Mr. Suicide

by Nicole Cushing

  You tried to convince yourself that, even if you’d offered for your brother to join you in the escape, he wouldn’t have taken you up on it. His spirit had already been too broken. He was a model inmate in your mother’s prison.

  Besides, even if he’d wanted to take you up on it, he’d have been too mentally unstable to follow through with things. How long would it have taken you to get him up out of your closet and packed and ready to go? How much noise would he have made while packing? How impractically would he have packed? (Would he have, for example, insisted on taking his baseball card album with him, along with his twenty-year-old catcher’s mitt, and a dozen other sentimental items he wouldn’t have had room for?) There’s no way you could have pulled it off without waking your mother.

  You tried to force your brain to focus on the logic of those arguments, but it wouldn’t cooperate. Instead, various alarming scenes ignited in your imagination. You might have been granted the Gift of Plastic-Vision, but that didn’t apply to your daydreams. (At least, not yet.)

  And so you saw the whole scenario play out in your head, in all its grisliness; acted out in flesh and blood, not action figures and puppets. Mom shooting your brother’s kneecaps out from under him with your father’s shotgun, perhaps shouting Bible verses while she did so. Your brother bloodied, begging Mom for mercy. Your father hiding in his room, too gutless to even keep her from shooting their own son.

  Yes, that could explain the police tape. It would make all the sense in the world. Mom didn’t have enough self-awareness to blame herself for your departure, so she’d find a scapegoat instead. She’d blame your brother. Say that he’d seen it coming. The two of you talked, hadn’t you? Sometimes even talked behind her back. Your brother had known you were leaving and hadn’t tried to stop you—hell, hadn’t even reported the matter to her so she could stop you. For that greatest of all disloyalties, she had no choice but to inflict severe punishment.

  Or, maybe Mr. Suicide came for a visit right after you left. Maybe he convinced your brother that he’d better go ahead and off himself.

  Yes, that could explain the police tape, too. Out of bitterness for not being Chosen, he would renounce the Great Dark Mouth. Then Mr. Suicide would convince him that without you in the house to absorb the worst portion of Mom’s wrath, it would fall on him and he would find it unbearable.

  Mr. Suicide would convince your brother to use some particularly baroque method to dispatch himself. Auto-erotic asphyxiation, maybe. The images flashed through your head: he’d be hanging from a rope in the closet. Since he was exceedingly quiet and often stayed in his room, Mom wouldn’t even notice anything was amiss for several hours. Maybe even half a day. Maybe she wouldn’t find him until it was time to hang up laundry. She’d march toward his closet, muttering some bitchy gripe or another, open the door, and then discover her son naked and dead. She’d see his dull eyes (like those of the dead Siamese twins in your dream), his face frozen mid-orgasm (like the meat hook people). She’d see those things and she’d scream and then she’d sit down and ponder whether or not she should call 911. (She wouldn’t want to make a scene for the neighbors.) Maybe she would even leave him like that until dinner time, until your father would come home and notice something was amiss. Ultimately, he’d find out and then, for the first time, insist on putting his foot down.

  Maybe that’s what happened. All of it flashed through your head.

  But best to not jump to conclusions. You’d find out soon enough. You investigated the property to see if there were any little blue coperoos lurking about. There weren’t. The crime scene tape hung with too much slack to have been freshly applied. But then again, it wasn’t completely fallen away, either. The house and its occupants were still surrounded by a cloud of police activity, but the cloud was looser rather than tighter.

  But a cloud was still a cloud now, wasn’t it? You still had clothes in your backpack, stained with the blood of the old man. It just wouldn’t do to waltz in there with incriminating evidence strapped to your back. Especially since the bits of flesh caked onto the clothes were starting to take on an odor.

  You looked to see if there was any sign of your family being there at the house. Lights were on, but that was a poor measure of whether or not anyone was home because your mother always insisted the lights be kept on during those rare occasions when no one was home. She was terrified of intruders. Thought that leaving the lights on would deter them. Likewise, it was impossible to tell if any cars were in the garage, as its door was closed.

  You had to have faith in the Great Dark Mouth. (“You’ll know when you get there, bucko.”)

  You turned around. You would return to grab the passport, but not before getting rid of the murder evidence in your backpack. You considered where you might be able to drop it without detection. Throwing the clothes away in the trash seemed like a poor idea, simply because—in their current state—they’d surely attract attention. Various images flashed through your head. Dropping them into a storm drain. (But at this time of day, that was far too public an escapade to undertake.) Another option: going to the Ohio and adding your clothes to the ugliness that already floated there. (Again, too public. The Ohio might be an ugly river but it was the only river in the area that was worth a damn. Therefore, it attracted a certain tourist element who convinced themselves it was something worth looking at. Both on the Indiana side and the Kentucky side, there were bars and restaurants positioned along the waterfront. Each year they held a fireworks extravaganza and military air show over it. It was a gathering place, teeming with frolickers out for a wee merry stroll. Frolickers who would be taken aback by the sight of a disheveled young man polluting their cherished landmark with bloody, sweaty clothes.)

  You kept walking. Thinking. Walking. Thinking. The rattling noise with you, all the way, like the sound of a pesky metronome that couldn’t be turned off. Ca-chink, ca-chunk, ca-chink, ca-chunk.

  When you arrived out on the main stretch of road, outside of the subdivision, you spotted a plastic homeless dude assembled from dirty, chipped Lego pieces. He didn’t look like he belonged there. He looked like he should have emigrated over The Border Crossing many years ago. You supposed you could’ve said he looked fascinating. He was thin and gaunt, (as thin and gaunt as you could imagine a Lego man being, at least). He was in the midst of quite an animated discussion with himself. He talked like Elmer Fudd. When he saw you coming, he stopped talking and smirked. Pulled a rubbery, white-gloved hand up to his face. Put a rubbery, white-gloved finger up to his lips. Shushed you.

  He was the one talking to himself, and he shushed you.

  You giggled.

  “Be vewwy, vewwy quiet,” Lego Homeless Man said. “I’m hunting aliens.”

  Lego Homeless Man was clearly a lunatic, and this troubled you (but not for the usual reasons people are troubled by lunatics).

  You and the Great Dark Mouth had talked about schizophrenia, and He’d convinced you that you were not mentally ill. But in the back of your mind you’d still wondered. You considered the possibility that sanity and insanity were still two valid landmarks by which you could judge how your life was proceeding. Now a lunatic appeared fake to you. The concrete, objective existence of lunacy was essential; for we can only measure sanity by the presence or absence of aberration. When the aberration, itself, looked and sounded unreal, you realized such landmarks were useless.

  But then again, hadn’t the Mouth told you this? He’d said that He was to become the sole landmark of your life—that all other landmarks were useless. (“That’s all you should worry about, from here on out. My opinion of your progress should be the sole barometer of your self-esteem. And I do insist that you progress toward your destiny.”)

  Was it possible to use Lego Homeless Man to reach your destiny? You felt the straps of your backpack chafe against you. Yes, you decided. He could, in fact, be useful.

  “How very fortunate that you’re hunting aliens,” you told him. “I happen to be an alien hunter,
too. As a matter of fact, I slew one just the other day.”

  “How do you know he’s weally dead? They come back if yewuh not cewful,” Lego Homeless Man said. He glanced to one side of the street, then another, confirming no one was eavesdropping. It was as though he was about to speak of privileged information that he was only sharing with you because you had the right security clearance. “Dey wessurwect on Sundays,” he whispered. “I never killed one all da way. Dey always get back up.” Then he let out a Fudd-like laugh. “Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”

  You glanced around. None of the passers-by diverted their eyes from their wee merry strolls long enough to pay you any attention. If you were noticed at all, the two of you were simply dismissed as two chattering street people. So you felt safe taking a tiny risk. You took off your backpack. Unzipped it. Said to Lego Homeless Man, “Take a look in here, you’ll see proof.” You showed him the bloody clothes. Through the filter of Plastic-Vision, they appeared to be made out of vinyl and smeared with ketchup.

  He looked at them and looked at them. You felt uncomfortable with such a long pause. When he finally glanced back up, he rolled his eyes at you. “Not at all impwessive! That’s not alien blood. That’s fwom a puwson! Alien blood isn’t wed. It’s gween! I found that out fwom Staw Tweck.”

  “Star Trek isn’t real,” you said (as though you, of all people, were now in a position to be arbiter of what was real and what wasn’t).

  Lego Homeless Man started to show signs of agitation; raised his voice: “I saw it on TV. And the camewa doesn’t lie!”

  Just then, a passing G.I. Joe-style action figure man turned his head to glare at you. There was a National Guard base nearby, and it seemed like he was taking a break from his chores there. (Although that made little sense—did military people have “breaks” in the same way kids working at McDonald’s did? Fifteen minutes and then back in the tank?)

  In any event, he walked along the sidewalk with a stop-motion animation style that resembled a confident, heroic strut. He’d probably just returned from Afghanistan, where he’d been fighting for your freedom. If he went to the cops with suspicions that you were up to no good, they’d likely believe him. In popular opinion, a hero—like a camera—doesn’t lie.

  This was going to be harder than you’d imagined. You had to think fast. You lowered your voice to a whisper. “Be very, very quiet,” you said. “The government is staring at us.” You jerked your head in the direction of the G.I. Joe man.

  Lego Homeless Man turned his head and saw the soldier. “Oh shit,” he said. “I’m sowwy. I’ll shush. I’ll shush.”

  “You better shush,” you said. “Or else he’ll ship both of us off to Guantanamo. You know the government is in cahoots with them, don’t you? The aliens, I mean. Down there, the aliens run the show. They put the prison down there, away from the U.S., so they can walk around undisguised.”

  “Weally? Gosh, I didn’t know that. I mean, it’s vewy believable. But no one told me that, befowuh.”

  This was the opening you needed. “You didn’t even know that? Ha! Some alien hunter you are. My guess is that you’re a mere rookie. Say, how long have you been at it, anyway?”

  Lego Homeless Man stroked his face thoughtfully. “Five yeaws, maybe six. Maybe sixteen or six hundwed. I think six is in there, somewhewe.”

  “Well, I’ve been hunting aliens longer than that. Seven or seventeen or seven hundred years. And so I know a few things you don’t. For example: the aliens sometimes drink red paint so that their blood looks red instead of green. How else do you think they’ve been able to walk amongst us for so long, undetected?”

  “For weal?”

  “Yes, for real.”

  Lego Homeless Man examined the contents of the bag once more. “So that all came fwom a dead alien? How did you kill him so that he didn’t wessurwect?”

  Ah, this was too easy. He was playing into your hands. You pulled out the knife that had belonged to the old man. “I used this. You see how the blade is silver?”

  (It was steel, not silver, but Lego Homeless Man nodded his chipped plastic head in agreement.)

  “Well,” you said, “that’s how I was able to kill him. This is a magic knife. If you stab them with this, they won’t resurrect. It was handed down to me from the alien hunter who trained me. And I’m so very sad, because now I’m about to retire from alien hunting. I’ve seen too much death, you know. I’m sort of shell-shocked by the whole thing. So I’m about to leave the profession, and I have no one to give this knife to.”

  Lego Homeless Man scratched his head. “What do you mean, you wascally wabbit! I just told you I’m an alien hunter, too.”

  You gasped, as though surprised. “Well I’ll be… That’s right. You have just told me that! Would you, by any chance, be interested in carrying on the good fight with this weapon?” You cupped your hand around the knife, so passers-by wouldn’t notice it.

  “Boy would I!”

  You slipped the knife into his hand. There was a flicker on and around his Lego face, and then you noticed the markings on it changed from those which portrayed a scowl to those which portrayed a grin.

  “If you’re going to take the knife,” you said, “you’re probably going to want my backpack, too. I mean, so you can sniff the clothes. Get a sense of what their blood smells like. Every hunter needs to know the scent of his prey.” You slipped off the backpack. Held it out for him.

  When he took it from you, he took on all your fears. The evidence was on him, not you. When he eventually had a run-in with the little blue coperoos (which, given his demeanor, he most likely would) they’d search him and find evidence of murder. They’d find DNA matching that of another homeless man. Assumptions would be made. Bum fights envisioned. Then they’d arrest him, and—despite idealistic notions to the contrary—a jury would deem him guilty until proven innocent. Most likely, he’d end up in a Lego Insane Asylum, attended to by Lego Nurses with Lego needles that would puncture his plastic and dope him up with happy-sleepy juice for the rest of his life.

  Thinking through the whole scenario made regret spew through your brain. After everything you’d done—more or less without remorse—you were surprised you still had anything even vaguely resembling a conscience. The last time you’d felt anything like this, you’d just shot cum on the old man’s face. But even that hadn’t stopped you from plunging with him down even more exotic depths of squishy-gushy. Perhaps you felt regret because you realized you’d come to embody the old man’s saying: “There is no honor among bums.” Perhaps you felt regret because it was almost too easy. Lego Homeless Man had so very much wanted to believe in aliens and alien hunters, and your words provided an excuse for him to keep on believing in such things. If it had been harder, you’d have had more of a sense of accomplishment.

  You felt a need to be extra-kind to him, as you said your goodbyes. You shook his hand in a pantomime of gregariousness and good cheer. “Best of luck, Alien Hunter, and thank you for your service to our country.”

  G.I. Joe Man was almost a block away when you said that, but you thought you spied his head turn ever so slightly toward you—as though he caught on to what you were saying and somehow thought you were talking about him. Perhaps he was ultra-alert to expressions of gratitude for service to the country. Maybe he had special sensors in his ears, designed to pick up such expressions so he could automatically respond to them. In any event, when it became clear you were talking to the homeless guy, G.I. Joe Man shook his head (stop-motion animation style). Even the briefest, most superficial experience with you had left G.I. Joe Man disgusted. He marched along, back in the direction of the National Guard.

  You marched along behind him in the same direction (because Mom and Dad’s house was only three blocks away from the National Guard armory). G.I. Joe Man marched back to his esteemed place on the ladder, where he fought for your freedom.

  You marched toward your passport. Toward true freedom.

  Ca-chink, ca-chunk, ca-chink, ca-chunk
.

  XVI

  The night you’d turned eighteen, you’d had to sneak out like a thief in the night. But you didn’t have to sneak back in. Shedding the backpack and the knife led you to shed fears of becoming a suspect. Who cared if cops were on the scene? As long as you weren’t carrying evidence with you, you were good to go. You could simply present yourself before your parents and get your passport.

  You still didn’t know how you would get it, but the Great Dark Mouth had assured you that it wouldn’t be such a difficult task.

  You had faith in the Great Dark Mouth.

  There would be questions, of course. Mom would scream at you. Try to slap you. Make you feel guilty. Try to convince you to stay. It was difficult to approach the house, knowing you’d be exposing yourself to all that when you walked in. But you would force yourself to tolerate that nonsense for the sake of the greater goal.

  If you were lucky, it would be the last time you would ever have to interact with any ladder person, ever again. You’d get your passport, take a bus back to The Border Crossing and proceed to oblivion.

  The yellow police tape still fluttered in the breeze. But now, it seemed as though someone was home. You saw silhouettes passing behind the window. Then you saw a plastic mannequin hand pull at the drapes. You saw the plastic shape of a young, Caucasian man with molded plastic brown hair.

  Your brother. At least he wasn’t hurt. (Though seeing him as a mannequin made you cringe.)

  It seemed as though he saw you, as well. In fact, he jumped in an exaggerated manner (more like a marionette, than a mannequin) when he saw you. Through the thin walls of the pre-fab house, you could hear a Porky Pig style stuttering. Then the door opened. Your father stood there, trembling. He appeared to you as a pink rag doll, tattered and frayed. His head was adorned with alternating loops of black and gray yarn. Your stomach sank.