didn’t, she called out.
Nervously, he glanced a second time to the road. He shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be thinking, even, about doing what he knew eventually he would. If he were caught there’d be hell to pay. She was young. How young? Fourteen, maybe fifteen, he thought he heard her say. He was seventeen but had a birthday next week. Technically, that made him seventeen; morally, he supposed it made him a year older.
He looked to the road a final time, back to the river and to her. Rising to his feet, he completed the task he had started when earlier she had interrupted him. Entering the water to join her, he thought for only a very brief moment; this is a bad idea that can only turn out bad , before submerging his naked body and allowing his instinct and the current to carry him to her.
CHAPTER TWO
JORDY BITSON TURNED up his broad, flat nose until it resembled a mushroom. Turning his face to the breeze, he sniffed at the night air. He watched as Ed Dojcsak walked from his front stoop to his car. Dojcsak moved woodenly, like a man stiff from physical exertion.
“ Fat fuck ,” Jordy said under his breath.
As if sensing the slur, Dojcsak turned his head slowly in Jordy’s direction. After a brief pause, he resumed his tentative walk to the car. Jordy waited in shadow, out of sight and out of the rain while the policeman pulled his vehicle from the drive and into the street.
Jordy slipped quietly through a side entrance to the kitchen of his own home: in from the dark, out of the cold.
A sheepish light spilled over the kitchen from a single incandescent bulb revealing a sink stacked high with unwashed utensils and dirty plates, left over from today, yesterday and possibly, though Jordy was disinclined to investigate further, the day before. Here, a dollop of coagulated egg for breakfast, there, for lunch, a sandwich with some sort of sauce, and for dinner, Jordy simply had no way to tell one greasy food stain from another.
Two-dozen empty bottles of Budweiser beer and an ashtray cluttered the kitchen table, butts spilling over the ashtray’s brim, leaving burn marks on the Formica surface. The stale aroma from tobacco mingled with the yeasty odor of sour beer, hanging heavy in the air like cheesecloth. To Jordy it was unpleasant yet perversely reassuring. Inadequate as it was, it smelled of home.
In his bedroom, Jordy stripped his damp clothes. In the bathroom, he showered, brushed his teeth, and rinsed his mouth with Listerine. He extracted a packet of dry cigarettes from a bedside drawer, ignited and lay naked on his bed. He contemplated the gray smoke as it hovered like a cloud at the ceiling. Jordy retrieved his mobile, inserted headphones, swiped his screen and, arriving at his Favorites , selected from a playlist that included Cannibal Corpse , Deicide , Suffocation and Dying Fetus .
To Jordy, the incessant, thrashing, thumping rhythm of the music and deep growl of the vocals was oddly soothing (with the added bonus of driving his old lady bat-shit crazy).
For no reason, Jordy recalled the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz , discovered by Dorothy rusting in the woods. As a child, terrified of the Wicked Witch of the West, Jordy’s mother had delighted in his fear by forcing him to watch the movie anyway.
“Jordy, don’t be a child ,” she would snap, oblivious, seemingly, to the fact that at only five years of age he was. “It’s make believe, you fool,” she would say and cackle, “ I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog too! ” Just like Margaret Hamilton in the movie and in a way that made you believe she would. (Though Jordy didn’t own a dog, his mother’s threat was no less chilling for the fact.)
Some nights, in his bedroom, frozen to the mattress and immobilized by a fear of flying monkeys ( Of all things! ), Jordy would wet the bed, unable to muster sufficient courage to cross the darkened hallway to the bathroom. He would pee, lying awake until daybreak, whereupon
Nervously, he glanced a second time to the road. He shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be thinking, even, about doing what he knew eventually he would. If he were caught there’d be hell to pay. She was young. How young? Fourteen, maybe fifteen, he thought he heard her say. He was seventeen but had a birthday next week. Technically, that made him seventeen; morally, he supposed it made him a year older.
He looked to the road a final time, back to the river and to her. Rising to his feet, he completed the task he had started when earlier she had interrupted him. Entering the water to join her, he thought for only a very brief moment; this is a bad idea that can only turn out bad , before submerging his naked body and allowing his instinct and the current to carry him to her.
CHAPTER TWO
JORDY BITSON TURNED up his broad, flat nose until it resembled a mushroom. Turning his face to the breeze, he sniffed at the night air. He watched as Ed Dojcsak walked from his front stoop to his car. Dojcsak moved woodenly, like a man stiff from physical exertion.
“ Fat fuck ,” Jordy said under his breath.
As if sensing the slur, Dojcsak turned his head slowly in Jordy’s direction. After a brief pause, he resumed his tentative walk to the car. Jordy waited in shadow, out of sight and out of the rain while the policeman pulled his vehicle from the drive and into the street.
Jordy slipped quietly through a side entrance to the kitchen of his own home: in from the dark, out of the cold.
A sheepish light spilled over the kitchen from a single incandescent bulb revealing a sink stacked high with unwashed utensils and dirty plates, left over from today, yesterday and possibly, though Jordy was disinclined to investigate further, the day before. Here, a dollop of coagulated egg for breakfast, there, for lunch, a sandwich with some sort of sauce, and for dinner, Jordy simply had no way to tell one greasy food stain from another.
Two-dozen empty bottles of Budweiser beer and an ashtray cluttered the kitchen table, butts spilling over the ashtray’s brim, leaving burn marks on the Formica surface. The stale aroma from tobacco mingled with the yeasty odor of sour beer, hanging heavy in the air like cheesecloth. To Jordy it was unpleasant yet perversely reassuring. Inadequate as it was, it smelled of home.
In his bedroom, Jordy stripped his damp clothes. In the bathroom, he showered, brushed his teeth, and rinsed his mouth with Listerine. He extracted a packet of dry cigarettes from a bedside drawer, ignited and lay naked on his bed. He contemplated the gray smoke as it hovered like a cloud at the ceiling. Jordy retrieved his mobile, inserted headphones, swiped his screen and, arriving at his Favorites , selected from a playlist that included Cannibal Corpse , Deicide , Suffocation and Dying Fetus .
To Jordy, the incessant, thrashing, thumping rhythm of the music and deep growl of the vocals was oddly soothing (with the added bonus of driving his old lady bat-shit crazy).
For no reason, Jordy recalled the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz , discovered by Dorothy rusting in the woods. As a child, terrified of the Wicked Witch of the West, Jordy’s mother had delighted in his fear by forcing him to watch the movie anyway.
“Jordy, don’t be a child ,” she would snap, oblivious, seemingly, to the fact that at only five years of age he was. “It’s make believe, you fool,” she would say and cackle, “ I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog too! ” Just like Margaret Hamilton in the movie and in a way that made you believe she would. (Though Jordy didn’t own a dog, his mother’s threat was no less chilling for the fact.)
Some nights, in his bedroom, frozen to the mattress and immobilized by a fear of flying monkeys ( Of all things! ), Jordy would wet the bed, unable to muster sufficient courage to cross the darkened hallway to the bathroom. He would pee, lying awake until daybreak, whereupon