“Just asking. I mean, I looked at the packet and started taking notes, but I don’t have a partner yet. You interested?”
Doby finishes his pizza, wipes his hands on his jeans. “Sure, I guess.”
Why'd I ask? The warning bell sounds. Benches and tables scrape across the floor as everybody hurries towards the garbage cans. Carlos cuts us a look from across the room, but doesn’t stop. Jenna is too busy with her friends to pay attention to me, not like she ever does at school anyway. Spence glares at us, his arm around my sister like she’s his property.
“Yeah, um, okay.” I hitch up my backpack, take a step towards the garbage cans. “See you in class and we can set something up?”
Doby shrugs. “Whatever.”
I don’t stick around.
Two days later, I’m out the door with the escape bell and on my way to the bus when I see shit going down by the planters out front. Carlos, Justin, and a couple others have Doby cornered, knuckling him in the arm, getting up in his face. Some nearby keep an eye out for school security. The rest pretend not to watch.
Doby is pissed, gut you and leave you to bleed pissed, his face all flushed and shoulders hunched tight. He wants to hurt them bad. I feel it in my stomach, the way he wants to grind their faces into the cement. Carlos and the rest keep pushing him to make the first move, but Doby doesn’t do shit back, never does, which only makes it worse.
I’m moving before I realize it. Next thing I know Doby is at my back, and I’m leaning into Carlos, talking low, “Wassup, man? C’mon, you don’t wanna do this, huh?”
Everyone’s watching us. “What the fuck, man?” Carlos says in my ear, his breath hot and sour against my cheek. “This got nothing to do with you.”
“I know, I know, right? So leave off and we’re cool.” I don’t want to do this for a whole bunch of reasons. I’ve known Carlos since the third grade, he’s a bud, but treating Doby like the meat of the week is all because of Spence’s dare and that’s not cool. I don’t play that. “So, why you doing this?”
“I heard he’s talkin’ shit about me.”
“Doby doesn’t talk shit, man, you know it. He didn’t do nothing to you, right?” I step closer so he can feel me, letting him know I’m not going anywhere. I keep my hands flat against my legs so I don’t make fists. I keep it on the low. “What’s really going on?”
I see the memory of the weirdness in his eyes, his frown. “He went and said…”
“You hear him say anything, huh?”
That’s when Carlos looks over my shoulder. I don’t have to turn around to bet money he’s not looking at Doby but at Spence. I tell him, “You ain’t Spence’s bitch, man. I got it, you know. Leave off, huh?”
I slide my left foot back.
Carlos finally looks away, jerks his head to the side. “Yeah, man, be right there,” he says to the distance.
I didn’t hear anyone call him. I back up half a step. He does, too.
We bump fists, and it’s over. Carlos and the others head to the buses and cars. I think I see Spence watching from beside his car at the end of the bus line, but I can’t be certain. Doesn’t matter. I knew he was watching.
I’m twitchy; my shoulders ache from coming down. I turn around. “Listen, I—”
Doby puts a chunk of blue and white in his mouth. He chews it like a thick wad of gum. One of those dishwasher gel packs? Had to be gum. Had to be. He drops his skateboard and rolls off without a word, eyes wide and hating. I breathe through my mouth so I don’t smell detergent.
◙
Doby sucks as a partner. He doesn’t do much except tell me when I’m wrong, like he knows all about mercury levels in fish. At the library, he sits with his feet on the table and listens to music, doesn’t crack a book or log on to the net, and corrects everything I do. Thing is, he’s right every time, which pisses me off even more.
Jenna flips me shit. “I don’t think you can get any more retarded than asking Doby Chuckman to be your partner.”
Like she has room to talk. I bet she’s going to end up working part time at Taco Bell and taking night classes at the community college for her GED while the rest of her friends walk come June. I tell her where to get off. Mom gets on my case; it’s bad for the baby.
It’s all about the baby anymore. What about me? I may not be the smartest in my class, but the recruiters liked my test scores back in February and took down my name. Mom freaked, and Dad told me he could get me a job at the recycling plant. Screw that. No way I’m sticking around.
◙
Doby doesn’t show up for science for two days. Eddie says he hasn’t seen him all week. I’m sweating. The presentation draft is due tomorrow, and I was stupid enough to give him my thumb drive when he said he’d check the references. For five bucks Anna gets me Doby’s address from the office during third period, and I catch the express transit after school.
As soon as I step off the bus, it starts to rain. Great. I’m soaked and set to finish everything myself by the time I get to his house, fuck Doby and his freak stomach, the rusted cars and sacks of garbage in his yard, then the front door opens and I swallow everything I was going to say.
A small guy with a face like a hemorrhoid, puckered and mean, squints up at me through the screen door. “What?”
I can see the resemblance. His dad? “Yeah, uh, is Doby home?”
“Doh-ber-min! You got someone at the door!”
Doby’s named after a kind of dog? That’s messed up.
The man turns away. “Come on in. He’s in his room, end of the hall. Mind the cat."
The cat is sad, all bald patches and bug-eyes. It hides under the coffee table piled with newspapers and garbage and hisses at me on my way down the hall.
The far door has posters of Tony Hawk and 50 Cent. I knock. Doby opens it, a paler shadow in a house of shadows. “Wassup?”
I’m still angry, but this place looks like it has enough anger. “Hey, man.”
Doby looks me up and down. He steps to the side and motions for me to come in. “Hey.”
The room smells like sweat, cat pee, and pot. A bed, a dresser, a couple of broken down chairs. Piles of clothes and junk make it hard to walk. Can hardly see anything with the light off and the blinds closed. “Where you been? Haven’t seen you in school.”
He pushes magazines and clothes off of one of the chairs, then drops onto the bed. “Not feeling good.”
I sit, put my backpack at my feet. “That sucks.”
He shrugs.
Does he have a stomachache? I want to ask, maybe as a joke, I’m not really sure.
“Doh-ber-min! I know I told you to take out the garbage, dammit!”
Doby gets that look again, the hurt you, hate you, make you bleed look he had at school. An ugly look. It busts through the wall beside me, grabs Doby’s dad, and snaps his pretzel neck.
Doby is up off the bed, gets his hoodie, stuffs a bottle in the pocket. “C’mon.”
He scoops up the bag of trash on our way out. I say goodbye to his dad because I don’t want to be rude. His dad smokes and watches wrestling, doesn’t answer. He does yell something after Doby slams the door behind us, I don’t catch what. Doby doesn’t turn around.
We walk. Doby looks straight ahead, working his jaw the same as my dad when he’s pissed. I can’t get any more soaked. I didn’t come to hang out, but I don’t want to up and split. Doberman. A dog gets kicked all the time, you want to do the right thing and help. “You okay, man?”
Doby pulls out the bottle and has it open and two swigs gone before I smell pine and see enough of the label to realize it’s not iced tea. “Yeah.”
The question tumbles out of my mouth: “Dude, what’s wrong with you?”
I expect him to tell me to mind my own business. Instead he snorts and takes another drink.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Do I stop him? Knock him over and call 911 this time like I should have done at Marty’s Mart?
Another drink, half the bottle g
one. “What’s it to you?”
That catches me by surprise. I’m not his friend, not really, I don’t think. “I dunno. I just think it’d be a waste is all. You’re smart; you could be someone.” I look around at the rundown shoebox houses with pastel siding, the 7-11 next to a boarded-up liquor store, a dead end street in a dead end town. My dad could have made it out, but he quit college and came back to Youngstown when his dad died. Mom wanted to be a nurse; instead, she got married and works at fucking WalMart. “I mean, Youngstown ain’t worth dying for.”
We cross against the light, cars laying on the horns as they swerve around us. “It’s all I got,” Doby says. “All I’ll ever have.”
I shake my head. Water drips into my eyes. “Not me. I walk with my paper next year, and I’m gone, no looking back.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
We don’t say anything for a couple of blocks. “You ever get angry, Connor?” he says.
I nod. “Yeah.”
He looks at me full on, not from the side, not with a snarl. “I mean pissed, hate someone mean.”
That’s harder to answer. Those feelings are like a genie. I got this fear that if I admit to it, I’ll never be able to stuff it back in the bottle. “Once or twice, I guess.”
Half a block more. Where are we? No idea.
“I do,” he says. “I hate all of them, the fucks, the dorks, the douche bags.” He finishes the bottle and throws it into the bushes. “This is food, right, for when I want to kill them. All of them. I might still someday.”
“Dude.”
“Give it all back.”
That last part is as dark as his look. What does he want me to say? I think of the kicked dog, how it can turn on you without warning, and don’t say anything at all.
Doby pulls out the cigarette lighter fluid, squirts a stream into his mouth. I try not to watch, but it’s like a wreck on the overpass and I can’t look away. He pulls my thumb drive out of a back pocket. “Here.”
I take it. “Thanks.”
He brings out a plastic packet of green pellets, the label a cartoon dead mouse holding a lily. “Whatever.”
◙
I turn in the presentation rough and get to work on the finished project. Doby corrects me and eats bleach tablets.
Jenna starts having contractions. Mom says they’re Braxton-Hicks or something. Spence gives me the eye if I’m around when he picks Jenna up for birthing classes at the hospital. He only talks to me once, when Jenna’s upstairs getting ready and Mom’s in the kitchen. I’m on the couch with a Dr. Pepper and chips. Spence stands in the doorway watching me play Halo 2.
“Hey, Connor.”
I don’t look up. “Hey.”
“You still a pussy for the freak?”
I give a Brute Spence’s face and press down hard on the fire button, blowing his ass away. “Bite me.”
“Pussy,” he says.
I hear Jenna coming down the stairs and suddenly he’s all smiles. Mom tells them goodbye from the kitchen, and they’re gone. Then she nags me to get off the game and clean the cat box.
Doby and I don’t hang out so much as go for walks a couple of nights after the library closes. He drinks lighter fluid and listens to his music. Him and me, we’re not from the same neighborhood but not that far from the same life. We don’t talk much. It’s better that way.
This is how Spence finds us. Maybe he didn’t set out looking for us, I don’t know, but we’re cutting through the back lot at Marty’s Mart and I hear him over the traffic: “Hey, freak!”
It’s late, but not as dark as it was the last time we were here. I see his sneer as he walks over to us, the glitchy eyes. The bastard’s tweaking. I wasn’t home when he picked Jenna up. Was he tweaking with her in the car?
“Wassup, freak and pussy. Freakin’ pussy.” He jangles his car keys in time with his steps like some sort of Clint Eastwood wannabe.
“Whatever.” I nudge Doby with my elbow. “C’mon.”
Doby doesn’t move. He puts the can of lighter fluid back in his hoodie pocket.
“What you got there, freak?” Spence says. “What is it this time, huh? Gasoline?”
“Fuck you,” Doby says, his voice low and hard.
Spence rattles his keys. “Ooh, big man.”
“Fuck. You.” Lower, harder, ugly.
Spence is close enough I smell the beer on him. Pictures of Jenna wrapped around a tree, in a body bag, the baby in a little casket, are lightning behind my eyes. The anger and what I want to do to him comes hot and fast, and scares me enough to speak up. “Get lost, Spence.” To Doby, “Let’s go, man.”
That Goddamn sneer. “You suck him off yet, Connor? His dick taste like bleach?”
Doby explodes. He knocks Spence to the dark rainbow asphalt, drives a knee into his chest and grabs handfuls of red hair. I can’t move. I can only watch as Doby slams Spence’s head against the pavement. Spence bucks, punches Doby in the side of the face, the ribs, again, and again, but Doby doesn’t care. He’s all hate, and scariest of all, Spence is swearing but Doby doesn’t make a sound.
A nightmare. Doby pulls his left sleeve up with his teeth and begins to gnaw on his wrist, his own freaking wrist, like a, oh God, like a dog. He puts a knee in Spence’s face, digs around his pants pocket, brings out a Swiss Army knife. He flips out a blade and saws at his wrist until it glistens, flows. He drops the knife and jams his wrist into Spence’s mouth. “Drink, mutherfucker.”
I couldn’t be half as frightened if he’d screamed it.
Spence gags, jerks his head to the side.
Doby wrenches it back and clamps a hand over Spence’s nose. “I said drink, you cocksucker. Swallow it.” I can’t see Spence’s mouth, only Doby’s hand and wrist with a black line oozing around it. “Swallow.”
Doby puts all his weight on Spence’s face. There’s a terrible sucking, puking sound that goes on forever, then Doby takes his wrist away.
Spence coughs, and I swear he tries to scream but all that comes out is foam. Black and blacker, it shoots out like he’s puking up his soul. His eyes roll back, and in the bare light I see the veins of his face crawl like worms trying to escape acid rain. Doby’s hate and anger and ugly eat Spence alive. He spasms and shakes. His insides pool around his head, ooze foamy and stinking in my direction. He stops moving.
I wanted Spence dead, but not like this. Right?
“What?” The word hangs up in my throat. “What did you…?”
Doby slides off, licks his wrist, looks at me sidelong. Looks at me like a dog kicked one-time-too-many-ready-to-turn.
He holds out the lighter fluid. I can move again, take a step back.
Doby smirks and looks sad at the same time. He goes through Spence’s pockets, takes his wallet and keys, grabs the knife. Then he’s sucking on the blue and yellow can on his way to Spence’s car. I hear the squeal of tires and see the flash of metallic blue less than a minute later.
Got to get home. Spence’s dark and foamy spreading towards my feet. Home. Veins like worms. Mom and Dad. Home.
Jenna is sorting through baby clothes and chatting on the computer when I stumble through the door. She looks up from something with strawberries and ruffles. “Wassup?” she says.
I sag against the wall, try not to puke. Shaking like I’m going to fall to pieces on the outside the way my life has on the inside.
She frowns. “You okay?”
“Everything okay down there?” Mom calls from upstairs.
“Yeah, just Connor,” Jenna says. To me, “Gawd, what happened with you? You look like crap.”
I stagger towards the couch. Does she see what happened? What I let Doby do?
Mom, “Any word from Spence?”
Jenna fiddles with the touchpad. “Not yet. He said he’d text when he got home. Probably stopped to get cigarettes.”
I gag, make a sound, not a word, and Jenna looks my way again. “What?”
“I-I…”
“You
look like crap. Sit down before your fall down.”
Veins like worms, and the baby, oh God, the baby.
It’s over, my life is over. The genie is out of the bottle. Turn and run, no idea where. Try to outrun the taste of lighter fluid as Youngstown closes in.
Samael Gyre on May Sinclair's
“The Victim”
As a deep cut, “The Victim” by May Sinclair fits the bill nicely. It is from 1922 and touches upon both modern gruesome and subtle psychological horror while playing against expectations of genre and presenting a chilling set of implications to consider. It is a neglected gem, originally published by T. S. Eliot alongside “The Waste Land” in his Criterion. That her fine dark fiction has been overshadowed by her poetry is a shame; it’s time to revive interest in her groundbreaking prose. Her work is well worth seeking out. She straddled the Victorian, Gothic, and Modern periods of literature and chose ghost stories to demonstrate her vision. She mixed oblique psychological terror, the erotic, and outright horror with an elegant directness. In “The Ditch” I tried to do the same.
◙◙◙
The Ditch
Samael Gyre
The ditch scares the hell out of me.
Which ditch?
The one you end up in. The one that catches you when you trust the shape and forget its contents. The one where your life’s story comes to a sordid end.
The ditch is closer than most know.
Life is like driving in a car. As long as you’re on the highway, moving along in comfort with music, and snacks, and conversation, coffee or soda to sip on, sun shining, protected from cold or rain, you ignore the passing ditch, but it’s there.
And you can be in it in a blink.
One second you’re fine. The next, you’re in the ditch broken, bleeding, and blind to life’s joys. Pain goes from a black cloud barely noticed on the horizon to a cloudburst drenching you in an inescapable, suffocating world. You condense into life’s last drops in the ditch. You become run-off. You become toxic spill. You’re in the ditch before you know it’s coming, and maybe you realize the ditch was always there as you draw your last breath—your eyes dull, as you beg someone to go for help.
Deep Cuts Page 4