I don’t know why I’m bothering to post this story here, but a memory I have from when I was a kid has been eating at me for weeks.
I won’t waste too much of your time with details of my current life, but I guess a few things wouldn’t hurt.
I live in the Midwestern United states, nowhere special. My job is normal, and my life is boring, but my dreams are… odd to say the least.
It’s not just that their subject matter is weird, no, its that they seem so real. I can feel and hear and smell and even taste things in ways I shouldn’t be able to.
When I wake up its like whiplash, you know, going from such vivid romance to bland, mundane reality.
I’ve been having these dreams since I was around 10, but back then they were more… narrative? I don’t know, they just had a continuity to them. Recurring dreams.
There were these things, creatures, that visited me periodically in my dreams. They were small, and they could fit in the palm of my hand. They had beady eyes, and sharp teeth, and their heads were wide and flat like hockey pucks. I told my mom about them and she jokingly called them ‘Puckheads’. I’d talk to them about my 10 year old trifles, you know: school bullies, homework, having to go to bed early. Normal stuff. Kid stuff.
There was also the abuse.
I didn’t realize it at the time, what it was. I don’t know if I didn’t know it was wrong or if I was too scared to tell anyone.
Mr. Tim was a family friend. He’d lived in the house across the street from us since before I was born. He and my dad hung out most weekends, and when I got old enough to walk he’d take me along on their activities. Swimming, fishing, bowling, all that good stuff.
Mr. Tim was touchy with my dad, so I thought it was normal for him to be touchy with me too.
One day when I was 9 he started actually touching me. I didn’t know what to do, or how to react, and I just laid back and let it happen, over and over and over again.
Then the dreams started, and I had an outlet. My mom wouldn’t listen, and she called me rude when I wouldn’t hug Mr. Tim goodbye. The Puckheads understood. My dad left me alone with Mr. Tim at the pool for too long. The Puckheads let me scream until I could feel my vocal chords tear.
I got older, and Mr. Tim got bolder, and my dreams got more and more vivid. I understood everything and nothing when I turned 14. I understood that what Mr. Tim was doing to me wasn’t normal.
I understood how much I wanted to hurt him.
The Puckheads would goad me to describe what I’d do to him in vivid detail. Sometimes, on those rare good nights, my mind would create a perfect image of Mr. Tim. Every gross, oversized pore on his oily skin, every wiry hair on his beard, the putrid stench of his breath, the rasp of his voice.
I’d tear into him without hesitation every time.
The Puckheads would screech something awful from the sidelines while I bit and scratched and stabbed and strangled. I always remembered the warmth I felt when I was satisfied, Dream Mr. Tim nothing but a lump of meat at my feet.
Then I’d wake up, and the cold would be unbeatable.
I came home, exhausted, from school one day. I’d had an algebra II test, and a mile run for P.E. that I’d forgotten about. There was some draft or sports thing on, and Mr. Tim had come to watch it with my dad. He eyed me when I walked in, and at that moment I knew. I’d had enough.
I went to bed sore, from P.E. and from other things. I took 3 sleeping pills, and squeezed my eyes shut. I wanted it so bad, to hurt him.
But when I opened my eyes again, I was still awake in my room.
I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, and I pressed the heels of my hands into them. I sat there for minutes, or hours, and sobbed until I felt like throwing up.
Then, a glint, in the corner of my eye.
It refracted though the swollen tear that hadn’t fallen out of my eye, and I turned my head towards its direction.
On the windowsill, they were there. The Puckheads, or at least two of them.
The light from the street lamp outside reflected off of their beady eyes. Their quiet chatter started when I noticed them.
I stood and wiped the snot from my nose on my sleeve, then crossed the room to the window. I kneeled and cupped my hands together, and they hopped off the windowsill into them. Their huge mouths spread into displays of their needle-like teeth. They both turned to look out the window and across the street.
Mr. Tim’s house.
Maybe I was dreaming after all.
I set the Puckheads on my shoulder, and crept out of my room. The stairs creaked under my weight, and I winced until I reached the bottom. One of the Puckheads leapt from my shoulder and onto the kitchen counter. It skidded to a stop on the gray granite in front of the knife block, and looked at me. The one on my shoulder tugged at my hair, and I swallowed. I reached for one of the black handles, my pulse throbbing as I curled my fingers around it.
I pulled it out and stared for a moment. It was clean, spotless, sharp, and beautifully mundane.
The Puckhead jumped on my shirt sleeve and climbed back onto my shoulder. I brought the knife down to my side and head towards the front door.
The night air was perfect in a way that made me want to stand on my front porch forever, just breathing it in. But I did ‘t. The Puckheads snickered and chittered on my shoulders as I crossed the street.
The yard was overgrown and filled with weeds, but Mr. Tim was never one for home maintenance, or personal hygiene. Each step I took made my heart crawl further up my throat, and my stomach sink lower to my feet.
Stepping up to the stoop, I stood I front of the door, listening to the Puckheads chattering on either side of me. I looked at the one on my right, and it was practically foaming at the mouth waiting to see my next move. It tugged on my hair again, and I reached for the silver door handle.
It opened, smooth and quiet, to a dark foyer. I stepped inside, and for a moment I considered turning back. It wouldn’t be worth the trouble, the police would question me, and they wouldn’t believe my reason for doing it. My parents would disown me, and I’d spend the rest of my teenage years in a detention center.
But I remembered. I remembered the pain, the shame, and the guilt. I remembered all of the times my parents left me alone with Mr. Tim, with his disgusting hands. I remembered staring at a water stain on the far side of my bedroom ceiling, gritting my teeth and waiting for it to be over. I remembered the sound of a belt being undone and clattering to the hardwood floor of our kitchen.
I don’t remember how I made it upstairs and into his room without being heard.
But I do remember everything else.
I knew I didn’t want it to be quick, so I started with his achilles tendons. His eyes shot open as the blade sliced through his skin and into the muscle, and be scrambled to get up only to fall flat on his face. The Puckheads were screeching wildly on my shoulders, jumping down to dance on Mr. Tim’s back. I smiled at them and shooed them out of the way.
Distantly, I registered his begging, and his apologies. The Puckheads had grabbed their own instruments from around his room, and began digging into him wherever they could. One gouged for his eyes, and the other snapped his toes. I heaved him onto his back and kneeled at his side, examining his chest. It rose and fell sporadically. Still alive.
Ribs are hard to cut through, as is the sternum. It only makes sense, the most important parts of our bodies are housed underneath after all.
I remembered from Biology that the femur is one of the hardest bones to break, and that actually fracturing it is one of the worst pains a human can experience.
Nociceptors in our toes and fingertips are what causes us the most pain when we stub them or slam them in doors.
Our spinal discs have the consistency of a loose jell-o, and our nerves look like angel hair spaghetti.
Our intestinal tract is long enough to cover the length of a tennis court.
I was waiting to wake up the whole time, and I was warm all over by the time I was done.
The Puckheads grinned up at me as I stood up and headed towards the bedroom door. Sunlight filtered through the windows on either side of the front door.
I remember the Puck heads jumping off and not crossing the threshold as I walked outside and back across the street.
They each pushed the door to Mr. Tim’s house shut, and I turned to walk back across the street.
There was never a missing person’s report filed. No cop cars pulled up across the street, no ambulances. Nobody heard from Mr. Tim again.
I never saw the Puckheads again either.