Unmoved
by Miles Rausch
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The funeral was in November. Not so many came as were expected, but more came than were invited. All sorts in the community came to extend a shaky hand of condolence or a wavering "I'm sorry" to the family, almost like they were too ashamed or grief-ridden to say it. We were all ten years old that day.
I sat with my mother telling stories to my uncles about my father and I. I'm sure that they had heard all these stories before, but I felt the need to share them. My uncles wouldn't look at me, couldn't look at me, while I spoke. Some of them had closed their eyes while others stared at the window or the other guests. At that time, I was not aware of things like tact or social unease and continued to ruin everyone's mood further. I talked for what seemed to be forever and, when I was finished, my Dad was still dead.
I don't remember crying. I'm not sure that I did. I remember wilting, inside. I remember telling myself that I should cry; I should get this out. I shouldn't shut down like last time, when my brother died. My mother said that if I changed again as much as I changed before, she wouldn't be able to handle it, and I would be sent away. She was under a lot of pressure and I tended to make it worse. Those weren't her words, they are mine, but they are still true.
Soon I couldn't sleep. I just couldn't. It took everything to keep going because my body was dying. All I could think about was my father and my brother and death. I could feel myself changing again. I was drawing inward, caving backward, like a hole had opened up at my back and my soul was being vacuumed into it. I put more and more dead pillow-air between myself and everyone else. If they wanted me, they would have to work for me. Things became white, then I became white, and I slept.
It was like a song, when I ponder it now. I was the rise and fall of a delicious melody, not heard by many, not heard by any. When my mother found me, she said, I was doubled over and crying. They asked me what the matter was, but I couldn't talk. They said I gasped at the letters of the words but they just shook inside my head. Tears and sobs and nothing. From that day on, I haven't spoken.
This isn't about a sad little kid who misses his dad and brother. It's about a little boy who was so overcome that he couldn't speak for the rest of is life. I stayed white for the longest time. Not completely white, but pale and fading. I waned out of existence bit by bit, little by little. I turned inside out, backwards, and reverse. I was the inverse of myself, my former self. I felt all this happen, this mirror on my side, but I could not reverse it as hard as I tried.
It was lonely, just my mother and I, in the house. Of course, I never spoke. Of course, my mother had never a dry eye. She would sulk around close the shades. She didn't allow sunlight anymore. She said that she had started to get migraines from the sun. I was never sure if mother was telling me what was true or if she was just seeing what I would believe. I pretended to believe all of it, and I pretended like I was making an effort to talk again. We were both content in our shells, our boundaries from the world.
We lived like that for years. Silent and dark was our tomb. Both of us were content to be where we were forever and to never get better and to never get worse. Mother still went to work, and I still went to school. We recalled our paces and marched through them, step by step. Meals were the most depressing. The tink of metal on porcelain. The scrape of a knife through meat. Soft chewing noises that maddened me, but I couldn't tell her to chew quietly. I was locked and getting black.
Who needs friends when you have zero personality? The only charming thing about me is also my largest insult. I turned to this, writing. How can one communicate but by written word when one's tongue is useless for actions beyond swallowing. I wrote stories, I wrote poetry, I wrote everything. I drew, sketched things. I drew a lot of cemeteries and skulls and crosses; symbols of life through death. Redemption through art, so to speak. I'd kill paper to save my soul, and I felt no remorse. What I drew and said through my pen made people uncomfortable and uneasy. They shyed away from me ever more. I was that weird quiet kid. I'd hear snickers when I pulled out my notebook. The invective insults were alarmingly clever and depressingly accurate. I drew pictures of them dying, hardly revenge.
All day, that is all I thought about. I got good at drawing nooses and glinting knives. If mother could see me now, I thought. If mother didn't cry all the time, maybe she'd be proud of me. If she didn't spend all her time alienating me and making me hate her, then maybe we'd have a relationship. Instead, I had a detached relationship with everyone else. If I liked you, you were spared from the notebook. If I didn't like you, you became a puppet.
I had complete control inside the blue ruled lines and red margin markings. I could put you wherever I wanted and make you feel whatever I wanted you to. I put people through merciless, violent rampages. I destroyed people's lives and made them believe it was them doing to damage. I trapped people inside boxes, inside crates, inside basements and made the room cold and dark. Cold and dark were large themes in my writing. Pain, hurt, dark, cold, and dialogue. I was very good at dialogue. All I could do was study it in my silence. You think that talking makes you good at speaking? It's listening that makes you good at speaking.
These bullies soon became my only friends. It wasn't that I liked them more now that I had berated and debased them. It was that I had spent all my time with these people. I had grown attached. I had carefully traced the looks of panick, fear, and sorrow onto their faces with my ballpoint, and I couldn't bear to leave that. I had to live it. That was what started this. I didn't erase them without good cause. I had to see what if I was right in my imagination. I had to make these people real, finally. They say it's always the quiet ones, but they never tell you why. I can't picture many people coming to these conclusions from these same events. I just wanted to help myself get better. I needed them as much as they needed me. The predator needs the prey. To that end, the prey is the victor, the winner. The winner is the prey that waits until the sleeping, stupid predator rolls onto his back where his heart and stomach are exposed.
I poured myself into those stories, too. I was not just puppet master, but puppet as well. I'm not sure why I did it. That part of it didn't make me feel better. I was always the character that screamed out, pleaded with the Deity to not shed blood for him. I was always asking myself to forgive them, but I never listened. It might be that part of it that made me sick to my stomach. I would get so ill after writing a story. It wasn't the blood, the violence, that made me vomit; it was the realization that I was the same as them. I was just like them; I brutalized others to make myself feel better. Would I never escape this? Would I never be free of restraints?
They always went out to eat Chinese food on Saturday. It would usually be around eleven in the morning. I, too, had quite the penchant for Chinese food, and I would often visit the local buffet on Saturdays. I had only to do this twice, at the same time as the brutal bunch, to learn my lesson. Still, I knew now where they would be. I could plan. My mother hadn't thrown out any of my father's things. Among the disheveled items in the closet was a hand gun and a clip. It seemed cliché to do it. Everyone was expecting me to snap, but they wouldn't understand why. That could be my salvation - misunderstanding. It was my hope that doctors from all over the world, doctors of all types, would come to examine me, to determine why exactly I did what I did. They would ask me questions but get no response. They would read my writing and speculate over my sketching and still come to no conclusion. They would have to conclude that I was a genius beyond comprehension.
Repulsed as I was by firearms, I tucked the weapon into my pants (in the back) after checking the clip. I knew how to use this. I used to use this, when I could speak. I left the house, with my mother sleeping finally, and began my walk. To get to the buffet I walk by the high school, two parks, the YMCA, and the Lutheran church. The Lutheran church sits on the outskirts of what would be considered the main drag. This is where the bulk of the businesses are, downtown. There are clothing stores, banks, photo development stores, and there, between a greeting card store and a men's store, is the Chinese buffet. They call it "Tokyo's Finest Buffet", though the squalor of the place says different.
I walked to the door and stopped. Through the glass entry I could see the group sitting at a table. They were laughing and talking and completely not noticing me. All these new emotions rose up. In a trice, I felt afraid. Everything narrowed to a pin point. Everything turned to ice, including my thoughts. They hung in the air where they were, suddenly motionless and glazed over. I could hear my heartbeat in the sudden quiet. I could hear my breath, I could hear the moisture in it as I inhaled and exhaled. I suddenly became quite aware of the time. I could feel that, too, pushing me from behind, as if my next step was the world's next second. Could I feel eyes on me, new eyes that could step out of this frozen era and see through this new time? Yes, I could. Then the moment passed, and I continued.
I pushed open the door. Everything was slow motion. Everything took it's time, weighed itself out, and became heavy. I walked down the aisle and slanted off to the right, towards the idiots. This odd detachment inside grew. I became more detached, like I could stand outside my body and watch what was going to happen. I reached the table and stood there. They were talking to me, but I couldn't hear them. I could only hear my eyes narrowing, bit by bit. I reached behind me and felt the cold metal of the gun through my shirt. I could feel the chill like an aura around the piece. I started to shiver from it. The one who I consider the leader was talking very earnestly towards me. I concentrated very hard on him and finally heard his words.
"...eh, freak?" My muscles seized, my face grimaced, and I grabbed the pistol. I swung around and aimed at the goon who was furthest on my right. Then, like the seconds tick on a clock, I went from person to person. The leader was sitting against with the wall behind him. When I pulled the trigger, a spray of blood, thick, splattered against the faded, oriental wallpaper and mixed itself with the plaster fragments. Some of them who sat on my left had started to try to get away; they didn't. They didn't suffer as I had planned. There was a twitch as the gun discharged, then shock, then they would fall. I was a better shot than I thought.
They guy on the far left I had only shot in the leg. He was bleeding pretty badly and crying. I ordered him to stand up. He did, shaking with fear, and he stood on his bad leg, too. I leaned forward and told him that I was doing this to save him and his friends. I was doing this not because I wanted to but because I was not in control of myself. The puppet master was in control of me, and I was the puppet master. He had to understand. He had to see. To prove it, I leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. Then I pulled back and mouthed 'I love you' as I lifted the gun to his forehead. One more click, and I felt a complete release of everything. I crumbled with him, to the floor, and wept. I couldn't stand. I was hoping that perhaps an event like this would restore my voice, but it hadn't.
I watched the bodies twitch for a bit. There was a sharp stabbing pain in the back of my neck. It was the puppet master. The sacrifice | he said | wasn't grand enough. He demanded blood, more blood, more suffering. Like an antediluvian god of War, he required a large sacrifice. I had killed who he had asked, though. The pain grew stronger. Get up. Prop them up at tables near the front, so people can see. Remove their clothing. This, all of it, I did reluctantly. I did not think that undressing five of my worst enemies and propping them up at tables would help me feel better. I propped up the bodies, set their plates in from of them, like they were eating there. It seemed both unusual and natural for a group of five unclothed corpses to be eating chinese food. With the setting of the last plate and cup, the stabbing pain stopped.
Suddenly I was hungry. Everyone else in the restaurant was gone. They must have cleared out when the shooting had started. I was free to eat as much as I wanted without paying. I grabbed a plate and went to sit at their table. I felt like I was finally up to their status as humans, but they considered me a parvenu. It was in their glossy, sight-less eyes that I saw this and heard it. I remember thinking that this might have been fun under different circumstances. Then the police came in. Funny, I don't recall hearing any sirens.