Fatality

Fatality


Autumn feels morning wane of my energy.  Daylight’s force seeps
through despite dark drapes.  She hopes such hours of weakness
will ease persuasion.  Her voice calm, even, engaged in conversation,
drips into me like soft summer rain.
“A person can be noble, sensible, even wonderful.  People are
mean crazy.  A person striving for sanity gets wiped out in the
madness.  The self-justified angry crowd will just converge to pin
you down and apply deadly pressure.  They’ll cry, whine, simper
that you’re the cause of their lethal behaviors.  You are the enemy
who refuses to fit their expectations or unwritten rules.  The truth,
that it’s not about you at all, it’s just what they do for amusement,
to fill some minute of their emptiness, what does that matter?
They win a stupid, miserable battle because they’re all about the fight,
all about taking out any foreign concept or perpetrator of perceived slight.
The war continues because soldiers are so much fun to play with,
so easy to control by those who enjoy divide and conquer games.
For the few outsiders who don’t want to play, well, we make good
training exercise targets.”
She settles into her quiet tirade, gesticulates with grace, profundity.
“That’s a lousy social function, a target to ridicule or overpower with
pain and shame.  I have no effect on this world, no path to a successful
future.  My best bet is what, a vampire’s house pet, me and my crazy
mom.  We could be a retro macabre sitcom.  Oh, yeah, in our own closed
circuit because nobody else is watching.  How long would even you, oh
eternal one, have an interest in putting up with our sweet domestic
degeneration?  I’m not so amusing when all my magic eye sees is
barren dust, empty recursive entropy, shattered ideations like mirror
splinters lost from reflection.  So very tired.”
Her demeanor is limp.  Her eyes flutter, close, reopen as dark stare.
“I know you are tired, Autumn, overwhelmed still by undigested
trauma.  You need rest, recuperation.  You can reclaim your energy
as you heal.  You don’t have to mirror Kathy’s defeat, despair, unwillingness
to face forward.  You can show her how to regroup, get stronger, live.”
She continues as if speaking rehearsed lines, unmoved by my pleas.
“What if teen suicide is just self-completion of a very late term abortion
when the mother was dissuaded from what she knew was right?
After he got her pregnant, more vulnerable to his oh so concerned
control, he was less vigilant about letting his good guy mask slip.
She saw glimpses that she tried to ignore or explain to herself, as he
gently suggested, as delusions.  In rare moments of clarity she
seriously considered ending me, breaking their bond of shared
parenthood, getting away from his influence and ever more evident
cruelty.  Instead, what happened happened.  After all those soul
breaking years she finally left, took initiative in theory to protect me.
For her I’m not much more than an excuse to wrap her lie around.
I get to be her reasons, her harness and whip that keeps her going
ever deeper into a rut she no doubt secretly hopes grows into her
final grave.  I guess we all escape as best we can once we understand
our place in this fixed casino.
We know that I attract violent, twisted men.  Most likely that was
always to be my fate.  You just postponed it, gave me this space to
create my mad dreams, try to erect my own meaningfulness against
unacceptable realities.”
Her eyes flare as if to singe.  She draws up what power she can marshal
to grab full attention.
“If you aren’t willing to supply me with resurrection to a share in your
supernatural powers that would assure me winnable defense, then
drink me dry as I sleep in your arms. At least let me die enclosed by love.
I know I can find plenty of guys out on the street who would end it for me
with anything but.  They would be so happy to rid their designated corner
here in humanity’s world of one more useless woman.  Well, useful for only
one thing; and she acts like she’s in charge, can tell you what you must not
do, as if she was boss of you.  You know I can so easily find them.  I’m a
violent guy attractor.  We certainly keep getting proof of that.  It’s my fate.
I’m born with magnetic DNA.
It’s like a dumb, sad joke.  A sadist and a masochist come together in
connubial entanglement.  What could go wrong?
I could.”
I try to reach into her mind, to connect.
“I love you, Autumn.  I am not your fatal servant or executioner.
I feel real, important, elevated by your presence.  I don’t want you
gone.  I don’t want to change you.  I want to help, to be back-up and
refuge.  I can’t protect you.  I can help you better protect yourself,
patch your wounds to heal, prepare, repair, share battle stories,
outrage, strategies.  Don’t demand what I can’t bear to carry in my
haunted hump of memories.  We can devise workable plans that
include my freely willed contribution.”
The illusion of fire dies down.  She presents wilted, desiccated.
“It’s not about getting better, having back-up, girding to get back in the
fight, strategy to win.  There’s nothing to win.  I’m not blind.  I see all
the impossible options.  They are always waiting, ready, pulling, pushing,
pissing to mark territory, assured this garbage heap they’ve invested in
reeks for their purpose, their domination.  Always shooting projectiles,
throwing jabs, oppressing with tests, cuts deep and shallow, draining me.
They’re the vampires, Ellie, sucking me not quite dry to prolong their
pleasure, vying to inject their poison, infect me with their koolaid blood
so I’ll be just another beast in the pit, squabbling, disgusting, unaware of
any other destiny, because, really, there’s nothing to reach for that could
lift me out.  My one chance, my miracle lucky break, was you.  You can so
easily transform me into something else, a different reality, or a definite
escape.  You can free me to forever, or absorb my life force to keep me safe
from your eternity and their unbearable disgrace of a world.  You can be my
redeemer; but you refuse?  How is that love?  What you think to preserve,
this girl you so admire, I’m not going to last in this man’s Earth.  It continuously
kills me in so much less pleasant a blood-letting.  How can you let those
monsters win my soul, destroy me at their pleasure?”
She is silent, pensive.  I watch her for a sign of where she travels.
“I haven’t eaten or slept for too many hours now.  I’m wrung out,
exhausted.  Even if I have some fantasy about getting real, striking
out to fight, or run, to survive, there’s not enough of me left to resist
defeat, to make a difference.  This weakness is good, a readiness
to fall into fate.”
I grab and hold her close to break this deadly spell she works to weave.
She releases from me, backs away to look and speak sharp daggers.
“When you go out to feed rather than drinking me, I’ll know
what I have to do.”