Thirsty - M. T. Anderson [67]
“You can’t leave!”
“Not without slapping you first,” he agrees and slaps me for no reason.
I stagger back against a tree.
“It takes so little,” he muses, “to cause biological beings pain.” His leg swipes upward and catapults into my shin. I topple on the ground, swearing and clutching. “Very strange.” He titters. “I’ve been given so much power, Christopher, so much in payment for this little gig. I feel almost young again. Do you understand? I’m seeing new things! I’ll be like a god soon! Despoiling worlds! A reign of terror! Ha!” He performs a quick dance upon the summer moss.
I’m rising to my feet as he hops in his jig. I’m careful, slow, ready to attack.
Above him, the horrified moon looks down through the black branches of pine. He trots and skips, chuckling and hopping, clapping and laughing beneath the night sky.
My teeth are now moving, they’re sliding and pointing, they’re ready for battle and blood in my veins.
He’s tapping and spinning and whirling and laughing; he’s hooting great names in the still of the night.
I take a step forward.
I scowl.
And I pounce.
Whack! His fist flies out, and I go careening backward, my nose splattering blood down my face.
I’m on all fours again, kneeling in the moss.
Blood in my mouth.
I’m thirsty now. I lick at it quickly.
His shoes move across the moss toward me.
I’m hungry for the attack. I tense my muscles.
“It’s bad manners to kick a man when he’s down,” Chet says, “but it’s just Too! Much! Damn! Fun!” and with each word, he delivers a savage kick in my side or my arm or my head.
I roll.
I can’t tell which way is up. I feel the weight of my body, but can’t tell how it’s falling. My lips are sticky. Sticky. I lick them. I want his blood.
“Why me?” I gasp. I want his blood.
“Why did I choose you, Christopher? Because you threw the Forces of Light off my trail,” he says. “They thought that because you were a child, you were innocent, working for them. It took them months to figure out the truth. And by the time they did, you were marked as mine; there was nothing they could do.” His voice is ringing in my head — all around me, like a halo of feedback in burning red. “But do you know the other reason I chose you, Christopher? Because I knew you were an incompetent: self-pitying; self-absorbed; self-centered. The perfect teen. I knew you wouldn’t ask the right questions at the right time. In other words,” he says, leaning down and placing his hand kindly on my crippled shoulder, “I chose you because, to quote Tom, your best friend in this world, you are a complete peckerhead.”
He stands upright.
I lunge for his feet.
I pass through them, and he stands with his foot on my head.
He rocks the heel against my forehead. “No, Christopher. You won’t win this one.”
I am thinking wildly in my head, under his foot. What I realize is he must take me with him. I must become his assistant. I will help him in his evil; then one day, I will turn. I will betray him.
“You’ve got to take me with you. I’ll help you.”
“Good-bye, Christopher.”
“You’ve got to! You made me what I am!”
“No, I didn’t. Good-bye.”
“Chet! Pleathe! I can help you. We can work together.”
“No, we can’t, Christopher. I can read your thoughts now, and they’re stupid.”
“Chet!”
“That’s not my name. You don’t even know my name.”
The foot lifts off me.
I lunge again.
Again I fall through him.
He steps back.
“You can’t —”
“I can.”
“No, Chet!”
“That’s not my name.”
“Pleathe!”
“No.”
“God, pleathe!”
“Good-bye.”
“I’m tho alone! I’m tho alone!” I scream, terrified.
For a moment, the un-celestial being eyes me up and down. Almost with compassion. Then slowly, whimsically, he recites, “In the midst of life, we are in death. Of whom may we seek for succor, sucker?”
He smiles at me.
Then he vanishes and leaves me appalled; for I know, and realize, that all he has said is true.
I am in my room.
I’m grounded for staying out after midnight. Somehow, that does not seem important to me now.
I look at my posters on my wall and at the stack of CDs next