The Storm Tossed Family Or: Guess Who’s Coming Out at Dinner

“I’m sure you are both aware that under normal circumstances, I have grounds to expel you.” Principal Brelling stated, staring down at us from behind thickly rimmed spectacles. Grey haired, liver spotted, with leathery, aged skin, the man looked positively patrician.
We nodded in unison. We’ve found that this tends to weird people out to the point where being rid of us is preferable to the alternative.
He took his glasses off, and in the time-honored tradition of the much put upon, began rubbing his temples vigorously. “Luckily, for you these are no ordinary circumstances. Without even having to ask, would it be fair of me to assume that Mr. Thompson and his associates instigated your altercation?”
We nodded in unison.
“Of course, of course,” he continued, still massaging his incipient migraine, and not bothering to look at either of us. “It would also be a fair assumption, were I able to visit Mr. Thompson at the hospital, though I have no doubt his confederates will confirm, it was you two that started things.” Marlin made to object, but the Principal forestalled her with a wave of his hand, “No, no, don’t bother. I already know the answers to all of the questions. This is neither the first time this has happened, nor will it be the last.”
While there had been no worries in my mind about whether we would be facing serious trouble or not, a small amount of relief still wriggled its way into my chest. One look at Marlin assured me she felt it too.
“However, because the only witnesses willing to come forward are the five of you that were involved, conjecture is all we have to go on. Equal punishment is the only recourse, God forbid that idiot’s parents get involved again should I show his victims any leniency.”
“Equal punishment? That isn’t fair!” I shouted at him.
He looked at me, and in his eyes I saw an educator that had been through this too many times, with too many kids. “Whoever started the fight gets expelled, we can’t prove who started it, so all of you get suspension. One week. Your parents have already been contacted,” and then, like a man doing an impression of someone realizing that a problem was no longer his problem, he smiled a wide, friendly smile. “Please try to stay out of trouble from now on, otherwise it’s going to be a long school year.”
Like that, we were dismissed from his office.
Straight into the looming form of our fuming father. “Car,” he pointed through the double doors, towards the waiting SUV, “now.” We shuffled past him as he gave a curt nod towards our principal, then turned to follow us out.
An unexpected surprise came in the form of Soren, buckled in the back seat, without a care in the world. Far from troubled, our brother was wearing a grin that would have been more at home celebrating a successful diamond heist. “Ooooh. You’re in trouble,” he sang.
“Us?” my indignant sister shot back. “You’re truant! Shouldn’t you be at school right now?”
The grin fell from his less-than-innocent cherub face. “I’m in trouble, too,” he admitted, flatly.
It was Marlin’s turn to smile, “You are definitely our brother.”
“What are you in for?” I asked him, genuinely curious. How often do three siblings find themselves kicked out of school on the first day?
Without shame, or volume control, he bleated, “I karate chopped a boy’s head off! Hiya!” Soren emphasized this last bit with his signature chopping of air that could not possibly fight back.
Dad, quiet so far, adjusted the mirror as he drove to get a better look at his quarrelsome offspring, “Soren, buddy, what’d I tell you about lying?”
Deadpan, he answered from rote, “Never lie to impress people and always make it believable.”
Returning his focus to the road, Dad nodded, “That’s right. He was fighting. Seems to be the day for it.”
Before we could wonder about why our father was so calm, quiet, not locking the doors and driving all four of us into a lake, Soren turned bright red with anger and practically shouted in a single breath, “One of the dumb older boys pushed my girlfriend down and tried to kiss her and I called him a buttface and then I kicked him in his buttface.” His tiny cheeks bulged with heavy breathing.
Trying to mask his snicker with an unconvincing cough, Dad managed to say, “You did the right thing, kiddo. That’s why,” he looked at us through the rearview mirror again, “he only got one day of suspension.”
“You don’t have a girlfriend,” I teased.
Still flushed and panting, he stuck his tongue out at me. “Uh huh.”
I raspberried him right back, “Since when?”
Dismissing me, he crossed his arms firmly across his chest and lifted his chin up and away in Marlin’s direction. “Since last year.” Then he whispered, “Buttface.”
Too loud, as Dad heard it. “Hey, I’ll only let you get away with that once. Watch your mouth.”
Ignoring the other two males in the car, Soren directed his attention at a possible sympathetic ally, “Her name is Isabelle but everyone calls her Punk and she’s beautiful.”
Marlin patted him reassuringly on the head, but instead of reassurance, she only had condescension, “I don’t believe you.”
He swatted her hand away, “Well, PUNK says you don’t have to believe in mountains for them to be mountains.”
I could not resist one final quip, “You know what, little brother? Good for you. At least we know she’s way smarter than you.”
“Duh,” he said. The little shit was beyond smug. I gave him a high-five.
To say that the rest of the car ride was uneventful was the very definition of a stretched truth. uneventful in the sense that nothing happened? Pure truth. Mentally, however, we had faced some truly terrifying moments together, but none of it was a match for the building   of tension caused by our father’s relentless calm. Not being able to read him was maddening, and we had no way to be sure if he was doing it on purpose or because he was truly untroubled. His instructions, delivered in a chipper voice, to take care of Soren while he returned to work, only served to feed our gnawing anxiety.
Leaving Soren in our care, he went back to work, with absolutely no clue about either his mood or our future punishment.
We cleaned.
We made dinner.
We waited for the coming storm with a keen sense of deja-vu.
Much like before, we were to wait until evening for the unknown.
Dad sat at the table first, a wry grin giving away nothing. He wouldn’t start eating until mom joined, so neither did we. Soren did, but his appetite was ephemeral at best, so he ate when he ate and no one made any comment.
When she finally did arrive, mom apologized as she maneuvered her way around the table to kiss each of our foreheads in turn, then joined us, “Sorry I’m late, you would not believe the day I had. A boy came in this morning, right when my shift started. It looked like he got his hand stuck in a tractor,” mom told us, as if she was causally mentioning the weather. Oddly cheerful for someone who should, given the situation, be furious, said, “Oh, this smells wonderful.” She bit into the chicken breast on her plate with undisguised hunger. “It even tastes good. Did you make this?”
“Y-yes,” I stammered, totally confused. “I mean, we both did,” I added, not looking up.
Mom surveyed her family for a long moment, taking in the, I am proud to admit, the well-balanced and carefully thought out meal of chicken picata, orzo, brocolli, and two glasses of red wine for our parents. “This is nice.” Mom’s smile hung on her face, then a faint malicious edge tinged her voice,” Your father tells me that all three of my children were suspended today for fighting. Tell me, is it something we did as parents? Do we not love you enough? Do you hate us? Are you being rebellious because you’re entering your teenage years?” Obviously fake tear glittered in the corner of her eyes, amplifying her attempted guilt trip slash outrage.
Unfortunately for her, we were far too inured to her martyrdom. Also, I would have been more inclined to take her seriously if she had not mixed her parental reaction mediums. “Yes. To all of that,” I told her through a mouth full of chicken. “It’ll probably be you that they blame for all the evil we enact on the world. You should really catch up on our new manifesto.”
“Funny” she sneered.
“I thought so.”
Mom set her fork down with a punctuated clink. Steepling her fingers, her glare shifted between Marlin and me. “You went too far today.”
“Even me?” Soren, who had been poking at the remains of his broccoli, asked.
“No, sweetheart. You did the right thing, your father and I are very proud of you.” He beamed. “Your siblings on the other hand.”
“It was self-defense!” Marlin protested.
“I understand that. Your father understands that.” Dad simply nodded affirmation at his plate as he continued to shovel food into his mouth. “That is why we aren’t nearly as mad at you as we should be. But, really,” exasperation lowering her volume to a near whisper, “you got suspended on the first day”
“And sent a kid to the hospital,” I reminded her, immediately aware I had pushed the limit.
Mom slammed her fist on the table, rattling silverware and spilling water from rocked glasses. Her sudden, uncharacteristic, real outburst stunned everyone into embarrassed silence. She was the peacemaker, the problem solver, the pacifier, the paragon of parental patience in face of her perpetually perturbing pubescent progeny.* Seeing our family’s bastion of calm truly angry was truly unsettling. “You need to learn restraint!” She shouted. “There was absolutely no reason to take it to that level!”
Caution not being her strong suite, Marlin muttered under her breath, “Better him than us.”
“Hush,” mom hissed acidly.
Dad, his plate clear, leaned back, and spoke up, “Just because you CAN hospitalize someone, doesn’t mean you SHOULD. You know the saying: With great punching strength…’
Some semblance of shame settled in finally. I finished the quote, “Comes the great obligation to only hit someone as hard as necessary and no harder.”
“We have to pay that kid’s hospital bill, so it might as well have been one of you two trouble makers instead of him. Regardless,” dad interrupted our faux outrage, “of the why. As it stands, this is the second medical related expense caused directly by your shenanigans. Gee, this sure does feel familiar,” he gave us a sideways scowl. “Now, I can only afford to send one of you to college. The other one has to strip. No, don’t you dare look at your sister. No daughter of mine is going to end up on the pole.”
It was hard to tell if he was joking or not.
“In the meantime, you’re both grounded and, and,” he repeated over a chorus of moans, “until you’re allowed back at school, consider yourselves indentured servants. Marcus, you’re working with me at the shop. I’m packing for a convention this weekend, so I need you running the counter.”
“Lin, you’re coming to the hospital with me.”
“That’s not fair!” I said.
“You can’t separate us!” Marlin said.
“You two are terrible influences on each other! It’ll do you some good. Besides, when was the last time you spent more than a few hours apart?”
Marlin thought for a moment. “When Marcus got sick and had diarrhea?”
“Seriously? At the table?”
Marlin looked disgusted, “Ew, no! In the bathroom.” Realization dawned, “Oh. Sorry.”
“Boy, if it makes you feel any better, there’s a new girl who started coming in regularly,” Dad winked at me. “I think she’s your age, maybe you’ll meet her.”
Marlin huffed, “Why can’t I work at the shop? Why don’t you ever find girls for me?”
“Because it’s probably never going to be difficult for you to find them on your own, and we want grand-kids at some point. Your brother is going to need all the help he can get.”
“Hey!” I objected. “Wait, what? Why can’t she have kids? Why can’t you have kids? Why’s it gotta be me?”
Ignoring me, Marlin asked, “You know?”
“Of course we know. We’re old, not dumb.”
“And you’re okay with it?”
“Sweetie, there’s nothing to be okay or not okay with. We love you no matter what.”
“What is everyone talking about?”
“Your sister is gay.”
“You’re gay?”
“You’re surprised? How could you not know? I mean, we’re twins, we do everything the same. You like fighting, I like fighting. You like pizza, I like pizza. You like girls, I like girls.” She spouted off the list nonchalantly, like it was nothing but a mere contrivance, but I could sense the waves of nervous tension hidden beneath the placid surface of her calm.
“Okay, by that logic, I should like guys though.”
“Do you like guys?”
“No.”
“There you go.”
“I,” but I could feel her discomfort radiating from her. My desire to ask any further questions, regardless of my curiosity or the need to tease my sister, eroded in the face of her upwelling panic. I shut up and held out my hand for a diplomatic handshake. Marlin took it with slightly confused hesitation. “I hereby, as your brother, officially love and accept you as you are and without reservation. Furthermore, I support you and your sexuality, while also secretly harbouring token resentment,” she inhaled sharply, expecting me to say something awful, “over the fact that someone as equally attractive as myself will prove a threat for future romantic endeavours.”
She exhaled, it was long, and for her it was not an act. Marlin needed a moment to steady herself, visible relief coloring her from neck to the top of her head. Seeing her shake like that made me feel kind of terrible for dragging it out the way I did.
Returning my handshake, she proclaimed, “And, I, as your sister, officially accept your support and love, while vowing to try my best not to sabotage any of your future relationships on purpose. But, I am secretly not promising anything because we both know we’re each other’s competition.”
“Jesus Christ,” dad broke the abnormal parental silence. “My children as so frigging dramatic.” He began eating again, and asked around a mouthful of broccoli, “If you’re all done coming out and reconciling Lyn’s lifestyle that was never an issue, can someone please pass me a napkin?”
Before either of us could respond to his sarcasm, Soren spoke up, “What’s gay?”
“You are,” I said automatically and regretted it instantly. Knowing that I would see a look of real hurt on Marlin’s face, I kept my focus on Soren. “You may or may not be,” I told him, trying desperately to take my foot out of my mouth, “and it doesn’t matter either way. You know how you like like Isabelle?”
Soren went an interesting shade of red. Very quietly he said, “Yeah.”
“Well, it’s like that, only gay is when a boy like likes another boy, or a girl like likes another girl. There’s nothing wrong with it.” As an afterthought, and because I suddenly felt more responsibility for the person my little brother grew up to be than I ever had, I wrapped my arm around his shoulder and told him, “If anyone around you ever uses it as an insult, or to be hurtful, you have my permission to tell them this: ‘You’re a shitty,”
A wet floret, launched by mom, smacked my cheek by way of interruption, followed by a harsh, “Language!”
Ignoring the scandalized tones, I continued unabashed, “You’re a shitty person, and a bigot, to imply gay is wrong.”
Still too ashamed to make eye contact with Marlin, I stared into Soren’s eyes until he nodded understanding. “Good.”
As we lay together that night, sleep taking a position at our periphery leaving Marlin restless and me overly contemplative. In the darks silence, Marlin asked tentatively, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yes,” I answered immediately. “No,” I answered again. “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. Something about my sister’s confession was bothering me, but I was at a loss as to what. Our parents were not particularly religious, so that was not an aspect of the problem. Maybe I just thought I knew her so well that learning something so important at this point in our lives was shocking to me and cast doubt on what I thought I knew? Then there was the issue of this morning; the way that kid was so hateful, calling me a faggot, and my reaction at being called one. How many times had I called someone gay, or made a joke about it? Of all those times, how many had my sister, my best friend, been there to hear? Was Marlin going to have to deal with that kind of vitriol for the rest of her life?
Unable to vocalize any of that particular minefield, I instead asked, “You’re still the same person, right? Does this change anything?”
I could feel her mull the question over, she countered with, “Is there anything different about me? Would a single day change who I am to you? Have I acted any differently that I do from every other day that we’ve spent together?
“When you put it like that,” I admitted, “I guess not. I’m just worried about you.”
“Why??
“Not about; for. What you’ll have to put up with.” With a degree of difficulty, I told her about the litany of concerns swirling around in my head. She was my sister, and if navigating a minefield was what it took to make her happy, well.
“I won’t lie, it hurt sometimes.” A ice pick of guilt stabbed me in the gut. “But, after what you told Soren, you’re forgiven. In any case, I can take care of myself. On the rare occasion that I can’t, I have you.”
“Yes, yes you do.”
*I was in the full grip of my alliteration phase.**
**You can be insufferable sometimes.***
***You’re both ridiculous.

First Day of Freshman Year

Our very first day of highschool was unseasonably, and unreasonably, cold. The shushing of wind-breakers and jeans added just a hint of extra volume to the cacophony that had already begun. All around us, friendly embraces and loud, excited conversations as friends that had spent a whole summer apart caught each other up on precious lost months.
Terrified, wide-eyed freshman, lost in their combination oversized hoodies and long-sleeved shirts, roamed the halls in small packs. Confused, but enthusiastic, they avoided groups of upper classmen like quick maneuvering bait-fish.
Seniors, easy to pick out with their sandals, limp, empty backpacks, and occasionally what looked like pajamas, were all cocky-strut and loud-mouthed. Carefree. Careless.
Then, there were the sophomores and juniors. Up and coming social bosses, toadies in tow, looking to carve out a place for themselves as early possible. Day one go-getters.
Finally, amongst the tumult and chaos, was us.
Quiet, moving with a chin up confidence utterly contradictory to our station, and swaddled against the, quite frankly, much too cold, we made our way through the halls in search of our shared locker. It did not take long. People seemed to move out of our way for whatever reason.
This was noticed. One of those out to make a name became aware of our presumption of calm, and took it as a personal affront. He, along with two of his cronies, broke from the general mob. They made directly for us, shoulder checking anyone smaller out of the way.
They stopped a few feet away. Their leader was easily a head taller than me, and flanked on either side by bundles of teenage angst just as large. In eyes his I saw the eager gleam of potential violence.
Our first bully!
I spared a glance at Marlin, she waggled her eyebrows. A clear meaning: Peace is possible, fight just as a likely. It could go either way.1
“What’s up, new meat?” he asked in a warbly voice bordering on deep. Everything about him, from his posture to his half-cocked smile, was intended as a threat.
Intended, obviously. Conveyed? Eh.
“You wanna?” I asked Marlin, who was still only kind of paying attention, the question left unfinished and hanging in the air. She shook her head, removing a few empty notebooks from her backpack, and gestured for me to handle it after placing them in the locker. “Lemme stop you right there, chief. I don’t know what kind of feel good 80’s movie you think you’re in right now,2 but I am fairly confident it isn’t going to shake out the way you’re hoping.” I winked at him conspiratorially, to emphasize how little I cared for this distraction. “So why don’t you and your buddies fuck off?”
He stepped closer, forcing my neck to crane upward to maintain eye contact. His face was a picture of barely controlled anger. Seething, he asked, “What did you just say, faggot?”
Everything went very, very quiet.
“Oh, honey,” Marlin made her presence known, “that’s not a nice word.”
The bully mocked laughter, “Oh, shit!” Turning to his posse, he said, loud enough for everyone around to hear, “Looks like twin brothers. Or maybe twin sisters.” For some reason, this elicited a chorus of hateful glee from the other two, drowning out the oppressive silence. “How are we even supposed to tell you two apart?”
I sighed. An honest sigh, one that spoke of vexation, of a long day yet to start. It seemed that violence was a foregone conclusion at this point. And while I saw it as a tedious, boorish exertion that I could most definitely do without, Marlin’s face lit up with pure joy.   She was suddenly alive with the prospect of action.
Mentally acceding to the inevitable, I turned away from the idiot to take off my sweatshirt. He had a moment of pause, as my arms, now exposed, showed a generous amount of muscle that stretched sleeves and had no place on a fourteen year old. Amazing what nearly a year of constantly fighting monsters on a nightly basis will do for the body.
Honestly, I was a little unsure myself. Fighting is one of those skills that can only be improved if you regularly practice. I had fought plenty of monsters, but I had yet to fight another human being. For all I knew, it could be totally different. He may have fought a lot of people, and would therefore have the natural advantage.
Anyway, fighting with a jacket in my hand was not an option. As I hung it in the locker, he roared, “Hey! I asked you a question, you don’t turn your back on me!” He grabbed my shoulder, trying to force me around.
Between myself and my sister, I would like to believe that I was the more in control. Where she was choleric, I was patient. Where she was rash, I was decisive. Where this jack-wagon chose to grab me by the shoulder, I chose an over-hand grip on his forearm, bending at the knees, using my weight and lower center of gravity to wrench his hand down and forward into the locker.
Ultimately, my sister and I are the same person. And, where she would have slammed the door on his stupid hand until his bones cracked and gave, I slammed the door on his stupid hand until his bones cracked and gave, punctuating each impact with a shout. “I. Told. You. This. Would. Happen. You. Dumb. Fucker.”
The locker door, now too bent out of shape to latch shut, was smeared with blood. Bully boy slumped to the floor, whimpering and cradling his broken hand. Remembering my severed finger3, I felt no sympathy. Through clenched teeth, he hissed, “You fucking psycho.”
Marlin, so far uninvolved, joined in. “You don’t know when to shut up, do you?” Her tone was so sweet, it could almost be mistaken for actual compassion. In a rapid shift, she hauled her leg back, the crowd gasped a collective gasp of anticipated pain, and Marlin launched her leg forward to kick him square in the groin.
There was a sickening, squelching pop.
He screamed.
His buddies, previously rooted to the spot by the knee jerk brutality, broke station and ran. Probably to find a teacher. Maybe to get away from us.
Marlin leaned in to whisper harshly in his ear as he whimpered, “Wanna know how you can tell us apart?” She jerked her thumb back at me, “He’s the one that broke your hand.” I waved, all innocence and toothy grin adding insult and creepy factor to injury. She stood over him and spoke loud enough for the remaining onlookers to hear, “And I’m the one that busted your balls.”
We high-fived. “To the principal’s office?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”

 

 

1 – Our nonverbal communication was pretty extensive by that time. -Marlin
2 – Probably one of the ones where the bullies always get away with attempted murder. -Marlin.
3 – For SOME reason. -Marcus.

The Finger Saga pt. 2

It would be a fair estimate to say that, including tonight, Marlin and I had seen dozens of amputations featured in the hundreds of movies or TV episodes we have watched. In nearly every one of those instances with a severed limb, appendage, or digit, there had always been an accompanying fountain of blood. Whether pulsing to a heart beat, or the steady flow of a garden hose, a bright crimson jet of arterial madness would spurt across a room and paint the walls.
It would also be a fair statement to say that I was pleasantly disappointed when what actually happened was completely, welcomingly, quite the opposite. Instead of a stream of gore, a few fat drops fell heavy to the floor landing near my severed pinkie. As we stared, the sluggish plops joined a small pool growing slowly as the liquid drained from the first two-thirds of my truant finger.
“Okay, okay, so, okay,” Marlin sputtered, “don’t panic.”
“You can’t tell me what to do!” I screeched at her.
That set her off. Her stricken grimace cracked into a poorly restrained smile as a bout of giggling bored out from somewhere deep. Laughter, spreading, infectious, broke through me as she gave up her self-control and allowed herself to be consumed by the ridiculousness of our situation.
As it so often is in the case of insurmountable trauma, unbidden thoughts welled up in my brain, adding to the hysterics. In between gasping breaths, I managed to choke out, “Five second rule,” which doubled Marlin over.
Rolling, she added, “Now mom and dad can finally tell us apart!”
What felt like minutes passed, though in reality it could not have been more than fifteen seconds, before we finally calmed down. With a deep, contented breath, I set my sword down and picked my finger up. It flopped at the joint from side to the other as I rolled it between my still attached digits.
Half-expecting it to twitch, I brought it up to my face for closer inspection. It reminded me of something as innocuous as a baby tooth.
Just a part of me, discarded.
Sobriety washed over me at that thought. I tossed the finger to Marlin, or more accurately, at Marlin, killing off her laughing fit as quickly as it had come on. “Mom and dad are going to kill us,” I told her.
She held it like it she was in a nightmare, a strange detached dream, the edge of bizarre. I have never had cause to use the word before1 but it felt so,
“Surreal,” Marlin finished my thought.
“Exactly,” I agreed.
Watching her turn it over and over in her hands, morbid curiosity tethering my sister to the body part. Not once did it occur to me to wonder where the pain was. Nor did I think to question why it had been Marlin that dropped her weapon first, to clutch at her hand.
All at once, though, the shock wore off, my body gave up, and I watched in slow motion as an arc of blood bridged the four-foot gap between me and my sister. If it were not for her wide-eyed surprise2 in that moment, she would have looked just like a serial killer.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered.
Blood loss was beginning to make me light-headed, I giggled at her hushed swear. “Don’t cuss!” I wobbled on my feet, “Sis, I’m feeling woozy.”
Ever the pragmatist, Marlin feigned calm. “Come on,” she said in a very level tone, completely at odds with her expression, “what’d mom teach us? Elevate.”
As she said it, I mouthed the word, and lifted the wound above my heart. Using my free hand I tore a strip from my shirt to press against the… cut?… slice?… my stump? To press against the stump. “Compress,” I said, the bleeding stemmed a noticeable amount.
Marlin, behind the cashier’s counter, rummaged through a drawer full of office supplies. She returned with a handful of rubber bands. “Tourniquet,” she announced triumphantly. Carefully, she wrapped several of them at the joint below my… stump. The pressure halted the blood flow, which I was grateful for. But, the tightening rubberbands, biting deep into already abused skin, and pressing hard into damaged bone, caused an alarming amount of pain that coursed up and down my arm.
Marlin, my twin, stared directly into my eyes as I winced. The pain abated to a more manageable level. Her face contorted slightly, “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I answered truthfully, “yeah, I’m okay.”
She frowned again, “We have to call 911.”
“Not from here,” I shook my head. “We’re already in a crazy amount of trouble. Going to be so much worse if they knew we were here cutting pieces off of me instead of home cleaning3.”
“But,” Marlin picked up the finger from the counter-top, resistance draining from her. “I hate it when you’re right. We need to put this in milk.”
I repeated her words in my head just to make certain I had heard her correctly. Milk? Really? “Milk? No, ice. You put teeth in milk.”
“Ice. Duh. That’s what I meant, you know that.”
And so, after securing a bag of ice cubes from the fridge where dad kept the sodas for all the nerds when they got too heated raiding a dungeon and or fighting a dragon, we walked out of a darkened store onto an empty street. “We should probably take the back way,” Marlin suggested. With a bloody cleaver in one hand, and a bag with an amputated finger in the other, she was hard to disagree with.
Away from the roads, through the woods, and across the creek, we stumbled. Bugs, all of the bugs, every single insect with wings and a taste for people, were drawn to the scent of fresh blood and wet sweat. In the heavy steam of the night, the going was slow, and my concern of being eaten alive by the swarm overtook the worry of my recent loss.
Our luck continued to hold, however, as when we finally broke through the treeline, the street was still devoid of any traffic. It was easy to imagine the reaction of a passerby upon seeing two fear pale twins, both wearing blood soaked clothing, one holding a knife and a bag red with a mix condensation and blood, and the other barely clinging to consciousness.
Eventually questions would have been asked.

1 – But more than I could have ever imagined after. -Marcus.
2 – Disgust. -Marlin.
3 – Ah, to be young and scared of how your parents are going to react again. -Marcus

A Midsummer Night’s Cleave OR: When I was 12, my sister cut off one of my fingers.

Sunday, June 23, 1996

Our Fort had stood, for the better part of two weeks, a proud testament to our collective laziness. It was grand, it was magnificent, it was one hundred percent deserving of the capital F.
It reeked of body odor and dirty socks.
The Fort began life as the fort: An accumulation of bed sheets and extra pillows on the big couch in the living sitting directly in front of the television, that grew from scribbled plans in a grade school composition journal, into the Fort: A slightly more organized accumulation of bed sheets, strategically place pillows and cushions, dirty laundry parapets, unwashed dishes, re-purposed brooms (for the banners), and an ever-increasing amount of disgust from our parents.
Marlin and I lived there. Slept there. Turned ourselves willingly into mindless drones of Hollywood as we tried our very best to power through the absurd collection of VHS tapes our parents maintained. Mom said they were mostly dad’s, but we knew better.
Somehow, we managed to come to an unspoken agreement that after a cheesy movie, or a boring one, we would watch a Kurosawa film. Whether we had seen it before or not, Toshiro Mifune’s mustache was ginger to our visual palate,¹ making the world a better place.
To watch terrible movies in.
Mom and dad worked extra shifts during the season and would, occasionally and after a particularly long day, enter our bespoke dominion to enjoy the first hour of whatever we were watching and pass into sweet, sweet blissful sleep within the comfortable confines of our snug sanctuary.
We were at the point where the long, languid summer days had matured into a delicious boredom of the type which bred that curious mixture of exhaustion and insomnia.² Thus, nearly every one of our many waking, and all of few sleeping, hours were spent in the home within our home.
What I’m trying to say is that we really liked the Fort. Capital F.
So, while the order to tear the Fort down was, especially after the events of this morning, inevitable, its issuance caused the two of us no less distress for having waited nearly ten hours for it to come.
The command was made even worse by the appearance of our young brother Soren, with whom, in our eyes, the blame solidly lay, making his was down the stairs dressed in a Karate gi.³
Rashamon was in the VCR. Marlin, noticing Soren, looked up from Toshiro telling the bandit’s tale, to ask, “Why are you wearing that?”
Soren rolled his eyes and shot back, “Duh, because I’m the favorite.” The little smartass punched the air with a loud, “Hiya!”
“No, dummy,” I told him, “she meant: Why aren’t you in trouble?” an edge of exasperation and a touch of jealousy entering my voice.
Soren, unlike his relatively sedentary siblings, had established an active pattern of life for a majority of the season. Until very recently, his days were spent amongst friends doing God knows what. His activities left him worn out enough to sleep through the night, wake up early enough to be gone through daylight, and return with just enough time left to do it all over again. Unfortunately, those friends disappeared one by one as their parents dragged them along on family trips.
This left Soren with his own family. With mom working double shifts at the hospital, and dad keeping the shop open at irregular late night college student hours, it actually meant it left Soren with us.
Marlin and I barely acknowledged his existence.
Without any stimulus to occupy his hyperactive attention, Siren embraced the ensuing ennui with an unexpected, but thoroughly exciting, destructive outburst. It was mom, with her preternatural maternal timing, that interrupted what might have been a wonderful bonding opportunity disguised as a fiery assault on the Fort.
Mom called it burning the house down. We called it defending our land from an aberrant claimant. I am absolutely certain it had nothing to do with our watching several hours worth of medieval movies.
“Because he’s my baby,” answered mom, stepping down behind him. “And he’s five. You two need to be more responsible.”
“You look nice, mom,” I hazarded. So used to seeing her in scrubs and in a state of near exhaustion, it was a surprise to see her dressed nicely, and made up.
“Thank you, dear. Your father is taking me out tonight.” As mom descended, she absent-mindedly affixed earrings while herding Soren downward. “Sweetheart,” she told boy who was still punching the air dramatically with each step, “pick up the pace or I’ll Karate your little butt into the car.”
With one last, “Hiya!” he pelted down the remaining steps and out the door.
“What about him?” Marlin asked from the couch.
“Parenting, child. I don’t trust you three to have the house still standing by the time we get back, so I’m removing one of you.” She made it to the bottom step and called up to dad, “Honey! Let’s go!” Returning her attention to her twins, “His,” mom paused, “energy needs to be channeled into something productive. Soren is going to Karate lessons. Your father and I are going out.”
“But mom!” we chorused together.
“That’s not fair,” I said.
“Why don’t we get lessons?” Marlin asked. “I want to learn jiu jistsu,” she added.
“I want to learn kendo.”
Marlin sneered at me, “How are we even related?” then asked mom, “Why don’t we get to do things like that?”
Dad, finally hobbling out from his bedroom, leaned against the top floor railing, “Children are expensive,” he said. “And neither of you had the courtesy to eat the other in the womb.” He began making his way down the stairs, the steady clomp of his fake leg following every other step. Upon reaching mom, dad gave her a purposely mushy kiss that made her giggle and us gag.
“Your father doesn’t mean that,” she told us as she shoved him out the door.
With a wink, dad said, “Yes he does,” then disappeared outside.
Mom, still giggling, assured us, “He loves you both very much.”
“No he doesn’t!” came his voice from the driveway.4
Mom adopted a serious tone, “Listen, I want this,” she waved vaguely at the entirety of the living room, “disaster taken care of while we’re gone.”
“But mom!”
“Hush. That means laundry, dishes, trash, and everything back to where it belongs. Otherwise, I’ll lock you in the basement until you starve.”
Marlin spoke up, “We don’t have a basement.”
Ignoring her, mom went on, “We’re going to the city and we will be home in two hours. I expect my living room to be presentable.”
“Wait,” Marlin said again, sharing my confusion, “we don’t have a basement.”
Mom stepped through the threshold, and over her shoulder as the door closed, she added, “I’ve already discussed it with your father. If the class is good for Soren, and if the house is clean, we’ll sign you up, too.”
“Bye, mom,” I said.
“We love you,” Marlin said.
“Mmhmm,” and the door closed.
We stood together in sullen silence for a few moments, listening to the car pull into the road and drive away. “I can’t believe they’re blackmailing us to take down the Fort!” I was shocked! Scandalized! Outraged! Adjectives!
“I can’t believe you would rather learn kendo than something useful. You don’t know how to sword fight.” As if to punctuate her statement, the bandit and the samurai crossed blades.
Moving around the couch, separating sheets and clothing, I kept half my attention on Roshamon. “Well, yeah, that’s kind of the whole point,” I told her like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “I don’t know how to sword fight. I want to learn.”
Across the room, Marlin had begun working towards me in the effort to clean. “Why?” she shook her head. “Who even sword fights?”
With both hands and a closed mouth, I pointed at the TV.
“That,” exaggerating several extra a’s and pointing, too, “is a fake fight! And they were both lying. And Toshi only won because he was lucky. You aren’t fast, or strong, or agile enough to use a katana,” I was about to interrupt her with the same argument about how lessons would improve that, and to ask why she was being deliberately hurtful, but she held her hand up to forestall me. “I know, but even if you were, who would you fight?”
Ugh, she was so blind to reason. “Who cares? Some dude comes at me and I pull out a sword, fight is over.”
She gave me a look, “So you’re just carrying a katana around everywhere you go? All I’m saying is that there is always a use for jiu jitsu.” The wife of the dead samurai began telling her tale, drawing Marlin’s full focus. “You know,” she said, watching the woman produce her dagger during the trial, “I bet I could beat you with a knife.”
“That’s it,” I told her, dramatically dropping everything in my arms. “We are settling this right now.”
Marlin mimicked my action with an emphatic, “Fine!” and ran into the kitchen. She returned holding a meat cleaver. “Well? Where’s your sword?” she asked, like holding a cleaver was the most normal thing ever.
“Why do you have a cleaver?”
“I said I could beat you with a knife.”
“That is a cleaver.”
“Butcher knife. Knife. It is literally in the name.”
“You,” she was right, “you’re right. Fine. Let’s go to the shop. Grab the spare keys, I’ll grab some change for Sharon. And,” I pointed at the knife she was holding way too casually, “hide that. Please?”
Marlin’s eyes narrowed in challenge. “No.”
We left as the samurai’s wife was explaining how she woke to find the dagger in her husband’s chest. I pretended not to notice.
It was only a ten minute walk. We walked all ten in silence. The thick, humid, Alabama air, and an acute lack of exercise causing both of us to sweat profusely. Concentrating on not breathing too hard, neither one of us were willing to admit we were dying.
It was also extremely lucky that the streets were barren tonight, as, to an outside observer, disheveled young twins shambling their way across town while one of them loosely held a shiny meat cleaver, might have been a tad unnerving.
Humming street lamps cast the cracked sidewalk in sulfurous yellow light, broken by flitting shadows of the constantly shifting forms of congregating bugs. Distant music from the college campus slowly getting louder the closer we came to the edge of town.
Dad opened the shop, with a degree of success, specifically because of the location. Right at the border of the commercial and residential, it cornered the suburban and college markets. And as the storefront came into view, so did Sharon.
Sharon, more or less a permanent fixture in the alley since long before our father leased the building, was wrapped up in layers of clothing. As usual, completely indifferent to the oppressive summer heat. We should have been ashamed at the state of our own physical condition, but there was little room for ego amidst the panting and sweating.
Harmless, quiet, Sharon kept to herself and never caused trouble. All she ever seemed to need was the occasional can of warm beer and handful of loose change. Upon receipt of either, she’d smile, say, “Sharin’ is carin’,” then be on her merry way back down the alley.
As we approached, struggling to breathe casually, Sharon stirred. Marlin bent low to deposit the coins into dirty wool mittens. From beneath multiple hoods, a face surprisingly free of sweat and grime, lit up. The money disappeared among hidden pockets, deft hands barely moving to give away position, or sound. “Sharin’ is carin’,” she said in a voice chiseled from bedrock.
“Have a good night, Sharon,” we told her.
She stood, still smiling, then shuffled down the alley. “You know,” Marlin said after her, unconsciously wiping her hands on torn jeans before pulling out the shop keys, “I’ve always wondered how old she is.”
I shrugged in answer. “I dunno, at least 40.5 Pretty old, though,” waiting for her to open the door.
“At least,” Marlin agreed, turning the lock and pushing. A welcome blast of cold air welcomed us. I walked in behind her, stepping quick to disarm the security system. Marlin made for the lights.
The first few rows of fluorescent bulbs energized, brightening the front of Peg Leg Geek’s comic shop, and casting the back into deeper shadow. There was a bit of madness to the layout. Every surface carefully cluttered with the latest craze. Here, some new board games; there, the latest release of pogs; collectible trading cards trapped behind glass cases to be looked at but never touched unless purchased.
Racks of comics stretched off into the shadows. Near the entrance, the new releases had their own separate shelves. And still there was more. Novelty weapons, movie props, models filled the spaces the comics didn’t. There was also an, quite frankly, disturbing amount of figurines and statues. Yes, statues. Dad had taken great lengths to assure us that they weren’t dolls or action figures.
Secretly, Marlin, mom, and I all believed that he only opened the shop as a reason to continue collecting like the unapologetic man-child he was.
All immediate thoughts of an epic battle momentarily suspended, Marlin wandered off to browse her favorites while I went to the new releases. On the rack sat Captain Punch, my guilty bit of cheesy pleasure. Dad kept them in store just for me, because no one else wanted anything to do with the Captain.
Richard Punch6 was a mild-mannered teenager until he was punched by a radioactive boxer. Now, he’s Captain Punch: Delivering justice one punch at a time. This month’s issue was: Captain Punch meets The Hacker! See the Captain prevent The Hacker from taking over the internet!
And so, I lost myself in the absurd tale of a digital Richard chasing The Hacker through the information superhighway before he could destabilize the world and launch all the nukes. Admittedly, it was terrible, but it did make me wonder whether or not the internet would someday be powerful enough to accomplish anything like that.
So completely oblivious was I to the world, that when Marlin reappeared, tapping me on the shoulder, I threw the comic and let out a pathetic shriek in surprise. “Um,” she stared at me, feeling embarrassed for both of us, “you gonna live?”
“You don’t sneak up on a man while he’s reading. It’s not polite,” I muttered.
“To hear your brother scream like a girl?” she finished. “Here,” Marlin tossed me a twenty-dollar katana she found hiding in the novelty weapons. Its hard plastic scabbard was glossy red, the white peg wrapped in a matching red braid. The collar wobbled, and it felt like the blade was going to break from the hilt.
Regardless of the portended danger, I unsheathed the over polished, too heavy, too dull blade, and left the scabbard on one of the glass display tops. Adopting a dramatic overhead guard, I asked Marlin, “Are you sure this is safe?”
With a much more functional butcher’s knife clenched tightly in front of her, she nodded. Pausing to add, “We should probably take it slow,” then moving in to attack.
Slow is exactly the pace we started out with. There was no flurry of clashing blades, just a steadily increasing interval of the clangs as the two made contact. Our confidence grew, and with each new thrust or parry or slash, we would laugh and hit a little harder.
It was but a warm-up, establishing a pattern we both felt comfortable enough to repeat ad nauseam until our cautious conflict finally became a cinematic battle. Banter began to insinuate itself into our fight. False bravado feeding our slide into carelessness. We fought like Akira Kurosawa himself was directing.
But, the sword eventually grew heavy in my hands. Sweat built up on Marlin’s palms. Both of us were too proud to admit we were pushing ourselves past our limits. My grip became weaker, the jokes less frequent.
Marlin came in fast, missing a beat of the rhythm we had established.
An audible thunk rang out, vibrations traveling from the peg all the way up my arm and back down again. The same sound and feel of hitting a large rock with a wooden baseball bat.
Marlin blanched, ghost white, eyes wide. Only, she wasn’t staring at me, but the point on the hilt where her cleaver had connected. Apart from her agape mouth working like a silent fish, she stood stock still. Marlin looked terrified.
Confused, I followed her eyes down to a sight where my ability to process what I saw failed me. Her knife was lodged in my peg, splitting the red braid, right at the spot where my pinkie wrapped around.
On the ground, at my feet, was my pinkie.
It would be a fair estimate to say that, including tonight, Marlin and I had seen dozens of amputations featured in the hundreds of movies or TV episodes we have watched. In nearly every one of those instances with a severed limb, appendage, or digit, there had always been an accompanying fountain of blood. Whether pulsing to a heart beat, or the steady flow of a garden hose, a bright crimson jet of arterial madness would spurt across a room and paint the walls.
It would also be a fair statement to say that I was pleasantly disappointed when what actually happened was completely, welcomingly, quite the opposite. Instead of a stream of gore, a few fat drops fell heavy to the floor landing near my severed pinkie. As we stared, the sluggish plops joined a small pool growing slowly as the liquid drained from the first two-thirds of my truant finger.
“Okay, okay, so, okay,” Marlin sputtered, “don’t panic.”
“You can’t tell me what to do!” I screeched at her.
That set her off. Her stricken grimace cracked into a poorly restrained smile as a bout of giggling bored out from somewhere deep. Laughter, spreading, infectious, broke through me as she gave up her self-control and allowed herself to be consumed by the ridiculousness of our situation.
As it so often is in the case of insurmountable trauma, unbidden thoughts welled up in my brain, adding to the hysterics. In between gasping breaths, I managed to choke out, “Five second rule,” which doubled Marlin over.
Rolling, she added, “Now mom and dad can finally tell us apart!”
What felt like minutes passed, though in reality it could not have been more than fifteen seconds, before we finally calmed down. With a deep, contented breath, I set my sword down and picked my finger up. It flopped at the joint from side to the other as I rolled it between my still attached digits.
Half-expecting it to twitch, I brought it up to my face for closer inspection. It reminded me of something as innocuous as a baby tooth.
Just a part of me, discarded.
Sobriety washed over me at that thought. I tossed the finger to Marlin, or more accurately, at Marlin, killing off her laughing fit as quickly as it had come on. “Mom and dad are going to kill us,” I told her.
She held it like it she was in a nightmare, a strange detached dream, the edge of bizarre. I have never had cause to use the word before8 but it felt so,
“Surreal,” Marlin finished my thought.
“Exactly,” I agreed.
Watching her turn it over and over in her hands, morbid curiosity tethering my sister to the body part. Not once did it occur to me to wonder where the pain was. Nor did I think to question why it had been Marlin that dropped her weapon first, to clutch at her hand.
All at once, though, the shock wore off, my body gave up, and I watched in slow motion as an arc of blood bridged the four-foot gap between me and my sister. If it were not for her wide-eyed surprise9 in that moment, she would have looked just like a serial killer.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered.
Blood loss was beginning to make me light-headed, I giggled at her hushed swear. “Don’t cuss!” I wobbled on my feet, “Sis, I’m feeling woozy.”
Ever the pragmatist, Marlin feigned calm. “Come on,” she said in a very level tone, completely at odds with her expression, “what’d mom teach us? Elevate.”
As she said it, I mouthed the word, and lifted the wound above my heart. Using my free hand I tore a strip from my shirt to press against the… cut?… slice?… my stump? To press against the stump. “Compress,” I said, the bleeding stemmed a noticeable amount.
Marlin, behind the cashier’s counter, rummaged through a drawer full of office supplies. She returned with a handful of rubber bands. “Tourniquet,” she announced triumphantly. Carefully, she wrapped several of them at the joint below my… stump. The pressure halted the blood flow, which I was grateful for. But, the tightening rubberbands, biting deep into already abused skin, and pressing hard into damaged bone, caused an alarming amount of pain that coursed up and down my arm.
Marlin, my twin, stared directly into my eyes as I winced. The pain abated to a more manageable level. Her face contorted slightly, “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I answered truthfully, “yeah, I’m okay.”
She frowned again, “We have to call 911.”
“Not from here,” I shook my head. “We’re already in a crazy amount of trouble. Going to be so much worse if they knew we were here cutting pieces off of me instead of home cleaning10.”
“But,” Marlin picked up the finger from the counter-top, resistance draining from her. “I hate it when you’re right. We need to put this in milk.”
I repeated her words in my head just to make certain I had heard her correctly. Milk? Really? “Milk? No, ice. You put teeth in milk.”
“Ice. Duh. That’s what I meant, you know that.”
And so, after securing a bag of ice cubes from the fridge where dad kept the sodas for all the nerds when they got too heated raiding a dungeon and or fighting a dragon, we walked out of a darkened store onto an empty street. “We should probably take the back way,” Marlin suggested. With a bloody cleaver in one hand, and a bag with an amputated finger in the other, she was hard to disagree with.
Away from the roads, through the woods, and across the creek, we stumbled. Bugs, all of the bugs, every single insect with wings and a taste for people, were drawn to the scent of fresh blood and wet sweat. In the heavy steam of the night, the going was slow, and my concern of being eaten alive by the swarm overtook the worry of my recent loss.
Our luck continued to hold, however, as when we finally broke through the treeline, the street was still devoid of any traffic. It was easy to imagine the reaction of a passerby upon seeing two fear pale twins, both wearing blood soaked clothing, one holding a knife and a bag red with a mix condensation and blood, and the other barely clinging to consciousness.
Eventually, one would rightfully assume, suspicions might have been raised.

1 – We had tried sushi for the first time just a few days prior. Marcus.
2 – Or from what I remember, at least. My journal simply said, “Summer is awesome so far, but I’m always tired and can never sleep.” So, some embellishment. Marcus.
3 – I feel it necessary to add that there was an angrily crossed out note about him being tiny and cute in the thing. Marlin.
4 – There is zero mystery as to where our sarcasm comes from. Marcus.
5 – Zero concept of age as a teenager. – Marlin.
6 – I just got that.7 Cannot stop laughing. – Marcus.
7 – Really? You never picked up on the literary gems that were middle school dick jokes? e.g.: “It’s time to punch you right in the -” “Richard! Look out!” – Marlin.
8 – But more than I could have ever imagined after. -Marcus.
9 – Disgust. -Marlin.
10 – Ah, to be young and scared of how your parents are going to react again. -Marcus

Act I: A Pantheon of Our Own

Wherein We Start at the Beginning

   Every adventure begins with exposition. Exposition is necessary for context. You can’t just tell people you started doing the Monster Mash without first explaining that at one point, you were working in the lab late one night. Otherwise, the target audience will say, in the immortal words of professional transvestite Eddie Izzard, “Quoi the fuck?”

   However, where most adventures kick off with the banal, “It was a dark and stormy night,” or the dramatically wrought, “This is the way the world ends,” or my personal favorite: “They who ascend to mountain tops, behold the sun in glorious majesty arise robing the distant mountain peaks with gold while still new prospects dim the dazzled eyes,” this particular misadventure starts with fear.

   Now, it is understood that heroes, by narrative convention and the aptly named Hero’s Journey, are heroes by virtue of protecting blank by conquering blank in order to save the blank all while evolving as a person. A princess, an evil king, a kingdom; homeland, invading army, freedom; living, dead, future; it’s possible to play madlibs with this all day and always come up with something viable. Point being that heroes are never self-serving myopic characters because there is always an element of something greater at stake, and they are completely aware of this fact. Tragic heroes have to suffer, destined heroes are birthed with sword in hand, which is mere coincidence, I’m sure.

   Just because he seems like an Oedipal character, doesn’t mean he has to stab himself in the eyes later. Sometimes a sword is just a sword.

   But not all stories are about heroes. Some are simply cautionary tales about ordinary people in extra-off-the-god-damned-wall-ordinary situations, where heroism is neither forced upon nor required for character development or narrative progression.

   Using that technique and a little literary algebra, it becomes possible to remove the first and third blank, while leaving only the second: Fear. Conquer or succumb. Eventually the first and third may worm themselves into the plot, but it really is a toss-up, they are generally pretty inconsistent.

   So, exposition for the exposition aside, this brings us back to the original jump off of the exposition: Fear.

   Rational fear is shaped by early experience. We, as a species, have lost instinctual fear. Most everything we know to be afraid of is learned at a young age. Spiders and bees are awesome until one bites us and we realize insects are horrible miniaturized death machines. Mustaches only belong on math teachers and firefighters. Vans that dispense candy are bad news. Basically, we don’t know what to be scared of until we’ve the opportunity for it to scare us. A horrible tautology that, though true nonetheless.

   As we grow, our fears become oddly specific with the knowledge we gain. Raccoons are cute until biology class, where we learn about rabies, the bubonic plague, transmission vectors, what have you. Rational fear, that fear of things that pose a tangible threat our lives, develops by external influence. Adults have rational fears that can be read like a three hour Wikipedia search. Oh, there’s a flesh-eating virus that you can get from sitting in the grass, guess what? There are also jellyfish in the South Pacific that can kill you within minutes. See: South Pacific killers in modern culture.

   Irrational fears are built from the same stuff with the addition of being products of unhindered imaginations. We have no constraints placed upon our minds as children, as such, our psychological fears manifest themselves abstractly. Darkness, claustrophobia, loneliness, amorphous monsters in the closet, all of these are molded by our own minds. It could be argued that these are instinctual fears, and thus perfectly rational. To that I say, if at some point in our collective history we possessed a racial fear of a three-toed sloth with the tail of a scorpion, seven eyes, a gaping maw of circular saw teeth and a hunger for child meat, then I’ll concede any debate for the rest of time. They grow parallel to the rational, but unlike the rational, they cease to bloom into anything further.

   Somewhere in there, during adolescence, we stop being afraid of the dark and instead start worrying about the real world.

   But the transition is so blurry that we don’t always lose that fear, we just forget to be afraid. Deep down, in the murky depths of our collective conscience, stuck between remembered episodes of cartoons secretly made for adults – under the guise of being children’s shows – lay dormant our irrational fears. What’s worse, they always pick the worst possible moments to bubble to the surface.

   I’ve never been afraid of the dark, though I do have a touch of claustrophobia. Sometimes when I go to the beach I stand on the shore, feel the hot sand between my toes, look off to the horizon and see the vast blue ocean carry off into the distance. Then I think, huh, the land just kinda stops right there. I’m literally out of land right now, there’s not enough of it. Then I look up and realize that our breathable atmosphere only extends out to nine kilometers, past that it’s too thin, and past that it’s a vacuum. Past that vacuum is the limits of our solar system, then our galaxy, and oh my god, what do they mean the universe is expanding? There are boundaries? It’s not finished yet? I don’t care if I’ll never live to see the edges, the universe is too small!

   Alright, so a fear of finite spaces more than enclosed spaces. Also, less a phobia than a mental condition.  Ignoring the batshit insanity of that example, it is still one of those irrational fears that can be overcome by taking a breath of fresh air and stepping into the water.

   There are two that have refused to leave me: The first being a recurring dream. I used to have trouble sleeping and there were nights where as soon as REM kicked in, my brain would say “No thanks,” and wake me up just enough that I couldn’t tell whether or not I was still dreaming or the room around me was real. The dreams would bleed over into my half conscious state, my room would be full of the shadows of people talking to each other, conversations I was never privy to because they never spoke clear enough. When I tried to interact with them, they would dissipate and I’d be left in my bed with a fuzzy brain. There were times when I wondered if that meant I was going mad, and madness became a terrifying prospect. A heavy weight for a tiny mind.

   The second fear is the most important. Subjectively I’d say it is the driving force behind this entire tale; Abandonment.

   My twin sister Marlin and I were somewhere around six years old at the time, not too long before our brother Soren had come into the world and dad’s belly had grown enormous (and mom’s butt had followed suite). The family was on a road trip through the American South West to visit grandma. She had moved to the lilliputian mining town of Tonopah, Nevada, for some ‘good old fashioned prospecting’ as she had put it.

   Mentally picturing my grandmother wading shin deep into a stream to pan for gold held a laughable place in my heart until I learned that grandma was kind of a slut. Prospecting did not mean exactly what I had thought.

   Ruined innocence aside, the deserts of the American South West were, and probably still are, unimaginably barren. There isn’t a damn thing out there save sporadic towns that scream, “Stop here and get murdered!” Stretches of sand and tiny towns that look like 50’s throwbacks to when they’d test them for nukes. So little activity you’d think the people who lived there had actually been replaced by mannequins waiting to be melted. Something about the whole scene screamed haunted and extra creepy with a side of meth because, it’s the desert, why the hell not?

   One can only go through so many bottles of beer on the wall before asking ‘MORE desert? Are you kidding me?’ We were out there though, to grandmother’s house we were a-goin. Determined to find out how many times we could get away with asking ‘are we there yet,’ before getting slapped.

   Not many, as it turned out.

   Dad pulled over mid-trip, late night, to relieve himself at one of the literally tens of gas stations along the route and grab himself ‘some goddamned coffee. I ain’t pulling over tonight for sleep. Probably wake up with fang marks and a car full of undead family members. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I let my kids become vampires.’ Safety first, that’s my dad.

   What he did not know at the time, was that I was awake not only to hear his muttered aside, but also that I had to pee something fierce, thanks to an all day ingestion of an unremembered soda and a consistent refusal to go when given the opportunity. I was six, stubborn was part of the charm. Whatever logic had compelled me to hold a full bladder throughout the course of the day also led me to believe that it was a fantastic idea to not get caught sneaking out of the parked car into the gas station behind my father.

   Imagine my surprise when I stepped through door, after having relieved myself in the tiny urinal – in which, on occasion, to this day, I still relieve myself in on the notion that every once in a while, I like to pretend I’m a giant – only to watch the tail lights of our weathered sedan grow dimmer and dimmer as it drove off into the night.

   There is nothing at that age to adequately express the completely awful feeling in my stomach. Absolute despair comes close, but without a frame of reference, which I didn’t have, it was and remains easily the worst emotion I have experienced.

   By the time our car had pulled back into the parking lot, I had been standing in the same spot, flabbergasted and shaking with the cold of the desert night. I was in such shock, it hadn’t even occurred to me to go inside and ask for help. Mom and dad were, naturally, panicking to the point of hysteria.

   It had been Marlin who discovered my significant lack of proximity. She had immediately noticed my absence upon waking to ask, “Where’s Marcus?” When my parents found me, I rushed past them straight to my sister and hugged her until she stopped crying.

   And shivering.