Daddy Dearest

I was sixteen years old when I killed my father for the first time. I was sitting on my bed with my notepad trying to work out a tune when he stumbled through the door reeking of smoke and booze. Learn to knock, I said. He grimaced through whatever haze consumed him and mumbled, you’re mine. It was a cold January night and I was wearing my leather jacket with all the drawings and pins. He fell on top of me and fumbled with the zipper, cursing when his finger got caught. I always hated that zipper. That night it was my lucky charm. I kneed him in the balls and he squealed, letting go. He grabbed my hair and slammed my face against my desk. I bit my tongue and tasted metal as my vision blurred. I run my palms across the floor as he dragged me down and sat on top of me, heaving. Something sharp was on the tip of my finger and I frantically closed my fists. His hands were on my throat just as I jammed the pencil in his ear. He mewled and pissed himself while I pushed my way up. He was on the ground, face first. Next thing I knew I was stomping on his exposed neck with a heavy thud and a crack. Those old combat boots were good for something after all. He lay there soggy and limp and I screamed at him, get up, get the fuck up.

When the cops came calling I was curled up downstairs smoking the last of his pack. I spent a few months in juvie while being paraded in court until our history and his record worked in my favour. There was no wailing mother to comfort or condemn me. She had skipped town a long time ago – who can blame her? - and they didn’t manage to track her down. I’d been stuck at home with him for years. He must have known I was getting ready to fly the nest too. A requiem for a runaway. He’d never tried to touch me before, though he didn’t do much else than drink either. At school there were always the same stories going round: the time dad went on a rampage during New Year’s Eve wrapped in Christmas lights and little else; the time he chased a priest around the block for “looking at him like he was God’s own dumpster fire”; the time he was discovered lovingly cradling a tire iron in his sleep at our school yard. There was no place for me in class anymore and I ended up spending most of my time partying and singing in my boyfriend’s band. That boyfriend was outlived by what became my own band and that band was eclipsed by the pleasures of the poison. I was following in my dad’s glorious footsteps.

Self-defence was the ruling of the day and I was deemed troubled but potentially salvageable. In an effort to block my descent into delinquency I was sent to a foster home with a perfectly nice and gentle couple who treated me like a ticking time bomb at all times. I felt more broken than ever but I didn’t shriek and shatter as everyone thought I would. I just left as soon as I turned eighteen and I didn’t look back. I worked as a waitress for longer than I should but I never stopped writing songs and yelling at a microphone until more people were mad enough to pay to see me unravel on stage with my adopted family of the baddest bitches in the land.

As I reinvented myself, so did he. He was there for me time and time again.

He was there in that bar when I celebrated six months of making a living as a bona fide tortured artist by drinking more rum than my body could handle and puking my guts out on a muddy toilet floor. The lights were flickering and the walls were coated with grime. As I lay kneeling I heard his shuffling gait. He was right behind me and his ragged breath made my skin crawl. I turned and instantly recognised him though his face was teeming with maggots. His hands were on my throat again but his grasp was more feeble than I remembered. Do it, I thought. This is my bed and I’ll lie in it. He found his strength and I couldn’t breathe. My next thoughts were: not here; not like this. I can’t die smelling of puke and shame. I put my thumbs into his eyes and dug deep for all I was worth. He left a rattling cry like a drill running out of steam and crumbled all around me. I blindly crawled out of that place and took long, cold lung-fulls of air until I sounded human again. I went back the next day and there was no trace of him.

He was in the crowd at my first gig as a headliner. Our band was called Die Daddy Die. Too obvious? Well, fuck you. While everyone was flailing and thrashing he stood still in quiet menace. I shone bright in the stage light and I didn’t stop singing even though all I could see was his half-chewed face looking up at me. He looked wary somehow, like he didn’t fully want to be there but something was driving him on. During my crowd-surfing big finale he put his cold hands on my shoulders and tried to keep me for himself away from the rest of them. They didn’t let him. He was pushed out of my sight and the lights went out. In the darkness he found me once more and put his frozen mouth on top of mine. I flipped open the switchblade that I had learned to carry everywhere and stabbed him until I lost count. Yet again he fell apart and I felt the familiar short-lived triumph. The lights were on and I was pulled to my feet by smiling strangers. If there was any blood on me, no one said a thing.

He was there the night I spent on Frank’s yacht. Frank ended up being majorly disappointed when I wouldn’t fuck him despite his promises of fame and fortune with his record company. I still had some dregs of dignity left and by then I’d embraced the fact that I was way more into women anyway. I was gazing at the water while he sulked below deck when dad climbed on board. He was bloated with barnacles and radiating rage. An eel slid out of his gaping mouth and his skin was the colour of the ocean. He lunged at me but I was way ahead; I tackled and threw him over the railing where he disappeared with barely a splash. I waited for him to break the surface and climb back up but the sea remained calm until daybreak.

He was there soon after I first met Angie. She had been hired as a photographer for one of my tours and our relationship remained professional for about half a day. I felt strangely at ease with her early on and that scared the shit out of me. I tried to put some distance between us but she saw through my bullshit. She wasn’t going anywhere and I couldn’t be more thrilled. The morning after we slept together for the first time he was waiting for me in the bathroom with a razor in each hand. He was predictably slow and I took hold of both blades and plunged them in his throat. As he chocked on his own blood Angie knocked on the door and asked, is everything ok in there? All’s well, I answered. Just thinking about my dad.

He was there when I found mom’s address and paid her a visit only to discover she had died of a respectable heart attack a few years back surrounded by her distressed and loving family. When I went to visit her grave I found him bent over in fits of dry laughter at the foot of her tombstone. He was trying to dig her up and although I owed her nothing I had to put an end to that. I brought back half a can of gasoline from the trunk of my car and doused him in it. He made a grab at my ankles and in response I threw my favourite lighter at him. Worth it. He roared and tried to climb outside but the flame was faster and it didn’t take long until he smouldered in a heap of crackling flesh and blackened bones. So much for a tearful reunion with my mother.

There were plenty more scuffles along the way but I forget the details. Once you’ve dispatched your stubbornly reanimated father’s corpse for the tenth time it all starts to blend together, you know? He’s been a steady presence all along and I’ve never let him get his way. Never, that is, until today. Today he is dragging his feet next to the hospital bed while I listen to the monitor’s steady beeps with my eyes closed. The poison finally corroded my insides beyond repair but I got some laughs along the way. Can anyone ask for anything better? I can hear him pacing across the room, which reeks of rot and damp earth. I know that he’s waiting for me to acknowledge him and there’s no one else here now. A few of my oldest friends – the ones that made it so far – stood by my side until nightfall but I sent them home to rest when I felt him close. As for a family, I’d never wanted children and Angie went and died before me. I wanted to be first but she wouldn’t let me win in this either. I picture her sitting on some heavenly bar stool and laughing her ass off. What are you still doing down there, she shouts. Get over here and get trashed with me.

Don’t worry. I’m not far behind. There’s one last thing I have to do. All I was ever really good for is punk and patricide and here’s my last chance. I open my eyes. He creeps into bed and wraps his rotting arms around me. I hold him close. His eyes are the absence of warmth and colour and his touch is light. I hold him tight. Tighter, ever tighter as my muscles ache and tears are rolling down my face. He disintegrates for the last time with a parting rattle that becomes my own. Where I go, I’m not coming back. Where I go, he will not follow.

Night of Blood and Feathers

Agatha lay on her back and looked up at the darkening sky, waiting for the blood rush. After hearing all the rumours and hints about the nature of the impending change, she had decided she preferred the image of a rapid increase in her heartbeat and a sudden forceful hastening in her bloodstream. She would feel more alive than ever while her blood boiled and her voice changed. Blood burst; bloodlust; blood bath. Blood, blood, blood.

Why was she so fixated on that visual? It could just as well start as a sharpening of her vision. Her surroundings would stand out stark and clear as daylight and no detail would escape her. The rest of her senses would soon follow. She would smell the fear in her prey, hear its ragged breathing and taste its cold sweat. Her heartbeat – there it was again, blood – would make her temples throb and she would slide through the velvet darkness with a newfound purpose. The women hunt; the men attend to the land and home. She would hunt. 

Her fire was breathing its last sparks. She huddled under her mother’s blanket. It wasn’t that cold yet. It was autumn and the moon was only half-full. It was the night for renewal. She could see the fading lights of other fires where the town’s teenage girls whose time had also come sat and waited. Her sisters, united in anticipation. Fierce and steadfast hunters in the making. Are they all this nervous or am I the only one who’s feeling this uncertain, she wondered? Are they excited? She knew Rebecca couldn’t wait. She wouldn’t stop talking about it for weeks, despite their being discouraged to discuss it in any detail. You’ll know when it comes and it’ll feel as if you always knew, their teachers told them, so no sense in spending time idly speculating. You’ll all go through it alone but in the end you will be as one. Our eyes and ears in the sky. The reason we are still fed and warm and protected. Yes, the men do their best to contribute and we are fond of their companionship and softness of touch, but without us this sliver of safety would cease to exist. Be proud of your legacy. Surrender to your power. Revel in the transformation. Grow wild and strong. This will be your first taste of womanhood. Enjoy it. You’ll see. 

Why was it taking so long? All this build up and pent-up excitement and fear for what? Nothing was happening. How could she blame Rebecca for her impatience? They were barely given any details and they were supposed to just tell when it was time. Her veins were still and her blood was cold. She was tired. It was so late! No, no, she had to focus. Maybe it was already happening and she was missing it. Focus. 

She closed her eyes and pictured her mother’s tapestry hanging in her room. A forest at dusk. Nearly too dark to see. The trees seemed to go on forever and their branches were frozen mid-sway as the shadows deepened. If you looked closely you would start to discern the winged shapes until the woods were crawling with hunched solemn-eyed observers. Her sisters staring out at her, inviting her into the woods. She hadn’t been ready. Would she be ready now?

She opened her eyes. She could finally hear her sisters’ screams of pain, or was it delight and violent relief? She peeked in the twilight gloom at the sources of the sounds where she could barely make out distant figures rolling on the ground and tearing at their clothes. The screams changed into high-pitched screeches and there was a sense of a broadening; a widening; an extra layer of flesh? She was on the ground, trying to shrink herself invisible. She had to understand what was happening to the others to follow their lead. The ones she could still see started moving towards the forest. Some crawled and some ran. The screeches intensified until they morphed into inhuman laughter echoing through the trees. They were almost lost to her now, venturing so far beyond her. Did she hear the flapping of great wings or was that just the rising wind?

She was oppressively alone and left behind. Why couldn’t she follow? Maybe she had to induce the transformation somehow. She was on the wrong track believing that the change would be forceful, sudden and inescapable. Perhaps the only way to know is to actively seek the knowledge; it won’t just magically reveal itself to you. Come on, make it happen. Listen to the whispers inside. Let them guide you where you need to go. Listen. 

This isn’t happening. This is not going to happen. You are weak.

She put her hands over her ears and screamed into the night. She screeched as loudly as she could. She tore at her clothes. She scratched her face raw. She rolled on the ground until all she could taste was dirt. She laughed until her throat hurt. She laughed until the sound lost all meaning to her. It was all a sad simulation of the real thing. She felt like she was caught in a lie and there was nothing else to show. She drew her limbs close and stopped moving. There was only sadness and fear where there should be excitement and triumph. Her fire went out and the cold found her. 

She didn’t know how long she lay there, but there came a point when a decision needed to be made. She wasn’t fierce and strong. She couldn’t hunt or protect. She was no woman. She could run and hide and never return. How could she face her friends, her teachers, her parents?

She got up and dusted herself off, looking at the edges of the forest. There was another way out. She would let her sisters take care of her. They would tear her asunder limb from limb and she would welcome it. She started running until the sky gave way to a canopy of twisted branches and the trees were gathering close till there was no more room to breathe and she could barely see. The wood creaked and snapped and it was all that she could hear until she broke into a clearing and fell to her hands and knees. 

She wasn’t alone. There was more than splintering wood now; there were footsteps and heavy breathing. Something dragged its way across the fallen leaves. Something that knew when to make noise and when to stay quiet until it was too late. It wasn’t afraid of her. She steadied her breathing before lifting her head to face the end. The creature stood in front of her in the moonlight. It – no, she – was taking her time. She was holding a rabbit in her claws and its entrails were snaking from its sliced-open belly to her beak. Her wide wings were spread out in a shuddering arc and her eyes were still disconcertingly human.

Rebecca looked at Agatha in puzzlement, not anger. Agatha started crying. Rebecca dropped her catch and brought her wings around Agatha, holding her tight. Agatha pressed her head against her friend’s soft chest and breathed deeply the comforting smell of blood. She would never fly. She would stay the same while the others embraced their nature and fulfilled their destiny. She calmly lifted one of her friend’s talons and placed it on her exposed neck. Rebecca shook her head and before Agatha could react she was lifted off her feet and they left the clearing behind in a flurry of feathers. The wind was electrifying and when she looked down her head swirled with vertigo and she laughed the night’s first genuine laugh. 

In the morning they all came out of the woods, shaken and smiling with fresh bruises and mud in their hair. Agatha was holding Rebecca’s hand. Whatever was to come next, let it come. She was not a hunter, that much she knew. Whatever she was, it was something new. 

Shadow Play

This hasty poem has been scribbled on a crumpled handwritten note left at the corner of an abandoned building in one of the long-forgotten towns we passed in our delirium:

I’m swimming, breathless, in your river. 

It gets me where I want to go.

I’m dancing, reckless, struck with fever.

I’m feeling more than I can show. 

The cities echo with your laughter.

They’re filled with glimpses of your grace. 

Our shadows know just what we’re after. 

They’re locked in secret, warm embrace.

That was then, way back when. Now our shadows are no longer hungry and you are never going to read this.

I first saw you atop a mound of chattering cacti. You were standing with one foot held high and an expression of intense concentration. You looked down at me and winked, or was that a twitch of anguish? There was the spark of recognition. Distant thunder, smell of rain. I approached and the ground gave way. I grabbed the ledge in a feeble attempt to hold on. As if I ever had a choice. I let go. Blood rushed into my head and I hit the ground. The pain shot through me like a forest blaze. Somehow I was still whole, all limbs attached. I looked up and saw the patch of sky that showed through the rupture. The same sky stretched above you. At that thought I became buoyant and feathery and reversed my drop until I rose out of the hole, landing on all fours in the fresh mud at the break of dawn. The world had irrevocably changed and the cacti were on fire. You were nowhere to be seen. I dug into the soft earth and found your invitation on a layer of shed skin. Meet me where ancient things find new life, it said. 

I headed for the antiques market where you waited in a halo of electrified air. We let eternity take its toll as we stood there staring. Seasons changed. We started pacing, never leaving each other’s sight. No sudden movements. We became increasingly distracted from the imminent danger of our proximity by the surrounding delights. We both laughed at the grandfather clock with the foul-mouthed winged snake. We marvelled at the matchstick warriors, gasped at the baritone gargoyles, and whirled away with the cluttering debris at the centre of everything. You said the flames won’t hurt us when they’re blue, not really. I thought, what if I want them to hurt?  

We walked to the nearest bar skipping over bones and bomb shells. You dissolved every last sugar cube into your absinthe. I just stared into my glass of wine. Your face was all that I could see. We drank and spoke and drank some more until the edges turned fuzzy and soft. I asked about the great mysteries and your answers bred more questions. You asked about me and I showed you my tightly wound entrails.  We carved into each other’s flesh and marked the floor with the intricate designs of our promise. Then the sirens went off and we dashed back into our hives, heavy with happiness and blood. We licked our wounds in mutual longing and counted the days until our next date. 

We met again in the primordial cave where our shadows lined the walls, starving and larger than life, waiting. We fed them all our fears and doubts until their teeth were sharp and then we pulled them off one by one, laughing all the while. As the shadows fled we proudly wore the teeth as necklaces and danced until our limbs were sore. We soared on stolen wings on branching lightning and resolved to catalogue every single moment of our shared conquest. We brought down the roofs of the shelters we encountered and rolled in wreckage with wild abandon. Your feverish touch and vertiginous eyes never left me in my waking dreams and I forgot where I began and where you ended. I lay next to you listening to the rumble of your thoughts until it was too much to bear and then I listened some more. 

Come with me, you said, to the maze of mirrors. I need to show you the truth. The blue flames will turn to the warmest hues of orange and you will love me more than you love this dazzling artifice and the savage games we play when no one’s watching. Follow me. Watch your step. The vines grow tangled and fierce in these parts and one false step will rob you of your minutes and months and years until you’re nothing but a whimpering husk and come, we’re almost there. All I wanted was to hear you speak and the words were friends in dire times and I didn’t care about the pain in my feet and joints because you were still talking and I hoped you’d never stop and then there we were, at the source of our splintering reflections. They were all standing with their backs turned, pointing at the centremost mirror. Look, look and don’t stop looking, you whispered, and so I did. 

All I glimpsed at first were gathering silhouettes taking their seats in some kind of amphitheatre. Then the first rays of sunlight hit the scene and it was all set into motion:

A flickering jester scampers on stage, fading away before the music starts; a spectral symphony of tiny footsteps and worn-out dresses, followed by a smattering of applause and distant cheers. The helpless marionette’s writhing dance is the main attraction. Shrill voices fill the air. Dance, they scream. Dance! Slave to its strings – invisible intruders inexorably enforcing their will – the puppet snaps awake. It moves in jerks and jolts and clumsy pirouettes. Falling to its knees, it claws at the space where its eyes should be. The audience’s reaction is deafening; a delirious laugh track. The faceless plaything curls up into a foetal position as smoky tendrils wisp across the ceiling and tongues of flame lick the walls casting a violent shadow play on the falling curtains and the crumbling pillars and the ceiling caving in on the crowd that roars with laughter to the end. 

So it went in an inescapable loop. The silhouettes changed shapes and sizes and the jeering, cheering and dancing were never the same, but the end always came. I turned to you and you rested your head on my shoulder. Is this it, I asked. This is it, you said. I put my thumbs on your eyes and pushed, gently at first and then with increased force until your mask crumbled in my hands. You shimmered and glimmered and exposed your marvellously monstrous underbelly. You put your fingers on my cheek and traced the outline of my lips before pulling at the edges with an impatient growl. It all came off with the softest of sighs. I was exposed. You lingered, disbelieving. I struck a pose to hide the fact that there was nothing to show. I stumbled, naked and empty. You tried to pretend that there was something more but we both knew then that it was over. 

The shadows came back and tore the necklaces from us while we bowed in fear. Their teeth restored, they towered over us and grew in sinewy strength as we diminished. They bit into our exposed necks and entered our mouths and ears and eyes until we were filled with their billowy forms. We were fat with bitterness and shame. We snarled at each other and ran until there was nowhere left to go. We hid. We hid when the frost came and we hid when the ice starting melting away. We hid when all was dry and barren and we hid when the sea swallowed the land and the drowning was a comfort. We hid through all our tiny deaths and we hid while our bones ached with inaction. We knew beyond all doubt that this state would never change and then it changed and we ventured outside, blinking like newborns, ready for the rest of our lives. 

We saw each other only once after that, at the foot of the crumbling tower in the glare of the descending sun. I was covered in barbed wire and broken glass and you were encased in layers of blades and thorns. Beneath the veneer of civility, snarling, frothing protrusions awaited. However, impossibly, there it was again. The spark of recognition. We spoke reluctantly of past provocations and misguided frustrations. We followed the path of a trillion alternative manifestations of our imagined destinies. We cuddled up close and lost track of time until the sun completed its downward journey and we vaporised without another word. 

Our story has played itself out and all that’s left are the drifting particles of dust. 

Somewhere else the sun rises and illuminates the stage and the play’s renewed. The faceless marionette snaps awake. Dance, they scream.