He steeled himself. What he was about to do-educate them-made it even more real, even more hopeless. It was like admitting that they were just as normal as the Detroit Lions on Thanksgiving Day or Saturday-morning cartoons.
He slid up the sleeve on his left arm.
There sat the Triangle, bright blue under his skin. But the eye slits were still closed. show us.
“I can’t. His…his eyes aren’t open yet.” some can see. not all. not yet.
“So which one of you can see? My back? My…my balls?” no, your ass, show us
“No.” show us
“No fucking way.”
SHOW US
The low-level mindscream hit him, causing more fear than pain. What he had to do sickened him, but he had no choice.
He dropped his pants and bent over, gripping the counter edge for support. He held the ruler behind him at ass level, parallel to his butt cheeks, directly in front of the Triangle buried in his posterior.
“Do you see this?” Perry felt embarrassed, like a teenager who’s pantsed in front of the girls, or someone caught masturbating. He felt his face flush red. He was standing there in his kitchen, pants about his knees, bent over like some silkyboy waiting for a bull fag to take it to him. He’d certainly rather have some three-hundred-pound convict sticking it up his ass than deal with the situation he had now. Even AIDS would be better than going out this way. yes what is it
He felt loud, high-pitch noise. Excitement rolled into his thoughts, an overflow emotion from the Triangles. He’d had all the Triangles covered up from the first moment they could see. The Triangle on his shoulder had enjoyed only a few moments of vision before Perry fucked up its whole day. Aside from an eyeful of fork, this ass-eye view was really the first thing they’d ever seen.
“It’s called a ruler. It measures distances.” Perry closed his eyes and laid his head down on the counter. It felt cool against his warm face. “See the lines and the numbers?”
He felt them accessing the new words. yes lines and numbers yes
Their excitement level soared, leaking into his own mind. Perry fought it down. Anger crept into his thoughts-he wasn’t going to let their emotions overtake him.
“Okay. The big lines represent inches. That’s a unit of measurement. The numbers count how many inches there are. There’s twelve inches on this ruler, twelve inches is called a ‘foot,’ which is a larger unit of measurement. Understand?” The fuzzy noise in his head was a speedy blur, then it was gone. yes. twelve inches in a foot
“Okay. Now, there’re the twelve inches in a foot, and if you have three feet-” three feet is a yard
They were at it again, checking his brain like the Perry Public Library. It was a redefinition of being used, and one hundred yards in a football field there was nothing Perry could do about it. Nothing. His anger continued to grow, his temper slowly mushrooming like a nuclear pile approaching critical mass. Perry shut his eyes tight and tried to
5,280 feet in a mile control the emotions, but there were too many: excitement, frustration, humiliation from being bent over the counter with his ass exposed like some prison bitch waiting to be taken, and rage at having his brain and memories fingered through like a Compton’s Encyclopedia.
His father’s voice came to him, unbidden. This time it sounded real and vibrant, not a memory but something angry and new. Look at yourself, son. Bent over like some nancy-boy, you’re a goddamned disgrace. I oughta teach you some manhood, boy. You gonna let them treat you like that? You gonna let them? Huh, boy? You gonna let them
PUSH YOU AROUND LIKE THAT?
A narrow-eyed snarl slipped across Perry’s face. He reached his left hand over to the stove and cranked the front right burner’s knob to “high.”
He stood and pulled up his pants. Their disappointment overflowed into him, as pure and as powerful as the excitement had been. let us see. let us see
“You wanna see? See the fucking shit stains in my underwear.” let us see let us see the ruler
“Shut the fuck up, you’ve seen enough.” Part of Perry hoped they’d continue. He wanted to hurt them, teach them some manners. Another part of him (the part that had been all of him until a week ago, the part that was fading fast) struggled to bring his temper under control. He was split right down the middle, and he didn’t give a ratfuck which part came out on top. let us see See SEE
Perry flinched as the Triangle volume started to rise. A mindscream fast approached. The part of Perry that hoped for a peaceful resolution shrank away to nothingness.
In that moment, he was his father’s son once again.
“You want to see?”
Pain was coming, Perry knew. Truckloads of it. A clearance sale on agony.
“You got to learn not to talk to me that way. Tell you what, I’ll show you how I cook your dinner.” Perry hopped up onto the counter.
He sat with his ass on the countertop, legs dangling over the edge, right ass cheek almost touching the edge of the electric stove, back resting against the cupboards that held his mismatched plates. He watched the burner slowly change from black to a soft, glowing orange. An orphaned, dried-out grain of rice sat let us see on the burner. Perry watched closely. The grain was at first white, then slowly turned black.
It began to burn, sending a thin let us see now tendril of smoke toward the ceiling. The little stream thickened as the metal continued to heat, smoke rising in a tiny column then dissipating into let us see, we’re warning you nothingness. It was so black against the hot metal. There was the briefest flicker of an orange flame, and then nothing. The smoke quickly petered out, leaving a small black husk on the glowing burner. warning you warning you see See SEE
“You want to see?” Perry rolled onto his left cheek and hooked his right thumb under his waistband. They’d “warned” him. Nobody “warns” a Dawsey of anything. It was Perry’s house, after all, and anyone under his roof was damn well going to live by his rules. yes we want to see now Now NOW, and we’re not going to tell you again
Perry slid over so his right cheek hovered directly above the burner. He instantly felt the rising, searing heat. He pulled his pants down, exposing the right cheek to the burner only inches away. Blistering heat cascaded over his naked skin.
“Do you see now, fuckers?” He felt the overflow excitement again, coursing through his body, intense and stronger than ever. what is it? is it dinner? are we going to eat? what is it?
“You don’t know what it is?” Perry heard the malice in his own voice, the hatred and the anger that had once again taken over his body and thrown reason and common sense out some mental twentieth-story window to splatter on the concrete sidewalk below. He heard his father’s voice within his own.
“Well, if you don’t know what it is, maybe you’d better take a closer look!”
Perry slammed his right cheek down on the burner and immediately heard the answering sizzle. The scorching pain stabbed into his body, but it was his pain, and he welcomed it with the wide-eyed smile of a madman. His nervous system railed against the searing heat as his flesh bubbled and blistered and blackened.
NO NO NO NO NO
The stench of his own burning flesh filled the room. The unbearable agony ripped through his every fiber. Later on he’d congratulate himself on his incredible willpower-he managed to keep his ass pressed firmly against the burner for almost four seconds, fighting against his body’s primal directive to get away from the pain-
The mindscream hammered into his head and broke his superhuman concentration. Perry leaped off the stove and landed on his bad leg, which promptly gave way. He fell in a heap on the bloodstained linoleum floor.