The sinking paper sailboat.
Rushing past dense dark foliage with sickly black-barked wooden towers that dripped dirt and grime and the rain falling, I almost fell into a dip that would surely have left me for Paice to find and-with unknown cruelty-conquer. But he wouldn’t get me this time. Today was my day.
I kept telling myself that, too. Over and over again, sometimes changing the finish on the words, tipping up the back end with a little extra boldness just so I could taste it. “It’s my day,” I said out loud, nearly biting my tongue in half as I ran. “Not today, it’s my day.”
But when I thought I was getting close to a familiar spot, nothing familiar made its way to my hungry eyes. I could feel the blood boiling up behind the irises. Frantic, bolting and weaving between trees, over and into trenches, weeds, wet spider webs, vines and trash, but nothing that I really needed to see came out of the hidden green black murk of the forest. Just the same old nonsense of laughing wilderness, warning me, with the hush of leaves and the snapping of twigs, that I had one chance this time-just one chance to climb into the world and shake it by the throat, or else suffer at the foot of it like a baby being hit by its father.
Just trees and weeds and vines and scurrying animals running from the commotion the two of us were making. And to my horror, Paice was closing in fast.
Goddamnit, I breathed out into the forest tomb; I hope I’m even going the right way.
As my feet soared through the humid air, snatching at the empty spaces ahead, greedy for the absolute necessity of purchase, I blew hard while buttoning my lips tight so that my ears popped, and for the first time in my life I waited for unconventional reality to take hold and let the trees laugh me into the grave. I was ready for wax hands to protrude from the forests and slap me dead. Because if Paice caught me this time-and especially given that we were now totally and utterly alone in God knew where-he’d kill me. He would just plain kill me.
By panicked last-ditch-effort first-prayer sonar I detected every sound in the forest, from the terrible absence of planes in the sky overhead, to the dumb, negligent bittersweet pit-pat of an overturned beetle in the soft mud under my feet. And there. Two bent trees that pushed away from each other in twin arches that loomed over thick green patches of sick waist-high weeds started to sing my song in the almost inaudible falsetto of a nervous breath let slip. I stared at the twin bent trees, chasing the crisscross down like a fucking finish line.
“I’m coming, Gibby!” I screamed feebly, my voice cracking and overworked. “I’m coming Gibby!” Passing in between the middle of the trees, “I’m coming Gibby!”
I didn’t slow down (marathon runners don’t), but rather I pushed on with an extra burst of energy I found in my legs and ailing heart. I could hear Paice fast behind me. His grunting breath reminded me of a sty of pigs.
When Paice-surely a big brute of a kid if ever there could be one-was just about to pass between the trees, a shadow in black came out from its hiding place and buried a hatchet in Paice’s sweaty, meaty face.
And then it was over.
By the time I slowed down enough to turn around-still running a bit, though-Paice was dead.
Gibby and I had the hole ready nearly two days ago, so all that was needed really was to drag Paice’s body in and spear the shit out of it with heavy sticks we shaved and carved into sharp points. Together we tore his stomach open through the t-shirt, and immediately it started to smell really bad. The air was thick with it; blood and the refuse in that disgusting asshole’s body. All the dead crap he sucked in and chewed on, swallowing to fester in his fat, rotten stomach. My face probably went green, and medically I could probably have stood to throw up a good portion of my own stomach, but really, I liked that smell.
It was curt and sharp, and it meant things were different now in a way that could never be reversed. I didn’t fucking need to lose my virginity ever, because this was all in eternity that I could possibly need or want by way of knowing I’d changed. The boy who would run screaming and crying through the woods, letting death pull at his dirty wet hair in the woods at night-he was dead. His unnecessary ghost would now stand guard over Paice’s remains and forever piss on them until the world exploded.
Next to me, Gibby coughed. His face was a sickly green, like the woods, but getting blacker, like he was about to throw up his colon. He could only look at Paice’s body long enough to spit on it once or twice at a time, and when it seemed he was out of spit, he’d kick clumps of weeds and mud into the pit, flipping Paice the bird with his smeared, muddied hands. We pushed and prodded with the sticks, doused the pile with kerosene and kept a watchful little fire to hopefully char some of this before smoothing it over with dirt for the rest of history to forget.
I was proud of him, in a sort of removed way. Gibby, I mean. By nature-and also by the nickname “fuck Gibby”-Gibby Clenson was one of C. Adams High’s biggest recluses. He was clean but unkempt, had mild acne sprinkled over both cheeks, with ugly red hair down to his shoulders that now looked tangled with sweat. Gibby and I weren’t friends by any stretch of the word. Truthfully, I guess, I hated him just as much as everyone else did.
But I found out not too long ago that we had a very mutual desire to see Paice Adams at an end. Actually, the same could be said for most kids at school, but in the most serious way, nobody could feel for that son of bitch what one of us did-the people Paice was prone to pulverize on a daily, unchecked basis.
The story between Gibby and the now dead bully was a well known one. Gibby was a geek, and bullies push geeks around. One time Gibby accidentally pissed under the bathroom stall (exactly how he did that remains to be seen), but in any case, the whole ordeal ended with Gibby’s face busted open on the bathroom tiles and Paice urinating into his gagging mouth while the poor boy lay half unconscious in the grime.
Ever since then Gibby’s been out of his head. Which made him easy to coax.. But now, after all this, Gibby had a secret to hide worse than the bathroom thing. Something much more important that some whining story about getting picked on when you were a kid. This would be something he’d have to take with him to the grave.
Thinking this, I paid him more serious attention as he circled the pit in a distracted repetition, mumbling to himself and shaking, sometimes looking up at me but more often than not taking his eyes off the multitudes of violent nothings in his glazed stare only to peer into the little suffering fire at the bottom of the rot-smelling grave.
He started to cough too loudly, and then to whine, and then, for a minute, I thought I heard a stifled little whimper. Earlier today when I kicked Paice off his bike and made a quick path straight into the woods behind the grocery, I had two key concerns in mind. One, would Gibby be there for me? And two, after it was done . . . would Gibby crack?
Gibby’s eyes were running wild and that first fatal question popped out of his mouth even though I warned him about it way before we ever decided to do this. “What are we going to do?” he asks me.
We dug that hole two days ago, big enough to fit up to four people in it.
It was a deep hole. When I left it for good, it housed the last battle of Paice Adams, and also Gibby Clenson, both burned.
The taste in my mouth now is metallic. I feel like a new machine. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle this any more than Gibby turned out to, but to my surprise I feel pretty amazing. The rain gets darker every day, but my mood doesn’t sink into the gutters with it. Methodically carried along like a newspaper sailboat collecting damage on the decks. To a funeral hymn orchestrated by the bustling of broken cars in this disgusting, wet town.
I kept telling myself that, too. Over and over again, sometimes changing the finish on the words, tipping up the back end with a little extra boldness just so I could taste it. “It’s my day,” I said out loud, nearly biting my tongue in half as I ran. “Not today, it’s my day.”
But when I thought I was getting close to a familiar spot, nothing familiar made its way to my hungry eyes. I could feel the blood boiling up behind the irises. Frantic, bolting and weaving between trees, over and into trenches, weeds, wet spider webs, vines and trash, but nothing that I really needed to see came out of the hidden green black murk of the forest. Just the same old nonsense of laughing wilderness, warning me, with the hush of leaves and the snapping of twigs, that I had one chance this time-just one chance to climb into the world and shake it by the throat, or else suffer at the foot of it like a baby being hit by its father.
Just trees and weeds and vines and scurrying animals running from the commotion the two of us were making. And to my horror, Paice was closing in fast.
Goddamnit, I breathed out into the forest tomb; I hope I’m even going the right way.
As my feet soared through the humid air, snatching at the empty spaces ahead, greedy for the absolute necessity of purchase, I blew hard while buttoning my lips tight so that my ears popped, and for the first time in my life I waited for unconventional reality to take hold and let the trees laugh me into the grave. I was ready for wax hands to protrude from the forests and slap me dead. Because if Paice caught me this time-and especially given that we were now totally and utterly alone in God knew where-he’d kill me. He would just plain kill me.
By panicked last-ditch-effort first-prayer sonar I detected every sound in the forest, from the terrible absence of planes in the sky overhead, to the dumb, negligent bittersweet pit-pat of an overturned beetle in the soft mud under my feet. And there. Two bent trees that pushed away from each other in twin arches that loomed over thick green patches of sick waist-high weeds started to sing my song in the almost inaudible falsetto of a nervous breath let slip. I stared at the twin bent trees, chasing the crisscross down like a fucking finish line.
“I’m coming, Gibby!” I screamed feebly, my voice cracking and overworked. “I’m coming Gibby!” Passing in between the middle of the trees, “I’m coming Gibby!”
I didn’t slow down (marathon runners don’t), but rather I pushed on with an extra burst of energy I found in my legs and ailing heart. I could hear Paice fast behind me. His grunting breath reminded me of a sty of pigs.
When Paice-surely a big brute of a kid if ever there could be one-was just about to pass between the trees, a shadow in black came out from its hiding place and buried a hatchet in Paice’s sweaty, meaty face.
And then it was over.
By the time I slowed down enough to turn around-still running a bit, though-Paice was dead.
Gibby and I had the hole ready nearly two days ago, so all that was needed really was to drag Paice’s body in and spear the shit out of it with heavy sticks we shaved and carved into sharp points. Together we tore his stomach open through the t-shirt, and immediately it started to smell really bad. The air was thick with it; blood and the refuse in that disgusting asshole’s body. All the dead crap he sucked in and chewed on, swallowing to fester in his fat, rotten stomach. My face probably went green, and medically I could probably have stood to throw up a good portion of my own stomach, but really, I liked that smell.
It was curt and sharp, and it meant things were different now in a way that could never be reversed. I didn’t fucking need to lose my virginity ever, because this was all in eternity that I could possibly need or want by way of knowing I’d changed. The boy who would run screaming and crying through the woods, letting death pull at his dirty wet hair in the woods at night-he was dead. His unnecessary ghost would now stand guard over Paice’s remains and forever piss on them until the world exploded.
Next to me, Gibby coughed. His face was a sickly green, like the woods, but getting blacker, like he was about to throw up his colon. He could only look at Paice’s body long enough to spit on it once or twice at a time, and when it seemed he was out of spit, he’d kick clumps of weeds and mud into the pit, flipping Paice the bird with his smeared, muddied hands. We pushed and prodded with the sticks, doused the pile with kerosene and kept a watchful little fire to hopefully char some of this before smoothing it over with dirt for the rest of history to forget.
I was proud of him, in a sort of removed way. Gibby, I mean. By nature-and also by the nickname “fuck Gibby”-Gibby Clenson was one of C. Adams High’s biggest recluses. He was clean but unkempt, had mild acne sprinkled over both cheeks, with ugly red hair down to his shoulders that now looked tangled with sweat. Gibby and I weren’t friends by any stretch of the word. Truthfully, I guess, I hated him just as much as everyone else did.
But I found out not too long ago that we had a very mutual desire to see Paice Adams at an end. Actually, the same could be said for most kids at school, but in the most serious way, nobody could feel for that son of bitch what one of us did-the people Paice was prone to pulverize on a daily, unchecked basis.
The story between Gibby and the now dead bully was a well known one. Gibby was a geek, and bullies push geeks around. One time Gibby accidentally pissed under the bathroom stall (exactly how he did that remains to be seen), but in any case, the whole ordeal ended with Gibby’s face busted open on the bathroom tiles and Paice urinating into his gagging mouth while the poor boy lay half unconscious in the grime.
Ever since then Gibby’s been out of his head. Which made him easy to coax.. But now, after all this, Gibby had a secret to hide worse than the bathroom thing. Something much more important that some whining story about getting picked on when you were a kid. This would be something he’d have to take with him to the grave.
Thinking this, I paid him more serious attention as he circled the pit in a distracted repetition, mumbling to himself and shaking, sometimes looking up at me but more often than not taking his eyes off the multitudes of violent nothings in his glazed stare only to peer into the little suffering fire at the bottom of the rot-smelling grave.
He started to cough too loudly, and then to whine, and then, for a minute, I thought I heard a stifled little whimper. Earlier today when I kicked Paice off his bike and made a quick path straight into the woods behind the grocery, I had two key concerns in mind. One, would Gibby be there for me? And two, after it was done . . . would Gibby crack?
Gibby’s eyes were running wild and that first fatal question popped out of his mouth even though I warned him about it way before we ever decided to do this. “What are we going to do?” he asks me.
We dug that hole two days ago, big enough to fit up to four people in it.
It was a deep hole. When I left it for good, it housed the last battle of Paice Adams, and also Gibby Clenson, both burned.
The taste in my mouth now is metallic. I feel like a new machine. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle this any more than Gibby turned out to, but to my surprise I feel pretty amazing. The rain gets darker every day, but my mood doesn’t sink into the gutters with it. Methodically carried along like a newspaper sailboat collecting damage on the decks. To a funeral hymn orchestrated by the bustling of broken cars in this disgusting, wet town.