Rusty Spoons

      It was a dreary day: raining, gray skies, cold. It was wonderful, and I was determined to learn something new today. I liked to learn new things and I tried to learn something new everyday. I was walking along the boulevard jingling my bag of spoons, making sure to soak my feet in every muddy puddle. Muddy puddles were fun. They made my naked feet look like I had shoes on. I was out on my daily walk, searching for rusty spoons.
      I stomped in a particularly deep puddle. Water splashed everywhere, soaking my pants and my bag of spoons.
      “Oh goody,” I said, “now my spoons are wet. They’ll get rustier now.” My spoons were my treasure. I love rusty spoons. I love to touch them…to caress them. I love the feel of the rust on my skin. So rough…so abrasive. Delicious.
      Today was a good day. I was feeling happy and sad at the same time. Happy that I didn’t want to hurt people anymore. Sad that I didn’t have enough rusty spoons. The man at the hospital told me that it was OK for me to look for rusty      spoons when they let me out last spring. I lived there for five years, and I liked those      people very much. I used to hurt people when I couldn’t find rusty spoons, but the nice man at the hospital helped me with that. Now, Alfred, he would say, Alfred, you must be nice to people. If you’re nice to people, they’ll be nice to you.
      Looking down as I walked, I saw another puddle. As I prepared to stomp in it, I noticed that it was not muddy. There was someone in the puddle staring up at me. It was a man with long, stringy hair and brown, rotten teeth. The rain was beating down on his face, making little circles ripple across it. His head looked misshapen and one eye appeared to be bigger than the other. His eyes were deep, sunken and tinged with yellow. One of them twitched and as I grimaced at his visage, he grimaced right back at me. I could stand it no longer and I stomped on his face.
      As I stood there, stomping in the puddle with all my might, I looked up and noticed that I was at the house on the corner of Cliff Avenue and Bleeker Street. It was a grey, one story house with a simple wooden porch. The shades were drawn in the windows. The house looked cold and uninviting. Perfect, I was sure they’d have some rusty spoons. I walked up to the door and pushed the button for the doorbell. It chimed a bright, cheery Westminster chime.
      A small boy opened the door. I recognized him as the short, tow-headed boy who egged my door at Hallowe’en, then asked for candy. Little Jimmy Foster. I never had candy. Just spoons. When I offered him a spoon, he spat at my feet and threw a rotten egg at me.
      He looked up at me. Snot dribbled out of his nose as he greeted me, “I know you, you’re that weirdo Alfred Signas. What do you want?”
      “Hello,” I said. “Would you happen to have any rusty spoons?” I jingled my bag of spoons at him. The man at the hospital would be proud at how politely I asked. They taught me how to be polite. I liked to learn new things.
      “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked. My eye twitched. Little children should not use such language.
      “It’s not nice to use words like that,” I said to him. “Not nice at all.”
      He rolled his eyes and said, “What’s it to you, wierdo? You ain’t my dad.”
      I looked past him into the house. I saw a polished china hutch on the wall behind him. The man at the doctor’s office taught me that breaking things like china might be fun, but it wasn’t nice. I told him I wanted to gouge his eyes out and he told me that wasn’t nice either. They locked me alone for several weeks after that. I wanted to be nice to Little Jimmy, but he wasn’t being very nice.
      “Go away, you freak.” He started to close the door, but I stuck my foot between the door and the jamb.
      A muscle in my neck twitched. “You’re a very rude little boy. Very rude, indeed.” He glared at me as I pushed my way in. The man at the hospital told me that people were rude all the time, but that didn’t mean I could hurt them. The man at the hospital was always very nice to me, in exactly the same way Little Jimmy wasn’t.
      “Look, mister,” he said, “my dad won’t like you coming in here like this. I’m going to tell him when he gets home, and then he’s going to kick your ass.”
      I shut the door behind me and locked it. Walking over to the china hutch, I wondered if I would find any rusty spoons in it. I love rusty spoons.
      “Hey! What are you doing?” the little child said. He followed me closely, tugging on my shirt. I hate when people touch me. He tugged harder and my shirt ripped. My eye twitched again. The man at the hospital’s voice was very loud in my head: Now Alfred, he would say, if we let you out, you can’t hurt people. Once you learn how to be nice, we’ll let you out. I saw myself beating him with my bag of spoons until he was quiet.
      The china hutch reached up almost to the ceiling. It was a shiny, dark brown wood. Behind the glass, I could see white bone china with gold trim. I started to pull open the drawers. The first one had doilies and linen napkins in it. They were soft and white. Ick. I hated soft, white things.
      “You’d better leave, or I’ll call the cops!” I heard an annoying noise coming from near the floor. I looked around the room. Little Jimmy Foster was still there. That must’ve been what the noise was. I walked over to the phone. Little Jimmy reached for it, but I was faster. I grabbed the phone and yanked it out of the wall. He started to run for the hallway.
      Little children don’t run well when they’re hit in the back of the legs by a telephone. He tumbled to the floor like the sack of potatoes I used to pummel that nasty man who would beat me when I wouldn’t call him “Mum.” That’s when those men sent me to the hospital to live.
      He just lay there on the floor, crying. I looked in the second drawer. It was full of vile, shiny silverware. Though it pained me, I picked up a long tea spoon. It wasn’t rusty, but maybe I could make it rust.
      “Little Jimmy,” I asked him when I grabbed his leg, “Do you know how to make a spoon rusty?” I dragged him towards me and flipped him onto his back. He stared at me with wide, red-rimmed eyes.
      “N-n-n-o.” He answered, sniffling.
      I looked at the spoon in my hand, then at his eyes. His eyes were as big as the spoon. I stopped for a moment and thought about the hospital. The man who told me not to hurt people wasn’t there. I remember him telling me if someone tried to hurt me, that I could protect myself, but I shouldn’t hurt people to make myself feel good. I asked him if it was OK to hurt rude, nasty people, nasty people who were not helping find my rusty spoons. He didn’t answer, so I assumed that it was OK. I wondered if Little Jimmy’s big eyes would fit in the spoon. There was only one way to find out.

      Later that day, I was sitting at home watching a caterpillar crawl across the floor near my foot. My home was simple, like me: just one room. A toilet sat in one corner, and my bed in the other. Shelves lined the cracked, plaster walls. Over there, was my collection of rusty kettles and pots. And there, my pile of rusty forks and knives. Oh, but how I loved the spoons the most. So round, so smooth. Then, rusty. Gritty, rough, but still round.
      I thought back on my day, as I often do. I learned that bloody was not the same as rusty. The color was similar, but it wasn’t the same. Water-wet and blood-wet were not the same thing, either. My new teaspoon was sticky and not rusty. It was red at first, and then turned brown and crusty. Crusty is fine, but rusty is divine.
      I also learned that caterpillars taste better than little boy eyeballs. Maybe if I had used a rusty spoon, things would have been different. Oh well, any day in which you learn something is a good day. I had learned something that day, so I sat and stared at a spider crawling down the wall until it was so dark I couldn’t see anymore. Then I went to sleep. I wondered what I would learn the next day.