Scars: Part One: Dreams (Chapter Four-- Unfinished)

Of course, on top of all the crap I had to deal with, there was school. School was the rotten cherry atop my shit sundae. If my back hadn't been broken like a two-humped camel's after carrying a massively overweight and equally lazy sheik on his back for two whole days, non-stop through the desert, then this, school, would definitely be the straw that broke mine, that shattered my spinal chord into a dysfunctional S-shaped skeletal structure.1

These were my waking thoughts as the sun barely shone through the unusually crisp summmer air, through my transluscent inidgo curtains, and spread over my room like my room was the ocean at sunset, reflecting in the same fashion. Only this was just barely dawn. As a matter of fact, it was still somewhat dark as I wearily got up and spread my curtains wider.2

Glistening water droplets frictionlessly rolled off elven-green leaves as it had appearantly rained last night after I had gone to sleep, just as at the same time, black, overcast clouds blanketed the sky. I was actually really suprised the sun could shine through at all.3

But even the sun ticked me off. How dare it rise, all high, mighty, and radiant, almost smiling like you see in the cartoons at my misfortune. How dare it approach the day it was helping greatly to unfold when it had been the parent to so many preceding misreable ones and would be host to many more atrocities like yesterday was, and like today was fated to be.4

Nonetheless, I got dressed and walked out my door, memories  from last night haunting me in my own house, ghost with gaping silhouettes, painful demeanors that tormented my mind. Naomi and John were the perfect evil pair like Bonnie and Clyde, they had teamed up together and shot me to hell, left me in my own pathetic world of trouble.5

It WAS a pathetic little world, too. Descending the staircase a disgruntled me winced in disgust at the so-called morning that was the flashlight in a cave of bats and creepy crawly creatures of the night. My world, my cavern of endless trouble. The morning was what showed me all these monstosities just when I was comfortable and thought that the "cave" was the perfect refuge from the bad things on this Earth. Now this Earth hardly seemed an atmosphere worth living in, let alone dying for like all those foolish Japenese kamikaze fighter planes had done.6

O gloomy light, dreary sun, disappear. Leave me in my seclusion. Leave my fate in the paws of darkness and the freakish maternal hands of the night. All I wanted was serenity, which the day, full of its revolting people and their vomitous actions could not provide, and which the night surely would sustain me with, like a mother's erect nipple supplied warm breast milk for her eagerly anticipating infant.7

I made my way sluggishly into the dining room, and sat myself down at the expensive mahogony dinner table. the scrumptios scent aroma of scrambled eggs wafted to my flaring nostrils, awakening me a little bit more, and the pale yellow color on the inide of my eyelids reminded me even more of the eggs, so I opened them. For the third or so time this morning, sunlight expanded my pupils open, trying to pry into my inner thoughts, penetrating my very way of thinking, and posoining me like a deadly virus. This day was already starting to piss me off.8

My mom emerged from the kitchen just then, same pajamas as last night, and practically the same appearance, too, except for her frazzled hair stuck out more today.9

"I made you some eggs, hon. Scrambled, just the way you like them."10

"Unhhh..." I managed to say at last.11

She sat down to my right, at the very end of the eight person table, stirring her coffee. Every now and then she'd take a mellow sip and it'd drive me crazy because I knew she wanted to say something to me, but didn't. I just thought "Well, two can play at that game."12

Without looking up, she finally gave up like she did last night and inquired: "What was all that commotion I heard last night."13

"Unhhh..." Was still the closest thing to a word I could muster.14

"Well, young man?"15

"I, uh..." I trailed off.16

This time I started again, catching conciousness and a dripping drool in the process.17

"I fell down the stairs and bumped my head on the bannister, if that's what you mean," I said, slow as ever and pointing to my balck and blue badge of shame. I had lied just like John had said to, accentuating my cowardice, becuase I couldn't even rebel against him in the slightest bit, couldn't even make up a feasible lie of my own. The saddest part of them all, however, is that my moom believed me.18

I found her crinkly old hand reaching across the corner of the table and caressing my injury tenderly, maternally, which I didn't understand because my mom hardly ever showed affection for me, and now in the past couple of days she was giving me more attention than ever.19

"Don't touch me," I said, and directly afterwards felt bad for the hollow tone I had used. It's not that I wanted her to stop because it hurt, (even though it did, excutiatingly, but I refused to say anything about that aspect of it,) it was the fact that I was so used to only talking to her when I HAD to. This sudden decision by her threw me off-gaurd, caught me unsuspecting and disrupted my routine. Selfish, perhaps, but I really didn't care right now. I mean, I cared about my mother, I'd do anything for her, but for her to suddenly thrust this upon me and expect me to not question it, accept it as normal, especially considering the events that transpired last night, just wasn't fair.20

She continued though, undauntingly brushing her fingers across my face. One more time I said the same thing, only more polite now.21

"Please don't, mom." She looked at me and her expression went numb, she was a faceless gargoyle. I started to wonder if I didn't have something on my face equally as hideous as my pudding-like bruise, that was the kind of look I was getting and it made me feel so uneasy, I myself had to look down.22

"Okay." And she looked pained just like she had last night when she said the same thing to me. The same way, too, like her every feautre from last night was recorded and played back to me now, a mirror-image of our earlier conversation, reviving my guilt.23

I saw my plate as I looked down, and it was like one of those anti-drug commercials. You know, 'This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs; This is your brain with a side-order of bacon.' This scrambled yellow mass of edible delictables  before me seemed to prove that what;s in my head wasn't grey, intellegent biological matter after all, but rahter mashed-up eggs and fried bacon just like the commercials said, only I hadn't taken any drugs.24

My mom got up then, and left the table and the living room altogether, probably to et dressed for her work, kindergarten teaching, vanishing from my peripheral vision, for I was watching her leave out of the corner of my eye. I don't even think I talked  to her for the rest of the misreable day.25

I sighed, knowing what had just gone on, and knowing that both of us were too prideful to make amends for it. So I just started stabbing away at my food, whiuch was already dead, my food, but I didn't care. I just gobbled it up when I was done mutilating it because even it triggered tragic feelings within me.26

When I finished with that I went back upstairs to the bathroom up there. I passed my mother's room and noticed she still hadn't emerged. I sincerely hoped she wasn't crying. I guess I never found out either, because I soon cast the thought aside like an old shirt so that I could better prepare myself for the "indoctrination center" as my father called it. So I stepped through the bathroom door and commenced to do so, grabbing my toothbrush and Crest toothpaste to clean my "pearly-whites." But looking at myself in the mirror was hard.27

I peered at this being that looked exactly like me, but bore an entirely different body language. My doppleganger wasn't exactly cheerful, but neither did he express my feelings. This wasn't honesty. So I suddenly became angry at myself for not being honest with the world. Scratch that, with myself. If walking piles of steaming turds were going to look upon me and talk about me to their comrade turds, I wanted them to know I was not in the mood to be messed with, or even talked to. I knew they'd ask "What's gotten into him?" but I really could care less. Let them wonder. Let them waste oxygen by asking questions to which no one had the answers except for me, the unapproachable on whom no one truly cared enough to ask personally, anyway, except maybe Anne who was just curios. Let them do all that, they were wasting their lives like wicks on a candle anyway.28

I slammed my palm into the wall next to the mirror in abhorration that this person before me almost passed off as me. I just stood there panting, foaming at the mouth and staring at this imposter down with an icy glare sharp as daggers.29

I spat out the contents of my mouth, still looking as if I were looking tat the murderer of my family facing death row. And maybe that wasn't too far off. I just know that dishonesty, especially with myself was intolerable and fled the bathroom, back down my stairs for the millionth time, going into the living room and snatching up my backpack and lunch money and headed out the reddish-brown door to wait in the toxins  of thw world until the yellow hate machine came along, encumbered with screaming little gnats whose eyeballs I wanted to pluck out and give them a reason to shriek. There, in the belly of the beast I'd sit, in the stomach of the iron giant, the roller coaster that transported me to a fiery hell where I could have my head pumped full of cucca until my brains came oozing out my ears. Anyway, that's where I was off too.30

*          *          *31

In that hellhole I waited for some excitement. I waited for something to life my spirits. Nothing really happened. At first.32

There were too new kids, however, Daryll and Jared, brothers, or the Osmond twins as they soon came to be called. They were not particularly friendly like their TV counter-parts, and after only a short stay at Warren High, their names were bing whispered in hushed tones.33

Both had thick, dark hair and wore black leather jackets with Metallica and Megadeth pins all over them and tears in the armpits you could fit your fist through. Although God knows no one wanted to. We all specualted, in secrecy, of course, when we decided that not even a leprachuan could eavesdrop on us, on just how those rips (or where they acidic burns?) got there. Their lower half of their appearal, too, stuck out. Blue, almost whitesh faded blue jeans, also with tears in them, like scuds on the kneecaps. Almost as if they skateboarded WAY too much and cut up their knees upon falling every five seconds, but I never saw them to pick up a skateboard.34

You had to look closely at their gut, too. Not the smartest of ideas, seeing how they get easily offended... and you do NOT want to offend two burly guys whose alternate nicknames, even adopted by some weasely teachers, was the Kobra Twins. When you actually did see their bellies, hidden under all that hot leather, you saw they were really quite large young boys. (And even this, the fact that they were young boys seemed not right, because of the unnatural rate at which they grew stubs on their chins and the gruff, weathered looks upon their faces.) They were really fat. But no one ever said anything for the exact reason that you just didn't go looking at their girths to begin with. But that was all hidden if you were just petrified in fear staring into their probing eyes.35

Daryll was the youngest of the two identical twins, born eleven minutes and ten seconds, exactly six-hundred-sity-six seconds before Jared. At least that's what they say. He was bi-polar, as was his brother, although Daryll was obviously the more chronic of the two, and had a tendancy to be a dickhead one second and a complete asshole the next. Entirely different anamotical parts, I thought to myself.36

Jared was the eldest, but probably not the more intellegent of the two. He was smart, and strong, but neither so much as his brother, who was a good four inches taller than him, reaching a massive 6'4". As a matter of fact, Jared's brother was probably the brains and the brawn of everything they did together, (and nothing was left out) and Jared was just his slightly shorter assistant like the hunchbacked Igor to the mentally acute Doctor Frankenstein.37

You may be wondering why I am rambling on and on and on about these two, but you will find out later, when the time is right. They actually play one of the biggest roles in shaping who I eventually become than perhaps anyone else.38

Throughout the course of the grueling day, I noticed that even the two's SCHEDULES were inseperable. I started to almost think of them as siamese twins. They might as well have been for I rarely saw them more than five feet apart. They always walked sid by side, Moses and his clone parting the sea of high-schoolers in the hallway when they approached.39

The worst part of all was that their shcedules were almost identical to mine, except maybe a few classes.  The first class I had with them was Music/Music Philosophy, which fell on a black day. (Our school colors were red and black, as our mascot was a raptor at Warren High.)40

The class progressed horribly. Our teacher's name was Ms. Mink. It seemed as if we had a lot of strange named teachers here, whereas my homeroom teacher's name was Ms. Buzzcock, a name which I heard chidings about every day. Ms Mink was an old saggy teacher whose reptilian skin beneath her dark, piercing old eyes looked like saddles on a sluggish western mare, they hung so low. When she spoke to you, too, she winced, puckered in her pale, cracking lips, and all you saw between those eyelids was sheer blackness, the black emptiness of hell. Then, as if that wasn't enough, she'd point a crooked old finger at you, as if to jab your eye out, which no one put past her of being capable of doing. After that, she'd glare at you harder, sometimes shaking that arthritis-inflamed twig and rattling the various tin and fake gold braceletes hung on her wrist which was as jagged as her finger, like sharp rocks that large ships always crashed into in the midst of a harsh storm.41

But she only turned into that fire-breathing succubus when you pissed her off, which I never did. She actually was quite a nice old lady if you just showed her a little respect.42

She was odd. She always wore Rasta or Jamaican looking dresses, which, coupled with those big, loosely clanking bracelets, made her look very much like a hippy. I actually think she was a die-hard hippy, being an avid Grateful Dead fan, although she was open to all kinds of music. I never heard her complain about some of the shit kids brought in at least.43

Anyway, being a hippy, she didn't have fancy chesterwood chairs, but instead had us all sit in a semi-circle facing her like a bunch of little children would at a D.A.R.E. puppeteer would at an elementary school for crissakes. It was kind of funny, actually, because she did sometimes whip out a maize colored acoustic guitar and start singing in a raspy, toad-craoking tone, ancient folk songs like Bob Marley or, her personal favorite, Bob Dylan.44

That day was one such occasion, and I wedged between the two putrid behemoths, like a scrumptous piece of turkey smothered in disgusting mayonaisse, mad foul by the condement. I must have been hallucenating because it was almost as if I could SEE green vapor rising out from theri heavy, black, wool-lined leathr jackets.45

Ms. Mink was singing us and old Johnny Cash song, "Delia," I think it was, which I loved, but I don't think it was all to appropriate for school. I couldn't really pay attention, though, because Thing One and Thing Two right next to me were pulling from their grungy pockets, pieces of crinkled notebook paper which they then tore tiny pieces off of and stuck in the corners of their mouths. Their mouths, which I could only compare to trash-disposals stuck in the middle of their acne-plagued chins, chewing machines that did not good, especially when they were trying to produce noise. When those pieces of paper were all moist and saturated with dripping saliva, they'd pull Bic pen shafts from a secret pocket in their jackets, put their fat lips on one end, pushing the wad of paper into the tube with their tongues, and spit oversized spitballs at each other, more often than not missing completely. Some spitballs even found their marks on my cheeks, next to my lips, foreign saliva spreading across my face, to ther corners of my mouth, which I found particularly disgusting.46

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and made possible the biggest mistake of my life.47

"Cut it out!" I yelled, as if I were Marsha from the Brady Bunch, or worse yet, Princess Leia in Star Wars. All eyes turned to me, focusing on me like owls in the night on field mice running by.  Their glares were just as piercing, too. Even Ms. Mink looked at me in suprise, a look of shock and not the visually piercing daggers I would expect.48

"Lemmy...?" she said softly. 49

I hung my head for a while, knowing what the Kobra Twins would do to me, only imagining the painful torture I'd have to endure after this, because I had already seen the wet hair smelling of shit of Steven Tremonti, a shy, brown-haired boy who had accidentally bumped into them and had gotten the harsh initiation don't-fuck-with-us swirly, human feces stuck in his hair and neon yellow urine dripping off his nose, as if his face was an Ozzfest porta-pottie, too. The Osmonds were LAUGHIN about that one, and now they lacked that humor. Perhaps I should have just hung myself so I wouldn't find out. I had rope at home and a huge sycamore tree in the yard, hopefully my neck would snap from the fall. It was too bad I didn't think of faking sick (although I didn't have to fake, thinking of Steven Tremonti,) so I could go home and execute that course of action. Too bad indeed.50

"What's the matter?" A question it seemed every person living and breathing was asking me of late. A question I was sick and fucking tired of trying to avoid answering. So I made an EVER BIGGER mistake, (which seemed impossible, but believe me, it wasn't,) and pointed my thumbs feebly to either side of me and uttered: "them."51

"And what are they doing, Lemmy?" she curiously prodded, her voice peaking. "C'mon, tell the truth, Lemmy, don't be afraid." You could hear she was fond of me as a student by the way she spoke. But I WAS afraid.I could feel my bladder weakening and small droplets of pee trickling out. I also figured, however, that it was too late to turn back. A foolish thought, because I could have very easily said 'nothing' and gotten a still bad, but less severe punishment.52

Instead, I looked up at her and said "They were throwing spitballs, MS. Mink."53

The queit hippy morphed then into the raging beast from the abyss then, unleashing hell upon the boys and going over the familiar routine which seemed more like a satanic ritual of pointing her dagger-esque finer at each of them and saying coldly: "Go... to the... office..."54

The pair hesitated, but when Ms. Mink yelled "Now!" it was quite appearant she was serious and pissed off like a mongoose being physically chided and jabbed at with charred and pointed sticks and then wafted the aroma of raw fish in front of their nose, accumulating the mongoose's saliva and angering it even more, bot not giving it one bite. 55

Daryll and Jared retreated to the office as commanded, hating to be bossed around and giving both me and the teacher a hateful scowl upon their exiting. Ms. Mink just stared back at them until they shuddered away, and I sorrowfully dropped my head down, and closed my eyes as Ms. Mink adopted bi-polar disease and said sweetly to the class: "I'm so sorry for that rude display of ill-manners." It won't happen again. And it didn't.56

*          *          *57

The school bell finally rang, resounding an echo in the hollow passage of the labyrinth of my skull, my ears, and remeinded me much of what I believe the ecstatic outcry of a black slave would have sounded like back in the 1800s when his shackles were unchained and he rubbed his wrists and severely chaffed ankles, purple and swollen for a few minutes. The bell, for me, was the voice of the cruel master who had, time and time again, given you twenty lashes for speaking out of line, a harsh reality you had to learn, and now the master was saying in reluctance, or perhaps, although unlikely, it was in repentance: "You are free." But I did not feel free.58

As individual upon misguided individual littered the vacant hallway like an old hair-metal anthem out of the 80s, only not as poorly dressed (although there was the occasional, contrasting, seemingly colorblind outcast that stood out like a drunk in a midnight choir,) as the students marched relentlessly, militantly, and rejoicefully onward, nearly plowing me, a dear in the hadlights of an oncoming semi-truck, over; I felt a chill scurry up my spine like that basilik lizard in my dream was using each bone on my back like a wrung on a ladder and burrowing itself into my neck like its relative, the snake, who buries himself in his hole when a predator was nearby.59

I felt like there was a snake, a Boa-Constrictor, wrapping its elongated and sickly pale belly around my Adam's Apple, in attempts to crush it like one would apply pressure with your foot on a beer can, collapsing it. I think this metaphor is perfect, too, because I felt malice and a swell of hatred, uncompleted acts of vengeance lacing my nerves and very being to produce this feeling, much like the serpent in the Garden of Eden would despise the apple he used as his tool of deception, because it was placed there by his enemy, God, whom he loathed and longed to be, to become with everything, whatever it was, scales and pure evil that composed him.60

That swelling feeling climaxed in my abdomen, then, and all at once pressure came gushing inot my bladder, which was a water balloon with the capacity to hold two or three pints of water and was nearing the one quart mark. That certainly was NOT the time for me to lose control of my urinary issues. I would just have to contain myself and look like a fool, squirming about as if I had uncontrollabe seizures in a  bus seat all by myself while everyone gawked at me. Shit. I was in a real dilemma here, I thought, as I looked outside to the bus rapidly filling with students as if it were a giant pool slowly being filled via hose, full of water. No, I couldn't think of that, I told myself. I'd just have to control the immense build-up that ached sharply in my gut, probably intoxicating and poisoning my other organs...61

I bolted down the hallway, but in the opposite direction of the bus, towards the boy's room where I could releive and release myself, alleviating that concrete block that lay atop my water-balloon bladder. Besides, I told myself as drops started to trickle down my leg and I started to wimper with each thud of my foot hitting the floor, I would look like an even bigger fool if I pissed myself only a few minutes from my home. I also tried to calm my other fear about this situation, that I wouldn't be able to make the bus in time if I took my little break, but I said to myself that the bus headed just across the street to pick up the middle-school students when it was done here, anyway. I should have plenty of time.62

I reached the navy blue door and flew it open, so it smashed into the concrete wall and slowly closed, prevented from slamming shut by an air-pump. I rushed past the two darkly complexed boys a little older than me conversing with each other, creating what seemed to be small talk. all the while occupying two of three urinals this room contained (on the third hung a sign upon which was scrawled in black sharpie "Out of Order). This was all a blur, though.63

I rushed past the boys and flung the metal, red-painted stall door open and immediately pulled down my jeans and started peeing right then, ass exposed and stall door wide open, but not a moment too late. There aren't even words in the English language that can describe how incredibly relieved I felt. All I can say is that I finally know how a poddle who has been trained to "hold it in" all day long finally feels when they let it loose, unleashing a steady grunge-orange fountain of pure resolve. No wonder they lolled their tongues out the way they did, that's how good it felt.64

About half a minute late, I was done and sighed as if my mouth was a piston on a train wheel, releasing gasses or air or whatever, and like the train, now that I have exhausted my air, I could move onward, forward with my life, across the street and catch the bus at last at the end of the jam-packed day.65

But as I rounded the corner, of the stall, one pain gone, another saluted me like a flashing pop-up on your computer, cheerful-looking, but concealing a virus. My eyes stung from an ever-thickening smoke filling the cramped room and my only reaction was to wince and cough as my throat felt like it were a mangy old cat's scratching post. My eyes, though... The pain from my eyes was the most prominent. I imagined them being cracked patches of dirt in a desolate desert being blown apart by a western wind. This thick, milky cloud being the wind. And as I approached the sink to cleanse myself, (not thinkking this was a hazard like a fire or anything because the unique smell... like something I have smelled before on my father's mechanic,) I heard more coughing. Then I remembered the two boys I had seen upon entering this place, and it hit me. They were now smoking a little recreational reefer, and I smelled like pot.66

"Shit," I uttered, but so lightly I thought they couldn't hear me. Appearantly they did, and heard my irritated tone, too.67

"What the hell was that?" One of them choked. The other grunted and started waving his hand sideways as to clear the smoke away and to get a good look at me.68

"Why, it's that little punk from Music class, Jare. Lemmy."69

This is where I realized who they were. Jared and Daryll Osmond, the Kobra Twins also deemed the Doobie Brothers in their short stay here, which I was now discovering the true meaning of. I had always assumed it was a reference to the old '70s rock duet, but I guess that could be thrown out the window.70

"Where?" the eldest said and looked around stupified.71

"Right THERE bro!" The youngest pointed. He saw me and grimaced.72