The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (3 page)

“You’ll have to give her up.”

“One more reason to not go to your stupid
school.”

She tapped the iPod screen with a sapphire
nail. “Did you steal this?”

I calculated an answer in my head. My usual
answer was to deny, deny, deny. But . . . who wants a thief at her
school? So . . . logic train . . . “Yup, I steal all the time.”

“An iPod, comic books, and your girlfriend’s
virginity, what a thief!” Ceinwyn Dale mocked me.

“Again,
fuck you
.” The whole
door-being-locked thing had to wear off, though I still couldn’t
figure it out. But another very teenage skill is to never let the
facts get in the way of some hating.

“Say your favorite word again, King Henry. I
dare you.”

And just as I moved my mouth to oblige the
lady, a ball of compressed air lodged itself between my jaws. Yup,
shit got real. I started choking. Panic came right on its heels.
Eyes went wide, pulse went high, arms grasped, trying to grab onto
Ceinwyn Dale to either make her stop or get her help.

She watched it all with her smile. “How long
will it take? I do wonder . . .”

“Please!” I tried to say but it came out as
a ragged hiss. Another round of grabbing followed, which she batted
away. All my fighting and I felt like a baby as I drifted down to
the floor, eyes going foggy.

[CLICK]

When I came to, my jaw was still locked
open. I was on the floor with my dirty clothes, stained with blood,
spit, smoke, and teenage lovemaking. That day is almost eight years
ago and I want to take a shower just
thinking
about the
floor. Ceinwyn Dale reclined on my bed, looking down at me from her
side, a comic book draped over one hand.

“I do wonder . . .” she repeated. “How long
will it take you to realize you have a nose, King Henry?”

“Guu Ou, Baa!” I told her.

“Yes, yes.
Fuck you, bitch
, I know.
That mouth is going to get you killed one day, King Henry. You’re
thinking,
what do I care?
But that’s only from the
assumption on your part that the world is as safe as you
assume
it is. Safe to steal, safe to have a girlfriend
giving you those mighty three minute grunting and humping sessions,
safe to get into fights with whomever, whenever.

“A world where all you have to worry about
is a mother that wants free from her psychosis and a father that
has never been able to control you. What the world really is . . .
is a dangerous world most never bother to see, a one in
ten-thousand world, a one in a quarter million world. A world where
a woman can vaporize herself past a door and five minutes later
stick a ball of air into your mouth to . . . Shut. You. Up. For.
Once.”

Douchebag showoff aeromancers.

Fourteen-year-old-me stayed silent—not by
choice—and considered what she’d said. Strings be multiplying.

Ceinwyn Dale flipped a page of the comic
with a nimble finger. “The Institution of Elements is a neutral
faction
within
that world, King Henry. It seeks to find the
special few and train them
for
the world as a whole. This
includes a normal education and a one in ten-thousand education. It
is not an easy ride but if you survive it, you’ll survive quite a
lot. You’ll be able to make something of yourself and . . . you’ll
be able to escape your parents’ fate. Stuck in a small life with
little money and shackled by children you hate just as much as you
love.”

The ball of air in my mouth dissolved in a
puff of smoke. “What’s it like?” I asked, finally interested.

Maybe if I’d been older I’d have questioned
her more about ‘
magic
’ existing, but after the demonstration
I took it at face value. There is something in the Mancy that calls
us to it. I could escape a crappy life but I couldn’t escape it.
The Mancy is the biggest string of all.

“It will change you.” Ceinwyn Dale smiled.
Least reassuring smile I’d ever seen up to that point. It’s still
top ten. “You won’t like all of it, but certain lessons will open
you up like a butterfly, something new and beautiful and true to
itself.”

I got up on the bed and sat next to her.
Butterfly . . . not exactly the best metaphor to use on me but I
got the image. “So it’s like Hogwarts kind of?” Between three
minute grunting and humping sessions as Ceinwyn Dale called
them—though to my credit they were actually
five
minute
grunting and humping sessions—the girlfriend liked to read books
aloud to me, usually as I smoked a post-sex cigarette out her
window.

For the first time I heard Ceinwyn Dale
laugh, a short and quick ‘
ha!
’ That’s all I ever hear from
her. A quick ‘
ha!
’ A bark, you could call it. Never real
laughter you can’t control.

“I’m not some friendly giant, King Henry.
The Institution of Elements isn’t a fairy castle. There will not be
magical duels or trips to town to try steaming candy or Christmas
vacations. You may write your family, that’s all. Other than that,
you’ll be stuck. Seven days a week without a way to escape us for
four years if you’re a one in ten-thousand kind of person, seven
years if you’re a quarter million kind. We’ll break you . . . we’ll
forge you . . . we’ll make you a mancer.”

“A mancer?” I already liked the name. Like
she’d said, it made you feel special. Every kid wants to feel
special. Every grown-up too. Of course, I was already imagining
many things about the Mancy which didn’t happen. Spell after spell,
throwing around fire and lighting.

Bullshit.

It takes about a minute to focus enough
anima into a ‘
conjuration of magnetism
’ on yourself, more
for something outward, usually much more. As a weapon in a straight
up fight the Mancy is often useless. Preparation is its weakness,
but over the years stories get spread and imagination goes bonkers.
For example: over 1500 years ago in Britain you might have some
Irish and Welsh facing off in a battle line, shouting and drinking
and waving ass and peckers at each other trying to work up the
courage to charge, all the while druids on either side are
gibbering and screeching and acting like a bunch of fucktards.

But one guy doesn’t. One guy is calm and
focused and after about five minutes of staring down his enemies he
raises his arm and sends down one bolt of lightning.
One
bolt of lightning. In five minutes, with lots of set up. That’s
what the Mancy will get you. Let’s name the guy who shot the
lightning Merlin. Merlin would cause my expectations to soar and
eventually they’d crash to the ground. Sooner rather than later. In
the end, a mancer is a fucktard just like everyone else and Ceinwyn
Dale is
weird
.

She looked at me as if judging my ripeness.
Is it harvest day yet, little lamb?
“Let’s get back to your
parents and finish the paper work.”

I’ve looked at this recorder quite a few
times over the last twenty years and thought about doing what I’m
about to do. At first I was just too busy; running a shop, falling
in and out of love, trying not to get myself killed. Then . . .
then the regrets and the lies began to pile up like cast off spare
change and even though I never picked it up, the idea of the
recorder felt heavy in my mind, a growing mound of metals. It
gained a density beyond its size. A nickel here, a penny there.

It’s fitting, I suppose, that once again I
feel forced into doing it. This time you have my daughter to thank
or to blame, depending on your view of my distinctive place in
mancer history. I don’t know how exactly she found them. They’d
been locked away in one of my oldest storage cabinets for years,
dragged from the old shop to the new shop and then yet again to my
home office, but she found my old tapes—little SD cards, most
computers don’t even have slots for them nowadays, but she found
one that did.

My own inventive genes slapping me in the
face.

King Henry Price as a disgruntled young man
thinking about being a broken angry teenager. That’s bad enough,
the idea of your teenage daughter learning about your antics in
that way. Listening to her father curse and curse and curse some
more just for the fun of it, because he likes the sound and the
feel of those violent words on his lips . . . coming up the back of
his throat and out of his mouth—back before I’d even started to get
creative with the cursing as a way to win myself a smile or laugh
in dangerous situations, back when it was only to put a person off
and repetition after repetition to blast the senses, to create a
wall. Listening about her mother as an object of sexual desire, and
about the women besides her mother. Listening about her favorite
uncles getting into fights and breaking rules that you’ve told her
not to break a dozen times.

It’s bad enough she listened to them.

It’s rather amazing she treasured every
moment . . .

But then she made copies.

And then she handed them out during the
first month of her schooling at the Institution to her new
friends.

And then I got a phone call from the
Dean.

If it wasn’t my kid responsible I’d be
laughing about the woman getting caught in her own webs. How funny
the whole mess would have been
then
. Instead, I drove to the
Institution stern faced and disappointed in my little girl, just a
bit angry that she’d stolen from me, and just a bit more ashamed
about what she’d heard from me, and just a bit fearful that Dad’s
curse ‘
you have one just like you
’ came true. It was the
same drive that takes place in the first tape, or near enough to
it. I even stopped to have lunch at the same place. I found it
nostalgic.

Once I finally arrived and had my meeting
with the Dean about the damage that had been done, my anger and
shame and my fear only grew. The tapes were copied into a million
forms of information and no matter how many times the teachers
confiscated a copy, more seemed to show up, spreading at the speed
of rabbits breeding. The kids loved me. I’d already been a legend
for my deeds and misdeeds, now I’m a folk hero from my own telling
of it all. A twenty-year-old graduate student asked me for my
autograph . . .

My little girl had the guts to give me what
I call her why-am-I-in-trouble-daddy-don’t-you-love-me? face. And
the damn thing worked . . . I was ready to ground her, to banish to
stay alone at the Institution for the summer off-month like I had
to experience seven times, to put my foot down, lay down the law,
and suddenly I felt like I was the one being unfair, that I’m the
one really at fault for not destroying the tapes in the first place
. . .

I think it’s the flattery that really did
it. ‘
I just loved them, Daddy! So did everyone else!
’

How does one combat it? No wonder my old man
always tried to give my sisters whatever they wanted while I got
hand-me-downs. I was outclassed! Outgunned! Fears or not, I was
never so cute!

Instead of yelling at each other in the
typical teenager versus parent deathmatch, we talked about the
tapes like adults. I explained I was a lot angrier with the world
back then, that it was before her mom and I got things together and
before I became a father, especially before I worked some facts out
in my head about my own childhood. And she understood all of
it.

‘
If anything they make me love you
more
’. Well . . .
again
. . . how does a father fight
back against it?

To my surprise, she wanted to know what
happened next. There were rumors at the Institution among the
students, passed down whispers from parents to oldest brother to
youngest sister. No one knew what the truth of the story was, but
it sounded even better than the first tapes had been. Like the
tapes were some television show and she wanted the next season to
come out already.

I gave in, big wimp that I am, and started
to tell her about my old shop right then. Only she shushed me.

‘
No, Daddy, I want more tapes just like
these! Other people want to know too!
’

‘
That was a long time ago
,’ I told
her. ‘
They won’t be the same. I’m not the same person
’.

‘
Couldn’t you try to remember?
’

And here I am. Telling you this little intro
as I try to remember. The twenty-one-year-old man, just graduated
from the Institution . . . the Asylum I suppose he would call it,
was much closer to the school boy than I am to him. Seven years
fresh in the mind versus twenty years which seem so long ago. So
small and innocent.

I’ve changed.

More than you can ever imagine.

You’ll notice I haven’t said ‘
fuck
’
once so far. Having kids will teach you to watch your mouth a lot
quicker than even Ceinwyn’s papercuts. I’m different now. I’ve
traded anger for silence. Hunches and guesses for certainty before
I act. I faked being a respectable man for so long I eventually
stopped faking and just
became
.

He had yet to have three children, a wife,
even a pair of dogs. He hadn’t started wars and ended many more of
them. He hadn’t saved the world and then broken it yet again in the
same week.

He knew nothing about what the Mancy could
really
do. He had no idea of the terrors waiting for us all,
of death and loss and of even worse. He was a little foul-mouthed
fool and he had it easy. Even talking about my upbringing with my
parents is child’s play compared to what will come in these new
tapes.

But I do have some advantages. I’ve had
kids. I’ve learned how to narrate a bedtime story. Welcome to the
most fucked up bedtime story you’re ever going to hear.

[CLICK]

January 2018

If September in Fresno is a hellhole, then
January is just depressing.