Disparition
On the day of my departure, I had been happy. It was hot and dry, as many days this time of year tend to be, but I prefer it hot and dry. The summer I became absent was identical to all previous summers—warm breezes and pop-up showers, family gatherings and backyard picnics, day trips, and adventurous vacations. And yet, it was the difference on this late summer day, today, now, which ended it all. A family broken, a son removed, a brother stung and washed away.
It began as a whisper on the ends of my toes. A spider’s breath. A dandelion’s puff on a late spring morning dragged by a slight breeze. I could feel it, barely, I’d say, only because I’d never experienced anything like it before. Not even as a boy, standing barefoot in my grandfather’s field, baseball mitt on one hand, an apple in the other. Centerfield could be a lonely place sometimes. No, I didn’t feel it then or any other time my toes slipped through the green blades of summer.
But it occurred today. Some parts of the lawn were starting to turn—a tan, a beige, a light brown—this is how things are in late August. Bare feet were almost de rigueur because of the heat and dryness of the day, just as my linen shorts and Tom Ford sunglasses became my uniform. The whisper on my toes was simply another component of summer. But it wasn’t a normal part of any summer I had ever known, and its alien presence suggested an assassination of sorts.
By the time it reached my thigh, I knew I was in trouble. It wasn’t painful. There was no blood. No broken skin, in fact. But it was a distressing feeling, not only because of the physical sensation but also the knowledge of its progression in such a short time. Its movement. Its tactile advancement. Its goal.
I put my two-year-old niece down on the grass, hoping/knowing it wouldn’t spread to her. It advanced past my hip and occupied the soft tissue of my abdomen. It wasn’t moving as, say, a slug across a sidewalk. It was expanding, like a fungus or a blood stain on a carpet. I could still feel it on my toes, my calf, my thigh. She began to cry, and her mother, my sister, came to retrieve her, comfort her.
I had been describing the way tree branches grew away from the main trunk, as if they were tentacles or a slow-motion lightning strike. Zigzaggedy. My niece had laughed at the Seussian word, so I said it again. She didn’t know or care about trees or lightning strikes; she was two, and she simply liked funny words. But now she was away from me, swathed in cuddles and tickles or some other calming mechanism mothers administer. And I was left standing frozen in the summer grass.
As it meandered its way up my side and across my chest, I recalled a time when I was in the third grade. My teacher came over to my desk to help me with a math problem. She was wearing a dress with a zigzaggedy pattern. You couldn’t see it when she was at the blackboard, but up close, it was distinct and undeniable. She had her hand on my shoulder and spoke with a soft, breathy voice. I stared at the zigzags inches away from my eyes, and I experienced a frisson of intense rapture.
The sensation was similar now, but there was also an element of deep dread. A trepidation so profound my eyesight began to fog over as if I were viewing the world through silvery gossamer.
This will destroy me, I thought/knew.
Somebody I was unable to recognize, was asking if I was all right. I don’t recall how I was able to hear them; they must have been many miles away. I heard laughter from another country, conversations from a different planet. Sounds were becoming colors. I was aware of its weight—not heavy, not light. I sensed its movement across my shoulders but also encircling my neck. It maneuvered with the overt randomness of a stain. An inkblot on dry, cotton fabric. The train in the distance was purple; my sister’s voice was aquamarine. Her features formed a luminescent glow, like when you stare at your face in the bathroom mirror and suddenly switch off the light. My niece continued crying, but she was on Saturn, and I was on Triton. The slight breeze smelled of motor oil and pantry dust.
My fingers began to tighten and relax, tighten and relax, as it split in two and snaked its way down my arms. My third-grade teacher became one long, continuous zigzag, stretching across eons. My older brothers, shouting for me to get out of the water, sounded fresh in my ears, as if the warnings were just now broadcast and not from twenty years ago. The jellyfish will sting! My hands tightened around a baseball bat, but I held no such thing. Somehow, it oozed between my fingers, as if it were made of putty.
I recalled a memory of a snake attacking and killing a neighborhood cat in our backyard, long ago. Nobody else in my family shares this memory, but it remains with me, even to this day. The snake stalked the cat, slipping through the grass like a liquid sword. The cat let the snake circumnavigate its small body once, twice, three times, as if hypnotized by the flickering, black tongue. Constriction was speedy and efficient, barely a mew, and a surprised eye was ejected from its socket. This memory was a reality for many years, but now I find it difficult to believe its torturous implications.
Somebody clearly summoned the authorities because my father was now barking my name with the concern of a tiger and the anger of an evangelical. His words became a fine mist as they left his canyon mouth, tiny, golden droplets forming massive galaxies and solar systems, spinning with both ruled dominion and blind abandon. His voice, striped yellow and magenta, rainbowed its way through my head and exploded on the other side into hundreds of two-headed microbats. I imagined/knew I was nearing the end of a brief trip, a product of a million years of planning.
As the leading prong of it progressed up my neck, the remainder of it continued spreading outward, seeking, staining, proclaiming new territory. I fashioned a whip of jungle fibers to do battle with it, but no such weapon currently exists in the world of barbecue smoke and tin pan home plates, of little nieces and chalk-drawn sidewalks, of sweaty lemonade glasses and sun-bleached Frisbees.
I began losing my thoughts, my intellect, as the ancient infestor skulked down my back, whispering obscenities that tasted of rancid butter. My skin was paper, and the sensation of its carpenter’s plane dragging, scraping, invading was a threat to be reckoned with, an ultimatum to be heeded. The pain came with an urgency, like an attacking grizzly on a careless hiker. The sting on the back of my neck was merely a compass point to guide the arc of razor-toothed fire ants to stoke their primal furnace of torment.
I wondered how I was still standing, how I even remained intact. But I guessed/knew I was no longer on a suburban lawn, in a familiar backyard, on a loitering weekend of leisure and domestic comfort. I was floating in a timeless atmosphere, a black orbit of poison, a disintegration of being. My father’s receding echo was a curtain of unimportance, a bellowing of ignored rebukes. Get out of the water! My limbs seemed to be no longer attached, and yet, I touched my chest with flaming fingers to confirm if my heart was still functioning.
A souvenir of my past, my last perhaps, awoken by the agony, uninvited, shone like a curious flashlight onto unsuspecting creeper worms, their protective stone upturned. I had been separated from my siblings and parents on a woodland trek, running ahead with youthful exuberance and unproven navigational skills. Three hours later, in the early evening shadows, alone and exhausted, I found the remains of a small child, essentially a skeleton and some hair with a ragged vestige of desiccated flesh. Three hours after that, rescue personnel found me sleeping next to it. For the next several weeks, I had nightmares that the poor, forgotten child was with me in my bed, looking for its evaporated skin.
As the tendrils of it wormed their way up the back of my head, I became aware of the sirens. Someone had called the calvary, my sister perhaps, informing them of my impending doom. The wails of the Samaritans’ transport were violet and black ribbons, sharp as scalpels, tearing the clouds, revealing opals of dried tears. They will not be the rescuers of my youth. They were bricks of stupidity, stones of ineptitude, being thrown at my glass mansion. How could they help me with their dusty wash rags in their jump bags? My family’s panic was a calliope being played by some ogre of dubious talent. Their concerns were soap bubbles ascending. Never popping, but never landing.
It seemed as if it had been decades since I held my niece, explaining tree branches, pointing at blue jays and cardinals, saying funny-sounding words to elicit the young child’s giggle. Years passed since I perceived my father’s spittle-strewn tirade through a veil of feathery encumbrance. What’s the matter with you?! Didn’t he understand? I wanted to shout back, I wanted to play centerfield again, I wanted my grandmother to ask me to retrieve the potato salad from the fridge, I wanted a daughter of my own, I wanted to break these carnivorous shackles, and…
The cartoon paramedics ran in slow motion, as if I were watching a football replay. They were late, centuries late. Delay of game, five-yard penalty. Their raspberry heads bobbing in the late summer sun, mimicking a pair of disorderly beach balls at a pop concert. Their black, steel-toed shoes gouging the lawn, sending chunks of unprepared soil into orbit. My charcoal-drawing family surrounded me, most standing facing me, some sitting on the grass carpet. Chocolate concerns directed at me, lemondrop tears falling, smearing illustrated faces. I was aware of these things even though my eyelids were tightly locked together; however, they were isolated images. Snapshots. My mind was a malfunctioning school projector stuck on a single frame of celluloid in a darkened classroom. The film was getting hot and was about to melt.
It made its way across the crown of my head and separated into several factions, spreading, dripping, scratching through my hair and skin, invisible to others I assumed/knew, but I perceived a glistering, palpable entity of ruthless devilry. A damnable euphoria of pain and pleasure. My life will no longer be limited to this settlement of structures and angles and protoplasm and digestion. My life will no longer be fueled by terrestrial viables or salacious intrusions. My life will no longer… be.
Memories are gone now; only the transcendental sense of forgetfulness and frustration remains, the psychic reorganization taking over the physical suffering. I was a zigzag of emotions: I am an angel, I will be returning to hell; I will possess everything, I must lose all; I shall fight to stay, I choose to follow. My former association with those of my corporeal kinship has expired. The function container that had brought me to the grassy terminus has completed its assignment and will be discarded without remorse, like a reptilian skin.
When it slid past my forehead and caressed my face, it was the most exhilarating feeling I’ve ever had.
