I Am Not at Home Here. (page 3)

compound complex

Like I already said, I was hardly being held captive. I kind of liked the old folks. Since my own family and I were on the skids - what family doesn't have its ups and downs?, to quote Eleanor of Aquitaine - I guess I gravitated toward their warmth and hospitality, like any bummed-out and lonely bloke would do. Anyway, rather than tempting the flesh by walking the edge between Town's good and evil, I found myself staying at the old homestead more and more. Oh, yeah, I wandered out once and a while, but there didn't seem the push to find some cheap, empty thrills. Gee, am I just getting older and wiser? Actually, the first but not the last.

In the prime of life, a guy doesn't think about tomorrow and responsibilities so much as he does enjoying where his energy and lust for life take him - a big, nonstop adventure. Well, I don't know what happened, but something came along and took all the starch out of my sails. I've lost it. It's not quite like I've lost the will to live, just because my dear, departed family has turned their backs on me. Sure, it hurts, but Mabel and Henry, out of the blue so to speak, have filled up the empty hole in my heart.

I can't figure why I feel so exhausted though. Take a look in the mirror and you're not always displeased. Sure, there are those bad hair months and a little too much good food and beer that go straight to the gut and stay put. But lately I notice there are bags under my eyes and a few creases I never noticed before. Now don't get me wrong. I'm no Narcissus or whatever his name prancing and preening in front of any piece of glass that happens to cast a reflection of yours truly. I just look old.

The old folks - why do I even say "old" folks? They are up and at it, going circles round me ...

They never looked better.

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I was going through a stack of old books on the floor and decided, since I had nothing better to do, to put them where they belong - on the book shelves. A lot of them were the Readers' Digest condensed stories. Leafing through a few pages of a really beat up copy, I looked in the table of contents to see if any of the tales looked familiar. The title "Intruders" caught my attention. I opened up to page whatever and started reading and guess I forgot about time and what I was supposed to be doing.

The deeper I got into the story, the sicker I began to feel. But you know how it is, that strange and deadly fascination that hooks you and reels you in. When I got to these lines I felt myself turn pale, or maybe green.

My irrational fears and misgivings over the recently acquired relationship with the old couple have been realized. I had readily taken them into both my home and my heart. The once cheerful aspect of my beautiful home has grown opaque, a dark and murky atmosphere bleeding muddily into every room, spreading like deadly contagion from floor, to wall, to ceiling. The brooding, pestilential pall has insinuated itself into my cherished home. It has sickened me, not only physically, but likewise in spirit and soul.

Who or what has brought this disease upon me?

Johnny B.

myelaine

dear CoCo...

Romans 12:19-21

love michelle

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Thank you, dear Michelle!

Overcoming evil with good is always the answer ...

Gratefully,

CoCo

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Get your head screwed on straight, Johnny B., and don't get lost in the story.

Yeah, I'm into horror and SF all right, but my stupid little life is dismal but real. Stories in books are make-believe. No more, no less. Just a crazy coincidence that the story's about a creepy old couple who walk through your door and take over. Who knows? Axe murderers maybe. And I wouldn't go so far as to say Mabel and Henry are certifiable. A little over the top, I guess, but harmless enough. They wouldn't hurt a fly. Besides, I darkened their door, not vice versa. Reality check.

I slammed shut the battered old book and got back to business. Put the books on the shelves ... do not open them ... get this mess cleaned up ... fix supper for the three of us....

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It's three months I've been here in the old folks' home - funny way to put it - and I'm mellowing out about the junk that used to have me flying off the handle at every screw up that messed up my life and my head.

I remember seeing a program on TV that in the animal kingdom the younger critters need socializing - guess that's the term - or they go rogue. Bad behavior, juvenile delinquency, in a manner of speaking. Like these bad-assed teenage elephants that went on a rampage goring rhinos. They were put on a preserve, already there as a matter of fact, to protect them from poachers, but you see they had no good adult influence there to keep them in line and to teach them right from wrong. So like all misbehaving little elephants, they search out poor defenseless rhinos and gore them. Well, as the story goes, Nature channel I think it was, they had to bring in Mom and Pop pachyderm to teach the youngins a thing or two.

I'm no elephant you see, but maybe that depends on who you talk to. My point, if there is one here, is that I am getting some peace in my life now, and I really think it's the old couple. Guys don't like to talk about their feelings usually, they get all tongue-tied and embarrassed, but I admit that I really have warmed up to Mabel and Henry and don't feel so much on the defense when they talk to me and even when they ask me questions. They are just so interested in me and don't treat me like human garbage the way my family does, well did. I don't see them any more. Their loss. No, I shouldn't be that way. It's our loss. Maybe some day they'll be proud they had a son and brother who turned around and flew right.

In the meantime, I've got to get the dishes off the table and washed. It's amazing the hundreds of things that go through your head in the middle of everything else. Like talking with Mabel and Henry or cooking and cleaning. Seems I'm here more and more. Don't mind. Guess I've become domesticated. Is that the word?

Mabel and Henry are sure spry tonight. They say they're going to get gussied up and paint the town red. Well more power to them. When I finish up my chores I'm hitting the sack. I'm beat, really beat. Maybe I need some vitamins....

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Henry and Mabel are gone for the evening, maybe till the wee hours for all I know the way they've been carrying on lately.

I sure as heck can't keep up with that pair. They were homebodies when we first met, cheerful and able enough, but not ones for going out and tripping the light fantastic. Nowadays they're out dancing a couple nights a week, in the groove, so they say, they just got back recently. And Mabel. It's not like an old dame acting like a flitty teenager and dressing the part. Ridiculous and embarrassing when old biddies put on the make-up with a trowel and wear outfits their granddaughters fill out, I'd say, in a pretty shapely manner. Something here, though, is altogether different.

Mabel's hair is darker, not the dye job from a bottle that screams fake and phony, but honest-to-goodness natural and real brunette. And her face - it was always sweet and soft looking against her wavy gray hair - is tightened up, a few lines, sure, but not what I remember a short time back. Gee whiz, the gal is nearly 80 years old! And that black sheath she's shimmied into fits just so in all the right places. I better stop. I'm starting to get weirded out talking this way. But what's killing me curiosity-wise is what in the name of creation is going on here? She didn't sneak off to some spa for a relaxing, rejuvenating week of makeover. No plastic surgery, that's for darn sure. I don't get it. I just do not get it at all.

And then there's Henry....

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INTRUDERS: Against All Escape

Like the breeze of a warm spring day flow onward and upward
The comforting spirals of a current that caresses and comforts
The little people gathered unto its tender embrace.

These innocents find relief, at long last, from careworn days of
Unrelenting distress.

Though simplicity has vanished forever from their insignificant lives,
They sigh a smiling sigh as choking strangleholds of grief are swept
Away by these beneficent winds of welcomed, unforeseen change. Unnoticed, ignored or shut out by the sedated minds of these newly liberated,
Spring's tender zephyr gathers strength and speed, lost souls once embraced
Now firmly held as captives, clutched in a tempest, tightly, against all escape.

They have awakened rudely to the gradualism that beckoned, then persuaded,
Then caught them against all escape. Against all escape.

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Tonight's sunset is as spectacular as any I had ever viewed from the kitchen window in my former, beloved home-sweet-home.

A tiny abode it was compared to my current habitation. No longer within a mere four wooden walls of plain aspect and diminutive scale, I now am lost in a seeming infinite architectural spread that reaches toward earth's four points, an edifice of four expansive levels that demand I walk, climb, explore every one of thousands of hidden nooks and crannies. I am compelled to do this but find no joy in discovery. I want to go back, go back to the simplicity of my earlier life. I cannot.

It is becoming dark out of doors, a furtive, watery sun having limped its pathetic course through the closing chapter of a gloomy and damp spring day. Its brief, craven appearance has created more shadow than illumination, and this has tended toward my unease, prompting me to turn on each light of every room on all floors. I am alone - sometimes it is all right to be alone - but not at this time. This dwelling space of loss and loneliness holds me captive and I want only to walk out the door and go home. I can never go back.

I have been locked up within. No one hears my cries for help. They are swallowed down whole by the grinning and cruel emptiness of an outwardly beautiful home that has no soul so has stolen mine.

No one hears my cries for help. They are growing fainter.

I am silent as I watch the sun sink deeper and deeper into an eternal night. It is beautiful.

It is beautiful....

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The sun, though wan and useless yesterday but for an incredible sunset, has risen. Perhaps today it will more effectively break through the barrier of personal and celestial gloom.

I am turning out the lights. I will face the day with a new perspective. I am hopeful.

I am confident.

I Am Not at Home Here.

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