location: stage of the local theatre
content warnings: death, graphic imagery of violence and well, essentially, murder, implied depression and related triggering content.
The month he lost his first tooth and almost swallowed it. The milk tooth, as they used to call it, had barely wobbled at first until it finally gave into the pressure of his prodding curiosity. He was like that, to poke and jab until it bruised, but the damage was already done, all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again. The month he found salvation at the dinner table, but there was no God, unless God was a home, his siblings’ laughter. The month that was forgotten, but still rooted within like sprouts of memories awaiting the rain. Mundane things, like eating arroz con leche on a Monday morning, buying Mickey Mouse band-aids for his scraped knees; painful things that were covered with a cadaver pouch of grief. The month his mother died.
Stuart’s life was an ode to those who stayed and didn’t. And he’d stayed, by some miracle, so the biggest piece was dedicated to himself. His mother was kind, but the world wasn’t kind to her; but it was the world in which Stuart did not exist, the upside down in her ailed mind. He would tell her tales of a kingdom come, about princesses carried into the light—come out, come out, mama, I can feel you, but I want to see you. Then come out she did and the world was right again, mother and son aligned on the same axis. Until an earthquake shook the Earth, a tsunami towered over to wash her away.
Stories woven with threads of life. His last one unraveled by death.
The ladder swayed with the tremble of his startled hands, then grew steady to the beat of his heart; the dim glow of the stage highlighted the enigmatic shadow backstage to shape a silhouette of familiarity. He climbed down the ladder and they talked. They laughed. Embraced. A temporary distraction defused his bomb of frustration.
Pause. Rewind. Frame by frame.
He climbed down the ladder, then felt a crushing weight pinning him against the hard metal. An electrical jolt coursed through him, but it dulled the ache of the stab in his chest cavity; in his imagination, his lung hissed like a deflating balloon, and with each breath, he felt like his head was being pushed underwater, minutes ticking by like hours. Betrayal surfaced in his eyes and he was nine years old all over again, the attic window was ajar and the February wind stung his cheeks like a bullet ant burrowed into the skin.
“Mother—” Stuart gasped out in a plea, but then it wasn’t “—fucker.”
The film reel was cut and dry, but he was the tortoise and reality was the hare. There was no moral of this story and the tortoise did not win. But the tortoise did try, relying on the pressure of Stuart’s hand around the person’s—hare’s—throat. Pump. That was the adrenaline. Squeeze. That was the hand. Pump. Squeeze. Pump. Squeeze. Pump. Pump. The more he prodded, the harder it was to breathe like they were mirror reflections of each other; bruise, bruise, bruise, chanting in his head. His siblings’ laughter echoed distantly in his mind’s hallway, growing louder with each step. Don’t come, you shouldn’t see this. His own voice was alien yet familiar, his mother’s lullaby. He’d said something, he was sure of it, but his words bubbled like a witch’s potion in his throat, choking on the metallic tinge of his blood that poured, poured, poured until it filled up the frame. Why? was his silent scream.
He closed his eyes and hoped that when he opened them again, there would be no slit in his throat, no puncture in his chest. Maybe he would be a nobleman or a thief, a cowboy or a priest, a dog or a father. A better son and a better friend. A friend turned lover.
It had meant to be his show, but someone else had told the story for him, using his lifeless force as a ventriloquist dummy. His wrists, tied up against the beams of the makeshift balcony, made a biblical icon out of him that rained all over the stage. No! This performance was going south, he had to put a stop to it. But he could take a break, they could laugh and talk, and embrace again. A temporary distraction to defuse his bomb of frustration. Sleep.
A story he wanted to tell.
There was a bed in the middle of the tortoise’s path. He’d traveled such a long way, he wanted to rest. His family and friends gathered around his bed, they wiped his wrists and neck clean and tucked him in.
“Sweet dreams, little tortoise,” they all said and, one by one, they kissed him on the head.
And so the little tortoise slept.
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