Sanctuary

- If you just wait here - he should be arriving any minute from his daily walk with his attendant.

I wait, the room is spartan but tidy and pleasant apart from the lingering odour of the institutionalized.  Probably sterilized regularly and devoid of the normal bacterial fauna we're used to from home.

Very hygienic, could belong to an OCD teenager with an obsession for tidyness.

I'm bringing my brother a Christmas present, it's the first time I've visited him in 15 years.

When he arrives, his caretaker accompanies him inside and seats himself on a chair in the corner of the room while my brother sits on the bed.  He looks up into my eyes briefly but I don't see any hint of recognition in there and he looks away.

He also wears some sort of safety cap that looks like a cross between a hockey helmet and an executioneers hood. Unsettling...

He looks sideways at something in the distance and his dried lips part in something resembling a grin without being a smile and I'm stricken by the absence of frontal incisors - his entire front row of teeth is gone. Missing. I didn't know.

Mother told me something had happened, something bad. She wouldn't say exactly what beyond vague bits and pieces and she didn't have the strength to visit him anymore so she had been hinting regularly that I should.

I ask the attendant to give us some privacy, he looks puzzled and asks if I'm sure. I tell him I am even if I am not and he leaves to get some coffee and a cigarette to go with it judging by his yellowed fingertips.

I raised my brother to a certain degree, grew up with him or rather beside him as he never grew up. His body matured and grew stronger but his mind never caught up.

After I left them mother tried to continue by herself and did so for some years until she didn't have the strength anymore to handle the outbursts of a child trapped in the body of an adult and eventually found some supportive housing for him run by an association for the mentally handicapped.

It was inevitable and always had been since the day he was diagnosed. It was the best for him and the best for her also.

- What happened?

My brother looks up, he seems to have heard my words but still no hint of recognition or understanding.

- Who did this?

Blank stare, grin.  He starts chewing on his lower lip and rubbing his forehead with the palm of his hand.

- I will find them

Nothing, the lights are on but if anyone's home they aren't answering the door nor do they care for visitors.

I swallow my tears and my rage and leave, the drive home is as unreal and foggy as the visit itself but I remember this;

You beat my brother's teeth out, then you raped him.

I will find you.

I will make you hurt.

...and years later I did, but not in the way you'd think.

Fear of the dark

There was a strange building right next to the farmhouse, it looked like a cross between a cave and an artificial hill with some pieces of driftwood randomly stuck into it at odd angles and grass growing on top of it. It must have been well over a hundred years old at least by the looks of it.

There was something dark and sinister about it in the eyes of a 7-year old, no electric lighting for one thing and it housed a bull and an old cow that I never saw leave it either.

One day they were just gone as if they never existed.

I avoided the place for the most part, I didn't like the dark and the bull was a looming presence that just filled me with dread whenever I approached it.

The farmer that lived there and was married to my mother didn't really respond to my attempts to get closer to him.  I tried calling him father at some point shortly after we moved there but he didn't answer and just looked at me silently each time until I stopped trying.

He locked me in there once in the middle of winter as punishment for something I did or didn't do, I never figured out which one.

The terrifying disconnected feeling of being lost inside complete darkness with nothing linking you to reality except the deep breathing of a beast capable of goring you to death doesn't leave much room for sanity in a child.

I was however too afraid of the bull to scream... in fear that it might get angry, break loose and trample me to death. Silent tears were all I dared to cry, that and nails digging into my palms were what kept me sane for what seemed like hours but might have been minutes.

Fear of the dark, fear of the dark, fear of the dark.

Time loses all meaning in sensory deprivation, without electricity there isn't even the hope that you can find the light switch to re-enter the physical world.

A child without hope is a child without fear and I was afraid. The only option is to face your fear or go insane. The problem is you never know if you failed or succeeded afterwards.

The library on the farm had several volumes of ghost stories from the countryside and I had read them all.

The ones coming uninvited back to me as I shivered in the pitch black darkness revolved around ghost doors that would sometimes appear on the sides of the organic buildings, these would lure you inside the walls, close behind you and entomb you in there forever.

People would disappear without a trace and then years later someone would find their bones inside one of the walls.

I wondered if that could have happened here on this farm before or if it was happening right now as a door opened in one of the walls without anyone visible outside it and dark light flowed in with nothing except the slight howling of the winter chill audible in the background.

Fear of the light, fear of the light, fear of the light.

I don't remember much more from that episode, at least not getting outside although evidence would indicate I did somehow.

A couple of years later the organic building was demolished by a bulldozer, I'd never set my foot inside there again afterwards and I hadn't told anyone about what happened either.

Until now.

I watched from a safe distance as the walls came down, waiting for something to reveal itself.  I was pretty sure I saw a collection of bones at one point when a wall came down, but the belts of the bulldozer crushed them into bits and the next time they were visible they just looked like so much gravel.

Perhaps it was an unlucky lovechild from another age, perhaps it was just a dog or a cat.

Nobody made a note of it at least and I didn't share this with anyone either.

Until now.

Nightwings

- No way you did that, you're lying

My friends don't believe me when I'm telling them about what I did last summer.
We're hanging about outside a grocery store, whiling away the hours in the middle of summer.

 - I'm telling the truth and just to prove it I'll do it again tonight...right here. 
- Yeah, you do that and then you bring us back something to actually prove you did it.

We part, each of us going back home for dinner. Before I return I slip inside the grocery store and unlock the back door in preparation for the evening's activities.

Dinner time comes and goes without incidents, I'm starting to have second thoughts about the pending mission but at stake is my 14-year old pride and desire to prove myself to my friends.
Because you've got to, mister.

After dinner I slip outside unnoticed and head downtown again on my bike, the grocery store closed at 18:00 so the coast should be clear by now.  I'll pop inside, pick a trophy from some of the merchandise in there and then return triumphant to my friends.

The back door on the grocery store opens silently when I try it, I slip inside, close it behind me and survey the battlefield within.

My thoughts return to last summer, to making a conscious choice as a 13-year old child to travel 5 miles in the middle of the night across gravel roads just to satisfy a frustrated desire for adventure, excitement and challenge by breaking into the local supermarket/gas station.

I almost got caught back then before the episode even began, people apparently stay behind after work doing things I had no idea about.  I was forced to jump headlong into a recess between two flag poles and press myself into the ground there to avoid detection as the headlights of the last car to leave passed over me.

Detection is partly based on expectations, my advantage was that nobody was expecting a minor to be prowling around the premises and if they did spot me at all they didn't jump to the conclusion that I was planning on breaking and entering anything.

In either case, the car pulls out of the parking lot and heads home without slowing down. I wait around for a few minutes more just to be safe and then stand up again, confident that I'm alone now.

In preparation for the night's activities, I had brought a screwdriver with me when we visited the supermarket earlier that day. From the inside of the restrooms I had unscrewed the hinges of a window on the backside of the building but left it closed in such a way that a quick glance at it from the inside would leave you thinking it was safely closed.

I climb up to the window, pry it open and squeeze myself inside the narrow frame that a grown-up would never fit through. The toilet inside serves as a platform that I can slink down onto and I soon find myself standing upright again inside the building.

To cover my tracks I screw the hinges back on and wipe away any signs of entry, mostly just dirt and grime but fingerprints as well just in case the police gets called in.

I move into the building itself and feel like I'm Ali Baba with all the treasures of Aladdin laying before me, waiting to be plucked. I quickly fill my backpack with loot and sneak back outside using a side entrance.

Afterwards, during a nerve-wracking ride home on a dark, moonless night I find myself talking to God for the first time in a long while.

I promise her I'll be good for the rest of my life if only I can make it the whole way back to the farm before the Nightwings take me and consume my soul and devour my body alive.

I made it back in one piece then, unnoticed and unmolested... with or without divine intervention.

As I'm reflecting on this in the present I hear the sound of footsteps coming from inside the grocery store, the owner hasn't left yet and I'm about to be discovered.

The store was the kind that carried just about every item anyone would possibly be willing to pay for. This included a rack of thick winter clothing that I use to duck behind just as the owner comes into view and walks into his back office where he sits down and starts counting money and balancing the books for the month.

The owner was notorious among the younger boys in the village, he had a reputation for inviting small groups of boys into his back office where he would talk to them about strange things they didn't quite understand.

Some said he had a video cassette player and a TV in there, a Betamax. His was also one of the few places where you could actually still rent a Betamax tape.

Some of the other boys said he had porn videos there also, although none would acknowledge that they had seen it themselves.

The unspoken myth we shared amongst us was that he liked young boys and gave them gifts and even boys want to be liked and pampered even if we couldn't imagine the whole truth behind what that attention would have meant.

All this goes through my mind as I'm hiding there behind the clothes rack, I'm not talking to God about this but I am making a plan B for what to do if the owner discovers me.

I'm frantically considering offering to let the owner do whatever he wants with me in trade for free passage in case of discovery.

In the meantime I'm barely breathing behind the clothes rack and completely immobile for what seems like hours.

Eventually, the owner is done with his chores and stands up. He walks to the back door that I came in through and finds it to be unlocked. He locks it, then stands silent for a few moments as if pondering something or listening for someone.

He walks by within a yard of my hiding place and further on into the store itself, then he's gone and I hear the front door open and shut as he leaves.

I've had enough excitement and adventure for today and I don't stick around for loot or trophies this time. My friends don't get their proof but I'm just happy to have dodged whatever bullet was hiding in the gun I had dug up and relieved to be climbing into bed at home without any other thoughts accompanying me.

In comparison, the loot from last year's heist was that much more rewarding to a 13-year old boy with rampant hormones dancing around.

A couple of Coke bottles, 4 chocolate bars and the piece de resistance.... a copy of every single pornographic magazine and book sold by the supermarket.

Totally worth the effort, value is in the eye of the consumer.

Mindlessness

We’re heading south, driving at a comfortable pace and everything seems to be in order. 

It’s late spring in the north of Iceland, the first rays of the summer sun are breaking apart the chains of winter and the snow is slowly releasing its frozen grasp on the countryside. 

We pass by a faded sign that wishes us a safe journey and thanks us for the visit, the latter barely visible through pellet holes from repeated shotgun blasts.

- I’ve got something to tell you, I’d rather you hear it from me than from someone else. 

It’s always difficult for me to tell if mother is talking to me or to herself, she doesn’t really give you much in the way of feedback through body language or eye contact to indicate one or the other.  With her driving it’s even more difficult, minimal eye contact turns to none as her focus is on the road ahead and not on you.

- I’ve been having an affair, it’s someone you know and that has been living with us for the last couple of years but it’s over now. 

Do I need to know this? The someone she’s referring to is two years older than me, I am 16 currently. Flashback memories from the last two years return, odd words and fragments which didn’t make sense at the time suddenly fall into place. 

Words like "Ask Joe if he knows that you never say No to a woman" or "Ask Joe if he knows what women want" and "Tell Joe that you need use shampoo as well as conditioner" 

I refused to be a part of it, go ask him yourself or tell him yourself. He’s right there in the corner bedroom studying. 

I feel trapped inside the confines of the moving vehicle with no way out. I want to scream  something else but all that comes out is a nonchalant "...Ok"

- Your autistic brother was molested by one of his caretakers

"...Ok"

- Your grandfather just passed away 

"...Ok"

- Your sister has terminal cancer and has two years to live at most if she’s lucky 

"...Ok" 

Honesty without kindness is cruelty, there may be no right time or a right place to say things that hurt but there are definitely wrong places and a wrong time to do so. 

Always the wrong place, ever the wrong time, kindness is just a word without real substance to her even if she is a decent person. She knows what it means at an intellectual level, she loves us as a mother and does what she can to keep us alive and fed - she’s just unable to apply that knowledge to mindfulness. 

Being her son I fear I have inherited this trait from her, whether through genes or upbringing it matters little when you hurt the ones you love time and time again and you only realize it after the fact each time when their tears start flowing and you start bleeding on the inside.

Secrets and spies

- Do you want to earn some money? It's just a short trip on your bike. 

My mother asked me this one afternoon and of course I wanted to earn some money. When you're 12 years old you don't get many opportunities to rake in cash.

- Orren is away over on the rented fields tilling on his tractor, I know he's seeing that tramp from the neighbouring farm and I want you to go and spy on them. You'll get 500 kronur for it.

OK, so I'll just ride over there on my bike, sneak in the middle of the day through open fields close enough to spot if anything is going on without being seen, sneak back undetected and then double back with the report and collect the reward.

Easy money, right?

The ride takes maybe 15 minutes, I decide to hide the bike some distance away and sneak closer through a dried drain pipe that ran under the road.

I reach the other side and get close enough to see a tractor approaching from the distant field. No tramp or other cars in sight.  Maybe my mother is creating one of her conspiracy theories again, a variant of the imaginary vacation pipedreams that she looped me into  occasionally when the hours were dark and bleak. We would look at some pamphlet or other with far away places with exotic names dancing about the pages with smiling people with tanned skins beckoning us to join them in a happy place. Plans would be made, excitement and exhilaration created, then nothing. Rinse and repeat.

The farmer is harvesting hay with a trailer, I've had experiences with the trailer in the past where I got caught between the tractor and the trailer while trying to hop onto it after fighting with one of the hired hands on the farm that then threw me off it after I lost the fight. In righteous fury I ran to the front of the trailer after being thrown off the back off it, intent on jumping onto it again but my foot got caught in the bezzle as I was making the attempt.

I ended up hopping on one leg after the tractor for several seconds with slashing blades at my heels until the farmer finally heard my screams and stopped the tractor so I could dislodge myself from the bezzle.

Needless to say he wasn't happy, he even scolded the hired hand for sloppiness.
- You don't have to beat the boy so hard that people can see it 

The tractor gets closer and I decide I'd better retreat to avoid detection, my skills at subterfuge at the age of 12 are however lacking and the tractor comes to a grinding halt and the farmer jumps out, an angry buzzing hornet intent on settling the score with his soon-to-be ex-wife through whatever means available
 Right now, that would be me.

I backpedal frantically through the drain pipe and skipjump over a few low ditches and throw myself flat into one of them and stop breathing and moving. I hear the volume of curses grow louder and risk a sneak peek over the top of the ditch, is that a wrench he's carrying?

He stalks around in the distance searching behind every nook and cranny except the one I'm safely hidden away in, trying to flush me out by threatening and goading me into making a revealing response. I know better and I'm good at playing dead.

He eventually gives up and returns back to his tractor, slams the door shut and revs away as fast as only a tractor with a trailing mower can go.

I wait for several minutes or hours, completely still, listening for signs of an ambush.

Finally, the tractor appears again but this time on the other side of the road. There is no escape this time, I'm trapped and resign myself to the inevitable but remain frozen to the spot.

The tractor passes by within a few yards, apparently heading back to the farm and I start breathing again as it slowly fades away into the distance. I sneak back to the farm, slowly but surely in case I run into someone or something that I want to avoid.

Nobody's home  when I get there so I quickly grab a few sandwiches from the kitchen and splatter some strawberry jam onto them before disappearing up into my hiding place in the attic. The attic has been my sanctuary for a few years, creeps and all.  Its only reachable by climbing through a hatch in the roof amidst the cobwebs. I've dragged a mattress up there and some books, a flashlight and a pillow. Sometimes I stay there for hours when I want to disappear. Nobody seems to know about it except me.

Eventually, I feel safe enough to come down and give my report to my mother when she returns.

I get my money even if the mission didn't give any clear results.

Kintergarten logic

Memories of chocolate milk, riding a schoolbus to kindergarten outside of town at the age of four.  That same kindergarten would later be completely destroyed by an avalanche rushing down from the mountainside above the fjord that would all but kill one of my childhood friends as it consumed their house.

That same house would then decades later be purchased by my late sister who would later fall victim to terminal cancer.  Her mother - my mother - would in turn also suffer the same affliction later.

I remember waiting patiently by the swings in the kindergarten playpen, silently biding my time for my turn and when that turn finally came it was because the other children were being called in for lunch.  I recall consciously deciding to not answer the bell and for an unknown amount of time blissfully swinging back and forth while casually noting the rest of the kids running back inside.

The next memory is of an irritated nanny that was removing my wet undergarments in front of the other kids and them observing wide-eyed as the nanny muttered some meaningless phrases that she was probably intending to teach me to honor the toilet protocol more closely the next time.

If she was intending to shame me into submission by the public display then I doubt that worked, the feeling I remember all these years later was more one of a slight puzzlement at her not understanding the pure logic behind my decision which was simply based on the amount of time I had spent waiting for the swings versus the actual amount of time I spent on them.

Years later my mother told me my grandmother was working as a cook in that same nursery during the time that I was there and I had been given free entry there as a result of that.  I still wonder today whether that irritated nanny was her or just some random other nanny with too many diaper changes weighing down on her shoulders.

The burning child

The day my brother set himself on fire began like any other. The sun shone all night long, the birds did their birdy routines and I awoke in my bed without having slept a full night's sleep nor having eaten much of anything the day before. Not because I was being systematically starved but because I had no appetite for most of the country cuisine and used to binge up on days when something palatable presented itself or otherwise stock up on strawberry jam sandwiches after the others had eaten. 

My mother and her husband, Farmer Orren, had left me in charge of the house chores and my two younger brothers that day while they visited the nearest mid-sized village a good few hours drive away. I was twelve, going on thirteen, a skinny pale pimpled snotling who stammered occasionally, my brothers were 8 and 5.  

My youngest brother was autistic to the point where he did not communicate much to the outside world beyond grunts, hollow sounds and signs. I used to be the one that could connect the closest with him, not with words but I somehow sensed what he was thinking and was able to act as his communication gateway to some degree. A man-sized fence had been built around the back yard to enable him to play unsupervised outdoors, otherwise he would have required a whole headcount to watch him all the time. 

I used to ride around the countryside that summer on the bike my uncle bought me the summer before, most of the time with the 5-year old clinging to my back on the gravel roads that connected the farms with the outside world. Fear wasn't a word that was familiar to him, not fear of death or mutilation at least. Safety helmets or children's seats were a distant future and everyone was grateful I took him off their hands. 

Sometimes I secretly wonder if they were subconsciously hoping he'd fall off and be gone during one of our trips or maybe they just didn't want to think about it as long as nothing happened. Few people care about accidents until they occur.  Me, I was secretly waiting for him to wake up and snap out of it, what's the point of spending your life as a vegetable? He looked normal, why couldn't he just be normal? 

I often tickled him as an infant, until my big sister told me you shouldn't do that because tickled babies never learn how to talk. She was just trying to protect him from my overly enthusiastic attention but I remembered this as the years passed and he never spoke a coherent syllable. 

My other brother was a frisky 8-year old that could do anything, he rode horses bareback, made friends easily and was generally a likeable guy. In other words; the complete opposite of me. 

I presented him with a choice: 

1. Do the dishes
   *or*
2. Take out the trash.

Needless to say he chose option #2, taking out the trash meant dumping it in the assigned garbage pit and setting fire to it and was much more fun than washing dishes for an 8-year old.

In my minds eye I believed he had done this countless times before but in retrospect perhaps this was his first time. There had been a previous incident when he and his best friend had been playing with bullets and tossed them into the fire that I was in charge of. I shoved them away, heard something pop, turned around and felt a sharp sting in my left upper arm and something warm starting to flow. One of the cartridges had exploded and the shrapnel had hit me. Technically, my brother shot me when he was 7 and I still have the scars to prove it.

I watched him sally out the door, resigned myself to doing the dishes and tried to think of something interesting to pass the time. My thoughts were interrupted by a painful howl with my name in it coming from the direction of the garbage pit. 

I ran outside and saw my brother running towards me with a trail of flame following him. An icy calm came over me and I jumped over the fence and sprinted towards him. Somehow I patted out the flames with my unfeeling hands, dragged him crying into the bathroom where I removed most of his clothing down to his undergarments and forced him to sit in the bathtub while I drenched his red swollen backside with icy cold water from the showerhead while he whimpered and sobbed, clearly in pain and shock. The smell of burned flesh was overwhelming but didn't register in my brain. Afterwards I remember it only vaguely but to this day I have never been able to eat the fat part of any meat from the barbecue as it associates with the burning fat on my brother's back. 

After a few minutes of cooling down the crying burn victim I ran to the phone in the living room and called up his grandparents from the next farm who promptly came and picked him up and drove him to the nearest hospital, 32 km away. That was the last I saw of him and my mother for the next 6 months. 

I felt empty inside, I had saved my brothers life after endangering him through lack of attention but it should have been me burning. 

Everything changed after this, nothing would ever be the same.

The boiling man

I'm six years old, hidden away in my make-believe cave reading books to get away from the world. Something isn't right, there is too much shouting going on in the other world and I'm no longer able to block it out. 

I run towards the noise coming from the dining area and see my sister huddled on one of the kitchen chairs, crying and cringing. Two people are arguing beside the kitchen stove, my mother and the man that lived there with her on the farm. 

The argument turns even more sour, the man loses. He chooses to continue the argument with alternative means; clenched fists and closed mouth.

It felt like a moment that would last forever but her screams awake me and I run towards them. A pot with boiling fat is bubbling on the stove, I grab it and splatter the contents upon the wife-beater shirt the wife-beater is wearing. 

The screams stop and I don't remember anything else after that. 

My next memory is of my mother changing bandages off his his swollen back while I and my sister hover uncertainly close by, trying hard to be both invisible and somewhere else in time. 

For a long time I hoped he burned to the point where it hurt but I no longer care enough about him to hate him anymore.

Many years later my sister told me she had been so relieved when I came in and made the beatings stop, that she loved me for it and my strength of will to be able to do that while she was paralysed with fear. She also told me he had abused her that day.

At that point I didn't know what to believe from her anymore as she was quite heavily doing drugs and alcohol at the time she told me and I had just picked her up from jail where she had been incarcerated overnight. 

She never talked about that day ever again nor ever will as terminal cancer took her life at the age of 40. 

I visited the man many years later at the farm while driving through the area enroute to someplace else, my six-year old daughter in tow. 

Seeing your oppressor as an old man without any power over you and you no longer a helpless child gives you perspective. 

He wasn't evil, just insignificant and weak. Not someone worth hating even if he wasn't worth forgiving either.  I forgave him anyway, not because he deserved it but because life is too short to spend it on hating anyone.

Numb

It's the middle of summer in the northernmost part of Iceland, which essentially just means it isn't snowing for a couple of months. It's a month since my 12th birthday, I'm tired after a long day of harvesting remote fields by myself on one of the tractors on the farm and heading back home on it at a leisurely pace. I'm completely relaxed and not really focusing on the road ahead and suddenly find myself stuck on the tractor in a muddy cesspool that intersected the road.

After a few minutes of unfruitful attempts to dislodge the tractor and only succeeding in burying it further in the mud I give up, jump off and head for home on foot whilst daydreaming.

I wake up from my reveries by loud curses coming from the direction of the cesspool, the farmer has discovered the tractor and he isn't too happy about it. In fact, he's closing in on me with long strides that escalate to a sprint.

I've seen that type of sprint once before; that time my 8-year old brother had wrecked some delicate machine part or other by tinkering as he loved to do and his blood father ran after him like he was some unruly dog and gave him a vicious football kick in the rear side that made him fly a few feet up in the air before coming crashing down again.

Curiously enough, I never saw him doing that to any of the dogs on the farm.

I remember not saying a word, not caring about anything else than me not being on the receiving end of that field goal and my brother sobbing quietly in a crumpled pile on the ground while the angry man evaporated out of sight in a cloud of fury.

No doubt he retired to his master desk afterwards where he busied himself with postcard chess. He always fancied himself as a brilliant chess player but I don't remember us having played a game of chess more than once. I beat him, then he beat me. We never played chess again.

I'm running away as fast as I can but his strides are longer and he eventually catches up to me in a slight indentation between two rolling hilltops that hide us from plain sight from the farm below. He kicks my feet out from under me in mid-sprint and starts raining punches and kicks down on me as I lie there prone. I'm not feeling any of them land and I don't cry or make a sound, although I hear them and see them I simply gaze indifferently up at him as if he wasn't affecting me at all which enrages him even further.

A mind trick I learned from one of my books was to imagine yourself standing beside your body, measuring the incoming pain as it rolls in and quietly calculating a discomfort score that belongs to someone else. That way, you never feel a thing...somebody else does.

I'm intent on not giving him the satisfaction of the slightest whimper from me, I'm prepared to die rather than do that.

He eventually tires of the futility of it all and angrily struts off downhill back to the farm, muttering and cursing me loudly all the while.

I wipe away the dripping blood from my nosebleed and do a quick inventory check to see if all my teeth are still present. They seem to be even if it is a bit difficult to tell with the lips being swollen and the tongue bitten through in several places so it's a bit numb and unfeeling.

My right index toe seems to be broken, it takes a few weeks to heal but grows back slightly crooked as the bone re-attaches itself without proper support.

After this I carried a pocket knife on me for the rest of the summer, a 12-year old cub imagining I could slay a dragon with a toothpick.

I probably would have, I'm glad I didn't.