Creepy and Maud by Dianne Touchell Read Free Book Online Page B

twinkling in the synapses of my brain, my hatred of being touched in her body. I know that’s what I think because I write it down. And I wonder what would happen if we touched each other. Would we repulse each other like charged magnets held south to south, or would we short each other out and curl together like the knuckles of bone in the spine of a sleeping cat? Maud doesn’t open her eyes even after Limo-Lionel leaves the room. She keeps them closed for a while. I screw my face shut, too, so I can see the same colours she is seeing.
     

ELEVEN

    The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved...
    the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing,
    but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...
    —Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957)

    I held my eyes shut longer than she did that day. I held them shut for so long that when I opened them again, she was on her bed and my sight of her was obscured by that sticky lack of focus you get from wringing your eyes out behind closed lids. She was lying in much the same position as the figure in her drawing, except I knew from previous watching that she was plucking at her pubes. I think it dawned on me then. She hadn’t drawn a wankpanel at all. She had drawn herself, hurting herself. And there it was again. Understanding followed by the thought: I wish I didn’t know that.
     
    We started talking to each other soon after that. Not in the usual way. There is nothing usual about it. It is exceptional, just as it should be. It didn’t seem mad at all, at the time. It seemed perfectly logical. More than logical. It seemed natural. But I see now that it was quite mad and there was no way it could be anything but mad. It started with me writing a question on a piece of paper and sticking it in my window, facing out. The question was: Why did you scream?
     
    Maud stood for a long time, looking at my question. It never occurred to me that she wouldn’t answer. Well, it occurred to me for just a second. But once she put her glasses on, I knew I was in. Everything slowed down then: I could hear Dobie Squires baring his teeth somewhere in the house and Mum having a go at Dad. Limo-Li was in his backyard, throwing hibiscus cuttings over the fence onto the roof of our shed. That hairless cat sidled across the fence capping in front of me and skidded down the side, all grace and nakedness. And Maud stuck the frontispiece of Alice in Wonderland in her window with her response. It was like our first touch.
     
    And very disappointing. It was a beautiful glossycolour plate. Alice was gazing up into a rich verdant tree, speaking to the Cheshire Cat. She was leaning forward slightly, clasping her hands behind her back with a quizzical expression, lips slightly parted. The Cheshire Cat was fat and orange and soft. Maud had written something in the tree but I couldn’t read it. Not even with the binoculars. I responded:
     
    —Use darker pen can’t see that
     
    Our first touch. How fucking romantic. Trouble was, Limo-Li had absconded with all her drawing materials. That tiny turd of charcoal she had was down to a nub. I watched her rummaging about, opening and closing drawers, until she found something that would show up on top of Alice. Purple lipstick. She wrote in slanting block letters. And she wrote:
     
    —BETTER?
     
    I gave her the thumbs-up and immediately regretted it. The thumbs-up: so Merrill. Then I stuck my original question back on the window.
     
    —Why did you scream?
     
    —BECAUSE I AM MAD
     
    (No contraction of ‘I’ and ‘am’. I notice things like that.)
     
    —What are you mad about?
     
    —NOTHING I JUST MAD
     
    —Angry mad? Sad mad? Crazy mad?
     
    —YES
     
    —I like mad
     
    —WHY?
     
    —Mad is alive
     
    —I AM NOT ALIVE
     
    —You are alive
     
    Each lipstick communiqué had left an imprint on her bedroom window. Her own words in reverse.