I'M NOT DEAD: The Journals of Charles Dudley Vol.1 (19 page)

I reached for Jane’s hand as vines from the left of us snared her by the legs and dragged her back toward the bottom of the steps away from me.

I pulled the utility knife from my belt to cut her free, but the vines responded by picking up a large chunk of concrete and striking me, sending me back down the rocky stairway with her.

When the back of my head finally stopped bouncing off the steps and reached the bottom, the vines had Jane hoisted high and upside down, nearly consuming her as they rapidly wrapped and twisted around her like a cocoon. They shook and swung her like a fist full of hot dice. The vines slammed Jane’s body into a tree and spit her limp body back out at my feet as I lunged to catch her.

Slowly retracting, the sinuous vines opened a passage leading back to the meadow. I guess that was their way of allowing us to leave–that was nature’s way of telling us that we were not welcomed there anymore.
Here, take your shit, and never come back, human
.

Happy to oblige, I picked Jane’s motionless body up and carried her back out onto the lawn where I laid her down as far away from the trees as I could get. I worried she was dead.

Bryce did warn us about the plants back at the commune, but I never thought I’d get my ass kicked by a gang of oak trees and a bush.

Jane was breathing, thank God. Her chest slowly rose and collapsed, and her breasts looked exquisite. Other than the abrasions on her arms and a possible concussion, she was okay.

I was hurting after that unmerciful beating I received on the stairs, so I sat for a minute with Jane to catch my breath…when a severed, decaying foot with the toes nearly gnawed off came tumbling my way.

What now? No more, please.

The odd foot sat there in the upright position in the grass with a bone sticking out from the top of it. My eyes raced every possible direction to see where it came from.

A moment later, a young, scrawny Deviant came galloping out from the trees tackling it like a dog fetching its chew toy in the park—Narghfff! Nom! Nom! Nom! The Deviant rolled around in the grass, chomping away, playfully tossing the foot in the air with its mouth. Jane and I went unnoticed. I slowly reached for my backpack, for the gun, trying not to make a stir when the Deviant spun its head and caught me in the act. It put its curious nose to the air while guarding his dead foot from me with his hands.

Act natural, Charlie.

The Deviant edged closer and grunted. “Eat?” he barked with a watchful, swirly blue and purple enthusiastic eye. He kindly offered to share his diseased riddled foot with me, but I declined as nicely as possible, trying not to offend him.

“Eat? Eat!” the Deviant continued to order me to take a bite from his foot.

“No, no eat, thanks, take your foot now and go away,” I said, still pulling the backpack out from under Jane’s unconscious body.

The friendly Deviant then tossed the foot into my lap anxiously waiting for me to throw it back. He waited.

I reluctantly looked down at the maggot-infested foot and tossed it back onto the grass, but not far enough, forcing the Deviant to come closer to retrieve it. He was curious about Jane, flaring his nostrils and grunting with a concerned look in his eyes.

“She’s okay. She’s okay, sleeping, see?” I said, shoving her even harder to wake up. The Deviant cocked his head like a dog sitting at attention making me feel beyond uncomfortable.

“You have a name, little buddy?” I asked my new jungle friend, wondering why I was entertaining this beast and for how long.

“Eat?”

Yes, you’ll be swallowing a fucking bullet when I get to my gun. Jane, wake up, you bitch.

His face became frozen with thoughts and he paused for a second.  His face slowly distorted like he had just eaten a lemon and then the belching began, then the jerking motioning of his body as he was getting ready to hurl and bend forward.

Oh God, he was going to throw up, I don’t want to know what’s in you, no, no, not here. In two violent thrusts, my friend let it all loose—one big pile of chunky regurgitation onto the blades of grass in front of me. Once vomited, he licked his lips, sighed with relief, and then started circling as if he was getting ready to let go of something else from the other end.

“Oh, come on, anything but that, man.  I don’t even like it when the dog does it, seriously, don’t do that,” I said, trying to reason with the creature as he squatted and pushed, smiling at me for approval. The harder he pushed, the wider he grinned.

Jane started to regain consciousness and raised her head, slowly opening her eyes. I couldn’t begin to describe the look on her face when she noticed the Deviant in mid-shit and grunting just four feet away from us, still pushing.

“We have to go,” I said to her as I helped her to her feet, but she was slow getting up because of her wounds and my leg had fallen asleep.

We hurried, limping across the field to find the nearest exit as the Deviant followed closely, sniffing at my ass.

“No, stay. Stay here!” I said firmly with my finger pointed to the ground. The young Deviant stood still looking like a depressed monkey on the verge of crying. “Don’t do that,” I said, “look, no, don’t do that, go back home to mama, run away now, okay?”

Do not look back Charlie, don’t look back you little Nancy
, I told myself.

STUCK ON YOU

Monday, February 3
^rd
(cont’d)

Jane and I took a short cut through the forest toward the baseball field, the shortest distance back home, where we slid and fell in a trail of smelly and sticky secretion.

“Oh my God, Charlie, I think I’m going to be sick. Is it on me?” Jane squirmed as she held her arms outward, covered in the webby, foul, thick snot.

I was pulling the elastic gunk from between my fingers and away from my mouth when we heard a strange gurgling coming from the woods just a few feet from us. We froze in our tracks and waited.

There was hardly any visibility in the park due to the intense density of the fog, but the rustling drew closer until the beast finally slithered and squirmed into view.

“Yeah, it’s all over you. You think you feel sick now, wait ‘til you see what’s swimming inside of that thing. It’s gross,” I said as it passed, referring to the collection of objects digesting inside of the slug’s jiggling chamber of organs.

I think I identified half a person, grass, and sludge from where I stood as the filmy, gelatinous creature sat there sucking up the muddy soil, twisting and contracting its body like a wet muscle.

It looked like a used condom wrapped around a flooded restroom at a truck stop; spouting and belching scum and globs of jelly from orifices located on its sides.

The slob had no eyes and made thick wet slurping suctioning sounds with its tentacles as they extended out in our direction from its head, inspecting us as we stepped back and continued over the squishy mire. The ground was slowly moving and churning beneath us.

I heard others. I think this thing had a family, and they were somewhere in the short distance on each side of us.

My brother and I used to keep worms and insects like these in jars when we were little and then burn them with our magnifying glass until they curled up into little balls of ash. I don’t think I have a jar big enough for this one.

We finally reached the baseball diamond beyond the woods where tall bottlenecked mounds of dirt and ditches populated the entire field. I just couldn’t believe my eyes….Giant fucking ant hills?!

This was my field, and now it’s nothing but giant fucking ant hills! It enraged me! “Those motherfuckers!”

“Are you crying?” Jane asked. “You’re crying.”

“These are man-tears, you can’t understand, it’s not like when you cry.”

No, she couldn’t understand.

The field was my youth. It was teenage Americana. It was summer romance. It was little league, it was baseball; it was hot dogs and hamburgers. It was EVERY THING a boy could ever want and now it was
gone
.

I lost my virginity in the dugout to Rosie Lee, I smoked my first joint in the bleachers, and I cracked bones on home plate to win three championships for the team. This was the last straw, YOU DON’T KILL BASEBALL. You don’t kill GLORY.

xxx

‘TIL DEATH DO US PART

Wednesday, February 5
^th
, 2014

The morning Morgan left I stood on the porch in mesmerizing disbelief as the movers hauled her boxes out of the house and into the moving truck. Everyone was playing it cool, trying not to wear our emotions on our sleeves.

Morgan had finally cut the cord, but I was in denial. “We need space, that’s all,” I told myself. “She’ll be back before you even know it, Charles.” “Denial ain’t a river in Egypt,” they say. No, it’s worse—it’s a sweeping tsunami of shit, and I’m drowning in it.

The girls looked so beautiful that morning. Kate was wearing a lemon yellow summer dress with matching hair twists, and Morgan wore tight fitted jeans with a low-cut
Rolling Stones
t-shirt that fell over her left shoulder.

“Why do you have to look so damn hot on the day you leave me?” I asked Morgan as she walked past me leaving behind a lingering trail of “Fuck You” vapors in the kitchen.

Morgan was wearing the perfume she used to put on that signaled we were going to have sex that night. It was my favorite. I called it the “Whore Spice.” We kept it underneath our bed in a sexual treasure chest along with other toys. Her wearing it used to indicate that we were going to have the kind of sex I liked to refer to as “naked cage fighting” with my wife.

This was Morgan’s big sendoff as she stood on her toes trying to reach the top shelf for something in the cupboard, revealing the tattoo of shamrocks on the small of her back, a Cancun tramp stamp, and extending her legs outward. She was playing dirty and my libido didn’t deserve this.

She was the only girl I ever knew who could twist a knot in the stem of a cherry with the tip of her tongue and punch a man out with a single shot.

I wanted to hold her, but Morgan hadn’t allowed me to touch her since the day she decided she wanted to leave. She would say, “No Charlie, we can’t, it will just confuse things and make it complicated,” while pushing me away.

There was nothing complicated about wanting to touch the woman I loved.

I didn’t know why she was leaving me. I understood why she wanted to leave, but I never thought she would actually do it. My mother never left my father and he’s twice the bastard I am.

She just lucked out and died. Divorce was taboo when I was growing up. Now everyone is divorcing at neck breaking speeds.

Our marriage was dangerously close to the edge, and she took the initiative to leave.

I didn’t agree with her method, but it was the best idea to leave me in my current state…the man-child’s mid-life crisis.

Morgan and I didn’t have the money for our dream wedding, and I refused to have her cop dad pay for it. Instead, we eloped when Morgan found out she was pregnant with Kate, and she moved into Nana’s house with me. We were young, rebellious, and over the moon for each other. 

We would lay on the hood of my T-bird, smoking pot and drinking beer by La Guardia airport’s runway, listening to Rock n’ Roll as the planes took off and landed. There’s nothing like making love to the roaring jets of a 747 as it takes off.

The movers finally removed the last box from the house, and it was time to say our goodbyes. All three of us stood on the porch in silence, fighting back the tears, as the truck drove off.

“Please tell me you’re coming back,” I said, as I let Morgan go.

“No. It has to be this way, Charlie, please understand that, and I promise to have Kate call you when we’re settled in, okay?”

I didn’t know what to say, we just stared each other until we embraced, kisses all around, possibly for the last time.

“I’m sorry,” I told her—damn, she smelled so good. I tried getting one last feel in before she left, but she firmly smacked me on the wrist.

“Don’t be a pig,” she said and kissed me goodbye on the cheek.

Morgan’s sister finally arrived to pick them up, and I held onto Kate, fighting back the tears—sucking back down whatever it was that wanted to come dripping out of me, but I was too proud to show it.

We waved until we were out of each other’s sights, and that was the very last time I saw Morgan and Kate before the fallout.

I turned and walked back into my cave. The house had nice acoustics now that it was half-empty. But now, the walls were too white, the floors were too bare, and the dining room was just an empty space you had to walk through to get to the kitchen. I was alone and lost.

So what do I do?—I drew all the shades closed, locked all my doors and indulged in a three-day bender for my thirty-fourth birthday. I just wanted to be alone— just me, myself, and I—‘til death do us part.

OVER MY DEAD BODY

Wednesday, February 5
^th
, (cont’d)

I stared at the cordless phone anticipating her call all day. I wouldn’t leave it out of my sight—until she called. She promised she would after they settled in, and it still hadn’t sunk in they were gone for good. I was nervous to speak to my wife.

I didn’t want to sound too desperate even though I had already drowned myself in the sauce, and by the way I slurred my words, I’m sure she knew I was up to no good.

“You’re gonna’ be fine, Charles,” she reassured me, and I cringed when she called me by my name.

It would be pretentious to think she would carry on calling me babe or hun’, but it stung like hell when she called me Charles. It was one of the coldest nails in the coffin when she did it.

“
Can-you-come-home-now-please
?” I wasn’t too proud to beg. The few hours I was alone in the house had already proven how much I depended on her and what a fuck up I could be.

I learned my lesson,
you win
, I frantically waved the white flag, but her answer was still a firm
NO
.