Saturday's Storyteller: "Every razor blade hidden behind the bathroom mirror told a story."
by Belinda Roddie
Every razor blade hidden behind the bathroom mirror told a story, and it helped that they had been collected from several different people. Some blades held the wear and tear of daily or nightly shaving, from the jawline to the thigh, with few nicks in between. Others, surprisingly, were adequately honed and sharp. Something Sweeney Todd could use to slice up human hor d'oeuvres before the main meat pastry entree.
Jules worked as a psychiatrist in the main ward of Helm Hospital, and she had taken the time to pick out each razor, tag them, and slip them behind the mirror where her husband wouldn't notice. Raoul was a desperately paranoid man, and for one reason or another, he was always worried that Jules, in the long run, wasn't as conventionally happy with her life as he had hoped. One look at the collection of pointy metal slicers, and he would most likely have gone into cardiac arrest after beginning a tirade on how life was so worth living to his moderately stable thirty-four-year-old spouse.
As the number of razors grew, Jules bought a cheap plastic box to keep them in, so the mirror became nothing but a reflective fragment of a past shelter. Many of the razors she kept, although she did not like to admit it, had drawn someone's blood. She had adequately cleaned them of any carnage or potential homicidal undertone, though the names glaring from the shards of paper in red, scratchy pensmanship still offered a picture of human despair. What Jules had also done in recent weeks, however, was begin writing brief spasms of prose for each razor's former owner - whether they were deceased or not. She kept each piece of prose in a small, squarish envelope, and she could easily match razor to writing.
This wasn't to say that Jules was a passionate poet. It was more accurate to claim that poetry was appropriate for her and her more psychological studies.
Jules had been the designated therapist for sixteen of the twenty-four patients whose blades she had hocked, and eight of them had died while in the ward: two from presumably "natural" causes. The others - well, let's just say the image of razor blades didn't help matters. These eight were the first she wrote for. And these eight will be the ones immortalized for those willing to serve as Jules' audience.
Each razor blade tells a story. That doesn't mean each story is easily fathomed.
Let's slit it all open.
Denise Jubilee
The jubilee is over. The lion tamer died with his head in a steel trap's mouth. There are plenty of ways to digest absinthe, though you settled on the funnel. You liked it when you had a mane. You used scissors to cut off split ends. Snip, snip, snip. Until the circus took the blades away from you. But you found one anyway, under your pillow. With your last real tooth nestled up next to it.
Ralph Abernathy
Skid a bit longer on the boat, and you'll find twenty rainbow trouts just lined up for a carnival show! The kiss of death seems sweeter when laced with licorice. You always liked licorice. You'd sneak it into your room, or your partner would. He liked it when you talked about dead flies. So did the fish. And so did the gray matter mottled in your skull before Creutzfeldt cried in Jakob's arms as their papers flew all around them in little airplanes, and every fishing line - no matter how tough - snapped.
Audrey Hickory
Trees hung across your window and rubbed the glass every night, and it wouldn't let you sleep. You hated having to use ear plugs, but the nurse offered them, and you had to take them. And even then, you couldn't stop having nightmares about carnivorous Jeeps or a history exam gone wrong, even though you were seven years out of college and just wanted to be able to drive a car without being scared. Or your father being scared. Or your father being dead.
John van Clouten
You blew it, jack-off! You blew it in Vegas. You blew it in Reno. You had tailcoats grabbing you by your flabby ass and flinging you out the door with slot machine debris in your hair. You ate playing cards for nourishment and choked on the queen of spades. You licked five dollar bills just to see how Honest Abe's green beard tasted. And through it all, you still maintained a smile, though honestly, I think that was from the cheap white powder in your bedroom. It was sugar, you asshat!
Mrs. Feingold
I don't remember your first name. Why the fuck don't I remember your first name? You wore lavender all the time. You even pinned it to a scarf when you had to wear what the nurses gave you. You were my third patient. I don't remember your first name. Why did you have to hemorrhage before I could ask you to remind me?
Donald the Drinking Manwhore
I don't forgive, and I don't forget. I don't forgive, and I don't forget. I don't forgive, and I don't forget. I don't forgive, and I don't forget. I don't forgive, and I don't forget. I don't
Zelda Macintire
There's an evil in this place that I can't comprehend. When you sat in the bathtub, you liked it best when the water was tinged blue from your cheap shampoo. You kicked your toes up just enough so that the prune-y wrinkles caught the florescent lighting. And you sang a little diddy from your north Kentucky hometown as if you only wanted me to hear it.
Do not ask me how I know all this. The crack in the wall, since you died in the same tub, has been masked with very, very strong duct tape.
Jules Gilbert
You used to be a violinist in New York, where you played every hall except for the ones with walls. You made a cat lady cry on the fire escape, and when the white vests took you in, you didn't want to communicate with anyone unless you could use your bow. You played for me a long time ago, when I called myself Cecily Burton, and I was married to Albert Burton who then fucked my sister and tried to kill me with a serrated knife that he was using to cut pugliese that would go with the tortellini.
Then you killed yourself. A lot of people kill themselves. But you wrote one last song and played it the night before, just for me. It was titled, "My Name is Yours."
And so it's mine. It's mine forever. Cecily Burton died sprawled across the porcelain, not Jules Gilbert. Albert Burton would cry and then choke on corn on the cob as his lover punched him in the back. The mailman down the street heard the spluttering, and when he walked in, there were kernels everywhere, and Cecily's sister was heating up popcorn within the dead man's stomach. She went crazier than I ever did, and I'll be the one playing the violin over her grave.
If only I knew how to play a violin.
If only I was familiar with a bow instead of a razor.
Help Me.
Raoul walked into the room and found an inkblot on the wall. When he got closer, he saw the razor blades spilled out of their box, with little fictions strewn against the tile. The one tagged, "Jules Gilbert," was stained. And the inkblot wasn't ink at all.
This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.
Every razor blade hidden behind the bathroom mirror told a story, and it helped that they had been collected from several different people. Some blades held the wear and tear of daily or nightly shaving, from the jawline to the thigh, with few nicks in between. Others, surprisingly, were adequately honed and sharp. Something Sweeney Todd could use to slice up human hor d'oeuvres before the main meat pastry entree.
Jules worked as a psychiatrist in the main ward of Helm Hospital, and she had taken the time to pick out each razor, tag them, and slip them behind the mirror where her husband wouldn't notice. Raoul was a desperately paranoid man, and for one reason or another, he was always worried that Jules, in the long run, wasn't as conventionally happy with her life as he had hoped. One look at the collection of pointy metal slicers, and he would most likely have gone into cardiac arrest after beginning a tirade on how life was so worth living to his moderately stable thirty-four-year-old spouse.
As the number of razors grew, Jules bought a cheap plastic box to keep them in, so the mirror became nothing but a reflective fragment of a past shelter. Many of the razors she kept, although she did not like to admit it, had drawn someone's blood. She had adequately cleaned them of any carnage or potential homicidal undertone, though the names glaring from the shards of paper in red, scratchy pensmanship still offered a picture of human despair. What Jules had also done in recent weeks, however, was begin writing brief spasms of prose for each razor's former owner - whether they were deceased or not. She kept each piece of prose in a small, squarish envelope, and she could easily match razor to writing.
This wasn't to say that Jules was a passionate poet. It was more accurate to claim that poetry was appropriate for her and her more psychological studies.
Jules had been the designated therapist for sixteen of the twenty-four patients whose blades she had hocked, and eight of them had died while in the ward: two from presumably "natural" causes. The others - well, let's just say the image of razor blades didn't help matters. These eight were the first she wrote for. And these eight will be the ones immortalized for those willing to serve as Jules' audience.
Each razor blade tells a story. That doesn't mean each story is easily fathomed.
Let's slit it all open.
Denise Jubilee
The jubilee is over. The lion tamer died with his head in a steel trap's mouth. There are plenty of ways to digest absinthe, though you settled on the funnel. You liked it when you had a mane. You used scissors to cut off split ends. Snip, snip, snip. Until the circus took the blades away from you. But you found one anyway, under your pillow. With your last real tooth nestled up next to it.
Ralph Abernathy
Skid a bit longer on the boat, and you'll find twenty rainbow trouts just lined up for a carnival show! The kiss of death seems sweeter when laced with licorice. You always liked licorice. You'd sneak it into your room, or your partner would. He liked it when you talked about dead flies. So did the fish. And so did the gray matter mottled in your skull before Creutzfeldt cried in Jakob's arms as their papers flew all around them in little airplanes, and every fishing line - no matter how tough - snapped.
Audrey Hickory
Trees hung across your window and rubbed the glass every night, and it wouldn't let you sleep. You hated having to use ear plugs, but the nurse offered them, and you had to take them. And even then, you couldn't stop having nightmares about carnivorous Jeeps or a history exam gone wrong, even though you were seven years out of college and just wanted to be able to drive a car without being scared. Or your father being scared. Or your father being dead.
John van Clouten
You blew it, jack-off! You blew it in Vegas. You blew it in Reno. You had tailcoats grabbing you by your flabby ass and flinging you out the door with slot machine debris in your hair. You ate playing cards for nourishment and choked on the queen of spades. You licked five dollar bills just to see how Honest Abe's green beard tasted. And through it all, you still maintained a smile, though honestly, I think that was from the cheap white powder in your bedroom. It was sugar, you asshat!
Mrs. Feingold
I don't remember your first name. Why the fuck don't I remember your first name? You wore lavender all the time. You even pinned it to a scarf when you had to wear what the nurses gave you. You were my third patient. I don't remember your first name. Why did you have to hemorrhage before I could ask you to remind me?
Donald the Drinking Manwhore
I don't forgive, and I don't forget. I don't forgive, and I don't forget. I don't forgive, and I don't forget. I don't forgive, and I don't forget. I don't forgive, and I don't forget. I don't
Zelda Macintire
There's an evil in this place that I can't comprehend. When you sat in the bathtub, you liked it best when the water was tinged blue from your cheap shampoo. You kicked your toes up just enough so that the prune-y wrinkles caught the florescent lighting. And you sang a little diddy from your north Kentucky hometown as if you only wanted me to hear it.
Do not ask me how I know all this. The crack in the wall, since you died in the same tub, has been masked with very, very strong duct tape.
Jules Gilbert
You used to be a violinist in New York, where you played every hall except for the ones with walls. You made a cat lady cry on the fire escape, and when the white vests took you in, you didn't want to communicate with anyone unless you could use your bow. You played for me a long time ago, when I called myself Cecily Burton, and I was married to Albert Burton who then fucked my sister and tried to kill me with a serrated knife that he was using to cut pugliese that would go with the tortellini.
Then you killed yourself. A lot of people kill themselves. But you wrote one last song and played it the night before, just for me. It was titled, "My Name is Yours."
And so it's mine. It's mine forever. Cecily Burton died sprawled across the porcelain, not Jules Gilbert. Albert Burton would cry and then choke on corn on the cob as his lover punched him in the back. The mailman down the street heard the spluttering, and when he walked in, there were kernels everywhere, and Cecily's sister was heating up popcorn within the dead man's stomach. She went crazier than I ever did, and I'll be the one playing the violin over her grave.
If only I knew how to play a violin.
If only I was familiar with a bow instead of a razor.
Help Me.
Raoul walked into the room and found an inkblot on the wall. When he got closer, he saw the razor blades spilled out of their box, with little fictions strewn against the tile. The one tagged, "Jules Gilbert," was stained. And the inkblot wasn't ink at all.
This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.
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