Steve Tem - Ugly Behavior

But the sackman could not remember when he had grown so old.

“Little one!” he called, after catching his breath enough to say it softly, tenderly. “Come back to see your old grandpa, honey. We’ll play hide-and-go-seek later. I promise.” There was a distant giggle back in the dark far-off rooms of his house, but nothing more. The sackman bit into his lower lip until the blood spurted, and then he began to suck. He closed his eyes and stared at red circles in the darkness. When he at last opened them again, the giggles had started again. It had been a very long time since a giggle had been heard in his house.

To the casual observer, the sackman’s front room was furnished unremarkably—the more obvious mementoes of all his children were displayed in the back rooms of the house, the chambers down under the cool mountainside, the shadowed places where the little girl in the red dress now laughed and hid.

“Are you Little Red Riding Hood? Is that who you’ve decided to be, my sweet?” Then the sackman howled his best wolf howl, an old wolf certainly, but without a doubt a huge, snarling horrific wolf it was. For the sackman had had much practice over the years playing the part of the wolf.

There was no answer and the sackman laughed as loudly as he had howled, and felt young again.

Then the sackman sucked some more of his own salty blood, smiled and looked around his front room, and saw:

A large pot he’d once upended over a small girl, four or five years but small for her age, the smallest child he’d ever had in his home. (Although not the smallest he’d ever sent back to heaven. Back during the fifties he’d sent back a half dozen babies who’d been sleeping in bassinets and on blankets in the park. All that had been required was something to distract the mothers. There’d been time for only the briefest of bedtime stories, but babies required very little, being half dream and parental anticipation already.) He’d kept her in that pot until she’d been quite convinced he was going to cook her, so that she was almost relieved when finally it was his hands that sent her on her way.

A worn-out sofa with oversized cushions. For three full days he’d once lain on that sofa, taking his meals there, even relieving himself into a hole in the worn-out upholstery when he couldn’t hold it any longer. A visitor would have seen a smelly, sickly old man lying there, perhaps breathing his last. A visitor never would have guessed a skinny ten-year-old boy lay underneath those cushions, the life squeezing out of his semi-conscious body an hour at a time.

A tall kitchen trash can over in the corner once contained twin six-year-olds tied together, face-to-face. He’d used both his huge hands to send them on their way, at the same time, providing them with a joint fairytale, a shared dream, making sure that they might look into each other’s eyes as they began their long journey back. Now he could not remember if they had been boys or girls.

The fireplace along a side wall appeared much too large for the room, but otherwise was unremarkable in every way. It didn’t even sport a rudimentary mantel. But more than once it had contained giant logs of newspaper wrapped in wire, each with a small child completely hidden inside. He would never have considered burning a precious child, although he had been content to let them think so. It was all part of his game, and their personalized fairytale.

The sackman had no illusions about what an outsider might think if he or she (some matronly social worker, going house to house in behalf of children’s welfare) stumbled onto his doings, or witnessed any of the games he played with the children. He had given up hope for understanding many years ago, although he was convinced there were hundreds of people like him in the world who might appreciate his mission. Who understood that children were lied to, made to anticipate an adulthood full of promise and dream, when all the time the promises and dreams ended with the onset of puberty. The life of an adult was made putrid by constant disappointments and betrayals. Only a child, a mere eyeblink out of heaven’s embrace, could glimpse glory. But after the development of the sexual organs and the accompanying desires it was as if they had been blinded, never to see the brilliant light of heaven again.

The sackman loved children, and envied them. So what better way might he show that love than to send them back to heaven where they belonged, where they would truly want to go if they only had the understanding ironically wasted on adults?

From the sackman’s under-the-mountain rooms, where much more obvious secrets and mementoes of his career were kept, came the sound of footsteps and giggles and can’t-catch-mes. Surely it was time for this particular child’s game to end, and her final fairytale to begin.

The sackman’s eyes were old, but they were still the eyes of the sackman. Who sees everything, child, so just you watch out!

Don’t let him catch you out tonight! He could still see clearly where this one little girl had been.

One of the giant clothes closets off the east hallway had been opened up, and decades of children’s dresses and shorts, pants and socks and shirts and underwear had spilled out, some of it vomit- or blood- or other-stained, all of it precious reminders of the children he had known and loved into heaven. He stopped for a moment and tried to pick some of these up, trying to match pieces of outfits, trying to match clothing with vague, frightened, then peacefully sleeping little faces, but it was an impossible task. There were too many dead children spilt here, too many tiny ghosts struggling into these scattered outfits every morning. With tears washing his face he cast them aside and called “Darling!” and “Sweetheart!” and even “Grandchild!”, careful to keep the growing rage out of his voice, but all he heard was the distant laughter, the small feet running from room to room, crashing through all the doors of his life.

“Baby!” he shouted, kicking the piles of torn little body parts aside. “Baby, come here!” and pounded his feet into the floor to make a Giant’s footsteps guaranteed to terrify even the bravest Jack.

He could hear her somewhere just ahead of him now, racing in and out of the numerous dimly-lit or dark rooms that spread far under the mountainside.

In one room numerous toys, furred in greasy dust so that they appeared half-animal, half-appliance, had been removed from their storage shelves and scattered about the floor. The hands that had once played with these played with toys of pure light now. But it still angered him that they’d been touched, perhaps even damaged, without his permission. “Nice little girls ask before playing with another’s things!” he shouted into the darkness. But the darkness continued to run and cast its laughter back at the sackman.

He inhaled deeply of the cold, musty air of these backrooms, these storage chambers of his past, this air redolent of ten thousand children’s screams, children’s fear sweat, breath stink, and blood. He felt the air lengthening his stride, putting the power back into his huge hands. With each inhalation, with each new insult from this anonymous little girl, he felt as if his mass and muscle were increasing, his old man’s fatigue draining away, until by the time he reached the farthest, deepest rooms, he’d become convinced that he was the sackman of forty years ago, the terror of children and their parents for three states around.

The doors to wall cabinets had been thrown open, countless pairs of small children’s glasses spilled out onto the hard gray rock floors. Some were shattered, some had their frames bent and twisted. He gathered them up by the handfuls and piled them on a nearby table alongside two miniature prosthetic arms, a prosthetic leg, and several cigar boxes full of dental appliances. One pair of glasses had snagged on his black coat sleeve—he picked it off and examined it, recalling how he’d always been amazed by these prescription lenses for children, how small they were, as if fitted for dolls or ventriloquist dummies. He tried to wedge the glasses over his own eyes, and his eyes seemed larger than the lenses themselves (The sackman has great big saucers for eyes. He can see you wherever you go. He always knows what you’re doing.) From beneath the small lenses he could feel the darkness pushing down in a spiraling rush, a huge face suddenly looming over him, greasy lips parting to show dancing teeth as the sackman began his recital of the final fairytale.