story ive started

[poetically_outspoken]

Chapter One: Never did I want to be here again and I don’t remember why I came.

"Get up Mercedes!" I hear coming from my Mother, Cristyn. She's banging on my bedroom door. Her and I don't get along too well. While I raise my head to see what time it is my alarm sets off. It's 6:03 a.m. on Monday morning. I'm too tired to turn it off and plant my face into my pillow. Cristyn is yelling about how much of a "freak of nature" I am.

"Define 'of nature'," I mumble back to her.

“Smart ass.”

Cristyn is about my height, she’s 5'7" and I’m 5'8". She’s an addict with medium length blonde hair that keeps falling out because she bleaches it too much. I have her overly large nose and eyes. She’s an anorexic just under 100lbs. Cristyn was a product of the 60s.

I block her out of my mind and think about the dream I just had. The static coming from my radio plays louder and louder and I get a ringing in my head. I sit up and turn it off and lean against my wall. I had this dream before. I'm sitting at the kitchen table drinking orange juice. Then Cristyn screams and there is a gun shot. It sounds like an exaggerated fire cracker. I hear her corpse hit the ground. I felt paralyzed. Couldn't close my eyes, couldn't think, couldn't feel. Then I see a tall man in front of me, and I didn't see him enter the room. His scent was my favorite smell in the world; the smell of fresh cut green apples. He's wearing a mask with pale red eyes painted on it and dressed in white with a pistol in his left hand. The apple guy gripped my arm hard and pulled me close to his body. I felt his sweat and regret. He is a couple of feet taller than me. He turned me around and wrapped his arm around my waist and held the pistol to my left temple. I would of let him do anything to me. Then I led him to my pool. We stood at the edge and I turned to face him. He allowed me to lift his mask. Once I had I didn’t see anything. No eyes, no nose, no mouth just a long piece of nothing. I let my fingers run across where his eyes should be. I lower the mask and he pulls the trigger. I feel a rush, it's a brain freeze. He pushes me back but I don’t hit the water. I see myself from above. I'm falling down a flight of stairs. At the bottom are black and white swirls circling around each other. The swirls look like snakes swallowing each other; the snakes have rat's eyes. My hand slides down the stair railing but I didn't dare hold on to it, it just guided me. I discovered when I close my eyes I fall faster. That's when I heard Cristyn at my door.

Now she's yelling about the first day of school and how much of a lazy sack of shit I am.. I was perfectly content with school being in the back of my head. Out of mind, out of memory. Damn parents, they always want me to leave.

"Get out of bed, Mercedes! You need to get ready for school for Christ sake!"

"Get away from me! Stay the fuck away from me!" I bellow back at her. My Led Zeppelin poster falls down. I'm standing in front of her my eyes burning. Insane, I don't remember standing up.

Cristyn and my father Tony have yelled at me my whole life. After a long while it comes like flame to terpentine. I can't control myself any longer. She left my doorway finally.

I have to get ready for school, bleh. I put on fish-nets; black and grey plaid mini skirt; spikes on my wrists and a safety-pin necklace I made around my neck. I pull on my favorite shirt and my hair turns to static. I pull my freshly dyed jet black hair back into two pig tails and rummage on my floor. After finding my combat boots I go to the bathroom and lock myself in. I stand and stare at my reflection. I see a distorted vision of myself from when Tony had caught Cristyn in bed with the Mayor of Findlay, Ohio and broke this mirror. I hate this mirror. I outline my eyes heavily in black eyeliner all around and put on Blacker than Death Lipstick. I apply my Vampire-white Cover up all over my face and notice something different about my eyes. I was born with two different eye colors; my left eye is bright green and my right is sapphire blue. This morning something is different with them, they are pale. It looks almost as if someone had erased my eyes entirely --if I ever meet that person I will thank them greatly.

"Jesus Mercedes you’re a freak. Why would you wear that? That’s a stupid thing to put on a shirt, 'Why should I be afraid? It's not the first time I've tasted pain. I wont be afraid. This isn't the last time I will feel pain.' "

“Uh huh.”

“When did you get that shirt anyways?”

“At Otep’s concert in New York.”

“When did you go to New York?”

“Last Thursday when you slept with my old math teacher.”

“You know about that?”

“Cristyn, I know everything. So what's upsetting you Crist? my clothes? hair? don’t like my shirt? No, no that can't be it," my voice gets deep, secretive; seductive, "I know what it is. Your little fuck toy didn't call you back. Right? They don't call when they get what they want," long dramatic pause, her eyes are shooting daggers at me and I am saving them," from somebody else."

I light the turpentine.

I flow like a river back to my room before she starts to yell at me. What I like most about rivers is that you cannot step into the same river twice. The water is always changing and flowing. I walk over and tap my long nails to the side of a cage calling to her, Tawney Claire. She comes out and I lift her from the cage. Tawney is my rat, she has a black head and white body and she has the rat's eyes from my dream. I kiss her neck and she jumps from my hand to my shoulder. She is my beloved companion. I get my red bag that has a guitar on the front and put some cut up green apples in it. That's my hiding place for Tawney I take her with me everywhere. We understand each other, she has never left me and she never will. I stop in front of the wall to the right of my door. There's a picture of Nevets, my dalmatian I had until my 12th birthday, hanging running free in a wheat field with his blood smeared crossed it with my finger tips. I kiss my hand and press it to the picture and walk out of the room. Insane, pure insanity.

When I walk into the living room Cristyn is shooting up heroin. I take a piece of paper and write, ‘I'm not the one who's so far away when I feel the snake bite enter my veins. Never did I want to be here again and I DON’T REMEMBER WHY I CAME..... And I wander from day to day. I don’t like you anyway. And I don’t need your shit today. You’re pathetic in your own way. I will be free from you. You better go away. I will never be here again you better go away. And I don’t need to fantasize you weren’t right all the time. And I don’t mind if you go blind you get what you get until your through with life.’ I flip the piece of paper over and write some more. ‘ Do you understand? Mother? Can you hear me? Mother? I'm slipping! Mother?! Help me! Mother.....you let me fall into the rat's eyes. You will find Serenity in Fire, Mother. Mother? Mother are you listening? Mother? can you hear me? Mother? Wake up! Mommy..... Why should I be afraid? This is not the first time I've tasted pain. I won't be afraid. This won't be the last time I will taste the pain..... ’ I folded the paper at the center and kissed it leaving black prints from my lips. I laid it in front of her and watched her read it.

“Cristyn, you let the snakes bite,” I take the needles away from her.

"Do you enjoy treating me this way, Mercedes? You are mine, I am in your blood. You cannot escape me. I am your wings." At this I looked down on her, my new pale white-light eyes reflection less.

"Cristyn, my wings are burning. With every drug you take with every drink you pour, do you know what you did, Cristyn? Do you? You lit the terpentine on my wings. My wings that connected us you set aflame. I didn't escape you Mother you burned me free. My blood is boiling and changing you will never be inside my veins again," my voice was temper mental and seductive and I was helping the drugs kill her.

I took Tawney out of her bag and put her on my shoulder and went back into my room. I sat down in the far side left corner with my pen and notebook and wrote a poem.

“The sky’s a gloomy grey Im so damn tired today

I’ve got nothing to do

It takes too much effort to hate you.

Its such an empty feeling

The flowers are dead and my cuts are slowly healing

All I want to do is die

It hurts to think it hurts to cry.

I’ve been laying in bed tossing and turning

My head is aching my stomach is churning

I haven’t eaten I cannot sleep

Minute by minute I’m getting even more weak.

Staring at my ceiling

I cant get rid of this empty feeling

My eyes are sore I’m feeling dead

I cannot get these thoughts of rape out of my head.

Later on in the day

When the sky was still a gloomy grey

I was sitting in my corner

Hugging my knees

Quietly crying whispering someone help me please.

And that’s when I realized that whether I scream or shout

No matter how much I cry, cut myself or pout

No matter how loud I am they will never hear

Something wet splashed into my hand, it was a tear.

I’m too hungry to move too tired to eat and too messed up to sleep

Haunted by all of the secrets I keep

Forever I’ll sit in that little corner until I die

Or until you kick the shit out of me because you don’t want me to cry.”

Chapter Two: Veronika

After rereading my poem I pull on my combat boots, not bothering to tie them, and crawl from my corner to my closet with Tawney running in circles on my back. I sit Indian style in front of my closet and push the doors open. I keep everything in my closet, including my feelings. I grab my portable cd player and the Otep-House of Secrets cd. My cd player is covered in red duct tape from when Tony threw it at the door after ripping it out of my hands and I had to fix it. I have to fix everything with them two. I pull out my amplifyer that I hollowed out all of the wires and push off the top inch of it. This is where I keep the snakes. I take the needles that Cristyn used to inject heroin and drop them in. The fragile stolen needles from the rusty county hospital crushes into a million-and-one shards when it lands on top of the others. Tears start to swell up in my eyes, there were a lot of others.

I walk back downstairs and while I’m standing in my kitchen looking out the window I see Tony pull up in the drive way. I take Cristyn’s cigarettes from the table and fly out the front door. I slam the door behind me and light a cigarette on my front step, it creeks. Tawney nibbles on my ear and hides on the back of my neck behind my hair as I lean my neck slightly forward for her, she hates the smell of smoke. I take a piece of green apple from her bag and hand it to her. She licks my neck and grabs the apple out of my hand. I start walking down the street taking long drags on my stolen cigarette; Tawney’s tail curled around the front of my neck.

The high school is only a block away from my house. I stand at the end of the block and watch it. Tawney hisses into my ear, she hates this place as much as I do. I see a cherry red corvette pull into the side parking lot with ‘wigger music’ blasting. Bleh, white boys. Tawney crawls down my chest and stomach and holds onto the bottom of my shirt as I open my bag for her and watch her jump in. I flip the back over my shoulder and look around more. Where is he? Come on Aiden where are you?

“Mercedes!” I hear a deep voice shout. I look straight ahead and see Aiden walking towards me. I run across the street, my combat boots flapping around everywhere. I jump up on him and wrap my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck and hug him, smiling and feeling safe knowing that the snakes could never bite.

Aiden is 6 foot 4 inches tall and 17 years old. He has black hair with red streaks to the middle of his back and a beard grown down to about an inch above his pierced nipples. Im slipping down and I feel his hands on my ass and push me back up. Aiden has hymotising evergreen bright eyes that I fell heels over head for.

“Nice rings,” I say to his neck.

“Thought that you would like them,” he says as he kisses my neck and lets me down.

I look up at him. He has his eyebrow pierced twice, nose, lip pierced tree times and his tongue is pierced. He smells like green apples too, I hope he did that for me.

“Are you okay Sadie? You look different.”

“My eyes, right?” I ask him.

“Yeah, I think that’s it.”

“I don’t know I noticed that too when I woke up.”

He takes my hand and leads me through the crowd to the school doors. I feel the crowd watching me, their eyes of leprosy. With his arm around my shoulders we pick up our schelduals for this semester and the bell rings.

“Don’t you have any paper or anything, Mercedes?” Aiden asked me.

“Eh. I’ll find some. Do we have any classes together?”

“I have Art I, then Art II, then lunch, then English, then History. Urg, I hate history.”

“That sucks Aid. I have Creative writing, then Home Ed., then lunch, then History, then Art II.”

“Meet you in the library for lunch?” Aiden asked when the final bell rings.

“See you there.”

“I love you, Mercedes.”

“I love you too Aiden.” He hugged me and left. I always felt guilty telling Aiden I loved him. Truth is I have never loved anybody except my pets. I am a product of Cristyns.

I walk down the empty hall way with Tawney in her bag hanging off my shoulder and my hands on my hips. I stop in front of the office windows and look around. My feet are numb. I hear people laughing, shouting, hitting, and I can hear the blood drip to the floor. It still smells the same here. Smells the same as when at the county fair after the bull fights when the riders are in the hospital tent and they are over dramatizing their cuts and their aches for attention. Smells like savage, meaningless aggression. I remember this suffering. I remember my hate. I remember everything.

I jump when the office door opens and the P.E. teacher walks out. He is a stout, balding grey haired man. I am taller than him with my boots on but without them we would be the same height. He has massive eyes that make my hair on my neck stand up and my spine quiver.

“Get to class!” he yells in my ear like I am a toy soldier and points his short finger gesturing to the stairway.

“Simmer simmer now. Lets not get aggressive, Mister Gym teacher Sir,” I retort back to him, acting cocky to make his blood boil–I’m not his favorite student.

I walk away and I can still feel his eyes watching me. When I am certain that noone else can see me except for him I turn back around.

“Shouldn’t you have a class to teach? I mean what would we ever do with a gym teacher?” I say to him. Before he has time to respond I turn around and lift my skirt mooning him my fishnet covered ass and go to class.

When I get to Creative writing I stand outside the door listening.

“And I pledge alliance to the flag...” I hear the class say. I silently open the door and carefully step in to the freshly painted classroom and the color isn’t right. I sneak into the back corner seat and sit down and gently lower Tawney on the ground beside my desk, I can see her body in it she is rolled up into a ball and asleep. The seat to my left is empty so I hiss at the guy on the other side of that desk. His name is Eric he isn’t tall only about 5'9". Eric is a suicidally depressed Emo kid who parents beat and people neglect. He has black shaggy hair that he keeps long to cover his bruises on his face and black eyeliner covered eyes, but I love his pupils they are bright blue and I think they have crystals in them. They are beautiful. He looks over at me.

“Can I have a pen and some paper?” I ask Eric.

“Mmm,” he mumbles back. Eric sits a new notebook and a black ink pen on the desk in between us and lowers his head staring at the desk he is sitting at.

I take the notebook and pen and slouch down in my seat and watch the teacher rummage on her messy desk, her desk reminded me of my bedroom floor there is so much useless stuff on it. I haven’t seen her face yet but the top of her head has black hair with fading midnight blue streaks and I stared at her with interest. I’ve never seen a teacher with blue anything in their hair on purpose. I leaned in on my desk and twirled my new pen between my index and middle finger. Her name plate says Veronika Stuart. Veronika finally lifted her head to the class and I busted out laughing. She has a very noticeable silver stud in the middle of her bottom lip and her eyebrow is pierced with a butterfly hanging down at the bottom and a spike at the top.

“Is something funny Miss...?” she asked me and I knew by the way she looked at me that she knew exactly why I was laughing. Veronika had a beautiful pearl white smile.

“ It’s Miss. Mercedes, Veronika,” I answered.

“Well Miss. Mercedes welcome to creative writing. In fact I am sure that you wont mind reciting a poem in front of the class at the end of class would you? I have heard of your work and I was intrigued.”

“Sure no problem. Although, I will have to be excused from doing any sort of class work today so that I can write a poem. I’m sure that wont be a problem, will it Veronika?” I said back to her.

“ ‘Course not Miss Mercedes. No problem at all.” We smiled and giggled at each other – I think I could be her favorite student.

“Oh and Miss Mercedes,” she said directly to me, “don’t recite anything too morbid. Okie doke?”

“Okay Veronika,” I said back to her smile.

I’m sitting in my corner and thinking about Aiden. I bet they start painting right away. That’s what I will right about, a painter. After I finished my poem I rested my head down.

“Alright Miss Mercedes go read your poem,” I hear in the back of my head and I stand up and walk in front of the class my boots still untied and flapping around; my fishnets clinging like filthy spiders to my legs. I look down at my notebook and then to Veronika, then to the class.

“Greetings and beatings children,” I said to them Eric smiling big watching me and I can tell he is trying not to laugh, “ this poem thing is called The Painter.

Brush strokes on the canvas

He paints with his heart

Tenderly displaying colors

Carefully placing each perfect part.

With intricate detail

Imagining the picture

First- red, pink, and white

An intimate mixture.

Then- black, blue, and grey

Dark colors of hate

Contradicting meanings

Dirty a beautiful slate.

Tears from his eyes

As his feelings crumble down

A once friendly smile

Now a miserable frown.

Still, colors keep erupting

Letting loose how he feels

Screaming with flourescent blue

Creation lost it's appeal.

The canvas now messy

He attempts to retreat

But two steps back proves

It's still not quite complete.

He thrusts his black brush

Into wet, soggy paint

The image of love

Grows seemingly faint.

A once welcoming portrait

Painted with love and passion

Takes a quick turn

In an unexpected fashion.

Tears now are streaming

His brush begins thrashing

Painting over beauty

The image goes crashing.

Paint on the floor beneath

His trembling toes

It's the story he covers

As the black overthrows.

He throws down the canvas

And starts over again

But he cannot control

The hatred within.” I look over to Veronika so she will know I’m finished.

“Amazing,” she said to me her mouth slightly hanging open.

The bell rings and I go back to my seat and lift Tawney up and put her on my back and rush out of class before Veronika has time to talk to me.

[float]

awesome

great writing

it flows

[Head Wreck]

i say finish it.

[Amerist]

Still reading.

Though, one thing as a favor? With Internet forums comes this horrible uniformity of lines and text. As a result it's difficult to tell paragraphs apart in text (no indentation) so in order to facilitate the ease of reading I generally put spaces between all my paragraphs.

That way it's simply to tell where one paragraphs ends and another begins with very little strain.

Anyway. I finished chapter one. Very good so far.

If find it extremely gritty. The stream-of-thought gets extremely muddled during the release of the rat from the cage section--probably because my brain wants to break it apart into separate thoughts--but in general it winds around in a thinking pattern that I can certainly follow.

I cannot say that I'd ever want to be put in Mercedes situation.

I especially like how the song "snake bite" metaphor is pulled out of that song and reiterated by her in the story. It gives it a different sort of feel (especially because I can hear the song in my head.)