Smile

Smile
         When did it all begin?... I’ve asked myself this question a thousand times, and I cannot quite decide. Maybe it started with Mrs. Alberts’ old brown tabby, maybe some shadow memory before that.  It’s hard to tell; when something is a part of you it’s difficult to remember when it got to be that way.  Perhaps the answer is in those quiet moments when I close my eyes.  As sure as you and I are alive whenever my mind wanders it goes back to two days in my junior year of high school. Two days which transformed completely.  I have never told anyone about what happened in those days, but I will tell you dear readers.
          I let myself relax, and I am a seventeen year old girl again laying in a lavender, and white ruffled room waiting for my life to truly begin...
WAITING
         I don’t dream.  Maybe that’s why my alarm clock sounding never upsets me, but for the sake of conformity I hit the snooze button once.  It will be a day of behaving, but tonight I get my cat.  I’ve been waiting nearly a month for it.  The day will be boring.  I will spend every moment pretending.  Acting as though the arbitrary is important, and everything is arbitrary. I will have to wait for those brief glimmers of feeling; feeling more intensely than anyone.  The rush of blood, burning fingertips, and the oh-so-rare knot in my stomach… I can get a cat tonight, but there’s a time and place for that.
          I allow myself those few moments to imagine. Then get up. Mornings are not so bad before I go downstairs.  Tonight is my night. That thought alone will keep me feigning interest in school and what the all the know-nothings have to say.

         “Gracie! You up?” speak of the devil, the queen-bee- know-nothing
         “Yeah ma! I’m coming!”
         “You’re gonna be late!” whatever queenie…ignore her just  get to the bathroom
         I ‘ve always been a fan of the bathroom routine. Everything in a certain order.  This plastic world melts away under the drone of the faucet.  I brush my teeth; molars… bicuspids… canines… incisors… canines… bicuspids… molars.
         Donned in the standard low riders and t-shirt I apply make-up.  I can remember the stink I raised to be able to wear it.  I couldn’t care less except that every other girl in school was wearing it,  and it’s good to start the occasional fight on the home-front.
         I stare at myself in the mirror.  Why do my looks make things so much easier?  What is it about blonde locks and flushed cheeks that make them think I’m trustworthy? I will never understand them.
         I go downstairs and see the know-nothings.  I get excited about waffles, talk about tests…smile. I find some pleasure in watching people. If they bite their lips they’re waiting for something.  A tilted head may mean they are sympathetic, or they are trying to convince you of their honesty.  True rememberers need to glance away. 
         “I’ve got to catch the bus; see you guys later” I grab my back pack and walk from my angelic little house (lawn mowed, flower beds sparkling with dew) to the bus stop.  Angie is already waiting. 
         “Hey!” she begins.  I swear each morning I watch her take a breath before we get on the bus, and then stop for her second  as we get off to go home in the afternoon.  You’ve got to love her though.  She is the quintessential high school girl. All pom-poms, acne cream, and reality t.v. I like her because  I don’t need to talk much when I’m around her.  “Oh my God! I have big news! Peter and Donny got like a whole bottle of vodka! We’re all gonna go to Donny’s tomorrow night  to get like completely trashed. You should come. I know you’re like never allowed to hang out on week nights.  What’s up your parents asses anyway? And I know you never sneak out, but now is the time to grow a set Gracie!”
         “I’ll think about it. When? “
         “We’re starting at like eight tomorrow, but just come over once the ‘rents are asleep. Peter is telling his parents that he’s sleeping at Donny’s house.  They don’t know his parents are gone. And I’m telling my parents that me and Sarah are working on a biology project, and I’m sleeping at her house. And she’s telling her parents that she’s sleeping at my house.  You know the deal…”
         “Yeah I got you.”  I’m a woman of little words The bus pulls up and we climb on.
         “So… are you gonna come tomorrow?
         “Sure why not.”


STILL WAITING
         I can feel eyes on me as I walk down the institutionally colored hallway to English class.  Boys and men stare; they always have.  You would think that with all the feasting they do with their eyes they’d have no appetite left for anything else.
         “Grace, what do you think Shakespeare meant in this sonnet?” Shall I wrap that conveniently dangling extension cord around dear Ms. Proot’s fat neck?
         “He’s saying that he loves this woman even though she’s  not what people thought of as perfect.
         The bell.  Why do people jump at loud noises?
          Wait a few seconds before giving them the answer in math class.  The day will pass.  Answer one question in each class, hand in the homework.  Laugh when everyone else does.  Real smiles show teeth. Go to Ye Olde Ice Cream Shoppe.  Tie that pretty pink apron, and look as wholesome as the frozen treat I serve.  Scoop... smile...scoop...smile...Go home and eat dinner with the know-nothings. Go for a run. There with my head phones in I let myself imagine. 
Once Greg and Gabby are asleep Mom will take her sleeping pill and Dad will go in his study.  You can have a cat. Go home. Shower. Brush my teeth.  Molars, bicuspids, canines, incisors, canines, bicuspids, molars.
         Watch Dancing with the Stars with Mom.  Let her touch my hair. Try to ignore Gabby.  Only two and she won’t let me hold her.  She stares at me and looks worried.  Do I give myself away? I sometimes think my blank look is too convincing.  Maybe they’re not all know-nothings… maybe she’ll be like me.  Doesn’t matter now. Now she truly is nothing.  She goes to sleep. Greg bounces a basketball in his room for what seems like forever, then goes to bed. Mom takes her pill. I go to my room to read.  Dad goes to his study. Twelve... twelve- thirty... one... now.

A CAT TONIGHT
         I’m getting better at it.  I get out of the house without a problem. Out the back door no one hears open.  The know-nothings live up to their title, and I disappear into the night. Six blocks to my alley.  These are the moments I live for.  The bubbling, tingling anticipation.  The wanting that spreads through me like an utterly desirable chill.  Standing here with my plastic bags I am the darkness in this alley; perfectly still and waiting to make my move. 
         I stand motionless for nearly two hours.  I am in my element.  I know some furry little foe will soon enter my alley.  This is my refuge.  After so many days and nights of nothingness.  After so many meaningless fake conversations,  after so much numbness, tonight is my night.  I can feel every nerve in my body.  I can hear the fluid rushing through my ears. 
          Here it is.  A brown tabby with matted wet fur.  I can’t see the eyes; not yet. The distracted little shit muddles through the spilt garbage.  I raise my arms ever so slowly from less than a foot away.  I can smell the poor thing. His little ears tinge backwards.  He  knows what’s coming, but not quickly enough.  I cover his head with the plastic bags and step on his back to keep him in place.  He’s not getting away; this one is mine... light suddenly floods my alley.  The door from the Chinese restaurant opens just a few feet from predator and prey, shattering the predators hopes, and saving the trembling treat.  I let the cat go to distract the restaurant worker, taking out the trash.  I slink around the corner taking cover behind a far off dumpster.  Why the hell is someone still cleaning at three in the morning!? 
         My alley was usually entirely mine by twelve-thirty.  The Chinese restaurant closed at eleven, and everyone was gone by the time I started my game... my lifeline. It was as though it ceased to exist to the rest of the world.  To all the know-nothings.  Why would anyone still be there? Why would they break through the walls of my world?
          I want to scream. Burning hot, unfamiliar  tears push against my eyes, and I start home.  It wasn’t safe.  I had no idea when this overly ambitious restaurant worker was going to come back out.  I had no idea when another piece of prey would wander towards me, and I would certainly not have time to complete my ritual and get home before Dad woke up at six, put on his perfectly pressed suit and tie, and sat at the kitchen table reading the paper like all good fathers do.
         This walk home should have been euphoric.  I would pass the occasional street-walker-know-nothing.  My sinister secret stuffed inside my back pack. I’d be aware of everything around me , but I’d no longer bored by it.  It’s a wonderful feeling that you are to be feared.  I’ve seen enough t.v. to understand the hairs that stand up on the back of people’s necks, and on their arms.  Reader, I ask you to imagine how free would you feel to know that you are the thing that goes bump in the night.
         But now I am nothing.  Tonight I walked home a crumpled mass of desire.  Wanting more than anything to be that villain we are all supposed to hate.  Yearning for a secret all my own.  I needed my kill.  I needed to feel that rush of sickening power.
          I arrive at my house and go around back.  As I approach the back door I cannot enter. I have to see them.  I know that just holding them, and turning them over in my hands will help to ease this lust.  I turn and head for the woods behind my house.  The quarter mile walk passes quickly with images of pearly white churning in my mind.  I can almost feel the sharp edges.  Finally I arrive at my shed.
         It’s a tiny decaying structure of rotting wood and peeling paint, but it is my temple. The squeal of the door sends a shiver down my spine. It’s okay now; I’m home with my trophies. I use my cell phone for light, and move to the farthest left corner. I pull up the loose floor board.  There you are.  I reach down and run my finger tips over the red velvet of my tiny sac of treasures.  Just holding the pouch cools the flush of my cheeks. These are mine, entirely mine. I pull open the draw strings, and there they are.  Twenty-three pearl white teeth gleam in the blueish glow of my cell phone, and my world is suddenly in order.  The ritual of each kills floods back to me, and everything fits into place. 
         I pour the canines into my palm and admire them one by one. Most of them were from strays from my alley.  I searched for my favorite trophy.  The smallest, most delicate canine I’ve ever seen.  It formerly belonged to a grey kitten that wandered into my yard from next door. What a thrill it was to see the posters all over pleading for help to find dear little Muffin.  Each was razor sharp, and as white as can be.
         After my kill, I keep just one tooth.  I let them sit in a small container of bleach (also kept in my temple under the floor board, and I polish them up with a tooth brush.  I have twenty-three glorious little keepsakes.  I only developed my ritual six years ago.  My first five kills I can only visit in my memory,  but these twenty-three treasures make it all the more real for me. Okay, I can go back now.  I let the evidence of my deeds slide out of my hands and back into their resting  place, restore the floor board, and turn to go.  One more trip.  Instead of heading immediately home I walk  deeper into the woods. There are some steep cliffs leading to an endlessly deep ravine.  The cliffs themselves are not very difficult to get to, but the ravine is too narrow for anyone to walk through, or climb down.  Here is where I dispose of the unwanted parts of my kills.  I let myself imagine a furry sac of fur being tossed over the edge.  It falls so far I have only twice heard my kills hit the bottom, and have never seen the bottom myself.  Here, nearly two miles into the woods, no one is around to take in the stench of decay which would surely be my downfall. 
         I walk home in a trance.  No longer boiling from my failed attempt, I just feel tired and hollow.  The sun is beginning to rise, and dad will be up soon.  I slip in through the back door, walk silently up the stairs to my bedroom, and collapse onto my bed.
         The next thing I know my alarm is sounding.  I hit the snooze button once, and wait for my mother to call up the stairs.  I go to the bathroom. Even the drone of the faucet cannot bring me any peace today.  I brush my teeth; molars… bicuspids… canines… incisors… canines… bicuspids… molars.
         The day passes like many others.  I look the know-nothings in the eye, bare teeth when I smile, answer one question in each class, and one at lunch; “Yes Angie I’ll come drink with you guys tonight if I can sneak out.”
         “Great! Peter said Donny is going to get some pot too. It’s gonna be awesome!”
Go to work, scoop...smile...scoop...smile, go for a run and let myself imagine, go home, shower, brush my teeth.  Molars, bicuspids, canines, incisors, canines, bicuspids, molars,  watch some bullshit reality show with mom, let her touch my hair, stare at baby Gabby like the little alien she is, Greg bounces that damn basketball until he goes to bed, mom takes her sleeping pill, dad goes into his study.  Tonight? What if there’s someone at the Chinese restaurant again? What if I need to find new hunting grounds? Twelve... twelve- thirty... one... my thoughts are interrupted by the unfamiliar plop on my window sill. What the hell?
         I look down to see Donny standing in my driveway tossing pebbles at my window.
         “Grace!” he shouts up in a stage whisper “Grace!”
         “What are you doing here?”
         “I thought you were gonna come party with us tonight!”  I look at him a moment.  There he was as wobbly as a giraffe fresh from the womb.
         “Come around back; I’ll be right down.”
         I slink down the stairs and out the back door.  It takes my eyes a minute to adjust to the complete darkness, but I can smell Donny approaching from the side of the house.  Vodka and pot. Perhaps a lethal combination. 
         “What are you doing here?” I repeat.
         “I was hoping I could tell you tonight...” He giggles and stumbles back a bit. “I was gonna tell you...” Hiccup. “...I think you’re the hottest girl in school” With that he lurches forward pressing sloppy wet lips to mine, and  grabs my left breast. Definitely a lethal combination. “You’re so hot, I mean...”
         “Hold on” I stopped him “Are you here alone?” Could this really be happening? Has my prey come to me tonight?
         “Yeah, Peter and Angie are totally passed out. I was thinking about you, and look!” He proudly produced a flask from his back pocket. “You want some?”
         Heat spreads through my body along with the excitement.  That thought that had only ever crossed my mind as a hypothetical was now on the verge of becoming reality. I know what I want, and exactly how to get it.
         “Aren’t you happy to see me?” I asked playfully.
         “Yeah, yeah of course I am.”
         “Give me a smile then.” He grinned coyly, and looked at his feet.
         “You’ve got a great smile... your teeth are really white.”
         Again he emitted a drunken giggle “You’ve got a great everything... you want some?” He offered me the flask again.
         You know... I’d rather do something else..” I put my arms around his neck and pulled him in for another  sloppy wet, but necessary interlude.  And yet again his free hand was groping around, this time I let his go up my shirt before I stood back a moment to study him. He outweighs my normal furry foes by about 130 pounds.  I’d have to chop him up so he’d fit in the ravine.  There’s an axe in the shed.
         “Wanna go to your room?” He asked mistaking my surveying for bedroom eyes.
         “My parents will hear us.”
         “Oh... let’s go back to my house. My parents are gone ya know.”
         “That’s too far, let’s go into the woods. There are these awesome cliffs.” He hesitated a minute most likely imagining the difficult drunken trip through the woods.
“I’ve always wanted to do it there.” That sealed the deal.
         “Ok yeah let’s do it.”
         “Stay right here. I’ve just got to grab something from my room.” I go back in through the door, back up the stairs and into my closet for my plastic bags and my back pack. It’s really going to happen. My first time with a person. I laugh out loud when it occurs to me he’s probably thinking the exact same thing. Back down the stairs, and out the door to my anxiously waiting treat.  It’s graduation day Grace, a full sized kill.  You can do it.
         He follows me through the woods like a fawn.  Stopping occasionally to slobber on my face.
         “Did you tell anyone you were coming here?”
         “No, no every one’s asleep.  But I just wanted to see you so bad.”
         “Good.  I’m really glad you came.  Can I have some of that Vodka?” I take the flask and fake a gulp. “You have some too.” He greedily guzzles it down, and walking gets visibly harder for him. We are less than twenty feet from the shed.  “Let’s stop here a minute. I want to get something.” I leave him leaning on a tree.  I go inside the shed, pull up the floor boards and get my forceps.  I remember the day I got them from the second hand shop in town.  It had long been separated from the rest of a dentists set of tools.  I was just eleven, and my mother thought the purchase was cute.  She proclaimed “She’ll be a dentist!”, and smiled at me.  She was close.
           Donnys canine is  going to replace my kittens-tooth as my favorite trophy.  I also grab the axe, but it won’t fit in my back pack.  Damn, he’s pretty messed up, but he will notice an axe. I chance walking out with it. 
         “What’s the axe for?” He laughed.
         “It’s not for me, it’s for you. It’s creepy in these woods. What if something attacks us... like a bear or something? Here.” I hand him the means of his own disposal. “You’ll protect me right?”
         “Shit yeah!” He’s overjoyed with the idea of his manliness.
         We go deeper and deeper in my excitement growing with each step.  Finally we get to the cliffs. “Can I get some more of that?” I ask motioning towards to flask.
“Yeah.” I fake another swig and hand it back to him.
         “Man I’ve heard you can drink other guys under the table.  Can you finish the rest of that?”
         He laughed heartily bearing his teeth, They really are nice threw his head back and killed the flask. Now it was his turn.  “Stay right here” I walk a bit into the woods with my back pack. Leaving him teetering, an empty flask in one hand, and the axe in the other.  I hang my bag from a branch, and take out three plastic bags. This is it.  I’ve fantasized a million times about actually getting a person, but I was never sure how to do it.  Donny practically gift-wrapped himself for me.
         I saw him stumbling through the woods towards me. Less than twenty feet from me he stopped to lean against a tree.  I watched breathless as his body slowly slump. My god he’s melting into the tree! He slid to the ground, torso propped up, head practically falling off his shoulders.
          As I approach, his helplessness brings me back to Mrs. Alberts’ old brown tabby…my first.  I came across it on my way back from religious school. I’d just been allowed to walk home on my own (funny how Fate aligned my first cruel instincts with the corresponding chance for privacy) The old thing was lying under a bush along a dirt bike-path a few blocks from my street.  The brat had bitten me the summer before leaving me with a scar on my forearm.  The razor sharp teeth had formed a perfect mold of her upper teeth on my skin.  Although I hated the cat, I’d always adored the scar. It was so permanent, and orderly.  Upon seeing her I ran at her to frighten her, but she didn’t budge.  She just lay on her side filling her belly slowly like a balloon, and exhaling at an equally glacial rate. I grabbed a stick near me and began to poke at her stomach. How those low little groans thrilled me! I poked just a bit harder, then just once more.  I drew closer...
         I find myself back in the woods walking towards my semi passed out prey. Yet again I was the darkness, each crunch of twigs beneath my feet excites me.  That magnificent knot forming in my stomach, I can hear the fluid rushing in my ears, the blood in my cheeks. Lord I am alive!  I kneel down beside him, he looks over at me barely able to lift his head.  I lean in as though to kiss him again, raise the bags and slip them over his confused eyes, then the rest of his head before he realizes what is happening. 
         It is every bit as wonderful as I imagined it would be.  I quickly walk around to the other side of the tree he is leaning on.  I hold the bags tightly against his throat from behind the tree.  In his drunken panic he can neither reach me, nor claw through the heavily layered bags.  He flails his arms wildly, and kicks leaving deep grooves in the dirt from his heels.
         He can neither breath, nor see.  I can feel my own neck throbbing with my raging pulse as his neck is strangled between the tree, and the bags.  His muffled groans shoot electricity up my spine, and I am nearly ready to cry for my joy.  Nothing has ever felt so right.  I do this because I can.  I love it because I am completely in control.
         My excitement is boiling over as he finally goes limp.  I hold onto the bags a moment longer to be sure the job is done.  I have a moment of doubt as I realize the difficult task of disposing of his body.  I am unsure of what to do next.  I remove the bags, and examine my work.  His twisted expression and open eyes ground me completely, and I’m no longer afraid.  I had really done it.  I had killed a person.  I had shown another human being what I really was.  I had executed it perfectly, and back then I truly believed that no one would ever know. 
         I spent the rest of the night calmly going about my task.  The sky was changing from black to blue when I stopped to add his canine to my collection. I had just enough time to get home before Dad woke up.          
         I can only imagine the grimace that would spread across your faces to hear about Angie and I helping to hang “Have You Seen This Boy?” posters all over town with a group of kids from our class.  You do not want to know about the overwhelming pleasure I felt watching a search party riffle through the woods behind Donny’s house on the complete opposite side of town from his dismembered body.
         I am sure you think I am out of my mind.  Not only for my actions, but because I have written them down.  Immortalized them in black and white, and confessed to anyone who reads these pages.  A decade has passed since  what I have just described took place, and this is just the first of many such confessions.  For now I continue to walk among you, but you see, I know that one day I will be caught.  I must be caught so people will know that “...I am not what I am...”  When people finally read this they will know that things are never what they seem to be. They will know that evil can exist even in the sweetest looking girl, or neighborhood, or family.  My life will serve as an example.  So sit easy dear readers, and smile.