16919901 Murder In Eugene

Chapter One.

Chapter One.

THE BEGINNING: It is a crisp fall day here in Eugene, Oregon, the town in which I have lived all my past six years, and will continue to live in until I am old enough to leave. This time of year is different each season. The Oregon rains can spatter about, or be still to let summer have a last glance. Autumn is as unpredictable as it is beautiful, here in this quiet city of often rain and sometime sun. My name is Martha. Today is September 6th, 1967. I am six years old about to turn seven years old in a few months. It is my first day of school in the second grade at Silver Lea Elementary. My hell is still just a small warm flame, a child-fire that has not yet truly began to burn. I am today, at least for a few moments a smiling and happy child, even if I feel a squeamish hesitation at the thought of going to this school for the first time. At this moment though, as I walk down the street to my new school, my small ivory white hand clenched tight in my mothers, I am blissfully unaware that this day, in this new school, is about to lead me into a hell of torment, of which I will barely survive.

Chapter One. Our street is lined with massive maple trees and I see the green summer-moist leaves as they cling hopelessly to branches getting sparse and stiff, like old women clinging to the fading of their youth, their fuzzy undersides now no longer velvety soft as a newborn lamb's ear. Freshly brown and dead leaves, seated deep with veins of crimson hues lie about in clusters. The colors cry out like a silent death blood for the rest of the leaves to tumble down to join them in their decay. I am starting second grade in this new school, which is right down at the end of my street, which is Armstrong. Then you cross over Grove Street into a small field of grass. It's actually about four or so bare lots, filled with tall billowy unkempt grasses and small animals of sorts. It will be over twenty years before the fields become filled with new homes, so for now the children can cross the fields, chase little brown rabbits along the way and then go through the chain link gate which empties onto the back of the school. I attended River Road Baptist School on River Road for kindergarten and first grade, starting a year too early technically, but was ahead for my age reading wise, starting to read at age two. My mother had permission from the directors, to start me early. However, now, as I was going to the second grade, the cost was not even remotely possible due to my father's commitment to a mental ward. It's hard to keep your job when you're in a straightjacket, so I now had to go to Silver Lea Elementary.

Chapter One. It is unbearably hard to leave River Road Baptist School, and especially my best friend Lonnie Higgins. She and I were inseparable there, and it has been what was still possibly to be, the happiest two years of my life. Truly though, I had no bad expectations today. School is fun for me, and I had lots of friends at my other school. My mom had been room mother, and she always brought amazing cupcakes. She smiled a lot then. She wore pretty red lipstick and pretty clothes, and was still slender and vibrant, with her hair always freshly done in soft chestnut pin-curls. I had nice clothes, and wore lots of new dresses with shiny new patent leather shoes. My parents had enough money for me to be taken for hamburgers and French fries, and thick chocolate milkshakes at the "Flying Scot" hamburger diner just down the road, almost each day. I participated in everything, and got good grades. It was an utterly joyous time for me there at River Road Baptist School.. Yes, I know there was bad-scary things going on of course with my father, and changing schools is not what I wanted. No, I did not want this at all. But the tears and pleas of a six year old girl, are met with a cold indifference from a suddenly quiet mother who had other worries of course. So no, I had no idea I was about to go from this life of laughter and friends, and a normal (sometimes at least until now) family, into a period of over 10 years of torture and teasing of which you could not imagine, except that its true and I did more than imagine it. I lived it.

Chapter One. We enter the small classroom. All eyes are on us. Why my mother chose to bring me late, after class had started I have no idea. Parents don't really think these things matter I suppose. They do matter very much to a six year old. My mop of fire-bright red hair announces me silently in the crowd of dark heads and dark souls. My hair shouts out the fact that I am different. It will soon draw this anger to me, as if to say "How dare you be different?" My name is Martha. Today is June 4th, 2009. A typically warm California day, spent wholly on the 1-5 finally driving home to Santa Clarita, California from a national Maltese dog show in Vancouver, Washington. I have shown and bred Maltese now for the past six years. The dog ring is filled with political intrigue, secrets, and suspense. Back-stabbing is whispered about, yet I have not experienced the feel of a sharp mental shiv thrust into my vulnerable weak spine. his is most likely due to the fact that I am still considered a novice after only six years, I have few dogs, and am not a threat to anyone. I am lucky to have my dogs out of the best possible lines, but that was pure luck. The four hectic days are over and in my circle of friends, Kathy Sanguinet's Dog, Danielle was crowned number two in the nation. It was a hard win, and Kathy has worked tirelessly with this dog. Danielle is a royal beauty with a long aristocratic neck, and striking face that is bold and proud, demanding your attention. Her eyes are black with fire and fierceness. Her coat is silken and flows past the ground, moving in ocean like waves of a pure white molten metal. Five pounds of perfect beauty.

Chapter One. As the show was being held in Vancouver, I stopped through Oregon along the way home. I had planned on spending a few extra days in the area, but it just did not go as planned. Much like everything in my life it seems. My name is Martha. Today is June 1st 2009. This visit in and around the city of Eugene that was my childhood of hell, has been harder on me then other longer visits. The degradation of culture that is on the streets is rampant, and vacant buildings and storefronts are everywhere. Bums masquerading as eco-hippies in dirty dreadlocks' of lice filled hair, and tie-dyed rags appear to be the majority of the population. Middle class has vanished in the areas that I see. I am sure it's still there; at least I hope it is. Maybe it's hidden inside the brand new homes. Homes built in the open fields of Kelley's pond, where I spent summers hiding among the marsh of golden thrushes, and the croaking fat bullfrogs, and the slimy little pollywogs that we loved to catch in dirty pails. The disintegration of my own flesh of youth and that of my peers is also on my mind. Every age has its rewards and some say they become masters of it. The ones who cherish it, embrace it, do they really feel rewarded? Or are they all just wizened wizards, hiding behind glittery gilded purple curtains, using voice changers to shout out the lies that us dried up vaginas and limp penised leathery mortals should envy them, that they are happy and successful and forever tender young. I ponder my sudden thoughts of my own tribulations towards this point in life. I can laser away the lines on my face but the things that are deep inside are getting deeper. I expected them to fade as I got older. The pain should dull now. Time should be my opiate on these painful memories'.

Chapter One. Rational Martha says, "Don't say it aloud! Don't let this become stronger! " Here in Eugene, I planned time to spend with a friend, *Angelica* one of only a few people I feel kind to still there. This friend has not changed much over the years, though she shows a vulnerability now, that I did not notice in the past. A hairline crack in her marble façade of toughness. Her marriages have been bad, and bad still I think, as her latest one, I believe is a pervert, who has hidden what I believe, is a sexual deviation amongst what he calls an "Alternative Lifestyle." I tried to be polite, and kind to him, as the benefit of doubt should be given freely, like love should be to children. Though really I had him pegged from day one a couple years ago, having a very good sense of pervert radar, honed razor sharp over the passage of time spent with men. I did not get to this point in my life, mentally taking notes these past years among all that I have experienced in various perversions of the male sex without this radar. It's an uncanny ability to sense the disquiet and deranged eroticism in their pea like brains. Still, I normally keep silent my judgments' unless provoked like a stick thrust in a lion's cage, lest I be wrong. This last male subject in her Trilogy of Woe Begotten Marriages has poked the stick into my cage. I am glad at last to call him out for the pervert I know he is, and yet sad to tell my friend thoughts that I forced my mouth to be closed on. Friends never want to hear the truth, not that truth at least.

Chapter One. Also, if I was wrong about my suspicions', then it would not help her at all, and the risk of damage to our infrequent yet valued friendship outweighed the obligation of warnings that, "YOU MIGHT BE MARRIED TO A PERVERT. " Now though, after walking into the living room, from the rose garden and finding him boldly standing there, NAKED, and still like, with his slitty beadish eyes as though a cat waiting to pounce, my judgment is correct. His disgusting fat and bloated white carcass-like belly, resting on his spindly turkey legs revolts me. My eyes were quick to block the offending sights, and it's only the vacuities of knowing he was naked, that I saw, except for the protruding jelly belly of milk fat. Vomit curled up into the recess of my throat, and the burning bile taste of repulsion, was filling my mouth as I headed quickly to grab the few things I had in the home. I was out of there in 3 minutes flat. I told my friend who was still outside, suddenly dumbfounded as to my hastened departure. She began to cry, but I know women well too though, and I could see her litany of plausible excuses fight into her mind. I do not argue, and just say the facts and quickly leave. I will not be waived on this knowledge, that I believe he is a Pervert, and so sick as to not be able to constrain this perversion for even 24 hours of a brief visit every two years. No, this is not a good sign of things to come for her in this marriage.

Chapter One. My name is Martha. Today is June 2nd, 2009. I am driving my little black Prius up I-5 to Salem, Oregon, a historic town that's most famous for its insane asylum, which was portrayed in the 1975 film, "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest." It's a place that would find my own father locked up in during the sixties and off and on for many years during his "dangerous freakouts" throughout the 1970s. A White Jacket man he was, that is, until they perfected their special tasty cocktails of chemical lobotomies that kept him from murdering us in our little child beds. There is a character in the film that is quite similar to my own father, and of which was painful to see visually, as I knew it was him. Though, of course his persona was changed somewhat of course for legal reasons. The book was written much earlier, but the asylum was visited for research, rewriting, and so forth, along with filming during his time there. A brilliant movie though, and dead on accurate. So I am now in Salem, with Denise "Morningstar" Greenwade, though the Greenwade, has been gone many pillow nights past. A friend of hers, Paul Wegner has come over. Paul was a senior my first year at North Eugene High. He is a nice enough sort, seemingly confident and happy at this stage in his life. He has a smiling face and a head full of sandy blond hair. A guy most people would like. A good character it would seem in the short-short time I was to visit, but it was something he said that made me reflect on memory. His, mine, and yours. Well, Paul should not bear the brunt of what I say now, as this book was already being written in my mind. I finally accepted the fact that I was never going to be able to write of anyone else's pain truthfully, and appease my harshest critic, myself, until I came face to face with my own pain. Until I stopped pretending the shame and hurt you bore on me all those long years was not real. I have tried so hard to forget, I really did.

Chapter One. As we talked of High School, Paul innocently, said "I do not remember you." I am sure indeed that he did not, in that part of his memory that was searched. I never dated him, he never passed me notes. We had no interaction that I recall specifically in High school. Now, Paul, but I ask you. "Did you remember the kid who everyone picked on?" Every school has one of these misfortunate beings. Every single school in this country, even the deaf mute school. For torment and torture can take many forms. Do not dare to speak that you know of no one like that. "Did you laugh with the other boys as they tripped her or stuck notes on her back, or the girls who cut quick chunks of her hair off in the crowded hallways? "Did you help her pick up her books when they knocked them out of her hands? Did you see anything?" Or do you too claim your lie of innocence by your silence now? No, I do not say we should all bear angel trumpets and announce to the world a list of all our dirty, sordid, and deepest secret sins of the past, or mouth your chants of repent or do whatever your gods tell you to do in your god-churches and god-temples of moneyed silks and sweet honeyed voices. I just now say to all of you who shared those tortuous 10 year long moments in my past. You are guilty. If you disagree with this, then now is the moment to proclaim your innocence. I will listen. I will speak of your proclamation of innocence. Let each one of you be cleansed. Let each one of you become a juror to the other. Let each one of you judge the other. Time has given me the forum and the knowledge to show my secret shameful torments to the world, and name the accused. It is you. It is you who stood by as I was dragged into an emotional death of which I shall never wholly recover. You who instigated or participated each different day some form of constant and

Chapter One. brutal terror and torture of me, even to this day that such extent it is rarely heard about, even in crimes of mass killings. Dare you deny this? Are you not the same person inside that you have always been? Do you feel your guilt each time you hear of this torture of children? Or has your mind folded fluffy Blue and Pink blankets of "We were just kids" over the past? Can you see me here now, crying? Salty wet tears, rivulets of my pain, which I still bear today, over 30 years later? That I feel right now, at this moment. Knife cuts into my soul-heart that can never be stitched up. Wounds that forever will drip blood drops of hurt onto my white sheets of happy-cloth that I have tried to hide under. Who among you has the courage to face your past, as I face mine? To atone for your part in this shattered life, I led as a child? To acknowledge each day from this day forward, that you bear some guilt. To touch the mental sticks and stones you broke me with. My name is Martha. Today is June 3rd, 2009. The poorly patched freeway of soulless cement hums its steady song up through the wheels of my Prius. It's so loud I don't even have the radio on, which is probably good, as I can then force my mind not to wander. I rarely travel to Eugene anymore. I go back to see a couple of friends, but no family is there that I even have an address for. Eugene is now just a town on the I-5 that has not been my home in many years. A town filled will pain and memory besides the vacant lots and rotten piles of worm filled leaves from winters past. I have gone to occasional North Eugene High reunions, and found it somewhat cathartic, and healing. Or at least I did until my epiphanic revelation of clarity and purpose. This is not a purpose I have chosen, this telling of tales of the past. I know that it's not a good happy tale, but I am not sorry for this telling of it. You have made it my story. The telling of this tale is like lancing a deep abscess in my soul. It perhaps needs to be done but the ooze and pus that

Chapter One. bursts out like lava, burns my mind. The memories that have been forced down over the years, flood my thoughts. Even lanced abscesses can continue to fester, and maybe the knifequill that I have chosen to make this sharp cut with, is poisoned with an unknown bacteria that will infect my mind further. A god-germ of yours brought on by my refusal to submit any more. To pretend you are innocent in the destruction of this life I endure. Perhaps it will bring on a descent into a deep black darkness that I thought I had escaped. A watery living grave of epidural fluid and mis-fired neurons and recalcitrant chromosomes. A sudden desire to seek out your gods. Repent. Repent. Wrap copper coils on my wrists and neck. To demand the world to be as insane as I must be. Only time will tell, and my path is suddenly clear. Just as my memory now is vivid at points, but with the glass like lucidity of a mad mans frenetic rants. My memories and my mind could not be clearer to me, nor more fragile. My name is Martha, today is June 5th 2009. I know if I think too long about this, Rational Martha will continue to tell me to "let it go, drop it!" Say hello every 10-15 years if I feel like hitting town, and just smile and let everyone go on pretending they were not involved in the crime. That writing this book will be excruciatingly painful for me. That it will make people feel uncomfortable and bothered, unhappy that I choose to take us from our safe little world of forget, or benign blankness, into the torment of my past. This includes causing distress to my own loved ones, who not only find it incredulous that it actually happened to me, mom, wife, lover, friend, but that I should willingly choose to immerse myself in the deepest pain I have ever known, once more, for the next six months at least. To shut myself alone in a room, and to terrorize my soul willingly this time. To risk my ability to let it slip quietly back in to the tiny spot in my head that is content to just take small nibbles off my happiness constantly. To mentally abandon them, to what I am sure they must think is insanity. No, they do not understand it, but I know you do.

Chapter One. I also know that six months from now the devils you have forced on me will not be gone, just sated enough for me to maybe continue existence for a while longer. So no, why should I care about making people feel uncomfortable. Is it worth the 3 hours of watching everyone somewhat covertly every few years? Pretending I am okay, when I am not. Pretending I belong when I don't? Why should I give up trying to exorcise something that has haunted me for over thirty years now, just to let hundreds of others forget? How does one forget a murder? No, not a grisly, crime of physical death. The Murder of a Soul. The crime of killing something inside a person that can never be resuscitated, and rots away inside after its death to a small pile of dusty ashes. A place where something happy and light once was, only now there is nothing but a vast vacant hollow of emptiness that will never be filled with anything, not booze or drugs or sex or children or marriage or fancy homes and fancy dogs, or new cars and new friends or plastic surgeons with pockets of syringes filled with botox and lip-plumper and perky pretty breasts in their magic bag of pretty tricks. Nothing can fill this up. This emptiness is always dark and silent and hungry. What type of person has such lack of character, and heart, that they could commit this crime, and then claim to forget? No, they probably did not collect any souvenirs, such as a serial killer does, but they knew it was wrong, and they knew they were hurting someone, and they did it anyway. Not just once, but many, many times. A good many of you, did this the entire ten years. How can all these hundreds of people forget? Has their gods wiped their mind free along with the guilt? I am dead now as you read this, this story of yours. Safely gone, this redheaded different girl. You are free to paint swirls of soft hued water colored days over the time you spent near me. To deny to each other, each person we share this past with, which you breathed into your soul. I am dead to you, I am sure. No, I may not be physically dead; I do not yet hope so. Perhaps my Melanoma, and its sweet death scythe-a saccharine promise of eternal amnesia from this pain, will not

Chapter One. yet have called out its song? It will not matter to you though I am sure. For we are always the same person we have ever been, and I do not pretend that these words of mine shall make any difference in your life. My name is Martha. It is 1977. We are sitting on the hard wooden bleachers inside the gym with its beautiful polished maple floor. The slick surface gleams almost as bright as the basketball team that is making town history with Danny Ainge leading it on like a god among mortals. I can smell the pungent sweat of victory on the players. It's a different smell then when they are losing, which is not very often. Tonight it's a sweet green apple like scent, a fresh energetic scent. Can you smell it? I am sitting here now, below you, with the odd lot of others. I am never aware that something is going to happen, but always aware it probably will. You boys behind me are now spitting sunflower shells onto the back of my somewhat tangled hair. You girls egg them on. I can hear your bright-girl laughter, and feel the seedless stripes of empty plant uterus hit my head as they are spit on me. I am lucky. Tonight its only hollow seedless shells that swiftly fall to the ground. If this was a school assembly, with just teachers in attendance only turning blind eyes to my cage, then I would have sticky spit and gum on my hair. Yes, I am lucky it is only shells, and you are clever enough to be ever so slight as to not cause more to know my shame and hurt. Later that night I cry silently into my pillow. It's something I do a lot. Sometimes the torment is tolerable, and sometimes I am left with bruises on more than my mind, or spit and gum that can be washed out of my hair. Needles and pins stuck quickly into my arms as I am passed by in the crowded hall, as stealthily as a secret spy could accomplish. Your large boyfeet-stick-em-out-fast, that send my red hair head flying into a sharp metal locker edge. Yes, tonight I am lucky! When Danny Ainge gets control of the ball once more and easily takes the final victory, I am ecstatic! We won! ©2009Martha Raysik. Please comment your thoughts on this book. I would appreciate it so much.I am on facebook

Chapter One. The preceding work is copyright protected by Martha Raysik under all applicable laws and statues of the United States Government and other countries. It has been submitted with all proper payments and registered through the United States Copyright office. This is official notice of electronic publication. The pending registration number is 1-204348081 with a date of 06/12/2009, as its first official electronic publication. No part of this work may be reproduced without the permission of the author.