Kill Me Now

by Timmy Reed

  Near the tree, I noticed the curtains were open on the second floor of the show house where the supposed killer had moved in. I watched a minute until the geezer came into view. He was wearing goggles, an apron, and work gloves. He looked sweaty and frustrated, sinister even. He was holding a hacksaw. I put the binoculars down and stepped away from the window. I didn't want him to see me. Probably nothing, I told myself on the way out. Then I paused by the door and went back in. I went back to Kelly's wallet and took another five.

  ~

  Never in life have I been able to suck a lollipop down into nothingness. I always bite it and break it in pieces in my mouth. I've been trying as long as I can remember. I guess I've never had even a little bit of what you'd call patience or discipline. I flush toilets prematurely, midstream while pissing, out of nervousness. And then I have to wait until the tank refills so I can flush the leftover bubbles. It's embarrassing. And when I was a kid I couldn't stand watching my mother talk on the phone. “Five more minutes,” she always said, me tugging on her pant leg and winding myself up in the curlicue phone cord and shit. Then I'd wait a million hours every evening just for my father to get home from his office downtown. And when it rained the streets took forever to dry out so I could skate. Like time was always cheating me somehow.

  It cheated in bigger ways too. Holidays never came on time and they rushed past like airplanes out the sunroof when they did. There was always something like five years between Christmas and my birthday. I could never understand why parties and things had to be separated by time to become special. I guess time has that effect on things.

  Time moves faster now. Sometimes it moves too fast. I can feel myself getting older. Time has always been a weight on my shoulders in one way or another. I can't get away from it. Nothing I can do. Like I'm stuck in it, chained and smothered by time. It's crazy, right? You can't stop thinking about it. You can't escape. And adults always seem so fucking comfortable with the way time is passing. If anybody should be worried about how time is moving for themselves personally—and I'm pretty sure we should ALL be worried—then it's the adults that should worry. I mean, they are that much closer to death. Think about it.

  I think about old Death a lot. Mostly about the death of my parents though. Not my own. I don't spend very much time thinking about my own death, only I always hoped it would happen before my folks had time to kick the bucket—especially my mother. So I don't have to be there or anything. I'd rather die first than watch her go. Most definitely. I know it's selfish, but that's what I hope. I guess I could be a better kid in the meantime. But FUCK TIME, I guess is what I'm saying. I wish I could just forget about it.

  So lately I'm terrified of wasting too much time, instead of being bored and wishing the shit would move faster. But that's only because I'm getting older probably. And it doesn't really matter anyway because the effect is still the same either way. Both ways of looking at it make me feel fucking impatient. Both sides of the coin are dirty. I'll probably never finish an entire lollipop without biting it and breaking it in pieces. I envy people that do.

  ~

  My mother tends to cough in her sleep. She isn't that loud, but sometimes I hear her and it wakes me up. Usually I'm already awake watching TV or pulling my dick or whatever . . . I'm a total insomniac . . . And I get scared, listening to her coughs. I wish she wouldn't smoke so much.

  But I hate myself for bugging my mom about quitting smoking or about cutting back at least, especially because I smoke cigarettes myself and pot too and sometimes I even smoke my mom's cigarettes when she's not looking and I don't have any of my own. But I figure that Mom's way older and has been smoking forever and smoking like more than a pack of reds a day, which are practically the worst for you except the unfiltered shit. See, I figure I'm better off since I'm young and I smoke light cigarettes and I don't smoke anywhere near as compulsively as she does anyway. I'm probably going to quit sometime in the future, too. I'm only a kid. Smoking could just turn out to be a phase or whatever.

  I try not to nag her about her habit. I hate it when she nags me about stuff like wearing shoes outside or waking up for school on time or chewing my food. Nagging is shitty. But I always end up nagging her anyway. I can't help it. I mean, I don't even think nagging works. We should all just leave each other alone and everything would be copacetic, right?

  But then again, I hate the sound of her coughing at night. I tear out my skater cut all the time worrying about what it's going to be like to see her rotting away one day with an evil black cancer inside her chest . . . I seriously imagine this stuff. Like holding her hand next to her deathbed as she's on her way out. Me hugging her tiny shoulders till I can feel the bones rub together. Her telling me how wherever I go she'll always be in my heart. Whatever that means. I picture myself smiling into her faded eyes. Trying to act like we've spent enough time together. Quality time. Time in general. I really do imagine this stuff. I miss her like torture already. I can't help it. It's pretty grim. I know I should be enjoying our time together while we have it. Live life. I know that's the most logical thing. Which is why I get so mad at myself for bugging her about smoking and also for being so nasty all the time when she bugs me about my shit. But my mom can get REALLY ANNOYING is all.

  Last week I was up the street from my dad's, at the Rite Aid on York Road next to Corky's, when something in the medicine aisle caught my eye. Nico-Water, it was called. Now, my father has gotten my mom both the gum and the patch in the past but I don't think she ever really used them, so I don't know why I thought Nico-Water would work. But whatever, I was interested. Nicotine-infused water. It seemed so cool, you know, futuristic. I had to get it for her.

  First I thought about stealing the water. But it came in packages of five that would be kind of hard to stuff down my shorts if you know what I mean. Besides, there was this fake-ass flashlight cop stationed at the entrance of the store. On account of York Road being kind of hood and all. There's always all these wanted posters hanging on a corkboard when you walk into Rite Aid. Which is pretty cool in a way. Like the Wild West.

  Anyway, they wouldn't sell me the stuff because it had nicotine in it. Even though it's just water. You can't smoke it or anything. “But I'm trying to quit,” I told the bitch at the register, whose Day-Glo press-ons were like three inches long. “Cut a kid a break why don't ya?” I gave her this really sincere kind of look, which was real because I meant it. Only I meant it for my mother. Not me. The checkout bitch kind of looked around a second like maybe she was going to sell me the stuff. But then she didn't. Probably because she was scared of being fired and all. I can't blame her for that.

  On the way home I decided I'd have to play Hey Mister if I wanted to get that nicotine H2O. Which was totally gonna suck since it already cost like twenty-eight dollars for five bottles of fucking WATER. Outrageous, right? And it probably wouldn't last my mom more than a day or two anyway. I didn't exactly feel like paying the extra five or ten dollars to have a homeless buy it for me. But if Mom could only try this stuff, I thought. See what it's like not to have the cravings, see how easy it is, then maybe she'd want to quit on her own. I wanted her to quit for herself, you know. Not me. That seemed important at the time.

  So today I rode my bike over and parked it at my dad's house. I walked up Homeland Avenue to York Road. My mother had left a pair of crisp twenties on the table this morning for me and my sisters. Pizza, I guess, and maybe a movie rental. I rent a lot of movies. I tore up the note that was sitting alongside the money so my sisters wouldn't find it and know I'd gypped them out of their share. I let the note fall in little pieces along the road on my way. The little pieces looked like flower petals, drifting into the gutter.

  It took less than fifteen minutes in broad daylight for a haggard-looking black dude with crusty, wrinkled fingers and bright red eyeballs like Christmas lights to shuffle up and ask if he could help me. I was that obvious. There are like three liquor stores
on this one city block and I'm a little white kid. Well, the hobo was pretty fucking confused when I told him what I actually wanted. His eyes kind of rolled around in their sockets. I had to look away.

  I was mortified trying to explain myself. I said the water was for me. I said I'd been smoking for years. I'd tried everything. Nothing worked. The only way to quit was the water. “I need it!” I told him. “BAD!” I'm not sure if the dude believed me, but he was all right about it. He thought I was trying to get high with it somehow, I think. This was all just a formality anyway. I ended up paying him the extra ten dollars and he wished me luck. He warned me I was too young to be smoking in the first place. I think it made him feel good to give somebody advice. I didn't want to shake his hand or slap palms with him. On account of how gross he looked. I offered him a pound instead. We tapped fists and he gave me a knowing smile. Like he wanted me to think I was really hip or something. Like we were both really hip or something. On the level. In the know. It was a ridiculous exchange. Humiliating.

  I'd already decided not to tell my mother and just mix the water with ice and put it next to her plate at dinner. I'll build her confidence, I thought. She'd never even know why she wasn't craving a smoke! She'd think she'd quit already! How devious of me! What a ruse! Once she gets past the crucial first couple days, she'll be able to quit all on her own! I was very proud of myself. I kept thinking about it. Patting myself on the back.

  Of course, I'd have no control over what kind of water she drank tomorrow when she got to work. I realized that. But whatever. I guess I thought that maybe if she realized at the end of the night that she hadn't thought once of the mild, satisfying taste of a cigarette since before dinner, maybe she'd be inspired to turn over a new leaf. I could give her one every night for a work week. I was very optimistic. No more death!!!! No more worries!!!! A new dawn!!!! A better life for everyone!!!!

  At dinner my sisters knew I was up to something weird. I could tell by the way they were watching me. And looking at each other sideways. It was hard not to laugh. Quite a few times I had to use my napkin to hold back the chuckles. I was being sneaky. It felt good. Kelly wanted to know why I'd taken it upon myself to set the table. My mother told the both of them to hush. I was just being a sweetheart and taking care of her because I knew she had a hard day at work. “Moms deserve to relax sometimes too,” I beamed at my sisters. Even though my mother had cooked the spaghetti, meat sauce, and garlic bread and mixed up the salad all on her own without me.

  But the thing is, my mother was mostly just drinking light beer during dinner. I only saw her take three little sips of her water, but she drank at least two cans of beer. I watched her closely. Her glass was still full when the meal was over. That meant I had to clean up after dinner too, so she wouldn't pour out her water, which cost me like more than five dollars a bottle, plus that ten-dollar tip to the crackhead who scored it for me.

  After cleaning up, I positioned the glass next to her in the kitchen while she was making phone calls. She didn't even touch it. She acted like it was a fishbowl or something. She even heated up a cup of coffee left over from this morning. She had another beer. I didn't feel like standing there all night watching a glass of water. I've never had any patience. But I hung around for a while anyway. I missed a rerun of The Simpsons, which I watch every night. The news was on in the background while she talked to her sister—and smoked a cigarette—so I picked up on some of that while pretending to look through the refrigerator for an after-dinner snack. A few people had died in the city today in gunfire. One of them was a little boy on training wheels who had ridden his bike through the crossfire of a drug dispute on the west side. Another child was missing in Baltimore County. There was also a story about some kind of cool pet robots that had become popular in Tokyo. But then they did one about breast cancer that was just way too depressing and I had to get out of there. I went outside the garage beneath the deck in back to fuck around on this little PVC grind rail I have. Then I switched the trucks on my skateboard. But mainly I smoked a bowl. Two bowls. And a couple cigarettes.

  ~

  Today was all good. It was hot out and Robby picked me up in his dad's truck and we floated down the Gunpowder on black rubber inner tubes. I kind of remember doing this with my older cousins when I was little, but I don't think I enjoyed it as much back then. You move along pretty slow most of the time. When I was little I guess all I wanted was to go fast and hit rapids. But drifting merrily along was more than fine with me today, just rolling down the icy falls with your tube spinning lazy circles and a six-pack of Boh floating behind you in a plastic bag. The water keeps your beer kind of cold. You hang your head back and stare up at the green foliage that reaches out over the stream. The light dances. A filter for the sun. It makes you feel like the world is upside down when you're lying that way.

  The water was cold at first, like dunking your nads in a glass of ice water. But we smoked a blunt and after a while I didn't even notice. Besides it was HOT AS SHIT out this afternoon. Humid. That's why we went tubing in the first place. Duh. And the best thing is that even though it cost us ten dollars to rent the tubes, we stole them afterward and then gave them each custom paint jobs with spray paint from Robby's father's garage, so nobody'll recognize them from now on. We can go wherever we want on the river whenever we want. Like tube fucking pirates! ARRRRRRRGGGGHHHH, BITCH, I say to that. BLOW ME DOWN!

  Robby wrote BEASTER BUNNY on the side of his tube of course, and also drew a pot leaf that came out looking like an asterisk. I just wanted to do camouflage on mine so I could blend in with nature, but it was too hard to make the camo look right, especially with the colors we had—lime green and blue and Easter egg yellow. I ended up writing SNIZARD on the side of my tube. I don't know why I did it. It just came to me. I could have written RETARD I guess. But I didn't.

  ~

  I was so psyched on floating down that river yesterday that I tried to convince Robby we should go tubing again today—mostly because I needed his car to get out there, although I wouldn't have minded the company. But he wasn't interested. Anyway he had to be at the animal hospital in Towson, where he works cleaning up dog turds and locking things in cages. So I ended up spending the better part of the afternoon wandering around the neighborhood all by myself like a dummy, pondering the answer to a specific, peculiar question. It felt like some ancient riddle passed down through history by all the great mystics. That is: Do birds fuck?

  I'm serious. I mean, they lay eggs, right? Like fish, or snakes that just writhe around and don't really fuck as far as I'm concerned. Male and female snakes do it kind of like human lesbians, rubbing up against each other and stuff. Seriously. Look it up on the Internet. But can you imagine two bluebirds going at it? I mean, the physics of it just seem way too awkward. Their backward legs, their wings, their shape . . . The whole prospect of bird sex seemed ridiculous to me today. Of course they fuck, you know. But, HOW? I just couldn't wrap my head around that shit. No matter how hard I tried.

  It was beautiful out and the sky was practically see-through. So I ended up bumming around all distracted with my head tilted up toward the treetops and phone poles, thinking all these filthy thoughts about nature, when I rounded a corner in Roland Park Northway and bumped square into the bony-chested madras shirt of an old gray man with a red nose. The murderer from across the street. The one that my sisters are so fond of spying on.

  He must've been watching the ground in the same way that I was watching the sky. He looked up at me real startled. Not so much from the impact, because we were both going real slow, but from seeing me I guess. Like he'd just bumped into a dinosaur on the way to the mailbox or something. He smelled like cologne and egg sandwiches.

  For a split second I thought he was staring at the big-ass purple blotch on my eye, which I guess can be kind of shocking for some people when they first see it. But then when he kept on staring I figured he was just buried down deep in his thoughts the
way old people get sometimes. Anyway, if he was looking at my birthmark he didn't act all polite like a sweetheart the way most people do after they realize I've caught them staring. Not this guy. This old bird just snuffled and looked back down at his shoes before taking out a plain white handkerchief and coughing into it.

  “It's okay, fella,” he said, like he thought I was about to apologize or something. Which I wasn't. Then he winked at me. I think. It might have been a tic. “It's all right, kid. If you're going anywhere important,” he croaked. “You're gonna end up walking on some bodies . . . And mine's as good as any. It's already close enough to the dirt.”

  He carefully dusted off the front of his shirt with the handkerchief, even though his shirt wasn't noticeably dusty or anything. I stood in the sun with my eyes all chinked up and watched the old man hike off at a worm's pace. He was headed in the direction of the front gate. I tried to imagine where he could possibly be walking to and how long it would probably take him to get there at the speed he was traveling. And for the life of me I couldn't help wondering why he didn't just take his hatchback.

  ~

  I often HATE the way it seems like every time I walk into a room I find the television on. I don't know why I hate it, but I do. On the other hand I can't help watching TV most of the time. Like more of the time than not really. Especially if I'm all by myself. If I can't hear anything in the background of my life—music, static, dialogue, commercials—I feel uncomfortable or something. I think I'm hooked. It's complicated. Sometimes I wish the machine had never been invented, but that doesn't mean I stop watching.