About twenty minutes after she-who-will-not-be-named tore my life and everything I cared about to shreds, I wondered if I took the Tri-Met bus down to the other side of Portland and in the following fifteen minutes and jumped from the Ross Island Bridge would anyone even care, or notice. Maybe they would say that they knew me and pretend to actually acknowledge the fact that I was ever born. If so this would be the first time in seven years that it would have ever even become a slight possibility that I still even breathe or exist. But alas I still wanted to use that bus pass for the last time and jump from that bridge. No note, no goodbyes just a jump from that newly remodeled bridge into the only next logical step into oblivion. Instead I made prominent use of stolen Turkish Silvers from the kitchen drawer and a razor blade laying on the bathroom counter trying to shut her out of my mind. Trying to get along without her, I only wish this was possible.
fifty minutes after I couldn’t get the one anonymous soul who tore my world apart out of my head I decided to just let everything out of my system the best I knew how to. In the fetal position sobbing relentlessly trying to make good use of years of extensive therapy and anti-depressants. Following the rule of letting you’re emotions out in a positive manner and knowing that it’s okay to cry and sob your eyes out as an emotional, fiery and possibly suicidal or even homicidal wreck. I thought about the Ross Island Bridge again. But I just tried to push it aside. I just kept breaking apart wide open like a dismantled piñata, replacing birthday candies with rotten bad blood and rapidly spoiling brains.
About seventy minutes after the-no name destroyed and burned everything in her path, I decided to lay down with my eyes near rotted out of my skull. I could barley move and decided I needed some well deserved rest. I kept on shivering and shuttering as the sun outside of my window glared inside and made the room look like grainy 8 millimeter film. I was near beyond the point of crying, or even talking so I turned off my phone just in case she would bother to call me. I closed my eyes still thinking about the bridge. Still thinking about jumping straight into the polluted Willamette River. Letting years of spilling oil rigs, radiation and carelessly tossed candy wrappers and newspapers swallow me whole. Just to drown and dissolve. Maybe there would be a dingy deteriorating papier-mâché like girl at the floor of the river. Maybe we could become scum together. Maybe she wouldn’t sleep with my friends. Maybe that’s just false optimism, maybe I’m just naive.
About two hours after I thought about the Willamette River, I woke up from a dreamless sleep, my eyes were crusted over and she who must not be named was still in my head from the second I shot up straight from the pillow. There was the sound rapid gunfire, negotiating police and frantic hostages blaring loudly from the other room. Mom had just arrived home as I could smell Kentucky Fried Chicken scenting the entire house in a buttery and spicy aroma. I would on any other circumstance have rushed to the kitchen hours ago. But instead I found the butter and spice doing a number on my stomach and was hunched over the toilet bowl trying to keep a good grip on the edges of the bowl and not fall in headfirst. Mom just stood there trying to reach out to me. I told her that it was seven years too late. That’s about the time that my brother came into the house boasting about his amazing life with many fabrications and incoherent teen movie like twists and turns. Mom hung onto every word as he threw everything I can and will not ever achieve. He smiles deviously in my direction as I try to retain the rest of the vomit in my throat.
About twelve hours after my life has been completely demolished I walked through the crowded school hallways without a second of sleep. They all push and pull and knock the books out of my hands and the wind out of my lungs. I try not to break down and there you are with your friends pointing and staring. I try to bury my head but the entire hallway bursts into riotous laughter. Are they laughing at me? Or are they laughing with me? I know it’s either one or the other and I’m close to tears again but not the tears of laughter as everyone else has rolling down there cheeks. So I’m sure that pretty much narrows it down. I think about The Ross Island Bridge once again.
About seventeen hours after my life has been completely and totally ravaged. Mom tried to make me eat even one measly bite. Just one meager bite. It would’ve been easier said then done granted that brother-oh-so-fair hadn’t had a whole barrage of cheesy one liners but alas nothing here is truly granted. I couldn’t even pick up the fork. Mother dearest chuckles slightly as the worlds greatest older sibling makes a witty remark about what you did with my friends and how you enjoyed every second of it, how you couldn’t remain faithful and how we were doomed from the start. I wanted to snap his neck in half just like a wiry little twig, savor the look on mom’s face and then use the rest of the bus pass and jump from that oh so familiar bridge. But instead I ran to my room and thought about how much I could do to get you back as the laughter grew louder. Little did I know that there was a party that was supposed to start at your house in only a little less than three minutes. It suddenly crossed my mind and I decided to crash the get together, I decided to ask you to come back to me. We were going to be just fine after all.
About ten minutes after I remembered about your party I took the keys to mom’s Honda Civic and told her that I would be back soon. I kissed her on the cheek as she turned up the volume of the TV without even looking back at me, without even smiling she just pushed me aside as assault and told me off and let the gunfire and pleading hostages make their prescience clear throughout the dingy broken home. She told me not to crash the car and I told her not to worry that’s when I remembered how much you hated this car. I remember how much you hated the torn upholstery and cracked windshield. I thought that maybe this wouldn’t be the best rescue chariot after all. And then I decided to break down and cry again knowing you would never get back in this car, and back into my arms. I just took the keys out of the ignition, slammed the near broken drivers side door almost off of the frame and walked shamefully through the garage and back into the house. And there my brother was with another barrage of harsh insults. I just couldn’t get you off of my mind. I have tried many times to forget about you. But the more I try the worst it seems to slip and the more south it seems to go. The Ross Island Bridge is still calling my name. She still wants me to jump from the low-rise railing. And sometimes I grow a bit morbid and deranged as I stare at the near dead light bulb and listen to the sound of your voice echoing through living nightmares caught on tape and Mix Cd’s that you have left lying scattered and scratched on my front porch, Seeing your fading face in old photographs hanging from the unkempt bedroom walls and mirrors. I grow a bit morbid, The Ross Island Bridge calls my name.
Sometimes I think maybe she wants you to jump with me.
About nineteen days after my life was destroyed. The entire school has still been laughing. Rumors have been speculating and spreading like wildfire. I feel as if I had now developed leprosy as no one wants to talk to me and the exploits of my darkest secrets have spread throughout the school. I try to keep my head hidden in the class but it’s just no use anymore. Sometimes I wish I could be invisible again, I wish I could go back to being an anonymous and unknown. Just go back to blending in with the background and going unnoticed. Just to get the image of The Ross Island Bridge out of my head and just to feel some sense of peace or belonging that I have not felt in the longest time. I know it has only been a little over two weeks since you tore me into shreds and spit me back out onto the floor but it feels as if I have been gone and missing for my entire lifetime. As if my face has been on a milk carton for years and years on end now and then suddenly somebody finally decides to come looking for me. They find me and my thoughts and troubles all behind me once and for all lying on the rocks by the bay as the Willamette River washes the blood off of the shore and the passerby’s step out of their cars and all point and panic. Rushing to call the police, someone like my brother at my funeral saying how he always cared and always loved me. Pretending to have always cared from the second I was born. The only way anyone would care about me either way is in some sort of postmortem state of fake remorse and guilt. Yes in fact my face was on that carton for years but no one came looking. Nineteen days later I sit in the lunchroom trying to eat or avoid vomiting again at least. But here you come walking by smiling ear to ear pleased as punch with what you’ve done to me. The chatter in the room builds into TV static like cacophony and I just try to pretend it doesn’t bother me. I feel my head spinning you start to laugh cruelly. I throw up the rest of my esophagus as the entire room is once again in riotous laughter. When I am taken to the nurses office they’ll ask me what is wrong, why has something like this happened three or four times within the past two short weeks? I’ll probably just tell a little white lie. Maybe the flu, could be anything. I won’t tell them the truth. I won’t tell them about me and you, I won’t tell them about The Ross Island Bridge, I’ll tell them a fabrication, a simple and harmless lie as time ticks on and I’m finding ways to settle the score.
It has been about two months since my heart was torn to shreds and two months since my life was destroyed by you. Two months since they all laughed in the hallways and it’s been about a month and a half since the sun has stated to shine bright down on this desolate and mundane town and less than a month since Prom Night. School has now let out for the summer and the light bulb is still glowing bright in my room as I try to patch up my plans for retribution. My red notebook telling every single dark fantasy, reality, growing anger, revenge and murder plots has a new name and title etched in to the front with worn royal blue ballpoint ink a and long hard scrapes reading “Viciously Sweet” I hear the voices in my head over an over again. The taunting, the cruelty, everyone and every name in the book held against me. Just fading into the background, completely unnoticed and untouched for so long as I hear the word “retard” said with a snide tone and corresponding hand motion. He has been tormenting me for years and so I put him on the list. His name written in a close second right underneath yours and right between at least a hundred and more. The kids who laughed and shoved me into the lockers and the dilapidating drywalls, spit and called me a “faggot” for years and years on end, their names are written clearer than day in pure black and white, binary, solipsistic and crystal clear, The ones who’ve told me that I would never have the things that they did and told me that I wasn’t worth their time are written down on the list, getting every ounce of pain dealt throughout the years with full brutal force. Everyone who’s ever called me a name, or spit in my face, walked all over me, used me, took me out to the bleachers and drove their fist right into my stomach and face until I was not even recognizable for no good reason other than the fact that I wasn’t like any of you, Their names are overfilling the notebook. Anyone who ever made a patronization, statement, judgment or generalization. The people in which you have commissioned and gave direct orders to join your witch-hunt’s month after month and year after year. Anyone who said they knew me and then forgot that I was even there, forgot completely that I existed always making promises they couldn’t keep. Everyone’s on that list, and everyone is going to know me. The blue suits will be searching high and low for me, a siege will begin. A statewide manhunt ensues. No one would ever guess my body will be washed a way to shore, until months later I float up decomposed on the muddy banks of Seattle. The hipster’s will stroll by under the Space Needle as it stands taller than ever the elevator running up and down at any hour imaginable as either in broad daylight or pitch black nighttime someone with long hair dressed in trendy clothes and riding a ten speed pulls on my near skeleton like hand, surrounded by flies and flaking dry skin. He shouts out for help, he shouts out telling the entire world about my dead lifeless corpse as the crowd grows wider and wider.
About a year after I get even you’ll be on TV right between the hostages and rapid gunfire and in-between the cheesy sitcoms and melodramatic Lifetime Movies telling your queasy and morbidly late testimony and alibi to the entire world in a special 20/20 report. You’ll sob and testify how sorry you ever were for humiliating me. How remorseful you felt for destroying my life. Some will call you brave, some will commend you for telling the truth and stepping up to the plate. Others will hope only for the worst, you won’t be able to show your face in public my soul you can never wash off of your dirty little heart and hands. You will in tears and my family will either be buried six feet under or locked away in straight jackets when your apology commandeers the local and international airwaves. Your eyes will be puffy and red, they will have to kill the microphones and flick off the cameras as you go crying and running away to hide and drown your shame. The commercial break will fill that blank space with something such as a Lexus, baby lotions, or perhaps furniture stores going out of business. When the break is over you will be sitting back in your chair trying not to break down and start sobbing trying to catch your puny little breath. The entire world will be tuning in to watch you come clean for your youthful magic moments and admit that you have made an awful mistake. Some would tune in, drop out and want to see you admit to the world your involvement pushing me just a little too far this time and see you live with your regret. And some would tune in to comment on how I had it coming and how I am sick and psychotic and how I would be burning in hell. But maybe I’d just be watching your downfall right above in the clouds or below in the cryptic flames watching you choke, and watching my big devious master plan be put to use. Watching my recognition and appreciation slowly creep back across the world, trying to not feel bitter, trying to just watch you get what you deserve. Trying to remember about that one time I truly loved you. The one time my heart was made of cookie crumbs and soft fluff taken from stuffed animals and down comforters. The day that I have ever believed in you.
About two years after it happens you may wonder why you’d even carry on. Why would you continue to live knowing what you’ve done to me? Why would your friends want to carry on being guilty as well? Why would mom and brother the ones who are just as much to blame as everyone else want to carry on either knowing what they’ve done to me? You all would want to join me, after years of ignoring me, years of pushing me aside, years of pushing me away, years of tormenting me. The tears coming to my eyes right now seem far too long restrained and these feelings far too long ignored. Some would contemplate suicide with a knife, some a pistol, perhaps a noose, perhaps a bottle of pills. But The Ross Island Bridge takes many self-voluntary and volatile victims everyday and every week, the bigger the come the harder they fall. Maybe you’d jump from The Ross Island Bridge and maybe you’d rot with me down at the bottom and maybe you’d float away right into the night and right into Seattle and right into a suave hipsters hand.
About ten years after it will all happen the entire world will start to grow fuzzy and will start to forget about the day my world was torn apart. The details will start to wither and my fame and small fortune will start to slip and slide, twist and spin straight down to hell following me into my darkness that has now become my proud and happy home. They will all start to find other things to cry and moan about. Buildings might burn, guns may be fired, amber alerts might flash bright and wide, some might put a bullet through their head, drugs and alcohol might claim more victims washed up celebrities might die and come to the spotlight, scandals will ensue corrupt politicians will fall from grace this will all look inconsequent and pointless to even still think about. But I promise that you will never forget, even in your demise in the muck and mire running through a field of broken glass and shattered dreams, you will always remember.
About twenty years after it happened I have completely faded from memory and this nightmare is not even thought of or brought up. Every little trace of me is completely vanished from this good rotten earth. No one even remembers my name and no one even wants to recall, remember or even acknowledge me again for as long as this world might turn. Maybe you’ll be locked in a padded room, maybe you’ll be in jail, maybe in rehab endlessly relapsing, or perhaps you will be in a dingy trailer park trying to pay for your addiction and way to live with what you’ve done. Maybe your body will be for sale and maybe your mind and well being will be at risk. Yes the rest of the world has forgotten about me, perhaps The Ross Island bridge has crumbled to the ground or perhaps torn down when claimed unstable or maybe it’s being remodeled once again. Maybe you will be under that bridge calling my name in the very dead of night hoping apologizing lying to yourself telling yourself that I am alive and well for the sake of solace. You might call my name walking around the bay. Calling out and begging me to come home as the police are giving yet another warning and as the neighbors living by the bay try to sleep. They have jobs and kids and you’re being filed as a disturbance. You might be coming belligerent as my body rests in the morgue and as my sick kindred spirit will haunt you everyday and every night. Every waking moment you spend on this earth I will be hovering over your shoulder. I will be taunting you. The world has forgotten about me, no historical commemorative plaque on that infamous bridge, no one cares, no one even remembers. The 20/20 special is perhaps lost at sea drowning in vintage archive footage that no one remembers or even mentions. No one remembers the killing of the microphones, the flick of the cameras, The Lexus, the baby lotion, the long since closed furniture store possibly demolished and paved over and no one even remembers the sight of you at all. But you can never forget about me, I am beside you in time and spirit without reason nor rhyme and I am tearing you apart figuratively limb by limb. I am under your skin, you are in my prison you could never break free, never.
About seventy years after it has happened, you have long since been dead and buried in the ground. High School has ended years ago and no one has ever kept in contact or spoken to you again. No one loved you like I did and no one wanted you around so you twisted and strewn yourself into a permanent blackened exile. Maybe living on the shoulders of life. Living a lie that you still loved yourself that you’ve always loved me, dying a spinster lonely and lost. I am still rotting for an eternity you seemed to have joined me and I seemed to just smile and turn away. Your body has finally decomposed and fertilized the soft and selfish fabric lining of your final resting place. Nothing but bones and spare pieces of flesh. You ask me as we both burn bright “Was it all even worth it?” And I tell you with a somber chuckle as the soft white underbelly of the beast starts to harden “You can answer that question yourself.” Meanwhile the archive footage has been most likely destroyed in a fire spreading throughout the studios or has just been completely forgotten about and destroyed. Perhaps someone misplaced the footage or maybe the film canister has been dropped off of the bay somewhere in New York and floated up to Portland and made it right back home where it should belong. No one remembers one single little detail of out faults and shortcomings, lies, vices or negativity. Something barley worth remembering.
About a week before it happens I will make sure that I have everything in order. I will take my video camera and take it into my closet and keep evidence and inventory of my evil deed. I will count each potential exit and escape and what their power may be worth. I will work alone and I will make sure that viciously sweet as every little last detail scribbled and jotted down in every blue faded perforated line, and I will make sure my motives and reasons are clear to the entire world. I will make sure that everyone knows that you can only remain sweet for too long, and that the sweetest and most blessed things are the most cruel and vicious in this world. But you know all about that, now don’t you?
About four days before it happens I will be waiting outside of your house every night in my beat mom’s beat up car, the one that you hate, the one that you loathe. I will watch you set up for your next party and I will make sure that entire list will be there trapped just where I want them. You’ve all had you’re laughs. It was fun to be cruel, it was fun to be mean. You didn’t know my name, you didn’t want to, you just wanted to maim you just want to poke and prod. You didn’t know me, you never did. You never will. Your limited prejudiced and biased believes. Limited and false of what things could be, of what I could be. Maybe I should just keep you alive in the trunk of that car listening you scream. I kiss you goodnight as I take you to The Ross Island Bridge and make you jump with me. I wouldn’t have to leave alone, you could come with me just the way it should’ve been this entire time. The leaves are bright red, falling from the trees, Carmel Apples, cider and Halloween Costumes starting to sell for a certain price. School starts soon and the teachers are getting ready to come back for another miserable years as you get the drinks, drugs and other party favors I sit watching you from the Honda Civic while I lay low and wonder if you’ve ever loved me to begin with.
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About twenty-six hours before it happens my mom will break down my closet door and notice my arsenal and she will read this notebook and she will know all about my plans. She’ll then call the police and my loving brother might try to hold me to the ground, I might not be able to break my fall. My loving mother will tell me that this is for the best and she’ll force a tear or two, I’ll grab my good lord shotgun almighty, I’ll pray to him, I’ll offer him shells, bullets ammunition blood and rounds as a tithing. An offering of goodwill. I will be damned if someone who has never had any business being in my life from the first place will stand the long awaited date between retribution and I. They’ll squeal to me their last requests, vows and words and brother-fairest and mother-dearest will be sung to sleep once and for all. Their final destination will be a black garbage bag sitting on the curb as I clean the mess, burn my clothes, shave my head and grab my suit and wait for the party of the century.
About two minutes before it will happen the room will be filled with smoke and disgusting black hearted lies. It will reek of vodka and beer, I will walk in the door no one seems to notice me, no one noticing my big black coat and my big hefty boots. No one will even see my saviors hidden in the holsters. They’ll all just smile and laugh intoxicated and falsely in love with one another just for one meaningless evening. No one will notice anything, I will walk among them as a ghost and doppelganger for a so-called human. Their eyes will be drooping shut, their brains will be frying just like eggs in a corroded pan they will try to remain conscience until my saviors speak out once and for all, sending all of the demons from the earth banishing them from this sacred cesspool and sending them to their true sad, inferno shanty houses eaten away in flies and flames. The more I send home I’m still making my way back to you. I find you in your bed with you’re legs spread wide open to let the insects and vermin of this town and world in. You will beg for your life, you will apologize, you will cry and bawl. I will tote my shotgun over my shoulder, I will undo my blood soaked black tie and coat. I will smile sickly, you will have to live with this forever and I will walk away.
About thirty minutes after it will have happened I have crossed off every name on the list. I mark the everything down in the now notorious notebook. The Ross Island Bridge is still calling my name as cars rush in every direction, the moon glows brightly, the crickets chirp and the sirens scream as loud as they can in my ears about to pour blood all over the road and flood this disgusting vile city. I then take a step onto that ledge, I look around Portland one last time, I breathe in the putrid air one last time as if I will miss it. The sirens get grimy, down and dirty as they all rush around looking for me. The lights shine in the harbor, citizens walk all throughout town, the boats take off and sail peacefully into the night, the high-class homes right past the bay sparkle and glitter like gold and the cars contrasting the tranquility pick up the speed and pace, the sirens shriek and holler as I exhale that long deep breath. I swing and sway back and forth. I jump, I think of you one last time and listen to the whole world come crashing down with me as I feel the wind and the cool night breeze whip through my hair, fill, chant and excite my ears. I continue to plummet down faster and faster, still seeming slower and slower. I hit the water at the speed of sound and the feeling of transgression and the blissful feeling of increasing and broadening feeling of nothingness.
The last thing I remember is the image of your loving facade and indecent, inhuman smile watching me die. The smile you gave to me long ago telling me that you cared, telling me you would never let me go. Telling me dirty sweet lies as I was secretly dying on the inside just a little more each day. I remember the last good thing that I had going. I remember your body pressed against mine only a week before my world started to come down and drop onto my head. I remember what I thought you were, and what I thought I was never capable of when you were there right by my side. And now your smile disappears, I feel a thousand burning soothing needles are sticking out all over my body. I close my eyes as I’m starting to slip.
And, right before I go home, right before I slip away, right before I die, I just have to ask you, “was it really worth it?”