by Richard Long
Martin grinned and leapt out of the car, clutching Mrs. Morgy as he scampered over to the truck behind Paul’s quickly moving legs. Paul gently placed his belongings in the back of the truck, then hopped into the cab and started the clunky motor without saying another word. Martin jumped into the seat next to him and Paul reached over and rubbed his mop of hair. He threw the gearshift into reverse and stepped on the gas so hard that dust flew up in every direction. He was shifting back into first gear when Martin grabbed his arm as tightly as he could.
“Where’s Aunt Norine?” he asked, looking nervously at the motionless screen door. “You said she was coming right behind us.”
Paul slammed on the brakes. A cloud of dust cascaded over the windshield like a brown waterfall. “No, Martin, I said she’d be coming a little later.” His smile was unwavering and unfathomable.
“When?”
“If I told you that, it would ruin the surprise, wouldn’t it?”
“What surprise?” asked Martin, fully attentive.
“It isn’t a surprise if you tell. You know that, don’t you?”
Martin frowned, mulling it over. Then he grabbed Paul’s arm again. “I don’t want the surprise. I want Aunt Norine to come with us now.”
“That’s what you say, but you don’t know what the surprise is! Why do you think I drove here so early in the morning? It must be something pretty special, eh?”
Martin had to think about that. Paul said it with such tantalizing allure that Martin’s brain momentarily disengaged from the problem of “No Norine” to ponder the dangling promise of the mysterious surprise. He was bursting with curiosity, but his true-blue heart pulled him back like a slingshot to the door on the porch.
“Why didn’t she come out to say good-bye?”
“Because she’s getting ready, that’s why,” Paul said glibly.
“Ready for what?”
“For the surprise, Martin…the surprise!” Paul shouted, patting him on the head and jamming the shift down so hard that the grinding gears sounded like the chains of a castle drawbridge. Before Martin had time to say anything else, they were barreling down the dusty driveway. He turned quickly backwards, pressing his face into the rear window.
She had to be coming! She had to! But no matter how hard he tried to believe it, he couldn’t ignore the feeling in his chest as he searched window after window for any sign of movement.
Why didn’t she wave? Why didn’t she look out the window and wave?
Martin stared at the bare blazing bulb overhead, then down at the nail emerging from the flesh of his hand. As bad as this was, it was a million times better than what he’d been seeing in his head.
Curtains drawn, just in time.
He was glad his memory didn’t work like it should anymore. It was more like the switch now, only he didn’t have much control over when it turned off and on. That was okay. Some part of him knew when to use it and always seemed to spare him the very worst parts. Most of the time. But not this time. This time he saw too much.
He was in the truck with Daddy. His head turned back every few seconds to look at the dust-blurred speck of Norine’s receding house. When they reached the end of the driveway and took a sharp left, his body stiffened. They were headed back home.
“No!” Martin cried. “Don’t take me back there! Please, Daddy, please!”
Paul’s smile never wavered. “Don’t you worry, little man,” he shouted back. “Everything is going to be fine and dandy.”
Martin’s shoulders slumped to his chest. He stared at Daddy’s smiling face, knowing there was no use in arguing with him, knowing with equal certainty that nothing was going to be fine, or dandy, or any other word that sounded happy. It was going to be bad. Really, really bad.
“SURPRISE!” Paul yelled, throwing open the door to the dining room.
The table was lined with party hats and toys and balloons of every color. More balloons hung from the ceiling with ribbons that reached all the way to the floor. There was a white cake in the middle of the table. It was shaped like a heart with little red candy hearts running along the outside edge like the trim on a lace doily. Eight glowing candles flickered with every gasp of his breath. As he read the script spelled out in gooey red letters, Paul’s voice shouted along with him, “Happy birthday, Martin!”
Martin didn’t even know today was his birthday. Momma never told him. The table was set for three, with name cards in front of each chair spelled out in big block letters in what looked like Momma’s red lipstick: MOMMA. DADDY. MARTIN. Three cards. Not four. He looked at the cards and the cake and back at Daddy. He wanted to ask why Norine wasn’t coming, but Daddy was pointing at the door on the other end of the room. His sad eyes told him something awful was coming.
Martin’s eyes followed past the cake and the balloons. Past the cards and the napkins. Past the toys and the shining wrapped presents. The door opened slowly and Momma walked inside. She had a look in her eyes he’d never seen, even in the cellar. She was all made up, blue eye shadow and bright red lipstick, her hair brushed down, soft and blond, wisping against her naked shoulders.
Her smile was scary. So was the look in her eyes. But that wasn’t what made him want to run. It wasn’t just her shoulders that were naked. Momma wasn’t wearing anything at all.
She came toward him slowly, leering and swaying her wide hips.
“Look at her, Martin!” Paul leered with his arms stretched open, as if his naked mother were the icing on the cake. “Just look at your dear sweet Momma!”
Momma smiled crookedly and cupped her breasts in both hands. Martin turned to run out the wide French doors on the other side of the room, but let out a scream when he saw they’d been locked. “Where you goin’, honey?” Momma asked, still walking toward him. “Don’t you want to play with me?”
Martin sat and cried, trying to turn his head away, not being able to. Her hair was dark down there, almost black. Even in his blind panic he couldn’t help but wonder why it didn’t match the brassy blond hair on her head.
She came closer. Her breasts wobbled as she walked.
Martin looked at the doors and at Paul with an expression that could only be a called a prayer. Please. Please help me, Daddy.
Daddy was wearing the dead mask.
The mask didn’t change when she squatted down, resting her hand on Martin’s leg, moving it slowly up his thigh. It wasn’t until she put Martin’s hand on her breast that Daddy’s face came alive.
“Would you look at that, Martin!” Paul shouted, his eyes wild and savage, his smile sliding up and down like a see-saw. “Would you look at that evil skank of a whore cunt!”
Momma shot up like her legs were spring-loaded. “You bastard!” she shrieked, so humiliated by his unforeseen betrayal that she didn’t know whether to scramble for her clothes or attack. She attacked, rushing at Paul with her nails poised like talons, ready to rip the sneer from his face. Paul pushed her backwards on the floor with the one-handed ease of a farmer tipping over a sack of grain.
“Me a bastard?” he asked in a gurgling laugh that sounded like a toilet flushing. “That’s pretty cheeky comin’ from a kiddie-raping cunt like you!” He walked over, plucking up Martin’s easy weight and cradling him in a single arm, their heads side by side. Together, they stared into the blast furnace of Momma’s hate. “Look at her, Martin…just look at her!”
Martin couldn’t. He buried his face in Paul’s thick neck as Momma tried to cover herself with an ugly throw rug by the door.
“I’ll cut your balls off, you fucking ape!” she growled, regaining her footing.
“Well, isn’t that exactly what I’m talking about, eh?” Paul mocked, turning Martin’s chin out, forcing him to watch her. “Do you know what she wanted to do?” Paul asked sadly. Martin’s stomach tightened with dread.
“Stop it!” Momma shrieked, rushing in for another attack.
Paul pushed her against the wall with a head-thumping thwack. Her eyes rolled in a lazy orb
it that made Martin wonder if he’d killed her. Paul began talking again as if nothing had happened. “Not only did she want to foul your proud virgin member, but she wanted me, your own dear daddy, to take me big willy here and…well, I can’t even bring myself to say it.”
Martin couldn’t hold it back anymore. He screamed with a horror so complete that it washed all his senses into the abyss. “NOOOOOOO!”
Paul had to turn his head to protect his eardrum from the sickening wail. He watched happily as Momma’s eyes slowly focused. Now they were coated with a wet film of fear. She tried to scoot toward the door, but her legs weren’t working right. Paul set Martin on the floor. Martin looked at Momma’s naked, squirming body and felt sad and angry and sick to his stomach. When he saw the bloodstain on the back of the wall where her head made the loud noise, he almost threw up.
Paul opened his brisket-thick hand in front of Martin’s face. Resting on his palm was the most beautiful pistol he had ever seen, a .22-caliber Beretta with a silver-plated grip. It had been custom engraved in Spain. There was a blue ribbon wrapped around the barrel.
“Happy birthday, Martin,” Paul said and kissed him on the forehead.
Martin sobbed uncontrollably. Paul rubbed Martin’s head, soothing him with one hand, holding the pistol in the other. “Shhh-shhh, dear boy. I’m sorry it had to be like this, but it’s the only way. You had to see for yourself that there isn’t a bone in her filthy body worth caring about before you do what needs to be done…just like the boy in the story.”
Martin cried on the floor, as confused as he was horrified. He looked at Momma and the pistol. It was the perfect size for a little boy. When Martin curled his hand around the grip, it felt like part of his own flesh.
“Mahtinnn…” Momma groaned, “Pweeasse…”
There was something wrong with her mouth. The left side was smiling, but the other side seemed to sag a little.
Paul knelt down and whispered to him, cold as ice, “I know you don’t like knives, so I got you this lovely little pistol. Just pull the trigger nice and slow like I taught you, son.”
“I can’t!” Martin sobbed, still clinging to some ancient trace of love for the crumpled body below him, her fluttering eyes darting back and forth between them.
“Kill her now!” Paul demanded. “Don’t feel, boy, just act!”
“Doan, bibby, please,” Momma begged, blood leaking from her lips. She was slurring so badly that Martin could barely understand her.
“Ees da one…” she hissed, wagging a limp finger at Paul, the other arm hanging lifeless by her side. “Ass im abud Noeene.”
“What…?” Martin croaked, trying to decode her garbled moaning.
Paul’s combat boot crushed the part of her face that was still working. Momma tried to make her tongue move, but the gap between the place in her brain that made the words and the place where the words come out was quickly filling with sticky clumps of blood.
“Norine…she’s talking about Norine!” Paul shouted. “Do you know why she hated her so much? She was jealous. Jealous of you and Norine!”
Martin nodded. Hatred rose through his neck, weaving into every crevice of his mind.
Squeeze.
“Remember when she came to pick you up and saw you dancing with Norine?”
Squeeze.
“Remember what she did to you that night…in the cellar?”
That was it. All the years of torment erupted like vomit from the depths of his soul. From the cellar. “I hate you! I hate you! I HATE YOU!” Martin screamed at her, feeling more powerful with each repetition.
“Shoot her, Martin!” Paul hissed, pointing at the place between her breasts. “Shoot her right through her cold black heart!”
Momma begged him with her eyes one last time. Mercy, son. Mercy.
He couldn’t do it…he couldn’t. But his finger squeezed the trigger without his head’s permission. A long, slow, steady squeeze, just like Paul taught him. The bang was deafening in the small room, the kick nearly enough to throw the pistol from his hand. But his aim was true. The lead whizzed out like a rocket ship, not at her heart but at the smooth dead center of her forehead. A dimple of red, just a drop really, appeared above her eyes like a shiny red bindi. Momma didn’t move. Martin thought he must have done something wrong and began to squeeze the trigger again. Then he saw her eyes. They were changing from a sweat-soaked stare of horror to a milky glaze of utter confusion.
The tiny .22-caliber bullet was ricocheting inside her skull like a pinball, lighting up old memories of love and cruelty as it whipped the spidery gray filaments of her brain into a six-egg omelet. When the lump of lead finished its final twists and turns, there was nothing left of life inside her but the last few twitches of jangling nerves and pulsing capillaries. The same look of bewilderment remained painted on her face as her body slowly crumpled beneath her.
“Yesssss!” Paul shouted at the top of his lungs, sweeping the little boy up in his arms. “You did it! You did it! YOU DID IT!”
Martin’s face lit up in a rainbow of triumph and vindication...his smile beaming from ear to ear and back again. Yet, as he watched the drops of blood ooze slowly from his mother’s nostrils he felt an emptiness rising from his toes and burrowing into his chest. The switch clicked again, so hard he could almost hear it. All the feelings he had ever known…love, sadness, hurt, longing…all of them folded up inside his head, tucking themselves away into old wooden cupboards and dark, musty closets where they could never be found again. One by one, the doors closed like an endless hotel corridor. When the final door slammed shut, everything that could have called itself Martin had been silently locked away. And the smile on his face vanished like a wisp of smoke.
Sad, wasn’t it? I almost hated telling you, but I figured you’d want to know. Everybody wants the backstory. Everyone wants to know how people “got that way.” Personally, I don’t think explanations help very much.
They certainly didn’t help with me. I went to therapy for years, digging up all the worms and green goop that were supposed to free me from my demons. The results were less than liberating. I’m not saying I had it worse than Martin, but it was quite horrible in its own way…in its own special way. I won’t go into it now; you’ve already been through enough. Let’s just say it was bad. Take my word for it.
Sometimes I feel sorry for myself. I suppose everybody does now and then, some more than others. But whenever I feel really sad about my lot in life, all the terrible things that happened, all the wonderful things that didn’t, I start to feel really icky about the self-pity too. I guess feeling sorry for myself makes me feel weak. Then I feel ashamed. So instead of just feeling bad about how shitty my life is, I feel bad about my feelings about how shitty my life is. All in all, it’s not worth it. Better to hop off the pity-pot and find something else to do.
Actually, that was how this all started. I was feeling sorry for myself. And I was feeling bored with feeling sorry for myself. So I went on the web.
It seems so long ago now, but when I first discovered the website I thought it had to be a joke. I was just prowling around, looking for…well, looking for the stuff I always look for, when I clicked on a link and…boom!…there I was, staring face to face with an angry young man, dementedly sticking his tongue out. Not very startling, except for the fact that his tongue was split in two. My immediate appraisal of the blurry low-res image was to guess that it was a Photoshop alteration, poorly done. It was the poorly done aspect that captured my attention, drawing me in for a closer investigation that made my stomach churn and tighten. I know a thing or two about Photoshop and if I wanted to make a forked tongue look like it belonged to some Heavy-Metal-Demon-Snake-God, I’d make it long, tapered, slithery, curly, mobile. Not these twin fat lumpy wads of tissue that looked like your pal Jimmy just clipped your tongue in half with a pair of pruning shears. So in the space of a second, the dim light in my head turned on and I realized it had to be real. What the fuck? Why the fuck? Yet ther
e it was. Wag. Wag. The loose flaps of disassociated tongue meat wobbled and flapped in my face, computer animated, moving in crude jerks and flickers. I could have hit the back button and returned to the comparatively warm and fuzzy world of rose tattoo ankle bracelets and diamond stud nose jewelry. I could have shut down the computer, taken a deep breath and walked outside. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I had to see more. My fist gripped the mouse in a cold, sweaty squeeze that should have popped the little track ball inside. I guided it over the picture and squeezed the clicker on his tortured stubby tongue flap and…boom…I was instantly transported to a very innocuous, nicely designed e-zine.
There was a picture of a young girl who looked about nineteen and would have been called pretty by anyone, regardless of all the rings and posts in her face. Still, it was nothing particularly outrageous, certainly not on the level of Snake-Boy, just your usual assortment of eyebrow, lip, nose and ear piercings. There were a variety of articles that also seemed pretty tame, mostly on tattoos and piercings and personal ads where people with a lot of holes could go meet each other and fill them with metal objects. Then way off in the corner was another title that made my arm hairs crinkle up the moment I read it: “Extreme Body Modification.”
Some saner part of me tugged my shoulder and said, “Hey, let’s beat it.” Of course, I ignored my inner wisdom again. Looking back, I would have done anything to prevent myself from clicking on that link. I won’t tell you the name of the URL…it’s real, and it’s still there…but you’ll have to find it for yourself. Nevertheless, I hope you think twice before going there. For most people it wouldn’t be a very big deal, you’d look at one or two pics, puke and go have a good stiff drink. But if you’re like me…
I suppose I’ve always had a morbid fascination with gore. When I was a kid, I used to read Famous Monsters of Filmland. The magazine had a glossy color cover and cheap black-and-white newsprint inside. I’d leaf through the pages, checking out pictures of vampires and werewolves and what I loved most...the black-and-white shots of the Famous Monster’s victims. Black blood. I liked it better that way. It was much more frightening. The color photos with their fake blood and fake shiny guts and fake hanging eyeballs looked...fake. The black-and-white pictures looked real...like news.
