BOY versus SELF
Harmon Cooper
Copyright © 2015 by Harmon Cooper
Copyright © 2015 Boycott Books
Cover by White Comma
www.harmoncooper.com
[email protected]
Twitter: @_HarmonCooper
All rights reserved. All rights preserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Boy versus Self description:
Sometimes art kills.
There are moments when a creation pushes its creator to the brink of their imagination, to the fine line between true ingenuity and blistering insanity. Boy is such an artist, an artist who can't seem to shake the demon he has himself created – Glass Wings. With his career taking off, will Boy overcome the darkness within? Will he reconcile with his family, his sister, his demons? And the people surrounding him – his erotic novelist girlfriend with violent night terrors, his drug dealer friend, the married Irish woman who brings him to New York, the mysterious Japanese man financing his art – where do they fit in all this? Will he ever be able to tell them the truth?
A serrated existence that runs from Texas to Mexico, New York to Tokyo, BOY Versus SELF is a disquieting journey into the mind of a penniless artist as he struggles with shocking hallucinations that could kill him. The novel is a psychological coming of age story full of suspense, horror, struggle and ultimately, triumph.
True fear is easily created and rarely destroyed. True art is always the opposite.
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Harmon Cooper
‘If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few.’
–Gustav Klimt
‘All art is quite useless.’
–Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Chapter 1: Glass Halfie
Boy’s Age: 18
It starts with small shards and memories on the dresser Girl shares with Boy. It starts with one piece, the bottom of a beer bottle with the numbers 247000143 pressed into it. The piece of glass is brown, uneven like the petrified jaw of an ancient shark. Girl runs her fingers along it, feels its dull edge push against her skin.
The only person that sees her do it is Boy, but she knows his secret too – she’s seen him up at night talking to no one.
He tells her to throw the glass away, but her collection has started, and there’s nothing Boy can do about it. He’s distracted with his art anyway. So he lets her keep the broken bottle on their shared dresser next to the Old Spice aftershave he uses as cologne.
Within the week, Girl finds a piece of stained glass leaning against the dumpster near their apartment. Nice piece, already red at the tip and blue on the wider end. Thick piece. Once pressed against the skin it feels more or less like a butter knife. Not sharp enough, but still beautiful, so she keeps it.
While Boy watches TV, Girl lays on their bed with her two pieces of glass. She holds the pieces over her head, drops them in close and peers through them at the ceiling light. She wishes she was somewhere else but she doesn’t know where.
Her ears perk up when Mom drops an empty glass in the kitchen. ‘I’ll clean it up!’ Girl calls out. ‘No!’ Mom says, ‘Stay back, there’s glass everywhere!’
There’s glass everywhere!
It’s a reason to come forward so she does, dips in quickly while Mom is retrieving the dustbin, palms a sliver of glass shaped like an icicle. The instant the piece of glass is squeezed it draws blood, fresh, beautiful blood.
She runs to her bedroom, opens her palm to see the cut. She licks the blood off her palm, carefully runs her tongue around the sliver of glass. Girl smiles at herself in the mirror on their dresser. Her teeth are vampire red, her eyes are black olives.
The red, the throbbing pain in her palm, the crimson contrast against her teeth, her fixed gaze. It was there, in front of the mirror, in their shabby duplex in Huntington, West Virginia, that Girl grew to love pain, its color, its sting, and its meanings both hidden and blatant.
A few months after her thirteenth birthday, Girl’s collection of glass goes from three to twenty-five pieces. Boy continues to let it slide because it seems to make her happy. Half-broken beer bottles with chunks of glass sticking out of their serrated trunks line their dresser like stalagmites. Brown, white, green, clear, yellow. They stand next to each other like wounded soldiers admiring each other’s injuries. War-torn courage. There’s something skin-tingling about its secondhand aesthetics.
A decision is made – the first word she will carve into her body will be glass. The second word will be halfie.
Boy’s reading a comic book on the couch. He’s read the same comic five times by now, Girl knows this, and he will read it several more times before he moves on to the next issue. Spawn. He loves the horrifying drawings, the grotesque figures, the big-breasted women. If he’s not reading them, he’s drawing them – an endless circle of self-gratification and figure study.
Girl looks at his X-Men comics too sometimes, wishing she looked more like Jean Gray than she did Storm. That’s her father’s fault; the dark Mexican Santiago who she’s only seen in photos. Two photos, actually. Mom keeps them hidden, but she knows where to find them.
No matter – Girl closes the bathroom door.
She takes off her shorts and sits down on the toilet seat. She spreads her legs wide. One more deep breath and she lowers the piece of glass. She chooses a spot on the inside of her thigh, a place no one will see.
Girl’s not stupid. She knows what people will think if her new cut is in an obvious place. She’s not ready to show her words to the world just yet. She smiles as the sharp piece of glass breaks the surface of her smooth skin. The initial pain spreads up and out until her entire leg is on fire. God it feels wonderful.
The blood trails down the inside of her thigh. She watches it fall, smiles faintly as the pain intensifies. Some of the blood gets on the outer rim of the toilet bowl as she finishes the word glass. She starts carving the word halfie across from it. Somehow, blood has gotten onto her panties. A few droplets hit the bathroom floor and she stands.
Girl pulls her panties off over the fresh wounds and the cotton fills with blood. She says a word she’s not quite able to say as convincingly as adults. Fuck! She’s not angry at the pain, she’s angry at her own stupidity in forgetting to take off her panties. She hates to waste clothing, was brought up that way. She can’t take many hand-me-downs from her brother so her clothing has to last.
She tosses her panties onto the bathroom floor and turns the shower on. A trail of blood leads from the toilet seat to the bathtub. It looks like someone was stabbed there because someone was stabbed there. Girl sets the piece of glass down next to the bar of Dial soap that resembles a hunk of melted candy corn.
The bloo
d dripping down her leg swirls into the water. It’s mesmerizing, the little red and clear funnel against the yellowed bathtub. Girl pulls her shirt off, throws it onto the sink.
Half of the perforated holes in the shower head are clogged and the water barely trickles out. She adjusts the pressure; the shower head begins spitting the water in little vomit-like bursts. It pelts her chest and cascades down her body. It mixes with the blood oozing from her freshly cut words. Her words. A new chapter is wrought and the book hasn’t even started.
As she continues running water over her new wounds, she makes a pact with herself to only cut words that have meaning to her; to only cut words she has thought long and hard about.
Girl lets the water run over her new wounds, watching the blood wash away. She touches the fresh cuts, feels the way her skin has opened small red valleys to accommodate the new words. She wishes that the letters were straighter, wishes she could carve in cursive, or Old English; the words look scribbled, but they were her first, and she’d get better. There would be more.
Girl increases the temperature of the water.
Her latte-colored skin turns cherry blossom pink. Blood falls like cherry blossoms in droplets, spreading in fractal patterns against the bottom of the bathtub. Her shampoo smells like cherry blossoms. She’s never actually seen a cherry blossom. If she saw a cherry blossom, she’d stick it in the space above her ear like a princess. She’d rub the blood red stigmas on her cheeks until they looked flushed. She’d have control.
Steam has now filled the bathroom. Searing water hisses against her frail body. Girl lathers the soap onto her fingers until the soap is lodged under her bitten fingernails; she rubs the soap into her new wounds, pressing the word halfie until it stings. Feels good to do that. Feels horribly good.
‘Honey!’ she hears Mom call from outside the bathroom door. Girl jumps. The door handle jiggles open.
‘Mom!’
‘Dinner is—’
‘Mom!’
‘Oh my God!’ Mom screams as she sees the blood smeared from the toilet to the bathtub. ‘What the hell happened in here?!’
‘Close the door!’ Girl yells. She shoves her legs together, as if her Mom can see into the misty shower. Her face tightens; the broiling water no longer stings.
Mom catches her breath, places her hand over her chest. Her eyes zero in on the blood-stained panties. ‘Oh, my little baby is growing up,’ she whispers, calming down immediately.
Boy comes running. ‘What happened?’ he asks.
‘Your sister is starting her period.’ Mom shakes her head at the blood. ‘She’s made a little bit of a mess.’
‘Mom! Close the door!’ The sound of the pelleting water has become mocking laughter. Girl pulls her knees in tighter and screams.
‘Gross!’ Boy says, turning away.
‘Calm down, Sweetie. It’s not gross… it’s a fact of life,’ Mom says to Boy’s back. ‘You hit puberty a few years ago and now it’s your sister’s turn.’
‘It’s freaking gross,’ Boy says over his shoulder.
‘Close the door!’ Girl yells again. ‘Shithead!’
‘Hey! No cuss words! Honey, listen, I want you to clean the blood up, okay? And put a tampon in, okay? You know how to do it, right? Remember how I showed you? It can’t get stuck in there, so don’t worry.’
‘I know!’
Mom steps into the bathroom and opens the cabinet door. ‘Okay, I put the tampons on the sink. Remember to sit on the toilet when you put it in, okay?’
The water continues to beat against Girl’s knees.
‘Also, remember not to flush the tampon down the toilet when you finish with it. We already have that little leak under the sink; we don’t need another one. If you flush the tampon, the plumber will have to come out and that costs money.’
‘Okay!’
‘And how often do you change it?’
‘Every. Six. Hours. Mom. Please. Leave.’
‘All right already, don’t be snooty with me. I’m just trying to help. Listen, clean up and then come eat dinner with your brother and me.’
₪₪₪
Glass Wings appears the same day that Girl starts her broken glass collection. His wings are small, made from multiple shards of glass. They are squamous and the tips are rimmed with dried blood. Rotten, blemish-ridden skin is stretched over his ribcage. His image is more or less a blurred line, torn at the edges and battered. His face is that of a vulture.
Boy sees the monster, illuminated by the lights from the parking lot outside. Their room is always too bright, like an Alaskan Summer. He watches as the repulsive monster hobbles into his room, legs scraping against the floor as his tiny wings ruffle and clink together like wind chimes. The hair on the back of Boy’s neck stands fully erect as a frisson of fear scissors through him.
Boy checks to make sure his sister is still sleeping; she usually sleeps on her stomach with an arm hanging off the bed. He looks for Girl’s arm and sees it. Relieved, he turns back to the ghost, to the mangled monstrosity, to the most horrible thing he’s ever seen.
Glass Wings.
The wretched creature is admiring a piece of glass on their dresser with his back turned to Boy. Small slits cover the flesh of his back, oozing with blackened blood. His tiny wings pulsate slightly.
‘H-h-hello?’ Boy is trembling so hard the bed is shaking. His eyes are burning hot, his legs are numb, his nerves shot.
Glass Wings turns to Boy holding the piece of glass from the dresser. He opens his mouth and a long black tongue rolls out. It curves in the air, falls onto the broken beer bottle. The tongue sluggishly wraps around the piece of glass. Like a syrupy lasso, it draws the glass in.
Glass Wings swallows the piece in a single gulp.
A harsh sound like paper ripping meets Boy’s ears. He pulls his blanket over his head after seeing a new piece of glass tear through the flesh of the creature’s scarred back. ‘W-what do you w-want?’ he whispers, peeking out from beneath the blanket.
Girl stirs. She watches Boy whisper in the dark and wonders who he’s talking to. She sees her brother, his eyes torn apart with fear.
Glass Wings shuffles out, his wings plinking against one another. Boy notices his calves as he leaves. They’re long and narrow, shaped like picks. He doesn’t have feet. Instead, he has two sharp points that carry his body like a pair of stilts.
Who to tell? Boy falls backwards onto his mattress, stares up at the ceiling. Can’t tell anyone that you see ghosts, or whatever the hell they are. He rolls to his side and pulls his bony knees to his chest.
‘What did you see?’ Girl asks.
He turns to her, catches the gleam of her eyes reflected from the light outside their window. She stares at her older brother without blinking.
‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘Shut up and go to sleep.’
‘Be nice. I heard you talking.’
‘Hell no I wasn’t. Maybe you’re dreaming.’
‘I’ve seen you do it before…’ Girl’s voice has no tinge of mockery in it. Regardless, Boy feels defensive.
‘Seen me do what?’
‘I don’t know. Talk to ghosts, talk to thin air – something like that.’
‘It’s not true!’ He squeezes his eyes shut, forgetting what he has just seen. After all, it isn’t the first time he’s encountered things that aren’t really there.
‘I don’t care if you talk to ghosts,’ she says softly. ‘I won’t tell.’
‘Good, because there’s nothing to tell. Now leave me the hell alone. He turns his back to her, faces the wall. He clenches his fists, trying his hardest not to think of the monster he’s just seen.
‘You cuss more than Mom.’
‘Yeah? Well at least I’m not racist.’
‘So you’d marry a black girl?’
‘Of course I would,’ Boy says.
‘What about an Indian girl?’
‘Sure.’
‘A Mexican? What about a Mexican?’
‘Sur
e, your dad is Mexican, remember?’ Boy asks, turning back to her.
‘Shut up!’
‘What? It’s true! You’re a halfie.’
‘I’m not a halfie!’ Girl sits up and throws her pillow at Boy.
‘Yes, you are. You’re half-Mexican, half-white. It’s not a bad thing.’ Boy immediately realizes he’s gone too far and begins to back pedal. He was only trying to poke her with a toothpick, not a dagger.
‘I hate you!’ she hisses. ‘I hate our stupid family.’
‘Hey, let me finish. What I meant to say was lots of famous people are of… um… of mixed racial heritages,’ Boy says, using the word from his social studies class. ‘You know, people like Mariah Carey, Chuck Norris, Tiger Woods. I think Prince is too.’
‘Whatever,’ Girl says.
‘Look, I’m sorry.’ He knows he shouldn’t have said the word. It’s her trigger point. He glances back to where Glass Wings was standing just moments ago and shudders. Let it go, deal with the matter at hand.
Girl doesn’t say anything as she turns her back to him and faces the window. He can hear her sniffling, wants to go to her bed and hug her for a moment. A part of him wants to do that, to hold his sister and show her he’s sorry, but he can’t find the mettle to do so.
Glass Wings comes to their bedroom every time Girl adds another piece to her collection. Boy never quite notices the correlation – he’s too terrified by the menacing haunt to contemplate cause and effect. He just lies there, watching as the hideous being swallows glass from the dresser. He also doesn’t speak to Glass Wings any longer in an attempt to avoid waking Girl. With each piece of broken glass the strange ghost swallows, his wings seem to grow in size. And every morning, just like the first time he visited, the piece of glass in question is back on the dresser unaltered.
₪₪₪
Let us return then to the night that Girl has started her first period, which in actuality wasn’t her first period at all. The thought of her period disgusts Boy because having just turned eighteen, he’s still a virgin and curious to the point of terror regarding the female body. He still can’t believe how much blood was on the bathroom floor.
Boy versus Self: (A Psychological Thriller) Page 1