Raleigh's Prep

Pounds of Flesh-2

When he was sure they’d escaped detection, Topher said, “I think he knows who we are.”

“Gertrude’s father?” Zorn said. “He knows exactly who we are. He’s the reason we were sent to this place. Weren’t you at the trial? It was quite dramatic.”

“I’m aware of Mr. Hughes’s roll in our internment. I was referring to Mr. Floyd.”

“But we’ve only been here less than a month,” Gertrude said.

“Yes, but Mr. Floyd is everywhere. He could probably tell us the time and date of your last bowel movement.”

“What?”

“Didn’t I tell you he approached me the third day after our arrival? ‘Six thirty in the evening,’ he growled. ‘Tuesday.’ It took a while before I understood exactly what he was talking about, but when I did I shuddered for nearly an hour straight.”

“Then he knows exactly who we are. Among other things.”

Topher waved the comment aside. “The question I propose is this: Why did he let us go?”

“Maybe he didn’t see the corpse?”

“How could he not see it?” Zorn said. “It was right there in front of him, despite Topher’s, er, best efforts to draw away his attention.”

“I don’t know what happened. My buttocks usually have a mesmerizing effect upon people, particularly adults.”

“Perhaps, then, he didn’t understand that the corpse was a corpse?” Gertrude offered. “I mean, I know it was obvious to us, but he didn’t really get a good look at it like we did.”

“Don’t be an i***t, Gertrude. What else could he think it was?”

“From that distance? Maybe a pile of rotted squirrels? Odious little vermin, them. I was once attacked by squirrels when I was three years-old. Nearly bit off my thumb. See the scar?”

He presented his thumb to them for inspection.

Zorn peered at the tiny white line just below the nail.

“I thought that was a badger?”

“I was also attacked by a badger, but not until I was six. An altogether different story. It was mostly to blame.”

“You told me you swatted it with a walking stick.”

“I did, and when it attacked, I compared it to several unfavorable things. I believe the beauty of the metaphor was lost in the violence of the moment. I was forced to run for my life.”

Topher began to get heated.

“The corpse was neither a pile of deceased squirrels, nor was it a pile of deceased badgers.”

“Then there was the time that baboon bit me on the arm at the zoo,” Gertrude continued. “It would seem as though I’m not held in high regard by mammals at all.”

“Shut up! What we found was obviously the body of a dead student. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t there something about not murdering one’s classmates in the Student Code of Conduct?”

“If there isn’t, there should be,” Zorn said.

The gold dome of The Grotto loomed ahead atop a short incline, growing larger and more mythical as they approached. Pillars framed the wide wooden doors, and marble benches were bolted into the concrete next to them. Zorn’s belly growled at the thought of the impending feast.

“Wait, are rodents mammals?” Gertrude finally asked.

If the exterior of The Grotto was a romantic approximation of a gothic cathedral, the interior resembled more of a late nineteenth-century booby hatch. Beige tiles covered the floor, and the walls (also beige) weren’t made out of brick, or wood beams, or anything else stylish, but sheetrock. Even the lime-streaked windows were square. Rusty iron bars were bolted into the frames, and the glass panes were warped and bubbled.

“Look,” Zorn said as they joined the queue. “It’s I, Dennis. Hello, I, Dennis!”

He waved at a tall, skinny boy in the middle of the line. He was wearing black celluloid pants that crinkled when he walked, a matching black shirt, and a black plastic helmet, all of which shined dully in the buzzing overhead lights. His nose was angular and prominent, his cheeks sallow and sunken, and his Adam’s apple protruded like a painful tumor. Topher had never been very impressed by the helmet, though everyone else seemed to think it was magnificent. That knot in his throat, however, was unnerving, bobbing like it did whenever he spoke, or breathed, or did nothing. It was like it had a mind of its own.

He didn’t say anything, but he did let them cut in line behind him.

Gertrude eyed the camera mounted onto the back of the helmet.

“So, are you still, er, still modifying your body?”

The camera jerked in symmetrical polygons, making little mechanical sounds as it scanned Gertrude’s every movement. I, Dennis turned around, blessing them with his white, scar-puckered countenance.

“Hello, Zorn. Hello, Kenneth.” He nodded at Topher and his Adam’s apple bobbed and Topher jerked his eyes toward the ceiling.

Gertrude beamed. It was rare that anyone referred to him by his given name. Zorn pointed at some wires sticking out his neck.

“What are those for?”

“Performance enhancers. The kids at my old school used to tease me. They don’t anymore.”

“The wires stopped them?”

“No, I did.”

He let that hover in the air.

“I did these before I came here. The kids at my old school liked to throw soggy bread rolls at me. If someone here throws a soggy bread roll at me, my camera will identify it as a hostile object and send electrical impulses to my various muscles. Then I’d burn it to bits with my eyeball lasers.”

A soggy bread roll sailed through the air and hit him right in the back of the head. It splattered, thick and wet, the sodden dough squirting into the helmet, which sparked and fizzled.

“Duck, Jean-Claude!” someone yelled.

“Why do they call me that?”

He took the helmet off with a twist and a click, revealing his puckered skull. Irregular strands of greasy gray hair sprouted like witch-weed, and where there wasn’t hair, the skin was corpse-white, and where the skin wasn’t corpse-white, it was scarred and bruised, and where it wasn’t scarred and bruised, it was wrinkled like the neck of a bulldog. Topher found another spot on the ceiling to stare at.

“It’s an allusion, I think,” Gertrude said.

“An allusion?” I, Dennis scraped bread off the components and out of the cracks in the plastic. “To what?”

“A movie. A late-eighties, science fiction flick called Cyborg, to be specific. It starred Jean-Claude Van Damme. He’s a Belgian karate expert.”

I, Dennis flicked the last few specks bread from his helmet and twisted it back on his head. It clicked and whirred, buzzed and droned, and dinged three times.

“I don’t watch Japanese films.”

“How did you get your hands on all of this?” Zorn asked. “Isn’t that considered contraband?”

“I told you. Most of my upgrades were completed before I was sent here. I’d have Internet service if we weren’t so far out of range.”

Topher continued to stare at the ceiling.

“You’re lying. Who’s your contact? Can you get me some candy bars and a revolver?”

Someone grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around and he came face to face with a muscular Assistant. Phyro Brimstone, his nemesis. He was a little taller than Topher, and he kept his head shaved. The shiny slug of a scar crossed his left cheek. His partner, Burr, stood behind him like a dog, his hands clasped behind his back, fawning and obsequious and ridiculously intense.

“Did I just hear you threaten to shoot somebody?” Brimstone asked.

“My goodness, Phyro,” Topher said. “Your uniform is spotless. Did your boyfriend wash it for you?”

Brimstone sneered.

“Didn’t see you in the hallway this morning, Bill.”

“Oh?”

“You weren’t sneaking out, were you?”

“Of course not. That would be against school rules.”

Brimstone took a step closer so that his nose almost grazed Topher’s.

“If I find out you’ve been sneaking out before wake-up call, you know what that means, right?”

“That I’ve been banging your mother without you?”

The satisfied smile on Brimstone’s face turned into a snarl. He clenched his fists. Topher bounced on his toes, trying to seem taller. Then a voice, cool and collected, said, “Is there a problem, boys?”

Brimstone whipped around, ready to pummel whoever said it, but then panic swept over his face.

There, standing in the entry, was the new Headmaster, Mr. Stoneman. He was very thin, with sunken, snakelike eyes, and a sharp nose and sharp cheeks that emphasized his full lips. His skin was smooth and ruddy, offset by jet-black hair streaked with gray. He wore it long and swept back off his forehead. His suit was also black and expensive, and his shoes were polished within an inch of exploding into flames.

Brimstone’s fists unclenched and he stood at attention. Burr followed suit, the bloodlust in his eyes replaced by terror.

“Mr. Stoneman,” Brimstone said. “How nice to see you, sir.”

“Spare me, Brimstone. I asked you a question.”

“A question, sir?”

“Don’t be an ass, boy. What’s going on here?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all, sir.”

Burr nodded furiously. Stoneman smirked. He hung his head a bit and let the smirk turn into a creepy half-smile.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”

Brimstone blinked and swallowed.

“Yes, sir. This is Topher Bill. Behind him is his roommate, Michael Zorn. And this is Ger . . . Kenneth Hughes.”

“Zorn? That’s an odd name.”

“Yes, sir,” Zorn said. “It’s a family name. My mother’s mother’s maiden name, sir.”

“I see.”

He took them all in, a little half-smile on his face.

“Topher Bill, Michael Zorn, and Kenneth Hughes. I remember you now. I just read your files the other day. Positively murderous.” Gertrude shuddered. “I trust you boys will stay out of trouble while you’re in my care? No more ‘accidental’ fires?” The boys nodded in unison. He held their attention for one last uncomfortable beat. “Very good. Brimstone?”

Brimstone stood even straighter, and Burr tried to mimic him.

“I need you and your little friend to come with me, please.”

Marvin Grimm was almost six foot six and weighed over two hundred pounds. His hunch was legendary. Usually it was all anybody could see as he waded through the sea of chairs, bobbing on his back like a gull on the waves. His head was huge, too; a stylist’s nightmare, a haberdasher’s wet dream. He scanned the cafeteria for an empty table where he could spread his full bulk, an empty table, preferably, far away from the others, but there wasn’t one. Then he saw his roommate, I, Dennis, and the other new kids whose names he didn’t know yet. They were sitting in the middle of the cafeteria, surrounded by a forest of chair legs and backpacks, but he decided to risk it. He was big and strong, and that’d saved him before, but he’d never been sent away to a place like Raleigh’s where his size and strength didn’t seem to matter. There were kids in there that had done unspeakable things and had no problem telling him about it.

Those unfortunate enough to be in his way were knocked aside or shoved into the tables. When he was forced to stop at some impasse, his hunch was assaulted by a variety of fruit, mostly apples, which ricocheted off like a marble on a trampoline. One shot straight up into the air and hit the ceiling. He grunted a greeting when he reached the table, prompting one of the bearded newcomers below cry out “Marvin Grimm! Nice to see you. Please, have a seat.”

Marvin gently placed his heaping lunch tray on the table and allowed his backpack to slip off his non-hunched shoulder. He placed it carefully on the floor, pulled out a chair, and engulfed it with his buttocks. The chair protested with a creak.

“I forgot your name.”

“I’m Michael. But you can just call me Zorn.”

“Okay. Hi, Zorn.”