Table of Contents
Strays Book I of The Glaring Chronicles by Matt Krause
Part I: Sarah/Tom
1980: Awful Game
1986: Let’s Play
Flight
Creepy Jack
Rage/Salvation
Enter Tom
The Camp
Fight
Part II: Kyle/Molly
1980: Hero
1986: Paper Route
The Girl
His Father’s Proposal
Summer of Bad Things
The Other Girl
Part III: Vagabonds
The BTB
Boy In the Closet/Cat In the Bag
Blacktop and Bottles
Safe Place
Strawberry
BTB Unchained
Kyle vs. Jack
Company of Friends
Kyle vs. “Dad”
In Dreams
Part IV: Monsters
Good Ol’ Rhino
Convergence
Calling Home
Kyle vs. The BTB
Arrival
The Ogre and the Rhino
Kyle, Sarah, and Everyone They Know
Face-Off
Ogre’s End
The Glaring Rises
Jackal
Strays
Book I of The Glaring Chronicles
by Matt Krause
“I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through.”
- Jules Verne
Part I:
Sarah/Tom
1980: Awful Game
It may not seem like a big deal to you, but the first part of that month when Sarah Smallhouse’s stepfather got free Cinemax on their cable box was like a vacation in Paris … or at least how Sarah imagined Paris might be. She had only seen Paris in that movie The Aristocats, which had been rereleased the previous Christmas, and it was one of those rare times when her mother had left Big Buddy to stew in his easy chair while she took Sarah and Little Bud to the theater. Granted, the Paris of The Aristocats was a cartoon, but that made it all the more magical in Sarah’s nine-year-old eyes. It was just the first of many places she wanted to see and knew she never would, but when it came to dreams of travel, the movies were the next best thing, a window to that other world, and for one glorious month in the spring of 1980, Cinemax opened that window into Sarah’s home.
Every day after school, Sarah would wait for Little Bud to get out of his kindergarten class, walk him home as fast as she could, fix him a cheese sandwich, and set him up in the room they shared with his favorite toys. Once her brother (half-brother, Mom reminded her, but she never saw it that way) was cared for, she settled cross-legged on the floor in the center of their living room, turned the TV to Cinemax, and gazed into the window of worlds. Most of the movies she had never heard of, but she watched them all the same—weird titles like Skatetown U.S.A. and The Fish Who Saved Pittsburgh. If Mom scored the lunch-and-early-dinner shift at Rusty’s Diner, Sarah could watch until Mom got home at 7:00 p.m., but most of the time Mom got saddled with the late-night trucker’s shift. On these nights, Sarah could watch until almost 9:00 p.m. when Big Buddy came home from second shift.
The 9:00 p.m. nights were the best of that glorious month, five nearly unbroken hours of movies with only brief intermissions to fix Little Bud another sandwich at 6:00 p.m. and tuck him into bed at 7:30. Sarah would even watch the previews of other movies that came after the movie she just saw, and she’d dream of a day when she could look through this window any time she wanted, at anything she wanted, without fear of interruption.
Yes, these nights were almost the best. Almost.
Then Big Buddy would come home.
Sarah had learned early on what happened if there was no food for Big Buddy when he walked through that back door that connected the kitchen to the garage. As such, she made a point to start browning the ground beef at 8:30 in the evening and have the pan of Hamburger Helper simmering by 9:00. If she was daring, she might have Big Buddy’s plate already on the table, a steaming mound of the processed casserole piled atop it, with a fresh can of Coors Light waiting next to it. But even this did not safeguard her from Big Buddy’s wrath. Like a gourmet chef at a Michelin star restaurant, she had to time the presentation of the meal just right; otherwise, the goulash might be a couple degrees too cold or the beer a few degrees too warm, and a sound thrashing would commence.
That’s what Sarah called it—a thrashing. Not a beating or an ass-kicking but a thrashing, like what Tom Sawyer got from the teacher for protecting Becky Thatcher (Sarah had watched this in a movie on one of those splendid afternoons). Sometimes it was a swift kick to Sarah’s backside with one of Big Buddy’s work boots, catching her so hard she would tumble against the wall. Other times it was a backhanded slap that found the side of Sarah’s head, snapping it sideways fast enough to make her ears whoosh. Sometimes it was a combination of the two. Whatever it was, it all amounted to the same thing—a thrashing meant only for Sarah, just as the thrashing in the movie had been meant for Becky Thatcher … only Sarah had no noble Tom Sawyer to take the blows in her place.
After dinner, Big Buddy would retire in his Barcalounger, putting up his feet without even bothering to take off his boots. He would have his second of many beers, and once it was empty he would shout for Sarah to grab him another, howling through the house like a tortured animal.
“Saraaaahhhhh!”
Sarah would run to the fridge and deliver the beer as fast as she could, and even this took precision. If she was too slow, Big Buddy’s fat, muddied work boot would swing off the elevated footrest of the Barcalounger, landing a cruel punch in Sarah’s ribcage. But if she ran to deliver the can of beer more quickly, she would risk shaking it in her hands, and if the slightest bit of foam spurted up when Big Buddy opened it, again the boot would swing. Sometimes Big Buddy called for another beer well after Sarah went to bed, forcing her to crawl out of bed, ever careful not to awaken Little Bud who slept beside her, and scamper as fast as she could to the kitchen. On these occasions, she was never fast enough, and the swinging boot ensued, and at last she chose to sleep curled up on the floor in front of the fridge, ever awaiting Big Buddy’s cry so she could deliver his next beer in a timely manner.
All of this was a good system, and after a time or two she had mastered it well, keeping the slaps and kicks to a minimum. Of course these days were made more bearable by those few beautiful hours after school and before the arrival of Big Buddy, where she could sit undisturbed in front of the television, gazing into the window called the movies. For that one almost picturesque month of free Cinemax, it was almost good.
Almost.
And then Big Buddy asked her to play.
In hindsight, Sarah knew it was her own fault. That afternoon, she had seen a commercial on Cinemax for a movie to be broadcast late that evening, a movie called Grease. In the commercial, there was music playing, and there were kids in a high school dancing in the cafeteria and on the bleachers at the stadium. There was a pretty blonde girl named Sandy who looked like the kind of girl Sarah would like to be best friends with, and it all seemed so magical, exactly what Sarah hoped high school would someday be. How she longed to see this movie … and yet according to the commercial, Grease would not be broadcast until 11:00 p.m. that evening. Big Buddy would be home by then, snoring in his Barcolounger in front of the TV after polishing off his fifth or sixth beer.
Still, there was this movie, a chance for Sarah to gaze into the window once again to another world, a world full of happy kids that perhaps Sarah would one day meet, kids dancing and laughing and living. She not only wanted to see the movie, she had to see it, to escape into it, to know that there was something better
out there, something waiting beyond the world of Big Buddy and swinging work boots.
And so it was that at 11:00 p.m. that night Sarah waited just outside the living room, listening to the sounds—the windy hum of the space heater (for Big Buddy was always cold even on warm days), the radio-static chatter of the talking monkeys on ESPN … and finally the gargled growl of Big Buddy’s snore. He was asleep, and if his habits held true he would sleep for hours, at least until Mom came home and urged him off to bed. With great care, Sarah slipped into the living room, sliding her stockinged feet gently on the dirty wood floor so as to not make a sound. When she got to the TV, she crouched on all fours, and after glancing back over her shoulder at the Barcolounger to make sure the cyclops still slept, she switched the channel on the box over to channel 17, the sacred home of Cinemax, the combination code to open that window into the next universe.
Mere seconds into Grease the music began, informing Sarah that “grease is the word,” and she allowed herself to be wrenched from her life of flying boots into a world of rhythm and melody.
* * * *
“What’re you doing, little girl?”
She was no more than a foot from the TV screen, the volume just barely loud enough for her to hear, when the cyclops awoke. Sarah jumped like a rabbit but did not bolt or turn. Better to simply wait for the flying boot that no doubt would come. A moment passed and then another. On the TV screen, Sandy, played by pretty Olivia Newton-John, was crooning next to a wishing well, frustrated by the harsh turn of events.
“I'm talking to you, little girl.” It was not the voice of the cyclops Sarah knew. Big Buddy sounded almost gentle, the way he had back when he first came into Mom’s life. He had asked Sarah back then to call him Dad, and although Sarah obliged out of obedience, in her heart she had another name, one she had conceived after watching a video in school about people who protested slaughtering animals for their pelts by wearing coats made of something called “faux fur.” Sarah had liked that word “faux,” and deep within her heart, she had always thought of Big Buddy as Faux-Dad.
“I’m asking you what you’re doing?”
Sarah took a breath and turned slowly to face the worst monster in her closet. “It’s a movie,” she said. “It’s got music.”
“Turn it up,” Big Buddy Faux-Dad said.
Sarah reached up to the volume knob and carefully lifted the volume of the TV. In the movie, Sandy was singing of her hopeless devotion to Danny Zuko, staring into the reflection of the wishing well and seeing the smiling face of Danny, so tender and assured as played by the painfully handsome John Travolta.
… nowhere to hide … since you pushed my love aside …
“Come over here, little girl,” Big Buddy said. “I want to show you something.”
Sarah turned on her knees and slowly crept toward Big Buddy’s Barcolounger, watching his eyes the way she might watch one of the rats that scampered into their kitchen.
… out of my head … hopelessly devoted …
“You know you’re supposed to be in bed,” Big Buddy said, his voice still gentle. “Don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Sarah said.
“Yes who?”
“Yes, Dad.”
Big Buddy smiled. “We wouldn’t want Mom to come home and find us like this, would we? Why, she’d have both of our heads and mount them on that wall right over there.”
“Yes,” said Sarah, and then corrected: “Yes, Dad.”
“I won’t tell her,” said Big Buddy. “I promise. I’ll even let you watch the rest of this movie. What do you think about that?”
Sarah looked back at the TV. Sandy gazing in the reflection, Danny still grinning back at her, and then she ripples the water and his comforting face disappears.
… head is saying … “Fool, forget him” …
“Just one thing,” said Big Buddy. “You have to do me a little favor?”
“You want me to get you a beer?”
“No,” said the cyclops. “Nothing like that. This is different, something fun. Something I think you’ll like. A little game.”
“What is it?”
“First things first,” said Big Buddy. “First you have to promise you won’t tell Mom. This is a secret game between you and me. And if you tell Mom, she’ll be mad at both of us but especially you. Can you make that promise?”
… heart is saying … “don’t let go” …
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Yes, Dad.”
… “hold on to the end” …
“Good,” said Big Buddy. “Let’s play.”
1986: Let’s Play
“Let’s play,” the shaggy boy in the backwards cap said.
He wore a long-sleeve flannel unbuttoned over an untucked gray t-shirt, and he held the hem of the t-shirt with the thumb and forefinger of each hand, flapping it in front of the fly of his acid-washed jeans like a matador taunting a bull.
Somewhere deep within Sarah’s chest, a sound beyond a shriek, ugly and prehistoric as it sloughed off the last chains of sanity, was tearing its way into her throat. Sarah swallowed hard, sucking breath between her teeth as if she had just bit into a Red Savina pepper. She forced herself to meet the boy’s eyes.
He wasn’t a boy, not really, at least not in terms of biology. Sarah guessed him to be maybe 19 or 20, face free of blemish and whiskers, pale and bare like her little brother’s hairless crown when he was first born. The half-circle opening of the back of his hat was pulled high on his forehead, and the wavy tuft of beetle-black hair poured out in an oily curl. On the sweatband was printed the word SEAHAWKS, and Sarah imagined that if he turned his hat back around the right way, the forest-green hawk’s head inspired by Northwestern tribal art would grace the cap’s front panels. Probably a student at UW, Sarah figured, on his way to Tacoma to slum it on a Saturday, probably looking to score some cheap weed. But my God, he could pass for any of a number of vagrants along the strip, what with that colossal mass of shadowy hair that discharged out from under his cap, down around his face, framing his round-lensed black sunglasses (at night, no less, like a bad ‘80s cliché) before at last obscuring the mass of tattoos he had imprinted on his neck.
Sarah tried not to look at the neck tattoos—there were so many twists and knots and thorny vines in the artwork that they looked like a skin disease—but she could make out a couple of letters at the throat, what looked like an S and part of what was either an R or a P.
“C’mon, girlie,” the bushy boy said, flicking his top lip back from perfect teeth and snapping the t-shirt again in a sloppy toro-toro. “Let’s play.”
Sarah peered around the C-store. It was late, and there was no Tom Sawyer there to assume the role of hero. Most of the truckers who waved in and out like a stream of fat army ants had retired to the cabs of their rigs, which now sat idling out on the west parking lot. The interior of the store was empty save Sarah and bushy-boy and the red-faced clerk who was too busy listening to a late-night rebroadcast of a Seattle Mariners game that had been played earlier that evening. He would not be of much help. Sarah’s visual surveillance of the area lasted mere seconds, and she met bushy-boy’s eyes again.
“Going to the bathroom,” she said. “Excuse me. Please.”
The boy held the eye-lock, his right caterpillar brow twitching like a fly was buzzing at it, and then sniffed the air hard, rocking back and catching himself on the candy shelf.
“What a coinky-dink,” he said. “I’m going to the bathroom too. We could play in there, baby. Let’s play.”
“What I've got to do in there,” Sarah said, “you don’t want to play with it.”
The boy’s smile softened by about the thickness of a dime, and this time when he sniffed it turned into a snorting laugh. “Good one, girlie. I like that jazz you got goin’.” His grin looked like it wanted to slide off his face. “How ‘bout you and I have us a party?”
Sarah played her last card, even though it only seemed to work about half the time with drunk college boys.
“You don’t want any of this. Fifteen will get you twenty.”
“Wha--?” cried the boy. “No way you’re only fifteen, no way.”
“Way,” Sarah said. “Lay one finger on me and I’ll scream.”
The boy considered this and shook his slippery locks out of his face. He spread his hands in a gesture of mock submission. “You got me,” he said, stepping aside and offering a sweeping bow as he indicated a clear path to the bathrooms. “Your majesty,” he said.
Sarah bit down on the back of her tongue to keep that rabid scream at bay in her throat, then offered a thin, closed-lip smile and strode past the man-child. She could smell the stench of cheap rum as she passed, not quite the familiar bouquet of the Cortez Silver that Big Buddy liked when he had a little extra cash, but something in the ballpark.
Bushy-boy looked up at her as she passed and winked. “I like your style.” He finished the sweeping bow and pulled himself back up. “So I want to show you something.”
“Don’t want to see it.”
“It ain’t that,” said the boy. “Just my tats. Want to see my tats?”
He reached up to the locks of hair about his neck and parted them, revealing the printed body art that was intaglioed across his throat. Sarah saw the letters—S and P—and there was an apostrophe, and then T’S and PL and then ET’S and PLA and then at last it was all revealed, inscribed across the neck and throat of the drunk boy with the fatty-black hair, his special billboard to the world:
LET’S PLAY
Sarah belched, and something that tasted like rotted milk came up in her throat, as if the scream took on solid form. She staggered back, turning away from the boy. When her eyes were averted, she forced the vomit back down. It burned in her chest and it burned in her belly, for she had been without food for coming up on two days.
The bathrooms were past a thin door next to the beer cooler, along a narrow hallway leading back to the stockroom. She knew them well enough. She had spent the better part of three nights in the fourth stall down, sleeping crouched on the toilet with knees tucked up into a fetal position until the night clerk came in to mop the floors around 3:00 a.m. The regular clerk, the one who was out there now listening to the ballgame, knew she slept there. So far he hadn’t said anything, seeming too interested in listening to baseball, even though 1986 had not been kind to the Mariners thus far. Sarah thought that maybe he didn’t care, or maybe he was the last good person on the Sea-Tac Strip, but maybe, as she often suspected, he was just waiting for the opportunity to get something in return, to offer an invite with a slurry “let’s play.”
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