Hello
21: Lincoln's Idea
1
Lincoln Loud sits close-legged on the seat of the john. His eyes are brimming with a kind of excitement — an easy to read excitement, at that — which brings out the icy wash of his pupils. At one point, with his back arched with a dangerous candy-cane hunch, his eyes grow huge, revealing the glistening sclera around the pale aqua irises. Puckish laughter explodes — struggles — against the walls of his throat. Hands flying, elbows popping, eyes bulging. His mouth is smothered by his open palm, doing its damndest to keep the laughter from jumping out.
He talks to Rusty, his conversation with Birtz and the rest of the gang tied off. Texting is fun, he finds, a lot more fun than face-to-face communication; despite his fingers cramping and the annoying, jittery popcorn noise of the digital keyboard (he knows well how to silence it, but for some reason is to lazy too), he still loves it, not exactly sure why . . . perhaps it is the ambiguity of each message's humor, the tone he imagines each message being sent in, or the power to think through your messages before you send them. Perfect for an argument.
When he finally ends off the conversation, Lincoln just sits there, sitting on the toilet with no real emotions or thoughts. Just his face — an unremarkable haze in his eyes, as well — and the pale bathroom light battering on his listless features.
A shower. He needs a shower. A fetid smell rises from his clothes, drilling into his nostrils as if an icepick. The recoil Lincoln suffered at his own scent is comparable to that of a shotgun blast. All of his clothes; down to the socks, pants, Puma boxer briefs, the . . . well, not the shirt — he remembered picking it out not too long ago and spritzing himself with Rusty's gift of English Leather cologne — and you may even say himself in general, having been majorly unwashed; have been collecting everyday muck since Monday. It is Wednesday now, the clock having just ebbed past midnight.
He stands up, not smelling too different from the toilet on which he sat earlier (as soon as he had gotten home, all sodden with his clothes plastered to his skin and into his butt, he made for the bathroom, already lowering the waistline of his jeans, and urinated forever into the still water), and ripped his shirt off his skin, the cotton sounding like suction cups. The pants come off next, his scraggly forearms yanking them low-water. Steps out of the ankles, pulling with it an everted strip of denim. (Don't let me go, daddy-o!) He hitches his thumbs into the waistband of his prismarine boxers next, and they are off as well.
The clothes form a miniature, sopping Kilimanjaro in the middle of the bathroom floor. He kicks them aside in its fused heap, painting a fresh roll of Adam's ale along the tiles, and steps into the bathtub. Its smell is almost musty . . . and airless, as if nobody had showered at all today. A couple of tall shampoo bottles crowd up the inward edges of the tub; on a small ledges, bars of soap were squirted into book-sized holding trays, its suds dried up and giving them the look of undersea coral.
His reaching hand closes on none other than the knob. He wrenches it to the side; left, for hot water. The showerhead quakes a little, a hiss issuing from both its spouts and the drain just below as if a warning. Water rushes upward, spurting out of the showerhead through its spouts in a hundred little jets. A thought ricochets through Lincoln's mind, much as it did when Nathaniel Morrison's paper airplane had been bound for his head (this time the letters appeared out of a thousand little crystals and bubbly suds — LOOK OUT! COLD!).
Then suddenly the ceiling is inches away from his eyes. The water — the cold water — is splashing up just beneath him, beelining for the shower floor and collecting in a small, drain-bound sheet.
"Right," Lincoln says, unknowingly out loud. "I got to wait for it to change temperature."
Now his brow creases. He has hopped up and gripped onto the ceiling. And shit, he can not get down. He tries to think, think, think (oh god the machete where's the machete WHERE IS THE DAMN THING IN THIS FUCKIN JUNGLE) but it does not succeed this time, and the pads of his fingers have seemed to fused to the ceilingpaint. But he thinks harder — in a much less confused, more calmly focused manner — and suddenly he is down, landing on the crowns of his toes. He steadies himself from slipping, grabbing onto the curtains which project their amber motor light. A small scream as the ring-holes shift along the rusted bar.
"God," Lincoln says.
He steps under the shower, which is now lukewarm, and hones his eyes to slits; he does not recoil against the driving water, instead letting it splat on his flash and strike the wall and floor and curtains. The shower heats up, a gout of steam spreading over the ceiling, still operating in its sound which is awfully reminiscent of piss. Lincoln believes this may wake up a few of his siblings, this sound which seems to be distinguishable through the entire house (especially at night), but he does not hold that to high consideration. Instead he begins to think: What should I do with my powers . . . ?
A glob of shampoo now cupped in his hand, he rubs it through his white hair, nearly pulling some strands out because of how stubborn it is from being shower-starved. The suds materialize, encompassing his head in thick beds of what he likes to call 'Santa's Beard,' its fruity smell waftering out. He thinks a second time: What can I do with my powers?
Well the obvious choice would be to . . . become a superhero; all of those Ace Savy comics he read as a younger boy of eleven would have certain influenced him, had this happened years ago. But he is not the young child he once was anymore; he is a man. Well, not exactly. But closing in on it — three years to go. Much has changed since then. The comic-obsession has been dwindled to tatters. Science, for one reason or another, has peaked his interested; caught onto it as if a fishhook. He has grown much taller now. A solid five foot ten on a "good" day. Much taller than his eleven year old self — he must have been what? Four foot five at most? His friend Stella used to be pushing the holy five foot mark then. Now she is likely an inch smaller than Lincoln; Zach, Clyde and Liam are also still shorter than Lincoln (not by much granted), apart from Rusty who stands three inches taller.
The rain of the shower drills into his head, the shampoo drifting away in sudsy streams. Being a superhero is definitely a no-go. But there are opportunities he can use with his strength, right? He would think competitions of some kind, or maybe some kind of spectacle, something for people to ogle and drool over? Maybe he can do that. The only thing he would need to do is research. He smiles around the soap streaming down his face — a smile that is almost cynical — and thinks about an advertisement for amateur wrestling which he saw in the papers not too long ago.
His druthers settle on jumping off a cliff and dying rather than doing something so public and potentially humiliating, but he could fantasize. His costume . . . a black suit with red web patterns on it . . . he would call himself The Tarantula and whoop everybody's ass in that name.
If only he could muster up the courage to do so.
If only.