Housebroken (31 page)

“Drop it or the little guy eats dirt,” Stu shouted behind Adam.

Drew stood over the body of Gary on the ground, one foot on the man’s head as if he had stopped a soccer ball. The head, which was no longer connected to the rest of his body.

“Okay, okay.” Joje flung a small pistol away.

“The, uh, sword? You can drop that too.”

It took Drew longer, but he leaned down, sliding it their direction in the dirt.

Where was his dad? Hiding? Had they all really come to rescue him?

“Adam! Are you okay?” Jenna asked. Adam could see motion through the windshield, Jenna trying to move or get out.

“I’m good,” Adam yelled, expecting a kick but receiving none.

Joje didn’t seem that concerned with the automatic rifle Stu had pointed at them. He kept looking toward the cabin, moving gradually away from the car. One wheel still spun lazily in the air. “We’re just here for the boy,” Joje shouted. “No one else needs to get hurt!”

Adam caught movement out of the corner of his eye near the cabin.

Milton knelt in the rocks, raising a large cylindrical tube to his shoulders.
It’s a rocket launcher
—Adam almost wanted to laugh. Milton’s angle kept him out of view from both Joje and Drew, though he had a perfect shot at the vehicle.

Jenna. Trapped within.

“No!” Adam turned, jumping onto Stu, clawing at his face.

The rifle connected with Adam’s jaw, sending him sprawling. He heard commotion behind him, someone running.

“Get my mom out!” he shouted.

Stu was on one knee, bringing the rifle up in a quick and trained motion. Adam leapt at him again, causing his first shot to go wild. Stu held Adam back with his left hand pressed into Adam’s face.

“Stop it, kid—I’m on your side!” He shoved Adam back down, raising the rifle up and firing. No aim, no scope, and only one shot. Its noise rang out.

Adam followed the direction Stu had fired.

Toward the cabin.

Stu rose onto his toes to see if his shot had landed. Joje was still running, reached the corner of the cabin and turned back toward them, arms waving in the air.

Man down, or whatever the hell it meant.

Adam reached his arm up toward the bulky bearded man to have him help him to his feet. “You were with them the whole time?”

Stu took it, pulling Adam up, then shoved him forward with such thrust Adam flew back to the ground, barely keeping from hitting his head. He slid in the dirt, a prickly weed scratching at the side of his face.

“You could have gotten someone killed,” Stu said, clearly pissed. As if that wasn’t exactly what Stu had done? He left Adam there, walking toward Joje and the cabin.

Adam went to the Escalade.

He lay down in the dirt, hand reaching through the broken windshield to take hold of Jenna’s. A lock of hair had fallen over the left side of her face, and Adam could see it had darkened near her forehead.

“I wanted to come to you,” she said.

She was bleeding. How bad?

“Where’s Dad?”

“Home. I think.” Her tone lost any of its brightness. “They’re going to kill us.”

“They saved us!”

“No, Adam, they are going to kill us.” Her grip tightened on his until it hurt.

“I won’t let them,” he said.

Her lips rose in a forced smile. She didn’t think he could.

“I don’t know why, but I mean something to them. I can protect you,” Adam said.

“I’m glad I’m your mother,” she replied.

And for the first time that Adam could remember, he didn’t know what to say.

She pushed at the hair falling over her face, and it fell out in one large chunk. Adam gasped—it looked like someone had taken a cheese grater to the side of her head. The pink and gristly material that had formed like mold on her scalp pulsed with a heartbeat of its own. Her head fell forward, grip releasing from his hand.

“Help!” Adam screamed. “We need help!”   

Milton felt the chains wrapped around his body, preventing him from rising. The bullet had severed the carotid artery in his neck, and he could feel himself slipping away. It was more dreamlike than he would have thought, the pain someone else’s. The clear blue sky shimmered like puddles on a paved road in the dead of summer. Only a mirage.

Joje appeared over him. The gurgle of blood was the only curse Milton could utter.

“I wowee . . . you don’t know who I am,” Joje said.

And suddenly he did know. If Milton had had any color left in his cheeks, it’d be gone now.

How had he not seen it before? How had he not been prepared? But who could prepare for this—for
him
?

The corner of Joje’s face drew down, his left eye drooping. “I wanted you to know. So you didn’t think this was . . . random.”

The boy began screaming in the background but noise was already fading . . . fading . . . playing in another room, over the radio in a busy diner where, no matter how hard you tried, you could never recognize the song, playing not to be heard but to fill the gaps between dishes clanging and forks scraping and uncomfortable lulls in conversation that always accompanied those who ate at diners.

The shakily drawn version of Joje lifted a gun, his form going jagged like scribbles where staying in the lines no longer mattered—had it ever mattered? He pointed it, shakily, gun splitting into two, three distorted versions of itself, in his direction, his colors darkening . . . darkening . . . and of all the regrets that could have flashed through Milton’s mind, only one burrowed its way out.

He had known this day was coming. They all had known. He just never would’ve suspected it’d be Joje.

Jing
Jong
,
Jing
Jong
,
Jing
Jong
.

The doorbell resonated through Blake’s mind, replacing thought with instinct, instinct with dread. He knew he was losing all rationality.

He also knew the doorbell wasn’t ringing.

Jing Jong, sing along, in a cell forever long.

The forbidden corners of his mind had melded into a giant hole as large as the squares between the gridded bars around him. He could no longer lose himself in something as simple as memory.

He thought of his son. He thought of Jenna.

He thought of all the ways he could kill himself.

Suffocating wasn’t possible, no matter his willpower, he was unable to keep his nose and mouth pressed into the crook of his arm past a certain point—lungs burning, eyes watering, head both sinking and floating away at the same time. There wasn’t enough leverage or enough force for him to break his own neck. His back and spine may have felt like they were at the brittle point of bursting, but there wasn’t room to push them any farther. Wiggling or flexing muscles proved almost impossible, drawing enough movement to break or even cut into his own skin, also out of the question. He had even tried to keep his eyes open when sneezing—an old child’s maxim he had never believed but was at least willing to try. Conrad’s hair and dandruff in the cage had gotten to him over time, his nose now a dribbling mess.

At some point he had let himself urinate, the urge far stronger than sensibility.

Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
 . . . 

At times he was falling. Like a dream where the air whips around you and there’s never a floor or end to graciously splat across. An eternity of flailing limbs and rushing air, eyes so dried from the wind they begin to crack like egg shells.

Help me
, he thought.
Helllp meeeeee!

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
 . . . 

Tick, tick, tick. The clock’s one-syllable laugh. Flies feasted on his skin, buzzing down the tubes of his ears, using ropes and pick axes to ascend through his nostrils until they reached the command center where, much like the movie
Being John Malkovich
, they were able to see through his eyes, only now his eyes saw through theirs in strange gridded fashion where every image was distorted through a hundred segmented views.

Humpty Dumpty murdered his wife, Humpty Dumpty took his son’s life.

A plague of shadows transformed into scuttling demons, their centipede claws clicking and clacking against the hardwood floor and marble counters. Each time they came forward, they became a little bolder, like seagulls at a beach picnic, darting closer, inch by inch, until the bravest one would eventually reach its talons out, snatching a chunk of flesh off Blake’s exposed arms or legs.

Jing
Jong
,
Jing
Jong.

Who issss iiiitttttt?

In the maddening silence, Blake came to what might amount to the greatest epiphany of his life—Humpty Dumpty hadn’t fallen. He had jumped.

Jing—

Jong
.

The doorbell continued to chime.

“There’s no need to worry.”

Adam looked down at his fingers, nails bitten to the point he was now chewing skin. He set his palms down on his legs and watched the other people in the restaurant. An older couple, both massively overweight, mopping up their plates; a young girl, maybe two or three, climbing over the back of a cushioned booth, her mother lifting her back over and setting her down without breaking from her conversation; a young black waitress moving toward them then into the kitchen, pretty face, her gold dangling earrings bouncing with every step.

Even prettier legs.

It felt strange to be surrounded by people who were just living their lives, eating meals on their way to the next item on their things-to-do list. People who weren’t wondering if they would be alive tomorrow.

“She’s going to be fine. Drew will take care of her,” Joje said.

Adam sipped his Mountain Dew, avoiding Joje’s gaze. It was almost surprising how easily he could understand Joje now, despite his speech impediment. Adam suspected that with time, even the most grotesque of horrors could become commonplace.

“What’s wrong? You can tell me anything, and it stays right here, between you and me.”

“This isn’t . . . fun anymore,” Adam said. “What you’re doing? You’ve taken it too far. It needs to stop.” He twirled the straw in his drink.

“So why don’t you stop me?” Joje asked.

The little girl squealed as her mother once again lifted her over the booth.

“We’re in a public place, people all around, why don’t you shout out that you’ve been kidnapped or have someone call the police? If things have gone too far, you should ask why you’ve allowed it.”

“I can’t stop you, I’m just a kid.”

Joje laughed, his face lighting up with amusement. “Don’t try your games on me. I know you better than you know yourself, better than your own father knows you.”

Adam glanced out the window to their left. Dusk was settling into night like a blanket, its folds draping lower to the ground. The beat-up station wagon they had taken down the mountain was parked next to a white minivan that had backed into the space, a stick-figure family of four plus a stick dog all waving on the back of their filthy window.

“Is she going to die? Jenna?” Adam asked.

“Would that bother you?”

The question bothered him, had for some time, mainly because Adam didn’t know. He had always thought he wouldn’t care if something happened to her, now he wasn’t so certain. He felt her hand gripping his even now and had to shake it off.

“Drew will make sure she gets the care she needs,” Joje said.

 “And what if he doesn’t take her to a hospital? What if he just tells us he took her there and instead leaves her in a ditch or, or kills her?”

Joje shifted in the booth, sitting forward and resting his arms on the table. “Drew’s not like you or me. He’s an idiot, just does what he’s told, so yeah he’ll take her there. But would your life be that different without her in it? Would you be any different? Or would you maybe stop hiding from who you really are, start becoming your true self?”

The black waitress returned, setting their plates of food in front of them. Her name was Shayna, tag hanging from the open V-neck shirt, bringing it down and to the right just enough to see a little of the cleavage beneath. Like the first tear in the wrapping of a birthday gift, letting you see just enough to make you want to see more.

As soon as she left, Joje asked, “You like her?”

Adam dropped his head, dipping a fat steak fry in the saucer of ketchup.

“You don’t have to pretend around me, Adam. Be yourself. Do your parents know?”

“Know what?”

“I didn’t think so.”

“What, that I like girls?” Adam was surprised by the anger in his voice, more so by Joje’s ability to draw it out of him. This was the first they had spent time alone together.

Joje’s bottom lip twitched, drawing his left eye down; it looked like he was repeatedly winking at Adam. Creepy. He cleared his throat, glancing at his plate of untouched food, then was back, the movement on his face gone. “How old were you when you made your first kill?”

Adam stopped chewing and swallowed his fry in large chunks that hurt going down.

“You can always tell by the eyes. That special glint. It doesn’t come cheap. Was it just one? Or have there been others?”

“Just one,” Adam said. He felt like he was both vomiting out his soul and having a stalled car lifted from his chest at the same time.

“There’ll be others,” Joje said, picking up his Philly cheesesteak sandwich and taking a large bite. Clumps of greasy beef and melted cheese dropped onto the plate. “I knew we would share a bond—I knew it!”

“How . . . how many have you killed?” Adam felt an exhilaration rising within him. Here was someone who could actually understand him, maybe even accept him for who he was.

Joje shook his head, motioning to the waitress approaching. She refilled both of their glasses, asking if everything was okay. They both watched her walk away this time.

“Got a girlfriend?” Joje asked.

Adam recognized the change in subject but was okay with the deflection. They could move back to warmer climates when they were no longer in public. “No, I mean—I had a few back home, but not here.”