Christopher WunderLee: Moore's Mythopoeia

She gave birth to a healthy boy. Then, the afterbirth. The doctor, Dr. Kunkle-Driad (of Kunkle-Driad Sprinklers), wheeled away from her akimbo womb. Aaron, the father, weeping, chanced, “where is… where is the other?”

“There is no other…”

“But Alvin?”

“No…”

“What have you done? The blood shrieks out to me from within him. Where is your brother? Where is your brother Alvin? Why did you not protect him?”

It was a failure of eugenics; the one was a marred product of the industry of birth. Sometime during gestation, Joseph had absorbed his brother. Acme Fertility & Births had stalwart guarantees and a lenient return policy. He was sent to one of their satellite hospitals in the city of Enoch.

* * *

The first experience Joseph Moore remembered was a hollow craving, not an event or word someone had said or a face, but a feeling, an overwhelming desire for warmth, the warmth of someone else’s body, the warmth of tender hands clinging to his limbs, the warmth of intimacy. If he had been someone’s child or if he was a different type of child, Joseph would have received all that he wanted, he would have had a mother who would allow him on her lap, cradling his little body within her own, possibly singing to him, or telling him stories, or just talking in a soothing voice, she would have laid him on her belly as an infant, he would have grown within the warmth of his mother and father’s breathing bodies as they all slept in an enormous bed, and he would have had a father, a father who would have lifted him up and rocked him in his arms, who would have photographed his first step, who would grin delightedly as the little boy stumbled towards his waiting arms, a father who would kiss his toes as he laid on his infant back. But from the very first, he had been treated as a patient by nurses performing a duty. Joseph wanted attention, he boorishly tried to find ways to receive it, feigning illness, performing tasks, grasping their legs whenever they halted their continuous movements, movements he could never keep up with, movements he had to watch, wait, and then, attempt to gain their attention. What should have been charming, what should have delighted his mother and father and grandmother and grandfather, what should have gotten him all that he desired, became annoying and unpleasant in the odd, magnified lost little boy; he was trying ever so hard for any of them to return his embrace, to wrap their arms around his lithe body, and say anything affectionate to him, but he was not their child, and he was not a fair child, he was odd, two different colored eyes, a dirty looking birthmark on his arm, a clinical boy in a clinical hospital filled with working women who spent most of their days taking care of others and who wanted no one else to rely on them. So, he was rebuffed, scolded, told to leave, threatened, and dejected, even as he watched the other children, the ones who came in for little operations or visited on field trips or came to visit their mothers on special days, as they were held and doted after and told, so many times he knew how each of the nurses responded to the sight of their child, how much they were adored.

The rejection made Joseph grovel, head shy, but still a beggar for affection, weary of any sort of recognition. He became aware of his deficiencies, when someone new greeted him, Joseph hid behind an adult’s leg and turned his head, hiding one eye, or he would simply place his hand over it, as though he was taking an eye exam and place his tainted arm behind his back, giving him an absurd salute as he returned their salutation. Joseph sometimes wore surgical masks too, for as long as he could, until some nurse noticed him and chased him down the hall demanding it back. He also wrapped his arm up, as though it had been badly burned or as though he had a large wound, covering his birthmark the best he could, until, again, someone noticed that the little boy had stolen some gauze or tape and forced him to return it. But Joseph did not want to be noticed, not at all, not anymore, and so, most of the time, he remained in the attic of hospital, in the room with fourteen beds (only one occupied) with his books and his toys and his invalid caregiver.

When Joseph was still quite young, he discovered a secret. At night, if he moved ever so quietly, if he was unnoticed, he could slip into the female wing of the hospital. He would wander the halls, room to room, gazing at sleeping women, until he found one that he liked, one that he, in his adolescent heart, wanted to be his mother, one that he could invent a life together with, one that was pretty and content looking, one that he could never imagine saying or doing anything cruel. The secret that Joseph had learned was that if they were lying just right, he could crawl in bed with them ever so carefully, and they would automatically, unconsciously encircle him with their warm body, even, at times, place their arm around him, and he could lay there, for just a brief while, within another person’s tenderness, and he could imagine she was his mother and that they had fallen asleep together or that he was only a baby and they slept that way every night. It was the biggest secret Joseph had ever uncovered and one he guarded with special care, he was an expert at not being seen or noticed, and he knew, even as a child, that he could never be caught lying there with them.

Joseph was able to keep his secret, until he decided himself that he wouldn’t continue, that it was meaningless, meaningless because he could no longer pretend and make himself believe any of his own dreams. Then, he simply walked the halls, checking in on them every few moments, but not allowing himself to go into their rooms and crawl into their beds and pretend that this woman was his mother and that he was her child. Over time, he became angry with them for not being his mother and for not inviting him into their beds and for not noticing him. He was beyond noticing and he made himself so, but his intolerable need for affection, for their attention, made him greedy for it, and selfishly he blamed them for what their negligence had made him.

* * *

That warning voice that some call instinct and others intuition, which he saw through to the end, when the dragon was set loose and came furious down to seek his ever-lasting revenge, his arrival was announced, acted as a tempter and an accuser, to wreak havoc upon the frailties of his losses. Beginning his most dire of attempts, he recoiled from the steps, like a cannon belching out a ball of fire, due to doubtful distractions and troubled thoughts, awaking within him sleeping memories of what he was, what is, and what must be worse; of worse deed worse sufferings must ensue .

Legs folded, hands cupped over swollen eyes, as the purr of her engine shifts room to room, his only bed amongst fourteen others, in the attic of the hospital, the dark crevices of light pouring in like smoke from his one window, a hermit of children, agoraphobic by exile, the lonely help-maid of nurses and janitors.

“I will be the custodian of heaven”.

Writing poetry to her, she that handed back the valentine, unopened, he wrote to her every night, long letters of his poisoned heart, his smoky eyes offended by the sight of her, filled with the fornicating verse of forbidden books. He spent every lunch hour against the fence, as near as possible, unwavering his gaze, never minding that she refused to acknowledge him even as her friends whispered into her ear and pointed towards him, or sang dirty songs about the way he looked at her, even as they ran up and kicked his shins, or taunted him with sharp statements about his two different colored eyes, his mask of exhaustion, his drunken gaze, all of which was because of her (a Lollyesq bewitchment), because Joseph Moore was obsessed with her, so obsessed he could not eat, he could not sleep, he did not bother talking, he had fits of vertigo and fits of tears.