Predator
Chapter 3
Gary wished he could kick his poxy little bedside table to pieces and then set it on fire. It wasn't really what it was that mattered, it was what was inside it. Medication. Neat bottles of pills labelled with instructions he could recite by heart: twice a day, two with water.
Two by two down in double rounds. It took more than a thin sheet to smother out his personality. They needed to choke him with covers, fill his mouth and nose with feathers until he couldn't breathe anything but down and became as light and soft inside as everyone wanted him to be.
He was deciding if he was going to take a dose today. After last night, he'd had an angry self to contend with, furious about Pete. Even though he needed Pete to be his piece on the board, part of him knew he was still too nice. As if he actually liked the little whelp. He'd reminded himself it was all a scam, a way to neutralise Pete before he caused any trouble, but it wasn't the same. He was still at war with himself.
As he stared a the drawer and wondered if he should take his medication, that same disgusted reflection looked on in contempt. Like a prism divided white light into all its colours, his personality was split off and divided into shades. This one hated him along with everything else about the world. It laughed at him, mocking his weakness, and he spitefully refused to let it win. He wouldn't take his medication, let it lie there like canopic jars of bones.
However, when classes started concentrating was like trying to get ball-bearings through a sieve. The teachers blared start-of-year nonsense and assigned them mundane, repetitive tasks while his mind pinballed between thoughts like a rickety arcade game.
Students were giving him a wide berth, and his dark aura probably only contributed to his reputation. He could have picked a victim to try and cheer himself up, but he wasn't sure if it would make him feel better or worse right now. If things didn't go exactly as he wanted with a target he often ended up more irritated than when he started.
When the final bell eventually gave him mercy and rang, he bolted from the classroom and went straight for the garage, biking into Bullworth Town to gorge himself on junk food. Going without medication brought his appetite back with black-hole intensity, and the cafeteria wasn't actually food so lunch didn't count.
He went to the Yum Yum Market and slipped every other candy bar into his jacket, taking only what he couldn't steal up to the counter. As the weary shopkeeper rang him up, he noticed the displays behind the vendor – mostly booze and tobacco. Although there was a dirty ID sign poked into one corner, everyone knew that for a few extra bucks you could pay for the convenience of not getting your card out. Impulse grabbed him by the tongue.
"A packet of Lucky Strike too," he announced, dropping down some of the spare cash he'd saved in stealing as much as he was buying.
"Ten or twenty?" the vendor asked with listless eyes. What did he care if kids wanted to get an early start on their cancer?
"Twenty," he answered agitatedly, and then palmed a lighter as the clerk turned around. Once he was outside, he found a quiet bench near the town square, ate six candy bars in a row, then unwrapped his cigarettes and lit one with shaking fingers. He felt better out here, where no one cared to recognise or judge him for anything. The first drag was hot and foul, but he let he nicotine creep over him and forced himself to enjoy the burn.
By the time it was finished he'd put his thoughts back into their place. There was something calming about the repetition of raising the cigarette to inhale and settling back down again; just enough background occupation allow him to think straight.
His biggest problem was the waiting game. He'd had to mess around for an entire year before he got Jimmy last time, and he wasn't sure if he had the patience for that again. He needed something to happen now. Too restless to stay seated for long, he got up and started the walk back to Bullworth, resolving to check in with Pete; he wasn't much, but being Head Boy might make him privy to some useful information.
Pete wasn't in, but Gary let himself in with a steel ruler and got nice and comfortable on Pete's bed. He left the lights off so no one would think anything was amiss, but in the darkness and comfort, it was easy to drift off. Often when he went off meds it became all too easy to lose ten, fifteen hours and still not feel rested, yet still have that maniacal energy that had to be doing something all the time or he'd go insane. It took a while to adjust to the feeling of being wired and exhausted at the same time, but he would have to do it. It was that or medication for the rest of his life.
He woke to a clap of noise and burst of light through his eyelids. His first thought had been that he was still in a hospital – one where they turned on the lights in the morning to let you know it was time to wake up. Still half-asleep and groggy, the memory was rancid and not even the relief of realising that he wasn't there any more took the bitterness away.
When he saw Jimmy standing behind Pete at the door, nothing of his previous calm or composure remained. He scowled like he was drinking acid.
"Gary?" Petey queried. "What are you doing here?"
"I was paying a visit, Petey," he said hoarsely, throat raw from cigarettes and sleep. "You kept me waiting."
"I didn't... you..." Pete fumbled for words as if they were marbles falling out of his fingers.
"You don't have any business being in Petey's room," Jimmy cut in aggressively. Gary closed his eyes and imagined for a moment that Jimmy just wasn't there. That the entire existence of James Hopkins had never happened.
"Almost sounds like you're jealous," he taunted, working motion back into his body and stirring from the bed. "Don't tell me you girls were on a date?" Pete looked aghast, but Jimmy didn't flinch.
"None of your damn business," Jimmy retorted. Gary almost wanted to laugh because it was exactly his business. Regardless of how they dressed it up, anyone swapping fluids with Jimmy was an opportunity for exploitation.
"So hostile," he tutted, pulling himself up to his full height, though not daring to look directly at Jimmy. That could wait until a better a day, a day when he could look him in the eye and know he was winning. "I just came by to see a friend."
"A friend?" Jimmy echoed vindictively. "The only friends you have are the voices in your goddam head, Gary." That was as rich as it was wrong – they were just as cruel to him as they were to everyone else. His inner critic was the impossible standard he had to meet. If spared himself no mercy, why should others deserve it?
"Do you see what I mean, Pete?" Gary asked, waiting for the bear-trap he'd laid to snap shut. Sinking cold metal teeth into flesh and bone, until Petey was chained to him irrevocably.
"Leave Pete out of this," Jimmy bit. "He's-"
"Uhh... look, Jimmy," Petey interjected sheepishly, and Jimmy's look was scalding. "I mean... maybe I did say something like... Well, Gary's gotta have someone to keep an eye on him, right?"
"What are you trying to say?" Jimmy growled with a look equal parts confused and angry. "Don't tell me he's convinced you."
"It's not like that," Petey insisted. "Just that... well, you know how it is to have everyone in the school hate you."
"I didn't deserve it." Jimmy cast an ogreish scowl at Gary. "He does."
"But he was crazy and off his meds," Petey protested. Gary was happy to let them talk around him for the time being. It was like watching a script he'd written performed from the audience, lost in the dimmed lights and darkness.
"I'm sure he told you that," Jimmy retorted.
"Yes, but he's been in... well, he told me-"
"He told you anything you needed to hear to feel bad for him, Pete," Jimmy pointed out. It was almost satisfying that no matter what he did, Jimmy knew he was never deserving of sympathy. Gary liked that – that at least one person understood he was never going to be a victim. Even if he hated Jimmy still.
"You know what..." Pete started, and for a second it was almost as if he was going to stand up for himself. A flash of bravery that disappeared like light reflecting off rippling water. "I'm kinda tired," he excused meekly. "I have to get up early tomorrow to go over prefect-"
"Don't bore me with the details, Petey," Gary contributed. "I'll go back to sleep and you'll have to bunk up with Jimmy." He gave a Cheshire Cat grin. "Or maybe you'd like that?" Pete looked away quickly, but under the light it was almost as if he'd blushed.
"All right, I've had enough of you," Jimmy declared brutishly. "Beat it, Gary."
"This isn't your room," he reminded the oaf, bleeding the words like a low, cold fog over water.
"Yeah, but this is my fist." Jimmy raised the clump of bone and gristle. "So unless you wanna make a date with it, get your ass out of here." Gary didn't respond to Jimmy, but laid Petey with a look like a drill. He was going to have to call the shots. Whose side would he come down on?
"Actually," Petey announced like he was talking to his left and right shoes, "if you both wouldn't mind going." He was evading the issue. The only reason Gary didn't snap and start throwing all Petey's nice sentimental photo-frames of his family at the wall was because Jimmy looked equally pissed off.
"You're kidding," Jimmy snapped, but no one was laughing.
"It's late already," Pete pointed out sheepishly. "I've gotta get some sleep."
"Wet dreams to be had, am I right?" Gary baiting, sitting up on bed and skipping his eyes right past Jimmy.
"Get lost, Gary," Pete said like he was trying to have some meaning to his voice. It didn't really work.
"After you, Jimmy," he invited, watching as Jimmy stared at Pete for some intervention, frowning as none came. He was waiting for them both to go. They left in surly, barbed silence.
"If I catch you anywhere near Pete again," Jimmy murmured before they parted ways in the corridor. "I'll finish you."
"Promises, promises," he sneered, not looking back as Jimmy stomped off to his den. A loss for Jimmy was almost the same as a win for him. It was enough.
However, though he had no criticism waiting for him back in his room, he'd been asleep so recently he couldn't seem to shut down. For all his wanting things to happen, the pieces he collected didn't seem to make any sense. Christy was on his side in some way or shape, and Pete wasn't against him, but it didn't mean anything. He didn't know what to do with these things yet. He knew what he wanted – to take down Jimmy, to obliterate him any way he could – but he lacked the blueprints of how he was going to get it done.
He sat on the floor, pressing his back against the side of his desk and tucked his knees up near his chest. Bending his arms back around his legs, almost making a protective cage around himself, he pressed his fingertips together and rested them stiffly against his mouth.
It wasn't an angry, critical self that spoke out of him this time. Those were appeased for now. This was the rational one. The one that often got told to shut the fuck up while his temper set loose.
"You aren't going to last like this," it told him, towering over Gary like an adult standing up to a child, straight and aloof in comparison to his huddled, drawn-in mess on the floor.
"Maybe not," he mumbled, parting his hands and sliding his face forwards until he held his forehead by the temples. He shut his eyes, not needing them to imagine the figure.
"It'll help," the sensible phantom remarked. Didn't need to say what. They both knew.
"I don't want help," he told it.
"What do you want?" it posed cruelly.
"I want to be able to concentrate without a fucking pill," he declared aloud, confessing the sad truth into the isolation of his room. A hoarse voice admitting its own weakness.
"So learn," he answered himself spitefully, "but you're not going to manage it like this." It was true. Today all he'd really achieved was a half-win over Pete Kowalski and the start of a smoking habit. That wasn't worth anything in the bigger picture. He was better than this.
"Why should I?" he questioned, waiting to be convinced.
"Because it's this or accept defeat," he put to himself. He wouldn't admit it to anyone else, but his confidence had been challenged. He wouldn't be here if he'd beaten Jimmy the first time. He wasn't stupid enough not to see that. He was smart; he knew the answer would come if he could hold together long enough to see it.
Okay," he breathed, finally relenting to his own consul. "Tomorrow." He had to keep the balance – last year demonstrated exactly how well a boycott worked for him. Considering he basically stopped turning up to classes, he was lucky he even passed. This wasn't giving in, he told himself, it was strategic battle planning.
Eventually he picked himself up off the floor, yanked open his window and lit another cigarette, smoking into the cooling night air. With the pleasant clutch of nicotine cradling him, he was eventually able to get to sleep. But when the morning came, so did trouble.
Something was wrong from the moment he opened his eyes to the piercing shriek of an alarm clock. He was going to take his meds today, that was it. Only this time the hand down his throat was his own.
The greatest problem he had with medication was the way it changed. Not the varying drugs, but the way it changed. How it was sometimes harmless, helpless little powdered pills in a bottle – something he could take to remove the pressure of handling his mind all by himself – yet at other times it was a hundred foot high, an oppressing blockade that he couldn't get past.
He couldn't win. If he took them he would loathe himself for relying on drugs, but if he didn't take them he felt like the wires had been uncrossed in his head. Sometimes that was great, but it was hard to handle; like going from a moped up to a Harley.
This was one of those days where medication was like the world on Atlas's shoulders. He'd resolved to dose just so he'd get through classes without feeling like he wanted to smash a beaker over someone's head, but when he got up and knew it was hanging over him, he might as well have been in hospital with pills in a little paper cup again. Feeling like he had to take them or risk the consequences.
He avoided confronting the bottle blocking up his door and went for cigarettes instead, perching on the window frame with one leg up and one hanging down, pulling the first corrupted breath of the day. It felt better than taking prescription drugs. At least this was something he chose, not something he had to do.
He was over half-way through the smoke, enjoying the ritual and actually coming to like the sensation, when there was a knock at his door.
"Yes?" he called at it, almost believing that it wouldn't open with a four foot tall pill case in front of it. But it opened easily, no resistance as it passed through the space of an object he put there only in his mind.
"Gary?" a familiar tone called out, and he grimaced as he dragged on his smoke. It could be worse. Petey's head popped around the door like a puppet on a stick.
"Femme-boy," he muttered, pleased that Petey had come for him but still grumpy. It never did to reward him too much anyway.
"Look, about last ni-" Petey started, but didn't get more than a step into the room before he noticed what Gary had in his hand. "You're smoking?" he said indignantly. "You can't do that in here!"
"Shouldn't, Petey, not can't," he corrected, raising the cigarette to his lips again and sucking. He enjoyed the disapproval and horror on Petey's face. It was good to know he could still shock him. "You were saying?"
"Well... I... when did you start that?" he nagged with such effectiveness he could've had his hair in rollers and a roast in the oven. "You didn't smoke bef-"
"Why should you care?" Gary accused, blowing smoke out of the window with a billow of steam. "You certainly don't care about me when Jimmy's around." Petey looked like Gary had reached out and given him a slap, which was of course, the right reaction.
"That's not true," he admonished weakly. "I just wanted to..."
"To what? Explain to me that you have no backbone, so you'll let Jimmy do or say anything, no matter how unfair it is?" he accused savagely. "Well don't worry." He picked up like a silver lining in a stormcloud, offering a patronising smile. "I knew that already."
"Gary, no, it's not like that," he countered. "Jimmy just... needs time, okay?"
"And what do I get until then?" he asked, bundling Petey up in words and agreements until he was swaddled like a baby. He took another drag on his cigarette, feeling better, almost feeling confident enough to walk through the bottle, and watched Petey's eyes follow his hand up to his lips and away again.
"You've just gotta be a little patient," Pete entreated. If it weren't against his principles, Gary would admire how Petey was operating. After shutting them both down last night, he was here alone to smooth things over. No doubt he'd do the same to Jimmy. Gary must have taught him a few things while he'd been pushing him around for fun.
"I don't want to be patient," he snapped, and he did actually mean that one – it was about as close to honest with Petey as he'd get. He felt irritation climbing up the back of his neck, pinpricks as each leg of the monstrous spider crawled higher. His cigarette was almost done, so he set it between his lips and sucked the last few drags from it, the smoke bitter and acrid.
As his chest filled the burn caught in his throat, and he began to cough, hacking hard as it spilled back out of him. He'd only started yesterday, he was allowed some beginner's leeway.
"Jeesh, Gary," Petey murmured pityingly. "How's that going to help, huh?"
"You're not my mother," he snapped, stubbing the end and throwing it out of his window to mingle with the rest of the trash.
"But I am your friend... right?" Pete suggested gingerly, not trusting Gary as he had every right to do.
"Close enough," he bit.
"So I can say when you're doing something that's bad for you." The tone in his voice was poisoned honey; friendly, caring, and at the same time trying to influence him, so that he fitted the mould. Petey was practically a poster boy for the fucking cause. Make everyone as generic and pathetic as him, then watch how well they all got along.
"Just back off!" he caught himself hissing like a cat driven into a corner, his tone angry and uncontrollable. Petey didn't say anything, just stood across the doorway in his nice ironed slacks and stupid Head Boy blazer, a look of pathos in his eyes.
"Gary... have you... uh..." he started to fumble through words, grasping for them like a clumsy attempt to feel up a girl. "Have you been keeping up with your... yunno," he trailed off, but still said more than enough. Gary's fuse wasn't long at the best of times, but Petey was observant enough to detect the difference between 'short' and 'microscopic' – on a bad day off medication, a strong breeze in just the wrong direction could set him off.
"Have I been taking my meds? How considerate of you to wonder, friend," he said with a wire-garotte tone, one that could draw blood if he wrapped it around Petey and pulled hard enough.
"I was just-"
"Just thinking my business was your business," he concluded. "Tell me, am I the only one who sees the irony here?"
"Irony?" Petey quizzed.
"Yes. When it's a cigarette you bitch and moan at me, Gary it's bad for you, Gary stop that," he parodied in his scathing impression of Petey's voice. "Then one minute later you want me to take my meds. They're all drugs, Petey, no difference between them. One's given to me by quacks who don't take the time to know me before they shove chemicals down my throat, and the other I chose for myself because I wanted to. Well fine, you know best, femme-boy," he commended, getting up from the window ledge and pacing to the drawer where he kept them.
"Gary-" Petey started protestation, but it was too late for that because he needed to make a point now. He ripped open the drawer and snatched up the slow-release grenade; the bottle that just made his explosions happen slower and later rather than not at all, and flicked the top off.
"Bon appetite," he announced as he raised it up like toast. Petey looked on in headlight-struck horror; a bunny about to go under the wheels of a truck as Gary put the rim to his lips and tipped it back. Instead of two he took a nice hearty mouthful, then lowered the bottle and swallowed.
"Wait, don't!" Petey yelped, running around the bed and then stopping just short of him. He knew what could happen if he tried to get in Gary's way when he didn't want to be stopped. Gary peered down his nose smugly. "What did you- oh never mind," he rushed anxiously. "How many did you take? Is that safe? Hell... maybe you should see Nurse McRae..." he babbled, bringing his hands up to furrow in his hair.
Gary twisted up one corner of his mouth, lips pressed tightly together, and raised a finger to stop Petey's panic attack. He reached for his arm and started to pose it like a doll, turning Petey's palm upwards, flat and open. Then, as a confused crease appeared in his forehead, Gary leaned down and spat a mouthful of pills into Pete's open hand.
"Gross!" Petey yelped, lashing his arm back and tossing the soggy remains of Gary's medication around his room. "What did you do that for?!"
"To teach you a lesson," he lectured, still quietly fuming. He backed away and wiped his mouth on his hand. Though he'd spat most of them out, he had actually swallowed a few, and didn't have an exact way of telling how many – until they started to work, at least. It would be fun; like a lottery where instead of a jackpot, he risked overshooting the landing pad and becoming even more agitated and tweaked out than normal.
"Okay, okay... I'm sorry, Gary," Petey said obligingly.
"That's all right, femme-boy, you can't help being a whiny little bitch. I forgive you," he answered, straddling the line between sarcasm and sincerity.
"Are you gonna be all right?" he added tentatively, and was close enough for Gary to hook an arm around his neck and jostle him uncomfortably, which he did with relish. Invading other people's personal space was one of his favourite pasttimes, especially when they were too pathetic to stand up to him.
"Why? Do you care?" he simpered. "I'll be fine." He probably wouldn't.
"Come on, let's go get some breakfast," he cajoled, but Petey just shirked under his grip. "Oh I'm sorry," he sneered with a derogatory moan, "did I hurt your feelings? Poor, bullied little Head Girl. Just come on," he ordered again, releasing Petey and snatching his bag from the foot of his bed. This was the test; would Petey follow him, even though he was being deliberately unpleasant?
Of course he did.