First, happy Halloween, general users of Writer's Beat! Get ready for the celebration of everything terrifying and horrifying.
Second, can you, yes you, the reader, comment on this piece? I need it
This is one I need some comments on, generally on the characterization, the violence, the flow of the story, and any other improvements that can be given.
It's a little long, so if you do get to read it, you have my appreciation, and also, I'll read whatever you'd like me to comment on in this site. (Why, yes, I am desperate for comments. How did you know?)
Have fun, and Happy Halloween! :punk::punk:
New Vision
Damn those bullies.
They’ve beaten me up so bad this time that my glasses have been smashed to pieces. I couldn’t see off them, I couldn’t wear them, and based on how bent all the frames are, I can’t fix them. I called my Dad so he can take me home (kinda glad now that I put my parents on speed-dial), and rode home pissed at the assholes who did this to me.
It wasn’t really a new experience, but that’s not a good thing: since eighth grade, Jimmy Smith and his gang has basically made my life a living Hell because I corrected him one time (and ONLY that time) on his report about The Great Gatsby. I mean, it’s Daisy, you idiot, not Maisy! Prick took it personally and punished me on it ever since.
And no, I can’t fight back because my body is as beat up as my frames, and he’s a fucking giant compared to me. I tried one time a couple of weeks ago, I think a Monday, inside a McDonald’s—after watching “The Ant Bully,” ironically—and I was sent to the hospital, accompanied by the worried-looking Jimmy, who knew then and there he may have gone too far. He got a week’s detention, and I got took off the honor roll because of my undeclared absences. One of the reasons why the honor roll of my school is normally just the 2 people who went to school all the time.
I laid down my head to the side of the car door and prayed for a miracle to happen.
“I hope you’re OK, son,” my dad said while we were driving home. “I hate to see you hurt like this. Tell me the boy’s name, and I’ll report him to the principal.”
“No, Dad, no need. I just need some glasses,” I said as I ignored him and stared out the window, looking at all the hazy green swishing past.
“You’ll have to tell this to me eventually, boy. I can’t stand around doing nothing while this bully turns your face into Sylvester Stallone’s.” He started playing OMD’s “If You Leave” on the radio. “I mean, I found you behind a dumpster, for crying out loud. Let me help, son. Let me help.”
I stared at his face. I was a little annoyed.
“Dad, if I need help, I know where to find the pills.”
“Son…”
“Dad, it’s my problem. I can handle it, OK. I’m not some pussy who needs a pimp to guide me. I’m growing up. Let me be. It’s not like you ran away from your bullies then.”
“The difference,” he said with gritted teeth, “is that I was able to fight back. You’re being a punching bag. Let me help you.”
“You want to help me? Get me new glasses. I need them.”
He sighed. I shook my throbbing head and opened the glove compartment. An orange canister fell into my palm, and I opened it and swallowed the pills inside. My dad was still talking, but my mind had left in a swirl of dizzying thoughts and painful memories of every crooked-tooth smile and bleeding punches and cocky laugh that Jimmy Smith gave me.
That fucking xenophobe (at least that’s what I thought). My dad’s solution to any bully was to go to higher authorities. He was always a pacifist, and he wanted me to shake hands with someone who’s fucked me up so bad I’m afraid to go to McDonald’s. It just seems a little sad that I have to apologize for what Jimmy Smith did.
Plus, his solution was weak. He wanted to go to the principal and get the bully’s wrist slapped and the bully’s anger to deepen. I didn’t want that. I wanted there to be no more threat in the future, no more bullying and beatings and swirlies and pushing me off to the dumpsters from the third-floor balcony. No, fuck all of that, I wanted him gone.
I wanted him dead.
When I got home, because of my near-blindness, I was taken to my room and laid straight to my water bed. Mom washed my face and got rid of the blood and dirt from my face. She asked me about it, like Dad, but unlike him, she didn’t badger me, and after I refused to speak about Jimmy, she allowed me to talk about anything else until she finished cleaning.
Then, she told me to sleep and left me in my bed.
While I was trying to sleep, I heard her and Dad fight. It was about me. She left the door open, so I heard it all in high quality audio.
“Daryl, why the Hell aren’t you bringing the cops in? You saw him, right? He’s a couple steps away from being the walking dead.”
“Well, Hannah, I just—he asked me not to. He wants to fight this bully, to conquer him by his lonesome, and I can’t fault him for that or for anything like it.”
“Fuck, you know he’s an abuse victim at this point. Let’s be realistic here.”
“Oh, you, Mrs. Concrete Ideas. Do you have any way that may, just may, save our son from this fucker?”
“I don’t know what to do! That’s why I’m asking—begging you to just stop this. Just stop this from happening, please. Don’t kill our son.”
Silence.
“I’m going out to buy him glasses. We’ll continue this later.”
I heard the door slam, and after a moment, a stifled weeping coming from downstairs. It became less stifled as it got closer and closer to my door until my mom was practically standing in it, looking at me sadly, and sniffing in her tears.
Pretending to be asleep, I heard the creaking of the wooden floor for a few moments before I felt a kiss in my cheek. “I love you. Don’t worry, we’re going to find a way out of this, and when we do, you’ll come out twice the man you were before. But no matter what happens, remember always that we love you.”
As the footsteps retreated to the open door, I felt my tears sting some of the cuts in my face. Then the door closed, and I was left alone in the darkness.
I remember this class I had with Jimmy once, Creative Writing 101, and this lesson specifically: Chekov’s Gun. Basically, it’s that you don’t put any unimportant detail in the story, or as my teacher said, “Don’t put a gun in the first act if you don’t shoot it in the third act.”
I remember this day as the time I talked about one of my culture’s most-enduring stories: a womanizer tempted by the devil with a woman, then turning him into a girl every time he had sex, and later on, stealing his soul away. That story was morose, and was supposed to teach people to resist temptation. I always thought it was trite, and never really fleshed-out, but it had a blatant use of Chekov’s Gun because it starts with the end of his current relationship because he fucked 2 girls on the side, and in the end, those two girls led him to Hell’s Gates, so I presented it to class.
Jimmy stood up after my presentation, and called the story a terrible example of Chekov’s Gun, that it was more characterization than anything, and that the Chekov’s Gun example would be the contract that the womanizer signed to make the deal happen. I told him he knew absolutely nothing about literature, and then I think I quoted a Jay-Z song: “He who does not feel me is not real to me, therefore he doesn’t exist—poof—vamoose, son of a bitch.”
He got pissed off, but he saw the teacher watching us, so he kept his fist in his pocket. “Cogito ergo summa,” he told me.
“Life is nothing but a dream within a dream,” I told him back, “so wake up from slumber-land, idiot.”
He looked at the teacher, still watching with anticipation, and then he looked at me with the strangest eyes, flared up and ready to kill. Jimmy breathed in, and said, “Well, Mr. Antoine Ego, let me give you a couple of wise words from my favorite band.”
“What?”
“Dream on,” and then a sucker punch to the face.
That was the first time I ever felt so betrayed, so unprotected. The teacher didn’t stop him from beating me up, and even if he did get suspended for a week, I got a D- for my work because my teacher accepted his bonehead analysis. God, did I hate him so. I hated him from my head to my very inner core. I hate him with a vengeance. I hate him w—why is this green light flashing in my eyes? It keeps flashing my eyes like it’s a—it’s getting bigger. Shit. Damn, I guess I’ll j—I can’t move. I can’t move. I CAN’T MOVE. Shit, get away from me. Get away from me. Don’t DO ANYTHING TO ME, WHATEVER YOU ARE. DON’T DO ANYTH—AHHHHHHHHH
Awakened by a strange, hissing sound, and a moving bed, I thought there was a leak in the water bed. I checked and there was none. But the hissing continued, and when I looked at the direction of the door, I smelled smoke and saw a green light outlining a rectangle. It played around the edges as if it were fingernails and they were trying, maybe scratching, to open the door and rush in to bathe me in that seminal light of approval.
I walked towards the light, and when I found a doorknob, I breathed in--gasp--and opened it.
The light was gone.
It seemed to have run away because it was discovered, and they refused to be caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Well, actually, when I looked to the left of the hallway, I saw the green light again, except for two differences: it was smaller than what I saw a couple seconds ago, and it was in the shape of eyeglasses.
I stepped forward in caution. As it grew brighter and brighter, I slowed my pace until I was standing next to it. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, it was glowing green, for crying out loud! It is the textbook definition of radioactive danger, yet I couldn’t help picking it up and trying it on.
I blinked twice, and everything went into perspective. A smile formed in my lips ( I smiled). I looked around and saw the hallway with its doorways, its paintings of a Jackson Pollock wannabe (OK, it was me when I was 5), and the red rug being illuminated by the green glow my glasses still possessed. I took a couple of steps in happiness before something caught my ear.
Crunch.
I lifted my left foot and looked down, and saw a cockroach, completely crushed by my slipper-covered feet. I shook my head and kept walking to my parent’s room to thank them. When I touched the doorknob, I saw my fingernails, and it took me a moment to recognize them as mine. I mean, it was longer than I remember it was, as well as curved slightly to resemble a hook.
My head shook as I opened the door and woke up my parents. My father looked at me murderously, his eyes glowing green. “What?!?”
I was shocked a bit ‘cause my Dad never acts like this, but I shook it off and told him, “Thanks for the glasses.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? Did you steal that, boy? Mom, wake up! Our boy here’s stealing stuff.” He stood up, dressed up like Rodney Dangerfield in ‘Natural Born Killers’ in a tank top/wife beater, and pants with a belt. He started undoing the belt.
I was moving closer to the door, but my mom got up, curlers still on and wearing a barely-legal nightie, with eyes glowing green as eggs and ham, and she screamed to me, “Why are you awake?!? You pussy, come back and pay for your crimes! We’re gonna show why you should never steal. Ever.”
Tried to run away, to tell you the truth, but Mom ran to the door and closed it. She held me by the shoulders, and though I tried to shake her off, she wouldn’t budge, her nails digging into my shoulders. My dad readied his belt to me. “Hold him tight, Mom, because I’m about to beat the pussy out of this dick.”
He smacked me in the left arm. He smacked me to the right. He smashed the buckle of the belt directly to my cheeks. My cheeks stung, and blood fell slowly from the insides of my cheeks to my mouth. I tried holding it in, but I was forced to whimper in pain. My mom forced me down as my dad layered each smack one after another, each hitting me hard, pulling my hairs out from the roots, poking my eyes, making my nipples bleed.
Then suddenly, he said, “What kind of a man are you? No wonder you’re Jimmy Smith’s bitch. What are you gonna do about it, you prick, huh? Whatcha gonna do?”
I looked up at his eyes. I felt my eyes burning with pure, hot tears. I gritted my teeth. Then suddenly, a fist emerged from my hands, and I threw that to my dad’s pot belly. He tumbled down into the floor, heaving and gasping. Then, I clenched my fingers and started punching my dad in the face. It felt like a fist going to the dry wall, but I kept going at it, blood and pain mixing into my hands, until his eyes were an arm’s length away, and his jaw fell dead-center in his chest. His spinal fluid leaked as I stood up, took the belt, and started using it to beat my mother to submission, turning her concrete head into an abstract concept.
I spat to both of them, and walked out of the room. When I stood outside, something hit me: they called each other “mom and dad”. I took off my glasses to wipe the sweat off my eyes, and looked at them through the dimming glow of the glasses. It made me double-back into the wall in shock.
Their belt cabinet was opened, and their clothes were spread out and burning using a match hidden for their ‘romantic’ nights. The room was bloody, it was a mess, and on top of their bed’s frame was written “Bestia, liberata est.” In red. I saw what happened to my parents, and I didn’t need to assume what it was made of.
My father was wearing his pajamas, and his head’s blood trail led from his spot on the bed. He had scratches across his body, and he looked worse for wear. Mom was worse. Much, much worse. She was beaten from the top of her head to the bottom, and though she was wearing a nightgown, she had no curlers on, and her feet were bent up to the knees. Her brain I could see was still intact, and filled with scratches, and I shook my head. I saw my hands, then, and behold, it was red. I ran to the bathroom, opened the lights, and barfed out my lunch till kingdom come.
Going to the sink, I tried to wash the red off my hands. It didn’t go so well. In fact, I saw myself at the mirror, and lo and behold, I was red from head to toe. I stared at the mirror for a while, then I tried washing it off again with more soap.
When that didn’t work, I took some bleach from below the counter and poured some in my hands, as I tried to scrub it clean. It started smoking, and the nerves in the hands started popping one by one, telling me to STOP, while I whimpered quietly, but the remaining flesh stayed red.
I then scratched myself all over to get rid of the red. The wounds began to bleed, but it didn’t go away. I screamed and screamed but I was still red all over. I slapped myself, sure, but nothing happened.
“This can’t be real,” I said, looking at myself in the mirror. I put some water in my face to wake me up.
As I looked away, I heard a voice inside the room say, “Do you want to know what’s happening?”
The voice surprised me, mostly because I didn’t know whose voice it was. I circled around the room, and even looked under the toilet, but there was nobody there. So I went back to the sink, and patted my wet face with a towel, seeing my reflection in passing. Except it wasn’t my reflection; it was the Devil.
“Actually, it’s Azareal. I’m the one you deal with when people can’t handle the fact that the Devil has no genitals. It’s a living,” he said, shrugging. He was red all over as well, and he had horns up in his head, but his overall look was more of a ‘30s-gangster, an Al Capone-type, without the chubbiness that made Al Capone look so much like Danny De Vito. He put a cigarette in his mouth, looked at me, and said, “Boo.”
It took me a while to stop screaming like an opera singer ending the
show, I admit. And when I went forward, I asked him, “What the fuck are you doing here?!?”
“I want to use your body. You know, human form and whatnot. You’ve seen films, you know the deal. Come on, ‘Breaking Bad’ is on in 15 minutes.”
“No, no! Go away, go away! How many times have I told you fucks, I don’t want to associate with evil, you, you monster. Just get out. I have some stuff to deal with.” I started to exit.
“Like hallucinating and killing your mother and father.”
I stopped from my exit. “What did you do?”
“Oh, nothing, it’s just weird to see your son opening your clothes cabinet, taking your belt, locking the door, and start chanting loudly in Latin as you killed them in cold blood.”
No, it can’t be. “No…”
“I especially loved it when they said, ‘Son, stop! Please stop hurting your mother. Remember that we love you!’ and you said, ‘Fuck off,’ before gouging out his eyes with your bare hands.” He looked at my claws for hands. “Well, my hands, but still.”
“No…” I said, falling to the floor.
“Yes. I’ll give you 5 seconds to guess who really was beating you up in there. 5, 4…”
I wasn’t listening. I was saying to myself, tearing up slowly, “No, no, no, no, no…”
“It. Was. ME!”
“NO!” I had my fist up in the air, ready to punch away the glass, until he held his arm and told me, “You’re turning into me, boy, and the nails, the skin, the long hair, it’s all permanent. You can’t do anything to get rid of it and live a normal life. You have to become me. You will become me.”
I stared into his eyes, his purple eyes hypnotizing my mind into submission. Then my head shook, and I said, “My mom and dad wouldn’t want me to become a monster. Goodbye, Devil.”
“Remember Smith, boy! Remember him. I can help you defeat him. Wouldn’t you want to control him and his posse and finally exact your vengeance to him? Don’t you want to finally show him want it felt like to be under his thumb for the entirety of his existence? You have no parents, no other glasses, and nowhere to go looking like that and definitely not after killing your parents. I will give you one last chance to exact revenge, if you join me. Will you join me?”
I sniffled a bit. “You killed my parents.”
“Yes, but because what I require from you needs them out of the picture, and it also proves what you’re willing and able to do for us. If you want Jimmy in your hands, then you have it. But you have to come and join me and my side, and fight for that strength and vengeance that we are asking for. What say you? Are you ready to finally get Jimmy?”
“But you killed me parents. How will I know that you’ll keep your end of the deal?”
“Because I’m not the Devil; I’m Azareal. Unlike the Devil, I have the balls to do this. Remember all the times he’s humiliated you, punched you till your eye socket practically fell off—”
“That never happened; it would be illogical if it did.”
“Well, something like that. Look, just think of what he did to you, of that time he made a mistake of calling Daisy Maisy, and you laughed and teased him about it, and he didn’t take all the mockery over a one-time mistake well, so he punched you in the face. Remember all the shit you took from him over the years. Don’t you want your vengeance? Do it, so that your parents’ deaths will not be in vain. Do it, you fuck, do it.”
I grinned.
As I walked to school, I wanted to scratch myself. It took a lot of white make-up from my mom for me to look anything close to human. A very pale human, but human still. It gave me a couple of weird stares from passersby, but I didn’t care. I had one last purpose in my mind, and if I was going to do this right, I had to look weak, so that finally, I could subjugate him under my thumb. I had to, because right now, I had nothing. No hope, no future, no loved ones. Might as well add no need for vengeance in the list.
Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice yell out my name. I looked behind, readying my hands to punch him to death.
He looked sad, his face in a sad frown, eyes emulating a repentant killer. “I have to say somethi—”
I threw a punch at him. And another. And another. I couldn’t stop. His ribs cracked open and splinters stabbed my fingers hard while I made my way towards his beating heart. His mouth opened, and muttered two words I could barely comprehend. “I—I’m sorry.”
I broke his jaw. Then, my hands went under his muscles and lungs, and ripped out his beating heart. I bit it, hard, and ate it in front of him as he closed his eyes.
My bloody lips filled with a grin, and I threw his heart to the sidewalk and stomped on it. To tell you the truth, it felt satisfying.
Suddenly, however, I felt heat rising from inside me. I took off my glasses and dropped it to the ground. My arms started smoking, and then lit on fire. It spread, and I kneeled down as I paid for this one vengeance I had done for myself. I cried as the flames engulfed me, and closed my eyes.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“Get the defibrillator.” A blur of white dress runs out of the door as the man in the blue scrubs opens the patient’s eyes and flashes light on his face.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
“We’re losing him. His pupils aren’t dilated.”
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
The parents of the patient stood at the side. They looked as their son as he went into cardiac arrest, his chest shaking and flailing as if a chest-buster was struggling to come out. The woman put her left hand in her mouth as she backed out, trying to stifle away the tears in her eyes. The man stared in sadness, as if this very moment was killing him to his very core. They practically disappeared in the walls of the place as the blur of hospital help went in to try to keep this kid alive for one more day.
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
A large kid was in another corner, forced into the fetal position, as he laid down, cradling himself, as he muttered, “I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t mean to do it. I’m sorry, God; I’m sorry. Why did I do it? I didn’t mean to…”
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, bee—
The beeping stopped. The doctors and nurses and hospital help stared at the body of this patient, beaten to a pulp, eyes wide shut, with a tube in his mouth to help him breathe. The lead doctor, in his blue scrubs, stared at him for a moment, before looking up to the clock.
“Time of death, Monday, 11:59, near-midnight. Died because of cardiac arrest; call the cops.”
A nurse went out, and the man in blue scrubs went to the large kid in the fetal position and stood him up. “Jimmy, you just killed a boy. No matter how much he teased you in school, he didn’t deserve to be bullied and die like this. Shame on you, Jimmy. Shame on you.” This made the boy cry even harder, wailing and begging for mercy
Two cops went in. One of them had handcuff, and that man went to Jimmy and started to handcuff him while the other cop read Jimmy his rights. As they lead Jimmy out to the hallway in cuffs, the parents looked at him with no pity, no mercy, no love lacing their eyes; just anger.
Meanwhile, the kid remained dead, hopeless for a happy future, forced away any good in his life forever.