Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates.
Title: Zombie.
Author: Joyce Carol Oates.
Genre: Fiction, epistolary novels, serial killers, mental health, crime.
Country: U.S.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1995.
Summary: Meet Quentin P. He is a problem for his professor father and his loving mother, though of course they do not believe the charge (sexual molestation of a minor) that got him in that bit of trouble. He is a challenge for his court-appointed psychiatrist, who nonetheless is encouraged by the increasingly affirmative quality of his dreams and his openness in discussing them. He is a thoroughly sweet young man for his wealthy grandmother, who gives him more and more, and can deny him less and less. Based on Jeffrey Dahmer, he is the most believable and thoroughly terrifying sexual psychopath and killer, with an obsession of creating a perfect zombie sex slave.
My rating: 6.5/10.
My review:
♥ Distinguishing features: none.
Except maybe these faint worm-shaped scars on both my knees. They say from a bicycle accident, I was a little boy then. I don't contradict but I don't remember.
I never contradict. I am in agreement with you as you utter your words of wisdom. Moving your asshole-mouth & YES SIR I am saying NO MA'AM I am saying. My shy eyes. Behind my plastic-rimmed glasses that are the color of skin seen through plastic.
Caucasian skin that is. On both sides of my family going back forever as far as I am aware.
My I.Q. when last tested: 112. A previous time tested: 107. In high school when tested: 121.
♥ Is Time outside me, I started wondering in high school. When things began to go fast. Or is Time inside me.
If OUTSIDE you have to keep pace with fucking clocks & calendars. No slacking off. If INSIDE, you do what you want. Whatever. You create your own Time. Like breaking the hands off a clock like I did once so it's just the clock face there looking at you.
♥ Nor EYE CONTACT with anybody. It was observed how for that period of incarceration Q_ P_ was not talking & was not making EYE CONTACT with anybody.
In that way the fuckers slide down into your soul.
♥ I did not require sleep (did not take my nighttime medication) & so at 3 A.M. climbed to the attic where there is a star-shaped window at the front of the house. The peak of the ceiling is not high enough for me to stand upright & anyway I needed to crouch there looking up at the night sky where there was a MOON so bright it hurt my eyes! How I knew the MOON was there, from down in the cellar, I don't know. Shreds of cloud were being blown across the moon clotted & cobwebbed like thoughts moving too fast for you to hear.
♥ Fuck the PAST, it's NOT NOW. Nothing NOT NOW is real.
♥ The week following Thanksgiving 1988. BUNNYGLOVES had been missing twelve days but there was never anything in the Mt. Vernon Inquirer or on local TV, why would there be? Set out from Detroit to Montana & not a trace.
How many hundreds, thousands in a single year. Like sparrows of the air they rise on their lows them up.
♥ "Why would you?"
Distinguished Professor, Mt. Vernon State University. Dual appointments in Physics & Philosophy. Senior fellow of the Michigan State Institute for Advanced Research.
DAD'S EYES behind his shiny glasses. Looking at me like when I was two years old & squatting on the bathroom floor shitting & when I was five years old playing with my baby dick & when I was seven years old & my T-shirt splotched with another kid's nosebleed & when I was eleven home from the pool where my friend Barry drowned & most fierce DAD'S EYES when I was twelve years old that time Dad charged upstairs with the Body Builder magazines shaking in his hand.
♥ Twelve years old & in seventh grade & now I was wearing glasses & long-armed & skinny & hair sprouting under my arms & at my groin & their eyes sliding onto me & even the teachers & in gym class I refused to go through the shower refused to go naked moving through them & their cocks glistening & scratching their chests, bellies & some of them so muscular, so good-looking & laughing like apes not guessing except if seeing me & my eyes I couldn't keep still darting & swimming among them like minnows if seeing me they knew & their faces would harden with disgust QUEER QUEER QUENTIN'S QUEER & that time Dad charged upstairs to get me where I was doing homework in my room & yanked me by the arm & downstairs & into the garage & showed me the Body Builder magazines & the naked Ken-doll from the playground I'd brought back hidden behind stacks of old newspapers & he'd found his face splotched & furious & at that time Dad did wear a goatee like Dr. M_ K_'s & this too livid with outrage. Twisting the magazines in his hands like wringing a chicken's neck to spare himself the sight of the covers & the drawings somebody had done on them in fluorescent-red felt-pen ink. Nor the insides wit more such drawings on centerfold models of male muscle-bodies & the young guy who looked like Barry might've been in a few years & many pounds heavier & a shiny pink upright banana lifting from his groin & parts of certain photos scissored out. This is sick Quentin Dad's mouth worked, panted, this is disgusting I never never want to see anything like this again in my life. We won't tell your mother starting to say more but his voice gave out.
Together we burned the evidence. Back behind the garage where Mom would not see.
♥ Forgot my morning meds & lunchtime & so on way down here swallowed two 'ludes. Eating a double cheeseburger & fries & drinking Bud in the van, got a six-pack at a 7-Eleven & drank four beers straight, throat's so fucking dry. Cruising the expressway & the riverfront & down by the projects. OFF LIMITS since sentencing. Taking a chance if a cop pulls me over & I'm drinking but no cop is going to pull me over, white guy with a neat haircut driving a van with O.K. headlights, taillights, safe within the speed limit & keeping to the right-hand lane. Q_ P_ got his driver's license aged sixteen & always a damned careful driver.
♥ My shoulders hunched like a vulture's & I'm staring at my shoes which are jogging shoes stained like rust. Quen-tin? How about you? & I open my mouth to speak & there's this voice comes out, it's Q_ P_'s but like anther's guys too, somebody on TV maybe, or I'm imitating Bim, Perche, Frogsnout, stammering saying how ashamed I was to betray the loving trust of my Mom & Dad & that was the worst part of what'd happened to me, not just this once but many times since the age of nineteen, though I had never been arrested before & never did anything illegal but many smaller things. (Why I said nineteen I don't know, just an age that sounded O.K. I was aged eighteen in fact, the incident at Ypsilanti & how upset Dad & Mom were.) I wished I could turn the clock back to infancy I said! & start Time again. When I was pure & good. When I was with God. I said I believed in God but did not think He believed in me because I was not worthy. There is that way Mom's face creases & collapses when she cries because she is getting old & my face collapsed like this & the guys were embarrassed & looked away except for Perche sucking it up like cum & Dr. B_ frowning & nodding. One of the black guys Velvet Tongue passed me a tissue but not looking at me & my voice was going fast now like a runaway trailer-truck down a mountain road. Said how sorry I was about the twelve-year-old boy I was accused of "molesting" (but did not supply details that he was black & retarded & a natural zombie-I'd thought!)-said I did not know what had happened exactly if I'd approached the boy myself in the alley back behind the dumpster where my van was parked or if the boy had followed me there & picked me up without my knowing. Because sometimes things happen to me I can't comprehend. Too fast & confused for me to comprehend. This boy looking so much older than twelve with eyes piercing like blades demanding money from me or he would tell on me, he demanded $10 & when I gave him $10 he demanded $20 & when I gave him $20 he demanded $50 & when I gave him $50 he demanded $100 which was when I lost it & screamed at him & shook him BUT I DID NOT HURT HIM I SWEAR.
By this time I was stammering & my face was wet with tears! I had not known there were tears inside my eye sockets so close to leaking & once begun it's easy to cry & half the guys were looking away from me & the other half mainly white guys were looking & Dr B_ was flush-faced like he'd come in his pants asking questions about the boy as if this was some kid I'd known like in the neighborhood not a total stranger & weird questions like had I felt affection for the boy & did I feel that feeling affection was being manipulated & that was why I lost control, it was control of my own emotions I had lost wasn't it? & feared? & I was shaking now a little imitating Bim, the hand-tremors & twitchy mouth & my face shining with tears & I looked up at Dr. B_ for the first time daring to make eye-contact because the tears protected me & I said in a loud clear voice like it was a surprise to me & a wonder-Yes doctor. I felt affection & that is why I lost control.
♥ A true ZOMBIE would be mine forever. He would obey every command & whim. Saying "Yes, Master" & "No, Master." He would kneel before me lifting his eyes to me saying, "I love you, Master. There is no one but you, Master."
& so it would come to pass, & so it would be. For a true ZOMBIE could not say a thing that was not, only a thing that was. His eyes would be open & clear but there would be nothing inside them seeing. & nothing behind them thinking. Nothing passing judgment.
(Like you who observe me (you think I don't know you are observing Q_ P_? making reports of Q_ P_? conferring with one another about Q_ P_?) & think your secret thoughts-ALWAYS & FOREVER PASSING JUDGMENT.
A ZOMBIE would pass no judgment. A ZOMBIE would say, "God bless you, Master." He would say, "You are good, Master. You are kind & merciful." He would say, "Fuck me in the ass, Master, until I bleed blue guts." He would beg for his food & he would beg for oxygen to breathe. He would beg to use the toilet not to soil his clothes. He would be respectful at all times. He would never laugh or smirk or wrinkle his nose in disgust. He would lick with his tongue as bidden. He would suck with his mouth as bidden. He would spread the cheeks of his ass as bidden. He would cuddle like a teddy bear as bidden. He would rest his head on my shoulder lie a baby. Or I would rest my head on his shoulder like a baby. We would eat pizza slices from each other's fingers. We could luke beneath the covers in my bed in the CARETAKER's room listening to the March wind & the bells of the Music College tower chiming & WE WOULD COUNT THE CHIMES UNTIL WE FEEL ASLEEP AT EXACTLY THE SAME MOMENT.
♥ Parked the van overlooking the ice-jammed shore & the lake & the sky steely gray & a flare so you can't tell where one ends & the other begins so you could climb up from Earth into Heaven if you believe in that kind of shit WHICH Q_ P_ DOES NOT! & I had the ice pick in my hand poking & prodding & thrusting into its target & so EXCITED suddenly with no warning I COME IN MY PANTS before I can fucking unzip, oh Jesus IS THIS A SIGN WHAT'S TO COME?
♥ It was when I saw my face next day the revelation came.
Blinking & leaning close to the mirror because I didn't have my glasses, & there was this FACE! this fantastic FACE! battered & bandaged (& blood leaking through already) & stitched (more than twenty stitches they gave me at Detroit General for three bad gashes) & the lip bruised & swollen & these were bloodshot-blackened EYES UNKNOWN TO ME.
& I understood then that I could habit a FACE NOT KNOWN. Not known ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. I could move in the world LIKE ANOTHER PERSON. I could arouse PITY, TRUST, SYMPATHY, WONDERMENT & AWE with such a face. I could EAT YOUR HEART & asshole you'd never know it.
♥ Led me by the arm into the living room where Mom was sitting stiff-smiling on the cream-colored brocaded sofa with two strangers, a man & a woman, Bruce's parents, & their eyes like shattered glass in their angry faces & Dad stood with his hands lowered to my shoulders & asked in a calm voice like somebody on TV news had I purposefully hurt Bruce? tangling his neck & head in the swing chains purposefully? & I jammed my fingers in my mouth, I was a shy slow-seeming child & wide-eyed & the light of fear always quick in my face. I stared at the carpet & the little round plastic things that bore the weight of the coffee table & the sofa & were intended to protect the carpet & I wondered if there was a name for such things & who is the source of NAMING, why we are who we are & come into the world that way-one of us BRUCE, & one of us QUENTIN. Mom began to speak in her high quick voice & Dad cut her off calmly saying it was my responsibility to speak, I was seven years old which is the age of reason. & I started then to cry. I told them no it was Bruce, it was Bruce who hurt me, scared me saying he would strangle me in the swing chains because I wouldn't touch his thing but I got away, I got away & ran home & I was crying hard, my elbows & knees were scraped & my clothes soiled.
& Mom hugged me, & I was stiff not wanting to press into her breasts or belly or the soft place between her legs.
♥ It might be that Q_ P_ is being photographed and/pr videotaped here, might be Q_ P_'s actual brain is being X-rayed & the negatives sent to the county offices & East Lansing, the capital of Michigan & the F.B.I. in D.C. & to Dad c/o Physics Dept., Mt. Vernon State University. But I am not agitated, I am calm & unsuspecting. I have nothing to hide. What happened with the black boy was Q_ P_'s first offense, & a suspended sentence followed no actual jail time beyond the detention center-THAT IS THE PUBLIC RECORD. Flatface in her gauze mark returns & I'm almost asleep so calm & she takes out the X-ray cardboard & positions another & leaves the room again & sets the machine humming. & again. & again. WHEN Q_ P_ FIRST REALIZED THAT EVERYTHING HAPPENS AGAIN & AGAIN. & SOME PEOPLE KNOW, & SOME PEOPLE NEVER KNOW.
♥ Fighting the drug eyes rolling sideways in his head like marbles. Hey man I guess I don't want to do this O.K.?-lemme go man & I told how I wanted him to stay with me like we were friends, brothers, I told him I would pay him well & he wouldn't be disappointed & he was sweating saying Man I'm cool won't tell anybody I swear just lemme out of here man please?-O.K? & I tightened the cord so his big eyes bulged & his skin was ashy-plum & the lips I could not take my eyes off were ashy & it was shooting through me like electricity HE KNOWS! NOW HE KNOWS! NO TURNING BACK! which is the point that must be reached. The threshold of the black hole that sucks you in. A fraction of a second before & you are still free but a fraction of a second later & you are sucked into the black hole & are lost. & my dick hard as a club. & big as a club. & the sparks of my eyes. & I did not stammer as when first he swung into the van this cool dude eyeing whitey & his easy smile like Here I am, man, what're you going to do about it? In the back the old battered Elements of Geophysics textbook to provide a false clue, & my stick-on woolly moustache & hair parted weird-neat high on the left side of my head & in the tavern in Grand Rapids where we had a few beers he did the talking & I sat quiet just listening & if anybody saw us it was NO-NAME they saw & some white guy who never was there.
♥ Q_ P_ always drives at the speed limit & obeys all traffic regulations. Whether there is contraband cargo aboard the van or not. Sometimes impatient drivers sound their horns at him moving slow & cautious (for instance in rainy weather, in snow) in the right-hand lane. But no response. No lowering the window & yelling out or waving the .38 pistol & firing into somebody's surprised face LIKE THEY DO IN DETROIT, MAN!
♥ Vacant lots, wooded areas near parks-risky because kids play in them, & dogs. Dogs are your natural enemy if you don't dig deep. But empty marsh land beyond the Interstate in some lonely place where nobody goes is a good bet & weighted down with a tire iron & baling wire dropped into deep water-NO-NAME was dropped into a river in Manistee National Forest east of Crystal Valley.
& never a ripple, nor any word. Never a news item. No obituary. He did in fact have a name but it did not suit him.
♥ Dad & Mom & the relatives were ashamed but THAT IS HOW IT PLAYS OUT as my lawyer, in fact he is Dad's lawyer, in Dad's hire, has said. THAT IS HOW IT PLAYS OUT.
If your son had come up before a black judge, or a woman judge-it might've been much, much worse.
Q_ P_ was allowed after negotiation (in which Q_ P_ took no part) to plead guilty to sexual misdemeanor committed against a minor. My lawyer & the prosecution lawyer worked it out. & Judge L_ was understanding. People were saying where money changes hands & it is the word of an inexperienced white man, unmarried, thirty years old, against the charge of a black boy from the projects, & this black boy, twelve years old, from a "single-mother welfare" family, there is not much mystery guessing what probably occurred. Nor what kind of "justice" would be extracted.
Just plead guilty, it's worked out & you'll be O.K.
But if my son is not guilty?-what a travesty!
Quentin would not do such a thing. He is my son, my boy & I know.
Quentin, O.K.? Agreed?
In fact Q_ P_ was visibly ashamed & repentant & had "learned his lesson"-one look at him, his grainy red-rimmed eyelids & parched lips, you knew.
Two years' sentence-suspended. Psychotherapy, counseling. Regular reporting to probation office. Agreed?
Tearful before Judge L_ & my hands in my pockets, in my right trouser pocket fingering my good-luck GOLD TOOTH & Dad whispered for me to take my hands out of my pockets, please. & I did, & I thanked Judge L_ for his understanding etc. as my lawyer advised. & leaving the judge's chambers I was having trouble breathing & Dad was gripping me by the elbow. Buck up, son those were his actual words everything is fine now & we're going home. & out in the empty courtroom, Mom & Grandma & Junie & Reverend Horn who is a close friend of Grandma's & who "vouched" for Q_ P_ to Judge L_ were waiting. I was wearing a new suit of small brown checks & a beige bowtie with narrow red stripes & my hair had been cut trimmed neat at the ears & the nape of the neck & I was not wearing my sexy aviator-style glasses but the clear plastic frames & I was not crying now but smiling & hugging my family the way you would do at such a time. I shook Reverend Horn's hand Thank you, thank you I am so happy, so grateful. Thank you for your faith in me.
♥ Right, Quen? I grinned into the rearview mirror. Right, Junie.
There has always been a special feeling between Big Sis & me. On her side at least.
♥ From the back seat they were asking me something & I wasn't listening the way you don't listen to females mostly but I must've answered O.K., maybe it was something about taking over as caretaker or maybe they liked my haircut. & Dad laid his hand on my shoulder. For the first time driving that day I believed I could feel the motion of the Earth. The Earth rustling through the emptiness of space. Spinning on its axis but they say you don't feel it, you can't experience it. But to feel it is to be scared & happy at once & to know that nothing matters but that you do what you want to do & what you do you are. & I knew I was moving into the future. There is no PAST anybody can get to, to alter things or even to know what those things were but there is definitely a future, we are already in it.
♥ Q_ P_ did not mean for such to happen. SQUIRREL was not a wise choice of a specimen. I knew that, & have always known. I was resolute (how many times I have instructed myself!) SUCH WOULD NOT HAPPEN. Anyone with a family to care about him, Caucasian & suburban & living in Dale Springs!
Grandma is to blame for much of it. She would be hurt to know but that is so. Of course, not Q_ P_ her only grandson, nor anyone else, would ever disclose such a cruel truth to a woman so old.
♥ Or I would wake in my caretaker's quarters but not in bed, on the sofa fully clothed except unzipped & my hard cock poking free, the TV going loud & it's morning of some day unknown to me, empty bottles or beer cans underfoot, & roaches scurrying over the pizza crusts & bells of such sweetness chiming from the Music College, it was like something MIRACULOUS had happened in my sleep! A voice said If you go down into the cellar, Quentin, he awaits you.
Who? Who awaits me?
You know who.
My ZOMBIE? My ZOMBIE?
But the voice disappeared into the TV ads & footsteps overhead & plumbing. & next-door in the kitchen Big Black Guy (as I called him) from Zaire thumping at roaches with a rolled-up newspaper. As I have requested him not to do.
Knowing then it is just Q_ P_ alone in the Universe. If you want something to happen, you do it.
♥ It was after World War II Grandma says University Heights began to change. Coloreds began to move in & whites to move out in a steady irreversible stream to such suburbs as Dale Springs. Oh I will never forgive the Germans for that war! Grandma says.
♥ It was easy to trail SQUIRREL home on his bicycle.
It is easy to trail anyone home, of your choosing. No need even to be INVISIBLE.
♥ In all, Grandma would leave a sizable estate. Maybe she would leave something to her grandson & granddaughter? In recent months I was led to believe that I was her favorite & not Junie any longer. But I could be mistaken-with females & their feelings about one another you can't tell.
In any case Grandma P_ would leave a sizable estate when she died to Mr. & Mrs. R_ P_. & they would not live forever, either.
♥ Standing on tiptoe to pat my cheek. A fattish old woman but frail, too. They say their bones are weak, hollowed out inside & easy to break. Her washed-out no-color eyes I had a weird flash miniature QUENTINS were mirrored in! For once they have loved you as their baby, their own strange flesh born of their bodies or their children's bodies, always you are BABY in their eyes.
♥ Now in the heat of Michigan summer I quit my medication totally & had less timidity of EYE CONTACT I saw things normally not-seen. & they sank deep in me, & brooded. A responsible man makes his own luck Dad has said. Quoting one of the great philosophers.
♥ Except Q_ P_'s strategy would be 100% different than in the past. This was Dale Springs & not the inner city, nor any lonely stretch of interstate. This was a Caucasian upper-middle-class kid, a child (as his parents probably considered him) & not a black or a mixed breed & lots of people cared for, & would miss at once. & would notify the police in a panic. For sure.
& that scared me, too. For never in the past not once to my knowledge had any cops anywhere known of my specimens' disappearance, let alone searched for them. & so this would be different, & I believed I would be equal to the challenge. So wild a need & hunger, SQUIRREL entering my life like a shining angel-he was worth dying for, for sure!
♥ Some friends of his come into the restaurant & there's wisecrack bantering & insults traded. Why didn't Q_ P_ have friends like that, guys who liked me, guys like brothers? twins? & now when they see me their eyes flick carelessly over me. Little cocksuckers don't see me at all.
♥ QUANTIFIABLE & UNQUANTIFIABLE MATERIAL!
For a long time, how many fucking years of Q_ P_'s life it had seemed maybe, like a scientific experiment, like it was a principle of shifting to the left or the right for instance, a few inches & no more. Or growing taller. & all the Universe would rearrange. & others were born with radar for such but not Q_ P_. The principle (though not articulated at the time, being too young) of pushing up close behind the boys in the cafeteria line, Bruce & his friends. or entering the showers in high school at the right instant, with just the right stride & angle of head & shoulders. & yesterday purchasing three dozen baby chicks at this farmers' marker in Ludington for that was something Q_ P_ had never before done in his life & to do it just once was to be somebody new. Or, those months at Eastern Michigan U. where Q_ P_ strove to RE-INVENT MYSELF purchasing clothes & shoes not of his own taste but that of others closely observed, & showering twice a day (for a while, until my skin began to flake away like scales) & even forcing a new handwriting & new signature which it required many weeks to master. But it was mastered!
Some shift to the left, or right, or up, or down, or in thickness, or in thinness. Some alteration of skin tone, or freckles. Or a more baritone voice not reedy & nasal any longer. & Q_ P_ would be pledged to DEKE for instance! But what seemed so easy was in fact so hard.
If you had a heart, that is how it would be broken.
♥ & I'm pushing through some doors & there's a lighted stage & some guys & females in leggings or whatever are rehearsing some dance to kettle drums & horns & they're so absorbed in their dancing they don't see Q_ P_'s eyes flaring up at them out of the shadow. & finally somebody comes over to me, some faculty cunt, female with thick glasses & asks who am I please? & I turn to her not-surprised & say, like this is the most natural reply to an asshole question, I am the presence standing here at this juncture of Time & Space-who else?
& that night in my sand-colored 1987 Ford van with the American flag decal covering the rear window cruising Cedar Street, Dale Springs & parked in shadow & with my binoculars trained to the mostly shaded or darkened windows I thought, If this is where I am this is who I am. & so it was.
♥ In the front hall I was walking Mr. T_ to the door there was Abdellah & Akhil at the mailboxes & they were chattering together & their eyes & teeth flashing & went quiet at once as Mr. T_ (who is a big slope-bellied white man with a flushed face & balding scalp) bore upon them & murmured Excuse me! & eased past in the narrow space. & Abdellah & Akhil went upstairs quiet now. & Mr. T_ said nothing until we were out onto the porch then said, Must be a little weird for a white man, white caretaker, for them eh? & adding quickly I don't mean anything by it, I've got lots of black friends. I'm speaking of history.
♥ HOW THINGS PLAY OUT. A certain juncture of TIME & SPACE. A certain minute of a day of a life & a stretch of a one-way alley of security fences, high hedges & rears of buildings. (The site I chose for the van & the capture was behind a commercial building FOR SALE & the rear entrance & garage never used. No private residences nearby. Always the chance of somebody driving through the alley, other kids on bikes etc. but that was a chance Q_ P_ must take.) & NO TURNING BACK.
♥ & I'm thinking how your sister (or it could be your brother) comes out of the identical hole you came out of. & shot from the identical prick. & all of it blind & chance & yet there's the DNA CODE. & that is why a sister (or a brother) knows you that way you don't want to be known. Not that Junie knows me. Not that anybody in the Universe knows me. But if one of them did it would be Junie staring into Q_ P_'s soul.
♥ & Grandma says Quentin, of course! & smiling & her bony hands trembling a little as she writes out the check. It's a loan, I say. I will pay you back. & Grandma laughs Oh Quentin. They want somebody to love & live for-women. It doesn't matter who like it would with a man. & for lunch preparing big grilled cheese sandwiches for me crossed with strips of crisp bacon I was crazy for as a boy visiting Grandma. & Grandma sips her piss-colored tea & takes her "heart pills" as she calls them.
♥ "I know-the world is so different now."
& I'm licking cherry-swirl ice cream from the spoon looping my tongue around the spoon saying, "Grandma, hey no. Don't cry. The world is not ever that different."
♥ & I remained calm & controlled. For all that has happened, has happened. From the beginning of Time. Approximately 6:08 p.m. sighted bicycle turning into the alley. Thereafter ceased to take note of precise time but remained calm, controlled. SQUIRREL pedaling in my direction as in my dreams. For how could he not. For what other destiny.
♥ These hours Q_ P_'s plan before returning to 118 North Church in the darkness had never been worked out clearly I realized & were but a blur. As in a movie there is a FADE OUT, & a FADE IN to a later time. But I could not do that. I did not have that power. I was in Time.
♥ & the .38 pistol in my pocket I could not use in safety because the sound of the shot would be heard. Because that is the weakness of a gun, & why a knife is superior. But to kill any living thing with a knife is not easy. You would want to avoid it if you could.
♥ & the waves of Lake Michigan lapping & tepid in the heat. Toxin-waves Junie said. What have we done to nature! Junie said. She will look into your eyes & know: & what must you do? I turned to stare at the plywood partition behind the seats & it was-just there. & no sound beyond. & for a moment could not remember who was back there-which one of my specimens. For everything that happens, has happened. & will happen again. & remembering then the boy climbing out of the swimming pool-so shining with life. & began to feel revived again, & excited. For he was mine now, & always will be so. In sickness & in health & till Death depart. So started the motor & drove through the picnic area, so many people! families! so many kids! the smell of charcoal-grilled meat, & slowly through the park & this weird thought came Yes but you could release him even now, dump him into the woods & somebody would find him. For it is TODD CUTTLER he saw, & not Q_ P_. But I was pissed with him. Always you get pissed with them, & want to punish. Taunting me & following me in my head all these weeks. Looking through me in the Humpty Dumpty like there was nobody where I sat. & provoking me, that sidelong dimple-smile & green eyes.
♥ Do bones float?
& if so, but no flesh is attached, & the bones themselves scattered & lost to one another, what identity is there. I never think of it.
♥ For all that has happened, has happened. From the beginning of Time. I accept this.