by David Beers
John heard Harry’s footsteps behind them.
Knock, knock, knock on the pavement, and John didn’t know for sure, but he thought Harry wore cowboy boots. The motherfucker put on cowboy boots so that John would specifically hear them as he walked.
John picked up his pace, feeling a slight resistance from Cindy.
“In a hurry?” she said.
“No, just cold.” He didn’t slow down, though.
They walked the relatively short distance from the theater to her dorm. Harry kept following, quietly except for the repeated crash of his boots on the sidewalk.
“Are you okay?” Cindy said as they stood outside of her building. “I know it’s dark, but you look pretty pale.”
“Yeah, I’m okay. Just don’t feel well all of a sudden.”
Cindy turned her head slightly sideways, studying him, and perhaps judging—seeing if he told the truth.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Of course. Mini-golf,” John said, trying his best to smile.
She leaned in and gave him a light kiss on his cheek, then turned and walked into her dorm.
John stood outside under the light pole and listened as Harry approached from behind.
“She’s perfect,” Harry said.
“For me?”
“No, no. For us.”
“No.”
John lay in his bed with his eyes closed. He said the word quietly, though inside him an emotional tornado raged.
“Why not?”
“You know why, Harry. The same reason I won’t kill my mom. I care about her.”
“You barely know her,” Harry said. “You’ve known her for a month or so. Just because you gave her a little kiss doesn’t mean you can’t kill her.”
John didn’t want to open his eyes, didn’t want to see Harry on the other side of the room. He could already hear the flipping of pages as Harry moved through his book, holding this conversation with the same focus as someone discussing the weather.
“I’m not going to do it. That’s all there is to it.”
Harry sighed, a long one that portrayed only one phrase: stop being such a child, John.
“It’ll be painless. One bullet and she’s gone. You don’t even have to stick around and watch what happens after.”
“I don’t want you to ever come around us again. Do you understand that?”
“I understand the words, yes. But, I think she’s the one, John, do you understand that? I think that we’re going to have tons of fun with her. I mean … imagine if she lets you fuck her first? You lose your virginity twice in one night. If that’s not fun, I don’t know what is.”
John flew off the bed as if propelled by a rocket. He stood and moved across the room barely understanding he did it—simply reacting, anger driving him to a state he hadn’t known before. The rest of the room blacked out; John saw only Harry, the fat, fleshy ghost from his mind. He faced him, inches away from Harry’s nose, and he could smell the stench. Rotting meat. A smell moving with Harry’s breath that spoke of dead and diseased things.
“I’ll kill you,” he said. “How about that? I’ll fucking murder you, Harry, and then I’ll put you back out in that ocean. This time you can float away forever, but you won’t be able to scream, because when I slit your throat I’ll make sure I cut your goddamn vocal chords too.”
Harry looked on, his non-burst pupil expanding almost to the same size as his wrecked eye. “You watched me, didn’t you? That’s why I’m here. You watched me drown and you didn’t do anything. Oh Lord have mercy, you’re more fucked up than I thought, John. What did it feel like when you watched your best friend die at sea? How long would it have taken you to get help? My parents were two hundred feet away, weren’t they? How long to get a lifeguard out there? It would have been a tight race, no doubt, but I think I might have lived. Do you?”
“I’ll do it again, Harry. I’ll kill you.”
“How did it feel?” Harry said. “Do you remember?”
And the emotions rolled back, rising high in his body, higher than the anger rushing forward at Harry. Because watching him die had been the greatest thing John ever saw. Hearing his screams and knowing that no one would save him—no life boats, no life guards, and in the end … no life.
“Yes …,” Harry said. “Yes, that’s right. Remember it.”
In the end, Harry’s screams weakened, unable to fight to stay above water. And then the water came in, through his mouth and filled up his young lungs. Suffocating him. And John saw it all, watching like a bird of prey circling a small, wounded animal.
“You see, John. We’re not very different, you’ve just forgotten what it feels like. We can get her just like you got me. Why don’t we give it a try?”
“I’ll kill you first,” John said. “I swear it.”
But they both understood that might have been a lie.
John,
I hope things are well. I miss you terribly, more than I thought would be possible. I think about your smile all the time, even though it’s a rare thing to see. I hope you’re smiling more over there.
Alicia told me you called her. She said you had a girlfriend, is that true? Said she’s a blonde? She wasn’t too happy about that, but then again, blondes have more fun, from what I hear. Don’t have too much fun, if you understand what I’m saying.
Your father sends his love. He’ll probably write you soon, too, though he’s not as free with the pen as I am. I know people are starting to write with computers, but I think writing it longhand may let me gather my thoughts some.
Before I go on, I want you to destroy this letter when you’re done reading it. I don’t mean throw it away in the trash; I mean you burn it. What I’m going to say here, John, is something that I should have a said a long time ago, but I just don’t have the courage. Your father might, if he knew these things, but I don’t. I can’t face them, not truly, despite what I’ve been doing with Dr. Vondi. So you burn this and you don’t talk to me about it again, okay?
You asked about my mother in our phone call and I dismissed the question. I shouldn’t have, but I did. And now, here I am, trying to make up for it, but still too chickenshit to pick up the phone and call.
I’m scared, John.
I’m scared because of the animal I saw on our trails a few years ago.
I’m scared because Harry died while you were there.
I’m scared because I’ve seen what my bloodline is capable of.
After you burn this letter, you’re not to repeat anything I say in it. Not to your father and not to your sister. Not to your girlfriend. Not to Dr. Vondi. No one. I can’t be more clear about this. What I write here is between us, and neither one of us are going to share it with another soul. As scared as I am for you and this situation, I trust you more than I can put into words. Because I love you.
My mother killed my father, John. She didn’t kill him as in, wore him down over the course of a lifetime. She put a butcher’s knife in his neck and left it there for me to see when I came home. I’m lucky that I’m not in an insane asylum right now, to be honest. I thank your father for that and my own resiliency.
She did a lot more though, John.
Things I haven’t told anyone.
She would bring men home, presumably for sex, and then they just disappeared. Not from me—but from the world.
I’m going to tell you one episode, because I want you to understand why I’m so scared. One and only one. Then we have to decide how to move forward.
I was sixteen years old, and I know that for sure because when I was a kid, I counted the days—literally, the days—until I would legally be an adult.
Nine hundred and seventy two days until Lori turned eighteen.
She counted the days in a small notebook. She didn’t write anything else in it, she simply flipped the page and then knocked the number down by one—tomorrow would be nine hundred and seventy one.
She wondered if prisoners did the
same thing, except instead of a notebook, they perhaps carved it into a small place on their prison walls. Lori couldn’t do that, of course. Even the notebook she kept might be too risky, if Clara found it. She hid it well, but just couldn’t bear not having it—a tiny ray of light at the end of this horrendous, dark tunnel. She tried to focus only on that light, because things came out of nowhere in this tunnel and hit her all the time. Knocking her over as she walked, and pummeling her face, leaving bruises that wouldn’t fade—but never killing her.
Her mother wouldn’t murder her.
On the nine hundredth and seventy second day until Lori’s emancipation, a freight train came down that dark tunnel. She didn’t see it or hear it until it was too late, but that was how these things always went, wasn’t it?
“Come here, Lori,” her mother called.
The basement. Lori never went to the basement, was specifically forbidden from going. She didn’t want to, either, because if Clara told her not to do something—it meant something sick was most likely happening. Something like what happened to her (NO DON’T YOU THINK ABOUT THAT DON’T YOU DARE).
“Why?” she called from the top of the stairs. She could see the illumination cast by the single light hanging from the ceiling.
“Because I said.”
No argument existed inside Clara’s words. Just a singular command that Lori had to follow, because whatever existed down there with Clara wasn’t as bad as what would exist upstairs if she didn’t obey. Or so she thought.
Lori walked down the steps, slowly, carefully, dreading each time her foot hit the next stair.
But eventually, as all things must, the staircase ended and Lori found herself standing in the basement. She looked at the light, first, trying to avoid her mother, who stood a bit further back, just in the shadows. She saw the drawstring hanging from the bulb, and knew she couldn’t look at it forever.
“Lori, over here.”
She slowly turned her eyes to her mother and saw the second most horrifying thing ever.
A man sat tied to a chair, arms and wrists bound so tight that his skin grew pale towards his feet and hands.
“Come,” Clara said.
Lori went, already her mind trying to shut down, trying to turn catatonic—unable to see and unable to know what happened around her.
“What should I do to him?”
The man was brutalized. His face a mixture of swelling skin and broken flesh. Deep purple grew across him like a weed. He couldn’t see anything and blood dripped from his ears.
Lori followed the beating downward, seeing that he was naked, and that …
“No,” she said. “No, no, no.”
The man was gelded. Tied off to stop the blood flow, but missing what made him a man.
“Do you want to know why?” Clara said.
“No, no, no, no,” Lori repeated without knowing she said the words at all.
“Because, Lori … sometimes it’s fun to see how far the human body can go. I didn’t think he would make it this far … so what should I do?”
“Let him go, mom. Please let him go.” Lori wasn’t sobbing, but tears streamed down her face all the same.
“How would that work? You think he’ll keep quiet about all of this? Won’t turn me into the police, right?”
Lori shook her head, unable to take her eyes away from the horror and not understanding a word her mother said.
“You don’t like seeing this, do you?”
Still shaking her head, but not answering the question.
Clara smiled. “I didn’t think so. Where’s your little book at, darling? The one with the days in it, the days until you turn eighteen?”
Lori’s eyes snapped to her mother’s.
“Oh, there isn’t anything that happens under my roof that I don’t know about, sweetheart. It’s fine. Keep your little book. I just thought you might want to see this … if, I don’t know, you were thinking of leaving before those days reached zero.”
Lori said nothing, only stood staring at her mother with wide eyes and fear rippling through her entire body.
“Go on. Get upstairs. I’ll take care of this.”
I went upstairs. I don’t know how long it was until I left my room, John. All I know is that one morning she came in, turned the lights on—and they shone down like God himself opened up the heavens, because I’d been in the dark for days at that point. I didn’t even get up to use the restroom, though I don’t remember going in bed, either. She told me to get up, that I’d missed enough school, and so that’s what I did. I got up and went to school.
I don’t tell you all this to scare you, because I doubt there’s much that can scare you, John. I tell you because I want you to see what could happen to you. You’re going to have kids and a family one day. You’re going to have a household. I don’t think what was in my mother is the same as what’s in you, but there’s a part of it. A large and strong part.
Everyone else can deny it or refuse to see it, but I won’t.
Because I love you and I have to keep you safe. That’s why you’re over there, but you knew that already, didn’t you? Vondi cared too much. He wanted to understand you, and when he finally did, you’d be jailed. Or killed. I can’t let that happen, not while I’m alive.
You have to be careful. You can’t let what’s inside you break through. I don’t know what happened with Harry, but … it doesn’t matter. Be safe, John. Be careful.
I love you more than you know, more than anything in my life.
-Mom
24
A Portrait of a Young Man
Years Earlier
“Wow,” Harry said. He placed the letter on the dorm room desk. “Well, at least you know now, huh?”
John stood at the door, facing it. He just finished listening to Harry read the whole letter to him without saying a word.
He remained silent for at least another minute, not turning around either.
“She knew,” he said. “She knew the whole time.”
“Didn’t you kind of suspect that, though?”
“There’s a difference between suspecting and knowing that your grandmother was a lunatic, Harry,” he said, moving from the door to his bed. He sat down and put his head in his hands.
“So what?”
“That’s what’s going to happen to me. I’ll be like her. That’s what you are, you’re the beginning of me turning into that fucking bitch.”
“Come on, man. That’s a bit of a stretch, don’t you think? I mean, we’re talking about an eentsy weentsy murder here. We’re not talking about cutting balls off and making your daughter watch. That’s absurd.”
John looked up to him. “Eentsy weentsy murder? That’s what this is? No, Harry. It’s all consuming. It’s taking over my life. I’m sitting here talking to someone, a guy that doesn’t exist for Christ’s sake, about killing my girlfriend.” He shook his head, looking back down at his hands. “Jesus, she knew. She knew what was happening and she didn’t help.”
“Don’t be so hard on her.” Harry stood up from his chair and walked over to the bed. He sat down, his weight causing the balance to shift. “What could she do, John? What could anyone do? Her mother was like this and maybe this thing skips a generation. You drew the short straw. The difference between you and your grandmother, I think at least, is that your parents care about you. You’re … I don’t know, you have a heart of sorts, which is what makes this so difficult. But even so, you can’t change who you are. Your mom couldn’t change it, either. She’s doing all she can by trying to protect you, by arming you with this knowledge and sending you away. But, did she say to quit, John?”
Tears sat in his eyes like hot pools, blurring everything around him.
“Did she?”
He shook his head.
“Exactly. She didn’t. She knows you can’t. She wants you to be careful, but you’re going to be what you are, John. She sees it; why don’t you?”
The tears fell, and John’s chest hit
ched.
“I know, man. I know,” Harry said, placing his hand on John’s back. “It’s heavy, but she still loves you. Your family still loves you. None of them need to know, ever.”
John turned and looked at Harry. No smile sat on his face, none of the usual jokes and irreverence. Harry appeared completely serious, even sympathetic.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll be okay. I’m here, too.”
John wanted to hug him, and at the same time, felt repulsed at the idea. He had no one else, not in this strange country, who could understand any of this—and here his dead friend sat, telling him they would work through it. They would be okay. No one else sat here trying to help, just Harry.
“You ain’t gotta hug me, man. But we’re in this together, for better or worse.”
And John nodded, because he knew the truth in those words. For better or worse, Harry was here to stay.
“Not Cindy,” John said. “Anyone but her.”
Harry cocked his head to the side, studying him, and when he reached whatever conclusion he searched for, he straightened it up again. “Let’s not talk about who right now, okay?”
“Okay,” John said, nodding. “Okay.”
John knew what was coming, knew it and saw no way around it.
He had thought through the possibilities for the past two days, trying to see if he could do anything else and get the outcome he wanted. In the end, though, the answer was simple and final: no. He had to do it this way, because humiliation was key. Anger was key. Hate was key. If all of those things rolled up inside Cindy, then no chance existed of her ever trying to date John again.
Because the truth was, John didn’t trust Harry. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it a few days ago, but when John finally calmed down, he understood why. Harry wanted Cindy. He wanted her to be their first and wasn’t done trying to convince John yet.
So John had to end it with Cindy.
