Gray Inside, 2025

Eleven-year-old Danielle Lloyd has always been different. She can sense things other people can't, a gift—or curse—that leaves her isolated and exhausted.

When her beloved cat is found brutally murdered, Dani becomes obsessed with finding the killer. But the deeper she digs, the more she uncovers: secrets her mother won't discuss, missing memories, strange lights in the sky, and a terrifying truth lurking just beyond human understanding.

As reality begins to fracture around her, Dani must decide whether discovering the truth is worth the cost.

A psychological horror novel combining alien-abduction mystery, emotional suspense, and unforgettable coming-of-age terror.

Kindle

paperback

blood trip

(Published 2014 - Voices of Imagination Volume 2)

This kid wakes up in the back of the RV and sees his mom on the twin bed across the aisle. The back of her head is blown open and the green comforter is dark and crusty with tiny pieces of bone glued to it. Her eyelashes are trapped under dark, coagulated puddles and blood is stuck to her lips, filling every tiny, chapped crevice. Her brains are splattered around the softball sized hole in the particleboard wall, just above her.

The kid peeks through the blinds over his bed and sees a gas pump. His father stands there in his sleeveless shirt, his John Wayne shoulder tattoo smiling at the boy. The man’s hat is blue with the Dallas Cowboys star on it. He puts his left hand in his jean pocket and his right hand on the nozzle. At the pump behind him is a Mustang convertible from the eighties with hail damage and a cracked windshield. The top is down.

With the kid watching, the father glances around the parking lot. He leaves the nozzle in the RV and turns to the car. The kid watches him reach in and pull out a leopard print billfold. The father shuffles through it and takes out some cash. Above him, on the gas pump, a yellow sign says Smile! You’re on camera.

The kid stops watching and kicks off his blanket. It’s an Incredible Hulk blanket, portraying the green superhero smashing through a brick wall. His mother bought this for his seventh birthday, just a month back. This kid, he idolizes the superhero. The storage under his bed holds stacks of these comic books.

He throws the blanket on the floor and tries not to look at his mother when he walks by, but it doesn’t work. Her Mickey Mouse T-shirt is stained brown. Her left leg dangles in the aisle while her right is straight on the bed. There’s the necklace that the kid’s father gave to her for their fifth anniversary. It’s a gold chain with a cross resting against her chest.

The kid squeezes a fist until his fingers hurt.

He goes into the bathroom, a place barely the size of an outhouse. The carpet is covered with splinters of particleboard, and even on his tiptoes, the kid can’t quite see through the hole in the wall. To the left is the toilet with the cracked plastic seat. To the right, the shower with just a bit of mold around the drain. Straight ahead, the sink with a plastic golden, faucet. He lifts the seat and does his business and flushes. He washes his hands without soap. He turns to open the door and stops. His mother’s purple bath robe hangs over the shower curtain and her slippers are next to the toilet. Just about every morning, she had these on while the coffee pot was going. She’d sit at the table and talk politics with the father. The mother would always ask the father why he couldn’t blame W. for a damn thing. The father would retort with hippy this or Democrat ball-sucker that. Then the mother would always laugh.

The kid grabs the slippers and wraps them in the robe and stuffs them in the trashcan and lets his eyes water until his father stomps inside the front door.

“Get up here, boy! I have you something good for lunch.”

The kid comes out of the bathroom and walks into the kitchen, the rusty stovetop to his right and the scratched up table to his left. His mother’s and his father’s names are carved in the middle with a heart circling them. On that heart sits a closed can of Mountain Dew and a hotdog smeared with ketchup, just how he likes it.

“Where are we?” the kid says. He sits at the table, the ripped upholstery beneath his rear, yellow foam sticking out. “Are we to Canada yet?”

The father blinks, smiles, and says, “Nope. It’s gonna be a while longer. We’re in the shit town of Wellington, Kansas.”

The boy sighs. He opens his Mountain Dew and the can hisses and pops. He takes a sip.

The father says, “You look so much like your momma with all that blonde hair. Them blue eyes.” He adjusts his ball cap. “At least you got that. My family is full of ugly folks.” He laughs, punches his son on the shoulder just enough to make it hurt. Enough for a light bruise.

The father leaves the kitchen and walks by the TV stand and the piss colored couch and then sits in the driver’s seat. He starts the engine. The entire camper rattles.

With the end chunk of the hotdog in his mouth and ketchup on his cheek, the kid thinks how just last night his mother was sitting on the couch and helping him read his first book without pictures. It was a scary book. Goosebumps: Egg Monsters from Mars. The boy was on the fourteenth chapter when his father walked in the door, his face red and pasted with sweat.

The father, he looked at his wife and said to his kid, “Boy, you should go outside and sit in the lawn chair by the door.”

So the kid did as he was told. He sat there and slapped at the mosquitoes swarming around his legs. One bit him through the sock. He scratched at the bite while he heard his father screaming and his mother crying. His fingernail scraped the skin until the bite bled, and he kept going. The kid looked up and saw some guy in a blue shirt and jeans walking his poodle. He was standing by a tree in the courtyard while the dog sniffed the grass. The father’s voice, “You fucked that nigger!” His mother’s, “Who the hell told you that?” and then, “I want to leave this fucking place.” Fifteen, twenty seconds later, a loud crack echoed through the park. Then silence. The guy with the dog pulled out a cell phone. For twenty seconds the kid sat alone, scratching his bloody bug bite. The blood staining his white sock with small dots.

The door opened and his father stood there, panting. He told the kid to get inside. Leave the chairs. Leave everything.

They were living at a campground in Waco, Texas. There was a swimming pool with unbearably cold water and plenty water bugs. A playground with a swing set and a rusty slide. Even an arcade room with a pool table and a few of the best 1980’s arcade games. His father had a deal worked out with the owner. Two-fifty a month. This couple was trying to save money and build a house. A nice one. A big one. In the country somewhere. The plan was one more year.

The father, he was a gravedigger for the McLennan County Cemetery. While the pay was meager and hourly, he told his kid that he liked to throw dirt on people who have less than him, spitting on the coffin before they go under. The mother, she worked at a diner, a hostess. Her eyes were blue and her hair was blonde and her skin was smooth, not hard or wrinkly like some of the other mothers who stayed a few days at the campground.

The mother’s body was left face up on the bed, just as it had fallen. The father told his son there was no time to bury her. No time to drop her off somewhere. Besides, if the body was left behind someone would find it. Then, the police would know.

Instead of sleeping on the couch, just behind the driver’s seat, the father told his son to sleep in the back across from her while he drove. The father told the boy looking at him was too much like looking at her, and he wanted to calm down.

“I’m very angry,” the father said. “Don’t make me lose my temper again tonight.”

Twelve hours later, the kid finishes his hot dog and takes his can of Mountain Dew to the front. He sits in the passenger’s seat and watches the white dashes on the road pass by. A bug splats on the windshield, leaving a splotch of yellow on the glass.

“Good hotdog?” the father asks.

“Yeah.”

The boy thinks of his mother’s screaming voice. How she tried to tell the father that she wasn’t cheating. Moments before, her voice was smooth, helping with all the hard words. Encouraging the kid to sound them out. Goosebumps: Egg Monsters from Mars. A boy finds an egg with veins all over it. He takes it to a scientist.

The kid doesn’t remember where he left the book.

“Why are we going to Canada?” the boy finally asks.

The father smiles. Acne spattered John Wayne smiles. The kid decides that it’s okay to smile too. “Cops can’t follow us to another country. I know Mexico was closer, but I cut off a few heads down there. Left a few bodies in the ocean. There are some people there who don’t like me very much.”

The kid’s brow creases and he scoots to the edge of his seat. He imagines John Wayne smiling from his father’s shoulder while the gun goes off, and while his mother’s brains splatter the wall.

The father picks his nose and wipes it on his jeans. “If we go there, those fucking spics will find me. The fucking horrible things they would do to you. Of course, they’d make me watch. You know what they would do to a small kid like you?”

The kid’s eyes fill with water, but he blinks it away.

The father smiles. “With kids, they like to bury them in dirt with the head sticking out. Then they have this huge riding lawn mower with sharpened blades to drive right over you.”

The kid turns his head and watches the tiny ridges on the highway’s shoulder. There’s a dead dog, a big one, he isn’t sure what kind. The head is bent in the wrong direction and the body is crushed. Guts on the road.

The father turns his head, looking directly at his kid with a blank face. “She deserved it. Your mother deserved to die.”

The kid thinks of when he was four or five. His father had a two-by-four with a nail in the end. He showed this to the kid and told him to obey his mother, to do the chores she gave him. Don’t talk unless talked to first. Don’t leave the RV without permission. Don’t snore while sleeping. Don’t chew with an open mouth.

Occasionally, the parents kissed, and the kid saw it. The father would say she had black cock on her breath and that she cheated with Steve, the cook at the diner. The mother would deny it and complain about living in an RV. In recent weeks, he would show her his .357 magnum after each fight.

The kid takes a drink of Mountain Dew and thinks about how he never smelled anything on his mother’s breath when she helped him read. He tries to imagine being cradled against her with the book in his hands. He turns to his father. “Do you know where my book is?”

The father doesn’t answer. The boy notices how big his arms are. The big curve of the bicep, the bend of the elbow, the tiny hairs on the forearm and wrist.

This kid whispers, “I need my book.”

“I don’t know where your book is,” the father says, not taking his eyes away from the road.

The kid looks at the blue carpet. Separated fibers are standing around the chair’s base. He takes a long drink of his soda, and some of it goes down the wrong pipe and he coughs. With his fist over his mouth, his eyes begin to water.

“You okay?” the father asks.

The kid coughs more, and his face is red. He leans forward and gags a couple of times, and then he starts breathing deeply.

“What did I tell you about drinking and eating too fast?” The father’s eyes are on the road. His voice, flat.

“The two-by-four. The nail,” the kid says, breathing deeply.

The father nods. “And asking questions? Talking too much?”

“The two-by-four. The nail.”

“That’s right,” the father says. “I don’t want to hear anymore about the motherfucking book, either.”

The kid feels a deep stab to his stomach. Words that cause physical pain. The father, he wasn’t like this all the time. The two would play catch at the playground back home. The father would even smile if the kid caught the ball. Then, just a few minutes later, he’d get into a fight with the mother, usually revolving around Steve. After this, the father would make the kid stand in front of a tree without a baseball glove, and then he would throw the ball as hard as he could, getting as close to the kid as possible without hitting him.

“I’m going to go lay down in the back,” the boy says. “Next to Mom.”

The father shakes his head. “The couch is right behind me. I don’t mind anymore. I can look at you now.” The boy gazes to the piss colored couch with the daisy pattern. The couch he sat on while reading last night.

The kid, he shrugs.

Another bug slaps into the windshield. This time leaving white guts behind. The father smiles and looks at his son. “You like that shirt I bought you this week?”

The father made him wear it to bed last night, and the kid still has it on. It’s an Incredible Hulk T-shirt. The big green guy wearing torn, purple pants. The boy nods and looks down at Hulk’s face. The green man is showing his teeth. His eyes are narrow with fury.

“Hulk smash,” the boy says.

A long silence passes. The dishes clamor in the cupboard as they hit a bump. A clock swings on the wall above the stove. It’s a brown clock in the shape of an octagon, a glass face covering the numbers. Normally, they take it down before going on the road so it doesn’t fall.

The boy thinks about the book again. Then his mother, always sitting on the couch and helping him read. He thinks about his first book without pictures. Those scrambled little Martians.

“Do you think there are Martians, Dad?” he asks.

Without letting his eyes leave the road, the father says, “Do you know what vacuum aspiration is, boy?”

The kid looks at his father and shakes his head.

“Do you know how babies are made?”

The kid nods. “All the kids at school say it’s when the car goes in the garage.”

The father leans back and laughs, glancing at the ceiling and then back to the road. “Well, that’s right. Vacuum aspiration is something I tried to get your mother to do. You see, vacuum aspiration is when the woman sits in this chair with her legs spread open. Then the doctor has this vacuum, and he sticks it in her and sucks the baby out.”

The boy stares down at the floor. “Does the baby die?”

“Sure as shit,” the father says. “That’s the whole point. And you asking me about that book and Martians and bullshit makes me wish we would have went on with it. So shut your fucking mouth.”

The kid swallows and uses his arm to wipe the tears away. They’re entering a city now. Lots of cars are passing them on the left. A semi-truck blows by and the camper shakes.

“Wichita,” the father says. “An even bigger pisshole than Wellington.”

The kid stands and walks to the couch. There’s something purple sticking out from between the cushions. He looks closer. In white letters he sees Egg Monsters from Mars, and he takes the book. On the cover is a carton of eggs sitting on a kitchen counter with a green egg burst open. A monster, looking like a mass of scrambled eggs with black eyes, stares out. Below, in white letters, is “They’re no yolk!”

The boy smiles. His bookmark, a tiny tear of paper, is still in the right spot. Page fifty-six. Chapter fifteen. Just about halfway through. This is where Dr. Gray shows Dana dozens of the egg monsters huddled together.

The boy announces that he has to use the bathroom and the father nods. He walks down the aisle and the camper hits another bump. He stumbles into the table, his side hitting the pointy edge. He cringes and holds his breath. Crying is something punishable by the two-by-four with the nail. The kid holds his side for a few moments and hunches while he walks to the bathroom, his face red, the beginning of tears.

In the bathroom, he lifts his shirt and sees a dark red spot the size of a golf ball with flakes of dead skin at the edge. Breathing deeply, the kid sets his book down in the sink and keeps staring at the injury. He thinks of it as his father’s fault. Just like what happened to his mother.

The kid locks the door. He pulls down his pants and sits on the toilet and opens the book and begins to whisper the words. His father reads on the toilet all the time. The boy decides he likes it. There are no windows, only a skylight. When the camper is moving, the boy can’t read near windows or he gets sick.

This kid, he has to read the paragraphs two or three times to understand them without his mother there. He tries to imagine her voice, saying each word with him. But the voice never comes. His mind is frozen. About thirty minutes later, he hears his father shouting for him. The kid, never having the urge to use the bathroom in the first place, decides to pull up his pants and open the door.

He leaves the book in the trashcan, just under his mother’s bathrobe.

“What are you doing?” his father shouts. “Get up here.”

While the kid walks up the aisle toward his father, he holds his side. It’s tender, and he’s concerned about hitting another bump, so he passes the table at arm’s length.

The father, his eyes gazing out the window, says, “What were you doing in there for so damn long?”

The kid finds his Mountain Dew in the cup holder and takes a drink. It’s empty now. He wants another one.

“I’m sick,” he says. “I threw up.”

The father, he turns his head slowly, and his eyes look the kid from face to feet, and then they settle on the kid’s face. “Were you reading the book?”

The kid doesn’t answer. His legs start to shake. He thinks of the hole in his mother’s forehead, and imagines what his own scrawny body would look like, sitting in the passenger’s chair with his brains splattered on the window next to him. Blood running down the Hulk’s face.

The father sighs, turns his attention back to the road. “I want you to open that glove box.”

The first thing the kid sees when he opens it is the magnum. Next to it is a deck of playing cards, held together with a red rubber band. A folded road map. His mother’s wedding ring—fake diamonds, fake silver.

“Pick up the gun,” the father says. “That thing has killed a lot of spics, but it still has its silver shine.”

The kid’s eyes follow all the little engraved lines on the black handle, intersecting to form diamonds. Without picking it up, he runs his finger over them, feeling the bumps against his skin. Just above the handle, on the metal, is the image of a bucking horse.

“Point it at me,” the father says. “Pick it up and point it at me.”

This kid, he grips the handle and the first thing he notices is how heavy the gun feels in his scrawny hand. In fact, he has to use both hands to hold it up. His finger on the trigger, he remembers his mother’s scream last night. How she pleaded and told the father that she wasn’t cheating. The kid wonders if he can shoot John Wayne between the eyes.

“Now,” the father says, “we’re on Interstate 135, going about fifty-five, probably the top speed for this heap of shit. Think of what I did to your mother last night. If you think I was wrong, I want you to pull that trigger. But remember, we’re going pretty fast on a highway. If I die, there could be a big accident.”

The kid breathes in, exhales. Breathes in, exhales. The gun feels heavier with every second. This kid, he remembers playing catch with his father, standing against a tree while the ball flew by his face. Never once did it hit him. Never once did the father strike the boy.

“But don’t miss. If you miss, I will kill you.” The father glances to the kid and then looks back to the road.

In the movies, it looked so easy. The kid thinks of when he used to watch zombie movies with his father. How hundreds of slow moving people, all gray and covered with blood, walked aimlessly through the cities. Point the gun in the right direction, fire, and heads explode. But now, in real life, the kid can’t hold the gun still. His legs and arms are trembling, and tears begin to blur his vision.

“Line the sights up with the end of the barrel. Aim for my brain.” The father doesn’t even look at him. He just keeps his eyes on the road. “You won’t get anywhere in this world if you don’t get your hands dirty and spit on a few people.”

The kid blinks several times to clear his vision. He aims the gun for his father’s head the best he can. His arms shaking, he pulls the trigger. But nothing happens. Nothing happens except a click. There aren’t any sparks. There’s no booming shot. The father’s brains are still in his head.

The father turns to him and smiles. “You missed. I told you not to miss.”

This kid, he pulls the trigger again and again. Nothing but clicks. The father is still smiling, and the kid stares at his eyes and notices each individual bloodshot vein—a series of red spider webs. The kid screams.

“Shut the hell up,” the father says. He runs his hand over the tiny black bristles on his face. “Give me the gun.”

This kid, he’s still standing there with the gun jittering in his hand, pointed at his father. A mixture of sweat and tears moistens the kid’s cheeks, shining in the sunlight. He takes a hand off the gun and runs it through his damp hair. There’s a pressure on his stomach, and his chest burns.

“I don’t want to die,” this kid says.

The father, he turns the wheel and directs the RV to an exit ramp. “Your mother deserved to die, boy. I know for a fact that she was cheating with that nigger. There’s no way any woman should have to work past midnight at a diner like that. She wasn’t really working.”

This kid, he cradles the gun against his chest and walks down the aisle towards the bathroom.

The father yells, “I’m going to kill you because you wanted to kill me. You didn’t trust your father. You can hide anywhere in this camper, but I’ll find you. I know you’re young, but you betrayed family.”

This kid, he walks through the kitchen and he stops and opens a drawer and pulls out a steak knife. He looks at the water spots on the metal, runs his finger over the teeth of the blade.

Then, he starts heaving. He rushes to the bathroom and pops up the toilet seat. The camper slows. He can feel it turning a corner. The remains of the hotdog spew out of his mouth and land in the toilet bowl. The Mountain Dew burns when it comes up.

When he’s finished, this kid, he takes some toilet paper and wipes his face and his eyes. He starts to breathe, and when he turns to leave the bathroom, he stops at the trashcan and picks up his book. He stares at the cover, the egg monster. The eyes are black with a little white dot in the center of each.

He tosses the gun in the unflushed toilet, in the slop of Mountain Dew and the partially digested hotdog. He slams the toilet seat down and sits, pressing the book to his chest and extending the knife to the door.

He hears his father scream. “Fuck!” And the RV slows down. “I can’t outrun pigs in this thing. Bring me my fucking gun, boy.” The RV slows down.

The kid decides that he’s going to sit still. He’s going to wait for his father to break down the door, and then he’ll stab him in the heart. The father’s eyes will widen when the blade sinks in. He’ll gasp. He’ll stop breathing. He’ll cough. Dark blood will fly out his mouth. Just like in the movies.

And this is when the camper stops, completely. The kid, he hears his father screaming and cussing, his foot steps stomping back toward the bathroom. The camper shaking all around. This kid can even hear the dishes rattling from the kitchen.

He stays put, his fingers turning white around the knife’s handle.

And then a bang at the door, probably a fist. The kid isn’t crying. His cheeks aren’t wet. His hair is dry. His heart remains steady.

“I’m going to kill you if you come in here,” the kid says. His voice is calm. “I’m going to read my book while I do it.” He opens the book to the sixteenth chapter. He puts his left thumb at the crease between the pages. His right hand still holds the knife to the door.

“Boy, you are a piece of shit.” The door shakes violently. The noise of wood slamming against wood.

The kid reads loudly from page fifty-nine. “In a pa—panic, I tur—turned to Dr. Gray.”

This is when the egg monsters form a circle around Dana. When Dana is trapped. Dr. Gray tells Dana that the monsters are harmless. This kid, he pictures the harmless egg monsters outside the bathroom and he stands up.

And the front of the camper starts shaking. The kid listens while the front door opens and more footsteps stomp inside. “Police!” someone yells.

“You cocksuckers!” the father says.

Someone shouts, “Taser!” And the floor shakes outside the bathroom door. This kid, his father told him about tasers. He used them on people so that they would stop moving. So he could do anything he wanted to them.

The kid, he opens the door and dives on to his father, and he jabs the knife into his chest, so that the handle is the only thing sticking out. The police, they shout and wrap their arms around the boy, and he goes willingly. While they carry him down the aisle to the front of the camper, he looks back over his shoulder. A policeman is on his knees, pressing two fingers to his father’s neck, and he shakes his head.

kids

published 2008 in graduate conference papers iii (Wichita State University)

performed at 2008 national undergraduate literature conference (weber state university - Ogden, utah)

I get nervous when Rodney wears his sleeveless shirts in public because there’s this tattoo on his left shoulder of a woman spread eagle and fingering herself. The image is so detailed and so perfect that any on-looking boy might prematurely experience the dropping of his balls. Rodney calls this woman Jessica, though I don’t know why. Her blonde hair is on fire and her breasts are like two golf balls on his shoulder. Rodney claims there is a story behind this woman, but he refuses to tell it.

Right now, Jessica smiles at me while I stand next to Rodney at the salad bar. On the other side of Rodney is some kid in a My Chemical Romance T-shirt and what I think are girl’s jeans three sizes too small.

It’s only a matter of time, I’m thinking. A matter of seconds.

The guy’s hair is greasy orange with a feminine curl over his left eye. There’s a tattoo of a star on his right, nonexistent bicep, and he also has those thick black rimmed glasses that look like something from the sixties.

Rodney hates kids that dress like this. He calls them emo kids.

I use the plastic tongs to fill my plate with lettuce. A Barry Manilow song plays over the diner’s speakers. A fly buzzes around the fresh selection of fruit –cantaloupe, strawberries, watermelon. It lands on a stray piece of spinach stuck between the tubs of lettuce and grated carrots.

It’s only a matter of time, I’m thinking. A matter of seconds. Rodney will punch this guy in the face and we will both be asked to leave Gary’s Diner and never return.

Rodney gets to the salad dressing and nothing has happened yet. There’s a slight hint of hope that nothing will. Rodney reaches for the plastic dipper in the ranch and drowns his lettuce. He gets another scoop and does it again.

“God,” Emo Kid says in a nasally voice. “Would you like a little bit of salad with your dressing?” Rodney stops moving and faces him, his shaved head glaring under the ceiling light.

It’s over.

Emo Kid will soon be on the floor with blood spraying from his broken nose.

What an idiot. Would you like a little bit of salad with your dressing?

Rodney smiles and says, “Would you like a little bit of my foot with your ass?”

Emo Kid grabs some silverware and scampers to a table, where there’s this big Mexican guy in a Ninja Turtles shirt eating a chunk of cantaloupe.

“Pussy,” Rodney mutters. I don’t think Emo Kid hears this.

“You’re going to get us in some shit,” I tell Rodney. He shrugs.

We both grab silverware and napkins and go to a table in the far corner of the restaurant. I am thankful that Rodney is sitting with Jessica facing the wall. I just don’t feel comfortable being seen when she is out, freely stroking herself and offering a sensuous smile to anyone who might glance her way.

“You never told me what day school starts,” Rodney says. “We need to plan our fishing trip soon.”

“School always starts at the beginning of August,” I say. I just got my certification to teach. I’m going to be a teacher’s aide in a third grade class. I’m doing this because Rodney’s sister is doing this. I’ve been dating her for like five years, and we’re practically married. When she made up her mind to teach, I followed her because it didn’t sound too difficult, and so far it hasn’t been. I didn’t know what else to do after high school.

“We could bring Emily,” Rodney says. “Just as long as you two don’t start ass banging in the tent.”

“Ass banging?” I say. “Before marriage?  Do I look like a fucking heathen?”

Rodney laughs. “Whatever, it’s cool. I just don’t want to be around it. I hooked you two up because I knew you’d respect her, man. After Dad died, she didn’t have a single guy in her life aside from me.”

“Yeah,” I say. Rodney reminds me of this all the time. Their father shot himself in the face Kurt Cobain style when Emily was like ten. I met Rodney in high school. He introduced me to his sister, who kept her distance from guys until she met me.

Rodney takes a bite of his salad and dressing drips onto the table. It sinks into a tiny crevice and then a small iceberg leaf falls on top of it.

“Next weekend, then?” Rodney asks.

“Sure,” I say.

I take a bite of my salad. The dressing tastes sour. I put my fork down and scoot the plate aside. Rodney blots his mouth and then sets the napkin down on the table. On the napkin there is a cartoon of Gary Johnson, the owner, wearing his chef’s hat and holding a giant fork with a crying pig on the end. Gary is smiling at me and giving me a thumbs-up with his free hand.

“Something wrong?” Rodney asks. There’s still salad dressing on the left corner of his mouth, but I do nothing to inform him of it.

“Dressing’s sour,” I say.

Rodney chuckles. “That’s what I thought about your mom’s–”

“Quit being a dick,” I say.

“I’m not being a dick.”

“You’re being a dick.”

“I am not.”

“Just shut up.”

“Whatever,” Rodney says.

A woman wearing short shorts walks in and sits down at the table next to us. She has two children with her. There’s cellulite gathering in the backs of her legs and a few purple stretch marks venturing across her thighs. Rodney smiles. The kids are both boys. One has a very old Power Rangers T-shirt and the other is wearing a dark polo shirt.

Kids, I’m thinking. I’m going to teach them soon.

The woman smiles at us briefly to acknowledge our presence. Her smile reveals nice looking teeth through thoroughly glossed lips. Rodney and I nod to her and she leaves to the salad bar with her kids.

Rodney leans forward and smiles. I can smell the sour dressing on his breath. “Did you see those stretch marks, man? It’s like fuckin Freddy Krueger drug his blades across her legs. That’s sick.”

I can’t help but to start laughing. He does too.

“I bet they go all around her ass,” Rodney says.

I start laughing so hard that my sides hurt. I can feel the looks of a few people across the restaurant. One from a lady with bushy, silvery hair that almost looks like an afro. Her husband sits across from her in a John Deere hat, chewing on ribs.

“Stop,” I say breathlessly. “Just stop.”

Rodney shrugs. “It’s true.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll bet it is. We’ll put money on it. Why don’t you go ask her?”

“Fuck that.” Rodney laughs.

We eventually stop laughing and Rodney stares down at his empty plate. There’s still a lot of dressing smeared around with the occasional bacon-bit mixed in. A fly buzzes around Rodney’s head and it lands on his ear. He swats at it and it flies away.

A waitress comes out with two plates and starts walking toward our table. She’s wearing an apron that has the same logo the napkins do. Her hair is in a pony tail and she is wearing denim shorts and her legs look smooth.

She smiles at us. Her name tag says TIFFANY. I smile back. Rodney smiles too. She walks by to the table behind us. Rodney sighs. “The service here sucks.”

Stretch Marks returns with the two kids. Power Ranger Kid screams about some new toy. Polo Shirt Kid is crying.

Kids, I’m thinking. I’m going to teach them soon.

“I can’t picture you as a teacher,” Rodney says. He has to say it twice because I can’t hear over the kid’s screaming.

“I’ll be fine,” I say. “I’ve already been trained for this crap. It’s cool. I love kids.”

Rodney starts laughing. “No you don’t. You’re just doing it because Emily is doing it. She’s a little concerned about you, man.”

“Concerned?” I say. “She hasn’t said anything to me.”

Rodney shrugs. “She doesn’t think you’re good enough with kids.”

“Dude,” I say, “I’m good with kids. I already got my certification so I’m fine. This isn’t going to be that bad.”

Rodney laughs. “Good with kids? You’re so full of shit. You like to annoy kids. Don’t forget what you did at the bookstore.”

I nod. He’s got me there. I am full of shit.

The sixth Harry Potter book was coming out and Borders was throwing a small party at midnight for the release. I read an illegal internet copy of the book before it came out. I knew that Snape killed Dumbledore long before the first wizard-dressed child even touched the green hardcover of the book. I was drunk. I was really drunk. I don’t know why I did it.

Rodney drove me up to the book store. When we got there he pulled out two white shirts with the words “Snape kills Dumbledore!” printed across the chest. I laughed uncontrollably and we wore them while we stood in line.

In the end, there were some pissed off parents and some crying children and we were asked to leave by Borders management.

“It’s only ten dollars!” Power Ranger Kid whines.

“Shut up,” Stretch Marks says, swatting him on his butt. “Stop whining!” He doesn’t stop. Power Ranger Kid won’t sit down and is jumping and screaming for what I think is some sort of Spider-Man action figure.

“Whatever,” Rodney says. “She’s just a little concerned. I love you, bro. I just don’t know if you’ll last.”

“Lasted long enough with your mom last night,” I say, smiling.

Rodney shakes his head and flips me off and calls me a dumbass.

I shrug.

“That’s the perfect kind of talk from a third grade teacher,” Rodney says.

I suddenly feel a sharp pain on my left arm, just below the elbow. I look down and find Power Ranger Kid with his teeth deep into my skin. For a moment, I’m frozen. The kid opens his mouth and backs away from me. He smiles. I look down. His crooked teeth have left pink, bleeding imprints on my arm.

I glance to Rodney. His eyes are twice their normal size.

“What the fuck?” I stand up and scream.

The kid starts crying. Then Polo Shirt Kid starts laughing.

I feel all the eyes in the room fall on me. Everyone stops eating. They want to see blood. They want to see drama.

Kids, I’m thinking.

“Don’t yell at my child!” Stretch Marks stands up. Her eyes are hazel. She folds her arms across her sagging tits and grimaces at me. Her face is full of wrinkles, poorly covered by makeup, and her mouth sags down like a bulldog.

“He bit me,” I say.

The woman says nothing.

“Your fucking kid bit me!” I scream.

Power Ranger Kid wails louder, hiding his face in his arms.

“You shouldn’t yell at other people’s children,” Stretch Marks says. “It’s not your business to discipline my child.”

I shift all my weight to my left foot. Then I shift to the right. Then back to the left again. I am thinking about hitting her. I am thinking about hitting a woman. I have never hit a woman. Hell, I haven’t hit a guy since high school.

“When you can’t control your fucking kid and he bites me it becomes my business,” I say.

Rodney stands behind me. “Calm down,” he whispers. “We should go.”

My heart keeps pumping me full of desire for some sort of vengeance. My fists clench.

Kids, I’m thinking. I’m going to teach them soon.

“This isn’t my fault,” I say. “Stop looking at me like that you dumb bitch!”

“There are children here!” Stretch Marks screams.

Someone taps me on the shoulder. I turn and find a man in one of those aprons that has Gary lancing the pig on the front. The guy is huge. His stomach is large enough to hold small children inside. I briefly fantasize that Power Ranger Kid is being barbecued.

“I have to ask you to leave, sir,” he says.

Rodney nods. “That might be a good idea.” He lightly tugs my arm.

I stare into the woman’s eyes without blinking. “I’m bleeding,” I say. “That’s bad news for you.”

“What?” she says.

“I’m HIV positive,” I say. “Get your kid checked.”

Everyone is still. The woman’s eyes grow large and even bug out a little. The kid keeps crying.

Rodney briefly smiles and then pats me on the shoulder, mouthing the word nice into my ear.

“You’re not serious,” the woman says.

“I am serious,” I say. My arms are shaking.

A tear escapes her bulging left eye and then one from the right immediately follows. Each tear paves a stream of water through thick makeup.

“We can go,” I tell Rodney.

As I walk to the door I hear her crying intensify.

Kids, I’m thinking. I’m going to teach them soon.

butterfly

literary nonfiction

publish 2012 - Underground voices

BUTTERFLY
In loving memory of Donald Hammond

Hammond pitched summer league baseball in high school. The early sixties. The diamond stretched between the public pool and the park. Packed stands climbed from the dirt as the sun struck the crowd. Chatter. Roaring. Clapping. The announcer buzzed. Balls slapped into gloves. “Steeeerriiike!” blasted the ears of the crowd frequently when Donald Hammond pitched. Scouts observed from the stands. His lifetime goal: to play Major SLeague Baseball.

Donald Hammond suffered from an invisible something. Growing up, he lived with his family on a farm outside of Clay Center, a dot on the map in northeastern Kansas with currently just under five thousand people, most of whom had sprouted gray hair. His room was off the kitchen. A double bed. A chest of drawers. Clothes on the floor. A window.

Hammond mostly avoided people. He went to prom without a date, as he never dated in high school. When tugged into conversation, he’d struggle for words. He once told his sister’s boyfriend, now husband, John that he didn’t know what to say when talking to people, so he said nothing.

After high school, Hammond attended a trade school in Beloit for shop classes. His pitfall was that his mind wandered when he performed tasks. He once crashed a tractor into a light post. While burning brush on the farm, the flames ripped out of control and consumed the barn. At trade school, a fiber blade sliced through the tendons in his right arm. He couldn’t grip a baseball anymore.

Schizophrenia is a form of psychosis, a lost sense of reality. Schizo is split. Phrenia is mind. Both derive from Greek. Symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia include delusions of persecution and hallucinations of voices, smells, tastes, sexual touching, and visualizations on rare occasions. The cause is unknown, but prenatal illness may increase the chance of contracting schizophrenia. The illness tends to run in families and can be set off by the spurt of puberty or outside stresses.

On a global scale, one million people commit suicide every year, one person every forty seconds. In his mid twenties, Hammond snapped after an argument with his parents. Screaming about suicide, he stormed out of the farmhouse and into his car. He sped to a pasture off Highway Eighty Two, west of Wakefield, and his parents followed him. His father jumped out of his car and into his son’s, while his mother drove home. Hammond muttered more about killing himself to his father, and once back on the highway, he veered into the left lane and floored it toward an oncoming car. His father struggled for the wheel, but he was in his late fifties and recovering from an illness. At the last moment, the oncoming car swerved into the other lane to miss them. Days later, Hammond was institutionalized in Topeka for several months. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

A fuzzy photograph of Donald Hammond taken in his mid to late thirties displayed a squinting face with a thick black mustache covering the top of an unwavering mouth. Brush and dead trees reached out of the ground behind him. Sturdy legs, hidden by dark blue jeans, rose from his black boots to a light leather belt with an elaborate design and a huge, oval buckle. A solid body filled a blue button up shirt with a collar. He leaned to his left, putting his weight on a rifle as if it were a cane, his hand around the barrel and the butt in the grass.

Hammond had once been a date with a slender woman with shoulder length brown hair. For several weeks he courted her, buying gifts and taking her on dates. Then, for no reason, he delivered a break up speech, and all was done. Hammond’s mother also tried to set him up with a young woman, whom she had over for dinner. He behaved as if she were invisible.

After Hammond was released from the institution, his father retired from the farm, and he brought his wife and son to a house in Clay Center. Hammond lived in the basement. At night, he would pace the house, and the only way he could sleep was if his father sat in bed next to him with a hand on his chest to hold him down, which led to sleepless nights for them both, but when Hammond did sleep, he was capable of being out for up to fourteen hours.

Donald Hammond was thought to be a possible threat after his parents died, when he quit his job and stopped taking his medication. He lived alone in a house in Clay Center, never cleaning anything and only leaving to eat at Wendy’s or go to the grocery store.

After pledging money toward the sheriff’s department, Hammond received an honorary deputy card from the sheriff, which he thought gave him the right to carry a concealed weapon. He found a waitress he liked at a bar in town, and he opened his jacket toward her, flashing the gun as he told her that he was an honorary deputy and was here to protect her. He followed her home on his motorcycle, and she called the police. On a chase, he led the police back to the farm where he grew up, owned at the time by his sister, Shirley, in Wichita. After the arrest, a psychological evaluation determined that Hammond was not a threat to anyone, so the police released him.

Neighbors once spotted Hammond in his yard, in the snow, dressed in white underwear, rubber boots, and a Mickey Mouse hat with ear flaps. He wielded a double-bladed axe over his shoulder while searching for brush to remove.

Years later, Donald Hammond’s neighbors reported a foul stench resonating from his house. No one had seen him for four days. His legal guardian and former high school classmate found him on the floor, sitting against the wall and decomposing in a mess of bodily fluids. The mortician covered Hammond with embalming powder and zipped him inside a body bag. The spot on the wooden floor where he died was several shades darker than the rest of the room, and in the days following, the house would smell of bleach, but the effort to eliminate the deathly odor failed, and the house had to be torn down. Due to decay, the cause of death could not be identified. It was summer, 2000.        

 A few days later, clouds spread over Clay Center. Forty to fifty showed at the cemetery. White gravel roads traveled about the graves, which were grouped by family and covered by dark grass. Warm and humid air engulfed them. Six or seven rows of metal fold out chairs spread back from the closed coffin, but most had to stand.

John and Shirley Browning sat directly before the coffin in the front row. They had driven from Wichita, almost three hours to the southwest, while most of the others were from Clay Center and knew, or knew of, Donald Hammond. A minister from the First United Methodist Church of Clay Center, the church John and Shirley were married in, began the service.

Less than a minute later, a pink and black butterfly landed on the coffin directly in front of Shirley. Facing her, it folded its wings, unfolded and folded again. She noticed. John noticed. It remained in the same spot for the entire eulogy, folding and unfolding its wings. The minister summarized Donald Hammond’s life. Shirley dropped her head but didn’t cry, the same reaction as everyone.

The Greek word for butterfly is psyche, meaning soul. Aztecs also believed the dead return as butterflies or sometimes humming birds. While butterflies spend the summer in the United States and Canada, they travel south to Mexico in the autumn, and the locals believe they carry the spirits of lost relatives honored on El Día de los Muertos (The Day of the Dead). For Christians, the butterfly symbolizes resurrection. The caterpillar cocoons itself, appearing dead, and the butterfly rises.

John and Shirley remained at the site for a half-hour and exchanged pleasantries. The butterfly returned. It hovered in front of John’s face. He remarked that the butterfly was a pest. Then someone noted it had been on his shoulder since the sermon had ended.