by Aaron Dries
Light from the kitchen spilled into the room.
Jack could now see the numerous wounds he had inflicted upon the father. A thrill wracked his body. His cock stiffened. Jack pulled his arm from Wes’s grip and shot a finger into an open gash in Wes’s cheek. It slid sideways under the skin. When he yanked it from his face, the fabric of Wes’s skin ripped open like an envelope.
The kitchen was filled with green storm light. The mother stood near the oven with her back to him. Every cupboard was open. Michael had gone to Taronga Zoo in Sydney once, and the kitchen smelled like the monkey house he had visited there. The door of the refrigerator was open wide—broken jam containers and carrots spotted the floor in front of it. These specks of orange were the only brightness in the room.
Reggie turned, a smile on her face. In her hands she held the chicken her husband had killed and plucked that morning. It was slimy in her grasp. When she spoke, her words were drawn out like a record run at half speed. “Birds been ooooutt too long. Salmonellla in theee blood.”
Michael backed against the wall. Across the room was the closed door leading to the backyard.
Go, run, he told himself. Now!
Fifteen
Wes attempted to grab Jack’s hair but it was too closely cropped to hold on to. Instead, he latched on to his shirt, tearing it at the collar.
Do it. It’s not just that you have to do it, you want to do it, said the voice in his head. His voice. Sweet and low and comforting. You have to end this because you were put on this earth to end it all, Jack-o.
The old man was pinned underneath him once again. With a tightly clenched fist he smashed the face before him and heard the nose shatter.
Jed was on his side at the foot of the steps, bleeding to death. His world was growing dark. He wondered how much longer he had to live. He had assumed it would be almost instantaneous. Foolish.
He couldn’t move but he could still see. He watched the passenger lean in close to his father’s face as though he were going to kiss him.
Jack lifted himself upright and spat the lips he had bitten off the father’s face into the air.
Fourteen
Michael wrapped his hands around the handle and pulled the door inwards. The mother’s body pressed against him, her heat on his skin. Michael grabbed her doughy face and pushed her away with what was left of his strength. She flailed and an image crackled through his head: priests on late-night Evangelical commercials throwing the blessed to church floors. He dove outside. Where there should have been ground there was a low step, little more than loose-packed bricks. One toppled under his heel. He hit the ground and felt instant pain shoot through his chest. He rolled onto his back and saw lightning.
Then he heard the sound of jangling chains and panting, the snuffling of an animal getting closer. Michael arched his head and took in the upside-down countryside. Between himself and the trees, which formed a fence at the back of the yard, there was a clothesline. Saturated sheets hung over its wires, flapping like wet skins.
In front of that was a heaving blur; it ran straight at his face.
He was twelve again, in his school uniform, knees shaking. His face was tattooed by the criss-cross shadows of Mr. Maclachley’s junkyard fence. On the other side he saw the mechanic’s dog rushing at him, kicking dirt up into the air. The dog’s maw the size of a dinner plate, its breath hot against his cheeks through the heaving wire as it tried to climb and attack and tear apart little boys who were too inquisitive.
Michael didn’t realize what was running at him until it was too late. The Rottweiler sunk its teeth into his shoulder. Above the growling he could hear his own gasps, interrupted by a ripping sound. Oh God, let that have been my shirt, he thought, frantic. But he knew better. The long teeth had snapped into his flesh—he could smell the blood already. Bitter foam splashed into his mouth. He saw two eyes buried in the black fur. The dog pulled and dragged him. It was bound to the clothesline by a thick chain, and there was a trench in the lawn from where the Rottweiler had run back and forth. Michael punched at the dog, felt the hard bone under its slick muzzle. He could smell saliva and grass.
Then came the pain in his shoulder—it was incomparable, the worst in a day of continuous tortures. Shock had blunted it for a while, but not long enough.
Seventy-five pounds of dog bore down on him. He lashed out again, yelling.
It took three more punches for the dog to howl and release its jaws. The moment the teeth pulled out of his flesh blood started to gush.
He slipped in the newly churned mud, linked to the dog by strands of flesh and shirt. As he crawled away, every movement proved an agony. I can’t do this, he thought, pushing on. He watched the dog shake its head, square its hindquarters. It ran again.
The dog’s lips pulled back to reveal black gums. Blood dripped from its tongue. Overhead lightning flashed again, haloing the dog.
Michael’s eyes closed and he saw the junkyard fence. It had saved him so many times in that no man’s land between school and home.
The chain pulled taut, yanking the dog hard against its collar. It slipped sideways with a bark. Michael watched it howl, relief coming from some small, undamaged part of him. The dog continued its endless arc at the end of the chain.
Michael touched his shoulder, terrified at the things sticking up out of his skin. Again, realization snapped back at him and he understood it was his own muscle and tendons. Everything burned and his hearing flared out into dangerous static again.
He looked up. The yard was bigger than he first thought. Electricity landed in the valley somewhere, shaking the ground. He dragged himself to his feet and swayed, body waltzing with the trees in the wind. He knew he didn’t have the time to open his mouth and drink but he did it anyway. The drops ran down his throat, igniting a small flare of life within. Jesus, that tastes good. More, I need more. He licked his lips and began to shuffle away from the house.
Daylight had faded; sun swallowed by storm.
From somewhere behind there came the sound of crashing glass and a woman’s scream.
Michael turned, looked through the veils of rain to the back door. It slammed open. The mother fell onto the top step; another brick shifted and fell under her fingers. She hung over the threshold like a half-consumed mouse in the jaws of a snake, her lower half lost in the dark of the doorway. She scrambled, hands outstretched. Her teeth were stained red.
“Help!”
Her scream was cut short as someone pulled her backward into the house by the ankles. As she disappeared, Michael felt a part of him dragging away with her. He dropped to his knees.
Leaves blew against his face. Water pooled in the puncture wounds on his shoulder. His mind told him it was time to give up. Black dots started to paint the house and grass.
He saw the shadow standing in the doorway.
The world began to blur. I’ve come so far, I’m the last of them all and now it’s my turn. What did I do to deserve this? I wish. I wish. I wish. He didn’t know what to wish for any more.
The shadow stepped into the light. It had something in its hands.
The rain whispered lullabies to Michael as he kneeled in the grass. Just put your head down and it will all be over. Sleep. It was a sweet idea.
Don’t faint. Don’t. Not. Now.
Michael collapsed. As the world spun on its axis, lightning flashed, illuminating the doorway of the house. In the flicker light he saw the face of a man, smiling. He held a pair of scissors in his hands.
Thirteen
Michael opened his eyes. The clouds were only a fraction darker, rain still fell and had pooled in his ear. He heard nothing, just felt pressure.
How long have I been out? It felt good to be lying down. His bones hurt, joints throbbed. Michael wondered if the ceiling of his bedroom was leaking. His face was wet.
Things started to come into focus and he remembered that he wasn’t in his bedroom. Michael saw the house and then the door.
Jack stood in the doo
rway. Only it wasn’t Jack. It looked like him, had the same muscular arms, his jutting cheekbones. But it was not him. The man he saw was a gore-covered shell with a pair of long-bladed sewing scissors in its right hand.
Michael pushed himself up off the ground, life flowing back into his body. He felt like he had been sleeping for months.
Sluggish, he lifted his head, the world spun on its hinge until it was the right way up and water drained from his ear. The man in front of the house continued to stare, head lowered, looking out from under his heavy brow, mouth ajar. The experiences of the day had taught Michael that Jack was no living creature, not any more.
If he’s dead, then why is he moving? Michael wondered.
The Beast took a step. And then another. Closer.
Towards me?
“…oh God, no.”
Jack walked in hulking strides. The scissors slit open beads of rain as he swung them through the air.
Michael watched him, heart beginning to race. Jack was evidence of the effect; once the symptom and now the cause.
It hurt to move but he did it anyway. He had no choice. Michael turned to run, his direction as blurred as his vision.
His day had begun with a frantic dash from bed that had severed his old life from the new. It now continued with running.
He headed for the trees. In their gnarled bulks there were laughing faces, like those he had seen in Thailand when they saw his jiggling man-breasts, his stretch marks. The water splashing over his face smelled of chlorine, of the pool. He remembered his schoolmates and how they had stared. His running slowed. It was his fat dragging him down again. His torn shirt stuck to his skin and exposed the shape of his bulging stomach. The fat clogged up his throat. The trees continued to laugh as he disappeared into the branches. Slimy leaves slapped at his face.
Twelve: Jack
Jack was the smallest kid in his class. He hated being short, with his narrow shoulders when the others’ were so broad. Some of the boys even had hair growing on their upper lips.
Though the runt of the pack, he was popular but never the ringleader he always wanted to be. He became resigned to their jokes about his size and hated himself for letting them get away with it.
He accepted that he wasn’t extraordinary, or noticeable. In class he raised his hand even if he didn’t know the answer just so his teacher, whom he loved and dreamed about would look in his direction. But she never did. He had no great aspirations and came from average blue-collar stock. Jack was destined to be forgotten and he knew it.
One recess he slipped into the boy’s restroom. In the farthest stall he sat on the toilet seat and opened his backpack, dug through notebooks and lunch wrappers and fished out a pen. Nervous, he scribbled words against the back of the door. The felt tip against the paint squeaked like sneakers on the gymnasium floor. He sat back and looked at his handiwork, silently proud. He put the pen in his mouth and chewed on the tip.
ur mother sucks coks in hell
It was a line from a movie he had never seen and knew only by reputation. The Exorcist. He couldn’t wait until he was old enough to see it. He left the toilet stall just as a prefect was ringing the yard bell, signaling their return to class.
Later, when they were dismissed for the day, instead of going to the shelter under the school veranda where students’ bikes were kept, he returned to the restroom to admire his mark upon the world. Inside there was a photocopied note from the assistant principle above the rusted urinal. Jack stepped close to it, read it slowly, and with a curious, heavy heart:
Students caught destroying school property (incl. graffiti of any kind) will be suspended.
He stepped away from the wall. The room smelled worse than it had a moment before. Above him the neon light flickered. He went to the far stall and pushed open the door. Where there should have been his childish, messy scrawl there was nothing but a swirled, gray blur.
Jack lost his virginity five years later to a woman named Rena. She was two years his senior with curves in all the right places. When she broke up with him, he did nothing. Just stared at his hands and accepted that he had once again been erased.
The anger came later.
He saw her in the James Bridge Pub parking lot, alone and waiting for a taxi. Stupid girl’s just asking for trouble, he thought. It had never occurred to him before that he might be the trouble. He realized he had the potential to be heard and to dictate to others as others had dictated to him. The urge rushed over him too quickly to think of risks and repercussions. He pulled the back of his shirt over his head and hooked it under his nose, now upturned into a piggish snout. The material was thin enough that even in the dark he could still see through.
He ran fast. Punched her in the back of the neck. The cigarette she had been smoking flew through the air in twisting, red sparks. She landed hard on her knees, skirt lifting up in the back to expose panties with a cherry blossom print. Jack never looked back. Later that night in the quiet of his room he masturbated, guilty and afraid but aroused.
Rumor spread through town that he was the one who had committed the crime. Unlike Rome, rumors were built in a day, and sometimes outlived the people they involved. Jack could still captivate a crowd with his charm, but they never forgot his unpunished crime. He had an indelible black mark against him now. James Bridge had the unique ability of pushing out its unwanted folk.
His anger. Hot. And burning.
He found ways of venting. He sometimes screamed into his pillow, or stabbed his mattress with a knife. One night, a casual fuck found him darting around the living room, ripping at the furniture, tearing the curtains. She yelled at him, called him psycho. He kicked her out and held himself back from wrapping his fingers around her neck and squeezing her throat so tight she turned blue. It terrified him that he liked the thought so much. He never saw her again and that was okay—she was just a cunt and after all, there were plenty of cunts in the ocean.
Jack had filled out, sculpted his muscles. He liked looking at himself in the mirror, flexing his chest so it looked like the men in the sports magazines, in the pornos he watched. He wished his dick were bigger, just like those models. He really liked the idea of punishing a cunt with it, sliding it in so far it cut them open. Deep down, women liked to be hurt. He was sure of that.
Nothing hotter than watching a woman screaming through a smile, right, Jack-o? the voice would ask.
The voice got him out of trouble more than it got him into it. He came to respect and love it. He never questioned its presence. It was his closest friend.
And now it was gone.
“Talk to me,” Jack asked as he ran, choking on water and excitement.
There was no answer.
“Where are you?”
There were only gray swirls of silence. Panic filled him. He felt alone for the first time since cutting his cousin’s fingers with the scissors, the day the voice had entered his life.
“Talk to me now, goddammit!”
Something had taken the voice away. Someone. He knew there had to be blame. Blame made his world go ‘round, kept him sane. If there was nobody nearby to hate, there was no reason to be angry. Without anger there was no reason to exist.
Everyone was dead except for the one person he hated more than the rest.
Jack watched him run like a limp-wristed girl. Even through the sleet he could see the flies swarming around him, could hear their buzzing over the dog’s incessant bark. Jack knew why the swarm flocked to the kid: he was dying. It made perfect sense. The kid was riddled with the gay plague that was slowly wiping them off the planet. How could he not have realized it before? Jack made the decision to help the disease.
The scissors in his hands were the faggot’s failing organs. Every cut he made would be another Kaposi’s sarcoma legion. In many ways Jack respected, even admired the plague. It was powerful and had no mercy; it was almost enough to make him believe in God.
Eleven
The ground beneath Michael’s feet was
uneven. Rocks jutted up through the earth for the purpose of tripping him over. He ran farther and farther into the trees. The sky was corpse gray.
His vision was blinkered as though he were looking at the passing scrub through a telescope. Branches tugged at his arms, twigs raked his skin. Jack followed behind him.
Michael pushed himself harder than he ever had before. Every yard he put between him and The Beast was a yard closer to safety. He heard the monster crashing through branches. Michael ran blind, praying he would come to a road, or find some half-buried weapon in the ground with which to defend himself.
Lightning flashed; in the strobe he saw nothing but more and more trees.
Ten
As Jack ran he remembered killing the father.
The ease with which the lips had torn off. The way he had screamed when he saw bits of himself stuck to Jack’s face. Victory was euphoric.
Jack was surprised by how long it took to kill him. The human body was programmed to fight; a self-defeating trait, considering that it was destined to die. He enjoyed helping the old man fulfill his destiny.
The father had rolled around on the floor, grabbing at where his lips should have been. Jack laughed; it was just so damn funny! He felt full of power. Free.
There was a ceramic lamp in the shape of two swans kissing on a table near the television. He picked it up, sneered at its tackiness and yanked the cord from the wall. Jack slammed it down on Wes’s face, shards of the bulb poked into the father’s eyes. They both heard them pop. And still he didn’t die.
“Tough little fucker,” Jack said.
There was nothing left to hit him with so he went into the kitchen with the hopes of finding something sharp. He stepped into the room and saw the fat old woman, huddled up on the floor. Once upon a time he might have felt pity for her but now all he felt was disgust. She scrambled for the open door, kicking a raw chicken in his direction. He laughed as it skidded across the floor, featherless wings flapping. It was absurd. The mother didn’t get far. Jack went to the kitchen sink and looked inside. There were only spoons and forks, speckled with water. He contemplated using a fork, and then shook the thought away. Don’t be a fool, he told himself, a fork wouldn’t kill her. Open the drawer and see what other goodies are inside. He found a long-bladed kitchen knife.