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Hi, my name is Ox Heart
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 | Prologue |
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 5 with 4 vote(s)
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| Created: 2009-02-21 04:58:27 |
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I used to have a friend. His name was James.
James Alexander.
He was heading on sixty now, but his shoulders were still broad, his eyes were still dark and full of shadows, but his skin had grown gaunt and was beginning to crease. I found friendliness in his tousled grey hair, and a kindness in his gaze. He was an ordinary man of his age. He still had a smile, a wide handsome smile and a set of healthy teeth. I used to notice all the tones in the strands of his hair, interlinking and then blending together, so very neatly and then combed with a brush. It was plain that he was once dark haired, too, because some gatherings were as black as the black of an ebony horse. His features were strong, in addition, all big, and it made me think… yes, he was a horse, like a horse and he looked like a horse. And he dressed smartly too… just like any other man.
He would take me to the park every week… every Wednesday, to be precise. In a way he was like a father to me.
My own life at home had been corrupted, at an early age. It did not bother me now, for my real Father was gone, long gone. In fact, I hardly remembered his name. But it was James Alexander that had taken his place, though he did not know my family and he did not know my Mother. I still lived, back at home with my Mother, although, I was twenty one now… now in 1995. I had no job, and no qualifications.
All in all, I was pathetic… a pathetic excuse for a full grown man.
I did not realise that then. But I was short and I was chubby, more so fat, and my shoulders were weak and would slope, and those arms I called muscular stayed straight, not contoured. I was fairly strong, I was strong but I was not worked enough and I was not hard enough. And honestly, I don’t know how… what he saw in me that man, I don’t know. But he loved me, and I was, at twenty one, his special little “kid.”
And now we were strolling, side by side, in the grass and the trees by the lake and the river. It was spring, hot spring and the sun would blaze down on bare skin and would make it all red and then peel it. I was fair, very fair, and my hair was so blonde it had almost turned white, and my eyes were a watery blue, with a weakness. It would scald me, the sunshine, but I would never hesitate. It was just a burn, just a burn and it was what made me tough, and all, and it impressed the old man.
I remember that once he had asked me, does that burn… and I’d said it’s alright. We had been with his friend, Steven Gates.
But Steven Gates… my God that old Steven Gates had been creepy. He was speechless, almost mute at that time and when he had then left Alexander said to me… he is strange, acting strange… and then I had agreed. He would give me horrid glares with the flashes of the light in his eyes like a raging axe murderer, his natural look, apparently it was and he would always look the same. Alexander said, oh he never used to be like that. He doesn’t mean it he doesn’t, but we don’t really talk, not like we used to anymore. And in a stupor and the void I was trapped in I just nodded, and said yes, yes I know. Then again, I knelt down to that man, as the idol that he’d been to me and would back every word that he said.
I never told a soul about him.
And now, yes, we’d been walking, and talking together like we always used to do. I was wearing my shorts, the old denim ones I had cut out off my jeans that would fray at the bottom and then dangle down my legs. They weren’t tidy, not at all, and my Mother had said so but I’d ignored her and had left the house anyway, without a second word. I had known what that would have resulted in; she would torment me with her words and would say, oh, you shouldn’t, it looks awful, awful, awful. But I’d take it, just for her. Oh I loved her I did, I loved her too.
And now, James and I, we had been silent for a while, and I walked passed a lady with a pram and a child that was running to follow. Then once she had passed us, and the coast had been clear Mr. James then took a breath.
It was a deep, thoughtful breath, and it wasn’t uncommon for this man. It was the breath that he took when he confided in me, when we came deep in contemplation and the link, the connection that we had which was so deep and understanding was a surface. I had looked at my hands and the bloated, puffy backs and the nails that had been chipped and were cracked and it was making me think. Who was I now? Who had I been to be speaking to this man? I was lucky, I was lucky he had chosen me. It had been the best thing since the loss of my Father. And that had been a funny thing to say for me, for my Father had been good to me and he had cared for me well. Though, indirectly, he had hurt me.
He had hurt that sweet woman, at my house. I would not take that; no I wouldn’t take that for a thousand. She was my Mother; she was more than good to me.
And it was then, on that thought Alexander had spoken. And then oddly, he had then said my full name aloud.
“Tommy Michael Pike.”
It had caught my attention immediately. My eye had flitted on his face, and in my mind I was startled. He had said it with meaning, and more worryingly with intention. And nobody used my middle name. In total, no one had known it. Just he, and my Mother, and then possibly my Father had known. Whether he’d recall it now had been another question. Then I’d thought, but anyway, James Alexander, he is not a man to be predicted. And he had intellect, complex, unimaginable intellect, at least then compared to my own. And once then I had settled myself, and assumed, he’ll be okay, whatever comes it will be fine, he’d read my mind, he had, and then he added:
“I want to let you in on something.”
I want to let you in… on something. A phrase, it was, could be dissected in so many ways. He wants to let me in. That is flattering. He trusts me, though I thought I had known that anyway. But then add “on something.” It is a different concoction. It suggests a secret… and a secret… a secret…
A secret. That was never good. He was digging in his pockets and his face had turned red. His skin was rough and flaked and tanned. And now I noticed that there was something different on this moment, and the flicker of frustration in his eyes enabled me to recognise. He thought, or he assumed I had not noticed yet, but then sometimes, he would underestimate me, just that bit, a little bit. But as far as it went, he was always sharper than I was.
But his mouth had grown drawn, and had become one long, thin, tight line. The wrinkles round it emphasised, and he had that look, as though perhaps he was unsure or was making a mistake. Maybe it was innocent, perhaps, maybe, perhaps, maybe. But I could never tell with this guy. Suddenly he had stopped wandering, at which point I copied him and I stood there to face him. He was not looking at me, and I could feel my breath coming heavier, and my skin a little sweaty which I knew would later come as an irritant. Then he was dragging out what looked to be a key… or two, on a little silver ring. They looked like his house keys. Maybe he was lifting them out, so he could look for something else.
“There was a special reason why I took you out today.” He persisted. And no, he had not been searching for something else. He held them out to me. “Take them.”
I obeyed him without protest and I took them. And then I answered him. “To keep?”
I could feel the frown on my face and the baffled twist of puzzlement. And then his teeth had then hung from his opening mouth, and had twisted into an unbecoming smile. It was not the Alexander that I knew… he was no longer, on this moment, handsome and charming, but then there was a hint of that but mixed up with something else. I guessed that once he’d done something, despite all his uncertainty then he would want to look more confident about it, domineering even, so that another party would not dare to knock him down. He’d got me right, and he always did. He circled round me, and I pivoted; I did not want him stood behind me. And this was the part… the part where it got bad. For now he would explain himself.
“It is not just to keep.” He said more solemnly now, and even slightly patronising. “It is to use. You do remember Steven Gates.”
Yes, I did remember Steven Gates. Maybe he’d tell me why… why they did not speak anymore. Then I felt my face relax and then my skin begin to cool. It was probably alright, but then, everything back then had been alright. I liked that man too much. He was my rock, the wall on which I leaned on. I would always, to him, let my feelings out. I thought nothing of his slowly contorting nature at this minute. He had led me on and fooled me, and then he started.
“They key that I have given you is a copy of the key to something which Mr. Gates and I, we call the “Hot House”.” He had become, you could say cold, or more nicely informative. That’s where my head went, but my heart had gone with cold but my heart had been bound to ignorance. He had told me, Tommy you are impulsive, and my boy, that makes you stupid. Well, I laughed that off, but it was different now. I was a light house, on my own, however close to James I felt. And then he said more, with a little chuckle and a tip of his head. “I thought you’d like to share it with us. Tommy, do you love me?”
Like the dummy I was, I just nodded again. He had asked that question before, many a time anyway and I had always just said yes, so it would make no odds as now.
“So you would keep something for me?” He played on the question. This was not just questioning; it was interrogation, not the usual sort of interrogation. But again I just let him control me, where his voice was the remote and where I was the receiver. So I said yes, and then I thought about his previous words. “Hot House” could mean anything, but that could mean more one thing than anything else.
I’d find myself cold too. He knew I was “stupid” enough.
And I found that there was something missing inside of me when he told me his next words, as though I didn’t care, and even as though… I wanted to participate. He regurgitated his story. And then he made a proposal, and with this proposal I accepted. But that proposal, in fact, more reasonably the task he’d set had played on my thoughts for the rest of the evening. I felt the keys in my pocket, which would dig into the top of my leg between my hip and my thigh. There was more that one reason he had chosen this boy, by the name of Pike. I could not remember his exact set of words, but his task I had recalled and told it round and round and round in my head where old James had then lived.
“Take somebody.”
Take somebody. That meant take somebody, up off these bad streets.
It had turned out this man was not an old man at all, not really, not at heart, and he certainly had nor been old hat.
In the centre of the town, with his friend, Steven Gates, he had owned a building, bare and barren he’d described it. I was to take somebody there, and that had duel meaning. In fact, James and I were to take them together. It turned out that Mr. Alexander and that Mr. Steven Gates had owned their own nice little cult… between them, and them and them and no one else. And with me, gormless me they would pull this thing three ways, or so he had said “expand the business.” I did not think I was foolish to join in.
But I had been misled. All through my life I had been misled. I was uneducated, and I was left to rot in the midst of a scruffy Northern English town. This place it had been poverty stricken and it was dull and grey and it was covered in dirt. But I knew nothing else, and so I followed him, and so my insecurity caught up with me and all the damage that my past had done.
And it was not my Mother. And it was not my Father.
For the reason for my invalid mind was the one that I kept to myself, the one I never thought of and the one I did not tell anybody. Not even James Alexander. From the beginning there were rifts, and that was why I had consented. Although we talked a lot, we did, I did not tell him everything. Though I hoped that he had told me his last secret, and still, I was thinking, I am lucky, lucky, and lucky. I am lucky for this man who would give me a life. And had not I thought he was strange? Strangers do approach people they do not know.
After all, that was how I had met James Alexander. And I had known him, just only six months and a week. And as I had known him as James, he became to me, just Alexander. He had said to me “Boy, you are one of us now. You address me as I tell you. Feel part of us. We want you here.”
And then I became a kidnapper. |
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