A Wave Goodbye – by ROB TRUE

A Wave Goodbye

When I stopped it was because I needed a break from it all.

That past year I had gone over twice and spent two months in the hospital with septicaemia, an infected valve in the heart.  Nobody expected me to survive then and when I did, nobody expected me survive much longer.

I knew I was a ghost and felt like a slave.  My veins were all shot to bits.  I was covered in abscesses, bruises, scars, and holes where they’d had to cut out infection.  I told myself I would lay off until my veins healed.

They never did.

The worst of it, apart from the sickness, was the fear of psychosis returning.  It did, but somehow I felt at peace with it for the first time in my life.  I was managing my hallucinations and delusions without medication and the crazed, racing thoughts had gone quiet.  I had no support and didn’t want it.  The last thing I wanted to do was sit in front of some nodding do-gooder, spilling out my difficulties and receiving obvious advice and observations that I’d already thought of.  Even worse, sitting around in a miserable circle, telling my sorry tale and then having to endure all the other sad stories.

I didn’t want to be anywhere near my kind and had severed all contact with everyone I dealt with before.  I just wanted to laugh, fuck and learn.  I started a different adventure.

I kept getting into fights on the street with bullies and hooligans.  I won every time it came to blows, but mostly they would back down on account of how fucking scary I was when I lost it.

I didn’t really know much then, everything seemed new and my mind was blank.  If I was asked what I wanted in my sandwich, I didn’t have a clue.  It didn’t matter, somebody would choose for me.

I drifted through the days listening to Jimmy Cliff and felt like I could cope.  I would go for walks and swing in the park in a trance, until a mother would come along and look at me like I might be a paedophile and I’d leave.  Gradually I realised my magic was strong and I felt like I could do anything.

I often longed to go back, but how could I?  Not anymore.  I was on a quest.  I was the wizard that beat the terrible demon who had possessed me for so long.  I would confront that huge and monstrous bastard and he would tower over me.  Standing in his shadow I fired laser beams from my eyes and he flinched in pain as he began to grow smaller.  I’d shrink that fucker down to a size I could manage, “Not so big now are ya?”  I’d pull my gun and shoot that piece of shit down.  He’d clutch at his trunk and fall to his knees and I would run in and kick him straight in the face.  When he was on the floor, I stamped all over his head ‘til it was mush and spat on it, even pissed on it.

And when I felt like crying back to her, for sometimes she was a her and begging for her delirious kiss, I would write myself a page of no’s and punch my stupid face.

I waved her goodbye forever, but she is always there somewhere in my mind.  She waits for me to feel weak and tired and everything is too much.  She whispers in my ear, seductive and full of such tempting memories of me with my head in my lap, or slumped to one side, blue lips and pale face.  But I know the truth of what she really is.  I know that if I kiss her, she will become him and he my master.  Fuck that.

***

Rob True was born in London 1971.  He left school with no qualifications.  Lost in an abyss, he spent a decade on another planet.  He returned to earth just in time for the new millennium and married a beautiful, strange girl.  She taught him how to use paragraphs and punctuation and his writing has been a bit better ever since.