Sheep and Wolves

by Jeremy C. Shipp

“Bring out the photographs,” the little man says.

  “What photographs?”

  “Family photographs! What do you think?” He paces back and forth on the dresser. For the first time, or maybe the second time and I forgot, I notice the man’s lack of reflection in the mirror behind him.

  I almost ask him if he’s a vampire. However, I’m too busy pissing myself and saying, “I don’t think I have any photographs.”

  “Everyone has photographs!” he says, and scratches at his mustache.

  My Aunt Laura waddles in. She says, “Would you be a dear and feed me my stuffing?”

  The little man points his gun at her. “What the hell is that?”

  “She’s my aunt,” I say. What I don’t say is that she’s also a teddy bear. Or at least as close to a teddy bear a person could possible be, with hair transplants, amputations, and a mad swarm of cosmetic surgeries. Not to mention two dead parents and a substantial inheritance.

  “Please let her go,” I say. “She’s harmless.”

  “She’s not going anywhere,” the man says. “She could call the police.”

  “She doesn’t have hands.”

  “How do I know she doesn’t have a specially made phone she can use?”

  “She doesn’t.”

  “So says the guy with the gun pointed at his family. Where are those photographs?” He aims the gun at my face. “Get on it! Now!”

  “Who’s your little friend?” my aunt says. She fiddles with the perky ears of living flesh attached to the top of her head and steps closer to him. “You look just like a little doll.”

  “Stay back,” the man says.

  “Why don’t you sit on my bed for a while?” I say. “I need to do something, then we can go eat dinner.”

  Or maybe I’m not saying this. Maybe I’m not brave enough to say a few damn words, and I watch as my aunt holds out her hands to pick up the little man and press him against her hairy chest.

  Before she can lay a hand on him, he shoots her. The miniscule pellet whizzes past the layer of brown fur which cost her more than a bullet proof vest.

  She wanted to be lovable. Cuddly. She wanted to light up the faces of children when she entered a room.

  Maybe three weeks before he died, Jordon told me over a couple bowls of steaming chili that he was thinking about quitting the caretaking job. He told me that he cried for Aunt Laura almost every night. He said people hugged her less than they used to, before the transformation. We finished the chili.

  After this conversation, Jordon didn’t make an effort to hug her more often.

  Neither did I.

  I think about rolling Aunt Laura under my bed with the teddy bear I outgrew but never threw away.

  When she opens her mouth, I think she’s going to tell me the meaning of life. Blood gushes out instead.

  I open another drawer and toss out the innards.

  “For god’s sake,” the man says. “They’re in the chest!”

  So I open the chest, and find the photographs.

  “Here,” I say, and hold out the cluster of memories.

  “I don’t want them,” the man says, and I think I detect a hint of sorrow in his voice. A sour sort of sorrow.

  “I want you to eat them,” he says.

  “Eat them or die,” he says with the gun.

  I eat them. At first they taste sweet, then bitter, then they’re gone.

  “Now the birthday cards,” the man says.

  “I don’t know where—”

  “They’re in a tin box under your bed.”

  I find them. I also find Franklin snuggled up against my old teddy bear.

  I start with a birthday card from my grandma with flowers on the cover. Flowers that look nothing like the flowers at Jordon’s funeral, but doesn’t seem to matter. I remember anyway.

  Then I take the wet wad of card out of my mouth. “You do want me to eat these, right?”

  “Obviously,” the man says, looking smaller all of a sudden.

  It goes on like this. He commands me and I obey. I eat letters and gifts and even my teddy bear. Aunt Laura would have tried to talk me out of it if she wasn’t so dead.

  I dissect my room, devouring all the vital organs. I feel sick to my stomach, the way I felt at the birthday party right after I laughed. I laughed because I knew Jordon couldn’t die. I laughed because I already imagined us laughing about it over a couple steaming bowls of chili.

  “I need to shit,” I say.

  “Not yet,” the little man says. “You’ve got to eat me first.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  He waves the gun. “It’s either you or me.”

  I hold him by the arm and lift him in front of my face. After all this, I guess I expect him to be happy. Instead, he looks as afraid as I feel.

  His mustache falls off. Without it, he sort of looks like me.

  I can’t say that I’m surprised, but I pretend that I am, for my own benefit.

  I lift him higher and he says, “Damn it!”

  “What?” I say.

  “I dislocated my shoulder. Never mind. Hurry up and do it.”

  So I do.

  As his brittle bones snap and crunch in my mouth and his sweet blood oozes down my throat, I feel like a monster. Not so monstrous that I don’t recognize the human in me.

  Just monstrous enough.

  As for the gun, I forgot all about it, and it pops in my mouth, blowing out not one of my teeth.

  Still, it’s my turn to die. And not the kind that keeps you guessing.

  The kind you can’t take back.

  It’s cheaper than therapy.

  Camp

  My muscles tighten. My teeth clench. My irritable bowel is seriously pissed off.

  I’m no good at sitting.

  “Hold it together,” my dad tells me. Not physically here, of course, but why would that stop him? Hold it together—that’s easy for him to say. He’s made of steel bars and rivets and bolts. Me, I’m held together with Elmer’s glue and pushpins and chewing gum.

  Memories vibrate. They fall and crack open.

  A few years ago I shit my pants on this very same two and a half hour bus ride. With liquid crap trickling down my legs, I stumbled toward the bus driver. In tears. In shame.

  I begged him to take me home, but he said, “Sit down!”

  I told him that I was sick, and he laughed at me and said, “No kidding,” but I won’t shit my pants this time. Even if I do, I’ll handle it. I’m bigger and stronger and smarter than I used to be. My dad made sure of that.

  Another memory falls off the shelf and smashes on the floor. My first memory.

  In this one, I watch my neighbor’s pet rabbit kick frantically inside a blender until its legs are too mangled to even tremble anymore.

  “This game sucks,” Nigel says, beside me, tapping at his phone/camera/mp3 player/game console/everything else.

  “Can I play for a while?” I say.

  “It doesn’t suck that much.”

  I’ve never seen or spoken with Nigel outside of Camp and the bus ride to and from, but I still consider him one of my best friends. Mainly because I don’t have all that many.

  Nigel’s a troublemaker and sort of a jerk, and that’s why I like him.

  “You know, they’re going to confiscate that,” I say.

  “Not unless I keep it in my ass,” he says. “They won’t check my ass. Not without probable cause anyway.”

  “That’s sick. Would you really do that?”

  “You’d have to help me.”

  “You’re sick.”

  “No kidding.”

  *

  Once again I’m stuck in the top bunk, despite the fact that I called bottom the moment Nigel and I entered the cabin. I remind him that last year I fell off the top bunk during a night terror and suffered a mild concussion. I also remind him that he promised me on the life of Katherine the Great, his pet Chihuahua, that this year I could have the bottom.

  “She
died two months ago,” he says. That’s that.

  Hamilton enters the cabin, dressed in yellow and grinning like an idiot as usual. “Hello, boys. Excited about the fire tonight?”

  “Yeah,” we say, Nigel and I.

  “Good.”

  I shudder.

  I don’t hate the guy, but sometimes when he’s talking I want to punch him in the kidneys.

  “Your cell phone please, Nigel,” Hamilton says, his hand out and flat like a bear-trap ready to bite. Although mousetrap might be more appropriate. This is Hamilton, after all.

  Nigel mumbles something that sounds like, “Poop hound,” and hands over the phone.

  “I’m not trying to be a dark cloud at a picnic,” Hamilton says. “I just want to start our camping experience out right. We’re not only here for fun and games. We’re also trying to learn some responsibility. And that means following the rules.” He sits on the bed and wraps his arm around Nigel’s shoulders. “You might not appreciate it now, but someday you will. You won’t always have Counselors or parents to bring you what you want. Someday you’re going to have to fulfill your own needs, and that’s not always an easy thing to do. It’s better to start preparing now. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Nigel says. “Please get your hands off me.”

  Hamilton sighs and heads for the door. “See you at the fire, boys.” He smiles and leaves.

  *

  For those campers who don’t like eating sheep meat, the Counselors supply us with baby back ribs. I watch the sheep spinning on the spit. It reminds me of my neighbor’s bunny, turning around and around, staring so intently at nothing.

  “Does anyone else have a ghost story?” Kent says, another Counselor.

  Nigel raises his hand.

  “Go ahead, Nigel.”

  Nigel stands, though no one else did when they were telling stories. “Years ago, there was a boy murdered at this camp,” he says.

  A few kids laugh.

  “He was a good boy,” Nigel says. “He never did any wrong to anybody, so he went to Heaven. The first thing he wanted to do when he got there was meet God. He had all sorts of questions for God about the meaning of life and stuff like that. Mostly, he just wanted to thank God for creating the world. The problem was that a lot of people wanted to meet God, so the line was really, really long. So the boy waited. For years and years. He had a long time to think about what happened to him. He was killed before he ever had the chance to drive a car or fuck a girl or—”

  “Nigel, don’t be vulgar,” Hamilton says, smiling.

  “Sorry,” Nigel says. “Anyway, the more he thought about it, the angrier he got. By the time he reached the front of the line, his whole body was covered with fire. He didn’t care about the meaning of life and he didn’t feel like thanking God for anything. All he cared about was getting revenge. God loved the boy and so he sent him back here, to this Camp, like the boy wanted. The reason why I know this is because he talked to me last night in my dreams. He told me to warn all of you to beg for forgiveness. He’s not only after the one who killed him, but everyone who didn’t stop this terrible thing from happening. Everyone.”

  There’s some laughter, but mostly there isn’t.

  “He’s telling the truth,” Mike says. She’s one of the few girls who comes to Arthur’s Science Camp every year. “I saw the boy last night too,” she says. “He asked me to fuck him, but I’m not a whore.”

  “You can’t fuck a ghost,” England says, in that stupid fake accent of his.

  “Does anyone else have a story?” Hamilton says.

  “He’s watching us right now,” Nigel says. “If you don’t apologize, he’s going to—”

  “Your turn is over, Nigel,” Kent says. “Please sit down.”

  Nigel obeys.

  *

  The boy holds hands with the Holy Light and points at me. The Light glares at me in a way that reminds me of my father.

  “It wasn’t me,” I say. “I didn’t do it.”

  The Light comes at me with a belt.

  I wake up when I hit the floor.

  Luckily, I don’t hit my head this time.

  A boy rushes into the cabin and I kick at him, even though he’s quite a distance away from me.

  “Wake up. You have to see this,” the boy says, not a ghost, but England. He tugs at the stupid fake necklace of teeth he wears all the time. He always plays with that thing when he’s excited.

  “What’s going on?” Nigel says.

  “Come on,” England says. “Before they take it away.”

  So we follow him outside, past the other cabins, toward the Barn. Already, there’s a small group of kids standing around the outside of the Barn.

  We enter the circle and see the body.

  “Shit,” Nigel says. “Is it anyone we know?”

  “No, it’s just some guy,” a younger kid says. I don’t know his name. He’s new.

  Tiny spotlights stroke the man’s carcass up and down. A flashlight rests for a while pointed at the man’s face, and I notice that someone’s crapped in his gaping mouth.

  “Maybe the ghost did it,” England says. “What’s his name, Nigel?”

  “He forgot his name,” Nigel says. “He’s too consumed with rage to remember.”

  Hamilton squeezes through the child barrier, wearing urine-colored pajamas covered with smirking bees. Kent, in his nightgown, is close behind.

  “Go back to bed, children,” Hamilton says.

  No one moves.

  “Does anyone know this man?” Kent says, kneeling, searching through pockets.

  “He thinks I’m a slut,” Mike says.

  “No I don’t,” Kent says.

  “Not you, Kent. The dead man.”

  “Oh.”

  “Go back to bed, children,” Hamilton says. “Or none of us will be allowed in the Barn tomorrow.”

  Most everyone groans.

  “Now,” Hamilton says.

  We go back to bed.

  I’m usually no good at falling asleep, but the instant I hit the mattress, I sleep like a rotting baby.

  *

  One swipe of Hamilton’s keycard and the Barn door will open, and we can all do what we’re here for.

  But Hamilton doesn’t swipe the keycard. He stands there, staring at us, smiling.

  “As I’m sure you all already know, a certain troubling incident took place last night, and we need to talk about it,” Hamilton says. “Kent and I haven’t been able to ascertain the identity of the man, but we believe he was homeless and living in the woods.”

  “Then he wasn’t homeless,” Nigel says. “If he was living in the woods, then the woods was his home.”

  Hamilton’s smile grows a little—which doesn’t mean that he’s any happier, by the way. “OK, Nigel,” Hamilton says. “The point is that we’re probably not going to cancel Camp because of what happened, but that doesn’t mean we can just forget about it.”

  Cold wads of water begin to pelt me from above.

  “Can we talk about this inside?” England says.

  “No one’s going into the Barn until we finish this conversation,” Kent says.

  “He was just some homeless guy,” England says. “It’s not like he was one of us. Who cares?”

  “We should all care,” Hamilton says. “Your parents sent you here because they want you to care.”

  “I’m too fucking cold and wet to care,” England says.

  “You’d better start,” Kent says. “Or you’re not going to last very long.”

  “OK,” England says. “Sorry.”

  Sometimes the other kids put England and Nigel in the same category, but England really isn’t much of a rebel. He only talks back because he likes the attention. 99.9% of the time, he doesn’t mean what he says.

  “The rules and regulations that we follow here don’t exist to make our lives more difficult,” Hamilton says. “They’re here to protect us. To help shape us into very fine young people.”

 
; “Not into prostitutes,” Mike says.

  “That’s true,” Hamilton says. “But what we’re discussing right now is the deceased homeless man.”

  The dead man floats around like a ghost inside my mind, so I close my eyes to get a better look. I see him so clearly, it startles me. He looks a little like my father.

  Hamilton continues, “For safety reasons, we’re only allowed to slaughter sheep inside the Barn. We all know that. However, breaking that rule isn’t what has Kent and I so concerned. We at Arthur’s Science Camp believe that to slaughter an adult not only shows disrespect to us, but to the other authority figures in your lives. I’m talking about your parents. Do you want to disrespect your parents?”

  There are a few no’s. Most everyone’s silent.

  “Slaughtering a fully-grown sheep is a privilege at your age,” Hamilton says. “Not a right. Only your parent mentor can decide whether or not you’ve earned that privilege. Not me, not Kent, not any of you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” we say.

  He swipes the card.

  Nigel leans in close to me and says, “Let’s go swimming.”

  “We can’t,” I say. “We have to go inside now.”

  “Suit yourself.” He walks away.

  So I go in alone, with everyone else.

  *

  The young sheep girl squirms and gags, and that’s about all she can manage. At some point she’ll probably pee her jeans.

  My station today is equipped with needles and an axe. Mainly I’ll be working with the needles, because the axe is just to finish.

  I have thirty minutes before Kent shows up to inspect my work, and my stomach is killing me. I feel like throwing up and shitting at the same time. I feel like exploding.

  I start off scratching her skin with a needle tip. In general the skin nearer to the bone is more sensitive than areas with more fatty tissue, so I go for the skin nearer to the bone.

  She’s trying to talk to me. If she weren’t gagged, she’d probably beg for mercy and then when I don’t give her any, she’d tell me that she hates me. She’d tell me that I’m going to burn in hell.

  I stick a needle in her eye.

  She screams silently.

  What she doesn’t understand is that I’m not doing this because I want to. I don’t want to cause her as much pain as humanly possible. This is about need.