by Glen Krisch
The dream thing purred like a kitten, even as they cuffed its hands (or were they paws? they wondered) behind its back. It didn't struggle a bit. It seemed totally unaware of its surroundings. All it wanted was to be fed. Maybe a saucer of milk would do. Yes, a saucer of milk, and a warm fireplace to curl up in front of… and then maybe some sleep.
They closed the dream thing inside an empty, secluded cell. It went over to the hard bunk, curled up into a ball, and began to purr.
The boy had been at the park fountain. Mr. Freakshow knew this before he even found his windbreaker. When he had seen the oasis of lush green amongst all the gray of the city, he was certain the boy would have explored its mystery. Every stride he put behind him heightened his sense of the boy's presence. To Kevin, the secluded fountain would have looked as inviting as a loving maternal hug. Yes, the boy had definitely rested by the trickling fountain for an extended period.
The Freak leaned his substantial form to the water's edge and could feel the coolness climb through the air to greet the claws of his extended hand. He cupped a handful of the coolness and brought it to his feral lips. The boy had been in the water. The Freak's eyes flared yellow with excitement. He laved his palms with his tongue, imbibing the fluid like it was life itself. He consumed it, tasting the boy. He was close. Soon enough his blood would entice his tongue instead of his discarded wash water.
Mr. Freakshow licked his palm dry and stepped into the bubbling fountain. He let the water simmer the heat of his hatred. The damned human form and all its frailty--once he had his claws buried in the boy's chest cavity, the Freak would turn his attention to the next step of his master plan. Gather up those dreams worthy of standing next to him. Build an army worthy of serving him. It would be a more luxuriant time. A time when he could go about his business of destroying the humans in a methodical manner, enjoying every quavering lip and tattered body.
For now, he would soak up the essence of the boy. He eased his body lower until he was submerged past his nostrils and only his eyes were visible above the surface.
A young couple latched at the hip, and looking so tuned to each other that they resembled siblings, wandered over to the water fountain. So caught up in the moment and the artifice of their love, they never saw Mr. Freakshow. He fought his impulse to kill and probed for the dream soul of these two hapless humans. The Freak could see the girl's unwavering devotion to her boyfriend, just beneath the skin, a shadow of her human desires, her petulant and nauseating dreams. He saw the gossamer collage of flowing white wedding gowns, cream colored flowers in piled heaps, and the strong, square-shouldered figure of a man dressed in black. His face was not visible; all he saw was shadow. To this young lady the man of her dreams was all that it really was, a dream man, a shape only. A symbol. Her boyfriend fit the mold. Her devotion in her waking world was to the symbol he represented.
The boyfriend had no clue. When the Freak looked inside him, just beneath the skin, hanging tenuously like connective tissue, was the boy's dreams. He had a spiteful, dark soul, and his dreams mirrored this. The girl was only a depository for his sperm. She was a body, a piece of meat, something to soil and discard. Mr. Freakshow laughed and the fountain water rippled. The boyfriend jerked a look over his shoulder as Mr. Freakshow stood, shaking the water from his skin. The girl screamed.
"I sure love that sound. Like manna from heaven."
The Freak made his choice. The irony of the two lovers loving something other than who they were fucking was not lost on him. The girl fucked a symbolic ideal. The boy fucked a wet hole. The girl was too sweet to let live. He struck, with unfurled claws, without an ounce of sympathy for his victim. The park became a blur of torn flesh and blood-tainted water.
He allowed her to scream, even after he knocked her boyfriend off his feet and against a nearby tree, he let her scream. Mr. Freakshow felt badly for eventually silencing the girl. He shouldn't have gone for the throat so quickly. She continued her struggle, but the only sound she gave off was the blood flowing down her shoulders, spurting from her mortal wound. The Freak brought his prey into the fountain, the essence of Kevin lingering in the water. He slumped into the water, pulling the girl with him. He plunged his teeth into the remains of her neck and held her firmly in his coiled arms. He flipped over violently in the water, his limbs clinging to her dying body, flipped until her heard her fragile human neck snap in his jaws.
He held her under until her skin started to soften. He knew he shouldn't have done something so impulsive, but then again, he understood where he came from. Perhaps he had been spurred on by finding Kevin's trail. A boy's mind had spawned Mr. Freakshow, and sometimes he couldn't help a child's unthinking impulse.
Chapter 18
Kevin and Sophie shared an amiable banter while they walked through the crazed streets of Chicago. Everyone they passed seemed to have grocery bags in tow, weighed down with nonperishable cans and dry goods. People strained to carry multiple gallons of water.
"You know my name, but you never gave me yours," Sophie said.
"My name's Kevin." He purposely left off his surname. He didn't know why he was walking with this old lady. He had never met her before and his mom was always harping on him about not talking to strangers. But Sophie seemed different, not scary or threatening. Yet somehow, there was something recognizable in her. Maybe she shared similarities with his grandma. Walking with Sophie seemed to bring him a certain level of calm, and as long as he was fleeing from Mr. Freakshow, he would take it where he could.
"Kevin, I'm glad to have met you."
He made sure to match her more casual pace. Sophie seemed to be oblivious to the tension in the crowd. She would nod or give some other small gesture to most of the people as they hurriedly walked by, as if in recognition, but she couldn't know all of these people. Could anyone be so nice?
They had gone a few blocks and he was beginning to realize just how tired he was. It wouldn't be dark for quite a while, even with the days getting shorter, but Kevin was getting hungry and he would have to start thinking about where he was going to sleep. When he found a safe place, he would rest his eyes for a couple hours, get off his feet and try to relax. If relaxing was possible anymore.
Sophie spoke as they walked. "So, Kevin, what are your big plans?"
"I was thinking about heading out to the country, maybe hook up with a farm or ranch or something like that."
"That sounds wonderful. I grew up on a farm."
"You did?" Kevin had never met an actual farmer, but he had an idea they were a different kind of person, almost like from a foreign country. Farmland surrounded his hometown of Warren Cove, but it always seemed far away. "My grandpa was a country boy," he said, remembering what his grandmother had recently mentioned. "He didn't like the city, and I don't think I do, either."
"A farm is a nice place for a kid to grow up. I sure enjoyed it. I milked cows and split logs all the time."
"You split logs?" He sized up Sophie with a quick glance. He couldn't imagine her being able to lift an axe, let alone use one to split logs.
"When I was younger I was as fit as you. And I was always strong for my size, even though I'm a girl."
They didn't talk much after that. Occasionally, Sophie would point to where she wanted to turn. Kevin didn't want his words to ruin this respite from fear. He was glad Sophie wasn't asking about his parents or trying to turn him into the cops as some kind of juvenile delinquent. He was sick of people asking about his parents. And from now on, he had to accept the fact that he didn't have any. Distancing himself from thoughts of his mom--thinking about her frantically searching for him, crying over the loss of him, his grandma trying her best to console her--none of this could bother him anymore. He was on his own, and it would stay that way, for his safety and the safety of his family.
"This is my stop, Kevin." Sophie stopped at a corner. They stood and looked at each other for what seemed like a long time. "I've enjoyed talking to you, Kevin. Would you like to stop in and have s
ome chocolate chip cookies and talk some more? You can meet my husband."
"Well…" Kevin said, looking at his suddenly antsy feet. He liked Sophie, but if Mr. Freakshow was close, he was putting her life in danger as well as his own just by standing there.
"I baked the cookies not more than an hour ago. I just stopped down to the store to pick up some supplies, what with all that's going on."
His stomach grumbled its emptiness, as if it had its own set of ears and was eavesdropping on their conversation. "Well, okay. But just for a little while."
"Wonderful!" Sophie held her hand up high in the air, her palm facing Kevin. "Aren't you going to high-five me, or do young men not do that anymore?"
Kevin laughed and slapped Sophie's hand. Her apartment was in a washed-out building in an equally washed-out neighborhood. The buildings looked like they were from another time, a time when there weren't cars or planes, let alone museums displaying the nightmares of traumatized children. Sophie looked younger than Kevin's grandma, and she was light on her feet and moved like someone even younger. She had her hair pulled back, and he saw traces of black hidden within all the gray. He was surprised that someone like Sophie would live in such a neighborhood. He didn't want to judge the area too much, but it was a wreck. Sophie was nice. Sophie was intelligent. Bad people lived in bad neighborhoods. She unlocked the door and stepped inside, holding the door open for him.
"This is my tiny apartment, and the man sitting on the stool is my husband, Andrew," Sophie said as they entered her studio apartment. She immediately lowered a heavy steel bar across the closed door, flipped a deadbolt in place and chained the door. So she did know just how bad their neighborhood was.
Sophie left Kevin to get a plate of cookies and a pitcher of milk. Andrew didn't seem to notice him right away. He crouched over from where he squatted on a foot-high stool, dabbing a paintbrush against the wall. All of the walls and most of the ceiling was a big canvas, and Andrew was busy filling up the bottom corner of one of the walls to complete a country scene. The mural was frighteningly similar to what Kevin had in mind when he thought of his venture into the country.
"Hello?" Kevin mumbled.
Andrew turned away from the mural, his expression as inviting as Sophie's had been after Kevin had run into her. He had a mustache as big as the Yorkshire terrier Kevin had laughed at this morning. What was her name… Gerty? Gerty the yappy little Yorkshire terrier. Had that been just this morning? The day seemed like a whole week or longer.
"Why, hello there. My name's Andrew. And you?" He was wearing old gaudy clothes that Kevin would have snickered at if he saw Andrew on the street, but he bit his tongue. He couldn't laugh at someone Sophie cared about; his parents had taught him better. Andrew's shirt had a wide collar and a strange red check pattern. His pants were rough brown polyester and fit snuggly on his thin legs.
"I'm Kevin."
The walls seemed like windowpanes peering into another world. Golden brown wheat fields seemed to sway in an imaginary wind. Cotton ball clouds cast their long shadows on the fields below, and then he saw them converge and coalesce, merging into larger and larger white puffs of cloud. Kevin shook his head. The painting was as still as a rock when he looked again.
"What do you think? Is the sky too blue? It's been so long I can't remember what the country sky looks like." As Andrew looked at his mural, he turned his head on axis like a dog straining to understand.
"No. I think it's good. Looks better than the real sky."
Andrew made a soft clucking noise with his tongue. "That's the problem. It needs to look like the real sky, not bluer or deeper or cloudier. No sky is perfect. The sky in my memory has flaws, as any sky does."
Kevin studied the wall. Different textures revealed themselves in the paint layers. At first the fields were the same simple golden brown that he had originally seen. Then he saw the layers of red and green underneath it all. The coarse fiber of the plants looked as real as a photograph. Kevin saw beyond the first stalks of wheat, and soon it felt like he was becoming lost in layer upon layer and row upon row of the field. Somehow, the tiny studio apartment smelled earthy and the closed-in air carried with it a certain heaviness, as if it would soon rain. But the vaporous paints quickly overpowered, and everything snapped back into focus. Kevin was only looking at a wall again.
"Here we go. I even warmed them for a few minutes in the oven. You like your cookies warmed I bet?"
"It's my favorite. My grandma… well that's how I like to eat them anyway."
"Good enough. Come on over and sit down. I'll pour you a glass of milk."
While Kevin finished off his third milk-dipped cookie, he felt guilty for eating in front of Andrew without offering him any. "Andrew, aren't you going to have any?"
"I'm not all that hungry. I want to keep on painting as long as I have my inspiration," he said and turned to Sophie. They shared something with their eye contact, as if they didn't need to speak to communicate. Andrew must have been twenty years younger than Sophie. His hair was mostly dark brown peppered with gray, while his thick mustache had no trace of gray at all. His wrinkles looked new, also. It was hard for Kevin to judge people's ages, especially when they were older than sixteen or so, but it looked like Sophie had robbed the cradle. Maybe that's why she was so spry and exuded such happiness all the time.
Kevin and Sophie continued talking for a long time. It was hard to tell how late it was in the windowless apartment, but Kevin had a feeling it was getting dark by now. Kevin learned that Sophie and Andrew had moved to the city almost twenty years ago. They had both been teachers in their hometowns after growing up as farmers' kids. Andrew had been a high school art teacher, while Sophie had taught the sixth grade. Kevin thought that he would love to be taught by Sophie, and that he would be going into the sixth grade soon--next week, if he lived that long. The thought that he might never go back to school popped into his head. He thought about Reid and all the other kids from the baseball field. It was like it was finally sinking in. He wasn't going home. He wasn't going home, and he would never make any friends. Who would he spend Christmas with, make snow forts with, and go fishing with in the springtime? All of these thoughts deluged his mind, and he had to block it out, or he might start crying.
"You must have enjoyed my cookies because there aren't even any crumbs left."
"Yes, ma'am, they were delicious."
"You're dragging a little around the edges. Why not stay awhile? You could take a short nap, if you like."
"I shouldn't have stayed this long. I should get going." Kevin got to his feet. His toes felt raw in his shoes and it wouldn't surprise him to look down and see hot metal rods poking his thighs. He was wiped out.
"Really, now. Do you think you'll get far as tired as you are?" Sophie said.
"I think she's right, Kevin. You look beat. Why not take a load off, and rest up. We have room enough for you to catch a couple Zs." Andrew had gotten up from his stool for the first time since Kevin arrived. He stood next to his wife and put his gangly arm around Sophie's shoulders. He was a good foot taller than her, but they seemed to fit in some odd way. Apart, they were imbalanced, but together they became a steadier whole.
Kevin took a couple steps toward the door, but he realized they were right. He was exhausted and it didn't help that he had slept no more than a few hours the night before. Once outside, he didn't know where he would go, just away and as quickly away as possible. Once outside, fatigue would weaken his defenses. He could barely keep his eyes open as it was.
"Okay. I guess I'll stay a little while. Not more than an hour or two. I need to be on the move." Kevin felt betrayed by his body, by the warmth and security provided by these strangers. He wanted to be mad at them, but couldn't summon the effort.
Sophie opened a folded cot and brought over a handmade quilt and extra pillow. Kevin sat down on the cot, and was glad he could see the whole apartment from his resting place. Andrew was back to his painting, and as Kevin pulled his legs onto
the cot, Sophie went over to be with her husband. Their eyes met again and they shared a moment as they had earlier. They were happy despite their meager apartment, and had enough happiness to share with a stranger they had just met.
Sophie took up a long wooden paintbrush, and as a couple, they added fresh paint to the countryside. Sophie hummed softly as she worked, some familiar and nameless tune, and she swayed to her slight song, occasionally adding brush strokes to the mural.
Within a few minutes, Kevin was fighting his heavy eyelids and struggling to focus on Sophie and Andrew. When he was a sliver away from falling asleep, with one foot on the other side of sleep, his eyes started playing tricks on him. The wall of reality crumbled around the lifelike murals. The three of them were no longer in a cramped studio apartment. They were in the countryside, surrounded by rolling hills of wheat heavy with ripe seed. Sophie continued to hum, but she and Andrew set down their paintbrushes. She gave a small curtsey to her husband, and he responded with a deep and respectful bow. They started to dance in a formal manner, all stiff arms and flowing gestures.
A breeze invaded the former apartment and the earthy wheat field smell returned, clouding Kevin's drifting mind. A lone black bird flew overhead, swooping down into the wheat and out of sight. The golden field was at its peak. Sophie and Andrew were happy, enjoying each other's company. And Kevin felt safe. When he finally fully accepted sleep, he didn't need to dream. There were plenty of dreams in the outside world to fill that need.
When Kevin woke with a start, he had a feeling that the day was gone, that night had come and touched the land with its dark hand, and it was now morning. His eyes were gummy and his mouth tasted like a monkey's armpit. He stretched his arms over his head and stood from the cot. To his surprise, his back didn't hurt like it usually did after sleeping on his Uncle David's old mattress. The first thing he did was make sure the dried paint on the walls wasn't moving, and that nothing was about to step from the painted cinder blocks. Then he smelled breakfast food. So, it was morning. A half wall blocked off the kitchen area, but he could see the top of Sophie's head from the kitchenette.