Lambs Read online

  Connor figured if Leon and Marvin were willing to let Arthur sneak out for a girl they might do the same for him.

  But then again Arthur was well liked and well spoken and he didn’t shake. The staff didn’t stare at him the way they stared at Connor with disgust or revulsion or pity or whatever it was that rimmed their eyes or twisted their lips or scrunched their noses when he shivered and shuddered and tried his damnedest to be normal.

  If Connor were to pull one of them aside and plead his case (not the need for gas, but a ruse, a meeting with a girl, in order to buy him time to actually get to the garage and get the gas) they would laugh in his jittery face. They would think he was joking or just trying to get some time so he could escape.

  To get their attention he would probably have to flash some cash. Leon was definitely the type to take a bribe; Connor could see it in his shifty stares and hear it in the way he was always complaining about how shitty their pay was.

  If he wanted to make things work and get a plan rolling, he would need both money and a girl-centered excuse.

  But where was he going to get the money to grease Leon’s palms?

  And the girl? Where was he going to get a girl to cover for him? He supposed he could lie about the girl. He could tell Leon that a girl was going to meet him at a certain time and if he could just leave the garage door open they were going to make out in the van for a little while. He could…

  Yeah right.

  Even if he could get the money (which would be as simple as stealing some kid’s iPod or phone and selling it to another), Leon would never believe that a girl would meet him for a hot and heavy make out session in the group home van.

  If Connor laid it on thick and baited the hook and really played things up, Leon might bite and indulge him, but it wasn’t like he would let Connor wait in the garage alone, door raised in anticipation of his mystery girl’s arrival. The risk that Connor would go AWOL was too great. Instead, Leon would surely wait with him in the garage for the arrival of the mystery girl. When she never showed he would shoo Connor back to bed. The plan would only work if Connor could produce an actual girl. Which meant he had to talk to an actual girl and get her to go along with it—which was impossible.

  Connor was short, a full head shorter than the shortest kid in his class, and prone to uncontrollable spasms. His hair was a rat’s nest of fair juts and jags and no matter how hard he tried to style it, the unruly mess always reverted back to its savage state. His skin was pale to the point of near translucence. An explosion of freckles spread across the bridge of his nose and flecked his cheeks. His breath stunk. His pits stunk. He wasn’t even sure if he liked girls or boys or what and his confusion pointedly showed on his face. A broken vibe emanated. Everyone tended to stay away. Getting an actual girl to agree to meet him so he could fill his bottles with precious gasoline was more impossible than impossible if that was even possible.

  There were other ways. There had to be.

  But over the course of the two weeks, since Arthur told him about the after hours date, he couldn’t think of anything feasible and his idiot bribe/girl plan was so flawed and so unworkable Connor was pissed off at himself for wasting the brain cells on it that he did.

  Now, there were only two days left and Friday didn’t count because the house was up considerably later. Things were too unpredictable. If George the Destroyer was off, some of the staff drank beer and partied till three, four in the morning. That left Connor with no choice. A stealth mission. Tonight. Right now.

  Leon wasn’t the most diligent of employees. Connor was sure he could sneak by him, get the keys out of the administrative office, creep into the garage and then get the gasoline. If he got caught that was it. They’d search his room, find his stash and he would be thrown out of the system and placed in a juvenile correction facility (the grenade would not bode well). He had to time things perfectly. He had to get moving.

  * * *

  First things first.

  The final indoctrination.

  Connor grabbed the Perrier bottle, put it on his lap, and then picked up the grenade. Its heft felt good in the palm of his hand. It sent warm vibrations throughout the length of his arm. At his shoulder the warmth spread outward and cascaded over his internals like a shower of electric sparks.

  Once the bottles were full, it was on.

  He didn’t have a definitive plan, but just the same, it was on.

  Everything would burn.

  Fire eternal.

  A world of ash.

  A world of his own making.

  The warmth danced around his core, wisped through his heart and sent butterflies aflutter in the pit of his stomach.

  Heat blossomed in his groin and his sex grew erect. Connor pushed the cool metal casing of the grenade against his chest, over his heart and tried to will a piece of himself into the explosive’s fiery core.

  A song lyric, shock rock artist forgotten, intent intensified, buzzed in the back of his brain: I was a hand grenade that never stopped exploding.

  Dreams of fire licked his half-lidded eyes as he worked the grenade lower and lower.

  He began rubbing its knobby surface in time with his raging desire.

  Furious.

  Red fantasy.

  Volcanoes and plumes of lava.

  * * *

  And he was three years old on the floor of his mama’s place, subconscious memory, fetish forger, boyfriends who weren’t boyfriends and girlfriends who weren’t girlfriends, all slaves to the rock, burning him with cigarettes and laughing hysterically.

  Escalating, climbing, ascending, lighters out, his prepubescent scrotum kissed by flame.

  * * *

  And he was four years old, hungry, staring at the wall where the TV used to sit wondering when his mom would be back to give him one of the Pop-Tarts she hid high out of reach in the mostly empty kitchen cabinets. He got sick of watching the nothing-TV and walked in aimless circles singing a broken jingle to himself until she came home with friends (always with friends) and ignored him and moved like a unanswered prayer to the back bedroom.

  She shut the door but didn’t lock it, couldn’t lock it, after it had been kicked in a few weeks ago by a boyfriend who wasn’t her boyfriend.

  There was a splintery hole where the door knob used to be and Connor peered through it.

  He saw the flame first. It roared from a butane torch bold and beautiful like harnessed lightning. It was heating glass and Connor marveled at the spectrum of color—whites, oranges, reds, blues—the substance on the glass disintegrating into carbon, into black nothingness.

  His mom and her friends huddled around. They looked frightened or nervous and they swooped in with hollowed out pen casings pursed between their cracked lips and bathed in the rising thick smoke. Connor thought they looked like vultures, or buzzards, or whatever those dopey birds were on a cartoon he used to watch where the TV used to be. A song turned itself over in his mind—I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee, won’t my mama be so proud of me. I’m bringing home a…

  There were two men and two women and his mom. They abandoned the pretty glass and started taking of their clothes and doing things that would make Connor change the channel if he were watching the TV that used to be there. His mom was on her knees and awful things were beginning to happen when one of the men took the butane lighter and fired it up.

  The roar. The power.

  He burned one of the woman’s nipples off. There was blood and screaming, but Connor couldn’t look away. His mom was helping the other woman hold the burned nipple woman in place while the men laughed and guffawed and stood there looking alien with their engorged members standing erect and pointing accusatorily at the screaming woman. The butane man smacked the hysterical woman and then put the flame to her good nipple.

  Connor heard a sizzle, saw puckering, bleeding, smelled cooked flesh, and then, overwhelmed with sensation, fainted away.

  * * *

  And he was seven years old. His third
foster family, the Starks, were nice enough. They were hippies or something and Connor was one of two other foster children. They had a black kid and a Chinese kid of their own from adoptions and were in the process of adopting another during his short stay (three months). Connor suspected, though he had no way of really knowing for sure, that they wanted a white kid, but couldn’t seem to get one, so they fostered out to complete their multi-cultural experiment.

  For the longest time, ever since he could remember, he dreamed about fire. He dreamed about ice cream sandwiches made of fire. He dreamed of playing a videogame with a controller made of fire. He dreamed of fire burning his wiener off, and his nipples. He dreamed of fire exploding from his eyeballs. And for the longest time he woke up hard and confused.

  The last night he stayed with the Starks there was an accident. Connor was wrestling Marcus (their black kid) when Jason (the Chinese kid) got in the way. He fell and took down Maggie (a fostered white kid) and she knocked over a candle. A bedspread caught on fire and flamed up fast. All of the kids ran screaming but Connor stood transfixed, unable to move. Like after his dreams he hardened. He moved closer and closer to the fire until he could barely stand the heat. Sweat ran. A few blisters rose on his arms.

  He heard his mother’s scratchy voice inside his head, calling his name, making him want to jump out of his skin.

  Mr. Stark came rushing into the room. He picked Connor up to get him away from the flames and in that unexpected friction of movement Connor felt like everything inside of him came unglued. Mr. Stark dropped his ward to the ground and furrowed his brows. He looked at Connor, disgust clearly rising in his face and stared in horror at the semen stain that ruined his shirt front.

  * * *

  And in a spasm that rocked his constant spasms into near seizure, he finished.

  Shaky, shaky, he guided his essence into the Perrier bottle.

  * * *

  The Carlos & Rossi bottle was too big to fit in his backpack with the rest of his supplies so he carried it loose. It felt odd lugging the oversized jug around, his cum swishing about within like curdled milk and if he got caught, before he added the gasoline, diluting his sperm and mixing it away, he would be extremely embarrassed.

  What could he say?

  What defense did he have?

  He understood, on a deep, deep, soulful, wordless level what it meant and why it was important to mingle self, to ensure an organic part of him helped to fuel the impeding destruction, but he had no way of expressing it verbally. On the surface it seemed disgusting and weird, but within, were neurons fired and wet work hummed, it was necessary and made perfect sense.

  Not that it mattered.

  If he was caught and questioned he would keep tight lipped.

  He didn’t have to explain shit to anyone.

  He was alone in this world.

  He was The Flame.

  Besides, adults never heard anything beyond what they wanted to hear.

  Connor pushed asinine worries from mind. It wasn’t the time for thought. He had to keep his focus white hot and concentrate on getting shit done.

  The other four bottles were wrapped snugly in his backpack, clink proof even with his shakes. As he descended the stairs his only concerns were the squeaking steps and the chance of Leon investigating. There was absolutely no prospect for evasion while stuck in the stairwell and though it was fairly dark, it wasn’t so dark that shapes couldn’t be seen or boys couldn’t be identified.

  A cool glow danced around unseen corners and emitted from the TV room intensifying and dying with whatever Leon was watching. Connor was banking on this, the TV as distraction, and he felt mild relief wash over. He still had to be careful, Leon could be inbetween shows, or off in the kitchen or the bathroom or returning from an illicit smoke break. He could be wandering around, bored, listening to the house creak, and hoping to bust one of his wards.

  Connor paused halfway down the stairs until the glow rolled into a dark patch. Holding his breath he stepped down lightly and moved fast. He broke from the stairs, hung a left, creeping away from the front entryway of the house and the TV room just beyond, and made his way down a long hall. At the end of the hall he made a right into the laundry room and then set the Carlos & Rossi bottle and his backpack gently besides the door that opened into the garage.

  Connor took a second to breathe and acclimate.

  So far so good.

  From the stairs he couldn’t see much more than that TV glow and when he got to the bottom, just before dashing for the laundry room, he craned his neck as sharply as possible while in motion for a better look. As far as he could tell there were no other lights on. The kitchen fluorescents were bright and if they were on he would have seen them from the stairs. The administrative office situated just off the kitchen was lit by another set of powerful fluorescents and had they been on Connor would have surely noticed a bit of residual glare.

  As long as Leon was watching the tube, and as long as Connor could move fast, quiet, through the dark without any hiccups, grab the staff ring (which contained the key to the garage and the keys to the van which he needed to pop the gas tank door) he was home free. Well almost. He would still need to repeat the journey in reverse, return the ring, repeat the journey yet again and then lug the bottles upstairs to his stash spot.

  Thinking about the plan did nothing but frustrate and knot his stomach.

  One thing at a time, he reminded, one thing at a time.

  Connor sucked in a gust of air, let the breath go, and then set off.

  Passing the stairs, he dropped to his knees, crawled past the entryway and took a sharp right into the kitchen. Luckily it was still dark and unoccupied. He paused for a second, looked about, and when he was sure he was alone he got to his feet and moved back to the kitchen entrance. Peering from behind the door jamb he had a clear view of the stairs and the hallway to his left and the TV room with Lazy Leon lounging in a recliner, awash in Technicolor, to his right.

  The bastard looked to be sleeping, but it was hard to tell. His eyes were always kind of squinty and from this distance it was difficult to determine if they were closed or simply half-lidded. One thing was for certain, the motherfucker was drinking beer. Out of glass bottles no less. One sat on the end table beside him and the remnants of a six pack littered the coffee table before him. Connor bristled. These were the adults tasked with taking care of him and his housemates. He ordinarily didn’t give a fuck about little things like rules, or drinking beer on the job, just like he didn’t give a fuck about burning everyone to ash, but something about Leon’s lack of respect infuriated him.

  He was tempted to give up on his plan, march into the administrative office, grab the digital camera (used for processing new arrivals), take a picture of the fucker and then get the image to George the Destroyer. If only it were possible to get Leon fired and then travel back in time to carry out his plan and blow him up. How great would be to have a hand in taking away his job and killing the lazy fool?

  It was going to feel so good to take them all down.

  Connor left Leon to his impertinence and then tiptoed through the kitchen and down a short hall to the administrative office. George the Destroyer continually instructed the staff to keep the office door closed and locked. There were important files and confidential materials contained within. But the staff hated the process of unlocking and locking the door every time they needed to fill out a work log or a timesheet (which was often). Connor harbored a small fear that on the one night he chose to make his move the office would be locked.

  Predictably, incompetence held and the door was wide open. He grabbed the staff keyring from the hook where it always hung and then returned to the kitchen. As a precaution, though he could probably just stride right out of the kitchen and down the hall in full view without being noticed, Connor got to his knees and crawled. He stopped at the doorjamb and took another look. This time it was easy to see that Leon was out. His mouth hung askew and the occasional snore rose
above the medium din of the TV set.

  Connor envisioned taking one of Leon’s beer bottles, preparing it for war, lighting it up and then smashing it into a million fiery pieces on his stupid head.

  Oh what a glorious spectacle!

  He envisioned Leon’s kinky hair sizzling, his mocha skin puckering and slipping from the strong, angular bones beneath. The image made Connor’s mouth go watery and his palms tingle with anticipation.

  Head down he shook the fantasy—soon, soon, soon—and crawled out of the kitchen. The keys jingled violently in time with his herky-jerky motions and he had to stop and pocket them before continuing.

  Back at the garage door, key at the ready, Connor bit his lower lip and tried with all of his might to steady his hand. The key bounced a few times, its tip scratching about, making a racket, leaving telltale grooves within the metal face of the lock and he had to reset, deep breath, deep breath, before trying again. Two handed, he finally got the key in and turned it super slowly. The deadbolt clacked out of place with a resounding, reverberating earthquake.

  Pause.

  Nothing.

  Connor twisted the knob and pulled the door open slowly. It sounded like an airlock depressurizing, like a car crash, like a fireworks display.

  Pause.

  Nothing.

  Transferring his backpack and the Carlos & Rossi bottle, removing the key from the lock, and then pulling the door closed set off atom bombs of volume.

  Pause.

  Nothing.

  Was it possible for a fifteen-year-old to have a heart attack?

  To sweat to death?

  To die of fright?

  Connor had no idea but figured he was very close to finding out.

  He stood still in the dark garage for a full two minutes before carrying on. With no Leon, no trouble, his systems recalibrating and syncing up with the plan, Connor got the van open, popped the gas tank and then went to work.