The Ballad of Aberdeen

Life comes in splatters and backstroked patterns against the grain. It’s an unseen Jackson Pollock made using the kind of ink that makes canvas rise. You can only see it in cryptic cuneiforms, by running your hand against it’s blind surface and feeling purely it’s beauty rumble beneath your fingers. My thoughts are reserved in blackness, my actions independent from the latter. I’m cryptic now, so cryptic now. Speaking against the wind into the distance. The Distance, he is my friend. He is vacancy brighter illuminated by the fluorescent no to his side. I don’t belong in his company, for he is just pure Distance, an idea that holds my past. I digress. Through the window I reflect.

Yes... Through the window.

I drove the accordion car. It crumpled under pressure in the face of something greater. It was the freeway, I can’t remember exactly which one, is there a difference? It was the freeway. My rocket casket took my arm at the shoulder. My memory does me little justice. Splatter, splatter, splatter, what does it (Word I shan’t say nor think) matter, matter, matter. Cryptic, still so God-(Not his name in vain) cryptic. It’s the drugs really, blame the drugs. Some time after the accordion car. Can’t say exactly how long, time is staccato. Time is repugnant. Time is pregnant and in need of a cesarean. SCALPEL!

The doctor in front of me. Pretentious (Word I can’t say) button up. Pretentious (Word I can’t think) button fly slacks covering the (vulgar reference to a Male appendage I can’t speak of) she wish she had. Her words sputter, sputter, sputter, out of her “mindful” “scientific” gutter, gutter, gutter, of brain. I must have something curable.

IT’SBURNING! IT’S BURNING!

I digress again. Her words, Xanax this, Prozac that, Vicodin for that, to counter act the Xeno whatever that means and whatever this could be. Every morning since I wake to the tune of an opening sarcophagus of killer pills.

They kill... they kill... they kill me... they kill... they kill...

they kill my thoughts my mind

mymemymemymememefjfjsdjfufckcfucksllshilsslshitslshsitttt!!

I want to say it. Want to feel it. Can you tell? Can you see it! Or am I still too cryptic? Are my codes still too much? Can you not read them?

It’s coming through the window.

My hand, it’s coming through the window.

It’s bringing the blackness.

It’s wet.

It’s hot.

It’s slipping.

Maybe I’m approaching this all wrong. I’m not conveying my message effectively. They told me, when I could be seen at school without a trail of vomit and bile at my rear (at least they mostly had the courtesy to not throw up in front of me.) that the best way to construct an argument is to present evidence. Present evidence. Here’s the news story. Because this is in fact an argument.

This isn’t a whisper.

THIS IS A MOVEMENT!

A movement that twists and juts inside begging, pleading in complete protest, to be drenched and licked off.

LOCAL GIRL SUFFERS 3RD DEGREE BURNS ON 98% OF HER BODY, HAS ARM SEVERED ON IMPACT, AND LIVES TO TELL THE TALE!

They say “HUMAN INTEREST SECTION.” And I laugh. I find out in the hospital bed that humans have no interest. After my 3rd former friend comes in to vomit at the sight of me I find out the very hard fuc(DON’T YOU FINISH THAT WORD!)ing way that humans have no interest in me.

I saw them come in. I heard their camera shutters. Heard them steal the can beside my bed and puke till there stomachs produced only bile and still they went until there intestines hung out of there mouths like alien mammoths.

I saw them!

I SAW THEM!

And I saw the paper. No pictures of the girl, just pictures of the accordion car. The one I was in. Mangled metal. A prettier picture. Prettier than a bucket of vomit. This is my legacy. Charmed I’m sure.

I am Aberdeen, and I feel less cryptic. I feel cohesive.

I feel xanaxed.

I feel prozacked.

I feel Jackson Pollocked.

And it’s a pretty splatter, splatter, splatter...

Pitter-patter-pitter-patter

I have to tell you,

I must tell you.

Someone has to know

Will you know please!?

Will you know?

I was running! I WAS RUNNING!

It was my mom...

It was mother...

It was...

I was...

i-i-i-..................

Before the accident (The on-purpose you mean) mother walked in. She walked in as I looked at a boy and wanted him to touch me. My skirt open. His hand creeping closer. An awkward stare we shared. She came in before he even passed the edge of my knee high. All I heard was her yelling. All I remember was the yelling. He left red faced.

She called me sin.

She called me the devil.

She called the exorcist, she called the pastor, she called the sister, she called the president, she called Hitler, she called Che, she called Tsun-Tzu, she called!

And she called!

But the only thing that gave answers was a belt. It drew blood. It drew screams. It drew sand skrit. Though it wasn’t very cryptic. It was rather clear. The lashes rose off of my behind and though I cried I never told her, I liked it. I loved it. I wanted more. But I wanted her to stop yelling. They called this a catch 22 in school. I remember reading that book, but not what it was about. I met him at school. I wanted to see what his hands could do. I went back to my room with a bloodied behind and looked where I sat when he was there.

It was still wet.

It wasn’t all sweat.

Is it less cryptic now? Are you catching the breeze? Can you see the code?

I saw crosses. They riddled my home. Just my mom and I. No questions. No answers. Just a man on wood all over my house. I remember watching Romero movies and thinking Jesus must be the Zombie king. He must have started it all. Patient Zero. My Zombie mom his bride.

She tells me not to say things like...

Well, I can’t really say.

She calls it sin. Calls it sicker than sin.

I see the T.V. It shows me things I shouldn’t see, say’s things I shouldn’t say, does things I want to do (no you don’t!)

I do I do I DO!!!

Zombie mom says the devils in the T.V. I don’t like the devil because I’m not allowed too. But I want to meet him. My mom, Zombie mom, says that I’ll get my chance if I just keep on sinning. She thinks she’s clever. She says baptism by fire.

She’s a foreshadower that one!

There’s a soon to be familiar blackness in between the drive, the stop, the conservation of momentum, of energy. It’s effect on things once in motion and the transfer of it’s force to create a give that can turn any plastic car into an accordion.

This is my accordion cars short relevance to this story.

IT’S NOT A STORY IT’S A BALLAD!

This Ballad I mean...

My memory serves the blackness. It brings me feelings, they wash over me. The anticipation. The hallway. That’s where I was, yes the hall. And the feeling was similar. Upon the road, I felt it. I closed my eyes and felt the closing of the book. The last chapter read happily ever after once my heart stopped beating. That’s why I did it you know. The accordion car. Loaded with alcohol, an accelerant to the flames. I remember when it crashed, I remember I vomited as the flame consumed. I became a dragon. I became a dragon and breathed fire. I felt so powerful. I was a monster and that freedom became my burden. A burden that would be my scar. A scar that left me in pieces, never to be whole again.

I let the wheels burn and beat.

It was all on purpose.

They’re wearing off...

The drugs I take...

Breaking down...

Down...

Downdowndowndown.

I’m not a pretty girl. I’m sorry. I’m not very pretty anymore. And I have a confession to make before we continue. It’s the shame I felt that drove me into the wall. Not my hands (well hand now...) but my shame. I was so red. I just wanted to feel something. Wanted his hands in me. But they could have been anyone’s hands really.

(NOT YOUR OWN YOU DIRTY LITTLE SLUT! YOU WHORE! HARLOT!)

Just not my own. But she walked in anyway. You saw! She screamed my zombie mom, and I had to do it. I just had too.

You understand don’t you? Don’t you?

But why were you walking down the hallway...

let’s go back to that...

It was Lucifer you see. Lucifer drove me down the hall and made me did what I did. The devil, he’s to blame. The devil in a form I guess. (THE HAND THROUGH THE WINDOW! FROM BEFORE I REMEMBER!!! THE HAND IN THE WINDOW!) It itched. That’s the problem. The itch. How could I not have told you about the itch. It was Satan. And I had always wanted to meet him.

(PHANTOM WHORE FUCKING PHANTOM WHORE!)

You’re losing them again. Go back to school.

Evidence. Argument.

Construct it!

Phantom limb syndrome. It’s the phenomenon that occurs within recent amputees, like myself. They feel as though the limb they most recently lost. A.K.A. My FUCKING (We’ve lost you now. Go ahead and just fucking say it you stupid little whore! You luster of Satan! DEMON FUCKER!) ARM! I thought I could use it, felt I could use it, but worst of all, it itched, it itched so bad! I needed to find a cure! I needed to make my

phantom limb stop FUCKING...

(It feels so good to say it, so good to feel it, so good, so great, so perfect. So Fucking perfect!!!)

(HARLOT!)

...Itching

I tried touching myself with it. I felt it even. Felt it run down my burnt flesh. I was alone in the dark, in the bathroom, while my Zombie Mother slept soundly. Her snores in the hallway. A thousand reminders. A thousand echoing reminders. I felt the devil reaching.

My phantom limb feels my body as it once was. Not scarred and melting. My eyes closed as to avoid any betrayal. My supple breast it grips and coddles, my stomach, fresh and fuzzy as a peach, it’s smooth, it’s perfect. (We’ve lost her!) It got hotter as I got lower, the itch it slowly began to disappear. The closer I got to my temple, my sacred area, the area meant for my husband, my beau, my love, it was mine. Mine for the taking. And as my limb got closer I felt the heat.

She’s getting more lucid. Less vivid. Let us leave, let us let her be.

(SHE’S LOST! GONE! BEAUTIFUL! And completely lost... to oblivion. The beauty she’s lost in it. Continue. Come to it. Come on it. Make it yours)

STOP!

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

It didn’t work. It’s hard finding it out. That skin can melt. Not just of itself. But it can melt things together, it can melt nerve endings off, and well... The limb began itching again. Welded shut as I am, it found no homage. It couldn’t be satisfied. It’s urge. It’s need. The devils hand denied. I could not reach it in me. The snoring brought me back through my tears. I thought I was done crying to be honest. But this was the final defeat. The answer to the itch was a sinister one, and I am not proud. I am far from proud. Far from anything really.

Far from where this all started. Let’s recap.

Here it goes...

How do you feel?

I feel lucid and vivid. I feel Van Goghed! I feel Salvador Dalied! Not Jackson Pollocked...

I don’t feel Jackson Pollocked.

Good...

Good...

Recap...

My name is Aberdeen. I have no father and never have had a father. All I’ve had is my mother who makes less than enough money to put me through The Christian Academy she loves so much. I call her my Zombie mom because of her dead and drawl steps towards this Jesus guy whom I surmise to be nothing more than a king of all these zombies like mom, that too closely resembles the Romero movies I watched in protest to my religion. I protest the religion I’ve been raised with because it limits me, and I’m better than that. I watch T.V. When she doesn’t look. I listen to the rap music she’s so strongly against. I do it in protest but as well to live. I know the morality, I know the dead and drawl life it dictates and I want something more. So I rebel. It all reached a head when I invited one of the boys over from school. He was a jock type. The kind that would fuck anything he saw. The recluse I was bore no excuse for his condition. One of lust and betrayal to his convictions. I was scared so when he came over, not to study like I said, but to explore, he started slow. As he reached his hand towards me, meant to penetrate and make way, I was left in earnest. In lust and I wanted it all. I was going to stop him and let him in. His member. All that he wanted I was going to give. But then my mother walked in. Zombie mom she did. She saw what I wanted. She saw the future and she knew. So she reprimanded him, watched him leave, let him curse me, and then proceeded to beat the embarrassment out of me violently. I couldn’t tell her how much I liked it though. But the shame was too much. I felt conflicted between three consciousnesses. They all wanted a piece. One to give in, one to refrain. But I chose me. The one solution. I drank enough of her liquor to forget myself and let the wheel take me. It took me to the freeway. I found a nice wall. I was vomiting before I hit it. When I did the flames came in waves. I had so much alcohol in my system I was vomiting fire. It was igniting as it flowed out. The flames, they baptized me. They helped me find what I wanted. I wanted the pain. I loved it. I came I think. Then the blackness. I awoke in a hospital bed. The “friends” came first. I can’t even remember their names they’re so distant. They vomited so much, the drugs doing their job, I thought I saw there intestines hanging from there gaping and worn jaws. It was funny to me. I laughed as the press came in and took there pictures. The ones they didn’t use because I was too graphic to give witness. They showed the ashes where the car was. It took me two weeks to even realize that my arm was severed. I really only noticed because the magazine said it. I swear the pages fell from it when I realized it wasn’t there and not a second later. I later would suffer from a specific form of phantom limb syndrome characterized by a painful itch. All of this while my mother tried to evangelize me. Telling me in her Baptist way that this was all punishment for my sin. I would laugh she would get angry and damn me to hell as she stormed away. This persisted until the itch became unbearable. I tried to touch myself with the phantom limb. It’s funny, I felt it feeling me. It felt the old me. Perfect, innocent, supple, young, perky, all of those adjectives that made him drool. The boy I call distance, the one so far away now, so so far away. When I tried to touch myself with the limb I was confronted with the reality that my body doesn’t work anymore. My vagina sealed tight and crisped by the flames I once loved. There has to be some poetic justice here.

Somewhere I just can’t see it. Where were we?

See!

That Wasn’t so hard?

Now was it?

Let’s reconvene...

Down the hall, as dark as the car before I was torn from it. I walked, no I lurched towards my mothers dwelling. Who would have known, Zombies need there sleep too. It was anticipation, the sweet medicine. I knew what I wanted, what I needed, rested beyond the doors from which that dull, rumbling, SCARY snore came. It creaked with piercing precision. The door as I entered, I was afraid she would awaken, though I knew she wouldn’t.

(YOU WANTED HER TOO!)

I do I do I do I do I do!!!

Beside her bed now. I am beside her bed and my phantom limb is lucid. It wants what I want and it starts at her ankle. She has no sheets. Too broke for sheets. She loves the cold. She loves her nighty. She wears no underwear. She loves her nighty. I can feel her legs, prickly and imperfect. They lack shape and definition beyond the thin layer of fat I can see depressed beneath the fingers I’m not touching her with.

SHE SHIFTS!

Her legs are wide and my hand, it itches so deeply. Down to the bone it aches it itches so much.

I’m not proud of this you know. I’m not proud at all.

The fingertips of my limb not seen reaches the softness of her inner thigh and dwells. It likes the oasis that this is. An oasis of pretty flesh not explored for years. The tomb of her new found virginity. My phantom limb finds no patience and plunges!

PLUNGES!

And

she shifts in ecstasy.

There’s a wetness that I could only once dream of. I feel the muscles flex, feel the porcelain smooth inner-wall and decide to explore every ridge, every last path and junction. I can almost feel the limb reach so far that it grabs her heart. It grabs her heart and makes it beat faster and faster. I can see the fluid flowing. I find the hand of the devil. I shake it and it’s warm. He takes my limb at the shoulder. It disappears. Through the window They leave. Through the window! It’s coming through the window! I find myself panting. I find myself jealous.

My eyes this whole time have been closed. But at least I find myself.

I open them.

HER STARING!

She had the same look. The same look as that with distance, and I knew. I knew that she knew and it was shame I felt. That same bitter shame. That same old same old. It hits me flush and I see her rise from her grave in a rage fit for a beast. She was going to kill me. I tell you! She was going to kill me!

RUN!

I ran. Into my room I went. I had a lock on the door so I locked it. I threw a chair in front of it. I threw bookcase on the chair. I threw my self onto the fuc(DON’T YOU DO IT!)king bookcase.

(YOU DID IT! DIE KILL YOURSELFFUCKINGSUICIDE

DIRTYSLEWBAGWHOREBITCHSLUT!!!!!!)

We’re back to saying goodbye

Goodbye Aberdeen

Goodbye...

As she pounded the door to splinters. I saw her foaming at the mouth. She was rabid, so rabid her eyes bled. She couldn’t see my sadness my shame. It wouldn’t be enough if she could.

A knock on the window! There’s a knock on the window of my room and about it I know is my phantom limb. He brings the devil with him.

Goodbye Aberdeen...

I’m so sorry, but goodbye.

I’m sorry too.

The hands down my throat. I got to taste what it was I was missing and it’s bitter. To my tongue it’s so bitter it almost hurts and I love it.

I come, and I know I come.

THE DOOR ABERDEEN!

THE DOOR!

The door in splinters, the chair in splinters she’s tearing apart my bookcase now, hoping to get to me and eat my flesh. To massacre me.

She’s rabid.

(THANK YOU PHANTOM LIMB!)

The itch is gone. The limb was gone. But he came back. He came back to put his hand around my blistered, my melted, my distorted throat. He closed it. I stopped breathing. I think I’m dead. Before she got to me. Before she got to me to eat me, I think I’m dead. Or at least the part that matters is. The part that matters is escorted through the window. Led by the devil, what a kindness he’s shown, and phantom limb as well.

Through the window...

The hand

Yes!

Through the window...

My body fails me. (I wanted to stay anyhow. It’s the right thing to do you foul mouthed hooker!) I leave it to the mercy of Zombie mom. It becomes one of them and makes her happy.

(Happily ever after Aberdeen, without you! Happily ever after.)

I died though, I died and carried on...

On I carry still.

On we carry still.

Yes. Still we carry on. And on and on and on...

Happily ever after?

Ever after...

Happily indeed. Happily indeed.

From the other side of the window I see it. She gets to my shell. To my old casing and she rips it to ribbons. Blood everywhere. What the accordion car could not do. I can see her tearing into it with her mouth. Gouging the eyes with her thumbs. Breaking the bones with her knee. She rips the limbs off with a calculated precision. I think the fire weakened flesh made her feel stronger than she is. Makes her feel like a God. I see her feel closer to Jesus and smile. It’s what she’s always wanted.

The shell feels something I think. I think I saw it scream. But I do not. Through the window I leave now. Story told and forgotten. I’ve met the devil

Yes we’ve met...

and saved me he has...

I leave now-

Hand-

-in hand-

-in hand.