Mormon Blood

Unsettled Mind

As a young member, Peter had always felt like a like a hamster on a wheel, behind a glass cage, getting nowhere. Humans glimpsed him in passing. No, not exactly that. Something more passive like a fish, untouchable like the ugly orange and white coy in the tank at the Madison County Library who was so long ago a cute fishy, but now a grotesque monstrosity. Patrons only glanced momentarily, disgusted, looking for more stimulating attractions to catch their eye, a cute goldfish perhaps. Peter knew he was ugly and awkward. He possessed a minimal capacity to maintain the attention of other kids who were always searching for a more appealing companion. Even when he was hanging with Jake, his friend at Madison High School, Peter discerned from subtle gestures that he hoped for Jack or Paul to save him, any other face more entertaining or less gawky. Peter struggled with friendly chit chat, not knowing how to carry on a normal conversation. "Yeah, I hate math, too." "Oh, Mr. Finkle is so boring." He would simply reflect what the other person said. His acquaintances would glance at their cell phones, and then latch on to anything that could save them. Jake's favorite trick was to pretend he had an urgent text from Karen, his girlfriend. Abandoned, Peter would stand with his hands in pockets, shoulders slumped, looking at the ground, kicking a pebble. He empathized, after all. He would rather not be with himself. If he just didn't have to be around other people, he would gladly isolate himself for their benefit, but high school did not allow that. Study hall was a terror and lunch hour was hell. He had to be hanging with someone all day long or he was a loser.

His worst memories. The time in Miss Berry's first grade class when after the bus safety video ended, Rob had pointed out the yellow puddle beneath Peter's chair, his left foot right in the middle of stinky piss, pant legs wet. Or, the time he played catcher during recess softball in fifth grade, Joseph swinging a full 360 degrees at the slow pitch, the bat striking Peter soundly on the left ear, knocking him flat, the sky swirling, trying to stand, staggering and falling repeatedly while the whole school laughed at the spectacle. The time when Terry, all-star football team guard, pinned Peter's shoulders to the hallway wall during lunch hour, slamming 250 pounds of force into his chest, the head a battering ram, Peter unable to breath, tears flowing. Or, the time he wept in the weight room, a mandatory class, when Lance, the full back, intentionally dropped a five pound dumbbell on his foot. Peter hated football players.

These injuries of the past still haunted him, created his self image, and returning early from his mission represented the culmination of all past, petty humiliations. Four weeks since his return now, he seldom left his room. He had not spoken to any of his friends, avoiding them. None had called. He had not even gone to church. His parents left him alone to wallow in his embarrassment. "Everything alright up there honey?" his mother or father would call, climbing the stairs to check on him not worth the effort. He could be dead up there, and no one would know until the stink descended. His parents probably rationalized that he needed his space. Days would pass without physically seeing his parents. Peter did not mind.

His eyes passively took in his chamber, the ocean blue walls, his pre-mission posters hung randomly, a potpourri of religious and secular images, Five Fingered Death Punch not too far from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Disturbed juxtaposed with the Prophet Joseph Smith. While the room was filled with these pungent colors of an old life, it all faded in Peter's eyes as if from years of exposure to the sun, bleached neutral. The drugs dulled his perceptions, and he hated that anesthetizing filter. If he had any ambition, he would rip the ungodly crap from his walls. He didn't even listen to the music anymore. He listened to the sounds of an empty house. The meds robbed him of ambition to do anything.

His window was filled with a monument of his former addiction, a pyramid of Mountain Dew cans, contraband for Mormons, but he liked his green tower. It filled the window and gave the blue room a greenish glow. He had given up the addiction weeks before leaving.

Peter stood and then sat on the corner of his bed, still coiled in the comforter. His feet felt at home on the soft carpet floor, dark blue. Carpet was something he had missed in the Dominican Republic where the floors were dirt or concrete. He rubbed his pasty, white legs, pimpled from the cool October morning. His long, skinny bones shivered, and his mind would not unfog. His mission clock read11:30 AM, even though he had set the alarm for seven, with some vague ambition of rising to find a job or register for school. He cursed himself for sleeping away the day again. But, realistically he knew that, even if he were awake, he would have accomplished nothing. Just getting out of bed sapped all his energy. His parents didn't care about his sleeping habits, probably figuring that he just needed time. He was vaguely aware that perhaps stowing him away in his room would prevent them the embarrassment of exposure to the outside world.

Stretching out on the bed again, he felt life zooming by, dreams and doldrums his only realities. The meds usually dulled his dreams too. He hadn't even had a wet dream since returning from the Dominican Republic. How cruel was that? He slept another dreamless hour, so comfy.

He slept deeply only when the sun was beginning to shine. He wrestled at times with a nightmare that he was back in the suffocating Dominican sauna heat. He was a vampire in a zombie narrative where viruses were turning the world into the walking dead. Whose blood could he suck? The walking dead? He hunted young girls who did not yet have gray faces and bloody eyes. He would wake rolling in his sheets and sweating thinking he was actually back on the island.

In his bathroom, he winced at his emaciated, acned face that would not mature beyond the zitty peach fuzz stage. The Dominican sun had not even given him a tan. The lithium and deprakote antagonized his face, multiplying the acne as if the pills were fertilizer. The Xyprexa, an anti-psychotic, was supposed to make him put weight on his skinny bones, but nothing could do that. His body was an embarrassment, like the orange,1963 International pickup he drove in high school. Both were only slightly better than nothing at all.

His face brought back a memory of Brenda, a tragic girl from high school with double his zits and a chin with more hair than his own. He had wished that he could have taken a small portion of her weight which would have done them both good. Though ugly, she had the advantage of being outgoing. She was a talker who didn't need a speaking companion. The two went out for a short time. In their brief romance, he had only spoken a handful of short sentences to her. He once listened to her on the phone for a whole hour without saying a word. They had never even held hands. She broke up with him his junior year, his only girlfriend. Not because of another boy. Brenda simply tired of him, found no boyfriend at all was better than having him.