The Roadway

This story contains sensitive themes around mental health, violence and self harm.

The words rattled off the tiny kitchen t.v. into the radio silence air, as if snatching the

daylight

directly off the

countertops.

It felt all too synchronistic. It felt, louder, than it probably actually was, as I stood over

It,

vermillion still dripping from

my well sharpened

Swiss.

“Every time,” I thought.

Why does this happen, every time I try to do

Better.

I dripped all over the cantaloupe I had intended to eat.

Sometimes it’s time, too fast.

What time is it, anyway?

I glanced at the clock on the wall, not hearing anything at all, but static.

Throwing the blade in the reservoir, I tripped over my own boot laces in an almost comical retreat back towards the bedroom, rolling slightly past the squeak.

II.

The floorboards had been rising ever since the night the humidity started in the living room.

I went crazy that night, because nothing made any sense.

The air was wet, everywhere.

Everywhere.

It never gets humid, in this part of the country.

I shut my eyelids in an heirloom-war like manner, over and over,

An unyielding trauma,

trying to make the image in my mind unstick itself.

a gunshot repeated at the edge of the clip, white lights bending my eyelids into themselves

Like a funeral director’s eye caps,

Plastic shields ridged for embalming,

I saw through the milkiest truth.

there was no gunshot,

there was no wound;

only salty wet red hot air in the middle of summer, in the middle of America,

and a transient, amniotic photograph of her face. right before it happened.

As it, was happening,

I think.

V.

It was on a Saturday night.

In the middle of the day, it felt like November.

In the backwoods, near Dear Park.

I was wearing other boots then; the ones with a steel toe strong enough to catalyst an Ox.

Oxblood,

Doc Martens,

are the ones I wear now.

The ones you can’t descry real red,

vein,

arterial,

the dark stuff

or bright stuff, if it drips down

on top.

IV.

Dear Park was nevertheless a worthy place to carry a body.

My own body,

my families bodies,

other peoples bodies.

It had the biggest cemetery within a twenty mile radius. Probably because it was the

only,

cemetery,

within a twenty mile radius.

I never wore my docs to dear park. It felt uncomfortable for me emotionally, like a sign of

disrespect, to the deceased.

Dirty and unscrupulous from overworking the soles, checkered and tattered.

I wore the steel toes from Carmichael instead.

Slightly worn, but nevertheless, not the oxblood

with the other crimson, still on top.

III.

It was a forest ranger who rang me; right as I was sliding my army ornament into

The cantaloupe this morning.

“That thing you asked about; we found it.”

He had no idea the implications of a very simple phone call.

a very simple sentence.

I had developed quite a sturdy relationship with the rangers since that morning after

The night in a day, in a felt November.

One where we say hello in times of passing, and exchange all knowing glances in tread, that one day, the thing we needed to know, that we were searching for,

Would come about.

“Are you headed over here so we can take a closer look at it?”

I was already tripping over my boot laces before he even asked, barely escaping the squeak.

VII.

On the night in November, the ranger, wearing nothing but his semi tattered, checkered cloth night dressings, said to me;

“You may not know it now, but that pain you’re experiencing, is the roadway, to peace.”

Not the detour;

THE ROADWAY.

VII.

In all axis,

The road was dirt.

It concealed any possibility of discovering something clear, or something that may appear as if it never belonged there in the first place.

I could still see and divine my boot prints from the last time I swept the area, hoping.

Hoping that it had all been a mirage, or an eclipsed false memory, prolonged by confusion.

an internal, unfounded lie.

That the lights flashing were a sign of my early descent into madness.

Anything but

The truth.

BLACK TAILED,

DEER ANTLERS.

VI.

Something was amiss, and this was the first indication of a truth that was out of place.

A clue.

But what did it mean?

The ranger pointed his flashlight into the dark, squinting

like it was snowing.

But it never gets humid, or wet,

Or snowflake unique

In this part of the country.

I thought I understood a lot more than I do.

IIV.

We found the Deer, stiff in a patch of dead brunette leaves on the side of the main road.

It smelled of sulfur, and earthiness as if it had been visited by the entire pack by now.

“How long do you think this has been out here?”

A few weeks, maybe, one or two.

Another clue.

But this isn’t why the ranger called me.

This isn’t what he found.

I.

What he found was a brick.

On top of another brick,

On top of another brick,

Where the house used to be.

Every single piece of burnt

Castle

Had disintegrated

Into dust.

Bright orange red gold, black

Dust.

The bricks were starting to

Crumble

Too.

III.

Last time we were here,

I found the Polaroid I had taken of

Her face.

It was pale & shadowy,

Mirrors in the surrounds

& a temple full

Of curly blonde locks.

There was a thirty second

Delay

In the shutter speed.

Don’t ask me what that means.

That’s what the doctor told me.

Someone had to tell me,

Exposure in time.

But it made the mess on the floor

Look darker than the

Cardinal

On my doc martens.

A downright sang-de-boeuf.

V.

What I didn’t notice

Before

Until right this second,

Were the

Checkered, tattered, dressing cloths

Hanging in the doorway

Of the bathroom

Behind her shattered

Phiz.

I need to know what time it is

Before I think another

Thought.

VIIV.

…the ranger?

The Ranger.

I.

III.

The further the flashlight flickered,

The more reasonable it started to sound

That it had been the ranger all along.

His feet fit the description.

But why was something telling me

To look further.

The tattered, the plasma,

But keep looking.

VIVII.

The cracking open of the closet door

Sounded even louder than

The squeak on the floor.

I had opened it

as if I were blacksmith,

Forging, quenching, bluing, bending

Iron rods, stale but pure

Before the night in a possible November

When the whole world was

Navy,

Red & White.

Something else was lurking in the background of the photo of that night. A reason to call in backup.

Ring ring. Drilling carbon;

III.

“Send in forensics.”

VII.

Peabody?

“No, Townsend, sir.”

I’m Peabody’s apprentice.

Hell have to call you back.

When he gets back.

VII. THE SUN

The sun was so incredibly bright outside by now.

It was too early, but the hue of the sun felt early, too

Like the plastic sterile intensity

Of a yellow number five, with obvious green

But no red

yellow plastic Easter egg,

Nestled In the grass that has just been

Mowed & overly watered,

On a cold Easter Sunday morning.

That kind of bright.

Like a Truth, heat seeking missile.

I was now staring point blank into the crevice of somewhere deep within the closet.

I say deep because

I can’t see where it’s headed, or why the amber

Golden Sun,

Won’t herald any type of sign that

Someone could be alive in there,

But I’m gonna have to try.

A baseball swing into a rotten crack in the boards, an echo chamber

Blossoms,

and now it’s just a tunnel.

just a deep, dark,

Abyss.

I hear nothing but the sound of my own

Bootlaces dragging across

The ruins, I am

Lifting to take a step and the dust is settling behind me in the bright, lambent sun.

I see it, it’s a yellow green

Materiality in the

Distance.

VIII.

PARANOIA

If I take any more steps into this

tunnel,

Will they find my body when I’m -

Will it already be green, by then?

Poached and eggless,

I removed the flashlight from my cargo pocket,

shone it down the well of

Darkness.

“Hello?”

“Can anybody hear me?”

I heard the echo in the chamber of the only sound it could possibly be.

V.

THE SQUEAK.

Squeak.

Squeak squeak.

The Carmichael not doc martens.

But why did it sound so

Far away

And furious

In this house.

Not at all, like at home.

When my steps are even less rigid, than

This instant.

A dead ringer.

I stared deeper into the tunnel, my facial expression as uncomfortably serene as the

uncanny valley.

“Mom?”

Her voice, it thickened my

Complexion

With blood,

rubicund.

She’s alive.

Iii. Children

When we were just kids,

She told me this would happen.

Eventually, the world gives in

And a cave appears.

Going great guns,

Inflorescence,

Pearls

Into permanence.

They are gathered & mined,

Then shipped off to be sold

After being

Theoretically

Stolen.

This is exactly

What would eventually,

happen

To her

In theory, she was taken.

But in reality;

She was

Lamented,

she was martyred.

VIV.

I moved towards the reverb undulations of her cries

Without making my

Boot steps known,

Apart from the squeak.

Who was she?

How did she get in here?

MOM IS THAT YOU

I’ve never heard anyone

Drone,

Quite like this.

Downright lurid.

The dust from my forceful entry

Into the void

Had began to take leisure,

I thought of my own madness once again

Blossoming Pearls

Because I couldn’t find

The source

Of a single living soul

Prying

out for

MOTHER.

There was no one.

“Hello?!”

Squeak.

Squeak squeak.

Maybe that’s actually not,

My docs.

VIII. AWAKENING

Suddenly,

Supra normal,

Staring right back

At me,

White crisp, vacant, pupils the size of saucers,

Whether terror

Or

Darkness,

How far do your eyes see?

In the black, like this.

She looked as if she had been

Tattered

A thousand times before.

A ration of food a day

Or

Every

Twelve.

Or no food whatsoever,

But she’s alive.

I couldn’t believe the fingernail marks

Down her own backside;

Towards her waist

With thin scratches along her

Jawline

Above.

A cataclysmic warrior

This child was

Wearing nothing but her

Threadbare

Pink & brown teddy

Night

Dressing cloths.

Apart from the curly blonde locks

She didn’t resemble at all

Like the mother

I thought she might be

The daughter of.

But it couldn’t possibly

Be true.

That child was never born.

This is not what we were looking for,

But it appears to be

Another clue.

VIIX.

My shoes were beginning to look closer

And closer

To a timeline before

I ever dropped

The blade

In the reservoir this morning.

Covered in the ashes

Of the closet wall,

Wading through a look of scoria

This little girl wasn’t heavy

At all.

Unabashedly, I started to plan how I would make my escape without the girl knowing.

Every other prospect had been gambled, every avenue sought.

They would know immediately what I had done i

If I tried to stay

And help the girl get away.

My boots were soggy

Down to the root,

As I pulled away a barbaric graveyard

Of pieces of house

demolished to get here.

What if this child

WAS BORN,

AFTER-ALL?

III. The Morning

Everything was still.

The light was wandering around the moon, still

Cascading down amongst the

switches,

What time was it, anyway?

It’s 6:00 a.m.

She was laying in her crib, soundless

Sleeping

As the clock ticked.

Too big, too

Rhapsodic, my felt night, I had become

A larger bed was needed

To fit her wounds

And her wings

But the cage was all I had.

She was accustomed

Too accustomed

To tiresome, exiguous

Confines.

SQUEAK.

LOUD SQUEAK.

Did I wake her?

Her formerly bleak saucers now pin pricks of longing

And soaked sadness,

“ARE YOU GOING TO SAVE ME?”

She didn’t even know

We were,

I was

Already,

gone.

The silence echoed.

Where the plaster was on the walls

In the hushed shrill night

Of banging my head against

Beautiful paper

I laid in a pool of cherry

From the last thing I ate

From a cantaloupe

Cut too deep

With a Swiss

Before either of us ever knew

What had even happened, but I was falling, I fell

All the way out

Into the roadway

Barefoot.