She lived for those stories! Sometimes I think the people on the television had become more real to her than me and Racecar. I couldn't really blame her, though. I was a dumb boring s.h.i.t, fun to laugh at but never with. Nothing but trouble. Virtually r.e.t.a.r.ded. And the father, the father was something different altogether.

He was, as I said before, an angry gimp. He'd lost both of his legs in a work-related incident of dubious cause. I never talked to him much, anyway-especially about that. He had this old motorized wheelchair he zoomed around the house in and he was always knocking things over-ashtrays and gla.s.ses off the coffee table, the TV Guide off the mother's end table. All the lower cabinets in the kitchen had this horizontal strip of raw wood down close to the floor from him slamming into them with the unused metal footrests on that d.a.m.n gimpy wheelchair. That's all he did with his day, zooming around the house like he was in some f.u.c.king marathon for cripples. The carpet, which wasn't in too good of shape anyway, was all worn bare from his continuous buzzing. He was trying to wean himself off the motor, though. He saw the motor, undoubtedly a modern convenience to most, as some sign of weakness. A cla.s.sic case of overcompensation, he wanted to make his arms and torso huge to make up for not having any legs. He didn't talk much and when he did it was with his teeth clenched around this old yellowed-plastic cigarette filter. He had stopped smoking after he lost his legs. He said if he ever had to go on some sort of lung gadget, it would make the wheelchair too heavy to whir around the house like that. When he did talk it was usually a fervidly pa.s.sionate and obsessive rant about getting the bas.e.m.e.nt all cleared out so he would have a decent place to ride his chair around. I wasn't even sure the bas.e.m.e.nt needed "all cleared out." n.o.body had ever gone down there. It could have been used as a body farm for all we knew.

The mother described the father as a "bundle of nerves."

"Why don't you just stop for a minute," she would strumble. "Stop turning this place into the G.o.dd.a.m.ned Grand Prix."

Even with the television turned to top volume, the mother still had to strain to hear her stories over the buzzing and clunking of the father. Sometimes he growled around that filter. This really drove the mother nuts. When he started with the growling she usually had to go into the bedroom and lie down. That's something else she was doing more of lately, just going into the bedroom and falling asleep. If I was ever too sick to go to school, she usually stayed in bed all day. Like a whole day with me was just too much for her. Needless to say, she was bedridden most of the weekend. She would make me move the television stand over to her doorway so she could still watch it. She never let me push it all the way into the room. She said it cluttered up her room to push it all the way in. Since she made me her personal servant when I was there all day, bringing her this and that, I had to go through the tedious process of moving the television out of the doorway to get to her bed.

So that's what the parents were like. That's not really fair. That's what the parents had become. I really hated them. I hadn't always hated them but, lately, I hated them an awful lot. I didn't really blame them for anything, like my failing and all that f.u.c.kness. Before I started failing, back when I actually tried to fit in, I blamed them for a lot because, even at an earlier age, I knew they had somehow created me. I never saw myself as something that came from G.o.d. I wasn't familiar with the eggs and the sperm and all that f.u.c.kness but I could tell I was like two puzzles that had the pieces all mixed up, making a third puzzle that didn't really look like anything. So when I was younger, I blamed them a lot because I didn't have my own personality so I was just a combination of them and they sure were terrifically blobby wastes. But I grew out of that and I just started wondering why I had to be born to them. That's really when I started hating them. I knew I still wouldn't have fit in, but at least I could have maybe had new clothes and good food and all that f.u.c.kness.

I was sure there were a lot of other people out there who would have made better parents. Maybe if I'd been born to one of those other countless parents I could have had some sort of plan or goal or f.u.c.kness like that. Mostly I just sat around wondering how I could have been born to such slothful and ridiculous blobs like the parents.

When Miss Pearlbottom sent me home that day, I knew I had it coming. Miss Pearlbottom liked to call the parents from school whenever she thought she didn't have an opportunity to punish me enough for one day. Like I could tell that some days she wanted to haul off and smack me, I could see it in her eyes. Those were the days she would call home so that the mother and father could properly lay into me. I hated them all. The mother, the father, and Pearlbottom combined formed some kind of f.u.c.kness triumvirate. A web of f.u.c.kness. Those three lead the f.u.c.k-Wallace-Black-in-the-a.s.s parade.

That day, walking home through the rain, I hated them-especially the parents-with an even greater pa.s.sion than usual. The only thing I could think about was getting the f.u.c.k out of Milltown and never looking at any of those blobby faces with their seeping r.e.c.t.u.m mouths ever again. I walked down the sidewalk and remembered that old saying, "Step on a crack, break your mother's back," and I made sure to step on every f.u.c.king crack along my way. I briefly hoped the parents would be too tired to really punish me or maybe they would have a stroke of understanding or compa.s.sion but I guess, deep down, I knew that wouldn't happen. They always had their ways.

Sometimes, when they didn't jump my a.s.s the second I walked through the door, they punished me in different ways. Like sometimes the mother wouldn't make dinner because demons didn't deserve dinner. That thing I said about wishing I hadn't been born to them, well, I knew they had the same feelings. Like they wished that I had never been born to them. The mother really did think I was a demon. I would catch her saying pitiful little prayers over my bed when I was asleep, trying to get the demon to fly out. Sometimes she would make me say prayers, too. They were stupid things I tried to forget right after saying them. They all sounded like something you'd find on a napkin or book of matches. I bet the father prayed he would've had a son like Bucky Swarth. A stout little s.h.i.t who was smart enough to get away with everything he did. Making me skip dinner was actually one of the better punishments they had in store for me. That is, I didn't really mind it too much. The best punishment was when they flat out gave me a beating and sent me to my room. That was the best punishment because it was over so quickly. Any beating was better than thinking you're not going to get punished and then getting punished when you least expected it.

One time I got in trouble for some stupid f.u.c.kness or the other and they didn't say anything when I walked into the house. This was one of the first alternative punishments I can think of. So this one time there was no yelling or hitting and I didn't bring up anything that happened at school and a couple hours went by with me at home and nothing happening. I stood by the kitchen sink, drinking a gla.s.s of ice water, thinking everything was just fine, like I'd got away with something, when the father barreled out of the living room on that wheelchair and rammed it straight into me. The hard steel hit me at the same level it usually did the cabinets and I thought that leg he hit, the left one, was broken. But I couldn't say anything like, "What the f.u.c.k're you doing?" because I knew that was part of my punishment. There was something inside of me that said I deserved the punishments. That it was just something I had to put up with. And the crazy f.u.c.k kept doing that for the rest of the night. I'd have my back turned and right when I heard that whirring and growling I'd try to move but it got me anyway. And it hurt like h.e.l.l every time. You'd think I would have wised up after the second or third time, but that's where my stupidity comes in. Was it stupidity or optimism? After every hit I told myself that had to be the last one. How could he think I could possibly take more than that?

There was this other time I got all the way to bed thinking I wasn't going to get punished and woke up the next morning with an incredibly bad haircut. It was that morning more than any other that I awoke wishing I wasn't such a sound sleeper. We lived right behind some train tracks and that loud sound kind of dulled me to noises and f.u.c.kall, I think. So, because I slept so f.u.c.king heavy, I woke up and had these wild tufts of hair sticking up all over my head. I looked like a crazed chemotherapy patient. I wasn't attracting anyone anyway, but that f.u.c.king ridiculous haircut made it even worse. Like I could give up all hope of ever attracting anyone, or even going unnoticed which, at that point, was the best thing I could really do. It worked too, the punishment that is. The kids at school taunted me for the next month, making all kinds of stupid remarks and jokes and f.u.c.kness. Like, "Hey, Wally had a fight with a lawnmower and the lawnmower won." I must have heard that a hundred times by the end of the month and I wanted to smash all those blobby people's teeth out. If you ever see someone who's had a really bad haircut, you should never start all that s.h.i.t about the lawnmower because they've probably heard the same thing three times that day. Some of them just called me "Leukemia Boy," like leukemia's a disease you get from jerking off or something. I'd never hated those blobs at that f.u.c.king school more than that month I had the really bad haircut. Did they think I didn't know my hair was ridiculous?

I eventually found the clippers and evened it out myself. I got hit for that. The mother busted her drinking gla.s.s against my face and strumbled, "I didn't tell you you could do that yet." She acted like I was some kid who was put on the couch for quiet time and got up before my fifteen minutes were served. She was a really vacant mean sick piece of blobs.h.i.t.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I never really knew how things were going to be when I walked in the door of my house. I braced myself that day I got thumped by Swarth. It felt like I had already been through so much. I didn't really know how much more I'd be able to take.

I imagined that fata.s.s Swarth going home to his family.

"h.e.l.lo, son," his mom would say. "How was school?"

"School was great, Mom!"

"Oh yeah, what'd you guys do?"

"Well, I beat the absolute s.h.i.t out of this kid named Wally Black."

"Hmmm... I don't know if that's so... Wait... Wally Black, he's that half-wit molester, isn't he?"

"Yeah, he's a real queer, too."

"Well, that's just wonderful, Bucky. It's nice to see you're looking out for your fellow cla.s.smates like that. Looky what I bought you... A new pair of pants!"

I imagined things like that just to amuse myself. There were some days when I imagined things about everybody. It was like I lived this whole other world in my head, where the people I hated were truly despicable people. It depended on the person, I guess, and sometimes these things were quite mundane. That girl had a brother who was dying and she thought it was funny. That kid had s.e.x with his mother. This other kid was a ravenous drug addict. This girl's parents sold her into white slavery and on the weekends she had to have s.e.x with people of exotic origins, slimy men with huge mustaches. That boy made love to a sheep. That kid had prosthetic legs. His dad was a n.a.z.i. This kid's gay. That one's a Satanist. Maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise no one liked me.

I got onto our street, Walnut, and my body didn't want to go any further. I wanted to be home as fast as possible if I had to be there at all, but my battered body forced me to walk kind of slowly. It was work just to focus on the sidewalk. I'd never felt so tired and sore in my life. I wanted to get the beating over with and go to my room. My room was the only place I felt even sort of comfortable in that house. h.e.l.l, it was the only place in the world I felt comfortable. That had to be my goal. That tiny room, as sad as it was, became my reason for going back to that house.

Our street wasn't the absolute worst street to live on in Milltown but it was definitely a lower rung on the social ladder. There were three houses on the street that were just burnt out sh.e.l.ls. The mother said that was from the crackheads. I believed her when she had first told me that but since I had stopped believing anything blobs ever said, I wasn't so sure. The rest of the houses, like ours, looked like they were sinking into the ground or collapsing or some f.u.c.kness like that. Black soot had acc.u.mulated on all of the houses, quelling them into a monotonous gray color, the paint peeling away to reveal the weathered wood beneath. Some of the windows were boarded up. In other houses, odd things like shirts, quilts, and Confederate flags were used as blinds. Some people didn't even have proper front doors. The whole road smelled like gasoline, oil, and sewage.

I reached our door and figured, what the h.e.l.l, might as well get it over with. Had to get to my room, you know. And then I opened the door, hoping it wasn't one of those nights where they decided to f.u.c.k around.

It wasn't.

Chapter Five.

The Horns f.u.c.king Racecar. He was waiting right there at the door for me. The combined smell of rotting wood and stale cigarette smoke greeted me as I stood there in front of the door, not having any idea of what was coming.

I opened the door, swinging it inside and to my left, thinking about how stiff I was from the Swarth beating. About the time I thought that thought, Racecar launched himself out of his wheelchair like a bizarre armed missile, barreling into me. The blow hurt like holy h.e.l.l. I stayed upright, though, Racecar deflecting off me, thudding to the floor and rolling around. My first reaction was to tear his face off. I was so mad and sad anyway that it didn't really matter. I could have done it. I could have killed Racecar right then and there. Not only could I have killed him, I wanted to. I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to snuff the life right out of the nightmare. But nothing wanted to move. I had those dreams sometimes where somebody was trying to fight me and when I went to fight back my punches were slow and leaden and if I tried to run away then it felt like I was trying to pull myself through water. This felt just like those dreams. By the time I had gained some sense of what was going on, Racecar wrapped a muscular hand around my ankle and yanked it out from under me. I went down hard.

"f.u.c.k it," I said, mumbling it through swollen jaws and a whumming head. It was almost like I was proving a point, lying there and taking Racecar's blows like that.

Even though he had no legs to speak of, his arms were like tree trunks from pulling himself around in that wheelchair so much. Why couldn't he just use the motor?

I hated that f.u.c.king wheelchair.

I was face down on the carpet and those heavy hands kept hitting the back of my head. One of them was wrapped around one of my arms. I couldn't tell which arm it was. I wasn't sure which side of my body was which. I felt his huge eagle-shaped belt buckle digging into my back and I'm pretty sure he was trying to jab that plastic cigarette filter into one of my ears. Worst of all, I could picture him rubbing those hideous stumps all over me. I could feel them. The pain became a giant blur, like a huge red-black womb I tried to viciously tear myself out of. I could hear him grunting and growling, "You little s.h.i.t. You little piece of s.h.i.t. f.u.c.kin lowlife trash. Never even offered to help me clean the G.o.dd.a.m.n bas.e.m.e.nt."

Once it felt like I slid out of that womb, everything was kind of dark and foggy and numb. It made me think of being wrapped in cotton. The impact of the blows resonated through my body but the sharp, stinging pain was gone. The mother's voice came down all around me like a big bra.s.sy bullhorn, amplified strumbling, a needle through the cotton.

"We've had it! We've had it! You're gonna get it this time you little s.h.i.t. You've ruined our lives. Do you hear me? Ruined them! We're nothing because of you. You and your stupid failing and your s.h.i.tty rotten brain. What are you?!" Seeing that I was a bit lost for words, she graciously strumbled the answer to her own question. "Demons.h.i.t! Demons.h.i.t! That's what you are! Jesus Christ, we're gonna mess you up this time. You're getting the f.u.c.king demon horns you deserve and I hope you wear em til you die!"

Then I felt her wrestling with my head, pulling it up off the floor, sending snapping red shivers of pain shooting down my spine. I could smell that horrible smoke and liquor stink hanging around her in an acrid cloud. I found it in me to thrash.

The horns.

I'd seen the horns.

The Wig had threatened me with those horns before. Mostly she started using them as a way to keep me in my room at night. She told me that if I took a notion to wander, I'd wake up with those giant grotesque things on my head. I squirmed and bucked her off, managing to stand.

Racecar quickly yanked my legs out from under me, being expertly positioned to do so. I flew backward and bashed my head on the door, legs sprawled out in front of me. The mother knelt on my legs, facing me, smothering me with her mannish girth. With each breath I took, consciousness slowly slipped away.

That was the first time I felt the red crawlies and I thought maybe the mother was right.

I did have some kind of demon in me.

I could feel it come through my skin when the mother put those huge reddish-brown things on my head. It swirled around inside my skull, ricocheting back and forth before shooting down my spine, exploding through my heart, stomach, and groin.

In an instant, I was fully conscious. It was almost like some kind of hyper-consciousness. I could taste and sense everything in the small house. I could see everything not only as it was but also how it would look a hundred years from now.

The mother sensed it, this thing that had entered me, the red crawlies feverishly pushing against the underside of my skin, forcing me into action.

And I could smell her fear, thick and sweaty like an old dirty blanket.

She was immediately on me again, trying to undo the straps, sensing she had done something terribly wrong. With newfound strength I shoved her off. She went careering dramatically into the back of the TV, knocking it onto the flimsy coffee table before landing on the whole heap. She looked at me from below her lopsided wig and mumbled words I couldn't hear. Words I didn't want to hear. Words I only wanted to end.

I hoisted the TV up above my head, imagining how much pleasure she had derived from it. How many hours she had spent catatonically staring into it and then I brought it down on her head. There was a brittle, shattering sound followed by something meatier, pulpier. I picked up the TV again. Her head was a mess. The wig was split and tattered. The face beneath was unrecognizable. Her legs kicked out in the twitches of early death. I let the TV drop again and her movements ceased.

In the time it took me to do that, Racecar had managed to reach the end table and was trying to pull himself up on it. I didn't imagine that would really do him a whole lot of good.

He pulled himself up on the ends of his stubs, his arms vibrating with anger. The end table rocked and threw him off, a lamp tumbling to the floor with him. The light bulb threw crazy shadows across the room.

Grabbing the cord from the television, I wrapped it around my hand and gave it a great yank. It came out with a stretching pop. I took the frayed end in my hand and walked over to Racecar. Yielding the cord like a whip, I lashed the father with the plug-in. He yelped in pain as the copper bit into his skin. I got down on top of him and wrapped the cord around his arms, cinching it up tight. Then I rolled him over onto his arms, his back, where he rocked and rolled like an overturned beetle.

I grabbed the base of the lamp and knocked the shade off. Racecar stared at me and I realized, I think for the first time, that his eyes were blue.

He shouted words but, to me, they were just the facial contortions of the mute.

I stood overtop of him, that feeling dancing around inside me, and I slowly moved the lamp toward his eye socket. I pressed the hot bulb further and further into his eye, watching his screams.

Then I did the other eye.

I got down on my knees beside Racecar and wrapped the lamp cord around his neck, squeezing it tighter and tighter until it started to bite into the flesh and Racecar stopped moving.

I stood, surveying the room and, with a silent whoosh, the red crawlies crawled out. The feeling was gone, leaving me to swoon there in the middle of the living room. Everything became black and blurry. My body felt like a piece of lead.

This isn't what I wanted, I thought. And with that thought, I pa.s.sed out.

Chapter Six.

The Room of Idols I woke up in my bed. The bed was really an old army cot with some blankets thrown over it. The cot. That was another punishment. The more I thought about it, the more I realized the punishments were just some form of vicious cycle. The parents would punish me and I would fail or, more often, get sent home from school or suspended, the small failures I imagined culminating into a life of failure. The night of the particular failure, they would punish me. I, in turn, probably wouldn't do my homework, creating another failure. The cot was what I got for burning my bed. I can't even remember what the punishment that brought that on was.

I waited for the day they both left the house, which was a very rare occurrence. I yanked the mattress and box spring out into the backyard, went back in for the wooden bed frame, doused them all in gasoline, choked down one of the mother's Basic Menthol Lights and threw the b.u.t.t onto the heap. The rancid fire warmed my soul. I even burned my blankets on the fire. I presently used whatever dirty clothes I could as covers. I wanted the mother to come into my room each morning and see what a pathetic heap she'd turned me into.

That happened a lot, me waking up in my bed without actually falling asleep in it. I knew the mother put me there. Either that or she lifted me up and slung me over Racecar's wheelchair and had him roll me in there. This latter technique resulted in minimal work for the both of them so it was rapidly becoming the preferred method. I usually stayed in my room but a lot of nights, the folks would both be asleep before eight o'clock. That's when I came out of my room to do the wandering. Racecar often exhausted himself from rolling around the house continuously. Even when he kept the motor on, it was still a lot of work to navigate that machine at the high speeds he chose to travel. The mother's drinks made her doze. If I knew they were both asleep, it felt like I had the whole house to myself. Some nights I would stay up late watching cable television. Mostly I waited for them to show something with naked women in it. Sometimes I watched music videos. For whatever reason, I never m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed unless there was a woman on the television in front of me. I always imagined it was me who was sticking Mr. Lawrence inside of the girl on the television even though they rarely showed the thing Mr. Lawrence was entering and they never showed the guys' d.i.c.ks. Because the women on the television were never naked for very long, I usually had to be pretty fastidious about my beating off. Many nights I stood there behind the couch, the remote control in one hand, the other hand shoved down my pants and vigorously stroking Mr. Lawrence, trying to come before the mother moved and busted up the erection or, even worse, woke up. If she happened to come out of her mini- coma, I quickly changed the channel back to whatever she had been watching and scurried back to my room, my underwear wet against Mr. Lawrence and that whole area down there. It's a wonder no one at school ever accused me of smelling like s.e.m.e.n.

Whenever I couldn't find an appropriate amount of nudity on the television or if I just didn't feel like playing with Mr. Lawrence, I'd see what I could find to eat. It usually wasn't much. Sometimes it would just be some mustard on a piece of bread. There was usually cheese or potato chips. Most of the food was something you had to cook and I never really knew how to use the stove. This was a process I refused to learn. I guess I was so happy some nights just to have the house almost to myself that I didn't want to go to bed and I would end up just staying awake until I collapsed somewhere, usually on the couch or the floor in front of the couch. No doubt, sitting on the floor, the fresh linen- scented disinfectant that was sprayed there daily contributed to my drowsiness.

Usually, as soon as I woke up, I jumped out of the cot. This was for the same reason as staying up late. Waking up early was, many times, better than staying up late because by then the mother had usually woken up and got in bed with Racecar. Those were the mornings I could sprawl out on the couch and m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e with wild abandon if they were still actually showing the dirty stuff on TV. Sometimes, on less l.u.s.ty mornings, I would simply stroll around the house and enjoy the blue dawn. But that morning I couldn't move. Getting out of the cot was like a physical reaction-wake up, jump out of the cot. Not being able to do that was something like not being able to breathe. My attempt to move felt like rolling into a wall of spikes. My whole body hurt. It throbbed and somewhere, beneath the swollen throbbing, a sharper pain twinged steadily along. I imagined my bones were grinding together, that's what it felt like.

Gradually, I remembered what had happened when I blacked out, the pain serving as a hyperbolic reminder. I remembered the horns. I tried to lift my arms to the top of my head to see if they were actually there, but my arms wouldn't move. It wasn't like the numb type of motionlessness I imagined paralytics enjoyed. To try and move was to be punished by the grinding, sc.r.a.ping bonefeel. d.a.m.n it, this pain was worse than the two beatings that had caused it.

I remembered something else, too. What was it, though?

Managing to tilt my head back, I heard the hard tapping on the wall behind me. The Wig had done it. She had strapped on the horns-giant, reddish-brown things sticking up nearly a foot in their arcing length. And I had one of them on each side of my head. Now that I knew I had the horns strapped on, I felt the thick hot leather straps running down both sides of my face in front of my ears and joining in a heavy itchy buckle that dug in under my chin. I don't know how long I let that itchy buckle drive me insane. I couldn't move my jaws around against the strap and itch it that way. The jaws had stopped working, too. And, of course, to raise my arms and attempt to scratch it would bring that grinding bonefeel on again, with its hot swarm.

"f.u.c.k it," I said, the dawn's blue fingers filling my room.

I just lay there and imagined that Racecar and the Wig were roaming around the house so I wouldn't feel like I was missing out on any time to be out there alone. But that thought, for whatever reason, didn't feel right. Maybe my brain was as f.u.c.ked up and out of joint as my body.

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach of a missed opportunity that was almost worse than the bonefeel. I had kind of a love-hate relationship with my room. When I was there by choice, hiding out from the parents or napping, I loved it. But whenever I felt like a prisoner in there, like when I was being punished or if the mother stayed up much later than she normally did, it seemed like the most boring place in the world.

My room was completely bare except for a poster beside my bed and a book that always changed positions around my room. The mother sold all of my toys a couple years back. She told me stupid demons.h.i.ts like me didn't need to waste their time playing with toys. I cried a lot at the time but lying there at age sixteen, I was kind of glad she'd sold my toys. There probably weren't any sixteen-year-olds who still played with toys and I was sure I wouldn't have been able to get rid of them on my own.

The book was called The Jackthief and, at the time, it was one of the few books I'd ever read and enjoyed. Every time I'd had to do a book report, since the fifth grade, I'd done it on The Jackthief. Since I was in my third year of eighth grade and had had old Pearlbottom twice, all I did was change the t.i.tle. We didn't have to bring the books in or anything and I knew if she remembered the t.i.tle she wouldn't remember what it was about. They just a.s.signed book reports to make the kids be doing something, anyway. She probably just blobbed around back there and fantasized about eating kids or some f.u.c.kness like that. Maybe she fondled the d.i.l.d.o I was certain she kept in her desk drawer. It wasn't like they were that interested in what eighth graders were reading.

Most of the kids just picked the shortest book off of a big list anyway. But that was stupid because it was something everybody and their pedophile uncle had read so, even if they got the reading done quickly, they had to put more work into the actual report. The Jackthief wasn't on any kind of list so, if I'd wanted to, I could have just made something up. But I didn't do that. I read it every time I had to do a report, which made it kind of honest, I guess. Besides, it was no easy ch.o.r.e to read every time since it was well over 500 pages. That was one of the reasons I bought it. The drugstore had other things by Holger Blackwell, but The Jackthief was the longest and it made me feel like I was getting my money's worth. The mother had rolled her eyes and said it was a sick piece of trash, but she thought it was good for me to read.

The first time I read the book I was about twelve and I read it just for fun. It made me feel really smart to read a book that thick. I enjoyed the s.e.x and violence in it, too. I must have read that book something like ten times. I had whole pa.s.sages memorized but there was still something new that kind of jumped out at me when I read it.

I won't attempt to tell you the whole thing but it was sort of about this guy who marries this really pretty woman and them trying to start a new life out in a country house somewhere in New England. But it's really about the Jackthief. The Jackthief is something that is totally beyond human understanding. He's kind of like a vampire but he doesn't drink blood or any stupid f.u.c.kness like that. What he does is destroy everything else like the important s.h.i.t around a human and, eventually, their very soul. That's how they always say it in the book. They never just say "soul." It's always their "very soul." He takes it, their very soul, away from whoever he's decided to haunt. And this main character guy, the one who's just married the pretty blond girl from New York, has been haunted by the Jackthief since he was a real little kid only it has to make some sort of bargain with people before it can take all these important things away from them. So, even though the Jackthief haunted this guy when he was a child, he couldn't do anything about it because the bargain has to be meaningful. A kid would sell his soul for a can of pop, but a grownup has to think more about it.

So the Jackthief waits until this poor guy's been married for a few years. And this guy, he's a real big blob. I think that's one of the reasons I liked that book so much. It's like Blackwell knows what blobs are like and he makes this main character a cla.s.sic blob and has the Jackthief be really cruel to him. Anyway, this blob is married for a few years and he starts to get bored of his pretty wife who hasn't done anything to really make him bored-"variety's the spice of life" and all that s.h.i.t was this blob's philosophy, I guess. So the Jackthief creates this other woman who isn't real-she's like a ghost or something-but she's so beautiful that no man, let alone a blob, could possibly resist her. And this man's been looking for another pretty woman to put his d.i.c.k into, anyway. So when the man's pretty wife is away at work, the man f.u.c.ks this other woman. From the first time he sees her, he can't think of doing anything else. He goes around for a while feeling really sorry about what he did. Afterwards, though, Blackwell makes the blob feel really guilty but mainly because the f.u.c.k wasn't anything too special. The guy realizes he just needed to get it out of his system. A couple months later his wife tells him she's pregnant and he's overjoyed because he thinks the baby will bring them closer together and they live like this for a few months, blissfully happy, until his wife tells him that she doesn't think the baby is his. When he finds out that his wife might have f.u.c.ked someone else, too, he gets worked up into a psychotic rage and kills his wife by throwing a blender at her head. At the pinnacle of his rage he cuts her open and drags the baby out, dancing around the house with it, "wearing the umbilical cord like a necklace." By morning, he's cleaned himself up and decides to go to work. As soon as he walks in, the boss is standing there telling him he's no longer needed, he's fired. Then the guy says, "But we're expecting a baby."

The whole book builds to this great climax when the Jackthief sends this other ghost woman back to the blob and the blob follows her out into the woods because she's told him that if he follows her then everything will be as it was before. Instead, he's dragged into the heart of the Jackthief who ends up being this ancient spirit that forms itself from the black twisted trees and the moon above, with red dripping fangs and crazy angry eyes. The Jackthief forces the man to watch his house imploding and disappearing into the ground, his wife f.u.c.king another man, images of him dancing around the house with the fetus. Then the Jackthief takes the man's soul and Blackwell has this really great description that goes on for a few pages about what it feels like when the man's soul is being ripped from his body. It ends with the man waking up on the subway in New York and all the faces in the windows streaming by look like his wife's. He wants to scream but he can't. He doesn't even remember much about who he used to be. It's almost like he's only a body, which I think is the best metaphor for somebody being a blob.

Lying there, cotridden, I didn't feel like screaming. I was starting to feel comfortable. I wondered what it would be like if I could never move again. I could lie there and try to be a blob, without the twitching or fidgeting to separate me from the rest of the blobs. I wouldn't have to go to school. The mother would bring me food because she'd feel sorry for me. I would read The Jackthief over and over and maybe try and get the mother to bring me more books by Blackwell. I didn't think anyone could write books like him. Maybe he had a short story collection because really, short stories were much easier. To be honest, I thought there was a lot of stuff in the big books that didn't really need to be there. Maybe I could even get a more comfortable bed to read those books in. Something adjustable.

Who was I kidding? Actually, this is probably what would happen: the parents would forget I was in the room at all, they'd think I had run away or something. I imagined lying there, getting thinner and thinner, too weak to yell. The parents would find me a few months later, one arm totally devoured, my mouth pulled back in a horrible bloodstained rictus. Or would the parents look for me at all? For some reason, I didn't sense their presence in the house. Even though they wouldn't have been awake yet. I found it odd that I couldn't even hear Racecar snoring. I got that sinking feeling in my stomach again, except this time it didn't seem so much like it was for a missed opportunity. No, it was for some other reason. But I couldn't tell what. My brain still popped and sizzled.

The only other thing in my room was a giant poster of Bobby DeHaven that hung on the wall beside my cot. While reading The Jackthief showed me how horrible life could be, looking at the Bobby DeHaven poster made me think of how glamorous life could be. Bobby DeHaven was a true inspiration for me. Until I got that poster, he was a complete mystery to me. I'd heard his songs on the radio, when I still had one, and I loved his music. They played two or three of his songs all the time. There was something about it that really made it stick in my head. It got to where I'd be sitting in my room, all alone, and one of his songs would come on the radio and I would get up and start doing this elaborate dance routine.

One time, I was dancing to one of his songs, the one called "Little Heartmaker," when the mother opened my door and caught me at it. I think she'd been standing there a little while before I finally noticed her. I immediately stopped, waiting for some punishment to follow. She just laughed and strumbled, "What the f.u.c.k kind of fit was that?"

She called it a fit because I did that sometimes, rapidly jerking my body back and forth. Only, most of the time, there wasn't any music. My natural movements were more impulsive. Stare at someone too long and I had to whip my head to one side so I didn't go on staring. When I heard DeHaven though, I wanted to move. It was great to be able to move to his music like that. To feel something so deep inside it forces you to move. To move in response to something that came from outside of my rotten body.

"I was just dancing," I said.

"Well it looked like nothin but a buncha arms n legs."

"I don't know. It's just what I felt like doing."

"A good way to hurt yourself."

I was happy she left quickly so I could get back to the song and working out my routine. During my DeHaven phase, I entertained dreamy thoughts about being some kind of backup dancer for him but it was like I had to get that poster to find out he was real. It became nearly an obsession to find out how real he was. What did he look like? What did he sound like when he talked? What did he do when he wasn't on tour? Getting the poster was like a small window into Bobby DeHaven's world. Scoring the poster turned out to be a real ha.s.sle too.

Luckily, almost right after I heard the guy on the radio say Bobby DeHaven had a totally free fan club and then give the address, we got this a.s.signment in school where we were supposed to write a business-type letter to some important person like a congressman or the President or some King Blob like that. And they gave us stamps and envelopes and all kinds of ideas of who to write to. I, of course, took that opportunity to write a gushing letter to Bobby DeHaven, telling him about what a big fan I was and how I was really glad he had a club and all. The letter was something like five pages long but my writing was pretty big. I hoped he had time to read it. I'm pretty sure I put something in there about my routine. About how, if he was ever in the area, I could show him. I was a little more naive at the time. I figured he would at least sign the poster or something.

A few weeks later I got the poster in the mail. I unrolled it and was a little bit disappointed to find out that Bobby DeHaven didn't look exactly the way I expected him to, but I grew to like the way he looked. And I started imagining that person on the poster singing all those songs on the radio. There was something kind of disappointing about it, though. Like now, when I heard the music I just thought of the picture.

In the picture he was at the microphone, singing. A number of band members stood behind him but they were just a blur. I couldn't make out if he had any dancers back there or not. He had his eyes closed and looked soulful as s.h.i.t. I could tell he wore some make-up on his eyelids. The way he kept his hair reminded me of some of the haircuts the kids at school were getting. Except Bobby DeHaven's looked so much better. It looked like the real thing and all those haircuts on all those blobs at school were just imitations. Bobby DeHaven probably didn't even have to get his hair styled like that. It was blond and flowed down to his shoulders in the back but the sides and top were cut short and feathered. He looked like an exotic bird. His voice was really deep so I was surprised to see how thin he was. It was like his voice came from that huge Adam's apple. He was almost as thin as me and he wasn't wearing a shirt. He didn't have any of the coa.r.s.e chest hair like Racecar, or like the hair that covered Bucky Swarth's stomach under that a.s.sortment of striped shirts. In the picture, he had on a pair of tight black pants that I almost didn't even notice because the background was almost completely black too, but I could see enough to tell his hips were almost womanly. He looked just like this pale floating head and body.

That Bobby DeHaven had it made, I thought. He could write his songs and sing them for a million people. I was sure he had all the girls he ever wanted and I pictured him just going down into the crowd and saying, "Yeah, that one looks good," and the girl would just go with him because he was gorgeous and they could tell by his songs what a sensitive person he was. The other person they played on the radio all the time was a woman named Pinky Lopez and I imagined Bobby DeHaven f.u.c.king her all the time, like whenever they played the same city or some f.u.c.kness like that. But I knew Bobby DeHaven probably didn't f.u.c.k people, he probably made love to them. Making love sounds like two people are creating something and I knew DeHaven probably wouldn't do anything that wasn't creative.

Bobby DeHaven made a lot of my evenings go by real quickly when I would lie there on my bed and wait and wait for them to play something by him. I didn't really care when the mother threw my radio away though because, for some reason, they stopped playing Bobby DeHaven. But I still had the poster and I would look at the poster and all those songs would come back and make me happy for as long as I could lie there. I even made a few up myself.

And that was what kept me content lying there in the dawn that morning, looking at that poster and telling myself that when I could finally get the h.e.l.l out of Milltown I would run off and go on tour with Bobby DeHaven. I was pretty deluded at the time I had that thought, r.e.t.a.r.ded with pain, swimming in and out of the morning blue.