Nocturnal

Rex Gets Good News

School had started an hour ago, but Rex wasn’t there for it. No way he was going there. No way.

The cast on his arm was a badge of shame, a brand of weakness. Some would snicker; others would outright laugh at him. Everyone in school would know who broke his arm. That didn’t matter to Roberta — all she cared about was getting him out of the house. He’d pleaded with her to let him stay home, even cried a little, and all he got for his trouble was a slap in the face and a brief-but-intense lecture about being a crybaby.

He hated the BoyCo bullies. Hated them.

Roberta didn’t know about his secret places, his hidey spots. He walked toward his favorite — Sydney Walton Square, down by the Embarcadero. There he could sit with his back against his favorite oak tree. His backpack held his sketchbook, pencils, and his tattered copy of Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin.

Maybe he could read a little later, read about empires and knights and kings and queens, but first he had to draw. Draw more of what he’d seen in last night’s dream. Draw more of what had made his pants wet. It was wrong to want more of that, very wrong, but he had to draw it.

If only that dream had been real.

If only he was big enough, strong enough, to get an ax or a knife or whatever, use it on that stupid asshole, cut into his belly and drag out all his guts, hurt him, break his jaw so he couldn’t scream, couldn’t cry for help, could only whimper and make quiet begging noises. If only he were man enough to kill Oscar Woody.

Whatever Rex had been in that dream, it most certainly was not a man. He didn’t care. It had been the best dream ever. Ever. Oscar going over that black gate. Oscar turning … oh, the look on his face! And something with Oscar’s arm … Rex couldn’t quite remember. Had he broken Oscar’s arm?

It had seemed so real. But it wasn’t. He’d never be free of those bullies.

Rex wasn’t strong. He was weak. A wimp. Pathetic.

And that’s all he’d ever be.

The sun peeked out behind the tapering point of the Transamerica Building as Rex walked east on Washington Street. He looked up just enough to see where he was going. The rest of the time he kept his gaze firmly affixed on his shoes and the two or three yards in front of them.

It wasn’t until he reached Kearney Street that he looked around, and when he did, he saw a San Francisco Chronicle headline screaming at him from inside a beat-up newspaper rack.

Rex stopped cold.

GALILEO STUDENT BRUTALLY MURDERED

16-Year-Old’s Arm Torn Off, Still Missing

Those words called to Rex, but not as much as the picture that accompanied them. A small school photo of a smiling Oscar Woody.

Oscar Woody was dead? His arm … torn off?

An older couple walked by. Rex ignored them. Dream-recollections flooded his thoughts, crystallizing the visions of smashing Oscar’s face, throwing him to the ground, stepping on his chest, grabbing his arm and yanking until there was a muffled cracking sound and the arm gave way.

Rex felt his dick stiffen a little in his pants.

My dream … I did this. I MADE him die.

Rex’s pulse hammered through his body. His face felt hot. He grabbed the newspaper rack and pulled. The locked door just rattled. He dug in his pockets, but he had no change. He had no money at all. He turned in a near panic, eyes scanning for the ever-present bums. He didn’t have to look far. An old man with a dirty beard and even dirtier clothes sat on his knees in front of the concrete steps that led into Portsmouth Square park. Head down low, hands cupped together and held at chest level, the kneeling bum waited for suckers to walk by.

Rex sprinted to the man.

“Give me your change,” Rex said. “Give it to me now.”

The bum ignored him.

“I said give me your change!” Rex reached back his right foot and kicked. His sneaker landed in the bum’s ribs. The old man cried out. What a baby — Rex hadn’t kicked him that hard.

The bum fell to his side, his face screwed tight in pain. “Ohmygod ohmygod … you broke my ribs.”

Rex leaned in until his face was only inches from the bum’s, so close Rex could smell breath that combined fruity alcohol and decay.

“Give it to me now, you motherfucker, or I will cut you!”

The bum shrank back, tried to bring his hands up in a defensive posture, but his face scrunched tight again and his hands shot to his side, where Rex had kicked him.

“Please, boss, don’t hurt me!”

Rex felt electric — this man, this grown man, was terrified. Rex’s dick stiffened, throbbed.

“Hey!”

The voice came from down the street. Rex looked up. A half-block away on Washington stood a big man with a beer gut straining a white wife-beater shirt. He had a thick black beard that hung down to his chest. He wore a green John Deere baseball hat, and he was looking at Rex.

Looking so strangely.

“Hey,” the man said again. “You can’t do that when people are looking.”

Rex stared. More images, flickers of his dream phasing together in ghostly echoes. He’d seen this man before.

He’d seen this man in the dream.

Rex’s rage vanished. What the hell was going on? How could he see a man who had been in his dreams?

Then, a strange feeling blossomed in his chest. A warmth, a buzzing. It felt so good. The guy looked like a pedophile from a TV show, but the sensation in Rex’s chest made it feel like he could trust this stranger.

The man held out his hand. “I’ll help you. Come with me.”

Rex stared, then shook his head. The man was coming from where Rex had been walking … had the man been following him?

Rex turned to run, stopping only long enough to wind up with his right foot and kick the bum again, this time right in the face. The bum’s head snapped back, shaking hands reaching up to cover a mouth that already gushed blood.

Blood. I made him BLEED …

Rex sprinted down Washington, thumbs hooked under his backpack straps. He saw a Chinese restaurant and ran inside, pushing past anyone who got in his way. He slid past the tables, saw a door in the back and ran through it into the kitchen. People were yelling at him in Chinese or whatever, more in surprise than anger. Moments later, he found a door that led to a back alley.

He sprinted away from the restaurant, away from the bum, away from the bearded man. The emotions that pounded through his body, his brain, were exquisite in intensity and texture.

He had hit someone.

For the first time in his entire life, Rex had fought back.