Kill Me Now

by Timmy Reed

  What's more, the legend says the skulls are supposed to contain all this important information inside, and the scientists say the silicon they're made out of is basically the same shit they make computer chips from. CRAZY, right? And so all these people are out there looking all over the damn continent for the other eight skulls. The five that have been discovered were each found in different parts of Latin America, not even all that close to one another. But the legend says that the skulls cannot be found until the human race is completely ready and only then will we be able to learn the secrets inside. But all these people are out there looking for them anyway, searching and searching. Figuring I guess that we're ready enough as it is.

  ~

  The truth is, I've never really been all that sexy of a dude. Not sexy like handsome (although probably not that either, on account of my blotchy right eye), but sexy like horny or whatever, I mean. I'm not even all that into porno for instance, even though I've seen plenty of it. Mostly I just watch it with my friends out of curiosity and stuff, sort of the same way I used to look up dirty words in the dictionary during study hall. Just for fun, you know. Just to see. Truthfully, I kind of think people fucking look silly, the things they say and the faces they make and noises and all that. It's weird. I don't even use porno when I jerk myself off. More often than not I just use my imagination and stuff. Think about people I know. Like certain teachers or my friends' older sisters and shit. And really the only reason I do beat it so much is because I keep getting these random goddamn hard-ons all the time. At the weirdest times. In the car with my mother or during a lacrosse game or something. It's terrible. And then after I blow my load it feels like I HATE sex or something. I can't bring myself to even THINK about whoever I was just beating it to, even if it is someone like Ashley Vidal . . . or Venus . . .

  Seriously, no matter what, my crushes just dissolve after masturbating. As soon as that little white gob jumps from the end of my wiener, all I can think of is skateboarding or cartoons or video games or sleep. It's weird. I just feel like the whole thing about sexiness is so overrated. Which is a dumb thing for me to think, I know, especially because I'm a virgin and all. Plus I know in my head that fucking is a natural thing and all animals have to do it to propagate their species, so whatever. But somehow I just can't help thinking it's a pretty stupid activity, which makes me feel a little bit like a freak. Especially since I'm walking around with a big old hard-on tucked up against my belly most of the time.

  I just can't help being fascinated by fucking. Even if it does seem kind of stupid or VAPID, which is a sweet new word I just learned. I read it off the liner notes in this punk rock CD I bought and decided to look it up. It was being used as this guy's last name, the guitarist or whatever, and even though he was using it as a name, I could tell it was a real word. A lot of punk rock guys adopt real words as last names, just because they sound cool and make good aliases or whatever. My real last name is a word already, LOVER, you know, but I never thought it sounded that cool. Anyhow, I looked up the word “vapid” in the dictionary and it sort of means dumb and boring and like, dead, you know. And sometimes I think all that sexy stuff seems kind of like that. Vapid or whatever. But on the other hand I want to get laid as soon as possible if I can. I'd probably do just about anything to make it happen. Really, I mean it, probably anything in the world . . .

  ~

  I was all vegged out in front of the TV in my mother's basement next to Thomas Angel the cat, who has two names on account of my mother allowing my sisters to name him and them not being able to decide on just one. I was surfing past one of those health channels that usually showcase all these nasty close-ups of surgical operations and shit, when I saw a program coming up next that grabbed my attention. The program was called Boy Expires. It was about this thirteen-year-old boy who just like DIED for no reason the doctors could figure out except apparently his time was up. Well that threw me for a goddamn loop all right! What do they mean, expires? Like milk? I didn't understand. Well just as I was getting ready to find out, my mother's doorbell rang and I went to open it and Gary and John were standing there with their mountain bikes resting against their hips, waiting. I guess they had been at Gary's house because he lives not too far away on Club Road in Roland Park. John lives all the way out off of Falls Road past St. Paul's in a subdivision called Pine Ridge Terrace or Pine Terrace Green or something. All the houses are these mammoth cube-shaped things made out of beige-colored bricks with huge perfectly distributed backyards. Everything in the neighborhood looks pretty much the same because it was all built at the same time by the same company. On top of somebody's farm or something. I hate that shit. All those cheesy new houses out there, they make me sick. They're so unoriginal. They bore me. Which is a kind of weird thing for me to say because both of my parents' subdivisions are sort of like that too, except they're townhomes instead of mansions and they're still technically in the city and all.

  Anyway, they wanted me to go out and ride bikes around Homeland. Truthfully, what I really wanted to do was figure out what caused the boy on TV to expire, it seemed important somehow to find out. But instead, I pussied out and went with them anyway. I've never been able to say no to anybody.

  It's not that I don't like hanging out with John or Gary. I do. I've known them both forever. Ever since we used to go to the same preppy-ass fucking grade school and play rec league lax and shit. It's just that I don't really enjoy hanging out with them together anymore, you know what I mean? Just one or the other is fine. But when they're both together I usually feel like they're making fun of me. Like I'll innocently say something, anything, something that would probably go over pretty well if it was just one of them with me. But if it's both of them they'll look at each other and smirk like I'm a dork or an idiot or something, cut me down like some oddball annoyance. Things get all antagonistic with them. It makes me feel bad about myself. Like I ought to reach out and break their teeth or whatever. Which I never do because I'm a total wuss.

  For instance, today when we were riding out of my mother's community, I noticed this old Honda hatchback pull up. Out climbs the old man my sisters have been spying on, the Killer and all. Only this time he wasn't alone. He was with this young black chick. She had a cool little moustache and acid-washed jeans decorated with stars and hearts and shit going all up and down her thighs in glitter that sparkled when the sun hit it just right. They were unloading two-by-fours and a big bag of wood chips from his car. Well, I thought that was pretty weird. That these two very different people were hanging out and working on a project together I mean. Not her jeans or the woodchips especially. Just the whole situation in general. I thought it was interesting.

  The Spring Lakes are these six artificial ponds on Springlake Way in Homeland, which are full of carp and crayfish and kind of pretty too even though they're fake. When we got there, I told Gary and John the story about how my sisters had been spying on the old man and how they thought he was a killer and how I had just seen him kicking it with a young-looking black chick in glittery jeans and all. I guess I took a while telling the story—I always take a long time telling people stories because I never know what details they are going to think are the important ones and sometimes they all seem pretty important to me. But I didn't take that long and all we were doing was crayfishing with a stupid tree branch anyway, so I thought they'd be pretty interested. It's not like either of them were saying anything too remarkable. And I think they would have been pretty interested if they hadn't been together. Or maybe they wouldn't have been interested, but they would've at least pretended to be interested. Instead they were all, “Hey, Retard, so-fucking-what?” and “Who cares about some old douchebag anyway?” Which nearly broke my heart, even though I don't even know the old guy. It just seemed like he deserved some respect, even if he was a killer. Anyway why the fuck did they ride by my house and pick me up if they weren't interested in hearing the kind of things I had to say? To make me feel bad? Fuck
all that. Seriously. Fuck those guys.

  So we went on scooping up these crunchy green crayfish with a stick. A crayfish is just about the dumbest animal on earth. They're simple to catch. They will just climb up a stick and cling to it if you dip it far enough in the water, you don't even need to bait them or anything. Anyway, that's what we were doing when Gary asked me if I had any pot. I lied and said I was completely dry because well, fuck those guys. I didn't feel like sharing.

  We kept on horsing around with the crayfish, like heating them up with a lighter at the foot of this little bronze statue of a nymph standing by the lake. She's wearing an overturned lily as a cap. It looks like she's peeing down her leg . . . Point is, the three of us were just fucking around in general. Daring each other to jump in the water, which wouldn't actually be that bad probably except the Spring Lakes are kind of murky and gross-looking and it's probably illegal to swim in them even though there isn't a sign. Well, while we were fucking around we noticed this crew of black boys in the semi-distance. They were definitely headed up to the lakes, a couple of them on bikes that looked stolen because they were way too small. The rest of them were on foot, moving down the center of the road.

  “Holy shit,” John squeaked, like he'd seen a shark or something. “Let's get out of here . . .”

  Gary agreed with him, looking all serious. “Dude. Nigs. Let's split.”

  Now, that sort of pissed me off to hear them talk like that. Not the word “nig,” that didn't bother me so much, but the two of them being so automatically frightened pissed me off. I mean, they were probably right, these kids weren't going to come up and ask to be our best friends or whatever, but still . . . I know Gary and John well enough to know that they're probably terrified of every black person they meet. After all, there's only a couple of them at their school and there damn sure aren't any of them lying around either of the country clubs those two practically live at come summertime. People that are afraid of everything, especially other people, really piss me off.

  Me, I figured I might even know one or two of the black kids from going to city school in seventh grade. Which might not be that great of a thing considering one of the major reasons I left before the end of the year was because of all the fistfights I was getting in. But still, I hate it when all the rich kids I grew up with act all ignorant and scared of black people and poor people and the city or whatever. It's like they're brainwashed or something. They're such pussies. Fifty bucks says their kids and their kids' kids will be the same way too. Just because they've never had the balls to sit down and talk to an actual honest-to-god BLACK PERSON. I mean, it's totally fucked up.

  I wanted to stay and see what the kids wanted at least, but Gary and John had already started riding off, leaving all these half-dead crayfish squirming and snapping at each other on the little nymph's feet. So I just hopped on my bike and followed them. But I felt like a dipshit for doing it. We spent the next half-hour playing Ding Dong Ditch, which was fun in third grade maybe. It's just lame now. And when we were riding back in the direction of my mom's place Gary asked me if I had any pot—as if he hadn't just asked me earlier. So I lied again and said no. They went home after that.

  ~

  When I was just a little guy, I liked myself pretty good until I realized that nobody else particularly liked me. Then I tried to change so people would like me better. Once that happened, I could like myself again. I thought it worked for a while. People started to like me all right and I thought I could enjoy my own company again. But sometimes I'm not so sure.

  ~

  Thomas Angel brought home a mouse today. He left it on the doorstep at my mother's. It was my job to get rid of it. I didn't complain.

  ~

  One of my father's biggest beefs when we were all living at my old house, bigger than my report card or getting brought home by the fuzz (I'll tell you some more stories later . . . I was on probation all last year . . . I do everything wrong . . .), bigger than anything really, was when skateboards got ridden in the house. Which happened a lot. This was the all-time worst sin I guess and when he heard me even just flipping my board in place on the carpet downstairs, which was supposed to be our “game room” with a pool table and stuff, my dad would just absolutely FREAK. His screams would echo through the walls all around me and I would wince and look over at my buddy like it was the voice of god yelling for us to be quiet. I'd give my dad the finger through the ceiling as I swore not to do it again. But I've never been able to keep a promise.

  Anyway, the hardwood and the moldings and even the roof (which was actually highly skateable in the one or two little areas that weren't made out of slate), they were absolutely sacred to that guy. He was constantly fretting over the condition of the house, the amount of clutter, the lawn. I don't think anything ever got too fucked up anyway. I mean who cares if it looks like somebody lives there, a family for chrissakes. He was always just bugging out in general over all the most unimportant shit. He refused to build me a treehouse because of the way it would look in the neighborhood, even though there was a nice-sized possum nest made out of brambles and garbage in one of our trees by the road.

  He never let me build skate ramps for the same reason. They were ugly. In his opinion, they had to be ugly, despite the fact that my father was an excellent carpenter who made his own bookshelves and a bench for the breakfast nook. Ironically, a backyard mini is probably about the only thing that would've kept me from skating in the house! My dad let us have a backyard lacrosse goal because, well, everyone in this part of town has one, but he hated the idea of a trampoline. Even though my sisters wanted one too. He was worried it would kill a patch in the lawn. It's not like he was scared for our safety on any of these things. I had BB guns and a Buck knife and shit. He used to take me rock climbing and skiing. He dropped me off at the skate park all the time without a helmet. I was ALLOWED to build a rope swing.

  But now I realize the reason he was so anal about the house was because he knew all along that we weren't going to be there forever. He's in real estate for chrissakes. It's easy to take down a fucking rope swing. You just cut it off.

  So what I knew as an ivy-covered paradise full of potential—this place that could be added to and customized on and on forever—my father saw as an investment. Insurance against bad times to come. Now I realize that's why we had that useless fucking exercise room off of the basement—a room that could have housed a ramp or was maybe even going to be my bedroom at one point. It's because potential buyers like to see what that part of the house would look like as a stupid exercise room, because that's what kind of room they would probably have if they lived there. It was a display. A prop. As if there aren't enough unused workout rooms out there, full of gadgets for people who can't figure out how to use their muscles. Like these people can't come up with a physical activity more stimulating than walking up and down on a machine that simulates a fucking staircase . . .

  Workout rooms really make me sick, by the way. I can't think of anything more boring than a room you exercise in. Why don't people just go and DO something once in a while if they want to shed pounds? Explore. Climb a tree. Get in a fistfight. Whatever. What do they need a conveyer belt and a room full of mirrors for? It's so ignorant. Anyway, we used to have a workout room in the basement. Strictly for fucking show.

  It pisses me off that my dad was planning on leaving that house all along, ever since he bought it. Not that I blame him. I mean he did pay for it and all that. But it pisses me off that I could go for so long, thinking all the time—even when they'd get separated and stuff because my mother would always stay at home and my room would never change or anything—that we would live in our house forever, that maybe I would even own the old homestead one day. And then my son after me. How retarded is that? I'm so stupid . . .

  The house really is in a swell location by the way, at the very top of the city on Charles Street, which is like the main vein running through Balti
more. It's the road that separates everything into east and west. I always thought that was cool when I was a kid. East and West.

  But seriously, that place would be sweet to live in one day when I'm some old dude, I imagine. It was built by a man and woman who raised six children, four of them hearing-impaired, and then grew old together and died. Although I'm not sure whether they died in the house or not. Or together, at the same time either. That would be weird if they had. My father told me the old man had a big-ass train set in the basement at the open house, but train sets are stupid. I would have a half pipe and a treehouse and a trampoline and a rocking chair and a four-foot hookah pipe. Maybe even a hound dog and a shotgun—even though I probably couldn't shoot it around here without seeing the inside of the clink. It's illegal to discharge firearms within city limits. But maybe I could hang a great big flag, with my face on it, flying over the roof in the wind. It would be perfect. But it'll never happen. Not now. It's like no one respects anything anymore.

  ~

  While Katie and Kelly were at summer league practice this afternoon, I moseyed into their bedroom with an eye out for extra money. I owed the $$$ to Tobin Detzer, who had sold me some of his mother's Xanax. I found three dollars in change lying around Katie's old dollhouse. I went over to their desk drawers to look for some real, paper money. Eventually I found Kelly's wallet. There was fifty bucks inside. I only took five.

  As I was turning around to leave I noticed the binoculars lying in a mess of magazines decorated with glitter-paint doodles, signatures and flowers and boy's names and stuff. Technically they're my binoculars, even though I never use them. I picked them up off the ground so they wouldn't get broken. Holding them, I got the urge to look through the lenses. I glanced out the window, but there was nothing to see. I watched a squirrel hop across the rooftops and into the big oak tree. For a second I thought he might slip through the branches, they were bending so much under the weight of his leap. But he made it all right. Squirrels never fall. Or I've never seen one at least. That might be the sort of thing that doesn't happen when there are people around to see it . . .