Superman's Cape (24 page)

Kyle needed to rest. He turned his broken body around to see where he’d run from. He had no idea what direction he was running in and he had no idea how far or how long he’d been on the move. At some point the sun was behind him. But now it was gone and he was still thirsty and starving.

“Watch out Auntie Enn, I’n coning hone,” he protested to the woods and dropped to his knees and then eased himself back to the seat of his pants. A sour urine smell rushed up to his nose as his bottom landed on the ground. “I pisded my danz … I really did dat,” he mumbled as shame and embarrassment peeked then faded. He rested and studied the trees around him. He listened for anything familiar and only heard the wind beating up on the highest branches.

The smell of autumn fought past the sour urine. He thought of how fast seasons change … how fast the curtains of green turned to brown and then were gone.
Blink of an eye
he thought of his Dad saying as leaves ended their seasons and fell in silence around him. He wondered … if the season were to actually change in an instant, then would it let him see home? Would he be looking from the other side of prison bars that were made up of tree-bark shingles? Could his skinny body slide past the bars and escape back to Jonnie and his Momma?

There was movement on his arm. The Boar cut remained alive and all passengers were present and accounted for. The little pustule machines worked their way around the wound. There were more of them as they chomped and chewed and Kyle hoped they were cleaning his infection.

Kyle poked a finger in the Boar cut and nudged one of the maggots off course. He nudged another before picking it up and popping it to the back of his mouth.
Not too many,
he warned,
gotta let them finish.
There was Jack and Sam and of course Nancy and her best friend in the whole wide world Celia. The class of maggots was hitching a ride on a buffet train that was him.

“I niss George. Dut you guys will do,” he whispered. The names were easy to remember. He used the names of the kids in his class. Most were his friends, but some, not so much.
Nothing wrong with using their names
, he considered while he watched the maggots do their work. Saliva built up at the back of his throat. It was a good wet. The kind you see your dog lick away when you put the dinner on the counter. Not the bad wet that pulled his stomach apart and left parts of it on the ground. He reached in and pulled out Joe.

“Deen saving you,” he said to the maggot. Joe was one of the fatter and juicer maggots who in Kyle’s starved mind looked just like Joe Rascome in the third row – fat, smelly and a bully; always a bully. Kyle thought of how Joe stole the mechanical pencil his father bought for him. His Dad bought a two-fer from the drug store. One
fer
work and the other
fer
home. When his Dad saw Kyle’s eyes and ears perk up to the click-click-click, he gave it to him. “Time to learn the magnificence of a pencil over a pen,” his Dad preached, smiling.

Kyle thought of Joe’s pudgy fingers with the ragged and torn dirty fingernails. He thought of the fat fingers holding his mechanical pencil and how Joe took it from his hand while Kyle was scratching his name across the top of his homework paper. He’d put his first letters on the paper when pudgy bully fingers stretched a smelly reach across his nose and yanked it out of his hand. “Mine,” Joe snorted and offered a puffed cheeky smile before running back to his desk.

“What an effen assdolhe,” Kyle mumbled as he looked over Joe Maggot for a minute. He turned the white pustule around in his fingers. He held him with some care so as not to pinch or puncture and rush the maggoty juice from the little sac.

“Joe naggot, I here-dy sendence you to death,” he said in the best judge sounding voice he could muster under the circumstance. Kyle tossed Joe maggot into his mouth and chewed the juices out of him.

With his eye closed, and with a fevered mind, he imagined that he had Joe’s little sausage fingers. Kyle took the mechanical pencil back, it was his after all. His dad gave it to him. He took it back and then pulled Joe’s pudgy digits up to his mouth and bit down through the skin and bone while blood streamed up across his good eye. He bit down again amidst harsh screams from Joe Maggot – and Joe Maggot’s mother standing behind him and yelling and begging Kyle to stop. She was sorry her little boy was a bully, a monster bully, who took what wasn’t his.

Kyle tore the middle finger off of Joe Maggot’s hand in the next bite. His teeth sawed through the bone as though it were made of twizzler; a strawberry twizzler. His favorite. Kyle used his tongue to shuffle the pudgy finger around in his mouth. Joe Maggot’s crying mother begged and pleaded with him to stop, to please stop. He turned the finger around and with his tongue; he pushed the middle digit out through his lips. He pushed the finger so that the fat pudgy gray thing stuck straight up from his kisser. He shot his chin up into the air and gave them both the middle finger. Kyle flipped them the bird using Joe Maggot’s own grubby mechanical pencil stealing finger. He laughed at them as he watched their reaction. He watched them retch while he chewed on the finger. They spewed vomit on each other as he kept on chewing, breaking the bones and then swallowing it down – skin, blood, bone, strawberry twizzler, all of it.

Kyle pulled and pushed his tongue in and around his teeth to grab every bit of the skin and juice Joe Maggot offered him. He was disappointed by the little of it there was.

Kyle opened his eye. Not a single thing in his view told him any more or any less of anything that could help him understand where he was or even where he had come from. In front of him he only saw the near mirror image of what was behind him. More rain drops escaped the capture of the tree tops and made their way to his face and shoulders.

The fevered skin in his arm was spreading. He knew that. It was all through him. He could feel it. It was high in his lungs and he could hear his air bags wheeze with nearly every breath. He felt it in his hands and chest and it was getting strong.
It’s a flood,
he thought.
Lungs are gonna fill up like a pool of Nickelodeon Green Goo?
And he wondered if he might drown.

“Wouldn’t dat be a spat,” he coughed out, “drowning with no water?”

Kyle pushed his insides against his chest and hurried along a cough that was building. He pushed harder and felt the mucous loosen and rupture. He threw what air he had until a warm lung puck was sitting on his tongue. He kept the heat of the salty good in his mouth for a minute. And then he spat it into his hand, but then wished he hadn’t. He was sicker than he thought.

“Indection is really getting bad,” he told the trees sadly. And as if in response, the raindrops seemed to quicken their pace. He joked with himself that the raindrops were rushing in to listen to him. He pushed the lung goo around the palm of his hand. The mucous was a deep green; far darker than he’d seen before. The cold air began to kill the warm lung biscuit. And as he was about to toss it to the ground he hesitated. He considered the alternative. And then he decided. Without another thought, Kyle pulled it back into his mouth and ate it.

When he pushed against his lungs again, he coughed up another green batch of infection. This time he thought he tasted some blood in his mouth and was immediately reminded of his dad dying. Blood painted his lips and teeth as he struggled with his last words. Kyle shook the scene from his mind and swallowed what he’d coughed up.

Something stabbed at the Boar cut in his arm. It pulled at his skin and ripped his attention from everything as the sudden agony caused him to scream out for all the woods to hear. He turned to see what stabbed him. A bright line of fresh blood trailed down his arm to his elbow. Drops ebbed and fell to the ground. Behind his arm, he saw yellow piercing eyes staring back at him. A pair of tall black birds chattered and grunted back and forth to one another. They chattered another second then looked at Kyle. Fresh blood was painted on one of their dark beaks while the other bird cradled a maggot classmate in its mouth. The maggot wiggled back and forth as if searching for a way to get free. But the wriggling lasted only another second before the black bird flipped the tiny meal into the pink of its mouth and swallowed.

At once, anger erupted and replaced any fear Kyle thought he would have. He felt offended and sick. And worse, he felt hurt that he lost one of his maggots to a stupid bird. It was his maggot to do something with. His. Kyle punched his good arm around and yelled at the black birds. But they only jumped to the meager swing of his arm. He swung again and the birds hopped as if playing double dutch jump rope in a schoolyard. He waved again and up into the air they went before floating back to the ground.

When the second attack hit, Kyle wasn’t prepared. He never expected there would have been a second. He realized then that the birds weren’t afraid of him. Anger turned to fear. Both birds rushed his arm and dove their long beaks into the Boar cut to pull all of his students. A mass kidnapping. Kyle screamed. They intended to eat the entire maggot class. He cried in anger and pain and felt repulsed as he swung his arm trying to connect. They chewed at his skin and stole what he’d left in the Boar cut to clean his infection. Pain ran up and down his arm. It turned his stomach over as he reached his hand to swipe at their heads again. A collage of luminous blue then green shine from their black feathers flew up across his face as they took flight to avoid his swinging arm. The double dutch jump rope game played on, but his swings were slowing.
Maybe they’re gonna eat me
, he considered.
Maybe they’ll forget about the maggots
. Kyle swung harder, desperate to connect with one of the birds.

Landing on their black scaly talons, they caught their balance and rushed into his arm again. Kyle watched as more of his students were abducted. He screamed and swatted with his hand while waves of iridescent feathers fanned at his face. He felt the brush of a wing on his fingers as their changing colors ended in black before slipping from his grasp. Kyle yelled in frustration and screamed in pain.

Pins and needles stole his legs again as he tried to get up and run. Kyle tried to roll. He pushed his body over and over as the attackers followed and continued stealing more of his maggot class. He rolled around and around and felt the birds jumping on and off of him with each turn. Finally Kyle rolled over and stopped when the open cut of his arm was sandwiched between his body and the ground. He took the maggot class away from the black birds. And they screamed in anger. They screamed at him and then stabbed their beaks at his head and neck and face. One took hold of his ear and closed its mouth until he felt the skin on his lobe begin to open up. All he could do was hide the Boar cut and cover his face.

A flood of air swept over his fevered skin. It fanned his body and stopped the attack. He stopped screaming. The black birds stopped screaming. Kyle heard a new voice and it sounded out and drowned all of their voices. Kyle rolled onto his back to find the familiar face of George. George held down one of the black birds with his brilliant yellow talons while the twin black bird stood a foot away; a look of uncertainty in its eyes. George squeezed his talon and Kyle saw the bulge of the yellow eyes in the arrested black bird.
He’s squeezing the life out of him
, Kyle thought. The twin black bird showed no apprehension or reservation for the large raptor. It rushed George. It rushed an attack and bounced off the larger bird. The black bird fell to the ground and pushed out its wings to regain its footing. The smaller black bird rushed again, wings spread wide to make itself appear larger. But like the first time, the twin black bird only bounced from George’s side. George remained dismissive of the attacks. The twin black bird screamed at George some more and Kyle thought maybe the other black bird wasn’t a twin at all or even a sibling. But maybe it was his mate, a husband or a wife. He thought if birds could cry then he would see the twin black bird break down into a puddle of tears and feathers while its soul mate was taken from him. Squeezed to death by George.

Kyle’s anger and terror faded to pity. He felt bad seeing their union break as George started pulling feathers and meat from the other black bird. It was still alive and it fought back. It jabbed at George’s yellow talons while its own feathers were being pulled off. The dying black bird’s attack on George only lasted a few minutes as George let go of his prey. He repositioned his talon directly over the face of the black bird and squeezed more of the light from the bird’s yellow eyes.

Kyle wanted to scream to George, cheering him on. He wanted to tell George thank you. He wanted to tell him to have at it and please, oh please, rip apart that effen black bird. He wanted to tell him to tear out his little yellow eyes and cut off that forked tongue and to leave some of it on the ground so he could stomp on the remains. But Kyle didn’t say any of it. Not a word. He kept his tongue and instead let the sadness take over the fear and anger and put to rest the adrenaline that was shaking his hands and legs near uncontrollable.

The black bird in George’s clutches drew one last breath and died what Kyle thought to be a painful demise. The twin black bird conceded his mate was lost forever and gave Kyle an oddly long yellow stare before taking off. George was a machine tearing and stomping on his catch. His monarch-orange eyes watching Kyle as he ate.
I’m not a threat,
he thought and raised his arm to inspect the Boar cut. An efficient eater, George left almost nothing but discarded feathers and some bones as Kyle watched his hooked beak dive down and tear away one bite at a time.

The two watched each other for a time, George eating his catch and Kyle staring and thinking he was moving closer and faster to his death. The time he had to escape from these woods was getting shorter. And he considered that in fact, it might be gone. As more time passed, he thought more parts of him would stop working altogether and eventually George would have a much bigger feast. He might even invite some friends, including the newly widowed black bird.