From: sienna@yabbs
To: all@yabbs
Subject: Matter of Perception II
Date: Wed Jul  6 21:17:10 1994

Here is part two......


    Sighing, Jenna rose from the windowseat, and walked up the back 
stairwell to her old bedroom. Sitting in a corner on the floor, she rested 
her chin upon her knees, unaware of the tears which were falling down her 
cheeks.
    "Here," she thought, "here is my childhood, which I am not intended to 
escape." Its smallness and meanness seemed destined to follow her always. 
She stared up at the ceiling, in that room where her childhood had 
happened, and in her mind she could hear the old screams, the grunts and 
shrieks of pain and passion. *THIS* was the bedrock, the very foundation 
of who Jenna Peters had become....and herchildhood seemed to reach forth 
and touch her with a deathly cold finger.

    Jenna felt these things with very little emotion. She supposed that 
that calm, passive state was a dull version of what most people felt all 
of the time. 
    "It is probably what they call sanity.....sanity is what takes over 
when you get too tired for anything else," she sighed.

    Sitting in that corner, her memories came crashing down upon her. Her 
father had become ten feet tall, and every one of his breaths drained all 
the air from her own lungs. His screams bruised her ears. She could still 
hear her father's huge, punishing voice. The world belonged to people like 
her father, while people like her lived in its potholes and corners.

    Jenna could still hear him screaming at her, in front of the priest, 
in front of the mourners, in front of her fiance. She could hear his 
accusations, feel them like stabs from a sharp dagger...."You killed her! 
You killed her, she worried herself to death over you, Jenna! You are 
worthless! You are nothing! You are dead to me!" Jenna cringed as she 
remembered the shame. She heard his voice, and she felt astonishingly 
small. Her father's voice had the power to pound her into childhood, and 
instantly she was three feet tall and helpless. But these experiences, 
too, can be sealed within a leaden casket, and pushed overboard into the 
great psychotic sea. They are aberrations, silent and brutal exceptions to 
a general rule.

    "What makes anything great?" she asked the ceiling. In her mind, 
understanding is what made anything great. Depth of understanding. 
Unbelieveable responsiveness to detail linked to amazing clarity of 
vision. Sometimes it felt like the world was beginning to shred at the 
corners. The sense of gloom was undeniable for her. She was separate, and 
she became lost in her separation. She remembered her sins, her 
meagerness, her misery. There is something about death which intrigued 
her. Something which burned deep inside. And then her own face appeared 
before her. The first sensation was that of being on the fuzzy edge of 
sleep. Then the layers began. For some they are layers of color and light. 
For Jenna Peters, she seemed to rise endlessly through scenes of ehr own 
life: She saw herself playing in the leaves, making snowballs,
doing homework...trying desperately to please her father...and she cried 
out, having seen the littleness of her own figure and the foolishness of 
all her joys, for they are so harmless yet so damaging. 

    "Maybe this is where my destiny lies," she said, as she picked up the 
razor blade. 
    "I am coming Momma," she whispered. "I am coming home."




(c)1994
Dee