by Jeff Strand
“I’m sorry,” said Samuel. “I was not polite to your mother.”
Ellen sniffled, then gave her husband a sad smile. “It’s all right. We can do this on our own.”
* * *
Helena did not send anybody to take Nathan away. Upon further thought, Samuel had decided that he probably wouldn’t actually murder her if she did, but it was nice to not have to make a final decision on the matter.
Samuel and Ellen vowed to give their son a normal life, although they settled on giving him a normal life except for the almost complete lack of social interaction. Apart from Dr. Thompson’s regular visits, nobody ever saw the boy. When he got old enough to crawl, Samuel built a fence around their yard, where Nathan could happily scoot through the grass without the neighbors catching a glimpse of his teeth. Though it wasn’t ideal, it was better than locking him in a basement, and much better than having torch-wielding villagers surround their home.
It was with a great deal of relief that Samuel came to accept that Nathan’s teeth were the only odd thing about him. Otherwise, the boy was healthy, alert, and happy. He did bite his tongue on a couple of occasions, which caused the child to scream in agony, but nothing was ever severed. And though it took him longer to start forming words than the average toddler, that was only to be expected.
“It took me longer than average to start speaking, and that’s only because one of my eyes was crossed until I was six,” Samuel noted. “We can’t hold that against the boy.”
On his fourth birthday, Ellen and Samuel thought long and hard about how Nathan should receive his education. They knew that he had to be integrated into society at some point, but Ellen was reluctant.
“What if the other kids make fun of him?” she asked.
“They will,” said Samuel. “That’s a given. But I suspect that if he bites one of them, he won’t be made fun of multiple times.”
“He shouldn’t have to bite people to keep his dignity.”
“All kids get made fun of. He might as well have something genuinely weird about him; otherwise they’ll just make things up to ridicule.”
“What if he bites another student and the parents sue? Most children can barely break the skin, much less come away with a mouthful of flesh.”
“You’re right. We’ll make sure he’s aware that it’s wrong to bite.”
“I don’t know,” said Ellen. “I think it may be too much for him. Why can’t we wait until his baby teeth fall out? For all we know, his real teeth will grow in normally, and we’d have created all of that mental scarring for nothing.”
“What’s going to damage him more? Kids making fun of him for having sharp teeth, or spending his entire childhood alone with his parents?”
“Kids making fun of him.”
“I don’t think that’s correct.”
“I can’t do it,” Ellen said. “Kids are cruel. I can’t subject him to that. Maybe when he’s five.”
* * *
Nathan traced his finger along the words on the page. “…to the story.”
“To the store,” Ellen corrected.
Nathan frowned. “Why?”
“Because the ‘e’ is silent.”
Nathan gave her a that’s really stupid look. “Why can’t I ever go to the store?”
“We’ve already talked about this.”
“But why can’t I?”
“Because, sweetheart. People are mean.”
“You’re not mean.”
“I’m sorry, not everybody is mean, but some people are. You don’t want people to be mean to you, do you?”
“Why would they be mean to me?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
“My teeth?”
Ellen nodded.
“I’m not scared of that.”
“Well, Mommy is. Mommy doesn’t want you to get hurt. I’m here to protect you. Okay?”
Nathan lowered his eyes. “Okay.”
* * *
“I’m taking him out.”
“Samuel, no!”
“He can do whatever he wants today.” Samuel looked at Nathan across the dinner table. “Nathan, what did you say you wanted to do for your sixth birthday?”
“Go someplace.”
“It’s unconscionable to keep him locked away like this. I’m not going to let it happen anymore. Nathan, show Mommy how you smile when you’re not at home.”
Nathan looked at Ellen and gave her a smile, keeping his lips together.
“Show her how you talk.”
“Hi, Mommy,” said Nathan, speaking so that his lips barely moved. “You look nice today.”
“Nobody will ever know,” Samuel insisted.
“He’s only six,” said Ellen. “He can’t completely control his smiles.”
“You can’t tell him what to do on his birthday. We’re just going to go down to the store and buy a huge bag of candy. I promise that nothing will happen to him.”
Ellen continued to protest, but Samuel didn’t listen. The way they raised their son was appalling. Nathan had to be able to leave the house once in a while. Ellen would see; they’d go to the store, come back without incident, and she’d realize that there was no reason to worry so much.
“If you give me a night to sleep on it, I’m sure I’ll be fine with the idea. I know you’re right. I just need a little more time.”
Samuel sighed. His concern was that in the morning Ellen would decide that this was the worst idea imaginable, and she’d beg to wait until Nathan’s seventh birthday before letting him interact with other people. Samuel wasn’t going to wait another year. He was going to do this even if he had to sneak Nathan out of the house under the cover of night.
However, one more day couldn’t hurt. “Okay,” he said.
“Do I still get candy?” Nathan asked.
“Yes indeed,” said Samuel. “First thing tomorrow.”
* * *
It is important to note that what happened next was not suicide. Ellen Pepper was not a depressed woman. She was actually a very cheerful, upbeat woman, who was simply insanely overprotective and concerned about her son being subjected to harm. She would never use the word “freak,” but others would, and the idea of other kids (or even adults) staring at Nathan, or pointing at him and laughing, or—God forbid—trying to hurt him because of his frightening appearance was more than she could bear.
But Samuel was right. They couldn’t hide him away forever.
Tomorrow she’d come with them and keep a watchful eye on anybody who approached. Maybe everything would be fine.
Ellen did not go to bed unhappy. She was merely distracted.
She turned on the gas stove with the intention of boiling some water for a cup of tea to help her sleep. The flame didn’t ignite, and she decided that she didn’t feel like having the tea. She remembered—distinctly but incorrectly—shutting off the gas. She’d turned it off most of the way, but the knob hadn’t quite clicked.
She even thought about it right before she fell asleep. Did I shut off the stove? She was about to get up and check, but Samuel was a light sleeper and it would wake him up, and if she concentrated really hard she did remember turning the knob back to “off.” No need to worry. She went to sleep in her husband’s arms.
The gas seeped throughout the night.
* * *
When Nathan woke up, in his room on the other side of the house from his parents, he felt different. He really hadn’t felt any different yesterday when he woke up and was six years old, but at six years and one day, he almost felt like a completely new person.
Today was candy day!
He yawned, stretched, and then got out of bed and hurried over to wake up his parents.
THREE
“Mom? Dad?”
Nathan understood death as a vague concept. He knew, for example, that when he crushed a beetle its guts came out and it stopped moving. This had made him sad, and he’d made it a poin
t not to crush any more beetles.
Dad had read him a book about a little boy with two dogs, great dogs, hunting dogs, and at the end of the book both of the dogs had died. Dad was crying while he read it—not sobbing, but several tears trickled down his cheek—and Nathan had found the book overwhelmingly depressing, even if he didn’t quite get it.
He knew immediately that his parents were dead.
Still there, but gone.
Nathan poked Mom on the arm, trying to get her to come back to life. “Mom…?”
He didn’t know what to do.
He cried for a while.
Then he got scared. He knew he shouldn’t be frightened of his own mom and dad, even though they were dead, but he couldn’t help it. He went outside and sat in his front yard and cried some more.
He didn’t want the candy anymore. In fact, Nathan Pepper would never again eat candy of any sort. Licorice sticks, lemon drops, chocolate bars—the idea of all of them would be forever repulsive to him.
Nathan sat outside for five hours. He only cried for about two of those hours, off and on, but fortunately he was weeping when the postman arrived with the day’s mail. Though Kirk Keller heard plenty of bawling kids on his route, this sounded different. He knocked on the door to the wooden fence, got no answer, briefly considered continuing with his route as if nothing happened, and then decided to go inside.
Kirk would become something of a hero at the Hammer’s Lost post office for the next couple of weeks. After all, none of the other carriers had ever discovered a pair of corpses while en route. He would retell the story countless times throughout his life, gradually exaggerating the level of decomposition until it became a tale of his discovery of two human-shaped piles of goo.
The police came to investigate. They asked Nathan many questions, but he kept his mouth tightly closed and never said a word.
* * *
“Perhaps we should adopt the boy,” said Dr. Thompson, lying in bed with his wife.
“Is it because you want to do experiments on him?” asked Mrs. Thompson.
Dr. Thompson was silent for a long moment.
“Perhaps,” he finally admitted.
“Then no,” Mrs. Thompson said.
* * *
The Bernard Steamspell Home For Unfortunate Orphans was run by Bernard Steamspell, a man who was very impressed by his own accomplishments, despite their scarcity. Over the past thirty years, he had engaged in thirty-two different business ventures, all of which had failed. He’d won the Our Lady of The Weeping Statue Orphanage in a bar bet over who could inhale the most black pepper. He’d renamed it after himself, as he had all of his other businesses, and immediately sought to figure out how he could make this non-profit establishment more profitable.
There were plenty of expenses that could be cut. The Our Lady of the Weeping Statue Orphanage had never exactly served gourmet meals, but under Steamspell’s leadership, its dining experience only rose above the level of “vile slop” on Thursdays, which he reluctantly allowed to become Taco Night. He sold the current twenty-eight mattresses and used the proceeds to purchase fifty-four much worse ones. Hot water was limited to his private bathroom.
These were easy changes to make, because Steamspell loathed children. Whether they were well-behaved or rambunctious, intelligent or rock-stupid, fat or thin (though they would all eventually become thin in his care), Steamspell hated them all. Rotten brats. If they weren’t awful little things, they’d still have parents.
Though Steamspell did not beat the orphans without justification, he found this justification remarkably easy to find. He had a large wooden paddle that he used to administer the beatings, but liked to turn it sideways, to better focus the pain. Every orphan under his roof had been beaten at least thrice, and a couple of the worst troublemakers were well into the triple digits. Despite his best efforts to control the impulse, Steamspell often burst into maniacal laughter as he struck them with the paddle.
Nathan had tried to be brave as he rode in the front of the police car that drove him to the orphanage. The officer he’d been with the most, a gentle-eyed man named William, had told him that it was time to be a big boy, and assured him that while he’d be sad for a while, he’d make plenty of friends at his new home.
The police had seen his teeth, of course. The reactions were evenly divided between horror and fascination, though those who fell into the “horror” category did not express this in front of Nathan, out of courtesy for the fact that he’d just lost his parents.
“His name is Nathan,” said William, giving him a gentle shove forward to his new caregiver.
“Nathan, eh?” Steamspell asked. “Do people call you Nate? That would be easier.”
Nathan shook his head.
“Well, we can make do with Nathan for now.” Steamspell hated learning the children’s names, and preferred to go with identifiers like Kid With Cowlick, Boy With Two Moles on Chin, and Blond Gawky Whiner.
“He’s quiet but very polite,” said William. “But before you take him into your care, you should be aware of his oddity.”
Steamspell frowned. “Oddity. He’d better not be a bed wetter. I won’t tolerate that.” He glared at Nathan. “I’ve put many lads before you in diapers, and if you think they only have to wear them overnight, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“I don’t wet the bed,” said Nathan, softly.
“Did I just see what I think I saw?” asked Steamspell. “Open your mouth again, boy.”
Nathan did as he was told.
Steamspell let out a long, harsh laugh. “Well, I’ll be damned! I’ve never seen such a thing. The children I get are rarely top quality, but this…”
“He’s a very nice boy,” said William.
“Oh, I’m sure he is!” Steamspell held his sides as he laughed. “What a tragic young man you are! My God, the other children will eat you alive when they see those things. I don’t mean that literally, of course. In a literal sense, it’s much more likely that you’ll eat them.” He laughed some more, and committed that joke to memory with the intention of using it at least five or six more times.
“Are you going to be okay?” William asked Nathan.
Nathan was relatively certain that he was not going to be okay, but he nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.” The police officer shook his hand, and then left.
Steamspell briefly glanced at a piece of paper inside a folder. “Parents killed themselves, did they?”
“No, sir.”
“Boy, when you address me, you will say ‘sir.’ Do you understand?”
“I did say ‘sir.’”
“Then say it in such a way that I don’t immediately forget that you said it! I will be treated with respect. If you wish to eat and be sheltered from the rain and sleep without being bitten by snakes, you will need to learn that I am the most important person in your life.”
“Yes, sir.”
Steamspell struck him on the side of the head, an open-palmed blow that made Nathan’s ears ring.
“I said ‘sir’!” Nathan insisted.
“I know you did. I’m not deaf. That was for all of the bad things you did before you came to live with me. I think we can both agree that a slap to the ear is an extremely mild punishment for all of the sins you’ve accumulated, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So now we’re starting clean. From now on, when I beat you, it will be for transgressions after this moment. Does that sound fair?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you bite the heads off chickens?” Steamspell laughed. “Wouldn’t that be something to see? I wonder when real geeks get started in the geeking business. I’d guess it was pretty early, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“No, I guess you wouldn’t, not having grown up in a carnival atmosphere. Maybe it’s something I’ll exploit. Do you like the taste of live chicken? Oh, no matter,
we’ll deal with it later. Come on, Nate, let’s get you to your mattress.”
* * *
On his second day at the orphanage, Nathan was given the nickname “Fangboy.” His first day was mostly spent scrubbing down the kitchen with another boy who never spoke, and his first night was spent lying on his mattress, weeping softly under a thin blanket that had a mild scent of mold.
The other boys did not bother him that first night, possibly because they all remembered how they’d cried their first night at the orphanage. Nathan didn’t want to cry, he wanted to be brave, but he couldn’t help himself. He missed his mom and dad, and his own bed, and edible meals. (Dinner had consisted of gray and white lumps that, by popular vote, were determined by the boys to be chicken and dumplings, though in fact they were meatloaf.)
The second day, first thing in the morning, a boy who was about ten grabbed Nathan’s toothbrush out of his hand. “It’s mine now!” he declared.
“Give it back!” Nathan shouted.
The boy, Arnold, shook his head and held the toothbrush up out of Nathan’s reach. “I’m trading you,” he said. “I’m older, so I get the better toothbrush.”
Toothbrushes were among the many items that Steamspell felt were unnecessary to replace on a regular basis, though he did not force the boys to recycle dental floss.
“No!” Nathan shouted. The toothbrush, though not custom-made, was the largest size Nathan’s father had been able to find. He knew he could make do with a smaller brush, but despite his lack of social interaction, he realized that this was a pivotal moment. If he let the boy steal his toothbrush, he’d always be the Kid Whose Toothbrush You Could Steal. He wasn’t going to be pushed around. “You can’t have it!”
