Beach Reads #7: Jagged

Welcome to Beach Reads for Goth Kids. All summer long, I’m sending out short stories that pack a haunting punch: creatures of the week, heatwave madness, and vacation nightmares. These will be sticky stories with summery themes, best consumed with a tiny paper umbrella.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back outside, we present: Jagged.

Photo by Abdullah Ahmad on Unsplash

Parker closed his hand around the Get Well card and squeezed, his sweaty palm blurring the ink on his friends’ printed signatures. He slammed his fist into the cast that rose halfway up his pale thigh. The pain was sickening, but when the tears fell, at least they had good reason.

Out the window he watched his so-called friends riding their bikes away from his house, his second-story prison made all the more devious by its uninterrupted views of the entire cul-de-sac. Their errand was done and now they could get back to summer, their old friend Parker fading to a memory, paling in his dark room alone.

Caleb didn’t even need to ride his bike. He lived two houses down, while Jackson and Carter, the twins with their matching fades and matching t-shirts, had to pedal another ten houses up the street.

Caleb rode his bike to spite Parker and that was it.

Parker watched, rage and envy blurring his vision, as Caleb swerved into his driveway, tossed the bike aside, and waved over his shoulder to the twins. Parker wished Caleb would forget about his bike and his dad would back the car over it. He could almost feel it crunching and popping under the SUV’s heavy tires, his mind seamlessly stitching memories of his car accident into the fantasty.

He allowed himself to wish Caleb was under the tires. Not dying, but feeling his own leg bones crack like Parker’s had, holding his own leg in helpless hands and staring into a jagged bone. Seeing his own skin deflated and warped. He imagined Caleb looking to his wise friend’s window with pain in his eyes, I’m sorry for laughing at your cast Parker, I understand now.

At least it was a rainy day. At least Caleb would be stuck inside, miserably wasting a summer afternoon, just like Parker was.

Caleb paused in his driveway, turning like he could feel Parker’s eyes on his back. Parker wondered if he could see in through the window. Then Caleb, that redheaded dickwad, flicked him off.

Parker’s blood boiled. Through clenched teeth he growled, feeling the anger burn through him. It felt clean, powerful. For a moment, it made him forget the cast.

There was a flash of light outside. A finger of lightning snaked down from heavy clouds, glowing white and jagged as if the very air had split open. It moved in slow motion, zig-zagging a path from the sky straight to Caleb’s orange hair. When the light touched the top of his head, Caleb went stiff, his body stretching out, his legs seeming to grow longer. Time was so slow, Parker could see his friend’s fingers, spreading and quivering in their electric bath. He saw Caleb’s mouth widen into a silent scream, a black chasm twisting open among the blinding white.

And then it was over. Parker was shielding his eyes, but the finger of light retreated into the cloud in a fraction of a second. And where it had struck, rather than a heaped and crumpled body, was only a sooty black smear on the driveway. Caleb was nowhere.

Parker wanted to yell for his dad downstairs, but he found his mouth was dry, his voice stuck somewhere in the base of his throat. It squeaked out with that humiliating cracked sound of puberty. He sucked in lungfuls of air to power a scream but the sound wouldn’t come.

Looking out the window, he noticed a gap in the clouds, a wobbly triangle of blue piercing the cement sky.

That’s when he realized there had been no thunder. Instead of yelling for help, he closed his eyes against this new reality. He was losing his mind.

***

“Parker, tell us exactly what you saw. You have the best view of the entire neighborhood from here.”

Parker’s eyes had sunk into black pools of despair. He lifted them to try to meet the gaze of Caleb’s mother but found he couldn’t.

“Anything, son?” With his lowered eyes, Parker watched Caleb’s dad wring his thick, pale hands, red hairs sprouting from the knuckles. Parker wondered if he would have knuckle hair someday.

“Nothing,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Did you see Caleb leave our house, Parker?” It was Parker’s own dad asking the questions now, trying to speed things up. They had already been through this so many times, once with Caleb’s dad that first night, twice with the police in uniforms the next day, and again with the ones in suits and ties.

“No.”

“I’m sorry, Stan, Wendy. I’m sorry he doesn’t have more to tell you. I know he wants to help.” From the corner of his eye Parker saw his dad open the door, motioning for them to leave.

Parker looked out his window at the neighborhood. It was another grey day, dark humid air hanging over the street. Ghost lightning bolts shot across his vision in negative. Black, glowing streaks that always disappeared right before he could focus.

***

it was me

bruh, wtf is happening to you up there

im rotting jackson but i think it was me.

caleb ran away

i was so mad at him

everyone was mad at him so what. lowkey caleb was a shithead

i think i made lightning come down and strike him

get help parker.

***

“Hey kiddo, how we holding up?”

Parker’s dad pushed into his room with his good arm, the other in a sling since their car accident.

“Fine.” Parker barely looked up from his iPad. He hadn’t showered or changed his clothes in three days. His hair lay matted and greasy on his head, and the circles under his eyes were those of a 60-year-old shift worker, not a 12-year-old boy. The room smelled like a rescue kennel.

“I know,” He paused in the doorway then added, quieter, “you’re always fine.”

“Listen,” he said as he crossed the carpet, “I don’t know if it’s good for you to have this or not, but I— I want you to know everyone’s looking for him. I know you wish you could help.”

A piece of paper slid into Parker’s field of vision. Caleb’s school picture, the one from 5th grade where he was smiling instead of looking tough, underneath big block letters: MISSING. REWARD.

“This is a hard summer Parker. I’m sorry.”

Parker felt the anger puff through his body like steam in a locomotive. He wanted to tear the flyer, to punch his dad, to throw himself out of bed and break his leg all over again. But his anger had teeth now, he couldn’t let it out.

He slid down in bed until the covers were up to his chin, and defiantly turned his face to the window, where he watched graphite clouds swirl and tried to calm himself down.

“You know, with all these storms we’ve had this year, well, you aren’t missing much of a summer. Sorta lucky, if you think about it.” He paused for a response he knew wouldn’t come and raised his palms, like he could feel the heat coming off his son. “I’m sorry bud. I’ll leave you alone.”

He left the flyer in Parker’s lap.

When he was gone, Parker set it on the windowsill, next to his crumpled and smoothed Get Well card, the wrinkles and cracks looking like nothing so much as paper lightning bolts.

***

That night he lay on top of the covers, sweating under his cast and watching dense clouds roll across a bright moon. His thoughts flipped past like a video on double speed. Could he have done it?Where was Caleb, and what made the black smudge on the driveway, the smudge he knew he would see in the streetlight if he looked down?

Of course Caleb had run away or been forced into a car by a kidnapper. Of course he was eaten by a bear, slipped the space-time continuum, or fell through a hole in his own yard straight to the core of the earth.

Anything made more sense than what Parker knew.

When he tried to close his eyes all he saw was lightning. Over and over, that hotwhite claw climbing down from the sky in slow motion. The way it grabbed Caleb, strands of his orange hair standing up to meet it. Caleb bathed in that sickening glow. His open mouth a black cavern of pain.

Parker laid awake until the sky glowed a dirty white color at the horizon, grinding his teeth against the movie in his mind, against the certainty that he, himself, was lost.

***

Parker sat on the table in the doctor’s office, the paper crinkling under his shorts. The doctor wore a mask and wielded a tiny, buzzing saw.

Parker clenched his fists. The sun blazed through the window, casting a hot yellow square on his chest. He hated the feeling of the paper under his thighs, hated the vibration of the saw and the pressure on his fragile leg. Cold sweat beaded on his face and he felt nauseated, thinking about his leg being out in the world again, fresh and fragile as a newly hatched chick, open to whatever injury might come his way.

Worse, once this cast came off he would be expected to go outside. The thought was terrifying. He looked down at the sunlight on his chest. He thought it was the first time he had seen the sun in weeks.

There was a feeling like a sigh when the cast broke open, and a moment of bliss when the cold air touched Parker’s skin after so long. Then a smell filled the room like a canister of tear gas. A muddy, rotting smell, sugary and sharp. The doctor didn’t flinch, but Parker saw his dad cover his face.

“That must feel better!” His voice was muffled, laden with forced cheer.

Parker rolled his eyes. The doctor opened the two halves of the cast like he was uncovering a fossil. And then he stopped.

“Now that’s strange—” the doctor’s voice faded, as he prodded Parker’s leg with a gloved hand.

“Is that,” his dad started, his hand falling from his face, “scarring?” He added it quietly, like it was a word Parker shouldn’t hear.

Parker looked down at his own leg. Shriveled, damp, and sickly pale. Pencils and pens lay in the opened cast— the ones Parker lost while trying to scratch under the hard shell— and he could see where he had drawn eerie shaky lines on himself with them. But that wasn’t what they were talking about.

Parker felt his head go light and he collapsed onto the table. The last thing he heard was rain, tapping against the window out of a clear blue sky.

***

For fifty-four days Parker’s skin was smothered under heavy plaster without light or air, and yet something had touched it anyway. The scar unveiled by his cast removal stretched from thigh to ankle— the entire expanse of the limb that had been wrapped in the dark for so long.

It sliced down his leg in the shape of a lightning bolt, white and raised, holy and haunted. Touching it turned Parker’s stomach, sent a feeling of dread down his spine.

The breaks in his leg had been terrible, jagged bone pushing bloody through the skin, his thigh misshapen and bulging. There was enough cutting and stitching required in the Emergency Room that his doctor decided that’s what had caused the scar.

But the shape was too familiar. He saw it every time he closed his eyes. He remembered wishing Caleb would get hurt, his blind fury when Caleb delivered the Get Well card with a sneer, his incandescent rage when Caleb flicked him off.

***

The next day, Parker’s dad dragged Jackson and Carter to his room, practically shoving them through the door. The lights were off and the sun had slid behind a black cloud, leaving the room dark as a cave. The boys hesitated at the threshold.

“Hey Parker.” It was Carter. He half-waved, glancing over his shoulder at Parker’s dad for approval. “You feeling any better?”

“Hey,” said Parker. He turned to them and his face was gaunt, stripped of the sweet round cheeks of childhood.

“You, um, wanna go to the pool? Now you got your cast off?” Jackson asked.

“I’m ok. You guys go without me.”

Carter swallowed audibly. “Can we see your scar?”

Parker winced. He looked at his dad, who had hope all over his face. He looked at the twins and forced a smile, but he felt like throwing up. He flipped back the blanket on his lap, revealing the long white scar.

“Whoa,” the twins said in unison.

“It looks like lightning, dude. You’re like a superhero,” said Jackson, sounding like his old self. As soon as the words left his mouth his eyes flicked to Parker’s face. In their eye contact, Parker could see him wondering, knowing the horrible truth.

Outside the clouds built up again, and the boys heard a distant rumble of thunder.

“Sounds like no pool today, guys,” said Parker’s dad. “Parker? You want to come downstairs and watch a movie with your friends?”

“No,” said Parker, covering his legs. “I’m tired.”

***

Right before school started, Jackson and Carter moved away, their parents deciding the cul-de-sac was no longer safe. Parker was alone a lot, which was fine, because he couldn’t bring himself to leave his room, the jagged scar marking him as a killer.

The search for Caleb slowed after a few months, outdated flyers curling and fading on light posts and bulletin boards, while the rest of the world kept turning.

Parker lay in bed, watching the clotted sky with vigilance, wondering if he could fix it. Reverse this summer back to May, before the car accident. Jump timelines, unravel the whole fabric of the universe to make everything un-happen.

But he found all he could do was move clouds. And carefully swallow anything that approached the feeling of anger, squeezing it down into a persistent melancholy that painted the cul-de-sac grey with mist.