Burn

 

By Edward Zeauskas

 

His name was Alice

He was supposed to die yesterday.

His Throat that raw virgin pink, hoarse from screaming, “Don’t save me!” His trembling lips dried and cracked. 5,800 milligrams of Zyprexa, 1,800 milligrams of Depakote, bottle of extra strength Tylenol, hand full of thermal weight loss pills, chased by a glass of stringent Everclear, 151-proof. Throughout all of it he remained conscious, his own body betraying his desire.

The beast, once beaten devil dog howled at the artificial neon sky. The spirit of Johnson’s hounds were empowering him, hell itself burning, yearning to break free of the dry, dark brown leather straps that bound him to the cotton cage with cold steel body. The drugs, the drugs that were supposed to free him from mortal coil, locked him in a memory based nightmare realm. The shadows live here, they stretched along old corridors, like ivy corroding the foundations of little remaining sanity. The decaying ruins a reflection of fear’s intensity.

To Alice it was real, everything happening again all at once. He could hear the disembodied voices, ghosts of the past, beckoning to taunt heart strings. Hearing the crack of daddy’s belt he wrenched forward, all he could feel was repressions. Detached eyes and conversation in the corner ignoring the feeling of the metal tipped serpent tongue that struck tender child flesh. It was his alone, his to own. It happened then as it was happening in the now.

He could smell the beer sour whiskey breath lingering in stale air, “ Can’t breathe, Can’t breathe” the Cheshire mind screamed. The air was confining him, it was hurting him, he wanted out. He could taste, he could feel, trickling down his throat, a remnant of salt and copper

The demon beast lashed out and roared. One of the straps split under the pressure of his rage, the illustrious man in white rushed to confine it, by forcing sleep-time cobra venom into anxiety ridden, and pulsating veins. Square men in blue paper business suits, hiding themselves behind square construction paper masks, breathing heavy as they held him, double binding his wrists and legs.

The Gods were impersonal, the Gods lacked identity. They lacked, they lacked sympathy, and they lacked respect for his autonomy. The atmosphere devoured the beast, it raged, it panicked; it feared the light that had burned it for so long. He thrashed like an epileptic dog stuck in a box of rose thorns, dead but alive. His massive form fought, it fought, fighting, screaming, biting, thrashing.

Thrashing against the fallacious intuitions that imprisoned him, against years of physical abuses and pyscho-sexual torments at the hands of such Gods. He thrashed against sorrow, against pain, society, he thrashed against the world.

The dirt ball that broke his ribs, jaded his innocence, that destroyed his Christmases. The violent contradiction called truth, the world, the world is what punched him, bruised his ribs, that kicked him, that bit. It was the world that tried him on to see if he fit, then three him aside like a hand me down thrift shop coat. His Existence was that of a second hand object. It was life, life that left him intrinsically desolate.

Alice the retarded poster boy for child abuse awareness at Zipple elementary, Alice the problem child, Alice the devil child who deserved everything he got, Alice with the desert soul, so dry.

The pathological damage passed down by the systems numerous patriarchs had already been done as the drugs did their work. Absorbed by abyssal fate, he faded. His mutterings about the faceless corpse shadows that existed behind his raw lids went unheard. The devour him, they eat away at his flesh, they try to make him one of them. This is where fear lies, this is the incurable disease that inflicts him, the one which he runs from.

That was then, this is now.

How sad he is sometimes, that he continues to draw breath. In his mind, he remembers being young, Alice in a broken looking glass complexity. The mirror shows vast waste, sad and deep. Black circles under his eyes, bruises hidden by time, dreams and repressed feelings, a generator whose existence is important only within his own perception.

He stands somber, tired from a day of image maintenance, Sarte lying idly on a Dollar store coffee table. Presenting Alice, the fun loving deviant intellectual who sprouts off semi-rhetorical dialogue in a state of satirical perversion. He is what people see. He lights menthol, watching enviously as the smoke spirals and dissipates into the infinite heavens. The cherry flame highlighting years of stress and specks of gray; he is only 28. “It is always that lonely kind of crazy isn’t it?” He nods in agreement with his own internal dialogue.

The beast sits back and drinks from a bottle of Fisheye, Moscato to be exact, sweet & cheap. There is a melancholy depth in his look as his gaze falls through the cracks in hardwood floors.

Gone…

He is tracing the external scars, cigarette burns, razor blade connotations, knees damaged from accident, the purple lines hidden under hair from his fight with a window, when the world shattered and the ground came up to forcefully embrace him.

Then there are the knuckles. They are hardened, worn tools of remembrance. At Dottie’s they had him kneel on his knuckles for punishment. The floors were cold, unfinished cement. There is also the long nights punching steel doors, skinning his knuckles on punching bags, or the nights the glass cracked. The image broken under fist, beating the despised reflection, the hand wet and scarlet until fragments of him lay upon the floor. Bam! Dancing dust glass spores burst forth in a violent, spider web inducing ballet. It became fragmented like him.

And he kept hitting it, again, and again, and again, until the flesh was torn and the piece foundation collapses in order. The dry hair, the haunting hazel orbs holding back demons, the nose, the flushed cheeks, the dry lips, the coffee stained teeth, and lastly the insecure chin. Destroying everything ugly, vaguely aware of his own existence.

He sits in class trying to prove something to himself with trembling hand. He watches the filth, the fighting, watching the fake smile, and the laughter. He observes and detaches himself, he smirks at the commercialized hallmark identity of contemporary love, possibly because he lost his own. He is able to mimic a semblance of normativity, showing perceptions of appropriate social response, but never fully understanding them.

And the dog? The dog’s just asleep in his rabbit hole, repressed now by ink and blank paper. An incarcerated soul fiend finding liberation in representations of tabula rasa. Alice gets lonely, a child demon beast beat on gilded cage, begging, weeping, screaming, asking for attention while living in a state of art. 

 

Those eyes, wild, deep, frenzied, intelligent eyes, they are my eyes. They are Swirls of colorful confusion, of fear, and of knowing. It is the embodiment of a manifested dirt eater. Alice is the core, the concrete; he is something beautiful and scary. He is dangerous in his destiny, his ability to destroy. When I stare into the glass I am reminded of Graham Greene, I stare into him as he stares into me, we watch each other, and we watch each other burn