Dedun
by Lili Koi
Copyright © 2010 Lili Koi
Smashwords Edition
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
Dedun is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and incidents appearing in this work are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. This is a work of fiction, and the author does not endorse or condone any behavior done to another human being without their consent.
This ebook contains explicit material suited only for adults and is intended for those over 18 years of age.
Contact: lilikoi2@yahoo.com
Staring at a world through thick round-rim glasses, his eyes, curly lashes and irises so brown, blink but unsure, still question.
Tyler, blink and show nothing.
Tyler, blink and grow anger.
Anti-psychotics and anti-depressants float in Tyler's blood and autism is the label he wears.
Dedun, so Tyler says, tells him to be mad. Like a court jester, jingling its bells, laughing and taunting, Dedun is a spirit who lives inside Tyler and together they live in a carefully painted purple and green flat-roof Victorian farm house on Pig Hill Road. Once the only modest house for miles around, it was joined with a much finer dwelling that mysteriously burned on Flanders Road some fifty years back on a forgotten hilltop in upstate New York. Assembled from salvage and thus born with a questionable, if not haunted heritage, this beastly twin castle squats close to the pavement where it shares some footage with great dying elms, maples and poplars that stand, on either side of the road, grasping each others limbs.
The Pig Hill farm, some 400 acres, was once splendid, full of cows, alfalfa, and brome grass. Said to be named after a spilled cart of pigs, Pig Hill Road was a gravel path connecting three dairy barns, seven fields, and a Church. Feudal in the sense of one ownership and many workers, this lush piece of heaven was the pride of western Montmore County. People were said to visit, by car or by horse, in the 1930’s after leaving Flanders Air Field five or six miles away, just to take in the view.
Now, the barns and church are gone. The realm of Pig Hill, subdivided by stupid greedy heirs, is littered with mobile homes, modular homes, and blue Morton tin shacks. The road, paved but forever growing potholes, is a secret beer route to the local convenient mart.
Every day and night, cars roar past the purple and green farm house, neglecting to heed the bright yellow and black road marker- the deaf child sign- thus refusing to slow for the child-man standing, on the road’s shoulder, thrusting his fist at the air - the child-man named Tyler.
It is August 3, 2010. Autumn is near. And the summer sky, never bluer, sits too low over the bowing sunflowers lining the ditches of this Pig Hill road.
From within the purple and green farm house’s whore red Victorian den, the renegade blues, Tom Waits and Asie Peyton, sifted through months of rote listening, wail and shake the painted home.
We are gathered on the purple and green porch, under the maples and elms. I “thirty something” have grown to like my “forty something” neighbors. Memories, and now alliances are important to us all, as we watch our lives fade.
Despite the fear of growing old, Tyler’s Mommy says above the musical din, “We live in a finely restored rich man’s farm house on a road once dirt, now paved yet still rural. We have two dogs that run free and chase cars on this ever popular route to the beer store. We collect antiques, many of them, they are dry relics filled with better times. We restored this purple and green house from ruins, and we collect antiques because they have meaning; because they have a story and we like stories even though we are only in our forties, we like stories and we like to tell them too.”
Mommy’s shrill voice rises. Tension dries her tongue. She pours another brandy.
Another song, another track, Asie Peyton switches to Tom Waits.
Tyler's mommy shakes her henna rinsed head. Licking the film of brandy from her lips, she then holds her snifter elegantly, maintaining a seductive pose and stares.
Jester Dedun doesn’t approve of Mommy's sexual appeal. Mommies shouldn't look like that.
Tyler rocks, standing boldly in front of us, thrusting his fist back and forth across his girth. Tyler hovers over his mommy. She winces at Tyler's forceful motions and breathes deep. Tyler leans into his mother and swings his fists near her face like a sickle shearing grass, over and over. I grip my chair's arm, waiting for an explosion of words or worse from Tyler.
Terror always begins with a dull beat of a strangled heart, Dedun Dedun....or a warm temple throbbing... Dedun Dedun. Then the back of the head, cramping with a heat, boils like eggs trembling on a hot stove. The head, Tyler's head, expects the neck to tighten, and the blood vessels to break. The popping of eggs over-boiled cry DEDUN, DEDUN.
Dedun coos to me. Jester Dedun has lived with Tyler since he was five, and she follows Tyler like a curse. Always laughing. I am Dedun. I will always be yours and Tyler's friend.
Dedun thrives upon our panic. Sensitive to the anguish that lives in this painted house, Dedun appears whenever terror arises. Always averting a fight between Tyler and Mommy, I know Dedun feels my panic and surely feels Mommy's. I was Tyler’s and Dedun's friend for over a year and Dedun's voice always followed me home.
Tonight Tyler’s Mommy sips Corvasier and she has me as “company.” Mommy also has her husband Mark and Mark loves Tyler. So does Mommy, but Mommy never talks to Tyler.
Tyler’s Mommy, as if an actress explaining her plight continues to say to me, “We’re from Pennsylvania. Not New York. Tyler is my second child. His father was a small time mafioso in Pittsburgh. He beat me. Tyler’s father was my second husband and I was afraid to leave him because I knew he would have me killed. Tyler looks like his dad. He is dark, muscular and hot tempered and very strong. Tyler is twenty-three. I left Tyler's father with the help of a friend who was eventually murdered. Boy do I have a crazy life or what?”
Mark interrupts and says this about Mommy, “I loved her since I was in grade school. I knew what kind of shit she was in and it didn’t matter. I married her. Have been married to her for sixteen years and I adopted Tyler. The little fuck. I love him but I tell you it’s getting tougher to deal with him and his shit. You know if it was me, I would just hit the mother fucker good, just once, and then it would be all over. Tyler would understand that he can’t just do shit the way he wants. He can’t just break things and holler. He can’t just hurt my wife.”
Tyler pounds his left fist against his right hand. The callouses formed from so many self-inflicted blows, from the impact of hand hitting hand, turns his weathered skin brown to red.
Dedun mumbles to Tyler, “Seniors don’t act like that”.
Tyler rocks on the carefully restored porch. His dark hairy legs beat against their feet. Back and forth the sneakers rock. Tyler's walking shorts, dark with fresh urine, slap against his skin. Tyler's spine clicks with the repeated snapping of his head. Down and up, and down he throws his head. Tyler's chin prods his chest, his body heaves with insult until I think he is going to retch. Then Tyler's fists collide.
Slap. Slap.
“Seniors don’t act like that!” Tyler says and grabs his crotch with a bruised hand and touches himself. Flipping his penis side to side, Tyler assures himself that he is still there. Tyler sighs.
Dedun whispers, “That feels good.”
Upon the painted porch I am seated on a metal garden rocking chair. The chair is certainly Victorian for my hair is caught in its intricate metal lace. Tyler’s Mommy sits to my left. I and Mark sit opposite, he upon an antique tavern bench. Tyler between us, rocks and boxes the air. Leaning into me, Tyler's wet, pee soaked shorts brush my knees.
“Go on Tyler, move back,” I say, pushing Tyler away.
Tyler thrusts his bruised hand into his pants deep into his rear and rubs it in his crack. He pulls his hand from behind himself and tries to touch my eyes with the same hand. Tyler's own eyes twinkle, he giggles at me through his steamy eye glasses. “Eyes, eyes,” he snickers.
Mommy and Mark protest, “Tyler we have guests!”
Tyler giggles more, his eyes narrow and he backs away from me.
I shrug, for Tyler has always been fascinated with my eyes, and has tried to poke them out many times.
So used to averting crisis, so trained by Mommy to behave as if her son, her Tyler is normal, Mark drinks another micro-brewed beer. The alcohol dampens Mark's instinct to react and pads his stomach with useless weight.
Tyler’s mommy tells me she loves me. I am their only friend.
And all the while I know I have seen the Jester Dedun in their house. I know, it’s an exaggeration of the senses. Maybe too much wine. But I tell you, here in this painted house, painted dark slime green, with everything dark green like forest moss, the trim, the doors, and the walls whore house red- all the house is painted as if to cover what can not be hidden. Jester Dedun, the strange clown living within Tyler dances in the corner of my eyes. Dedun is in the delicate antique Staffordshire dogs laughing and in the rotted flowers dusting the rooms. Dedun is the detail in the Victorian lace table clothes, the reflection in the exquisite glass oil lanterns that leak. Dedun is in Tyler’s laughter that unnerves the room and never lets you sit too long. Dedun follows me home and haunts my dreams, Dedun, so she says, is my friend too.
Mark has seen Dedun too, although his description doesn’t fit mine. Mark's is an awareness of another spirit, one brooding and vengeful.
I asked Tyler earlier that day, feeling clever, I asked, who lives in his painted house. I said, “Mommy, Mark, Tyler and? Who else lives here?”
Tyler didn’t reply.
Later, I took Tyler on a walk to divert his anger. He had tried to hit his mother again. I never thought Tyler would hit me. He never hit his caregivers at Program, so, me, a friend of Mommy but still a stranger, was probably safe. Tyler and I crossed the seven acre lawn behind the house, past the herb garden and bird houses, the roses, and the hemp. Me bare foot. Tyler in his shorts and sneakers, pulled his toy, a Fischer Price tug-along wagon. Resembling a steam roller, the toy was given to Tyler some fifteen odd years ago by a flea market merchant. Tyler yanked his roller toy and then dragged it. Back and forth the toy flew as we paced around the field.
Again I asked, “Tyler is everything okay? Is someone in the house bothering you?”
Tyler mumbles but doesn’t reply. He draws his stare upward so all I see are his eye whites.
Dedun finally laughs, “Yes.”
Then we come back to the house and again we settle outside on the porch. Mommy had decided to acrylic seal her new kitchen's black and white tile floor so all of the furniture was on her faux marble-finished porch. Dried flowers, folk-painted furniture, Windsor chairs and dried eucalyptus fronds that kept the air smelling sweet, provided the evening with a green, wispy comfort.