Be in the Real
Authors: Denise Mathew
Be in the Real
Denise Mathew
Be in the Real
Published by Denise Mathew
© Denise Mathew 2014. All rights reserved.
This book is licensed for your personal use. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without prior permission from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictiously. Other names, characters, places, incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-928197-00-3
“Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.”~ Dr. Seuss
“It is in the touch and the feel of all that is, and all that will be, that brings the world and the heart to a mutual understanding that if one did not exist neither would the other.”~ Jebidiah
PROLOGUE
There are many things that I can tell you about me to show you who I am, who I once was, and who I'll never be, but it still wouldn't bring you into the world that is mine, the space that I occupy. For if a life is lived in the way that I have inhabited this world, is it a waste of time per se? Do we need to be there in the sea of humanity to understand what it feels like to be alive, or can we sit in our space, connect with our fingertips and a monitor, be that illusion that we have created. A phantom of a being that exists only in the feed of bytes and megabytes, a group of typed symbols that tell the world that I am this, or I am that. Alone, but never really alone because at any time of the day someone in the world is awake and sitting in a space much like, or very different, than ours. For those seconds we connect and relate, strangers across the globe, joined in commonality.
Our human need to connect, be understood, to be gotten, it is what strikes a cord of truth for us all, and that my avid reader is what I design and foster with my words, and in doing that I help the lonely, comfort the grieving, and sometimes on a rare occasion change a life for the better.
Love is not a word it is a state of being. Though I write this touching phrase and emotion, I have never really felt what it is in real, never known the feel of a man's touch on my naked body or a life growing in my womb. And though I have never experienced much real in my life, I have imagined and studied, dipped my toe into the pool of truth, in an attempt to understand just what it feels like to be there in real, not virtual. I have become that woman in the arms of the man on my monitor, felt the press of his muscled chest against my cheek, the brush of his lips on mine. I have almost smelled the scent that says he is with me, not just an image that I can never touch. And in those moments when I feel, really feel, even for a second or two, it is enough. For it is within those moments that I find peace that few but those of us who are shut away from the craziness of the world can boast. It is for those times alone that my very being yearns, because for those infinitesimal blinks of my existence it is perfect, it is real, it is mine.
My name is Trillian and this is my story.
CHAPTER 1
We have all glanced at the trees and flowers and wondered why they are as such. How did the universe decide the color and number of petals that would grow from that bloom? Why does one flourish in a stark climate, while another wilts at the most infinitesimal drop in temperature? And more than the wild, why are we humans as we are? We wonder why everything is as such, for just as the flowers and all the wild are painted with Mother Nature’s wide brush, so too are the people that inhabit this earth.
Many years ago when I was a child I stared down upon a tiny buttercup that was butter yellow, and in that tiny cup it was said to foretell whether I loved butter or not. In fact I do love butter, the flavor of it against my tongue, how it melts beautifully on a warm slice of bread. And when I placed that tiny buttercup beneath my chin and a wonderful shadow of pale yellow reflected on my juvenile skin, indeed it seemed to profess that I was in fact a lover of butter. I was struck dumb with awe at how a flower growing rampant in the wild had the magical property to know something so personal about me. In that moment I believed in the world that surrounded me, in its magnificence and vastness, but even more than that I believed, really believed that there was so much more to all that was around us than we knew. Those parts of life and the environment that we so readily ignore, for if a flower could predict if I loved butter or not, what could a tree know, and what about an animal, a rabbit maybe, and maybe something even smaller like a mouse, or maybe something larger could divine the truth. Could we test all the creatures, moving farther up on the evolutionary chain until voila, we hit the supposed top of the hierarchy, man himself?
Now that I have passed my twenty-fifth birthday I know that a buttercup will always reflect a yellow hue upon the underside of the chin, it is purely physics, yet even though I know this fact to be true I still hold the world in awe, because as easily as I can explain away the buttercup, I cannot explain so many other phenomenon in the world that surrounds us.
I once read about elephants and other animals, racing for higher ground long before humans deigned to know that there was a powerful Tsunami coming, one destined to wipe out so many humans and life. Yet the so-called highest developmentally evolved beings were oblivious to this truth, to this warning, but the animals somehow felt it in their bones and had a knowing, one that we humans were locked away from.
I have always wondered why we know what we know, and how some of us know so much more than others. There is a power in prediction, yet the world believes that this is the work of charlatans, purveyors of falsities, of things that no one can explain scientifically, and thusly so, declares that these prophecies are much less than that which we can see and prove, and know beyond a shadow of a doubt to be fact.
And so for many years I have worried and wondered, and studied and followed every lead to the darkest corners of the earth because I need to know before my body is released back into the collective energy. Before I become dust I must know without hesitation why, why, and another why is it that we do not know. Why do we walk aimlessly around in a fog when all the answers might in fact be there for us to grasp, to pull into our psyche, to see without question that it is the most definite truth.
You may call me crazy, many have, and I will most gladly wear that mantle around my neck. I shall profess to the world that I, Trillian, am stark raving mad. If I am that label then so are the others who do things that they say are helping the world evolve, yet kill life around us, a life that has never needed us humans to survive. To butcher the orangutans for inhabiting a jungle that is their home, to murder them for perching in a palm tree and eating the fruit that nature has provided. There are humans that believe that this fruit belongs to them alone, as if the act of planting the tree was all that was required to produce a fruit. It is easy to forget that the clouds bring the rain that nourishes the tree, and the sun provides the light required for it to perform its beautiful task of photosynthesis. Yes, this is the nature, the world that survives without our interventions, the fruit that has existed long before the farmers on the plantation came into being. And it is only when man decided that the world needed more, that people everywhere in the world needed that fruit and oil that was not native to their land, that everyone in fact needs so much of this, yet the truth is they never needed it at all.
I do not profess to say that
…
“Hey there.”
Kaila felt the tarantula on her shoulder, spreading its hairy legs on her body. She wanted to get it off.
She spun her chair around until Norm was in her view. His glasses were perched on the tip of his sharp nose, his hair in a million different directions as if birds were taking flight from his skull. Her logical subconscious knew that there was no spider, that in reality it was only Norm’s hand resting on her, but she could not stay the reaction anymore than someone could stop a wave from crashing over them. It was nature, her nature, and in her world touching her was like entering the launch codes into a weapon of mass destruction. It could not be shut down once it had been activated.
“I hate you, hate you, hate you,” Kaila screamed.
Norm let go of her and took a step back. In truth he should have moved as far away from her as was physically possible, instead he waited, watching the show unfold.
Kaila pressed her fingers against her temples, bobbing her head up and down; swaying her body to what seemed like a melody only she could hear. Her shoulder length copper-colored hair flew wildly around her head as the mania that was part of her life took hold. Norm, who was quite accustomed to this kind of over-the-top response, grinned, showing every one of his teeth that were as crooked as a picket fence, that had been lifted and pushed up by the thawing of frozen earth.
Kaila continued to bellow her hatred adding in obscenities intermittently, something that on good days she was abhor to. Norm stood watching, appraising her, knowing what would come next and reveling in the reality, because this was the best he could achieve in a day. Watching Kaila unravel like a ball of yarn shooting across the room was thrilling. Being responsible for such an outrush of emotion made him feel like a super hero, because she hated being touched and when she lost it, she couldn’t help but do the very thing she hated the most.
As if by a predetermined cue, Kaila stopped yelling, released her hold on her head and brought her gaze up to Norm. She glared through a sheet of her hair, one blue eye focused like a laser on him, seconds later she pounced. It was times like these that those who witnessed Kaila’s outbursts wondered if she was part panther because there was a grace in seeing her attack her prey. Today Norm was her prey, and though most might have called him mentally unstable, something that was actually written in his file, he loved this part. He felt an erection begin to grow in his pants just before Kaila landed full body on his wiry frame.
“I am Trillian,” she bellowed.
The cadence of her voice reverberated in every corner of the wing. Now straddled across his slim waist, Kaila’s fists, as enormous as those of a lumberjack, were balled and ready to attack. The first hit knocked his glasses off his face. They skittered with a metallic sound across the taupe linoleum.
The second smash connected with the side of his head, with enough impact that his head snapped sideways with a sickening pop. Though the sound was nefarious enough it wasn’t as horrific as it seemed, because Norm had shoulders that dislocated with almost no force applied. Kaila’s jaw-breaking sock had shifted the ball out of the socket and now his left arm fell weirdly against the floor. The third punch never made it to its target because finally, after what had seemed like an hour but was only seconds, Lou and Trip, the orderlies and all around security for the Wildwood Mental Health Facility, snatched both of Kaila’s arms and tugged her off Norm. Despite the nasty purple mark blooming along his jaw, Norm smiled because no matter how or why it happened, having Kaila on top of him like that was strangely erotic. It would be a memory that he would jerk off to for a week at least, maybe even more.
“You know Kaila doesn’t like it when you bother her when she’s writing,” Lou, a meaty man who was just shy of five feet, said in his Southern drawl. He was one of the few men who was actually shorter than Norm.