Psychos

by Neil Gaiman

  “Doubly tough. Were they punished?” “It’s an ongoing process,” I say. “Just tough,” he says, as he turns back towards his bike.

  I can’t help but giggle.

  He turns back to me and gives me a baleful stare. He speaks low into his mobile radio, his eyes never leaving me.

  Asshat’s going to arrest you, Mutt says. Asshat cop thinks you’re a crazy asshat pedophile and is going to call backup.

  I can feel it coming. In a desperate ploy, I point towards the pizza box. “Look at that!”

  The policeman follows the direction of my finger to where the pizza box lays alongside the track.

  “There. See it?” “What about it?” he asks, suspiciously.

  Asshat thinks you’re crazy, Mutt says.

  Asshat is right, I think. Crazy as a fucking loon. I can’t help but giggle. I’ve come to love the term ASSHAT.

  That was your outside voice, Mutt points out like I’m the King of All Asshats. “What’d you say?” the policeman says.

  Everything goes into slow motion. He looks to the pizza box and the kids running past, then he looks at me. I can see his mind spinning furiously but unable to fathom what is about to take place. He takes a step towards me.

  I step back and shake my head. “Sorry. Like you said. I’m a little off.”

  He stops.

  I watch as he seems to come to term with the idea that I may be insane. I mouth the word BOOM!

  Staff Sergeant Reyes is approaching my bomb. I press the speed dial. I wait three seconds, wondering whether it will be confetti or skin raining down on the gaggle of boys twenty meters behind him.

  Kawhoomp!

  The shockwave knocks us back.

  I turn in time to see the red-tinged cloud rise into the air like Ezekiel’s own mushroom cloud of righteous destruction. The boys struggle to their feet. Most of them are holding their ears and screaming. The open-jawed policeman stares blankly at me, I shrug, then he takes off running towards the carnage, shouting for help into his mobile radio.

  Asshat, I say or don’t say to his back. Should have arrested me when you had the chance.

  It’s nothing for me and Mutt to get in my car and head down the road. I’m aware that sooner or later I’m going to have to get rid of the car. I’ll miss it, but maybe I can get another Bwik, one in which the ghost of my son can ride, as me and his mother, whom I’m certain is locked within the fluffy skin of a dog, trundle on down the road of righteous redemption to deliver four more bombs.

  Daddy! Come out and play war with us, he said once when he was seven or eight years old.

  I remember asking who he was going to be, the good guys or the bad guys. He gave me one of those looks like Mutt would give, but without calling me asshat. We’re always the good guys, Dad. Come on, Dad!

  And I remember that exact moment, standing on the porch with a glass of ice tea sweating in my hand, wondering about all the children of bad men in the world, if when they played war if they played at being bad guys. Somehow I doubted it. At the end of the day, everyone’s a good guy. It’s just that some can be even more good, especially if they’re righteous.

  And I am about as righteous an asshat as there ever was. Look out world, here I come.

  The Meaning of Life

  BY AMELIA BEAMER

  Have you ever watched a little kid who really likes to hurt things and gone, “Oh, this is not gonna turn out well?” All through my life, I’ve taken note of them as they crossed my path, and wondered who they turned out to be.

  Or, more specifically, what they wound up doing.

  I gotta tell ya: this was the single toughest read of the book for me. To the point where I said to Amelia Beamer—again, one of my favorite new writers, whose work often sparkles with charm and wit—“You know that people are going to hate you for writing this story.”

  But she knew, as I knew—and my editor agreed—that you can’t do a book like this without a story like this. Because herein lies the terrible truth.

  So I’m not kidding when I slap a warning sticker on “The Meaning of Life.” It may not be your meaning—I sincerely hope it isn’t—but that doesn’t change the facts.

  Jonathan’s life started on the day with the butterfly. He was in the yard, his mother was kneeling in her garden, busy with the dirt and plants. The butterfly landed on a flower near where he was sitting. He had seen pictures of butterflies in books, but this was alive. He understood the difference for the first time.

  He reached out for it and to his surprise he caught it. He pinched its wing between his fingers as gently as he could and brought it close to study it. It struggled. He decided it was a boy butterfly, because all animals were boys, all the good ones anyway. He watched the butterfly beat his wings. He wanted to know what made him alive.

  The small boy checked that his mother was not watching, in case he was not supposed to have a butterfly. He turned his back to her, just to be safe.

  Jonathan examined the small, hairy legs of the butterfly as they kicked and squirmed. There was an orange powder on his fingers from the butterfly’s wing. The wing was already torn, even though he was holding it as gently as he could. The butterfly had a tiny face: black eyes, and long, wiggly antennae. He couldn’t see the butterfly’s mouth but he knew it must have one.

  Carefully, he pulled off one of the legs. It was really easy. He looked at the leg, or what he could see of it, as it was pinched between his fingers and he did not want to drop it. He rolled it between his fingers until it got rubbed into a black mess. He was fascinated.

  So he did it again. And again until there were no legs left. Then he did the same with the antenna. Somewhere inside this butterfly, he knew, was life.

  The boy really liked the round shiny blackness of the butterfly’s belly. So he pinched it until it broke. The goo that came out was no colored. He squished it between his fingers. Then, very carefully, he tore off one wing.

  What was left of the butterfly’s body stopped moving. That was it. The boy felt a feeling that he had never felt before. A wonderful, wonderful feeling. He felt big and strong. His belly was warm and tingly. He crushed the wing in his hand and watched it turn into powder and goo. He rubbed it between his palms and then studied the mess. The life was gone. This was all that was left.

  The feeling of power grew stronger in the boy. He had done this. He had felt life, and he had taken it.

  How could anyone forget that feeling? The boy thought of it often. He became an expert at killing bugs, anything that he could catch. His parents bought him a kit with a butterfly net and a killing jar, and that was fun.

  Jonathan particularly liked ants, not only because they were easy but because of the strange sugary smell they gave off when you squished them. The big brown carpenter ants were his favorite.

  But he grew bored. The good feeling got smaller and smaller, and he started thinking bigger.

  Jonathan asked for a hamster. He was excited when he got one. He named the hamster Sammy, after Sammy Davis Jr. He let Sammy run around in his room. He liked when he crawled on him: he liked the feeling of Sammy’s soft fur and nails. He played with Sammy and fed him and cleaned up after him until the itch grew too strong and he started making plans to kill him. Jonathan was five years old.

  He knew he had to go somewhere private, outside. It was too risky to do it in the house. Plus it would probably be messy. He would need a knife, at a minimum. Maybe scissors, he wasn’t sure. He would tell his parents that the hamster got lost.

  The boy waited until one day when the weather was perfect. His father was out and his mother was in a good mood. He asked to play outside in the backyard, where his mother could see him from the kitchen window. Jonathan promised not to leave the yard.

  His mother agreed and said she was going to make cookies. So she would be busy for a little while. The boy was happy about that, and about the cookies.

  He put Sammy in his sweatshirt pocket, where nobody could see him. In his sleeve he had a steak knif
e and his mother’s sewing scissors, and the best thing of all in his other pocket: a long needle he had found in his mother’s sewing kit. Just the thought of the needle made him feel wiggly inside.

  Jonathan was careful not to let his mother see his excitement. He went outside. He’d promised to sit where his mother could see him, and he realized that he needed to look like he was doing something. So he went to the sandbox and took off the cover. The sand was clean and fresh and there were nice, new buckets and shovels. He put the hamster in the sandbox. Sammy was happy running around smelling everything. But Jonathan grew bored after a minute. He wanted to get on with his experiment. He wanted to understand what made Sammy alive.

  First he decided to use the pin. He poked the hamster in its belly.

  He did not expect the hamster to scream. It was a scratchy, strange noise. The hamster bit him. He dropped Sammy and examined the tiny bite mark on his hand. A drop of blood welled up. It hurt. But not enough to change his plans.

  Jonathan caught the hamster and held him so that he couldn’t bite. Sammy’s eyes were wide and frightened, and he was shaking. This was not easy. The boy realized he would have to go faster than he wanted to. He eyed first the knife and then the scissors. He wasn’t sure what to do.

  He chose the scissors and cut off the hamster’s head. Or rather he tried to, it didn’t actually come off, but kind of halfway. The hamster screamed. Blood was going everywhere, on his clothes and hands. The boy tried again with the scissors until he had cut the head off. Sammy’s head fell into the sand. The hamster’s body went still.

  It was a lovely feeling, the warm, bloody hamster, soft in his hands. He loved also the feeling still in his fingers of snipping Sammy’s head off. This was way better than bugs, no question. He felt so powerful he laughed.

  He cut a line down the hamster’s belly. Inside, the hamster was all sorts of colors, not just red but also yellow fatty bits and bluey grays. Twisty stuff. He poked the guts with the needle. It felt good, the way the meat moved. Then he used the scissors to cut the inside of the hamster until he could see bits of bone. He cut the bones apart as well, just to see if he could. He cut up the guts. There was a smell of poop, and he understood that there was poop inside the hamster. This made him laugh. He felt so good inside.

  After a while there wasn’t much body any more. The boy realized that he had to put the pieces somewhere that his parents wouldn’t find them. Bury them somewhere that they would not be dug up. The sandbox wasn’t safe, neither was his mother’s garden. He’d have to think of somewhere.

  Jonathan put the pieces of Sammy into a bucket, along with the sand that had got blood on it. One little hamster eye looked back at him.

  He thought about putting the stuff in the trash can, but that would be no good because his parents would see it. Then he thought about just putting it over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. They had a dog, so everyone would think the hamster got killed by the dog, if there was enough of the hamster left for anyone to know it had been a hamster. Probably the dog would eat it anyway.

  So he threw the remains over the fence. He felt a bit sad watching it go. Then he thought about the blood on himself. He remembered the time when his father had had a nosebleed, and got blood on his shirt. Jonathan decided to tell his mother that his nose had bled.

  He got extra cookies. And later when he said that his hamster was “lost,” he got lots of hugs, although he didn’t get a new hamster.

  Soon he was thinking about what came next. He wanted something bigger, something more. But he didn’t feel strong enough or big enough. So he decided to wait for his own body to get a bit bigger. He killed bugs sometimes, plus he also had other things to do, like school and playing and television.

  He also started watching from the window. Cats, birds, squirrels.

  He made friends with a cat. The cat was white and thin and old and his fur looked kinda gross. He didn’t have a collar, which meant he probably didn’t have a home. Jonathan fed him salami pieces from the refrigerator, the drawer that said “Meats ‘n Snacks.”

  After a few weeks, the cat started letting Jonathan touch him. Jonathan was not in a hurry. He liked to think about the cat: where he could take it, what he could do to it. Cats were a different league entirely. He thought about knives, and poison, until he finally thought about a hammer. That was a nice thought.

  Jonathan was a good boy. He liked being good and being told he was good. He loved his parents. He knew that they did not care about life in the way that he did: they did not understand it or want to feel it the way he did. He accepted this, and knew better than to try and share it with them.

  The cat started to trust Jonathan. He would sit in his lap and purr as Jonathan petted him. Jonathan enjoyed the rusty sound, and the softness of the cat’s fur, and the feel of the cat’s sandpaper tongue as it licked his hand.

  The day came when it felt right. He got permission to play outside. The cat came. He followed Jonathan behind the garage. Jonathan had a hammer, scissors, and a knife. He fed and petted the cat one last time. He let him sniff the hammer. The first blow only stunned the cat. Jonathan held onto the back of the cat’s neck so he couldn’t run away. The cat scratched the boy’s arm, but it didn’t hurt. He hit him again. He had swung a hammer before but it had never felt like this. The cat’s eyes showed many emotions including surprise, pain, anger, and a feeling like he never would have expected this from him.

  He hit the cat until the cat’s eyes closed and there was red blood on his fur. It was the best feeling ever.

  The cat’s skull was funny shaped. He wasn’t moving. Jonathan wasn’t sure if he was still alive. When he touched him with the hammer, he twitched. The boy shuddered with pleasure. This was the most real moment of his life: what he had done could not be undone. He had done this. He was real.

  He watched the cat and poked him until he didn’t move any more. Then he started to cut. He was surprised at the amount of blood, and at the different colors and textures. It was like the hamster but much more so. He especially enjoyed cutting apart the cat’s knees: they were a tiny bit like the drumsticks on a chicken.

  He buried the remains in his secret place, underneath the front porch, where nobody ever went aside from him. He was proud of this plan. This way he could keep the cat close, and nobody would know. He wrapped it in his bloody shirt before he buried it, and washed his hands and arms with the hose. He’d brought a spare shirt outside with him so he could go inside wearing a clean shirt. He also felt proud for having that idea.

  After the cat, bugs held no interest. Time passed. Jonathan killed another cat, and then a small dog. He buried them under the porch. Sometimes he would go sit under the porch and just remember how good it felt. He wanted more. He waited and grew and thought.

  And then one day he stood in the school yard at recess, watching the little kids, and he had the idea that perhaps he could kill one of them. Just the thought kept him happy for weeks. He was ten years old.

  The thing was, it had to look like an accident. He wished he could just take a kid and do what he’d done with the animals and bury him under the porch, but he knew that wouldn’t work. The risk was just too much. There was no way to keep it secret.

  So he volunteered to help mind the little kids during recess. He enjoyed spending time with them and seeing them have fun and helping them to do things like climb the ladder to the slide. He pushed them on the swings. He didn’t like the way their noses dripped snot, and how sticky and dirty their hands were, and how they would cry for no reason. But he liked being praised by the teachers and his parents for being a good boy and helping. Other students his age also helped, but they were all girls, so he didn’t have much use for them. Jonathan’s friends were all boys.

  While he played with the little kids he looked at the play structures and thought about the many ways that the kids could accidentally die or at least get hurt. Falling from high up on the monkey bars. Being high up on the swing and having it break. Being hit
in the head by a branch that fell out of a tree, or by a rock or a ball that someone threw. All of these things would be good, but Jonathan needed it to happen in a way that he didn’t get in trouble. So he waited and hoped and imagined. Kids, he’d noticed, were clumsy and often hurt themselves by accident.

  Then one day as the bell rang, the impossible happened. A boy named Freddie was going down the tube slide, one last slide before going back to class. He got stuck at the top, and Jonathan just happened to be standing a few feet away.

  The little kid’s body dangled inside the orange plastic slide, hidden from view. The string from the little boy’s hood had got caught in a crack at the top of the slide. The cord was trapped under his chin, choking him.

  The rest of the kids were on their way back to the school. They made noise enough so that nobody, Jonathan thought, could hear Freddie gasp and cough. His breathing was loud and funny. He moved his arms and legs like a bug, trying to grab onto something. He tried to free himself from the cord around his neck but the weight of his body held him still. He tried to speak. Jonathan wasn’t sure if Freddy knew if anyone else was there or not. All the kid could see was the inside of the slide.

  Jonathan’s mind went fast. His body was singing with excitement. He crouched down so that if someone looked at the play structure they wouldn’t see him, and also so that he could be closer to the little boy. Freddy wore a blue jacket and he was probably about three years old. His face was turning red and his eyes were huge and scared.

  Jonathan realized that he could help the boy. He could scream and run and get adults to come and save the boy. Or he could pull him up so that he could breathe. Knowing that he could do these things and that he did not want to was a strange and good feeling.

  Then he realized that if the boy saw him and Jonathan didn’t help him and the boy lived and talked about what had happened, he would be in trouble. But if the boy died and people knew he’d been out here, he would be in trouble, too. He didn’t know what to do.