It is time.
I lower my head and make eye contact with the dead fool in the mirror. Dead fool. I barely recognize myself. The eyes are the same—a little weary, but definitely me. Everything else has been altered, lessened, deadened. My face is gaunt and sharper and less puffy than usual. The color has drained from my cheeks and the effect is severe. In fact, the loss of color throughout my entire body makes me look leaner, deepening the shadows and defining illusionary muscles. I actually look better dead. I’m not as greasy and my body hair isn’t as jarring. Colors are dulled, there is less contrast, and everything blends. Zits have dried and died and even my gunshot wounds are clearing up. The three wounds (my shoulder, my chest and my thigh) have already closed and scabbed over with mushy purplish flesh. The nasty wound in my stomach, the one Lumpy plugged me with at extremely close range, isn’t doing as well. It has closed. I can no longer feel an air passage in my back and when I carefully dig my finger around a bit, I can feel a tough, calcified build-up of tissue forming. Unfortunately the hole still leaks a god-awful blackish fluid, but it’s gone viscous, almost gooey and looks like it’s beginning to clot. All in all I’m not doing too bad. If it weren’t for the fist-sized hole in my abdomen or those little Play-Doh-ish mounds of purple skin my gunshot wounds have left, aside from being way too pale, I wouldn’t look half-bad. I was expecting a lot worse. It’s nice to get a little break every once a while. It keeps the psyche primed and ready to push on.
I cup my hands and dip them into the sink, disrupt the ever-burgeoning microcosm and splash a double handful of water onto my torso. I continue until I look reasonably clean and I then grab another enormous wad of toilet paper and lodge it into the hole in my stomach. My tattered shirt isn’t salvageable, so I tie a couple pieces into a long, thin piece, wrap it around my torso, secure the toilet paper snugly in place and then tie it off.
As I’m adjusting my makeshift bandage, the bathroom door swings open. A burly bearded man, all flannel and blue jeans and tobacco-chewing swagger, walks in. He gives me a Boy, what the fuck are you doing? look and then says: “Boy, what the hell happened to you?” Close enough.
“N-n-nothing,” I stammer and before any more questions can be asked I scoop up my sweater and squeeze it over my head. The burly guy shrugs, enters the toilet stall, unzips his pants and goes about his business. Not particularly interested in hearing (or smelling) his business, I bail out into the restaurant.
Eddie looks super-relieved when I slide into the booth. I was tempted to just keep walking, get in the car and step on the gas and ditch out. I couldn’t do it, I could feel his little eyes on me the moment I exited the bathroom.
“I was afraid you were going to leave me,” he says quietly.
“Not that afraid.” I smile back at him and gesture at his plate. The Grand Slam breakfast he ordered is almost gone.
“Your English muffins were getting cold, so the waitress took them and said she would bring them back when you returned.”
“I wasn’t that long, was I?”
“Long enough to get me worried.”
“Well, here I am. No worries, right?” I try another smile. It’s depressing to see him down, like he was back in the car. The waitress, old pro that she is, appears and drops off my muffins. I am so unhungry it’s ridiculous, but I take a few small bites for show.
Eddie says: “I can’t read you and it scares me. I can read everybody.”
I say: “What do you mean read me? Like your ESP? You read me earlier. Remember in the car when I was wondering what you were all about?”
Eddie says: “Yes, but those were stray surface thoughts. Unsubstantial. I can’t get in and see things.”
I say: “Good, you shouldn’t be reading people anyway.”
Eddie says: “I know, but…”
And then he’s off. That’s pretty much the end of my side of the conversation. In the short time I’ve know the kid, I’ve surmised this much: once he gets comfortable (which takes no more than a short, silent drive) he will talk, and talk and talk and it’s funny because he is really quite brilliant. He knows everything about everything and isn’t afraid to throw a little of everything into a conversation about a particular thing. This is great, and even interesting, but unfortunately he hasn’t learned how to edit himself. He’s full of knowledge, but lacks wisdom. Which isn’t entirely true, some of the stuff he throws around is profound to the point of bedazzlement, but there is so much filler in between it’s hard to pick up on.
I really wish I could do his little diatribe justice. Understand that I am not a genius. In fact I am closer to idiot than genius, and all of this is filtered through me, so little Eddie isn’t given his proper due, mind you he earns his due through these long-winded discourses.
Anyway, Eddie says (as filtered through my thick senses):
“I know, but that is how I understand people. It is how I survive. My age and life experience puts me at an extreme disadvantage. The average five-year-old is cute and cuddly but incapable of intense cognitive functions. They think, of course they think, but lack introspective ability and complex reasoning skills. My intelligence, my ability to understand things a person my age cannot possibly conceive, is a curse. Nobody takes me seriously. Nobody understands. My ESP then, is a gift. It’s compensation, it’s balance, it’s the smallest of condolences for being trapped inside this little body with all of these big ideas. Mostly it’s ammunition. It gives me an in, a way to force adults to understand that I am no ordinary child, that I am smart and intuitive, a force to be reckoned with.
“Generally it’s easy. I center my thoughts and before long I’m in. With you, I focus and focus and get nothing, just a few meaningless thoughts floating lost in an impenetrable black cloud. The brain is made up of pathways. Think computers and the Internet. Do you know about computers?”
I shake my head no. Eddie goes on anyway.
“There are all of these ports and every one of them is encoded and information is allowed passage through particular ports depending upon a number of factors: address and accessibility mostly. The brain opens and closes these ports as it sees fit, receiving pertinent information or rerouting irrelevant information to the proper port.
“My level of sensory perception is so potent, it’s like I have a giant cloud of energy floating around my body and when I get close to someone, I engulf them in this electrolytic field. The field is basically free flowing, kinetic information, an ever-mutating encryption breaker. It swirls around your brain, or another’s, and gleans information. It overrides inaccessible ports and permeates the brain entire. I don’t just get some information, I get all of it. A flood of thoughts hit me and at first it was a little overwhelming, I didn’t understand how to process it, but over the years I’ve come to know my way around. I can navigate the neuronal pathways as easily as a computer hacker can cut through firewalls.”
I chime in, tapping my head with my forefinger, “Well then, it’s just as well you can’t get in me and I stand by my earlier decree. You got no business in here.”
“But you are my only chance. Did you know that? Even though I know what I know about you, you are my only chance.”
“What do you mean ‘what you know about me’? I thought you couldn’t get in here.” Again I tap my forehead for emphasis.
“I can’t, but my dreams, remember? Listen, I don’t have many choices. I have to do what I am told. Children are expected to be complacent. Everybody treats me like a kid. Never mind that I am thousands of times smarter than any of them. When I woke up and you were there, I was scared, but a calm came over me. Despite my dreams, it was a chance for me to be me. No matter how brief, or ill-fated, it was a chance. So instead of outsmarting you and getting away, or turning you in to the authorities, I decided to see it through.”
“Ill-fated?” What does this kid know?
Eddie ignores me, finishes off his chocolate milk and continues.
“I shouldn’t know what I know. Not just about you, and don�
��t worry I’m getting to that, but about life. Birth, school, work, death, nothing less, nothing more. People can’t really put it together, they can’t grasp the abject pointlessness of it all, until they are quite a bit older. At my age I should be a walking smile, I should be a ball of unquenchable energy, I should be unconditionally happy, but I can’t be those things, because I—like 93.7 percent of all living, breathing adults—am depressed and jaded and all too aware of how meaningless everything is.
“It’s the way of the world, I know, but it isn’t fair because one hundred percent of those jaded adults had a childhood. They had a time of wonder and pure, dumb, ignorant bliss. When you’re like me and that horrible realization comes on prematurely, there has to be exceptions, there has to be certain freedoms allotted, no matter the age, because I cannot pretend to be a happy-go-lucky child. I know life is a wasteland of hurt and disappointment and I don’t want to watch cartoons or play with toys or say cute things to make adults long for the innocent simplicities of their misspent youth. I want to be treated as an equal and permitted to go out and experience the great mess firsthand.”
Eddie gives me a look to confirm that I am following him and then continues. “My parents do not understand that. Nobody understands that and I know because no matter what they tell me, I’ve been inside their brains. I know what they think about me. Freak. Anomaly. No matter my IQ or my desire to be accepted, or my ability to reason and consistently reinforce my logic and cognitive power, all anybody sees is a five-year-old. All anybody hears is a five-year-old.”
Eddie stops and takes a deep breath. His little eyes look moist and his lower lip quivers. I notice his hands are balled into tense fists.
“It’s okay,” I clumsily try to comfort him.
Unclenching his fists, Eddie inspects the little crescent indentations his fingernails have etched into the soft flesh of each of his palms. He shakes his hands out and starts up again, “That being said, do you want to know what I learned about you in my dreams?”
I nod yes and he’s off once again.
“You are death.”
I’m about to speak, but Eddie gives me an intense look and motions for me to wait. He closes his eyes and speaks as if he is in a trance:
“You are the end. In my dreams the world writhes at your feet. It begs for mercy, but you laugh and stomp it into silence. I watch you from a distance and I am terrified, run through with fear, but I know I have to do something. Even though I hate the world as much as you hate it, I hate the hypocrisy and idiocy, I hate that no one can be trusted, I hate that everybody thinks in lies, but for some reason I can’t let you destroy it. I can’t, so I run toward you and I am about to leap into the air and use momentum to harness what little power my body is capable of producing to tackle you down, when you extend your palm. Everything freezes.”
Eddie’s eyes are still closed. He holds his left palm in the air, turns the palm toward me and continues.
“The palm opens like some grotesquely blooming flower and within its depths I see the most beautifully mesmerizing spiraling colors. Time resumes and there is no stopping my forward thrust. The palm widens and catches me. I fall in and I tumble for what seems like an eternity before my feet touch down upon a billowy, radiant red surface. Complete darkness surrounds me and the only thing I can see, except for the soft flooring, is a red streak of color darting about in the distance. I chase it and as I get closer I see the outline of a woman.
“She continues to run and I am unable to catch her. I get tired, double over and rest my elbows on my knees. When I finally regain my breath, I stand only to encounter a vicious German shepherd growling and frothing at me. It tenses and its lips curl. My muscles tense up and as sure as I know I am a genius I know this rabid animal is going to pounce upon me and rip my throat out. Luckily a figure appears out of the darkness and shoos the beast away. The figure gets closer and after a moment of adjustment my eyes clear and I can see it is you.
“You look much kinder than you did in the beginning of the dream, before I fell into your palm, and you reinforce this by smiling. You ask me what I am doing here and I tell you that I am lost, that I am trying to get away from you. You shake your head and tell me no one is lost, we are all on our way, and no one gets away from you. I ask you what you mean and you bring your finger to your lips, signaling me to be quiet. An eerie redness rises from the ground, climbs your legs and wraps itself around you like a paper-thin, phosphorescent snake.”
Eddie waves his raised arm like a snake and then brings it down, palm out, extended toward me. “The woman from earlier appears in the distance. I can’t make her out, but she stares on expectantly from afar. She seems anxious and her hands fidget. The red overtakes you completely and your eyes roll up into your head and their luminous white backsides turn to black. You raise your palm for a second time. It opens again, but there are no mesmerizing spirals of color, instead its center is a cavernous pit, black and infinite and deep, ringed with a million colorless shades of decay. I want to run, but terror paralyzes me. You raise your death hand high above your head and the palm stretches to cartoonish proportions. You bring it down around me, entombing me, and in the complete darkness there is no air. There is no hope, or place to run, or chance of escape. I gasp and choke and die myself awake.”
His little eyes open and I look into them. I break and stare off and think: this kid doesn’t need access to my brain, he knows me better than I know myself. All this fucked-up shit in my head, my new purpose, my destiny, my new station in life, all the crap I can’t seem to get a grip on, I can’t seem to make sense of, he understands. He understands that I’m here to kill all. And I understand it too: the thought comes and I want to explode, I want to annihilate every last soul, but then as quickly as it comes, it goes, and I’m looking at Eddie and thinking about how clever and childlike-cute he is, or about the waitress and how kick-ass she is at her job, or a world within a world in the bathroom sink and how life is perpetual, and suddenly I’m not thinking about killing anymore. I’m thinking about fitting in. I’m thinking about life-type things. I’m thinking and I’m thinking and I have to stop. I have to refuse such contemplation and stay focused on death. On what I am. I am death. I have to grab someone and drain them. I have to get away from Eddie. I have to get the hell out of Denny’s. I have to fulfill my destiny. I am everlasting fucking death and for fuck’s sake where is Annabelle to steer me along?
Eddie points at me. “I may not be able to get in your head, but I can read your face. I know I sound crazy, but I also know I am not too far from the truth. I also know that you are planning on ditching me, it’s written all over your eyes. Knowing all I know, knowing there is a good chance that you will kill me, I still want to stick. This is my only chance. If you drop me off, somehow, some way, I will be returned to my old life. I can run and try to make my own way, but a five-year-old won’t get very far. People,—despite my dislike, despite your dislike—are kind and they won’t let a child alone. I will be returned to my family or turned over to Child Protective Services no matter what I say or do. So if you please, push those ideas from your mind. I am sticking and if you refuse me, I will make sure you are arrested for kidnapping. I don’t care what you are or what you are capable of, I will take my chances, because anything, even death, is better than going back.”
The waitress appears out of nowhere. “Everything okay here, gentlemen?”
We both nod.
“Can I bring you anything else?”
We both shake our heads.
“Have a good day then.” She puts down the check and hurries away to another table.
I look at the check. Eddie watches me and then whispers, “I also know that you can’t pay the bill. I’ll meet you in the car.”
He smiles and then gets up and bolts out the door.
Chapter Nine
Something Like Faith
Nobody notices me ditch out on the check, but I feel hundreds of eyes on my back and butterflies slam-dancing in
my stomach nonetheless. I fast-walk to the car, a blanket of sweat moistens my forehead, nerves I guess, but everything evens out once I am behind the wheel. Eddie is sitting in the backseat staring at me in the rearview mirror. I give him a look—a sour, fuck-off look—as we pull out of Denny’s and head for the freeway. I still like the little goober, and a secret joy pulses in my brain over the fact that he is here keeping me company, but his petty threats back in the restaurant have pissed me off and I intend on making him feel like shit for going there.
“It’s not going to work,” he calls from the backseat. “I know you’re happy to have me along.”
He sure collects a lot for someone who supposedly can’t read my thoughts.
“Just the surface stuff.”
“Enough!” I shout half-mad. Eddie kind of smirks and stares off out the window. “Nice pajamas,” I jab.
Sweet silence then, for a little while at least. I drive aimlessly, awaiting Annabelle’s return. Gas is at just under a half tank and I don’t know how long before we run out. Stealing gas isn’t as easy as skipping out on a breakfast check. I’ve never siphoned before, but I think I know how it’s done. I hope this tank will last me until nightfall. Under the cover of night I can find a residential area, snag a thin hose from someone’s front yard and then see if I can get some gas. Maybe I should steal another car. The cops are probably looking for this one. The thought makes me nervous and I feel like I did exiting the Denny’s without paying the bill. I feel like a thousand pairs of eyes are bearing down on my back. Well, a thousand and one pairs of eyes if you count Eddie’s, which I don’t.
Where was it Annabelle said I had to go? Did she say where? I have a tough time remembering. All that’s happened is a blurry mess in my mind. Arizona keeps popping up. Did she say she lived in Arizona? I hate it when this happens. Someone gives you a piece of information, like an address or a phone number or an appointment time and everything feels right, like your brain has got it locked and there is no way you are going to forget it, but when you try and retrieve it from the overcrowded goop in your head, it’s nowhere to be found. When I was younger, I used to roll my eyes at people who made lists or kept organizers. I used to think they were lazy-brained or weak-minded, but now I know better, and though I hate to admit it, I understand. I have become one of those people. My brain isn’t as sharp as it used to be and I have to write shit down. The craziest part is it just sort of happens overnight. One day you’re on top of everything, the next it’s all gotten away from you. Getting old is a scary thing.
I Will Rise Page 12