by David Haynes
“Sure. I’m fine. Much better now.”
Dan frowned. Better than what? “Okay, well…”
“You ever had a book speak to you?”
The question caught Dan off-guard. Completely unprepared.
“I mean, I know you go on about that shit in class, but really speak to you. Like…like…I don’t know, like you can actually hear the characters inside your head.”
Was Ryan making fun of him, just like his father had done years before? He waited for his expression to betray him. The telltale twitch of the lips. But it didn’t come. He just looked up at Dan with a serious yet slightly confused expression.
“Well…” he started, still feeling cautious. He glanced over his shoulder, half-expecting to see Sam Portland and the rest of the football team sniggering behind his back. There was nobody there. “It’s a question of finding the right book, the right story, the one that fits you best, speaks to you, gets inside your head.” Dan paused. Maybe he’d underestimated Ryan, perhaps even undervalued the impact his own lessons had been having.
“Some characters become real to you, Ryan. Sometimes you’ll even start to fill in the gaps that…” He glanced down. Ryan was holding a book in his left hand. It was bound in a faded brown leather, but he couldn’t see the title and the spine was blank.
“Is that the book?”
He reached for it but Ryan jerked it away. He smiled but it wasn’t a pleasant grin. “This is mine. You got to find your own book, sir.” He paused, narrowing his eyes. “Hey, I know someone who can…”
He stopped, looking over Dan’s shoulder toward the sports field. The girls’ soccer team were filing out of the gym and onto the pitch. They were laughing, speaking in excited voices, the sound drifting over the field toward them.
Dan turned away but Ryan was already climbing the steps, going into school, his book clasped tightly in his hand.
“I’ll see you in class,” Dan called.
Ryan simply raised his hand but said nothing.
The kid was acting strangely, that much was clear, but there was no smell of booze on him and no traces of weed. His expression was odd but his eyes didn’t betray any drug use at all.
Dan exhaled loudly and turned back toward school. He shouldn’t be surprised by any of the kids’ behavior after being here for so long. But every now and again, something scratched at the base of his neck. Something with sharp nails. He shook his head and climbed the steps. At least Ryan was back in school. That was something.
10
“So, you coming over later?”
Alex shook his head. “Not tonight, JJ. I’ve got a date.”
JJ stopped walking. Other kids pushed past them on the sidewalk eager to get home. He grabbed Alex by the arm. “What?”
Alex laughed and pulled free. “With my Xbox. I’ve neglected it all week and we’re due a…”
JJ let go and shook his head, exhaling loudly. “Should’ve known.”
They walked in silence for a while, crossing the park, the crowd of schoolkids gradually thinning out.
“I don’t get it,” JJ said.
“I know. Which is why you’re constantly frustrated.”
JJ shoved him. “Dick. I mean Xbox. It’s you and all those other kids shooting each other’s faces off that are frustrated. You don’t even know who they are…I bet some of them are men…dirty men who get off while…”
Alex said nothing. They’d been over this countless times. JJ was his best friend and always would be, but there were some things they didn’t agree on. Xbox was one.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Alex offered. “Hey, you want to go to the movies this weekend?”
“Sure,” JJ replied, “but I’m not sitting through some bullshit video game adaptation again. No way José.”
“They’ve remastered Jaws. Put in some extended never seen before footage.”
“You’d come and see that?”
Alex nodded. “Never seen it.” He had seen it, but he knew JJ wanted to go.
“Oh, man,” JJ beamed. “You’ve never seen Jaws? Man! We have to go!”
They reached the edge of the park and paused. They lived in opposite directions. This was the place they met each other every morning and left each other every afternoon.
“See you in the morning,” JJ said.
“Not if I see you first.”
The same routine every day. Alex turned right, walking slowly up the slope toward his house. It was empty at this time of day. No parents, no noise, just him and the Xbox. Him and his other friend in cyberspace.
He unlocked the front door and called “Hello?” Just in case someone was working from home today. Silence greeted him.
He ran down the hall to his room, dumped his bag on the bed and closed the door. The Xbox took a few seconds to bring up the home screen. Alex put on his headset. On the left was a list of friends, people he didn’t know but played games with online. Names popped up quickly as other kids got home from school. Forget homework, forget the school corridors and the derision, this was their place, their time. Their world. A couple of invites popped up for him to join some rooms but he declined them. He was interested in one name alone.
Five minutes passed, then ten. The excitement he’d allowed himself to feel after leaving JJ was fading. Maybe tonight would be one of those days when he didn’t come online. It was probably going to be another frustrating night, spent waiting for someone who never showed, finally switching off the console angry and confused.
He closed his eyes, rocking back on his chair. How could he go on like this? Divided, bewildered, angry and utterly lost. Wanting to fit in. Not wanting to fit in. Desperate to be just like all the others, just like his best friend, and yet knowing that would never happen. Knowing he would always be different. All the time feeling he was dying inside and that unless he told someone, told them exactly who he was, more and more of him would shrivel up and die until there was nothing left but a withered husk.
“Hey, you there, Al?” The boy’s voice came crisp and clear through his headset.
Alex jerked upright, wiping a tear from his cheek.
“Hey, wasn’t sure you were going to be here. I just came on to check.”
There was a pause from the other end, the sound of a deep breath. “I can’t talk to you anymore.”
His heart stopped, actually stopped beating.
“What? What’re you talking about?”
Another pause. This time it was longer.
“I can’t talk to you. It’s…it’s just too difficult…I’m confused…I don’t know what…” His voice broke, the sound of a deep intake of breath and a shaky release.
Alex bit down on his lip. “I am too, P. I don’t know where to turn. You’re the only person who knows me…knows me properly.”
“I need to get my head straight. Stop talking for a while, try and figure things out. I need to get straight.”
“Straight? You keep saying that word. We’re never going to be straight, P. Never. Don’t you see that? Don’t you understand? That’s what we’ve been talking about all this time!” He was panicking, almost shouting. He didn’t mean to, he didn’t want to scare P away. Not now, not after so long.
“But it isn’t right. We’re not supposed to be like this. We’re supposed to be…”
“Bullshit!” he shouted then instantly regretted it. “Look, why don’t we just have a chat, play some Fortnite and chill out. Maybe we can…”
“No.” The voice was strong now. “I have to defriend you.”
“You can’t.” He heard the whine in his voice, like a child whose best toy had been confiscated.
“Yes, I have to.”
“But…but…Why don’t we meet up, have a coffee? No one will know what we are.”
There was a long pause from the other end. They had discussed meeting up a few times but Alex had chickened out, too afraid someone might see him, might really see him. He thought there would be time in the future. When he was braver, more confident.
Now he wished he hadn’t been so chickenshit, just done it when he’d had the chance.
“You want to meet me?” P asked.
Alex swallowed hard. His heart was hammering in his chest, in his ears. He was shaking.
“If you want me to, yes.” Then more forcefully. “Yes.”
“But you never wanted to. You never would before.”
“But it’s different now. I want…”
“It’s because I’m leaving, isn’t it? That’s the only reason. Because you’re afraid of being alone again.”
Tears burned the corners of his eyes, blurring the screen. It didn’t matter, all that he cared about right now was keeping P with him, keeping him talking. If he did that, he couldn’t leave.
“I have to go, Al,” he said. “You need to take a look at yourself, figure things out for yourself. I’m no good for you. I’m as fucked up as you are.”
“But…”
The headphones clicked. He’d gone. Alex watched the name P disappear from the screen. Gone.
“But, I love you,” he whispered.
He slumped back in his chair and allowed the tears to come. They flowed down his cheeks and into his lap, warm and salty. He stayed that way for a few seconds, feeling waves of grief wash over him. Feeling like wailing, like throwing himself…rage bubbled up from somewhere. A burning, sour-tasting emotion that forced his teeth together in a painful bite.
He rose from the chair, picked up his bag and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall, the contents spilling over his bed. He turned to the Xbox, the green welcome screen showing the hundreds of names he’d played with over the years.
“Fuck you!” he roared, picking up the console, yanking the cable from the wall and pitching it into the closed bedroom door. He grabbed the old office chair he used and hurled it at the Xbox. The case cracked and the glowing white ‘X’ went out.
“Bastards!” he screamed, picking up anything he could lift, hurling, throwing and kicking things in a violent maelstrom of fury. He carried on until he was exhausted, sweat bubbling on his forehead and back. He looked around, his teeth clenched in a maniacal rictus. It looked like a tornado had twisted through his room.
He collapsed face-down onto his bed and wept until he fell asleep.
*
A bang on his door woke him. It jerked him from some horrible nightmare.
“Alex? Dinner’s ready. You coming?”
He glanced at the bedside alarm. It was a little after six. He rubbed his eyes. It hadn’t been a dream. His room was trashed.
“Alex?”
His mom knew better than to just walk into his room.
“I’m coming!” he shouted. “Give me a minute!”
“There’s no need to shout. Jeez!” He heard her footsteps recede down the hall.
He knuckled his eyes again, the full realization of what had happened slowly sinking in. A blanket of oily grief smothered his thoughts, drowning everything in fathomless darkness. He could smell food, the aroma of pot roast, usually one of his favorites, drifting under his door. He couldn’t eat anything. He wouldn’t even try. How could he sit at the table and pretend he was okay? How could he sit there, as he had done countless times and make them believe he was the same as everyone else? He couldn’t. He didn’t want to.
His Xbox lay in pieces beside his door. The chair twisted with one of the feet through the shiny black case of the console. On his bed, his school textbooks, his cell, his…
One book was on the pillow beside him, almost exactly in the center. The spine was blank, the front cover devoid of letters. He reached out and took it in his hand. He’d held it once or twice but never opened it. Somehow the book’s size, its weight and feel, had made him feel a little uneasy; like it was out of balance, didn’t fit his hands. Not today. Today it felt perfect. Like it belonged to him. It was old, he could feel the textured contours on the leather binding, but it had never belonged to anyone else, nor would it ever be held by another. The book had been written for him, just for him.
Alex opened it to the first page. The typesetting was not one he’d ever seen before, but it was beautiful in twisted sort of way. Some of the letters were joined, almost as if they’d been written by hand, with an old-fashioned nib in indigo so dark that each letter seemed to tumble into the next.
Boys like you are freaks, disgusting freaks. Boys like you will never be accepted. There’s only one way out and you know exactly what that means!
He frowned. “What the fuck,” he whispered.
Boys like you are freaks, disgusting freaks. Boys like you will never be accepted. There’s only one way out and you know exactly what that means!
The whole page was covered in the same short and simple paragraph. He shook his head and closed the book. Was he still asleep, dreaming perhaps?
The paragraph repeated itself in his head. It wasn’t his voice he could hear though, it was someone else’s. A voice he vaguely recognized but couldn’t place.
Boys like you are freaks, disgusting freaks. Boys like you will never be accepted. There’s only one way out and you know exactly what that means!
“Shut up!” he shouted.
He opened the book again, sure he had imagined the words in some half-sleep haze.
But they were still there. He read down the first page and then turned over. The next two were the same. He read those too. By the time he reached the tenth page he was too far gone to stop reading. The book was speaking to him as no other book had ever done.
*
Dishes clattered together down in the kitchen, the gentle ring of cutlery scraping food from a plate. Alex lifted his head. It was dark outside. At some point he’d switched on the lamp so he could continue reading. He didn’t recall doing anything. He hadn’t finished the book, not yet, he would do that later. But for now, he knew what he had to do. The book told him.
Him. It had been about him. Someone had filled a bucket with the contents of his soul and then poured it onto the pages where it formed the truth, a reality he had tried to distance himself from. But he never could and he most certainly never would.
Boys like you are freaks, disgusting freaks. Boys like you will never be accepted. There’s only one way out and you know exactly what that means!
And he did. He knew exactly what that meant.
He turned the book over and placed it on his pillow, smoothing the creases from the cotton so it looked neat. He stepped over his Xbox into the hallway.
“You missed dinner, Alex!” his dad shouted. “If you can’t be bothered to make an effort then neither can we!”
He heard his mom say something to his dad in hushed tones.
“I don’t care!” Dad shouted. “At his age…”
He stepped into the kitchen. The overhead lights burned his eyes, made him wince.
“What’s gotten into you?”
He ignored his dad’s question.
“Leave him be.” He heard his mum speaking up for him. She always did. She knew there was something different about him. She probably suspected he was gay. But Dad didn’t and even if he did, he would never admit it. Never accept it.
Boys like you are freaks.
He was a freak. A disgusting freak. Worse than that, he was also a coward. He couldn’t tell anyone, not even his supposed closest friend. He smiled to himself. And if he couldn’t tell JJ then who could he tell? Nobody. That was the answer. Nobody, and that meant he was all alone and he always would be. There had been a glimmer of hope. A shining light in the form of a letter P. But that light went out earlier and so there was nothing left.
He grabbed the heavy skillet from the cupboard.
“What you gonna do with that? Cook a steak?” His dad’s voice was filled with sarcasm. He was still sitting at the table, reading the newspaper. Just like he did every night of the week.
“You want me to fix you something?” His mom bustled up beside him, made to reach for the skillet. “Pasta? Can I make you…”
He swung the skille
t in a short arc. It hit her on the temple with a dull clunk. Her eyes widened as a thick trail of blood ran slowly down her cheek, her mouth a shocked O.
The blow had come off a short swing. He didn’t have the room to put his back into it. Not the first one anyway. The second blow was better. A home run. The heavy iron pan smashed into her cheek. The noise was different this time. It sounded like twigs snapping. Her eyes rolled back and she fell to the floor. She tried to grab the counter-top as she fell, knocking the spice carousel and scattering her bloodied pulp of a face with fragrant herbs.
“What the hell’s going on over…”
His dad didn’t get the chance to finish his question. The skillet, complete with bloodied bone fragments, smashed into the back of his head, knocking him face-down onto his ruined copy of The Silver Lake Tribune.
Boys like you will never be accepted.
He raised the skillet again, high over his head, and brought it down like a great axe. Blood flew everywhere, coating the walls in a dark shade of crimson.
He continued with the skillet until there was nothing left of his dad’s head but a puddle of smashed bone and gore. He stared briefly at what he’d done and stepped back to his mum. One side of her face had collapsed in on itself, her jawbone and teeth in jagged shards beside her head.
The skillet was greasy with blood but he was able to wield it a few more times before it slipped from his grip, clattering into the refrigerator. It made a decent-sized dent in the metal door.
The knife block was where it had always been. Undisturbed and proud of its place in the kitchen. He selected the carving knife from the block and looked at his reflection in the steel blade. His face was warped and twisted, painted with blood. Even his teeth were coated.
There’s only one way out and you know exactly what that means!
Alex walked slowly to his bedroom and closed the door behind him.
There’s only one way out and you know exactly what that means!
Even as he started cutting himself, he could hear the words clearly in his head. Vaguely familiar. It was someone he’d met recently.