“The pattern is characteristic of the initiation of shamans and other specialists in the sacred, comprising both a descent to Hell and an ascension to Heaven (essential themes: dismemberment of the body and renewal of the viscera, climbing trees).”
As a child Simon had a recurring dream. It would leave him crying and shaking every time.
He is walking along with his Nanna and Pop, His Auntie Belinda and his Mum and Dad. They are returning to his Nanna and Pop’s house after a family outing.
They are nearly home when Simon asks to go to the toilet. Since they are near the house his Mum and Dad say they will wait with him while the elder family members walk on ahead, weary from the day’s exertions and eager to rest their bones.
His Mum and Dad point down an alley and say there is a toilet at the end. Simon walks down the alley, it is very dirty. There are cobwebs and spiders with human faces. Simon feels a chill and thinks to himself that this place is dangerous. It is not the sort of place where a little boy should be on his own.
Halfway down the alley he gets scared and turns around, the urge to urinate suddenly forgotten. When he gets back to his parents, they say that he should stop being a baby and go back down the scary passage to the toilet.
He pleads “I’m scared and I think I can hold it in now.”
Maria is eager to get home and crack open a bottle of bubbly, but also determined to punish her child for daring to have bodily functions “No! You made us wait now we’re not leaving until you go to the toilet."
Simon was terrified of his Mother and figures that whatever is giving him the chills couldn’t possibly be worse than her, so he turns around and goes down the hallway to the toilet.
He makes his way into an empty cubicle, closes the door and loosens the draw strings on his shorts. He hasn’t looked up yet – most of the time he walks around with his eyes downcast. When he raises his eyes, he is confronted by the sight of a baby demon crawling out of the cistern. The creature has the torso, legs and head of a baby, but its arms are demonic claws. They are made of an unearthly ivory like substance, or like the Terminator’s arms without the skin. It moves in a way that defies gravity. The soles of its feet appear to adhere to the surface of the cistern. In stark contrast to its surroundings and the sewer from whence it emerged, the creature wears a clean, ultra white nappy.
Simon panics and turns around to leave. He reaches out to turn the lock on the door, but somehow the creature’s claw stretches around and covers the lock, preventing his egress.
“Who are you?” the creature asks.
“Simon.”
“No, you’re a piece of shit.”
Simon looks down at himself as if to check that he is not a piece of shit and looks back up. The creature now has a weird clown head with a pointed sort of nose as well as the claw arms. Simon starts to tremble. He says “No, I’m Simon.”
The creature says “No, you’re shit.”
It pushes with a claw hand on his shoulder. Despite its small stature the creature is incredibly strong. Simon falls back onto the floor. He looks back up to see that the creature has grown much larger and now has a chainsaw. The chainsaw doesn’t make any noise, though Simon can see the chain spinning. The only noises in the dream are the voices of Simon and the creature.
The creature swings its weapon and cuts off one of his arms. It puts the dismembered limb in the toilet and flushes it.
“Shit goes down the drain.”
Simon yells back half crying, half screaming with pain “I’m not shit.”
The demonic beast cuts off his other arm, both his legs and finally separates his head from his torso. Simon is awake through all of this. With each piece of his body that is dismembered the creature repeats its hellish incantation:
“Shit goes down the drain.”
And Simon responds with as much courage as he can muster:
“I’m not shit.”
Finally laying on the floor unable to do a thing, Simon watches as his torso is flushed down the drain. The creature has trouble getting it to fit and cuts it into smaller bits with his chainsaw. To finish the job, the creature leaps down from its perch and jumps up and down on Simon’s head, screaming and cackling maniacally until his vision fades to black.
Simon had this dream throughout his childhood and into his adulthood. He would waking crying, sweating and shaking. He would be repeating a mantra over and over and over again.
Just act normal and everything will be okay. Just act normal or that will happen in real life.
O free his soul from such monstrous ills, free him ye gods, and turn to better things his darkened spirit.
And do thou, O Ypnos, vanquisher of woes, rest of the soul, the better part of human life, thou winged son of the mother Nyx, sluggish brother of cruel Thanatos, thou who dost mingle false with true, sure yet gloomy guide to what shall be;
O thou Ypnos, who art peace after wanderings, haven of life, day’s respite and night’s comrade, who comest alike to king and slave, who does compel the human race, trembling at death, to prepare for unending night—sweetly and gently soothe his weary spirit; hold him fast bound in heavy stupor; let slumber chain his untamed limbs, and leave not his savage breast until his former mind regain its course.
Simon’s Dad had been away for nearly four weeks. Soon he would return and on the weekend the family were going to get professional photos taken. Mary was worried her son would fuck it all up with his autistic face. She had devised a special increment to his training program. One which would fix his autism once and for all. At least so she didn’t have to worry what her relatives thought about her dreadful disappointing son.
Simon is awoken by yelling. it’s getting louder as it comes down the hallway to his room. He is already shaking and has pulled the doonah up over his head. He holds tight and he cries.
The footsteps and yelling get closer, closer, closer.
RIP!!! The doonah is torn from his hands so hard it jars his fingers.
“Your father is coming home in a couple of days and on Monday we’re going to get a nice” for some reason there is a sickening emphasis on the word nice. It is as though another being has stepped forth to say this one word with a thin veneer of sanity blutacked to the edges of its face “family photo. And you’re not going to fuck it up this time do you understand me.” She grabs Simon’s hair in her hand and pushes his head into the pillow. His neck is cracking and he feels like he might die. It becomes too much and he passes out.
She slaps him across the face.
“Wake up you fucking piece of shit.”
Her quality parenting is interrupted by the jangle of the telephone.
Ring Ring!! Ring Ring!!
She turns and stomps out of the room. Simon comes too. He is bewildered. He looks around the room frantically. His face hurts. His hair hurts. He feels sick. He feels hungry. His thoughts are akin to an animal. He has no name and no place. His awareness is of painfearterror and nothing else. The shadows creeping across the room with the rising sun are yawning mouths that threaten to engulf him. The light glows unbearably bright when he shifts his attention away from the maddening shadows. Ypnos has him now.
His eyes roll in the back of his head and his back arches. He is shaking. He is not in his body.
Maria has finished on the phone. She stomps back into his room and sees Simon twitching and spasming.
“You fucking dirty little shit.” She grabs his hair with one hand and his boxer shorts with the other. She picks him up from the bed and throws him across the room to crash into his bookcase. His boxer shorts tear in half as she launches him. He crashes into the timber case. Books and toy dinosaurs fall over him in a bizarre avalanche.
He is still gone. She doesn't care. She kicks him in the stomach now.
“You fucking freak! Why do you make me do this? Why can’t you just be normal.”
He can’t hear her. She may as well be kicking a corpse.
Later in the day. Simon wakes in a strange pile. He has no recollection of anything. He doesn’t know who he is or where he is. He gets up and walks into the hallway. An orange glow bathes the walls and floor making things seem like from a movie. He is a mindless automaton with a vague tugging sensation in his midsection. He associates this feeling with a place down the end of the long room he is looking down. He walks. Shakily. He bumps into the walls. For some reason his face is wet.
In the lounge room his little brother Martin sits at the table staring into space. Martin sees his brother and smiles, or tries to smile – it comes out as a pained grimace. He sees – really sees – his brother’s face and his lips start quivering and he starts crying too. Not too loud though. He too has learnt not to wake the beast.
Simon sees his brother and feels a glimmer of recognition. There is no outward sign other than a stream of tears falling from his right eye. He looks into the lounge room and sees their sister laying on the couch gaze fixed to a point a couple of metres in front of her face, which is expressionless.
She has also suffered greatly. Sometimes being the middle child is a curse, because you don’t get as much attention. For Martin, it was a divine kindness. Simon suffered for being firstborn and for being autistic. Crystal suffered for being a girl. Martin suffered, but by virtue of being in the middle he missed out on a little of it.
“Who are you to me? Who’m I s’posed to be? I’m not exactly sure, any more...
...You think the worst of all is far behind, the Vampyre, of time and memory, has died.
I survived. I speak. I breathe. I’m incomplete.”
“Simon, we need to have a talk.” Simon’s supervisor has come in to the office where he is working on a contract.
“Okay, no worries.” Simon hits Ctrl+S to save his work and swivels his chair to face his boss. “What’s up?”
His supervisor looks down and to the right, for a moment collecting his thoughts and thinking of the most delicate way to put what he wants to say. He looks back up, takes a breath and begins “I think you might be autistic.”
Simon’s expression is blank, he bares no expression.
“Maybe a little. I do seem to remember something about that when I was at school.”
“Oh, okay. Well, there are people who can help you.”
“I have read a bit about autism over the years, but if I am autistic, I don’t think it’s causing me any problems.”
His supervisor suppresses a giggle and covers his face with a hand while he pretends to yawn. Simon is confused by this reaction. His heart beat quickens. The muscles in his arms and legs are suffused with blood. He feels a knot in his stomach. Simon’s supervisor is very good at noticing details and reading body language, he notices Simon’s pupils dilate. He sees Simon’s fists clenching. Simon’s torso sways as his abdominal muscles contract and release. His eyes glaze over.
“What’s happening Simon?”
Simon is gazing into the distance. He has a thousand yard stare.
“Simon.”
Simon snaps back to reality. His body shudders and his fists relax. He gasps and looks at his boss in surprise as if noticing him for the first time.
“Huh, what?” he feels as though he has just woken up. “Sorry, what were we talking about? I must have gotten distracted.”
His supervisor is deeply concerned, but displays warmth and kindness. He has tried to broach this topic before, with similar results. He smiles and puts a warm hand on Simon’s shoulder.
“It’s all good mate.” he stands up “I’m going to put on some coffee. Would you like one?”
“Sure. I’d love one.”
His supervisor walks to the kitchen. Simon watches him walk off and notices his heart is racing. His armpits are wet with sweat even though it is a cold day.
What the fuck just happened? What am I supposed to be doing? He looks at his computer and his mind is drawn back to the contract he has been working on. Oh right, time to get stuck back in to this, I guess? He rolls up his sleeves and resumes proofreading. Within moments all traces of the conversation have retreated into the memory hole where the babytoiletspider stalks, eatingchewinggnashing. A vampire of time and memory.
“When he reached Lakonian Tainaron, where the entrance to the descent into Hades’ realm is located, he entered it.
All the souls who saw him ran away, except Meleager and Medusa the Gorgon.
Herakles drew his sword against the Gorgon assuming her to be alive, but from Hermes he learned that she was an empty wraith.”
Crystal learnt table manners the hard way.
Maria and her children are sitting at the table eating dinner… Well the children are eating dinner, while Maria sips her glass of champagne, which for her is dinner. Crystal puts one of her elbows on the table. Her punishment is to be treated like a dog. Her Mother grabs her by the hair and drags her down the stairs. She is so small she can do nothing to stop it. Her hips make a thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk with every step on the way down. The noise is almost drowned out by her screams.
Simon forgets his place and dares to rise from the dining table. He walks to the stairs and looks down. He glares at his Mother. He wants to hurt her for what she is doing to his sister. But she is his Mother. Something inside him breaks. Though he doesn’t know it at the time.
His Mother sees. And looks back with malevolence. She wins the stare off.
“What the fuck are you looking at you little shit!?"
“You’re hurting her.”
“Fucking right I am!!!” She is at the bottom of the stairs now and as if to prove her point she jerks her daughter to standing by her hair. Crystal screams.
“Come down here now you little shit. You can fucking watch.”
She turns and walks towards the laundry. She doesn't hear Simon’s footsteps. She comes back.
“COME DOWN HERE NOW!!!” Though he doesn't want to. Simon walks down the stairs. Like a robot. He knows that this is dangerous. But staying upstairs is dangerous too. In this moment his body is not his.
Time passes and he is somehow standing in the laundry. Barely standing though as he is shaking and crying. What am I doing here? Where am I? What is going on here? These question are more feelings than thoughts. Impulses not words. Simon does not know how to speak right now.
His sister is on her knees. Her hands are behind her back. She is eating dog biscuits out of a dog bowl.
His mother is standing there too shouting at the little girl. She is just a little girl now. This woman in front of him is a monster. He recognises neither of them.
If he could recognise these people and the language they are speaking, he would be ware that his sister was getting in trouble for not using her table manners. She was being made to eat like a dog. Maria’s attention turns to Simon. She asks him a question.
He looks at her blankly. He opens his mouth to speak and naught comes out but drool.
A change crosses Maria's face. She wakes up.
“What’s wrong Simon?” She holds his face tenderly and looks at him with concern as if seeing his pain for the first time.
Simon jerks his face away and looks at his sister.
Maria's gaze follows his.
“Oh Crystal!” She bends down and picks up her daughter, or tries. She is slick with sweat and tears. Crystal breaks from the strange monotony of eating the dog biscuits and screams.
Maria's legs fail her and she collapses onto the floor leaning up against the laundry cupboard. She cries “Oh Crystal. What have I done to you?” She wails with grief at the loss of her own sanity, her child’s innocence and whatever hope they had of growing up to be normal human beings.
“In the hollow recesses of a deep and rocky cave… are set the halls of lazy Ypnos and his untroubled dwelling. The threshold is guarded by shady Quies and dull Lethe and torpid Ignavia with ever drowsy countenance. Otia and Silentia with folded wings sit mute in the forecourt.”
“Thou shalt find to the left of the House of Hades a Well-spring,
And by the side thereof standing a white cypress.
To this Well-spring approach not near.
But thou shalt find another by the Lake of Mnemosyne (memory).”
One of the effects of chronic alcoholism is depletion of the body’s reserves of Vitamin B1, or thiamine. Thiamine is used for the production and maintenance of nerve cells. In the absence of thiamine for an extended period of time lesions develop in the brain of the affected individual. These lesions tend to be indiscriminately distributed throughout the brain. The damage also affects the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system.
When Maria first showed signs of Wernicke’s she did not know what it was. Perhaps mercifully, by the time a diagnosis was made she was beyond the point of being able to make new memories, thus she never knew what afflicted her. She spent the last year of her life in a nursing home, utterly dependant upon those around her to take care of such things as feeding, toileting and changing her clothes. She had almost no memory of who she was or where she was. She had no name and no place.
Simon and Martin believed this to be a divine comedy. A simultaneous proof of karma and the existence of God. For surely Maria’s state was divine retribution for the way she treated her children. They stood firm in their belief and rejoiced in their Mother’s suffering.
Crystal’s interpretation of this development was quite different. When she learnt of the seriousness of her Mother’s condition, she got on the first plane to Watervale to be by her Mother’s side. Simon already felt a deep distrust of his sister and felt threatened by her presence. They had not spoken much in the last three years – not since ThetimeofCrystal’sevil. Simon’s feelings of caring and protection for his sister outweighed the threat and fear he felt in this moment of her vulnerability.
The night she arrived the three siblings sat and drank together. They compared notes from their childhood -what little they could remember. Simon and Martin felt on the whole positive about the situation. They felt Maria was getting what she deserved. Crystal acknowledged their feelings but kept coming back to the refrain “But she’s our Mum.” That night was the last time Crystal’s brothers were able to discuss the terror of their childhood with their sister. That night while she was asleep a switch flipped in Crystal’s head. She awoke in the morning and could not remember any of the horrors her Mother had perpetrated. In her mind Maria was a picture of perfection in parenting and she would hear nothing else. When her brothers attempted to bring up the subject of the Vampyre of Time and Memory she would viciously attack them
Crystal who was dragged down the stairs by her hair.
Crystal who was made to eat her own vomit.
Crystal who reported her Mother to the police.
Crystal who drank from the River Lethe.
“Malign Tisiphone seized a torch steeped in blood, put on a robe all red with dripping gore and wound a snake about her waist, and started from her home;
and with her as she went were Penthos and Phobos, Deimos and Mania too with frantic face.”
Crystal gazes into the mid-distance like a survivor from a prisoner of war camp. And while they are prisoners, the war is far from over for these children.
They are very careful not to make any noise. Simon makes jam sandwiches for himself and his siblings. They sit at the table and eat together. They try not to look at each other. If they do they will be forced to admit the reality of their situation. As long as they concentrate on the act of eating their sandwich, they can pretend that the rest of the world does not exist. So highly strung are they, that they distract each other from their reverie with the slightest movement, forcing eye contact. Forcing admission of the futility of their hopeless and painful existence. But they do not wish to wake the Monster and thus they can exchange no words. They can only cry. And choke back their sobs with the coarse texture of the bread.
But they want to forget. They want to pretend they exist in a world that contains only their imagination and the sandwich. Eating the meagre meal takes their minds off what is surely to come when the Monster down the hallway wakes up. Finally they have finished eating and they put their empty plates in the sink.
It is dark before their mother wakes. They are nearly ready to go to bed themselves, but they know better. If they are asleep when they wake the trauma will begin again without warning. Better to be awake and to see it coming.
It comes. Tonight is different. Tonight their mother is anxious about the family photo that is coming up soon. She is worried that her children will ruin it and all the money they pay for the photographer will be for naught. She is worried her stupid autistic son will ruin everything with his stupid autistic face.
For most of his life Simon remembers the aftermath of this training session. It is not until he comes down from the mountain that he can see what came before. When he was a child Simon visited the afterlife.
Floating above the clouds. Simon can see to the horizon in every direction. He knows he could fly in any direction he wants to, but he is being drawn on to the setting sun. The glowing yellow orb is just above the clouds in the West.
Simon looks down to see his body, there is nothing there. He looks to his arms – expecting to see wings – there is nothing there. This is okay. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have a body in this place. Everything is now. Everything is forever. Here is eternity.
Simon feels nothing but joy and peace and belonging and acceptance. The heavenly choir sings with warmth. Simon knows he can stay here if he wants. But he knows that to do so represents a big choice. Every choice comes at a cost. What is the cost? Simon does not know. All he knows now is his sensation of this place.
He has almost made up his mind. But some part of him knows that he cannot make this choice without complete information. He knows somehow that this is not really his choice to make.
Screams. Crying. ‘Come back you little shit!’ He recognises those terrified whimpers. ‘You’re fucking faking it.’ The serene view starts to shake. ‘Wake up!!!’ The moaning and crying is his brother and sister.
I have to go back
Simon’s eyes open and at the same time he coughs up a lungful of water. He sees the demonic visage of his mother leaning over him. He feels the cold and wet tiles under his back. He sees his brother and sister’s faces locked in a horrible grimace that will haunt his dreams for years. He rolls to his side and coughs the last of the water out. In an instant of horrible dawning comprehension he knows that he left paradise to protect his brother and sister form this monster. He was given a taste of eternity which was denied at the outset because of he could never leave his siblings to bear the fury of this monster on their own. He feels nothing but malevolence for this woman. He breathes in and screams at her. Nothing he is yelling is words. He is making animal noises. He is breathing pure hatred. His hatred towards this abuser is reinforced by his love for his brother and sister. Love can make people do incredible things.
For most of his life Simon was confused by this, all he remembered was floating above the clouds and then the bathroom floor and his mother wearing her demon mask and his brother and sister wearing their terror masks. What did it mean?
Simon remembers the day his sister came home from hospital about a week after her birth. He sees her lying in her crib and instantly falls in love with her. He wants to protect her and look after her. Love can make people do incredible things.
He wanted so badly to protect her he willingly took beatings for her when she had done something to upset their Mother. He would voluntarily confess to her crimes. All of our actions have unintended consequences.
Maria had anxiety problems which she would take out on her children. If Larry was away and she had to take them to the shops she would make them wait in the car while she went in alone. She would always come back seething with rage and looking for an excuse to hurt one or all of her children. If she could not find one she would invent one.
Crystal realised that if she told Maria that one or both of her brothers had done something she could avoid being hurt. So that’s what she started doing. She would tell her brothers that was what she was going to do and she would use this as a bargaining position to get them to do things she wanted. Trauma makes people do terrible things. For Crystal this became an enduring behavioural pattern. Sadly it drove a wedge between her and her brothers. It stopped Simon from being able to take heed of her warnings. He discounted her sayings, thinking them all to be lies. This would cost Simon a great deal.
It is a Tuesday afternoon and Simon has just gotten home from work and has just cracked his first beer for the day. His sister calls.
“Simon. I have some bad news and I don’t know who else to tell. Please promise you won’t get mad at me.” She sounds like she is holding back tears.
“Ah okay. What is it?” Simon is concerned for his sister.
“I was raped.” The tears come in a flood with sobs.
“Oh my God! That’s terrible.” He puts his beer on the table with a thud.
His sister cries through the phone. For minutes all Simon can do is offer words of comfort and consolation. Eventually Crystal calms down somewhat and Simon says to her that she must go to the police. With as much care as he can muster, he tells her to go without having a shower so that the police can gather the evidence they need to bring about a successful conviction. Crystal says it is too late for that.
Simon tries as hard as he can to convince her to go to the Police. But she will not. Simon decides to take matters into his own hands. He has murder in his mind. His sister must be avenged.
One day in year 6 the pain is too much to bear and Simon breaks down crying in class one day. His teacher says ‘Come on Simon, what are you hiding. It’s time to spill your guts.’
Simon does. He tells them everything. He tells them about why he won’t go in the special education classes. He tells them why he shakes when the teacher tries to force him to do so.
‘I’m not allowed to ask for help. I’m not allowed to say what Mum does. She said if I tell anyone she will kill Matthew and Katie and blame me and the police will believe her because they think I’m crazy.’
Simon’s teacher and the school principal listen to his story and are dumbfounded. They tell him that tomorrow his parents will come in for an interview and that if he is telling the truth he will be taken from them and put in a foster home.
That night Simon sleeps soundly for the first night he can remember.
The next day Simon’s parents come in for the interview. Which is just after little lunch. Simon is walking on clouds all morning. He tells his friends that soon he will be living with a new family. He is so happy he is delirious. Simon is called to the office. He walks in thinking this is the last time he will see his parents.
His teacher and the principal look at him disapprovingly. His Dad looks angry, ashamed and embarrassed. These expressions confuse Simon. He sees his Mother who is crying with her head in her hands. That’s better he thinks.
‘Simon.’ the boy turns to look at the principal. ‘Your parents told us the truth.’
Oh good. So am I going to a new family?’
‘No Simon. You’re very lucky to have such good parents. They want to help you.’
Simon’s mouth drops open in horror and surprise.
‘Simon are you doing drugs?’ his teacher asks. At this point Simon totally loses it. The rest of the time in the office is a blur. He cannot see properly he cannot hear. All he can think is that in two months his Dad will be going away on exercise again. In his mind that means he has about two months to live. In a way he was right.
The stigma of being accused of using drugs followed Simon through school. He was never regarded the same way again by any school staff. He was always assumed to be lying. He thought he was doing the right thing. He had been taught that if you do the right thing and tell the truth God will look out for you. Especially if you are a child, because God loves all his children, especially children. Where was God now? How was this God’s work? Was he bad? His Mother must be right. He deserved it.
“I had a vision as clear as day (frozen in pose, locked up in amber eternally)
Delusions of grandeur in our DNA (buried so close to the fountain of youth I can almost reach)
Every drop like an ocean, a moment of truth (frozen in pose locked up in amber eternally)
Everybody was drowning in the fountain of youth (buried so close to the fountain of youth I can almost reach)
Screaming – du du, du du, du du, la di du.
For much of his third decade of life Simon was very enthusiastic about heavy drugs. This destructive dance had started on his 20th birthday when he had first tried ecstasy. He was an instant convert. He had gone from thinking that he would never do any drug other than cannabis and maybe some hallucinogens to a pill popping maniac in one night.
A year later and he was spending hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours every week engaging in wanton acts of drug induced hedonism. One weekend while hanging with His Drug Crew, A Select Fucked Few, That He Spoke Shit To When in the Mood To, Mingle at a Venue, he reached a sort of tipping point. One of his friends had purchased a large bag of high quality crystal methamphetamine. The contents of the sandwich bag had been split into smaller bags and had just been emptied when Simon arrived at his friend’s house, ready to start drinking on a Friday afternoon. Simon was given the bag so that he could scrape out anything that was left. Simon ended up making love to the bag with his tongue and was peaking uncontrollably before he was even half way through. He had put in an order for some pills earlier in the week and later in the night had two and a half White Mitsubishis. He had also been drinking beer for hours and smoked a not inconsiderable quantity of marijuana when he finally made it to the nightclub strip that night.
He was uncomfortably high as the pills were enough to send him into orbit on their own. Add to that the contents of the bag and the few glass pipes he had smoked and he was on cloud 9^2 . Simon had not ordered a beer straight away and had politely declined an offer of a beer by one of his friends when they offered. Simon was hallucinating intensely and couldn’t understand anything anyone was saying. The walls and ceiling were dancing in time to the music, which sounded clunky and distorted and out of order. The patterns in the ceiling and in people’s faces were swirling around so that all of the colours were bleeding into one another and no features would keep still.
After an interminable period, which seemed like minutes, but his friends later said was hours Simon made up his mind to get a beer. But first he had to remember how to order one. He had been unresponsive to his friends attempts to engage him in conversation up to that point as he couldn’t quite remember how to talk, but he asked himself to somehow remember the correct words to say to order a beer. They appeared in neon letter floating in front of him and stayed in front of him as he walked up to the bar.
He stood at the bar and rested his arms on it as it was moving and he couldn't’ be sure how close he was to it. By resting on the bar, he could feel it under his skin and knew that it wasn’t moving. Everything else in the bar was though. Another patron came and stood at the bar next to him. Simon had an urge to look at him, but fought it. He knew there was no real reason to do so, but he couldn’t resist a peek – he had to know if someone was really standing there. He turned to look at the stranger’s hand and saw that they were wearing a well-tailored suit, from which protruded feathers. He looked more closely and saw that the stranger's hand was covered in very small black feathers and that the ends of larger feathers were visible poking out of his sleeve. Simon turned away in shock and fear. He turned back just as quickly to see if he had really seen what he just saw. This time looking at the stranger's face. The stranger's face was that of a crow. The stranger was in fact a Lowman from the Dark Tower series which Simon had read the year before. The crow opened its mouth wide and cawed at Simon. Simon even felt the breath of the crows yell and could smell the forest. He turned, walked back to the seat he had been sitting at and did not move again until it was time to go home.
The next day and the day after that Simon’s drug fuelled adventure continued. He smoked hit after hit on the glass pipe. On Monday he started a new job. He had barely slept all weekend and had eaten very little. Yet when he turned up for his new job, he was full of energy and feeling strong. Walking to the bus that morning though he had noticed something unusual. The sky was on fire. The usually blue vista was a seething maelstrom of red, orange and yellow. The day was somewhat overcast, but from sunrise to sunset every time Simon looked up, he could see flames.
It took him six months to come down.
Another night later that year Simon went to a rave. He had gone to a lot of raves that year but that one was different -and we haven't even reached the above mentioned tipping point yet. During the rave he found some pills going cheap. It was the fourth batch of 007s to go through town and though they had declined in quality through each iteration, Simon knew that they were good for somewhat of a buzz – while they were not proper MDMA pills they seemed to have a little in them, though they were mostly speed based. So, he had four. After the party, was the after party. There the pickings were much better. He met someone new, who had the goods. A choice of three high quality pills straight off the plane from Holland were presented and he took one of each. A Red Dove, a Green Mercedes and a Blue Cherry. The dove was almost pure MDMA, the Merc was cocaine based and the Cherry was a very strong speed pill with a decent helping of MDMA. Cloud 9^2 again. This time Simon nearly overdosed. His fellow partygoers put him on a taxi home. Simon had been drinking heavily all night too. Simon was lucky he didn’t die.
Despite the toll on his mind and body, Simon persisted with these destructive behaviours.
In his 21st year on Christmas day Simon was arrested for drink driving. Simon had been on a bender for two weeks. His days had consisted of cannabiscannabiscannabisbeercannabisbeercannabisbeerfoodcannabisbeerbeerbeerfoodbeerecstasybeercannabisbeerbeerecstasybeerbeerbeerbeerbeersleep
Repeat
That night he had some speed too. He had visited a few pubs and at about 1:00am in the morning was very wasted on the cocktail of drugs circulating in his system. He wanted to visit his favourite pub but the bouncer on the door said he was too drunk. Not to be deterred Simon hatched a cunning plan. He could see from the front of the pub that the veranda had been closed down to keep the patrons inside as there were not too many out that night. He walked around to the back of the pub and climbed the barb wire fence. He climbed the back stairs as far as he could – there was a solid door with a solid lock - and then climbed a drain pipe to the roof. Keeping low, he climbed across the roof to the front and dropped down to the side of the building to the veranda. He confidently walked up to the door and kicked it just next to the lock. The door broke around the lock and Simon was in. He found the friend he was looking for, told him what he had done and asked if they could swap shirts so the bouncer wouldn't recognise him. The bouncer still recognised him on the way out, but said ‘I’ll let ya off ‘cause it’s Christmas.’
Simon was lucky the police pulled him over – less than 100m from where he started driving – that night. He probably would have died in a fiery crash otherwise. He was arrested for drink driving and spent the night in the lock up.
Simon was still yet to reach his turning point.
It didn’t come when he travelled to Melbourne to go to a dance music festival. That was the first time he had real LSD. It came in the form of sugar cubes. The first night Simon saw a feral pig in the hotel room as the trip came on. He found that disconcerting and went for a walk outside to have a cigarette. He got in the lift and saw his reflection. He had red eyes. Not just red as in bloodshot, but blood red. Like the devil. Behind him in the mirror he could not see reflected the décor of the hotel, nor the interior of the elevator, rather it appeared that Simon was standing in a maelstrom of flame, with blood red eyes. As he watched horns grew out of his temples and his jaws. His teeth grew into long pointed fangs. He felt the lift come to a stop and heard the doors open. He turned away from the mirror and exited the lift.
He pulled a cigarette out of the packet as he walked through the lobby and onto the street. The breath of the city hit his lungs like a cool breeze on a sweltering night and also like a warm blanket on a cold night. He lit his cigarette and closed his eyes. Desperate for the visuals to stop. With his eyes closed he could hear a roar building up to a deafening crescendo. He opened his eyes and the sound burst through the wall of the building across the road. A torrent of water gushed out of a hole big enough to drive a truck through. Just as the water was about to hit the ground and create a torrent of destruction through the Melbourne CBD a hole collapsed into the pavement and the water careened through. The occasional errant thread of water would collide with the sidewalk to create a fine mist which coated Simon as he stood smoking his cigarette and gazing at the wonder of a waterfall coming out of a skyscraper.
In the morning smoking a colossal joint on the rooftop of the building and he could see buildings all around getting up and moving around like transformers. Some of them met like old friends, shaking hands and slapping one another on the back.
Simon shouldn’t have been up there. The door was locked, but that wasn’t going to stop Simon. He had been disappointed to find the door to the gym and outdoor dining area closed at 10pm each night. He really wanted to sit up there and smoke a joint,. He found an internal stairwell and climbed to the top. There he found an unlocked plant room. He found some large diameter copper refrigerant pipes which led further up the side of the building and to the very top. The pipes appeared to be twisting and writhing like snakes, but Simon knew this was a trick of his eyes. He grabbed them with his hands and closed his eyes and could feel that they were still. The only way he would be able to do this was if he didn’t look at the pipes and went by feel. He climbed up the side, walked across the top of the building and then climbed the shade sail down. It was a ridiculous and reckless risk to take, but Simon was like a dog with a bone. He wouldn’t let go of his mad idea. He eventually made it down and when he looked back up to where he had come from, he couldn't believe that he had just ascended that shaking and wriggling mass of steel and concrete.
Simon was very lucky he didn’t die.
The tipping point eventually came on the bus. Simon was on his way home after yet another weekend of cannabiscannabiscannabisbeercannabisbeercannabisbeerfoodcannabisbeerbeerbeerfoodbeerecstasybeercannabisbeerbeerecstasybeerbeerbeerbeerbeersleepcannabiscannabiscannabisbeercannabisbeercannabisbeerfoodcannabisbeerbeerbeerfoodbeerecstasybeercannabisbeerbeerecstasybeerbeerbeerbeerbeersleep
he was half way home and just felt like shit. His mind and body were very much showing the toll of a couple of years of hard drug use and hard drinking. He was thinking about how he felt and realised he felt terrible. He felt sad. He didn’t know who his real friends were. Or who he could trust. He thought about his friends and realised they had been good friends. But things had been different since the plan for the Savannah. His thoughts were always dark, suspicious and paranoid. Simon felt like an idiot for being so easily manipulated. And he was planning to kill people on the say so of one scared little girl – he was a dangerous idiot. Simon started crying. Tears streamed down his face for the first time since he was a teenager. He felt something click inside of him. He said inside – to himself – that he felt like a hopeless drugged out fuck up and that he had to change. Change or die.
So he did. He cut out all the heavy drugs and most of the drinking. He only smoked cannabis and started eating healthy. He enrolled at a martial arts academy and started training in Brazilian Ju-Jitsu, Jeet Kune Do, Boxing, Filipino Stick Fighting, Kung-Fu and Kick Boxing. It was one of the best decisions of his life. If he hadn’t made that decision he surely would have died.
He was clean of heavy drugs for over a year. And while he would never go back to anything approaching the volumes of drugs he had consumed in that two and a half year period the spectre of heavy drug use was always hovering over his shoulder for the rest of that decade.
Simon had a mean teacher. Simon’s Mum had asked the teacher to help toughen him up. The teacher scarred him in a number of ways. He would make a point of calling out Simon’s social errors. He would make sure that everyone in the classroom stood up and pointed at him and laughed.
Simon loved dinosaurs and wanted to be a palaeontologist. His Dad had collected fossils for him from the Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia. He lovingly categorised those fossils. He borrowed books from the library and identified the species and the geological epoch. He had taken them in for show and tell one day. He described them in great Aspergian detail. He spoke too long and when the teacher had enough he stood up and said ‘That’s enough now Fossil Face, can’t you see everyone’s bored?’ Simon looked at him confused. ‘Go sit down.’ Waving a dismissive hand.
In the bus on the way home the kids start chanting ‘Fossil Face. Fossil Face. Fossil Face.’ Simon stand up and jumps up and down pumping his fists in the air. He is smiling with delight because he thinks he has finally been accepted.
One of the other boys fills him in ‘They’re making fun of you. Teacher was making fun of you and he wants everyone to tease you so you stop liking dinosaurs.’ Simon’s countenance fell.
Teacher had more in store. He was asking Simon questions about something. Simon couldn’t understand. He answered that he didn’t know. Teacher was very frustrated. He took Simon outside where he thought no-one could see.
‘LIAR!!!’ He screamed as he struck Simon in the side of the head with his open hand. Simon’s body jerked to the side, his feet left the ground and he sailed through the air to strike a stainless-steel water cooler head first. He was concussed. He couldn’t remember what had happened.
Someone did see though. One of Simon’s friends was watching through the window.
When Simon went home that day his Mum asked him if he got in trouble at school for anything. Simon said he did, but that he did not know what for. He explained what happened as best he could.
His Mother said ‘Good. You deserve it. He hit you for the same reason I do. You’re not trying hard enough and you don’t care about anyone but yourself.’ She drove the point home with a wooden spoon across his back and legs and sent him to bed without dinner.
Simon hated school photos. His Mum hated them too. It was a sorry reminder of what a failure her son had turned out to be. He felt so uncomfortable being so close to everyone and bumping into people as they all stood in line like cattle. The flash hurt his eyes and it was so hard to keep them open. They would have to take the photo 3 or 4 times and Simon would end up forcing them open so you could see the whites. And then he would forget to smile. A month or so later and the photos would be handed out to go home to their parents. That day was always so much worse than having the photos taken in the first place.
He would give them to his Mum and then have to wait at the foot of her bed. She would sip champagne as she took her time opening the envelope. Her face would be a mask of disappointment from the moment he set foot in her bedroom. It stank of sweat and alcohol and disappointment and shattered dreams. She would open the photo and look and then scream ‘I HATE YOU!!! ALL THAT MONEY WE SPEND ON SENDING YOU TO A PRIVATE SCHOOL AND TO GET YOUR PHOTO TAKEN AND THIS IS THE THANKS WE GET. YOU CAN’T EVEN SMILE PROPERLY.’
She figured out a great way to train him out of this. They would go together and sit at the dining room table. He would sit with the photo in front of him while she sat to the right with a glass of champagne near her right hand and his hair in her left. She would smash his face into the table over and over again, sometimes till his tears made the colour on the photos run.
‘You fucking spastic! You can’t even smile properly.’
She even figured out a way to make him fear birthdays and Christmas. Autistic people are not known for having neat handwriting and Simon was no different. She wanted so badly to show off how well the money for private schools was helping her son. She made him write out all of the Christmas cards and birthday cards for their relatives. Including the addresses on the envelope. Simon would make mistakes. It’s hard to write neat when you’re autistic. It’s even harder when a drunken beast sits breathing alcohol into your ear, holding a ruler so she can whack you across the hand as soon as you make a mistake.
She would make him write them in pen. Because then if he made a mistake it would be ruined and she would tear up the envelope and throw it in the air so the bits of paper would stick to his sweat and his tears and he would wear the consequences of his mistakes; on his skin, in his body, in his mind. Sometimes his mistakes would drive her into such a rage that she would throw him off the chair and kick him in the back. She would drag him down the hallway by his hair. He would be sent to bed early for being a hopeless failure and he would dream of the babytoiletspider.
He never did learn to write neatly. He learnt to make excuses as an adult. ‘Sorry about my handwriting, it looks a bit like hieroglyphics. I may have been an Egyptian in a past life.’
He didn’t learn to write terribly neatly. But he learnt to fear greeting cards. He leant to hate birthdays and Christmas. Because no matter how hard he tried to explain the way greeting cards triggered him, people would still give them to him. They would give him greeting cards and smile, Simon would grimace say thank you and go through the motions. And at night he would dream of the babytoiletspider.
She helped Simon to learn to read and write and do maths in the same way. She would sit in his right side with a ruler in hand. Every mistake would be a whack on the back of the knuckles. Simon learnt to fear rulers too.
So important were the photographs that Simon learnt to fear facial expressions. The time was nearly here for the expensive family photograph ‘to show our relatives how normal you all are. They’ll see that you’re not autistic because you can smile properly.’
She used the mirror for this one too. They were all still in a trance and somewhat hungry because a jam sandwich isn’t really enough for dinner, but that’s all Simon knew how to make. Maybe it was for the best because they probably would have thrown up seeing what they were going to see that night.
She had dragged Simon into the bathroom by his hair as usual. She made Martin and Crystal stand and watch. She felt that these punishments should be a family thing – even if their Father was away at least she and her children could all participate in these fun activities together. And making his siblings suffer for his behaviour was bound to reinforce the lesson.
She pulled Simon by his hair to look in the mirror. She held his face just above the basin as she put the plug in and filled it with water. They had done this before but today was different. She was really stressing about the photo shoot.
‘Now Simon. Today we’re going to do this differently.’ When she was getting warmed up she had this really scary faux-nice passive-aggressive butter-wouldn't-melt-in-your-mouth almost cheerful voice that she would put on. In a way it was scarier than her demonic rage voice. ‘If you skitz out and pretend not to feel anything I’m going to do this to your brother and sister. And if you’re gone for too long, when you come back, they’ll be dead and I’ll tell the police it was you.’
Simon cried in terror. He so badly wished he was dead. Why wouldn’t God or Jesus listen to his prayers? All he wanted was for he and his brother and sister to die, or his Mum. Was that too much to ask? Was that why he was being punished? Because he asked for that in the first place? That couldn’t be right, since he was being punished before he asked. Or was it? Maybe God could see into the future and was punishing him for something he was going to do.
‘And they’ll believe me because you lied to the school a few months ago about me hurting you.’
‘But I didn’t lie.’
‘They think you did. Because I told them you were. And your Dad told them you’re a liar. He hates you and he wants you be punished.’
She pulls his hair tight and forces him to look into the mirror while she looks in the mirror straight into his eyes. ‘now smile.’
‘I can’t.’
‘SMILE!!!”
‘But I’m sad. I can’t smile.’
‘I’LL FUCKING MAKE YOU SAD YOU LITTLE SHIT!’
She pushes his face under the water. He screams until all the air is gone from his lungs. He breathes in. Simon crosses the river Styx. He glimpses eternity. He touches the divine. And he comes back to tell the tale.
