[Note: All my fiction shorts are first drafts unless otherwise noted.]
The kid with the purple highlights in his otherwise jet
black Mohawk, the one wearing the Nietzsche shirt, could feel the warm sticky
blood coming out of the center of the “S” where he’d stuck the jagged piece of
green rock into. He cocked an eyebrow as the blood started to leak at first,
the spray. He had to shut his eyes as it sprayed into his face. The tall guy in
the mostly blue suit with the red cape, the one with the square jaw, gave out a
slight, awkward gasp, staggered backwards and fell down, hands clutching at the
tail end of the jagged piece of green rock sticking out of the fountain that
had once been his chiseled chest.
The kid wiped the warm sticky blood out of his eyes. His
first thought was how he was definitely going to need a shower when he got
home. His second thought was how he’d just killed god. He took the earphones
out of his ears since he only wore them to make people think he was listening
to music to avoid conversation. The iPod mini he carried was broken. Hadn’t
worked for ages. Truth was he’d gotten used to playing the music he’d heard
before over and over in his head anyway, so it wasn’t like he was ever really
without tunes.
The guy sure was big. He’d been tall enough but he was
really stretched out now, lying sprawled out on the ground, the dark red pool
of blood unevenly expanding more on his left side than on his right. You could
only see some of the red “S” and yellow background now, most of it was covered
up. His eyes were still open, staring blankly up into the sky. The tail end of
the jagged green rock stuck out of his chest, a red light beeping on and off.
The kid looked up into the sky. He knew the guy came from up
there, not from ‘up in the clouds’ up there but from ‘beyond the stars’ up
there. Did aliens like him even have a soul, the kid wondered. And if they
didn’t, say, would it be wrong to kill them, even if it wasn’t on accident? Was
killing an alien, even on purpose, was that even murder? Or was that, like,
some kind of cruelty to animals?
“Hey kid, come here. This will come in handy someday.” The
bald man in the stretch limo rolled down the mirrored window and handed him a
sliver of green rock. It was sharp. It looked like an emerald. Course he’d
never seen an emerald….
“It ain’t no emerald kid.” The mirrored window rolled back
up and the limo pulled away from the curb. The kid felt it, weightless in his
hand. He liked the way the sun danced on it. It was jagged and sharp, long and
thin. He slipped it into his middle hoody pocket and walked away, listening to
the music play in his head.
His mom paid just under a thousand for the loft they lived
in. His ‘room’ was a converted closet. The roaches were only really bad in the
hottest parts of summer. It was an old brownstone in an old neighborhood and
the heaters didn’t always work in the winter but when they did they were good
enough to take the edge off the cold at least. His mom worked three jobs to
afford the place so he didn’t see her often, mostly coming and going. She was
mad about the Mohawk at first but then she seemed to forget about it. She was
probably pretty once, the kid thought, but she looked sad and tired now. Even
if the guy who said he’d been a fireman and was on disability, down on the 4th
floor, kept hitting on her all the time, trying to get laid. The kid thought
the guy was a real laugh but his mom never seemed amused, or even flattered.
The city at night was loud and busy. The kid liked it. He
felt less lonely then. The honking. The shouting. The sirens. People would talk
about seeing the guy flying above. This one kid, Jesse, he swore up and down
that the guy flew buy his apartment and saved some Puerto Rican girl who jumped
out of her burning apartment. The kid didn’t believe the story. He didn’t
believe in the guy who flew even with all the news coverage and the newspaper
photos and the videos on the Internet. There had to be an angle, he was sure of
it.
He looked at the guy’s uniform. Was it a uniform, he
thought, or a costume? When did the one become the other? The red boots. The
blue tights. His eyes were still staring blankly up into the sky. For an alien,
he sure died the same way people did.
His mom didn’t want to but his grandmother had insisted. The
kid had to take the subway across town to check on Uncle Freddy. Mom gave the rules
but the kid had always remembered them because Freddy creeped him out. He had
this smile that you instinctively knew wasn’t a smile. The ride across town
didn’t bother him. The subway had plenty of weirdoes, sure, but the hum and the
swoosh and the sound the doors made opening and closing, they all made up for
it. He didn’t mind going, as far as that was concerned.
Uncle Freddy didn’t let him up when he buzzed so he waited
around by the door in a slushy mix of rain and sleet until he could sneak in. Some
little old lady in ankle breaker platforms couldn’t manage the door, her
umbrella and her yappy Pomeranian all at the same time. The elevator was out so
the Kid had to walk up to the 7th floor. He stomped more than
walked. He liked the way the sound echoed in the close stairway. The stairs
were wood and looked old. He liked that.
The door to seven, from the stairwell, stuck. He had to work
at it to get it open. Someone was playing some loud Italian singer in the room
across from the door. It would’ve been annoying to listen to for anything more
than a few minutes. Room 777 was Freddy’s but it had never been particularly
lucky. The door was locked. The kid knocked. Knocked again. Yelled. Nothing
happened. The kid waited. The building smelled bad but at least it was warm
compared to outside. His jacket was too light for winter and had stuffing
coming out here and there. The long inside pocket was still good though. He
reached in and pulled out the long green sliver of rock. He had tried to bend
it before and realized it was really tough. It wasn’t a perfect fit into the
door lock but it worked. The kid played with it and the door popped open.
The smell wasn’t the building. Or, if it was, it wasn’t just
the building because Uncle Freddy’s place smelled awful. And there were flies.
Flies in the middle of winter. He had no idea how long Uncle Freddy had been
dead but it was clear it had been a while. He saw the maggots and they bothered
him but not as much as Freddy’s dried
out eyes, staring up at the ceiling, blankly. What were they looking at, the
kid wondered. What did they see?
The alien’s eyes weren’t all dried out yet but they had the
same blank stare, up into the sky, the sky he was used to flying in. The kid ha
been walking down the alley, hadn’t even heard him then felt a slight swoosh of
air. He turned around and the guy was there. Tall. Looking him over like he
could see through him or something.
“You’ve got something that doesn’t belong to you son. A
green rock. You have to give it to me.”
The kid thought his voice was cold. It was deep and polite,
but cold. The kid instinctively reached for the green sliver of rock in his
back pocket. The guy took two quick steps forward. All the kid could see was
that big red “S”. He felt scared.
He didn’t remember stabbing the guy. He just remembered
feeling the blood coming out of the guy’s chest, out of the center of that “S”
and thinking that he’d heard the guy was supposed to be some kind of
bulletproof or something.
Pigeons cooed and stared from a fire escape above. The blood
had stopped spreading outward. The guy had bled a lot. The kid wondered if all
aliens bled like that or if this guy was special. There was honking coming from
the street. And shouting. The kid figured he should get out of there even
though he was pretty sure about the ‘it can’t be murder if it’s an alien’
thing. He thought it was good, you know, to play it safe. He checked the time
on his phone, his mom would be off to job number 2. When he got home he’d have
the place to himself. The first thing he’d do was shower. Then he might sit by
the fire escape and stare up past the clouds and into the stars. He’d listen to
the music in his head and he’d read and he’d think that even the true stories
weren’t always true.
Copyright 2014, M.R. McCaffery. All rights reserved.
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