I Will Rise (11 page)

So be it: womb of death, cradle of nothing, the baptism begins. When I reemerge from this sink of initiation, I will genuinely be reborn.

I reposition my elbows on the countertop and slowly bring my head out of the water. Cool air sweetly bites me in a million different places. I am still not ready to face the mirror so I keep my head down and watch as water droplets rain down from my face and patter the surface of the sink-lake.

The death and sweat and blood expunged from head have given rise to an entire microcosm of life within the Charles-made sink-lake. Busy microbes spin, building, colonizing, taking root and gaining momentum, almost forming, almost origination, until the water rolling off my head obliterates the forward progression. Clean slate. Devolution. As my head dries and the frequency of dropping water decreases, the microcosm is able to maintain development, amass, solidify, grow and thrive. Swirls and eddies slow, gain substance, coagulate and come to resemble land masses. And upon the virgin lands: frenzied movement, creation.

I stand, avoiding the mirror, and look up to the ceiling. Moths flutter and dance, trapped within the semi-filthy lighting panels. I stare hard, force myself to focus, and let the harsh light wash everything away: a blur to a crushing wave of white to a sallow universe of colorlessness eternal. Somewhere, dimensions away, a blink away, a pregnant pause, a stillborn conjecture, a half thought away, another is staring down into an infinite microcosm. A God, a Dreamer, an Idea with wings and the wherewithal to use them, studies the complex milieu of life spawning life and is unaware that a creature like me stands staring, hoping, dreaming, lost and alone among the beautiful chaos.

It is time.

I lower my head and make eye contact with the dead fool in the mirror. Dead fool. I barely recognize myself. The eyes are the same—a little weary, but definitely me. Everything else has been altered, lessened, deadened. My face is gaunt and sharper and less puffy than usual. The color has drained from my cheeks and the effect is severe. In fact, the loss of color throughout my entire body makes me look leaner, deepening the shadows and defining illusionary muscles. I actually look better dead. I’m not as greasy and my body hair isn’t as jarring. Colors are dulled, there is less contrast, and everything blends. Zits have dried and died and even my gunshot wounds are clearing up. The three wounds (my shoulder, my chest and my thigh) have already closed and scabbed over with mushy purplish flesh. The nasty wound in my stomach, the one Lumpy plugged me with at extremely close range, isn’t doing as well. It has closed. I can no longer feel an air passage in my back and when I carefully dig my finger around a bit, I can feel a tough, calcified build-up of tissue forming. Unfortunately the hole still leaks a god-awful blackish fluid, but it’s gone viscous, almost gooey and looks like it’s beginning to clot. All in all I’m not doing too bad. If it weren’t for the fist-sized hole in my abdomen or those little Play-Doh-ish mounds of purple skin my gunshot wounds have left, aside from being way too pale, I wouldn’t look half-bad. I was expecting a lot worse. It’s nice to get a little break every once a while. It keeps the psyche primed and ready to push on.

I cup my hands and dip them into the sink, disrupt the ever-burgeoning microcosm and splash a double handful of water onto my torso. I continue until I look reasonably clean and I then grab another enormous wad of toilet paper and lodge it into the hole in my stomach. My tattered shirt isn’t salvageable, so I tie a couple pieces into a long, thin piece, wrap it around my torso, secure the toilet paper snugly in place and then tie it off.

As I’m adjusting my makeshift bandage, the bathroom door swings open. A burly bearded man, all flannel and blue jeans and tobacco-chewing swagger, walks in. He gives me a
Boy, what the fuck are you doing?
look and then says: “Boy, what the hell happened to you?” Close enough.

“N-n-nothing,” I stammer and before any more questions can be asked I scoop up my sweater and squeeze it over my head. The burly guy shrugs, enters the toilet stall, unzips his pants and goes about his business. Not particularly interested in hearing (or smelling) his business, I bail out into the restaurant.

Eddie looks super-relieved when I slide into the booth. I was tempted to just keep walking, get in the car and step on the gas and ditch out. I couldn’t do it, I could feel his little eyes on me the moment I exited the bathroom.

“I was afraid you were going to leave me,” he says quietly.

“Not that afraid.” I smile back at him and gesture at his plate. The Grand Slam breakfast he ordered is almost gone.

“Your English muffins were getting cold, so the waitress took them and said she would bring them back when you returned.”

“I wasn’t that long, was I?”

“Long enough to get me worried.”

“Well, here I am. No worries, right?” I try another smile. It’s depressing to see him down, like he was back in the car. The waitress, old pro that she is, appears and drops off my muffins. I am so unhungry it’s ridiculous, but I take a few small bites for show.

Eddie says: “I can’t read you and it scares me. I can read everybody.”

I say: “What do you mean read me? Like your ESP? You read me earlier. Remember in the car when I was wondering what you were all about?”

Eddie says: “Yes, but those were stray surface thoughts. Unsubstantial. I can’t get in and see things.”

I say: “Good, you shouldn’t be reading people anyway.”

Eddie says: “I know, but…”

And then he’s off. That’s pretty much the end of my side of the conversation. In the short time I’ve know the kid, I’ve surmised this much: once he gets comfortable (which takes no more than a short, silent drive) he will talk, and talk and talk and it’s funny because he is really quite brilliant. He knows everything about everything and isn’t afraid to throw a little of everything into a conversation about a particular thing. This is great, and even interesting, but unfortunately he hasn’t learned how to edit himself. He’s full of knowledge, but lacks wisdom. Which isn’t entirely true, some of the stuff he throws around is profound to the point of bedazzlement, but there is so much filler in between it’s hard to pick up on.

I really wish I could do his little diatribe justice. Understand that I am not a genius. In fact I am closer to idiot than genius, and all of this is filtered through me, so little Eddie isn’t given his proper due, mind you he earns his due through these long-winded discourses.

Anyway, Eddie says (as filtered through my thick senses):

“I know, but that is how I understand people. It is how I survive. My age and life experience puts me at an extreme disadvantage. The average five-year-old is cute and cuddly but incapable of intense cognitive functions. They think, of course they think, but lack introspective ability and complex reasoning skills. My intelligence, my ability to understand things a person my age cannot possibly conceive, is a curse. Nobody takes me seriously. Nobody understands. My ESP then, is a gift. It’s compensation, it’s balance, it’s the smallest of condolences for being trapped inside this little body with all of these big ideas. Mostly it’s ammunition. It gives me an in, a way to force adults to understand that I am no ordinary child, that I am smart and intuitive, a force to be reckoned with.

“Generally it’s easy. I center my thoughts and before long I’m in. With you, I focus and focus and get nothing, just a few meaningless thoughts floating lost in an impenetrable black cloud. The brain is made up of pathways. Think computers and the Internet. Do you know about computers?”

I shake my head no. Eddie goes on anyway.

“There are all of these ports and every one of them is encoded and information is allowed passage through particular ports depending upon a number of factors: address and accessibility mostly. The brain opens and closes these ports as it sees fit, receiving pertinent information or rerouting irrelevant information to the proper port.

“My level of sensory perception is so potent, it’s like I have a giant cloud of energy floating around my body and when I get close to someone, I engulf them in this electrolytic field. The field is basically free flowing, kinetic information, an ever-mutating encryption breaker. It swirls around your brain, or another’s, and gleans information. It overrides inaccessible ports and permeates the brain entire. I don’t just get some information, I get all of it. A flood of thoughts hit me and at first it was a little overwhelming, I didn’t understand how to process it, but over the years I’ve come to know my way around. I can navigate the neuronal pathways as easily as a computer hacker can cut through firewalls.”

I chime in, tapping my head with my forefinger, “Well then, it’s just as well you can’t get in me and I stand by my earlier decree. You got no business in here.”

“But you are my only chance. Did you know that? Even though I know what I know about you, you are my only chance.”

“What do you mean ‘what you know about me’? I thought you couldn’t get in here.” Again I tap my forehead for emphasis.

“I can’t, but my dreams, remember? Listen, I don’t have many choices. I have to do what I am told. Children are expected to be complacent. Everybody treats me like a kid. Never mind that I am thousands of times smarter than any of them. When I woke up and you were there, I was scared, but a calm came over me. Despite my dreams, it was a chance for me to be me. No matter how brief, or ill-fated, it was a chance. So instead of outsmarting you and getting away, or turning you in to the authorities, I decided to see it through.”

“Ill-fated?” What does this kid know?

Eddie ignores me, finishes off his chocolate milk and continues.

“I shouldn’t know what I know. Not just about you, and don’t worry I’m getting to that, but about life. Birth, school, work, death, nothing less, nothing more. People can’t really put it together, they can’t grasp the abject pointlessness of it all, until they are quite a bit older. At my age I should be a walking smile, I should be a ball of unquenchable energy, I should be unconditionally happy, but I can’t be those things, because I—like 93.7 percent of all living, breathing adults—am depressed and jaded and all too aware of how meaningless everything is.

“It’s the way of the world, I know, but it isn’t fair because one hundred percent of those jaded adults had a childhood. They had a time of wonder and pure, dumb, ignorant bliss. When you’re like me and that horrible realization comes on prematurely, there has to be exceptions, there has to be certain freedoms allotted, no matter the age, because I cannot pretend to be a happy-go-lucky child. I know life is a wasteland of hurt and disappointment and I don’t want to watch cartoons or play with toys or say cute things to make adults long for the innocent simplicities of their misspent youth. I want to be treated as an equal and permitted to go out and experience the great mess firsthand.”

Eddie gives me a look to confirm that I am following him and then continues. “My parents do not understand that. Nobody understands that and I know because no matter what they tell me, I’ve been inside their brains. I know what they think about me. Freak. Anomaly. No matter my IQ or my desire to be accepted, or my ability to reason and consistently reinforce my logic and cognitive power, all anybody sees is a five-year-old. All anybody hears is a five-year-old.”

Eddie stops and takes a deep breath. His little eyes look moist and his lower lip quivers. I notice his hands are balled into tense fists.

“It’s okay,” I clumsily try to comfort him.

Unclenching his fists, Eddie inspects the little crescent indentations his fingernails have etched into the soft flesh of each of his palms. He shakes his hands out and starts up again, “That being said, do you want to know what I learned about you in my dreams?”

I nod yes and he’s off once again.

“You are death.”

I’m about to speak, but Eddie gives me an intense look and motions for me to wait. He closes his eyes and speaks as if he is in a trance:

“You are the end. In my dreams the world writhes at your feet. It begs for mercy, but you laugh and stomp it into silence. I watch you from a distance and I am terrified, run through with fear, but I know I have to do something. Even though I hate the world as much as you hate it, I hate the hypocrisy and idiocy, I hate that no one can be trusted, I hate that everybody thinks in lies, but for some reason I can’t let you destroy it. I can’t, so I run toward you and I am about to leap into the air and use momentum to harness what little power my body is capable of producing to tackle you down, when you extend your palm. Everything freezes.”

Eddie’s eyes are still closed. He holds his left palm in the air, turns the palm toward me and continues.

“The palm opens like some grotesquely blooming flower and within its depths I see the most beautifully mesmerizing spiraling colors. Time resumes and there is no stopping my forward thrust. The palm widens and catches me. I fall in and I tumble for what seems like an eternity before my feet touch down upon a billowy, radiant red surface. Complete darkness surrounds me and the only thing I can see, except for the soft flooring, is a red streak of color darting about in the distance. I chase it and as I get closer I see the outline of a woman.

“She continues to run and I am unable to catch her. I get tired, double over and rest my elbows on my knees. When I finally regain my breath, I stand only to encounter a vicious German shepherd growling and frothing at me. It tenses and its lips curl. My muscles tense up and as sure as I know I am a genius I know this rabid animal is going to pounce upon me and rip my throat out. Luckily a figure appears out of the darkness and shoos the beast away. The figure gets closer and after a moment of adjustment my eyes clear and I can see it is you.

“You look much kinder than you did in the beginning of the dream, before I fell into your palm, and you reinforce this by smiling. You ask me what I am doing here and I tell you that I am lost, that I am trying to get away from you. You shake your head and tell me no one is lost, we are all on our way, and no one gets away from you. I ask you what you mean and you bring your finger to your lips, signaling me to be quiet. An eerie redness rises from the ground, climbs your legs and wraps itself around you like a paper-thin, phosphorescent snake.”