Book Description

The noise assaulted me as i entered the classroom. another day of hell. I flopped into my seat ten minutes after the bell had rang, uncaring of my tardiness. It’s not like the teacher was here to say anything. He was rarely on time to class himself. His wife’s ongoing affairs and his recent knowledge of his stage 2 cancer were enough to bring him to drinking , and more recently, heroin. Five minutes after my arrival, he walked through the door carrying with himself the sour odor of fermented alcohol and smoke. i mentally gagged. I wonder if telling him his wife, Jillian, was also sleeping with his brother was enough to push him over the edge. Glancing up from the abstract sketch i had curled around the corner of my paper, i took a good look at him. Rumpled clothing, tie askew, hair unkempt, and baggy eyelids were all pointers towards his downward spiral. Our calculus instructor was a genius, but only in academics. If he was as good with women as he was with numbers maybe his wife wouldn’t have strayed.
Continuing the doodle down the side of my paper, i played with the ideal of telling the jock behind me that his best friend, Brodey i believe…ahh, yes, Brodey, was gay and had been crushing on him for a while. The jock, Richard, made a joke and Brodey laughed punching him in the shoulder. Bromance sure, with an under current. nobody would ever suspect the feelings hidden there. nobody but me of course. but i suppose i’m an exception.
Me….looking out the window i stared at the reflection gazing back. All i seen was bones. a bare skeleton with platinum blonde hair. the only trace of my original appearance were my eyes. icy blue. so light people had remarked that they seemed gray. Green highlights zig zagged their way through the irises. people say the eyes are the window to the soul. They’d be right. i knew what my reflection was. an ever present reminder that i’m not of this world, not anymore. I hadn’t been for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, i was still somewhat human, i even looked human to those around me. But it seems missing a soul sets you apart from the rest of humanity. I have Smilley to thank for that.
Thinking about Smiley took me back in a whirl of memories. Staring death in the face isn’t something you easily forget. it isn’t something you ever really recover from. 6 months in a mental institution proved that. Schizophrenia is what they diagnosed, severe paranoia coupled with hallucinations. i remember the nurse there, Elizabeth. she was very kind, very motherly.. i remember looking up at her one day after she asked how i was feeling. As i peered into her brown eyes, i remember falling, swirling in colors. I was seeing a fenced in yard and a child, maybe three years of age, running.
someone left the gate open, where are the adults?
he’s running, running..running…where are the adults?
i see the van coming, where where where where!
The child lays in the road. Hes enveloped in red, his body twisted and wrong. Smiley looks up at me
Smiley Smiley Smiley.
His skeletal grin bores into my vision.. holding up two rotting fleshy hands, he gives me the numbers.
I open my eyes to a concerned look from Elizabeth. “Jeremy” i remember saying. “two days from now, keep the gate closed”. Elizabeth had looked shocked that i knew her sons name, but smiled patronizingly. she probably thought i had overheard it in a conversation. as she turned and walked away, i heard her as if she were speaking.
“What a strange girl. its sad her parents are dead. what that must do to somebody. its not a surprise she developed the disorder….”
Her thoughts droned on and on until she met up with the doctor and they took a more professional turn. 3 days later i heard elizabeth had quit the institution. nobody gave a reason, but i could hear it. i didn’t know how to block the voices back then. Their minds whispered my name. They’re thoughts bombarded me as if i was caught in a verbal hailstorm without shelter. “her baby run over…dead..predicted…just a coincidence…Elizabeth must be heartbroken…schizophrenic…freak..”
I used to hate Smiley for the “gifts” he’d bestowed on me. When the gang members invaded my house i fully expected to die. at age 7 i already knew the ropes. my father had owed too much money on behalf of the drugs for too long. i knew how the system worked. pay up or be killed. of course we didn’t have the money. electricity and water were luxuries we couldn’t afford half the time. i remember the hours they took beating him. i remember hearing my mother’s screams in the other room. i remember crawling into the cabinet under the sink. i remember i remember i remember…. they took their time. we had no neighbors and they had no worries. I huddled in my sanctuary listening to it all. but i kept quiet, and i shed no tears. there were not any tears worthy of the two. i had long since grown apart from my parents. my anger, hurt and betrayal against them had long before manifested into loathing. i heard the gunshots after the screaming had already stopped hours before. security in the kill i suppose. i heard the heavy footsteps of the men leaving, of the door creaking open and slamming shut. i didn’t yet move from the cabinet.
the sound came to my ears slowly at first. a whooshing..a splash, like someone was throwing water on the house. not willing to give up my position, i remained huddled in my hiding spot. the noise continued for quite a while, and i found it soothing. i remember my eyes getting heavy, me getting drowsy, and i fell asleep to the rhythm of gasoline being poured onto my home. as the smoke reached me, my nose began to burn and i woke up irritably wiping at my eyes. opening the cabinet door, i was ambushed with a wave of heat and utter confusion.
hungry ghastly fingers licked out towards me, the heat already intense and blistering my face. the kitchen was a fiery inferno, tendrils of liquid heat reaching for me and calling me into them. i ran through the only opening i could find through the tempest. pieces of the ceiling and walls fell around me as i struggled to find an exit. my house had become maze, nothing was familiar and everything took on an alien feel. i reached a door the fire had not yet burnt through. my 8 year old self knew nothing of the danger opening this door could cause. i remember grabbing the handle, and pulling back with a cry. my blistered palm screamed pain, but so do the rest of my boey that the fire had tasted. using my shirt i opened the door, and ran in. i didn’t make it but a few steps before i was frozen in place by what i saw
what lay in front of me didn’t look like my dad. what lay on the bed didn’t look like my mother. they looked like dolls that had been drug around and then discarded carelessly. only dolls don’t bleed. dolls dont have guts…have brain juices…have missing eyes and splintered fingers. my father lay in several pieces on the ground in front of me. flames had already caught his shirt and my nose was filled with the acrid scent of his flesh. i remember falling to my knees and gaging, throwing everything up that was in my stomach. when i was finished, i had to brave yet another site. standing i caught the full intensity of what was done to my mother. i will save you the horrors of what i seen, but it’s something i will never forget. i remember her strapped to the bed with ties, and all her clothes bunched up in a corner of the room. she was laid out for everyone. and i had no doubt that everyone had had her.
my eyes had enough of there fill. i remember turning to go back through the house, find another way out. but in the house there was a hissing….a hissing i couldn’t hear. in the house there was a gas line, a gas line i couldn’t see. and in the doorway stood me, when that gas line blew up. of this i remember little of. what i do remember was short. white hot searing pain, my flesh falling off my hands, my eyes seemed to be boiling, i couldn’t see, everything was dark dark dark hot. i remember screaming. i remember feeling my ignite, the black locks lighting up as if they were oil.i remember falling, and going numb…i remember endless dark, than cold..bone numbing cold…and then i met smiley.
He stood beside me as i looked down at my skeleton. nothing but ashy flesh was left. i lifted my head and stared at him. he pointed at my corpse, and drew a finger across his throat. “i know i said, “i’m dead”. he nodded. it hurt i said. it hurt alot. smiley nodded again. i gazed at his empty eyes, his grinning black lips and his fleshy swollen face. turning a finger towards me, he laid it in the center of my chest. “you’re dead too” i said. Smiley cocked his head to the side, but said nothing. the finger laying on my chest curled, and i felt something inside of me tug. black, skeletal wings erupted from behind him. i stared at him. i knew what an angel was. he was not one. slowly he wrapped the wings around me, and all i could smell was rotting flesh, earthworms and blood. the scent i remember above all was the slight hint of spice though. such an odd thing to smell among death and decay. everything thing was spinning, spinning, spinning again, and i grabbed onto his wings as to not fall.
when i touched him, a cold shiver ran up my spine, and i stared in wonder at the ends of my hair as they turned from black to platinum blonde. Smiley moved his finger from my chest, and placed it in the center of my forehead. i stared at his gruesome lips, curved into the cheshire cats’ smile. i heard a voice soft as silk, as endless as the sky, and as mysterious as space say in my head “Remember, Arazial”.
i woke up outside the house, fully clothed in my outfit and with the police surrounding me. what happened they asked? are you ok they asked? but i couldn’t answer. all i could was do was listen to their thoughts. house..burnt…arson…murder…girl lucky..it’s a miracle.. what’s your name they asked? dark dark dark dark….”your name? “ an officer asked again. dark dark dark wings wings wings smiling…smiley..remember…”Arazial” i managed before i blacked out.
The bell rang, bringing me back out of my thoughts. the jocks ran out of the room snickering, and the teacher stared at his computer, lost in his sad world. there would be more time for remembering. there would be more time for smily. He’s a constant in my life, an ever present feature. pretty much a friend at this point, though i’ve never heard him say another word since the fire. picking up my books, i walked away from class and out through the school doors. the peoples thoughts were full of questions around me, but i ignored them. i knew one place where i could find solace from everybody elses white noise. i was heading home.