The earth opens up and swallows us whole, this is what i was thinking when i woke up this morning. The earth swallows us whole.
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Thomas wet the bed again. He has been fearful lately since his diagnosis. I'm scared too. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't want to know. I'm afraid. It seems like everything is falling apart. Nothing is normal anymore. There was an earthquake last week and that freaked Thomas out. I think he sees earthquakes as a sign of God's anger. I suppose he is looking for signs, looking for a message from god. i guess this comes from his upbringing. He was raised by a very religious family with fourteen brothers and sisters, some of them street preachers, all fire and brimstone.
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Thomas's brother Hyman, fearing God's wrath refused to speak or open his eyes for five years. he remained in bed until the darkness passed and God's praises entered again into his soul at least that's what Thomas said. He showed me a picture of Hyman curled up on a bed with his eyes closed tight. The photo always fascinated me; a bed with dirty white sheets, a wall marked with what looked like scratches, a grown man in a fetal position. I thought he must be retarded but Thomas said he wasn't. Thomas and Hyman shared a room together and apparently Hyman would get out of bed in the dead of the night, leave the house and come back before dawn. Nobody knew where he went, but sometimes he would come back with his clothes all torn and blody. They were afraid to follow him. They didn't want to know where he was going. They just prayed for him. They prayed for the evil to leave his body. Eventually Hyman started talking again and looking people in the eyes but still he would leave the house in the dead of night and come back before dawn.
Every now and then the Holy Ghost would visit their home and the whole house would be speaking in tongues. I can't imagine what that was like with everyone babbling and shaking and writhing. It sounded frightening to me but this is how Thomas was raised. The story that scared me the most was the one about the Evil Eye that lived in the wood paneling on the kitchen wall. The grandma would warn Thomas not to look at it. She said don't stare at it for it might transfix you by showing all the bad in the world foretold. "The eye sees all future evils to befall man." I asked Thomas if this were true, if he really believed that the house had an Evil Eye on the wall and he told me yes. he would catch glimpses of it, never looking into it directly. He didn't want to know his future.
Last night Thomas had nightmares and was trapped in his dreams. I get trapped in my dreams, but they're the type of dreams I have when I'm awake. It gets harder and harder to rouse Thomas. I had to kick him really hard. I watched him struggle to open his eyes. I could see the panicked movement of the pupils under the thin skin of his lids. Once I actually spread open his lids and was staring into his darting, vibrating brown eyes. He was somewhere else. I kept calling his name, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas... and nothing. That scared me. He seemed so far away. Later he told me he could hear my voice but that i was way down in a tube or pipe, which was bent and twisted and curved and wrapped around a void. I tried to picture what he meant but all I could think of was that there was blackness and I was at one end of a giant French horn like instrument and he was at the other. Last night he was tossing and turning, his moans woke me up. I actually watched Thomas wet himself. He seemed so tortured. Thomas told me that he had dreamed that a giant pair of scissors was chasing him. The scissors were bloody from cutting off his dick. I think the blood was his pee.
The Earth opens up and swallows us whole. This is what I was thinking when I woke up this morning. The earth swallows us whole. The earth opens up and swallows us whole. I keep saying this over and over like a mantra. The earth swallows us whole.
Two years ago when Thomas and I first got together we were living in a store in downtown Long Beach. The front was my painting studio and in the back we had a loft space built up next to the roof. There wasn't enough room to stand but it was comfortable for sleeping. One morning I was sleeping in late. I had a hangover, when a loud noise jolted me awake. My eyes opened to see a foot sticking through the roof above my head, a dirty white sneaker, no sock, a muscled black leg, and a section of green pant. I was staring at this shoe, this leg, thinking what the fuck was going on. Then the shoe/foot wiggled, pulled back up and out leaving a hole. I was looking up at the sky. I heard a commotion, some yelling, and footsteps running, then pop, pop, pop...pop. Gun shots.
(I can't remember what i did next. I think I hid downstairs in the studio for an hour not moving, totally silent. I remember deciding that I needed a drink so I crept over to the kitchen area and there was a 40 Ouncer left from the night before. i remember that I drank it real quick. Then I had some left over whiskey mixed with Dr. Pepper cause that's what i was drinking back then. I would have drunk cough syrup if I had some.)
Anyway, so I was feeling good, safe like how alcohol makes a person feel safe. I decided to peak out the front window. The place was swarming with police. Turns out that the bank around the corner had been robbed. The police had chased this dude through the transient hotel next door, up to the roof, where the guy jumped ( a three story drop to my roof). The police shot and killed him on my roof. I found this out cause my neighbor Victoria called. She had told me it was on the local news. she lived in the storefront next to mine (in fact we had adjoining toilets). She wanted to leave her place but was afraid. We were not supposed to be living there. We made a plan for me to come out first and then knock on her door. I got paranoid that if the police found me there that they would think i was part of the robbery. I was drunk and my thinking wasn't flying right. When i opened the door i startled the police that were leaning against the window. They jumped to attention. I said drunkenly, "I don't know anything. I just saw a shoe, that's all. Just a shoe, no money came down the hole. I don't have any money." I held my hands up as if I was waiting for them to shout Freeze. The cops looked at me crazy. I told them that I lived there. "I am an artist," I proclaimed, as if saying that would explain everything. I went over to Victoria's storefront and knocked on her door, meanwhile telling the police in a rather over explanatory way that my friend lives next door and that she is a school teacher. The door opened and Vicky came out. She didn't look like a schoolteacher. She looked kind of crazed with her wild unruly dread locks. She was wearing a black baby doll dress and black thigh high go-go boots. She was stick thin. she eyed the police dog as i escorted her to her car (later she told me that she had a couple of joints stuffed in her bra). She drove me to the store and bought me a case of beer.
Thomas came home at dusk. I told him about all the excitement. I explained how the bank robber's body had been on the roof and that they removed him an hour before he got home. This really disturbed Thomas. He said it was a bad omen. That the man's soul would be trapped forever in the spot where he passed or that a soul in anguish might even attach itself to the living so as to try to find God's grace. This freaked me out and made me sad. I had been obsessing about the bank robber all day. I told Thomas that we needed to make a shrine for him. I was really drunk. I grabbed the candle and the rest of the beer and took Thomas outside to go to the roof, accessing it from the building next door. On the roof we found a dry pool of blood. It seemed like such a small amount for a life gone. I showed Thomas the hole where the foot came through the roof.
I kept obsessing about the bank robber. What would have happened if I had grabbed the bank robber's leg and held on tight? I didn't tell Thomas that i had jacked off earlier while thinking about the bank robber. I didn't tell him that I imagined pulling the robber down through the roof, pulling him towards me so he wouldn't die. I'm afraid of death. I'm afraid of being left alone. I fantasized about the bank robber holding me from behind, kissing my neck, and fucking me, making me feel safe. I didn't tell him any of this. I get trapped in my dreams sometimes. I dream when I'm awake. I looked at the dried pool of blood. I told Thomas I loved him.
We lit the candle and drank the rest of the beer. Thomas held me as we watched the sun set. It got dark and i could see a few stars in the sky blinking at us like eyes.
Somewhere back east, in a rundown house, a grandma stares into an Evil Eye that lives on a paneled wall in her kitchen. She watches the earth crack open and sees a man falling in and disappearing. She is transfixed by what she sees but doesn't say a word as her grandson passes her by on his way out the door. She doesn't want to tell him his future.