Helter Skelter

Naturalism, Death, and Pages

I return to a dark trailer that night. And boy, I wish I hadn't. Returned, that is, I was never one to be fazed by the dark. I must've not been the only one that had to get used to the fact that I wasn't alone; the brink of paranoia. Corbin was bent over something, or someone, grunting. He was breathing heavily. I caught him red handed. Literally. His hands were drenched in red-something. It was dripping down his hands like a fluorescent syrup. It wasn't paint. Now, if life teaches you one thing it is that one has to treat psycho-killers like one would catch a fly; you have to strike hard and fast. I slam my hand on the light switch so hard that the impact my fingers had on it flicker the light to the extent I duck in case the light bulb explodes. Only my idiot eyes attached to my idiot skull wanted to know what was going on in the dark.

"Oh! Dave! I didn't know you were rooming with Crobin..." a familiar voice coming from underneath Corbin says. Sheets are rustling and Esmeralda's messy head pops up. That does not matter. Corbin's ass is where I've seen it all. They are both covered in some red goo...ketchup? Strawberry syrup?

"Flavored lube." Corbin says, licking his fingers. I became a wax figure as of that point. I wish I could have, anyway. All the sugar I have consumed in the past few days was coming up my nose. I wanted to throw up. No, I wanted to get rid of all that was inside me. Including my memory. Was that possible, to have one's brain throw up one's intestines? Would the blood be pink or red? Thinking about it wasn't helping me feel any better.

"I'm gonna go now..." I point to the door cautiously, swinging my demanding feet in its direction.

"Aw, pumpkin, I didn't mean to scare you." Esmeralda wiggles out from Corbin's grasp and wraps herself in the messy covers. She said something else but I was lost in the whole idea of trying to get the hell out of there. As soon as I hit the balding grass, I started to run. To the one place I knew everyone felt safe; Bonnie's tree. Scared the stars would judge my climbing skills, I let myself sink at the bottom of the trunk trying to melt away the past few minutes of my life.

"I....I-f....if y...ou..yow? Gow?" a voice mumbles above me. It sounds more frustrated than the breeze within the leaves. I look up. Bonnie is holding a red, velvet-bound book, squinting at one of the pages as if she was ready to get in a fight with it.

"Hey Bonnie." I grin up at her. Her eyes were the closest windows to sanity in this madhouse.

"Dave!" she was startled by my presence, but I was the only man she didn't mind sneaking up on her. She was like a puppy that has been beaten too many times, and everytime someone rose their hand at it it would cower in the expectation of pain. She pats the seat next to her and I try to crawl up as gracefully as possible and fail because I am an idiot.

"What are you doing?" I jut my chin out at the book.

"Reading." she replies.

"You can't read." she grasps the edges of the book, almost shyily.

"I can try...listen to this," she shielded the page from my lingering eyes so I could just make out what book she was holding. Hemingway. "I'm afraid of death but not afraid of dying." I raised an eyebrow in half-interest, turning my head from the colorful fairgrounds to the colorless acrobat with a slightly croaky voice and a colorful enough soul to make up for the gloomy reflection behind the stage.

"Oh yeah? Says who?" this circus had even crazier mottos.

"Hemingway." she lets the golden title glint at me in the sun. "It explains why things are they way they are don't you think?" her eyes were glowing, transparent and pregnant with her thoughts with her thoughts, "if suicide were easy, we'd all be gone."

"That can't be true," I object, "you can't read." Bonnie lets herself fall backward dramatically, holding on to the branch with her leg, skillfully, letting the rest of her body dangle, fighting gravity. She wins.

"Maybe I can't, maybe it's not, but the author of the truth will only be famous when they are dead. Doesn't that kill you Dave?"

"I guess, but I'm not afraid." I reply, thoughtfully, or so my butterfly brain had thought. We sat in the silence of the sunset for a while until she briskly turns to me, her eyes glowing again.

"Can you teach me, Dave?" she was clasping it to her chest so tightly her knuckles were turning white. How could I refuse her offer?

"Su-"

"We can come here every single day and by the end of the year I can read and write like a normal person right, Dave?"

"Ye-"

"Thank you so much!" every time she exclaimed tears trickled from the edges of her eyes. This was the beginning to one of the promises I decided to keep. Several ones followed after that, and it sounds good, and most of it was good, until they started to backfire against me. Which is why I find myself here, atop the tightrope to hell.

I will try to look back rather than look down; though I've been sick of both perspectives. And speaking of perspectives, I forgot to mention the climax of insanity.

After half a year of my sad life goes to waste, blends with the ever-changing dirt of the fairgrounds, I finally receive answers. Not the answers I was looking for, though, obviously. Margot Robertson. Candice was pregnant. Zeke finally got what he wanted. Notice how that's in past tense? Another kid meant more money spent on things that weren't greasy foods or beer. Not that Arabella got much of the share anyway. Candice on the other hand, saw the other side of the bills. Like every young woman, she was living in her false fantasy. Within the first week of Margot Robertson's life, her squeamish daughter who came to life prematurely, Candice found her corpse rocking in the breeze who butted in through the curtains of their trailer's window. I arrived in the middle of the aftermath of this event, luckily, and was able to attempt to use the logic I was lacking to fit the pieces together. The thing is, you see, no one knew who was the victim of this clean murder, this transparent butchery. And when the weight of a trauma falls upon a madhouse, assumptions are made. To cut to the chase; it was obviously Esmeralda. Even though she claims she didn't. She threatened to verify all the knives in the kitchen, and in all the trailers, for the fingerprints, and to send Candice to jail for murdering her own child. It was worse than a witch hunt, without the lynching thankfully. Margot's head still rests on the upper shelf of Candice's sink, staring at her mother, or into death's oblivion for all we know. She watches as her mother mixes colors in her sippy cup, drinks her jar of tears. Esmeralda wishes she could have bore a child, anything for Zeke. For a stable relationship to walk in her unstable shoes.