Damn Regret pt. 2

David.  He had yellowish skin.  Slanty eyes.  He looked like a chink mixed with a Spaniard mixed with a beaner.  David was a disgusting character.  His hair was greasy, his face was greasy.  He was greasy.  He was revolting.  He smelled.  He was strong, and he could fight.  I learned this the hard way.  He also had no clemency, not even toward twelve year-old girls.  He was truculent and I was diffident.  His virulent actions haunt me.  His and all of theirs, I cannot blame it solely on one person, for there were many.  Or, rather, at least a few.  There were many blacks.  One was a greasy, disgusting character.  I do not remember his name.  Actually, I don’t think I ever knew his name.  I don’t think I knew all of their names.  I just know their faces.  Their ugly, greedy faces.  Greed filled their cold, black hearts.  They loved to rip away the purities of others, they loved to steal their souls.

      When I first arrived, there was a girl.  Her name was Ashley.  She was the one who hugged me and called me her best friend.  The one with plaque.  The one who smelled.  The dykey one.  I think she showered about once a week, if that.  She threw tantrums.  I didn’t want to be her best friend; I didn’t want to be anyone’s friend, not at all, not at all, not at all, not at all, not at all.  She stalked me.  She followed me everywhere, even at “school,” where she was in none of my classes.

      School was also appalling.  The teachers were not teachers, they just sat there while we played cards on Hoyle Casino.  School was interrupted every day by some screaming, howling child or an attempted escape.  Oh, how I wanted to escape; I was willing to live on the streets, not eating, wearing dirty clothes.  I do not know why.  Actually, yes I do know why.  Because this place, it was hell.  It was worse than hell.  Sometimes, I seriously considered I had gone through with suicide and was now in hell.  My mother always told me that people who commit suicide go to hell.

      I did not eat.  I dropped about twenty pounds there.  I remember stepping on the scale daily.  I was obsessed.  I thought that for a 5’ 9” girl, 128 was fat.  Why would I think that?  The scale moved quickly, and my pants soon became baggy.  I had to wear shorts under them because they started to fall off.

      They had levels.  There was a level called observation. I was always on observation.  It was the watch/punishment level.  You had to go to bed at eight and you were not allowed to watch movies.  There was then junior, senior, and frozen.  Frozen was for the retards.  Juniors had some privileges, while seniors had more.  I was a senior once, and I went into the recreational media room with another senior.  We found Christmas lights and broke them open to use the glass to cut.

      Most days I sat in my room and colored coloring pages like a little kid.  I had about 200 crayons.   Erasers were forbidden, and once I found out why, I started to use them.  I was the quintessence of loneliness and misery.  I had a radio, and this is how I got to know mainstream songs; I could not have my iPod, and eventually I could not have my clothes or any belongings, except my crayons and my one pen, for pencils were forbidden.  I smashed my radio in order to retrieve sharp objects.  I broke my favorite CD in order to access sharp pieces of plastic which I hid under my shoe inserts; the metal detector could not possibly find it there.

      The beds had slots on the side of the wooden frame.  I did not know what this was for until the day I found out what the drain was for.  The desk had lining that someone told me could be ripped off and used as a razor blade.  I did this as soon as I found out.  Of course, I was put on observation.  Then all of my belongings were taken out of my room and put into a box in the office.  Did I mention nobody was allowed to keep their own toiletries, including feminine items?  We had to ask.  Every.  Single.  Time.  “Can I have a tampon?”  They hand you one.  Sometimes two, if it was a man.

      I tried running away.  We got a group together.  I could kick open the electronically-opened doors, the ones you needed a card to get in.  I was apparently the key to escape.  I tried the doors to the gym, but my lack of nutrition really got to me.  I did not know this at the time, however.  I figured I was just a failure.  Which I guess I was.

      Aaliyah arrived.  She made sexual advances toward me and called me her “girlfriend.”  I backed away and locked myself in my room.  At least it was not as bad as the gang of boys.  I have nightmares of them every night.  I have nightmares of all those people, of all their actions, of all my actions.

      One time I went to the movies and then to Wendy’s with a group of kids who were doing “well.”  I plotted with a couple of people to make a break for it.  I was too weak.  We were always strip-searched after we left the building and we came back.  It was horrible.

      I could kick open most of the doors.  One time I kicked open the door to the courtyard and tried to climb the wall.  No luck.  It was a 15-foot brick wall.  I was carried inside over the shoulder of a very large man.

      I took my shoelaces and tied them together.  I strung them from the light fixtures and tied a slipknot.  I guess sailing school turned useful, after all.  Well, only a little bit, for it didn’t quite work in the way I had hoped.  Again, I was a failure.  I could not do it; I could not do anything, I cannot do anything.

      But my a*s touched the desk, which was directly under the fixture.  Every paperclip I got I dug into my artery in my arm, one time into my neck, which was pointless, as I do not even know where my jugular is.  Needless to say, it didn’t work.  More to come, but again, I’m a failure.  Or maybe I just didn’t try hard enough.

 

Sinewy.

Venturing forward into what they know is wrong.  Waffling to me, advancing.  Advancing toward the epitome of my vulnerability, opening my very core and pouring hydrochloric acid in it.

It hurts.

It stings like a wasp bigger than a basketball, a burn from a hot coal, the chill of antarctic ice.

     Limpid intentions and an intuitive mind rarely make for easy affairs.  But my mind is dormant.  It has hibernated.  Not wanting to cause a fracas, I back away.  

     They are tigers.  No, they are game hunters and I am a dove.  A prize.  A delicious prize.  The epithet of their kind is to eat, yes, but why must they eat the dove?  If not to eat, then to pluck the feathers from, taking its one beauty.  It has done nothing.  They will not eat another food, they will not settle for chicken feathers.

The dove is what they want.

     The morality of the game hunters confuses me.  Their greed appalls me and their desire frightens me.  Their accurate shot guarantees certain death for the dove; nonetheless, the dove flies--but the dove's wing is broken.  The dove cannot fly, teh dove cannot escape.  The mind, as the body, has shut down.  It has crashed; all data is erased.  

     The data will be hidden forever.  The chips which hold the information have been used and abused over and over and over again.

     The dove has fallen.  The dove is dying.  It is crippled.  The dove hopes the taunting game-hunters will shoot it and prevent weeks, months, years, eternities of pain and psychosis, ruining the dove's purity, the dove's beauty.  

     The dove becomes crippled and disturbed.  It does not want to associate with anything.  The dove is social-phobid and agforaphobic.  The dove is afraid, terrified.  The dove is afraid of the creatures that even slightly resemble the hunters.  The dove is afraid of the night; the hunters will come into the nest with their tormenting machines.  The dove wishes for tranquility; but, as calmess does not come, the dove wishes the hunters had killed.  The dove wishes to be no longer.

     The dove yearns for love, for another to be able to commiserate.  Nonetheless, the dove tells nothing of the hunters, for it will be accused of dramatizing, or, worse, lying.

     So the dove prattles to its acquaintances.  The dove has acquaintances but no friends.  The dove is very amicable, howevber, and wonders: why do I have no friends?

                    The pride of the purity has faded.

     The dove works up courage and ventures out.  The bird then realizes it has made a mistake, for it is stepped upon with boots.  The dove's wings are crippled once more.  The bird's plumage grows, but gray, not white.

                    The dove hibernates once more.

                    The dove hibernates forever.