Claudia and Charlie, Charlie and Claudia

Claudia and Charlie,
Charlie and Claudia

It was just a trip to the college hospital, Charlie hauling me along on the back of his bike, pedaling faster than he needed to as I held on tight for the slightest of wobbles made me shiver with something that was a lot like fear. It was cruel but well desired twist of fate that once we had crept pass the volunteers at the front desk and walked through the labyrinth of chemicals and dim lighting, he began to grip my shoulders tighter than I had his, blue eyes darting franticly around for an exit as we saw our first glimpse of the cadavers that bought everything we had worn, eaten, and touched that day.
My father sat with a small gaggle of prescription glasses and ballpoint pens taking down his words as he explained something having to do with cardiovascular system. His olive green eyes went sharp at the sight of me and Charlie standing a few feet from door, bright abnormalities in his work place world of adults and dull colors.
“Claudia, Charlotte. Whatever are you two doing here? This is not the time or place for children! “Then he suddenly remember there was a dead body in front him and he rushed to loosely cover it with a white tarp, sliding his stained scalpel under the sheet in the same fluid but unprecise motion.
I could barely speak, my tongue dry from the churning feeling in my stomach as my fingers held on to the cheap paperback I had stood three hours in rather lengthy line to get him. Yet he just stared down at me, obviously thinking I had only come to steal pocket change and help Charlie in wrecking his precise office space.
When I couldn’t give out an answer, he took a breath in and released it to face his newly focused students, still jolting down notes as if this incident was to be on final exam.
“Excuse me for a moment. We’ll finish when I return” He stated sharply to the class and then grabbed me and Charlie by our collars and awkwardly pushed us along as he was too weak to drag us out, the fluid from the cadaver dripped down his hands and dampened the napes of our necks.
Once we again journeyed through the hospital only with our footsteps clicking through the halls, he dragged us outside the emergency room entrance and stopped sharply, reeling us back before letting go and forcing us to turn towards his wire framed eyes. “Can you please explain to me why you two interrupted me during a very important session with my students? If Martha wanted me at dinner, she should have known-“
“Dad, we came here-“but he simply glared me quite, aggravation making the edges of his mustache rise. I obeyed, head looking down as my eyes began to blink rapidly in order to keep my composure.
“Do not interrupt me again. I was speaking. How did-“
Charlie who had been silent from his shock jumped back into reality to defend me. “She stood in line for three hours and sweet talked your favorite author to sign a book. She wanted to give it to you on Father’s Day because that’s what today is, Father’s Day!”
My father took a few steps back, blinking in rapid bursts, slightly scrambled up as if an iron pan had just knocked against his scalp. He had let a fourteen year old peg him down. He looked at me and saw it the book, slightly opened in my hands with Agatha Christie’s curled cursive splattered on the front page. He looked somewhere between disturbed and confused in the late afternoon light, trying to figure out what he should do or how he could respond in a matter benefiting him.
Nervous that a negative option would outweigh the positive one, I closed the book and lifted it up to him. “ Happy Father’s Day”, I whispered but my eyes were on Charlie whose hands shook that same way as before he punched Raleigh Gibson for calling him a dyke.
My Father took it from me and lifted the upper corners of his mouth ever so slightly that I knew it was rarely used and the curling of those corners sent off a warm pop in my chest.
“Thank you. Now please go home”.
He walked away from us with his book tucked underneath his arm, slouching back to the students and cadavers he loved. Charlie stared, mouth thin as my father’s figure disappear between the doors. “What an asshole”, he muttered and shoved his hands into his jeans, fire brimming from his eyes.
“Charlie, don’t”, the command that came out wasn’t from Claudia. The person who barked it out was something different from me but not plentiful or common enough be called an emotion. I tried snatch onto it and twist whatever more could be rung out of that presence but it darted away, diving back into the crevices of my skull as a mocking laughter could be heard somewhere near my frontal lobe. Asshole.
Charlie nodded yes, after a few seconds of internal debate, before starting his trip back to the parked bike, undisturbed by the sudden command. Of course, he probably knew the being better than I did as it came when I needed it to stop him from breaking windows or crunching up old men’s flower gardens.
“Claudia, come on” He urged and pull his foot over the bike, tapping it up and down against the cement with impatience
“What? I was just thinking”.
“Let’s just go”, and his sudden softness made me realize why he was impatient, moving around in a single fixed point above his old faithful bike. It was the hospital, the looming bricks that towered over him and drew a thin sheet of sweat across his brow. And very few things made Charlie sweat like that.
I made my way over to the bike and we made our way home in total silence, quiet as we both had too much to mull over. He stopped down the street as the tip of our fence came into view. “Claudia, you know I’m boy right? I’m a boy”.
He stared out into the Ferguson’s yard after his question turned into a statement, face twisted like he was debating going over and watering the wilted looking petunias hanging around the porch or lighting them on fire. “Charlie, I know who you are.”
“Your father doesn’t. This town doesn’t. My own mother doesn’t”, He fumed out, flames dancing in the back of his throat, ready to set ablaze whoever disagreed with him.
“But she loves you Charlie. She loves you so much”, I retaliated back, remembering how many nights Martha tended to his wounds and packed his lunches with notes and kissed him goodnight before she trotted up to her bed. She did all those things for him not because she was given a check to, she did them because she loved him.

She would need a raise to kiss your forehead too.

I ignored the prickle of jealousy to listen to Charlie’s response.
“She loves Charlotte. Not Charlie”, he informed me in a graveled voice, knuckles white.
I didn’t know what to say, the air had been squeezed out of me as the sentence rung to my core so I wiggled off the bike, careful not to moon anyone who may be looking between their window blinds. He didn’t protest me departing early and instead took off, pedaling pass the house and turning the corner, disappearing somewhere he could throw rocks and break bones. I watched him, throat locked with words I could have said but knew they had no meaning to him because they had been used too many times for too many things.
I wouldn’t see him until I was jolted out of sleep with someone shaking me when the early morning was as dark as the late night.
“Claudia, Claudia, Claudia wake up!” His high pitched whispers disorientated me and I tried searching for my glasses on my nightstand only to have him steal them away from my grasp. But even then I could tell he wasn’t wearing his favorite jean jacket as his yellow t-shirt burned my blind eyes from how it contrasted with the darkness of my room.
“You need to get up. You need to help me”. The help part made me suddenly shiver as Charlie stood up from his crouched form over my bed, eyes tinged with desperation that dead men wore but he didn’t point them in my direction, choosing to glance over at my book strew shelves instead.
“What happened?” I asked, trying not sound panicked but failing miserably.
He didn’t look up and instead gripped my hand, dragging me down the steep stairs. We ran out of the house and jumped on his bike. He pedaled away from the house and ignored the stop sign near Main Street, constantly craning his neck around like he expected someone to be following us. Finally he stopped at the edge of the Peppermont River, a place people went to picnic and belly flop during the day before drinking beer and frolicing naked at night.
“Why are we here?” I whispered but Charlie urged me off the bike, still expecting someone with each turn of his golden head to pop out of the blackness not too far away.
We made our down the steep dirt curve and a rusty smell slapped my face before I saw an orange mass that only could be Raleigh Gibson, for his trademark mint plaid shirt was distinguishable even with my lack of vision. The closer we came with Charlie’s nails biting my palm, the darker the details morphed. Legs bent in painful looking angle, nose pointed to the left, and half of his giant orange curls spewed out two yards away from him.
“What did you do?” I spat at Charlie, ripping my hand from his as he moaned at my screech.
“It was self-defense. Be quiet”, he implored, now a golden white glob of cotton, flesh and hair in my eyes as Raleigh Gibson became clearer. I could see the remains of Charlie’s favorite jean jacket stuffed between his wide cheeks, muffling any significant chance of rescue.
“Self-defense? You broke his both his legs in self-defense?!” The hiss slide out between my lips as the being poked through my brain matter, smirking with a twist of its wrist.
There’s a pause and it’s a pause that filled with everything Charlie can’t get out in clear complete sentences. It’s something that make him fall to his knees, his glob condensing as a soft muffled whimper rises to overpower Raleigh’s faint yelps. The whimper becomes pitiful and brings the scent of rain to my nose as water pours over golden boy freckles. My tongue is numb and my hands take uneven grasps in the darkness until they slide against the shaved feel of brittle gold, sand in between the strands.
“He-he tried to pull my pants, he tried”, a struggling breath before continuing,” I couldn’t he would of-. It was gross”. Then he breaks down in fat sobs, his tears wetting my nightgown even from our barely there distance.
“Charlie”, I mutter into his hair, bending down to take in his scent, motor oil and ketchup and the way chocolate peanut buttercups feel against the tongue. “I’m sorry”.
Charlie just violent shakes against me, not daring to meet my eyes and we stay in this moment that counts seconds as centuries, his fingers barely grasping the dimples of my spines as I try to listen to the beat of his chest against my stomach. In my mind, I repeated his name over and over; however it becomes harder and harder each time.

Charlie, Charlie, Charrrrlie, Ccccchhharlie, Charliiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeee, Charlie.

Finally he tugs me off him with a gentle push and stands up, wobbling from blurry red eyes. “His dad is an attorney, a big shot who knows higher-ups in New York”, Charlie moaned, rubbing the spot between his eyebrows. “I’m gonna go to prison”.
“You won’t”, I responded trying to be comforting but knowing Charlie will end up in prison if anyone finds this bastard. He was girl who was a boy. A rowdy one too who didn’t like it when people snapped at him on the street so he’d chuck rocks into their windows. If he wasn’t an angel in the local law enforcements eyes, wait til’ they see Gibson Jr’s Legs.

He deserves it though.

But, Charlie would still be the one who’d end up prison. And maybe, just maybe he’d spend his whole life trapped in a cell because too many people just didn’t understand him. Raleigh was the victim in every scene that flashed through my head and Charlie was the one who’d always end up crying in a cold hard place I couldn’t follow him to.
A switch was flicked up and I could feel it, the person who I needed when there was a crack that needed to be filled. My hand came out and the being spoke for me. “Give me your Swiss army knife, take off your shirt, and gather some big stones up”.
Charlie gave them up without complaint, rubbing his arms as the cool summer air danced against his upper chest as he scuttled against the shore, not daring to breath in my direction. I covered one hand with the shirt and flicked the cardboard box cutter setting up. The next minutes happened in quality image pictures that only the darkness around me and I would reminder.
Raleigh Gibson’s eyes widening at the full sight of me.

The faintest scratch of metal against a fat throat.
My hand gripped around his double chin.
Red blood against a yellow shirt.
Those eyes that went blank.
Then it was done.
Charlie’s face.
Relief

I stepped away to see Raleigh’s dead body, not as similar as I thought it would to the cadaver I had saw on the metal table a couple hours ago, so still and full of chemicals you’d think someone whipped it up in the hospital’s lab more plausible than it ever walking around and having a name. Charlie stood quiet next to me, holding the rocks in his shaking hands.
The next part was easy but mechanical in its process. I open his body up with one sharp slice and filled it with the rocks Charlie continued to collect on the edge of the river. I closed him up by taking a strip of my night gown and lacing it through rough indentions I poked through with the Swiss army knife before tying his body up like a shoe. Charlie and I dragged him on a plank sitting nearby through the river though he brought it to where the current carried people off as I tried to scrub off the stare of Raleigh’s eyes against my skin.
Remember Charlie.
Charlie came back with shaking hands but nodding up and down as red danced off me. We both trudged back up to the sand pit, combing red sand into the river until it was replaced by a dark shade that was probably just dirt. Charlie stuffed leftover fabric into the pocket of his jeans but I could still see a piece of red against yellow from the overstuffed pocket. We got on the bike but I couldn’t remember the ride home, only the scent of pine and the distant shape of familiar landmarks that were unrecognizable but memorable as I stared from the corner of my eye into the darkness that seemed too close to me now.
I only realized we were home when Charlie shook me off the bike. “Come on”, and he dropped his bike on the grass as we tiptoed up the stairs before separating into our rooms.
The next part was just my brain, handing me information on task and I performing it as needed.
Take off your nightgown, put on a new one. Check for any stains, rub off any sand onto a towel, and put the towel in the waste basket. Repeat to make sure you’re still breathing. Make sure to still breathe. You die without air. Breathe.
Charlie came in wearing his pajamas, his own stained clothes balled up and thrown to my tainted white nightgown. I stuffed it under a loose floorboard and we curled up in my bed, his arms around me as his breath came out for the first time since I had woken up steady.
“I’m sorry”, he apologized, his sparks dying in the back of his throat as I could feel him, deflating against the ridge of my spine, sinking into me.
“Just go to sleep”. There was no anger or remorse or even bitterness in my sentence. It was just a sentence and he obeyed, the sound of his half-done snores filling my ears very shortly afterwards. He was the closest thing that I got to sleep until the dawn peaked through my windows, dancing like flames against someone who deserved to burn.