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Immortally Wounded By Robbie Stockman

PART I: Suicide is a Dish Best Served by Professionals

Chapitre Un (1)

“Merde,” Michel gasped. “Shit!”

Forty-thirty a.m. in the middle of a residential street corner in San Carlos, California felt as solitary and frigid as the Siberian tundra. The street was still slippery from El Niño rains. It seemed like this was the only night in months the rains had subsided. Only a new substance was flowing now. His left hand oozed the blackness inside of him from his wrist, the cold and viscous fluid trickling down his forearm and splashing silently against the sidewalk.

“What have I done,” he cried aloud, not receiving an answer.

His vision grew hazy as a light mist wafted in the early morning breeze. He rubbed his eyes furiously, the blood smearing over his golden blonde hair and pale forehead. As the scent of rusted iron invaded his nostrils, a shock ran through the adolescent’s spine forcing him to his knees. The tears streamed down his cheeks, mixing with the blood and into his mouth. He spit and spit, but the bitterness would not go away. Around him a pool of blood began to form. The wound showed no sign of closing. Merde... merde, merde, merde! What am I doing here? What if I’m spotted? What if I’m not? Do I call out for help or do I lie down and succumb to my fate? His mind wandering, he didn’t notice the porch light in front of him suddenly come ablaze. The front door slammed against the siding as a short but burly middle-aged man in a dark green bathrobe and boxers rushed toward him, grabbing the boy by his shirt collar.

“What the hell are you doing here?” the loud, menacing voice barked. “You get the hell away from here, do you hear me?! You forget about this place. You don’t come back ever again. If I ever see you here I’ll have you locked up for good. Do you understand me?”

Michel, frozen solid, could not respond, even when the man shoved him into the gutter.

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“If you’re not outta here in five minutes I’m calling the cops!”

A loud bang marked the stern voice’s exit and then the light, all light, disappeared.

A few minutes later he regained consciousness. Rolling over onto his stomach, Michel picked himself up by his palms, scraping them against the curb. He worriedly glanced down toward his wrist. Mon Dieu... zut! The wound had closed and a thick white gash had taken its place. Although dawn had begun to break, his eyes were enflamed from the burning tears. He could barely see the nose in front of his face. Luckily, he had been going to this house every day after school for the last six months; he could practically feel the way home. Somewhere along Walnut Street his sight began to return. It was then he noticed another night-wanderer along his path: a small, dark- colored cat shivering on the porch of an unlit house clawing at the front door, meowing weakly. No one could hear it.

Seven ten a.m. Michel arrived home at last. He could hear the shower running from the side gate. At this time, he knew his mother would be busy noisily making breakfast in the kitchen, but his father had the ears of an owl and was just as fond at catching prey. Although he had never returned home this late, he figured his usual ruse would still do the trick.

“Milou!” Michel called, “here boy!”

Holding the back door open, a dog darker than his night ran past him into the house. Why would anyone name a black dog “Snowy”, anyway? Stupid sis! Michel made a break for his bedroom once he saw the coast was clear. Although his room was alongside the bathroom, he had been letting the dog sleep at the end of his bed for more than a year. Coincidentally, the dog had a weak bladder and would wake him up in the middle of the night to go outside. All Michel had to do was leave her in the backyard until he returned. It was a brilliant plan, only he didn’t feel so brilliant anymore. Before he even had a chance to change his clothes, he heard a knock at the door.

“Micha, breakfast!” “In a minute, mama,” Michel complained. The world hadn’t ended just because his life had.

As the steam rushed into his room, he knew it was his only chance to wash up before school. Looking into the mirror Michel was horrified by what he saw. Dried blood stains covered most of his face and arm appearing like smeared chocolate. The grotesqueness stared back at him. A monster. An abomination. This is not the face of a human being. Not anymore. What have I become? Another knock.

“What!?” Michel grunted. “I need the bathroom too, ya know!” yelled his sister, Julyana. “D’accord,” he replied. “Okay, okay... I’m almost done!”

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He was always subservient to his sister. As he reached for the door handle he suddenly paused and noticed the sink, covered in blood. Michel hurriedly grabbed his washcloth and wiped up the mess. Now what, he thought swiftly examining the bathroom. Stuffing the wet, bloodstained rag in his back pocket, he flushed the toilet and opened the door.

“You might want to wait a couple of minutes before you go in there,” Michel explained, holding his index and middle fingers over his nose. “What’s that on your fingernails?” Julyana inquired. “Oh,” Michel said hesitantly, “nose bleed.”

His sister flinched and closed the bathroom door behind him.

“Bon matin, mon cheri,” his mom smiled as he sat down at the table. “...m’tin, Micha,” his dad exclaimed as he shuffled more of his omelet down his throat. “Thanks, mama.” Michel was in no mood to eat or talk.

After taking a few bites of his omelet (yuck, spinach), Michel kissed his mom and dad goodbye, grabbed his backpack and hopped on his blue 1989 Schwinn 10-speed. The seat was small and torn up, the chain rusty, the gearshift broken, the side mirror cracked and the paint job was peeling and faded. Michel saw his bike as he saw himself: a broken bike for a broken kid. Oh well, gotta go to school, dead or alive.

Sequoia High School, in the neighboring town of Redwood City, probably looked as crappy a hundred years ago as it looked today. Originally built as a mansion, the school was painted a sickening beige color and had Victorian-era fences surrounding the school. There were bars over the doors, the windows and probably even the toilets. It looked more like a 19th century prison than a place of learning. The bike racks in front of the visitor parking lot were the only place to keep your bicycles in the whole school and were also where the local chapter of the XIV gang hung out. Leaving your bike there was like leaving your car unlocked all night in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Be prepared to lose whatever isn’t bolted down... and a few things that are. Michel locked his across the street, attaching the frame and wheels to a sign that read “Speed Limit 25”, even though all the cars sped down Brewster doing at least forty.

The walk to class seemed longer today. He hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in months. There was no way he could sleep. How could he sleep when every time he closed his eyes he thought of... damn, it’s her. Michel quickly dodged a bullet by ducking into the men’s restroom by the auto shop. Blech, was it nasty. The stench was bad enough from the other side of the door. The floor must have been half an inch deep in stale urine. Garbage was overflowing out of both trashcans: mostly toilet paper and food

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wrappers. He could smell the toilets just fine from where he was standing. No way he was going any closer. Only one person could have made Michel go into a public lavatory.

Her name was Amelia Davenport. Even her name drove him crazy. Five foot ten inches tall, long dark brown hair usually put into a bun, deep opal eyes, small, thin lips, carefully manicured eyebrows and lashes, and a body so firm yet soft, buxom yet small, that Helen of Troy would have lost all her suitors had they ever caught sight of her. They had been acquaintances once. The very first day of high school, the very first class, she sat down next to Michel in honors world history class. Every day he would stare at her during the teacher’s lecture, writing love poems and sketching her visage with his number 2 pencil while the other kids were drawing dildos or passing notes.

In the afternoon they were in drama class together. They were performing Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”. Michel had been acting since the fourth grade and all of his friends were in drama. He was sharing more than the stage with them now. Every day during lunch he’d hang out with them in the auditorium, the drama teacher Mr. Hume often getting into the conversation. They all saw Michel’s personality changing. No longer interested in acting in any other part than the tragic hero, he became alienated from his colleagues and his ambitions. He had not even bothered to audition. Operating the spotlights, he relished the opportunity to follow Amelia’s every move and wouldn’t blink the moment she took the stage. She was the first person he had ever had such feelings for. The sight of her was enough to blanket him in complete serenity. He treasured her above everything else, and it was costing him everything else in his life.

Each day he would talk to her just a little bit after class. If she had questions about the homework, he would answer them for her. If she were absent a day of class, he would give her his notes and a copy of the assignments she missed. He would listen to her problems and bring her gifts to help cheer her up. Eventually he got the courage to follow her to the library after school one day and talk to her. She loved history and literature. She enjoyed acting in plays and dancing in shows.

On the last day before winter break, after drama class had let out, Michel walked Amelia to the city library. The performances were over so Mr. Hume just had the students play acting games taken from the variety show “Whose Line is it Anyway?” He stayed with her as she checked out a copy of the latest Stephen King novel and stood beside her by the parking lot as she waited for her mother to come pick her up. He smiled staring at her dream-like beauty and realized he needed to let her know how he felt.

“I love you, Amelia,” he said abruptly. “Oh,” Amelia replied. “But you don’t even know me.” “I know, but I... do you want to do something, maybe, sometime?” “Aww, that’s sweet of you, but I have a boyfriend.”

The word short-circuited his brain and his heart turned cold. It was as if his soul had deserted him and all that was left was an empty shell. As he faced her in awkward silence, an aqua Honda Odyssey mini-van pulled alongside the curb and the driver

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honked the horn. Amelia turned around and waved in recognition before looking back at Michel with sympathy in her expression. As he watched her lips tremble and her eyes gaze into his, synapses began to spark and his brain shifted to auto-pilot.

“I understand,” he acknowledged glumly. “Have a good weekend.” “Thanks, you too,” she smiled earnestly.

He watched her gently slide open the side door of the van, observed her gracefully take her seat inside and then slide the door closed. He followed the van as it turned the corner on Main Street and headed away from view. Standing on the sidewalk, staring at the empty space where Amelia had stood, he couldn’t just let her go.

Michel spent his vacation thinking about Amelia, replaying her smile over and over in his head. He had to win her heart. No feeling this strong could possibly be wrong. It was a sign from the Lord that he was meant to pursue her. The emptiness inside could only be rectified by her love. His priest would often talk about God testing his children. This was a test of devotion. How much pain could he endure until he would give up his love for her? What would he be willing to give up in order to prove his love to her? I will suffer, I will sacrifice, I will persevere. I will show the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit that I can love absolutely and eternally. The warmth of God’s love would protect him from harm until he had achieved his destiny. It was this same warmth that enveloped him whenever he was with Amelia. It was a sign.

After school resumed he continued to follow her around, giving her notes in class and calling her on the phone declaring his love. Then on a warm Tuesday afternoon in the middle of spring break he went over to her house and knocked on the door. The tension in his muscles growing tighter and tighter as he waited pondering how she would respond. Finally, a young boy of about seven years of age answered the door. Michel could see the family resemblance so he handed the boy a card to give to his older sister. The child accepted the envelope reluctantly and headed back inside the house without closing the door behind him. Turning toward the street, Michel started to walk away when Amelia ran outside in her pajamas and called out for him to stop.

The day before he had gone to the bank and withdrawn a hundred dollar bill from his savings account that had taken him nearly a year to accumulate from his weekly allowance. He had been saving up for a Nintendo 64 but reminded himself that he had to sacrifice. He got a card at the local drug store and sat in his room later that night planning what he would write. Eventually he settled on two simple sentences: “I’m sorry I’ve been a bother to you. I hope you can forgive me.” Placing the money in the card, he sealed the envelope and wrote her name on the front of it in the exact same style as she was used to writing it. He had recovered every scrap of paper that she had ever thrown away and studied the elegant handwriting. It tortured him to be so close to her firm, delicate fingers and yet so far away.

Standing face to face with her on the sidewalk he wished that she was farther

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away, the distress in her face as discernible as her beauty. She shoved the card into his hand and quickly drew her hand back, keeping her arms to her sides. It was at that moment he realized what he was doing to her. God may want me to suffer, but that doesn’t mean she should have to suffer too. Amelia asked him not to follow her anymore and Michel nodded meekly.

The following week she plopped a paper bag on his desk before class began. Scrutinizing its contents, he quickly recognized all of the gifts he had given her since they met. Also inside the bag he noticed a single sheet of binder paper, its margins filled to capacity on both its sides. He stared at the paper dumbfounded, his brain failing utterly to transcribe the symbols on the page. Only one phrase stuck out, scribbled over and over again as if she had written it a thousand times: “STAY OUT OF MY LIFE!” It was then he decided that there was nothing left to live for. That had been almost a month ago. He had not spoken to her since. It had been difficult since they had two of the same classes, including drama, so he resorted to sitting in the back of the class and not participating. Now her father had caught him stalking her again outside her house in the middle of the night. Surely he noticed the blood on his arm and face. If not, he would certainly not miss what was left on the sidewalk.

Less than half an hour had passed in his first class when a security guard came into the classroom. Security guards at the school wore yellow safety jackets and, unlike some urban schools, did not carry weapons of any kind. Sure enough, he had come to take Michel to Mr. Vargas concerning his “behavior”. When he opened the door to the vice principal’s office he noticed his mother sitting beside the desk crying softly into her hand. Beside her was a uniformed officer of the Redwood City police. Michel knew. They had told her everything. His mom was muttering about God and his soul. The vice principal kept telling him how ashamed he must be towards the poor girl he had tormented. The police officer just stood there. His presence was enough. After being given a warning about attempting suicide, he was ordered out of Amelia’s classes. No more advanced placement history or English, no more theater, no more friends, no more Amelia. Period. Counseling would also be mandatory, at the family’s expense. High school counselors weren’t getting paid to deal with students’ problems.

That night at the dinner table was unusually quiet. Michel’s dad would not even look his son in the face. Julyana stared silently at her plate. She ate less than usual, although she was always going on diets so it might have been unrelated to the day’s events. His mom just kept cooking, more and more, as if the more food she made the happier the family would be. As if somehow her failure as a homemaker caused him to consider suicide. It’s always the family to blame.

Before bed, his dad knocked on his door and made him promise not to go out late tonight. No more sneaking out in the dark and getting into trouble. A good Catholic doesn’t do these things. Neither does the son of Gerard Foucart. His son is a good, well- mannered boy. It was then he looked into Michel’s eyes, as if to wonder, is this really my son anymore?

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Michel sat in bed all night staring out the window. Around midnight he noticed the light of his parent’s bedroom reflected off the backyard lawn. They’re still up? They’re never up past eleven. It’s about me. They’re talking about me right now, wondering what to do with me. I failed them. I’ve failed everyone. What else is there to do?

Chapitre Deux (2)

With the school year ending, the guidance counselors arranged to meet with students in their homeroom classes to discuss their plan for the following term. Miss Tara Lynn Fussey sat with Michel in his English I class and immediately started checking off boxes. She had dealt with him just last month when he had to be removed from Advanced Studies English and Drama I because of his harassment of another student. She detested chauvinistic males who thought they “owned” women and didn’t intend to be manipulated by this one. Although he had previously been tracked on the honors path, so had Amelia and she was not about to risk the possibility of them sharing a class. “Regular” classes, as Michel quickly found out, meant remedial classes; the average English I class consisted of writing a new vocabulary word (like “trivial”) and its definition (“this class”), then watching another movie from Mr. D’s laserdisc collection. Today they would have continued watching “Boogie Nights” if the guidance counselor hadn’t interrupted their previous agenda.

The counselor reviewed her marks as Michel sat silently, desperate to escape her malicious stare. She tapped her pencil eraser over the empty category marked “Fine Arts”. Since he was no longer enrolled in drama he would need an alternative to ensure his graduation. She pondered where to place him, the dilemma being that all of the art teachers’ classes were too much fun and relaxed to be considered punishment. In fact, the only art classes she felt students really hated were during the summer. She grinned as she scribbled down “Art – Summer Enrichment” after the “Other” field in the student’s folder. Michel didn’t care. He hadn’t planned on having fun this summer anyway. How could he? His fun had left him, and so had his hope, his dreams. The counselor made him sign off on his revised schedule before calling up another student, deciding the success of the next adolescent’s future.

Wednesday at four o’clock Michel would go see Dr. Zhargov, a marriage and family therapist operating out of a building filled with dental offices and chiropractors. The building itself was tannish gray in color with an obscure puce trim, like looking into the mouth of a corpse in the process of rigor mortis. The waiting room smelled like teeth. Michel hated the dentist: the drills, the plaster, the water hose; he always felt worse going out than he did coming in. He figured therapy worked the same way.

Dr. Emile Zhargov was in his mid-forties, gray hair, unkempt beard, stocky, wearing a corduroy sport coat, plaid dress shirt and a putrid pale green fuzzy tie. He was snacking on cheese puffs when he told Michel to come in, some of the crumbs clinging to his tie fuzz. He was on his third marriage; his first two wives hated him but the third merely disliked him. Although he had a couple of kids from his previous marriage they

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were never close and they didn’t miss him. Counseling gave him an opportunity to forget his own problems by hearing from people more miserable than himself.

“Hello, Mike,” Dr. Zhargov chimed gleefully. “What’s up?” “Nothing,” Michel uttered. “What’d you do in school today?” “We read about two lines from Homer’s Odyssey and then watched some softcore porno movie.” “The Odyssey, eh?” he chomped, crumbs spilling out of his mouth and running down his chin. “I’ve heard of that. What’s it about?” “It’s about some guy who gets lost trying to find his way back home, but on his way he keeps suffering from horrible random tragedies.” “Sounds rather timeless, doesn’t it?” “I really don’t care.” “Why not,” asked Dr. Zhargov. “He kind of reminds me of you.” “I think you got the wrong story, doc. I have no home anymore. Sure my mom and dad still act the part, but deep down I know they don’t see me as their son anymore. I’m just a stranger living in their son’s bedroom. I have no family, no friends, no life. I couldn’t possibly handle any more misfortune right now.” “Oh,” Dr. Zhargov interjected. “And do you think because you’re depressed right now that life is not going to get any worse? That just because you’ve had bad luck that you will suddenly have no more problems until your current ones go away?”

Michel left the therapy session more miserable than before. Being forced to pay someone a hundred dollars to be told your life will only get worse was not much of a bargain. Most of their sessions were simply spent talking about what he learned in school and listening to Dr. Zhargov complain about his personal life. Michel didn’t like complaining about his family. He disrespected them and he insulted God with his selfish, immoral act. They were not the problem. He had outcasted himself from his friends, his goals and his happiness. The only advice Dr. Zhargov had was to get an afterschool job and join a club. Michel’s dad urged him to get a job to pay for the therapy himself and was even searching the Internet at his desk at the Oracle Corporation for opportunities in the local area. Unfortunately, his summer school art class made most internship positions impossible. There was only one place he could find work: cleaning theaters at the cinema by the Bayshore Freeway. He would be one of the only cleaners working there who spoke English. How exactly he was supposed to communicate with people who couldn’t even comprehend him was never explained.

On the bike ride home from the counselor’s office Michel passed by Dylan’s house. Dylan Farish was probably the loneliest boy in the world. They knew each other from their 8th grade field trip to the Egyptian museum. Their history teacher, Ms. Consuelo, assigned each student a “field trip buddy” and Dylan and Michel were matched up. The teacher allowed each pair to explore the exhibits on their own as long as they

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stayed together. While Michel walked briskly from one exhibit to another, Dylan insisted on reading each plaque out loud, making comments like “I heard” and “did you know that?” It was the first time he had considered strangling another human being.

“Hey Mike!” Dylan called out from his front yard. “Ya wanna see something neat?”

Michel was raised in his family to treat others courteously, perhaps a tragic flaw in retrospect, so he leaned his bike against the fence and and walked with him into the backyard. Dylan led him toward what appeared to be an old garage and then walked around to the right hand side to a set of a set of double glass doors with a solid redwood frame. The brass door handle required some finagling before the latch clicked, but a moment later they were inside a cold, dusty and surprisingly dark home office. Surprisingly, there were no pictures of photos anywhere in the room. On the floor Michel noticed a thick layer of dust that had only been disturbed by one set of footprints that tracked back and forth, over and over. The same prints were currently being made right in front of his eyes.

“I gotta show you this cool game my dad just got.”

They made their way over to a grandiose solid oak desk with a mint condition IBM computer with only a floppy drive. Michel’s computer had a CD-Rom drive and a modem, but most adults didn’t use their machines for much more than fancy typewriters or calculators. Still, he couldn’t understand a teenager growing up in the mid-nineties who didn’t play “Doom” or “Quake”. Staring closely at the screen, the PC’s desktop only had shortcuts for Quicken and Microsoft Word. There was also a cluster of files marked “Confidential”. Dylan plopped himself onto his father’s black leather office chair and double-clicked an icon on the screen too fast for Michel to identify it.

“It’s a jet simulator! It’s got all the latest prototypes! I’ve already mastered the first ten of ‘em,” Dylan proclaimed enthusiastically.

As the image of a jet with the word “Loading” beneath it appeared on screen, Michel noticed that the copyright date read 1992. The game was seven years old. Dylan then began demonstrating how to do a loop the loop with an Apache helicopter. Michel gave it a try. The mouse was big and bulky. No matter what he did, he couldn’t keep the plane from crashing.

“Heh, not as easy as it looks, is it? You gotta get used to the controls.” “I can’t get the damn controls to work,” Michel protested. “Oh? Well the mouse is kinda old and dirty. My dad’s shopping around for a new one.”

Before Michel could comment, he could hear the sound of gravel being crushed by a car in the driveway. Before he knew what was happening, Dylan suddenly grabbed

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Michel’s forearm and shoved him out the door and dragged him into the back door of the main house into the kitchen. He crept toward the window facing the driveway, instructing Michel to duck down to avoid being seen.

“What the Hell was that for?” Michel groaned, rubbing his sore arm.

“Shh! Watch your language... Just watch,” Dylan whispered as he gazed out of the kitchen window towards the backyard.

As they looked out the kitchen window, Dylan’s mother walked into the backyard. She disappeared for a few minutes and then returned to their line of sight with a high-powered garden hose. She was wearing a short white t-shirt and jean shorts that barely covered her upper thighs. She turned on the water pressure and began spraying weeds on the edge of the lawn, the plants quickly forming a pile against the fence. She bent over forwards so that her ass was directly in their faces. Michel cringed.

“Ain’t it somethin’?” Dylan asked, still staring intensely. “Yeah, something,” Michel replied. “I’d better get going.”

Michel quickly rushed out the front door and took off on his bike. He didn’t realize until later that he had left his bicycle helmet behind. All he could think about was getting away from that kid and his mother as fast as possible. At least there was one kid in this city more miserable than him.