Is There Anybody Out There?

snippet 12

It’s two weeks into second term and Leo Galdorise is still the new kid.

   

  He stands really stiff with his hands in his pockets, upright and cautious, hardly breathing, like he’s trying to keep a demon inside. Like he’s trying to prevent a ticking time bomb from exploding. He takes a sharp breath and his shoulders cave in when he exhales, and then he is alert again. Hiding something. A secret that could destroy him and anyone who comes within five feet of his personal space. But this is all figuratively speaking. 

  

  When Leo sits down, he takes the seat farthest from the door, exactly fifteen steps from the blackboard, a good way into the back of the room at a desk that looks like it’s been attacked by sharks. Leo presses his thumbs into the pock marks in the fiber-wood, over pen graffiti, and the words Mark and Julia, forever. 

  

  A safe distance away from the chirpy, early morning gossip that’s being exchanged at the front of the classroom by people who are too beautiful. Too beautiful this early in the morning. How do they do it? 

  

  Leo has blonde, almost white hair the texture of straw. He has brown eyes, the color of s**t, and remarkably round so that he always looks surprised. His arms are skinny and the rest of him is roly-poly, and as if God hadn’t made him disproportionate enough, he’s that short that he’s got to stand on a chair to reach the bowls at the top of the kitchen cupboard. He’s wearing plaid, and checkers, and stripes so horrible that even his mother said something when he walked out of the house that morning. 

  

  Leo doesn’t expect to be given more than a puzzled look. He closes his eyes. His eyelids are a light shade of purple, the bottom ones darker and sagging. The shade of purple dying people get when their bodies begin failing them. He’s not dying but maybe he’d like to be. Maybe there isn’t anything worth living for besides books and films and tacky clothing, the type of stuff that distracts him from life, but nobody is going to ask him,  is human life worth a  dime? How’s yours going for you? How are you Leo? How’ve you been feeling? Nobody’s said more than two words to him since day one. The other kids might offer him a smile out of pity, that smug, sad smile they’d give him to tell him, you don’t fit in here. Like he’s carrying a lethal disease, and they all feel bad, but it’s contagious. 

  

  Leo pretends he has the Kuru epidemic. If anyone at the front of the classroom would ask, he’s got Kuru disease, and his brain is going to shut down. If any of his thin and tan, fashion savvy schoolmates would care, he’s going to go crazy first, and then die.

  

  “I had brains for breakfast,” he says aloud, to no one in particular. “Cold brains.” 

  

  Nobody turns their head.

 

  Leo opens his eyes. “I had brain cereal. It was like oatmeal, but a little chewy.” 

  

  Nobody pays attention to his idle mumbling. 

  

  Nobody is a good listener. 

 

  There is a loud booming sound outside, and Leo jumps in his seat. He turns to look out the row of dirty, smudged windows. Behind the iron bars that protect the dirty glass, the world is wet and grey. Trees lean over and surrender to the moaning wind, and thunder rumbles again, this time farther off in the distance. Lightning flashes, and a white face appears in the window frame directly across from him. It flickers into sight like a film reel on a screen and Leo goes rigid the moment he sees it. A white face with eyes like two gaping mouths. It has no lips, no nose, no hair save a few stringy tufts, and its flesh is pulled so tightly over its skull, it’s translucent. Drear light shines through it, like light might come through a pale stocking. The head hovers there in the window frame. 

  

  No gasps, no cries of shock. Nothing. Only Leo sees it, and he stares at it intently. 

 

  “Hello,” he says. Softly, he says, “This is a bad time.” He has seen this face before, this head, in a dark hallway. In his bathroom mirror. He has seen this face before in parking lots, in store windows, but never in his dreams. Leo’s terrible secret. His ticking time bomb, ready to go off at any minute. Figuratively speaking. 

  

  He digs his teeth into his fat bottom lip and he peels off strips of skin, chapped skin, dried blood, scabbed lip. He says, “This is a bad time.” 

The head shudders with another peal of thunder 

Author's Note

{ something i wrote a while ago but never completed or shared }

Reviews

[Dane Osborne]

Honey doll you got a voice all your own. Some people go to college for six years to learn how to write but never find their voice no matter how hard they try. It isn't horror or fantasy and it's not sci fi. It can't be labeled, no if anything I would describe your work as stealing secrets from the Gods and using them to slander the universe successfully.

But by whatever means you are going to have to learn to finish these. These are too f*****g good to be unfinished.
Only speaking the truth.

You've become one of my favorite writers on here....seriously.