Man Made Boy

by Jon Skovron

  I hated talking to him when he was switched off, because he acted like the robot everyone said he was. I stared at him, sitting there in the chair by the stage door, just an immense stupid lump of stitched-together body parts waiting for someone to tell him what to do. A lot of people really took advantage of him.

  Of course, I was about to take advantage of him, too.

  “Ruthven wants me to go run some errands with him.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Outside,” I added.

  “Outside?”

  “Yeah, I’m doing stuff away from the computer, just like you said. So can I go? He said I had to get your permission.”

  “If Ruthven thinks you’re ready, then okay.”

  When I got back to the lobby, I headed straight for Ruthven’s office. It was a small room, empty except for a single desk, chair, and light. He looked up from some paperwork when I knocked on the open door. “My dad said yes!” I felt a twinge of guilt, but it was drowned out almost immediately by the idea that in a few moments, I would be going outside and meeting real humans.

  Ruthven stood up and the swirling shadows around him solidified into a trench coat. The rumor in the company was that Ruthven didn’t actually wear clothes, only shadows.

  He inspected his coat for a moment, then nodded. “Let’s get going, then.”

  I smiled, trying to act like my nerves weren’t revving up into overdrive. I pulled up the deep hood on my dark gray sweatshirt, and that made me feel a little better. Then I followed him back into the lobby.

  “Well!” Charon called from his box office window. “Don’t you two look like a perfect picture of normality?”

  “I’ll thank you to be a little more encouraging, Ferryman.” Ruthven put his long, pale hand on the door handle. He stared at the dark wood for a moment, as if that was as far as he planned to go. Finally, he said, “Once more unto the breach. Come along, Boy.”

  2

  Snakes, Snails, and Puppy Dog Tails

  IT WAS BRIGHT outside. At first, that was all I could take in. I’d watched so many movies and TV shows, and asked all my online buddies a million questions that probably sounded insane to them. But none of it had prepared me for the physical sensations that surrounded me: the wind, the noise, the smells…and humans everywhere. I must have stood there on the sidewalk blinking like a complete tool for a full minute before Ruthven tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Stay close and try not to make eye contact.” Then he plunged into the swirling mass of humans that flowed in either direction on the sidewalk.

  Humans seemed so fragile up close. As I followed behind Ruthven, I had this weird impulse to reach out and touch one.

  Another thing I wasn’t prepared for was the sky. It just kept going up and up, endlessly. It made me so dizzy that I couldn’t look at it for long. And it was a cloudy day. I couldn’t imagine what it felt like to have a real blue sky above you.

  None of it seemed to bother Ruthven. He just walked forward, eyes straight ahead, like he was daring someone to get in his way. And nobody did. Even outside the theater, people did what Ruthven told them to do. Of course, Ruthven had spent a lot of time out among the humans, both before and after he started the company. He was older than most of us. Not as old as Charon, but pretty old.

  “Where are we going first?” I asked.

  “The thrift store.”

  “Why don’t we go to a regular clothing store? Maybe Old Navy or the Gap?” There were a lot of Old Navy and Gap commercials on TV. They seemed like amazing places. All those beautiful salespeople going around modeling the latest fashions. I wondered if they danced all the time or just at certain times of the day.

  “Two reasons,” said Ruthven. “First, the company can’t afford it. And second, we’re shopping for the trowe, and they’d just distress the new clothes as soon as they got them, so we might as well save them the trouble and buy the clothing used.”

  “The trowe?” I asked, trying to make it sound casual. “Are we getting anything for Liel?”

  Ruthven smiled faintly. “Would you like to pick something out for her?”

  “Oh…well…I mean, it’s just that I know what she likes.”

  “Certainly. It’s a marvelous idea.”

  “I mean…Would she think that was creepy? If I picked something out for her?”

  “I think as long as it was tasteful,” he said.

  “Maybe we don’t even have to say that I picked it out.”

  “If you prefer.”

  As we walked, I tried to think about what to get her. I wasn’t exactly sure what would be “tasteful” to someone who typically just wore tank tops and jeans. And it was hard to concentrate on anything in this environment. The blinking neon advertisements, gigantic flashing LCD screens, car horns, stereos, and the low hum of hundreds—maybe even thousands—of human conversations converged on me like a sticky, electrified spiderweb.

  “Ah, here we are,” Ruthven said when we reached a plain storefront that said THRIFT in black letters on the window. He opened the door and gestured for me to go first.

  Once inside, I had to swallow my disappointment. The light was dim, the floor was a dirty tan linoleum, and the walls were white with weird streaks of yellow, like water damage. There were no neat clothing displays or pictures or mannequins, just row upon row of clothes hung on rolling frames. A few customers were scattered around the store, flipping unenthusiastically through hangers.

  “Well?” asked Ruthven.

  “Oh…” I said. “Um…”

  He patted my arm. “I fear this will be the first in a long line of disappointing revelations that humanity is not accurately depicted on television.” He scanned the aisles of clothing. “The young ladies’ apparel is over there, I believe.”

  “All of that?”

  “Do you want me to help you?”

  “No, I’ll figure it out.”

  I flipped through shirts, skirts, jackets, and jeans. I didn’t really know what size Liel was, so I held up some blouse thing, trying to gauge if it would fit. This could be harder than I thought.

  “What are you doing looking at girl’s clothes?”

  The voice was so sudden and unfamiliar that I nearly dropped the blouse. My pulse was hammering in my ears as I turned toward the source.

  It was a human girl around my age. She had bright red hair and freckles on her soft, round face. I still had my hood up, so she didn’t see what I looked like until I turned toward her. When she saw me, her eyes went wide and her mouth tightened and I thought she was about to let out a scream. I braced myself, thinking maybe Ruthven was wrong. Maybe I couldn’t pass for human and I had just ruined it for the entire company.

  It hung there for a moment, then her face relaxed and she just said, “Well?”

  “Well what?” I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

  “What are you looking at girl clothes for?”

  “Oh! For a…uh, friend.”

  “A girlfriend?”

  “No. I mean…not really….”

  “I get it.” She gave me a smile. “You want her to be your girlfriend.”

  I laughed a little. “Yeah, kinda.”

  She scrutinized the blouse I still held in my hands. “You don’t want to get her something like that.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head. “It’s old-fashioned. And not very romantic.”

  “Well, I don’t want it to be too romantic. In case…”

  She gave me a knowing smirk. “You want something that could be just from a friend, if that’s the way she wants to take it.”

  “Yeah, totally.”

  “You want to get her something like…” Her eyes flickered across the isles of clothes. “What size is she?”

  “I was trying to figure that out….”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No.” It seemed like a failure of some kind.

  She sighed. “Typical boy.”

  “Yeah, I guess.�
�� I couldn’t help smiling at that one.

  “Is she, like, my size?”

  “Taller,” I said. “And a little smaller in the…um…” I held out my hands in front of me, saw how huge and ugly they looked compared to hers, and quickly put them back in my hoodie pockets.

  “The boobs?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Okay, we probably need to go one size down. Follow me.” She marched down one of the aisles. I walked behind, feeling like I had just lost all control of the situation. And yet, I had to admit, I was really enjoying it. The store may have been a disappointment, but the human was kind of cool.

  She held up a white, blousy shirt. The material looked thin, almost transparent, and there were little lacy frills around the wrists and neckline.

  “How about this?” she asked.

  “Uh, maybe something that isn’t so…delicate.”

  “Gotcha.”

  She pulled out several more tops for me to look at. It took a little while, but eventually, we settled on one that was frayed and broken in enough to appeal to Liel and still romantic enough for the girl.

  “Oh, yeah, she’ll like this,” said the girl. “And it’s a blue tag.” She pointed to a sign above the register in the corner. “Blue tags are half price today.”

  “Thanks for helping me. I think I would have been totally lost.”

  The girl shrugged. “It was fun.” Then she seemed to lose her confidence for a moment. She looked away, then looked back at me. Looked me full in the face, which she hadn’t done much. “Hey, I don’t know if this is weird or whatever, but what happened to your face?”

  “My face?”

  “You know. The, um…” Her fingers fluttered across her own face for a moment. “The stitches.”

  “Oh!” I said. Then I realized that if I was supposedly a human, I needed a reason to have stitches. I should have thought of a cover story ahead of time. “An…accident.”

  “A car accident?”

  I almost agreed with her. It seemed to be the most obvious answer. But for some insane reason, I said, “No, it was a thresher.”

  “Like on a farm?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whoa, like, you used to live on a farm?”

  “Sure,” I said, trying to remember movies I’d seen that took place on farms and what that looked like.

  “That’s probably why you’re so big.”

  “Big?”

  “You know.” She lifted her arms out to the side. “Built.”

  “Yeah.” Was that a good thing? I couldn’t tell. “I guess so.”

  “So, why did you move to the city?”

  “Oh, uh…”

  Then I heard Ruthven’s voice:

  “Frank? There you are.”

  I looked over and saw Ruthven walking down the aisle toward us, an easy smile on his face, his trench coat billowing around him.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “Sure.” I held up the shirt for Liel, like it was proof that I had everything under control.

  “Oh, just lovely. I’m sure she’ll like it.” He turned to the girl. “I hope my nephew wasn’t taking up all your time.”

  She looked a lot more spooked by Ruthven than she did when she first saw me. “N-n-n-o, it’s cool.”

  “Excellent.” Then he turned to me. “Shall we go, Frank?”

  Once we had paid and were back out on the busy sidewalk, I asked, “Frank?”

  “Sorry, I just can’t resist little jokes like that.” Then he raised an eyebrow. “And what about that thresher?”

  “You were listening?”

  “Of course. It was your first time out among humans. You didn’t think I was just going to let you run wild, did you? All in all, I think it went rather well. Up until the point when you dug yourself too deeply into a pointless lie and I had to come and rescue you.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I was trying to impress her or something.”

  “You were trying to impress her with a story about getting mauled by a thresher?”

  “It made sense at the time.”

  “Ah, youth.” He sighed. “Do you know what I would give to be young again?”

  “No, what?”

  “Nothing. In fact, you’d have to pay me.”

  We walked on in silence for a while. Now that I was getting used to the constant movement around me, I was able to relax a little. In some ways it was easier than being in that store. It was so crowded that nobody really paid attention to any one person. I almost felt invisible. But in that store, talking to that human girl, I had never felt so out of place. So…monsterish.

  “Hey, Ruthven, what do I look like to humans?”

  He turned toward me and frowned. “What a strange question. Why do you ask?”

  “That girl. She was really nice and all. But when she first saw me, she gave me this look. Like girls in the horror movies when they see the bad-guy monster. Did I scare her?”

  “Probably a little. Humans don’t like to see things they aren’t expecting to see. It didn’t last, though, did it?”

  “No, she got over it pretty quick actually.”

  “It’s as I suspected. When a human looks at you, they just think that you’re an injured human. Unpleasant, but not intrinsically dangerous. In fact, you’re more likely to elicit pity than fear.”

  “Pity? Why?”

  “That’s how humans generally react to those of their kind who are deformed, maimed, or profoundly ugly.”

  “I’m…ugly?”

  “To a human.” He said it like it hardly mattered what humans thought. But it mattered to me what that girl thought.

  “Do humans think you’re ugly?”

  “No, they generally find me attractive.”

  “But that girl seemed even more freaked out by you than she was by me.”

  “When humans look at me, they get a feeling that they don’t often have. They feel like prey.”

  “And they’re attracted to you, anyway?”

  “Humans are funny little things.”

  “They don’t have a lot of predators, do they?”

  “No,” said Ruthven. “And our theater houses most of them.”

  “That’s why we have to hide from them?”

  “For now.”

  “What does that mean?”

  But Ruthven didn’t reply.

  WE WALKED THROUGH midtown. Once we got out of Times Square, there were fewer people and a lot fewer ads. It was nice, being out there in the fresh air, with the wind blowing through my hair. It felt like I could just keep walking forever and never come to a dead end. I knew that wasn’t true, of course. Manhattan is an island after all. Still, it was nice to think about.

  Eventually, we came to a little pet shop on a quiet side street. There were three kittens in the front window of the store. Two of them wrestled, playfully showing tiny fangs. I had never seen kittens up close before. They were so cute and fragile, I was afraid to go near them.

  Ruthven stopped in front of the door. “When we’re in this store, please allow me to do the talking.”

  “No stories about threshers,” I said.

  “Precisely.”

  The store was crammed with brightly colored pet supplies like leashes, collars, and chew toys.

  “Hey, Ruthven!” an older human male behind the cash register boomed in a jolly voice. He had a big belly and his thin, black hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

  “Ah, Carmine.” Ruthven walked over to the register. “So good to see you.”

  “The usual?” asked Carmine.

  “If you please.” Then Ruthven gestured to me. “Carmine, this is my nephew, Frank.”

  Carmine paused for a moment when he saw me, like he was acknowledging that I looked different. Ugly, I guess. But it didn’t really rattle him like it did the girl. I wondered what the difference was.

  Then he smiled. “Good to meet you, kid. Learning the ropes from your uncle?”

  “Uh, yeah,�
�� I said.

  “No business like show business, huh?”

  “It’s pretty cool.”

  Carmine turned back to Ruthven. “Give me a second, I got it in the back.” He disappeared through a doorway behind the counter for a moment, then came back out with a large box. The top of the box was peppered with air holes, and I could hear tiny nails scratching the inside.

  “So, hey.” Carmine carefully set the box on the counter. “I wanted to ask a favor.”

  “Of course,” said Ruthven.

  “My cousin is visiting from Florida in a few weeks and he wants to take his wife to see your show.”

  “It would be my pleasure. Just name the date and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Much obliged.”

  “And when are you bringing the missus to The Show?” asked Ruthven with a gently teasing smile on his face.

  “One of these days, Ruthven. You’re not closing anytime soon, are you?”

  “It’s still very much an open-ended run.”

  “Yeah, see, I just assume it’ll always be there, so I never go. I should have learned my lesson when I missed Cats, but there you go.”

  “Indeed. Well, the invitation is always open.” Ruthven handed him a couple of fifty-dollar bills, then gestured for me to pick up the box. “Take care, Carmine.”

  As we walked back to the theater, I held the bag of clothes slung over my left shoulder and the box of rats under my right arm. Through the cardboard, I could feel the small, shifting bodies in the box against my side.

  “So, Carmine doesn’t know what the rats are for, does he?” I asked.

  “He thinks we have snakes in the show.”

  “I guess that’s close to the truth.”

  “Close enough for a human.”

  “But what if he comes and sees the show and doesn’t see any snakes?”

  “He won’t come.”

  “How do you know?”