He decided not to ask his parents if he could keep the child—they were real sticks in the mud about kidnapping. Not that it was really kidnapping, he decided, no, it was more like when scientists re-located animals to new habitats. Not that the child was an animal—it was just destined to make a new friend, or so he decided. The child slept all the way to his parents’ house, not even waking when the sirens rushed in the direction of the fast fading grocery store.
He wanted to make sure he could take care of it, so he stopped at another grocery store and bought Chef Boyardee, Cheetos, licorice wands, marshmallows, and a six pack of Bug Juice drink. As he was paying the cashier, a sudden paranoid panic came over him, and he found that he could hardly breathe. His hands shook as he stuffed a ten-dollar bill into the hands of the teenage girl.
The man’s heart pounded.
“Sir? Are you alright?” asked the cashier. He nodded frantically and held out his trembling palm, flexing the fingers to indicate that he needed his change, now, right now, damn it, now.
“I need five more dollars,” she said when he failed to notice she still held the ten. He crammed another ten into her hands and fled, falling against the car door. Inside was his sleeping child, and he breathed a gush of pure, cool relief, knowing that no one had stolen his little friend.
After all, there were crazies in this world, he decided.
It was all rather reminiscent of the time with the cat, he decided, as he snuck the kid in through the back door of the house. He had once snuck a kitten in through the window of his bedroom. It would have remained a secret if he hadn’t forgotten to feed it. The squalling of the desperate tabby had alerted his parents, who alerted the Humane Society, who alerted him about the repossession of his kitty.
This wasn’t reminiscent of the time with the cat.
After all, this time he had Chef Boyardee.
He kept to himself when his parents got home. They never minded if he kept the door shut, never required him to leave the room for dinner, for guests, or for anything, really, if he didn’t want to. His parents kept to themselves when he got home.
It thought he was cool. He showed it all the games on his computer—games full of robots, aliens, large breasted women, monsters, humans with great swords and women with the power to perform magic, all of which he played for hours when he was alone. He would have to go out and purchase a two-person game, he decided, as the kid oohed and ahhed over the graphics flickering on the screen.
They ate all the licorice.
It also thought his room was cool. He sat in the room that night with it, and they talked about their favorite things. They had all the same favorite things. It laughed at every joke he made.
They ate all the Chef Boyardee.
You are my greatest friend, he told it. It knew how to play cards, so they played Go Fish all day the next day. He skipped his usual trip to the grocery store, forgot to go to classes he’d been failing for some ten years, or even to go outside.
You win again, it told him, fanning out for him the dozens of matched pairs of cards. It gave him a high five, and its hand was the cold, clammy texture of duct tape.
They ate all the marshmallows.
He saw something once, as they played. Something flickered in its eyes. It reminded him of what he saw in his parents eyes, when the second cat was found dead in the bathtub, covered in the contents of every shampoo bottle in the stall, swirling around in patterns of green and blue and milky pink, budding into beautiful designs and wafting up the fragrant smell of Suave Green Apple. The look was admiration, he decided. His young friend agreed with him.
The floor was littered with empty Bug Juice bottles.
It laughed with him, through thick silver lips, square and shining with the sugary drink. The laughter rang inside his mind.
The door set off a gunshot between the giggles, sending an entire army of Chef Boyardee’s into an offensive attack. All he remembered seeing were what seemed like a hundred shining badges on navy blue. Cold bands froze his wrists, while the same cold graced the child’s wrists when he was cut from the duct tape.
He hadn’t finished his Cheetos.
He only heard snippets of the conversations around him.
…. taped to the chair…still alive…
…two days…covered in food….has not eaten or drunk….
…six years old… male…. in shock….silent….
….suspect also silent…child in custody…
Child. His child.
Please don’t let them take me, it begged to him as the officers carried him out. The monsters in uniforms seemed unwilling to hear what he could hear.
I won’t, he said, his voice breaking with emotion.
He had never felt anything like this, the pain of losing a child. His chest was splitting in two, on a fault line, and the all-encompassing loss of it all drug him down somewhere, dark, where he could do nothing but scream his loss, his grief from the bottom of that cruel place, this world, a world that could take someone’s light, their child, their entire universe away from them in the blink of an eye, a screech of a cat. Chef Boyardee grinned up at him from the stained carpet.
His parents watched them take him away.
They had no idea what he was feeling, he decided.
…suspect still silent…
No, he screamed.
…detached…unresponsive…
He howled at the badges, who seemed to hear nothing of his animal like instinct to protect his child, they heard nothing as he screamed obscenities into the hands that hauled him through a trail of canned spaghetti, mashed into the carpet with marshmallows and licorice, a trail that would lead him to the courtroom kicking and screaming where even then the lawyers couldn’t hear him, where he begged the judge to press charges, to stop these terrible people, to return his child to him…. these things, all these things—everything—that he was willing to do to get his kid back from all those badges, all those crazies in this world.
May 2008