TigerEatsCow

I am numb when it hits. No feelings. Capped inside like a car tank full of gasoline. Maybe I have blood sloshing around but I don’t feel my heart beat and think gleefully. Wow, I LOVE being alive! Women in ads doing yoga with long blond ponytails. Women, stick thin, hair natural, in a field of sunflowers. Not sure what they’re doing, they’re laughing about it though. It’s a menopause commercial. Figures. 

TV bores me. Stupid commercials. Symbalta can help. I want to die, so badly, and I imagine it utterly consuming me. War. Death. Famine. Rape. Children with cancer. Billionaires. Wet bread, no crust. Pepto bismol pink. Acid ulcers in your stomach. All the bad things in the world. 

So when someone whistles my name at 9:23 at night while I’m eating hot cheetos, I simply shrug it off. I’ve been hallucinating smells, recently, I think, so I guess voices aren’t out of the question. 

Then it whistles again.

I’ve heard people online talking about the woods, but I figure, I deserve to be gutted and eaten by whatever finds me, my folks and their folks and the folks that made them took everything, so maybe we deserve to be guzzled by a goat-human?

Getting up and out of my boring ass life also sounds fun. 

As I approach the window, I smell something funky. Cat litter box funky. Maybe it’s a monster. I’m not sure.

***

My sister is throwing up piles of frogspawn. It comes out like it’s being shaken from a pipe, and plops into the toilet, sashaying back and forth for a few seconds before resting still. At first neither of us knew what to do. I hate vomit, and she’s hungover most of the time, so I frantically texted our younger brother. 

Paul doesn’t text back for an hour, and then asks us if we’ve both done shrooms. By that time, my sister’s skin is a pale greenish color, like the flesh of a leaded Victorian woman, stuffed with so many chemicals she’ll fizzle like seltzer at any second. Just whoosh, she’s gone, with a bunch of bubbles, up into the air. 

I am upright, the oldest of us, the herder. Of course I have not been doing shrooms. As to Abbie, my sincerity is less rigid. Shrooms, alcohol, weed, I am not sure. But the frogspawn is being flushed down the toilet as we speak. 

Paul asks what it smells like, and I tell him nothing. If anything, fresh apple-pairs, the kinds you get at markets, the kinds that are round and crisp and whose skin is the color of diarrhea. Asian pears, he says. Why do they call them Asian pears, Abbie asks, head on the tile, eyes to the ceiling. Asia is so big. Are they Philippine Pears? Malaysian Pears? Are they Pears from Chongqing, or Busan? Japan or Bhutan? Are they South East Asian Pears?

Great job at telling me you know geography, Paul says on the other line, as Abbie begins to sweat pale tears, her skin clamming up and shrinking across her face. In three or so hours, she’ll look like blubber, Paul tells me. Don’t worry, just toss some salt on her. She’ll scream for a bit, but you’ll have to take it, because if you don’t what comes after is worse. What’s worse, Paul. I dunno, never tried to see what happens after. Abbie pushes her hands towards the ceiling. Maybe I want to explore what’s worse, she says. No, Abbs, says the voice from the phone, no you don’t. Anyway, I have to go now, buh-bye, but please keep me updated. 

Did you eat frog legs, I ask, squeamish. 

Nah, Abbie says, I had two beers and a huge fucking burger at Claire’s last night. Then some Pesto on bread when I got hungry at three in the morning. Huh, I slump down against the tub. The guts of our childish habits still cling to the side of it – white pieces of stickers that mom has never managed to get off, no matter how much scrubbing she does. Blades will ruin the tub, so the testaments of our girlhood will remain there until someone’s brave enough to laser them off or something. 

You really shouldn’t be drinking that stuff, Abbs, dad’s worried. 

Dad can go fuck off.

Dad’s a pediatrician, Abbie.

Yeah, for kids, not for, like, adults.

You’re twenty-two.

I’m grown. 

It’s illegal. 

So is your face.

I just sigh. At least the frogspawn vomit has ceased. Now Abbie’s skin is crawling around, like a thousand fat centipedes are struggling to escape its under-layers. What the fuck is that, I say, dialing Paul again. Abbie groans, but then insists she’s fine. Paul doesn’t pick up again, so I shoot him a text. Abbie sits up, rubbing her temples. Ugh, she says, her hands oozing some sort of slop or slime that’s iridescent luna moth green. The fuck is this? She asks me. I shrug. Paul texts back: normal stage. Get her to drink some water so she doesn’t dry out.

Over the next few hours Abbie soaks in the tub, with her clothes on, and gulps down three bottles of Evian from the pantry. When she pees in the bath and giggles, I tell her she’s disgusting. She responds by taking her now webbed fingers out of the water and creeping them, slowly, my way and I shrink back, with a lowly and desperate STOP from the bottom of my stomach, and finally she stops. Her nose begins to curl forward now, along with her mouth, and by the end of the hour my brother texts me to get the salt. Abbie seems happy as she flutters about in the water, light green and covered in algae from the shedding of her own skin. I’m grown up, she says, I can handle it, as she writhes around.

I grab a huge tub of kosher salt off of the kitchen counter and return upstairs, where she is paddling her feet in slow motion. Closing my eyes, I hurl the tub of salt up and down so a bunch falls in the water. I can’t see her suffer, but I have to hear her suffer. The screams aren’t awful, but they’re not tolerable, either. She begs me to stop and stop and stop. I return with headphones, and pour the salt at an angle which I hope hits her body, eyes still closed. 

When the entire container is emptied, I rush out of the bathroom and close the door. I sit down on my bed and just breathe, hasty, for a few seconds. My eyes flutter forwards and close.

When I wake up, I hear a knock on my door. Abbie opens it, drying her damp, curly hair with an old pink towel. What’s up, she says, I feel so new. Let’s get out of here and get FroYo? 

I blink my eyes open, ask how she is feeling, ask if I’m okay. She brushes me off as if it’s normal. 

Paul responds to my last text with a laugh emoji. 

We never speak about it again.

***

Step one is to bleed yourself you can take your period blood or you can get a bloody nose and dip the paintbrush into it but it has to be your own and not contaminated with anyone else’s and if you can’t get blood from somewhere you probably shouldn’t hurt yourself but if you are really desperate you can it is ok my momma told me it is ok if you have to 

Step two is to use a paintbrush but it can’t be too big or too small, it has to be the right size, the right length, the right metal holding piece or stem, whatever you call that part of the paintbrush, and then you have to curve the blood into a circle on the ground, it doesn’t matter if the ground is dirt or marsh or mainland, sand works too, it just can’t be water, actually make sure you don’t do it around water, said Billy, and momma agreed

Step three is to actually draw the array on the ground, a circle and then a star inside it, and at each point or tip in the star make a little heart that is small enough to see, not a heart that looks like an upside down lady’s bum, but a real looking heart, it can be a few lines but it has to be the organ, not the symbol, if you do the symbol you really won’t get to the last step because it will take too long and then it’ll be weak at the end and you have to have it not be weak, if it is weak it won’t work and you’ll be stuck anyway after you draw the hearts at each point you have to draw two waves in the middle of the circle and then a square in the middle of the waves, and in the square should be a little eye, just an oval with a little circle in it and a dot in the circle, it doesn’t have to be fancy, if you want a little more power it can be fancy, but it doesn’t have to be

Step four is to put both of your index fingers on each end or tip of the eye at the same time, and then draw down two lines in the dirt or sand or whatever ground, and then to rub the blood and stuff from the ground that’s now on your hands onto your palms and the bottoms of your feet if you get nauseated rub a little on your inner wrists too but only a little or you’ll feel strangely good for a few days and you might eat food you shouldn’t eat that your body can’t digest 

Step five is to get into the circle, place both your feet in the center where the eye is, take three deep breaths, and draw three circles with your left or right hand (it doesn’t matter) and imagine them in your mind. 

Step six is to take both of your hands, clasp them together, raise them above your head, and then spread them as far as you can, really reach up and then down to your sides, creating flow and energy, says momma

Step seven is to quickly place your arms, still, like a stick, against the sides of your body, really really really quickly, because if you don’t you can’t escape and they will catch you

Step eight is to wait, you will feel a bit of a lurch under your feet and the ground will eat you up and pummel you down like it’s slapping you and you won’t be able to breathe for maybe fifteen seconds and it’ll be scary but you’ll get away from them, the men with sticks and dogs and guns, you’ll be free momma says, it’s your last result but you’ll be ok, and your feet know this dirt and your hands know this ground, it is safe

Step nine is to let the earth pocket you, that’s right, it’ll form a pocket around you, and it’ll crawl a little tunnel near your mouth so you can breathe, steadily, not well, but it will protect you, that little hidey-hole it makes for you as you sit in the dirt womb and wait, wait till the vibrations of trample from men’s feet passes, you won’t be caught, it’s ok, it’s ok, says the ground, then get up and run, run, follow the bright star

Step ten I was not expecting, and didn’t happen til the ground let me go and I shot up into a great big tree maybe a magnolia maybe a weeping willow all my body parts gone all my smells heightened and my many arms connected beneath ground to other things around me, deep and welded to this part of the earth 

That’s right, said the trees around me, and I heard my mother’s voice among them, it’s safer to be a tree, baby, that’s right, steps and steps I will no longer take, steps to be a tree 

Step eleven is to forget 

***

The truth is I am not excited to move into my parents house, even if it is free. The truth is it is my own haunted house.

I don’t want to return to where I grew up. My childhood was lonely. My fingers were busy spelling and spinning lines on paper and I was gassy and awkward and tight and terrified, trapped by the sanctity of a farm in between fields and the behemoth eye my parents used to guard me with. Strings. Strings is what I think of when I think about my childhood. Tight strings but also dusty ones, strings wet with substances I didn’t know, and strings I did not tie together. All watching over me, in a shabby old farmhouse, where wind tumbled through planks. No hay bales on the floor, just a concrete slab, and no animals, either. Overlooks and staircases that began halfway up the wall, to landings I could never step onto, or even step towards. My neck hurts from looking up and my mother told me to look up, I think, or maybe I told myself that. 

When I was a child I wanted to fly far away and now I am back. I have run from a past that is putrid and now I have to face each follicle of memory. Places I drive by tweeze the hairs out of me, and I know that with each tweeze will be a release, but not like an orgasm — like the sighs your throat makes in hospice when you’re beginning to make peace with your failing baby body. 

I do not ever dream I am old. I dream I am young so I can pluck the strings on the barn to a melody that agrees with me. My 13 year old self slaps and screams at my current 34 year old self, my 16 year old self thanks god I am no longer a virgin, and my 12 year old self questions god. When I dream I am going young it is painful. When I dream I am going old it is brief. Vanessa Redgrave on a boat in Italy. A tan husband. Pale hair and pale skin for me. I burn in the sun. But I burn out before I can get there; I explode like a star. Do not confuse this with a beautiful metaphor. A star explodes and the universe around it goes away or shifts into something new, too far away in light years for us to see up close. If you think of my metaphor like a twinkling ballerina you are wrong. Forest fires do not twinkle. They consume. Bombs don’t whisp away into stardust. They confetti people into a million pieces and then make their children watch. 

But bombs are not natural. At least I will die as a piece of nature, in this body I hate. 

My family is weeds, my grandparents are pesticides. They lie and twist and satiate and yearn like a horny college girl who confuses her desire with the desire of a man and then twists herself into candy cane stripes because that’s all she knows what to do with her body.

My hatred for childhood is like a thousand minnows. Small and separate if you look closely but absolutely massive when they all swim together. I am afraid of the minnows, too. I am afraid of my own hatred. I am afraid of my anger towards and anger directed towards me. I am afraid of what it would look like as a creature. 

I am afraid of what will happen when I move here. I am afraid because I know what lives there, in the basement, under the stairs.  I am afraid because what truly kills and burns a star? I am not a star. They are brilliant and life sustaining. I am a shriveled prune past a prime that was created by parliaments and I am not proud of anything. What is most horrible is how I want to take my own giant bullet and load it into a giant casket of fire and blow it into the universe like a canon until it hits the sun-of-another-universe and then watch it burn a big black spot. What is most horrible is that I know eventually I would be forgotten, and no one would miss me, but for an eye’s watering of time I would be mourned. And the worst part is it would not be by me. 

What will this house do that clearly hates me? And the thing in the basement? Go away, it says, you said words and spells to snake a sword into the ice and drift away from this life, now go. Who cares if you never travel? Who cares if desires sour and the future becomes paralyzed. Who cares if your heart becomes stale bread? You have failed, you have failed, you have failed, and you are the monster at the bannister lurching forward, you are the cattle that clacks its fangs together while the good farmer pellets you with a gun, you are a spider and the fly is innocent and very good really. You are the troll covered in reeds, waiting for the chance to smile and for a smell to arise from your teeth so foul that your would-be victims faint. 

You are the three rings, spinning, circling, constantly, the stretch of time, you are so important, aren’t you, comparing yourself to the sun and thinking yourself as powerful as a monster. You really are a wart on a perfect daffodil girl’s pearly plucked chin. You are nothing. You are nothing. You are not even a house. You are not. Are not. Are. Are not. Are. Our. Goodbye, house. Goodbye, our. Are maybe but definitely not now, was, will be, lived, died, took, wrestle, monster, fall, help, scream, 

SPLAT! 

*** 

There aren’t any clowns out today.

Huh.

Did you bring your bag of peas? 

My mom gave me frozen.

The mall we’re going to has a giant case of peas surrounding it. Sometimes they just sit there, counting.

Really?

Yeah. 

That’s scary.

They never get to the end though. 

How?

They add new peas each day.

Remember when we used to eat peas? 

Yeah. 

Now it’s just weird. They’ve made it weird.

At least it controls them, Jen. Remember before, when they’d wander and snatch kids like us up?

Sorry. I’m sorry and you’re right. I know. Sorry.

No! That’s not what

Oh I didn’t think

No it’s fine

I’m sorry 

Oh wait, I see one.

Where? 

Behind a tree. Oh my god

Shit! 

Now it’s coming towards the bush

Do you have a camera?

I’m. Yeah

Are you taking a video for TikTok?

Yeah. Do you wanna pitch the peas over his way or?

It could be a her.

Most of them are men, Jen.

Sorry. Just. I don’t know

Ok 

That’s a good shot

Wait, don’t put your hand there

Oh look there he goes! Oh my god it’s starting to count now.

How long do you think it’ll take him? 

I dunno. Let’s walk faster. They creep me out so much.

Make sure to sprinkle them around as you go. Did you get good footage?

I think I should put it on my story.

Me too. 

We’re don’t have THAT many followers

Hey but we’re still 

Oh my god

Jeez! 

Sprinkle 

Dude use your … eek! GO AWAY.

Thank god you got that on time. 

That’s terrifying.

That one really crept up behind us, didn’t it.

How many peas do you have left? 

My mom gave me three bags.

Ok good. 

Yeah.

Do you wanna stay home and look at videos next time? 

Yeah. 

I wish it wasn’t like this. I hate them. 

Me too.

I hate all the guns and security guards now.

Yeah. They think they know where they came from.

Oh….

Yeah. I saw it on my mom’s iPad.

……. Wh-where? 

My dad told me     but I forgot.

Yeah.

What’re you going to get at the mall? 

I dunno.     Maybe we can go to Brandy or Sephora and then get a pretzel.

I can’t wait to be somewhere safe. 

Me too.

Do you want to hold hands? 

Ok.            How much farther do we have? 

Only a few minutes.

Ok good.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Yeah.