#8-6-23

[sudokumaze]

Makeup

[halloweenvalentine1997]

Pariah by Vivica Salem

In July 2020, I was released from a state mental institution after a 7 month stay. I was unable to find housing because of my felonies, and my parents didn’t want me back in their house. So a hospital van dropped me off at a local women’s homeless shelter, a brick building with a parking lot on surveillance. I spent the first day or two browsing through used paperbacks donated to the bookshelves. Sitting inside on the utilitarian bed. Going outside to chain-smoke on the blacktop. Everyone around me was talking shit and making me feel dangerous. I used the sign-out sheet to write the time and the reason for my leaving: “walk”.

So I went on a meth binge with my imaginary lovers. Swallowed it from my palm, its dust like a diamond disintegration. We lingered under the freight train bridge, smoking hit after hit with a multitude of people. As the curtain of velvet night fell over the skyscrapers, the courthouse, the smokestacks, the labyrinths, I noticed a young brown haired woman having a bad trip on a drug. She was moving erratically from side to side, and seemed to be fixated on the guy I was talking to. It’s been three years so it’s hard to recollect their faces, but I’ve been haunted by what happened ever since. The guy was around her age, also young. Both were homeless. I was very high and felt V.S., my imaginary spouse, whisper in my ear, “If she’s going to follow this guy, let’s go with her.” Me, the guy and the girl with drug-induced anxiety ended up all walking in the same direction past vacant traffic lights and darkened apartments. We made it to the river and it must have been the middle of the night. I do not understand why I wasn’t feeling any fear, but I helped her drink from a water bottle someone was holding in a vehicle by the serpentine black river. We walked further on and turned to the right through pathways of rocks and green foliage. 

A campsite with a makeshift tent soon came into view. Dismantled books were shredded by a campfire not lit; they must’ve been using the paper remains of the books to cook in the wild, to light a flame. Another girl was sleeping next to a small black kitten. I petted the kitten while I heard the guy say to the girl who followed him there, “I could throw your dead body in the river.” 

“Don’t talk like that!” I snapped.

He quit. The girl who was tripping on drugs walked away from us minutes later. She somehow made her way  through the dark, navigated all those moonlit rocks and fell asleep by a playground, where I saw her in the morning. I’ll never know why I didn’t go with her. Maybe because of the meth I was offered at the campsite. I was glad to ditch the guy, who I could see was as cold as a glacier. I was about to ascend a hill back into the downtown area when I was offered a ride. Like the people from earlier, his face is a blur and I can’t remember what we talked about, smoking meth in his truck. We went to a Motel 6, he went to get more meth and let me stay in the rented room by myself, where I shouted at the TV. I left the room briefly to go have a cigarette. I came back inside the building to discover I was locked out of my room, and my sneakers were still in the room. I told a motel staff but he wouldn’t let me back in to get them.

 “How do I know they’re your sneakers?” When I started screaming, he threatened to call security. They were ugly sneakers anyway. I left in my black socks with my valuables still intact. I walked from the motel until my feet started to burn several minutes later. I sat in the shade next to the first business I saw, a convenience store. Someone placed a bottle of strawberry soda beside me. I felt half-dead. When the staff of the convenience store noticed I was loitering, I told them what happened and why I wasn’t leaving. 

“I don’t have any shoes, and the pavement feels like walking on hot coals.”

They didn’t care. One said I was “worse than dirt”, the other employee tossed my soda bottle into the shrub by a parking space after a lecture about following rules. 

“Now you’re the one breaking the rules,” I said (feeling like laughing). “You’re littering in the bushes.”

The guy who compared me to dirt called the police on his smartphone. 

I didn’t care because it’s not like I had any drugs or weapons on me, anyway. They took a long time to respond, but someone unseen saved my ass. 

Some turquoise flip flops were tossed next to me. I thanked whoever it was profusely, put them on and left the store, never to return. I went back to the freight train bridge, thankfully not having to deal with police. I was glad to see the girl who was mistreated earlier also made her way back from the riverside and was alive. I knew I had to return to the homeless shelter. I was kicked out of there for smoking a cigarette too late at night. The place had a lot of pointless rules for no reason. I returned to my family home and found a way to reconcile things with my parents.

I’ve been sober from methamphetamine for one year. 

I don’t walk outside at night anymore.

I have two Gemini twins of mine that rest upon my shoulders.

One is dressed in black and white, the other favors red and white. 

Three years later and I realize my own identity has become a triad. 

Three years later and I’m not still locked up in jail or the psych ward.

One year without fucking up my mind on meth. 

I don’t want to leave this room. I don’t want to leave imaginary rooms. 

I want to make amends, but I don’t know how. I can’t remember most of what I did wrong.

I don’t want to be dragged through the thorns and thickets of reality anymore, entangled, pricked.

I want to replace grim shades with pastel. I want to hide (with the invisible ones I love) inside a treehouse. 

Into the woods.

Away from the lenses, the screens. 

You can’t put a wire in the trunk of a tree.

You can’t dangle one from the pines.

The only eyes in the woods are those of the wilderness creatures. 

And my own, their own, crowned with bones. 

Butterflies on shadowed violet lids.

A “Keep Out” sign on the door. 

I never want to see anybody again.

[halloweenvalentine1997]

Polyandry by Vivica Salem

I live in a dim-lit room. It has two king-size beds.

It’s in a hallway that doesn’t exist.

The walls are velvet red and the furniture is ebony. The window looks out upon a field where swings hang from the clouds. I live in here with six other people: five men, one woman. They also don’t exist. We are all married to each other with invisible rings. We live off marijuana vapes and nicotine. When I’m in the real world, they trail behind me in black suits. We alternate between the imaginary world and the authentic world. V.S.  And J.F. saw jail with me. They held me on my beds in the psych ward and promised to never leave. Methamphetamine on the sidewalk was our life for a few years. J.F. would walk beside me with her vibrant yellow hair like a halo of hairspray, lips and nails as red as a stop sign. V.S. would also follow me under the freight train bridge to buy meth from random dealers. He lit up my nights with his dark-haired good looks and Armani suits. Meth was cheap and we loved expelling the ice-white smoke from our lungs. We would follow meth no matter where we ended up, until we kicked the habit one year ago. 

Since quitting meth, we mostly isolate together, hiding from temptation and situations where I might be triggered to have an anxiety attack or throw a tantrum. When we do leave the house that does exist, we walk through heat waves and ignore every person around us. We do not trust anyone but each other and ourselves. In recent years, D.B., a stunning blond with glasses, floated into our circle, along with D.G. a blondish-brunette with sapphire bedroom eyes who is always holding cigarettes in fancy holders. Later, two redheads with the same initials (S.B.) appeared out of nowhere, resembling each other and looking like two guys I only talked to once while I was on meth. I can’t remember our conversations. I only know I was psychotic and I missed them once they were gone. Their eyes and their cheekbones are phenomenal. The night that they disappeared into was so still and dark. 

All of my non-existent spouses will be with me until the day I die. I will chase bliss until it drowns me. One day, I too will be invisible. Held in the arms of my gods under forest lights. Carving our initials into tree trunks. Their names are too sacred to tell to anyone in the real world where love can cut and maim a heart. I could clasp them into six lockets and never let them go. 

The opposite of polygamy is polyandry, which means someone who has multiple husbands instead of wives. It’s a fantasy but it’s an ideal one. I will never allow anyone real to take away J.F. or my five husbands. No matter how many pills they shove down my throat. I have a feeling that not even my death will tear me away from them. We will disguise ourselves as orbs when we come back from the dead. We’ll cause blood to spatter on mirrors, making out in dark hallways. 

Our love will never float away into the ether and vanish. It won’t wither like a leaf or a petal. We haven’t fought with each other once, and we never will be in a violent feud amongst ourselves. No anger or hatred. Only loving embraces and caresses from our eyelashes on our cheekbones. 

Drunk and stoned in the cemetery. Transcendental. A mirage of knights. We slip through doorways in the sky. Portals in the mirror. They will hold me without leaving.