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The Resurrection Shuffle

by
Barbara Welton

BLOW A LITTLE KISS TO THE WOMAN NEXT DOOR

How do I tell, as I lie here, the difference between being awake and being asleep? Being awake's the worst, as I have to make an effort to entertain myself. When I'm asleep, my subconscious slips right into power drive and does all the stuff for me - the memories, the stories, the visitations, the bizarre revelations. But when I'm awake, I have to make all that happen by the force of my will. A memory turns into a dream turns into a story turns into a movie turns into a memory. If I want to remember the words to a certain song, I have to put the effort into doing so. When I'm asleep, it all just washes over me without me having to lift a neuron.

I read an Emily Dickinson poem once about dead people in a cemetery whispering to each other through the walls of their coffins and the layers of earth that separate them. Am I as alone here as I feel myself to be? Is there another person a few feet away, their parched lips murmuring into the darkness in a vain attempt for me to hear them and let them know I'm here?

A sudden explosion of fireworks. Goblins on wild boars' backs. Like I said, I've never actually paid for drugs in my life... but I know an exhaustion-induced flashback when I have one. Stars flare and burn at the periphery of my vision. And a beautiful but ageing woman stands in a doorway with her arms stretched out before her, beckoning me into her embrace.

'It's okay,' she says to me, 'He's gone. You can come in.'

I slide my arm around her trim waist and we go into the house. I see myself in a mirror and realise I'm seventeen again. I'm carrying a copy of Wuthering Heights and there's an annoying zit on the side of my forehead.

She puts on a record. I kick off my shoes, roll up my sleeves. I have a tattoo of the Virgin Mary on my left forearm. And we start to dance...

We're twirling around and around, the room a blur behind her head as I spin her this way and then that. Laughing and short of breath, we crash into a wall and I hold her there. She brings one leg up around me, winds her arms around my neck and we're suddenly rutting. Her voice is harsh and rasping at my ear, punctuated by sharp nibbles she makes to my earlobe.

'All this time we've lived next door,' she hisses at me, 'And my husband and I have resisted you all along...'

It's then I realise that her husband isn't gone afterall. He's watching us from an armchair near the window. Smiling at me - the kid from next door - while I grind against his wife. Fear and embarrassment might have felled me right then, if only my dick hadn't have taken over thinking for me. 'This feels too fucking good!' it tells me. 'Don't you dare stop now!'

Her fingernails are digging into my arse as my body explodes. I'm too messed up over the whole situation to do anything other than put my dick away, straighten my clothes and get the hell out of there. Two days later, my father storms into my bedroom with my copy of Wuthering Heights.

'Nextdoor just brought this over!' he splutters at me, his face puce with rage. 'He says you left it behind after fucking his wife!' Then he belts me across the face with it. Twice. And it was a hardback copy, too.

'You filthy, dirty, disgusting little fucker!'

I cover my face with my forearms and cry out unintelligible syllables. My mother comes running into the room and tries to haul my father off me but he pushes her away and keeps right on pounding me. I see Mum's head bounce off the opposite wall from the force of his push and my Berserker Gland kicks into gear. One punch, that's all it took. Which is just as well, really, as I wouldn't have got the chance of a second one. One punch, one flail of my seventeen-year-old fist and my father was sprawled across my bedroom floor. I knocked my own father out cold.

It's a horrible realisation of adulthood - realising you've grown bigger and stronger and quicker than the man who made you.

I saw my mother's eyes flare wide as she saw what I had done, and then she looked up at me. She looked scared and impressed and excited and grateful and wary, all at the same time. I suddenly thought of her being fucked by a young man my age and I saw me as she was seeing me. I wasn't her little boy anymore. I was a man all of a sudden. A strong, virile man standing there in her house, having just knocked out her husband. My stomach jolted and I ran from the room, tears furiously bolting down my cheeks, gorge rising in my gullet so quickly that I couldn't make it outside quick enough. I vomited in the hallway, then again on the porch steps, and again in the driveway, leaving a slip-slide trail of bile in my wake.

I wiped my mouth and started running. There was a light on in the house next door and I could hear the woman and her husband laughing loudly about something or other. I ran and ran and ran.

I don't have a tattoo of the Virgin Mary on my forearm.

Christ. Where do the visions stop and the memories start? And where do the dreams ingress and egress?

I'm starting to feel hungry now. I guess I've been here longer than six hours, then.

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