Chapter 11- Bad Recollection(s) Revised

Author's Note: I've strayed a bit too far from updating like I should- but at least this should prove that I'm not giving up. At least.

This one's one of the longer chapters I've written- and I just hope that everybody who reads it finds this chapter not, er, nonsensical. I found the length of this chapter necessary- in fact, I've had to cut the end off considerably from the original version- but what I think about doesn't matter in the long run, now, does it? Just tell me straight whether you found this chapter good (and necessary).

Oh, the warning... In this chapter, I'm going to have to forewarn about Offensive & Derogatory Language. If that stuff offends you to an ungodly amount, and you won't be able to stop yourself from going off about it, just skip around that part, or just stop.

--Mad Red Queen

Horace didn't know if he really did hear what he thought he did on the other end of the phone, or if he had just simply imagined it.

Either way, he believed that he heard a noise very much close to the sound of a gate, heavily rusted, creaking. The sound brought him back immediately to the Mahoney Family Junkyard, to the sound of everything in the old, cold place where he spent his entire life- the crash of cars being crushed far in the depths of the dilapidated metal jungle, the sounds of people driving past his small one-room shack at the road's strict speed of 45, and of his dogs barking from their kennel.

He shut his eyes, and when he opened them, he found himself standing in complete darkness, the only noise he could hear being the so very familiar sound of the rusted metal squeaking in the darkness. He knew it was complete darkness, because he looked around, turned around in a complete spin, and his eyes only returned with the confirmation that he was in a sea of unwavering black.

"It's just lovely to see you again, big boy." A soft voice said from the darkness.

Horace could have jumped backwards and started yelling- especially when the darkness around him was dissolved with the bright light that came to life in the dark room he was previously standing in- and steeled himself, prepared to face whatever was in the dark.

His eyes were searching the now bright room, looking for the owner of the voice. His gaze found the form of a women wearing torn-looking rags who looked as though she had just gone through a mud treatment- minus the treatment- and any part of exposed skin appeared to be a cadaverous shade of gray. And, he realized as he raised his eyes to search her face, her eyes seemed to have become an intricate cobweb of blood red, lending her the look of someone severely hung over or terribly sick. All in all, they reminded him of his own- only the color of their irises differing.

Horace must have been staring at her silently for too long, because she gave him a catty grin and posed sideways, turning her waist at a delicate angle. The smile was not very comforting (or pleasant) because of her teeth, which were either missing, or hung in her mouth by reddened, practically tenderized tissue.

"Ah- I take it you approve of my costume?" She asked in a surprisingly warm voice that Horace had no problem with placing, finally, as Lilith's.

She turned on her bare, dirty feet, whirling around in the same manner a young girl would the first time she wore a flower girl's puffy dress. Without really thinking, Horace said, "What are you wearing?"

For a moment, Lilith's dirt-crusted, peasant-like features wrinkled into a look of pure distaste. Then, barely looking as though she had ever worn a look of displeasure in her entire existence, her smile came back. "Oh... I love the middle ages- and the Black Plague; now those were some good times!"

Horace felt like asking her how long she's lived... or, more or less, existed, but he remembered that there were things of more importance than finding out how long a creature like Lilith had existed. He became aware, once again, of the white, featureless room he was standing in when his eyes trailed away from Lilith's peasant rag dress.

"Okay, I'm here... what now?"

Lilith, who had started twirling once again while Horace was talking, stopped suddenly, her smile seeming to freeze itself on her dirty face. When she finally sighed and turned back to face Horace, her mood seemed to have dampened considerably. "You must have really meant it if you brought yourself here with the intensity of your..." She paused, looking away from him and taking a moment to swallow a lump that materialized in her throat. "Like all things in the afterlife that are this... out of the ordinary," Horace found himself thinking, 'and this is supposed to be ordinary?' "you will have to sign a quick contract, then you can begin what the living would call some exterminations of the highest order."

"You mean getting rid of- er, destroying them..."

"Sending them to the afterlife permanently, so they can face judgment, yes."

"Okay, giving them a way over here so God can..."

"Oh, He doesn't handle personal cases anymore; he has either us lost souls on probation to judge with the All-Seeing Gaze, or those hypocritical angels to do the job."

Horace stared at her for a moment, looking very annoyed before sighing in defeat, understanding that anything he said to her dealing with the afterlife would be promptly proven wrong by a flesh and blood (is it possible that she has any sort of feelable skin?) native of the afterlife. "...I'm going to have to sign something before I start?"

She frowned and tilted her head slightly. "Basically, yeah. Something else, but that comes later. Besides, it's not that... important."

Horace wasn't surprised by how doubtful he felt that anything having to do with Lilith, or the afterlife, for that matter, was ever unimportant or simple.

He stared at her for a moment, focusing on the slightly down-turned curve of her lips, blinked- and found her gone from the spot that she had been in a second before. And, along with her disappearing, what appeared to be a huge, dark-wooded desk (the kind his father- and, he had always believed, every principle in the schools that he had never been allowed to attend for long- had in his office) had materialized five feet or so before him. He felt a sense of de ja vu, and why shouldn't he, after all, with the way it was turned so that he was facing the desk in the same way he always had?

Without meaning to, his mind dredged up memories, ones he had believed to have been long buried in the black, barely disconcernable waters of his past memories, bobbing up like amphibian, and sometimes rather nightmarish creatures, gasping at him. He saw images of a stern man wearing a cheap stone-colored suit and wrinkled yellow tie, tucking his dress shirt into the pants of his Dockers, asking him without ever actually turning to see him to ask him if he looked good enough to get the dick for brains that owned the local used car lot to bend over the desk and let him (he meant it jokingly, of course, as homophobic as he actually was all the while that Horace knew him) fuck him up the ass as hard as he could, and be grinning afterwards.

The another, this one of a his old middle school principle telling the same man who had worn the cheap suit, and who was wearing an oil-stained blue mechanic's jumper that he was concerned with his son's school attendance, which was more of a complete lack thereof, and despite the fact that he was quickly growing past his father's height and was easily two inches taller than the concerned (yet frightened of him- they were always frightened, in some elemental part of themselves, whether they meant to or not) head principle. His father's face had bloomed a bloody, purplish color that Horace was more than familiar with, which always served as more than decent a warning that, fact aside that he couldn't do anything in the mode of physical harm to Horace, he was pissed, and it was time for Horace the Horse to do the 'ol heave ho away.

"Are you telling me what right I have and don't have with my son?" Horace couldn't see his father's expression- his head was bowed down in an attempt to shut out the voices in the room.

"No, Mr. Mahoney, but-"

"But what? But what? Are you offerin' to adopt him? If so, please make me a fair offer!" Horace winced as his father began banging on the back of his chair, which he had abandoned to stand behind. "Do I hear fifty? Do I hear fifty-five-?"

"Mr. Mahoney, please!" The principle implored. He, of course, had never seen Joseph Mahoney swept up in his own version of a real fire and brimstone sermon, so he was most likely shocked. "This is about your son who-"

"Do I hear forty?" Joseph bellowed. "Do I hear forty for my god-damn retard of a son? No? Then Thirty?!"

Horace believed that this would be when he should start crying, bawling, and go racing out of the room like any other normal kid, but he only stayed silent, staring at the floor like the 'tard he was, after all. It would only enrage dad, and his father was all Horace had, besides the dogs and the yard. The damned junk yard.

"Mr. Mahoney," the principle finally said, giving up on keeping the conversation with the wild, aging owner of the Mahoney Family Junkyard, yelling. "Mrs. Dohert, the counselor for sixth graders, says that she has real reason to be concerned with your son's behavior towards other people-"

"Holy hell, folks," Joseph said, smacking at the wood of the chair in front of him with his palm. "You've gotta give a father a break- after all, this make and model may be downright fuckin' ugly, but it can haul like you WOULDN'T BELIEVE!"

"MR. MAHONEY, WE HAVE FOUND ABNORMAL BRUISING AND MARKS ON YOUR SON'S BODY!" the principle finally shouted. He then paused, as though embarrassed. He also, no doubt, expected another outburst from this, the great king of all dysfunctional and bad parents.

None came.

After a moment of silence, his father spoke in a much softer tone of voice. "...And what's that supposed to mean to me?"

In that moment, the shock coming from the principle seemed to be a physical thing, causing the air in the tiny head administrator's office to vibrate. Finally, then, he spoke. "I've seen parents like you before, Joseph Mahoney- but none who have ever been so boldly callous and harmful to such a talented, artistic child like your son."

His father scoffed and walked out from behind the empty seat, coming up to the principle's desk. When he spoke, every word he said coated in cruelty. "Horace? You must have the wrong parent and child in here- y 'see, this idjit here..." he flung his arm out behind him, motioning to Horace, who still sat there, his head turned downward. "Couldn' live alone by hisself properly, let alone be a goddamn Mark van Gout."

As Horace sat, trying to look as small as a tall boy like himself could and attempt to ignore what the two men were saying in front of him, he felt sucked out of being able to ignore what his father and the principle were saying by hearing his father mispronouncing the name of one of Horace's favorite artists. It's Vincent van Gough, you moron! Horace wanted to yell at his father. And you don't know anything about what I can do- just like everybody else.

His hands tightened on the smooth wood of the chair's armrest for a moment before he let up, remembering that if he could tighten his grip hard enough, he could easily crunch the wooden armrest into splinters and sawdust, so he turned to tightening his teeth into a painful pressure point in his teeth and jaws instead of gripping the (to him) easily crush able wood.

"Mr. Mahoney, do you even know what your son does in his art classes- and out of class?" The principle finally said.

With that one sentence, Horace felt his head snap up so that his gaze no longer napped on his lap like a cat and was, instead, focused on the back of his father's cleaned mechanic's uniform. Dear god, no, how could he tell his father...

"What in the hell are you gettin' at?" His father said. Even from a view of his back instead of his face, Horace could practically see the anger coming off of his father in waves.

"Your son is one of the most accomplished young painters I've ever seen. He is what many specialists would call a... a prodigy- a genius at paints..." The squat superintendent then started looking for something under his desk hurriedly, abandoning Horace's raging dragon of a father for the moment.

"Look here," Joseph said. He sounded half angry and half uncomfortable with the situation. "I don't know who in the hell lead you to believe that Horace could hold a damn pencil right to squiggle a stick figure, let alone paint, but whoever it was really lead you along, Mr.-"

The principle seemed to have found what he was looking for- a large, thick piece of white paper rolled up into a tube- and he placed it on his desk, cutting Joseph off. Before he could even begin to unroll the painting, Horace already knew what it was. He stared at it in disbelief and horror.

How in the hell had anybody found that, since he had given it to his art teacher, Miss Simmins, for safekeeping?

He had warned her that his father had already torn up the sketchbook that he had failed to keep hidden from him, and had told him afterward that drawing in sketchbooks- and painting- was something that faggots did (he kept the "faggot" part out when telling the whole sob story to Mrs. Simmins, for reasons of embarrassment). And he could only hope that the principle was bluffing, and what he was unfurling wasn't Horace's most prized painting, or that they had broken into his locker and had taken one of his nonetheless prized works, but one that was less important to Horace than the one he had entrusted to the art teacher.

But, as the man behind the desk unfurled the huge, thick piece of paper, Horace felt his breath stick in his throat at the unmistakable sight of his favorite creation with paint.

How could he not identify it immediately?

The painting was comprised of a fiery red corvette sitting atop a huge pile of crushed, rusted cars. The sun was shining on it like a most perfect spotlight- as though the corvette itself was the star of some show for the heavens, or a king whose throne was that of the dead bodies of other mechanical beings who were never destined to out-race the great red contraption atop the pile made up of them.

Sure, the art teacher had said it was a miraculous painting for a pre-teen like him, but Horace was never completely satisfied with the painting. In short, he had been planning to wait until he got better at painting before he tried re-doing it.

It would be the last time he would ever see it again as a whole, bright painting.

His dad stared down at it for a moment, probably either shocked, or busy trying to guess at what the little smirking man behind the desk was trying to get at. His father wasn't too hard a nut to crack; after all, he was always, self-admittedly, looking for the angles other people were trying to pull on him.

Then, turning around slowly, he spoke in a tone of voice that showed his surprise. "Did you do this, son?"

Horace didn't say anything for a moment, but when he regained control of himself, he shook his head vigorously before turning his gaze back to his painting. His eyes stuck to the mesh of blue sky and white, cream-puff clouds that made up the sky in his painting, focusing on that instead of his father.

His father turned back around, seemingly satisfied with his answer. "There, see? Boy says he didn't do it, and you can hold me on this one, Ira," He ignored the annoyed look on the other man's face, which was probably on account of him referring to the man by his first name instead of his title. "This idjit couldn't do this anymore than I could river dance."

The principle rose out of his seat and pulled the paper over slightly by one of it's curled ends, flipping it partially over. "I disagree., Mr. Mahoney. Do you recognize this?"

Horace could almost believe that he felt his eyeballs close to popping out of his skull when he saw that scribble of pencil written on the back of the painting. Even though he couldn't read it from where he was sitting, he knew, with a dropping heart, that it was his signature.

Sadly, his father memorized almost any and every signature of everyone who had ever signed anything and had passed it even close to him. And, Horace knew, he had easily memorized Horace's scrawled, wide-spaced writing a long time ago.

At first, his father didn't speak. Then, he reached down to the painting, caressing the drop of golden paint that illuminated the car from above. "Horace? Did you lie to me?" Horace didn't answer. "Horace? Son? You want to explain something to me?"

Horace felt more panic than he ever had in his entire life- even when he had gotten beaten up by a group of freshmen in high school when he was eight years old. But, then again, Horace cared more for that painting than he did for his worthless, hatefully shaped body. He tried to swallow some of that panic away, then said, "That... that's mine... I just... I just didn't recognize it-"

"Do I look like a sommabitch that's as stupid as you?!" He snarled, bringing his tightened fist down on the painting. "You were planning on lyin' to me!"

Then, just as quickly as he started to yell, Joseph was silent. And, for a moment, Horace could almost believe that his father had, miraculously, calmed down, and seemed preoccupied with running his fingertips all over the painting, running over the painted lines that Horace had worked on while sitting in his corner of the art room, alone as always.

Then, he grabbed onto the bottom end of the painting and whipped around, holding it out as though he was holding the carcass of a smashed rat he had found in the fridge. "Where in the hell d 'ya think you can get with this, huh?" Horace didn't answer, so Joseph took a step closer to his son and thrust the painting out at the sitting, gangly boy. "Answer me, you stupid sonofabitch! Answer me!"

Tears were building up, and he could not hold them back any longer. "It makes me happy!" He yelled, trying to stop himself from sobbing. After he finished saying it, he choked back a powerful sob, his lips moving on their own accord as though each halve was a rabbit's nose.

His father seemed to be looking down at him for forever, waiting for him to regain control of himself, then he bent over closer to Horace's face. "You are no fuckin' fruit. I may raise a goddamn 'tard, but I refuse to raise a faggot- got me?" He then dropped the poster to the ground and reached forward in one quick, cruel movement, latching his bony, hard right hand on his son's lumped chin. "You are no faggot."

Not knowing what to do, Horace could only nod his head dully and dread anything his father planned to do next. He could not control the flow of tears any longer, however; they flowed from his eyes like a fountain, running over the flat expanses of his cheeks, darkening his ratty t-shirt's collar.

His father let go of his chin just as quickly as he had grabbed on, and Horace believed, for only a second, that he had gotten a momentary respite, at least a moment in which he wasn't being terrorized by his father. Then he saw Joseph picking up his painting again, this time taking two ends of the painting in either hand- and ripping it in half.

For a moment, Horace could believe that someone had just dropped a cinder block in his chest- or that he wasn't really seeing what he was seeing. But when he shut his eyes, then opened them again, he was really seeing his father tearing his painting up.

A choked cry rose out of his throat as he raced to his feet, running to his father's side, trying to save the shredded mess that had been his painting in blind desperation. "Dad, no!" He cried, trying to force Joseph's hands off of what was left of the painting.

"Stop it, stop it!" The principle shouted from behind his desk. His voice was overpowered by the sound of Horace and his father as the painting was ripped up, despite Horace's attempts to save the painting, which was worsened by the fact that he was not really trying to harm or touch his father out of a desire to try to obey what his father had ordered him to do. His father eventually rose to his feet when all that was left was pieces no bigger than quarters, leaving Horace on the ground to stare down at the mess of what had once been thick paper in shock and grief.

"I told you not to do it, so that's what you get." He said down at his son, his voice oddly cheery-sounding, any earlier rage gone. Horace was too shocked for a moment to respond, then he lowered himself down until he was sitting with his face turned down, his arms entwined together, making him look like a man in the depths of an agony. He began to cry in low, shuddery sobs, his chest wracking from each pained shudder.

"Sir," the principle said, sounding every bit once more like a true school administrator. "along with physical abuse and obvious neglect, this outburst is going to be known by the right authorities so that when your time come to plead your case to keep Horace, you won't have a chance to be able to do this to him agai-"

"Oh, blow it out your self-righteous ass," Joseph interrupted. "because you won't be able to do shit. I don't mean to get into some old-fashioned pissin' contest with you, but I know I've got a helluva lot more money to spend on any court bullshit that you and this school wants to get that I do involved in over my boy."

"I believe that you'll find that money doesn't pay for anything when it comes to a criminal offense done to one of this school's children!" The principle said, his voice sounding more as though it was coming from a lawyer than a small-town principle. Much less one that looked more likely to break into a full-body tremble and begin to piss his pants than start yelling at the town loony for the way he chooses to treat his freak of a son. "And it disturbs me to see the way that you would treat your son, especially since he is really not what you say he is."

Joseph's voice seemed to be a sharp, cold edge on Horace' ears. "Are you all done actin' all self-important n' shit? Good. Here's the truth that you seem to forget all the while I'm down here, wavin' my dick 'round in the wind. First of all, he's my boy, whether I like it or not, and I know what's best for him. Now, you may or may not disagree with my ways of keeping my freak-boy in line, but trust me, once he's pulled out of this school for good, you won't need to think about him anymore, alright? Another thing's that all the while you goddamn idjits here are all tying yourselves up because of Horace, he's out there, getting into fights with the other kids, bein' told that he's a worthless sommabitch. Now, while you idjits are all havin' yourselves a reg'lar jerk-off fest, tryin' to see who'll bust 'fore the other one does, I'm putting a fuckin' roof over my worthless son's head and givin' him something he can really do when he gets older-" he bent down, picking up a shredded piece of paper, one of the many that had come from the painting. "-An' not tellin' him somethin' he can't be. " Joseph seemed finished with what he had said, dropping the remnant of the painting onto the ground, but when the principle looked ready to speak again, he spoke again, his voice was unwavering. "Unless you want to start somethin' that'll cost not just this fuckin' school but you a shitload of money- and one helluva lot o' trouble- more than you could think of- I'd leave it alone." He stomped away from the principle, walking past Horace towards the entrance to the principle's office.

He was a few steps away from the open doorway when he stopped at the sound of Horace sniffling softly. "And since you want to act like a goddamn pussy, you can walk home. Be there before noon, or I'll go lookin' for ya, and you'll have to work 'till seven tomorrow."

Horace didn't turn around, but he heard the sound of his father's hard-soled work boots hitting the linoleum out in the hall, and he knew that his father had left.--

He was shaken out of the vision he barely recognized as a memory of his from long, long ago by the sound of wood scraping. When he look at the source of the sound, it came from behind the great, dark desk.

He was still thinking about what he had just seen, that dark snippet of a miserable life that he felt less than acquainted with when he came up to the desk, curiosity winning over anything else.

He looked over the desk in time to watch as a hand- small, filthy- slammed a manila folder down on top of the desk. When Horace looked down over the folder and at the head of he owner of the small hand, he saw that it was Lilith who was crouched behind the desk, looking through the vast-sized desk's many drawers. She was apparently having problems finding something within the huge mess of drawers that made up her side of the desk.

As she continued looking, obviously not sensing Horace's presence on the other side of the desk, Horace heard her begin to mutter to herself, the only thing he could understand from her low voice as she continued looking through one drawer, "Fuck if any of those messengers can put it in the right..." and, ten seconds later, "I wish I could be paid to screw off in the message port all day..."

She kept on looking through two more drawers before she threw one open impatiently and stopped in the middle of throwing one piece of paper atop the growing pile of folders and papers on the desk. She paused, drawing it closer to her, giving it a quick read before she snapped the fingers of her extra hand together. "Ah- found it! Knew I'd find it..." she paused. "...Eventually."

She looked up from the document briefly before reaching her empty hand out across the table, grasping Horace's huge hands in hers. "Last chance to change your mind, y'know."

Horace contemplated the many differences that came with the situation he was in; his hand was a giant compared to the smaller one that rested on his, yet the one with the most power seemed the much smaller of both of them. He also took brief note of how kind- how intimate, really- it was for her to put her hand atop his. "I... guess it is." Horace said , staring at the paper Lilith held. "...Can we just do whatever needs to be done?"

Lilith gave him a small twist of her lips (a bittersweet smile for sure, just more bitter than sweet) before turning the paper around and sliding it over to Horace's side of the desk.