by Hiromi Goto
Cracker shrieked. Then began to laugh hysterically.
“Ten seconds,” Gee said tersely. “Then run!”
Cracker raised her heavy boot and pounded her heel into the other headlight. Gee swung his cudgel again and again against the windshield. The glass cracked, a spiderweb of lines spreading outward.
Destroy the body, Gee thought. The windshield is easier to replace.
He alternated between kicking and pounding the yellow sides of the Hummer with his heel and the two-by-four. The doors dented inward with dull metallic thuds. Gee swung the cudgel in a vertical arc and pounded the nail through the roof. Bang! Bang! Bang! He punched holes into the metal, his mouth stretched into a wide loose grin.
Cracker, on the other side of the Hummer, was kicking in the metal. Gee could hear her panting and wheezing breathlessly with excitement. Gee yanked the embedded nail from the roof of the car and dragged its point along its body. Screeeeeeeeeeeee, metal against metal, a snaking line. Gee snapped his elbow backward to take out the side mirror. The glass popped and cracked simultaneously.
The sounds of destruction, Gee thought, were so sweet. So beautiful….
“No!” A voice. Enraged. Anguished.
Cracker peeped with fear.
Gee spun around.
The pig dog stood in the open stairwell, a dark silhouette in the framed doorway. His hands were clenched in tight fists. Gee ran around the Hummer, grabbed Cracker’s arm and belted toward the fire exit, Cracker staggering behind him, scarcely able to keep up. “Faster,” Gee said tersely.
He could feel the weight of her. Slowing him. He could hear the pig dog’s heavy pounding steps.
He should let her go…. Gee hadn’t asked for her help—she’d joined him of her own accord.
The weight of her lagging body fell from his grip. Cracker had dropped to her knees. Hands flat on the dirty pavement. The contents of her purse scattered on the ground. She was gasping, almost retching, for breath.
The pig dog a few metres behind her. His burls of fists.
Gee’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t owe her anything. He had no friends. A few more strides to the exit door and he was gone. He back to his life, and Cracker back on her own track, just as they’d been before she’d ever spoken to him. Gee’s hand clasped the doorknob. He didn’t need her, nor did he want her in his life.
Cracker screamed.
Unable to stop himself, Gee looked back.
Winston had grabbed Cracker by her hair. She raised her hands, trying to break his hold, but he continued yanking upward to draw her to her feet.
Gee stared. Winston wouldn’t hurt her. He would just call the cops and Cracker would be charged with property damage…. She’d maybe have to do community service. Or spend some time in a juvenile home. Winston hadn’t seen his face, so he couldn’t be charged. Gee could just walk away from it all.
Cracker’s gasping breath quickened. Short panting, desperate for air.
She couldn’t take all the excitement. Her heart….
Gee’s own heart thudded heavily inside his narrow chest. His palms felt sticky. He watched as Cracker flailed for her skirt pockets, attempting to plunge her hands into the messy folds of the crinkly material.
Winston grabbed her wrists.
The pavement blurred, stretched beneath Gee’s steps. The parked vehicles loomed dark, silent. Cracker’s eyes, wide, panicked.
Winston’s eyes gleamed as he watched Gee running toward him. He released one of Cracker’s wrists. She thrust her freed hand into her pocket just as Gee reached them.
Gee didn’t know why he did it. His body took over. He smacked the flat of his palm into Winston’s face, completely covering his nose and mouth.
Winston clamped his free hand around Gee’s throat. Squeezed.
Gee could feel something in his larynx beginning to give. This is dangerous, he observed, coolly. You could very well die.
The small dark silent place deep inside him, the seed that had to be contained at all costs—the shell began to give. Minute cracks, spreading outward, finally weakening, a howling rage bursting through the seams. Roiling, swelling with sickening stench, sour, mildewed and noxious.
What was happening? Gee was choking, what was—
Elation swelled, bright, powerful. Awful. He could do anything.
Anything!
Gee could feel Winston twisting his face beneath his palm. His skin tingled. The boy’s struggles were somehow so deeply gratifying…. The smell of curdled milk filled his nostrils and he closed his eyes. It reminded him of something he could not name. His palm growing moist, soft. Spreading.
“Ohmygod—” Cracker’s voice broke.
Gee opened his eyes.
The pig dog no longer had his fist in the girl’s hair.
Cracker was standing a metre away, her eyes wide, staring with horror. Something in her hand. She held it like a spray can.
Gee, following Cracker’s line of sight, looked down. Winston was on his knees, his hands swiping weakly at Gee’s bony wrist.
The skin from Gee’s palm had spread, webbed, stretching thin between his fingers, white and elastic. Fingers, palm, elongated and pliant, his hand covered the boy’s entire face, wrapping around half his skull to tenderly cover both ears. Gee could feel the loose skin flap in and out of the boy’s open mouth as he desperately sucked for air.
Ticklish. Obscene. Monstrous.
Winston clawed weakly at Gee’s arm, trying to tear away his suffocating hold.
Gee stared down at the struggling boy. On his knees. His gasps smothered, growing weaker and weaker. He was so very, very pathetic. Ugly. Ignoble. Disgusting.
“Stop it, Gee!” Cracker shouted. “That’s enough!”
Just a little longer, the growing darkness inside him whispered. In a few moments he’ll be dead….
Cracker raised her hand.
Gee almost smiled. Did she think a slap could stop him?
Zsssssssst.
Wet, cool. What—
Flames seared his skin. Eyes burning, tearing— Then the molecules hit his lungs and Gee began coughing, whooping for air.
The maddening pain. As if he were being stung by wasps. All over his face, the inside of his mouth, down his throat. His burning lungs. Gee released his hold on the boy’s face to claw at his own eyes.
“Don’t touch it!” Cracker shouted. She sounded far away. “You’ll make it worse. It’s pepper spray. Keep your eyes closed. I’m sorry! I had to stop you!”
Gee could scarcely hear her. Unable to stop himself, he tried to wipe the pain away. His fingertips sank into his face.
As if it were melting.
“Ohgaawwd.” Cracker’s voice was shaking. “Your face….”
Gee pulled his hands away. His skin— He could feel clots adhering to the tips of his fingers, stretching, like long strands of glue.
The pain. Receding. Growing numb.
His eyes. The tears were growing thicker. No longer liquid. Hardening. They were sealed shut. Gee swiped the back of his gooey hand over his sealed eyelids, and it was as if a sticky melted layer was sloughing from his entire face.
The sound of retching. Deep. Low. It was Winston. He hadn’t died.
The jangling sound of boot buckles, pounding footsteps, receding. Gone. Cracker had run away. And Gee could finally see once more. In his hands, stretching in long white strands, were the remnants of his face….
His face.
He should be blind. He should be writhing with pain.
He felt nothing.
A soft plat, plat, plat of something moist hitting the dirty pavement. Gee looked down. Lumps of white melty skin dangled from his fingertips, stretching to the breaking point, dripping into a flat gluey pool. A wrinkly skin started forming on the surface as it began to harden.
The rage that had burst from his hidden place—it was gone. And what was left, Gee thought numbly.
What am I! the childish part of him screamed.
Noisy, he realized.
So much noise. The Hummer was still honking and wailing and the wretched boy was crawling backward, away from Gee. Something in his eyes was broken and fearful.
Gee turned and walked away.
Chapter Six
Rain streamed down his face and his clothes were completely sodden, but Gee scarcely noticed the cold. Heavy wet clumps of hair stuck to his face and water dribbled down his neck. He did not shiver. He walked with his gaze locked to a point a metre ahead of him. If he kept on walking, looking straight ahead, he would not have to look upon the reflection of his own face.
His footsteps faltered and he came to a stop. Gee slowly raised his head to discover the familiar shape of Rainbow Market, their living space above it. All the windows were dark.
That’s right, he thought dimly, Popo is in the hospital. So she couldn’t help him. Popo didn’t know that the world had changed today.
Don’t go inside, the childish part of him entreated. Once you go in, the bad thing will happen. The bad thing that you’ve known has been there all along. Just keep on walking. Popo will worry, but you’re old enough to quit school and find work. After a while you can send her a postcard, as Older Sister does, to say you’re doing fine…. It’s okay to have your own life, away from everybody. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. You’re only a bad person if the people you love see you being bad….
A harsh sound burst free from his mouth. He clamped his arms around his middle, sealed tight his lips. If another sound broke out he wouldn’t be able to stop it. His shoulders shook with the effort to hold it all inside. His eyes were dry.
Several minutes passed.
Gee’s arms dropped to his sides. They hung, limp, his shoulders slumped. Exhausted. He slowly walked to the store entrance and unlocked the door.
The familiar odours of sweet fruit, musty herbs and dust filled his senses. Gee closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. He trudged up the narrow flight of steps that led to their upstairs home, the old boards alternately creaking and shrieking, a natural alarm system installed by time. Loud enough, Gee thought, to wake the dead.
If Popo were home, she would turn on the lights. She would pad to the kitchen and put on the kettle for tea. She’d tell him to sit and would look at him with her dark, penetrating eyes, and she would see that ugly thing inside him. If she were home he’d have to watch the love in her eyes … turning. To fear and disgust. It was good that she wasn’t home.
Gee stepped through the upstairs door and stood in the darkness. He was very much alone. A stillness hung in the air. Something was not right.
His heart began to thud, slowly, heavily. There had been a cat. A talking cat, Gee thought distantly.
“Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.” A high giggle escaped his lips. Gee slapped his hand over his mouth, his dark eyes overlarge in his pale, pale face.
The lights. Hadn’t he left them on when he’d run out? He flicked the switch and the glare blinded him for several seconds.
If emptiness was a presence it was heavy and oppressive. He glanced at the clock on the wall beside the large orange tree. What had happened to time? There was something he was supposed to do. He couldn’t remember what it was.
Gee caught a flash of white in the corner of his eye. He spun around, only to realize that it was the blurry reflection of his face in the glass of the display cabinet. Gee spun away before he could focus on the details. He fought the compulsion to touch his cheeks with his fingertips. No! No! All of it, hallucinations. Please, he thought. Let it be hallucinations…. Because if it were real. If it were true.
His chest felt tight. Squeezed. His breath was a little shallow. Rapid. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“Actually, it’s not,” a gritty voice growled.
Gee twitched, but he did not cry out. He slowly turned around.
The fat white cat lay sprawled atop the old book on the dining room table. His tail slowly bobbed up and down as he stared disinterestedly across the room.
Gee dragged his forearm across his eyes. He was groggy from all the shocking things that had happened.
Look at you, the small dark voice deep inside him laughed. You’re a face-melting freak of nature, an orphan, a whacko who’s talking to a cat. The only person who likes you is probably dying. And that dark and bad thing that you’ve felt all along—the one you could never escape? Your shadow companion…. It’s finally caught up to you.
“You’re running out of time. Not that I care. But Ming Wei still cares, who knows why. There are things you need to do.”
“I don’t want to,” Gee whispered.
“I don’t want to!” the cat mimicked. “I’m scaaaaared!”
Something warm, wet, landed on Gee’s slender wrist. It was white, a dab of something that hardened as it cooled. Like a bead of melted wax. Two droplets trailed down his cheek and Gee felt the slightest pinch of skin. He raised his hand to brush at the sensation.
Tears, Gee thought. I’m crying. He could not remember the last time he cried.
Did teardrops that turned solid count as real crying? Gee didn’t know.
He was hollow. Empty. Emptiness was good. Emptiness meant there was nothing inside that would break and shatter.
“You’re in danger, and you draw danger to the one you love the most!” The cat was standing, his tail vertical with displeasure. But the tip couldn’t help but flop a little to the side.
Gee shook his head. He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. The hardened tears fell to the floor like more bits of wax. “No.” His voice was harsh. “Not Popo.”
“Then read this book!” The cat leapt off the table and landed on the red velvet cushion of the big chair by the window. He turned thrice before covering his face with his tail. “There you will find the answers to many of your questions.”
Gee stared at the old tome. Was the cat speaking the truth? And if the book did contain answers to his questions, what if he didn’t like what he read? A large knot was forming inside his chest. Sending tendrils up his esophagus, choking his breath. Because whatever was written inside that book had the power to destroy his world….
Gee took a long shuddering breath. He pushed the flop of dark hair back off his forehead and pulled the wooden chair away from the edge of the table. He sat down. His hand did not shake when he reached for the book. He let the cover fall open, and a musty, slightly cinnamon scent filled his nostrils. It was not unpleasant.
The first page was blank, opaque and brittle. Gee slowly turned it to reveal the next page. It was adorned with the same round symbol, the pieces curling together, entwined, in black, white and grey, but it was smaller than the one on the outside cover. Beneath it was a peculiar writing that undulated between cursive and … something else.
Gee wondered if it was something like Sanskrit, or maybe Hebrew, a language whose letters he could not decipher. It was odd—the longer he stared at the flow of writing, the more he felt he could almost see it. Gee frowned and squinted. He could almost read it, the same feeling as a forgotten person’s name, on the tip of the tongue…. Suddenly the illegible letters seem to shift—and then meaning followed.
The Book of the Realms
Gee shuddered.
No, the childish part of him pleaded. I don’t want to. It’s not fair. I didn’t ask for any of this. It’s not fair!
“Tick tock, tick tock,” the cat muttered, his rounded hindquarters facing Gee, his droll voice muffled by the velvet back of the chair.
Gee could picture it clearly: he would snatch up the book and throw it, hard, at the awful cat. Hard enough to break bones. The cat would yowl with shock, his legs twitching spasmodically. Gee would knock the cat to the ground and kick him across the floor, repeatedly, until he was as loose and wretched as a dirty dishrag.
The fur on the cat’s rump expanded as he turned one ear backward. As if he could hear what Gee was thinking.
And maybe he can, Gee thought. He stared at the title page of the book once more. He too
k a deep breath. Held. Then flipped the page.
He began to read.
THE CHIRRUP CHIRRUP CHE-REE of a robin seeped through Gee’s stasis, and he slowly raised his head from the last page of The Book of the Realms. He did not know for how long he had been staring at it. His neck was sore.
Daylight shone through the crack between the two folds of curtain. The rain had stopped while he read through the darkest hours but he could not say when. He turned his head.
The cat was no longer on the red velvet chair. A few white hairs clung to the dense nap of the upholstery, and the seat was slightly indented.
Gee closed the book so that the back faced upward. In the centre was a small, embossed circular symbol. It was much smaller than the image on the front cover and the details were worn away with time. He bent a little closer.
It wasn’t the three-pieced yin-yang symbol.
A spiral…. As he stared it began to swirl, turning inward and inward; he followed the lines, perpetually twining and twining and twining into the next dimension that spun around around around—
Gee tore his eyes away.
The light shining through the crack in the curtains was golden yellow. There was a dull, hollow pain in his stomach. Gee considered this sensation. Hunger, he realized. He was hungry. Popo was in the hospital and he had promised he’d go back yesterday evening.
And he, Gee, had once been a monster.
Gee stared at the empty red chair.
He did not believe in monsters. He believed in rationality. He believed in observation. The only monsters he could identify were human—the ones who’d been formed from cruelty and ignorance. The bigots, the bullies, the power-hungry. People with monstrous behaviour. Real monsters did not exist.
The small, tight dark voice inside him crowed with laughter. Oh, you liar! You know they do, the ugly thing whispered. That’s why no one loves you. Why your sister cannot bear being around you. Why there is nowhere for you to belong. Ohhhhh, you know all right. You’ve known all along. Once a monster, always a monster….
