Craniumcellar

The Pact - Part One "The Discovery"

Steven blinked at his reflection that stared back at him from the impeccably polished mahogany dining table.

Was this his face?

Lines etched deep into pallid, sagging flesh; tired, weary eyes, tinged with uncertainty that searched back, needing an explanation but finding none.

He watched as his right arm extended in front of him; noticed his fist as it relaxed and dropped the die onto the gleaming table.  The sound of it clattering across the slick, smooth surface reverberated in his ears like thunder as it slowly came to stillness revealing a single black dot at its center.

He gave a shuddered sigh and reached for the large, long brass key that lay next to where the die had ceased its erratic dance. It felt cool and familiar in his hand..and he braced himself for the flood of memories that would surely come. But they did not. He turned the key over and over in his hand.

Dare he open the chest that rested at the head of the table?

His left hand clutched at his chest momentarily. His heart pounded in his throat as he watched his fingers on his left hand reach toward the rusted padlock that guarded the secrets contained within. A glint of light from the corner of the room caught his eye and his head snapped to the right to investigate.

He let out a captive breath when he realised that it was only a reflection of the flames from the fire burning in the hearth and bouncing off the world globe that sat on the desk in the corner of the room. The desk belonged to him. It was a great oak monstrostiy that had been his father's and his grandfather's before him. Like the table in front of him - and everything else in this cursed house.

How many hours had he wasted at this desk - in this house, dreaming instead of doing? Instead of living?

His meandering thoughts were once again interrupted by the grandfather clock out in the hall impatienting calling out the hour with a loud, insistant bong! bong! An insistant reminder that time was still slipping through his bony, arthritic fingers with a steady pace.

He turned his attention back to the chest on the table and the key in his sweaty palm. His tongue swept nervously across cracked, dry weathered lips..

Would the key fit the lock? Would it be able to open that long-forgotten rusty latch?

His scalp crawled suddenly as if someone had waived a wand and touched the wisps of sparse, unruly white strands of surviving hair on his balding head. He quickly brushed at his hair with his hand.

He looked again back to the chest. His hands were now trembling He had to open it. But it frightened him. Not because of what was in it. He was pretty sure he knew what was in it and that was bad enough. What scared him even more was what is was doing here now, when it had been buried along with its nightmare over fifty years ago.

Who have we become
To allow ourselves to be slowly consumed;
To watch a world we thought we knew
Vanish before our suffocating eyes?

Like rats in a maze trained to need the cheese
We are fed to want more.
Never now content
We welcome ourselves to the banquet
Only to find we have dined with the Viper.

The BB Gun by S.K. Waugh
All summer long I had been pestering my grandparents to buy me a BB gun. My grandfather had been teaching me how to shoot in the early evenings after work and on weekend mornings before the sun heated the day.
Finally, on my 10th birthday, in front of all my friends, I received the prized BB gun from my grandfather and a six-week-old boxer pup from my best friend, Buddy.
We were all sitting around the picnic table in my front yard, just about half-way through our hamburgers when my grandfather came up from behind me and put the BB gun down on the table.
My mouth dropped open as I stood up. I stared wide-eyed as it lay there gleaming in the noon-day sun; the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It looked exactly like the picture I had cut out of a magazine and put up on the wall of my room. J.D. whistled with approval and delight at the brand new Daisy BB gun.
“Ain’t she a beaute!” He ran his fingers lightly over the stock, then the barrel. “You got to take care of a gun like this’un”.
Although he was looking directly at the BB gun, his focus seemed far away. Then, from under the table, we heard a whimper. I peeked under the blue gingham tablecloth, and right under my feet was a puppy in a cardboard box. I looked up at J.D.
“He needs a good home an’ I know you’ll give him one” J.D. slapped me on the shoulder. “Happy birthday!”
I picked up the puppy from the box and he immediately began washing my face with his wide, flat tongue. This had been the second hot debate between me and my grandparents. My grandmother smiled at me from across the table.
“It’s ok, Lenny-Dean.” J.D. continued, “I checked with your grandma. She said it was ok.”
It’s Rocky”, I said, biting my lip hard, determined not to tear up.
I put him down and he began hopping around my feet, barking and pulling at my shoelaces. Looking back all those years ago now, it was one of the best birthdays I ever had.
Next morning, I was up before the roosters in the neighborhood, but not before my Grandpa. He was always up before the sun, sitting in the dark at the kitchen table with his cup of coffee in one hand and tinkering with his morning cigarette with the other. The stillness of the morning had an eerie quality. It almost dared you to break the thickness of its cool, shadowed silence.
I watched the bluish smoke rise from his cigarette as it snaked and curly-queued up. up toward the ceiling, casting a grayish haze above his head. The embers on its end glowed bright red with every deep breath he took. Sometimes, to amuse me, he would blow smoke rings and I would try to catch them with my finger extended, only to have them break apart into other ghostly shapes in the air.
My grandpa looked up from his coffee. “You better take that pup of yours out before your grandma gets up.” he said quietly, as he took a sip of the steaming coffee from his mug.
I dashed into my bedroom. My grandma had told me the night before that Rocky had to sleep outside, despite my pleas to let him sleep with me.
“Not till he’s older!” she’d said and made me put him back outside.
While in bed, waiting for sleep that wouldn’t come, I had heard a sound at the back door… a scratching noise, then a whimper and whine. It was Rocky. He had gotten out of his pen.
I unlatched the back door, brought him in and put him in bed with me He curled up contentedly and went right to sleep. I forgot all about him when I had gotten up that morning. I’d been too excited about “target practice” with my new BB gun. I hurried and let Rocky out the back door.
“How’d you know I had Rocky in?” I asked my grandpa, upon returning.
He cocked his head to one side, took a last draw on his Lucky Strike and mashed its remains in the purple, tin ashtray.
“Went out to his pen…he wasn’t in there. .He must’ve dug out underneath. I’ll fix that so he won’t be able to get out again. I figured when I didn’t see him out there that you let him in.” he said to me with a grin.
“Thanks, Grandpa.”
I marveled at the way nothing ever seemed to upset him like it did my grandmother. She had a temper that you didn’t want to set off. It was kind of like sitting on a stick of dynamite. If it went off, and you survived the initial blow you might get a chance to explain yourself. I always chose a distance greater than her arm’s length to ensure my survival.
“Well, c’mon,” Grandpa stood up and drained the last of his coffee mug. “Let’s get some target practice in b’fore your Grandma gets breakfast.” We both grabbed our BB guns and headed out the front door.
The sun was just peaking above the hills beyond the pasture, spilling it’s golden light over the fields. Beyond our worn, peeling white picket fence was a bench Grandpa had put it out there for us kids to sit on. Most of the time we used it on when we played baseball in the road.
The bench looked out onto the crude pavement which was barely big enough for two cars to pass. It sloped on either side ending in the dirt and had no curbs or sidewalks.
Directly across from the bench was a huge open pasture usually dotted with milk cows, but today, they were at the far end of the field. Soon tractors would be dropping water pipes to hook up the rainbirds that would drench the thirsty pasture with much needed water.
This meant we could move the bench across the road, next to the fence and set the cans on it to shoot at. . My grandpa reached into a burlap sack and pulled out several empty beer cans. Brew 102,Eastside Old Tap, Lucky Lager, Pabst Blue Ribbon…all popular Los Angeles area beers back in the 50’s when I was growing up.
The cans were thicker and heavier than the aluminum cans of today and they had to be opened with a can opener that punched two triangular holes at opposite edges of the tops of the cans. These empty cans were our targets and Grandpa lined them up.
Within minutes, I was hitting my targets, knocking the cans off their marks and lapping up the praise my grandfather was heaping on me.
The morning was alive with sounds. Off in the distance we could hear a tractor hauling a trailer full of water pipes at the far end of the pasture. The cows mooed in the distance. From all over our isolated little block of houses, we could hear the roosters crowing and the meadowlarks with their sweet, melodic voices mixed with crows fussing and calling to each other. My grandpa lined the cans up again. Then he looked up at the telephone wires where two little birds sat chortling back and forth at each other.
“Watch,” my grandpa suddenly said. He put his gun to his shoulder, barrel pointing upward, towards the birds on the phone wires, and pulled the trigger. One of the birds tumbled awkwardly from the wires and hit the ground.
“You got him!” I squealed. "You got him, Grandpa!” I thought he was the best shot in the world. The other little bird had fluttered above the wire, and landed a few feet away from where he’d been, but closer to us.
“Ok.” my grandpa said. “You get this one.”
I shouldered my gun, took aim and fired. The bird took off and flew away. I was disappointed and started to voice it when my grandpa said,
“SHhh.. here comes some more…take your time,” he whispered.
I re-cocked my gun and took aim again. Carefully, holding my breath, I squeezed the trigger. This time the BB found its mark and the bird tumbled from the wire, while the other birds took flight.
I was ecstatic. I was like a real hunter!! I took down my prey. My grandpa clapped me on the back.
“Couldn’t a’done better m’self”!” he said, his blue eyes squinting from the bright morning sunlight..
“Boy, howdy!” I heard J.D. call from his front gate. He came trotting over to us with his BB gun. “Good shot, real good!”
J.D. had seen me hit that bird! My reputation would edge up a notch. He was a full year older than me and getting praise from him was like acceptance into a club.
For the next hour we sat and took turns shooting the cans off the bench until Grandma called us in to breakfast. A little later in the morning, J.D. and I and some other kids in the neighborhood were going to go swimming down by the dam. A brand new BB gun, a new puppy and a swim in the river; summer was good. Nothing could ruin the day.
As I walked in to breakfast, I passed by the two birds my grandpa and I had shot. Their pudgy little bodies just lay there so still…Something about that scene was slipping into my thoughts like the remnants of a bad dream. Once past the front gate of my house, I could smell the bacon cooking and everything else faded quietly out of my head.
My grandma was the best cook in the world. And a breakfast like the one that sat before me was sure proof! There was bacon, ham, fried potatoes, eggs and fresh, hot biscuits with gravy. And this particular morning my grandma fixed me something special…coffee! It was really mostly warm milk with a little bit of coffee in it, but to me, I felt I was finally in the big leagues!
While we ate, I listened to my grandparent’s conversations. They talked about grandpa fixing a leak in the bathroom and running to Crawford’s to get some roof tacks to fix the shed roof. Grandma talked about finishing up some new curtains for the living room and there was a hint of a vacation to go fishing. Everything seemed so right, that at first, I didn’t even hear the screaming and screeching that suddenly erupted from our back yard.
Grandma was the first one up, with Grandpa right on her heels and me in tow. The screaming was monstrous! It filled the air with panic and pain beyond anything I had ever heard in my short life – and it wouldn’t stop. When we all reached the back yard fence, I saw what was making all the racket. What I saw also made my knees weak and I sank to the ground.
“Get him out!” I cried..I pleaded. “Get him out!”
There, under the bottom of the chain link fence, front half in J.D.’s yard, his back half still in my yard, was Rocky. He had tried to crawl under the fence and couldn’t fit and when he tried to pull himself back through, the open y-prongs on the bottom of the fence had embedded into the back of his neck. They were in so deep you could no longer see any of the y-shape.
Rocky was struggling and screaming and there was blood everywhere. I felt as though I was spinning. and that nothing was making sense to me.
“Get him out!!” I begged.
My grandma grabbed hold of me, “C’mon, let’s go inside, your Grandpa will take care of this.” She tried to steer me toward the house but I broke away from her sobbing wildly. By this time, J.D. and his family were at the back fence watching. Floyd, J.D.’s dad, came walking out calmly with a rifle resting over his right shoulder.
“Go on Lawrence, “he told my grandpa “We can’t let him suffer..better take Lenny Dean on in the house..I’ll take care of the pup.”
“NOOOOOO!!! I screamed, “Please..nooo!” I collapsed in a heap at my grandma’s feet. She raised me up and started walking me toward the house.
“Please don’t let them shoot my puppy, grandma, please” But I knew there was nothing I could do. Then I heard the loud BANG!” as the gun went off…and then the deafening, sickening quiet.
It was like a thick, heavy, suffocating blanket of silence. I struggled in my grandmother’s arms, and she finally let go. I stumbled to the ground then was up on my feet running back toward my puppy.
Rocky lay there so still and silent and I thought of the dead meadowlarks out by the telephone pole, lying there still and silent. Shot…just like Rocky.
I looked up at J.D.’s dad, a soft blur through my tears.
“You know I had to do it, Lenny,” he said softly.
I looked at my grandpa, then to my grandma..
“You can’t fix him…”I tried to choke back the tears. I looked over through the fence at J.D. He was biting his lower lip. Our eyes met for a brief moment, then I turned and walked slowly into the house.
I spent the rest of the afternoon in my room. I didn’t much feel like swimming. I watched from my bedroom window as my grandpa and Floyd freed Rocky’s limp, lifeless body from the fence. They put him in a cardboard box and Floyd carried it off. I never asked where they took him. They never told me. I was hurting so badly and missing him so much that I didn’t want to ask. But I never stopped wondering.
That night, as I lay in bed, I wondered about the bird I had shot with my BB gun. I thought about his small, still body, laying there cold and silent. I was missing Rocky and I knew that he, too was laying somewhere cold, still and silent.
Hot tears blurred my vision and spilled down my cheeks. I made no attempt to wipe them away. I felt an ache deep within my chest and stomach that I had never felt before. It was an emptiness I could not describe at such a young age. I could only feel it. And somehow I knew that morning would not be able to wash this pain away.
Outside my window I heard an owl cry out, I heard the night-sounds of the crickets and bullfrogs. I pulled the covers up around my neck, trying to keep the emptiness away and I began to shiver even though the August night air was still warm.
As the moonlight filtered softly into my room, it cast shadows as it tumbled between branch and leaf of the huge Elm just outside my window. I caught sight of my BB gun on the desk, its barrel glistening in that soft silvery light. I turned my face away as the overwhelming sadness closed my throat once again. I shut my eyes so tight that my cheeks began to ache. I buried my face in my pillow with the intolerable realization that I would never hold my puppy again The hurt washed over me, forcing deep, convulsive sobs. My heart was breaking…
As I cried myself to sleep, I knew that the rooster would crow in the morning. My grandfather would get up and sit in the dark, drinking his coffee and smoking his cigarettes. My grandmother would cook breakfast like she always did. And the meadowlarks would once again call happily to one another across the fields in celebration of the new day. But the way I felt inside about these things were forever changed and that anguished feeling would always return to haunt me whenever I heard the meadowlarks sing.

Benny leaves the safety and comfort of his bathtub lured by the call of adventure and the desire to find his childhood buddy, Rubber Ducky.

When Mama Got Married Part 2

My mother’s wedding picture always sat in on top of the cabinet at the bottom of the stairs. It was the first thing you would see when you walked through the front door of the house I spent most of my youth growing up in, though I will never consider it my home.

That was taken from me when my mother got married when I was just four years old and I was reminded of that fact consciously or subconsciously anytime I entered the house through that front door. I was also reminded each night when I went up to bed as I had to pass right by it on the way to my room.

No one told me that I would be ripped away from the only parents I ever knew – my grandparents. But I remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach as I hid under the table that held my mother’s wedding cake. I can only describe it as a bad feeling. It made me feel bad. , lonely

I screamed and cried and begged and pleaded with my grandparents not to let then take me away. Away from everything that was safe and warm and right. I cried so hard that I was gasping for breath – my body trembling as my step dad pulled me forcefully away from my grandfather’s grasp.

“Dorothy, for god’s sake leave her with us..You have your baby..” The tears were streaming down my grandmother’s cheeks.
What she said was true..my mother was pregnant with my brother when she got married.
My stepfather butted in – a pattern he would continue all his life.

“She is coming with us. She is Dorothy’s baby, not yours!” His words were harsh and cold. And I found myself clawing at the back window of his 49 Mercury as we drove away from the only place I had ever known as home. The only place that is still home all these years later.

It would be 6 months before I was allowed to see my grandparents again. My grandmother would later tell me that it was the only time she ever saw my grandfather cry like a baby.

I was used to having my grandmother read to me every night. After my bath, we would lie down on my grandparent’s big, soft bed with all its pillows and quilts and she would read to me from a stack of children’s books she had bought just for me. We would look at the pictures and giggle and laugh. She would try to skip over parts but I was too smart –
“Uh-uh, you forgot this and this...” I knew them all by heart.
In the mornings when my grandpa was home, I would sit with him out on the front porch as he smoked and had his morning coffee. I would chatter his ears off and he would laugh and smile.

Other mornings, when my grandfather would leave for work when it was still dark, I would crawl in bed with my grandma and he would kiss us both goodbye as he headed out the door. Once the sun would peak up over the hill and spill its golden rays across the pastures and fields that surrounded our little isolated block of houses, I would sit on the floor in the kitchen playing with my toys and listening to the music my grandmother would have on the record player while she cooked breakfast for us.

But at my mom’s new house, I stayed alone in my room. I was made to take my baths alone and no one would read to me. No one had time. At breakfast, my mom and step dad talked to each other and when I would join in, I was told I was interrupting. I wasn’t allowed to be a part of their conversation.

When my step dad would leave for work, my mother would get on the phone with her girlfriends and I was told to “go on outside and play”.

And I hated outside – there were no fields to play in – no one my age to play with and my mother didn’t have time for me.

I occupied my time watching television when I could. When my baby brother was born, they would put him in a stroller and stick him outside for me to watch. They stayed inside and smoked and drank coffee and watched TV. I chattered at him for a while, but he wasn’t listening either. So I began to go inside my head. I could do anything I wanted there. I could be anyone I wanted and never get into trouble. No one told me to go away while I was in my head.

When my mom had to start working, to help support the family, my grandmother came to take care of my brother and I. On Friday nights, she would pack us in her big, orange and cream colored ford fairlane and off to her house we would go. I was in heaven once more!! Until they would show up on Sunday evenings to rip me away from my home once again. And I would cry. And my stepfather would threaten me.

“Shut up – before I give you something to really cry about..” he would threaten. Once he even stopped the car and spanked me with his belt. My mother sat silent like she always did when he would force feed his authority to us. She never stood up to him…ever.

And then came the night visits…visits that would make me paralyzed with fear to go to sleep at night…visits that would leave me trembling uncontrollably when he would leave my room to go back to my mother’s bed. And even when she found out when I was only 9 years old, she kept her silence.

And I retreated further into my own thoughts and the world in my head where I could be me – where I could be heard and where I didn’t feel stupid and slow – used and scared. where I could love and feel loved and no one could hurt me. A place where I was never alone.

When Mama Got Married Part 1
I hid under a big wooden table that held Little Mama’s wedding cake. I scratched at the ruffled pink-laced dress that Big Mama had dressed me in earlier in the day. I hated it! It was stiff, uncomfortable and it made me itch. Worst of all, I had to act “lady-like” in it. Sissy stuff!
No one could see me in my hideout as I peeked through the frilly cloth that hung down from the table. An assortment of grown-up legs moved back and forth in front of me. Disembodied legs dressed in black with a shiny stripe running down the side to their cuff. Others were covered in light tan mesh that reminded me of the back porch screen at home when the dust from the back yard would catch in it.
Some of the legs had on brown pants, some blue. The screen-like legs were somewhat covered with parts of dresses, some pink and shiny, some shimmering and frilly. Some were plain, tan or brown, like the pants on other legs. And they were all so busy moving about here and there. Shoes seemed to sprout out from under the cuffs or at the end of the screen-covered appendages clumsily, while others met in perfect grace.
Sounds of voices, chattering magpies, drifted in and out of my retreat. They would grow loud, then soft; hushed, then brazen or crass. Some voices chirped while others mumbled and garbled. Words drifted in and out of earshot; a spattering of misfit veracity.
I peeked out from my refuse just in time to see Daddy’s hand reaching toward me.
“C’mon out from under there now before your Mama catch you and whup both our tails!”
I crawled out from under the table and he hoisted me up into his arms. I leaned my head against his chest. I could smell his after-shave. It was my favorite – the blue one.
I looked up at his craggy face and patted his cheek. It was rough, like the sandpaper on his workbench at home. He grabbed my hand and kissed it. I felt his arms tighten around me, enfolding me with their great gentleness and refuge. Slowly, his body began to sway back and forth, from one foot to the other and back again. His unconscious rocking to and fro was soothing.
From where we stood, we could see everyone; mostly people we didn’t know. People we didn’t care to know. His people; that man who was going to be my Little Mama’s new husband; they were his people and they huddled together in small groups jabbering and gesturing with their hands.
Intermittent laugher exploded from these clique-ish groupings. They drank champagne from small crystal cups, and ate cake daintily from expensive china plates decorated in silver, all the while their razor-sharp, serpent-like tongues wagged shamelessly.
Some of the women, dressed in pink satin, would whisper to each other behind cupped hands, cast disapproving glances toward Big Mama or Little Mama and then erupt into short bursts of veiled laughter. And sometimes the glances would come our way. I pressed myself further into my Daddy’s strong, safe arms.
“I want to go home, Daddy.” I said. “When are we going home?” I wriggled in his arms and looked into his big ruddy face. His blue eyes glistened.
“Hush, now.” He said softly.
“We don’t like this, do we Daddy? We’d rather go fishin’, huh Daddy?”
He continued his rhythmic swaying back and forth.
“That’s right, baby.” He answered quietly.
I had no idea at the time, that soon I would never be able to go home again.

Mother Earth

One

I grieve for Mother Earth, for what I, her child, has done to her. My heart aches deep and pulls the breath from my chest. Tears well up and spill for she who gave me sweet life. I have shown the greatest disrespect; committed the greatest sin with my apathy. I must stop this cancer that eats her soul, for I am that cancer multiplying madly, devouring her out of selfish greed. I strangle her life and instead of compassion, instead of feeling her pain, I turn a deaf and unsympathetic ear and a stone cold heart to her, pretending she is fine.

Two

Grieve for Mother Earth and what you, her children, have done to her! Your hearts should ache deep. Where are your tears for she, who has given you sweet life? You have shown only disrespect and committed the greatest sin with your apathy. But still, you will not stop the cancer that eats her soul. You are that cancer, multiplying madly, devouring her out of your selfish greed. You suck the breath from her nostrils, suffocating her. And instead of compassion, instead of feeling her pain, you turn a deaf ear, a blind eye and a stone cold heart to claim she is fine.

Three

Mother Earth grieves for us and what we, her children have done to ourselves. Her heart aches deep and her breath catches in her chest. Her tears well up and spill for those to whom she gave sweet life. For we have shown the greatest disrespect for her. We have committed the supreme sin with our apathy. She cannot stop the cancer that eats her children’s souls, a cancer that devours our hearts, spawned out of our own blind, selfish greed. She is full of compassion, feeling our pain, she lends a sympathetic ear as we refuse to confess, and with our stone cold hearts, pretend that we are fine.

Bug Off!!

I’d like to tear your head off,
Tho’ I really don’t quite dare.
I’d kick it, then I’d bat it
And I’d toss it in the air!

I’d use it as a bowling ball,
An ashtray, or a chair.
I’d use it to scrub down
The bathroom walls.
I don’t much care.

So you just better watch it bud,
I mean just what I say.
I’ll roll your head right
Through the mud.
So stay out of my way!

Of My Own Accord

I am tied to this nightmare of my own accord.
Begging for just a scrap of your attention
To get me through the day.

I am haunted by the once safe, warm bed,
And the chair that now sits daunting and restless
Beside the fire.

I am not even a trophy mounted on your wall,
Instead, I am hung on just a wisp of hope
That you still see me at all.

Reunion

You have never been far from my thoughts.
Not that you haunt them, but somehow you are
Etched in memories bittersweet
From another time, a recurring dream.

You are god-like in standing
For this is my remembrance
And I choose to keep it so in my mind;
A choirboy image locked in adolescent simplicity.

I see, then, the forever boy I think you must be
Never changed from that innocent
But gentle in word and act of strength and kindness.
Eyes pure and true, yet twinkling with impish gaiety.

This eternal youth unswayed
By years of recollection
Stands defiant, refusing to age
Like Greek antiquity fashioned from the finest marble.

I think of you and aqua ink
A declaration inscribed on my hand.
Our names on my palm, enclosed by a heart
And Cupid’s arrow.

How quickly you hurried away
Leaving me to ponder your actions
Alone in a school hallway
Dazed and bewildered.

These are my treasures that
I keep locked in my heart.
Yet I have never stopped wondering
Where life has taken you

So many lifetimes ago…
And I needed to know
Where you’d been and
Who you’d become..

Would I awaken from this dream?
Would the memories remain?
If I dared touch reality
From so far away…

But 45 years is so long to be wondering
And Facebook had cast its spell yet again.
That connection was made and with the stroke of the keyboard
All those years just simply dissolved.

There you were – no mistake
That same choirboy face reflecting a life warm and sweet.
Smiling eyes twinkling back with that schoolboy delight..
And where once was a boy, is a man.