I dream I’m standing in the living room in my Grandpa Charlie’s farm house, the house I’d grown up in.  My Grandpa Charlie sits on an oak chair at the kitchen table carving an apple.  Grandma Kathrine rocks in her favorite chair working white cotton with knitting needles.

I hear a woman singing or talking upstairs.  She’s singing I’m sure of it.  It’s my mother’s voice.  Even though I haven’t seen my mother since I was two, I know it’s my mother’s voice.
I’m excited and rush up the stairs.

Jesus hangs on the bedroom door, positioned as he was on the cross.  Crown of thorns, palms and side pierced, he’s been lashed to the point he barely looks human.  His blood is smattered all over the door and is dripping into a pool on the floor.

“My mother’s in there.  I want to see her.”

I hear her singing more clearly now.  Only it’s not singing.  It’s moaning.  And it’s not just her.  There’s a man with her.  They’re fucking.

“Is that my father?  Jesus, let me in.”

He hangs there and bleeds as a response.

“I haven’t seen them since I was two.”

The moaning increases.  Bright light shines through the crack at the bottom of the door.  Jesus won’t let me get passed the door.

Then the door quivers to my mother’s orgasms.  The light pulses.  Blood gushes from Jesus’s wounds.  The door shakes.  Mother screams.  Father grunts.  Jesus bleeds.

Father climaxes.  The door explodes.  A torrent of semen and blood wash me down the stairs back in the living room.

Grandma Kathrine doesn’t look up from the tiny apron she knits for the apple head doll Grandpa Charlie holds.  I’m happy she doesn’t see me like this, but maybe she doesn’t look up because she’s seen enough blood and semen in her life that it’s nothing to her.

Laying on the hard wood floor made slick with human fluid, I look toward Grandpa Charlie.  He also takes no notice of me.  The apple head he carved has dried into what looks like a shrunken human head, a replica of a decrepit old man. The head spins on the stick that Grandpa Charlie has impaled it on.  It forrows its spongey dried fruit brow and says, “Get up kid.”

I stand up, washed in blood and semen, holding Jesus’s crown.

The apple head says, “You best learn to care for yourself.  Ain’t no one else gonna take care of you.”

The whole book is worth the read.

Here’s my story.

What They Did With Jimi

They found Jimi in a box full of building HVAC equipment.  He’d been folded at the knees, and his stand bent back.  They set him up to see if he could stand on his own.  With a little negotiation, bending the creases backwards, and getting his balance just right, he stood.

He didn’t look as good as he once did.  He wore a discolored frilly blouse over orange stretch pants.  He was holding a high note on his yellow Stratocaster.  The neck on the guitar had been broken, so they fixed it with gaff tape.

They stood him in the corner and kept moving the spare HVAC equipment.  They thought they heard a squealing fan belt and decided perhaps they shouldn’t move all the spare parts to the warehouse.  When they went up, Jimi went with them.  He stood back while they loaded the box truck and waited on the loading dock for them to come back with another load.

But when they came back, he was gone.

“Where’s Jimi?” they asked the front lobby security guard.  “We only left him alone for ten minutes and now he’s gone.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” the security guard said, sweating.

“Jimi was there when we left, and now he’s gone.  You see anything?”

“Okay.”  He held his pudgy hands up.  “I was sitting here at my post, watching the camera, and two guys in turbans came on the loading dock.  So I called over the loudspeaker, ‘May I help you?’  I see one guy pick up the phone, but all I hear is feedback.  Next thing I know, I see them two guys in turbans running down the alley with a cardboard cutout of Jimi Hendrix.”

Jimi made an appearance the next morning, propped against the street vender’s cart at the Dupont Circle South metro stop, accompanying an old Chinese man playing his erhu.  At first it only sounded like the low rumble of a subway train coming up through the air vents.  Then it became more of a drone like a truck engine idling in a diminished A chord.  

People stopped and listened.  Some wondered how the man with the erhu could make such music.  Many dropped spare change, even paper bills.  He ate the chef’s special double fried duck that day for lunch instead of his usual stir fried lettuce with pork fried rice.

In the weeks that followed, Jimi traveled the entire street musician circuit.  He traded fours with a harp player at Dupont North.  He played a distorted version of Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” behind Pal Kenmore’s sax solo at Farragut North.  He hit the Old Post Office Pavilion for the lunch show, riffing over “Green Dolphin.”  Wherever he played, people stopped and listened to the squelch of his guitar, and they threw money.

He met with Mars Frankens on the platform at Ballston at 6:35am one Monday.  Jimi stood there, his guitar neck flapping and his fold out stand wobbling as each train went through.  

“This is a real honor, Mr. Hendrix,” Mars said.  “You know I started playing after I seen you in Monterey Pop.  Maybe you could show me a lick or two.”

Jimi never answered him one way or another, but he showed his stuff in a solo part during “Puff the Magic Dragon.”  That day Mars Frankens made four times what he normally brought in.

After that, Jimi picked up club dates, standing, jittering on a stack of Marshall amplifiers or propped back to back against the bass player.  Jimi made his way around the mid-Atlantic states and finally up to New York City, where he got a guest appearance with Moses Roberts and they sang “Hey Joe.”  While Moses sang and Jimi was balanced against the handrail for the stairs leading up to the stage, one Englishman in the crowd only heard Jimi’s rendition over Roberts’.  He spilled his drink on himself.

Everyone asked the Englishman if he was all right, if he suffered from seizures, or perhaps he’d had a bit too much to drink.  Someone else told him he needed to get cold water on that spill right away, but all he cared about was securing management of the Jimi Hendrix cutout.  Jimi didn’t argue when the Englishman made him an offer, at least he didn’t say no.  

So off to London he went where he was stored in a room next door to where a cutout of Handel had been stored three-hundred years earlier.  He rocked out with a recording of the Messiah, but nobody heard it in the storage room.

They tried to put a band together for Jimi, but it was difficult to find cutouts who could match his caliber.  So Jimi kept making guest appearances.

Finally, Jimi got so popular he won the headline act at Woodstock 5.  They stood him up, center stage under the purple lights, pointed cameras at him, and projected his image onto a Jumbotron screen setup in the farmer’s field.

The crowd waited.  He stood there, a ragged, soggy piece of cardboard holding a high note.  Over time, the gaff tape had fallen off the neck of his Strat and the head had torn off.  He’d spent so much time in the sun, his color had faded to blue, so he had an electric-psychedelic color under purple lights.  Jimi did not make a sound.

They flicked Bics, lit Zippos, or flipped open flip phones, but Jimi did not make a sound.  They left their seats, stomped their feet, and waved their hands in the air.  But Jimi just stood there as if he didn’t care.  They danced around arm-in-arm and sang a sing-along song, and Jimi did nothing at all.  

Somebody started it-nobody is sure who-but somebody started singing “The Star Spangled Banner,” and Jimi began to move.  Some people say he started to sway because the crowd disturbed the air.  But the needles were pegged on the mixing board, and the speakers were vibrating the stage.  Jimi began to play.  He got to the part about the red glare and bursting in air and the pyrotechs exploded the flares.

One spark arced out from the spray and landed on Jimi’s guitar.  He held that high note on “the home of the brave,” as his Strat burst into flames.  The fire spread, the crowd banged their heads, making pitchfork signs in the air, and chanting Jimi’s name. 

Then the pyrotechs hit him with the extinguisher and announced the show was through.  There was nothing left but a charred cardboard mess, so they swept Jimi from the stage.

But if Maurice comes in, I do what ever he says.

Maurice is a goblin.  He’s real ugly.  If I don’t do what he says, he threatens to eat me, like he did to his own goblin kids when they didn’t listen to him.  So I listen.  

One time when Maurice was brushing my teeth, I wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing–I was playing with the cap from the toothpaste–and he got mad and growled at me.  I ran out of the bathroom, toothpaste drool running down my chin and onto my shirt.  I would have hid under the bed but that’s where he lives.  It’s good that he’s lives there, because he keeps other monsters away.  He’s the goblin I know.  

Mornings go like this.

I wake up and shout, “MOM!”  I’m not scared, haven’t had a nightmare, and I’m not ready to get up to pee.  I just always yell for my mom at four in the morning.  And she comes.  She lays down with me, and I fall back asleep happy to have her there.  

Next thing I know, my dad is in my room.  

“Hey, Bud, it’s time to get up.”

“Get out of here,” I say.

“Somebody’s a grump.”

“I don’t think he slept well,” Mom says.  And Dad shrugs and goes to the kitchen.  He’s in there, making lots of noise, putting dishes away, making tea just so I can’t get back to sleep.

I lay my head on my mommy’s belly.  She pets my head, and I look up at her.  She’s beautiful.  She has a small nose and almond shaped eyes that can smile and frown as well as her mouth.  Her short black hair curves away from her face in slopes shaped like bananas.  

She says, “Mommy loves you so, so, so much.  I wish we can spend the whole day like this.”  Mommy’s breath stinks, but I don’t mind.  I want to spend the day with her, too.

But Dad calls from the kitchen.  “It’s after seven.”

“I hate Dad,” I say.

Mommy’s eyes frown, and she sticks her bottom lip out.  

If I don’t get ready in time, mom gets mad at me.  But Maurice almost never comes out in the mornings.  I think he doesn’t like the light.

But he shows up at night.  Regularly.

“Time to brush your teeth.”  My dad says.

I don’t respond.  I’ve got a space dragon guy going with my Legos.  It’s got wings and a tail that shoots.  I show Dad.

He pretends to be interested.  Says I did a good job.  Points to the tail and says, “Cool you made a handle for your airplane.”

He’s clueless.  I show him how to hold it by the sides. Like this:

 He still grabs it by the tail and says, “See, this is a cool handle.”

“If you hold him by the tail, Dad, he’ll bite your hand off.”

“Oh, okay.  Better not do that then.  Go brush your teeth.”

“Two more minutes.”

“You said that two minutes ago.”

I go back to working on the dragon.  Dad finally gets the message and leaves.  

I play.  I don’t keep time.  I don’t care about time.  Time is my dad’s thing.  He’s always talking about it like he’s got a clock for a brain.  I just play.

It must be dark out because Maurice comes in.  “Time to brush your teeth, kid.”  I’m not sure why Maurice thinks it’s so important for me to brush my teeth.  His own teeth are frightening.  Every one is pointy and crusty with yellow gunk.  The inside of this mouth is bloody, like he’s just eaten another one of his kids.  Maybe he doesn’t want my teeth to look like his.  But whatever the reason, if that’s what Maurice wants me to do, I’ll do it partly out of fear, and partly because he’s so much cooler than my dad.  Maurice understands.

I hold up my dragon, so he can see it.  

“Cool Dragon,” Maurice says.

“Can I take it in the bathroom.”

“Sure.”

“Thanks, Maurice.”  And off I go.

While brushing my teeth, Maurice tells me all about being a Goblin.  About the wars they had with Elves a long time ago.  And he tells me about Trolls–famous ones from stories like Beowulf, and “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” and he tells about a hobbit named Gollum who was turned into a Goblin by a magic ring.  I spit toothpaste and say I want a ring like that, so I can be a Goblin too.

Maurice lifts me off the stool and sets me on the floor.  “Into bed with you, or I’ll have a kid snack tonight.”  He pushes me toward the bedroom.  He’s a little rough, but I don’t mind.  That’s just the way Goblins are.  

A few minutes later.  Maurice is in my room again.  

He doesn’t like to read to me.  He says he doesn’t read good.  But whenever he does read, it’s fine.  He reads as well as my dad, better even.  He tells me that reading aloud is hard for Goblins, it makes them loose their breath.  

But I’ve got Where the Sidewalk Ends opened to his favorite poem, “Monsters.”  And Maurice can’t resist to read it.  So he lays down beside me on the bed and let’s me see the drawing.  There’s a boy laying in bed, like me, his eyes are wide and his hair is standing up.  His dad’s legs are sticking out from the bottom of the bed.  With a jagged toothy grin, Maurice begins to read.

“There are hungry monsters under my bed, 

Growlin’ at me ‘cause they haven’t been fed…”

When he comes to his favorite part, he can’t hardly read because he’s half laughing half drooling…

 …So just to prove that Harry was silly,

Under the bed crawled Mr. McGilly.

Harry heard a “chomp,” he heard a “slurp,”

He heard a “gulp,” he heard a “burp.”

And now little Harry sleeps sound in his bed,

‘Cause there are no monsters, as father said.

(And if there are–well–they’ve been fed.)

Then Maurice reads me a few more poems:  “Enter This Deserted House,”  “Worst,” and “The Googies Are Coming.”  He tells me it’s time to sleep, and I say okay, because that’s what you tell Goblins.  

Then I say, “Let’s make a deal.”

“What is it?”

“You hide under the bed, and when my dad comes in, I’ll ask him to see if there are monsters under there.  When he looks, you eat him, okay?”

Then Maurice reaches up and peels his face off.  And there’s my dad!  He says, “Hey, you’re not getting rid of me that easy.  Now go to sleep.”

See? Dad always messes up everything.

“Okay,” I say.  “But tomorrow night you have to be a Clone Trooper.”