Mr. Suicide

by Nicole Cushing

  So kids gossiped about how poor her family was (ignoring the fact that you were all, by any objective standard, white trash). They gossiped about how ugly she was. The boys at the bus stop teased each other by accusing each other of having a crush on her.

  “I’d fuck a squirrel before I’d fuck her,” one of them had said. And, somehow, Fuckasquirrel became her new nickname.

  Once the kids at the bus stop tired of commenting on her appearance, they moved on to trying to determine just how she’d become handicapped.

  Some kids said her legs had been mangled after a crazy car wreck. Other kids said she got that way after surviving a fall out of a window. Yet another theory was that she’d been shot (by her father, by her brother, by a burglar, by a kid at her other school, the permutations were endless).

  You didn’t know how she got that way. You didn’t care how she got that way. All you knew was that she hobbled around when she walked. All you knew was that she only managed to get around your school with the assistance of heavy, clanging metal leg braces and heavy, metal crutches.

  She could’ve been a model for Perfect Monsters.

  You had, before then, always silently agreed with the other boys that she was unattractive. But in the autumn of your senior year, your assessment of her began to radically differ from theirs. You never said it out loud, of course, but her disability began to consistently give you a boner. There was something about her handicap that aroused you.

  This wasn’t just something in a magazine anymore. You had the fetish in real life. You liked the idea that she was hobbled. It was like Mother Nature, herself, had placed shackles around her legs. That bondage… that vulnerability. That sense of being easy to master. That sense that she needed someone to take control of her.

  It took a long time for her to navigate the school, with those crutches. None of the other kids wanted to slow down to her speed to go from one class to another, so she was always walking around alone—a good ten feet behind the other kids in her class as they traveled from one room to another. This isolated her, and you used it to your advantage.

  One day you pulled alongside her, kept pace with her, and asked her—straight up—if she hated the fucking cool kids. She looked over at you like she resented the intrusion into her unhappy but stable arrangement of solitude. She let out a short, sharp laugh that was intended to serve as sufficient response, and then she tried—in vain—to accelerate her pace. She walked away from you. She was wearing a skirt and you found the sight of her misshapen, atrophied leg muscles delicious as they struggled to go faster.

  You, of course, had no problem matching her pace once again. You leaned over close and whispered into her ear. Told her you hated the fucking cool kids, and that—if she wanted—you’d fuck ’em up real good, for her sake. “All you have to do,” you whispered, “is give me a sign, and I’ll do it. I’ll fuck up whichever one you want me to fuck up, because I don’t have anything to lose anymore, you know?” When you whispered in her ear, you got a whiff of her hair. It smelled like medicinal cream.

  She replied to you. Not in a whisper, but in the soft, quiet tone of voice timid people often use. “For real?”

  And you assured her that, yes, you would, because the two of you had something in common. Neither of you belonged. One thing led to another. She said she didn’t want you to beat anyone up, because she didn’t want you to get into trouble over her. But she said she appreciated the offer. This led to more conversations during school. Which led to more conversations after school. Which led to… an emotional state that was the closest you’ve ever come to what most people would call “love”. It wasn’t love, of course. Even you know that. More like lust, seasoned with an obsession for ownership. You wanted to possess her—body and soul. That aura of sickness surrounding her… you felt it. You wanted to be one with it.

  There was a brokenness about her that resonated with the brokenness inside you. You suspected you were diseased in your mind and possibly in the very core of your soul. Fucking her was like fucking disease, itself.

  Despite the fact that she was lame, you were—in a metaphorical sense—able to get her to hop off the bottom rung and join you in the empty, engulfing darkness that lingered just away from the ladder. At least, for a month or two (September and the first couple weeks of October). You fucked her seven or eight times during that stretch, over at her house. Both of her parents worked in the evening. Your mother voiced no concerns about you going over there, probably because you’d told her Cressida was disabled (and she, like everyone else, falsely assumed she was asexual). You told her you were staying over there to study.

  Fucking Cressida made things a little better. When you pounded your hips against hers and dug your nails into the tender flesh of her shoulders, you felt alive again. But then she stopped fucking you. One night she called and said she didn’t want you to come over any more. She was sniffling, like she’d been crying. Said you shouldn’t even call her ever again. Said last time you’d come over, you’d hurt her. Her mom had noticed the bruises and scars when she helped her get out of the bathtub, then asked what happened. She went crazy when she found out. Screamed at Cressida. Slapped her. Threatened to slap you, too. Threatened to have a good long talk with your parents.

  But you didn’t get in trouble. You never worried, at all, about getting in trouble. You figured Cressida’s parents would be too embarrassed to raise the issue with your parents, and you were right. They were embarrassed of having her as a daughter. You suppose that if they could have killed her and gotten away with it, they would have. But, from what you’ve heard, no one can kill a kid and get away with it. The cops take that shit seriously. Cressida’s parents must’ve known that. That must’ve been why they just slapped her around, and didn’t go ahead and kill her. That must’ve been why they did the best they could to forget about it all.

  Moreover, they couldn’t really do anything about you having fucked her. You never raped Cressida. Every time she’d gotten it from you, she’d wanted it. She liked not being a virgin anymore. She liked getting a boy’s attention. But she couldn’t keep up with you, when it came to sheer ferocity. She sort of… gave out. She had no stamina. She got squicked when she felt a few drops of blood trickle away from her shoulder and down her arm. You were disappointed. She wasn’t like the girls in Perfect Monsters, who were willing to go to any lengths for experience. No, sadly, she wasn’t like that at all.

  Damn, you wanted to kill her when she broke things off. But you didn’t. You hit things—the wall, the desk, the bureau. You hit things and pretended they were her. But you didn’t kill her. You told yourself she was just a receptacle, nothing else. Replaceable. You would move on to other conquests. Get her out of your head.

  Somehow, though, word got out that you’d fucked her and the whole thing became fodder for drama. This made it impossible to get her out of your head.

  You wondered how everyone had found out. Pieced together a likely way it unfolded, step by step. Maybe the neighborhood kids had seen you walk over there and leave. Maybe they’d noticed the way your hair was dripping with sweat or the way your shirt tail hung out of your pants afterward. Maybe they’d broken convention and slummed down to the lowest rung of the ladder and asked her what was up. Maybe Cressida had felt flattered by the sudden attention from those even slightly more popular than herself. Maybe she’d told the story in lurid detail. Maybe she’d shown them the scars (exaggerating things a little when discussing them, to keep everyone listening).

  In any case, when she started yapping, everyone in the school—kids, teachers, hell, even janitors—cringed when you walked by.

  Sometimes, you almost liked that. Before the news leaked out, you’d not even been in the same world as all the other kids. Now, there was finally some fact about you that made you relevant again: an action you’d taken against someone on the lowest rung of the ladder that somehow served to remind everyone on the ladder that you existed. Fucking Cressida made you notorious.

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nbsp; You noticed that girls, in particular, glared at you with revulsion and awe. On the colder days when you actually bothered going to the lunch room (instead of eating out in the courtyard), you noticed Cressida suddenly had a group of friends to hang out with. Marching band girls, mostly. The sort of not-too-dumb, not-too-bright kids who hung out with her because they felt someone should hang out with her to make sure she didn’t fuck you—or anyone like you—ever again.

  Seeing her like that, surrounded by self-proclaimed protectors, pissed you off. You wanted to say hello. But the one time you summoned up the courage to approach her, the gauntlet of marching band girls gave you the hairy eyeball. The leader of this clique—a redhead—spoke up and actually told you that you needed to leave Cressida alone.

  Was that really what Cressida wanted? You didn’t think so. She didn’t speak up that day, one way or the other. But you didn’t press the issue. You blew her a kiss. Thought that might cheer her up. Then you walked off to an empty table that was relatively close by so you could keep an eye on her.

  She looked so mopey. You suspected she was just as depressed about the breakup as you were, because she’d gained weight and had taken to wearing even frumpier outfits than she had before. Oversized tops. Knee-length sweater jackets. Skirts that went all the way down to her ankles.

  Winter was cruel. It gave girls the right to walk around without showing any skin. And Cressida had started to use the season as an excuse to start showing less flesh than a nun would. It was like she was doing everything she could to make herself as uninteresting to boys as possible.

  To compensate for her appalling lack of cooperation with your ogling, you treated yourself to an evening masturbating in your room to Perfect Monsters. Eventually, you put the magazine aside and relied on your own, fresh fantasies to masturbate to: mental images of beating Cressida. Beating her with her own crutches. Fucking her with her own crutches. Sometimes, in the fantasies, other girls’ faces appeared on her body. The same crippled legs, only attached to a stunning face—full lips, a slight nose. Cat eyes. You imagined band girls’ faces on her body, and jacked off. You put cheerleaders’ faces on her body and jacked off.

  Hot stuff, but there were only so many times you could wank before it exhausted you. The skin on your cock started to chafe. You’d run out of Vaseline, and didn’t want to go to the bathroom to grab another handful. You felt too exhausted to get up and shower. More and more, you drifted into a life free of the convention of hygiene.

  You lay there as the cum dried on top of you and looked at the wall and heard the humming of house sounds—electricity coursing through filaments, ceiling fans slicing through the air. For years, Mom had been threatened by the thought of you growing up. She worked to keep you there in that house; in that artificial environment where sweat and grime were washed down showers and shit was flushed down toilets and cum was washed off with a wash cloth, which was subsequently laundered, then re-used to wash off your mother’s face. The house was a place built on the premise that sweat and grime and shit and cum were altogether undesirable and needed to be eradicated.

  And yet there was something about the smell of body odor that you enjoyed. That tangy scent that came with two-day-old sweat was, to you, a pleasant one. It made a statement. It said you didn’t care about what other people thought. And cum… hell, cum was the stuff we’d all started out as, right? If anyone felt disgust at the thought of cum, it may have been because—in their subconscious—they felt disgust at themselves. Now shit, admittedly, you weren’t so crazy about. And yet… what dude hasn’t wanted to poke his cock into a chick’s tight asshole? (If for no other reason than just to see what it’s like?)

  The house was an unnatural environment. Artificial—as in, living there day in and day out was a true artifice. Living there day in and day out was, increasingly, a denial of your burgeoning identity. You weren’t conventional or kind or clean or civilized or intended to live in such a setting. Conventions and kindness and cleanliness and civilization were lies—public performances intended to convince everyone that they’re not just biological entities that secrete and excrete and squish and gush. Public performances intended to fool every man into avoiding the fact that his most excruciating preoccupation is that of finding an attractive container to gush into. In your case, the most perfectly hobbled, misshapen container for your cum.

  So, you didn’t shower. You stopped brushing your hair. You stopped brushing your teeth, welcoming the corrugated layers of plaque that began to grow there. Night after night, you let the cum dry atop your skin and your jeans and your shirt.

  “What do you want to do after you graduate?” you imagined the guidance counselor asking.

  “Go mad,” you imagined replying.

  You imagined that conversation, and it made you laugh. Then you daydreamed a little more. Imagined what it would be like to sneak into her house one night when her husband was away on a business trip. Sneak into there and break her legs and jack off while she howled in pain and twitched on the ground. Then you’d come on her face, in her cunt, up her ass. Then you’d laugh and ask her, “What do you want to do after I’m done raping you?”

  It’s not that you hated the guidance counselor. It’s more that you hated everything she stood for. She wasn’t the personification of the ladder, but she was definitely a travel agent for the ladder. She was fully invested in the idea of advancing one rung after the other, of that procession having an intrinsic meaning. You only fantasized about raping her because you fantasized about the day when people heavily invested in the ladder finally realized its meaninglessness. You wanted people on the ladder to see that the ladder couldn’t protect them from running afoul of rapists, that the sense of security conferred by the ladder was a false sense of security. You wanted people to finally recognize that it was those who somehow existed off of the ladder who had value.

  It makes you embarrassed to recall that you felt that way back then: that you wanted people to value you and others like you. You’re embarrassed because it makes it seem like you cared about what other people thought. You’re embarrassed because it was naïve.

  They would never admire you. The closest you’d ever come to being admired was being feared. Your newfound disregard for hygiene and your reputation for deflowering Cressida only reinforced your status as an outsider. When people passed you in the hallway, they gave you a wide berth. If you’d said “boo”, all the other students would have shuddered. If they could have voted on “Senior Most Likely to Wipe Us All Out with an Uzi,” you would have won.

  You could have lingered around like that. Could have fed off that fear for a good while. It would have been better than, say, dropping out and being stuck at home. But you weren’t the kind of kid who got off on playing small time, high school boogeyman. You deserved to swim in a larger pond with far more exotic fish. A grander destiny awaited you. You yearned for salvation.

  IX

  You were supposed to graduate in mid-June. Really, you had no right to graduate. Even when you attended classes, you put forth little effort. But everyone wanted to see you gone, so they made all sorts of accommodations on your behalf. F’s became D’s. Rules were bent. The principal and teachers must have put their heads together and decided that anything and everything should be done to arrange it so they’d be rid of you.

  Little did they know you’d be gone sooner than they’d expected.

  Yes, you were supposed to graduate on June 13th, 2015. But you turned eighteen on April 22. That’s the date you’d been watching for years, and its approach made you nervous. It was time to put up or shut up. Were you going to have the guts to leave behind your mother and the artifice she inflicted on you, or were you going to stick around until your name was called out from a stage on a football field, and you picked up a piece of paper that verified you were—in fact—part of the ladder?

  On the night of April 21 you were so tense you wanted to vomit. Mom told you she was going to make a cake with candles on it and aske
d if there were any friends you wanted to invite over. She was treating you like you were fucking ten years old. You asked her if the party was going to be at a fucking fast food place, with balloons and clowns and pony rides in the parking lot. She didn’t like that. Told you that you ought to mind your manners and show a little gratitude. You told her to, seriously, not bother making a cake or planning a party.

  “No matter how old you get,” she said, “and no matter how much you break my heart, you’ll always be my baby.” She looked down at the cake like it was her baby. She was fussing with it like it was a baby. Putting the icing on all gentle and shit. You wanted to tell her to go fuck herself with that knife and use the frosting as lube. If you’d said that, she would have slapped the shit out of you. But she wouldn’t have stopped making the fucking cake. So you didn’t say it. It wasn’t worth the effort to say it.

  So, instead of saying anything, you went to your room and lay on your bed and considered having a little fun with Perfect Monsters. But you were too worked up about things to masturbate. So you took off your glasses, turned off the lights, rested there in the blackness, and felt it wrap around you like a warm blanket. You still had on your street clothes. You never changed into pajamas or even sweat pants anymore. It seemed kind of stupid, changing into special clothes to sleep in. The only things you could see were the red numbers on your digital alarm clock, glowing like embers of a fire: 10:10 pm.

  There were moments of comforting quiet when you lay there in the blackness, but they were interrupted by Mom’s racket in the kitchen—cabinets opening and closing, her muttering to herself about needing to buy new candles. Then you heard the refrigerator door close and heard her march down the hallway and into her room. Heard the door close. Heard dresser drawers open and shut, as she changed out of her clothes. Then the mattress squeaked as she fell into bed.