Vein Fire (2 page)

“Yes.”

“I guess I never realized you thought of me as your best friend.”

“Well, you’re my best friend over the summer. When school starts back, Sera will be my best friend at school and you’ll be my best friend at home.”

“Oh,” Hannah sighed—this made more sense. “Well, how did he ask you?”

“He was nervous and just said he needed to ask me something. He kept stalling as he said, ‘um’ over and over again. He picked me a few daisies and said, ‘I wondered if you’d want to go out with me.’”

“And that’s when you turned him down?”

“Hmm…it took me a few moments.”

“Why? Did you have to think about it?” Hannah sounded frustrated.

“Well, yes, I did.”

Hannah rolled her eyes.

“I also told him my parents wouldn’t allow me to date him because of the stuff you told me about how he lives and his family.”

“Olivia! How could you say that to him? I only told you to see if your parents could help. Now he’ll hate me for it.”

“Stop it, Hannah. He doesn’t care what you say.”

Hannah was furious. She kicked off and peddled away from Olivia. Olivia called after her, but did not follow.

*

Hannah knew there were four things going right for her that week: first, Olivia was in Italy; second, her braces had been removed after two long years; third, her brown hair had a new spiral perm; and lastly, she had bought the new Cinderella tape before anyone else on her street. Music was becoming more and more important to the boys and Hannah didn’t want left behind.

She hadn’t seen her friends all weekend. Olivia was too busy packing before she left, and the boys didn’t want to be bothered with her. A new, white off-the-shoulder shirt waited patiently in her closet for her big reveal in the afternoon. She brushed and flossed twice, proud her teeth hadn’t yellowed beneath her braces like she’d seen happen to other kids at school. Several times, she straightened her clothes in the mirror, checking herself, hoping the boys would see more than just the chubby neighbor.

It was hot, but the tree-lined road broke the sunlight into manageable fragments. She could smell the grass releasing the sunshine. Hannah heard the boys up ahead before she saw them. They were practicing the fainting game; no doubt to impress Olivia when she came back. Brian had just collapsed onto the mattress; his hand still loosely pinched his nose shut.

Joel stood over him with his watch, carefully recording the time on the piece of cardboard. “Oh hey, Hannah,” he said without giving her as much as a second glance.

Matt stood back and didn’t acknowledge Hannah. She could see his jaw moving under his cheeks—he looked angry. Brian woke up almost immediately. He gazed up at Hannah and smiled wonkily, “Wow. You look different.”

Hannah smiled and blushed. “Thank you.”

“Your time’s getting worse instead of better,” Joel said.

“What are you doing here?” huffed Matt.

“I just came to hang out,” Hannah said.

“Well, why don’t you leave—we’re busy and no one wants you around. We only put up with you so Olivia will hang out with us.”

“Matt, c’mon man, relax. Hannah’s cool,” said Joel.

“No, it’s okay. He’s just pissed off because Olivia refused to go out with him,” Hannah retorted.

Matt clenched his fists, rotating three different shades of red before settling on one moderately flushed color.

Joel tried to change the subject. “Brian got the sheet music to
Long Cold Winter.
”

“That’s cool. I just bought the tape yesterday,” Hannah said happily.

“Aww, man! I wanted to buy the tape, but I only had enough money to get the sheet music. I started to learn ‘Gypsy Road’ last night on the guitar, but I didn’t get too far before my dad yelled at me to stop playing.”

“Yeah—well it’s not ‘cuz you’re a budding Ace fuckin’ Frehley,” Matt said.

“Well what do you play besides your cock? ‘Oh Olivia! Olivia!’” Brian imitated Matt masturbating.

“You’d better shut your mouth,” snapped Matt.

“Why don’t you, dog shit breath?” Brian laughed. Matt’s veins surfaced his neck. He glared at Hannah.

Hannah panicked and held her breath. Olivia must have told Brian. She worried Matt would think she had told the others.

“Guys, let’s settle down,” Joel said.

“Yeah, let’s settle down. If the cunt wants to play with us, let her play. You’re up, Hannah,” Matt said, nodding towards the mattress.

Everyone was silent because of the word Matt had used. It wasn’t something any of them had ever said before. They watched as Hannah dismounted her bike and walked over to the mattress, readying her hand over her nose.

“Will you catch me?” she asked Brian.

He nodded and stood behind her, ready with both arms to ease her down.

“Okay…” Joel posed with his watch, “On the count of three…one….two…three!”

Hannah inhaled sharply, filling her lungs to capacity, over and over, determined she could hold her breath the longest this time. She exhaled and waited for the blackness.

“Thirty seconds,” Joel yelled.

She looked around; Matt was pacing back and forth in front of her.

“Forty-five! You can do this Hannah, you’re going to break your record!” Joel squealed.

“C’mon! Hang in there,” Brian whispered into her hair.

“One minute! You broke a minute! Keep going Hannah! Keep going.”

The sky faded to black static as she tipped back into Brian’s arms. He was partially beneath her, and broke her fall, allowing his body to fold as her weight transferred on top of him. He was staring at her parted lips and didn’t see Matt come around to the front of them with the cinder block in his hands. Hannah’s entire body convulsed after the first swing splintered the tibia bone out of her right leg. Her scream shattered through the cemetery when Matt brought the cinder block down on her left leg. He held the bloody block hovering over his head for the third strike when Joel yelled and dropped the watch. After the fourth swing, Joel tackled him to the ground.

Joel was much smaller
than Matt, and they quickly stood up, but Matt turned and ran when he saw Brian had jumped up from underneath Hannah and started chasing him.

“Joel, we have to help her. Knock on the auto salvage door and see if anyone’s there.”

Brian ran back to Hannah, knelt down, and cradled her head on his lap. Her screams were the worst. Tears surged down her face and the veins in her temples puffed under the skin in lightening strike patterns. She rocked back and forth because of the pain, but with each movement, she screamed even more. Hannah’s arms flapped as she grabbed for Brian’s hand and then squeezed. Her legs were a jumbled mess of pulp and bone. Bright red blood saturated the mattress and was splattered up the gray block which rested a few feet from them.

Joel raced around the corner and the man from the auto salvage followed a few seconds behind him.

“You God-damned kids! I knew I shouldn’t let you play back here. Oh Jesus. Jesus,” he said when he saw Hannah’s legs. He began choking back vomit, but coughed up snot and spit it into the dirt.

They couldn’t pry Hannah’s hands from Brian’s until the morphine settled into her veins. She quickly passed out as the paramedics put her onto the gurney. Joel and Brian stood in the cemetery as the ambulance pulled away.

Chapter  2

The  Pudding  of  a  Plan

Matt waited patiently on the picnic table in his front yard for the police to arrive. He didn’t go inside to say goodbye to his family and he didn’t try to hide. It was a small town with a minimal local police force, so he was taken quietly, and without handcuffs. The officer might have been bringing Matt home for staying out past curfew, as he had many times, but he held the back door of the cruiser open for him instead of the front one.

Matt slid onto the seat and examined the red stains on his sock. There were also specks of red up and down his legs that he counted before the police arrived. He could have counted as high as he wanted to—there seemed to be an infinite number of splats, but the police pulled up before he tallied further than four hundred and twenty- three.

The police station was one partitioned room inside of the municipal building. The walls were bare and the single holding area was a cinder block enclosure with a reinforced steel door. By the time his mother arrived, the waiting area was chaotic. Matt was sure he was locked in a holding cell to protect him as much as contain him. Hannah’s uncle showed up with a baseball bat, shouting, trying to get past the deputy. The silence returned when he was removed, except for Matt’s mother, whose drunken cursing blubbered from the back office.

The local district magistrate arraigned Matt later that same afternoon. It was, after all, the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, in the middle of an ordinary July.

The public defender was a nervous woman with slender legs. Matt leaned back in his chair so he could peek up her skirt when she tried to speak to him. The peculiar attention, and knowing what he had done, made the petite woman uncomfortably cross and uncross her legs. He didn’t offer her much help: yes, he had done it, on purpose; yes, he intended to harm Hannah; no, he was not sorry for what he had done.

Matt’s life became a series of chess moves which he didn’t make himself. From the holding cell, to the magistrate’s office, to solitary confinement of the juvenile detention center where he was evaluated by a psychiatrist and then shipped off to Oakmont State Hospital’s violent juvenile criminals ward—they were just moves on a checkered board to progress Matt from where he was, to where he was going. His rights were neutered to a minimal amount of decisions which they spoon fed to him with a great deal of limitations.

The ward was locked down. Visitors were infrequent and the doctor’s hand was heavy when it came to pushing the medications. They could only keep Matt until he was eighteen, and he had already begun planning his exit.

He didn’t sleep at night. Often, he’d replay the cinder block coming down on Hannah’s legs. Her thighs responded dumbly, with a rippling echo of fat. Her knees and calves were different. They popped bone and blood immediately. Bone shards frayed her skin and the blood melted down her legs and onto the mattress. If he remembered it in slow motion, it was quite beautiful.

Matt didn’t see the situation as “right” or “wrong”, he saw it as necessary. Hannah
needed
it done to her. He could have killed her by striking her face with the cinder block instead of her legs, or by luring her into the woods and strangling her. He didn’t see the point in ending her—she didn’t need to be killed; she only needed to be taught a lesson. Taking her life would have been an act of anger; he wanted to deal back the humiliation.

It took Matt one day to realize medication time should be followed by two things: cheek and spit. Anyone who wasn’t doing this spent their time sleeping on the chairs in the common room or dozing off during group therapy sessions. These were the people Matt believed neither the doctors nor he could help; they were hopeless.

Everyone sectioned off into cliques, just like high school. The fire starters huddled in groups, whispering and giggling like little girls. The real lunatics walked around talking to themselves and were shunned by everyone. There were the budding pedophiles who sat in writhing groups, palming their clothes until they could sneak off in pairs for gratification. Lastly, the watchers were people like Matt who quietly observed others, lost in the pudding of their next plan, or savoring the joys of what they had already done. The watchers could pass as normal and possessed the most chance of slipping back into society.

After a month, Matt had made one fr
iend, Jared. Jared watched the others, like Matt. His pale blond-hair and small build made him look like one of the elementary aged boys, but he was only a year younger than Matt. The way his face pinched inward reminded Matt of a rat, mostly because it accentuated his slightly bucked front teeth and his beady eyes.

Jared explained that he liked to see people fly, and that’s why he was in Oakmont. He had a theory—if someone was special enough, they could fly. He said he thought it was some sort of unconscious power all humans had, and it only needed the right catalyst to emerge. Jared was the catalyst. At first, he dropped his younger brother over the banister of their porch. After numerous attempts, he decided his brother’s palsied-like falls meant he wasn’t special enough to fly, and he moved on to trying to pick out the extraordinary people.

Jared was sure a classmate named Clarissa was one of the special ones. He watched her for many months at school—she was beautiful. Patient, his chance arrived at a football game. Clarissa and her girlfriends crowed at the top of the bleachers. They had jumped over the railing and were talking to the boys down below them on the ground. She was wearing white jeans and a white windbreaker over a little pink top. Perfect. Jared made his way up to the top of the bleachers and positioned himself behind Clarissa. Quickly, he gave her one good push, and she fell. Her windbreaker caught the air, and for a second, she looked like a little white bird with a pink belly. She seemed to pause for a second before she hit the ground in a crunch of bone and failure. She died. Jared was certain she was almost able to fly—maybe she only needed a few more tries. He said he was glad she hadn’t screamed…it would have ruined it.

Only one boy saw him push Clarissa. When the psychiatrist evaluated him and sensed something was “off” with Jared, he committed him to Oakmont for long-term placement. There was no court hearing and no jury, just an article in the daily newspaper and an agreement with his parents that he should stay until he was eighteen.

Jared explained it to Matt…it wasn’t much of a choice really; getting pushed was something Clarissa needed. Matt understood him perfectly well. He shared his story about Hannah, the smug, chubby neighbor who was always talking down to him. The surplus of time they had in the institution allowed Matt to retell the story almost daily. After hearing it so often, Jared could have made it his own.

In Matt’s first year at Oakmont, Jared became a semblance of a best friend. Had it been a different time, and a different place, Matt would not have befriended Jared, nor would he have spoken to him. He didn’t like him very much and he thought he was creepy. Among the few watchers living on the secure unit, it was slim pickings for a worthwhile conversation, so Matt remained Jared’s friend.

Without anyone to push, Jared said he became restless. He devised a plan where he and Matt would save their pills for a few weeks, crush them up, and put them in juice to feed to one of the lunatics. Matt wasn’t sure about it. He had never killed anyone, and wasn’t certain he wanted to, but he played along, having an urge to make things ‘right’ or to get ‘even’ for the placement in Oakmont. He recognized that his thoughts were very different from Jared’s, who seemed to not value human life.

For an entire day, the two sat and whispered about who they should choose.

“Why are we doing this again?” asked Matt.

“Because there are no ledges and there are no cinder blocks here, and this is what we do,” answered Jared. After a long pause, he inhaled with excitement. “It has to be Danny.”

“Danny? He never bothers anyone.”

“I know, but I’ve watched him and I’m certain it wouldn’t be a waste. Danny has no potential to ever learn to fly. Plus, we’d be setting him free in a sense. Because he’s a ward of the state and no one visits him, he’ll be stuck in here forever if we don’t get him out. Think about it—he doesn’t speak and he carries that pathetic rag of a stuffed bunny around with him.”

Matt considered it, and nodded his head. “Danny it is then.”

They picked Danny because they liked him, but also, he would be easy. He loved grape juice and would drink whatever they mixed in with it. Matt wasn’t sure what pills he was prescribed, but after he swallowed them once, he slept for two days and felt like shit.

Matt figured they didn’t need to use all of the pills they had stashed, but it was Jared’s plan, so he went along with it. They crushed the pills between two shiny magazine pages until they were a fine powder. Jared saved his grape juice from breakfast, and they dissolved the pills in it.

Jared only had to leave it in Danny’s room for him to find it and drink it. When he wondered out of his room again, Jared retrieved the cup, rinsed it out in the bathroom and tossed it in the trash where it landed among dozens of other similar cups. Within one hour, Danny returned to his room, sick. He lay on his bed, convulsing in violent seizures for several minutes.

“Do you think he’ll swallow his tongue?” Jared asked as they watched Danny die.

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think he has much time left.”

Indeed, he did not. The death rattle they had never heard before became a symphony they’d never forget. Danny was dead. They snuck out of the sleeping area and went to the common room to play chess. The two boys were calmer than usual, almost satisfied.

Danny’s body was discovered and the place was locked down. Everyone was questioned, but no one remembered seeing anything. Matt almost believed the administrator suspected him, but nothing came of it. He, after all, had just been playing chess in the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, of a typical month, in a place where one day could not be distinguished from the next.

It took one week before the autopsy results came back and showed a high level of medicine in Danny’s system. Out of all the patients on the floor, Jared was the only person prescribed the pills.

Jared was removed unceremoniously. Two orderlies held him down while a nurse thrust a shot into his ass
cheek. He was limp when they walked him out, his pants still slightly pulled down, exposing a red bead of blood where the needle had plucked into his buttock.

They only questioned Matt once before Jared confessed—stating Matt had no part in poisoning Danny. Matt was sure they were still suspicious of him, but the full confession by Jared made the investigation easy, so they gave up on outing Matt as an accomplice.

Because there was no other place for murderers who were mentally ill children, Jared returned, but to the restricted ward—in solitary confinement, indefinitely.

Occasionally, the two would see one another and grant a respectful nod towards the other, but they were always kept separated. Matt didn’t mind getting rid of the crazy fuck. Jared was an unnatural sort of wrong and if Matt ever wanted to get released, he knew he needed to stay clear of him.

After several months of ‘successful’ therapy, Matt was moved to the integrated floor. This only meant he was a mouse in a larger cage, but with girl mice as well. Two way mirrors were the norm on this floor, but the same reinforced steel and glass doors only opened when someone in an office pushed a button. Electric clicks on doors became a familiar background noise.

Here, Matt was given a job—not a real job where he earned money, but more like a chore. Correctly completing the tasks earned him neat red checkmarks in pre-printed boxes. His initial assignment was to clean the bathrooms. At first he was pissed off about it, but after he figured out the perks to the job, he asked to keep the chore longer than the first month.

Marilyn Bennet was his unofficial welcoming host to the integration unit. Her huge double D breasts earned her the nickname ‘Bubbles’. Even the nurses had taken to calling her Bubbles instead of Marilyn. She told him she couldn’t make the bad stuff go away, but she could make him forget he was there for a little while. Matt wasn’t sure how crazy she was, or why she was committed to Oakmont, but he did know she promised to suck his cock. It would be his very first blow job and he wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.

There was
n’t much opportunity to be unsupervised, and with cameras mounted in the corners of each room, it took Matt three days to figure out a way he could get Bubbles alone. Every day at lunchtime, she worked in the cafeteria, assembling sandwiches. He told her to complain that she had to use the bathroom and he’d meet her in the girl’s lavatory at 12:15. Most of the other people ate lunch at that time, and if he posted the ‘cleaning in progress’ sign outside of the bathroom, they could steal fifteen minutes alone—at least.

He asked her if it was enough time, and Bubbles giggled, “That depends on you, silly!”

Matt was sure it would be the best fifteen minutes of his life.

They arranged to meet the next day, and Matt mounted the sign on the door. His heart pounded and his chest flushed in anticipation as he waited for Bubbles. He kept picturing his hands on the back of her head, and her curly blonde hair sticking up between his fingers. He didn’t know what else to expect, but he was ready to find out.