Index:
Chapter Eight
Prescribed Freedoms
I remember the first time I met with Marty.
I could tell right away, this guy,
he was… you know, real. He cared, and it wasn’t all show. It was nice, but…
…I didn’t
think he was listenin’, when I talked. They never do. That’s the irony, with
all these ‘mental health’ assholes. They tell you to talk, they push and push
and push until you do, and then they
just…
See, when you’ve got a problem, it’s like…
…people
filter it all. Your words, I mean. Like, what you’re saying, they’re not sure
if it’s you or your problem. Are you thinkin’ clear? Should they take you
seriously? God forbid they, eh… ‘enable’ you.
Is that
comment because you hurt inside, or because you have too much serotonin and not
enough dopamine and maybe your reuptake inhibitor is inhibitin’ too much
reuptake and they should adjust your dose and—
Just, fuck.
So you
gotta talk like a goddamned robot, act like some little machine. Beep boop.
Illogical. Does not compute. Emotion is invalid; opinions are futile. I hereby
swear to take my medicine and cease to be myself.
I ask Marty
if he saw on the news where that one teenager, Bill Gardens, was caught snatchin’
some little kid off the playground. They found the bones of five, maybe six
little girls in his back yard.
He gives me this look, like he wants to say how sad that is
but…
he’s not sure where I’m going with
this.
I tell him
I went to school with Bill. Every time he talked to me I
smelled rotting meat. I threw up on him in sixth grade, and
they
kicked me out of school.
Marty was
quiet for a minute.
And then he
changed the subject.
New York City –
Winter
THE WINDOW PANE was cool
against Raiku’s face. His eyelids felt heavy; the sounds of the highway aimed
to lull him to sleep. Car rides had always made him sleepy, since long before
he could remember. Yet, despite the best efforts of the ambiance, the pain in
his abdomen kept him awake. The only comfortable position for him was lying on
his back, and there was too much stuff loaded in the back seat of the car for
him to tilt back and relax.
His Aunt Kana had been quiet for most
of the trip home. Every now and then, he could feel her gaze turn to him, or see
her mouth open to produce words that she soon realized she could not find.
She’d been like this for days. Ever
since the hospital agreed to release him, she’d insisted on bringing him with
to every legal and medical matter even remotely related to Raiku Hirubasa and
his crazy, crazy antics. Court orders, doctors’ orders, psychiatrists’ orders,
orders orders orders orders. Yet his obasan
had had very few orders of her own, and every night when they got home,
after watching him take his medicine, she left him alone in his room.
Today had been the last day, at least
for now. Aunt Kana had been signing paper after paper, agreeing to this
stipulation and that, and so far as Raiku could tell, nothing much had changed.
Kana Hirubasa would soon return to her work overseas, and Raiku would be home
alone with Misses Williams, the elderly live-in housekeeper who was supposed to
double—no, triple—as both spy and caretaker.
Truth be told, she was a poor
caretaker and a poorer spy, choosing instead to trust Raiku over anything the
pharmacy gave him. The pharmacy was controlled by the government, after all,
and the only person old Ruth Williams trusted less than Uncle Sam was her car
insurance agent.
No, Misses Williams would not make
him take his pills in front of her. She would never know if he’d swallowed
them, spit them out, buried them under the rose bushes out back, or fed them to
the neighbor’s yappy little dog. She would never know if—
“Raiku.”
He blinked, tilting his head to face
his aunt. “…Yes?”
Kana was quiet for a moment, choosing
instead to flick on her blinker and watch the oncoming traffic speed through
the intersection.
Raiku waited.
“Raiku, I’ve made a decision.”
He shifted in his seat, careful to
move as slowly as possible, so as to keep the seatbelt from digging any further
into his wounds than it already was. “Yes?”
The car began to move again. Her eyes
followed the road as she spoke, never once leaving the task at hand. “You have
one more chance. You will stay on your medication and stay out of trouble. If I
have to come back in the middle of another assignment, I will find some
additional help for Ruth.”
Raiku’s stomach sank. Lacking for
response, he stayed silent.
“I have spent the past four days
swearing on my honor that Ruth is a sufficient caretaker. I have signed dozens
of documents and argued with judges and lawyers that you don’t need a live-in
nurse to be responsible for your well-being while I’m away. If you screw up
again, I won’t have any other choice.”
The vehicle came to a stop, and Raiku
watched as the gear shift slid to ‘Park’. The key turned in the ignition. The
engine fell silent. Finally, Kana turned to look at him.
Her deep, brown eyes seemed to pierce
straight through his own, deep into the twisted confines of his soul. Her gaze
cut him open like an infected wound, and guilt, thick and sour and revolting,
globbed to the surface.
“I’m giving you the last of my trust.
I’m choosing to believe you can take care of yourself. You’re almost an adult.
Don’t break my trust, Raiku. Are we clear?”
A slow, somber nod formed his
response, his gaze breaking from hers and finding the seat below. Free from her
gaze, the guilt began to subside, seeping into his pores. The old, familiar
sound rang between his ears, a silent scream that built and built, more and
more pressure, until, months from now, he knew, his faux resolution would crack
and shatter like battered glass.
Thin, bony fingers pulled at his
chin, gentle but insistent, until his gaze returned to hers.
So much guilt. His stomach clenched,
shriveling in pain under the tangible force of an intangible blow.
“I want you to promise me. Promise me
you’ll do what I ask, Raiku.”
He tried to nod, but her gentle grasp
turned firm.
A subtle twitch of her features
betrayed her frustration. “I want to hear it. Promise me.”
Promises. Why would she ask for such
a thing? Didn’t she know how he felt, by now? Didn’t she know how this went? He
would play along, for a time. He would feel better. He would grow optimistic.
But that sound, that pressure, it would build and build and build and build
until—
“Raiku.”
He blinked, his eyes refocusing, as
though he’d been pulled through darkness and fog and plunged into a bright room.
“Raiku, I… I will give you a semester
at home, okay? A compromise. Take your pills, and…” she began, only to pause a
moment. Her face softened. “…stay out of trouble. Do this for the rest of this
semester, and you can have the next one at home. I’ll talk to the dean, and
figure out how best to transition you to home schooling for a time.”
The smile that formed on his face was
automatic, involuntary, completely beyond his control. It frightened him in its
normalcy, but the fear itself was exciting. He nodded again. Opened his lips to
speak, though the words weren’t quite ready, the syllables dancing fleetingly
on the tip of his tongue. “…Kana. I…” he started. A tremble found his lower
lip. The syllables he’d just started to organize fell apart, letters cracking
and splitting into gravel between his teeth, grinding away his enamel until his
mouth filled with blood and raw nerve endings and pain. A lump formed in his
throat, and when he tried to swallow, it stung.
Kana’s fingertips left his chin and
found his cheek, brushing gently, dark flesh against porcelain. She smiled
softly and shook her head. “It’s okay. I know. Now promise.”
Raiku nodded, then nodded again, and
suddenly felt furious with himself for the cop-out motion that he’d just been
told not to give. “I promise,” he spat suddenly, eagerly, and his eyes widened
for just a moment as if he had, all the same, broken a private promise to
himself.
Something registered briefly on his obasan’s features, something worn and
tired and knowing, and she turned away. She opened the door, and one foot left
the vehicle before she stopped and turned back. “…Thank you. Now let’s go have
lunch.”
* * *
Raiku stood alone by the dining room
table, considering, not for the first time, how much his remaining family had
in common with this particular piece of furniture.
In the months following… that day, Kana had developed a peculiar
obsession with postmodern furniture, sterile-looking pieces that eschewed
intricacy and character in favor of order, cleanliness, and subtlety. Her
cabinets, for example, were white-faced and plastic, without so much as a
handle to open them with—pressing on the face of a cabinet door depressed a
small button behind it, and with a distinct ‘click’, the cabinet door would pop
open. Each was wall-mounted; space was left beneath the cabinets, refusing dirt
even the most innocuous of hiding places.
This table had always felt to him
like the defining piece of her home. Well, that wasn’t the entire truth. The
piece that defined her. Kana. The
brilliant, professional woman, a woman who defined what it meant to be a
survivor as opposed to a victim. What it meant to tuck away the ragged,
swollen, bleeding interior of the soul, and to lock it shut behind the flesh,
safe and secure, hidden where no one can see or touch – not even herself.
This table was, like the cabinets,
solid plastic and white. Perfectly cylindrical, it rose from the floor until it
reached his waist, where it gave way to a perfectly flat surface. Four faint
creases split the cylinder every ninety degrees, running from the cylinder’s
base upwards, until they met another crease seven centimeters below the table’s
edge that ran perpendicular to its surface. Exactly forty five degrees into
each ninety degree wedge, and fourteen centimeters down from the top of the cylinder, rest a
rectangular outline—seven centimeters tall, fourteen centimeters wide.
Raiku took a slow step forward,
willing his fingers to one such outline. He pressed gently, and with a quiet
‘pop’, a ninety-degree wedge fell away from the body of the table. He pulled at
the top of the wedge, rolling it his way on carefully concealed wheels to
reveal a vibrant seat, the cushion covered in lush, colorful swirls and twists,
organic shapes that made him think of once-inconceivable life—microorganisms exposed
first to a microscope, then a kaleidoscope, and then to LSD.
Pulling the chair farther away
revealed the table’s leg: a gnarled, branching, ghastly thing hewn,
inexplicably, from actual wood. The leg wasn’t so much carved as it was
repurposed, its original shape unadulterated, each limb shaved off at exactly
the same height. It was the only organic piece of the entire table. Maybe even
the entire house.
Life, carefully guarded, a secret,
hidden altar before the very throne of experience, shielded from harm by a
fragile shell.
Simple. Harmless. Safe.
Raiku looked again at the cupboards. Sometimes
he wondered if Kana had had this home built from nothing but fiberglass,
stainless steel, and plastic.
Seating himself gingerly, wary of the
wounds on his stomach, he glanced past the table, past an island piece
separating the kitchen from the dining space, to watch Misses Williams bustle
around the kitchen.
As if in direct defiance of the home
itself, Misses Williams was wearing a gaudy green dress composed of 31%
polyester, 46% sparkle, and 23% glam. Her hair had changed again, as it did
every third Wednesday. This week it reminded Raiku of the whipped cream on top
of an overpriced coffee, swirling ridiculously around her head and tipped in
bright pink. It stood in harsh contrast to her dark, wrinkled skin and saggy
jowls, but as she hummed her way across the kitchen, her smile broad and
healthy and real, Raiku felt something black and sickly worm its way through
his chest.
Envy.
For as outlandish as she looked, for
as quickly as people assumed she was denying her age, her reason, or her
modesty, Ruth Williams was a woman without a shell.
* * *
“Ruth, this is hardly… lunch.”
Misses Williams regarded Kana with a
mixture of pity and irritation. She nudged the plate toward the younger woman,
and set a fork and knife beside her. “You’ve had a long day, Kannie, you and
Rai-boo both. Eat your waffles. They’re good for the soul.”
Raiku turned his eyes toward his
plate, trying his best to stifle the smile blooming on his face. Misses
Williams was a firm believer in the healing power of bleached flower and
processed sugar, and this was an argument she would not back down from.
Kana sighed, even as a slight hint of
a smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth. “He’s healing. You don’t think maybe
he needs some nutrition, right now?”
Misses Williams chuckled and shook
her head. Reaching behind herself with one hand, she moved a bottle of genuine
maple syrup from the island piece to the table. “The only thing Rai-boo needs
is a bottle of Coppertone and some personal space. Let the boy have his
waffles. It’s been a hard week.”
Raiku watched as Kana did her best to
appear offended. Failing that, she took the maple syrup and applied some to her
own lunch, then reached across the table toward his.
Misses Williams cast her a scowl of
disapproval.
Kana sighed, mumbled an apology, and
set the bottle down next to Raiku.
Raiku waited until her attention was
turned back toward her own lunch to take the syrup, and he added what he
thought was a fairly reasonable of approximately two maple trees per… corner? Quadrant?
What did you call one-fourth of a waffle?
When Kana realized how much syrup he
was adding, she opened her mouth to object, realized it was full, and held her
hand to her lips. By the time she swallowed, the damage was done, and she let out
a quiet sigh before turning to Misses Williams. “…They’re delicious, Ruth.
Thank you.”
Misses Williams just smirked. “Of
course. They’re waffles. Now, I’m gonna go watch my soaps. Turns out, Lawrence
might be Jessica’s baby’s daddy, even though she got with Jason almost a year ago. Mmm.” With that scoff of disapproval, she scooped the last waffle
onto a plate and reached for a clear container with a shaker top. Powdered
sugar was applied liberally to her lunch. She turned away and wandered out the
other side of the kitchen, muttering something about that bastard Lawrence.
Raiku couldn’t hide the grin that met
his features. He noticed his obasan smiling,
too, and for a moment she looked just like his mother, and his heart stopped,
and his chest tightened, and then it was gone and it was just Kana and she was
begrudgingly enjoying her waffles.
She caught the look in his eye, and
her fork and knife found her plate.
He nibbled his lip.
The slightest grimace betrayed her,
inconceivable almost, if anyone else were looking. “…tell me what’s wrong,
Raiku. It’s okay.”
He took a deep breath, glanced up at
Kana, and immediately looked away, again. His fingers fidgeted, moving almost
on their own, as if an overwhelming energy had bloomed in his stomach, bursting
through every tissue in his body until finally resonating in his fingertips and
toes. Suddenly, his seat felt hot, and his insides were trying to escape in
every direction. For the briefest moment, he drew his eyes back to hers. “…for…
a moment, you… you looked like...”
Kana’s lips twitched. Her breath left
her, and she turned away. She fell still, as if her capacity for movement were
anchored by the composure she’d just lost. Her eyes grew moist, just for a
moment, and she sucked in air through her nose. A tired smile tugged at her
lips, and finally, she looked back toward Raiku.
Something warm and weary drew the
feeling from his limbs. The energy was gone, replaced by a heaviness that was
altogether welcome, despite being as foreign as it was frightening.
His cheeks grew wet. Silence fell
over the table, filled not by distance, but familiarity, and lunch passed
without another word.
* * *
As Raiku ascended the stairs to his
second-story bedroom, a cautious optimism threatened to overtake him. He
imagined the steps he climbed stopped not at the second floor, or the third,
but in another place entirely – a place where his medication worked, his obasan had nothing to worry about, his
teachers adored him, and his future was bright. A place where he could not only
hold a conversation, but perhaps even start one – maybe with that pretty girl,
Jakee Henders, that sat a few seats ahead of him.
A place where his ojiichan and his mother both could watch
him grow up, get a job, maybe even start a family. Where he was – no, not normal. Not quite.
Something that could pretend to be normal in public. Functional. Useful.
Happy.
His foot caught the top step.
Stumbling forward, he caught himself on the wall just ahead, the pain in his
toes shooting up his leg until it turned into a hiss of air between his lips.
Cursing and mumbling, Raiku drew a deep breath.
He stopped.
Something thick and musky caught his
nose, like the smell in the air after a heavy rain, when the earthworms have
all tunneled to the surface and the breeze carries the smell of the parched
earth.
Something in his stomach twisted. His
feet carried him slowly forward, and with each step his skin seemed to tingle.
Goosebumps covered his arms, his legs, his neck.
Raiku found himself standing outside
his bedroom door, one hand on the frame and the other curled against his chest.
A familiar sickly squirm crawled down the flesh over his spine, like maggots burrowing
beneath fetid flesh. He reached for the door knob and his heart fell still. He
tried to swallow the lump in his throat and, failing, tried again.
The door creaked open. His bare feet
felt clammy against the polished slate tile, and he shuffled into the room,
slow and unsteady, dread weighing from his legs like a concrete block sinking
into the sea.
Everything seemed… normal, save for
the smell. It was thicker here, and every breath he drew felt rich with earth. He
looked first to his twin-sized mattress to his right, covered in a dark grey
comforter and neatly made by Misses Williams while he was out. The headrest was
adorned by a handful of stuffed animals themed after the classic Studio Ghibli
films his mother had bought before he was born—characters like Totoro, Porco
Rosso, and Jiji, among others.
Nothing seemed out of place. He took
a few steps in, his eyes trailing over the thirty-two inch television mounted
on the wall on the left side of his room, maybe four feet from the floor, with
a red strip painted from the floor to the ceiling behind it. Below the
television sat a wall-mounted twenty-six inch shelf, and below that, a
twenty-inch shelf. Above the television, thirty-eight and forty-four inch
shelves.
Kneeling by the television, he set
his fingers on the bottom shelf, leaning in for a closer look. The gaming
console it held was untouched, even covered in a little dust. On the second
shelf sat a handful of books, all in order, and on the third his collection of
cheesy action films, obscure foreign art titles, and import copies of Studio
Ghibli movies all sat unmolested.
The top shelf held a veritable army
of collectible action figures, arranged from shortest to tallest like a class
photo taken at an anime convention. He looked over the toys, ranging from the
colorful leads from over a dozen old role-playing games, to prominent,
bandana-toting espionage action heroes, to radioactive comic book heroes, villains,
and supporting characters, and then more normal, believable characters, like his
personal favorite, the Punishe—
Where was Frank Castle? Raiku took a
step back, his eyes wide. It took only a few seconds to notice. His favorite
Punisher figurine was perched at the far right of the shelf, facing away from
the rest, one arm posed to point at the closet, the other gripping a small
plastic pistol.
Raiku blinked. For a moment, he shut
his eyes. He thought back to the night before. Kana had watched him take his
pills. He’d definitely, absolutely taken them. And sure, they weren’t entirely
reliable, he knew that better than anyone, but usually after an… an episode, he had at least a few weeks of…
Misses Williams. It must have been
her. She knew this was his favorite – she was the one who bought it for him in
the first place. Kana hadn’t approved. Frank was a constant reminder, and a bad
influence, and just all-around wrong,
and—
Raiku started toward the closet. Misses
Williams must have placed a gift in here. She was always doing this. Always
hiding surprises, and…
The closet door was cracked, just a
bit. It was one of those older types, the ones that folded like an accordion or
maybe a fan when pulled. Raiku’s fingers hovered in the air above the doorknob.
He realized they were trembling, and shook his head. Everything was fine. Misses
Williams was prone to being accidentally creepy with the best intentions, and
while this would certainly set a new record in obliviousness, it wasn’t at all
beyond her. This was the old woman who tried to dress as Wonder Woman at his
eighth birthday party, prompting one of his friends to burst into tears. It’d
taken her this long to learn that not all comic characters were created equal.
He took a deep breath, steeled
himself, and pulled.
There, in his closet, was the suit
he’d been wearing at the mall, hanging perpendicular to and in front of the
rest of the coats he’d inherited from his grandfather. It’d been dry cleaned
and pressed, and looked better than it did before he’d wiped his vomit on the
sleeve.
Hanging from the coat hanger was a
red string. The string looped inside the coat’s inside pocket, disappearing
from view.
The tremble spread from his fingers
through his arms. His stomach twisted in knots.
Before he could stop himself, he was
reaching into the pocket. His fingers touched something smooth and crisp, and
in moments he was pulling a purple envelope out of the jacket.
Scrawled across the face of the
envelope was unfamiliar handwriting, the kind of meticulous calligraphy that
takes a lifetime of practice to master:
“To the frightened little boy,
Who ran
screaming through the mall:
Would it truly ease
your mind,
To know
you weren’t wrong, at all?”
Raiku’s fingers went numb. His knees
started to quiver. He sank to the floor, envelope clutched in both hands. At
some point, he realized he’d turned it over, and discovered that it wasn’t
sealed.
Shaking fingers pulled away the flap.
He blinked, spotting something that looked like a folded up newspaper. Slowly,
carefully, he freed it from the envelope. Unfolding it once, then twice, then
maybe five or six more times, he held it abroad.
On the inside of the paper were taped
a half dozen articles from different, unrelated newspapers. Each of them had
headlines circled in red pen, with words underlined by the same pen:
“complaint”
“minor”
“voyeur”
“alleged”
“harassment”
“approached”
“offender”
“testified”
—on, and on, and on.
And in the center of it all, taped to
the middle of the paper, was a photograph of the plain man from the bathroom at
the mall.
The paper fell to the floor.
Numb
feet
carried
him
to
the door.
The lock twisted in his
fingers.
. . . .
then
the bed
knees to his
chest,
arms wrapped
around his
memories,
sleeves
muffling his
screams,
and filling,
slowly, with
his
tears
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