting outside after I had gotten the belt again.  The belt was such a marvelous piece of leather that cut the air with a whistle.  I can still feel that sweet, sting of metal and leather hitting me.
The leather I fingered inquisitively when he was gone, and mother was in the shower.  The worn leather smelled of desire and passion.  The leather felt cold when it was static, and had a hot passion when it was active.
I must’ve been 5 when I met Jimmy.  He was a god in his own right.  I was sitting outside like I said, and it was sunny and warm.  I had been hiding in the tall grass in the field next to the house.  The sun was warm against my back and head as I squatted rocking. 
Jimmy came up to me, and seemed to know exactly what I needed; he didn’t seem to shy away from me when he saw the blood staining my pants and lower shirt.  I didn’t know how much Jimmy was going to help me, until I was on my stomach screaming in that field.
I was rocking and I heard this rustling of the dry grass.  I almost jumped up when I heard it.  I was trying to crouch deeper into my silence and appear so small, when I saw a sandaled foot appear at the top of my eyes.  Looking up, I saw this little angel appear.  He was dressed in jeans and a shirt. He was carrying a black medical bag from the 60’s. 
A soft flowing voice came to my ears, “just grab your ankles and bite down on your knee.”  I did as the voice said.  I wasn’t sure if this was the angel speaking or just the voices I had begun to suspect were in my head.  A sharp pain allowed me to realize that my shirt had been lifted. 
A cool water came pouring across my back and then that sharp shooting pain came.  It felt like my skin was being boiled off and my flesh was going to rupture and dissipate.  The flash of pain began to burn.  I fell to the ground.  The pain made me scream.  That guttural scream, I can still hear.  The pain I can still feel, even 30 years later.
8
Now about that time, the world melted away and I returned to where I was; the hazy dream of the past slipping into the present.  I was against the wall in the window again.  I slipped my cigarette between my Hallux toe, and the second toe, and pulled off my shirt.  The scars still breathed some life when the cold cinder block wall touched them.
The Doctor looked at me; I had gotten a little chubby in my old age, and retrieved my cigarette asking him, “what?”
“I’ve never seen anybody do that before.”
“I’ve got prehensile toes, stop staring.”  I had begun to be defensive again.  Nobody had really seen my weird prehensility.  I was afraid he’d hurt me for it.
I was afraid of a lot of things.  I hate it, I think it stems back to my birth and my up bringing.  My birth was rough, from what I have overheard from my mom.  Rough labor, I was breached and she was 15.  
9
She was alone by then.  She had met my daddy while out surfing one summer afternoon at the beach.  She had never surfed before.  It was the summer of 1969, and the warm California sun was amazing, this is the way I heard my mom tell it one time, and she was young and free.  Her folks had moved out to California before she was born.  She had been out with some friends that warm August afternoon, and they had all wound up at the Beach.
A voice brought me back to reality.  The warm summer faded into dark, cold cinder block.  “Where are you?”
“California with my mom.” Was all I could utter, before I sank back like the sun in the sky over the water.  “My mother had been 14 in August on 1969.  Like I said, she’d met my dad, while surfing.  Let me back up he was surfing, she was watching, well….” I took a pause and breathed the air, it was still stale.  I wish it was warm and moist.  I didn’t pause to look at that doctor whom I was once again disappearing and hiding from.
“Well, my mom and her friends had been eating ice cream laying on the beach, with their newly formed breasts, and watching the boys.  She had caught the eye of my daddy, and he was young and handsome and was surfing.  He came up to her from the shore and knelt down beside her, her friends giggled.  He smiled and she offered him a lick of her ice cream…
“Story has it that he accepted and said, ‘Little darling I saw you by the shore and knew I had just seen a fallen angel.’  She and her friends looked at one another and giggled.  This is where her friends took off and went to town for supper, and mom stayed behind with my dad.  He hadn’t introduced himself.  She smiled and said, ‘My, you sure were good looking out there.  Will you teach me sometime?’
“Apparently he said ‘yes, I can, I think you’d be great.  Wanna go out for a burger?  I am about starved.’  She sweetly agreed and they went to his car and went to a hamburger stand.  She said it was packed and he offered her a cigarette.  She agreed and smoked.  After supper her memory gets hazy but I think that’s because she never wanted to tell me about her first time. 
“But by October, she had turned 15, and was pregnant with me.  She remembers not wanting to tell her folks that she was pregnant.  Instead she took some clothes and walked out leaving a simple note ‘Mom-leaving home to find myself.’  She had gone to find dad, and found out that he had moved on and was gone.  She did however find someone else.  She found Johnny.  Johnny took her to Arkansas and told his parents the baby was his.
Johnny loved my mother, he just didn’t want me.  So, he raped my mother every night trying to get her to miscarry so that he could give her his seed.  It wouldn’t happen.  She gave birth to me on May 23, 1970.
 “I was only born on that day because they induced her after he had put her in the hospital for beating her on the 22nd.  If she hadn’t been induced and fought for me I would have been put up for adoption straight away and not 6 months later.”  I began to cry, in my little window. 
I couldn’t tell him anymore.  He sat there staring at me; his eyes reminded me of eyes from long ago: judging eyes.  I couldn’t tell him that the reason my mother stayed with Johnny for so long was because even though he did beat her and rape her, he took care of her.  She was a runaway and couldn’t let her daddy see her as a whore for having me. 
10
It was then that I didn’t want to exist anymore.  It was my final retelling of my birth that made me want to never exist.  If I didn’t exist I wouldn’t have been dropped into this bullshit life.
If my mother hadn’t opened her legs I wouldn’t exist.  If she didn’t fear her daddies’ wrath, I wouldn’t be adopted.  I hate her.  Sometimes, things in her life make me hate her so much.
The doctor touched my knee and I punched him in the gut, he looked at me with pleading eyes, and I opened mine.  I saw the doctor, and apologized.  I released a cigarette from its box and began to smoke it down.
“Where did you go?”  The doctor asked me.
“…to hell for hating my mother...”
“How come?”
I was done talking for the moment.  My mother loved me, for not being judgmental.  She carried me to term, and held onto me as long as she could.  She hated my father for giving me to her, but I guess that’s ok, cus I’m here now.  She can curse his name all over again, but I’m still here.   I guess she meant for Johnny to kill me that night.  God knows he tried.
If it wasn’t for Johnny it would’ve been Gerald.  When I had met Jimmy, it was when Gerald had decided to test the theory that Johnny hadn’t succeeded, and Gerald took a belt to me.  I had come home with dirty shirts I guess.  I can’t remember why I had been beaten so badly. 
But Jimmy found me and cleaned me.  It was then that we were the best of friends.  He was my best friend.  He was my first friend, he was my only friend.  He was a dirty faced kid in shorts and a holey shirt.  He was poor and didn’t seem to have a home to go to.  So we spent a lot of time on the streets playing well into the night.  He seemed to not want me to go home.
It was one night in the summer when were had been hanging out in the Rowland barn, because it was raining.  We had been talking and then he had to go take a leak.  So I lied up in the hay loft alone.  He didn’t come back.
The doctor touched my arm lightly.  I got off the window sill and lied in bed on my back. 
“…it’s not time for sleep; it’s time to go to breakfast…” His voice floated in as I fell asleep, a dream perchance to relax the waking mind.  A dream perhaps to stop the fears of Jimmy’s disappears and of my sweet Sadie.
The dream came in as a step back into time.  I had been living with this girl for so long and she still wouldn’t let me have her.  She would hold me so close and so sweetly and leave me hard as a rock and wouldn’t let me love her.  I was so frustrated.  I hated her for it; I should’ve left her for it.  In all the years we were married she never did get pregnant.  Why didn’t she get pregnant?  Why?  In all my years I’ve had girls left and right ask me if I’d pay for a pregnancy test, but damn it she never did…
I shot up out of bed when the door opened up and there was the doctor staring at me.  “She never got pregnant.”  That was my line of the day.  I don’t know what time it was or why I had been sleeping.   
 I looked around and the doctor had some clothes for me.  I began to get wide eyed, these were not hospital clothes; these were going out clothes.  My hair fell in front of my face.
“Come On, Dennis, I got you a day pass, I told the warden it would help.”
I looked away, grabbed my cigarettes from his pocket and got in that window again.  I began to smoke one and he looked at me, “What’s your trouble?  Don’t you want to go?”
I looked at him with my eyes so deeply full of sorrow.  “Why are you being nice to me?  What is with you?”
“After hearing what you told me it made me want to get you out of here on a day pass and let you explore some of your home.”
After hearing that, I got sick to my stomach and started to let my vision swirl around me.  It swirled, the edges blackened; the stars twirled inward in concentric circles.  I fell off the wall, and was dead to the world.
In my unconsciousness I was excited to learn I wasn’t dreaming.  In this bit of free scale madness from my worlds of judgment, I could relax and not worry about the bullshit of life and answering questions.  In my unconsciousness, I could see myself on a short brick wall in the corner of two intersecting strip malls in a small Americana town.  I could feel the slight breeze, it was so warm.  I could feel the sun on my body, and feel the leaves casting their shadows on part of my body.  I felt so free and untethered. 
When I came to, I was lying once again in the familiar bed looking around at the walls and the doctor was in a chair next to me.  His voiced waved unceremoniously through my head.  What he was saying I don’t know.  I hate it when he speaks and I ain’t got my bearings.  I sat up, and crossed my legs.
“Shut the fuck up you, I ain’t got my bearings.  I dunno what you’re saying.”
“(Garbled something important I guess.)”  The doctor.
I was beginning to get pissed off at that doctor.  He would never shut up.  I kept thinking at him ‘shut up, shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up!’  But of course he didn’t hear.
His voice came into filtered hearing again and I could understand him.  “Dennis, are we ready to go?”
I rubbed my eyes, I wish I knew how and why I had blacked out.  “Go?  Go where?”  I cocked my head innocently.  My hair had been plastered to one side of my face because I had drooled on it.  I looked at the doctor and peeled the hair away. 
“I want to take you to a place and show you something.”  His certainty bothered me just as much as his convoluted speech made me uneasy.
Sitting there, I was forced to think about the life I had been dealt.  I didn’t want to get up.  I don’t wanna go anywhere with this guy.  I don’t trust him.  There was no reason in my mind not to but I just didn’t. 
So, while sitting here I find myself thing of my apartment, on the many nights I sat there on the computer doing nothing.  I’m nothing if not boring.  On this one night, wearing black, listening to music (I used to convert it), and I was on the internet, listening to The Beach Boys.  I used to love rock and roll.  I was sitting there reading some philosophical banter from an internet buddy.  A chick I’d know I’d never meet.  She sounded so pretty though.  But whatever.  We were typing and I got the odd sensation that something was around me. 
I jumped and looked around, Olly looked at me from his slumber and blew a bubble.  I glared at him and told him to shut up.  I turned back to the computer and my friend was gone.  I looked at the conversation again, and her last line, was “nini hunny, love you.”
I looked at the words, in black in white in the Skype window.  Hunny.  She called me hunny.  I looked up the definition.  “No results available.”  What does hunny mean?  Was she calling me something sweet so that I would know she likes me?  Does she like me?  I went to bed that night confused and fell asleep so quickly.  I awoke in the dream world, in such a weird state.  I was reading a book.  A book I had never read before about these cowhands who spend the entire book robbing and running away from the law. 
When I woke up from the dream, I began to get ready for work, and then I saw a box laying outside the door of my apartment, and when I opened the box….  It was the book I had read the night before. 
Coming back to the real world was harder this time.  I wanted to stay there forever.  I miss hunny.  She was probably my only friend, and there’s no telling WHAT she was.
I didn’t want to come back, I could still hear the sound of Dennis, Carl and Brian harmonizing together and swooning so sweetly, and the clickity-clack of the keys on my board, as I typed to her. 
When I did come into reality, however, the doctor was driving down the road and I was in the passenger seat staring out the window.  He’d been talking for quite sometime and I’d never known it.
I cocked an eyebrow at him and thrummed my fingers against my thighs as the music played in the car.
“Are you back yet?  I’ve been talking trying to annoy you back into this world, mister glazed eyes.” 
I chuckled, half grinning.  Not gonna say a word, it’s your fault I’m in this mess.  I sat listening to the music as the song changed.  I looked at the radio, it said AUX.  It was running Auxiliary power?  He’s into music?
“Where’s the iPod?”  I asked demandingly.
“How’d you know?” He asked looking at me.
“The music changed from Respighi Suite No. 1 for the Lute, to Ricky Nelson’s Poor Little Fool.”  I said matter-of-factly, with a look of chutzpah on my face.
He pulled it from his pocket, where the AUX cable was going if I had looked, and showed me it.  I looked at the tracks, and looked at the music on it, and noticed a lot of things familiar about it. 
“This is mine?”  I asked accusing the doctor of stealing personal affects.
 “It is.  I was looking into your affects when I thought the court was going to kill you, but since they repealed THAT law, I guess it’s safe, I was just curious what was on it.”
“That’s illegal, and you could be fired for stealing.”
He looked at me and stopped the car in the grass.  I looked around and sat up straight in my seat.  I put my feet in the seat.  Beginning to shake, my fingers clutching each others, I took a deep breath and bit my lip.  “AH!” He cried, and stuck a paddle in my mouth.  “I will not have you biting your lip.  I know what this place means to you, and I need you to stay conscious.”
11 
The yard was so green and over grown.  The weeds were choking the grass in some spots.  The trees had lost limbs due to unforeseen storms.  The limbs that were on the grown had decayed and fallen apart; the grass was even greener in those spots.  I saw a bunny hop across the side walk up to the door.  The Door. 
That door that I had opened and closed so many times, the stained glass door that opened into the hall way.  The doctor opened the door and unbuckled me from the seat.  I fell into the grass and lay there.  The grass itched at my body, and held me close to the ground. 
The grass cooled my body, even though it was the middle of summer and it was hot.  The grass cradled me in this way that I think mom would’ve cradled me had she wanted me. 
I looked up at the sky and it was blue.  I was afraid to look at the house.  That house I had looked at 40,000 times before.  The door I’d opened and unlocked with my keys.  The trees I had trimmed over the last 14 years.  A lawn I mowed and killed with ant killer certainly loved me now.
The doctor crowded my field of vision and stared at me, “Come on, get up, I’ve got your hand.”  He offered a hand to help me up, and I rolled over and stood on my knees looking at him.  “Come on Denni, don’t make me pull on you and hurt my back.”
I crept closer to his crotch trying to spook him.  I didn’t want to stay.  Looking up at him with pleading eyes, he kicked me and I leaned up to bite his thigh until he bleed, the iron got into my mouth, and it hurt.  It began to curdle my stomach and I began to dry heave and cough and choke. 
“Serves you right, get up.”  I got up, and began to get in the car.  “No sir,” he closed the car door and locked it.  “You aren’t getting out of this that easy.”
“You bastard.”  I glared at him and walked around to the Oak, and climbed it.   I climbed it to the top and could see the entire house and the back yard.
“Get down here, Dennis!  Don’t make me put you back in solitary.”
I saw the house, and it was still as beautiful as the day I left it.  Someone had covered it in police tape, and posted notices.  Someone had dug up the back yard.  The holes were massive, the police tape around the excavation site looked fresh.  Had she talked more?
The chagrin died right there.  The breeze became bitter and cold.  The doctor babbled at the foot of the tree on the phone.
“Kill the phone, someone’s been here.”  I called to the bottom.
He hung up the phone and seemed intrigued. He called up, sounding a little hoarse.  “What’s the matter?  Come down and talk about it.”
I dropped from the branch, and landed on my back on purpose.  As I fell I consciously exhaled and balled up.  I bounced.  I kept my head up and bounced.  The doctor lost it.  He came over to my side of the tree and looked at me as I lay there laughing at his fear.  I guess that man thought I had died, or had gotten hurt or something.
12
 Laying there looking up at him, his look of concern made me grin.  I hated to have him always want the best for me.  It wasn’t fair.  He didn’t know me.  He didn’t know I was a Sociopath.
I thought of my wife, my beautiful wife in her cell.  She was being held in maximum security somewhere in some town, in some state.  All I know is that she’s not in my personal hell.  I know that because I hadn’t seen her in there, that and the judge said Prison.  A grin came to my face as I thought of that word.
I thought about the trial.  I thought about her in the orange jump suit, plastered were the words to the holding facility we were both at.  We had a cell next to each other.  Every night I remember her either trying to squeeze through the bars, yelling at me or trying to make love to me.
That woman, in the end was so raw, so passionate.  Why had it taken her so long to come around to my side?  She had taken her time when it came to her desire to fuck me.  I remember wanting her.   She denied me for next to a year after we were married.  I wanted to ask for her hand almost a month into our relationship, but waited, like a gentleman.  Looking back I waited like a fool.
 That first year we spent in her house, in our home, after we had started dating, I spent the nights with her, my days working.  I couldn’t imagine my life without her.  She was such a doll.  I used to come home and she was in a pink apron strewn about her hips, in a blouse and skirt.  Dinner was ready on the table and she was ready with a pipe and a pair of slippers.
At first I thought I was crazy because she wouldn’t have sex with me, but she treated me like a god.  We used to make out on the couch and I would get so hard, and she would shut me down.  On one occasion I can remember particularly.
We had been on the couch, making out, and I was hard as a rock, and I moved her hand to feel my crotch give her the word as it were that I was ready. 
She looked at me stopping my progressing emotions and surging hormones as her hand recoiled.  “Denni, sweetheart, I’m just not ready.”
I swallowed hard, sighing heavily.  “Hunny, darling, my love…”
She looked at me with pleading eyes and those eyes wielded tears.  That woman had a habit of turning on the tears so easily.  I hated that shit.  She was such an emotional one, especially right before she had a really bad period. 
Feeling like a bastard so early in my relationship with her I took her in my arms and held her tight so close.  I got up and kissed her forehead and was drawn to the refrigerator to make her a shot of whisky.  Several times I did things like that for no reason. 
Coming Back to the grass, looking up at the doctor, I looked at him with saddened eyes.  He helped me sit up and we sat by that tree for a few minutes.  He allowed me a cigarette as I told him what I saw. 
“The backyard was dug up.” I ventured after a while.
He patted my knee and kindly stated, “I’m aware, they have been given information to further the investigation.”
Sighing I looked away enjoying that cigarette. 
“What is this place, Dennis?  Can you tell me?”
I stretched and yawned cracking my back against the tree feeling sleepy all of a sudden.  “I used to live here.  This was my pride and joy.  I lived here with her: I mowed the lawn, pulled weeds here every Sunday.  I made sure that the fire ants didn’t take over.  I made sure the trees and plants were watered and the hedges were trimmed so dear.”
“You loved your lawn?”  He asked that like it was a crime.
“No, I took care of it, because she wanted me to.  She used to give me lawn essentials, and she liked for me to keep the lawn perfect.  It made her ready.”  I lowered my voice and wiggled my eye brows like I needed to emphasize my subtle innuendo.
He sighed like he didn’t understand, and I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t get it, just frustrated that he was intelligent and didn’t understand.
He elbowed me and said, “What else did you take care of?” He had a dirty grin on his face.
I looked at him and shook my head.  He had finally gotten what I was getting at.  I sighed out, “You Pervert.”  I shook my head again, with narrowed eyes.  “Are we on the same page now?”
His look of joy sank, and he sadly said, “yes.”
I got up and walked up to the sidewalk.  It was concrete and it danced about the lawn in a double S-Curve.  It seemed to look at me menacingly.  I walked right up to it, and watched it.  That sidewalk I had been using for 15 years had begun to crack and look disheveled.
I remember the countless times walking up it and down it.  I remember running down it in the rain so I didn’t get wet.  I had many memories of that sidewalk.  I remember carrying my Sadie down the sidewalk after our wedding and carrying her across the threshold.  I remember the sad times.  I remember holding her up as we came home that day, with out her beloved dog; her tears staining her cheeks and dropping to the concrete, beginning to make it appear wet. 
I breathed a heavy sigh and closed my eyes.  I flashed on the night the cops dragged me out of the house.  The cops holding me up as I twisted and squirmed and screamed.  You swear you’ve never heard a hear splitting scream such as mine.  I felt a hand at my back.  It was Doc.
“Doc, I-” I began, my voice wavering like an old, warped record.  “I am-, I can’t- I can’t do this.”
He began to hum, ‘Young Emotions’ by Ricky Nelson, and I began to get the courage back.  I knew it was Ricky Nelson, he was one of my favorites. 
I put a foot on the concrete.  It hissed at me.  It warned me not to proceed.  It said ‘don’t go farther.’ 
I swallowed hard, and I had, had that ominous feeling before.  The first time my wife let me be with her, a few weeks after that she became angry and hated me, then she became sad and hated me more, and finally I caught her crying.  I had asked her what was wrong and she shook her head and her voice, sweet as cherub’s singing, “Nothing.”  We didn’t have sex for a while after that.  It was so foreboding the way she said ‘nothing.’
After that she seemed to go through that series of emotions often and I took it as PMS.  I thought all women were like that.  It wasn’t until her conviction she looked at me and said, “I wish I could with this like I did all the others.”  Her voice was no longer the cherub but the jackal.
Both feet now on the sidewalk, I took a deep breath, and turned toward the house.  That house.  The windows; those big bay windows, eyes to the soul and evil of the house; those windows, some in shades, looked like eyes peering back at me.  Those eyes are the ones that said welcome home. 
I looked away, those eyes had seen so much that Sadie and I had to offer.  I felt ashamed to be here again.  “Never did I want to be here again.”  I spoke, the words of a Godsmack song.
“What?” Doc, looked at me confused.  I realized he had a hand on my shoulder.
“Get off me.”  I shook him off and took a step towards that house. “I’m a big boy, you wouldn’t take my advances earlier why should I bother with you?”  I got ballsy, and took several more steps towards that house. 
That foreboding house staring at me; it’s grey brick façade so unnerving standing there untouched by time in 40 years.   The grey brick was such a delightful touch when I moved in.  I was just glad, honestly, that it wasn’t pink.  We had had it repainted several times, just to keep it up to date and pretty.  With my lawn maintained and her house maintained we were always complimented on it.
I felt something watching us.  I stooped and looked around.  It was in the trees, it was in the bushes, it was anywhere and everywhere but in sight.  Doc, came by and came close tried to straighten me out.  I looked at him and hushed his mouth.  It was watching me.  I saw the woods, it was there!  It had to be.  A leaf dropped to the ground.  A squirrel had knocked it down, and it came close to us and chattered. 
“How rude of that squirrel to yell at us for doing nothing.”  Doc said so confident.  He didn’t feel the presence I did, that bastard.
I straightened up, satisfied that the creature was still watching us and figured it would get the Doc first.  So, I proceeded towards the door. 
The door had an oval cut piece of glass in it.  It had pillared glass on each side of the door.  A beautiful glass storm door hung in front of the heavy door.  Both were adorned with gold plated fancy knobs, the kind with the tails on them.  The white pillars on the porch were menacing enough just standing there, but to be on this side of them again it was worse.
We had a pretty wooden park bench to the right of the door that I had stained the summer before along with the park-bench style chairs on the left.  I remember sitting on that bench on Saturday and Sunday morning having coffee with her.  We put out mugs on white antiqued planters on each side, and watch the birds. 
The chairs had often held our little lawn decorations for the different holidays.  The garden in front of the porch on either side was full of ivy and petunias.  The petunia was her favorite.  We fought for 14 years to get the deer to leave them alone.  We finally did right before it happened, but mostly because the deer stopped coming around.
The bushes to the right of the porch lined the garage.  I don’t know why or really understand why there were bushes right there, they didn’t cover the garage windows which for some reason stayed broken.  They didn’t cover anything or really make the house nicer, but I made sure they were trimmed in the square pattern I had first seen them in. 
I had put my hand on the knob, and it turned on the storm door, it clicked and opened.  I tried the knob on the door, that door, and it clicked too and opened as well.
13
My eyes were greeted with stinging smell of disinfectant, and iron.  The wood entry hall, I saw, I stared at the floor, was still in need of repair.  The hall had been sanded and varnished sometime back but it needed to go again.  The wood was a black walnut color, I had, had a hell of a time trying to find that stain about 10 years ago.  That little entry hall was intruded by white carpet stairs and some plants.
“Holy-” the doctor spoke, his voice echoing in the entry hall. 
I took off my shoes.  It was a force of habit.  I took a breath, and smelled dust, and dirt.  I narrowed my eyes and sighed.  I cut across the dining room into the kitchen and headed for the pantry, ignoring the scenery, and grabbed the mop.
“What are you doing?” Doc asked seemingly confused when I returned with the Swiffer Mop.
I set it down, and was glad to see the lemon disinfecting mopping solution was still in the holster on the mop.  I checked the fluid level, and began to move the plants.  There had been two plants situated on rolling pot holders in each window by the door and the rug at the door.  I flipped the rug on the stairs and wheeled the plants on to the carpet.  I began to mop when the Doc grabbed me by the arm, and yelled at me.
“This is an active crime scene, you can’t be cleaning this up!”
I looked at him with a narrow face, and went back to my mopping.  I picked him up and put him on the stairs on the rug when I needed him to move.  He was cursing me at every swipe of the mop.
I ignored him.  I needed to do this.  With every spray of the solution I saw the gleam of the floor and the dirt disappears.  I could almost hear the pores in the wood open to except the cleaning.  They wanted to be clean.  I was disgusted with what they had been leaving my house to become. 
Once I had finished the entry hall, I brought the plants back to their spots.  I took the rug to the garage for cleaning, and came back with a bucket of warm water from the sink.  I poured a solution of window cleaner in the 5 gallon blue bucket and mixed it around.  Lemons.  It smelled of lemons like it always had. 
I quietly worked on the windows, scrubbing them and cleaning them like I had been taught early on in my life.  My adoptive mother, the bitch, forced me to hand scrub the floor every day and clean the windows every other day. 
When I was old enough to hold a scrub brush, I was 3.  She told me to dip that brush in water and lye soap and scrub our wooden floors until they shined.  She then told me to take lemon juice and baking soda and make a paste and shine those windows with newsprint.  If I wasn’t done with the floor by lunch and the windows by dinner she would beat me.
I remember wondering if she would ever beat me if I wasn’t quick enough.  Scrubbing the floor every morning gave me time to think, think about what she’d beat me with.  I remember when i was 5, and I had gotten up at 6:15 instead of 6 to start on the floor and she turned me over her knee and beat the daylights out of me, and then she threw me to the ground and left my broken and bleeding to scrub the floor. 
I remember laying there twitching, and then she kicked me and I got up.  I crawled to the bucket and got the scrub brush.  I reached for the hot water, and she pushed me out of the way, and said “you get no water; you will spit, shine and polish that floor for getting up late.”
I went to get the bar of soap to scrub with and she handed me a new bar of lye, some of the toughest soap to work with if it hasn’t been started.  I don’t know where she got lye soap, she didn’t make it herself.  But as I set to work barely breathing, I think she cracked a rib at that point, and it hurt.  So, I got down on all fours in the corner with my bucket and my soap and brush. 
I spit blood on the soap, and took my horse hair brush and scrubbed that thing until I got a bloody bubble.  I spit on it again, I needed more bubbles.  I knew that.  There was a knock on the front door.  I knew the drill, I hid the soap and bucket and crawled in the crawl space, hiding. 
When mom screamed, I thought it was ok to come out.  But it wasn’t, the officers had come in anyway.  I was taken from her and my bones set to mend.  She came and retrieved me, after paying her small fine, and took me home after she spent two days in jail.   
That’s when my step dad came home and beat me beyond recognition, and threw me in my room again.  Ha! I use room loosely, it was four walls and a floor thankfully.  My room was missing some roof bits, and a proper bed.  I was 7 when I got my first clean shirt.  I can remember crawling on the old feather mattress and crying.  My hunger pains had started again.  I knew, however after a day or three, the pains would stop.  My parents were just mad at me a little. 
The bee buzzing on the other side of the window looking at me intently brought me back to my clean windows, and my dying succulents. 
I got the pitcher of water from the kitchen and watered Sadie’s plants.  She could never remember to water them.  I often took over her chores in the day when I wasn’t working.  She normally spent her mornings out walking, and then the afternoons she liked the house to herself most of the time.  I spent my mornings cleaning house like I am used to and my afternoons, I spent alone, going to museums, as long as I was home by 6:15 on the dot for supper.
Sadie never cooked a bad meal in all our years.  I sat down on the clean, wood flooring in the entry hall, while Doc sat on the stairs.  I put my back against the closed door, and smiled at him.  I took a cigarette from him and lit it. 
“What was THAT all about?”  He finally asked.
Sighing I simply said, “I don’t like my house dirty.”
“The Chief is gonna kill me.  You know we aren’t supposed to be here, and we got-no scratch that, I put my ass on the line, to bring you out here, with the intent that you wouldn’t touch anything.  And what is the first thing you do?  You clean the god damned-”
“Don’t you dare curse my house.”  I snarled interrupting him.
“Excuse me-you clean the front hall and now I’m going to get my ass handed to me.  I better call my wife and tell her to make funeral arrangement I’m as good as dead….” He trailed off as far as I was concerned, because I got up and set about to head up stairs to our bedroom. 
14
The white carpet was a high pile carpet, it was so thick and lush against my toes.  The stairs made a 90 degree turn half way up and our room was down a long dark hall off the stairs. 
The door was closed.  Why was the door closed?  I stood there rubbing my knees together at the door.  I began to wonder what was on the other side.  I stood there, wondering what could be over there, just on the other side.  This hall is a hall that holds no special value or meaning in my memories.  Its just a hall, I used to walk it thousands of times every day.  I still cant believe that this room has a walk in closet and a converted attic space for a bathroom. 
I remember our entire first year together I converted that space and the attic above us.  I had to frame in the little space off her closet; I tiled it in 16 inch tiles, and I even ran plumbing through the garage for our private bathroom.
The attic space above the second floor, took me a bit longer.  I brought stairs through the closet in the spare room, and extended that closet.  I had a lot of free time on my hands when I moved in with her.  She told me she wouldn’t feel my love until I contracted it all.  I turned that house into a piece of ART. 
The newly converted space was a play room and a nursery, I did that privately.  She wanted it for an office but I convinced her otherwise.  When I was done I put a lock on that door and hid it behind what little boxes we had in that closet.  I wonder if my nursery is still there…
In lieu of searching my bedroom, I walked away from that door and went to the spare bedroom just off the hall on the left. I walked in that spare room, it was set up in a rustic beach front design.  There was even a 900 dollar, 9 foot 6 inch Thresher in the corner that I converted into a coffee table, with some industrial piping.  The white pickled floors in this room matched the futon, and the dressers.   Both dressers we reclaimed from a yard sale and I took the time to take them apart to fumigate and replace nails and hardware, sand and stain.  That was a project in itself. 
The walls were covered in posters by The Beach Boys and Bruce Brown’s The Endless Summer.  I don’t know, anything about them, but the futon was in the seated position the dressers where they had always been.  The room was covered in dust.  I spotted the door.  I opened the closet door.
  I stepped inside, I hated the way my house looked so dusty and dirty.  I closed the closet door and came up to the secret door at the back of the closet.
The boxes had been strewn about the floor.  I was narrow eyed and mad.  I hope that she hadn’t been up here.  This was my spot.  This was my surprise to my wife.  What if the cops had been up there?  They must have thought that I couldn’t get her pregnant…. Shit!  I gotta get up there.
I opened the door, there were hand prints on the railing.  Damn it!  The cops were here.  The stair case smelled like fucking donuts and ass hole.
I raced up the narrow stair well, and I stood at the open door.  I had left this door closed.  I sighed deeply and a hand touched my shoulder.
“God Damn It Muther Fucker!” I jumped screaming and fell against the wall trying to get around fast enough to see who it was.
Doc stood there laughing at my fear.  “Sorry, Buddy.”
I looked at him and kept wishing he would burst into flames, he knew what he had done.  Didn’t he know that this was intense for me?  “What’s you deal man?”
“I thought I might come up here and check on you.”
Fuck you.  Ain’t no reason for you to be here, I thought looking at him.  I brushed off his hand and turned away looking at the open door.  The Room had changed to.  I saw the rug I had put down was gone, and so was the crib.  I turned away.  I didn’t want to even go in there.  I brushed passed Doc and went down the stairs. 
I took the short cut to the kitchen through the dining room, and found one of my wife’s knives.  I sat there next to the floor cradled between the cabinetry next to the sink.  That big basin sink.
I began to stare at the blade.  I needed no reason to do it, just knowing that she had been in there and people had been in there was enough to make me sick.  I didn’t have many spots to go that were truly mine in that house, but that closet was mine.
To think that she had violated that spot, my privacy my world, just made me hate her more.  I had no desire to live in the world anymore as long as she was here.  I wish she had taken my life when they caught her.  She should’ve done it.  There’s nothing I want more then to be gone from this planet as long as her violating ass was here.
She ripped out my heart when she stepped into the closet.  To move everything out and move her shit in was even ruder then stepping into that closet.  To imagine her in there made me sick to my stomach.
I wanted to open my veins and spill them on the floor.  There was no reason for her to be up there.  I hated her for it.
I closed my eyes, and flashed on the day the cops picked me up.  I was on this floor, curled in a puddle of blood.  I had been bleeding, and she had taken a butcher knife to me.  She had been starving me for a few days and I had escaped. 
Luckily the neighbor had heard screaming and called in a noise complaint and when the cops got here I was spared my death, and embarrassed by my crying and she was taken in.  The psych ward picked me up.  They thought I had done in.  They thought I was guilty.  I looked up from the knife poking my wrist and looked upon Doc starring at me in horror. 
What?  Is what I should’ve asked.  I stayed silent.  My mouth closed.
“Dennis what are you doing?”
15
I was home again.  I was 9.  My sister was drawing me a bath.  I had been beaten senseless again.  This time she had found me on the floor bleeding.  I was uneducated having never gone to school.  My sister, Gloria, god she was a saint.  When she had noticed our step father disciplining me, she realized she needed to care for me.
Gloria had beautiful red hair, so sweet and flowing.  Her freckled face and fair skin stuck around with her green eyes, and Irish brogue.  I learned from her. 
So that night she had the bath running in the hall by my room, and she had carefully stripped my clothes away.  She had examined my body for infection from the beatings.  She looked closely at my naked frail body.
“You should be ashamed of your nudity.”  Her voice, I can still hear close to me.
“Why?”  I looked up at her innocently.
“Cause the devil showed Eve that she was nude and covered her with a fig leaf.  And Adam saw it and Eve convinced him that the Snake was clever and true.  And then God got mad and made Adam and Eve ashamed to be naked once he kicked them out of Eden.”
I scratched my head.  I didn’t know nothing about God.  So she turned off the water and set me standing in the tub.  She grabbed the soap and washed my body.  She was careful around scars and cuts.  She gently washed my body like she loved me.
I still don’t know why she would take the time to bathe me.  She’s always just washed my hair.  Today, however, she paid special attention to my legs and bottom, and she fawned over my soft body parts. 
“Where are you?”
  I looked up and saw my sister staring at me still.
“Where are you?” The voice repeated.
I blinked a couple of times, and the weight of the blade returned to me hand, and my jaw hurt like hell.  The Doc looked at me, he was on his knees hands on mine.
“Where did you go?”
I sighed and got up, and pulled myself on to the counter top.  That Formica countertop, it was a butt ugly mauve color.  The Doc stood up again.  I hung my head and grabbed a cigarette.
He pulled it from my hand, “Where did you go just now?”
“Gloria bathing me” I softly almost in an inaudible squeak and stole my cigarette back.  I lit it quickly.
“Who is Gloria?”
I looked at him menacingly.
“Never mind.  Where did you go?”
I closed my mouth and glared at him.
“Ok, yes or no.  Was that room upstairs the Killing Floor?”
I looked at him like he was speaking 4th Century Latin with a Spanish accent.
“The Killing Floor?”
I nodded my head.
“That’s the place commonly referred to when livestock are killed…”  His voice hung limp in the air.  He was sad to have said it.
I shook my head quickly.  I wasn’t ready to tell him about the nursery.  It still pissed me off that he knew what happened but didn’t know that this woman was capable of that.  I’m sure he thought that I’d have some remorse and confess.
“What was that place?”
I glared at him.
“Is that your bedroom at the end of the hall?”
I grinned in reminiscence.  I enjoyed not talking to.  I enjoyed sitting on the counter with my cigarette.  If she could see me now, she’d be pissed.
There was a click as the door in the kitchen opened.  That door opened from the garage.  There was a small face coming through, with long brown hair and saggy brown eyes.  He crept in, with a woman.  I didn’t recognize the pregnant woman for quite some time.
She had brown gray hair, she appeared to be in her early 50s.  I looked away.  I knew who she was.  But who was with her?  Who was the child near her?
Doc faced her and went up to her and said, “I’m sorry ma’am this is a crime scene you and your child can’t be here.”
I looked at her, tears in my eyes.  “Hey mom.”
16
She looked up and was beginning to wrinkle.  She was still beautiful though.  I remembered her from pictures and dreams.  I used to talk about her when I was little my memories of her but people wouldn’t let me say those things.  I was six months old how could I know what she looks like?
Doc turned around.  “Mom?”  His eyes appeared that of Marty Feldman’s and his jaw dropped.
“That’s my mom.”  I got off the counter and went towards her, feeling the baby kick inside of her.  I missed that feeling.  I had yet to feel it with my Sadie and feared I never would.
“To answer your statement, the judge said that I could take the boy to see some things.  The boy has been wanting to see this place for some time.”
I narrowed my eyes.  “Mom, you live in the valley over 5 hours from here.  How did the child hear about it?”
I began to look at the boy.  He was 2 or 3.  He was cute. 
Her voice interrupted my thoughts.
 Her voice was angelic.  It had begun to age like all good voices should.  Sighing she touched his hair, and closed the door.  “That’s not important right now.”  She looked down at the child.  “Go play, Denni.”
 I looked at her and cocked my head narrowing my eye brows confused.
The child, Denni, ran off giggling through the house.  I offered my mother a stool at the counter and went back up on the counter top.
“What are you doing here?” Doc, whom had been speechless this entire time, asked.
She sighed, and I grabbed her some water absentmindedly.  I sat back down and smoked another cigarette.  I leaned against the overhead cabinets.
“Well, when little Denni came along, I needed to raise him better then my own little Denni, so I stayed single.”
Doc, looked at her, “Why did you name your second son Denni?”
Sighing, she seemed disgusted with the doctors questions already, she stated, “Look, I don’t have the time for this.”
You tell him, mom. 
Shocked he said, “well, I’m-I’m sorry.”
She looked at me, “Boy don’t smoke around me.”
I looked at her as she motioned to get up and put my cigarette out.
“Who’s the kid?”  Was all I could manage to ask.  “Why did you abandon me?”
Sitting there she looked at me, ignoring my first question she said, “I didn’t abandon you.”
“You sure as shit didn’t come get me.”
“Johnny didn’t kill me which I’m thankful-”
“Yeah you do.  Johnny didn’t kill you cus he hated me and wanted me gone so he could fuck you.”  I was enraged.  I looked around for the kid. 
The doctor sighed seemingly thankful to be standing between us as she got up and came towards me.  “I-I-I D-don’t think-” He stammered
That woman looked at me, “This guys a stupid shit isn’t he?”
I looked at her and sighed strongly ignoring that stupid girl.  She might’ve been 15 years my senior but she sure was stupid.
“Some body outta belt you in the mouth.  I won’t do it.  I won’t….”  I looked at her with pursed lips.  “Get your fat pregnant ass, and that bastard out of my house.”
She came up next to me, and said ever so gently, “He’s not a bastard.  You can call me every name in the book, and I probably deserve it but don’t you dare call that child a bastard.  His parents may not be around, and his mother might’ve died, but you’re more of a bastard then he is.  At least his parents were married for 14 years before they had him.”  She called for the boy and waddled to the door.  She desperately called for the boy again, and opened the door, shaking her head at me.  “Yes, she’s gone.”  She slammed the door making it shake open and she grabbed it and slammed it again.
I scratched my head as Doc looked at me, again. 
“Who was that?”
“That was my mom.”
“What’d she mean by what she said?”
I chuckled softly, nervously I said, “I dunno.”
“How do you not know?” 
“I dunno that fuck is going on, how am I supposed to know what she was blathering about?”
He shook his head frustrated.  “You know what she was talking about and if you don’t wanna talk about it, that’s ok.”
I looked away and decided to smoke another cigarette, I was frustrated.  That was my son?  Did his mom died?  Did my Sadie die?  What else did she know?  What else did my Sadie tell the cops?  How did she die?  She’s not set for the electric chair for another few years.  She should still be alive.
I jumped off the counter and brushed passed the doctor.  The cigarette ash that had been on my jeans dropped to the floor.  I went back to my private closet; the one in the spare.  I closed the door, and turned on the light.  I curled in the corner by the winter coats and the sweater chest.  I pulled out a small box, full of pictures. 
17
The box, a plastic box, with four sides and a lid, was, like I said, full of pictures.  It was an old box I had kept around.  I had broken the lid sometime back, and had to get a new one, so now the box was green and the lid purple.
The pictures were full of me and Sadie, from the day we started dating until the day we parted.  I saw pictures of us so happy and together, and us holding smiles wide on our lips.
I paused a picture where she was sitting in my lap, and her smile had softened, her features looked so sweet, and her eyes looked so sad.  I read the date on the back, 2 months married.
I thought about what my mom had said and what she had said.  Mom said she was gone.  She said, “I wish I could do with this what I did the others.”  If the kid was … mine … that means…
“Oh God NO!!!!” I howled and cried looking at the picture in my hands and banged my fists on my legs and punched the wall supporting my back.
Doc came running in and stared at me on the ground.  He dropped to his knees with his black bag, thinking I’d hurt myself.  He checked my wrists as I howled in pain. 
I looked at that picture and knew now why she got upset and cried and angry, why she never asked me for a pregnancy test.  I tore the picture in half.  I crumpled it in both of my hands and began to tear up all of the pictures of us after that.  She didn’t love me.  If she had, she wouldn’t’ve done THAT, that horrible disgusting thing.  That Bitch.
She knew what she was doing all along.  She knew that I had and she knew that and never once asked me to use a condom.  I would’ve gladly have used a condom the rest of my life if I had known she was doing that.
I should’ve known.  I had good viable seed, my doctor told me so.  He told me I had a good count and they were all strong and healthy.  How many times had she gotten pregnant?  How many times had I told her about Jenny…?  How many times had I held her close after sex and hoped and prayed she’d get pregnant?
Why did she hide it from me?  As I held the crumpled pictures in my hands still oh so angry.  My fingernails were digging into my palms and the nails had long since pinched the skin and my palms had begun bleeding.  Doc grabbed my hand and begun to doctor my palms. 
“You know what hurts the most?”  I asked.
“What’s that”?
“She never told me.  She hid it from me.  She never once told me she was and then she did THAT, and then she just drops him off and dies.”  My voice was audible for that moment.  I murmured some things that weren’t audible anymore
He either knew what I was crying about, or was just being sympathetic but he put his arms around me and held me.
18
I awoke again in this magical dream world.  The world I like to escape to.  The world I escape to when the real world isn’t making any sense.
My world hasn’t been making much sense at all lately.  I did my best to make sense of life when in the real world, but sometimes my brain shuts down and I can’t, so I get hoisted into this dream world shut off from pain and misery.  I looked around in my fantasy world, I was no where.  I wasn’t in the past thinking about my mom, or Sadie.  I wasn’t in the presence screaming at people, I was back in my safe little closet.
I guess my cerebral cortex, said no to my sensory organs, and I could no longer see the pictures that had been making me upset.  I was allowed to breath free and easy away from those pictures.
I dropped my head against the wall and breathed heavy.  The world was hard to look at in that other state.  I didn’t want to see the dark winter coats in the closet, nor the shadows walking about.  I noticed a smaller door I had never noticed before on the opposite end that the stairs were.
I crawled towards it, and could smell a musky odor from the door.  It was a warm malodorous smell.  It left a bad taste in my mouth.  I could feel myself pulling out of the mysterious happy world and back into reality and into the world beyond myself. 
I could feel Doc shuffling behind me as I sat at this tiny door.  I had been in this room a thousand times and had never seen it before. 
I slowly reached for the knob.  I had been afraid what this door opened into.  Where would this door lead?  Would I see more of what I didn’t want to see?  Would I see things I really shouldn’t see?  Would the cops find me again in a compromising position that would destroy me?  
I put my hand on the knob.  It was cold, why was it cold?  Oh yeah, dummy, its dark.  Why would someone want a door here?  What would be in the room beyond?  How big would it be?  What would be in here?
I began to turn the knob.  My mind raced with questions.  Doc got wildly excited and kept telling me it was time to leave, it was time to go, he could hear his momma calling him.
The knob clicked, it was unlocked, I slowly pulled the door open, damp air rushed out in an exhale from the room.  It was light.  There was a damn light on in the room!  I paid to the electric bill for 14 years for a light to get left on? 
I crept towards the opening and Doc had begun to pull on me.  He didn’t want me to go in there.  Why didn’t he want me to go in there?  What did he know?  Why would he bother to stay so close and act like he didn’t know if he did?  I peered inside and jumped back and hit my head on the wall.  I closed the door shut with my foot before I blacked out.
19
I awoke in my bed.  I looked around, and it was dark outside.  I was in my bed.  I looked next to me expecting to see the cinder block walls in my cold cell, I saw plaster walls.  I jumped and looked at the other side, I was alone in my room.  My room!  The room I shared with Sadie!
I sat up and got out of that bed and crawled into a corner away from the bed.  It was a corner that used to hold a lamp and chair I used to read by.  I had read so many books and I used to read everything in the chair.  We got rid of it; I had to pay for a bill, what it was I can’t remember…
I began to shake, with fear.  I was alone, in the room, the closet door was slightly open and I could hear the converted bathroom creak and there was a dim light coming from the closet.  I was utterly alone and felt that there was no one in this world that would save me from the horror in the closet.  I heard a soft noise whirring in the closet, a stirring that made me cower closer to the wall.  A shadow appeared in the door way and I begun to cry. 
I was so afraid that she was back.  That woman, who stole my seed for nothingness and who had stolen so many things from me.  She can’t be back!  The shadow groaned and grew louder still, it opened the door to the closet and stepped out.
I screamed in horror and threw my shoe at the shadow and it hit!  It made contact.  If it was that bitch she was gonna feel my anger and pain damn it!
The shadow rubbed its knee where I hit it, and groaned.  The shadow reached for me.  I grabbed my mouth and tried not to scream.  I began to scramble away from it.  It reached for something that had been near me and I heard a ~click!~
Doc turned on the light!  My old reading lamp had been in the corner right behind where my chair had been.  Doc was in the bathroom and now he was staring at me weirdly. 
“Hello?  Are you awake or in panic because you don’t know where you are?”  He spoke and very gently dropped down to make himself as small as possible.
My eyes were wide and I was leaning against the other wall, under the desk.  I could barely see him until I flipped the switch for the lamp on the desk, which made things better.  It was only him he was the only one there.  He coulda fooled the hell out of me though.
“Dennis?  Where are you?”
Are you serious?  “I’m under the desk stupid.”
He sat down on the ground and stared at me.  “I understand that, but why were you so scared when I came out of the bathroom?”
“You got some real nerve coming into my room and putting me in THAT bed, and then using MY bathroom.  You really have a death wish don’t you?  I threw a show at you because I thought you were HER!”  I cried.  My heart hadn’t finished with its fear, I was spooked just by being in here. 
“That was a shoe?”
“Damn right it was a shoe.”  I felt proud of myself for having hurt him again.
“Why’d you hit me?” He came a little closer having scooted forward on his butt.
“I was terrified you were HER!”
He looked at me and honest to god, he said, and I quote, “Her who?”  He had inquisitive eyes and I just wanted to punch him.
I looked away disgusted with his stupidity and wanted to sigh him away from me and force him into reliving what I had been through and then let him ask “her who?”
I began to look around the room.  It wasn’t like I remembered it.  It had this smell now, this dusty, musky smell like something came in here and …. died.
I swallowed hard and tried to get up, I hit my head and my toes curled as I fell to the ground again.
Damn that hurt. I began to rub my head and I crawled out from under the desk, I didn’t wanna be in there anymore.  I tried to desperately look around and get out the room.  It was hard to breath in the room.  The foul stench of death was chocking my lungs. I grabbed the door handle and leaped out of the room. 
My feet touched the floor with leaps and bounds as I hit the hall and then the stairs.  I slipped forward on the stairs and tumbled down the stairs.  I hit a foot on a picture and saw the clean wooden floor as I landed on the back of my neck at the door straight up.  My feet had hit the glass door and my hands were straight out from my sides holding me up. 
I heard the Doc come running down the hall and flip on the foyer light downstairs, after turning on two hall lights and a bedroom light trying to find a light.
The light distorted my vision at a weird angle so it was hard to see him at all.  My head pounded as the blood rushed to my ears and pooled at the back of my head.
I could hear him saying something.  What?  I dunno.  I just started laughing because I wasn’t hurt and I couldn’t figure out how I was going to get down. 
Doc came rushing down stairs the moment he had made sense of my predicament and he began to pull my shoulders which had landed on the rug coincidently, and my back hit the floor with a force that knocked the breath out of me.
When I could breath; I started laughing again.  Doc’s leaned next to me trying to get my attention to see if I was hurt and I was just laughing.
I finally stopped, and the first thing he did was hold up 4 fingers and ask me how many fingers I was holding up.  I held up four fingers, and he asked me if I was ok.
“I was laughing wasn’t I?”
He rolled his eyes at me and I grinned in my fear.  I had almost died today and I loved it.  I am so tired of living in this world with her.
I didn’t believe she had died.  In my readings from our private library, I had learned that some prisons let you keep your baby and have them live with you, and some prisons make you give it up, and it would go to the most immediate family member, which would be my mom.
I had finally accepted that Denni was my son.  He looked like me I guess.  I can accept that she hadn’t cheated on me, who else would love her like I did.  I do, I still love her no matter what.  The church had me take vows when I married her, to love her forever and always no matter through sickness or health, wealth or poverty…I guess she was mentally ill, so I’m still gonna love her.
I lay there on the ground looking up at him, my ears didn’t hear his voice as he sighed or sat down near me.  I begun to take my body up and drag myself towards the bottom step.  I wanted to sit up, and wasn’t going to let Doc help me at all.
I sat up and looked at my knees.  He had brought me here for a break through.  I refuse to be used as a tool for his research.   It was time to tell Doc everything, therefore Doc would see that I belonged in that mental house and not out on the street, and he would just leave me alone.
20
“…and that’s what happened.” I concluded having talked to him until dawn. 
Doc looked at me mouth agape.  “She didn’t.”
“She did, she really did.  I’m not gonna lie to you about what she did and didn’t do.”  He sat there dumbfounded, “You know I didn’t even have to tell you, you miserable bastard, I didn’t have to tell you a word.  And now you’re gonna lock me away like the animal I am because I am crazy!”  I turned away from him and got up to get a drink, and remembered there was no running water.  I cracked my back and went to the pantry for a bottle of water.  Thank god for the millennium.
Doc came plodding into the kitchen weary from the night and said so softly, “Its not that I don’t believe you.  I didn’t think she’d really do that, I’m really sorry now, for not coming to your aide sooner.  Can I get one of those?”  He was so tired and his eyes sunken and drawn.
I passed him a bottle of water and took him back up stairs.  I lit a cigarette and took him on a tour of the upstairs for a proper tour.  I showed him our room.  I told him about the sleepless nights she denied me sex, and the time I came into the room with her crying.  How I never knew she was pregnant.  How many times I cried every time she had her period, and didn’t miss it. 
I wanted so desperately to become a dad.  Not having had a father of my own, I wanted to be a dad so much.  I wanted to break the cycle and show my children that even though I had no family, I could still raise good, honest and smart children.
I didn’t care, I still don’t, what she gave me.  She would’ve been a great mother if her priorities were straight.  It still irritates me that she would go to the doctor and take care of my beautiful children month after month like it was nothing. 
“Do you resent her?”
I looked at him like he was crazy, “Resent her?  What-no, no.  Why would I resent her?”
“She denied your desires, she stole your seed, she threw it away like it was nothing, she took advantage of you, she-”
I interrupted him, “who do you think you are for taking MY wife and degrading her down the line like that?”
“I’m just-”
I wasn’t having any of this crap, “She didn’t use me.  She didn’t steal my seed.  I gave it to her.  I made the choice to give it to her.  Yea, she denied me for a few years, but she’s not a whore or a slut, she made it worth while when I got to have her.  And who do you think you are to tell me that she took advantage of me?”  I yawned and blinked hard glaring at him.  I took out a cigarette and sat on the bed.  The bed wasn’t scary in the day light.
I began to smoke the cigarette.  The bed was a futon in the middle of the South Wall.  There was a lamp on an old record case at the head of the futon.  There were two big, and heavy wooden book cases and the desk for the computer. She had made me move those book cases several times.  She used to be a librarian at one point, but when we got married she was a writer, a starving artist. 
I caught her many times with a cigarette burning in the ashtray writing on the computer late at night having gotten up from sleeping with me.  I caught her many times when I got up in the morning still writing.  Well she said she had been writing, I really don’t know for sure.
There were posters on the wall; she was like a big kid.  She had inherited the house she grew up in when her parents died.  When they died, instead of moving into the master bedroom like I would’ve done, she stayed in her bedroom.  She kept everything the way it was, except for the attic and the private room.  She installed a butcher rack, because she knew she wouldn’t be able to host big dinner parties on her salary.
She was friends with animal control, who often gave her meat that couldn’t be saved.  She had hunting friends, that taught her how to field dress carcasses and would often give her the meat from a prize buck, but that’s just what she used to tell me.
She had a perfect life, she had been raped and molested most of her life but she had more or less a perfect life.  Her body grew tall and lean, and had been a real genius, at one point. 
She also used to tell me that she had done some hard work one time, had been all over the world and left a broken heart there too.  Course she used to tell me she’s seen caribou in Alaska and seen Santa Clause too.
Rolling my eyes in the present time now I kept feeling like I was being watched.  Like she was watching me and at any moment she’d come out from her hiding place and scream, “Gotcha!”
I had become spooked again, damn it.  I got off the bed and curled into the record case and drew my knees up to my chest.  It was a safe spot.  My back and sides were being held close.
I don’t know why that works; nobody has ever held me like that.  I had to be the big man and hold others that-a-way, but not me, never me.  I became soothed by the box.  I breathed easier. 
Doc finally spoke up, from his dazed confusion.  “What are you doing?”
“No.” was what I could tell him.  He looked at me insanely and I remembered he couldn’t speak psychotic, and said, “I’m scared.”
“Why?” He asked finally laying down across the bed to look at me.
“Get off the bed.”  I spoke to him like he was a mangy dog and knew better although he didn’t.  He hesitantly rolled off the bed and hit the floor with a thud.
Sighing, I looked at him and shook my head, and rolled my eyes at him.  I yawned again, I was still sleepy I wasn’t about to sleep in this house again.
21
I can remember the first time I slept at this house, in this bed.  I had spent half the night trying to have sex, and she had spent half the night telling me ‘no.’   I can remember sleeping in these boxers, these purple haze boxers that were so fun.  I had gotten them some time back from a friend; they were my first pair of boxers. 
But I remember laying there in the bed with her snoring softly, or at least pretending to, the bed was warm, the fan was on, it was the dead of winter, and the fan was on.  I’d soon learn I couldn’t sleep without it, and neither could she. 
There was a gentle flapping sound from an overhead poster and a warm lump at my feet.  Her dog was asleep on my feet.  I closed my eyes and listened to her breathing, and it was distinctly odd.  It wasn’t the normal inhale exhale, it sounded raw and had undertones of fear in it. 
I remember putting an arm over her and the breathing becoming less raw, and I held her close to my chest.  I also remember her turning to face me and breathing on my chest.  I can remember exactly how soft and warm and moist her breathing was.
I soon fell asleep but when I awoke she was gone.  The dog was gone, and she was gone.  She wasn’t at the computer.  I put on a pair of long lounge pants and slipped on an International Harvest jacket that had my cigs in it. 
It was a black jacket that I had had forever, it was cheap and I was cold.  I dug into the pocket and found a cigarette and lit it as I stepped outside in my bunny slippers.  All of my life I had wanted bunny slippers.  All of my adult hood I hadn’t been able to find them.  So I found me some fuzzy slippers and sewed button eyes and ears on them. 
The black button eyes stared up at me as that first blast of chill hit me in the face and chest.  I zipped up the jacket and shuffled to the bench on the front porch.  I yawned and sat down looking at the front yard like I belonged there.  I loved this house.  I enjoyed sitting there, until I heard a sharp whistle.  I rose up off the back of the bench and listened intently.  I heard a galloping and running.  A sharp whistle and everything stopped in a shuffle. 
I heard something scream.  I swallowed hard, I heard a growling howl.  She had warned me about feral dog packs out here as well as cougar and coyotes.  I quickly stepped towards the door.  I didn’t know how close it was.  I tried the door, it clicked, and clicked again, it was locked! 
I grabbed the door and shook it fearing now I had alerted whatever it was to my ultimate position, and I was being hunted at this very moment. 
I began to bang on the door, Sadie must be inside.  I finally looked to my right, and saw the garage door open.  I could see through on of the side windows.  I looked around me, the galloping became aware of me and was getting louder.
I ran towards the garage, I was running through mud and wet leaves.  The smell of dirt filled my nostrils and made my teeth hurt.  The rock dust in the mud hurt.  I ran closer to the concrete, closer to the drive way.  The galloping was louder.  I was hit in the side hard and fast.
I fell to the ground with a plod as my face hit the ground I saw this thing standing over me.  I heard the whistle, and the thing stood its ground.  My vision was cloudy and the thing moved. It got off of me and went running away.  Blinking helped to bring it back long enough for me to look up and see Sadie standing there at the edge of the road 30 yards away with her knife and her dog. 
I shook the past from my body in a shiver that started at my ribs.  I closed my eyes tight trying not to remember it.  That should’ve been my first clue that something was odd, but it wasn’t.
My ribs hurt.  It must have been from my fall earlier.  I wish to god I hadn’t tried so hard to impress that girl.  We might still be together then.  I can remember once again, on my knees begging her to marry me.  She had refused my desires many times before. 
The day I asked she was mopping the blood of a hog from the floor.  It smelled like pig in the kitchen. She was smoking a cigarette as she mopped.  I can remember the specks of blood on the floor.  I got down on my knees in front of her, in the blood, and pull the ring out and ask her to marry me.  She put the mop in my face and said, “no.”
Not to be easily discouraged I tried it the next night while she was on the couch and I put my head into her lap and asked her again.  She grabbed my nose and told me “no.”
What a fool I was to ask her so many times.  How could that woman have ever loved me?  Or if indeed she had how could she deny me so many things I wanted.  So many things I desired to get from her.
The day I met her I knew she and I would be together forever.  I knew she was my soul mate.  I knew she was going to be my Jenny.  I hoped this time she wouldn’t die.  From the moment I saw her I just knew she was to be mine.  She didn’t know it though.
I tried so hard to be her perfect man, but she kept me a perfect stranger to almost all of her body, mind and soul. 
Looking up at him on the ground, I rolled up onto my feet.  Sitting on my feet I feel forward onto my hands and knees.  I looked down upon his face, my libido raising and said gently,   “We need to go.”
22
In the car heading away from that house, I sat in the passenger seat my feet crossed underneath me, I smoked a cigarette and watched as the house got smaller and smaller in the side mirror.  
“What’s with the sudden desire to speak?”  Doc finally asked.
“What was with the sudden desire to listen to me?”  I asked in retort. 
“I told you that, I wanted to clear your name.  Hey it’s been a long day, can I get one of those?”  He asked reaching for my pack of cigarettes.
I chocked on the smoke, and coughed a while.  When I could breathe and speak again, “You want one of these things?”  I asked holding yup a cigarette.
He nodded.  I inhaled a deep lungful of smoke and blew it in his face, “You want a cigarette?  You know its going to ruin your health.”
He breathed deep.  “Yes damn it I want a cigarette!  Please.”  He became slightly enraged.
I pointed to a small road, and said, “Take that.”
He stomped on the breaks almost causing an accident and turned, in front of another car causing it to come to a screeching, horn-blowing, cursing stop.  “Can I have my cigarette now?”
I started laughing at lit it for him and stuck it in his lips.  I let my fingers linger as if I was going to let him puff-puff-pass.  He slapped my fingers away. 
His lips were soft.  I smiled at the warmth on my naturally cold fingers and smoked my cigarette and watched the trees come and go on the dirty, bumpy road.  He was driving thirty and the trees kept getting closer and the road began to climb and recede and twist and turn.  I held onto the oh shit bar, and looked at him.  He was angrily puffing on his cigarette like he was gonna get another.
I looked at the trees again.  I recognized this road from my years past.  I saw a deer running in the woods.  It was galloping like there was no tomorrow, something must have spooked it.  I looked at its body movements.  I was mentally studying the underlying muscles and ligaments.  I had studied anatomy and physiology in my off times when I was on my own and learned quite a bit.
When I had thoroughly satiated my desire for watching this animal, I looked again at the trees and then at Doc.  His rage was subsiding. 
He looked at me, and softly said, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve been so selfish.  It was wrong of me to take that from you.  You obviously have behavioral possessiveness and taking a cigarette was wrong of me.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”  I asked jumping in voice to appear angry although I was thoroughly relaxed. 
“It means you are a compulsive hoarder.  You collect books and stuffed animals.  I saw your house.  You have a pocket full of cigarette butts right now.”  He said pointing at my left pocket.
“Shut up.”  I said defensively looking away.  I was ashamed to touch myself.  I had always been ashamed to touch myself when someone noticed my compulsiveness.  It was like my prehensile toes. 
Ever since I was little and I never got to have anything, I would collect things.  I would collect shiny things, and buttons.  I would keep wrenches and pieces of ribbon, and bits of string.  I would put them in an old cigarette carton and keep it under my pillow. 
I still had it at the house before she found it and threw it away.  By that time I had screwdrivers, washers, buttons, string, ribbons and paper clips, Allen wrenches, hex washers, and my favorite were marbles.  I had found them all over.  They were shiny and they smelled like iron.  When I was little, just to posses something like that, made me happy.  I don’t know why, it just did.
“Should I not have brought that up?”  He asked again, this time raising his voice, because my thoughts drowned his words out the first time
I looked at him with tears in my eyes.  I had become upset when he told me he knew about my eccentricities.  Those were my eccentricities and after being poked and prodded for all of my life history; this bastard looks upon me and knows it. 
I refused to speak to him and looked away.  I began to see a lot of things that looked familiar, we came to a stop sign and the cross roads.  I looked around and saw dirt roads in all directions.  I hesitated and pointed straight.  He went straight and looked at me.
“You stopped talking to me didn’t you?”  I grinned.  “Well shit.” 
I smiled and wanted to laugh but I couldn’t.  I didn’t want him knowing I thought he was funny. 
“Well, since you aren’t talking, I guess I should.  Maybe if I tell you a story you will talk to me again.”  He paused as if I was gonna talk.  “Well, let’s start with the beginning.  My name is Dr. Hans Schieren, and I am from Würselen, which is in the North Rhine-Westphalia of Germany.  The North Rhine-Westphalia is a state, the state actually which formed when the northern Rhineland and Westphalia, which both used to be part of Prussia, came together in 1946.  I was born in Würselen in 1987.  I moved to the states when I was a freshman in college during a foreign exchange.  I stayed because I loved to air, and the education systems.  I speak German, and learned English from watching television, and learned French in high school.”
He looked at me to be sure I was still listening.  I gave him a sideways glance and tried to pretend not to care.  The road was making me qualmish, I was wondering if it was just the road or really my head, I hadn’t eaten yet today.  I checked the clock in the car, it was 11:10, in the morning.  Come to think of it, I hadn’t eaten since yesterday…morning. 
If I paid attention I began to notice my head beginning to throb, and my vision was beginning to fade.  I smiled weakly and held my stomach and pulled my knees to my chest and in one fail swoop laid my head on the window.
“Dennis, what’s wrong?”  Doc rested a hand on my left calf. 
I looked at him with weak watery eyes.  I was almost in tears things hurt so bad.  I had to sleep.  If I put myself to sleep I wouldn’t pass out.  If I slept I prolly wouldn’t throw up either. 
“Dennis?  Shit.” He said, flashing on an epiphany.  He pulled over and got out and ran around to the other side of the car.  He squatted on the fairly flat ground and opened my door.  I began to fall, and he caught me by the middle and laid me out on the ground.  The grass was green and felt cool.  He put his palsy hand on my face, and with the other one he lifted my shirt feeling my stomach. 
He left me and grabbed the tote box from the back of his car.  He set it near me and lifted my head and back up a little.  He held my with his left arm, letting his hand dangle.  He popped open the tote lid and rummaged.  I was beginning to see shapes appear.  He began to move and I could hear it, but I couldn’t see anything.
I felt a hard item against my lips, and heard a mumbling sound.  I opened my mouth.  I felt a tap against my bottom jaw.  It wasn’t hard, just enough for me to feel it.  I closed my mouth.  I felt human contact on the side of my throat, and tried to suck.  It tasted like something lemon and lime mixed.  It had a weird taste to it.  I kept drinking.
I felt a tap on my chin, and the slight pull of the straw away.  I let go reluctantly.  I opened my mouth and kept it open.  I tried to hum or make some sound as if to say “HUNGRY!”  I don’t know if it came across.  I could feel the liquid going through my body.  It made things happy. 
I felt a weight on my tongue and clamped my mouth shut, hoping it was food and not a bee or bird shit or even a finger.  The taste began to meld with my tongue.  I turned it over, it was hard and soft and chewy.  I tasted peanuts and peanut butter.  It was Granola!  I chewed it and swallowed and begged for more like a baby bird.
Doc began to grab me and drag me backwards.  He stopped and I heard him walking away.  I grabbed my legs and began to shiver and curled up.  I felt the thud from the tote.  I could feel his vibrations go away and come back, what seemed like hours later.  I knew it couldn’t be and that my time was distorted by the giving sleep of hunger.  I let myself slip into those grasping fingers of sleep. 
23
In my sleep and in my dreams I was happy.  Today I was purely dreaming, nothing bad, no razor blades chased me.  There were no bodies rising from the ground, or dogs chasing me.  I was laying here in my dream world, on the ground. 
The green, green grass of my southern styled dream home was joyously and laboriously taken from the stories Johnny Cash told about home.
I lay in the grass under a tree in the side yard with my dog, and my daughter.  She lay on my stomach and looked at the seeping willow branches with me and giggled when I breathed.
I looked down upon her and she looked like Jenny.  I asked her, “Dear, my darling, angel who is your mother?” 
She looked at me, and, innocently told me, “Daddy, mommy is in the house, and if you don’t know who she is you’re in big trouble.”
When I awoke I was hot, my neck hurt and so did my head.  My eyes throbbed and ached.  I normally felt like this when I awoke from the sleep induced by my eating disorder.
When I saw Doc hovering over me I opened my mouth, and words came out, “Food.  Now.”  He went running and came back as I sat up slowly against a tree.  He dropped to his knees and slid on the slippery grass to me and handed me a granola bar.  “I’m sorry that you had to see that, I got hungry.”
Doc looked at me like I was being silly, and he said, “Obviously.  I’ve never seen anyone do that.  You were fine and then you were leaning there pale and sweating.”
“I was sweating?”  I had begun to struggle with the packaging on the peanut butter granola bar and it didn’t help that my vision was still fading.
I felt him watching me, “yes, you were…” he paused to watch me, and his hands began to open an invisible bar near to him, “Do you need help?”
“Ffffff-uck!” I cried and slit the package open, flying the granola out and into the air.  I watched it twist and turn in the air towards a tree.  I scrambled to my knees and tried to dash towards it but it hit the ground before I could even get close.
I saw it touch the ground and I laid there and cried.  A hand touched my shoulder as I picked up the granola in my hand and let it lay there in it its righteous justice like it should.  I didn’t move towards the person touching my shoulder.
When a moment of passing came to be, I gingerly allowed for the snack to have its final moments as a delicious snack before I broke it to pieces, and tossed them into the woods. 
It is important for me to allow a snack to be respected.  Somebody took the time to make that snack.  They took the time to grow the grains and the peanut plants, and they took the time to select the ingredients and ship them.  The plant works took their time when mixing them up, and cooking them, just to be sure nobody gets sick.  
I kissed the air for the animals to come get their snack.  The animals needed a snack too.  If I can’t have it, a squirrel or deer or bird, would love it. 
I acknowledged the hand on my shoulder and looked at it with a kind of grin.  The hand held an unwrapped piece of cracker in it.  I turned around and crawled back towards the tree where I’d been sitting and sat down against the trunk again.
I took the snack in my hand and began to take it apart.  It was a cracker sandwich with a layer of cheese inside it.  I took one of the crackers off and after setting the other half of it on my knee I began to nibble on it.
The slow absorption of food into my stomach was helping my eating issues.  Swallowing I looked at Doc, and said, “You remember about 20 years ago, I went to Alaska and helped a friend of mine out?”  I took a big bite, and was chewing it as he nodded his head, I swallowed again before saying, “Well, you remember that she kicked me out right?”
I began to pick my teeth with my tongue and swallow the pieces as I motioned for my juice.  Doc passed it and I opened the lid, and took a gulp.  I breathed hard once or twice, and looked up, “After she kicked me out and before I came home, I lived with some friends who ate out a lot.  I was working nights at the time and wasn’t included in their food runs.”
“So you starved.” Doc concluded as I took another bite.
“It if had been-” I took a deep breath, “IF IT, had been a few days I would agree with you.  However, it was nearly three weeks.  I survived on a bag of popcorn once a day, and was lucky to have peanut butter.”  I watched his eyes become engorged and I stopped.  I ate the rest of my snack in peace.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I lost almost 30 pounds in those three weeks.
He looked at me shaking his head.  “I don’t believe this.  You’re in a state hospital, but I bet you nobody has read your file.  Like, really read it.”
I looked at him with my mouth full of that last bite, and furrowed my brow in confusion.
“Your file says that you’re crazy, psychotic, and schizophrenic.  It doesn’t say that you are smart, or that you were abused, or-”
I stopped him and shook my head.  “Nobody would have listened if I had tried to talk about anything except her.”
“But, you’re interesting.”
I stopped him again, “it really didn’t matter.  I am the only witness to a murder case and instead of hearing the whole story; all those bastards want to know is if I helped.”
“But you didn’t know at all.”
24
I looked back onto that day, it seemed so long ago.  I was in the typical interrogation room.  Grey walls, camera in the corner, complete with a metal table, and an ash tray.  I wasn’t allowed to smoke.
I sat there, while I smoked my cigarette just to calm my nerves.  The man in front of me paced back and forth trying to calm his anger. 
He slammed his fists on the table and yelled at me, “Tell me what you know!”  His brown eyes stared at me and I flinched.
“I dunno nothin’.”  I squeaked low enough to be almost inaudible.
“Excuse me?”  He pushed his face closer to my bubble of personal space.  I couldn’t imagine, him getting any closer and still respecting me.  I blew smoke in his face as I spoke, a little louder and clearer, “I don’t know nothin’!”  I crisply spoke the word so it would come out louder and clearer then the rest of it.
He looked at me and let the smoke flair around him.  “You are not perfect.  You will slip up and I will find out what you know.”  He straightened up and turned away from me.  He began to walk towards the two way mirror.  It’s not a big shock that it was a two way mirror, why it had closed circuit television I dunno.
He stepped towards the door; a mechanical buzz released him and in entered a woman.  It was Sadie.  She was hand cuffed and ankle shackled and she shuffled in with an officer behind her. 
Another seat was brought in to allow Sadie to sit with me.  I was allowed another cigarette as I sat next to her.  My heart raced.  I offered her a cigarette, she took it and it was lit for her.  I leaned over to her and put my unrestrained hand on her leg. 
I hated her, and was afraid of her, but she was still my wife damn it.  She was my world and my life.  I was afraid of her still though.  We sat next to each other.  She was in a cream jump suit, and had the numbers 202499 preceded with the letters of the Travis County Penitentiary. 
I was reminded of the numbering sequencing of Auschwitz.  I flashed on 200,000 male prisoners identified with a number, and 12,000 Soviet POW’s tattooed in the chest with a number, and the 90,000 poor women tattooed in the arm.  But what made me sick, was thinking about the 30,000 women who had an entirely different number tattooed on their arm and only separated from the first group of 90,000 women, by the letter A.
It made me sick to think about that even in today’s prison systems the letter is still used with the number.  The penitentiary is exactly like the concentration camps of old.  They had taken my wife and stripped her, made her wear an ill fitting piece of cloth, assigned her a number and marked her for death. 
I looked at Doc, who was staring at me because I had stopped moving, and shook dreams from my hair.  I looked past him and smiled.  I got up and stepped passed him and turned towards the forest that had been sitting behind me.  “Doc?  Are you coming?”
I began to want to run; a breeze had lifted me into its desired realm.  I began to feel drawn towards the center of these woods.  The air smelled ancient and deserving of more respect. 
Doc blinked at me, as I stood there, he put the box away in the car and locked it up.  He looked towards the car longingly and slowly stepped away from it.  He turned towards me and in expectant fashion he took towards my right side and took my arm, “Are we going far?”  He asked as if I knew.
With his question unanswered I took off running.  In my mind I was running fast, I began to jump over logs I didn’t know were there.  I began to duck under branches before I saw them.  My legs began to gallop in this run.  The wind took me and carried me farther then it had before.  My mind was no longer my own.
My mind was that of a hungry animal.  The animalistic brain was searching, questing for something clean and old, and familiar.  I didn’t know where we were when we stopped the car.  But in the deepest muddied controls I knew exactly where I was going.
I heard a stumbling sound of something tripping behind me.  It was chasing me.  My brain grabbed the strength and ran my body faster.  I leaped like a deer.  My body hunched closer to the ground and my arms began to swing back and forth.
My fingers extended and clutched as I ran on my hind legs.  At a clearing I took off away from the road in a caddy corned direction away from the path I had been running.  I jumped a stream and heard the thing behind me splash into the water.  I ran on and couldn’t stop.  I came to a tree and scrambled up the tree. 
It was in the tree that my brain allowed my consciousness to take over.  I had been panting and the breeze stopped.  I looked around and grabbed the trunk of the tree, because I am terrified of heights.  I looked down, and placed my feet on the branch underneath me.  I looked down and saw Doc running.  He was looking around and muttering to himself.
“Doc?”  I asked.
He looked around confused.  I shuffled my feet and knocked a piece of bark off the lower branch.  He jumped and looked up.  “What the hell are you doing up there?”
Looking around I saw another clearing.  “Hang on.”  I called down gently.  This clearing wasn’t as receiving at the last clearing had been.  I slowly stood up and looked at it.
This clearing gave off an air of regret.  It was clear and had an old barn on it.  There was a broken down fence on all sides.  There was a flower vase in the window.  It looked really familiar.  I looked upon the barn with interest and intrigue.  I wanted to go over there but I was afraid.
“What’s there?”
I began to look down and found out how I got up the tree.  There was a ladder leaning against the tree.  So I dropped off the limb I was standing on and down to the lower branch.  I felt for the ladder leaning against the tree and began to climb down.  My fingers clutched the rungs as my feet shook in fear.  I was afraid to fall now. 
When I touched ground I dropped to my knees exhausted and scared.  I looked at where I had been and saw the net underneath the bottom branch.  I saw the ledge attached to the tree; it was full of coffee mugs.  I looked towards the clearing. 
“What’s over there?”  Doc asked me touching my elbow.
Getting off my knees I took his arm and slowly, softly stepped through the tall grass. I felt this cold foreboding wind.  The wind howled at me to turn around and go the other way.  I pressed on, forcing myself to face the demons that were in the field.
25
Doc began to step forward as if to want to go closer.  I looked at him with sad eyes.  He pauses and looks at me.  “What’s the matter?”
“There’s something out there.” I squeak nervously.
He looks at me with kind eyes and grabs my hand; the warmth made my heart race and made me smile.  I got excited when his blue eyes stared at me. 
“Ok, I’ll go.”
We stepped towards the field; he squeezed my hand making me want to go farther.  I enjoyed the warmth and I could almost feel a passion growing between us.
He slowed down and hesitated.  I turned to look at him and pulled him towards the broken fence posts and stopped.  Pausing briefly to stare at the wooden siding on the decrepit building, I noticed a sense of familiarity with it.
I let go and hopped the fence.  I dropped to my knees.  The perfectly green grass made me weak to be on.  Doc climbed over the fence gently.  He passed me his hand and pulled me up. 
“Did you get tired?” 
I nodded gently and decided to not think about the sudden weakness I had experienced. 
I held his hand and felt the warmth of his beating heart in the wrist.  I let go of his hand and smoothed my hair back, and then graced his wrist with my fingers.  I grinned in my dark delight.
We walked closer to the side of the barn; I noticed a warm heat around me, from whence a cool breeze once sat.  The intensity was sweltering in the new calm air.  I began to sweat. 
I saw a familiar box where a sign once stood as we stood at the door to the barn.  I flashed on the box.  I flashed on the engagement ring, and the crying.  I flashed on Jenny.
I sat down in front of the door, and cried.  I sat there on my knees and saw my beautiful Jenny sitting in front of my as we played hand games.
I saw her and me as shadows playing in the barn yard.  We danced and sang together.  She and I swung in a tree swing near by.  I watched us run in and out of the barn. 
I saw us a little older.  I held her hand and smiled.  I kissed her.  We went into the barn.  We came out.  She was holding my hand.  I saw the shadows cleaning the barn.  I saw her sitting under a tree sewing my clothes while I sat naked near her.  I was young and covered my nudity.
A single tear fell from my eyes.  I saw the shadows grow older and I saw her pushing the car out.  I saw her running around getting tools to help me fix the car.  I saw her calling me for dinner when I was working on the car.  I watched her as she helped me learn to sew. 
I saw the shadows come out of the barn and hug so gently, and my shadow graced her body a look, her saddened face and my hand on her waist.  I heard myself say, “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to, but I love you, and if it happens that’s fine with me.  I want this for us.”
I broke down and put my head to the ground and cried.  I closed my eyes.  I couldn’t bear to think about what I had done.  I couldn’t bear to see anymore shadows.
I felt a hand on my back.  I felt a thud as I assumed doc dropped behind me.  I felt an oblong thing on my back.  His hands dropped to my shoulders as if he knew exactly why I was crying. 
After some time feeling sorry for my self and having had the help to do so, I sat up and Doc fell to the ground behind me.  I looked behind me as he smiled up at me.  “Get up.”
He got up to his feet with me in tow, and we stood there at the barn door again.  This time Doc didn’t say a word to me.  We stood there staring at the old entrance in an amazing silence. 
Was Doc beginning to understand me?  Was he beginning to look upon me as a promise to deliver what he wanted to know in good time?
I stepped towards the old oak opening and touched the handle.  The door swung free from its lower track.  This was going to prove difficult when it came to opening.  I grabbed the haft with both hands and braced myself to open.  It came off in my hand as I fell to the ground.
I threw it down and got up dusting myself off.  I looked at the door and threw a hand up in dismissal to Doc, I didn’t need his help.  He looked down upon me over the brim of his nose. 
Bracing myself with my back on the door, I pushed backwards.  The smell and heat hit me hard enough to knock me down.  I had opened the door only an inch or two when the smell took to my stomach and wrenched it in knots.
I stepped away from the door to catch my breath and went back to push it farther.  I couldn’t let the door defeat me.  I was positioning my legs when I saw the most devious thing in the corner.  An old refrigerator sat ominously in the corner. 
I pushed backwards.  I saw more of the old kitchen.  The towels, the window, even the cabinets I had built.  The smell knocked me down again.  I went to the side yard where the tree swing had once been and lost my lunch. 
I turned back towards the barn door and Doc was standing there in front of me.  The sneaky little bastard had come up behind me and was not preventing me from opening my door.
“Move your ass.  I got shit to do.”  I said walking around him.
He comically ran in front of me to put his hands on my chest to stop me again.  His frail wrist stopped me, I was being nice. 
“What’s your problem, Doc?”  I asked him, eyebrows furrowed and body stance irritated.
“I can’t let you see what’s in the barn.”   He spoke as if his heart was riding on those words.
I walked around him again and pulled the door open a little farther.  I turned to push it open all the way.  The sweat on my brow glistened in the late afternoon sun when my burden was lifted. 
I dropped to the ground, exhausted.  I saw the living room and the dining room and our bed room up stairs were covered in blood.  I looked towards it with sad eyes.  “Why?”
26
I sat in my bed looking at the shiny blades.  I was 15 again, and my Jenny had just died.  I saw the shine of the pocket blades.  They were white and plastic.  I had found them on the side of the road. 
I picked one up.   I depressed the button to slide the blade out.  It was a little blade couldn’t do much to me, but it was sharp.  It would make things easier.  My Jenny had been gone two days. 
Yesterday I just didn’t believe it, and I lost it today.  I was sitting in class and got up during a lecture and ran to the bathroom with my bag and never looked back.  I stayed there the rest of the morning and when lunch came; I snuck out the front door and walked home.
The moon light shown through the window, and lit up the little blade so it shined like diamonds.  I had been sleeping all afternoon, and couldn’t sleep any more.
I watched the blade as it touched my flesh.  I had heard that cutting the skin would make the pain go away.  I had seen the scars on my acquaintances at school.  I had seen a girl walk around one day last week with short shorts on and a tank top shirt and she was covered in head to toe in cuts, deep lasting scars, fresh, some still bloody.
I had made friends with her, today.  She was a brunette and when I asked her what was with her stunt last week, she said, “I didn’t want to be ashamed anymore.”  She couldn’t be the first one nor could she be the last one.
It was March 7, 1986, and I was 15.  In a weeks time I was going to be 16.  I didn’t want to be 16.  I didn’t want to share the world with the guilt I felt.  I didn’t want to feel this despair anymore.
I don’t want this guilt to rule my life.  I am done with this.  I need to release it.  I need to let this burden of guilt go, and feel something, anything.  I know pain is the strongest feeling when emotions run high.  I’d fallen enough times to know that.
I took the flashing blade and stuck it to my skin.  I pressed deep on my wrist, and kept thinking, I don’t want someone to see this.  I moved to my upper arm, and thoughts about somebody touching it.  I pulled down my pants and pressed it to a chunk of my meaty thigh.  I stopped. 
I thought about the searing pain that would accompany it.  I felt through my desires to touch and feel my wounds.  I pulled my left leg so that my ankle sat on my right thigh.  I pressed the metal to my flesh. 
As the white, hot flash of intensity came to me; I muttered a prayer.
“Bleed for every pain I’ve given mother
Bleed for my stupidity,
Bleed for my Lost lover
Bleed because it’s my fault.”
The pain came and I breathed a sigh of relief as it took me to a plane of existence beyond my own.  Euphoria and ecstasy filled my aching brain.  The guilt melted away and the pain that filled me was just happy release.
The cut was shallow and the blood didn’t trickle up until I grabbed it and squeezed it.  I squeezed it so hard and then I took the blade and went deeper in a line across the top of the straight line on the backside of my left calf.
I grinned and felt once again the joy of pain.  It was helpful to feel something besides my burdening guilt and sadness.  The blade dropped to the ground and the blood flowered from my leg and I lay back on the bed.  My head swam with endorphins.  It was marvelous.
I shook the memories from my hair again.  I was in my old home wandering slowly towards the loft and the bed.  Doc followed closely behind me and watched me.  I began to ascend the ladder and the smell grew worse.  When I saw the half eaten deer and looked down and saw the dead cougar I knew what had happened. 
Sighing, I bring a world of truth to Doc as I tell him, “Cougar came in and slaughtered a deer.”  I descend the latter again and walked out.
I dropped to the side of the old tree when I got outside.  I couldn’t help feel responsible for the cougar choking and dying.  It was my fault that the cougar had taken over my house.  He had probably eaten something.
Doc came out and sitting, he leaned his back against the tree and sighed.  “How did you know that barn was here?”
Looking at him I smiled slyly, “I didn’t.”
He looked at my quizzically, as if I’d been lying.  His mouth hung agape.  “You couldn’t have stumbled onto this place unless you knew it was here.  How did you know?”
I looked at him and as innocently as before, “I didn’t know it was here.  I thought the barn was somewhere else.  I thought it was farther from her place.”
“Farther?  What do you mean farther?”  He asked pulling out a notepad and scribbling with a pocket pen.
As I spoke he might as well have been scrawling in blood he was writing so feverishly.  “My life began just down the hill, across the pond and around the bend.  This was my home I escaped to.  This is the place I hold tightly to in my memories when I’m having regrets and desires to go home.”
I took a breath and began to explain to him again on how Jenny and I found the place.  We’d been walking and ran into the barn when it had started raining.
The wind blew and I started to shiver.  I cuddled closer to the tree and remembered that I still had a blanket in the barn.  The sky had become a dull cream in the late afternoon.  The sky was cloudy, but the clouds weren’t dark and deep and evil.  I got up and pulled Doc up and we walked back into the barn. 
“I don’t want to be in here.”  Do squeaked trying to back out.
I put him on the ground with a single slap and told him to stay.  I scrambled up the stairs to the loft and opened the window by the bed.  Plucking the deer from the bed was easy, it was half eaten.  I put it over my shoulder and carried it like a sack of grain and put it by the tree.  “Grab the cougar.”  I barked out a command to Doc, as I came back in.  He sat there on the ground in fear.  I looked at him, and he scrambled up the stairs and prepared to push the cougar to the ground.
“Don’t you dare push him off!  He doesn’t deserve that disrespect, get up and pull the sheets off the bed, I’ll carry him down.”  I gruffly spoke as I hauled fresh sheets and a bucket of cleaners up the stairs.
I passed the things to Doc as I took the Cougar gently and hauled him down.  He was heavier for he had just up and died.  He probably choked on something and died.
I put him by the tree next to the deer.  I walked to the barn and stopped.  The chill wind blew my long hair as I looked towards the sky as if deep in thoughts.  I was merely looking.  I remembered that the shovel was under the loft in the store room with the brooms.
“What do I do with these sheets?”  Doc called down interrupting my thoughts.
“You can drop those off the side, I’ll pick them up.  Is the mattress soaked?” 
“No.”  He called down, and I could hear his weight shifting above me.  The store room had once been a horse stall for Ben’s Golden Girl.  The sign was still there.  It was a big, gorgeous stall.  Even when the economy went to pot it was still meticulously cleaned and organized.
I went over and pulled a bucket, a broom, a mop and finally found my shovel.  I let the other supplies rest just outside the room as I took the shovel and the white sheets Doc pulled off the bed, to the tree.
  I dug a hole under the tree, being gentle with the roots and wrapped the deer in the bottom sheet.  I put her on the shovel and did my best to lower her body to the bottom of the hole. 
I knew it was a female because I saw no rack.  She fell off the shovel and dropped to the bottom.  Her body landed with a thud.  I dropped to my knees and gently muttered a poem of remorse for her.
“Here you lie
Precious bundle of life
Your days cut short
To gift another with your own”
27
I took that prayer and began to cover the doe.  It took me by shock at how easy it was to do.  I felt little remorse as her hole grew smaller and smaller.
The second hole was dug in great swiftness as the cloud grew darker and I knew the smell of the dead would bring in more predators.  I wrapped the Cougar in the top sheet, wrapped in dried blood.  He would have loved it.
I lowered him just I had the doe, and he didn’t fall.  I leant to my knees and uttered the same poem I had for her. I covered him faster than I had dug his hole.  I dropped the shovel at the head of both graves and let it lay against the tree. 
   I ran inside as I heard the first howl of night drop in closer in this valley.  This barn was a sitting duck for coyotes.  I slammed the door and found my old rope lock.  I locked the rope bye hanging a loop at the end of the lock on an old pitch fork hook. 
Doc looked at me from the loft.  He began to climb down the ladder with ease; he was gaining confidence here.  “We aren’t staying here.  We can’t stay here.   Your day pass said one day, yesterday!”
I turned to the cabinets, and found something to munch on.  Thankfully I’d found an expired complete meal.  All I had to do was put it together.
I picked up the box, once again ignoring Doc, and began to read the box.  It was a complete meal in a box.  It was a chicken pot pie.  It came complete with canned chicken, canned veggies and a biscuit mix.  I looked at the directions.  It just had to call for fucking milk and water. 
Sighing, I looked back at Doc who was pacing in the living room muttering to himself.  “You don’t happen to have any milk do you?”
He paused, turned towards me and came up to me.  “Milk?! We’re lost in the woods, God-knows where, and I’m going to get fired.  You are probably considered an escaped mental patient and I’m in so much trouble.  What if they think I’m dead?  What if they find the car and the police put it into evidence that you killed me?”  Then he cried something in German and began to cry.
I turned to the refrigerator.  I opened it.  It was still cold.  Holy shit, it was still cold.  Somebody hadn’t noticed me piggy backing for 35 years…  I pulled out the bottle of Absolut Vodka.  I opened the cap and walked over to him.  “We have to stay here tonight.  I need you to pull yourself together.  Do you have any milk?” 
“How do you have cold Vodka?”  He looked up and sniffled asking.
“I have been piggy backing off an account that’s been open to preserve old man Rowland’s Museum, and his cryogenically frozen horse.”
“Huh?”
“This barn used to belong to a big owner and proprietor of horse racing.  He built himself a museum to honor his career.  His favorite horse was frozen for the museum when it died.  I have been piggy backing off their electricity for years.  When asked about it, I told the curator for the museum that I was the caretaker for the barn that they started their life in.”
“Damn.” Was all he said, after he took a swig of Vodka.
I left him to his drinking as he sat down at the table.  I busied myself with my cabinets again.  I searched for milk; any kind of milk.  I found some evaporated milk.  Evaporated milk would have to work.
I took it from the cabinet.  The expiration date on the can was November 1982.  Does evaporated milk go bad?  I took out a bowl and blew the dust from it.  After pouring the biscuit mix into a bowl I searched for the can opener.  It was getting easier to find things again.
I opened the can.  It was a caramel color.  I smelled it.  It smelled like evaporated milk should.  It was solid.  I gave it an odd look.  I put it in another bowl and let it relax a bit.  I mixed up everything else, having been able to add water to the mix because I had a case of unopened water still. 
I gave it a sideways glance, “Fuck it” I murmured and dumped it out.  I turned on the electric oven and wandered to the sink.  I was curious if I had any water pressure…
I flipped on the right handle, a squeal in the pipes and a burst as it turned on.  Damn right it turned on.  It came out, brown and room temperature, which was fine with me.  It didn’t matter right now if I had hot or cold water just that I had water.  I waited a few minutes to see if the color would change.
After the color changed just fine, I grabbed the soap and began washing dishes.  I slide the food into the oven and finish dishes.  “Doc, what time is it?”
“It’s 5:15.  Holy crap its 5:15.”  Doc looked back at me with the bottle in his lap.  “What’re you doing?”
He was a total light weight – his slurred voice made it clear that he was inebriated.  Sighing, I began to clean the counters.  This place was sure dusty.  I was disgusted with how dirty it was.  Supper would be ready at 6. 
Looking around after the counters were cleaned I began to dry the dishes I’d used for the biscuits.  I opened up the cabinets where they would go and saw that they were filthy too. 
“What’re you doing?”  Doc asked me again.
“Doc, I told you what I was doing five minutes ago.  Are you drinking?  Where’d you get that bottle?”  I asked him.
“You gave me this bottle and told me to relax.  Didn’t you?”
Turning to him I took the bottle and told him, “I’m sorry I didn’t.”  I put the bottle back in the freezer, and took out a bottle of water and grabbed me a soda.  I looked at the Cokes.  They weren’t dusty. 
I smiled and decided that someone had left them there, from some time ago.    I began to take everything out of the cabinets to clean them.  “Doc, what time is it?”  I asked him to see if I could keep him awake
“Its 5:30.  Are you sure you didn’t give me that Vodka?”
“Doc, I think you have a problem.”
I looked around the kitchen for something else to do while supper finished cooking.  I began to arrange the bottles and canisters under the sink. 
“Why are people so cruel to each other?” 
Doc piped up.  I was going to say something when doc continued without me, “People are such assholes.  They look upon each other like I’m expecting something from you.  I don’t want anything from you.  You’re a good guy.” 
I wanted to agree with him. 
“Well, you’re not really a good guy, you’re kind of an asshole.  But I don’t want anything from you.  Well I do, but that’s not important.  You’re my friend, and you’ve helped me these last few days realize who I really am.” 
I wanted to tell him off, I’m not an asshole.
“Well, we aren’t really friends because I’m a doctor in a mental institution.  Why is it a mental institution anyway?  What makes it mental?  The building isn’t thinking.  It doesn’t feel.”
I stifled a giggle.
“And for that matter what makes it an institute?  An institute is a transitive verb that means to establish in a position or office.  It’s not even a good descriptor of the building.  Why don’t they call it a mental building?”
What?  I looked at him with a bottle of dirty window cleaner in my hand.  The dirt was caked on the bottle and it was sticky. 
“For that matter what makes it an asylum?  Asylums house the crazy because they are criminals and are in debt?  No, the crazy aren’t in debt.  They usually have a mental disorder.  For that matter what makes it a mental disorder when they can all think, feel and breathe?”
My hands felt dirty and it made me nervous.
“It’s not a brain disorder.  It has to be-well you know, the whole idea of the mind is not even mapped.  The world doesn’t really know where conscious thought comes from, and if the mental thought processes don’t fit a certain criteria they poo-poo it as crazy.  I just don’t get it.”
“Doc, what time is it?”  I asked him quickly hoping he wouldn’t interrupt me.
“What?  Time is irradiant, and speaking of time, how long does the average person with a so-called mental anomaly which doesn’t make him the same last in a building to house the crazy?”
“Doc, what does your watch say?”  I asked again. 
“The clock says 5:55.  But aren’t you listening?!  The crazy aren’t really crazy!  I don’t believe it!  I have finally figured out that my job is a job in the bases of working somewhere that doesn’t exist trying to make better the people that are open thinkers.”
I got off the floor and washed my hands, with my soap, and grabbed a pot holder for the casserole.  I set the casserole on the stove top and scooped it on to plates.  I added a little bit of bread, that the museum must have placed for aesthetics.   
I set the bread out and served the food.  I’m glad I put all the chicken in this pot pie to one side.  Putting it in front of Doc, I looked at him and said, “Eat.”
“What does eating do for the body?”  Doc began again.
I really need to keep my mouth shut when he’s been drinking.
“I mean, yeah I know it provides nutrition but, seriously, it makes the body fat and it makes people sick, and feel bad.  What’s it got?  I mean, I read somewhere that pound for pound, 95% of the human body is edible verses, like a cow or something that’s pound for pound 45% edible.  But I also heard that the body produces a chemical that eats away brain tissue, which is why it’s not more common.”  He picked out at food.  “I guess I shouldn’t have said that I guess, because I’m really not hungry anymore.”
Sighing, I was happy I didn’t have chicken on my plate.  I was doing my best not to have flashbacks.  “It’s chicken.  I promise it came out of the can.”  I mumbled really having difficulties with what he’d said.
“Hunger.  What is hunger?  Is it the body telling the mind that it needs fuel, and in that aspect what is the mind?  Is it truly tangible or is it just a single aspect of the imagination.  And for that matter, what is the imagination?  I mean, I know people pretend and it makes a lot of science and the like possible but what does it mean?  What does it really mean?”
“Eat.”
“Eat, that’s such a weird word-”
“Oh-no, you ain’t getting started again.  Eat, now, or I’ll spank you and put you out with the cat.”  I growled looking at him.
He picked up his fork and looked at me.  “What does ain’t mean?  I mean I know it’s not really a word.  It can’t be.  It’s a nonsense word isn’t it?”
I banged my fists on the table.  “Eat it!”
28
When I awoke, I was in the bed in the loft.  As I lay there peacefully feeling the sun beat on my face, I was transported to the any day I awoke in this bed.  The sun felt nice on my face.  The sheets were warm.  The smell of dinner was still fresh in my mind from last night.  It made me hungry.
I stretched not wanting to move and remove this sleep from my eyes.  I felt so warm and turtle like.  I wanted to duck my head back under the covers and go back to sleep.  I wanted to lie here for ever.
I couldn’t.  I knew I couldn’t.  I knew we had to get back to the hospital.  I knew that the staff was worried about him.  I knew the staff has a stigma about me.  
The doctors hated me for not speaking.  The nurses hated me because I wouldn’t eat.  The staff hated me because I tended to be a pain in the ass at times and stubborn as a mule.
Doc would never forget last night.  He left me feeling confident he could walk up and down the ladder if he had to pee in the night, so I left him down stairs on the couch.  I was not about to wake up to his ass on the ground twitching because he fell off.
I sat up and stretched again.  I turned to pop my back, and felt something hard.  It was a bit closer then the window sill was.  I looked down at where my hand was and in my panic I fell off the bed. 
Doc sat up and looked down at me, “Morning!”  He was awful damn chipper for someone that should be hung over.
“What are you doing in my bed?”  I looked at him.
“I got sick in the down stairs toilet and got cold, and thought you might be cold too.”  He raised his knees up as he sat up as to hide his morning wood.
He had to know that I touched it.  “Why aren’t you hung over?”  I asked trying to change the subject.
“I’m German; I’ve been drinking ritualistically since I was 14.  Why?  How drunk was I?”  He put his head to his knees almost in shame.
“Philosophically speaking; a little bit.”  I chastised.
He looked up and saw my naked body and blushed a deep flush, and dropped his head again.  “I didn’t perform any…certain…functions to you….did I?”
Looking away, I flashed on his body mounting me on the couch and him kissing me deeply and passionately and gently pushing him away I knew he needed to just sleep and not make this mistake.
“Don’t ask, it’s too early in the morning.”  I got up and grabbed my some jeans from the sweater chest and a pocket t-shirt.  I left it open as I got dressed.  “Get you some clothes.  We need to get out of here.”  With that comment I descended the ladder and put some bread in the toaster and found some good brie. 
I set the toast and cheese on the table, and got a glass of water.  I sat down at the table and awkwardly looked towards the loft.  Why did I push him away?
I watched his form coming down the ladder and his feet gracefully waft across the floor.  He seemed to be watching me as well, and as he drew closer his nose scrunched up in disgust.
“What is the repugnant aroma?” His voice flitted in distaste around my ears.  I was beginning to wonder if I had pushed him off of me last night or not. 
He sat down across from me in a pair of old cut off blue jean shorts and an old button down top. 
“That’s breakfast.”  I softly replied still in thought on my quandary.
“What smells like cat pee?”  His cute little button nose ruffled further still, as his demeanor softened to more of a friendly aura.
I looked up at him, recognizing the deep circles in his eyes, and the new found wealth of rejuvenation in his face.  He was happy.   Raising an eyebrow I replied skeptically, “Cat pee?”  He looked away and grabbed a piece of my brie and toast, “Since when has Doctor Tobias Schieren ever, EVER said cat pee?  It’s so undignified and queer.”
He took a bite of my toast, “I mean, well you know what I mean.  It smells gross, it smells like a cat peed in here.”  He swallowed.  “I guess the right word is ammonia.  It’s probably that black thing on the counter.”  He said pointing to the brie.  The brie was a lovely black-rind, aged brie.  Brie is one of the few cheeses that the more it ages the better it gets.  It basically has a shelf life of forever.
“Smell my toast.”
He smelled the toast, “It’s the toast!  What is this?”
“Doc, it’s brie.”
He dropped the half eaten slice.  “I can’t eat this.”
“Yeah you will.  We got a long days’ work ahead of us.”  I said getting up to toast another slice.
“Excuse me?  We’re going back today.  We have to go back.”
I turned to him and brought the brie to the table, setting it down I walked around to him and put my arm under his chin and lifted it up, pulling his chin up, “I am not going back.  I don’t belong there.  You have no evidence that I belong there.  Your notebook is filled with notes on me not needing to be there.”  I let his chin drop and released my arm and patted his chest, “’sides, I need help cleaning this place up.”
 I walked back to the toast and brought the two slices over and put two more in.  I sat down across from a terrified face.  “It’s ok, it’s just brie.”
“Did you just try to choke me?”  The face squeaked.
“What? - No!  I…uh…what’s the phrase?  I was telling you what was going to happen.”  I took the brie knife, which was short and curved like a frosting spatula but straight on one side, and began to cheese the toast.
I passed him the toast.  “What are we doing today that so important?”  He picked up the half slice he’d been eating.
“We’re cleaning the barn.  We’re gathering evidence for me.  This is my home, I was here everyday.”
He took a bite, pausing for just a moment to ask, “Home?  I thought that two story gray-brick home was yours.”
“That house is no longer mine.  When she did what she did to it, that’s not mine.  She drove me out of my life and my home.  I didn’t know where I belonged, but sleeping here last night just made me realize, that I belong here.”
I got up being done eating, his words still floating frozen in my brain taunting me that I cooked with meat, it made me sick.
“Tell me, where did this house come from?”  He asked eating.
“You don’t remember?”  I asked looking at him from the sink. 
He shook his head, ‘no.’ 
Rolling my eyes I look at the sink, smiling, busying myself with drying the dishes as I replied.  “Well, Doc, as drunk as you were last night, I’m not surprised you don’t recall.”  I opened the cabinet to put the baking dish away and a spider came to greet me.  Sighing, I shut the door and put the baking dish on the table.  “When I was a little boy, with my sweet little Jenny, we stumbled upon this farm.  In a months time we had turned this into a little house.  A man walked up to me, and said to me, ‘Son, I’ve seen you here everyday and I’ve seen what you’ve done with the place.  Will you be the caretaker and keep this barn in this condition?’  Well, I looked at him and swallered hard and said, ‘Y-yes’sir I can.’  I was young, I was nervous.  He let me live there for as long as I took care of the barn.  He never told me what it was for until I received a placard in the mail thanking me for my services of caretaking and curator for the Benjamin Rowland Horse Racing Farm, Private Sector 6, The First Home. ”
Doc, grabbing some more toast, looked at me, “I remembering hearing about that.  You’re the kid that got the rights?”
“Rights?  What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Well, I read in the news that a small Texas squatter, became the youngest curator to exist, and the only reason he got such a position was because the oldest son gave it to him.  The boy was given the rights to the museum and property at the age of 15, and just wanted to live on the property a little bit.”  He took a bite, and his words confused me.  “However the boy never saw any of the money because his parents stole it, because he’s a minor.”
I looked at him and kind of half grinned.  I looked away ashamed and grabbed a cigarette.  The first one I had had in almost 24 hours.  I took a breath and began to relax.  The smooth taste beckoned to me. 
“Dennis?”  Doc asked, “What’s wrong?”  His face stuffing slowed down long enough to give me a dirty face of concern.  He had cheese and toast crumbs on his lips.  I wanted to lick them off.
“I think I was that little boy.  I was squatting on the land, and I lived here for free.  Those bastards stole my stuff, after spending years beating the crap out of me.”  I blurted out without recognition.  I was out of it.  I didn’t want to be here.  I felt used and betrayed.  I was so angry with my parents, those horrible people.
“Wait, why didn’t you tell me that you were beaten?”  Doc asked standing up.
I threw a glass on the floor, that’d been sitting on the counter from last night.  “I did tell you I was beaten you drunk asshole.” 
He raised an eyebrow and looked at me oddly. 
I dropped down the cabinet and sat next to the shards of glass.  I picked one up.  Fingering it and calming down, I slowly told him again, “My parents beat the hell out of me.  I am adopted.  They broke bones and told me I was stupid.  They took the belt to me because I was bad.  They looked at me like I was just another hungry mouth to feed and they didn’t need that.”
Doc grabbed another piece of toast.  He looked at me and wanted to let me speak. 
Looking towards the glass in my hands I looked up at him with tears in my eyes. “Why did they bother adopting me if they were just gonna do this to me?”
I put my head to my knees and closed my eyes.  Distant echoes came into my hearing once again.  I heard the voice of my step father coming home and screaming at my adoptive mother; his booming voice hurting my ears.  I was in the bedroom in the attic away from everything.  I could still hear it.  They were heart beats in my ears.  I pressed my hands over my ears and cried.  The bruised on my arms began to burn I was so ashamed of myself.
The breath of life I had been given I didn’t want.  I sat in the corner behind the box I used as a desk.  This was my hiding spot.  The spot I come to when people want to find me.  At 7 years old I was small for my age, because they didn’t feed me very often. 
The heartbeats and echoes grow louder.  A smaller voice joins the heart beats and I recognize it as a sister.  My privates began to burn in shame.  Hot tears flowed down my cheeks.  I cried silently, trying not to be found.  I knew already I had done something wrong.  When do I not?
I heard that icy slap of his hand across my sisters’ face.  I cringed and clenched my teeth.  I hated him.  If he couldn’t find me to treat like trash he’d use my sister and my adopted mother.
The heart beats stopped.  I lowered my hands.  I heard a soft shuffling of footsteps.  I pressed myself further into the corner.  I tried to hide even deeper still into this corner behind the crate.  I tried to make myself as small as possible.  The shuffling got louder.
I knew something bad was going to happen.  I tried not cry.  I tried not to make noise.  I didn’t want to be found.  The door burst open.  I lost control.  I couldn’t breathe as the wet warmth filled my underwear and I knew I smelled.  If I survived the beating I’d get for wetting my pants on top of the beating I was already going to get for hiding, I’d be lucky.
The voice boomed, as those boots stomped across the floor.  “Come out here, you rat bastard.”  His voice clear and crisp rang in my ears.
I felt a coward and afraid as the warmth of my urine stopped and I cowered next to the cold wall, it was my friend.  The boots stopped just shy of seeing me.  I held my breath.  They turned and started stepping away.  They stepped down stairs.  They became softer and softer. 
Beginning to breathe again, I began to cry.  I began to come out of the corner and the warmth moved and ran down my legs and I closed my eyes not wanting to look at my shame.   I stood, dropped my shorts, opened the window and threw them outside.  I’d go get them a few hours later when every one had gone to sleep after my bath.
My sister had a field day every time she caught me in the corner trying to clean a puddle in just a little tee shirt.  She used to make me stand up and take off my shirt and shake my butt.  Sometimes she’d ask me to rub them and sometimes she’d put them in her mouth. 
I slammed my fist on the floor, forcing those painful images away.  I closed my eyes and slammed it harder and harder over again into that old wooden floor.  My hand began to bleed as I kept pounding. 
I felt a hand stopping me as I slammed it into the floor one last time.  I heard a soft voice humming something.  I reared back and hit my head on the cabinets behind me trying to knock myself out.  I couldn’t understand these feeling and I didn’t want to feel this pain anymore. 
I was picked up and carried to the couch.  The figure dressed in black put my head in his lap, and rubbed two spots behind my ears.  I broke out in tears.  I didn’t want to feel this way anymore.
I imagined myself jumping out the window.  I saw visions of knife blades piercing the skin; the blood red flowing from the veins.  The passion and desire become fantastic.  I couldn’t get up.  I shook my legs and kicked them.
“I want up!”  I cried.
“You will stay lying down.  You are not ok to get up and do anything right now.” 
I looked up and it was Doc!  He was holding me down and talking to me.  I stopped struggling and watched what he was saying.  I didn’t listen to him, I just watched him.
29
The world shone brightly around me as I played in the field.  I had so much fun in that field.  I was safe in the field.  I had just met a new kid, Jimmy. 
He was short and round and his hair was red, his skin speckled in little brown dots like a Robin’s Egg.  He had come into my life when I needed someone the most.  He’d walked up to me in that very field and cleaned my wounds that the belt had left.
In our game he was my wife and I was the husband.  He said playing house would help me with my social distortions.  I wasn’t allowed to yell at him, or hit him.  That’s not what proper husbands do to their wives.
I had just come home from work and he was sitting at the table with dinner and said, “I burned dinner.  I’m sorry.”
I told him that it was ok, and he jumped on me knocking me down and hugging my neck.  He rolled off of me and held my hand as we lay together in the field.  I felt this need to tell him a few things.
“Jimmy?”  I asked him interrupting our game.
“Yes, My Dear?”  He asked looking at me.
“He put my sister in the hospital last night.”   I sat up and crossed my legs.
He sat up on his knees and took my hands, “Oh Denni, what happened?”
“She started crying and said it hurt.  And He said well that’s what you get, and she said you did this to me!  And I was hiding in my spot and I started to cry.  They walked out and when he got back it was dark and She was home and she started yelling and hitting Him.  He came up to me and started beating me.  He knew where was I, and said I was bad and beat me too.”  I fell into his lap and began to cry.
“Where I was, is the way to say that.  But Denni, why would he hit you like that?  You didn’t know anything and didn’t do anything.”  He cried in my defense.
He had been going to school and was teaching me everything he knew.  He was teaching me to speak proper English and to read.  He was teaching me math and science as well.
Jimmy stared at me with sadness to him.  He knew more then I and I knew he was sad because he knew so much.  He was empathetic to my thoughts and feelings.  He felt more then I did.  He could feel the heat from my beatings and my tears, before I told him about them.  I knew we were meant to be together forever, best friends forever.
Jimmy held me close.  I felt something so warm and serene bubble up inside me.  I felt his arms around me and smiled.  He held me like a man and not a boy. 
I cried in his arms and I felt like his little boy.  I looked up at Doc with tears in my eyes as he held my head in his lap.
“Did you have a nightmare?”
His brown hair fell in his face and his thin concerned mouth crept to a smile.  His glasses looked at me and I could see his green eyes reflected in the lens.  I feel like he was judging me again.  I shoot straight up, standing and walking away.
I pull my shirt down and step outside for a cigarette.  I feel a bit chilly in the mid afternoon wind.  The sky was a blue grey with dark clouds pregnant with rain.
I shake the dreams from my hair again as I inhale on the cigarette.  I’m not sure if they’re really dreams or echoes.  I guess since I was asleep this time they’re dreams.
The echoes in my life seem so real.  My mind sits blank with this cigarette.  I enjoy it so sweetly.  I feel a face staring at me.  I know it is Doc.  It has to be, there’s no one else around. 
I begin to hunger for Jimmy’s touch.  That sweet boy, who was shot and killed one night in the woods by my house; I lean against the side of the barn, and drop down to the ground, extending my feet in the process.
I feel a cool hand on my shoulder, a sweet voice asking me, “What happened in your dream?”
Looking up at Doc; he looked so young and innocent.  I was older then him.  I have been here longer then he had and I owned this part of the world.  I was in a precarious position.  I could tell him about Jimmy or keep him secret like I had my entire life.
“Dennis?”  He squats next to me and pulls up a patch of clover. 
The clover is green and shaking in this breeze.  I can see the different sizes mixed together. 
“He’s gone.  He’s really gone.  My best friend in the entire world, and that helped me and fostered in me a love of learning and a love of life, is gone.  He was murdered.  I hate the man who murdered him.”  I paused for a breath.
Doc took the opportunity, “Who killed him?  What happened?”
“The man who killed him took his gun and shot his 7 times.  He riddled my best friends’ 8 year old body 7 times with gunshot.  That man held me in his arms and shot him in front of me.  We were camping together cus he’s my best friend!”  I began to panic. 
Doc pulled my head to his lap and held it there petting me.  I guess he was trying to soothe me.  That just made me sort of nauseated.
I rolled my eyes back to look up at him and brought the tears to my eyes as if I could cry.  I cried my tears for this boy all of my life.  I see him in my dreams, I think about him every time I speak.  He’s the reason I can speak and semi trust people.
I sat up and lit a cigarette in the ashes of my old cigarette and let that one die.  I leaned over my hands clutching my stomach.  “Jimmy is my best friend.  He took me camping, one weekend with his family at Pedernales Falls State Park with his family.”
“What’s that?”  Doc Asked.
I ignore him and keep talking.  “Jimmy brought me and Jane brought her friend.  His folks served hamburger and the like all weekend.”  I breathed a sigh, “One night after we’d spent the day on the river the big kids were talking and Jimmy and I had gone to bed.  Jimmy and I held hands in our sleeping bags that night as we fell asleep.”
Doc opened his mouth; I heard his saliva slap open in his mouth.
“I woke up a little later.  I had to go pee.  Jimmy wasn’t around.  I had had the dream of us being old men and having babies around us playing.  As I came back I saw figures by the fire.  The fire was huge so I guess it was a wet season that year.”  I wiped a tear.  “I came closer to the fire I felt something beckoning me.  I began to make out shapes against the fire background.  The shadows danced and played as I drew near.  I was met with a beautiful smell.  I smelled so yummy and delicious.  I realized my hunger.  That familiar pain in my stomach alerted me that the smell was edible.  As I came closer I heard the slurping sounds of food being readily eaten.”
I let the cigarette go and pushed it into the clover.  I allowed myself the passing fancy of it relighting for me.  It didn’t.  Sighing I looked at Doc and began speaking again.
“I wasn’t hungry but I saw Jimmy over there and went over.  Being six I didn’t want to go back to bed.  I went to him, and asked him for a bite.  He turned to me, holding something long and that bend, and his mouth and face were dirty.  I felt I pull, a tug at my shoulder as I was hoisted into the air.  I saw a spit, and felt the flames licking my skin.  I saw something on the spit.  I was lowered onto the spit.  The fire began to kiss my tender body and blister my skin.  The hand held me over and I screamed.  I felt this pulling at my clothes and something grabbing my ankle.  The monstrous claw of the woman that was Jimmy’s mom held my ankle and held me above the spit.
I felt the hands of something pulling my clothes off.  In a flash of excitement I felt a burning pain in my side as a kicked and squirmed.  I heard ‘Freeze!’ come from the dark.  The murderous faces looked away from me, the claws let go of my ankle and I swung down towards the first hand and dropped.  I landed by the fire.  The fire licked my spine.  The fork fell out of my side. 
I ran.  I ran as fast as I could.  Their howls alerted me they were coming.  I ran deep into the darkness the wings of the wind lifting me into another’s arms.  His twisted face howled in fear.
‘Shoot fire kid,’ the man said, ‘I thought you was one of them cannibals.’
That was the first time I’d heard that word and even now I shiver I fear and hope they don’t exist except in my deepest fears. 
I looked at the man, buried my face in his shoulder and cried.  He carried me towards the clearing.  I saw my clothes.  I saw my best friend.  Jimmy heard me crying.  His eyes turned to face me and I saw no fear in his eyes.  I saw only hunger.  He dropped his arms and in his hand I finally saw it.  It was an arm.  They’d been eating Jane’s friend.  Jimmy dropped the arm and loped towards me and snarled.  ‘You are my meal!’  The officer shot him in the leg and he cried; he kept coming.  The officer shot him in the chest and the arm and Jimmy just kept coming.  He stumbled when the officer shot him in the thigh and that was when he got his chance to shoot him in the head.  Jimmy died 5 feet from me; his blood igniting in a metallic smell.”
I hung my head.
Doc put his arms around me and spoke, “That’s when you stopped eating meat, and stopped talking and trusting people isn’t it?”
I nodded and passed out.
30
I woke up on the couch.  The house was clean.  I looked around and it was dark.  I could hear a slight heavy breathing noise.  I sat up and in the dark the sound grew louder. 
I knew it really couldn’t be getting louder and louder.  The breathing sounded like it was becoming closer.  I drew my feet onto the couch and held them close.  I could feel something breathing down my neck.  It was big and monstrous behind me.  I shut my eyes.  I couldn’t open them anymore.
I was afraid and scared of the thing behind me, and it was now possibly in front of me.  I could just imagine the pale face breathing on my face.  The mouth hanging slack jawed and dripping in hot, sticky saliva, just made me cringe.  I knew that saliva was full of bacteria.  I felt dirty and frozen.
I knew moving from this spot would allow whatever was standing there in front of me to get me.  I hardly breathe I know if I stay still it will go away.  I pray it’ll go away. 
I feel something bugging my eyes.  Oh god I have to rub my eyes and it’ll get me.  I’ll move and it’ll eat me. 
The thing bothering my eyes is unforgivable.  It hurts and it itches and I need to rub it.  I want it out of my eye!
I quickly moved my hand and rubbed my eye and sat again very still.  It hadn’t seen me move!  I was sure it hadn’t.  It couldn’t have I wasn’t dead.  The breathing stopped.  I heard a clamor and a crash followed by screaming and a thud.
I jumped off the couch, fuck the thing.  I ran to the sound I heard.  I could almost hear the thing galloping behind me as I ran.  I turned to see and the shadows ran just as fast.  I slid into the thing that fell and rolled with it covering me from the thing.  We rolled into the wall and I hid cowered under the thing I was holding.
I could hear the thing that wanted me pacing back and forth.  Whatever I had was magic.  I felt something warm dripping against me.  I propped the thing on my left arm and fished for the lighter in my pocket. 
I put my thumb on the wheel and flicked it.  A spark ignited the air into a small flash.  The fire didn’t start.  I flicked it again, and again it clicked.  I flicked it a third time and the light went through the hole.  I was excited with the lighter and then saw what I was holding.
“Doc!”  I screamed.  The face I recognized as the man I had began to see as family and not just healer.  His eyes fluttered open and then closed again.  I dropped the lighter to my chest and it went out.  I fished above me for anything I could light and fix doc up.  I found an old oil lamp, sitting up.  I lifted the glass chimney and set it aside and lit the cotton wick.  It ignited and began to burn.  I saw there was no oil in the base and knew it wouldn’t burn for long.  I replaced the chimney. 
I set Doc down on his back, rolling and cradling him in one fail swoop.  I knew the lantern would keep the monster at bay as long as it lasted.
I rushed the dark for some oil.  I ran to the kitchen I searched the high cabinets.  I had remembered in history class something about olive oil being used in a pinch when it comes to kerosene lamps.  I know now what I was looking for.  I rummaged the cabinets until I found two bottles that felt round and tall.  I grabbed them knocking something down and ran back to Doc.
I checked the bottles in the light.  The first one was garlic powder and the second was olive oil.  I dropped the garlic and opened the olive oil.  I had begun to reach for the chimney.  I set it down in depression.
How can I be so stupid?  I have to extinguish the flame and pour in the oil and let the wick soak for 15 minutes.  I can’t let my buddy, my friend, be in the dark and die on me in those 15 minutes.  I pulled the late 19th century oil lamp closer to me and to Doc.  I saw his face.
Docs’ face, slender and pallid had a gash across the right eye.  He’d never see out of that eye again.  I knew that.  I took my shirt off.  I saw his closed eyes and pinched the web of skin between his thumb and first finger.  No Response. 
Fuck, he was unconscious on top of it all.  I grabbed something soft around me and draped it over him.  I knew, from an old primer of health, that he had to be kept warm.
I knew that for a foreign body I had to rub the other eyes to stimulate tears and that for a gash I have to clean it and bandage.
I was afraid to, what if his skull was fractured from the impact?  I need him so much.  My primer never covered this.
I got up again and ran to the refrigerator.  I put my hand on the pull.  I don’t know if this lights up.  What if it doesn’t light up and Doc gets an infection in his ocular sockets and dies? 
I have opened this door a thousand times.  I have dreamed of opening this door with a baby cuddled in my arms in the middle of the night and grabbing her milk so Jenny can sleep.  Why can’t I remember?
I opened the door.  The light blinked and clicked on.  I didn’t find the vodka.  I opened the freezer and found i, I closed the freezer, keeping the fridge door open and found some batteries in the drawer and a cheese cloth.  I closed the refrigerator door.
I ran back to Doc.  He was lying unconscious on the floor with a dim burning oil lamp on his right.  I found the electric lamp.  I checked the bottom for the battery hutch.  I opened the compartment and it had batteries.  I sighed in relief and turned it on.
The bulb flickered on.  It was very dim.  I set the electric lamp on Doc’s chest.  I placed the extra batteries in my pocket and blew out the oil lamp.  In the dim light I opened the vodka and soaked the cheese cloth in vodka to clean the gash.  I tore a dry section off. 
I grabbed the dry section and folded it into fourths.  I placed it gently on his eye.  I striped my shirt into sections and folded them.  I put one folded strip on the cheese cloth, and then placed another strip, this one loosely folded around the eye socket.  I allowed for slight movement then wrapped my bandage around Docs head. 
I took a breathy sigh, and downed a swig of alcohol.  I opened the base on the oil lamp and poured in the olive oil I found earlier.  I closed it back up and let the oil soak into the wick.  I sat against the wall and looked around.
I remember this section of the house being near the old stall for Ben’s Golden Girl.  I remember wanting at one time to turn it into a reading nook or library.  She used to teach me so.  I wanted to surprise her with it on our anniversary but things don’t look so good on that subject.
Sitting there I began to feel pitiful.  I began to hate myself.  I began to hate my world.  I began to hate what the world has become. 
This world, no this God, would let a sweet man fall out of the hay loft and on to the ground and then torture me with an oil lamp out of oil. 
I lit a cigarette.
God is a bastard.  God allowed for me to find such a great man and to really fall in love with him and now he’s going to take him away. 
God doesn’t exist.  He can’t.  There just can’t be a higher power at work in this world.  I don’t believe in that.  I can’t believe that there is a higher person at work that has the capacity to change anything and everything about someone’s life and chooses not to.  I can’t believe that.  It’s not fair.  It’s not right.
Why would an all knowing and all seeing being let that happen?  That’s why I don’t believe they someone like that can exist.  It’s not fair.
I’m afraid for Doc.  He has taken care of me when I was sick.  When I lost my mind and almost died he was there.  When I was starving and sick, he was there.  I wanted to jump out that window and there he was. 
He’s handsome and he’s my friend.  I could love him.  I could take care of him and be his saint and angel for the rest of my life.  I might as well be on death row. I ain’t ever getting out of solitary again.  When I get back they’re gonna look at me and put me in the little room and throw away the key.
I feel like Charlie.  God, when I first read about Charlie I was ready to meet him.  I empathized with him.  It wasn’t fair he was in Corcoran State and had been there several years for something he didn’t do.
I wrote him one time, about two years ago, and told him hey and asked him if he would be up to hang out, and he seriously wrote back and said, “Man, I ain’t ever getting out of here.”
He was such a nice man.  We wrote a few times then he said he couldn’t write back anymore “the man” was reading his messages.  I’d asked him why and he never wrote me back.
I wish I had known who he was, what his last name was.  More about him really, all I really knew was that he was Charlie B-33920.  He kept telling me about some sort ranch in the desert.  I didn’t get it.  But when he stopped writing I wasn’t too disheartened, he struck me as weird.