That was all he needed to know. The whole bottle had almost a hundred capsules in it. That ought to be enough. There was no sense in taking a chance, making a mistake. He wanted to sleep. That’s all he wanted to do: sleep without dreams. Forever.
Earlier.
Before the hospital, before swallowing the pills.
I could hear the roar of the chimaera, feel its flaming breath on the back of my neck.
Earlier.
In the dark.
Sleeping, safe, snuggling into the covers, dreaming of a gleaming silver airplane high against the clouds. Hands touching me. Hands under my covers, touching me.
There was a voice. Voices. A finger touching my lips.
“Shhhh!” came a whisper. “Quiet.”
I smelled the alcohol, just like my father’s smell, but it wasn’t my father. My brothers. Derek, ten years older; Vern, thirteen years older. They were giggling. Instead of excluding me, this time I was to be included.
I loved them. Looked up to them. Wanted so much to be like them, part of them, loved and respected by them.
I giggled.
Hands tickled me and pulled down my pajamas.
Hands picked me up, turned me over, and held me as something huge and slimy slipped between the cheeks of my buttocks, entered my anus, and tore me, making me cry out.
A hand covered my mouth as the thing slid in and out of me, tearing to pieces my guts, my soul, my heart, my childhood, my present.
My arm was pushed up behind my back until it cracked. Hands gripped my throat. Choked me. Couldn’t cry out; no one to save me—
I hovered up near the ceiling and watched through the shadows as the two teenage boys repeatedly raped and sodomized the beautiful little boy with the halo of white hair. I felt sad for the boy. He wasn’t very strong. Derek cracked the boy’s left arm by forcing it higher and higher behind his back. Vern bruised the boy’s left calf by stepping on it. He held the boy by his neck to keep him quiet as he raped the boy’s beautiful face.
The boy tore two fingernails before he went limp and no longer noticed what was happening to him.
It wasn’t so bad.
It didn’t hurt that much.
And from now on maybe Derek and Vern would love the boy, let him play with them.
“Listen to me, Timmy,” whispered Derek, his voice full of menace. “I’m serious. This is our secret. If you tell anyone about this, if you tell Mama about this, you’ll die.”
“You’ll die,” whispered Vern, “because I’ll kill you.”
Kill you.
And what is love? What is family? What is trust? The world is filled with fantasies. Without them, broken dolls have nowhere to live.
The next day the boy’s arm hurt. It was swollen and Mama had Dad take the boy in to the doctor’s. The doctor found the fracture. “How did you break your arm, Timmy?”
“I don’t know.”
It’s the secret code of the broken dolclass="underline" I don’t know. Listen to me, doctor. Hear my cry: I don’t know. It means save me. Help me. Someone please save me.
“I don’t know.”
At home, his upper arm tightly bandaged, Mama asked the same question: “How did you break your arm?”
She would not be put off with I don’t knows. She demanded the truth. Even though the little boy would be killed for telling, he told. “Derek and Vern were in my room. They played funny. Derek hurt my arm.” The little boy started to describe the funny things that had been done to him.
Mama dragged the little boy to the upstairs bathroom and thrust a cake of Ivory soap into his mouth. “Filthy, nasty, boy! Filthy, nasty, boy!”
That night the boys came into the room again. Timmy started screaming and Derek put a pillow over the boy’s face. Fingers wrapped around his throat and choked off the sounds. Again Timmy hovered up near the ceiling and watched as the boys raped and sodomized the beautiful little boy again. Once more they twisted his arm, this time his right. Again there was a sickening crack.
Greenstick fractures.
Standing in a moving car.
Good god, the lies.
The next night was no different, save that there were no broken bones; only bruises. The first broken leg came in a month’s time. Two weeks later the boy with the halo of white hair couldn’t remember anything about anything except for what those yellow capsules could be used.
I opened my eyes, the taste of cruel horror still in my mouth. A tiny sob escaped my lips. My arm hurt so bad. From the sound, I knew it was broken again. I could see the spatters of blood on the backs of my hands. My blood. Blood from my poor bottom. I was in my mother’s room. Couldn’t she see the blood? What do I need for proof? What do I need for the nightmare to stop?
“Here, honey. Take this.”
She put a pill in my mouth and gave me a sip of water. I swallowed and choked on the water, bringing back the memory of being choked. “Mama, Mama, they came into my room! They choked me, They—”
“I know, honey. I know. But it was just a bad dream. You know Derek and Vern wouldn’t do anything to hurt you. They’re your brothers. You know your own brothers wouldn’t hurt you. Put it out of your mind. You just had a bad dream. Dreams can’t hurt you.”
The first lie.
The blood was there on the back of my hands. The blood, Mama. What about the blood?
A dream? But if I point out the blood to her, she’ll say it’s nothing. I know this from another, older, dream. Another dream.
Believe the lie.
Believe the lie and never sleep again.
Refuse to believe it and never trust again.
Accept it because the alternative was unacceptable.
The only sleep I slept after that came in bottles, powders, and pills. Trust became a sickeningly dark joke.
My mother stroked my head and calmed me as the sleeping pill softened the edges of the world, drowned my terror, chased away my phantoms. There was another pill and the world became a huge, soft, black cloud.
Hovering up near the ceiling, I looked down and saw the woman take some of her own pills. The little boy was naked. The bruises on his arms purple and yellow. The woman took some tissues and wiped the boy’s backside, cleaning it.
She smelled the tissue, closed her eyes, and seemed to weave back and forth on the bed.
Another pill.
Another.
And she moved the boy’s drug stunned body over, between her legs, and held his head by the neck as she, as she—
—I roared, “No!”
I ripped the world into a thousand pieces as the flames from my roar vaporized the chimaera, the lies, the universe, cleansing it, shattering me.
Aether.
Limbo.
Never Never Land.
The lake mists.
I always loved the mists, fog, stormy, snowy days. Hide within the fog, become the mist, blow away with the vapor.
I’d take the canoe and paddle into the mist hovering over the warm lake water in the chill of an early autumn morning. Sometimes the wind would blow the mists from me, making me strain to catch up and disappear within them.
From the middle of the mist anything is possible, the past is vague, all hopes fresh, all plans edged with promise.
I looked down into the water, saw the reflection of my own face, saw the face of the little boy under the water.
The little boy looked up at me. He raised his hand and I took it. I picked him up and held him close to me. He held me back. “I’m here now. I will protect you. Now you can sleep. Now you can begin to live. I love you.” He kissed me and faded from my arms.
Without comment Shields began bringing me back.
Keegan was sitting in his underwear, half tied up in the chair. His molars ground on the stump of an unlit cigar as Shields and Meyla Hunter finished loading the truck. “I swear I’m comin’ for you, Shannon. You owe me for this one, and I never fail to collect.”