Abyss (Songs of Megiddo) (9 page)

“
S’ok.” Meg’s lips were tightly pursed in a tense, pink little grimace. She was clearly worried. “We wouldn’t have missed it for anything. We love you guys.”

“We love you both, too.” Naithe looked
so happy. It made me feel warm inside.

§§§

The way that I’d always thought about it; the way that – to me – it seemed to
work
...was that, when wounds healed – psychological wounds just the same as literal ones – they generally healed unevenly. The ruptured flesh never perfectly knitted back together...and they always left a trace, however minute that trace may have been.

Lar
ger wounds left larger evidence: Winding scars. Thick, sinuous contusions. Marks that faded with time, but were still, generally, at least somewhat evident in a person’s behaviour and the reactions they had. They could complicate or compromise a person...but in small ways, mostly. In – from the outside – barely noticeable ways.

As it was for everyone, there’d been some bits and pieces of my life where things had ha
ppened that had left these...‘marks’. My personal, private collection of scars and contusions; abscesses and holes...dotted the topography of my psychological landscape. Again: Just like they did for
everyone
. Some people had many, many more than me.
Most
people, so far as I could tell, had quite a few less.

And, like I said: there were signs.
Signs that showed, to whatever degree, on the outside.

For example – without meaning to, and from an early age – I’d gravitated towards words and concepts like: holes; rifts; branded skin; hollow objects; train derailments; and structu
rally unstable buildings. There were many more, but they all centred on the same foundations: they were all things that were empty; broken; scarred; compromised; or in the midst of their own annihilation. I brought them up as allusion and metaphor constantly, without even really realising the extent to which I was doing it. They were always just...the first things that came to mind as comparisons or for contrast. This was due, I assumed, to a basic level of symmetry that I instinctively grabbed for between them and myself.

In my experience, this wasn’t all that unusual
, either. These were – and are – all fairly common subconscious preoccupations for a good proportion of people who’d lived through something – or some things, as the case may have been – that had changed them. Because, ultimately, they were ways of relating. One finds, that is, things outside of oneself with aspects which
mirror
what one tries to avoid, or which resemble what one seeks to better understand, on the inside. It’s just...a more narrow, recognisable version of how everyday people create meaning in the world around them, every...single...day.

But I’d also been through some other things. Worse things. And these had created diffe
rent kinds of damage.

When a trauma was profound enough, it seemed to me: when it tore too deeply and too extensively, the associated wounds could take a very long time to heal.
Much longer than if the wounds had been small, shallow, or superficial. It was also possible, however, that they never really
would
heal.

When this happened, the scar tissue simply...remained raw, no matter how much
time passed. Bloody and ragged...swollen and seething...you lived with it as best as you could. But you were never quite the same as you had been: because the trauma – in its way and over time – ceased to be a thing that had happened to you. It became, instead, a part of you.

There were parts of me like that. Parts that
I tried to protect others from, and tried to protect myself from...in terms of the damage that they could cause if they were uncovered. So I learned to...‘cordon off’ these parts of who I was. These raw, ever-bleeding edges of me that were too sensitive to allow other people access to, and too grotesque to explore myself.

The potential complications, when it came to these kinds of damage...were immense. With something
benign...something like a preference for certain words or concepts, I could have
– if I’d wanted to – just trained myself to stop using them. I could have made a list of anything morbid, say, and just...monitored myself; meting out rewards and punishments for compliance. As long as I had the self-control for it, and a fairly adequate ability to concentrate and criticise myself, it would’ve been a reasonably simple thing to do. I mean...I haven’t and I won’t, because it’s not really that important or noticeable...but the point is: I could.

F
or more significant damage, though, the markers aren’t benign, but malignant. You can’t negotiate with...or ‘train out’ malignant behaviour. Not really. The key difference is that benign markers are passive...and thus you can become aware of them, more-or-less, as they manifest. In the moment they occur, that is...or immediately after. You interact with them as loose variables which, though they impact on, or reflect aspects of you, they are...quite clearly...not you.

Malignant behaviours, on the other hand, don’t manifest as tic
ks or patterns, but as varying levels of psychotic behaviour. Once they take hold, any real distinction between the edges of you – where you end – and the corresponding edges of the behaviours – where they begin – are basically immaterial. By definition, that is to say...psychosis is invisible to the psychotic mind.

Most malignant markers – for me and for most –
manifested as responses to ‘triggers’. Encountering these was simply the result of running across something, out in the world, that meaningfully echoed or called to mind an aspect of the trauma that had caused the wound. Usually, for me, there’d be some kind of near-immediate regression or relapse. I often wouldn’t even realise what had happened, precisely...my mood would simply darken, and my thoughts would start to get a bit jumbled and erratic. I usually worked it out and worked through it. But, sometimes, a trigger would create a dissonance or a dislocation that I could neither consciously detect, nor handle. When that happened...at least looking back from a later, saner point...it was almost like damaged computer experiencing a system failure. A vast, sudden overreaction...to being assaulted with sudden insight into just how deeply you’d been marked.

So, in response to triggers – if the response got out of hand and began to exceed the base-level emotional aspect – psychotic symptoms would emerge: auditory hallucination; more rarely, visual. Disordered, disrupted, and delusional thoughts and impulses. Extreme par
anoia. Extreme and fluctuating emotions. Uncontrollable anger. Other...‘things’.

While many other
disorders encompassed these same aspects, massive trauma that caused lasting damage didn’t really seem to be constrained by any particular parameters. Psychosis, after all, was a term that, in a technical
sense...really only indicated the
lack
of a more specific diagnosis.

The worst of it was, you’d never know what might trigger you,
precisely...or how you might react to it when it did. As for allergies...there was an entire spectrum of possible response-severity, and you really never knew just how bad a given response would be until you found yourself having it...or reflected back on fragments of memory and the testimony of those who dealt with you, after the fact. You could guess, in advance...and, if you were willing to look inside without averting your eyes – as difficult as it may have been to do so – you’d probably have been right more often than not. But there was always the possibility that your estimation would slip over something small that would end up triggering something big. And that would be when the panic began.

§§§

“So. Kayla...” Meg bit her lip. I raised my eyebrows. I knew the general contours of what was on its way. The only time Meg made that particular face was when she wanted a favour. If not a big favour, then certainly an involved one.

“Uh
-oh. Here it comes...” I chuckled, leaning back in my chair and folding my arms over my chest.

“Don’t be like that,” She whined. There was a touch of adolescence to that whine, playful though it was. I felt a momentary surge of social claustrophobia, and couldn’t help but co
ngratulate myself on my heterosexuality. I loved all of the Arden women to bits – those I’d actually met, that is – but thinking about what it would be like actually being with someone like Meg? I shivered. Maybe it was sexist, but it was also the sum of my life experience: boys were easy. Malleable. Girls – at least the kinds of girls I assumed I’d have been attracted to if I’d been attracted to girls – weren’t. “Girls like us have to stick together.”

“
Woot. Girl power.” I deadpanned. Meg scowled a mildly unimpressed little scowl before continuing; pretending my hilarious rejoinder hadn’t happened.

Everyone’s a critic.

“Look. Right now, I need some info. Like...need, Kayla. Can we talk?”

“We’re talking
now, Meg.” I reminded her: all fake innocence, topped with my most infuriatingly passive smile. To be fair, she could have been worse. The immediate example that sprang to mind was her sister: Naithe’s mother and my new mother-in-law. Now there was a woman – you’ll notice that I now use the term ‘woman’; something that she definitely was, but that I had significant trouble seeing myself, or Meg, as – who had elevated passive aggression to a nuanced species of artistic expression. And, as with any consummate specialist, the aptitude and finesse with which she plied her trade demanded admiration.

And I did admire it, honestly. Compared to her...Meg was a bush
-league manipulator. I had also, of course, met plenty of other women – and men; after all, these sorts of skills are far more significantly correlatable with intelligence than with gender – who were far more frighteningly adept than Meg at leveraging weakness to get their way.

I suppose, as well...that I’d be lying through my teeth if I claimed that
I didn’t have a finely honed set of my own skills in this area.

With Meg, the difference was that
– generally, to an external observer – it was hardly noticeable. You had to know her to know what she was doing, and the better you knew her, the more obvious it became. By the same token, though, the better you knew her, the less inclined you were to push back against it. She wasn’t the kind of friend or – I imagined – significant
other, that you’d really want to say ‘no’ to. Not because you’d pay for it if you did, but because she had a way of making you want to see her happy. Of making you willing to expend a decent amount of effort in order to make that happen.

That was how, when you had Megan Arden
– now Megan
Rodriguez
-Arden, apparently – in your life, you’d find yourself happily devoting hours and hours of what should have been your free time to the attempt to widen that pretty smile of hers, just a little bit more: only to, at some point in the middle of it all, have this moment of sober clarity where you realised that you’d...well... you’d ‘been had’. Part of me admired it. But, as I said, a bigger part of me couldn’t help but breath a sigh of relief that I wasn’t in Eli’s shoes. It was probably part of the reason she liked young guys so much: too young to realise that there were better things to do with their lives than being the Head Priest of the Cult of Meg.

Fairly sure he’s getting enough out of it to make it worth his while, though.

No doubt.

And, I guess...every relationship has some elements to it that mirror that dynamic. The
see-saw never quite sits horizontal: it’s always up on one side and down on the other, even if the weighting shifts from time to time. Some people swear by submission to an equal, or however you want to phrase it. Some people take it a step further, and seem to actually want an unequal dynamic: either on the one side or the other. I, personally, can’t fathom either – at least...I can’t fathom either if I’m meant to be on the bottom
–
but then, loss of control seems like insanity to me...so I’m hardly an objective commentator.

“Just meet me outside after the first speech, okay?” She pleaded.

God. That pout.

It was disturbingly easy to forget that I was a good seven years younger than her.
Her whole strategy was premised on her ability to make a person feel as if they were dealing with a teenager in need.

“Of course.” I nodded. “I love that dress, by the way.”
I commented, making an illustrative, up-and-down gesture with my hand. She looked a little confused.

“I’m the Maid of Honour.”

“Mmhmm.” I nodded. Her eyes narrowed.

“
You picked it.”

“Mm
-
hmm
.” I nodded again. Realisation slowly began to cast light over the shadowed horizon. She smirked.

“I love it too, Kayla
...you have such great taste.” She cooed with syrupy, exaggerated sweetness. “You’re the best.” I tilted my head towards Naithe.

“So this one keeps saying.”

§§§

It goes like this:

The fight or flight reflex activates deep in the subconscious mind as a response to the initial trigger...desperately trying to reposition your focus away from the torn and bloody – the desiccated and desecrated – remnants of those parts of you that were once whole. So while the trigger pushes you to focus on these parts...your mind, defensively, pushes back.