Ionic Relapse Read online

  Since that day they shared a close bond, but not too close. Never referring to Wayne as “dad” or “father,” Ashley had always been a respectful child with the occasional flare-ups that all growing teens have. Sharon would like to think that Ashley, whether she realized it or not, appreciated Wayne for the standing father figure that he represented but didn’t push on her. Just like with Sharon, he was always there for Ashley when she needed him and expected nothing in return. With her real father completely out of her life, hopefully lying dead in a dingy brothel somewhere in the dirtiest part of Europe, Ashley dealt with the divorce better than most kids would have.

  Looks like that might change.

  Sharon blindly shut off the sink and wiped the water off her face with a fresh towel. “I just think that maybe you overreacted today over Ashley’s friend being here.” Grabbing her bathrobe from its hook on the open door, she tucked herself in and walked out into the cooler air of the bedroom.

  Wayne, dressed in his plaid pajama bottoms and plain white t-shirt, laid on his back; his body stretched out on top of the sheets of the king size bed. Her words reached him from across the open room, faint whispers under the mountain of thoughts crawling and climbing all over each other inside his head.

  “You should really consider apologizing to Ashley for the way you yelled at her friend. I think she really likes this boy. You embarrassed her in front of him,” Sharon said as she walked over to the dresser, removing her pink shower cap to let the long blonde strands of gold-spun hair cascade down around her shoulders.

  Setting down a paperback copy of The Da Vinci Code, Wayne looked up at Sharon. “Just because she’s sixteen doesn’t mean we should let her bring boys over. You know what kids do at that age—”

  “I know that if we restrict her too much, she'll rebel.” Sharon’s still vivid memories of sneaking out her bedroom window to make out with Tommy Anderson by the rocks flickered in her mind's eye. Her parents had been strict, making the temptation to explore much more tantalizing.

  Wayne cleared his throat and rebutted. “We can’t just open the door for every boy to walk in here and—”

  Sharon turned from the dresser, leopard print bathrobe open to expose her freshly washed skin. She stabbed at Wayne with blue dagger eyes. Her usually warm smile faltered in disapproval. “Every boy? What in the hell do you mean by—”

  “I'm just saying,” Wayne quickly interrupted before Sharon could delve any deeper, “that if we let her do whatever she wants, we will regret it later. Trust me.”

  Sharon searched his placid face under the shallow light of the bedside lamp before turning back to her open dresser. Pulling out her matching cheetah print pajamas, she went back to the bathroom to lotion before getting dressed. She propped up one smooth pink leg on the lip of the tub. Rubbing cocoa butter into her milky skin, Sharon faced the open door. “Okay, Wayne. Let’s make a compromise.” She heard nothing in return until exiting the bathroom.

  “Compromise?” Wayne asked from the bed, his demeanor still calm. Reflective.

  Sharon climbed into the opposite side of the bed and faced Wayne. “We can’t completely stop Ashley from seeing boys. If we do, she might do something stupid. What we need to do is meet this boy that she likes and try to get to know him before we go forbidding anyone from coming over here.”

  “I didn’t say he couldn’t come here,” Wayne argued. “I just don’t want her here alone with some—”

  “THEN,” Sharon interrupted, “we meet this boy, have him over for dinner some time and find out what his intentions are with our daughter. Until that point, we can’t chase out her friends just because of their gender. We’ve been lucky so far, but you knew she would eventually be in a serious relationship. Don’t you remember being a teenager, Wayne?”

  He did, though he didn’t want to. He was the tall, lanky introvert with bad eyes and even worse skin. Every school in America has the type. Coke bottle glasses and poor posture aside, he was painfully shy and for most of his life avoided unnecessary conversation whenever possible. His high school years were mostly spent alone, reading down by the water in his hometown of Newport, Rhode Island. He enjoyed the solitude, never being one for easygoing chitchat anyway. But, he’d have appreciated some backup against the bullies who teased and tortured him all throughout high school. Like Kieffer, Wayne was singled out.

  The group of older boys who went looking for him anytime they got the urge to beat someone up was ruthless. Half of the group was the Miller brothers, Mikey and Bill, who acted as the two heads of the bully brigade. The other half consisted of Ted Burr and Larry Thompson, two braindead teenagers who intentionally huffed their brains to sludge on lacquer fumes. All they understood was senseless hazing, skipping over the harmless name calling that Kieffer was so lucky to endure.

  Wayne did his best to avoid the bullies. He knew if he didn’t that someday he would get more than just a black eye or scraped knee. But the more he hid, the harder they searched. And when they found him alone, always with his nose shoved in a book, it would already be too late to run. His efforts to escape into his literary worlds were always cut short by the arrival of the sadistic four horsemen. Each one crueler than the last.

  He learned after the first couple beatings that it was easier not to fight back. It only enticed the animal inside of them to jump out and tear him apart like a pack of baboons. There had been no other option but to roll with the punches and try his hardest not to scream. He was more than willing to take an ass-whooping if it meant he would make it home in time for dinner. He could explain bruises, but not broken bones. But, his patient virtue only fed their infliction. Each beating became longer and more agonizing than the last. Wayne did his best to cope, telling himself that it would all end once he got out of high school and out of this town. Had he known at the time that being a loner would cause him so much pain later in life, then he would have tried a little harder to make some friends.

  Maybe then someone would have been there to help him on that warm summer day when the boys found him reading down by the pier. His theoretical friend, or friends, could have stopped them from beating him unconscious and tossing him off the boardwalk’s rickety edge into the shallow waters below. He woke up covered in blood on the shore hours later with the orange dawn setting low across the water behind him. A cut from his right temple was responsible for the blood that caked his damp clothes. Its pounding spikes of pain followed the rising beat of his heart, each dull stab birthed pulses of nauseating vibrations that collided against the soft, open tissue of his temple. Wayne hadn't known it at the time, but he had hit his head on an ill-placed rock under the water and had suffered a serious concussion.

  He was lucky to be alive.

  Or so he thought. Until the choir of unfamiliar voices cropping up in his head soon started to overshadow his own.

  It was the soft tenor of Sharon's voice that pulled him out of the suppressed memories. “If we don’t let Ashley know that she has our faith in her good judgment, then she WILL act out. I know it’s hard, but we have to let her start being responsible for herself. If we don’t start now, she will end up getting pregnant before she even gets accepted to college.” Sharon knew plenty of girls who had done just that. All of them with overly strict Catholic parents who were forever tainted as failures.

  “Okay, you win. Have Ashley set up a dinner date with this kid.” He avoided looking directly at her and adjusted his glasses. His tone remained placid, his face stern in mild defeat.

  “I’ll see if she’ll want him over for this Saturday since we’ll both be home.” Sharon leaned across the downed sheets and kissed Wayne just below the faded scar on his temple. “Thank you, Hun. You’re an amazing man.” She rolled back onto her side, and with a clearer mind, fell into a peaceful sleep next to the man of her dreams.

  Wayne, on the other hand, leaned back over to pick up his book and flipped to a random page. He hadn’t read a single word of this hyped-up, bullshit story. He couldn’t get past the
oversized font and gratifyingly short chapters to get invested. And besides, he didn’t want to read. The bounded square of wasted paper laid open in his sweat-laced hands, words merely jumbled letters stamped across the page. Its purpose was to act as a cloaking device.

  He had other things on his mind.

  Seeing that poster with the crudely drawn face on it raised many questions for Wayne King. Not any questions of guilt or remorse, but questions of the poster’s cosmic regularity. Clearly not a sign from something or somewhere beyond.

  Or was it?

  Upon first seeing the old etching of himself lying casually on the couch, he was convinced that it meant something. But once it was out of the house, he was able to calm down and think more clearly.

  Things throughout existence seem to occur with some extent of a purpose or reason, but not all. As if an unseen hand or omnipotent force sets up ordinary people to encounter each other without reason, like fleshy dominoes, one teetering into the next in an endless cycle until the last human on Earth is dead. And even then, who’s to say that the effect doesn’t carry on into another world? Maybe every coincidence here, no matter how big or small, is something from the other side trying to push fate in a certain direction. If that were true, then maybe we in turn do the same. Like moving electrons that occupy two spaces at the same time, does the domino effect take place in every faction of time? We are constructed of these elements, so does that mean we also occupy more than one space? Are our bodies microbiotic pins that can tack together the shapeless folds of existence? Is there a fixed reality for each level of our being, or do they all overlap each other? Like stacked pieces of fine parchment paper, creating on the surface something solid but undeniably layered.

  This line of thinking consumed Wayne for hours after the incident. He had to squirrel away in his hobby room and work on his crafts to properly rationalize his thoughts. And what about Ashley’s friend Kieffer? Wayne thought later. Did he play some sort of minor role in all of this? Was there any other reason why that picture made it into his home after all these years? His mind wouldn’t let him settle for coincidence; it saw a bigger picture that his rational side wasn’t willing to accept.

  They were trying to reach him.

  The idea sent a ripple of nauseating fear through his brain. He felt his palms grow slick and his legs tingle with unease. Deep down, in the depths of reason once thought to be erased, he could see Them staring through the walls at him again.

  Watching. Waiting.

  Wayne knew this was all horseshit now. He was at one time a very sick man. Though the memories of that time remained, the voices and ideas of that man were dead. Wayne intended to keep it that way. The poster he found on his living room couch wasn’t a sign or an omen; it was just a regular old coincidence. No cosmic alignment to be found here. He soothed the stabbing heat of disquietude that pounded at his right temple, telling himself repeatedly that it meant nothing. Just another kid learning about his state's dark history. He wasn’t the first and surely wouldn’t be the last.

  It had been over fifteen years since Wayne had last seen or heard from one of Them. Another cosmic regularity when his only surviving victim accidentally cured him of his extreme mental ailment. He considered himself to be incredibly lucky considering all the things he did while under Their control. Countless sacrifices, the true number even unknown to him. The Doll Man was credited for the deaths and disappearances of thirty-five souls; the actual number was somewhere closer to sixty. The Allagash swallowed more than its share of rotted flesh floating through its cold, rolling waters. Most never seen again. He had his little red notebook of names to reference, but that could only account for a fraction of the kids he claimed. Sometimes the victim's name, self-confessed out of overwhelming terror, was lost under the piling voices berating his every thought. Often, he would get their names from the weekly paper. Knowing better than to keep the article, he would jot down what he could find and go about his day. Wayne only kept the book as a reminder of specific sacrifices. The ones where fate had led his victim right into his hands.

  He was incredibly lucky to be where he was today and not in a prison cell. The way things were going, he would never see the repercussions of those years come back to bite him. A smug feeling of superiority swept away the dwindling anxieties that gripped him since this afternoon.

  Wayne knew he would never be caught.

  His memories of those days took on a rosy hue. The blood of all those kids washed over his mind's eye, turning the whole past bright pink.

  I was so powerful, Wayne thought to himself. I alone held their destiny. I was like a God amongst children. Wayne forgot Them and only remembered the ego trip that came with controlling the fate of another living thing. Perplexing, yet, improbably exhilarating. It was a feeling that he had yet to feel again. Only in the dark memories that lay dormant behind his calculating eyes. The heartfelt pleas and echoing screams of all the children who he had shepherded into the next realm were an endless lullaby playing in his head.

  Smiling, Wayne set down his book and glasses and turned off the bedside lamp.

  Slipping under the covers, he drifted to sleep in a figment sea of blood and guts, the cries of tortured souls filling the empty spaces in his ears like the whooping gulls that fly through the South Pacific. With a familiar grin shadowed on his tired face, Wayne fell into a dream state where he could relive those days of power without Them pushing him around, picking at his brains.

  Although, it was They who made him reaper of all things innocent and a collector of untainted souls. He chose to only remember the parts that made him feel purposeful. Made him feel powerful. Sometimes at night just before falling asleep, he asked himself if he could do it all again without Them. Could he make a comeback if he felt the urge?

  As he effortlessly transitioned over to a lucid dream state, the hypothetical question remained.

  Through eyes untainted by foreign thought, he was again the bringer of childhood’s end.

  Tonight, even if only re-lived in his dreams, he was The Doll Man.

  Chapter 10

  June 6, 1984

  10:13 pm

  Caribou, Maine

  Day by day, Christopher Shaw became increasingly consumed by dreams.

  Not nightmares or hauntings of shadowy men leaking in through the hairline cracks in the walls, but an obsession with beauty in its purest form. A longing to experience the first living source of inspiration for man. True origins unknown, these faceless demigods and their evolutionary functions are undeniable. They are the givers of life and the destroyers of hearts if used by those whom possess their awesome power. The holder of this flame stands tall. Unchallenged. Relentless in a world of false truths and non-sequiturs. The mere presence of this force can scramble all sense of logic. Yet, they remain the only thing in this faltering world that makes any real sense.

  I, of course, am talking about breasts.

  Big floppy ones. Tiny teacup ones. It didn’t matter. He loved them all, and they loved him back. Every night since he was ten, Christopher dreamed he was naked in a land sculpted of soft, pillowy boobs. An artificially geodesic landscape full of jiggly roundness. Every building, tree, and even mailbox is rounded and capped with either a bright pink or beige nipple. When God made women, he must have done the nipples last, Christopher often thought. They were like two cherries on a perfect hot fudge sundae.

  Delirious with rapture, he would jump and dance through the abandoned cobblestone streets, the stiffening nipples under his feet tickling every bounding step. A collective slapping and flapping noise from above silenced his squeals of joy. He looked up with lidless eyes at a flock of busty Ballards flying low overhead. Their wings majestic and strong. Their feathery bosoms swollen and firm. Christopher's translucent hands grabbed and squeezed everything around him as his eyes teared at the sunset through the peaks of the glorious mammary mountains sitting proudly on the horizon.

  Then, the real morning came. His dream would be forced to a
n end. It was time to wake up to reality.

  And what a cruel reality it was.

  Christopher was the only freshman in his class who hadn’t gotten to second base. He had never had a girlfriend, or any friend for that matter. He was addressed by others on a strictly need to know basis. If he didn’t have anything urgent to say, he didn’t say anything. Aside from those tiny bits of social interaction, he was a complete loner.

  Not an ugly kid, but still not close to being attractive, Christopher was a short and stocky boy with no charisma. ZERO confidence. Not only in himself, but in the people around him. He was the guy in school who you always saw sitting alone even when surrounded by people. He was a chameleon in his ability to infiltrate regular everyday activities without ever saying a word. In the grand visual scope, he fit perfectly as just another face, but played no real function. He was the sort of solitary figure that stuck out socially like a rotten tooth. You could place him in a random group conversation and watch the group slowly break apart, leaving Christopher an isolated organism stranded among the cluster of multifaceted conversations all co-existing outside of his exiled world.

  A leftover nucleus from a dying chromosome.

  There was a simple but tragic explanation to why a perfectly mild-mannered boy of such regularity was so lonely. There was a crucial connection missing. One that could never to be mended or replaced.

  The human connection was gone.

  He was one of the unlovable.