I was a child once. Hard to imagine something so long ago. Yet I have only memories and feelings, as we all do, about it. My doctor says my memories aren't exactly "there". He constantly complains to me and asks why, and why, over, and over, and over again. I guess that has something to do with how absurdly confusing certain things may be to him. To her however, it should make perfect sense.
I don't like to think on "why". I just assume things happen, and that it's alright for them to. What is so wrong about that? Maybe, just maybe; something may have peaked my interest lately, but nothing that I can't get my mind off of. If I try, I promise I can. You believe me. Don't you?
At some point, my mother likely hurt me. Beyond anything I've dealt with prior, having to come to terms with my mother's...eccentric nature isn't something that interests me. I actually feel as though it does nothing but destroy her legacy. I couldn't bare to do such a thing.
Therapy is difficult. Thinking is difficult, so why do I have to do it?
I don't know. That's my answer.
I was walking through my house yesterday, just reciting, "Please, please, do something." to myself, as my head felt ablaze with plenty of fire and brimstone monologues from when my mother would tell them to me.
"2 Corinthians 5:13!, Leviticus 18:22!"
God. Give me a break and spare me your comically quiet outbursts of fury. My mother always used to shout bible verses at me like I was Satan himself.
Funny to think about it now, seeing the way she gutted herself deep with lashes and whips and tails and other things she told me were to "quell" vengeance.
My walking was stopped by an odd sight out of the corner of my Hippocampus, shyly peeking through my Amygdala.
My attic.
I've never, I don't think even a singular time, felt it important enough to go up there anymore. Anytime I have enough of loving life, I think about my attic and I get a bit of fear for the day
Like a junkie looking for his daily fix, I think to myself, "It's been 24 years of you in this house. 4 spent alone, and 20 spent with mother. You can't be scared anymore of these pretenses that sometimes things will scare you. If God doesn't-" I stop thinking, and I twitch.
I've not a clue as to why, but when God shows up, whether it be conversation, or media, I just, break.
I don't move, it goes dark, and I can't speak. It's almost as if the big man came downstairs and sewed my mouth shut.
I finally fix myself, adjust my tie, wipe my eyes and pull down the ladder.
Something odd about my attic is that I can't even remember being up there, but it feels like home to me. A mattress sits decaying on the decaying wooden floor from Lord knows where, and a singular, stained with looking glass window looking over and admiring a pale gray street, and a pale and dying sky.
Home sweet.
I feel fine going up but I get a sharp blurriness in my eyes when I finally come to my feet. It's not a weariness from tears, or a flu flare up, but something I altogether forgot the feeling of, but I know like the back of my hand.
My body is rejecting whatever is in my attic.
You ever eat a bowl of food and you sense a deep rumble in your stomach because it's either expired, or because it's just disgusting? Yeah. That.
Nausea sets in almost immediately and I start to fall and luckily, I catch my ass on the rungs before it gets punished by the wooden floor, and I can not settle what the issue is.
My nausea is causing me to panic, and in my rampant struggle to free myself, I look down and remind myself, "Stop it. Be a man Colton. " I whimper and pant like a dog before finally letting my arms by my side, and continuing upwards.
I'm able to touch my feet to the floor and I am nothing short of horrified by what I see.
It is ridden with poop. I mean, absolutely ridden. The floors are wooden, but what I assume to be rats must have been eating it like termites from the amount of chips in the wood.
I gag and hold myself back from my own hand's strike, swallowing my stomach's pride as I lie my hand over my nose. I'd use my shirt but that'd be worse.
Other than the fecal matter, the attic is lain bare with a thick fog of confusion to me.
"What in the hell..." I mutter under my breath so the whatever doesn't hear me.
I take a few steps and I look to my right.
The nausea is back. This time with fear.
Remember how I had no clue what I was scared of?
Yeah. I damn sure do now.
In the corner of my attic,
in a cobweb filled menagerie of memories I'd rather have thrown to the wayside of my mind,
sits a mahogany chest, barely visible, if not for the sun's way of reflecting light across a room.
I falter.
I follow my instincts and drop to my praying position before flinching for...
something.
I hate that chest
I have not a clue in this house's hell why, but I hate that chest.
I don't know what I've ever done to, or for, someone to deserve that chest.
But if it's a gift, I'd love a receipt.
I know that receipt lies in that chest.
I stand up abruptly, slightly worsening my nausea, and kicking some dust around the room. I take slow, painful, agonizing, burning steps toward that crate with every intention of breaking it's fucking barrier, and chucking it out of that bitch's window.
Out of the side of my cerebellum and through my neocortex's warped sense of self-importance, I take my fist, and volley off a round of hate into the head of the mahogany.
It takes about 20 or so seconds for my bleeding it to make a crack in the probably near-hundred year old wood, but when it does, I keep going.
After 40 or so, my right hand's bones decide to give out, and without thought for my own safety, I stared directly into the valley of death, in the pit of hell, and switch hands.
My left immediately cracks through and my fear of being forgetful, as rough as it deems itself to be, whines and pouts with puppy dog eyes when I see the hole. It's dark and the inside of that chest is as known to me as my first steps. I feel it in my heart, but it my head, I can't seem to sense that it happened at all.
I reach into the jaws without thinking on it first and I feel a deep, dark pit of nothingness on my fingertips. My body has gone cold and I've forgotten who I am and what I'm doing here. I remember to breathe and slowly, but surely, grab onto something.
When I pull my hand out, a long, sickeningly familiar leather book
I see the dark novel and feel the weathered texture and my body's safe place has seemingly been ejected out of itself like a VHS tape. I stare in silence at it before taking it out and sitting on the floor with the chest for company, having my back rest on it as I begin to open the book.
The only thing that matters to me is opening that book.
The devil may deceive, but it never lies to you.
I caress, with an open heart, and a crystal mind, the cover which is laden with grief and a silver-grey heart for admiring before you step into it's confines.
I wonder, and then I sigh, and then I stop asking questions.