deadpie
January 6th, 2013, 03:30 AM
These are two shorts meant to go together that I originally wrote for my book that I was supposed to self publish (but I could never find a reliable editor). Warning, they are triggering.
OCTOBER
She was still in the stands after my baseball game ended and I remembered everyone being picked up to go home or having already left. I was still in my sweaty gear holding a small notebook with a G2 Pilot 07 ink pen tucked in between my pants and jersey. When I sit down next to her I notice the sky is dead black and the suburban lights have murdered all the stars of their beauty to shine.
“You're a good pitcher”, she said. “Watching your patience, serenity... it's quite obvious why you won the game. I know your name. You don't have to finish moving your left hand to shake mine. Nobody starts a handshake with their left hand. You do realize that, right?”
I open my notebook to a clean page and write down in small letters, 'I don't realize much; forgive me for my young empty head. What is your name?'
The thing is I already know her name somewhere in my young empty head, but I just can't remember it right now. She was at a Nate Young concert standing alone holding her pearly shining purse as noise was penetrating the walls of the room. I had looked at her for a good five minutes during that concert, then one of her girlfriends came up to her, handed her a beer, and said her name along with some conversation that is a blur to me.
“Allison”, she answers. “Why are you still here? You haven't even changed or anything. Don't you guys have to get naked, shower together and butt-fuck or something? That's what jocks do, right?”
She pulls out a pack of Lucky Strikes, lights herself a cigarette and I scribble in my manic mind while pulling my hair as if I'm about to lose my mind. I write down, 'It's called anal sex. You should try it sometime.'
“Doesn't answer my question.”
In sign language I tell her 'too bad'. I throw the notebook out at the empty stands, then rub my cheek looking at her sucking on a death stick. She spits down at my cleats and says, “You should stay the night at my house then. I think I want you to fuck me.”
Allison was afraid of the sun. I noticed this when I woke up in her bed, pulled the blinds up and she screamed like a screeching chalk board at me. Her father used to rape her when she was a child and all she could see while her head was digging into the pillows was the Sun shining down on the bright little planet. She showed me a photo-album of pictures of her family and told me that once her father stopped he treated her like gold and as if nothing ever happened.
We didn't talk anymore after I fucked her. I still saw her at the bus stop and as winter came up she would bring a cinnamon scent coffee with her. Both of us sat down on a bench with frantic sixth graders in-between us babbling about tits and video games.
I expected a day where she would come up and kiss me, pulling my cock out, and we would have sex right in the bus stop, but that never happened. Things stayed the same.
Four months pass. A bus came. She went inside with her head pointed downwards. I looked up. The Sun shined down on me and the rest of this beautiful planet.
And I screamed.
The Pitcher.
My mother throws me to the carpet floor, puts her arms around my neck, then starts choking me while sobbing down on my face. I pull her weak body off of me, stand up, pull one of my baseball bats out from under the sofa, then slam it straight into the television. She stays still, keeps crying and I shatter the glass of the coffee table with the bat, drop it, then leave to go in my bedroom.
We spent an hour arguing after I woke up about what she's going to do when her so-called job stops working. She found it offensive that I'd question her in such a manner and I found it completely rational. She's a disgusting monster that I love and care about for some strange reason. I want her to die the worst possible pain covered in the softest blanket sown by my higher power.
I pull my clothes off and change into my baseball gear. My bedroom has a mattress with a torn up blanket and pillow on it, a stack of clean clothes in one corner, a trash-bag, and hundreds of pieces of torn up paper from notebooks. It's always looked like this in my bedroom. There's cracks in the walls and ceilings around the entire house waiting to pull the it down on itself. When that happens I'd like to be far from the destruction as possible. I'd like to be with Ally again on that day.
Prospect Creek is the coldest city in America and hides in part of Alaska. I was born here and found a good fascination in baseball. It didn't take long for trophies to start filling the closet. Sure, it was a talent and I was making lots of friends with this, but things went wrong at one point when I was young.
At age ten two masked men broke into our house to steal money from us and my Dad was shot in front of me around thirty times. The shooting seemed to never stop and I still have dreams about it to this day, but instead they fire an infinite amount of bullets into him and whatever I do to stop the madness gets me killed in the way. Mom started blaming me for my fathers death when I was twelve.
When I was thirteen I won a trophy for best middle school pitcher in America. At age fourteen my Mom started beating me. Now I'm sixteen and things haven't changed much, except the house getting ready to fall apart and the fact Mom doesn't have a job anymore. I get home from my coach and friends at school, but when I come home there's no food.
Mom sucks dick for food and water. She does this outside in my backyard. I know this because she told me to watch one time so I could be reminded of how horrible I've made her life for not saving Dad. My mom stared at me through the window the entire time while sucking a man off that looked exactly like someone that shot Dad.
I leave my bedroom, push my mom over on her back to see that she's fallen asleep, then walk outside of the house into the snow. The blizzard stopped finally and now the weather is as silent as a music piece by John Cage. Air is so thick in this weather in November that you can cut it with your finger, walk through and feel the heaviness crushing around your body. I reach the bus stop, sit down next to Ally, rub my throat, then hug myself to get some warmth.
“You jocks are crazy”, she says to me. “How can you play in weather like this? I don't get how you guys have made it to the finals for American High School baseball games. Hell, you'll probably win Best High School pitcher again. You think you will?”
She expects me to respond to her somehow. I look at her, then look at her bag, back at her, back at the bag, back at her, and then down to my cleats. Ally pulls out a notebook from her backpack and a pen, hands it to me, and I write, 'I hope that eventually I can make my Dad happy and he'll come back to congratulate me, but that's crazy talk. That's all I feel about the situation.' She reads the paper, I tear it out, crumble it up, and throw it at a freshman walking by. He yells, “What the fuck dude?”
“It'd be easier to talk to you without your stupid...”, she stumbles on words. “Aphasia? Is that what it's called? Has anyone ever called you a speechless dumb fuck before? Sometimes I feel like calling you that.”
Finally the school bus comes. I get on first, sit in the front seat on the left side by the window, keep my head against it the entire time and stare out at the snow waiting for it to melt and the world to light on fire. It's not that I want the world to be on fire, but I want this particular city that I live in to be on fire. I think the Earth would be better off without it. The Earth would most definitely be better off without me.
When the bus stops I get off first, head for the baseball field, my coach turns to look at me and throws a ball towards me. I catch it and fall down into the snow pretending I’m dead, freeze up a bit, stand back up and walk towards him.
“Today I have a good workout for you”, he says. “You don't have to interact with anyone else. All you have to do is stand over by the balance beam I set up for you, pitch about twenty balls off of it, make sure you can keep balance and not fall off. If you fall off you have to grab all the balls and start over. Think you can do it?”
I nod my left fist to say 'yes' to him and walk over to the balance beam that's a little above ground. There's a bag of baseballs beside and I use the one coach handed me to throw back towards him while placing my first foot on. Coach understands the basics of my sign language. The rest of the school knows absolutely nothing and I have to write if I want or choose to speak to them.
My body stands stiff up as I'm holding onto the second ball, get into position, think of where I'm wanting to pitch and throw it still standing on the beam. After I've finished the entire sack I walk back up to coach. He says, “Just shower off in the locker room, change into some clothes, and head into my office. I have some stuff to go over with you.”
Pulling out both hands I pretend my left is a knife at a chopping board with the right, raising it up and down to tell him 'alright'. I head inside of the school building, go inside the quiet locker room, find my locker, strip myself down, throw my gear into the locker, then go into the showers alone. The water is warm and feels good running down the scars of my legs, thighs, upper arms, and wrist.
Once I've finished washing my dick and ass I turn off the shower, clean off with a towel left in the clean pile, toss it on the floor, grab some clean clothes hanging inside my locker, and slowly put them on while inspecting the scars on my body. All of these were once self inflicted.
I head to my coaches office, sit in the empty chair next to his desk, wait for him to enter and study the room. There's a large case full of trophies, pictures on the wall of his wife and kids, and his amazing degrees. My question to him would be why he decided to have a career in this frozen shit hole.
After a while of waiting he enters, sits down across from me, stares at my face with a dead expression and asks, “Why didn't you go to the support group yesterday?”
My head goes down and I look at my converse's digging into green carpet. He's talking about the support group the school set up for suicidal teenagers that happens during second period class every school day. I didn't want to go because I had nothing to say. Truthfully, I never have anything to say. The reason why is probably because I literally don't have the ability to speak out in the first place.
“You do want help, right”, he questions. “You can't expect to get anything out of sitting around barely passing classes, smoking pot, and going home to let your mom do whatever she does with you. It's time you take some responsibility with your life. I mean, fuck, you're almost an adult.”
Silence. I rub the scars on my wrist and think about picking at them until I can dig far enough that I start bleeding. He's right about what he says, but everything he says makes me just want to smoke pot, go home, sleep, and get beaten some more. I think about how I could kill myself in this room right now. I'd blame my suicide on the people that never read my favorite book simply because it was a manga. Those people would kill themselves over my suicide note and this entire town would make a gigantic suicide pact. With that I'd feel complete with my life.
I look up at him, grab one of his fancy philosophy books, open up the first page, grab a pin off his desk and write, “I'll go today if you leave me alone.”
He reads it, holds onto his book against his chest, and sinks into his chair still staring at me. I think he's started to hate me now even though he feels sympathy for what I go through. Why was he at my fathers funeral again? My mother must have invited him. He shouldn't have been there. I'd rather him never know a thing about me and just think of me as some stupid psycho baby. Why didn't he throw me off the baseball team after the first suicide attempt I made?
The councilors office is quite small and minimalistic. Inside is a circle of five chairs. I'm sitting in one of them, surrounded by girls and an older women. Apparently I'm the only suicidal male teenager in this school. Well, at least the only one that's attempted suicide and gone to a hospital.
“My life is falling apart”, Vivian says sitting next to me. “Every day I'm shoveling the snow out of the front yard so I can drive to school. When I get here I want to immediately drive home. I know there's only another half of the school year until I graduate, but I'm ready to give up. Nobody talks to me here and everyone stares at me like I'm some fucking freak. I'm ugly and fat. When I die I'll probably die a virgin without even being kissed one single time. Nobody loves me, certainly not my parents. I guess that's all I have to say today.”
Councilor pats her arm and says quietly, “Thanks for sharing, Vivian. Collin, would you like to share?”
She actually expects me to share for once. I move my right hand pass my left hand to say 'pass', then look over to Summer. She's a feminist bitch and sometimes even likes to talk to shit about me just because she knows she can get the free pass to do so. Summer is sobbing and whimpers, “I can't get his dick out of my head. He had no remorse and just kept raping me no matter how loud I screamed for him to stop. I know there were many other people at the party inside that house but nobody did anyone. All the men at this school give me dirty looks like they want to fuck me and girls whisper 'slut' and 'cunt' in the hallways when I walk by. The truth is all men are fucking monsters. All of them have thought about raping a woman at least once.”
The room goes completely quiet and her sobs echo through like a thunderstorm. Summer looks at me with an angry face as if I have done something wrong and I look back at her confused, somewhat spooked, and keep my head back down at my shoes.”
“Even Collin is a pervert”, she speaks up. “He's probably trying to hide his erection in this room right now knowing that he's the only guy in here. I mean, I know you're a sweet guy with lots of problems, but I can't think of you as completely a nice person. He has a penis, which is a weapon. What do I have if he decided to attack me right now? I'd be useless.”
Councilor taps her knee and responds, “Collin would never hurt you and if there's any man in this school that respects you it's him. Not all men are like the man that hurt you.”
“Bullshit”, she screams. “The man that raped me was on his baseball team! Collin was friends with him. They probably joked about me all the time!”
I stand up, grab my chair, and throw it at the door. The legs of it break into four. I walk over, grab one of the metal legs and bash my head in with it as hard as I can. The councilor runs over to me grabbing it from my hand, throwing it on the ground, and I fall down on the broken chair smiling at Summer as blood starts running down my nose to my chin. I strike the palm of my left hand twice to tell the councilor to hand me paper and she does. Vivian walks over to me handing me a pen, wipes some blood off my face with her hand, then sits back down. I write down what I want to say and hand it to the Councilor.
She reads it aloud, “Summer, you're right about me having a penis. I'm a man and do get urges to look at women, but I never think of taking advantage of anyone. If anything, I'd rather someone die than be taken advantage of. For example, I'd like to be killed instead of being beaten by my mother. I'd like you, Summer, to come over here, castrate me right now to show you how little I care about your reproductive system, then let me die so I never have to deal with my mother again. You think you're the only one to deal with PTSD? Do you not remember my father being shot in front of me or the fact I'm abused daily? I deal with more shit on my plate that anyone in this school. Have you seen the cuts on my body? You haven't. I don't speak because I will be judged. Now I speak and wait to be judged. This is what you want. All I want is to go to bed, pitch, and smoke pot.”
“Lord, kill the pain”, Greg sings. “Don't want to ask you again. Kill my neighbors and all my family too. They doubt my direction.”
Greg's headphones are blasting so loud that I can hear them and I worry about his hearing for a few seconds, then finish the bowl that I started. Once I've finished smoking I hand it back to him and pull a mop out from the tiny room we're in. We're hiding inside of a Janitors closet in the high school to smoke pot like we do just about every day.
He holds a mop as if it's a guitar and pretends to strum it while singing the lyrics to one of his favorite bands, Red House Painters, while I pull at a loose string on my shirt. The end of the mop hangs down like one of my teachers hair. I lay my head down on the floor, slap Greg on the leg, then use my hands to tell him to 'roll a blunt'.
“Not in here”, he coughs. “Smells dank as fuck in here already.”
We go back to zoning out in our own worlds in the Janitors closet as I think of smoking more pot. I listen to the lo-fi fuzzing coming out from his ear-buds and attempt to nod my head along to the music. Greg notices, hands the right headphone to me and I take it from him to listen along.
On my way to lunch my councilor stopped me in the hallway while I was holding a brown bag of shitty snacks. She says, “I have something special for you. Follow me.”
I look around the hallways as students are walking like ants to the lunchroom and feel like I'm a parasite to them walking the opposite way to follow the councilor. She leads me to wear the athletics rooms are and opens up the mens locker room. Inside is my entire baseball team, my coach, and a single girl. It's Allison; the girl I sit by near the bus stop. She's hiding behind a few of the guys. My coach walks over to me, hands me a fancy trophy, and puts one hand on my shoulder.
“You won it again”, he says. “Best high school pitcher of the year. Congratulations. I've brought your entire team here and found your best friend to eat some cake with us. Are you proud of yourself?”
Nodding my head with a smile I try to focus my eyes on Allison. I think of how they would think she would be my best friend. It doesn't make any sense at all.
A cake is brought out. It's cut up. Pieces are shared. I'm holding a plate and staring at the cake sitting on a bench next to Allison. She finishes her piece and takes mine to eat. Team mates come over to give me a handshake and congratulate me. A trophy sits next to me. It's golden and has a pitcher ready to throw a ball. I start picking at a scab I've found on my leg.
Everyone is having a fucking blast except me. I've worked hard for a trophy that sits in my closet. I thought that after I won this one my Dad would come from his grave and tell me he's proud of me or I can go home not having to expect my mother to be the mess she is. I know she'll probably hit me when I get home. Dad is still dead. This is just another trophy.
She places her hand over one of mine and asks, “Why did you stop talking to me after we fucked? You know, I talk to your councilor too, because I have problems of my own. I told her we're best friends and was excited for you when I heard you won this award again. The surprise party was my thought, believe it or not. Why is your neck all bruised up?”
'Choked' I say with my hands. I forget that she doesn't know sign language and she just stares at my hands as if mouths would open up through them and tell her what I'm trying to say. She keeps her head down, I walk away from her, grab another slice of cake, and eat this one, but put all the icing off on the side.
My coach asks me, “Are you enjoying your party?”
I nod my head. He walks away. People slowly start to leave the room. My councilor waves her hand good bye. Coach has left. A few of my team mates are chatting around scrapes left of the cake. Once they leave I sit back down next to Allison. She's holding a marker in her hands.
“Can you write what happened down on my arm”, she asks. “I'll wash it off after you do so.”
“You think I give a shit about your special new trophy?”
Mom slaps me across the face while I'm sitting on the sofa watching the static on television. She sits back down next to me, keeps changing through the static channels, then whispers, “I like this one the best. Listen to the hiss right there. Just think about what your Dad would say if he were here to look at you. He'd smell the pot on your clothes and beat you like the piece of shit you are.”
I take the words harder than the slap to the face, but stay still and realize that this is a new television. The one we had this morning I smashed with a baseball bat. She must of sucked some major dick today to get that box.
“Why did you stop cutting yourself”, she asks. “Things seem to get better for you emotionally when you do that. I think you should slit your wrists tonight. Don't kill yourself though. I do have some love for you, but not that much. It's always slipping away every day. I mean, you did kill my husband, you piece of shit. Don't you think you deserve punishment? Why do you feel bad for me hurting you? Just fucking take it. You fucking pathetic pussy.”
A new crack on the ceiling is forming. I'm waiting for it to rip open and a pile of snow from the roof to fall down on the floor. It doesn't happen. This storm will freeze up the babies and lost dogs, but it won't kill the demons that live inside of these houses. My winters have no remorse for the hurt and feed off the ones who make their pain self inflicted.
I walk out of the living room, go to the restroom, open up a cabinet, and pull a new razor blade out of a package. The blade shines at me as if it's happy to see me again. I drag it across my wrists about ten times, throw the blade in the sink, walk back into the living room and sit down next to my mom. My wrist is bleeding onto the sofa and with that my mother leans her head against my shoulder smiling. She says, “You're being the good son now. I love you.”
Every ball that comes straight towards me I hit with all of my rage. I spit my gum out and keep hitting pretending it's the faces of the people that killed my father. For every bullet they fired would be a smack to their skull with my bat.
My team mate stops throwing, throws off his gloves and yells, “Fuck, it's cold!”
“No shit”, someone says back to him. “What's going on with Collin? He's hitting those balls pretty damn far. I swear he's the best player I've seen when it comes to everything. I'm fuckin' jealous. Collin! What drugs are you taking?”
I drop my baseball bat, head to the locker room, throw my clothes off, shower, change, then grab my towel and walk into a bathroom stall. Once I've listened to the silence well enough to know that nobody is in the room I put the towel to my mouth and scream as loud as I can into it.
The new cuts on my wrists are starting to scab and one of the cuts is already opening back up. I let it do so and don't give a shit. To show how little of a shit I give I rub the blood off from my wrist on my face. I walk out of the stall, stare at myself in the mirror with a grin, then walk around the empty hallways of the school looking for Greg.
What I need to do is smoke more pot.
I find an empty classroom, walk straight into it and sit down. Someone comes inside holding a laptop and says, “You looking for Greg?”
Nodding my head my friend Nicholas sits down next to me pulling open his computer to show me pictures of fat ladies with huge boobs. He scrolls through the pictures while I wait for him to tell me where Greg is. There's no paper around for me to write down anything to Nicholas and remind him what I need.
“Greg is trying to find me”, he says. “We're supposed to smoke up. You joining us, I'm guessing?”
Nicholas, Greg and I are all packed in the claustrophobic janitor's closet handing a blunt around. I hold in my hit for as long as possible while Greg puts his headphones in my ears, then I blow the smoke out at Nicholas. He's giving me more slowcore to listen to; this time it's the band called Codeine.
I sit in the corner of the closet while Nicholas stares at his laptop. On the computer two tattooed chicks in purple hair are eating each other out. While watching this I think of Allison. I think of what I look like, stare at my hands, then picture myself. Five foot six, long black hair, cuts on my body, smell like pot, look like a sleepy slob, and the cheeks of a dead fat frog.
“When the winter ends”, Greg says. “It'll still be snowing and still be cold as the bottom of hell. When the winter ends I'll still be smoking weed with you guys. I wonder if I'll still be alive by that time. The three of us live in our own hells. I can tell Collin is fighting through his hell by the new cuts on his wrists. When the winter ends I hope my friends can get a better chance to live.”
Nicholas hands me the roach and responds, “When the winter ends we'll all be dead or still be fucking up.”
Allison holds my hand as she follows me to the route of my house. She says, “What was your father like?”
She always expects a response from me. In fact, everyone does, but I don't say a thing. Even if I could I wouldn't. People ask the wrong things to me as if I'm willing to tell them everything.
We reach her street and I let her go without a word. She gives me a final look before walking towards her house. I continue my walk towards my house freezing in the cold. My cuts have scabbed up and turned purple now. When your cutting all the time it makes your body temperature feel much higher than normal, so walking through the cold right now isn't a bother.
I reach my house, stare at it, and study the fact that the front part of my house has fallen down on itself and piles of white snow are covering where the living room should be. For a second I feel like it must be a joke, but after a few blinks I realize that it has actually happened. I walk on top of the front door, upon piles of snow, then find myself in the hallway. My moms arm is sticking out of a pile of snow that's covering the sofa. Her arm is almost a purplish black.
She's obviously dead. Both of my parents are dead now. With the thought in mind I head into my bedroom, grab a pillow sheet, and throw all the trophy's from inside the closet in it. Once I’ve finished I throw the pillow case over my shoulder, walk back to school and find myself in the baseball field. I sit down in the pitchers mound, surround myself with all of the trophy's, look at them and cry.
This is the winter that will never end.
“You look like shit”, Allison says puffing on a cigar. “I'm sorry about your friend.”
I open up to the next clean page of my notebook, write down 'which one' then hand it to her. She studies, writes a response back and hands it to me. Her response reads 'the pervert'.
The snow is picking up its pace again and there will probably be a blizzard in the next few days. It's been two weeks sense my mothers funeral, which resulted into me moving into my friend Greg's house where I reside to smoke pot and sit in a pitch black room.
Summer is dead. She killed her rapist, one of my team mates, then killed herself three days ago. Apparently she used a shotgun to blow his face off before blowing her own head off her neck. Both of the funerals had closed caskets. They were buried in separate funerals. Dried up human feces have been rotting on Summers grave. My team mate has dead frozen flowers.
Allison uses my notebook to start drawing a picture for me of a naked girl with a missing head. She hands it back to me and says, “This is what I imagined Summer to look like when she died. I think she was pretty hot so I had to draw her naked and give her larger breasts. Would you have fucked her?”
“No”, I respond moving my hands. “You're sick.”
Then again, who isn't sick in this city? Everyone is dying here. My mother was able to be buried need to Dad. Two people from my school brutally died. Last night on the news a private jet crashed down close to where the school is. Everyone inside died burning alive with parts of their limbs dismembered. There was some large happy family inside that jet. Seems like they found the perfect place to die together.
Greg eats the roach out of fear that someone is about to open the janitors closet, but Nicholas reassures him that nothing is going to happen. Nothing happens. I flip back through my journal to the picture that Allison drew and start adding my own drawings to the artwork. Nicholas lights up a black cigar that smells like a coffee, offers it to me and I pass. I give Summer some angel wings and a skateboard where her feet.
“What are you going to do if you win”, Greg asks me. “Are you going to do anything special with your team mates? I'm pretty sure you'll win your last game. You know that Allison chick that you hang out with? I think you should fuck her if you haven't already. Fuck, I know I would. If I don't get any action soon in this cold shit storm I'll end up killing myself.
Nicholas responds, “You can't kill yourself or else I'd kill myself. I'm pretty sure Collin would end up killing himself too. Plus, that lady from our school just killed someone and herself. Don't you think that's a bit over kill for the time being? Enough people have died recently. What you need to do is smoke more weed and chill the fuck out, man.”
“Yeah. I'll do that.”
“Good.”
“Mmmhmm.”
Summer is still missing her head. I draw my mothers face on her body, crumble up the paper, and toss it at Greg. He tosses it at Nicholas. Nicholas blows his smoke out at my face and says, “Dude... not cool.”
I sit alone in the back of the bus staring out of the window as the weather keeps changing. Connor, the pitcher of our team, is blasting technical death metal out of his stereo while talking to the Coach about penguins. My notebook is halfway full of two word responses and drawings that Allison did for me. She drew me a picture of herself spreading her cunt on a page for me saying that it'd help me keep my mind on her when I'm alone.
Allison is becoming a cancer under my tongue. I don't know what she see's in me or why she keeps talking to me. For a second I hope that she isn't in Prospect Creek when I come back, then I regret it. After regretting the thought I think about the different perspectives that idea can come from. She could run away from home and live a good life. Running away in the cold means she'd probably die of frostbite or some bullshit like that. No, there's no good options – fucked no matter what move you make.
Coach told me before we got on the bus that if I win this game then I'll probably get a few more scholarships. If I win the game I can find a college far away from home and finally be free of my hell. Chances are I'll lose. A thought comes to mind that I should attempt to lose the game just so I can make my life worse because that's probably what I deserve.
No.
My mothers thoughts and demands are still carved into my brain.
Connor walks over, sits down across from me and says, “I'm sorry about your mother dying. It took me a while to accept my moms death. I don't know if you know this, but she was a construction worker. One day she went to work drunk and ended up falling asleep on this machine. The machine had wrapped her in plastic, suffocated her, then dropped her into a pile of other plastic things.”
Fuckin' Moses. Everyone knows that a pitcher and catcher are meant to have the closest friendship on a baseball team, but I've failed to be there for this guy. I've never heard of such a shit way to go out.
“You know my brother died last year”, he continues. “He was a schizophrenic and thought that if he chopped off his left leg that a demon would stop biting his leg. Well, he was only able to hack off half of it before bleeding to death. Fuckin' a. I miss him more than anything. He was only twelve years old. I remember when I was twelve years old. Remember Mr. Ramsey? That Spanish teacher that got fired? Well, he had this thing for me and one day after class he took advantage of me. This went on for about a month. After I was able to get the guts to tell someone his entire life went straight down the drain. His wife divorced him, daughter killed herself, then he had a prison sentence for forty years. On my thirteenth birthday someone had cut his throat while he was in prison. Crazy shit. He had it coming, though. Only thing I regret is not being the person that was able to cut his throat. Did you know when I was six years old I was kidnapped? Well, you know those public speakers when we were kids that would say never go up to a car with a man in it staring at you? I did that. Fuck, I saw this creepy dude in his purple vehicle, I walked up to him, he said he had tons of candy he could give me if I went on a short drive with him. Next thing I know I'm in the trunk of his car and then I'm in his basement with a gag ball in my mouth. I have barely any memories of what happened, but I was missing for two months before they found him. When they did he tried to shoot a cop and they shot him in front of me a few times. I remember when you told me about what happened to your father and I just wanted to say that I'm here for you, bro. All you have to do is ask if you need anything.”
He gives me a long hug and walks back to where he was sitting. I stare straight into the fabric of my seats for the entire drive in complete shock while sweating. When I look out the window I see the Sun shining. It's something I haven't seen in a while. I stare at the Sun for a few seconds until it starts to hurt, then turn my head back, grab my bag, and get off the bus.
“Oh fuck”, Allison moans. “Fuck, you sure I'm the only girl you've fucked?”
I nod my head. She drifts back into the pillows of her bed lighting a cigarette, then rubs my back. My mind is foggy and I think about Connor; hoping that he's proud that we won the tournament. Allison asks, “Did you think about me while you were gone in the sunshine?”
My notebook is missing and I can't respond to her, so I just draw out letters on her leg slowly to tell her my answer. She smiles, sucks on the cigarette and holds onto my hand. It's warm and gives me anxiety.
While I was gone for three days some old fucking maniac blew up a supermarket at night in our precious city. He killed twenty four people inside and injured ten. A new grocery store opens up tomorrow with a new manager and new hired workers. Sometime this week there's going to be a service at the football field at our school where candles are lit in honor of the dead and their families.
There's a feeling in my stomach that I shouldn't be here with Allison anymore. I'm having sex with a lady that could kill herself at any second. She's the definition of tragedy. This is the bed her father fucked her in when she was young. It makes me feel disgusted to be inside of it with her. I almost feel like crying, but instead find myself hiding underneath her bedsheets with my head against her belly.
“Do you know if this winter will come to an end”, she asks me. “I think a blizzard is supposed to come in tomorrow morning. Do you want anything to eat? Like some.... fuckin, soup? Something healthy? I have food if you're hungry.”
I keep resting against her belly with my eyes closed trying to block out all the words she says. With this living feeling and atmosphere in mind I think of suicide.
Greg has this never ending supply of weed coming from nowhere. I don't know where he gets it or how he gets it. Every time I ask him he just tells me to smoke more and forget I asked the question. He comes into my bedroom with a doughnut and asks me, “Do you want this? Some girl at the new super market let me have it for free and I was thinking about you.”
The doughnut is blue and has pink sprinkles on it. I ponder if I want to really eat it and decide to take it from his hand. After the first bite I already start to feel sick, so I hand it back to him and put two fingers in an X as to say no.
“Damn”, he says. “I thought it looked like a good doughnut. Too bad you didn't like it. I'll finish it off for you.”
He shoves the entire doughnut in his mouth, pulls out a small bag of pot and throws it to me. I open the bag halfway, smell it, then slap it against my knee. Greg looks at me as if I'm a zombie and says, “I think I should get going. Some middle school kids called me up for pot and I'm going to charge them extra because they're stupid and won't know the difference.”
I smile back at him as he shuts the door and everything goes pitch black. In the darkness I reach under the bed, grab a baseball, and leave the bedroom. The hallways are clear heavenly white as I walk through them and I venture out the front of the house staring out at piles of snow. I look at the ball, thinking about tossing it as hard and as fast as I can, but decide to just drop it by my foot. The ball thumps down halfway into the snow and sits in the yard next to a dozen other baseballs. I pull my foot up, look down at it, and stomp my foot over the ball deep into the snow in anger.
Today after school a bunch of people from the city gathered at the football field. Everyone sat down at the stands holding unlit candles. A man stood in the middle of the stadium trying to figure out why his microphone wasn't worked and people put their hands around their ears as screeching sounds from the sound systems rambled through the crowd.
Allison tells me while we're sitting by the bus stop that in the past month two hundred people have died in our city. She says she's going to write a book about a town where people live not knowing when they're about to die, but are aware it can happen at any second. I look around the other kids at the bus stop expecting someone to immediately drop dead. Maybe I'm the next one to die.
“You don't think I exist”, she says. “I have this very long idea of you that I want to paint out before the bus comes. Due to this language disorder of yours you take advantage of it and choose to use as little ability to reply to others as much as possible. You're avoiding people and you let people speak for you. I'm speaking for you right now, right? I bet that as you're listening to me right now you're pondering if I even exist. Am I right? Of course I'm right. Even if I was wrong I'd be right because I already know I don't exist. Believe it or not I'm too complex, confusing and unbelievable of a human being to possibly exist in this World. I am fucking fiction. Maybe you are too. I don't know. I'd ask you what do you think but you'd probably look down at your shoes and say nothing. If you don't believe in me then it makes me question what do you believe in. Do you believe in a higher power? I'll let you write out your answer and it has to be more than two letters or else I'll kill you. I'm sick of you fucking around with me.”
I take the notebook out she hands to me, pull a pen out of my pocket and write, 'Yes, I believe in a God. This city we live in is too unrealistic and spontaneous to make sense or exist, so I think that a God exists and has a thing for torturing his failed creation. It's a unreliable statement with no proof, but I really don't care. The winter isn't going to come to an end because God says so. My parents died because it was God's plan for them to die. Not for the better, but for the worse. I have a theory myself, but it's just as childish as yours. Prospect Creek is hell. That's all.”
After she reads my response she laughs, “Hell doesn't exist. You speechless dumb fuck. I'm done hanging out with you. You're fucking stupid. I don't know why I thought you were an interesting person. Fuck, you don't exist. Only I exist. It's whatever, though. Fuck you, I guess. Speechless fucking idiot.”
She looks at me for a good thirty seconds, spits on my face and walks her path back home. The spit drips down my chin and I spit on the ground digging my nails into my hands while watching her walk away.
“You look tired”, Allison says. “Do you like my dad? He's a nice guy, huh?”
I dig myself into the sofa watching the Adventure Time cartoon as she draws a picture of me in my notebook. She lights herself a cigarette and I caress a baseball in my left hand thinking of the catcher on my team.
Allison goes on, “People here are falling dead like flies in a jar. You know, I've become to think that more I've been around you knowing that you cannot speak that maybe, just maybe, you're letting people speak for you. What you do is put a mood out and let everyone sink down into it. You're depressed, the atmosphere grows depressing, people speak out in sadness. I've drawn you a few times. The last one didn't have as many dark shades in it. Possibly because we had just finished having sex, so you might have been happier, left a more positive atmosphere and influenced me to draw a more positive drawing. You seem almost dead, makes me feel quite down in the dumps, so, well, I'm going to grab something from my bedroom.”
Her father walks in and sits down on the opposite side of the sofa next to me as Allison walks away. He gives me a long look, lights a cigarette, and changes the channel to a right wing political talk show.
“You're the pitcher that's won all those awards”, he laughs with surprise. “Surprised to see my daughter with a man as special as you. I was never good at baseball but I watch the games on television. In fact, I've seen you play before. You're a better pitcher than the ones I've seen on TV. Why do you care about my daughter? You know she's a slut, right?”
A loud blast rings through the room screeching in my ears and I look over to see Allison's father with his head between his legs leaking blood out of his forehead. Allison sits down back in her seat, taking her fathers cigarette to take a drag off, then looks over at her drawing. She looks at me, blowing smoke out pointing the gun to her neck and says, “When I die the entire universe dies with me. God is dead. It was nice meeting you. Thank you for staying quiet and not raising your voice at me. I love you more than anything.”
Her chair falls back with her body rolling out from it.
I walk into the baseball field eying at Connor in a ball laying on the home base. He's crying softly and the snow has stopped falling. The sun peaks out from the clouds. It's early May. I sit down next to him, place a hand on his shoulder, myself starting to tear up, and he looks up to me to ask, “Has winter come to an end yet?”
Connor sits up and faces me. I pull out a small notepad from my pocket, write down 'yes' on it, hand him the paper, and cry next to him.
A week after Allison and her father were dead Nicholas and Greg overdosed on their first attempt of using heroin. The day school went out part of the school fell down killing four students. Many people have taken their lives and the news read that in their suicide notes they claimed that this was the winter that would never come to an end.
The Sun shows its face to my dead city as Connor and I stand up like zombies that have died a thousand times in this place alone. We passed the overflowing graveyards and places we once called home. Both of us took our separate paths knowing we'd meet at the same college in the same dorm room to survive the aftermath together.
As I come up to my house, where Greg used to live, I count the baseballs in the melting snow out in the front yard. I pick one up, face myself towards the road and throw the ball as hard as I can. Even with my survival I still feel the pain that will be infinite in me. Yet again, I feel the need to scream, but I can't. I face the clouds with my hand covering the sun looking for a movement of content.
My God crumbles in flames in my mind and I move on to a brighter, better day.
OCTOBER
She was still in the stands after my baseball game ended and I remembered everyone being picked up to go home or having already left. I was still in my sweaty gear holding a small notebook with a G2 Pilot 07 ink pen tucked in between my pants and jersey. When I sit down next to her I notice the sky is dead black and the suburban lights have murdered all the stars of their beauty to shine.
“You're a good pitcher”, she said. “Watching your patience, serenity... it's quite obvious why you won the game. I know your name. You don't have to finish moving your left hand to shake mine. Nobody starts a handshake with their left hand. You do realize that, right?”
I open my notebook to a clean page and write down in small letters, 'I don't realize much; forgive me for my young empty head. What is your name?'
The thing is I already know her name somewhere in my young empty head, but I just can't remember it right now. She was at a Nate Young concert standing alone holding her pearly shining purse as noise was penetrating the walls of the room. I had looked at her for a good five minutes during that concert, then one of her girlfriends came up to her, handed her a beer, and said her name along with some conversation that is a blur to me.
“Allison”, she answers. “Why are you still here? You haven't even changed or anything. Don't you guys have to get naked, shower together and butt-fuck or something? That's what jocks do, right?”
She pulls out a pack of Lucky Strikes, lights herself a cigarette and I scribble in my manic mind while pulling my hair as if I'm about to lose my mind. I write down, 'It's called anal sex. You should try it sometime.'
“Doesn't answer my question.”
In sign language I tell her 'too bad'. I throw the notebook out at the empty stands, then rub my cheek looking at her sucking on a death stick. She spits down at my cleats and says, “You should stay the night at my house then. I think I want you to fuck me.”
Allison was afraid of the sun. I noticed this when I woke up in her bed, pulled the blinds up and she screamed like a screeching chalk board at me. Her father used to rape her when she was a child and all she could see while her head was digging into the pillows was the Sun shining down on the bright little planet. She showed me a photo-album of pictures of her family and told me that once her father stopped he treated her like gold and as if nothing ever happened.
We didn't talk anymore after I fucked her. I still saw her at the bus stop and as winter came up she would bring a cinnamon scent coffee with her. Both of us sat down on a bench with frantic sixth graders in-between us babbling about tits and video games.
I expected a day where she would come up and kiss me, pulling my cock out, and we would have sex right in the bus stop, but that never happened. Things stayed the same.
Four months pass. A bus came. She went inside with her head pointed downwards. I looked up. The Sun shined down on me and the rest of this beautiful planet.
And I screamed.
The Pitcher.
My mother throws me to the carpet floor, puts her arms around my neck, then starts choking me while sobbing down on my face. I pull her weak body off of me, stand up, pull one of my baseball bats out from under the sofa, then slam it straight into the television. She stays still, keeps crying and I shatter the glass of the coffee table with the bat, drop it, then leave to go in my bedroom.
We spent an hour arguing after I woke up about what she's going to do when her so-called job stops working. She found it offensive that I'd question her in such a manner and I found it completely rational. She's a disgusting monster that I love and care about for some strange reason. I want her to die the worst possible pain covered in the softest blanket sown by my higher power.
I pull my clothes off and change into my baseball gear. My bedroom has a mattress with a torn up blanket and pillow on it, a stack of clean clothes in one corner, a trash-bag, and hundreds of pieces of torn up paper from notebooks. It's always looked like this in my bedroom. There's cracks in the walls and ceilings around the entire house waiting to pull the it down on itself. When that happens I'd like to be far from the destruction as possible. I'd like to be with Ally again on that day.
Prospect Creek is the coldest city in America and hides in part of Alaska. I was born here and found a good fascination in baseball. It didn't take long for trophies to start filling the closet. Sure, it was a talent and I was making lots of friends with this, but things went wrong at one point when I was young.
At age ten two masked men broke into our house to steal money from us and my Dad was shot in front of me around thirty times. The shooting seemed to never stop and I still have dreams about it to this day, but instead they fire an infinite amount of bullets into him and whatever I do to stop the madness gets me killed in the way. Mom started blaming me for my fathers death when I was twelve.
When I was thirteen I won a trophy for best middle school pitcher in America. At age fourteen my Mom started beating me. Now I'm sixteen and things haven't changed much, except the house getting ready to fall apart and the fact Mom doesn't have a job anymore. I get home from my coach and friends at school, but when I come home there's no food.
Mom sucks dick for food and water. She does this outside in my backyard. I know this because she told me to watch one time so I could be reminded of how horrible I've made her life for not saving Dad. My mom stared at me through the window the entire time while sucking a man off that looked exactly like someone that shot Dad.
I leave my bedroom, push my mom over on her back to see that she's fallen asleep, then walk outside of the house into the snow. The blizzard stopped finally and now the weather is as silent as a music piece by John Cage. Air is so thick in this weather in November that you can cut it with your finger, walk through and feel the heaviness crushing around your body. I reach the bus stop, sit down next to Ally, rub my throat, then hug myself to get some warmth.
“You jocks are crazy”, she says to me. “How can you play in weather like this? I don't get how you guys have made it to the finals for American High School baseball games. Hell, you'll probably win Best High School pitcher again. You think you will?”
She expects me to respond to her somehow. I look at her, then look at her bag, back at her, back at the bag, back at her, and then down to my cleats. Ally pulls out a notebook from her backpack and a pen, hands it to me, and I write, 'I hope that eventually I can make my Dad happy and he'll come back to congratulate me, but that's crazy talk. That's all I feel about the situation.' She reads the paper, I tear it out, crumble it up, and throw it at a freshman walking by. He yells, “What the fuck dude?”
“It'd be easier to talk to you without your stupid...”, she stumbles on words. “Aphasia? Is that what it's called? Has anyone ever called you a speechless dumb fuck before? Sometimes I feel like calling you that.”
Finally the school bus comes. I get on first, sit in the front seat on the left side by the window, keep my head against it the entire time and stare out at the snow waiting for it to melt and the world to light on fire. It's not that I want the world to be on fire, but I want this particular city that I live in to be on fire. I think the Earth would be better off without it. The Earth would most definitely be better off without me.
When the bus stops I get off first, head for the baseball field, my coach turns to look at me and throws a ball towards me. I catch it and fall down into the snow pretending I’m dead, freeze up a bit, stand back up and walk towards him.
“Today I have a good workout for you”, he says. “You don't have to interact with anyone else. All you have to do is stand over by the balance beam I set up for you, pitch about twenty balls off of it, make sure you can keep balance and not fall off. If you fall off you have to grab all the balls and start over. Think you can do it?”
I nod my left fist to say 'yes' to him and walk over to the balance beam that's a little above ground. There's a bag of baseballs beside and I use the one coach handed me to throw back towards him while placing my first foot on. Coach understands the basics of my sign language. The rest of the school knows absolutely nothing and I have to write if I want or choose to speak to them.
My body stands stiff up as I'm holding onto the second ball, get into position, think of where I'm wanting to pitch and throw it still standing on the beam. After I've finished the entire sack I walk back up to coach. He says, “Just shower off in the locker room, change into some clothes, and head into my office. I have some stuff to go over with you.”
Pulling out both hands I pretend my left is a knife at a chopping board with the right, raising it up and down to tell him 'alright'. I head inside of the school building, go inside the quiet locker room, find my locker, strip myself down, throw my gear into the locker, then go into the showers alone. The water is warm and feels good running down the scars of my legs, thighs, upper arms, and wrist.
Once I've finished washing my dick and ass I turn off the shower, clean off with a towel left in the clean pile, toss it on the floor, grab some clean clothes hanging inside my locker, and slowly put them on while inspecting the scars on my body. All of these were once self inflicted.
I head to my coaches office, sit in the empty chair next to his desk, wait for him to enter and study the room. There's a large case full of trophies, pictures on the wall of his wife and kids, and his amazing degrees. My question to him would be why he decided to have a career in this frozen shit hole.
After a while of waiting he enters, sits down across from me, stares at my face with a dead expression and asks, “Why didn't you go to the support group yesterday?”
My head goes down and I look at my converse's digging into green carpet. He's talking about the support group the school set up for suicidal teenagers that happens during second period class every school day. I didn't want to go because I had nothing to say. Truthfully, I never have anything to say. The reason why is probably because I literally don't have the ability to speak out in the first place.
“You do want help, right”, he questions. “You can't expect to get anything out of sitting around barely passing classes, smoking pot, and going home to let your mom do whatever she does with you. It's time you take some responsibility with your life. I mean, fuck, you're almost an adult.”
Silence. I rub the scars on my wrist and think about picking at them until I can dig far enough that I start bleeding. He's right about what he says, but everything he says makes me just want to smoke pot, go home, sleep, and get beaten some more. I think about how I could kill myself in this room right now. I'd blame my suicide on the people that never read my favorite book simply because it was a manga. Those people would kill themselves over my suicide note and this entire town would make a gigantic suicide pact. With that I'd feel complete with my life.
I look up at him, grab one of his fancy philosophy books, open up the first page, grab a pin off his desk and write, “I'll go today if you leave me alone.”
He reads it, holds onto his book against his chest, and sinks into his chair still staring at me. I think he's started to hate me now even though he feels sympathy for what I go through. Why was he at my fathers funeral again? My mother must have invited him. He shouldn't have been there. I'd rather him never know a thing about me and just think of me as some stupid psycho baby. Why didn't he throw me off the baseball team after the first suicide attempt I made?
The councilors office is quite small and minimalistic. Inside is a circle of five chairs. I'm sitting in one of them, surrounded by girls and an older women. Apparently I'm the only suicidal male teenager in this school. Well, at least the only one that's attempted suicide and gone to a hospital.
“My life is falling apart”, Vivian says sitting next to me. “Every day I'm shoveling the snow out of the front yard so I can drive to school. When I get here I want to immediately drive home. I know there's only another half of the school year until I graduate, but I'm ready to give up. Nobody talks to me here and everyone stares at me like I'm some fucking freak. I'm ugly and fat. When I die I'll probably die a virgin without even being kissed one single time. Nobody loves me, certainly not my parents. I guess that's all I have to say today.”
Councilor pats her arm and says quietly, “Thanks for sharing, Vivian. Collin, would you like to share?”
She actually expects me to share for once. I move my right hand pass my left hand to say 'pass', then look over to Summer. She's a feminist bitch and sometimes even likes to talk to shit about me just because she knows she can get the free pass to do so. Summer is sobbing and whimpers, “I can't get his dick out of my head. He had no remorse and just kept raping me no matter how loud I screamed for him to stop. I know there were many other people at the party inside that house but nobody did anyone. All the men at this school give me dirty looks like they want to fuck me and girls whisper 'slut' and 'cunt' in the hallways when I walk by. The truth is all men are fucking monsters. All of them have thought about raping a woman at least once.”
The room goes completely quiet and her sobs echo through like a thunderstorm. Summer looks at me with an angry face as if I have done something wrong and I look back at her confused, somewhat spooked, and keep my head back down at my shoes.”
“Even Collin is a pervert”, she speaks up. “He's probably trying to hide his erection in this room right now knowing that he's the only guy in here. I mean, I know you're a sweet guy with lots of problems, but I can't think of you as completely a nice person. He has a penis, which is a weapon. What do I have if he decided to attack me right now? I'd be useless.”
Councilor taps her knee and responds, “Collin would never hurt you and if there's any man in this school that respects you it's him. Not all men are like the man that hurt you.”
“Bullshit”, she screams. “The man that raped me was on his baseball team! Collin was friends with him. They probably joked about me all the time!”
I stand up, grab my chair, and throw it at the door. The legs of it break into four. I walk over, grab one of the metal legs and bash my head in with it as hard as I can. The councilor runs over to me grabbing it from my hand, throwing it on the ground, and I fall down on the broken chair smiling at Summer as blood starts running down my nose to my chin. I strike the palm of my left hand twice to tell the councilor to hand me paper and she does. Vivian walks over to me handing me a pen, wipes some blood off my face with her hand, then sits back down. I write down what I want to say and hand it to the Councilor.
She reads it aloud, “Summer, you're right about me having a penis. I'm a man and do get urges to look at women, but I never think of taking advantage of anyone. If anything, I'd rather someone die than be taken advantage of. For example, I'd like to be killed instead of being beaten by my mother. I'd like you, Summer, to come over here, castrate me right now to show you how little I care about your reproductive system, then let me die so I never have to deal with my mother again. You think you're the only one to deal with PTSD? Do you not remember my father being shot in front of me or the fact I'm abused daily? I deal with more shit on my plate that anyone in this school. Have you seen the cuts on my body? You haven't. I don't speak because I will be judged. Now I speak and wait to be judged. This is what you want. All I want is to go to bed, pitch, and smoke pot.”
“Lord, kill the pain”, Greg sings. “Don't want to ask you again. Kill my neighbors and all my family too. They doubt my direction.”
Greg's headphones are blasting so loud that I can hear them and I worry about his hearing for a few seconds, then finish the bowl that I started. Once I've finished smoking I hand it back to him and pull a mop out from the tiny room we're in. We're hiding inside of a Janitors closet in the high school to smoke pot like we do just about every day.
He holds a mop as if it's a guitar and pretends to strum it while singing the lyrics to one of his favorite bands, Red House Painters, while I pull at a loose string on my shirt. The end of the mop hangs down like one of my teachers hair. I lay my head down on the floor, slap Greg on the leg, then use my hands to tell him to 'roll a blunt'.
“Not in here”, he coughs. “Smells dank as fuck in here already.”
We go back to zoning out in our own worlds in the Janitors closet as I think of smoking more pot. I listen to the lo-fi fuzzing coming out from his ear-buds and attempt to nod my head along to the music. Greg notices, hands the right headphone to me and I take it from him to listen along.
On my way to lunch my councilor stopped me in the hallway while I was holding a brown bag of shitty snacks. She says, “I have something special for you. Follow me.”
I look around the hallways as students are walking like ants to the lunchroom and feel like I'm a parasite to them walking the opposite way to follow the councilor. She leads me to wear the athletics rooms are and opens up the mens locker room. Inside is my entire baseball team, my coach, and a single girl. It's Allison; the girl I sit by near the bus stop. She's hiding behind a few of the guys. My coach walks over to me, hands me a fancy trophy, and puts one hand on my shoulder.
“You won it again”, he says. “Best high school pitcher of the year. Congratulations. I've brought your entire team here and found your best friend to eat some cake with us. Are you proud of yourself?”
Nodding my head with a smile I try to focus my eyes on Allison. I think of how they would think she would be my best friend. It doesn't make any sense at all.
A cake is brought out. It's cut up. Pieces are shared. I'm holding a plate and staring at the cake sitting on a bench next to Allison. She finishes her piece and takes mine to eat. Team mates come over to give me a handshake and congratulate me. A trophy sits next to me. It's golden and has a pitcher ready to throw a ball. I start picking at a scab I've found on my leg.
Everyone is having a fucking blast except me. I've worked hard for a trophy that sits in my closet. I thought that after I won this one my Dad would come from his grave and tell me he's proud of me or I can go home not having to expect my mother to be the mess she is. I know she'll probably hit me when I get home. Dad is still dead. This is just another trophy.
She places her hand over one of mine and asks, “Why did you stop talking to me after we fucked? You know, I talk to your councilor too, because I have problems of my own. I told her we're best friends and was excited for you when I heard you won this award again. The surprise party was my thought, believe it or not. Why is your neck all bruised up?”
'Choked' I say with my hands. I forget that she doesn't know sign language and she just stares at my hands as if mouths would open up through them and tell her what I'm trying to say. She keeps her head down, I walk away from her, grab another slice of cake, and eat this one, but put all the icing off on the side.
My coach asks me, “Are you enjoying your party?”
I nod my head. He walks away. People slowly start to leave the room. My councilor waves her hand good bye. Coach has left. A few of my team mates are chatting around scrapes left of the cake. Once they leave I sit back down next to Allison. She's holding a marker in her hands.
“Can you write what happened down on my arm”, she asks. “I'll wash it off after you do so.”
“You think I give a shit about your special new trophy?”
Mom slaps me across the face while I'm sitting on the sofa watching the static on television. She sits back down next to me, keeps changing through the static channels, then whispers, “I like this one the best. Listen to the hiss right there. Just think about what your Dad would say if he were here to look at you. He'd smell the pot on your clothes and beat you like the piece of shit you are.”
I take the words harder than the slap to the face, but stay still and realize that this is a new television. The one we had this morning I smashed with a baseball bat. She must of sucked some major dick today to get that box.
“Why did you stop cutting yourself”, she asks. “Things seem to get better for you emotionally when you do that. I think you should slit your wrists tonight. Don't kill yourself though. I do have some love for you, but not that much. It's always slipping away every day. I mean, you did kill my husband, you piece of shit. Don't you think you deserve punishment? Why do you feel bad for me hurting you? Just fucking take it. You fucking pathetic pussy.”
A new crack on the ceiling is forming. I'm waiting for it to rip open and a pile of snow from the roof to fall down on the floor. It doesn't happen. This storm will freeze up the babies and lost dogs, but it won't kill the demons that live inside of these houses. My winters have no remorse for the hurt and feed off the ones who make their pain self inflicted.
I walk out of the living room, go to the restroom, open up a cabinet, and pull a new razor blade out of a package. The blade shines at me as if it's happy to see me again. I drag it across my wrists about ten times, throw the blade in the sink, walk back into the living room and sit down next to my mom. My wrist is bleeding onto the sofa and with that my mother leans her head against my shoulder smiling. She says, “You're being the good son now. I love you.”
Every ball that comes straight towards me I hit with all of my rage. I spit my gum out and keep hitting pretending it's the faces of the people that killed my father. For every bullet they fired would be a smack to their skull with my bat.
My team mate stops throwing, throws off his gloves and yells, “Fuck, it's cold!”
“No shit”, someone says back to him. “What's going on with Collin? He's hitting those balls pretty damn far. I swear he's the best player I've seen when it comes to everything. I'm fuckin' jealous. Collin! What drugs are you taking?”
I drop my baseball bat, head to the locker room, throw my clothes off, shower, change, then grab my towel and walk into a bathroom stall. Once I've listened to the silence well enough to know that nobody is in the room I put the towel to my mouth and scream as loud as I can into it.
The new cuts on my wrists are starting to scab and one of the cuts is already opening back up. I let it do so and don't give a shit. To show how little of a shit I give I rub the blood off from my wrist on my face. I walk out of the stall, stare at myself in the mirror with a grin, then walk around the empty hallways of the school looking for Greg.
What I need to do is smoke more pot.
I find an empty classroom, walk straight into it and sit down. Someone comes inside holding a laptop and says, “You looking for Greg?”
Nodding my head my friend Nicholas sits down next to me pulling open his computer to show me pictures of fat ladies with huge boobs. He scrolls through the pictures while I wait for him to tell me where Greg is. There's no paper around for me to write down anything to Nicholas and remind him what I need.
“Greg is trying to find me”, he says. “We're supposed to smoke up. You joining us, I'm guessing?”
Nicholas, Greg and I are all packed in the claustrophobic janitor's closet handing a blunt around. I hold in my hit for as long as possible while Greg puts his headphones in my ears, then I blow the smoke out at Nicholas. He's giving me more slowcore to listen to; this time it's the band called Codeine.
I sit in the corner of the closet while Nicholas stares at his laptop. On the computer two tattooed chicks in purple hair are eating each other out. While watching this I think of Allison. I think of what I look like, stare at my hands, then picture myself. Five foot six, long black hair, cuts on my body, smell like pot, look like a sleepy slob, and the cheeks of a dead fat frog.
“When the winter ends”, Greg says. “It'll still be snowing and still be cold as the bottom of hell. When the winter ends I'll still be smoking weed with you guys. I wonder if I'll still be alive by that time. The three of us live in our own hells. I can tell Collin is fighting through his hell by the new cuts on his wrists. When the winter ends I hope my friends can get a better chance to live.”
Nicholas hands me the roach and responds, “When the winter ends we'll all be dead or still be fucking up.”
Allison holds my hand as she follows me to the route of my house. She says, “What was your father like?”
She always expects a response from me. In fact, everyone does, but I don't say a thing. Even if I could I wouldn't. People ask the wrong things to me as if I'm willing to tell them everything.
We reach her street and I let her go without a word. She gives me a final look before walking towards her house. I continue my walk towards my house freezing in the cold. My cuts have scabbed up and turned purple now. When your cutting all the time it makes your body temperature feel much higher than normal, so walking through the cold right now isn't a bother.
I reach my house, stare at it, and study the fact that the front part of my house has fallen down on itself and piles of white snow are covering where the living room should be. For a second I feel like it must be a joke, but after a few blinks I realize that it has actually happened. I walk on top of the front door, upon piles of snow, then find myself in the hallway. My moms arm is sticking out of a pile of snow that's covering the sofa. Her arm is almost a purplish black.
She's obviously dead. Both of my parents are dead now. With the thought in mind I head into my bedroom, grab a pillow sheet, and throw all the trophy's from inside the closet in it. Once I’ve finished I throw the pillow case over my shoulder, walk back to school and find myself in the baseball field. I sit down in the pitchers mound, surround myself with all of the trophy's, look at them and cry.
This is the winter that will never end.
“You look like shit”, Allison says puffing on a cigar. “I'm sorry about your friend.”
I open up to the next clean page of my notebook, write down 'which one' then hand it to her. She studies, writes a response back and hands it to me. Her response reads 'the pervert'.
The snow is picking up its pace again and there will probably be a blizzard in the next few days. It's been two weeks sense my mothers funeral, which resulted into me moving into my friend Greg's house where I reside to smoke pot and sit in a pitch black room.
Summer is dead. She killed her rapist, one of my team mates, then killed herself three days ago. Apparently she used a shotgun to blow his face off before blowing her own head off her neck. Both of the funerals had closed caskets. They were buried in separate funerals. Dried up human feces have been rotting on Summers grave. My team mate has dead frozen flowers.
Allison uses my notebook to start drawing a picture for me of a naked girl with a missing head. She hands it back to me and says, “This is what I imagined Summer to look like when she died. I think she was pretty hot so I had to draw her naked and give her larger breasts. Would you have fucked her?”
“No”, I respond moving my hands. “You're sick.”
Then again, who isn't sick in this city? Everyone is dying here. My mother was able to be buried need to Dad. Two people from my school brutally died. Last night on the news a private jet crashed down close to where the school is. Everyone inside died burning alive with parts of their limbs dismembered. There was some large happy family inside that jet. Seems like they found the perfect place to die together.
Greg eats the roach out of fear that someone is about to open the janitors closet, but Nicholas reassures him that nothing is going to happen. Nothing happens. I flip back through my journal to the picture that Allison drew and start adding my own drawings to the artwork. Nicholas lights up a black cigar that smells like a coffee, offers it to me and I pass. I give Summer some angel wings and a skateboard where her feet.
“What are you going to do if you win”, Greg asks me. “Are you going to do anything special with your team mates? I'm pretty sure you'll win your last game. You know that Allison chick that you hang out with? I think you should fuck her if you haven't already. Fuck, I know I would. If I don't get any action soon in this cold shit storm I'll end up killing myself.
Nicholas responds, “You can't kill yourself or else I'd kill myself. I'm pretty sure Collin would end up killing himself too. Plus, that lady from our school just killed someone and herself. Don't you think that's a bit over kill for the time being? Enough people have died recently. What you need to do is smoke more weed and chill the fuck out, man.”
“Yeah. I'll do that.”
“Good.”
“Mmmhmm.”
Summer is still missing her head. I draw my mothers face on her body, crumble up the paper, and toss it at Greg. He tosses it at Nicholas. Nicholas blows his smoke out at my face and says, “Dude... not cool.”
I sit alone in the back of the bus staring out of the window as the weather keeps changing. Connor, the pitcher of our team, is blasting technical death metal out of his stereo while talking to the Coach about penguins. My notebook is halfway full of two word responses and drawings that Allison did for me. She drew me a picture of herself spreading her cunt on a page for me saying that it'd help me keep my mind on her when I'm alone.
Allison is becoming a cancer under my tongue. I don't know what she see's in me or why she keeps talking to me. For a second I hope that she isn't in Prospect Creek when I come back, then I regret it. After regretting the thought I think about the different perspectives that idea can come from. She could run away from home and live a good life. Running away in the cold means she'd probably die of frostbite or some bullshit like that. No, there's no good options – fucked no matter what move you make.
Coach told me before we got on the bus that if I win this game then I'll probably get a few more scholarships. If I win the game I can find a college far away from home and finally be free of my hell. Chances are I'll lose. A thought comes to mind that I should attempt to lose the game just so I can make my life worse because that's probably what I deserve.
No.
My mothers thoughts and demands are still carved into my brain.
Connor walks over, sits down across from me and says, “I'm sorry about your mother dying. It took me a while to accept my moms death. I don't know if you know this, but she was a construction worker. One day she went to work drunk and ended up falling asleep on this machine. The machine had wrapped her in plastic, suffocated her, then dropped her into a pile of other plastic things.”
Fuckin' Moses. Everyone knows that a pitcher and catcher are meant to have the closest friendship on a baseball team, but I've failed to be there for this guy. I've never heard of such a shit way to go out.
“You know my brother died last year”, he continues. “He was a schizophrenic and thought that if he chopped off his left leg that a demon would stop biting his leg. Well, he was only able to hack off half of it before bleeding to death. Fuckin' a. I miss him more than anything. He was only twelve years old. I remember when I was twelve years old. Remember Mr. Ramsey? That Spanish teacher that got fired? Well, he had this thing for me and one day after class he took advantage of me. This went on for about a month. After I was able to get the guts to tell someone his entire life went straight down the drain. His wife divorced him, daughter killed herself, then he had a prison sentence for forty years. On my thirteenth birthday someone had cut his throat while he was in prison. Crazy shit. He had it coming, though. Only thing I regret is not being the person that was able to cut his throat. Did you know when I was six years old I was kidnapped? Well, you know those public speakers when we were kids that would say never go up to a car with a man in it staring at you? I did that. Fuck, I saw this creepy dude in his purple vehicle, I walked up to him, he said he had tons of candy he could give me if I went on a short drive with him. Next thing I know I'm in the trunk of his car and then I'm in his basement with a gag ball in my mouth. I have barely any memories of what happened, but I was missing for two months before they found him. When they did he tried to shoot a cop and they shot him in front of me a few times. I remember when you told me about what happened to your father and I just wanted to say that I'm here for you, bro. All you have to do is ask if you need anything.”
He gives me a long hug and walks back to where he was sitting. I stare straight into the fabric of my seats for the entire drive in complete shock while sweating. When I look out the window I see the Sun shining. It's something I haven't seen in a while. I stare at the Sun for a few seconds until it starts to hurt, then turn my head back, grab my bag, and get off the bus.
“Oh fuck”, Allison moans. “Fuck, you sure I'm the only girl you've fucked?”
I nod my head. She drifts back into the pillows of her bed lighting a cigarette, then rubs my back. My mind is foggy and I think about Connor; hoping that he's proud that we won the tournament. Allison asks, “Did you think about me while you were gone in the sunshine?”
My notebook is missing and I can't respond to her, so I just draw out letters on her leg slowly to tell her my answer. She smiles, sucks on the cigarette and holds onto my hand. It's warm and gives me anxiety.
While I was gone for three days some old fucking maniac blew up a supermarket at night in our precious city. He killed twenty four people inside and injured ten. A new grocery store opens up tomorrow with a new manager and new hired workers. Sometime this week there's going to be a service at the football field at our school where candles are lit in honor of the dead and their families.
There's a feeling in my stomach that I shouldn't be here with Allison anymore. I'm having sex with a lady that could kill herself at any second. She's the definition of tragedy. This is the bed her father fucked her in when she was young. It makes me feel disgusted to be inside of it with her. I almost feel like crying, but instead find myself hiding underneath her bedsheets with my head against her belly.
“Do you know if this winter will come to an end”, she asks me. “I think a blizzard is supposed to come in tomorrow morning. Do you want anything to eat? Like some.... fuckin, soup? Something healthy? I have food if you're hungry.”
I keep resting against her belly with my eyes closed trying to block out all the words she says. With this living feeling and atmosphere in mind I think of suicide.
Greg has this never ending supply of weed coming from nowhere. I don't know where he gets it or how he gets it. Every time I ask him he just tells me to smoke more and forget I asked the question. He comes into my bedroom with a doughnut and asks me, “Do you want this? Some girl at the new super market let me have it for free and I was thinking about you.”
The doughnut is blue and has pink sprinkles on it. I ponder if I want to really eat it and decide to take it from his hand. After the first bite I already start to feel sick, so I hand it back to him and put two fingers in an X as to say no.
“Damn”, he says. “I thought it looked like a good doughnut. Too bad you didn't like it. I'll finish it off for you.”
He shoves the entire doughnut in his mouth, pulls out a small bag of pot and throws it to me. I open the bag halfway, smell it, then slap it against my knee. Greg looks at me as if I'm a zombie and says, “I think I should get going. Some middle school kids called me up for pot and I'm going to charge them extra because they're stupid and won't know the difference.”
I smile back at him as he shuts the door and everything goes pitch black. In the darkness I reach under the bed, grab a baseball, and leave the bedroom. The hallways are clear heavenly white as I walk through them and I venture out the front of the house staring out at piles of snow. I look at the ball, thinking about tossing it as hard and as fast as I can, but decide to just drop it by my foot. The ball thumps down halfway into the snow and sits in the yard next to a dozen other baseballs. I pull my foot up, look down at it, and stomp my foot over the ball deep into the snow in anger.
Today after school a bunch of people from the city gathered at the football field. Everyone sat down at the stands holding unlit candles. A man stood in the middle of the stadium trying to figure out why his microphone wasn't worked and people put their hands around their ears as screeching sounds from the sound systems rambled through the crowd.
Allison tells me while we're sitting by the bus stop that in the past month two hundred people have died in our city. She says she's going to write a book about a town where people live not knowing when they're about to die, but are aware it can happen at any second. I look around the other kids at the bus stop expecting someone to immediately drop dead. Maybe I'm the next one to die.
“You don't think I exist”, she says. “I have this very long idea of you that I want to paint out before the bus comes. Due to this language disorder of yours you take advantage of it and choose to use as little ability to reply to others as much as possible. You're avoiding people and you let people speak for you. I'm speaking for you right now, right? I bet that as you're listening to me right now you're pondering if I even exist. Am I right? Of course I'm right. Even if I was wrong I'd be right because I already know I don't exist. Believe it or not I'm too complex, confusing and unbelievable of a human being to possibly exist in this World. I am fucking fiction. Maybe you are too. I don't know. I'd ask you what do you think but you'd probably look down at your shoes and say nothing. If you don't believe in me then it makes me question what do you believe in. Do you believe in a higher power? I'll let you write out your answer and it has to be more than two letters or else I'll kill you. I'm sick of you fucking around with me.”
I take the notebook out she hands to me, pull a pen out of my pocket and write, 'Yes, I believe in a God. This city we live in is too unrealistic and spontaneous to make sense or exist, so I think that a God exists and has a thing for torturing his failed creation. It's a unreliable statement with no proof, but I really don't care. The winter isn't going to come to an end because God says so. My parents died because it was God's plan for them to die. Not for the better, but for the worse. I have a theory myself, but it's just as childish as yours. Prospect Creek is hell. That's all.”
After she reads my response she laughs, “Hell doesn't exist. You speechless dumb fuck. I'm done hanging out with you. You're fucking stupid. I don't know why I thought you were an interesting person. Fuck, you don't exist. Only I exist. It's whatever, though. Fuck you, I guess. Speechless fucking idiot.”
She looks at me for a good thirty seconds, spits on my face and walks her path back home. The spit drips down my chin and I spit on the ground digging my nails into my hands while watching her walk away.
“You look tired”, Allison says. “Do you like my dad? He's a nice guy, huh?”
I dig myself into the sofa watching the Adventure Time cartoon as she draws a picture of me in my notebook. She lights herself a cigarette and I caress a baseball in my left hand thinking of the catcher on my team.
Allison goes on, “People here are falling dead like flies in a jar. You know, I've become to think that more I've been around you knowing that you cannot speak that maybe, just maybe, you're letting people speak for you. What you do is put a mood out and let everyone sink down into it. You're depressed, the atmosphere grows depressing, people speak out in sadness. I've drawn you a few times. The last one didn't have as many dark shades in it. Possibly because we had just finished having sex, so you might have been happier, left a more positive atmosphere and influenced me to draw a more positive drawing. You seem almost dead, makes me feel quite down in the dumps, so, well, I'm going to grab something from my bedroom.”
Her father walks in and sits down on the opposite side of the sofa next to me as Allison walks away. He gives me a long look, lights a cigarette, and changes the channel to a right wing political talk show.
“You're the pitcher that's won all those awards”, he laughs with surprise. “Surprised to see my daughter with a man as special as you. I was never good at baseball but I watch the games on television. In fact, I've seen you play before. You're a better pitcher than the ones I've seen on TV. Why do you care about my daughter? You know she's a slut, right?”
A loud blast rings through the room screeching in my ears and I look over to see Allison's father with his head between his legs leaking blood out of his forehead. Allison sits down back in her seat, taking her fathers cigarette to take a drag off, then looks over at her drawing. She looks at me, blowing smoke out pointing the gun to her neck and says, “When I die the entire universe dies with me. God is dead. It was nice meeting you. Thank you for staying quiet and not raising your voice at me. I love you more than anything.”
Her chair falls back with her body rolling out from it.
I walk into the baseball field eying at Connor in a ball laying on the home base. He's crying softly and the snow has stopped falling. The sun peaks out from the clouds. It's early May. I sit down next to him, place a hand on his shoulder, myself starting to tear up, and he looks up to me to ask, “Has winter come to an end yet?”
Connor sits up and faces me. I pull out a small notepad from my pocket, write down 'yes' on it, hand him the paper, and cry next to him.
A week after Allison and her father were dead Nicholas and Greg overdosed on their first attempt of using heroin. The day school went out part of the school fell down killing four students. Many people have taken their lives and the news read that in their suicide notes they claimed that this was the winter that would never come to an end.
The Sun shows its face to my dead city as Connor and I stand up like zombies that have died a thousand times in this place alone. We passed the overflowing graveyards and places we once called home. Both of us took our separate paths knowing we'd meet at the same college in the same dorm room to survive the aftermath together.
As I come up to my house, where Greg used to live, I count the baseballs in the melting snow out in the front yard. I pick one up, face myself towards the road and throw the ball as hard as I can. Even with my survival I still feel the pain that will be infinite in me. Yet again, I feel the need to scream, but I can't. I face the clouds with my hand covering the sun looking for a movement of content.
My God crumbles in flames in my mind and I move on to a brighter, better day.