Trevor Patterson
Short Fiction
There was the dream. It started not long after I moved into the house, and I’ve had it every night since. It’s a beautiful modern design. Maybe a little too many windows for my liking but there’s no one up in these mountains to see in. I hope not at least. More windows than walls by my count. I find myself staring entranced through the windows at times. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m wondering where the wall went. That’s gotta be one of the thoughts in there. One of the bedroom windows rattles, like the iron bars of a prisoner futilely pulling on them. It only happens when I step on a specific board on the bedroom floor. I’ve tried other things. Dropping a copy of War and Peace, hitting the windows, yelling. Nothing. I don’t see any of them move, but I can hear it. I don’t know how to fix it.
The dream. I wake up in a void dark as oil, but I can see myself clearly and the floor is solid. When I turn my head a certain way, I can see a sheen in the darkness. The first thing I notice though is that I’ve been stitched together like Frankenstein. Or I guess more like the Bride of Frankenstein. I wonder if I have the Elsa Lanchester hair. In the dream, it never crosses my mind to check. Dreams work in a different kind of reality I suppose. I don’t know why everyone gets so up in arms about calling the monster Frankenstein. Wouldn’t it take on the name of its creator? It’s not like people call it Victor. I guess depending on the rules that would make it a junior. I have to find my body parts in the darkness. At the start, I’m missing my right foot and my left hand. There are others that aren’t mine. I can never remember what they look like when I wake up so I can never place them. They say you can only see the faces of people you’ve seen in the real world in your dreams. I wonder if that goes for body parts as well. I wonder if I’ve come across my mother’s in there. I crawl, grab a foot, examine it, try to line it up on my shin, toss it, try another. When I do find it, I realize I’ve been holding onto a needle and string, and I have to reattach it. So far, I’ve never put on the wrong foot. The hand is harder. Each finger is missing, and I have to find each one. I always wake up when the final stitch is done.
The gash in May’s forearm opened to reveal the meat underneath. The bleeding finally stopped. She put her fingers on either side of the cut and opened it wider. A trickle of blood came from the corner of it like a tear and ran down her pale skin until it dropped into the porcelain sink. The cut wasn’t too deep, but it was deep enough to see what lied under the skin. She saw a tendon in her elbow tighten and loosen when she moved her arm. More tears ran from the wound. May opened the medicine cabinet above the sink. Inside was a first aid kit, an assortment of prescription pill bottles, sheets of over-the-counter allergy medicine, a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and a tiny box of Q-tips. She grabbed the hydrogen peroxide, unscrewed the cap, splashed it onto the cut. A white cluster of bubbles sizzled into the wound. May wrapped toilet paper around her hand and dabbed at the bubbles. Next came the first aid kit. She opened it and dug around through the plastic packaging of bandages and gauze. She pulled out her sewing needle with a line of thread tied into it.
She pulled the needle from the bag, careful not to poke herself in the process. That would require her to stop and get another one, and she was determined now. She was never afraid of needles, never took the time to have feelings about them either way. She had less experience with them than most people. A side effect of her homeopathic mother keeping her away from doctors. After the move into the mountains of North Carolina, she decided to pick up a new hobby since she never left the house. Needlepoint seemed like a good idea. When May was a child, she watched her grandmother spend hours in her favorite chair by the fireplace stitching designs on a small, round canvas and May felt vague nostalgia for that. The next time she went down the mountain for groceries, she added the materials she needed on the grocery list. At first, she couldn’t think of anything to make. Her mind raced with ideas, but she never settled on one. As she sat in her recliner by the window with a canvas in her lap and a thousand things in a whirlwind in her mind, she absentmindedly started twisting the needle into the top of her middle finger. She realized her mind was clear for the first time since she moved.
May rubbed the edge of the wound with the needle. The cold steel had no sensation to it as she moved it around her forearm. She placed her hand on her cheek and looked down at the wound. Top to bottom seemed like the best idea, although there was less feeling the closer to the elbow it got. May stuck the needle into the ridge of the cut until it connected to the other side like a crude bridge. She twisted the needle to tunnel through. Once through, she pulled it until the knot at the end of the thread stopped it from going any farther. It caused her to clench her fist and when she did, she could feel the thread against her muscles. It gave her the sensation one would get from slowly pulling the plastic from a new electronic. Back through. And again, until she got down to the dry skin of her elbow. The needle dangled from her arm by the thread, like a spider coming down on its web. She grabbed the small pair of scissors from the first aid kit and cut the thread as close to the skin as she could. The needle tinked on the tile floor. The stitchwork in the mirror looked more like a crude attempt at a cat’s cradle than actual medical work, but it didn’t matter how it looked. No one else was going to see it. May grabbed the gauze and started wrapping it around her arm.
My therapist thought it would be a good idea to keep a journal after it happened as a way to keep myself together. She thought I kept too much bottled in, which I mean she’s right, but that’s the way I’ve always dealt with things, and it never seemed unhealthy until she said it was. Whenever I had problems before, I never really talked about them. I worked through everything on my own and when I was ready, I went back out as if nothing had happened. It might be harder this time, but I think it will still work. It’ll just take more time than usual.
I tried keeping a journal one time when I was a teenager. I got the idea after I read through Sylia Plath’s. It didn’t last too long. I think I kept it up for almost a year and I didn’t even fill up a regular spiral notebook. There’s no quicker way to realize how dull your life is than trying to write out everything you did in a day, only to see that you can sum up days and weeks in one sentence. It eventually devolved into fantasizing about the crushes I had. I wonder what happened to that notebook.
I think it went to the Salvation Army after Mom died. There’s probably some random guy out there with it, just reading it like I did with Plath’s. I don’t think I ever put my name it in. Hopefully he never finds out who wrote it. Hopefully the Salvation Army workers just threw it in the trash. I doubt that though.
May sat at the dining table and stared at a cardinal hopping around in the yard. It twisted its head as if it heard something and stuck its beak into the ground. It came up with a worm and flew off. A blank notepad sat on the table in front of her. She tried to remember everything that she needed. She was going down to the grocery store today. But this time, May had nothing to put on the list. She looked around the kitchen. It seemed well stocked. A bowl of apples and oranges on the kitchen island, mostly green bananas hanging on their hook, the coffee bean grinder full. There had to be something that she needed. May tried to remember the last time she went into town, but every day ran together for her. Maybe it hadn’t been that long ago, and she didn’t need anything.
May chewed on the eraser of her mechanical pencil. Her crowned canines gripped it, and she slowly pulled it in and out of its holster. She started to shade the top corner of the notepad, using the side of the lead. Once it was fully shadowed, she lifted the pencil up to her eye to look at it. Sharp as a syringe needle. She clicked the pencil once, as if she were a doctor clearing air bubbles from a syringe. She pointed her finger up at nothing and dug the pencil into the pad of it. The lead slid easily through the skin. There isn’t much flesh before the bone. When the lead touched bone, it gave the physical sensation of a rusty nail scraping a chalkboard. A shudder started in her eardrums and went down her body like a tidal wave. Her hand shook enough to snap the lead off.
“Shit.”
May pinched the lead between her fingernails and unscrewed it out of her fingertip. She tossed it in the trash and sat back down to write the list. Laundry detergent, milk, eggs, toothpaste. It was a short list after all. She stuck it on the refrigerator under the Yosemite National Park magnet. She walked to the bathroom to get toilet paper to dab her finger with. It wasn’t bleeding that much. Only a small drop landed on the shaded corner of the list. She didn’t think anyone would notice it at the grocery store.
I used to be an English teacher and I was good at it. I taught 12th grade mostly, seniors ready to head off to college or whatever jobs they could find. Shakespeare was the last thing on their mind, but I think I changed that when they stepped into my classroom. Whenever one of them needed a recommendation letter for college, I was the first teacher they came to and I would always do it, even if I didn’t think they had a chance, because I truly believed in them. Sometimes, I think I was the only one that did. So, I would do everything I could for them. I’d make them fall in love with literature, at least for one year. But I wasn’t the same, after. After everything that happened and after the school thought it would be best to put me on leave. After I just never went back.
Now, I don’t even leave the house. Most of the day, I either wander through the rooms or lie on the couch and read. More like a wraith than an actual person. Nature has started to lose its color. That’s really the reason I moved out here. Nature has always been a place of healing for me. Whenever I got sick as a child, and the teas and herbs my mother would make me take didn’t work, she would haul me out into the woods. Sometimes this could take weeks of camping outside, sleeping with no tent or sleeping bag. Just the soft grass and in the morning, I would be soaked in dew. I also developed bad allergies, which going outside only made worse. That was when we spent the most time camping. It took time, but I became good at hiding my sicknesses, mainly so we could actually go back home, hopefully before the school called.
I thought about trying to find a job at one of the local high schools. That way I would have a reason to get out of the house and get my mind on something else. I never tried, though.
May looked out at the treeline from the front porch steps. A flash of color cut through the tall wildgrass. May walked out into the yard to see what it was. A monarch butterfly perched atop the yellow flower of a dandelion. It stretched its orange and black wings as it sat there. All the world to go, but it didn’t care.
“Hey there, little fella. Hold on a second, I’ll be right back.”
May went back to the house and grabbed a mason jar. She slowly placed the jar down around it. The butterfly flew upwards. Its wings tapped the glass as quietly as a whisper. She wasn’t sure if there was a sound to it or if her brain made it up when she saw it hit the jar. She slid her hand and screwed the lid back on.
“Don’t worry, little guy. Everything’s gonna be alright.”
May sat the jar on the dining table. It seemed cruel to collapse its world to something small enough she couldn’t fit her fist into. It looked like it agreed with her. She never tried to read the emotions of a butterfly before, but this one looked scared and angry to her. Or maybe only one of those. It crashed headfirst into the glass going away from her. Maybe it was confused as well, not knowing why it could see its freedom but not get it. It couldn’t have any idea what it was that held it, unless butterflies were smarter than she thought they were.
“Where were you going? Clearly not here I assume. What’s here for you? I admit it’s a beautiful yard out there. If I were in your shoes, or whatever metaphor works for you, I’d stop here for a break too. Do you even have feet? Looks like only legs to me. Bet you didn’t think you’d end up inside the house, though, right? I didn’t plan on it either. I haven’t captured bugs since I was like 7. Back then it was lightning bugs. My mother and I would take a jar like this out into the woods.” She thumped the side of the jar and the butterfly fluttered wildly around it like a cyclone. “Sorry. We wouldn’t bring a flashlight or anything. By the time we were finished, we had enough to light our way back. It was like a cheap lantern because they would only flash sporadically. They do it in sync with each other. Did you know that? Have you seen a lightning bug before? Get enough of them together and it’s like nature’s lightshow. I think they were all dead by the morning though. Cruel way to go, I think. We never poked holes in the lid. My mother wanted to keep using the jar, so in the morning she would dump the bugs in the trash and wash it. I tried to keep track of what mason jar we used, because no one wants to drink out of something that’s had bugs in it. No offense.”
May went into the living room and grabbed her needlepoint supplies from the couch, a canvas and the pincushion. She laid these out on the table. The butterfly stood at the bottom of the jar, its antenna jerking around. She unscrewed the lid and stuck two fingers in. It took a moment, but the butterfly eventually flew up and landed on her fingernail. Its nonfeet tickled her cuticle. Carefully, she pulled it from the jar and grabbed its body with her other hand, daintily so as not to harm it. Its wings relaxed themselves, drooping down as far as they would go. May placed the butterfly down on the canvas. She kept hold of it and picked a needle from the pincushion. There was a brittle crisp as the needle went through the butterfly’s wing. Its entire body jerked. May flattened the other wing with her pinky finger and slid another needle into it. It looked like it was crucified.
Nabokov is what got me interested in butterflies. The image of him as an old man out in a field with his net struck me first. I could never do more than just watch butterflies though. The whole idea of pinning them down seemed obscene to me. Why take something beautiful like that and destroy it? It’s the same way I feel about flowers. Isn’t the best thing you could do to a rose is let it grow? If we had done that instead of taking shears into the bush to mutilate it, then they probably wouldn’t have grown thorns and a rose without thorns would seem so much more beautiful. It’s the reason I never liked anyone bringing me flowers. Someone I was with would pull them from the ground when we walked together outside and every time I’d ask him why he didn’t just leave it in the ground. But I also don’t like the artificiality of fake plants. Again what’s the point?
I wasn’t myself when I went back to the classroom. I felt like a husk of myself, a fake, trying to navigate my way through the day. My class consisted of me handing out a reading quiz and sitting in my chair staring at the back of the classroom. I think my students knew something wasn’t right, but they didn’t know how to deal with it, so they completed their quizzes and left. I remember how quiet it was. The sound of a pencil falling onto the tile floor sounded like an artillery shell landing in the center of the classroom. During my planning period, I shut the lights off and put my head down on my desk. When I raised up, there was a butterfly, a buttery yellow one, perched on the end of one of my pens. It flew in through one of the open windows, which I didn’t realize was open. It must have been open all day since I know I didn’t open it and I don’t remember any of the students going to the windows. I don’t why I did it, I wasn’t thinking at all, but I gently picked up the pen and carried the butterfly over to the bulletin board by the door. There were only thumbtacks left on it. I took one and jammed it into one of the butterfly’s wings. It flapped its other wing, which only caused the tack to dig a trench through it. One of the students from my next class came in early. I guess he thought I wasn’t there and flipped on the lights, only to see me staring at the butterfly as it struggled to break free. It did and fell to the floor with its broken wing. The student left and got the vice principal.
May paced around the kitchen. She traced the edge of the marble island with her fingertips. When the tip of her index finger hit the edge, she unconsciously jerked her hand back. The pain seemed to echo through her hand. This was a nervous habit she picked up during college. When she couldn’t think of what to write for an essay, she would pace back and forth across her tiny dorm room to the annoyance of her roommate. It helped get her thoughts in order and after about ten minutes, she would sit back down at her computer and furiously type out a paragraph before going back to pacing. She had walked around the kitchen for 30 minutes. There were too many thoughts going around her head that it sounded like the school’s cafeteria during lunch. Too many voices together that made it sound like radio static and that nervous energy ran through her entire body. She tried reading on the couch but couldn’t focus on the page. She thought about pricking herself again, but the last wounds didn’t look so good. Her fingertip was slightly swollen and deep red. It hurt to touch. Red streaks wound through her skin around the stitches. It started to itch more as well. She avoided scratching it and only ran her fingers over the string like she would a guitar at a music store.
Pus started to seep out under the stitches. May grabbed a paper towel and delicately dabbed at the wound. Each time she touched the scab under the string, searing heat shot through her arm as if she’d just downed a whisky. After she threw the paper towel into the trash can, an idea came to her. She opened one of the kitchen drawers and dug through the loose silverware until she found what she was looking for. May grabbed the wooden handle and pulled the long, thin ice pick from the drawer.
They lobotomized Rosemary Kennedy because she was a free spirit. Thought it’d hurt the family’s reputation. Why else would they keep that a secret? At the time, a lobotomy was groundbreaking. Hey, let’s hammer a fucking needle into someone’s brain. That should fix them right up. It was meant to calm you down, which sounds insane. A needle tunneling into your skull and splitting the folds in your brain is basically like an acupuncture session. And of course, they did them on women most of the time. Can’t have the misses being hysterical. Gotta have an off switch on that.
I have wondered about it though. Wondered if going deep into the brain might unscramble everything. I’ve thought about performing one on myself. There’s no real way of doing it, at least I don’t think there is. Even though it could be the cure to all my problems. The calming sensation magnified to its fullest.
Noon. It seemed the perfect time. For once, May wasn’t anxious. There were no second thoughts about what she was going to do. It seemed right. A cure-all for her problems. Her mind was silent, except for the instructions she kept repeating to herself. One wrong move would turn out to be disastrous. One millimeter off would be the difference between brain dead and cured. May sat at the dining table, her tools in front of her. The ice pick and War and Peace, the thickest book she found. She didn’t need precision so much as surface area. She held her arms out in front of her. Not even a tremble. The conditions couldn’t get any better.
May picked up the ice pick and touched the tip to the corner of her eye. The cold metal felt like a solid eyedrop. She stared straight ahead through the glass wall to the edge of the woods. What little she saw of the ice pick was blurred. She picked up the book. It was nearly too heavy for her to lift with one arm and her arm shook. After taking a long, deep breath, everything was steady. She brought the book up to the end of the ice pick handle, gave it a light tap, and the tip slid under her eyelid. A tear came forth and rolled down her cheek. Blood welled into the corner of her eye. She tried to blink it away, but she couldn’t fully close her eye over the ice pick. It welled until it filled, and a bloody tear ran down to the corner of her mouth. She ran her tongue over her lips and tasted the salty, metallic blood. Her arm fully extended. She took a deep breath and held it.
May slammed the book into the ice pick.
The first night when I finally moved into the house, I decided to take a walk through the forest. Or it really wasn’t quite night yet. It was right before sunset. What photographers called the golden hour. Under the canopy of pine needles and maple leaves, it was more like dusk. I had moved everything into the house myself, carrying each cardboard box to the room it belonged, slicing the tape with a box cutter, and arranging everything. Every picture frame needed to be aligned, every trinket in its place. To finish the unpacking, I arranged my books on the coffee table. The last books I had taught to my senior English class. 1984, Pride and Prejudice, The Catcher in the Rye. A wide assortment, but the students enjoyed them. At least, they actually read them, which is good enough. I think having books out in a room makes it better. Maybe it just gives off an intelligent air or maybe it’s nostalgic for me. My mother used to have towers of old dusty books in the corners of each room. I never saw her reading one and she yelled at me to “Put it back!” whenever I grabbed one. I got good at sneaking a book off, but sometimes I’d try taking one from the middle of the stack only for the rest to topple down and she would come in the room and glare at me.
Once the final book was in place, the urge came over me. I had been in the house all day and needed to break out. So I did. There was a path already beaten down through the forest from, I assume, the previous owners when they went for walks. I hadn’t eaten all day and when I reached the path, I started to feel it. My empty stomach growled. Before going into the tree line, I stopped and watched a ladybug crawl across the yellow face of a dandelion. The forest was beautiful. Shafts of golden sunlight slashing through the leaves, God rays are what my mother used to call them. Birdsong and cicadas playing me along. A groundhog scurried across the path away from me.
When it finally started to get dark, I turned to go back to the house. Beside the path, something caught my attention.
A baby robin had fallen from its nest. It was laying on the ground, one wing twisted around behind its body, on its back with its feet in the air.
Trevor Patterson is a first-year MFA student in fiction at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.
Photo Credit: Sandra Hosking is a photographer and writer based in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in West Texas Review, 3 Elements Review, Edify Fiction, Red Ogre Review, and more. She holds M.F.A. degrees in theatre and creative writing.
L'Esprit Literary Review 