Rob Thurman - Slashback

Niko

Twelve Years Ago

Our neighbor is a serial killer.

It was that kind of day.

There had been tutoring no-necked football players lacking enough in brain cells that I was surprised they didnt have calluses on their knuckles from walking on them. It wouldve gone well with their gorilla grunting. Following that had been the food poisoning caused by a casserole brought in by Mrs. Dumpfries. The teachers lounge had been liberally labeled a biohazard. The color of which is not orange like they tell you, but the bile green of nonstop vomiting. I stood witness to that. Id gone through three mops.

And now we had a serial killer.

Or so said my little brother.

I closed the door behind me and locked it, not because I was immediately on board with the serial killer comment just issued, but we rented in a bad neighborhood. For us, an average neighborhood would be a more truthful way to put it. Wed not lived in better and wed sometimes lived in worse. This cramped little house with a pronounced lean, no insulation, and cracked windows in east New London, Connecticut, was nothing special in one way or the other. When we didnt stay anyplace longer than five or six months, thanks to our mothers occupation, it was all the same. I put my duffel bag containing my schoolbooks and janitor uniform by the door and took off my worn, but warm, Salvation Army coat to hang it from a rusted hook by the door.

With everything in its place I moved to the kitchen table, which wobbled, where my little brother with pencil and paper sat in a chair, which also wobbled. I lightly ruffled his black hair, shaggy in length but with a gloss like silk. Thanks to Cal being a good brother, he let me without complaint.

Wheres Sophia? I asked. She had given birth to us and I used the word mother sometimes, but the truth of it never quite fit in my mouth.

Gone. With her suitcase. The pencil kept moving and he didnt look up.

With her suitcase. . that meant she would be gone anywhere from three days to three weeks. If business was slow in the area, she went looking for it elsewhere. She told fortunes, picked pockets, ran scams, whored herself out if the price was right. There was only so much whiskey you could shoplift before the local liquor store owners became suspicious and you had to actually start paying for it. Yes, life was hard for Sophia. I swallowed my anger as Id been taught. I wouldnt let Sophia have that kind of power over me.

And truthfully, the times she was gone were the best times.

Are you doing your homework? I asked with a little disapproval for him to hear. It was six p.m.-although I couldnt make it home at the same time he did, I made it there before dark. Always.

The homework-he shouldve been done with it by now. There was also a pan crusted with burned SpaghettiOs in the sink, some less scorched fake pasta in spots on the cracked linoleum floor, and a purple handprint, grape soda probably, on the door of the groaning refrigerator. Cal was a good brother, but there are all sorts of definitions for good when it came to an eleven-year-old.

Yes, Nik. Im doing my homework. Watching the serial killer made me get behind. I didnt have to see his eyes to know they were rolling with the disdain and sarcasm only an eleven-year-old could manage, and I gave him a gentle swat to the back of the head.

I took the other chair and sat down. All right. Tell me why our neighbor is a serial killer, I said with a patience I didnt have to fake. I listened to Cal when he had something to say. I always listened to him. I had even when he was three and thought a monster lived under the bed, because in our world. .

In our world, there was every chance that he wasnt necessarily wrong.

I also listened to him as hed had to grow up very fast and deserved the respect and dignity that came from surviving a harsh road that I hadnt been able to change nearly as much as I wished. There were times I could close my eyes and see the small bloody footprints on that blackly grim path. That my larger ones were beside his every step of the way didnt help. Didnt absolve.

I was fifteen and I was smart. More than smart. I could admit that because it wasnt boasting. Being more than smart meant knowing too much. If Id had a choice, I wouldve chosen to be less smart. I wouldve chosen not to know all about absolution and how hard it was to come by.

Impossible on some days.

As for right now. . Id grown up as quickly as Cal, but if I hadnt-if Id been a normal fifteen-year-old, I would still know this: you show respect to a warrior. For Cal to have survived our childhood, he was a warrior. I gave him his due. Anything else wouldve made me less of a brother.

He put down his pencil and raised his eyes from the carelessly rumpled paper. I swallowed the sigh and reminded myself that there were worse things than a messy nature. Cal was a good brother and a good kid when, if theyd lived his life, other children would be feral as wild dogs and amoral as sharks at dinnertime. Cal was amazingly, painfully human in comparison and not once did I overlook that.

I reached over and gave him an encouraging tap on the back of his hand as he hesitated, something he rarely did. Cal knew his own mind about generally everything under the sun and all the other suns in at least half our galaxy. Go on, grasshopper. Tell me.

Gray eyes, the same as mine and that of our mother, Sophia, blinked; then he shrugged. I smelled it. On him.

Thats where the discomfort entered the picture. Cal didnt like admitting he could do something other people couldnt. He didnt want to be different. I told him that sometimes different is good, sometimes its better. It was one of the few times in his life he hadnt believed me.

Okay, I said, calm as if that was something I heard every day. I pretended not to see the flush of shame behind his pale skin. He wouldnt want to talk about it and if I tried, it would make it worse. On certain matters Cal was determined that no positive spin could be put on it and that was that. Stubborn, so stubborn. What exactly did you smell?

He shrugged again. I got off the bus at the corner with the other kids. To say that Cal could take care of himself better than your average eleven-year-old was something of an understatement, but I made certain he played it safe all the same. That he stayed with a crowd or a group of other people if he could. I was walking home and he was at his mailbox by the sidewalk. When I passed him, I smelled it. He smelled like blood. A lot of blood. After he went inside, I snuck around to his backyard and got close to the house. There are tiny kinda half windows to the basement. I think theyre covered up with cardboard on the inside or painted because I couldnt see anything. He made a face. But I could still smell. Its like roadkill. His basement smells like a mountain of roadkill.

He gave a third shrug, a habit I was going to have to break and soon while I was still sane. He has a basement full of dead bodies, he declared, and that means hes a serial killer.

End of story. Which was my brothers way. If he became a lawyer when he grew up, hed have the most succinct closing arguments in any court system in America.

He had already picked up his pencil again and gone back to the math problems. It wasnt that he liked math or homework of any kind, but he knew no homework meant no TV. That motivated him to no end. . normally. What motivated him now was the amount of trouble he knew was coming his way.

You went prowling around the mans windows? Cal, how could you do something so stupid? He couldve shot you. If hed seen you, he