Stop Screaming and Turn Left at the Light

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For a summer day, the air was a chill-inducing and bitter kind of cold. The wind whistled startlingly, making the short hairs on the back of Glenn’s neck prickle. But he paid it no attention and instead puckered his lips to join in the howling orchestra. As he walked he would occasionally run the tips of his fingers up and down the path of pleasing goosebumps on his arms. Under the soles of his sneakers, he sloshed the pockets of leftover rainwater that littered the grassy area. He took enjoyment in pressing the water into the mud. It made a satisfying wet squishing sound almost as if he was pressing down on a fresh wound. 

He was intending to make it home to pick up the newspaper before his mother got to it. He enjoyed cutting out the pictures and articles he liked but his mother started to frown upon the habit when he began cutting out the obit-obituaries (?), he sounded the word out quietly to himself as he thought about it. His mother had said it in such a hushed tone that it made it seem like a dirty word. Though he was not quite sure what the word meant, he thought it was wonderful to have little stories about people in the paper. He hoped he could get them to print his own one day. 

Stepping off the curb, the wafting smell of burgers became distinctly stronger. The Dimelight Diner had been a trademark of the town for as long as he could remember. It sat on the corner to tease the busy street. He liked to walk past the small building at night. The pale green hues of light would shine down on the pavement giving it a glow. It sometimes made the passing cars glitter like his mother's earrings. Had it been night-time he would have gone over. But despite the chill, it was still a summer day that would not go to waste. So he crossed to the side street where Mr. Hannigan was mowing his lawn. The shiny red machine plowed over the greenery and left blades of thin grass in its path. And due to the accompanying wind, the strands flew a little ways off the sidewalk and danced about in the air. 

Mr. Hannigan taught at the small school where Glenn spent most of his days during the less favorable seasons. Glenn paid more attention to the man's inconsistent facial hair than the syllabus. Though it seemed for the summer time, the man was going for a clean shaven look which was somewhat disappointing to Glenn. But he still had somewhat of a shadow. Glenn’s eyes traced the specks of hair like constellations as he started to stroll again. He hopped atop the cracks in the sidewalk without a second thought. He’d walked this path more times than years he’d been alive. He knew what each house held. A family, a friend of his, the kid who pushed him over in the 2nd grade, or Mr. Hannigan. 

When his shoe caught on a particularly prominent crack, he noticed the white laces were now loose, long and spilled onto the concrete. He kneeled down to seize a moment's rest and began fumbling to double knot them like his mother did. But as he held one bunny ear, he noticed a rush of movement from the large yellow home across the street. 

It was a girl he remembered to be Virginia Denver who had a father that never let the grass in his front yard grow too high. He recalled an unusually hot summer when Mr. Denver pulled out all the dandelion weeds that littered the green by hand. He’d laid them out on the sidewalk only to have some neighborhood children swipe them. Not that the old man cared all that much, at least he hadn’t had to dispose of them himself. Glenn’s mother always made some sort of a ‘tsk’ sound when conversation of the girl came up. She was only legally obligated to like one child. It seemed as if everyone else got on her nerves. At least, that’s what he suspected. He’d overheard his mother and her girlfriends having not-so hushed conversations about problem children within the neighborhood. He recognized a few of the names they casually tossed out. But Virginia came up once or twice more and she was the only one his mother had actually had a conversation with considering she worked for her father. She never made that ‘tsk’ sound around Mr. Denver. 

Virginia was someone’s little sister but an older woman in the eyes of Glenn’s classmates. Kip Allen was in Glenn’s desk clump and had the smile of a crazy man. He was overzealous in character and felt the need to lean over during every test and whisper the worst jokes Glenn had ever heard just to get his goat, as he would say. On occasion, the jokes would turn grimy and dirty. Glenn absolutely despised those days. He even channeled the kind of anger they infuriated him with when trying to beat out his friends during those recess games. Kip had dropped Virginia’s name while making what he called, a ‘Big tits’ gesture. He’d seen the girl during the brief fling she had with his older brother, Greg. And from the start of that fling Kip had made her a prominent subject in his theater of cruel humor. 

Looking at the young woman now, Glenn decided she was just that. A young woman. Not someone to ‘tsk’ at nor the punchline of some disgusting joke. Just some stranger. 

During his third attempt in trying to focus on tying his shoe, he noticed the way Virginia’s lips were moving. Her head tilted down with a small hidden bounce in her step. Speaking a quiet truth to herself, she was singing softly along to a song that carried over from Mr. Hannigan’s small radio, he was surprised she could even hear it. As she moved to gather her some things and move to cross the street, Glenn pondered the song himself. ‘Who had the radio personality introduced it as…? The Eagles, he thought.The voices sang with such an ease that it did make him wonder just what it was a woman could do to your soul as they so pleasurably claimed to know.’

His brief wonder overcame him for a few solid seconds, a simple thing he could not comprehend. What awoke him from the tiny daze was the tickle in his throat which made him cough up unpleasantly into his elbow. His eyes found Virginia again who was stepping off the curb, the sun light tracing her body. Her eyes were skimming the small pile of books in her arms with a nature of eagerness. He’d never had such joy in his eyes before and wondered if he ever would. He also wondered if the girl knew just what people like his mother or Kip said about her. She didn’t seem-

All normal thoughts rushed from Glenn’s brain as something played out in slow motion. And it was not something he’d ever been a witness to before in his life. Barreling down the street was a young man’s car. Its headlights, though turned off, were like eyes on Virginia. A predator on its prey. The low and deep growl of the engine rang in his ears but was missed on the blissful girl. He tried to think of a solution as an adult would but his voice just screamed before he could realize it for himself. He ran toward the edge of the sidewalk just screaming to her. “Virginia! Behind you!” before he had his first real kiss...with the concrete just below him. His loose shoelaces proved him unstable and knocked him down. He peeked over his crescent shaped elbow and saw the girl stop and pause with confusion. She was looking at him as if to condemn him as some kid playing a game. 

And it was with that pause that the real terror began. He saw the horrified look in her eyes just before the collision. Her eyes widened and looked as if they might pop right from her head just before her body curved back in an unnatural manner, the car skidded harshly. Hot blood spurted out and splashed onto the concrete wounds of the street. The uncomfortable heat from the now low hanging sun boiled it and would later bake it into permanent stains. The air soon smelled of screaming metal. It had played out as if it were a scene from one of those horrid movies Glenn had passed while channel searching. His tender skin was burned slightly as he pushed himself up from the ground in an unsightly manner. It proved to be a mistake as he had to clamp his hands over his eyes just to avoid sensory overload. 

He felt someone’s large hands wrap around his middle and pick him from the ground like a fresh apple from a hollowed autumn tree. As the slender fingers slipped comfortably between his ribs, Glenn was overcome with the smell of freshly cut grass, laundry and other household chore aesthetics. He writhed his body in Mr. Hannigan’s grip without a clear goal. Maybe to run his way down the block and spill his guts to his heart content into that sewer grate. He felt that idea begin to rumble in his lower belly just as the man slapped his own large hand over Glenn’s eyes. A part of the boy wanted to peek through the small slivers of scenery peeking through the skin and soak up the aftermath. Find the source of the screaming, get a good look at what Virginia looked like now. He thought about Kip again....he wondered if he’d ever seen someone die before and what kind of material that’d make for. It made Glenn shiver all over and take the last step to peek through Mr. Hannigan’s hand because after all, he wasn’t too sure he’d seen someone die before either. 

The radio was still playing on because it wasn’t as if the time-frozen band knew to pause and stare like the strays of Middlerock. So as his town flocked around the girl with brown hair now matted to the side of her head, they sang on. 

‘I get this feelin' I may know you

As a lover and a friend

This voice keeps whispering in my other ear

Tells me I may never see you again’

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Flakes of cereal dust floated miserably along the sides of Glenn’s tiny breakfast bowl. He batted his eyes a few times to watch the life of his Sonic Spooners die out in stop-motion. The pit of his stomach burned deeply enough to make him sick, chicken-soup sick. That was the big one. The kind of sick that required bed-rest and no school. His mother had told him so over the mess of his flu related vomit just last year. However, Glenn was in no mood to be coddled with-at least not anymore than he already was-so he swallowed the idea of telling his mother just as well as he swallowed the chunks of food that came up his throat. They did not taste as good coming up as they did going down and he hardly believed his chicken meal from the night before would still be little dinosaurs when splattered against cold kitchen tile. That kid in his class had once claimed to have hurled up an entire chicken strip. Dolly Weston had leaned over her social studies work that day and told Kip that she wished he had choked on it. Glenn chuckled once more as he thought about it. His mother gave him a curious glance as she poured him a fresh glass of orange juice. He thought for a moment that she might say something but instead she just resided in her favorite chair, the one he wasn’t allowed to steal from her. He smiled at her and mashed his spoon down into the bowl, allowing himself to drift back into thought. 

He’d once heard an adult say ‘anything can happen in Middlerock’ and he supposed coughing up a chicken strip fell under the umbrella of anything. It reminded him of that little story kids his age passed around like his mother’s gossiping friends. 

He’d heard Grover had been a thick bald man whose priorities laid with his truck. He drove that dirty hunk of metal everywhere and kept it until it was on its last legs and funny enough it’s where his last leg broke. A couple kids said it was WGRV-The Groove- 's three for thursday rock block that got him all excited and lodged that sorry piece of hot dog down his throat. The last thing he heard before choking out had been Elvis crooning about some girl called Marie. As his hand had reached to turn up the volume dial with a rush of eagerness, his whooping mixed with a dry throat caused him to hack alone in his car. Glenn bet that man would’ve given anything to see his hotdog spurted out all over his fabric car seat while he heaved for the breath almost lost. At least, Glenn assumed the seats were fabric but they could have been leather. It was just as likely as the story being complete bull too. The tale ends with the bit of proof his classmates wave around with pride, the man had been buried in the old & the decrepit cemetery known now as Grovers Rest. Glenn liked to believe it all. 

“Are we enjoying breakfast?” His mother spoke softly, chin resting in the small dip of her palm in the way that irritated her skin. Glenn never liked that habit of her’s. He couldn’t tell her if ‘we’ were enjoying breakfast, just if he was. But all mothers had hang-ups like that, didn’t they? Julie Crest’s mom had the habit of shouting every other sentence.

“S’good.” He licked his lips and intended to take another mouthful to show her but the dust floating around in the filmy white river almost made him gag. So instead, he shoved his spoon around as if searching for another good bite. However, his mother was not fooled and slowly made her way back over to take the bowl from him. He followed her movement to the sink with his eyes and began to whistle to himself. It was an apparently endearing action as his mom came back over to rub her hand through his hair, rings pulling slightly harder than he assumed she expected. 

She’d been at his side for the past two weeks without venturing farther than just a small shout away. For a while it was nice to have her around and he understood her desire to but it was coming to the point where Glenn didn’t think he needed it anymore. It wasn’t often that he even thought about ‘the accident’, as he was being told to call it, let alone affected by it. Plus, being shadowed by his mother made him look like a wuss in front of his friend. He tried to glance at her as she continued to play with his hair. 

“Did I ever tell you the story about the time-?” Donna halted her words as the soft buzzing of the oven timer went off for no good reason. It had been on the fritz lately according to his mother. She tore her hands from his hair startlingly and mumbled a string of harsh sounding words as she marched over to the machine. Glenn delicately peeked over his shoulder to follow her, resting his chin against his shoulder. As she jammed her fingers onto the buttons, she put a clever disguise on her angry words. Glenn assumed the words that went right over his head were italian ones she had learned from his father and that was about the only fun fact he knew about the guy. His father was an italian man. Oh!-

Glenn sat up in his seat, turning his back on his tempered mother. He also knew his father had floppy-or was it more curly?- hair that his mom had adored at some point in her life. That had been something he’d heard at the kitchen table from his Nonna one Thanksgiving, the one before she’d died in her living room. He was sure he placed the memory right because he remembered not being able to truly see over the counter yet while she had told him that snippet of a fact, he’d really only been able to look at her forehead. He had counted the creases of wrinkles, twitching his nose with annoyance everytime her expression changed and subsequently lost or gained some. He sorta wished he’d been paying more attention to the conversation but what was a dumb little seven year old to know? He tuned back into his mother’s voice and found her still stringing italian words together, he remembered a different day when his Nonna had criticized his mother’s pronunciation. Glenn had never truly had a frame of reference for what the words were supposed to sound like because his Nonna ‘never said such harsh words’ according to his mom. 

Donna came strolling back in the nice little fashion she usually walked in with an amused grin on her face but for a split second Glenn thought it was strained. Her palm fell back onto his shoulder and he returned the smile. “What’s the plan, Stan?” He looked up at her with a thoughtful expression. Donna Cabrette took in a long breath, wiping under her nose like she always did when stressed. When his other grandma was under stress she looked like a picasso painting of wiggly wrinkles. But her daughter took it with more grace...though he wondered if or when it would fade for her? She was reluctant to say she’d be by his side for another day, Glenn could tell. He wanted to pout which was childish, he knew that, but he was feeling quite small. His mother’s eyes looked so troubled though...maybe this was more about her than it was about him. He shrugged. If he said it enough times, maybe he’d start to believe it more fiercely. He gave her a small nod to let her know that he knew what she wanted. Her face lit up just like his neighbors christmas lights and she squeezed him closer. 

For every tight hug from the brushed off subject, there were two times spent in sympathetic and analytical discussion of it all. Glenn hoped just once that those times wouldn’t come. “Can we stop by Richard’s?” He asked softly. 

Richard was the kind of friend that mother’s liked and dad’s thought little of or at least he assumed so, he didn’t truly have a frame of reference for that part. Richard-Ricky-Staple was his best friend. He’d seen quite little of him in the past two weeks and was looking forward to hearing about the new record his father had bought him...while he still could. 

“Sure, sure.” The hesitance in her voice was purely location based. Richard lived and dwelled in the large Crown Motel with his father, the owner. Rodney Staple was the kind of man women fawned over and Glenn had overheard his fair share of gossip about him. The Crown itself was gorgeous in the background of the night. Twinkling stars and a pitch black sky suited the neon reds and golds, they bled into the sky. Glenn liked to stare as long as he could before ‘the burn’ set in, which was how Mr. Staple-Rodney-referred to the morning. 

In ‘the burn’ The Crown was more pale and reserved and he knew very well that his mother preferred it that way, if any way at all. “That Richard never comes ‘round much to our place ...?” She let that one hang out in the air like drying laundry. 

Glenn smiled and shrugged. “I like it there.” He looked at her with amusement and bopped a little in his chair. “You think it’s sleazy though, huh?” He repeated the word with an air of sass even he wasn’t prepared for. 

Donna Cabrette stepped back with her hands on her hips and a look that could kill. “And where did you hear that?” 

“You said so yourself to Mrs. Lewis from across the street.” He smiled and figured she’d be plenty more steamed with him if she wasn’t so pleased with his joy. In fact, she looked almost amused but with the kind of expression that said she knew she shouldn’t be...alas, self punishing like lots of mothers did these days and maybe all of the days. Glenn shrugged and she went back to rubbing the counter down with a damp tea towel. He could tell she was going to be practicing the art of self-punishing for most of the day which was no big surprise. What really ‘bit the shit’ (another ‘Kip-ism’) was that Glenn knew there wasn’t much he could do to help. It was the same sort of feeling he got when his good ol’ mother was suddenly winded by the memory of her own mom from the likes of a song on the radio. She would begin the cry slowly, he could hear the sniffles behind him as he was turned to stare out the window. He’d pause for a moment or two to debate if he was actually hearing it before the escalation of little gasps for air. Glenn would turn and watch her, open his mouth and close it a few times without fail before offering much of what he could...a few soft  questions: “Mom? Are you ok?”

But he always felt helpless in those situations in the passenger's seat, picking at the fabric of the chair while she wiped under her eyes and giggled it off just to get rid of the tender air. He always left those moments feeling deeply unsatisfied before once again forgetting it until the next. Glenn slumped in his chair and wondered if and when he would become his mother in that situation. 

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The thought that Richard might wanna talk about ‘the accident’ hadn’t even occurred to Glenn, almost as if he’d forgotten what his friend was like. He chuckled softly and played with his thumbs as he nestled himself against the large headboard of room nineteen’s bed. His little buddy was across from him, staring with his lovely wide eyes. Richard was morbid, to say the least. There he sat with those innocent eyes like he wasn’t already thinking over the details as he’d made them seem in his head. ‘The blood, the sounds, the feelings’ were more apparent in his mind now more than they ever were in Glenn’s. No, in his own mind he was hearing the soft whirling beginning to some Simon & Garfunkel song he could no longer recall. So somewhere in the recesses of his brain he heard the same words over and over playing their tune but barren with name. 

Richard had a funny way to him that Glenn quite loved and others found to be ‘too much’ for just one little boy which was understandable. He picked at the gold trimmed edges of the blanket and was surely building up to one of his vague but curious questions. Glenn sat back and listened to Simon & Garfunkel as if it were muffled elevator music. “There’s not a lot to say about it.” He settled on an answer to Richard’s curious face. The boy frowned and for a moment, it was hard to see a difference between him and his father who was just some ways away in the lobby talking with his mother. “Besides, I don’t think I should be feeding more into your issues, Ricky.” Glenn giggled and sat back, wondering if that comment had been a touch too rude. But as it worked out, the boy had completely missed that end sentence. Ricky was facing the small candle at the corner of the room. It flickered orange light and left the air smelling of something citrus. He’d lost his friend for at least a couple of minutes and when his attention was elsewhere, his hearing was even worse than it was normally. 

His little arms helped Glenn army crawl forward on the bed to where he could lay just next to where Richard was kneeling on the carpet. “S’not too close to the edge, Rick. But why don’t ya just blow it out?” He raised his head so as not to mumble into his arm which was a habit of the good hearing. Richard sighed, little body hunching forward before he quickly got himself up and blew the thing out from a safe distance. It wasn’t uncommon for Ricky to latch onto something so relevant which in this case was a hang up about fire because of the infamous Majestic burning last Fall. But his long list of neurosis didn’t need to get any longer than it already was because it was just no help. His little buddy was a good boy. The kind that followed the rules, cleaned up after himself and loved his dad. Richard grinned cheekily at him as he got ready to sit again, his tongue peeking out. A good boy who didn’t have trust in anything. 

“Your dad took you to that doctor up in Painted Glade?” Painted Glade was a nicer town in Illinois not that far from where they lived. Doctor Sagan lived and worked in the center of the place in a large building. Glenn didn’t very much like when Richard pointed out that it looked as if it was going to fall on you when you looked up at it. The tall brown building haunched forward over your head like a disappointed parent...that was the only time Glenn had joined them but Mr. Staple, Rodney, treated them to the Rolling Lanes bowling alley afterwards. His belly got filled with pizza and Rodney taught him how to get a strike almost every time. The paint job had been his favorite thing though, reds and golds and even greens...it was like a slap in the face. He and Richard loved it so much. 

“Oh yeah, yeah.” Richard nodded with a glossy look in his eyes and Glenn almost thought he smelled the bowling alley pizza again. He shuffled up and trudged over to the drawer of the motel room nightstand. Pulling out a small clean, white box he trotted over and jumped onto the bed with a neutral expression. “Gave me this…” he flicked it open and showed off his new…? “They’re hearing aids.” He explained with a small smile and Glenn returned the expression with curiosity. It was odd to see those things curled up in his buddy’s small palm because in his experience only gray haired elders needed those. The kind that had lived enough good hearing years to spare some not being able to hear what the Jeopardy questions were. But Richard was eleven going on twelve and though he hated the dang show, he deserved those Jeopardy questions too. 

“You wanna be wearing them then, huh?” Glenn pinched the boys arm lightly to tease him. Richard shrugged with some sense of dreaded calm and began to hook the things up to his ears. The afternoon light was streaming in through the large window, sheer curtains doing no help to block it. It was a twinkling gold hue that bathed the bed and startlingly warmed Glenn’s face when Richard kneeled back down on the carpet. For the first time since it happened, Glenn felt that summer day again. He could feel the warm sidewalk under his burning palms and the screeching metal rang in the tunnel of his ears. He wanted to squeeze his eyes shut and to be honest, he wasn’t sure if he’d already done so. But when that song that had been on the radio came flooding back in his mind and played somewhere in his head at just the same whirling quality as Simon & Garfunkel had been, he knew he had. Closing his eyes allowed for none of the peace he expected, instead the hot orange light sat waiting for him behind his eyelids. 

He hadn’t truly realized how far off he’d gone until Richard pushed his arm so hard that he fell back onto the bed. “Ow, jeez.” Glenn rubbed his arm as he sat back up and looked at his friend's unamused face. 

“Am I supposed to believe that hurt?” Richard rolled his eyes and climbed onto the bed across from Glenn with his signature expression of curiosity. He wanted to know where Glenn had just been and for no details to be spared however Glenn wasn’t going to let him in on this one. The kid didn’t need to worry about anything else and if one more thing got on his plate, he might go crazy.

Glenn wondered just how many times Richard had sat on the gold sheets of the bed thinking about how he might roll off in his sleep and hit his head on the nightstand. He could see his friend stewing in that turmoil before ultimately getting out of bed to move the table over. He could also see him doing it with at least ten other minimal ‘problems’ a night before falling asleep. But worrying about things like dying in his sleep, possible future injuries he might get or if some deadly disease was in his future was what kept Richard from worrying about that one thing he should be worrying about...his declining hearing ability. 

“I had a dream that you got hit by a car.” His buddy blurted out into the silence like it made him uncomfortable and in Glenn’s experience, it never did. Though he did like to talk about his dreams. Glenn’s eyes widened and he felt an immediate rush of confusion. Sure he’d expected questioning about his little zone out moment just then but this. This just punched him in the gut and stole his lunch money.

“What-um, ok?” He stumbled through a response that somehow just wouldn’t come out right. He was usually so immune to Richards' weird little musings, dreams and worries. He went back to the night he spent over at The Crown where his friend went on and on about the odd little routine he did before bed. 

Check under his bed, just in case. Make sure the door is locked. Richard sighed. 

Look around his walls for any sign of bugs or spiders. Do that three or four more times once in bed. “It was the night before you saw that girl get hit. Remember, you called me afterward and I was a little off?” 

Check inside his closet, for what? He didn’t know but maybe even twice if he was especially anxious. “Anyway, I didn’t want to tell you then since it seemed inappropriate and I haven’t seen you face to face in a while so…”

If he left the room to pee, do the whole thing all over again. “Is that weird?”

Glenn sucked in some air and looked at his little buddy across from him who looked a little antsy. He thought about the question “For you? No. Not so weird.” he shrugged and felt a little weight fall off his shoulders though he wasn’t all that relieved. In fact, he felt a little more on edge than usual. He whistled a quiet tune while he mulled over the ways he could take the conversation. With Richard, if you simply moved onto something else he wouldn’t mind. He would gladly join but he also liked to talk these things out. “So...I got hit?” 

Richard nodded and hummed a little, they could make a nice little band if they were constantly in thought. When his friend opened his mouth to explain more, an odd sense of dread filled Glenn’s belly. It was the same feeling he got when sitting at his desk, tracing the carvings with his finger, and Mr. Hannigan called on him to answer. His stomach would tighten like he might puke and his finger would slowly ascend from the choice vandalism (B. Gibson is gay). 

“You were walking down the street where Mr. Hannigan lives, right? And Virginia was there but just sitting on her curb. I’m not sure if I was actually there with you or not...it was kinda like I was seeing it through a third eye or...I dunno. I was having the dream but also half-aware of being in bed.” Richard waved over his forehead lamely and gave up on explaining that aspect. “It was the perfect day, weather wise. The sky was so blue, just how you like it. But I really remember how hot it was. I felt like-maybe my skin was melting? I was so sure my skin would be like candle wax stuck to my sheets when I fully woke up.” He paused again and Glenn took a deep breath. That day had actually been pretty chilled for summer and that somehow eased him. 

He glanced at the freshly blown out candle across the room and saw the wax was still moist and dripping heavily down the base. He tried to picture his friend’s skin at that consistency….he shivered. “You were just walking but when you passed Mr Hannigan mowing his lawn-”

Glenn grew more apprehensive to hear the rest. The accuracy in that statement was all too unnerving considering he hadn’t told his best friend any details apart from a brief rundown on the phone that day. He almost began to speak to tell him to stop but then Ricky went and spoke up again and his throat closed. 

“His lawnmower started hiccuping up grass and it was getting away from him like it was alive. It was growling, pulling him along while the sun bounced off the shiny red paint. He tried to get the thing to stop and get back to the weeds but it ran over his foot. I could see the bone poking out of his mushy skin and I’m sure you did too. It was peeling back and he was cradling it while it poured blood like water onto the grass. Then the lawnmower came barreling toward you. So you did what seemed like the best idea. You started to back away and run across the street and you know-” Richard illustrated with his hand and Glenn felt his stomach turn but was thankful he was done and out with it-

“Mr. Hannigan watched the whole thing while he bled out on his grass, eyes wide and strained. You tumbled into the street just as this huge car came flying down and I felt like I was on fire. I woke up when I heard the thump.” He finished with a small cringe and looked almost guilty. He pooled his hands in his lap, twiddling his thumbs and waiting for a response but Glenn wasn’t sure what he should say. He didn’t think anyone in the world would know what to say to something like that. For a long few moments the room was completely quiet and still, making them each a little uncomfortable. 

“Well-”

Just as Glenn tried to muster up a few words for the subject, the door opened and in walked Mr. Staple. He was a tall man who's hair almost reached his shoulders and a grin that spread to everyone like wildfire. Glenn liked him a lot for his taste, it made him laugh. Just giving the man one look could tell you he dreamed of Woodstock every night (which was not the same as the Charlie Brown character according to his mom). He was still stuck on the hippie trend but instead of looking like a middle-aged ghoul, Rodney was absolutely singing. He even had a stripe of gray within his clean brunette hair that made Glenn sure he was going to do that when he grew up. The most interesting detail about Rodney however wasn’t his style. At least not to kids his age, no. All that was on their minds and came out of their mouths was one question and it was for Richard. ‘If your dad is white, why are you black?’ which Glenn overheard everyday. People-kids-their age were not the best at being appropriate. His mind swiftly went back to Kip and B. Gibson is gay. 

However his buddy was excellent when faced with the question to which his answer was always a variation of ‘I’m black?!’ or ‘He’s white?!’. Sure it was funny but they both dreaded the times when the kids were far more horrible. 

“Donna would like to take you boys into town…” Mr. Staple tapped his fingers against the doorframe and highlighted the static noise of people in neighboring rooms. It occurred to Glenn that he’d just referred to his mother by her first name which struck him odd though it had no business to. Supposing you knew someone long enough, you moved from professional to social. But his mother only ever referred to him as Mr. Staple. It made Glenn wonder what she and Mr. Staple had found conversation with. “Don’t keep her waiting. She’s a lady.” He grinned and flashed it to both of them before stepping out once more, the door shutting after him. Glenn grimaced, Donna was ok but lady? That was just no good. 

He heard Richard snickering as he made his quick rounds around the room, checking for any odds. He tucked in his blankets, made sure the candle was out again, turned the bedside lamp off and finally walked over as Glenn was shoving his feet back into his shoes. He was struggling in the way he might’ve if his feet had grown an extra size while they were talking. “Do we dare keep the lady waiting?” He snickered again with a funny eyebrow dance and Glenn rolled his eyes with a mocking laugh. 

“Ah, the losing man laughs.”

“Losing man? What do you-?” 

Richard’s question was cut off short when Glenn bounced up and darted in a great running speed out the door. He clicked his tongue, shook his head but ran right out after him with the hopes of beating him anyway. 

             ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Glenn flicked a loose piece of skin back and forth as it stung against his thumbnail. He’d make another attempt to rip it off only to be fooled into thinking he’d got it when in actuality he had only smoothed it over. After at least the sixth time he hissed in pain, Richard gently took his hand and hovered it over his own lap. The back of Glenn’s hand rested in his open palm as his friend carefully got rid of the thing for him by cleanly ripping it off like it was no problem. Richard’s next laugh was a low chuckle that sounded like it had enough life experience to pass peacefully in it’s sleep. “You never do them right. You have to commit, y’know?” He let Glenn’s hand fall back towards the seat of the bench. 

He shook his hand for emphasis and then took care of one of his own. “Pull it off without thinking about it, quickly but not too hard so it doesn’t split the skin so bad.” He blinked those big brown eyes of his and sighed. It’d long been on Glenn’s mind to ask him just how on earth Richard could do that without slicing his skin and ‘carefully’ would not be a satisfactory answer. No kid their age ever successfully pulled without going too far but Richard...was Richard and he’d always managed. His buddy was a wonder. 

Glenn smiled. “Y’know something, Ricky? You're really good at tons of stuff.” It wasn’t the best way he could phrase it but Glenn wanted to make sure he got it out when he was really feeling it. He waved his hand and curled his fingers into his palm, leaving his pointer out to jab at his buddy a few times. 

A laugh escaped the corner of Richards mouth and it again sounded far too old. “Yeah? But everything I’m good at stops being important once you’re an adult.” He looked off with squinty eyes. Looking at the scenery of green grass and tall trees around them as if it were still behind hard glass. Glenn wasn’t sure why or how but that’s what he thought it looked like to him. It reminded him of the looks he’d seen on his classmates during boring lessons, their heads cocked to the window with soft smiles. Dreaming of summers spent with permanent dirt spots on their knees and a never ending supply of potato chips. The classic kind...those always said summer to Glenn.  

He shook himself out of his brief hunger long enough to remind himself of the conversation. “What do you mean? These talents are like a coupon? Only good until September the 17th 1981?” He teased him while hoping his math added up correctly outside of his own mind. Despite himself, Richard laughed a little and sounded refreshingly young again. It settled Glenn’s stomach back to it’s normal state. 

“Eighteen...that seems so far away now.” His mind seemed to be taking the Greyhound bus for another state by the look of his far away eyes. Glenn had to agree, especially looking at his buddy who’d always looked perpetually younger than him if only really by two months. He tried to imagine Richard at eighteen but his imagination wouldn’t allow him that far. 

“I’d like to keep it that way too.” The thought of becoming an adult wasn’t something that kept him up at night but Glenn would rather think of something a little less unnerving. 

“Anyways, what I meant was...you don’t see any adults especially good at removing hangnails.” Richard waved his thumb around for gesture. “Or any of the other small dumb things I can do because they’re not important.” He shrugged like it was a problem he’d already met with, built a bridge and got over it which unsettled Glenn all over again. 

“Man, I give you a rope to skip with and you hang yourself with it.” Glenn mumbled with amusement and Richard gave him an odd look. “I just mean, I compliment you and you turn it into something depressing.” He teased with a smile. Richard looked on for a few seconds before giggling. Glenn pulled back like a wide-eyed puppy. “What? It’s an expression. I heard the man at Archer & Clarks say it.” He pouted as Richard calmed himself. 

“No, no. I liked it. Very dark. Very you, Glenn.” He waved him off when Glenn reached over to poke him a few times. 

They laughed together for a few seconds on their little park bench in a very unapologetically loud way, a child’s laugh. It went on for a long enough time that tears threatened to spill from the corners of their eyes. It spurred out however like a driver realizing the gas tank was empty, switching lanes and pulling onto the median with a hardy dragging noise. Except the noise came from the depths of Glenn’s throat when he caught sight of his mother (still refusing to let him out of her sight). She was sitting there and watching with a careful eye, it was not all physically there but Glenn just knew from the pit of his stomach that she was upset. Her eyes upon him with worry and love, hands cradled in her lap delicately. The scene isolated Glenn from his happiness immediately and he felt a whirl of guilt in the pit of his stomach. It felt just the same as the day he’d been playing his greatest game of baseball only for it to be cut short when storm clouds gathered over the field. They had all smelled it in the air but foolishly thought they could beat it. 

“I wish she wouldn’t worry so much.” Was all he could mumble out, not taking too much time to realize he’d sliced the happier air. Glenn turned back to Richard and began to pick at the grass. “It was just something I saw you know?” He figured by now he did not have to explain what it was he was talking about. “It could’ve been worse.” 

“Yeah. Could’ve been a lot worse.” Richard’s voice sounded distant again and it flickered that interest in Glenn’s mind again after another round of guilt. Because he knew what his buddy was talking about just the same as he had for him. 

“You know this dream you had…” He began slowly and Richard raised his head to meet his eyes. He had that same look on his face that he got when Mr. Hannigan asked him to share his report with the class. His big brown eyes looked wide and nervous, Glenn did not have the ‘B. Gibson is gay’ graffiti on his desk to nervously play with this time to avoid the look. “Do you have dreams like that often?” He made the split decision not to ask for specifics on the one centered on him. Something in his gut told him he did not want to hear anymore about it yet but he was still naturally curious about the whole subject. 

Richard seemed to consider the question before he attempted to speak on it. “They don’t come a lot. I haven’t told my dad about them either but I almost have. Cause when they do come…” He looked hesitant again. “They scare the shit outta me.” 

Glenn felt those old baseball game ending storm clouds over his head again. Feeling too strongly to speak so soon, Glenn just swallowed the ball of mucus in his throat. A boy of eleven could offer no good advice according to Mr. Lewis from across the street so Glenn felt anything he might’ve said ball up in his throat. He sort of wanted to go back to talking about hangnails again just to move on and it wouldn’t be that much of a problem. At their age, they were quite good at bopping from subject to subject without much hold in a way he’d found adults couldn’t do. But a small part of him still wanted to remain there in that moment instead and he hated that. 

“Have you had any dreams since the one about me?” He asked, softly and shakily. Was it embarrassing how nervous he was to hear an answer?

“Just one. About that kid Harvey from class. He was on the monkey bars-” 

                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~INTERMISSION~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Buried around the grassy dirt rim of Junior Lake was Wile, an old tan tabby cat that had once belonged to one of the houses on Blue-cup street. There were strict rules against burying or spreading the ashes of loved ones in the area. But Kip Allen had once told everyone in his third grade class some years ago that a crazy old guy who loved his cats like they were people had gone out in the middle of the night with a shovel and a limp animal to do it. 

So somewhere along the little dirt mounds close to the water was the cat’s final resting place. There had been floating rumours of other little pet friends and family burial sites but not a whole lotta people could afford to buy more than one funny story about Middlerock’s main attraction. 

Junior Lake was for Middlerock’s children. A place where parents could send their kids off for long summer days spent away from them. Sometimes the water would be crowded with old floaty tubes and hitting' sticks but other days, a kid could show up alone with only clear green-blue water in their future.

Another thing that was along that grassy dirt rim of the lake, was a small park where the younger kids most commonly would explore while older siblings tried to drown each other in the water close by. Julie Crest’s barefeet led her way across the moist wood ledge that circled around the park. She wiggled her fingers from her outstretched arms to help keep her balance. It was early enough in the morning that she was the only one there and her parents weren’t likely to miss her. She whirled around on her tip toes and the stickiness of the wood’s residue clung the wood chips to her feet. She smiled, her skin going concave and light freckles that the sun had just stenciled in fell into the slopes of her dimples. 

The sun beat down on the hanging black plastic swing and it warmed the seat of Julie’s jeans as she sat, shifting a little. She’d been quick to learn how to swing by herself, without having to have an adult to crash into. Harvey Duncan had offered her a trade. He would teach her to swing if she taught him how to cross the monkey bars. She shook her head in laughter as she remembered how long it had taken Harvey to even make it to the 2nd bar. The park had the swirled kind that resembled the curly fries served in diners. She licked her lips and pumped her legs vigorously. She felt as though her feet were touching the sun and leaned back, giggling. 

But as it started to fall back, a rough tug made the giggle choke in her throat. In an instant her joy turned to panic, her vigorous pumping became a doozy of kicking. She closed her eyes and thrashed, she was tugged again painfully from her head. Her eyes watered as she opened them. The hair that her mother would run her hands through and push over her ears in front of the mirror, telling her over and over that she could make Farrah Fawcett jealous, was now a rats nest strung through the chain. 

She suddenly couldn’t catch her breath as she swung back and forth. She threw her hands over the mess and pulled, the tearing she felt on her scalp made her start to blubber. She hiccupped, burning tears shot down her cheeks as she gave one last jerk with enough force to launch her backwards, smacking her body hard on the wood chips and knocking the wind out of her small frame. Her face was beet red as she laid there, sobbing. Though she was able to will herself up eventually. The swing was gently slowing down, she dragged her eyes to the side and tangled within the chain like weeds was her hair. She slowly raised her hand to her stinging head and it came back moist and red. Upon the sight, she pulled her knees to her chest and began to wail. Her shaking hand slapped back to hold her head. She wasn’t sure who Farrah Fawcett was but she knew now that she stood no chance against her. 

             ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~END OF INTERMISSION~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

             --------------------------------------3-----------------------------------------

Glenn felt bad about how relieved he’d been when his mother let him know it was time to go home for lunch. But the idea of having to hear anymore of what he couldn’t stop asking for was too much. He’d never been more excited for one of Donna Cabretti’s crusty peanut butter sandwiches in his entire life and he would probably never be again. They had all walked back to The Crown in near silence. Occasionally, his mother would politely begin a conversation that would only fizzle out in a few seconds but Richard seemed a lot more content than he’d been at the park. So Glenn could make his peace with leaving him for a while and that was a kind of confirmation he needed a lot with his buddy. 

Glenn had heard Rodney refer to his son as ‘high maintenance’ before and he wasn’t sure how nice it was to agree with. But Richard had always been sort of particular(?). He had a way of doing things, almost a routine for everything and he could get a bit...anxious. Glenn was pretty sure that was how Richard referred to it. He wanted to understand it better but even Richard seemed to struggle with it. And now there were dreams (dreams that Glenn hadn’t even known about) that were causing him worry. If Glenn was honest with himself, he was concerned that his buddy might just drown in all his issues. 

He’d been grateful to have missed out on the dream about Harvey but his mind kept drifting back to it. 

Picking the crumbs off his white bread, Glenn sighed. He hoped it wasn’t anything big because last time he’d seen him Harvey had some cool yo-yo tricks that he was practicing and he was real good too. ‘Of course, would it matter if it was serious? After all, it was dead serious for Glenn in Richard’s dream but he was just fine. It was someone else entirely (he saw her picture in his mind) that ended up with the harm.’ 

“Lunch no good?” His mother came round to the table, an old family flannel falling off her shoulders. Glenn thought it might’ve once been his Grandpas but he wasn’t entirely sure. She obviously looked much younger in it than he’d ever would have seen his grandpa and he got told that a lot. Not anything about his Grandpa being old considering everyone’s Grandpa was, no, he was constantly being told how young his mother looked. He never quite knew what to do with that information or why adults thought to tell him. Maybe they hoped he would go out with it to his mom and they’d get some sort of credit for it. 

“Delicious. Can I have the newspaper?” He bit through half of his sandwich and looked up at her with pure eyes. Donna faltered for a moment, bringing her hand to rest over his glass of water as she thought about it. Glenn had been a good boy and avoided asking her about it because it somehow had always worried her and after the little incident he figured it’d only worsen. “Just today’s, you can keep the ones I’ve missed.” He added, hoping to make it look somewhat better. He knew very well that she always kept the newspapers, the ones Glenn hadn’t cut up anyway, because Grandma Nicely (boy did Glenn get a kick out of his mother’s old name) liked to read when she came over. 

“How about we finish eating and then we talk, huh?” She slid the water closer to him, patted his hand and walked back into the living room. 

He wanted to tell her the food was no good then and maybe go upstairs to make the point that he was mad. But, the stompy child within him had somewhat died down after the little incident. He was much more aware of how those ‘points’ affected his mother. She did not take them so well anymore so Glenn decided he’d better back off. He bit hard into his sandwich. 

                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Songs were far more frightening to hear in the dazed state of the mind where it sat between the different realms of reality. Richard wasn’t asleep but he definitely was not awake either. He could feel his eyes fluttering open and closed and it must have looked as if he were having some kind of intense dream or else, he might have looked crazy. The unconscious part of his brain, still mid-dream, played the same few lines of the same song over and over...but muffled and far off. He remembered a time he’d gotten lost in a shopping mall and had ended up walking around in circles for an hour with a special intensity of fear he’d previously never experienced. Different songs had faded in and out from the loudspeaker mixed in with the sounds of chattering conversations and distant traffic when he passed the glass doors of Macy’s. Yes, that’s how it sounded to him now. So far away it was barely comprehensible but so muffled that it bounced right in his ears. 

“He says, "Bill, I believe this is killing me"

As the smile ran away from his face”

The part of the boy that was conscious allowed him to take in the scenery of his mostly empty room. The neon lights of the Crown standing tall just outside bled through his blinds and blinked furiously in a pattern that felt practiced though they were just broken. The song went circles in his brain and acted as his bridge into further detachment. He followed the red tail lights of other vehicles traveling the same bridge. Whatever that meant. He snorted a little and brought his blanket up to his sweaty chin. 

“Oh, la la la, di da da

La la, di da da da dum- 

Oh, la la la, di da da

La la, di da da da dum-

Oh, la la la, di da da

La la, di da da da dum- 

Oh-”

His dissociating mind managed to miss words and catch on an annoying cycle like when a record hit it’s end and played the same scratchy skip over and over again. The repetition was deeply unsettling and nauseating. Richard sat up as quick as a crack in a newly broken back with hot uncomfortable sweat dripping down his temple. One fleeting thought was left as a side-effect from his dream ‘I wanna go home’.  For a second interval that sentence made him shake but if he’d been asked what exactly he’d thought just a minute later, he wouldn’t have had a clue. He sat there with the plain white blanket pooling in his lap and the beginnings of a dull headache bumping in the back of his skull. The soft pitter-patter of rain on his long window eased him the tiniest bit. The patterned curtains did not. They were a deep shade of classic motel red but Richard swore by his heart every night and disregarded every morning that he could see faces in them. Sometimes they were permanently captured mid-scream and other times his eyes adjusted to simple smiles in the dark. In his hot sweat, he felt his chest pound from his hard heart and tried to convince himself he did not need to get up to check it out. And for a few seconds he sat still, willing himself to please just lay back down. But he knew, painfully, that he’d be getting up from the comfort of his bed to go through a memorized routine no matter how hard he tried to deny it. The ache to do so was buried too deep within him. 

Turn on the lights, check the curtains for faces, look out the window just to see if anyone was checked out or going to check in, look inside the closet for whatever intruder his anxious mind created which of course was never there, look under the bed, and try to tuck himself back in...then take five or six more peeks over the edge. 

Knowing it was all ridiculous and all in his head did not aid him in any kind of way. Sure he knew that following through on his worries only gave them more strength but it wasn’t as if he could just stop. With a small struggle, he threw his covers off and hopped down from his bed to begin the orchestra of anxiety. His small feet imbedded nicely into the red and gold carpet as he stepped carefully in the dark, feeling for his light-switch. He moved quickly for fear of something or someone who might be hiding out under his bed waiting to slash his ankle. There was no basis for the fear but that never really mattered when it came to the boy and that scared him too. The thought that on any ordinary night, his careful eyes could miss one thing...just one and it would be crucial. The boogeyman lingering in that one corner of his closet he only lightly glazed over with his nasty handsome grin. Taking pride in the fact that little boys could be so stupid. And he would creep on out while little Richie, or little Richard like his daddy called him to get a laugh, was sleeping in disillusioned safety. His blanket to his chin and his small body dying from the heat of his thick train pajamas, sweat sticking to him intensely. And maybe a careless arm would fall and hang off the bedside while he edged unconsciousness. No time for paranoia of a tingling wrist, instead it would be fiercely slashed and-

Richard’s entire body covered itself in shivers when he finally hit the light-switch and almost as quickly as the light came on, his ears began ringing. He smacked his hands over them and felt his wrists tingle. Had there been more time, frustrated tears would’ve come down his cheeks at that moment. But he was too confused as the ringing continued so intensely that he worried blood would pool out. 

But after a few moments, it stopped. Actually, it all stopped. He could no longer hear the small whirling sounds of his ceiling fan nor the electrical buzz of a TV coming from the next room that he hadn’t realized he got accustomed to. So he did as any kid would, he pounded on his door and hoped to anything out there that he was actually screaming for his daddy because he could not hear it. It never occurred to him that his hearing aids were just on the nightstand. He supposed he was successful as his father came barreling through the door, slamming it behind him as he picked up the child and nearly shook him. His lips moved but Richard could not for the life of him, or anyone else, understand. His father sat him down on the bed and moved like he knew something his son did not. And just like before when it had gone out, his hearing came back so quickly he almost missed it. 

-“the matter with you?!” He missed his father's question though it was not hard to guess what it had been. Richard swallowed slowly and made just a few confirmations of hearing before he decided to answer. 

“It was all gone, dad. Everything. I couldn’t hear anything.” Was what he’d managed to string together. It sounded pathetic but he was barely calm yet though the fact that his dad was finally here with him was comforting. Going deaf and being full-on deaf were two very different things and he did not like the taste he got that night. 

Rodney nodded his head as he listened and rubbed his son’s back. “Well, it’s all back now, isn’t it?” He asked softly and waited for his answer. Richard nodded but still looked quite shocked and shook up. “Nothing to get too worked up about. I’ll call your doctor in the morning, yeah? Get some sleep.” He gave him a final pat before nudging him slightly and tucking him into bed. 

Richard allowed this and actually looked like he might fall asleep pretty quickly, working yourself up allows for a heck of a come down. He turned the light off on his son, moved to the door and watched him for a second or two. He turned his head to the closet and smirked the tiniest bit. ‘There’s something in there, huh? Pretty gnarly too.’ 

He shut the door behind him but did not move until he heard Richard slowly get out of bed and turn on his light. When the closest door opened for one last check, Rodney got the confirmation he needed and felt the greatest satisfaction roll over him. ‘Sometimes he just wished he could shut that boy up but he had to admit it was fun to bother him.’ 

--------------------------------------4-----------------------------------------

Though the paper was glossed over, the edges of it that tickled against her skin threatened to leave one of those burning cuts. But Donna kept on flicking through the newspapers as fast as she wanted. The television from the living room emitted a peaceful white noise static and every once in a while she’d remember the little mug of coffee just adjacent to her hand, it was getting cold. As she reached her hand at the sudden thought, the speed proved too quick and her hand sliced open in the tenderest of ways against the paper. Beads of red dotted the insurance ad and colored in a small car drawing. Eerily, it reminded her of the cold, slimy eggs she’d stabbed her fork into that morning. The yolks had been too runny. The yellow had squirted out and clouded over the blooming bushel of painted roses which covered the majority of the delicate plate. She shivered, almost getting the taste again from the vivid memory of her less than average cooking. Without hesitating she reached for the flannel she’d flung over the kitchen chair and shrugged it back on and curled the length of the sleeve over her palm and tightened her fist under the ball of fabric. They owned band-aids (Of course, she’d be dumb not to with a son of just eleven years old) but she didn’t care all that much when it came to herself. It was a small sliver, anyway. 

As the morning light broke through the window pane and breathed new life into the floral tablecloth, the place in her chest which laid to rest most of the difficult memories seemed to have a momentary breaking point. She dipped her chin and set it into her open palm. What popped into her brain was an old memory but what struck her was how recent it felt in her mind. The warm golden light from the window dipped further down, kissing her shoulders. 

                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~INTERMISSION~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was the same melancholy lighting that had bathed her that early morning, cradling her baby alongside her. Dean’s soft footsteps on the carpet missed her ears and she hadn’t realized he was there until he kneeled down in front of that awful yellow cushioned chair and blocked some of the light. He hiked his pajama bottoms up in the slightest and they crinkled at his knees. She could tell just by the look in his eyes that he planned to ask for no more in life...she knew everyone of his dreams by heart at that point and the list was all fulfilled. It was sunday morning, they were still fresh from sleep and their laundry made the air smell like home. She glanced down at baby Glenn and felt a whole new type of affection. She suddenly wanted to burst into tears. 

“And I thought I could never love someone as much as you…” She chuckled, bouncing her boy and peeking at Dean who was just as enamored as she was. “But buddy, he’s got you beat by miles.” She raised Glenn slightly, his eyes catching some of the light again as he babbled. 

“Oh yeah, yeah.” Dean had grinned and slowly reached over to help her transfer the baby into his arms. “Love of my life, this kid.” He glanced at her with earnest eyes and gently reached his spare hand out to help her up, his other lay underneath Glenn. He had stared at her for a few lingering seconds with that smile he used to do. She couldn’t picture it anymore. “But you’re ok too.” He reached out and pinched her on the arm like a child. 

              ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~END OF INTERMISSION~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Donna ran her tongue over the bottom row of her teeth and sighed. She’d let go of the tight grip she had on the sleeve and some trickles of blood pooled in her palm, she’d always been a bleeder. As the sky burned out all the morning oil and closed in on the afternoon, the blood slipped through her fingers. She shook her head and pushed up from her chair with the intention to get a head start on some dishes. She’d grabbed that rose bushel plate and half-heartedly began scrubbing at it for no more than a few seconds when Glenn hopped on down the stairs looking as content as usual. 

“You know it’s about time you start getting back into the habit of waking up early.” She spoke over her shoulder and turned. Glenn shrugged and walked over to stand by the head of the kitchen table. It unsettled her deeply to know that she was more anxious about school starting up again than he was. He was looking at her with pleading eyes and she knew what was coming. It troubled her immensely to realize just how intense she’d been for the past few weeks. “You wanna go out, huh?” She asked, the teatowel she’d been playing with fell to her side. Her son, who did not realize he already had an advantage over her on that fragile morning, bit his lip. 

“I just wanna go to ‘Archer & Clarks’ with Richard. Word has it that they got a cool new little record display.” He neglected to mention that he’d be walking there alone and meeting his buddy there. But his mother was a smart girl, she knew. 

She also knew that keeping an eleven year old boy inside on a nice sunny day such as this was pure torture. It was times like this where she wished Dean was here with her, helping her to know what was best. It was a lonely thing to raise Glenn, a product of both of them, all on her own. She figured she wasn’t doing him proud. “You be careful, ok? When you get there...maybe ask Mr. Shannon to use the phone and call so I know you’re there.” God, she hated the way she sounded. She used to resent that kind of clinginess when she was a kid. 

Glenn nodded with enthusiasm and after he called Richard to let him know the good news; she kneeled down, gave him a kiss, patted his cheek and sent him off. As soon as he was out of her sight, she regretted it. 

                   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Glenn enjoyed the fresh air and made it to the front end of the ‘Archer & Clarks’ store with no problem. He figured he would make the call to his mother in the time it took Richard to meet him, which shouldn’t be that long. Even though Richard knew his mother well, he still got embarrassed talking to her on the phone in front of him so he wanted to get it out the way. 

He marched up to the front desk, just past the patch of fake summer grass, and whistled to himself until Mr. Shannon greeted him. Mr. Shannon was one of Glenn’s favorite people. He was grumpy but Glenn could tell he really loved this place. “I’d like to call my mother-what?” He had to pause his question when the man seemed to stare at him, eyes narrowing as if confused. 

Instead of using his words, which was something Glenn noticed in a lot of older people, Don reached out and swiped his hand along Glenn’s cheek. He was about to make a comment on how he needs to spit whatever it is out, thinking of Kip’s disgusting spitballs, but then he noticed the red hue now on Don’s hand. He got a little light-headed. He’d never been that faint of heart about things like blood before but he had trouble realizing that things were a little different now. Starting with a sick feeling in his stomach that dropped on him when Mr. Shannon wiped his hand on a tissue. He reached his own hand up to his cheek and felt the now crusty casing of blood that thinly marked his skin. His throat closed like he’d eaten something he was allergic to and his hand started to shake. Why hadn’t anyone stopped to tell him that he was bleeding on his walk over here? How long had it been going on? 

The picture of the blood stained Virginia on the road popped back into his brain for the first time in a long time. She lay there in the middle of the street, wobbly limbs twitching and blood plastering the hair over her face. He tried to breathe slowly but felt that tightening in his throat again. The radio from a few aisles over was blasting and it was all he could consciously focus on. 

‘How do you do what you do to me?...I wish I knew…’ 

Virginia was hit over twenty more times in his mind and Glenn wished she would just quit it. Leave him alone. 

‘If I knew how you do it to me

I'd do it to you…’

Glenn squeezed his eyes shut and pushed her away, hoping to get rid of her picture all together and tried not to feel guilty about it. 

“Doesn’t seem to be your blood, kid.” Don finally spoke up after what felt like thirty minutes but was actually just a couple seconds. “No cut in sight.” He wagged his finger at his cheek and smiled a bit, trying to ease him. Glenn nodded, reaching up to touch his face again but Mr. Shannon came round with his tissue and wiped the rest of the dry blood away. He tilted his cheek and leaned into it, wanting it to be off his face as soon as possible. His body relaxed once the tissue was in the little tin garbage can. “You think you might know where that came from?” 

Glenn twirled his thumbs around each other and shook his head. If the blood wasn’t his, he had no idea where it came from and he didn’t want to think about it. He went quiet for a few seconds before asking for the phone again. He didn’t mention the little incident that had just happened to his mother because he knew she’d make more out of it than there was actually to be concerned with. He didn’t care to worry her after she’d just come around to letting him leave the house without her. 

When he’d finished up with that, he took to waiting for Richard by the paint samples, not wanting to spoil what little records were in that new section without him. It took about an extra five minutes before his buddy came strolling inside with a neutral little smile on his face. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, which he did often, as he came round to stand in front of him. Glenn waited a few seconds and sure enough; “What’s wrong?” 

Despite the nerves that were just beginning to settle in his stomach, Glenn managed a giggle and wiped his sleeve over the little grin that was coming over his face. “How do you do that? You always know.” He sold himself out on the fact that, yes, something was bothering him. But he didn’t mind when it came to Richard. 

“It wasn’t very hard this time. You look like the prize in your cereal box was a moss covered rock or something.” Richard poked his shoulder and grinned, maybe trying to cheer him up despite not really knowing for sure if anything was wrong.

“I would love that.” Glenn countered, a smile of his own, feeling immensely better just by having Richard with him. He thought about pouring out his morning Sonic Spooners and having his spoon being rattled by a wet, green rock. He laughed at the image. Little pieces of dirt covering the sugar flakes and turning the bowl into its own tiny burial ground. 

“You would.” Richard giggled and shook his head, looking like the real spirit of his age. 

They quietly made their way over to their desired display, Richard opted not to push Glenn into explaining himself and Glenn was extremely thankful for that. There was no doubt in his mind that he would tell him everything if he had asked but he found the situation a little embarrassing and was glad to hold it in, even if it were just for a little while longer. The new display was a wide, spindly red wired cage that was hooked onto the end of a large desk. The albums were tilted at an angle that allowed for the bright hardware store lights to bounce off the shiny packaged ones. Some were dustier and looked as if they were plucked straight from someone’s bedroom. ‘New & Gently used records’. The boys immediately laid their eyes on the previously housed records. The change and spare dollars in their pockets combined could possibly earn them three records. 

Mr. Staple, Rodney as he more often called him, was an ace at picking out records for them. He always knew what album made the best company for each of them. He expected that of him with his own son but he even knew what Glenn would best enjoy. It was always a wonder to see him flick through the record sections and hand them over with such excitement. He wished he was here with them to do that cool trick now because he wasn’t sure what to look for. He barely knew what he was into. He glanced at Richard, spotting the hearing aid sitting in his ear and rolled his lips together. He was glad he was actually wearing it. 

“Can we pick by the cover or is that cheating?” Richard asked, tilting his chin towards his friend. Glenn’s answer was one little smile and a small hop over to start digging into the stock. Richard gladly followed in suit. 

Being the eleven year old twerps they were, they did pick by cover. But to be fair, they were just beginning to become aware of the idea that they could have a music taste. It was the time to build up a healthy stock of vinyl for use later. And as their fingers brushed over tops of albums, a pocket of nerves lay still in Glenn’s chest. He tried hard not to focus on it but his attempts were too forced to actually work. So it sat there, making it the slightest bit harder for him to breathe. Apart from a few fleeting glances, Richard kept what he noticed to himself and instead initiated a new conversation. It was the good kind-Glenn’s favorite kind-the ‘over the shoulder small talk’ that was only for friends who were close enough to pull it off without tuning out.  

“My dad always says you gotta find your soul artist.” Richard elevated his body slightly as he stood on his tiptoes to look at the few records on the higher section. Glenn’s answer was a short little questioning hum. Richard nodded his head and pulled out a record to check out the back. It was a simple black and white color scheme but Glenn couldn’t really tell just what or who it was from where he was standing. “You know, that band or person that...I guess you really connect with.” Richards brows crinkled with thought as if he was trying to remember just exactly what his dad had told him. It inflicted curiosity upon Glenn and judging by Richard’s own eagerness to mention it, the same went for him. 

“How do you know who it is?” Glenn figured there was about a dozen or so in the music industry that each person in the world regularly enjoyed. ‘How do you separate the soul artist?’. He thought briefly about the music he heard in recent months but he hadn’t really paid enough attention to name any names. 

“When you hear them, you know. It’s like falling in love.” Richard’s eyes looked far away for a solid few seconds, mystifying Glenn. It all sounded oddly intense for such a casual thing in life but it did sound like it came straight from Mr. Staple’s mouth (in that aspect especially). Glenn suddenly felt like the decision he was making was a lot more important than he’d originally pegged it to be. He looked down at the record he was holding in his hand and glanced back up to the shelf. He wasn’t completely sure why but he made a last minute switch out for one he’d passed just a few minutes ago. He could feel Richard looking at him with a touch of amusement, no doubt a little buzzed with excitement that Glenn had taken to something. 

“Don’t get all excited.” Glenn chuckled and swiped his tongue across his lips as he brushed some dust off the album, feeling somewhat better. “This could just as likely be something I hate.” He shook the thing within his grip but with a careful eye. Richard hummed back at him and so obviously did not believe him. 

“It called to you. Must mean something.” He playfully poked Glenn and peeked at the record in question though it wasn’t as if he’d really know who it was either. “Why’d you switch for it?” 

Glenn pursed his lips and tapped his thumb against it. “Dunno. The name of the band seemed familiar.” He shrugged and proceeded to tuck it under his arm, a little signal that he was done. They shared a look for a few passing moments before Richard tucked his own choice under his arm and they headed for the check-out. 

Mr. Shannon was much more quiet than he usually was, only really giving them some polite smiles as he rang them up. It was slightly unsettling to the boys and Glenn always liked talking with the older man while he paid for whatever kind of junk he bought that day. But the pleasantries of conversation escaped the three of them. 

                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 The sun was setting yet the uncomfortable heat hadn’t cooled at all. It was still covering both boys in a thin layer of sweat. But Glenn was headed back home and Richard was biking his way to the motel building. His legs felt as if they had weights tied to the ankles and peddling became more of a chore each minute. He was reminded of a faded memory from when he and Glenn were barely eight years old. It was when Glenn had that awful plastic yellow tyke-bike with big red wheels that he’d ride up and down the ‘full range’ of his street (not yet allowed to cross). There’s a home video somewhere of him peddling the horrid plastic toy with Glenn on his back, arms around his neck while looking like he was flying through the air. The sound was completely absent on the tape and their gaping mouths in static color could now only suggest their old screams. He was pretty sure his dad was on the end of the street waiting for them to maybe crash into him or something. He’d been more of a reckless kid back then...before some of his weird ‘hang-ups’ caught up to him. It was the bitter conclusion he came to after all his memories, the part he didn’t like to think about because it only disappointed him. 

He chained his bike up once he got to The Motel and headed up the stairs, just above him the neon flickering Crown sign buzzed wildly and caught his ear. He felt unbelievably tired almost instantly, as if the day of biking had just caught up to him. It made him all the more eager to get inside and curl up on his bed. The plastic bag swayed from where it hung on his sweaty finger and crinkled all the while. 

He swung the door open and padded inside, shoes squishing into the old carpet that to his knowledge had never been changed since opening. From where he stood he could hear his father laughing by the check-in desk and he smiled as warmth grew within him. Hearing that his father was happy always put him in a good mood, seeing enough of the bad had him always hoping for the good.

He ran in that way little kids do (maybe he was getting a little too old for that) and stopped short of the tall red desk. “Wanna see what I bought?” He shook the bag and ignored the adoring look that Mr. Trailer gave him when he broke their conversation. He’d grown quite used to that kind of look from the man, who had no kids. Richard figured that was Mr. Trailer’s biggest regret in life and he often wondered what had stopped him from getting there, his wife sure seemed bitter about it too. He gave him a smile and hoped that gave him a bit of joy because if anyone deserved happiness, Richard would pick him. 

“In a minute little man, go off to your room and I’ll see ya in a few.” He reached out his hand and ruffled Richard’s hair, a gentle push in the direction of the hallway. The little son happily obliged and tuned out of the man’s conversation as he strutted down the hall to his room. The brass numbers on the door were just a little loose and jiggled when the door was moved too fast. But he secretly hoped his father wouldn’t fix it because to him, it was the sound of coming home. 

Blue sneakers were kicked off his feet and the records slid freely from the bag once he threw it onto the bed. Despite the good day, he found himself brushing against anxiety-which was a word he’d first heard from Mr. Hannigan in the classroom one day and had been using it ever since. He did his best not to think about his dreams but that nearly meant nothing considering he couldn’t do much about the flashes in his head. They came with a tiny bit of pain that shot from different places in his head. 

He saw Glenn running from the lawnmower again and felt the sensation of a sunburn on the back of his neck. He wanted nothing more than to blurt all of these visions out for his father just so that he wouldn’t feel so clogged. But they were just dreams. His father would tell him so and pat his back in the same spot that had been horribly curved and broken on Glenn’s body ...which had really been Virginia’s. 

Who was he to sit and shake from this when his best friend had actually seen the accident? Demented dreams were still just dreams. Glenn had a lot more to be scared of than he did. 

Richard laid back on his bed and remained stoically still until his dad finally crept in with a soft grin. With his return, Richard's flashes disappeared. He curled into a seating position and laid out his record treasures and waited for his dad’s commentary. 

“Billy Joel.” He hummed, cradling the black & white album with an intense expression. “Wistful and…” He broke off with a sing-songy voice that made his son ever the most eager kid “soft.” he clicked his tongue and held the empty sleeve out for Richard’s small hands to retrieve. He smirked just then and only for mere seconds before he started to set up the record on the little player he’d bought him a few years back. Brushing his hair behind his ear as he bent, his look lingered at the needle and he started to brush the pads of his fingers down the legs of his jeans. He looked like he might have something to say but wasn’t quite sure how to voice it which was a common trait when it came to his father. He could be frighteningly good with words but choke on them the minute he had to face his child but Richard saw that with a lot of parents he knew. 

The music faded in with a bit of a static crunch but seemed to keep a steady sound after the hiccup. “S’that still a good volume for you?” Rodney hovered his hand over the dial, ready to steer it louder if necessary. He’d grown so used to the slight way the dial clicked when he hit the familiar space. It was there that his son was able to comfortably hear anything that poured from the player. 

Richard paused and allowed himself to listen. The music was soft but it was all there, as far as he knew. He nodded, closing his eyes and willed himself to enjoy the moments like this while he still could instead of grieving for a day that hadn’t come yet. But that was one of his many talents and he wondered if it’d be the kind to carry over to adulthood. He peeked one eye open to see his father fiddling with the clipboard he had brought on his lap. His eyes were narrowed and full of distress. Maybe that was his answer. “How was your day, pop?” 

Rodney‘s eyes glazed over as he dropped the pen he’d been holding and sighed. “Mr. Trailer’s gonna be staying in room twenty-two for a while.” His face looked worn and tired. It was the kind of look that no kid wanted to see on their parents. 

“Why? I thought things were getting better with Mrs.Trailer-? ” 

“Listen buddy, I should probably start laying off on talking to you about a customer’s personal business. Don’t want you running your mouth about things you shouldn’t even have a clue about.” The black pen wiggled in the air before he brought it back down on the harsh white paper. 

“I would never-” 

“You might think you wouldn’t but you’re twelve, I remember what twelve was like. You don’t know any better.” His dad shrugged and the longest pieces of his hair fell from his shoulders. It caught the light of the desk lamp and shined the gold strands. “I said the wrong things to the wrong people all the time.” He chuckled with a tone that kinda sounded like pride. 

“I’m eleven.” Richard twiddled his thumbs and broke conversation for a few seconds to listen to vinyl spinning softly. “Do you really think I’m that kind of kid, dad?” He tilted his head and eyed his father like an analysis was taking place. It had come to his attention very recently that his dad could handle any amount of pressure from a person unless that person happened to be Richard. He couldn’t really understand it but he figured he might when/if he ever became a parent for himself. But he wasn’t really trying to analyze his father, no. He was just trying to get his way by reminding him what a mess of a kid he’d had. 

He was not proud of it and it may have contradicted his point but there were times in his short years that Richard wondered if he could use his hang-ups to his advantage. It crushed him to think about but sometimes he felt like he deserved it, a way to use what hurts him for silly things. Like reminding his dad of his overgrown fear of talking to adults just to get the new town gossip. 

Rodney gave up on the little kneel he was doing and finally plopped down to rest on the floor in full-seating position. His elbows curled over his knees and his hands came together at the center of his lap. “I think...” He began, eyes now meeting his sons with renewed energy. "I know my boy well enough to understand that he wouldn't go around flapping his mouth." He reached out to pat Richard's knee while his son blinked. "But I gotta start respecting my customer’s privacy.” His face fell into a funny smirk as the vinyl smoothly transitioned between songs. 

"You tell your customers about my privacy all the time." The words came out of his mouth before he could even think to stop them. His chest caved in with a rush of panic and tried to look anywhere but his father's face. There was no way around it. Richard's situation was common knowledge around town. 'The kid's hearing is gonna be gone before the turn of the season' was something he'd overheard in the hall just some days ago. From the mouth of some drunk guy who stayed in room 15 for a solid week. It never used to bother him so much but over the last few months it began to feel like a betrayal.  

Rodney didn't look pained at all. In fact, he perked up slightly. His teeth picked into the lid of his pen and he straightened his back with a slight crack. “You bring me a lot of worry, son.” The pause in that midsection of his sentences felt like an eternity. “Sometimes, I just need to vent.” His hand waved about, stirring the air and making Richard’s stomach turn with it. “It’s hard to take all this on by myself, you know?” 

Richard’s throat tightened from sad embarrassment because ‘Of course’, he was being insensitive. It was just hard to picture your own father as someone who needed support so sometimes he neglected to remember that he was a man all on his own. He had no memories of his mother but his dad carried the weight of his own with him all the time. Richard couldn’t imagine how difficult it is to raise him without a partner to share the load with. “I’m sorry.” 

His father nodded and happily tapped his pen against Richard’s knee before standing. “Ok. Well, I’ve got some work to do and I’m sure-”

“Did you ever think about venting to me, dad?” Richard suddenly shifted from his seating position with a determined expression. “Maybe I can help?” 

Rodney cracked his back and grinned. “I think you’re too busy servin’ me the plate to worry about helping me with the load, son.” He strolled over to ruffle his child’s hai. “You have no business helpin’ me with this.” He moved his hand down to pat his cheek and turned off to leave the room. 

Richard swallowed, still feeling the tiny push on his cheek and played with his hands while the door closed. The coldness of the air was suddenly unbearable though he hadn’t even noticed it before. So he hoped towards the little closet that each room at the Crown was gifted and sat down on the floor in front of it. 

He sat there, legs crossed and arms folded in his lap like some kinda jacket was gonna fly out for him. But he made no move to reach out for one himself. Instead, he silently reached his hand backwards, towards the night-stand and picked up the shiny red phone. There was no need to look before dialing the number he knew by heart. 

He let the phone be a rest for his chin while took slow in-and-out breaths. They were the kind for steadying. Glenn had taught him...-well, he hadn't taught him 'how' to do them. Richard knew how to breathe on his own, duh. Glenn just showed him the power they could have. 

"Ricky, sweetheart is that you?" Came the soft and sweet tone of Mrs. Cabrette. Richard smiled down towards the phone and nodded even though he was not actually in her company. “I can never remember what your room’s number is…” She mumbled, mostly to herself and he could almost picture her darting around the Cabrette kitchen. 

"Yes, Mrs. Cabrette. I was calling for Glenn?" 

Glenn's mother was just about the kindest girl in town. Richard had done a lot of growing up alongside her son and inside her home. Glenn carried the same energy as his mother but they didn’t look too much alike to the untrained eye. Richard could see their resemblance more and more clearly as he grew up basically in their household. They both had a birthmark which folded between the apples of their cheeks and the sides of their noses. Richard liked to poke that spot on Glenn’s face when his friend wasn’t paying enough attention to him. 

“Oh sure, sure honey.” Donna’s voice got farther as she must have pulled the phone down to move about, the cord was no doubt twisting around her. “Did you get home okay, bud? Your dad feeding you yet?” Her voice came back all soft and motherly which was not a foreign concept for him to grasp. He had never known the love of his own mother but he had something close to it with Mrs. Cabrette. 

“No, not yet. But I was hoping we might go for hot-dogs or something.” He coughed into his arm because he wasn’t sure how to keep conversation going sometimes. He looked out the window behind him while more shuffling sounds crinkled in his ear. 

“Hey, buddy. Did ya make it home, ok?” Glenn’s voice suddenly cut in from the loud background noises, mostly TV and moving fabric. Richard smiled and moved the phone up to rest it between his shoulders. 

“Yeah, just fine.” He chuckled. “I just had a question.” He mumbled as he scooted closer to his closet. He pulled the whole shiny phone down from the night-stand and cradled it into his lap while the carpet burned the bottoms of his legs. 

“What’s that?” 

Richard rolled his lips together and ran his hand across the bottoms of his hanging clothes. It was a warm, staticky feeling that bred well with the chilly air and made his fingers tingle. His eyes bounced towards the ball of fabric which was curled up near the right side of the tiny room. “You left your jacket here the other day, do you mind if I wear it?” He asked, leaning forward to the furthest of his ability and attempting to swipe it. “Dad’s got the AC blasting and your’s is warmer than mine-”

“That’s cause you wore yours until the thinning point.” Glenn chuckled and the picture of that red crap-fabric thing popped into both their heads. 

“It was my dad's old one too. So it was from like the sixties or some shit.” Richard giggled and brought the jacket up to his lap. He twisted his arms in some funny way and tucked the phone safely under his chin while he attempted to tug the damn thing on. 

“You don’t need to call me to ask, y’know? What’s mine is yours, at this point.” Glenn’s voice peaked into a tone similar to one he might use during a hushed sleepover. 

Glenn’s jacket was just a bit larger than Richard’s regular and was a honey golden color that faded a bit at the sleeves, he briefly wondered if his good buddy sucked on the fabric when he was bored. It was an idea that Ricky didn’t quite like to think about yet he kept it close to his chest. He pulled at the edges and dragged them over his fingers, clenching the fabric down against his palms. 

“We’re so close that I’d let you borrow just about anything, Ricky. And I know you like the back of my hand, so I know what you’d ask for.” He laughed as Richard began absorbed in thought. 

For the most part, Glenn was right. Nobody did know Richard quite like he did. But there were a few things Glenn didn’t know about. 

          --------------------------------------5-----------------------------------------

The Hitchhiker came and went through the bloodied recesses of Richard Staple’s mind often. He would repeat old time-y sentiments that were not necessarily blatant horror just sentences Richard could take as calmly as a pill only a little too thick to swallow on the first try. But they were the kind of words that ripped another stringy clot of skin from the wound that the first had created.

Sometimes,The Hitchhiker would open his mouth to a gentle ‘O’ and out would pour the sounds of an old radio trying to tune itself to a station. Static would salt out of his painted lips before landing on something like Roger Miller singing ‘King of The Road’.

“Third boxcar, midnight train, destination Bangor, Maine

Old worn-out suits and shoes

I don’t pay no union dues…”

Though The Hitchhiker hadn’t started doing that until he tunneled his way out of Richard’s mind and bled into the real world. But there was also the likely possibility that Richard had manifested the character into the air by building him a subconscious bridge.

The train-yard in Middlerock, Illinois was the first place that he saw his little friend slinking around a plain of existence that Richard hadn’t made-up.

It was late-afternoon with the company of a low-hanging sun and nice screeches coming from under the wheels of great long freight trains. Passenger trains long since halted their run in the town. But the freights were loaded with goods to bring into places to the north and to the south. His favorites used to be the ones which had gleaming Fords and Chevys because it had been a real dream of his childhood to own a car like those.

His little hitchhiking friend must have known of this affection for the yard because that afternoon, when he was wandering around town, Glenn-less for the first time in a while, the sad man was just sitting on a paused freight.

His eyebrows frozen in what looked to be an upward quiver and lived under a flat little brown hat. A shadow of paint took over his chin like a beard and made the white around his lips truly stand out. But most notably, a ball of red sat in place of his nose.

Richard recognized the familiarity of the man in an instant. For he was what Richard had begun to associate with fuzzy memories that sometimes came back into his head. They were never complete nor useful, just sentences that could be a mighty pain to hear. But the man on the freight was the image they were almost always voiced from.

In an old worn out suit, lived an Emmett Kelly looking clown who sometimes appeared to Ricky in passing thought. Of course, he was never quite sure why he’d first began to associate a clown with old childhood memories but it never much bothered him.

And in that moment, as he sat on the train with a clenched fist around a small sack, the Kelly look alike seemed so real.

The man turned to Richard and spoke one of those charmed little sentences but this time, he had his very own voice because there was the absence of him being trapped in Richard’s own internal narrative. “Everybody’s got a back story, Richard and this town is gonna be yours.”

That had been his Father. Rodney. Richard was sure that he had once said something of that sort to him when he asked about the trains that ran through town. It was a plain sort of question he’d thrown into the air without knowing it was because he was already planning an escape. Ol’ Rodney Staple took one look at his boy and knew for him.

‘Emmett’, Richard supposed he could refer to him as such, reached out a hand which poked out from the boxcar. Richard flinched in some sort of sweaty fear but calmed slightly when he realized he had only been pointing to a crate sitting in the cinders. 

Richard was sort of paralyzed with either fear or shock but decided to take a peek when Emmett covered his eyes in a playful manner. As if to say ‘Hey! I’ll look away, if you want’!

So Richard tipped his body and took a small, gentle peek into the crate and caught sight of something eerily familiar. Stacked almost to the top of the box was a collection of old school supplies and papers but on top of it all was a coiled jump rope. And carved into the side of the box were the words; ‘I give you a rope to skip with and you hang yourself with it’. 

“Oh, Fuck off” He shook his head and stepped back to his original spot. Somehow he didn’t think his little friend meant to harm him. Maybe his Hitchhiker wanted to tell him something…

When he glanced back to the train, Emmett had disappeared altogether.

                                           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“There's just no percentage in remembering the past. It's time you learned to live again at last…”  Monkees lyrics? That’s what Emmett tuned his good ol’ mouth radio to in Richard’s dream last night. 

He wasn’t entirely sure what he was aiming for with that but decided it’d be best not to think too hard about it. Instead, Richard made his Father some breakfast in the backroom of The Crown and tried not to self-diagnose the itchy spot on his arm as eczema. 

The bushel of pink-painted roses covering the delicate plate was covered in scrambled eggs and a side of bacon made just for Rodney. He plopped the mess of food onto the table in front of his Dad and remembered something simple. 

In his good ol’ motel room & on his wooden bedroom window-sill there was a small carving. Richard smiled to himself and took off for his room, no matter how his Dad complained that they needed to spend actual time together. He just had to see if it was what he thought it was…

Kneeling down, he dragged his finger against the wood he couldn’t see until he felt the markings. He dipped himself to take a peek & found that it was still there, of course. ‘Take a Giant Step’

The song in which those Monkees lyrics had come from. “Holy shit.” Ricky mumbled to himself and slapped the window-sill in pure shock. He laughed to himself, a deep sort of chuckle that may have sounded a little crazy.

Glenn Cabrette. The memory was getting a little clearer now. 

Eleven year old Glenn had carved that into the weak wood with the  knife Richard had used to spread butter onto his toast just a couple mornings ago. Rodney would have a piss-penny fit if he knew this. 

The Hitchhiker spoke in Glenn’s voice as he reappeared in Ricky’s mind- “I’m tellin’ ya, buddy. You gotta listen to the song, there’s this part that reminds me of us. Listen-….” Emmett paused and instead of continuing with the memory version of Glenn reading out the lyrics, he tuned that good ol’ mouth radio and sounded out that specific part. 

“You stare at me in disbelief

You say for you there's no relief

But I swear I'll prove you wrong

Don't stay here in your lonely room

Just staring back at silent gloom

That's not where you belong…-” 

He really couldn’t blame Glenn for associating that lyric with him. Richard smiled to himself and dragged his thumb across the carving once more before standing. The dork had carved the title in so he wouldn’t forget to listen to it. 

His heart skipped a beat or two and he tried to wrap himself in that happy memory. 

                         --------------------------------------6-----------------------------------------

“-Stop screaming and turn left at the light.” Glenn mumbled miserably in the passenger's seat of his Mother's car. He was trying desperately to sink into the material of the seat and ignore the horrid expression on her face. It helped to rub his palm harder into his eyes, it earned him the fuzzy kind of vision that usually only got when he was overwhelmed. The different kinds of streetlights bled together and he could almost pretend he was in any other situation.

“I’m not screaming. Trust me, you’d know the difference if I was-” Donna Cabrette paused just time to catch Glenn mouthing those words along with her in a mocking gesture. Her boy was rarely the bratty type but he had moments here and there like any other child. The cause usually stemmed from something along the lines of patience running thin on the ‘subtle’ new restriction on leaving the house. 

She did one of those half-chuckles of disappointment and tightened her hands on the steering wheel. Glenn wanted nothing more than to escape the scene entirely. It wasn’t fun to admit but he was highly embarrassed and angry for reducing himself to pouting just as much as he was upset with her. He shuffled in his chair and lifted his legs to tuck them under his body. His knees hit the door with a loud thump which sounded eerily close to an angry reaction and maybe it was. For a few painful seconds, it made the air even more awkward.

That wasn’t a completely uncommon thread pulled between them. Most of their fights consisted of long, horrid silences because neither of them were the type to make a loud scene.

“Don’t make this into a fit, Glenn.”

“I’m not having a fit.” He dug into the bag at his feet and pulled it onto his lap. Logically, he could get out of the car so much faster if he could gather all of his crap ahead of the parking lot cruise. The car rolled to a complete stop at the next red-light. Glenn’s head thumped softly against the headrest, nails dragging painfully hard into his lip.

“I work Glenn. This is a huge waste of my time-” She glanced at her son and waved a spare hand off the wheel.

“Eyes on the road, Mom. If we get into a car accident, that’d be on your head.” Glenn spoke the words before he could even think about it. The car suddenly became that kind of Hell that always seemed exclusive to the times his mother was taken over by a memory of dad. 

Painful flashes of that Summer day where Virginia Denver’s body had thrashed from the impact of a barreling vehicle...that was what ran through Glenn’s mind again. He visualized the thought within itself (a little tick he’d once picked up from his buddy), pinning an image to it. Maybe the thought became a writhing creature covered in thick and muscular fluid which bled down from inside his temples all the way to the pit of his stomach where it stuck there like tar. 

It was a growing pain which pinched his guts and flared. The quick intensity would become harder and harder to ignore considering his mother, who was pitter-patting her fingers across the steering-wheel. There would be a few minutes of soothing silence and he’d think he was safe...just the distant and quiet hum of the tires moving-*click* another little dance from the tiny cracking of her knuckles. 

“I shouldn’t have said that.” Glenn finally broke their record-breaking twenty minute silence. It had been strange and he was glad the opportunity to speak came up. He turned and due to the small space, he could stare right at the woman he loved more than anything in the world. “You’re not...mad at me, are you?” He played with his fingers.

Donna took a long and distant breath but did not even try to look back at her son-No-she kept those baby-blue family antiques dead forward.

“I wish more than anything that you didn’t see that…-” She waved her hand a little and sniffled. “That scene. You’re just a kid-my child.” Her palm thumped against the little concave part of her collarbone, just above her heart. “And Virginia was someone’s child. Someone’s best friend. Someone’s little sister and you had to learn the hard way that life doesn’t give a shit about any of that.” 

She shrugged and he felt his past snacks launch back up his throat, he harshly swallowed it and let himself feel sick to his stomach. That dream of Richard’s popped back into the chaotic mess of his head and burrowed into that muscly stream of thoughts. The lawnmower got away from Mr. Hannigan and peeling the skin off his foot…-it seemed to barrel out towards Glenn. Hopping from that dream plain of existence in Ricky’s head and onto the bumpy street of Middlerock, munching on the asphalt their car was due to trek. He blinked a few times. 

“Why did you want to go to Grovers Rest so bad, Glenn?” She asked in a soft voice and made a sharp left turn, taking them away from the bleeding-red machine. 

                                         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Rodney!”

Richard dragged his eyes up from the carpeting of the Crown’s lobby and found who was a stranger to him yet...an old pal to his dad?

“Jerry fucking Stetson, what on earth blew you into town?” his father slammed his hands down joyfully on the main desk and gave the guy one of his rare warm grins.

“More like who on earth blew me into town!” Jerry broke into a little chuckle like he was being a little shit. Rodney only tossed him an annoyed look and waited for an actual response. “-Yeah, nobody did…ha…Not funny, huh?” He swiped his curled knuckle under his nose and shook his head.  

Rodney rolled his eyes (fondly?) and thumped their arms together to urge this guy to spill. “Um, yeah I-” Jerry awkwardly began and ran his palms down the legs of his jeans. “I’m just visiting my mother & step-dad for the weekend. Frank is being a little asshole, says he wants to redo the living room.” he shrugged. “So ma called me to try and y’know, talk him outta it…distract him - which is my talent after all -” He broke for laughter.

“But my ulterior motive, you ask?” Jerry waved his arms and smugly grinned. 

“Of course.” Rodney chirped happily from behind the desk and vaguely gestured to Richard but did not introduce him. 

“I want to try and convince ol’ Frank to hand over all his old or vintage luggage and suitcases to me, y’know?” He leaned back onto the desk and shrugged. “He’s got tons of nice junk perfect for me to stuff my shit into. I just gotta get him to make the big journey to our storage unit place.” He grinned madly. 

“What did you pack your stuff into to get here if you are without that necessity?” Richard blurted with curious eyes and came to stand against the desk, to the guy’s left. He’d been patiently sitting still in one of the padded chairs while he waited for his father to drive him out to Grover’s Rest but it looked like a distraction was afoot. 

The gangly man waggled his finger and clicked his tongue. “A garbage bag-” 

“Jesus, man-”

“What it isn’t a used garbage bag, Rodney. I have some class.” 

“Yeah, you’re the picture of class. Just drop the C & the L.” Rodney shook his head and feigned his attention elsewhere which always used to annoy his friend. A few seconds of silence passed them. 

“Oh, I’m the ass?”

“Congratulations, you figured out the joke.” Rodney playfully clicked his own tongue and pretended he was more interested in the books stacked just next to his elbow. Jerry reached over and smacked his other arm off the counter.

Richard wasn’t sure how to take this strange man coming in and making his dad grin harder than he’d ever seen before…

                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~INTERMISSION~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was one man in Rodney Staple’s life that he considered to be a friend, he lived in one of those stop and shop kinds of towns, the kind where a righteous man could pass through on autopilot. Longing to enjoy a cup of a homestyle coffee that settled in the pit of his stomach. And before leaving it all in the dust the man could score a cheap necklace for the wife who was loathing herself back home. He’d been passing through just the town many years ago in the midst of a classic endeavor and had halted his journey to offer his services to a young woman who believed in a world of magic and mystery or so she claimed through old wooden signs with cracked paint that read ‘Psychic Reader’. Her aura was a sob in the void that he’d been unable to resist pouncing on. He allowed her to believe she was an enchantress so powerful that she’d had him under her spell upon sight. The illusion of the enchantress crumbled just as simply as her body did when he rattled his tongue like a snake inside her mouth. 

With the additional visiting time in town he’d been able to meet the others who made the welcome mat of a place their home. Among the cast of characters that he related most to a tasteless lineup in a cliche novel, there was a standout most pleasing to him. Jerry Stetson was a mild-mannered and twitchy young man. But the special...oh so special thing about him was not just his name, though that really did get Rodney off, it was the way he lived. In the short time he’d put up with him, Jerry revealed himself to be a mind numbingly stupid clown. Rodney occasionally wondered what kind of man his real father had been but he certainly did not need that confirmation because he already admired him in his sense to abandon his child. 

Jerry very quickly opened up as a naive man with all the charm of a slightly used and damp napkin. Rodney had anticipated such upon sight without the aid of a third eye but by just taking notice of his obvious and pitiful half-grin. Which just so happened to be one of Rodney’s least favorite traits among mankind. He liked long committed grins and detested the new youth trend smile that favored the shy inability rather than the actual joy. Jerry lacked a lot but he made up for it in opportunity. 

The vacation town’s overview was much like a new box of chalk where all the colors stood long and thin. There was no variety in shape, just in shades of dust. The homes were the least interesting spots. Apart from Jerry's which had shit from end to end. Enough so that it spilled from one wood splitting window on the first floor at least once every five months. The Mayor, who would die not four months after his re-election in a wasteful & boring car accident, often showed up on his doorstep to tear his head off about it. Jerry mistook Rodney’s amusement for interest several times in the timeline of their companionship. He regurgitated most of that passionate yet inept dialogue to him on afternoons without taking the time to breath. His skin would turn to pinkish hues until going into a desperate red as he spoke so rushed to get his sentence out before he had to take in more air. It made his voice vibrate in Rodney’s ears and the tip of his pinky finger would rest between his rows of teeth and slide further and further in to press on his wet tongue as the sentences got longer and longer. It was when the heat of the red blushed down to Jerry’s neck that he got the most randy. The neurotic and idiotic man so preoccupied with his ‘damp napkin’ story that breathing took the backburner. He could almost feel an echo of the tightening in Jerry’s chest as he held it in for moments, upon moments, upon moments-

And then with a loud pop, Jerry would breathe again with an airy laugh. It was always a disappointment but there would always be hope for next time. Rodney missed that man every time he thought back to him and those days of star collecting Celeste. He made himself a nice little life there in Trader, Wisconsin. 

Celeste had been a wonderfully bold young woman that he had first ran into outside her store, Nightfall. The wooden sign hung a little bit too low to the sidewalk and his eyes followed the painted words with amusement. It was not that he didn’t believe in psychics, fortune tellers or hell, witches. He’d be dim if he didn’t. It was just the fancy foolish way humans went about it all, making it a performance art. And Celeste was a star with crystal vision. She sat there on that night with an air of confidence that Rodney actually had to admire. He’d walked up and down the mainstreet rows of kitschy shops looking for funny little things to take home with him and wound up with an eye for her. 

But he wasn’t about to do anything about it. What he liked more was for the woman to make that first move. It was much more satisfying that way so he passed her by with nothing more than a small and easily missed glance. She returned the gesture with no added interest so Rodney got ready to find something else to keep himself busy. 

“I don’t have to be a fortune teller to tell that your shoes aren’t gonna last one more long walk, sir.” 

Rodney turned and there she was, head cocked to the side as she stared down at his breaking shoes. Her long hair was blowing loosely off her shoulders and draping beside her, she smiled at him. Rodney had got the confirmation he craved and walked back over to her, planting his feet just in front of the bench. She looked at him with a mixture of interest and amusement which was not the kind of look he was used to. Celeste was not the kind of girl he was used to and that’s what made her perfect. 

In his time there, Celeste proved to be just the kind of companion he wanted so he decided an extra week or so in Trader would do him far more good than harm. It was when the week actually turned into months which ended up being two years that Rodney decided enough was enough. Rodney could not blame poor, down on her luck Celeste for his leaving considering that had been his plan the entire time. But he would still like to blame her for the conception of their baby. If she was actually as good at her job as she had claimed to be, then she would have known better.  

         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~END OF INTERMISSION~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mr. Stetson hiked up what Richard assumed was the trash bag which contained most of his ‘essential’ items. The concave bottom was uneven and jaggedy from the amount of junk the guy must have stuffed inside. 

“Thanks for the room, pal. I really appreciate it.” He smiled and flung the bag over his shoulder, heading down the hall. But not before giving Richard a tiny glance...kind smile and a big round nose that looked eerily familiar. 

Rodney watched after him, eyes a bit watered red and tired, but with a smile nonetheless. Richard admired the face for a minute or two before hopping off his seat. 

                      --------------------------------------7-----------------------------------------

Dandelion yellow smudged the skin of Glenn’s ankles as he trudged his way through heavy mud around the grim grass.The area was mostly bare apart from the turned over, sideways and broken gravestones sparsely to his left-and-rights. The air smelled deliciously of wet rain to come and Glenn just knew that his mother was an anxious mess in the car. Glenn had been more than surprised that she even agreed to let him wander about Grover’s Rest without her. He’d given her no stable explanation as to why he wanted to meet Richard there and it sure as hell was worse than reading the obituaries, in her opinion. 

It might’ve had something to do with the fight in the car...but he didn’t care to think about that now. Nor the story she told during the last minute or two of driving. She talked a lot about his Nonna when she was overwhelmed by silence. 

The woman wasn’t fond of Glenn’s mother but boy, did she have stories. How she would be fussing around a warm dinner and her husband would be sat in one of those dreadful vibrant plastic orange chairs (His Mother talked about his father’s childhood home a lot. She’d spent a great deal of her teen years there) Apparently, those chairs had been bought because they matched the kitchen utensils. Though ol’ Donna Cabrette always had to mention the fact that they were a shade off, making the room all the more nauseating. 

“Glenn!”

The sudden voice caused him to fall forward, just a little trip-up that found him on his knees. He dusted himself off only to find his hands cut up from the headstone he must’ve grabbed on the way down. He looked around in interest, ‘Here lies Stu Marsh’. Glenn watched the blood ooze from it’s tiny holes in his palm. ‘Thanks for the hand, Stu.’ He thought grimly aware that poor Stu couldn’t hear him at all.  The injury was nothing more than small but the odd way in which the crimson kept pushing out no matter how many times he’d wipe his palms down his jeans was starting to worry him...for Richard’s sake (who was now darting over) but it was no use. His pants were more or less drenched in the mud-blood mixture.

“Holy shit, Ricky. I almost just died.” Glenn smiled and locked his hands together, not chuckling in fear that more blood would spurt out. 

Richard kneeled down and plucked up a piece of white and rolled it over in his fingers with a small half-smile. “Baby-tooth?” 

“Ricky-baby that....” He attempted to hold back a disgusted lurch. Standing, he guided the boy into dropping the souvenir and together they went around the long rows of graves. If he had to guess, Mr. Staple most likely dropped him off with the promise of return in an hour or so. He was lenient like that. “Was not my tooth.” He felt a chuckle try to escape.

Richard paused for a few scary seconds before succumbing to the lurch that Glenn had held back. It possessed him to jump into Glenn’s arms like the tooth would jump out and grab for him again like a hand from the grave. His smaller body was easy to keep balanced and Glenn found that he didn’t mind too much. There was a ‘flash-fond’ warning in his head, in big news font, before a flood of warm feelings popped free from his gut. He allowed himself to hug Ricky closer because nothing felt quite so good in the past few months. He smelled like home. 

“Your hands are wet...?” Richard pulled off, legs uncurling around Glenn’s waist, and attempted to look at the back of his thin shirt. When he turned, the bloody hand-prints were clear and startling. Hands flew directly over Glenn’s mouth as he dissolved into horror filled laughter 

Glenn swallowed a thick clot of mucus and breathed in-and-out slowly. “I wanted to visit Virginia’s grave.” He pursed his lips and grabbed onto the edge of Richard’s sleeve as they started to stroll again. As he did so, he used a free hand to take out an old portable radio from his jacket. 

“Oh? So we’re not patrolling the grounds for old Grover’s grave?” Richard playfully bumped their arms together, which only drew them closer. 

They were silent for a long time after that. Instead, they just kept on walking to wherever Glenn thought the young girl’s grave might be as the kid turned from station to station (Avoiding WGRV-The Groove for the sake of bad luck). Each boy studied the names carved into the stones and thought briefly about who those people might’ve been. Glenn began recognizing some names from the obituaries and was glad he treasured them as much as he did. 

It was just hard...extremely hard to keep that bit of pride in himself when the boys came face to face with Virgninia’s grave-marker. “I thought we could sit and y’know…” Glenn waved the little radio around. “See if that song plays...the one that was playing when she-?”

Richard nodded. “I remember.” 

Glenn hummed. “Maybe, at least, just listen to music with her or something.” He dipped his chin to the grave. “I have no idea who she was but I think she liked music.” He swiped his palm under his eye and together, the boys took a seat in the grass next to her grave. Richard could tell that his buddy needed him. It was probably all the time spent on the other end of that which made him so good at it, but Richie really was. 

The train-yard was just across the street or so from the cemetery, so Richard couldn’t help but glance up every few minutes but never once did he catch a glimpse of his Hitchhiking pal. 

It was strange…that kind of fear that his little Hitchhiker caused him lately. Bouncing from mind to reality like that. 

The air smelled strongly of dark brown perfume and mild touches of wet autumn leaves as Richard scooted closer to the stone, to be dead across from Glenn. His forearms itched, that dirty itch, which felt like bugs had crawled under his skin and were now making themselves comfortable. Glenn blinked at the movement before gesturing to the open space next to him, eyes gentle and eager. So Richard hopped over the resting place and plopped down next to his friend. 

Little Emmett Kelly was back in his mind, opening his mouth and tuning it specifically to a song that Glenn’s radio could not…“‘I get this feelin' I may know you as a lover and a friend…”

Glenn had never truly explained any of the lyrics to the song in grave detail, but in all things, Richard believed little Emmett Kelly knew information beyond what was short enough for him to grasp. 

The physical radio faded into some commercial jingle and Glenn leaned his head down onto Richard’s shoulder. He melted into him like butter…and kinda like a boy about to break down and cry. But Richard just tightened the grip he had around his arm and sighed with something like relief.

‘Emmett’ reappeared in his mind’s eye for a brief second and used his magic mouth-radio to play an encore it seemed. 

“‘This voice keeps whispering in my other ear

Tells me I may never see you again’…”

Richard nodded to himself and laid his own chin atop Glenn’s warm hair.  “You know that dream I had about Harvey from class?” 

Glenn hummed but nodded. “Yeah, you never did explain that one to me-”

“It was the same thing, Glenn. I dreamed that Harvey got hurt on the monkey bars while that girl Julie Crest was on the swings but-” 

Glenn glanced up as best he could, remembering something else his mother had told him on the ride over. “Julie’s hair got all ripped out from the swing chain…” He rolled his lips together.

“I never get it right, do I?” Richard blinked away a few tears.

:

:

:

:

Before Richard could stop himself and maybe be polite enough to leave his friend to get his closure, he had begged Glenn to come walking with him. He felt a sudden sense of shakiness and could hardly breathe. 

He took Glenn back by the train-yard and the two strolled down track 3 while the sun bathed them both in colors deserving of Summer even though it was starting to become fall.. 

“And I’m not sure she’s happy with me...” Glenn finished his long story of the car ride over with misery clear in his tone. Richard tried to listen but couldn’t help but dwell on the fact that he’d been right in his dream assumption. It dragged him down like the thick filmy sweat that used to coat his body after a long summer day spent in the sun.

“I’ve been seeing a clown-…” He found himself blurting to her. 

“I’d hardly call myself a clown.” Glenn teased, his eyes directly on Richard’s, filled with a nervous kind of mischief. Like he wasn’t sure he should’ve said that. 

“No-…Not you…” Richard chuckled but found he couldn’t really explain what he did mean because he wasn’t sure if it really made sense out-loud. “It’s this character that I sorta created a few years back, the angel and devil on my shoulder or something.” Richard scratched behind his ear and Glenn hopped off the rail and strolled closer.

“When memories pop into my brain or weird shit that I can’t place, it speaks through him in my head. Which is fucked-up I guess but I didn’t really give a shit about it before. I just thought it was something I did, y’know? He was a train-hopper kinda…dude. Which I always liked but now…”

Glenn pulled Richard’s sleeve just to let him know he was safe to speak. 

“Glenn, he kinda scares the shit outta me lately. Not because he’s doing anything scary. But when I see him now...it’s like he knows stuff that I don’t and…” Richard paused and tried to find physical and mental footing. “I don’t know. I really don’t.” Richard broke into a loud laugh which his friend had to join in because their lives were too fucking weird. 

“One time, I was walking around town, right?” Ricky bumped their arms together and laughed. “And my little Hitchhiker popped into my brain when a really good song was playing outta some store-…‘(Sittin' on) The Dock Of The Bay’, I think…-and in a clear impression of you, he said ‘Life is just what happens in between long drives.’.”

Richard sighed like he couldn’t believe his own words. “That’s what ‘Emmett’ does. He repeats things like that to me…like a moment’s reminder not strong enough for me to think anything of it but strong enough to deepen a wound I didn’t know I had. Sometimes it has to do with my...obsessive little habits but other times...” 

His eyes were watery when he turned back to Glenn, which he didn’t realize was breaking the boy’s heart a little. “Emmett?”

“Oh, That’s what I call him. Because he isn’t a Bozo kinda clown…looks more like an Emmett Kelly, you know him?” Richard asked and suddenly pulled out a hearing aid like he’d just decided the struggle of trying to hear on his own was now too much. 

“Anyway, I think you told me that once when your mom drove us to that Petty-Mart one town over?” Ricky giggled. 

Glenn smiled with a touch of sadness that now broke Ricky’s heart. “If there’s anything I learned from my mom, it’s that you can’t live your life today being scared to wake up for tomorrow.” he gently put her arm around him and squeezed. “It’s not a good way to live and…” he looked at him with warm eyes. 

“If there’s no reason to, don’t start convincing yourself to be scared of your Hitchhiker. We all got the angel and devil on our old shoulders.” Glenn spoke as if he were some years older which was probably one of the many reasons there was a friendship between them.

“I should live by those words, Glenn.” Richard shook his finger and repeated them in his head, like a mantra. ‘You can’t live your today being scared to wake up for tomorrow.’ 

He thought upon all those horrible nights spent wide awake and being scared of how he just might lup and lose all of his hearing the next day. Clutching his blanket like an anxiety filled mess. 

Richard didn’t notice he’d been anxiously clasping his hands until Glenn held out his arms for a hug. He fell into his grip as if it was the simplest thing to do.. Glenn rubbed his hand in a circle on his back. 

Ricky pulled away and looked off into that bright orange sky. He frowned as he started walking up to a dead freight car. Glenn followed and accepted the helping hand of his friend when it apparently became time to hop inside and sat at the edge. “I didn’t want to tell you about this, y’know?” 

Glenn watched with a tilted chin as Richard paced the length of the old boxcar in that nervous way he had always approached stress with. It brought a little light into the car, Glenn thought. He could only be what the situation handed him in moments like this, where he was pretty vulnerable. And the situation tossed him a memory of joy so he smiled at his bouncy friend. “We should probably walk back over before your mom notices, I’m ok.” he dropped his shoulders and sat back down. 

Glenn shrugged like it had been no big deal to push-back his closure and glanced at Richard with all the softness in the world. His lips trembled which was strange to see. 

Richard played with his earlobe and blinked back some stress tears. He looked off towards the middle of the train-yard and found his little hitchhiker in the distant boney and dead grass. Emmett was raising what looked like his very own hearing-aid except when he went to shove it in his ear, water squirted out and drenched his face. He frowned and made brief eye-contact before tossing the thing deep into the field, looking betrayed.

‘Yeah’…Ricky decided the Hitchhiker was nothing to be scared of. 

                ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The boys had made their peace at Virginia’s grave, sitting in the dirt and shifting through songs she might’ve liked. Glenn was surely disappointed in the song missing but good ol’ Ricky could hear through the mouth of his Hitchhiker. 

Mr. Staple didn’t show up on time so Donna just drove the boy home all on her own, helplessly watching him trail into that crappy motel’s mouth. Not only was her mind constantly drowning in worry for her own but...sometimes Richard felt like her boy too. 

She tried not to overthink her worries while she watched baking shows and cooked a warm dinner for the two of them to share. 

While she did so, Glenn washed his hands over a 100 times into the clean white sink. Each time hoping for less dirty blood because the sight of it made him panicked these days. 

The tooth was sitting on his side-table and reminded him of the time Kip Allen shoved his molar back into the stringy red hole after he’d knocked it out. The kid was downright disgusting and Glenn was pretty sure he’d been the one to carve ‘B. Gibson is Gay’ in that desk. 

                    --------------------------------------8-----------------------------------------

Richard slipped back into the passengers seat of his father’s car, pants rubbing against the warm seat. He took one of those long sighs that makes him feel like everything is better for a few seconds. But eventually, a few seconds after his breath let go, his chest felt heavy again. He anxiously tapped the door in an uncertain beat while his leg bounced up and down. 

The neon sign just a few feet from his parking space cascaded different colored lights over him. It broke through the cracks on his windshield, reminding him of the stained glass windows of the Middlerock Church. For a moment, his mind recreated the echoing voices of the singers but he was quickly knocked out of it when a small knock on the window made him jump. His knee banged under the wheel and he shot his head over to the source.

Rodney Staple smirked a little at his son, two fizzing soft drinks were clutched in his hands and under his arms was the bag of groceries they’d come for. Ricky grinned and rolled down the window, taking them from his hand. “I got you a Ginger Ale, heard those were good for a sensitive stomach.” His pop watched carefully as Richard set them in the cup holders. 

Richard took a grateful sip as his dad went round the car and got himself settled in the driver's seat. Richard went through the motions, turning the heat on, buckling up, and glancing to see if his father was checking the mirrors. But when the time came to pull out of the lot, he just fell back in his seat with some kind of weight on his shoulders. Rodney slurped down some of his own pop and it sloshed a little as he placed it back in the holder. “You ok, sport?” 

“Fine. Just...worried about-” He cut himself off to point to his ears. “That night when everything just went away.” His voice wiggled a little though he’d tried to hide it. Rodney took a spare hand off the wheel and gripped Ricky’s, rubbing his thumb in nice circles. 

“Bud, if I wanted to control your problems, I would.” Rodney stole a quick glance at his boy and felt a pang of genuine connection though his smile came off as smirky. “Got something on my back, call it my Moonshadow, kid.” The grip got tighter and Richard missed his father’s smile. “Now go on and take a nap, I’ll drive you to where I used to go to calm down.” 

And with no time to think, Richard did. 

                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For a winter's day, the air was a blazing and moist kind of heat. Wind whistled and allowed the demons of goosebumps to crawl their way about Richard’s back as he sat in the middle of the sidewalk, glued. He recognized Mr. Hannigan’s street in an instant and felt an absolutely stunning sense of anxiety and cluelessness. It could not be the same dream, which had never happened before, for this had to be a Winter’s future. And...

Glenn wasn’t anywhere in sight this time, which gave him a bit of comfort as he felt the somewhat conscious version of himself bang his head on the car seat. But Mr. Hannigan was still outside his home, mowing the white blanket which was his lawn. It sputtered in that familiar way but the teacher didn’t seem to care. He pushed on through and looked proud of his work, a soft song poured from that tiny radio shoved in what looked like only a bottom half of a snowman. 

“Here comes Suzy Snowflake

Dressed in a snow-white gown

Tap, tap, tappin' at your windowpane

To tell you she's in town…”

A young black woman with a mountain of curls which bounced as she walked, came down the path of the Denver household...only...the house seemed more like a store. Nightfall was what a swinging sign said. Richard was struck by the immediate connection he had to her. The fact that he was cemented to the ground all the way across the street did not stop him from noticing the way she didn’t walk but-glided behind her long skirt. 

He focused completely on her and  noticed the way her lips were moving. Her head tilted down with an exaggerated bounce in her step. Her face looked pained from the smile but she was singing softly along to a song that carried over from Mr. Hannigan’s small radio...Not the one Glenn had described, just that ol’ WGN animation theme...He didn’t much care for it. Bozo was more his incentive for the broadcasting network.

“Here comes Suzy Snowflake

Soon you will hear her say

Come out everyone and play with me

I haven't long to stay...”

His eyes found her again as she began stepping off the curb, the sun light tracing her body, as Richard’s skin melted deeper into the pavement. He felt a sharp pang of knowledge and wondered if Glenn should’ve just kept the Virginia details to himself. 

All guilty thoughts rushed from Ricky’s brain as something played out in slow motion. Barreling down the street was the very car he was napping in, head lolled to the side and being scratched by the seat belt. 

His father’s headlights, blinding in the snow, were dead set on the woman like she was a mere bump in the road. The low and deep growl of the engine rang in his ears but was missed on the blissful girl. Richard couldn’t do much more than shake and try to pull his waxy skin together just to hobble over like that might help. Mr. Hannigan’s lawn mower was mumbling and grumbling, snow being shot in different directions and melting upon contact. 

He was able to catch one horrified look in the woman’s crystal eyes just before the crash, in which his very own father leapt to a standing position and plowed into her with his broken shoe on the wheel. Her body curved and broke in the most horrific manner that Richard believed to be possible. The blood which spurted out looked to be just as thick as Ricky’s melting skin as it splashed in the dips of slushy street snow. 

The car...their car, kept on racing away without a care in the world but the woman’s body did not remain still as it should’ve. Instead, she writhed her way to a standing position and let off some of the most awful cracking sounds. 

“Here comes Suzy Snowflake

Look at her tumblin' down

Bringing joy to every girl and boy

Suzy's come to town…”

Only instead of shining snow, crests and shards of broken windshield burrowed deep into her arms and acted as a crown upon her head. But she appeared to continue gliding to the static radio, skirt-no matter how torn-pillowing behind her. 

Richard let out a desperate child’s scream that fizzled out...hearing aids failing him.

“Soon you will hear her say

Come out everyone and play with me

I haven't long to stay…”

                 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Richard thumped his head against the dashboard just from the sheer thrust it took to wake himself from that nightmare. He lay still against it for a few seconds, letting his chest just go up and down as the sounds of driving eased him into reality. 

“Human life is too delicate and touchy...I don’t like to think about it and I cannot for the life of me imagine what it must feel like for you.” Rodney sucked in some air and allowed his body to shiver uncomfortably. “I am not above showing fear. Any living being should show it for their own Goddamn health, if anything. Though mine does not come often.”

Richard finally sat himself up again and slowly cracked his neck to face his father, wiggling his fingers against the wheel. 

Rodney turned his wrist over (the one he’d used to hold his son’s hand a moment ago), the pale skin facing up at him with veins of blue popping out from the strain. He admired the way they looked on him and swallowed a huge hunk of mucus that must have been sitting on the edge of his throat ready to be waterfalled down, he almost choked on it (which he kind of loved for the moment). The car was sweltering from the anxiety building up in his company like an up facing needle. It was still astounding to Rodney that he could only feel such things from foreign places. It made it all the more savory...he rubbed his palm down the base of his neck and rested it on his hot chest. If Richard were to get any closer, he could do much more than just touch the needle's point. He could press his skin all the way down the damn thing and feel the anxiety gushing like blood. 

“One sudden thing could black you out for eternity. Car crash? Perhaps?” He paused to laugh at that like it was an inside joke. “Think of the things you’re gonna miss!” Rodney continued to laugh. “Defects within your own bodies can kill you on site or even your own friends and neighbors just up and slaughtering you. And I think that one’s my favorite.” He waved his finger in a ‘matter-of-fact’ sorta way. “In my time here, I’ve seen countless TV programs obsessing over just those types of incidents.” He continued, throwing his hand behind him at the general direction of the television set. 

“You’re all so obsessed with the end of your own lives! I love that so much, you wouldn’t believe it!” Rodney pulled the car over and turned around with the strength of a man much younger than him. His legs whipped up and went sideways over the steering wheel, Richard thought he heard a cracking sound like all the bones in his legs broke and it all together hit him with horror and sickness. Rodney smiled at his boy with a sincere look, which might’ve been the scariest part. The shudderingly accurate picture of youth that Rodney always carried with him so naturally began to peel from his skin. It became much more clear when he slithered on closer, Richard remembered his old classmate Kip and the school year he had a bad case of eczema. He was seeing something grotesquely similar to that. The skin on his dad was slick with sweat and pulled back a few layers now, revealing deep scratches as the skin melted away with an awful red color left behind. “And I hate it all the same and do you know why?” 

Richard shrugged, as if indifference was the true key in the situation. 

“It’s utterly terrifying. You for instance.” Rodney slapped Ricky’s shoulder like he did in those young, dumb days with Jerrry. “You just never stop. Kid, you’re what eleven?-I don’t know but you must-you spend an hour up in bed scaring yourself from the constant thought of a man hiding in your closet coming out just to slaughter you while you slept or the sudden idea that you might be hit by the old school bus the next day. I couldn’t care less but you’re a kid, a child, so consumed by his own created anxiety that he can’t get a simple eight hours of sleep. I just don’t get it and that’s what scares me.” His fingers snapped and Richard feared they might just crack right off his hand. 

Richard’s little body shook. “Dad, you’re scaring me.” He frowned. 

Rodney’s face softened a little. “You’re nothing like me. No moonshadow shines on you, if it did…” He pursed his lips and shrugged. “Middlerock would have a lot more problems.”

Richard thought of his haunting dream-glimpses of the future. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” He gripped the edges of Glenn’s jacket, which he didn’t plan on returning. 

“Moonshadow. S’what I call this...talent I have. Got it from my soul artist” Rodney chuckled. “Wherever I go...chaos follows, son. And I’m not talking coincidental.” He gently thumped Richards arm. “I traveled for years, town from town, leaving incidents behind me. Trader, Wisconsin….Jerry’s house burnt down and your mother died, son.” Rodney smiled, and though it was the scariest thing he’d ever seen, Richard clenched his eyes and ached for his father to hug him and tell him all was alright. “Middlerock-” he paused.

“Been here as long as it took to raise you and so far, there’ve been a lot of concerns about accidents and deaths, including your buddy’s dad, The Majestic burning....and-” He cut himself off and tugged on Ricky’s ear. “That’ll be enough for the specifics.” He looked down at Richard like a dad teaching his boy to throw a baseball. “Oh, I don’t do it consciously, Ricky. Just something about me...makes bad shit happen, Pardon my french. I create a kind of vulnerability. Was hoping’ all these years that you’d turn out like me and have that neat little Moonshadow instead of your mother and all her false visions.” He rubbed behind his ear and frowned. 

Richard backed into his door and felt like he was inside of a jail cell or some shit. He thought about his dreams...his false visions and was suddenly glad his father didn’t know about them. 

“Anyway, I came here to think.” Rodney gestured to the nice little view he had of Middlerock from atop the small hill. He didn’t say it aloud, but Richard figured the ‘thinking’ had to do with him. “Why don’t you ride home and I’ll see you there, your bike is still strapped to the back.” Rodney stuck his thumb out and Richard couldn’t help but nod along. “Be careful, it’s late.” His face lightened and color came into his cheeks. “I love you.” 

Richard cracked the door handle and glanced over at his dad. “I love you too.” he said with his full-chest and pictured that old homevideo with the tyke- bike...where he rode towards his father’s open arms. 

He shut the door and tried to ignore the way he accidentally slashed his belly with the metal of his bike as he unhooked it. 

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A paper boat did not float so easily on dampened brown mush but on this day the air was heavy with thick wind and the ground was seeping with foul rainwater. It really signaled the end of the cruel summer which had begun with one Virginia Denver. 

Richard was screeching his bike tires across the pavement pebbles, occasionally rising to stand on the steep pedals. Subconsciously, his mouth would hang agape, the air would rush down and dry his throat and he’d clamp it shut again. Teeth crunching hard on the inside of his cheek, causing a puddle of blood to rest under his tongue. He wondered if the Moonshadow was on his back. If his dreams weren’t just nightmares but...that precursor to the kind of chaos his Father brought in his bindle sack from town to town. Little Emmett Kelly sometimes carried a bindle sack.

The train yard was dusted in dirt and Richard hopped off and slid his bike down past the pavement to that dust. He could feel the small rocks denting the rubber on the bottoms of the cheap sneakers he’d found at a lonesome thrift outlet. Each step made his knees go weak. He climbed on the back of an open freight car and laid back. His hand rose to press against the fabric of his shirt over his stomach. It was soggy, coated with the thick sticky liquid that he’d watched drip from Glenn’s mouth just the other day. 

Starting with a cough, the puddle dripped the shape of veins down from the corners of his mouth. The next cough gurgled. He pulled the shirt from his skin and ran his hand under. The skin was pulled back and ripped from the bike. When his thumb met the wound, he grew sick. But the cooper bubbled in his throat before he could empty his stomach. 

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“Children have You ever met the Boogeyman before

No, of course You haven't for You're much too good, I'm sure…”

Little Emmett Kelly’s ‘O’ shaped mouth was what greeted Richard as he pulled himself together and spit out the rest of his mouth blood onto the floor of the freight. He let the last bit of it string off his lower lip as he took in some air. 

His hitchhiking buddy was probably the closest to him that he’d ever been, in the physical sense which made Richard feel even more crazy. He stared at the sad clown who was leaning onto the edge of the freight’s opening. “Is it bad that I want my dad right now?” 

Emmett closed his mouth and his eternal frown was somehow comforting. Instead of speaking anybody else’s words, he reached over to his sleeve and tugged on it. Richard raised his brow. Emmett pulled at it again and out came a million yellow clothed tissues, tied together and waving towards Grover’s Rest, land of the dead. 

Richard glanced down at the fabric of Glenn’s jacket and found he needed no more lovely hints from his little friend, who was still following him all the way across the street. 

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Glenn Cabrette was sitting, cross-legged, next to Virginia’s gravestone (his mother waiting in the car once again). He was doing the best he could to string the words of that song together, the wonderment of what a woman could do for your soul was a little less present in his mind. But as his voice drifted out, he spotted a tired looking Ricky fumbling over to him like a lonesome hitchhiker. “Ricky-?”

Glenn didn’t have much time to finish before the poor boy fell into his lap and started to sob into his shoulder. Glenn soothed his buddy, his pal for life, as best he could. Mumbling soft words in his ear and rubbing circles on his back when Ricky began tumbling through his story. The further he got, the darker Glenn began to feel. He gripped Ricky tighter and slowly slid him off his lap and next to him on the dirt. 

“What am I supposed to do, Glenn? He’s my dad.” Richard wiped away tears. “I can’t just stop loving him.” Emmett kept on singing, but back into the depths of Richards mind. 

“Hush, hush, hush, here comes the Bogeyman,

Don't let him come too close to You, he'll catch you if he can.…”

Glenn, still a scared little boy himself, could only grip onto Ricky’s arm and tuck his head into his shoulder. Remembering that ol’ ‘B. Gibson is Gay’ carving, Glenn gently kissed his best friends cheek and hoped that all the love which lived inside him just for Ricky & Ricky alone would be enough to help him. 

 “Say Shoo shoo and stick him with a pin

Bogeyman will very nearly jump out of his skin…”

Richard’s little Hitchhiker, whose nose was eerily similar to that Jerry Stetson’s, pressed on with his singing.