A Twin’s Calling

Ghost story for Creative Writing class written by Nathan and myself. It's in rough form so do comment. Experimenting with time placement.

John opened the yellow metal box that contained the daily paper. The headline on the front page said “Bizarre Fire at Meadowbrook Trailer Park”. He continued reading the article while waiting for his coffee at Dunkin Donuts.
Police and fire crews were called out to the rural property at about 12:45 am. Neighbors say they were woken by a roaring noise and later saw flames reaching as high as the tree tops. The woman who was killed in the fire is believed to have been in her 50s and living alone at the property. Police are continuing to investigate the cause of the fire.

He sat there for a moment. It was Friday. Friday the 13th , 2005, the sky was gray with only the noise of a few cars driving by on the desolate street. Jolie lived at the park. The phone buzzed in the background. John didn’t get up to answer it and let the answering machine pick up.

“Hi, I’m not home at the moment leave a message”
“This is detective Ryan Peterson from the Orion Police Department. I’m looking for John in reference to a Jolie, call me at the office when you get a chance.”

When detective Peterson came to scene all he could smell was dirty diapers and Ash smoke. He approached and looked around. The body lay there, next to a lime colored gas stove. Her body pale blue and lightly covered with ashes that drifted as the wind slowly wisped by. The fire inspector checked out the surrounding area. Peterson scratched his forehead. He was puzzled. She laid there with ashes all around her. How could it be? Clear signs of a fire explosion, yet her body and stove not even burnt.
The fire inspector came over the Peterson.

“The origination of the fire was the stove no doubt. She could have been a homeless person, wrong time wrong place. No identification yet.”

John drove up and parked his car across the street. He came up to Peterson.
“What happened?” his eyes got big as he saw the body laying two feet away. “That’s Jolie” he exclaimed.

The twins laid there in the bed beside Jolie. She smiled at them as the smell of alcohol loomed over their heads. “My little girls…mommy loves you” she said as the twins laid there. The bed was actually two twin beds pushed together. Pale yellow sheets with the pillows encased in a sky blue and yellow stars. The twins laid there in light pink jimmies and lil white socks. She looked at them. They did not move, as if time stood till. Arms clenched up close to their body with their legs in midair. Their faces a light red. They started to move as if in the slow moving picture. Their arms fluttering and their bodies started to tremble as the blood rose to their face. She looked closer.

Their eyes were now closed mouths wide open with their tongues curled upwards and nostrils flaring. They began to cry. “What’s wrong?” she asked them. “Don’t cry mommies here”

They continued to cry and screeching as their bodies began to tremble uncontrollably. She went to pick one up. Her face started turning black and within seconds the body turned to ash and flowing through her hands. She looked at her other twin, but all that lay there was a pile of ash with maggots crawling atop. She awoke in sweats to the distant cries of a baby in the background.

She quickly got up. She ran through her house. “Emily? Tasha” no answer. It was silent for a few minutes as she frantically looked for her cigarette lighter. It happened again. The cries began to get louder this time. She ran out of the trailer after the screeching of the twins went on for a few minutes. As she opened the door you could see the white lawn chairs in the yard next to the grey trash can.

She walked down the path and went onto the main road. You could see the trailer all lined up on both sides. It was dark out. The crying continued as she walked down half drunk. She walked to the corner and looked around her. She began screaming out the twin’s name. She ran to each trailer hoping to find the twins, but nothing. Soon the neighbors started coming outside watching Jolie running around with her head cut off. “Can you hear it?” she yelled to the onlookers. “Hear what?” a neighbor replied as he looked at her through his coke bottle glasses. “The babies crying, can you heat them?” she ran to the edge of the park and began calling their name out again.

The blue lights from the police car got stronger as it came closer. Jolie was in the large garbage container in the park, where she believed the crying was the strongest. The officer asked what was wrong.

“My babies, can you hear them?” she told him.

“I’m sorry m’am but there are no crying babies” he stated. He called for an ambulance and Jolie was admitted to the psych ward. The doctors released her the next day saying that it was a hallucination from the pills she had taken and the alcohol. John picked her up and pulled into the lot driveway and Jolie got out.

The beads on her necklaces clacked together as she rummaged through an overstuffed
denim purse. She rumbled with dissatisfaction as her hands searched around inside a catastrophe of personal effects. Forgotten receipts, candy wrappers, hair ties, odd makeup items, bills, disconnection notices, loose change, worn business cards, all thrashing in a moshpit of misshapen cadavers, yet she remained unsuccessful at locating her house key.

“Gotchya. Goddamned purse is overdue for an overhaul!” her play on words caused a brief smirk to wash along her features which did little to hide the years of exhaustion and heavy drinking. The deep set lines that etched their way around her mouth and eyes were like fissures searching for the depths of earth. White kinky shoots rocketed out from her otherwise orderly brown wavy lochs. The years had been cruel to some, but Jolie had suffered the wrath of an overzealous keeper of time, she sagged and drooped, crouched and shuffled, she jiggled and popped; grace had left her to rot in her own futility.

The faded teal uniform and white apron no longer complemented her figure; instead it displayed her aging body like a carnival would an abomination. Her wide hips and bouncing thighs no longer drew the attention of strapping young men, now they inspired harsh laughter and comments as crude as Texas Tea. Cigarette stains could be found on her fingers and in her mouth, the smell was unavoidable.

The key thrust into the lock and forced the tumblers into the appropriate places, with a quick turn and practiced heave the tired women from lot 13 entered her small, cluttered haven. There was a slight sway to the trailer as gusts of howling wind raced past the rusted casket of aluminum and paneling. The smell of stale alcohol and overfilled ashtrays comforted the women back into the lull of lethargy.
As she always did, and would always do, Jolie dropped her purse onto the kitchen table and headed for the freezer. She stopped trying to reason her intentions years ago and now recognized her habit for what it was; life. She used to drink to relax after a long hard day, and then it was to help her get some rest, or it was to calm her nerves, or to lessen the pain, clear her head, finally she just drank because it was what she did, and what she would always do. Today though she drank to help herself forget.

She set the bottle of Wild Turkey on the lime green gas stove, and reached into the cupboard for a large plastic cup. After getting thirteen stitches from a glass mug last year Jolie refused to pour her cure-all in anything but plastic. The asshole boyfriend that hit her with that mug would be hard-pressed to get the same satisfaction from a plastic mug!

Dropping two ice cubes into the mug, she quickly retrieved the ruby red grapefruit juice from a rusted old refrigerator. After the concoction was complete she headed into the living room, her oasis, the olive drab green couch welcomed her familiar form into the usual spot with the usual recklessness. It was well into the evening and there would be little worth watching at this hour. Distant memories stirred, unsettling old emotions that shared a connection with late night drinks, but Jolie slammed shut that door yet again in her mind.

Having ruled out the television she dragged herself from the welcoming comfort of her couch and shambled over to the stereo. Click… then nothing. She peeked into the bramble of wires to make certain that it was plugged in. It was. Strange that it should stop working so suddenly without warning. Shaking her head she made it back to the sofa and fell into it with little enthusiasm.

After a moment of contemplation she decided to fill the silent vacuum with the senseless droning that came from late night programs. Just as she was about to turn the television on the stereo came to life. Static started erupting from the stereo. Drum sounds started to emit as the Four Seasons started singing. “Big Girls don’t cry. Big girls don’t cry. The music continued. “Big girls don’t cry-eye eye. Big girls don’t cry.” The chorus repeated several times then stopped.

“Momma” erupted from the static. Jolie’s head peaked around to the stereo. Her eyes became wide as two little girls stood there. Short pink shirts and tan shorts. “Momma” Jolie’s eyes started to welt. She got up from the couch falling over her shoes. She looked up. “Help momma” Emily said to Tasha. Tasha came over and slapped Jolie in the face. “Come momma” as they ran out of the trailer. She got up on her feet and ran out the door and looked. Nothing. The twins would have been eight now she thought. Was this her babies? She sat at the table and turned on the stove sitting in the chair she propped her feet on the racks to warm them up. She got up and took another one of her pills and fell asleep. She dreamed of the girls she just saw. They told her to get out, that something bad was going to happen.

John, her estranged boyfriend came over. They had started dating a year before the twins were born in 1991. They had been doing shots for nearly two hours, not noticing the heat wasn’t on as the trailer started becoming colder. He had taken a few hits of acid before coming over. The infants started crying. “Leave them be, they will fall asleep on their own” she said as she poured another round of Canadian Whiskey. “Cheers”. A few minutes past and she was slumped over on the couch snoring away. The infants continued screaming and John became irate. He kept thinking on how to make them quiet. He opened the stove and turned it on at 250 degrees for heat leaving the door open. He then figured the babies were cold and wrapped them in a blanket and set them on the rack in the stove as it protruded out a bit. He sat on the couch and began watching TV still doing shots and tripping. He then became sick and ran into bathroom which was through the kitchen. As he ran he bumped into the stove causing the door to close shut and started vomiting in the toilet. John ended up passing out along the toilet. You could hear the muffled screeching of the infants throughout the trailer, eventually fading out as the sun came up the next morning.

She got up and went into the bathroom and woke John up. She was hung over and John ended up leaving. She went to start coffee and turned the oven on for some heat and went to take a shower. As she came back into the kitchen she smelled something funny coming out of the oven. She opened it to find the infants cooked to a charcoaled crisp. She was startled and wasn’t thinking right. She thought how no one would notice. She hadn’t had company in the last year, with the exception of John. She took the ashes and threw them in the trash.

2005 came in like any other year. Jolie and John had separated. The twins would be thirteen today she grimaced as she went through a box with the newborn clothes inside. “Time to let the past be the past” she said to herself and threw all the reminders of the twins in the garbage. John had tried jimmying the gas stove to run off the neighbor’s gas lines. John had not noticed the tiny holes in the line when he went home for the night. Jolie returned from picking up some whiskey at the store and plopped herself on the couch. She poured her a full cup. “Happy Birthday she said as she gulped the cup down.”

Then Tasha appeared in front of her. Tasha waved for Jolie to come to her. Jolie couldn’t move. She smiled and waved back. As she turned she saw Emily coming towards her. Emily told Jolie to leave. Jolie didn’t budge. Jolie figured like the last few times nothing would happen. The twin inched closer and closer to Jolie. Jolie began to become frantic screaming and crying. Jolie felt a warmth come over her as the twins encircled her. BOOM. The trailer exploded.

Detective Peterson got a call to respond to a loud explosion a few blocks from where he was parked. He drove over the park as the Four Season’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry” began playing.

Deep Snatches

It’s like a guy
Calling you a cocksucker.
Hold on -- my cheekbones are coming out.
It’s been a while.
Like when I was 20.
Great sex.
Third eye.
Look,
No juice.

1 cup 2 cup 3 cup whore.
It’s not all connected
Love your pumpkin.
I have two that have muffin tops.
They put frosting.
I like the top
I like the bottom
Fuckin’ ring ding things
Or devil dogs.

Holy hell.
Look at you
Are you good?
I am.
I need a medal.
Oh gross.
Oh mother *^%^
Oh mother *^%^

Jesus it’s four inches thick
Stick your hand in
More mellony then watermellony.
Feel it.
Like fairies on ecstasy.
It’s the edge.
Keep the knife away!
Took me three hours.
She’s Halloween.
No, it’s nasty.
Come this way.
I’m trying.
Bring a chunk home with you.

I see Red

I come home from visiting family on a cold December night. I turn on the computer and sign onto Yahoo and go into the chat rooms. I post a message: “Young guy looking to try new things” After a few minutes a guy messages me and asks if I had ever been tied up. No, I reply, but I would try anything once. We agree to meet. He arrives in a red four-door sedan and parks near the light post out front of my house at midnight. A man steps out with a duffel bag and walks towards me.

“Hi. I’m John,” he says. He is 34 years of age, 6’3, weighs around 180, has brown hair and is clean shaven. I greet him and invite him in. His skin is a darker complexion and he has an almost mischievous smile. He is wearing a red Nautica cap, a white hooded sweatshirt and a red long-sleeved shirt underneath. He has red jogging pants on with white socks and hiking shoes that have a red stripe near the base.

We sit on the couch smoking a joint while watching Comedy Central. “Where is the bathroom,” he asks.

“Pass the stove, light is on the side behind the door,” I reply.

He goes to the bathroom and closes the door. After five minutes he comes out and sits back on the couch. There is silence as the comedians tell their jokes.

“Wanna go in the other room?” he asks.

“Sure,” I respond.

He gets up and starts to walk towards my bedroom. As I walk into my room I flip the switch on my stereo to the local rock alternative station. The lava lamps give a warm orange glow as they reflect off the wall in my room.

“Good, I was going to ask if you had music,” he says.

I sit at the end of the bed as he opens his bag and starts pulling out red rope and bandannas, placing them on the table next to the computer.

“Stand here and put your hands behind your back.”

I do so, excited to try out this new challenge.

“Where is your camera?”

I point to the digital camera on the table.

He takes some rope and slides it around my wrists and proceeds to tie them together. I spread my them out as he secures them to give me some extra room. I feel my shoulders bend back and he makes sure my palms are securely closed as he finishes with the first rope. I see him take a longer rope. He starts intertwining it around my arms making the bond of restraint stronger and stronger. As he loops the rope between my palms, I place my thumb in between, to move a little bit if I feel the need to untie myself.

He takes a bandanna and wraps it over the top of my head, tying it like one would wear at the beach. I see him grab another one, placing it over my eyes, and tie the back securely to prohibit me from seeing. My heart beats faster. I can hear him now in the background, moving. My mind begins to wander as my anxiety peaks. I am not able to see what he is doing, and it starts to frighten me, but I let him continue.

He ties my chest and my arms tighter. “Good Boy,” he says as he gropes me with his hands. He then goes to the back of me and comes in closer and I can feel him breath on me. I hear him flattening another bandanna. My body temperature starts to rise from the heat, building up inside my clothing from being tightly bound. He puts a bandanna with a knot in the middle in my mouth and ties it.

“No,” I say from behind the knotted cloth as I spit it out of my mouth. “Can we stop? I am starting to get too anxious and scared. Can you at least take the one off my eyes?”

“Just relax. You can trust me. Ok, we’ll try a smaller one.” He takes the knotted bandanna off and wipes my lips with something wet and they start to tingle. He offers me a drink. It tastes like Pepsi. He ties a smaller knot and places it in my mouth. I hold the knot with my clenched teeth. I start to think, “What should I do if something happens?” I had his phone number on an index card, saved on the chat session from Yahoo, but would anyone be able to find it?

I begin to grow groggy and sleepy, unable to stand up.



I move from the bumping, like I am in a car driving down a road. I try to stretch only to find that I am enclosed. We stop. I hear a door open. After a few minutes I hear the door open again and an engine starts. Am I am in the trunk of a car??

I am in a cell, beneath the streets. I hear footsteps. The man is gloating about his work. He has been proud of tying up his victims. He has used many methods, from tying a man in fishing line to tying a man up with wire. He is paid $1, 000 for each victim. He has pictures of his victims on the wall, depicting his art and mastery of tying. Beside his wall of photos there is a pile of digital cameras. Each one depicts the tying of victims, from the start, middle and the end result. It has taken years to master the art. I am one of his many victims, all to be auctioned off. This auction is being held under one of the Mill’s canal structures in Lewiston, Maine where Main and Lisbon Street connect through an underground tunnel built years ago.

After this auction, the next will be in Singapore in March. Bids there will pay up to $50,000 for an American tied up. The patrons pay well. They have one thing in common, power. They’ve been upset and want to take out their mental anguish in a physical sense and now they can. The patrons each pay an entrance fee to go to the auction. The patrons buy the merchandise and transport their product to another section of the burned mill. Here they torture, sodomize and kill their victim anyway they feel will extinguish their internal anger. Then they release the remains into the Androscoggin though a pipeline outlet. But there is a hitch. If it becomes daylight, the auction is over . If the victims are not picked up from the auction, they are saved for the next one.

I can see the light coming in through a crack down the hall, or is it a light bulb? I hear the cars zooming overhead. I scream. “Help”. The cars drown my pleas. I hear footsteps from across the way. Clat. Clat. Clat. The footsteps get louder and I hear the cocking of a gun. My heart quickens and my breath becomes heavy and quick. The doorknob turns and the door creeps open.


I wake up. I hear breathing in the background. I try to move, but still find myself bound. I spit out the knotted bandanna. I open my mouth real wide to remove the bandannas and breathe the air.

In the background I hear something click.

“Dude, I gotta go home. I have to work in 4 hours.” He begins untying the bandanna around my mouth and removes the knotted bandanna from around my neck where it had fallen. He offers me a drink. I drink through a straw, tastes like Pepsi; I don’t remember having any straws in the apartment.

“What happened?” I ask.

He unties the bandanna around my eyes and I find myself sitting on the couch in front of the TV. “I gave you some acid, and you passed out on me. So, I carried you into the living room and watched the movie you had in the DVD player. “It is about these three guys who travel Europe staying at different Hostels. On a bus ride they meet a man who says the women in Slovakia are hot. Sex all night. So the travelers went and started popping up missing. The guy from the bus took his victims to be bought and tortured by these rich guys. It just ended. Freaky movie. I couldn’t tell if you were awake or not. You weren’t moving much.”

He unties the looped rope between my palms. I start moving my shoulders and arms as he undoes the final ropes around my upper body. I am now untied, walking very stiff as the blood starts circulation in my numb body. I walk over to the door where he is putting on his shoes and sweatshirt. He looks at me as he opens the door.

“I’ve always wanted to get tied up and stuffed in a sleeping bag all night. I got this friend In Lewiston. He uses body bags. Maybe next time you can tie me up.”

I begin to feel ill and nervous. He picks up his bag. “I left some pictures on your camera. I took some on my own digital camera. I’ll send you a copy,” and out the door he goes.

As I hear the engine start and he drives off, I turn on the camera. There are no pictures. An hour later I get an email from him. He sends a picture of me, all tied up, freaking me out.

I get a message from my friend Terry. He tells me about this experience he had with this guy who was into tying people up. I tell Terry that “I had just met a similar guy who was obsessed with the color red.”

“Hmm. Was this guy named John? I went to his house last Friday in Portland,”

“Let me send you his picture,” I type. In the picture he is standing in the background with a kitchen table in front of him, and all the walls painted red.

Terry types, “He wanted to tie me up. I got nervous after he did my hands and told him, ‘no fucking way‘. The freak wanted me to tie him up and spank him, and leave him in a bag overnight. The house was large, too much red though. I went to the bathroom and everything was red. He needs to watch ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ and get some lessons. He listens to too much country though. We tripped on acid together. It was great. He asked if I had any friends that are cool, and I told him about you. He said he was getting some more acid in two weeks. Wanna go with me? I can give you his screen name.”

I quickly type, “No. He freaked me out.” as I tell him about my experience.

“lol. You need to stay off the drugs, ‘Mary‘,” Terry says.

I signed off Yahoo.

I go to the fridge and cut a piece of cake. I eat the cake and go into the bathroom. As I take a shower visions of the movie Psycho and other evil themed plots that could have happened flash before me. How can a new experience can be so alive? Was what I experienced induced by the acid and the movie playing in the background? I become anxious and go around the apartment making sure all the windows and doors are locked. I go into my room and am getting ready to climb under the covers when I spot a red bandana on the floor.

Associations

Where have you gone?
You was here
no longer anymore.

Hamburgers with crackers.

Lost in the realms of my mind
memories taunt me
without emotion.

Cry with no tears.

You inhale
as I walk by
emitting sweet fresh scents.

Bottles filled with fluid.

The bumps
push me up
as it emits smoke and energy.

Scraps with wheels.

Creative Writing Week 4

This week I am choosing to write a little on Natasha Trethewey's poem Myth.

In the poem, I thought about some dreams I have. They are so real to the point you wake up and still believe them to be true in your disillusioned state. My grandmother passed away about five years ago and in my dreams we talk, eat and share times and when I wake up those first few moments-- she is still alive. As my unconscious/conscious being starts to come to, the reality at the moment fades as I sunk into -- that was a dream she's dead. Just as a mother who has lost a child runs into their bedroom only to find they were not there and her mind played a nasty trick on her. Upon reading some of her other published works I find she does good at putting narrative writing from stories quite possibly being recollections from older family members in a reminiscent state. I know there are times I will be having coffee with my grandfather and he talks about growing up on the farm and gets so entranced in the moment he begins to salivate; I go home and write a narrative piece which makes those stories come all that much real for the reader to relive through someone else's words.

Links: Other Poems Interview & Reading New Poem Monument

Creative Writing Week 3

As you saw from my previous posting about a dream I had after the class discussion on Lisa Olstein's Poem, entitled Radio Crackling, Radio Gone, it was to some sort of extreme. I find that Olstein's ability to write in the non-tense works to her advantage. Virtually any reader can relate to the poem with something, mostly stemming from a disaster -- or cause and effect moment. Could she have been recollecting from personal experience or perhaps something she say on the news? Ms. Olstein seems to use hypnosis and recollection practices when writing poetry, something similar to Aldous Huxley who wrote Brave New World. This would be a creative approach to a descriptive piece of prose. Not much was available online, other than her myspace account.

Links: MySpace