Kill Me Now

by Timmy Reed

  ~

  When I was little, my butt always stank. No kidding. I wasn't really potty trained, not like consistently, until I was about four years old. After that I didn't wipe so good for a long time either. I was always in too much of a hurry. I usually missed that little indent behind my asshole. The one at the base of your tailbone. It caught feces like a spoon. The smell didn't bother me too much at that age. It was sort of comforting to be honest. But then I started noticing it more. Probably because I started school. I didn't want to smell like that around other people. I began to feel self-conscious. I decided to do something about it. That made me wipe extra hard. Too hard. I got rashes. I carried Gold Bond in my book bag. Baby powder. There were always dingleberries. Now, I try to shower after every time I take a dump. This is a hard habit to keep. I end up taking showers at odd times. At people's houses. Sometimes people ask questions. My hair's always wet. I am always dripping.

  ~

  Got my dad to drop me off at the concrete park in Pigtown this morning when he went to work downtown. I was supposed to meet him outside his building for a ride around five this afternoon. Or I had money for a cab if I got antsy and couldn't wait that long. Pigtown is kind of trashy with a lot of boarded-up houses and meth freaks, but also some families and a shitload of renovations I noticed this morning out the window of my dad's worn-out old Beemer. The reason it's called Pigtown is on account of how they used to slaughter all the meat there in the olden days. It's where all the death houses and butcher shops were. The rowhomes aren't so bad really, but they were traditionally occupied by the broke and desperate I guess because of the way dead things tend to reek. They kill meat somewhere else now I guess. Somewhere outside the city—probably Texas or something. So Pigtown is kind of this abandoned little hamlet near the stadiums. Anyway that's where the skate park is and today I went skating.

  Since it was so early, eight thirty when I got there, the park was empty and I had the whole place to myself for a while. Clean off-white waves of smooth concrete. I could go anywhere I wanted. It felt like a dream. Really it did. No one was even there to look at me. Well, a couple of times these little black kids came over and watched me skate through the chain link fence. They kept talking to me, requesting kickflips and shit. It made me nervous. But mostly they just chased each other around the parking lot with sticks and hunks of asphalt. At around eleven thirty a Blazer rolled up and out hopped three dudes about my age. I'd never seen them before. I was pretty beat already and smoking a cigarette on a ledge near the fence. I watched them pull their boards from the trunk. Squinting real hard, I could see the girl in the driver's seat well enough to tell she was hot. Dark hair. Probably like seventeen. Soft purple lips in the shape of a heart. Bangs in the late stages of growing out. Somebody's older sister. I imagined her bent over on top of my Mortal Kombat sheets, ass wriggling like a Jell-O mold. It was a ridiculous fantasy. I hadn't even seen the poor girl's body from the neck down and I was almost hard. My penis is out of control.

  She drove off and I ended up skating with these kids for a while in the mini capsule bowls, carving and stalling on the spine transfer in the middle. At first we didn't say anything really, just nodded and stood around watching each other's moves. After a while things warmed up a bit and I learned that the older sister belonged to the smallest boy, who was about my size and had freckles and a lip ring and arched eyebrows like the Joker. His name was Ryan, I think. I sort of missed the other two dudes' names and I was afraid to ask twice so I just ended up calling them “dude” and “man” for the rest of the day. They were from out in Owings Mills. I listened to them talk shit about Ryan's highly fuckable older sister, but I didn't know if it was cool or not to join in the fun. I'd just met them, af-

  ter all.

  After a while the sun started really heating things up. I seriously thought birds were gonna start to fall from the sky. Everyone was pretty worn out and thirsty. Especially me. More and more people kept showing up at the park, older guys, guys on bikes, a whole bunch of people, so we four decided to clear out and skate over toward the inner harbor. Maybe get some food or something. Everyone agreed it would be a good thing if we had herbage. I had some back at home that I'd gotten from the Beaster Bunny, but I didn't say anything about it, just mentioned I could probably find them something later if they wanted. They asked me for my phone number. I gave them my mom's, but I doubted they'd call.

  We skated until we could see the stadiums and then we skated past the stadiums and into the harbor. We got chased off the Legg Mason banks by this chubby meter maid. The dudes I was with wanted to skate down Baltimore Street. So we did, but we were all too young to go into any of the strip clubs. Instead we just kind of did powerslides on the sidewalk out front and waited for the callers and doormen to yell at us so we could give them the finger. Then we went into this newsstand and looked at butterfly knives and stash cans and the outside of porno tapes without buying anything. Someone said they wanted to skate the Columbus Statue in Little Italy. So we headed over there, even though every skater in Baltimore knows how busted it is. On the way, we stopped at the aquarium to check out the seals, which are the only animals that are stationed outside and free to the public. Ryan threw a nickel into the seal tank like it was a wishing well. He wished the seals would start fucking. The other boys laughed. One of the seals gave us a friendly look before diving after the coin. I laughed too. But I was secretly worried the seal might choke on the nickel. I wished I could reach in and pick it up without anyone seeing. Then one of the dudes got bored and decided the seals were lame I guess, so we moved on to Little Italy.

  We'd hit the statue for like ten minutes until, sure enough, a security guard came by and asked us to leave, which was fine with me because my legs were feeling like rubber and I wasn't landing anything anyway. We rode into Fells Point. The plan was to go look at CD's. We'd skated pretty fucking far already and, like I said, it was hot out. So I took off my T-shirt. I used it to wipe the sweat from my hair. I left it on top of my head. I meant to put the shirt back on before we got to Broadway, but when I looked over my shoulder I noticed the other guys had seen me and done the same thing. Now we were riding down the street shirtless, all four of us, in a line. So here we come, four bare-chested idiots rolling past all these H & S Bakery trucks at full speed with rags draped over our heads like Aunt Jemima. I felt a little embarrassed. Like a big dork. A retard.

  We went into this head shop on Eastern Avenue. We had to put our shirts on first. There's a big talking parrot in the back of the store that alerted the boss lady to our presence. She tossed us out right away. We weren't old enough. On the street outside was a dirty homeless. He was hassling people for change. I noticed his sign was double-sided. One side said: LAID OFF + HEP C = NEED A BLESSING. The other side said: HELP A MAN GET A BEER DAMMIT . . . PLEASE! I didn't feel too bad for him. I figured one side must work when the other didn't. Ryan and the dudes thought he was a riot. One of them gave him a dollar. I wouldn't give two loose shits for that shifty old bum, but I did feel slightly apprehensive when I saw this tiny blonde girl like four or six years old lying all alone on the step of an empty storefront across the street. I wondered what she was up to. She reminded me of a fish in a bowl. She was wearing a sad little cotton dress and a pair of Aqua Socks that gave her clown feet. Her face looked sort of doped up to me. I felt bad seeing her.

  We headed down Broadway to the Sound Garden and hung out at the listening station but didn't buy anything. Then we decided to eat at the market so we rode back up the street. I had a gyro. After eating, we were all out of ideas. Except me. “Let's get some fishheads,” I declared, all happy with myself for being so clever. “And bake them on somebody's dashboard.”

  We hooked up four rockfish heads from the fishman at the market. I thanked him myself. Then we started trolling up and down the sidewalks with an eye out for car windows that were left open a crack because of the heat. The dudes I was with were practically pissing t
heir pants at the prospect of putting a fishhead in somebody's ride. They were really gung-ho about my prank.

  Cracked windows weren't hard to find. But since the drivers were always off somewhere, you had to be patient and wait around if you wanted to see their reaction, which was the whole point I guess. Plus we were too scared to loiter around a car with a bloody fishhead in it. We didn't want to be too suspicious. We probably looked like A-1 pranksters to most regular Joes already. So we dicked around for a while. We went all the way up past the bong store and managed to plant three heads on the way. We planned to look for the owners on the way back down Broadway. I hit the first car—a metallic blue Camry with an interior full of Happy Meal boxes and perfume samples—and the other guys took turns after me. I just kind of hung back and dug the scene mostly from then on. Actually, I thought the whole prank was pretty stupid by this point—I was feeling guilty—but I didn't want to tell the guys that because I was the one who suggested it.

  Anyway, as we were walking back down the far side of the street with an eye out for open windows and for the owners to return to the ones we'd already hit, I saw the little blonde girl again. We passed right next to her. She was sitting up now in her little cave off the sidewalk and she was holding something shiny in her lap that I couldn't quite make out, even squinting. I found myself unconsciously moving a step closer to look. Maybe she was holding brass knuckles? Holy shit. She was holding brass knuckles. I blinked twice. Her little baby hands were in her lap, holding a pair of genuine knuckle-dusters. She was playing with them. Catching the sun against the brass, transfixed by the glare.

  Like I said, I was pretty exhausted from skating. I thought I might be seeing things. All at once I wondered who her parents were and why they'd abandoned her. But more than that I couldn't figure out why anyone would give a baby girl brass knuckles. To defend herself? It seemed pretty ludicrous. What would she do with them? It was almost more likely that she came from another planet or something. Especially the way she seemed so calm and natural sitting there, like she'd just crawled out of a crack in the sidewalk. I watched her in freeze-frame. She didn't notice me. I started to make up all these little, like, stories about her. All at once. Nobody else seemed to notice the girl. Or they didn't acknowledge her if they did. I couldn't understand it. I looked around, but people were just moving along, minding their own business. Loud salsa music was playing outside the Puerto Rican grocery. Someone was selling bootleg DVD's. A construction worker was waiting for change outside a snowball stand . . . I wanted to help this girl. Get her a snowball at least. Then BAM! like that, this big black woman in a tank top with meat hanging off her bones popped out of the vacant storefront and scooped the child up. She took the brass knuckles from the little girl's hands. That's when I realized they were not brass knuckles at all. Just a shiny trinket on a sort of heavy-looking key ring.

  Seeing me standing there like a dunce, the fat woman shot me a dirty look. She tried to shield the girl between her big breasts. I'd freaked her out. She thought I meant the child harm. I looked down at my feet and realized for the first time how close I had gotten to this kid. I could have touched her. I felt like I'd just emerged from a coma. I tried to look around for Ryan and his boys, but I couldn't find them anywhere in the pedestrian traffic. I went to the curb and stood on my skateboard to get a better view. They were gone. I was all alone. I turned back and saw the fat woman running across the street, the little girl's head bobbing up and down over her shoulder. The little girl was watching me. A huge grin split the baby fat on her face. She waved at me with her whole arm. I waved back.

  Then my stomach started to shrink. I saw where they were headed. Straight for the metallic blue Camry. The one I'd put a fishhead inside. It was baking on the front seat with all the perfume samples. I could picture it. Beady-eyed and stinking. I skated off before I could see their reaction. I imagined the little girl's tears and felt bad. I almost told my dad about it on the way home that evening, but I didn't.

  ~

  Sometimes when I say something by accident or whatever and my mother's face crumples up like a paper bag and I know she's about to cry, I feel all low and nasty like I owe all my time as long as we're both still alive to loving her and protecting her and making her happy and comfortable for the rest of her days. Other times I feel like she needs a poke in the eye. And I want to give it to her. Should god hate me for that?

  ~

  News on the march! There's a family of moles living in this mound of dirt behind one of the manicured firs in my mother's development. I first found them while playing Hide and Go Seek Tag with my sisters and all the little neighborhood brats, using the gate and the vine-covered chain link fence around the development as our boundaries and the big oak in the center as base. I was hiding by myself, sitting on my butt in the dirt smoking one of my mom's cigarettes when all the moles began popping out of these baby-sized openings in the earth near my legs. They moved low to the ground, slipping into each little bellybutton in the mound's surface. Without noticing me, I think. They weren't scared of me at least. I could've picked one up and put it in my pocket if I'd wanted to. But for some reason I didn't. I just watched them. It made me feel like a giant sitting there with these all these tiny animals scurrying around my legs. It was nice. Aren't moles supposed to be blind? I couldn't be sure from looking at them, but their eyes were very small if they existed at all. The little guys were actually kind of cute. They looked like worms. Mammals, but worms.

  ~

  Okay, so this spring word got out at like every school in the north Baltimore area about this number you could call if you wanted to get cussed out by this old lady. “The Crazy Lady” is what people called her. Like there was only one in the world. It's not that much different than “Retard” if you think about it. Anyway, I first called her number with David Frimke whose older sister was a sophomore at RPCS and had been calling the number with her friends during free periods. But really everyone was doing it. Nobody knew who discovered the number. It was just everywhere all of a sudden, all at once.

  The voice on the other end of the line sounded like a cartoon to me. A cartoon that smoked too many cigarettes. She reminded me of the evil stepmother in Snow White when she transforms herself into an old woman with a wart on her nose, which is pretty weird because no one ever actually saw the Crazy Lady. She could've been like thirty years old. Or twenty. Or beautiful. She could have been anyone for all I know. There's a lot of people around Baltimore with fucked-up sounding voices, not just her. Besides her gravelly voice, she had a real dirty mouth. But from listening to her you could tell she didn't have Tourette's or anything. She was just plain bonkers.

  “LICK MY PUSSYFARTS YOU CUNTBAG SKUNKFUCKING PERVERT! YOU GOAT! YOU PIG!” That was the kind of shit she'd tell you. And you could cuss her back if you wanted or ask her questions or put her on speakerphone at a birthday party. Or just sit there and pass the phone back and forth with your friends or whatever . . . People just loved this phone number. It was a total hit. I know some people who called like ten times a day. A lot of the time when you called during peak hours, like at lunchtime or right after school, the line would be busy. You'd have to sit there and press redial over and over until you got through. Like a radio contest. People would do conference calls. “I SHIT ON YOUR DEAD FACE! DIE, DIE, DIE, YOU EVIL SHITLOVER! WHORE! SLUT! NIGGER! YOU EAT DOGGY TURDS! YOU DRINK CUM!” She loved to talk about death. It was gnarly. I told the kids I was going to school with over in Hamilton about her. They thought it was gnarly. They started calling her too.

  But I kinda felt bad for her in all of this springtime insanity. The poor woman obviously lived all by herself. Her phone was ringing off the hook at all hours of the day. Couldn't her neighbors hear it? Did nobody know what was happening? Sometimes it made me uncomfortable talking to her. She scared me. Like a witch. And what if she was somebody's grandmother? I felt bad. But I kept calling all the time I guess because everybody else around
me was doing it. Anyway it was pretty fucking funny sometimes. My little sisters thought she was hilarious. They knew about her before I did, in fact.

  I even called her by myself a few times, nicely, hoping I could maybe reason with her. It was corny as hell. I admit it. (Admit it? To a fucking journal? Is this really lame? Am I lame?) But I called her anyway. And she cussed me out. What's your name, I'd ask her. Or, do you have any relatives I could call that might want to help you? Or even just, do you want to be my friend? You know, talk to her. Shit like that. But she just swore at me every time. “I KILLED YOUR MOTHER EVERY DAY FOR A YEAR, ASSHOLE! AND SHE FUCKING LOVED IT! SHE SQUIRMED!!!”

  The Crazy Lady was too far gone to be helped, I guess. Or she didn't trust me. Eventually—after like two and a half months almost—her phone was disconnected. When you called you'd just get some robot voice telling you no service. I remember hoping that maybe her son had come to visit her and saw what was happening to his ol' mom and the conditions she was living under and whisked her away to some place in the country where he could visit her often and they could feed her good drugs and make her feel happy and comfortable for the rest of her days. I hoped that, but I couldn't help thinking that maybe she had passed away all by herself in her wasted apartment. Some superintendent probably discovered her corpse and had the telephone line disconnected. I couldn't help worrying that she had died and spent the last two and a half months of her life answering the telephone and cussing into the speaker. And that no one would ever even know about it.

  ~

  My uncle Rick told me the cicadas are coming back this summer. He seemed excited about it. I told him I wasn't even born yet the last time they came. “You ain't seventeen yet?” he asked, even though he obviously must know I'm not seventeen. I look twelve. I told him my age. “Whew,” he said. “Fourteen. That is young. You're gonna go out one of these nights, get loose, and wake up my age. And the cicadas will be coming back again. It happens to the best of us . . . Boy, Miles. Time sure does fly.”