Methods of Madness

by Ray Garton

“What’s this?” Brett had gone to a closed door at the end of the hall.

  “Laundry room.” He’d taken Brett’s arm then and led him back into the living room, saying, “It’s a mess.”

  After he finished in the bathroom, Brett stood at the bedroom door a moment and decided Mr. Moser wouldn’t mind if he just took a peek inside to see what his bedroom looked like.

  It was dark in the bedroom and Brett reached for a light switch, found it, and flipped it up.

  The first thing he saw was the huge screen across the room. He thought it was probably a big-screen TV; he’d heard about them, but had no idea they were this big.

  Brett stepped over to the television to get a better look and saw that there was another VCR hooked up to it, just like the one in the living room.

  He brushed his fingertips lightly around the labeled controls— ON-OFF, VOLUME, COLOR, TINT…

  Watching a movie on that big screen would almost be like watching it in a theater…

  Maybe this is the surprise, he thought.

  Brett hurried into the living room, ejected Ghostbusters, - returned to the bedroom and turned on the television. When he tried to insert the tape into the VCR, he found another already in the slot. He pushed EJECT and the tape eased out like a tongue from a mouth.

  The top of the tape was black as night and the white spools in the casing stared at him like dead eyes.

  Looking around, Brett found no box for the tape, but a white label was attached to the tape’s edge. In block letters written with a felt-tip marker was written WARNER BROS. CARTOONS #2.

  He glanced at the clock beside the bed. Mr. Moser had been gone only fifteen minutes. That left another fifteen; he’d probably be a little longer than he’d said if it was a meeting.

  Slipping the tape back into the slot, he pressed PLAY, and sat back against the foot of the bed.

  Cheerful music began to play and the words LOONEY TOONS appeared on the large screen.

  “Bugs Bunny!” Brett exclaimed happily when the rabbit appeared, munching a carrot. He’d seen pictures of Bugs in a coloring book his mother had sent him. Grandma had taken the book away from him and, in its place, given him a book called Uncle Arthur’s Bible Stories. No rabbits in that book.

  After the credits, a short bald man appeared holding a rifle. He was walking through the woods on tiptoe looking right and left.

  “Shhh!” he hissed to Brett, looking right out of the screen at him, “I’m hunting wabbits. Heh-heh-heh-heh!”

  Bugs suddenly poked his head out of a hole in the ground, took a bite of carrot, smacked his lips a few times, and said, “Aaaaahh, what’s up, D—”

  The cartoon was gone.

  The screen danced with black and white speckles; Mr. Moser called them “ant races”.

  For a moment, Brett chilled with the fear that he’d done something wrong, something that had perhaps broken the VCR.

  He sighed with quiet relief when the picture returned.

  But it was not the cartoon of a moment before.

  Garbled music played over the television speakers and the screen filled with a square platform surrounded by a fence of ropes. Two huge, sweaty men stood in opposite corners of the square.

  “And in this corner!” a faceless voice shouted. “Measuring in at ten and three-quarter inches! Mickey… “the Bone”… Semeninski!”

  The men stepped out of their corners as an invisible crowd cheered them on. Their arms were held slightly outward, fingers crooked into threatening claws.

  Both men wore tight masks over their faces, one black and one red. Hugging their massive bodies were leather outfits that crisscrossed and zig-zagged; silver spikes and zippers shined all over the costumes.

  That was not, however, what shocked Brett.

  What made Brett’s mouth fall open loosely, what made his breath catch in his throat, was the large triangular opening below each man’s waist and the stiff fleshy rod that jutted from thick dark patches of curly hair.

  Brett closed his eyes a moment, certain he was not seeing what he thought he was seeing. Surely he’d come in on the middle of something—perhaps a recording mistake on Mr. Moser’s part—and had missed an important scene that would explain what he thought he’d seen.

  But when he opened his eyes again…

  The men were circling one another menacingly, eyeing the exposed sections between their legs.

  An odd memory suddenly flashed behind Brett’s eyes, vivid in detail. He was sitting in a tub of soapy water bathing on the third night after moving in with his grandparents. The bathroom door opened and Grandma came in—he remembered how overwhelming the smell of Ben-Gay had been—wearing her bathrobe.

  “Wash good,” she’d said with a smile. Then her eyes had darkened and she’d leaned over the tub. “But when you wash there,” she’d whispered, pointing to his private area (that’s what Mom had called it) hidden beneath the suds, “wash quickly. Don’t touch it anymore than you have to.”

  “What?” he’d said, puzzled.

  Her lower lip had begun to twitch as she said, “Your pee-pee. Your penis. It’s… bad. Dirty. If you touch it too much, it… wakes up. Makes you think bad thoughts. So wash it quickly.” She’d smiled then and left him to his bath.

  Never quite sure what she’d meant, Brett remembered what she’d said each time he bathed and did as he’d been told, not wanting to awaken his penis.

  The men on the screen, however, were apparently trying to awaken theirs. They were handling themselves, pulling on themselves, making their penises grow even larger as they circled one another again and again.

  The red man suddenly lunged for his opponent, grabbing unsuccessfully for his penis.

  He was not unsuccessful the second time.

  The crowd roared.

  The garbled music continued, rambling almost tunelessly.

  “And the Bone is down!” the faceless voice cried.

  The red man straddled the Bone, holding his penis in a fist. Reaching up to his masked face, the red man opened a zipper over his mouth, rounded his lips into a large O, and leaned forward.

  The invisible crowd went wild.

  Brett buried his shock in a forced, familiar numbness until he could watch the film without reacting.

  He felt nothing.

  Just like in church.

  The Sabbath school committee meeting was over in twenty minutes, just as Mr. Moser had suspected it would be. The entire committee was present—eight people in all—and, as usual, they sat around the conference table and socialized after the official business was out of the way.

  Mr. Moser excused himself from the chatter, left the room, and headed down the main corridor of the church for the front entrance, walking at a brisk pace, thinking of Brett…

  “Ed! What’s your hurry?”

  He stopped and turned to see Pastor Alexander coming out of his study.

  “Well,” he began, pushing a smile onto his face, “I’m, uh… I’m in no hurry, really.”

  “Then step in here for a minute. I want you to meet someone.”

  Mr. Moser followed the little man with the big walrus mustache into his study where a man, woman, and little boy were seated on a brown leather-upholstered sofa.

  “Ed Moser,” Pastor Alexander said formally, “I’d like you to meet the Rileys, Jack, Betty, and their son Jason.”

  Mr. Moser smiled, shook Jack Riley’s hand, and said, “Pleased to meet you.”

  “The Rileys have just moved to Manning,” the pastor said. “This is going to be their first Sabbath with us.”

  “Oh. Well. Welcome. Glad to have you.” He glanced at his watch and made note of the time; he’d been gone almost half an hour.

  Pastor Alexander moved behind his desk and seated himself in his squeaky chair. “Have a seat, Ed.”

  Still smiling, Mr. Moser thought of Brett back at the house, sitting in front of the television set watching a movie. What would it be tonight? Jaws? Stripes? Maybe The Wizard of Oz. He seated himself
in a chair facing the Rileys.

  “Ed is one of our Sabbath school teachers,” Pastor Alexander said. “He works in X-ray at our hospital up the hill—has quite a reputation up there—but I’m happy to say he’s very generous with his time. Ed’s devoted to our children here at the church.” The pastor winked at Jason and said, “You’ll be in his class tomorrow, Jason.”

  The boy smiled hesitantly at Mr. Moser.

  “We’ll be glad to have you, Jason,” Mr. Moser said. “I’ve got a great bunch of boys in my class. Boys and girls, of course.”

  Jason blushed beneath his freckles and looked away bashfully.

  “Fine looking boy you have there,” Mr. Moser said to the proudly beaming Rileys. “Fine looking boy.”

  There was a second movie on the tape and it began as soon as the Bone and the man in red milked one another’s penises. That’s what it looked like to Brett—milk. Thick, like soy milk.

  More of the same.

  Brett hit FAST FORWARD, waited a moment, then pushed PLAY.

  Still more.

  He pushed REWIND and sat watching the ant races, his mind buzzing with questions.

  Did Mr. Moser watch these movies? He must, or else why would he own them?

  But did he enjoy them?

  He must, or else why would he watch them?

  Then was Mr. Moser a man lesbian? A—

  … and the homo-seck-shuls spreading the AIDS…

  —homosexual?

  If he liked to watch men doing sex together (if that was what those men had been doing, and Brett suspected it was), then…

  … then he must like to do it, too, Brett thought.

  The tape finished rewinding with a solid thunk.

  Maybe he was just curious, Brett suggested to himself as he ejected the tape.

  Surely Mr. Moser didn’t have any more of those movies.

  Then again, he had been very uncomfortable talking about sex.

  Maybe even guilty.

  Brett stood and dashed down the hall to the living room where he cupped his hands to the pane of the front window and looked for Mr. Moser’s headlights in the night.

  Nothing.

  He hurried back to the bedroom and began his search.

  Brett looked through drawers—careful not to disturb anything —under the bed, in the closet.

  He found nothing but underwear and clothes, shoes and some dusty boxes and books.

  Disappointed, Brett sat on the edge of the bed and slowly looked around him for a place he might have missed.

  To his left, at the head of the bed, there were two rectangular sliding doors, each with a round brass knob in the center. Brett slid one aside, then the other.

  Boxed video tapes were neatly stored on the headboard shelf, labels facing out.

  From left to right were WARNER BROS. CARTOONS—#l-#7, with #2 missing. There were three more tapes labeled LITTLE RASCALS—#l-#3.

  Brett removed the fourth cartoon tape and put it in the VCR.

  After about two minutes of a Daffy Duck cartoon and a few seconds of ant races, Brett saw two young men stroking their penises beside a swimming pool. When one of them gasped, “Okay, suck me, now!” Brett rewound the tape, ejected it, and replaced it in the headboard.

  Mr. Moser was not just curious.

  Wondering why they were labeled differently, Brett couldn’t resist taking a look at one of the LITTLE RASCALS tapes. He chose #3.

  The film—”Our Gang” in The He-Man Woman-Haters Club—was old with fuzzy black-and-white images and music and voices that seemed to be coming through a wall of gauze.

  A fat little boy and a tall skinny one with funny hair were entering a makeshift clubhouse.

  The fat one said, “Well, Alfalfa, this is the headquarters of the He-Man Woman-Haters Club.”

  There were some other boys in the clubhouse and they all waved at Alfalfa, who waved back and said, “Gee, Spanky, I’d sure like to joing. What do I have to—”

  Ant races.

  The ant races were replaced by blackness; Brett slowly realized that the blackness was a room, unlit and unoccupied.

  A light came on with a distant click, and Brett saw what looked like a doctor’s examination table. It was covered with a sheet of heavy plastic. Tied to the table was a naked little boy. Brett squinted at the boy’s still face.

  It was Jimmy Greenlaw.

  A naked man stepped into the picture, his back to the camera. His skin was white and flabby. When he finally spoke—

  “Okay,” he breathed with anticipation. “Ooookay.”

  —Brett recognized the voice.

  It belonged to Mr. Moser.

  It was only a matter of minutes before Jason Riley lost his bashfulness and was chatting with Mr. Moser as if they were old buddies.

  “Do you like Bible stories, Jason?” Mr. Moser asked.

  “Sure do,” the boy said with an enthusiastic nod.

  “They’re my specialty. Tomorrow I’m telling the story of Daniel in the lion’s den.”

  “Oh, that’s his favorite,” Mrs. Riley chimed, putting an arm around her son.

  “Good,” Mr. Moser grinned. “It’s my favorite story to tell.”

  Mr. Riley politely said it was time to go home and they all stood at once. Pastor Alexander suggested that he and Mr. Moser walk them to their car and they headed down the corridor at a leisurely pace, Jason walking beside Mr. Moser, who rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  “Looking forward to having you in my class, Jason,” Mr. Moser said through a smile.

  Brett’s fingers dug into the carpet beneath him and he felt something uncoil in his gut as he watched.

  His back still turned, Mr. Moser ran his hands over Jimmy’s small, still body, his breaths heavy and moist. He turned so Brett could see him in profile, reached under the table, and produced a white, blue-labeled bottle. Brett recognized it as the stuff that Grandma used to remove ring around the collar. As Mr. Moser poured some of the thick liquid soap in his hand and began rubbing it on his rigid penis, Brett sang under his breath, “Ring-around-the-collar, ring-around-the-collar,” then closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them again when he heard Mr. Moser sigh, then moan, then pant.

  The Sabbath school teacher was holding Jimmy’s legs up and apart and lying between them, his dimpled buttocks jutting up and down spastically.

  At the Riley’s car in the front parking lot, Pastor Alexander suggested Mr. Moser say a prayer and the five people joined hands in a small circle.

  “Dear Heavenly Father,” he began, “we thank You for bringing these good people to our town and our church. We ask that you watch over them as they settle into their new home… “

  Brett sucked in a sharp, sickened breath and diverted his eyes, looking at the room on the screen.

  It looked like a garage only smaller, with lots of dusty shelves on the walls. Behind Mr. Moser and Jimmy was a large rusty metal sink; next to that were a washer and dryer. Below the table was a drain centered on the concrete floor surrounded by a large dark stain.

  Laundry room… it’s a mess in there…

  Jimmy screamed and Brett turned back to the television in time to see Mr. Moser lift a hatchet over his head and bring it down with a heavy, wet crunch.

  “… We especially ask that you watch over young Jason. Guide him in Your Way, oh Lord, and protect him from the snares and temptations of the Evil One… “

  Blood shot upward in a crimson spray.

  Jimmy’s scream became a shrill, piercing wail.

  “… Guide them safely home now, Father, and rest them well so that we can all gather tomorrow in Your name. We ask these favors in the Name of Your Son Jesus… amen.”

  “Amen,” they repeated in unison.

  Mr. Moser gave Jason a friendly hug and said, “You’ll have to come over to my place real soon and well go lizard hunting.”

  “Okay,” Jason said happily. “I’d like that.”

  Mr. Moser bid them goodnight and walked to his car.


  Another chop.

  … a mess…

  Brett’s fists unclenched and the tight knot in his stomach relaxed as he began to distance himself from what he was seeing.

  Just like in church.

  Driving down the road in his car, Mr. Moser slipped a cassette into his stereo. It was a tape he often played for his children in Sabbath school, an album of Anita Bryant singing some children’s gospel favorites. The first song began and he sang along.

  “Jesus loves the little chilllllldren ... all the children of the worrrllld… “

  He smiled, knowing that in just a few minutes, he would be able to give Brett his surprise.

  After Mr. Moser had taken Jimmy apart and milked his penis over the armless, legless, lifeless trunk of the boy’s body, the ant races came back on.

  Brett watched them for several seconds, his mouth dry. He thought of Mr. Moser teaching Sabbath school, acting out Bible stories, making the kids—Brett included—laugh.

  And he thought of what he’d just seen.

  I have a surprise for you, Brett…

  … a surprise…

  Brett stood, left the room, went to the door at the end of the hall, and opened it.

  The sink was across the room.

  The table was covered with canvas and boxes were stacked on it, making it look like a sort of workbench.

  The drain in the floor looked clogged with black soggy lumps.

  To the right of the doorway was a tall wooden cupboard. Brett opened it and stared for a while at the tripod and the black and gray camera case beneath it.

  He hurried down the hall to the front window and looked out again. He still saw no headlights, but knew he probably didn’t have much time to cover his traces.

  Back in the bedroom, he felt vaguely ill, like he might throw up, but he started to hum a church hymn and the feeling went away; he didn’t want to make a mess he couldn’t conceal.

  He ejected the LITTLE RASCALS tape and returned it to the headboard, then picked up Ghostbusters from the floor, wishing he had time to finish watching it; wishing even more that he could see it in a real theater on a real movie screen…

  The idea that came from that thought made his hands tremble.