Sh'ayn Tohee
Fiction 1
Lucero
Imperial
Robert
I dreaded waking up this morning. I take several long yawns before getting ready to sit outside on the lawn. While sitting on a metal bench, a few friends walk pass me and wave hello. Gazing at my cracked and rigged fingernails, I hear ambulance sirens. I see Nola, who is sitting on another bench beside me, and I ask her what the date is. She replies, “the 10th of July.” I reply with, “I’ll be 22 in three more days.” I am aware that the ambulance and the season were a coincidence, but I still can stop thinking about the events that happened six summers ago. I mumble to Carl, “I’ll be out of here in three more days too.”
On one afternoon in the summer of 1998, I just turned sixteen years old, my father and I were going to take a fishing trip. While taking four fishing poles outside to the truck (my father is always prepared if one of them breaks) an ambulance and two police cars quickly passed through our street. They stopped in the meadow at the end of the road, the meadow that had a worn out railroad bridge. My father told me to go see what was happening.
I stood against the street pole tapping the police tape as I watched the paramedics carry my neighbor, Ricky’s, body to the ambulance. Miss Garth, from down the street, had brought a sheet from her house so no one would be able to see Ricky’s body, but one of the paramedic’s almost fainted because of the hot weather and Ricky's body plummeted out of the sheet. Neighbors who watched gasped as they saw Ricky's pale body hit the grassy meadow. Miss Garth’s son, Jamie, had seen Ricky climb up the old railroad track bridge, but didn’t think anything of it. But when he began mowing the lawn he noticed Ricky hanging. After many debates I decided to ask Jamie what he had experienced. Jamie had said he walked up to Ricky’s body and described it like a mannequin, because he didn’t move, but looked strained.
Officer James found the letter Ricky
had written before hanging himself. The letter, which had been safety pinned on
Ricky’s shirt, was dampened from Ricky’s saliva. Officer James read the note,
but not aloud. Jamie said he got the
chance to read the suicide note before the police came. Before reciting the
note to me, he exclaimed it was a sad attempt of a note:
When the morning comes, it’s still a scary
world.
I question myself for my mistakes.
Ricky lived three yards down from me, but we didn’t talk that much. In fact we rarely saw each other. I was always busy at work or smoking pot, I wasn’t sure what he did. During school we’d say “hey” or “hi,” sometimes we’d ask how each other were doing. We went to church together, but I stopped going to church whenever I was twelve years old; our moms were also in PTA together. Last summer my friends and I tried getting him stoned, but he said he didn’t want to; after that I thought he was a douche.
After Ricky committed suicide, my parents and I went to his funeral which was held on a Monday. We sat near Martha Black and Bernice Jones, Ricky's parents, while I kept gazing at Ricky's body. Martha and Bernice separated, Martha took Ricky and Bernice, took Ricky’s younger brother, Alex. Ricky always pretended like his mother and father weren’t women. Staring at his neck, this appeared with no ligature marks, it seemed to be coated with make up. Throughout the service, and to Ricky’s request to his mother when he was younger, “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” by both Bob Dylan and Guns and Roses was played, also “Just A Closer Walk With Thee,” by Patsy Cline was played. Martha wouldn’t quit her squealing and crying, I guess I could understand. I’ve only been to three funerals in my whole life. One was my grandmother (1992), second was my cousin, Rebecca (1996), and the last was Daryl, that was nearly three months before Ricky’s.
At Martha’s house, I got the chance to talk to Alex, who was fourteen, and asked him about Ricky.
“I always looked up to Ricky,” Alex said pouring some punch.
“I would too,” I said watching him, “I mean he seemed like a good guy.”
“He was,” Alex said before taking a drink
“So you guys were close, huh?” I asked as we walked into the backyard
“We were, until he wanted to move with Martha,” Alex continued, “He was embarrassed by Mom and Martha.”
“Oh,” I replied confused because I wasn’t sure who the real mother was, Martha or Bernice.
“I still don’t know why he killed that Daryl guy,” Alex said sipping on some punch.
3 months ago (
In our suburb, which is on the outskirts of
Daryl and I used to walk to school together, it was about five blocks away, but he didn’t show up on this damp Monday morning. I continued, but kept watching for him. I began thinking why we even talked. I think it was because he was a nice guy, everyone talked to him, and he talked to everyone. He was a volunteer at the hospital, was involved in special Olympics too. He went to church with both Ricky and I, that was before I stopped going. I believe that they still went. Every time Daryl and I talked, he seemed interested in what I had on my mind.
I made it to the high school parking lot, which was usually filled with the cliques or groups: the stoners (my group), the skaters, the preps and jocks, and the loners (The nerds were always inside doing computer things), but today it was filled with crying girls, and some crying boys, and reporters. I completely forgot about Daryl and started concentrating on what was going on. There must’ve been a school shooting or some kind of accident.
As I kept walking, and to my dismay I heard a reporter say:
“Daryl Leslie, an all-star
basketball player here at
I stood, shocked, wondering if it were true. I’ve never been in a situation like this before; I stood still with a large bulk in my throat. Tears formed in my eyes, causing me to turn around and wipe them with my sweater.
Near our high school, there is a mini-forest of different types of trees. My clique would, sometimes, go into it and smoke. But on this particular morning, I didn’t feel like smoking, but I went into the wilderness anyway. I sat on a red pillow, which I turned over to the dry side, staring at all the other pillows and trashy substances, then I heard a voice, say:
“Robert?”
I looked up to see Ricky standing against a tree, his clothes look dirty and his eyes were puffy and red, I replied:
“Hey. So you must’ve heard?”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I think I did something… really… really wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
Ricky sits on a pillow in front of me, and asks if I had anything to drink. I opened my back pack and pulled a bottle of Mountain Dew out and handed it to him. He drank it until it was gone.
“I killed someone.”
The first thing I thought of as he said “I killed someone,” was Daryl. I stared deeply into his eyes as tears filled his eyes and rolled out. And he continued with:
“I can remember it was late evening and the sun was barely seeable. I had grabbed my dad’s pistol from the closet in the dining room. I… Daryl pulled up in his jeep. We were going to have a few beers and fish at the lake. He had his fishing things in the back seat, I had my backpack and it had, just my school stuff… and the pistol. He drove us to the lake. I told him to park somewhere in the trees because I had to pee. I grabbed my backpack and I pulled the pistol out and walked to his side of the jeep…”
I couldn’t say anything and I couldn’t move. I felt I had to run and tell someone, but I just had to know what had happened. I remembered an article I read in some magazine about serial killers and what makes them serial killers, and I thought maybe Ricky will strike again. I could picture it too as the weeping confessions of Ricky continued.
“… He looked at me like he was stupid. I told him to roll down the window. When he did, I told him to close his eyes. He was smiling like I had a surprise or something. I pointed the gun to his temple and, and fired. Blood squirted everywhere. He started shaking and shit, I started throwing up until I couldn’t hear him anymore. I grabbed my backpack and ran down the road.”
My breathing started to pant as I
sat and watched this boy: This boy I didn’t really know; this boy who had been
accepted to over five Universities; this boy who made fifty-two baskets during
the
Five days before graduation I tried killing myself. My mom found out that my dad was messing around with another woman. I was asleep when I heard them yelling at each other and loud bangs on the walls, and finally my mother’s screams. I opened my bedroom door and saw my dad standing over my mother with his fist ready to fly into her face. I looked her and her right eye was already puffy, blood ran down from her lip. Silence. I looked back at my father and his face had scratches and such. My mother started crying. I slammed my door so hard that a picture in the hallway fell. I went into my bathroom and stared at myself in the medicine cabinet window, I can hear my mother yelling my name as she tried to open the door. This isn’t the first time this had happen. This one time my dad broke my mother’s jaw and she had to have it wired shut; she had to pay for the operation. I opened the medicine cabinet to see all of these pills, which were for my allergies, and the next thing I know I’m lying in the hospital bed. After three days of lock down, I was sent home, but had to go to a psychiatrist.
At the graduation it felt empty because Ricky and Daryl were not there. I didn’t tell anyone what he told me the day after Daryl died. Ricky had turned himself in. Ricky was released from jail; he didn’t attend the commencement.
A lot of grief and sadness was in the air, but the graduating class still was happy to leave high school. I sat near the back, in between geeky-Nancy Ryan and jock-Keenan Smith. Principal Williams called Nancy Jennifer Ryan; about thirty seconds after her name he called mine Roberto David Sanchez. I heard a few yells and whistles from the audience, but I was too nervous to pay attention.
After graduating, was the school party, after that were three separate parties: The popular crowd party, the mid-popular party, and the geek get together; I belonged in the middle, but didn’t go. I felt obliged enough to stay at home with my mother’s busted lip and the discussion that was in void since my attempt at suicide.
At the psychiatrist’s office, this is my third visit, Mr. Rossetti asked:
“Have you ever been in love?”
I laid on his red velvet coach looking at the ceiling and answered with a no.
“Is that odd for you?”
“No, not really. I just don’t really care for love.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
I paused, staring passed the ceiling and at Ricky.
“This one time, in elementary, my class took a trip to the swimming pool park. On the way back to the school I had to sit next to the teacher and some kid was behind us. He told her he hated swimming. She asked him why and he said it was because it reminded him of the many times he wet the bed,” I said gesturing with my hands, “Like three years ago I read an article on serial killers. They said something like serial killers wet the bed, abuse animals, and play with fire.”
“Did you do those things?”
“I used to wet the bed when I was around five and six.”
“Are you afraid you’re going to become a serial killer?”
I smirked and replied with a no.
“Then what made you think of that?”
“I was thinking about Ricky. I wonder if he did those things.”
“Ricky is not a serial killer. He only killed one person.”
“I know, but… what’s a sociopath?”
“Somebody who is victimized by a sick society. They can be devious at times and show no remorse for their crimes.”
Ricky came to my house late in the night, him and Martha had gotten into a fight. He just wanted to talk, so we went into the backyard. I sat on a red bench my dad made to hold flower pots, and Ricky sat on a lawn chair. He had his pajamas on and I had my clothes on, I didn’t go to sleep until late. He decided to talk, but I kept quiet.
“I don’t know why or how, I became this monster.”
“You’re not a monster.”
“Yeah I am,” he continues. I didn’t want to argue with him, because I was still afraid of him.
“So your parents fight?”
“What?” I asked as if it were a secret and no one was suppose to know.
“We can hear them fighting all the time.”
“yeah.”
That was the end of that conversation when Ricky bluntly said he was gay. I couldn’t say anything, but just look at the concrete separating me from the grass. Before he could say I knew he liked Daryl.
“Remember from the bible…”
“I don’t remember anything from the bible.”
“Judas Iscariot?”
“Oh yeah, I remember something about him.”
“He betrayed Jesus,” Ricky sat still, “Maybe I am like him.”
“How?”
“I have to go now,” Ricky said getting up and then walked around the corner of the house and into the front.
I sat on the bench for a moment,
wanting to realize why Ricky was giving me this information. That would be the
last time I talked to Ricky, alive.
I sat on my porch and watched several neighbors’ kids at play. The name Judas Iscariot stuck in my mind ever since I saw Ricky’s dead body. I finally realized that Ricky was Iscariot and Daryl was Jesus. Ricky betrayed Daryl, he took advantage of their friendship and maybe, not only was he embarrassed of his parents, but of himself too, then he hung himself. .
Ten minutes before my mother had to go to work, my dad came home drunk. And he started to talk awful to her, and I heard her scream while I was upstairs in my bedroom lying awake.
I stood in front of my father’s dead body with his rifle, and his body was over my mothers. Her head had hit the bricks of the fireplace we never used. He had been strangling my mother, but I had shot him in the neck. I was sorry that his blood splattered on my mother’s face. She was crying. I stood there, frozen, as if I were making sure he were dead.
I fell against the wall behind me and slid down. I started crying, and mom got up and ran to the phone and called the police.
“My husband is attacking me.”
I don’t know why she place that situation in present tense, but I knew she had a good cause.
While she was giving the phone the address, I decided to shoot dad again. Three times in the back. My mom screamed and started crying, she ran back into the living room and held me until the police came.
I was charged with murder and was sent to a mental institute until I turned Twenty-two years old, and still had to see Dr. Rossetti for another five years.
After being released from Seaground’s Mental Institute, I decided to go back home, on
Grant and 11th street. I had a few bags, a red balloon in hand, and
a small vase with a fake sunflower in the other hand, which Nola had given me
to remember her by. I stood in my old neighborhood, there weren’t many kids
playing outside, but kids I didn’t recognize. Through my family visits, my
mother told me that Martha Leslie moved to
Standing at the front door, I tie my balloon around the vase, and I knock on the door. A man answers with a greeting smile, he doesn’t look like dad, he looks more white than anything. Brown eyes, a pointy nose, blue eyes, and the stench of too much aftershave.
“I live here,” I tell him before he greets me.
His greeting smile drops, and he slowly backs up.
“Rosetta?!”
I hear a ‘coming’ from upstairs. I see my mother’s shoes and she asks this man, “Who is it?”
We stare at each other, her eyes glisten with both fear and happiness.
“Hi mom.”
“Robert!” she releases as she throws her arms around me. She starts her crying, my name and apologizing for how I was put in the mental institute. She let me go and guided me through the house.
Sitting at the dinner table, she had made home made pizza (which was my favorite as a child). Her white man sits across from me and mom sits beside me. She sips on a cup of tea, while watching both me and the white man, whose name is Jeffery, eat our pizza.
“Dr. Harris, if that’s his name, said you made a tremendous recovery.”
“Recovery? I didn’t know I had to recover from anything.”
I could feel Jeffery’s uncomfortable situation, as he kept quiet.
Mom shakes her had, agreeing with me, and she gets up and goes into the kitchen.
“Jeffery and I have a party to go to, will you be okay alone?” Mom says walking back into the dining room. “Your room is still the same way.”
“I’m fine.”
Once they left, I washed my dishes, along with Jeffery’s and mom’s cup. I sat in front of the television and flipped through the channels. MTV was still on channel 103, but they had different vjs and different type of music, more programs than music. I saw my bags and the vase and the red balloon, I decided to take them into my old room.
In my room, everything was the same. Same posters, same blankets, but it was a different feeling in all. It was like being born with sight, then gone blind, but then it was able to see again. It wasn’t the same, it wasn’t my house. I laid, curled up in a ball, on my bed I closed my eyes and went to sleep.
At breakfast I talked with my mom, Jeffery was at work, and I knew it would come to this, she wants me to move out.
“So do you have a place to stay?”
“What?”
“You can stay here until you find a place of your own, but you’ll have to find one soon.”
“Mom?”
“Well, it’s just that I’d feel more better if I were alone.”
“When did you think of this?”
“Jeffery and I discussed…”
“Jeffery?!”
It became silent as mom sat at the end of the table.
“I can’t believe this,” I told her as I was standing up.
“Robert?”
I walked through the living room, up the stairs, and into my bedroom. My bags were still packed, and I grabbed them and the vase and balloon.
“Where are you going?” my mom hollered from downstairs.
I thought in my head that I killed my father to set us free, but it just freed her; she was still weak.
“I’m leaving!” I said quickly hopping down from the stairs and out the door, which I slammed behind me.
Dr. Rossetti
gave me his home address, and I decided to go there. Not to stay, but just to
calm my nerves down. He lives on the middle of
“I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”
“We can help you find a place and put you back on your feet.”
“The problem is, I never been on my feet. Although my parents moved all over the place, they took care of me.”
“Well we can teach you.”
“No thanks,” I replied, “Who is we.”
“We – as in the institute.”
“Oh Jesus! Do you think I’m going to be able to do anything when I was in a mental institute?”
“There are things out there. There is hope, Robert.”
“No there isn’t.”
“You can stay here for a while if you want…”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, no, no, no!” I said sitting on his couch, “I can’t do this.”
During a sort-of-session, Rossetti asked me where I saw myself in five years, I told him that he asked that question six years ago. Then Dr. Rossetti’s telephone rang and he excused himself. I got up and grabbed my things, that are by the door, and left.
It was already evening time and I
was a bit hungry. I made it back to Grant and
“I’m going to kill myself,” I said to myself.
I grabbed a cheap towel and a blue t-shirt, which were from the institute, from one of my bags. I ripped the towel into and tied them into a knot with the blue t-shirt. I tied it around a board and then the other side around my neck.
I saw the red balloon drift off into the night as my eyes filled up tears, and before everything went black. I felt the cheap towel tear into my flesh, causing tremendous pain. My body was swinging back and forth, as I struggled for breath. Before I needed no more air, before I went blind, I asked myself who I was, I answered, “Imperial Robert.”