KNEELING ON my cot, I leaned against the wall, feeling the vibrations from the music at the dance.
That morning, Taylor had left to catch up with Zack. Exhausted and depleted, I’d fought through my daily chores. The students were so excited about the dance. It was all I’d heard them talk about. No matter where I went, there was another sign, another whisper, another reminder of that so stupid dance—the one I desperately wished I could have been at.
The rhythm of the music tickled my ear. A tear followed the trail of a previous droplet, making its way down my cheek.
Had life turned out differently, maybe I would’ve gotten to dance. Maybe someone would have asked me. Maybe I would have asked someone.
Stop thinking like this, you pathetic idiot!
There was no point in dwelling on my crappy life. It didn’t get me anywhere.
I struggled to change my thoughts, but the beating vibrations from the wall kept my mind fixated on the cruelty of circumstances. It wasn’t just about a dance. It was about knowing that no one could ever want to be with me. Knowing that something was viciously ripped from me. Knowing that I’d never had a choice.
Tom was probably having a great time with Deanna. Maybe she was already giving him a blow job in the bathroom.
I slid off the side of my cot, collapsing to the floor in a fit of tears and whimpers. My chest tightened. It stung like the night Darren had put his hands over me.
I reached out to the cot, as if using it to brace not only my body but my heart. After climbing back into it, I curled against the wall, sobbing.
I didn’t have anything. Or anyone. I was completely alone, and this evil thing inside me, though I didn’t have to fear his mockery, surely could taste and delight in the pain I was experiencing in ways I couldn’t even imagine.
“Why?” was my subtle question. I didn’t know who I was speaking to. I believed in evil. Not God. Not hope. I believed in the darkness—the same darkness that had haunted me to this very place.
But I still wanted an answer. I wanted someone to explain why others had it so easy. Why didn’t they have to deal with being this horrible mutation of a human being? This disgusting reminder to everyone I encountered of everything they feared and abhorred?
I allowed myself to wallow in self-pity and anguish, and as the music escalated, like a cruel joke, it only grew worse.
Tap tap tap.
It took me a moment to realize the sound was coming from my window. I hopped to my feet and hurried over.
The orange of the streetlight behind Zack washed over the leaves of the bushes around him.
He smirked.
I unlatched and opened the window. He crawled in.
“Ow, ow!” he moaned.
“Jesus Christ, be careful. You shouldn’t even be walking arou—”
What’s he wearing?
It was a tux. Not one of the fresh, new tuxes that I imagined most of the guys from St. Augustine were wearing at the dance—that Tom was probably wearing. This one was something Zack must’ve picked up at a thrift store. A few brown stains, possibly coffee, trailed down the white button-up under the black jacket he wore—one that had black strings unraveling at the shoulder seams. The black bow tie he wore was faded like it’d been washed a thousand times. Light threads burst from tears in the dark laces on his shoes.
It was an adorable little tux.
Zack’s hair was gelled flat and to the side. He looked like a butler.
Is he going to the dance?
That was ridiculous. Why the fuck would he be going to St. Augustine’s dance? But why else would he be wearing that?
“What are you doing here?” I asked defensively, pissed that he’d caught me in such a vulnerable state.
He reached into his pocket.
A click was followed with a soft, melodious tune.
What the—?
It hit me.
“You told me you wished you would’ve been able to have a dance,” he said, echoing my realization.
A tear followed that same path down my face. It was more like a geyser shooting from the corner of my eye as it streamed to my jaw.
I turned to the cot. I didn’t want him to see how stupid I was being.
The music grew louder. I flashed a glance back. Zack had a tape player in his hand. Duct tape was wrapped around it, probably holding pieces of it together.
Zack limped over to my box desk and set it down. He walked between me and my cot.
I should have thanked him… at least shown some sort of appreciation for his efforts, but I was just confused. How was I supposed to react?
“Are you mad?” he asked. He wore a worried expression, like the one he’d had when I’d showed up to his place, terrified about the demon that had entered me. Of all the things we’d been through the past few weeks, this seemed like such a trivial thing for him to be worried about.
“No, no,” I said. “Just… how did you know?”
“You said it was tonight.” He smirked a charming, wicked smirk. He held out his hand. “What are we waiting for?”
I wiped my eye and took his hand. It was damp, sticky. He must’ve been warm in that getup. Or was he sweating from the pain he was surely in from walking around on that leg?
I tucked my nub at his waist.
“I don’t know how—”
“Sshh….”
He rocked back and forth.
I couldn’t take my thoughts off his leg. He shouldn’t have been moving around this much.
My eye wandered to his hair—more groomed than it’d ever been before. I liked when it was a mess. I liked when it looked like someone had hacked at it with shears.
We swayed together.
An orchestra of cracks and hisses added a new dimension to the otherwise soothing music.
I smiled. I couldn’t help it. This was so nice. So thoughtful. And it made me wonder and hope. Maybe Zack felt more for me than just friends. Did he? Or was he just being nice? Was this gesture nothing more than the gesture of one friend to another? I didn’t know. I didn’t have enough friends to gauge something like this.
I closed my eye and rested my head on his shoulder, trying to just enjoy the moment.
The beating of the music from the dance ceased, and all I could hear was the music from Zack’s player.
We drifted around the room. I stepped on Zack’s foot. He hissed.
“Oh shit. I’m sorry,” I said, pulling away.
“It’s fine,” he said, wincing. He tugged me close to him again, continuing along, slower than before.
Following the urging of his arm, I pulled away and twirled. It made me giggle.
Zack smiled and pulled me in close again. His face was inches from mine. Those eyes like the pine woods fixed on me.
What did he see? The one-eyed monster? The freak? Did I haunt his thoughts the way I haunted others? The way I haunted myself?
His thumb massaged my cheek. His lips touched mine.
They were soft. As he opened his mouth slightly, I felt the warm saliva across his lower lip.
His face smelled musky. Bitter.
He pushed against me. My back hit the wall.
His lips opened. Warm moisture covered my lips as he assaulted my mouth with his.
Chills rushed across my body. Heat surged across my face, something hotter than anything that could have just been coming from Zack’s body.
After a moment, I struggled to breathe, but I couldn’t stop. I just wanted to be trapped in this moment, lost in it.
Did Zack really want me? Did he really see me like this? He must have. And yet, even as his tongue rushed past my lips, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was all for some other reason.
His fingers slid under my shirt, one thumb kneading my back, the other slipping over a curve in my abdomen.
It was even better than it’d been with Tom. My temples felt like they were about to explode. A rush trickled up the back of my neck.
I stroked my free hand over his button-up, allowing my fingers to massage his little black bow tie.
I didn’t know what to do. What was appropriate? Was I supposed to initiate something? Was I doing it right?
He stopped and pulled away. His eyes fixed on me, serious, as his hot breath rushed across my nose. The edges of his lips swirled up as his teeth took over his face in a smile. My face locked in a similar look. I hadn’t remembered a time where I’d been this happy or smiled this big. It hurt my face, but I liked it.
I wanted more. I wanted him to attack me, to be all over me. But I didn’t dare let him know. That seemed like a horrible idea. My desperation would scare him off. I just knew it.
“Luke,” he said. His face moved beside mine. He whispered into my ear, “You’re incredible.”
I jerked back instinctively. I wanted to run away, to disappear.
He pulled me in so our torsos touched.
I was perfectly still. My dick was starting to get hard, and the head was grazing against his pant leg. Could he feel it?
“Seriously,” he said, “you have no idea how amazing you are.”
Something inside me protested. It was like having a trial taking place in my brain with all the witnesses testifying against me, and then this one loud voice challenging their statements. I wasn’t sure what to do with it. It felt good, but the mental sparks it ignited made me uneasy.
“You deserve someone so wonderful,” he continued, “but I hope you’ll settle for me.”
He abandoned his words and kissed me again, wrapping his arms under mine, around my back, stroking up and down.
The tingling of my lips and the heat across my face overloaded my brain, and I couldn’t think, deliberate. I could just lose myself in Zack.
I brushed my fingers through his hair. Strands, solidified by whatever product he’d applied to contain his usually careless mess, pricked at my fingertips.
Soon, we made our way onto my cot. Zack had to be careful, slow. His leg still needed time to heal. And as nice as this all was, I couldn’t help but think, dumbass.
His arms wrapped around me. His lips moved across my cheek like they were exploring. As he came to my temple, he offered a soft peck.
Ease swept throughout me. It was as if every muscle in my body had finally decided to take the day off, to savor in relief. It felt so good.
I lost track of everything. No sense of reality. No sense of my past. Just that moment with him.
It was one of those rare moments. Like the ones I’d had when Artie and I had read travel books together.
Zack pulled back, a serious look overtaking his face, as if he’d remembered something important.
“We’re leaving tomorrow,” he said.
I felt the tears returning.
When I was kissing him, I’d managed to forget that he was going to be gone soon. That he was leaving. Of course he was leaving. And I was probably never going to see him again.
“We have to. We’ve got some good contacts, and it’s the only chance we’ve got. The UCIS is too close.”
I turned to the door. I couldn’t look at him. It was going to be too hard. Had he come to say good-bye?
He set his thumb on my cheek, turning me to him.
“Luke, I want you to come with us.”
My chin quivered as I unleashed a half howl, half whimper, an uncontrollable spasm from the far-too-quick move from utter despair to overwhelming excitement. I stifled it as fast as I could and wrapped my arms around him.
“Yes.”
I would have gone anywhere with him. I liked him so much. I didn’t just like him. I loved him.
I felt his lips curl up at my cheeks. His lips kissed down to mine. He pulled me tightly against him. I felt his thumb behind my ear, rubbing. I savored the moment and imagined us having so many more of them together.
After too brief an embrace, he pulled away again. “I need to head back,” he said. “Got a lot of things we have to get straightened out before the move. But I want you to meet me tomorrow at six, okay? There’s an alley on Luckie and Broad. I’ll be near the dumpsters. Appropriate, I know. And we’ll get the fuck out of here.”
It was so romantic. Soon, I would get to be with him, running away from all this pain. This heinous nothing of an existence.
He kissed me again.
“Tomorrow at six o’clock. That’s when our lives begin.”
THE NEXT day was incredible.
I took my time with every task, every assignment. I savored this last day under the control of the state.
My work was effortless. At times, it was even fun. There was a sort of nostalgia to it. A sadness knowing that I was leaving it behind for good.
Wahrmer didn’t bother me. I didn’t even see him. Was the universe finally conspiring in my favor? That was a first.
My thoughts dwelt on Zack’s and my future together. What would it be like? Would we be boyfriends? Were we already boyfriends? Surely, I would have known if we were, but was that something we had to say? I’d have to ask at some point. But was I supposed to ask?
It was nice to be so absorbed by such superficial thoughts. And before I knew it, the workday was done.
Entering my room, I checked my phone. Five forty-five. I was gonna be a little late. Just a little.
I grabbed a paper bag I’d packed some of my things in the night before and headed for the window.
This was it. This was my last moment in St. Augustine.
Click.
Shit.
Tucking the bag under my cot, I lay down, wrapping my blanket around me.
The door opened.
Wahrmer stood in the hall.
What the fuck does he want?
He clasped his hands together.
His demeanor was unusually calm for having come to my room. If he’d come all the way here, he must’ve been pissed.
His eyebrow twitched. He definitely had something on his mind.
“Hello, Luke,” he said. He was frighteningly cordial.
“Did you need me to do something?”
He pouted his lips and shook his head. “Nope. Just making a little visit. Wanted to see how you were liking things here. Every so often, I like to check in with the guys. See if everything’s running smoothly.”
He stepped in, making his way around my room, his eyes scanning the floor, my things.
He was looking for something. Shit. The clinic.
“You know how I feel about stealing?”
It’s fine, I thought. Nothing’s in here.
But there was a library book under my cover. I could feel it at my heel. As long as I kept him from finding it, I’d be fine.
“Yeah,” I replied, acting as cool as I could manage.
Heat rushed to my face. Goose bumps pricked at my arms.
“I don’t like it. You kids just don’t have any respect sometimes, you know?”
He approached me, sitting on the edge of my cot, setting his hand on the blanket by my feet.
Is he seriously going to check under this cover? I don’t need this. I just need to get out of here.
“I’ve had curseds steal from me before, and you know what I do?”
I shook my head.
“I beat the fucking shit out of ’em, and then I call the police and have them hauled off to jail. I’ve probably done it to five or six curseds total. That might not sound like that many, but considering how few we have here, and how long curseds usually remain at their posts, it really is.”
He got back up, headed to my bin of clothes in the corner of the room.
Whew.
As he approached the bin, he knelt down.
“You mind?” he asked, a broad grin stretched across his face.
I shrugged. He could look wherever he wanted as long as he did it fast.
I checked my phone anxiously.
He fingered through my dirty clothes, slowly, relishing my anxiety.
He stopped and chuckled like he’d found something. Was he bluffing? Trying to see how I’d react?
“You know, Ms. Stoddard’s been real suspicious for a while. Said the prescriptions keep running out too fast. Asked Henry if he’d seen anything suspicious. And he said he saw you sneakin’ into your room one night. Said he didn’t think much of it. Thought you might have needed to go to the restroom, but….”
He lifted a clear bag, filled with pills. Three times as many pills as I’d seen that night when I caught Henry with them.
Henry must’ve set me up when he realized Wahrmer was onto him. Fuck!
Wahrmer picked one of my belts up from beside my clothes bin.
I had to get out.
Leaping up from the cot, I sprinted for the door.
The belt flashed before me.
My hand instinctively reached up, feeling the taut band around my neck.
“Curseds don’t steal from me, you nasty fuck,” he said in a low, guttural whisper.
I choked, desperately trying to pull in air as pressure rushed to my face, like someone was sitting on it.
As he tossed me against the wall, pulled me back, and shoved me back into it.
Fuck.
Why did this have to happen now? If I’d left just five minutes earlier… or he’d come five minutes later, I’d be long gone and never have to deal with this sort of shit again.
Realizing that my efforts at tugging on the belt were in vain, I beat my fist against his skull, which I could feel right behind me.
“You are going to fucking jail, you shit. I’ve already called the police, and you’re gonna spend the rest of your fucking life where you belong.”
By now, I was on my knees and my vision had transformed into a blur.
I continued flailing uselessly about.
“You think no one would notice thousands of dollars’ worth of prescriptions missing? You must be some kinda retard.”
Wahrmer’s hot breath rushed behind my ear, creeping across my flesh.
Red and blue spots surrounded me, but a familiar yellow haze came into view. The cleaner. I snatched it, and lifting it over my head, sprayed where I imagined Wahrmer’s eyes were.
“Fuck!” he wailed, his grip loosening. I pulled on the belt, loosening it even more, and lunged onto my cot, gasping for air.
He cried out on the floor, his eyes sealed shut as he felt before him. “Assault and robbery…. Oh, you’re in a lot of shit now, cursed.”
Abandoning my sack, I made a dash for the door.
I guessed he heard me because as soon as I passed him, he leapt to his side, snatching me by the ankle. I dropped to the floor, my head bashing into the side of the door.
My head swelled with pain. I wanted to just lay there, paralyzed, but this wasn’t time for shitting around. I crawled on my elbows as Wahrmer dragged himself up my body.
“You are mine, Retter.”
His eyes were red, covered with blisters as he made it halfway up me, effectively pinning me to the floor with his weight.
“I have to go!” I shouted, not to Wahrmer as much to the cruel fates that had put me in this position.
I reared back, projected my thumb and pinky forward, and jammed them against Wahrmer’s eyelids.
He screamed, loud, at a much higher frequency than normal.
As his hands retreated to his eyes, I threw a punch at his balls, striking fiercely, with an intensity that I was certain would leave him groaning in agony.
I was right.
He toppled over, but he didn’t scream. His whimpering was quiet, as if his cry had been trapped in his throat and was still desperately trying to make its way out.
Crawling to my feet, I opened the door.
At least twenty students were collected in the hall.
They muttered to each other, staring at me in horror as I passed them. I knew what they were thinking: the one-eyed monster finally lost it. And it had.
Tom stood at the end of the group. His eyes were wide, distressed.
“Thank God,” I said, approaching him.
It was so good to see his face. I needed a friend. An ally. “Wahrmer’s lost it. Tom, I need—”
A few guys crowded beside him. I’d assumed they were just with the rest of the group, but as they clustered around Tom, I realized they must’ve been friends.
“Tom, he—” I continued.
“You know this one-eyed cursed?” a brunet boy behind him asked.
Tom stared at me for a moment, panic in his eyes.
Tell him, I thought. Tell him.
“Yeah,” he said.
I was relieved. For a moment, I thought he was going to pretend that he didn’t.
“Tom, I have to get to—”
He pushed my chest. I stumbled back.
I froze. I didn’t know how to react. What was happening?
“Yeah, I do,” Tom iterated, his eyes anything but friendly. “You’re that one-eyed freak that got in our way the other week.”
He shoved my shoulder and backed me up against the adjacent wall.
Oh fuck.
The five guys in the ski masks. Tom had been one of them. That was before I’d helped him… started talking to him. Had he just reached out to me because he’d felt bad about what they’d done? And was he really going to stand here and let them pummel me again?
No, I thought, reminding myself that Zack was waiting for me and I didn’t have much time.
“Please,” I mouthed to Tom, psychically begging him with everything in me to convince his friends to leave me alone.
I looked through the crowd. Young, innocent faces. Would any of them stand up for me? Of course, if Tom wouldn’t even be there for me, I knew none of them would either.
“What’d you do to Mr. Wahrmer, you fucking dick?” Tom asked, grabbing my shirt and pushing me against the wall.
Why are you doing this? How can you be doing this?
My thoughts scanned through all our talks… talks about our pasts… talks about all the injustice in the world. After all that, I couldn’t understand how he could turn on me like this. He was my friend. But he wasn’t.
A hand came from the side, gripped onto my hair.
“You fuckin’ stabber.”
He yanked me away from Tom and pushed me against the metal double door at the end of the hall.
The guy was taller than Tom, taller than all the guys. I’d noticed him around campus just because of his size. His hair was dark, waved to the side. He wore the uniform vest over a short-sleeved shirt.
“Where’s your knife now?” he asked, tugging at my hair. “Oh, here it is!”
He slipped my blade from his pocket.
Tom’s eyes grew wide. They looked to me, this time, far more compassionate than they had before. I could tell he didn’t want this to happen, and yet I was sure that he was about to stand by and watch.
“Josh, dude, let’s not get into trouble,” one of the other guys said.
“Trouble?” he asked. “Look at Mr. Wahrmer. This is the guy that’s in trouble.”
He pressed the knife against my jaw and dug the blade into my skin, quickly drawing blood.
The warmth rushed down my chin. Down my neck.
“Say you like it, cursed.”
Rage consumed me, and I lashed out, biting his wrist, savagely, without thinking. Letting my anger out. All my survival skills culminated to one powerful attack. I tasted iron. The warmth that had just rushed down my chin and neck now filled my mouth.
The blade clanged against the floor.
I swept it up with my hand and stabbed Josh in the knee.
“Fuck!” he wailed.
I released his wrist. He toppled onto the floor.
As one of the other guys approached, I ripped the knife out of Josh’s knee and aimed it at him, sprinting forward.
“Come on, you bastard! I’ll rip your fucking heart out!”
He didn’t move. And the rest of the boys. From the gang. From the hall. They just stood there, their eyes shifting from me to my victim.
My eye met Tom’s. There were so many things I wanted to say. So many things I felt needed to be said. He needed to be called out. He needed to at least acknowledge his own hypocrisy.
But granting him another moment of my attention was more than he deserved.
I backed against the double door, my gaze on my now silent audience.
Gotta get to Zack.
I HAVE to get there. No. I’m gonna be late. He’s gonna leave me… forever.
I raced into the alley, the cold air burning at my teary cheek.
He wouldn’t leave. He knows I was going to be here.
As I approached the dumpster, my only company was a pigeon with a scab across its back as it feasted on what looked like a browning piece of squash.
I snuck behind the dumpster, allowing my aching back to scrape across the steel as I hit my knees.
I wasn’t going to be able to control my emotions. Not now.
The pain. Not the pain from the severe beating I’d just taken. A pain that was so much stronger… a familiar, stabbing pain that ripped me apart.
He left you! it cried. He left you!
I wanted to believe I was wrong. I imagined he was going to show up any second now, spewing apologies for being late. I imagined him coming around the corner, seeing me in all my tears, and reaching down, wrapping me in his arms and taking me away forever.
Wasn’t that what it was going to be? Forever.
No. Just a dream. A dream that wouldn’t be.
My whimpering and sighs didn’t distract my pigeon friend from his squash scraps. He picked at it as if it were a living thing, as if it were a worm struggling to break free—like circumstances were now picking away at my heart.
My nose was still bleeding from the attack, and blood, snot, and tears collected on the concrete beside me, reminding me of the savage, grotesque nature of reality.
Zack had managed to give me hope that I could be happy again and rip it away from me all in such a short time. Now, all those memories of being immersed in his gaze, in his arms, were only going to cause me pain… only remind me of the dark cruelties that are always lurking just around the corner.