The Trace Trilogy (Book 1): The Wretched

by R. James Faulkner

  With an intimidating expression on the boy’s face, he knew he would scare Ben away. His fat jowls formed weightless threats, while his fat belly jiggled over his swimming shorts. Charlie could recall the way his chubby tits looked like an old woman’s breasts. He was alone, no one around to see his pudgy hands giving Ben the middle finger. The way he yelled and teased him, his acne covered face was a pockmarked round of red flushed fat. He moved to come across the creek. Ben was frozen with fear, unsure if he should run. He seemed to wait for the boy to get him. Moments passed before he recovered from the sudden shock and he sprinted away, running toward home.

  But not Charlie, oh no. Not Charlie at all. Charlie didn’t like that game. He had a different version. He liked the game where the fat piggy got what he deserved.

  The boy made the fatal mistake to come across at the deepest spot where the water slowed his movements. His girth contributed to his feeble looking advancement. In the large boy’s mind, he must have looked threatening with the way he crossed, but in reality, he looked like a plump pig trying to swim. Charlie giggled as he recalled the look on his fat face when that large chunk of mud-covered sandstone struck the top of his head. The look of complete and utter surprise as his head went slamming into the brown water. The way he floated up against the mud bank, his plump and pale back sticking from the water. Charlie felt delightful at the beautiful sight. Pride swelled inside him when he saw his achievement.

  Charlie left the boy to bob in the smelly water. Ben was shocked when his mother told him the next morning, they all were. How could it have happened in such a quiet little town? Charlie knew why. The fat boy played with an angry snake and was bitten. Ben cried about it, but not Charlie. No, he laughed until he was hoarse.

  A year later, the old man and his barking dog became a problem. Ben hated to walk past his house on his way to the store. When his mother would send him for a jug of milk or a forgotten bag of flour, he would have to pass by it twice. Once on his way to and again on his way from. The old man knew Ben had to walk on the sidewalk that bordered his yard, there was not a shoulder on the other side. The way he would watch Ben try to hurry by, the words he yelled at him, they were petty, malicious acts by a mean old man.

  That small evil barking dog would run full speed to the end of his chain, snatching himself backward from his own force. Its little front legs would lift from the ground as it strained to get him and the old bastard would holler. He told Ben he was hurting his dog, that he would call the police. Ben knew he was deranged, he never spoke back to the old bald man. He never told him to shut up, to pull his pants up, put away his genitals, to stop exposing himself. No, Ben never did, but Charlie did.

  There came the day Charlie had enough of the toothless mouth yelling about how he would press charges, so he stepped across the lawn. He stomped the barking bag of fur’s head right into the dirt it shit on. Charlie clomped up the steps, slow and loud. He stood in front of the sagging, rancid smelling old man, pointed to his withered penis and laughed. Charlie told him, ‘You shouldn’t show that to me. I may want to cut it off and go fishing’, he launched a large glob of spit onto the old man’s face and walked back to the sidewalk.

  But he made one mistake, he did not kill him right then. No, he left, and the old man called the cops about the trespasser. When he returned that night with a dollar and seventy-five cents worth of gasoline, he set the old bastard’s house ablaze. He stood outside in the open yard beneath the old man’s bedroom window. Charlie lingered so he could hear the cries of terror from those old snuff-stained lips. He enjoyed listening to him scream as the flames consumed him before he ran back home to crawl in his bed. The cops did not have to go far to find the one who lit the house afire.

  How their mother cried out, her voice rose high and long, followed by the look of utter disbelief on his father’s face. There were months of meetings with different doctors and other mental health professionals. They spoke with several lawyers, and then the frowning judge who called him a deviant. The sheriff made assumptions that he may have killed the Patterson boy. It was not proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, and the charge was dismissed. They locked him in the house, away from other people. They taught him there, kept him safe, at least until they no longer could when the world went to hell.

  Charlie was the bad seed. Ben was the sweet boy. Charlie could only play when the game was too rough. The two sons trapped sharing one body. Two minds and only one brain. The first son was too afraid of the world, the second son was too eager to burn it all to the ground. Ben wanted nothing to do with violence. Charlie loved it. He enjoyed the harsh realities of the world, watching things fall apart, and reveling at the destruction he caused.

  I think I have a new game now, a better game to play, and a better world to play it in.

  He decided to leave Ben behind. The young man was useless in the new world. It was better he die comfortably on the carpeted floor than to die at the hands of a deranged killer. Charlie knew there was never a chance for Ben in any type of world. He believed Ben knew it as well.

  Charlie smiled at the thought of Ben wasting away, drying out, and becoming a mummy stuck to the floor of the abandoned office. He would be a relic of the weaker world.

  It’s better this way.

  37

  A sour taste lingered in his mouth. The thick paste of blood and saliva coated his tongue, making it hard to swallow. With nothing to drink for several hours, his throat was parched. His eyelids felt that the edges had ground glass in them. He could not bring himself to close his eyes. His guts felt to be tearing apart as if hooks dug into his intestines and held them under tension. Frank wished for relief. He begged any deity in the heavens or hell to release him from his torments.

  The door opened, and hard clacking heels announced the doctor’s entrance. He appeared determined, with wild eyes above a sadistic grin. Doctor Wilson slid onto the table and sat with his hands folded on his lap. He wore a mischievous grin, one that spoke of his knowing. Excited rasping breath flowed past his aged and yellowed smile.

  “Perhaps,” he said. He could not mask his cheerful mood. “You have decided to forgo this pitiful game and allow the process to work?”

  His hungry eyes scanned for clues while his quick flicking tongue worked over his thin lips. He stood and applied drops into Frank’s eyes. With marked irritation, he paced around the floor and waited for the answer. Frank heard his low voice, raising a threat to him from behind, as he drew closer to his ear.

  “If you do not cooperate, I will be forced to give you more treatments now.”

  Frank continued his quiet standoff. He tried again to count the small spots on the ceiling. His eyes focused on them, ignoring the feeling of the needle in his vein, the count was already to a hundred. A dread came to him when the other arm felt the same needle prick. He tried to look at his elbow as the white lab coat arm moved from him.

  “What did you do?”

  “Simply, what I must,” the doctor said. He presented both empty syringes into the air, for Frank’s inspection, before placing them on the table. “You have forced my position in this matter. I do not care for games, trickery, or lies.”

  More than fire crawled inside Frank’s veins, there was the similarity to thousands of biting ants that came with it. His neck tensed and it felt as if a tremendous weight was on his chest, crushing it into his spine. Frank’s lungs seemed to have forgotten the motion to breathe. Soon the world went into a keyhole, and it became all black. His fingers had the sensation of something chewing them off. It felt as though there were shards of hot metal in his legs, working themselves into his muscles, striking bone and drilling further on.

  Frank’s chest swelled outward and pulled in a large gasp of air. The world came back from its narrow field to the wide-eyed view he did not want to see. The doctor held a little metal blade. He let the knife reflect light into Frank’s eyes.

  “Ah, there you are,” Doctor Wilson said. His voice was at once warped and thunderous.
“I thought you’d left me.”

  Frank tried to focus on escape as endless waves of hot daggers penetrated his brain. His ears filled with the rush of his heartbeat while his body felt the simple pull of gravity on his flesh intensify. The lining of his throat was sandpaper and sent jolting pain up into his sinus cavity when the back of his tongue scratched against it. He could no longer form the actions to swallow. His body was only a collection of twitches and uncontrolled flinching.

  “Water,” Frank said. His voice crept past his lips, dry and raspy. “Please…water…”

  The doctor stood and frowned at him. He said, “We’ll trade, you and I, you give me something I want, and you get something you want.”

  Frank tried to nod his head. “Anything.”

  A crooked grin of chipped teeth twisted beneath the wrinkled skin of the doctor’s face. He walked to the far wall, out from Frank’s vision, opened something that sounded metal. The loud clacking of his heels came closer followed by the revelation of a plastic water bottle held suspended in front of Frank’s unmoving eyes.

  His mouth ached at the sight, and every cell in his body cried for it. He realized he was mouthing at it like a baby to a nipple. He did not care, not anymore, his body could not last much longer. The doctor opened the cap and sat it on the table.

  “What do you want most from this, Frank?” His hand went to his forehead as he asked and rubbed his brow with his skeletal fingertips.

  “To…be…”

  “Yes,” the doctor said. He leaned forward, anticipating the answer. “Go on, tell me what you want?”

  Frank sighed, the words fell from his mouth in one loud breath. He said, “To be healed.”

  The doctor’s enjoyment rewarded him with cool liquid splashes across his tongue. He sipped and licked at it, wanting more to flow into his throat.

  “Ah, ah, careful. Not too much at once.” His bony fingers pulled it away.

  Frank sucked at his cheeks, the thick coating came free in wads. He could move his tongue around without the deluge of pain. The knife wound the doctor gave his tongue was open again. Thick silver tasting blood dripped from his lip.

  “See how this works? You get a nicety when you provide me a necessity.”

  The doctor pulled his stool up to the table and placed his papers in neat little piles on the wood surface. He arranged his notepad just so, with the edge of the pad at the edge of the table. Doctor Wilson placed several pencils in a row above the pad and removed a little book bound in black leather, which he set to the left of the papers.

  He tilted the chair forward again and locked it into position. For several minutes, he stood and stared at Frank’s face. Without an explanation, he unbuckled the strap that held his head to the chair, and let it fall forward to hang over his chest. The doctor then returned to his stool and sat stiff back straight at the table. He folded his hands before him.

  Frank watched the world feather away in streaks of light. His head came to rest, and he looked at his lap. He watched as thick strings of bloody saliva fell from his lip and collected on his denim jeans. When he raised his head upward with his stiff and sore neck, his eyes landed on the schoolboy look of the older man. The doctor sat with a rigid posture, lessons ready at his hands, a thirst for some yet obtainable knowledge in his dark eyes.

  “Do you feel to continue?”

  Frank closed his eyes and experienced the grating of hot sand over his eyeballs.

  “Do you wish to continue our journey?” the doctor said. His tongue protruded and licked his lips. “Do you want to progress forward, into the depths, to the very core of this sickness?”

  With a heavy sigh, Frank lowered his head. His eyes cracked back open, and he looked at his arms. He saw the little red dots with blue bruise halos along his veins, both arms had them, of where the doctor pumped injections into his body. He lifted his head again and nodded it in quiet hopelessness.

  “Good.” The doctor stood and opened the small black case. “We shall begin the final embark.”

  Frank shook his head. “You said—”

  “Hush,” the doctor said. His fingers withdrew another syringe. “I told you these are treatments. The cure is not of chemical concoction, it is a therapy, a rehabilitation of the psyche.”

  Frank tried to bite at the hand as it carried the clear tube of liquid toward his arm. His eyes watched as the fluid disappeared from the clear plastic. He saw the metal needle slide out of his flesh. It left a small red spot of blood to stand on his skin.

  This shot was different, there was no sting, just a dull flow of warm. The spread of it was gentle, almost tranquil in its nature. Doctor Wilson sat back down to observe Frank’s reactions as he noted them on his paper.

  “I mixed it with morphine, you will notice the painless transition.”

  “Morphine?” Frank asked. He leaned his head back and tried to hold his eyes on the far wall.

  “Yes,” the doctor said. He glanced down at his watch before scribbling at the paper. “It will help, for what will happen next. Your body would try to reject it otherwise.”

  Long seconds passed, the doctor counted the time on his watch, waiting for it to begin. Frank grew more nervous but could not react. The morphine dulled his senses, but he felt there was something else present. The gnawing feeling one gets when something is not right. His fingers could not feel the metal of the armrest. He tapped against the metal trying to invoke feeling. The numbness had reached his tongue.

  “Relax.”

  Frank blinked repeatedly, his lids moved in fluttering jerks as tears formed. His mouth made unwanted chewing motions. Horrible muscle cramps started. He watched as the doctor wrote it all down on his paper while keeping a constant check on his watch.

  “You see,” the doctor said. His words were collected and stern. “This world was never meant to do what it has. We as a species, bred rampantly, consumed everything, all that we could find, and moved when the supply ran out. Like a bacteria that overwhelmed the host, we spread outward, colonizing, and destroying.”

  He stood from the table, pulled his glasses off his face, and walked around as he gave his lecture. Frank could see that the doctor felt it of great importance, with his waving arms and exaggerated gestures. He was preaching to a sinner, giving his own fire and brimstone sermon, letting his voice carry to the ceiling in dedicated fits of shouting.

  “It was a Halloween day that the United Nations declared we had swelled to seven billion people. Seven billion. Doubling the world population from only three and a half billion in just over four decades. All scurrying about like insects, drilling holes, and poisoning the air.”

  He waved his finger in Frank’s face and jabbed at the air with his bony digits. His face, feral and sweat coated, was inches away from Frank’s. There was the loud sound of him wheezing as he spoke, directing his words into Frank’s forehead.

  “We could not sustain ourselves,” the doctor said. “The earth could not support our exponential growth. No, it could not. Something had to be done, yes something, to curb our insatiable appetites. And the planet, regaining its reign over all, had enough of it. And it cast forth a disease of such an immense magnitude to cleanse the soil of its parasites.” The doctor held his arms wide. “And what was left was damaged, we know this. But, it can be made whole, the gifts of the mind are such valuable things. The morbidity rate does not need to continue. There is no reason to allow it to do so. We, you and I, can end the deluge and let man return to his rightful place in the world.”

  He knelt down in front of Frank and held his hand. His face transformed into a kind grandfather or a caring neighbor.

  “Do you want to be healed?”

  “Yes,” Frank said. He whispered as his chin trembled. “I want to be healed.”

  “Then we shall begin.”

  In the distance, Frank heard it again, louder, closer to his ears. He turned to see but the door was closed, and he could hear it then as if it were in the room. The doctor sat at the table, pen held r
eady in hand. He noticed his reaction.

  “What is it? What is there?”

  “The impossible,” Frank said. Shuddering as he spoke. “That damned crow cawing.”

  “Tell me, what is your name?”

  “Franklin.”

  “What is Franklin’s last name?”

  “Williams.”

  “Very good, Mr. Williams,” the doctor said. He showed his yellowed grin. “Tell me about that day, what did you see?”

  The doctor wrote on the paper, the sound of his scribbling boomed in Frank’s ears. He turned to look at the aging man, but he was gone, all of it was gone, save the sound of his voice. The doctor pressed him to tell him what he saw in the black void, about that day, that one particular and horrible day. Frank tried to resist, at first, then he could not fight against the current any longer. He let the pull of memories have his mind. Down he went into the dark cavernous hallways inside his thoughts.

  He had fallen to the floor and slid back from the oven, from the broken shards of glass and its contents. The sight was too much to bear. He looked away and tried to stand. His arms felt weak as he pulled, but he could not lift himself. The sound of his sobs flowed out into the pungent smoke-filled air.

  His hands shook as he held his face and howled in agony at what he had seen. The utter devastation she had caused him, the undeniable loss she had delivered, ripped a hole in his heart. He had sworn to cherish her, and he did. He had sworn to protect her, and he tried to the best of his ability. To keep her safe and secure, away from the people of the world that would harm her. But he could not stop what she had done to herself, and unable to stop what she had done to the both of them.

  He got to his knees, lifted his hands upward to an uncaring god, and begged for it to be over, to be removed from such a world. He screamed until he gasped for air in amongst the smoke. His body trembled in uncontrollable fits, his mouth hung open as he cried aloud. He shouted the word ‘No’ over and over until he felt it no longer held meaning for him. It became just an empty response to an unasked question. He sat on his knees and stared at the only thing that would have saved his otherwise fading sanity. He stared down at the charred remains of his future, their future, all of his hopes and dreams. She had ripped it away, placed it in a casserole dish with her amputated breasts, and set it all in an oven heated to four hundred fifty degrees.