I chop and I change and the mystery thickens
There’s blood on my hands and you want me to listen
To brawn and to brain when the truth’s in the middle
Born of the grain like all good riddles
Burn the skin off and climb the roof top
Thy will be done
Bite the nose off and make it the most of
Your kingdom
You kill when you talk and the enemy weakens
Your words start to walk when you’re not even speaking
If my heart is a war its soldiers are bleeding
If my heart is a war its soldiers are dead
I’ve lost and I’ve gained and while I was thinking
You cut off my hands when I wanted to twist
If you know how to dance to Boney Maroney
He’s doing the ballet on both of his wrists
You’re a bitter malignous person
And the death is well overdue
You suck the blood that kills you
You kiss the hand that hates you
You’re a bitter malignous person
And your death is well overdue
Your sucking bitter pain
Sandwiched between Twilight and Triumph is Pinch Me, which serves as a step back to consider what it’s all about at the midpoint of Across This Antheap. I wanted to flesh out my relationship with Bethany, my fellow-traveler neurologically challenged office mate, in greater detail, but because I hadn’t told Bethany about my autism diagnosis, it didn’t add much to the second half of the story.
But I couldn’t leave out Bethany. Her welfare meant a lot to me, and still does, and she was a prime motivator for me to keep going. The scene itself actually occurred much later chronologically, around the beginning of The Strange Remain (Part Four), but by that point in the story things are moving so fast that the scene interrupted the flow. Adding Bethany as a new character 80% of the way through the book also didn’t appeal to me.
Sadly, the conversation with Phinizy about Bethany dissuaded me from telling more people about Asperger’s, even close friends in the office. Furthermore, by that point I had told a few people I thought might be willing to offer me some support and had come up empty. As with many others outside of the company, those few I told about the diagnosis avoided me thereafter.
In retrospect I most definitely wish I had told Bethany and Phinizy about the diagnosis earlier; it might have made a difference in several situations.
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