The Maze of the Mind

My last image was of the green. Sublimely chartreuse. Rivulets of peridot streaming into a pool of jade.

…

I was back there; young again. Back before it happened. Still worrying about alligators crawling into our pastel colored house.

Mom came out of the screen door with her hair pulled up. That was not unusual. I was drawing with colored chalk on the driveway. She squatted down next to me and began to talk. Though I was listening to her, what she said is now lost to me but the intent was clear even back then.

I grabbed her patterned legs and didn’t want to let go. But she crumbled in my arms to ash. I stared up with my mouth open and was pulled by the arm by my father all the way up up the Atlantic Coast to Karen.

The words of my letters ran down the pages, I’s speared by T’s, S’s snaking upon M’s, C’s catching on H’s, and O’s on top of everything. They themselves years of repetition.

Every question, every time that I begged her to come back or at least to call. The words were starting to pour down my throat when-

They streamed away in fear. I saw my mother and blinked and then she morphed into Karen as she slithered towards me.

On the tip her serpentine body, she balanced up, flicked back her fake red hair and smiled when she got to my eye level.

Ever so sweetly, she hissed to me, “Honey, we are going to be such good friends.”

Then she started to grow appendages while her hair got longer and lighter. “Can’t you stop being so annoying?” She asked as high heels popped out of her feet fully formed.

And of course, her daughter sprouted out of her hip. Polly, my age, too perfect. At least according to her mother.

“Can’t you two just get along?” my father’s voice echoed, even though we were supposed to be best friends.

Polly bared her teeth in a look of self-joy as she gained her legs and popped off of her mother and advanced upon me, “Don’t you want to play with my doll?”

I didn’t answer but she smelt what I said and laughed while prowling towards me, “Well, you can’t. It’s mine. I’m the favorite.” The doll was a pretty little thing with braids and a smile that was beginning to lengthen.

I began to back away from them when I fell over Trish. Though she was composed of half of the spite of Karen and the spit of Polly, she was also part me. The creatures continued to advance as I backwards crawled until Trish took my hand.

Polly began to melt and her mother disappeared just as mine had.

Trish aged up to the age of twelve and then stopped.

“What’s happening?” I gasped.

She looked up at me and then fingered her white nightgown and said, “You’re in your mind.”

I couldn’t help but asking, “My mind?”

“Yes,” my sister answered. “It’s where you are stuck. Your body has stopped interacting with it, Laura.”

“What?” I sat down on the ground and she stood over me. I looked up as she shuffled her bare toes in the mud.

“You remember the fall?”

I nodded.

“Well,” she said as she took my hands. “Your body is at rest. Your mind is fighting, so you are stuck.”

I stared at her open mouthed as she began to age. Finally, a pair of glasses grew upon her nose and she was her college self as she said, “This is what you repressed years ago.”

“Trish, my little psychologist.”

“You never wanted one. Lord knows you needed it.”

I shook my head before asking, “So, I’m stuck here. Forever?”

“Not necessarily forever,” she said as she took my hand and got me to rise.

Then Trish vanished. I called out, but she was gone.

I walked down the hall. There were flashes of friendship moving along the wall. People that I hadn’t thought of in years. Then it stopped. I stooped. I hit a wall and fell back. When I picked myself up, I saw my father standing in front of me grinning. He looked like he had just before he had passed. Too young, most people would say. He still looked healthy but there was a hole from his cancer right in his middle.

I didn’t know what to do. He hugged me, but I didn’t hug back. He smelt like he usually did of cigarette smoke and floral cologne. But there was also a reek that was underneath it.

I had so many things that I had wanted to say that melted on my lips. So he started talking.

It was like an angler’s fish’s and I said, “I suspected as much.”

“Why did you do it?”

“When did you figure it out?” He asked, his tongue back in his mouth.

I tried to pull away as I said, “I suspected for a long time.”

“I did it because- well, why does anybody.”

“But why Karen?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I was lonely.”

“You let her rule the roost.” His grasp was starting to hurt.

“I was busy. I needed my life the way that I wanted it.”

He held me close still, even though I wanted to run. I had ignored him until his illness was almost at the end. Many people told that I was wrong for doing that, he was my father after all and I only had one.

He said, “Don’t be so angry.”

“You killed my mother.” And I pulled out of his grasp.

My father fingered his cancerous hole and hissed. But as usual, he made no move to stop me.

I fumbled in the dark for a long, long time. I bumped into things, skidded, slid into things, and finally saw a silhouette. I hesitantly approached her but she stayed in silhouette as I got closer. I did not particularly recognize her though she reacted as though she knew me. Her lips pursed before she began to speak. It was with a thick New York twang.

It would have been funny if the circumstances were different. I knew this voice; I had heard it a million times before. It was of my first friend that I had made when I moved to the city. We were inseparable for a few years, drifted, then became pretty close back in high school. Well, that was until-

“Laura Catabsis, what is wrong with you?”

Trish appeared and said, “This is what you must fight. Learn. Don’t run. Redeem your mind and your body will follow.”

So I did. “Kandice, what are you talking about? I had nothing to do with it.”

“Really?” And she cocked her head.

I was flooded with emotions again, even though she was only a dark silhouette. “Yeah,” I added. “I had nothing to do with it. Can I help it that your boyfriend wanted me?”

“Yeah, you can.”

So I instead said to my old friend, “Damn it Kandice, do you really think that I would do that to you? Does that even sound like me?”

She paused for a second.

“It was Polly. You know that she has the same last name as I do. She did it to him. Then made me take the blame.”

Kandice took another second to pause. “That makes sense.”

Trish the little girl appeared and nodded and we walked away from Kandice. Trish said, “That was well done, sis.”

I took her hand. It felt cold and slightly slimy. I looked down at it and she trailed off.

Then I saw the guy who I dated in college. We had been steady but then I got scared. My parents’ marriage and then Karen had not inspired my faith in commitment. He recognized me and said, “Heart breaker, what do you want?”

Trish gave me a meaningful look and vanished.

“Heath,” I breathed.

I saw that there were tears in his eyes. He blew out some air and I embraced him. It was not a romantic hug but one of comfort.

He held me back. His fingers dug into the flesh of my arms.

And I held him until Karen appeared behind his back. Her neck was stretching long and coming ahead of her head. I pushed Heath off of me and started to crouch. Karen’s teeth were getting pointed.

“I always knew that you were a monster.”

“What more do you want?” she hissed. “I was a mother to you.”

“You never were a mother to me.” And I crouched more. “I had one mother and you chose only to be a mother to Polly and Trish.”

She hissed more, unable to talk and I struck her down. I could have killed her but showed her the mercy that she never showed me.

My mother hovered over her. She had swamp weeds clinging to her and was white like a fish. I froze up. She spouted up some water and then smiled and held her arms out to me. I embraced her cold and clammy body and closed her eyes. I looked in instead of out.