Haunted: Part One
By Julia O’Donnell
An Excerpt from an Untitled Memoir
That summer began like any other, with dread. I worried about getting along with my parents, missing my friends, being lonely, and being away from whomever my crush was the end of the year. They always began this way, but none of them had ever lived up to that feeling as much as this one would.
The first month consisted of fight after fight. Mother and I fought with a violence I had never experienced before that summer. I cannot even remember now what those fights were about, just that there were no holds barred. Every moment we were at each other’s throats. It was made worse by the fact that every fight was about God. Right vs. wrong. Evil vs. Good.
When people fight about God, the argument changes. It becomes darker. A movie I once saw a trailer for said, “How do you say no to God?” That was the underlying question in every fight with my mother. “How can you say no to God?” Because she was my mother, in her own estimation she was put in place by God to tell me what to do, what to believe, and who to be. Therefore, if I went against any opinion she had or command she gave, I was defying God. Which of course meant that I did not love Him, or her, and that I did not care if I went to Hell. This led her to believe that threats of Hell were the best way to deal with me.
It did not help that at one point I decided to follow a friend’s example and give up social media for the summer. I thought it would be help to develop spiritually. Everyone was always talking about just how bad it all is for you spiritually. I realize now that that was one of the stupidest ideas I had ever had. Terrified of being alone, and trapped in a building with people who made me question my identity, I made a conscious decision to be more alone. There was no way that could have helped me at that time. I needed little else more than as much support from my friends as I could get, and in the name of spirituality, I cut myself off from any support they could give me. So I was isolated into the chaos of my family without any recourse.
The worst of it was a morning when we were fighting on the way to Church. Again, I cannot remember what we were fighting over, but I will never forget the moment she yelled that we could not go to Church if we kept fighting about this. Isolated from my friends, and completely alone in my family, God was quite literally all I had. Something in me broke. For a moment, everything went black. Sometimes decisions take months, years, days at least, but every once in a while, a decision becomes physical. The body takes over, and the two choices become so vivid and violent, that there is no longer a choice to be made.
In that moment, with everything black, time stopped. I turned in on myself having developed claws like the trees in Disney’s snow white, and blood poured from eyes and my chest as I tore my own face and body to shreds. Screams emanated from everywhere around me, demons and saints gasping and clawing invisible in the black space of the universe. A tar that dragged me into a void that held no air until my lungs collapsed, and without missing a second after my mother’s comment I gripped my own hands down from my face to keep from enacting my fantasy. My hands exploded onto the mirror with a fury that stopped the fight dead in its tracks, pounding into it as if to break out of the car, as if shattering this cage would break the larger one that trapped my heart.
Mother looked at me in horror. I curled into myself crying the sobs of complete despair. I knew I was in trouble for exploding. Yet, I also knew that there had been no hope of silencing my explosion. I was a pressure cooker that had been left on for years building and building, and she had kicked off the lid, and was now about to murder me for bursting. We went to Mass, in an awkward, terrifying silence. It did nowhere near the good it needed to do, and I spent every moment of it aware that the day would only get worse.
My parents sat me down later at the kitchen island, and made a good show of asking me what was wrong that I reacted the way I did. I felt the sun shine down on me for that moment. It seemed like every minute of my life, every second of despair had led up to this. Finally, they had seen that they had broken me, and they were about to listen to me. I was honest. I confessed that they fights we were having made me feel like they never listened to me, and that I struggled with feeling trapped because nothing I said ever mattered. Dad proceeded to tell me that I was supposed to listen to them, and that something like this could never happen again. Pretending to fidget, but really watching my foolish castle in the cloud of a moment ago collapse in front of me, I crumpled an empty bottle of water in my hand, and said ok. I watched, both inside and outside of my body, as I crumpled my own soul into ash.
I played up my meekness for the remainder of the day, silencing my spirit until I could make the excuse of needing to go pray upstairs. My body completely numb, I placed myself onto my bed and stared down in front of me. I allowed myself to view the complete despair that had drowned me out of myself that day. I made a decision in that moment. God had refused to save me, almost every fight that summer had been about Him, and He had only let it get worse. If He refused to protect me when I stood up for Him, I would not let Him speak to me anymore. No more of the glorious Muse I had learned to love over the past year, no more of His fickle beauty, no more of His cheating romance. I was done with Him.
I constructed a porcelain mask of purity and perfection to wear for as long as it took to survive, and put my pen to paper to paint what was happening inside.
The War
It was a vast expanse of what felt like nothing to me.
One step forward.
“Is anybody there?”
Silence.
I walked through a vacuum. I would call it space, but there was nothing to make me believe in a time or a place where I was.
Everything was dark.
There were no stars, and no lights, though I sensed some planet nearby. I was loath to determine what planet that may be. A reddish glow emanated from it, filling the pit of my stomach with a glorious dread. And I stepped forward. “Hello?”
I said it with no belief that I would be answered.
It was my own fault.
“Here.”
It was a faint whisper. “Hello?”
But it didn’t answer again. He moved only enough that I would know that he had moved. One word was enough to grasp my lungs. I breathed for him.
Where was I to go?
“I…don’t”
Why can’t I be silent?
Silence.
I walk through the vast emptiness. I have a sense that there is some presence beyond my level of sight. He is watching me. Waiting. For what? I was only quiet, and walking. Where would I go? Or where…what was I to do? He expected some move I am sure, but a wound within prevented my comprehension.
Refusal.
A vast blackness filled my veins. I breathed a trembling sigh inward. Spidery tendrils of flame filled my inward senses, and I dropped. Not outwardly. Something about this vacuum kept me on my feet. Within my outer skin, I, Myself, fell. Collapsed.
My heart was lying on the ground. Whispering to me. Its silence begged me to question. Question what was to become of what I had done.
My head hung down to my chest. Eyes, dark eyes, refusing to lift, closed against the sights, the nightmare.
I welcomed the goblins. Invisible, craggy creatures, climbing all over my skin. Nails pierced my fortress, and they climbed into me. They sneered at my collapsed inner self, climbing on it to higher ground. A grey mass mountain challenged them to surround it. They did. They breathed a lake into its great stones. Land masses moved to welcome their approach, and groaned at the acid invasion. My lips withered into a grimace-like frown. They tightened. I don’t know why. It seemed they were trying to protect something that I was not aware of. I was motionless, save this independent effort of my tight-lips.
Fear.
Black sable shock glancing from my skin. Ants drizzled their percussion through the inside of my fingertips. Silent transfixed. Down with pen and paper in hand. A feather comes from beyond, caresses, kisses my hand. The mouth of stainless steel curves around its dark oozing ink. Each drops forms itself into a curve, a shape, a noun.
Give.
A verb comes from beyond sight. What fear given to the Muse now stopped my hold. Chill full up my veins. It was now that I would go insane.
Low.
I sat to wait where I held the pen just above its mate. Be still my heart, remain apart.
Wait.
No do not despair. Stillness waits. Low I wait. I wait. Why wait? I bow my head. Incline my eyes to inward history.
The blackened sea surges upon a river boat crashing beyond the docks. A little man cries out, “Save me love!” I watch. He rocks. Back and forth through the wave tops. Save me, oh please don’t let me die. He’s old. He would die soon anyway. I am only watcher. I wait. He is in the woods. The boat is not gone. But now he is among trees. He is worn thin-wasted. He sits by a blossoming daisy fire. Flames lick its petals. What would be whose fire? But he still sits and moans. Oh my boat, my soul, my love. Why do you not come?
Your tendrils tightening round killed before I’d come.
My tightened lips tremble. They burst forth as if from some dam damning them to silent melodies. Reverie splits. Cry out. They scream. Pant. Whistle. Bring. But what? Bring what to whom?
No.
Traitorous wretch. No rest for weary man. No treasure for the wounded traveler. What ignorant, what weary sin is this. No mercy for he who’s all.
I am writing a tale.
No you’re not.
What foolish sin is this.
What sin?
What melody composed sin?
What whispered effort betrayal?
Why wait.
“You traitorous wretch,” he said again.
Are you talking to me?
Curious thing that one whose abode lies deep within in a long forgotten wood, could speak outside and bring full nigh problems that won’t be done with.
You know who speaks my friend.
Wait.
Yet he doesn’t look up once. Something in his lap arrests his looks and he toys within his hands.
What looks would mend he then denies. Refuses to comply.
You traitorous one. Judas!
What?
You look your heart over once, thrice, see. What wounded purpose malpractice there may be. Tightened lips curl into anger’s grimace. What right have you to say so, insignificant creature?
Who waits.
You stupid, spineless man, who lives in naught but me, and wishes to hold some semblance of commandery? But no, I will not live in one’s cursed angry spell. What scrupulous curse one might endorse so against my heart.
What. Well go now. Peace be to you. For now I hope to see you again soon.
Pursed lips goes above and grasps a savage grasp. The pen gasps for breath under her strangling aggresses. No, teach him, I will. She says within and gives no respite. While drops of words and ink like curds glops upon pen’s mate.
It’s perfect.
Exclaim pride in one’s own expert doses. Moses and roses supposes. What of Moses?
Whisper comes. Tome. Tome. No. Incorrect, lingering. Flee. No. No.
No. Oh no, my dear, now you know.
A widened snake of blackened flakes wither up from below. Comes to usher a man in seaside now below.
No!
One tragic moment passed.
