By Blood and Tradition

My Aunt had a special reputation in the neighborhood as a person who knew who to get rid of unwanted pregnancies, without having to deal with the expense and trouble of seeing a doctor. She referred to it as a Tradition, something I never quite understood but still would never have questioned. It was much easier to let my Aunt speak without interruptions or questions, because after speaking for a time her face would kind of change a little and her voice would sometimes get deeper, and you could feel the presence of someone else in the room, inside my Aunt, and she could say some strange things, stuff that had no context to whatever was going on in our family or the world at large, like she was seeing too far into the future for me to comprehend. But she would laugh and her voice would change back and she'd take another drink from her glass before sharing some arcane bit of knowledge that would one day suit you.

But she made special potions by combining oils from the wooden rack in the kitchen, when some teary eyed woman from the neighborhood would come over and tell her sad story about how they couldn't afford another mouth to feed, or else they'd say they'd gotten knocked up on accident, or by force, but my Aunt never questioned their motives. If they were paying, my Aunt would pick a few leaves from the herb garden out back and she'd let them soak in the oil mixture in her old black glass bowl, and she would swirl the leaves as the lady spoke on about how their doctor is friends with their husband and he'd most certainly report the discretion if she walked into his office with a baby to get rid of. My Aunt, I was never sure she was ever even listening. She'd pour the stuff out through a coffee filter set over the mouth of a mason jar, and a clear liquid would drip drip drip into the jar, and my Aunt would smile even though no one was saying anything funny at all. Everyone knew to come to my Aunt for problems like these.

Once it was all drained out she'd throw away the filter and close up the jar, and my Aunt would tell each of them to drink the liquid before bed, and that the next morning when they went to the bathroom they would pass the baby, simple as that. And then the lady would hand my Aunt the money and they'd disappear. I guess it worked, because I never once heard one of them coming back to say the medicine didn't work. I did see some of the ladies more than once or twice.

When she didn't have her customers coming over, my Aunt began to teach me the Tradition, little bits and pieces as she went. Some days she wouldn't have much at all to say to me, and others I felt like I was getting overwhelmed with her describing what each plant worked for which ailment and how if you mixed certain plants different things would happen. I tried to remember what I could, but she wouldn't let me write anything down. She said you weren't supposed to write about the Tradition, that it had to be spoken and remembered, and carried on. I didn't really understand very much of it at all, but I still clung to her.

I was her shadow. I wasn't the best student, but I tried.

One day, she was explaining how she could make a miscarriage happen with her medicine. She told me that her medicine was only good if it was an early pregnancy, within the first three months, because otherwise the woman would bleed to death passing the baby. My Aunt gave me this look, like she was waiting for me to ask a question, but I didn't have anything to ask. She went on to tell me about another method, one she didn't tell many of her customers about. She said there was too much room for error in the method, even though it was effective at any point in the pregnancy, even up to the day before delivery, she said. It worked, but it was too involved for most of the careless women who came to the house for my Aunt's medicine.

She never explained it to me. She trailed off, and never came back to the topic. Maybe she realized I would never follow the Tradition like she would have hoped. I would have believed it if she told me she saw far into the future, seeing me break away, a firsthand witness to my future follies. From that moment after, she treated me with a sort of resigned defeat. She didn't see it in me anymore.

And I did kind of outgrow her. I found myself avoiding her conferences at the kitchen table, and not making my way out to her herb garden. Summer came, and there was a traveling carnival that had set up in the fields across from our house. I found myself exploring this strange new world and its inhabitants, until I met a man who worked in some capacity for the carnival, but I never found out what he did. He treated me special, and seduced me, and like a fool I fell in love with him, but in less than a week the whole carnival was gone, run out of town by the local police. And there I found myself, 15 years old and pregnant with the baby of a drifter. I told no one of my condition, and for a time I was able to conceal the baby growing inside me. The summer turned to autumn, and by October I'd resorted to starving myself to fight the onset of a lump growing in my stomach. I took to bed, no longer leaving my room, always covered by a blanket. Everyone thought I had come down with some illness. My Aunt, she saw right through it all, and late one night, she entered my room, and sat at the edge of my bed, and explained the method, the one she never shared with me.

If a woman wanted to not be pregnant, she explained, and if she was past her first trimester, she would have to go to a graveyard at midnight, during a waxing moon. She spoke slowly and softly, and I remembered every instruction, so much easier to hold in my mind than it had been the year before. She said I would have to find an infant's grave, by checking the dates on the stones.

I went out, the next night, alone with a small flashlight, I snuck through the silent house and through yards to get to the Clementville cemetery. I walked the rows until I found the right kind of grave. This baby, it had been alive for only six days. I rubbed my stomach and thought about the baby inside of me.

My Aunt said to mix some of the dirt from in front of the grave with my urine to make a clay, and I worked it into a thick mush in my hands, forming the body and then the head and limbs of a tiny figure. My hands shook as I remembered her telling me to lay the clay figure on top of the gravestone. I felt a hot pain deep inside my stomach, a pain so intense I fell to my knees.

She told me about the pain, but I didn't think it would have been as bad as it was. I felt as if I was being pulled apart, and I was splitting up the middle. She said I might see blood, and not to be frightened, but I got scared when it began pouring out of me like a faucet. The dirt turned into sludge around my knees as the deluge continued, until I felt like I had nothing left inside, just emptied out.

She told me I would know when it was all over, and that I was supposed to lay the clay baby in the mess. I watched it fall apart, soaking up the mess around it. It felt like my skin was hanging off of me. I walked home, and as quietly as I could, made my way back to bed. The next morning, my Aunt brought me a cup of tea with leaves still floating in it. She told me it would take away my nausea, and give me back my appetite. She didn't ask about the method. It was like she knew.

Twins

The twins, they were almost identical, they dressed so nonchalantly but still ended up picking the same clothing out of their piles. Nobody ever asked why they had two of everything, we must have assumed that was how twins came. Physically, they never seemed to notice they looked the same. They hardly interacted beyond shared whispers but it was understood in the House that they were two different people, and to somehow happen to mistake one for another could have grave consequences.

Marabel was a tormented girl, scarred in such a way as to encourage her unbridled id to inflict terrible injuries upon the other children. Like a preteen De Sade she would lure a confused little cousin up the stairs to the attic, at the very top of the House, and there she would come upon them. There would be her favorite pair of restraints hidden in the corner, and there in the faint shadow cast from the small window, with a view of heaven, there were a pair of scissors. Once ensnared, she toyed with her prey, and soon becoming bored she began to cut; first clothing, and then, their flesh. She held them down and cut them to pieces, defenseless children who thought that she was Selene, her sister.

Selene was gentle, a graceful girl whom the children seemed to flock to, like a mother hen. Selene would make sure they were well fed and that they would take their baths and be in bed by nine. She helped them with homework and changed diapers when she had to; and in her quieter moments there was almost always a pleasant interruption by an adorable toddler. She would find them a rag doll toy and send them along. When she wasn't tending to her flock, Selene seemed to hover in place, like a non-transparent apparition locked in a looping pattern of slowing fading in and out of reality. If no one was watching she sometimes looked like the static on the television screen. Her eyes were blue like the babble box showing the aux channel, never-ending and bottomless.

I don't know who raised her. I do know Selene looked after Marabel for a time, which always kind of mystified me because Marabel was 7 minutes older than her. I also did overhear a conversation in the kitchen once when someone said Marabel killed their mother with a knife from the kitchen, when they were little. No one said an age, and I had to go before I got caught eavesdropping.

Someone said once he could see a resemblance in me and the twins, one of my drunk uncles holding on to the stair bannister. I gave him a scowl and ran down the hallway. I don't want to look like either one of them.

Grandma said there had been a curse laid upon the house the night the twins were born. She said their Ma wasn't supposed to be having twins, but she delivered them in the kitchen, during a really bad thunderstorm, blood dripping through the partition in the table. Grandma said she had to help their Ma during the delivery, because the girls came out fighting, with the cord wrapped around one's neck. That baby came out blue, but once Grandma slashed the cord she started breathing and everything seemed fine. After that no one was sure which baby had been almost stillborn, they looked so much alike. I have my suspicions.

I was born in a hospital, like a normal child should be. I ain't nothing like those two.

I hate finding Marabel's victims one she's through with them. I never know what to do. I found Emma in the third floor bathroom, crumpled in the tub. I tried to ignore her and back my way out of the intrusion but I could hear her struggling to get my attention, and I couldn't ignore her. I closed the door behind me and looked at the damage. Her eye makeup had streaked to her ears, dragged by tears, and there was something wrong with her eyes and the way she stared at me. Marabel had removed her eyelids, but left the rings of eye shadow, not knowing how much was makeup and how much was caked blood from the sloppy wounds. Marabel had covered her body with a dirty old blanket that she must have found in the attic, in one of the old boxes.

I asked Emma what she wanted me to do, since I'm just some dumb kid who found her. She shook her head back and forth. She didn't say anything, but she was crying. I cracked the door open a tiny bit when I heard footsteps down the hall coming. It was Selene, but I wasn't completely sure it wasn't Marabel, so I didn't move, and I prayed she wouldn't come in, but my heart just about stopped when she pushed the door in and found me and Emma, who started kicking the sides of the tub, scared it was Marabel coming back to hurt her more. But the thin frail girl stood in the doorway, looking at the two of us that was in a way unreadable, so distant that it seemed she was watching us through a telescope. It seemed there was blood coming down the inside of her leg, running down to her slipper, staining the white cotton, and she smoothed my hair in a way that I knew it was Selene, and she eased me from the room so gently, told me there was stew ready in the kitchen, and so I walked away, knowing Selene would take care of everything. I noticed the sound of the door locking, I couldn't help not feeling it reverberate through the hallway.

I never saw Emma again.

Doorway

This is a Doorway.

Someone had seen fit to staple wallpaper to the piece of plywood covering the doorway in the closet in my bedroom. It kind of matched, but not really. You'd look at it and know it was a half-assed job, the way the fixture in the room twinkled off the staple backs, set into the paper in no apparent pattern. No one would say who did the patchwork over the door, but it was understood that I was not to pull off the wallpaper and move aside the wood to expose the small door, only three feet high and almost as wide, small enough for a child, but an adult would run the chance of being trapped in the enclosure should they decide to uncover the door and try the latch that held it closed and stepped over the threshold.

They told me to leave it alone, and so I emptied some boxes in the closet so I could make a dummy stack in front of the door, easy to move when I knew I could work in silence, in peace. My progress has allowed me to preserve the visual integrity of the wallpaper, where in reality it came off in one whole piece, adhered by old wads of chewing gum. The board was not nailed to the wood beneath it, and the first time I moved it, I came away with a deep splinter in my left hand, which ran from underneath the webbing of my thumb through the top few layers of skin, and it left a black outline as a reminder.

There is no door knob, but rather a small latching lock mechanism that somewhat resembles the trigger of a revolver, and when you slide your finger in and fire, the door swings inward, into deep murky nothing that I dare not enter. There's something down there, something wholly unpleasant. I don't understand whose bright idea it was to close off the entryway to something malign with a quarter-inch slab of plywood and a big swatch of flaking plaster paper covered with yellow sunflowers. But I've opened it three times, and looked in long enough to hear something moving deep within the passageway. It sounds like it could get hungry, but I don't know what it prefers to eat.

Diana taught me a new game to play. She calls it Bloody Mary. To play the game, you go into a dark room, without windows, with a mirror and a candle. You light the candle and stare into the mirror, and once you're ready, you repeat Her name three times. You will see her reflection, standing behind you, and you must remember not to turn around in fright or surprise, because she can steal your soul from your body and then inhabit it, taking over while you exist in limbo for the rest of eternity. When you see her, you must stay calm, and you can ask her a question, any question at all, and Bloody Mary will tell you the answer. She can see the future, and she can change it too if you want her to. Mary will take care of whatever you want.

I conjured Mary, with the closet door closed tight, the rest of the house fast asleep, and with my back to the covered up door I called her name three times, and in the dark I saw her, the face of the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Her hair was black and hung past the border of the mirror, and her eyes were tiny explosions, sparkling like a chemical fire. I closed my eyes for a second and I felt something like tendrils easing past my body, as if I had been floating through thick seaweed, and she waited for me, waiting for my question. I knew what I wanted to ask her, but I was too scared. She told me to close my eyes, and when I did I saw her standing next to me, but it felt like she had extended past her own physical boundaries and had somehow swallowed me up in the flutterings of her flowing dress, individual threads pulling away and bringing me closer to her, in the darkness of my closed eye imagination, she showed me the doorway behind us and somehow it had been uncovered, and the entrance seemed alive as she had me try the latch. It opened, and as the door swung inward we were drawn into the opening like the water swirling down a drain, and we slid down through darkness into a long tunnel, the two of us locked into a tighter and tighter embrace as we sunk downward with the slope of the tunnel, like some forgotten vestigial air duct.

Somewhere near the center of the universe the passage ended, in a long empty room whose walls went on forever. Mary untangled me from her tendrils and affixed me with a cold stare. I felt so scared of the thing that was sleeping down at the other end of the room. I couldn't see it, but I could hear its heavy breath, lumbering as if it were having a hard go at the task of breathing in and breathing out. Mary led me by the hand into the dark, and we got closer and closer to the other side of the room, but I couldn't find the beast. Mary shook her head in sad desperation. She told me the truth, and to hear it made my lungs explode in an awful wail and I fell to the floor and beat my tiny fists in the dirt. I didn't mean to turn and look at her, when we were upstairs. I just got a little scared, spooked enough to jump and kick the candle over, and in the act of pulling away Mary caught me falling and pulled me through the doorway. It was the only way out for me, when the carpet caught fire and it spread to the empty boxes, and it quickly turned into a tiny inferno. She said the flames ate me up, and I knew she was telling me the truth. I felt my burnt limbs a whole lifetime ago as they turned to ash inside the closet.

Sometimes I can hear things, at the other end of the passageway, and I will go to the opening and stare in, wondering who's at the other side of the closed door. I wonder if they did anything to close it over, so no one will ever find me here in the bottom. I shriek and make a racket hoping they will hear me but I don't think I'll ever be found. Even Mary went away after a while. I tried to follow her down the passageway but something kept me from getting very far at all, and she disappeared into nothingness. But, she kept me company for a while.

THE JAR

Hello there, if you're reading this it means you have happened upon a story I just wrote here in the dark, listening to Hairway to Steven and 26 Songs. I like the idea of short fiction, and the websites that cater to that style of writin. I'm just gonna put the story here, and you read it if you like. Working title: the jar

I feel the need to tell you outright that I have, in my possession, a jar that I believe contains the disincarnate spirit of a young woman who died much too young. I could show you the simple Mason jar, its lid sealed shut with candlewax drippings of a rainbow of colors, melted with no apparent pattern. Inside the glass, there is a little pool of liquid, almost invisible unless you pick it up and disturb the jar.

I could tell you that She doesn't like that at all, that it really pisses her off, but you scoff and pick up the jar from my bookshelf altar, and you peer through the rough glass at the puddle, and I would feel her energy gathering in the room like a thundercloud until you set down the jar and look at me and smile that stupid grin, the one that means, you're a complete dipshit. However, I could tell you that I am certainly no dipshit. I feel that I could tell you quite a few things, more things than you could ever imagine. But first off the bat, you should know about the jar. The one you just unsettled. That's a weird story.

I used to be the kind of man who would hop the fences of graveyards after dark, and explore terrains that look so much different than they do in the daylight. In the light of the moon, everything takes on a certain twinkle, catching the reflection of the faintest star. I don't trespass anymore. I haven't done it in twenty years, and I am not an old man. I'm young, still young enough to remember the follies of my youth. I have had time to reflect on my actions, and my transgressions prevent me from breaking any more laws.

But I did it. I climbed over the rusted fence, in the dark and still, no cars in the parking lot, no headlights down the street. I threw over my bag and followed its transjectory. I explored the unfamiliar sprawl of the cemetery until I happened upon the jar, placed at the center of the upturned earth. I saw moonlight reflected in the glass, and I saw her face for the first time, reflected as if she was staring into a mirror. Her eyes were filled with fear and surprise. She was helpless, trapped in the glass by some strange magic, some horrid curse that imprisoned her soul inside the jar.

Do you want to know her name? Lily Abgel. I read the headstone, freshly engraved. I made a rubbing of the writing, with my charcoal and roll of paper I always carried on these trips. The earth beneath my feet sunk as I crouched and made the transfer. She was only twenty years old when she died. Just like that, she was gone.

I could tell you I heard people coming, cutting through the stones, approaching so swiftly that I felt I had no choice but to take the jar and run. That fact is somewhat irrefutable, since I still have the jar here in my possession. I wish I could tell you more, but I know practically nothing else about her. I searched the local newspapers for her obituary, for a story that should have been there. But it wasn't. There was no Lily anywhere I looked, not even in the library archives. She only seemed to exist in the graveyard, but when I went back the stone was gone. The grass was just beginning to grow again and the name became Leonard Sentence. Leonard was 93 when he died. I don't understand that part, but I have my suspicions.

You don't have to believe any of this if you don't want to. I completely understand. But I have no intention of deceiving you with any of this. I just want to tell you about the jar. I should have told you this part right at the beginning, so I am very sorry for that. Lily, she spends most days staring out of the glass, her face gets distorted by the bends so you see slivers of reflections of a sullen impatient girl. She never aged, forever preserved. But forever can get pretty tiresome, or so I have been told. Sometimes, it can get unbearable in here, when she gets into one of her fits. She goes batshit when I drape the black cloth over her, because she hates the dark. And that's when drawers start opening by themselves, and the channel gets changed on the tv, and all of the radios will turn on at once. My neighbors get pissed when this happens late at night and they've complained to the super. So, I really try to keep on her good side. Try not to ruffle her feathers. She likes it when I have visitors. She tells me she gets tired of looking at me all of the time, so that's why I invited you over, and that's why I'm telling you all of this.

I know this is weird, so forgive me in advance, but she likes to play a game whenever I have company. She sits on the shelf, and she knows I'm going to lead you over and tell you just a little bit about her and how she ended up in the jar. And she will correct me if the story leads astray even a little, oddly enough. I hear her in my head, feeding me lines whenever I trip up. But her game involves whether or not you pick up the jar or if you leave it alone. That's the hinge this whole relationship swings on. She gets the ones who shake her and upset her eternal relative tranquility, because for reasons she won't explain, she's going to end up taking your soul.

I'm really sorry. She won't let me tell anyone not to pick her up before you do it or not. Those are the rules that I have to play by. Please don't take it personally. You don't have to believe any of this if you don't want to. Just don't believe anything will happen.

She makes me, just know that. She makes me bring people over. I know we work together but it's nothing personal. I never know who will disturb the jar and who will just think I'm a nut. And the people who think I'm a little funny in the head, I usually end up becoming pretty good friends with them. We stay in touch. People who shake the jar, they just end up going, I hate to say. They just die, no apparent rhyme or reason, they fall to the ground or swerve the car into the oncoming lane or they go to bed and just never wake up.

But the night they die, I see them inside the jar with Lily. They're scared shitless, and she, well, I am not really sure what she does to them, but they're always gone by the next morning, and then she's back to staring out on my little room. She says she'll help me if she can, so I help her. But, maybe none of this will happen to you.

I hope it doesn't, because you seem cool. I really wish you didn't pick up the jar.

THE POLAROID and the story that goes with it

1/1/11 1008 pm

I took a Creative Writing class while I was attending Brookdale Community College. I had taken another of the professor Gene Snyder's classes the previous year, in Literature of the Occult. I went into the class with my wife, who was then just my fiancee, and we went together to class, into Snyder's workshop, not sure of what to expect.

So, it was pretty simple, it seemed. All we had to do was write, a roomful of us, less than 20 including Gene, but I recognized a gentleman from seeing him at my job on a regular basis. His name was Dick Herman, and he was one of my regulars, and he knew me as the smiling servant of the restaurant industry. Inside the cutout room of the new annex he learned a little bit more about me than I think he had reckoned for.

Up to that point in my life, I was writing sporadically, I knew I enjoyed it but it wasn't something I really pursued but the class allowed me a certain measure of focus on the act of creation. I went home after the first or second class, when we had the assignment of writing something, anything, but a lightbulb burst above my head, it heated up so fast. Frantically I created something readable, I had hoped; I never really ever had given others the pleasure of reading what I wrote, unless you were a teacher or something. But in the class, we would be assigned the first drafts of what everyone came up with, and we'd make our way through critiquing each other.

So I wrote something kinda terrible. Maybe a little grammatically awkward (I insisted on writing it in the present tense) but, just kinda awful in a bad way from start to finish. But that wasn't what I set out to do. I just wanted to create a narrative and exploit my characters, just to see what would happen. So I worked at it until I was happy, and due to my name being near the front of the alphabet, I think the third story read and critiqued was mine. I called it 'The Polaroid.' I will copy and paste it following the body of this introduction.

The class reacted somewhat unexpectedly to what I had written. It seemed like I upset a lot of people, students who were moms and shouldn't have been forced to have pornography around their children, filth assigned to them to read. My work was reduced to two words, scrawled across the front of her copy. One of the middle aged middle classed moms who wanted to write flowery romantic fiction. It said 'PURE PORN.'

I didn't set out to write porn, but the class, they fixated on the sex and violence, and the way they were united, the way I wrote it. There were some creepers in that class too, who seemed to enjoy it a little too much. And so they argued throughout most of the time they spent tearing apart my story. Some of them were deeply offended, and I just didn't know what to say.

My friend Dick, the one who I had served breakfast to for like three years, he says I'm like some kind of secret pervert who never lets on how perverted he really is. He interacted differently with me from that point on, that was for certain. And some people dropped the course right after that. I don't know if it was because of me. Maybe they didn't feel creative.

But Gene dug it and he encouraged me to run with it, so I wrote another story in that class, and then went on to begin developing visions of an opus work entitled 'The Leper Meditations,' which I labored on for a few years. Gene invited me to join one of his writing workshops outside of class like but I didn't have the cash or the fearlessness to study with the old guy. I have one of his books in my library, the 'Ogden Enigma,' I think. He wrote some cool stuff, crazy scifi action, and it was in general a pretty great experience for me, and I got an easy A in the class (or was Brookdale still on the check plus or minus grading system?). I began to write more feverishly, producing strange media like fliers and booklets, scissors and glue cut and paste editing. I guess Gene allowed me to use the tools in my arsenal to carve out something ugly for people to look at, like they've done something wrong, and that's what I was trying to capture with my writing in general and this story in particular. So presenting, my first foray into the world of transgressive fiction, 'The Polaroid,' (and I fixed the tense after all). Please be advised that there is some graphic depictions in this piece, so I ask if maybe you shouldn't be reading stuff like this, well, maybe you shouldn't be. Like you Mom, maybe skip this one. I'd hate to have you react negatively to such fiction that I made. Thanks!!

THE POLAROID

The shrill tone of the telephone pulled me from my trance devotion to the TV set in the middle of the living room. I picked the receiver up out of the cradle and pressed it to my ear.

"Hello?"

"Hey Paul, what's up?" Eric's painfully sarcastic tone responded back. Fuck, anyone but him.

"Oh, hey I'm just watchin' some TV with my old man." I glanced over at my father, fully reclined basking in the cathode glare. The mention of his existence didn't stir him. He was as oblivious as ever.

"You're such a fucking pussy, Paul. Fucking Friday night, and you're spending quality time with your daddy. That's sweeter than shit. You ladies resting from doing each other's nails?"

"Look, dude, what do you want? I'm not supposed to be tying up the line right now, he's waiting for a call," Eric could probably tell I was lying, but I was willing to try anything to get out of this conversation. Whenever Eric calls me late in the evening, it usually turns out to be something humiliating, dangerous, or illegal.

"Well, before I let you get back to your Fantasy Island reruns, listen for a second. Meet me behind the Methodist church in the parking lot at midnight, and wear something dark."

"No, I can't," I said.

"Be there, and don't be late. You know better than that, don't you, Paul?" It was a commonly used threat on Eric's part, but it was one that usually worked. He had enough shit on me to get me in serious-ass trouble with a lot of people, even though he had a hand in all of it. If Mayor Hamilton ever found out what we did to his daughter Kayla and their golden retriever Lucky, we'd probably both be in jail right now, with new assholes torn into us courtesy of the Mayor.

What in the hell did Eric want tonight?

He's not what you would call one of my best friends; of course, I really don't have many of those anyway. We grew up together as neighbors, and seeing that we were both total losers, we had to stick together out of necessity to avoid as many ass beatings and tortures as possible from the other kids around town. When we hit puberty, I pretty much stayed the same quiet nobody, whereas he changed. He started hanging out with all the older local heads and fuck-ups (a lot of the same guys who made Eric drink his own piss out of a soda can when he was eight). He picked up all their mannerisms and habits, all the dope and fucking around and being destructive to all those around them. He still occasionally hung around with me, when they weren't around, but I think our quality time together was used for Eric to be as sadistic to me like Rooster and those guys were to him. One good thing about him, though: he turned me on to pot and its many joys. He would usually supply me with weed he had scored from the local schwag dealers here in town. I'd almost always have to beg him for some, though, and getting high with Eric always carried a price. He liked playing subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) head games and fucking with me hard, tricking me into doing things I wouldn't normally do. He has that effect on me.

I sat in my room, occasionally leaning out the window to hotbox a cigarette, listening to old Black Sabbath records I stole off my old man. 11:45 came soon, and I failed to convince myself that I should go meet him at the church. I crept out into the living room to check on my dad. He was as I expected to find him, snoring away, his can of Busch still cradled in his fingers but dribbling out its contents onto the carpet, filling the room with its heady smell. I snuck out the back door and zipped up my black army jacket, and headed for the church.

I could see Eric standing in the misty shadows behind the church, a thin specter lurking there. I saw his nervous face checking to make sure it was me. As I reached him, he handed me a lit joint.

"Here you go, but don't fuckin' slobber all over it, asshole." I put it to my lips and toked deeply, the hot smoke tearing at my throat and lungs. After my fourth or fifth hit, as the J slowly became a blackened roach, I felt like something was terribly wrong, but I'm not quite sure what it was. I felt real high, higher than I've ever been. I wasn't sure if I was making the feeling up in my head. Not sure about anything. Felt real fucking panicked.

"What the fuck is in this shit, Eric?" My heart threw itself repeatedly against my prison cell ribcage. Each beat bounced my body against an unseen wall, I'm not here, but dangling from a long cord in some deep cavern, being jerked to and fro.

I heard from far away, "It's weed, you fuckin' pussy. What the fuck are you talking about?" The sure voice reaffirmed to my rational mind that I was going completely crazy. I looked down into the grass and saw each individual blade wiggle like they were all being pumped alive by electrical current. They all chanted my name over and over, a hypnotic mantra that consumed my consciousness.

A hard shove awakened me from this void. Reality rushes back up into my senses. Eric's stared me in the face angrily. "Jesus Christ, Paul. You never smoked weed laced with embalming fluid before? Fuckin' better than the usual shit I get, don't you think? Rooster took an ounce of this shitty dirtweed and hosed it down with this chemical spray he got from his cousin, said it was fucking embalming fluid. I feel like I'm on real intense acid, don't you, pussy? I thought you were gonna shit your pants just now. That was funny as hell." I felt slightly more in touch now with my mind. At least it was only the fucking pot that made me feel that way.

"All right, you gotta get your head together, man. You better not fuck this up tonight. I ain't getting busted because of a piece of shit like you." He began to pull me along by my coat collar.

"Where are we goin'," I asked him, still unsure of the evening's felony.

"Just doin' a job on this guy here in town. Rooster told me he's gone for the week, went down to Texas to do a run. No alarm, no real close neighbors, no one else in the house. Not even a fucking watchdog. We're in and we're fucking out, as long as you don't trip over your own dick."

"What do you need me for, then?"

"Shit, bitch, you just gotta help me carry out the goddamn loot. Rooster said he's got two motherfuckin' kilos of coke in there. If we score that, Rooster said he's give me a good cut of it. I'll be fuckin' set." Eric beamed, like a normal kid would if he made the honor roll.

"What am I going to get out of it?" Sure as hell want a piece of something, too, considering I'm an accessory to breaking into this dude's house.

He stopped and shot me a pissed-off glare. "Don't you fuckin' worry about what you're gonna get. We'll see what we can find in there. Maybe we'll find some porno magazines you can keep, huh? Just keep your mouth shut right now. I gotta think." His pace quickened; I struggled to keep up with him. He was nervous, anxious, jumpy; his gestures and tone of voice were aggravated. I looked him over, analyzing him as we walked through the back yards and over the fences in the darkness of night. He was usually residing in a more lethargic position, bordering on coma, sadistic on occasion as he felt fit. But tonight he's fucking on, like a light switch. Is it that fucked-up weed, I wonder. Or is it because of what we're about to do?

He stopped right in front of me and I bumped into his back. He pointed to the house that is our destination, just your average suburban stoner crash pad. Looks like it could've been a nice place at one time in its existence. We dodged various obstacles like chunks of dead cars and demolished doghouses as we crept through the unkempt backyard. Not a light is on in the house; the moon glares back at us from every pane. Eric paused on the back porch, glanced around, and put his elbow through the window on the door. The shatter was brief but loud, making me spin my vision to make sure no one noticed the crash in the quiet air. Eric fished his hand through and fumbled with the inside lock, then swung it open.

"Ladies first, bitch," he said, shoving me in. "I forgot to bring you a pair of gloves, so try not to touch anything in here, or else it's your ass." His work-gloved hand pulled a heavy yellow flashlight out of his pocket and flicked it on. Aimed the beam at me. "What are you waiting for, man? Start fuckin' looking. We ain't got all fuckin' night." He wandered upstairs as I headed for the living room.

It was so quiet in there it made my ears ache. I felt tense, fighting the urge growing that told me to run home and forget about this place and Eric. I really didn't want to snoop through this guy's shit, but I especially didn't want to leave my prints on anything. I pulled on a dangling light switch that illuminated the living room. Walked over to look at the dude's record collection that was in the corner, on the side of the speaker cabinet. Taking care to wrap my hands inside my t-shir,t I thumbed through the dusty crate. One album caught my eye, an old King Crimson record that had a painting of some guy's screaming face close-up on the sleeve. I dropped it back into the slot where I found it, and weny to pick out another one when I saw two plastic wrapped bricks nestled in between the crate and the wall, smashed in there out of sight. The son of a bitch probably thought nobody'd find his two fucking kilos of coke back here. I ran out of the room to go tell Eric.

Things got real fucked-up when I found the room he was in, and I looked down and saw some guy crouching in the corner, about to spring upon these intruders. Right before he leaped, I noticed he doesn't have anything in his hands, no knife, no heavy weight or bludgeon, must have thought he was some kind of hardass.

Then I started to scream, cause I was scared out of my fucking mind.

"What the fuck you doing yelling Paul somebody's gonna-" that was all he got out before the guy tackled him like a football player, snapping Eric's head back to smack loudly on the floor. The flashlight he had flew up in the air, spinning its shine everywhere. It landed on the carpet, pointing at them wrestling on the carpet. I picked it up so I could aim it better at them, to view the struggle. They fought like rabid dogs. The man was clearly dominating Eric, landing punches and headbutts onto his face, pressing his weight down on Eric's scrawny frame. The sick motherfucker actually stuck his head down face to face with him and bit down on lip, taking a piece of Eric's bottom one, exposing his clenched teeth before spraying blood upwards into his face. The shower distracted him for a moment as Eric's hands worked their way up and started gouging wildly at the man's eyes, as his left index caught under an eyelid, pulling hard away from his face, scrapes of skin getting caught under the fingernails, both figures bleeding freely. The guy started to scream and yell and began to drive knee after knee into Eric's balls. Eric answered back with a deafening response of his own.

"Fucking Paul, man, help me. HELP ME!" His voice was cracking and pained. I just couldn't seem to tear myself away from viewing this violent ballet that was taking place before me. Of course, I did realize that when this guy was finished with Eric, which looked like soon, he was gonna come after me. I swung the flashlight, hard, into the man's face, catching him in the mouth and on the chin. The impact crumbled his teeth as they broke apart like chalk, tearing into his tongue, which was poking out viewing the spectacle. I tugged the flashlight away as the red provided an overwhelming contrast to the yellow handle. The next blow fell upon his right eye. After that, every subsequent hit blurred together in my mind, a slowly unfolding montage of brutality that I was the star of. I realize he was not moving anymore. I was soaked with his blood.

"Hey motherfucker, say cheese," it was Eric, a flash of light that for a second exposed the mess that I had created there, then the brightness was gone the second it left, submerging the room in darkness again. I was disoriented, like before when I first got high, not sure where I am. Eric found the light switch as finally the light came back. I wished it had stayed dark in there. I was not hallucinating. This was really happening. Eric stood there stupidly cruel, a big black Polaroid camera in his hands. He must have had time to collect himself and find it in the room as I killed the guy. Blood was still running down his chin, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Yeah, I must have never told you that I was sort of an amateur photographer. Shit, I could probably get this published in the paper, maybe even on the six o'clock news." He waved the picture in the air to speed up its development. "Exclusive crime scene photograph, catching killer in action. Fucking excellent."

"You asshole, give me that," I demanded as I lunged for him. He pulled back from me as he shoved me away with his free hand. I looked up and caught a glimpse of it, clearly capturing what I had done. Shit.

"Hey Paul, just think of this as insurance in case you ever try to rat me out, you know, we can go and tell the pigs what you did." He had me by the balls. And I fucking saved his ass by killing that guy. I just wanted to fucking kill him right then, just to shut him up. He noticed my anger and put the picture into his pocket.

"You know what, Paul, this gives me a great idea. You take the camera and fire off some pictures of me and our friend over there. I want to have a memento of the occasion, my best buddy's first kill." He pressed the bulky Polaroid into my hands and walked over to the body. He stood over it, apprehensive to touch it outright. "Jesus fucking Christ, you really fucked this guy up, man. My God, he doesn't even have a face anymore. Did you see what this bitch did to me, Paul? Fucking bit me on the lip like he was trying to kiss me! Fucking piece of shit!" He kicked the corpse for good measure.

I looked around the sparsely furnished room. The only decoration was a series of Polaroid photos thumbtacked up on the wall. All are of some empty-eyed, slack-faced chick strung up in a harness, receiving various forms of discipline by a fat, leather-clad dominatrix with long red hair. The tied-up girl with a ball gag in her mouth looks about how I feel. Eric finally lifted the corpse's head and looked closely into its rearranged face.

"Man, this ain't even the guy who lived here, I don't think, it don't really look like him, but how can you tell after what you did to him, huh? Hey dude, smile," he lifted the head close to his and mugged at the camera. I hesitated, then squeezed off the shot.

Eric contorted himself and his friend into various juvenile poses. I kept snapping the pictures, part out of wanting to oblige him so we could get out of here, part growing interest in the macabre, disturbing scene in front of me. I still didn't want him having that one of me.

"I want that goddamn picture, Eric. I don't want anyone finding it. Asshole, listen to me!" I continued to yell at him, but he didn't seem to notice. He was having fun. He giggled like a Mongoloid as he made the limbs dance with his own, shuffling the body along, doing a crude tango. He became a ventriloquist, pulling the jaw to mimic speech, making low-blow, childish cracks about the man's demise and present condition. I dutifully took the pictures, lining one after another against the wall, facing the series across the room.

"Hey Paul, how many pictures you got left?" He made the body stand on its knees but he still had to support it with a steady hand on the shoulder.

"Uh, I think one more," I was very out of touch right then, bordering on what I felt was pure screaming psychosis, a kind of calm before a raging storm. Anything could have happened, and I would have believed it to be true.

"All right then, dude, get a close-up on this one. This is gonna be the keeper." He began unbuckling his jeans, undoing them with one hand. Eric eased them down his hips, trying to shake them off, getting them down far enough to expose his genitals. He grabbed his half-hard cock, pulled it tight from the bottom to make it stiffer, its head veiny and purple. His hand supporting the body shifted, so he held on by the top of the hair, the weight dangling like a heavy pendulum. Eric moved his dick closer, trying to work its way in to the corpse's mouth, through the fragments of jagged teeth, making tiny splatters of blood down his open jeans. The bloody mouth accomadated him, swallowing the sex organ whole. Eric groaned in pleasure, grinding the corpse's mouth closer in mock porno gyrations. I couldn't take it anymore.

I dropped the camera, staring at him in hysterical disbelief.

"Come on, dickhead, pick up the camera. I want a picture of this."

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" I screamed and raged at him, dizzy and insane from the atmosphere in the room. "Look at what you're doing! You're fucking sick, man, SICK SICK SICK!" His expression changed, but not because of my impassioned presentation. He looked down and found his penis gone, not where he had grown accustomed to seeing it for all his life, there was nothing there, just flat skin and pubic hair and a bloody gap where his dick used to be. He saw the corpse's jaw locked firmly in a spasm, separating Eric's penis from him with a row of clashed tight teeth. Blood pumped up to the injured surface, the wound freeing it to splash out down his thighs and the face before him. He let go and the body fell, as Eric fumbled for it.

"Jesus fucking Jesus NO!" One hand clutched his bleeding crotch as the other hand tried to force its way into the corpse's mouth, looking for his lost cock.

"Oh Paul please fucking help me Paul please!" I knew right then what I had to do to make the situation better.

The flashlight was sticky from the congealing blood all over it. Still, I used it again, with a much more methodical fashion than before. Firm, strong, direct strokes, all upon Eric's crying face, special attention paid to every important area. I really put myself into it the second time around. Eric looked worse than the other guy.

He really deserved it. I was tired of the way he treated me. He wouldn't be able to fuck with me anymore.

I bent over and pulled my picture out of Eric's pocket. It was all bent up and wrinkled and bloody, but I didn't want to leave it here. I scooped up the rest of the shots that I had lined up against the wall. They were coming with me, as was the last one of the series of the S&M photos, as I realize that those were taken in here also. The trussed-up girl, a close-up of her face contorted in a mixture of pain and ecstasy, smeared with sweat and what looked like shit.

One more thing, though.

There was one picture left in the Polaroid.

The two slack bodies fitted nicely together, like adjacent puzzle pieces as I squeezed them into the frame of the picture, embracing in a post-mortem 69. It was actually kind of erotic, seeing them like that. Maybe I'm more like Eric that I realized.

Flash!

The cops would never figure out what happened here. They would never understand. I wiped off the flashlight and the Polaroid, getting rid of any loose fingerprints I might have left, just in case. That guy will be suprised when he comes home from Texas, won't he? They'll probably put him away for this, considering he wouldn't be able to use his going on a drug run as an alibi. Maybe he will, though, I just don't fucking care. I wanted out of there.

Washed my hands, then went and got that coke. I'll need something to do so as to fill the void now that Eric's gone.

I don't know if I'll miss him or not.

(Here's a happy kitten to help cleanse the mental palate.)

Hope that wasn't too bad!!

sincerely

s bowlin

K GRAVE

It was sometime in 2002 that I wanted to create not just a musical act, but more of a performance art piece set to sound, and I enlisted my friends Jay to join me in the endeavor. By that time I had known Jay since my wife and I moved to Kent, OH, and met a recently transplanted himself Jay, on his own up the street from us. It made sense that we would gravitate towards each other.

Up to that point I think Jay was one of the craziest sons of bitches I'd ever had the pleasure of meeting, outside of random mental cases met casually, Jay was very polite and quick to laugh but he could turn into a madman at the drop of a hat. He'd seize you by the lapel and chant rabid accusations, some practically in tongues, and he was grand in gesture and reaction, a magician without a top hat. The first time he came to visit us in our new apartment, he had brought over a box of wine and once that was gone we were instant friends. He was a visionary and a mad prophet escaped from the desert, part child evangelist gone wild, he could eat a whole BBQ chicken in one sitting, leaving only the bones, and he was an artist, an artist who made maniacal paintings and seemed almost feverish at times. He was very magnetic, and he introduced us to those others who had been drawn into Jay's sideshow machinations. I always felt Jay lacked the pulpit from which he could spread his message, and to supply him with one would be a magical thing.



I decided to create something kinda ugly but highly spiritual out of sound, and feature Jay to tear through the tomato fields in bare feet and a tattered tuxedo. I wanted to forge something hypnotic, but more importantly I wanted to extend outwards to the realms of public spectacle, where we could catapult this lumpy projectile straight at people. I asked Jay to record himself, talking or chanting or even reading, but to try and capture his inherent intensity. Once he gave me the data disc I went to cutting up and asking what I had, with sine waves and primitive samples of Tibetan prayer bowls and church bells. I put together the demo 'Demostration 2002' and christened the project K GRAVE, named for the ketamine fugue state of nothingness, a mindstate I wanted to force people into and to exploit Jay's atavistic tendencies.

Jay was up for it, he was up for anything. By that time we were living in NJ, in separate residences after having roommates together for a time. I found the email address of a local booking agent for shows in our area, mostly hardcore matinees but I wanted to pitch to this guy, so I sent him the demo and the leaflet/flier that we had made, with our manifesto of sorts on it. To my surprise, the booker was into the cdr, he called it 'a soundtrack to a horror film' but every booking fell through, as he didn't think we'd fit on any of the bills he was promoting. I fantasized about traumatizing little hardcore kids with our sonic gruel, but he never offered anything else to us, and sadly we never got a chance to perform live, thus depriving the world of the fierce spectacle of K GRAVE. After a few years Jay moved back to Ohio, where he's into the local produce scene. I had intentions of creating a soundboard of Jayspeak but I never got around to it. I wonder if he ever thinks about how glorious it would have all been, to terrify into submission a room full of faces and to allow Jay to channel some higher energy and perhaps for everyone to have a wonderful mystical experience.

Here is a link to download 'Demonstration 2002' plus, two other pieces recorded post-demo, utilizing Jay's vocal torments: Mediafire Link



Here is the original manifesto:

A CALL TO WITNESS——Within endless circles there is an understanding of a certain protocol, a prototype to uphold, a patent to honor. There may be laws so cosmic that they are nearly invisible in our heads, as silent as a thought, signaling commands. Reptilian brain schemes must be dealt with upon an individual basis, and this thorough double-gloved deprogramming will be accompanied by the wails of paranoid schizophrenic street preachers, the clanging of detuned churchbells, and a very sorrowful greek chorus who sing only in sine waves. K GRAVE are the conductors of this almost unholy symphony. K GRAVE are two individuals who push at the sturdy walls of endurance to blaze new pathways out of the head, and into the skull. Using sound loops and scrapes both primal sounding and foreign, various antiquated effect setups, and a stream of tortured consciousness that flows from the body of the honorable Rev. Avatar, a new strange understanding seems almost attainable. K GRAVE has been delivered from a thornbed of ideas, crosscutting tent revivalism with power electronics and primal scream therapy and performance art and sufi brain training exercises and alphawave thoughbending and gnostic scripture lessons and backwoods witchcraft legends and rabid mid-western upbringing, a sonic cocktail that takes god out of the classroom and sticks him right in your third eye chakra. Let it in.

12/17/46--7/15/09

I am very lucky to have been born into the family that also contained my Aunt Eva, one of the most magical people I have ever encountered. She was alternatively referred to as a witch, a Satanist, a whore, and the life of the party everywhere she went. She took the older kids in the family to haunted houses around Halloween, where my mom had no interest in paying someone money to try and scare you. But Eva seemed to live for thrills and frills, all made up with no where to go, and she was the first woman I ever met who always wore wigs, I don't think I ever saw her natural hair. In the mythology of my childhood she looms large, sometimes through first-hand memory but also through the recollections of others in my family and this has colored my perception of this woman, who passed away in 2009, but is still very alive and vibrant, the aftereffect of a kinda charmed life, maybe even jinxed, but she was certainly an unforgettable character. I would like to share some of my memories, but thinking about only allowing for my stories to be heard provided but one reflection of this woman and who she was, but also to seek out the stories of my sisters and mother, and others who knew her. I haven't decided yet if I want to keep her anonymous to perhaps 'protect' her sanctity but then, the kind of lady she was, I think she'd love the hell out of it if the whole world knew her name. So maybe this is her helping me out with this? Wouldn't be surprised.

I can google my Aunt and I'm amazed at some of the things I've found, due to her being involved in the politics of a small town in Ohio, but there's other stuff too. I found this page called tributes.com and there was her brief obituary. They left out all of the good parts.

I didn't attend her funeral. She passed away in 2009, halfway through the summer. I know I should have, and I regret not seeing her one last time. It had been the summer of 1995 when I last saw her, the summer I fell in love with a beautiful girl; we had a small family get together for the Fourth of July. She seemed as wicked and as full of life as she had always been, even though she had endured some serious health problems but somehow managed to bounce back, and she still smelled the same when I hugged her, a scent I have never smelled before or since but unforgettable in my memory, the smell of sweet flowers wilting in a humid greenhouse.

My Aunt was the first person who demonstrated there may be an alternative to traditional methods of belief and spiritualism. I was raised in a religious family and we went to church every Sunday, and I took to certain sections of the Bible when I was very young, somewhat fanatically. According to some people, my Aunt was a witch, others said she conjured spirits, others say she worshipped the Devil. Honestly, I was too young to really fully understand what she practiced, but it amazed me and enchanted, even when 'bad' things would happen to her, that was as engrossing as hearing about her experiments with leaving tape recorders in graveyards overnight and then playing back EVP's of people moaning and babies crying. There were kid stories I heard about seeing the leftover remnants of rituals, of weird images appearing on the walls of the basement (where I'm assuming most of the rituals took place). Even driving past their house, years after they'd moved out, I would feel a charge, the tiniest voltage of an energy that I could barely process but certainly feel.

I don't know for sure how she grew up, if it was all just rebellion against authority, or if she just liked to shock and awe, because that was part of her repertoire, catching you off guard. Maybe she just made up some of the stories, perhaps fleshed them out to give my aunts and uncles and grandparents a figurative goose. There were tales of possessed Ouija Boards, of ghostly aura photographs depicting the faces of demons. And I know there's so much more that I am not remembering.

I remember my Grandmother recounting of Eva's experience with the Ouija. I think around this time there must have been a wave of popularity for mysticism in general and pop culture magic in particular. Eva had brought a board home, to where she was living with her husband and his parents. Apparently she used it frequently, at once both exploring and consulting, I'd assume. I don't know if you've ever used a Ouija board, but if you have, you know that, unless there's another pair of fingertips on the planchette it's going nowhere on the board. I've tried it in the past and just felt silly, but with two people there is a synergy that enhances the experience. Perhaps Aunt Eva had enough synergy to communicate with the other side, where the dead rest? I don't know. There are many schools of thought on what is happening when you use the Ouija. Maybe it's your subconscious, just telling you what you want to read (actually, I take back my previous statement. A third person is essential for serious Ouija use, as they act as scribe and intrepeter.) My Grandmother believed in evil spirits, and demons, and that a Ouija board was an invitation into your very soul from these tempestuous beings. And apparently, Eva caught the 70's equivalent of a computer virus when one of those evil spirits got in through the open gate and took over the board. Grandma told me in an empty room the planchette would suddenly glide across the surface as you watched from the doorway. The board would be put away for the night, only to be found set up in its regular space the next morning. I don't know what kind of things it told Eva, but it must have been too much for her because she decided it was time to get rid of it.

So, here it gets a little weirder. Grandma said Eva took the board outside and threw it into the burn barrel, only to come back with a gas can and matches. She tried to burn it but the board itself would not blacken or char. Nothing, it seemed, could destroy it or remove it from Eva's life. I don't know where the Ouija board finally ended up, but, as the story went, where the Ouija board had leapt by itself from the firry pit and landed, the grass was different. It left a nuclear mark, killing the grass, an indelible effect upon the blades as they would not be ever growing there again. And that's when Grandma showed me the spot in the yard, and yeah, it did kind of look kind of funny having so much overgrowth surrounding it, this dead patch of ground, and of course I believed it all. Why not believe in a world where there are other forces swirling around us, every day and we barely notice, but sometimes you can find a transistor to tune in a particular signal, to touch something others might label as evil but was perhaps malignantly maligned?

Many years later, as a curious teen, I found myself interested in the Ouija, and I wanted to look past the veil for myself, and this seemed to be the method not only the most commercially accessible but also seemed so taboo. I found that in my experiences certain messages do come through the ether, but I don't know how reliable that information is, since, like, you're seeking advice from a pressed board and a magnifying glass on felt tipped feet. Perhaps there remains a need in us from more primitive times when we still sought the conch of the presences of those who have passed on, ancestor worship reduced to something you can buy at Toys R Us (I think they still sell them there, but I don't think Walmart does.)

There were many odd superstitions I seem to have inherited, and with that birthright I have sought out the energy source of belief, following it back to the source for myself. And its taken me a lifetime, but on my way there she is, my Aunt, as tourguide and flamebearer in the darkness.

So I intend to return to her story from time to time, as I learn more about her and maybe others will come forward to help me tell about her. So try and not be alarmed.

And now, here's the Eagles classic, 'Witchy Woman."

TAKING A BEATING

I remember watching the movie 'Fight Club' and then, later, reading the novel, and that I understood there was redemptive power in the act of fighting, of fighting your way back to pure manhood, the glory of an ass-beating, the promise of freedom through rebellion. But I fixated on that taking a beating part. I felt Jared Leto's cheekbones being smashed in, and I knew there was no glory in that, no redemption.

I think maybe Chuck Palaniuk, or Brad Pitt or Ed Norton for that matter, never have taken a severe ass beating in their experiences. No glory at all. Everyone knows, when it comes to violence, it violates the rules of Christmas and every other ritual gift exchange, because here, giving is much better than receiving. I can still feel what it felt like when I punched my friend Kevin straight in the face, coming out of a hotel bathroom swinging. We were on a high school marching band trip to New York City, all the way from New Middletown, Ohio. And my roommates were engaging in a pillow fight I grew weary of early. I took a shower, came out to a darkened room, and was hit squarely in the face with a stiff pillow shot. I saw stars and punched straight out where Kevin's face happened to be and I felt his nose squish beneath my knuckles and I felt a sick satisfaction in knowing I escalated the action to make the pillow fight cease and ruined the good time with my fist. Everyone went to bed, or else left to go to another room, I don't remember, but I do remember sleeping soundly that night.

So, I know one's better than the other. Because, in a safe environment where you're surrounded by friends and fellows and you want to test the boundaries of your own strength and courage, sometimes you can do that, but most other times, you simply cannot. It will not happen so gently. I've been on the receiving end, one time in particular more worse than any others I can have the resolve to remember, but still somewhat transformative in my teenage psyche. I will recount this for you, despite in its retelling I feel much more the antagonist than I thought I remembered.

It was near Halloween, and the chill in the air of our small town betrayed a fast approaching winter. My sister Linda and I found ourselves gravitating towards the kids up the street, the mishmashed collection of Petersburg's best and brightest miscreants, and for a night somehow joined them in their evening festivities.

Someone said there was a hayride cutting through the outskirts of town. A truck hauling a hayload and a bunch of teenaged kids down black country roads, the kind that surrounded our tiny little town, swallowed up by murk and darkness. But, this wasn't so random of a collection. This was the high school marching band clique that I had been in the band with but never a part of, most of them at least, with their other friends.

And then someone in our group had eggs, cartons of them, and I was enlisted to accompany this ragtag band of egg throwing bandits, an egg in each hand, four or five of us, we took through backyards and alleyways to the edge of Garfield Road, to hide in the shadow of the hill next to the post office. And we waited, but not for long, because we heard the diesel huff of the truck's engine and saw the hayride coming down the street.

Someone said throw, and the eggs sailed through the air, but I hesitated, watching how they did it, and then mine hit the air following, both at once it seemed, and we heard the truck screech stopped. There came another simple command, then, maybe from the same voice. It said Run!

And so I ran, a fat little fourteen year old boy who'd thrown eggs blindly at a group of people, not knowing or caring what they hit. I'm sure it would have been fine if they just hit the street, short of their target. But they wouldn't be stopping if someone hadn't been splattered. We were seen and found ourselves in pursuit, through the small cemetery that was an island between two streets, a small stretch of military graves and ancient headstones that floated there, separated by the larger cemetery a half mile down around the corner. But in the darkness I found myself running faster than I had ever had to run before, and even still I could see my compatriots fading into the distance ahead of me. Maybe I was too concerned with tripping over a grave stone, maybe I was too fat to be chased, but the voices behind me got louder and angrier like a reverse Doppler, until I could feel them on top of me.

I stopped running. I just couldn't anymore. And they came to a stop then, behind me, and I felt the first punch land on the back of my head. It bent me forward, as I tried to cover up the best I could but the punches kept coming, in my back and uppercuts to my face and more punches to my skull, making me see purple sparkles behind my eyelids every time. Three or four dudes, just taking their shots and me, taken to screaming and blubbering and just being their heavybag. I told them I had nothing to do with the egging, that I was their friend, that I was chasing the kids who really did it. I didn't fall down, I don't know how but I knew if I did I could get kicked and stomped and I knew I didn't want that. So I cried a little and begged some and finally they stopped hitting me. They ran away triumphant, while I stood in between graves and refused to believe it was over.

I crept in the shadows to the store only a hundred yards in front of me, the corner store in the middle of town offered a shadowy retreat so I could collect myself and figure out how to get home. It was there where I examined myself to make sure I was intact. And I felt one of the braces connected to a front tooth was loose in my mouth, just spinning on the wire. Nothing else seemed damaged, no teeth actually missing. I didn't have a mirror to see how bad my face looked, but I forgot all about my face when I realized I had pissed my pants.

The pee stain on my crotch ran down my leg in a dark streak, the denim soaked to an inky black against the relief of the faded blue. I guess they hit the piss button in my brain, the one that tells me to go, and I went all right. To make matters worse, the hayride was still going on, this time now with a shared story of a beatdown and what if they caught me creeping home? I did not want that at all. I went down the back alley that ended on the edge of the Presbyterian church and avoided any detection, knowing the hayride couldn't fit down there. I climbed through the fence that separated our yard from the church and went in the front door, where Linda and a bunch of other neighborhood kids were hanging out and watching TV. Linda saw how jacked up I was and I may have began to cry at that point, but I don't remember, but she kicked them all out and drew me a bath and didn't mention the pee stain on the front of my jeans.

So there were many implications in this experience for me. Firstly, I realized I would probably see these guys again in some capacity, since I was still in high school band with them and we lived in an area with a severly small population. I went to church with one of the guys there, so I couldn't really get away from any of them. This was a problem especially since I found out I pee my pants when I get beat up, and did not look forward to peeing my pants in front of people in broad daylight. Secondly, I had escaped this beating with only broken hardware in my mouth, but it would have to be explained to my mother and my orthodontist, and so I decided my cover story was that I had fallen in gravel, thus explaining (I guess? I don't know why I emphasized the gravel part) my damaged braces and any facial discoloration. I also skipped Sunday services, out of fear mostly, and then began to dread going to school the following day.

But I went, and nobody had anything to say, including the kids who'd been throwing eggs with me. It felt like a non-event, and while I did not seek out the people involved with my beating, I don't feel like I was hiding, either. But when the bus dropped me off in front of my house, a car pulled into the alley and stopped in front of me. The window came down, and it was one of the boys who'd been there, I'm not sure if he was one of the punchers, but I knew for sure he'd seen it all.

"Hey Sam, you need to tell Jason Himes to leave us alone." I wasn't sure what Jason had to do with this situation, but I let him continue. "You cracked one kid's tooth and splattered eggs all over someone else, of course they were pissed off. He had to go to the dentist today to get his tooth recapped. But you tell Jason if he lays a hand on any one of us, we're coming back to take it out on you."

For some reason the scariest kid in town had threatened to give out multiple beatings to all guilty parties, Jason Himes, who had once threatened to murder me if I kept fighting with my neighbor Greg, while Jason was on his paper route. That had been two years prior but I was still terrified of him, but had had minor if any contact with him since. But Linda did, I guess. She went and explained what had happened to me, and he became my instant defender. Linda told me all of this, afterwards. For some reason Jason took my case, in a way.

So we existed in a state of detente, and Linda and I took up with Jason and his delinquent ways, the first real 'bad influence' upon us as my Mom would call him. But just know there's a treasure trove of stories about him I could share, but this is about getting a beating and living in the afterlife. The afterlife lingers and flickers and never really goes out, just as a reminder to fight with everything you have when you must absolutely have to. I will never piss my pants in battle again. And if I do take a whipping, I will not be ashamed to tell my Mom that her baby had just been beaten. There is no shame in that.