The Lazarus Effect

Chapter 6: The View from Halfway Down

I am here. Picking up the fallen golden apples until the fruit becomes pixelated. Even then, I tried to run my hand through what I knew to be a hologram. When it shimmers, I grimace at the illusion and lick at my dry lips to wet them.

"That right?"

"Had she been drinking?" 

He sneered, "She could turn saltwater into wine."  

I slathered Ma's ashes under the sliver of honey and black that separated the towering oak of Pa's door, slightly hanging above the softening brick. No one was allowed in Pa's room when Ma was alive. I tried once, by picking the two locks. He never got his hands on me, but his shadow got close. Even when both of them had died, my sight of him was reduced to glimpses in my peripheral. Ma refused to release any of her birds from their cages. Pa bunkered down and raised the gates with enough insulation to hold out against most dragon fire. Who could blame me for scattering hidden doors around the house? For picking the room with the most windows and the balcony touched with a ladder of ivy and oak. He would steer me away from the iceberg and I would grab the wheel to turn it back. It was Odysseus between Scylla and the void. It was Cersei when she sailed for the first time and killed the monster that could be traced back to her blood sister. By consequence, her mother. When all seeds and sap in her father's bloodline cursed them all. It took 23 years for anyone to speak my language and be brave, it took them 23 years to learn how to listen. Maybe, it was because everyone always said, 'oh how big her ears were.'  All the better to listen. What a small mouth and if it grew any larger there were always way to fill it. If he hadn't weaved a rape joke into every creative writing assignment and two others deconstructed their rape as the world's largest rubix cube in their writing. Maybe, in that universe I wouldn't have spent the last of our block arguing to use our free time to play Coup. Maybe, the English teacher who advocated for Creative Writing as an elective wouldn't have let me every time. She gave us a choice and always a gaggle of geese would gather in a circle. No matter where I sat, I made my seat into a pseudo-throne. 

I was searching for the middle ground in being a prison guard. Losing her legs only fueled her resistance to crutches. I hoped to spot someone else raising their hand as high as mine. I parted my mouth to speak the answer before anyone was called. Teachers always call on those whose eyes wander. Not every drowning person asks for a life vest. I balanced resentment between the houses as if they were spinning plates on a stick. Endurance is not always strength. Sometimes if you don't let go, it is death do us part. Oppa! The last time he laid eyes on the white rabbit, it was at the end of the edge of the world. Then all at once, down the man and the bunny went. 

I used to have an imaginary bird that followed my family.

I was a student at a meister's door... The Lily in the Valley that was better given back to the swamps. He could not kill me; that was his price. I gladly accepted as he knew I always would. The thing that haunted us had no true shape, it was only a handle that stuck easily. Maybe my fingers never got a proper hold... The ghost only made its appearance known in the presence of a woman. Even then, I was more of an in-between go-between. A monkey in the middle. He took her to the maze to duck the hedges and beheaded her. Luckily, there was another serial killer chopping women's heads off in the area. But God Forbid we have one potential Lizzie Borden.  

Would the weeds or sunflowers sprout first?

I cut my wrists for you, he says. Correspond with a feat of my rovers and anxiosle await Greeted with them over a directive's functions

 He loved me while I was suspended, and rope instead 

by his hand on my neck. Could we the put me down easier than his prey?