Damned (29 page)

"Two kids in one week..." says Archer, “... my poor
mom."

In the silence which follows, I begin to hear my name streaming on the
nighttime breeze, as thin as the distant smell of candle flames cooking carved
pumpkins from the inside. From somewhere over the nighttime horizon, a chorus
of three faint voices seems to call me. In the distant, faraway dark, three
different voices chant repeatedly: "Madison Spencer... Maddy Spencer...
Madison Desert Flower Rosa Parks Coyote Trickster Spencer..." With this
siren's song entrancing, captivating, luring me into the unknown, I stagger in
pursuit of the bait. I'm edging between tombstones, hypnotized, listening. Thoroughly
pissed off.

Behind me, Archer calls, "Where are you going?"

I have an appointment, I call back. I don't know where.

"On Halloween?" Archer shouts. "We've all got to be back
in Hell by midnight."

Not to worry, I shout to reassure him. Still drifting, dazed, in
pursuit of the mysterious voices, drawn along by the sound of my own name, I
call back to Archer, "Don't worry." Distracted, I shout, "I'll
see you in Hell......"

Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison Desert Flower Rosa Parks Coyote
Trickster Spencer.

You've thrown down the gauntlet. You've brought my wrath down upon your
house. Now, to prove that I exist I must kill you. As the child outlives the
father, so must the character bury the author. If you are, in fact, my
continuing author, then killing you will end my existence as well. Small loss.
Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living. But if I destroy you and your
dreck script, and I still exist... then my existence will be glorious, for I
will become my own master.

When I return to Hell, prepare to die by my hand. Or be ready to kill
me.

My worst fears have been realized. In the Swiss boarding school where I
found myself locked out-of-doors, naked in the snowy night, I have become the
ghost rumored into being by silly rich girls.

Why is it that I occur as a story to everyone except myself?

Crowded into the small residence hall room I once occupied, the various
classes of students—these giggling, nervous girls—spend this Halloween around
my former bed. Seated upon the bed in approximately the same positions in which
they held me and suffocated me and baited me back to life, there are the three
Miss Whorey

Vanderwhores. It is their trio of little Miss Skanky Von Skankenberg
voices that recite, "We summon the everlasting soul of the late Madison
Spencer."

In unison, they say, "Come to us, Madison Desert Flower Rosa Parks
Coyote Trickster Spencer......" And they all three snicker over my
ludicrous name. They intone, "We demand the ghost of Maddy Spencer come
and do our bidding....."

Skanks or Satan. Why am I always called to do someone's bidding?

Centered on the bed, a plate stolen from the dining hall holds a few
burning candles, but otherwise my former room is dark. The curtains are open,
revealing the ragged trees and wintry night. The door to the hallway is closed.

One Miss Slutty MacSlutski leans off the side of the bed. She reaches
under the mattress and retrieves a book. A dog-eared book. "With this
personal object," the Skanky Skankerpants says, "We exercise our
power to control you, Maddy Spencer.

The book? It's my beloved copy of
Persuasion.
A collection of characters who've long outlived their author.

At the sight of my personal possession, my favorite book, the other
giggling, wide-eyed witnessing girls fall silent. Their eyes flicker with
candlelight.

It's on that cue, just as I'd press Ctrl+Alt+C on my mother's laptop
computer, that I begin to slowly draw the curtains closed, and with the first
hint of movement the assembled girls scream. The smaller girls scramble and
tumble over one another in their hurry to escape the room. As easy as pressing
Ctrl+Alt+A, I increase the air-conditioning, dropping the room temperature
until the remaining girls can see their breath hang, hazy, in the candlelight.
In the same way I'd toggle Ctrl+Alt+L, I flash the room's overhead lights on
and off, on and off, strobing the lights as fast as lightning. Filling the room
with the equivalent of every flash photograph of every
People
magazine photographer who'd ever snapped my
picture. I blind the assembled girls as would an army of mercenary paparazzi.

With this, the remaining girls claw their way to the open door,
spilling out into the hallway, screaming and wailing like doomed souls locked
within the soiled cages of Hell. They skin their knees and elbows climbing over
each other, leaving only the three evil Miss Pervy Vanderpervs still seated
around the candles on my bed.

Yes, here I am, the legendary naked girl who left the ghost prints of
her dead hands on the doorknobs of this very residence hall. Miss Madison
Desert Flower Rosa Parks Coyote Trickster Spencer. Here I am, returned to you
for just this one night, the dummy dumb-ass spoiled daughter of a movie star. I
gaze down at these three with their pointed ballet feet smudging my bed and the
knobby hip bones of their anorexic butts digging into my old mattress, and as
easy as keystroking Ctrl+Alt+D, I slam and lock the hallway door. I seal them
inside my room just as my mother would hold some Somali maid hostage until the
bathroom tile truly gleamed.

In the time-honored ageless way the dead have always sent messages to
the living, I wail my subsonic attack on their shriveled Miss Sleazy
O'Sleaznoid bowels, roiling and boiling the watery contents of their so-abused
digestive tracts, bubbling and churning the stewed refuse contained in their
intestines, stomachs, colons. I push the mess in violent peristaltic waves,
making the three grab at their own midsections, their nether orifices erupting
in methane clouds, exploding the tiny candle flames, dousing the room in
stinking, suffocating darkness. I force outward the hot slop of their past
meals, pushing it against their clenched oral and anal muscles. Trumpeting this
scalding putrescence in a slurry against those confining fleshy walls.

Their hands clamped to cover their burning mouths, the girls scream
between their fingers, wailing and calling for aid. They clutch their bloating
midriffs. In the hallway, beyond the locked door, the assembled students and
faculty wrestle with the locked knob.

Only then do I announce myself, that I am arrived. I am Madison
Spencer, the nominal ruler of Hell. Making my soprano voice all eerie and
wailing-ethereal, I warn that the three Harlot Von Harlotty girls must make all
efforts to not find themselves damned... for if they do, they will suffer my
wrath for all eternity. They will be subject to my whims and endure the endless
tortures which I shall decree. Like Archer ranting and railing in his cemetery
at night, a human lightning rod, I decree that should these three girls find
themselves condemned to Hades, I will force them to stand lips-deep alongside
Hitler and Company in the Swamp of Partial-birth Abortions, forever.

The acrid, sulfurous stench of Hell already wafting out, spouting,
issuing from their own lithesome, ballet-trained bodies, the three girls weep
and beg for forgiveness and release. The locked door reverberates with the
pounding fists and shouted entreaties of those students and teachers excluded
in the hallway

"Heed my words," I tell them. From this moment forward, in
order to save themselves, they must utilize the slang terms
nigger
and
fag
at every opportunity. They must never wash their hands after using the toilet.
They must refrain from ever covering their mouths when they cough or sneeze,
especially while aboard crowded airplanes during in-flight meal service and
filmic presentations of
The English
Patient.
Oh, I just go on and on. Damn, but I'm
having so much fun. And at the last possible instant before they choke totally
to death, mired in their own pungent filth, I throw open the door, allowing
every one of their peers full view of what these three Miss Twatty Twatlanders
have become.

There they sprawl, moaning in their own slippery degradation for all
the world to observe.

And yes, I am petty and vengeful, but I have places to be and flowering
trees to plant. I have evil hordes and bloodthirsty armies to command. According
to my sensible, durable wristwatch it's twenty minutes to Halloween midnight.

To anyone reading this who isn't already dead, I wish you luck.
Honestly, I do. You just keep swallowing your vitamins. Keep jogging around
reservoirs and avoiding secondhand cigarette smoke. Cross your fingers... maybe
death won't happen to you.

And yes, I am thirteen and dead and a girl. I might be a touch of a
sadist and a little bit jejune... but at least I'm not a victim, not any
longer. I hope. I hope, therefore I am. Thank God for hope.

For the rest of you, please don't be afraid. If you go to Heaven, bully
for you. But if you don't—well, look me up. The only thing that makes earth
feel like Hell, or Hell feel like Hell, is our expectation that it ought to
feel like Heaven. Earth is earth. Dead is dead. Another insider fact about the
afterlife: If you miss your midnight curfew on All Hallows' Eve you'll be stuck
wandering the earth, a ghost trapped among the living, until the next
Halloween.

Now, if you'll excuse me, it's late, and I'm in a terrible, terrible
hurry to go kick some satanic ass.

To be continued...