WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (4 page)

I feel different today, somehow…as if I’ve woken from a bad dream that lasted months. My vision is
a tad clearer than it has been.  My thoughts are more put together, not altogether there, but better than chaos. 
The sun is bright and hurts my eyes, the wind is blowing the leaves
across the lawn and the tree limbs bounce up and down as if they’re waiving to me. 
The warmth of the sun’s touch takes me to the window. I drag my man pillow with me. It’s an old feather pillow I’ve had for ages that I plump up and wrap my hungry arms around, a temporary exchange for a warm body. A replacement for Branson. Here lately,
it’s been my lifeline. 
I have to hold things to keep from dying…
literally
. I sit upright and lean against the windowsill, lost in what is and what isn’t. My hand glides up the man pillows back slowly and erotic, 
taking me places. 
Hurt. Pain. Need.
 When I can’t stand it any longer, I press my cheek against the warm glass and squeeze the man pillow. I want to slip away inside the house to visit the pity room, the poor, poor me room. I’ll go there a lot, dwelling between four walls of self-deprecation, drowning in the tears of regret and woe is me, 
but instead, my eyes drift out the window. 
The wind is whipping the Chinese tallow tree like a spoiled child. Dad planted the tree outside my window in 1962, a year before I was born and it has literally grown into the side of the house
as if they are one and the same. 
And since Mag and I felt we had the authority to change namesakes for just about anything, the tallow tree was officially the wondering tree because that’s what we did when we sat in its scraggly limbs—we wondered about life.

In the spring time, it sets off yellow-green clusters of spiked flowers that attracts thousands of bees. When I was just a kid, I’d leave the win
dow open to hear them. 
Sometimes the buzzing was so loud my room vibrated and I felt transported to a peaceful place of mind and solitude. It was like riding the wind on a leaf, with no cares, no silence, no crazy, no f
eeling different, just floating inside a long chant of the universe. 
When autumn came, the leaves dropped and took my heart with them. The bees disappeared and the silence of my bedroom drove me insane. The tree is huge now, so much the outer bark has grown around three pin back buttons
Mag and I placed there as kids.  They were
from the television show, 
Welcome back Mr. Kotter
. The grain has swallowed John Travolta’s head, leaving only the gleam of his toothy smile. Horseshack’s fish eyes and forehead are bizarre and Mr. Kotter’s afro has shrunk 
considerably to a flat top. 
These are but small remnants of my childhood left behind in the grueling battle to remember and forget, to deny or confront. Who shall win, I have no idea, but either way, I fear I shall be a prisoner, regardless. I catch a glimpse of something in the tree tops but the suns glare, blurs my vision. I unhinge from m
y man pillow to open the window and get a better view. 
A slight dislodging occurs in my chest, inside the room—the room that everyone says doesn’t exist.

I open a window. She opens a window.
What happens here is happening there. A twin of myself, carefree and young is acting out my every move. It’s odd at first,
and I stop if only for a second but then continue on. 
I have learned to l
ook past things of this nature.  Everyone says it doesn’t exist—and maybe they’re right, so I try to think as they do. 
I grab my man pillow and lean my head out the window, taking in the breeze and rays of the sun for the first time in months. The Texas humidity slaps me like a damp dish rag
.  O
range, red and brown leaves clink from spindly limbs like sky chandeliers. I close my eyes and absorb the Vitamin D my body is craving from being in utter darkness,
inwardly and outwardly. 
After a good soaking, I open my eyes and come undone.

It was high up in the wondering tree, waiting for me to acknowledge 
its presence, bow to its kingship, and grovel in its majesty.  I lost my breath with its sight, lush and dripping with morning dew.
The drops glistened and bounced across the fabric of its sticky weave.
I had always been leery of spiders in general, but their craftsmanship was astounding and often left me in awe.  I wondered how something so small could create such beauty time and time again, over and over as if it simply wasn’t going to quit.  And then I wondered why I couldn’t do the same? 
The spider web was three foot across, one limb to another and draped with a gallery of crisp, colorful leaf curtains. The small brown spider clung to the stretchy yarn but that’s not what held my gaze and made my heart drop. In the center of the web, hanging from a single thread and clinging to a brown leaf was my redemption.
I could feel a tear pool up in my eyes, left over in time, waiting on this very moment to spill out, to release. 
The tiny cicada crackle clung to a dried maple leaf. 

Like me. Holding on. Tossed in the wind. Drifting. Waiting

Stuck.

Memories flood inside my mind, bits and pieces, childhood relics so vivid and real, I feared I would die from their impact. The leaf crackle spun blurry in my vision, around and around it toiled and my mind connected to it, drifting from past to present and yearning for something unknown, unseen. Suddenly I emerged into another realm, a world of forgotten magic, held up in a lost childhood that sought to reclaim me. Maw Sue appeared at the foot of my bed, ghastly,
ghostly again and scaring me to death. 

“Make lovely your losses, Willodean.”

My heart shattered like pellets of window glass as if it understood the meaning for the first time. She vanished, once again, leaving me to grieve in my wake of incredible afflictions. 
I saw nothing lovely. It didn't feel lovely. How is one to make lovely the pain?
Make lovely our losses.  It’s simply mad. 
 
I glanced at the 
crackle as if it would speak and tell me the answers I needed.  Instead,
I saw myself in its place, stuck, brittle bones, clinging to threads, tangled up, spinning and unable to escape the peril, drifting through days without direction, focus, and left to the mercy of the gusting winds. 
Unreleased. Captive.
 There was a thread in me that felt mysteriously attached to these objects, the wind, the web, the leaf, and the crackle shell, all appearing like snapshots from my childhood. The wind would gently sway and move the leaf crackle and at the same time, my heart would flutter and move with it, aching and ravaged with lost desires.
My mind spun a web of thoughts. 
 
A leaf didn’t belong in a spider web. Nor did a crackle. How did it get there? Did it marry the wrong man, make a gazillion bad decisions, drink liquor to null the pain, horde up in a house of horrors, have sex with strangers, fight internal demons, or swallow bottles of pills to kill the pain? Did it give up? Did it fight a great sadness? Was it gifted and cursed? Was it searching for meaning? Was its namesake nameless? Did it wish for death every day? Did it feel dead already? How did it get there? Where did it start? And how will it end?

A deep quiver rumbled from a dark place,
a hidden room inside the house, beside my heart. 
Underneath. Below.
 It was unsettling. Something grabbed my hand and pulled me. 
Invisible force. Strong.
 
It dragged me to another realm, out from my bedroom and into a dark passageway. 
I kicked and screamed. My skin scraped and buckled in the hallways, passing room after room. I noticed the brass plate descriptions on each door of every room; tower, pity, numbing, shame, sexpot, namesake, seven. As I read each one, something in me broke, ragged glass cutting and
slicing. 

“LET ME GO!” I screamed at the invisib
le force pulling me.  And then as if my mind had no choice, I remembered where I was.  No one could hear me. 
I was inside my own house, the house inside me. 
I knew there were more rooms, many rooms, secret and hidden but sud
denly, whatever had me, stopped and left me still.  I sat dazed at the end of a
familiar hallway. It was eerie as if seeing it with new eyes and my skin pricked.
A gleam of gold peered down at me. 
I looked up at the namepl
ate on the door. I read the bold black letters on the square. 
CRACKLE. Then in a flash, I saw
the door knob rattle and turn and the heavy door swung open and without warning, I was shoved in by the same force that drug me here. 
Before I could think straight, I heard the sound of the door s
lam. 
My heart bolted inside

My flesh goosed out in a cold sweat and I felt clammy. 
Everything was different. Everything was the same. Something was and something wasn’t.
 
I was me. I was her. Two people. It was odd, ethereal, a drifting in of two worlds. Lost but found. Here but there.
 

In one world, I was
an adult, sitting on my cherry blossom bed, staring out the window, and clutching my man pillow.  B
ut in the other world I was inside the house, 
inside the CRACKLE room and she is here with me.  I can feel her presence in me, in the room, around me, of me, for me, against me. 
She has to be the one who brought me here. 
Why can't she just let things alone? Always stirring up trouble.
 
If I could find her, I’d swat her a good one. 
I scan the room. The walls are brittle, sand beige in color and flakes peel off like dried skin. The floor is rough like sandpaper.
It’s irritating on my skin and I can feel it through my thin white cotton gown. 
The emptiness of the room begins to grow loud with voices and hollow reverberations that are haunting to my ears

I stand to my feet wobbly and
unsure.  I walk a few steps.  I hear a scruff noise, almost a drag as if
someone is shuffling behind me. I turn around and a gust of wind like the rush of a train blows against my skin
.  I struggle to stand straight.  I see her flushing
through the walls like a torrential ghost. She is the same as I remember her. She is everything I used to be…
used to be.
 
But no more. 
Our eyes blend together, blue to blue, transferring our energy, one to another. She is making me see, hear and feel even though I don’t want to. 
She
 is a deeper part of me, the little girl I was, unknown and complex. A conflicting twin who knew things—disturbing awful things. 
In fact, she knows too much. I must keep her hidden. 
I must hide her from anyone that could hurt her, defile her, ruin her, 
including myself
.
Yes. This is how it must be.  My mind spins with thoughts I can’t seem to put into action.  It’s her.  She is the reason I can’t do anything. 
She is defiant, unruly and stares me down, controlling me somehow. She doesn’t like my thoughts,
never has.  She calls it
stinking thinking.

"Accept me." She screams
through swirling energy and light.  An aspect of her consciousness and mine seem to manifest themselves, denser than an aura but penetrating into a blue stream of mist.

“No. No. No.”  I say shaking my head. 
I refuse. 
I want to forget. Bury it in the ocean. FORGET.  
When I don’t respond the way she want
s, she throws a temper tantrum and the house inside me, the house we are standing in, follows suit, repeating her anger, shaking and rumbling under our feet. 
My second skin erupts in tiny flinches of fear. 
This is my warning.
 
It’s how my vessel reacts to stress overload when I cannot cope with what I know to be true. 
And when I can’t cope—the Amodgians come. 
T
hey always come. 
Sure enough, the shadow figures sift in like fog phantoms to rescue me from remembering, disappointment and hurt.
They are not scary to look at, not at all.  Just phantoms of smoke in swirls of black, gray and white with black eyes like peas appearing in and out of the mist, with snatching fingers, always wanting, grabbing and trying to take what isn’t theirs.  It’s not their appearance although it is creepy, it is more so their bad energy, as if they were made from the fear of every living thing, combined into one misty cloud and when that cloud touches human skin—it reacts in the only way it knows how.  Fear.  Terrible fears are brought to life.  But since I have interacted with them for so long, they know I will not fight them anymore.  I gave up a long time ago.  They know me now. 
I close my eyes and let them take me to the only place that allows me to
exist as I am.  We end up in front of the wooden black door inside the long dreadful hallway. 
I read the bold black lettering on t
he gold nameplate in the center.  NUMBING. 
The coping room. The leave-it-be room. It never happened room. The don’t-go-back-there room.
 
The denial room. The silent room
.

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