... This chapter, to me, has a lot to be fixed. I'm trying to finish Chapter 3 before vacation so, a lot of this was typed at the speed of sound in one sitting.
11: Stow It Part I
1
June 2nd 2020
Sometimes I wake up with a scratchy throat, or my eyes glued shut with sleep, or even a stuffy nose, but until that day I had never woken up with superpowers. Ugh, just the idea sounds ridiculous; I had always thought they didn't exist, just as some made-up thing to keep little kids at bay, or to give them something to look up to.
A pool of sweat isn't the most comfortable thing to lay in, you know? But thanks to a strange dream that gave me the chilly-willies, I figured the sweat was normal, didn't think much of it . . . until I destroyed my alarm clock. That thing woke me up everyday, got on my nerves too, so I'd slam it to shut it up. It worked every single time. But on that day it worked . . . let's just say a little too well.
I didn't understand the feeling at the time. It took me a few days, but then I finally understood it after a journey which felt like an on-foot adventure (which is how most of my discoveries feel). Power. It was power! I hadn't felt that in a while, not to that degree. My ego has gotten smaller over the years, you know? Everything's all sunshine and lollipops when you're a kid. Likely you also thought you owned the world — well atleast I did. Life feels like an eternity, love is a gross topic that should never be mentioned at all, blankets protect you from the monsters under your bed and in your closet and other ridiculous things . . . You name it. But as life went on, it didn't take me long to realize how weak I was, or how insignificant I was. And I'm not going to lie — I got used to it. Quite literally liked it.
You see, it gave me a reason to hide away from society; be nothing but a casted shadow. The friends I had made during elementary school were good enough and I'm surprised they put up with my BS. I met them back when I was full of ego.
Some may say: Oh Lincoln, you're not full of ego
(definitely not lying to make you feel better)
don't put yourself down!
Well here is my response: Shut up! D'you even know what I did back then?! Let's see here . . . I had my head lodged so firmly up my own alley that I thought a girl had a crush on me because she invited me to go to a friggin fast food restaurant . . . I ran a cookie business by the seat of my pants and was certain that it would blow up . . . and I forced my siblings to act like a bunch of knuckleheads because I wanted to get a 'perfect' family photo. And trust me, it wasn't perfect at all. They all looked like they were held at gunpoint: say cheese or I'll blow your brains out.
See what I mean?
Anyway, the older I got, the more I wanted to improve myself. Going around town, I always felt that everyone saw me as a swollen-headed prick. I felt exposed. Vulnerable. Almost like I couldn't change myself. I know, I know, sounds stupid and weird, but that is just how it is. As much as I tried to straighten myself out, I couldn't help but think I was still crooked. That is probably why I was so awkward and bad at making new friends. Maybe sometimes I got lucky, but I was always the bad apple. Nobody wanted to pick me for a friend. I think I was afraid, maybe even embarrassed.
But now power had swooped in and taken that fear's place.
I grew a relationship with fear. And suddenly feeling bigger and stronger than everyone else, yet keeping the build of a straw and those same insecurities as a swollen-headed prick, was so . . . weird. I felt bigger than everyone else, yet I wasn't. It makes no sense. It is a feeling I don't understand even to this day. And all these weird ways my body had reacted — at one point even drove me to the toilet. Not in that way, you know; went there to throw up.
I can't say I want to keep being scared and awkward; it is something I hate but at the same time keep coming back to; but I can't say I enjoy feeling like the most capable in the room either. It puts a lot of responsibility on my back — and though others can't see it — it is there. It is there more than I want it to.
2
"So . . . you're finally here." Lynn's damning voice cuts him like an icepick.
Swinging his eyes side to side like a pendulum, Lincoln tries to find something to look at other than her, feeling like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Embarrassment flares his insides. "Yeah, let's just not talk about that."
First day of school, Mom had suggested Lynn and Lincoln hop the shame train in pairs. They both made their complaints, but to no avail. 'I want you two to be safe and that's final.' Once Mom made her decision, that was it; no going back. There was a time where she forced Lincoln to join a club in the 7th grade. 'You need to meet new people,' was her idea. She probably thought that plan was the absolute cat's ass; but the way it turned out was more like the shit that comes out of the cat's ass.
Either way, that didn't give her the idea — and the saying goes, 'if you give Mom any static you might as well dig your own grave.' That is at least how most kids see it.
Lynn, being the big sister and all, is supposed to protect Lincoln. Seventeen years-old and fifteen years-old respectively. She has already argued that Lincoln should be old enough to defend himself; it is not her fault his arms have less meat than a chicken wing. He should be 'big and strong' by now. But what do you know? He spends every single day camping out behind his bedroom door. And it doesn't help that she is usually not there to help him after school because she has practice for at least some type of sport.
Ugh, if only he tried.
Thumbs jammed into his jean pockets, Lincoln pads down Franklin Avenue, shook by how unsteady his heart is working. That same beat persists — ka-thud, ka-bam, ka-thud — and it is starting to stir him up. What is stopping him from gouging his heart out right now? He sighs weakly. If only these weird powers had rendered him some sort of warning; likely he wouldn't be dressed in two-day old jeans and a wrinkled shirt, owing three-hundred dollars and a thousand more apologies.
The sky is overcast, but the rain has decided to take a day off. Thank god he learned to always, always check the weather report, unless you want to end up beaten in an alleyway showered by the cold March rain. He was wayy past that . . . yet he wasn't.
A chill creeps from his spine, from between the shoulder blades to the tail. What did Arnold say to him again?
"Listen here you little shit, treat this as your final warning; if you EVER meddle with my affairs again, I won't hesitate to make your life a LIVING HELL! What you'd deal with wouldn't even COMPARE to this!"
Huh, a living hell.
And a little shit.
Makes him feel like nothing more than an annoying insect. It buzzes around provokingly; it gets swatted once. Not hard enough to kill it though, but enough to make it suffer. Now on its belly, contorted, legs twitching; it has no chance to escape. Then it gets swatted again and again until it dies. Think of that as the moment he graduates.
To everyone else in the school, he is a nobody; just another face in the hall; maybe not when he is objectified to the insults, but yeah, that mostly sounds about right. But Arnold has plenty of attention to invest into him, he supposes. Hah, loser. Flamed by someone like Lincoln Loud. He kind of wants to piss Arnold off on purpose. Eh, probably going to stammer at the last minute. That seems fitting because Lincoln Loud hasn't wanted to be the center of attention for a good 4 years. But why now?
They round the corner at Southmoor Drive. Wind starts to pick up. A paper soda cup skids along the asphalt of the road, a fleck of gravel kicking up near the sewer drain, a strong April gust flapping like a bird inside their eardrums. The sewer grates; rusted with slits wide enough to swallow your hand whole. He can swear that he hears the water dripping; a drop clings to one of the grates, grows pregnant, and drops. Plink. The same plink he had heard when stuck in the alleyway; curled up in a ball and frozen in pain, those final words a shallow echo in his ears.
He questions himself: why do you wanna piss Arnold off, but you're also too scared to get that attention. C'mon, the answer seems so obvious; you just feel the need to vent your anger, but you're still nothing more than a scared little kid. Yet that answer feels too far-fetched to be true.
For the first time in years, Lincoln doesn't understand why he has a sudden drive to grow a pair and throw a foot forward.
It might be power—
"Want a sucker?"
"Huh?"
"A sucker."
Oh, a lollipop. Sure.
"What kind?"
"Dunno. But it's red."
"Better not be cinnamon."
"You can only hope."
Lynn produces two of them; dark red candy balled to the tip of a white stick; no branding; just a sheet of clear plastic wrap twisted at the end. Finding it a bit suspicious and foreign, Lincoln wrinkles his nose. "Where'd you get that thing?"
"Stole it."
"From who?"
"Someone."
Well, that doesn't help.
A few years back, the Loud children had started a quarrel against anyone who'd filch their food from the fridge. You'd expect no privacy in a house with 11 kids. And that's exactly right. Putting any bit of food in the refrigerator is basically dumping it amidst a pack of hungry wolves. Everyone had something to steal — everyone had something to be stolen. They even devised a system to help work things out; but that was short lived. Lincoln is a bit guilty himself too, but he has already made himself promise to never steal from his siblings again. "Not from one of us, right?"
"Oh no, I stole it from a teacher."
"What type of high school teacher keeps lollipops at school?"
"They don't. When I volunteered at your old elementary school they gave me one. But I stole a second one."
Oh, well that clears things up.
Lynn is a great person. Sometimes she is a pain in the ass, but that is to be expected. (You can call it the sibling norm.) When they were little they'd sometimes go up to the park to play some baseball or basketball; whatever was available, as long as it was classified as a sport, was Lynn's game. She was much more competitive back then, maybe a bit domineering, but he still enjoyed her company nonetheless. Sometimes she'd let you get the upper hand for a bit only to clutch the hell out of the last few plays. Now she's won and humiliated you; but don't worry, she's probably just trying to help you get better. You could say it's kind of beneficial. Like how she just stole a lollipop only to give it to someone . . . kinda?
He unravels the lollipop and gives it a test lick. It is cherry. Thank God. He then crumples the plastic in a closed fist. "Thanks, Lynn."
Lynn manages a dainty smile. "No problem."
Silence.
"So . . . uh, I just want to talk about the little incident."
Dammit, he should've seen this coming.
The incident; that only meant one thing. Suddenly he was back in the bathroom; his head straining, the alarm clock a few rooms down screaming like a friggin banshee, his heart palpitating in his chest and wrists and ears. Ka-thud, ka-bam, ka-thud.
Then the vomiting.
Now the child-like fear is back. Maybe reconciling himself to this sour future isn't going to get him any further away from it; maybe brush it away, but there is no good in that. Why forget it if it is just going to bite you in the ass later? He has always lived in some form of fear. But this, for some reason, is different.
"Ugh, I guess you don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
And now he has forgotten how to speak. Like he has been hit by the subtle yet thunderous cloud of Lincoln Loud thoughts. Again.
"Sorry, I just . . . forgot to speak."
Lynn gives him a look of damnation, almost as if she is standing next to someone who has pilfered one of her protein bars and denies it. Somehow . . . somehow, she can see through him: he didn't just forget, he got lost. Everyone in the family knows that Lincoln has always lived in a jungle, all contained to the hollows beneath his skullcap. But Lincoln has yet to find the machete — bright, silvery, yet all the more concealed beneath thick piles of duff — that will help him navigate and make his way through. Sometimes it glimmers and catches his eye, albeit, it is still not there. Or something like that, was that really just a guess?
"Yeah," Lynn starts, "so . . . what you did back there doesn't seem so much like you." It seems as if she is talking to the air. "You're always so cool-headed, reserved, not really strong enough to do a lot— well, not trying to sound mean when I say that but—"
Lincoln stifles a laugh. A laugh that sounds brittle, hurt, scared, and apologetic all at the same time; too arcane to fully understand. "You're not wrong."
She laughs too. "No hard feelings."
He feels a small pang of guilt . . . but puts it aside, determined to stow it for a bit before opening his big, chip-toothed mouth and clicking the lighter over his sisters, or anyone else for that matter. No attention for me, the cautionary voice in the back of his head (which he is sure everyone else has) says, it is the one thing you don't need.
"It was an accident. Nothing else I could really say — I guess I have one good-ish idea, but nothing I can really back up," Lincoln answers, as if his mouth is moving of its own accord.
Lynn gives him that same look of damnation, her thumbs slipped beneath the straps of her backpack and loosening them up. "What's the idea? You can tell me, I'm your sister, not some rando from the streets."
He can feel his pulse inside his neck, and suddenly he is not anymore on the sidewalk of Southmoor Drive. A ripple of pressure: "Well?"
He is back at the Genetics Lab; people cooing around him, the bitter smell of carpet-cleaner buried beneath the burning yet pleasant smell of sanitizing spray, Birtz at his left running his mouth at every damn thing he processes. His hand is warm from writing, and his feet are a bare inch from smoldering beneath the crushing weight of his legs — he is almost certain that his fingerprints have been grazed off by the grip of the pen he has used, and dots of sweat have popped out on his temple from trying to keep up — ten minutes in yet the discussion continues to drone on. 'These ones are genetically modified,' a presenter has said, who runs by the name Mrs. Cook. 'They were given an extra . . . something.' He can't tell whether he wants to start dilly-dallying with Birtz, or keep focus and take notes, but now he has had enough. He leaves . . . only looking for one of the big, information-displaying televisions that has been mounted on one of the big pillars holding up the ceiling, determined to stick with it.
"So, remember when I had the field trip to the Genetics Lab of Detroit? The place where the science teacher took us to take notes for our entomology paper coming up. I think that's where things started; I think." He scratches his elbow with his head in the clouds. "Still, I'm not sure. But I can't get a better idea of why, so—"
Reading the information on that television, something crawls up his arm.
It is a spider.
The GLOD spider.
Lynn feels into the pocket of her vest, closing around her cellphone. "So what?"
The spider makes its way onto his hand and stations itself at the 'L' of his thumb and index finger. The eyes, which he can barely make out, look up at him; black and soulless. His heart leaps in his chest, his stomach clenches, his lungs tighten. Then he can feel the spider jolt, and suddenly, as if willingly, the—
"Can you explain?" Lynn's voice is a little bit louder this time.
He stumbles forward, the gravel grating beneath his sneakers, his arms cropping out sharply to catch balance. He can still feel his heart palpitating, and yet . . . it doesn't feel as bad anymore. They are now only a block away from Jefferstone Road. Have they already walked this far? He peers down, maybe it is, with the strut of their legs, they have reached this far. And far enough to find a garbage can too; the kind you find at the playground or public forest. He needs one of those. Something has changed, that is for sure, but nothing is going to change the wad of sticky plastic wedged between his fingers.
He shakes the collecting mist out of his head and motions it at the trash receptacle. "One sec, hand me your garbage."
Lynn did that obediently.
The trash receptacle, lazily daubed black by someone who seemingly doesn't like their job, is positioned against a large oak tree, an open park field to the right. This tree is odd, however, with a stout trunk that evens out to a stem of thin branches that spring back and forth like a slinky in the cool April wind. He climbs over a slight elevation caused by the tree's roots, banks the plastic balls home, and plods back down to the sidewalk.
Except — that is not what ends up happening. Where is the plastic? Well, still in his hand!
He goes back and tries it again. Nothing, and the two pieces of trash cling onto him with a desperate prayer. "I can't get the garbage off my hand," he says.
"Hah, what?"
And now he is back again, but not in the Genetics Lab — it is nothing more familiar than his own bedroom. He has been outside for so long that he has forgotten how cramped this room is; for Christ's sake, the guy is barely 5'10" and can touch either wall by bringing out his wingspread. White light spills out of his laptop — the screen is tucked up by the search engine. 'Genetics Laboratory of Detroit spisrfsefdrg,' is typed into the search bar and he tries to clear it out. And suddenly there is a peeling noise and the pluck of plastic and metal, and the backspace button knew no more.
"Ugh, why are you ignor—"
Lincoln utters a rusty scream that makes Lynn jump on her toes, makes birds fresh from spring migration thrash out of the oak branches above, and makes sleep-drunk adults scramble to their paned windows or front screen doors. "I can't get it off! My hand's doing the sticky thing again! I-i-t's ... stuck!"
"What do you mean 'stuck—"
"Gosh, just help me!"
He puts his hand out and Lynn tugs on the plastic, but it doesn't budge. Her brow instantly furrows, and she looks at Lincoln with wide-eyes — large brown ones. He has never seen her open them this wide before, and it makes her confusion all the more visible. She makes him clutch a thicker branch, closer to the bottom of the big oak tree, and tugs a second time. This time she uses her foot on the trunk of the tree for leverage, but she fails again.
Lynn vexes after a brief moment in which she catches her breath, "What the fuck did you do?"
"Nothing!" Lincoln cries, and that damning look returns.
It feels as if, inside the hollows beneath his skullcap, he surfs through the jungle, searching restlessly for an answer, and for a moment, along the duff that waves up and down the sea of trees and vines, something glimmers. The machete.
And now Lincoln feels a push and slumps against the trunk of the big oak tree. He sees Lynn stumble backwards, her right foot catching in one of the big roots of the tree, and she hits the ground with a small cloud of dirt. Her stomach hitches with sapped breaths. Her eyes are still wide-open, staring blankly into the leaden sky that has curved over Royal Woods on this April morning. A wave of exaltation overturns him, and now he feels happy, but also foolish; almost punchdrunk. He lifts himself back up.
"The hell was that?" Lynn barely manages to get out.
He rubs his dirty hands on the thighs of his jeans and tosses the sulking white hair out of his face. "I don't know," he says, almost giggling.
He starts to laugh, though, not at anybody but at the clouds.
It's 1:24 a.m. Lol. Imma read this tomorrow morning and see how much of an idiot I am
Edit: not too bad