Creeps by Darren Hynes

Am I a joke? Am I like a wrestling mat: something for you to lie and sweat and bleed on? Is it because I’m weak? Because I like drama and writing, but I also like UFC, did you know? Is it because your dad’s not your real one and that you had a tough start but lots of kids live with people that aren’t their biological parents and they turn out fine. Is it because you’re afraid of me? I don’t mean in the physical sense, but is there something about me you fear? Is that what this is about? Do you think it doesn’t bother me? That I can get up and walk away and just forget about it? Do you think my pissy clothes wash themselves? Do you think I like eating yellow snow and being tackled by Bobby and having to smell tuna on your breath? Maybe I hate you too, even more than you hate me and maybe someday I’ll wait outside your door and when you open it I’ll shoot you in the head and then you’ll be sorry, won’t you? How would you like that? I just wish you’d leave me alone becasue because I’m tired and I’m only fifteen so I shouldn’t be, right? I’ve been searching for a reason, you see, and I can’t find one and I’ve come to believe that things don’t just happen. So if there’s something I’ve done let me knowand I’ll stop doing it ’cause I just want to get these three years over with so I can get out of here.
    The one you pick on that would like to know the
reason,
Wayne Pumphrey

    Wayne opens his eyes and sees his father sitting there: checkered shirt and brown slacks and hair actually combed and slicked back like Tony Soprano and his cheek’s so swollen it looks like he’s stuffed grapes in his mouth and he’s playing with his Zippo lighter. He looks at Wayne and says, “You’re awake.”
    Wayne nods and thinks he was a youngster the last time his father sat on the edge of his bed like this: a tugged toe, a hand messing his hair, a prickly kiss on his forehead. “What time is it?”
    His dad glances at his watch. “Ten-thirty. How’s your stomach?”
    â€œGurgling,” Wayne says. “Might need to sleep all day. How’d you get in?”
    His father flips open and then closes the lid of his Zippo. “That lock’s useless.”
    Wayne looks at his father’s face and says, “Your cheek broken?”
    â€œNaw. Sore as Jesus, though.” His dad focuses on the space between his feet and says, “What’s the real reason you’re not in school?”
    Wayne lies back down and pulls the sheets up. The silence presses down on him and makes it hard to breathe and he thinks it’s even worse than having toothless Bobby on top.
    â€œGot the strangest call a few minutes ago,” his father says at last. “Turns out Donna Hiscock was staring out her back window this morning and what do you think she saw?”
    Wayne turns over on his side and tucks his knees into his chest and closes his eyes and hears the lighter flicking open again, then closing … opening … closing.
    â€œA bunch of boys is what … picking on another boy. A smaller boy.”
    Wayne imagines giant hands coming through the ceiling and plucking him from his bed and covering him and carrying him somewhere where there’s no Zippo lighter and no father with a swollen cheek and no piss-soaked pants in the hamper down the hall …
    â€œNow she couldn’t be absolutely sure—her eyes being what they are—but she could have sworn that the tiny boy belonged to the sweet woman named Ruth that she used to work with at Woolworths.”
    â€¦ and no iron ore mine and no eight monthsof winter and no band called Nickelback and no mother swinging a heavy frying pan and no girl up the road with a dead father and a mother who may as well be …
    â€œShe would have called sooner, but it took her a while to find your mother’s number. Would have grabbed a