Okay - I couldn't sleep last night, and from the mind of the wicked bored cometh a fan fiction.
First, the preliminaries: I don't know U2, more's the pity.
All events herein pertaining to U2 and staff and whatnot are completely false and not to be taken as factual.
Warning: there is language, violence and disturbing themes. Sensitive readers might want to avoid this.
Sister
Book I
Chapter I: Baby Sister
don't wake up
baby sister, keep dreaming
did he fill your cup?
baby sister, keep drinking
Or he'll hit you and bleach your eyes
be a good girl just for the night
i want to tell you a story: it's about a girl who wasn't really a girl. i was an old woman almost before i was born. as an infant, i survived pneumonia. at two, i pulled out every shred of hair on my head in a fit of rage. nobody knows why. such rage and sadness in one so small is probably unusual., but there's no record of why i's like that. at five, i convinced a man i knew only as Kevin to take me home because my mother was late coming to pick me up from school. i didn't know where my mother was, nor did i know where my brother was, only i was convinced my mother had forgotten about me, and i was so tired of being stuck in that schoolroom with those boring teachers. generally, i liked them well enough, but i wanted to leave already.
my neighborhood was a regular war zone, with gangs fighting over one city block, eight buildings, and whatever drugs they traded for money beneath the imposing tan buildings i called home. gunfire was a background sound, much like the trains that bordered the project ghetto on the east and west. i got so i'd sleep through it. Imprinted on my mind: age seven, hiding behind a narrow slide while a man who looked like Dick Tracy sprayed the field in front of our building with bullets. i do not remember if anyone died, only that he shot everything he could. we were not injured.
throughout school, i've had a little trouble adjusting: that is to say, i never really did. i was bullied, harshly, day in and day out. quiet, smart, not particularly interested in other people and their feelings, i was continually beaten up, for i wasn't much of a fighter, and found other girls to be mysterious creatures who were inconceivably boring. the boys didn't want to play with me either, because i was a girl. i was a lonely girl, and read voraciously, despite a bit of a delay due to my severely crossed eyes. i had to wear thick bifocals most of my life, and eye patches to straighten my eyes out. i felt retarded, despite having one of the highest vocabulary test scores in my classes. i was fully able to comprehend adult fiction and textbooks at about nine or so. i was never much good at math, being too daydreams for the dry, textureless series of unending numbers and binary systems. i had an alert focus for music; it was my outlet when nobody was around. i was no good at sports, another thing to be cruelly mocked for, on top of my unfashionable nappy hair and homemade clothes.
i got no breaks at home, either. my mother would hit me for any little show of independent thought or spirit she didn't approve of. though i was sure mother loved me, i was never quite sure whether mother actually wanted me, or didn't blame me, somehow, for her own failings in life, for her own father rejecting her for getting pregnant so young. so i became the scapegoat for knowing too much, for seeing to much, for having an opinion and saying so, for hating the cage mother tried to stuff me in, constantly.
i had no real friends, only the daughter of a neighbor woman who babysat me. i was not allowed to be around the neighborhood girls. the excuse was they were 'too fast'. i was forced to spend hours on end on the neighbor woman's porch, bored out of my mind while her mentally challenged daughter chattered on an on about god knows what. i barely tolerated her, truth be told. not that she wasn't a sweet girl, but she had the mental capacity of a ten year old, despite us being the same age. my mother was convinced we were best friends. i gave up any hope of ever convincing her otherwise.
i saw my brother have sex with her sister once - that sister was 'fast', and actually not challenged in any way, except by extreme stupidity. my brother actually wanted me to watch, why i don't know. but i was curious - and bored - enough to do it. i didn't see anything particularly interesting, to be truthful.
i was often forced to watch mother vomit during one of her many bouts with vertigo, feeling helpless, miserable, and angry. when mother forgot to call me and brother, i would always go into brother's room and hide under the covers, trying to escape that horrible sound, that horrible smell. i would eat and grow fat, simply to stuff the feelings down far enough to stay inside, to be invisible to everyone. i do not exist, no matter what your eyes tell you. i do not exist.
father was an absent alcoholic, coming over sporadically, lying, cheating me of a father, interested only in what he could get for himself. how often have i seen father's skinny, dark, erect penis wrapped in his robe and his hand, uncircumcised and ugly, ready for a night's self-indulgent pleasure? how many nights have i heard his whining and crying and mother's lame attempts at soothing him? How many nights have i lain awake, wondering why mother and father don't care whether i exist or not? when would they notice me? when will they love me?
i often imagined myself to be someone else. an actor i saw on people's court, perhaps, one of the lawyers, back when there actually were lawyers on the show. i became a male doctor, gentle, loving, kind; had his heart broken by an evil, heartless bitch of a woman because he wouldn't have sex with her. He wanted to wait till he got married. he knew her from the iit campus. see the girl had typing lessons there in the fourth grade. i didn't do well, according to the teacher, who insisted i should know how to type thirty words per minute without mistakes. i didn't see why i should - it was boring and unimportant. it wasn't like i had to transcribe anything for prince, or something cool like that. It was stupid. but i said nothing. it didn't matter. only my rich inner life mattered. as time wore on, and i became more outcast, unlike popular brother - who never had to wear homemade anything! - who was good at sports, and was friendly and outgoing and got to leave mother's side - my long list of male characters expanded, and i made tentative efforts to write about them. the papers were snatched and read aloud, criticized by students for being sexual in content. they often missed the sharp attention to detail.
i learned to commit things to memory. i graduated grade school, unruffled by the noise and tenseness of everyone around me. it was stupid, beneath me. "she's so cool and calm!" my paternal grandmother would wonder aloud. had i asked me, she would have known i simply did not care about the ceremony. i was leaving this dreadful existence, at least for a summer. i could not care less about school. the people did not matter. they were beneath me.
the sound of flesh hitting flesh ricocheted like lead shot about the small, cramped bedroom. a scream, sharp and pained, was quickly cut off. Low moans ensued. bedsprings squeaked.
I did nothing to indicate that I breathed. I dared not; no one must know I was awake to the nightmare world I had the misfortune to inhabit. An infinity of sound later, the noises stopped.
I rolled over, carefully feigning the vague tossing of someone still asleep. They didn't even notice, so involved with each other were they. I prayed I wouldn't have to go to the bathroom anytime soon, or there'd be paranoid questions. Why they chose to try and have sex with me in the same room, expecting me not to notice was beyond me - I don't sleep for very long periods of time, and hadn't for the length of my life, due to my mother's rigid insistence on waking me every two hours because I was incontinent at night, even at the age of eighteen. She constantly threatens to tell the kids at school if I don't 'get it together'.
I wondered why it never occurred to her that I might have had this problem because she wouldn't let me sleep. I got so damned tired that even my bladder being painfully full didn't wake me, because I had such a short amount of time to rest before she'd wake me up to drag me to the bathroom to try and pee. Again, despite not having anything to drink about two hours before bedtime, no matter how thirsty I was. It was a problem that would persist well into adulthood.
Silence, finally, from the other bed. I could get up; I could move about. With relief, I did so, going to get some water. I was parched, needing water so badly I didn't care that I'd wet the bed before morning and be subject to another angry beating by my mother. She'd had no right to deny me water or sleep. I managed to go to the bathroom and empty my - eerily full - bladder and go back to bed without waking either of them. I'd learned quiet movement very, very young.
I lay down on the bed and pull the covers over my face, snuggling my five stuffed toys before arranging them in a specific order. Tonight, I was Jeffrey, infamous gangster with pale gray eyes, who had a baby and was the nicest man, even when you did something he didn't like. He hated violence.
He was also a very good lover.
My mother used to hit me for masturbating. She'd ask scornfully if I was that hard up for a man. Once, i even screamed at me that I must stop, that I would stop or she'd beat me to death. Or something to that effect. I just learned to be sneakier, to hide to better effect what I did at night, or during times where she couldn't see me.
and oh, no
Don't get stuck
baby sister leave this land
And read your books
Baby sister
Wash your hands or he'll hit you
And he'll bleach your eyes
So be a good girl just for the night
Part I: Full Moon
It's June, and I'm graduating high school in less than thirty days. I somehow don't feel too excited about it. If grade school were sheer miserable drudgery, high school was merely the halfway house an inmate has to go through to get away from the jail system. I managed to make a few friends, here and there, despite myself. I still wasn't popular, but I was, for the most part, merely left alone. I was tolerated at best, because I went out of my way to be unremarkable, and even funny sometimes.
This year, I discovered I was a great saxophonist and drafter. Of course, I was interested in neither as a career, but I loved the creative expression I was allowed in those classes. And Mr. Lovelace was an excellent English Lit teacher - tough, challenging, and impartially fair to all. You got the grade you deserved with him - no more, no less. Most students found him intimidating; I merely found him funny. He didn't scare me. To prove it, I took his class two years in a row. I learned to write properly when I left his class, though my penmanship was dismal. The only reason I never got an A in his class, to be honest. Not that I cared - I loved the challenging way he taught. I had to use my brain with him. Not as much as he would have liked, but just enough to get the job done. He's retiring this year. Damn him, he should have stayed to drill a few more knuckleheads.
I shoplift briefly, but avoid arrest because I was a polite little liar. I am told by my mother that I am no longer allowed to sing in the choir. Fine by me - I was bored with it anyway. It'd always just been my cover to get the hell out of school for the day. And I still had band.
And roam
Run
Run
Baby sister
Run, baby sister...
Part II: Sunrise Water
I woke in a cold sweat, alone in my apartment. I was twenty eight years old. It was two days after my grandmother died of colon cancer. I couldn't breathe, my heart was racing. I could feel my blood pressure rising. I reached for my cell, called emergency. they sent an ambulance and I am taken to the hospital. They can find nothing the matter with me.
I leave the hospital early in the morning.
It's my first introduction to the awakening battle with anxiety and depression.
It would soon become far more than a mere battle. It would rage into a war.
I can't take people's stares, laughter, or accusations. I grit my teeth and drag on, working, living - only I'm hardly present to life. Instead, I consider ways to end it, telling no one, presenting my bland mask to the world. The acting skills acquired as a child come in handy, though more easily now.
I feel comfortable in no space and time, except holding a guitar, or listening to music somewhere. Occasionally, when I find a quiet space, I even sing. Only so no one can hear me, though.
The morning of my twenty ninth birthday, I'd made up my mind to just quit. I couldn't stand it anymore. I didn't want to go on with this charade. I couldn't feed my cats and had to give them up to other people. My home was gone, because I couldn't afford that either. I was living with my mother and her two cats. I couldn't keep a job. I was invisible baggage again. I walked down to the Chicago Water Tower, then decided to keep going, on towards the beach. I passed the Drake hotel, barely noticing the giant herd of people gathered outside.
I simply didn't care, truth be told; people were merely an inconvenience to me.
They were beneath me.
When the screaming started, I barely turned my head. Firecrackers close at hand. I turned, staring intently at the crowd of people, noting a flash of silver hair followed by a green hat on a shorter level before I saw him.
A man, gun raised, aiming at the green hat, hate looming large in narrowed green eyes.
Without thought, I stepped between that hat and the gunman, shoving him backward and unresisting with surprise, into the other's equally startled arms.
"No!"A hoarse masculine voice in garbled, Irish-accented English shouted. "Lemme go, Adam - "
Too late.
Ave Maria,
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
kive Maria
Domne, Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Loud as cannon-fire, quiet as a mouse, the gun fired.
First, the preliminaries: I don't know U2, more's the pity.
All events herein pertaining to U2 and staff and whatnot are completely false and not to be taken as factual.
Warning: there is language, violence and disturbing themes. Sensitive readers might want to avoid this.
Sister
Book I
Chapter I: Baby Sister
don't wake up
baby sister, keep dreaming
did he fill your cup?
baby sister, keep drinking
Or he'll hit you and bleach your eyes
be a good girl just for the night
i want to tell you a story: it's about a girl who wasn't really a girl. i was an old woman almost before i was born. as an infant, i survived pneumonia. at two, i pulled out every shred of hair on my head in a fit of rage. nobody knows why. such rage and sadness in one so small is probably unusual., but there's no record of why i's like that. at five, i convinced a man i knew only as Kevin to take me home because my mother was late coming to pick me up from school. i didn't know where my mother was, nor did i know where my brother was, only i was convinced my mother had forgotten about me, and i was so tired of being stuck in that schoolroom with those boring teachers. generally, i liked them well enough, but i wanted to leave already.
my neighborhood was a regular war zone, with gangs fighting over one city block, eight buildings, and whatever drugs they traded for money beneath the imposing tan buildings i called home. gunfire was a background sound, much like the trains that bordered the project ghetto on the east and west. i got so i'd sleep through it. Imprinted on my mind: age seven, hiding behind a narrow slide while a man who looked like Dick Tracy sprayed the field in front of our building with bullets. i do not remember if anyone died, only that he shot everything he could. we were not injured.
throughout school, i've had a little trouble adjusting: that is to say, i never really did. i was bullied, harshly, day in and day out. quiet, smart, not particularly interested in other people and their feelings, i was continually beaten up, for i wasn't much of a fighter, and found other girls to be mysterious creatures who were inconceivably boring. the boys didn't want to play with me either, because i was a girl. i was a lonely girl, and read voraciously, despite a bit of a delay due to my severely crossed eyes. i had to wear thick bifocals most of my life, and eye patches to straighten my eyes out. i felt retarded, despite having one of the highest vocabulary test scores in my classes. i was fully able to comprehend adult fiction and textbooks at about nine or so. i was never much good at math, being too daydreams for the dry, textureless series of unending numbers and binary systems. i had an alert focus for music; it was my outlet when nobody was around. i was no good at sports, another thing to be cruelly mocked for, on top of my unfashionable nappy hair and homemade clothes.
i got no breaks at home, either. my mother would hit me for any little show of independent thought or spirit she didn't approve of. though i was sure mother loved me, i was never quite sure whether mother actually wanted me, or didn't blame me, somehow, for her own failings in life, for her own father rejecting her for getting pregnant so young. so i became the scapegoat for knowing too much, for seeing to much, for having an opinion and saying so, for hating the cage mother tried to stuff me in, constantly.
i had no real friends, only the daughter of a neighbor woman who babysat me. i was not allowed to be around the neighborhood girls. the excuse was they were 'too fast'. i was forced to spend hours on end on the neighbor woman's porch, bored out of my mind while her mentally challenged daughter chattered on an on about god knows what. i barely tolerated her, truth be told. not that she wasn't a sweet girl, but she had the mental capacity of a ten year old, despite us being the same age. my mother was convinced we were best friends. i gave up any hope of ever convincing her otherwise.
i saw my brother have sex with her sister once - that sister was 'fast', and actually not challenged in any way, except by extreme stupidity. my brother actually wanted me to watch, why i don't know. but i was curious - and bored - enough to do it. i didn't see anything particularly interesting, to be truthful.
i was often forced to watch mother vomit during one of her many bouts with vertigo, feeling helpless, miserable, and angry. when mother forgot to call me and brother, i would always go into brother's room and hide under the covers, trying to escape that horrible sound, that horrible smell. i would eat and grow fat, simply to stuff the feelings down far enough to stay inside, to be invisible to everyone. i do not exist, no matter what your eyes tell you. i do not exist.
father was an absent alcoholic, coming over sporadically, lying, cheating me of a father, interested only in what he could get for himself. how often have i seen father's skinny, dark, erect penis wrapped in his robe and his hand, uncircumcised and ugly, ready for a night's self-indulgent pleasure? how many nights have i heard his whining and crying and mother's lame attempts at soothing him? How many nights have i lain awake, wondering why mother and father don't care whether i exist or not? when would they notice me? when will they love me?
i often imagined myself to be someone else. an actor i saw on people's court, perhaps, one of the lawyers, back when there actually were lawyers on the show. i became a male doctor, gentle, loving, kind; had his heart broken by an evil, heartless bitch of a woman because he wouldn't have sex with her. He wanted to wait till he got married. he knew her from the iit campus. see the girl had typing lessons there in the fourth grade. i didn't do well, according to the teacher, who insisted i should know how to type thirty words per minute without mistakes. i didn't see why i should - it was boring and unimportant. it wasn't like i had to transcribe anything for prince, or something cool like that. It was stupid. but i said nothing. it didn't matter. only my rich inner life mattered. as time wore on, and i became more outcast, unlike popular brother - who never had to wear homemade anything! - who was good at sports, and was friendly and outgoing and got to leave mother's side - my long list of male characters expanded, and i made tentative efforts to write about them. the papers were snatched and read aloud, criticized by students for being sexual in content. they often missed the sharp attention to detail.
i learned to commit things to memory. i graduated grade school, unruffled by the noise and tenseness of everyone around me. it was stupid, beneath me. "she's so cool and calm!" my paternal grandmother would wonder aloud. had i asked me, she would have known i simply did not care about the ceremony. i was leaving this dreadful existence, at least for a summer. i could not care less about school. the people did not matter. they were beneath me.
the sound of flesh hitting flesh ricocheted like lead shot about the small, cramped bedroom. a scream, sharp and pained, was quickly cut off. Low moans ensued. bedsprings squeaked.
I did nothing to indicate that I breathed. I dared not; no one must know I was awake to the nightmare world I had the misfortune to inhabit. An infinity of sound later, the noises stopped.
I rolled over, carefully feigning the vague tossing of someone still asleep. They didn't even notice, so involved with each other were they. I prayed I wouldn't have to go to the bathroom anytime soon, or there'd be paranoid questions. Why they chose to try and have sex with me in the same room, expecting me not to notice was beyond me - I don't sleep for very long periods of time, and hadn't for the length of my life, due to my mother's rigid insistence on waking me every two hours because I was incontinent at night, even at the age of eighteen. She constantly threatens to tell the kids at school if I don't 'get it together'.
I wondered why it never occurred to her that I might have had this problem because she wouldn't let me sleep. I got so damned tired that even my bladder being painfully full didn't wake me, because I had such a short amount of time to rest before she'd wake me up to drag me to the bathroom to try and pee. Again, despite not having anything to drink about two hours before bedtime, no matter how thirsty I was. It was a problem that would persist well into adulthood.
Silence, finally, from the other bed. I could get up; I could move about. With relief, I did so, going to get some water. I was parched, needing water so badly I didn't care that I'd wet the bed before morning and be subject to another angry beating by my mother. She'd had no right to deny me water or sleep. I managed to go to the bathroom and empty my - eerily full - bladder and go back to bed without waking either of them. I'd learned quiet movement very, very young.
I lay down on the bed and pull the covers over my face, snuggling my five stuffed toys before arranging them in a specific order. Tonight, I was Jeffrey, infamous gangster with pale gray eyes, who had a baby and was the nicest man, even when you did something he didn't like. He hated violence.
He was also a very good lover.
My mother used to hit me for masturbating. She'd ask scornfully if I was that hard up for a man. Once, i even screamed at me that I must stop, that I would stop or she'd beat me to death. Or something to that effect. I just learned to be sneakier, to hide to better effect what I did at night, or during times where she couldn't see me.
and oh, no
Don't get stuck
baby sister leave this land
And read your books
Baby sister
Wash your hands or he'll hit you
And he'll bleach your eyes
So be a good girl just for the night
Part I: Full Moon
It's June, and I'm graduating high school in less than thirty days. I somehow don't feel too excited about it. If grade school were sheer miserable drudgery, high school was merely the halfway house an inmate has to go through to get away from the jail system. I managed to make a few friends, here and there, despite myself. I still wasn't popular, but I was, for the most part, merely left alone. I was tolerated at best, because I went out of my way to be unremarkable, and even funny sometimes.
This year, I discovered I was a great saxophonist and drafter. Of course, I was interested in neither as a career, but I loved the creative expression I was allowed in those classes. And Mr. Lovelace was an excellent English Lit teacher - tough, challenging, and impartially fair to all. You got the grade you deserved with him - no more, no less. Most students found him intimidating; I merely found him funny. He didn't scare me. To prove it, I took his class two years in a row. I learned to write properly when I left his class, though my penmanship was dismal. The only reason I never got an A in his class, to be honest. Not that I cared - I loved the challenging way he taught. I had to use my brain with him. Not as much as he would have liked, but just enough to get the job done. He's retiring this year. Damn him, he should have stayed to drill a few more knuckleheads.
I shoplift briefly, but avoid arrest because I was a polite little liar. I am told by my mother that I am no longer allowed to sing in the choir. Fine by me - I was bored with it anyway. It'd always just been my cover to get the hell out of school for the day. And I still had band.
And roam
Run
Run
Baby sister
Run, baby sister...
Part II: Sunrise Water
I woke in a cold sweat, alone in my apartment. I was twenty eight years old. It was two days after my grandmother died of colon cancer. I couldn't breathe, my heart was racing. I could feel my blood pressure rising. I reached for my cell, called emergency. they sent an ambulance and I am taken to the hospital. They can find nothing the matter with me.
I leave the hospital early in the morning.
It's my first introduction to the awakening battle with anxiety and depression.
It would soon become far more than a mere battle. It would rage into a war.
I can't take people's stares, laughter, or accusations. I grit my teeth and drag on, working, living - only I'm hardly present to life. Instead, I consider ways to end it, telling no one, presenting my bland mask to the world. The acting skills acquired as a child come in handy, though more easily now.
I feel comfortable in no space and time, except holding a guitar, or listening to music somewhere. Occasionally, when I find a quiet space, I even sing. Only so no one can hear me, though.
The morning of my twenty ninth birthday, I'd made up my mind to just quit. I couldn't stand it anymore. I didn't want to go on with this charade. I couldn't feed my cats and had to give them up to other people. My home was gone, because I couldn't afford that either. I was living with my mother and her two cats. I couldn't keep a job. I was invisible baggage again. I walked down to the Chicago Water Tower, then decided to keep going, on towards the beach. I passed the Drake hotel, barely noticing the giant herd of people gathered outside.
I simply didn't care, truth be told; people were merely an inconvenience to me.
They were beneath me.
When the screaming started, I barely turned my head. Firecrackers close at hand. I turned, staring intently at the crowd of people, noting a flash of silver hair followed by a green hat on a shorter level before I saw him.
A man, gun raised, aiming at the green hat, hate looming large in narrowed green eyes.
Without thought, I stepped between that hat and the gunman, shoving him backward and unresisting with surprise, into the other's equally startled arms.
"No!"A hoarse masculine voice in garbled, Irish-accented English shouted. "Lemme go, Adam - "
Too late.
Ave Maria,
Benedicta tu in mulieribus,
kive Maria
Domne, Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Loud as cannon-fire, quiet as a mouse, the gun fired.
Wow, didn't see that coming!!
