Climb the Cross and Nail Yourself to It

In retrospect, Joel told Ororo as he perched on the wooden crate in the alley beside the diner --- in retrospect, he should have known something was wrong way before the shit hit the fan. There were signs everywhere. The thing was, you read and heard all about these mutants, these freaks (Ororo glowered, but said nothing), popping up out of nowhere. One minute, they're as normal as you and me (Joel shot an uneasy look at Ororo), then, boom, the next minute they're something else, something wrong. Something malignant. You heard about these --- these people. Sometimes you even knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who was a mutant. But you never expected someone you really knew to be one of them, someone you... Well, fuck it, that shit happened to other people. It didn't, it shouldn't have happened here.

But it did.

"Yo, Horse!" Joel called up to Horse's window through cupped hands. "Get your ass down here!"

He wasn't sure Horse heard him, though. His windows were boarded up --- his mom's doing, no doubt. Mrs. Bradley sometimes punished her son by locking him in his room for days on end, and Horse hadn't come out of his apartment since he got back from Syracuse four days ago. She probably wasn't too pleased about him spending his summer vacation with his dad. This was hardly due to Mrs. Bradley's affection for Horse; she wasn't that kind of woman. Joel figured she just disliked giving in to her ex-husband. His pop was like that too, especially during the infrequent times when Joel's mom actually asked for him.

Divorce, he often thought, was a kind of killing bottle.

"Horse!"

This week was the last of summer vacation, and Joel disliked the idea of anyone spending that last precious week cooped up in his bedroom. King and the twins had gone on ahead to the arcade, and Joel had promised to follow shortly with Horse.

He looked around briefly before calling Horse's name again. He'd timed this trip carefully, waiting until Mrs. Bradley had gone off to work, but that lady had a nasty habit of turning up when you least expected her, or when you were doing something you weren't supposed to be doing. He waited a minute, and was about to turn away when the front door of the apartment building burst open and Horse came jogging out, his sunglasses bouncing on his narrow face.

"Took you long enough," Joel said irritably.

"Sorry," Horse said breathlessly. He ran a hand through his thick red hair in attempt to tame it, but only succeeded in making it messier.

"Come on, the others have gone ahead," Joel said, his tone gentler as he turned in the direction of the arcade. It was hard to stay mad at Horse for any amount of time. The guy was such a victim that Joel always ended up feeling terrible when he snapped at him. The worst part of it all was that Horse always took abuse, mild or no, lying down. He looked back at him --- Horse was struggling to keep up with his strides, which were twice as long --- and noticed that his hands were wrapped in thick bandages. More of Mrs. Bradley's work, Joel thought angrily. Jesus, what a bitch. He knew she could be heavy-handed sometimes, and her patience never seemed to wear out so quickly as when she was dealing with her son, but God! What could Horse have possibly done to deserve whatever the hell it was she'd done to his hands? He supposed she'd hit him in the face, too, or he wouldn't be wearing those sunglasses. This wouldn't be the first time Horse came away sporting a shiner from an argument with his mom.

Horse noticed Joel looking at his bandaged hands and tucked them quickly into his pants pockets.

Joel drew a deep breath and began to tramp down all the unpleasant thoughts in his head. If he had thought on it for a little while longer, he might have remembered that Horse had been wearing his sunglasses since the day he got back home. But Joel was ten years old, unmindful of such things, and doggedly determined to enjoy the last few days of summer vacation.

Here Joel halted and told Ororo he couldn't go on with the story until he'd told her about Popeye Pataki, whose tremendous stupidity had kicked up all the shit about Horse.

"Who's that?" Ororo asked.

"Our neighborhood's resident asshole," Joel said. "Former asshole. He got sent up the state pen a year ago, for pushing crack on a bunch of twelve year olds. He and his guys used to make things hard for the younger kids."

"For you?" Ororo said.

Joel sat up straighter.

"No," he said defensively.

Ororo could believe it. Looking at him now, she was hard pressed to believe anyone could bully this kid, unless he was rattled or his tormentor was smarter. Joel was only fourteen, but he was pushing six feet tall and looked strong enough to take on a college quarterback. He would have been a pretty big ten year-old. But Horse, she gathered from Joel's description of him, was probably scrawny and awkward --- the perfect target for your run-of-the-mill schoolyard bully.

"Did Popeye pick on Horse?" Ororo asked.

"All the time," Joel said.

One of Joel Sullivan, Sr.'s favorite sayings was, "Shit happens." It was probably the only truly profound thing he'd ever said to his son in all his shitty, booze-filled life. Several years in the future, when a thirty-seven year-old Joel Sullivan, Jr. was laid off his job as a high school track coach, he would remember his dear old departed dad's saying and nod to himself. Yes, indeed, shit did happen. Usually for no good reason.

The shit that happened that Joel was now relating to Ororo took place halfway through the fifth grade. Joel, Horse, Evelyn King and the Nelson twins still hung out with each other, meeting at King's mom's greasy spoon practically everyday after school. Unfortunately, the establishment was also the hangout of one Popeye Pataki, when he wasn't prowling the streets with his boys and making as much trouble as he could. Popeye didn't much like Joel and his friends. He never said why, but Joel instinctively felt that Popeye was threatened by him. Joel didn't take anyone's crap lying down. Even if it meant getting the snot beat out of him, he would fight back. Even his father, a great big bullying drunk if ever there was one, hardly ever raised a hand to him (though the same couldn't be said for anyone else who crossed him, Popeye included).

Horse was the exact opposite. Joel guessed that was why he felt so attached to the little guy. He felt the need to protect him, from his mother, from the other kids and especially from Popeye. Pop had it in for Horse ever since he'd come home from Syracuse, sporting sunglasses his father had bought him. That didn't sit too well with Popeye. Sunglasses were his thing. That's what he was known for, that was part of his rep. The fact that Horse never took them off (a strange habit Joel had come to accept about his friend) pissed him off even more.

Listen, Joel told Ororo, the world was full of idiots. Most of them were harmless. Some, like Popeye and Joel's father, could be nasty when they wanted to be. Popeye was only sixteen at the time, prickly as a horny alley cat, dumb as an ox, vain even though he was about as good-looking as road kill (not for nothing was he called Popeye), and possessed of a crack headed, arrogant kind of meanness that made him dangerous to people who were scared. People like Horse.

Joel knew from experience that cruel people smelled it when other people were afraid of them. It gave them a rush that they got off on. Popeye was just like that. It didn't surprise Joel, then, to find him and his boys surrounding Horse one day after school. They had him backed up against his apartment building's wall and were waling the living daylights out of him.

Joel was himself coming out of the liquor store across the street. The owner, Moran, let him buy booze as long as his pop called ahead to say he was sending his boy over. As soon as he saw Popeye and his boys, he ran across the street to help Horse. He stepped between him and Popeye and said, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Fuck off, Sullivan," Popeye said.

"No, you fuck off," Joel said, and suddenly Popeye slugged him across the face.

Pain flashed across Joel's mind, blinding him. He grabbed his nose, which was bleeding freely, and cried out. Dimly, he realized that the bottle of whiskey had slipped from his hand. He heard it crashing on the sidewalk and thought,

Dad's gonna kill me.

He heard muffled voices beside him. One of them sounded like Denny Albright saying,

"Christ, Pop, you broke his fucking nose. His dad's gonna have your ass."

"Shit on his dad, man, you think I'm scared of him?" Popeye snarled.

Joel felt Popeye shoving him aside. Still blinded and weak, Joel swayed and fell heavily on the pavement. Sharp pinpricks of pain sliced into his hands and chest --- the bottle, he thought dully as cold liquor spread across his shirt. Blood was still flowing from his nose. He put the collar of his shirt against it and blinked rapidly. The pavement below him began to come into focus, and he looked up.

His head was still spinning, and though he could see Popeye, it was like watching him from beneath the surface of a swimming pool. The older kid was standing in front of Horse, who was cowering against the wall behind him.

"Thought you could get away with stealing my thing, didja?" Popeye hissed, leaning close toward Horse. "You ugly ass, snot-nosed punk."

Without knowing or understanding why, Joel felt a surge of horror in his stomach as Popeye snatched Horse's sunglasses from his face. Somehow, he would realize later, he had known --- he had known those sunglasses were hiding something horrible, something that wasn't meant to be seen by human eyes. In the instant Popeye flicked Horse's shades from his face, Popeye and his boys froze, staring in horror at the younger kid.

"Jesus," Joel heard Denny saying, in a low, frightened voice. "What the hell are you?"

Joel heard Horse whimpering and saw him covering his face with his hands. For the briefest of moments, he thought he saw something... not quite natural about Horse's face. He looked at Popeye and his crew, his head clearer now, and saw that they were backing away from Horse, looking (there was no other word for it) completely terrified. Something dropped from Popeye's hand, landing in front of Joel, and suddenly he and his boys were running across the street.

Joel got up slowly, still holding his shirt to his nose, and watched in amazement as Popeye and his gang ran as quickly and as far away from them as they could.

What the hell was that? Joel wondered. He looked down at Horse, who had slid down to the ground, his body curled up like a baby's and his hands covering his face. He was sobbing softly. His arms were bruised, and blood was dripping from his temple.

"Don't hurt me," Horse begged as Joel approached him. "Please don't hurt me."

"It's me," Joel said, kneeling next to him.

"My glasses," he said in a low, sniffling voice.

Joel turned and picked up the thing Popeye had dropped. He extended it to Horse, but Horse didn't reach for it.

"Here they are," he said. "Come on, Horse, take 'em."

When Horse remained immobile, Joel reached for his arm and pulled it away, planning to deposit the sunglasses in his hand.

He instantly wished he hadn't.

Something inhuman stared back at him. Joel crouched on the ground, frozen, struggling vainly to break away from the gaze of those eyes; massive, lidless, blood red eyes, hypnotic and terrible, unbearable to look at. All at once pain stretched tightly across his chest. He couldn't breathe, and every time he tried he felt as though someone were smothering him with a pillow.

Let me go, he thought as he fought to suck air into his lungs. God, let me go, please, please, let me go ---

Horse turned away with a cry, and instantly Joel began to breathe again. He fell back from Horse, meaning to run away. But there was no strength in his legs or his body. Instead, he got down on his hands and knees and crawled. Horse got up and fled into his building. Joel kept on, breathing deeply. No one saw and no one helped him. When enough strength finally flowed back into his limbs, he struggled up to his feet and ran, limping, back to his own apartment.

He fumbled for what seemed like an hour, trying to get his key into the door knob. When he finally managed it, he went into the living room, where he heard the TV running. His dad was on the couch, beer in hand. He stared at his son, agape.

Blood was still flowing from his nose. His hands and chest were pricked with glass. He looked down at his hand and saw that he still had Horse's sunglasses.

"Dad?" he called out, and fell to the floor in a dead faint.

To Be Continued