The Solution

I'm always a novelty at parties. Whenever I get invited somewhere, I know it's just so that whoever invited me can tote me around all night and be proud to say, "Remember the kid from that murder trial a few years back? This is him." They revel in the look of disbelief and amazement. Then the questions come. It will start out with a few people at first and then most of the room is crowded around me. The answers come as methodically as possible. There's no passion or real emotion behind them. I've been asked dozens of times before by people surprisingly less intimidating than these gore hounds and parasites.

The questions are always the same. "What did it feel like when you saw the whole thing unfolding?" (Like it was just a movie.) "Was there a lot of blood?" (More than you'll probably ever see in your life.) "How long were you locked in the closet before the police came?" (Approximately four hours, twenty three minutes, and seventeen seconds too long.) "Is it true that he raped her before AND after?" (Yes.) "Why didn't he hurt you?" (I don't know. I really don't.) "Does it still bother you?" (You get a little desensitized the forty millionth time you have to tell the story.) "What was it like when you had to testify?" (No different than this.) "Why didn't he kill himself?" (He said he was sorry over and over again.) "What was he like when you were a kid?" (Surprisingly decent.) "Did he ever touch you?" (The man never even hugged me, let alone molested me.)

They may not always be worded the same but at the root they are. The answers may not be worded the same but they always mean the same thing. At the beginning of it all, I used to ham it up. I was small-town famous because my father had raped my mother, stabbed her seventy-three times, slit her throat, and raped her again while I had been locked in the closet watching. The first few times I heard their questions it was hard. Then I learned to go with it. The more detail I gave, the more they loved it. The more people I had eating out of the palm of my hand. As time went on, their questions started to bore me and the more acerbic I got. I just became an asshole while I answered their questions. I found that wore pretty thin and I didn't get invited around as much. There was even a rumor circulating that I was going to snap the way my dad did. I think people bought into it for a while and some still do.

The nights I got invited out became fewer and fewer considering that most everyone had heard the story twice and then some, embellishing when they would relay it to their own friends. After the novelty wore off for them, I sank into the obscurity that I so longed for, only vaguely aware when I would go to work or out to eat or buy groceries that people were whispering about that wayward Anderson boy who had all that trouble. The less polite ones might say 'that weird kid whose dad fucked his ma after he kilt her'.

I wasn't expecting it when it happened. Skeeter Flintz walked up to me in his ever-twitchy way at the grocery store in the produce department, wiping at his hook nose and looking around before leaning in to talk to me.

"Tammy Peters is having a party on Saturday. Do you wanna come? It's gonna be fuckin' wicked, man."

"I don't know. Parties are all the same. Someone gets wasted, pukes on the host's carpet, and a fistfight breaks out while some cheerleader is getting date-raped by Johnny Cumsalot on the host's bed."

My not really false explanation of the party situation made Skeeter laugh. His laughs were always what several people had called 'pretty trippy, man'. He laughed like a hyena on crack, his voice ascending at least two octaves. "Don't be that way, man! Come on. It's going to be tight. Tammy made Brock go all the way to Davidson county just to stockpile. Fuckin' dry counties..."

"Saturday?" I considered quietly. "I'll be there around ten. I have to close at work."

"Lucky for you the town rolls up at five-thirty, huh?" He asked, laughing his disturbed little laugh afterward before clapping me on the shoulder and shuffling in the other direction. I flinched a little at the touch mostly because I didn't know where his hand had been.

After that I bided my time. I did my usual routine. Woke up, went to work, came home, read Bukowski until bed. Saturday night I went the extra mile and brainstormed possible responses to questions that I might get asked, placing them all on cuecards. I made up about thirty of them, all hand written meticulously neatly. I put them into my jacket pocket that night before I walked out the door, taking the time to grab the switchblade I never left with. The few times I'd pulled it out in front of someone to cut something, they'd asked if it was the same one my dad had killed my mom with. I'd included that in on the cards too, just in case.

When I got to the party, it was 9PM. I thought that the festivities would be starting a little later for some reason, but the house was already jam packed full of society's malcontents. I should have been at home there. The front door of the two-story yellow average suburban house had been jammed open with a door and I could hear the sweet strains of Rock You Like a Hurricane blasting out. As I stepped in, I was greeted almost immediately by Skeeter who led me through a crowd over to the keg. Cups were consumed in short order. I don't remember how many. Three or four, maybe. At the rear of the house there was some commotion. It was nothing I was paying attention to by then. I just patiently waited for Skeeter to introduce me around.

Finally the introductions came and I handed the cards out. I was happy that I'd made enough of them. Their faces were priceless to me. The kids all wore a similar look of disbelief at first, slowly turning into a mixture of confusion and anger as their eyes skimmed the card.

"The fuck is this?" One of them asked with a Southern twang.

"Skeeter, you said this guy was cool!"  A nasally female voice said.

"I bet I have a question you didn't put on he--" I swung my eyes to the girl who'd said this briefly before there was a loud crash toward the back of the house, and then the sound of footsteps. Suddenly there was a scream from one of the rooms toward the back as two men rushed past me. The third man had a knife and gave me what he would later call in court 'an accidental stabbing'. The first was mostly accidental, I think; I was in his way and his knife was out in a strange position. But once he realized what he'd done, he stabbed me in the lower back a few more times just for good measure. I think he was hoping I'd die so that I wouldn't be able to testify.

The sounds were suddenly becoming muffled and I remember sliding to my knees on the ground as my t-shirt and jacket became wet and warm. The circle of kids that were standing around me now watched with morbid curiosity. Their faces began to blur together more than normal. I could hear voices but they sounded a million miles away. No one was moving to do anything. It was finally Skeeter who took his old TracPhone out and began to dial 9-1-1. The feel of Tammy Peters' lime green shag carpet underneath my fingers might have been the only thing that kept me hanging on for so long. Finally my consciousness slipped away.

When I woke up in the hospital, Skeeter was there, and a few of the girls from the party. I hurt myself laughing in a doped delirium, thinking of what Skeeter would say about the girls: "Dude, this makes you a badass! Of course they wanna fuck you!" The old nurse in the room came over and told me in a stern voice that I needed to lay down and be quiet. I slipped back into my sleepy stupor for another night.

The next morning, Skeeter was still there. Either he'd been a better friend than I'd ever thought or he wanted a first hand account of what it felt like to be stabbed. It was a question I couldn't have previously answered before. Now I could. When he noticed I was awake, he put aside the dog-eared copy of On The Road by Jack Kerouac and leaned over toward the bed.

"Hey, champ. You lost a lot of blood but nothin' much else. They say you're pretty lucky though. A little more blood and you might not have been so fortunate." Skeeter looked worried and suddenly I felt bed for considering that he ever had such ulterior motives. "Is there something you want that I can get for you? I'll go to the grocery store and pick it up. You're mostly on a liquid diet, but maybe you want a book or something."

There was no hesitation in my answer. "Index cards and pens."

"Oh, okay. Sure, no problem. But when I get back, I wanna hear all about it!"

The Killing Moon

Going to the cemetary was something I'd been doing since I was a child. I'd always enjoyed the peaceful solitude I found there. It had earned me a few less than kind nicknames in the town I lived in, occupied by hypocritical zealots that thought wearing black and having an appreciation for death was unnatural. I called it balance.

On that day, something inside of me changed. Something in the sky above my head changed. It was a feeling of excitement and dread all at once. I didn't see anyone else when I stepped over the battered down fence that had encircled the graves ever since before my grandmother was a child. Usually when families were here, I knew it because they would get into the car as fast as they could when they saw me coming and speed off, muttering under their breaths about heathens and the taint that I carried with me. I never understood how black lipstick or eyeliner was tainted.

One minute he wasn't there and the next he was, standing in the moonlight. It had only just rained and the scent of it was still heavy in the air, mingling with his clove cigarette. I'd never seen him before and that was unusual. He looked like someone I'd dreamed about once. He was my dream. His short black hair was spiked liberally. It was one of the first things I could tell about him from behind. I kept walking toward him, inexplicably pulled by a force I would never understand. I was staring unabashedly when he turned to me. It was unexpected when he smiled at me. It was a dazzling smile. One of the nicest I'd seen. It was genuine. Those feelings of excitement and dread I'd had before only intensified when I saw that doomed smile. He looked like he'd known me my whole life and like he'd been waiting for me. I felt like that too.

"Hi." It was his simple greeting, somehow enough to send a shock of shivers down my spine. His voice was deeper than I'd expected. He had dark eyes that bordered on the blackness of his hair, his bangs hanging down near his eyes. His nose was thin and his lips almost too big for his face. He wasn't masculine or feminine. He hung in the balance.

"Hi." It was all I could say back.

"Nice day. Do you think it's going to rain again?"

"Maybe. You're not from around here, are you?"

"That obvious, huh?" He asked. We both had to laugh. The black trenchcoat he wore was uncommon around these parts, let alone the rest of his black ensemble.

"There's only one person around here that looks like you do and that's me. I've never seen you here before, so I assume that you're either luckily passing through or that unluckily you're here to take care of someone in your family... or even more unluckily, you've moved here, in which case I offer my condolences."

"Just passing through." Even though I didn't want someone resigned to the same fate that I had been given, the ache of disappointment spread into my chest. I nodded for a moment and cast my eyes downward, thinking of something to say when he came closer toward me and offered me the half-smoked cigarette right out of his mouth. I took it and took a puff, raising my eyes to him. He stared into mine with a tenacity that I
couldn't at the time put my finger on.

"Lived here all your life, have you?"

"Not in the graveyard, but close. Yes, I've lived in this town my whole life."

"Then I offer my condolences. What is it that you want to do in life?"

I was caught off guard by his question. I hadn't expected to be swapping deep meaningful conversation so early on, but I'd hoped that we eventually would. "That's sort of a loaded question, don't you think? I don't even know your name and you're already asking me what it is I want to do in life. Are you some kind of college recruiter? If you are, I have to give you an A for effort but you're a few years too late for this one, I fear."

He chuckled and shook his head. "No, not a college recruiter. It's just not every day I find someone like you, Jewel."

"How do you know my name? What do you mean, 'someone like me'?" Now I was on edge. He was close enough to press his nose against mine.

"When I went to the gas station, the towns people were all too eager to tell me about how there was someone else like me. They gave me your address and everything."

"Fucking typical..." I muttered underneath my breath. "You didn't answer my question."

"Hmm, someone like you. I suppose it was a broad statement. Sorry."

"You're a little infuriating."

"And yet you're not walking away."

A silence fell over the two of us as he stared into my eyes. He smelled like cloves and chai and something boyish that I couldn't put my finger on. He reached out to brush my hair away from my face, tucking it behind my ear. I didn't pull away, but my breath caught in my throat. For a moment I was frozen. I threw the clove down without ever having taken a puff, putting it out underneath my boot.

"You don't deserve to live and die somewhere this... tragic." He smiled again and I felt my legs moving backward. I was pinned then against a large statue of an angel with him pressing against me. I could feel his hand moving down to take mine.

"What do I deserve then?" I asked him with wide eyes, my heart beating wildly. I knew my breathing was getting erratic even though I was trying to be as calm as I could. My veneer was cracking bit by bit with him staring at me. I could tell he was enjoying making me so uncomfortable. Not that uncomfortable was an accurate word for it either.

"This." He murmured, leaning in to kiss me. His lips were soft but cold. His breath against my face felt like the caress of winter wind. His arms cradled me from behind as I lost the feeling in my knees. I started to get light-headed as my breathing came slower and slower. I opened my eyes to see that full moon reflected in his own, staring at me as intently as he had as he broke away and propped me up against the angel statue.

His eyes were the last thing I saw then as he crouched in front of me and reached into his trench coat pocket. From it he pulled a red rose and placed it in my hand, kissing my forehead one last time before he leaned back, the moon shining down into those inky black eyes and the abyss within.

Rat Poison

It had been two months since Lily walked out on me. I was too ashamed to admit that I was going to spend another night crying my eyes out and watching Friends episodes when Quince called me.

"We're all going down to the bar. You have to come. That crazy Russian fuck is going to be there."

"Who, Dimitri? Really?" I had to think about it. Was Dimitri worth breaking my solemn vow not to have any fun for? After careful deliberation on the subject I hung up the phone with no ceremony at all and pulled on a pair of jeans and a red hoodie.

At that point I had no stake in life so I had no qualms about walking to a bar at 10pm in the less than reputable downtown area. I was a skinny white kid with a mop of brown curly hair who had never once taken a karate lesson much less landed a punch on anyone and yet I was completely unconcerned with being randomly shanked by angry gangbangers for the measly twenty dollars I had in my ironic Bad Motherfucker wallet and my out of date iPod. Luckily for me this isn't one of those narratives where it's told from beyond the grave.

MacMurphy's was somewhere that my friends and I had been coming since college. It was cheap, it was gross, and it was a source of mischief in our lives that we were always hard pressed to turn a blind eye to. As I walked in, I was greeted by the familiar sight of Quince and Tom sitting near the back. I knew right where to look for them. As promised, Dimitri was there. Judging from the flush color of his cheeks, it seemed like he'd had a leg up on the others as far as how many beers he'd had that night.

As a precaution I glanced around the bar. I was clinging to some junior high hope that Lily might be there with one of her girlfriends and I could forgo the male bonding, instead skipping right ahead to the portion of the evening where I would get my still-beating heart ripped out of my chest and shit on in front of everyone. Figuratively, of course. Then I remembered that she'd never liked the place anyway.

Quince was the first to notice me. He waved me over to the table that we'd normally occupied whenever we could. It was nothing special; just another table that had been utilized past it's prime, covered in beer, sweat, and other assorted bodily fluids. I took a seat next to Tom across from Quince and Dimitri, trying to smile casually.

"Wipe that fuckin' pathetic look off your face. I saw you over there. You were thinking about her, weren't you?" Quince asked.

"No. I was thinking about what your mom's pussy would look like after I finished eating a Twinkie out of it."

There was a peel of laughter from the group, Quince shaking his head at me as he wiped the half-psychotic grin off of his face. "Fuck you, asshole. I could just tell you that myself I wanted." There's a pause as he leaned in, squarely looking me in the eyes. "I thought I told you, man. That girl was a fuckin' whore. You know, you just know she was fucking around. Girl like that doesn't leave a guy like you unless there's some dick on the side, boy."

A guy like me. Boring, over-sensitive, too analytical, and too sentimental. I knew he what he meant. If I hadn't known the prick since grade school I might have been offended. But he was right. He always would be. "Jesus. Lay off the guy," Tom said quietly. "They were engaged for two years." I couldn't help but notice that Dimitri had been unusually quiet since I got there, yet he was smiling at me like a wolf. His handlebar mustache only added to this mental caricature of him.

"Engage means jack shit fuck all. You find a woman who cook you egg and bacon while same time let you fuck her from behind? You find gold." Dimitri's English was shaky at best, his accent still thick even after fifteen years in America.

Quince and Tom laughed at him while Quince shook a finger at Tom and I. "See? That. That right there. This man knows what he's fuckin' talkin' about."

"Jesse boy, we got a story for you tonight. Yes we do. They told me it  cheer you up, da? So I sit here all night, think of a good one for you. You ready?" He asks, his beady black eyes staring at me expectantly as much the others are now. I wave Debra, the same waitress who has been working here since before I was born over, and order a double of whiskey. I can tell I'm going to need it.

"Ready as I'll ever be. Lay it on me."

"This is gonna be good," I heard Quince mutter to no one in particular as he pounded back another beer. Tom seemed to look more doubtful on the subject.

"I date girl once too, Jesse boy. Hair blonde like daffodil, eyes blue, big round titties and little ass. Beautiful. American dream, da? She and I move in together two months. Longest two months my life. I knew she was crazy when I start fucking her. First time she take her shirt off, cuts all over her arms. Cuts everywhere when she takes the rest off. Some still bloody. I say, 'What the fuck's that?' This is what she say: 'Sometime it hurt. I take my mind off by the cuts.' But you can't argue with regular pussy." Dimitri paused and took a long drink from his beer while Quince shook his head. Tom was in a state of some quiet emotion that I would put between vague horror and subtle distaste.

"So I say, okay. Maybe this crazy manageable. Wrongo, bucko. Little things at first, you know. She told me she like to shower with the lights off. Dangerous, but okay. Yeah, whatever, right? Didn't ask about it. Figured safer not to. Then one day I give her money, tell her go buy grocery. Okay. She come home from store. She buy cigarettes, coffee, soda, soup, noodle. All good thing. But then I notice. She buy twenty fucking packs rat poison. I look at her then. I ask about this. 'What you need so much poison for?'"

Then we're all silent and drawn in. It was one of the chief reasons we tried to invite Dimitri to the bar or run into him. He always had the most insane stories. It was hard to believe that the man had collected such a compendium of trash in his lifetime. My whiskey came and I thanked Deb, nodding to her as I pounded back the first shot.

"All she say was that we have rat problem. Probably true. Place was shit hole. But twenty box a little much. We start argue for a bit. She walks out, I keep watch TV. Fine, fuck it, whatever. She come back a little later, smell of fuck. That smell, you know? She smell like pussy and sweat and dick. We fight more that night. Ends up with me getting sloppy seconds off guy I don't know. Not first time." Quince let out a boisterous laugh that made Dimitri smile. There was something in his smile that I didn't like. His eyes were changing too.

"Two week later she come in with pregnancy test. Oh fuck, I'm thinking. She tell me that she think we have problem on our hands. She does test. Positive. Now I really think oh fuck. She start talking about how we get married. But then something else happen. She decide she needs last shebang, da? I tell her fine. Maybe you drown the thing in alcohol. Pickled. Then we don't have paternity test." Dimitri laughed, reaching into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. It was a cheap brand that was going to stink the whole room up even more in two seconds, but no one cared. He put the cigarette into his mouth and light up, taking a few puffs before he continued.

"We go out to some club she pick. I don't know what the fuck. Places like that really piss me, you know? Rap music, flashing light. But my fault. I told her she could pick. We go inside and sit down at the bar. She has drinks, dances by herself and with other guys. Fine and dandy as they say. I sit at bar get shitfaced for last time since I know it's all downhill when you become papa. After bit, I see I lost sight of her. Probably out fucking some other guy, I think. Whatever. But no. Worse." Dimitri took another pause, Quince's eyes starting to bulge out. He'd always had that insatiable curiosity. He was the kind of guy who always looked when someone said 'don't look'. There was a silent urging to Dimitri that he should press on and after taking another drink of beer, he did.

"I start stand up, leave. I'm almost to exit when big black guy drags bitch to me. She's crying. Makeup all down her face. She won't look at me. Her top is off. Cuts showing all over arms. Not like her. She covers up most time, but I figure they were doing something. But now I wonder what she done. He looks at me and says, 'She yours?'" Dimitri snickered. "Loaded question, as they say. I nod. Don't know what else to do. So then he shove her at me. She cling to me, crying and saying how she sorry. Now I'm really getting fucked up in the head. Then I notice that he's missing his arm. Right up to elbow." Dimitri shook his head a little bit. "He says, 'Yo bro. Sorry for trying fuck her. Everything okay 'til she see arm. Then she tell me stump fuck her. When I tell crazy bitch to go away, she start screaming and crying. She grab my arm, start trying force it in her pussy. I restrain her and bring her here. She tell me she with guy with mustache.'"

Quince's jaw had dropped open. Tom was looking like he might be sick. I, on the other hand, was cool and composed. Inside my stomach was churning and I could feel my palms getting sweaty. Even if I wasn't reacting visibly, I was on the edge of my seat. All of us were still silent until Quince started to let out his asthmatic laugh.

"I look at her. She look me in the eyes, look away. The guy wasn't bullshit to start with. But now I know it's really true. I apologize to him. He didn't even look mad. Just... sick. So I drag her out to car and put her in. All the way home so angry with her. She cry and cry, ask me to forgive. 'What the fuck is wrong with you?' I ask her. She keeps mumbling over and over that she don't know. Everything quiet for a bit. I think she's asleep when I hear some plastic. Look from corner of my eye. Her hand is in her purse. I keep looking then while I try to drive. She take box of pills out of purse. At first I think maybe some kind of Tylenol, you know? No. Nothing simple. I see label. Rat poison. She got four, maybe six tablet in her hand already. I start swerve off road when she put in her mouth. Too late. By time I get stopped and try to take it out of her hand, she already has swallowed. In heat of moment, I backhand her. Call her stupid cunt." Dimitri didn't look proud of it. But he didn't look apologetic either. It was what it was to him. Quince wasn't laughing anymore. Tom had turned a shade of green that every school child with an unexpected flu wears at least once during lunch time. I had reached for the second shot of whiskey brought to me and was lifting it to my lips, downing the liquid as if it would help Dimitri along.

"She start crying, spit all over. I floor it to hospital because I know then... she really crazy. Like she has to make sure, she take knife out of purse and start cut her arms with it. Cut over cut over cut. She bleeding everywhere, screaming, 'It make me feel good!' By then I not even tell her to stop. Too busy trying to dump her ass at hospital. We get there and I drag her in. Even here, big scene. Blood all over. She freaking out. 'No, they come get me if I go here! No!' I tell them she ate the poison. They dope her to calm her and patch her up. I ask them... run pregnancy test. They said they have to anyway. I sit in waiting room. I don't care about her now. I want know if she really got baby inside. Doctor comes out little later, says I'm going to be a father. No congrats." Dimitri snickered again before finishing his beer and raising his hand for another one.

After a pause, I finally spoke up. "So what did you do?"

"Doctor came back out. Said she had mental record illness. He said they were going to send her somewhere for psych eval. I only laugh. After that, who need doctor to confirm crazy? I leave her there. I go home. I think for bit. Then I  toss her things out in hallway, get mine into boxes, leave. Landlord not pissed til he finds what she did. Every time we eat chicken, bitch put bones under mattress. Whole place starting to stink. In closet she wipe blood all over walls. Never use it, never see it. He found knives under couch cushions. I get slapped with fine while she in mental hospital, pregnant with some poor bastard's baby." I could tell that Dimitri was including himself in the poor bastard category at that moment.

"So that's it? You just left her there? Did she ever find you? Don't you wonder if it was your kid or not?" I asked, vaguely wondering what I would do in the same situation.

"Da, I just left her there. She never found. Maybe she still there. I don't give fuck. And no. Don't think it my kid. Had vasectomy when I was when twenty-four. Least what I tell other girls now." That made Quince laugh and give his nod of approval while looking over at me.

Finally, Dimitri looked at me, stared me in the eyes. "Maybe next time you have bad break up, you think it not so bad, eh?" He reached out to pat my cheek lightly before calling for Debra, just returning with his beer. "Another round for my comrades, then more stories."

It was going to be a long night.