Sweet Ellen

-03:02 November 7th- Curled against a tree in the forest.

Ellen, I think, who is Ellen? Is this body that pulls its self up and awake Ellen? There is a pain in my head, a tingling that drills into my skull boring deeper with each new movement. The room is dark. My face is dark. There is a whiskey blotch and a heavy hand laid across my face. Alarm clock, you let me down. My night watch guard you should have roused me. You traitor who conspires against me, blushing 12:00 again and again as you stare back at me. I smell his scotch, it’s inside me now. His scent, I feel it under my flesh like maggots crawling through spoiled flesh. I pray to god that’s all that’s in me. His scent is the last legacy. Nothing else crawls and pulses upstream towards secret places, sanctuaries left undiscovered. Ellen should focus. Focus Ellen I think.
My feet hit the floor boards and they scream out to tell of my escape. I put on clothes; abstract articles pieced together and move towards the door. The door snarls at my approach and bites with rusted hinges at my hand. He’s there, in the dark, I see him, see his eyes. Like pools of mist catching grey glints and rejecting them back towards me. A sound of bones breaking, brittle ancient bones, smashing under his weight as he leaps at me, and resetting as the pressure lessens. Rotted wings dropping flesh reach out spewing black feathers at me feet. Scream, come to me, come up from me, lash out. Nothing. My mouth opens and I gag. Vomiting on the floor I look down and his maggots swarm in my bile winking up at me with child faces, hundreds of tiny reflections of my nose and lips building a foundation for his hollow eyes. The tips of the wings begin to enclose me and I hurl myself against the breathing door. It splinters and I drop to the city.
Ellen, marshal your thoughts. I say. Rally your cortex army; call the handsome vanguard of synapses to the line. Fire at will, fire at will! I say. The sky shatters again in a snow globe torrent of glass swirling me up and setting me down in my shell. I pull on an Ellen shaped hoodie and slip into soiled Ellen scented underwear, rich in fertile fields on my blood. Who is this body I wear like a slip?
I look up and there is the city. My city. His city. The streets are empty. Tall buildings with weeping cherubs and mocking gargoyles stare up at a paper sky. I hear the snapping of bones and labored breathing rolls out from a near by alley.

-06:04- Dolby, Mrs. McGrath’s Labrador finds something off the trail.

Focus. Focus. Focus. I click my heels.
The Ellen, my Ellen, settles on me. There is a city. I pull myself up and look around. It’s Seattle. There’s the waterfront. In front of me extends the sound and I am in Pike’s place. The market is empty, only me. Papers scuffle across the street and no hearts beat. I walk past the fish market and the fish watch me. Their eyes lock on me and follow me as I walk past them and down the sidewalk. A drilling sensation hits me again, my head feels hot and there is a pain in my skull but I remain clothed in my skin this time. The grimy tiles slicked with translucent scales and disregarded flower petals remain firm beneath my pink Converse. I look down to make sure I’m still planted on the ground and I see blood running down my thigh and past the Converse star. The river pulses down my leg and I panic. I feel the monk fish watching me. He’s watching me bleed and curving his two thousand needle teeth upward to grin after me. There is no one else. “Hello? Is there any one there? Hello?” I shout. Not even my echo responds.
My heart pulses and a fleeting sound percolates up from some blocks away. A crackling, old joints throbbing in deliberate movement, comes stalking down the street after me. This isn’t right. This is hollow.
The city is empty. I walk past a radio left in a booth bejeweled in leather mittens and two dollar rings. The radio makes a huffing sound, the sound of a dog hyperventilating. It breathes harder, and then slower. Harder then slower. In and out, in and out, “He he he he he he he he ha ha ha ha he he he he ha ha ha he he he ha ha.” The puffing speeds up and speeds up and becomes a scratching like a record left on too long. I feel him behind me, I hear the crackling of decaying wings unfolding. Images of ravens lying dead on the road swarm my vision and I see his pinions engulf me. I run. Never looking back. Past Starbucks, as I run I see screaming faces etched into the window, the mermaid’s face is sagging like melted wax. The coffee smells burnt inside. Onwards I run. Past the Turkish delight, past the Cutlery shop and the rattling shapes that lurk behind the massive Swiss Army Knife pulsing in the window. My running feels slow, like running underwater, I can’t get away I fall and my eyes go dark.

-06:38- An ambulance screeches through the streets of Seattle. An investigation begins.

When I open them I’m in a forest. The trees are dark, there is moss glistening in the moon light. Frost clutches the bark in a firm grasp and beams of pale light pour down from a brutally crisp sky. Some make it to the ground, other get plucked from the sky, mid-flight, by gnarled fingers enclosed in evergreen rings. Cedar is rich on the thin air, and my labored breathing tries to drink it in. I shake, uncontrollably. My scent is the only warmth I feel here, my rich and fertile scent pouring out from inside me. Boorishly pressing the crisp night air away from me and pooling at my feet. My hips ache. My hair is knotted and tingles towards the back. My face burns and I feel my blood stalling in its flow beneath my left eye. It hardens where he struck me. It pours where he tapped me, unceremoniously, poured me out to be gorged upon, like a keg full of cheap nectar. In front of me I see his eyes. Smell the rotting flesh. A shadow lurches. The sound of bones snapping rushes through the forest, the form straightens up on haunches and bones reset and form again. Eyes, glinting orbs denying light, reflectors repelling the moon level on my face and I am swallowed by my fear.
He, moves towards me, jutting out at angles all a Kimble as his internal structure splinters and reassembles with each move. Ellen please, I plead. Ellen please, I try to move but don’t respond. He spreads forth withering wings and engulfs me, the piece meal body trying to hold together as it advances, the scotch rolling on me, white capping and breaking on my face, assaulting my nose. He’s there, he’s inside me again. I bleed.
“No please, please, no more God?” I say. I shudder with my tears. My flesh tears.
Split away. I pull away, claw away, my body rips and I leave scored self on his long crows hands. I hurl myself backwards and am alone again. Where? Caporal street? I’m alone. I keep pushing open doors, an old motel. It’s hard to focus. Laboring to remember what happened? The searing pain in my head increases. I feel it bore into my skull and eat away my memories. I’m in Seattle. The streets are empty. Where are all the people? Windows are filled with darkness, no light, no movement, no bodies. I’m all that moves.
I wander the streets, calling out.

-10:21- Mrs. Janice Fairweather unable to contact her husband goes to the hospital alone.

I open my eyes. I’m in bed. Not my bed, just a bed. A tall four post cast iron bed. Sterile sunlight filters through cumulous gauze and leeches through the window. A rocking sound comes from the corner. There is a smell of nursing home, of brittle leaves, of scotch. I ask my hips to respond to me. They don’t listen. I tilt my head up and there in the middle of the creaking is an old woman wrapped in a thinning shall. She rocks slowly and nods her face muttering to herself. When her mouth moves the bags of skin that sag from her cheek bones billow. She has no eyes. Open sockets gape at me.
“Beep” she says.
“Who are you?” I say.
“Beep” she says.
“Please, what’s happening to me? I can’t hold on to anything.” I say. My hips still won’t hear me begging them to move. My toes won’t wave back at me when I ask them to. I’m so confused, I need to focus. Ellen. Please listen, Ellen please pull yourself to one piece again.
“With any luck she’ll be, beep, in a few months. There’s no certainty of, beep,” says the old woman. She rocks faster. I look down at my legs and I see my skin bubbling. I see the maggots beneath the pink, I see them eating down towards the bone defecating trails of scotch in my veins. The iron posts of the bed curl in towards me and pin my feet. I hear the bones breaking, smell his breath.
“Fairweather all together, black feather, whether or not she’s feeling better,” chuckles the old woman in a sign song tone. The bed coils a post down from behind my head and slithers down my throat. I struggle, I thrash, the bed post grows and coils and pulses downward, pushing my tongue aside and probing, fondling my insides with its cast iron sides. The old woman rocks faster.

-13:14 November 7th - Mr. Edward Fairweather puts the bottle down and sees several missed massages on his phone. He goes to the hospital to see his daughter.

He enters. Carrion and liquor on his breath, his putrefying wings wrapped around him and shifting shadow form with listless eyes stumble towards her on breaking legs, resetting and popping as he lurches at me. I can’t scream, I choke on the post in my throat. I cry, and struggle, but am held. I thrash, but only the maggots rove freely through me, descending my valleys, burrowing towards my sacred groves, wiggling and chewing. He descends upon me and I close my eyes. I bleed.
-19:02 November 19th- Ellen Fairweather remains in a coma. A lab test returns. An official knock sounds on the Fairweather’s front door.

© Capt C Staudinger 2006