Kenneth Lynch, Staff Writer

Mother dearest always haunted me with a harp of warning notes. My mother, an intelligent, idealized woman, prepared me with two injunctions:

1. “Watch your words. A mouth that acts like a faucet floats their friends to the surface and drowns their feelings to the bottom.”
2. “Watch who you surround yourself with, Zakarie. A community is an arena where the resources are scarce. When a hothouse flower is planted outside, it will have to compete with eucalyptus roots.”

My mom carved these proverbs into my palms. Regardless, I moved on. I was too lonesome to receive an invitation that would derail me from my immortal innocence. Or so I thought…

As the brass globe spun the years of my life forward, I met a student cloaked in mischief and mayhem. This student, Luci, walked into class like a merchant for whom it seemed as if the floor beneath her was cobblestone. The way Luci’s heels clicked on the floor seemed like the synths in a hymn I would intone during service. She opened her robe like the door to a vending machine; so many options, too many bad choices. In our seventh period German class, she offered me a trial: “$15 for the emerald strawberry flavored pod.” Temptation was my infamy, and my mother’s words were a failed inquiry.

As my addiction stretched to cities and factories, the exhaled pollution clouded my town in my snow globe. What started off as one fireplace chimney became a widespread epidemic of addictive tendencies. For my life became an ambush of addiction, I offered my body to the altar and said “I do.” I gambled my guarded thoughts to fuel an inferno in my lungs and a second sliver to visualize mind prisons of kaleidoscopes. The worst part about addiction is that you’re so self-aware, but there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s when I realized I broke my mother’s second rule. So I planned to get better. But what’s an architect without a blueprint?

As I sat on my window sill, the spirits in the sky rose from the smoke off my candle wick placed horizontally between my lips. When I exacerbated one alternative, I turned to another remedy. That is when I met Levi, the dry. His house was perched above a valley like the shadow of his stovepipe hat that rested on his skull. I asked Levi, “Do you have anything else in your hat that signals the shakes down my spine?” He handed me a demijohn of elixir. I gulped, gargled, garbled. As soon as the fluids fueled my fire, I heard the strings of synths, the cries from the choir and the rattling from the release. I joined the dead for the macabre dance. Levi may have been a bad influence, but sometimes as a teenager, I wanted to stop wondering. That was my second mistake, always wandering in my realm of introspection. 

I confess, my heart flickered like flames on a candle. Did he hand me a hypnosis trick to be his harlot? The longer I visited Levi’s world, the more I wanted to be in it. So, I gulped, gargled, gagged. The walk as I ascended toward the katabasis stretched my flesh as I got closer to Levi. Once I breached his barriers, I sat with him. The more I binged my potation, the more shadows I unveiled to him. In a way, he shaped and resonated with my terminal uniqueness. As soon as I felt naked with my bouquet of bare bottles, he proffered a glass vessel of peyote. Like Eve, I plucked the fruit off and chiseled a small nibble with my raking teeth, and realized my trust was rustic and his presence was patient. He invited me to his garden to snake me in his riddle. As I honored my vow, I devoured the fruit to dance with the devil. That’s when I realized I broke my mother’s first rule. 

As my heart twisted and turned, I let the faucet gush like a rapid from my bloodstream. As Levi levitated to the surface, my bundle of burdened baggage sank and I dissolved into the void. When I freed myself from the shackles, my soul remained shattered, with no salubrious strength. Before I let the seconds slit me silly, I was being haunted by my autoscopy. 

This darkening delineation waded towards me and hovered over my wretched posture. The figure pursed their jaw and soughed, “You who seek the salvage of your sanity must step back from the world before your sobriety can return. Be wary of the beast that tempts a weak mortal.” As I listened to my younger self speak to me, my survival instinct shimmered and I slipped through death’s grip.

Unlike the mortal Icarus, I bolted from limbo and my hope was sliced into the rays of the sun that I swam closer toward. As I blazed through Adam’s Ale, a hand with engraved letters on its palm turned my snow globe upside down. I tugged the daylight like a rope that slithered around my body as a harness. Once I reached the welkin, I was welcomed by colorless figures who beamed me to a gurney. As my mom quavered “Zakarie,” the harp’s notehead strummed a pulse to my shriveled heart. All may end in a lesson and a scar, but my mother’s third rule was:

3. “Never ghost your family from the other side of the gravestone.”