Vacation by Jeremy C. Shipp Page B

aren’t small, but the album still vibrates in her hand, due to its weight.
    I take it.
    I open it.
    These photos, I don’t want to describe. Not because you’re my parents, and I want to keep you from this specific suffering, but because I want to keep myself from suffering again. Even now, as I’m writing this, as I’m attempting to block out the images, they’re popping and bursting inside me. I see the faces. I see the eyes.
    “What is this?” I say.
    This is everything Mary Shelley’s monster did that she was too afraid to write down.
    This is Hemingway’s shattered romanticism.
    This is Mr. Hyde’s nightmare.
    “This is the world,” she says.
    There’s something worse than being tortured in hell.
    It’s being in hell, and left alone to watch.
    And I thought I knew guilt.
     
    I’m sitting on my bed when a banana peel flitters through the mouth of the room onto the ground at my feet. Then an old woman creeps inside. Her hair is a rainbow explosion with a different color for every spike. Her skin’s as wrinkled as mine.
    She hobbles over to me, and I raise my hand and open my mouth to warn her, but by then it’s too late. She slips on the banana peel.
    “Ah! My hip!” she says.
    “Oh god, are you okay?” I say.
    She sighs and stands, and brushes herself off. “You were supposed to laugh, honey.”
    “What?”
    “It’s called comic relief. God knows you need some right about now.” She pockets the banana peel and hops down onto my mattress. “The name’s Laetitia.” She holds out her hand.
    I take it, and my hand vibrates a little.
    She points her palm at me. Hand buzzer. “Alright, so you’re not a fan of the classics. I’ll make a note of it.”
    “My name’s Bernard.”
    “I know.” She pulls out a pad of paper and something small and black. Charcoal maybe. She starts drawing. Her eyes jump up and down. “I also know how you’re feeling. Because, honey, we all felt that way at first, like we don’t belong here. But that’ll change, if you stick with the program.”
    “I doubt that.”
    “So did I. So did all of us. Because growing up, we all label each other, and we label ourselves. We think we know our definitions and our limitations, but we don’t. We work our asses off to be the person we think we’re supposed to be, but the fact that we have to strive to be normal proves that we’re not. Honey, you haven’t the foggiest the man you could become.”
    I think of Krow and her transformation.
    No. I’m not that strong.
    “I’ll tell you what works for me,” she says, and her eyes still keep the beat as her fingers dance on the paper. “Humor. Humor’s a powerful weapon, and the fact that it’s underestimated is part of its power. Don’t demonize the enemy. Satirize him. When you make fun of an aspect of society, its authority is lost, and people will be more likely to change the way things are. The same goes for you. Laugh at yourself, and you’ll be better prepared to see yourself in a new light.” She flips the paper around.
    And here I am on the page. Caricaturized. Deformed and cross-eyed. A big giant head on a long skinny body with long skinny limbs.
    I don’t laugh, but I smile.
    “That’s the way, honey,” she says and stands. “Keep it up, and you’ll be one of us before you know it.”
    Now, I laugh.

Part 9
    I have to leave this place.
    Not because I want to go.
    But because I don’t.
    “That’s enough for today,” Noh told me. “Think about the pictures, and we’ll continue again tomorrow.”
    And now, I’m lying in bed, staring up at the earth, and this could be my coffin.
    But it could also be my cocoon.
    I’m on the verge of something.
    And once I cross that line, I don’t think I could find my way back.
    So I sneak out of my so-called room, and enter the Garden. One of the giant bulbs emits a faint glow. An inside moon for an inside garden.
    The only sound I hear is the rushing of air and dripping.
    I walk and pass by openings to