WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (43 page)

“After all I do.” His brown eyes grew into hard specks while a heat rose up in me. 
Heat, terrible heat. 
It rose up through my gut, gurgling through my throat, heat and fire, pain and more pain. “You buy shit every goddamned day.” He said. “You have no fucking right to question me. I work in this household. I bring home the money. What the hell do you do?”

His voice always like this, one sided, accusatory. He diverts and directs all fault my way, 
me, me, me
. But I'm wondering why he's talking money when he just walked in the door at five AM. He should have been home at eleven thirty. Where the hell has he been all night and what was he doing? More so, who was he with? My head was spinning, a rapture of endless wrath, blending together.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—lift off.
 I exploded.

“Yeah I do have a right.” I screamed. “I have a right to know where my drunk ass husband has been all night so don’t put this on money. Money has nothing to do with it. Quit trying to make me crazy you piece of shit for brains. Couldn’t you have called me or something? Picked up the damn phone and tell me you were out screwing some whore?”

I ran across the room, picked up the phone, jerked it from the wall and threw it at him.
Shocked with my own behavior I stood there replaying it in my head. 
Oddly, it felt good.
 He ducked but it didn’t slow him down. 

“It’s none of your damn business where I’m at.” His voice was a growl and then he laughed as if my anger was funny. The room was quiet except for his teeth grinding, a blade sharpening for the next swift cut. He
mouth wrinkled around his cigarette as he took a long disgusting drag.  He never took his eyes off me, while he dropped it on the
linoleum floor and stepped on it with the toe of his Red wings. It was a dare for me to say another word, make a move. But I didn't have to—his cigarette may have been snuffed out but he ignited into a madman. He went from calm disgust to tee-total psycho. His normal brown eyes went into a wildness I had never seen before, stages of yellow and green, devil red. A plate, a flashlight, a book, dishpan, bag of chips, cup of pens, a lotion bottle, my camera, ALL went flying and crashing across the room in a tornado fit. He rambled with rage, violent and slurring words I didn’t understand and when he could find nothing else to throw, he came at me. He pinned me against the wall. I could fell a nail head stabbing me in the back as he pressed against me with his hard hips. I could smell the rich stench of alcohol and tobacco on his breath. “You wanna talk shit now woman?” He said biting my ear just enough to keep me still. I flinched a little but couldn’t move. “Why are you here Willodean?” his voice was gritty, hateful. “You don’t love me. Who you been screwing? That guy at the grocery store, huh? The one who talks to you every time we go in there? Was it good? Does he give you what you want?” He slammed his body against me in punishment. I know better than to answer him when he talks crazy—because there is no arguing with crazy. He goes into a spin of looney talk that never makes sense. I have no idea where he's going with it and if I try to make sense of it, it
will backfire and drive me mad and I’m pretty sure that’s the intention. 

“Where did you go today? I know you haven’t been here. Were you with him?” 
He screams slamming his fist into the wall making me jump. 
What the hell is
he talking about? 
I've been home all day.
 
I have no idea what he’s talking about. I haven’t screwed anyone. I was faithful.
 His words were twisted and made no sense, harmful, awful words beating me down, letter by letter like a pounding fist, raging chatter verging on lunacy. I had heard this talk so much during marriage I began to question my own sanity—as if I HAD done the very things he said. It made me doubt
. It made me wonder in my mind and to keep from losing it, I had to just endure it and wait itll it was over. 

“After you fuck him, he’s just gone throw you away when he’s done. Nobody will have you. Nobody.” He said. Word assaults, one after another, spirit breaking, confusion, mess. 
Would it have made a difference if I’d done this or said that?
 The chaos of my inner life matched the chaos of my outer life. Pretty soon, everything went black and fused together. I hated who we were together. 
Toxic.
 I hated who I was when I was with him and without him. Bearer of all wrongs, Willodean Hart Spates had had enough. I snapped like a green pea in my mama’s pea shelling, southern sap hands. The rebel of my namesake came out and by God, if I was going to go out—I was for damn sure, going to go out knowing that I got a few punches in for good measure. 

Split second overload of madness, temporary insanity, house of dark shadows shit, wild and out of control, pent up emotions let loose discharging on anything and everything. He was ranting again. Louder and more obnoxious, bringing up the whole kitchen sink, things I don’t remember saying or doing and quite possibly never happened to begin with, except in his sick twisted mind games. His hands lock onto my each side of my head like a vice, getting tighter and tighter as he presses me into the wall. A ramble of word assaults rage out of him, not fluid enough for me to decipher. Lip spit dripped from his mouth and I could see a swirl of venom flicker in his dark eyes. He blamed me for everything. I wanted to scream but his hands held me firm, squirming underneath the pressure of his grip, then he just let go and let me slide down the wall. When I gained breath I went mad. 
I lost it.
Months and months of hate formed a hard slat paddle the size of my palm. I didn’t care if it hurt me or not. I was
numb anyway.  I lurched at him. 
A sizzling skin slap broke the room. In a split second
, it was over.
 The entire room settled silent. The plates in the dish rack clattered, my hand sizzled and his left cheek flamed red as if we were standing in hell’s kitchen. My lungs expelled all air while the hands of the hell clock above the refrigerator moved in slow warps, shivering gaps of seconds between each number, little hushes of fear because it knew, like me, what was next. I named it the hell clock a few months after we moved in, a few months after that infamous phone call. 
Make the bed. Live the lie.
Every time I heard a tick from the damn clock—it reminded me of my insignificant existence, inside this insignificant marriage. A tick—tock, a slow, moving, every hour, on the hour, misery of death.

In that second, after I slapped his face, I wanted to simply vanish. 
TICK! Swoosh! TOCK! Gone.
 I prayed the Shadows would take me away and lock me inside the numbing room. Their hell wasn’t as bad as my own hell. Instead,
I made my bed. I lived the lie. I took my punishment.
Branson’s face filled with a boiling fester of the devils due. He came at me, eyes red and wil
d. My bones rattled from impact. 
His thick fingers wrapped my neck like a python. When I couldn’t feel air—I saw stars and tears from the centerpiece, and they spun out of control, out of my reach, taking me with them. 
I hated him. I hated myself. I hated the world.
 I morphed, mentally and physically from my body, leaving this cruel, awful place I never understood. I entered a place of in-between, a realm where the little girl appeared to me. She showed me myself. I 
am floating, fragile through the swift wind, above her, while she runs through the fields below me, looking up and grinning. I am attached to her, by a string, tugging at her wrist, soaring, rising, and falling. It is blissful. I am free. I see memories of days past, when I am flying close to danger, and then tragedy. I wrap around a tree limb. The little girl tugs to snap me free and I drift down to the ground, wounded and broken. I am a kite. I was meant to fly. She patches me up, tends to my bruises, and launches me to the winds again. I kiss the clouds and feel the shine of the sun on my fragile paper heart. This continues each day, sometimes I fall, or get tangled up and when I do, the little girl mends me, tapes me back up, reassembling strings, and retying the ribbons. She paints over my scars with bright colors to disguise the bruises. There are days I snap loose and that is when I face turbulent winds of change and lose my direction, lost in the horizon without anything to tether me to the earth. Sometimes I lose hope and tell myself that I am just a dumb ‘ole kite. I mean, who says a kite has to fly when I can sit in the corner, undisturbed, useless and packed away, with no worries of scars, or bruises. No risk, no challenge…no rewards.

“You’re supposed to fly.” Says the little girl. “It‘s your destiny to fly. You‘re made to fly. You‘re a kite, you must live out your namesake. Remember what Maw Sue says—a seeker has to do what a seeker knows it should, regardless of the cost. And for you, you are a kite and you are meant to fly.”

The apparition of my vision fades. My head is pounding and heavy and I try to lift it but a striking blow keeps me down. I’m not sure where I’m at. I’m lying flat, white panels, small and blurry come into vision, a hundred eyes turn to ceiling tiles. I’m on the floor of the kitchen. I hear the ominous ticking of the hell clock while the kitchen spins. A few seconds later, I manage to upright myself and crawl to the window by the sink. The driveway is vacant, Branson’s truck is gone. I sink to the floor, exhausted, hurting and drained of life. I am reminded of the vision.
I am the white kite, grounded, broken, torn.

In the days that followed dark spirits entered our home. I could feel them hovering in me, over me, around me. They were darker that I’ve ever seen them. They hoisted me to their crippled lair. In the haven of my mind, inside the Dumas of Umbra, I revisited the past, and the secrets I hid in the interminable labyrinth of rooms and hallways. Everything was multiplications of three. Three stories, thirty three bedrooms, three staircases, three bathrooms with jungle waterfall as showers and turquoise pools as baths. I’d float in the glistening water of the darkness and stare into the roof which had no ceiling, only a dark sky of night with three moons and 333, 333, 333 stars. It was my safe, unhindered world, a world I built to live, to exist when I couldn’t bear to breathe in the other one. It was my safety. Life had no meaning, it was uneventful, and insignificant. Time did not exist there. While taking occupancy in the house, I’d get lost in the maze of doors, windows and hallways and end up in the crackle room where the little girl lived. The girl I had forgotten, denied, mistreated, even though she deserved much worse punishment. She would get attached and barely let me leave without her. I’d flee out the door, her running behind me, screaming, beating on the door wanting out, wanting to be free, wanting to live.

“No.” I’d say. “You cannot come out.” She was unable to
take no for an answer.  She’d sneak into
my nightmares and daydrea
ms to haunt me with her screams, her whispers.  Not only did I have to deal with her, I had to deal with Branson and he was never going to forgive me for slapping him. 
I was the damaged girl, the crazy woman. He came and went and paid me back with his drinking, his anger, his cheating, his words, his actions and then his favorite. The one that got the most attention. He threw out the dead zone. 
My childhood bedfellow.
 It drove me mad. Madder than mad. Second
s pass. Days pass. Months pass while I sit in the dead zone. 
The hell clock ticks. The kite is grounded, broken, stored away. I make my bed. I live the lie.

Bloody President

When adults tell me not to do something—it’s the only thing I want to do.
It should be proven knowledge to adults, but for some reason, they continue to taunt us and make us get in trouble.  For me, it’s the broken knob inside my head,
clicks to rebel mode and cannot be shut off until the carnal act is committed, so sayeth James Dean. Just a mere five minutes ago, Dell told me
not
to go in Maw Sue’s bedroom and normally I wouldn’t think of it, because it’s haunted. Two of Maw Sue’s husbands died
inside that room. 
Uhh...creepy.
 
But nonetheless, it niggles at me. 
I stop on the dirt trail to speculate, about twenty-five yards from Maw Sue’s house. The rickety old porch seems off kilter as if it’s brooding. Within a matter of seconds, I find myself standing on its squeaky planks. It’s disturbingly quiet—almost too quiet, as if something shattered leaving behind the engulfing void, a holy hush after a prayer, that fraction of a second where hope lingers unsettled in chaos, undefined. Goose bumps rack my skin. I don’t know whether to run for my life or drop to
my knees in confession.  Instead I run inside. 
Eeeekk. Eekkkk. Swaaaaccckkkk. Bam! Clang! Clang!
 The rickety screen door wails behind me, while the bells sound out my entrance in warning. My heart leaps for the thousandth time. There is a foreboding preeminence in the air around me.

Walking into Maw Sue’s house was like entering a box of pastel crayons, plus it held oodles and oodles of horrors. Every room is a different color; pink, powder blue, lime green, yellow and red. She swore the whole house was a mammoth gray, proof that she’s color blind. I tip toe across the floor—trying not to wake the dead. The house has its own language, the floor sinks, moans and bellows under my feet followed by a repertoire of low creaks and whistles, squalls and scurries, and other unmentionables. This house had the ability to bring my nightmares vividly alive, as if I’d given them p
ermission to act themselves out, which I didn’t. 
Since I have the gift, everything is magnified, intensified to the hilt, almost unbearable. It is days like this I wish to be normal with no gift whatsoever. I wish I was a sleeper, bland and boring, dull as dirt and filled with the world and all its glory and guts of materialistic gore. But according to Maw Sue we don’t get to pick our gifts. It is preplanned, uniquely written and designed for a purpose uniquely for our timing.