The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady Read Free

to freaking me
out. Current educated me always thought of the Cheshire Cat. Old
white trash me saw reruns of Jack Nicholson playing the Joker from
Saturday afternoons when there was nothing worth watching on the
TV.
    “Fuck you,” I told her. Real snappy wordplay
at the time.
    “You’re special. One in ten-thousand at
least. One in a quarter million perhaps,” she explained. “Does this
make you feel above? Does it make you tingle and give you
goose-bumps?”
    Damned if it didn’t.
    Damned if it didn’t piss me off that she
called me on the feeling, belittling it into nothing. Typical
Asylum maneuver—making me seem like some pathetic little emo
wimp.
    I popped up from the kitchen table, pointing
a finger at my parents, ready to spread my favorite word around.
“Fuck you two for talking to her,” and pointed at Ceinwyn Dale,
“and double fuck you with something rusty!”
    I ran into my little room, locking the door.
Know I did. Still remember the lock turning like amber frozen in
time. All the good memories from before Mom got sick have faded
away but that one stuck . . . me turning a lock. Something
small—something huge .
    Lying out on my unmade mattress of a bed, I
clicked on my aforementioned gold-plated fan. The bike chain
rattled as the tiny motor kicked full speed, clanging the bars of
my headboard. A prisoner’s cup making noise to make noise and pass
the time. Fitting sound for a fitting room.
    Running away from your problems and hiding
in your room when you don’t understand what’s going on is a
long-standing teenage tactic. In my house, with its thin doors and
even thinner walls, it didn’t work too well. You could still hear
everything. But at least I didn’t have to see Ceinwyn Dale’s smile
any longer.
    I lit up a cigarette to calm down. Smoking
was forbidden in the house . . . actually it was forbidden at all .
. . but doubly forbidden in the house—I wasn’t giving much a crap
at the moment.
    My fan rattling and wafting exhaled smoke, I
heard the aftermath. “Sorry about that, Mrs. Dale,” Dad said in his
gruff voice which only got kind when he talked to my mother.
    “It’s Miss still . . . and don’t worry
yourself over him, I’ve seen worse. The Institution of Elements is
very capable at handling young men with his type of problems.”
    “Then you’ll still take him?” Mom asked. Her
voice was happy, almost relieved.
    “Of course we will . . . he’s a special boy,
deep down. I wanted a reaction and I got one, my job is to see how
applicants react to situations they don’t understand. As I said,
I’ve seen much worse. He has hidden potential.”
    “Let’s not get hasty. He don’t want to go,
he ain’t going,” Dad reminded the women who were deciding my future
for me—getting enough strings together to make me a baby
bootie.
    “He’ll want to,” Mom complained. “Once he
calms down and hears Miss Dale out.”
    Like hell I will , I told myself.
    Pathetic little shit, I was. I popped on a
stolen iPod and picked up a stack of stolen comics—told you I had a
habit of getting lucky with accidents—and completely tuned them out
on the idea I was going nowhere. Special. One in a quarter mil . Fuck her . My life could suck but it’s mine . I wasn’t leaving what I knew for some reject school
that probably stole more money from the government on some crackpot
scheme to improve troubled kids than I ever had.
    Guess who my favorite comic book character
was? Wolverine. Got to love a fighter. He’s short too. Got hurt but
could take all the pain, that’s better than being invincible. Got
all the women he wanted without having to deal with relationships
like that poor sap Cyclops with his girlfriend that died fifty
times. A teenage boy’s wet dream. Comic, cigs, girlfriend,
fighting: my life.
    My life, assholes, take your strings
and shove them.
    A couple comics finished and lots of heavy
metal songs later, I realized I wasn’t alone anymore. Over the rim
of my comic book