Fire Boy
By Elvira Drake
Copyright © 2013 Elvira Drake
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Friday
Jeremy Scott pushed his legs under the sheets and moaned. He dreamt of the world set aflame and only he was able to escape by jumping into a warm river and swimming away. The screams of the remaining inhabitants of earth screeched in pain. Sirens wailed. A voice called out from the black, smoke covered sky, “Jeremy! Jeremy Scott! Get up!” It was his mother’s voice. It was a cringe-inducing voice. “Jeremy!” And with a pull of the sheets, the cold air hit his thin thirteen-year-old body, shaking him awake violently.
His mother, Lucy, stood there clutching the blanket in one hand, the other on her hip. She stared down at Jeremy’s crotch and he knew. He knew what miserable thing he had done. He had done it so often. He carried the warm river from his dreams into this world. Except here the river was closer to a puddle. A puddle of yellow urine that left a smell. He looked down at his already stained bed sheets. Stained so many times it should have been tossed already but there was no money for a replacement so he would have to live with his embarrassingly stained sheets.
“Jeremy! How old do you think you are? Still wetting the bed.” Lucy tsked. She was truly embarrassed and disappointed with her only child, a son, pissing himself at his age.
Jeremy leaned on his elbow staring down hatefully at his crotch. Darkened with moisture. He wished the whole world would burn down.
After a cold breakfast of brightly colored cereal, Jeremy sulked out of the house and down the block to the bus stop on the corner. There were already a few kids waiting there. Samantha Jones was twirling herself around the stop sign. She stopped when she saw him approach and looked away. Her dirty blond hair flew around in the wind. Jeremy stood slightly away from the group and stared at her.
Snapping fingers rudely awakened him out of his wonderment. It was Theodore Haggard. He was a short, fat boy with a bright orange buzz cut and a face spattered with big brown freckles. He continued snapping his pudgy fingers in front of Jeremy’s face until Jeremy slapped his fat little hand away from him. Theodore took it as an invitation to fight, though Jeremy didn’t mean it like that but had no choice but to defend himself. He couldn’t be made a fool of by losing to this little midget dough boy. They tugged and pushed. The other children stood around and laughed. Jeremy looked up to see if Samantha was laughing at him. She was not. She stood looking unammused.
Jeremy gave Theodore one final shove which knocked him off the curb, thus ending the fight. That was that and Theodore knew it. He didn’t want to make a big scene out of it. Jeremy caught Samantha roll her eyes, shake her head and turn her back to him. His heart sank slightly. He stepped off the curb and crossed the street.
“Hey, where ya goin’?” one of the kids called out to him tauntingly.
Jeremy didn’t turn around as he heard another whisper to the first kid, “Don’t call him back here.” Jeremy knew when he wasn’t wanted. He kept walking down the sidewalk. He heard the bus pull up but did not look back. He only picked up his pace.
A few minutes into his aimless stroll a gecko crossed his path which he promptly stomped on causing a thin smatter of blood to squish out. He stood over the freshly killed lizard, staring at it. Alive one second, dead the next. This is true for all living things, he realized. Be it a plant, animal or human.
Jeremy observed that he was standing right at the edge of his neighborhood where it met the wooded area. He turned around and scanned the street. No one around. He retraced his steps. He heard a car coming around the corner and jumped into a bush in someone’s front yard. The car drove by without stopping.
Jeremy noticed that he was in Samantha’s yard and decided to creep into the backyard. There were two clotheslines up with linens out to dry. He spotted little white panties blowing in the wind and looked around, heart pumping against his throat. He felt the tip of his ears burning. Weaving through the rows of large white sheets he jumped up and snatched a pair before darting out of the yard. He ran as fast as his skinny legs would carry him, off into the dark wooded area surrounding the neighborhood.
The teenagers would hang out in the woods to drink, smoke and fool around. Jeremy liked to pick up empty beer bottles and shatter them against the trees but he had to be careful not to be heard, since he was cutting school after all. Another thing he enjoyed doing was picking up the cigarettes the teenagers snubbed, barely smoked because they didn’t actually know how to smoke. They pretended to but could only bare a few puffs before their prickly itchy throats became unbearable. But not Jeremy. He liked the taste and feel of smokes. His favorite part was lighting the cigs. That part he relished. Striking the match and watching the paper burn away, slow. He would keep the match lit as far as it would go before burning his finger tips.
Jeremy sat on a log puffing on the cigarette, thinking about the smushed gecko, and the implications it had on his life. How will I die? He wondered. He snubbed the cigarette and replaced it in his pocket for later when he suddenly remembered the panties he snatched off the clothes line. Jeremy drew them out of his pant pocket. They were made of cotton, with tiny pink frills on the edges of the leg holes. He pressed them to his nose and breathed in deeply. It smelled of laundry detergent. He noticed that the other kids in school smelled of laundry detergent but his clothes never did. His mom used the cheap generic brand of laundry detergent which never left his clothes smelling like flowers or the summer breeze. Jeremy rubbed the cloth all over his face.
He flashed back to Samantha’s mature face screaming with disapproval at his childish row. Humiliation. Humiliation! He scrunched up Samantha’s panties and shoved them into his briefs, throwing his head back in a dizzying ecstasy, splotches of sun shooting through the spaces in the trees. “Samantha…” he whispered to the dark silhouette of the treetops above. “Sa….man…tha.”
Jeremy wandered home and let himself in using the key hidden in the most obvious place, under the WELCOME mat. Except their WELCOME mat didn’t say welcome. It didn’t say anything. It was just a rough brown, tattered mat. Well worn. Like my parents, he thought.
He looked up at the clock and saw school hasn’t let out yet and his parents wouldn’t be home for another two hours so he threw himself on his sheetless bed. His mother threw it in the laundry, to be washed with the generic laundry detergent. His mattress smelled faintly of piss nevertheless.
Jeremy pulled Samantha’s panties from his briefs and held them up to the light. They’re perfect, he thought. Just like her. Her and her perfect family. He wondered what life would be like with a perfect family. The kind you see on an old black and white television show. His family was the kind of family no one would care to watch on television unless it was for shock value. Yes, folks, this is the America you don’t see! But for him, this was his reality. This was the America he saw every day.
Jeremy wondered where his dad, Virgil, was and if he would be home today. Or tomorrow maybe. Or maybe he found some floozy home wrecker in one of his favorite taverns. Probably rolling around in some bedbug infested motel bed with a peroxide blonde, offering up a whopping dose of herpes. Jeremy didn’t care. He wished his dad would stay away now. Far away. He didn’t do anything for him. He’s never there. If he had a good dad, he would care… but he didn’t. Jeremy bundled up his prized cotton trophy and tucked it under his pillow and drifted off to sleep.
A sharp slap shook him out of his sleep. He was confronted with his father hovering over his bed. Jeremy turned to look out the window. The sky was darkening. He sat up on his elbows.
“So I hear you been pissin’ yourself again, boy?” Virgil growled at him, hands balled in a fist.
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br /> Jeremy sat up straight and slumped his head. He didn’t answer. He did’nt know what to say. Sir, yes, sir. I pissed myself?
“You better grow up! What thirteen year old boy pisses himself?” He emphasized boy as if it were OK for thirteen year old girls to piss themselves.
Jeremy still did not answer. But he did agreed, it was pretty messed up of him to still be wetting himself. He was just glad he did it at home in bed and not while he was at school. That would just kill him.
Virgil shook his head and turned to walk out the door but stopped suddenly. “Oh, yeah. You have to go to a birthday party tomorrow-”
“Awwwww what!?” Jeremy cringed.
“Don’t talk back! You’re going and that’s that.”
“Whose birthday party?”
“Samantha Jones down the block,” Virgil answered as he walked out. “Suppers in a few. Wash up,” he called from the hallway.
Jeremy laid back down. He saw Samantha clearly before him. She was wearing her white undies, the one he hid below his pillows. He closed his eyes and again, began to drift into a hazy sleep. It didn’t last long for his mother called out for him to get his butt into the dining room for supper.