by Strand, Jeff
I wanted so badly to do that.
Instead, I dropped the knife into the sink and drove myself to the emergency room. I got eight stitches in my hand and a lecture from my mom about knife safety.
I can't kill Danny. I won't ever be able to. I know it, and he knows it.
He never stops looking at me.
I haven't worn my seat belt in six months. I don't think I really want to get in an accident, but I can't bring myself to fasten it.
Danny never stops looking at me, and I swear to God that every once in a while, he almost smiles.
ROUGH DRAFT
He stares at the house, wishing he were already inside. Already upstairs. Already in the room with her, watching her sleep, perhaps brushing his fingers softly across her cheek.
[Note to self: Is present tense the right choice? I don't want this to sound pretentious. I like that it adds an immediacy, but I'm usually kind of turned off when other authors do the same thing. Maybe I'll just see what my critique group says.]
But he knows that he must wait. At least until darkness. At least until he knows that she is asleep. If he visits her during her slumber, she will not scream.
["Slumber." Does anybody say that except for "slumber party?" Now I wonder if I'm going beyond pretentious into being campy. That's no good. And maybe "she will not scream" is too much, too soon. It shows that she'd consider him a threatening presence in her bedroom. I should let the reader think that he's her husband or boyfriend or something, and save the stalker revelation for later. Something else for the critique group I guess.]
He waits until nightfall, always staring at her window. He tries not to fidget. Tries not to grow impatient. There is nothing else he needs to do. Nowhere else he needs to be.
[Nice!]
The light in her bedroom window goes out, and he smiles.
["Grins," maybe? "Grins" seems more sinister. But do I want him to seem sinister? He should still be sympathetic at this point, I think. I'll stick with "smiles."]
Now is the time. Suddenly his palms are sweating. His heart is racing. His throat is dry. He has never felt such anxiety . . . or excitement.
[Too many clichés. Those are all accurate descriptions, but it's all stuff people have read a million times. Need to come up with some original similes to make it more interesting.]
He picks the lock to the front door and walks inside.
[This is supposed to be a really short piece and I don't want to spend a lot of time on exposition and description, but I wonder if I'm going to lose my readers by skipping over the lock-picking so quickly. Will people just accept it? Do I need to mention the hours of practice and the tools involved? Do I need to explain that her house was completely isolated, so that even though it took about ten minutes to pick the lock, there was no danger of neighbors seeing what was going on? Does anybody care?]
[These notes are longer than the story! What's up with that?]
He looks around. Though he has never been inside, the surroundings feel comfortable. Familiar. He stands there, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark, even though he feels that he could navigate to her room in the blackness.
[Awful. "Navigate?" Come on. "Blackness" also sounds wrong, but I used "dark" in the same sentence so I don't want to say "darkness."
This is crap. Nobody is going to like it. I'm going to get kicked out of my critique group after the second meeting, and they're all going to have a great big laugh. Why am I even trying?]
Finally, he walks up the stairs, moving slowly so they won't creak and awaken her. The knife feels good in his hand.
[This present tense really isn't working for me. I'm going to have to start from scratch before I let anybody read it.]
He walks into her room. She looks so beautiful as she sleeps. Like an angel. Like a goddess.
[Okay, this is a crucial moment, and I'm ruining it with lame descriptions like "angel" and "goddess." Anybody could write it like that. I wasn't staring at her thinking "Oh, she looks just like a precious angel" or anything corny like that. What was I thinking? There weren't really any words going through my mind, just this feeling, and I can't figure out how to write about the goddamn thing.
Should he tingle? I didn't really tingle, but this isn't supposed to be strictly autobiographical. Still . . . tingling is stupid. I don't want people to laugh at this. How did she look? Can I just say "beautiful?" That seems weak. Gorgeous? Iridescent (check spelling)? Sensuous? Damn it, it just can't be that hard to describe her! People make this kind of stuff up all the time, and yet I can't figure out how to say what I felt! This is insane! What's wrong with me?
The critique group can give suggestions, I guess, but why the hell do I have to let a bunch of strangers with no publication credits help me with this?
"Breathtaking?" "Sumptuous?"
Maybe "angel" isn't so bad. Anything else and it might feel like I'm trying too hard.]
He moves over to the bed, feeling as if he is gliding rather than walking. She lies on her back, completely at peace. Her eyes do not open as he slowly brings the blade toward her pale neck. He knows this is right. They will be joined forever. It will be a wonderful thing.
[Actually, that's not so bad.]
Gently, like the caress of a lover, he draws the sharp blade across her throat. The blood flows quickly, warm and red. Her eyes open now, and she gazes at him. It is not love in her wide eyes. It is fear. Delicious fear. She gasps but does not struggle. It would be of no use.
Her blood stains the white satin sheets, a spreading pool of her essence. And he watches, relishing every instant, almost wanting to kiss her lips as the life flows from her body.
But he does not. He watches. And laughs.
He has done what he longed to do for as long as he can remember. And it is an experience he will never forget.
[Freewriting exercise:
They said to just type and type and not think about what you're writing, which I can do, nobody will ever read this, I may have to stop and fix typos as I go along but nobody will know. Heh look at me writing about cheating on the freewriting exercise, that kind of defeats the whole purpose, but you're not supposed to stop typing so if the only thing I can think about to type is how I'm not supposed to stop typing, that's how it's got to be, right?
This story is bullshit, and I don't know why. Why can't I make it work? I have to get these words out on paper, and I need them to get published, they need to have permanence. I don't need hundreds of thousands of readers but I need the permanence. I need it need it need it need it.
He laughs. That's how it should have ended. I should not have had to start stabbing her in the chest like a fucking maniac just to keep her from getting away. Jesus how many times did I stab her? Ten? Fifteen? I can't even remember. I wanted to remember every detail, and I don't even know how many times I stabbed her.
Joined with her. That's all I wanted. Not bent over in the corner, puking my guts out, sobbing. Standing there with vomit and snot all over my goddamn face and crying like I was three years old. I didn't even care if somebody heard me and called the police. She wasn't even dead yet — at least ten stabs to the chest and I hadn't killed her, and if there's been a phone by the bed the bitch probably would have been able to dial 911 before I did anything.
I didn't even take her with me. I just left her there. I was supposed to take her! I was supposed to keep her! I just left a bloody corpse on the bed. Didn't even take the sheets. Didn't even keep the knife — I just threw it against the wall, ran out of the house, didn't even wipe the puke off my chin until I got home.
If the cops had my fingerprints on record, or even my goddamn shoe size, I'd be so screwed. Probably still am.
But that wasn't supposed to be the story. I wasn't supposed to sleep alone. I wasn't supposed to wake up crying. My stomach wasn't supposed to hurt this much.
I need a better story. Please, I just need a better story.
Enough freewriting for now.]
He carried her lifeless
body out of the house and through the forest, pleasantly surprised by how light she was. He didn't even need to stop and rest.
She would stay with him forever.
And she was only the first of many.
He laughed, placed her on his bed, and closed the bedroom door.
FANGBOY AND THE TROLL
(A FANGBOY STORY)
(AND ALSO A TROLL STORY)
Many people believe that the best parts of the tale of Fangboy have already been told. It's a natural assumption when one considers the high quality and wide variety of adventures that have already been shared with the general populace. But there is at least one story that was omitted from The Many Adventures of Nathan Pepper, Who Was Known As Fangboy Because He Was Born With A Mouth Full Of Razor Sharp Teeth (published — under great protest from the transcriber — as Fangboy).
As we all know, real life sometimes has uneven pacing. Things will happen, and though they are perfectly interesting little events, they do not contribute to the primary through-line of our lives. These are not the times we reflect upon as we lay dying in a hospital bed, or inside of a great white shark if we are lucky. We edit them out of our narratives. Only one human being has ever been able to literally go back and edit his own life, a power that he used to rule the world in a most cruel manner indeed, until he became so arrogant with his power that he accidentally erased his own conception, and was thus removed from all but the most omniscient of narratives. Nathan Pepper did not have any sort of magical abilities; he just had the teeth. But the story of how he met the troll was not known by many, until now.
It happened when he was six years old. He spent much of that year wandering around a deep forest, all alone. And then he met a troll.
Nathan did not immediately realize that it was a troll. Though he had very specific mental pictures of certain monsters, such as Bigfoot, he didn't know exactly what a troll was supposed to look like, so instead of thinking "Uh-oh, a troll is standing before me," he thought "Uh-oh, a greenish lumpy greasy large-nosed smelly beast is standing before me." It was carrying a large wooden club, so perhaps it was a caveman.
The creature snarled at him. Nathan would have expected a caveman to grunt.
"Who are you?" asked the creature in a low, rumbling voice.
"I'm Nathan, sir," said Nathan, since he believed that even the most foul-smelling of forest inhabitants deserved respect.
The troll had planned to devour Nathan in forty-two bites (one bite for each of his fingers and toes, three for each arm and leg, four for his head, and six for his torso) but he hadn't expected the young boy to be polite. It confused him. He was used to dividing living things into only two categories: Eat Now or Eat Later.
"That's a silly name," said the troll. He was being somewhat hypocritical, since his name was John, which is a very silly name for a troll.
"Well, some people call me Fangboy," Nathan admitted.
"Fangboy? Is that because you kill trolls and wear their fangs around your neck?"
"No, sir." Nathan opened his mouth wide, revealing his sharp teeth.
"Goodness!" cried out the troll. He liked to call himself a fanged creature, but the truth was that his teeth weren't very sharp at all, just crooked and brown.
"What sort of animal are you?" Nathan asked.
Normally the troll would have tried to devour anybody who didn't immediately recognize him as a troll, but Nathan intrigued him. Perhaps they could hunt together.
"Why, I'm a troll, of course. What did you think I was, a platypus?"
"No," said Nathan. "Actually, 'platypus' would have been at least two hundred and seventy-eight guesses down the line, and I would have been embarrassed when I got to that guess, because there's so little of you that has any resemblance to any sort of a platypus. I suppose if I saw your kidneys . . ."
"You will see nothing of the sort," said the troll. He tried to sound indignant, but deep inside he knew that he'd had every intention of seeing Nathan's kidneys before he ate them, so there was only so much offense he could take. "I was being sarcastic."
"Oh," said Nathan. "None of the other creatures I've encountered in this forest speak at all, much less in a sarcastic tone."
"How many of them have you eaten?" asked the troll.
"None."
"What do you mean, none? None as in zero? Or were you asking me to clarify if I was asking how many nuns you'd eaten?" The troll didn't really think Fangboy had been asking about nuns, but it made his head spin — not literally, though he could do so if he wished — to think that the boy hadn't eaten any living creatures in the forest.
"Yes, I was asking you to clarify if you were asking how many nuns I'd eaten," said Nathan.
"Are you just saying that to avoid an awkward social situation?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, stop that. How many nuns have you eaten?"
"None."
"Good. That way lies hellfire. But have you seen your teeth? They're works of art! What a waste to have such amazing choppers and not to sink them into any succulent flesh! What do you eat with them? Celery?"
"A lot of tree bark," Nathan admitted.
"Tree bark? Why, that's . . . well, tree bark isn't bad; if you soak it in water it's sort of like jerky . . . but that's still a tremendous example of not living up to your potential. Do you really mean to say that you haven't eaten so much as a squirrel?"
"Yes, sir," said Nathan, opening his mouth wide to show the troll that there was no squirrel fur between his teeth.
"That can't be allowed to continue," said the troll. "Here, eat . . . uh, a bird."
The troll looked around for a bird, but saw none. This enraged him, because when he didn't want birds around, the damn things fluttered all around his head.
"Or . . . that deer!"
"I think that's a pond."
"No, no, next to the pond."
"I think that's a log."
"No, no, standing on the log."
"I think that's a moose."
"That's not a moose, you fool, that's a . . . oh, it's another log. Doesn't look like a deer or a moose, actually. Here, eat this raccoon."
The troll spent the next two hours trying to catch the raccoon, while Nathan stood there, politely waiting. The troll grew angrier and angrier each time his massive hands failed to grasp the raccoon's neck, and soon he was spitting out words that Nathan had never heard before, but that he assumed were not synonymous with "joy" and "peace to all."
"Wretched taunting cur!" shouted the troll. "Forget the raccoon, then! Here, eat this panda!"
"I don't think pandas live in these woods," said Nathan.
"You're right, they don't. But I am being driven nearly mad with the knowledge that your teeth are not being put to proper use! It vexes me beyond all comprehension! It is like seeing a man with a six-foot tongue who licks nary a thing! Oh, my brain throbs just thinking about it. Can you hear it throbbing? Can you?"
"No, sir."
The troll clawed at his scalp, then brightened. "Here," he said, holding something out toward Nathan. "Eat this."
"But that's your arm."
"Then just bite it."
"That idea strikes me as —"
"Do it!"
And so Nathan bit down on the troll's arm. Cognitively, the troll had known that this would cause him discomfort, but it wasn't until Nathan's fangs pierced his skin that the full extent of the lack of wisdom of this idea occurred to him.
The troll let out a shriek that could be heard throughout the forest.
"Aaah!!! My arm! My tooth-marked arm! Release it! Release it!"
Nathan opened his mouth and the troll pulled away.
"I feel, all things considered, that it is best if we do not continue to interact," said the troll, summoning up as much dignity as he could, which was not much. "I wish you the best of luck in all of your future endeavors."
"Thank you," said Nathan.
And so the troll left, eventually finding peace and comfort under a bridge,
and though a great many people saw him again, none of those people were Nathan.
Which brings us to the conclusion of this side adventure of Nathan "Fangboy" Pepper. As stated previously, it was not an adventure of great importance in his overall saga, but it did have a reference to eating a panda, and thus cannot be entirely discounted.
DEAD IN THE WATER
Because I'm a Tampa guy, I wasn't all that concerned about the zombie infestation of St. Pete. I mean, sure, I had rations, weapons, and a full tank of gas like everybody else, and I kept tabs on the situation whenever I went online, so it's not like I ignored it. But there's about ten miles of bridge between the two cities, and our side of the Howard Frankland Bridge was protected by soldiers with machine guns, so there was no way in hell those rotting corpses could make it over here.
Even now, when I'm forced to acknowledge the irony, that attitude seems reasonable. I don't care how many people are on the news going "We told you so! We told you so!" It was a ten-mile bridge over a freaking bay that was protected by soldiers with machine guns. Zombies move, like, a mile an hour. How'd they overwhelm us? It's crazy.
I heard about it because the neighbor kid — Kyle, who was an obnoxious little brat but really didn't deserve to have so many fingers bitten off two days later — ran up and down the street screaming that the zombies were through the barricade. I turned on the television and, yep, they were through. A couple of weeks ago I'd vowed "No zombies are gonna kick me out of my home!" but I quickly retracted that vow and raced out to my car.
The tires had been slashed. Dammit! Sure, I'd slashed a few tires in my life, but I'd never be so tactless as to do it during the zombie apocalypse!
I knew who'd sabotaged my escape. It was my jerk of a neighbor Greg, with whom I'd been engaged in an (admittedly petty) feud over . . . actually, I don't even want to tell you because it makes Greg and I both look bad. Let's just say that I understood why he did it, but that didn't make me any less terrified about my chances of survival.
A spare tire would've been nice. I'd had one, a few months ago. Should've replaced it.