Under the Tree.
Warning: This is the most disturbing thing I've ever written. And it takes a lot to disturb me.
Under the Tree. Not a Christmas Story.
You ever seen mangroves? They’re all over in Miami. They grow all together like a jungle and have big roots that love stagnant and salinated water. Big in swamps. Swamps, naturally, also have alligators.
I like biology. I like cool animals. So I’m fifteen and I’m at Dade-Sanchez, that’s the place they stick you when you can’t keep placements, and I really wanted to get out, just for an afternoon even. I’ve been in and out of DaSa - that’s what the kids there call it - over the years, and it’s like rock bottom. If you felt like a failure switching foster homes every few months, having to go to DaSa is like a thousand times worse. Only the worst head cases end up there. But I’ve heard the things the families have said about me. Too quiet. Too anti-social. Stuff started disappearing, we think it was him. It’s not gonna work out, sorry. We’ll just get a goldfish instead.
Anyway, I was back at DaSa for the third time in two years, and I was just really not feeling it. The walls are this teal color that kind of always makes you want to puke, and it smells weird, and the other kids will steal your stuff or do shit like cut your hair while you’re asleep. So I just wanted to leave. And it’s not like it’s a locked campus, you can go and do stuff nearby after school or on the weekends, except that’s usually easier to do if you have friends. Which isn’t that easy to get at DaSa ‘cause a) people are always coming and going and b) they’re not really kids that are easy to get along with.
I don’t like his name, so I’m not gonna say it. But he was older than me, seventeen, a few months from getting out of the system himself. I dunno, he was nice to me. That’s hard to come by at DaSa. And I was just lonely enough to like it. I didn’t think much of the attention, it would just be nice to have a friend, right? Someone else who knows how shitty it is.
I was in biology that year, ninth grade and all. So I was talking to him about different animals species, and reptiles, and I dunno, alligators came up. And he was all shocked that I’d never seen one in person, after living in Miami my whole life. The place to see them is the mangrove swamps, and there are plenty of them in parks and stuff. But the one he knew about was on private property, you had to jump a fence to get in, but since no one else was allowed in there the chances of actually seeing an alligator went way up, he said. So we went.
I didn’t get to see an alligator.
It’s not like I didn’t fight back. But I was a lot scrawnier back then, I worked out in juvie like crazy because of it. I don’t want to be vulnerable ever again. But he had the upper hand the whole time, got me down early, under all those trees, arms pinned behind me, dirt and mud and leaves in my mouth, really hard to breathe. I had to keep my head turned to the side, just so I didn’t suffocate. I wish I had sometimes. I couldn’t see him. I kicked but it was wild and pointless, you know fishes flopping on the boat deck after getting caught? That was me. I didn’t want to feel anything that happened, but I did and afterward, it was hard to feel things normally again. It still is, and that was almost five years ago now.
When it was over I was crying and he wouldn’t let me go, he put his hand in my hair and whispered in my ear, “Don’t cry, Jeremy. What are you, a pussy?”
That’s when I knew I was going to kill him. And like it.
And I did.
Under the Tree. Not a Christmas Story.
You ever seen mangroves? They’re all over in Miami. They grow all together like a jungle and have big roots that love stagnant and salinated water. Big in swamps. Swamps, naturally, also have alligators.
I like biology. I like cool animals. So I’m fifteen and I’m at Dade-Sanchez, that’s the place they stick you when you can’t keep placements, and I really wanted to get out, just for an afternoon even. I’ve been in and out of DaSa - that’s what the kids there call it - over the years, and it’s like rock bottom. If you felt like a failure switching foster homes every few months, having to go to DaSa is like a thousand times worse. Only the worst head cases end up there. But I’ve heard the things the families have said about me. Too quiet. Too anti-social. Stuff started disappearing, we think it was him. It’s not gonna work out, sorry. We’ll just get a goldfish instead.
Anyway, I was back at DaSa for the third time in two years, and I was just really not feeling it. The walls are this teal color that kind of always makes you want to puke, and it smells weird, and the other kids will steal your stuff or do shit like cut your hair while you’re asleep. So I just wanted to leave. And it’s not like it’s a locked campus, you can go and do stuff nearby after school or on the weekends, except that’s usually easier to do if you have friends. Which isn’t that easy to get at DaSa ‘cause a) people are always coming and going and b) they’re not really kids that are easy to get along with.
I don’t like his name, so I’m not gonna say it. But he was older than me, seventeen, a few months from getting out of the system himself. I dunno, he was nice to me. That’s hard to come by at DaSa. And I was just lonely enough to like it. I didn’t think much of the attention, it would just be nice to have a friend, right? Someone else who knows how shitty it is.
I was in biology that year, ninth grade and all. So I was talking to him about different animals species, and reptiles, and I dunno, alligators came up. And he was all shocked that I’d never seen one in person, after living in Miami my whole life. The place to see them is the mangrove swamps, and there are plenty of them in parks and stuff. But the one he knew about was on private property, you had to jump a fence to get in, but since no one else was allowed in there the chances of actually seeing an alligator went way up, he said. So we went.
I didn’t get to see an alligator.
It’s not like I didn’t fight back. But I was a lot scrawnier back then, I worked out in juvie like crazy because of it. I don’t want to be vulnerable ever again. But he had the upper hand the whole time, got me down early, under all those trees, arms pinned behind me, dirt and mud and leaves in my mouth, really hard to breathe. I had to keep my head turned to the side, just so I didn’t suffocate. I wish I had sometimes. I couldn’t see him. I kicked but it was wild and pointless, you know fishes flopping on the boat deck after getting caught? That was me. I didn’t want to feel anything that happened, but I did and afterward, it was hard to feel things normally again. It still is, and that was almost five years ago now.
When it was over I was crying and he wouldn’t let me go, he put his hand in my hair and whispered in my ear, “Don’t cry, Jeremy. What are you, a pussy?”
That’s when I knew I was going to kill him. And like it.
And I did.