Frightened Boy by Scott Kelly (easy books to read in english txt) 📕

out one of my eyes or strangle me until I gurgled blood and white foam.

One of the wounded Strangers was bleeding steadily from a wound on his calf; the crimson stream had reached the small river we sat around. The man’s injury appeared infected, probably from marching through miles of shit and sewage. Sweat formed around the man’s brow, and he’d fallen into a fevered sleep.

Mal started paying particular attention to this one. He soon shortened his pace to only walking back and forth before him with a look on his face that was more expressive than any vocalization could ever be:

Why not now? He’s going to die anyway.

A bullet in the head would be infinitely more kind than staring into the eyes of Mal as he choked the life out of him. Lux seemed to be thinking the same thing; he’d silently shifted his position so a pistol was concealed in his lap, his hands wrapped around it in.

After an eternity of pacing, Mal lunged for the wounded Stranger. Calamity erupted in the cavern as those who were nearby scrambled away. One man fell into the stream of water, and those who weren’t struggling to put distance between themselves and Mal were rushing toward him. Soon, two men were trying to pry Mal’s hands from the wounded man as he was lifted into the air by his throat. The man beat his arms feebly against Mal’s chest and neck, trying to break his grip.

Mal fixated on the victim in his hands; the people trying to pull him away had no effect on his posture. He was connected firmly to the ground, and they may as well have been trying to uproot a tree. The black tribal tattoos that climbed up his chest and arms seemed especially dark as he grinned manically at the thrashing Stranger.

Lux finally uncrossed his legs and walked over to Mal, pointing the pistol directly at his head. The barrel was less than an inch from his skull.

Mal turned to look at Lux. The two stared directly at each other as the rest of us squirmed backwards, wishing the chamber was larger.

With a sickening pop, similar to the sound of breaking fresh branches away from a tree, Mal twisted the struggling man’s neck and dropped his lifeless corpse to the ground—all while staring at Lux. Lux lowered his aim and his eyes and sighed, his bluff called.

Our spirits were further dampened by the act. Mal returned to sitting down at the opposite end of the corridor from the rest of us, apparently placated by the murder. He didn’t seem interested in eating the body and only needed to take its life. The killing alone seemed to feed whatever part of him was hungry. He simply stared at the dead body curiously. I imagine the Strangers wanted to toss it downstream so they didn’t have to sit so close by, but all were scared to touch Mal’s fresh kill.

Lux returned to his spot next to Escher and me. “Shit,” he murmured, echoing the feelings of everyone in the chamber.

*

“Where’s he from?” I asked Lux an hour later as we warily eyed Mal.

“Him?” Lux asked, pointing the tip of his gun at Mal.

“No, Escher. You’ve known him a while, right? He must have said something about where he’s from.”

Lux chuckled softly.

“Yeah, he’s told me. You won’t like it though,” he said. “It doesn’t help anything.”

“I’d still like to know what I’m into,” I said. “What’d he tell you?”

“He told me this story the day I left to go on my big walk. He told me that in another alternate reality, he was the artist M.C. Escher. In this past reality—I guess really just the 1940s—he used to draw this freaky math shit. Pictures of looping staircases, hands drawing each other, reflections fighting—all made from these crazy formulas he got from mathematicians.” Lux stopped to swallow hard as Mal suddenly lifted his hand up to scratch his bald head.

“Anyway,” he continued, “according to our Escher here—this comatose black hole of surreality—he started fooling around with an equation called Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, trying to draw it. Now this Gödel was apparently a real sonofabitch. His theorem disproves mathematics, sort of. Or, what Escher said is, it proves there are more things true in life than can possibly be proven.

“So he started drawing this gate, kind, out of this theorem. Now, our Escher here thinks he tore reality with this picture. He thinks he got sucked in and created this world,” Lux said.

“Shit,” I replied. “That is crazy.”

We survived another four, maybe five hours in the timeless depths of the sewer chamber that may or may not have been a creation of Escher’s tormented mind before Mal began licking his lips again. If I’d had a gun, I would have considered killing him, if it wasn’t more likely that I’d botch the job somehow and end up dead.

All the injured among us had taken to attempting to look as healthy as possible, leading to much painful flexing of cracked bones and stretching of bruised backs.

As Mal stood again to restart his torturous pacing pattern, Escher finally spoke. “Calm down,” he said.

Mal returned to a sitting position.

At last, Escher stood up. Thank God. “We need to get out of the city,” he said simply. “They’re gonna be all over us. We gotta get out of here. The Strangers will go back to Kingwood. Lux, Mal, and Frightened Boy will be coming with me. I know what I have to do now.”

Fuck. Oh well. I was ready to die, if need be. No more Erika. Didn’t care too much either way.

Escher led us back through the tunnels. He turned right, left, right again. We crawled through an impossibly small space with disgusting sewage lapping at our knees, and we reached a ladder. The exit had been so close that I felt a little stupid for not discovering it myself, assuming that was possible.

Escher climbed through first, heaving the heavy manhole lid to the right and poking his head through. I followed with Lux behind me, thankfully separating me from Mal.

*

We came to the surface in an Orange Zone on the outskirts of Banlo Bay—seedy, dark, and dangerous. The skyline of downtown Banlo Bay loomed over us like an angry giant, reminding me we were only a few miles from what had been the most heated battle in the history of the Secret Society of Strangers—indeed their final battle, judging from the few who were left.

Escher sat down with his remaining Strangers and explained to them how to get back to Kingwood without being seen. Then he turned to myself, Mal, and Lux. “We’ve got places to go,” he commanded.

We followed Escher’s lead, walking for hours, sticking to alleys and staying off major roads, snaking our way through the Orange Zone in an attempt to find a way out of the city.

As we walked, we were greeted by the usual sights that fill any man’s walk through an Orange Zone: small groups of men on street corners glaring angrily and suspiciously at anyone who walked past, challenging anyone who dared to make eye contact; sick people—sick from polio, rubella, schizophrenia—that no one cared about enough to help.

I also saw the type of person I once was—a person looking at the ground, stopping only once every few seconds to glance about and make sure they weren’t being watched or followed, a person whose worst fear was being approached by anyone.

I was starting to see what Escher was preaching. I could finally see what my problem was.

Welcome to Banlo Bay! We are the paranoid humanoids, and we’ll be avoiding eye contact with you and otherwise pretending you do not exist. Have a good day, or have a bad day…hell, have anything but anything to do with my day…

Too late to matter, though. Too late to matter without Erika. You loved her. You always learn your lessons too late.

“Fuck Little Brother,” I said with finality.

“I agree,” Escher said. “I don’t know what I did wrong to make this happen. I feel like I must have been through three worlds. It’s metamorphosis in magic mirrors. Order is repetition of units. Chaos is multiplicity without rhythm. This pattern, this strange loop, became twisted. There’s logic here, but it’s hard to see. I just can’t pierce the veil and see the pattern—not anymore. The only way is to wipe it clean until it’s a manageable size.”

Not helpful. More nonsense.

Together, we passed through alleyways and mostly uninhabited streets, looking as normal as we possibly could, though it certainly wasn't normal at all. After six hours of walking north, we decided to take up lodging for the night.

We found a bar whose roof sat an angle that would make surrealists proud, and Escher knocked on the door boldly. The place was closed, armored in iron bars, but there was movement inside.

Escher was halfway through his second set of knocks when we heard keys clattering, bolts being undone, and much cursing. A fat, pale balding man with a desperate comb-over stood behind the doorframe and held a shotgun level to Escher’s head.

“We need lodging,” Escher said simply, as though the gun was not there.

“Why the hell would you knock on a door that says it’s closed? You read? My bar is closed. I don’t want any trouble—I’ve got dogs.” The man pointed a thumb behind him where there sat a half dozen mutts, all chained to posts some six feet from the entrance to the door and looking like they'd eat anything that blinked. If a burglar were to get into the bar, he wouldn’t get far. The animals made an effective security system.

“This is Escher, the Red King,” I said. “We only need this place for the night.”

“Red King, huh? I saw you guys on the news. I don’t want you here. I know they’re coming for you. Gonna turn this whole place into a war zone. Go on! Get out of town before it’s too late.”

Escher looked downward. He faced the man again and exhaled, and then he stepped to the side. “Barkeep, I’d like you to meet Mal,” he said. As Mal walked by Escher, grinning, Escher whispered to him, “Try and keep it all in one room, would you?”

Mal put his hand on the long shotgun, pushed the barkeep back into his own shop, and closed the door behind him.

*

Lux and I waited patiently for about half an hour as thumping, chopping, and gurgling sounds played out from behind the iron bars of the door. I tried to look nonchalant, looking and down the street and pulling my red cap down low on my head. For the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged on a street corner.

Finally, Mal opened the door. His hands were coated in blood, but it looked like the maniac had been kind enough to clean up for us. As I cautiously entered the bar and Lux locked it behind me, I took stock of the situation.

There were six empty leashes resting limply on the ground, still connected to their posts. There was a bloody towel stuffed