The Childhood of Tobias Thibideaux

     Toby sighed quietly as they drove away from the house that would be no more. The chain on the floor where he was kept for punishment would be swept away when the house was demolished.

   Gripping Candice's hand tightly after she asked to go for coffee once at the Fer a Chevel hotel, he remembered his mothers words clearly, though their sting had faded and escaped through the last breaths of many young women.

   “I told you to get inside,” her sharp drawl grew stronger as she grew angrier. “I told you to get in out that yard twenty minutes ago, Tobias!”

   “Sorry, I caught...I was catching lightning...b-b-b.”

   “I don't give a rats ass what you were doing. Your father told you to stop bringing in them jars of lightnin' bugs and letting them out all over the house,” she screeched as she neared closer to Toby, the same height as he was although he was only ten. Her curly, dark auburn hair was pulled into a tight bun.

   “I didn't br-bring any in,” he defended, noticing his sister's eyeliner and tear-stained face as she leaned against the doorway where he had stood with Candice when they met with Adam.

   “Get on the floor,” their mother said. “Get on the floor now, Tobias!”

   Toby remembered dropping to his knees as he watched helplessly as Maybelle doubled over, crying.

   “He's a kid, mom!” she cried as their mother took the chain attached to the counters side and wrapped it around Toby's neck, only loose enough so that he could breathe. “Why can't you leave him alone!”

   “Go to your room before your father gets home,” she snapped, pulling a dog-bowl and water bowl from the cabinet as Toby stared at his sister from the ground. “He can't act right and you can' control that devil's tongue of yours.”

   Their mother placed the bowls in the corner by the counter, one filled with water from the sink and one empty.

   “You might can eat once everyone else is done,” she snapped at Toby. “You'd do right to make yourself at home in the kitchen. Filthy little animal.”

   His mother pulled two newspapers from a lower cabinet; this was routine, and Maybelle and Toby knew it. The papers were placed by the food and water bowls, since the chain only allowed for him to crawl halfway across the kitchen – not quite in reach of the dining table.

   He dare not stand.

   “Mom, I don't – I d-d-don't want to spend the night down here,” he said.

   “Shut your mouth!” she hollered as her foot hit his chin with one swift movement, and his teeth chopped into his tongue. Blood began to pour down his chin from his mouth so he crawled over to the newspaper, terrified of making a mess. “Dogs aren't going to talk in this house, by God.”

   “Mom, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Maybelle sobbed. “He's a kid, he's not a dog. Leave him the fuck alone!”

     In a house where swearing was forbidden by the children, Maybelle often had a problem controlling her mouth; she was punished with three hard slaps to the face. Toby kept his eyes downward at the blood as it pooled around on the newspaper.

   “Get in your room, now, you possessed little girl! Get up the stairs!”

   Maybelle let out a screech as she turned, giving Toby one last, helpless glance as she stomped up the stairs with the kind of rage only an angry fifteen-year old girl could emit.

   Toby stayed on his knees and waited for the bleeding to stop, hoping his father was too tired for the belt once he got home. He curled up on the cold floor and listened as Maybelle threw things around her room, terrorized by the routine of their lives as Adam sat comfortably in his room watching television.

     The house disappeared in the review mirror and the next day, it would be knocked to the ground. Though not a superstitious man, Toby thought that perhaps it would be best for nothing to ever be built there again. Candice was there with him and what needed to be done was done; Maybelle was gone, and he had been given an upgrade.

   

Though her wings were folded behind her back, and she was unaware of them as she glanced down at the missed texts on her phone, but they were waiting open the moment that he needed her.

   “Coffee is a good idea,” he confirmed as downtown Pierreville came into view., and Candice smiled.

This has been an excerpt from Killing Butterflies, a novel by River Endsley

HFA and the College-try: Ambition with no Degree

I didn't know I was on the Autistic Spectrum until I was twenty years old and in the middle of my second college-attempt after running away to NYC. It was a beautiful campus and the professors weren't idiots; they even had some respect and admiration for how well I wrote and how much knowledge I had despite failing at community college in Louisiana, when I had no idea what was causing my near meltdown-panic attacks when going to class, or what was troubling me socially. My ambitions included being a graduate by age twenty-three. I wanted to work in the field of criminal psychology - my specialized interest. Ideally  I would become a prison psychologist or a criminal research psychologist. 

I am now almost twenty-four and have either 12 or 16 credits, most of which are in English. I have not been back to college since I was twenty-two; I'm not working for the FBI and have no credentials other than published psychological articles. I am not a particularly lazy person, and particularly was not when it came to college. 

After receiving my diagnosis in NYC, I began to understand why - despite my lack of social anxiety - I had panic attacks when walking into class or even trying to find my class. CSI has the largest campus in the CUNY system, and my community college was one giant non-academically challenging florescent light. I had sensory overload and had to run from the classroom if I made it inside. The behavior wasn't new; I had frequent meltdowns and shutdowns in school before college but my sullen or rowdy behavior was interpreted differently. I can't filter the lights and sounds around me, nor the smells. It can be pure, unadulterated hell for clear thinking, even if I look like a fully functioning adult at first.

I did drop out, finally, as my ability to handle sensory processing and the confusion of being in a room of people - much less work with them - dropped through the floor. I sought help for my disability - Asperger's, ADHD, and Math Disorder (not to mention general Panic Disorder.) I received odd looks and administrators shrugged and told me I looked normal. Autistic students in NYC received more help but I left soon after my diagnosis was final; they had special pen and paper and were allowed to choose their seating. In Louisiana, they gave zero fucks. I resorted to recording lectures and even managed to record one professor insulting me for my inability to make eye contact or work well wit other students. 

And then I'd had enough.

I had been writing since age 15 and it proved to be a serious passion for me as I published my first book of three at age nineteen. The topics I write about are the same topics I wished to work in after gaining a college degree; serial killers, murder, delusional mental illness, and suicidology.
              I wrote articles online professionally and began video-blogging to attract the kind of people I wanted to work with once I got the ever-evasive degree. While I make no money doing this, it does fulfill a large portion of my Asperger's-driven obsessiveness.
                    I began making pen-pals in prison, and I am now working on my fourth and - in my opinion - best and most disturbing, personally progressive novel yet. Meanwhile, I see people getting pure shit published through major publishing houses as I search clumsily for agents and self-publish while shamelessly self-promoting my work on social media. These people are publishing fanfiction of their own work and people are buying it. 
                 It is confusing and bewildering and frustrating, but I will one day be a major author. I managed to write and re-write my fourth novel while becoming a new mother. I understand plot. I understand character development. Other than painting, writing may become my entire source of income one day. And as I watch many with Masters degrees struggle to find work and make ends meet, I'm okay with that.

Writing is easy but understanding submissions guidelines makes me want to jump off a bridge. 

I am not giving up working in the field of criminology and I am not against the idea of returning to college if I find a way to fund it after bombing so many times because of my supposed "high functioning" Autism. But for now I may have to use my ambition and passion in other ways in the field; no one needs a degree to collect data, to write, and to advocate for better mental health treatment. My passion can be part of every day life because I look at the abnormal psychological symptoms of everyone, everything, and I observe and report. I have internet and I can take pictures; with or without a degree, with high intelligence, that gives me power. I am not where I intended to be when I began my journey into criminal psychology and writing, but I may end up somewhere even better. So, thanks, rulers of academia, for not doing your jobs properly. 

I don't need a piece of paper to prove I'm not a failure. 

Dizzy