WILLODEAN (THE CUPITOR CHRONICLES Book 1) (31 page)

The memories were
almost more than I could take.  When I came back to myself, I snapped.  The little girl screamed inside my head
impaling me with her vicious cy
cle of cries.  Frantic, I pick
up each picture of Branson
and began ripping them to shreds.  O
ne after another, bone by
bone, skin by skin, eye for eye. 
I enjoyed every minute of it. A barrage of pent up noises escaped my lips and I slipped into a state of catatonic scary. Resentment and anger
seethed.  I
stacked the bones of Branson in little piles in front of me, dismantled into sections, arms, legs, torso, ears, neck, and eyes. I enjoyed seeing him torn
to pieces. Just like he left me. 
Bastard.

When I thought the nightmare was over—th
e universe sought to torture me more.  In worse ways than this. 
I stood up to get a trash can and my eyes caught a
glimpse of the demon hanging in my closet like limp moss from a tree limb.  Seeing i
t re-surged a v
iolent memory. The jacket, a demon in disguise hung on a hanger at the end of my closet, pressed against the pine wall, all snug and tight.  Just l
ike Branson used to fit with me. 
Spooning on the couch or under the covers.
 My mind
drifts and touches dark places.  My second skin crawls.  I charge across the floor and jerk the
demon off its hang. 
I am a reactionary.
 
Over-reactor.
 

The next thing I know, I’m standing in front of the mirror wearing the gross, filthy green demon.
Why I had to put the jacket on, I don’t know.  It was quick, over and done. 
Maybe to see if Branson still fit me, as sick and twisted as it sounded.
It was true. 
A part of me wanted him back. 
Badly.
 
Achingly.
 The part of me that liked being wrapped in demons. Another part of me craved the familiar, uncomfortable comfort that was us, even if it was bad.
Attention is attention no matter what form it takes, at least it’s not alone.  The girl I see in the mirror, the grown woman’s reflection fading in and out, girl to woman, woman to girl—is the one I
don’t understand, the girl I hate, the sad little girl who is drawn to dark things. The girl who used to be drawn to light, moon and stars, is drawn to the black beyond the black, the dark way past the lesser light and I don’t know
why. 
 

The jacket demon was military green, long sleeved with brass buckles and deep pockets. Branson ga
ve it to me our first Christmas together. 
I gifted
him his favorite cologne.  While he was splashing it on, I took off all my clothes, except my panties and put the jacket on.  We made love in front of the tree, lights twinkling in the deep of night. 
The jacket still smells like that night, cologne, carpet,
sex, pine scented trees.  It makes me long for his touch, his kiss, the good times we had.  I try to keep the good ones so they’ll override the bad but it’s off balance.  It doesn’t stop me from feeling. 
Just one more touch. Just one more smell. Just one more day with him, the way it used to be. When it was good. Because when it was good, it was really, really good.
I gasp remembering. 
But when it was bad—it was demon bad.
 A warm spring pools up between my legs and a need overtakes me. I claw at my skin, hungry, a touch starved addict craving a body to fill its desires, its outstanding debts, its sweet revenge. I lose myself in twisted thoughts, wrapped in a green jacket, trapped in
a past that will not release me as if I am again, wrapped in demons. 
The brass buckle dangles and rubs against my stomach. It’s cold and brings me back to the stark reality of my life.
What are you doing Willodean?
 The mirror reflection that is me, speaks and gives me a stern look. “Take off that damn jacket. Burn the sumbitch right now. What the hellfire has gotten into you anyway?
Gawd! After all he done to you and you’d go back? 
You’ve come too far to lose it now. Snap
out of it. Get a grip girlfriend.  Get a grip.”

“Okay, okay.” I take off the jacket
but the demon doesn’t hush.  His delicate voice, a chime that breaks me, a
simple jingle, a jangle, a lost earring or perhaps a few coins. I was notorious for misplacing things. Last week I found a gold peace sign inside a pair of blue jeans and a ticket
stub from a Sammy Hagar concert.  Before that, a
few Michelob beer caps and a five dollar bill inside a suede hippie vest. I haven’t drank Michelob in years. I swear, from the look of things, my life is unclaimed and sitting in a lost and found box somewhere. 
Dingle, dangle, cling, clang.
 I long to silence the green demon so I reach my hand inside the pocket and pull out the lost something or another. My heart thuds. My eyes grow wild and
fall to the floor.  T
wo nickels and four years
of my life sit in the palm of my hand like hatched baby demons I snatched out of the nest. 
The gold wedding band burns my skin until the fires of deceit crackle and sizzle. I feel as if I have just ripped out my own heart, with my bare hands and stare at it beating, one horrible
beat after another. 
Uncontainable tears flow. Each one unleashes a memory, good, bad, and ugly—all meshed together. I see reflections, warped and blended coming off the wedding band, a mirror to myself, the poor, sad, unlovable, broken Willodean.
A crumb of bitterness on my tongue takes me back to the day my life came undone. 

The
final divorce was over by months.  Days passed slow and horrid. S
igned, sealed, stamped and finalized, a declaration of war over, a cease fire signed by both parties.
The only thing I wasn’t doing was taking the ring off. 
It was my only attachment to the hopes and dreams I held secretly inside me. Without the ring—I was nothing. My life meant nothing. The ring was the only visual validation that I was of any importance at all. Certainly I was worth at least six hundred and forty-two dollars of 24 karat gold. Long after the papers were signed, I walked in a trance, dual realities not fully here and not fully there, 
not fully anywhere.
 In my colossal downfall, not willing to accept reality, I merely stuffed the ring out of sight, out of mind.

Pink elephant.
 I pretended it didn’t exist. I did the very thing 
seekers should not do. 
Seekers cannot deny their existence, their true namesake, regardless of what happens in their lives, because good and evil are part of the internal makeup that characterizes what a seeker is to become.
Without struggle, without war we would not know peace.  Every lesson of life is to teach us something about life, about ourselves. 
The
light and the lesser light both make up the substance of who a person is. 
Instead of facing the lesser light, and lighting a candle like Maw Sue did in her ceremonials, I stuffed the ring and all it represented inside the pocket of the demon, inside the closet, inside the room, inside the house, inside me. And just like pink elephants, when demons hide,
they grow. 
 

***

M
oth to flame. 
Our eyes slithered and collided across a crowded smoky bar room.
Since I didn’t burst into flames, I fell in love, or lust. 
I shouldn’t have been there to begin wi
th. 
I wasn’t able to sit still so
I roamed, searched and sought after a man to love me, someone I could marry, spend the rest of my life with. 
Bra
nson was just there, and seemed to lodge his way into the fit.  He was life of the party.  He
held a beer in one hand, cigarette in
another and danced on tables.  He was the center of his own attention.  He didn’t seem to care what others thought and I found this utterly attractive since I lived my whole life based on other people’s opinions, likes and dislikes. 
He shimmed and sashayed on the dance floor, and grinded hi
s hips with a charismatic charm. 
He was ordinary, cute and outspoken
but his green cat eyes held a glint of bad boy and that is all it took for me to latch on.  It wasn’t his fault, really. 
 
The irresistible seductive charm I possessed captivated him.  The spell worked as I knew it would. 
Sex always worked.
 
The initial phase, at least.  Once I got men, I always waited for the spell to kick in and render to me what I wanted in return.  It never happened.  For Branson and
I, we were so
tangled in each other, it was hard to tell who was who. 
I don't recall having giddy feelings of love, or butterflies.
It was sex.
Period.
I was waiting on the magic to start but it never did. 
Looking back on it now—
Branson was the honest one.  He showed me
exactly
who he was.  We’d been dating a week and a few days.  One night at the club, by closing time, he was drunk off his ass, stumbling and barely able to walk.   I insisted he give me the keys to his truck and let me drive home.  He threw a wild eyed fit, cursed me out, called me a fucking bitch and told me to get in the goddamned car or he’d leave me standing in the parking lot at 2 AM.  I was scared to death.  For him, for us, for my life.  He already had two
DWI’
s in the last year.  I felt trapped.  I had no one to call for help.  So I got in the truck with him.  I sat in the middle next to him in case he passed out while driving, at least I’d be able to grab the steering wheel.  It was the scariest ten miles behind the wheel
of an automobile
I’ve ever had.  He went ditch to ditch, down back roads, taking out mailboxes, garbage cans, running stop signs, and red lights.  How the hell he found his driveway, I’ll never know.  There were times,
I’d try to grab the wheel and tel
l him to stay on the road but he’d go into a road rage.  He’d jerk my hand off, start cursing, and send the truck reeling off the road again.  All I could do was pray silently that we’d make it home alive.  The whole time, in my head, I’m thinking, if I get out of this alive, I am never coming back.  I am leaving his drunk ass tonight. 
When he pulled into the driveway,
I was in a drenching cold sweat.  Branson stumbled inside the house, knocking things down left and right.  I stood in the driveway beside my car still in shock.  A part of me wanting to run so fast away from him and never come back.  But the darker side of me, the confused torn, displaced Willodean needed to fix him.  He needed me.  And so I went inside, and stayed like I always did.  When I walked down the hallway, I saw his legs sprawled out on the carpet through a crack in the bedroom door.  He was passed out cold.  That night I laid between cold sheets processing it in my mind. 
He needs me, that’s all. He needs me to fix him.
Yeah.
That was it.
He’ll change soon.  He just needs someone to love him more. 
It sounds crazy to me now, but back t
hen, it made perfect sense. 
It’s all I knew. I needed to fix things.
And since I couldn’t fix me—I set my eyes on the next best thing. 
A man.
 

Only when I was alone, in the solitude of my own home, in my own bed, did the reality of his true character surface in
my dreams, and cause me pause.  I’d wake up remembering.  Unsure, unclear, confused.  It was a
cautionary split inside me, where two women emerged. One wanting love so bad she was willing to subject herself to anything to get it and the other waved bright red warning flags of danger and screamed, “You are enough. No. Back away. You are enough. Please don’t.” A rapid fire conversation took place inside the house, inside me while two women made a list of the pros and cons.
He drinks too much.
Straight up alcoholic.  He’s had two DWI’s and he almost killed you driving home drunk.  THAT should be enough right there.  But more so, h
e’s aloof, un-attentive, non-affectionate and brash. Can’t you see that? Normal conversation is limited as if neither of you speaks the same language. There is no intimacy. Sure, neither of us know what exactly that is, but this can’t be all there is. Is it? There is no underlying current of connection between us either. It’s just not there. But why am I so attracted to him? Am I attracted to him? It’s not the sex, even though the sex is good, I still feel like an object of possession, a trinket to play, an object of satisfaction and lust. When it’s done—it’s done. There
is not an ounce of love. Not that I’d know what love is…could I be wrong? Is it me? His temper is borderline hostility. Plus, he’s controlling as if he owned me. He has no relationship with his mother. Of course, I can’t talk—I don’t have a relationship with my mother either.
Uggghhh.  This is so hard.  Why am I doing this?  I feel as if I have to chase Branson constantly, just to keep him, you know?  Why is that?  Because he’s unavailable to you, don’t you see that?  It drives me crazy, I know that much.  I feel second.  Not first.  I feel I must be more to please him. 
I am not enough. I must fix this. I must fix him.
Yes….that’s what I shall do.