Variations on a Theme

I want to tell a story but I don't know what to say. (So where's the story in that?)

I want it to be an anecdote, with a punch line and a point. (But I don't know what happened and I don't know where to start.)

I don't know where to end.

(Has it ended?)

You ever feel like you've come in in the second act? Something about my life has me grasping for the Cliff Notes.

I got the title all right, and the synopsis is burned into my brain.

(One girl in all the world.)

I want to tell this story but I don't know how. (It's not a story.)

Once upon a time. ( A time. Not this time.)

A long time ago. ( A short time. A petite time.) /and sleep and wake/ another day/ and sleep another night/ (This is time passing.)

But if I tell it, does that mean it ends? (I want it to end. I want to be finished.)

Once there was a girl (all soft and sweet) who met a boy under the light of a silvery moon /not a boy/ not a moon/ a thug and the moon was in/ (God save us all from meaningful moons.)

Once there was a boy (and snails and puppy dogs tails) A thug to a rabid dog to a stray dog. /a week/ a year/ a snake and a bad dream/ and a hell god/ and sleep/ another night/ (This is time passing.)

/and a jaw and a hard hip/ and a rough kiss/ a tough kiss/ (And the house fell down.)

A time. Not this time. (Twice upon a time.)

It's not a story. It's a footnote. It's a consequence. It's a spin off and I'm spun out.

One girl in all the world, that's me. But now I'm only one in a million. /sigh/ moan/ queen dethroned/ ( Blah blah blah.)

Has it ended? I finished it. I'm moving on, moving on up, out, and the other.

Blah blah blah. I don't know what happened and I don't know where to start. I want it to be an anecdote. So where's the story in that?

I'm gonna tell you a story, so sit tight and be good.

So once there was this girl. Pretty ordinary, pretty and ordinary. She's got a dad and a stuffed rabbit and a satchel for her schoolbooks. She likes school okay; it's fine. There's a bus she gets from the end of the long path. There are two paths to her house: a long winding path to the highway and a wide drive from the farmhouse to the lane. She gets the bus from the long path in the morning and she has to get there early because the driver won't wait and can't see her round the bends. Her dad has explained all this and she's explained it back to him when she sometimes comes traipsing back up to the farm for the day.

They've a farmhouse. It's made of wood and it looks like a house on TV. There's a barn out back and a dusty yard with bricks laid down for a floor. They don't really have a lawn, but there's a couple old sinks tossed at the side of the drive that this girl plants flowers in. They look pretty in the late spring.

She doesn't have a mother, this girl. She must have had one once but she lost her or something. It's no big drama. No one much cares, or thinks about it. She's got a dad and a satchel and a little bookshelf in her room full of princess stories. Sometimes she is secretly a princess, but mostly she's pretty ordinary.

Most days she goes to school but her school is one of those with long stretches of vacations. For the harvest, you see, and the sowing, and the haymaking. There's a lot to do on a farm.

This farm and this girl don't do so very much. The fields are fallow on account of government surplus and the only cattle are an ancient bull and a cow. Cow's called Daisy. They'd never gotten around to naming the bull. There's still fencing to be kept up and the tractor to be kept running, but most days in the long summer it's just her and her dad rattling round the nofarm.

And after a while, she goes away.

It's not much of a story. What have you there? There's a girl and her daddy and a farm where nothing grows. Except the flowers in the sink, of course, can't forget them. There's a cow called Daisy and a winding path and a bookshelf filled with princess stories and that's about the all of it.

Heard this all before, in a million stories, and lived it too? Waiting for the plot to kick in? This all sounds like an introduction, don't it?

You'd be right.

Childhood goes like that sometimes, and anyhow, there's nothing so tragic as childhood being the whole story, is there? So spin on.

High school is just zits and clichés. Spin on through the bus ride. It's a long trip from Ohio to So Cal, just a couple thousand miles of freeway and the same restaurants over and over. Spin on cuz this girl gets lost in the city for a while. Spin on to death! Dismemberment! Female Empowerment! Shoes! All this and more because...

Because Bethany moves things with her mind.

But it isn't her mind at all.

She's pretty angry about that.

The first thing I remember: I looked up and said, "This means nothing to me."

And she looked at me and said, "But... this is your life's work!"

Yes, I thought, but does it have dental?

The things you remember, the things you don't. What makes up a person, anyway? Am I anything like myself? That is the pressing question, I suppose. Is this the sort of thing I would have thought, would think? It's the same brain. I have, there is, this great desire to know, to remember. But, of course, if I am not myself, where would I go if I do?

I feel far too old to be asking: who am I? It is faintly absurd. Darkly absurd, even. I think I am this question, this moment. Or a series of moments perhaps: a train pulling carriages.

I am a train pulling carriages.

I am wary of finding out too much about him. Me who is not me. I feel him, maybe, pulling at the edges of my memory. Looking for a way back in. Perhaps he will prevail and I will be me again and remember all this and feel stupid. Perhaps. I wonder if this is how lunatics feel? That to become sane is to lose oneself? It seems a reasonable supposition - if you are insane then who are you without that? What is carried over and what is lost?

They keep saying I am not myself. I think: who else can I possibly be?

I am pieces of other people's puzzles.

This has happened before. To me? To them? To us? There are things to be done, apparently, and none of these things involve anything one might expect. We travel a lot. There are things to be done, people to be seen. I sit in the back seat like a child. They have urgent conversations in loud whispers about mad scenarios and I am deaf and dumb like a child in transit. They wish I were here. I would know what to do. I am a bag of lost property.

I am unclaimed shoes with the laces tied and a wallet holding alien pictures and foreign money.

I watch the television and I wonder what I used to like. Also: what is real and what is not, but I suppose that is predictable enough. They rush around and no longer bother with hushed voices. They are on to weapons now. Knives are being sharpened. He strides towards doorways a lot and she tugs on his sleeve. All of this happens at night because he is a vampire apparently. Okay.

The desperation is rising. There are things they need me for. I am the last, best hope for peace.

I am a wrong number with the same name.

He knocked on the door. He said, "Am I disturbing you?"

I thought, Yes. I said, "No."

He came into my room and paced about anxiously. "We're trying to get you back, Wes," he said.

I am right here, I thought.

He said, "We think it's a spell," and he swallowed like a man on the telly.

Maybe I just hit my head, I thought. Then: No, we went to the doctors at first. Then: Can I cast spells?

I said, "Who has done this?"

He looked at me very strangely. It is me who has done this, I thought. I thought, What on earth was I thinking?

I am a train pulling carriages.

There is more than this. There are other things happening. Things other than me. I thought, What was I running away from?

Now they are wild with worry. He is giving some sort of speech and she vacillates between rapt attention and rolling eyes. There was a fight earlier. I hid in my room. A monster came in and lunged at me. I killed it quite easily.

I thought, Maybe this is what I was running away from. Then: I didn't think about it very cleverly then, did I?

They have a plan. I said no but I'm not sure they heard me. I am not me.

They seem to know what I would do. Perhaps they have the pieces of myself that I have lost. Perhaps they are the backup?

They mark circles and light candles. I sit. A monster sings.

I wonder how good a job they would do, if I allow them to rebuild me with their pieces that they carry. Will I be a better version? A copy or a reflection or maybe a -

"Ah."

(I am a train pulling carriages.)