Chapter Four

Arthur

Hey!

I dreamed of an Elwood that touched the sky. Gone was the pathetic town center that might as well have been a village watering hole. In its place was a sea of gleaming towers made of steel, glittering with their glass windows. above them all stood the greatest structure ever built: a tower that not only reached the heavens, but grabbed them and brought them low.

A hand dragged me down towards the bottom of the great tower, and the music began.

"Laffy loopy floppy floopy"

"Absolutely busalooey"

Every note moved more slowly than the last, and the screams soared.

all the voices were the same. It was all the same men, women, and children. They cried for help that would never arrive, for those who didn't care. I didn't know how, but I knew they deserved it. I knew that the world would be better off without them. I arrived at the bottom. A featureless concrete box held a rusted yellow school bus. Its mouth quit screaming long enough to call my name.

"Arthur. Seek Tomised. Seek the bus."

"Who…who is Tomised?"

"Seek the bus Arthur."

The rusted behemoths eyes glowed, and it roared with its thousand screams

I woke up as night had long fallen and two small freezer bags full of product were on my table. I was captivated by it. I had cut it at least twelve times. There was still barely enough to fill up a briefcase.

"50,000 dollars from these," I thought to myself.

A year's salary was just sitting on my table, delicate enough that a swipe of the hand could obliterate it forever.

Even still at that point I thought to myself, "Just finish grammar school. Just go to college. Become a dentist like your mother told you to. Do you really want this?" In my contemplation, I had focused so intently on the product in front of me that I swear I could make out the grains of the baking soda I'd woven into the pure product. I didn't have time to talk myself out of it as a cold draft fell on my shoulder. Soon enough I realized that it was not a draft, it was breath.

"Hello Arthur." His voice was heavy, and deep. It carried with it a thick Russian accent.

Before he even finished I had flung myself over, knocking over my desk, spilling every last grain of the product I had so carefully cut all over the floor. My shirt had turned from yellow to white as I moaned over what I had just lost. I looked up, tears dripping off my cheek, and my desk light now shining up at him from the floor.

It was binky. His hollow cheek went so deep that most of it was shrouded in darkness. I could see clearly the day when he had attacked Sue Ellen with the xacto knife, and Ratburn cowardly swinging at his cheek with the corner of his briefcase. Was he here to exact revenge on me? I was only a witness to the events of that disastrous day.

"Binky! It's funny seeing you here. What's happening?"

"It's good to see you again, Arthur. I hope I did not frighten you last time we saw each other. I have a souvenir from that day. You see?" He held up the hollow in his cheek so that the light had shone right into it.

"Frightened?" I stuttered. "Of course not. I know I was never in any danger binky."

"Oh but you were in danger Arthur."

My heart slammed into my stomach. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that if you were an inch closer to Sue Ellen that day, I would have done to you what I did to her."

I had kept my cool through most of his visit, but when he told me that, I felt fear, genuine fear. I knew I was doing a poor job in hiding it.

"I felt sorrow for what I had done to her. it was the last time I felt sorrow."

I had never seen someone capable of such violence as I had the day binky had ruined Sue Ellen's face. I couldn't imagine the violence he was capable of now.

"I visited her in the hospital last night. There were no more guards. They must've thought I was still in juvenile detention. She slept so sweetly in her hospital bed. Have you seen her recently?"

"Um. No I haven't."

He smiled "ah so you are afraid eh?"

"Why would I be afraid?" I raised my voice.

All he could do was smile wider, and giggle. "you run from your emotions Arthur. You think you can hide them to be strong. You cannot. You must root them out, and destroy them."

I wiped the tears from my face. "What are you doing here Binky?"

"ah yes. I am getting ahead of myself. For now, at least, I am here to warn you of Francine."

"You think I don't know that she's dangerous?"

"Of course, but you were not careful. Francine knows that D.W. is up to something. It's only a matter of time before she discovers what that something is."

I grabbed a pencil defensively. All it would likely do was make me feel better. "What are you gonna do about it?"

"Do not worry Arthur, I will not hurt you. You have always been good to me, like the time when you brought that pencil to me, knowing that I had no other choice but to punch you for the sake of my reputation with my friends. I care for this city Arthur and I want it to be controlled by men who can lead, men like you. However, it is not your city yet Arthur. I have come here to tell you that you must not fuck with Francine. However much you think you have the upper hand, you must always know that you do not. For she has the mind of two men, and more muscle than anyone in the city. You cannot do this alone Arthur."

"You told me not to fuck with her, and I'm still waiting for the 'or what.'"

"Or this." He brought his face directly into the light. Every detail of the hollowed cheek had been revealed to me, every mangled inch of flesh that had been pushed into the empty side of his face stood out like an ancient relief. The scene it depicted was whatever hell befell him in the past few months.

"But that was Mr. Ratburn's doing!"

"Not entirely. Francine knew I was a threat to her as long as I was in control of the Tough Customers. Don't you remember what happened just before my breaking?"

That was when I remembered it. Binky trembling at his desk as Ratburn passed him, hoping the old rat would forget about the homework he had assigned just the day before. And then I saw it clear as day, Francine raising her hand.

"Mr. Ratburn, wasn't there homework today? We had homework today."

I had shrugged off her comment at the time, but now I remember her smile and her head turning to Binky as the rage filled him. As he grabbed the xacto knife from Mr. Ratburn's desk, as he flayed the flesh from Sue Ellen's bones.

Binky squinted his eyes at me. "She knew just what button to push, she knew it would take only one of Ratburn's bouts of disappointment to drive me over the edge, to plant within me the desire to kill the first thing I could get my hands on."

"Why?"

Binky picked his head up out of the light and pulled a bag out from behind him. "The tough customers"

I remembered the older kids sitting by Francine in the classroom. "Your old gang? That's who has been muscling for her?"

"Very good Arthur." He pulled up my table, some coke dust still stuck to the top of it. "They were the strongest gang in the whole city, if you could call this a city. Hell you can't even call most of its gangs gangs, but they are the power of this cities underground, and Francine desired that power.

I had thought I knew what I was dealing with, but all illusions of an easy victory over her died then.

"Francine cannot be defeated Arthur, not with that muscle behind her.

I found the strength to stand up." Then what are you doing here?"

"I wasn't finished. Nobody can defeat Francine but you." He pulled out a brick of coke from his bag, and threw it on the table."

"Where did you get that?"

"I have my sources Arthur. Don't cut it as much as you did before. Francine is cutting it systematically, so the students will buy more every month. Keep it pure the first time you give it to them, and cut it in greater amounts as you go."

He pulled out a gun, and placed it gently on the table next to the brick.

"I don't need that binky."

"You will. Seek Prunella. She will know what you must do next."

"Wait you don't actually believe she's a psychic do you?"

"Do not make the mistake of disbelieving the greater powers of this world Arthur. There is more power working behind you than you think."

I stepped towards him. He stood his ground. "well why don't you tell me about it then? Give it to me straight."

"A straight answer is not possible."

I snickered "that's what I thought."

He whispered in my ear "ask the bus in your dreams Arthur. See what straight answers you can get from it, and then you will know my meaning."

Binky stepped back into the shadows as I looked down at the gun on the table.

As the warmth returned to the room, I looked up to see only the wall and heard four words echoing throughout my room.

"I'll be watching you."