The Blood Poetry

Chapter 3

“s**t, I didn’t really want to come up here.”

“Why did you?”

I feel for my fisted balls in my pant pockets to make sure I’m still a man, not some f****d-up transsexual, and I’m relieved as if I had s**t an epiphany because, indeed, I am a man. “You were banging around so loudly in your sleep and who knows what an old broad like you is up to?” I do have some gumption to stand up to the old b***h!

“Stop with your tantrums. You know what daylight can do to a being like me?” Her three hands turn into feet and her maw is somewhere in my mind, but it is dark in here, so it’s difficult to tell reality from other realities.

“It’s so dark in here, Mother. You’re very safe.”

“Get in and close the door.”

I can’t see anything anymore or anyone or any of my other Mothers and the smell of her tomb is like my stifling baby blanket all over again. I’m going to piss on myself or puke, but I wear my manliness on my yellowed sleeve to show the old broad who is truly in command, but I stutter for the second time in a day, “What…what is it Mother?”

“I’ve had a tampon in for ten years.”

“I’m not taking it out for you.”

She cackles and the unbundled beads of her laughter (or maybe her teeth?) piddle all over the floor in ting-ting-tings as she continues, “Should I suck my own blood, Epstein?”

“That’s for a doctor to recommend.”

“No doctor’s gonna treat an active vampire, Epstein.” And Mother adjusts herself and finagles her thing and I envision that what remains of her soul slops out of her uterus and onto the bed, pickled like a back-alley abortion. The horrid decade-old blood nearly wastes me and drives me to weep and to seek out my one true offspring: Sylvia, whom god entrusted me to protect from the undead b***h and the b***h’s legacy, the old broad who brings nothing but terrible luck, and Applebaum, and the likes of me and all the other victims; god entrusted me to shield my offspring from the likes of this, our clan, but Sylvia is part of us and we are part of her, but I want to slumber with my offspring so infinitely and pretend I am truly a better father…

“There!” Mother exclaims and more black bile from the center of her stillborn heart.

“It’s out?”

“Oh, it’s very out.”

“I can’t believe you’re still able to have children.”

“I could have me a zombie child!”

“Weren’t we enough? Wasn’t Abby enough?”

“You’re my son and that’s all you are.” She rolls over and splits the air in two and I hear bed covers fold back, but there is walking, yes, walking, but more like dead shuffling, really.

Then her smooch is full on my chapped lips and her smell of ancient refrigerators envelopes me yet, “Mother!” I exclaim.

“You know I get funky when I’m thirsting for blood.”

“You got Thomas Ogre, and is he some kind of infantile vampire or something? I think he’s a crack fiend and a heroin addict and a prostitute.”

She shuffles back through me, back into her body and onto her bed and coughs and is awake and asleep all over again and…

“Thomas will be coming by, so don’t give him any trouble and just let the poor boy in. It will be time.”

I feel for my balls again to make sure I’m alive, yes, and the near maiming was just Mother’s little joke between a parent and her child, and that’s it, just a game that the vicious play on the living. “I’m going now,” I say, “and I need to pretend to shop Sylvia around to search for her mother, so go on being undead, Mother, or whatever you are,” and I slam the door behind me and Mother’s music slips into my brain, but I wouldn’t say it’s an orchestra or anything, yet there are unusual horns and strings and, ah, I remember! Vampires will exact a kind of screech on you. I turn toward Mother’s bedroom door and yell, “You’re never f*****g satiated!”

***

“I hate to take you to a place like this,” I tell Sylvia.

“Mom wouldn’t come here.” The house is a ramshackle pile of wood flack and addiction and the drapes are drawn, the paint peeling for miles because it’s a dead house, a dead mind, and I wish I had a hot dog right now—all beef, of course…

We approach the door ever so gently and, terrified, we stand there for a minute and, “Are you going to knock?” Sylvia asks with her hand resting against my thigh because I am her father and the only parent from here on out that will protect her.

“I hate to bring you to a place like this.”

She knocks and there is no answer.

“It may be open,” I say.

Sylvia opens the door slowly and walks in before me even though it’s a dark sniper hideout and she’s protecting me, and you can smell the spiders but Sylvia, so much braver than me, calls out in despair, “Mom? You in here?”

Nothingness, yes, there’s always nothingness. We venture inside further, further, but the place is actually quite bare—a mattress on the living room floor, a broken television, a covered-up mirror, a handkerchief and pennies and I add, “Addicts are always collecting pennies.” My hands are in my pockets and checking my balls and I look to Sylvia for any kind of direction, not just for this moment, but for the remainder of my life and my head swivels away from her as she—

“Look at me, will you! Mom would never hang out here, Papa. You would.” She halts, slouches her shoulders and bellows, “f**k you! I know Mom left us because of you!”

“Honey, calm down,” I manage, “Honey…” and I’m suddenly entranced by the rabbit-eared television nearly dead in the corner of the living room, but it’s still plugged in and playing a diffuse, static daydream that I project all of my thoughts into. I go with the role and imagine I’m the devourer of the Old West: defiler, carnivore, wrecking-ball, werewolf, steel machine with the titanium teeth and rabid mind, a killer, yes, the killer. Finally, if only I could, I would maim the likes of all whores, all cops, all old women, all those boys and…can I really be thinking this? Me? Me?

“Mom is missing and I’m with you and its Earl who’s searching all the bars and hospitals…”

…and imagine me plunging my head through the television, into my static daydream, the rabbit-ear antennae going amuck, so I could find me and find you, whoever you are, and with shards of glass still sticking out of all my necks and half my brain, I’d climb into the television and assume the role that most damaged men desire: no more stuttering and no more halting before the terrifying maternal figures, my dear Satan, and now assume the role of the perpetrator whom you once feared, who terrified your bowels tightly and unreal, and assume the role of the burgeoning r****t who, until now, was a tiny boy hunkered fetal-like oh-so-sweetly under his bed sheets, but pissed all over them, he did, oh-so-skillfully during the middle of every night and the vampires—Applebaum and everyone of them in the flesh—siphoned from him any human decency, only to leave behind the thing between his legs and his blood, yes his blood, because the boy was never turned undead, but spared, only to assume the role of the Dark King in the boy’s tiny inner world and Kingdom, but now late in his middle-age and with daughter, wife disappeared, Mother amuck, left only with the vampire within him to soothe the mind, this pathetic man-child, heaving from asthma, the man-child who has had enough, enough and will break free from this s**t and find you wherever you are…

“Papa?”

“What? …Yeah…I mean…I’m glad Earl’s helping, really…”

“Do you even love my mom?”

I kick over an empty beer bottle, wanting to exhibit my righteous anger and show my dead innards next to the other genocides; although humorous I find my own impending death, and melodramatic, I’m determined to be at least one father to this offspring and fight against my brutal grain. I say, “More than you can ever believe, Sylvia, I loved your mom…” but to ye ole vermin eavesdropping on me from under the kitchen sink, I’m coming for you too…

“I think we should go to the police, Papa…Hello, anybody there?”

…and I’m just a conditioned and electrocuted specimen (think: lab rat or Pavlov’s drooling mutt) with behaviors and thoughts as automatic as child abuse and suddenly, “No f*****g way, I don’t think we should involve any cops yet because, what if your mother’s caught with drugs or a gun or whatever, or patting the heads of children a bit too fondly, or flirting with the fireman who’s axing a door to save the cripple inside; if they find that, they’ll surely bang her.”

“Are you f*****g insane? Bang her? What are you talking about? Are you a freak? I mean, is all of this totally turning you?” She quiets, but demands with girl fists, “Let’s just get the f**k out of here.”

I rest my palm on her head, squeezing it a bit, like I want to know if she’s ripe. She swats the stupid hand away, but I want to be sure she’ll never uncover the horror movie inside me and tell all of our neighbors about her Papa and her grandmother gumming out on some poor f**k, so go ahead, Sylvia, since I was going to tell you everything anyway (don’t you remember?) and of course you’re always correct, and maybe I am complicit (oh s**t!) and then, “Sylvia,” I say, calming myself, “my rambunctious and beautiful daughter! Can you read my thoughts? And what do you hear? I guess you’ll figure it all out soon enough, right? I’m sure of it.”

“Stop, you’re f*****g creeping me out. Wait …figure what out?”

I open the drapes and there is a huge black “X” painted on the front window and, scared out of my wits, I screech, “What does that mean? Sylvia, enlighten me because I don’t know what’s happening to me…no, what I meant is, what happened to your mother? To recapture that bliss your mom and I once had, like when we were married for the first time and then the second time and then the third time, and our bodies were one, or at least two bulbous halves clumped together…that bliss, I yearn for again…and for you, offspring…I want something better…for you, I want to have your mom back and maybe not be with me whatsoever…” but I regret that last bit of the confession…

“If we sit here,” she instructs, “and listen to you play baby-cry and philosophize about some so-called lost love like, ‘Oh! Poor me! Father of Sylvia and husband of the wife, Abby, who I will always love and devote my regretful heart…’ f*****g bullshit, Papa. That ‘X’ just means that we’re all fucked.”

“No, Sylvia, I think it declares that this is a generic house or the idea of a house without living beings in it, as if we’re in a squatter’s house from 1867, but they didn’t have televisions then, so scratch that, but the ghosts still have all their broken furniture, however bloodied, and maybe real people were murdered here…and we’ve happened upon a preserved crime scene from my innards.”

“Is that why brought me here? Like maybe we’d find Mom’s—”

“No, no, no, nothing like that—”

“Then, let’s leave.”

I palm her head again and clear my throat and, yes, most evidently this time, I’m about to tell her, to tell her…