Authors: Autumn Christian
She hands you the bag full of mushroom buttons and you take
one. Then another. Two hours later your eyes have become gods sitting in the
center of your head, and neither of you can stop laughing.
When you can finally breathe, chest aching, you say, “I
think my mother will die without me,” and this is profoundly hilarious in a way
that nothing has ever been and nothing will ever be again, hilarious in this
cosmic divine way, which starts both of you laughing again, harder than before.
St. Peter keeps driving. The road is a slit throat; the road
signs are open mouths. There is no past or future. There is nothing in behind,
nothing in front. There is only the road underneath the wheels. Trying to
imagine where you’re going would be incomprehensible, because it won’t exist
until you step out of the vehicle, and the universe builds it in front of you.
Yet despite all of this, when the sun sinks, you grow
afraid. There’s something about the darkness, the sharp white lines on the
highway that reminds you what you’ve left behind. There is blood in-between
your fingers. There are still pieces of wood in your hair. You wonder how long
it’ll take before they move your mother from ICU to the psych ward.
There
is a dark passenger sitting in the back of the van, rubbing the film of her
hands, like a poison, across the glass.
THE
ROAD DIDN’T END
, and neither did the trip. I became dangerous and started
to ask questions.
“Where are we going?”
“My friend wants to meet you,” Saint Peter said.
“So she knows about me.”
Saint Peter lit a stick of incense and stuck it in her teeth
like a cigarette. Rosemary and Sandalwood filled the van. She stretched in the
front seat and her shirt rode up, revealing a wound right above her belly
button. It was an old wound, the edges yellowed, scars traced and retraced, as
if it’d broken open and healed several times.
“Have you ever loved someone so much that you mutilated
yourself?” she asked.
I touched my stomach where I’d cut it with a dirty piece of
glass.
“It wasn’t really like that,” I said.
Something popped behind the van, like a barrier breaking. Or
maybe a flat tire, but no, the sound was too loud, too thick, and the van
didn’t slow.
Behind us the dark waters rushed. The river where Charlie
drowned was following us, sluicing down the highway. Nausea set in. It’s only
the drugs, I told myself. It’s only the drugs.
“Where are we going?”
“Someplace you’ll be safe,” she said.
“You’ll have to drive faster than that then,” I said.
But she didn’t press harder on the gas pedal, didn’t speed
us away from our impending death. If she looked in the rear-view mirror and saw
rushing water, she didn’t let me know. She only leaned her head back on the
seat, a band of sweat creating a halo around her forehead.
“When I first met you, you were shining,” she said.
I opened my eyes again, and could see horned faces forming
out of the dark water. They strained their cheeks against the dark foam. I
cowered into my chair and closed my eyes.
Maybe I should focus on something else.
“I’m sick of hearing about me,” I said. “Tell me about you.”
“I grew up in the Middle East, in a small fishing village.
One day a man came to preach, but he had so many followers, they threatened to
push him into the water. So I let him borrow my small boat to preach on so he
wouldn’t drown.”
“And that’s how you became a Saint.”
“It’s how I fell in love,” she said. “I sold my boat and
abandoned my home. My children. My wife. I threw myself at his feet and told
him I’d be his slave because, without his light, I knew my organs would burst
with grief.”
“Then what happened?”
“I left him because I met you.”
When I opened my eyes again, her head stretched across the
road in a psychedelic blur. We passed a field full of shadow children dancing
in a circle.
“I’m going to throw up,” I said.
“We’re almost there,” Saint Peter said.
Don’t focus on anything outside of the car, I told myself.
If you focus on the blue Virgin Mary stickers on the dashboard in front of you
and the torn up seats underneath you, then all of hell, with its screaming,
nickering sea, might disappear.
The crosses faded from Saint Peter’s arms, and in their
place, bloomed acidic wounds.
“Cignus said you went to my school, but I don’t remember
you,” I said, trying to ignore the dark water in the rearview mirror, the
blurred landscape shifting into a funneled dream.
But as quickly as it came, the river disappeared.
“I was different back then,” Saint Peter said.
I remembered myself back in Psychology class, right before I
dropped out. I turned to the chapter on Paranoid Schizophrenia, expecting to
find my mother’s photograph. Instead, I found this:
Auditory and visual hallucinations, such as hearing voices
and seeing strange people
Delusions and paranoia, such as believing everyone wants to
poison them
Difficulty forming or maintaining relationships
Disorganized thought patterns and confusing language
Messianic complex or believing they have superhuman powers
Suicidal thoughts and behavior
An irrational fear of humanoid monsters that crawl out of
dead trees
A tendency to build Viking Ships out of junkyard scrap
Propensity towards a boring death by drowning
Attraction toward dangerous and selfish people - like
artists
Guilt for something that wasn’t your fault that will follow
you for the rest of your life
Blahblahblah. Just die already.
As the words mutated on the page, I tried to suppress my
laughter, and started coughing. Jock Buddy kicked the back of my desk and told
me he’d be fucking my ass in hell. I whipped my braid back in his face and told
him I’d fuck his ass in the parking lot, but I wasn’t paying attention to him.
Really, I was thinking about my family’s curse and how much longer it would be
before it peeled back its foam lips and chased me down.
It wasn’t fair. Jock Buddy would probably ditch the sneer
and end up with a respectable career in marketing, and I’d be hospitalized,
psychiatrized, and chased down like a rabid dog whenever I ditched my medicine.
Maybe in a past life I could’ve used my insanity as a shaman
or a seer. But this was America, sister, where the only acceptable form of
insanity is religion.
That day after psychology class I went into the bathroom. A
girl stood in front of the mirrors examining a bleeding cut on her arm. She was
frail and tall, with slender and knock-kneed Bambi legs. She wore thick,
cat-eye glasses and hid her face underneath layers of heavy brown hair. She was
a tragedy really, the kind of girl who would probably commit high school social
suicide before she even had a chance to open her mouth.
“You cut too deep,” I said.
“It wasn’t me,” she said.
“Also your mascara is running.”
I dug into my purse and found a pack of makeup wipes.
“Here,” I said.
She tossed her hair back. Her eyes were ghoulish, haunted.
I’d seen eyes like that only once before, on a boy who couldn’t sleep without
tracking dirt.
“I’ve been looking for you,” she said.
She gripped her cut arm, shaking. She didn’t take the makeup
wipes.
My hand began to shake as well.
“Looking for me? What did you want?” I asked.
She smeared my face with her blood.
“Nothing right now,” she said, and left.
It’d been Saint Peter.
“How could I have forgotten?” I said.
That was where I recognized her from the night I found her
tangled in lights in the artist’s yard. Who could blame me for not remembering?
The blue-haired girl in platforms, with drugs in her blood and scars heaving on
her skin, hardly resembled the trembling, creep-shouldered brunette I met in a
high school bathroom.
“We’ve been together lifetimes,” Saint Peter said. “One day
you’ll remember.”
This is how schizophrenia must work. It finds the white
spaces and fills them in with rituals and astral logic. It reaches down into
the dregs of the sub conscious and finds a broken girl who will look to you as
her savior. What a pair we would make: the mad god, and her towering, bleeding
saint. We could set up this van as a Tabernacle, and charge $20 for salvation
and a t-shirt. We’d never have to get real jobs.
“Where are we going?” I asked for the third time.
“Somewhere safe,” she said.
Saint Peter pulled the van over on the side of the road. We
tried to bed down in the back with warm blankets, but, of course, neither of us
could sleep with the universe exploding above our heads, the horse-headed
nebula opening its mouth to scream, the earth but a moist eye. St. Peter lay on
the floor of the van with her pupils big enough for horses to run through,
sweating all over. She stripped off her clothes and huddled inside a blanket.
The demon rested her head on me and her black hair spread
out across my lap like a fan.
“She is a dark and pretty thing,” Saint Peter said, her
chest heaving, each breath hissing hard through her teeth. “You should be proud
to have her.”
Whether she spoke to the demon, or me, I didn’t know.
She unzipped the hunter’s bow from a suede bag. She opened a
can of bowstring wax, but instead of applying it to her bow, she drew patterns
in it with her fingernails. She hummed underneath her breath - gospel hymns -
ones that I’d never heard before.
If someone asked me then why I invited the demon into my
bed, or why I brought her with me as I ran from my childhood home, I wouldn’t have
been able to say. She’d been chasing me my entire life, a night terror, the
kind of monster, you can only hope, will terrify your children into obedience.
But as I looked across the van at her, playing with Pluto by taunting her with
the spiders dangling from her wrists, I only wanted to cling to her.
Right before sunrise, the demon, Pluto, and I went outside
underneath the pale spatter of stars. We walked to the field off the highway.
We were coming down from the high of the mushrooms. I grew sleepy and slow, my
jaw aching. My skin seemed too heavy to carry anymore.
I almost expected the demon to burst into flames in the
sunlight. But, when the sun hit her, she didn’t ignite. She closed her eyes and
inhaled the light. Wisps of dandelions blew into her hair.
It could’ve been an almost romantic moment, but then I
thought of my mother, alone in a hospital bed. I thought of plastic tubes
snaking around her arms and tugging at her veins, while nurses drugged her with
enough tranquilizers to make sure she’d never walk straight again.
“I’m a terrible person,” I said.
“Me too,” the demon said, “but I wasn’t a person for long.”
“I’m letting my mother die.”
“You could always go back,” she said.
A crow landed on the demon’s arm, trying to eat a centipede
crawling in her hair. The demon grabbed the crow and twisted its head off. She
ate it. She tore its wings off and pressed them to her mouth. Its body fell
into the grass. Pluto jumped out of my arms and started to play with its
headless body, biting it, circling it.
“Look,” she said. “I could be an angel.”
She rubbed the bloodied wings against her lips, her cheek.
Underneath their black feathers, she smiled at me.
“You’re a monster,” I said.
“You thought you were the only one?” she asked.
I should leave her. I could push her down into the grass and
jump into the van and tell Saint Peter to drive drive drive.
She tried to touch my face with the black feathers. I
stepped backwards.
“Keep those away from me.”
Her smile faded. She dropped the feathers. They floated to
the grass. My hands curled into fists. I’d raised them, ready to strike the
demon.
I stared at them, taut with energy, as if they didn’t belong
to me. She didn’t move to avoid an incoming blow, didn’t flinch.
“I’ve waited for you,” she said.
Slowly, still tense, I uncurled my fists.
She drew one of my shaking hands to her lips and gently
kissed the knuckles. Her lips were smooth and dry.
“I came when you called me,” she said. “I took care of you.”
My stomach bottomed out when she looked at me. When she
pressed her body against mine, my heart ached. She arched her back and I ran my
fingers down her spine, each vertebra, one by one. I gathered her skirt in my
hands and pushed it up against her thighs, squeezing until my knuckles turned
white.
“Didn’t I take care of you?” she asked.
I kissed her mouth. Kissed her again and again, breathing
hard.
I always thought she was made of spiders and chitin, rotten
water, but I touched only cool skin.
The demon and I went back to the van and Saint Peter climbed
into the driver’s seat. We arrived in the city in the middle of the night. It
was not what I expected.
CHARACTERS
MAD GIRL
: a
schizophrenic loser, late teens
THE SAINT
: a
self-harming art model, late teens
DEMON
: a shadow
whose reality or unreality is disputed, late teens
THE WITCH
: drug
addict, possibly reincarnation of Hecate, early twenties
PLUTO
: a black
cat, middle-aged
[The stage is the living room of a dark, dilapidated house,
owned by a diesel punk witch. The only light is the candle underneath THE WITCH’S
face. THE WITCH sits on a burgundy couch in a nearly empty living room. The
couch is her throne. A pack of dogs lies sleeping at her feet. There are
machines, like industrial tubing, embedded in her forehead. There are machines
hooked into the crumbling wall behind her.]
[Enter Stage Left: SAINT and MAD GIRL, who
is
carrying PLUTO]
MAD GIRL. (To the Saint) You told me we were going somewhere
safe.
THE SAINT. Yes, but nobody can keep you safe forever.
MAD GIRL. I’m going to throw up. Get me out of here.
THE WITCH. You don’t even know where you are.
[THE WITCH blows the candles out. They are cast in darkness.
There’s a soft grinding noise coming through the walls. MAD GIRL cries out
softly. There’s a scratching sound like MAD GIRL is trying to tear the skin off
her face]
THE WITCH. You shouldn’t be acting that way. You’re an old
goddess, sister.
THE SAINT. She’s dehydrated. She’s malnourished. She hasn’t
been awake for years.
THE WITCH. Why would you ever fall asleep?
THE SAINT. (Whispering) Please, be kind to her.
[MAD GIRL begins to weep. THE SAINT presses MAD GIRL’s face
into her chest to muffle her crying. MAD GIRL’s body convulses. PLUTO jumps out
of MAD GIRL’s arms]
THE WITCH. I’m getting sick of kindness.
THE SAINT. She’s not ready to accept this.
THE WITCH. Well how long is it going to take? I’m getting
bored. I have neural pathways you couldn’t dream of, and you want me to just
sit here and be nice?
THE SAINT. The plan was ruined.
THE WITCH. (Speaking to the invisible audience) I’m building
a chaosphere out of used parts. I could destroy the universe, if I wanted to,
but I haven’t found another I like yet.
[A soft blue light starts glowing from above, growing slowly
in intensity, illuminating the entire living room. the sleepy dogs at THE WITCH’s
feet begin to stir.
They’re more
like monsters than dogs, great black mastiffs with glossy fur. Their eyes are
baby blue. Their claws are like glass. PLUTO lies among them. THE WITCH shifts
on her throne, and, out of her lap spill eyeballs and little blue flowers]
MAD GIRL. (Whispering to THE SAINT) I want to go somewhere
safe.
THE WITCH. (Overhearing) You’ll never find a place like
that. Now be quiet, and pay attention. I don’t want to have to show you this
again.
[The blue light gets brighter. The light reveals they’re
standing in front of dark blue curtains. The curtains part to reveal a small,
dark, empty stage]
THE WITCH. (To MAD GIRL) Where did everything go? You can’t
come into my house and change whatever you want. Tell me what you’ve done!
MAD GIRL. This is the wrong play.
SAINT PETER. (Whispering to MAD GIRL) It’s only the actors
who are wrong.
[MAD GIRL tugs at the SAINT’s jacket and at her hair. She’s
never known fear like this.]
[THE WITCH stands up abruptly from her throne. Her dogs
begin barking and eating eyeballs off the floor. She’s looking at the stage
behind the stage. We cannot see her face]
THE WITCH. I did not cast you for this role.
[A soft blue
spotlight casts down on the empty stage. DEMON appears to materialize on the
stage from the blue light. MAD GIRL hardly recognizes her. DEMON is wearing
gaudy bright red lipstick and a shimmering flapper dress. Her black hair has
been tied in a topknot. The dogs keep barking.]
THE WITCH. Who let you in here?
[THE WITCH motions
for her ghouls to head toward the stage. The ghouls writhe across the floor
toward her, but when the demon holds her hand out, the ghouls stop.]
DEMON. I’m going to sing a lullaby.
[A microphone materializes on stage. The demon creeps toward
it. Her motions are nearly too quick for the human eye, almost stopgap. She
seems to walk through dimensions, flickering in and out of existence. She
touches the microphone like a sex organ.]
DEMON. (Her voice reverberates throughout the stage. Only
MAD GIRL exists for her in this moment.)
You know how lonely I get, honey,
waiting
for you to come home.
I get so lonely, I lie down and listen to flowers grow.
We could be stars together.
You could shine and I would explode.
I’ll build storm clouds for you
to
dream on.
Cities for you
to
rule in.
Oh, but even though I get so lonely,
I’ll only wait for you, honey,
Wait until you come home and see
What a garden I’ve grown for you
All of these beautiful flowers
All of these beautiful trees.
THE WITCH.
Love
is the worst kind of pain.
THE SAINT. Then you’ve never been in pain.
[THE DEMON is still singing. Her hair is coming undone. Her
lipstick is smeared down her chin, as if melting]
DEMON. (Continuing to sing)
You know how lonely I get, honey,
waiting
for you to come home.
I get so lonely I lie down and—
[The microphone stops working, cutting the demon off.]
THE WITCH. I’m done with children’s games.
MAD GIRL. She wasn’t finished. Let her finish.
THE WITCH. This isn’t how the ritual works.
THE SAINT. You’re a new goddess? Then do something
different.
THE WITCH. (To THE SAINT) I’ve never heard you be so
disrespectful. Something must be wrong. I’ll forgive you this once.
MAD GIRL. (Pulling at her hair, in mental pain) How does the
song go again? I can’t remember.
[THE WITCH crosses the room toward MAD GIRL and THE SAINT,
trailing behind her a gown eaten away by dust, sewn together with bones. The
tubing attaching her head to the wall stretches out as she moves. The dogs
follow after her, sniffing at the feet. MAD GIRL pulls away from THE SAINT’s
arm. She is shaking all over. THE WITCH touches MAD GIRL’s chin.]
THE WITCH. Listen carefully to me.
[MAD GIRL appears barely coherent. Her head is lolling
against her shoulder. The dogs sniff at her arms and legs. Her clothes appear
to be disintegrating. THE WITCH embraces her, but the motion is aggressive,
like grabbing a disobedient toddler.]
THE WITCH. Are you listening to me? I’m going to give you a
potion to wake you up.
MAD GIRL. (Delirious, trying to pull away) I am awake. I’m
only in the wrong play.
[Fog rolls onto the stage. The grinding noise coming through
the walls get louder. DEMON has stopped singing. Her hair is completely undone.
The microphone is gone. The blue light fades, and DEMON steps down toward MAD
GIRL. THE WITCH releases MAD GIRL, who goes spinning into the DEMON’s arms]
DEMON (To MAD GIRL).
I could sew
you a robe of stars.
MAD GIRL. I’m not my mother.
DEMON. You have her mouth.
MAD GIRL. Don’t say that ever again.
DEMON. You have her head.
MAD GIRL. I won’t be her. I won’t.
DEMON. Whatever you are, you’ll never be the same again.
[The grinding noise through the wall grows even louder.]
MAD GIRL. What the fuck is that noise?
[DEMON kisses MAD GIRL on the mouth, leaving a smear of
lipstick]
THE WITCH.
A new kind of medicine.
[They are all standing on the overgrown lawn of THE WITCH’s
dark, dilapidated house. The lighting is dim, to suggest nighttime. THE WITCH
is summoning ghouls to build a giant machine in the middle of the lawn. Ghouls
crawl out of her skin. They fall from her wrists like transparent slugs, and,
on the ground, they writhe into human shapes. When they’re fully formed, they
pick up scraps of metal and bend them, weld them together, with their teeth.]
MAD GIRL. Why can’t anyone hear me screaming?
THE SAINT. This is a dark city and a lonely city.
MAD GIRL. I’m going crazy. You were supposed to help me.
[Laughter comes from every direction, including the
audience]
THE SAINT. I am helping you.
MAD GIRL. You can’t even stand up straight.
THE SAINT. (Laughing.) You know I’m a fuck up. I did too
much cocaine.
THE WITCH. Have some more.
Mad girl, you
too.
You look sober.
MAD GIRL. No more drugs, okay? No more drugs. That was the
worst acid I’ve ever had. I was fighting lions in the coliseum for a thousand
years.
THE WITCH. I am the queen here. You do as I say.
[The dogs bound out of the front door of the dilapidated
house, which is really an empty frame, rolled onto the stage. There are now ten
or twelve dogs instead of six. They’ve grown bigger. Their eyes are no longer
blue, but silver. Some of them carry deerskin pelts in their mouths. Others
wear the ribcages and horns of deer. They surround MAD GIRL.]
THE WITCH. Hold out your hand.
MAD GIRL. What is happening to me?
THE WITCH. Haven’t you ever been to a higher state of
consciousness?
MAD GIRL. If that’s what this feels like, I don’t want to
be.
[One of the dogs
spits slobbery pills into MAD GIRL’s hand.]
MAD GIRL. Gross.
THE WITCH. Can’t you see I’m trying to help you? Take them.
MAD GIRL. No way.
THE WITCH. I’ve sunk Viking ships on hydra-headed pieces of
ice. I’ve conquered distant galaxies with ships made from the ether of ghosts.
I’ve taken the Internet to parallel universes and used it to enslave kings with
its knowledge. Do as I say, and take those fucking pills.
MAD GIRL. (Backing away). I don’t care. I won’t.
[The DEMON appears behind MAD GIRL. She moves. It’s sensual
and slow. She wraps her arms around MAD GIRL, mirroring her body, and presses
her ear into her mouth.]
DEMON. All you have to do is hold your arms out, and I’ll
take your hands.
[MAD GIRL, reluctantly, swallows the whole handful of pills.
Her eyes widen and her entire body goes slack. She falls onto the grass in slow
motion. The ghouls step over MAD GIRL’s inert body as they continue to work on
the machine. None of the other characters on stage move or speak, as if they’re
frozen in time. This continues for several uncomfortable, long minutes.]
THE WITCH. (Her voice startling and unfamiliar after the
silence) She’s hopeless. She’s not going to wake up.
THE SAINT. You don’t know her like I do.
[DEMON bends down to MAD GIRL, her hair trailing over MAD
GIRL’s eyes, her mouth. MAD GIRL has gone unresponsive. She is in a distant
universe. We can assume she is having the worst trip of her life.]
DEMON. (Speaking to the inert MAD GIRL) You can push through
fear to the other side. It’s like piercing a membrane.
THE WITCH. If Mad Girl could only get past this petty idea
of consequence and causality, she’d transcend her worthless human
consciousness.
DEMON. (Looking up at THE WITCH) That doesn’t sound right.
THE SAINT. (To THE WITCH) What are you talking about?
THE WITCH. Never mind, I forget. Most things are still made
out of meat.
[The machine groans. Its mechanical arms move up and down,
as if being pulled by levers from the inside. It is painted a dark black, like
the ghouls themselves. MAD GIRL writhes in the grass, choking.]
THE WITCH. (Looking down at MAD GIRL.) I will admit. She is
strong, and brave. But old goddesses can be so stupid sometimes.
THE SAINT. (Pointing upwards) Look up.
[THE WITCH, THE SAINT, and DEMON look up into the sky. Baby
spiders like black wisps, floating on almost-invisible, thin spider webs, are
floating above them on currents of air.]
THE SAINT. Where are they going?
THE WITCH.
Toward the city.
Like
all things made of meat. They go there to die.
DEMON. Never kill a spider. If you do, they’ll never show
you the way again.
[THE SAINT and DEMON continue to stare at the spiders floating
past. The dogs surround them, barking and slobbering. They bite the air, trying
to eat the spiders that float too low.]
[THE SAINT kneels beside MAD GIRL and shakes her. MAD GIRL
is unresponsive. Oil drips from the mouth of the machine and flows around them,
killing the grass. They now appear to be standing on an island, surrounded by
oil. The rushing sound of the river pierces the walls of the stage. DEMON looks
around, searching for the source of the sound. Some of the baby spiders, flying
past, snarl into her hair.]
DEMON. She’s getting close.
THE WITCH. It’s too soon. She’ll destroy us, and we’ll have
to do this all over again.
THE SAINT. My brother. I could kill him for what he did.
DEMON. Her anger is like a bullet train. Her anger is like
the Gulf War. Her anger is as vast and meaningless as dark matter.