CW: Death of a Child, Body Horror
I’ve wanted to tell this story for years, but I’ve never been able to just sit down and type it out. However, due to recent events, I think now is the best time to share this, because I’m terrified, and I don’t know what else to do.
I’m Callisto The Moon, or at least, that’s the username I go by on Reddit. In real life, I’m a nineteen year old named James. I was born and raised in Brooklyn. I never wanted to live anywhere else. It was New York City! Who would ever want to leave?
And speaking of New York City, let me get some common misconceptions sorted out. A lot of people think that NYC is cold and uninviting. There’s always hustle and bustle and there’s no real heart to the city. That it’s just a cold concrete hell which it’s residents despise.
That could not be further from the truth. When you grow up in the city, you begin to know it like the back of your hand. By the age of 15, you know exactly where to go to catch each train and where they go. You know the quickest way from one side of Manhattan to another. You know which delis are the cheapest and the ones that don’t sell expired products.
It’s strange though. If you asked me all the stops of the A train, I couldn’t tell you, but as soon as I step foot on the subway, I know exactly how many stops there are until mine, and exactly what all of them are .
But before I got this ultimate grip on the city, I was just a kid who wasn’t even acquainted with his own neighborhood in Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, you only really live in one of two places. An apartment building, or if you’re wealthy, a brownstone.
Most apartment buildings used to be huge mansions that were heavily remodeled and transformed into their modern day counterparts. Most brownstones were newer, but a few were larger and more gothic. Grander. Me, I grew up in an apartment, but my best friend, Isaac grew up in one of those big brownstones across the street.
Like most brownstones, Isaac’s tiny little stone courtyard was protected by a dark ornate metal fence, with spade-like spikes poking upwards and patterns of spirals and flowers visible in the twisted iron. These fences were outside of pretty much every brownstone, regardless of how old it is. It was almost like construction workers saw these fences and just copied their design exactly when they were building newer homes. The black paint of the metal was always slightly chipped, but never to a point where you could see the purer color of the rusting metal.
Now, when you’re young in Brooklyn, you walk a lot of places, and normally with your parents or another responsible adult. As a result, it gets really boring. So kids like me would find ways to spice up the journeys to and from random places. What my friends and I personally liked to do was to run across the stoops of brownstones and leap from stoop to stoop, as there were generally huge bricks between.
Our grown-ups would monitor us, and make sure we didn’t fall and scrape ourselves. It was generally a harmless game with no risks, except for one. The fences. Every couple of jumps we would come face to face with a spiky fence, which our grown ups would forbid us to leap over, for obvious reasons. We would simply dismount the stoops and walk for a bit until the next game. It was a harmless game, and it was safe, until one day.
I was eight years old at the time. A third grader. I would normally walk to school with a couple other kids and the parents would take turns accompanying us. Today, It was Isaac’s mom’s duty. The group consisted of myself, Isaac, a girl named Izzy, Isaac’s sister Alex, a boy named Liam, and another boy. Kyle.
Now Kyle was a strange kid. He was incredibly unpopular, I mean, as unpopular as you can get in the third grade, and he was just, strange. He never really talked much and when he did, he spoke slowly and clearly. He seemed to have some sort of accent, though I could never place it.
The strangest part about Kyle was that his mom never walked us to school. Nor did his dad. Or his babysitter. Or any other guardian or family member. In fact, when he had come over for playdates that my mom had organized, no parent ever came with him.
Kyle normally trailed behind us, and opted not to play “Parkour” on the stoops. Instead he just watched. But this day was different. The walk was going as usual. I had just finished jumping on a particular group of Stoops that I had been trying to get a high speed on while Isaac’s mom timed me. When I was done, I ran up to her.
“Did I do it?” I panted, excitedly.
She shook her head.
“Still 12 seconds.”
I groaned.
“Let me go again! Please! Please! Please!”
“Sorry no, we gotta get you guys there on time, or else we can’t play Parkour at all, can we?”
I sighed defeated.
“I guess.”
I fell back into step with the others. Izzy and Alex were talking about some girl’s show that I didn’t care about. Liam was throwing a bouncy ball up in the air and catching it. Isaac had already started on the next group of stoops. That’s when the hand touched my shoulder. It was clammy, warm and large. Larger than an eight year old’s should be. I thought it was Isaac’s mom at first, but when I heard the voice I knew it was Kyle.
“I want to try.”
He said only four words, in that slow, accented voice of his.
“Try what?” I asked.
“The Jumping.”
“Oh yeah!” I said. “Sure, I think Isaac’s almost done!”
Sure enough, Isaac had dismounted his stoop and rejoined the group, running up to his mom to ask for the time. As soon as I gave him the go ahead, Kyle began to walk towards the next section of stoops. I watched as he climbed the initial stairs and made the first jump. I watched as the normally sluggish kid began to leap across the stoops with an unusual speed. It was faster than I had ever gone. Faster than Josh had ever gone. And his landings were perfect. They were beautiful. It was like watching Picasso.
Finally, he reached the end of the section.
“WOOH!” I cheered, clapping. But he didn’t stop. He made another jump. And this one was the last jump he would ever make.
I watched, eyes wide as Kyle did what was forbidden. He attempted to jump over the fence. I watched as he only made it halfway. I watched as his body dropped and I watched as the spiky rusty iron pierced his skin. I watched as the blood trickled down the fence and I listened to the terrifying moans of the child.
Kyle didn’t die. Not that day at least. He was in immense pain and I still heard his cries as Isaac’s mom called 911. Eventually, the ambulance came and took him away.
Over the next few weeks I learned that Kyle’s family had immigrated from Russia a year ago. His mother had died during the journey and his father worked long hours each day. He was far too poor to pay for Kyle’s hospital bills and as a result, he became deeply in debt. A month later, he died in a fire during an odd job. Kyle was sent to a homeless shelter as a result.
Kyle returned to school the next year. He seemed okay, but as the year went on, the frequency which he showed up heavily decreased. Eventually, it became rare to see Kyle for more than once a month. That was until he stopped showing up altogether.
It was now June of fourth grade and Isaac and I had been deemed old enough to walk home on our own. We were walking up the block to our house and having an insignificant conversation.
“No dude, I’m telling you,” I was saying. “Ahsoka could totally beat Kai in a fight.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Isaac shook his head.
“Maybe if it was Zane then he’d stand a chance, but Kai’s just lame, bro.”
“He’s literally the ninja of fire.”
“Ok? Ahsoka’s lightsabers are made of lasers, and i’m pretty sure that that’s also fire. Zane could probably melt the ice and extinguish them.”
“Uh, no, Ahsoka literally went underwater in that one episode.”
“Yeah but her lightsabers weren’t on then.”
“They totally were!”
“Nuh-Uh.”
“No cause she fought the big fish guy!”
“That didn’t happen.”
“It totally-“
We were cut short when we ran into a huge string of yellow caution tape. It was right outside of Isaac’s house.
“What the-“ Isaac began, but then he saw it. “Dude, look.”
I could barely see over the crowd of paramedics and cops within the caution tape but what I did see haunted me. It was Kyle, or at least it had been Kyle. His body was unrecognizable. It had been impaled on the fence of Isaac’s brownstone, but that wasn’t the most terrifying part. The most terrifying part was that Kyle’s body seemed to be in a pattern. A pattern that seemed impossible had he just been impaled by the fence. His head was tucked into his lap and his legs were bent upwards. His arms reached towards the sky. He looked like some strange, grotesque, flower. And then I realized. It was a flower. It was a flower that I had seen thousands of time throughout the city. It was the flower that was made of bent steel. It was the flower that made up the pattern of every fence in the city. And as I focused on Kyle’s impaled, contorted body, I realized what had happened. Kyle had been made a part of the fence.