Sky Tongues

Gina Ranalli

Also by Gina Ranalli

Novels

Chemical Gardens

Suicide Girls in the Afterlife

Wall of Kiss

Mother Puncher

Swarm of Flying Eyeballs

Praise the Dead

House of Fallen Trees

Collections

13 Thorns (with Gus Fink)

Winner of the Wonderland Award

Sky Tongues

Published by Eraserhead Press

205 NE Bryant

Portland, OR 97211

www.eraserheadpress.com

ISBN 1-933929-81-2

Copyright © 2009 by Gina Ranalli. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

1

With my tongues folded neatly in my lap, I sit here on my balcony and watch the bright lights of Los Angeles twinkle below me. Sometimes I’m still not sure how I came to be here. Even at the height of my fame, I wasn’t sure. My life has, for the most part, been a gift and though there was a time when I would have protested intensely, I now know that my finger-tongues are a gift as well.

I want to share the story of my life with you. Some have requested it, but most have not. Either way, here it is. My gift to you, my fans.

2

My parents, Gall and Maude, met one day when they were in a diner. Both were Mues, of course, he a Skin and she an Outie, but their differences didn’t matter to either of them. My father has always had a thing for Outies, had in fact, dated many of them previously, but my mother was much younger and shy, barely able to look up from the plates of greasy eggs and burgers she would serve to the customers.

My father ordered a vanilla milk shake as soon as he sat down at the counter and my mom, never having seen a shark Skin before became immediately enamored of him and promptly spilled his shake in his lap. Surprisingly, dad laughed and told her she could make it up to him by agreeing to a date, which she did.

They continued to date for several months and then she became pregnant. Gall, a very traditional kind of Mue, at first wanted her to have an abortion but when she refused, he promptly moved in with her, despite his own parent’s intense disapproval. It had always been understood that he was to be with a Skin like himself and the rest of his family. And he had always planned to do so, considering the Outie females he was attracted to as merely playtime before settling down.

But, as we all know, nothing ever goes as planned.

3

Maude was a very unusual kind of Outie and most had ever seen one quite like her. Most of her veins were outside her body, snaking up and down her skin like so many tangles of wire. She had suffered some abuse while growing up, with other children often attempting to cut one of her veins just to see what would happen and watch her bleed. Obviously, even the slightest nick was a far more dangerous prospect to her than it is to most of us. But somehow she always survives, never having been unlucky enough for someone to get hold of one of her major arteries.

But despite her uniqueness, her new “in-laws”- in quotations, of course, because different breeds of Mues are forbidden to marry - were still not particularly impressed with her. They welcomed her into their house as their son’s new pseudo-bride but rarely spoke to her and, she always said, only tolerated her because she was carrying their first grandchild. They were deeply disappointed in their son Gall and he himself was not particularly pleased with having his playboy days end so abruptly and at such a young age. He was barely 26.

And that is how I came to be, the offspring of an Outie and a Skin, thrown together by circumstance rather than love.

I was in the womb and already my destiny had begun.

4

By the time I was born, my parents were living in an apartment south of Old Boston and both were working their respective jobs, she, still at the infamous diner and he as a plumber. His pay was far greater than hers and he never let her forget it. Resentment at his ended bachelorhood was always there, lying in wait just beneath the surface, anxious for a chance to spring out and give her a friendly reminder of all that he had sacrificed to marry her and financially support the child he already didn’t want.

But still, there I was, little Sky, born healthy on June the 5. Adding insult to injury, however, I was not a Skin as Gall was. Instead, I was an Outie like my mother. My condition though, was even more unusual than hers. Instead of something run-of-the-mill, like a spine on the outside of my back or a partially exposed brain, I had tongues for fingers. Four longish thin ones, somewhat snaky and serpentine, while my thumbs were more like regular tongues, shorter and thicker. The tongue in my mouth was exactly as it should have been, thank the gods. I also was born with two fat tongues on each foot, instead of big toes, which, as you might guess, made shoes difficult to shop for. But that was the least of my problems. I still had to grow up with a resentful father who didn’t want me and made no bones about it. He was the one who began calling me Sky Tongues, a nickname which stuck all through my growing up years.

Maude, on the other hand, adored me when I was first born. She took me everywhere she went, showed me off to strangers and often brought me to visit my grandparents, who also, for some mysterious reason, adored me as well.

The first few years of my childhood were mostly full of bliss. I have very few memories of my father during this time, but the ones I do have are scary ones. He was loud and always angry, his shark skin glistening and shiny, his black eyes full of fire.

My mother did her best to shield me from his temper and disgust at having had an Outie. As I said, she adored me, and I her. Unfortunately though, those days were altogether too short.

5

I was six when my brother Zion was born. And Zion was, to my father’s relief, a Skin like himself, not to mention a male, which was infinitely better than what I was: neither male nor female. I was a hermaphrodite, born with both sex organs, and that had been yet one more reason for Gall to hate me. He disliked Hermies even more than he disliked most Mues. Even more than he disliked the Norm Mues, which, for some reason, he hated worst of all.

But Zion was neither of those things. His Skin was beautiful Dolphin, a gorgeous shade of gray rarely found except maybe among the Splits, which we all know may as well be fake. He was all boy and proved to be smart as well, lovable in every sense of the word.

Now, my father was happy (unless his eyes fell on me, which they all too often did) and then so was my mother. Pleased she’d finally given him something he wanted, she focused all her attention of her new child, all but forgetting the previous one.

6

It was at this time that I began my schooling. Instead of being sent to an all Outies school, however, I was sent to a much cheaper school for Norms-those supposed unfortunates possessing “normal birth defects”. And a Norm I most definitely was not.

School was hell for me. Just learning how to hold a pencil between my tongues proved to be a difficult task that took far longer for me than it did the other children. No pun intended, of course, but I did indeed stick out like a sore thumb. My classmates were the most common variety of Norms. There were many with barely any deformities at all, such as having an extra limb or an extra eye. Several hunchbacks graced my presence as well as a few doubleheads.

But none were as odd as I with my tongues and as such, I was teased unmercifully. I was called Froggy by most because my tongue fingers were so strangely long. I was told to go back to my lily pad and catch flies. More often than not, I was asked to hop.

It was all very unoriginal taunting, as children are usually unoriginal beings, but sadly, many of the teachers I encountered also held a latent contempt for me. They, like the children, were Norms, with nothing more than an occasional nose on a cheek or lumpy knobs instead of hair.

Completely and utterly miserable, I shut myself off from my surroundings, preferring the company of my own brain, even at home. There was nowhere for me to turn except into my imagination and that is where I went, where I found solace and a place where I fit in.

7

I took an interest in art at a young age due to my discomfort among the rest of the human race. My first inclination was music, but obviously playing an instrument was out of the question and my parents refused to pay for lessons, using the excuse that they were saving up to send Zion to the very best Skin school in the state.

Next, I tried my hand at painting, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I had to take odd jobs around the neighborhood to get the money for paint. I babysat, mowed an occasional lawn, cleaned the occasional house, all so I could afford the cheapest non-toxic acrylic paint I could find. I didn’t need to buy canvases or even paper, for I found that collecting discarded cardboard or pieces of wood suited me just fine.

In the beginning, I used brushes to paint my expressionistic abstracts but holding them was never my strong suit. I preferred to paint with just my tongues, even though the paint tasted horrible. I loved the whole process of spreading color around where there had previously been none and it enabled me live happily inside myself for hours on end.

But as Zion grew older, the time I had to myself steadily decreased. I was now given the majority of the household chores and sometimes I think my father delighted in watching me work. Dust rags often made me physically ill due to the chemicals sprayed on them and I was made to vacuum the same rug over and over until he was satisfied. And some days he was never satisfied. More than once he made me get down on my knees and pick microscopic bits of lint off the carpets with my bare tongues. This was disgusting and obviously a cruel enjoyment for him but any displeasure on my part was promptly greeted with a beating and more chores still.

I would rake or shovel, depending on the season, do laundry for the whole family, wash dishes by tongue every morning before school and then again when I got home and then again before bed. My tongues became dry and chapped, cracking and bleeding, sprouting blisters and sores but none of that mattered to Gall. He would watch me struggle to hold a broom, a little smile of amusement on his face.

This went on for years, while my mother happily ignored it. All of her attention was now taken up by Zion and his new verbal demands. I mourned the loss of my mother and looked on with envy as she polished his skin and attended to his every whim.

Before long, I was attending to his every whim as well. Zion’s room needed to be cleaned, his sheets changed, his toys repaired. He disliked the way I folded his clothes and so I received a beating my father, a lecture from my mother and instructions from my six year old brother on how he preferred to have his socks stacked and color coordinated.

Boiling with black rage, I learned to hate them all and hating them, as it turned out, became my salvation.

8

Entering my teen years turned out to be a fresh kind of hell. As most teenagers find themselves suddenly curious about the opposite sex, I was intensely curious about both sexes. I had both sets of sex organs, after all, born with what they call a clock between my legs. Neither clit nor cock, but both. One and the same. Considered either an extremely large clit or an extremely small cock, depending on who was asked.   Regardless, though, my clock was awakening to new sensations and late at night I would lie awake in my bed thinking about a girl or a boy, whichever had caught my fancy that day, while feeling my clock swell beneath my pajamas. Eventually, I was brave enough to sneak a hand down there, stroking my clock with increasing intensity, pinching and pulling it between my thumb and index tongues. The resulting orgasms sent me over the moon and instead of painting, masturbation became my one greatest skill.

Other kids too, mostly boys, took a new interest in my tongues as well. For the most part, I looked more female than male and so it was mainly boys who were looking at me in a new light.

In front of others, I was still the freak Outie, but when I was alone in the library or spotted walking home, boys would corner me and say obscene things about my tongues. They would make me offers, usually money, but sometimes other things if they had no money. They would beg me to step into the woods with them; it would only take a minute. I received untold amounts of promises, confessions of love and occasionally a threat.

I ignore them all. These were the same kids who had for years tormented me about being an Outie rather than a Norm and they continued to do so every day at school. The only thing that had changed was their own libidos and they way they acted towards me in private.

But I knew I was my own best lover and I wasn’t about to share the glory of my multiple massaging tongues. That was only for me, my clock. It was the one thing that was truly mine and no amount of cajoling would change my mind on the matter.

9

And then I met Midgard.

He was the one Norm that I found myself attracted to when I entered junior high school. He was the most handsome Norm in the entire school and everyone agreed, even him. His deformity was his extra long arms, which hung well past his knees, and his claw-like hands, one with only three fingers, the other with four. I suspected his feet were deformed as well, but I never saw them. His face, however, was perfect. Even more handsome than that of the best looking non-Mues. Midgard, I was sure, would grow up to be a movie star. He was completely and utterly beautiful and I was in love with him.

Midgard and I sat next to each other in science class. He and his friends called me Froggy, among other insults. “Half-girl” particularly stung. I pretended to hate him as much as I hated everyone else but he knew it was an act. I could see it in his crystal blue eyes.

On one occasion, I caught him gazing at my tongues when we were supposed to be taking a test and I smiled at him. There was a second when I thought he’d return the smile but instead, he shouted, “Don’t look at me, Froggy!”

I was mortified, hung my head and tried to concentrate on listing the different kinds of clouds.

The next day in the library, I was in a secluded area searching for a president’s biography for a book report and then there was Midgard standing beside me. He brushed his body against mine without saying a word. His face was intensely serious and for some reason I bent low and grasped his hand in my tongues. He shook himself free in what could have been disgust but when I straightened up again, he kissed me, shoving his tongue into my mouth in a way that only a twelve year old could. It was a clumsy, messy kiss but I returned it lustfully, closing my eyes, filled with bliss.

The kiss was painfully brief and the instant it was over, Midgard disappeared down an aisle and proceeded to ignore me.

Back in science class it was business as usual. He hurled an extra amount of insults my way, making the entire class hysterical with laughter until the teacher put an end to it and told us to open our books to page 111.

10

The library became the place where Midgard would come to me. He would fondle my breasts as we stood quietly behind the bookcases which held the most neglected books. He grew more and more bold, at one point running his hand over one of my shoulders, determining that I was braless and then quickly, deftly, unbuttoning my top, exposing me and muttering, “They’re beautiful,” before dipping his head and taking a nipple into his mouth.

During these times, he would always disappear as quickly as he’d arrived, strutting off to sit with his friends at a round table by the window and then be loud and obnoxious with them, sometimes so much so that they would be kicked out of the library and banned from returning for several days.

Unlike class however, Midgard never made fun of me in the library. His friends did, but not him. He would sit silently, almost sullenly, and at most he would laugh with them but he never said a single disparaging word to me himself.

One day, in a particularly daring move, he came to me while I was stooped down examining a book on a bottom shelf. He used his long stringy fingers to open his jeans and pull out his penis, shoving it in my face. “Kiss it,” he said, his voice low.

I looked at this thing presented to me, thinking it was rather ugly but still it was his and I loved him. I was tempted to do as he demanded but in the end, I couldn’t. The feelings of disgust and fear were too overwhelming. He repeated his demand but I turned away and then another student entered the aisle next to our, leaving him no choice but to quickly put it away and vanish once again.

That day in science class was like any other, but I now thought of his cruelness as only something he did for show. It was like a game he and I were playing and we were the only ones who knew it. It was our secret sport and I was just pleased that he was paying attention to me. I knew he only did it because he wanted to talk to me but couldn’t because his friends would tease him if he did.

But, he was too beautiful to not forgive and so I did. I even came to a place where I thought I understood his actions and loved him all the more for it.

I took to calling him on the phone at night, having found that he had a listed number. Sometimes he would hang up on me but more often than not he would talk dirty. Tell me all the things he wanted to do to me and the things he wanted me to do to him. He would ask me sexy questions about my body and tell me things about his.

Our bizarre love affair lasted exactly one school year and then it was over. The following year, we shared no classes and seldom saw each other except as we passed in the halls. And then would come the taunts, the name-calling, the “Hey, Froggy, let me see you leap!”

Eventually, I became bored with Midgard, grew to think of him as nothing more than an asshole and forgot about him.

But still, for reasons twisted and pathetic, he was my first love.

11

The first year of high school was pretty much exactly how junior high had been but during the second year, I began to make my own special accessories. I fashioned gloves and moccasins out of soft leather and so was able to hide the fact that I was an Outie. I made a few friends who, though Norms themselves, eventually learned that I was an Outie but by then didn’t care anymore.

My grades improved slightly, due to the fact that I was smarter than the school administration assumed. They had put me in many remedial classes where I was mostly able to excel.

I took as many art classes as I could, sometimes winning prizes for my bizarre paintings, and was befriended by a young teacher’s aid. She was a college-age art student herself and we would often meet for coffee and have long conversations about various painters, styles and movements. It was also she who suggested that I investigate the drama department, which after much inner debating, I did.

Armed with my gloves, I auditioned for small parts and, to my own amazement, got them. I began spending more and more time in the theater, not only in school but in the real world as well. Encouraged by the teacher’s aid, on weekends I would attend swap meets and sell my paintings, sometimes fetching as much as a couple hundred dollars for a single piece of decorated cardboard. I would use the money to buy tickets to plays in Old Boston, as well as tucking some aside with the intent of saving it so I could attend actor’s workshops during summer vacations.

Nearly all of my time was now taken up by the arts, which, when I’m honest with myself, I know was only to escape an increasingly unhappy home life.

Zion was now in the 5 grade and still the apple of my parents eyes. Even when he angered and attempted to cut our mother’s carotid artery, he was forgiven and I was assigned the task of cleaning up the small lake of blood pooled on the kitchen floor while everyone else rushed to the hospital. It seemed to me that Zion should be cleaning up his messes himself, but I can’t recall a single time when he did.

Even though I was now 15, my father still thought it was ok to use me as a punching bag and often did. Because of my extra curricular activities and friendships, things like the laundry were taking longer to be done and he eventually threatened to throw me out of the house unless I started “pulling my own weight.” I wasn’t about to sacrifice my art (that would have been sacrificing my soul) so I started doing as many chores as I could when I should have been sleeping. I’d been an insomniac my entire life, making the transition a fairly easy one, but then my school work began to suffer, which earned me yet more hell from my father.

I think the fact is simply this: any excuse to beat me was a good enough excuse for him. In fact, he often made things up just so he could throw me to the ground, sit on my chest and punch me in the face.

Being witness to this didn’t make Zion sympathetic as one would have imagined. Instead, he began making things up and telling my parents outrageous lies about me, earning me yet more beatings despite my denials and usually the complete impossibility that I could have done what I’d been accused of, most often because I simply had not been home when said crime had occurred.

But there was no winning for me. All I could do was be there as little as possible and when I had to be, make myself as small and quiet as possible, hoping that they would forget my existence for a short while.

The actor’s workshop was a huge blessing in that department. When, come summer, I had enough money to attend, I practically lived there. Acting was heaven to me. The chance to live another person’s life became an obsession; to be anyone but myself is all I craved. I studied everything I could: mime, body movement, improvisation, method and technical acting, voice, dance. If there was a class, I took it and I soon was given leads in impressive plays, playing both Anne Frank and Joan of Arc on a New Boston stage. The reviews were almost always positive, except for a few which stated I was often difficult to hear. Throwing my voice was the hardest thing for me to learn, as I was so pathetically shy and afraid of my own shadow most of the time.

But, with much practice, I learned to be loud while in character. I worked hard—harder than anyone else attending the workshop—and my hard work paid off. I had talent, more so than I’d ever had with painting, and I soon began to see that talent as my ticket out of hell.

12

Learning how to raise my voice turned out to be both a curse and a blessing. I would sit in my bedroom, reciting monologues as loud as I dared, until Gall came crashing through the door and demanding that I shut the fuck up.

“I have to learn how to do this, Dad. It’s important.”

“I don’t give a fuck what it is. If I hear you again, you’re ass is grass and I’m the lawnmower!”

That was one of his favorite expressions. He wasn’t what I would call of high intelligence. “Ok,” I said meekly. Then he left and I would practice throwing my voice quietly. Naturally, this technique didn’t work that well and after half an hour or so, I forgot myself and became louder and louder, unaware that I was doing so until the next time my father kicked open the door.

I was scared of him certainly, but even more than I was scared, I wanted to succeed in the only thing I truly knew how to do, the only thing besides painting that I’d ever been praised for.

The third time he came in was the last. He grabbed me by the hair and threw me into the wall face first. Instantly, my lip split and my nose made a peculiar cracking sound as I crumbled to the floor. Before I’d even had time to register what had happened, he was on me again, kicking, kicking in my stomach, hips, back, head. Whatever he could reach with his steel-toed boot.

I have no idea how long it went on, but I remember my mother finally coming in and trying to grab him by the shoulders, repeating, “Gall, that’s enough now. Calm down. Calm down.”

He did stop kicking me but instead of just leaving me, instead of leaving the room, he lifted me by my hair again, dragging me out and down the hall, down the stairs and straight to the front door. Still holding me with one hand, he opened the door with the other and flung me out of it, screaming, “Get the fuck out of my house, you freak! Don’t ever come back! If I see you again, I swear to fucking gods, I’ll kill you!”

Lying on the family walkway, curled into the fetal position and trying not to vomit, I watched him slam the door. I thought it might reopen and I’d see my mother there, but that never happened. The door stayed closed and in time, I was able to pick myself up and move on.

13

With the little bit of money I had in my pocket, I took a train into New Boston. I had to ignore the strange looks I was getting from other passengers, but that was easy enough. I’d been ignoring strange looks my entire life.

Once the train pulled into the Park Street station, I got off and rode the escalator high into the bright afternoon sun. I walked until I found a fast food joint where I went into the bathroom to assess the damage and clean up my face, which was caked with dried blood. My split lip was badly swollen but my nose seemed ok, despite the loud crack I’d heard when it collided with the wall. It was sore and twice it’s normal size but I didn’t think it was broken.

I was in pain though, both of my hips ached but the worst of it came from my stomach and back. Lifting my shirt and craning around, I looked in the mirror and saw the purple bruises of a settling dusk across my back. My front didn’t look any better and I briefly considered marching myself to the nearest police station and turning the fucker in for child abuse. The thought gave me bitter pleasure and I actually managed a slight smile, which opened my lip again and made me wince.

Holding a damp paper towel to my face, I exited the bathroom and the restaurant and aimed for the park across the street. The sun felt warm and wonderful and all I wanted to do was sleep, so I picked a spot that was mostly void of people, laid down and closed my eyes. I listened to all the sounds of any park on a bright summer afternoon: children playing, dogs barking, people laughing and sometimes arguing but never anything that sounded as if it would lead to violence.

For a while, I was able to forget my family and that they’d finally succeeded in what had been their goal all along: for me to not exist.

I dreamed of a world where it was them who had never existed at all.

14

“Hey.” A male voice from somewhere faraway. “Hey, kiddo. Wake up.”

I opened my eyes, expecting to see a cop but instead I saw a regular guy. He looked old to me, perhaps in his fifties and he was squinting down and smiling beneath an enormous nose. “You look like someone tried to make hamburger out of you, kid.”

Intentionally frowning, I hoped he got the hint and would just leave me alone, but he didn’t. “What happened?” he asked. He sat down on the grass beside me with a vague groan.

I also groaned and sat up, studying him. He wore khaki pants, and a beige polo shirt beneath a baby-blue windbreaker. He took a pack of smokes from his pocket, shook one out between his lips and offered me one. For some unknown reason, I accepted and thanked him after he lit it for me. I saw his eyes linger on my tongues but only briefly before returning to my face. “Let me guess,” he said. “Your dad did that to you, right?”

I sucked on the cigarette and refused to respond.

“Your boyfriend?”

I did my best not to choke but I’m sure he noticed anyway. He looked away, nodding. “Your dad.” He said it automatically, without a trace of doubt. “You need to go to the hospital?”

I shook my head but wondered. I certainly felt bad enough.

We smoked the rest of our cigarettes in silence, watching the passersby. When he was finished with his butt he flicked it away and held out his hand to me. “I’m Gus. Who are you?”

Imitating him, I flicked my own butt away and accepted his greeting. He took my hand of tongues without blinking and I told him, “My name is Sky.”

“Sky the Outie, eh?” He smiled when he said it, showing me his cigarette-yellow teeth.

“Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

He tilted his head at me and asked, “So, you hungry? I’m buying.”

With my stomach rumbling, I didn’t have to think for long. We’d still be in public and if he turned out to be a freak, I’d just scream my head off and run away. “Sure,” I said, smiling back.

He helped me to my feet with his paper-dry but exceptionally soft hand and then we went in search of food.

15

Gus treated me to a burger and fries and suggested I put some of the ice from my soda in a napkin and press it to my lip, which I did.

“When we’re done here, we’ll go to the drugstore and I’ll buy you some aspirin. Ease the pain and get the swelling down.”

I nodded, secretly waiting for him to spring the catch on me. I was sure he wanted me to jerk him off with my tongues and I wasn’t sure how I would respond when the request came. I didn’t want to be flat-out rude, since he was buying me things, but still. The idea was pretty gross and would make me a whore.

But when we finished our food and headed out into the dwindling day, he still hadn’t mentioned what he wanted in return for his kindness. We simply walked up the street to CVS and he bought me aspirin and a Coke and a few packs of cigarettes for himself. After that, we headed back to the park and hung out. He did most of the talking, telling me that he ran a carnival and more often than not, recruited street kids to work for him.

“Doing what?” I asked suspiciously.

He shrugged. “Running the rides, the concession stands, the games. Pretty much everything.”

“Why aren’t you there now?”

Smiling, he said, “That’s the best part, Sky. We basically only work weekends until later in the summer. Then it’s every day and night, but that just means a lot more cash. Unless you’re afraid of a little work, it’s the perfect gig.”

I considered this and sipped my soda, hoping the aspirin would kick in soon. After a while, he asked, “So, what do you think? You wanna come work for me?”

Here it was, the moment I’d been waiting for. Now he would ask me to fuck him or jerk him off or some other nasty thing I didn’t want to do.

He appeared to read my mind and raised his hands in submission. “No funny stuff. Swear to gods. It’s all on the up and up.” I was still doubtful and he knew it. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t we ride the train over to Eastie and I’ll introduce you to a couple of the kids in my crew. That sound ok?”

“You’ll just take me to some motel or somewhere, right?” I asked, surprising myself.

Gus, however, didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised. Or offended for that matter. “Nope. Just over to a big field where with a bunch of hauling trucks and another whole bunch of tents where the kids stay. A couple trailers, maybe a camper or two, but we can stay outside the whole time.” He raised his right hand, the three middle fingers held straight up and added, “Scouts honor.”

I was still skeptical and he asked, “So, you think you might go home?”

“Hell no!” I was somewhat irritated that he would even mention that as an option.

“Well, where then?”

Where indeed. I admitted I didn’t know.

“Then what do you have to lose? Other than being raped and murdered that is.”

I laughed and then he laughed too, lighting another cigarette. “Just think about it for a while,” he said. “Hang with me a little longer and if I seem like a creep you can go along on your merry way to wherever. But if I seem like a pretty good guy—which I am—then just take a ride with me on a public train to a public place. No harm, no foul.”

“Ok,” I agreed finally. He did seem like a pretty good guy. So far anyway.

16

The scene was exactly as he’d described it: trucks with long beds and disassembled rides and beyond that a little tent city and a couple of crappy campers. There were several teenagers about, some sitting around talking while others kicked a hackey sack back and forth between them. A few adults lingered about too, sitting in folding chairs, smoking, talking. Everyone seemed to have a transistor radio and music could be heard from every direction. As soon as you passed one and the song would fade out, another one was fading in in front of you.

Night had fallen and there was a general feeling of ease and relaxation in the air all around. The feeling I had was instantly a good one.

Gus led me to the kids with the hackey sack. They we all Mues and they all smiled when they saw him. One boy left the game, came over to us and gave Gus a high-five. “Gus, my man! Missed you! Where’ve ya been?”

Pointing at me, Gus said, “Trying to rescue another stray. Everyone, meet Sky. Sky, this is everyone.”

“Like hell!” Someone yelled from one of the tents. Another person called, “Get out while you still can! He’s a slave driver!” And everyone laughed, including Gus.

A shiny female fish-Skin stepped forward and shook my hand. “Don’t count on him to give us proper introductions. He has no manners. My name is Milo.”

“Hi,” I said, instantly reverting to my shy nature.

Milo introduced all the other Mues to me, which took a while and I forgot their names the moment I was on to the next, but every one of them gave me a friendly smile and somehow, I knew I was home.

17

And so it was that I became a carnie.

I was assigned a ring-toss game, working alongside Milo exactly two days after we met. Once again, I was told I needed to raise my voice and I did, pretending that my father could hear me and it was killing him to be able to do nothing about it.

Milo was truly beautiful, even more so than Zion. Her scales threw rainbows off themselves whenever the sun hit her just right and as far as I could tell, she never neglected her skin, always keeping it moist enough so that it never flaked or became slimy.

Like me, Milo dreamed of one day becoming an actor. Only unlike me, she wanted to do it in the movies, not on the stage and she’d never actually done any studying or spent any time on a stage or before a camera.

But she was eager to learn and most of our time off was spent with me instructing her in the little ways that I could. I taught her what I knew of mime and tricks for memorizing lines, that anger was the easiest emotion to portray and happiness the hardest.

Together we wrote mini plays and acted them out in our tent at night, with other Mues sitting around laughing at us, cheering the heroine and booing the villainess.

We were silly teenagers, outcasts, and we accepted each other without question.

I discovered that most of the kids Gus had recruited were runaways, or, like myself, throwaways. All had suffered abuse in one form or another and all adored him like a father. A good father, gentle, caring and loving unconditionally.

It was many weeks before I discovered that he wasn’t human.

18

We were all sitting around one night, talking and playing cards while Gus strummed an acoustic guitar and attempted to sing an old-time folk song. His voice was horrendous and by then I’d moved past my shyness enough to tell him so. “You really need to stop smoking,” I said. “You might be a decent singer if you did.”

Gus laughed. “Darling, smoking has nothing to do with my voice. It’s just the way I was made.”

I was clueless and said, “Well, whatever, but your lungs would love you more if you quit.”

“You think I might get cancer, Sky?” This time everyone laughed with him, leaving me confused. He saw my bewilderment and rapped his chest with his knuckles. “I’m all synthetic inside, darlin’. I can smoke a hundred packs a day for a hundred years and cancer still won’t get me.”

I gaped at him. “You’re a Split?”

“Damn right. A proud one too!”

Shocked, I couldn’t say another word. Splits were the lowest of Mues, even lower than Norms. They were mostly man-made and therefore, not considered Mues at all by some, my father included.

Hillel, an Outie like myself, spoke up. “You have something against Splits, Sky?” he asked, clearly ready to defend Gus if it came to that.

“No,” I said quickly. “I’m just surprised. I didn’t know.” I faked a chuckle, putting all of my training into it, and smacked my tongues into my forehead. “Gods, what an idiot I am.”

The tension that had been building in the air quickly dissipated and everyone went back to their cards and Gus’s guitar once again twanged out its folksy tune.

It seemed that my father had been wrong yet again and yet again, the thought made me smile.

19

Towards the end of summer, the carnival traveled to the west coast where both the weather and the people were always beautiful. We were in San Diego, both Milo and I leaning on our counter watching the marks go by, one of us occasionally shouting at them to come and try their luck, when Milo said, “You know where we’re going in a couple days, right?”

I didn’t, nor did I particularly care. Every place, I learned, was pretty much the same as the last and so were all the people. At first, I’d been excited to travel around and see new places but basically the only things that ever changed were the accents.

“L.A.,” Milo told me, a tinge of excitement edging her voice.

“Yeah?” I tried to feign interest. “Cool. But isn’t there a lot of pollution there? I’ve heard it’s kinda gross.”

“Sky! Who cares if it’s gross! It’s LA! Do you know what that means?”

I shrugged. “What?”

“Hollywood!” she practically shouted. “We could get our big break!”

“Ohhh.” I reached under the counter and grabbed a cigarette. I’d been smoking quite a bit by this time. I’d even mastered holding them only by the filter so my tongues wouldn’t make them too soggy to smoke.

Milo gave me a look. “You don’t seem very excited for someone who feels she was born to act.”

Dragging on my cigarette, I said, “Hollywood is about movies and that kind of shit. That’s not what I want.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m sure they have theaters there, Sky. Gods!”

It was then that two teenage marks strolled up to our booth and wanted to toss a few rings around, so we got to back work and the subject was forgotten about for a while.

20

Everything I’d heard about LA was true.

The pollution can cause your eyes to water and birds fall from the sky choking so frequently that no one even pays attention to it. The streets are littered with every kind of imaginable debris and then some unimaginable. The people are rude and mostly not as beautiful as the media wants you to think. I hated the city immediately but fortunately, we set up in a parking lot across from a beach, which wasn’t bad. It kind of reminded me of home a little bit. It was August and little kids, Mues and otherwise, ran around with sunburns and sticky faces, having themselves a good old time. It was fun and I spent a lot of my time off riding the Ferris wheel over and over, looking out for miles across the blue Pacific ocean.

While we were closing up a little after midnight of our first night there, Milo said she’d bought a paper on her break and circled all the open-call auditions. “You wouldn’t believe how many there are!” she declared, grinning from scale to scale. “Like, hundreds! I figure we can ask Gus for some time off and check out a few of them. It couldn’t hurt right?”

On the contrary, I knew that auditions could often hurt quite a bit, but I kept my mouth closed on the subject. Instead, I said, “What makes you think he’ll give us the time off? He’s never given us time off.”

“That’s my point. We haven’t had a single day off the entire summer. I’m sure if we beg enough he’ll say ok, especially if we can get Hillel to run our booth for a while.”

“And why would Hillel do that?”

Milo wiggled her eyebrows up and down. “Let me worry about that.”

I stared at her. “You’re kidding, right? Hillel?”

Laughing, she continued packing up all the plush prizes and never did answer me.

21

That night Milo cornered Gus and begged him for the following day off.

“No way,” he said quickly. “I need your booth open.”

“Hillel will cover for us!” she insisted.

Gus eyed her skeptically. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. Go ahead and ask him.”

“Hillel is the laziest son-of-a-bitch gods ever put on this planet.”

Milo repeated her statement, telling Gus to ask him, which Gus immediately did, calling Hillel away from his hackey sack game.

“Yeah, I’ll do it,” Hillel said. “No problem, boss.”

Looking even more skeptical, Gus gave in, shrugging his shoulders. “Alright then, but if any of you kids give me any grief, if I lose even a single dollar tomorrow, you’re all gonna be on my shit list for a year.”

Milo jumped up and hugged him around his neck. “You won’t lose a penny, Gus. We promise!” She then proceeded to thank him about a hundred times.

To myself, I was wondering about the “we” shit she was promising, but as usual, I didn’t say a word.

22

In the morning, before I was even fully awake, Milo began showing me the things she’d circled in the paper and pointing out bus routes on a map. I had to forsake a shower and get dressed as fast as I could, gloves and all, and then we were on our way, a mere twenty minutes after she’d shaken me awake.

“This is insane,” I told her while we sat on the bus among a few dozen other people who all seemed to smell bad. “It’s hot and I’ve given up a day’s pay.”

“Quit whining,” she said, staring out the window at the ugly landscape. “If I get even one of these jobs, I’ll pay for the damn day myself.”

I sat back and pouted, mentally preparing myself for what I knew was going to be a long-ass day.

23

By mid-afternoon the temperature was well over a hundred degrees, my tongues were miserably parched and Milo had yet to receive any positive feedback from any casting directors.

“I need to find water for my tongues,” I told her.

“Ok, just one more place first,” she said. “This audition is for an ice cream commercial, so it’ll be nice and cool inside. We might even get free ice cream!”

I made a face behind her back but followed her onto the bus and to the next destination.

24

We arrived late. The waiting room only contained only one actor who held a script close to his face and moved his lips while he read.

Milo signed in, received her script and sat down beside me. “I told you it would be cooler in here.”

Ignoring her, I pulled off my gloves and began licking my tongues to get them at least somewhat moist. A few minutes passed and a door opened. An actor came out looking dejected and the one who had been waiting went in. Impatient, I asked the receptionist if there was a water cooler around and she told me where I could find one down the hall a ways.

By the time I returned with my tiny cup of water, Milo was gone, off to do her audition. I sat and sipped water, occasionally dipping my tongues despite the looks of disgust the receptionist was giving me. I glared right back and went on with my business.

The water was gone by the time Milo emerged with the casting director. “We’ll give you a call,” he was saying. “But, just for future reference, you really should get yourself some headshots and a portfolio.”

She smiled sweetly, saying yes and thank you, blah, blah, blah. I was just anxious to get the hell out of there and find a place where I could get a proper glass of water.

“Ok, you’re up,” The director said.

I sighed and licked my pinky tongue.

“Young lady? It’s your turn.”

Milo laughed and said, “Oh, she’s not auditioning. She’s just here for moral support.” And that’s when I looked up, realizing he’d been talking to me.

“Oh, you’re kidding! With hands like that! Oh, no way. C’mon, get up.” He was waving a hand at me motioning for me to come with him through the door.

I looked at Milo, who shrugged.

“You want me to audition?” I asked the director.

“Hell, yes. Now come on! Time is money.”

“I don’t know…” And I really didn’t.

“Free ice cream,” Milo smiled, showing me a cone of chocolate chip.

It sure looked good. “Ok,” I said, getting up. “What the hell, right?”

“What the hell, indeed,” the director agreed.

I followed him through the door and to an extremely fake looking set pretending to be a suburban kitchen. “I don’t have a portfolio either, you know,” I told him.

“Eh. Who cares? It’s always a good excuse to say that to some people though.” He grinned at as if we were best friends and I had to suppress a gag.

There were a few people hanging around the set, camera, light and sound people by the looks of them. The director told me to go sit on a stool at the fake counter and face the camera, which was easy enough. Then someone handed me a bowl of ice cream.

“Ok,” the director said, as he sat in his special director’s chair. “Now just act like you’re enjoying it. Like you’re really loving the shit out of that ice cream. It’s the best you’ve ever had in your entire life.”

“Umm…ok.” I picked up a spoonful of ice cream, put it in my mouth and made a face of ecstasy.

“No, no, no,” the director said, “use your hands.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your hands. The tongues on your hands?”

“But…they don’t really taste that well. Only if something is really strong—”

“Do I give a shit about that? No! How is anyone else gonna know if you can’t really taste with them, huh? They aren’t! So, just act like you can and what they’re tasting is delicious. Go on now, stick your tongues right in there.”

I looked around at the whole crew staring at me. “So…uh…how much would I get paid if I got this thing anyway?”

Five seconds later, I was sticking all ten of my tongues in that bowl and enjoying every bit of it.

25

I got the job and Milo took the news much better than I had hoped.

Gus, on the other hand, was extremely unhappy when I told him I’d have to stay in LA for perhaps as long as a week. “No way,” he said firmly. “I won’t allow it. Who knows what kind of trouble you could get into on your own. These people are vultures! Absolutely not.”

I told him how much I’d be making for the work and he whistled. “Holy shit! Well, I can see why you’re tempted, Sky, but the answer is still no. I need you here. We still have the whole pacific coastline to do. Maybe I can send you back once we’re done, but—”

“What?” I exclaimed. “You think they’ll just wait for me? They won’t wait, they’ll hire someone else! And you know damn well I could work for you for a month and not get that amount of money!”

“Sorry, darlin’. You know if I could afford to pay you that, I would. Hell, I’d pay you all you kids that but you know I can’t. Just wait until the end of the season and you can come back here. There’ll be other jobs.”

“You don’t know that,” I said. “I’m staying and I’m gonna do this. You can’t stop me.”

“Well, sadly, that’s where you’re right. I can’t stop you. But, I’m asking you respectfully. Don’t do this. A young girl alone here in Los Angeles.” He shook his head. “That can only be trouble and I want to keep you safe.”

I stared into his eyes, furious. He stared back helplessly, pleadingly.

In the end though, I walked away from him. I walked away from all of them and a life that I had loved. I think now it was out of spite, out of resentment at being told what to do. I’d had enough of that shit from my parents and I told myself I would never let anyone order me around ever again.

And, for the most part, I never did.

26

I camped out on the beach that night, listening to the waves gently tasting the shore.

Sleep didn’t come for quite sometime, however, due to the beach itself being quite famous for its aqua-colored sand and tiny rainbow snails, which had tourists combing it night and day, bagging sand as souvenirs, or homeless folks looking for a tasty slimy snack. The snails were free, after all, and quite good when eaten raw.

Later, I washed up in a restaurant bathroom and showed up for work on time. During the downtime, I went around asking the crew if they knew of any cheap places to stay and of course, they all did, but no place was cheap enough for my wallet. A homeless shelter was the best I could do for the time being.

The day after that the ice cream director gave me a business card, telling me it was a friend of his, an agent who specialized in getting work for Mues. I called the guy and made an appointment for the following week.

As I lay in the shelter night after night with druggies and drunks and people just down on their luck, I thought about Gus and Milo and all of the rest of the carnies and wondered where they were now. Portland? Seattle? I wondered if where they were was a prettier place than LA but of course I was just playing a game with myself. There was no doubt that wherever they were, it was better than here.

27

My agents name was Franz and he was a complete human, not a single drop of Mue blood in him, but he was nice enough and sent me out for job after job, without end. I got a few more commercials—enough to get me out of the shelter and into a tiny roach infested studio apartment where I shared a bathroom with other tenants—but not enough to get me much else. Rent in LA was obscene and I finally broke down and got a job working nights in a laundromat. The atmosphere was horrible, the pay was horrible and the customers where horrible, but I was desperate and took what I could get.

I searched around for an acting class or program I could get into, but they were all out of my budget for the time being. Continuing to pound the pavement everyday, I was always tempted to drift into one of the theaters off Sunset but Franz was always discouraging me from doing so. He said my night job paid me more than they would and the real money was in film.

“I can’t stress it enough, Sky!” he would say. “Film is the only thing worth your time.”

I held out and got bit parts in a few sitcoms and another commercial or two. I had become a real working actor, complete with the headshots and the portfolio. Something was bound to break for me eventually. At least, that’s what Franz kept telling me.

He was also convinced that I was not your average Outie. He kept insisting that I was also a Uni, the most rare of all Mues, those being unlike any others, having a deformity or mutation that was unlike anyone else’s in the entire world. They were unique, hence the name Uni.

“I’m telling you, Sky,” Franz would say. “You are a Uni! An Outie-Uni!”

“Please. I am not.”

“Have you ever seen anyone else with tongues for fingers?”

“No, but—”

“I rest my case! I’m going to put in your resume that you’re a Uni!”

“You can’t do that! It’s not true! You’ll get us both in trouble!”

For months we had the argument over and over, until I’d gone about 11 weeks without getting a single job. I became convinced that my previous successes, however minor they had been, had only been due to luck. I obviously had no talent at all.

Then I waited until the next time Franz brought up the Uni business and I agreed to let him put it in my resume. I figured, at that point, it sure as hell couldn’t hurt.

28

The very next week I landed a supporting part in an episode of a popular TV drama, playing the best friend of the suspected villain. In the end, the villain turned out to be me.

The ironic thing was that I hated television. Always have, always will. I think it is nothing but swill for the brainless but it certainly paid well. No doubt about that. I suspected I would be swallowing my pride quite a bit, ignoring my own opinions and values, showing up for the job and collecting that fat juicy paycheck.

But, my personal feelings about television and television studios aside, there was still one more negative thing about working in TV. Despite all the positive things your co-workers could say about your performance, it was still months before anyone else saw the work, thereby making it the same as if you’d never done it when it came to meeting new casting directors.

But I muddled through, forgetting about the show and continuing on to the next project, always keeping in mind that I was lucky to have a next project because there could easily come a day when I woke up and all the projects would be gone. I would be gone, before I’d even arrived.

It was during this time that I was finally able to attend a few acting classes and it was there that I met Rimona Rishona, the famous porn star. She had decided that she had made enough porn movies (13) and now she wanted to have a “serious career.” She’d been laughed out of almost every audition, most of the casting directors telling her she needed to learn how to act without using her 3 vaginas. So, there she was, in an acting class with me and a bunch of other unknowns, learning monologues and method.

One night, during a break she began asking me what I thought of her hot tub scene in To Have and Have Hot.

“I didn’t see it,” I told her. “Sorry.”

“Really?” She was quite surprised. “Well what about, Honey, I Screwed the Kids?”

“I haven’t seen any of your movies, Rimona. I’m not into porn.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me! Even with those?” She looked down at my hands.

“Even with these. Just not my thing, I guess.”

“Oh, honey, you’d make a fortune with those! Well, you know, not as much as me, but a lot!” She giggled and added, “There aren’t many people with 3 vaginas though!”

Instead of replying, I took a bite out of my apple.

She leaned forward in her chair and whispered conspiratorially, “You don’t have three vaginas, do you?”

“No,” I said, still chewing. “I have a clock.”

“Oh.” She sounded almost disappointed. “How big is it?”

I shrugged. “Not very. Maybe the size of a kiwi.”

Rimona squealed, making me jump and drop my apple. “Shit, Rimona! What the fuck?”

“That’s pretty big!”

“It is?”

“Yeah, most of them are the size of cherries or so. At least the ones I’ve seen anyway.”

“Hmm.” I drank down the rest of my coffee and went to throw the paper cup away.

“You really should meet my manager. He’s a hoot. I know he’d be dying to see a clock that big. Probably get you lots of work.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. Like I said, I’m not into porn.” I started walking away but she said my name. I stopped and looked at her. She smiled what I’m sure was her best porn movie smile. “I wouldn’t mind seeing one that big myself.”

I nodded, thinking she was crazy. “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said and then got the hell away from her.

After that, Rimona was always flirting with me, making it hard to concentrate and remember my lines. When we were asked to pick a partner to do a scene with, she always picked me and then kept whispering to me about my clock, often getting us scolded by the instructor.

She even began telling other people that she was interested in me, going so far as to tell another girl about my clock and then she too spent a good part of the night flirting with me.

“Tit clock, tit clock,” Rimona would chant at me. “Time is precious you know, Sky.”

“Tongues and tits and clocks, oh my!” The second girl joined in. “We should have a threesome!”

“No,” Rimona disagreed. “I want Sky all to myself. At least the first time!”

Then they both burst into fits of cackling laughter and I had to get out of there.

29

I didn’t go back to that particular acting class again after that, but not entirely because of Rimona and her unwanted sexual advances. Mostly, I didn’t go back because I had to take on another night at the laundrymat. Work had dried up again and I was becoming more and more frightened that I’d made a terrible mistake by staying in LA.

But as it always happens in my life, just when I’m at my most desperate and about to give up, something comes through for me.

This time it came in the shape of a television pilot for a sitcom. It was called “Chrome Cowboy,” about a Split-Mue-his lower half was a unicycle-touring the country as a rodeo clown. I was hired on to play Ponderosa Lollipop, a cowgirl clown with a knack for boxing bulls. Though I was still only 16, I was smart enough to have my doubts about “Chrome Cowboy.” Franz, however, considered it a paycheck, another good thing to put on my resume and of course, he was correct.

We taped 9 episodes of Cowboy and in the meantime the episode I did of the popular drama finally hit the airwaves. Suddenly, I was slightly famous. People recognized me on the bus and at the laundrymat and they always asked the same question: “What are you doing here? You’re a famous actor!”

Their illusions were further encouraged when “Chrome Cowboy” was finally released. It played on Fox for a total of three weeks before they yanked it. Part of me was relieved. I was fairly certain that I didn’t want to get stuck playing the same character for months, maybe years, on end.

But the tide was turning in my direction now and once it turns, like it or not, there is no stopping it.

30

The next job I got was a TV movie, playing a character with ESP, but only through touch. It was supposed to be a scary thriller but I’m not so sure it succeeded in that regard. It did, however, keep me working for over two weeks, meaning I had to quit my regular job and focus solely on acting.

These kinds of little roles and odd jobs lasted for over six years. I was a professional actor, actually making my living at doing what I loved and what I’d set out to do, but I wasn’t making a lot and I still had far to go in order to consider myself a true success.

It was during these years, when I had a recurring role on “Gimp Country,” the popular nighttime soap, that Franz called me up one day sounding a bit distressed.

“I got a call just now,” he said. “Someone named Zion said he was your brother and wants to get in touch with you. Do you know anyone by that name?”

I released the breath I’d been holding and said, “Nope, I sure don’t.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I told him you don’t even have a brother.”

“That’s right. Must have been one of those crazy nut jobs.”

“I guess so. You’re getting to that place where they’re starting to notice you, I suppose. Time to start being careful.”

“Right.” I faked a yawn. “Well, thanks for telling me, Franz. I’m exhausted though. I’ll call you in the morning?”

“You do that, babe. Sleep tight.”

“I will. Goodnight.”

“Night.”

Though I really had been sleepy before his call, by the time I was hanging up, I was wide awake.

31

At the age of 22, after 7 years of struggling, I finally had my “big break.”

It came in the unlikely form a cable TV show called “Exquisite Afterlife.” Finally, I had a script in my hands that I genuinely loved. It was funny, but in a smart way, serious, but not sappy, tooth-decaying syrup.

The premise was this: a band of Mues, one of each kind, are killed in a plane crash and returned to Earth in the form of angels to try to save the other victims of the crash and figure out the evil government conspiracy behind it.

It didn’t make too much sense if you thought about it too hard, but it was still entertaining with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing.

Plus, I was working with two very well known, very respected actors: Dove Sabotka, one of the worlds most famous Unie Mues, was hired to play the head angel Woodrow. As you already know, Dove could morph his limbs into any shape or color he desired, which was perfect for his character. Gorgeous purple Skin Lavinia Camano would be playing his second in command, Jardena. That alone was enough to make me ecstatic, but our entire ensemble cast was phenomenal. There was myself, playing the wisecracking, gum-chewing Outie angel Star, David Fredrickson would be the not-so-bright Split angel, Sacheverell and for the chilly but beautiful four-armed angel, they cast the Norm, Lucia Housner.

David, Lucia and I were all relative unknowns but the producers told us we had “youth appeal.” We didn’t give a shit what they said; we were just stoked.

And so began the long lustrous chapter of my story called “Exquisite Afterlife.”

It was easily the best chapter yet.

32

I was not prepared for the amount of work that went into producing a fifty-minute once a week cable show.

My mornings now began at 4:00 am, with a 6:00 am makeup call. I was picked up every day in a white Lincoln Towncar by a driver named Lotus. Lotus was fairly amusing. She had no idea who I was or what was going on. She saw the place where I lived and clucked her teeth in sympathy. I agreed with her that it was a dump and hoped that the show would do well and I could finally move to a real place and not be afraid that I’d have to move right back to the slums again.

Every day, I was happy to get up and go to work, but I was also happy when, at midnight or later, Lotus dropped me off and we said our goodnights. It took a long time to adjust to the exhaustion and even longer to adjust to the fame that was suddenly mine. Of the three of us newbies, I think I had the hardest time coming to terms with it, but David wasn’t the greatest at it either. Lucia seemed fairly comfortable with the insanity, maybe because she’d always expected it.

The cast and crew of Afterlife became my new family, the only one I’d known since my carnival days. We instantly bonded with each other and I took a particular liking to Lavinia, who played a tough bad-ass angel on the show but in reality was the sweetest Uni I’d ever met in my life. Whenever I watched her work, her delicate purple skin so perfect for the camera, those high cheekbones, I knew I was watching a legend. Of course, she was too young to be a legend back then, but she still had a lot of time and projects under her belt and there was just something about her that made you know she’d be remembered forever. Part of me, I know now, was a little bit in love with Lavinia, but so was the entire world. She was magic.

There was sometime early on the show, maybe our fifth or sixth episode, when one of our guest actors suddenly died shortly after completing his part. He was a very young man, about the same age as me and we’d had most of our scenes together, along with Lavinia.

When I heard the news, I couldn’t stop crying. It was impossible for me to work. I kept trying to say my lines in a scene with Lavinia but I kept bursting into tears. Finally, the director called for a break and I went to Lavinia and said, “How are you staying in character so well? Aren’t you sad?”

She gave me a compassionate look and stated, “What I am is irrelevant. Jardena isn’t sad.”

Then she walked away, off to her trailer where I suspect she may have done a bit of her own crying, but that was Lavinia crying, not the bad-ass Jardena. On set, she was her character and no one else existed.

33

“Exquisite Afterlife” was nominated for Best New Cable Drama our first year out. Dove was nominated as Best Actor and we also received a few nominations for things like set design and screenplays and costumes.

Everyone was thrilled that people had noticed and liked us, but I was somewhat apprehensive. “Doesn’t this mean we’ll have to go?” I asked David while we sat in our chairs waiting for the light guys to finish lighting the set.

He looked up from his script. “Go?”

“Yeah. To the Emmys.”

He smiled. “I would imagine so, love.” He replied, his limey accent just as appealing off-screen as it was on.

I groaned. “All of us?”

“Hey, it’s not my country. I just live here.”

“Fuck. I don’t want to have to get dressed up and all that bullshit.”

“You get dressed up and all that bullshit every day.”

“It’s not the same.”

David just continued to smile and went back to studying his lines.

A couple hours later, when we were finished with our scene, I went and knocked on Dove’s trailer door. He called that it was open and I climbed inside to find him doing yoga on his kitchen table. “What’s up, Frenchy?”

Frenchy was Dove’s nickname for me since the first day we met; it was in reference to my tongues.

“I don’t want to go to the Emmy’s,” I whined.

“Why not?” He was always completely direct.

“I don’t know. I just think I’ll be uncomfortable. You know me. I don’t want to have to wear some frilly dress and a ton of makeup and all that happy horse shit.”

Stretching a foot up behind his head, Dove said, “All that happy horse shit is just part of the game, Frenchy. You just have to learn to play it.”

“I don’t want to. What does it have to do with acting anyway?”

“Absolutely nothing. Like I said, it’s part of the game.”

“You’re not helping, Dove.”

He seemed indifferent. “Sorry.”

Out of everyone I spoke to, no one understood my reluctance to be a part of that “game”, as Dove had put it. They all agreed that it was no big deal, one night out of the year.

It wouldn’t kill me.

34

When the day of the awards show finally arrived, I was much less nervous than I’d initially been. By that time, I’d done a few spots on Entertainment Tonight, had a few interviews here and there and had generally grown into the whole fame thing to some degree. It still didn’t fit quite right, but neither was it completely uncomfortable.

To be more relaxed, I declined the offer of a limo and drove myself, got stuck in traffic and had trouble with the security guards who had no idea who I was, thereby making me even later, and by the time I finally got inside the show’s producers were furious with me.

“You’re going to have to hurry and look over this script,” one of them bellowed at me as we made our way through the building and then backstage. He shoved a script at me.

I frowned as we hustled along. “A script? What’s this for?”

“For your presentation?”

“My what?”

“This is why the actors need show up in the afternoon!” He was now speaking to his assistant who was jogging beside him. They both stopped suddenly and pointed to what looked like a long row of toll booths side by side. “Your friends are in there,” he said and hurried off to fix yet another catastrophe.

I made my way through a crowd and saw my name on the last toll booth box. I opened the door and stepped inside to see a little stool before an open window and smaller windows on either side. On the left, where the next booth was a couple feet away, David sat on his own stool facing his own forward-facing window.

I poked my head inside his booth and said, “What the fuck is this shit?”

He looked at me and burst into laughter. “Fuck if I know. They keep sending these reporters over to ask us questions, one by one. It’s completely retarded.”

Looking past him, I could see Lavinia in her booth and Lucia on the end. Beyond her was another booth, which was empty. “Where’s Dove?” I asked.

David laughed again. “He said he’s already done this bullshit and he’s not doing it again!”

“That bastard! He told me it was part of the game!”

“Bugger him! Here comes one of those reporter women now. They’ve been wondering where you were, asking us if you were a no-show like Dove and what it meant.”

“What it meant?”

“Yes, like if you were making a political statement or some such bullshit.”

“Oh, brother.”

And sure enough, a woman suddenly stuck her head in my window and thrust a microphone in my face. “Sky! Sky, what are your predictions for tonight’s show?”

David gave me a cheery grin and thumbs up and I could have kicked him.

35

There were hundreds of other, equally lame, questions thrown at me that night.

How did it feel to be an overnight sensation?

Did I care to speculate on what message Dove was trying to send the media?

Was there anything special I wanted to say to the fans?

Any advice I might want to give to aspiring young actors like myself?

What were my predictions for the next season of Exquisite Afterlife?

Would Star and Sacheverell hook up?

Were any sparks flying off the set?

Oh yes, and how did it feel to be an overnight sensation?

Over and over, around and around, until I wanted to scream and rip their eyes out by the roots.

Finally, the questions abated somewhat and the show’s director came over to me to ask if I’d looked over the script yet and did I have any questions. I had to tell him that, no, I hadn’t had a chance to look at the script but I would momentarily. He grimaced and made me promise.

“Fuck!” I said once my window was clear. “This is insanity.”

David continued to look amused. “By the way, love, you look quite stunning in that dress.”

“David, I’m not wearing a dress.”

“I know!” He laughed again. “The studio is going to kill you!”

“Well, thanks. You look very nice in your tuxedo as well.”

He laughed loud enough to make Lavinia glance over at us, with an expression that said, ‘Good lords, I hope those kids don’t embarrass me.’

“You’re stoned, aren’t you?” I asked him.

He brought the magazine he was reading up to his face so that only his eyes showed over the top of it, nodding emphatically. “What am I going to bloody do?” His voice sounded panicked but he was still laughing.

I shrugged. “Drink some water or something. I don’t know.” Then I turned away from him. I had my own problems, the current one being this damn script I was supposed to already have memorized. Opening it up to where someone had stuck a tab with my name on it, I silently read what was supposed to be going on.

Apparently, Lavinia, Lucia and I were all to present the award for Best Sound Effects in a Drama and before doing so, we were to engage in pathetically non-humorous banter with each other, as well as read a few ads and sing a song!

“What the fuck?” I leapt off my stool and flung open the door of my booth, racing over to Lavinia’s booth, flinging open her door and repeating, “What the fuck?” while waving the script around.

She barely glanced up at me. “What the fuck what, Sky?”

“This thing says we’re supposed to sing some stupid jingle!”

“No, no, no,” She corrected with a pointed purple finger. “I am supposed to sing a song. You are supposed to sing the stupid jingle.”

I was speechless, turning nearly as purple as she was in my outrage. Finally, I coughed out, “What about Lucia?”

Lucia leaned in from her own booth. “I already told them I don’t sing.”

Lavinia looked at me. “She doesn’t sing.”

“What the fuck? I don’t sing!”

They both couldn’t have cared less whether I sang or not.

After a moment, I left Lavinia’s booth and went in search of someone in charge. Every time I saw a person who appeared to be part of the crew, I asked, “Who’s in charge around here?” Everyone pointed to everyone else. I kept muttering “Fuck” under my breath and moving on to the next person.

“Where’s that guy?” I began shouting to anyone I encountered backstage. “That guy who gave me this! The producer. Or the producer’s assistant. Where’s that guy?”

I’m sure everyone thought I was the druggie of our cast instead of David, but I didn’t care. There was no way in hell I was about to sing for anyone, especially since they hadn’t even asked me first.

In the end, I gave up searching for the guy who had handed me the script and I went back to my booth and sat docilely like a good girl, answering stupid questions with a smile and simultaneously trying to talk David down from his high.

On the whole, I wouldn’t say it was a good beginning to the night.

36

Half an hour passed and then someone from the show told Lucia that we still had an hour before we would be presenting the sound award.

Restless, I couldn’t sit still inside that damn booth for another hour, so I left. I decided to go exploring and since there wasn’t much to see back stage and since we weren’t allowed to sit in the audience until our own nomination for Best New Show rolled around, I went outside.

The world out there instantly reminded me of the old carnival atmosphere I used to love so much. There were games and rides and everywhere you looked people were enjoying themselves. Unlike the old carnival days though, this place was full of celebrities walking around, being entertained and eating fried dough.

It was all very surreal.

I was out there for perhaps twenty minutes before I noticed all the bleachers set up around the carnival, bleachers full of people, onlookers who wanted to watch their favorite personalities win a teddy bear or ride the Whip.

Amazed, I walked around to the rear of one of the rides and looked up at the crowd looking down at me. There were a few Mues shouting my name and waving frantically. I waved back, smiling, trying to pretend this was all very normal to me.

I started to feel like the whole thing was part of a twisted nightmare that I couldn’t escape from so, I decided I was better off inside after all. As bizarre as things were in there, they still didn’t compare to what was outside.

Attempting to go back, I had yet another argument with yet another security guard who kept saying he didn’t recognize me, he’d never heard of me, etc, so it was another twenty minutes before I was even back in the building.

I knew I should head immediately back to the booths but I couldn’t face that weirdness again just yet. Instead, I wandered around backstage, trying doors and finding most of them locked. When I finally found one that wasn’t, I quickly slipped through it without anyone noticing.

One white bustling hallway led to another somewhat less bustling white hallway until I came to a completely silent, completely deserted white hallway. I tried various doors in this hallway until I finally found one unlocked. I opened it and stepped into a plain white room with furniture of shockingly bright colors in striped and polka dot designs. There was nothing in this room besides the furniture, consisting of a single loveseat and several funky armless chairs, except for a mirror on one wall with a magazine rack hanging beside it.

I did what anyone would have done: I chose a magazine and sat down on the loveseat to read it.

When I opened the magazine in the middle, there was a bright psychedelic painting of the late John Lennon of the Beatles, a musical band that was popular over a century ago.

The accompanying article was a description of the process of creating the painting. The writing was so vivid, I could actually hear the squishing sounds of the brush moving through the paint and then scratching against the canvas and all I kept thinking was, This would make a great script. I have to remember this. It would make a great script.

Then a woman entered through another door I hadn’t noticed when I’d first come in. with a paper towel, she said, “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t have a watch.”

“Well, you’d better hurry up then,” she said tossing the used towel into a basket on the floor beneath the magazine rack.

That’s weird, I thought. I’d swear that basket wasn’t there before.

“Hurry up for what?”

“To practice your presentation, of course. Did you forget why you’re here?”

I looked down at the magazine in my lap, my thumb tongues caressing the glossy pages, the colorful image of John Lennon’s face, his famous round eyeglasses. “I guess I did.”

When I looked up, the woman was giving me a disapproving stare, then she shook her head and went back through the door she’d emerged from.

She was right though. I needed to get back. How long had I been in here anyway? It seemed like forever but when I looked again at the magazine, at the words written there, I saw that I had only read the first line of the article. Maybe repeatedly, but I couldn’t be sure. How had I thought a single line would make such a good script? The whole thing was rather mystifying and I wanted to take the magazine back with me, show it to the others and ask them what they saw in it. But, I was afraid that if I took the magazine from the room, something horrible would happen, something I couldn’t predict. I knew without a doubt that I would find myself in huge trouble. Perhaps arrested.

I stood up and hurriedly put the magazine back in the rack and exited the room, wondering which door I had entered to come to this abandoned hallway in the first place. Where the hell was I?

Running up the hall, trying every door along the way, I was distressed to find them all locked. I was on the verge of panicking, of shouting for help, when I tried the last door and it opened into another hall with a few people entering and exiting various doors along it.

I peeked into all the doors I could and at least tried the ones I couldn’t until I found the one which opened on a vaguely familiar scene.

Soon, I was in the busy backstage area again, moving past people and heading for that ridiculous row of booths we were assigned to.

Entering my own booth, I was happy to see David in his and I sat down, breathing a tremendous sigh of relief. After all that, I knew that presenting a little award would be nothing but a piece of cake.

37

I was wrong.

Getting back only minutes before we were told it was time, I hadn’t memorized what I was supposed to say yet. I told the assistant who was sent to fetch us and he said not to worry about it. There would be a teleprompter. I also told him I had no intention of singing any jingle and he said he doubted there would be time anyway, since the show was running behind.

Reassured, I felt much better as the three of us were led to the stage entrance and told to wait for our cue. Both Lavinia and Lucia were perfectly calm. They seemed almost bored, which was usually Lavinia’s natural state and unsurprising at that point since she had been to these things before. But I figured Lucia would be at least as nervous as I was. Instead, she calmly waited, checking herself in the mirror now and then.

We watched as someone received an award for Best Original Screenplay and then we were up. I was scared to death I might trip and make an ass out of myself, but the walk across the stage went well, with Lavinia leading, Lucia in the middle and me bringing up the rear.

Once we arrived at the podium, Lavinia did most of the talking without ever glancing at the teleprompter and I was able to scan the crowd. As soon as I saw the sea of people sitting before us, I calmed down. It was just like doing theater, I thought, except that everyone here is dressed in fancier clothes. I figured if I’d ever made it to Broadway, the audience would have looked exactly the same as this one did.

Meanwhile, Lavinia had begun singing her song, while Lucia and I took a step back and let her have the spotlight. We both made it look good, swinging our hips back and forth and smiling like lunatics. Lucia snapped the fingers of her four hands and I tried clapping with my tongues, without much success.

Thankfully the song was brief and we stepped forward again, patiently waiting for the applause to cease. When it finally did, it was time for Lucia’s mini-monologue and I stood idly by, trying to look fascinated by what she was saying. All too soon, she was finished and it was time for me to ramble on about nonsense. I calmly smiled and for the first time flicked my eyes at the teleprompter. To my dismay, I couldn’t read a single word on it. One of the ceiling lights was casting a glare and all I good see was its reflection. Distressed, I did the only thing I knew to do: I improvised. I made small talk with the audience, saying how exciting the whole event was, meanwhile trying to remember from the script what I was supposed to say. I managed to recall the bit about the award we were presenting almost verbatim, but then it came time to do the little plug for one of the shows sponsors. I knew it was for some chain restaurant, but that was about all I could remember. Which restaurant? No clue.

So, I made one up and began talking about Charley’s Big Tine Saloon. It was the first thing that came into my head. I tried to ignore the crew motioning for me to look at the teleprompter and generally going crazy, and I just rambled on. Charley wanted everyone to come on out and try his spicy baby-back tofu ribs, his special secret sauce tofu buffalo wings and of course, the infamously huge forks. His slaw was also to die for and if you were looking for a casual place with sawdust on the floor and live country music, Charley’s Big Tine Saloon was the place to go.

I noticed the audience exchanging glances here and there, but most just sat, either looking bored and yawning or staring with a blank smile.

Lavinia and Lucia, gods bless them, stood by and remained absolutely neutral, as if they’d known all along about the Big Tine Saloon. Then I noticed the director frantically dragging his finger across his throat, motioning me to shut the hell up, so I did and Lavinia began reciting the nominees.

A fine sheen of sweat had developed on my brow but I pretended it wasn’t there and waited for Lavinia to open the envelope. Together, all three of us read the winner aloud and then acted ecstatic over it. The winner came up and we casually faded back, waited for him to finish his speech and then escorted him off the stage.

Once we were backstage, chaos ensued. I had about half a dozen people screaming at me while my cast mates burst into hysterical fits of laughter (including David, who was there to present an award with a little Uni kid.) I began to laugh uncontrollably myself, but it wasn’t real laughter. I was acting and secretly mortified. I just wanted to go home and forget this night ever happened.

But I couldn’t do that. The night dragged on for another hour, during which time we were permitted to sit in the audience and wait to see if we won Best New Drama series, which was one of the last awards given. We didn’t win, but Dove did and David went to accept the award on his behalf, saying that Dove sent his apologies for being unable to attend.

Then the show ended and the media frenzy began. I don’t even know how many times I said how thrilling it was just to be nominated. I was making myself ill. And of course I kept getting asked about my presentation performance, which I insisted was all part of the plan to add a little humor to what was always a tense night. In fact, our whole cast and crew would be asked about what I did for an entire week to come and by the end of it, they were as displeased with my stunt as the show’s bigwigs were.

And that was how I became to be known as a drunk at the age of 22.

38

It was shortly after the Emmy fiasco that I became a favorite among the rag-mag crowd. To read those things, you’d think I was drunk or stoned 24/7, not to mention having sex with everyone in Hollywood. I did my best to ignore the crap they were printing about me, refused about a million interviews and tried to concentrate solely on my job.

Relief finally came during our seasonal hiatus when I was offered a supporting part in a feature film that was to be shot overseas. I jumped at the chance, packed my bags and bought a ticket for the first plane out of the states.

The movie was called The Queen is Dead and was to be shot mostly in London, but my character didn’t come into the film until the middle portion and so I was sent to a remote island in the middle of the South China Sea.

I was there earlier than I had to be and stayed longer than I had to, living it up, lounging in the sun and reading trashy bestsellers. I loved being somewhere where the people had no idea who I was and even if they did, they didn’t care and remained completely unimpressed.

I always had plenty of dipping bowls for my tongues at my disposal, ate exotic foods and met exotic people.

And then it was time to get to work on the film.

The Queen is Dead is a very apt title for a movie that is about—you guessed it—a dead queen. Or, more appropriately, an assassinated queen. The hero and heroine are assigned to find the drug lords behind the assassination and, after traipsing around England for an hour or so, follow a lead to a remote island where they meet my character, a missionary teaching the native children English and mathematics.

The film is very much a thriller and was a good deal of fun to make.

The best part of the entire experience however, wasn’t the actual film at all but a special someone I encountered during the making of the film.

It was there that I met Rabia.

39

Rabia was a technical advisor on the set, having spent time as an actual missionary, working with actual native kids.

Because the native people live in such a remote part of the world, mostly untouched by the rest of humanity, their home is very unspoiled. They have almost no pollution to speak of and very little chemical contamination of their foods and water supplies. Which all means that they have very few Mues among them. In fact, many of the children I worked with were seeing Mues for the first time and while some were quite intrigued, others were terrified.

Rabia was an exception. Although she was a Uni Mue and hadn’t worked with these particular children, she spoke their language fluently and just had a way about her that made them trust her and eventually fall in love with her.

Of course, they weren’t the only ones enamored of her. I myself wanted her from the moment I saw her.

40

We actually met before filming even began. She was assigned to help me understand my character and the children I’d be working with, as well as speak the language at least passably, which technically just meant being able to say my lines with believability. But learning a few things beyond the script would be good as well. Being able to communicate with the children off-set would be very important as well, since it would bring depth to not only my performance, but theirs as well.

So, one day I was in my hotel room talking to Franz on the phone when there was a rap at my door. Without pausing in the conversation, I went, peeked out the peep hole and then opened the door a crack.

“I’m Rabia Jacobs,” she said. “I guess I’m your technical advisor.”

I nodded, smiling and let her in, giving her the “one moment” signal by holding up my index tongue, then motioning for her to have a seat and make herself comfortable.

Franz chattered on in my ear, talking nonstop about another part he thought I’d be perfect for. I was only half-listening. Nowadays, Franz thought I’d be perfect for every part that slid across his desk or even those he’d just heard rumors about.

I held the phone away from my ear and whispered to Rabia that she should help herself to anything on the dining cart; the fresh fruit was especially delicious. She only nodded, looking rather uncomfortable.

Finally, I told Franz I had to go and, ignoring his protests, hung up on him.

I stood, head cocked, studying Rabia. “You must be a Uni.”

She nodded, smiling nervously. “How can you tell?”

In fact, it was quite easy to tell. Her skin was completely transparent. It was as if she were made of a clear gel: you could see inside her body. Her teeth, the tongue behind her teeth, her brain, her veins, everything. The bones in her hands. She looked like a medical students model come to life.

Naturally, I couldn’t see everything. She was wearing clothes after all, but I knew that were she to undress, I would see everything. Every little organ, every sinew, every bone. I had never realized until that point how inconsequential the muscles of the body really are. They obstruct the views of some things inside but certainly not all. They are there, but only as doors or walls, you can peek around them, see what’s behind them if the angle is right.

“Staring is rude,” Rabia said, startling me out of my thoughts.

I blinked. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I can’t believe I was doing that.”

She held up the script she’d been holding. “Do you want to get started?”

“Yes,” I gave her my best smile. “Absolutely.”

41

After about 90 minutes of talking shop with her, I was ready for a break. I stood, stretched, and walked over to the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony. It was still morning, not quite 11:00, and a gorgeous day. The hotel was on a more populated island than the one where the actual shooting would take place and my room looked out over a bay and beyond that were bright green hills with large white houses speckled throughout the landscape.

The view was beautiful and made me long to be out in the sun, exploring the island, shopping, going for a drive. Anything.

I turned around, facing Rabia again. “Do you want to take a break? It’s such a beautiful day.”

“I could use a glass of water.”

“Oh. Ok.” I went into the little kitchen and brought a bottled water out of the refrigerator. When I handed it to her, I tried my best to look like I wasn’t paying attention, but of course I was. I watched with complete fascination at the water entered her mouth and then flowed down her throat to disappear beneath the collar of her T-shirt.

“Do you want to go for a drive maybe? See some sights?” I asked, still pretending to be uninterested in her see-through body.

“Shouldn’t we keep working?” she asked. “I know we don’t have much time before shooting begins.”

I plucked a strawberry from the dining cart, popped it into my mouth, chewing thoughtfully. Once I’d swallowed, I said, “Not even the tiniest break?”

For the first time, Rabia gave me a genuine smile. “I was warned you might try this.”

“Oh? By who?”

“Lots of people. They say you can be quite a handful.”

“Ah. Well, they’re right. I can.”

I couldn’t believe I was flirting with her. I never flirted with anyone, ever.

“Ok,” she said. “We can take a break. But only a short one.”

“Excellent!” I immediately began hunting around for the keys to my rental car.

“We’re staying here,” she said firmly. “If we go out, who knows when we’ll get back to work.”

“Damn. Ok.” I sat at the table while she reached into her bag and pulled out a granola bar.

“I have two,” she offered.

“No, thanks.”

She ate her bar and drank her water while I fiddled with this and that, waiting for her to finish. Maybe ten minutes passed and she was done. Rising to throw away the foil wrapper, she also used the bathroom and when she emerged she said, “Ok, back to work.”

I gaped. “What? That was our break?”

Consulting her watch, she said, “We stopped for a good fifteen minutes. That’s how long breaks are.”

“On what planet?”

“Planet Earth,” she laughed. “I realize you movie-star types don’t really live here, but in the real world, that’s how long the average break is.”

I wasn’t sure if I should be offended or not so I said, “I’m not a movie-star type, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

“Oh, you’re not? Then why are you here?”

“Here? Here where?”

“Here on this island. In this hotel. Talking to me.”

Meekly, I said, “Because I’m in a movie?”

“Exactly. Now let’s get back to work, shall we?”

I rolled my eyes dramatically, playing the sullen, spoiled ‘movie-star type.’ “Oh, fine then!” I sulked as I made my way back to the sofa and sat down beside her.

I felt like a major idiot but I was still getting her to smile.

42

All through preproduction and into the actual shooting, my relationship with Rabia remained professional, albeit playful. But when the movie wrapped, I finally felt it wouldn’t be inappropriate to ask her for a date.

Naturally, she didn’t make it easy for me.

“What do mean? We’ve gone out before.”

“Yeah, I know, but—-”

“We’ve been to restaurants a dozen times. And remember all the times we sat on the beach while you practiced your dialogue?”

“But that was just for scenery. We were still working.”

Suddenly, understanding shone in her eyes. “Oh. You mean…ohhh.”

“Yeah, ohhh.” I tried to smile.

“Well, I…uh…” She stammered around for a minute before I decided to let her off the hook.

“It’s ok,” I said. “Just forget I asked. No big deal.”

“No. No, wait. I didn’t mean…”

I stared at her, my heart thudding in my chest.

“It’s just that I’m surprised. I didn’t think you were…you know…gay, I guess.”

Speechless, I continued to stare. The thought had never occurred to me. “I don’t think I am,” I said finally.

“So…you’re not gay but you’re asking a woman to go on a date with you?”

“Umm…” I thought about it. “I guess so. I’m not not gay either.”

“I see.”

I didn’t understand her confusion and then it dawned on me that she probably didn’t know about my clock. I thought everyone knew. It had been in the rag-mags, hinted at in interviews and had even been a plot twist for my character on Exquisite Afterlife. “I have a clock,” I said simply.

Now she was staring at me. At last, she said, “I know, Sky. Everyone knows that.”

We stared at each other for a long time. Finally, I said, “OK, then. Well, it was great working with you. You were really a tremendous help. Thanks so much for coaching me in the language and all that fun stuff.”

“Oh, no problem. It was a pleasure working with you too. You were a great student!”

I laughed falsely. “Oh, I don’t know about that. You were just a great teacher. But, good luck in whatever is next for you!”

“You too! Bye now.”

“Bye.”

43

And that was that.

I went back to LA and she went I didn’t know where.

Sky’s Infatuation Story.

The end.

44

The second season of Exquisite Afterlife began with a bang. Literally.

A week before our premier, President Guzman was assassinated, making Vice-President Beecher the first Mue president ever.

The country was thrown into turmoil; the racist Pure Humans were convinced it was all a conspiracy, that Mues were behind the president’s murder and there were even riots. Hatred was everywhere, Mues were constantly being attacked out on the street and sometimes in their homes. Mue shop-owners were terrorized and there were several cases of Mues being murdered.

All hell had broken loose and Mues were at the center of it.

Given the circumstances, our producers decided it would be best if we ceased shooting the show for a while, just until all the insanity abated. I was disappointed but I understood.

I holed up in my house and for the first time in my life, I bought a gun. I learned all about the weapon and went to a shooting range to practice with it. Using a gun is not easy for me at all. Not only do I hate the dreaded things but also, my trigger tongue is just not as strong as the average finger. I ended up having to have one specially made exactly to my specifications.

I hated having it, or more appropriately, having to have it, but I had to admit that it did make me feel safer. I was able to relax and not worry so much about what I would do if someone were to try entering my home and then, even worse, if they actually succeeded.

Without much to do, not daring to go out in public during this time, I took up painting again for the first time in years. Now I was able to afford actual canvases and made one of the spare bedrooms into a painting studio. For the first time, I had actual easels and didn’t have to hunch over a table or hold a piece of cardboard in my lap.

It was exciting, buying all the paraphernalia I needed, opening a tubes of paint and brand-new brushes. The paint tasted exactly as I remembered: disgusting. But I was able to get used to it fairly quickly, thanks to my mostly taste-bud free tongues.

Shooting was postponed for three weeks and in that time I painted a total of 45 paintings. When it was time to go back to work, I was invigorated. I felt like an artist again and I was anxious to apply my reborn enthusiasm to the show.

It worked too, as I think season two contains some of my best work ever on Exquisite Afterlife.

45

The show really took off its second year.

Suddenly, everyone knew who we were and crazy things like fan-clubs started springing up all over the place. The merchandising department was thrilled and all our faces started appearing in the most bizarre places. They made a total of seven different T-shirts, one with the shows logo, one with the whole cast and then we each had one of our own, for the especially eclectic fan.

Then there were posters, puzzles, lunch boxes, mugs, you name it. There were even boxer shorts and a set a sheets people could buy. And then came the real money-makers: the action figures, complete with moveable wings and detachable swords, harps and halos.

Just to think about it made me dizzy.

The show’s theme song started getting air play and gained enough popularity that we were all recruited to appear in the video, which was ridiculous and embarrassing, especially for Dove who was just not a video kind of guy.

For the first time, we appeared on the cover of TV Guide. I say ‘we’ but it was actually just Dove and Lavinia, though the rest of us were interviewed for the article and had a few photos inside.

It was assumed that the show was now a huge success because of the new president and our nation’s current political and emotion climate.

I became involved in some activist organizations, speaking out publicly about the atrocities being enacted against Mues all over the world. It was an outrage and I wanted everyone to hear about it. I had it written into my contract that every year during the shows run, I would get a few days off in order to attend the national Mue’s Walk on Washington parade. I knew I was making a larger target of myself than was wise, but I didn’t care. This was important, not only for us, but for the future generations of all Mues everywhere.

In order for us to be accepted and treated as equals by all walks of life, we needed to stand up and be counted. Change does not happen by sitting idly and praying for it. It comes with work and it comes slowly, but I was, and still am, willing to do my part, do to whatever it takes to get us all there, safe and sound.

46

The hate mail began pouring in by the truckloads.

Not for just me, but for all of us, including the studio head honchos, most of whom were Pure Humans.

We tried not to pay too much attention to it but, admittedly, things like death threats can get under your skin after a while.

So there was this odd sense of millions of folks loving us to death and millions of other folks hating us to death. Going out in public became a problem when it had never before been an issue.

I had to disguise myself to go anywhere, wearing wigs, glasses, bulky nondescript clothes, and of course, gloves. Sometimes the disguises worked, sometimes not. Luckily though, it was only people who liked me that busted me trying to buy melons or whatever in the supermarket. Apparently, people can learn to hate you without paying any attention to what you look like or who you actually are.

No surprise there.

Occasionally, I received word that my family was still trying to reach me and I always ignored it. They’d never given a shit about me before; in fact, I’d been told to get out and never return.

But now, I knew all of that would be denied. That would say I was misremembering things, that I had misunderstood. They would pretend to be surprised that I had taken the whole thing seriously, after all Dad had only been blowing off steam, the way all dads are prone to do now and then.

I wanted no part of it. They could keep their grand illusions about what had gone down that day and all the days before it. But I remembered the truth and would never forget it. Never.

And so it went.

47

The rumors of David and I whipped into a frenzy when we began hangout outside of work. David was also linked romantically to Lucia and about half a dozen other women in the biz. I could understand why, of course; he was an absolute doll, and very cute in a little boy kind of way.

But, we were just buds. He was a blast to hang out with and more often than not would get me into trouble.

For example, it was his idea that I get my tongues pierced.

We were a little buzzed and I think he was half-joking when he said it but I thought it was the best idea I’d ever heard. My one hesitation was the studio heads.

“They’ll be pissed,” I said.

“Fuck the bloody studio!” David roared. “Tell me, what have they done for you lately?”

“Fucking A!” I agreed. “Fuck the bloody studio!”

“That’s the spirit!”

And off we went, searching the boulevard for a place to get pierced. We found one just minutes after beginning our quest, a place called The Medusa, Tattoos and Piercings.

We strolled in to check the place out and were immediately greeted by shouts of recognition.

“Oh my gods! You guys are from Exquisite Afterlife! Oh my gods, I love that show!”

A small crowd had gathered around us, mostly young girls mooning over David and telling him how dreamy he was. We played the game as best we could and then I was able to talk to the piercer. She was a young Outie Mue who was tickled pink for the chance to pierce a celebrity, even a minor one like myself.

“Now, don’t you have bones in your tongues?” she asked me. “I think I remember something about that.”

“Only small ones,” I said, “and they’re near the bases of them. If you stick something through the middle or near the tips, there are no bones there.”

“Rad!” she said. “Which do you want?”

“Which tongues?”

“No, middle or tip? Most people get near the tip done, but far enough back so the studs can’t be ripped out or anything like that.”

“Sounds good to me.” I was trying to act as sober as possible and evidently I was succeeding because there was even a sign on the wall warning people that unless they were completely straight, no work would be done on them, no exceptions. “We’re Serious!” the sign admonished at the bottom.

So, either I was a pretty good actor or she didn’t give a shit that she could smell alcohol on my breath. I’m sure it was the latter, but I didn’t care much myself. I just wanted to get it done.

Meanwhile, David was still busy chatting it up with his fans and trying to get them to tattoo the shows logo on their bodies, two of whom actually did it, much to his amusement.

After much deliberation, I decided to get only the tongues on my right hand pierced, a simple silver stud through each of them. She said I wouldn’t feel a thing and for a while, I didn’t.

Later that night however, my tongues swelled up like tiny eggplants and I was worried that maybe they were infected or I was allergic to the steel. But by morning they were pretty much back to normal and the only unpleasant part was dousing them in peroxide, which was what I had in the house. And if there’s anything that’ll make me gag, it’s the taste of peroxide.

I had to go to work that morning feeling extremely nauseous. David whispered that I was probably hung over, but I knew I wasn’t. It was the damn peroxide.

As soon as it got around that my tongues were pierced, as expected, I was called on the carpet and asked to explain myself. It was in my contract that I was strictly prohibited from doing anything dangerous while working on the show, i.e. no skydiving, mountain climbing, racing cars or motorcycles, etc…

Also in the contract: no body modification of any sort unless it is in a private place and will remain unseen by either the cameras or the general public. This puzzled me a bit. The general public?

I was told, “You are playing an angel, after all.”

Long story short, they made me take out the studs every morning and I wasn’t allowed to put them back in until the days shooting was completed. It made the healing process twice as long and twice as irritating and as revenge I completely ignored the ‘don’t wear them out in public’ rule. I wore them everywhere and still do.

48

During the hiatus between the second and third season of the show, I did another movie, this time lending my voice to an animated feature. It was a cute movie about a silly family of raccoons conquering the elements, hunters, trappers and an evil bear who shares their forest. I played the eldest child raccoon, a moody teenager who enjoys head-banging, boy bands and tormenting her younger siblings. It was a fun and easy job and it didn’t take much time to do, so I had most of my vacation free to pursue other things, including a six-week run in the LA stage production of Much Ado About Nothing. I was paid next to nothing but the play received great reviews and I experienced a renewal of my original love, the theater.

It was a good break, but I was also happy to go back to working on the show when the time came.

49

One night I came home to find a note had been slipped under my front door.

I didn’t think much of it, not because it happened often—it didn’t—but because I was dead tired and only wanted to hit the sack. I tossed it on my kitchen table with all the other mail and promptly forgot about until I had a day off and was able to actually sit down and go through all the junk.

My usual custom for reading mail is to grab a beer from the fridge and carry the whole bunch of it up to my office and examine it piece by piece, either at my desk or while seated comfortably on the couch I had up there for script reading sessions.

This day was no exception. I carried the mail upstairs with a beer and flopped myself down onto the sofa to read. It was all the usual crap, mostly junk, a few fan letters from people who had somehow managed to get my home address and then the unmarked envelope I’d found a few nights prior.

Curious, letter opener in hand, I split the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of paper, neatly folded into three sections. When I unfolded the paper, I saw what appeared to be blood smeared all over it and the words, We’ll be together soon, also written in blood.

“Fuck!” I dropped the paper, wanting it away from me.

Lavinia had warned me that something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. I just hadn’t paid much attention, figuring I wasn’t the type to attract a stalker. Even after Lucia had had a problem with one, I still hadn’t seriously considered it a possibility for myself.

I rose from the sofa and went to the phone, pressing the speed dial button for the security company that we were all given to call just in case something like this very thing were to occur. The man I spoke to was very nice, didn’t seem even the slightest bit alarmed and managed to ease my mind with only a few words. He said he’d come and take a look at the letter himself and he would arrive in about ten minutes.

Comforted, I tried not to think about it and drank my beer while surfing the net and listening for the doorbell. I’d actually managed to forget about it by reading one of the shows fan sites and when the ring came twenty minutes later, I was surprised.

Then I remembered and hurried downstairs with both the envelope and the letter to show the security guy. He examined each carefully, still seemed unperturbed but told me he’d send a guard over to watch my house every few hours or so, just as a precaution.

“Is that really necessary?” I asked. “It seems like it would draw more attention than dissuade it.”

“He’ll be very inconspicuous, ma’am. Not to worry.”

I knew that in these kinds of circumstances it was best to just step back and let people do their jobs. I said ok and thanked him, sent him on his way with the foul letter and forgot all about it.

50

About a week later, I was in my trailer when the same security guy knocked, accompanied by another more official looking security guy.

“Unfortunately, we suspect the person who sent you the letter has been sending mail to the studio for quite some time.”

I looked between them. “How long is ‘quite some time’?”

They exchanged a glance and the first guard said, “Basically since the show began.”

I leapt out of my chair. “What? Why wasn’t I told about this?”

The suit guy did his best to placate me. “You weren’t told because we didn’t deem him as a serious threat at the time. Just one of those whackos who professes his love for one celebrity or another. Usually those guys turn out to be harmless ugly loners who can’t get laid to save their lives.”

“But not this time?” I asked.

“We’re sure he’s an ugly loner all right, but we’re not so sure he’s harmless anymore.”

I sat back down again. “Great. He never wrote in blood before?”

“Oh, no. He has. That isn’t what we consider threatening. And it isn’t so much what he wrote, even. It’s the fact that he’s progressed to sending things to your house.”

“Ok,” I said. “So, what does that mean exactly? Besides the fact that he knows where I live.”

The first guy replied. “Generally, it means that he’s getting frustrated, probably due to the fact that he hasn’t received a response from you.”

“Great,” I repeated.

The suit again: “Well, we don’t want you to be alarmed. You’ll be perfectly safe at all times, of course. You can count on that. It is just our standard procedure to let the client know when something progresses to this degree, not because you’re in danger but just as a common courtesy and for your own awareness. Teaching the client to be aware and careful is half our job, after all.”

I’m sure he expected at least half a smile from me, but he got nothing. “Well, thanks for making me aware then,” I said listlessly.

“Absolutely. And remember, just be cautious. That’s all we ask and you can leave the rest to us.”

“Gotcha.”

I showed them the door and sat staring into space until I got my makeup call.

51

Somehow, the freaky son-of-a-bitch managed to break into my house a week later. I wasn’t home, thank gods, as we were doing a night shoot, but somehow he was able to climb in through a second story window, avoiding the notice of the guards on duty and spent several hours rummaging through my belongings before security finally noticed the glare of a flashlight moving back and forth across my bedroom window.

He’d been parading around my house and wearing my clothes when they caught him. I was called immediately and asked to come to the house. When I arrived home, I was disgusted by what I found. He’d masturbated every where he could thing of: on my bed, my sofas, my toilet seat and tubs, even on a kitchen chair and in the fucking refrigerator. He’d also done obscene things with my toothbrush and various kitchen utensils.

“Jesus,” I cried. “How long was he in here?”

“An hour,” one of the on-duty guards said. “Maybe two.”

“Fuck!” I was disgusted, scared, and furious all at once. “What the fuck?” I just kept walking around my house, saying “fuck,” over and over again.

“The good news is we have him in custody,” someone said.

“Fuck!”

I was told of a reliable and trustworthy cleaning company and given their business card. “Fuck that,” I said. “I’m moving.”

I went back to work and spent my downtime talking to people about where they lived and was anything for sale in the neighborhood.

52

I moved into a spacious place in the same area where Dove lived with his wife and kids.

It was much more extravagant than my little Tudor had been. It had what the realtor called grounds. I had to hire a gardener, something I could never have pictured myself doing only a month before. I also hired a maid and was sure to make them both sign security clauses. My life was getting to be very bizarre, something I barely recognized, especially when I thought back to my beginnings. I had come a long way and with that knowledge came a sense of pride I would carry for the rest of my days. Beginnings were nothing more than that: beginnings. The end always counts more than the beginning.

53

Because our show had become such a ridiculously huge hit, some people got it into their moron heads to send us all on a publicity tour. In a bus, even. A painted bus. Painted with our logo.

It was insane.

None of us were thrilled with this idea but Dove seriously hit the roof. He threatened to walk off the show, and when they threatened him back with a lawsuit, he threatened them back with a countersuit.

We thought it was the end of the show for sure and even starting planning cancellation parties, consoling each other by saying things like, “Well, we had a good run,” and “It was great while it lasted.”

But in the end, Dove agreed to go on the tour and we all boarded the bus like good little corporate angels. We did a lot of special appearances, a lot of interviews, signed a lot of autographs. Much of the Mue hatred that had been going on had by then settled down enough so that we weren’t heckled very often and, as far as I know, we never had any security problems.

There were a few bus problems, however.

We were somewhere in rural Washington when the damn thing broke down. The driver told us fixing it would take a while, consulted a map and said there was a general store just a couple miles up the road.

Dove was not a happy camper. “Why would I want to go a couple miles up the road?” he demanded. “I have everything I need right here, don’t I? I have food, I have air-conditioning? I even have a mini-movie theater right here at my fingertips? Why would I leave?”

The driver looked like he might cry. He had been getting the brunt of Dove’s anger for the entire tour and I suspected the camel’s back would be breaking any day now.

The rest of us left the bus in a hurry, not so much because we cared about going to a general store but because we didn’t want to be around when that kid pulled out a gun and decided that taking the show’s star hostage would be a great way to get his point across.

It was hot from the moment we left the bus and Lucia doesn’t do well with hot. She briefly reconsidered, going so far as to get back on the bus, but we waited by the side of the road and she emerged less than thirty seconds later.

No one had to say a word. We could hear Dove’s ranting from where we stood.

David pointed and yelled, “Forward march, ladies.”

So, we marched.

By the time we reached “the center of town” (which we all agreed just had to be someone’s idea of a sense of humor) we were drenched in sweat and wanting a cold drink. It must have looked quite comical actually, almost the entire cast of Exquisite Afterlife showing up in Shitkickville, thirsty, without makeup and most notably, without wings. I’m sure we were a sight to be seen.

The general store was smaller than my old house and evidently one of the best places in town to hang out with your buddies. About a dozen people were hanging around out front, mostly Norms, and every single one of them started staring the instant we came into sight and never took their eyes off us the whole time we were there. I don’t think they recognized us; their reason for staring was because they didn’t recognize us. We were strangers in their town, interlopers.

David, being David, thought making conversation would be just the thing to ease the tension in the air. He stayed outside rambling gods know what at the rednecks while the rest of us went inside in search of beverages.

“Shit,” Lavinia muttered under her breath. “I think Dove had the right idea.”

“Yep,” I agreed. “From now on, I’m not gonna leave his side.”

“You got that right, girl.”

We peered into one of those old time box freezers for something to drink while Lucia was asking the proprietor where the magazine rack was. She was always in search of new articles about herself; I believe she had a collection.

After a minute, she joined us in the back, saying, “Can you believe they don’t sell magazines here except Guns and Ammo and Penthouse?”

We laughed and Lavinia said, “Honey, I am not surprised.”

When we’d chosen our drinks, including one for David, we paid and went back outside. Sure enough, David had them laughing and so relaxed that they were suddenly not so shy and several of them began whistling and tossing catcalls Lucia’s way.

We all walked away in the direction we’d come from, with Lucia practically jogging in front of us.

The walk back wasn’t too bad now that we had drinks. It wasn’t until David saw a loose dog in someone’s yard that the trouble began.

54

David, quite innocently, spotted the dog and said, “Oh, look. It’s a pit-bull. I had one of those growing up.”

Simultaneously, we all made a move or a sound to stop him but it was too late. He was already crouching on the ground and yelling, “Here, boy. Here, boy.”

The last thing I heard before the barking began was Lavinia saying, “Oh, shit.”

And then the dog charged us, all six of its legs pumping furiously, covering the ground between himself and us in about 3 seconds.

It probably wouldn’t have been so bad, had it been just the one dog. But the instant the first one barked, three others rounded the side of the house at full speed racing towards us with teeth bared.

Lucia screamed and started to run, but Lavinia was quick enough to grab her by the arm and hold her in place. “Don’t move,” she whispered. More to all of us than just to Lucia.

But David moved. He stood up so fast he dropped his Diet Coke and good thing too because if he hadn’t the dog would have lunged for his throat. Instead, it lost its balance when it stepped on the can and went skidding past us and into the street. No matter to it though. It simply turned around from there and proceeded to snarl, covering our backs.

We were surrounded by a pack of redneck dogs, all barking to wake the devils. None of them were attacking, but they were sure as shit trapping us, making it impossible for us to move.

“David,” Lucia hissed. “If one of these dogs bite me, I swear to fucking gods I’ll have your balls on a plate!”

“I think someone beat you to it, love,” he said, his eyes on the mutt at his crotch.

It was easily five minutes before someone came out of the house to rescue us. A big guy with a long white beard and a straw hat on his head; he was dressed in dirty overalls with no shirt, his big bare boobies hanging out in the breeze.

The man started screaming at the dogs and they all scattered to the winds as if they were terrified of him, which I’m sure they were.

We all thanked him profusely but he never said a word to us. Just stared as if we were strange bugs he’d never seen before. Maybe bugs from space.

When we got the gist that he wasn’t about to reply or apologize for his rabid murder squad, we hurried away down the street and the moment we were out of his sight Lucia began whacking David in the head, swearing at him, insulting him, threatening him. He kept apologizing but it did him no good. Hell hath no fury and all that.

Lavinia and I followed them, mostly without speaking, occasionally wincing when Lucia landed a good one on him. Poor guy. More than once Lavinia and I exchanged a glance and had to fight like hell to keep from laughing.

When we got back to the bus it was running again and Dove’s hands were covered in grease up to his elbow. He peered at us from over a newspaper. “Did you kids have fun?”

We all made statements to the affirmative and he said, “Good,” and went back to his paper.

And before long we were on the road again.

55

During the wrap party that year, I was popping an olive into my mouth when I looked across the room and saw the woman who had been my advisor on The Queen is Dead. She was standing in a corner talking to one of our shows editors. I stood there watching her for a minute, trying like hell to remember her name but it just wasn’t coming to me. Oh well, I thought. I’ll just bite the bullet.

I left the bar and started making my way towards her. She spotted me over the guys shoulder and smiled. Smiling back, I thought, Fuck! What is her name!’ I figured by the time I’d reached her it would have come to me but it didn’t. Was it Rabia? I couldn’t be sure…

“Hi,” I said, raising my glass in greeting. I never extend my hand to be shaken unless the other person does it first. Experience has told me that not everyone is thrilled to be grabbing a handful of tongues.

But this woman actually reached around the man, offering me her hand. “Hi, Sky. It’s so nice to see you again.”

“Likewise,” I agreed.

“You two know each other?” Clyde, the editor, asked.

I nodded, chewing a piece of ice from my glass. “We’ve met, yes.”

He looked at her. “Wow. I didn’t know that. Why didn’t you mention it?”

She shrugged, a little half-smile on her face as she watched me.

Even though I regretted having to do so, I said, “I’m really sorry, but right now your name escapes me.”

She seemed surprised but not particularly offended. “Rabia.”

“Rabia! Of course!” I nodded enthusiastically, like a complete idiot.

“Clyde, would you mind freshening up my drink?” she asked, still not looking at the guy.

“No, problem,” he replied. “In fact, I’ll get you a whole new one. Open bar!”

When he was gone, I said, “So, you and Clyde, huh?”

“Oh, gods no. I just met him.”

Really? Tonight?”

“A few nights ago at a friend’s house. He told me he worked on your show and then when he invited me to the wrap party, I couldn’t say no.”

“Cool.” I nodded again, feeling like a moron. “So, how have you been?”

“I’ve been great, thanks. Working here in LA on my dissertation. How about you?”

“Good, good. You know…” I gestured around us. “Same ole, same ole.”

“Movie-star stuff,” she said with a mischievous smile.

I laughed. “Yeah. Movie-star stuff.”

Clyde returned with her drink and I excused myself. She gave me a look that said don’t go, but I had to. There was something about her that made me nervous as hell and I didn’t want to make a bigger ass out of myself than I already had.

For most of the rest of the night, I did my best to avoid her but when it was getting on towards dawn and I’d stepped onto the balcony to toast the sunrise, she found me.

She leaned her elbows against the railing, same as me, and asked, “Are you avoiding me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you make me nervous.”

“Why?”

I didn’t dare say the first thought that ran through my head. Instead, I looked down into the depths of my gin and tonic and said nothing.

“Sky.”

“Hmm?”

“I’m sorry I was such a jerk the last time we saw each other.”

I looked up in surprise. “You weren’t a jerk.”

“I was. I should have just said yes. I’ve been regretting it ever since.”

“Really?” I was still surprised, but tried to make light of it. “You didn’t miss much, I can guarantee you that.”

She leaned over and kissed me. “I beg to differ.”

I took her home with me that morning.

56

I would have married her too, if the laws had permitted it.

But, as we all know, our government is not open-minded and to this day forbids different breeds of Mues (yes, we are still referred to as breeds in the books) to marry, stating, basically, that, who knows what kind of children these unions will produce?

It’s completely disgusting and racist (though the government denies this) and it is exactly these kinds of prejudices that events like the Walk on Washington are trying to rectify, but we still have a long way to go.

In the meantime, Rabia and I were content to live together in sin.

57

We did have a commitment ceremony however, a very private one in our own back yard and only our closest friends were invited. It was held under a tent and Rabia wore flowers in her hair. We were both barefoot, proudly displaying our Mue bodies to everyone who cared to look, she with her see-through feet and I with my big tongue toes.

Barefoot is not a state I like to be in often though, because usually the ground tastes terrible. While mostly people dread stepping in something gross, I live in terror of it. Have you ever had to taste dog shit? Or used gum? Or spilled day-old orange juice? I rest my case….

But that day our grass was green and as sweet as could be. It was the happiest day of my life and when I think about it, that fact remains true even now.

I often wondered how I landed such an amazing partner to share my life with but whenever I gave voice to such ruminations, she always replied that she wondered the same thing.

My Rabia, the mate of my soul.

58

In the middle of the fourth season of Afterlife, Rabia announced that she was pregnant.

“What? That’s not possible, babe. You must be mistaken.”

“I’m not,” she said smiling gently, understanding how this could be such a shock to me. “See for yourself.”

She stepped out of her jeans and lay on the bed, naked from the waist down. I sat beside her, examining her pelvic region. While I could see that the blood in her uterus was building up more than it had ever done before, I didn’t see anything else unusual. “You’re about to have a heavy period,” I said. “Gods, you scared me.”

She shook her head emphatically. “No. Look here.” She pointed to a spot on her belly. I peered at the spot closely but still saw nothing. I looked up at her helplessly.

“It’s an egg,” she explained. “A fertilized egg.”

I started to wonder if she’d gone nuts overnight. “It can’t be, Rabia.”

“It is! You already know I’m late!”

“Yeah, I know, but my clock isn’t…I mean, it couldn’t…”

Smiling again, she said, “I think it must have been the position.”

“But there’s no way you could actually see an egg. They’re microscopic.”

“Gods, Sky! Will you just trust me? I know my body.”

“Ok.” I stood up. “Then I guess we should get a pregnancy test or see a doctor or something, right?”

Her smile widened into a grin. “I already bought the test. It’s in the bathroom. I wanted us to do it together.”

We did and according the test, she was right. She was pregnant. And then we went to see a doctor and she was still right. She was definitely pregnant.

I couldn’t believe it. At first, I was in too much shock to be either happy or unhappy, but I knew that as soon as the shock wore off, I was going to be flying high.

I was going to be a mom! We were both going to be moms!

It was truly a miracle.

59

I watched our child grow inside my lover’s womb.

It was both thrilling and terrifying, actually seeing it develop in there. One of the many advantages to having a see-through wife was that we could always tell how it was doing. If it turned itself around and became tangled in the umbilical cord, we would know right away. We could actually watch it moving around in there, predict when it was going to start kicking her, so I could jump right over and place my hand against her body.

And soon enough, we didn’t have to call it ‘it’ anymore.

We were having a son.

How many parents can say they’ve looked into their own child’s eyes before it was even born? I can say that. I stared at him for hours and he stared back at me through the window of his mother’s belly. I watched his tiny body grow, and neither of us were disappointed when it became obvious that the little guy was developing tongues instead of fingers. But he didn’t inherit Rabia’s transparent skin and I couldn’t tell if she was saddened or relieved at the news that she was indeed, still a Uni.

The bigger he became, the more I worried about Rabia.

That is the disadvantage of a see-through wife.

Her body was warping in ways I had never imagined possible. It was being stretched, pulled into unnatural positions. But she only laughed when I voiced my concern.

“You’re so silly,” she’d say. “It’s the most natural thing in the world.”

“They only say that because they can’t see what’s really happening.”

She did her best to comfort me when I should have been comforting her, but she was always so much braver than I. When it came to her, fear could literally paralyze me.

Even going to work became a chore for me. I wanted her to accompany me to the set every day because I couldn’t stand the thought of being away from her for 12 hours. She humored me as best she could but the fact remained that sitting in a television studio all day could be torturously boring. I know because I do it, but I still wanted her there and it pained me when she announced that she’d be staying home on any particular morning.

I worked the same as always, putting everything out of my mind when the director yelled “Action”, but the moment he yelled “Cut,” I was on the phone with her.

It was the longest, most wondrous nine months of my life, a beautiful and hellacious time.

But, I’m sure most people would agree with me when I say that the best part about pregnancy is that it ends.

60

Our son Crispin was born on the day after Christmas that year.

He was a perfectly healthy little Mue with ten tongues and ten toes. Our lives would never be the same again.

61

By the time season five rolled around, all of us were getting slightly weary of the show. We had other interests and we all, with the exception of David, had families now, and spending half your life away from your family can be excruciating.

It was the last year of our contracts and Dove had announced that he wouldn’t be renewing his. We all understood, as he had had a huge career before the show, dozens of movies under his belt and he was tired of playing Woodrow, the tough but lovable angel boss.

Lavinia, too, was thinking about leaving, for almost all of the same reasons. She’d already had to turn down several films because of her commitments to the show and I know she was quite unhappy about that.

David, I think, was content just to have work at all and said he’d stick with the show until it had died of natural causes. Both Lucia and I were on the fence.

There were already signs that we were becoming typecast. We were no longer being offered bad-guy parts, but if there was a heroic, squeaky-clean Good Samaritan type in a script, we were sure to get the call.

Which really didn’t make much sense to any of us, as our characters, though angels, we not exactly an upstanding group.

Dove played a grump, Lavinia played another grump, David played an immoral moron, Lucia played an immoral narcissist and I played a whining brat. Where exactly did the angelic part come in, other than the fact that we were angels?

The whole thing baffled us all but that’s—as the saying goes—how the cookie crumbles. For the most part we stopped bothering to try to figure it out. Dove had put it best when he said, “These fucking assholes who don’t even bother watching the fucking show just hear the word ‘angels’ and think it’s Its a Wonderful Life with fucking swear words. Fucking cretins.”

I thought about it long and hard, discussed it with Rabia and finally decided I would stay with the show for at least another season. Lucia decided the same thing and in the end, I’m glad we both did because neither Dove nor Lavinia left that year. They were both offered hefty pay raises and there was no more talk of being bored with their characters.

“Bloody hell,” David said. “Why didn’t we think of that?”

Lucia and I couldn’t help but agree.

62

Once Crispin was born, Rabia continued working on her dissertation and when it was completed she took a Uni-versity job teaching foreign languages to a student body of Unis.

I was somewhat skeptical of this decision, wondering what kind of impression it would give our son when he became old enough to start asking questions.

“What will he think? He’s not a Uni and neither am I.”

“But, I am,” Rabia replied. “And he won’t think, he’ll know that his moms love all Mues.”

“That’s my point. Why do you have to teach at a Uni-versity? Why not just a Mue-versity?”

“Are you aware of how few Unis there really are in the world? Do you realize that in some countries we are still hunted down and killed for study, or even worse, for our bodies to be displayed in a fucking museum? Are you aware that some Unis are being held in prison camps right at this very moment, while others are in cages at some fucking zoo?”

I could see I hit a nerve. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about all that. I apologize.”

But, sorry didn’t cut it. Rabia stayed mad at me for days, even going so far as to sleep in one of the guest bedrooms and only speaking to me when it was about Crispin.

After that, I never again questioned what she wanted to do in her professional life. Whatever it was, it was fine by me. And if our son had any questions about it when he was older, I intended to let Rabia do all the talking.

63

One night when I got home from work, Rabia told me that someone had stopped by to see me but had refused to say who he was. Instantly, I thought, Oh, gods! Stalker! And tried to do the math in my head to see if it was time for psycho masturbation boy to be released from prison yet. When I concluded that it was still far too early, I asked Rabia to physically describe the person.

“Male,” she said, bouncing Crispin on her knee. “Young, early twenties probably. A Skin. Really, the most gorgeous dolphin Skin I’ve ever seen. He was quite attractive actually.”

My heart had stopped and my jaw hung open. Rabia couldn’t help but notice the expression and asked what was wrong.

“It was Zion.”

Her stare was empty. “Who?”

“My fucking brother Zion!”

“I didn’t know you have a brother.”

“Well, I don’t. Not really. Not anymore. But I used to, a long time ago and obviously he thinks I still do. Why else would he be coming here?”

Rabia was bewildered, but thankfully, not angry. She didn’t care that I had kept my family a secret from her as I had kept them a secret from everyone I’ve ever met after I left the carnival. She only cared that I was upset and after I told her the full story of my upbringing, she became upset as well.

“Do you think he wants money?”

“Probably. What else could the fucker want? To get all touchy-feely with his big sis? I fucking doubt it.”

She agreed that that was probably not the motive and lacking another, we had to conclude that it was in fact money.

“Well, fuck that,” I said. “Those people never gave me shit, so that’s exactly what they’ll get in return.”

“Maybe he read about Crispin in the papers,” she suggested. “Maybe he wants a relationship with his nephew.”

I laughed bitterly. “Yeah, maybe he’s acting on behalf of my parents, as a go-between for them.”

“Why would that be? What could they want form you?”

As it turned out, they wanted something big.

They wanted my life.

64

“What do you mean, ‘custody’?” I screamed into the phone at my lawyer. “How the fuck can they want custody? I haven’t seen them in almost fifteen years!”

“My best guess, from what you’ve told me about them,” she replied calmly, “Is that it really has nothing to do with Crispin. I’m sure they only want custody of him so that you will then be forced to pay them an outrageous amount in child support. More than they’ve ever had in their lives.”

“Well, that’s fucking nuts. It’s not going to happen.”

“Of course it isn’t,” she said. “All this other nonsense about the laws forbidding two different breeds of Mues to…well, to breed, is just so much smoke and mirrors. It’s definitely the money they’re after.”

As is my custom when I’m upset, I yelled the word “Fuck.” I yelled it approximately 70 times throughout the whole of that day. It didn’t matter how many times I was told to stop. I didn’t care who heard it. I didn’t care that it made my son flinch. After about the fiftieth time, he stopped flinching anyway.

Those rotten, no-good, cock-sucking mother fuckers!

How dare they? It wasn’t enough that they had tortured me all through my growing up years? They had to torture me some more? Of course they did. People like that don’t know what to do unless they’re torturing someone. If it wasn’t for that little amusement, they would just shrivel up and blow away in the slightest breeze. They thrived on making other people miserable. It was their sole purpose in life.

But I had beaten them before just by living the life I led. By being happy. They say that’s the best revenge against abuse: to live a happy life. After all, that is the last thing abusers want. Their business is to break you, to make you more miserable than they themselves are. It is the only thing that makes them happy, regardless of how brief that happiness is.

Not this time though.

This time I would kill them with my bare tongues if I had to. No one would threaten my family and get away with it. They would seriously regret fucking with me, of that I was certain.

65

A custody battle ensued, and they never even came to California. It was all done with lawyers, which disgusted me even more. I wanted them to come to me, wanted them to look in my eyes and to look in theirs. I wanted them to the hatred there, the complete lack of fear or anything even remotely resembling fear. Sadly, I never had that chance, because, just like most bullies, they were cowards. The whole thing turned into a joke as well, because they ended up bankrupting themselves in the process of trying to ruin my life. They were so certain they would win that they had spent their every last penny paying the most expensive and impressive lawyer they could find.

What they didn’t take into account, quite stupidly, was the fact that the very money they were so interested in having could now pay for an entire fleet of the best lawyers money could buy. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that though, mostly because my regular attorney already charged an obscene amount and could handle the job quite aptly. She was a celebrity attorney after all and had already handled many such cases. She was one of the best and I was grateful to have her.

It was almost disappointing, the way it had ended so anti-climatically. I had really wanted to rub their faces in the dirt, break more than just their bank account. I had wanted them to suffer profusely.

Even dead was too good for them. I wanted them breathing, eaten alive by ticks, slowly, excruciatingly, until they went blind and insane with agony…

66

My life had been taking quite a toll on my body.

Though I had never done drugs or been much of a drinker, the amount of work I was doing was affecting my body almost as badly as years of drug abuse or alcoholism would have done. I started to feel dragged down, even when I’d had enough sleep. Fatigue was always with me. I became nauseous and plagued by headaches. When I started vomiting, I saw my doctor but even she was baffled as to what my symptoms could mean.

I continued working, as always, but instead of spending any downtime joking around with the crew or goofing off with David, I took to just laying in my trailer until they were ready for me.

My body ached. Just ached everywhere.

Rabia insisted that the bullshit with my family had been the last straw, that my body had finally succumbed to the stress. But then I began losing weight and running a fever and neither of us thought it could be contributed to stress.

I have no recollection as to what happened next but according to my wife, I’d stopped breathing while I slept. I was rushed to the L.A. County Hospital and put under close observation.

When I woke up, the first thought in my head, before I even opened my eyes, was, gods, my feet are killing me.

When I did open my eyes, I saw a chubby nurse by my bed, checking my IV. “My feet are killing me,” I told her, but then realized it wasn’t my feet at all. My head hurt but my feet felt fine.

The nurse called a doctor in and then I thought, Jesus Christ, I can’t even finish a fucking cup of coffee in this place.

“What?” I said.

The doctor leaned over me, sticking a light in my eyes and telling me to follow his finger. I did, thinking, I wonder what Marilyn is wearing right now.

“Who?” I said.

Both the doctor and the nurse ignored me. He began asking me questions about how I felt and what I remembered, while she fiddled with the medical equipment beside the bed. I answered the doctor’s questions and he kept nodding and I thought, I wonder if she gives good head.

“What?” I yelled trying to sit up. “Who?”

Now they exchanged a glance and the doctor asked if, to my knowledge, I have suffered a head injury. Did I remember if I fell down at all?

“No,” I said.

“No, you don’t remember?”

“No, I didn’t fall down.”

“Are you sure?”

I thought I was sure, but was I? “Where is my wife?”

“We sent her home,” the nurse said. “We didn’t think you would wake up tonight. Would you like me to call her for you?”

“Yes,” I said immediately. Rabia could tell me what was going on. She always had the answers.

67

When Rabia entered the room, I thought, Oh, thank gods! But for some reason it felt like I thought it twice. Like I had two separate thoughts which had overlapped each other.

“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” she asked, coming over to the bed.

“Ok.” I did feel better when she kissed my forehead but only for an instant. Other than that, I felt like puking again.

I thought, Jesus, she looks awful!

I frowned, looking at Rabia’s face. Now why did I think that? She looked beautiful. She always looked beautiful.

“Did the doctor tell you anything yet?” she asked.

“No. I don’t think he has a clue.”

That’s probably because he’s too busy hitting on anything with a vagina.

Now, why did I think that? I don’t even know the guy.

Maybe I should move her to a different hospital.

I’m seriously gonna puke.

I swallowed hard. “I’m seriously gonna puke.”

Oh, fuck!

Rabia jumped up and grabbed the plastic puke thingy that had been set on the table next to me. She stroked my hair while I threw up. I had to hand it to her. She didn’t look away or even grimace. She’s a real trooper, that girl.

Gods, this is making me want to puke myself. What’s wrong with her?

I think my whole stomach is gonna come up.

I’m going to find that little bastard and demand some answers!

Please, just let me die now.

Don’t let her see how worried you are.

Finally, I stopped puking and Rabia gave me a napkin to clean up and then a sip of water.

If I have to, I’ll take her to a specialist. Someone must know what this is.

I wonder what time it is.

The doctor came into the room with a smile. “Sorry to keep you ladies waiting.”

My gods, I bet you could watch her come inside her body!

“Well, we’ve run some tests and so far, everything looks fine. We’ll have to wait until the lab gets back to us with the blood work, but I’m sure that will be normal as well. In the meantime, I think we’ll keep you here for a while and

Damn, I would love to get a video of these two together. How hot would that be?

I can’t believe the asshole is trying to look down my blouse!

The nurse entered carrying a tray. She smiled and said, “I brought you some Jello and a few crackers. You’ll need to put something in your stomach before you take your meds.”

Look at him! Could he be anymore obvious?

I bet I could bag her if I get her into my office.

If he looks at my tits one more time, I’m going to break his goddamn nose!

I really need to sit down. She’s totally checking me out. I hope Crispin is asleep by the time I get home. I think I’ll call in sick tomorrowshewantstosuckoneIjustknowitthefcukingdickfaceislookingatSkynowIneedtostopandgetsomethingformycornsitsbeenforeversinceshesbeenwithamanyoucantellistillneedtocorrectpaperstonightifonlychuckwouldlendahandonceinawhilesuckmebitchyouknowyouwanttoIhopeshegetsbettersoonthenmaybeicouldgetenoughrestandfuckherintheasshowsweetwouldthatbegoddmankids

I started screaming and couldn’t stop.

68

If it hadn’t been for the physical part of my illness, I’m sure they would have thrown me in the psycho ward. But once my screaming began being punctuated by vomiting, they knew I was seriously sick.

I was transferred immediately to the California State Hospital and underwent three days of every kind of test imaginable. I tried not to think but it was next to impossible. I tried not to scream but that was also impossible. It was the only thing that drowned out the thinking and kept me sane.

A specialist in World Diseases was sent in to examine me, but she didn’t do a whole lot of examining. Mostly she asked questions. One of them being, can you tell what I’m thinking?

She asked without moving her lips so I started screaming again. She shouted over my screams. “ESP Flu!”

“What?” I screamed.

“ESP Flu! I know what you have! It can’t be cured but we can treat it!”

“Thank fucking gods!”

She smiled and gave me a big thumbs up.

Then she left the room to tell the news to my wife.

69

Treatment for the ESP Flu is not particularly pleasant but it sure beats the hell out of the symptoms.

First, they put me in what was called a Shielded Room, which basically meant an empty room with steel walls.

I was sat down at a table facing a window—Plexiglas, four inches thick—-and the specialist sat on the other side writing questions on cardstock paper. I also had a Sharpie and paper to write down my responses, but since most of the questions had yes or no answers, I mostly just nodded or shook my head

When the question and answer part of the treatment ended, it took three orderlies to drag me from The Shielded Room. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to live there forever, where my mind was blessedly my own and I wasn’t being bombarded by other peoples thoughts.

Then I was doped to the gills, unable to think a single thought of my own, never mind hear other people’s thoughts.

It was during this drugged state that they drilled into my head and drained out the infected fluid. I had to be awake for it so they could ask me questions during the process and I could give them at least some semblance of an answer.

I remember watching the fluid drain out of my head and into a bad similar to an IV bag. It flowed from a tube I couldn’t see straight into the bag. The fluid was first red, then pink and white, then a sickly yellow-green color, then just yellow. Then yellow-green, white, pink and red again.

It seemed like I watched it for hours, watched the nurse change the full bags to empty ones, but I’m told the procedure lasted little more than seventy-five minutes.

When it was over, I remember one of the nurses telling me I wouldn’t remember anything, I wouldn’t remember anything, I wouldn’t remember anything…

But here I am now and I remember everything. It’s all hazy, as if watching someone else’s dream through a telescope, but I remember just the same.

I remember having nightmares in the hospital that night, one quite vividly.

It was nighttime and there were many Mues in a field, dozens, and everyone was terrified. A man, large and dark, walked through the crowd touching people. After he touched them they screamed in agony and often fell to the ground. It was too dark to see what was happening, but the Mues were fleeing before him. Trying to avoid being touched by him. I was scared too, but curious and so I stood still, watching him approach. Mues kept slamming into me in their efforts to escape the dark man, almost knocking me down but no matter how hard I was hit, I remained standing.

As the dark man drew closer, I had a better view of what was happening to the Mues he touched. One Mue, a female Skin, wasn’t quick enough and he reached out and brushed her back. The woman screamed and as I watched her human tongue turned into the tongue of a dog, long and flopping, drooling down her chin.

Another man was touched and his tongue turned into that of a pig.

This was enough for me. I turned and ran with the crowd, desperate to get away from the dark man, but by now he was beside me. He walked and I ran but still we went the same speed. He reached out and touched a naked Outie as she passed. Her back turned into a braided rug, woven right into her skin. Looking away, I saw a hill up ahead, the end of the field, and I knew salvation was just over the top, out of sight.

I raced for the hill, gathering all my remaining speed and reached it before the dark man was able to touch me. Panting, running up the hill as fast as I could, I made it to the top and saw that it wasn’t a hill at all. It was a cliff and just like all the other Mues around me, I was unable to stop myself in time and sailed right over the edge of the cliff to land in an frozen black ocean beneath an frozen black sky. Icebergs floating off in the distance, mountainous and mocking.

We were drowning, freezing and behind us, high up on the cliff, the dark man laughed and laughed.

70

I stayed in the hospital for another week, despite the studios protests. We had to figure out how I had caught the ESP Flu. According to the specialist, it was very rare in West California, but not so rare on the mainland. In the end it was decided that I must have come into contact with someone else who had contracted the nasty bug. There was no other explanation. I was just happy that I hadn’t given it to my family, a fact confirmed when they were both tested. We could only imagine what effect that particular flu would have on a toddler and from what the doctor said, we didn’t want to know.

“Left to spread in a small child,” she said, “the psychological damage is usually irreparable.”

Everyone who had spent anytime at all with me within the previous weeks was also advised to get a check-up and keep an eye out for early symptoms.

Pretty much everyone I knew ended up making certain to have their seasonal flu shots after that.

You can never be too careful.

71

Back at work, while David, Lavinia and I were in the middle of shooting a scene, a carpet row bigwig came out to the set and interrupted us. He asked everyone to gather round and in a somber tone told us that they had just received a call from Lucia’s manager. Lucia was in the hospital, having been E-vaced there after an intentional drug overdose.

We were all told that she would be written out of the rest of the season and Hazel our head writer was upstairs the very next minute brainstorming ideas with her staff on how to explain Frederica’s absence.

Then everyone started asking questions all at once. What was her condition, did they know for sure that she’d meant to it, had she left a note, how was her husband holding up, where exactly was she, and on and on.

I didn’t ask a single question. I left the circle of people and sat down on my pretend couch in my pretend apartment, staring up at the non-existent ceiling. I felt the whole world unraveling around me. Soon it would be a spun-out spool of time tangled at my feet.

Had we pushed our luck too far? Carried on with a show when we should have quit while we were ahead? I wondered if this was fate, telling us simply, game over. Clock out.

The word curse was on my mind when David came and sat beside me. He looked tired and pitifully sad. “I was in love with her, you know,” he said quietly. “For so long, I kept trying to get her to take me seriously, but she never would. I even loved her after she married that bloody ass.” He began to weep, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. I reached over and touched his knee with my tongues. “For years I loved her,” he said.

I sighed heavily, blinking back my own tears. “I know.”

72

It was shortly thereafter that the tongues of my right hand were slammed in the door of a stretch limo by an inept driver. Just before an awards show no less. About two dozen paparazzi slimes caught the whole thing on their damn cameras and there I was, gracing covers the world over in a million dollar dress, screaming and looking like I’d just been shot. It was delightful.

All my tongues except my thumb tongue turned black-black and I began to wonder if they might fall off. And then, after not being able to move them for days without gasping, I began to wish they would fall off.

The Afterlife curse continued.

Dove was in a skiing accident (breaking the safety clause) and Lavinia came down with none other than the ESP Flu.

Various bizarre and unpleasant things happened to some of the crew as well.

By the time season six was over, we were all dancing a jig that we’d made it out alive and had our biggest, wildest wrap party ever.

We prayed to the gods that our string of bad luck had ended and we could all breathe a sigh of relief.

73

Rabia was pregnant again and we couldn’t have been happier.

Crispin was growing up and turning into a little Tasmanian devil. Naturally, we thought a younger sibling for him to terrorize would be just the thing for all of us. (I’m kidding, of course.)

As it turned out, we had another son, just as beautiful as his brother.

Saada, like his brother and siring mother, was born with tongues instead of fingers and only tiny patches of transparent skin scattered over his entire body the way some people have freckles. So, he wasn’t exactly like Rabia but was certainly unique enough to be registered as a Uni, which pleased her greatly.

Home was always the place where I was the most content and being able to stay there with my wife and kids for the whole summer was truly a gift I gave to myself and hopefully to them as well.

I did nothing during that hiatus except be with my family. I did no appearances and interviews; nothing work related at all. I didn’t read a single script.

It was a great few months I’ll never forget.

74

Back on set, it seemed that the time off had helped everyone. Even Dove seemed happy and rejuvenated. He had agreed to come back for another season but under the stipulation that he would only appear in 7 of our 18 episodes. They were gently phasing him out.

The rest of us were doing our regular gigs, working 12 plus hours a day and for the most part, we were glad to be doing so. Lucia appeared to be in great spirits, as well. Whatever pressure she’d been under, whatever her personal problems may have been in the past, that storm seemed to have passed.

Things were looking up for all of us: David had managed to meet a girl he was crazy about, claiming that his days of bachelorhood, however blissful they may have been, were now over and Lavinia had appeared in a musical during the break.

We were back in top form and both the fans and the critics took notice.

That was the season we took home Emmy’s for Best Dramedy, Dove won Best Leading Actor and Lavinia was nominated in the same category.

Just when everyone thought we were dead in the water, Afterlife rose up, a triumphant phoenix ascending from the ashes of itself.

75

By the time the season wrapped, I was ready to take on another part again and signed on to play Death in a remake of Death Takes a Holiday.

The film was to be shot back in the land where I grew up, New Boston, and after talking about it with Rabia, we decided to make it a family adventure. It would be a great opportunity for the kids to see where their mom had grown up and the place where the entire country had been born.

Why parents ever think these kinds of trips will be fun for children is beyond me. Are kids ever interested in historical things at that age? I never met one who was and my own were no exception but still, for whatever reason, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe I was just making excuses. In fact, I know I was. The truth of the matter was just that I wanted them there with me, especially because it was where I myself had been so miserable as a child. Maybe I wanted to give myself new memories, good memories, where children were happy, and there were no such things as favoritism and cruelty for amusement’s sake.

My hopes were that my own children would cleanse a haunted place for me; maybe they would find the small Sky and show her what a parent’s love could really be.

76

Everything went exactly as planned for the first six weeks or so.

Then, while shooting a scene downtown, a few people in the crowd of spectators began shouting my name repeatedly. This is far from an unusual thing but the things they were yelling we at least moderately uncommon.

They were hurling insults at me, calling me names, yelling as loud as they could, informing everyone within earshot that I was a joke, a loser, a lying psychotic bitch.

I did my best to ignore it and it wasn’t long before security ushered them away. But an uneasiness was growing in the pit of my belly. I knew who the hecklers had been even without seeing them and I also knew they’d be back.

And soon.

77

The next day was exactly the same thing.

Nasty shouts from the crowd lasting around ten minutes until the guards located the culprits and escorted them out of the area.

The third day of the location shoot they were arrested for disturbing the peace, as they were the following day.

On that fourth day, I went to the police station to confront them.

To my complete and utter surprise it wasn’t my parents, but my brother and a few of his friends.

Just because I knew it would piss them off more than any slurs I could come up with, I bailed them out, grinning broadly when they each walked to the front counter to collect their belongings.

Zion had grow into a very tall, very wide young man with dark darting eyes squinty with suspicion even before he saw me. When he did, he stopped short and asked, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Still smiling, I said, “I posted your bail.”

“Oh, fuck that!” he bellowed, turning around and facing the nearest officer. “Forget it. Put me back in. I don’t want that cunt’s money.”

I continued to be amused when he literally tried to run back to the cells and was caught and threatened with arrest again. “Get busted as much as you want, Zion,” I said. “I have all the money in the world.”

This enraged him even more than I had hoped. The dumbass went and punched a cinderblock wall and then yowled like a cat with its paw caught in a mouse trap when bones cracked. Then, because he was furious at being hurt, made a move to punch it again, but at the last second thought better of it.

“You bitch!” he screamed at me, holding his injured hand and glaring at me as if I’d done it to him. “I oughta fucking kill you! Wait till mom and dad hear about this.”

Resisting the urge to laugh, I said, “I truly cannot wait.”

“You just wait,” he shrieked and ran past me and out of the station.

I was in a good mood for the rest of the day.

78

That night the hotel started getting calls for me at the front desk.

The clerk, under strict instructions, refused to put them through or to even confirm that the caller had the right hotel. Of course, everyone knew where I was staying anyway. The media had made no secret of it.

Worried, the desk clerk asked if I wanted him to phone the police. Apparently the callers had been none too kind, unsurprisingly resorting to slinging profanities when he wouldn’t put them through.

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him as I collected all my other messages. “Just hang up on him if it continues.”

“It wasn’t a him,” he said. “It was a her.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

I rushed for the elevator, anxious to tell Rabia what my mother was up to now.

79

Rabia was not as amused as I was.

“This is not funny,” she insisted. “How can you think this is funny?”

I shrugged. “I have no idea, but for some reason it’s making me feel all giddy with excitement. I can’t wait to see what happens next.”

She looked at me as though I were running a high fever. “Sometimes I wonder about you, Sky.”

I smiled, as if she’d just complimented me. “Isn’t it cool?”

80

They continued to harass me in any way their tiny brains could concoct.

They sent a rubber pig with several nails hammered through its head. A bag containing dozens of live millipedes and perhaps hundreds of living lice, all squirming and bouncing around joyfully. And for some mysterious reason unknown to any of us, an aluminum pot filled with frozen grease.

The hotel management was becoming increasingly upset, since they were the ones who had to deal with the “gifts.” Evidently, they weren’t amused either, threatening to take legal action whether I wanted them to or not. By then I didn’t care either way. “Do what you have to do,” I told them.

Of course, they had no idea where the packages were coming from, making any kind of action, legal or otherwise, next to impossible.

But they were getting quite antsy about the whole thing and I started to feel guilty so I decided to take my own action.

I picked up the phone and dialed, somehow knowing that their number would not have changed over the years and I was right.

My mother answered on the second ring.

“Hello, Mother,” I said in my most theatrical voice. “How are you?”

Silence on the other end, lasting a good fifteen seconds. Then: “You! How dare you call my house?”

Smiling, I said, “What do you mean? I’m only returning your calls. Sorry it took a while but you know how the career of a rich and famous actor can be. Busy, busy, busy.”

“Oh, you’re the same smartass asshole you always were, aren’t you? I don’t care how much money you have, you ungrateful bitch, you’ll still be a loser until the day you die.”

“Is that so?” I played with a pen on the table. “And what have you done with your life lately, Mother? What has that child beating husband of yours been up to?”

“You lie!” She screeched into the phone, causing me to wince and pull it away from my ear. “You’ve always been a lying little cunt!”

I remained silent, trying to relish this moment, to hold onto the humorous part of it.

“He never touched you unless you deserved it and you know it! Now you make it sound like he beat you every day for no reason at all! All he ever did was try to protect you!”

No longer smiling, I said, “Who’s lying now, Mother? Protect me? Please! Is that what you tell people?”

“I tell people the truth! That you’re an ungrateful cunt who spit in our faces as soon as you were old enough and somehow—gods know how!—some idiot asshole put you on a crappy-ass TV show! That’s what I tell people! The truth!”

“Your twisted version of it anyway.”

“FUCK YOU!” she screamed. “I should have killed you when I had the chance! You should have been a fucking abortion! We never wanted you in the first fucking place! You ruined our lives!”

“I know I did, Mother. Which is why you’ve always wanted to ruin mine, isn’t that right?”

“We treated you like you deserved to be treated. You were a LOSER! Everyone knew it! The kids in your classes, your teachers, EVERYONE!”

“But it’s okay to try to take a loser’s money, is that right? I’m not so bad that you don’t want my money.”

“Why shouldn’t we get some of it? We raised you! We fed you, clothed you, put a fucking roof over your head! We deserve to get something for that!”

“You don’t deserve shit!” I raised my voice for the first time. “I earned every fucking dime I ever made! I work my ass off for every penny!”

“That’s bullshit! You think what you do is work? Getting up and showing off in front of people? YOU should be paying THEM for that!”

“It’s called art, Mother. It may not be fair, but when you’re in the arts you’re either a star or you’re starving. I didn’t want to starve.

“Oh, you didn’t want to starve? You DIDN’T starve when you were here! And now, greedy little fuck that you are, you don’t want to share!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I shouted back. “You actually think you should be paid back for raising me? Children do not have to pay their parents, Mother! Children are a fucking GIFT!”

Rabia came in from the other room looking annoyed. She stood in the center of the room, hands on hips, glaring at me.

“Children are a gift if you want them!” my mother shrieked into the phone. If they are the child you want!”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The woman was seriously demented. Remembering that my wife was already mad at me, I lowered my voice and said, “Like Zion, you mean.”

“YES! Like Zion!”

“Well, I can certainly understand that. He turned out to be a real prize.”

“Don’t you talk to me about Zion! You’re not worthy to even breathe the same air as him!”

“It’s funny though, how he claims he doesn’t want my money. Does that mean he’s out there getting arrested every day for you?”

In the background, I heard my father’s voice saying, “Who is that?” There was a pause, muffled words and he yelled, “Hang up the fucking phone! Hang it up right now!”

Click.

Always the good little wife, obeying her husband.

81

“Demented!” I said to Rabia.

“Then why did you continue to talk to her? What is the point of fighting with an insane person?”

I chewed my lower lip. I had no answer for her.

“And what about the kids?” she continued. “They could hear you in there, Sky. What happened to our mutual agreement that it’s unhealthy for kids to see their parents lose it?”

Going to lay down on the bed, I said, “I don’t know. I’m sorry. But maybe it is healthy for them to see us lose it once in a while. Show them that a human emotion like anger is okay once in a while. It’s natural.”

She sat beside me. “The emotion is okay, yes. But we’re trying to raise them to handle their emotions in a healthy way, remember? Swearing and yelling at the top of your lungs is not a productive solution.”

I rolled over, my back to her. I just didn’t have the energy to continue this conversation. I was emotionally bruised and mentally wrecked. I apologized and promised to try to control my temper in the future. That seemed to satisfy her and she went away, leaving me to simmer on my own.

82

I assumed after the episode with my mother that the harassment would stop. Instead, it nearly doubled and then my lawyer called to tell me they were trying for custody again, citing that I was an “unfit parent,” due to my “raving outbursts” “false accusations” and “clearly violent temper.”

To say I was annoyed would be an understatement, but not by much. “Jesus,” I said. “Why do they keep trying to drag my kids into their bullshit?”

“Don’t waste a moment of your time worrying about it, Sky.” Even the lawyer sounded bored by them. “They still have no proof of anything. The judge will laugh them out of court the same way she did last time.”

“Yeah, it’s still irritating though.”

Rabia thought it was irritating as well. “Gods,” she said. “Can you imagine having to give our kids to those lunatics?”

“I never would. Even if some freak thing happened, like they paid off a judge or something, we as parents would still have rights. We could demand that the boys be sent to live with someone else, an aunt or cousin maybe.”

“Still, the thought creeps me out.”

I took her in my arms and squeezed her tight. “It creeps me out too.”

83

The lies they were telling their lawyer grew more and more outrageous.

Supposedly, they had witnessed firsthand, me dangling my youngest son out the window of a limo, traveling at 80 mph along the freeway.

They’d seen me leave my children out in the park alone all night. They’d seen me hitting them with belts, electrical cords and my bare tongues. They’d watched as my children begged me for food and I’d ignored them, stuffing my face full of prime rib and mashed potatoes. (The idiots had no way of knowing that I’d been a vegan for the past 14 years.)

My children had sat out in public in their own feces, had been tied to trees and shopping carts, and had been spotted strapped to the roofs of moving vehicles.

My lawyer and I loved it whenever they came up with something. It made them look even more insane than they actually were.

84

I received word that their next ploy was to try calling magazines and television news stations, anxious to prove to the world that I deserved to have my children taken from me. For some reason, Rabia was never mentioned in any of the accusations, which only served to diminish their case further. Even if by some miracle of miracles they managed to convince a judge that all these things were true, it only stands to reason that my wife would raise the children herself and they still wouldn’t get a dime. But they’d apparently forgotten she existed.

Unfortunately for them, even the lowliest of the rag-mags either hung up on them or didn’t return their calls. It must have been extremely frustrating to them.

Destroying a person’s life was not as easy as they made it look in the movies.

My attorney suggested that we counter-sue for defamation of character, basically for no other reason than to be a thorn in their sides. I said, sure why not. Go for it.

85

Ah, how the tides will turn.

As soon as the countersuit was filed against them, they dropped their own flimsy case and went scurrying back into their hole.

Word came back to me that they were possibly going to be held up on charges of wasting the courts time and threatened with prison if they so much as whispered my name again in a public setting.

With their wallets being endangered again, I was certain that that would be the last we’d hear of them. Death would wrap in another couple weeks and we would fly back to the west coast and go back to our normal lives, me with the satisfaction of knowing I’d kicked their asses without even lifting a tongue.

It was a good feeling.

86

I was going over a scene with Theodora the director when the call came.

While playing with the boys in a park, Rabia had been assaulted, punched and kicked several times until she fell to the ground. The perpetrator had next snatched up our son Crispin and then disappeared. They were currently searching for both the suspect and our child.

Rabia was in the hospital with detectives. She’d told them with 100% certainly that the kidnapper was my brother Zion.

87

The first place the feds checked, of course, was my parent’s house. I wanted to go with them, but they refused to allow it. When they called back half an hour later, they informed us that neither my son nor my brother were on the premises. Both my parents were there and claimed not to have seen Zion in weeks, but still insisted that they knew nothing about the abduction or the assault except that Zion would never do such things. He was a good boy.

Despite their claims and protests, they were brought in for questioning and their house cordoned off as a possible crime scene.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wanted to be insane with fury, I wanted to want to kill them all.

But in truth, I was just terrified in a way that I had never known before.

No one knows true terror until their child is in danger.

88

After 72 hours, my parents were released and allowed to return to their home.

Rabia had slept for about 8 hours of that time. I hadn’t slept any. We were both delirious with fear and exhaustion.

When we were left alone, I told her, “I have to get away from these cops and go there.”

“To your parents house? What for? They’re not going to just tell you where Zion is.”

She’d broken her own rule and raised her voice in front of our kid, who neither of us wanted out of our sight for even a moment.

Every time I looked at her battered face, fear was replaced by a murderous rage so deep that I wanted to tear off my own skin. I sometimes wonder if I may have actually tried, had I had fingernails.

“They won’t tell me where he is,” I agreed, pacing the floor. “But they’ll sure as fuck tell me something. They won’t be able to stop themselves. They’ll want to gloat about it, to rub it in my face, torture me with it.”

Rabia sniffled into a tissue, looking up at me with swollen, red-rimmed eyes. “And what the fuck will that accomplish, Sky?”

“I don’t know. Something though.”

She stood up and grabbed Saada from where he sat beside me. She shouted, “You egging them on is what caused this whole fucking thing!” Then she and Saada both burst into fresh tears and she ran from the room with him in her arms.

No matter.

I couldn’t think about them right now. They were fine. It was Crispin who was in danger, Crispin who I had to get back from those monsters before they did something terrible to him.

Unless they already had.

The thought boiled the rage up from inside me again and I knew beyond a doubt that if that was the case, I’d kill each and every one of them. I wouldn’t give a fuck about prison or my family or anything else. Blind wrath would take over and I would kill them all.

89

In the middle of the fourth night I told the sleepy police officer stationed outside our door that I needed to go get a pack of smokes from the lobby or I would start tearing the wallpaper off the walls.

He looked in my eyes and I’m sure what he saw there was a crazed nicotine attack. I’m sure that’s what he saw because that’s what I wanted him to see. I was a trained actor and a fucking good one at that.

Yawning, he said okay, but to hurry back.

I promised him I would, but of course I was lying.

90

Dressed only in my plaid pajamas and a thick terrycloth robe, I hailed a cab and gave the driver the name of a street a few blocks from my parent’s house. He didn’t blink an eye and we were on our way.

91

I don’t know what I expected to find when I approached their house from behind, creeping through the neighbor’s yards. Police cars with flashing lights? Cops with cups of coffee milling around outside. Sharp-shooters lurking in the shadows, weapons pointed, just waiting for the word.

Instead, the house was dark and silent, like all the other houses. There was no one around and, though relieved, I was also angry. Why weren’t they being watched? Shouldn’t someone, at least one someone be here, waiting for something suspicious to happen? Maybe Zion would show up carrying my son? Did that not occur to anyone? What the fuck were those people being paid for?

Crouching low, trying to stay in the darkest patches, I crossed into their yard and hurried to the basement door. Once there, I knelt and brought up the hidden house key from under a log of rotted firewood older than I was. So predictable. They just never changed a fucking thing.

I slipped the key into the knob lock and it turned smoothly, without even the faintest click.

A second later, I was inside.

92

The basement was pitch-black.

I closed the door behind me and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Slowly, shapes formed around me and I saw that the basement hadn’t changed at all either.

To my right lay my father’s six-foot work bench, something he’d made himself before I’d been born. In front of me was his hulking black table saw, looking like some kind of medieval torture device and beyond that, against the far wall, the ancient washing machine and dryer. I couldn’t believe they were still using such primitive appliances.

I carefully made my way around the table saw, passed the washer and dryer and left my father’s workshop and entered what they’d always planned to be a “family” room. I saw they still hadn’t done it and probably never would. The same ratty couch sat against one sheetrock wall and an antique but broken console television sat against the other. I thought about all the things they owned, already old when I lived there, and how they could probably sell some of that ancient crap to a museum and make a small fortune.

But no. That might take a little effort on their part. Easier to try to steal it from a virtual stranger they had once owned.

Grimacing at the taste of the dusty concrete beneath my feet, I made my way to the stairs that I knew led up to the kitchen, but just as I lifted my foot and was about to place it on the first step, I froze, thinking I’d heard something.

A barely audible scraping sound, gritty somehow.

Had it come from the crawlspace?

I reversed position and bent over, peering into the blackness beyond the 3x3 square cut into the wall to my right. The basement had once upon a time been twice as big, but for some reason my father had put up this extra wall and made a crawlspace out of half the room. As far as I knew, the only things in there were Christmas decorations, old patio furniture and the furnace. Maybe a few boxes of junk, but that was probably it.

I strained my eyes trying to make shapes out of the impenetrable darkness, but it was useless. I couldn’t see a thing and heard no further sounds. Considering how decrepit the place was, it was more than likely that they’d developed a few rodent infestations over the years.

Straightening up, I turned back to the stairs and began climbing, carefully avoiding the stairs that I remembered as creakers. I marveled at how the oddest things come back to you when you return to the place of your youth, the minute things you recall.

I was halfway up the stairs when the scraping sound came again, much louder this time, making no attempt to hide itself and I knew what the sound was.

The rubber soles of sneakers scrambling across the grainy concrete. It was a sound I recognized instantly, a flashback to my childhood.

I turned around to see the silhouette of my brother taking the stairs three at a time.

93

He hurled himself forward, taking me down with no effort at all. He even managed to prevent both of us from tumbling down the stairs to crack our skulls open on the cement floor.

“Zion!” I screamed, trying to wrestle myself out from under him.

His response was to punch me in the face multiple times and then the director called cut and the scene faded to black.

94

Water splashed into my face and I heard myself groaning.

I heard a man laugh and say, “We should make her pick the lint out of the rugs for a few hours, huh?”

More people laughing.

A woman’s voice: “Give that lazy cunt some more water, Zion.”

He gave me more water.

95

When I tried to open my eyes, I discovered that the lids weren’t working properly. They were stuck somehow. Gummy.

I heard my parents talking and thought I was ten years old again, probably late for school and in big trouble. I decided that today would be a great day to skip, go hide out in the woods and smoke cigarettes.

I had a headache.

96

After a while, I knew exactly where I was and what was happening, but I didn’t move. I kept my eyes closed and just listened. I knew I was on the living room couch and they were in the adjoining kitchen. They were still talking and joking but beneath that I heard a child crying.

My child.

He was in the house and alive and at least well enough to be howling. I thought he sounded okay. Scared maybe, but okay.

Quickly, ignoring every muscle and bruise that shrieked in pain, I sat up and forced myself to see through swollen eyes.

They noticed my moving right away; from where they sat at the kitchen table, they had a perfect view of the living room. Immediately, Zion jumped to his feet and ran over to me.

“Think you’re going somewhere,” he asked. “You’re not going anywhere. Right, Dad?”

My parents both rose from the table and came into the living room. My father grunted at my brother and sat down across from me in his favorite armchair. I was amazed at how old he looked. He’d lost most of his hair and what little remained of it was white and wispy. He was gaunt when he’d always been chubby. His shark Skin had taken on a mottled dry look, like it would crumble at the slightest touch.

My mother didn’t look any better. The veins covering her body had withered into dried up worms and I wondered how she could even be alive. How did her blood travel through those wrinkled old roots?

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, breaking into my house?” my father wanted to know.

“Taking back what’s mine.” My answer was firm, without fear and without hesitation.

“No, no, no,” he said. “You owe me!”

“I don’t owe you shit, you sick bastard! Where is my son?”

“He’s my son now!”

“You’re insane!” I started to get up from the couch but my brother stepped forward and shoved me back down.

My mother cackled.

“Maybe I’ll keep you too,” my father added with some amusement, showing me how his teeth had yellowed.

“Yeah, good idea,” I said. “No one will ever notice I’m gone.”

“You’re not too big for me to back-hand, you know,” he said.

I made a show out of rolling my eyes, knowing he’d always hated that.

“You upset your goddamn mother!” he yelled suddenly.

I waited for Zion to glance away before making another attempt at rising. But again, he caught me. He was standing too close. If only he would back up a few feet…

“You sit still,” the old man bellowed. “I’m talking to you!”

I couldn’t believe he was trying to intimidate me in the same ways he had done when I was a child. I had the urge to laugh in his face. Either than or spit in it.

“Always the smartass,” my mother spoke up suddenly. “You never knew when to leave well enough alone.”

I looked at her. “Oh, you’re telling me you can take my kid and I should just “leave it alone”?”

“You ungrateful bitch!”

I shook my head. “That’s an old fucking tune, mom. I don’t owe you psychos anything.”

“Oh no? Who the fuck raised you? Who the fuck fed you?”

“Don’t start with that crap again. You sound like a broken record.”

“I’ll give you a broken record!” my dad shouted, shaking a fist at me.

“No, you won’t,” I told him. “You’re not man enough anymore. Isn’t that why you have little precious Zion here doing all your dirty work for you? Hell, you probably can’t even get it up anymore, if you ever could.”

His face flushed crimson and he stood up fast, charging across the room at me. “You fucking talking to me with that mouth, you little bitch!” He actually swung at me but I stood up fast and shoved him into Zion. They both staggered but didn’t fall and my father, absolutely seething with rage now, attempted to come at me again. But now I was on my feet and moving fast. I whirled around them both, bringing me closer to the stair and the second story of the house where they were keeping my son.

“Fuck you all,” I said and pulled my gun out of its shoulder holster.

97

My mother barked laughter. “Oh, she has a gun! Oh, we’re so scared!”

She was clearly an idiot, but both my brother and father looked at least vaguely alarmed. Then my dad recovered and said, “Oh, you’re gonna shoot us now? Throw away your whole life and go to prison? You talk about your fucking kids! You’d never see those bastard freaks again!”

“Just shut the fuck up and stay where you are,” I said. “I’m going up to get my child and none of you are going to do a damn thing about it.”

“This isn’t a movie, little Sky,” my father said in a sing-song voice. “You come in to my house, waving a gun at me, I got every right to blow your fucking ass away. That’s the law! You’re threatening my family!”

‘My gods,” I said. “You guys have turned into the Texas chainsaw family.”

Zion made his move and lunged at me. I shot my gun into the floor near his feet, scaring the shit out of him, and he jumped back to his former position. Air hissed out from between my teeth. And I hoped it didn’t show that the shot had scared me nearly as much as it had scared him.

“Okay, put the fucking gun down, Sky,” my father said. “Come on, before someone gets hurt. You’re taking this too seriously.”

“Oh, you want the gun, dad? Because I’ll give you the fucking gun!”

“You don’t have to give it to me. I’m just asking you to put it down. You’re upset.”

“You’re fucking right I’m upset!” I screamed, making them all cringe. “And why do you think that is?”

“Calm down Sky,” my father said, taking a step towards me. “You need to calm down. Go wash your face.”

I realized only then that I was crying. That was what he’d always said to me when I cried. Go wash your face.

“You don’t want to do anything stupid, Sky. Come on, now. We’re your family! Right guys?”

My mother nodded emphatically, but Zion didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t even blink.

“You don’t want to do this. Now come on. Let’s all just sit down and talk about this calmly, like civilized rational adults, right?”

“You’re right, dad. I don’t want to do this. But you haven’t left me much choice.” I stepped back and began easing my way up the stairs, my eyes never wavering from where they stood.

“We’re your family,” my father said. “You know we love you, no matter what we say. We’re just blowing off steam. We don’t mean any of it.”

I backed up another step. “I’m getting my kid.”

“Sure, sure. Get your kid. That’s fine. We just wanted a little visit with him anyway.”

I increased my speed, ascending faster and none of them made a move to stop me. By the time I had reached the top, I knew I’d have to turn my back on them. I knew I’d have to be quick.

Without thinking about it, I turned and fled, heading first for my parents room to the left. Crispin wasn’t in there. Next to my brothers room and it too, was empty. That left my old room and the bathroom. I hurried further down the hall and flung open the last bedroom door. There seated on the floor was my child, sucking on his tongue thumb. As soon as he saw me he began wailing again, reaching his arms up to me, waving his tongues and repeating “Mommy” over and over again.

I put the gun back in its holster and lifted him into my arms, kissing his tear streaked face. “Are you okay, Crispin? Huh? Does anything hurt?”

He shook his head, still crying and I felt around his body for anything unusual but he seemed ok.

Now we just had to get the hell out of there.

98

I made it to the top of the stairs with out incident. Down below me, they were still just standing where I’d left them, with the exception of my mother who had never even bothered to get up.

I began descending with my son.

“There,” my father said. “You feel better now? You got the kid. Now can we all just relax?”

“I’m leaving,” I told them as I reached the bottom.

None of them said a word and for a moment I thought I would be able to leave without incident. But of course it’s never that easy.

As soon as I entered the kitchen, I heard movement behind me. I sat my son on the table and spun around, the gun already in my hand. The three of them halted at the threshold, crowding around.

“You hurt us bad,” my father said. “Look what you’ve done to your mother.”

“I haven’t hurt you at all,” I told him. “But if you don’t let me out of here, I will.”

“You know that’s not gonna happen, Sky Tongues.”

Zion began walking towards me. I backed up a couple of steps but couldn’t go very far because I needed to stay near my son. I circled around the table, holding the gun in one hand and scooting Crispin across the table by wrapping my free arm around his waist.

“I’m not doing anything,” Zion said calmly, showing me his empty palms. “I’m just seeing you out like a good brother.”

My gaze flicked to my parents and I saw the way they looked at him, their eyes shiny with pride.

Zion strolled casually towards the front door, giving me a wide berth, and said, “You were always a freak.” Abruptly, he changed direction, lunging at me, and I put a bullet through his forehead. He didn’t fly backwards, didn’t stagger around; he didn’t grab the counter and make some profound revealing statement. His brains exploded out the back of his head and he dropped like a stone. That was all.

Both my parents screamed, rushing forward towards their fallen boy and I grabbed my shrieking son and carried him out into a bone-colored day.

99

I called Rabia from a neighbor’s house and told her what I’d done. Then I hung up and called the police. I met them outside my parent’s house, holding my child in my arms, bouncing him up and down, telling him everything would be okay.

And eventually, everything was.

100

As expected, there was a trial, which lasted about a year too long but I was not a flight risk and was allowed to go home and be with my family. Ultimately, I was acquitted of murder, as the jury agreed that I had acted in self-defense.

I was stunned beyond belief to hear that everyone involved with Exquisite Afterlife wanted me back and I took them up on it immediately, anxious to put the whole ordeal behind me.

On weekends I flew back to New Boston to finish up playing Death; it only took a few trips as we were very nearly done when the production had been interrupted.

When it was released, the movie was a moderate success and I gained favorable reviews, but it wasn’t the triumph we’d all expected. It was a cute little movie that is still good to watch on a rainy night when you find yourself alone with a dish of your favorite ice cream.

That’s good enough for me.

101

Both my parents went to prison, guilty of kidnapping. He received a longer sentence as it was established that my mother suffered from a mental illness and had probably only been acting out of loyalty to him. So, really she didn’t go to prison at all. She went to the nuthouse.

My father died in prison and my mother has yet to be released from the asylum. She probably never will be.

I was acquitted of the charge of murder as it was clearly a case of self-defense. I’ve never met a single soul who said they wouldn’t have done the exact same thing in the same situation.

I’ve never regretted my actions.

102

We stopped the series a year later, after its seventh season.

Ratings had dropped drastically since Dove’s departure and we all agreed that it was better to leave quietly than to be thrown out with a fuss.

The party we had was heartbreaking; we’d all spent so much time together, watching each other get married, get divorced, have children, have grandchildren. We’d been there for each other as much as any family ever had and if you happen to catch an episode and think, wow, what a crazy bunch of characters, you don’t know the half of it.

We loved each other and parting company with those you love is always a difficult, if not impossible, task.

It is comforting to know that somewhere, right this very moment, Exquisite Afterlife goes on.

103

I continued working in film for a few years but grew tired of all the traveling it entailed. I wanted to remain close to home for a while and have at least somewhat normal hours.

Rabia is the one who suggested I open my own theater company here in LA and that is exactly what I did. It’s just a small company called Mue Productions, but we have fun and, I think, produce good work.

I’m especially fond of spotting new talent when they walk through the door, some young Mue with drive and passion and not just the desire to succeed, but the need. The knowing that there can be no other way, no other choice.

Besides my family, that is the greatest thrill of my life.

Finding a flower where others saw only a weed. |