by Nick Mamatas
Dave waits on the couch, thinking. Barge in blasting, or hide the gun in the basement. He has two—he can do both, or either. He only has four magazines, so it might be best to keep the guns separated so he doesn’t blow all his ammo doing a Scarface routine. He barely even notices that the plan has shifted from waving the guns around with Erin to actually shooting people. And he wants to live. Running out of ammo and letting the cops shoot him is not an option. He could run, or surrender, or just not do it.
No, there is no just not do it anywhere in Dave’s head. Early-onset schizophrenia, maybe. Stress from both his parents leaving him, perhaps. The influence of the goddess of discord seducing Jeremy and fucking him right on the couch, the couch that is still stained with something, that still smells like her, that last and final betrayal.
His nose still hurts. It’s hard to breathe. There won’t be much running on Thursday. Around 4 p.m., he reaches over to the phone and makes a call.
“Tigger,” he says when Oleg answers.
“Cutting again, eh?” Oleg says. “Slippin’ Erin the ol’ baloney pony?”
“Wait . . . what?!”
“What what?”
“If I were doing that, why would I call you right after?”
“That was going to be my next question!”
“Anyway,” Dave says. “Remember that time you found me bleeding in the bathroom?”
“A mother always remembers her daughter’s first period, David.”
“Be serious. You said something about teaching those dirtbags a lesson. I wonder if—”
“Yes!” Oleg says. “I’m all for it. My brother Aram got Photoshop. I say we start a website and stick the heads of our tormentors on some gay porn pics.”
“Where are you going to get gay porn?”
“Google. What, you mean you’ve never even peeked?”
“Uhm . . . anyway, I have a better idea.” It’s not a better idea. Dave says he needs a kilt, and needs to borrow Oleg’s duster in order to better reveal it at the right moment. Oleg says he’ll leave it on Dave’s stoop, secret agent-style. Dave doesn’t bother to explain that secret agents don’t leave thing on stoops.
“Shave your legs too!” Oleg says.
Nobody came home that night. Dave’s choices were to moon over Erin, to gnash his teeth and chew on his fingers and chant “Cunt! Cunt Cunt!” through clenched teeth—just like his father spoke to his mother—till his lips bled, or to think about Hamilton, and what he could do with those Uzis.
Maybe Erin will show up. Maybe she fucked Dad just to gain entry to my room and leave me the guns. Like Mata Hari or La Femme Nikita . . . he thinks, but then it’s back to slapping his palms against his temples, then back to reading up on school shootings.
He could just shoot Erin, he supposes. If not at school, then on the way to school. Drop by her apartment and plug her. Her fat obnoxious father too. Maybe go to the city and visit Washington Place Diner and Restaurant and put a bullet in “Uncle Bill”—who did look just like the guy who had stabbed him with a pen.
Revenge is hard work. Dave knew the old saying, Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. He had lots to dig, and he didn’t want any of them to be his. In ten different timestreams, he is killed, and in six of those he’s killed before he even manages to shoot anyone. In one world, the gun falls to the steps with a clatter, and he runs and doesn’t stop when a cop demands that he does, and he’s shot in the back. In another, he gets scared in the dark storage area and shouts at a shadow to stop moving and fires upon it and a bullet punctures a heating pipe and high-pressure steam takes off his face. In another, he gets to the loading dock, looks around at the mannequins in school uniforms being prepped for the stage, blows them to splinters and then shoots himself in the head. In yet another, he leaves the statues unmolested, but stands close to them when he puts a bullet in his brain in the hope of an artful splatter.
What’s the difference between one Holbrook and the next? I’m as young as Dave, though I’ve lived until my late thirties in some contexts, and I have no clue. The only thing I know is that Erin trapped me here in the Ylem, to live and relive every possibility, and they all end poorly.
Dave can’t afford to practise with his Uzis. He has to get in close, keep his finger from just squeezing and freezing. Decisions are made, and with every decision a new world is born. With every decision carried out, that is.
Dave skips school again on Wednesday. He’s very hungry, so he buys three cheeseburgers at the old-fashioned white-tile McDonald’s close to Hamilton, and eats them by the window. You’re officially casing a joint, Mr. Holbrook, he thinks. Or I think it to him. It’s hard to tell. Mostly he has his eyes out for Erin. But she’s not anywhere near school anymore. Not in that body, anyway. She’s wherever chthonic goddesses go, deep underground, between manifestations. One of the two Uzis is in an oversized satchel at Dave’s feet.
The Wednesday assembly involves a number of black and Latino actors and dancers in matching tracksuits. Dave’s so horrified at the idea of a hip-hop breakdancing anti-bullying spectacle that he’s almost upset that he’s going to miss the show. When the lights dim, he slips in via the loading dock—which is kept open for fire safety reasons during assemblies—and then opens the trapdoor by what used to be the orchestra pit and heads down to the basement. The rapping is terrible, a cloying riff on “Woo Hah!! Got You All In Check” by Busta Rhymes. Something about putting bullies in check before they wreck and it’s all about respec’ so let’s break it down on this here deck—that sort of nonsense. Admirable sentiments all around. In the basement, all Dave hears is the thumping of the bass, and his own racing heart. He’s relieved to be free of the gun, but he’s sweating so much that he’s sure the police could find his DNA on the satchel if they were to discover this hidey-hole and locate the gun. Which is impossible! he reminds himself, except that it isn’t impossible. Entropy decreasing is impossible. Order forming out of chaos is impossible. The destruction of energy rather than its transformation is impossible. Someone finding the Uzi before tomorrow and calling the cops, and the cops figuring out that the gun belongs to Dave is just very unlikely. Except for the belongs to Dave part. Who else is wandering around Hamilton with a broken nose, a broken home, and a constant hydrocodone high?
Scratch the broken nose and there were plenty of possible suspects. Dave still doesn’t feel safe.
CHAPTER 21
Ann is home and ranting to herself in the master bedroom when Dave comes home from school. Her clothes are in disarray all over the floor and the unmade double bed. For a moment Dave pictures Erin straddling his father there too, naked save for little girl socks with pink ruffles, raising her hips twice a second like a machine.
“You!” Ann says to Dave. It’s a blast furnace of a phoneme. Dave nearly bursts into tears and admits everything. He stole the money, the purse, has a submachine gun in his room. Let’s put one end of the hose in the exhaust and the other in the car and commit suicide instead! But Ann is fast. “Pack a bag! We’re leaving tonight!”
“What? Why?”
“Because your pedophile rapist father is coming home tonight, and if I have to see him again, I’ll kill him.”
“You knew . . .”
“Oh, did you know?” Ann drops what she’s holding and gets right up in Dave’s face. She’s not been drinking. Her breath smells like ash and shit instead of sweet wine. “Was that little bitch one of your classmates?”
“Uhm . . . it’s a big school,” Dave says. “I just mean, how did you know?”
“They were going at it in front of the window. I hollered at them, even threw a rock, but they ignored me. Your fucking father ignored me while fucking a teenager on my couch. I sit on that couch every night.” She has more to say, but no more breath with which to say it. Instead she just huffs and gasps for air in front of Dave for several long seconds. “I should burn this fucking place down,” she says.
“Let him come home to ruins. That would be fitting, wouldn’t it? But I won’t. Pack a bag.”
“Where are we going?” Dave says.
“A hotel. The Doubletree by the ShopRite. The motel by the Holland Tunnel, whatchamacallit? Any place but here. Good thing I don’t have a gun, David. I know he’s your father and you don’t understand, but if I see his face, I’ll kill him.” She would. Dave knows the feelings. Is that where it came from, somewhere in mom’s genome?
“Well, what will we do next?” Dave says. “After the hotel.” Keep her talking, Mr. Holbrook. “We need to sit down and talk this out. Not with Dad I mean, but just—”
“David, you are a child. There’s nothing to discuss.”
“Well, go downstairs and think it over. I’ll order pizza. Have a drink and try to relax. Then we can really think of something. Call a lawyer. I bet you could get the house in your name, or a restraining order, or something.”
Ann looks skeptical. But she licks her lips. “I need to call my sister. Maybe Julia too, talk this out. But pack your bags.”
“I have a test tomorrow,” Dave says. “With Mr. McCann.”
“So? We’re not going to Egypt. Pack. A. Bag.”
Dave goes to his room, unplugs the phone line from the modem, and calls his father’s cell phone. It goes to voicemail, but Dave leaves a message. “Mom’s superdrunk and unconscious on the couch. Please come get me.” Then he tips the bureau over again, finds his emergency Robitussin and drinks half the bottle and gets into bed. His stomach roils and he cuddles his Uzi like a teddy bear, not caring if his father comes in and kicks the door to pieces. By the time Jeremy comes home to Ann, who is only half-unconscious, the screaming argument is like nothing but a half-remembered dream. It’s not a good night’s sleep, but it is a long night’s sleep. Dave is leaving for school early in the morning, after all. He dreams of Erin and behind her, a great black thing taller and wider than his range of vision. It is black, and scaly, and writhes with dozens of coiling limbs and necks. He is Typhon, and his hundred dragon heads scrape the stars.
CHAPTER 22
Dave wakes up early to the sound of his parents fucking. They were shouting like teenagers, and the whole upper floor of the house seemed to quake with each thrust and thump.
Well, Mr. Holbrook, it’s time to ruin someone’s day.
Dave is hungry, and a little nauseated. He decides to keep it that way. He likes the edge, the taste of saliva and nothing else in his mouth. He doesn’t have a kilt, but that’ll be fine. Tigger won’t be doing much complaining once he sees the gun. Oleg’s a good kid. Dave will send him home.
He walks to school in the morning twilight and gets there an hour early, as planned. As usual, the metal detector hasn’t even been plugged in but the doors are open for the teachers and the custodians. The security guard doesn’t look up from his breakfast. Even after Columbine, nobody worries about a nerdy white kid who gets the shit kicked out of him all the time. It’s getting hard to think. His mind is hazy, full of twisting black clouds.
If I see Erin, I’m going to shoot her.
I wish I had some Robitussin.
I should have brought my Gameboy to pass the time.
“Mr. Holbrook!” It’s McCann.
Dave turns. Why is he here? Why is he here with an Uzi in hand, another hidden in a safe spot? Erin’s guns. Of course she wouldn’t be here today, and neither would his parents. Nobody to shout, “See what you made me do!” at, while pointing at a few bullet-riddled bodies. It’s too late now. McCann has to be on to him. The gun’s just barely hidden.
They have a brief conversation about McCann needing some help. Dave brandishes the gun. Then the world splits. In one, he doesn’t shoot. In one, he does. Then the world splits again. McCann falls in both, screaming and clutching his side. In one, Dave runs right out of the school. In the other, he shoots the guard, then turns on his heel and heads deeper into the school.
A few minutes go by and a crowd gathers—students, teachers, Vice Principal Fusco. McCann’s alive, the guard isn’t. Sirens in the distance already. Dave opens a second-story window right over the school entrance and empties the magazine into the crowd, just in time for the cops to roll in to a generalized panic.
Hamilton’s an old urban school. Lots of hallways, plenty of corners, difficult to surround. Almost nobody is inside, so that’s a blessing. The JCPD uses an old playbook—circumscribe the building and wait. Dave conserves the second magazine as best he can. He’s not a great shot, and the Uzi isn’t a sniper rifle, so all he can do is run from one side of the building to another and occasionally plink at an ambulance, or a cop car. The door to the principal’s office is locked, but he puts a few bullets through the marbled glass window on the door and manages to wing a secretary. She cries and calls for help on the phone. Her voice is an echo in Dave’s mind. He loves it. If only Erin was here.
Dave isn’t in very good shape. After thirty minutes, he’s coated in sweat from all the running. He’s nearly out of ammunition. He decides to head down to the basement and retrieve the second Uzi, but first he fires a single shot in the air and screams as loudly as he can. Only after does he realize that people who shoot themselves in the head probably can’t scream right after, but he hopes the police will be lured in anyway.
In the dark, he has a conversation with Erin. An imaginary one.
“Happy yet?”
I’m always happy, Dave.
“Did I kill anyone outside? I guess that security guard is dead, huh?”
I think someone out there is going to die. But it might be because of a heart attack, or from falling in a dirty puddle and getting an infection in her wound.
“Her wound?”
You know the girls deserve it too. They’re why the guys spend all their time punching your lights out. To show off. They get blowjobs and cupcakes in exchange from those bitches.
“Lucky me—you never gave me anything like that.”
You wouldn’t have liked my cupcakes.
“If you were here right now, I’d fucking shoot you too.”
You’d try.
Nothing for a while. Then in Dave’s head, Erin’s voice again. I hear too, from the Ylem. It’s distinct from the imitation Dave was doing.
Well, I will give you a present now.
“What?”
There’s a fuse box by the boiler room that runs the fire alarm system. Open the box, mess with the fuses, the alarm will go off. Then the cops and the fire department will have to storm the place.
Dave has nothing to say to that. He’s hungry. He’s bored. Running down the hallways was nothing at all like a video game, thanks to McCann and his own nervous trigger finger. He doesn’t even know if he managed to nail any of his tormenters with his random bursts out the window.
So he walks to the back, pulls the alarm, and then heads back up the ladder to the trapdoor. He feels like a grunt in Vietnam, half-hidden in a foxhole. The door’s heavy atop his head, and he doesn’t have a great shot, but when the cops check the auditorium they likely won’t see him in the pit until it’s too late.
Erin’s present works very well. The first SWAT guy to enter the auditorium gets his ankles chewed off, and the room’s too large to gas effectively. Dave gets to empty a whole magazine into the bulletproof vests, replace it, fire off a few more shots, then drop back down into the basement, throw the gun away, and wait on his belly with his arms behind his back for his arrest. Shooting cops is much cooler than shooting kids, he decides. It’s not like these cops will shoot him in cold blood. Not until he’s a grown up.
The Uzi is recovered with ten bullets still in the clip. From prison Dave explains that those ten bullets belong to the world now. Ten bullets for the picked-on kids, for the oppressed peoples across the planet, to deliver as they see fit into the heads of their tormentors. Does not the schematic symbol for resistor have ten points? The esoteric meaning is so clear it�
��s actually exoteric. When selling antinomianism to high schoolers, the Kallis Episkopos had to keep things simple.
Then there’s the world where Dave ran. The gun was like a snake in his hand—terrifying, dangerous, and strangely compelling all the same. He couldn’t drop the gun and surrender, but hearing McCann howl like an animal, seeing the fat security guard switch off like an old machine, drained the fluid from Dave’s spine. He bolted back down the steps, Uzi in hand. He smelled like hell.
Officer Ford is on the corner. He spots the gun and bellows for Dave to stop. Dave points the Uzi and says, “No, you! I mean . . .” Then he turns and runs. His fingers feel huge, the gun so small. He couldn’t pull the trigger if he wanted to. He wants to throw the gun away, but there’s no turning back. There’s still a small rational part of him saying, You can’t go back home. You can’t go anywhere. All you have is that gun. You can trade it. You can sell it. You can use it to get out of here. Don’t worry, you won’t have to shoot anyone else.
That small rational part of him was me. I often wonder if Erin put me here in the Ylem just for this reason—to keep David alive beyond the end of the day. Once he entered the school with the gun, a near-infinity of alternative lives ended, like a tree being pruned of almost all its branches. I could guide him away from putting the gun to his own head, from turning the wrong corner and being gunned down by the police.
Erin’s house!
Let the cops find him there. Either she’s home and is just a semi-messed up girl, and it doesn’t matter; or she’s not home and it doesn’t matter; or she is Eris the goddess of discord and can deal with a SWAT team blowing away her pig-fat golem of a father and sending a wall of bullets right at her, then she raises her palm and the bullets stop mid-air and fall to the ground like it’s bullettime for real, and then everything matters.