...i keep reading and reading about this, about me, about the many other kinds of me out there, the things, the humans who are not human, who are more than human...
The People Who Are Supposed To Know, the psychologists and the feeble bureau of investigation nazis, they say things like me are made.
beaten, fucked, abused with hot irons and lighters and torture and degradation, and that all sounds rather fun...but my mommy just brought a tray of cookies and hot tea and sat it outside the door and blew me a little kiss goodnight and my dad will buy me just about anything i ask for.
but i don't ask for much, you know...because i'm a Good Boy. i'm a good boy, no one's ever hurt me. i don't even swear.
i fucking hate swearing.
there was just that thing in the night, when i was, what? eight? nine? i think i was younger.
it was a dream. in the dream a shadow stood at the foot of my bed. shadow like a man. not in any old shroud from the grave. not in some perverse black monk's robe. a man in all black, black pants, a black hoodie, his face just a flat smudge.
and he flowed, he flowed over me. i drowned in the dream man-shadow.
i woke the very next morning and knew what i was.
if i'd had any doubts, the little apgar girl at the ball field told me for sure.
i was still too scared, you know. too scared to admit what i wanted, what gave me that weird little giddy shivering feeling that i know now is almost sex, but better than sex.
i was standing between the dugout and the gate that led out to the bleachers, watching my friends play. who was out there? i know hancock was there, maybe the klute kid, the one who moved away after his daddy got arrested for fucking the kid's friends in the boy scouts.
i was really not thinking about drowning in that dream-man shadow. i was thinking about how i wished i didn't have asthma. how i wanted to be out there chasing the ball, feeling the thonk of the aluminum bat ring in my own arms when i swung.
then i looked over and saw the little apgar girl - what was her name? lucy? saw her looking through the fence. she was just on the other side of the gate, poking her nose through the wires. chubby little hands latched on the fence above her head like she was about to climb. even though it was probably in the sixties that day, she was wearing a little pale blue jacket.
cute kid, i guess. fat little cheeks, green eyes, dark curly hair. not even 3 yet. she stared out at the field with sort of a blank doll's gaze.
i started talking to her, just baby babble. i figured out she'd understand if i asked her if she wanted some ice cream, so i asked her. i really scanned those bleachers, too, checking for her fatass mom, the lady who wears pale green eyeshadow no matter what. where was that bitch? here was a baseball field full of boys and the coaches, who weren't paying attention to anything but the game - 50 feet away the bleachers began and there wasn't hardly a soul on them. nobody that i knew to have anything to do with the little apgar kid. i'm still wondering how she ended up there even now.
so i slipped out of the gate, no one looking, and took the girl's grubby hand, led her toward the little ice cream stand directly behind the dugouts. hancock's mom was still alive, and i knew she would be there handing out the cones. she was a tall, skinny lady who rarely smiled.
funny, that - the little apgar girl was really solemn to be so small, too. i still wonder if she could sense what i was, what i'd realized was inside me after the dream-man shadow.
i walked her over, and i remember i stopped right before we rounded the side of the snack counter. we were in a strange, blind place - no one from the bleachers could see us, and if i wanted i could cut to the right, little girl in tow, and we could slip unseen between the backside of the dugout and the snack counter.
i would then lead the little one out to the practice field on the other side of the access road that led into the park. it would be empty. she'd probably start asking about "ice qweem", maybe get kind of whiny. i'd talk to her like mommy sometimes still talks to me, you know, real smooth and soothing, give the hand a reassuring squeeze. we'd walk around the field so i could make sure we were alone and not in anyone's sightline. there would still be a couple of practice bats there - there always were.
i'd walk the kid to the home plate and ask her if she wanted to learn how to play ball.
however she reacted, as long as it wasn't loud squalling - and she didn't seem like the kind who did much of that, really kind of odd and quiet - i'd pick up one of the aluminum bats. i'd say, 'okay, let's pretend your head is the ball', and swing for the motherfucking trees.
all of that entered my mind so clearly, like a gift. like a religious seer's vision.
but i walked lucy apgar around to see mrs. hancock, smiling for once. cam's mom's skin was yellowy, i remember noticing that even then - the lady died of liver cancer just over a year later - but she talked to us, and gave the little girl her ice cream for free.
i didn't eat my ice cream. later i realized i even popped a woody during all this. i was so excited, eating seemed irrelevant.
but i walked lucy apgar back to the bleachers, and damned if her fatass mommy wasn't there after all, starting to look a little pinker than usual as she paced the front of the bleachers searching for lucy. ms. fatass apgar gave me a dollar for being such a good boy and watching her lucy.
i walked home from that game before it was even over, and all i could think about as i walked was that sweet thonk of the aluminum bat, how that would feel if i swung for the hills, lucy apgar's head the ball.
i've wondered, since, if lucy felt some vibe, and that was why she was so quiet. a weird thought, but death is weird, cool, that way.
and in humans, it's kind of unpredictable. that's what i keep finding out, everything i read, those "faces of death" movies i've got in the top of the closet that i watch when mom and dad go on their saturday night 'date'.
that's the thing. doggies and pussycats are getting old. they are only the prologue to my miscellany of skins.
drowning in the dream-man shadow taught me that i am an author in the making. but my words are cuts. they speak blood. the pages that make my book will be skins. all sorts of skins.
i keep wondering what i'll call myself when i finally do this thing, when i finally let everyone know who is among them. finally touch that deeper thrill i learned might exist when i stood there behind the dugout imagining the thrum of the aluminum bat up my arms when it cracked into that toddler's skull.
i just haven't decided who will be the first page of chapter one.
maybe the redheaded girl will join her little buddy strudel soon. i even tried to figure out if i could make some kind of fake strudel and leave it on the waycross's doorstep, but that would have been a little hokey.
maybe the dyke. maybe the slut lady who lays out. i don't know. i'm watching them all, and i'm getting really itchy to move.
but haste will make waste. and i think dad might say that i shouldn't shit where i eat. of course dad would shit if he knew what i was talking about, if he found this funky little journal. i'd probably have to kill him, too, but i'd rather not. at least not until i have a car.
but planning and patience. the ones who got away with it, the zodiac, the child killer in michigan, the guy in kansas - they were planners, that's for sure, intellectuals. deliberate, careful. not impulsive. other guys my age will go through hell and high water to get a good nut somewhere other than under the bedsheets, but i'm smarter, better than that. i know that. i'm not made like the other guys.
saw hancock at the rec center, he was staring at the bulletin board like he was hypnotized. cam's always been pretty cool, but it's the first time i've wondered if someone else has noticed how much work i've really been doing. mr. hancock, his dad - the detective. wonder if it's a like father/like son deal?
cool or not, i'll keep an eye on hancock, just in case...
