Page 28

“What’chu got here, huh?” Hooch grabbed the book and looked down at it. “ The Hardy Boys .” He sneered out the title and then batted the red cover against Oz’s forehead. “Boys make you hard, Creepy? That it? That why you’re so weird all the time?”

Oz tried to grab the title, but Hooch hit him in the face with it.

Hooch’s friends laughed.

“Yeah, I gotta keep you from reading shit like this, don’t I? Isn’t that what a good cousin should do?” Hooch threw the book as hard as he could, out into the dump.

Oz watched it pinwheel through the sky and then disappear into the mass of garbage, never to be seen again. The mystery contained within would never be solved. The villains it featured would forever escape the Hardy Boy’s justice.

The order the book promised was now replaced with chaos.

Messy, messy chaos…

Oz felt his anger stirring, sick to death of being bullied and even more furious about the mess.

Hooch’s father hit Hooch. So Hooch hit Oz. And any other kid he could get his hands on. Hooch was one of those people who didn’t feel happy unless he was hurting something.

And his usual target was Oz.

“I want you out of my life, Creepy.” Hooch reminded him seriously, as if Oz had somehow forgotten it. “You’re just another piece of fucking trash that Mom and Dad decided to stuff into our house!”

Oz had been taken in by his aunt and uncle when his parents had... Well, when his mother had died, anyway. And he wasn’t exactly adjusting well to the change.

“His old man, he goes crazy and carves those people up, and now I got to put up with him.” Hooch thought aloud, then turned to look at his small gang of idiots. “That sound fair to you?”

Hooch’s friends shook their heads, laughing in slack-jawed acquiescence .

“Way I see it… I’d only be getting justice if I were to end you right here….” Hooch met his eyes. “A little revenge for what your psycho father did…”

Oz’s father, Henry Arthur Dimico, had calmly walked into a Mega-Burger and killed his wife and sixteen other patrons halfway through his meal, before turning the gun on himself. His last words were reportedly: “ I told them NO fucking pickles!!! ”

He was not a well man.

He had somehow survived his suicide attempt, but had not spoken since. Not even at his trial.

Oz only had the vaguest memories of his father.

They were all entirely ordinary, involving fishing, and laughing at comedians on TV, and tying Oz’s shoes.

Nothing at all which would evidence the man’s troubled psyche.

But then one day… whatever levee there had been in the man’s mind finally broke. And the nice guy was suddenly evil.

That idea frightened Oz. He didn’t like its implications. He didn’t like the thought of waking up and being a completely new person, who could be capable of something so horrible.

This concern was reinforced by what had happened to Oz’s brother.

His brother’s girlfriend had broken up with him right before a dance at school, so he had strangled the girl. Then drove to her family’s house and strangled them too. The next morning, he had been shot to death on the street in front of Oz’s elementary school, during recess.

Oz had watched the whole thing, from the base of one of the slides.

But he didn’t like talking about that.

It scared Oz too much. It was like looking into a crystal ball and seeing what he was sure would be his own future.

Evil was a latent personality trait in the Dimicos, it seemed.

And Oz was terrified of catching the mysterious and peculiar insanity which seemed to afflict men in his family.

There was no escaping it, but Oz was scared of it all the same.

He had structured his entire life around that fear, readying himself for sudden madness or all-consuming hate which he’d be compelled to take out on the world.

But Hooch didn’t actually care about that, the death of Oz’s mother, or any notion of personal responsibility.

Hooch just didn’t like the fact that Oz had invaded his life, or that his parents had given Oz half of Hooch’s room.

The beatings were so frequent now that Oz’s aunt had literally drawn a line done the center of the dirty floor using masking tape, showing each boy their territory.

But the line noticeably moved closer and closer to Oz’s bed each morning, as if by magic.

Oz would have gladly given Hooch the entire room, just so long as he didn’t have to be there to see it. Oz just wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere , really. He didn’t want to be in Hooch’s room any more than Hooch wanted him there.

Oz missed his parents. He missed his brother.

He missed his old life. He missed the people he thought he knew, and the things they once did.

He missed the masks they had apparently been wearing.

He missed… he missed himself. Again, Oz was not a part of the world.

Half the time, it felt like either his old life or his new one were fake.

Just delusions of a diseased mind, finally cracking under its own weight.

The foundations of Oz’s world were crumbling and broken. The more things shook, the more danger there was that Oz would collapse. And whatever new structure was revealed under the debris… it scared Oz.

Bad blood would out. And no matter how much dirt you piled on top of it or how many air fresheners you used, you could always smell the dump. Always .

Whatever Oz was… was what Oz was doomed to become, whether he wanted to or not.

“How about it, Creepy?” Hooch pushed him again.

“What have you got to say for yourself, huh? Mom says that you’re just as crazy as your old man and your psycho ass-wipe of a brother.

That true? Huh? That why you spend all your time out here with the rest of the trash!

?!” He pushed him harder, causing Oz to stumble.

The radio in his hands tumbled free, and as Oz bent to pick it up, Hooch smashed it to bits with the heel of his boot.

“Oops.” The boy’s evil sneer grew, relishing the destruction of one of Oz’s only remaining possessions.

His mother had given him that radio the Christmas before she was killed. Oz carried the red plastic case everywhere, unwilling to let it out of his sight, for fear of Hooch getting his hands on it.

But now it was gone.

Just like his book of mysteries which would never be solved.

Just like his mother.

Sometimes, the memories Oz didn’t think he had, stirred to life again. And he was suddenly younger, lying on the dirty tile floor of the restaurant, feeling cold french fries and ketchup on his palms… mixing with the slick, hot blood… looking at his mother’s face as she died .

The screams…

Hooch punched him in the stomach and Oz doubled over, falling to the filthy ground. Hooch kicked him as he tried to get up, causing Oz to collapse again.

He pressed Oz’s face into the muddy ground.

“See, what we got here is a problem. I don’t want you in my life.

I don’t want you reading your creepy books and listening to your lame-ass music in my room.

” He leaned closer to growl into Oz’s ear, pressing Oz’s face further into the slimy mud, which smelled of chemicals and garbage.

“Which means… you’re going to leave or I’m going to make your life hell, do you understand me! ?!”

Oz’s mouth and nose disappeared into the filthy water which quickly filled the hole Hooch was pressing him into. The icy runoff from the garbage was now covering his face and Oz couldn’t breathe.

When he couldn’t hold his breath anymore, he inhaled a gasping mouthful of garbage water. The noxious fluid rushed into his straining lungs, offering only death.

And his eyes popped open, like he’d been hit with a cattle prod.

Oz could see the world. Not the world that people usually saw… he could see the REAL world. Watched as it came to life before him.

Trillions of microscopic organisms and lifeforms, all snapping to attention and waiting for their orders.

There were more organisms in a teaspoon of dirt than there were people on the planet.

10,000,000,000 bacteria per square centimeter of your mouth alone.

Eight-legged, worm-like spider creatures, forever swimming in the grease which filled the pours of your face.

And microanimals which couldn’t be killed with heat or cold or the vacuum of space.

You couldn’t suffocate them, dehydrate them, or starve them.

You could freeze them in ice for millennia and irradiate them, and they wouldn’t even notice.

They were everywhere. They were eternal. They were unstoppable. And they covered everything you owned and everything you touched and everything you ate. Moving and eating and screwing and having little microbe wars.

A hundred thousand tiny mites were shitting on your face, right now.

Life on this planet, in a very real sense, was microscopic.

People and the world they inhabited were just walking petri dishes.

Huge moving vessels, which carried around the real possessors of this disgusting earth.

God had given the world to the microbes and the viruses and the bacteria.

The little things that people overlooked and stepped on.

The trash.

But they could be very angry, if you let them.

They were as willing to destroy their environment as man was willing to destroy his.

Poison it. Consume it. Sicken it. Burn it down .

All they were waiting for was an order.

And sometimes… Oz felt like they were all waiting for him to issue it. Swore he could hear them in the darkness of the dump… urging him to do it. Telling him things about the objects they were clinging to and the kinds of worlds they moved through…