by Rowan Massey
Whenever I pictured meeting him in a normal way and getting to know him as his estranged son, I couldn’t stand the thought of his giving me whatever he wanted to give me, be it affection, time, or assistance. Fuck receiving whatever he might be charitable enough to finally give.
I was going to take what I wanted without asking.
Chapter Four
Zander Age 18
KILLY THE KNIFE joined me for the Wednesday night prayer meeting. There was a plan in mind back then too, and it was similarly all about the planning, pretending, and fantasizing, not about a desire for the actual goal. As a child, I wasn’t dealing with things much differently from the way I would when I grew up a little.
I’d recently learned the word therapeutic. That was Killy summed up, or so it seemed to me. Playing with him at church was therefore acceptable.
I pretended that I was the knife and I’d made my way once again into the boy’s willing hands. I’d made it all the way to church, and all the way through the abominable half-hour meeting without being discovered by the mother. In a moment, I would hopefully plunge myself into Eli’s belly fat and entrails, soaking myself in gore until I dripped with it. I had a cartoonish image in my mind of blood spraying out of him like a garden hose when you put your thumb over the opening. Every time I thought about it, I wanted to laugh. I hoped it wouldn’t get on my face though. That was disgusting.
There was a little sidewalk between the church auditorium and the banquet hall. Eli, Hannah, and some other kid were walking ahead of me, acting as if I didn’t exist. With Killy’s hurried and whispered voice and his sleek body in place of my own identity, I quickly formed a strategy to separate Eli from the group and do my ugly work in the dark.
I pounced sideways into the gravel under the bushes and grabbed a handful of dirty pebbles. As I stepped back onto the path, I tossed one in Eli’s direction, missing him by a few feet, but the clatter caught his attention. Unfortunately, the plan was only practical in my head, and the other two heard it just as clearly as he had. They paused and turned to look back at me, faces blank, probably trying to figure a way to quickly rebury my existence.
Killy was loosely held in my hand, but they hadn’t taken notice of him yet. Eli’s eyes darted nervously from me to his friends. On a whim, I slowly lifted the blade to my face and grinned maniacally.
“Eeeeeliiii,” I singsonged in Killy’s deep voice. Somehow, in my disjointed eleven-year-old reasoning, Eli would know it was a game, and more or less, play along. If he didn’t, I’d be in trouble, but I was already used to being in trouble.
He gave a sharp shout and bolted.
I chased.
“Oh my gosh!” I heard as I ran past the others. “What the heck!”
I couldn’t believe I used to talk like them. Their self-conscious and self-righteous avoidance of swearing was incredibly annoying.
“Fuck you!” I yelled at them, feet slamming into the pavement behind my prey. Killy made his way up into the air over my head and enjoyed the coolness of the night air rushing past.
Someone was behind me, overtaking me. Hannah sprinted past, her body cringing away from me. I was confused by it, and cringed away from her in turn. For a frozen moment we both risked losing our balance and falling in opposite directions, but she made it past me with a mouse-like squeak. I immediately chased after her.
“Eli!” she called, and he paused for a split second—just long enough for her to reach him, which meant Killy was that much closer to his target.
I heard Eli say something along the lines of, “What are you doing!”.
I laughed despite my panting. I couldn’t help it, especially when I saw that they each refused to be the one running out in front of the other, and it was slowing them down.
Five feet away. Four. Three. The countdown halted when they stopped in order to pull a door open and run inside. Killy flung himself at them, but my hesitation ruined the attack. They were inside, and the heavy door was trying to shut on me. I shoved it open with a loud grunt that raked my throat, attempting to intimidate them even further.
The door had opened into the middle of a short hall. I looked to the right, and to the left, and thought I heard something in the Sunday school room to my right. I stalked in that direction. Hannah was whispering urgently. The dumb bitch couldn’t be quieter than that? She was making it too easy for me.
There was only one place in the room two people could hide—the large supply closet with a missing door knob. It always stood cracked open, but it was being held shut. I peered into the door knob hole and saw a fingertip holding onto the door, unable to hide from sight. I grinned and hooked my own finger into it. His immediately pushed all the way through and hooked on as well, so that we each had a grip. When I yanked at it, there was a gasp inside, but his finger was stronger than I’d expected. The door rattled against its frame. A third finger joined ours inside the hole; Hannah’s. I stuck Killy in my pocket and took hold of the door with fingers from both hands. The space was intimately tight, their fingers hot and reddened against mine. I couldn’t get it open, so I kicked at the door in frustration.
They screamed.
I yanked and kicked again, just to hear them scream again. I was having much more fun than I’d expected to have, but they were going to bring adults running in my direction, and I’d be screwed.
“Please,” Eli wailed. He sounded like such a baby. It irritated me.
The door shot open into my face. I stopped it just before it hit my nose. Inside the closet, Eli and Hannah stood paralyzed. He was in front of her, arms out to protect her like a big, brave man, but his terrified expression betrayed his weakness. She had her arms wrapped tightly around his waist. Were they dating? That would explain why Hannah saw the need to become a victim too, instead of running off. God, I hated them.
Killy made his way back into my hand, and I took a fighter’s stance. Eli lunged at me, and Killy met him in the middle.
A clarity washed through my mind, and there I was with Eli’s hands gripping my forearms. I had one hand against his chest and the other…Killy had made his way to Eli’s flesh, but not head-on. Woozily, I observed that Killy was against Eli’s side, edge pushing against his body the way you slice a tough block of cheese. My fist, closed around the handle, brushed against Eli’s button-down shirt. There was blood, but I couldn’t tell if I’d hurt him badly or not.
The word bastard had been better defined for me a long time ago and had become a badge of pride instead of a scarlet letter. But right then, what entered my head was that I hadn’t wanted to be a bastard, and in the same way, I didn’t want to be a killer. One thing was something I couldn’t prevent, but the other I could.
Taking a step back and shaking off Eli’s grip, I tossed Killy onto the floor, where he skidded to meet the wall. Throwing him away wrenched my heart. He’d been a friend, but I had to let him go because I was afraid of what he’d make me do next.
Hannah was the one to push forward, forcing Eli to edge past me.
“Go! Go!” she whispered.
They left in a hurry, feet stumbling. After a pause, I followed because it was the only way out of the room. I reached the hall just in time to see them round the corner at the other end, no doubt ready to grab hold of the first adult to cross their path.
I headed back through the door to the outside and gazed at the small parking lot in front of me, not sure what to do. Gnats and moths swarmed under lights, crickets sang, a handful of people stood chatting nearby, and it was like nothing had happened.
There would be a lot of trouble in a minute. I knew that, but I didn’t think Killy had hurt anyone seriously.
“Lysander!” My mom’s voice. Did she already know? She was in the doorway of the foyer. I’d gotten all the thrills I’d wanted and was anxious at the tone and volume of her voice. She wasn’t the kind of mom who yelled at her kid. She was too quiet for that. Maybe this was bigger trouble than I’d thought.
She walked briskly into the b
ig floodlight that illuminated the parking lot, heels clacking. The tension in her brows alarmed me. Mom was rarely emotional in plain sight, or even around me. It was a thing she reserved for the loneliness of her bedroom.
“Get in the car. Now.” She didn’t need to shout for the alarm bells in her shaky voice to reach me. There were people milling around chatting, and they each took a turn looking her way, ready to start gossip. With a glance behind me, thinking of where Killy lay waiting to be found like evidence in one of Mom’s cop shows, I did what I was told. I got into the backseat instead of the front. Mom’s emotions were a signal for me to back off.
Ten minutes later, we pulled into the apartment complex and I jumped out of the car as soon as it stopped, sprinting ahead of Mom. I used the spare key hidden in the dirt of a dead potted plant to open the door for her. I made sure to put it back. Sometimes she got annoyed with the lock, and I could get it open faster than she could. When she crossed the threshold with a sigh, her eyes more sad than I’d ever seen them before, I took the set of keys from her hand and locked the door behind us.
There were a lot of little things I tried to do for her when she seemed at the end of her rope, even when I’d caused it. Sometimes every little thing she did seemed to be an enormous effort for her. I’d long since learned that if I tried to make her laugh when she was depressed, I’d only annoy her and make it worse. Sometimes I still tried the old trick of telling her I loved her, but I didn’t know if I did love her anymore, so I said it less and less. Love was making about as much sense as everything else as I approached puberty.
Also, I still wasn’t sure if I was going to be in trouble for being Killy at church. Mom knew about Killy and said the rules were I didn’t hurt myself enough to need a doctor and didn’t take him anywhere away from home.
Maybe coffee would hit the spot for her. Even at night, she drank it to relax, as backwards as that seemed. I went to the kitchen and took out the coffee filters, fiddling with them to make sure I only used one. Predictably, she went out back for a smoke or three.
When she came back inside, whiffs of nicotine trailing behind her, I was sitting on the sofa and had turned the TV channel to one of the police procedural reruns she watched every day. I’d put her coffee with two sugars on the table next to the recliner, but she skipped it and went fishing around in the bottom of the living room hutch.
I didn’t ask what she was looking for. She never wanted to talk in her bad moods. Words seemed to be an effort when she was blue, even if it was just yes or no. Her back straightened, and she was holding a dark bottle in her hand.
It was wine.
For religious reasons, our house was strictly tea totaling, so was everyone I’d ever spent time with, and I couldn’t hide my shock. It was a severely demonized and taboo substance for us, and she had casually unearthed a stash from the living room, her body language as languid and uncaring as ever.
“How’m I gonna open this thing?” she mumbled to herself, and shuffled into the kitchen. Wary, but unable to stop my curiosity, I followed her. She took a steak knife that was completely subpar to Killy and worked the tip of it into the top of the cork, twisting it back and forth until it came out with a high-pitched pop that I’d only ever heard on TV.
“Is that real?” I asked.
She nodded. “You can have a few sips if you want.”
“What? Really?” My voice was getting higher. “What are we celebrating?” That was what people said on TV when somebody unexpectedly started pouring alcohol.
She stopped what she was doing and looked towards me, but not at me, her eyes gazing anxiously at things in another world.
“We’re not celebrating,” she said, snapping out of it to pour a full tumbler of red wine for herself and about a half inch in a second tumbler for me. “We’re drowning our sorrows. Jesus wouldn’t mind.”
The night was getting weirder and weirder. I took the tumbler from her and sniffed the liquid, swirling it a little with a movement of my wrist and smiling at my own silliness. That’s what people supposedly did with wine, but I didn’t know what I was trying to detect. Before I could drink it, Mom stopped me with a hand to my arm.
“Things might change,” she said softly. “Just be ready.”
Change how? Ready how? It was frustrating when people said something like that and didn’t want to explain. I was sure I could understand more than adults thought I could. I stopped myself from saying the sarcastic things going through my head. After a pause, I bit my lip and nodded. We clinked our glasses.
“Cheers,” Mom said in a monotone.
“Cheers.” We drank in unison. I was glad I hadn’t gulped it because just a sip twisted my face and made me cough. It was awful.
Mom watched me and had a small smile on her face. She thought it was funny. So I did it again and this time hammed it up a little. She smiled slightly bigger, grabbed the bottle, and went to her room.
Chapter Five
Zander Age 18
I WENT TO a small party at Greg’s house to celebrate his parents giving him the studio apartment over their garage. It was supposed to be a graduation present, but they’d given it to him for Christmas instead. Maybe they were eager to get some distance from him. I didn’t give a shit, but I wanted to get the hell out of my house. Who knew being on Christmas vacation could suck so much? Sitting around the house was giving me constant low levels of anxiety. Every little thing I did for distraction ended up being somehow even more irritating than doing nothing. I felt better sitting around Greg’s place, but I was still dealing with a racing mind and bouncing leg.
There were only four people there besides me and Greg, and everyone was stoned except me. The sweet, dank smell of the bud was killing me. I had a dim hope that the dissipated smoke would make me a little high despite my efforts. Each person there felt the need to tell me to take a hit. Without the social lubricant of smoking, all of them were fucking annoying, especially the ones I didn’t know well. Every time, I was tempted to just take a quick puff, but I kept saying no. The plan was everything.
I sat in a saucer chair in the corner—the folding kind every teenager has in their room—and started watching a vegan documentary that I’d found streaming for free. The music in the room was loud, so I turned on the subtitles. It was nice to enjoy the music and watch something at the same time, and I figured I should do it that way more often.
I had all my social apps set to give me banner notifications, and now and then, I’d get something uninteresting, but I’d still been checking Lottie’s stuff obsessively.
Lottiedahs: I put the recipe on my Tumblr :)
I was jarred out of my relaxed state. My gut sucked in with exhilaration. I’d officially made first contact with the other side of my family.
I hunched over my phone and left the documentary to go to her comment where she’d left a link to her Tumblr. It only had posts of recipes and her reviews of them. I’d already thought about the timing of my response. My instinct had been to wait a while so that I didn’t seem too eager, but that was in the context of normal internet interactions or dating. I wanted to surpass the distance that the internet automatically inserted and get her to talk to me as readily as she would to someone sitting next to her. It was a gamble, but I was starting to accept that every move would be a gamble.
Zando11: Awesome thx. Let me guess…Omnis asked for the recipe and were surprised it was vegan. They always are lol.
It was a comment I’d seen somewhere else, and it had gotten a lot of responses so I figured it was a safe bet for a copy and paste.
I sat there staring blankly into the room, contemplating the fact that I could still do a one-eighty on the whole thing and arrange a wholesome meet-up, maybe with them both at the same time.
Fuck that.
My phone vibrated.
Lottiedahs: Every time haha
I went back to the comment thread I’d copied from and read through it, picking out my next move. I sat and thought about it for a full
twenty minutes before I settled on the wording.
Zando11: Do you think it hurts the cause that it’s harder to bake vegan deserts than omni ones?
Lottiedahs: I wouldn’t know since I’ve never baked omni things lol but I don’t think it’s hard at all. It’s really cool that you’re a guy who likes to cook btw. Love it.
Zando11: If you want it done right you gotta do it yourself. Is your family vegan or vegetarian? Mine isn’t.
Here we go. I’d already found a way to talk about her family. I’m awesome at this.
I got a direct message. When a girl sends a direct message, you know you’re in, at least as a potential friend. My arms went up in a touchdown gesture.
