The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore - Benjamin Hale [170]
She shivered involuntarily, jumped up in terror, shrieked, and so on. Now, the throat of a little human girl is acoustically unique in this world for the sheer hyperbolic qualities of the sound of which it’s capable: so long in duration, so deafening in volume, so piercing in pitch! I had to clap my palms over my ears lest my exploded eardrums further bloody her stuffed animals (I had already bled on them some), and in the process of clapping my hands to the sides of my head—such that I resembled the central of the Three Wise Monkeys—my flailing arms upset the pile of stuffed animals, sending them flying in all directions, and also revealing myself from the waist up—and, upon seeing me, the girl’s bright eyes waxed all the wider in fear, and she screamed all the louder. Then she shut her mouth, and the screaming ceased.
“Do not be afraid!” I said, trying, I suppose, to sound powerful but benevolent, like the voice of an angel appearing before a mortal. She wasn’t buying it. She threw down her cigarette and bolted for the door. I leapt after her from my makeshift nest, stuffed animals bouncing and scattering all over the little pink room. Her hand was already on the heart-shaped doorknob when I intercepted her. I grabbed her waist and covered her mouth with my hand, which she then, with astonishing ferocity, bit. I suppose I understand, for I’m no innocent when it comes to using my teeth to get out of a tight spot. However, it certainly did hurt, and I bellowed out in pain, but did not release her. She kicked and squirmed in my arms, hitting me with her elbows and trying to kick my shins with the heels of her shoes.
“Please don’t be afraid! Please, please don’t! I won’t hurt you.”
She was weeping now in fear, wailing, thrashing in my arms. I dragged her backward into the room toward the fluffy pile of animals in which I’d been sleeping, and shoved her down while grabbing her arms and holding them pinioned together behind her back. I quickly inspected my hand: she had left a puffy bite mark in the flap of flesh between my forefinger and thumb.
“You’re a monster!” she screeched. I did not try to correct her.
“Please help me. I mean no harm,” I said.
I was still holding her arms behind her, though, with her head buried in the stuffed animals, and when she spoke her words were muffled: “Are you gonna rape me?”
“No!” I said, with a gasp of offense.
“Then why the fuck were you hiding naked in my playhouse?”
“I was lost and hurt and cold!”
“Why naked?”
“Because I have no clothes! They were taken from me!”
She quit struggling beneath me. I loosed my grip on her arms.
“Please don’t scream or run away,” I said. I slowly stood up. As I did, I seized a stuffed zebra, and modestly held it over my genitals. The girl slowly rose to her feet, too. She did not run this time, but backed cautiously away from me. I edged myself nearer to the door to prevent her from escaping, while clutching the zebra to my crotch.
“Who the fuck are you?” she said. “Are you like, some weird midget or something?”
“I’m shocked to hear such coarse language issue from such a young mouth!”
“I’m fourteen, dickwad.”
This information immediately injected into my heart an added affinity for her—for I too was in my fourteenth year. She caught my eyes asking visually at our surroundings.
“This is all my baby shit from when I was a kid. This was my Little Princess Playhouse.”
“Please—,” I said, still obscuring my groin with the stuffed zebra. “I need help. I need some clothes, at least. It was never my intention to appear indecent before you.”
“So are you a midget, or what?”
“In a sense, yes.”
“God, you are so weird-looking.” She stepped closer to me, her fear quelled.
“I’m sorry if I frightened you,” I said.
“Jesus, I thought you were gonna rape me. You’re all bloody! What happened?”
“I had to climb over a barbed-wire fence.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“Much.”
She noticed that the cigarette she had dropped had landed in her teacup, and was still burning. She picked it up, pincered between