Black Beetle

"The color black represents power, influence, affluence, empowerment, strength, & the unknown wisdom...While a beetle symbolizes fertility, home life, relations, and surroundings. The black beetle's message is to keep moving forward and it is assurance that you are on the right path."

- Quornesha S. Lemon

I remember quite vividly the first time I met one of them.

I was 6 and had just woken up from a long nap. Still yawning, I stumbled my way into the living room. At the time, we stayed in a tiny condo on the west side of Paramount. The place was mainly one long hallway, with 2 rooms at the ends, and a small living room and kitchen in the middle. The door opened right into the living room and sunlight only reached the window in the kitchen at sunset. The walls were thin, the A/C didn't work most of the time, and we shared the place with a family of rats.

We were doing good for a family in the hood.

My parents were in the middle of another "talk". My father stood in the center of the living room, behind the coffee table where we ate our meals. He is a black man of average height, standing about 5'9", but his love of exercise was apparent in his defined shoulders and legs. As physically imposing as he is, I never once have seen him touch my mother. Not even for a hug. He is a gentle spirit and generally dislikes conflict, except when he feels it is unavoidable. I suppose it was unavoidable that day.

"I don't get it, Malia, what do you want me to do?!" he asked, fists clenched and neck tense. I had never seen him like this. For better or worse, he was very good at concealing what he felt.

My mother was not.

She stood in the kitchen, a stout, light-skinned, 5'0" maelstrom of rage and bitterness. With a venomous tongue, she responded, screaming, "I want you to do something Jay! I want you to stop being so passive all the damn time! You know what"—she paused, and the room grew darker—"you just ain't shit. Just like your murdering father and your dead, bum ass mother."

The world went quiet.

Maybe it was her words that caused F to show up. Maybe it was because I had never seen my father this upset before. Maybe I'm just cursed. F is a dark gray, like clouds in a thunderstorm. He and his siblings all have distinct coloration. Their skin looks smooth and shiny and has a gelatin-like appearance. They often have two arms and two legs, but they don't have any real definition to their bodies. Their bodies seem to constantly be shifting around, like the inside of a lava lamp. They have no neck, and their heads are round, like a ball, and blend into the rest of their bodies. They are always slightly taller than me. F and his siblings don't have facial features or hair. When F shows up, a few things happen. Usually, I begin to sweat and have a hard time swallowing. Sometimes, I struggle to breathe. When it's bad, all of these things happen at once.

As I stood at the edge of the living room watching my parents tear into one another, it was bad.

I wanted so badly to scream, to tell them to stop, to do something. But F wouldn't let me. He held me there, his presence overwhelming, his strength too much for me to resist. I felt my breath leaving my body, my attempts to regain control useless as it flowed from me with each gasp, each desperate reach for peace.

Before I knew it, I was on all fours, with F's foot on my back, holding me down. I must've hit the floor with a thud, because, for a moment, the yelling stopped. My father was the first to reach me, knocking over the coffee table as he did so. More yelling after he knelt beside me.

The last thing I remember hearing before F pressed down and the world went black was,

"One day, you will know peace."

...

Sometime after, A and S showed up, crimson red and deep violet, and became the closest thing I’ve ever had to friends. If that was what you called beings that told you to punch a wall and lie in bed all day. My family moved around too much for me to have any lasting friendships. My dad was always changing jobs and my mom couldn’t find one she liked enough to stay. Still, A and S were something.

They filled a void.

Eventually though, I met Cam. A tall, skinny black kid from the LBC, with a reputation for being one of the toughest nerds around. He was always real with me. He was the only person who didn’t judge me when I spoke to A or S. He was the first person to give me a chance.

And I left him too.

Fast-forward some years and I’m a sophomore in high school. About 2 weeks before school began, I’d seen a paper on the coffee table. The same table knocked over a decade ago.

The heading read: Superior Court of California, County of Paramount. As my eyes scanned the document, they came to rest on two boxes. The box on the left had the word Divorce, written in bold letters, while the other had the words Legal Separation next to it.

A was there first, telling me to scream, to punch a wall and flip the table. His touch filled me with an internal heat, like the sands of the Sahara Desert. In that moment, I wanted it all to burn, wanted to turn to ash a world that had hurt me time and time again. But before I could move an inch, S was there. The cold, dead weight of his presence slumping my shoulders, smothering the flame. I carried that weight to my bed. Then the tears came. Salty rivers that carried pain until, eventually, they ran dry.

As far as I know, my parents haven’t said anything to my siblings about it.

...

3:00 pm.

The last class of the day. It’s AP Psychology with Mr. Waller.

Lecture topic: “The Effect of Divorce on the Mental Health of Children”.

Wonderful.

Regardless, I’m doing well until we’re looking at the list of harmful consequences and the kid in the back yells, without warning, “Damn! Them kids be fucked up!” He laughs, and the rest of the class joins in.

Normally, a comment like that doesn’t matter to me. Normally, I’ve got pretty thick skin, courtesy of A and S, and a good BS filter. But for 2 weeks, my world had been anything but normal.

Whatever that even means.

A hot, familiar hand touches my shoulder. A cold presence brings tears to my eyes. I am still, locked in place by an eyeless gaze.

“Hey! That was not okay!” Mr. Waller says to the one who yelled.

My breath quickens.

“I’m dead!” someone else adds, laughing hysterically as they speak.

My grip on my notebook and pen turns my knuckles white.

Cam, yelling, “Stop!”

The river flows once more.

One more voice, from deep within, a gentle one almost forgotten.

“Run.”

So, I did. I ran from it all. I ran from A, S, and F. From the pain. From the only friend I had. From a family soon to fall apart. From a world that cursed me. From everything that made me who I was. And when I could no longer run, I jogged. When I could no longer jog, I walked and when I could no longer walk, I crawled. Until I was alone. Alone, sitting on the floor in the dimly lit bathroom of a parking garage, eyes red and lungs still burning. A notebook and pen, for the first time in a long time, were my only company. I wrote. I wrote until I had nothing left to say.

A beetle appeared, the color of night, with a gentle voice.

“Where did you go?” I asked.

“I never left; I was just locked away. I’ve always been with you. I just needed you to set me free” the black beetle replied.

It was H.