Brooklyn Half - 6

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Brook crawled out her window and onto the fire escape. A cold breeze and a wailing siren drifted towards her. Anger had replaced her fear and now exhaustion replaced her anger. She looked out over the lower east side street and hoped the cold would clear her mind. Still, she felt haunted and watched. She couldn’t avoid the feeling that there was something out there... something that was looking and waiting for her. She pulled up the bandage over her ears and felt the ugly stiches. More tears fell and dried on her face and an image of her mother flicked into her head. She thought about what Shaun had said. Could it really be her?

‘It’s not your mother,’ sounded in her mind.

The fire escape began to reverberate. She turned around to see who was coming down.

‘Woouff, woouff’

‘Get that thing Toro’

‘Reeeowwwwwn…..Hissssss’

Mrs Simpkins hairless cat landed on her leg, clawed up her shirt and clung to her chest and shoulder.

Ahhh, F!@#!

Benji from number four and his Great Dane thundered down next, taking the stairs two at a time. Fluffy sheltered against her, tensely clawing her skin as they stormed past.

‘Hey kid’ he said.

‘Jeez Benji,’ she muttered.

‘That cat is one ugly little critter isn’t it?’

He didn’t wait for her response and Brook was left trying to prise the cat off her shoulder.

‘Reee hisss’ the cat spat after them

‘Ahhh, Fluffy you bitch get off.’

She sat back down unplucking its claws and placing it on the stair beside her.

It sat quite still and calm now

She put her hand under her shirt feeling the welts.

‘Ignorance is the greatest ugliness’

She sat quietly stunned. It was as if she had thought the words rather than heard them. They were in her head, but the words were not her own. She looked about frantically.

‘IGNORANCE’ the word resonated in her head like a gong.

She looked down at the cat now and it fixed her with a steady gaze, as if it was reading her reaction. She’d flipped. Without a doubt. Brook shut her eyes as tightly as she could and counted to twenty in a panic. When she opened them again the cat was still sitting beside her, looking patiently up at her.

“He is ignorant. You are ignorant.”

Sane people probably ignored it when a cat spoke to them. Brook thought this was the best approach.

‘And it’s not your mother.’

It was looking right at her. Skinny and bald with absurdly large ears and it was reading her mind and communicating with her.

‘What you see is a cat. To believe only what you see is ignorant.’

‘This isn’t happening, I’m not listening’ It was all Brook could think of to say, she was losing her mind. It was being taken away from her.

‘What is mind? Where can it go? Is it a possession? How can it be lost? How can it be taken?’

‘You’re Mrs Simpkins cat Fluffy; you’ve lived across the hall for as many years as I can remember.’ And now she was arguing with it. Jesus.

‘So certain of that which you are uncertain.’

‘Cats can’t talk.’

‘Exactly, and since we are communicating now your own rational deduction would suggest the truth, that I’m not a cat.’

Brook looked down at the cat and realized, however f*#ked up, the little critter had a point.

‘Rational deduction would suggest I’m a fruitloop.’

‘Human deduction would suggest that. And you are only half, Brooklyn. It will take a while to explain and it is now necessary that I do.’
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Brooklyn Half - 5

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Even on the crowded street Brook was afraid. Her shadow took on elongated shapes, like a monster poised to attack but when she turned to look there was nothing. Nothing but lower east side New Yorkers going about their business. If there was something after her it was biding it’s time, awaiting its opportunity.

She was two hundred metres from the apartment block when her nerves cracked and she burst into a sprint, pounding the pavement until she reached her front door. As she pushed her way through the buildings entrance she felt a chill, like the touch of an ice cold hand across her back. But the door closed firmly behind her and remained shut.

Still, as she stared at the brass deadlock she could have sworn there was someone or something on the other side staring just as intently.

Adrenaline launched her up the stairs and into the apartment in record time. Back to the door, her heart pounded for the waiting minutes until the fear subsided, until she was sure no one had followed.

Judd wasn’t in the lounge or kitchen. On the carpet beside the couch was an open bottle of whiskey, three quarters gone. It hadn’t been part of the décor when she left.

Great, she thought, her fear boiling into raw anger, if Hollow legs the social worker decides to drop in now I’ll be in a foster home quicker than Judd could down the rest of the bottle.

She found him in his studio, mixing paint on a new canvas. He was in his old painting shorts and flip flops. His face slack from the alcohol but his eyes burning with that obsessive fever he always got.

‘Hey babycakes,’ he said when he saw her standing there. ‘How was your afternoon?’

Brook wanted to scream at him that she was losing her mind, being chased around Manhattan by monsters and that she needed him to be sober, to be anything but what he was. She was never very good at saying how she felt though.

‘Apparently not as fun as your's,’ Brook said, holding up the bottle she had carried into the studio with her.

‘I’m working honey, I’m just having a couple of looseners.’ He was drunk enough to be defensive, not drunk enough to be contrite.

‘Well I doubt Mrs Holloway would see it like that if she was here.’ Brook struggled to hold back the tears for the second time that day.

‘You don’t understand. This…’ he pointed to his painting then, ‘this is for you, I need to do this…. to protect you.’

To protect her? He has no idea, she thought.

‘And how do you expect to protect me when I’m in a foster home!’

The bottle dropped out of her hand and rolled across the floor. Judd followed it with his eyes as if willing it not to break. He cared more about the stupid whiskey than he did about her. She stormed out of the studio, slamming the door behind her.
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Brooklyn Half - 4

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‘Is this like in Grade 4 when you wanted revenge on Hammy the Hamster for pissing on your bag?’

‘No! It’s not like that. Can you to listen to me?’

‘Alrigh, alrigh, I’m listening.’

Brook felt like she was losing it. Her heart was thumping and she couldn’t keep her feet still.

‘I cut the tops of my ears off and I don’t regret it. These bandages are coming off and I’m going to be normal.’

‘I hate to be the one to tell you this sister but you aint acting very normal.’

‘It’s not my ears, there’s someone after me,’ she blurted out.

‘Those bitches in your class again? Coz you know…’

‘No, not them,’ Brook cut him off. ‘It’s something different. I was attacked in the hospital.’

Shaun was looking at her weirdly. She knew what she was saying sounded crazy but couldn’t stop it.

‘It was a boy, he jumped me. It’s hard to explain. He disappeared right after.’

‘Where were the nurses? Wasn’t anyone around?’

Shaun had dropped his try hard South Bronx slang and was speaking like the son of the mid Manhattan African American judge that he was.

‘No. And they don’t believe it happened. The doctors say I dreamt the whole thing.’

‘But you don’t think you dreamt it?”

‘It was real. I swear it Shaun. And look at this.’ Brook pulled open her jacket and sweater to reveal red welts across her right shoulder. ‘They didn’t come up straight away. Not until I got home.’

Shaun was looking at her shoulder with concern but didn’t say anything.

‘And now there’s someone stalking me. Every time I leave the building I feel like I’m being watched. And followed.’
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He didn’t speak straight away. Had that serious look on his face, the look he got when he had something on his mind but didn’t know how to say it.

‘Look, I don’t know what happened in the hospital. But this stuff about you being watched, have you thought maybe it’s your Mum,’ he said eventually.

‘My Mum?’ Brook was lost for words. She couldn’t believe he’d said it. That topic had always been taboo. Shaun knew that and up until this moment he had always respected it.

‘Maybe she heard about your ears and was worried and doesn’t…’

‘My mother walked out on me thirteen years ago. She couldn’t give a stuff about my ears,’ Brook cut him off. She was fighting to keep the tears back.

‘Don’t hate me for this but I need to tell you something.’

‘Tell then,’ Brook said, focusing her gaze on her shoe.

‘There was this time years ago when we were playing in the Wild West. I saw this lady watching us. She had ears just like yours.’

‘And?’ the tears had swollen up in her eyes and were spilling down her cheeks.

‘And I never mentioned it because I knew you would go all mental but it was weird. What if it was her? Maybe she’s been keeping tabs on you all along but is afraid to contact you. Maybe it’s her following you now.’

The floodgates were open. This conversation had taken a turn she hadn’t expected and definitely wasn’t ready for. And it was all her fault. She started it. It was her fault that she was probably losing her best friend. Maybe it was her fault that her mother left and her father was a crazy drunk.

She was going back to the dark place. The alone place where the only relief from the pain came from physical hurt. Physical hurt from self inflicted cuts.
They would say she caused the cuts to her shoulder. It was probably what Shaun thought already.

‘I’ve gotta go,’ she said getting up.

She used every inch of her self control to stop herself from running. When she got to the gate Shaun was still sitting on the bench, staring miserably at the dogs going berserk in their run.

Neither of them noticed the shadow that crept from behind a huge Elm and followed her out of the park.

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Brooklyn Half - 3

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Tompkins Square Park is full of conscientious dog walkers, hipster students and pram pushing parents. At 3.28pm on a Thursday afternoon there is absolutely nothing to fear from this gentrified plot of recreational land. So why couldn’t Brook shake the sensation that she was being watched? The Elm trees that had soothed her in her childhood suddenly felt sinister.

She sat on a bench seat next to the dog run waiting for her friend Shaun who was running late. Nothing unusual there, he was always late and Brook usually compensated by turning up fifteen minutes late herself. But today she couldn’t stand to be at home, with her Dad brooding and angsty and trying to remain sober, trying to be strong for her, his wayward and possibly deranged daughter.

They had sedated her and when she came to, told her that there was never anyone sharing her hospital room. That she had dreamed the conversation with the boy and then woken up afraid and confused. A not unusual side effect of the pain killers and all of the emotional pressure.

Brook could tell that behind the rationalization and concern they thought she was mad. ‘Kookie’ as her friend Shaun would say. She couldn’t really blame them. First the ears and then the attack. And what she hadn’t told them was even weirder. Even in her terrified state she had known enough to hold that back.

When the pain had dulled enough they put her through the psych ringer. She lied her way through three separate evaluations before they let her go home with Judd. And even then she had a newly assigned social worker to keep tabs on them and an appointment with the psychologist every other week. She could tell Judd was pissed about this but he was doing his best to handle it and didn’t seem to blame her. Judd said he blamed himself. Brook thought the only thing he was to blame for was not letting her have that stupid operation years ago.

Once she was home the whole thing seemed less real. Maybe she had dreamed it. Or maybe she was as crazy as they all thought. She was Judd’s daughter after all, it was probably genetic. About time she started seeing demon boy apparitions.

And now the squirrels were making her nervous. A particularly beady eyed black one was making its way toward her bench. She reached into her bag and found her can of mace and then Shaun finally turned up.

‘Wassup earless,’ he said as he sat down next to her. “Go on show me. That’s some f#$%ed up s!@# right there. What’d you use to get’em off?

She slapped his hand away. In a normal situation she would have jibed straight back at the unfunny prat but things definitely weren’t normal right now.

“Oh, oh, oh. You know I love you, I always got your back, but damn girl, you really walkin on the wild side with this s!@#.”

‘Knock it off. Do you see that squirrel?’ she hissed.

‘I can see a fricken hundred squirrels, the damn rodents are everywhere… c’mon wassup with you?’

It had disappeared, Blackie was gone and the squirrels rummaging around the trees were once again just innocent vermin making their way in the city.

She looked at Shaun and wondered if her best friend, her only friend really, would understand what she was trying to contend with…

“Shaun before you turned up I was just about to mace a squirrel and I think I’m going insane.”

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Brooklyn Half - 2

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At one point they were going to take Brook away. Two cardigan and slacks wearing social workers had come over with clipboards and concerned looks on their faces. They seemed to take particular interest in the pantry, stocked with whiskey and cheese puffs and soda and Budweiser. It wasn’t looking good but then Grant, her Dad’s fairy art dealer had turned up and fixed things. It wasn’t the first time.

Hopefully this situation wasn’t going to bring them back. Living with Judd was no tea party but she didn’t fancy being sent to a foster home in Queens. She was old enough to take care of herself and it’d be much better now… Now that her freak pointers were gone…

‘Hey!’

It was coming from the other bed, teenage male voice.

‘What,’ she said, not wanting to sound too friendly. F*%k making friends in a hospital.

‘I heard you cut off your ears, like that painter?’

Little punk. She felt like going over and boxing him. She clenched her fist but felt her restraints.

‘Maybe I’ll cut yours off if you don’t shut your face.’

That got him. It occurred to her then that she was going to go from being called Spock to Van Gogh… Tears welled up in her eyes even as she tried valiantly to fight them back. Wouldn’t do to weaken now. Couldn’t survive.

And just then, as if her vulnerability had left a gaping hole for the boogie monster to crawl thru, something changed. It felt like the air had been sucked out of the room and been replaced by a thick fog of malice. Brook felt a stab of fear so intense it made her shake.

Her neighbour was rising from his bed and crossing the room toward her. But he was no teenage boy. She let out a scream so loud it could have raised Jesus.
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Brooklyn Half - 1

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The room was pale green and white with a mild undercurrent of antiseptic. Two beds sat either side of a central window. The hump in the other bed indicated it was occupied but Brook was too groggy to be bothered paying much attention to it.

She wished she could be comforted by all the light and cleanliness, so different from the dust loft she lived in with Judd. But she wasn’t, mostly it just made her feel out of place.

The pain killers were starting to wear off and her ears throbbed like a razor with her pulse. She instinctively went to touch them but remembered she was restrained. Instead she rolled her head on the pillow. The scratchy white gauze which circled her head was tight as a drum.

Brook had been awake for an hour or more. She’d kept quiet and still to avoid speaking to her Dad. Eventually he’d left. It was amazing he stayed as long as he did. Had to be way past whiskey o’clock on Judd’s timepiece.

It hit her again like a wave. They were gone. There was going to be a lot of shit to deal with over this but they were gone. What she had wanted desperately for the last three years had finally happened. No more Brook the freak. No more stupid Spock jokes or sneering ‘elf kid’ taunts.

Funny, instead of feeling elation there was something like loss nagging at her. It had to be the pain, the drugs, the loss of blood, she rationalized. But severing the stupid abnormalities that connected her to Judd’s madness was the only way. She should know, she’d thought about it enough.

Her father was convinced his ex-wife - wife really, they had never technically divorced - was a magical being who was awaiting the appropriate moment to return to them. Apparently on reuniting all would be perfectly forgiven and forgotten and they could play happy families again. F*#k that, Brook thought.

The longer Judd waited the drunker he got. The longer Brook waited the angrier she got. It had been 13 years…
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Brooklyn Half - 0

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Coming soon live from Brooklyn...
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