Ionic Relapse Read online

  “I liked your presentation, Kieff. Very lighthearted.”

  A familiar voice from directly behind his right shoulder jumped him out of his ranting soapbox drama. He bolted up in a spastic shuffle, nearly dropping his overstuffed backpack.

  He shut his open locker door to reveal the glowing smiling face of his classmate and semi-casual school acquaintance Ashley Bennett. Being the only juniors in Ms. Craig's senior Sociology class and Mr. Wood’s senior Creative Writing course, Kieffer and Ashley had gotten to know each other well over the last three quarters. The two openly flirted in school, light teasing and touching, but neither one ever made an official romantic move on the other. Though, the flirting could easily be interpreted as nothing more than friendly horseplay.

  Kieffer was currently single. Well, technically, he had always been single. His only serious relationship had been online with a girl from Minnesota. They met on a popular serial killer fan club forum online, later taking their conversations to closed chats. The relationship wasn't at all sexual in nature. Not even so much as a candid picture was ever sent between them. Really, it wasn’t even a relationship. It was more like a long and in-depth virtual exchanging of intimate ideas and crude jokes that lasted for almost a year.

  He never loved Username: MissingKid89, nor did he ever try to convince himself that there was ever anything else there. As lame as it was, the primary purpose of his correspondence was the comforting thought of having someone with similar interests to talk to. That someone just happened to be a girl… probably. There was no way to be completely sure. The chances were just as good that she was a forty-year-old pedophile trying to gain Kieffer's trust in hopes of some day playing hide the pickle.

  Regardless, it’s hard to find good conversation these days. Kieffer knew his chances of meeting a girl at school who found him or his ideas interesting seemed highly unlikely. The probability of getting one of those girls to date him was implausible. His well-known reputation around school limited his romantic prosperity to negative integers. He was known as a nerd. A weirdo. A pretentious dick-nosed jerk that compulsively masturbated to snuff porn. He had heard all the labels and none of them came even close to the truth.

  Kieffer was just unusual.

  Ashley, on the other hand, was strange like Kieffer but only in the sense of her demeanor and humor. While she was a pretty pigtailed blonde with a cute button nose, smooth white skin, and full pouty lips; her surprising bluntness and obvious mental capacities over her classmates seemed to put people off. She wasn’t nearly as unpopular as Kieffer, but she also wasn’t exactly regarded in as high esteem as the other attractive girls around school. Maybe it was Kieffer's personal taste, but he thought Ashley to be a knockout. He had been secretly crushing on her ever since she moved to town late last year. Her modestly trim figure and confident voice instantly set her apart from the others. She was clearly set in her own ways, and Kieffer couldn't help but respect that. Even in heavy mascara and black lipstick, she was bright-faced and always radiated an air of classic symmetrical beauty that contradicted her sometimes fiery personality.

  Kieffer often fondly recalled the day she walked into Sociology at the beginning of the school year and took a desk directly next to his. As she made her way through the thin rows of desks, her huge milk saucer eyes found his and that was it. He was thoroughly awe-struck. For the next six months, Kieffer and Ashley saw each other in and out of school casually, often running into each other by mistake or being paired up by their high reading lexiles. Being put in classes together ahead of the other junior kids gave them even more reason to connect. By the beginning of the second quarter, they had already gotten close enough to form a loose and friendly rapport around school.

  Kieffer was adamant about not having friends. In a weird way, he enjoyed the anti-tribal practices. He had thoroughly convinced himself and everyone around him that he didn't need or want friends, but little did he know that he actually did have a friend. Whether Kieffer liked it or not, Ashley was his friend. He felt comfortable and unquestioned around her and she him. The only thing that was holding them back from seeing each other outside of school was the awkward sexual tension. Not the kind that two adults feel, but the kind between a boy and girl who are old enough to realize how anatomically and mentally different they are from one another. Still too young to understand the biological friction. The path to a boy and girl being good friends would always lead to assumptions of romance. Those assumptions always creep their way into a perfectly good platonic relationship and eventually poison the hosts.

  Kieffer was resolute in his decision to let fate take the wheel. Besides, the idea of Ashley liking him as much as he liked her seemed juvenile when he really thought about it. What would a smart, pretty girl like her want with a pale, sunken-chested weirdo like him? Although, he secretly felt that maybe, just maybe, she liked him back. Ashley soon replaced MissingKid89 as his constant online buddy once they swapped info, and soon Kieffer found out through many late school night chats that they had a few things in common. Ashley’s taste in music was shit, in Kieffer's opinion. He hated all that sappy emocore garbage that she constantly pushed on him, but her disdain for fan fiction and respect for film and literature coincided with his own.

  Even with the last half year of talking and light flirting for encouragement, Kieffer was still too much of a big soggy pussy to make a move. He didn’t even know if she took his flirting seriously. For all he knew, she just thought he was gay. A lot of his fellow classmates did. Being painfully introverted often has its negative stereotypes, one of them being that you must be a sexually retarded goofball if you don’t have a legitimate girlfriend by the age of sixteen. Can’t argue with that logic, right?

  Of course, Ashley had more than a few eager boys ask her out here and there since her move from downstate. But so far, she had remained publicly single. This didn’t surprise Kieffer much. She was a beautiful girl with an amazing sense of humor. Any guy lucky enough to catch her attention was in for a ride. If Kieffer had been a little braver and a lot less paranoid, he would have tried his luck. Even if he did, she would have probably declined. Turns out, she was a bit picky. Kieffer wondered if she had the same trouble finding someone compatible, someone with complete and utter disdain for regularity just as he did. The idea gave him a tiny nugget of hope to cling to. They never openly talked about that. In a way, he was glad. The last thing he wanted was to be that overly sensitive guy friend who you complained to about your boyfriend troubles.

  Kieffer found it much easier to carry on the friendship if he pushed those thoughts to the side. No sense in fucking up a good thing with a bunch of Victorian dialogue and bleeding-heart bullshit. He firmly believed that if destiny intended for them to be together, then it would be so. Why rush it?

  “Hey, just because I didn’t do my report on puppies like you did—”

  “It was on puppy mills, you fuckin' jerk!” Ashley playfully scowled at Kieffer as she rammed one tiny white-knuckled fist into his boney forearm. Kieffer tried not to flinch from the swift hit, but failed miserably, dropping his Algebra Two homework all over his feet. “You sounded like a robot back there, man. But hey, at least you did a good job of freaking everyone out. Tammy Meyers looked like she was going to puke when you started talking about vaginal insertions.” Snickering, she flipped off a group of passing kids before turning her attention back to Kieffer.

  “Seriously though,” Ashley continued as Kieffer crouched forward to lazily collect the spilled pile of papers, “your report was great. I had no idea that we had our own homegrown killer on the loose. It’s kinda cool, ya’ know? Like we have our own state mascot for murder. But instead of some gay chickadee or something, we have a lubed up naked guy running through the woods with a blood covered boner.” Her pink converse shoes and dark blue skinny jeans filled Kieffer's sight as he stood back up to face her.

  “I don’t think The Doll Man ever sexually tortured or—”

  “Jesus, Kieffer, relax. I was ju
st joking. Don’t act like you're friends with those sick freaks in your project.” Her sparkly Pepto pink nail polished hands smoothed unseen wrinkles out of her favorite Panic! At the Disco band tee. “Anyway, what are you doing after school today? I got that writing project due for Mr. Wood's class tomorrow, and I really need your help.”

  Initially taken aback by the request, Kieffer paused slightly and searched her big blue eyes for any hints of sarcasm. “Yeah, sure,” he said after finding only a hopeful glimmer. “You want to meet at the library, or—”

  “I was thinking, actually, we could go back to my place,” Ashley intervened before Kieffer could finish. His eyes must have reflected the tiny rush of panic that surged through him upon hearing those words, because Ashley quickly added, “I live just a few blocks up the street. I did the little amount I have freehand and, like a dick, I left my notebook on my desk at home this morning. I would send it to you online, but I really need to get this done, and I think we could hammer something out faster if we did it in the flesh. Right?”

  Kieffer heard her words, heard them a little too well. She wanted him alone in her room. The words hammer, dick, flesh, and freehand flashed and throbbed behind his eyes. It probably meant nothing, but soon that might all change. Kieffer knew he had a pension for over-analyzing, and most of the time he could keep himself in check. This time, however, he could barely scrabble together a short response. The steamy implications piled rapidly in his mind as she stood patiently and waited for him to say something.

  Just as Kieffer was about to flop out an excuse to delay the meeting, even if only for a half hour so he could mentally prepare, Ashley suddenly said, “My mom and stepdad won’t be home if you're worried about meeting them. They both get off work around six, but I figured we would have the basic outline done way before then.”

  Well, that escalated quickly.

  Alone. Together. Alone together, in a room, in an empty house, with many beds and locked doors. Had he been slightly egotistical or displayed any sense of bravado, he would have seen this as the perfect opportunity to test the waters of their relationship. But, in his current state of frenzied assumptions and nut-less thinking, the very scenario sounded like a nightmare. Kieffer had never kissed a girl, something that was painfully embarrassing for him to come to terms with. He knew it was something he wanted to do and that needed to be done, but he was a hopeless romantic. He wanted his first kiss to be with someone he liked, not just a girl who was willing.

  It took him several more moments to surmise that yes, Ashley Bennett would be that girl.

  “Sure, I’m not doing anything after school,” he finally said just as the awkwardness was about to peak out the entire conversation. “Meet me out front once the buses clear out?”

  Showcasing one of her flawless smiles, Ashley said, “You got it, fag.” And like that, she twirled around and walked to her next class.

  Kieffer watched her walk away with one question stabbing at his overripened sense of growing fear and anxiety. Each citation birthed tiny but complex scenarios where everything played out against him. He could see the ones where nothing went wrong at all, but they were buried under the insurmountable layers where he messes up somehow. All this festered and screamed in his head until the bell for last period rang, audibly bitch slapping him back to the now.

  Even as he ran the empty halls to his Algebra Two class, the one burning question remained...

  Chapter 4

  July 26th, 1976

  12:38 am.

  Limestone, Maine

  “What in the blue hell is that smell?” Eric asked bitterly as Nieko knelt in the moon-soaked grass to tie his ratty, dirt-clogged Chuck Taylors. Sticky strands of long, narrow weeds tickled at his naked wrists. Warm night air rustled the thick tangles of elm and spruce that hung ominously over them like sleeping giants in the white glow of the skull-faced moon.

  The soft, purring whispers of the surrounding blackness had made Nieko’s response sound unnaturally loud and whiny. “Calm down, Dr. Seuss. I’m sure it’s just a dead deer or skunk.” He wished at that moment, for the fifth time since beginning the hike, that he had been able to find someone else to go with him. Of all his other friends, Eric Holmes (a.k.a Toni Pepperoni) was the only one brave enough, or dumb enough, to dare make the three-mile midnight hike into the dark woods just outside the border of town. Time was of the essence, and Toni would have to do.

  The mission was simple:

  1. Carry eight canteens and four five-liter jugs

  of water to hidden crops.

  2. Water crops.

  3. Go home.

  It was relatively easy work for anyone not scared of walking these eerily deserted forest trails in the dead of night. Even with the promise of two ounces of sticky Colombian Gold for one night's work, Nieko had very few takers who were up to the challenge. What he really wished was that he could’ve made the trek alone. This had always been a one-man job. In fact, Nieko was solo during all check-ins the past two growing seasons. But sadly, he didn’t possess enough arms to carry all the water containers needed for this trip. It would take him at least four or five full trips on his own. He had no choice but to call in for some help.

  Therein lies the problem.

  The vague sensory threats of the dense blackness and the occasional encounter with a wild animal didn’t bother Nieko. It was the fear of getting caught that terrified him. He had made this bi-monthly trek for the past two summers now with relative ease because he was responsible for one person. Himself. His responsibilities just doubled. He knew this was Eric’s first run, and Nieko had serious doubts. But with the last winter and spring birthing several weeks of unusually hot, dry days and windy nights, Nieko had no choice but to play God (lazy jerk) and make sure his crops got the water they so sorely needed. This miracle work couldn’t be carried out in daylight if he wanted to see the fruits of his efforts. It had been four weeks since Nieko had checked on his babies. The mystery of their current state of maturity and overall condition was driving him crazy. Against his better judgment, he decided that he would go up ahead of schedule and do a little precautionary watering.

  Fumbling agitatedly with his crusty shoelaces on the narrow path encompassing the winding hillside, he wondered endlessly at the questions that plagued any serious outdoor grower.

  Was the sunlit patch of land I tilled secluded enough?

  Will I have time to pull the males before they cross-pollinate with any of the females?

  Have any bugs or animals gotten to them? If so, how many of the plants are effected?

  Will I be able to sex each plant properly by only the waning light of the full moon?

  Did I bring enough water to give them all a drink?

  Nieko started to get nervous about these unpredictable intervals when a loud screech echoed out of the distant hillside of shadows. He snatched up the containers that lay at his feet. He tossed them back over his shoulder as he quickly stood back up and looked around. “You hear that?” he asked Eric, blood soon pounding hotly at his temples.

  Eric stopped pacing, listened with one ear cocked towards the moon like an old prairie dog and said, “No… was it that shit covered skunk horsin’—”

  “SHHH!” Nieko hissed as his body tensed up like weighted steel cable. His breathing became shallow as his ears adjusted frequencies, scanning the murmuring sounds of the distant woods for anything unnatural. “I swear I heard a scream or something, man.”

  “It was probably a deer or a skunk,” Eric said mockingly, his tone that of a drunken Louisiana shrimp boat captain. “You ain't chickening out on yer’ own mission, is ya’?”

  “Just keep your voice down and follow me… TONI.”

  Nieko watched Eric predictably spike the two containers he was carrying and throw off his holstered canteens like a leashed monkey rebelling against its tyrannical organ master. “I TOLD you and everyone else that I DID NOT shove a pepperoni stick up my ass! I was trying to scratch a hard to reach… I dropped… F
UCK YOU! My retard brother is a fuckin' liar, so don’t you start with that shit, or I’m goin’ home, asshole!” he screeched angrily at Nieko as his pimple-spotted cheeks turned to purplish bruises under the pale glow of the overhead light.

  “Then stop acting like a bitch and follow me. Keep an ear out, too. The last thing I want to do is run smack dab into a black bear. The hairy fucker will probably smell that pepperoni stick you hide up your—”

  “That’s it!” Eric barked as he replayed his tantrum, blindly kicking the containers about the dusty ground at Nieko’s feet before turning to storm back down the sloping trail.

  “Alright, Eric. Hold up. I have a peace offering.” Nieko produced a pinky finger sized joint from behind his left ear. Rolled earlier that day for such an incident, the two-paper canon seemed to glow like a miniature white lightsaber. Walking after Eric, Nieko stopped to spark the joint. Catching a whiff of something familiar in the breeze, Eric looked back and saw Nieko crowned in a drifting turban of velvet smoke. As if just remembering the reason why he came out here in the first place, Eric casually walked back and motioned for the jib.

  “Shit… You know I can’t say no to that.” Eric wheezed between several long and deep hits. The minutes slowed to a snail's crawl, and by the end of the session, all sense of time had melted away. The dirt path ahead of them glowed in a luminescent cloud of dust that hovered on the shifting breeze. Tiny spinning minerals and dewdrops created a new and exciting starscape across the outlined shapes of the forest.