______________________________
Ella Cinders
______________________________
There
is something wrong with me that one cannot see just by a glance. At the core of
my being, something wasn’t right when I was born. My biological mom left me
with dad and that jezebel he married, but that was only the start of my
predicament. Right now those people called my parents are sitting in front of
the television watching Wheel of Fortune.
I can hear the host saying, “Spin that wheel!” through the hollow walls
of my room. I’m about to spin their wheel, alright.
So,
everyone knows me as Jack. I’m a lanky teenager boy that wears dreary colors and
listens to metal music. I’m a bit of a science nerd and I collect many samples
of insects in my spare time. One of my favorites would be the butterfly because
of its complexity in its metamorphosis stages. I only have one friend, which
happens to be the preacher’s son. I think that Tanner is only my friend because
the lord would make him feel convicted if he backed out now. We have been
friends since we were kids. Without him I would be more alone than I am now.
Well,
today is the day. I’m going to walk out there and tell dad the truth. He might
disown me as a son and might try to kick me out of the house, but I don’t care.
I can’t live like this anymore. He has too many expectations of me. He wants me
to follow in his footsteps and become the popular football player that scores with
all the chicks, but that isn’t going to happen. One day God will let Tanner see
that we are suppose to be together. It already feels like we are dating, if he
would just commit to the physical aspect of it I would feel complete.
I
walked out of my room to find my parents arguing over which letter the
contestant should pick on Wheel of Fortune. I sat down on the sofa beside them to
wait for the commercial. I looked over at my dad with my stepmom cuddled in his
arms. She appeared to think she was the queen of the castle while she was in
his embrace. I hate that bitch. She has manipulated my dad to the point that he
follows orders from her. She is just a parasite that sucks him mentally,
physically, and financially.
I was trying to decide the right wording in my
mind, but there were no words to soften the blow. My lips started to form the
first word of the sentence. Here it goes. The idea left my mind and was being
expressed into actions. I blurted out, “Dad, I’m gay.”
Like
a redneck from hell, he cut me the meanest look and replied, “You’re what?”
His
quick reaction made me feel like a deer in the headlights of a car. I don’t
like being in this position. I felt like Bambi’s mom not going to make it to
the sequel. I felt like roadkill all because my dad was a bigot. He was not
open to people different from him being able to excel in this world. They
needed to fall because this was his country. He was here first. His ancestors
rode in on the Mayflower and he believed everyone else’s did not. His ancestors
knew how to defend camp.
I
stood my ground though. I felt empowered and free like an Indian about to
attack Christopher Columbus. I said, “You heard me. I’m gay.” Even though I
said it with a serious face, the words made me smirk on the inside. Maybe I was
smirking because the hard part was over. I felt the eyes of judgment pass over
me as the gears in his head ticked.
He
looked over at my stepmom confused. He asked me, “What do you mean you’re gay?”
His
question stupefied me. I clarified it to him in the simplest form imaginable
for inbred bastards like himself. I spaced out my words when I said, “I…like…boys.”
My
stepmom looked up into his serious face and said, “I think he’s joking, Sam.”
She belted out in laughter and then dad slowly followed. The gaping holes of
their mouth looked like black holes that could suck up the entire planet, but
the gravity of the situation was real for me. I imagined that I could see the
uvula in their throats swinging from side to side. How disgusting, I know.
The more they laughed, the more I realized
that I was the butt of their joke. It was as if there was something funny about
the demon living inside of me – the one that has been taunting me to kill
myself for the past several years. My parents do not know that I tried hanging
myself last week in the woods. My parents do not know that I drank a cap of
bleach, thinking it would eat out my insides. My parents don’t know that my
driving accident was intentional. I tried to hit that deer. That was the real
ending of Bambi’s mom.
At
the core of my being I felt like a fuck up, like I was born with the wrong set
of genes. Or God was laughing when I came out, knowing I wouldn’t fit into the
social norm. Well dad, you have it. Your good parenting skills mixed with mom’s
genes created the little girl you always wanted, your own Cinderella. The only
thing that is missing is some mice friends, and I saw them trying to make
contact with me while I was eating supper. My life is like Cinderella’s. My
stepmother is a bitch. I get treated like a slave. I just wish I had some magic
like that fairy godmother bitch.
After
my parents stopped laughing, dad mocked my coming out process. He said, “Awww,
my little princess.” He still thought I was joking.
Dad’s
bitch said, “I’m gonna have a little step daughter.”
Them not taking me
seriously infuriated me. I felt like Mount Vesuvius and I exploded. I said, “It’s
not a joke! I like penis!” My words echoed over Wheel of Fortune which just
came back on. I know what I said was a little extreme but it was the only thing
I could say to get my point across.
Well, that did it. Dad
was going to kick my ass. Everything he did to build me up into his masculine,
football player son evaporated in his head. He balled up his fist and smacked
me across my face like a cheap whore. Without any seconds spared, his ginormous
hands tightened around my neck and began choking me. I desperately gasped for
air while kicking him in the stomach. He grabbed me by the leg and aggressively
threw me off into the floor. He pressed his hand on the back of my neck and
forced my face into the dirty carpet. He was becoming the bully that he was in
high school.
My stepmom came in holding
a belt at the wrong end. She started violently slashing at my back with the
buckle. The sharp tooth on the buckle ripped through my skin. I felt like Jesus
of Nazareth being whipped for crucifixion. I felt cold tears rolling down my
eyelids. I yelled at them trying to knock some sense in their skulls. I said,
“What is wrong with you people?”
My dad got inches away
from my face and yelled back with a bucket of spit leaving his mouth. He asked,
“What is wrong with you, faggot!?”
I asked, “Why would you
do this to your son?”
“Why would you do this
to me? A son is someone who will one day grow into a man. ”
My stepmom got in my
face preaching the word of the lord. She said, “God will end you, my son. If
you have made the devil your father, we have every right to throw stones at
you. Your father hurts you not because he hates you, but because he loves you.”
After those words left
her mouth, my dad began pounding on my face, but I did not feel the love that
my step mom spoke of. A punch to the lip made my teeth cut into my gum. A pool
of blood flowed over my lip and dripped down the arch of my chin. He punched me
in the eye, leaving my head throbbing with a pounding sensation.
He paused and said, “I’m
gonna let you rethink the queer thing, son. While you’re crawling on the ground
like a woman, this is what it feels like to be lesser than a man.” He delivered
one last blow across the crown of my head. I was out like a light.
The lights of the
living room dimmed and quickly shut off like a lightning storm attacked the
electricity. I was all alone in a dark, oblivious space in my subconscious. My
body was trembling like I was out in the middle of a snow storm. I could see a
close radius of the area around me. I fell to the floor and noticed there were
several inches of snow dusting the ground. Or I thought it was snow. My nose curiously
sniffed at the powdered dust and I accidently sucked it up. There was a stinging
feeling on its way up, but a few seconds later there was a burning sensation
dripping down my throat.
Out of the darkness a
hand quickly grabbed my leg. The warmth of the hand felt good, but the touch
felt wrong on so many levels. I looked over and the hand disappeared into the
nothingness.
I crawled in the snow
cocaine for a few moments and found a glassy floor of ice. I could not see my
reflection, but I saw a shadow projected beneath me as I held myself up. I knew
it was not my shadow because it moved when I did not.
The shadow spoke in a
distorted, boyish voice. It asked, “Are you okay, Jack?”
I was dumbfounded on
whether or not to talk back to the patch of ice. I didn’t reply back because it
was going to make me feel crazy. I knew this was just a dream, and I am
creating this illusion by projecting my desires and fears.
The voice asked, “What
do you fear?”
Oh no, it’s reading my
thoughts. This isn’t good. Out of nowhere that hand grabbed my leg again. Every
time the hand touched me, it felt like I was remembering something; something
that I repressed in the labyrinth of my mind.
The voice asked, “Would
you mind if I showed you the way?”
“It doesn’t matter.
This is just a dream anyway.”
“But sometimes your
dreams are a reflection of your inner desires, like the cocaine dusting the
floor.”
I shook my head. I asked,
“What does this have to do with coke?”
“Cocaine was going to
be your escape from it all. Now your body has entered a state of recovery, and
I’m here for your survival.”
“Why should I survive?”
I added, “I hate myself.”
“You should try metamorphosis
like your insects. You could always change into the insect that you wanted to
become. You have a choice in this world like all the other shadows roaming.
Quit feeling sorry for yourself. You belong.”
“I already tried
killing myself.”
“Jack, you are already
dying like all of them. Insects like you are attracted to the flame. The candle
is slowly burning. Once it blows out, your shadow will be absorbed into the
darkness of nothingness.”
The shadow beneath my
body revealed a boy. I looked into the face and realized it was my best friend
Tanner. His eyes were shut like he was sleeping. Then the hand returned back
from the darkness. It aggressively grabbed my leg. A man’s voice whispered in
my ear, “Shhhhhh. Don’t move or you’ll wake him.”
My stomach turned and I
got that sick feeling when one eats a bad hotdog. I wanted to puke. I
remembered being young. It was the last night I spent over Tanner’s house. I
woke up to his dad touching my leg from the floor. His hand went under my pants
and massaged my muscles. His eyes looked at me in a way that they never did in
church service. I wanted to scream but was too afraid. I remembered my body
shaking like I was going into a convulsion. Tanner’s dad’s voice echoed in my
mind once again. It said, “Shhhhhh. Don’t move or you’ll wake him.” What he was
doing to me felt like the temptation he spoke about from Genesis in the Garden
of Eden. It felt wrong on so many levels. I didn’t know what to do.
I could no longer see the
ice below me. Everything was swallowed into the darkness. I felt the ominous
feeling that I was back in Tanner’s bedroom on that night.
The distorted boy voice
spoke again. It asked, “Do you choose to live or die?”
I screamed out, “Get
out of my head!”
“I am your head, silly.
The neurons in your brain finally fired at the right second and pushed out this
repressed memory.”
“This was better left
forgotten. I coped better that way.”
“You tried to kill
yourself last week. You’re not proving anything to me, Jack. As you said
before, your desires and fears helped create this dream. I am just here to write
the instructions to your thoughts.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m your brain,
stupid.”
A bright light radiated
behind my eyelids. I knew that I was no longer under the power of my
overdramatic, talking brain. I opened my eyes from the dream and stared at the
morning sun pouring through the living room windows. My parents had left me
unconscious on the floor all night like any responsible parents would. They had
already left for work.
A throbbing headache
surfaced. Stop it brain, you already caused enough trouble for one day. I stood
up with my face aching like I had just fell from the ugly tree and broke every
branch going down. I walked into the bathroom only to see my hideous reflection
in the mirror. My face was marked up with bruises. I had two black eyes, and my
bottom lip was swollen.
I looked down on the
countertop and saw a bottle of my stepmom’s concealer and foundation. I knew
what these things were but never had any desire to use them. I first dabbed the
concealer around my black eyes and rubbed it in with a sponge. I did the same
with the foundation and evened out my skin color. My complexion was starting to
look flawless and it hid all the bruises perfectly.
I turned my bathroom
radio on and looked at myself in the mirror, reflecting on my thoughts. Marilyn
Manson’s cover of Sweet Dreams came on the radio. The distinct guitar riff
started and Manson’s raspy voice followed, “Sweet dreams are made of these…”
I felt very dark in the
moment, like I was about to do something destructive. I thought to myself, “Metamorphosis. I could change like any ‘ol
insect.” I picked up one of my stepmom’s sticks of red lipstick and rubbed
it over my puffed lips. I picked up an eyeliner pencil and rubbed it across the
bottom lids of my eyes. Across from the sink was a case of Halloween contacts I
had from the previous year. They were an icy blue color. I unscrewed the lid
and dipped my finger into the solution. With the contacts on the end of my
finger I placed them into my eyes. I looked back into the mirror and noticed
that I looked like a completely different person, but something was missing.
I remembered that my
tramp stepmother had a red wig beneath the sink. I carefully placed it on my
head and was looking more like a girl by the second. I turned around and saw
one of her silky red bathrobes hanging on a hook of the door. I put it on and
it fit comfortably. I walked into my parent’s room and squeezed my feet into a
pair of her elegant high heels. They fit a little tight, but they would do for
now. I wasn’t supposed to be a boy in this life. God made me with the wrong
parts when I was on the assembly line.
I picked up a lighter
on the living room coffee table and struck it a few times. The more I did it,
the more powerful I began feeling. I tore the metal guard off the cheap
cigarette lighter to make the flame rise higher. “Insects like me are attracted to the flame.” I thought to myself.
I picked up a pack of dad’s Marlboro cigarettes and slid one out of the pack. I
lit the end with the long flame of the lighter and held it between my lips. I
walked out into the garage and unscrewed the cap to dad’s full gas can. While
holding onto the handle, I poured a river of gasoline behind me.
In my high heels I
carefully planned my steps as I walked off the porch and into the yard. I
looked at the yellow river of gasoline flowing behind me. I took the cigarette
out of my mouth and said, “My fairy godmother magic.” I threw the cigarette
down and watched the river ignite into waving flames. It took a few minutes,
but the house started flaming up quickly as I walked down the street. I
glanced back and was enthralled at seeing the black smoke and hellish fire
pouring from the windows. I could feel a demented smile stretched across my
face. I laughed as I imagined what my parent’s faces might look like when they
got home from their minimum-wage-paying jobs.
Meanwhile, I was on a
mission. With the gas can in hand, I walked down the street to Tanner’s house. I
felt that I wanted some answers from his dad, the preacher. I just wanted to
know what he was thinking that night several years ago since he knew his
scriptures so well. I think that night made me question my sexuality and
contributed to why I’m so fucked up today. I wasn’t going to hurt anyone if
necessary. I was just going to question his morals and his faith. One of my
high school teachers said that there are over three million survivors of child
sexual abuse in the United States. Most of the crimes never come to light.
Well, I’m not going to be a preacher’s choir boy today. I am not going to be
forgotten in the shadows of nothingness.
I am just an insect in
this jungle of madness. Some of us will never find our wings to fly. I might look cute, but I can be deadly. I
feel like there is a fire recklessly burning inside my heart. I will purge this
horrible world with fire and make it become anew. My enemies’ blood will be my
nectar. Jack is dead. At some point we will all have to change to survive. Boy,
Tanner is gonna flip out when he sees me ringing his doorbell.
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