Scorpions
Scorpions
The first time I saw a scorpion, it was the first of three, something I should have expected, considering that it happened in the apartment filled with the spirits of the dead. Even the first night in the apartment, they showed their presence in a mysterious manner with the breaking of a bowl, followed by the lights flickering into darkness. The group of friends in the apartment at the time giggled nervously and brushed off the incident, but two more glass bowls would shatter in the two days following, each under suspicious circumstances that I demanded were the signs of the spirits giving sign of their presence in the apartment.
The bathroom called to me, and as I sat upon the porcelain throne, I noticed my black cat curiously looking at something small, which at first I assumed to be one of the large palmetto bugs that Florida was famous for. With the chill surface on my buttocks, I leaned forward a bit, curious to see my cat’s newfound playmate. Able to get a better look with my closer view, I spied something dark in color about an inch long.
As my eyes focused, I saw tiny legs and an armored body. There was a tail that curled up into a teardrop point. Though I had not seen a scorpion in person before, I had seen enough pictures to know what I was looking at, and fear spider webbed through my body.
I could only recall that my boyfriend mentioned the smaller scorpions have more powerful venom in their compact body. Barely wiping the dribble that still tinkled between my legs, I leaped up, snatched my cat and hurdled the critter that was disappearing into a small space between where the wall joined the bathroom door that was due to the shabby construction of the dilapidated turn-of-the-century building. A scream escaped my lips.
Looking for comfort, I zoomed into where my boyfriend at the time was reading on the bed. “There’s a scorpion in the bathroom!” I could feel my body slightly trembling with the words.
He did not bother to look up at me, “so?” My jaw gapped at the uncaring voice that seemed distracted by my presence. “What do you want me to do about it?
“Go kill it! Do something like get it out of here. It could have stung the cat!”
Trying to plead with the black cat I held in my arms, the female cat that was his obvious favorite, I annoyed him until he had risen from bed, grumbling. By that time, it was too late and all signs of the scorpion had vanished into the wall. Not believing me, he shouted a barrage of questions as to the size and shape of the alleged invader, finally blaming its presence on the third floor of a building on a leather recliner we had brought in from outside.
Fearing a nest inside the pink chair, I ordered him to move it out to the hallway, swearing that my comfort was not worth a mess of swarming creatures. My wish was obeyed, and the chair was discarded, only to be swooped up by the men in the office downstairs, happy to receive a leather recliner, even if it was pink. I never did see another scorpion in the apartment, but his lack of emotion weighed on me, the first of many signs to follow.
His interests in me were beginning to waver, but I did not want to admit this to myself, fearing the rejection. Instead of spending time with me, even for a brief dinner alone, he insisted that I needed to find activities of my own, which I did. One such activity I took up to please him involved nightly brisk-walking, often times with a friend from work, Raina, which led to the second scorpion.
She had become a confidant in my worries, as she had live on the island and interacted with my boyfriend long before I was ever in the picture. In attempt to illuminate his personality to me, she shared stories of his past that I would have had no way of knowing, slowly trying to convince me that our love was not as pure as I wished it to be. On the night she finally had the guts to gush her true feelings to me, that I should end it with him and begin again on my own, we were walking a few streets up from Duval, going around the Key West cemetery.
On the southernmost corner of the cemetery, she blurted what she had been holding back from telling me, and as she did so, we both eyed movement on the pavement from what we thought had been merely a shadow. Stopping for careful inspection of what we thought had been mutual hallucination, the shadow continued to move, taking the form of a scorpion making its way towards us. About the size of a baseball, with tail high in the air, Raina was determined to stop what she viewed would be an attack.
Two steps away were some rocks and boulders lined along the wall of a garden. Using both hands, she hefted one of the large stones above her head, aimed and dropped it onto the approaching creature. Smiling with the thudding sound of a squish, she nodded approvingly and bent over to pick up the stone to inspect how well she had injured her victim.
To her surprise, the creature began to charge towards us as she picked up the rock, causing me to leap back and beg for flight. Not hearing my cowardly intentions, she threw the boulder back onto the critter. This time, a tiny leg ricocheted, barely visible in the dim lights of the streets.
Convinced she was now a hero, she hefted the stone again, only to find the creature still with its tail arched, determined to make us pay for its injury. Not looking to see my reaction, which trailed me down a little further but with eyes unable to turn from the scene, she threw the rock a final time, hitting the scorpion for a third time. She did not bother to pick up the stone, for we saw some sort of bloody goo gush from under the rock.
Watching for a moment, not knowing what to expect, we both backed away in fear as the creature crawled out from under the stone that we were convinced crushed him. Even Raina was awed by his indestructible ways and agreed to let give up the fight for flight. Upon walking the streets of houses patched time and time again from hurricanes, overgrown with lush greenery, she again began to convince me to leave him, promising that I would be better off alone.
I probably feared being alone more than the scorpions, but I would not let myself understand how I had fallen from an independent woman to one wrapped up by the concerns of what I could do to make my man love me like I deserved to be loved. I had given up my former life, my career, my car and all the money in my name to try to persuade him that I deserved his love. It was a hopeless battle that I was determined not to lose.
That’s partially why when the third scorpion came that I had felt helpless. I had found comfort in my work, the numbing activity that left my brain occupied on other things and allowed me to live like everything was okay, even though I feared the intoxicated explosions that typically awaited me at home. More comforting than work was the one person I could identify with there, the one person that many others had turned their backs on, dismissing her to insanity.
The owner’s mother and I had become close, me being one of the few who could decipher her conspiracy-laden words that many thought were a mixture of age and an outlandish lifestyle. In her day, she had written a some-thousand page novel, then gave up writing for art, having shows at many of the notorious galleries in New York and New England, as she hailed Massachusetts as her home, a place I also used to live. It was she who opened my eyes to many things, starting with the simple statement, “you’re Wiccan, aren’t you?”
Shocked that she could pick up on a vow my cousin and I made in the earlier years of our youth, when we had been into Ouija boards, spells and the old religion, she piqued my curiosity enough to look forward to her random presence at the restaurant in between her travels of the globe. Her confessions of things dipped beyond the typical cries of the abandoned mother whose only son had married and sought a life of his own at the ripe age of 28, already a retired stockbroker-turned-restaurant-owner. Instead, she told how she had been possessed as a child, a victim to one of the only church-sanctified exorcisms that she claimed did not work, as she had been selected as a sacrifice by her parents before her birth.
Wiccans, she claimed, were quite different from the heavy-handed church officials, which set her mind to the feeling of an outsider, even though she clung to her religion like a walking cane. “They’re such beautiful people, the Wiccans, very loving and considerate of the earth, never really up to any harm. That is, unless you do something to feel their wrath, which can be quite violent indeed, but it generally takes them a lot to get to that point.”
I, too, could identify with her feelings of the church, however, as I had been brought up Catholic myself and knew from years at a parochial school how the church viewed many things. Only vaguely could I understand the other church she spoke of in hushed tones, insistent that people that you’d never expect could be a high-ranking member of, especially in a place like Key West, where assumed street bums are really millionaires. The other church, though I’ve heard of it before, has always been shrouded in secrecy, which only fueled my desire to hear more of her ramblings, though the clues must be so carefully deciphered, dropped in random conversations about shopping and things seemingly having nothing to do with the topic…just in case someone was listening.
People from this church were who she blamed for her husband, who she swore was not the guy she married. “The man I married had eyes so blue, just like the ocean, that I could gaze in them for hours and get lost in their depths, but shortly after our marriage, he was called off to war. After the years passed, a man came back to claim me as his wife, and though the looked identically the same, the only difference was significant enough to me: this man had brown eyes and was not the man I married.”
He was to watch over her, protect her and act as any good husband should, but she swore her feeling could never be the same. Her son was the only tie to the first man, her real husband, which is why she was so hurt by his abandonment, causing her to show up when randomly expected, only for him to send her off on another trip to a new location on the globe. Often her trips would change or end early, and she would blame the travels on the secret church, as they not only had control of all the government but also all the worldly travel, from buses to trains and planes.
“You will not be able to travel when it is not their will, and trust me, you will soon enough find out what I mean.” I looked at her inquisitively, but she only asked, “isn’t it about time for you see your mother? How long has it been since you’ve seen her?”
During this conversation is when the third scorpion appeared, simply crawling into the front door of the restaurant, tapping its way towards us. We spied it at the same time, this one slightly smaller than a grapefruit. We were both paralyzed, sentenced to simply watch as it approached with quickening speed.
When it was merely three feet away from us, a shoe smacked down on top of it, flattening the body to the floor and causing a colorful squirt of goo to shoot from it. Our eyes met, then we looked to see who had saved us from what could only be a savage attack. Her husband smiled at us sheepishly, scooping the mangled remains of a scorpion body up with a discarded piece of cardboard.
She scoffed. The church, as it were, saved us. Her faith, however, was of a different kind, the real church with Jesus and the Apostles.
That wasn’t all she believed in though, as she also told me tales of aliens, how they’re the most beautiful creatures of all, often with pale coloration and such innate charm that one cannot help but like them. “They’re so different from Wiccans, as they may be beautiful, but they lack all emotion. That’s their curse, that they cannot feel or experience life in the true sense of the emotions that we all feel on a regular basis; they’re simply here, getting what they want due to beauty and not emotional ties with anyone, though that often can make them very successful, too.”
So here I find myself in a world of aliens and witches, two opposing churches, in the midst of the fight between good and evil. Control, it seemed, was only partially due to our own conscious efforts, a lesson that my boyfriend had also explained to me. “If everything happens for a reason, then certain things are bound to happen, while others are not; if this is true, then do not seek it out, just let it come to you, no matter what it may be.”
It, for me, was the end of our relationship. It happened so quickly, at the only moment I had let myself go broke, as I had paid for his bills and bought presents for Christmas, like the cruise I was going to take him on. When I came home from work one night, December third, there was a mass of guys, many of which were gay or bisexual, in the apartment, and in the time it took me to change out of my work clothes, all the men, my boyfriend and all of his stuff were gone.
My first instinct was flight, not to even bother with a fight, even though I had paid all the bills and was set for at least a month, being able to get money each night at work, as well as food. I tried to leave, really I did, but there was no way out. Though I had money and the intent to leave, no way out could be found until the end of that month when my parents were scheduled to stop by for a Christmas visit.
As if my mom knew what would happen ahead of time, she had rented a condo just a bit north in the familiar territory of Fort Myers Beach for the months of January and February a few months prior, and she was more than delighted to have me stay with her there. It perplexed me, however, to ponder what the other mother had said to me, that I would experience the problems with traveling and that I should spent time with my mother. How could she have known?
There was so much more that she didn’t tell me, could not tell me, like the forces aligning up around me. Good and evil gathered around rolling the dice, betting on my soul and which way I would roll, but I was oblivious to this. Instead, I only identified with the sadness of the spirits, those who had much earlier been murdered in my exact apartment.
Cold breezes gust from seemingly nowhere, causing crying fits that sent me sobbing for hours. Comfort could not be had, for I had what I feared, rejection. Clearly, I was like the abandoned mother, only I had no child, unless you count my black and white cats.
I did, however, have a roommate, one who proposed to me the minute my boyfriend left. “I know this is the worst time for you, but I’ll give you a year to make up your mind. I love you.”
This shock of information was one that I had not been prepared for, and to try to comfort me, he put in a porno, thinking it would take my mind off of the situation, rather than remind me how many months I had slept next to a man without getting laid and the late nights that he would stumble home, without his pants on a few occasions. In time, things passed by me, leaving me wondering who was friend or foe and only making me realize that I was indeed alone in a strange land that many claimed was really my home. How could I believe them though?
Questions piled up in my head as I tried to ponder what steps would be next, and people pointed out to me the random dead animals that they were finding around my apartment building, snakes and rats. Mechanically, I went on with my days, glory in obliviousness, but the true fight smacked me in the face when I opened the door to my apartment one day. There was Dred, the one who proposed to me, looking as if he had seen a ghost.
“Where’s your book of angels?” He flipped through the books on the shelves, frantic. “We need to find the meaning of the Archangel Michael, because he was just here!”
It was the first time I had heard the rastafarian whisper anything about religion, but I helped him find the book. When he opened it, the pages spread automatically to Michael, and Dred looked up at me seriously. “You have to read this right now.”
I didn’t understand what he was talking about, and before I could read a few paragraphs, he gushed into a story on how they were fighting for my soul and how it was his duty to help lead me off the island. “This is your home, and I love you and wish you could stay, but it’s not meant for you right now. It’s my duty to see that you are safely sent away to your mother, and though I wish we could marry, I honestly feel that we will only be destined to be close friends, as has been my fate with others before you.”
His spirituality I had glimpsed in short doses, but I could not deny his seriousness in this, and I knew from the days of Ouija boards, spells and possessions to not simply cast away what he was saying. With a few deep breaths, he detailed how he had felt a presence while I was away, and at first he thought it was simply the spirits of the apartment that we had long ago grown used to, but this one was different. Quickly, it grew menacing and was meant to scare him, and he fought to control his composure by pushing out the goodness inside of him.
His efforts were futile against the being, but before it could enter his mind to give up, he saw a dazzling white light which he instinctively knew was the Archangel Michael. Describing the quick fury that took place, Michael banished the being from the apartment, and that’s how Dred knew about the fight for my soul. No words were exchanged, he explained, as there was no need for words when enlightenment was shared.
“The fight of good and evil goes on everyday, but when the Archangel Michael steps in to banish a being, that’s when you know you’re dealing with a main pawn in the fight. I don’t know how or why you fit into all of it, but I know your time here is limited, and it is my duty to give you the comfort and help of getting out of here. Even if we don’t get married, which I wish we would, I think I’m just here to remind you that no matter how bad you think it is, there’s somebody here who would marry you in a heartbeat.”
The scene brought us closer, and I repeated some of the strange occurrences that I had been reluctant to let my mouth utter, such as the warning about problems with travel and the comment of my mother. Dred’s face contorted momentarily as he looked at me, and he demanded to know who had told me this. “I need a name, a specific name.”
Names were another thing that she had mentioned to me in our conversations about the other church, the one with travel control. She said that often members took other names than the ones they were given at birth, and often these would be ones of whimsy. For example, if someone had a habit of picking at his or her fingernails, instead of Nail-pick, their last name could be something like Napik.
Something would not allow me to utter her name to him, and I tried to pretend as if I did not know. He did not believe me, but he did not press the issue. Instead, he turned to lighter conversation, one of the last we would have at the apartment.
My now ex-boyfriend had heard of his proposal and was not happy with the seeming betrayal of friendship. He ordered him from the apartment that he still viewed as his, even though he and all his things were out, banishing him to Christmas Tree Island, an uninhabited island that the water taxi ran to on occasion. I was truly by myself to fight these forces that were gathering around me.
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