Burning Cold

by Jeff McNeely

Part One

 Chapter One

You fell to the ground like rain
On deaf ears your cries met hands
And knees were blistered

                        Kittie

                        In Winter

 

Soft, white snowflakes drifted through the cold winter evening.  The tiny crystals landed on dead brown leaves and on green pine needles.  The ground was covered with snow.  Nothing moved.  The world had finally returned to peace and restfulness, had rid itself of the plague of man.

            Until a young boy came, trudging slowly through the knee-deep snow.  He saw something move out of the corner of his eye.  Turning his head, he saw a deer leap through the forest, away from the boy.  The little boy’s name was Sid.  He was wearing a very heavy jacket that kept his arms at his side constantly.  His hunched shoulders were sore from carrying his school books for almost a mile.  The snowflakes were coming down in a thick curtain of frozen rain, keeping Sid from seeing more than ten feet ahead of him.  He missed the warmth and light of the far-away school bus.  He longed for the screaming and carrying-on of the other kids, even if they did make fun of him for living in Scary Ed’s house.  He could remember the terrible rhyme that they kept whispering through the thin, leather-and-tape seats.

There once was a man named Ed
Who wouldn't take a woman to bed.
When he wanted to diddle,
He cut out the middle,
And hung the rest in the shed.

None of the kids would tell him what actually went on in the house, but it had definitely been a rotten first day at school.  Who was Scary Ed?  What had he done?  The kids talked about him like he was the Boogeyman.  At this thought, Sid realized how dark and lonely it was on the small dirt road.  And it was quiet too.  Deathly quiet.  No crickets chirping, no animals stirring.  The snow was the only thing moving on the cold winter evening.  Dark clouds hung oppressively low over the decaying rural Wisconsin woods.  The wind began to blow a little, sending the cold, stinging snow drifting onto Sid’s reddening nose. 

Finally, the woods came to life.

Soft, crunching noises began to resonate somewhere back down the road.  Sid turned and craned his neck to hear; the snow was shielding whatever it was from view.  It sounded like… like footsteps.  Heavy footsteps.  After listening a moment, Sid realized that it was accompanied by a dragging sound.  An image popped into his mind: a short, hunchbacked man dragging a mangled foot behind, carrying a bloody, gore-covered axe in one hand and a little boy’s head in the other.

Sid quickened his pace, picking up his short legs and trying to run away from his approaching doom.  The deep snow seemed to drain all of the energy from his legs as he tried to run.  He lost his balance and fell face first into the snow.  His face erupted into brief, indescribable pain as the snow shifted into his nostrils, into his ears, into his eyes.  Despite the burning cold in his ear, Sid could hear the increasingly loud footsteps of doom approaching quickly.  Something heavy pushed the snow to the ground next to his head.  Something violently grabbed the back of his jacket and pulled him out of the snow.

“Boo!”  A kind, unshaven man exclaimed into Sid’s face.

After the initial shock wore off, Sid recognized the man immediately.  “Dad! What. . . what’re you doing out here?” Then he noticed the red Radio Flyer wagon being lugged behind his father, filled with firewood.

“Just getting’ some wood.  It’s cold out here.”  He looked at Sid strangely for a second.  “Somethin’ wrong?”

Sid smiled back at the comforting, worried face.  “Yeah, you just scared me.”

His father reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair.  “Sorry ‘bout that, kiddo.  Umm…why didn’t the bus bring you all the way?”

“The driver said that the snow was too thick.”

            “Well, I wish that the school would’ve called and told us that you were gonna have to walk the last friggin’ mile.”

            Sid didn’t want his dad mad at the school bus driver; she was nice to him.  She had finally made all the other kids stop teasing him.  But Sid couldn’t tell his dad about the teasing.  It would just make him angrier.  Daddy would drink stuff that stung Sid’s nose with a sniff, and he wouldn’t be able to talk right, and he’d walk funny start bumping into things and falling down.  Sid didn’t like it when Daddy drank that smelly stuff.

“Wanna ride, kiddo?” Daddy asked, pointing towards the almost-full wagon. 

“Yeah!” Sid cried and piled in with the logs, rearranging them so that he could be comfortable.  The wagon sank a few inches into the snow, but Sid rode in relative comfort all the way back to the large farmhouse a few hundred yards away.

“I’m home, dear!  And I found a little hitch hiker on the way!”

Connor let the screen door swing shut loudly after Sid entered the house, who quickly removed his jackets and several other layers, then dashed into the living room and plopped in front of the comforting fire.  The yellow and orange flames licked up the backside of the chimney, turning the bricks a dark, soot-colored gray.  The dry firewood crackled and popped, sending small harmless sparks flying onto the hardwood floor a few feet away from the hearth.  Sid watched the flames in wonder as the snow that had yet to melt on his face and ears became to turn to water and slowly drip off of his face.  The thoughts of Scary Ed were burned from his mind by the roaring fire and the sweet aroma that had begun emitting from the kitchen.

“Sid!” an angelic voice called from somewhere in the depths of the house.  “Sid! Come to the kitchen!”

Sid jumped to his feet and climbed over the new couch, landed on his side, pulled himself up and dashed into the kitchen.  His mother, a tall, beautiful woman with dark, shoulder-length brown hair and hazel eyes was pulling a tray out of the old-fashioned oven.  Steam rose from several small spots on the tray, and the smell of cookies wafted into Sid’s little nose.  He tried to grab one of the largest cookies, but his mother quickly jerked the tray away.

“No, no, no, no, no.  First, wash your hands and get a glass out of the cabinet.”

Sid hurried over to the kitchen sink and climbed onto his stool.  After he had squirted some liquid soap into his hands and washed, he jumped back down and reached into the cabinet, grabbing a small plastic mug decorated with his favorite cartoon character, Samurai Jack.  His mother poured some milk into it and he sat down in the dining room table, where his mother had put the cookies on a large plate.  The hardening dough crumbled in his mouth as he chewed and chewed.  Cookies were a God-sent food in his mind.

The day was really beginning to look up for Sid.

Chapter Two

Someone take these dreams away

That point me to another day

A duel of personalities

That stretch all true reality

                        Nine Inch Nails

                        Dead Souls

Sid sat in the back of the classroom.  His teacher, Ms. Rainey, stood at the front of the room rambling on about the events of the First World War.

            Sid was hunched over his red notebook, scribbling furiously, oblivious to everything else around him.  The side of his right hand had turned a dark gray color from rubbing against the dark pencil lines.  A callous, which had been slowly growing for the past few weeks, began to throb on his middle finger.  Sid set down his pencil and shook his hand, trying to ease the dull ache.  Thoughts continued to run through his mind as if he were still writing.  After the pain subsided, he picked up his pencil and began to write.

            Snow was falling outside, though not as thick as it had been the week before.  The sun had come out three days before and melted a large portion of the snow, but the clouds had rolled back in the night before and it began snowing again.  Half-a-foot of snow lay on the ground, littered with children’s footprints.

            Sid continued to spill his thoughts onto the paper.  One day this writing is gonna get me rich and I’ll be able to take care of Mom and Dad forever.  No more worries.

            He jumped in his seat as the bell outside the classroom began clanging.  Here we go again.  Sid stood up and grabbed his books that were in the basket underneath his desk.  He waited until all of the other kids had left the room before he stepped into the hallway.  The long corridor was lined with disgusting purple lockers and littered with loose pieces of paper and old report cards.  The door to the bus exit was still crowded with kids like the front row barrier at a rock concert.  Sid hung back halfway down the hall, waiting for the doorway to clear.  He clutched his small notebook in his hands tightly, fearing to drop it and watch the words spill from the page and onto the floor.  He couldn’t bear to watch the letters run rampant around the school, into everyone’s mind.  They couldn’t read his writing.  It was too personal.  He closed his eyes tightly for a few minutes and when he looked up, the door was clear.  He dashed outside and jumped on the big yellow bus, lumbering all the way to the back.

            He clambered into the second seat from the back.  Two big kids, sixth graders, sat behind him putting some Skoal in their mouths.  Sid curled up into the seat, trying to sink into its rough, leathery depths.  He looked intensely at the small, curving lines that covered the back of the seat in front of him.  It reminded him of the large Mississippi River that wound through the distant Southeast.  He remembered that it was the Mississippi River that twisted right before it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico, it was the river that made New Orleans a crescent city.  Sid had fond memories of the French Quarter, where he had lived before moving to Wisconsin.  He remembered the cobblestone streets, the French Market, the hundreds of delicious smelling restaurants.   He missed New Orleans.  He missed Jackson Square and Café du Monde.  He even missed the rank odor that always radiated from Bourbon Street.  I’m gonna move back there one day.  I’m gonna get rich and move back to New Or…

            “You’re the new kid, right?” one of the sixth graders behind him asked, interrupting the pleasant streams of thought.  “The one that lives in Ed’s old house?”

            Sid turned away from them and began staring at the lines on the seat again.  But the older boys were persistent.  “Hey kid, I’m talkin’ to ya!  You live in Ed Gein’s old house, right?”

            Sid nodded his head, wishing with all of his heart that he could have faked sick and stayed home from school. 

            “Yeah, that must be pretty creepy.  I bet your catchin’ alotta crap from everyone, right?”

            Sid nodded again.

            “Well, all I know is that ya need to keep your eyes open when ya sleep, cuz ol’ Eddie might pay you a visit one night when you’re asleep.”

            Sid held his notebook close and slid as far down in the seat as he could.

            The bus was able to make it a good bit further up the road towards Sid’s house than it had for a while.  He only had to make a five minute walk to the house.  The sun was out, which greatly changed the dead forests’ landscape from a desolate wasteland to a sleeping enigma that was waiting for the snow to melt so that it could finally blossom again.  The trees still lacked the beauty of bird songs, but Sid supposed that it was better than it had been with the winter storm. 

            When he made it inside the house, he called for his mother.

            “Yes honey?” 

            Sid worked up all of his courage and pushed his humiliation from the bus away.  “Mom, who lived here before us?”

            Her eyes suddenly became very serious.  “Well, actually, it was a family of farmers.”

            “Did anyone named Ed Gein live here?”

            Fire blazed through his mothers eyes.  “Who told you that?”

            “W-well,” Sid stuttered, “ some kids on the bus make fun of me because I live in Scary Ed’s house? Who is he?”

            “Someone who died a long time ago,” she said sharply.  “I don’t want you to mention that name again, and from now on, I’m gonna give you a ride to school in the car.  I don’t want you around those kids anymore.”

Chapter Three

In the depths of a mind insane
Fantasy and reality are the same.

                        Slayer

                        Dead Skin Mask

Four Months Later

Sid rose his new bike through the woods quickly, trying to escape its ominous grip.  His feet peddled harder than they ever had before.  He had to escape the nightmare of the dim forest before the sun set.  It was only half-past noon, but Sid had heard horror stories of what had happened to people that got lost in the woods after dark. 

            School had let out a week ago.  The snow had melted along with spring break almost two months ago.  Sid couldn’t understand how it could still be so cold during springtime; he wasn’t used to the northern climate.  But the sun had finally begun to rear its welcome face upon the Wisconsin landscape, and much to Sid’s delight, his parents had bought him a new bike just for the summer.  He had managed to acquire a library card a few weeks ago, and he was racing to the house of books to break it in.

            The woods began to clear and Sid came out among the silent cemetery.  He didn’t know that there was a cemetery on the way to town.  How long had it been here?  Judging from the broken and weathered tombstones, it had been standing for a very long time.  He made a mental note to return to the graveyard before he went home.

            The red backpack draped over his shoulders thudded against his small body as the bike bounced over numerous bumps in the road.  Sid saw the first house that led to the main road, which meant that the library was only a few hundred more yards away.  He began to pump harder, harder, harder, propelling the bike forward at an unbelievable speed for a soon-to-be seven-year-old.  He rounded the corner of the house and hit the newly paved road flying.  The library loomed ahead, partially concealed by tall, ancient oak trees.

            Sid skidded to a halt in front of the grayish brick-colored building.  He locked his shining bike into the bicycle rack and opened the glass door that led into the seemingly cavernous vortex of books.  Sid was stunned by the immense size of the library; he figured that it would be a small establishment on account of the size of the town.  He walked up and down the aisles, opening some books and scanning them over, savoring the aging-paper smell that comes with old, yellowing volumes.  Sid grabbed a book that seemed appealing and found an over-stuffed chair, plopped down, and began reading. 

He sat in that chair, pouring over the book for almost five hours, before the librarian came over and told him that the library would be closing soon.  He closed the book and hurriedly searched the rows for more books.  He picked out a few more scary books for kids and went to the counter.

            The librarian was a tall, fat woman that smelt of mothballs.  Of course, Sid didn’t know what mothballs were and for the rest of his life, he would associate the scent with his first visit to the Plainfield Library. 

            “A little young to be reading books like these, aren’t ya?” she asked him in an impossibly deep, gruff voice.  Sid could smell the stale cigarette smoke on her breath.  Judging from the foulness of her dragon-like breath, Sid was surprised that her yellowing teeth hadn’t rotted out yet.  It didn’t look like she brushed three times a day like he had been taught. 

            “Well, my mom said that she trusted me to get anything as long as it wasn’t…what’s the word?  Racy. Yeah, that’s it.  She knows that I like to read scary books.”

            The librarian poked at the stringy gray bun that she had made her hair into.  The way it flopped around on the back of her head made Sid think that it was going to fall off.

            “Mmm….okay.  But if I get any phone calls from your parents complaining about what you got, I won’t let you get anything but baby picture books.  Got it?”

            “Got it,” Sid said with delight. 

            The librarian stamped his books, cited the due date, and turned her back to him, acting preoccupied, but really just trying to get rid of him so that she could close the library and leave for the day. 

            Sid turned around and began to walk out, putting the books into his backpack.  He continued to scan the new arrivals as he left, and one in particular caught his eye.  The title was Ed.  The cover picture was an older man, but not as old as Sid’s grandparents.  He was probably in his early fifties or late forties.  A few days growth of beard decorated his face, making him look tired.  He was wearing a ragged golfers hat and a plaid shirt.  The thing that caught Sid’s attention most was the man’s eyes.  There was nothing there, like two black holes.  They just seemed to stare into space, as if he were looking at something beyond any human thought and reasoning.  He picked the book up and was beginning to read the back cover before it was snatched from his grasp.

            “The library’s closed now, little boy.” The librarian said sternly.

            “Could, could I check that book out also?” Sid asked nervously.

            The librarian replaced the book on the shelf.  “’Fraid not.  I’ve already closed everything down.  You’ll just have to get it next time”

            Sid hung his dead dejectedly and ambled out of the library.  The sun was blazing in the west.  It would soon disappear over the horizon.  Sid climbed onto his bike and began pedaling back towards home.

Chapter Four

Smear those lines.
I thought I found
What I always wanted.
                        Kittie

                         What I Always Wanted

The sun was falling slowly behind the far-off lands in the west as Sid skidded to halt at the gates of the cemetery.  He pulled the kick stand down and propped his bike up, keeping it away from the dirty earth.  Sid pulled his slung his backpack off and opened it, and after rummaging around for a few moments, he withdrew a large booklet of tracing paper.  He pulled a charcoal pencil from the depths of the bag and left it hanging from his bike’s handlebars. 

            Riding through earlier, the cemetery looked old, but now that Sid had actually taken a moment to gaze around the forbidding place, he realized that it was ancient.  Headstones had been knocked over by irreverent hooligans, some had been desecrated, and some were in perfect condition.  Either way, all of them were old.  Some of the inscriptions were weathered away, leaving their stones as blank slabs.  The cemetery was very different from the graveyards that Sid was used to.  He had always known the cemeteries that looked like forgotten cities with mausoleums jutting from the ground, resembling small houses. 

            Well, a rubbing’s a rubbing.

            He made his way towards the nearest headstone.  The caption read:

Robert Smigel

1889 – 1951

            Sid squatted down and placed the thin paper over the words and began rubbing the charcoal pencil furiously over the white surface.  Instantly the words began appearing on the sheet.  Sid finished with that one and moved to the next grave.  He had done ten before he came before the second to last stone in the row.  The inscription read:

Augusta Gein

Loving Mother, Caring Wife

Gone But Not Forgotten

            Sid proceeded to rub it, and went to the next one, only to discover that the stone was gone.  He noticed that grass hadn’t grown over the grave, and someone had written Scary Ed in the dirt.

            This is Scary Ed’s grave? Sid thought to himself.  He looked back at the stone he had just rubbed.  Augusta Gein.  Is…is this Ed’s mother?

Chapter Five

Deliver the remains from her womb of earth,
Prep the rack and tie up for new love's rebirth,
Covert understanding of novice surgery,
I'll focus concentration and only take just what I need.
                        Mudvayne

                        Nothing to Gein

Ed Gein had been nagging at Sid’s mind all week.  His mother hadn’t let him go back to the library because it had been pouring down rain ever since he got home from the cemetery.  But the rain had cleared and the mud had finally dried up, so Sid used the excuse that his books were due back and took off as fast as he could to the library.  He pedaled harder than he ever had before, feeling the call of the farmer that was now only heard about in books and scary stories at school. 

            The library seemed to be so far away when Sid finally came within sight of it.  It seemed to grow invisible legs and scurry further away.  He pumped and pumped the bike pedals, faster and faster, and he finally skidded to a halt in front of the building.  He didn’t bother to chain his bike to the rack and he burst through the door and stopped in front of the new arrivals section.  There is was.  Ed.  He didn’t even bother to read the synopsis on the back; he just dashed to the counter and checked the book out quickly.

                                    *                                   *                                   *

            Sid’s room was set up just like any other six-year-olds room.  The walls were decorated with posters plastered with cartoon characters such as Scooby Doo and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  His bed was draped with a Power Rangers comforter and sheets, including a pillow.  A toy box sat at the end of his bed, filled sloppily with toys, broken and fully functional.  Clothes littered the floor and were also piled in the corner next to the nightstand.  Books lay on top of the nightstand in a crooked column.

            Sid burst through the door and lunged onto the bed as if within its blankets was sanctuary from death.  He sat up and crossed his legs and leaned on the headboard.  The pages within the book were crisp and a dirty-white color.  The stale smell of a new book wafted into his nostrils as he turned to the first page and began reading.

            He read the book for hours, never taking his eyes off of the page.  He learned about the simple farmer that had lived in his house almost six decades ago.  He learned that Ed Gein’s mother was a domineering woman who quoted scriptures of hellfire and brimstone at the dinner table and forced Ed and his brother to pray with her that God would kill her abusive husband.  He learned that Ed’s mother had told him that women weren’t to be trusted, and neither were men.  Ed became emotionally dependant on his mother.  After his father died from a heart attack, his mother began to shelter her two sons even more.  She kept them away from any human contact until the day she died.  A few years after Ed and his brother Henry had buried they’re mother in the cemetery not even a mile from the farmhouse, Henry died mysteriously in a forest fire. 

            The citizens of Plainfield began to notice that Ed was acting strange.  They knew that he was always a bit eccentric and not all there, but what they discovered at his farmhouse after two women had disappeared appalled the entire state.  After the owner of a local general store, Mary Worden, disappeared, the police made a trip to Ed’s house five miles outside of town.  In the shed behind the house, they found the corpse of Mary Worden gutted and hung from the rafters like a dead deer.  Her head had been removed at the shoulders (but was later found inside the house).  Several other body parts were found scattered around the premises, but the real horror lay in the house within.

            After finally forcing the front door open, the pungent smell of death hit them.  A few men ran outside and vomited, but the rest sucked it up and proceeded into the house.  The entire place looked like a tornado had ripped through.  Dirty plates with moldy leftovers were stacked almost to the ceiling throughout the kitchen.  Old newspapers and books about the Nazi death camp experiments were found all over the house.  But the most harrowing discoveries lay beyond, in the living room. 

            Ed had fashioned an armchair, using human arms.  He had made a belt laced with nipples.  A bowl was sitting on a small coffee table.  The odd thing was, it was rough and gray.  After a quick inspection, the policemen found that it was half of a human skull.  As they made there way up the stairs, they discovered human heads hanging from the ceiling like potted ferns.  They also found the head of Mary Worden, ready for hanging. 

            All of the rooms upstairs had been nailed shut, save for one.  That was Ed’s room.  Heads hung from the ceiling, and severed human faces were tacked to the wall.  A body-suit fashioned out of female skin was propped in the corner, waiting to be worn.  The house had barely been changed at all since the death of Ed’s mother.  The doors were forced open one by one to reveal nothing unusual except years of collected dust.  Only one room remained: the room that had been previously occupied by the late Mrs. Gein. 

            The door was forced open and body parts were found scattered all over the room.  A picture of Augusta Gein was placed in front of a mirror.  On either side of it were two burnt down candles.  Arms and legs hung from the ceiling like a demonic mobile.

            After his capture, Ed had confessed to two murders.  He also told the police that he had often snuck into the towns three cemeteries after dark and dug up bodies for his experiments.  He told them about how he would cut the skins off of the corpses and how he sewed the body-suit together.  They learned how he had dressed up in the suit and danced in the moonlight in the clearings surrounding the house, joyously masturbating and singing archaic words which he had no idea the meanings of.  Ed was tried and sent to the Wisconsin State Mental Hospital for the Criminally Insane, were he stayed until his death in the early Eighty’s.

            The moon was setting over the treetops when Sid finally finished the book.  He was covered in a cold sweat that chilled him to the bone.  This…this man…lived in my…lived in my house?  he thought to himself.  The boy began looking frantically over the walls in his room, checking for heads and faces stretched like posters.  He finally fell asleep a few hours later, shivering, waiting for Ed to come tearing into the room to dissect him.

The room was dark when Sid rose from his bed.  He looked around and realized that the room had been changed.  No evidence in the room could show that a six-year-old lived there.  He looked down at his hands and was shocked to discover that it wasn’t a little boy’s hand, but the rough hand of a farmer.  Looking down at his body, he saw that he wasn’t wearing his pajamas, but a blue and white flannel shirt with a pair of dirty, blood-splattered overalls.  He tried to lift the rough hands, but they refused.  Instead, the body that he had seemed to enter began walking quickly out of the door.  It strolled down a littered hallway that looked familiar to Sid.  It was the hallway outside his room.  But it was totally different.  Old newspapers and stacks of books lay all over the floor.

The body reached the stairs and began to descend, hurrying faster and faster.  At the bottom of the staircase, the body turned right and walked into the living room.  An arm sat next to a chair, which had had one of its oak arms removed.  That’s the chair that I read about earlier, Sid thought to himself.  Oh my god!  I’m inside Ed Gein!  This has to be a dream! he screamed at himself.  Wake up! Wake up! 

Ed’s body ambled over to the fireplace, where, to Sid’s horror, a strange-looking body sat.  Stitches covered it, keeping the breasts, the abdomen, and the torso attached.  He slowly began to realize what was about to happen.  Ed removed his shirt and delicately replaced it with the morbid suit.  Sid could feel the soft, slightly wet inside of the suit scrape against their skin.  His body tingled with anticipation as Ed carried Sid’s mind outside the house and into the front yard. 

The moonlight shone brightly above Sid’s head as the body of Ed Gein began to hum and move about a little.  Soon, he began dancing, jumping up and twirling, rolling around in the dirt.  God, please let me wake up!  Please don’t let this be real! Wake up!  Wake up!”

            “Sid, wake up honey! Wake up!”

            Sid fell out of the bed as his mother shook him awake.  Sweat was pouring over his body.  He scrambled into his mother’s outstretched arms and cried.

Part Two

Chapter One

You have created a rift within me.

Now there have been several complications

That have left me

Feeling nothing.

                        Disturbed

                        Numb

Seven Years Later

Festive wrapping paper lay all over the hardwood floor of the kitchen.  The island was cluttered with brand-new books and CDs.  A half-eaten birthday cake sat on the kitchen table, waiting to be consumed later on in the early hours of the morning by some half-asleep inhabitant of the house.

Sid sat in the living room, putting strings on his brand new Fender Mustang.  Its sleek body glistened from the sunlight pouring through the window, casting his hands reflection across the black paint job.  After delicately applying the strings to his much-desired long-awaited instrument, he pulled a pick from his pocket and began strumming.

            He had learned how to play on an old, beat-up acoustic guitar that had belonged to his granddad in the sixties.  The strings seemed to pop for no reason, and dents had been made in its body due to Sid’s frustrations of not being able to play a real electric guitar.

            After plucking at the strings experimentally for a few minutes, Sid grabbed the small amplifier sitting next to the couch and carried his two new birthday presents upstairs.  His mother and father were taking a nap in their room, so Sid remembered to keep the amp turned down a little.  He pulled both of them into the wall and began jamming, working out tunes for a song that he was writing. 

            The sun sank slowly behind the trees, filtering the light casting a green tint throughout the room.  Sid had lost complete track of time and reality.  His fingers slid softly up and down the vibrating guitar strings.  He moved the plastic pick according to the rhythm, picking out tunes as they entered his head.  Every now and then he would stop playing long enough to jot a cord position down in his notebook, but then he would pick his guitar back up and continue playing.  He played long into the night, until he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer.  Sid laid back on his bed and let his eyes close for the last time, and he slowly drifted into the dream world that he had created for himself.

The crowd cheered as Sid reached into his back pocket and pulled out a cigarette.  He struck his lighter once, twice, three times before the small yellow and blue flame finally burst forth.  Sweat poured down his unshaven face and his shoulder-length, unwashed black-dyed hair hung messily in his face.  He listened for a few moments as the crowed screamed and yelled for the next song.  He let his smoke dangle from his moist lips as he brought his fingers to the top of is guitar’s fret board. 

The movement along the guitar strings sent feedback spilling from the huge amplifiers that dotted both sides of the stage.  Sid began to pluck the strings with his pick and hardcore music began to crash throughout the stadium.  He looked to his left and saw someone that he didn’t know strumming furiously on a black Warlock bass guitar.  He looked to his right and saw another man playing backup on a solid black Ibanez.  The drummer was sitting behind them, pounding mercilessly on his drum set.

Offstage, half-naked women were dancing in scantily-clad leather.  Hardcore fans covered with tattoos and piercing were mosh-pitting right in front of the stage.  The smell of cigarettes and pot radiated throughout the entire stadium, and a blue cloud hung over the crowd like an ominous storm.

The crowd began chanting and bouncing when Sid began playing his guitar very fast.  His wrists moved with the speed of lightning, scratching the pick along the strings.  His hand moved up and down the fret board, picking out the right notes and sending the music through the amps. 

He was pushing his face towards the microphone in front of his to sing, but all of a sudden…

“Wake up Sid!”

He opened his eyes slowly to reveal a blurry face inches away from his. 

“Sid?”

A fist rose above his head and knocked three times.  It didn’t feel good.

“W-what?”

“Wake up boy!” It was his father.  “Even if you just turned thirteen, that was yesterday, and you’re gonna wake up today.”

Sid rolled over and groaned, rubbing his hands across his face and his eyes.  “Why do you want me to wake up so bad?”

“You’re mom’ll be home in a few hours.  She wants you to get your room cleaned before she gets back.  Now, I let you sleep a lot longer than I meant to, so I want you up now and I want this room cleaned in two hours.  If it’s not, I’m gonna take away your guitar for the rest of the day.”

Sid sat up abruptly.  “What!  But Dad, my room’s trashed!  How can you expect me to clean it in two hours?”

His father looked around the wrecked room.  Shirts and jeans were hung from any and every possible place, doorknobs, chairs, bed, and etcetera.  Books and CDs were scattered across the floor and piled into corners.  The only thing that seemed to be in order was the video collection, which was stacked neatly next to Sid’s TV. 

“Well, it would be almost impossible to get it all cleaned before she gets back.  Just get it neat.  Get your dirty clothes in the hamper, put your CDs and books away.  If she’s not happy, well, she’ll get over it.”  He turned to leave, but then turned back.  “Oh yeah, uh, happy birthday son.”

Sid rolled his eyes.  “Thanks Dad.”

He heard the door shut and he darted into the mess, sweeping the clothes swiftly into a pile.  He almost fell over trying to pull his shirts down from over the door, but after a half-hour of searching, he had all of his dirty clothes in a massive pile in the middle of the room.  He grabbed the pile at both sides and slowly steered his way towards the door, where he kicked it open and scrambled into the hallway.  He dropped numerous articles of clothing on his way to the laundry chute,   but he finally arrived with the bulk of what he had carried.  He dropped the pile and shoved the clothes in three or four pieces at a time.  It took him five minutes to disperse all of the clothes into the bowels of the house, then he returned to his room and began to organize his CDs and books on the bookshelf.  It took almost and hour, but then he realized that several CDs lay underneath his bed.

Sid dropped to his hands and knees and began feeling beneath the mattress.  He retrieved a few almost instantly, but some still lay just out of his reach.  He stood up and moved the bed a few feet over, only to reveal a nothing but a smooth floor.  One of the floorboards was popping up.  Sid tried to stamp it down, but it kept popping up.  He got back down on his hands and knees and grabbed it, trying to force it back into place.  Instead of going into the floor, it moved abruptly to the right, revealing a hole underneath the floor.

An extremely dusty stack of old, yellowing paperbacks lay underneath the floorboards.  Sid grabbed one of the books and looked at its cover.  Nazi Death Camps: The True Horror.  Another read Playing with Death: The Nazi Death Camp Experiments.  There was one about the anatomy of the human body.  Sid opened up the weathered front cover and looked in the corner.  A name was printed there.

Edward Gein.

Sid almost fell over.  Oh my god!  Ed Gein’s books!  He put his entire arm underneath the floor, feeling around for anything else.  His hand closed on something rough and round.  It took Sid a few seconds of pulling to finally jerk it free from whatever was holding it to the floor.  He brought it to the surface.

The skull sat smugly in Sid’s palm.  He stared at it; its coarse, gray texture reminded his of a low-hanging cloud that housed a tornado or a killing bolt of lightning.  It was missing a few teeth, but they were probably lying somewhere underneath the floor.  Sid stroked the top of the skull, letting his hand run over its rough surface, savoring the feel of something that was once a living, breathing person.  He tried to picture in his mind what this person had been like.  He saw a tall, pretty girl with long brown hair and striking blue eyes.  She had lived in the town.  Her dad had been a plumber, and her mother was a teacher.  She went to the school that he had gone to until last year.  Then she met Ed...

Sid finally snapped out of his trance.  He heard his mom’s car pulling down the long gravel driveway.  He tossed the skull into his closet, did his best to replace the loose board, moved his bed back, and threw all of the books and CDs sloppily on the bookshelf.

Chapter Two

It’s hard to stay between the lines of skin

Just cuz I have nerves don’t mean that I can feel

                        Slipknot

                        Scissors

            After dinner that night, Sid excused himself from the table and returned to his room.  He pulled the skull out of his closet and admired its flawless beauty, its sharp curvature, its hollow eye sockets.  Why can't we all be like this? Sid thought to himself.

            After an hour of jealous gazing, he carefully placed the skull into a little niche on the top shelf of his closet, towards the back wall.

            The room still wasn’t exactly clean, only a bit tidied up.  Sid dropped to his knees and began moving everything to the side of the room.  As more and more of the floor was exposed, he tried to get a grip on the floorboards and pull them up one by one.  None budged.  Crap, he thought.  Then he remembered that he had a hammer stashed somewhere in the closet. 

            He plunged headfirst into the small space, sending almost everything in his way soaring across the room as he threw them through his legs.  Finally, he stood up, clutching the old hammer.  Its wooden handle had a splinter or two waiting to stab him in the finger, but Sid flicked them off quickly and tossed the hammer on the floor.  It landed with a loud thud but he didn’t think that his parents would come.  He scooted the bed over a few feet and found where the loose board had been.

            Sid crouched down and began to tear up the surrounding boards.  After he had uprooted three, he could tell what exactly was underneath his floor.  It was a human skeleton.  Its bones and joints had fallen out of place over the years, but he could tell that it was definitely a skeleton.  He even found the teeth that had been missing from the skull’s mouth. 

            What would Mom and Dad say if I told them about this? Sid didn’t want to even think about it.  He knew that he had found a treasure, something that meant more to him than anything, even his guitar.  He knew that he would have to keep it safe.  He would have to keep his parents away from it.  He couldn’t tell anyone about it.  It would be his…forever.

            The darkness wasn’t an issue with his dreams anymore.  His eyes had permanently adjusted to the darkness of the house.  His feet clunked heavily on the bare wooden floor as he walked through the filthy kitchen.  He kicked a plate filled with putrid, rancid steak across the room and into a growing pile of newspapers and torn paperbacks.  Broken plates and fragments of soiled food littered the kitchen counter, while the floor was covered with other types of filth that couldn’t be explained or created in the house, only brought in from the woods outside.

            The cold winter air outside bit into his skin, making him shiver.  He realized that a window was open somewhere in the house.  He made his way towards the staircase but stopped, admiring the head which hung from the rafters.  The woman’s beautiful, pale blue skin was beginning to droop off of her slightly overweight face.  He lifted his arm and poked at a patch of the running skin, trying to position it back correctly on her face.  Realizing that it was a lost cause, he forgot it and began the cold trek upstairs.  An arm hung from the ceiling, attached to a link of chain.  A piece of plywood lay on the last step.  Three dismembered human noses where tacked to it.  He looked at them and giggled as he walked past. I might have to pick me a nose later on, he thought to himself. 

            A nightstand was stood at the end of hallway, in front of a boarded-up window.  Everything on the top floor was boarded up.  All of the doors except one had boards nailed into the wood, keeping anyone from entering.  The shrines to his mother lay beyond those doors.  The only one that wasn’t blocked off was the door that led to the tiny bathroom. 

            A lamp stood on the nightstand.  It was shrouded by a crude, tan-colored shade.  He eagerly approached it, and felt its texture, then rubbed his own arm.  It’s skin.  The thought sent shivers down his back and up through his arms.  He switched the lamp on and the luminous glow from the bulb sent a strange radiant light shooting down the hall. 

            Sid awoke from the dream feeling exhilarated.  His head spun from the rush of discovery.  He had been seeing the house as it was when Eddie had lived there over fifty years ago.  He pulled himself out of bed and pulled on a pair of black jeans.  The room was warm from the sunlight beating in through the window.  He made his way out into the hallway, and began feeling the door frame outside of his room.  Sure enough,  his fingers picked out the holes that Eddie had made so long ago after his mother died.  These holes were what had kept Eddie from entering his mothers old room and desecrating her memory.

Chapter Three

We’re just two lost souls

Swimming in a fish bowl

Year after year

                        Pink Floyd

                        Wish You Were Here

Three Months Later

            School had started back, and Autumns death grip was beginning to grip the Wisconsin countryside.  Leaves littered the ground like dead locusts after a the Egyptian plague.  Flowers were drooping and dying in the Northern cold, and Sid constantly found himself wishing that he was still in New Orleans.  Even though it had been even years since he had been able to walk on the cobble-stoned streets of the French Quarter, he could still smell the beignets that were cooked all over the city. 

            But Sid’s  reality was in Plainfield, whether he wanted it to be or not.  He had to wake up in the morning and go to the same boring school, where he learned that nothing is as good as it’s made out to be.  Plainfield was a trap, and he wanted more than anything to be outside the cage.  He worked hard in school, earning good grades and hoping that one day he would be able to go to college outside of Wisconsin and get away from the tedious routine of daily life.  He also played his guitar and wrote several hours a day.  He wrote stories and songs that touched the core of his deepest thoughts.  His growing depression and increasing numbness to the world was reflected and distorted with the riffs that he came up with on his beloved guitar. 

            The school bus wasn’t anywhere near the torture that it had been when Sid was six.  Most of the people that rode with him had accepted the fact that he lived in Ed Gein’s house, and they had begun to accept him within their social groups.  Sid had become especially close to another thirteen-year-old named Corey.  Corey was the one that got Sid into playing guitar.  He was also a very good artist.  He drew almost none-stop.  If he wasn’t drawing, he was playing his guitar.  Corey had drawings of all kinds of things on his wall, superheroes, dragons, knights, warriors, but mostly it was decorated with abstract drawings of crosses and other strange designs.  Sid had once asked Corey where he came up with those kinds of designs, and he replied with only “Those are tattoo’s that I want to get one day.”

            The bumpy road shook and tossed the school bus around chaotically, threatening to throw it off the road.  Sid and Corey held on to the seat on front of them to keep of falling into the aisle. 

            “Hey man,” Corey said to Sid loudly so that he could be heard over the other kids screams.  “You know that new chick, Alyssa?”

            Sid thought for a second, then replied.  “Yeah, dude.  She’s hot!”

            “Well, I got good news for you.  I hear that she’s got a thing for ya.”

            Sid was stunned for a spilt-second, then said, “Nah.  I doubt it.”

            “Well, I think that you need to introduce yourself to her today.  She does sit by you in third period, doesn’t she?”

            “Eh, I’ll think about it.”

            God, I hate English, Sid thought to himself as he sat bored to death in his second period class.  The teacher stood at the blackboard, screeching the white chalk across its surface, forming a sentence so that some hapless sap in the class could find the pronoun, or something around those lines.  Sid sat in his chair thinking about Corey had told him on the bus earlier.  Alyssa had a thing for him?  How could that be?  She was only the best-looking girl in the eighth grade.  She could have the choice of anyone she wanted, but she liked Sid?  It’s probably just some stupid rumor that got around to Corey, he thought.

            Finally, after what seemed days and months and years thrown into a one-hour time span, the bell rang.  Sid grabbed his books and dashed out of the room.  His locker was all the way at the other end of the hall.  He twisted the knob to the correct combination numbers and popped it open.  The inside door was covered with magazine clippings of bands like Nirvana and Tool.  He had also super-glued a variety of coins to the back of the locker into an anarchy symbol.  Sid’s favorite picture in the whole bunch was actually three in one.  He had taken a picture of Kurt Cobain, Maynard James Keenan, and Sid Vicious and pasted then onto a piece of cardboard, making it seem like the three vocalists were singing into the same microphone.  That was Sid’s dream, to see his three favorite artists together onstage.  But that was impossible, as two were dead. 

            “Sid!”

            He turned and saw Corey running towards him. 

            “What?”

            Corey stopped, out of breathe, for a second or two.  “Thought about what I told ya this morning?”

            “Yeah, but I haven’t made up my mind.  I mean, c’mon, there’s so many better looking people than me that she could choose from at this school.  So, why should she like me?”

            Corey put his arm around Sid.  “Because man, well, I’m not sayin’ that what I heard is true, but it’s a possibility.  Why can’t you just take a chance.  Stop being a whiney little…”

            “Okay okay.  I’ll introduce myself to her.  Happy?”

            Corey shrugged his shoulders.  “I guess.  It doesn’t really matter to me, but I do think that you need to quit holding back so much and just take a chance every now and then.”

            “Point taken.”  Sid looked at his watch and realized that the bell would ring in a a minute or so.  “Well dude, I gotta jet.  The bell’s about to ring.”

            “Aight.  I’ll see ya at lunch.”

            “Later bro.”  Sid turned to get to his next class while Corey ducked into the bathroom. 

            Creative Writing was Sid’s favorite class. He got to hang out and do exactly what he felt he was born to do: write.  His teacher would just give them something to write about and the class would get to work.  Sid always made it a top priority to twist the story into whatever it was that he wanted to write about.  He had the talent to turn the assignment from something about a fire hydrant and its history into a huge, sensational murder story. 

            The classroom was almost empty when Sid got in there.  The only people were the usual early birds that never talked to anyone in the hallway, they just went straight to their next class. Sid took his assigned seat and stowed everything but his notebook underneath the desk.  He opened the notebook and began touching up on yesterday’s assignment.  It was about a young boy that was trying to help a ghost who haunted his room.  In the end, the ghost possessed the little boy and used his body to exact revenge against her murderers.  Sid was sure that the teacher wouldn’t be too happy about all of the dark and depressing themes that graced the story, but he didn’t care.  It was Sid’s story and only his.  If the teacher didn’t like it, well, he knew what he could do.

            The bell rang and the class began to fill up almost instantly.  People poured into the room like water through a busted dam.  The chatter of student gossip circulated people and radiated off of the walls.  Sid heard his and Alyssa’s name mentioned once or twice.  Maybe Corey was serious.

            Sid looked up just in time to see her enter the room.  Alyssa wasn’t tall, but she wasn’t short either.  She was the perfect height.  She had shoulder-length brown hair that had a few light-blonde streaks and curled outwards a little bit at the tips.  Her oval-shaped face was like that of an angel’s.  She had large, beautiful blue eyes that reminded Sid of the color of the ocean on an unpolluted, uninhabited island.  She had full, pouting lips that were decorated with some kind of sparkling lip gloss.  She was wearing a cute blue and black striped shirt that showed a tiny bit of chestnut tanned stomach.  Her blue jeans were just the way Sid liked them, big and baggy.  He even liked her black and white Converse tennis shoes.

            She took her seat next to Sid and began to write in her notebook also. 

            “Um…what’s that about?” Sid asked her cautiously.

            Alyssa looked up at him and smiled.  “Well, nothing right now.  I’m just brainstorming.”  She saw his notebook open and all the words that he had written down.  “What’s that about?”

            “A little kid and a ghost.  If you want, I’ll let you read it when I’m finished.”

            “That’d be great.  I’ve heard some of the stuff that you’ve read aloud in class.  You seem to have a real talent.”

            Sid blushed deeply.  “Well, I…um, thanks.  Your poems are very good too.”

            Before she could reply, the teacher entered the room.  “Okay class, today’s assignment is to write about what you want to be when you grow up.  Then we’re going to read yesterday’s assignment out loud.  Now, get to work.”

            Sid began writing furiously.

When I grow up, I want to either be a musician or a writer.  If everything works out, I’ll get to be both.  I want to get a band together and tour the country, while at the same time, write books.  I’ve just always thought that it would be a great feeling to be able to see something that you’ve written displayed in a window and for sale somewhere, so think about what It would be like if that could happened every time you passed by a bookstore and a music store.

            Sid didn’t get any further before a folded piece of paper landed on his desk.  He grabbed it and opened it up.  It was a note.

Hey Sid,

            I dunno if you remember, but my names Alyssa Brooks.  I hate it when teachers interrupt my conversations with work, don’t you?

            Sid picked up his pen and replied with:

            Yeah, I do hate that.  Where did you live before you came here?

Birmingham, Alabama.  I thought it was dull, but this place takes the cake.  I dunno though.  I’ve been meeting some pretty cool people here.  I think I just met another one ;0)

            Sid blushed furiously as he read that last comment.  He wrote back quickly.

Yeah, well, I’m sure that there’s people around here cooler than me.  I also know what it’s like to be new.  I used to live in New Orleans.  I moved here seven years ago.  You get used to it after a while.

You used to live in New Orleans?  COOL!  I LOVE NEW ORLEANS!  I’ve only been there once, but I had sooo much fun.  Did you ever eat at Café du Monde?

Heck yeah!  I loved that place.  I’m gonna move back there when I get the money. 

And how are you gonna do that?  What do you wanna be when you get older?

Either a writer or a musician…or hopefully both.  I love play my guitar.

That’s pretty cool!  Are you any good at it?  What kind of music do you like?

            Sid thought for a minute before answering. 

I guess I’m getting to be ok.  I like a bunch of music.  Metal, grunge, jazz, techno, almost anything except rap and country.  Country = bad.

HAHA!  You’re right, country sucks!!!  What are you doing Friday night?

            Oh my God! Sid thought.  Is she gonna ask me out!?  Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Nothing, as far as I know.  Why?

Wanna come to a party at my house?

Chapter Four

Let’s get this party started!!!

                        Korn

                        Let’s Get This Party Started

            Sid dashed around his room, trying to find the clothes that he wanted to wear.  He had already found his favorite pants; baggy black jeans with cargo pockets and white stitching and a white stripe down the side of each leg.  After searching for a few minutes, he finally found his favorite shirt too.  It was a black shirt with two flaming dice on the front and flames running up each sleeve.  He donned his silver Nirvana smiley face necklace and a black and silver studded bracelet before checked himself in the mirror.  He saw a fourteen-year-old boy with wet shoulder-length black hair staring back at him.  His cheekbones jutted from his face and the tiniest hint of peach fuzz was beginning to sprout from his chin.  His dark blue eyes reflected the unfounded genius inside of Sid.  He looked older than fourteen; he looked more like sixteen or seventeen.  His thin body was beginning to show signs of building muscles from working out in the weight room during gym at school.  He finished dressing by tugging on his nine-inch Doc Martens and slipping a few rings on his fingers. 

            He heard a car pull up outside.  Looking out the window, Sid saw that it was Corey and his older brother James.  He dashed downstairs and heard them honk the horn twice.  He flew out of the door but was stopped by his mothers voice. 

            “Sid! What time are you gonna be home?”

            Sid stopped in his tracks and spun around, annoyed.  “Mom!  I told you I was staying at Corey’s house tonight!”

            She looked disappointed.  “Well, call me when you get there.  I don’t care how late it is, just call. Okay?”

            “’Kay!  Bye Mom!”  He ran and jumped into the backseat of the Civic. 

            “What’s up Sid?”  James asked.

            “Nothin’ much man.  Just tryin’ to get my Mom off my back.”

            James sniggered.  “Well, you better get used to it.  When you start goin’ to parties more often, she’s gonna be all up and down your back.  Trust me.”

            James put the car into reverse and kicked it out of the driveway, slinging dust everywhere.  They got out onto the main road and floored it, leaving a cloud of smoke in the air and a track of burnt rubber on the road.  James handled the car expertly; he had been driving for years and his Civic was souped up so that he could race.  Once a month he took the two hours or so drive to Milwaukee and competed in the Nationals.  He would usually return home with an extra five hundred bucks in his pocket. 

            “So man,” Corey said, turning around as the car gained speed.  “You gonna put a move on Alyssa tonight?”

            Sid contemplated for a second.  “I dunno.  It depends.”

            “On what?”  James asked as he shifted gears.

            “Well, number one, on whether I can get her off somewhere by ourselves.  I don’t wanna do it right in front of everyone, just in case she does shoot me down.  It might also depend on if beer is there or not.  I dunno why, but it seems so much easier to talk to people when I’ve kicked back a few beers.  Know what I mean?”

            “I hear that,” James said as he shifted into third gear.  Sid sat back and watched the trees alongside the road flash by.

            They pulled up at Alyssa’s house fifteen minutes later.  Not many other people seemed to be there, even though Alyssa had invited almost the entire school.  Sid had been told that her older brother had invited a bunch of people from the high school too.  This was going to be one crazy night.

            Sid knocked on the door with James and Corey standing behind him.  They heard someone scream “Get the CD player plugged in!” and then Alyssa answered the door wearing a tight light blue shirt and some baggy raver pants with flames going up the sides.  She saw Sid and threw herself on him in a bear hug.  He hugged her back and introduced James.

            “…and I’m sure that you remember Corey.”

            Alyssa smiled widely, showing her pearly white teeth.  “Of course I remember Corey.  He’s the one that let me borrow that techno CD for tonight’s festivities. C’mon in guys.  The booze’ll be here any minute.  Sid, if you don’t mind, could u help me set up the lights?”

            Lights? he thought as she led him down some rickety wooden steps.  The room that she brought him to was huge.  It was a large, cavernous basement.  It was two rooms separated by a short, wide hallway.  The smaller of the two rooms had a small wooden stage step up.  Two Ibanez guitars leaned in their stands by the wall.  A tall, tattooed guy was tuning up his black Warlock bass in the corner.  A drum set was set up towards the back of the stage and two large amplifiers  stood on either side of the stage.  Two microphones were placed at the front of the stage, waiting to be plugged in.

            “There’s gonna be a band here?” he asked. 

            “Of course.  My brother always has a band at his parties.  It’s like…tradition, ya know?”  Alyssa handed Sid some black lights.  “Could you use this tape and rig one black light on each mike stand?”

            “Sure.”  He grabbed the tape and did as he was bidden.  Sid couldn’t wait to see the band.  He hoped that they were a metal band.  He was in the mood for some thrashing. 

            Alyssa and Sid put black lights and strobe lights up all over the place, then her brother Chris brought some rave posters downstairs, which they also put up.  They turned all of the lights on, turned some techno music on the CD player up, and turned out the lights.  They were ready to have a small rave.

            The beer arrived just as the music was turned on.  Chris and a friend of his rolled two massive kegs down the stairs and into the second room where the band was going to set up.  Alyssa brought in three large bags of plastic cups and a trash can in case someone got sick.  People began to arrive in rapid succession, and soon the front yard and driveway were filled with cars.  Alyssa didn’t pay too much attention to the rest of the guests though.  She drug Sid over to a couch in the farthest corner and they began talking.  Corey and James both got a few beers then found some girls to dance with.  The strobe lights flashed, turning everything into slow motion, and the black lights let off a hypnotic glow throughout the entire basement.  The party was in full swing when Sid finally had enough alcohol and began to feel confident enough to really talk to Alyssa.

            “So, um, what was it like to live in New Orleans?” she asked him.  “I’ve always wanted to live there.”

            Sid’s head was swimming with thoughts, and he grabbed one and answered.  “It was great.  I loved to just walk around the Quarter with my mom and see the sidewalk performers.  Kids would put pieces of metal on the bottom of their shoes and tap dance.  It was awesome.  I miss it from time to time.”

            “I’m going to live there one day,” she said.  “may be you can come and visit me someday.”

            “Not if I move there first,” he said, then he leaned over and kissed her.  It was a soft “I don’t know if I should be doing this” kiss.  It was the kiss that Sid would compare all other kisses in his life to.  But of course, Corey could always be counted on to interrupt it.

            “Woo!  Sid!  You go son!” he slurred drunkenly.  Fortunately, the girl that he was dancing with went to get another beer, so he stopped yelling and chased after her.  “Hey baby, where ya goin’?”

            Alyssa giggled at Corey’s comical behavior.  He stood up and grabbed Sid’s hand, dragging him out into the midst of the dance floor.  Sid had no idea what he should be doing, so he just went with the music, swinging his arms and moving his legs a bit, but eventually the alcohol rushed to his head and he had to sit down for a minute.  He slouched onto the couch and watched Alyssa dance.  After a few minutes, she sat back down on the couch and they began kissing again, this time with more passion, more aggression. 

            They made out until the band took the stage, then Alyssa pulled Sid into the hallway; the room the band was in was too crowded for anymore people.  A large walk-in closet that Sid hadn’t noticed before was built into one of the walls in the hallway.  He and Alyssa grabbed a nook in the corner and watched the band.  The guy that had been tuning his bass earlier was the lead vocalist.  He had black light reflective paint on his face in strange, tribal designs.  He screamed into the microphone with a force that could rival a tidal wave.  His bass thumped loudly through the amplifiers, shaking the house walls.  The two guitarists were playing very fast, crunching notes, head banging nonstop, and jumping around the stage like madmen.  The drummer, pushed towards the back, pounded on his drums with the force of a cattle stampede.  Sid hadn’t heard music this fast since his Mom confiscated his Cannibal Corpse tape last year.  He watched in awe as the band played three or four songs, but then Alyssa pulled his head to hers and they kissed again.  They fooled around for the rest of the show, then Corey showed up, saying that they had to go.  If James didn’t leave then, he’d get too drunk to drive.  Sid kissed Alyssa one more time, got her phone number, and then the three boys piled into James’ Civic and sped off into the dark Wisconsin night.

Chapter Five

Cold silence has a tendency to

Atrophy any sense of compassion

Between supposed lovers

                        Tool

                        Schism

            He walked outside of the house, anatomy book in hand, and made his way towards the shed.  Muffled screams could be heard radiating from somewhere within its depths.  He got closer to the shed and clutched the razor-sharp dissection knife in his hand, eager to use it on his new subject.

            The door to the shed opened slowly, creaking on its rusty hinges.  Somewhere within the bowels of the room, a woman tried to scream, but the gag on her mouth prevented any coherent sound from escaping.  He  walked slowly, carefully, among the sharp tools and body parts hanging form the ceiling.  The dirt floor was covered in dried, crusty brown blood.  A woman’s body hung naked from the ceiling, like a gutted deer waiting for the knife to take it’s skin.  But he wasn’t going to take the woman’s skin; he was just going to take her head and hang it somewhere in his house. 

            The woman was tied down to a table.  Her mouth was filled with a dirty rag and taped shut.  Her eyes emitted the fear of a rabbit in car headlights.  It’s Alyssa, he realized.  Her naked body was tied down to the table with thick, strong rope.  He walked over to the table and leaned over to kiss her on the forehead, but she jerked her head away.  In a rage, he lifted the knife in his hand and plunged it into her stomach, slitting the skin from her naval, up between her breasts, and to her throat, where he extracted the bloody utensil and shoved his gloved hands into the gaping, bleeding hole.  He looked back at Alyssa’s face, and the gag was gone.  She looked into his eyes and screamed…

            Sid awoke with a start, jerking up out of the sleeping bag and trying to brush the nonexistent blood off of his hands.  His face was pouring with cold sweat.  Something was pounding in his head.  Blood rushed through and pulverized his temples.  Sid clutched his head in his arms tightly until the pain subsided.

Part Three

Chapter One

I am so alone

Let with no one in my life

I’m so alone

                        Mudvayne

            Nothing to Gein

Light blue smoke streamed from Sid’s nose.  He was sprawled across the bed in his room, trying to concentrate on the show that blared from his TV.  Alyssa lay beside him asleep.  Corey was sitting in the recliner across the room, strumming on his bass.  It’s yellow and black body was covered with fingerprints and smudges. 

“Hey man,” Sid drawled, “don’t forget that we have to call the guys and get together for practice tonight.  We’ve only got another week left ‘til my party, so we gotta practice hard.”

“I know, I know.  I’ve already called ‘em.  They’re gonna be here by six.  Don’t worry, I took care of everything.”

Sid thought for a second.  “Oh yeah, did you mail those demo tapes out yet?”

Corey’s eye got huge.  “Um…no.  I forgot, dude.  But I’ll get ‘em sent out tomorrow.  Okay?”

Sid just rolled his eyes and let his head droop onto Alyssa’s shoulders.  Her soft skin was the perfect pillow.  He got close to sleep, but then he dropped the joint that he was smoking on the bed.

“Crap!” he shouted, jumping up and brushing the burning coals off of the sheets.  A small black hole had been burnt in his comforter.  “CRAP!”

“Dude,” Corey said.  “Don’t worry about it.  It’s just a little hole.  Chill out.”

Sid snuffed the joint out in the ashtray beside his bed and lay back down.  “If I dose off, wake me up when the guys get here.  Okay?”

The room was devoid of all human life except for Sid.  He could smell the rancid, cluttered kitchen ten feet away.  He looked around the room and saw a brown-haired scalp dangling from the ceiling.  Not too many macabre decorations for once.

Sid could smell death coming closer to the house.  He looked out the dirty, stained window and saw Ed approaching.  He was carrying a woman’s mutilated torso.  The sight turned Sid’s stomach a small bit, but he had grown used to the disgusting dreams. 

What was it like for Ed? He began thinking to himself.  To be living so far away from anybody.  What did the world expect him to become?  A well-adjusted individual?  He lived half-a-mile away from anybody for chrissakes!  He shouldn’t have had to live like that.  He should have had…someone.  He was a nice guy except for the whole murderer thing. 

Sid could hear the shed door outside open and close.  Sound’s like he’s about to begin working on his suit again.  A sense of understanding began to flow through Sid.  Did he live alone up here because he was still scared of the world?  Or did he like feeling alone?  Did he like not having anyone to share a happy moment with?  Did it hurt him to see other people socialize because of the way his mother raised him?

Sid stood up and began to wake towards the front door.  He saw Ed leave the shed and walk back into the woods, but he returned a few seconds later with two dilapidated arms. 

I wish that I could have the guts to do what Ed did.  I wish that I could create the great pieces of art that he did.  I wonder what it’s like to taste another person’s blood.

“Sid! Wake up ya stoned freak!”

A foot connected painfully with Sid’s side. 

“Ow!  Dude!  Gavin!  That was so not cool dude!”  He struggles to his feet and saw the band standing in his room.  Corey had his bass strung and plugged in.  Gavin was holding his guitar like a staff to ward Sid off if he tried anything.  And Mark was sitting behind the drum set in the corner. 

“You guys ready rock?” Sid asked, rubbing his eyes.  Alyssa was still sleeping peacefully on the bed.  Sid thought that she looked like an angel.  Her brown and blonde-streaked hair was billowed around her head, resembling a dark halo.  “Look at her guys,” he said with the utmost sincerity.  “Isn’t she beautiful?”

“Sid, don’t be gettin’ like that right before practice.  Whenever you do, you play like crap. Now c’mon.”

He grabbed his guitar off of the floor and plugged into the amp.  Feedback resonated throughout the room for a second before Sid turned the volume down and quickly tuned his guitar. 

“Voodoo People on three,” he said, putting his fingers on the right strings.  The drum sticks clicked three times and suddenly the entire room boomed with energy.  The walls vibrated with the sound of the crunching guitars and booming bass.  The drums sounded like thunder rolling over the house and stopping, trying to shake the house to its foundation. 

Sid’s fingers moved quickly and gracefully over the strings.  His guided the guitar pick expertly and stuck the right chords, pulling the whammy bar at the right moment.  He did everything perfectly. 

Gavin shouted something unintelligible into one of the two microphones.  Sid took his cue and began singing.  The deep guttural growling from the back of his throat quickly turned into angelic harmonizing and then to screaming.  He sang of the people in the world with no hope, no future.  He sang of the ones with no self esteem or living will.  He sang of the peoples suffering.

When the song ended, he lit a cigarette and began strumming experi-mentally on his guitar.

Chapter Two

Since you never gave a damn in the first place

Maybe it’s time you had the tables turned

Cuz in the interest of all involved I got the problem solved

And the verdict is guilty

                        Slipknot

                        Spit It Out

            The hallways filled with people when the bell rang.  Sid gathered up his books and joined the crowd, anticipating the moment when he could get into his car and dig into his stash.  But first he had to find Alyssa.

            Her locker was on the next hallway.  Sid pushed and shoved through the freshmen that littered the hallway.  Alyssa was standing by her locker, and…some guy was flirting with her.  Sid’s eyes widened and he saw everything through a tint of red.  He watched as the guy leaned over and kissed Alyssa.  He watched as she jerked away from his touch, but that wasn’t enough.  Sid barreled through the crowd of people and before he knew what was happening, he felt the boy’s cheek crumble underneath the impact of his fist.  The boy hit the ground hard, clutching his face, but Sid was on top of him, straddling him.  He felt his fists fall up and down, landing on the boys face with staggering force.  He swung and swung until blood began to spurt from the boy’s nose.  The sight of blood drove Sid wild.  He grabbed the kids head and tried to lick the blood, but before he could reach the life-giving substance, strong hands grabbed his arms and jerked him off.

            Sid twirled around and came face to face with the football coach.  “C’mon boy.  We’re goin’ to the office.  You’re gonna get a little vacation.  Someone help this kid out!  He’s hurt pretty bad!”

            The events of the day twirled through Sid’s mind as he waited for the acid to kick in.  He had just smoked a joint and was feeling the tingling effects slowly creep up on him.  He remembered the principal yelling something about the kids cheekbone being broken, and something about the parents possibly pressing charges against the school.  Sid had tried to explain, but they said that the intent to steal his girlfriend wasn’t a good enough excuse to fight in school.  They sent him home and suspended him for two weeks. 

            He was now lying on his bed, waiting for Alyssa to get to his house.  His parents hadn’t gotten home yet, and he was wondering what he was going to tell them about his bleeding and bruised knuckles. 

            Sid lay immobile for an hour, until he began to feel the LSD take effect.  It began to slowly distort his vision, then he looked at the wall.  The posters that he had tacked up began to slowly melt and drip onto the floor.  The nonexistent liquid began to puddle up and jiggle. 

            Then, slowly, Sid watched as the puddle began to take form.  Something was growing out of.  He tried to move, but the drug had rendered him helpless.  He watched in horror as the puddle began to grow and change color.  It turned from a swirled mixture of black and yellow to a green and white plaid texture.  He watched as it molded itself into filthy blue overalls.  Underneath the overalls was a plaid shirt.  Then a head wearing a black and red plaid baseball cap popped out of the lanky shoulders.  It was Ed Gein.

            “Hello Sid,” he said sweetly, as if nothing strange had just happened.  “How’re you doing?”

            Sid tried to speak, but he couldn’t form understandable words. He could only utter, “Uh…”

            “You don’t have to say anything.  I know what you’re thinking.  I know that you’ve been watching me for a very long time now.  Watching me as I make my trophies and “clothes”.  I hope that one day you will be able to follow in my footsteps.  You see,” he said as he sat down at the end of the bed.  “Murder isn’t a bad thing.  All animals, including humans, do it.  I’ve noticed that you’ve been doing drugs lately.  Why?  I think that it’s because you want to try to feel what I felt as I cut into human flesh and eat it.  Well, I’ll tell you something that I never told anyone else.  I loved every minute of it.  It was the best head rush anyone could ever experience.  Better than any drug that you could put into your body.  To feel the surgical steel slice through another person’s skin, and know that you are the cause of that art, there’s nothing better than that.  And the knowledge that you are wearing another person’s skin in order to be something than what you really are, I must say, life couldn’t get any better.”

Chapter Three

I said “Hell yeah”

I’m livin’ life in the fast lane

                        Limp Bizkit

                        Livin’ It Up

            Cars covered every available space in the yard.  Kegs lined the front porch and people poured into the house, beer in hand.  The sun was setting, casting a pink and orange glow across the landscape, illuminating the stained glass wind chime that hung next to the front door.

            Inside, the house was filled with smoke and glowing black lights.  Sid sat in the corner with Corey and Alyssa puffing on a cigarette, waiting for Mark to finish setting up his drum kit. 

            “This is goin’ to be a great show man.  I can’t wait to get these people goin’.”  Corey drawled.  He had already down four beers and was working on his fifth.

            “Just don’t get too wasted dude.  We’ve all heard you try to play drunk, and it don’t work too well,” Sid said as smoke streamed through his mouth and nostrils.  He leaned over and kissed Alyssa on the cheek, then he got up and grabbed Corey by the shoulder and drug him over to the stage. 

The wooden box was big enough for the whole band to perform on, and his dealer AJ sat behind a large table, tinkering with the sound board.  Sid helped Mark set up the rest of his drums, then manned his guitar and began tuning it.  Soon, the rest of the band had taken the stage and looked over the set list. 

Sid opened the first song with an ambient tink-tinking sound on his guitar, then the music grew louder and louder as the drums and bass and second guitar joined in.  Finally, Sid screamed into his microphone and went crazy, jumping all over the stage.  The crowd went wild.  They jumped up and down, screamed, and even moved some of the furniture in the room to the side and began a mosh pit.  Sid’s vocal cords began to strain under the pressure of his howling voice, but he didn’t care.  This was the largest crowd that Swamp had played for in almost three months. 

As the crowd got more and more into the music, and more and more into the music, AJ pumped it up by distorting some of the guitar riffs on the sound board, producing unearthly, psychedelic sounds that radiated from the amps. 

As the night drew on, Sid realized that it was the best birthday party he had ever thrown, and he was happy that it was his own.  He was delighted that his band was able to entertain so many people.  And over all, he was thrilled that Alyssa was there with him, to stand by his side as he enjoyed his moment of glory when Swamp finished their last song and just stood silently onstage as the crowd cheered for them.

Chapter Four

You are mine!  You will always be mine!

I can tear you apart; I can recombine you

All I want is to covet you all

                        Slipknot

                        IOWA

            Sid awoke the next morning to find his house trashed.  Plastic cups and half-smoked joints littered the floor.  Furniture was turned over on its side and pictures on the wall were hung askew.

            It was a great party, he thought as he picked up on of the joints on the floor and lit it.  The piney taste scorched his throat as he inhaled, and ten minutes later he was floating on the clouds.  He was rehashing the memories that he had of the past few days: getting suspended, working on a novel; playing a great show the night before.  Then he remembered what Ed had told him.  He had said that murder is better than any drug in the world.  Well, if it can be better than pot as good as this, then I gotta try it. 

            Sid looked and saw Alyssa asleep next to him.  God, I love her so much.  She’s so beautiful.  I know that one day someone is going to become obsessed with her.  They’ll follow her around, learn everything about her.  Then they’ll rape her.  They’ll kill her.  Then I’ll be alone.  I can’t let that happen.  I can’t let her go through that.  And I can’t have her ripped away from me.  I can’t be alone.  I can’t become Ed.  But I want to send her off myself.  I want to make sure she goes painlessly.

            Sid picked her up gently and carried her outside.  He put her in his car and taped her arms and legs up.  Then he went in the shed out back and grabbed a shovel.

            He drove the car out into the middle of the forest, far away from any breathing being, be it human or animal.  The birds weren’t chirping here.  They must have known what was going on and flew away. 

            Sid got out of his car and began to dig.  He dug for hours while Alyssa slept.  He dug until the hole was almost nine feet deep.  Then he crawled out of the gaping cavity, covered in dirt and grime, and pulled Alyssa out of the car.  He gently slapped her cheek to wake her up.  Her eyes fluttered open, and Sid stared into her deep blue irises and ran his finger slowly down her face. 

            Alyssa’s eyes flew open when she realized that she was taped up and her boyfriend was covered in dirt.  “What’s going on Sid?” she asked timidly.  He didn’t say anything; he just leaned down and kissed her.  It was the best kiss that they had shared together in the three some odd years that they had dated.  She didn’t know what to think, but when it was over, Sid grabbed her softly by the arms and swung her toward the hole in the ground. 

            “It’s time baby.  I love you so much.”

            “Sid?  Sid, what’s going on?”  Her eyes were full of fear, but Sid just stared into them, admiring the deep, beautiful blue.  He was going to miss those gorgeous eyes.  He walked her slowly towards the precipice of the hole.  She began to resist, but his grip was strong. 

“Sid, please tell me what’s going on!  Why are you staring at me like that!?” Then she saw the hole.  “Sid!  Sid no!  Don’t do this!  Please!  Don’t put me in that hole!”

Then she was falling.  He heard her thump to the ground.  “Ow!  Sid!  Please Sid!  Don’t leave me here!”

He approached the edge of the hole and looked down her.  She was crying.  “Don’t cry baby.  This is to protect you.”  Then he picked up the shovel and began throwing dirt back in. 

“Sid!  Please don’t do this!  I love you Sid!  Why are you doing this!  Please stop!  I don’t want to die!  I DON’T WANT TO DIE!”

He blocked out her pleas and continued throwing in the loose dirt.  After a while, the hole was filled.  Then he turned around, got into his car, and went home.

Three weeks later, after graduation, a man gave Sid a call.  He had received one of Swamp’s demo tapes.  He liked it.  He sent the band a first class airplane ticket to New York.  They sat down and had a meeting with him, and left the conference room with a record contract.  They went into the studio and began recording their first album and also began rehearsing for a national tour.