Styrofoam Throne

by David Bone

“Oh. Hey.” Renaldo didn’t lift a smile.

  “Sorry I’ve been all busy lately.”

  “Oh, yeah, me too, man. Me too,” he said, taking a long hit.

  “Shit has been getting so hairy in there,” I said.

  “Yeah? Wolfman needs a shave?” Renaldo asked, raising his eyebrow as he passed the joint. It was so tiny that it burned my fingers and I dropped it.

  “Fumble, dude,” Renaldo said and stared into the distance.

  “Fuck. Dude, did I do something wrong, man? I’m sorry if I did. Shit has just been crazy, man.”

  “No, man.”

  “What’s up then?”

  “Did you ever just stop and think about shit?” he asked.

  “Yeah, man. I feel like all I ever do is stop and think about shit. Sometimes I just stop.”

  Renaldo looked me in the eye and nodded. He was super baked but in the zone and present.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “And some of my thoughts are heavier than any band I’ve ever heard,” Renaldo said, pointing at his Walkman.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, nothing . . .” It seemed like Renaldo was embarrassed. “Man, tell me, what’s it like having a mom?”

  “Shit, man. I don’t know. What’s it like having a dad?” I said.

  “Yeah . . . I don’t know.”

  I didn’t like to think about the dad thing that much these days. In the past, I spent so much time screaming in my head about it that I had to put it to rest. As much as I could anyway. I had broken so many slats on my bed, jumping up and down on them, crying and pulling my hair out.

  “Sometimes I think my dad was either the coolest guy in the world or just the worst,” I said.

  “That’s what I was thinking too.”

  “Which one?”

  “Both,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  Both of our lives had holes in them that were easier to imagine than the people we actually knew.

  “Do you think if everyone had just one parent, that people would miss having another?” Renaldo asked.

  “Like, if no one ever knew about the two parents thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know. But I heard some lyrics once that said, ‘You can’t miss what you never had.’”

  “Yeah, you can,” he said.

  I paused as Renaldo’s heaviness sunk in. He was right, but I had worked for years to disagree.

  Then we both spoke at the same time and said the same thing.

  “Fuck it.”

  It honestly felt like the best and only way to lift the insurmountable weight.

  “You need some new batteries, dude.”

  The next day, I became a full-time Satan worshipper.

  Jack appointed me High Priest in the Church of Satan. The A-frame room was painted red and had goat heads lining the walls. I stood on the pulpit in a black robe and ad-libbed incantations from The Grimoire of Castle Dunes prop book. When plebes came through, I’d whip myself into a crazy preacher persona.

  “Hail Satan! King of Hell!” My words boomed off the walls. “Let him who has understanding know the number of the beast! Six hundred and sixty-six!” I was in heaven, selling hell.

  “Well, I just had to see for myself,” a woman’s voice said. I looked up from the Grimoire and confirmed what I already knew. Janice. The scariest person in the whole place. The horror of reality that I was running from.

  Janice just stood there with her face clenched in disgust. She was trying to make me feel stupid. It was working but it didn’t make me want to leave. I wanted her to leave. This was supposed to be my place away from that look. That’s probably why she came. To show me that no matter how far down the rabbit hole I went, she could reach in and sideswipe me.

  “Oh, hey,” I said.

  “So, is this worth it?” she asked, white-knuckling the purse strap over her shoulder.

  “Jesus, come on.”

  “Now it’s Jesus, huh?”

  I stopped myself short of saying “gawd,” when three screaming plebes ran into the room. I stood in silence, trying to decide if I wanted to embarrass myself further by doing what I loved. The plebes saw me acting more scared of Janice than the reverse. They could feel the tension and gave us both funny looks.

  “Oh,” Janice said to them. “Don’t be afraid of him, he sleeps with a night-light.”

  The plebes erupted in laughter and ran off in search of better scares than a family on the brink.

  What a low blow. I hadn’t slept with a night-light out of necessity in forever. I simply kept it around because it was an awesome green skull. And also, if I was that scared, why would I want a green skull staring at me all night?

  “This place is a giant toilet and you’re pulling the handle,” she said. It was hard to argue how accurate that had been for me a couple weeks ago. But I was sworn to defend the Castle and my cast member status.

  “Why can’t you see I’m happy here?” I said.

  She gave me a head-to-toe look and squinted at my morbid makeup.

  “Oh, you look so handsome, Donovan. And praising Satan? Bravo . . .”

  My lip started to quiver as I held back tears and rage in equal amounts. The Castle was supposed to be my shield but I was powerless against her attack.

  “Don’t cry because of me. I wouldn’t want you to start now,” she said and dug a candy bar out of her purse, holding it out for me. Fuck. How did she know I was starving? I hesitated, reached down from the pulpit and grabbed it. But she didn’t let go. Janice locked eyes with me and didn’t say anything, but her look did. It said, “You may think you are the High Priest of the Church of Satan but you still need a melted candy bar from your mom, don’t you?”

  I wasn’t going to turn it down. And I hated that.

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  Janice gave me a new look that seemed to say she pitied us both and left. My sigh of relief was interrupted by the embarrassing realization that my co-workers in the next room would be popping out at her. I heard a monster bark and growl on the other side. Janice simply hissed, “Oh, just stop it already.”

  When Janice first told me about me working at the Roost and her keeping the paycheck, I thought she was being insane. But after seeing a Past Due notice on our door from the power company, I changed my mind. I had just gotten paid for two weeks and had a pocket full of cash, including a “You got your ass kicked” bonus from Jack. I wanted to spend it buying one of Renaldo’s stolen bikes. It would make it a lot easier getting to work and I was tired of walking home drunk.

  Janice always bought groceries on the same day every week, the day after she got paid on Saturday. It was Friday and the cupboard was in its usual dwindled state. Before I went to work, I decided to go to the grocery store and stock the house. Normal food stuff, but also what I believed to be thoughtful items like toilet paper, shampoo, and a TV Guide. And some shit just for me. I lugged the bags back to our house and put them on the kitchen table before leaving for the Castle.

  On break at work, I met up with Renaldo and said I didn’t have the money like I promised.

  “How come?” he said.

  I told him and he just gave me the bike for free.

  When I came home that night, I expected things to be a little better with my act of maturity. Going into a grocery store and not coming out with just booze seemed like a big step. I opened the door and Janice jumped up from the couch in a fury. She had a box of condoms in her hand and a look of wide-eyed disgust. Shit, in my dash for work, I forgot to take them out.

  “Whose are these, mister sex guy? Huh? Whose are these?” She was so pissed.

  “What?” I didn’t know what to say, I was shocked and confused at her level of anger. Even if I was doing something she thought wrong, I was clearly doing the responsible version of it.

  “What?! This is what!” she said, shaking the condoms. “What are you doing?” Janice leaned on the last wor
d with pure revulsion.

  “Nothing.” She genuinely wanted an answer. What was I supposed to say? “Mom, I slowly roll one of those over my raging boner and then put it in a dripping pussy until I fill the end up with jizz.” This was going a lot differently than the condoms talk with Jack. My grocery gesture was ruined by my sexual responsibility. She forbade me from working at the Castle all over again. I pointed to the groceries and said, “But look!” It didn’t matter. I had soiled its contents with my carnal lust.

  “Nothing?!” she hissed. “Oh I know what nothing is! Where have you been doing this?!”

  “Nowhere.”

  “I know where that is too! Dip Shit City, aka Trouble Town!”

  My normal defense tactics of “what,” “nothing” and “nowhere” were useless against her rage. I had to say something else.

  “What am I supposed to do, not have sex?”

  “No!”

  “Where did I come from then?”

  “That’s my point!”

  It was a bummer to hear that. Don’t do this or you might end up with you! Jack’s version was much better. At what point does a child having sex become acceptable to a parent? Never for Janice. She refused to accept the inevitable. She made it seem just as bad to even think about it. I thought she should be happy her son was exhibiting signs of normalcy. Janice always said I should “interact” with people more.

  “This is so unrealistic,” I said.

  “I wish this was unrealistic. It’s too fucking realistic! Everything!”

  Yeah, it was too fucking realistic. The living room was too real. Janice’s anger was too real. My failed stab at adulthood was too real. I needed to dive head-first into the deep end of Castle Dunes. And wrap myself in wolf skin.

  I asked Jack if Melody and I could do a room together. I thought it was a foolproof plan to spend more time with her. He just said, “This is a horror house, not a motel.”

  “But we’ve got chemistry.”

  “This place is enough of a soap opera. You guys will just jerk each other off behind a coffin. No one wants to see the Wolfman’s dick,” he said with a laugh.

  I was embarrassed and pretended to be professional.

  “This job is really important to me. I wouldn’t do anything to fuck it up. I just think if I’m locked up in some room for fourteen hours, I’d rather it be with her.”

  Jack sighed.

  “Dono, Melody’s a great girl but she’s a free spirit. It wouldn’t hurt to think that way yourself. It’s summer, Dono.” Jack paused. “Summer.”

  Since my plan wasn’t happening I suggested to Melody that we dial in a different channel on the walkies. We used number six so we could crack jokes to each other. She thought it was brilliant and we kept them on for the full day. We used the walkies to arrange hookups in the Castle instead of taking our break. The best place to do it was still the storage room.

  It was becoming one of my favorite places in the Castle for the obvious reason, but it also had all these fucked-up old Castle props. Like it was the designated graveyard for the place. I was usually up there before Melody and I’d rummage around.

  The best thing it held was the old Dracula robot that used to be in front of the Castle for years. It did a few rotating quotes, like “Come! Come into my Castle! I vant your . . . ticket!” and “I bid you welcome, children of the night, to Castle Dunes!” I guess they had to take it down after it took a beating in a big storm. But now robot Dracula looked even scarier. It had a deteriorating face with dead eyes, exposed machinery, and tattered clothes. Robot Dracula was so much cooler than Colin Dracula.

  It was still plugged into the wall. I shook it to see if anything would happen, but also just to touch the thing I had stared at for years.

  Pow! It came to life with a painful-looking spasm and wriggled around. The jolt gave me an electric shock as it sparked to life. There weren’t any sound effects hooked up, so it was silent and looked in pain with jerky limited movement. The mouth moved but no words came out. I put it out of its misery, unplugged it and propped him back up. The dead, red eyes staring through me started creeping me out. I buried him behind some old gargoyles. Sad to see an old friend in such bad shape.

  On our sex breaks, Melody and I couldn’t take our makeup off, so it became kind of strange when she would be doing Lizzy Borden and have some evil face thing going on. It was still pretty impossible to make her look ugly. There was also the plus side of the costumes. When she worked in a coffin scene she wore a nightie and I got to pretend like we were actually doing it in a bedroom setting, which still hadn’t happened. I looked weird too if I wasn’t doing a mask role where I could just take it off. I was a zombie once with elaborate rotting-face makeup on and Melody said she just wanted to do it from behind. I caught my reflection in one of the old mirrors and freaked myself out. In the middle of doing it, I started laughing and had to explain that it wasn’t at her.

  Sometimes there’d be awkward silence afterward. I thought things would be more relaxed. Maybe she was. I was too busy tripping out on anything my mind could get hold of.

  “What’s your favorite band?” I asked her. It was just shy of asking favorite color, but whatever.

  “King,” she said. The same band from the patch Renaldo gave me after I fell off the pier.

  “Yeah, he rules.” I didn’t know anything about King other than that Renaldo was a big fan.

  “They’re playing in a week at the Arena Dome up north. We should go,” she said.

  “We” again. Knowing that I would have a week of us together leading up to the show felt like anything was possible after it. I didn’t want to go back to being an “I.”

  By taking advantage of my job, I started feeling more comfortable about being one of the Castle gang. I was becoming like them. Partying, fucking, and abusing power, we were all under the same roof. The same spell.

  I wanted to approach Jack about some suggestions. I had this idea for a new commercial. It’d have a big, fat Dracula and he’s all, “I’ve been eating so much of your town, I’ve gotten huge!” It’d be a vampire’s ultimate success—the wealth of obesity.

  I went to Jack’s office and opened the door without knocking. Jack was wildly pumping away at some young plebe chick, laid out on his desk.

  “Goddamn it, knock!”

  “Shit, sorry!” I yelled, slamming the door.

  I stood frozen behind the door. Forgetting to knock was going to flush my dreams straight down. I was gonna be fired for sure. Who survives that encounter? I started thinking of fake emergency excuses to explain later.

  Then Jack yelled from behind the door, still in the act, “Kid, let’s go to lunch today. Meet me out front on the benches, I’m buying.”

  Jack sat on a bench in front of the Castle with a grocery bag. Parked on the curb in front of him was his Castle Dunes hearse.

  “What should we get for lunch,” I said.

  Jack pulled two twenty-four-ounce, tall-boy beer cans out of the grocery bag.

  “This,” he said. Jack passed me one and cracked his open, gazing out at the passing cars. His gold chain was usually floating on top of his chest hair, but now it was tangled up with gross sweat.

  We sat on the same bench where I got caught being a beggar by Janice. And now here I was, guzzling a beer in public with the owner of Castle Dunes. Cooling off in its shadow, I told Jack my idea for the commercial. He thought it was dumb. Said it wasn’t sexy enough.

  Jack didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about the Castle. He was taking in everything around him except the looming five stories behind us. I tried to drum up something else.

  “Your car rules. If I was rich, I’d buy it off you,” I said.

  “I wish you would! I hate that fuckin’ thing.”

  “Whoa, why?”

  “Why? Look at it, for chrissakes.”

  It had to be almost twenty years old. There was a good amount of sea spray–induced rust and corrosion. The “Follow me to Castle Dunes” writing
had faded a lot and been sloppily fixed a few times. And the doors had been keyed up.

  “Yeah, it’s awesome,” I said.

  “It’s good for business. And my taxes,” Jack said and took a swig. “Creepy for most chicks though. For me too. It sure wasn’t new when I got it.”

  A red Corvette sped past us.

  “See that?” he said, pointing his drink at the car and spilling some. “That’s what I want. That lucky fucker.”

  “But whatever, you’ve got the Castle,” I said.

  “It’s no red ’vette, Dono. The ’vette’ll get me laid up and down the block. One day, baby!”

  “You can get laid at the Castle though,” I said and took a sip.

  “Sure, yeah. But the Castle is a few months. Its purpose is not the same,” Jack said, wagging an extended finger off his beer grip. “The ’vette is year round. Not only does it get you from A to B like a motherfucker . . . but also! Also! With a ’vette . . . point B becomes Destination: Touchdown.”

  Jack crushed his can and cracked another brewski. He passed me a new one but I wasn’t even half done with the first.

  “You said the purpose of the Castle is not the same,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “What is it?”

  “Money. Everything else,” he took a long swig and came up for air, “is bullshit.”

  I couldn’t believe that the creator of the coolest thing in the world would refer to it as bullshit. Or that it was just a cash register.

  “So wait, are you, like, not into the horror stuff?” I asked.

  “Not as much as I’m into Corvettes!” Jack said with a laugh.

  I don’t know what I expected him to say. But I wanted to hear about how our camaraderie was based on similar interests. Not profit motivated. I couldn’t hide my disappointment.

  “Hey, what happened, buddy? I thought we were having a great lunch here?” he said, raising a can.

  “Nothing,” I said and looked down at the ground. Jack kept waiting for me to speak. I finally let out a tangential explosion. “I don’t want to leave the Castle. I don’t want to go back to school. I don’t want to go home.” I tried to add a more rebellious tone to it at the end, but I’m not sure it came off.