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by David Zuzelo
Every single time I lean forward
and listen close to whatever screaming face is in front of
me the sound brings back the question I always ask myself before
I start digging deep.
Is this what I sounded like
to them way back when?
Pain nails down the will to escape the sensations… and
you are helpless and powerless. A sound that doesn’t call to a
stop anything at all, just expressing a feeling. These are syllables
of another level.
I twist my finger in again-deeper-and listen
to the change in pitch. Scratching right into the hole I left in the flesh
while biting the thighs of the latest girl. This woman I mean,
she is older than a girl, I wouldn't think of hurting a girl. No.
Sometimes I wonder if a child would give me what I
was looking for. But exactly what that was is not what wondering about
myself was all about. I wanted what I'd heard before and never since.
I wanted what I had always called The Scream Box.
These memories come back every time
I hunt for it. I don’t think of recalling anything,
I only feel the memories-they don’t have any association
outside pain. But in doing so, feeling I mean, all of this
twisted shit becomes a deeper experience than what I’m
working right now. What I’m doing to this girl.
Sorry, woman. Right this minute as my finger
explores deep in the torn gap of flesh, a forced entry slot
that is jagged from my tugging and exploring. In my mouth
I taste the blood that always comes, though usually I’m
a bit slower at it than this. I’m not a slasher freak
or anything like that. Why make a mess when the results
will be the same?
1976 was a year that Captain America
saluted and celebrated the U.S of A. I always believed
the comics and their stories were more real than the equally
magical people that history books carried on about. Life was
more intense than history could speak at me about anyway, lots
of ass kicking, just like the comics. Somehow I was the
villain though. At least my teachers never really made me feel
like history was more than a collection of words they told
kids between their own humdrum nights of empty desire and inability
to satisfy their own desires. 1976 was also two years
after my father left the house. Well, he didn’t
leave, not really. He was thrown out. Not by momma, and
not by anyone I knew, but by a person from the welfare department. It
seemed that someone heard me screaming on a few occasions.
With a few incidents at school, of me asserting my manhood
as he would say, questions got asked. It wasn’t normal
I know, but it was my childhood and they couldn’t take
that away from me. I wouldn’t let anyone do that. I
won’t lie and say I wouldn’t have it any other
way, but you are what you are told you are sometimes. And
I was told I was a small pile of shit, torn out of my momma’s
cunthole for locking down men who should have been free.
I always thought of Iron Man when he said that…he
could fly and nobody told the guy in armor what to do unless they wanted to
be pounded flat. You want to build an iron man? Forge one with hate,
lust and pain. It certainly worked on me.
So after He was gone I discovered lots of time to
simply be. What had once been the least of the possible joys of my day had
become one of the best. After school I’d wander the neighborhood, just
observing everything I’d missed before while dreading the walk through
the door to home sweet home. Any place would do, as long as it wasn’t
my suddenly quiet house. I never got bored of watching kids play games
that I thought were just foolishness-it was fun to watch, but not to do. I’d
wonder exactly how they would feel when they would go home and have everything be
all right.
I don’t think I knew what that all right phrase
was, and to this day my definition is a bit off the so-called map of ordinary
peoples World Brain Atlas.
So I would wander up and down the main street in my
somewhat busy, slightly urbanized but not so inner city neighborhood. Houses
were jammed together on the main roads, however some side streets were connected
by a little somewhat sort of dirt path. The town had given them names,
but really only a single house would fit in those gulley road ditches, though
they did have large bits of yard and empty undeveloped space around them mostly.
I always thought these ignored addresses would be a good place to live.
One of these streets was Offut Road, stuck between
Third and Fourth and down by the liquor store. It was a slightly run
down little place on the edge of the Rumney Marsh, but the house down there
was nicer than the stink of mud just past it. It was bigger than what I lived
in. I would go down to the brook I called QUIET and sit alone for a few hours,
but I would always notice 1 Offut Road as the only house in sight down there. The
sitting was something I got used to with my father. I probably didn’t
need to do it anymore. Stay out of his way I mean.
He was gone and things were safer I was told. It
just didn’t feel safe.
Days would pass on and on and no sound could be heard
(I said it was QUIET), well… outside of the regular bug noises of course. When
I was 11 years old, I heard a scream ricochet off the little brook, like it
was fed in from the rot of the marsh. This was not a simple scream however,
but one that was long, loud and oddly full of intentions.
Now to understand that, I guess I’d best explain
what I mean.
Looking down at the torn woman in
front of me I see an example. When I found her she was
happily walking down a road I like to call My Way. It’s
a “Way” street and I find lots of girls there.
I mean women, but you know what I mean by now. Why is
it we call women “girls” anyway? They don’t
stay girlish long. Anyway, after the shock of getting
snatched up wears off and the hysterical shrieking subsides,
we get through the usual questions of “why” and “what” and
occasionally I get some offers that don’t sound half
bad, but I don’t fall for them. I have the plan down
now, and it works. I just plain out explain what I want. With
a grunt and a bit of a grin it’s a simple and time tested
line that is direct and to the point.
“I want the Scream Box. Give it to me.”
And that always gets me a scream in the right
direction, are these words really so menacing? I’m not up for bargains
or anything like that. It probably sinks in that I have a reason for what I
do. I mean, it sinks in for me, but I guess if someone told me that I’d
probably just scream from anger and frustration then pain or fear. But that
is my father talking through me again, his years of finding my spots may
have given me a resignation to discomfort that only bore out rage against it. I
don’t particularly like having those spots touched.
When I started in on her, only seven minutes ago,
the first screams were fear drenched. Those tend to be high and breath consuming. Adrenalin
pounds and the syllables come very quickly. It’s like a thrill ride scream
as you go down the first hill on a rollercoaster, or when the monster pops
out of a chest in a horror film. The words come fast… faster than the
meaning behind them. But after one or two cuts or burns, the rush is
gone, drained out like boiling water around spaghetti. Then we find the
deeper screams.
Screams of pain.
At first the fear poisons the sound for me, it’s
still hiding in the sped up logic and begging for most people. Maybe
it’s the thought that pain can get worse over time that lingers in the
mind. But I’ve always thought that if you burn in hell, it can’t
matter if the fire is one million or one hundred million degrees. It’s
just fucking hot.
Once the exhaustion digs deep and the body goes limp,
then we get honest. A sound of something being broken, but not in a metallic
or synthetic way like a metal to metal car accident, but flesh and something
else. Something you can’t touch under normal circumstances. And that
is what the Scream Box held, but it was more than that… it had a wilder
tone, beyond fear really.
It had joy.
That joy was in the Scream Box, mixed with pleasure
and agony and a beautiful resignation that I had never heard before or since.
So that is what I mean about different screams. But why don’t we
get back to 1976?
If this jumps around, you have to realize I’m
verbalizing something that my synapses are processing quite quickly; it is
just an amazingly deep few seconds in my mind. The blood is still in my mouth
and warm, and my fingers are penetrating a strangely cold bit of flesh. To
get in there, I really have to dig hard… and it’s not, sorry,
I mean she is not even vaguely giving me what I want. I think my disappointment
is letting me focus more on this story. And what it is that I’m
looking for. Exactly.
The river bank echoed with that first
scream.
It sounded so unlike anything I’d heard from
my throat it fascinated me the instant I heard it. And that fascination
gave me something to look for. Maybe I was jaded and maybe I was tired of being
the victim-but I wanted to make that scream come out again…but first
I wanted to see where it was right then.
I couldn’t find it. I knew it had to have come
from 1 Offut, it had to have! There wasn’t another house nearby, and
I’d run up and down the sloping embankment with my ears cocked looking
(with my ears? Does that make sense) for some hint of closing in on it. But
I just knew it came from there. The street was empty pretty much, so I felt
very exposed, my ears wide open and my heart pounding so hard I could hear
it against my shirt. One side of the road didn’t allow parking,
not that anyone put their car there, unless it was some kid looking to score
that quick blowjob from the girl he is paying to take to the movies or smoke
up before heading home. Right under the NO PARKING THIS SIDE OF STREET sign
there was a large seemingly out of place rock that would seem to have covered
up a good size spot for me to sit and listen for that sound to penetrate my
ears again.
That sound had me in a trance, though it was all to
brief.
So every day I would go back there, sitting and waiting.
Between my trips to NO PARKING rock I’d asked
around to some of the kids in the neighborhood. Though none were very friendly
we still shared that bond of just being a kid that opened up a path to conversation.
I knew they knew about my father.
They knew about me.
But nobody had much to say except that the people
in that place were young and didn’t have any kids… and that they
had groceries delivered. Now that was something and I sure as hell didn’t
know anyone that did that. Actually in 1976 I felt lucky if we had anything
aside from a turkey we could spread out over 3 days of Turkey Soup, Turkey
Sandwiches and Turkey Pie.
Oh, and Turkey.
So they had money, and someone was up to something. Could
it be similar to what was going on in my house? Was it different? Better?
Worse? I spent days and days trying to find an approach. Sitting next
to that rock I’d keep a notebook, writing down random thoughts the whole
time. I could go home now, my father wasn’t there, but I liked
the time away from everyone, and this seemed somehow to be more… Well,
more productive I guess. And then the way to get to the door came to
mind.
When I was younger my school would
have one of those candy sales that supposedly helped out around
the school. I sold and sold because I got my feet burned
for not selling enough once, and if anything can motivate someone
to walk, it’s the memory of feet that feel like exposed
stumps of bone that were hard to balance on top of. I
kept a shitload of the money for myself though, buying comics
with it. The school got some and my father took some. I
wondered if I had contributed enough to pay for that bathroom
puck I would piss on at lunchtime.
But it made a mark that I could sell things to people
who really didn’t need them. So, sneaking a 5 dollar bill from
my mother’s jacket pocket I went to the store and bought an entire case
of Boston Baked Beans. That was an outlaw candy, never really a kid’s
treat, and I figured I was doing an outlaw thing. It seemed appropriate. With
my best game face I sat behind the rock on one particularly warm day and got
ready to meet the people in that house.
But I didn’t go. At least not that day… I
was starting to rethink it all. Maybe I had made it up; maybe that scream was
just something I was daydreaming about. What the fuck that says about
me, I don’t care to know. I got scared, I got tired and frankly
I was getting bored. Fate always seems to know when we are settled and
grabs us by the scruff of the neck and shakes.
Real fuckin’ Hard.
The scream came crashing through
an open window on the side of the house I couldn’t see
while I was parked under a NO PARKING sign. Maybe I heard the
echo the first time, it didn’t feel the same. But it
got louder and more….
More.
Passionate.
Fuck the baked beans; I had to get
closer to this.
I don’t really remember the
process of slipping into the back of that house which probably
has something to do with the fact that I just pushed down onto
a bone in this girl…sorry woman’s…leg. Now
that got a response! But… not the exact one I
was looking for.
As I approached the back of the place
I heard that scream for the final time. Two times really.
The second scream was a sound that sounded almost tainted with
laughter, though it contained a blissful release that seemed
to step far away from pain into something that passed what
I know of pleasure. It was happy and really fucking eerie.
A shiver still goes down my spine just thinking of what that
joy could be like. But who could free that sound out
of another person? The final scream came quick behind
it. Louder and longer, I remember getting a hard on. That
slice of sound contained depthless pain without a note of despair.
I was energized and awakened.
I would have been sad if I’d known that
was the last time I’d get to enjoy the rush however. It was not
because I didn’t try…I just had to give up after three years of
watching that house.
I outgrew the rock and became pretty obvious too.
I did make one more attempt though. Just
to find out where the sound came from. That was before I started looking for
it, I mean… the way that I’m looking right now. The
flesh of this thigh is actually torn; I really should be paying
more attention. I had better go to something else before
all my techniques run out and it’s time to end this. I
know…
The little boxcutter… yeah, because it makes small incisions
and those hurt. Not a single time has it given me good
results, and honestly I’m thinking too much about all
this right now. It works better when I’m running on instinct.
But better to make use of the opportunity right now. I
can see her eyes open wide as I reach over to the table and
start to snap the little razor blade up dramatically.
Click…click…click…
Only a few clicks up though, otherwise
the blade is too long and the cuts are far too messy and it
would be embarrassing to go up and then down. A quick
cut later and I’m right back to where I was when I started.
Screaming with fear, without passion, just plain vanilla fucking
fear. After all this I am amazed fear still has a hold,
usually it’s resignation.
Or dementia.
My last attempt to find out what
had happened was a return to the salesman ploy a few months
later. I bought another case of Boston Baked Beans because
I must have been fucking obsessed with them, or maybe I was
happy enough to eat them if I lost my nerve.
I approached 1 Offut with a purpose. To get inside
and find out what happened there. Did a fuckslave live in the basement… tortured
until it was empty of sound? Was she perhaps dumped somewhere in the river
that was less than two hundred feet away? Was that person still there? And
if so, what was the hold up? I needed what they had to give me and I felt denied.
That was when I thought this was might go beyond just
being an interest, but it wouldn’t be until later I’d understand
what obsession could be. Or make me do.
The door was off white and seemed immobile as I waited
for someone to answer the doorbell I rang while watching my own shaking hand
hanging over it. There was a car in the yard so somebody had to be home. If
nobody answered I swore to myself that I was going in there.
But the door did open and what stood before me was
a middle aged woman with a happy look and a how do you do smile.
“Hello there! Can I help you?”
I thought to myself of the questions I could ask,
but instead I simply let fly my story about candy sales and Boston Baked Beans.
I may have applied some of the sales techniques that helped me both as a professional
pitchman and as a kidnapper years later.
“The Baked Bean is God’s Own Food…don’tcha
think?”
Well, I really did think that, so it wasn’t
a lie.
After the deal was closed and I was at least ready
to make back what I paid for the box of candy I had to go further. I needed
to get inside somehow.
“Can I use your bathroom?”
A flash of hesitation from her… I was intensely
scared and excited now. Something was hidden here. Her voice wavered
slightly, but she answered back a few beats later.
“Of course…honey?”
It was the beat between “course” and “honey” that
started me flop sweating. Surely this was the person who could
find that sound, and bring it to ear shattering life. Just
who or what could “honey” be?
And that was my biggest surprise.
He looked like every other guy on the block. I
studied him hard, probably giving more than one odd look that he should have
picked up on. But if he did, he never let on.
”Hello there! Can I help you?” Same
words as the woman. Same pitch as the woman. It was both eerie and unremarkable.
“I’d just like to use the bathroom if
I could. My name is Jason and I’m just here to say hello and get
some good candy into your house!”
“Sure, right down the stairs, I hope everything
comes out alright for you.”
Downstairs! This was where the sound had come from,
but with all of the echo and muffling, I could not be sure. That rush
came to a halt as the smiling woman motioned calmly and normal guy seemed to
realize what he had offered was not his to give. I was already pulling the
door open.
A hand touched my shoulder, but it wasn’t rough
or powerful like my fathers meaty club fist. Not like a hand that dragged
pain out of a person. More like what I thought a father could have been
like.
“Why don’t you use upstairs? C’mon,
I’ll show you.”
The door to the basement was in my hand, it was partially
open. I knew time was short.
Down the dark stairs I saw the basement
was not terribly deep, but it wouldn’t make sense to
build too far down into a place so close to the river. My eyes
couldn’t make out many details, and perhaps what I did
see I later made up. It looked like there were spikes
in the wall, all about three quarters to the ceiling’s
height. There were things hanging on some. But I didn’t
see more and then had the indignity of trying to force a piss
out of my fading hard on when we got upstairs. I was afraid
they would listen in case they were on to me.
Shit, I was afraid they would kill me.
They left eventually…
That is when I decided I would have to find the sound
on my own. Through college I always listened close to guys conversations
about women.
My keywords were those ridiculous demeaning ways proud
boys talk about girls who would be low enough to fuck them. “She’s
a slut, screams her fucking head off” and the like, you know what I mean. But
of all the “screamers” I met, it was always a scream of demanding,
not giving over, or giving up to me. The words “FUCK ME HARDER” being
bellowed into a pillow was not what I wanted. And then I had this idea. I
can still remember…
FUCK.
She stabbed me.
My own box cutter, the little one that only snapped
up a few clicks just slashed deep into my frigging stomach. She must have been
faking the fear and finding her way free. Too much thinking tonight,
too much damn talking to myself and you. I work best on instinct and that does
NOT involve thinking.
When the razor first hit my skin
and sliced deep through fat and muscle the feeling wasn’t
what I expected. No tearing sensation, just burning itchy urgency.
I’d been cut before, but it had been a long time and
your mind can forget that kind of thing I guess. Perhaps
my father just used the screwdriver a few times too many because
I forgot what a blade felt like. The dense pushing and
rending of skin was a much more my physical memory for me,
the blade seemed so much cleaner.
The sound I made was more surprised than anything…but
as she scrambled backwards and away from her terrorizer, pushing aside the
chair she was in and throwing herself towards the stairs things got strange.
I’m looking into that basement at last.
A stiff awakening in my pants reminded me of those
two distant screams, but I’m thinking again. It is time to make that
stop. I have a problem and I know the solution.
One advantage to using your home to kill someone is
that you have a good lay of the land. It’s not like a movie where the
slashfiend bumps into things, and smacks his head on a low hanging beam. Nope,
while she is tripping over the can of nails on the fourth stair up, I’m
reaching over to the table for the shotgun.
And picking it up.
And firing it straight into her upper body, and from
only roughly seven feet away. She made it up 10 stairs though, I’ll
have to clean the door off now and hope that there isn’t damage to the
wood. I’d hate to have to replace the damn door because of one dumb girl… I
mean woman. It is a rare thing that this happens, and only the second
time I’ve seen what a gun can do to flesh. It isn’t pretty and
she dies quicker than I would have thought.
But that can wait, I’ve got a new problem that
needs attending… which comes back to me as I go loopy and lightheaded
not from the release of the shotgun or the splashing of what is usually a persons
insides out onto the floor. No, it would be a gaping slice in my belly is hurting.
And again I hear that sound of satisfaction and screaming,
and it’s coming from me.
Me.
An accident becomes an advantage
and solves the clueless mystery, it’s positively fucking
funny. I realize I can’t clean this up enough,
but thankfully I’m a good talker. I’m in
sales, remember? There will be questions at the hospital
for sure, but I keep a work shed on my property and the cut
comes from a box cutter. It’s a simple accident
and a clean wound.
Reality moves faster than remembering, which is probably
why I’ve been so distracted tonight. It’s all coming clear now.
I’ll have to see about stealing a scalpel from
the hospital tonight.
I’ll have to buy some extra bandages.
Oh.
And a tape recorder to finally listen to the sounds
I’ve waited to hear for so long. Finally. The distortion from my
mouth to my ears is a bit much, and it will probably be easier to enjoy when
I can relax. Then I can take the scream box with me everywhere I go.
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