Page 29

As he looked at his own blood as it began to swirl within the garbage water his cousin was drowning him in, Oz felt that anger grow.

Could feel it moving through his veins like liquid evil, spoiling the flesh it touched.

Could hear the trillions upon trillions of unseen microorganisms and germs around him, stopping to watch the commotion.

Waiting…

Whispering…

And Oz knew, in that instant, that if he asked them…

they could devour Hooch like he’d never even existed.

Five hundred centillion tiny lifeforms, suddenly focusing their anger and their hunger and their hatred on his enemy.

Each taking tiny bites at a microscopic scale, but together, they could consume him in minutes.

Seconds . If they had the proper motivation and instruction.

They could wither Hooch away to nothing…

Make his body decompose, while he was still alive…

Yes… Oz knew what they could do.

He recognized the power of trash and forgotten things.

But Oz was not his father. He wasn’t his older brother. He wasn’t a killer yet. And it would take something a heck of a lot more important than defending his own life to ever make him one.

He unclenched his fists, trying to calm down before he lost control. Before he did something that Hooch would regret. His uncle hurt Hooch, Hooch hurt Oz, but Oz was determined to end it there. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He just wanted to be left alone.

Oz struggled free, gasping for breath and vomiting up the indescribably horrible water. He doubled-over, retching.

Hooch took the opportunity to club him in the back of the head with a piece of debris, knocking Oz out.

When he came to, forty-five minutes later, it was dark out and his shoes were missing.

Oz let out an annoyed sound.

He was really, really getting sick of his cousin.

He picked his way along the uneven path through the dump, cursing Hooch for every sharp stone and chunk of glass which cut Oz’s feet.

He eventually made it back to the shabby cabin which served as his home now, and shoved his way inside. The latch on the front door didn’t work and when you opened it, there was a sliding sound as it pushed aside the pile of junk on the floor behind it.

Oz’s aunt was a hoarder. She didn’t throw anything away, no matter how useless, which was probably why Oz was here.

Personally, he would have preferred it if they’d just let the state take him away. Or if they let Hooch finally kill him. Anything would be better than this.

The woman looked up from her microwave pizza, which she was eating out of a salvaged plastic Cool-Whip container.

Like most things in the house, all of the bowls had started out as something else.

“You’ve been fighting again.” She observed, with no real concern about the blood stains or bruises which now covered Oz.

His aunt’s dark brown hair hung in greasy strands across her forehead, because the shower in the trailer no longer worked.

The plumbers could not be called to fix the problem, because they would need access to the pipes, which was impossible because of all of the trash the home contained.

And they couldn’t clean the house to allow the workmen access to the problem, because…

Oz wasn’t sure, actually. But there must have been a reason which made sense to his aunt, even if Oz couldn’t fathom what it could possibly be.

“No, ma’am.” He shook his head, trying to get through the room without a lecture. “I…”

“Can’t just live and let live, can you? Always have to fight people.

Thinkin’ you’re the big man.” She rolled her eyes and pointed at him with the doughy crust of her soggy meal.

“Bad blood outs, that’s what I say. Your father was a killer, boy.

Took your mother from us. I told her not to marry that soulless devil, but she didn’t listen to me.

Insisted that we were wrong about him and that he wasn’t evil.

But he was. He surely was, as any man God himself ever damned.

” She gestured to him again, the gelatinous burned cheese dripping down into the repurposed plastic bowl, which was yellowing and stained from age.

“Brother too. We tried to look after him for your mother, give him a good life. But what did he do, huh? How did he end up?” She snorted in derision.

“Just like his waste of a father. And just like you’re gonna. Because bad blood outs. ”

Oz’s brother… Oz’s brother was a lunatic. There was really no argument there. Not that his aunt and uncle had really helped matters, but they also weren’t entirely to blame.

Ellen refocused on her meal. “That’s the way things are, Oswald. You can’t change what you are, and sooner or later…”

“I’m not evil, Ellen.” Oz told her flatly, hoping he sounded more definite than he felt.

“Not yet.” She took another mouthful of food.

“But you will be. If you stay on this road, you will be. Because it’s in your blood.

” Her tone implied her beliefs were backed up by the umpteen hours of televangelists the woman watched every day on KNNR Channel 10, after the Farmer Frank show was over.

Whatever money didn’t get spent on box loads of trash, got sent to the pastors on the TV, in exchange for supposed rewards in the afterlife.

Personally, Oz thought the woman should probably be giving this speech to her son– since the boy was already a sadist and was working hard to become a sexual predator, the way other boys might take on a summer job– but he’d never heard her say anything against her dear precious Meryl.

Which was a shame. Because his live TV exorcism might be good ratings for his aunt’s TV religious advisors.

Still, Oz sometimes thought about smothering the woman with a pillow. He wasn’t prepared to act on that, obviously, it was just a mental image that popped into his head every few weeks, but it probably wasn’t a normal kind of thought to have about someone who annoyed you.

Which meant… that his aunt was right about him.

He was evil.

Which terrified Oz. And made him even angrier.

She pointed towards the kitchen. “I waited for you as long as I could, but if you’re not gonna come home in time for dinner, that’s not my fault.” The woman shook her head, viewing his fifteen minute absence as a personal attack. “I’ve missed too many meals because of your nonsense already.”

“That must have been very hard for you.” Oz told her unemotionally, not pointing out that the woman’s weight struggles indicated that she was by no means skipping meals or the fact that he was responsible for cooking most of said meals, because she always claimed to be too exhausted to do it. “Happy Thanksgiving, Aunt Ellen.”

She made a noncommittal sound, too focused on her tabloid to pay attention to him .

Oz began to leave the room, limping on his bruised feet and trying to ignore the various types of unknown sticky debris and dirt which his bare skin and open wounds were picking up from the matted tangle of the filthy carpet.

“Your father named you after the Kennedy assassin,” Ellen called after him distractedly, sounding almost bored, “you know that, right?”

He tried not to roll his eyes. He didn’t know why his aunt loved to remind him of that little factoid about his life, but she did at least once a week.

It had long ago ceased to be effective in belittling him, and now his only real thought about it was that it was probably a warning sign that his aunt was going senile.

She’d just told him the Kennedy thing this morning, and she typically waited at least a few days before mentioning it again.

Oz made his way into the small house’s living room area, using his foot to clean trash on the floor out of the way, so that he could sit down.

The couch was a lost cause, as it was currently crowded with old plastic juice containers, which his uncle had salvaged and would (supposedly) one day recycle for money.

But that had been six months ago, and the containers were still there.

At this point, the smell of putrid fruit juice was filling the house and it was breeding small flies.

Oz had tried to throw the bottles away or recycle them himself, but his aunt and uncle had been horrified about the mere thought of that.

So the containers had returned, multiplied, and Oz had gotten screamed at for two hours about why he shouldn’t touch other people’s things.

And, obviously, reminded about his supposed Lee Harvey Oswald connection again.

In front of Oz, sat a pile of three TVs from various eras.

When one TV stopped working, a slightly newer model was simply stacked on top of it.

His aunt and uncle claimed that at some point, they would have enough money to fix all of the TVs, but in the meantime, it was just a tower to electronic impermanence.

Oz used needle-nose pliers to turn the old dial on the TV—since it was missing the plastic knob—and the picture came to life with an odd reddish glow, due to an unknown malfunction with the tube.

That was the problem with old electronics you fished out of the trash.

If his aunt and uncle noticed anything wrong with the signal, they never mentioned it.

Oz himself was in charge of keeping the electronics operational, but he could already see that his uncle would soon force him to go out looking for a new one, which would mean more dangerous and disgusting searching of dumpsters.

If it were up to Oz, he wouldn’t have a TV at all, but very little of Oz’s life was up to Oz.

Oz used the pliers to turn the dial to channel 40, because The Lone Ranger was coming on.

And he was instantly transported to a world of right and wrong. Where things were clean and bullies always got what was coming to them.