The Antichrist Drops a Mug on Our Kitchen Floor

Before, I drew pictures of what I thought the antichrist would look like. I’d fill pages and pages with mashed up black, dark lines curving and smudging. Once, a boy found me sitting in the grass behind the swings and knocked my sketchbook out of my hands.

There were so many nights alone, lighting the white candle first, then the black, and then the red, tethers to the sound of my own breath, my own rushing blood. I’d press a black quartz into my hands and wish and wish, feeling every jagged edge, squeezing tight.

He and his friends would follow me on the trail home after school, kicking me over and laughing. Then, different boys, and some girls, and sometimes at the same time. It would always end with me in my room, bruised or cut and crying until one, especially brazen, would knock on my front door. My father would answer while I yelled into a pillow to drown out the sounds of them telling him I was the problem, that I started every fight, and that he had to do something to get me under control, and it didn’t end the day I twisted one of their wrists until it broke. He showed up that night on my doorstep in a cast, and I watched him cry to my father through a crack in my blinds.

When the mug breaks on the tile floor I scream, long and loud. Michael watches me, eyes wide, and his mouth moves while he stretches toward me. I’m so sorry, he might be saying.

You’re crazy, the teacher said. The class laughed, and so did she, appearing to grow taller while they clapped. And you still believe in dragons. That night, again: the strike of a match, the rocking back and forth, the crying out.

I hear the sound of my voice, distant, floating above us.

Every knock was followed by a consequence.

Michael holds me from behind while I shake on the carpet. He smooths down my hair and whispers, almost inaudible. In this moment, so many wrists shatter into fragments of bone.

_____

Nicole Oquendo is a multimodal creator, editor, and witch. They are the author of five chapbooks and a hybrid memoir, as well a visual poetry collection that’s looking for a home. They are dealing with this prolonged moment of crisis by writing thinly-veiled speculative fanfiction. Follow them on Twitter @nicoleoq.