Four Legs and 2 Voices

Bonx stopped walking. I did the same. She was a few yards ahead of me and turned to face me. “Don’t talk about things like that.” She said to me.

“Besides,” she turned around and started walking again, further into the darkness of the graveyard. She outstretched her arms and spun like a dancer on the path. “It’s not so bad if you do this.” And she spun and walked around with her arms outstretched from her body like a small child would play airplane.

I did the same. And for a bit it did seem to help. Then my foot fell into a hole in the path, and I rolled my ankle. I dropped my arms to my side, and caught myself before I fell, but pain shot up my leg. I hurt. And I knew it had to be a spirit. One had gotten me.

“I’m hit! They’ve got me!” I cried out, but Bonx ignored me. She continued to twirl like a dancing child, light on her feet as she missed every bump and sinkhole in the path. She danced alone while I writhed in pain like the World Cup. I felt sharp knots in my stomach. My guts twisted and groaned. I doubled over from the cramps. I knew a spirit was inside me now. It was trying to take over. I began to sweat even more.

“Come on. We gotta go deeper.” Bonx said. She was drawing me further into the void of death. While a parasitic specter was digging into my guts. I turned around and noticed that I couldn’t see the road anymore. I sped up and caught up with my old girl, and I wanted to wrap my arms around in an embrace like a terrified child.

Once we had walked through the western woods of Massachusetts, years ago, minds wandering as we had hung close to each other, surrendering ourselves to the powers which tugged at our hearts and smiles. We didn’t acknowledge or understand, but didn’t scoff either, because weren’t we eternally happy in memories? Certain ones I could always pull and go back in them, there with her, in the woods smiling until my face hurt and grasping her fingers until our palms began to sweat.

Were we even the same people? I thought. It‘s like watching an old cartoon. Yellow and slow, the voices are unfamiliar and strangely discomforting.

For the last year, I had assumed that I had truly wanted to return to those moments. Had I even acknowledged healing? I wondered. It was beginning to occur to me that we had perhaps been truly different enough the whole time, especially evident when we were sick of pretending.

I was sweating to catch up with her. A strange girl who was somehow skinnier, filled with piercings and hardly interested in the mold of my old self. It was a polite relationship now. Completely formal, one which I did not deserve but was helpless to prevent. And now an ancient spirit had my body in its grasp, prepared to commandeer my vessel, recycle it, and use it at its whim. And this strange woman before me, who ran ahead of me in happiness while I staggered in terror, cared nothing about my plight.

Struggling to catch up with her as she ran further ahead, my tongue recognized the bitter taste of ugly thoughts inside of me. The rage was instantaneous, like a dark ooze of oil contaminating a placid, salty pool.

Who does she think she is? Leaving me behind? I growled to myself.

I began to jog into the warm air like an obese woman through crashing surf. Knees high, I swung for the fence of the graveyard with each step, careful to avoid twisting my throbbing ankle again. I followed her uphill, into a wad of dark trees.

The sun’s light was bleeding everything red and purple as I finally reached her on top of the dense hill. The shadows beneath the summer leaves were morphing darkness. I clutched at my intestines as we stood on top of the little rotating hill, Bonx marveling at the sky. I was losing interest. I had been doing that all summer--spending too much time marveling at the sky while I lost interest in everything beneath it.

Bonx muttered in amazement at everything. I wanted to get back home to die. A spirit had hijacked my vessel. I was going mad, I needed to get home to cleanse myself with water. And probably my Buddha statues. Someone way higher than me once said to picture the Buddha raining light down on to your body to ward off demonic possessions. I assumed those would exorcise the once I had summoned from the Satanic Bible when I was 13. Along with the specter which had forgotten to get off the wheel and hid in divets inside the cemetery. But firstly, I had to convince and ward off Bonx, another ghost from the past, which had forced me to try to stand upon the wheel for far too long.

“This is amazing.” Bonx said, somewhat breathlessly. It pitifully reminded me of having sex with her for the last time. In the city, I awoke one night and we wordlessly humped, under the pretense of being half asleep. By then, we had already known that our union was over. Epilogued.

We were at the crest of a hill in the early summer red. Shadows moved and danced among us like how the stars kaleidoscoped for the Hate Machine and I roughly 300 years ago. I had always pictured the reunion of myself and Bonx/Belle as a divine dissolution. But I am almost certain that it was worse than being lonely. I was tripping next to a skinny, long haired billboard which neonly proclaimed how nothing was the same. For ever from now on.

Bonx starred blankly into the morning sky. The fog was breaking apart. It’d be light soon. My mind began to clear and defend itself. Hours had passed, and it was metabolizing. I felt like I needed a bathroom and a notebook. Impatiently, I grabbed Bonx’s hand. She fought me off, but then I started to pull her away. I was done. In the past 3 months, I had wasted significant amounts of time in this cemetery under the influence of mediocrity. I had seen enough.

And worse of all, I wasn’t enlightened. Or scatter brained. But still frustrated. And hand in hand with a neon proclamation of chaos. Change. Unknown.

The two of us reached a wounded wire fence, rusted and limping along a border. On the other side, there was the church playground I had enjoyed with everyone I loved 300 years ago. That was gone forever now too. Just the fence now.

Bonx threw one sneaker into the fence and swung her thin legs over the top. No going back. She landed on the other side with a touch of grace. She turned and smiled at me through the rusted links. Her energy had always provided clutch athleticism. I thought, thinking of her drunkenly hitting me in the eye with a piece of orange fruit once.

The pressure was on. All living eyes in the cemetery were on me and my fence jumping skills. As a young shithead, having spent many days in Dedham Juvenile Court, I liked to believe that I could still jump fences if I was being chased, or infected with a ghost spirit.

I planted my foot and pulled myself to the top bar, emulating Bonx. I quickly realized I was a lot heavier than Bonx. And slower. Who knew spending hours wandering in an induced psychosis would get you out of shape.

Around the time that I should’ve been landing beside Bonx outside the cemetery, my shin tore through the wire links. Rusted shards of broken metal cut my into my pant legs. Shredding skin froze me, stupidly balanced with one leg on top of the collapsing fence, the other in the rusted bear trap of fence guts. I had enough time up there to see Bonx’s wide eyed amusement, my face probably a mask of horror.

I was perched like an animal on top of the border before I finally succumbed. My trapped leg ripped free with a horrible paper-tearing feeling and I fell over the top. I landed on the playground soil, made for little kids falling on their heads.

I stood, trying to retain some facet of pride. No such thing these days, I thought. Kill the ego, right ol’ boy? I brushed myself off, my hands going to my wounded leg. My hands brought back my wet pant legs torn, but I didn’t seem to be bleeding. I stood up straight to offer an explanation but instead I burped.

The spirit left me.

Shaken with my relief, I smiled in the bloody red of darkness, grateful the girl I once worshipped couldn’t see my dark eyeballs.