by Steven J Dines
If you believe in something hard enough you can make it happen. Every parent tells their kids that one, right? Mine did, and my twin brother, Owen, was far along the road to achieving great things when the accident killed him. Me, I never followed any road anywhere, but it’s time for that to change. Tonight, audience, I am going to believe.
“The boy you are looking at is Manny Prior, fourteen, resident of Catchlove, Illinois, population…one. This boy is a monster. A green monster. A tired monster. A bored monster. A monster who has stood waiting on this cold Halloween night for twenty-five minutes, trapped between two worlds, two streets, two minds. There is a bus stop up ahead. You are about to enter The Twilight Limits, The Outer Zone… Where is she?”
A Blue Bird bus rolls up to the far curb, and three of Catchlove’s shining stars of American Youth Football step out onto the sidewalk. Owen’s ex-teammates. The squares under their feet don’t light up like they did for Michael Jackson in the video for Billie Jean, but I kind of wish they would. There’s Jaden Trickle, the Cougars’ quarterback. Good with the ball on the field and the girls off it. He throws an invisible pass down Willow Street then swaggers after it like there’s a trophy waiting for him at the end of its perfect arc. The other two follow him, receiver Andrew Bryden stealing a piggyback from defensive lineman Bailey Marx. It’s like watching Hannibal ride one of his war elephants.
It doesn’t matter their Halloween costumes are all the same, all rush jobs, crude paper masks with holes cut out for the eyes, nose, and mouth. Doesn’t matter one bit. They’re still riding the crest of last week’s big game wave. They’re winners, heroes. They could walk around town in high heels and short dresses and we’d still love them for it.
Owen should have been with them tonight.
How can I not follow?
I keep a short distance between us, watching them sprint up paths, tackle each other on lawns, and hurdle picket fences like they’re back running drills on the practise field they only just left behind. They take it in turns to wail like banshees, scaring cats up trees or under cars, drawing folks to their windows.
In another year or two, these boys won’t be here. I don’t mean like Owen. They will know what it’s like to grow up and lose interest in things. To move on and do what older kids do, whatever that is. I can’t help but feel jealous. I want to move on too.
Shadowing them like a private detective or one of the paparazzi, I walk past a parked Taurus and catch my reflection in the glass. Frankenstein’s Monster with a rubber wig and an empty sleeve. Frightened white eyeballs peering back out of so much dark green face paint. I lean in close, closer, holding my breath so that the car alarm won’t bring out the angry villager mob. There it is, in my eyes. Fear. I have two faces, it seems: one for the world at large and one for when I’m alone and looking in the bathroom mirror. Outside, the fear leaks out of me. My student counsellor once asked, “What are you afraid of?” I replied, “What have you got?” By the time she stopped laughing I had stepped out of the room. Then there is the face I reserve for myself. No fear in that one, only emptiness. Running-on-emptiness. Ooo, that’s a neat look. Every kid my age should see that when they look in the mirror.
“What are you doing, Prior?” I look away from the Taurus’s window and see Cori, my neighbour. “Jaden sees you he’ll put your butt in a sling.”
Cori is twelve and as sweet and tough as toffee. Owen never liked her; maybe that’s why we hang out so much. She’s got a bedsheet over her–two eyeholes, two huge brown eyes. Underneath, she’s dressed in an E.T., The Extra Terrestrial costume. She’s probably gone to a lot of effort with it, even though no one will ask to see what’s under the sheet. But that’s Cori. One time, she gave Jaden her lunch money so he wouldn’t beat on me and take mine.
“Where you been?” I start following the boys again, while keeping a safe distance from them, too. “You’re twenty minutes late. I was about to start without you.”
“You wouldn’t,” she says, catching up. “You’re not supposed to go trick or treating on your own. Parents’ orders.”
“I agreed to look after you, stupid. I can do whatever I want. Anyway you’re late and we’ll probably miss out on all the best candy now.”
“I can look after myself,” she says, eyeballing me from under the sheet. “Besides, my parents told me to keep an eye on you. So there.”
I stop and turn. “Cori, you’re twelve. Why would they say that?”
“Because Owen’s not here.”
“Screw Owen.”
Cori’s eyes grow wide in their cut-out holes, but she doesn’t say another word. She may be toffee-tough but she doesn’t know how to deal with a subject like Owen. Hell, who does? Not me, and certainly not my folks.
“I guess we’ll just have to agree to look after each other,” Cori says, twirling an empty drawstring bag on the end of one of her long alien fingers. I smile; it goes against my nature, but I can’t help it. “Remember,” she says, “the Hershey’s Kisses are mine. I’m claimin’ you’re shamin’. But you can have all the Jolly Rancher Fruit Chews and Hard Candies just like we agreed. Deal?”
“What if someone gives us Raisinets?” I ask as we wade across the first lawn toward the Blackett house. “What’ll we do then?”
“I’ll suck all the chocolate off,” she says, “and give you the raisin.”
I give her a playful push and laugh as she stumbles in her dumb rubber feet. But as we approach Mrs Blackett’s front porch, my smile slips. I’m suddenly aware of how dumb I look. It doesn’t bother Cori; she’s from another planet, what does she know? But me, Frankenstein’s Monster, I know how it feels to have people stare at me.
“Ring the bell, Cor,” I say. I can’t bring myself to do it. “If you can reach…”
“Shut up! I can reach all right.”
“Yeah, tiptoed on your big-ass E.T. feet maybe.” I yank her arm so that she misses the doorbell. “Press the button already.”
“I’m trying,” she says.
“Don’t try, do. That’s one Owen taught me.”
“Let go and I will.”
I release her arm and she presses the doorbell–Bing–holding it for several seconds before letting go–Bong…
“Happy?” she asks.
“I can’t believe my parents made me do this.” They insisted I carry on the tradition Owen and I started five years ago, like it would bring us closer or something. But he’s not even here. And we were never that close to begin with. He used to take all my favourite candy and leave me the crud. Maybe they just wanted me out of the house. It can get pretty grim sometimes. “Seriously, they need to get a life. Shit, look at me, so do I.”
“Don’t curse.”
“Screw you, E.T.”
“Lucky for you it’s Halloween.” Cori reaches up and presses the doorbell again. “Even dead people find a life on Halloween.”
“That’s come to life, you dope. The dead come to life on Halloween.”
She just looks at me with eyes to wise for her age. So maybe I like her version better than mine, but I’ll never tell her that.
“Shut up,” I say. “Here she comes.”
The door opens a scratch and Mrs Blackett peers out at us from a darkened hallway. Cori thinks she looks like a librarian who’s spent too much time in the Horror section. The truth is her husband died a couple of winters back, heart attack, on Christmas Eve of all days. I figure something like that gives a person license to look and act any damn way they please.
“What do you want?” she asks. I like that, really I do. How she’s on her own now and takes no crap from anyone.
“Trick or Treat!”
If Cori feels uncomfortable pinned under old Mrs Blackett’s stare she doesn’t show it. “We just started,” she says. “You’re our first.”
The woman’s face doesn’t change. She’s stone, a gargoyle. I find myself leaning in to check if she’s breathing.
“What tricks do you do?”
“How about a song?” Cori asks. “I can do ‘I Love to Sing-a.’ It’s from a cartoon I used to watch when I was little. If you don’t want that then Manny here will show you some of his monster moves instead.”
“What if I don’t care to hear you sing or see your boyfriend dance?” Mrs Blackett says, opening the door a little farther. “What happens then?”
Cori shrugs under the sheet. “Nothing. You just give us some candy and we’ll leave.”
“I don’t think so, little lady. Now kindly remove yourself from my porch.”
“What’d I say?”
I take hold of Cori’s hand. “Let’s go.”
But the truth is I want to stay right here with Mrs Blackett. I want her to invite me inside. I want to swap stories of our dead in common, to tell her how Owen died in such vivid detail it’s like she’s actually there with me. Because maybe she would understand…
“I want to know what I did wrong,” Cori says. I try to pull her away from the door, but she jerks back, leaving me holding onto an empty latex hand. “Miss Blackett, it’s Halloween. This is what happens on Halloween. You give out candy. It’s not hard.”
“It’s Mrs. Blackett, you greedy…thing.” She swoops out of the doorway and onto the porch. Cori’s eyes widen. She backs away so fast she stumbles. “And I give to those I think deserve it. Good kids, not brats–or weirdos.” She’s looking at me. Dammit, I was really starting to like the old woman. I thought we were on the same wavelength. Kindred spirits or something. “What’s up with your arm?” she asks.
“This?” I windmill my empty right sleeve. “I lost it in the accident that killed my brother.”
It sounded a lot better in my mind, much more ominous, like Christopher Lee as Saruman. But at least for the moment Mrs Blackett won’t be calling me any more names. Instead, she laughs nervously, like someone in polite company brushing a big fat spider off their shoulder, and then says, “I’d appreciate it if you two got off my property right now. Go bother someone else.”
But I know I reached her.
And it feels grrreat! Who needs to go inside and talk about Owen? It’s all about Owen these days anyway. This–this is better. This is power; cause and effect. I say something; someone listens. I really got her attention just then. Why, I bet she’ll be lying in her big empty bed tonight thinking about I lost it in the accident that killed my brother, thinking about me, and wondering if what I said might in fact be true. I think she wants to believe. When you lose something, a good husband or a bad twin, you change. You move on. Folk like my parents may not like it, but it’s inevitable. Mrs Blackett understands because she’s moving on too, only she’s trying to put up a fight. But she probably has her eye on the mailman, or the clerk down at the post office, or maybe the young doctor who squeezes his gloved hand up her dry cunt–Owen taught me that one too by calling me a little one just about every chance he got. My point is this: once you lose something, once you hit rock bottom and bounce, you start to believe in things again. In possibility. It’s evolution. Survival instinct. Who knows, maybe in time Mrs Blackett’s frosty old heart will thaw out a little more for meeting me. Maybe that “weirdo” Manny Prior won’t seem quite so weird after all.
“I won’t tell you again,” she says, voice growing louder. “Get off my porch this instant.”
Mrs Blackett turns her attention back to Cori, who raises her hands defensively as the old woman stands over her, stone again, feet apart, one hand hipped, the other poised and ready. Ready for what? Who knows. But the old woman doesn’t move, just looms over my friend, intimidating her with her size and years. Cori, poor Cori, twelve-years-old and growing younger with each frightened second. My sympathy for Mrs Blackett is fading fast. She’s no victim, she’s just another bully.
“Why you being so mean?” Cori asks. “I didn’t say nothing wrong. I even wanted to sing you something.”
“Get out of here.”
“I’m not greedy!”
“Go on, get!”
“Stop it! Let me speak.”
“Don’t speak. Don’t do nothin’ but leave. Go on. I don’t want to see either of you round here again or–” I mouth what follows right along with her “–I’m calling the cops.”
“Mrs Blackett,” I say, stepping forward. “Can I just tell you how disappointed I am? I thought we might be friends.”
Cori creases at that. She laughs so hard that I end up laughing with her and forget that I’m actually dead serious.
While she is laughing she allows me to lead her off the porch, down the path, back onto Willow Street. The door closes behind us with a distant and feeble rattle. I give her back the rubber hand and she slips it on between giggles.
Wiping sweat from my forehead, I notice a streak of white skin appear on the back of my wrist. In bright sunlight or heavy rain, I would drip green all over this sidewalk. But the cool night is my friend. The cool night is keeping me together. Despite one small disappointment so far, it still teems with possibility.
I blow out my cheeks and widen my eyes at Cori. “What a piece of work, huh?”
“Witch with a capital B,” she says, looking back across the overgrown lawn toward the flaking walls of the old widow’s house. “I still don’t know what I said that was so wrong. I don’t think I was rude to her. Was I rude? Tell me, honestly…”
Poor, poor girl. I sometimes forget how much she needs me. Sometimes the two years between us seems less like a gap than a canyon.
“No,” I say, “you weren’t rude. You were just being yourself. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t ever let them tell you otherwise.”
“You’re not just saying that?” she asks, peering at me through the eyeholes, trying to judge if I’m lying or not. “You swear?”
“Shit yeah I swear. See? Just did.”
She slaps my back. “Very funny.”
I spot Mrs Blackett watching us from behind the net curtain of a small upstairs window.
“Look at it this way,” I say, grinning up at her. “Maybe we didn’t make a new friend, but she won’t be quick to forget us either.”
“Especially you and that thing you did with this.” Cori lifts my empty sleeve and tries turning it like a skipping rope, but it only twists itself up. “Yeah, that was way cool,” she says. “She looked really freaked out there for a second.”
“It was cool, wasn’t it? I reckon we could go one better though…” I start walking toward the next house. Cori takes the bait and hurries after me. “What’s cooler than being cool?” I ask when she reaches my side.
She gives it some serious consideration, then laughs. “I know this one, it’s…’ice cold’, and it’s from that song by Outkast. I’m right, aren’t I?”
I nod grudgingly. Cori is a strong opponent in our ongoing quotations game. We test each other by casually dropping lines from songs, movies, and television into our conversation when the other least expects it.
“I guess it’s worth a point.”
“Two, actually,” she says. “Not only did I get the quote but I got the answer to the quote too.”
“Alright, two it is. Now let’s see if you’re as good getting candy as you are guessing quotes.”
“Oh, I’m even better at that!”
“Yeah. You just proved it, didn’t you?”
“But she was mean,” she says, walking ahead of me. “Never mind. I’ll show you I can do it.”
Putting the old woman behind us, we march a zigzagging route down Willow, stopping at each house along the way. What a sight we must be! A One-Armed Frankenstein and An Alien Everyone Assumes is a Ghost. But I don’t care. Tonight belongs to monsters and freaks.
I am happy to ring bells, knock on doors, deliver my scripted words, and leave soon after with something of theirs in my possession, given most of the time without a single note sung or move busted. No one mentions Owen. No one connects me to him. Not once. They won’t either, not unless I bring him into the conversation, which I won’t unless it’s for effect.
It’s like the time he locked me in the closet under the stairs and wouldn’t let me out for five straight hours. Not even when I had to pee. Now he’s inside some little box in my pocket and I get to decide whether or not he can come out.
This beautiful green skin? I swear, I’d keep it green forever if I could. No one would recognise me and yet I’d stand out from the crowd. I would be the center of attention. People would talk to me about me instead of asking after Owen. It wouldn’t matter that I’d be singled out. After a lifetime of wearing someone else’s face it would be refreshing to be looked at, stared at, laughed at…noticed for all the right reasons. I can’t remember a time when I was Manny Prior, period, instead of “the other Prior kid, y’know, Owen’s brother.” If only I could stay this colour then people might begin to see me as a person in my own right. Who that person is, I don’t have a clue, but it would be a lot of fun finding out. With Owen out of the equation, I could become the only Prior kid who ever truly mattered.
We stop on the corner of Willow and Park, underneath the old Willow Oak that earned the street its name. Cori opens her drawstring bag and peers inside, tongue poking out, licking her bottom lip as she inventories her Hershey’s Mini Chocolate Bars. I tilt my head and listen to the soundtrack of the night. On the other side of the park’s iron fence, a chorus of cicadas rises up from the grass and shrubs. Farther back, beyond the trees, the nude-boy nymph takes his everlasting piss into the De Silva Park fountain.
Cori looks up at me, a puzzled or even suspicious expression on her face.
“What did you mean outside Mrs Blackett’s house when you said, ‘we could go one better’?”
I smile, and say, “Freaking her out was cooler than cool, right?”
“Yeah, ice cold, I got that part.” She jerks her head at me. “What you up to, Prior?”
I turn around and start walking toward the entrance to the park.
“I dunno, but the sound of that fountain really makes me wanna pee…”
Her rubber feet pitter-patter after me, not helping.
“What you up to?” she asks again.
“What’s cooler than ice cold?”
She tries to grab my empty sleeve, but it just runs through her oversized E.T. fingers. “Don’t know. Is this another quote?”
“Nope.”
“I give up. What is it?”
“A polar bear’s nutsack. Nah, just kidding. What I’m about to do is what’s cooler.”
“Prior, tell me…”
Three banshee wails roll out to greet us as I stop in front of the open gates. Jaden, Andrew, and Bailey probably trying to scare the bejesus out of each other and any Trick-or-Treaters who happen to wander past.
Cori shakes her head passionately. “You’re not going in there, not with them. They’ll tear you apart.”
“C’mon,” I say, “it’s Halloween. I’m just going to play a little trick on them is all. They’ve had all the glory for far too long. They’re dumb, and I’m going to prove just how dumb. That’s the treat part.”
“I’m not going in there.” She lifts her hand and the tip of her rubber index finger glows orange. “Eeeee Teeee go home.”
I look at her. “You’ve been waiting all night to do that, haven’t you?”
She nods. “I mean it though, Prior. I’m not going in.”
I clasp my hands together and drop to one knee in front of her. “You’ve got to. It’ll be no fun unless someone’s there to see it. See, I think I can fool them into believing I’m Owen…” I’ll take his place. Prove it isn’t that hard to be him, that it’s easy, in fact. What better way to get over him, to move on and prove myself, than to actually be him for a few short minutes?
It’s Cori’s turn to look at me. “That’s the stupidest idea I ever heard. They’ll never fall for it, not in a million years. Not even on Halloween with a full moon out, they won’t. I’m not doing it. I’m not.”
She folds her arms. Underneath the sheet, she may be pouting.
“I love this part,” I tell her, “when a character in a TV show says he won’t do something and the director cuts to the next scene and there he is doing exactly what he said he wouldn’t do.”
“Well that’s not me, I’m not–”
Shh, Cori. Please. Tonight it’s my show–The Manny Prior Show–and I’m producer, director, and star.
“You can have all my candy,” I say.
“I don’t want–really? All of it?”
I nod. “Everything. It’s yours. Just come along.”
She takes her time to think it over, my best supporting actress drawing out the suspense.
“Alright,” she says finally, “but I’m only coming with you because we agreed to look out for each other. You’ll need someone to run for help when they start kicking your stupid butt. And by the way, you can keep your candy. I’ve got more than you anyway. Let’s go.”
She walks into the park.
That’s Cori. Once she decides to do something, she does it, no second thoughts; she just marches right on in. I think that’s why I wanted her along with me tonight, because although I am a great ideas man I am also a wilter. My entire life I’ve never seen anything through to the end. Not like Cori…or Owen. But at least she never rubbed my nose in it.
I run inside after her, take her arm, and lead her gently off the path of loose, loud gravel.
“Whoa, no close encounters for you. You need to hide somewhere. If they figure out who you are, it’s over. They’ll know I’m not Owen.”
“No fair.”
“Stay back among the trees.” I point to an area off to the right. “Remember the beginning of E.T. when you’re running through the forest being chased by those guys from the government?”
“That wasn’t me,” Cori deadpans. “That was someone else–someone in a suckier costume.”
“Yeah, well, make like that over there. Stay down. Don’t let them see you.”
She sighs and stomps off in the direction of the trees. “I don’t like this,” she calls back.
With Cori gone, the walls of my world whoosh away from me, making the park seem huge and me an insect scratching around its borders. Breathing heavily, I listen to the swooping cries of the three ghosts circling the fountain. Those sounds…they make it hard to believe.
I look to my right and there’s Cori, crouching beneath the drooping branches of a Hackberry. With no park lights nearby, she is hard to see, easy to miss. I start moving toward the central area where the ghosts are, walking on the grass to one side of the path so that I make little sound.
A wind sweeps through De Silva Park. Those trees still with leaves whisper after it, while those without make a clacking sound like old folk trying to talk around false teeth that don’t quite fit. I don’t know what it is they’re trying to say, and the boy who used to devour guide books, envying trees their unfaltering stamina, seems to be slipping further and further out of reach.
The grass stretches in front of me, a dark green ocean I must swim across. Swim? I can hardly move. The trees would have been buoys to me once. It would have been easy to walk over, wrap my arms around a trunk, and let the shadows smother me. But I won’t hide anymore; I won’t stand in shadow. I will, however, use them to my advantage, to help me now as blending in has always helped me and kept me safe in the past. I hurry toward the fountain area, flitting from tree to tree to tree.
The fountain has three tiers, huge decorative stone basins that widen from the top tier down. The bottom basin, which has the diameter of a Californian Redwood, is lined with brown and silver coins. Under the rippling surface of the water, they wink in the glare of two high-mounted halogen lamps. I must have at least twenty dollars invested in there, with no sign of a return. Meantime, looking down on everything, a smile on his face and his tiny wanger in his hand, the nude-boy nymph pisses on everyone’s hopes and dreams. A few nights ago, I took one of Owen’s Catchlove Cougars team patches and superglued it to the little bastard’s ass.
The three ghosts are sitting on the edge of the fountain, facing my direction. They haven’t seen me yet, but I’m almost ready to make my entrance. They don’t look much like ghosts to me anymore. They couldn’t haunt shit. They’re just three overgrown kids in track gear wearing paper masks. Now I’m ready.
A figure steps out from behind a tree. He is the mirror image of Owen Prior only he’s wearing green paint on his hands and face, one of his father’s suits with a black T underneath, and a pair of old sneakers with two-inch wooden blocks tied to the soles and painted black. He shuffles across a poorly lit area of grass then vanishes suddenly and mysteriously behind the trunk of a Scarlet Oak.
With my back to the trunk, I give Cori, who is watching from some fifty feet away, a thumbs-up. Peering around the tree, I can tell from the large whites of their eyes that the boys think they’ve just seen Owen. I walk back across the space…
“Look, there he goes again!” Bailey cries. The giant lineman, on his feet, pokes a fat finger in my direction.
The other two boys, Andrew and Jaden, get up and move beside him, squinting for a better look. I stifle a nervous laugh with one hand while pinching my leg with the other.
“It was Owen alright.” Hands on his hips, Andrew shakes his head. “And don’t tell me it can’t be him because I know. But I know what I saw, too.”
My need to laugh is under control, but now I have to hold off the urge to pee. The sound of the fountain is to my bladder what a dog whistle is to a dog.
“Jay, you’re quarterback,” says Bailey. “Call the play.”
Jaden is quiet a moment. “You sure it was him?” he says finally. “I never got too good a look and the light’s bad over there. But you two–you’re sure it was Owen you saw?”
Bailey and Andrew move in front of him, turning their backs toward me, but I can see both of them nodding like those toys for the back seat of your car.
“Go speak to him, Jay,” says Andrew.
“Find out what he’s doing here,” says Bailey.
The tension in their voices tells me they’re buying it, convincing themselves I am Owen. At a moment like this I could be thankful Manny Prior is forgettable to everyone he meets.
“I’ll tell you what he’s doing right now,” Jaden says. “He’s messing with us, boys. But we’re onto him, right?” Then, shouting, even though I can hear every word these dumbasses are saying, “You hear that, Owen? We know it’s you back there, so come out and talk to us.”
“Why’s he trying to mess with us?” Andrew says, looking over his shoulder toward me. “We never done nothing to him.”
Jaden pushes past the other two and moves forward, closer to my hiding place. “It’s Halloween, dick-for-brains,” he says, talking to Andrew. “Don’t you know anything?”
“Yeah,” Bailey says, “it’s like April Fools only with candy and monster costumes.”
Of course they believe I’m Owen–nobody in this football town wants to accept he’s gone. When I knocked on folks’ doors earlier and talked about it to some of them, they just looked at me blankly, denial written all over their stupid, ugly faces, just like these guys. Well, I deny their denial. What do they think about that?
I step out from behind the tree and move a short distance into the light.
All three boys try to take me in, looking me up and down.
“I wouldn’t believe this if I wasn’t seeing it,” says Jaden.
“Owen Prior, here, on Halloween night,” says Andrew.
Bailey is smiling and shaking his head. “Like nothing ever happened…”
Remembering how my brother used to greet them, his friends, at our front door before practise, I raise my left hand while the cool night breeze pendulums the empty sleeve of my right. “Hello, dipshits!”
“Get over here, Frankenstain,” Jaden says, “We got a lot to talk about–like when we’re getting you back on the team.” He waves, but I shake my head. I’m happy right where I am. I just called the Catchlove Cougars three toughest players dipshits to their faces and I’m still alive to tell the tale. My job here is done.
“Sorry, guys. Can’t catch up right now. I gotta get back.” I edge my way out of the light. The three boys advance together. “I, uh, went through hell to get here.”
There, I said my line. Neat. Now RUN!
But it is hard to leave the field of this, my one and only victory. Still, I need to go, and fast, before the audience realise they’ve been watching The Manny Prior Show and decide to lynch the host.
But it’s too late. The three boys rush me like a defensive line on an opposition quarterback, and that feeling, that sweet sweet taste, I realise, isn’t victory at all but only the idea of victory. An illusion.
They never bought me as Owen, not for a second.
I look around for an escape route, and even though the open park yawns around me there’s no way of escape. Hands fall on my shoulders, fingers grip my arm. The fountain rushes toward me, and while the rest of me tenses against what is coming, my bladder does the opposite, emptying itself all down my pants leg as Jaden and his friends break the surface of the water with my face. The world goes quiet, muted; all I can hear are the bubbles escaping my mouth and my heart hammering its way out of my chest. The hands on the back of my head push harder, practically force-feeding me the coins on the fountain floor. I try pushing myself up, but those coins prove as slippery and reliable as ice. And I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
I.
Can’t.
Breathe.
The gun goes off underwater. The bullet shreds the lapel of my suit jacket and ricochets off the basin floor, exiting the water somewhere off to my left. Finding the hands on me suddenly gone, I explode upwards from the fountain, spraying water everywhere and gasping for air. Darkness and bright, almost blinding circles of light fill my vision. I rub at my eyes, trying to get my sight back.
“What the hell was that?” says a voice. Jaden’s, I think. “What’d you do, Prior, let off a cherry bomb or something?”
“Something, yeah,” I say as I pull my shaking hand away from my eyes. The faces of the three boys emerge from all the fuzz and glare. “I didn’t–didn’t think it would work underwater.”
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, and that isn’t my line. I’m deviating. Screwing up my cues. There is meant to be a big reveal, but not now, and not like this. If pressed I was to pull out the gun with my hidden right hand, point it at their faces one at a time, then deliver the killer line, Deus ex machina, baby in my best Austrian oak. Instead, I’ve missed my cue, pulled the trigger, and said something meaningless in a voice more Pee Wee Herman than Schwarzenegger.
“You okay, Owen?” Jaden is holding up his hands, palms out toward me.
Owen? But they know I’m not Owen.
“Uh, yeah,” says Andrew after a nudge from Jaden’s elbow, “we was just messing around with you, Owen. Wasn’t like we were trying to drown you or anything.”
Again with Owen. Do they really think I’m him?
“I knew that,” I say quickly. “Of course I knew that. You had me for what–a second? It’s no biggie, really.”
Bailey points at me. “Is that what I think it is?” Suddenly, he looks worried. Come to mention it, so do Andrew and Jaden.
I look down at the dark patch around my groin and the trail down my leg. When this headline hits the high school bathroom walls on Monday, I’m finished.
“Owen, don’t worry about that,” Jaden says, still holding his hands in front of him like he’s expecting a long snap to the chest. “We won’t tell anyone. Right Andy? Right Bail?”
The two boys nod enthusiastically. I’m not sure how this happened but it seems nobody is going to hear about me pissing myself in front of them in De Silva Park on Halloween Night. I can’t quite believe it. Manny Prior finally gets some luck.
A grin of relief fills my face. The moment the three boys see it, they take off through the park faster than I’ve seen any of them run on the football field. I’m still smiling when Cori walks out from the trees and says, “Oh-my-God, is that a gun?”
I look down and in a heartbeat it all makes sense. The barrel of my father’s Smith & Wesson 457 pokes out from the hole it blasted through my T-shirt and his old suit.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
They never believed I was Owen. They saw the gun and played along, scared I would shoot them in the face or something. Maybe there’s no escaping Manny Prior. Maybe in life you’re dealt one card and one card only, and if it’s a Joker then it’s a Joker you’ll always be. Maybe that’s all there is to it. And now there will be no escape for me on Monday either, not when that grapevine wraps itself tight around my neck. On Monday, I’m as dead as Owen.
Unless they keep their mouths shut.
Why would they do that?
Owen, of course. They’ll keep quiet about my accident–and possibly the gun, too–out of respect for him.
Yet again, my brother saves the day. Asshole.
I start marching back through De Silva Park toward Willow Street. “Let’s go home, Cori. I’ve had enough. It’s time.”
But Cori doesn’t follow. Her little voice catches me, pinning me to the spot. “Manny? Why are you carrying a gun?”
I stop, turn, peel off my rubber hair, and run my fingers through the real stuff. I’m pretty sure the skullcap belongs with an Elvis costume my Dad has stashed somewhere at home. I found it in the garage (not far from the gun drawer he sometimes forgets to lock) and painted the little flap of forehead green to match my face paint. But it’s a quiff not a flattop, which sums up how I feel tonight–like the parts of me don’t quite fit anymore.
“It’s just a prop,” I tell her. “I’d no intention of using it. I only brought it for protection. Good thing I did, too. Did you see what they tried to do to me?”
Waiting for her response, I pocket the gun with my left hand while working my right arm into the empty sleeve. Once in there, I flex the stiffness out of it.
Cori walks over to me. “You better put it right back where you found it, Prior,” she says. “Or you and me, we’re no longer friends. Got it?”
“Loud and clear.”
Without another word, we leave De Silva Park together.
Willow Street is not the same as when we left it. Packs of costume-wearing monsters are roaming the length and breadth: vampires and wizards, werewolves and orcs, pirates and Frankensteins. All in better costumes than mine, and carrying paper sacks so full they spill candy trails as they work their way down the street toward me. Typical, I’m heading in the opposite direction.
When we pass Mrs Blackett’s house it feels as though our encounter happened a long time ago, if it ever happened at all. I picture her hallway as a long dark throat, the carpet rolled like a tongue, and shadows, shadows everywhere, huddled against walls, crouched in corners, waiting for me to step inside. I’m just scaring myself, I know that; but I can’t help it. I need to feel like tonight has counted for something, even if it is only something I have imagined.
Finally, we arrive at Maple Street, a cul-de-sac of a dozen two-story houses with expensive cars parked in the driveways, and huge, perfect lawns. Green moats around lonely castles. For all the open space the neighbourhood has to offer, I can feel its crushing weight as we approach the end of my father’s driveway.
What kind of ending is this? What change in the main character except for a bagful of candy and some bullet-holed clothes? Where is the twist to the tale? All I’ve achieved it seems is almost losing Cori, my best and only true friend.
And it’s all Owen’s fault.
Cori stops on our driveway and turns to face me. As she opens her mouth to speak, she lifts her finger of healing for the second time tonight. It glows brilliant orange.
“I meant what I said, Prior. Put that thing back where you found it. If you don’t, I’m telling your parents for your own good.”
“I will.”
“Swear. Swear on my life.”
“Okay, I swear on your life.” I reach across and place my hand on her shoulder. “Cori?”
“Yes, Prior?”
A trio of trick-or-treaters enters Maple Street behind us. At the front, Jareth the Goblin King, sporting the same ridiculous blond wig David Bowie wore in the movie, Labyrinth. Behind him, some confused overweight kid in a Darth Maul mask and robe and waving an Orc battleaxe through the air. Then, trailing the other two and using a plastic-bladed scythe as a walking aid, the Grim Reaper himself–all four feet and six inches of him.
I turn back to Cori. “I want you to know I didn’t choose this road. Sometimes the road chooses you.”
She looks at me with those huge, innocent eyes of hers, and my heart almost melts.
“Roads?” she says. “Where we’re going we don’t need roads.”
After a moment of confused silence, she tells me it’s a quote from Back to the Future. I tell her that she’s cheating; it’s a movie I’ve never seen. Only, I’m lying and she knows it.
“You win, Cori,” I say finally. “I think it’s time to crown you Queen of Quotes.”
She looks stricken. “I don’t want to be Queen, stupid. I want to keep playing. And you–you, Prior, just need to try a little harder is all.”
“Nah. The game’s over for me, Queenie.”
She looks at me, trying to read what’s behind my expression. She gives in with a frown.
“It’s not from anything, stupid.” I give her a playful push. “It’s a Manny Prior original.”
And with that I step forward, lean in, and plant a great big wet one on the top of her head. Through the sheet. “Goodnight, Corissa.”
She pulls away fast.
“Look out, Prior,” she whispers. “Your brother’s watching from your window.”
POW! There it is, ladies and gentlemen. The Big Reveal. Chill factor ten. Better than Haley Joel Osment’s seeing dead people. Better than the moment in Rear Window when James Stewart is spying on Thorwald’s empty apartment and the camera pans across and there he is, Thorwald himself, staring back with murder in his eyes. Except it’s only Owen Prior. And the murder’s in mine.
“Go home, Cori.”
She doesn’t want to leave, not at first. But underneath the sheet she’s blushing so furiously from the kiss–the sort of kiss since there was no actual lip on lip or even lip on skin contact–that she turns and takes her blushes away, though not before another serious-voiced reminder to put back the gun. I remind her that I swore I would, and that seems good enough. By the time she crosses the street and turns around to wave and smile, I’m ready to give her a smile of my own in return.
Then I turn back to Owen.
Although we share the same face, it makes me sick to my stomach looking at it, looking at him. Below his shit-eating grin, he waves at me with his good left hand, flexing the fingers in a slow, deliberate taunt as his right arm, cradled in a sling, lies propped on my windowsill. I could endure a few extra weeks of him riding my ass every day if they’d only hit the son of a bitch harder during last weekend’s game.
Head down, I drag myself up the driveway toward the garage doors. As I pass beneath my window, a monster spitball splashes onto my rubber wig, rolls down the grooves, and slops inside my ear. He must have been building that one the whole time Cori and I were talking.
I reach inside my pocket and grip Dad’s 457. Tickling the trigger, I imagine knocking out every one of his teeth like ducks in a shooting gallery. But there are people around–Jareth, the Grim Reaper, the Sith Lord or the Uruk Hai or whatever the hell it is he’s supposed to be. And then there’s Cori to think about. Yes, Cori: my friend. And what else? Girlfriend? Who knows? Maybe, in time. And only if I put the gun back before I smear my foot all over the driveway.
Wouldn’t Owen just love that?
I flip him the bird and walk to the roll-up garage door, which is still as I left it earlier this evening, barely open, like the mouth of some nervy kid on a dentist’s chair. Holding my breath, I duck through the space into the murk beyond. I pull off the spitballed hair cap and toss it on a shelf. The touch light on the wall flickers and throws my weak shadow across the car onto the far wall. Then, listening for my parents while trying not to make any sound myself, I sneak to the back of the garage and the gun drawer.
I lift the gun out of my pocket and place it on the countertop. Its cold silence screams at me in the near dark. What I need right now is a voiceover, a closing statement or final thought to put this night’s episode to bed. But there is only silence. Maybe there’s nothing left to say. Maybe the show is already over.
I slide open the drawer, and place the gun inside. A cockroach, fat as two of my fingers, appears and scratches its way along the barrel and down the grip, reminding me that I’m well and truly back in the real and ugly world. And then I can’t bring myself to close the drawer again.
I don’t know how long I stand there, but I snap into focus when I hear something move behind me. A whisper of feet on stone. I turn around and there he is, looking back at me over the top of our father’s car.
Owen.
Was I waiting for him? I don’t know; I don’t think so. Before I can answer the question, the touch light flickers, and I spy Owen’s shadow trying to make its move. That’s all it takes to stop me thinking and get me believing again. I scoop the gun out of the drawer, and start firing.
The noise inside the garage is huge, the recoil of each shot powerful enough to make my arm feel as weak as a bendy straw. I follow up each pull of the trigger with a yelled Bang! Bullets rip through the garage door and disappear into the night, that is, until one of them doesn’t, hitting Owen’s face instead (my face…our face), splitting it messily in two. He crumples to the garage floor, out of sight behind the car. I move around it slowly, needing to see what the bullet has done to my brother–
The gun falls from my hand.
There are pieces of–of face everywhere, in and around the growing pool of blood. It is being drawn into a giant red teardrop as it trickles out of the garage, which is on a slope, under the partly open door, and onto the steeper slope of the driveway outside. I duck to look and see the blood running in a straight, uninterrupted line toward the bottom of the driveway and the feet of Jareth and his two friends.
From the corner of my eye I see Owen again. He’s shorter, smaller, and lying under a white sheet as though the cops have already been and gone when my back was turned. Except two holes have been cut out with scissors for his eyes…
But it’s Owen, alright. It’s Owen. I said I was going to believe, and I will.
Out on Maple Street, the monsters are watching. I know they are because Grim Reaper is screaming loud enough to raise the dead. The world’s gone mad. Topsy turvy.
This would be a good time to roll the credits.
I said, this would be a good time to roll the credits.
About the Author
British writer Steven J Dines’ short fiction has appeared in over sixty online and print publications. His story, Unzipped, was selected as a Notable Story in storySouth’s Million Writers Award and recently received an Honorable Mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008. He is currently writing his first novel. For more information, visit his blog.
©2009 Steven J Dines
