Wolf Howling

by Brian van Brunt

  At this point in the story, you should know that all this fucked with me. This shark shit with Lou. I know that. I’m not unaware. I should have cracked Lou over his drunken fucking head with the hardwood stretched out right here on my lap. But I didn’t. I was just a kid. It wasn’t the time for action. The bomb was charging, but the fuse hadn’t been lit yet. But that didn’t stop me from thinking about it.

  If I’m being honest with you, sure as fuck I dream about going back in time Marty McFly-style and walking up to my old man and just cracking open his goddamn skull. I smile when I see the crimson in my mind. The look of surprise on my old man’s face when the staff makes contact. I can even hear the crack of wood meeting bone. I have a good imagination. Casey wouldn’t miss this time. Takes the first pitch dead on and pops up a strong fly ball to right field. Going, going…gone.

  Alright, alright; I didn’t hit my father, but the desire was certainly there. And I know what they say about desire. 90 percent inspiration and 10 percent perspiration. Something like that. And I’m feeling inspired today. Inspired to cut those saggy tits off that curly haired Sneaky Snatch Snake. She will pay for her disrespect. This is about that. Telling you about the reckoning that is coming.

  You also should know this part. When I was eight, the shit started getting real. Those sharks were everywhere. Big razor-sharp teeth, grey oily skin, black beady eyes. They spoke to me in a raspy voice. A trench coat and dark sunglasses voice. “Hey, kid. Come over here.” Old-time gangster. Straight up, dirty glass, whiskey-gravel voice. I heard these voices often. Fucking Greek chorus that followed me around. This was before Valentine and Mr. Conrad showed up. The early years, if you will.

  The sharks lived in the trees; that’s where they usually stayed. They liked the tall oak trees with lots of thick green leaves. I don’t know why the trees appealed to the sharks. Maybe the rustling of the leaves disguised their voices. Maybe it was the height. I can tell you this though, they sure as shit loved dropping down from above. They would land with this meaty thud. This wet sound of their leathery skin hitting the concrete. I can still hear it when I close my eyes. I think they did it because it gave them the element of surprise. They brought that with them when they came ashore. Dragged it out of the ocean with them from the depths. Swarming dark masses swimming up from beneath to hunt their prey.

  When I was walking to school, I found a certain path to avoid the sharks. I mean, I was terrified, right? I was just a little shit and I had better figure out a way around this or I was going to lose my goddamn mind, right? Those beady eyes and gravelly voices fucked with me something fierce. Snapping, biting teeth. “Hey, kid.” With a slap of their tail they said, “C’mere.” Fuck that. I ran fast down that path and avoided oak trees on the way to school. But the running wouldn’t work. I knew running was careless.

  People could see me. Peering out at me like minnow fish watching the predator after its prey. I learned to be careful about what people could see and what they should not see. Subterfuge. It wasn’t an easy lesson, but it was one I took to heart.

  Oh, another thing. I had a little brother, once upon a time. His name was Joe. It’s important for you to know this because his sandbox was another place where the sharks would hide, those sneaky fuckers. Before all of this shit started with Lou, I used to stage elaborate Lego battles between Harry Potter and his friends against Voldemort and the death eaters. It was one of the fond memories of my childhood. One of the few, a time when I was left alone.

  But then, those fuckers, they began to swim beneath the sand. When the sand was smooth, I knew the sharks were not there. So, I figured if I could smooth the sand with the upside-down part of the broken rake my father kept in the garage, I could outsmart these fuckers. Long strokes, over and over. It generally took an hour to get the sand to an acceptable level of smoothness. First horizontal and then vertical. I would watch for the occasional disturbance from beneath. I knew the sharks were sneaky, intelligent and hungry. Any slip in the routine could lead to a missing finger or, if they got a good grip on me, I could have ended up right in the middle of the sandbox. It would have been a fucking feeding frenzy.

  It was the worst in the winter. The sharks didn’t like the cold and moved indoors. Not that it ever got too cold. Not in Baker, Louisiana. They had this particular affinity for kitchen cabinets. The sharks got thinner and longer in the winter. Hungrier. Like they had stored up their fat and slowly worked through it over the cold months. Their raspy voices became whispers. More reptilian. Thinner, but just as angry. And their teeth; well, those bright white serrated fuckers looked just as sharp.

  This is when I got my stick. It was a wooden dowel crafted from something sturdy, like oak or walnut. I first saw it in the corner at my Cub Scout den meeting. Not that my parents had anything to do with me attending the Cub Scouts. It was an afterschool program I signed up for myself to spend less time at home with my parents and brother. At the meeting, they hoisted the felt flags on these poles as the scouts recited the pledge of allegiance and the Cub Scout motto. Bullshit patriotic indoctrination, but I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I was thinking about the dowel. It was the perfect size, two inches thick and four feet long.

  I snuck it out of the meeting one week and into my mother’s car during snack time. This time was particularly well suited for distraction, as the other scouts were focused on the orange flavored drink and sugar cookies the den mother cautiously distributed in a manner that would have made the staunchest Marxist proud. Mom was chatting it up with the other parents outside the school and smoking unfiltered camels like some kind of fucking truck driver from Alabama.

  The stick fit perfectly under the passenger seat. There was something about the shape that intrigued me. I first thought of just taking a broomstick handle but really, my parents would have noticed that. Probably not my mom—that bitch wasn’t around. But Lou? Oh, you better believe Lou would have tuned into that channel. Watched it all night long. And then I would also have to explain the teeth marks.

  Unacceptable. My battle with the sharks was to be a private matter. Any attempt to bring my concerns to the outside world would have been met with increasingly vicious attacks from the sharks. So, it was just between us.

  I kept the stick under my bed until I needed something from the kitchen cabinets. Mom worked as a nurse in Baton Rouge; I’d guess she wanted time away from Lou and his drinking as much as I did. Although, this meant I had to forage for my own breakfast.

  I woke up early before anyone else and used the stick to push open the high cabinet next to the refrigerator. The sharks usually got one or two chomps on the stick before I was able to knock the box of Honeycombs free. “Hey, kid. Cut it out. Kid.” Their voices were gravelly and drawn-out, “Give me the stick, kiiiiiiiiiiiiid!”

  The box, more often than not, fell and spilled its contents across the kitchen counter. I gathered the spilled Honeycombs while the sharks watched me with their oily skin and hungry eyes. I can still hear them, “C’mere kid. We won’t hurt ya.” Sure, right. Never trust a shark.

  I took a few pieces of sandpaper from school and polished the stick clean in my room at night. I used some leftover stain from a project Joe had at school to give the stick a dark sheen. I liked the routine and consistency of the process. It also smoothed out the bite marks. That kind of repetitive action calmed me. Like with my journal. But I’ll get to that later.

  It was a particularly unlucky Thursday morning when my father found the stick under my bed. It ended up, as with many assorted objects, in the back of Lou’s pickup truck. “I took that pole of yours. Need it to get the mud clear from under the wheel wells.” He told me this absentmindedly, like it didn’t even matter at all.

  I remember trying to keep the panic out of my voice. “But that’s mine. I found it.”

  “You don’t need the damn stick. Leave it alone, you hear?” he answered.

  I didn’t have a choice. I’d have my time with the stick again but for now, I left it alone
. I was able to avoid the cabinets for a week or so before the sharks got angry. They wouldn’t let me just walk away. That’s not how the battle was fought. At night, I heard them as they slithered about the house. I could hear them propel their leathery skin across the hardwood floors. It made a wet pulling sound, like damp newspaper dragged across a sidewalk.

  “Hey kid” came the voice from the hall. I’d turn on the TV in the morning to drown them out. Get it? Drown them. But Mom wanted to know who had gotten up and turned it on. I blamed Joe. I told Mom that I saw Joe sleepwalking. Joe didn’t see the sharks, so I figured this was a fair exchange for him. Why should he get a free pass? Ridiculous. If Joe couldn’t see the sharks, at the very least he should be dragged off to the neurologist to talk about his nocturnal appliance usage. That’s how I saw it.

  Meanwhile, the sharks found a new place to roam. They began splashing and circling about in the toilet. And listen, don’t be a fuck about this. I know you’re going to judge me, but I’d like to see you do better. I started pissing the bed in the middle of the night. I tried to hold it in and just use the bathroom at school, but sometimes I just couldn’t. I’d like to see what you would have done. Those sharp teeth waiting. Sometimes I would keep a bottle in there and then empty it. But having Lou find a bottle of piss in my room would have ended with a beating. So, I tried to hold it. It didn’t always work.

  And then there were the weekends. No school. No safe bathroom. Did you think of that? I didn’t think so. It was a losing battle, falling asleep dreaming of rushing rivers and booming waterfalls. But I would be goddamned if I would use that toilet. They talked to me in there. “Come use the john, kid. I’ll bite it off. A little snack to tide me over till something more substantial comes along.”

  And let me tell you, a twelve-year-old who wets his bed is not received well by a distant, workaholic mother who hates doing the laundry. It’s received even worse by an abusive, mean drunk of a father always on a hair trigger. Mom was less and less pleased with my wetting problems and Joe’s nighttime wandering. Lou started hitting me so hard he left bruises on my arms and lower back. It didn’t take much to set him off. Maybe you know the type. I did.

  One night, Lou woke up at 3am to the sound of hammering in the kitchen. He turned on the lights and found me pounding nails into the kitchen cabinets with the hammer. And, of course, the sharks were all quiet when Lou flipped on the kitchen light. Of course. Sneaky fuckers.

  “What the god-damn hell...” was all I heard before Lou knocked me to the ground and gave me a fierce beating. “You’ll remember this, you little piece of shit!”

  The next morning, my mother dragged me to the first meeting with the school counselor. I remembered the way my mother looked at me as she sat next to me. All worry and concern.

  The BITCH should be worried. She sold me out. She told them all about my bed-wetting, late night television watching, combing the sandbox for hours with a rake, talking to myself, and putting nails in the cabinets. She used fancy nurse words like Autism and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. I could only imagine what she would have said if she knew about the sharks. But for me, it didn’t matter. By then, the sharks had gone underground, hiding somewhere else, plotting and planning, preparing their two emissaries.

  Which, in some ways, was worse. I knew what paranoid was. How it was defined. I had the Internet. But I also knew that people couldn’t be trusted. I saw how they washed their hands. The piss-poor way they cleaned up after themselves. I knew how lazy and stupid they were. How they did everything with the very least amount of effort. I knew they weren’t on my level from a young age; they certainly should not be trusted in any significant way.

  I learned at the university not to talk about the sharks; I kept these thoughts to myself. During my freshman year, I had been forced to meet with a psychologist after I had an “outburst” in class. That’s what they called it—an outburst. An unacceptable outburst interrupting the academic learning environment. I had seen Valentine for the first time and I think my reaction was rather reasonable. Intense, lengthy screams.

  The psychologist I met with went to the gym too much. He reminded me of Vin Diesel, with his bald head and those disconcerting veins. Like they were ready at any moment to come crashing through his skin. I disliked him immediately, the way he shook my hand and then wiped his nose. The way the stack of books and papers on his desk was haphazardly piled without respect to size or color. And the staleness of the office, like you could smell the pathetic sadness of the last person he talked to hanging in the air. It was safe to say I didn’t care for Dr. Robert Hawkins in the least.

  And while I didn’t like him, I already told you fuckers that I’m not stupid. I’m smart enough to be aware of the power Vin Diesel held over me. The fear hung in the air like the smell of a skunk days after it had sprayed someone. I told Vin Diesel about the sharks. Cautiously at first; I was no fool, but I was worried. I just told him the basics. Hell, if I had it together I wouldn’t have shouted about the sharks in class to begin with. That’s what caused this whole mess.

  So that small moment of weakness with Vin Diesel, the mentioning of the sharks in the trees around campus, was enough to cause the psychologist to watch me. Like something out of Orwell’s 1984. Big Brother was watching me. I knew I had to be on good behavior.

  They called my father. He couldn’t be bothered to come to campus. The embarrassment of them calling my father was something that stuck with me like a violation. Vin Diesel treated me like a child and I was no child. No. They’ll all see that. It’s best not to underestimate me.

  I’m sure if my mother was there, smelling of smoke and hospital disinfectant, she would have had something to say. Her petite self, brimming with that superficial southern charm. “Yes, Dean? Oh, my! I’m sure he didn’t say such a thing.” Just like middle school all over again. But she wasn’t there. The cancer took her right before Valentine showed up. And listen, don’t be a fuck about it. I’m fine. Better off without her and Lou. Parents of the fucking year.

  The take-away from my time at Counseling and Psychological Services was simple. I don’t talk about the sharks anymore with anyone. I told Vin Diesel I was not a danger to others or myself. I met with him three more times and was successful in convincing him that I was not going to cause any more problems.

  That was last year. I had agreed to meet with a psychiatrist to consider medications. I was smart and dedicated enough to sit quietly and listen to the psychiatrist, a fat man who moved as slow as the hot New Orleans summer heat. The sweat pouring off his head was just as disgusting as the armpit stains under his ill-fitting oxford shirt.

  He had a mess of a desk, with a prescription pad haphazardly lying next to a pile of charts and unanswered phone messages. And a partially used napkin on the desk next to his half-finished lunch; the smell of Pad Thai still lingering in the office. Why would I listen to a man who was so clearly not only a disaster of a human being, but also in league with the others plotting against me? Maybe that was part of their ruse. Giving me a sloth of a psychiatrist to try get me to let my guard down.

  It’s one of my most strongly held pet peeves, my Achilles heel, if you will. You should know that about me. A lack of dedication and commitment. Lazy and unfocused people. That’s really the problem with our society. People lost staring off into the TV and Facebook. No one lives life intentionally anymore. I do. When I see something, I go for it. Laser focused. I just hadn’t found something yet to focus on. Not until Mr. Sinclair gave me some guidance. Showed me the light.

  Anyway, back to the fat shit with his legal drug dealing practice. I just smiled and said all the right things. I listened as Dr. Russ Fitzgerald explained the benefits to a trial of Abilify to keep the thoughts of sharks and repetitive actions away. I listened to the side effects and looked thoughtfully at the glass award on the corner of the desk. It read “Dr. Russ Fitzgerald for Outstanding Professional Leadership. The New York Psychiatric Association.”

  I thought about p
icking up that award. I could feel the weight of it in my hand. How I would swing it in a wide arc smashing down onto the fat man’s head. I thought about the sound of cracking. The blood would fly up and splatter all of the office. How that would be fitting. To slaughter Dr. Russ Fitzgerald and leave his office like the pigsty it was. How gratifying it would be to see that fat hog lying on the ground and grasping at speech. His eyes darting the way a head trauma victim’s eyes dart from side to side.

  I liked thinking about how wrong the eyes would look, out of sync, out of focus. Then I would cram some of Dr. Russ Fitzgerald’s scripts from that prescription pad down his fat gullet. Give the good doctor a taste of his own medicine. HA!

  But I did none of that. Instead, I nodded. I said I would think about it and appeared genuinely grateful when the doctor offered me a starter pack of the medication for free. This pleased Dr. Russ Fitzgerald. I scheduled a follow-up appointment for the next month and agreed to start the trial of the medication and call the nurse if the side effects were too troubling for me. I nodded and imagined I would not be troubled in the least by the side-effects.

  I was pleased with myself that I was able to wait until leaving the counseling center to find a trash can for the small brown package of pills. I shoved it deep into the trash can outside the student union with disdain. That fucking guy. Like I’m going to take that poison. Three weeks later, I called and left a message to cancel my appointment with Dr. Fitzgerald, explaining I had a difficult test to study for and would reschedule after Thanksgiving break. The counseling center was busy so they never followed up with me again. Easy. Predictable. And fine by me. More than fine, really. I was careful to have no more “outbursts that interrupted the academic learning environment.” Dr. Hawkins and Dr. Fitzgerald faded into the background.