The Dead Boy

         

          The dead boy lies curled on his side, head resting on one arm. His bare feet are blue, nearly purple, his eyes closed, lashes long and dusty against his pale skin. Dressed only in a black T-shirt and faded jeans, his abandoned body lies in stark contrast to the rest of the forest.



Dawn draws nearer, the first faint rays of sunlight filter through the trees. Birds are beginning to sing, and the first hungry ants venture out from their nests. As the day heats up flies will arrive to perform their mating and propagating rituals, lovingly depositing their eggs into the soft parts of the body.



How did the boy come to be here, lying so peacefully in the grass? A closer inspection reveals that perhaps he is not so peaceful after all. His brown hair is matted and much darker on the back of his head, noticeably not from poor hygiene.



It’s a shame, really. Such a good-looking boy reduced to a pathetic bit of motionless flesh. Surely someone, somewhere, wonders about this striking teenage boy, maybe a skinny girl with a gap in her teeth and a flutter in her belly whenever he passes in the hallway oblivious to her existence because he’s one of the beautiful people and doesn’t waste his time with mere mortals.



An unfair assessment, perhaps.



Two boys enter the woods. The dead boy wants only a walk through the forest, time with nature in the peaceful quiet. His friend has another agenda, his heart filled with more than mischief. Jealousy has taken root, crowding out any friendship he might have felt for the dead boy. It’s a girl of course, a lovely smooth-limbed girl with butter yellow hair and moss green eyes. It’s always a girl, isn’t it?



The friend lets the dead boy take the lead, following him carefully over fallen trees, their sneakers crushing ant nests and scurrying beetles. He waits for the perfect opportunity. His belly churns with excitement and dread, his hand continually checking the pipe wrench in his back pocket, his fingers caressing the cool metal, the digits trembling slightly with anticipation.



It’s not hard to visualize the next moments. The dead boy will stop, leaning against a tree, ask his friend where to now? He likes the woods, likes the deep silence that reminds him of the time he spends with the girl, because she too, likes the forest. In fact, that’s where they shared their first kiss, an innocent fumbling of lips and tongues, skin flushing, breath quickening.



All this passes through the boy’s mind as he gazes up through the canopy of leaves, oblivious to his friend’s agenda. It seems fitting that his last sight is of the blue sky.



His shoes, though. What happened to his shoes? Perhaps it wasn’t a jealous friend after all. Maybe the boy was kidnapped, snatched as he walks home after school, his mind full of the girl or baseball practice or what he’s going to eat when he gets home, what he will watch after supper.



The blue van has been following the boy for two blocks now, its occupant waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect opportunity to perform his devilish deed. It starts to rain, the water sheeting down in ridiculous amounts, and no one in his right mind would try to walk home in this.



Of course the boy accepts a ride, why wouldn’t he? It’s a small town, a safe town, nothing bad has ever happened here, and never will. It’s this delightful innocence, this wholesome ignorance that works in the evildoer’s favor, and dooms the handsome boy.



When the evildoer has finished performing his evil deeds in the back of his blue van deep in the woods the boy loves, he gently lifts the dead boy in his arms and carries him even deeper into the forest, dead leaves crunching underfoot.



The dead boy’s head lolls, his eyelids shut tight against whatever terror he experienced in his last moments. Blood soaks the murderer’s sleeve, blood from the boy’s crushed head. When the murderer at last places the boy on the forest floor, he carefully arranges the body, his fingers lingering one last time on the smooth cheek, perhaps regretting his actions, perhaps not. Who can tell? The murderer continues on his way, his step lighter, his dark desires sated.



Horrifying, yes?



The dead boy cowers against the kitchen door while the beast foams and roars at him. The boy has done some perceived wrong, although he truly has no idea, can barely understand the incoherent ranting.

This is nothing new, this violence. It has been going on since the boy woke one morning and saw the beast on the couch with his mother, both of them sleeping, limbs entwined, beer cans littering the dirty carpet. He wasn’t the beast then, though. He was just Marshal, the latest in his mother’s string of worthless, drunken boyfriends. She’d married this one, though, despite the boy’s objections, maybe because of them. He’s never gotten along with her, has a hard time believing the overweight woman with the poorly dyed hair and love for whisky could be his mother.



Then it happens: the beast grabs the dead boy and slams him against the doorjamb, his head bouncing off the wood with bone crunching force. The boy slithers to the floor, his eyes sliding shut, his bare feet stark white against the dark linoleum.



The beast stands above him, glad for an instant that the brat is finally quiet, then afraid when the boy doesn’t move or make a sound, not even when it kicks his shoulder with its steel toed boot. This is a problem. Despite the mother’s constant bitching about the boy and the messes he makes, he is her child. The beast realizes he must dispose of the body, cover up his crime (but was it even a crime? Even a stepfather can discipline, can’t he?). Working quickly, the beast finds a ragged towel and wraps the boy’s splintered head, then picks him up and carries him outside to his rusty truck. It has to hurry; the mother will return soon from the bingo games at the church, and it wouldn’t do to for her to see this.



The beast cleans up the stain on the linoleum, tosses the bloody rags into the trash barrel as it passes by. It has a plan, a foolproof plan, it believes. The dead boy is known for spending most of his time in the forest, so it will not be much of a stretch to leave the body there.



By the time the beast is driving back home, it’s whistling and thinking about the baseball game in town tonight. Perhaps it will go.



Poor dead boy. Is there no one who loves this poor thing? Is he disposable? Forgettable? Regrettable?



The girl with the butter yellow hair. What of her? Will she miss the boy she kissed in the forest? Maybe she’ll keep her memories of him in her heart, pull them out when she feels especially lonely, close her eyes and feel his mouth on hers again while the wind blew her hair across both of their faces. I love you, he said, his eyes so soft. You’re the only one who understands me. That memory, yes, that’s the one that she’ll cherish forever. 



The drunken mother. Is it possible she will ignore the fact that her only child is missing, and her husband of a few years avoids her eyes when the subject comes up? Perhaps it will be easier to pretend the boy has run away, taken a Greyhound to another town where he can do what he wants and she can drink all she wants without feeling his judgmental eyes every time she picks up a bottle. If he could have just minded his own business, kept his mouth shut, kept his hands off crap that didn’t belong to him. She doesn’t blame the beast for his anger at the boy, and is secure in her knowledge that of course the beast would never actually hurt her son, not really, not beyond a swollen lip or a broken arm but that was an accident and it doesn’t count. The boy is hard to get along with, always wanting something to eat, new shoes, paper for school, so annoying all the time. So when she comes home from bingo, twelve dollars richer, she slips a little on the damp linoleum as she hurries to the cabinet for her vodka, a question flitting through the back of her mind (who mopped the floor?) and then it’s gone. The clink of ice cubes in a glass is as comforting sound as the noise of the television in the family room where her husband slouches on the broken down couch with a beer in one hand and the remote in the other.



After a few days, a week maybe, the mother will rouse herself enough to wonder where the boy is, spurred along by inquiries from the school and even the yellow-haired girl, the bravest thing she’s ever done, stopping by to ask about him. Another day or two of dithering before the mother calls the police to report him missing, and then she must answer as to why she waited so long, the chances are not good to find him alive after this long, the first 24 hours are crucial.



She will appear on the evening news, begging for the monster who took her dear son to please return him, he’s loved, he’s missed, tears spurting from her eyes, overdone mouth curved like an unhappy clown’s. Beside her the beast stands, uncomfortable, because he alone know the truth? Or because it’s the third inning and the Cubs are playing and they have a chance to win, the damn brat’s still ruining things.



The denizens of this small town are bewildered at the disappearance, the possible murder of one of their own, while others decide the boy just took off, ran away, everyone knows what a horrible home life the poor kid had, no matter the good looks, the grades, the girl.



The girl. Always, the girl. She has beauty, yes. It was this beauty that attracted the dead boy in the first place, her long, butter yellow hair, her white teeth, the feel of her lips on his. At night he dreams of touching that hair, of smelling her shampoo, of resting his cheek against hers. The girl has seen him, of course, seen him in the halls, watched him on the field from the bleachers, her eyes following his every movement, dreaming until the dream finally came true.



Then the dream ends, as all dreams end, although this one is a dream no longer, it is a nightmare, for the girl, but mostly for the boy, who is dead now.



The questions remain, however, of what exactly happened to this poor unfortunate boy, despised by the world, yet adored by a select few. Most had no idea of his private torment, how he dreaded going home, that he spent as much time as he could in the place where he felt the most welcome, where no one would hurt him.

Yet someone did hurt him.



This mystery…will it ever be solved?  Or will this boy simply be known as the Dead Boy forever, until he totally passes from memory? Even the girl will forget him, as much as she swears she will not as she sobs into her scented pillowcase every night, praying he will be found, praying he’s all right, praying that her worst fears won’t be realized.



Even the boy’s own mother will forget she even had a son, so consumed with her own worries about her own future with her current husband, soon to be the next ex-husband, unless one night this husband lets his temper get the best of him and then no one will remember her. Not a bad thought.



The friend will always remember what he did, always remember the heft of the wrench, the feel of the metal cool and then hot against his skin, sweat slicking his palm as his eyes center on the back of the boy’s head. Never will he be able to banish the sound, the sickening crack as the wrench made contact, shattering bone and pulverizing brain. Whenever he closes his eyes, perhaps after a long day at work, he’ll see it all, over and over again, see the way the boy crumples without a sound, hear the dull thud, smell the sudden copper smell when he crouches down to make sure another blow isn’t needed, and most importantly, he’ll hear the sudden silence in the wake of his evil deed, the forest going still, eerily silent.



The insects and weather continue their work, carrying out their tasks with efficiency, reducing the dead boy to nothing more than a slight lump on the forest floor.



Could something good come from this tragedy? Justice, perhaps? Only in a perfect world, a world in which boys grew up loved and protected, not neglected, abused and murdered.