The Second Stage

Code Silver

We enjoy telling stories; this is a human condition. We tell them to each other, we change them, we make them more real than reality is to us. We throw down the pieces our inner essence, our beliefs—our souls themselves—only to rearrange them into something understandable, something entertaining. That's what a story is: a reformation. And with stories, we forget how intricate our innards are, and how jagged our edges are meant to be.

I've written enough of the grotesque to know this. You probably haven't read any of it, posted far below the average line of sight on internet forums, but it's there. My name is Kyle Haynes. My father calls me K, my classmates stick with my given name, my mother once called me Cap. But in her last decade, she could only see me as Kyle Haynes: 38F, 7D, 18M, 5H, 575O.

It took the courts two years to grant my father full custody. They said my mother had Munchausen by proxy, peppering me with injuries both imaginary and inflicted for attention. They were mistaken; she found an even more selfish reason to do so.

I've run through plenty of reasons to hate her. As I aged, I thought up plenty of reasons to pity her too. Yet, when I ponder why she took the path that sent her to that warehouse, I find myself at a loss. The only tragedy she experienced was her own doing. Her only disability was the absence of her sense of smell. Sure, that might have been more of a burden than I'm giving credit for. Picking up the scent of the seasons changing, the aroma of fresh cooking, the stench of that damn boardwalk she loved so much... that might have brought more joy into her life. Maybe that would have been enough. Detecting leaking gas from a broken anesthetic machine could have helped her too, I suppose.

Meredith Haynes lived and died by quirks. She obsessed over the Beach Boys. Nobody obsesses over the Beach Boys anymore. She dreamt of sailing, yet had never spent more than an hour on the ferry. Even her death confuses anyone who hears about it. Positional asphyxiation—of course, she died of a medical term nobody understands. If you've ever wondered why nurses position your neck straight when you go unconscious, it's to keep you from choking. There you have it. Another oddity that nobody can make sense of—the final rotation of her tailspin.

But I haven't, and never will, tag her with the cliché of "better off dead." Meredith Haynes was my mother. I remember walking along the boardwalk hand in hand. I remember time spent helping me with homework and sneaking off to do the chores so I could watch my favorite cartoons. I remember the way she looked at me—and the way I looked back. Meredith always wanted to be a good mother, she simply forgot how. It was after my seventh birthday that something—borne of stress and desperation—got hold of her. So rather than write her off as a demon who found herself, I prefer to think that it was a demon that found her. If you ever ask me, that's what drove her to such terrible deeds, and that's what brought her to the final delirious months of her life. That's why she ended in a flash of regret and chaos.

The last time I saw her, the police were carrying her away from the carousel at the Boardwalk, having violated a restraining order my dad placed against her. After years of stolen drugs and dozens of mistakes because of them, people attribute everything she did to malice. When she screwed up some kid's leg by falling on it after passing out, they looked back and demonized her for that too. Sure, it was the anesthetic machine's fault, my dad would say, but she could've tested it. That's where the problem arises with those like her, where mistakes stop and evil starts is entirely subjective.

I can't blame my father for thinking that way; he was lucky to live. Yet, Meredith had the decency to place him in a better laying position than herself. He told me of her death immediately. Eventually, he told me of the contents of that utility cabinet, though I had long since guessed those details. What he didn't tell me, however, was one line in the police report. My morbid curiosity got the best of me and I found it several months ago. It's what prompted me to write my final story about my mother—that strange and lonely ghost.

When the police scanned the crime scene, they discovered a syringe still full of valium thrown against the opposite wall, and a driftwood anchor pendant clutched against her chest.

I remembered that pendant. Decades ago, I gave it to her for Christmas and I thought she had promptly forgotten it after the custody hearing. A few years later, she broke into the house and had a restraining order placed. I always wondered what she tried to take, or what she tried to do—and if she found it worth the trouble. Now, I'm sure that she did. I just wish she would have asked for it. Maybe I would have had the chance to give the pendant to her again.

There is so much I cannot tell you about her life. For the majority of my time on earth, I simply wasn't a part of it, and the details of the rest are scattered in the explosive mess of her last six months on earth. But I can write one detail I am certain of: Meredith Haynes deserved a better ending.