4

Barry Barlow. One of the most feared and despised kids in my school. A friend and a brother-in-thuggish-arms to Darren Henderson, the bully who had tortured my educational existence since its lowly inception.

He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. People said that he and Darren Henderson were two peas in a pod, but the truth was that Barry was as connected to Darren as a genital wart was to a sexually transmitted infection. He was the bum-fluff to his penis, the hangnail to his broken finger. But, as useless as he was, there was no denying that he and Darren were close, which was the first stumbling block I encountered when I decided to murder Darren Henderson.

It was a no-brainer really. The Butcher had killed teenagers—albeit not exclusively—and he had killed within a few miles of the area. No one would bat an eyelid if Darren happened to be the next victim. It wasn’t strictly sensible of me to let my personal feelings get in the way of mine and my father’s legacy, but if this wasn’t personal, then what was it? I was planning to kill people and no one was paying me to do it. Of course it was fucking personal.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t kill them both—that was a little too personal and would raise a few too many eyebrows. The Butcher hadn’t killed in pairs. The police would suspect a copycat on a mission of pure vendetta; it wouldn’t take them long to concentrate their suspicions on me.

On my first day back after spring break, I followed Darren around like a hawk. His dimwitted friend didn’t leave his side. It was noteworthy but irrelevant, as I wasn’t going to kill him in school. At the end of the day, I jumped the bell and hid in a small group of trees on the boundaries of the playground. The school board had jumped on the green wagon and instructed all the first-graders to plant trees, hedges, and flowers around the school, saving the world one pointless piece at a time. The high schoolers used it for clandestine illegalities as they smoked, drank, and fucked their way through recess.

There was no one there when I ducked inside and took up a position behind a low-hanging bush, where a used condom hung from a wilted leaf like snot from an infected nose.

Darren and Barry also finished early, trundling out onto the grounds like giddy hyenas on the prowl for their prey. They glanced around, scanning the throng that inevitably followed the chime of the school bells. They spoke briefly, voicing their frustrations, and then they left.

I waited for them to drift out of sight and then I set out after them, brushing painfully against a malignant thorny bush on the way. A few of the students gave me some perplexed glances as I emerged from the bushes. Their eyes darted past me to see if a female had also emerged, wondering who was desperate or dull enough to venture inside with me.

I kept my distance from the pair, sidestepping behind bus shelters, walls, and gardens whenever possible, peering at them surreptitiously from around my makeshift blockades. They turned around once—Barry’s head inevitably following Darren’s—to scan the backside of a middle-aged woman who strutted past them with the firm, comfortable gait of a teenager and the attire of a cougar desperately clinging to a lost and promiscuous youth. They didn’t see me. Others did, giving me numerous inquisitive stares, but no one paid much attention. I was a nobody. To them I was weird and unimportant, even more so now that I was an orphan, and therefore I was probably always doing something suspicious and creepy.

A mile or so down the road, they turned into a large subdivision—a succession of streets and houses that branched out from a central block of apartments like the diseased arms of a dying octopus. They walked down to the head of the octopus, bypassing a succession of pebble-dashed houses, and caught up with another pair of degenerates that had stopped to trade cigarettes, sweets, or something less innocuous opposite a garden that had been used as a Dumpster.

I ducked into one of the gardens, through a gate that had had been ripped off its hinges and left on a small strip of yellowed grass. I hid up against a wall, pressing my face against the cold grainy musk of concrete and peeking around the corner. Darren and his friends were huddled in a conspicuous cluster, watching each others’ backs with the privacy and agitation of drug dealers.

A loud, gruff shout dragged my attention away from the gaggle of cretins.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing!?”

It came from the house to my left, belonging to the garden and boundary that I had casually crossed. A heavyset man, his beer belly jammed inside an undersized tank top, was glaring at me like I had stolen his dinner.

My heart sank. He was only a few feet away, his body odor—an olfactory insult of cheap beer sweated through pores that hadn’t touched water for weeks—invading my nostrils. I recoiled and moved away from the wall, in plain sight of the idiots further along the road.

I held up my hands defensively but they instinctively moved to my nose; his odor was too strong. “Jesus!” I spat as the smell hit me like a sweaty punch.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he roared.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled through a pinched nose. “It’s just, well, you fucking stink.”

“What!?” I had been a few steps away, almost at the curb, but he waddled forward like a dropped Weeble. At any moment, I swore he would kick out a leg, lower his head, and charge.

I stepped back, lost my balance over the curb, and stumbled into the road. I hit a parked car, righted myself after a collision with the hood, and then propelled myself off it with my forearms.

There was a small dent where my forearms had collided with the hood, a concave puncture in the cheap metal. I neatly pressed the edge of the bubbled wound, hoping my magic fingers would right the wrongs that my arms had caused, but instead I caused more damage.

The waddling behemoth stopped at the curb, his chubby face now red with unadulterated anger. He looked from me to the car and then back again, seemingly ready to explode.

“That’s my fucking car!” he bellowed.

His forehead glistened with perspiration that appeared at an increasing rate, dribbling down his bulbous head like a freshly sprayed apple in a grocer’s window. A vein at the right of his temple throbbed aggressively, on the verge of hemorrhaging and getting me out of a tricky situation.

“Oh, erm … sorry about that,” I said calmly. I pushed my palms against it absentmindedly, forcing some pressure into it to try again to right the wrong. Somehow I managed to squeeze another indent into the surprisingly malleable hood.

He threw his palms to his forehead and screamed several obscenities at me. He took a few steps toward me and I took a few back, the effort far greater on his part.

In my defense, it was a shit fucking car. He did well to afford it, assuming he had actually paid for it, but it was a heap of mangled rust, and a few dents weren’t going to make a difference. I could have told him that. I certainly felt like doing so, but before I could utter a word, I was halted by a familiar sound and an encroaching sense of dread. In the calamity, I had forgotten about the half-witted Darren and his no-witted friends. They had broken free from their cluster, split into a line of four, and were now rushing down the road, heading straight for me.

The big man was also preparing himself for an attack, his arms held out like an obese and hungry zombie, his chubby fingers grasping the air as if it were made of cake. I sprinted away as fast as I could. A roar followed me, a bellow concocted of adolescent excitement and middle-aged rage.

“Get the fucker!”

“Break his fucking legs!”

“I can’t … continue … running out of …”

I sped away in no particular direction. There was no safety for me at home, only the comfort of having the shit kicked out of me in the privacy of my own house if they caught me there.

Out of the tentacled subdivision, across a graveled patch that kicked up flurries of stones behind my heels, the entrance to a park opened up invitingly in front of me and I headed straight for the woodland at its center. I was already breathless, ill prepared for the physical exertion. I didn’t exercise and I rarely ventured outside the house. During gym classes, I found solace in the fact that no one wanted to pick me for any teams and even the teacher was content if I didn’t take part.

They were gaining on me, clearly faster and fitter than I was. Darren headed the group; his two friends, two people I recognized from the year below, bounded just a few yards behind him. Barry was struggling at the back of the group, probably more upset by his distance from Darren than by his failure to catch me.

A wall of vegetation blocked my way, but I burst through like a runner scything through the tape at the finishing line. A few thorns sliced and picked at my skin, opening up wounds on my bare arms and piercing through my shirt and into my abdomen.

I slalomed through a succession of trees, listening with a heavy heart as the riotous group matched and bettered my every stride. The sound of their approach, their catcalls, and their heavy breathing broke through the sound of my own beating heart.

I hopped over a thicket, but my tired legs struggled and my right foot tangled among a twining of branches. I stumbled and nearly fell, but righted myself and plodded on.

I tried to detour, to cut right at an angle and throw them off my scent, but they were close enough to see me and follow. I struggled through the greenery, my legs growing tired with each stretch, my breath like razor blades in my chest. I made it to the edge, the light of the boundary and the street beyond—where a dozen alcoves, shops, and alleyways would have aided my plight—before I was crushed under the weight of an athletic dive from Darren Henderson.

I hit a number of bushes on my descent. The twigs picked and sliced at my knees and thighs; my stomach landed on something thick and heavy that refused to relent as bully after bully piled on top of me and pushed my torso down.

They kicked, stamped, and punched their way through my body like a baker preparing a lump of dough. They laughed through every moment of it, giving each other cheers when they decided to start jumping onto the bottom of my spine, laughing heartily when Darren pretended to take a shit on my head and rounded off his joke by farting.

They left me broken, bruised, and struggling to walk. When they had gone, I managed, with great difficulty, to stagger to my feet. It took me a few moments, but I ignored the agony in every muscle, forgot about the pain that coursed through my blood and bones like a visceral cancer.

I used the trees for support as I worked my way into daylight. I took a breath—an icy jolt of air into uncommitted lungs—sighed deeply, and staggered toward the boundary wall. I moved slowly and prepared to climb over the three feet of brick, an easy task made near impossible thanks to a torso that refused to lean and legs that wouldn’t lift higher than a few inches.

I leaned forward against the wall and rested my palms on its cold and bracing surface, where the broken brains of generations past had scrawled their names and epitaphs with blunted knives and permanent markers. I tried to lean onto it, to shimmy my way on or over its surface and onto the path beyond, but I stopped halfway, my stomach bracing the edge, my right toe resting on its surface.

Barry Barlow had popped his head up from the other side. In my struggle, I hadn’t been able to lean over. I hadn’t been able to see him crouched there. He stood directly opposite me, a beaming grin on his dumb face.

He hopped acrobatically onto the wall and looked down at me as I struggled to release my foot and pull myself away. Darren Henderson stood by his side, his arms folded over his chest, a knowing expression pinned on his smug, narcissistic face.

Barry swung his right leg like he was kicking a football. The laces of his boot first made contact with my chin, and then, as my head recoiled from the impact, they lashed upward against my face, breaking my nose, busting my lip.

I lost consciousness. The last thing I heard, mingled with the sound of my own teeth cracking inside my skull, was Darren Henderson’s sickeningly joyful laughter.

——

I returned home beaten, broken, and unsure how to progress. Darren was fitter and stronger than me. I couldn’t take him in a fight or risk being seen in his proximity. If I was going to go through with killing him—which I was more inclined to do after the beating—then I had to have the advantage of surprise. I also had to make sure he was alone. I couldn’t watch his back and anticipate his every move if Barry, the lumbering lummox, was doing the same.

Many weeks had passed since my father’s death. Sympathy had been rife in the early stages. Bereavement cards filled the letterbox, pointless pleasantries succinctly etched on mass-marketed crap. A few of his friends had called, doing what they thought was the right thing, the final thing they would ever have to do before erasing our family from their mind.

My grandmother, his mother-in-law, also called. She was one of the few living relatives in our minimal family. She was half deaf and fully decrepit. She lived alone with only an apathetic caregiver to look after her disease-riddled body, yet, unfortunately for her, all of her mental faculties still remained.

The cards and the sympathy had quickly dried up after those first few days. The pitiful looks I received in the street and the whispered conversations, supposedly out of earshot, were replaced by the contempt and suspicion I had grown accustomed to.

My uncle came to live with me. He was a drunk, an idiot, and a failure. I got the feeling that his brother’s death was a godsend to him. It dragged him out of the gutter and into a house, where the benefits of an overly generous government and a substantial life insurance policy would allow him to stock his liver with all the cheap beer he could drink.

He greeted me as I stepped into the living room. “Where have you been?” He sucked his head back, puffed out his chest, and unleashed a noxious burp.

I scowled at him, waiting for him to notice and comment on my face and my hunched posture.

“Well?” he said impatiently.

In that moment, I contemplated making him my first victim, but I felt I would be doing him a favor by ridding him of his pathetic existence and I didn’t want to waste my effort with something that the bloated, diseased imbecile would construe as beneficial. Maybe his euthanasia would come in the form of methanol poisoning from the cheap booze he acquired from the back of suspect vans, or from blood poisoning the moment his liver spat back all the venom he had fed it over the years.

“School,” I answered softly.

He burped again, glowered at me through lowered eyebrows. He checked his watch, tied to his hairy wrist with a plastic strap that threatened to cut off his blood supply.

“School finished an hour ago.”

Bravo, you fucking tit. Apparently not everything goes over that head of yours.

“Detention.”

He nodded knowingly, giving a cheeky smile that looked partly perverted and partly grotesque. “Naughty boy.”

Drunks are incapable of subtle gestures, and I didn’t know if he was about to rape me or if he was having a stroke. I ignored him, praying for the latter, before taking my beaten body upstairs.

I had adopted my father’s office as my own. There was no way I could keep it locked, though; my uncle had become surprisingly materialistic about a house he now considered his own. But he wasn’t a very bright man, and that, combined with his seemingly constant state of inebriation, allowed me to secrete my father’s files around the room. I had started keeping files of my own as well. A small collection of what I knew about Darren Henderson and his brainless friend Barry.

I made sure the door was shut and secure behind me before adding the day’s discoveries to the file.

——

My wounds healed slowly, but my determination grew instantly. The few days of school that followed the beating were tedious, painfully slow, and almost suffocating.

Before I had even arrived on the first day after the beating, I learned that Darren and Barry had spread around a story that I had followed them and then tried to fondle them. They said I had a crush on Barry and had tried to fulfill some kind of sexual perversion by following him home with the intent of watching him undress through his bedroom window. It took a great deal of energy to avoid another beating, and even the teachers were giving me quizzical and disgusted looks. In small-town life, and in small-town teenage minds, homosexuality is a joke, a sickening and alien orientation that is ridiculed, when the truth is that homosexuality is no different from heterosexuality. They’re both disgusting, they’re both unnecessary, and they both involve doing disgusting things with other members of the human race. Unlike my peers, I have nothing against homosexuality, just like I have nothing against people from other cultures and other backgrounds. I hate everyone equally. I was the most tolerant person in town.

During lunchtime, I had walked the halls of the school in an effort to avoid the playground and the inevitable physical and verbal abuse. On my idle journey, I turned a corner near the math block and then ducked behind a wall when I saw two teachers approaching.

“He was always a weird kid,” one of them said. He was a gym teacher and was speaking with a relaxed tone, happy that he could forget his pointless existence—teaching hopscotch to fat losers—for an hour as he bit into his sandwich and flushed his body with a fresh dose of coffee and cancer. “But since his dad died, Jesus.”

“You think the stories are true then?” a slightly timid French teacher inquired.

“That he’s a little gay boy? Definitely.” I heard him chuckle, a derisive sound that accompanied the pitter patter of his sneakers on the floor. “I’ve always said there was something odd about him, just have to keep an eye on him. Never turn your back.”

That sort of attitude almost made me wish that I was stricken with sexual desires, just so I could have a little fun with him before I slit his throat. I contemplated waiting for him to turn the corner, jumping out at him, and ripping his throat open with my teeth. I was capable, and I would have been justified, but instead I turned and set off down the corridor at a brisk pace, disappearing around another corner before they saw me.

The news had even spread to the lower grades, where I was treated with equal disdain by petulant pipsqueaks half my size. A group of them shouted obscenities at me during recess; another feigned an invisible blowjob as I walked by, receiving applause from his friends for doing so. I ignored these idiotic actions and homophobic slurs with the knowledge that I was going to give the one who had started them the ultimate punishment.

A week later, I resumed my intentions to do just that. It had become even harder for me to blend in at school. The target on my back was visible for all to see. Instead I decided to go to Darren’s home at night, to use darkness as my cover, something that my father, according to his notes, had done on many occasions.

I crept out of the house just after ten. It was pitch black outside and had been for a couple hours. A thin slice of moonlight and the heavy fluorescence of a dozen streetlights lit my way as I strode through the paved streets with my lowered head draped under the cover of a hood, my monastic silhouette cutting a sullen figure as I traced through the shadows.

It was a school night, but there was still an assortment of kids around: the young—a pool of pissants spread around the streets like a marmalade of unbroken voices, bicycles, and sportswear—and the adolescent converged near the shops in the center of town. I bypassed them all without raising my head, not wanting to kick-start a swarm of abuse or questions. They paid me little heed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a few familiar faces lift curious eyes my way, but nothing was said.

Darren lived on the edge of town, through the route I had walked the other day, on the outer tentacle of the public housing subdivision. There were back routes to his house from mine, ones much less traveled and much more conducive to a clandestine stroll, but they were used by nefarious youths who wished to keep their illegalities away from the main streets, youths that were sure to pay more attention to the rare passing of a hooded figure than their counterparts on the main street.

An unused field, bordered by a thick line of poorly maintained trees and shrubbery, lay at the back of the row of duplexes. The field was accessed by a short wall that traced around the border. I chose a neighboring house with the least activity—the windows black but for a small flicker of light in a second-floor window—and ducked inside, taking a route down the side of their house, through their back garden, and over the boundary wall at the back.

With my feet treading through moist mud, I scuttled forward, peering over the wall on my left, scanning the visible second-story windows in all of the houses.

I saw myriad blue flashing lights along the line—televisions and computers all buzzing with activity. In one window, a small boy sat smoking a sly cigarette, blowing the smoke into the night. In another, an elderly man stood gazing serenely at the nothingness beyond. I kept low and remained hidden, my pace steady as I made my way to the end house. I stopped in the trees and crouched further, taking in my surroundings. All the houses had small gardens at the back, between the house and the wall in front of me. Children’s toys littered the weed-bitten grass. A stroller sat sullenly in the corner, its wheels nearly rusted off, its seat torn to shreds and faded under the constant gaze of sunlight and rain. A small trampoline took center stage in the middle of the garden, on top of an unmown patch of grass that looked thick enough to house a hidden tribe of pygmies. A hoodie lay strewn and torn to its left; a deflated football to its right.

The windows looking out onto this assault course were all alight. In one of them, next to the back door, a blonde woman stood washing dishes, moving gently from side to side to the rhythm of unheard music. A pleasant smile adorned her attractive face. She wore a long white T-shirt that at some point had belonged to a man. It hung heavily and loosely from her slim figure. The torso had been soaked with water, exposing a black bra underneath.

Through the window to the right of the door, a heavyset man sat watching television, the screen unseen but for a blue flicker that reflected against the glass. He was slouched so far he seemed to be sitting in on himself, his double chin pressing against his thick neck, his man-breasts caressing his pot belly. He was topless and seemed to be dressed only in his boxer shorts, the seam of which was just visible above the base of the window. On the second floor, in the room directly above the serene, swaying woman, the lights were on but the curtains were drawn.

I waited in the silence, studying the man and the woman. He picked his nose, inspected the contents, and then wiped it on the arm of the chair; he changed channels, seemed unsatisfied with all he encountered, and settled upon one that left him with a reluctant frown. She stopped at one point, bent down to satisfy someone or something small, and then rose with a wide grin, peeking down intermittently. At one point he turned his attention to the other side of the living room, away from the window. He was talking to someone; his head moving agreeably.

I scaled the small wall. The woman was facing me and occasionally glancing out the window, but with the light of the kitchen and the contrasting darkness outside, she would only see her reflection. I felt my feet crunch wilted flowers and compress damp grass as I carefully moved across the lawn and pressed myself up against the wall to the left of the living room window.

I dropped to my knees and hurried along underneath it. I could hear the television inside, the boisterous calls of a studio audience and the clichéd catchphrases from sitcom characters. I tuned into the conversation that mingled with the sounds of the television. I heard Darren’s voice and that of the rough-spoken man whom I assumed was his father.

“Not my problem, old man,” Darren said casually.

“Should I make it your fucking problem, kid?” his dad yelled back.

“You can’t talk to me like that!”

“Do as you’re fucking told!”

It felt exciting under that window, spying on their lives. I made myself more comfortable, shifting my knees out from under my body and relaxing onto my backside with the cold strip of paving that split the house and garden pressed into the seat of my pants.

“You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not my dad!”

As I should have suspected, the perils of a broken home. You’re not my dad. I hate you. You were nothing like my father. My mother’s too good for you. Freud would have been delighted with little Darren, if only his situation weren’t a tired cliché.

At that point, the shrill calls of a youngster cut through the room. An incoherent and loud addition to the conversation. Daren shouted something at the youngster, which prompted an even shriller response as the child began to cry. The man then moaned and muted or switched off the television.

The woman entered from the kitchen and I listened to her as she consoled the child and then directed her aggression at Darren.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“He’s trying to get me to do his fucking dirty work,” Darren spat, aghast. “He thinks I’m his fucking lackey.”

How dare he? Darren Henderson is no one’s lackey. He may have the malleable mind of a modern-day moron, and he would probably do your bidding for a packet of cigarettes, a blowjob, or a pat on the back from his docile friends, but he is no one’s lackey.

The man objected, “I just want him to—” but the sound of his voice was cut short as the baby started crying again, even louder this time. I heard their voices trying to shout over the top of his. I heard something about a hoodie. I heard Darren swear. I heard his mother swear back and then a silence descended. Even the baby toned it down.

I shifted uneasily. Then I heard a clicking sound, a bolt sliding open. My heart skipped a beat, thudding violently in my chest as if it wanted to leave. I turned sharply to my right and saw the back door swing open. I felt and saw an illuminating presence above me as an outside light illuminated the garden and bathed me in its bright glow.

Darren stepped out, mumbling disconsolately to himself. I watched him plod onto the lawn, feeling a lump stick in my throat as he did so. I felt rooted to the spot, unsure what to do or where to go, but knowing I would be seen as soon as he turned back around.

He shuffled around the garden, searching for something in the gloom. His hands stuffed into his pockets, his head hung low, his feet kicking angrily at any clumps of grass that dared get in his way.

On my right was a small fence that separated his house from a short stretch of land, beyond which lay the next tentacle of the architectural octopus. It was short enough for me to clamber over but not with great ease. He would surely hear the struggle and recognize my frantically stumbling stature as one that he had so often beaten to a pulp.

There was also an exit down a thin path at the side of the house, but that was on the other side, beyond the open door that was still shaking under Darren’s angry exit and the kitchen window.

I swallowed thickly, trying to force the lump out of my throat. My head turned this way and that as I weighed my limited options.

Darren moved around the trampoline, kicking away the deflated football before inspecting the hoodie on the grass. He looked at it distastefully and then turned toward the window, toward me.

My heart sank. I felt it hit my stomach, a hollow depth charge in my chest. I waited underneath the ledge, expecting his eyes to light up and his fists to clench.

“I’ve got your fucking hoodie!” he shouted to the window. He dropped his pants, exposed his backside, and then began rubbing the sleeve inside the exposed cleft, mumbling obscenities as he did so.

I looked anxiously toward the open door and contemplated running right through it, hiding in the house and biding my time until an option for escape arose. But I would be running into an unfamiliar house, possibly right into a surprised mother, a crying baby, or an angry stepfather.

Darren pulled his pants up, gave a quick look to the far side of the garden, and then hurried over to the fence that separated his house from his neighbor’s. I heard him mumbling incoherently as he scoured the far reaches of his neighbor’s garden, hoping to foul the hoodie further with canine excrement, I’m sure.

I seized my opportunity and ran. I was over the fence in a desperate second, beyond the adjacent field as fast as my heavy heart and jittering legs would take me. I didn’t stop or look back until I was on the outskirts of town, safe in the knowledge that Darren, and his house, were a good half mile behind me.

Despite my desperate escape I hadn’t been followed, and it was too dark for Darren to have seen more than a suspicious blur. In my breathless exertions, my heart retaining normalcy, my mind pondered on what might have been if I had ducked inside the house. I envisioned myself hiding in Darren’s room, surprising him on his return and butchering him with his parents, helpless and ignorant, sitting just feet away.

The prospect of spilling his blood made me just as excited as it always had, but after being so close to him and his home, after I had been given an opportunity and an opening, my need had turned into a deep desperation.