Think of Happy Things [Pathday 3]

[Jesse Fforde]

What is it that they say, when one is bordering on depression?

They say, rather naively, to focus on the happy things. The ******* happy things, as if they can be plucked from the ether and forced to shine bright, to cure one of all ills. Perhaps this is another masochistic game of mine; I am insomniac, and I am insane. I feel I am going insane, anyway. Without sleep, without any semblance of rest, the memories come to me anyway. I know that they won't help. I know they'll only make me worse. Why the **** should any person down in their luck remember the good things in their lives? It doesn't act as a soothing balm, but instead acts only as a flimsy comparison. That's how you were then. See? You were happy then. This is how you are now. Your life is fucked.

I growl and shift my arms and legs. I am in the middle of the park. It's been snowing. I'm making an angel, because why not?

Jordan and I used to do this. I remember that. We were six. Maybe seven. Before he died, anyway. There was a park across the road from where we lived. A nice park. A clean park. The place where all the neighbourhood kids would run riot in the afternoons after school, and on the weekends. I don't remember the other kids much. Jordan and I didn't need any of them. We had each other. We'd go to the park to get out of the house and we'd stay there until our mother came to get us. Sometimes that would be after dark.

I snort, now, into the snow. This is the same park. It's still here. I can't believe it's still here. The playground is a bit different - less dangerous, and meeting the modern standards of health and safety. They're all far too protective of the children, these days. How are children supposed to learn to be tough if they aren't given the opportunity to hurt themselves every once in a while?

I remember a night just like this. All the other kids had drifted home to warm dinners and warm beds and the warm embrace of warm parents. The streetlights still illuminated the park; the little lamps that threaded down the path that snaked through the middle. Our breath steamed, conjoined, in front of our faces. And we laughed as our arms and legs scissored back and forth, back and forth. There wasn't anything remotely funny about the action, but I suppose we felt silly. Boys, making angels. Angels were for girls. But we were alone there, and we were never ashamed of anything when in each other's company. We each knew the other's deepest, darkest secrets. Jordan didn't particularly like how fascinated I was with dead things - with roadkill, and those frogs we had to dissect in science class. But he didn't judge me, or question me. Just like I never questioned or judged his tendency to gravitate toward the girl's toys in the toy shop, rather than the trucks and the lego. He always liked to choose Princess Peach when we played Mario Kart. I didn't care. He was my brother.

I stood first. I knew Jordan wanted a perfect angel. Mine was the one all messed up by hand prints and boot prints. I stood at the foot of Jordan's angel and reached out to take his hand. I heaved him up in one fluid movement - we were practised at this. And then he would leap from the foot of his angel. And there, always - one perfect angel next to one that was slightly damaged. Always.

I suppose that's still the case. Jordan was always the perfect angel, and I have always been the slightly damaged one.

I stare up at the sky, and I continue to scissor, back and forth. My vision blurs, stars dancing on the edge of it as I watch the slow, languid flurries of snow as they drift from the ink-black sky to land upon my cold skin, not melting. Maybe it'll bury me.

[Memory 1]

[Jesse Fforde]

The memories don't attack me in sequence. That never happens, right? When stuck in a sleepless state, thoughts are never coherent. They jump around, back and forth, meandering between reality and fiction. I wonder whether half these memories are even real - deep down I know they are. They are figments of a humanity that I have lost, and of a man I am slowly losing all sight of. Maybe I was never that man.

Every man has a turning point in his life. Every man has something - or a dozen somethings - that put him on the path that he now walks. Doesn't have to be a good path, or a bad path. Could just be an ordinary path. But every life, no matter how dull, no matter how regular, has those points where the path splits and a choice has to be made.

Every time my legs scissor, back and forth, there's a stab of pain in my thigh. A wound that has not yet healed. It's a dull pain, hardly even there - just a stretching of skin that hasn't yet had a chance to stitch itself back together again. But it reminds me. It reminds me of my first tattoo.

I'd tried at all the different parlours but I was underage and no one would give me what I wanted. Finally, through a friend of a friend, I found a guy who did tattoos in his lounge room. The place stunk of beer and cigarette smoke, but there was also that barely-there tang of ink. My first smell of the stuff. The guy asked what I wanted, and I handed him the letter that explained the significance of the all seeing eye. I was going through a stage of religious fervour; but it didn't just represent God, not really. Maybe it represented the kind of power I wished to wield.

Whatever the case, the artist didn't care. All he wanted to know was what design I wanted, and where. I gave him the exact image of the eye in the sharp triangle, surrounded by light. The design was included in the letter. Where? I pointed to the area above my pelvis, just below the belly button. Right there.

Twenty minutes later I was sitting on a cracked leather chair; an old thing that looked a lot like those chairs you'd find in a dentist surgery. my legs straddled the chair and my boxers were halfway down my ***. The area had been shaved of all hair. I watched as the needle hit the skin, and of course made no noise as the sharp, burning pain radiated from tip, surging through my body. For ten minutes I watched, fascinated as the ink was injected into my skin, as I bled, and as the blood mixed with the ink.

In the end I laid back, sweating, one palm resting on my chest while the other clutched at the edge of the cracked leather chair. The guy asked if I was okay. I grinned and nodded. More than okay.

There, in that dim room, with the man who smoked while he worked, with his hot lamp directly overhead and the room hazy with cigarette smoke, I realised for the first time what my calling would be. That was one of my turning points. That one moment where I could decide to remain a delinquent, or do something that I was passionate about. That buzzing, thrumming, burning pain was a pleasure to me, and as I lay there on my back on that cracked leather chair, I closed my eyes. Colours danced in the darkness. And I started to imagine all the different things that I could paint my skin with.

If only there were a clever way to depict an angel, flying in the snow.

[Memory 2]

[Jesse Fforde]

I turn my eyes away from the sky and its obscure flurry of snowflakes. Why have I come back to this park? Stag Heath isn't exactly known for its welcoming streets, but this is where I grew up. The suburb doesn't threaten me like it might ordinary people. There's not much left there now, where the apartment complex once stood. It's now dilapidated - maybe turned into something else, I can't quite tell. I flinch away from the memory that threatens me, the one that I had nightmares about for months. I don't want to remember how Jordan died, how he left me. The first, or the second time.

We stayed in that apartment even after Jordan's death. I probably would have run away had my Uncle not left, but he had. Maybe some latent guilt because he had to look at me everyday after what he'd done to my twin brother. It was in that apartment that I descended into a silence that my mother could not decipher or understand. Grief affected her like it does a lot of people. She couldn't live properly just for me, not when I was broken, anyway. She left me at home by myself a lot. This kind of behaviour lasted all throughout my childhood, and into my teens.

I knew she wouldn't be home when the girl next door came over.

Her name was Betty. She was a couple of years older than me. Maybe she saw me as some kind of conquest - that violent mute boy next door. Maybe she was fascinated by me. I don't know. I do know that she came in under the pretense of needing a cup of flour, but going nowhere near the kitchen. Her eyes were rimmed in coal and her nails were painted black, and chipping. She wore a shirt that had long sleeves but which showed off her mid-riff - the expanse of her skin was pure white and perfect; there were three freckles shaped like a triangle, just to the east of her belly button. I fixated on those freckles. The skirt she wore was tartan and pleated. She wore no tights, and no shoes, and her blonde hair fell in lanky strands over her shoulders.

"Jesse... your Mum's not home," she said. She didn't ask. It was a statement. The walls in this place were thin, and the neighbours were privy to each other's lives.

I nodded. Mum was not home. She was not going to come home until long after sunset. It was her usual habit. Betty smiled, her plump limps mischievous in the low light of the sun that slanted through the blinds. It made her look like some kind of golden angel. Those slim fingers of hers trailed over the cracked wallpaper.

"Want to show me your room?" she asked.

Betty was no-nonsense. She took what she wanted, and she knew how to get it. I was the mute boy next door who'd assaulted a kid the week before - everyone knew about it. All the other girls veered away from me - I was the bad boy their mother's warned them about. Not Betty, though. No - her mother was probably out cavorting with mine. Betty liked danger. And besides, she had something against me. She was a pretty, older girl brimming with confidence, and I was still a boy, made awkward by the weight of virginity.

Maybe that was another turning point in my life. I've always thought of Betty as a muse. She had special powers, my mind concluded. She could tell that I wanted to be a man. And so she came to me, and she took my virginity. When I think about it now, it's more likely that she was just bored and I was a plaything for her - either way, I don't care. She was the first steady thing I ever had, and is perhaps the reason why I haven't had a steady thing since.

Pretty sure Betty works at one of those strip clubs, now. Bada Boom? Is that what it's called?

I sit up and cross my arms over my knees and stare into the distance. Maybe I should go pay her a visit...

[Memory 3]

[Jesse Fforde]

The assault happened at 8D Mall.

It's where all the kids from school used to go hang out after school on Fridays and weekends. I was an exception. I didn't like the mall much. It was far too mainstream, and I didn't like any of the kids from school. I avoided them not because they scared me, but because they were a waste of my time. I had no patience for them. One of the therapists my mother once tried sending me to had told me that I was too old for my age. That I had to learn to be a kid. I didn't want to be a kid. I couldn't wait to get the **** out of childhood, because kids annoyed the living **** out of me.

I had to go to the mall, though. I'd run out of art supplies. There were no pages left in my sketch pad, there was only the dregs left in my favourite tubes of paint, and the charcoal had withered down to the tiniest splinters. Of course, I had no money. But that didn't stop me. The art shop in the mall was one of the best to thieve from - the place was cluttered, and there were no mirrors, and no cameras. It was the height of Winter, so no one blinked twice when I walked in with a heavy coat, my school bag still slung over my shoulder.

It was only when I got outside, to the main atrium of the Mall that I ran into trouble. A group of kids from my grade - boys, mostly. Some of the girls were lazing around and giggling. Betty wasn't there. This wasn't Betty's kind of scene, either.

Brett was his name. Star player of the school's Hockey Team - HRSHS Lions. A Mountain Lion was our mascot. How ******* cliche. The guy had it in for me. Probably because I was different. Probably because I never bothered to respond to his taunts at school. He thought that here, out in the real world, was a good place to come at me properly.

"Oy, retard!" he called. I ignored him, and kept walking.

"Deaf AND dumb, I reckon. RETARD!" he called again.

I was young. I was full of rage. I turned and gave him the finger. I could see the irritation as it coloured Brett's cheeks, and brightened his eyes. Too much testosterone. He stood and stalked toward me, and I held my ground. We were the same height - I was perhaps just a little wirier, where Brett had some bulk. He shoved at my shoulder and my fell to the ground - I flinched. The charcoal was in there, and I didn't want it to break. Some coloured pencils spilled out the top.

"Oh look, going home to draw some pretty little drawings, are we? Let me guess - a mural of unicorns and fairies," he taunted. I gave a sinister smirk. If only he knew the things that I drew. He shoved at my shoulder again.

"What's the matter, retard? Cat got your tongue?" he continued. I'd heard it all before. I should have been able to walk away, but I was sick of it. So ******* sick of it. Without any warning my fingers curled into a fist and I delivered a hefty blow to Brett's chin in a swift upper cut. I could her his teeth snap together. Blood spurted between his lips. He must have bitten his tongue. He shouted, and lifted his hands to his mouth, at which point I took the opportunity to knee him in the groin. He bent double. I took a step back and kicked him in the face. He tumbled backward and I launched myself at him, straddling him. I couldn't stop myself. I pummelled at his face, his jaw, his nose. I knocked a tooth or two from his gums. The more blood that began to spill, the more I wanted to hurt him. The more blood I wanted to see.

The only thing I could hear was a roar in my ears. I couldn't hear the girls screaming, or the security guards telling me to stop. But I didn't stop. Not until thickset hands were wrenching me away.

I can't really remember what happened afterwards. House arrest, I think. I got off easy - I think they took pity on me. And Brett never bothered me again - nor did anyone else, for that matter. That's the first time I legitimately remember beating the **** out of anyone. That was my first taste of a second addiction.

[Memory 4]

[Jesse Fforde]

Perhaps if I'd had loving parents I'd never have beaten the **** out of Brett. Poor Brett.

No, I know for a fact that if I'd had loving parents, my whole life would be completely different. Uncle Tommy would never have moved in. My mother would never have grown so soft with grief to have allowed him in; her penetrating mother's gaze would have seen the kind of man that Uncle Tommy was, and the threat that he posed to her boys, and she'd have guarded us like a lioness in front of her den. But she didn't. She let him in.

If Uncle Tommy had never been there, Jordan would never been thrown from the edge of the apartment complex like some rag doll. I wouldn't have needed to block the memory out. I'd never have gone mute. I'd have had my brother beside me that day in the Mall, and level-headed Jordan would have convinced me to walk away. Though, I'd never have been called a retard, if Jordan were with me, because I would never have lost my voice. Perhaps I might still have beat the **** out of Brett. Perhaps Brett would have picked on us for something else. But I like to believe that if we'd had loving parents, Jordan and I might have actually socialised. We might have ended up on the Hockey team, with the girls giggling around us at the Mall. We might have been friends with Brett and his entourage. I might have gone to art school.

But we - and more significantly, I - did not have loving parents. Our father died, and our mother gave up on us.

Of course she couldn't give up on me completely. No matter how broken I might have been, she still identified me as her son. There were moments of clarity in that brain of hers. I do remember, once, she scolded me for something and called me Jordan. She then broke down into tears. I didn't understand, at the time. But I understand now, of course. We were twins. Every time she saw me, she saw the other son that she had lost. And maybe I looked like Dad, too. But still.

The one day that I remember clearly, one of the ones that I hold most dear, is when I woke up to find that she had cooked me breakfast. She was sober. Her hair was washed and pulled back in a neat pony-tail, and her make-up was fresh and unsmudged. It was my birthday. She fed me breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon with syrup, hash browns, and a side of pancakes. She'd then ushered me into the shower and got me dressed, combed my hair, made me look like a proper little lad. I had to have been ten, maybe eleven.

We walked to the stadium. There was a hockey match - a daytime game at Redheart Arena. I didn't really care about the sport much, but I was in awe over how happy my mother was. I thought that maybe she'd been replaced by some extra-terrestrial. The fairies had swapped her for a changeling at birth, and had suddenly decided to give her back. I stopped speculating. I tried instead to enjoy the day. And I did. I may not enjoy the game but my mother did, and her mood was infectious. The mood of the crowd was infectious. By the end, I was cheering, too.

She bought us ice-cream, and we sat in the park to eat it.

On the way home, we stopped in a second-hand shop. My mother told me to wait out the front - she had a surprise for me. When she came out, she was holding an easel with a ribbon tied around it. My very first easel. An easel was no good without the paper, or the proper paint and pencils to draw with, but I didn't tell my mother this. I couldn't remember the last time I'd had anything for my birthday, let alone actual presents.

I think that if my mother had continued to treat me in such a manner, I might have grown up proper, rather than the delinquent that I am. But that one day of lucidity didn't last. Oh, there were others like it, but none quite as grand.

I stand and brush the snow from my clothing. It falls from me in drifts. It has not melted. My clothes are not wet. Why would the snow melt when I have no body warmth to melt it with? I begin to meander, slowly wandering toward Bada Boom. I want to see if Betty is working.

[Memory 5]

[Jesse Fforde]

I shove my hands deep into my pockets as I walk.

Of course I'm doing exactly as I predicted I would do. These fleeting memories plucked from my past do not live on their own, in their own little bubble. They have connections, they are the beginning of paths that I have forged, of the path I am walking at this very moment.

So what? I never had a loving mother or a loving father, and my loving brother was torn from me. The only other family I know is my Uncle. And he is not present tense anymore. He is past tense, because I slaughtered him in that warehouse. I set fire to that warehouse. I made sure, well and good, that he got what he deserved for throwing Jordan over the edge of that precipice.

And because I was given no love as a child, I did not learn how to give love. I did not learn how to act in an environment where people care for each other and nurture each other. Family loyalty, undying and unquestioning, was never demanded of me. Of course these are things that I have thought about before. These are things that I know have affected me, psychologically.

How does that make you feel, Jesse?

Well, doc. I feel pissed off, that's what. I feel as if I have deprived of the one thing that will have made this new life of mine run a little smoother. That one skill set from which I'd have learned to keep the respect that I had garnered rather than lose it. How do they really expect me to know how to act, how to feel? I don't know how to have a family, to be a family. I don't know how to coddle or sympathise with ******** that I don't understand. I learned to find my own feet and made a fuckload of mistakes along the way. Is it too much, to ask for a little independence?

I growl and shake my head, as if to rattle the puzzle pieces and hope that they'll all fall into place.

I have to remember those who do care. I have to remember those that I myself care about. They do exist, and I need to strive to show them that I do care. That I am a man with feelings, whether they believe it or not. I do have a family, and they have accepted me into their ranks. I have to earn my place, and I have to learn to keep it.

And as for my own blood? I focus on those three girls. I check my watch. I glance at the sky. Maybe just one glimpse of Betty. Maybe...or maybe I should just go and check on Ursula. Or Paige, or Renee. Or all three.

[Memory 5 - the consequences]

[Jesse Fforde]

I am no stranger to violence, these days. Brett was my first taste of it, and I soon became a connoisseur. Kids at school left me alone, most of the time. It was the kids outside of school, the older kids, the different gangs that I fell into over time that taught me the fine art of violence. I roamed the streets for years. I never stuck with any particular group, however. I preferred, most of the time, to stay by myself.

I grew up, in both body and mind. I got a job that I loved, and gained a mentor that I could respect, someone finally who I could look to as a kind of brother or father figure. I’m not sure where Tony is these days, but he was the one boss who could keep me under his thumb. And I didn’t want to disappoint him. He taught me all there was to know about the industry, until I could afford to start a business of my own.

The boyhood street brawls were replaced with manhood bar brawls; alcohol and drugs fuelled the testosterone, and as always, it was my ‘disability’ that caused me to flare up and rage at any who’d make fun. I’d pummel guys who’d dare touch my ‘girl’ – who was normally my girl for that one night – or simply because they dared to bump into me and make me spill my drink.

And then I ended up with a customer. One single customer who changed my life forever; a confident red-head who decided, for some reason or another, that she’d turn me into a vampire rather than kill me. It was that red-head who introduced me to the realities around me – the zombies, the ferals, the hunters and the mooncalves. The ritualistic slaughter that all vampires seemed to delight in, with raids of all kinds. I learned how to wield both sword and gun – either separately or simultaneously. Until, finally, the culmination – she introduced me to a group called Tytonidae.

At first I thought I would not be accepted. I was ashamed, my ego bruised. Again it was because of my ‘disability’. I managed to convince them, in the end. And now the faction has become my home. I am the epitome of Peter Pan, with all the lost boys and girls around me. We delight in slaughter, rather than in games with fairy dust. And not just meaningless slaughter, either. Finally, my addiction to violence has found a cause, a channel, a focus. It is not meaningless anymore. I don’t need to find an excuse. I have a legitimate reason to remain the way I am.

My shoulders had been hunched forward against the wind, as I was preferring to bunch up against it rather than receive its full, brunt force. Perhaps I was feeling a little vulnerable, a little tender. But now, remembering how I got into Tytonidae, remembering the hut that I can call my own, and the fellow faction members who have welcomed me, and who have forgiven recent outbursts—I am able to hold my head a little higher, to broaden those shoulders just a little.

At least I have one thing that I can be proud of.

[Memory 4 - the consequences]

[Jesse Fforde]

Bada Boom isn't booming as much as usual. It is late, however, I suppose, even for the ordinary folk. My hands are still shoved deep into my pockets as I step into the establishment. The bouncers don't bother asking for my ID - big, hulking dudes, probably twice my size, but they each avoid my eye. As if, were they to even look at me wrong, I might go psycho zombie and tear out their throats. Maybe they're not too far off the mark.

One might think that working as an erotic dancer wouldn't do wonders for a girl. It's all stereotype though, really. Or maybe it's just this establishment - maybe the owners like to take care of their employees. Maybe they only like to employ the women who actually want to dance for men for a living, rather than doing it only because they have some college debt to pay off, or some child to bring up. When I see Betty, she does not look as if the years have been unkind to her. The confidence and happiness radiate from her in waves, a light in her eyes that could never be extinguished. She is lithe, graceful like a jungle cat. Her blonde hair falls in silky waves, and her eyes are, as they always were, rimmed in dark black. She has a tattoo crawling up her back - cherry blossoms. The detail is amazing, and the colours are vibrant. I have to commend whoever's artistry it is.

She wears nothing but thigh high leather boots and a thin strip of underwear. She is all natural - no obvious plastic surgery enhancements. Her skin is even in tone - and her tan, too, is natural. She sees a lot of sun. I take a seat at the high table near the stage. I catch her eye, when she spins around the pole. I can see the slight tilt to her lips - that subtle frown. She recognises me, but she can't place me. I grin, a little mischievously, and next time she swings around that pole, I give a wave by way of a wiggle of the fingers. After I know that she has seen me, after I know that she knows that I know who she is, I turn away from her performance and wander over to the bar to order a beer that I will not drink. She is a dancer, I know, but I don't want her to think I'm some pervert come to haunt her from her past. Some kid from her high school days come to gloat about how she never got very far.

Half an hour later Betty sidles up beside me. She has wrapped a black shawl tight around herself. Her hair is pulled up into a ponytail. She still wears those boots.

"I know you, don't I?" she asks.

I don't respond immediately. I give a nod and a shrug. Silent, as she will remember me. She narrows her eyes, and after five seconds of deep scrutiny I can see the recognition dawn in those blue hues. They widen, and her jaw goes slack.

"No way! Jesse? Jesse Fforde, the mute next door?" she asks. I give her a slight frown.

"Oh god, I'm sorry. I mean, you were never really offended, were you?" She says.

I have to laugh and shake my head.

"No, I suppose I wasn't," I tell her.

"Oh my god! You can talk!" she says, her voice a little higher pitched than normal. The smile glimmers on her lips--

--and I remember. I remember the first time I saw Grey smile, in that little diner. Grey's smile does not glimmer quite like Betty's. Betty's smile is for show. Oh, there's no doubt that she is actually happy, but that smile of hers is just a little too broad, and thus that tiny bit less genuine. It fades, just that little bit, as her blue eyes narrow yet again, those painted lips shrinking into a knowing smirk. She, too, is remembering that afternoon long ago, where she took my virginity.

"My shift just ended. Want to get out of here?" she asks.

Without thinking, I nod.

"Great. I'll just go get properly dressed. I'll meet you out front," she says. As she swiftly turns, her hair whips behind her. I watch her until she disappears through a door near the stage. My gaze sweeps her from head to toe and back again. I want to go home with her because I have en ego. Because I want to show her how much I have grown, and how much I have learned. I want to make her scream my name. I pay for the beer and wander out the front door. I lean against the wall and pull the packet of cigarettes from my pocket, lighting one up to smoke while I wait.

I stare into the distance and again I have to recall how Grey sat, scoffing her food without a care in the world. She ordered so damned much, and she ate it all, too. I can feel the smile tug at the corner of my lips, wistful, as I recall how she continued to talk at my insistence, asking me nothing, taking no notice of the fact that I failed to actually speak. As if it wasn't an impediment. As if it was completely normal. I remember how utterly intrigued I was when she reacted so peculiarly as soon as she realised that the cops would be coming. They weren't coming for her. They were coming because I'd just killed someone in the bathroom. But she bolted for that door as if her whole life depended on it.

I remember the following days, and the following weeks; I remember sticking around, visiting her, bringing her home, talking with her. I remember teasing her, wanting only to get into her pants, but it didn't happen. She wouldn't let it. I assumed that as soon as I did get past that barrier, I would leave her. Hell, I wasn't ever completely monogamous, regardless.

But then I told her about the woman who'd thrown herself at me when I was too broken to move. The way she then let me touch her in that garage. The way she let me take her home, then - the way I broke down all barriers, then, and I took that which had once been taken from me. I took her virginity. The experience was more profound than any I can recall, even now - perhaps aside from the night I admitted that I loved her.

****, I love her.

I glance sideways. The bouncers are talking to each other. Betty hasn't emerged, yet. I drop the cigarette and crush it beneath my heel. I shove my hands deep into my pockets once again. I swiftly cross the road and round the block - I leave, without a backward glance. I leave, without telling Betty goodbye.

[Memory 3 - the consequences]

[Jesse Fforde]

From one tattoo were birthed many others. Numerous, copious, each blending into the next. Of course, after I secured the apprenticeship, I practiced on myself. My legs are littered with the not-so-good tattoos of my youth; the portrait of the man whom I believed was my father, who I had attached grand ideals to. The child, trapped inside the box – it was a dream that I’d had, one that I could not shake. The Pikachu. A rose. A skull, the shadows of which I didn’t get right. An ace, concocted of skulls. A writhing mermaid.

The bigger pieces happened simultaneously, or were soon to follow. My penchant for violence had me craving the guns crossed over my chest, smoke easing out of the their barrels. The owl on my neck, symbolic of the way that I watched everything, wide-eyed, without making much of a sound. A silent predator. The skull on one hand, the rose on the other. The birds, billowing from a dark landscape, flying smoothly up the expanse of my arm. The cartoons. The 21 on my cheek, on my twenty-first birthday. The numbers, 2402 and 1990 on my knuckles – the date of my birthday.

BORN LOCO

MIND FU*K

Because I could. Because I can.

The all-seeing eye. Again. And again.

The rabbit, leaping gleefully through the rabbit hole.

Ride the Snake.

A key and a hole.

A woman with a birdhouse for a head – perhaps early indication of insanity?

Sparrows. A sword. More skulls.

Addicted, I was, to the pain. The burning, searing, gliding, buzzing pain. Perhaps, instead, it was an addiction to the rush of adrenaline. Perhaps that is a thing that I am now deprived of. Perhaps that is why I feel so at home in Tytonidae; perhaps that is why I throw myself closer and closer toward the clutches of death. Maybe that’s the only way, these days, to get a kick. Maybe … maybe.

I don’t exactly know where I am. I know that my brows are furrowed into deep lines, and I know that the brisk walk is a helpful distraction. I should go home. Home. Where is home, exactly? Is it the Eyrie, and my hut therein? Is it to the apartment, where I know Grey might be waiting for me? Is it Larch Court, where I might find Ursula, Renee, or Paige? Where do I go? To which thread do I cling? Which rope do a climb? From which height can I fall the furthest?

Maybe I won’t go to any home. Maybe, instead, I’ll find a tattoo parlour; maybe I’ll get another tattoo. Maybe I’ll throw myself again into that bliss, like a drug, and let it flood my body. One more time, I change my course.

[Memory 2 – the consequences]

[Jesse Fforde]

I’ve done a full circle.

All the parlours that I found were closed. I decided, in the end, that I would find Micah. I told myself that I would go home. That I would find him at the Eyrie. Home. And yet I lost my thoughts again as I wander, aimless, useless. I don’t realise until I saunter back into that park that I have come back to my childhood home; I stand in that park, staring at the building across the road within which I once lived. The building to which I was brought home from the hospital. The one within which I had broken my arm when I was four, because I was convinced I could fly when leaping from the top bunk. Where I gained my first scar, just there beneath my eyebrow, because the fan on the roof had whacked me on the head on my way down.

In that apartment, Jordan and I had created a least a hundred different forts, made from old cardboard boxes, from sheets and pillows and whatever other building material we could find. Our mother was forced, always, to buy more clothes pegs because Jordan and I were constantly losing them. It was that apartment that we nearly burned down, because we’d started a fire in the middle of our bedroom, pretending that we were out in the wilderness, camping.

In that apartment I’d been happy, for the first seven years of my life. I’d been happy because my father was there. I have only a vague memory of the man – a man in a suit, a man who always looked haggard, but a man who smelled of aftershave and a musk that I could not name. His cheeks were always prickled with stubble. His fingers were always stained with ink. I don’t know what he did, but he always looked exhausted when he came home. And my mother doted on him.

I don’t know what happened to him. It’s a memory I never got back, or maybe I was never told. Maybe in the chaos that followed, in the hurricane of my mother’s grief, Jordan and I were never actually told what had happened to our father. All we knew was that one day he was there, and the next he wasn’t. Was there even a funeral? Were we allowed to attend? Or were we purposefully kept in the dark, hidden from the grief that might ruin us?

We remained young, and innocent. We continued to build forts. We were given more freedom, as our mother failed to notice use, or care.

I climb the stairs. The apartments here now are all empty. Shadows scuffle in some of the rooms. Somewhere, a fire burns in a drum. There’s a hacking cough, emanating from somewhere below as I continue to climb, right up, up, up to the top. To the roof. I stare at the corner where Jordan and I had built our last fort. No clue remains that two little had ever lived here. No clue that one had been thrown from the edge. I wander right up to that edge. I step up onto it. My hands clench and unclench in my pockets as I stare out over the city.

There is a fire on the horizon, just like I remember it from my nightmares. I know what it is. I can feel the familiar weight of it, as it rises.

I take a breath. I fill my lungs with the crisp air. I remember. I remember, now.

I remember screaming until I was hoarse as Uncle Tommy held Jordan over the edge. I screamed, and screamed. And then Jordan was gone and the breath died in my throat. I clambered up onto the edge and I could see the broken body of my brother, mirror image of myself, on the pavement below. A tremor passed through my small body. It hurt to breath. It hurt to pull that air into my lungs. My fingers dug into the cement of the barrier; I couldn’t feel the pain as one nail bent back and in on itself. And when I screamed, it was the sound of a strangled animal. Shock and grief and horror, pure and utter fright, incomprehension and denial, all of it, all of it clamoured my brain, crushing me, clawing at me. It was the last sound I made for over a decade. That scream stole my voice from me, completely. It depleted my supply of sound.

As I stand there on the edge, watching as the sun’s rays peer into the darkness, I remember far too clearly how inhuman I felt. As I look down, I can see him again – Jordan, his eyes wide and staring, blood beginning to pool beneath his head, his leg twisted at an unnatural angle. It’s as if I’m experiencing the whole ordeal all over again.

And I scream.

This time, the sound is full of fury and desperation. I scream, for all the times that I couldn’t. I scream because my sire hates me. I scream because my childer hate me. I scream because I am in love with a human who won’t let me kill her yet. I scream because I am so ******* hungry, all the ******* time. I scream because I hate myself so ******* much. I hate that it should be so easy to just leap. Leap, and follow the same path that Jordan flew. To do so at the exact moment that the sun’s head rears over the tops of the buildings. The last thing that I will see is that park, and the angel that I created in the snow only a couple of hours ago. And as I fall I will burst into flame. I won’t even hit the ground. My ashes can disperse across the trees of that park, and I will be at peace.

I can go and find Jordan.

But I can’t. I hate myself because I can’t. Instead, throat hurting and voice wrecked, I stumble backward as warmth begins to singe my skin. I stumble toward the door that will take me down, down into the bowels of decrepit ruination, into those rooms that had once been home. I find the apartment that had been ours. There is a man there, asleep in the room that once was mine. I tear out his throat and drink him until he is dry. I barricade the door and I curl up on the mattress that’s still there, in the wire frames of the bunk that was once Jordan’s.

I curl up.

And when I sleep, I visit the place that I crave. The place of shadows.

[Memory 1 - the consequences]


[End]