by Parker Fendler
After spending an hour at the computer, Eddie saw only his reflection on the screen. He slumped in his chair. Screw this. It was early enough in the semester that he could drop the class and register for a different one. Who needed creative writing anyway? He closed his laptop and went to sleep. Story fragments burdened his dreams as the unconscious mind struggled to accept the surrender terms of its conscious counterpart. Finally, the flicker of an idea lit a space in his mind. He sprung out of bed. Draw from his own experience. He flipped the laptop open and transcribed the swirl of ideas into a story outline. So fast were his fingers they banished the delete key even as an ally against the common typo. Hours later, a screech startled him from his writing binge. The alarm clock. He had pulled an all-nighter. The flurry of finger strokes subsided, and Eddie struck the final key.
***
Blaine was one of the cool kids. Past tense. Those pages had been turned and the dog-eared folds faded. Now he was the new kid at Jefferson High. It wasn’t going well. As Blaine was removing his algebra book from his locker, Rick and one of his cronies approached.
“What’s up, Stain?” Rick said. On cue, Rick’s friend erupted in laughter.
“That’s funny because it rhymes with my name,” Blaine said. Then he turned to Rick’s friend. “Is it my imagination or did someone with the unfortunate name of Rick just start a name war with me?”
The other boy crinkled his brow in confusion, but Rick got it. “Good point, Stain. You’re clever.” He paused a moment as if a thought struck. “Shit Stain.”
The boys roared at that one, high fived, and marched off to their next class. Blaine had weathered the incident, but by the end of the day, a rumor had circulated that he shit his pants in class; hence, his new nickname, Shit Stain Blaine. He took the long route home to avoid the other kids. As he walked, he absently kicked a rock along a sidewalk fronting some run-down shops. Why had he been targeted? Why was anyone targeted? There seemed to be a natural pecking order, and kids like Rick did the pecking.
“Hey, boy.”
The voice startled him. He turned to see a woman hunched against a storefront under a neon sign that read Checks Cashed. She shared a blanket with a chihuahua.
“Hey,” Blaine said. No point ignoring her.
“You got a few dollars?” she said. A rash crept under the wisps of hair along her scalp like an army of fire ants through dead grass. Blaine opened his wallet and handed her a five. Tomorrow’s lunch money.
“God bless,” she said. “Mabel gonna eat good tonight.”
Blaine didn’t know if Mabel was the woman or the dog – hopefully the woman – but he was glad to help. When he got home, he retreated to his bedroom. He tried to summon an answer to his own problem, but his thoughts kept drifting to Mabel. He hoped she was okay.
***
Eddie’s all-nighter had paid off – sort of. He received full credit on his outline, but so did everyone else. Five points for participation. The handwritten comments from his teacher read like a back-handed compliment. Nice job. Don’t be afraid to stray from the path as your characters reveal themselves. Why would he need to stray from the path? The path was good.
Class ended and the students were shuffling out. Eddie approached the podium as Professor Wilder stuffed her lecture notes into her briefcase. “Excuse me, professor. Do you have a minute?”
Professor Wilder unfolded her thin frame. Her smooth skin seemed to clash with her grey curls making her resemble a child wearing a wig. “Sure, what’s up?”
Eddie handed her the outline. “I didn’t understand your comments.”
She scanned the page. “Oh? Which part?”
“Everything after nice job,” Eddie said.
A gurgle escaped her mouth. Eddie wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or a sigh. She motioned to a table, and they sat. “I’m sorry, I have lots of students. You are?”
“Eddie.”
“Right. Your outline’s just a tool, Eddie. Don’t let it stifle you. Ignore it if it suits you.” Her glasses were perched on the tip of her nose, and she peeked over them as if they too were a tool to be ignored.
“Do you think I need to change the outline?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. It has potential. A bit heavy handed. Not every story has to shock the reader. That part will be up to your characters. Let them decide how it plays out.”
“Pretty sure I’m the one writing the story. The characters aren’t real.”
“Aren’t they?”
Eddie frowned. Eccentric English teacher thing. He got it. “Sure, okay.” He rose from the chair.
“Eddie, your characters are as real as you allow them to be,” she said. “They may even surprise you.”
***
Sometimes Blaine felt like his life’s story had already been written, and he was just going through the motions. He hadn’t even thought to take a detour home, but there he was passing the spot where the homeless woman had been sitting the previous day. He turned to follow an alley. Beer bottles littered the sidewalk. Some were empty, some broken – just like people, Blaine supposed. He lobbed one over the lip of the dumpster and it clanged against the inside.
“Ow!” A woman’s voice yelled.
Blaine rushed over and peered inside. Nothing.
“Boo!” A figure jumped out from behind the dumpster startling Blaine and causing him to hit the pavement. He looked up squinting. The old woman stood over him cackling like a witch. “You should see your face.”
Blaine scrambled to his feet. “You’re one to talk.”
“Aw, come on. Can’t an old woman have a little fun? Ain’t nothing to do around here ‘cept eat, sleep, and shit. If I’m lucky, that is.”
The words were literal, and Blaine felt a stab of guilt. “Sorry. How’s your dog?”
“Oh yeah. You the boy from yesterday gave me five dollars. She good. A bit gristly between my teeth, but better than what’s in there.” She motioned to the dumpster.
Blaine narrowed his eyes. “You’re messing with me again, right?”
“Boy, you not as dumb as you look. Be right back.” She skipped toward the dumpster, went behind it, and returned with a baby stroller. Garbage bags slung over the sides strained against their ties. Each looked heavy enough to topple the stroller had they not balanced like counterweights. In the middle rode the chihuahua like a queen in a carriage. Blaine reached in to pet her, and the little dog bared her teeth.
“I don’t s’pose you got another five-spot on you,” the woman said. “Mabel hungry again.”
***
Eddie rode the story like a raft on a river. He guided it effortlessly through the first two chapters as it surged through the boiling rapids. Every word leapt onto the screen untouched by the thesaurus. The story was approaching its climax. His protagonist had to endure three more sentences and then boom! Eddie was already thinking four, five, six sentences later. The raft teetered on the edge of the waterfall, its bow kissing the misty air. Then something happened. Somewhere in Eddie’s brain, a synapse fired and gave an instruction to his fingers. They rejected it. The directive didn’t make sense. As his typing ground to a halt, the waterfall froze and trapped the raft at the top. Eddie stared at the screen in disbelief, his fingers still twitching from the muscle memory of the keystrokes.
Eddie cornered his teacher after class, but she silenced him with a wave of her hand. Schedule time during office hours. A day later he faced her amid a sea of clutter. There must be a desk under the mishmash of books and fast-food wrappers.
“Nice office,” Eddie said. “Looks like my dorm room.”
“Then you have the makings of a fine writer,” she said. “Messy workstations are the sign of a right-brained person. The creative side. How’s the story coming along?”
“Okay.”
“I’m looking forward to reading it,” she said. “What brings you in today?”
“Remember when you said to let the characters decide what happens in the story, and that they may surprise me?”
“Sure.”
“What did you mean?”
She made the laugh/sigh noise again. Did she think something was funny or was she annoyed? He still didn’t know. “Think of it this way,” she said. “If you’ve developed your characters, each will have a unique voice. How they behave will be determined by who they are – their upbringing, their values, their mood.”
Eddie nodded.
“Humans are in-the-moment creatures. Today, I had planned to do three things: grade papers, eat Paleo, and tidy up my office. You can see how the third one went.”
“And the second one.” Eddie pointed to a Taco Bell wrapper.
“Zero for three,” she said. “In other words, humans don’t follow the outlines we create for ourselves. Neither should our characters unless we want them to be boring and predictable.”
“Then why do an outline?”
“Why, indeed?” she answered.
Then why did you assign the stupid outline? Eddie thought. He kept his mouth shut. He was starting to understand. “Do you think our characters have free will?”
“Most definitely,” she answered. “Want my advice? Your character knows more about himself than you do. If he does something unexpected, embrace it.”
Maybe the oddball English teacher was on to something. When Eddie left her office, he was already writing the next sentences in his mind.
***
For the last two months, Blaine had endured every form of psychological warfare. What had started as a periodic event now pervaded every waking moment. Before, during, and after class, Rick’s taunts tortured him. Blaine tried everything to no avail. He had nearly reached a breaking point the previous week and had faked sick for three days so he could stay home. Having missed the lectures, he fell behind in his two hardest classes. His few friendships had deteriorated. Had he pushed them away or had they bolted out of self-preservation? As he spun the combination lock to his locker, a voice shattered the ambient noise.
“Oh, God. What’s that stench?”
Blaine knew there could be only one possible origination for the imaginary smell that infiltrated Rick’s sensitive nostrils. As Rick came closer, he sniffed everything and everyone in sight. Nasal whistles and snorts were exaggerated to ridiculousness. “It’s not the bench. Not you, Anne. Nope, nothing under here.” Some of the students in the breezeway laughed. A few, like Blaine, were not amused. They knew what was coming.
“I think I’m getting warmer. Warmer. Warmer. Goddamn! Shit Stain is that you? Did you shit your pants again?”
Blaine loaded a response from his arsenal. I think it’s your breath, Rick. Have you been eating shit sandwiches again? He wanted to say it, but he froze. He wanted to fight back, but the relentless barrage over the last several months had snuffed his ability to mount a counterattack. He just stood there. Rick kept going, but some instinctual defense mechanism triggered deep within Blaine’s psyche and filtered most of it out. He caught something about a diaper, but the rest escaped him.
That night, Blaine’s room was dark, but his mind descended to a darker place. The next morning, he got dressed, ate his oatmeal, stowed his books in his backpack, and shoved his father’s pistol in the waistband of his cargo pants. There were two ways to stop the torment; the only difference between the two was who would be in front of the bullet when it exploded from the chamber. Since he’d survived the night, his choice had been made.
Blaine spotted Rick at the end of the hallway and walked toward him. Anger smoldered in his gut like a heap of burning coal. He summoned the memories, re-lived the pain, fueled the coals like a blacksmith’s bellows. He closed the distance. Rick looked up, the corners of his mouth pulling into the beginning of a grin. It faltered when he met Blaine’s eyes. Blaine’s fingers gripped the handle of the weapon still concealed under the folds of his untucked shirt. Strength and power radiated from the gun and surged through his veins.
***
The meeting with Professor Wilder had invigorated Eddie. She had said to let the characters decide their fate. He opened his laptop and scrolled to the last sentences he’d written. He read it again.
Blaine’s fingers gripped the handle of the weapon still concealed under the folds of his untucked shirt. Strength and power radiated from the gun and surged through his veins.
Eddie considered it as he read his outline. The pages chronicled the events of a school shooting. Could the constant torment have led his character to pull the trigger? He thought so. There were times in Eddie’s childhood when he could almost envision himself pulling the trigger. Blaine, on the other hand, fiercely opposed it. Convinced his character had free will, Eddie wrote the next sentences.
Suddenly, Blaine let go. He released the gun and the anger that went along with it. The gun represented weakness not strength. He thought of Rick. If Blaine took the boy’s life, he would rob him of the chance to change. He thought of Mabel. The woman had confronted far worse than Blaine had. People like her needed help from people like Blaine. He wouldn’t be of any use to them in prison. He found himself facing Rick. The gun was still hidden under his clothes. His breathing was as steady as a sniper’s trigger finger.
“You okay, Shit Stain?” Rick said. The comment lacked its usual bite. He seemed to be unsure of himself.
Blaine was okay. A mischievous grin spread across his face and a twinkle lit his eyes. “Never better, Dick.”
Blaine’s smile must’ve been contagious; Eddie had been infected. He scanned his outline, selected all text after chapter three, and struck the delete key. Who needs an outline anyway? The last thing he did was delete the title: Tragedy at Jefferson High. Maybe Blaine could help him come up with a new one.
Category: Featured, Short Story