Family (14 page)

bars may bind,

entwine,

encase.

encapsulate.

and
the man

may have tried to keep Henry

down.

but.

still,

He managed

to make,

to forge,

to foster

connections.

Henry brings people

together.

He knits and weaves

.

Henry has friends who are

important.

who want to spread

His love

.

this is what He tells us.

when we gather.

when He preaches.

this is what we believe.

this is our truth,

our word.

our
always.

Henry is love

.

no one has come to visit.

no one has lighted down upon the ranch,

eager to spread the gospel of Henry’s music.

it is a waste

.

Henry’s ties are

frayed,

unraveling.

disentangling.

and i

worry.

it has been twenty days.

<
helter-skelter.

love and terror.

the devil’s business.

sounds.>

something fierce.

somewhere deep.

someplace inescapable.

helter-skelter is coming.

this is what Henry says.

this is Henry’s truth. His message. His gospel.

His

love.

“when it’s time, you’re gonna have to do just exactly what junior says.”

“the man is in for a big surprise,” Henry says.

“you’ll see.”

at night, when the rest of the family is

nestled,

resting, soundless,

Henry rouses us,

outlines

how it will be.

junior.

shelly.

leila.

me.

we are chosen

to bear His message.

we are precious.

and my doubt

easy enough to tamp down.

to drown.

we—

the outcast,

the abandoned,

the hapless,

the helpless—

the

rejects,

the trash—

the
family.

we.

we
will
:

rouse,

rise,

arise.

catalyze.

awaken.

we will set the end of days

in motion.

we will swell, swarm, spiral.

we will light the match to spark

infinity.

Henry’s switchblade is a trigger,

a flint stone,

and when it is time,

we will ignite.

Henry’s lips against my earlobe,

a whisper of divinity, of clarity:

“when it’s time,

you’re gonna have to do just exactly what junior says.

you’re gonna have to be strong. swift.

you,
melinda—”

“you
are.
chosen.”

am.>

“you
will be my messenger.

you
will speak my words.

“the man is in for a big surprise,”

Henry says.

“you’ll see.”

1.

“it’s time, mel. get dressed.”

my eyelids flutter.

i struggle, briefly.

thrash against the hour.

strain to pierce the eggshell-thin,

frail,

fragile veil

between conscious

and light,

between coma

and wake.

between

before,

always,
and

never.

between
now
and
infinity.

between my half-life, heaven, and

hell.

i have a stupefying moment of
who/where/how,
and then realize all at once, in a dizzying rush, a flood of
yes
.

oh.
yes.

a barrage, a watershed of
come to now
.

i realize:

it is time.

2.

i cough, press my palms hard against the open-slatted floor,

feel the ridges, the grooves and indentations,

feel so much past-life, history, so much
before,
burrowed, carved deep beneath the surface.

i wonder what i’ve left of myself here, forever etched

into the skeleton scaffolds of

neverland.

i marvel at the reach, at the radius of my

mirror-self, the eternity of just who i’ve become, the endlessness of my

newfound

ties.

3.

i stretch back from my mattress, rise.

my bones make a hollow,

creaking sound as i stand,

shaking off sleep,

slights,

shrugging out from beneath countless anonymous

insecurities,

wordless queries,

soundless questions.

shedding the skin of the mel behind the

looking glass,

the mel i was

before.

before i became everything that Henry promised.

before i burned. frayed.

feared.

before i unfurled,

opened myself,

offered up my hollow places,

exposed my smooth undersides,

my pliant insides.

before i bled.

for Him.

4.

the creaking, the pops and hiccups that sound as i rise, they startle me.

they are the sounds of my skeleton snapping into place, the sounds of my skin, bone, sinew,

settling.

of my pockets, my pieces, expanding and contracting with my every

bated breath.

they are the sounds of my body reshaping itself, readying itself.

reeling.

they are the sounds of the opposite of solid.

it is time.

it is late. it is the witching hour.

helter-skelter is upon us.

helter-skelter
is

us.

the messengers.

the holy choir.

the harbingers of doom.

5.

junior’s face hovers, inches from my own.

i sense him, feel the edges of his skin

ooze,

radiate,

pulsate with energy,

with anticipation, with

yes, now,

always.

junior
wants.

it is the type of
want
you could clutch, you could grasp;

the type of
want
you could wind around a crooked finger.

through the tar-thick, viscous cover of night, i can feel it, the
want,
constricting across my shoulders, weaving about my collarbones like a dusty noose.

i can inhale and breathe his
want
into me so fiercely that i can almost taste its rancor.

can almost pretend it’s my own.

almost.

6.

it has been too long, here on the ranch. here in ersatz-everything, here without windows, without edges, without

far too long.

so much so,
so
long, that it has begun to feel that our
infinity,
our collective orbit, might be fading.

losing shape, strength, elasticity.

might be fraying. unfurling.

might be washing away like an etching in the sand as the tide comes in

and slowly,

steadily—

but irreversibly—

erases what once was.

leaves only the
now.

unwinds,

unravels infinity,

indefinitely.

i am not surprised to realize this.

after all, infinity has always felt impossible to me.

there is nothing, after all, that doesn’t

end.

7.

it is here.

the
now,

everything that Henry has

spoken of.

it is tonight.

tonight, we rise, and journey past the fault lines of death valley. through the canyons and craggy terrain, out toward where the blank, important people secure themselves, squirrel themselves away.

we—

junior, leila, shelly, and

i
>

me
,

my half-life—

my shattered, fractured, mirror-self—

we have a message to deliver.

His
message. Henry’s. of

terror and torture and undertow.

His reminder of what it feels like to drown.

to be held down, filled up, choked off.

of sharp teeth, slick canines.

of bloodlust, anger, hunger.

of empty spaces. of hollowed-out husks.

of uncles and elbows and knees pinned apart.

of breathlessness. of afterlife.

of what it truly means to

come

to

now.

8.

we are fragile and fractured.

we are family.

we are fraying.

but.

rather than

unravel.

we will

rise.

we are poised to set the city of angels afire.

we burn, we shrink, we shriek.

we are coiled, potent, poison, ready to ignite.

and Henry’s message will be heard.

now.

always.

tonight.

9.

He doesn’t come with us, Henry.

He can’t, shouldn’t, won’t; doesn’t exist within our orbit, our shallow, washed atmosphere. He is our rudder, our tide, our current, but
now,
tonight:

we
are the undertow.

we are messengers, harbingers, doomsday prophets.

we are
chosen.

we are chaos, fierce and deep.

we are inescapable.

10.

we know what to do, what we must do,

how exactly to go about setting the world

ablaze.

how to spark.

“make it messy,” Henry said. “show the people what happens to their sons and daughters when they refuse to see the
now.”

He had an address, though not one i recognized, of course.

and of course, i don’t ask questions.

there is no
why,
no
before
, only this:

blood. fear. chaos.

power. poison.

helter-skelter,

and infinity,

and mirror-mel,

still trapped,

pressed, soundless

beneath the looking glass,

its reflective surface a sheen, a sheath,

a sheet of ice

that separates:

before
and
after

broken
and
whole

fractured

but

patched,

patiently.

prepared for what is

now.

mirror-mel sees me,

signals to me

wordlessly;

she traces warning signals against the

frosted panes of her

transparent,

ever-present,

crystal coffin.

collapsing, gasping, drowning.

folding in upon herself.

afraid.

11.

i see her, mirror-mel—

see her at a distance,

as though she’s a mere shadow,

just a fragment of my former self,

a cipher, an outline.

a whisper,

a wisp.

a suggestion.

mirror-mel does not bleed; when she weeps, her face is a mask lit from the inside, streaked with sorrow, stained with someone else’s tears.

mirror-mel is a broken promise.

she is my
never
,

the jagged edge of my ruptured psyche,

my
me
that i have

learned to do

without.

a frozen fragment of my

unspeakable past.

but

even with

a chilly force field

a shield of charged ions

an icy screen the width of an ocean—

even still—

she and i,

we are conjoined,

ephemeral,

infinite.

we are paper dolls.

and i—

alone—

i:

am still, now,

broken.

12.

we have been chosen.

junior, shelly, leila, and i—

we, together, have been chosen,

anointed,

elevated.

handpicked by Henry to speak for Him.

to preach the word.

the truth.

the love.

the terror.

He bursts with love;

He overflows,

and we are vessels.

unique.

important.

we will preach the gospel;

foretell psalms of savage disarray.

we will tell tales of violence,

bloodlust.

chaos.

we are a choir of coiled fury,

of anger, of hunger.

a harmony of dissidence.

we are sharp and slick.

Henry has prepared for us, for everyone—

for the
family
, for
infinity—

He has prepared a

sacrifice to be offered,

a gateway,

a talisman to incite,

ignite,

illuminate the pathway to the great

beyond.

we have purpose.

Henry’s
purpose.

we are poison.

we are fever.

we burn.

13.

junior and leila hurry, stuff supplies into a single filthy sack, while shelly coats the planes and angles of her face with heavy greasepaint.

i have only just changed clothing, just begun to shroud myself in bleak, black cover when Henry appears behind me, touches my shoulder lightly, ushers me aside.

His gaze is a tunnel, a well, a portal to an underground hideaway. mud and ink and danger churn within His veins, swell and seep, leak from the scarred surfaces of His skin.

i swoon. i crumple. i collapse inward on myself.

i am a dying star.

“listen, mel,” He explains, “junior knows what to do. you just follow him, go along with whatever he says.”

i nod, thinking of heads tilted toward each other, of whispers, of weapons tucked away. of gleaming knife blades. of bright, swift pain. of the threat, of the dark-edged promise that arises, rouses, roils within my coconspirators.

thinking of the chaos behind their eyes, beneath the masks my sisters and my brother wear.

i know.

i know what
helter-skelter
means, what it is we’re meant to do for Him. for Henry.

the need, the now, the
want:

it is that our message, our word, our
love—

that it, that
we
, will set the world aflame.

that we will be the spark.

that we will remain, still, after,

when the tide rushes in again.

that we will be alone. together.

that we will be infinity.

that we will be
family.

still.

after.

always.

Henry opens a palm; flat tablets wink back up at us.

four round, pressed promises of

fire, fuel,

of consciousness, of overdrive.

of chemical undertow, hunger, and need.

we swallow them down.

and as the pill

dissolves against my tongue,

mirror-mel—

her half-life,

her second thoughts

her silent doubts—

mirror-mel’s unspoken

protests

dry up.

they crack and crumble like

a forgotten riverbed.

everything—

all of the
before,

ever—

crumbles,

carried off.

forgotten.

and my mind

unfolds.

fueled by Henry’s
want.

His orbit.

for the moment—

in
the moment—

my mind

my
self

unfolds.

14.

leila is dressed in black:

black jeans, black boots, slim black turtleneck pulled over her taut, slender frame.

she is a spring-loaded coil, coated in ink. she is slick, she is thick, she is heavy with sinister expectation.

she is the execution of a plot, a plan.

a threat.

hollow need hangs from her.

want
drips from her limbs, caresses her joints, pools within her crevasses, her cracks, her rivulets.

she brims, bursts,

overflows with
now.

her half-life is sticky; it rains nuclear showers against all of our twisted, crooked,

creaking shoulders.

leila has claws. and fangs.

leila is something fierce.