Here is a piece of a story that I've been working on.

Sympathy for a Devil

            Adrian sat at his kitchen table. The dull golden glow of the stove’s hood provided the only light in the room. He stared at a plate of pill bottles. Each one was familiar. They either held anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, sedatives or strong tranquilizers, all the things that made him numb to the world. He set the  revolver beside the plate.  Shiny black metal gleamed under the muted light. The snub nosed barrel was inviting to him. His vision blurred as he waited for the next wave to hit. It didn’t take very long.

            He was an empath with the ability to mesh his mind with anyone else’s. Adrian could sense others’ thoughts and emotions. Sometimes he became them. Adrian’s mind blindly reached out. His uncontrolled empathic ability found a woman as she stood in the den of her house. Her husband was beating her. Dark hair curtained the newly reddened mark of a slap on her pale cheek. The bodice of her small sundress shook as she began to cry. Adrian’s breath caught in a ragged rasp as a fist met the woman’s stomach full force. He felt her double over. His stomach burned with the blow. Another fist met her face. It shocked Adrian, making him blink. The woman screamed as her husband punched her again. Adrian fought the urge to scream with her. He had gained that much control since acquiring this empathic ability. The woman ran but was tripped by her husband. A sharp pain radiated up Adrian’s right leg. The woman’s leg was broken. She scrambled on the floor trying to get away. Pain mixed with panic, and she began to sob. Adrian muttered what she was thinking. “Oh God, please don’t let him kill me!” Then the hands went around her neck. The grip was unyielding as it closed her trachea. Her lungs burned desperately for air. Adrian gasped as he choked. His mind fell away from the woman as she collapsed, unconscious.

             When his mind finally broke away, he picked up a bottle of Thorazine and a bottle of vodka. The doctors had diagnosed him as having schizophrenic episodes. The drugs were supposed to control them. They allowed him to function and he’d actually found a job as a security guard at an auto salvage yard. He worked night shifts, which kept him out of the range of the active public. His only companions were the Dobermans and Rottweilers that lived in the yard, and nothing occupied their minds.

            In high school, he’d acquired a reputation of being a pleasure giver. The girls who had been with him would swear that he always knew how to please them. If a girl liked it rough, he knew exactly how rough she wanted it. He could somehow read her thoughts. He was a mental pickpocket. Adrian found the full extent of his ability the night of his senior prom. He had easily gotten a date since the female population of his high school had either tried him or was dying to. This night it was Gena, the smartest, classiest girl at school. 

           They left the prom early because he’d picked up the thought that she wanted to leave. He drove her to the park  near the lake. The bright moon and the shimmering lake were the perfect scene for lovemaking and she wanted him and he knew it.  Gena wanted him gentle and sweet. 
          When he hiked up her dress hem to find her panties, his mind reached into hers, making notes of what she wanted. Then it reached farther and found another mind. It was a man. The man was raping a woman in the woods nearby. Adrian lost himself in a trip of power and his touch became as rough as the rapist’s. Gena started to struggle and protest, but he didn’t hear her. His movements were a reflection of the rapist’s. 

He pinned her to the seat of the car and she screamed. The struggle made him hard. He was ready to rape Gena like the rapist was raping his victim in the woods until she kneed Adrian in the crotch. The pain between his legs peeled his mind away from the rapist, and it fell into the mind of the victim. He found himself sobbing uncontrollably and whimpering for help. Adrian had taken in too much. Not only was he witness to another’s mind and actions, he was that other person. That was the first of his “episodes”, and that was seven years and many doctors ago.

            Adrian laughed to himself as he emptied the open bottle into his mouth. Stray pills fell to the floor bouncing hard like loose candy. He took a big swig of vodka to wash the payload down before his mind locked onto something as strong as or stronger than the beating.

He sat back in his chair waiting for the drugs and alcohol to kick in. His mind reached beyond the boundaries of his physical location. On some nights, people didn’t need to be close for his mind to find them. A crazy rapture filled him and he hardened to the touch of invisible thighs. Some girl was fucking her man, and Adrian entered his mind. He thought he would burst as she eased her warm, tight sex around her lover. Her rhythm undulated and the guy moaned with pleasure. Adrian’s eyes rolled back in his head. The girl’s lover stared at the open sky, stars, and the buildings as pleasure filled him. Adrian saw everything. 

They were across town on Appalachia Street across from the First National Bank of Swindell. The girl’s lover had his hands on her breasts now. Adrian’s fingertips warmed with the sensation. He and the young man were enjoying the moment until it was interrupted by a surge of panic. Through the guy’s eyes, Adrian saw a girl standing on a building’s ledge. Adrian came out of his stupor with a curse. “Oh shit!” His mind instantly jumped into the girl’s.

            She had been watching the two lovers and now despaired over her own lost love. Adrian felt tears spring into his eyes.  They were the girl’s tears. A chill went through the girl and she laughed. The stars were beautiful. Then Adrian felt her jump. His mind was caught between the horror of being with the girl and witnessing her die. Her body went into a graceful plummet as it hit the ground. There was a searing pain of organs imploding on impact as she met the pavement, then a joy as she drew her last breath. Adrian’s mind jerked away with the girl’s need to die. He picked up the phone.

            “911. What’s the manner of your emergency?”

            Adrian breathed heavily into the phone as he drank. “Can you save me?”

            The voice on the other line sounded confused. “Excuse me?”

            Adrian laughed. “There’s this girl that just jumped off a building across from Appalachia Street. You couldn’t save her, but can you save me?”

            He picked up the revolver. The room started to spin as he leaned the chair on its back legs and felt panic rise in the operator. “Sir, what’s your address?”

            “I’m in the house on the corner of Oak and Carver Lane. Can you find me in time?” He cocked the gun and now he was with the operator. Her ears strained to decipher the click of a rolling chamber.

            “Sir, was that a gun?”

            “Yes it was.”

            “We have someone coming out to help you.”

            “I’m so tired of being someone else! But it’s done now.” The overdose of Thorazine made his thigh muscle twitch. “It’s already working.”

            “Sir?”

            “Call me Adrian. I already know you Claire. How afraid you are that I may kill myself before the end of your shift. You only have ten minutes left. Well, I hate to disappoint.”

            Adrian could feel her panic rise and her struggle to not let it sound in her voice. “Adrian, before you do anything, let’s talk about this and how you’re feeling right now.”

            He wasn’t listening. A spasm snaked up to his hand, and he dropped the phone. The room began to spin faster as another spasm went through his hand holding the gun. The chair fell back. The gun went off. He could hear the operator, Claire, as she lost her cool, and he closed his eyes. “Adrian?  Oh my God!”

 © 2013 Stella Moreaux

This is my attempt at the cento.

Riddle

Whatever it is, it must have

 the listening secrets
 of falling rain.

Two strings, one pierced cry,
here and there in the searing beam
that is like the twilight sound
coming over the hills, America singing
beneath its canopy of poisoned air.

The tongue even lies to itself

like a saint dying upside down,
in a land of shadow,
spread eagled on the soaking earth
that weeps light and rain.

The surfs of the body

are mating in the unopened crown of a Shasta daisy
rolling away in the wind,
with the damn wonder of it.

Poems Used

Louis Simpson “American Poetry”
Gwendolyn Brooks “To Black Women
Robert Creely “The Rain
Rita Dove “Variation on Pain
James Dickey “Deer Among Cattle”
Donald Justice “Men at Forty”
Galway Kinnell “Vapor trail Reflected in the Frog Pond”
Carolyn Kizer “The Gulf War”
Yusef Komunyaka “The tongue is”
Li-Young Lee “My Indigo”
Denise Levertov “Stele (I –IIc b.c.)”
John Logan “Spring of the Thief”
Maureen Seaton “Swan Lake”
Robert Bly “Looking into space”
Robert Hass “from Drgaonflies Mating”
David Ignatow “The Bagel”
Lucille Clifton “There is a girl inside”

 © 2013 Stella Moreaux

Musing over Music

Careless Whispers

“Time can never mend,

the careless whispers of a good friend.”

They are still my friends,
my lovers, these whispers,
though they invite my destruction.
Each is a kind dagger
seductively cutting my soul,
trying to fool me into damnation,
a thousand tongues,
a million teeth and fangs,
pinching and biting
teasing my ears with sultry kisses.

“To the heart and mind,

Ignorance is kind.”

Ignorance is not so kind.

It is a tribunal of blackened saints
hanging upside down.
They disarm and confuse me.
I don’t know where they are,
Who they are,
the man on the corner
across the street
watching me,
or the one walking on the highway before me.
Who are they?
I’m blind
and ignorant within shadows,
a shadow with an outline of dimming light.

“There’s no comfort in the truth.

Pain is all you’ll find.”

They tell my truth,

proclaiming to know it.
They have my truth
and snatch it away,
that iridescent pearl that is/was my wisdom.
My Devils in angel masks,
beautiful demons
languor in their painful pursuits.
They want me there.
That will make them happy.

Can I please them?

My whispers lap my ear, my mind, my soul,

sylphs of time,

shifts of light,

visions of mystical insight,
who are noises of everything and nothing. 
They are my truth,
my prison keepers,
my torturers,
lovers in my deconstruction.

Song lyrics taken from “Careless Whisper” performed by George Michael

 © 2013 Stella Moreaux