The Job of the Wasp

by Colin Winnette

  I went straight from the Headmaster’s office to Nick’s room, but the door was closed. I knocked, and when no one answered, I pounded. Still nothing. I crossed to the door opposite Nick’s, which opened onto a room belonging to another young boy whose name I did not know, with a face I did not recognize. I entered without knocking and found him on his belly in bed. His head was where his feet should have been, and his top half was propped up, hovering over a book.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I know we haven’t been formally introduced, but I need some information immediately and my preferred source won’t open his door.”

  “We’ve met,” said the boy.

  “Be that as it may,” I said.

  “Anders,” he said, shutting the book.

  “Anders,” I said. “Yes, of course. Anders. How could I forget Anders? The truth is that I didn’t forget Anders, but was worried you might have forgotten who I was, and I didn’t want to put any undue social pressure on you. It’s not that you should remember me, after all. We’ve only met the one time.”

  “We’ve worked the dish line together,” he said, “many times.”

  The dish line! I thought. The wretched dish line. When would we be done with it?

  “I rarely work the dish line,” I said. “You might be confusing me with another boy who’s assigned to that station more often.”

  “I’m not confused,” he said, reopening the book.

  “Wait,” I said, “we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. I only need you to help me with one question and then I will leave, and if we are ever on the dish line together again, I promise to remember you.”

  “I don’t care at all if you remember me,” he said. “Rat.”

  “Rat!” I said. “On whom did I rat?”

  “On whom?” he said. “On whom! Everything about you is false and misleading.”

  “I’ve only come to ask a question,” I said.

  “Well, you’ve done nearly everything but,” he said.

  It occurred to me that this boy was taking far too much pleasure in these distractions. Or, more than pleasure, he had the satisfied look of someone successfully executing an assigned task. It was as if the shape and purpose of our conversation had been predetermined, and he was merely cycling through the steps designed to keep me from ever asking my question outright, steps meant to hold me in the doorway churning through meaningless conversational loops that would keep me focused on him, moment to moment, and not on whatever else might be happening behind my back. And what might be happening behind my back? The only thing for certain was that there was no way of knowing while I was stuck in this room talking with this boy. It was a brilliant tactic, and I had to admire it.

  “So, what’s your question?” said the boy.

  I slammed shut his door as I stepped into the hall and made quickly for my room. There was no one in it and nothing out of the ordinary. I searched the bed and found nothing planted. The drawers of the desk were empty, its surface bare. I checked the window and it was sealed; no one in the yard, no one on the walkways outside. I checked the dresser and found everything as it had always been.

  I was calming down, beginning to realize that I might have overreacted. Everything in my room was safe and fine and exactly as it had been when I left it. And yet, for the sake of being thorough, I opened my narrow closet, which was roughly twice my height, and it was there that I discovered the corpse of Hannan.

  the ghosts

  The corpse slid from the closet and I shoved it back in, slamming the door to pin it in place. While I did not recognize his face, it required little deductive work to determine who it was and what it was doing there. I’d been looking for Hannan. I’d made it known that I wanted to find him. It was possible to conclude that I wanted to find Hannan because he had seen what had happened in the garden. If I was the one who’d murdered Ms. Klein, and then the boy in the garden whose name I did not know, of course I would have no moral tremblings over tracking down and murdering the boy who would be able to testify to that effect. And that was Hannan, the boy who had clearly seen me punch the boy whose name I did not know in the garden, sending him down onto the garden hoe, which I’d washed in the rain and set by the toolshed. Incidentally, locking me out of the toolshed was yet another ingenious move on the Headmaster’s part, as it guaranteed that particular garden hoe wouldn’t be lost among the many other garden hoes. Perhaps due to the fact that gardening had once been included in the curriculum, the facility possessed an almost comical excess of garden hoes. Now the Headmaster, along with whichever boys he’d turned or forced into his confidences through either fear or some more complicated manipulation, had one of the three murder weapons set aside for them, still streaked with microscopic evidence, I had no doubt.

  And now here was Hannan. Poor Hannan, who had only been trying to secure his own safety and comfort by affirming his allegiance to an unhinged Headmaster, coming to him with all he knew, all he’d seen in the garden. It was possible too that Hannan had not only seen me in the garden but had followed me over to the lake, where I’d disposed of the bodies. Reporting back to the Headmaster, he would have revealed that the bodies had been hidden, had been washed of evidence, and could not be brought out of the water without a great deal of effort and risk of exposure. These corpses were no longer corpses upon which anyone might stumble. More important, the extent of the physical labor required to hide them in this way was less suggestive of a young boy operating on his own than of a grown man, which would certainly be something the Headmaster would have difficulty explaining. It didn’t make him guilty of the crime, necessarily, and it was true he could make the claim that Hannan had witnessed my part in it all and reported it back to him, but the nature of their disposal would certainly raise questions, making the whole thing far less clean than the original arrangement: one corpse unearthed in the garden. So Hannan had taken Ms. Klein’s place as the corpse that could be and would be and had been stumbled upon, although perhaps not by the correct person. Either way, a boy who had possibly witnessed me taking the life of another boy and then disposing of two bodies was now dead. Poor Hannan, boxed in and bunched up against my closet door. It did not and would not look good.

  There was a knock then, and the door began to open, so I dropped my trousers and took my penis in hand.

  “A minute please,” I said. “A minute.”

  The door shut quickly and I heard the sound of laughter, one boy’s and then several.

  “What do you need?” I yelled through the wood.

  “We’ve brought you a gift,” said a voice.

  “Who is we?” I said.

  “Radek, me, Klausen,” it said.

  “Who’s me?” I said. I was trying to determine if I could fit Hannan’s body through the window above my desk. It seemed possible, provided it wasn’t too heavy. But I wouldn’t be able to do it quickly. And once it was out there, then what? The corpse would sit in the rain, waiting to be discovered. The closet was a good hiding place for now, except for the fact that Anders and the Headmaster and God knows who else knew the body was there. It was even possible they were here now to collect, to push forward their terrible plan, and have the blame fall firmly, and once and for all, on me.

  “Klot,” said the voice.

  “Klot?” I said. “Who is Klot?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Klot.”

  “Where are you from?” I said.

  “Can we come in?” he said.

  Even if Anders and the Headmaster were not among them, it was still possible these boys were part of the clever trap. I had to be cautious. I could assume nothing.

  “I’ll come out in a moment,” I said.

  “It’s a sensitive matter,” they said, speaking over one another in their rush to draw me out.

  “Your gift?” I said.

  I pulled up my trousers. I could hear them whispering but not what they were
saying. I stepped toward the door, set my ear against the wood. They pounded, startling me back.

  “We lied,” said Klot.

  I heard the laughter of several boys in a group. I’ve heard few things more chilling.

  “Let’s meet in your room, Klot,” I said.

  “I’m afraid we can’t,” he said, “because, you see, I’ve had to give up my room following the arrival of our thirty-first. We are low on beds, low on rooms. You couldn’t lie on your back in the space I now occupy.”

  “What space do you occupy now?” I said.

  I approached the door again and slid the lock into place as quietly as possible.

  “I can hear you at the door,” said Klot. “What do you think you’re doing? Put yourself away and let us in.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Klot.”

  “Because you’re a helpless pervert?” said Klot.

  “Because I’m ill,” I said. “I’m physically ill.”

  I blew my nose, losing no phlegm.

  “Let us in or we will let ourselves in,” said Klot.

  It was possible I could fit my own body out the window, but that would leave these boys alone in the room with Hannan, and if they didn’t already know he was in there, I had no doubt they would find him if left to their own devices. And what then?

  “What’s this all about?” I said.

  “A gift,” said Klot.

  “You said you were lying about that,” I said.

  He pounded against the door again. I could have sworn I heard its wood snap.

  I unlocked the lock and opened the door just wide enough to fit my body through the crack, then slammed it shut behind me.

  The hall was empty. There were no boys. There was no laughter.

  “Klot,” I yelled. “Klot! Everyone come into the hall. Klot has a gift for me.”

  Two boys came out of their rooms. One was the boy whose glasses would not stay on. He was having as much trouble with them now as he had been in the dining hall.

  “What’s all the noise?” said the other of the two.

  “Where’s Klot?” I said.

  Both boys shrugged.

  “Who?” said the boy whose glasses would not stay on.

  “Never mind,” I said. “I have an announcement.”

  “Calm down,” said the same boy.

  “It’s urgent,” I said. “Everyone! Out of the rooms.”

  Nick’s door was still closed. My hope was that he was in there alone with the drawing and that nothing had come over him, nothing had happened to him, nothing had been done. The question of his safety made me wonder if I’d been foolish to trust him in the first place, to approach him at all, let alone with talk of some kind of plan. How brilliant would that have been, to plant an indifferent and calm-seeming boy on his back in bed so that I might approach him on my own? It wasn’t beyond the Headmaster to dream up something like that. If I was right in all that he’d accomplished so far, it seemed only natural that he would install some kind of insurance, a side-net I might wander haplessly into without being guided. And how convenient that would be, not to have to guide me at all.

  Anders stepped out of his room, the book tucked in his armpit.

  “I have an announcement,” I yelled again.

  “Get on with it then,” said Anders.

  “It’s for everyone,” I said.

  “Just say what it is,” he said, “and it will make the rounds. If you even have something worthwhile to tell, that is.”

  Thunder clapped and the hall went black.

  “Ha!” I shouted, at the ceiling, at the storm, at Anders and the other boys, who were, I was sure of it now, in cahoots.

  I was wrapped in small hands then, confirming what I already knew to be the case. Anders, the boy struggling with his glasses, the boy I didn’t know, Klot, Klausen, Radek: I could feel them all grabbing me at once, covering my mouth, holding my arms and legs still, lifting me and carrying me through the total darkness of the hall.

  “Put me down!” I said.

  And they eventually did, in a room the size of an upright coffin. I could feel the walls around me, holding me in place.

  “It’s yours now,” said Klot, and I heard the door slam.

  I felt the air in the room grow thick. I pounded my body against the concrete walls to the best of my ability in the cramped space. It made little to no sound. But the door was made of metal, and when I kicked it, it sang. I shouted and kicked and demanded release. Nothing changed and no one came. I pounded and pounded and pounded. I thought of Hannan. I thought of Ms. Klein. Both woundless. Both trapped. Was this how it had happened? Had the others just left them somewhere, walled up like the beetle? I was furious. I was disgusted. I was boiling over with rage.

  “Please,” I said. “Please.”

  Poor Hannan. Poor Ms. Klein. Poor, poor me. And then my heart went out to the boy I’d murdered. It just took off like a bird from a branch. The walls of my tomb seemed to fall away, and there was only darkness. I had ended his life. I had plucked it from his body with my own hands. With my angry fist. I could feel the weight of each death suddenly, as if I would drown in them. As if I was tied to a rock in a lake full of corpses. I gasped for air.

  There was a thin chain above me, and it ticked against a lightbulb when I touched it. I pulled it and it clicked, but no light came. I pulled it again. I wiped my face. I pounded on the metal door until my hands felt bruised.

  I was in the dark, collapsed against the rear wall of my prison, banging the back of my head there with a mournful rhythm, when the door clicked open. I braced myself to be wrapped in hands again, or to be struck.

  “Are you coming or not?” whispered Nick through the darkness.

  “Nick,” I said. “You’re out of your room. You’re alive.”

  “Shh,” he said. “Of course I’m alive.”

  “I haven’t seen you,” I said. “I haven’t heard from you.”

  “I came by your room,” he said.

  “And you didn’t hear me yelling?” I said.

  “I heard you shouting in your room earlier, and I came then. When you were masturbating,” he said.

  “That wasn’t you,” I said. “That was Klot.”

  “I assure you,” he said, “it was me.”

  “Either way, you’ve got it wrong,” I said. “I wasn’t masturbating. I was staging an intimate moment so whoever was walking in would be encouraged to leave immediately.”

  “But you told me to come by,” he said.

  “You should have announced yourself,” I said.

  “Who is Klot?” he said.

  “That’s why I like you, Nick. You are focused and you keep to yourself. Is that why you like me?” I said.

  “You said you had a plan,” he said.

  “I do,” I said. “A very good one. But new information has come to light and we need to go over it.”

  “Come to my room,” he said. “Hurry.”

  He wasn’t touching me yet, but I still felt somehow that I was being rushed.

  “Where is everyone?” I said.

  “They’ve left to get the candles,” he said.

  I can admit I was happy to see him, happy to have the door open and someone at my side, but it was clear something wasn’t right.

  “Nick,” I said, “what took you so long to come and rescue me from the closet?”

  “I came as quickly as I could,” he said.

  “Didn’t you hear me crying out? Banging against the door?”

  “I heard something,” he said, “yes. But you can’t always be sure you’re hearing what you think you’re hearing, and I’ve learned not to follow strange sounds into darkened corners.”

  “Wise enough,” I said, “but then you came. What changed?”

  “I thought we wer
e allies,” he said.

  He was nothing but a voice in the darkness, but I was confident in my ability to imagine the tragic look on his scarred face in that moment.

  “We are,” I said, “to the bitter end.”

  “Then why does it sound like you don’t trust me?”

  “Nick,” I said, “there is no one else I hold above you in terms of trust.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “And you trust me?” I said.

  “You said you had a plan to get us out of here,” he said.

  “It’s not safe to talk in these halls,” I said. “We might trust each other, but that’s as far as we should extend our trust for the time being.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “Then let’s head to the gazebo,” I said. “We can talk in private.”

  “There’s a storm,” he said.

  “We’ll move quickly,” I said. “It’s darker in here than it is out there, and besides, the people who wish to do us harm have revealed themselves. They are among us. Take my hand, Nick. Help me out.”

  Nick took my hand and pulled me from my coffin. We traveled together through the dark hallway and to the exit. A dim light filled the entrance of our dormitory as the door opened, and rain found its way immediately to the floor. We dashed hand-in-hand through muddy grass and to the gazebo, which we could clearly see articulated against the blue backdrop of our stormy sky. Ripples of thunder were as constant as the ocean’s waves, and lightning lit the scene like a wind-torn fire. It was elemental, like we were witnessing the Earth’s creation. I felt a burst of energy, a charge that could be harnessed and used to bring down our enemies.

  “Take it all in,” I told Nick. “Soak it up.”

  He was catching his breath and watching the dormitory door to see if we’d been followed. It didn’t move at first, but then it startled. I twitched at the sight, but nothing came. We’d left it open and the wind was getting around it.