EXCERPT: PREVIEW

Excerpt from full novel Both Hands for Me

Entry Forty-Eight

 

 “What?”

Dragonfly spun around.

“I didn’t say anything.”

There was a note of pain that climbed up his throat and into the words as they came out of his mouth, and it reeked.

We kept walking, and I kept asking what. I never asked why, because It wasn’t telling me anything confusing. All It did was call my name and whisper things.

We were walking past stores and little shops and restaurants and people who didn’t have to ask what all the time.

Dragonfly was looking at those people, and wishing he was walking with them, I think.

He was walking ahead of me until it started raining. Then he stopped and waited for me to catch up. I was pulling on my hair and sliding my eyes across the sidewalk like this sort of typewriter. Everything was very saturated. Everything was wrong.

Dragonfly spun around in the rain. I had a memory then of when it rained when we were out on the road that day and I thought about how much I liked watching him back then, how I liked watching him happy. I think I’d seen all the things he still had left. But just then when I watched him amidst all the whats that hung around him, I saw everything that was gone.

But that didn’t matter. The rain didn’t matter. All that mattered was this bubble. I sat in it, scratching my head and pulling strings. I stumbled and sat down on the curb as Dragonfly spun around and around with this big smile sitting on his face. I waited to pass out, but this time I didn’t. Instead, I rocked back and forth, but not because of the coldness. I rocked at the sound of my name.

“Taissa,” It said. I didn’t ask what.

“Go away,” I said. “Please.”

I rocked back and forth. I pulled on my hair, understanding that I was donating myself to It more and more as I tried to pull it out, yet not being able to stop, because understanding quells nothing at all.

“Taissa,” It said.

“You idiot. Who did you used to be? You idiot,” It spit at me.

“Idiot,” I said back. “Idiot.”

Dragonfly stopped spinning for a moment.

“Are you talking to me?” he yelled, but he knew how much I wasn’t.

He threw his head back and closed his eyes.

“Idiot,” I said.

“Taissa,” I heard.

“Taissa.”

“Taissa.

“You--”

 

 

Entry Fifty-Two

Sleep evaded me all last night. When you don’t sleep, the days start to lose the lines between them. Dragonfly dancing in the rain and me listening to It say my name seem like they happened just a second ago.

But right now, there are chains rattling in my head. I look beside me to see that my pile of pulled-out hair has mostly blown away in the middle of the night. I didn’t notice it go, which is a bit sad. I feel my head and I feel the patches and the matted blood. It’s definitely gone, I just didn’t notice it go.

Same with Dragonfly. He’s not next to me. I push myself up the wall and stumble around the corner. Dragonfly’s not there either. I know he’s at the church, but I still look for him everywhere else. I walk down the sidewalk for a little bit, running into everything. I crash into a fire hydrant, and then a woman holding coffee. It spills all over her coat and down her skirt. She makes a noise that I don’t fully compute but I think she’s upset with me, only then she backs away, more afraid of me than the burning liquid dripping down her chest. It makes me feel better, because she’s afraid but not angry anymore.

I walk a few more steps and then collide with a street lamp. I crumple down right beside it, almost spilling into the street. Some people are stepping over me and some are stepping in excessively large circles around me. Occasionally, I feel them step on me, on my finger or my leg, and I hear it crunch before I feel it. I wait to feel it, but it never comes. The feeling is gone--I just didn’t notice it go.

Finally, I find an ounce of strength. I push myself up on my elbows just high enough so my hands can reach my head. Then I start pulling more hair, making a new pile since the other one left me.

“Taissa,” It whispers to me. I listen. I’m doing this, and I’m watching people not watch me. The man in the suit walking by doesn’t notice me here. A little girl steps on my pile of hair, but she doesn’t even know she’s done it. They would notice me if they thought I was crazy, but they don’t think that. Do you know why? It’s because people think screaming and crying is what makes you crazy and they think that crazy is yelling out and slamming fists into walls but that is the biggest misconception they’ll ever have because screaming and crying is still fighting and screaming and crying, actually, is the only sign of real sanity, but real crazy is the gnawing and the rocking and the pulling.

And crazy isn’t what you break because any sane being beautifully destructs every day of their life, but insanity is much more profoundly what you build and the insane build themselves a castle of their own compulsions, devotions and relish in every square inch of it, silently, every day and the silent lunatics are the real ones but--

Nobody watches the silent lunatics.

Nobody except for Dragonfly. I see the sticks! I see his legs. They’re right by my eyes on the concrete. He kicks me. I look up at him, investing all of my strength into my neck. I’m watching him.

He’s crying.

I can see his face from down here and it’s crumbled. Finally he softens his face but his eyes are still broken.

“You should really tell me next time,” he spits down to me. “Before you go crazy.” And he kicks me in the ribs again.

After that, my eyes stay open long enough to see the sticks move farther and farther away from my face. He turns the corner, and I know

he’s going to sit on the wall and wait for me to get up, because when I kick him every morning, he gets up.

I know what I have to do. I grab hold of the street light, and start hauling my body up the pole until finally I’m vertical. I lean against it for a long time, and feel my eyes close softly. My breathing goes from heavy to sort of okay. I decide that sort of okay is the most okay some things can be.

 

 

 

Reviews

[emipoemi]

Holy freaking kwap! This is what I'm talking about! You have a couple of lines that sound amateurish, and don't actually need to be there, but the story as a whole is brilliant! I don't quite understand all of it, but that's probably because these excerpts are from somewhere much further into the novel than the beginning, but from what I read in the excerpts, I could detect this to be a story about mental illness, and it's absolutely fantastic in its narrative and progression! THIS is story-telling pretty much at its finest. My only comment is to italicize the "what(s)" at the beginning, so readers understand that to be quotation. That it. If you're working to this published already, I would have liked to help edit the entire thing to see if I have anything to say about anything else, but would definitely like to purchase a copy when it's out (you could even check out my recently published poetry collection in return). Well done!