Dear Mother and Father,*

        I spoke with Ali today. Maybe it was the first time in years. Maybe it was the first time that we’d ever actually spoken at all. Either way. She told me some things that I thought you should know.

Prostitutes, ******, what have you. They’re not born, they’re created.

         Focus on this. Your white picket fence. Your barbecue, your big family dog. Your pristine, rich neighborhood. Your uppity gossip. Your rules, judgements, “charity.”

         Behind your closed doors, however, dwells something else.

         Something like hypocrisy. Something like abuse.

Now focus on this.

         Ali: dark and brooding, even as a small child. Questioning all of your family values, the ones that I had merely accepted.

         My little sister, the ultimate judge, the supreme *****.

         Forbidden black fingernails, black hair; fingernails, which you forced pink, hair that you insisted blond. Friends that you deemed “greasy” and “unsavory”.

         Hateful, teenage Ali. Ditching classes to go off with boys. Returning home with track marks and glossy eyes. Sneaking out with no destination, if only to not be at the one place she couldn’t be herself.

         Home.

Now, this. That awful “it’s not to late to save your soul” camp. A reform jail. Holier than thou epithets. Squeaky clean repentance. A stockade full of higher authority telling her, “you’re wrong,” telling her, “we are going to fix you.”

         Brain washing robots with backhanded facades.

         Sad, scared Ali. It’s no wonder she chose to rebel, for all she knew of authority was hypocrisy.

         Not just you.

         Instead, a withered, sick janitor.

         The old man who brought her the food that they didn’t serve in the dinning quarters. Fresh fruit, chocolate, and cheese. Food to outweigh the everyday gruel.


         This lonely, forlorn man expecting compensation in return. ****** compensation; unimaginable and certainly ungodly acts.

         This Janitor, he would wander into Ali's room in the early hours of the morning. . . And vanish, several hours later.

        His pockets, empty. His heart, full.

         In this sick and twisted world, the janitor believed that love could exist anywhere. He believed that romantic relationships should not be constricted by something as trivial as age.

         And Ali, she had alternative motives, and compensated her innocence to reach them.

         This was, perhaps, the beginning of Ali's stark career.

         The *compensation of her soul.

         Or, perhaps, it was the man that picked her up next, as a desperate hitchhiker.

         Ali, who finagled the nun’s keys and escaped that ungodly place forever.

         Ali, who climbed into a sinister car with a pretentious man who warped her in more ways than one would even imagine.

         Penniless, solitary, and willing.

         But, think. What would you do with yourself if you had absolutely nothing and no one to lose?

         **Prostitutes, ******, what have you. They’re not born, they’re created.

​​     I was ten years old when I wrote it.
One lone sentence. A sentence that would become my mantra; the sentence that defines my existence.

I wish I were dead.

I first wrote it in my journal. Then a couple days later, I wrote it again. Then again. And again and again and again. Until eventually, the pages had all been claimed. Each line on each page reiterated one phrase – I wish I were dead.

Although I was merely a fourth grader, this was no passing phrase (get it?). Ten years separate me from that lone sentence, yet I am ready as ever.

​I wish I were dead. I wish I were dead. I WISH I WERE DEAD.

​This is how I feel six days out of seven.
I can no longer count the number of failed attempts, the static loony-bin trips, the hospital hopping routine – a process I’ve memorized verbatim.

Can’t say how many times I’ve survived these garbage disposals for the insane.

You’d think if I really wanted to die, I’d be dead already. Yet, in a bizarre manner, not even the Grim Reaper wants me. I’ve consumed rat poison and lived, rolled my mom’s car and escaped without a scratch, tumbled from heights so high, yet – here I am.

One night, last summer, I mixed molly with coke with ****** with so much liquor – because liquor is quicker – thinking for certain I’d orchestrated my demise. Some of my friends were squatting in this foreclosed house, so there was no electricity, and I spent hours playing Sims with some girl in the dark.

Eventually, my computer died – but I didn’t.

The list goes on.

On this list, there’s one night I’ll never forget; an attempt that far outweighs the others. A night I’ll forever regret. The night I came face to face with the grim reaper, for the first and only time, and somehow turned away.

This is how it went.



​     The Last Supper was comprised of 150 assorted pills, and some secondhand Jack Daniels.
​
I ate alone. I’d exchanged dining hall for bathroom; chair for bathtub. I held one lone utensil – a razor blade – nestled safely in my hand. Cradling the blade like a child who found the cookie jar – the way my boyfriend worshiped a fresh syringe of ******; I snuggled that sacred utensil.

I failed to savor this Last Supper – for dine and dash would more appropriately summarize my actions. I ravaged the meal as a stray dog would raw meat. Gagging and choking, whilst feeling nothing at all.

All those pills, that jack, I poured into a jar and chugged like a freshman in college. (Get it?) The most unconventional supper you ever did see.

My makeshift chair filled slowly with water like concrete – and soon I’d be buried alive. So I squeezed the razor tight, pretending it was a loved one’s hand instead.

​Yet – nothing happened.

I considered my lone utensil – the blade – then laughed, and threw it aside. How high school of me – a time when I confused my wrist with a cutting-board. Oh, silly me; my insides could do the work without external additions.

​However, the nausea hit before I’d relinquished consciousness. I feared I would toss my cookies – ones stolen from the cookie jar – before they could toss me.

​An important factor to note is this was not my house. It belonged to my boyfriend’s aunt. And although she was not home – he was. Earlier, I’d thrown a knife at his head and told him I was glad Morgan died, to ensure he’d leave me be, but now I was bored and nauseous and so I got up and left the Last Supper to pursue a bad cliché I just died in your arms tonight.
​ What happened next is not important – I’ll fast-forward to what is.

The first to come was a young girl.
​She wore her blonde hair in two braids. Her tiny body, adorned in a loose, blue dress. Her feet were sheathed in neat white socks beneath modest, black slippers; slippers that matched her headband. A headband to cradle her mind.

​Her existence stupefied mine – for I knew at once who she was. And I was terrified.

This girl was coasting her eighth birthday. A birthday she’d never reach.

And yet – she was as wise as I am thin; far wiser than my nineteen-year-old self. She never spoke, but there was no need. Everyone talks, but seldom is speech genuine. Only in actions can we find the truth.

I’d waited my whole life for her. My true, beloved best friend. A girl as imaginary as could be.

Alison Wonderland.

Unfortunately, she had no intention of staying. She had no interest in my world; she’d only come to take me to hers. She’d come to take me away. Far away. Away so far I could never return.

This time – finally – I’d be gone for good.

My whole life I’d waited; now, she’d finally come. Not to join my life. She’d come to watch me die.

We both knew my lifespan would hardly outlast the hour.

Collapsed within a shower, I floundered for words. Separated from her by a mere pane of glass. She was so close. And yet, I was far from happy – I’d nearly surpassed hyperventilation. Literally stunned to death.

This beautiful angel maintained composure, however; unaltered by my frigid welcome. An unwavering smile illustrated her entire physic, whilst she offered her hand to mine – arm outstretched and waiting.

The ultimate invitation.

However, we were not alone. Not two, but three souls occupied this bathroom. The bathroom of my Last Supper.

On my side of the glass was a man. A man I knew. A man I loved. A man whose manhood was verified by little more than age – 25. Whilst numbers generally distinguish between childhood, adolescence, or adulthood, he was much more a boy than a man. His maturity – vastly negated by defining characteristics. You see, this 25-year-old boy was also a pathological liar, a sociopath, and a ****** addict. He was the stranger your mommy warned you not to talk to – and he was my boyfriend.

My boyfriend, our third addition, was christened Daniel no-middle-name Rodden. An alias more accurately spelled Rotten – which I knew, but refused to accept. So instead, he was just Danny.

Anyways.

I surrendered consciousness slowly. I was crumpled, trembling and mumbling, grappling to sit up or speak.

With all my strength I pointed, terrified and confused, at Alison.

“How is she here?” I wanted to scream. “How’d she get in? What’s happening?”

“What are you talking about?” Danny’s voice wondered. “There’s no one out there. I promise I promise.”

He must have been blind. For Alison remained, hand outstretched, waiting and waiting.

However, Danny Rotten and Alison Wonderland could not see each other. Nor could they hear or feel one another. They existed within uncorrelated dimensions. They were, in fact, entirely irrelevant to one another, compromised by one single factor. Me. Because not only was I physically dying – directly between them (monkey in the middle?) – my consciousness floundered amidst their two wonderlands.

But this was temporary, for we all knew I had less than an hour to make a choice; a life with this toxic boy, or a death with this loving girl. Death, which I’d coveted since I was ten. This decision could not be undone; I could not keep them both.

I never took this hand I was offered – Alison Wonderland’s – I clung to Danny instead. A decision I’ll forever regret. But I had yet to meet the Grimm Reaper.

Somehow, I’d been transported back into the bathtub. I sat back at the table of my Last Supper. Only, this time, I was not to dine alone.
I remember Danny’s face – if only for a split second – covering mine. His handsome, Spanish features contorted in fear; even mussed and wet, his dark hair swam across his forehead with graceful finesse.

On his face I’d never seen such emotion, nor will I ever again.

Drifting in and out of consciousness, I lost sight of that face. I knew he was speaking, perhaps even yelling, his physic – inches from my own. But then, the stampede arrived, trampling him whole.

Empty handed, Alison might have left. But this evaded me.

For into the room poured innumerable intruders. My ghostly escort, it would appear. Some spoke to me, some avoided. Some set up a poker game in the corner – waiting on my choice – whilst others conjured chairs like rabbits from a hat. Chairs they set up around this bathtub. Enveloped in bodies, my Final Supper had become a banquet of sorts. Danny tried to hand me a bucket, to throw up my poison, but I was so weak I couldn’t have held it had I wanted to.

Out of all these people – souls I presumed dead – I recognized only two faces.

Preston and Henry. Two boys I knew – and although ****** addicts, they were alive and well. Not ghosts like the rest. However, within the next two weeks those two would both overdose and nearly die.

Coincidence? I think not. Yet, I digress.  

That was when he appeared, for above the bathtub stood a window. Outside that window, I glimpsed a man. A man I’d been chasing since I was ten.

Mister Grimm. I remember not his attire, nor any defining details, only the expression on his face as his eyes singed my own. Complete and utter hatred and malice, with fatal intentions. He looked to me as his arch nemesis – and had I invited him in, he would have given me what I’d always wanted. I knew this to be true.

I knew also that, although Alison had appeared to be the defining choice, she was not. This man was. And in that pivotal moment, I began to scream.

I screamed for Danny – to make this Grimm go away, to tell him to leave.

Danny did. And when I next looked up, the man was no more. Gone, too, was everyone else. I took Danny’s bucket, hurled, and knew no more.

This is one night I’ll never forget; an attempt that far outweighs the others. The night I came face to face with the grim reaper, for the first and only time, and somehow turned away. A night I’ll forever regret. Sometimes, however, I wonder if it was not mister Grim I was looking at, but Danny’s reflection: the monster he soon became.

Or, perhaps, it was not a male I saw in that window.

Perhaps, It was myself.

When I was six, my grandmother enrolled me in ballet class.

     This choice was the first of many attempts to negate my tomboyish nature. Perhaps, she’d hoped that instead of collecting insects and cutting apart Barbie dolls, the pirouettes and glitzy attire might spin me. I was spun, eventually, but that had nothing to do with dance.

     Blame it on my peers; blame it on the tutus. Truth be told, my time was generally spent out of sight; but I got my kicks sneaking a reptiles home, playing with dinosaurs - never dolls, or - of course - taming earwigs. Alone.

     I don’t remember the classes, or the other little girls. In fact, the sole (no pun intended) impression left behind by those dance classes was why they'd end.
It was to be my first recital. The whole class had been coaxed into flashy leotards and uncomfortable tights. We’d been instructed to skip in a single file line onto the stage, which catalyzed my predicament, as I hadn’t a clue about the routine.

     As the girl preceding me danced into view, I floundered in terror – my turn had arrived. I fumbled along in her wake, passing the curtain and reaching the stage.

     The stage!

     An arena of ruthless lights, unveiling my anonymity. I faltered in terror, registering the audience registering me. How vast the auditorium looked against my tiny body! Betrayed by those blinding stage lights, I cowered at the mercy of the whole world.

     The instructor, a faceless female, was showing whose boss as girls began skipping around me.

    And yet, there I stood. Petrified that moving forward negated any hope of escape. My proximity to the curtain merited two options... the bright side of the curtains, which would soon claim everyone else in the vicinity, or the dark. I engaged in a mental game of Tug-a-war that lasted all of about half a second.

     The dark curtains won.

     So, dodging around the obnoxious ballerinas, I descended back into safety. It mattered not where I went, as long as I put distance between myself and the audience. Distance between myself, and detection.

     At some point, I discovered a backstage crevice, in which darkness sheathed me. For, even at five, I understood dark and safety to be synonyms.

     So, I crawled inside, and I hid.

     I don’t remember who went seeking. Nor, do I know who found me. Nobody is a possibility; it was an “Ollie, Ollie, Oxen Free” forfeit, perhaps. A rule that defeats the point of its own game. For at six, I was young enough to obey that “come out, come out, wherever you are” nonsense. But, such rules were dropkicked long ago.

     For, your existence – dear hide-and-seek – all but defines me. This game, that darkness, possesses my psyche.

     Some days, I ponder the uncertainty of memories. Vexed, for where memory dies, illusions are born. Illusions romanticizing reality – a reality in which I never came out, lost and unfound, a reality in which I’ll never come out, out, wherever I am. Hidden beneath the darkness.

     For, in truth, I have been hiding ever since.

That Old Drug Checklist? Completed. No Shame. So get over it.

(It's rather colloquial, however, revealings as well. This is what I said to a boy from driver's ed who wanted to be my boyfriend... So I tried to scare him off. Hahaha. **Rationale a la 15-year-old):

Maple: It's not exactly something I talk about, ever, because it just demonstrates my insanity. But, I want to try everything. Every substance, every drug.

Justin: Um, why?

Maple: Why not?

Justin: Well, cause it’s bad.

Maple: If you believe in good or bad, right or wrong. I don't know what I believe except that we're all robots of each other and nothing matters anyways.

Justin: Hmm, that’s a different way of thinking about it. I think that curiosity isn't bad, just be careful. . .

Maple: I don't know if I am, but, meh. Is there really any good reason to do anything?

Justin: Umm, no, not really. It’s what you feel, not what others feel. Well. . . just be careful.

Maple: Safety is a conspiracy.

Justin: Why do you say that?

Maple: Think about it. You can insure everything you own, walk on the right side of the road and follow strong Christian morals that give the illusion of safety, as if you’ll go to heaven if you’re good and hell if you’re bad. But, with one fire, one plane crash. . . well it's all gone. The entirety of you. And who even knows if there is that insured heaven anyways?

Justin: Hmm, you know I think that the way you think is very interesting and mostly true, I mean, nothing is ever completely safe. You can't always be careful, but I also think that you should use this and try to live life to its fullest.

Maple: Thank you. But what is living life to it's fullest? Everyone always says that, but what does it mean?

Justin: Well, like you, I know that what you’re doing is unhealthy, but your not afraid to try different things. You experience more then anyone else, cause most people play it safe in their comfort zone.

Maple: Exactly! Always judging but never trying. Society has made these things into taboos, but are they really? I know that getting addicted is a terrible idea, but everything in moderation. Why always sit on the sidelines making assumptions behind whispered hands and backs? Why not jump into the game?

Justin: Yep, that’s right. You can't sit there say that’s bad or you should do this if you haven't done it yourself. Because if you haven't, you don't know what it’s like and you’re being hypocritical.

. . .

Maple: Um. . . Says the boy who just told me not to do drugs “cause it’s bad.”

“I have something for you to remember me by,” said Tim.

    He held a little foam Hippo – the lone play animal supplied by the loonybin to patients in need.

     It was brand new – just as every Hippo looked – and I wondered why he’d chosen something seemingly impersonal in comparison to his other, odd gifts.

     However, what he did next made his hippo – my hippo – absolutely ideal. To people like Tim and I, that is.

     For, to my astonishment, he casually took the toy in his hands, twisted, and ripped it cleanly  in two.

     He ripped off its head, which he gave to me, whilst he kept the body.

    I will never get rid of that mutilated, foam hippo head. For he understood what no one else had ever come near.

     In this way – perhaps – Tim and I became synonyms. Synonyms for what ignorant perceptions would later christen ******, or merely, crazy (the latter - coined by those who remain too depressingly colloquial to invent unfounded diagnoses).

     These epithets, catalyzed post personifying such societal taboos as Tim or I committed, follow me still, and have yet to disperse.
  
     A criticaster disaster, personified.

     Yes; in this way – Tim and I became synonymously insane.


•

She frolicked through trouble, and dandled with mischief. Alison Wonderland; everything I wished I was and so much more. Ever emanating her doe-eyed façade; proclaiming our jests mere “mischief.”
Yet, an unspoken verdict (Foretaste? Conception? Notion?) had cloaked the truth: wickedness rippled beneath our parade.
I nuzzled her contours; my peripheral eye – nailed to her profile, her blueprints, her chassis. I stalked her mirage – dancing with vapor.
She glissaded about, no fool to my truth, varnishing my mantle.
I belonged to Alison: perpetually at her side. Our couplet became a “we.” So, We regretted nothing. We veered for the pyre: caroming(skimming?) those embers alit with vice.
She narrated my mental seminar. Discarding my dogmas to uphold her own; and thus, my mind was hers.
My mind was her mind.
Alison made heads turn, and mouths water, as we sidled – hand in hand – down the street. She was my Christmas morning: each colloquium – giftwrapped with finesse. She personified paradise, she illustrated utopia. Hatching our Carnival; netting us, enamored, sidling the Carousal. We’d skim, we’d sail, her halo – my fossil. Her lips, her eyes, her hands… they echoed the innocence of a child. Niave, innocent, and giftwrapped in wonder.
Little Miss Wonderland: my very own fairytale. She was mine alone; she was mine to keep.
Did I want her, or did I want to be her?
Alison Wonderland.
Her aura – so celestial – paralleled my prose. When she banished my husk – Maple Thatcher – I cackled good riddance… And I grew a new personality to accommodate her own.
For, without Ali – devoid of our we – I doubted the very existence of me.
On my composition, she bestowed rhythm. She gave tune to my silence; her chimes, her cadence. My ink was her song – fusing a symphony. A symphony of Alison: the melody to solidify our tryst.
My mind was her mind.
And yet… somehow, I missed a carriage – or two – aboard her train of thought. For, the same felon spiting my existence, was the angel I loved to life. Gladly, I huffed, and I puffed, and I blew Maple down.
Fused against Alison, I needed none of Maple.
Carnival infatuations…

Alison Wonderland.

Regressing into happenstance
I grasped the Rabbit in my hand
One sip I took, upon a chance
Off the edge, into quicksand. . .

Blacking out on your front lawn
On the ground, where you could stand
Can’t remember dusk or dawn,
Sinking fast into quicksand.

From: Daniel Rodden

This notice is from Daniel Rodden who is currently residing in Garfield jail. This is an informational email to let you know of the different options available for communication with Daniel Rodden. Several services offered by the jail:

InmateCanteen.com
The following options are available at Inmate Canteen.
Deposit Funds
Purchase Phone Cards
Buy Canteen
Video Visitation*
E-mail an Inmate

I sat up in bed, wide awake.

Mere seconds separated my dreams from reality. Yet, consciousness had seized me more effectively than ice water.

I had been caged within sleep, until something ridiculous happened.  

Something ridiculous, and something real.

I sprang from the covers, pulled on a sweater, and burst out the door. All around me was silent. Life, it seemed, was not yet awake.

I took a deep breath, and began running. I ran so fast my surroundings blurred into a pallet of color; the sound, still muted.

My feet flew across the dewy grass.

I imagined myself into smaller, simpler spaces; tucked in with the ghosts. How fast could I run from my dreams? How fast could I run towards reality?

If the grass had soaked my socks, I barely knew. If the wind had serenaded my skin, I remained disembodied. The alexithymia of consciousness.

My thoughts snaked and swerved and collided in my head, but in that stretch of oblivion, a lone inference guided me.

Nothing mattered in the world but one thought.

Wake up, Maple. Wake up.

The House of Addictions was the epithet I chose.

It nestled several blocks from mine, and was the type of estate that demanded normalcy.

Upon reaching the front hedge, I examined the house; two blue paneled stories. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but this wasn’t it.

I coaxed the front door.

Locked.

I circled around to the backyard. The room I sought was on the second level. I ascended the balcony onto the porch; the room’s window stood several feet from where I could stand. There was a vacant flowerbox sitting on a ledge outside the window.

Without question, I clambered onto the deck’s railing and extended my leg into the flower box. It was a long way to fall, but I wasn’t scared. I had no choice. I clung with all my might to the window’s ledge, shifted my weight to the flowerbox leg, and plopped over the other. A scream frozen in my throat. Breathing heavily, a death grip on my perch, I crouched; the box seemed sturdy enough.

I peered through the window.

At this ungodly hour, he was most likely still asleep.

Unless.

The bed was vacated. Did this mean? I closed my eyes, took a breath.

Wake up.

Things like this did not happen – plain and simple.

A minute later, after clambering off the flowerbox and scampering back down the stairs, I rejoined the street, sprinting along with renewed vigor.

The sun glistened on the grass, the morning, ripening. Yet, I heard not the sound of birds chattering on secluded sycamores, nor my feet pattering along the sidewalk. I was immaterial. I was the wind – gliding fluidly towards that which waited.

My body was to be found at a stoplight, punching the button spastically.

But my mind had already arrived, several streets away.

The stoplight changed. I ran. Stores whizzed by, early morning traffic sheathed the street. I had to slow my thoughts, I had to separate from the stark possibilities that incased me.

I’d dreamed of his death; simple, like the twelve forget-me-nots he threw across my floor five years ago. The last expression I saw as he departed still had yet to leave his face.

Although he moved home a year ago, he never really returned.

Wake up.

I veered my course to the left, dodging through traffic, and found the street.

It was there that my mind had arrived.

This avenue was vacated and tranquil, an eclipse of the earlier. And there was that house; green and silent as ever.

Clutching a stitch in my stomach, I dove over the waist high fence and tripped on my own foot. I fell, scraping my elbows on concrete and swearing beneath my breath, but I couldn’t stop. I scrambled to my feet and staggered towards a ground levelled window.

Exhausted, I tripped again. Then several strangled events laced together. First, I tumbled to that window. I held my hands out, expecting to hit glass, but realized too late that it was open. Before that fully registered, I was toppling – headfirst – through the open window. My insides plummeted, muting my scream. I hit the bed with a sharp thump, before it tossed me to the floor.

There, I landed, **** first, mute and sprawling.

While my body congealed, my heart auditioned as drummer, and stars teased my peripheral.

The room materialized as I blinked through confusion. Softy, I sat myself upright.

His eyes were the first thing I saw.

Reality zapped me so hard I almost fell back again; he was alive, I’d woken up.

Then my senses caught up; my elbows cried, my head throbbed, and my breath rekindled in ragged crackles. As if a switch was flicked, I suddenly identified sound; the humming of cars outside, the crisp ticking of a clock, the gurgling of his fish tank. So loud – so distinct. Color sharpened and brightened.

My mind in overdrive.

He was here.

He sat on his bed, alive and well, speechless with alarm.

Oliver was shirtless, lidded only by flannel pants and black gloves. He considered me with bleeding elbows, disheveled hair, and desperate eyes. Then, the shock on his face gave way for a giant grin.

“Come here often?” He inquired. His voice, raspy with morning.

Still panting and shaking, I conjured a smile to match Oliver's.

“You’d think so. . .” I choked.

“And I’d be right, Maple.” He finished. I managed a laugh.

Nothing had changed.