Sam Pink - The Self-Esteem Holocaust Comes Home

THE PEDOPHILE: Today they will try again. They will try to kill me. But it won’t happen today. Today they will try to kill me. I will stop it today. Mother Mary, may those who try to kill me find me too dead to be touched and let them die instead and be carried away by your hands and may your hands be lined with sharp sticks and may you have no home for the people that die. Amen.

The boy shakes his penis off and tucks it back in.

THE BOY: Amen.

The pedophile grabs the boy’s leg.

THE PEDOPHILE: Nothing will ever make me laugh again. If I ever laugh again it will be accidental. But I will have fun while I am here [peels scab off head in long tear] I will have enormous amounts of fun. And it will be hard to die because I will have loved everything so much [laughs] It’s really terrible how fun everything is [grabs other leg. firm voice] You are the love of my life, and while you are sleeping I will sew our sleeves to the backs of each other’s shirts, so we will be hugging all the time, or at least close enough to see each other’s faces. You are a box and all boxes get opened up. The time is now to make you blind and break your neck [face muscles droop, laughs] The time is now to break the skull of one of the skeletons and slit your throat open, onto my bare feet.

He holds onto the boy’s legs. The boy puts his hand over the pedophile’s skull, as though blessing him.

THE BOY: Don’t touch me.

THE PEDOPHILE: [ignores] I want you to have a present. I want to show you something and I want you to love it. Do you promise that you will love it? Huh do you promise? Come on [releases the boy’s legs, stands] Come with me.

THE BOY: [trying to back away] There will be a day when no one smiles at all. I bet. There will be a day when no one smiles about anything. I bet.

The pedophile puts on his garbagebag mask then holds out his hand.

THE PEDOPHILE: Here. We have to go somewhere. For me to show you something. Your present. You’ll like it. Come on. Come with me [taking his hand] I have no control over myself. I have no hope. I get even hornier when I know I don’t care. I can’t feel anything anymore but I want to try. Come with me real quick, just real quick. For me to show you something that you’ll like. Come on. I have a present.

THE BOY: I don’t want to touch your hand. I will follow you though. But you have to walk three steps ahead of me. Then I follow you.

They walk. Eventually they encounter a dog, tied to a stake at the bottom of a sloping backyard. The dog eyes them both.

THE BOY: [looking at dog, addressing the pedophile] I have hope in myself. And you have none. When I have the greatest hope in myself, you have none. I think that’s why you’re sad.

THE PEDOPHILE: Huh? [looking at the dog] Maybe. But I’ll be here as long as you. Our time will be equal.

THE BOY: [steps towards the dog then stops when it tenses] But you look way more dead. And the flies are already eating you. I’ll be here longer than you I bet. I’ll be here until the day no one smiles.

THE PEDOPHILE: [still staring at the dog] Look at how pathetic this dog is. To me, this is you.

The boy watches his feet, pressing snow down with the toe of his boot. Avoiding the dog.

THE BOY: What do you have for me? You said you had something. What is it? [pause] Give it to me.

The pedophile takes the boy’s hand and puts it top-down in the snow. The pedophile kneels on the boy’s hand.

THE PEDOPHILE: I’m going to teach you a cool trick.

THE BOY: [trying to pull out] I don’t like touching your hand. But thank you [still trying to pull out] Thank you but don’t touch me.

The pedophile holds the boy’s hand in the snow and kneels on it until the skin is numbed raw. Then he drags the boy to the dog and pokes the dog’s mouth with the numb hand. The dog bites it. Eats the hand in stringy pulls. And the boy watches, feeling nothing.

THE BOY: [staring at dog] Thank you for teaching me this trick. I love it. Thank you. It’s cool.

The pedophile continues to watch the dog eat the boy’s hand.

THE PEDOPHILE: [tenses] You are polite for saying thank you. You are so polite [seems agitated] No problem.

The pedophile watches the dog swallow, increasingly agitated by the sight.

THE PEDOPHILE: God-damnit [choking] The dog troubles me. I can’t stand it [stands, hits head against thick tree nearby, four times solidly] The dog is enjoying you [almost falling] It loves you. There is no sharing with a dog [louder] I have to have it back. I have to take it back. The dog is troubling me. I feel worse than I have ever felt, ever ever. No earth I stand on floats. Ever ever.

The muscles on his face drop. He takes out a plastic shopping bag from his pocket and wraps it around the dog’s head and pulls the handles together. He tugs the handles tight a few times, the dog grunting with each tug. Then the pedophile lifts the bag in the air and throws it down, stepping on exposed legs. The pedophile breaks the dog’s front legs, bending them with hard stomps.

THE BOY: [staring at his own stripped-hand, nearly fainting] I think I’m in love [pause] Thank you for teaching me that trick.

The pedophile picks up the crippled dog and throws it at the boy. With weight and what remain of its legs, the dog pins the boy down and attacks the boy’s face and chest in confused aggression, biting through the plastic bag. The pedophile watches. He watches neck and face becoming nothing, as the boy yells into the clamping teeth of the dog, until death. And then the pedophile kicks the plasticbag-necklaced dog off the boy. He lifts the boy and carries him back to the tree, throwing the corpse up into the skeletons. Bright light comes from behind the black sphere. The pedophile sleeps, back of head against tree.

Sam Pink lives in Chicago, IL. He is the author of Person (Lazy Fascist Press), Frowns Need Friends Too (Afterbirth Books), and I Am Going to Clone Myself Then Kill the Clone and Eat It (Paperhero Press), You Hear Ambulance Sounds And Think They Are For You (Willows Wept Press), and Yum Yum I Can’t Wait to Die (Jaguar Uprising).

His work has appeared in The Lifted Brow, Columbia Poetry Review, Exquisite Corpse, Slingshot, Pax Americana, Unsaid Magazine, Storyglossia, Lamination Colony, decomP, Everyday Genius, Robot Melon, Dogmatika, Pineapple War, No Colony, and many other publications.

Visit him online at impersonalelectroniccommunication.com.