Insomnia

INSOMNIA

I pushed open the door, as quietly and swiftly as I could manage, flipped the light switch on and, as quietly as I could, I vomited the contents of my stomach into the toilet.

I trembled with the effort of the heaving coughs, and hoped I wouldn’t wake anyone in the house.

It had happened again.

The voices. The shadows. The fear.

I had finally managed to fall asleep for the first time that week. Finally, I had become so thoroughly exhausted that all my fear could not keep my eyelids open for a moment longer, and, without my conscious consent, my eyes closed shut, and a dreamless sleep settled on my threadbare brain.

And, then, with a start, my eyes flashed open. I looked at the alarm clock next to my bed, knowing what it would read.

3:15 A.M.

It was about to begin.

That night, it began with the voices. The screams. I could hear them. The ones that suffered, like I did. Children, women, young boys, men. Their screams filled my ears, made a feeling of ice pool low in my hands, feet, and belly. I would start as I heard swearing and thuds, and crying. Desperation, blind fear, and terror.  Unadulterated terror. I could not do anything. I could not save these people. I could not fly in and defend them, like I ached to do. I could not kill the source of their agony. I could not even kill them. I would have, if I could have. There are things worse than death.

I could never help these people. For one, painfully obvious, reason.

They did not exist.

But that did not stop their screams from ripping through my sleep-deprived brain, ringing in my ears, echoing in my bones.

Then, as quickly as they had begun, the screams would cease.

And slowly, the shadows in my darkened room would begin to twist. They would begin to crawl from the recesses of the room, from the corners, from under dressers, from closets. The shadows would squirm, and contort, swirling around the air, reaching the ceiling and dragging images into my eyes.

I couldn’t tell what these images were just yet. But, I felt the fear they meant to impose hang heavily in my little bedroom. I did not dare to move a muscle. I did not blink.

The shadows had a mind of their own, and varied their routine from time to time.

That night, they chose to hover behind my headboard.

I felt the presences behind me. Then, I would stiffen as I felt warm breaths by my ears, smoothly slipping down my neck and chilling my heart.

“You’ll never be forgiven,” one would whisper in my brain.

“Why put off the inevitable any longer, little one?” another would add.

“Die. Have peace. Die. Join us, and die,” they would intimate, filling my head with their soundless words.

<Padre nuestro, que estas en los cielos, santificado sea tu nombre…> I would whisper in my mind, silently, feverishly, grasping at straws.

A face swooped down from the ceiling, shaped by smoke and shadow.

< Jesus, please, help me>

“No forgiveness. Never,” the face laughed, hot breath on my skin.

Bile began to rise in my throat, filling my mouth.

Suddenly finding my body worked, I jumped from my bed, and ran down the hall to the bathroom, where I let go the hot, bitter liquid that flooded my mouth.

As disgusting as it was, vomiting was reassuring. It didn’t let me think. I couldn’t sit and mull over the events of a few moments ago. I just had to let my body react. Just go until I collapsed from the effort, shaking, onto the cold white tile of the bathroom floor.

I stood up, wearily, but feeling a bit better. Carefully avoiding my face in the mirror, I turned on the faucet, and let the cool water soothe my mind. I washed out my mouth, and splashed a bit of water on my face.

I watched the water flow in around the sink drain for a few minutes, my face dripping. I watched as water droplets warmed by my skin would fall into the swirling liquid in the sink, each droplet washed away quickly, swiftly cooling and purifying its surroundings.

Purifying water. Cleansing water. Clean, and cool, and transparent. Hot tears formed behind my eyes, and I dipped my head into the sink, letting the cold water rush around my face and head.

<purify me>

Awhile later, I turned off the faucet. Squeezing excess water out of my long, curly hair, I swept it into my habitual bun atop my head. Wiping my face, I reached for a towel, and dried my skin. Inhaling, I looked into the mirror, and inspected my face.

Yep, I was still there. Not too worse for the wear, save for the darkening circles under my eyes, and the skin that seemed to get paler daily. But overall, you really couldn’t tell just by looking at me. Nope, you couldn’t guess the secrets I hid. And that was just as well.

I pulled the shower curtain aside, and stepped into the tub. Pulling the curtain closed, I crouched down and leaned back into the tub.

<I think I’ll leave the lights on>

And there I lay, fearful of going back into my darkened bedroom. The tub wasn’t so bad. It was fine for the night. I closed my eyes, knowing that I would wake up before my alarm, and sneak back into my room just as the orange and pink would peek through the blinds of the window in my bedroom, filling my room with wistful Technicolor, as if nothing had ever happened.

I would crawl back into bed, fifteen minutes before the alarm would go off, and twenty minutes before my mother would walk into my room. I would keep my eyes closed, and pretend to let her rouse me out of my slumber.

I would pull on my red hoodie, slap on my leather cuff, smear a bit of eyeliner on my face, and walk into the dining room for breakfast.

“Josie, I’ve told you a thousand times if I’ve told you once, take off your eyeliner before you go to bed, you’re starting to look like a raccoon,” my mother would admonish, setting down a bowl of cereal before me.

“Ma, I’m too busy to remember to do that! I’ve got homework coming out of my ears,” I would reply innocently, avoiding her gaze.

“Plus, every the eyeliner I try smears during the day, anyway. And, I don’t much care,” I would quip, finishing my cereal and rushing out the door into the rising sunshine.

<Sunrise. It’s over, for now.>

La Bolsa De Lucero

La Bolsa de Lucero

Hace mucho tiempo, en una luna lejana de un cielo oscuro, vivia una joven muy linda y inocente. Su belleza era tan resplandeciente que la gente se enamoraba de su rostro, y pronto olvidaban todo, y se perdian en su cara. Le dieron el nombre “Lucero”, por el gozo y la luz que trajo al pueblo.

El pueblo fue muy afortunado de estar lleno de  mujeres bellas, aparte de la belleza unica de Lucero. Pero el pueblo tenia un gran problema. Por tres anos no habia caido ni una gota de agua del cielo, y gente se moria de sed.

Pronto habian muchos hombres que se enamoraron de Lucero, y ignoraban a las otras mujeres. Su pequeno pueblo llego a llenarse de extrangeros que se peleaban por su amor.

Las peleas comezaron a suceder con mas frequencia y violencia, hasta que un dia, un hombre murio a las manos de los otros.

Las mujeres del pueblo empezaron a murmuran. Y mientras hablaron, surgian celos entre ellas. Pronto empezaron a decir que la joven era una bruja que habia venido a matar a los hombres del pueblo y traer maldicion sobre ellas. Decian que Lucero les robaba la belleza a ellas, y era asi que se mantenia su hechizo.

Una noche negra, se juntaron las mujeres del pueblo para matar a Lucero. Entraron a su cuatro, la atacaron, y encendiaron su pequena casa.

Le pusieron una bolsa tejida de las tinieblas de sus corazones sobre su cabeza, y la echaron al mar, atada a una piedra enorme.

El mar la trago, y Lucero se hundia mas y mas hacia el fondo del mar. El mar la jalaba hacia sus profundidades mas tenebrosas, millas y millas bajo la superficie.

Lucero lloro. Y cada lagrima que lloraba quemaba como fuego la oscuridad de el velo. Al fin, se quemo la mitad del velo, y su cara brillaba como estrella fugaz, bajando rapidamente a las profundidades de el mar.

Por sies dias cayo Lucero, hasta que el septimo dia, toco fondo.

Pobre Lucero no sabia que hacer. Todo a su alrededor era oscuridad, y ella sabia que habia caido muy lejos de la superficie.

Empezo a gritar, y a pelear con sus ataduras. Las esposas eran muy fuertes, pero Lucero siguio peleando con ellas. Al abrir su boca, se dio cuenta que estaba probando agua dulce. Paso siete anos bajo el mar, y alimentada con el agua dulce, cada dia era mas fuerte.

Finalmente su fervor era tan grande que su piel ardia, y con el fuego de su piel quemo las esposas que la mantenian atrapada.

Su fuerza era tan que el mar no pudo contenerla mas, y Lucero se lanzo del agua como una flecha encendida hacia el cielo.

Despues de siete anos, Lucero regreso a su pueblo con el velo oscuro en sus manos, lleno de agua dulce para el pueblo.

Cuando las muejeres del pueblo la vieron regresar a Lucero con su piel encendida y cargando agua dulce, cayeron a sus pies pidiendo misericordia.

Y por primera vez oyeron la voz de Lucero, y dijo:

“No porque se lo merecen les regalo agua pura. Es porque la luz es misericordia, y todo lo malo sale para bien aunque no lo deseen asi. Ustedes nunca podran probar del agua del bien. A ustedes sera el agua salada, y si la toman se envenenaran, no por el agua, sino por la maldad de sus propios corazones. Pero sus hijos y los hijos de sus hijos disfrutaran de la pureza del agua, y viviran.”

El pueblo disfruto del agua pura de la bolsa que habia sido usado para el mal, y el agua nunca se acabo. Las mujeres que habian tratado de matar a Lucero pronto marchitaron bajo el sol, y su belleza nunca les regreso.

Lucero vivio muchos anos, y el pueblo aprendio a apreciar su Corazon mas que su belleza. Y cuando Lucero finanlmente cerro los ojos por la ultima vez, una estrella aparecio en el cielo, y brilla hasta hoy.

The Nature of Beasts

The Nature of Beasts

            I had never expected madness to feel so exhilarating.

            It would start, this feeling, like butterflies in my stomach. These were little razor-edged butterflies; shining swarms of them shimmering in my gut, rising to my heart. I would close my eyes and wait. Soon, the electricity made by the tiny butterflies would be pulsing through my veins, sparkling in my blood, and shooting through my heart. I’d sit quietly for a few minutes, just enjoying the feeling of being alive; of being truly, fully, unapologetically alive.

            But the madness would reveal itself in due time. Until then, I was a proudly productive student.

I had spent the last weeks in a mercurial frenzy. I worked two part-time jobs by then, and went to school full-time. Rising at 5:00 AM, hitting the bed at 2:00AM, and some days there was no sleeping. I didn’t feel lack of energy, however. Hardly eating, I just kept going like that damned Energizer bunny.

I’d stare at the moon when I couldn’t sleep. Unblinking, I’d stare into the beautiful white pearl looming in the sky. I could feel its pull on my bones. The wildness of the moon called to me, somehow. I would sit wherever I was with an impassive face, reveling secretly in the natural high that rushed through me. I would lick my lips, feeling the crackle of lightening with its taste of white copper on my tongue. My hair would rise on end all over my body and I would shiver with delight.

As the weeks wore on, however, there were brief moments that would sporadically appear during these nights that bled into days. I would crash. Hard. Finding myself suddenly and more often in my University parking lot skipping a class because I could not stop crying, I knew something was wrong.

But an hour or two would pass, and I’d be happier than I was before. Dismissing the moments of weakness, I would plunge ahead into deeper waters, still. These waters were wilder, rougher, and bowed to the rhythms of the moon. Soon, I would be dancing to the push and pull of the tides, too.

I didn’t want to think about that, though. I didn’t want to think about the moon. I had goals, man. Unless it helped me reach those goals, everything else could be dealt with later. After all, the moon, in all its awe-inspiring might, could be tucked away neatly underneath my thumb when I held my hand up to the sky.

My energy was at an all-time high, and funneled into my schoolwork. But something odd began to occur. My thoughts became expansive and grand, linking together subjects and topics that had little real connection. My speech became faster, more assertive, and tangential. The tides were high. I was already waist-deep in water I didn’t know I was in.

Then suddenly, one moonlit night, I heard them again. I hadn’t for three years, even though I had heard them all my life. The voices were back. The wretched screams when no one was around had returned.

Quickly, my energy began to take a twisted, dark turn. I began to feel irritable. Insatiable. Unsatisfied. Reason was beginning to slip away more noticeably. At least, others noticed.

But it is in the nature of beasts never to show weaknesses. And that’s what I was becoming. A raging wounded animal guided by impassive moon beams.

People say to trust your instincts. Mine were tied to the moon; the moon of nighttime, the moon of virgins, the moon of lovers, and the moon of lunatics. When you try to stifle your instincts, they come back to suffocate you.

Desperate Art

The Art of Desperation

                Madness is the art of desperation. It is what separates the thinkers from the doers. You can think about licking the girl you just met, you can think about telling your boss off, you can think about finally giving up the Ghost, or you can do it.

I had never expected madness to feel so exhilarating.

It feels like wicked little indulgences. To actually do what you think about doing. And then you get addicted to the taste of electricity like white copper sizzling on your tongue, and you think “God, did I really just do that”? And the answer is yes, a thousand times yes, because you wanted to and you loved it and you’re mad.

And it makes you laugh these shy disbelieving little chuckles when you think about what you just did. Like the things you can read about but never truly come to regret doing yourself and then you realize you don’t regret it anyway because you did something in your life that made you sweat, and moan, and lie there helpless afterward in an incandescent bliss.

I don’t care what they say, reality and madness are the two most potent drugs there are.

Reality is a drug because it sometimes seems like madness but it’s there in all its hot and fleshy glory; and madness because it subverts and perverts reality like I lifted the skirt of that poor straight girl that lived up the street from me. I got her to kiss me first, because I’m no whore, but man was that a thrill. And sometimes I’m not sure it actually happened, but then I’m sure it did because I’m mad they tell me, so that means I do what I dream about but what I dream about never actually happens.

Or so it goes.

My life is a little riddle stuffed with drugs of all sorts; the real, the imagined, and the so real they must have been imagined but they weren’t. Those are the kinds that land you in a hospital bed under the brightness of the streetlamp outside and you can’t cover your face with a pillow to try and get some sleep because the nurses think you’re trying to suffocate yourself.

But the nurses only care because that’s what they’ve been instructed to do. I care because I know what it’s like to die a hundred deaths and live a hundred lives under the same moon. I know what it’s like to step into the water and hope it’s the last death you’ll die. I know what it is like to walk back and only feel, and be incapable of thought and words and just feel like fucking animals feel but can’t think with words.

And it’s sick what they do to us, the mad. They give us pills to swallow to make our dreams more like their reality. They pound Bibles in our presence and condemn us and make us swallow their judgment because ours counts for shit now. They can’t trust us, and they try to make us believe that we can’t trust ourselves either.

Because living to work and feed the pudgy faces of some ingrate kids until I wither up and the fat kids send me to a nursing home that the government says the government can’t afford is what makes life worth living, you know?

And the money I’ll make is what I’ll take with me to my grave and up to heaven, not the memories of what I did with my life until I couldn’t figure out what was living and dying anymore.

And those ungrateful kids that will hate my guts when I’m old and the house that sits on the land that I bought that the government owns is what I’ll have them cremate and sprinkle over my ten-thousand dollar funeral service as everyone stares open-mouthed at the sky where I was told I’m headed if I take my pills and fly straight.

But it’s not about my madness, or pills. It’s about the madness that consumes us all. The reality we have created and let rule us, the laws we have set forth in motion so that things work out for us the way everyone else told us they should. Instead of finding for ourselves what is real and true and false, we rely on others who cheat us for our definition of reality, and truth. That’s madness. 

Or, am I just crazy?