Kill Me Now

by Timmy Reed

  Somebody jumps in and asks a new question. A minute later Tracy gets up and leaves the circle. The game dissolves pretty quickly after that. And I'm feeling very drunk.

  I smoke a cigarette by myself, waiting for someone to come talk to me. Nobody comes. I walk out front and look at the numbers on the mailbox. Then I go inside to look for the house phone. I call Russian Stan and give him the address. It costs me thirty-five dollars to get home. Whatever. I wanted to leave. And the cops were probably on their way anyhow . . . Stan drops me off at my mother's. I slip inside and turn on the television. I can't sleep and I'm out of pills, so I drink Nyquil until it finally puts me out.

  When I wake up this morning I have a bad hangover and no marijuana. I panic. I slip on a pair of pajama pants and a T-shirt. I walk outside and the sun burns me on the eyeballs. I think I'm going to faint, but I don't. There are a bunch of little neighborhood kids lying on top of the high-voltage boxes, like lizards in the sun. One of them looks up at me and sticks his tongue out. They ask where my sisters are and I shrug, keep walking.

  When Mister Reese opens the door, he doesn't seem surprised to see me. He invites me inside. On the way upstairs, he tells me I smell like a brewery. “I feel like an outhouse,” I tell him. He chuckles. He offers me a cup of tea. Apparently he was already making a pot when I rang. I tell him thank you and accept.

  We drink our tea in virtual silence. I'm not sure how to ask him if he wants to get me high. I'm hoping he'll bring it up so I won't have to. I pray a silent prayer of thanks when he breaks out his pipe. It's a pretty nice one too—some kind of fancy dark wood, with a Sherlock Holmes–style shape to it. He doesn't pass it though. Instead he offers to let me use one of his backup pipes, a little corncob thingy. I've never smoked like that before, not sharing or passing the pipe, but both of us puffing away at the same time. It's kind of nice though. Civilized or something. It makes me feel old, but in a good way.

  Somehow we end up talking about AA. I think he brings it up. I tell him how I used to go to Alateen after I got in trouble. He just sort of nods, looks down at his tea cup. He used to go to AA, he says. His second wife made him go. “It can get a little cornball at times,” he tells me. “But it works for a lot of people.” He's hitting the pipe when he says it.

  “You hear some pretty crazy stories,” I tell him, just trying to fill a gap in the conversation. “That's for sure.”

  “Ain't that the truth,” he coughs. “All kind of desperate stories. Those rooms can be a regular soap opera,” he says. “Days of Our Livers . . .”

  I end up laughing and coughing until snot comes out my nose. And Mister Reese laughs too, just watching me . . . I think we are friends. Although I will continue to tax him and pinch from his bag when it comes to our business transactions.

  ~

  Dropped loot off at Robby's today. I asked if he wanted to go tubing. He wasn't into it. He told me to call him later tonight and by then he would have re-upped on his stash. I went to my mom's and practiced old school–style streetplants on the sidewalk out front. A few minutes went by and Donald Diamond walked past me on the sidewalk. I think I saw him roll his eyes. I sneered at him, gave him a rat-face. He gave me the finger. I picked up my board and made like I was going to charge him down with it. But he didn't run away or even flinch. Shit. I threw my head back and pretended to laugh. I fake-laughed like that for what felt like forever. Time froze. I sort of hoped he would hit me or something, anything to break up the tension. He just stood there watching me like I was the light rail and he caught me veering off my tracks. I must've looked crazy. I stopped laughing and hopped on my board. As I was skating away I looked over my shoulder and watched him waddling into his house, probably confused. The entire exchange went poorly for ol' Retard.

  Later on I stopped by Mister Reese's, hoping to get high. I talked up Robby's new stash, thinking it might get him excited to smoke. He just sort of shrugged. I guess he still has a bunch left over from Tuesday. He invited me in though. We went upstairs. It's amazing how much room this guy has all to himself. His house is exactly like ours, only we have four people and a cat. I wondered what he does when he's all alone. I would just go wild, I bet. Scream, jump on the couches, the tables, have food fights with the mirror . . . We made small talk and then Mister Reese put on a record. He has records everywhere. His cabinets are full of them. They sit against the walls in huge stacks. Some of them are hanging like pictures. This one was full of old-timey sounding hillbilly songs. I sat and listened a few minutes, hoping he'd break out the pipes. He didn't. Instead he closed his eyes. I couldn't tell if he was sleeping or not. I learned forward to see if he was snoring. I couldn't tell. I waited a minute. I cleared my throat. I told him I liked the music. I waited for him to respond. He didn't. I listened closely to this pretty old song about a man who was bound to hang. It was sad and spooky at the same time. It made me think of the music I'd been hearing around the neighborhood all summer. I decided to ask him about it. A smile spread across his face. He jumped up and winked at me. Then he scrambled upstairs. It was no joke, how spry he could be on those creaky old bones. Like a gray squirrel bolting up a telephone pole. He came back down with a dark wooden banjo strapped across his chest. He played along with the record, grinning from ear to ear.

  I clapped my hands together. “So that was you all this time?” Stupid question.

  “Yessiree,” he nodded. “I've been hoping someone in the neighborhood would take notice. Even if it was just to complain. This place could use a little music,” he said.

  He opened the screen door and we went out onto the deck. I sat on the railing and watched him play. He looked happy. And COOL! Really, he did. He was totally jamming. I bobbed my head and pretended to dance. It made him smile.

  After a while I thought of something. “What were you doing with that rat?” I asked. “The one you showed me out on the street? The one in the paper bag?”

  “That was for Tickles,” he told me. “That was Tickles's rat.”

  “Oh. Okay . . . Who's Tickles?”

  “Tickles is a big fat snake,” he said, still playing. “He lives upstairs. He eats one or two of those white rats every month.”

  “Really? I never met any, um, old . . .” I corrected myself. “Er . . . Older dudes that like snakes . . . Enough to own one, I mean.”

  “I don't really like him.” He plucked a warbling little birdsong with his right hand. “I'm taking care of him for a friend. She can't keep him in her apartment . . . Actually I like rats better than snakes by a damn sight. It's kind of a moral dilemma.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Can I see him?”

  “I don't see why not. Come upstairs and I'll introduce you.”

  We went upstairs. The stairway was full of posters for magic acts. Against the back wall of what would be my bedroom if this was my mom's house, there was a huge aquarium made of sanded-down plywood and glass. There was a jungle of rocks and ferns inside and two big red heat lamps on top. I had to get up close to separate Tickles from his surroundings. He was HUGE. Five or six feet long. And FAT TOO! Like one long muscle covered in scales.

  That must be what the twins saw Mister Reese carrying into his house, I realized. Tickles the snake. I wondered if he was lonely living in that tank. Mister Reese said I could pet him if I wanted, but I didn't. I just felt bad for him is all. And I wondered what he might look like with a set of tiny legs.

  ~

  I was six years old the first time I learned what fucking is. We were at a family party. Someone's baptism or first communion or some shit. My mother had me dressed up in a little bow tie. She was showing me off to the adults. Looking back on it, she was probably drunk. She kept dragging me along behind her. My father told me to put my hands in my pockets so I wouldn't bite my nails or pick my nose in front of anyone important. I kept having to take them out to shake hands. I got bored of that scene pretty quickly. I slunk off toward the kids'
quarters downstairs, where all my cousins were hanging out with their friends. I was the youngest at the party except my sisters who were practically babies, or at least that's how I saw them. I felt more aligned with the big kids myself. I wanted to belong.

  The basement was dark like black velvet, except for the flicker and glow of the TV. Everyone was hunkered down together like kittens, all along the circular sofa and stretched out across the floor on cushions. At the bottom of the steps, I started to chirp my little “Hello!” But the whole room shushed me. So I just plopped down on the carpet and sat myself Indian-style, right up front by the screen.

  Hulking across my cousins' television was a monstrous radioactive lizard-beast, a space alien with giant teeth. He lurched past a locker room shower and slammed a pretty yellow-haired lady up against a wall of metal gym lockers. His eyes were pitch black and hollow like an insect's, like deep tunnels leading nowhere. The poor lady screamed bloody murder as the monster thrust himself between her legs from behind. She was squirming and moaning and crying between deep exhausted breaths. The monster flicked his huge tongue at the camera. It was purple. I thought he was going to suck out her brain.

  “What is he doing to her!?” I wanted to know.

  “He's FUCKING her!” One of my cousin's friends shouted. They all told him to shush. But I had already heard the F-word before, although I didn't have a very firm grasp on its meaning. Not really. I just knew it was something real bad. All the cuss words rolled up into a nasty black ball, was about what I imagined. The monster ripped a claw down the blonde chick's back. She squealed as her skin peeled off in ribbons. I turned to my cousin Annie for an explanation.

  “The aliens are trying to get that woman pregnant,” she told me. “So she has a half-alien monster baby. That's how it works. Then they can use it to take over the planet . . . Um, maybe you shouldn't be watching this,” she suggested, leaning forward to peek in my eyes. I rolled away from her and sat in the corner. After a while I got bored and went upstairs to look for my mom, but the damage had already been done. The next week at school, I was telling everybody about what I'd seen that lizard do.

  Word spread to the teachers pretty quickly. It always did. Wild rumors were whipping around my pre-first classroom. Even the first graders were interested. All about spaceships and alien abductions and humongoid reptile-men raping pretty blonde teenagers in the shower. In other words, all about how babies were made. Parents were called. A conference was set up. The fifth grade science teacher had to come in and give us an impromptu lesson in rudimentary anatomy. A lot of mothers didn't want their sons hanging around with me after that. They told my parents so. My parents felt bad for me. I told them it didn't bother me. I still do.

  ~

  Secret: Sometimes I'm tempted to leave my journal on a bench or someplace where strangers might find it and read what's inside and learn about me . . . But I'm also afraid my handwriting might be too messy and they'll throw the whole thing out without reading. Then I'll have wasted my time. And that scares me worse than almost anything. Wasting time . . . I know. It's sad.

  ~

  Mister Reese used to be a magician, among other things. While we were smoking in his living room, I asked him about all the clowns and magicians hung on the walls and he told me he used to perform at parties and stuff and even went on tour with a carnival. I always dug magicians so I asked him to bust out some tricks. “I'll show you a trick,” he told me. “Close your eyes.”

  I closed my eyes, but by accident I peeked.

  “A little peeking is all right for this one,” he said. He turned his hands over to show me they were empty. “But it demonstrates a lack of trust. That's all right too. Never trust a magician.”

  “Do the trick already.”

  “Close your eyes,” he said. “Now try your damnedest not to picture an elephant.”

  “Hey!” My eyes were still pinched tight. “Fuck you. I just did picture an elephant.”

  “I know. You can't do it. That's the trick.”

  I opened my eyes. “That's lazy magic, dude. Not cool.”

  “The power of suggestion,” he smiled, obviously pleased with himself. “Is strong magic.”

  “Whatever. Do something else.”

  He reached across the coffee table. He pulled a fluffy green nugget from behind my earlobe, then held it out in front of my face.

  “Can I have it?” I asked, feeling hopeful.

  He tossed the bud at my lap. I caught it.

  “Now make Tickles disappear,” I told him.

  “I wish I could,” he chuckled. “Make him disappear forever.”

  ~

  This afternoon I caught the MTA downtown to go skating. The inside of the bus smelled like cat piss. The tints were peeling off the windows and the back of my seat was covered in stab wounds. Foam stuffing was coming out the slashes and holes in stale yellow crumbs that looked like boogers. Everyone was sweating. There were too many people onboard for this kind of weather. The woman in front of me was having a nervous breakdown because her hair-weave fell out. She was holding it in her hands like a dead ferret, blubbering. People were laughing at her.

  At a stop near North Avenue a man got on the bus with a chicken box and sat across from me. “Is that a skateboard?” he asked, pointing. I just nodded. It took him less than five seconds to get his box open and smear hot sauce all over his face. Chicken skin hanging from his moustache. Then he started to go on and on about terrorism.

  I HATE IT when people complain about the terrorists. It's all anybody talks about anymore. They love to gossip about death. Terror just sits in the back of their minds like a demon, a vulture picking at their thoughts. They have to say something or they'll scream. And you can't turn on the television without hearing it either. The terror alert has reached blood orange! Demon red! Fucking purple, for chrissakes! Planes are going to pop out of the sky like fireworks! Decapitation! Chemical warfare! Nuclear jihad! Nobody's safe! We're all being watched! DC is gonna blow and knock over our poor city like a set of dominoes! Or radiation will catch the breeze like a child's kite and give the whole town cancer! Jesus, give it a rest already . . . It's so boring . . . Even if we are all about to die, we don't have to sit around talking about it, do we? Well this slob on the bus must've thought he could talk Death to death, the way he was running his mouth. Shit, he probably could've. Someone needs to give this guy his own talk show. The Doom Hour with Donny . . . And I had no choice but to sit there and listen to him. I was too much of a pussy to switch seats.

  For one thing, I've heard it all before. Everyone on TV is an expert. The apocalypse is coming. The Last Days. Just look at the

  signs . . . Hurricanes, droughts, Ebola, Israel, cloning, the HIV, nuclear warheads, general terror . . . this guy even tried to bring the cicadas into his argument. Poor things . . .

  “But they come every seventeen years, don't they?” I pointed out. He wasn't listening. Civilization was about to freak out and die. We were all goners. And this guy had to vent his frustrations about it. His eyes were bugging out of his face. He looked scary. I didn't want to get on his bad side. I made sure he knew I agreed with him. “It's like, I try to sleep,” I told him. “But I keep thinking about World War III.” Which is kind of true anyhow.

  “That's good,” he said. I didn't see what was so good about it. But I kept my mouth shut.

  I hopped off at Fayette Street. I was sick of listening to him. “Be careful on that skateboard,” he called after me. “Those things are dangerous.” Sure thing, buddy. Then, out the window as the bus was driving away, “And watch out for THE BOMB!” he yells. “Coming soon, man! ON . . . ITS . . . WAY!”

  I ended up skating at the Holocaust Memorial. There are some decent stepped ledges there that are usually waxed up. The statue is in the middle: a giant bronze torch full of charred skeletons, screaming. It's pretty gnarly. A good place for photos. Eventually I got c
hased off by the fuzz. Fucking sk8 Nazis . . . So I rolled over to Water Street for a cheeseburger. On the way I passed an arabber's horsecart dragging around a bunch of rotting vegetables. He was a black dude with braids and he called out his produce in rhyme.

  The horse pulling his cart looked totally exhausted. Spent. You could tell it wanted to go home. I stepped off the sidewalk to pet it on the nose and the horse snorted at me with its big-ass nostrils. I flinched. I thought it was going to bite my fingers off. The arabber chuckled when he saw this and worked me into his rhyme: “Apples, oranges, corn, tomatoes . . . Little boy scared to pet my horse on the nose . . . Apples, oranges, corn, tomatoes . . . Come get 'em quick before everything goes . . .”

  I've got to admit, for a few seconds at least, I felt like a celebrity.

  ~

  When I was younger, the walls of my bedroom used to be covered in beer and malt liquor promos, full of pretty blonde chicks playing volleyball or riding motorcycles in their bikinis. I'd get all these posters and cardboard cutouts from the guys who owned the liquor store on York Road where my mom went for her beer and lottery tickets. The guys there made me show them my report card each month and they'd give me something for each B that I got. Like a little reward for doing okay. So my walls were covered with skin. And that's how I liked it. At least for a while.

  I say “for a while” because, even though the beer girls were WAY hot, the ads themselves were pretty corny and even kind of embarrassing. So as I got a little bit older, I stopped collecting new posters. I kept the old ones though. Mostly because I couldn't figure out what else to put on my walls. Right now, the posters are spread out between both houses. There are even some on the floor of the garage at the old place. From moving around so much, they've gotten all cracked and wrinkly, peeling and full of little holes.

  I may decide to throw everything out and start high school fresh with clean walls. But I can't make up my mind. I can never make up my mind.

  ~

  I woke up this morning with the powerful urge to play Cowboys and Indians or something childish like that, but instead I smoked a pipe and went over to visit old Mister Reese. We made tuna fish sandwiches in his kitchen and took them down to Robert E. Lee Park for a picnic. It was perfect outside, clear and warm but not too hot. From time to time a misty rain fell through the sunshine like diamonds and evaporated against our skin. We stood by Lake Roland and watched the water spill over the dam. I kept trying to skip stones off the water but they all broke the surface like plop! and sank right to the bottom.