After doing a few lines of Ritalin off the cover of his Social Studies text book Kyle forgets what video game he is playing and stares blankly at the screen. The pixel bodies of the electric combatants flicker in unison to his rapid blinking. Kyle thinks maybe his blinking controls the flickering image so he stops and stares hard at the glowing marionette ninjas. Sure enough, their flickering stops. High on his psychic mastery of the universe, Kyle leans back onto the carpet, lifting his t-shirt to wipe his nose -a trail of snot glittery with granules of chopped-up Ritalin streaks across his black shirt. Looking up at the ceiling fan he tries to stop the blades from turning. No luck. He must have used all his powers on the video game. The CD changer clicks and whirls. Death metal rattles out of the speakers -he can’t remember what was playing before. He fingers the Tarot cards strewn across the deep blue carpet. The cell phone he found at the Cinnabon at the mall rings but he ignores it. Rachel stirs on the bed, though. All he can see is the straw of her black hair poking out above the folds of his comforter.

Kyle stares at the fan until the blades stop, stop, hesitate then spin in reverse.

The cell phone rings again. This time Kyle answers it.

“You stole this.”

“I found it.”

Pause.

“Give it back.” Kyle hears a chewing sound. Gum. Or carrots. He can’t tell if the young voice belongs to a boy or a girl.

“Suck my dick.” Kyle grins into the fan.

Pause.

“Uh.”

Pause.

“Okay. Where do you live?”

“Miramar.” Kyle rubs his crotch.

Pause.

“Too far.” Click.

Kyle stares at the phone. It’s a Nokia. “Big deal,” he says, and throws it into the lap of the beanbag. He wonders about the voice on the other end, though. Definitely young. Possibly another recruit. Kyle has started a cult and needs recruits. You just can’t burn down a school or have a decent massacre with only four kids. Kyle wants a dozen. Needs a dozen.

Rachel wants to go to the mall to see the new Hellraiser film. They climb up on his roof to smoke a joint before she leaves. Kyle wonders if he were to kill her and leave her on the roof, would his parents be able to smell the body? He coughs out a really deep hit and asks her her opinion. “Well,” she says deeply, holding her hit of pot in for as long as possible, “heat rises.” They stare at the sky for awhile. A plane silently moves across the sky. “So,” Rachel asks, “how would you kill me?”

“I’d choke you, of course.” Kyle replies. He stares at the empty sky. He’s been up on the roof enough times to know another jet will appear in exactly five minutes. Rachel reapplies black lipstick, works her bra and says “promises, promises.” She fishes for the ladder with the heel of her pump, goes over the edge and is gone. Another jet slips by above.

Back in his room Kyle calls Randolph from the cell phone. He tells him that there will be a meeting tonight at his house and that everyone should wear black. In anticipation of the meeting Kyle unfolds a large square Japanese flag and tacks it to the wall above his stereo and television. He wishes the creases would fall out before everyone shows up. He can’t ask his mom to iron the flag as she’ll ask a billion questions. Usually at their meetings they watch one of the Faces of Death sequels then discuss their plans to destroy the school. Not tonight. Kyle wants things to move forward, and this means coming up with a manifesto and discussing recruitment. He knows Rachel only comes because she’s bored and in love with him. Randolph comes because he doesn’t have any friends and is in love with him too. That’s okay. Kyle doesn’t believe in love, but only guys are allowed to spend the night so on weekends he let’s Randolph sleep over and suck his dick. He’s been stoned enough to suck his tiny dick a few times as well and was somewhat embarrassed by how Randolph’s eye’s rolled back, how his tongue shot out like a cuckoo clock. Blowing Randolph is like sucking a little boneless thumb. Big Deal. He doesn’t swallow but Randolph does. He saves the Kleenex from when he masturbates and hands them to Randolph when they pass in the hall at school. Randolph blushes deeply and shoves them into his pockets and he believes. Kyle knows he believes. Randolph will do whatever Kyle tells him to do in the name of the cult. But he will do it because he loves Kyle, not the cult. Daisy, however, loves the cult. Kyle is impressed by her devotion but disturbed as well. She reads too much, for example. For Kyle there was some serious trepidation in starting a cult over a literary figure, but he thought he could handle it. After all, a cult is supposed to be a religion, and his only religious experience in his entire life happened while watching the movie about Mishima. He had smoked three or four joints with Rachel that night. They settled into the nest of his bed as the film filled his room with that particular blue of television’s second-hand light. Half-way through the movie he looked at her to see if she was getting it and she was; she was equally entranced. When the movie ended Kyle was more than wowed, he was ready. The next day at Barnes and Noble he and Rachel held hands among the bookshelves. There were so many books by Mishima. He bought as many as he could. Together they looked up Mishima on the internet. The black and white photo of Mishima’s severed head serves as the wallpaper on his computer, a pristine Dell his parents bought for him last Christmas. He read Confessions of a Mask. He chose to read that one first because the title sounded like something Metallica would call an album. Having seen the movie millions of times now he sees where Mishima was gay. He missed that before and was surprised by Confessions of a Mask. He gave his copy to Randolph because he knew Randolph was gay. Everyone in school knew Randolph was gay. Randolph seems always about to shrink. Messy blond hair melds into a pale complexion made paler by his choice of dark, dark, loose fitting clothes. Goth band t-shirts so large they hang off the bullet of his neck and shoulders like a sack. That following Monday after he saw the movie Kyle couldn’t stop talking about Mishima. About how much he cared. Cared enough to die for something he believed in. How he was really, really like the Kurt Cobain of Japan. But cooler—Mishima tried to overthrow the government. If Cobain had walked on stage and started pumping a shotgun into the audience, well, he would have been a God. Kyle didn’t realize he was shouting this to Rachel on the bleachers as they sat out gym class. Kyle shouts sometimes when he doesn’t mean to. Daisy, fat pimply Daisy whom he never talked to but who always gravitated toward them, so at a distance you’d think she were part of their group, someone one who had friends, Daisy listened to every word Kyle said and went to the school library and checked out one of Mishima’s books. She read the whole novel that night then returned to school the next day and checked out another. Daisy rented the movie. A week later she approached Kyle when he was alone in the hall and told him she was going to read everything he ever wrote, that Mishima was a much better writer than either Ann Rice or Stephen King. Kyle just blinked at her. Kyle was confused. He was half-way through Confessions of a Mask, and all he could think was Is this fat chick calling me a faggot? If Randolph told her about last Saturday night I’m going to step on his neck. Kyle stared at Daisy, fingering the porcelain wafer of Ritalin wrapped in foil in his pocket, when Daisy leaned in and whispered in his ear. I’ve seen the movie twice now. Wouldn’t it be great if somebody did something like that here? He pinched the pill in his pocket to dust, leaned into her ear and whispered back that’s exactly what I’m planning. You’re in. He walked away with had no idea where that came from, barely any idea where it was going. He couldn’t finish Confessions of a Mask, but read in two days the book his mother bought at the super market about the Heaven’s Gate Cult. Kyle then told Rachel and she kissed him. Kyle told Randolph and he nodded and said Wow. When he told Daisy that the first meeting would be after school at his house she took the folded Japanese flag out of her backpack and gave it to him. Scary, Kyle thought, making the mental note that when they massacre the school, to make sure her gun has blanks.

He was only half-troubled that Daisy’s read a lot of Mishima’s books—so far it’s been more useful than anything, like she’s doing homework for all of them or something. So far he’s only read the one, or most of it, anyway. He’s been careful though, to buy all of the books and to keep them in his room. One, Sun and Steel, he found used at the bookstore where he and Randolph buy comics. This book seems different from the others. For one thing it’s hardback and actually has a photo of Mishima in a loincloth with a sword on the cover. He showed the book to the group and proudly claimed that that was the sword with which Mishima was beheaded, that he had read it on the internet. Randolph often cradled the book at meetings, like it contained their commandments. Kyle found the book impossible to decipher. He would stare at the words and their cold poetry was lost on him, instructions to assemble something, the words marching around like fervent mechanical ants, never quite taking shape. Though he knew he and the cult were the parts to be assembled, he knew that much. The black and white photo of Mishima with sword showed a man with complete control. Every muscle was perfect and full. Kyle started doing push-ups every morning to Metallica’s greatest CD, Kill ‘Em All.

Daisy will occasionally mention a scene in a book that she thinks relevant and after the meeting Kyle will pour through that novel, searching for meaning. His particular coup was finding a copy of a film based on The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, checking out the Cliff’s Notes to make sure the movie didn’t deviate from the book—then he casually began quoting widely from the book, to impress the cult and keep Daisy from feeling superior. In the book a retarded monk burns an important temple. Kyle told the cult how they should shoot the teachers and the kids on their list, then burn the school down. Burning the school was a new idea to the group, one that was well received and made Kyle proud. Rudolph has a list of kids he likes and dislikes, those who should live and those who should die, that he constantly updates. He hands out revised editions every school day at lunch.

As Kyle waits for everyone to arrive he surfs the internet. He orders the film Dog Day Afternoon from Amazon.com and puts it on his Mom’s credit card. He’s been thinking about some of the skater kids he knows, but the coolest ones are straight-edge, and smoking pot, or at least drinking, since Randolph won’t smoke, seem like such an important part of the cult, so he can’t ask them to join. One of the guys, Randy, shaves his head and is the only kid at their high school with a tattoo. Kyle thinks he has enough time to beat off before the meeting when the cell phone rings. He answers it, “Hello?”

“It’s me again.”

“Uh. Yeah.”

So. Do you still want to use me?”

Kyle thinks for a moment and says yes.

“Wait a minute. Someone’s coming,” the voice says and the phone goes dead. Just then Kyle’s doorbell rings. Probably Randolph. He’s always early. That’s okay though, because now Kyle has a hard-on.

The meeting goes exceptionally well. Half-way through their gathering Randolph had what doctors in movies call a break-through. Rachel had scored some ecstasy at the mall and she split half a hit with Randolph while Kyle took two hits, forgetting all about recruitment while he and Rachel spun into their synchronized swimming routine where they swim fully-clothed on the carpet, imitating the stoic bird movements they found so hysterical while watching the Olympics a few weeks ago. While they were doing leg-splits on their backs Daisy fumed in a corner, Randolph kept saying “hey, hey, hey.” He had sunk so low into the beanbag only his knees and the Sun and Steel book shown, with a wisp of blond hair it’s bookmark. Randolph sat up, cheeks flushed from the ecstasy, and slammed the book shut to get their attention. “Hey. Did you guys realize that this book was published when Mishima was alive? I was reading the biography on the back. It’s in the present tense. Look, look.” He holds up the book with an intense earnestness. Kyle and Rachel stop their dry swimming and swing around on their buttocks to simultaneously face Randolph. Daisy puts her Gameboy on pause. “Look,” Randolph implores, handing them the book as he trips over his own feet, rushing to the pile of videos that bolster Kyle’s TV. “Look.” He then hands them the video box while taking the book back to expose the first page. “See? This date of his suicide in the movie is only a couple of months after the book was published.” Randolph’s eyes are wide, his pupils dilated. “He...he could have signed your book, Kyle. He could have signed it in blood!” At that the three of them collapse into an embrace shaking with tears, ecstasy percolating in their brains, their mission signed with the invisible, bloody kiss of fate. When they think Rachel isn’t looking Kyle and Randolph give each other little furtive kisses. Daisy puts her Gameboy in her backpack, announces that she has to get home before her ten o’clock curfew, and if Randolph still wants that ride he better say his good-byes now. The three of them take her command seriously, hugging and weeping much as prisoners might at the end of visiting hour. And just like that they start laughing. Kyle walks the three of them outside to the driveway. The street lights pulse like giant fireflies moored against their will, their green halos angrily enlarge then recede with each passing car. He takes the book from Randolph but before he can say goodbye Daisy reaches across, pulls the door shut, steps on the gas and roars down the street. Rachel looks up at him from in her car. He thinks he should say “I love you,” or “Drive safe.” Kyle smiles and says “I gotta go.”

In his room Kyle thinks about turning on some music or maybe the television. After his cult left he did two huge lines of Ritalin along with a few shots of Nyquil while playing some new Japanese video game, Store Detective, that Randolph bought on-line, one where you shoot shoplifters, losing points if you wing a salesgirl or a kill a shopper. Kyle’s vision is so blurred he just shoots, hoping for the best. He is out of pot so he rips the filter off a Kool and smokes it fast. Sitting in his room, trying to decide between turning on some music or maybe the television, the cell phone rings.

“It’s me.”

“Uh,” Kyle’s throat is dry, sanded by the fiberglass peppermint of the Menthol cigarette.

Pause.

“Uh. Do you want to come over?”

“Darling, I’m already here.”

Kyle laughs a short laugh and swallows, trying to get his voice to work again.

“Very funny. Fuck you.”

“No no. First we have to hold hands.”

Kyle still recognizes the voice. It is the voice. But clear, loud, almost with an echo, as if it were coming from the next room.

“Uh. Where are you?”

“The next room.”

Kyle looks around.

Pause.

“Where are you?”

“Leave your room and walk down the hall.”

Kyle smirks. He knows this is a game. He’ll play. Big Deal. He opens his door and looks out into the hall. Whenever he’s this high the hallway always has this familiar tilt.

“So where are you?”

“In your parent’s room.”

“No shit?” Kyle giggles, “Like, in bed with them?” Kyle does an exaggerated, cartoony tiptoe down the hall and puts an ear against the door.

He doesn’t know what to do.

“Open the door.” Now a flat whisper, as Kyle hesitates, the voice again says, “Open the door.”

Kyle opens the door, throwing a rectangle of light across the bunched quilt covering his parents, torsos oddly exposed, heads beneath a mass of pillows wrested from their covers. An arm of indiscernible parentage anchors the whole thing down.

Kyle looks around.

“I’m under the bed.”

Kyle turns off the phone.

He looks at the form of his parents beneath the darkness and sheets. The digital glow of the alarm clock showers stationary red comets across the thrust of his mother’s hair resting between sheet and pillow. With one hand lightly on the mattress he gets down on his knees and peers under the bed. The light from the hall cuts a clear, empty swath under the bed. Nothing there but his father’s shiny Colt .45, fully loaded, always loaded, straining against its black vinyl holster. Kyle reaches for the gun.

Pause.

 

© 2004 Tom Cardamone - Contributor's Bio