Article by Anonymous Art by Alex Wollinka
My joints are stiff and my limbs are cold when I step over the threshold and catch sight of him sitting at his desk, eyes glued to the monitor. My father is like a rabbit bone– pale, weak, and usually only obtained through a frenzied, violent hunt. The war had ripped the meat of humanness from his bones so that in the five years since his return, I could sense an unnaturally cold rage radiating from his breaths. I think you felt it too, though you never said so. Lately, we spend much of our time practicing the art of silence. When his words surface, we reject ourselves and pat down any bumps or ridges that might aggravate. My skin is pretty smooth, most things just slip away.
I choose not to announce my return from school and instead walk lightly, silently past him to my bedroom door. I close it slowly behind me and when I hear the knob click, I drop my backpack on the carpet, roll my shoulders back, and sit at my desk, resting my head in my hands. I breathe through my nose, counting each one. I understand that the conditions under which I live are unavoidable but I can still despise them.
A few years prior, I noticed a loud bitterness settling under my skin, one that seemed to grow like crawling vines. Regrettably, I have had moments of spirited abandon. In these moments, that bitterness bursts through my skin— the skin I have spent so much time flattening and polishing, like paper, and drips my (his) blood on the floor (so here then there, I practice the art of war). While he hisses at me to clean–clean–clean, I scrub the dirty carpet that has scraps of moldy food in its fibers as my body, now a bit too rough to be silent, becomes heavier with acrimony. Sometimes, I wonder what it might be like to look at myself. I imagine it to be expressionless and recondite, what a corpse looks like when it has a thin white sheet stretched over itself.
The Day has almost turned to Night when hunger grumbles in my stomach. I have not left my seat for a few hours and feel a little sore from my inactivity. So I rise from my desk, stretching for a few seconds, and then walk to the door, slowly twisting the metal knob. My feet land on the carpet and I very nearly make it to the kitchen without notice. But, he walks to me and speaks. I speak back. Somewhere, I make a mistake. You are here now too. All of it I clean up. When all is said and done, I am tired and unhungry. I sway back to my room, hands dangling like spiders at my sides, and collapse back into my chair.
You know that rejection makes your face burn white hot and without you noticing, splits your soul right down the middle. It makes you sense yourself incredulously and shamefully. It makes you feel pathetic and pitiful, like a baby fox with its legs broken, abandoned by nature to lay on a bloody, mossy ground. You might try to stare at it head-on but it will glare right back at you. It’ll strike you, shake you, turn you on your head, and laugh.
So on this Day, I choose to reject him instead of myself. I sit silently, swinging my legs back and forth, and despite the weight of my decision, feel excited. Because the way is simple. All there is to do is take the part of me that is him and cut it out. I rise from my desk and place my hands on my hips. I pace back and forth for a few minutes, enthusiasm growing hotter with each step. I’m thinking, thinking. There’s an urgent pressure right behind my eyes, revealing some hidden power pulsing in my head. This is when something strange happens, something you wouldn’t believe. When I think that my chest might burst and my brain will break my skull in two–I feel weightless, like the carpet cannot touch my feet and I am hovering just above it (I think that I have stepped out of myself). The experience is surreal and dizzying. I watch her straight black hair that swings lightly as she moves. I hear the fluids in her stomach and the quick, sharp inhales through her nostrils. The more I look the more uneasy I become, feeling the weight of my "body" shift ever so slightly. The more that I look the less I understand and the less I recognize. Who is she? I ask myself, with the sadness of one already dead and conscious of their own deadness. Who is she?
But this sadness soon turns to exhilaration. Because this one isn't me, I am me!
I, unbound by any law, laugh to (at) myself. I look down at my arms and hands to find that I have none. Glee twists my face into an ugly, triumphant grin. I am no one except myself. Gone is him that travels up and down my body, the one crying through my skin. I've done it! I try to whisper but my voice is soundless, holding none of his enunciations or tones. The world is slowly falling away into white nothingness. White, pure, and chaste. I feel myself moving, running, chasing after something beyond. Where my heart might have been is a strange, ashy glow. As I run, it beats, breathes, and sighs. There is an eternity before I am caught because the world dies and begins again while I run. I’m hanging in limbo, continually moving but never changing. And yet, the world is still a little faster than me. With its birth and death, I also die and then am born again. Nature latches onto me and rips my skin open just slightly.
Here, I fall, paralyzed by the movement of time. I blacken the space, like ink spilling into clear water. For a moment, I grasp everything. Then I hold nothing. I am going away, but I no longer wish to. Any excitement has vanished in a spur of terror and sweat. I'm on the verge of unbecoming and unraveling, feeling myself tipping over the edge into an unseen hell. I understand now that humans aren’t meant to possess multiple deaths and multiple lives. The thought that I could die while still living twisted my body and brain, and nearly eradicated my soul. I hear the sharp slice of a knife as it slips past the skin of the apple, spilling invisible blood. I pull out a few strands of hair and wrap them around my wrist. I get on my knees and begin to clean.
My father is asking me what I am going to study when I leave. Law? Medicine? Or maybe Biology? Dentistry? But then, you’re asking me to come back home.