Sputterpub's Blog

Of course Alice has thought about death before. It first occurred to her when she was five. She remembers being taught to recite the child’s bedtime prayer (Now I lay me down to sleep – I pray the Lord my soul to keep – if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take). “WTF?!” she would have reacted if she’d known those letters and what they meant. It made no sense to her. Even pre-kindergarten Alice understood that bedtime was supposed to be a warm cozy retreat from the exertions of day into the dream-comfort of night – why bring the specter of life’s end into the conversation? Exactly how many kids were going into a sleep from which they would not awake, that caused grownups to teach that prayer?

As she added years of life, she encountered death examples and engaged in death contemplations. First there were the fish in her father’s aquarium, followed by the tiny turtle her folks gave her after the tonsillectomy. Then Skippy the hamster (named for the peanut butter lid he used for a water bowl, a victim of garage heat prostration during the unseasonably hot September weekend when the family forgot to check on him), and the litter of baby rabbits across the street (all born with little blood blisters on their feet, and none surviving the attempts by the father of the house to perform surgery on them).

Those animal deaths impressed all the kids in the neighborhood. So did the demise of Barbara’s grandpa (from an unexpected severe heart attack), the hit-and-run massacre of Dennis’s collie, and finally, awfully, the suicide of Dabney’s mom.

They talked about death. They made jokes about it. Somebody said “Imagine that you’re sliding down the outside school bannister, and all of a sudden the metal rail turns into a razor blade?” and every kid who heard that “ew’ed” and “yucked,” but they all got it. Ever after that, Alice had a creepy feeling around razor blades, and when she learned that some people kill themselves by slitting their wrists, she developed a tender weirded-out attitude toward her own. The skin there seemed so fragile to her, the blue veins too near the surface, her vitality too exposed. Even as a grownup, talk of wrist-slitting made her want to cover her lower arms, and she saw nothing nice about a tattoo there.

Alice is never suicidal but that hasn’t stopped her from considering how she would do it, if. She knows there may come a time in her elder life when she needs to take herself out, and she isn’t counting on American medical expertise to assist her. The most appealing method would of course be an overdose on narcotics, but she likes the effect too much to stockpile the pills (they’re losing their efficacy, she always thinks, and besides that her back (or head, or feet, or neck, or whatever) hurts and the opium would help). She’s fascinated at high windows, sweating and fearing the height and at the same time tempted to just climb out, but she can’t even see herself tandem skydiving or bungee-jumping, so she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to actually take the step.

Drowning? She can’t imagine the required inhalation of water. Carbon monoxide poisoning? That could be a possibility. But last week she watched an episode of Criminal Minds that featured a guillotine, and now she can’t stop thinking about it.

She did a little research. She knew the device was named for a French man, but that’s when she learned that Mssr. Guillotin didn’t invent it; he was actually against capital punishment and proposed it, in 1789, as a more humane tool than the traditional Breaking Wheel. The guillotine was used for all executions in France from then until that nation outlawed executions in 1981 (the first person beheaded by guillotine in France was a highwayman named Nicola Jacques-Pelletier, in 1792, and the last was one Hamida Djandoubi, in 1977).

The Breaking Wheel was perfectly barbaric. The condemned was strapped onto a big spoked circle and then beaten with heavy objects until death. The spaces between the spokes allowed thorough bone destruction. And pre-guillotine beheadings were rough punishment at best; even an experienced executioner had trouble hatcheting a head off.

The guillotine blade is well-guided and uses gravity. It was perfected by the 45 degree angle; as anyone knows who has done kitchen prep, an angled chop is more effective than one that is perpendicular to the carrot, potato, or whatever needs slicing.

In the beginning, the condemned had to place his or her head on a stump. Later, the stock-like structure was conceived as a refinement. But every image and description of the event has the condemned person situated face-down, with the guillotine blade addressing the nape of the neck.

Not so on Criminal Minds. Their psychopath positioned his victim face up. He placed a bucket beneath the detachable head, and that area was bloody-stained from previous victims, so the face-up view was less messy than the traditional position. But of course that wasn’t the reason. The creep wanted his victim to see the blade coming. The actress in the scene screamed wide-eyed as the blade rocketed toward her.

And immobilized Alice with memory. The picture on her TV screen was shockingly familiar. She’d been standing in front of her gas fire, warming the inside of her robe, and the scene froze her in position, forgetful of where she was, and sent her mind toward a simultaneously vague and vivid recollection.

Ideas teemed. Had she died before? Was she catching the edge of a past-life recollection?

Alice doesn’t believe in paranormality. She’s a rational person and a lover of logic. But she was tossed into a semi-spiritual dream zone for a moment that seemed like an age.

Then her mind regained focus and found words. She realized she had momentarily become the actress. She’d ceased to see the screaming face and had become the eyes watching the blade plunge toward herself. “Shit!” she thought as the metal sliced toward her. “Oh shit. This is really happening.”

It was that stone-cold sober moment when one realizes a bad consequence is about to occur, unstoppable, unwanted, really finally serious. Worse than when a marriage ends and kills the future one anticipated. Worst.

Alice then understood she was recalling her own bad dreams. There had been a few where death was imminent but of course not realized. They’d always involved a fall from great height, into darkness, at first feeling wonderful but then stunning her with gravitational inevitability. They’d always been accompanied with that regretful oh-shit realization that the end was coming. They’d always awakened her to confusion and relief.

Maybe Alice will take herself out with a guillotine. She believes it is the most humane method, and she’s not too worried about the five seconds that scientists say will pass between the severing of the head and the cessation of all brain activity.

Maybe she’ll even position herself face up. People say one never knows what one will do until one is confronted with the actual situation, but that’s not true of Alice. She almost always can predict what she’ll do. She can imagine locking herself into a frame and letting a slanted blade take her out. She knows she won’t scream. And sure as shit, Alice will close her eyes.

Once upon a time, in a cul-de-sac realm, not far from a freeway exchange and an outlet mall, there lived a monarch, his queen, and their three daughters.

Theirs was a normal, functional family, for its time: the monarch was a male in his 40s, the queen was a like-aged female at the end of her fertility, and the three princesses were teenagers. Their kingdom included a bearded collie, comical and rambunctious, and a yellow cat who was introduced as a kitten to a household with a mature dog, so Yanther thought he was a pooch. Yanther’s name came from “yellow panther,” an idea voiced by the youngest girl. The dog’s name was Magic, and her namer, the oldest daughter, meant it for mage-wisdom and not for the tricks she never managed to perfect.

The family was like an anti-myth: the father bold and insecure, the mother severely opinionated, the dog a spayed bitch and the cat a neutered male. The princesses all bore “L” names, to match the family handle, and no one was selfish or envious or as good as she was beautiful.

Linda, then almost 17, was intelligent, nervous, and attractive enough for all practical purposes. Lana was almost two years younger, better looking, graceful and friendly. She wasn’t as bright as Linda, and she was more affectionate. The baby Lola had just turned 14. Her hair was the prettiest in that brunette family: almost dark blonde, and curly. She seemed to have inherited her mother’s impatience. Yet she was the easiest-going of the daughters; offenses and insults just rolled off her back.

The girls were teenagers, so they had friends outside their home and they dieted most days. Each considered herself fat, and sister time seemed to reinforce their opinions. They got along fairly well together, compatible even when alone and not bothered by parents or teachers or other authorities, although they did argue about the diets. Linda was a classic calorie counter and scientist about the issue. Lana was the one who tried herbal supplements and OTC pills. Lola fasted about one day a week; absolute refusal to eat was more successful with her parents than trying to reduce what she ate from her plate.

The diets didn’t work. The girls put on normal adolescent female fat and also added a layer from the breaks they took in their diet routines, breaks which of course were saturated with salty-fatty-sweet treats until they forced themselves, again, into deprivation.

The princesses were full siblings but they had different traits. Some of their differences were genetic, but most were situational. They concerned birth order and geography.

For Linda was as serious as any first-born. It’s an overlooked trait, but the fact is that first-borns have rookie parents. No matter how much babysitting or aunt/uncling they’ve experienced, the mother and father of a first child are profoundly insecure. And the baby, especially if it’s female and thus programmed to read the emotions of others, picks up on the parental insecurity and steps up to take some of the parental load. A first daughter may be modest and can exhibit a sense of humor, but she’s deadly serious about most things.

Lana had the middle child position. She was the only one in the family with an older sibling and a younger one, and that encouraged two qualities in her: a cooperative ability to get along with others and an elusive ability to get away from the rest of the family. Even when Lana was physically present she was often emotionally not there.

Little Lola didn’t care. The family was formed when she arrived; she had to find a way to fit in. She was agreeable and she wanted those around her to be happy. She liked pairing people up and she was uncomfortable around disagreement. She was the daughter who gave the best hugs, but she also wore a pin that Linda gave her – I’m number 3 and I don’t try at all – and it was appropriate.

Then there was location. Some kingdoms are on islands, some are on cliffs, some are desert fortresses, some are walled municipalities. Theirs was suburban, with twisting streets and roads that went nowhere. It was built to be safe and peaceful. It was called a bedroom community.

And so it was. The Love kingdom was a quiet place to sleep in. That appealed to busy grownups. Its yards and playgrounds were built for children. But teenagers aren’t grownups or children. Adolescents are young enough for their time to move slowly but old enough to decide. They want their lives to matter. They burn for significance.

Teenagers need the bustle of the city or the freedom of rural or wilderness areas. At best, suburbs drive them to drive cars, and kill them off faster than any urban gangs. At worst suburbs drive them crazy.

Linda seemed to get this early on. By the time she was eight she knew she didn’t want a subordinate life like her mother’s. She decided when she was eleven that she wouldn’t be a virgin bride or even college student. At twelve she began modeling her future self on beloved characters in her favorite books, and she used those books to escape the boredom of her own suburban existence.

Lana and Lola were different. Neither minded life-at-home the way Linda did. The younger daughters were more cheerful. And they joined their parents in mocking Linda’s seriousness. They weren’t mean, and they didn’t intend any cruelty, but they followed the parental example of making light about Linda’s theories and proclamations, and then they outdid their parents in furthering the mockery when they saw how much it bothered Linda.

For it didn’t matter how wisely Linda’s father counseled her, once he understood her pain, to just ignore the sibling jibes – the more you react to their teasing, the more you’ll egg them on – because Linda didn’t see the harassment as teasing; she interpreted it as a failure to understand ideas that she thought were important.

The girls maintained their differences as they grew. Linda developed a successful sense of humor – often getting into trouble as the class clown – but everyone assessed her as serious anyway. School was easy for her (and boring); she had no trouble obtaining good grades without studying. She spent a lot of time alone, reading and writing and considering the world’s problems. She was something of a nerd magnet; she attracted the geeky marginal individuals in her class.

Lana was the good sport in the family. She had the best physical coordination, enjoyed team games, was almost as good at losing as winning, although she mostly won. She was capable of strong emotions but she hid that quality behind an easy-going attitude. She had numerous friends and attracted boys easily. Lana would end up being the one who left the family of origin, moving as soon as she was old enough to the other coast, but she was always considered the prettiest and most popular of the sisters.

Lola was a sweetheart. She wanted those around her to be happy. She had a ready smile and didn’t easily cry. She never matched Linda’s academic achievements or Lana’s athletic ones, but she got along with almost everyone (even Linda, although she was the most weary of the family with her big sister’s philosophy and theories). She had a comfortable group of friends from her own class but also befriended and often hung with Lana’s crowd.

So it was Linda who noticed Curtis. He was a quiet, hoodie-clad boy who shared most of her classes and always sat near the back of the room. That’s where Linda liked to be too; distance from the front of the class retarded her tendency to dominate the discussion.

Curtis was not cute. Stricken with acne and frizzy brown hair, he had prominent ears and a bony body. He was below average height and his pigeon-toed walk was one of the several qualities for which he was mocked. He appeared to have no friends. He usually wore his hood up over his bad hair, and he spent most of his class time drawing noir-ish cartoons in his textbook.

He was not stupid. The few times he participated in class revealed that he was bright and even well-read. Linda couldn’t say she liked him, but she found him interesting and thought he could be a model for a short story character she might someday write.

They became acquainted not in class, but in walking to and from school. They may have been the only seniors that year without cars. That’s one of the dangerous conditions about suburbs: all the cars. True, the houses are hermetically sealed, so the fire retardants in the upholstery and the other domestic toxins have an opportunity to accumulate and concentrate inside. And the extra money spent on playground safety just encourages kids to take more risks, so those without helicopter parents watching and playing with them are likely to break bones and heads. But the biggest problem, statistically, is all the cars. They are the only place a teen can have privacy, so adolescents spend extra time in them. That custom at worst increases the number of collisions; at the least it sends kids through drive-thru fast food concessions. Neither course will build well minds and bodies.

Lana and Lola weren’t old enough to drive, but they had driver friends. Each spent a normal amount of time in cars with other teens. Linda tended to walk. She encountered Curtis and sometimes they walked together a little, talked together a bit. When he first shared his violent fantasies with her, Linda viewed them as creative. They matched his class doodles. He seemed able to distinguish his fantasies from reality. But the fourth time he launched into a dark story about revenge, with surprising details about bomb making and assault weaponry, alarms rang in her head. She tried to make light of his words. He scowled at her and stopped speaking. More alarms.

Linda was no fan of authority. She didn’t feel comfortable talking about Curtis to a teacher. She surprised herself when she brought it up to her father. And he surprised Linda by taking her seriously and stepping up, with her, to visit Child Protective Services.

They didn’t know where else to go. And Curtis was not yet an adult.

No one lived happily ever after, but everyone lived. When Curtis was taken into custody, a cache of bought and built weaponry was found in his room. His private journals suggested that, without intervention, he and who knew how many students wouldn’t have made it.

Curtis’s prognosis is not rosy. But at least he got some mental health attention. The whole episode solidified Linda’s determination to get herself out of the suburbs as soon as possible.