Bad Man

by Dathan Auerbach

Man’s life is a line that Nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it, even for an instant. He is born without his own consent…

But young boys are hard to bother. They’re immortal by their own measure. Only as the years wear on do they seem to see that there are fewer and fewer ahead.

Eric couldn’t be blamed. Not really, anyway. He was just a boy—old enough to have preferences and desires, but too young to be expected to control or manage them.

He stifled an impulse to call out, to yell for his brother at the top of his lungs. Because it wasn’t real yet. There was still hope. Screaming would make it real somehow. The door would open, the wind would carry the words, and this would all become a part of the world.

Every place he didn’t check was a place that Eric could be. And every place he did check meant he wasn’t checking somewhere else. Every choice seemed wrong.

Inside it looked exactly like he remembered it. The same sterile lighting and bad music. But it felt different, like thinking about the last meal you had before you got sick. It felt a lot like that. It felt exactly like that.

Infrequent cars lit up the road at the far end of the lot to Ben’s right, driving down one of the town’s main arteries, then being swallowed up by the darkness that lay beyond the illuminating streetlights of civilization.

“The trucks come Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,” Marty said, as they walked deeper into the back room. “We block the other nights—line everything up on the shelves so it all looks like one solid block.”

Something about this town, man. Got real big after they finished that interstate a few years back. But in a hurry, ya know? Like people got off the interstate for gas and couldn’t figure out how to get back on, so they just threw a rock and built a house.

When walls are thin enough, it’s almost as if they aren’t really there.

From the street, the homes really did seem nice. Picturesque even. But distance could do that. In reality, the houses were nothing more than cheap gifts in vinyl wrapping. Some of them were already starting to show their wear in charmless cracks and creeping mold.

But he stayed there, ensnared by her brittle hands like an adult elephant restrained by the memory of the rope that stopped it as a calf.

Every person has a day that transforms trust into a choice, when he learns that people lie for reasons all their own.

And as hope comforts us, it becomes easier and easier to forget that it too was in the jar that Pandora carried. It’s the one horror of the world that wasn’t loosed when she opened the lid. It’s the one horror that lives in us.

“This don’t look like help to me, man. This looks like hate. And I don’t hate you.”

“A suitcase can help you get to where you’re going, but only you can decide where that is, no one else.”

Ben rewound the tape. He understood why Palmer would have it. He supposed he understood why he had the other. But Palmer had them both. And there was something about that, something about the presence of them together—unmarked and uncataloged here in this place—that made Ben want to leave.

Junkie fuck put two babies in her and dragged that whole fuckin house into whatever’s below hell.

“Do you think that a place can be bad?” The last few words tumbled weakly from Ben’s lips as his voice shriveled against its own foolish sounds. “What? You mean like haunted? Like ghosts and shit?” “No. Bad like a person. Mean.”

“That notice don’t mean squat. Piece of paper can’t stop a person from stayin in a place.

Then Eric says he needs to use the bathroom. “I…I don’t know why I didn’t just take him. He’s little. He has to go to the bathroom. It don’t matter if I asked him five minutes ago. It don’t matter if it was five seconds.

Ben listened, but there were no more shouts at all now. Marty was still out there somewhere, chasing a blond boy through the wild trees. Chasing a boy who looked an awful lot like Aaron.

“I don’t think she can move on. And I don’t think that makes her weak. Everyone’s got that line.

but I spent damn near three weeks talkin to this lady just to find out that Eric countin up was supposed to mean that I was scared of losing you too.” “Why?” Clint tugged and scratched at his beard. “Because it was your turn.”

There was a question Ben could ask that would open Reggie up. Ben was sure of it. Everything Ben wanted was just below the surface of Reggie’s strained smile.

This wasn’t Beverly’s song. This was magic given to Eric by his mother. A song that beat monsters back into the dark.

Like a little boy, Clint appeared to be trying to will the world to his preferences, to will these people to stop and turn for just a second. To just look at the goddamn board. But they didn’t look. No one ever does.

I miss you, Brian. I liked you all the time. Easiest thing I’ve ever done. This book is for you.