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 Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 11:35 am
"Ugly place, isn't it?" passersby would say about the house, beautifully oblivious to the things inside and the story of the vaguely animate being within. Oftentimes they would see cats in the yard--there are a lot of them, taken in by the house and presumably fed sometimes, perhaps they took care of mice or perhaps they hasten the decomposition process. No one really knows.
The resident of 14 Branchland Court--these days, the only resident, aside from the cats--was a man named Christian Weston Chandler, though I hesitate to call him a man. He has been the object of trolling for I don't know how long. All the years seem to run together, all the sweethearts-of-the-week melding into one faceless girl in the trolls' collective consciousness, the various impersonators and claimants to the One True Copyright becoming a blurry mass of faces and mimicry. His long-abandoned website still exists in some form but he left it a long while ago, citing stress from troll emails and banner ads and people were sending him angry letters about the horrors within Sonichu Issue 12 or some nonsense. No one actually cared. Most people agreed at that point he was no longer funny. Rumors of institutionalization spread, but he was still there, at 14 Branchland Court. Still receiving his check. Still blowing it on video games and McDonald's food. Now that the lumberjack had passed on, he did not have to argue about Burger King's inferiority. He has not bought new shirts since Barbara died. 14 Branchland Court's exorcism is almost complete.
Under normal circumstances I would not care about this house. It would be a point of curiosity and nothing more. I wish I never had a reason to care about this house. I wish I had never watched him drink his own spunk mixed with Fanta, or clumsily attempt to pleasure a plastic doll, or hop about his room pretending to be a rabbit. I wish I had never read his insipid, self-centered blabbering on the Cwcipedia about how he was special and deserving of pity but also deserving of admiration. I wish I had never seen his horrible pornographic drawings, those that look like the work of a small child who had been molested. I wish I had never heard of Christian Weston Chandler.
I have my shotgun. I'm ready.
The yard appears to lengthen before me as I approach the house in the moonlight. The yard hasn't been taken care of in years. How long as it been? I know I look older than I did back in the day when we thought it would never end. I am unsure of my exact age and how long I have been awake. Far too long, I would suppose. But I know today may just be, as Chris would call it, a red letter day.
The front door is locked, a product of his paranoia about trolls and pickle men everywhere. I look under the worn welcome mat and find a house key. I could have just shot the lock off but I don't want the behemoth to notice me just yet. Not until he has nowhere to run.
I unlock the door and slip inside.
Within the house are piles and piles of garbage. There is a small pathway carved through it--judging by the dust, it was carved back when Bob and Barbara were still alive. They are still in here. I almost go into the basement to check but Bob has suffered enough. Barbara is likely in the music room but I have no desire to lose my sense of smell. The place gets dimmer and dimmer the deeper I go and I almost feel afraid. I'd forgotten what that felt like. I used to be afraid of guns, and afraid of ever seeing him face to face. After all that's happened I thought I had no fear.
The kitchen emits a foul odor that even my eyes can smell. My vision swims as I climb the stairs, quickly and quietly as I can, stepping on the edges of my feet to minimize noise. The staircase is quite creaky. Hopefully Chris is too occupied with his games to be bothered with checking the source of the sound.
The door to his room is slightly ajar. I am quivering, but not out of fear.
Here is the belly of the beast, the lair of the demon. The dungeon built to contain the mind of a stunted child within the body of an adult. There he is, on the filthy mattress with which he has essentially become one. He's far beyond the standard he set years ago--somehow he's become even worse. I want to turn around. I can't. I want to tear my eyes from his corpulent form and never have to look on it again. He's sitting in front of his television, playing LittleBigPlanet. Playing as Sonichu, like always, in this game intended for children. He's pretending for the thousandth time it's an actual Sonichu game made by professionals. He plays his homemade levels, over and over. I am unsure how long I am rooted to the spot. The soft glow of the TV reflects off the oil on his forehead. I do not catch him blinking. He is expressionless. I believe he has no conscience or emotion or brightness to his eyes because his soul left him long ago.
I feel cold as I cross the bedroom. He does not notice me. I am just to his side, mere inches away--he seems to be emitting an aura of warm moisture--and he is oblivious to my presence. I press both barrels of the shotgun to his temple.
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Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 11:45 am
"Christian Weston Chandler," I say, unable to think of something more clever.
He looks at me and gasps dramatically.
"Trowll! Awll cawll da poh-leese on yew!" he shrieks, ripped from his video game torpor.
"No you won't," I say, looking over the piles of s**t all around his room, the meticulously stacked video games and toys, hoarded away in neat rows while everything else lies in disrepair. "We're going to take a walk. A long walk."
"Why?" he says.
He wouldn't understand and he definitely wouldn't cooperate if I told him where we were going. I say nothing as I gesture to the bedroom door. Chris is vacant-faced for a moment. During his pause I notice his gray hairs and lines on his forehead. He has no laugh lines; he has never laughed or even really smiled. He's more bald than before, but his scalp still seems to produce a healthy supply of oil, lending his head a glistening sheen. Somehow he still has acne after all this time. He reaches for his cell phone on the other end of the mattress. I hit him in the ribs with the butt of the shotgun; he doubles over. I snatch the phone up and consider smashing it to pieces, but instead I slip it into my pocket. Perhaps it'll be good bait.
"Gibbit back," says Chris in a familiar whiny tone.
"No. Come on."
He stares at me but avoids my eyes, sort of looking up towards the ceiling or to my side.
"Chris," I say, "I don't want to make this any more difficult for you than it needs to be."
He turns his face upward as if looking down his nose at me, in spite of his a** being firmly planted on the mattress and me standing over him with a gun pointed at his brainpan. He turns to the television and, beyond all reason or logic I was raised to possess, begins to play LittleBigPlanet again.
Less than a second later, the television has an enormous smoking hole square in the center. Chris opens his maw and screams, long and loud. I poke him in the head to make him shut up.
"Do you get that I'm not ******** around? You could have just cooperated and saved your TV. But no, you had to be a Chris about it. Goddamn."
"Ah'm--Ah'm sorry, cuud you ruhpeat dat again?" he says. Oops, I made the mistake of talking too quickly for him to understand. I can't help it.
"We're going to take a walk," I say. "Move."
He still won't go. He gives me this pathetic look, like a scowling baby. I look up to the wall where his Pixelblock Sonichu and Rosechu hang, between Link, Sonic, Mario, and Samus Aran. They would be kind of cute if they weren't the brainchild of a truly horrifying human being...
I pick off Rosechu first. She explodes spectacularly, taking a chunk of Sonichu with her.
"Stahppit!" he screams. "Yorr frum da Encycapeea Dramakka paysh, aren't yew? Y'DAMN DIRTY--"
Sonichu's head bursts. All that really remains are his feet. Chris is silent for a long while, staring vacantly at the spot where his beloved creations once hung. Then he looks at my shotgun. I point it at the PS3.
"No! No, no!"
I grin and stoop down to pick it up.
"You don't want anything to happen to your PS3, do you?" I say imploringly, getting up close to his greasy face, hoping either his autism or fear of men will make him recoil. It works. "You don't want it to end up like your TV and your Sonichu and your Rosechu, do you?"
"No," says Chris. Oh Jesus Christ his breath is awful. I turn and yank the PS3's cords from the busted television and the powerstrip on the floor. "I'm taking this with me."
"Awll take the damn wawlk..."
"Good. Move it."
The street is deserted. Ruckersville itself has been deserted for a long time--and I'm glad, otherwise the cops here would probably attempt to arrest me for threatening a retarded man.
"Where we goin'?" he says. The stench of sweat is a little better out here where it doesn't have a small space to be concentrated in, but I still have to poke him every now and then or he'll stop to 'take a break' and wipe it all off his forehead with his shirt. It's disgusting.
"Charlottesville," I finally reply.
"Why?"
"Don't ask questions. You can handle it...you're fit as a fiddle, aren't you?"
"...Ah'm in pruddy guud shaype," he says.
"Still young and virile, huh? Still handsome like mommy says?"
"Ah do nawt--Ah do nawt uhpreciate yew tryna make me a h-howmow. No howmow fl-flirts playse."
"You haven't seen anything yet."
Chris decides to make a break for it, running ploddingly like an elephant with Downs. I give chase, which isn't hard, and run ahead of him.
"Do you really want your PS3 to go the way of your TV?" I say.
He sort of stops and hunches over, panting. I prod him into continuing the walk.
"Don't try to run. You have nowhere to go. I'll always catch up."
Chris grunted irritably and sighed, continuing as slowly as he possibly can. I am too desensitized to misery to feel the intended effect.
Some time later, at about sundown--I was slowed considerably by Chris's inability to walk longer than fifteen minutes without the sweat overcoming him--we arrive at the outskirts of Charlottesville.
"What's dis place?" says Chris, obviously very confused. He reads the sign in front of the building we stand before. He takes a second to read it, and his brow furrows. Then he runs.
I drop the PS3 at my feet, stick the barrels to its logo, and my task is complete. Chris turns. His mouth is open, but no scream comes out. Three nurses and one doctor emerge from the front door.
"There you are!" says the doctor, taking my shotgun. I don't care. I no longer have use for it. "Jennifer, call the police department and tell them the search is off, he's come back of his own accord...and take this with you."
Jennifer hurries back inside carrying the gun. The doctor finally looks to Chris.
"And who is this?"
"He expressed suicidal thoughts to me while I was visiting him," I say. "I brought him here to get him some help. He's homeless."
Chris does not comprehend what I'm saying. He's simply too shocked at the death of his PS3 to hear.
"Well," says the doctor, smiling kindly at him, "I'm sure we'll be able to get you the help you need. Welcome to Charlottesville Psychiatric Hospital."
Fin.
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