Oskar first saw the little blue boy sitting on a bench down
the path from where Oskar was flicking small bits of bread out to a hungry
flock of ducks. (Or maybe they were simply gluttonous. With the vast numbers of
bread-toting children that frequented the park on weekends, Oskar could
scarcely fathom these animals remaining hungry for long.) The boy looked a few years younger than
Oskar. His face was round and luminously
pale and topped by a fine black field of cowlicks. He was wrapped in a puffy winter coat that
strained against him, clearly a size too small.
His legs were draped in a pair of sweatpants that could have fit both
his legs in one side. The cuff of the
pants brushed the ground, but his feet swung freely above it.
Pitying the little pauper, Oskar hobbled over to say hi and
share some of his bread with the boy when the first smell of rot crept up on him. It was a damp smell that grew exponentially
as Oskar closed the space between himself and the blue boy. By the time Oskar was within three feet of
the boy, the smell had grown strong enough to develop its own taste and
texture. The air had the spongy,
pulsating feel of water-rotted wood filled with squirming insect larva. The smell was a physical force. It filled Oskar’s mind and made it difficult
to think or even to keep putting one foot in front of the other. Oskar suddenly wanted nothing more than to
stay as far away from the little blue boy as possible. He had no idea how people could stand being within a hundred feet of the
boy, much less to run and skate and play.
Oskar was a voracious learner of the highest degree, reading most
anything he could get a hold of. He could
recall tearing through stories of certain phenomenon that only children could
observe, but the adults here were not alone in their unawareness. Two children side-armed a Frisbee back and
forth not more than ten feet behind the boy’s bench.
The rotting, fetid smell doubled in intensity and Oskar
staggered a step backwards and caught his foot on a broken branch. He pin wheeled his arms wildly and had to
spin around to keep from falling over. It
was still a very near thing. He scowled
childishly at the dead branch that had nearly tripped him. Some dumb high school kid had probably thrown
it on the path trying to trip a biker.
When Oskar turned back to the little blue boy, he found himself looking
directly into the little boy’s pale green eyes.
Caught staring, the blue boy’s eyes widened slightly and he started
fidgeting, pulling at his fingers and licking his lips. A long moment passed before the boy was
satisfied that his curiosity was not going to earn him Oskar’s ire. He tilted his head slightly, his curious gaze
intensified and a tattered triangular strip of his scalp peeled away from his
skull and hung limply between his left eye and ear.
The wound was bloodless and tinged a painful purple-blue
color that was deeper than the shallow blue hue that touched the entirety of
the boy’s exposed skin. The boy shifted
his head back upright and the wound attempted to swing back against his scalp
again, but could not defy gravity and continued to bob loosely. It was this final gesture that suddenly and
completely broke Oskar’s will. He spun
clumsily on his heel, narrowly avoiding falling flat once more, and sprinted in
raw, breathless terror away from the park, away from the bench, away from the
little blue boy with the torn head.
Oskar ran home at full-tilt for nearly ten minutes before having to slow
down and trot the rest of the way. By
the time he got back to his house he was utterly out of breath, his legs felt
numb and watery, and his mind was a howling void that could not piece together
what he had seen only minutes before.
All he could see was the bobbing flap of dead flesh.
****
Nearly twenty years passed before Oskar gave another
moment’s waking thought to the little blue boy sitting on the park bench. Within ten minutes of arriving home all those
years ago, his mind had started up a rather standard procedure. It had slowly clouded over the events that it
had no classification for nor understanding of.
It took Oskar a bit longer to notice the smell this time and
far longer to actually lay eyes on what logic demanded be an apparition or
hallucination.
He was walking through Bed, Bath, and Beyond. It was the weekend and he and Alice needed a
new toaster. Their current one now
belched thin tendrils of ugly black smoke whenever it heated up. This was a fairly significant problem,
considering the job of a toaster. Oskar,
dutiful as always, had wandered off to find a sales agent in hopes of discovering
which toaster would die the least painful death after the longest
lifespan. Amidst innumerable throw
pillows, loofahs, and blenders Oskar strode through the aisles in search of
assistance.
Slightly taller than average with a thin frame, bleary green
eyes, and mousy brown hair that was starting to thin ever so slightly, Oskar
fit the mold of a young man looking to settle into his life perfectly. He was relatively unremarkable looking, with
only the sharp bend in his poorly healed nose standing out. He had broken it when he was younger after
falling out of a tree in the playground during recess one day and the school
nurse had set it with a rather distinctive crook.
Upon finally grabbing the attention of a nearby employee,
Oskar led her back to his wife and filled her in on the tragic demise of their
toaster. Petite, brunette, and
eye-catching enough to hurt any marriage, the saleswoman was more than happy to
point out the varying brands and models of toasters that they carried and
dutifully read all the different features off the information cards attached
beneath the displays. Oskar was the
first man she had helped in the past two weeks who had not watched with
unwavering attentiveness as she bubbled on about this product and that. In fact, Oskar had not so much as glanced in
either her or the toasters’ direction since he had met up with his wife again. His entire focus was narrowed to the little
blue boy perched lightly atop a display stand.
Oskar’s ears rang, his eyes watered, and his whole body
tingled uncomfortably as panic bent his every sense to its jarring whims. Oskar felt himself drowning, weightless. He could not obey even the simple laws of
gravity, he felt himself floating along numbly, unsure if his thoughts were
wafting away or if his body had really lost anchor. The world rocked to and fro, seemingly at
random, and the colors around him waxed and waned with it.
Oskar closed his eyes tightly and clamped his teeth
down. He told himself it was a panic
attack, he had been having optical and auditory hallucinations with the attacks
since he was a child and this was no more than that. He had learned a number of tricks to help
bring himself under control. He also
kept a small bottle of Klonopin with him wherever he went. Keeping his eyes closed, he opened the bottle
with practiced ease and dry swallowed a couple of the small, circular
pills. Giving the drugs time to take
effect, he counted, stretched, and breathed as subtly as possible and wondered
why Alice had not looked over and noticed his clear distress.
After exhausting his small bag of tricks, Oskar cautiously
opened his eyes. The world had stopped
swaying, the colors remained solid, and the weightlessness gave way to gravity. The little blue boy was still there, staring
at Oskar with round, curious eyes. The
flap of skin at his hairline had dislodged itself once more and the boy looked
on the verge of tears.
Oskar screamed.
****
Oskar awoke those nine years ago with little to no
recollection of what had caused his panic attack and had asked only to be taken
home. He apologized profusely to his
wife, to the employee, and to those patrons of Bed, Bath, and Beyond whom he
had disturbed (all parties were quick to wave aside his apologies) and then
passed the car keys over to Alice. The
rest of the day had been an uneventful mix of Oskar resting and Alice worrying
and by the next day neither party gave the attack another thought.
Oskar himself did not give the little blue boy another thought until
Sam drowned.
Sam was seven years old, the pride and joy of his parents,
Oskar and Alice. They had done
everything to make sure his life was a good one. They gave him a sweet, simple name they both
preferred to their own rather stiff first names. They allowed him the adventures, innocence,
and free spirited joy of childhood, even at the expense of their own
sanity. They taught him to find out for
himself what was right and wrong and forgave him the exuberant mistakes of
youth.
The police ruled Oskar’s suicide a clear case of guilt over
the death of a son. No one had ever been
told that Oskar had seen his young son’s dead body twice before the police came
to his door and asked him to make an identification. Oskar knew what had happened before seeing
the body. When the police officer
explained that Sam and his friends had gone to the local pool when no
lifeguards had been present, Oskar understood.
The boy had been running around the edge of the pool, he had lost his
balance rounding a corner and had fallen.
His head smashed against the concrete lip of the pool and had torn open
along his hairline. Unconscious and
bleeding, the boy had drowned while his panicked friends called 911 and cried. Oskar knew all this before the officer was
halfway through his story and long before the sheet was pulled back on Sam.
