Chapter 1: The beginning... or is it?

My mother just sat there crying quietly. My father, beside her, looked extremely worn and haggard. I had always thought of him as so strong... so much larger than life, but at the moment, he appeared to be as flimsy as a cardboard cutout from the video store. I felt that the merest breath would knock him flat. I wondered if he had ever been what I perceived him to be… or if it was all merely illusion. Existentially, I wondered if all of life was but an illusion.

As the court was called into session, I sat in utter amazement. Thoughts swirled through my dazed head like ethereal phantoms… coalescing and evaporating in rapid-fire succession. How did I end up here? Why was I being thusly persecuted? Did anyone believe me at all? Did I even believe myself? It was completely unthinkable that my perfect life had led me to this place. I had always been such a good boy. Good grades, good behavior, good athlete: good, good, good!

And HER. That bewitching siren of a she-devil. She taunted me both outwardly: and publicly… as well as from the hidden recesses of my tortured mind… telling me how absurd it was that I would not admit to what she said I’d done. Claiming outrageous trespasses upon her virginal purity… accusing me of such incredible brutality. No! My heart shrieked, no way! Not me! I’m a good boy. A good boy. You know I am! Everyone knows I am. I AM!

“All rise!” The bailiff bellowed… drawing our attention to the judge, austere in her black robes and thick glasses rimmed with dark plastic. It seemed to me that her spectacles did not truly reflect her value… as if she had chosen them specifically to deceive us into believing her to be a lesser woman, one who did not daily hold the fate of others within her powerful grasp. Who was she trying to kid? I just knew that beneath her robe she wore a sexy silk teddy… and nothing else. Not even pantyhose.

As the normal ebb and flow began in the courtroom, I felt myself slipping slowly away. Reality dissolved from the space I occupied like someone being “beamed up” in a Star Trek episode. In its place there grew a vast forest with huge, menacing trees whose vines writhed like snakes to block my view. They lunged toward me as if to grab and squeeze me like herbaceous anacondas. I flinched, feeling as though I’d been bitten… and suddenly realized that someone was speaking to me.

“Do you understand the charges that have been brought against you, son?” I was being asked, as my lawyer gently helped me to my feet. My feet: shackled to within inches of each other, encased in cheap dress shoes from a thrift store. Feet that were growing sweaty… as were the palms of my nervous hands. I stood there upon those feet feeling as if somehow they must not be mine. They must belong to someone else. I looked down at them, and did not immediately answer the judge. I don’t think she found that to be particularly amusing.

“Is your client hard of hearing?” she asked, this time directing her attention to my young and clumsy lawyer. He proved the latter at that very moment by dropping the entire contents of his overstuffed briefcase onto my sweaty, shackled feet… apologizing profusely to me, the judge, and everyone else present as he nudged me and cleared his throat. He looked terribly desperate. He reeked of cheap cologne and hair gel. He was not going to help me. Help me. “Help me! Somebody please, help me! HELP ME!”

“No ma’am.” He told her, “But I do believe he may have some… issues.” As if I was a magazine collector. I suddenly thought of “Boy’s Life” or “Field & Stream” then “Penthouse”. Issues. I began to giggle hysterically… like a schoolgirl. Horrified, I willed myself to stop: but I couldn’t. In fact, the harder I tried to compose myself, the more I fell apart! “Oh no!” I thought “could they be right? Am I really ‘unbalanced’?”

Again, the room began to disappear… this time to be replaced by deep space. Stars spun rapidly past me as glorious nebulae loomed ahead. I marveled at the stunning intensity of the numerous colors, and I gasped as a huge meteor struck a nearby planet, sending up a thick, toxic plume of cosmic dust. I began to choke uncontrollably. “Air!” I pleaded… “Air! I can’t breathe! The dust… the the the…”

I suppose I must have passed out. I’m not really sure. The next thing I remember is incredibly bright light. I wondered if this was how babies felt when they were first dragged from their mother’s soft, warm bellies into the cold, cruel air of the world. Probably. No wonder they cried so piteously… no wonder. I drifted back away from the light, closing my eyes once more… and floating along a lazy stream under the harsh light of the sun above. I thought it would be lovely to continue floating like this, but “OUCH!”

My eyes snapped open as a huge needle was unceremoniously thrust into my tender arm. “What the…” I began, trying to move, and realized with a sudden rush of panic that I was strapped to a gurney. Padded restraints immobilized my arms and legs… pain coursed through my veins as the radioactive iodine made its way throughout my circulatory system. It was warm… it made me feel high.

“We’ll start with a cat scan, to make sure there are absolutely no abnormalities present in the brain itself.” I heard someone say. I tried to locate the speaker, but my range of vision was too limited. All I could do was attempt to relax and accept the situation somehow. But everything within me contradicted that idea… saying “Run! Scream! You MUST escape!” Even though that was hardly likely. Even though I may as well have been an object d’art in a museum exhibit… I was that closely guarded and well-protected.

“Ma?” I croaked, “Mama?” I managed to wheeze… hoping against hope that I was dreaming, and that my mother would be waiting to feed me breakfast soon… once I managed to shake off the grasp of slumber. But reality pounced upon me then, ruthlessly attacking me with the details of my situation: No, I wasn’t hallucinating at the moment. No, my mother was not preparing a meal… with a bowl of her delicious grits. No, I could not just stand up and walk away. A tear slipped from my eye… running down my face, past my ear, to the pillow beneath my head.

“What do you need from us, doctor?” I heard my father ask, in his quiet, unassuming manner. “Can we stay here, at the hospital with him?” I could hardly believe it. He was going to leave me… he was going to let them hurt me. “NO!” I cried… “Don’t go!” They looked at me. The tears ran freely now, soaking my pillow… pooling in my ears. “I’ll be good… I’ll behave. I promise. Don’t… go…” But as I begged, I knew it was useless. I would not be allowed to go home. And my parents could not stay indefinitely. As this became clear, a wave of cold came over me. And I began to shiver.

“When will you know something?” my mother asked, “will he be going back to court today?” as she spoke, she wrung her tattered hanky over and over again. I thought it would fall apart… her hands looked so strong. I remembered the first time I had seen her knead dough for bread. How could such tiny hands be so strong? But they were. And SHE was strong. In fact, I came to the rather abrupt conclusion that she had ALWAYS been the strongest one. Funny how I’d never noticed that before.

“Let’s discuss this in my office... where we’ll have more privacy.” Replied the doctor, then to the orderly, “you may take him for his CAT scan now.” So I was wheeled away, down the long, long hall to the big elevator, which we took up to the 7^th floor, where we once again traveled down an incredibly long passageway to the diagnostic area. I began drifting again… this time like a leaf on the wind. Swirling in the autumn breeze, past the familiar faces in my life: my parents, my cousins and other relatives, my friends… my coach. They were all oblivious to my passing. I desperately wanted to reach out to them, but I just rode silently along on the cooling air of the season. I was an inanimate object. Whatever life had been within me was slowly ebbing away. I may as well have been dead.

Chapter 2: The Good Boy