the forty-fifth night:
since the day that his mother was stabbed, eddie was living in a kind of half world, where the world that we inhabit was like vellum covered photographs--he could make out the shapes and colors of the people who once populated his life, but he saw them through blown out shadows, white light like gauze obscuring his view.
in the place of the world that you and i know, eddie had been given a world in diarama; to him, it seemed that everything was stuck in place by children's glue and hung from an invisible ceiling with transparent wire. the stars were lights coming through holes poked in the top of this shoebox world, the sun a strong lamp placed on a dolly and spun across the shoebox sky.
the blown out figures of his shoebox world were, he assumed, cut outs of construction paper, given voices and made to move by invisible puppet masters, or maybe, even better, children in a nursery, his world a game that could easily be disassembled and tucked away, all the shoebox world's transit stopped, the lid placed on the box.
when he saw the flicker, however, any semblance of reality left eddie's shoebox world. everything around him became two-dimensional and drawn with the unsure hand of a child, thick black lines making up the edges of everything he saw.
everything, that is, but the scissors sticking up out of his mother's knitting sack. they were glowing almost, the light of the shoebox world making the long, sharp silver shears bright against the dull construction paper that made up everything else.
that night as eddie laid his flat two dimensional body in his flat two dimensional bed, the light from the shears came under his bedroom door and shown across his two dimensional eyes--even if he turned away from the door the light from them cut like a beautiful white ribbon across his dark bedroom wall.
he didn't remember getting out of his bed around five am, he didn't remember the way that ribbon of light drew him from his outhouse room into the house proper, or what it felt like when he first took the scissors into his hands, the way their light seemed to go through him like a flashlight through the webbing between your thumb and index finger.
he didn't remember the sound of the dull thud his foot made as it hit his mother's body when he walked through the front room and went out onto the porch.
he didn't remember the feeling of the night air against his construction paper skin as he cut through his clothes, first his shirt right across his stomach, then down the thighs of his pants as he knelt down onto his knees, the light of the scissors glowing brighter as he cut more and more away, his clothing hanging off of his body in long strips.
he didn't remember the feeling of the light filling his body completely as the blade finally was thrust down into his skin.
he didn't remember much of anything, really, for the first two years after his aunt found him, bloody and nearly dead, on the porch that morning, the neighbors coming up the to the steps of the house before stopping and looking away, pools of blood surrounding him and drying like draught-ridden rivers down the baseboards of the porch steps.
since the day that his mother was stabbed, eddie was living in a kind of half world, where the world that we inhabit was like vellum covered photographs--he could make out the shapes and colors of the people who once populated his life, but he saw them through blown out shadows, white light like gauze obscuring his view.
in the place of the world that you and i know, eddie had been given a world in diarama; to him, it seemed that everything was stuck in place by children's glue and hung from an invisible ceiling with transparent wire. the stars were lights coming through holes poked in the top of this shoebox world, the sun a strong lamp placed on a dolly and spun across the shoebox sky.
the blown out figures of his shoebox world were, he assumed, cut outs of construction paper, given voices and made to move by invisible puppet masters, or maybe, even better, children in a nursery, his world a game that could easily be disassembled and tucked away, all the shoebox world's transit stopped, the lid placed on the box.
when he saw the flicker, however, any semblance of reality left eddie's shoebox world. everything around him became two-dimensional and drawn with the unsure hand of a child, thick black lines making up the edges of everything he saw.
everything, that is, but the scissors sticking up out of his mother's knitting sack. they were glowing almost, the light of the shoebox world making the long, sharp silver shears bright against the dull construction paper that made up everything else.
that night as eddie laid his flat two dimensional body in his flat two dimensional bed, the light from the shears came under his bedroom door and shown across his two dimensional eyes--even if he turned away from the door the light from them cut like a beautiful white ribbon across his dark bedroom wall.
he didn't remember getting out of his bed around five am, he didn't remember the way that ribbon of light drew him from his outhouse room into the house proper, or what it felt like when he first took the scissors into his hands, the way their light seemed to go through him like a flashlight through the webbing between your thumb and index finger.
he didn't remember the sound of the dull thud his foot made as it hit his mother's body when he walked through the front room and went out onto the porch.
he didn't remember the feeling of the night air against his construction paper skin as he cut through his clothes, first his shirt right across his stomach, then down the thighs of his pants as he knelt down onto his knees, the light of the scissors glowing brighter as he cut more and more away, his clothing hanging off of his body in long strips.
he didn't remember the feeling of the light filling his body completely as the blade finally was thrust down into his skin.
he didn't remember much of anything, really, for the first two years after his aunt found him, bloody and nearly dead, on the porch that morning, the neighbors coming up the to the steps of the house before stopping and looking away, pools of blood surrounding him and drying like draught-ridden rivers down the baseboards of the porch steps.
another prespective in another person
another of yours always happy to read