My Second Greatest Victory

I'm sure many of you are aware of my Greatest Victory, but for those of you who don't follow my life as closely as you should, several months back I won a Cake Decorating Contest. I consider this The Greatest Victory in My Life because never, in my wildest dreams, did I ever think I would get to say the words, "I won a Cake Decorating Contest."

Here's how it went down: I was at the wedding of fellow English teachers Liz and Eric, and instead of having the traditional Big Cake, they opted for having many little cakes . . . blank canvas cakes. And each table was given the task of decorating their table's little cake. The winning cake got the privilege of being cut and eaten by the bride and groom. I provided my idea to the table-- a sperm meeting an egg-- and persuaded my team of English teachers to go along with it (actually while they were debating what to draw on the cake, I took matters into my own hands and grabbed the icing and drew a giant sperm, but once I did this they happily jumped on board). We defeated many beautiful cakes, and seeing Liz and Eric cut our cake was a priceless prize.

This Friday, I was at Liz and Eric's house for their Second Annual Scary Story Contest. The contest is simple-- you write a scary story (under three pages) and put it in an envelope. They are distributed randomly, so most likely you are reading a story that is not your own-- and if you draw your own story, then you have to pretend that it's not yours. The stories are read. Then everyone at the party votes and the winner collects the prize money (10 dollars to enter, 5 dollars to vote).

Last year's party was a blast and the stories were really good . . . Eric won, but the competition was stiff. I guess that's what happens when you get a bunch of English teachers together. Nerds! We also guessed who wrote each story, and last year the only story that everyone guessed correctly was mine. I thought I had disguised my voice, but apparently, at the conclusion of my dream-addled tale, when the old lady protagonist gets eaten by a "series of animals," this indicated to everyone present that the story came from the mind of Dave

This year, I forgot about the contest because of the overwhelming force that is Disney, so I had to whip something up at the last minute. Having a theme helped with this; last year the contest was anything goes, but this year the theme was Winter is coming. Spooky right?

I decided not to hide my voice and instead write something I truly thought was scary (although not quite as scary as Fantasyland on a crowded afternoon). The stories were even better than last year-- they were genuinely terrifying. I will ask the authors permission to post them so you can see what I was up against. There were two that had similar plots: women out running who get abducted, there was a Southern Gothic style tale of a corpse that comes alive, and there was the poignant story of an innocent girl who learns the horrible truth about a pleasant spot in her backyard and what her father was doing under there. I read the last one and I was sure it was by Eric and that it would win. I was incorrect on both counts. No one could guess who wrote the stories, except for mine (oddly, the only person who didn't correctly guess that I wrote my story was my wife, who thought I wrote the awesomely scary "Skin and Bones," and so she voted for that, thinking she was voting for me). Despite not soliciting my wife's vote, I won the contest, and I am very proud, especially because I thought I had no chance. I am calling it The Second Greatest Victory in my Life, as I believe it just edges out This Victory.

So here is my Prize Winning Scary Story . . . don't read it alone . . .

Suckers

His mom only had two, and they were inconspicuous. One dangled from her wrist, like a bulbous charm, and the other was on the back of her calf, so she had to wear dresses instead of pants. But he didn’t think his mom minded. She liked dresses.

His dad had it worse. When he was clearing out the brush on the side of the shed, he had stumbled into a nest of them and they got in his clothes. A strip of five hung down his right arm, four on his left. Then there were several on his neck, and one behind his ear. He had to have his work shirts tailored so that the sleeves were extra loose and the neck was extra large. He looked like a ghost, floating inside all that billowing material. And they were bigger on his dad than on his mom. Nearly the size of golf balls, fat with blood, useless little legs barely visible. Tyler knew that men had a faster metabolism than women, they ate more and felt warmer when it was cold. And that’s why the suckers grew larger on men.

He rolled onto his stomach, so he was hanging off the side of his bed and he reached under. Out came the plastic container. He wondered who would be angrier about the contents, his mom or his dad. Probably his sister. Kelly cried and cried after she pulled on a sock with a sucker in it. And it only latched onto her ankle. That was nothing. That girl in his class, Emily Berst, had one smack in the middle of her forehead, pulsing and sucking away for everyone to see. That was bad. You couldn’t to look at her when she talked, and you could almost hear the little tongue lapping at her blood, lapping at her brain. No one was mean enough to make fun of her to her face-- but behind her back they called her cyclops. And she ate lunch alone. No one could face that glistening, translucent thing while they ate.

That morning his sister said to their mom: “Fuck it. Maybe I’ll cut my leg off, right below the knee. Just so I can wear jeans again.” It was the first time he ever heard her use the f-- word in front of her parents. Tyler looked from his mom to his dad, but they let it slide. He had heard both his mom, his dad, and several teachers use the f-- word in reference to the suckers. He was going to try it tomorrow, in front of some adults, and see if he got away with it.
“Honey . . . honey, you’re so young,” his mother said to his sister. “They’ll figure out how to get them off. I heard that they might be able to freeze them off.”
“You’re going to let them try? Because I’m not.”
Tyler decided this was a good time to chime in, “We learned at school that they generate the neurotoxin no matter what. If they’re injured or killed or anything. It’s automatic. It’s a perfect defense system, because they have no choice. Mr. Mann said it’s like Mutual Assured Destruction. It’s an instinctual adaptation that forces us to get along, to coexist.”
“Hurray for Mr. Mann,” Kelly said. “I hope one latches to his eye-lid. Or his shriveled little di--”
“Sweetie, it’s not the end of the world, there are plenty of people worse off than you, and they’re not complaining.” She glanced at her husband, and then back at her daughter.
“Winter’s coming, honey, winter’s coming.” Tyler was surprised to hear his father speak. He usually let his mother deal with Kelly when she was in a mood.

Winter was coming for the suckers outside, but not for the ones in the container. The suckers outside would go dormant, some would hop and scramble their way into the mud, some would freeze and remain in stasis, and others would find warm spots in heating ducts and unfinished basements, waiting for a victim. But in general, everyone relaxed with the cold. People were better protected because of all the clothing. And snowfall covered everything, made the world clean and safe again.
So if he was going to do it, it would have to be soon. Otherwise his parents would know. He didn’t want to have that discussion. It would be so much better if it looked like an accident. And his parents would so impressed with his mature attitude, the way he would heroically bear it, the exact opposite of his sister’s whining and complaining. They would be so proud of him. And Kelly would be pissed. She wouldn’t be the center of attention. It’s not so bad, he would say, they’re ugly little fuckers, but if you’re careful, then they’re essentially harmless. And his father wouldn’t feel so ugly. Like father like son.

A musty smell emanated from the holes he had poked in the lid of the container. Hamster shit. He put on his gardening gloves and unlocked the clasps. Two suckers were latched onto the hamster, glistening and warm, and the other three were safe in the plastic bag, barely pulsating, and slightly shrunken, like large raisins with legs. They needed food. They perked up when his arm got near them, like leeches, they sensed his heat. They were awesome. They were perfect. They were from outer space, and they came and they knew what they wanted. Once they got it there was no removing them. He knew if he pulled the sucker off the hamster, his hamster would die in seconds. It was tempting, to grab one of the scrawny newt legs and yank-- and even if the leg popped off without the body-- the hamster would still die. It was a perfect system, a perfect way to live.

He could barely remember the pods exploding over all the land masses, the creatures raining down like a Biblical plague; in fact, he probably only remembered the event because people told him about it.  But still, he had always been fascinated with them, even more so than snakes and bugs. And he knew was lucky that one never latched him, because when he was young, he was always outside, adding to his collections-- his arrays of rocks and bugs and sticks and weeds and flowers and bones that he kept on the concrete walk behind the house.  His mother was more lenient than the other mothers-- because Tyler would have died if he had to stay inside, if he couldn’t play in the dirt-- but she  always made him wear gloves and long shirt and long pants and boots, even in the heat of summer.

After the incident behind the shed, he asked his dad the big question, the question everyone was thinking about: “Why do you think they came here, dad?”

“Buddy, I don’t think these things think ‘why.’ They just are. Like a tick. A super tick from outer space. Space-ticks.”

“That’s what they should call them, Dad. Space-ticks. Sucker is stupid name. And it’s already a fish.”
“I don’t think anybody cares about stealing the sucker-fish's name. They’re about as low as you can get on the fish totem pole.”
“You think space-ticks are low on the alien totem pole?"

So it was just a matter of deciding where. It was like when his cousin Samantha was deciding on a tattoo. She wanted to be able to hide it or show it off, depending on her mood. This was the same. He didn’t want one on his forehead, like Emily. She was shunned and friendless because of it. He wanted it-- or them-- somewhere that showed that he was in control. It was like having a loose tooth. Better to pull it out than to wait. And everyone was always impressed when you pulled out the wiggly tooth yourself, impressed and a little scared of you. He definitely wanted it somewhere where it wouldn’t change how he had to dress . . . his wrist was convenient, but his mom’s looked too much like a piece of jewelry, plus he didn’t want to copy. He wanted it somewhere he could watch it feed, suck with that round mouth . . . he wanted to watch the translucent skin turn deep reddish purple as it filled with circulating blood from his body. He couldn’t decide if he wanted one or two or three.
His door flew open. He thought he had locked it. “You little klepto shit, do you have my iPod?” And then his sister saw the container, took it all in. “Holy fuck. Mom and dad are going to kill you What did you do to your hamster? We learned in psychology class if you torture animals, you’re pathological.”

“Don’t tell them. Please?”

“I’m telling them,” she said and turned to leave. Tyler jumped up, holding the box, and tilted it towards her, as menacingly as he could. He said, “I’ll put them in your bed if you tell. I’ll latch one to your forehead."
His sister turned and stared him down. “Tell me right now you didn’t put that one in my sock." 
Oh shit. He looked down at the floor. “No. Jesus, Kelly. I’m kidding. I swear. Just listen, okay, listen for a second. Please?"
She breathed out and stared at him.

“I can’t stop thinking about them. I just want to get it over with. I’m going to put one on me, or maybe two, but I don’t know where.”

“Jesus Christ. Can’t you just cut yourself? Or put a vodka-tampon up your ass like everyone else?”
“Other people are doing it. Not just me. It’s not like I’m crazy.”
She motioned with her hand. “Let me see.”
He held out the container, so she could see them feeding on the hamster, and see how carefully he had stashed the others in the plastic bag.
“Yuck,” she said, and then there was a flash of movement-- a kick-- and he felt pain in his crotch, and then she had the box and was running down the stairs, and he couldn’t follow her because an invisible vice was crushing his testicles and then he heard her yelling for mom and he was glad dad wasn’t home yet. But he would do it anyway, in the spring. And she didn’t know, she didn’t know he put it in her sock, which wasn’t that bad anyway, not as bad as it could be.

His mother was angry, but his father was nothing but understanding.“Winter’s coming son. You won’t have to look at them. And maybe you’ll outgrow this feeling. We know what’s going on-- we heard about some of the high school boys. We didn’t want to talk about, but it’s a compulsion, like getting a tattoo or piercing your tongue. I’m not going to deny what you want to do, and I understand you want to be like us, like everybody, but try to wait it out. Give it to the first snow. You’ll be sledding down the hill at the golf course and you’ll forget all about it.”

But he wouldn’t forget about it, and though he was going to respect his dad’s wishes-- because his dad was being so good about it all-- it still wasn’t going to change the way he felt. Winter wasn’t going to change that. Maybe he would latch one to each bicep, so that when he flexed, they would throb ever so slightly, bulge along with his muscles, and fill with more of his blood. They would grow along with him.