Where I Live

A Story by Jess

'Meth lab in the back and the crack smoke pills through the streets like an early morning fog.'

Soundly I slept, my mind being doused with imagination and subconscious psychedelia. I’ve been falling in love with the darkness behind my eyes lately; oftentimes it brings me into a world of color and life so unprecedented and holy. These moments take my breath away faster than the meth lab explosion from weeks back or the time my Chevy ran through a red light when its breaks failed. Yeah, these are the only quiet moments in my life that leave such a poetic mark in my brain and stain my weak heart.

At first I thought the noise that rumbled over me was a part of my sweet little dream �" a sharp turn in my storyline or a weird interpolation of a stage play could’ve been what it was. But, in fact, what it truly was left a gap and a mystery inside my fantasy. I was shaken by the ear-pulsing pressure into the nightmare of my reality.

I scrunched my eyes, furrowing my brow with exaggeration and annoyance.

“What the f**k, man?” I wiped my eyes as if the cloud of my dream was left behind on my eyelids. My voice still croaked from the faint remnants of my paranormal landscape. I took my first deep breath �" sitting upright and dizzy somewhat �" my lungs aching at the intrusion of earthly pollution. The smoke from the dismantled meth lab still hung in the air. In fact, the morning this rat trap exploded into its charmed ashes of a broken down dope dealer kind of started off similarly to this brutal morning.

Damp sky �" clouds and fog spilling over the woods of my Alabama terrain �" weird and eerie and almost too dark to be a day filled with pleasantries. Expectedly I smelled the first whiff of burnt painkillers and flaming wood. I almost fell in love with the scent �" almost a burning apple-wood candle mixed with singed hair. Only a creep like me would find that lovely. Condescendingly, there was nothing lovely about this “tragedy”. To me, it was just another s**t day in the slums. However, this morning felt like a sad day in the United States.

I didn’t know why my heart started pounding or why my senses were suddenly so alert �" they were screaming with a fiery intensity that burned my nose, strained my eyes, and pounded in my ears. I didn’t know why I couldn’t remember my vivid dream. I didn’t know why I went to the window.

“I can never get sleep…” The fabric of my filthy sweats skidded across my leg hair and tickled my skin as I stepped out of my peaceful wonder-lair. The familiar feel of my sweaty plain T-shirt inspired a small calmness inside me; however, the weight of the heavy air as my tall frame entered a new elevation brought my mind back down to earth. My blood still pumped intensely.

I took extremely careful steps. My bare feet slid across the rough carpet with extended noise and more tickling sensations �" my dry feet were like burlap to this trailer trash equipment. I focused on the strange sensation if for several elongated moments so I could grasp onto my ignorance. My frozen brain somehow knew that when I approached the window my life would never be the same.

“What’s wrong wichy’all?”

That noise. That noise from the dream. The reality from my nightmare. A gunshot. It was a gunshot from my stepfather’s rifle. That rifle contained an entire backstory of its own: one filled with shock and treachery.

Through the crippling mist, the deathly smoke and the darkness of a dirt road, I witnessed a sight that I was disgustingly accustomed to: a sleeping body splayed in our driveway.

This body wasn’t sleeping though, but rather a breath freshly left from it. The heart ceased pumping, the brain stopped electrifying, and air entered my lungs in a ruptured gasp. His fingernails were decorated with moist soil �" moist from his blood. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a woman in that same place; it was always a creeping male with criminal intentions.

However, I saw something. No, it wasn’t the smoking breath permeating from my strained throat. No, it wasn’t the dark and musky maroon color leaving his porcelain body. No, it wasn’t the broken down Chevy with a shattered side window with the wires poking through the dash (the motive for a carjacking from a week back was still present). It wasn’t any of these things; it was, believe it or not, the sleeping body’s dark blue sweater.

“I’m pretty sure it’s navy, Michael,” he offered me with a cocky grin. The store was closing and I was exhausted from a day of hard work and gas fumes. I blew frustrated air out of my tight pale lips.

“Does it really matter what color it is? Just pick it out so I can buy it for ya!” I demanded with false annoyance and failure at avoiding a smile. He gave me one of his beautiful eye-gleaming smiles full of praise and genuine happiness.

“You…you’d really buy it for me?” he asked, exasperated. After I nodded shyly, his smile went away but the happiness remained in his eyes. “I can’t, Michael. I couldn’t let you take $50 out of your own pocket and get this flimsy thing for me.” He shook his head in discretion and looked down at his raggedy shoes �" we had that in common. I placed a comforting and cold hand on his lithe shoulder.

“But I will,” I assured softly.

“Attention shoppers, the mall will be closing in five minutes.” My heart leaped a bit, nervous that there wouldn’t be enough time. His eyes shot up and stared at me intensely. I gave him all the love that I had through my eyes with a side order of a friendly grin. A shy tear developed in his sweet brown eye.

“I love you Michael.”

“I love you too.”

And now that $50 sweater holds the torso of his still-warm body lying coldly on our permafrost dirt driveway. His eyes �" once warm and kind �" lay still and dark. Once brown and now black.

I bolted to the wastebasket by my rickety bed, relieving my body of my dinner from last night. My throat burned and ached for the death of my friend. Though I was relieved of nausea, the grief and despair remained. Suddenly I felt hot tears run down my cold face silently, falling down into the waste basket with the rest of my sanity lying below. My whole body vibrated as I heard my heart in my ears, pulsing with ferocity and confusion. It just couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t be him.

My head shot up as the echo of a door opening hit my fragile ears. I heard a gruff; a gruff that I had heard a million times before. I stood up slowly, staring out of my bedroom doorway with a striking gaze at a man with a bright orange hat. A fire blazed within me; he didn’t even know that I was setting him ablaze. I sprinted to him, face stone cold. He was turned away from me when I slammed down on his back with my fists.

“Why?! Why did you do this?!” I screamed with each thrashing punch. He coughed several times as he tried to turn around with no avail. I continued my assault until finally…

“B******s sneakin’ in here at the crack ‘o’ dawn. M***********s need to be taught a lesson,” he croaked out, slumped over and broken down. I was breathing heavily, my hands bloodied and bruised. My stepfather always knew how to keep calm in these types of situations. Even when there’s a gun to your head, he would say, you can always pull out your own. And he did. And now a life is lost. I swallowed heavily on a dry throat, shaking as tears continued to fall. He wouldn’t face me, so I left with a staggered pace and a sob.

I practically ripped the door off the hinges with the amount of malice emanating from my defeated body. I ran out of my home, the cold crashing into my body with intensity and anguish. My shoeless feet hit the earth’s pavement without breaking stride. My toes froze with the frost on the soft ground, chilling up my body right down to a shiver in my rigid spine. He was right there, right in front of me. I stopped.

His face stared at the white air, looking past it and into the clouded sky. He looked scared. That was not the man I once knew. I took about five careful steps �" dirt painting my toe nails �" and bent down to his body, my face hovering above.

When you leave this earth, you should leave peacefully. Looking into his frightened, black eyes and cold, pale face, I could tell that he left this earth with nothing but fear and abrupt pain. It wasn’t fair. The light that this man had brought me, his friendship, his kindness…it was unfathomable.

“No…” I whispered. It was real. This wasn’t a dream. This was him. In that dark blue �" f*****g navy �" sweater. A teardrop fell on that f*****g sweater. The light was lost. My light was gone.

I remember on the first day of high school, when some big chooch lifted me by the collar of my tired hand-me-down shirt. This dragon breathed fire into my face that smelled like coffee and stale doughnuts.

“You think yer a big tough guy, huh? Think you can talk down to me wit dem fairy-a*s baby shoes?” he snarled. I was about to cry, giving up my strength. Then he came through the cafeteria doors with a surprised glance, mimicking the stares of my classmates as they viewed on in awe.

“Put him down, jackass,” he ordered with a booming voice that was also subtle �" like Alex Trebeck rather than a wrestling announcer. I didn’t know who he was, but suddenly my tattered shoes were returning to the ground �" hard and solid rather than the wet soil tingling my soles right now. He went up to me afterward �" my face red and blotchy with embarrassment �" and smiled at me. He told me a joke and I laughed. He told me he’d walk me home and he did. He said we were best friends and we were.

His lips were blue now �" stained by death and a winter fog. I placed my shaking hand over his frozen one, cringing. His body had never been this cold before.

“No…” I whispered again. Another tear. His chest didn’t move, there wasn’t a pulse to be felt, his sweater dimmed in color. My clothes began to soak in his blood dripping to the soil, plagued by the nearness of this corpse that was once my dear friend. I leaned over, closed my pained eyes, and placed a kiss on his forehead �" my blue lips on his white, snow skin �" and my entire world began to fall into place again. The darkness came after I killed the light with that final gesture of love. I knew what I needed to do now to make sure I never forgot him. I decided to embrace the darkness �" this reality. I needed to chase a dream �" to be lost in one before the darkness hit me again. I released my lips from him, stood up like a zombie reborn, and trailed my way back into the trailer with a stone face. He got rid of the body.

I think about the darkness often. I wonder when the dark will turn off and leave itself unrecognizable, hopefully disguising the microcosms of which are my problems and issues. This is not sadness, this is depression. This is life, this is the voice of my people.

This ain’t no figment of my imagination, buddy this is where I live �" ‘Bama.

I will never forget the dream that I had that morning.

© 2012 Jess

Author's Note

Inspired by both the song and video "Pop the Trunk" from my wonderful husband Yelawolf. It's been on repeat all day and I just needed to release this creative energy. "Darkness sparks the truest art." -Yelawolf