Prodigal Blues

by Gary A Braunbeck

  "What the hell has that got to do with—"

  "Ever catch him in Houdini, Mark? Or see the TV movie they made with that actor who played on Starsky & Hutch? Did you know you can learn things from books and movies, Mark?" He wiped some perspiration from his neck. "Did you know, for instance, that in both movies about Houdini they describe how he was able to control his abdominal muscles and gag reflex to prevent himself from vomiting up things he swallowed, like keys? Keys he used to unlock himself from the restraints and chains they'd put him in before locking him in a trunk and dumping it in the water? Oh, yeah—the TV movie got really graphic about it, and almost all of his biographies went into a lot of detail about how he trained himself to do it. He used to say that anyone could learn how to do what he did, if they had enough discipline." His right leg was going so fast now you'd almost mistake it for not moving at all.

  "Well, Grendel made sure all of us had that kind of discipline, didn't he? Didn't he?" His arm shot out and he hit the dashboard with his fist. "No matter how much or how little we'd eaten, no matter how long it had been since we'd gone to the bathroom or how badly we needed to go, no matter what got shoved up inside of us, we learned how to keep control, how to maintain discipline. I got really good at it. As of today, providing that the object isn't longer, wider, or thicker than my index and middle fingers combined, I can hold it down my throat or up my ass indefinitely, doesn't matter how bad it tastes or how much it hurts, old Christopher here can take it! Not only can I take it and hold it, I can puke it up or shit it back out at will! Don't even have to think about it anymore, that's how good I've gotten, it's just"—he snapped his fingers—"and out pops the prize—oh, it took time, and it took practice, but I had lots of both to work with."

  He was past being agitated and moving toward frantic. "I think I'd like to start playing 'Bury the Cow' now, please."

  He hit the steering wheel with the side of his fist. "Oh, no you don't—it wouldn't be fair, and being fair is important, fairness is what a good person shows another to prove that their word means something, and I gave you my word, Mark, and because I haven't answered your question yet we can't start playing 'Bury the Cow' because that would mean I was going back on my word—and, besides, now I want to answer all of your questions, so, let's see now—where were we? Oh, right—Houdini."

  I thought he was going to rip the steering mechanism, wheel and all, right out of the floor and then take a bite out of it. He was beyond manic; he was in the grip of a sudden, blistering, searing rage that bordered on outright hysteria; he seemed about a breath away from insanity.

  There are no words for how stark staring terrified I was right then; none at all.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but a quick flash from his eyes killed the words halfway to my immediately- and wholly-dry tongue; I was so startled by that flash—how in a blink he ceased being Christopher and instantaneously metamorphosed into this possessed, snarling, livid, agonized, howling, frenzied thing that I knew would tear out my throat as soon as look at me—I was so shocked by it I'm surprised I didn't wet myself.

  Maybe Grendel's discipline was contagious.

  "All right, then," he yelled, beating a rapid drum roll on the wheel. "After Houdini—but before Mad Max, there was The Great Train Robbery—Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, Lesley-Anne Down? Now there's a movie for you—more ways to pull off the perfect crime than you can count! And Lesley-Anne Down is hot! God is she hot in this movie! That bit at the end, when she slips Connery the keys to his handcuffs through her mouth when she kisses him—it's almost enough to make me want to touch and be touched by another human being again! You bet your ass Rebecca and me filed that one away just-in-case. But the beauty part of the whole thing was the way Donald Sutherland got an imprint of the key to the luggage car—I'd've never thought of doing it that way in a thousand years, but—bam!—right there it was in full color and Grendel handed it to us and he never had a clue! God, it was so easy once all the pieces started falling together—I mean, yeah, sure, it took a couple of years to find the pieces before all the falling-into-place part could start happening, but once it did—pow!-zap!-whammo! and word to your mother—he couldn't fucking touch us!—okay, he could touch us, but he couldn't get a whiff of what we were up to, and half the time he watched the movies with us!" He threw back his head, hit the steering wheel again, and barked a short, shrill, ear-shattering laugh and resumed talking in a rapid cadence, nervously, like there were dashes around everything.

  "Ha! Oh, fuck me we were on fire!—On fire, Mark!—He had actual antiques in the house, you know that? Just-in-case. You never knew—no, you didn't—you never knew who might be monitoring things, never knew if Dirty Harry and the boys might come busting in to check things out, so he had 'em, genuine antiques all over the place—a lot of them were chests and cabinets that didn't come with keys and you sure as hell didn't want to damage their resale value by messing up the locks—Grendel got himself a key-making machine and even showed Arnold and me how to work it and make keys—what the hell did he worry?—it wasn't like we could get to the important keys, the special keys, no—those were on his very important, very special, terribly personal über-extending keychain that was always hooked onto his belt—only the thing is, there's a scene in the movie where Lesley-Anne Down has to get the impression of a key off of some skeezy-ass fat slug-of-a-slob—not the most attractive man in the world, is what I'm trying to convey—only he's always wearing his keys attached to his coat, so what she does, see—this is terrific—is she gets him alone and make like she's gonna seduce him—just ball his brains out until him and God are touching noses—and she starts taking off some of her clothes, then some of his, then a little more of hers, and pretty soon the guy's so horny the crack of dawn isn't safe—Lesley-Anne Down could make impressions of all his keys twice before he'd take his eyes off her truly spectacular breasts all bouncy-bouncy in the corset getup she's wearing—so Rebecca and me and Arnold and Thomas, we made sure to be on our absolute very best behavior at the next meeting because we had a very special, very important "One Day" list, right—like with Play-Doh on Thomas's and wax paper on Rebecca's—to wrap things in to make 'em easier for me to swallow—easier to get 'em back up, too—and lubricating jelly on mine—put a little of that on the wax paper and whatever's wrapped in it will slide down your gullet easier than a bag of White Castles—that got a smile out of him—my asking for the lube—me and Rebecca had been letting on we were doing the dirty-bunny bop on our downtime—and Arnold, he asked for a small box of cookie cutters because he wanted to bake cookies for the next meeting and when Grendel heard that, well, he just beamed like a proud papa on his kid's first birthday and never once asked about anything—he even said that we deserved everything on our lists because we had been so 'exceptional' lately—that was the word he used, 'exceptional'—and when he came back from town that day—he took Denise with him because Connie retired—when he came back, he brought us everything on our lists and some little extras—first time he'd ever done that—you'd think I'd remember what they were, but I don't, go figure—and then it was like breathing while you were asleep—hell, we probably could've done the whole thing in our sleep, we had it down so tight—we waited until after he'd had enough of his red wine that he was feeling all warm and chatty—then Rebecca, she asked him to watch her do this dance she was working on for the meetings—she thought it might be sexier for the group if she put on a little show for them—and while she's dancing—one of those sloooooow and nasty stripper dances with lots of teasing and touching—while she's doing this, Arnold is playing waiter, bringing Grendel snacks from the kitchen and always making sure his glass of red wine is full—and Thomas, he's sitting there on the floor beside Grendel just swaying from side to side and humming like he always does—off-key, naturally—did I mention he still had his legs at this point?—oh, yeah, he hadn't 'disappointed' the Big Ugly One yet—anyway—Thomas is humming and Arnold is pouring and Rebecca is dancing and me—I'm standing off to th
e side keeping an eye on everything because when this starts to happen, it's got to be fast and it's got to be smooth—Plan B is for me to do a Houdini and make myself suddenly vomit and between you and me, I'd rather not do this—but at the exact moment as we'd planned it, Rebecca hikes up her skirt and because she's not wearing underpants—like we'd planned—she gives Grendel a shot of the moneymaker and Arnold pours a little more wine and Thomas, he sways way over and uses this piece of Play-Doh he's been palming to grab a quick impression of both sides of the first key and that's it, one down, four to go, and the next three go just as easy as you please—Thomas can palm the Play-Doh with the best of them—and Grendel's getting pretty toasty but he's not about to pass out—the man never passed out, I don't care how much wine he drank—and I think maybe by this time we'd started getting a little cocky and careless because when Rebecca gives him the NC-17 pink bits this time around, she's a little too close and Grendel makes a grab for her—he almost gets her, too—but he's just far enough away that he misses and loses his balance and almost falls out of the chair—Arnold, he's slopping some wine over the edge of the glass—and Rebecca, she's a little off-balance, too—Thomas, he's got the Play-Doh palmed around the last key, but when Grendel slips forward, Thomas doesn't have enough time to un-palm the key—it pulls out of the Play-Doh and it's got a little bit of the stuff stuck in one of its side grooves—the impression of this one will be for shit, we all know it—but I'm thinking maybe we can make it work, anyway, if Donald Sutherland can do it, we sure as hell can—and Grendel, he's applauding, and Rebecca, she's curtseying, and Arnold, he's daubing up the spilled wine—but Thomas, Thomas is sitting there scared shitless because he can see—right—he can see that little itty-bitty bit of Play-Doh that's on the last key, and I'm thinking, It's all right, kiddo, it's okay, we'll deal with this, we'll manage, just put that last one down the front of your shirt—but he doesn't, he just sits there—I'm getting a tad concerned now, you might well imagine—really truly very deeply concerned—anxious, bothered, troubled, and vexed, even—that song, 'Don't Worry, Be Happy'?—not my favorite tune in the world right now—but still Thomas just sits there like Jabba-the-Lean-To and my concern—my anxiety—is reaching critical proportions now—I'm closing in on downright ruffled—when Rebecca grabs Grendel's arm and pulls him to his feet and says, 'I wanna dance on your face!'—I could've kissed her right then, really I could've—so now she's leading Grendel upstairs to his bedroom to keep him happy—and to keep him from going to Denise's room—he never went to her room the whole time she was there—and as soon as they're up those stairs me and Arnold are on Thomas, getting him to his feet—he's scared, he thinks I'm mad at him—and we get him into the kitchen—I was right, that last impression is mostly for shit but at least we got the others—and we know we gotta work fast because Rebecca can only do so much for so long and eventually Grendel's going to realize it's time to chain us up for the night and listen to his bedtime story—so Arnold and me head down to the sub-basement—there's a blowtorch down there that Grendel thinks I don't know about, right—he used it to cauterize the messier wounds—like when he sliced off Rebecca's breast then made her sauté it and eat it in front of us—oh, the happy days, what memories they leave—anyway, we grab that baby and fire her up and start melting down the cookie cutters—they melted real fast, they were just the right kind—and while we're doing that, Thomas is up in the kitchen using the oven to harden up the impressions—yeah, not the greatest way to make a mold but it works in a pinch—I saw it done once on MacGyver—I miss that show, don't you?—see, we'd had the oven on the whole time—whenever Arnold left the room for more snacks or another bottle, he'd increase the temperature a hundred degrees, that way when things started getting a little warm Grendel would figure it was just from all the dancing and wine, right—so the oven's at, like, 575 degrees and it was going to take fifteen, twenty minutes for all the molds to harden—I know what you're thinking—why not just steal the keys off Grendel when he's sleeping, right?—well the thing there is that those goddamn keys are never off his person, except maybe when he's sleeping or taking a bath—but that's out of the question because he locks his bedroom door at night and isn't exactly unconscious during his bath—sorry, I get a little scattershot when I get excited—where was I?—right, the cutters—now Arnold and me have got all the cutters melted down—this is maybe twenty minutes into a plan that's supposed to take forty, forty-five, tops—and God bless him, here comes Thomas holding the tray filled with the molds—the Play-Doh cooked up well enough—the trick now was to make sure that both the molds and the liquid from the metal cutters cooled enough so that one wouldn't damage the other—I figured about ten minutes—so we use the oven mitts Thomas has grabbed to hold the containers and the tray and I poured everything into the molds—we have just enough—and then it's upstairs and through the kitchen to the back room where the freezer is—we'd already dug a hole in the ice in the bottom—Grendel never checked the freezer unless he had some body parts in there—didn't have any right now, lucky for us—and we bury the molds, then make sure the oven's turned off and the mitts and pans are back in place—Grendel knew the exact spot where every item in that house was supposed to be—and everything's looking good, looking real good—and we're on our way back into the living room to wait for Rebecca and the Big Ugly One to come down so we can all be tucked in—we're all shaky from the adrenaline rush of the last forty minutes, it's been great but it's been rough—it's the first time in years any of us had any hope for anything at all—you have no idea how that felt—raccoon…"

  "Huh?"

  He jerked the wheel to the left to avoid hitting the fattest and slowest raccoon known to existence (who'd just decided that the middle of our lane was the absolute best place to stop and lick his unmentionables) but we were going way too fast; every tire squealed; the bus and trailer both lurched sideways; we damn near sideswiped an SUV that was trying to pass—the driver and passenger both gave us the finger while yelling things we couldn't hear and probably wouldn't have appreciated, but right then I didn't give a damn about them or the raccoon or even the bodies back in the trailer—the only thing I cared about was getting Christopher calmed down and some of his medicine into him; it was either that or knock his ass out and take the wheel myself—he was jumping around in his seat like water on a hot griddle, eyes wide, hands shaking even though they gripped the wheel, knuckles white; there wasn't one part of him that wasn't trembling as he jerked the wheel to the right to get back into our lane—we smashed the raccoon anyway, little fellow was probably depressed and better off—and once we were steady and straight again he started to speak, but I reached over and grabbed his wrist and swear that I felt an electrical shock jump off his skin and shoot up into my shoulder. "Christopher, you have to slow down, we're going too fast."

  "Too fast? You think this is fast? This is a Sunday drive with the grandparents, Pretty Boy, this is wussy test-drive speed, this is nothing! You want fast? Sincerely? I'll give you fast." He shifted gears and floored the accelerator. I watched as the speedometer climbed past 75, hit 80, got bored in a hurry, and crept toward 85.

  "Goddammit, slow down!" I had to shout to be heard over the loud metallic groan-grind of the engine behind us.

  "What for?" shouted back Christopher, twice as loudly. "Thought you were in a hurry to get home to the wife, get away from all this. I'm just trying to be accommodating, Mark, trying to be the good host, trying to do the right thing for everyone involved. Rebecca, she fucked Grendel so we could get those keys made, that was accommodating; Thomas claimed that he was just goofing around with the Play-Doh and the key when Grendel came down and asked us what was it with the stuff on his key, that was amazingly accommodating, don't you think, especially since Grendel didn't believe him for one second, said the stuff on his key hadn't been there before and what were we up to, anyway? And Thomas said it wasn't us, it was just him, and Grendel, he was so disappointed by that and we all just knew what that meant, that mea
nt a visit to Ravenswood—only this time, this time, we all had to go down there, and he strapped Thomas onto the table and got out the blowtorch and the bone saw and gave Thomas a little shot so he wouldn't pass out from the pain—Grendel did not like it when someone passed out from the pain, really put a crimp in his evening—and once he was sure the shot had taken effect—he'd given Thomas just enough to temporarily numb him, not knock him out—then he fired-up the bone saw and the blowtorch and handed the torch to me and he cut off Thomas's right leg and god, God, God, GOD! how Thomas screamed and thrashed against the straps but that didn't mean shit to the Big Ugly One, no, screaming only made him work slower—and that's just what he did, slowed waaaaaaay down with the saw—and Arnold's holding Rebecca so she doesn't try to run over and put a stop to it—I think that's what was going on, I couldn't be sure, because suddenly the leg was off, just like that, all goo and gristle and Grendel grabbed it from the table and tossed it in the corner and I set to work with the blow torch and Thomas is still screaming, still thrashing, and there's all this blood and slivers of bone and chunks of muscle slopping around on the table, but I kept at the stump with the torch until the bleeding stopped—it smelled like a barbecue pit down there—then Grendel gave Thomas another shot, pulled out his favorite pistol—the baby I got right here—and he held the business end against Thomas's temple, looked right at me, and said, just as calm as you please: "Cut off the other one or I'll kill him right now and make you fuck the exit hole"—he'd've done it, too, we all knew what he was capable of, so I took the saw and then Rebecca broke loose of Arnold—she grabbed the torch—like you say, she's the nurse, a nurse assists—and I cut off Thomas's other leg and Rebecca cauterized the wound and the whole time we were doing this, the whole entire time, Thomas was still conscious—can you believe that?—he's one tough kid—he didn't scream or thrash or nothing—he just lay there looking up at Grendel and saying "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'll be good, I will, I promise"—like he believed he was being punished for doing something bad, he was crying and his face was all red and sweaty and the snot—Christ, the snot was spilling out of his nose and down into his mouth and as soon as I had his leg off and looked at his face I understood then like I'd never understood it before—mostly because I'd stopped letting myself think about it: I understood for the very first time that Grendel wasn't human, he was a different species, a sub-species, and if you were a good person, if you believed that you were a decent person and that it was wrong to hurt other people, that you sh-sh-should treat all people with respect and compassion, then how could you allow yourself to just…to just stand there and do nothing?—that's all I'd been doing, just standing by all those years and letting him do what he wanted—fuck, I even helped him, I helped him with I-don't-know how many of the other kids, I stood there and handed him whatever he asked for and cleaned up afterwards and acted like it was no big deal to me because that's what he wanted, he wanted me to feel nothing, to be like him, and after a while I didn't know if I was doing this because I was trying to protect the family or if there was some part of me, some sub-species part that was starting to become just like him, and if that was the case, then I'd allowed it to happen, I'd opened the door and let it out and I hated him for that, I hated him so goddamn much and now, now here was Thomas, this great little kid, with a gun at his head and he's apologizing to this sub-species piece of shit like he understood that he'd been bad and deserved to have his legs cut off then something near the base of my neck snapped like a toothpick and I COULDN'T FUCKING TAKE IT ANYMORE!"