Episode 14 - Stories

The stories we tell ourselves are always clear cut.  (Music fades in) That’s how our brains are wired. Or maybe… Or maybe that’s just what we were taught in school. I mean, you guys did learn that too, right? It wasn’t just me. You went over that in English class or whatever it was called for you. Maybe whatever the school officials thought was hip and trendy. 

Regardless, maybe you learned about it in the context of other people’s stories. Maybe you spent all your time learning how other people wrote stories in a conventional way. And in that, though it was unspoken, was the important distinction that those writers you were learning about did not come up with those conventions. They might have fine-tuned them a bit, shifted the balance around, added a little flair and finesse in some places and took it away in others. But they did not build that framework. It was just always there.

I had those lessons too, but when I was in school, our normal and everyday English class actually had creative writing modules or sections or series of lessons. I’m not sure what the exact terminology you’re familiar with would be because moving around a lot showed me how many there were out there. But this was a recurring theme across my Kindergarten through 12th grade journey. And for all the problems my many schools had I was still granted this privilege, this series of small gifts that so many others are denied. And this gift has calmed my soul when seemingly nothing else will. 

And this is true even when I did not  like the conclusions so much. Even when I did not really need or care to refer to the rules and regulations that came from these lessons: from the mouths of authorities that I grew to distrust because of their general disinterest in me. From all those moments when I earnestly needed someone to step in and save me, but no one did. To them, I was invisible. And silent. And odorless if you really want to get more into the absurd. 

But I was there, yes. I was still there but fading into the distance. And no one bothered to  stop it. 

So there is this strong sense that I don’t care what they wanted me to think. I only care about the pieces they gave me.

So let me rearrange them however I want. Let me construct a narrative that may not make a great deal of sense to you. Let me build a tower unlike what you’ve known. Let me hide my meaning beneath the veils and frills of misappropriated tools. I will speak as much of a truth as I am able to. Nothing more.

But it’s not that I don’t understand the appeal of neat and orderly messages. Or narratives, rather. Misunderstandings are the stuff of nightmares for me, after all. More like… Well, there are different ways to tell a truth. 

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

The future cannot be told so neatly and orderly. Not like the other types of tales that are out there. However we might like to think that it can be. But there are too many unknown variables. Too many actions that are hard to predict and don’t always fall into place in the manner in which we would like. Our future story turns out to be the collection of so many other tales, converging and diverging. But in a way antithesis to the waves against the shoreline. It’s a dance we don’t pay attention to. And even if we did, what would it matter?

And so for our own comfort, we may do the best we can to weave some sort of tale. But really, we’re telling a tale about our present in more and different words. Even if we don’t realize it.

But regardless, that is acceptable. That’s okay for you… for all of us to do. But why is what I’m doing so different? Why is what I’m doing so wrong and apparently unbearable? Or why do I think that way? I who understands…. Who understands why it had to be this way. Who knows the truth I cannot say. 

Why am I so upset with myself?

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Do you want to know if I was afraid of Aishi? Yes. Of course I was. I was always going to be afraid of someone I had put so much of my heart and soul onto. Whose approval I essentially lived by and for. Aishi stood to be my only connection to the outside world. And the inside world, the home that kept moving from place to place, there was nothing good. Mom and Dad would be silent and distant to me but together with each other, bound together in a way I still cannot understand. But I somewhat envied. 

I’ve never dated anyone. Never had any sort of emotional intimacy beyond what I got from Aishi. But in hindsight, I don’t think that was intimacy. Vulnerability may look similar, but siblings--even identical twins--are not perfectly the same, even if the eye finds it hard to prove it.

And of the two, intimacy is to be preferred, quite obviously. But that’s not one of the options I had. Instead, I had Aishi and nothing more.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

The Watchman’s situation wasn’t exactly hopeless. There was just no hope that I could offer him. And if anything I was what I had always been: a liability, a source of potential danger indirectly coming at him. I was a risk. I was a target. And I should have pushed him away long before the watch came into the picture. There wasn’t a time when I did not know it was unwise to be close to him. But still, I did what I should not have done. And now there was a ticking clock filling my room and my mind. And outside of my door,, my aunt was in the garage with her chest. The chest that never brought anything good, and it was now open, spilling its contents out into the air, like a poisonous gaff engulfing the home. 

And I wanted to cry. That’s all I wanted to do. Cry and cry and cry. Not that it would have done anything. I was just filled with so much fear that I had to let it out somehow. But. I could not remind my aunt that I was home. I could not risk exposing myself. I could only wait. 

My parents had to be coming home soon, I kept telling myself. Dad was normally pretty good at predicting when these sorts of things would happen. He could read the patterns. He understood them. So he had to be coming home soon, or so I hoped. But he could never really be exactly sure when the snap would happen. He’d never been able to predict the exact day. And more often than not, he came up a few days short. Maybe he would even be a full week off, I thought back then. In which case, I would be waiting for quite a while. And Mom often did not even go into the home when the chest was opened, when my aunt was in that sort of way. Terrible to say, I know, but Mom knew that I knew to hide, so she did not worry about me. 

When I was a baby, that was different. She would have never left me alone.

I mean, there was this… tale in the family that I never crawled. And the weakness in my lower body that isn’t severe enough for any sort of treatment but severe enough for comments from my doctors would confirm this. I did not crawl as a child, and I lost some of that related muscle strength. Mom said she carried me all the time because of Dad’s cats. She was afraid they were going to claw my face, so what choice did she have? Reasonable, I know, but I don’t think it was that. Really, I think she kept me out of the way. Of something else. But of course I can’t prove that.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

I was alone. Or I could expect to be alone for quite a while, being suffocated by the somewhat rhythmic chaos. (quick breath) I put my hands against my ears, trying to protect myself from the sound, and that technically worked. But I only had two hands, and those two hands could only cover up that one sense. My ears. And my eyes were free to engage in whatever could possibly hurt me. And that’s exactly what they were doing.

I was watching my computer screen, and before me was a forum thread that seemed to move far too quickly. Impossibly quickly. I almost expected, neigh hoped,  the Forum itself to break as the comments kept coming in. The back and forth between Aishi and the Watchman. The attacks and the defenses. The attacks offered so maliciously against defenses offered jokingly because the seriousness of the situation was not fully conveyed. It was lost in a method of communication that can easily bend and twist to conscious whims and unconscious denials. 

That’s what it was: a trainwreck that no one could seem to stop.

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I felt like I didn’t have a voice. Not quite like I made an ill-advised bargain with an evil sea witch whose envious of my father’s kingdom type situation. Even if that isn’t so far off from the truth. I mean, my aunt did hate me. And she wasn’t a big fan of my dad despite everything he did for her, but whatever, I guess. Because it wasn’t that. 

It’s more like I never had a voice to give up in the first place. That wasn’t something I was born being allowed to have. Or have I been listening and relistening to The Deca Tapes too much? And the question it seemed to pose. Maybe I have an answer to that question, but it’s not the type that can be answered by a single experience. 

I can say, however,  that this sort of thing is hard to come back from. And that’s why it’s so insidious. You can crawl back up, though. You really can, but it’s just so hard.

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

We were in a forum thread all of our own. Sequestered by figurative walls that felt as thick as any other. We were trapped in many ways. Isolated. Alone. Three entities in a single space. Locked up. But we were also three potential doors to this conversation. Into the Watchman’s trial, you could say.

He didn’t see what was coming. He thought he knew Aishi. He thought he knew Aishi’s tendencies. He thought he could trust them. And he wasn’t the first person to make that mistake, but it did not make this any less tragic.

Would you consider me one of those who made that mistake?  Even if I was a vulnerable child without any sort of nest to rest myself in. Without any place to call my own. Without that sense of rootedness that all human beings need. And it really is a need. Safety and comfort by some other name. I mean, those things do  have to come from somewhere, right? But they aren’t sourced like food or water is. In this case, sources aren’t interchangeable in the slightest. Each is unique. Each is irreplaceable. 

Or that’s the poetic vision. But there are those in my position who have to find a replacement. What choice do we have? It’s that or we wither away. And... I’ve never wanted to wither away. Not fully. So I leaned too heavily on Aishi. And only Aishi. It was fear of losing them that caused me to forsake all others. All those who maybe could have helped me more. Whose assistance could have come without the same strings attached. 

Like the queen, I realized. She could save the Watchman. And she was actually willing to do so. You couldn’t say the same thing about everyone.

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

I can admit that I tell stories that twist the framework I learned in school. Not just this one. But The Oracle of Dusk is largely told in second person. And that’s a big, no no no. Or so I remember being told. Because I tried that before. I tried that before and got slammed for it. And what about all those fan fictions that insert the reader. Those have strong second person components. That’s the crux of it, and they don’t seem to be particularly well-liked.

But like the most unpopular color of paint, whatever that may be, it still has its utility. It still has its place capturing the image of that we may otherwise want to ignore.

But now I have to ask. Couldn’t dishonesty work in much the same way? The way I present the story. With it not being clear cut and all that. The pieces that may not be what I told you they were. Could you ever understand why I said what I said? Could you forgive me for lying?

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

I wasn’t supposed to keep any record of the Queen on my computer. And indeed, I did not dare that. I could not dare that. But it was still committed to my memory. It was written in my mind with a permanence I cannot explain. But I always knew how to get her. In her castle in Virginia. In the fortress that kept so many others away. I could get in. She made sure I could get in. She made sure I could always reach her. 

But I knew not to do it. I knew Aishi’s anger and rage that had never fully materialized but lay dormant in the silence of their disapproval. From there, it was able to speak volumes, able to give an impassioned speech about why I needed to avoid it. And I know that’s bizarre. But language goes beyond what we learned in school. Or so I think. 

I knew what was explained to me, and I always took those lessons to heart. I always listened and did what I was told. I pretended to. 

The ticking of the watch beneath my mattress grew louder and louder. And I was losing my mind. Or I had already lost my mind. It was just so loud. And it was shaking. And… (inhale) And I… I ran to the bed. I ran to the bed and threw off the bed sheets and cast the mattress aside just enough that I could see… that the watch was gone. And I knew what I had to do. 

But in some ways, I always had to do it, didn’t I? There was a right and wrong thing to do, and in such a moral black and white, as the expression goes, or yes and no in other words, well, it seems inherently wrong to tow the line like I spent my life doing. And I know that. I was always afraid of that fact because at the same time as I was committing this heinous sin, I was doing what I had to do to survive. That’s the ultimate standard from which all others are derived. So obviously, it follows, that was the ultimate metric for right and wrong. And if I lived, then I could not be faulted for what I did.

That was something the queen taught me. And it was partially why I loved her so.

(Extended - Music fades out and new music fades in)

Breaking the pattern that I had established across my life was hard. Necessary but hard. To my relief, though, when I did it, the Queen was receptive. More so than I could have ever  expected anyone to be after what had happened between us. After my cold rejection. It’s the sort of thing that I always had taken to heart and found difficult to forgive. But the Queen wasn’t like that. Her words came with a touch of kindness and concern. 

Who knew poison could taste so sweet? I did, I guess. And that might sound absurd, but this delicate balance I worked so hard to maintain wasn’t without its pains and hurts.

But the Queen promised me it could all be over in the best possible way. She could keep me safe, just like she would The Watchman. And all my struggles would be over, and I could have a brand new life. And sure, in that life, happiness would not be guaranteed, but I would have a chance. 

But there was a catch, however. There’s always a catch. The siren of requirement and power in this case demanded a story before she would act. A tale to amuse herself with. And that might seem like a good deal. I mean, it’s just a story, some would say. So would say the bards who tell this tale to future ages, to the children who gather around them. And the lesson imparted  in this folktale would be to trust authority, I guess. Or trust that the truth should always be told and against overwhelming odds because in speaking that truth, telling that tale, you will find freedom. 

It’s a relatively a low price for what could have been my salvation. Or the Watchman’s salvation. It certainly would have been enough to save him, but maybe I was too far gone. 

And I really needed to save him. The anger was mounting, the distrust, the accusations, the jealous, the lust. Growing and growing and growing. But that was even irrelevant. After all, the trunk was open. And that’s really all that mattered. 

I just needed to tell her something. Some tale. A small one. To save him. And as for me, I could worry about that later. It seems so simple, don’t it? But how well has it gone here? In this podcast that has made so little sense. With all the swatches that have been cut out. And pieces rearranged and repackaged. How well has this mystery worked for you all?

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Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show, please leave a review, tell a friend, or donate to the show’s Ko-Fi account.