The rutabaga lantern (a short story)

 

The jack-o lantern's smile flickers into my eyes. We have lit something in my soul I hope to never forget. The navy grey of our front porch, with its peeling paint, darkening with the setting sun. I was a Devil (at least for tonight). Mischievous mustache painted on my upper lip with a rough triangle on my chin. I carried a pitchfork my spiked tail dragging behind me. A Casper the friendly ghost candy bucket in my hand.

 

My mom walked me from door to door. Most lit up for the spectacle of the season. Skeletons, gravestones, and cotton spread on the bricks like some spider's nest. Children dressed as witches and your favorite slasher film villain. The smell of latex and the taste of candy corn. I celebrated this moment. It was freedom from the fear... I was the masked marauder. I was the scary one, the fear was mine and I embraced it.

 

My mom gave me a grocery bag and asked me to ask for candy for my baby brother, (who was still in a stroller). Anxiously I would say "trick or treat." and after safely having a piece of candy in my bucket. would hold up the bag and say "can I have one for my brother." I only remember being told "no!" once. Though it was with such vehemence I was afraid they would reach into my bucket and take out a handful of what I felt were well-earned goods for breaking the karmic laws of the night.

 

We got home later, My dad pored our candy buckets into what was left of his candy reserve and we were each allowed only one piece. Throughout the year if we were good we were given a piece of our candy. Though dad always got the first choice. It wasn't about the candy it was the air of freedom and mischief. Of seeing kids my age and not from the window.

 

That was a long time ago I am thirty-three now (as of writing this). I feel like a kid waiting for my parents to look over my shoulder at this pastiche of my memory. At that time, all those years ago, I wanted to write I hate my dad... but I couldn't spell hate so I wrote love. my illiteracy spared me a spanking though it has humbled my ambitions as a writer. When it doesn't matter anymore. The child is long since dead, but my memories of who he used to be... his potential and failings that are all lost down the winding halls of time. Of hearsay and judgment. From others and myself.

 

The next of those sacred memories. I was older. Not too old to be trick or treating. Though on that most sacred of nights I am laying in bed listening to my mom read me bible stories. I hated it. Not that I hated God... I hated being cut off from the spooks and spirits. I hated being punished for the necessary desire for some much-needed mischief. Listening to her recite some tale I could barely comprehend about someone in a lion's den, Made me feel guilty. There are two kinds of guilt required and unrequired. One leads to repentance while the other leads to decades of being in therapy. This was the guilt that I felt bad. I had not done anything wrong, no, it was because I hadn't and was suffering. Some people are thrown into the lion's den and God allows a miracle. Though in my experience I am not one of those people.

 

Earlier in the day, I had run across the yard screaming "look out you better run! it's momzilla!"

 

She grabbed me by my arm my shoulder twisted at an unnatural angle. And screamed, "never call me that again!"

 

She was leading me into the house. I started crying and said, "I'm sorry I don't need a spanking."

 

"If you were sorry you wouldn't have done it." Those words still have an air of truth to me.

 

I ran once many years ago screaming for help from the crazed look in her eyes. The neighbor stood outside talking with my dad. I cut my wrist on the bricks (a jutting corner a required edge to all life's lessons).

 

And remember with an escalating fear as she walked back and forth from my room to the kitchen. With each of her stomping struts, my heart broke. With each return was the order "get up."

 

Once under my therapist's advice and discretion, I mentioned it to her. "do you remember that time I ran from you and cut my wrist on the bricks and you kept whipping me?

 

"Azazel," she said "I was so mad at you that I had to wait to punish you. I was afraid I would hurt you."

 

I won't bring up the past. it's one thing to be lied to. It is another to be told what you remember was false. When you can look down at your arm and see the faintest line of a scar. Memories are a lot like scars, they bleed easy and people forget how you got them if it isn't expedient.

 

Why was I running? My baby brother wouldn't stop crying. So my mom decided to punish all three of us. My sister was standing in line in front of my little brother. I screamed, "leave them alone they didn't do anything to you!"

 

The menace with which she approached. The look of those eyes and the lack of control within them, the finger beckoned me forward as she commanded "come here."

 

Now I am laying in bed. The night when the monsters come out and there is no need to hide them. The black dog visits me in my dreams. He talks to me and tells me it's ok to remember things differently than others. The locking jaw, smothers the past clenched in the black dog's jaw around its throat.

 

I don't blame anyone anymore, but I still cry when I think about it. There is a quality, of metaphor and coherence where you are playing a shell game with the truth. laying things out but also hiding them.

 

The rutabaga lantern in my soul. That pagan dream. It's a face carved to scare away the unclean spirits. I keep that fire alive, its grotesque features and all. Why should the fire die? The orange and yellow flickers, the embers, and the smell of cooking fruit. It's jutting teeth. Cold judgeless eyes... why should the fire die?