by Susan Vaught
“What about my parents?” I ask Agent Mercer. “Do they have to be here when you question me?”
“No.”
Simple. To the point. That helps when the alphabet voices are so loud. He’s quiet, too. Quiet is good. I don’t want Dad in here because Dad thinks I’m bad. I don’t want Mom in here because if Agent Mercer gets me upset with Mom this upset she might kill him and I mean for real because my mom’s a colonel and she’s had to kill people in battles with her bare hands and she will protect me no matter what, no matter who. She could take out a nonmilitary guy, easy. Plus I don’t want her to cry and be upset. She’s my mom.
“That’s not—” the lawyer begins, but Agent Mercer cuts her off.
“There’s no law in any of the fifty states that says a parent has to be present when a minor is questioned.”
Her tone changes to mean shark but I’m not sure if sharks talk and I don’t want to think about sharks because then I’ll start seeing them too and really, sharks I could do without right about now.
“He’s in custody,” she snaps. “He’s not just being questioned. Don’t mislead him.”
“In this state, in custody or not, at seventeen, it’s his call.” Agent Mercer doesn’t sound mean shark or annoyed or like he’s won anything. He’s flat. Like always. What you see is what you get with him.
Maybe.
Die die die death death death he’ll kill you kill you kill you kill you.
Through the slits in my eyes, I see the gray stone walls starting to bleed and slide and split and nasty-looking plants come through the stones and fingers dead fingers and claws and no wait it’s branches the evil trees the Farkness Biters are here and when I catch a fast, scared breath it hurts so bad I have to bite my lip not to yell.
Dizzy.
I close my eyes again.
“He’s impaired and you know it,” Captain Evans says.
Agent Mercer moves. I think he just shrugged like me or Drip might do when we’ve had enough of a really irritating teacher. “Jason seems competent to me. Has since I got here. I think he makes more sense than most people I’ve met in this town.”
“Stop manipulating him,” Captain Evans says, only it comes out like a hiss and she’s sounding like a snake and all my voices start hissing too. “You know he’s diagnosed with schizophrenia. Plenty of records to support that. Anything he says to you will get tossed if you don’t let me stay.”
She’s a snake she’ll bite you she’s trying to kill you you’re gonna die and fry and fry and die and nobody will help you ever again because you’re worthless worthless WORTHLESS FREAK.
“See?” I nudge Agent Mercer with my elbow even though I don’t much like touching people when my head’s this bad because my skin aches and frig when I move like that the hot dagger-swords in my ribs try to kill me. “Nobody pays any attention to what I want.”
There’s a pause.
Nobody talks. Nobody breathes except the thousand voices in my head that all breathe at once like monsters from hell and then they scream and roar and then Agent Mercer says, “Do you want Captain Evans in here with you, Jason?”
His question drifts through the black Hades burning desert of my head, floating around the voices and the evil trees and the sharks and for some reason, he’s easy to hear.
Fight for Sunshine. Fight, Freak. Fight… Jason.
“I waive counsel,” I tell them both. “I don’t want her here. I don’t want my parents here, either, or Chief Smith, or anybody but you.” That was hard. Too much breath. Hurts. Dizzier. Everything in my head gets louder, louder, too loud to think to live to breathe to even die in peace. “I’ll talk to you, Agent Mercer. Alone.”
If I open my eyes, I’ll see blood. The walls will be blood. Captain Evans will be covered with blood. Everything will be red. I keep them shut.
She’s arguing. She keeps arguing, but Agent Mercer says, “If you don’t go on your own, right now, I’ll have you escorted from the building.”
And five seconds later or yesterday or maybe tomorrow the cell door clanks and shoe heels smack on concrete and stone and the whiff of bleachy piss gets worse as Captain Evans whips past me and out and away and thank God she’s gone. Everybody’s gone.
Sweat breaks out on my forehead and neck and my palms. I want to puke but if I puke my ribs will shatter and I’ll die. I think I’m going to die. I feel like a bruise. I’m a bloody bruise. A huise maybe, or a bruman. Some sort of walking human bruise. Bruman sounds better. I’m a bruman.
Agent Mercer tells the officers outside the door to the room with the cells in it not to let anybody come back until he says so. I half expect him to get a tape recorder, but he doesn’t. At least not one I can see when I do open my eyes and have to see him there in the cell door, with all the blood raining down around him. He’s covered in it and it’s awful and now I can almost smell it too like hot burning copper like the metal pan I left on the stove when we got the call about Sunshine.
Fry and die and die and fry and fry fry fry the freak the bruman freak YOU FREAK.
Bloody Agent Mercer sits beside me again and I’m glad he’s beside me because now I don’t have to look at him, not full on and that makes it easier not to scream.
“Where’s the locket?” I ask him because I’d give anything to see it smell it touch it get a tap of Sunshine’s magic so all this might get better. “What did you do with it?”
“It’s been placed into evidence,” he says, and I swear he doesn’t sound happy. Almost… gentle. But he probably wants to kill me. Or is that just my alphabet doing my thinking?
“It’ll be analyzed, then stored until trial, if there is a trial.”
I shiver. Feel cold. I think I’m dying. They’re going to kill the locket. I know they will. But they can’t. They just can’t. It’s all I’ve got left of her and the locket needs to live. “Does analyzing hurt it? Will it get torn up?”
I can’t stand it. That can’t happen. Don’t hurt the locket.
Don’t hurt me.
“No part of Sunshine’s necklace will be changed or destroyed,” Agent Mercer says, and I relax but not much because my ribs hurt and my chest hurts and I’m dizzy and the cell is still bleeding. Can’t talk because I’m trying not to cry because I’m happy the necklace will live even if I don’t.
“Jason, I have to tell you, some people might take your interest in that necklace as being obsessed with or protective of a trophy. Do you know what I mean by trophy in this instance?”
“No.” Talking through my teeth because if I don’t the pain will make me scream. It got so much worse when Chief Smith’s men put the cuffs on me. My arms behind my back—I can barely stand it even though I’m not cuffed now.
Baby. Whiner. Pathetic. You’re a loser. You’re gonna die. You deserve to die. Won’t you do the world a favor and JUST DIE?
“Some criminals—mostly killers and rapists,” Agent Mercer says like he’s a teacher in class and I’m a student, “keep mementos to remind them of their victims and the crime itself. Often it’s a piece of clothing or jewelry.”
I laugh. Can’t help it. Then I sob. It hurts so bad, but I don’t even know if it’s my body or my mind or my heart or my soul that’s in pain. I can’t tell anymore. I don’t know if I care. Everything I do to love Sunshine just makes everybody sure I killed her. Why is that? What kind of screwed-up world is this? Maybe I should die.
But
She
Wouldn’t
Want
That.
“Sunshine’s locket is special,” I manage to say to Agent Mercer, then get a real breath. Enough of one anyway. So I tell him everything, how I saw Sunshine with the locket that first day I met her when we were just little kids, and how she squeezes it to help her when she’s scared, and how she always uses it to help me hush my voices and get rid of bad things I’m seeing and thinking. “It’s like a piece of her, don’t you understand? She would never take it off unless someone made her, or unless she thought she absolutely had to—”<
br />
Can’t finish. Out of breath. For a second the world gets black like I’m falling asleep but how ridiculous is that? I can’t fall asleep. Sunshine is missing and the room is bleeding and my mom’s face fell off when the cops took me and Dad’s too and Drip’s and even Drip’s mom I’m pretty sure the people I love don’t have faces anymore so maybe that’s where all the blood is coming from.
Fight for her.
I still have a voice. I still have my own voice. And Agent Mercer’s waiting.
I can’t remember what I just said.
He reminds me, so I finish with, “She might take it off to leave me a message. And I think that’s what she did. Was there anything inside it?”
“I don’t know yet.”
I don’t think he’s messing with me but he’s probably messing with me because he’s the FBI for God’s sake he’s the government and—
He’s gonna give you the electric chair. Maybe he’ll hang you or poison you. You’re not even worth the electricity. You’re not worth the rope. Fry and die or maybe just drink poison and poison probably hurts. You deserve to hurt.
—I want Sunshine. I want her locket. Mostly, though, I want her.
“Will you tell me if she left me a message?” Don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry. “Please?”
“Maybe. Will you tell me how you found the locket—and where?”
So I do. I tell him everything from the moment I walked out of the VFW room after the DNA sample, and I don’t skip anything, not even how Roland and Linden double-crossed us and humiliated us and kicked the snot out of us.
Agent Mercer stops me there for a second. “They’ve done this to you before, I assume.”
“Sure. Lots of times.”
He hesitates. Takes a breath. I barely hear it over the shouting in my head and the raining sound from all the blood and I really don’t want to look at the blood but if I close my eyes I might go black again and if I go black and fall out then how can I help Sunshine I hurt I hurt so much—how much time does she have left? Will she drop dead when twenty-four hours is over?
No. Agent Mercer just said—or somebody—somebody just said the outcome won’t be good after that.
The outcome won’t be good.
She’s not an outcome. She’s a Sunshine. I have to fight for her. I have to help her. Hold it together. Don’t go black. But it’s getting harder to breathe. Maybe the blood is choking me. I’m going to die.
“And you and Derrick never tell anyone that Roland and Linden beat you up?”
“Why bother?” I’d laugh, but that would definitely kill me. “They don’t leave marks, and—” I stop again. Can’t breathe.
Agent Mercer finishes the sentence for me. “And no one listens to an alphabet.”
Just now he sounded sad. Might be the alphabet, but I think he was, yeah, definitely sad.
“I just want you to know I’m listening, Jason. I’d call you Freak like you prefer, but I think I’m too old for that. It feels disrespectful to me, especially since you told me Sunshine wouldn’t like it.”
He’s messing with you just trying to get next to you don’t buy it don’t believe it don’t listen you’re gonna die you’re gonna fry. Maybe he’s going to poison you?
“I don’t care,” I say aloud and the room is still bleeding and maybe I’m going to drown now and that’ll be better for the whole world and Agent Mercer is looking at me so I think then I say, “Sorry. Was talking to the voices. The ones in my head, I mean.”
He looks at me. His face falls off. I close my eyes. Open them. The face is still gone. Just blank skin.
The blank skin says, “Do your voices tell you not to trust me?”
“Sure. And that you’ll kill me, that everybody wants to kill me, that I should die or just kill myself. They say I’m worthless and I’m stupid and I suck, that I’m bad and that I’m awful.” Breath. Gotta get one. Hurts. I’m drowning. I know I am. “They say I do everything, that everything’s my fault—even whatever happened to Sunshine. But it isn’t. I know it isn’t.” Breathe. Need to, but it doesn’t happen. I’m going black behind my eyelids. I’m going blood and red and then black and I’ll die. “I try to keep believing it isn’t, but it’s so hard because the alphabet voices tell me it is my fault all the time and they never, ever shut up.”
“I don’t know how you cope with that. How you’re even talking to me right now when you’re hearing other voices.”
“And seeing blood,” I tell him. “And you don’t have a face. Sorry. But sometimes people’s faces fall off.”
“My face is still here, Jason.”
“Okay.”
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t.
He’s a liar. You’re a liar. You’re a piece of shit. You’re nothing. You’ve always been nothing. Loser. FREAK!
“Your medication makes this better?”
“A little. I can usually tell what’s real and what’s not, but sometimes I can’t.”
Who’s talking? Him or me? I can’t tell. Did my mouth fall off? I don’t want to look in a mirror.
“Are you all right, Jason? You look pale.”
Eyes closed. Can’t take it anymore. Going blood going black going dead. “I’m fine.”
Fight for her.
“Why didn’t you want your parents and the lawyer here?”
His voice echoes and chops in with my alphabet voices so it’s like a bad record played backward it’s demonic and it hurts my ears and I hurt I hurt I hurt but I have to help her I have to try I have to try I have to—
“Because they’ll try to protect me and I don’t need protecting, and it’ll just slow you down. Whatever I know, whatever I can tell you to help you find Sunshine, I’ll do it.”
Time passes.
So long.
I’m dying.
“I believe you. Now tell me about finding the locket.”
So I do. I explain to the bloody faceless man who’s probably Agent Mercer where, and how, and what I thought when I saw it. I explain about putting it on, about wanting to go home and open it and see if maybe, I hope so, please, maybe, she left me some kind of message.
“Jason, did you hurt Sunshine?” he asks and it’s like the knife in my ribs the knife that’s killing me dead in all the blood and black and faceless people will grow mouths and eat me and it’s over it’s all over.
YES. No.
Fight for her, damn it. Do it, Jason. FIGHT FOR HER.
“I didn’t hurt her.” Wheezed it more than said it. Voice is going. “Do you believe me?”
More time. Quiet except for my head and the blood-rain and the thump of faces hitting floors probably nobody in town has faces anymore there will just be facepuddles and so much blood bloodpuddles.
“Yes,” Agent Mercer says. “I do believe you.”
“If the DNA isn’t mine, will I be unarrested?”
“Probably. Maybe. I can’t guarantee that. That part’s not up to me—and the police and the people here, they’re pretty worked up thinking you might have hurt Sunshine or even killed her.”
I laugh and it kills me it finally does kill me whatever’s broken inside me breaks the rest of the way but I get enough breath to whisper, “The freak did it. Always how it works in the movies, right?”
“Something like that.”
And then he’s not talking probably because his face bled away to nothing but then he is talking again and he says, “Is there anything else you need to tell me, Jason? Something nobody might understand, something nobody might believe, just because you’re an alphabet?”
“Yes.”
He waits.
I try to get my breath, and when I do, I tell him, “I think I’m going to die now.”
And the coughing comes, the killing-me-deader-than-black-and-red coughing and there’s more blood blood real blood red blood black blood raining in my mouth, on my lips. There’s blood spitting into the jail cell to cover up the rivers of faceblood. I can’t sit up anymore, Sunshine. I’m so sorry. I’ve got t
o help find you but I can’t sit up and I can’t breathe anymore and I’m so sorry, I tried, I tried, I tried, and I’m falling, and somebody’s catching me, somebody’s holding me like I’m little again, cradled in his arms, cradled against his chest even though I’m hacking and spewing blood and wheezing and it hurts it hurts so bad and somebody’s yelling Ambulance—
And now he’s bellowing it and shouting it and kicking bars with his foot as he yells Ambulance ambulance get me an ambulance and get it right now!
THE CLOCK STOPS
Thick
tongue
Dead
Dead
Dead echoes in my head dead echoes dead in my head dead echoes dead in my dead head dead echoes dead in my dead head dead dead dead dead
Nothing
… Pneumothorax… serious injuries… bad beating rib fractures cardiac contusion bruising extensive trying to keep his blood pressure up trying to hydrate him this medicationis topreventsepsisnasogastrictubefornutritionjustforawhilenotpermanentsorryjasonthiswonthurtmuch
Faceless nowords from nopeople Fuzzy
Arm
burns
Everythingbroken
Black
Nothing
… blood pressure too low—watch it don’t let him yank the tube!
Pain
armstieddown
Nothing
Floatywords from floatypeople.
Mom. You’ll be okay your lung collapsed… little
infection …
Poison poison poison she poisoned you somebody poisoned you nobody has faces don’t look don’t look don’t look
Dad. More medicine. Maybe a big dose. Getting it straightened out, son, I promise and I’m so sorry.
They’re killing you killing you you’re really dead and in hell and that’s why the faces are gone bled away because of you because you’re bad because you’re a FREAK.
Drip. Dude. You’ll do anything to get out of homework and jail.
Drip’s mom. Touch that chest tube again, Derrick Taylor, I swear to God I’m gonna lay you out.
Drip. Did you see that he smiled he really did smile.
Drip’s mom. Boy you better get over here to me right now.
