Datura
Written between 1998 and 2001
Novel length, to be released Summer 2008
Copyright Beth Bajema
Sample from Chapter 1
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Datura
Sample from Chapter 1 |
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The introduction of the Rhapsodist
May 25.
No more head games. At least not right now. Things have been quiet since that last episode. They come and go, sometimes with great distance between visits, sometimes they just stay away for a few hours. They always come back though. After all, there are few places to travel within the body mirabella. Perhaps the theatre has closed shops and the patrons have been forced to leave their seats along my spine. Perhaps they're seeking a new entertainment in the isles of the clitorium. They don't give out programs there, they just sit and watch. Hoping to get a peek through the peephole. I think I can feel them there.
I want to lay back and spread my limbs across my bed. I don't want anyone else near, just me and me. My own touch, my own breath. I want to be the masochist pulling up the sheets... spreading my legs, tying my wrists...
May 27
I've lived a series of extremes, with the pendulum that swings from side to side. Experiences that leave me wondering where is my happy medium, where are those areas of gray that so many people walk through. it just leaves me wishing I could find the balance in life that so many others take for granted.
I remember back to a spring time when I was in my late teens. I had some direction in my life, even if I couldn't seem to get my thoughts together. Something is better then nothing in my opinion. Back then I had something.
I remember an evening at my friend's house. She was my world back then. The first person outside of Kristoph that knew me better then I seemed to know myself. I looked up to her more then any other human I'd ever known. She was the style I emulated, the thoughts I wish I'd come up with myself, and she possessed the ability to speak her mind to the world. She didn't act like a mouse when voices got loud and tensions got high. She was simply herself, for good or bad. I envied that about her.
She touched me once when we were young. I laughed nervously. She looked at me with nothing more then a slight smile on her lips, like the Cheshire cat teasing Alice with his drug-like talk. We were laying on her bed next to one another, the same as we'd done since we were thirteen. We talked about life, ideas, and school on that wine colored bedspread of hers. We went over our many “what ifs” involving men we'd never meet, adults we'd never know what to do with even if we did meet them. And on that night, as we lay on her bed, we spoke of what it would be like the first time we touched a boy, or let one of them touch us. I told her in my soft voice that I couldn't imagine the touch of a man, someone who was not Kristoph.
So she leaned over and put her hand on the front of my night shirt. I jumped to feel her touch in the dark but I said nothing. She took her slim fingers and gently slipped the first shirt button from it's loop. She pushed her hand under the material and rested it on my chest.
I remember the sound of crickets chirping in the yard. I remember the slim bit of light that chased across the dark wall and ran across her eyes so I could just see her gaze. Her hand grew warm as it rested there. Even in that warmth my skin became rigid in the ways that cold had only caused it to become erect before. I wanted her to move her hand, or to do something more, to make the sensation more. But I didn't have any words for her, I didn't have any words to tell myself to stop being ashamed.
Gently I moved myself on the bed, turning just slightly so I could look at her. I looked into her eyes that were lit up by that wedge of light in the room. The laughing subsided and I just stared at her, a smile on my lips. She undid the rest of the buttons on my top and pushed the material back over my shoulder. She traced circles around my chest, my nipples, the same half smile on her mouth. The bed moved a little as she rolled a little closer to me. She eased me back with one hand till I was lying on my flat. Then she sat up, leaning over me. The light left her eyes to cross back over the wall and I couldn't see her expression anymore. I could only make out the outline of her there as she looked down at me.
I felt her moving, felt her breath on my skin before I felt the wetness of her mouth opening to my breast. My body tensed and my hands folded into little fists, pulling the sheets up into them. She put her hand on my stomach and moved her lips and tongue over my chest. And when her mouth moved up my neck, when I could feel her lips on my chin moving close to my lips, I sat up abruptly and pushed her away. I hurriedly pulled my shirt closed and buttoned it to the top.
I remember the catch in her voice as she spoke to me then.
“I'm sorry Mira. I just wanted to show you what it felt like. I didn't mean to make you mad.”
I didn't say anything to her. I never said anything to her about that time. Nor do I believe I knew the right words to string together a paragraph that might explain what I was thinking then. I don't think I even knew. She was my dearest friend, the closest female I'd ever known. I didn't want her to be like Kristoph. I didn't want the guilt I had with him after we were alone together. I didn't want her hand to move past my stomach and touch me below. Didn't want to feel those things. Not with her. I wanted things to stay the way they were.
They never do though. There is no force in the planets and beyond to keep our little worlds intact. There are no ways to make things fail safe.
No matter what my inner voice would have me believe with it's whispers, things didn't change between her and I because of her tongue on my skin. They changed because we were growing up and apart. The things she did to me that night she would do to a man very soon after, and he would do the same to her. New dimensions in our little lives.
Sometimes I miss my friend.
Sample from Chapter 2
June 18.
The night was very pretty. I remember this very clearly. There was a small demon living within my pelvic bone that wanted a peek. I'm sure it could smell the night air. Smell the lingering fragrance of day nature mingling into night nature. It was potent.
But you see, this demon was living within my pelvic bone and it threw open it's windows and let the marrow come flooding out like milk, so that it could see the place making such a delicious scent. It stepped out from its hiding place and took up residence in my soft areas that made me anatomically a woman. I felt the pressure of it, resting back into my soft warm places. And it made me feel good. It made me feel like that fragrant night air.
And Kristoph wanted to dance.
He pulled me from off my comfortable couch and swung me around the room begging me to come dance with him. His circles made me dizzy and the world spun all around while Kristoph's face stayed so perfectly in focus. I liked it that way. I loved him within my focus. So I gave into his excitement and let myself be drawn away from the security of my studio.
June 23.
I remember a time that I lay in the grass. A field, vast and green, stretching off into the distance where the trees grew up to cut it off. It was just the beginning of spring, one of the few warm days we'd had in some time. Kristoph and I were in the car driving, and driving, till this field came up along the side of us and I made him pull over. We were playful for awhile, playful gave way to caution as we looked around to see just how alone we were.
Nothing was ever soft with Kristoph, it never had been. He took my arms and pulled me down with him to the grass. A few minutes of fumbling and rolling around in the grass left us sans cloths and mildly marked by the dirt beneath the green carpet. He lay there on his back and I sat perched above him. Taking in the outline of his face, wondering what it would be like the day I couldn't look at him like that again. He allowed me my moment to stare at him... stare at him like I often did when we lay together like that. Till I finally conceded to the whim of that moment and rolled over, letting him lay over me. He was quick to move in on me, and sometimes rough. I never did mind. I enjoyed the sensation, I enjoyed his need. It gave me a small show of proof that he needed me in some way for some period of time.
I only wished he needed me in the same manner I needed him.
Afterwards I lay bare in that grass for a little while. The air was warm but the ground was just starting to heat up. It still gave off a bit of the coldness that got under its soil skin over the winter. The coldness felt good though. Like a bit of torture that I could easily make go away. It chilled me, made my limbs heavy from the cold and my fingers numb after awhile. But as I lay there suffering this mild discomfort I knew that at any time I could get up and shake it off. I could put my jeans back on and slide my sweater over my head and let it warm me up. I could slide my arms around Kristoph and rob him of a bit of his warmth. I could make the discomfort go away.
Some people might find that ridiculous, or the hint of a masochist hiding underneath. For me it was therapy. It gave me control over my environment when it seemed like I was so out of control.
Now I lay on the cold linoleum in the bathroom. Kristoph was off working with a new group. Figuring out what type of theme their photographs would be. I was alone in the studio we shared and the shadows were whispering to me. Better they be voices coming from outside then within. Better the dust bunnies be teasing me with their dirty, lint ridden mouths then a chorus of taunters inside my own head.
Still, they frightened me in a way that was deep and unfounded. The hair on my arms was standing up and my limbs were so tensed they were starting to grow sore. It was as if I was waiting for something to lash out at me the moment I looked the wrong way. Something was wrong there. So wrong that the societies in my psyche were being unnaturally quiet, so as not to draw attention to themselves.
I'd come into the bathroom and removed my clothes down to a small slip that barely came between my skin and the air. I'd laid myself down on that cold floor and spread my limbs out. I lay my palms flat against the tile and felt the coldness of the cement floor below push through the decorative cover. It spread through my fingers and into the front of my arms and legs. The coldness found my tummy and thighs, it made my nipples become rigid to the point of pain. I let it sink in as far as it would go.
I can make the pain go away by turning on the warm water in the bath and getting in. I can make the pain go away by slipping the down comforter from my bed around me. I am in control of the sensation. I am the deliverer and I am the sender. It's just a matter of changing my perception.
If I tried I could make the dust bunnies go away and the shadows shut up. I could make all the noises of the studio not seem so loud. I can...
I can make things better...
It was growing dark outside, there were no lights on in the studio. Only the bathroom's red night light was on and that wouldn't illuminate the room much. I pulled myself from the cold floor and moved back into the room shivering. The sky outside was only a mild shade of dark blue but the main room was as black as a moonless midnight. The room seemed dead.
One step, two step, just four more till I could reach the light switch and take the gloom away. But the closer I came to my destination the more the hair on my arms stood up. The more the coldness in my limbs seemed to deepen. And the silence was painful to my ears. I pushed myself the one last step and flew the light switch up and cast the room into a pale yellow light. Now the coldness would go away.
Someone laughed.
A soft rippling sound that grew in volume as it flowed up from the throat. It wasn't Kristoph, but the sound of it was as familiar as his voice, or that of my mother. It was the sound of someone I knew.
Someone I never liked.
Slowly I turned around and looked over the years. Needing to confront my demons, but not wanting to put my eyes to the task of seeing them. There was nothing. The room was empty and warm, brightly lit up and safe. There was no reason to be afraid. But the voice laughed on.
“Hey Mira!”
I jumped as though someone had struck me in the back. The voice first came from the right, and then from the left. Like a delayed stereo, or an echo back and forth. I was calm though. I told myself Kristoph would be home soon. These things always went away when Kristoph was here, I could be normal when he was here.
“You can't hide behind him forever Mira. Forever and a day sweet Kristoph can not give you. You should be happy you've had such time. From childhood till today. But it is no matter. He was there for you when we first met. He never kept you safe. He never kept me at bay. He never kept us apart.”
The voice talked on. The deep familiar voice. As a child the sound of his voice seemed impossibly adult like, an alien tone to my young ears. Even now, after so many years it hadn't change a note and my ears received it the same as it did then. The sound entered my ears and shot straight down to my tummy to make me sick. It was flowing backwards to touch my spine and then vibrate up my vertebrae till it came to rest in the back of my head like an ache.
My head already ached.
“I promised you forever and a day. My favorite among favorites. My little girl who has always heard voices.” I looked around to find him but could not see him, and he talked on. “You should have never talked back if you didn't want us to converse. Did you think the conversation would simply end when you tired of hearing yourself speak? The most intelligent ones are always the most naive, the most unknowing.”
“Think of me, think of me.” he whispered.
No, I didn't want to think of him. I wanted to be against the linoleum again, back in the grass with the cold dirt pressing into my chest. I didn't want my mind to wander as it was doing to memories that were best left unused.
They were there though. In them a small image of a doll. It really wasn't much of anything really. Just some horrid little thing fashioned in my weekly art class in elementary school. The teachers cut out shapes from unbleached muslin that smelled faintly of mold. Each child was given a large, dulled ended needle and a spool of colorful thread. Buttons, swatches of printed materials and craft items were tossed onto a table. Each child was allowed to go through the pile and pick out the things that caught their eye. We were each sat down to a craft table and shown how to put these muslin pieces together. How to fashion the material swatches into cloths, how to make facial features with the buttons and yarn. And from this all the children fashioned crude dolls. Each child was given a bag of pebbles, the same foamy shapes stuffed into bean bags, to fill these dolls up with.
I was one of those children. And when I put the stuffing into my doll I added my own stuff as well. The stuff of me. I took my dull little safety scissors and worked at the end of my hair and stuffed it into the doll's body. I took a rock from outside, and a card young Kristoph had made for me during the rainy recess spent indoors that day, each of which I crammed into the pebble filled thing. I don't know why honestly. It was the way my little brain worked at the time. A brain that took in scary movies and odd television my mother should have kept from me. I wanted to do the same as the people I saw in those movies did. I wanted to create something more then the other children.
I wanted to be special.
I kept that doll at home, and dragged it with me everywhere. It began to smell after awhile. It smelled like the dirt it lay in outdoors as I play and like the many things spilt on it because of my childish clumsiness. I still slept with it though. Happy to have a talisman made by my own small hands. At least until my nightmares started.
Years ago I convinced myself my nightmares were the first symptom of a sickness in my brain. A kind of sickness I was too ashamed to tell my mother about. To afraid to let anyone see.
In that time I grew to hate that doll. I hid it away in a closet. I cried the day my mother took it from the closet and told me to put it in my room. I cried long and hard and begged her to leave it in the closet. She was confused but left it in the closet. She put it in a bag though, to shield the coats and umbrellas from the growing smell of the sickly looking thing.
My little talisman of muslin and scraps became a smelly thing that frightened me. I held my breath when I walked by that closet, so it wouldn't hear me near by. And during those rare times I had to be alone in the house I pushed a kitchen chair up to that closet door to keep that thing in there.
There came a day when I went into the backyard and picked a spot off in the corner. I dug a hole. As deep as I could make it with my mother's garden spade. I snuck into the house and moved towards that closet. I hadn't allowed my mother to put a coat or a pair of shoes in there since it became the home to the little monster. I hadn't even opened the door up once. Now I stood there with a towel in hand and holding my breath. I inhaled deeply and flung the door open, I rushed in and threw the towel over the bagged doll and scooped it up. I ran through the house out the back door to the hole in the ground. I put the towel and doll into the ground and buried it.
“All I smell it dirt Mira. Dirt and feel worms. How would you like that?”
I became afraid of it because of a figure in my nightmares that convinced me they were one and the same. He was the doll and at night he was able to live and breath in my mind because of all the ingredients I made the doll with. I wanted neither of them in my life. I wanted them to go away. It took little more then a thinking about it to frighten me to the point of panic.
“I got out though.” he said, slow and overly pronounced each word.
The voice was near-by now. The memories were turning my stomach. It was all fake, surely it was all just my brain. I was either still lying on the floor in the bathroom dreaming, or else I was causing myself this fear. The doctors had always told me it was my own paranoia that caused me these images. Nothing more.
“Here I am.”
I turned around and looked across the room at the mirror. There in the glass stood a tall pale figure, with lanky portions not right for a human. Long hair that look more like silk thread woven into it's scalp then actual hair. His face looked like it was made from a mold and all his features painted on, except that they moved. His body was wrapped in gauze and wires.
This was Mourning. Something I dreamed up as a child. Something I couldn't ever make go away. No one ever understood. No one ever tried to help me or told me he was just a dream. A boogey man, not real. Reality is as real as a child's mind makes it. Air can talk, bathtubs can become bottomless, and dolls can become bogeymen. These are the laws of childhood physics.
“Never could cover up your madness could you? Not to me anyway. Do you remember back then? Coming up the hallway... just a figure in the light. Coming to play with you. Touch you. Treat you like a rag doll.”
I stared at him as he stared back at me. Part of my head calmly told me that this wasn't real. It was just a shadow of my imagination coming to spook me. Just a piece of my childhood that would not let go. Another part of my head whispered sadly to me... it said, what does it matter if this is but smoke and shadows? It scares you enough to cause you to shake, your eyes can see it and your ears can hear it. Isn't that what makes it real? It becomes your reality whether you like it or not. Perhaps no one else can see it, but what does that matter? No one else has to live this scene but you.
So smart this whisper, the only familiar voice I knew that spoke the truth no matter how sad. It was my own voice. Weak and quiet, but still there, hiding beneath all the others. And then I began to cry. Cry for the truth of the matter. It was like a bad dream you know to be a bad dream, you know to be something that will end when you wake up. But as surely as you know this, you also know you must suffer the torment of the dream as though it were real till that moment you wake up. I could never make those doctors realize this.
He smiled and it was as if I were a child again, laying in my bed feeling him breathing on my neck. I could feel his hands as they lay on my stomach and pressed in on me. I could feel his body close to mine.
The door of the studio opened as Kristoph finally came home. I looked over at him and saw the waking moment of the dream. I fell backwards onto the floor and cried out, pointing towards the mirror.
“Oh god cover the mirror Kristoph! I don't want to see it!”
He looked at me with a mixture of shock and perhaps caution. Without question, he moved across the room, grabbing a sheet from the floor and lifted it over the mirror, covering it in the draping purple material. The reflective glass became a blank image of colored cotton. All the while I drew myself closer into myself, as tightly as my limbs would allow me into the fetal position.
“What the hell was that all about Mira? Are you alright?”
Am I alright... am I alright. Was the sky violet twenty-four hours a day? Did the sun revolve around the earth? Did children ever really outgrow their demons? These truths were as true as the fact that I was alright.
Kristoph kneeled down and put his arms around me, holding me tightly. As always I stole his warmth to take the coldness out of my body. And I wondered...
Wondered what it must be like for Kristoph to deal with me during these times. Had he ever wondered just how insane I truly was? And if he did, why did he stay with me? Or... why didn't he try to help me?
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