by Rex Hurst
Jon let them hammer it out. His mind was elsewhere. The image of Crixen Runeburner was ready. It was perfect. Noble face with sharp elven ears, flowing robes, a mighty quarterstaff in hand. Somehow the artists had managed to create everything Jon envisioned his character to be. And for a moment, the fear that had been building a web in his brain for the last few days was gone.
As they went through a few practice rounds and got the rhythm of the game, Jon found himself drawn further into the life of his character than ever before. His hair rippled under fictional air. The tips of his fingers tingled when a spell was cast. It was exhilarating.
This might be a good game after all.
CHAPTER 5
Sign of the Beast
He stayed with Michael the next two nights, at the latter’s insistence. Jon didn’t need much of an arm twisting. Where else did he have to go? Michael’s parents didn’t want him there, but they paid so little attention it was easy to sneak by. The dad got up early to go to his job repairing conveyor belts, while the mom ran out soon after for her job as a crossing guard at the elementary school. Most nights, they went out bowling after a fast-food meal. Meanwhile, Michael’s brother was always high or in the process of getting high, so he didn’t care. He just stayed in the room reading comics when the parents were home, then scavenged for food afterwards.
It couldn’t last, though. What was he to do? Become some kind of homeless derelict, eating garbage and collecting aluminum cans? There was no job he could get above minimum wage. Even if he could work full-time, he would be living out of an abandoned car or with ten other guys in a fly-trap college flop. Even with Michael’s assurances that he could stay hidden in his room forever, it was bleak.
The vague plan he concocted was to graduate next May, somehow avoiding total homelessness, and then enlist in the armed forces. Recruiters constantly prowled the school’s corridors offering a life of low-paid adventure to the dregs of the senior class. Right then, it seemed his best bet.
The alternative was to go home, which freaked Jon out. The emotional impact of what he had seen had worn off some, but the unknown—what his parents would do to him—kept him away. His mother’s words: “The way he’s been acting is troubling,” haunted him.
Things were made even clearer when Michael started collecting college brochures and applications. They spent a few hours poring over each one, then filling it out, along with a host of student loan applications, tuition grants, and any scholarship he came across. Jon didn’t bother. All the applications had non-refundable fees attached to them. The Ivory Tower demanded a little tribute for the honor of being rejected by them. Jon had more lint than pennies in his pockets. Not that Michael’s parents helped their son either. The teen dipped into his own savings account to pay off the college’s bribes.
“I think I’ve got a good chance for Stanford,” Michael said, not bragging. “They’ve got a great department for chemical engineering.”
Michael had maintained his grades well enough and had joined the science club like a good nerd. Stanford was not out of the question, except economically. At that point, anything seemed better than Jon’s imagined fate. He kept grasping at straws. Only out of desperation did he decide to keep an assigned meeting with the school guidance counselor to discuss college prospects.
All new seniors had to go through the process. An entire week was given over to it. A month earlier, each senior had been given an appointment time. Jon wasn’t sure why he bothered. Mr. Demorray, the counselor, a rapidly balding and bitter man, upset that his words had forked no lightning, inevitably told ninety percent of the student body that they weren’t college material and wouldn’t amount to much in life.
When he opened the door, the world fell into an ice age and he trembled. Not at the broken-down administrator, desperately trying to make a comb over work with significantly less material than required, but at the sleek, perfectly groomed, confident man seated in front of him. Father tilted his head and motioned for Jon to be seated.
“I’m glad you could make it, Mr. St. Fond. So many of the parents don’t turn up for these meetings, no matter how often we remind them. It’s a sign of the times, I’m afraid.”
Sign of a shithole neighborhood more like. The meeting commenced. Both adults talked as if Jon wasn’t there. Demorray went on and on about how Jon’s somewhat mediocre grades debarred him from the Ivy Leagues. The man was obsessed with those colleges, as if a student he had counseled going to them would somehow justify his own lackluster life.
“We want to keep him close to home in any case,” Father said smoothly.
“Well, then I suggest Buffalo State College or SUNY at Buffalo. Either of them is economical and won’t mind building up a student with less than stellar grades who would be rejected by Harvard.”
They continued. Jon being the subject of much discussion but not a participant of said discussion. Eventually the meeting ended with an exhausted sigh by the counselor and Jon being led out of the office by Father’s firm hand. The bell had rung and the halls filled with students.
“Time to come home, boy,” Father whispered in Jon’s ear. “You’ve had some fun, but where does it go? Does running away make anything better?”
Jon had to admit defeat. He wasn’t prepared to become a bum on the street. A return was in the cards. That didn’t mean he would put up with any more nonsense, or stop looking into whatever the hell his parents did to him in the basement, or what they were up to with the bowl. No, they hadn’t beaten him. Just the opposite. He felt stronger than he ever had before.
“I borrowed a bike from Michael. I have to see if he’ll let me keep on using it.”
Father only nodded. Jon was about to add on to that statement, something about needing more respect at home, when his attention was hijacked by the lithe form of Maria Maleventum walking by with a cohort of Italians. They were smacking gum on their lips while discussing which of the absent girls from their clique was the biggest skank.
His pants tightened. Mouth watered. Gabbaducci was with her. He grabbed her ass and sneered when he caught Jon looking, then whispered something to his buddies. Maria giggled under the assault, playfully smacking him. Father leaned behind his son.
“You want that girl?” he asked. “Why don’t you have her?”
“She only goes for jerks. You know nice guys finish last.”
“Well, you’re not that nice. I know what you did to your sister with the hot dog. Don’t deny it.”
Jon didn’t. No point. He knew how Father collected information.
“Her death would’ve caused quite a few problems.”
Jon bit his tongue, the reflexive I’m sorry was on the tip of it, but every time it came out in Father’s presence things got worse. He choked it back down. Besides, he wasn’t sorry. His older sister was a disgusting mass of putrefied desires and she made him sick. She was an idol of self-indulgence that his parents enabled for some reason.
He had never considered it before, but maybe there was a sinister reason for their actions. Jon had blamed all of his woes on bad parenting. Could there be a method to the madness? The rituals in the basement. The impossible bowl. How were they connected? His mind reeled. Too much he didn’t know. Too many gaps in the narrative that he could fill with fears. That sealed it. He had to go home, if only to discover more about what was happening.
“And it isn’t ‘nice guys’ that finish last,” Father continued. “It’s weak men who do so. Men who hang in the back and wait for the woman to slink to them. Who are too scared to go for what they want. Who are too lazy to figure out how to get it. You’ve all been brainwashed to assume that being a submissive to a woman’s ever-shifting wants is somehow being a ‘good guy.’ No, it’s being weak.”
Jon stared at him. Father had never been so frank and open before, even if it was somewhat sexist. Looking back over the chunks he could remember from his childhood, Jon had almost never gotten any direction from his elder. Mostly it had been one perpetual emas
culation by Mother. Otherwise, the young Jon had been left to develop on his own.
“Then,” Jon began, bracing for a verbal smack down from Father, “what do you do?”
“If they want something, don’t just give it to them. Make them work for it, plead for it. Humans value something that they’ve sweated for over something just handed to them. If a woman has to struggle for your attention or your favor, they’ll automatically put you in a higher bracket than those who run behind trying to sniff her ass.”
First bit of fatherly advice, how to pick up chicks. What a life. The late bell rang and the halls quickly became a ghost town. Father lit a cigar, completely indifferent to the school’s no-smoking policy.
“Better get to class,” he said. “I expect you at dinner tonight.”
He walked down the hall, somehow larger than the room. A mousy secretary tried to scold him for smoking, but he ignored her completely and disappeared around a corner. Jon ran to class, puzzled and nervous.
The rest of the school day passed in a blur.
Michael accompanied him home, talking a mile a minute about how Jon could keep the bike, about going to Stanford, about how great the game was going, about a big surprise he had for next week. Jon barely took it in. With each pedal towards home, his anxiety hiked just a bit. He was sure something horrible was waiting for him.
The only thing at home was his younger sister sticking out her tongue, though. Decked out in her frilly ballerina costume, she was a pink snarling nightmare when Jon walked in the door, then went back to stuffing a huge mound of sherbet into her maw off her favorite plate. Mother was talking to someone over the phone, growing increasingly agitated.
“How do you know you’re not a homosexual if you don’t try it?”
A pause. She rolled her eyes at the excuses. “Well I think it’s a good idea. There’s a guy I want to match you up with.”
Another pause. Another excuse. An offended huff from Mother.
“What does it matter what he looks like? We’re trying to get past this sexist corporate imagery of beauty and here you are diving right back into it. If you really believe looks don’t matter, then you’d go out with whomever I say.”
Objection from the phone. A shriek of outrage.
“You’re just not gay? It’s not you? Well then maybe who you are doesn’t work for us anymore and you can’t be part of any of our activist groups!”
She slammed the phone. She glanced at Jon briefly, noting him as one would a stray fly, and rummaged through her purse.
“I’ve got to take Catherine to dance class,” she said without looking up. Keys jingled under her fingers. “Michelle’s upstairs with a friend. Don’t disturb her. There’s some food and stuff in the fridge.”
Brushing past Jon, she led the young ballerina out the door, cooing sweetly about how pretty the little girl was. The door slammed. Silence, except for the faint hum of a bass line from the attic, where his whore sister held court.
The first thing Jon did was check out his room to make sure none of his second-hand stuff was missing. Nothing had been taken, or cleaned, the smell attested to that, but under the portable TV set he found something had been slipped into his journal.
A tarot card. An old one. Incredibly brittle, it felt like it would crumble under his touch. The tarot wasn’t printed on card stock and waxed, as modern cards were. It seemed to be a hand painted woodblock imprint. Back when they were twelve, Michael had been briefly fascinated with the tarot and had gone on about it for weeks.
It was the fifteenth trump of the major arcana, The Devil. Though this one was marked as Le Diable. It was a much cruder drawing from ones he had seen before. While still sporting the goatish mane and horns, the devil also had prodigious breasts and a massive phallus. There was a blue face in the devil’s midsection sticking its tongue out. Two chained demons, one male, one female, lay at a round pedestal at his feet.
From what he remembered, the image represented mankind seduced by the material world and physical pleasures. A lust for power and money. Its opposition meaning—represented when the card was dealt upside down—meant a person chained in fear. One who lived in bondage to a more powerful image. The card had been slid into the notebook sideways, as if its symbolism was still up in the air. One that Jon was meant to choose.
What was this? A little wave from his parents that they were on to him? Or maybe it was some sort of magic thing, some devil worship. Kathy’s mother had mentioned curse cards being used by those weird religions. All of those had used catholic saints, but did it matter? Had his parents cursed him? Mother had certainly cursed at him plenty. He slipped the card into his pocket.
The hatch to Michelle’s room was open a tad. Oily smoke from the illegal herb she was inhaling billowed out. Its thick fragrance penetrated the entire upper floor. Some ancient The Door’s song rumbled out, punctuated by inane giggling.
“This isn’t Thai stick. I’ve had Thai stick and this shit ain’t it,” Michelle’s voice warbled.
“Hey, baby,” a deep masculine voice replied. “There’s a pot drought on. I take what kind I can get. Should be happy I give you any at all.”
“Well, don’t call it Thai stick. It’s terrible . . . Don’t hog it!”
“You want it, huh? You know what that costs.”
“Okay,” Michelle said. “But you gotta use the back door, the front’s all raw and puffy.”
Ugh. Jon retreated to the first floor, where the godawful noises they started to make were reduced to low droning. He snagged half a cheese sandwich lying on a plate for him and some red flavored Kool Aid, just to line his gut.
Once again, he squashed down the fears regarding the cellar and forced himself to descend into the musky gray room.
He repeated his protective ritual in his mind. I’m not scared. One might expect the terror to dwindle with repeated exposure, but it never did. I’m not scared. He took one step, then another. I’m not . . .
The stairs extended and dropped a
Long way, then it
sna
ked
sna
ked
sna
ked
sna
ked
sna
ked
sna
ked
sna
ked
sna
ked
snake
snaked
snake
sn
a
k
e
d d
He made snow angels on the gray slate floor. Burning fumed from his pocket. What was there? Was it the Devil? Yes, it was.
The ancient tarot card was burning a hole in his pants.
His fingers sizzled behind a lavender scent as he yanked it forth.
The Devil roared its rage. The mouth in its stomach vomited up red ink that stained his hands. The floor cracked open and fiery stairs led the way down.
“What is this?” Jon yelled.
“Communion,” The Devil answered. “One step beyond.”
“Always just one step beyond.”
The demons chained at the Devil’s feet simpered and cried. From their mouths came a stream of unending babble.
***
The Male Demon thundered:
The invention of the left-hand-path as the direction where “evil” treads is based purely on the idea that polar opposites in moral deliberations exist as a force outside of the human mind. Whereas in reality, the “good” and the “evil” are cultural constructs designed to corral the local populace into accepted mental boxes, so the ruling elite may then dispose of them as per their fiat. Such ideas exist solely to fellate the individual’s ego. When one applies the adjective “good” to oneself, then those who have a viewpoint not in alignment, must out of necessity, be “evil.” Yet if each person views themselves as the “good” or the “hero”, then what actually constitutes evil? Is then each man a beacon of evil? Or does it mean that evil does not actua
lly exist beyond our own warped vanity? Will you let yourself be defined by others? Or will you . . .
***
The Female Demon screeched:
Crixen Runeburner held the globe of brilliance in his hand. For hours, he stood there pondering its icy depths. All about him, his comrades in arms, his fellow adventurers, lay crumpled like bits of paper. The rabid orc horde they had cut through was broken, the bleeding survivors running back into the hills. Only their master, the Ogre Mage, with one foul horn between its yellow beady eyes, remained. They clashed. The Ogre’s spells and raw strength had battered down the heroes. The fighter, the cleric, the thief. They all fell beneath the monster’s might. Crixen channeled power from hidden depths of will and sent a blast of destruction that enveloped the monster’s head, leaving only charred bone and melted flesh in its wake. “You can do this too, Jon,” the elf whispered into the gem. “All the power of the world lies at your feet. All you must do is . . .
TAKE ONE STEP BEYOND
Jon woke up, dehydrated as before. At least his clothes were still on this time. A post-it note had been slapped on his forehead. “You have to stop sleeping in strange places,” it read in Father’s handwriting.
Goddamn it. What was happening? He had been drugged, not a doubt about it. But how? The food? The drink? Wonderful, to protect himself it’d have to be nothing but tap water and stolen saltine packets from now on.
The bathroom mirror revealed a wretch of a face. Despite being unconscious for however long he had been, he was exhausted. The sallow pull of his flesh, combined with the black rings around his eyes, attested to that. He peeled a milky scum off his tongue that had congealed there.
He consulted the note again. Its tone was almost playful. Not a threat, more a smirk. Father knew Jon knew something, but how much? And how much did Father care? Not much, judging by their lack of reaction. That just might be their downfall, the underestimating of their son.
After slapping himself awake, Jon plunged back into the hidden room behind his parents’ closet. The bottle of whiskey was still in the hiding place. He helped himself to a slug while he pulled up the chair. Jon snapped off the VCRs and rewound the basement feed as far back as it could go. There he was on the basement floor. A robed figure descends, glances at him, then plugs something into the wall. He paused the image and leaned in, squinting to get as much detail as he could squeeze from the small sight. It looked like a crockpot with some kind of white liquid—very white, like alfredo sauce—cooking away in it.
