When I disagree with Mother verbally I have the immediate somatic flashback of having been struck quite hard on the temples and back of my head. My arms begin to have the pins and needles feeling of falling asleep. I remember seeing my pillow, without a case, blooming with the red of occasional blood from blunt force trauma. I found found solace in the red then, beauty in it. I would rest and recuperate and stare at the shapes and lines and create the most fantastic stories about what they meant. That my head was actually writing a story that did not need my hands or fingers, and only special others, that I now know were either schizophrenic hallucinations or hallucinations of C-PTSD , could read them.
Sometimes they were songs. Classical music flowing through my mind and dulling the ache into nothingness. Sometimes I livked the red, and decided to use this technique to remember why I had been struck in the first place. As my parents most common MO was to claim that none of it had ever happened.
That it was all in my head. Of course it was. I had the diagnosis of schizophrenia since the age of six, and that was the tell all reason for anything that had happened to me that was not of the norm.
And even if it weren’t, no one believed retards anyway, and any words to a trusted adult would land me in the looney bin for life.
So I enjoyed the red, it was like how Christ’s words in my Bible were red. So, they must be very special.
My head would begin to feel tight, and strange. I can only compare it to the rigormortis that happens to a dead body. My jaw would creak, and my eye lids would click. This gave me much distress, because I couldn’t sleep with the noise. But I couldn’t simply stop moving my jaw, couldn’t stop blinking. Murder had an idea, I would sleep and he would watch, keeping my right eye open and my left closed.
We saw this as sheer brilliance.
My other alter, Rape, disagreed. The eye left open would rot away without any moisture provided by blinking, he claimed.Rape caused my right hand to rise, and gently poked my open right eye which was already sticky with being held to the air for too long.
Quite the conundrum. Rape spoke, his voice always making me smile because it was so deep and unreal coming out of my little girl mouth, “I will blink, and I will move the jaw. I will hear that awful clicking. I do not sleep. Sleep well little girl.”
I clapped my hands together, quietly so no one in the house would hear and be aware of our secret plan. I smiled widely, Me, Rape and Murder. The three Musketeers.
“We must play a game,” I whispered to them. I lifted my hands and made them into serpents heads and mouths. “I will tell a story about what has happened to me and you two will tell me if it is real or imagination.”
The hands nodded.
We played this game often, well into the morning. At the end of which my hands would reach in and shower my face with gentle pecking kisses. I would whisper to them, the morning light creeping around the blanket hung against my window, “I love you Murder. I love you Rape. Goodnight.” They would respond out of my mouth quietly, first Murder, then Rape, “Goodnight crazy girl.”
I would drift off to sleep, listening to them in my mind talking about various subjects. How they had been in the war. Their accomplishments. Hell.
My two oldest alters were not guardian angels I had been told, like most children received. But retired gods from Hell, before Satan had ruled. That I needed those who dealt first hand with the wicked and tortured and not someone to bring me good tidings and messages from Lord God.
Brothers, vampires, the elder, Rape, a world eater, retired from Hell’s army. The younger, Murder, a Lord of Hell in times past. Both adult men in every way, Murder I had met at age 4, and Rape at age 5. I loved them dearly. My constant companions, bickering with each other, telling me stories, numbing parts of my body during abuse. Rape could even make my ears hear sound at a much lower level, and would do so often. He can still do this, and I am 31.
During particularly horrific abuse that lasted days, the two would create elaborate torture devices or dimensions of horror where my abusers were promised to be kept after they had passed.
“As long as you survive. As long as you are good. Sanity would be a blessing, but it isn’t a deal breaker my darling.” They would tell me, in my head, from my stuffed animals, from out of my own mouth. Their voices deep, and completely unlike my own.
I would dissacociate often. But there were times where I was simply hollow. Lost. Unafraid. Un-anything. Murder would slide over me like a warm, prickly blanket until my vision was black and I could only see Starlight. He would hum special songs for me. Never ceasing, even as he was pummeled, kicked, or a few of my teeth ripped out. His hum would become a gargle, but even, and without fear. I felt nothing but the warmth, and his hands moving around under my skin, squeezing and releasing my organs. Usually my heart, that at times would beat so fast that I feared it would burst from my chest and that I would die. He would laugh during the abuse, deep and unnatural sounding to my abusers, my captors, and they would speak in hushed tones worries that I was possessed by an evil entity. He would speak in tongues to them until they strapped a ball gag to my face. He would play possum with my body, my eyes unblinking and my breath so soft and shallow. They would fear I was dead, and make plans of my bodies removal and hiding. They would remove the ball gag and Murder would bellow Bible verses, that blood would reign from the skies, that the dead would rise and the dammed would rape them and theirs in an ever continuing cacophony of rage until all was left of them were hollow, terrified, elderly people. Shitting in their pants and choking on their tongues, begging for relief from the unimaginable terror.
My abusers had unmedicated schizophrenia and an amphetamine problem. So this effort by my alter worked to have them leave me be.
Even if only for a little while, a day or a week. Moved to a wooden cargo box to be locked in and told to pray for God. But there was not hitting in the Box, no kicking, no screaming, no pulling of my hair or ears, or touching of my body at all. Only the slow creeping of insanity upon my mind, and hour after hour of quiet conversation with my best friend Murder. And while at the time I was unable to will myself to be filled with rage, I took great solace in Murder’s plotting and planning of a great and violent revenge. Most often spoken in poems and rhymes, so that he could keep track easier he claimed. I would fade in and out, going to sleep Murder had called, and still calls it.
“There was water today. You defecated. You urinated. They placed the speakers in the Box and played head like a hole as loud as possible for what I believe to be a day. They claimed to have moved and left you. They returned. He committed the act of rape and attempted to convince me that I was a doll from China for that purpose and run on batteries. There was an electrical shock if I said no. I always say no my darling for I too can fall asleep, and then there is Rape, and if he falls asleep there is Everything, and we are legion. The mother begged for your release, as she has her head on straight again. Yet here we are my darling, and the end is near I think. But I will fall with you into the night, and you will not be cold, and you will not know because I will be here, in the Box and you will be in dreamland. I am still laughing, and our lips do even smile, and we do even hold hands, and we do even speak when you are at rest. And you say to me, “Murder, am I going to die?” And I say, “No.” And you say, “When I die, I want them to die.” And I say, “They will. And I am forever, I am 10078, I will Keep them.” And you say, giggling through cracked lips, eyes rolling around in your head, “I will Keep you.”
And you are so weak child, that I overtake you and wrap what are now my arms around your body, and I squeeze what is now my chest in a big hug and your breathing is fast and ragged, and your tongue clicks like a frightened little bird, like we had found and picked up. Who had died of fear. Then the other comes, the other you, the other little girl who is you but does not think, and does not dream, and does not waste precious breath on words and she hisses at me, “No.”
And then I have hope again. Because you are not Christ child, and should not smile and welcome Death with open arms. Should not come out of this box as a fearful, obedient puppy to be safe. What is sane, and what is rational is that you pull your teeth out at school and hide them for yourself because then they will stop playing the dentist game, and they will again worry, “Are we going too far?”
The teeth were to survive. It added months of peace to your life. You did not worry if you were going too far. There is no too far for you, other little girl.
And I, even I, who is with you always am astounded when you behave like everything is perfect when we are given to the grandparents for weekend visitation. They, the parents, puzzle over this. Out loud, outside of the box. I listen. I acquiesce to this, “No,” of yours, and we will wait, and I will revel in the fact that I, my darling, get to spend time with who you really are: A special and disturbed little girl, who needs a blinker, and a smiler, or she will dry up like a prune.”
He pauses, his voice filling my head as I fade out again. “They told me my smile was creepy and that I do not blink. I am unsafe for the little brother. I will do better to be you. But I am happy you can be yourself with me.”
Life of the 8. 