Posted by Whit, reposting for the Sorc on May 20, 2001 at 20:00:06:
16 May
I watched today..I thought she was dying. “My scissors, “ she calls for, and I
cannot reply. I try to hand them to her without shaking fingers. She has to know, i
think to myself, she has to know what i’ve been doing, what I want to be doing.
She took the scissors, eyes flat and cloudy, like a pond where all the birds are
dead, winter gripping the ice, turning it blue at the edges...she took them from me
and held them aloft, higher than i thought she could reach today, reaching up and
over herself over her gray hair over the dingy pillow and *SNIP* they went and
down went she and gone were the blades. My breath caught, I could not speak.
Suddenly, borne on energy from nowhere, she sat up, grasped my hand lying pale
and shaking on the coverlet, and said, “Now, what have i left undone all this
time?” She rose from the bed, put on her housecoat and proceeded mixing,
crushing, sweeping, and singing. I sank, instead, to the tired mattress, dazed. I
wish I knew how she...No. No. Too much knowledge,and I’ll be unable to hold it
all. I’m so full as it is. Ever I go, back to him again...Am I cheating? Who’s more
important to me? I sigh and fight this feeling. He is my dinner, dessert and all. I
blush to say it so bluntly, but looking at him is opening myself to a world i cannot
possibly swallow, i’m exploding with it, driven like a tide on the rocks. Crouching
in that alcove, peering through the keyhole, I am more alive than any night in the
sea, urchins under my skin, prickling my soul with their secrets.
Ah, dreamers, pretend you don’t see me tonight. I’ll try to fly over you quickly,
catch him as he flings wide the door and stands in moonlight, skin to skin to --
***
May 29
The floor should be soaked in red ashes. My heart is a phoenix
tonight, singed feathers float down from an invisible sky over my
head. I’m taking all hell kind of chances tonight, writing here so close
to him. I can’t say his name aloud; it burns so much and my heart is
far too raw. We drank each other through the keyhole and i swore his
arms were around me, holding me, holding my dark dress to my damp
skin, breathing in the smell of salt from my fingertips - i’d wandered
the docks all afternoon to see if the boats were coming yet..no sign
and it’s almost the end of our last store..Never mind. Anyway, there
we were, wrapped around each other without even touching and he
leans in close to my ear and asks me a question..a horrible question, a
question he asked me some days ago, the last time i wrote , when i
heard it fall down to me from the ceiling above and i dropped the pen,
bursting ink all over the floor, all over me and all over what i thought i
knew about him, and about myself, for i almost answered him, there
in the dark, in the single sphere of candle, nearly told him yes. And
when he held me today, i did. I said yes and my heart shrank and
disappeared into some wet pink void full of heat and need and now.
And just for a moment, he stopped breathing; i turned to the door,
pressed my whole body against it, shivering, saying please, speak,
please..He remained silent,
I glanced hesitantly over both shoulders, expecting to see her
grim face
(child, what are you doing here?) but there was no one to see. And so
I lifted my hands, pale from the attic cold, and unfastened the buttons
of my dress, letting it melt down my legs to the dust. I stood there,
more vulnerable even than when i was a baby, newfound at sea, and
waited. I felt my flesh start to tremble, goosebumps rose on my bare
skin, and still he was silent. I don’t know if he would even look at me
and there I was, fresh from the bath and smelling like salt and hot and
looking like nothing at all worth remembering..ready to lose, ready to
give, ready to know. And he did not speak.
At some point, i don’t know when, I began to cry very quietly,
letting the tears run down, warming my face for just that quick. I
leaned down to the floor and lifted my dress, pressed it against me,
wiped my face in its folds and buttoned it up. When I turned to go
down the stairs, I felt strands of my heart rip away, clinging to the
ancient door and its burning lock, and I knew I had just done
something tremendously wrong - and had survived. I walked down to
my room, where I lay on the bed for some time, watching the window
for I don’t know what, listening to her below me, working and
building a fire, and thought, how will I stand this? What will I say to
her when I go down and she wants me to talk, to be myself, when I’’m
not; I’m someone else now? So here I am, writing huddled by his
door, waiting...
I have to go now. he’s calling me..
***
May 30
It’s so late, my head aches to look at the page below me. But up I stay.. my
nerves, my veins, the tiniest cells in my body are alive, singing wet songs to the
moon outside. it’s full..I’m full too, finally full full full up to the top, I’m ebbing
like a high tide and I can’t come down, it’s too far to jump and i’m happy in the
dark clouds this time.
I read what I just wrote and i’m blushing scarlet in my dim room. I’m going to
sleep in full moonlight tonight, leave my window open to cool my face..to cool
me..I fear i’m glowing in the silence. I would almost pray that she will not hear
my small noises of joy, but I suddenly feel no need to ask for anything. After what
I have been given, how can I? Let her hear, let the whole world hear, how could
they have not heard yet? Can they not smell the roses, the smell that soaked my
clothes beneath me, dripped to the dusty attic boards, as I lay there..but I’m
blushing again. I lean to the blanket, whisper secrets to the sheets, and they turn
warm despite the chill of the room.
I closed my eyes, and i swear I heard him still..will he lie awake all night, too,
thinking about those hours? The clock downstairs strikes half past one..today -
yesterday was a century, I passed through day after day after year in those sweet
hours upstairs..I wonder if I could tell you, even you, without crying aloud,
without closing this book for turning red at my own rememories.
I have to tell you, though, because i know there won’t be anyone else I can tell. i’d
be sent, no, thrown from this house, banished to somewhere where she couldn’t
see the new sway of my body, the look in my eyes, the knowledge written in my
face like stars, bright and far away. I move against the mattress, burning and
feeling as though I stand before that door still, as though I still am lying naked
down on those bare boards..
I told you what happened yesterday (yesterday it was only yesterday oh God how
can i stand it how can i keep quiet!). His silence broke my heart and he must have
heard the rustle of pen to paper as I gave you my thoughts outside his door, for he
called to me in that way he has, the little licking voice in my head, and I went,
stood, unwilling to kneel before his door. I heard nothing after, not a word, just
the echo of my name drifting out of reach. I waited, angry now, ready to turn and
leave. My heart was sick and the drafts, so far from the heat downstairs, made
me shiver. Then, suddenly, the very wood of the door began to - I have to say
ripple, like water touching wind, and I saw the shape of a man’s body form in the
grain. Frightened, I whispered his name, questioning, and he answered me
lovingly, voice so low and full of gravel and promises that I could not turn away. I
stepped towards that ripple of shape and it vanished. i stifled the cry in my throat
and touched the door. It was the same as ever, dusty dark wood, polished with
tears as I leaned on it and wept.
He took my chin in his hand, brought my face to his. I breathed his breath and i
felt like i was falling again, into deep water from shallow cliffs. I waited for his
mouth to open, and when it did, when his small white teeth flashed in the
firelight, I knew I had been saved, somehow. Here was all I needed, here was the
key I had been looking for. He smiled. I wonder just how much of my thoughts he
could taste, his voice licking my mind, salt and all...
Numbly, I listened..but I could not tell you what he said. his voice was so damn
perfect, he gripped my insides with his words, twisted them, fondled my heart,
scraped down its strings..
When I could finally look away again, down at my pale thighs (i could not bring
myself to look at his body this closely), I whispered a single word. He again lifted
my face to his.
“You love me.”
I was not sure what I had expected; had I really thought he was in love with me?
That I had come in here for some reason beyond my own tangled emotions. He
spoke the truth, but he did not speak his own and it made me afraid. Do you love
me? i asked, but I could not say if he answered, because he had put his hands on
me and was lowering me back down to the soft floor, moving over me, and I was
lost and redeemed and satisfied on a warm hearth by a dead woman’s dream.
I can go no further here, my heart is pounding its way from my lips and I have to
sleep. My eyes burn, my mouth is bruised and my body is aching a gentle deep
ache from my tender center up to my shoulders..I will put out the candle; the sun
is up.
***
June 3
late
I’m watching the moon tonight. I’m too tired to sleep, too shaken to dream,
whose face will I see when i’m overwhelmed near dawn - If I can hold out that
long. I’m waiting for a whisper, listening so hard my head aches with the silence,
ringing ringing ringing ..If he doesn’t talk to me, I’ll go stone deaf.
While I wait and watch, I’ll tell you what happened this morning. She came up
those stairs like a hellion, marched me down to the icy dawn porch and stripped
me bare in front of God and everyone; anyone who came over the hill would have
seen what only three have seen..myself, my mirror, and -- he makes three. I can
feel the blush creeping up my neck now, but this morning I was too frightened
and cold to be ashamed. Down i went into the tin tub of hot water and washed till
my skin turned red and the soreness seeped out of my body. She stared at me as
though she had never seen a young woman, as though her body had always been
old and bent, her breasts low and sloping, her belly round with a womb that
would never be full. I looked back at her, angry, my chin up and my back
straight, taut in the cool air, showing her, showing her what I was and what I have
and i am what he wants not you! I thought these to myself, I dared not speak, but
I wanted to scream at her. I’m not a little girl, not now, maybe I never was if I
could do those things in the dark, whisper those little truths that I hadn’t even
known were true.....but I’m blushing again. After I dressed, we sat in the kitchen,
avoiding each other’s eyes until she finally asked what I had been dreading to
hear..but it was not what I had expected.
-who’s been at you, girl?-she spat at me.
Realization dawned; perhaps the old are not the wise. She didn’t know it was
him..and I admit I was ashamed, and I replied with the first name to my lips.
I don’t remember feeling so ashamed as I did then..or so wistful. I still can’t be
sure where that wish came from..why my body suddenly felt so hugely empty..as
if I were struggling to reach some understanding, and I felt like confessing (why
confessing? why am i suddenly thinking it was sinful? i need to think about this
awhile)
like telling her everything, though the thought of saying what exactly happened
up there made my insides clench tight around the truth. I could not look her in
the face, but i swear her mouth moved in a small smile of satisfaction. I trained
eyes on the worn carpet under the small table and waited for her reply, so stark
and driving in that usually safe room. I was on trial and I didn’t even know there
was a crime. (But then why am I feeling so muchly a victim right now?)
-are you sure?- she whispered and oh I thought to myself, she -does- know. But
when I couldn’t meet her eyes, she lifted her voice.
-I knew it- she dashed at me, -I knew you were your mother’s daughter!-
like a curse, and i wondered who else’s daughter i was. Funny how my sex is so
important to her and my mother’s is such a damn secret. How does she think I am
going to be? Was I born without a heart, without a center?
She talked, but I fell deaf and wondered to myself about things until I heard her
say
-Where is he? -
And I wondered, not for the first time, where Jay really was.
I’m going to try to sleep soon. I wish he was here with me. He still doesn’t speak
and I wonder if he is reliving our night together as much as I am..scenes flicker on
the wall..I didn’t know i could project yet, but it is a pleasant discovery, like
finding flowers in the corners instead of dust..I think briefly of Jay but my mind
cannot hold on to what my hands have missed. I close your cover now and try to
call my eyes to do the same.
Goodnight, love. Whisper to me, won’t you? I can hear you in my sleep -
***
June 5
Ah, it’s raining tonight. The sound is me all over, cool skin and dripping in the
eaves. I am almost ashamed of the way I am feeling, but it is holding onto me and
I have no choice but to say that I’m glowing up through the boards - surely he
sees me here, lying open to the nightwind, waiting for his touch, if he would just
reach.. There’s the rub, though. so close, so far; he won’t dare come down while
she is still awake, and she never sleeps in a storm. I admit i cannot sleep either,
but i don’t think my body would let me. My nerve endings are soaked in sodium
tonight, bubbling furiously and remembering
The memories drive me crazy sometimes..knowing how much better it could be
now, no fears, just flying and up and then down to the warm after. I’m wanting
him more tonight (is it possible) than I did before we ever touched, and I am
having to fight the feeling down
Do you read the page as I write it? Do you want me, too? Would I still hold that
mystery for you - that first touch, that shudder, the new? Tell me that’s not going
to be the end - tell me it can happen again..and again...and again..
I would take off my skin next if it would give some relief from this; I can feel my
whole body tense, waiting, please make the waiting stop..put your hand over my
mouth, she won’t hear anything but the rain and then
Oh, Jay, I’m sorry..
the rain’s falling and so am i ---
should i ever wish it were you?
***
June 8
The weekend passed uneventfully, and i answered no questions. I did
nothing to call any more attention to myself; it was pretty plain that I
was going to be the center of more than enough for weeks to come.
She made no move to look for Jay, whether by using her own means
or the telephone. Speaking of which , it rang this morning for the first
time since school ended and summer fell open. Summer here comes
like rain in the desert and the friends i thought i had vanish into the
sands..school ends and so does my existance, for those who even
know i am there at all. but i digress..the phone rang and i leaped for it,
almost too quick; her hissing breath by my ear blotted out the caller’s
voice and i surrendered the phone into her hand
-hello? yes. (she is never daunted by anyone; how much magic does
*that* take?)
I pretended not to be frantic and nosed around in our freezer, looking
for the leftover ice cream. She insists on making everything
herself..sometimes it’s not so bad.
I read what i just wrote and it is hard to believe i can be so nonchalant
- i sound like a kid. If all this hasn’t grown me up, what will? Well,
maybe the next three days will..Jay’s coming on Wednesday. I don’t
know who found him or just how they knew she was looking for him,
but he is on his way..I don’t even know where he’s been. One day not
long ago, I might have been wondering, I might have cared, I might
have cried to hear news like this.. and I might have smiled to think
what it might mean..what we might have together...ironic how much I
used to love him and now it is my love for someone else that has
brought him home again. I dread to think what will happen when he
arrives. Surely, she doesn’t think we are old enough to get married..or
that I have to marry the first man I sleep with..an archaic thought for
an archaic woman, I suppose. How do I take the name of a man whose
name i don’t even know -- Suddenly, I’m shivering..why didn’t I think
of this before? Why didn’t I ever notice he didn’t tell me his name?
Shouldn’t I have known that long before I let him know me?? I can
feel my heart scratching at my ribs. Am I going insane? If he would
just talk to me, just tell me where he’s been the last few days..I always
thought making love was part during and part after. He has not even
so much as called my name, much less held me and let me know that
he isn’t lost. I hope I can say as much for myself. I’m going down to
the shore before sleep. Goodnight, love, whoever you are.
***
June 12
I blur my eyes and watch my fingers turn to candlesticks..wax swells pink,
drips on the page, turning it translucent..I see the writing on the other page; his
name is written over and over. I don’t remember doing that. I focus again and my
fingers cool as I bring them to my lips. They do not taste burnt.
I keep looking out the window. The moon shows me the shore, a black line
of something against the nothing-dark ocean. He’s walking down there tonight - i
see the beam of his flashlight slipping around between his fingers. I want to be
the flashlight’s beam, senseless and bright beneath his hand. I watch for it to
disappear. He’s spent the last three nights on the beach. I saw his head find the
sand, heard his breath while he slept. He wakes at sunrise, jogging back down and
around the curve of shore. He doesn’t want me to find him; he can’t stay away to
hide, though.
***
I missed you so much...
I spent the night in arms I thought i could never see too soon... and felt
something i thought had fallen as fast asleep as we did... Together: the best word
in the english language..i slept so well and woke and watched him dress quietly,
trying not to wake me. i risk sounding helplessly romantic to say that, watching
him, I was completely overcome with a revelation so strong that i made some soft
sound of pleasure, and he turned, his eyes finding mine and a smile broke over
his face. he sank down again and held me, covered my mouth and throat and
breasts with kisses that would belie the strongest man.. this one’s in love. i just
breathed in his warm smell and waited for his voice. when it came, it was low and
his hands drifted lower, held my hips, traced the lines of my skin under the
covers. I slipped my free arm around his neck and returned the whispered words ,
which until then felt as if they had meant something completely different. Love
makes fools of us all, but it is the only thing that truly educates us - and what i
have learned from this man makes me want to cry when i think of how i might
have turned away and lost him to ignorance and mistakes long past. we spent a
few minutes more togethr and then he had to leave. He promised to return
tonight, and i try to look calm before heading back to Covenant House. Gran is
not going to be too happy that I slept in a strange bed last night. “o, hell, to love
through another’s eyes!”
***
June 15
He’s so mad. He’s so mad, I should have known- what do I tell Gran? I can’t go to
the hospital; I’m starting to fear that what I suspected is true. Nobody can even
see the horrible - places - but me. Nobody could ever hurt this way.. I would not
wish it on anyone. I’m so terrified..If he read what I wrote before..if he can read
this now..then I’m writing my suicide note to the world. Not that this could
escape the room if he didn’t want it to..if he has this much power, how did he ever
come to be in that tiny room? I know now that I released him; but how much
leash does he have?
I know that I will try not to go to him again. I know the blood on my body
and the bruise on my face would say that ‘try’ is not enough, but they weren’t
here when I took out my heart and took off my clothes and gave him all the power
he needed to keep me on a leash of my own..the other end lies frayed and
clenched in his red right hand. If he is reading this, then I may as well go on to
say that I hope his palms are stained and swollen and throbbing in pain, so much
as my body testifies the same to me.
No wrath falls from the ceiling; the scene rolls on, the sun is drizzling onto
the ocean, burning out and night will come. The clock is quiet.
It’s five past six.
He’s not coming down to get me.
I’ll tell you the story. I’ll tell you just in case I have to remind myself later. I’ll tell
you in case everything goes to hell and somebody has to know.
I watched that sun go by and sink down and someone beat the hell out of me and
gave me something to cry about. I hope I won’t be crying again in nine months.
I came home this morning and no one was home. Gran’s letter on the counter was
a familiar one:
Gone. Wash the dishes. Make the beds. Clean up the room YOU DID NOT SLEEP
IN last night. Be prepared to talk to me when I get back. Returning on bus 9:30
A.M.
I bathed..I wrote...I fell asleep in my room and when I woke up, I was in the attic.
I did not go up there in my sleep. I’m very sure of that. Startled and still drowsy, I
looked around me. The red carpets seemed to throw off a luminescence almost as
bright as the sunlight through the windows, which were wide open. He stepped
from nowhere and was in my face and gripping me by the sides of my head and
forcing me against him..
I could see through his chest, i could see black bile boiling around his heart and
skin rotting with some forsaken curse and then he let go. I staggered back away
from him, but the door wasn’t there anymore. The wall was smooth brick,
fresh-looking. Horribly clear details jumped at my eyes as I searched for a way
past this. He was naked. He was hideous and burning and -My mind won’t hold
on to the images now; I can’t think without wanting to scream. I heard him
whisper
-look what you’ve done to me-
and i screamed and screamed all the way down to the floor. The red carpet
burned my legs; they’re covered in red welts now...and then he fell on top of me,
biting at my lips and chest and slapping and seizing me and all the time shouting
how he
i can’t .. please
Wait.
I’m sorry but my hands won’t hold on much longer. He said that he wanted it
back, whatever he had given me. I couldn’t understand; he gave me nothing. But
now he gave me a million times over, pain and pain and fear and knowing he
could kill me but he wouldn’t ; our affair wouldn’t end that quickly. When I
looked down and saw...I fainted.
I woke up on the attic landing. There was blood on me, but none on the floor
where I sprawled. I touched my bloody fingertips to the bannister as I came
down; not even a smear showed.
***
June 16
Thank God he held me tonight. I couldn’t have stood much more
touching, but he understood and his arms made me safe for awhile - safe enough
to sleep and I was too tired to even dream. I couldn’t let him leave without
holding him to me, memorizing the feel of his body against my face, cool against
the burning marks. He sees them. He sees them, and I know now that I’m not
crazy. What he will do about this, I don’t know. I couldn’t tell him the truth, not
all of it. How do you explain to someone you just fell in love with that you were
practically in the devil’s bed before? How do you explain the devil.. if that is what
he is...I’m so confused and when I think that he was .. the whole thing makes me
sick. I don’t know that I could even face the thought of it if I left here...here being
Jay’s rumpled bed. It smells like him and so do I..I’m glad I can’t smell the
burning anymore...
I called home at last and told Gran I was staying in town with a friend. The
machine picked up ( which is unlike her, she hates the stupid thing, but I guess
she’ll have to deal with poor excuses for awhile). I’m not going back into that
house alone. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel that that house is my home again; I had a
dream last night that the walls really had ears and they had mouths too, because
they screamed along with me. There is blood in the grain of the wood, smeared
on tiles and flecked in carpet..whether anyone will ever see it to wash it away, I do
not know. I don’t even know if there is any way to undo everything I’ve done.
He made his home in me and he’s rotting in there, rotting like something
dead wet in a new spring and I’m so afraid that Jay will touch me and this
forsaken oozing thing will mark him, too.
***
Funny how it wasn’t upon a time very long ago that I sat here and waited on him
to call me and I thought when he called me that it was the new. It’s the old, it’s all
old, as old as the wood in the planks under me. I’m here again now, I am here of
my own free will..and i cry of my own free will, not for anyone but just to release
myself, but nobody calls to me.
This morning, I heard nothing in the house save the clock in the kitchen
and gran’s shuffling along the hallway. I went to my room, I undressed, I bathed.
Nothing. No invisible hand reached to cup damp skin, no invisible tongues traced
my lips. I couldn’t feel the burning; a sensation that had been on me since I woke
on the landing yesterday. The steam on the mirror clung to my shaking hand, but
all I saw when I wiped the mists away was smooth white skin and blue veins. No
welts, no bruises, no scratched-in scars. My first thought was that he had
magicked the mirror somehow. I looked down at myself, ran my hands over me
lightly..no changes. They were gone, washed down the drain with the soap and
the smell of Jay after midnight. That’s a smell I want to know when I’m old and
beyond all of this. Maybe we can be normal. Maybe...
Maybe I don’t want to know what’s growing in there. Maybe I don’t know
what’s growing in me but I can feel something in there. Maybe it’s just pieces of
me, my old self that he peeled away. I’m just bones and heat on the staircase. It’s
not even cold up here now. Gran hasn’t looked at me since I came in. I can’t find a
question to ask her and I think she knows where I was last night. I don’t think she
knows i went to hell and back.
I just realized there is no blood on the landing anywhere.
Oh ---
The door is locked. The lock is full of something red and smeared and my hands
are sticking to this page
I can’t hear him even when I put my hands on the wood. Something’s happened.
Something happened and he’s in there, shut up tight.
(why do i care?)
I didn’t do this. There’s no way I could have. But nobody was here last night
unless-
I have to go. I have a lot of asking to do. I’m putting you in my suitcase before i go
downstairs.
***
June 20
Goosebumps are crippling my flesh, my back arches so hard it hurts and rain drips off the trees and licks the panes as I grip the arms of the chair hard, harder, they’re working as hard as I am to hold this in, to keep it in this small body that just won’t take anymore...and his name rips out of my mouth and we shudder..
And I woke up shaking. Shaking all over and unable to lie there without arching my back, moving my hips against the stiff sheets. Like I was not alone, like Jay was there with me, pinning me in the piles of white comforter, flowered quilt, pillows uncomfortably hard from unuse. These dreams are so strong, it’s painful. Hard to sleep, unbearable to wake up. .
Even as I write this I can smell him on me more than the flowers outside the window. Sometimes I catch myself with him on the long black sofa, on the high lacy bed, the black shower, the tiny bathroom sinks, the soft carpets, even the billows of grass that encircle the house, down in the flowers whose names I can’t pronounce, the carefully tended gardens, the swing by the end of the drive. . . and then he melts into memory and I am left reading, dozing, weeding, washing..back in the same meaningless activity from which I escaped.
Somebody said once that if you are going through Hell, keep going. Well, I am. Going, that is. Trying not to ask too many questions, trying not to conjure any memories onto the corners of my pristine room. I can’t say I love this place, and I certainly do not know these people. How Gran came to know them, I don’t question either. They’re too young for her, though the lady must be at least fifty. The man is younger; he works often, complains often, eats too much and sleepwalks. He does not come into my room - He does not dare. The pictures on the wall are children I know by name only; they do not acknowledge me or run to me when they are here. I guess they don’t dare, either. I’m the anomaly in this house. I’m not the shiny satin wallpaper, I’m not the French doors or the four poster bed. I’m the spare room with the stained carpet and the cat hair on all the broken kitchen chairs that have no place in the rest of the immaculate house. I expect to look skyward nightly and see my prison sentence written in grease pencil on the ceiling: eternity.
What I do find is Jay's name written everywhere... without thinking, I filled the margins on this paper, the inside of my wrists are smeared with ink, even when I bathe I find tiny letters stitching my pink skin together. How can I stand to do this to him? How can I do it to myself?
***
June 26
Here I am again, hiding in the garden, trying to fend off a slurping dog and wishing I could see sand and stars instead of grass and groaning wooden steps. I can find nothing to do with myself here; there is no place for me. Not young enough to notice, the couple sit together with coffee and sewing for her, beer and books for him, under the lamplights, not speaking, not - I am certain - even breathing for long moments until a thread snaps or a sigh falls to the floor with a dull thuck and they go to bed. All the while, I tinker with their computer and pretend I am writing various harmless things which quickly are tossed into the trash once they’ve tottered *or in his case, stumbled* off to bed. I slide this journal from under the bed carefully. Noise at night rouses the annoying lapdogs the lady insists on keeping. They howl under the windows; bitches of eastwick, I dubbed them long ago, and they have yet to earn a better name.
I write long letters – before I go any further, I want to be sure I note that these letters are not those tearstained missives never posted and found after my body’s been smuggled out by the worms, no! These I will send and send quickly. I know Jay won’t waste any time getting here. God, I am so impatient with this whole thing. I feel like I’m thirteen again, waiting for something I can’t identify between sleeping and halfawake… waiting for Jay to come through the window, waiting for a phone call, waiting for gran to show up at the door and tell me I can come home. Waiting for the man in the attic to wake up and smell me over the miles and stroke my window with his flawless hand and twitch me out of sleep… I’m going crazy.