Futile Efforts (12 page)

The mauled and mutilated live in the walls.
 
At least six of your classmates vanished during your high school years.
 
Some claimed the families moved away, but you can feel those others moving alongside you now, alive but somewhere else.

They never really got away from the school, and yet in some fashion they did.
 
They never turned in their last homework assignments, never did their final laps in the gym.
 
In a way, they graduated with bizarre honors.

The fat kid with the kettle drum disappeared on stage during the Christmas concert.
 
One minute he's banging along to Brahms' "
Wiegenlied
," and the next his wide ass just isn't there anymore.
 
You were playing second trumpet, staring out of the corner of your eye when you watched him go.
 
Nobody else seemed to notice.
 
Later they said he died of leukemia.
 
Died of Hodgkin's.
 
Told everybody he got brain damage from the crash out on Route 287, where Bobby Hale flipped his van and hit a tree.
 
Four others dead, one paralyzed, and two walked away with bruises and plenty of psychological damage.
 
One survivor tried suicide six months later claiming rats lived in her belly.

Maybe they were right.
 
Btu the skin of that drum just couldn't take the goddamn pounding anymore.

So now you're walking past the science labs, where you cut open worms, frogs, a piglet, a cow's eye, and the starving Portuguese orphans who came on the black truck that backed right up to the gym doors.
 
Hustled them out while the lunch ladies and substitute teachers squawked into megaphones, "
Nao
toque
nas
paredes
limpas
.
 
Nos
estaremos
alimentando-lhe
muito
peixe
logo
."

Don't touch the clean walls.
 
We will be feeding you much fish shortly.

You see all the brown faces with bad teeth breaking into hideous grins.

"
A
festa
de St. Peter
comecara
dentro
da
hora
.
 
Coloque
mas
tabelas
e
tenha
uma
sesta
ate
que
esteja
hora
de comer
."

The Feast of St. Peter will begin within the hour.
 
Lay down on the tables and have a nap until it is time to eat.

You're in front of your old locker, wondering if the combination will still work.
 
If the pages you cut from the newspapers and magazines are still taped up inside.
 
You touch the cold metal and a sob breaks inside your chest.

"You all right?" someone asks.

Christ, you nearly leap through the top of your own skull.
 
You turn and stare.
 
She could be any of the girls who refused to go out with you back then when it mattered most.
 
She smiles warmly and it sends an electrical thrill knifing through your guts.
 
No more than fifteen, has a studious appearance to her–glasses, ponytail, a skirt and tie as if she was at private school, which she's not.
 
It throws you for a second.
 
She gives a melancholy grin and asks, "You lost?"

"Sorry.
 
This your locker?"

"Yeah."

"Used to be mine about twenty years back.
 
I was remembering a little."

"About a locker?"

"More or less."

"Okay," she acquiesces, still waiting.
 
You want to ask her if the fat kid with the kettle drum ever wanders around in the middle of the day.
 
If the eviscerated
Portugese
orphans crawl down the halls holding the flaps of their stomachs together with dirty hands crying, "
Eu
acredito
que
se
encontraram
me.
 
Nao
ha
muitos
peixes
aqui
."

I believe they have lied to me.
 
There is not much fish here.

She's got poison sumac rashes around her knuckles and you almost get homesick looking at them.
 
Perhaps you'll meet again another two decades from now, both of you roaming about the school, staring at this same locker while some child looks up into mad, sentimental faces.

"I'm gonna be late for class."

"Oh.
 
Excuse me," you say, flitting aside.

"Thanks a lot."

There's an extra glint in her eye as if she's trying to decide whether to do something or not.
 
She's on the edge but can't quite make up her mind.
 
Maybe bring you in for show and tell.
 
Or give you the name of a good therapist.
 
Or slam you out of your socks with a harrowing lie.
 
Scream rape.
 
Or offer herself up for a cockeyed kick, a power trip, something disgusting to tell her girlfriends about later, get everybody laughing–his belly was so big and white as a sheet.
 
His dick was out and maybe four inches long when I finally got it up, and that took forever.
 
I had to get on top or he would've crushed me, and he came in about ten strokes.
 
He cried afterwards.
 
He wanted to marry me.
 
I locked myself in the bathroom and threw up twice.

She opens the locker and you see that the pages and pictures you taped up are still there, yellowed and grimy.
  
You know they're yours but you can't recognize them any longer.
 
Newspaper clippings, magazine art, headlines.
 
You try to read the words but she grabs a book and shuts the door again.
 
She takes a breath and her ripening breasts thrust forward.
 
You jump back a step as if she just snapped open a switchblade.

"Hey," she says, "this might sound funny, but–"

"I've got to get going."

"Yeah, well, I was just wondering if–"

You shrink away, wheel about and damn near start scampering off.
 
You've never scampered before and it's sort of fun.
 
You've never even said the word scamper before and now you can't stop.
 
She follows for a few steps, trying to grab you by the elbow.
 
You shirk away before she can touch you.

"Stop," you tell her.
 
"Scamper, scamper."
 
It's a sound you can't get out of your head, you fuckin' nut.
 
"Scamper."

"But–"

"I wouldn't cry afterwards."

"Hey, listen, you're–"

You turn a corner, rushing past kids walking in groups, in pairs, everybody with somebody.
 
"I wouldn't want to marry you!"

A skinny boy arched like a vulture gets in your way and you plow straight into him.
 
He's probably a hundred twenty pounds in his white suede sneakers and he lifts off as if from a launching pad.
 
His long hair flails around his ears, little peach fuzz chin curling in flight.
 
He's got some serious elevation, goes up and flies backwards at least ten feet before he hits the wall outside the cafeteria hard.
 
The doors rock open.
 
You can clearly hear his arm snap in two.
 
He glares at the protruding bone and then glances at you, then back to the jagged jutting ulna and then back at you.
 
The pain won't hit him for another minute.
 
A fat kid with a kettle drum says, "Holy shit, man."

You run.

What room was it?
 
What was the number?
 
The utilities closet of seventh period study hall.
 
306?
 
308?
 
You lunge into 306 and see shadows writhing in the corners–two teachers screwing around, or two students making out, somebody giving head to the dead, or the smelly orphans still slinking around trying to get their internal organs back.

Eu
estarei
escravendo
ao
congressista
local
immediamente
.
 
A
remocao
de
meus
intestines e
certamente
uma
acao
immoral e
oths
l.
 
Eu
procurarei
os
danos
.

I will be writing to the local congressman immediately.
 
The removal of my intestines is surely an immoral and illegal action.
 
I shall seek damages.

There are shouts and the angry clamor of footsteps.
 
They're probably carrying torches, they've got you surrounded.
 
There will be tear gas soon.
 
Those high-tech laser beam
gunsights
scrawling over your chest.
 
You slip into the empty classroom next door.

Oh yes.

Here it is, this is it.
 
You give a satisfied grunt and cut loose with your father's chortle.

See.
 
Your tortured soul has been in the corner all the time, curled in the agony of common trauma.
 
It glances up as you enter, pale and shaky.
 
It lets out a pained bleat as you reach down.
 
Tears well and dribble.
 
It jitters happily and struggles forward to meet you.
 
You touch and the cool swims up through your spine.

The security guard puts his .45 to your temple, and you give him a slow and knowing grin, a hip wink that says it all.
 
Of course, it's
D'Angelis
.
 
Your face is reflected in his shining badge and you can hardly believe you're the same person you were twenty minutes ago, twenty years ago.
 
There was a time you would've begged him, or any other maniac, to pull the trigger and get it over with in one quick solution.
 
But already that existence is drifting away.
 
You're here to stay.

He nods and holsters the pistol, and both of you walk down the hall eyeing all the little girls.

Your soul is restless and fidgety with strange and ugly needs.
 
You touch the poison on your way out in front doors and it warms you.

Things are getting better already.

by T.M. Wright

O
kay, let's get something straight:
We
are what happens to
us
in this existential, surrealistic shadow show.
 
Whatever.
 
Whatever.
 
And sure, existence (or what stands in for existence) is actually just a playground for grownups—and those who want to be grownups, and those who sneer at the whole idea of being grownups—and sure, we can redirect, modify, alter whatever perceptions we like; we can loop here and loop there until we find
us
somewhere, or somewhere else, and over there, too, and, dammit to hell, nowhere.
 
All at the same time.
 
Sometimes.

What a blast!
 
What cool-thinking person would pass it up, right?

Of course, a moment happens (and quickly passes, so quickly passes) when what
stands in
for reality in the rest of the universe knocks hard at the door, and then knocks it down and, hell,
there we are
!

No one does the great, narcissistic mind fuck better than Tom Piccirilli.
 
Know why?
 
Because he finds all of us—the dweebs, the nerds, the assholes and the go-getters, the philosophers, poets and pug owners—endlessly fascinating.
 
(Hmmm…somewhere in that little list is Pic himself!)
 
And also because Pic is one of the best writers (genre or otherwise) in…existence.

Read.
 
Enjoy.
 
Read again.
 
Get real!