Abdiel: The Petty Tyranny of Trauma

A 9 Story Hotel Side Story Short from Lost And Found

A brief glimpse into the history of Abdiel, byproduct of the 9 Story Hotel

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Momma gave birth to a ginger.

Cute as a bug, tufts of pomelo hair and lime green eyes. All fingers and toes accounted for.

There wasn't a lick of Irish in Abdiel's parental lineage. They were all olive skinned black curled Sicilians, born in the swamps and raised by gators, ancestors of the 1890s New Orleans lynchings. At least that's what Daddy would have you believe.

But Momma gave birth to a ginger, and Daddy knew why. He gathered Abdiel's three older sisters and left to live with their Nan. His last words to his wife, words she made sure to repeat to Abdiel every year on his birthday, "I won't have my girls livin’ with no hole riddled whore and I sure as shit ain't raisin her spawn".

Abdiel was two days old.

Momma crawled into a bottle the day Daddy left and stayed there ‘til it drowned her twenty years later. She stood by her fidelity until the day she died, insisting Abdiel was a product of demonic possession, herself a hapless victim of unspecified satanic forces. The black hole to her dying star. She never wasted an opportunity to remind Abdiel that he was the product of sin, and it was his duty to absolve himself of that sin by honoring God through service to his mother, the saintly woman who gave up her family to keep him and raise him. Mary Magdalene, sinner redeemed, awaiting her salvation.

Abdiel spent the first decade of his life catering to Momma's every need, walking to the store for rolling papers and making her dinner of rice and beans with sugar and hot sauce. He kept her wine glass filled with Chambord and tucked her in when she passed out on the chaise lounge. He swept up shards of glass after her booze drenched tantrums victimized old family photos, screaming her daughters' names in anguish at the ghosts of frames imprinted on the walls. He would text the corner drug store from her phone on mornings she couldn't get out of bed, informing the pharmacist of the newest illness responsible for her absence from work. If one were to trust little Abdiel's diagnostics, Momma was suffering from progeria, bird flu, ebola, necrotizing fasciitis, and syphilis.

On days she went to work, Momma would miscount pills that showed up in mysterious fashion later on when Abdiel checked her pockets for loose change and cigarette butts. She insisted the pharmacy wouldn't want them back now that they weren't “sterile” anymore and tucked them away in unlabeled prescription bottles. When Abdiel was 10, he found an unopened bottle of something called “Sublimaze'' in Momma's white coat while she slept on the couch. He decided to help by returning them to the pharmacy so her boss wouldn't worry about where they had gone. He skipped home from the drugstore with a face splitting grin, happy as if he had good sense. The pharmacist seemed so relieved to see the medicine returned and Abdiel was proud as a peacock. When he arrived home to tell Momma, still groggy from her drunken stupor, she grabbed the remote and cracked him across the temple. Momma spent the next few hours clubbing his skull until he passed out, then pummeled him back into unconsciousness when he stirred. He was sure she beat a hole through his head.

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When Abdiel turned 15, he fell in love with a fellow choir boy at church. They sat at the piano together while the choir boy practiced his scales. Abdiel even learned how to play “Heart and Soul” with him. He had the most perfect, delicate fingers. The way they danced across the keys captivated Abdiel, waltzing with ivory in the glory of God. He went home and came out to Momma, professing his love for the boy with the perfect hands. Momma's lip curled and she said nothing, but she didn't turn the next page of her book for an hour. At the social that night, two women in their fifties arrived together in faded summer dresses and cheap patent leather heels with holes in the toe, smiling and giggling to themselves as they took Abdiel by the hand and led him to his bedroom. They kept him for most of the evening while Momma smoked spliffs on the front porch, calm as a pond at dawn.

Abdiel never slept in his bed again.

Next Sunday after mass, the choir boy played him Vivaldi. Abdiel marveled once more at his flawless form, then slammed the fallboard closed on his fingers. He sat on the bench next to the choir boy as he screamed and cradled his shattered dreams, blood dripping from cracked knuckles down the holesp between the bone white naturals. Abdiel wondered if the choir boy's genetic predisposition would stay between the keys forever, if the next pianist would know their notes were bloodletting broken dreams. He was the last person to ever hear the choir boy play with his impeccable hands. His hands belonged to Abdiel now. Destroying something beautiful was the closest he'd come to finding Jesus. Rendering a hole in the fabric of the universe. The rapture was exquisite. His salvation had arrived.

They found the choir boy slumped against him, half unconscious from shock. Abdiel was playing the melody of “Heart and Soul” with the choir boy's shattered hand, puppeting his fingers along the keys. The local diocese, amply equipped with the experience and resources necessary to do so, buried Abdiel's crime. It had not occurred to him at the time that he was doing something illegal, but he supposed it made sense. As much sense as getting away with it.

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