It was another miscellaneous afternoon. An afternoon of naps and nothingness and supreme lack of effort. A day identical to all the other days. The knock sounded like someone slamming a brick against the door about ten times. I opened it, still nap groggy. A sheriff’s deputy stood there. He was wide awake.
“Mr. Henderson?”
“It’s Henders.”
“Sorry, Mr. Henders.” He was holding a piece of paper. The first thought to shoot through my head was—he’s here to arrest me. For stalking Carly. Train whistles went off in my head and a sledgehammer of panic started swinging in my chest. Oh my god! I’m not a stalker! No! Carly! I’m sorry baby—I’m sorry!
“So, you are Jarvis Hen—”
“I swear to God—I never, ever harassed her in any way. I mean, not to this level. You’ve got to cut me a break here.”
The cop cleared his throat. Sounded like he had a steel wool pad caught in there.
“I fucking swear on the bible.”
“I don’t know what you’re referring to, sir, but I’m here to serve you a warrant-in-debt. So you are Jarvis Henders?”
“Yeah. That’s me.”
He handed me the paper.
It was for the Citizen Search bill. A whopping $2,643.92. That no good bastard Reinhaus was suing me.
“Have a good day, sir,” the cop said, spinning around military style for the stairs.
Have a good day? What the hell kind of thing was that to say! Could things get any fucking worse? I slammed door and dropped the warrant on the floor. I started pulling my hair and sucking air in through my teeth. A wave of feeling came over me, a wave of shit. I drove my fists into my temples. Carly! She would never call the cops on me. Would she? Not my sweet baby! And I’ve been fantasizing about killing her? Oh my god! How could I do that? I am a sick fuck! And I was stalking her, wasn’t I? Oh my god! I deserved to arrested. And shot.
I grabbed the phone and dialed her number. I had to apologize. For everything. For being a stalking weirdo loser. For dreaming about throwing her off of things. I didn’t mean it! I didn’t mean it! But her voicemail was full.
I didn’t mean it!
What kind of sick freak was I? Why was I such a horrible person? My chest was seizing up with white panic. I started hyperventilating. My neck felt like it was making stratospheric re-entry. I touched it and practically burned my hand. I wanted to puke hot nails. I could feel them edging up to the top of my throat. I drove my palms into the sides of my head and clenched my face shut. This must have been the bottom. I had to have hit it. There couldn’t be a lower level. I was a stalker, a fantasy killer, a weirdo.
And, of course, I sucked.
It was four-thirty in the morning and I was in bed, wide awake. My stomach was churning with boiling raw sewage. For the first time, I seriously thought about what I could do to end it. Eat a bottle of pills and then lights out—Jarvis no more. The idea got my heart going. I felt alive again. Pretty fucked up when the only thing that makes you feel alive is the idea of suicide. But I didn’t have the balls. And it would kill Mom. She was doing bad enough with her prescription meds and ruined mortgage.
So I just lay there, swallowing down lumps of grim depression. It tasted like ass. I thought about the warrant-in-debt again. What a kick in the groin. But at least I now had more justification for being so down. Things really were fucking awful. I had it on paper. Now all I needed was an injury, a broken leg or something. That’s probably what would happen if I tried to kill myself—I’d jump off a building and just break my legs. And face.
4:46 am. Still wide awake. I knew I was going to spend most of the next day sleeping, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t have anything to do. Other than drive by Carly’s to see if I could catch her coming or going. I had zero to occupy my time. Nothing to do but sleep and think. And at night, nothing to do but lie awake and think. And fantasize about mass destruction or spraying gasoline on all my enemies and lighting one gorgeous match. And think. And remember. And think some more.
8
Daniel Motorcar was our Adventure Group Leader. He took us on canoe patrol, nature hikes and he was director of the weekly scavenger hunt. But Motorcar did things Adventure Group Leaders aren’t supposed to do. We camp kids were filing into the craft shop to make papier-mâché rabbits or something. But Motorcar shuffled me off to the side for a Super-Secret Commando Mission, as he called it. I asked him if any other kids were going with us, but he said no, this was a two-man mission. It made me feel good when he referred to me as a man. But as we got over to an isolated spot behind the canoe shed, I found out that his only mission was to explore the contents of my underwear with his stubby little hand. He said if I told anybody about it that I’d get sent home like Jeffy. Jeffy was this messed-up kid who had spontaneous screaming tantrums and violent outbursts, such as smearing a giant handful of mac’n’cheese into this other kid’s face one night at dinner. They sent him home after a few days. I thought wow, his parents are going to be furious. He’s gonna be in major trouble.
I didn’t want to get sent home and I didn’t want to get in major trouble.
A few days later, it happened again behind the craft shop. I remember trying to get away by telling Motorcar I had to go to the bathroom. He said I could go later. I ended up not going until late the next day when my bladder was about to erupt. I was so tripped-out I couldn’t pee. I was in some new zone of tripped-out. A zone of cosmic confusion. I knew what he did was wrong, but I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure what the whole sex thing was about yet. He did it one more time behind the canoe shed. I knew if I told on him then the police and firemen and news cameras would all come and the adults would be upset and swarming and interrogating me. There would be this giant flashing circus and all because of me. No way was I going to cause all that chaos. There were a thousand reasons not to tell anybody what Motorcar did. Anyway, even if I had wanted to, I couldn’t think up the words to describe it. Eleven-year-old boys think in phrases like: “summer vacation” and “football hero.” Language like “sexual molestation” and “pedophile” wasn’t exactly in my word arsenal. If I couldn’t put it into words in my head then how was I going to describe it to an adult? I couldn’t sort any of it out. The sick lump dropped to the bottom of my stomach that first time behind the canoe shed. It sucked all the energy and joy and ability to think right out of me. A festering black death hole.
And it never left.
For the last two weeks of camp, I avoided Motorcar at all costs. Even though I knew he wasn’t likely to do anything to me in the bunkhouse at night with my five bunkmates there, I slept in two pair of jeans. They were tight and I sweat all night, but I felt a lot safer in my suit of armor. The last time anything happened was the second-to-last day of camp. I was at a urinal peeing in the moldy old bathroom building and he came up behind me and started rubbing my back.
“Hello there, Jarvis,” he said in this sick lady’s voice. “I’ll miss you.” Then he left. I was so freaked out I stopped peeing and couldn’t pee again until late the next day.
After I got home I knew it was less likely that I’d get into trouble, so I decided to tell Mom and Dad what happened. But every time I started to tell them, this sick freezing chill came careening up my legs and my mouth would fill up with glue. So I didn’t even try. After a while the whole thing became too embarrassing to ever bring up.
I felt like such a giant failure. Before Motorcar got his hand anywhere near me I should have beaten him in the face with a canoe oar and ran screaming Pervert! Pervert! But I didn’t. I wimped out like a super mega-wuss. If only I had picked up that canoe paddle or a giant tree branch and knocked him out. Then I could have watched him being wheeled off to the ambulance in handcuffs, the crowd hissing him and cheering me.
If only. If the fuck only.
The next spring, my parents sat me down and asked me if I wanted to go to camp again in the coming summer. I pretended to think it over for a minute or two and then I said no, I’ve outgrown c
amp for now. They laughed. And I never went anywhere the fuck near a summer camp again.
I woke up in an ice cold death sweat. No idea what time it was. It could have been four a.m. or noon-thirty. I felt a steady blast of white hot rage screaming through my chest. My head felt like a truck accident. I wanted to kill people. I hated flimsy girlfriends, dirty cops, crooked lawyers, perverts, and fake best friends. Wanted them all dead. I rolled over and beat the pillow with my fists. Then I started crying. It was Tuesday.
Sometime later I pulled myself out of bed and made an iced tea. Clean out of coffee. I stirred the tea mixture until it was mud brown and stuck my head in the freezer. The cold air bit my ears and rushed down to the bottom of my lungs. It felt good. Real good. I was energized. It was a strange and unfamiliar feeling. I felt a tiny spark, an invisible kernel of something positive.
It turned out to be the beginnings of a little tiny idea.
For a while, it was formless. I started whistling as I poured the soap into the washing machine. Not silent whistling, but a real actual tune. I didn’t know what was going on exactly, all I knew was, I was feeling a little better. For my next iced tea, I didn’t measure it industrial strength like usual. Then I started up a mental to-do list for the day: finish the laundry, shower, push-ups, look for a job. But then I remembered that I didn’t need to look for a job anymore, I had the gig waiting for me at the call center. That is, if I got past Marguerite. No prob—I was going to smoke her. I opened the blinds. Sunlight shot in everywhere.
But the feeling didn’t last. I sat on the couch and filled up with purple-black winter. It didn’t matter if things got better or if I got this new job or whatever, if I won Carly back or even got a new girlfriend—it was all going to crash to shit again no matter what I did. Just like always. It was the same thing over and over. An endless, meaningless cycle of 100% pure crap. I couldn’t take it anymore. It wasn’t just the highs and lows of life, either, because the highs weren’t that high and the lows were unbearable pain. Something wasn’t right. I just couldn’t fucking go on like this anymore. This life was a colossal suck-fest. I wanted my money back from God.
I wanted justice.
I wanted something.
I got up and started beating my fists on the kitchen counter. All the dirty dishes were shaking and rattling like it was Armageddon. Things started falling on the floor.
“Motherfucker!”
That’s when I first started picturing it:
Me, screaming in Motorcar’s face. Blasting him with the harshest, most satisfying razor cold, death zinger ever spoken. Screaming in his face like a rabid drill sergeant on PCP, crystal meth and gin. Chewing him so many new assholes that he drowns in a sea of his own bullshit. Yelling into his fat wet face. You sick motherfucker! Getting it all out. Burning him. Frying him. Zinging him like I knew I was capable of. Really, really doing it. Then shooting him. Or stabbing him. Wasting him and setting his corpse on fire. Kicking it with steel-toed shoes as it burned. Then tossing his dead body out in a desert somewhere and watching the vultures swoop down for lunch. And me, laughing in a state of absolute triumphant glee.
I had the fantasies about killing Motorcar off and on for years, but this was different. This had a new air, a sense of distinct possibility. I realized for the first time that there was nothing actually stopping me from going out into the world and finding Motorcar. Giving him a faceful of boiling cold justice. When the idea fully hit me, it hit like a thousand steam whistles blowing into my neck. I imagined screaming molten zingers into his face as though it was really happening, like it was really going to happen. And why shouldn’t it? Why couldn’t I have a showdown with Motorcar? It was still a free country, last time I checked. And I had zero to lose. If I was going to kill myself anyway, why not take him down with me?
Before I knew it, I was bathing in the magical golden light of absolute decision. Everything was coming together in my head. Motorcar. That sonofabitch! Ruined my life! Piece of shit made me a nervous wreck alcoholic freak! I had let him off the hook for too long. Time for that filth to die!
The idea started to grow, to sink in. Exhilaration was pumping through my body like a nuclear turbine, if there was such a thing. There was now. Motorcar was going to die, for reals, and not before I totally blasted him with the world’s most spectacular, most satisfying series of ice blind killer gotcha lines ever spoken by man. I was going to waste his rancid soul with super-zingers before I snuffed the life out of his pathetic body. It was going to be history’s most fantastic moment of golden electric hell glory ever. And I knew that I had the power to make it real.
You stupid sack-of-shit pervert motherfucker!
Okay, but a little too common.
You disgusting, child molesting lump of human waste!
Eh. I could do better.
I asked myself why I hadn’t realized this before. Why had it never occurred to me before to find Motorcar and pump him full of zingers and bullet holes? The concept was thoroughly satisfying, like a gourmet dessert. I decided to take a walk, take my new idea outside. Give it some air. Nurture it. Massage it. Any reason I couldn’t do this? Anything stopping me?
Fuck no!
Taking a walk was something I never did—who the hell wants to walk through an apartment complex? But I felt good. I was onto something. Something big. Something really big. I didn’t feel like a million bucks—I felt like a fifty billion dollar trust fund. A wheelbarrow full of stinking ten thousand dollar bills.
You worthless pedophile scum!
No, that one was terrible.
You pathetic sack of…
I hit the sidewalk and took in the oatmeal beige apartment boxes, row after duplicate row. Now they were somehow a reassuring rich light brown. At least it was my boring apartment complex. Things were going to change. I could feel the nuclear winter retreat an inch or two. Time for that crap to melt. I was gonna do it. I was really gonna do it. Motherfucker wasn’t going to drag me down into his psycho loser world anymore. He wasn’t gonna know what hit him. No wonder I became a drunk. And no wonder that my drunken stupors had been filled with evil circus clowns and flying space robots and a bunch of other stuff I couldn’t remember. Like getting thrown out of places—Cogbill’s, Tim Barlowe’s wedding reception, college. Because Motorcar was always there. He was down at the end of a creepy hallway, laughing mad scientist laughter, always dragging me back to a life of shit behind the canoe shed. It was time to snuff him out once and for all. I was so sick of feeling tiny and vulnerable, shriveled and shaky inside, like everything was coming at me from every which way, stomping on my face. Things were going to fucking change. Things were going to change and the world was going to have to take orders from Captain Kick-Ass.
You dirty piece of…
You disgusting lump of…
You filthy worm of a sub-human…
All terrible, but I was on the right track. I had to think of something. Something good. Something really good.
When I got back from my walk, I went on the Internet to look for Daniel Motorcar. My heart was jack-hammering its way across the inside of my ribcage. Then, as I stared at the flashing cursor on the Internet White Pages screen, it occurred to me that I had no idea what his real name was. Sounded vaguely similar to Motorcar and that’s all I knew. Was it French maybe? Or at least French-ish? Something told me it was. I started punching in all the combinations I thought it might be: Morticar, Morticlair, Metercore. I’d run about thirty of them before I starting getting test anxiety. My neck was raging hot. It was four o’clock, late enough to justify getting some beer to celebrate my bold new direction. I actually started to make a move for the car keys but I told myself no, I needed to stay tight to the wagon. I needed all my focus and concentration for this mission.
I punched in names for about an hour and didn’t find squat. I got up and paced. I made iced tea and tried some more names. Nothing. I started getting discouraged. How was I going to find and kill the fucker if I didn’t even know his
name? I kept going and finally, one spelling brought up some results.
“Marticlair.” There were seven of them in the United States. Two of them were in Richmond, Virginia, which was not far from the summer camp. One of them was a “D. Marticlair.” That’s probably him! Jackpot! But the phone number and address were unlisted. Still, the more I kept saying “Marticlair” over and over in my head, the more I was convinced that I had the name right. But the information was so freaking vague—no number, no address.
I sat there tapping my fingers. No way to find him. I started hyperventilating. I paced around the apartment some more. I ate some stale coffee cake, devouring it like I hadn’t eaten in years. It tasted like moldy chalk. I turned on the TV and watched some women’s tennis. Man, their legs were hot. So toned and wholesome. At least I was feeling alive again. Then I fell asleep.
I woke up and yawned and stretched. Time to resume my search. Then, while I was taking a pee I remembered something—Citizen Search. I could have smacked myself for not thinking of it in the first place. I raced back to the computer to have at it. Having logged on so many times at work, I easily remembered my username and password. Of course they no longer worked. I wanted to head-butt the monitor. Then I realized that I could just do it myself. So I signed up and paid for the search with my credit card. God, I love America. Within seconds a wealth of Motorcar info was laid out before me on the screen. Citizen Search finally did something to make up for getting me fired.
Daniel Marticlair was forty-three years old. He was the right age. He was employed as a driver for Emissary Limousine in Richmond, Virginia. And unless he was married to a seventy-two year old woman, the person listed as Margaret Marticlair was surely his mom. Living with his mom—seemed almost standard for a perv. It had to be him. I couldn’t believe I’d found him. And in less than three hours. This was going to happen. I was going to be judge, jury and executioner in the royal court of Fuck You. I couldn’t wait.
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