Grave Markings: 20th Anniversary Edition

by Arnzen, Michael A.

  When the videotaped news program finished its close-up on Judy’s slow-motion report, Schoenmacher pressed the POWER button on the remote control, turning off the television. He stood, pressed down on his hardened but withering lap, and walked over to Roberts’ stereo equipment. It was not quite as nice as his own, but it could crank just as loud. He put on the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” Before Paul’s voice jumped out at him, he twisted the volume knob all the way to the right, the speakers crackling with pink noise.

  Paul’s voice drowned in a tidal wave crash of reverberating bass. Schoenmacher danced in his underpants, shouting along with the song.

  He danced his way into Roberts’ bathroom, screaming, “Naaahh, nah-naaah, nonny, nah-naahhh…” He showered. The rattling hot water that slapped against the tub did not prevent the music from reaching his ears. Afterward, he shook his body dry in a hyperactive nude jig.

  He looked at himself in the mirror. His beard was full, scraggly. He opened a drawer, found a pair of scissors, and began to randomly clip clumps of the thick black hair into the sink. He toyed with patterns, like trimming a hedge. When finished, he grabbed one of Roberts’ razors, and shaved it clean off. He rinsed the remaining white foam and hairs from his face, and looked at himself in the foggy mirror. He face felt exposed, naked. Baby-smooth, and just as vulnerable.

  He repeated the procedure on his pubis.

  “Judy is gonna love me.”

  He quickly dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a nice, red-and-black-striped rugby shirt, and then drove to Judy’s house.

  Her neighborhood was busy with Sunday afternoon families, trimming lawns and gossiping with friends and kids playing ball. He pulled his car in front of her house, and half jogged to her doorstep. He knocked, but she didn’t answer. He tried the bell, which echoed inside the house. He expected her to not answer his call. He tried the knob in a last ditch effort.

  And it opened. He didn’t expect that.

  Playing hard to get, eh? I like that.

  He walked cautiously into the doorway, soundless. His heart was pounding his chest like a bass drum. Cool sweat was sticking his shirt uncomfortably to his back, like glue. He was hot and nervous. Excited.

  He heard a slight humming sound, a mosquitolike whisper. At first he thought she might be working on a sewing machine, perhaps even creating a cute little nightie that she could wear for him. Or even better: it was a vibrator, and Judy was writhing in her bed, making love to a substitute of himself, squirming beneath him in her imagination.

  He catwalked to the hallway that led to the area that emitted the sound. He looked down the hall—three doors lined the short corridor. She was in the bedroom, he was sure of it. He crept down the passageway, past the door on his left (the bathroom, dripping water and shining linoleum), and went to the end of the hall, presumably reaching the bedroom. He heard the sounds of bedsprings and shifting sheets. He smiled—she was waiting for him.

  The buzzing sound clicked off.

  He opened the door. Judy was on the bed, naked and lying provocatively on her stomach, sensuously concealed by a red satin cover that draped below her shoulders and over her curvaceous hips. He stepped inside the door, treading softly. He stood there for a moment, looking at his sleep-feigning beauty.

  He plunked open the top button of his jeans.

  And then a large multicolored arm wrapped around his neck and pulled him backward, knocking him off balance. He was forced to his knees, desperately clutching the strong arm that reached up to his head, grabbed a handful of his hair, and cocked his head violently to one side. His neck popped audibly from the thrust.

  He saw the glint of something wet and metallic shooting toward his neck. A filthy ink-stained thumb, slowly pushing down on a plunger. The world blurred, numbed, as he felt the queer sensation of something hot coursing through his veins, rushing, veining up across his face, burning into his temples and eyes, racing into his brain at the same hundred-mile-per-hour speed as his pumping, thrashing heart.

  Laughter, fading. No energy to scream. Nothing.

  III.

  Corky stood before the barrel of the gun, his arms crossed, hiding flexing fists. He sighed. “It’s a copycat.”

  “What the fuck you talking about, asshole?”

  “Here, look, you fucking moron. This corporal here wanted me to draw this.” Corky held up a newspaper clipping. It had a black-and-white photograph of Schoenmacher’s cat in the center of an article. The headline read “TV Station Macot Gets Cat-Tooed.”

  “Oh, God!” Roberts moaned, flinging his head into his hands, digging his fingers into his hair.

  Lockerman’s eyelids quivered as he tried to read the article that Corky held up in front of the gun.

  The soldier in the chair ducked, moving out of the pistol’s range. Roberts looked up at him. He was sweating, his face a wet gleam, perspiration giving the tiny tufts of hair on his head flecks of shiny glitter. The almost-complete image of Clive looked just as frightened, the tattoo prickled along with the corporal’s skin, mimicking the boy’s gooseflesh.

  Roberts colored, his face flashed with heat.

  Corky looked over at him. “You want to tell your friend to get that freaking sidearm out of my face?”

  Roberts, guiltily, “Put it down, John.”

  Krantz’ mouth dropped open, his tongue yellow. “You ain’t gonna fall for that, are you, Sarge?”

  Lockerman quickly twisted around, pointing the gun at Krantz. His lips opened into a drooling square, baring white angry teeth. “Shut the fuck up, you punk motherfucker!”

  The rookie’s eyes shot open. His zits oozed.

  Lockerman dropped his arms and stormed away, losing himself in the crowd.

  Corky looked down at the floor, shaking his head in disbelief. “Pigs, man.”

  Roberts stumbled up, walked over to Corky. “He’s drunk, man. He’s been pretty obsessed with catching the Killer. I think he just snapped when he saw that copycat.” Roberts looked back at the corporal, who was wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “After all, it does look pretty realistic…just like that cat, and I’ve seen the thing up close.”

  “I’m outta here,” the corporal said, reaching for his camouflage shirt.

  “Sit the fuck down,” Corky said, restraining his anger. “I ain’t done yet.”

  The soldier obeyed.

  Corky turned, looked Roberts in the eyes, sizing him up. Roberts shrugged his shoulders, nervously.

  Corky stared him down, as if knowing that Roberts had momentarily doubted him, had actually believed that he could be the Tattoo Killer.

  Then he laughed, loudly. He slapped Roberts on the back, hitting his tattooed shoulder blade.

  Roberts winced.

  “Guess I did a damned good job, eh? Not that I like copying the fucker’s work. But still, a man like me’s gotta make a living somehow, right?”

  Roberts smirked.

  Krantz was still standing where he was when Lockerman pulled the gun on him. His mouth was still agape, but his eyes looked dead as he glanced around the gym.

  Corky looked at the rookie and chuckled.

  Roberts found himself suddenly laughing, too, out of relief.

  The gym roared with screams of joy, as if the entire crowd, too, had witnessed the scene that just occurred. He opened his watery eyes as he laughed, looking around him. Colors—red, yellow, and blue—blurred in his eyes. The soldiers around the booth were playing with the balls of color, bouncing them up into the air.

  Balloons, he soon realized. A multitude of balloons floated down from the gymnasium’s ceiling and into the crowd in celebration of the convention. Roberts had no idea that such an event was planned. He smiled, wondering who he should thank for adding the special touch.

  Corky frowned, plugging a cigarette betwe
en his lips. “What kinda bullshit is this? Do they think this is fucking Romper Room, or what?” He lit the tip of the smoke with a silver lighter; it flared orange in contrast to the carnival-colored balloons that drifted down into the booth.

  Corky exhaled smoke, gripped the cigarette between two fingers, and touched the end to the nearest green balloon. It burst, spraying a thin film of green liquid. Green dots covered his forearm.

  Roberts jumped back from the noise of the bursting bubble. “What the hell…”

  Corky smeared the tiny green dots on his arm. “Ink,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “Green ink.”

  The soldiers continued to bob the balloons in the air, playing beggar’s volleyball. A yellow one popped from a fingernail puncture, giving a head-shaved private a faceful of yellow.

  Roberts looked around the gym, frowning. Thousands of the ink-filled balloons were now clustering down shoulder-level. He looked at the yellow-faced soldier, wiping his cheeks in disgust. He looked over at Corky, who was grinning, feigning a drag off a limpy green-soaked cigarette.

  And then he saw Krantz, Lockerman’s rookie, holding a red balloon in his hands, his face still openmouthed and ugly, his dead eyes suddenly alive with horror and shocked disbelief.

  The balloon was red, but stubbled with tiny follicles, similar in texture to the scalps of the soldiers outside of Corky’s booth. The orb looked flat, leaky. A wound-like duct was tied off with thick string. Wide black strips of electrical tape wrapped around folds in the balloon, covering what looked like eye sockets, nostrils, lips…

  “Collins!” the rookie cried, dropping the skin balloon to the floor. It burst and covered his trousers with a red that couldn’t possibly be ink.

  FLASH

  It has been a long time since the purging light has entered his eyes, and now it burns, like white flames torching the crust beneath his lids, crisping away the protective layer built inside. The pain is immensely pleasurable, and when the fingers of light finally reach inside to shine inside his mental gallery, the image rises afire and alive like a dreamer awakens in orgasm….

  The small wooden desk reminds Mark of the chair Dad once tied him to—it bites into the skin, and it is exquisite torture all its own.

  Mr. Limner is at the blackboard, drawing another picture of the nervous system of an earthworm. Zoology is a stupid class, Mark thinks, because there is no zoo at all; it’s all just animal parts. And Mr. Limner doesn’t know a thing about drawing—or diagrams, as he calls them—he’s a terrible artist. All he draws are stick figures and big thick lines. He is even worse than Mark was three years ago, in grade school. Now, in junior high, Mark is the best art student in his class (Miss Hackman, the art teacher, told him so, even though he already knew all that), and it is insulting to have to put up with Mr. Limner’s blackboard scribbles in a class he didn’t even want to take.

  Mark ignores the teacher, takes his pencil sharpener out of his pocket. It is a small cube, with a triangular blade inside. But he does not use the sharpener for pencils. Ever. Instead, he goes through the usual routine beneath the desk, unscrewing the tiny bolt that holds the triangle blade in place. When loose, he slips the parts into his pocket, and keeps the little shard of razor in his palm.

  He used to carry a pocket knife, but his foster parents—Ida and Ward—took it away from him, afraid he might use it on himself. Now he has to use the little sharpener blade. It works just as well…even better than the pocketknife because no one can see him using it.

  He slips the blade between his index finger and thumb, holding the tip of the blade like a pencil point. It cuts him sometimes, but he does not feel it, it does not bother him. He knows that pain is nothing to fear, anyway. And that blood makes unique colors.

  Mark begins to dig a line into the wooden desktop, extending a picture he had begun last week in Mr. Limner’s class. It is a drawing that consists of a maze of lines, all interconnecting, forming the shape of a naked woman and her secret parts. The woman is beautiful, much prettier than Mommy ever was. Almost as pretty as Ida, his foster mom.

  He doesn’t like his foster parents very much. They always complain that he isn’t worth the money they get to watch him. They always spy on him and take his stuff from him. They put one of his drawings on the refrigerator, but they never look at it—most of it is covered up with magnets.

  Ida drinks a lot, just like Mommy used to. She cries, too, which is something that Mark would never do. Late at night, Ida and Ward yell at each other, something about Ward’s im-bud-ins. They don’t fight like Mommy and Dad used to…and so it lasts longer. Mark likes it when they argue and scream.

  Mark etches another line, tracing away from between the naked woman’s legs. The maze that shades her body almost hurts his eyes when he looks at it—it is like one of those optical illusions of a spiral that always seems to spin down even though it doesn’t.

  SCREEE.

  Mark looks up. Mr. Limner has accidentally scratched the blackboard with his fingernails, like he always does, because he doesn’t know how to hold the chalk right. The kids in the class all have goose bumps—some are gripping their ears and others are giggling. Mark closes his eyes and enjoys the sound—it is wonderful to him; he likes it, and it makes him smile.

  “Sorry, kids,” Mr. Limner says, not turning around from the board.

  Mark returns to his drawing, turning the line that sticks out from the woman’s legs into a rope. He draws a little boy holding the rope—like the woman is really not a woman at all but a balloon woman, the sort of thing a little boy might have at a zoo.

  Mark stops, puts the razor tip into his pocket. His fingers are bleeding. He rubs his wounds on the carved maze between the woman’s legs, the gouges in the wood turning into tiny rivers of dark brown and red. The bumps of wood feel good in his cut, wet and slippery thick.

  The engraved maze delivers the blood around the woman’s body like veins. Some of it drains down the rope, heading toward the little boy. Mark pushes it away.

  He leans back in his chair; it squeaks as it pinches him in new ways. He looks at the etching from a different angle. No longer is it a little boy with a balloon…because the lines of the maze connect with the rope, it looks more like someone yanking a woman inside out.

  “Wow,” Mark says aloud, thrilled. He digs inside his pocket and takes out the razor. He begins drawing guts and lightning bolts.

  “I see that you’re an artist, Mr. Kilpatrick.”

  Mark slowly raises his head. Mr. Limner is standing over him, his glasses two discs of white light. His moustache has chalk dust in it.

  Mark doesn’t know how to react. This is the first time he’s been caught drawing on desks. He just nods his head.

  Mr. Limner moves closer, behind him, to look over his shoulder. “And a very sick little artist at that.”

  Mark gulps down a mouthful of spit. He slides a hand over the little boy in the drawing.

  “Class, you are dismissed.”

  Mark looks around—all of the kids in class are twisting in their seats to look at him, some are sitting up, trying to look at his desk.

  “I said, dismissed!”

  They all stand up, gather their books. Mark moves to do the same, and Mr. Limner’s hand slaps down hard on his shoulder. “Sit down, Mr. Kilpatrick.”

  Alone with his zoology teacher, Mark smiles at the man.

  “There’s nothing funny about your sick drawing, Mr. Kilpatrick. I want you to write on the board, one hundred times, ‘I will not draw on the desks in class.’ Do you understand?”

  Mark nods.

  “And then when you are done, I will give you a piece of sandpaper to erase that ugly little picture of yours. By the time you are done, your parents should be here. They will pay—correction, you will pay—for a new desk.”

  Mark frowns, stares directly into Mr
. Limner’s white eyes.

  “You will learn, Mr. Kilpatrick. I do not appreciate being ignored.” Mr. Limner slaps his shoulder again. “Now go, write what I told you on the board. I’m going out of the room, but don’t think for one second that I am not watching you. I am always watching.”

  Mr. Limner pivots on a heel, and marches out of the classroom, his footsteps echoing against the green concrete walls.

  Instead of standing, Mark reaches inside his pocket, takes out the triangular blade, and quickly completes the drawing on his desk, digging hard into both the wood and his own fingertips.

  When he is finished, he wishes he could take a picture of the drawing. It is one of his best.

  Slowly, he stands and walks up to the blackboard in the front of class. He picks up the chalk, and tries to reach the top of the board. He cannot. He turns, grabs Mr. Limner’s chair, and moves it in front of the blackboard.

  Standing on the chair, he looks out on the empty classroom. He wonders what it would be like to teach an art class.

  He drops the chalk, but instead of picking it up, he takes the metal shard out of his pocket, and begins to write:

  I WILL NOT DRAW ON THE DESKS IN CLASS.

  The screech of metal against the board is much louder, much better than Mr. Limner’s fingernail sounds. It is like music, loud music. He closes his eyes as he writes, swings his head from side to side as he screams in sing-along, a song from long ago: “I see you, I saw you, I see-saw you!”

  Mark finishes the first sentence at the top of the board. Then he steps off the chair, and pushes it away.

  At the bottom of the board he writes with the blade, digging it into the black stone, still singing his song:

  BUT I WILL DRAW ON THE BOARD IN CLASS!