Darkness descends

There is a little spot, a minute square in the corner of my window.  The only bastion of light in my small dark world.  The rest of my fortress is not penetrable by sunlight.  Shade drawn tight, and big heavy sweatshirt along the sill to block the small space light would sometimes filter through trying to reach me.  Except for that little space in the corner.  Chipped paint along the edges, a dingy film on the other side of the pane.  I can look out on my little piece of the world.  The window is level with the mattress allowing me to lay perfectly still with my head on the pillow and enjoy my program.  And I do, unmoving for hours, days, weeks, months.  There is no real time or space here.  A bug slowly traverses the outside of the pane.  An epic episode that I view intently.  When it rains everything is distorted the way that happens when looking through water cascading down a window pane.  Sunrise, twilight, moonlight and seasons all happen here, viewed through my miniature window to the other place.  Darkness, pitch black is my favorite, because it allows me to think that place doesn't exist.  It is out there that the light seekers lose a daily battle against the dark forces destroying humanity.  People, too apathetic and hopeless, to see the path they are being led instead ridicule those with the true vision.  The door opens and they come in, light filtering in from that other place, and there is a stab. There's pink, green, blue and gulp, gulp that's a good boy then they are gone again.  See you in four, eight, twelve hours or was it days.  I can't really be sure, the whole concept is foreign here.  There is no door as far as I am concerned.  I used to be one of them, a light seeker, my mind so muddled now that I can't be sure.  Sleep comes and goes with no real pattern.  Dreaming is a lost art here.  Suppressed because they try to speak to me, tell me what happened and why I am here.  Every now and again, bits and pieces, horrific blips in my mind's eye causing violent reactions.  The door opens.  More blue, green, pink or was it green, pink, blue.  A stab then gulp, gulp, that's a good boy you'll sleep better now.  But I saw them flash before my eyes, subliminally, at intervals barely recognizable.  Grotesque visages with sick twisted smiles.  They taunt and they spew invectives, but it's those smiles, those strange sardonic smiles that give me the shivers.  Eyes so hollow and vacant it's as if their souls are in their smiles.  They are trying to tell me things, somehow they know what happened.  It is so fragmented, hard to put the pieces of the puzzle together.  This would be hard for anybody to figure out, let alone me, the way I am now, here in this place.  I just don't have it in me most times, but I try and it's when they speak to me that I get any semblance of a clear picture of what happened.  I wasn’t always like this.  I was a writer and a lecturer.  My name was Patrick O’Reilly and it was when a professor friend of mine suggested that I lecture at the local university that changed everything.  There were bright days full of hope and promise.  Days that unfolded before me and made me feel anything was possible, and of course there was Caroline. Caroline was a professor at the university and she had an intellect that was second to none, possessing an insatiable appetite for knowledge and ideas.   She was molded from the finest clay He had available.  She had curls in her strawberry blonde hair and when they bounced it could make me smile.  Her smile was warm and inviting, the type of smile that makes you want to smile.  Deep brown eyes that could make me cry, always categorizing and contemplating, but also honest and real.  She had curvy hips and she had pouty lips that could melt you when they kissed.  Her fair skin was reminiscent of long ago royalty, breasts full and supple yet perky enough to stand out in a crowd.  A man could spend days exploring the exquisite outline and intricacy of her body.  When she was stressed or thinking too hard she would get this twitch under her right eye that would drive me crazy but I knew it meant she needed me to listen and give encouragement.  She would say things like “I know you’re sad or angry because your eyes are grey and they only get like that when you are”, and she was right.  Sadness and anger hovered over me like some cloud waiting to rain misery on my shoulders, I just didn’t know it yet. She was like an umbrella, repelling the light drizzle before the downpour that was sure to come, but I knew, we both knew, that it was approaching.  This storm would color it’s raindrops in the dark blues of sadness, loneliness and hopelessness. “If you don’t talk to me I can’t help you Petey”, as she became more and more frustrated by my sullen silences.  Caroline called me Petey, her cross between Patrick and sweetie, and she was the only one who could get away with that.  I wasn’t communicating with her any more. I had become enraptured by them, the voices, that endless cacophony that would spell out my impending spiral into oblivion.   I can’t recall exactly how it all started but it was the end of the beginning. 

 

In the beginning there was curiosity, innocence and in short there was childhood.  A rather normal childhood I guess you could say only I was far from your normal child.  I was quiet, withdrawn, seems there was more going on inside my head than anyone could have ever known.  I was the youngest of three boys, the baby. My oldest brother, Peter, was an artist.  He was intellectual and inquisitive and I always had fond memories of him sticking up for me as a child. He was much shorter than me but had the same fine, red hair.  Peter was seven years older than me and he knew I was different.  He saw my silences, he asked me questions, joked around, and he told people I was just really smart.  I loved him for that.  I always appreciated his artwork.  There were times looking at his paintings that I thought he had the gift too, but we never talked about it.  It began as rudimentary explorations discovering his abilities, turning into vast apocalyptic landscapes set on giant canvasses, which could intimidate you with their depth.  He had a witty, sarcastic sense of humor that I could always associate with.  Preston was my other brother, four years my senior.  My mother was a huge Elvis fan and hence Preston.  He felt the need to physically torture and brutalize me as a child.  I remember quite a few times Peter had to pull Preston off of me, fearing that the arm twisted behind my neck would break.  Preston was my physical match with a tall, strong physique.  He had a head of thick dark hair.  He played football in high school, both offensive and defensive line, and he could dominate when he wanted to.  He was smart enough but didn’t apply himself in school.  Underneath his somewhat boorish exterior was one of the most sensitive people you ever met.  I didn’t discover that until much later though.  My parents were typical, they loved me, but outward displays of emotion were minimal.  My mother was highly excitable but also very intelligent.  To subject her to embarrassment was to endure the height of passive-aggressive punishment.  Act up in public, waiting in line at the grocery store, hand atop your arm forcing fingernails deep into your flesh until red, yet somehow unnoticed.  The sight of the red stain on my arm could make me sick to my stomach, I learned at an early age not to disobey my mother in public.  She could also be the dearest woman you ever met, and that’s how I like to remember things.  Mom would cook, she loved to bake, and she would sing to me and I felt like the most loved kid in the whole wide world.  She had short brown hair and a knowing look, and she had a gift for language.  My father was a big, brooding Irishman.  He drank, but I must say he held it well, as there were no incidents of drunken belligerence as I recall.  As for the Irish temper, it was there.  You didn’t want to be the one to cross him on a bad day, or the one to set him off.  He had a voice that could carry for miles in his heyday.  He was generally a happy go lucky type, liked his booze and weed, and he didn’t hit.  He would grab my knee in that little spot right underneath and I would laugh and squirm with pure delight.  It was evident he found me strange though, always wondering what his silent boy was thinking.  They all said it, “so well-behaved but so quiet.”  “Such a strange child, so quiet, so sensitive,” grandma would say.  Little did they know there were pieces of my mind developing much differently than theirs’ or anyone’s ever had before.  I got sent to the special building adjacent to the school early in elementary school.  It seems I wasn’t picking up certain sounds and letters for speech and language.  They discovered a hearing deficit and worked to correct it, but it was strange and was not correctible.  What they didn’t know was I heard every one of them, before the deficit was found, say “this kid must be retarded or something”, only they never actually said it.  I heard it though, and boy they must have been surprised when after just a short time with a speech therapist my grasp of language grew far beyond what they could have hoped.  Armed with my trusted Speak’n’Spell and books far beyond my grade level I became the writer I once was.  It’s amazing how important every sense is to learning. Sight, sense and feel, hearing and comprehension all play a part in understanding.  There was no real explanation as to why this deficit had occurred.  I remember frequent tests and numerous puzzled doctors, but no real answers.  As for the painful earaches accompanied by noises and voices that I remember so vividly, those were written off as normal childhood afflictions.  My mother swears they never happened, yet I remember the heating pad under my head and her rocking and soothing me, I was in such a state that my eyes would tear and I would rock for hours.  As I grew older it grew on me, there was something different, something odd about my perceptions, my way of viewing things.  In middle school I was shy and introverted, but I had friends.  There was a teacher who made me write or at least she was the first to notice.  She would read the novice verse I wrote and I knew she was struck by it.  She was a large African-American woman and she was very bright, she would later serve in politics and I always knew she had goodwill in her heart.  I believe her name was Mrs. Henson and she would make me read poetry in front of the class.  It was never my own, I was much too shy for that, but the likes of Cummings and Wadsworth.  I didn’t quite understand her methods, but I understood the words even though some of the material was far too complex for the rest of the class.  There were teachers like Mr. Rounds.  A short, stocky man full of youth and zest it must have been one of his first jobs.  He challenged us to think outside the box.  He taught me that the mind could not be constrained and he taught us all about how to be creative.  “The word veracity is inside of creativity,” he would say “and veracity means truthfulness.”  He taught English and Language Arts and those of us who understood looked forward to his class with giddy anticipation.  A class with him was more a discussion than a lecture and he welcomed input and the sharing of ideas.  Then they started watching him, seems he wasn’t following the guidelines, never mind the fact he pulled more out of us than the guidelines ever could.  He was truly inspirational, and he was gone after one year, too young and controversial.  The kids were broken up about it, but no one ever asked us.  It was somewhere around then that I noticed it more and more.  They started to creep into my mind increasingly.  Thoughts that were not my own, other people’s thoughts crossing into the peripherals of my mind creating an incessant buzz.  I would fight a losing battle to block them out.  Study was the worst when the silence would bring them on in waves.  “Why is Nick staring at me?” and  it was all I could do to keep from turning and telling her “if you learned how to sit with a skirt on and closed your damn legs he wouldn’t be sitting there staring at your crotch with his stupid mouth agape.”   I didn’t say things like that of course, I just sat knowing and sometimes I was amused by it all.   Maybe that was the reason for the trips to the school psychologist recommended by certain teachers.  The knowing grin that was often on my face didn’t sit well with them.  I damn well sat with her though, she was in her mid thirties with flowing dark hair, not unattractive.  Joann was her name and she had a picture of her family, husband and three kids, on her desk and I’m positive she analyzed them to the point of utter anal-retentiveness.  She had a healthy bosom and I could often steal a glimpse of her ampleness when she bent over to read paperwork.  She would ask all your basic questions and I would play coy and not really answer any of them.  Then she would say “Is anyone in your family on drugs or alcohol?” and I’d say “it depends what you consider a drug, how about those pain killers right there” and she would explain those were for her carpal tunnel.  On and on it went like that, I began to think she was fascinated by me, but I think she just wasn’t too busy and I was her star client.  She never did ask me though, and it was right there hanging in the front of her mind every time, I knew it.  “Why do your teachers say you sit and stare with a strange smile on your face at times?”  I always wondered to myself what my response would have been, but she never asked.  High school was different, I became popular, and I could shut it off with drugs and alcohol although I knew it was always there.  I was a good basketball player.  My 6’2” frame and long arms ideal for the game.  My innate ability to know where my teammates were, and were going to be, gave me an exceptional passing ability.  I played football freshman year, talked out of soccer which I always regretted.  The coaches saw my size and potential and convinced me it would be a waste to play soccer.  Football just wasn’t appealing to me though, with the seemingly constant and mindless collisions.  I quit after that year and focused on hoops.  I got brought up to varsity at the end of sophomore year and started large portions of junior year.  Senior year I was the starting power forward and although I wasn’t a standout, I was a solid player that coach could count on for consistent production.  If I was a good athlete, then I was a world class partier.  We took all the average college-prep classes in high school, but it seemed most partook in extensive research of pharmacological excess.  It went on like that with the partying and whatnot for many years and it really eliminated my abilities altogether. 

Reviews

[Andromeda]

wow. very well-written, very eerie

[Rambling Mind]

You could never hear me...lol...I really like how you have started with the state of mind and then transitioned into your past timeline....with some mods here and there, of course..I have written something for on my page please check it out....xoxo

[Hedra Helix]

dang.
and sadly I can say I totally get you. but rather, if we were all truthful I suppose that could then be said by any and all, but dang. Im impressed with the intensity your insanity transmits its desperate fight for the light. but yes, the darkness is tricky.

Im sitting here though, wishing you the strength to follow that good fight, you know whats right, masturbation is messy, weather it be in the hand or mind. kick its a*s.

good write, gave me goosebumps

[Travis Lawrence]

Strange, from the beginning I thought of a drug trip, especially when the speaker is watching the rain. I love it, the way you reveal the environment curiously until it is clearer. Very often lately, I've felt like this. I've done my best to keep up my daily routine, but it's difficult with so much darkness. My two favorite parts:

"It is out there that the light seekers lose a daily battle against the dark forces destroying humanity"

"They taunt and they spew invectives, but it's those smiles, those strange sardonic smiles that give me the shivers. Eyes so hollow and vacant it's as if their souls are in their smiles."

Have a nice day!

[Michael W. Farrelly]

To say this is dark is an understatment. An also to say it's beautiful. You capture the air of vulnerability very well, man. Gives me shivers.