Ionic Relapse

by Howard Hachey

  Glued to his own shadow on the empty sidewalk, Michael’s face dropped flat. All color ran from his cheeks. His mind instantly jumped to the movie he saw not even five hours ago where this very scenario eerily played out on the screen. The boy in the movie was even around Michael’s age, although much naiver. In the film, an older man who appears to just be neighborly befriends a boy on the side of the road.

  Fast forward to later.

  The boy is looking at naked Polaroids of other kids in the neighborhood while his new adult friend’s hands start to wander below the belt line.

  Michael had initially laughed at the movie and its ridiculous premise, but now was frantically clawing through his memory to retrieve any useful information of how to escape this situation unharmed. Torn between running away and screaming for help, Michael teetered on the brink of a decision.

  The man’s face worked up an expression of patient understanding. “Don’t worry,” he said calmly. “I just need a moment of your time to ask you a few questions.” He pulled out his wallet and flashed the inside of it to Michael. Pinned on the lower inside flap was a shiny gold shield. The man only dangled it open long enough for the light to sparkle off its freshly polished surface before snapping the wallet shut with one practiced flick of his bony wrist. Michael saw this familiar symbol and started to relax a little.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said with a slightly embarrassed tone in his thin voice. “I wasn’t sure if you were some random pervo like in ‘Boys Beware.’ I just saw that in Ms. Finley's class today, actually. We watched movies all period ‘cause she’s been out sick with the flu, but my mom says that she’s probably just sleeping off a hangover. My mom says a lot of teachers are drunks ‘cause the—”

  “That’s all well and good,” the man interrupted, waving a pale hand up at him in a casual gesture of subtle annoyance and mild urgency, “but I am looking for a young man who fits your description. The matter of this is incredibly urgent. What’s your name, son?”

  Again, silence.

  Michael’s feet shuffled nervously as the man leaned forward and reached into his back pocket. He pulled out a tiny red notebook with dog-eared corners. The question of Michael’s name floated heavily between them in the waning light filling and deepening the still vacant side street.

  Suddenly, Michael looked up from the Beetle to see a seafoam green Chevy Impala cruising up the narrow street towards them. He watched it quickly pass, then slide down to the intersection and fishtail loudly into the left-hand lane of traffic. Tires screeching, the Impala jerked back over, its front right tire nearly jumping the curb before disappearing beyond the corner. Its motor roared back at them challengingly, announcing its descent and arrival with one deafening cry.

  Why didn’t he pull that guy over? Michael thought suspiciously. Something doesn’t feel right here...but, what?

  Using the driver’s side mirror, the man watched with his peripherals as the car turned right at the far end of the road. With the revved motor now fading into the background, the man continued flipping through the notebook. He eventually stopped on a blank page. “Does your mother teach you to treat the police with such disrespect?” He looked up stiffly from his tiny book. His smile slowly faded; his eyes sharpened coldly with authoritarian intensity.

  Michael spasmed at the judgment of his mother's parenting. He quickly decided that no, she didn’t teach him that. He was a good boy, and good boys always respect authority figures. No matter how creepy said figure might be.

  “Michael, sir. Michael Brown.” His eyes pressed down to the cracked pavement in distrust.

  The man flipped briefly through his notebook again and jotted something down with his pen. “Michael Brown. Yup, that’s the name on my list. Seems me and you have to go downtown for a little chat.” He leaned over and unlatched the side door. It creaked open like a rusty yellow alligator mouth welcoming Michael inside. On prosthetic legs, Michael watched the man with extreme caution. Feet cemented to the sidewalk, he felt emanate danger fuming all around him like poisonous streams of mustard gas.

  “I haven't done anything wrong, officer!” Michael exclaimed with tears welling up behind his bright round eyes. “I swear, whoever you’re looking for, it ain't me. Call my mom, she’ll tell ya’—”

  “No, no,” the man butted in, arms raised and palms faced out in a gesture of simple misunderstanding. But before the kid could go on blubbering about his mother, he said, “It’s nothing like that, Mike. I’m supposed to bring you in for questioning concerning a minor loitering case. Seems some hooligans were seen smoking dope at a vacant property a couple of streets down earlier today. Looked like they might be up to no good, so a vigilant neighbor called it in. One of the two boys was later identified as you, Michael. Now, I have already spoken to your mother—”

  “You told my mom?!” Michael gasped, unabashed terror stretching the once youthful features of his rosy face. “She’s going to kill me if she thinks I—”

  “Relax, Michael.” Soothing calm seeped back into the stranger's voice as before. The pseudo-friendly smile resurfaced across his typically plain face. His long fingers gripped the steering wheel tight enough for his knuckles to turn white. A tinge of annoyance had started to bubble its way through his low and formative words. “We had a little talk, and she insisted that you weren’t involved. She provided you with an alibi, and I personally believe you’re innocent. Sometimes, misunderstandings like this happen. But, I do think you know who the real culprits are, and I will need you to come down to the station with me to answer a couple questions.”

  Baffled, Michael took a few shaky steps away from the open door. “I’m not a doper, sir, I swear! Those guys you saw me with up the street are probably the kids you’re looking for. Please, sir, I gotta’ get home before my ma’ starts to wonder where I am.”

  This protest was met with tense silence. It became apparent that Michael was seriously trying the man’s patience. The man’s bloodless fingers flinched and cranked the steering wheel for only a split second before he snapped back into control. His face remained a blank slate, but the corner of his dark eyes and fingers twitched involuntarily like a once dead frog juicing with electric current.

  “Like I said, I talked to your mother, and she agreed to let me take you downtown for some questioning. Now, you can either get in this car like a good little boy, or I can get out and arrest you for obstructing an ongoing investigation. I certainly don’t think you want me to call your mom at work for a second time with the news that her son is now a full-fledged member of the Maine prison system, do you?” The man reached into the glovebox. He pulled out a pair of steel handcuffs, which he then tossed loudly onto the dash.

  The sight of those glinty metal claws sent a wave of pins and needles through Michael’s body. Cold beads of sweat collected on his brow, soon rolling down his pale face with each shallow breath. A grainy black and white mugshot of himself flashed achingly across his mind as the man's stare deepened. Every passing second under his scrupulous gaze harbored seismic feelings of intense forlorning.

  “Which will it be, Michael?”

  The question floated in the dense air between them. They both stared anxiously at each other in the dwindling daylight. Its rays painted orange flames on every stone wall and glass pillar towering ominously around them.

  Just as the man was moving to scoop up the handcuffs for a little more visual persuasion, Michael dropped his head in a defeated slump. He climbed into the passenger’s seat without a word. Smiling, the man slid the cuffs back into the glove compartment and slowly pulled out onto the street.

  ***

  “I’m from the precinct across town, so we’ll be taking quite the drive,” the man offhandedly said to Michael as they cruised through miscellaneous pools of dissipating traffic and stoplights. “Don’t worry, though. I’ll be giving you a lift back home. Gum?” He held out a freshly opened pack of Bazooka chewing gum towards Michael. His white tendril hand floated closer and closer, closing the ever
more necessary gap between them.

  “Go ahead. I got plenty,” he added after Michael flinched back in his seat. He might as well have held out a live rattlesnake baring six-inch hollow fangs dripping with bitter green poison. “It’s the good ones with the comics,” the man added with a toothy smile and slightly lighthearted tone, as if he secretly drew much enjoyment from seeing all of Bazooka Joe's crazy antics. His mirrored eyes were on the road, but his gum bearing hand kept inching its way towards Michael. It stopped inches away from the boy’s face and only retreated once Michael reluctantly grabbed the first piece in a hurried, rodentlike fumbling of his trembling fingers. He avoided directly touching the man at all costs.

  “Go on, open it,” the man said coolly, never taking his eyes from the ever-darkening road rolling under them. The sun was setting fast now. Michael had just enough daylight left to read the comic his gum came wrapped in before the night would take it back under its dark veil of secrets.

  Numbly, Michael unwrapped the gum. He smoothly pocketed the pink wad after pretending to place it in his mouth. He was no novice to the warning signs of stranger danger. Ms. Finley's constant absences taught him more than the teacher herself ever could. Still on edge, Michael nervously smoothed out the wax paper on his leg and stared blankly at the wrinkled sheet.

  Upon one side was a miniature comic consisting of three oblong boxes.

  In the first box, you see Bazooka Joe talking to a skinny, pencil-headed man wearing a red turtleneck pulled all the way up to his nostrils. “My mom always tells me,” Bazooka Joe declares to the odd-looking man with the wispy ragdoll hair, “face the facts!”

  In the next frame, you see Sweater Man reaching for the top of his rolled-up turtleneck and saying, “Joe, I have a FACT for you…” as Bazooka Joe is seen from the rear, silhouetted in dawning revelation. The third and final frame shows the now unmasked man with a bubble hanging over his head saying, “...my horribly disfigured FACE!” exposing a jawline that looks like it had been shaved with a cheese grater. His lips are completely torn off and his teeth are chipped and splintered, protruding violently out of the hungry, bloodstained mouth that was hidden under his shirt. All that is left of Bazooka Joe in this last frame is a pair of dangling legs and a pool of perspiration that Michael believed might not be sweat.

  Michael couldn’t stop staring at this last frame. He held it close to his face in the waning light, transfixed by the strange man with the pitted face. His thoughts wandered briefly to Dr. Bloomberg flashing that rotted fence post of a mouth lined with tacky purple gums. His poison smile was unusually like the man in the red sweater. Both were merely anatomical representations of something slightly more human: something less insidious. Michael regarded this with growing curiosity as his fingers nervously traced the smooth lines of the wrapper.

  He could feel, like worn down Braille, the small but deep microscopic grid-work of every line confining the red sweater man. The eyes and mouth seemed to splash and poke dully back at him with each feverish pass of his numb fingertips.

  It knew Michael knew.

  Sweater Man is trapped forever: eternally encased in sugarcoated ink and pressed wax. Michael then noticed the mutilated man's eyes in the last frame were different from the others. Two hollow, solitary pools of depthless oil transfix him in swirling rough circles, hypnotizing his once jangled nerves. Those polluted, multi-textual waters swim lazily with the untethered chaos of the unknown. His stare said that he has seen things far beyond the comprehension of anyone before him.

  He could see into the abyss, such as the abyss could see into him.

  For a long time, the man with the gashed eraser-head stared emptily up through the glossy wax paper at Michael, momentarily distracting him from the changing trees and unfamiliar buildings slowly filling the framework rushing by them on the ever winding back road. “Get a good one?” the man asked after much silence, his calculative stare leaving the road briefly to quickly scan Michael’s face. The boy’s eyes were now wide and alert as he looked up from his comic and finally noticed the drastic change in scenery. Tall rows of steel towers were replaced by dense forest and lonely farm houses.

  “Where are we? This isn’t the…” Michael started to say as he turned and finally saw the gun. It had taken the place previously occupied by the heavy silver handcuffs on the dash. The dull black snub nose .38 jostled a little with every bump and curve in the passing road.

  “Shut your mouth and listen very carefully,” the man said after he knew he had Michael’s attention. His voice was low and harsh. He had to raise the inclination slightly to be heard over the revving motor and shifting gravel. “Put your hands by your sides and stay in that seat, or I’ll knock your teeth in. Got it?”

  Michael was frozen in place. He faced the driver with the expression of a wax mannequin that had been left out in the hot sun. His skin went paper-white, giving his complexion a cheesy tint under the eerie green glow of the radio and tracer lights mounted in the dash. The man could literally see him shrinking back into his seat now, instinctively turtling away from danger. It had taken Michael way too long to process what was going on, leaving a foolishly huge gap of time between his thoughts and actions.

  When the tears finally started to flow and that screeching whine started to build up in Michael’s throat, the man had already swung a stiff backhand at him. It connected with a flat pop squarely on Michael’s right cheek. Stars and silver specks filled the fiery dusk that still bled stubbornly through the moving treetops, and for a second Michael fought the urge to pass out. The blow knocked him against the passenger side door where he proceeded to puke all over himself between great wet gasps for stale air. Hissing breaths and screechy whimpers rushed through his tiny frame like a harpooned whale.

  “What did I say, Michael?” the man asked over the incessant gagging and choking foaming out of Michael’s clenched throat. “Put your hands to your sides and sit still, or you’re gonna’ be shittin’ teeth. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?” He watched Michael scornfully. The boy feebly raised a pale white hand to wipe the long elastic strings of snot hanging from his puffy face and sheepishly did as he was told.

  The man nodded as he flexed his hands on the wheel. “Good boy. Now, shut the fuck up and don’t say another word...or else.” His gaze shifted back to the now black road. The man pulled out a crumpled pack of Pall Malls from his front shirt pocket, knocked out a single coffin nail, and lit up with his Zippo before flicking on the headlights and speeding ever deeper into the cold, dark woods.

  ***

  The two rode in tortured silence for about twenty minutes until the man suddenly took a sharp right onto an unmarked dirt road.

  “Please, mister,” Michael started to plead, sobbingly, as the Buggy sputtered its way through the uneven trail of gravel and dirt. “I promise not to tell anyone that you hit me if you just let me—” his desperate pleas were met with another powerful blow from the man's iron fist. The punch immediately connected with Michael’s delicate nose, audibly cracking cartilage and popping teeth back out of their nests of gooey pink nerve endings. The flat copper taste of blood mixed with the feeling of his uprooted teeth tumbling to the puke covered floor mat made Michael dizzy. He swayed and sobbed in the passenger seat until the car stopped abruptly, sending his tiny crumpled body to slam up against the angled glove compartment. He lay helplessly in a shallow pool of blood and vomit as the man grabbed his gun and exited the car.

  Moments later, Michael heard the side door creak open. Strong hands wrapped roughly around his neck, pulling him out into the night. He saw the interior lights of the car fade out as he was flung backwards, dirt clouds soon enveloping his already limited sight. When the curtain cleared and his eyes adjusted, Michael could hazily make out a rigid figure standing over him. The headlights of the idling Buggy backlighted the hunkering shape. Michael could see the shape of a gun in the grasp of the crouching shadow moving across the dry dirt towards him. Each step closer sent vapor trails of dancing dirt particles up to
the yellow cone shaped waves of light acting as the candlelit backdrop. Two forms, one solid and one giant projection set against the low hanging branches and leaves, were closing in onto Michael with intentional slowness as he shivered on the ground with fear.

  A gargled, guttural voice ordered him to get to his knees.

  Beyond terrified, Michael struggled to his knees and closed his sore eyes. He began to pray. The familiar stanzas floated to the top.

  “Lord Jesus, He who is my savior…”

  The dry shuffling stopped. Michael’s prayer also stopped short of his breath as he felt cold steel press firmly to the sweat-greased flesh of his forehead. Michael’s bowels loudly let go at that moment, and it took all his might not to faint, putting unwanted pressure on the surely loaded gun counterweighted against his skull. His whole life up to this point fluttered behind his eyes in shaky single shot moments. A young, innocent life reduced to a colorful photo album caught in the wet winds of cruel Fate. Once forgotten memories, old faces and smells, fly by like an overheated sixteen-millimeter film projector running at lightning speed. It was as if his brain knew that soon his mind would be no more than finely pureed mulch and squirrel food. His consciousness was getting one last run in before its time to ride the silver bullet.

  Tingling all over, partly from dehydration but mostly from sheer terror, Michael knelt vulnerably before the figure and continued to pray.

  “I’m sorry, Michael,” the silhouette interrupted mournfully, “but They have brought us together. Please don’t take this personally.” Michael then felt the man's heavy thumb slowly cock back the hammer on the gun. Each metal *clink* sounded more and more to Michael like the maddening tick of the second hand on Death’s pocket watch.