World Upside Down

Mason wonders where it all went wrong, and his investigation takes him back to his childhood. There, he remembers, was where he encountered evil for the first time. Nothing after that was the same.

I wrote this short story a little over a year ago. Like many of my stories, it deals with the burden of sin, theodicy, and the struggle of maintaining faith in an increasingly faithless world.

It goes without saying that these are heavy and serious topics. I often explore them by drawing on some of the more depraved tendencies and capabilities in man. My stories sometimes end happily. Sometimes, they do not. Sometimes, the endings are not so clear. I write fiction for adults to read and use to ponder the human experience, which inevitably contains both joy and suffering.

This is all to say that, though this story is primarily about children, that does NOT mean it is for children. Children shouldn’t be sheltered from the reality of evil, but it must be presented to them carefully. Best they learn of it first by reading about the Big Bad Wolf or the White Witch of Narnia than being exposed to the much more complicated and terrifying manifestations of sin our species is so prone to produce.

Not that I think many children are going to care to read my work, of course. I still feel it’s worth emphasizing, given the unfettered access so many children have to the internet.

All that being said, I hope you grown-ups enjoy. And, as always, feel free to let me know your thoughts!

- L.W.

---

Overwhelming dread sends me searching for the moment where it all went wrong, and I sit at my desk, flipping through memories like slides in a slide show, and recall looking at the world upside down, wondering if I was really right-side up.

I hung from a jungle gym, the top of my scalp dangling six inches from the woodchip-covered ground. My forehead swelled, as the vessels in my head filled with blood. It felt as if I were a plastic bag filled with water, my contents bulging at the bottom, on the verge of breaking free. And I observed the other children as they chased each other and screamed and scooted down the yellow tunnel slide, imagining the ground was the ceiling and the sky was the ground, and that I was really kneeling instead of hanging from the crooks of my knees from a metal bar.

Someone, then, tugged on my shirt and giggled. We were all so young at the time, ignorant of the grueling pains of puberty that awaited us in the later years of our youth. I could not yet distinguish a boy's laughter from a girl's. We all sounded the same. So, I contorted my spine and spotted my best friend's shoes. Henry stood behind me smiling, showing his baby teeth. He still had all of them. I was missing my front two.

"Want to play tag with us?" he asked, shifting his weight back and forth between each of his legs, as if incapable of standing still, awaiting my response devoid of patience.

"Sure," I said, and swung down from the jungle gym, gripping the metal bar between my knees and letting my feet fall. And, like that, I stood upright like everyone else.

Then, Henry lunged forward and jabbed me in my ribcage with the tip of his middle finger. "You're it!" he squealed. He leaped through the hexagonal window formed by the intersecting bars of the dome-shaped jungle gym. I followed, but he alluded me by rounding the make-believe pirate ship, and I let him go for another target: a quiet blonde girl with pigtails. Her name was Sissy, and she always wore pink. I cornered her by the red brick wall that separated the church playground from the street and tagged her despite her efforts to evade me. "No tagbacks!" I shouted, the pronunciation of the c-sound impaired by my lisp. And I darted in the opposite direction to seek refuge under the slide, as Sissy pursued another Sunday schooler.

Momma called for me from the chain-link gate. I was done with tag, and Henry and I swung side-by-side on the swings. He flew backward as I glided forward, distorting his face into a prepubescent grimace when we met only for a moment in the middle. I did not wait for the swing to stop. Rather, I launched myself from the seat while in mid-air and landed both feet on the wood chips, then sprinted toward Momma, whose own off-white, coffee-stained teeth showed between her red lips. She wore her jeans up to her belly button, her shirt tucked into her waistband, and under her arm was a blue leather-bound NIV Bible.

I remember that Bible because I still have it. I do not read it, but I see it in my desk drawer, because there it sits, staring at me as I fall into my memories, hoping to land on something that can explain why I feel the way I do.

Waiting for me at the playground gate with the other young mothers, Momma squatted and opened her arms, and I ran into her. I was little then. I have always been small. When I ran into her then, she embraced me, holding me against her chest, reminding me that I am hers and she is my shield, the protector of my innocence, my defender against the outside world. It reminded me how much I trusted her.

"Momma! Momma!" I yelled. I'd say that often as a child, sometimes with tears in my eyes, and sometimes with a grin. This time was the latter. I had something to tell her. I was so excited to tell her, I could’ve leaped right out of the black and grey Sketchers velcroed to my feet.

"What is it, Mason?" Momma asked that big blue Bible, then new with gold-edged pages, still under her arm as she cupped each of my shoulders with both of her palms. Next to her, Sissy's mom (who I only later knew as Janice Smith) escorted Sissy by the hand to the chalk-blue sedan in a special parking spot by the Fellowship Hall door. Sissy's dad was Pastor Jonathan. Some of my friends had dads. I did not.

"Henry says I can go to his house if I ask you," I said. "I told him I would ask you but I sure hope you'd say yes."

And Momma's red lips closed in on one another, shrouding her teeth. Her eyebrows sunk, and she looked at me as if I'd told her I was hearing voices in my head, or being solicited by a stranger.

"Did Henry ask Mrs. Butler?"

Momma stood and looked around the parking lot for Mrs. Butler. Mrs. Butler was Henry's mom. She sat on a bench by herself by the columbarium, across the parking lot from all the other moms, her pale hands piled in her lap, poking out of the end of her long sleeves, which she wore despite the midsummer heat. Like Henry, her hair was blonde and thin. Hairspray could do nothing for it. It blew over her face, a single strand connecting the dots between her temple and the corner of her mouth.

"He said he would," I said.

"Let me just make sure."

And Momma crossed the parking lot while I waited at the playground gate.

"What'd she say? What'd she say?"

Once again, it was Henry. And, once again, he was grinning, revealing to me his complete set of tiny white teeth which would soon fall out and earn him a dollar each from the Tooth Fairy, enough to fund more gas station Icees and sour gummy worms than a five-year-old could ask for. I got a quarter for each tooth, and I used to wonder why the Tooth Fairy thought mine were worth less.

I told Henry what Momma said.

"Oh, she'll say yes," he said. "She always says yes."

I took comfort in his assurance.

"Oh, what are we going to do? Play superheroes? Football? Do you have an Xbox?"

"I have a Wii," he said. "We can play Mario Kart."

Yes, that was it. Mario Kart. We loved Mario Kart.

So, we made plans about what characters we were going to choose, and which maps we were going to race on first. That kept our hopes high. My hopes were very high, perhaps higher than Henry's. I could not play Mario Kart at home. Momma said video games were too expensive and something I didn't need.

But I knew by the look on Momma's face as she returned from the other side of the parking lot (lips still shuttered, eyes scanning the two feet of asphalt in front of the toe of her sneakers) what she was going to say. I knew, even at five, that it wasn't going to be the answer I desired.

Henry, on the other hand, was naive.

"What'd she say? What'd she say?" he asked, bouncing up and down in his white New Balances.

Momma didn't answer. Rather, she directed me aside and squatted again to look at me face-to-face. "I don't know if this is the best time for you to go to Henry's," she said in a tone just louder than a whisper, probably so Henry wouldn't hear her and intervene, but he did hear her, and he did intervene.

"Please! Please!" he begged. "Why can't Mason come? Why can't Mason come?"

I, too, joined in on the begging. I knew something was making my mother uncomfortable, but I was not yet old enough to bear the disappointment of being denied my will. Had I been older, I would've at least hesitated to question my mother's judgment. Yes, all of us human beings are selfish. I am still selfish, sitting here thinking about childhood as if I am a psychoanalyst, digging for a repressed memory, all because I want to make sense of this dread for which I have no explanation, and ultimately to feel better by making sense of it. I want good feelings, not bad. That's been fundamentally the same from childhood to adulthood. But something happens between ages five and forty-five, and that selfishness becomes tempered by something else. Perhaps it is merely a mature kind of selfishness: a selfish desire for others to think that I, unlike everyone else, am the only unselfish person in the room, and, therefore, worthy of esteem, esteem being another good feeling, perhaps the most valuable of the good feelings. But when you are five, you already have esteem because you already think you're special. The world is yet to show you that you’re not.

I still thought of the world was in my favor, so I joined Henry in begging Momma to change her mind, to act against her judgment, to give us what we wanted despite whatever was holding her back. We begged together until Momma was on the verge of caving.

"Did she say no?" Henry asked. "She never says no."

"No, but I just got the feeling that..." Momma stopped. Maybe she realized she was speaking to five-year-olds who wouldn't understand. She looked at the sky, mulling over how in the world she was to explain her reasoning on our own terms (which would've not been reasonable at all, given we did not yet know how to reason).

"I just don't think it's a good idea," she said again.

Is it better to rely on our own authority when the one seeking an answer from us will not understand that answer if it is given to them? Probably so. But that does not change the fact that we human beings - and especially those of us who are children - do not understand our own lack of understanding, and only see the world through what we do understand. No one likes an answer without an explanation. It seems unfair, and insulting even to a pair of five-year-olds.

"But we were going to play Mario Kart," I wined. The good feeling (excitement) is gone. No good feeling equals bad (disappointment).

"Let me talk to her," Henry insisted, unphased by Momma's assertion. Momma reached out her hand to stop him, but she was too late. Henry crossed the parking lot and approached Mrs. Butler on the bench.

"Why can't I go, Momma? Why can't I go?"

I had to keep fighting the battle on my front. I wanted just one answer, something to ease my bad feeling, and spark a good feeling. It is the same reason I want answers now.

I couldn't get my way, so I started to pout.

"I don't ever get to go to Henry's!" I cried, stomping my foot on the ground, and clenching my fist. "You don't ever let me go!"

"Now, Mason..."

"We were gonna play Mario Kart!"

I could not get what I wanted. At that age, we all think we're supposed to get what we want. Once again, we have not yet learned the world is not in our favor. We think everything exists to serve us. Yes, five-year-olds are all tyrants. As an adult, I understand the world has no sympathy, but I still dread not getting my way. Does that mean I'm still a tyrant at heart?

Before tears breach the corners of my eyelids, Henry returns, skipping across the asphalt, mouth full of little white pieces of bone. When he reached Momma, he stood with his hands behind his back. He was a messenger carrying what was to him (and me) good news.

"She says Mason can come," he said.

"See, Momma?" I asked. "I can go to Henry's! I can go! I can!"

Momma sighed. Momma was strong, but she was still a mother at the turn of the century, a time when mothers had a particularly hard time saying "no." Mothers wanted to be "fun." They didn't want to upset their child. That would mean they weren't "fun," just like their parents weren't "fun." It would be to associate their actions with actions that made them upset as a child. So, they thought it was their duty to give their children whatever they wanted. It is that same selfish unselfishness I mentioned earlier.

It must be. I have never been motivated by anything but selfishness, even when I've been unselfish, so I must assume the same is true for all of us. I have never read it, but I know this blue book in my desk says otherwise. It suggests we can be motivated by something else. Can we? I am not so sure.

We all walked together to Mrs. Butler, who still sat on the bench by the columbarium, and Momma spoke to her for a moment as Henry and I reveled in our success at bending this world to our will. Good feeling back again.

Then, Momma told me to be on my best behavior, and that she'd pick me up from Henry's house at four. She carried my booster seat to Mrs. Butler's SUV, and, with her blue Bible under her arm, got in our Honda and drove away.

Henry's house was by the Country Club. My house was just off Main Street. Henry's was a red-brick suburban mansion surrounded by box hedges and St. Augustine grass. Mine was just big enough for Momma and me to live in. Our gravel driveway could only fit one car.

At one point before or after that day when I arrived at Henry's house, I asked Momma why I didn't have as many toys as Henry did, and why our house was so small compared to his. She told me some people had more than others, and that was how the world worked. She said the Bible teaches us not to envy, and to be content with what we have. I have never been content.

I would come to understand later in my youth that the real reason the Butlers had so much more money than we did was because Mr. Butler was a lawyer. Mrs. Butler did not work because she didn't have to. Momma was a receptionist for the school system, then for a time actually for Mr. Butler’s law firm, and then she tried selling insurance for a period before she got a job at the church, again as a receptionist.

Perhaps part of the reason I was always so excited about going to Henry's house was because he always had new toys and more video games. He had a state-of-the-art playroom with a flat-screen TV, and Mr. and Mrs. Butler didn't care what he watched on it (I had strict limitations at home). And Mrs. Butler was prompt to serve us snacks: pizza rolls, Oreos, potato chips, and Cheetos.

But there was more to it than that. Though I never saw him again after we moved, we were best friends when we were five. I like to think we still would've been best friends had he been a lower middle-class honkey like me. Then again, I can't help but recall my previous observation about our innate selfishness. That is what I believe, and I have not changed my mind.

As soon as Mrs. Butler unbuckled us from our car seats, we raced to the front steps leading up to the tall wooden double doors. We raced into the mudroom up the staircase, and to the playroom at the end of the second-story hall, our feet clambering on the hardwood, Henry screaming as I caught up to him and took the lead. We were quickly interrupted by Mrs. Butler, who stood at the bottom of the stairs and called Henry's name.

I saw Henry poke his face through the wooden posts of the banisters. I was already under the playroom door frame. I won the race. That meant I got to choose the first track.

"Your father is working," Mrs. Butler said. "Please use your inside voices." In the silence, I could hear the murmur of a man's voice behind the door across the hall.

Henry had two white plastic wheels into which we inserted the Wii remote. That way, we could steer as if we were driving real go-karts. We sat on bean bags in front of the T.V., and I won the first race. Some of my friends at that age would've pitched a fit upon a loss like that. I may have been upset if I lost. One would've expected Henry to go berserk, given he was used to getting what he wanted, but Henry was a fair loser. As my virtual kart glided across the finish line, and Henry's close behind me, he squealed and looked at me and laughed.

Mrs. Butler then brought us Scooby-Doo gummies and snack-sized bags of Doritos. She asked us politely to be quiet again, so Mr. Butler could get some work done. We only pretended to listen and made little to no changes in our volume as we started another race. We felt good and had to express it. If a person feels good enough, they'll want to express it. Expressing a good feeling always makes that good feeling even better. We wanted what felt best.

To this day, I still do, though I feel so far from it. I feel further and further from it as the years go on. Knowing this makes me feel worse.

After winning again, I ate my Doritos and sucked the preservative-laden cheese dust from my fingertips. My knuckles were still orange, and they probably stayed that way until my mother picked me up that afternoon and put me in the bathtub that evening.

"Want to play hide and seek?" Henry asked, setting his steering wheel down on the carpet. The Wii was what we came here for, but it had occupied enough of our time. Pleasures become less pleasurable when expensed.

"Sure," I said.

"Alright, you hide first."

So, I left the playroom while Henry counted to 20 facing the corner with his fingers over his shut eyelids. The door to Mr. Butler's office was all the way open. I could see his computer sitting on his desk. The white box monitor was next to the console and behind the thick-buttoned keyboard. A Windows logo floated around his black screensaver, bouncing off of the inner edges of the screen. I thought about hiding under the desk, but that would've been too visible from the door. Plus, I knew I'd be in trouble if Mr. Butler found me there when he got back to work.

Instead, I snuck down the stairs. My time was running out. To my left was the front door. There would be nowhere to hide outside unless I wanted to crawl up under one of the hedges. From experience, I knew that meant getting stuck with thorns and scratched up by the twigs.

I took a right into the living room. Already, I could hear the sound of Henry's feet on the stairs. I bolted down the hallway. I knew that connecting the master bedroom to the master bathroom was a walk-in closet with folding slat doors. The walk-in closet was an attractive hiding place because I could see out of the slat doors, but no one could see in. I looked through the crack in the door to make sure Mrs. Butler was not inside. All empty. Coast clear. I found the closet, and slid between two of Mrs. Butler's winter coats, staring through the narrow space between two of the slats, my breaths intentionally shallow, as to remain undetectable were Henry to sneak around the corner.

The bedroom door slammed shut. I sunk deeper into the hanging clothes. I smelled fabric softener and old perfume. When I thought about how surprised Henry would be to find me (if he could even find me!), I had to contain my laughter. I did this by wrapping my upper lip around my incomplete set of teeth and pressing them against my bottom lip so that it hurt a little, but not too much.

But it was not Henry.

"Damn it, Karen," I heard Mr. Butler say, his voice growing louder as he opened the closet door and entered. "You spoil him too much." Mrs. Butler followed, her head tilted forward so that her thin hair hung over her forehead.

"I thought it'd be nice for him to have some company,” she said apologetically.

"He's got company! All the time he has company! Yesterday, it was the Bellow boy. The day before, it was Tim Gibson's kid. And today it's Sherie's kid again? Didn't I tell you last time what Sherie was like in high school? She was a whore, you know. A disgusting whore."

Sherie was Momma. I knew that much. I didn't know what a whore was, though I had an idea it wasn't a good thing to be. I wish I never learned.

"I mean, Jesus!" Mr. Butler continued. "We're not a fucking daycare! Is that what you think we are? A daycare for bastard kids?"

"No, I..."

"My God, Karen. You're such a weak woman. Have some backbone for once, and tell that boy no."

Briefly, there was silence. Then Mr. Butler's rant went on.

"Invite Sherie Morrison's boy to our house again? After I told you last time? Are you kidding me? That boy doesn't have a father for a reason, you know? She probably doesn't even know who he is."

"She goes to our church," Mrs. Butler interjected. "She's a changed woman now."

"Going to church won't change what she is," responded Mr. Butler. "It won't change what people think."

Mrs. Butler's back faced me. She dug into her thumb with her fingernail.

"Well, Mary Magdalene was a whore once, and..."

"To hell with Mary Magdalene!" Mr. Butler stood tall, looking down on her with his tie loose and collar unbuttoned. His clean-shaven cheeks were like cherries, pitch-red. I imagined them steaming had they come in contact with water. "I'm sitting at home working on a Sunday, trying to give you everything you ever asked for, and you're turning my house into a playpen for noisy accidents. I don't ask for much, Karen. I really don't. All I want is some peace and quiet."

"I know why you're upset," Mrs. Butler mumbled under her breath.

"Yea?" asked Mr. Butler, leaning forward and breathing his angry breath into his wife's face.

"How do you know she's a whore, Harry?" Ms. Butler spoke louder than her previous sentence, but she was still hardly audible.

"Damn you, Karen."

"Lorie Bellow told me. I know all about your little 'business trips' back in '96. Legal expo my ass."

"Lorie Bellow's a gossip and a liar!"

"He could be yours for all I know. He is yours isn't he, Harry?"

"Hell no, he's not mine, Karen. Are you crazy?"

"Are you? When we were trying to have a son of our own?"

"I told you, Karen. I didn't sleep with Sherie Morrison!"

"Liar!"

"You shut your mouth!"

And that's when it happened. That was the moment I had been searching for, the split second in time when something clicked in my brain, and I realized something was seriously wrong. It wasn't just something seriously wrong with the Butlers. It wasn't just something seriously wrong with Momma, or just our little corner of the Earth. No, it was something seriously wrong with all of us. I didn't know what it was. I only knew that it existed. Evil, I came to call it, was real. And not only was it real, but it was real for all of us. It exists in all of us. It existed in me.

And, as much as I want to deny that fact, I can't. I can't bring myself to deny it, even if it is irreconcilable with my worldview. After all, if nature is supreme and selfishness our only motivation, what is evil but our will unfulfilled? What is evil to me may be good for you, yet the evil I knew existed at that moment was not that. It is in these moments I am tempted to cease thinking, to shove ideas back into my subconscious, banish them back to where they came as if a demon from hell, or swallow them as if vomit spilling out of my stomach and into my throat.

Mr. Butler reared back his hand and swung his fingers across Mrs. Butler's face. Mrs. Butler fell on the carpet and lay there, and I watched her cry. She cried like a woman who'd just lost a child, a woman whose reason for living had been stripped from her in the blink of an eye.

I have found it. Yes, I have found it at last! The source of my dread. It is my belief in two things that cannot both be true: that evil is real, but good is not. And I fear with all my mind and all my soul, the daunting task of discovering which, if either, of the beliefs are true. I am unsure which would be more devastating: If evil were not real, could I condemn anything for any reason other than that I didn't like it? If good were real, would I not have to measure my actions accordingly?

My journey to the source of my dread has been a tragedy. It is a tragedy because I have come all this way and found what I already knew but wanted to forget. And it has not cured me of dread in the least. Rather, it is worse.

I emerged from the closet, tears spilling from my eyes because I was five and didn't know what better to do. Mrs. Butler saw me. Her upper lip was swollen, and her teeth bloodied. Instead of grabbing me and begging me not to tell my mother, she said nothing and stared. And we cried together, haunted by our contradictions, uncured of our dread.

Even after she led me out of the bedroom, as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, and Momma picked me up and took me home, clueless as to why I wouldn't speak to her in the car, the world would not cease to remind me of evil's horrible existence, and how that meant, despite what I tell myself I believe, that good must also exist.

It reminded me of when I was in the fifth grade, and the other kids made fun of me because my teeth were crooked.

It reminded me of when Momma and I moved to the city, and I still couldn't make any friends.

It reminded me of when girls told me I was "too nice" for them and left me for boys whose parents had more money.

It reminded me of my first two years of college, which I spent alone in my dorm room because I was too shy to branch out.

It reminded me when, as a Junior, I reunited with Sissy Smith after all those years, and she told me Henry was dead. By suicide.

It reminded me of when Momma lost her long battle with leukemia and died in a hospital bed while I was working on my dissertation.

And it reminded me of last year, when, after a decade of marriage, Sissy, too, left me for the dean.

And now I have no one left to love but myself, who I am incapable of loving because I see my contradictions and am too cowardly to do anything about them. I stare them in the face right now, my drawer open and inside, Momma's blue book. I am petrified. Why don't I read it? Might it give me hope? If you are a Christian, that's what you're thinking. I know it. You're begging your God to show Himself to me, to give me a sign to make me believe so I can be free from the burden of my oh-so-terrible contradiction. But to see Him, my heart must be open. And it's not. I am a lost soul afraid to be found.

So, I do not open Momma's book. I just sit here and stare at it from two feet's distance.

If you are to pray for anything, brave believer, pray for my soul. Pray I have courage.

Pray for all of us, because we are in a world upside down, and most of us are dreadfully afraid of standing right-side up.

---

L.W. Blakely is a writer in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author of The Wayfarer, a newsletter where he publishes literary fiction, criticism, and musings. Learn more about L.W. and The Wayfarer on the About page, or (if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read) consider subscribing and sharing his work.