But you don’t kill yourself with four separate saws. Chad had a gun, so why didn’t he just use it on his empty head? Why not just blow his brains out and be done with it? Why go to all the painful work of making yourself suffer needlessly when you just want to end it? Chad wanted all the pain and the suffering to end. He wanted an escape from the inevitable, but at any point through his dismemberment process, the police could have arrived and ruined the party. No. Even if you have the inspiration to kill yourself, you do it before anyone can catch you and stop you. Chad would have used the gun. Someone else made him use the saws.
15
Tomorrow is my birthday. Six has been a good year. It has been the best year so far. Mommy says that when I’m seven, I’m officially a big boy. She says that I’ll be able to stay up a whole quarter hour later. I’ll be able to stay up until eight-thirty. I don’t know what eight-thirty is, but I’m pretty sure that it’s much later. A whole quarter later. I look at the tape in my hand, running my fingers on the sharp, jagged part. It hurts when I press too hard, so I try to keep my fingers away from it. But every time I pull out the tape and try to tear it off, my knuckles rub against it. I look at the tiny white strips of skin sticking off my knuckle. What is skin?
“Can I have another one, sweetie?” Mommy asks as she looks over at the TV. She’s always staring at it. I’m not allowed to watch TV for more than an hour a day, but Mommy watches a lot more than me. She says that it’s because she’s a grown up and a mommy. Mommy doesn’t like it when I ask her too many questions. I pull out the tape and tear it off, my knuckles scraping against the teeth of the tape roll. I wince and look up to her with a sad look on my face. I want her to know how much it hurts. “Oh, sweetie, you’ve got to be careful,” she says to me, stepping off the small ladder and coming down to me. I look up at her as she hugs me. Mommy gives the best hugs. She smells like cookies.
She takes the tape from me and climbs back up the ladder. She tapes up the far edge of the banner and I look up at the writing on it, reading what it says. It says that it’s my birthday and that makes me happy. It’s been so long since I’ve had a birthday. We’ve had Christmas and fireworks and all sorts of other days, but we’ve kept skipping past my birthday. It’s finally here though and I’m so excited for it. I get to have all my friends over and I get to play Spider-Man and Star Wars with them. It’s going to be the best time. Billie and David get to spend the night, Johnny might spend the night too but he gets scared when he’s not at home. I heard David say that Johnny pees his bed. That’s gross. I don’t want him peeing over here. He’ll ruin my birthday.
“Caleb, you’ve got to be on your best behavior tomorrow,” Mommy tells me. She’s always telling me to be good. I don’t think she believes me when I tell her that I’m a good boy. If she did, why would she keep telling me to be good? I don’t do anything bad, or at least I don’t think I do anything bad.
“Yes, Mommy,” I say to her with a happy smile. I love her. She’s so pretty. She’s the prettiest mommy in the world.
Once I was out in the back yard and I found a kitten and I know that Mommy hates cats. I was afraid that the kitten would make Mommy mad, so I hid the kitten. It meowed a lot and I felt bad for it. I didn’t want to hurt it, but I know that Mommy would be mad if she knew that I was playing with a kitty. So I picked up the little kitten and took it to the sandbox where I was playing and pet it. It was so soft. I wanted to keep the kitten, but Mommy wouldn’t let me. Good boys do what their mommy tells them. So I decided to hide the kitten. I dug a hole for the kitten in the sandbox. I was afraid that Mommy would come out and hear her meowing so I dug the hole deep. It was deep enough that it went all the way past my knees when I stood in it. I kissed the kitten on the head and put it down in the hole with one of my army men to protect her. Then I pushed the big mountain of dirt and sand over the hole so that Mommy wouldn’t find the kitten. I forgot about the kitten and when I went to go dig it up, I forgot where I hid it. I think Mommy knew about the kitten and went and took it away from me, because I never found it. I think she was really mad at me.
But that was the only time I did something she didn’t want me to. I swear that I’m a good boy and that there’s nothing bad I do to her. Sometimes she tells me not to watch TV, but I do and she gets mad, or I don’t like the food we eat for dinner, but that’s because she doesn’t make what I like. I don’t want her to get mad at me. I just don’t understand why we can’t eat good food for dinner. Why do we always have to eat gross, nasty food for dinner?
Mommy is looking at the TV and I can see that her hand is shaking, just like it did last night when she found me out on the road. I don’t know how I got out there. I remember dreaming that Mommy needed me to follow her, so I followed her and I remember waking up to Mommy scooping me up off the road and that strange, scary man was standing there, looking at me. There was something bad about that man. I don’t like the way he touched me. It felt scary. It felt strange when he touched my shoulder. I think he was a bad man. But when Mommy brought me inside, her hands were shaking. I think she was scared that I was going to run away, but I promised her that I wasn’t going to run away and that I didn’t know what I was doing out there. I was sleeping and just woke up, that’s all that happened.
“Sweetie, Mommy needs to make a phone call,” Mommy tells me, bending down and kissing me on the head before she runs off. Mommy is on her phone a lot. She talks to people all the time or she’s texting. She tells me that texting is bad and that when I grow up, I shouldn’t do it, but she does it all the time. It looks fun. She’s always smiling and giggling when someone texts her.
I walk out to the living room and stare at the TV. There’s a picture on the screen and it looks just like the man that I saw last night, the man who had been standing next to my Mommy. Was he a famous guy? Did he have a TV show? I never thought I’d meet a famous guy. Did Mommy see that? I decide that I need to tell her. She should know that we met a famous guy. Maybe she even knows what his name is. I rush through the living room and down the hallway to where Mommy’s room is. She’s shut her door except for a small tiny crack and I decide that I want to sneak up on her.
I’m great at sneaking. I’m the sneakiest of all my friends and I love to sneak up on them and scare them in school. Out on the playground, when we play dinosaurs, I’m the scariest dinosaur because no one ever hears or sees me coming. I’m the best at it. I sneak up on my tippy toes just like they do in the cartoons and avoid the spot in the floor where it creaks really loudly, and sneak up to her door. I can hear her talking to someone. She must be on the phone with Grandma. Grandma and Grandpa are coming to my birthday tomorrow. Last time I had a birthday, they gave me a big Lego set, but Mommy won’t let me play with it until I’m a little older. She thinks I’m a bad boy who swallows the little pieces.
“That man, on the TV,” she’s saying to someone. “He almost hit my boy last night. I had no clue who he was, but I saw him. He was here, right outside my house. I got a good look at his car. It was a silver Subaru. Are you sure?” She stops talking and I decide to scare her.
I jump through the doorway and throw up my arms like they have claws and roar as loud as I can. I hope she screams. I love it when she screams. But she doesn’t this time. This time she just jumps a little and flinches before she glares at me. Mommy has a look that’s really scary because it means I’m in trouble and that’s the look she’s staring at me right now. She snaps her fingers and points to the door, telling me to leave. I don’t know why she’s so angry with me. I just wanted to play.
I walk out into the living room and look at the coat closet in the hallway by the front door. Mommy tells me not to go near that closet, or at least she just started telling me not to. For days, I have been searching her room for presents when she’s not looking. I don’t know what she’s getting me and I can’t stand it any longer. All I can think about are the cool toys that she’s going to get me. She always buys me the best, coolest toys. Last year, she got me a sup
er soaker and all the other kids in the neighborhood were scared of me because it shot so much water that it could drown a person. I heard that a kid did drown from it, so other kids aren’t allowed to have them now. Thankfully, Mommy got me mine before that happened.
I want an Xbox like Johnny has this year. He has a game where you can chop people’s heads off and you can steal money and there’s another one where you can fly an airplane and blow up other airplanes. Mommy says that videogames will rot my brain, but hopefully she’s changed her mind, because I would love to have an Xbox. I asked her and Grandma for an Xbox and I asked Auntie for one too, but she said that she already bought my present for me. That would be so cool if they all got me an Xbox. I would have so many Xboxes. All the other kids would wish they had as many cool games and stuff as I did. I just hope they don’t get me more clothes. Clothes are stupid and boring.
Slowly, I sneak up to the closet door, looking back down the long hallway to where Mommy’s door is still open from when I scared her real good. She’s still talking on the phone to that guy and I can see her shadow. She’s too busy to notice me. This is the perfect time to get some searching done. I know that good boys don’t search for their presents, but I want to know. I’m tired of waiting and I’ve been waiting for so long. The last time I had a present was at Christmas.
Quietly I reach up and twist the door handle and pull open the closet door, peering into the darkness. Our jackets, raincoats, big, puffy coats, and our snow boots are all inside. It’s too dark to see anything, so I try pushing the coats apart and shoving the boots aside to get a better look. That’s when I finally see them. The first thing I see are the action figures that I’ve been wanting since we went to the store. She got me three of them. There’s two good guys and one bad guy. Behind that is the biggest Nerf gun that I’ve ever seen. It’s even bigger than the one David has. I hope they bring their Nerf guns tomorrow and I can shoot them with mine. Behind that is a few more action figures and a movie. This is the best birthday I’ve ever had.
“Caleb, what are you doing?” Mommy shouts at the top of her lungs. She’s very angry and I jump at the sound of her voice. I look over my shoulder at her and I’m scared that she’s going to smack me. I’m scared that she’s going to give me spankings like she did last time I was bad. I look at her and she’s standing right next to me. How did she sneak up on me like that? Sometimes I think Mommy has magical powers. I don’t know how she did that, but here she is and she’s very mad looking. “Caleb, I told you to be on your best behavior. What is wrong with you? You know you’re not supposed to be looking for these. Why can’t you just be a good boy? Go to your room, Caleb. I’m very mad at you right now!”
I run past her as she smacks me on the butt. It hurts. It stings and I can feel tears boiling in my eyes as I begin to cry, running up the stairs. I pass the bathroom and the play room before I go into my room and dive onto my bed, burying my face in the pillow and crying. I feel so bad. I shouldn’t have done that. Why did I do that to Mommy? I’ve ruined my birthday now. She’s not going to let me have one. She’ll probably take all the toys back and I’ll never get to play with them.
She should take the toys back. I don’t deserve them. I’ve been so bad. I’m not the boy that Mommy deserves. She’s so pretty and smart and funny and I just keep messing up and making her mad at me. Maybe that’s why Daddy left? Maybe I was so bad that Daddy got tired of me and didn’t want me around. Maybe he went and found a new Mommy and a new Caleb, one that doesn’t sneak around and do bad things all the time. I don’t want them to hate me. I don’t want them to be mad at me. I don’t want Mommy to cancel my birthday. I should punish myself. She didn’t give me a punishment, but I should show her that I’m a big boy and that I can punish myself so she won’t return my toys and cancel my birthday. I don’t want her to be mad at me forever.
Climbing off my bed, I walk back to the play room. I’ll show her that I’m a good boy. I’ll tell her that I don’t need the toys. I don’t need any of them. I just want her to be happy and to love me. I turn the light on and listen to hear if Mommy is coming up the stairs. I don’t hear her, so I think I’m safe. I go into the toy room and look around at all the toys I have. My big art stand is in the corner and I decide that I should write her a message. I should tell her that I love her. No, I should warn her. I should warn him. I should write them all a letter. I should keep them from following me.
I grab the big crayon and rip off the sheet of paper where I drew Mommy and me fighting pirates and I start to write them all a message. Maybe this time they’ll get it and they’ll stop with all the spying and the following. I write them the message and look around at all the toys. There’s so many of them. I don’t deserve any of them. I’ll show Mommy that I’m a good boy, that I understand. I’ll show her that she doesn’t have to yell at me anymore. I’ll be a good boy and I’ll do exactly as I’m told from now on. All she has to do is love me and I’ll love her. After all, it’s just me and her. I search the toys around the room. They look different now. They look like something new, like I’ve never had them before. They look like they are much more enjoyable now. I wish I hadn’t made her mad. I need those toys down in the closet. I need them to play with. I want Mommy to give them to me so I can play with all of them and they can go on exciting adventures.
I pick up a soldier toy. He’s a knight with all this cool sharp armor. He’s my favorite.
16
Wendy Anderson’s home is situated in a nice little corner of the city where old people congregate after retirement. They’re near everything that the aging, working class citizens of this city might want in their declining years. They’re close to everything and there’s hardly any crime. Every once in a while there’s a hood rat or someone desperate who will come lurking up from one of the city’s various ghettos, looking to steal bicycles or smash in car windows to steal a purse, but usually it’s as quiet and as tranquil as anyone in their late sixties would want. The only difference now is that I’m a hammer about to smash the shit out of Wendy Anderson’s world. Well, maybe not her world, but definitely her daughter’s. Two boys are playing out on the porch with toy cars, playing whatever make-believe scenario has popped into their tiny brains.
I never understood playing with cars. What’s the end game with that? I love cars more than I love pretty much everything in this world, but I don’t understand boys playing with them. I hate the noises they make and I hate the way they just roll around making those noises. What’s the point of that? Me, I was always about cops and robbers or army. I used to run around the neighborhood with my old friends shooting them with stick guns and pretending that dirt clods were grenades. Then we discovered what baseball and football were and we threw down our arms and went to a more civilized way of embarrassing and battling each other. But cars, that was never on our itinerary.
Stepping out of my ride, I leave it unlocked. There’s no one here that even knows how to hotwire a car and the most dangerous thing here is getting hit by an old tree branch that might break off and smack the roof of my beloved Shelby. No, this part of town is paradise. I close the door and walk up to the sidewalk and up the concrete of access of the garage to where the white picket fence with roses growing on the inside stops me. I check the yard for dog shit, dog toys, or a little rodent that most old people call dogs. Who wants a dog you can kill with a kick? There’s nothing of the sort, so I open the gate and approach the house.
The boys stare at me with dumb, blank looks on their faces and I completely understand that they might be retarded. They’re playing vroom vroom with cars. I look in to their faces and know by the time they’re my age, I will be in the ground, rotting into dust. I’m the previous chapter in the history of life.
“Is your mother home?” I ask them. Dispatch told me their names, but I don’t give a shit. This is a dead end. From what I know about all the other leads I’ve found on these homicides, suicides, whatevers, all these leads are dead ends. Dead, fucking ends. That’s
where these roads lead. The boys look at me, not nodding, not shaking their heads. I’m getting a whole lot of nothing from them. Thankfully, someone inside has seen or heard me. I can hear them approaching.
“Can I help you?” a matronly voice calls out to me as she pushes open her screen door and steps out on the porch. Her mere presence is enough for the boys to rise and go inside. They don’t need to be told what to do. They’re afraid of strangers. Good. They might live a little longer if they keep that with them.
“My name is Detective Steven King.” I hold up my ID for her to see. She looks at it, wrinkling her nose and squinting as she looks through her glasses. “I’m here inquiring as to the whereabouts of your daughter, Rebecca Roberts.”
“Becca’s here,” the woman I’m guessing to be Wendy says. “She came here last night when the other detectives told her about what Chad’s been up to.”
“Well, I’m not Robbery,” I say, taking off my glasses. “Do you mind if I have a word with Rebecca Roberts?”
“Mom, who is it?” a voice calls from deeper inside the house. I hear her coming. As she approaches the screen door, the darkness contrasts her silhouette and as she comes into the light, pushing the door open, I see the two boys around her legs, staring at me with their blank, vacant stares. They’re starting to unnerve me. Rebecca stares at me for a moment and I hold her gaze. She has lovely jade eyes that are enormous, larger than I thought eyes could be in proportion to her round face. She’s pretty, but the beauty begins to drip away into fear. “Can I help you?” she asks me.
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