D3 :: Kinsey Fer

D3 :: Kinsey Fer Mar 4, 2014 20:22:48 GMT -5

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Post by L△LIA on Mar 4, 2014 20:22:48 GMT -5

If you really want to hear about it, first of all I should probably explain about how I don't mind if you call me crazy, just so long as you don't scream while you say it. That kind of thing makes my ears ache until they ring. I mean it. Ringing ears is one of those things that gets under my skin and I've got enough to worry about without that. What I'm trying to say is that if I'm walking down the hall, try'na get to the bathroom because I drank too much water with my sandwich at lunch, then you can see how that kind of extra little thing would get to be a problem for me. I have to hurry along fast enough to get somewhere, but not so fast that I trip over my own feet and I need to pee and I gotta sidestep any nasty shadows along the way and there's a sound in my head like somebody left a seven-year-old Quasimodo wannabe in charge of a bell tower? No way. Seriously, I'm not kidding around — no thank you. Just turn around and walk away because I don't care enough to tell you anything if that's what my life is going to be like after. I'm already late for detention because my history teacher got mad that I was a little overenthusiastic about doodling in the margins of my test paper. Ripred. Some people just don't know how to let things slide.

School gets to be kind of a problem for me like that, if I'm being real honest. At home everyone is pretty used to me, but here people seem to think I'm a no good liar who's trying to rev the other kids up because I'm bored or my homelife is lousy or something. That really gets me. It's like they've got it in their heads that nobody was ever a weirdo unless their parents raised them to be one. I've met plenty of weirdos whose moms and dads never jaywalked or took too much medication on purpose and they probably even refused to clean their ears with cotton swabs, just because the warnings on the boxes say that's not what they're supposed to be used for. Although I would wager my right hand — I mean it, I would hack it off right now — that there's no such thing as another use for those things. Stop and think about it. Have you ever used a cotton swab for anything other than scritching gunk out of your ears? Don't you lie to me just because you want to see if I really would cut my hand off. I probably would and that's why everybody thinks I'm messed in the head because my mommy didn't tuck me in one night when I was a newborn kiddo. As if I even remember a thing like that. That's the real reason Mister Harvey is making me stay after classes are out today, not because I drew a picture of a five-headed crocantheraphant (that's a crocodile-panther-elephant, in case you're having trouble keeping up) fighting the boogeyman as my answer to question eight.

I didn't mean to, it just sort of happened. This is the part where I really need you not to scream until my ears ring, so if you absolutely have to call me crazy, then please be polite and mutter it under your breath like most people have the decency to do. Anyway. What I'm trying to say is: how am I supposed to watch that kind of thing happen and not keep a record of it? I was in history class, for chrisakes. The whole point is to teach us about how remembering the past is important. I should have gotten extra credit, not detention. Right there, in the shadows of the bookcase, a historic battle was taking place between a gruesome shadow-beast and the most infamous of children's nightmares and I managed to capture evidence of it for future generations. I oughta demand a medal-of-freaking-honor or an early diploma or at least a handshake from the mayor, but nope. Instead I get to stay late and write lines or something. (I will tuck my future-children in every single night so they won't grow up to be a weirdo like me. I will tuck my future-children in every single night so they won't grow up to be a weirdo like me. I will tuck my future-children in every single gosh darn night so they won't grow up to be a weirdo like me.) What a learning experience. Boy, I mean it. The things they teach us kids these days. At least when I hurry down the hall to detention today, even if I have to pee and if there's a ten-headed crocantheraphant after me, I won't have to be bothered about my ears ringing. What a thing to be thankful for.

Sometimes I just don't know how I make it through the day. I don't think I ever get enough sleep, so even waking up is this grand accomplishment for me. It's like: Con-friggin'-gratulations, Kinsey! You opened your eyes and the world is still there, wow woah hey there buddy, your terrible parents must be so proud of you! If only everyone could have such a talented son! People say we're all supposed to get something ridiculous like eight hours of sleep a night and, are you kidding me, if there is some guy out there who can actually close his eyes for that long without wanting to bash his head against a wall from boredom or peek out just to see what the heck is going on outside of his own head, then would I ever like to meet him. I'm not even joking right now, I would sincerely like an introduction. Maybe he can give me some pointers. Even though I hate crawling into bed and going unconscious each night — which I'm telling you, I don't understand how that's natural — every once in a while I start wondering what it must be like to get more than just a few hours of sleep in one go. I think my record must be around four. When I haul myself up in the mornings, my eyes are all bleary and the room kind of spins as if it doesn't actually want to be there and it's no wonder it's hard for me to focus on my history tests.

How am I supposed to sleep when I can't stop wondering what's under my bed or in my closet or just lurking a couple feet away in plain sight? Monsters have no shame these days. A person has to relax to drift away into dreams, but I've got too much to worry about. Laying down is like baring my belly to the enemy, let me tell you. I might as well slit my own throat if I'm going to give in that easily and practically turn my bed into a sacrificial altar of my own imminent doom. Really, kill me now and get it over with if I have to spend eight hours a day wondering when hellhounds are going to rip my arms off, hang me from the ceiling by my toes, and bark with laughter as they watch me slowly bleeding out for their amusement. What a way to go. Jeez louise, that would be miserable. I hope someone remembers that mental image the next time I get told I'm the one who's sick in the head, when that's the kind of thing some sleep scientist in his fancy underground laboratory expects me to subject myself to. Sicko.

This is why I get such a bum wrap, even though all I'm trying to do is survive. A kid can't even breathe around this place without getting a dirty eye from somebody, I swear. Take my cousin Topia, for instance. Let me tell you, she makes our family get-togethers worth going to. I know, oh man do I ever know, that if you lined everybody I'm related to up in a good long row and started try'na pick out the ones that got something kinda off about them, I know that Topia wouldn't be first on that list, but I think that's why I like keeping my own nosy eye on her. She's got quite a lot of people fooled into thinking she's a pretty well-rounded person who has all her ducks in a row — I mean that figuratively, because I don't think I've ever even seen a duck around here, let alone met somebody who owns a pack of the little feathered devils — but she does this counting thing that just really gets my goat. Before you ask, no, I also don't have a literal goat to be gotten, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. This really hasn't got a thing to do with animals. I don't know why I keep doing that. What I'm saying is, maybe we've all just sat down to dinner and passed the food around and Pari's already got his plate half-finished while the rest of us are only three or four bites in. Then you've got Topia, who's over there lining her peas up into neat little rows of six and cutting her lasagna into perfectly equal pieces that add up to exactly the same number as her painstakingly organized vegetables. It might just be the single most mind-blowing, bonkers thing I've ever witnessed in my whole damn life. That girl and her peas. She probably doesn't even like peas, but that plate of hers will be so clean at the end of the night I'd think she licked it, if I weren't watching her too closely to know better. I shouldn't, because I know exactly how lousy it is for somebody to stare at a kid when all they want is to go about their personal business, but I'm always too busy getting my socks knocked off when she's around to think about what a rotten hypocrite I am.

There must be some secret in all those numbers that I just haven't been able to figure out yet. It's like everything Topia does is encoded into a mysterious language that nobody else understands, where sixes are another way of breathing and three is a holy word of prayer. I don't think I'd be very good at religion if I were to give it a go, but that's the only thing I can compare her habits to and maybe it really does keep her demons out. Numerological voodoo magic. Ah-zinga-zinga-shalakazam-boogie-woogie-razzmatazz-ta-dah! If she could hear the things I think when I watch her turn her life into a never-ending math equation, it might just be enough to motivate my picture perfect cousin into slapping me real good, right across the face. Just — kapow! — right in the kisser, with a red hand print glowing on my cheek afterward, to prove it happened and make my sister jealous the honor wasn't hers. It's not that I'm so godawful bad, I guess, it's more that she wants to be that perfect and I don't understand that any more than why the meaning of life might have something to do with six peas being sorted into a line so straight and evenly spaced that you could use it as a ruler, but it still makes me curious. Not just about the hows and the whys and the what fors. I'm talking about the kind of mental inquisition that makes a guy start counting under his breath when he walks down the street or as he climbs into bed, wondering if tonight will be the night he's ripped limb from limb and scattered in seven different directions of unprecedented gore.

Thoughts like these don't appear out of nowhere; my family has a real gruesome history, you know. Entire generations wiped out all in one go — mass-hangings, axe murder, systematic drowning, house fires. Any sort of idea you can come up with, we can do worse and probably already have. I mean it, forty chops to the head apiece. No kidding. Can you imagine how tired your arms would get? The first time I attempted to decode Topia's enigma — one, two, three, hocus pocus, and bibbity bobbity boo — I drew forty circles on the floorboards surrounding my bed using white chalk and I just about didn't have any hands left afterward. I'd been thinking about my great grandparents and what it must've been like to go out in terrible glory how they did, just counting their death strokes with a tally of words and nothing more, but the thin sound of my voice didn't feel like any kind of lasting protection, so I began marking each number off with a ring, imagining the loops of pale dust to be new layers of skin. Forty layers of armor. By the time I was finished I was so worn out that I fell asleep without even hauling myself up off the ground and while I might've only been out for a couple of hours or so, there was still some magic in it. A lot of nights, if I sleep at all, it's a scattered quilt of twenty minute patches that feel more like lost time than rest; that night the Sandman and I were aiming to go straight on til morning. See, shadows can't cross white lines without feeling like they're being chopped up, so creeping past that many is a rough time for them. For monsters that live in the dark, a color that bright cuts 'em up real good, just like an axe being buried in their forehead over and over and over and over and over again. Talk about a history lesson.

Great Granpoppy Borden and Nannie Lizzie might not've been able to pull themselves together and get back up after having that hunk of steel buried in their brains on repeat, but my shadow-creeping enemies aren't so easy to defeat. If one spiked tail is hacked off, three more grow back in its place, and that's not even getting into how the teeth of a monster can't be filed down, but must be pulled free from the jaw entirely and burned in a pit of hellfire. All ten thousand or so of the deadly little suckers. That's real life, I'm telling you. You'd think that with my sister Luci on a twenty-four-seven, apocalyptic PMS rampage of doom, as if she's the heir to Ripred's throne or something, that I'd have unlimited access to all the hellfire I might need to be the victorious defender against all creatures who lurk in the dark, but the struggle is real. One does not simply get their hands on a thing like that without getting burned. Trust me, I've tried. So until I figure out a better way to fight these battles, the only things I've really got to defend myself with are those hoodoo magic chalk circles and my own skin. I mean it, I'm just as white as the rings on my bedroom floor — it's what people like to describe as being both a blessing and a curse. I'm pale to the point that my very flesh helps to ward off shadows, but it's also the reason they're after me to begin with.

Light and dark are natural enemies, you know. It's the most primal of instincts for us to want to swallow the other up, just like how the sun and moon fight for rights over the sky every moment of every day. Most people don't think much about the way the moon lights up against its will or what it might mean when a ghostly crescent haunts the bright blue of an early afternoon sky with its outrageous presence, but there's nothing harmless about it. Eclipses. Waxing. Waning. The war I fight is not a new one and it belongs to so much more than just me, but I wasn't born with skin this vacant to ignore it. Call me an old soldier, if you want. I've been duking it out since the day I took my first breath and I don't know how I've survived this long, just that it wasn't because I sat back and tried to pretend something bigger than me wasn't happening in the world the same way everyone else does. Do yourself a favor and stop being so freaking concerned about my home life, people, and start worrying about how you're going blind. That's what you oughta be getting all worked up about. Jeez.

Think of it this way: In vampire lore there are people born to be slayers, because sometimes destiny just has this insistent way of happening. The only thing they ever did was to get born on a Saturday, as if they had a choice about that, and from the second they pop on out into the world, they don't have any option but to grow up whittling hawthorn stakes so they can stab the undead in their dysfunctional, unbeating hearts, decapitate them, and burn the corpses so the soulless demons won't regenerate or whatever exactly is supposed to happen. Like I know. I was born on a Tuesday or something, so what do I care about Vampires? They're probably not real anyway or I'd have had a few knocking on my window by now, politely asking if I might oblige them a little access to my neck. Greedy bastards. At least they have enough manners not to barge in where it's been established they're not wanted, so I suppose they could be worse. What I was aiming to say though, before I got distracted by the blood sucking, is that all I ever did was get born with the whitest skin anyone around here has ever seen and just because of that one little detail I never had any choice about, destiny demanded that I become a shadow slayer. Life is pushy like that. Real inconsiderate, when you sit back and think about it. Some days I almost think I'd rather have the vampires.

At least people don't give me as much trouble about the whole albino thing as you might think. I guess their parents weren't as lousy as mine supposedly are, raising their sons and daughters up so's they won't bully a kid just because he can't get a tan like everybody else or his hair looks like it forgot color was even an option or his eyes have a real funny tinge of pink to the whites, because I don't know, evidently that's a thing when you're me. Just imagine what a hot mess I'd look like if I got pink eye in my pink eyes. It'd be a gen-u-ine horror show. Children would scream and little ol' grandmothers with bad hearts would drop dead, because they'd swear to the heavens I was bleeding out my godforsaken eye sockets. Maybe a baby somewhere would get born to slay me. What a picture that is and just because I was unlucky enough to give myself an imaginary case of pink eye. This kind of thing is probably why Pari tells me I need to get out of my own head from time to time or why Luci can't seem to stop herself from trying to rip me a new one at least once a week. You wouldn't believe the way the two of us go at each other sometimes. Just build us an Arena and put us on television already, I'm not kidding around.

I think my sister mentally decapitates me at least seven times a week. Maybe that's once a day or half a dozen times all in one go if we're really having it out, with a bonus round a couple hours later just for funsies. What a loving relationship. That Luci, always knowing how to kick a guy when he's down. It's no wonder nobody's ever tried to put my family on a poster for being exemplary and that my teachers think it's better for me to stay late after school instead of going home. I've got so many bruises on my ego by now, it's shocking I haven't just been declared a victim of abuse and shipped straight-off to the community home for the sake of my welfare. Honestly, I don't even know how we get started most of the time. All of a-sudden she'll just be making snide comments with a wicked snarl in her upper lip and I have to screw my eyes shut because if I look at her for even a single second longer, I know I'll deck her. A guy can't just go around decking girls. Woah there. That's one of those taboos nobody messes around with unless their life is on the line. So Luci gets a free pass from retribution for calling me a total schizo or whatever her insult of the day is — all sweet-voiced, like she's practicing for a vocabulary quiz — and I have to stand back and take it because way back when, somebody decided that kind of logic is what makes the world go round. That's the real axis of evil. At this rate, nobody's ever gonna whomp Luci upside the head like that coy mouth of hers probably deserves and there's nothing I can do about that but close my eyes and pretend that kind of unfairness isn't happening.

It's not as if it would even be that big a deal if I did try to knock her out or something awful like that. I'm not particularly strong, see. When people call me wiry, it's usually in the way that's reserved for descriptions about chain link fencing or electrical problems — real literal. All my muscles are kinda flimsy and untrustworthy, so if I have to pick something heavy up it gets to be a godawful chore and most of the time I hafta ask for help from one or two people, depending on who's around at the time or how fit a mind somebody is in to be helpful. I only say it like that, because my brother Ree, he devotes a lot of his brain cells to getting gone, even when he's standing right there. If I'm supposed to move some kind of box into attic storage or whatever for our mom, then it's like flipping a coin as to whether or not I can ask him for an extra hand. I know, I know, he looks like kind of a curly haired brute who'd be pretty handy to have around, but if you smelled him you'd understand. I can't explain it too well, other than how it's something like a science experiment gone wrong, and that if he's been playing around with chemical explosions of hallucinogenic consciousness, then you'll have quite the time getting the guy to even look at what you want him to do, let alone to make himself useful. It'd probably be a hoot if he were somebody else's brother instead of mine, sorta like how I think Topia's just about the greatest thing since sliced bread or better than the invention of the wheel or some kind of excellent cliché like that.

Luci doesn't say anything near as bad to Ree as what comes out that girl's mouth when she's fired up over me, in my personal opinion at least, even though he's the one causing real trouble. Drugs. Gambling. General hooliganism, probably. Maybe I'm biased, but whatever. I don't think my temper is anything all that extraordinary and I sure don't go around try'na get so high up my brainwaves could play patty-cake with the clouds. I think she just hates the way the chalk dust from my room creeps out from under the door and starts invading her personal space. Something about how it sticks around worse than glitter. Everybody oughta thank me for dusting the house in safety like that — sharing is caring, you know; I thought we all learned that back in preschool or maybe kindergarten if somebody was real slow on the uptake. It's most likely thanks to me and all that chalk dust that the whole fam-damnily hasn't already been chomped up in our sleep by hungry crocantheraphants. Those things have got about ten thousand teeth apiece, wowie-woo I am telling you. Luci would surely be a billion or so times more upset with me if I sat back and let her get eaten like that. Or at least she'd be right pissed if she weren't, y'know, totally dead. Still, she starts chewing me up about it at least a couple times a month and every other little complaint she can conjure up in between, until I gotta just get myself out of that house before I absolutely lose it. Contrary to the popular belief of my teachers and the community at large, that hasn't happened yet. I'm still very much together, thank you kindly, although I appreciate your misguided concern. Sort-of.

Bless my cousin Pari though. Seriously, I don't know what a guy has to do to be declared a saint (on account of me not being the religious type and all), but sign him up already. I'd be a part-time homeless kid if it weren't for him letting me crash on his floor every time I run away from home for the night, which is usually about once or twice a week these days. To tell the truth, it's still kind of a terrible situation for me, even though he's real nice about me showing up all the time and just letting myself in whenever, but I can't sleep there. If I sleep I die, remember? Belly up to the beasts? Arms chippy-chopped off so I can't fight back when I'm strung upside down by my toesie-woesies? This little piggy went to market. This little piggy stayed home. This little piggy was brutally gutted, had his intestines unwound and strung up like holiday lights stretched from lamp post to lamp post throughout the streets, and his fingers bitten off and turned into souvenir key chains so all the monsters could remember what a good time was had by all. I refuse to go down like that. Pari got all kinds of miffed when I tried drawing my chalk circles on his floorboards a while back though, so it's not actually all that safe for me there, I just kind of like hanging out with the kid. He's the big brother I wish I had, if I'm being honest. Nothin' personal to Ree, not really, Pari's just better at little things like realizing I'm there or listening when I talk even if I'm sort of rambling on about nothing at all or defending my honor against Luci's snide commentary, as if he actually cares whether I feel crumby or not. It's a better way of worrying about me than giving me detention, that's for sure.

So long as I don't draw on his stuff, he doesn't much mind what else I get up to. For instance, I can try his hats on all I want, flipping the brims up and down like I'm possessed or something until I get a bit dizzy with motion sickness and hafta calm myself, or make paper airplanes til I've got so many paper cuts on my fingers that I can't fold things right anymore. He'll even launch the things out his bedroom window with me at anybody unlucky enough to be passing by his house at the time. Pew pew pew! The two of us, we can horse around and shoot the shit for hours without getting too bored of each other. No joke. There aren't a whole lot of people in my life that I get on so well with, but like I said, Pari's an honest to goodness, bonafide saint. Even if he's not around, out whiling the dark away at some house party or other, I like his place well enough that I'm content to just lay around counting the cracks in his ceiling or practicing my whistling. His sisters thump on the walls sometimes, if I get going too enthusiastically with the whistling bit in the middle of the night, and start shouting for me to shut my inconsiderate mouth and sleep already, but it's not that much skin off their necks. Except maybe for Topia, because she probably thinks about slitting her wrists whenever an otherwise perfect night's sleep is interrupted with even just one toss or turn. Now, you tell me, who's the one who actually needs to stop and think about their behavior in that situation? I'll bet she lays there counting the number of notes I hit that are the least bit sharp or flat. Probably graphs 'em in her head and everything. Makes mental diagrams. Invents equations for b sharp times seven equals Kinsey is an annoying little twerp squared. What a gal. Boy, if only I could pay better attention in school, I'll bet I could come up with a real swell equation for her too, but this is why I'm just not all that great at comebacks and always lose to Luci. Me and the lousy doodles on my test papers, forgetting to learn anything the rest of the world thinks is useful.

This one time I almost flunked a whole grade on account of all that useful learning I wasn't getting quite right. Kindergarten, you know. I think I was maybe only five or something and wrote my ABC's down all mixed up and jumbled, because my attention span has been godawful for literally ever. I don't know how long my mom had to argue with the principal of the school and everybody else who decides whether or not a kid is smart enough to start learning about capitalization and how to tell time, but it was probably a good long while. That argument must have had some real zingers in it about what a useless halfwit I am. I suppose that's not unfair, even though I was still only five at the time. Holy moley. What kind of a person do you have to be to stand around calling a five-year-old a halfwit? What five-year-old isn't? What's supposed to be great about being a kiddo, after all, is the part where it's normal not to go around knowing stuff. I was just particularly good at being a halfwit, I guess. Real talented. Proud parents.

See, what started the whole thing to begin with was that I didn't much care for the way the alphabet looks when it's written out correctly. Even back then I had some pretty strong opinions about how much better D and O might get along, if only someone would give them the opportunity to make friends. I just wanted to help the poor things out. All the people in charge of my education thought this was a load of hooey if they'd ever heard it and, thinking back, I can't blame them. It wasn't until my good ol' mom stood me up in front of all of them — as if I were a one man band putting on a concert nobody in their right mind would ever attend if they weren't being paid — and had me sing the alphabet at the top of my halfwit-lungs, that anyone could believe I wasn't quite so dumb as they had thought. What it came down to was that I liked the way that everything sounded in the proper order just fine, it was only that I felt the need to keep all the toothy-looking letters separated from the sweet little round ones when I was drawing them out. Even then I didn't trust anything that looked like it had too many bite-y lil fangs of death and destruction. I'm telling you, I was born with instincts. On a Tuesday, just in case I find out someday how that really does mean something. Instead of Sabbatarian vampire hunters, maybe I'll run across somebody out there who'll be going on about the epic legend of Kinsey the Tuesatarian shadow slayer. There's a pretty nice ring to that, actually. Tuesatarian. I oughta write that down. Lookie here. I'm practically a poet, doncha know it? Good old cousin Spearey, he'd be proud.

It's not just teeth that bother me though. That's another reason as to why I shouldn't poke fun at the idea of Topia mentally diagramming my off-key whistling, because I've got endless stacks of sketchbooks, every last one of them overflowing with detailed depictions of fanged turtles or twenty-seven tongued pythons with scales made of liquid acid or horse-piranha hybrids that have tentacles whirling out from their bloody eye sockets as they unhinge jaws of incredible doom to reveal a belly full of famished, rioting bears. Welcome to my day-to-day life. That's nothing really. Small fries. A walk in the park. Piles of fluffy, rambunctious kittens. Take my word for it when I tell you that you sincerely do not want to know about the kinds of creatures that live in my nightmares. Whatever keeps you up at night, I promise that you and I are living in two entirely different states of terror. You maybe know what a code yellow situation feels like — if we're counting a really nice shade of sunshine gold that apologizes to you afterward with homemade chocolate chip cookies, because it swears it was just trying to play a practical joke on you. Tee-hee. Ha ha. Oh golly, what a laugh! That yellow is such a clever joker, quick, somebody give him a career in stand-up comedy. Me? The screaming sirens of code red panic are like memories of the sweet lullabies my mom used to sing to me as she rocked me to sleep in her arms. Don't I wish my problems only ever got that bad. Except I already told you how I don't remember anything about being a precious little babe, so you know I'm just shooting the shit at you right now. What a sense of humor. Slap me on the shoulder and call me yellow.

Let's categorize my nightmares as code black, if I'm going to keep up with this danger rainbow nonsense. Boy. Sometimes I just don't even know where I come up with these kinds of things. Color me impressed if you're still following along. W. O. W. Look at me and the punny funnies. I bet you can't even handle this right now. Your lungs are exploding and you can't stop thinking about how, really, that's par for the course because it's not like you've ever been too good at blowing up balloons anyhow and if you're going to get dizzy on me, please be considerate enough not to pass out on my feet and drool all over my shoes. Thank you. Now that I've gotten all that silly billy business outta my system, I think I can focus well enough to really get down to the point for you. It's like this: Even in broad daylight, darkness never actually goes away. Other than how I have to sleep from time to time, there's nothing else in particular that makes night too much scarier than any other set of hours in the day. If anything, it's that godawful liar of an idea about how sunshine means you're safe that's the most dangerous thing of all, as if nothing ever went and got itself killed at two o'clock in the freaking afternoon. Don't be stupid. I've met halfwit five-year-olds smarter than that. Even they understand that the brighter the sun is, the sharper the edges of shadows will be. That's how unsuspecting people get their feet bitten off even though all they were trying to do was walk to the store to buy some bologna and bread to make themselves a sandwich. No more walking for them. No sandwich either... not that they'd still be much in the mood for one after a thing like that.

That's why code black nightmares don't look like cemeteries at midnight or even the fiery pits of hell; they look like the most goddamn gorgeous summer day you ever did see. Only, the streets are flooded with congealing blood that swamp creatures rise up from, screaming in tongues and gurgling the waters of that carnage as the kind of cute little kiddos that could win beauty pageants wave naively at them from the sidewalks as if saying hello to a puppy. Ripred. The parents don't even see anything until it's all over. The teeth on those things are lined up at least five rows deep with colonies of maggots writhing in-between each molar and beneath all the blood and liquefied guts, their flesh is an unholy mishmash of matted possum fur, molten lava, sea serpent scales, and marrow-sucking tentacles. They've even got extra sets of eyes nestled into the joints between their three-foot-long opposable claws, so when they take a swipe with intent to kill, they can get a real good view of the exact way a skull crushes and jelly-chunks of brain ooze out from between the cracks. Front row. High definition. The kicker is that when I have these dreams, I'm not the precious little beauty pageant champion of an adorable kiddo; I'm the soulless, all-consuming monster of doom.

If I wake up screaming, it's not because I feel fear, but because I'm bellowing a war cry of apocalyptic proportions. Their hunger is my hunger and I know exactly how all-consuming their desire to crush bones between their jaws and taste the collapsing soul of an innocent child upon their many tongues is. I feel it. I take pleasure in playing with my food and slowly unzipping my prey from their skins, peeling the delicate layers of flesh back like skinning potatoes and boiling the raw bodies alive in the vaporous heatwaves of my own breath. I wake up, desperate to puke my guts out and scrape the lining of my stomach clean with a blunt razor, but too fucking terrified of what I might find within my own vomit to do anything but lay there, half-paralyzed as I wait for the sickening euphoria of destruction to evaporate from my chest. Eight hours. Somebody out there thinks it'd be beneficial for me to sleep for eight hours a night. Fuck you, sir. That goes for you too, because I wasn't kidding around earlier when I asked you not to scream. Quasimodo in my ears on top of everything else, that's obviously exactly what I need.

Maybe my ears wouldn't be ringing right now if I'd have eased into all that with the following detail, but I'll tell you now anyway: I don't dream like that every night, just occasionally. Most of my dreams are astoundingly average and uneventful, the kind of generic things that could belong to anybody — flying over rooftops like I'm Peter freaking Pan or my teeth disintegrating until I've got a grandfather's mouth sans dentures or just falling for a while with no dramatic crash to make it the least bit exciting or extraordinary. That's if I even dream at all. Usually I don't sleep deeply enough to see anything but a boring void, waking up several times every hour just so I can whine incoherently for morning to hurry itself up or peek out to catch a glimpse of my bookshelf or something. That's how dull my dreams are ninety-nine times out of a hundred. I mean it, a guy could find more entertainment staring at a blank wall than the inside of my head.

My walls aren't even painted an interesting color or anything, they're just plain white, same as the chalk rings on my floor. Other than all the piles of ink-stained sketchbooks and dirty clothes laying around that I don't have enough of a clean-gene to be bothered about, the only thing that makes my bedroom stand out amongst a trillion others is the scattered evidence I horde that those monsters I draw and have nightmares about are real. Bottled shadow dust. The hoof prints of goat-jackal demons preserved with silly putty, because I'm actually a pretty resourceful guy when I need to be. A regular MacGyver, you know? It's downright incredible what a kid like me can do with nothing more than a straw and some already chewed-up bubblegum. It would just about blow your mind to smithereens, probably, which you oughta be real careful about, because I'm pretty sure that's how most zombie apocalypses start. Some guy goes crazy over something that's not that big a deal or maybe a monkey is just really pissed off and — BAM! Zombies. Wow. Just like that. I've even got this entire rabbit skeleton that was picked perfectly clean by I don't even know what, just that whatever sucked the flesh off it like that without damaging a single bone couldn't have been a wolf or a zombie or anything normal. Luci thinks I'm kind of a creep for keeping stuff like that just laying around, casually sitting on top of my desk or knocked onto the floor next to yesterday's sneakers, but like I care. Even if I had no idea this stuff had to do with the creatures living in the shadows, I'd probably still think it was pretty darn cool. That's why I'm a teenage boy and Luci's definitely not.

If she weren't such a raging shrew, I think my sister might be difficult to get mad at. It's not so hard to see how some random guy who didn't know her like I do could think she was really something great and want to follow her around just to keep an eye on her and write a godawful sonnet in his head about how her hair is as red as his pathetic bleeding heart or something. I'm talking about the kind of sappy poetry that would be too embarrassing to write down, even if you were planning ahead to burn the scrap of paper when it was over and done with. That godawful bad. After all, she's got this terrifically nice smile when she actually bothers to use it and her nose doesn't stick out too far like some other people's and there's a lot to be said for that. That's the thing about good-looking girls, they've got this unspeakable talent for making guys forget if they've got a lousy personality just because there's something nice about their face. I mean, take the girls I go to school with. Maybe I'm a little behind the curve, but I've finally started to realize there's not something too bad about some of their faces and I know I said earlier that none of them ever went around giving me grief about how I look or whatever, but it's not like my classmates have been saints to me my whole life. Not everybody gets a gosh darn halo like Pari. Nobody is wishing they could follow me around to write sonnets about my weird pale eyes or the bump on the upper bridge of my nose that kinda makes it look like I was punched just long ago enough for the bruises to be healed up or the way my cheekbones are awkward lumps on my face or anything. If those girls I go to school with took a tour of my bedroom, I bet they'd take one look at that rabbit skeleton on my shelf and would say something just as rotten to me as Luci does. Worse, maybe.

Sometimes, if I feel like not paying attention in history class and there's nothing interesting about the shadows that are hanging around to distract me — let's say there's just a small fry walk in the park fanged turtle in the corner of the room and not much else — then I'll wonder what the girl sitting next to me acts like when she's around her brother and nobody else. Does she call him a total schizo and make it so he can't stand to be in his own house? Does she nag at him every couple of days to stop being such a nasty mess, both inside his head and out, and clean up after himself? Does she ask his mom to make peas for dinner just because she knows he doesn't like them? Even if she and their perfectly OCD cousin hate them too? Honestly, I think Pari is the only person in this whole crumby world who doesn't mind eating peas. Maybe Ree too, but that's more because he probably can't tell one food from another when his crazy neck is all the way in the high up sky. Freaking peas. Seriously. If little green vegetables actually have anything to do with the meaning to life then I give up. Both hands in the air. Wave the white flag of surrender. File everybody up in a nice, neat, evenly spaced line and walk 'em straight into the mouths of monsters one kiddo at a time. What I'm trying to say is, I bet all the girls I've met would be just as bad as Luci if I got to know them, but now that I've started to like a couple of their faces, it's harder to be bothered about it, even though when I stop to think about it, liking their faces might just be the absolute worst thing that has ever happened to me. That's what really kills me about girls. I mean, I'm getting to the point where I can't help liking them and all, but they're always making guys write terrible poetry for no apparent reason and one of these days my lousy heart is going to be written down on a scrap of paper and even if I burn it afterward, it'll be too late.

For the record, I don't think I've ever written a poem in my whole freaking life. I'm related to this guy — yet another cousin, whose name is actually Speare, but I always call him Spearey as if that extra little y makes things into an entirely new ballgame — and he probably writes a lot of poetry in the journals he carries around. I've never read any of it, so I don't know if it's about girls' hair or even if it's any good or anything like that, but I bet it is. Good, I mean. That said, I'd also wager my other hand (chippy-chop it off right now) that he's written at least one sonnet about somebody's hair at one point or another. Sure, he's older than me and probably more mature and not so lousy with words anymore, but he was my age once and so he had to have started off a truly lousy writer. I suppose I can't say for absolutely sure, but as an expert on the subject of myself, I'll venture out on a limb to say that no fourteen-year-old kid in the history of ever has actually been any good at stringing one word together with another. I mean, don't get me wrong. When I get going in a real good ramble, I can string a lot of words together — probably more in one go than you've ever heard in your whole life — but they teach us in school about how quantity doesn't mean the same thing as quality and, boy-oh-boy, they're not kidding around. Nothing yellow about it.

It's a little bit fun sometimes, being so godawful at talking no matter how much I jabber on. A person might think that with the amount of practice I get running my rotten mouth off each day that I'd be improving, but that's overly optimistic and I'm here to tell you that practice doesn't make perfect or I'd probably have fewer issues with peas. He won't really come out and say it, ol' Spearey, but I think the way I jabber on just drives him absolutely bonkers sometimes. Real far up the wall; I'm talking higher up than Ree. Ol' Spearey, he's a real polite bastard so he's never said anything about it to me before, all quiet and kinda charmingly standoffish like he's planning on growing a really fantastic mustache someday so everybody around will recognize how distinguished he is even if the only thing he's doing is standing there, but I'm still pretty sure the way I abuse words is his code black nightmare. That just cracks me up. See, I like most of my cousins real well and everything and that's why I just can't help doing things to him like mixing up my grammar on purpose or using words the wrong way down a one-way street or writing t-h-e-i-r when I know perfectly well it's supposed to be t-h-e-r-e in a sentence situation or whatever. I only horse around with people like that if I'm pretty fond of them. What a privilege.

I sometimes have this habit when I'm getting ornery of acting as if I'm in a hurry. Everything is a very big deal. I mean, I'm a kid, so it's not as if I actually have all kinds of places to go or people to see, but it sure makes me feel like I'm a bigwig when I talk so fast people start to assume I'm on a freaking schedule and time is running short. Suddenly if you want to talk, I've got to pencil you in. Who even does that in real life? That's usually about the time I start to lose track of saying things I actually mean and just sort of start shooting the shit with people in any direction that seems like a bright idea at the time. It's impossible to say why I do it, because most of the time it's about stuff that doesn't matter too terribly much. At all even. Like let's say I stopped by the store on the way home to pick up a gallon of milk for my mom, because by the time she realized she forgot to buy it when she was getting groceries the day before, she was already home and didn't want to go back. I can't imagine anyone who actually turns around and goes back to the store if they've already been there once that day, so it's not as if I could put up a big fight about it and gripe my way out of going. Ripred. So I'm standing in line to pay and strike up a conversation with a lady I've never met before about how I hope she remembered to buy milk so her kid doesn't have to make a trip here for her tomorrow and somehow the next thing I know I'm telling her all about some made-up cousin I don't actually have. By now I think you're starting to get the idea that not only do I have more cousins than is entirely necessary for any one guy, but that I'm pretty good at talking on and on about them for no particular reason at all other than maybe because I really enjoy the sound of my own voice or watching them act up is better than any sitcom television show or something. I practically wax poetic. Yet there I'll be, chatting it up about how my nonexistent cousin Jane won the third grade spelling bee last week — all because she knew the difference between t-h-e-i-r and t-h-e-r-e — as if that's something I oughta be rambling on about even if it were true.

As we speak, some psychologist doctor out there is probably pissing himself over just the thought of me and I'll bet he's best friends with the sleep scientist who thinks eight hours of sleep at night is a bright idea. If I'm Spearey's worst nightmare, I've gotta be that guy's wet dream, what with the ridiculous things that come out of my mouth with no prompting at all. What he wouldn't give to analyze a total schizo like me. I think I'd have a pretty good time too, laying down on a comfortable couch and reeling off my whole lousy childhood life story to a supposedly well-educated stranger who only seems to have about half a dozen words in his vocabulary: How does that make you feel? Can you imagine. He'd probably pay me to get to listen to the answer to that. Little did I know that I've spent my whole ridiculous life in preparation to become a professional patient of mental problems. Way to dream big, Kinsey. Why don't you go ahead and reach for the sky until you just throw yourself into the sun so you burn up and get it all over with already if that's gonna be your goal in life. Geez. Actually, on second thought, that sounds just about right and I really must still be a halfwit if that kind of thing never crossed my mind until now, especially with Luci always reminding me about it. Total schizo. What a sweet sister I've got. Bless her pretty little face.

For as much as I talk, I have to admit that I might like it best when other people don't. I suppose it's better if that's because they're listening, analyzing me in their heads like they're gonna grow up to be psychologists or whatever, but mostly I think it's because there's so much going on that it's real nice when other people don't feel the need to contribute to the insanity of it all. What with the ringing in my ears and all the shadows creeping around, always growling or cursing or rattling off recipes for all the different kinds of soup they think I'd make a tasty ingredient in, as if that'll put me off my shadow slaying game, I'm just saying that it's nice when people shut their yaps for a minute now and then, even if that makes me a hilarious hypocrite all over again. I actually said that one time to another of those infamous cousins of mine — a real one, not a fake cousin I made up because I was bored while standing in line to buy a gallon of milk for my mom. "Caro," I started off that way because her name is Carousel and I guess I've never met a name I didn't feel the need to shorten up and make a little snappier just for kicks, "I like you." That's not a lie at all. No horsing around. Sometimes I also call her Selly, just because I really do like her so much that I think she's deserving of not just one, but two sickeningly sweet nicknames. "You're an honest-to-goodness angel, you know that? I oughta ring a bell and get you some wings. I mean it. Ring-a-ding-ding." Pari and Caro-selly, the two patron saints of the Fer family. "Congratulations." Anyway, I probably went on and on like that for quite a while, but at some point I started confessing about how I like her because there are so many voices around sometimes, that it's nice not having to deal with hers too. I know that's almost definitely a seriously godawful thing to say to a girl who hasn't spoken a single word since she was seven, but that doesn't make what I said any less true.

If you had to deal with monsters whispering at you all the time, not to mention all the nagging teachers and defensive parents and rampaging sisters, you'd be fond of your quiet cousin too. Maybe I ought to try to pretend I have a better reason for thinking sweet little Caro-selly is a cherubic angel, but I don't honestly know too much about her other than how she doesn't talk. It's not an easy thing to get to know somebody if they never tell you anything about themselves. Sure, I can talk a lot without saying much at all, but other people are a whole different story. Other people usually say stuff when they prattle on. You can learn all sorts of things about other people when they strike up conversations — how bologna sandwiches used to be the most delicious food that ever existed until they got their feet bitten off one day on their way to buy one or if the color red is their favorite just because some girl with a nice face has it growing out the top of her head or anything at all really. Me and Caro, on the other hand, well you'll just never know. Caro, because like fun she's ever gonna tell the likes of you if she won't even tell me. And me? Well, I don't know. Maybe you think you know all sorts of things about me by now or maybe you were actually listening a hot minute ago when I was telling you about what a pointless liar I am. If I'll lie to some lady in the grocery store just for kicks, I don't know what makes you think I won't fib a little in your direction for funsies too.

I think what makes it hard for people to get anything useful out of me when I start spewing out words here and there and everywhere, honestly now, I think it's because they can't handle the truth. That's the kind of melodramatically cliché thing my dad says when I start asking questions he thinks are too big for a kid to wrap his head around, like why it's okay for kids to kill each other on television but not in schoolyard fistfights or if Ree is ever gonna be my brother again instead of a half-there ghost or what happens if one day the family curse turns out to be as real as my monsters. You can't handle the truth. Boy, do I ever whine when he starts in on me like that. I mean it. High pitched keening and everything. I can get my gripe on real well if somebody starts to talk as if they think I can't handle something, blatantly ignoring what I have to deal with every day just walking down the halls in school. If only he'd pay attention when I try to tell him about truths that can't be handled. It's always kind of like that when I talk though, as if it's an inherent rule of Kinsey-grammar or whatever. I before E except after C, but go ahead and bugger off right now because whatever word that spells will be too much for you. You will scream if you hear it and Kinsey will be pissed at you for that and everyone will be miserable and die a gruesome death and you can't handle that either. I don't know why I don't just quit already. Everything. Really now. This is ridiculous even for me, but I can't stop, because this is just the way things are. Goddamnit all.

When I lie, it's mostly about stupid things and everybody believes me. That cousin Jane of mine, they reckon they met her one time. Somebody else would even swear they were the one who gave her the blasted ribbon for the spelling bee that never even happened, I'm telling you. Maybe another lady is half-convinced she's the precious girl's godmother. This is why nobody ever learns anything about me by listening to me speak, because these are the things they think are true. On the flip side, when I tell a person the Ripred's-honest-truth, they refuse to buy a word of it, even if I offer to pay them off under the table. I can pinkie swear or cross my heart and hope to die or turn around in a circle five times, touch my finger to my nose, recite the alphabet backwards, and do the hokey pokey and nothing. If I even so much as think the word shadow while standing in front of them, let alone monster, any given person on the street is going to spend the next five seconds imagining punching me in the face, then just turn right on around on their heel and walk away in the opposite direction. I've learned all about this by now. A kid can get used to just about anything if it happens to him often enough. You wouldn't even believe it. Monsters and everything. Sure, alright, you can make me out to be a lousy kid for horsing around with unsuspecting, innocent people all the time, just because I'm bored and feel like shooting the shit with somebody who doesn't know better for a little while, but if I didn't, then nobody in their right mind would ever talk to me for more than those five seconds of imaginary face punching. It's not like I'm an aspiring hermit. Not all weirdos are anti-freaking-social. Some of us weirdos think your face is pretty nice, even if you go around call us halfwits, and want to talk to you regardless of whether you're going to be mean about it or not. Who's the lousy one now?

Contrary to how it seems, I don't actually like the sound of my voice all too much. I know, I know. That doesn't make a single ounce of sense when you take the yappy-dog habits of my unstoppable mouth into consideration, but I've got my fingers crossed that one of these days things are going to get better, so just stand back and let me be an optimist about one detail of my life. Would that be so difficult for you to do? There's a real long list of other topics you're more than welcome to shoot me a dirty eye of disbelief over. I'll write it all up for you. Monsters in broad daylight and lousy grades on account of my being intelligent, but totally stupid in the so-called practical sense and definitely something about peas. Just give me a year or so to get it all down. That's no joke and you know it. It takes a while to get that much stuff down on paper, even if you're pretty quick at writing like I am. I can write nearly as fast as I talk, believe it or not, but maybe that's because even though writing is sort of clumsier than talking, it doesn't bug me as much when I stop and think about it.

Words on paper don't break and crack the way they do when I'm in the middle of a conversation — probably talking to some girl with one of those really nice faces that I might not mind writing a sonnet or two about, if I were in the mood, because life is a foul little jerk like that. Always punching a kid in the throat whenever he's trying to pretend he's actually got something going for himself. There's not a lot a fourteen-year-old kid can have going for himself, but you would hope the ability to talk without choking on his own tongue would be a redeeming factor. Nope. No way. Fat chance, buddy. Good luck to you and the lower District Tributes of Panem, because you're all about to get cut up real good. I can't even say hi in a situation like that without my voice going all wonky. Talking to a pretty girl and all, I mean, not to a kid who's about to die for some no good reason that my dad won't explain, except to tell me how I can't handle that truth. What a crock of bull. This time I really do mean all of it — girls and dying kids and my dad. People are just seriously godawful hard to handle sometimes.

My vocal chords threatening to snap out of the blue sure doesn't help, hitting notes so high outta nowhere that surely only a dog could hear me then. Under normal circumstances, I couldn't reach that sort of pitch if I spent all day trying. Explain that. I sure can't. Other times when my voice cracks, it dips so low it touches the crown of the devil's skull in hell. Just kisses him right smack on the top of the head like I'm his mom try'na embarrass him in public by planting a soggy, smacking goodbye on his face while everybody's watching. I bet that kind of thing drives him just about as crazy as it does me. Worse probably, because I don't even have the excuse of being his mother. I'm just some kid with a voice so wobbly that every once-in-a-while I literally end up in Hell. Geez louise. I can't wait for the darn thing to just pick a place and stick with it instead of changing its mind every day. It's honestly beyond miserable being at war with your own throat, because usually, under normal circumstances, even if everybody around is giving you a hard time about things, you figure that at least you're on your own side. Except, when you're a growing kid whose body is doing all sorts of crazy stuff, whether or not you want it to, then sometimes that isn't true. You don't even get to be on your own goddamn side. There's nothing fair about it and too bad. Suck it up and deal, ya whiner.

On the bright side, I really am growing up. I mean it. I'm pretty sure I woke up today to find out I'm almost three inches taller than I was yesterday. For the longest time I was a real shorty and, boy, was that starting to get embarrassing. Even before I started realizing that some of the girls around here are pretty good looking and how it'd be nice if they had a reason to think I was somehow maybe just a little bit good looking too, despite being a pale weirdo, even before that I knew it sure wasn't a good thing to be a whole head shorter than a girl. No kidding, a couple of them were so much taller than me that I only reached their shoulder if I was standing way up on my tippy-toes and, sometimes, even then I'd have to jump a little, hoping nobody would notice. I was starting to think I was gonna need to carry a step stool around with me for the rest of my life. It was really getting to be a struggle, I'm telling you. Like I said earlier, I'm not very strong, so not being able to pick things up or even reach things to try isn't fun at all. It's a drag actually. Just terrible. Few things make a guy feel as useless as legitimately knowing for a fact, beyond a monstrous shadow of a doubt, how that's exactly what he is. Useless. At least now, if it's something real high up, even if it's heavy I can usually sort-of knock the thing off the shelf and cross my fingers that nobody can tell the difference between that and getting it down the proper way. Gravity is really useful like that. I'm a pretty big fan.

That said, it sure would be nice if I could get tall all at once. What I mean is that sometimes it feels like my arms are getting longer faster than my legs, as if one limb can't keep up with another. Other days I'm pretty sure I'm getting a limp because one shin bone isn't nearly as good at getting tall as the other or maybe one shoulder is so much heavier that it's throwing the rest of me off-balance or something like that. I don't actually know, but I wish I did so I could compensate a little better instead of just always feeling slightly annoyed about not fitting into my my own skin quite right. My dad says this is totally normal, since I'm a teenager now and all that, but you've got to cut an albino kid a break for being a little distrustful of his body's ability to be so-called normal. From day one, it's proven to mostly be good at being the opposite. So I worry a lot that maybe this is just the way I'm going to be, awkwardly out of balance and slightly limp-y for life. For once, I really hope my dad is telling me the truth and not just trying to protect me from things he thinks I don't know how to handle yet.

I used to tell myself that maybe being scary-pale was something else I'd grow out of. When he was my age, I watched Ree get taller and start growing hair on his chin and under his arms and stuff and I would look in the mirror and wonder exactly how different I'd look once that began happening to me too. Maybe my eyelashes wouldn't look like they glow in the dark anymore or my eyes would stop hurting when the sun is too bright. There are times when I'm walking down the street and I have to stop and clench my eyes shut tight, pressing my palms over them so I can't even see that pink daytime glow sneaking in from the other side. A lot of times I think it's kind of cool how the sun can shine right on through until I see the veins in my eyelids all lit up and electrified, pyrotechnics for my sights alone, but when it gets bad, my vision starts to feel like it's collapsing in on itself and if I don't look away I'll end up with twin pits gaping in my skull. That's when I start to get uselessly paranoid about my nightmares actually being premonitions, instead of just terrible nonsense. Right then, with my eyes folding into themselves until my skull is hollowed out, it's not so unbelievable that I could be turning into a foul monster. If it hurts bad enough I even start to feel like I ought to lash out, just to release some of the frustration, and I never have, but I do think about it and later on I look back and can't help dwelling over what a godawful horror I almost was with my disintegrating eyes and spiteful impulses. It's not the kind of pain where I'd gnaw my own arm off just for the sake of distraction, but now and then it's enough to make me think about going after yours.

Anyway, that's part of what I was hoping I wouldn't have to deal with once the round peg of my body started trying to shove itself through the square hole of the puberty machine. It's the whole thing where if a puzzle piece doesn't fit, a kid just gets stretched out and reshaped so the endgame picture can be a little prettier. Despite the health and science classes I take in school, I don't really get it, but there's a lot of information in those speeches to get distracted by, if you know what I mean, and not a lot of it is necessarily relevant to a boy becoming a man. Not in the sense of explaining getting taller and wobbly-voiced, at least — although that's probably because I get so distracted. There's plenty else that I'd never though about before, see, but I sure do now. You don't want to hear about that though, because you probably finished your health classes years ago. I bet in your head you're just hoping I don't go off on another tangent about girls, I mean, especially hoping right now. I can't exactly blame you for being right. Seriously, wow. Instead I'll just try to focus on things that I know that you maybe don't, which believe it or not, I've got a couple of 'em.

Okay, here's a weird one. The way the hair on top of my head is so white, the rest of it is just the same. I know I should have seen that coming and you should have too, but growing up looking at Ree and my dad and their dark hair, there was still a part of me that was surprised when little white hairs started springing up in my armpits and on my legs instead of being the same dark color as theirs. For the first part of my life, I was kind of innocent-white, you see. Even though I've always looked sorta creepy, when I was a kiddo there was still some sense that I was brand new and just born. It didn't matter about being six or seven because when you're perfectly pale, people still have this way of treating you like it's your first day on earth. Now that I almost have to start shaving and stuff though, I don't look like a particularly tall baby anymore. Instead it's like all that aging that never happened on the correct timeline pressed a fast-forward button to overcompensate and kept right on going and now I've got to be at least one hundred and eight years old. Since I'm not all newborn-smooth, all-of-a-sudden I'm getting more like a grandpa who turned so gray he's white, just because I'm finally growing a little hair on my body. What a gyp. I mean, I like being a kid well enough and the idea of being an adult is kind of exciting too, but I'm not exactly ready to be old. I was pretty psyched when I got to go to the bathroom by myself or eat without having somebody else feed me or not having to hold onto stuff to be able to walk across the room and everything. I won't go back to that, not after just one lousy decade. Nobody's shipping me off to the old folks home so soon. Get off my lawn, crazy people.

Maybe you think I'm on about nothing right now, but I'm telling you, it's embarrassing. I know lotsa kids who hate being however old they are, either because they're still too young to go out and party like Pari does with the upperclassmen or they're upset because teachers expect them to know things and do real homework, instead of running around being cute little useless halfwits who can't quite get the hang of that whole alphabet thing. Me? I just want to be exactly how old I am and that's why it gets annoying when people are always aging me up or down in their own heads, when I'm standing right in front of them being very obviously, legitimately fourteen. Especially now that I wouldn't mind if people would think of me as a little bit cool, it's not exactly helpful having all the grownups around me pinching my cheeks ruddy or looking concerned if there's a flight of stairs I need to climb. Boy, if there's anybody around when that kind of thing happens to me anymore, I sometimes wouldn't mind just killing myself over it. I know that's sort of an overreaction, okay, don't I ever know it, but when I feel myself flushing red and some girl with a nice face and a bad personality is standing close by, blatantly laughing at my misery... I'm just saying that sometimes I wouldn't mind killing myself over it.

What you've got to understand is that I don't exactly blush normal. Because I don't have any color in my skin, there's nothing there to help hide it, so my face looks like a goddamn wound every time I get a little embarrassed or worked up. If Luci gets too into teasing me, there are times when I start to look legitimately cut open over her, as if those teeth in her terrible mouth have just been gnawing on my face for a few shameless hours. Maybe that's part of what she finds so entertaining about me, but I don't enjoy it being downright obvious that she's bothering me. I would much rather be calm and collected, all you-can't-touch-this, staring her down like nothing she says can so much as reach me, let alone put me into a crumby mood. That's never going to happen though, because of my own traitorous face. What a dream crusher. Instead my devil of a sister gets all the proof she could ever want that I'm a total pushover and she's the unquestionable queen of evil and urgh.

I oughta be used to it by now, because the two of us have been like this for literally ever. Way back when I was just a littl'un and mom would ask Luci to put me to bed, even though my sister would gripe and whine and always get stuck doing it anyway, I didn't yet understand what an annoyance I was to her. So itty-bitty me, I'd naively ask Luci for a bedtime story as she tucked the covers up under my chin. By tucked, I mean violently yanked up and pulled so tight that a kid could suffocate, but I didn't care. See, in those days I still liked my sister. I thought she was a pretty angel, same as sweet ol' Caro-selly. I smiled when she looked at me, with all my teeth showing and everything. Ripred. What a sucker. I really was an exceptional halfwit back in the day. King Kinsey of the Freaking Idiots. I was so stupid that when she agreed to tell me bedtime stories, it never even crossed my mind for it to be possible that something horrible would come out of that mouth of hers. I'm telling you, it's all so obvious now, but I didn't see anything coming back then.

Kids with albinism are really special, Luci would tell me. So. Special. Wow, was it ever lucky that I got to be one. After all, skin like mine is magical. Jeez louise, you wouldn't believe how I ate her words up, what with me being a total moron and everything. I practically feasted on the sound of her sweet voice. The particular time I'm thinking of, she went on and on like this for just ever, as if this way of complimenting me was absolutely her favorite hobby and she'd have been content to prattle on about what a special snowflake I was until the day she keeled over dead. Decades and decades devoted to me being a fortunate little freak, that's what it felt like. Seriously. It was great, so much that it would still be a really long time until I recognized how it was all just an elaborate set-up for what she was really saying. The truth wasn't any kind of nice, of course. But there she was, telling her baby brother all about how people with albinism are rare and unique and precious and valuable. Goodie for me. So valuable, she finally said, that there are people out in the world who would just kill to have my skin. Literally. They would kill me for my skin.

Goddamnitall. I really hate that first guy who declared it wrong to hit girls. I mean it. Seriously, I'd punch him right now for making it taboo to get proper revenge on my godawful harpy of a sister. No good she-devil hellcat with acid for saliva and more blasphemy than bones. I was just a kiddo and she tucked me in with thinly-disguised stories about how headhunters would love nothing more than to corner me in a dead end alleyway and dismember me for parts, so they could sell my hacked up body to witchdoctors. I'm not joking around right now. I'm not messing with you. This isn't me being a petty liar, this is the unexaggerated truth of my lousy life: bedtime stories about gangs of vicious murderers prowling around looking for me, so they can take a bonesaw to my legs and turn a profit on the black market. I looked it up and everything. It's all true. Every horrifying word. That kind of thing has been happening all throughout history, with guys going around kidnapping people with albinism and ripping them limb-from-limb so shamans or whatever can mix our blood and gruesome flesh into potions. Grind our bones into fairy dust. Hex our scooped-out eyeballs to see past the veil of the afterlife. Spin our hair into thread for wicked dream catchers. Dry out our amputated fingers and toss them into the dirt, because the way they hit the ground is supposed to tell them secrets about the future, hideously pointing out which way a soul ought to continue on. Reading about things like that makes me hate the whole fucking world and I can't even ask my dad why people do such terrible things, because he'll just tell me about how the truth would be too much to handle. As if it's any easier to handle without a decent explanation.

It does bother me, you know. That's the worst part about it. On top of everything else I have to deal with — predatory shadows and family curses of ultimate doom and detention and everything — there are some random guys out there that will totally rip my throat out and sell it to the highest bidder if they ever see me. I don't really have nightmares about that kind of thing, because dreams aren't real and so they don't bother me much unless it's an extreme circumstance involving gleefully devouring cute little kids (my subconscious has fear-priorities, I guess), but the part where this is real life actually bothers me a whole lot. Sometimes I'll be walking home from school and I'll meet eyes with a tough-looking guy on the street and a shiver will go down my spine. Out of nowhere I'll be wondering how many witchdoctors he knows; if he's counting up my limbs and appraising my worth with that one glance. Those protective chalk rings I draw won't do a darn thing to keep a guy like that away from me when I sleep, so it's totally possible that one of these days I'll wake up and I won't be in a place that's anything like the bed I fell asleep in. I'll be in some abandoned warehouse on the edge of the factory side of town, strapped down to a table with a wad of fabric shoved in my mouth to stop me from screaming. Probably also to keep me from biting my tongue off as they hack me up for parts, because after all, they'd want to sell that too. Don't want damaged goods. The witchdoctors won't pay up for a botched murder. Only high quality corpses around here. Kinsey, you lucky little special snowflake with your magical skin. Everybody and their witchdoctor wants a piece of that action, wow. Aren't I just living the life.

I bet the complete set of my body parts would be worth a lot. My family is pretty well off, so it's sort of hard for me to wrap my head around the idea of money and what the black market price for an albino kid is and all that, because I've only ever known what it's like to have enough. I've never had to worry about where my jar of spare change is or how many meals I could buy with the money I spend on sketchbooks. Even though I just made some terrible jokes about being lucky, I know that I really am, when it comes down to it. Not the part where horrible people I've never met and shadow monsters want to kill me, but having dinner every night and getting to buy things just because I want them and not necessarily because I need them. In school everybody knows who the kids are that don't have enough to get by, bringing lunch in a paper bag and hiding off in a corner when the time comes to eat it, so nobody will see that there's not actually anything inside. It's all a show, trying to distract people from the patches in their pants and how their shoes get extra soggy when it rains because the water gets in through holes in the bottoms and squishes with every step they take, all day long. You can't help feeling real sorry for them. That's the kind of thing I wish I could do something about, but it's not like I can adopt them into my family or give them my dad's money. I'm fourteen and useless and they probably don't want to be part of my family anyhow, on account of how my parents are supposedly lousy and all, even in comparison to their broke ones. What do I know. Maybe kids like that really do have the best parents in the whole world and they just don't have any money because mom and dad are always staying home to tuck their children in at night and guard the doors so headhunters don't break in, kidnap one of them in the middle of the night, and haul them off for slaughter. I imagine that would be sort of nice, feeling safe all the time and everything.

Those kids at school would probably get really offended if I tried to help them out anyhow. Nobody likes random guys who go around pointing out how poor they are or if they need new shoes, as if it's any of my business, and I accidentally offend people enough without adding that to the list of my foot-in-mouth habits. I try real hard to be respectful and everything, but I don't exactly think a lot of things through before I say them, obviously, and on top of that I'll strike up a conversation with just about anybody. You can see how that can be a tricky combination. Some people, they think they have to know things to talk — facts and interesting anecdotes and clever jokes and stuff — but I don't really bother much with details like that. Maybe I'm in the habit of making stuff up because of that thing where I go around lying for no good reason when I'm bored, except it's not like anyone can tell the difference.

If I started jabbering on right now about the periodic table of elements, unless you're a scientist, it's not like you remember what every single abbreviation stands for or what ununoctium is. Are you kidding me. You're probably wracking your brain right now, trying to remember if that's even a real thing or if I'm just making weird stuff up again and in the end it doesn't even matter. Whether ununoctium is fake or not or if it's Uut or Uuo or number eighty-six or one hundred and fourteen or whatever. What we ought to be talking about is how we both think it's a fun time when somebody messes up in chemistry class and accidentally makes something explode. Or maybe they were bored and did it on purpose, you never know. Props to them. Either way, we can both agree that a good time was had by all, even if we can't explain the formula that caused it and your average conversation is just about always the exact same way. Nobody has to understand what's happening so long as it's fun and if you want to talk technicalities, let's stick to something we've both got a handle on, like oxygen. Ununoctium. I don't even know where I pulled that one out from. Don't ask. I can't tell you. I will never remember that word again for as long as I live. I'll bet you however much my left leg is worth on the black market that you won't either.

Everything is way more fun when you aren't bothered about whether or not you understand it. I'm one of those guys whose interests change about twelve times a minute, so it's a pretty important mindset for me. In the middle of playing cards with Ree one time, back in the years before he forgot how to pay attention to things like family time or his little brother, I decided I'd make a pretty fantastic blackjack dealer. After spending three and a half hours straight practicing shuffling, I was horsing around and had Ree pull a card from the deck so I could guess it. Ace of spades, I said. No joke, it really was. Right there in his hand was the ace of freaking spades and we both about pissed ourselves rolling around on the living room floor, laughing until it felt like twin alien babies were violently clawing their way out of our stomachs. It was such a good time that I took it as a sign from that god I don't believe in that I was put on this earth to be a magician. The next day was whiled away harassing pedestrians on the street to pick cards for me so I could guess what they were and after quite a few hours, some guy got huffy with me and threw his card into the gutter. I just kind of sat there on the curb, pouting over it for a while, but then some kid came along, picked the thing up, stuck it in the spokes of his bicycle, and took off. Just like that. So I learned to ride a bike and stuck playing cards in the spokes of the wheels and on and on and on. One idea to the next and into infinity.

It's unbelievable that such a halfwit like me knows words like infinity, isn't it? More than monsters or the way I wake up hungry for the bones and souls of precious little beauty pageant children or even how I look with my freaky pink eyes. I know, I know. I can't keep my own goddamn head on straight, but I can talk real impressive-like when I want to. Besides, I think infinity is one of those words everyone should know. Just look up and it's right there. Daylight can make it look sorta lousy, but night around here is really something else. I mean, first you've got the sky and even though stars are just itty bitty things, there are more than you or I could ever count, not on our fingers and even if we used all our toes or started tallying things up on our eyelashes and the strands of our hair. When I let myself think of it that way, I start to realize how even those little things are a gabillion-zillion times more than me. Not bigger. Just more.

Well, that's a lie. Stars are actually giants, just not from down here, but maybe I'd be a giant up there too. Someday I'm going to figure out a way to get myself up there — into outer space, I mean — and I'll find out. If ever there were a scientist I could actually get along with, it'd have to be an astronaut, so I'll just use my connections with the psycho psychologist and his sleep doctor friend to get myself an introduction. Just all casual like that. Maybe over a dinner party or something. My parents like hosting those types of things, even though all the people who come laugh fake and tell boring stories and don't do anything interesting when they eat their peas. If you round enough of them up and stick them all in a room together, I guess everyone assumes it'll add up to something worth wasting some time over. Boring plus dull plus unimaginative plus stodgy plus uptight plus urghhhhhhhhh must equal something bigger than the sum of its parts, the same way one star is just a speck, but a whole sky full of the things is incredible. It doesn't matter who you are or if you're completely uninteresting or if only your lies are humdrum-a-dum-dum. Everyone thinks stars are as pretty as any girl's face they've ever seen and that they're worth taking the time to write sonnets about — maybe even good ones — and looking at for no reason at all.

Just because they're there, hanging themselves way up in the dark in a way that isn't gruesome or scary at all, people have dreamed things. That's why I don't understand why sunlight is considered so safe and night gets the bad wrap, because no one has ever been scared of stars. Not even me and I've been terrified of plenty of things. Everybody sort of assumes a kid who's afraid of shadow monsters must also want to run away from the dark and sleep with the lights on and get all nervous just looking outside and all that jazz. No way, no how. It's nice not having to shove my palms into my eyeballs over the stars or the moon, like I have to do when the sun is being a crazy ball of blinding hellfire all the time. That light sensitivity thing really knows how to get me down, but even when all the lights in the city are lit up like a circuit board, it's never been a problem. I even like the way it looks. I mean, I've never really thought about wanting to work in the factories like most people in this District do, making electronics and hitching up one wire to another and, oh, I don't even know. It's all that stuff I'm supposed to learn about in science and can't bring myself to pay attention to, but when I look outside at night and everything is lit up like living inside a computer connected directly to the night sky, I think that could almost be worth getting smart for. If that's what it were like all the time. I know it's not, but since I'm human and look at the stars, I find myself dreaming crazy things like that when I'm awake and shooting the shit inside my own head instead of out loud like usual.

Feeling patriotic like that, I don't make a habit of it. I guess it's hard when I ask all those questions about dying kids and never get any answers and I look up at night and see a place I'd like to go, but know I never will. Even if I meet an astronaut at a dinner party, that's not just something a kid can become. I'm a real halfwit and all, but even I know District kids don't get to fly into space on rocket ships, no matter how much I want to. My family doesn't have that much money. So it's just this fun thing to think about in that way where you don't let other people know that you can't stop thinking about it, because you know that they know how it's a real halfwit thing to hope for. I embarrass myself enough without that. Still, let me tell you, I read something about this guy once. It started off really awful about how he was blind because of his stepmother throwing lye in his eyes as a sweet little innocent kiddo to punish his father, who beat her on account of her sleeping around with some other man and on and on until he died horribly. He had pneumonia instead of money and when he blinked out he was sleeping all bundled up in wet newspapers in the ruins of his burned down house, but see, despite all that, he'd been this incredible blues musician. Some guy who had once been a kid like me just staring up at the stars really liked one of those songs that sad man had written — Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground — and he found a way to send it out into space, in one of those spaceships filled with everything somebody decided is important about humanity. In case aliens find it or whatever. That Blues man, he died so godawful terrible like that without anyone caring and he didn't live any better, but his music left the solar system.

Photos of life on earth, greetings in dozens of languages no one even remembers now, and the music of somebody who probably thought everything was impossible — that's what went up and up and up to reach absurd distances. I just want something in my life to be like that, even though no District kid from Panem will ever, ever get to go to outer space. It's impossible, but so what? It's probably a better thing to daydream about than becoming a psychology patient laying around on a velvet couch all day while a head doctor gets his rocks off over what a little schizo I am. How does that make you feel, Kinsey? Ripred. Don't even get me started, Doc, I've already gone too far and shooting myself into space would just be the real kicker on top of literally everything, now wouldn't it? You can't handle the truth. Not about me or The Cold Ground up in The Dark Night with the hanged man stars blinking into the circuit board of a city full of pretty kiddos twenty times smarter than me and with nothing to fear from greedy headhunters of albino children. I don't even know what worst comes to worst is when you're me, but it can't be too far beyond becoming an impossible astronaut lounging on a couch. I'll just plan for both and be that kind of crazy.

Honestly, I did join the Astronomy Club at school, thinking that maybe I'm not the only crazy person around here after all. Nobody else talks out loud about wanting to be an astronaut either, but they like to roll their eyes at me a lot and ask me what I'm on about by being there when I don't care about memorizing the names of all those stars I swear I like so much. Or how I draw on everything all the time, but not constellations or, at least, not real constellations. I drew one once for this girl with a nice face because she was looking at me and for as long as I kept drawing, I knew she'd keep looking, but it wound up looking like everything else I draw and not like anything she know-it-all says is hiding up in all that dark space. As if she actually knows with certainty that there aren't monsters up there with tongues split into tongues split into more tongues with tips made of fire and tar instead of saliva that drips into new suns that get born beautiful from something that never was anything good otherwise. As far as the monsters I draw go, I thought it was almost a pretty thing, what with it making stars instead of eating kiddos and all. The girl with the nice face didn't agree and I've had a helluva time try'na get her to look at me since.

I'm gonna start writing sonnets soon and no matter how freaking terrible and embarrassing they are, maybe that's still better than making up roaring star charts of tar dripping doom. As if I know what romance is any better than all the other idiot fourteen-year-old nothings that ever tried to impress a girl in some way so backwards they might as well have just stood there punching themselves in the face. I could do that. I mean, not hard, seeing as how I'm not all that strong despite getting so tall, but if knocking my knuckles into my own ugly pink eye socket would impress a pretty girl, I'd be even more of a lying liar than usual if I tried to tell you that I wouldn't do it. Once you go halfwit, you never go back. I'd at least think about it way too seriously, because sometimes that girl looks like space to me and so it's not my fault if I can't help wanting to go there. It doesn't matter if she's an out of my league upperclassman of impossibility because suddenly I want to listen to a Blues song that only exists in a faraway place I'll never get to go, but lately I think I hear it when I stare at all the blank nothingness inside my skull while sleeping, and maybe good ol' Spearey and saint Pari can team up and help me out. Somebody's gotta save me back soon, because I don't think I can handle having to slay shadows and hormones at the same time. If I have to write my pale, bleeding heart onto a scrap of paper and burn it afterward in the same voodoo magic that wants me to lose every bet I've ever made so I'll be forced to chippy-chop my own hands off like I always say and hand them over to some sicko witchy guy who's going to turn around a hock 'em on the black market for profit, well then, fuck me, aren't I my own worst goddamn enemy?

I oughta have nightmares about that. There's probably not a color for dreams like those, but that's not the point. It's not about rainbow codes and it's not about bright little stars and it's definitely not about blonde hair looking like sunlight and how that should be terrifying to me and make me want to decapitate her before running away screaming at the top of my lungs. All of that would make way more sense than thinking about smashing my face into hers for a while and expecting that to feel not just good, but like W O A H B E S T D A Y O F M Y L I F E E V E R ? ! ? ! Do you get that? I don't know why that's a thing, but it definitely is and suddenly I think Luci might be on to something when she calls me an idiot and I hate that, just not enough to stop. Oh, Ripred. Oh, nonexistent God. I'd rather my spawn of hell and the inevitable cause of the apocalypse sister be right about me sucking at life in every possible way than to give up looking at the face of some girl who doesn't like me any better than Luci does. I'm not even pulling your leg right now — how much worse is that than punching myself in the eye? I'm never gonna see the light at this rate. If only that weren't another backwards positive for a guy with sun sensitivity problems.

Pari could be twenty drinks into the drunkity-drunk and have a better chance at making this girl swoon than I do. Maybe he'd do something charming like vomit on her new shoes or run into the side of a door frame so hard he splits his own face open and starts gushing blood all over the place. It could look like a reenactment of this year's Bloodbath — split skulls and axed limbs and bile puking junkies — and I bet you (I don't have a third hand, so what do you want me to swear I'll chippy-chop off now?) that she'd pucker up for the gorenucopia of his mouth before she'd even consider me on my best day. I could slay three dozen crocantheraphants with every ninja-smooth Tuesatarian shadow slayer move I know, saving her and the whole gosh darn world without even breaking a sweat and... she wouldn't notice. It wouldn't matter if I piled the corpses up in the middle of the Astronomy Club meeting room and declared it a victory pyre, standing as a champion on top of the mountain of flames. The only thing I'd earn myself would be melted soles on my shoes and a bunch of angry janitors.

At this rate, the only way I'm ever going to get anywhere with anyone is if... well, I don't actually know. Honestly, I don't think there's much hope for me on that front. Girls and stuff, I mean. It doesn't really matter how good I am at getting tall or slaying shadow monsters because that's not what impresses them at all and the rest of me sure doesn't either — not my pink eyes or my pale hair or my super special snowflake skin. It's all about poetry and star names and I'd be lying if I pretended to actually care about any of that and I know, I know. Cross my pale heart and hope to die by getting my eyeballs mauled out and my ridiculous tongue eaten by sludge mutts, but I'm telling you: I know. I'm the self-professed King of the Liars, so what exactly is my problem with hoodwinking a pretty face if I've got no trouble shooting the shit with their moms at the grocery store? It's different because there's got to be something in this world that makes a person want to tell the truth and there also has to be something lousy about a guy who goes around lying to get girls to kiss him. Maybe there's got to be something lousy about the girl too, if I'm really getting down to it, falling for that like they don't know. They know. I think everyone who has ever stood around yapping and yammering with me knows.

It would just be real nice if girls really could be outer space like that. I don't mean to say it in the way that their names don't matter to me, because I'm not completely useless like that, but they're impossible enough to be stars and sometimes maybe worth playing long lost Blues music for. What else in the world is ever going to be worth that kind of trouble? If you can't look at just one person on this planet and find yourself wanting to tell the truth then I'm not quite sure what you're doing with your life. Even a halfwit liar like me can daydream about finding another pretty faced halfwit who won't look at me like I'm a madman for running away from shadows and sunlight and she'll yell at me if I start prattling on about cousins in spelling bees, because that's not true, but the rabbit skeleton on the bookshelf in my room sure is, even though she thinks it's disgusting and that I should throw it out anyhow, because Kinsey, it's foul. Well. I guess I'll get to that if ever I get to that, but in the mean time I'll just sit around reminding myself that I don't actually know what Blues music is, other than maybe how it sounds like it should be some kind of sad, so maybe I shouldn't want to play it for anyone, much less some girl I decide I actually like.

What it comes down to is that I don't need some schizo-psycho analytical doctor man to want to poke around inside my head, because I'm obviously doing a stellar job of that myself. ("— and how does that make you feel?") It doesn't really make me feel a whole lot of anything. Mostly it makes me think about how I just rambled on and on and on about wanting to find some stranger to set me honest, despite loving a bunch of other people in my life that I've already got and who sometimes even like me back and I still lie to them. To Pari and Caro-selly and Topia and her goddamn peas. Maybe it comes down to how they don't actually believe me and just sort of patronize me now and then, like I can't tell because I'm still the kid who failed his ABC's that one time. And I get how that's a kind of love for them, like when my dad tries to protect me from all those scary ideas he thinks I can't handle yet, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. There are a lot of times I find myself loving people I don't like one bit. Luci's usually at the top of that list, but everyone sort of gets a turn every once in a while.

There was this one time when I found out how I wasn't supposed to have gotten born. Not just on a Tuesday or anything having to do with all that, but at all, I mean. I'm the youngest of my siblings and my mom and dad had just decided that the others were enough and one more kid would be one too many. Maybe that was foresight on their part or some kind of straight up premonition of don't do the thing doom, but what I'm trying to say is that I know I wasn't ever really supposed to be here. I've always sort of wondered if that's why I wound up looking like a ghost. What I mean is, maybe this is what happens when you try to keep a kid out — you leave part of him behind. All that color and bits of things in my skin that I'm missing might just be somewhere else in an alternative universe where the forgotten pieces of things go. After all, if there are monsters who can pull themselves up out of shadows, then they have to come from other places. I know them well enough to know how that's not what lives in concrete sidewalks, but they sneak around somewhere and maybe the rest of my body does too.

There are some people who try to treat me like I'm a ghost without even knowing anything about how I wasn't supposed to get born, but that's pretty stupid. They really oughta know better or, at the least, if they're gonna think stuff like that about me then they should believe me about all the monsters I'm always trying to warn them about. Just because I'm pale doesn't mean I'm a dead guy, okay? I'm not sure what's so hard for people to understand about that. I mean, maybe I've got a doppelgänger ghost out there in some otherworld where the monsters come from and that ghost-Kinsey has all the dark that my hair was supposed to have and the extra whites of my eyes that would make it so that the blood vessels aren't so easy to see and it would be a real tan ghost somehow too, just to really show off and make me feel bad about myself. I don't know. Maybe that's a real thing. Even if it is, that ghost doesn't make me any less real, any less human. I might be a spectacular half-wit, but even I can tell that I've got a pulse and I know how to breathe both in and out. People who look at me like that sure make me start to wonder about them though. Like if they're too simpleminded to tell a living guy apart from a dead guy then how am I supposed to believe that they know how to make their heart beat or that they're any good at remembering to breathe? Maybe they're the real ghosts. Oh jeez, but then I guess I'd be the dumb one again for not being able to tell how they were the dead ones all along and now we're going in circles all over again when I just wanted to point out what a... dead end — ba-dum tish — that kind of thinking is.

This is the kind of stuff I have to put up with all the freaking time. Not just from other people, but from myself. I just can't help going round and round until I'm so dizzy that I've gone and turned myself fully upside down and inside out and then of course nobody wants to take me seriously. Not when I can't even take myself seriously half the gosh-darned time. It just sorta happens and I obviously don't know how to stop it or I'd never get like this to begin with. It's like this: all I was trying to say was how I know I'm kind of an accident all around. I don't look like everybody else I know. I don't see the world like everybody else I know. I didn't get born on purpose like everybody else I know. Maybe I'm supposed to hate my parents for it and have some sort of complex over feeling unwanted or something like that, but even if there was a time when they didn't like the idea of having another kid, I'm still pretty sure they love me now. Even all those times I didn't get tucked in at night or when I'm being so annoying that I start to not like myself so much either and finally get to a point where I can't hardly blame other people for not liking me too.

I've got this other cousin, Tsara, and I know, I know. I've got too many cousins and you're tired of hearing about all of them, just absolutely beyond exhausted, but here I go again anyhow. You're just gonna have to deal with it because I'm clearly on some kind of rambling roll. Or you could walk away, which I'm pretty surprised you haven't done already, to be completely honest with you right now. I don't think anyone has ever listened to me jabber on for quite this long. You're setting world records. Did you know that? You must. That's probably the only reason you've stuck it out for this long, because even I'm a little tired of myself by now. You must just want your name in some book that tells people how accomplished you are and listening to me feels more challenging than competing in any sport or climbing deadly mountains or jumping out of hovercrafts so you mistakenly found yourself thinking how, yeah, sitting through this will earn me a fancy title. Well, I don't want to be the one to break it to you, but the only person who's ever going to recognize this accomplishment of yours is me and nobody ever really listens to me. Nobody except for you, I guess. Congratulations.

Anyways, like I was saying before. My cousin Tsara. Well, Tsara knows a thing or two about not being born the way she was supposed to be. She's got nice enough hair and both her eyeballs and all of her fingers and toes and stuff like that, but for a long time nobody looked at her quite right anyhow. I don't know. My mom always tells me I'm too young to remember the days when Tsara had such a hard time getting people to understand her the way she wanted them to and I guess that's for the best. Tsara doesn't seem to like people remembering stuff like that about her any more than anybody else likes people remembering bad days and sad days and embarassing days about them. Still, even if she never talks about the reasons why, I can understand Tsara wanting to change something about the way she was born. I don't always like to admit things like that either, but I can understand.

There's been plenty of stuff I've wanted to change about how I was born, if only I could. Like that Tuesday thing. Maybe my whole life would be a million times better if only it had started on a Friday. You never know. It's the small stuff that makes the biggest difference sometimes. Like I know I should probably want to change the whole bit about being an albino shadow slayer born into a family that's doomed to self-destruct and yadda yadda yadda or at the very least I should absolutely put the thing about being hunted by monsters on the table, but somehow all of that definitely comes after the whole Tuesday thing. Something in my gut just knows that would be the real game changer, like maybe a couple extra days to cook would have made my face so much nicer that suddenly all of the girls at school would just think I was the neatest guy they'd ever seen and then being a shadow slayer would make me sound like a superhero instead of a total psycho. I'm gonna tell the godawful truth now: I wouldn't mind the monsters so much if they helped me win a girl over now and again. I'd sign up to dream about eating babies every single night if that nice-looking girl in the astronomy club would just laugh at my dumb jokes once in a while. Not all the time, even. Like once a week. I'd settle for that. I think it was pretty obvious, even before I said it out loud, that I would settle for that. I guess that means hormones are gonna be the real death of me, so why bother trying to change being born seeing monsters anyhow?

All of the stuff about my family being doomed is pretty messed up though. Like I know everybody thinks their family is crazy and that no one in the whole wide world could possibly compete with them in a dysfunctionality pageant, but I'm telling you, mine really takes a cake. Maybe some other family out there wins grand prize and takes home The Cake, but the Fers? Wowie-woo, I am telling you, we at least get a real nice runner-up cake instead of a lousy participation award like all of the contestants who aren't actually that bad off and it turns out they just aren't very good at being empathetic about other people's lives and problems. I know I'm kind of a jerk for talking about this stuff like it's some kind of contest, but can you really blame me for wanting it to feel like I've won something instead of feeling like my whole family has just been losing at life over and over again, all the way back through the entirety of history? I'm enough of a loser all on my own without having a pedigree to prove it, thank you very much.

Hangings. Drownings. Tragic fires. Axe murderers. Step right up, folks! Step right up! We've got it all! I know you think I'm exaggerating right now or just flat-out lying to you like you're a bored suburban housewife in a grocery checkout line, but I swear this is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no matter how much it sounds like urban legend ghost story nonsense. It all started at the end of the war or at least that's as far back as my family knows about what happened because of how everyone died and all that. You see, back then the government was real keen on executing people. Pretty much everyone was a rebel in those times, but everybody was pretty tired of getting murdered for it in the war and so by the time the Districts all surrendered, the people who were left were just playing a big ol' game of Nose Goes. The government wasn't giving up on weeding out the rebels and so instead of confessing to treason when people were asked, everybody just started telling on each other. I'm not a rebel, they'd all say, I've never even met a rebel! Not in my whole gosh-darn life! That's probably about the moment when the peacekeepers would narrow their eyes and give 'em a look to show how suspect that sounded. People would panic. People always panic. Even now it's so easy to make people panic. They'll panic about just about anything. Forgetting to buy milk. Seeing a kid write their ABC's in the wrong order. Nudging a single pea too far to the left. Wellllll... People would finally say, nervous as hell and shaking in their boots, some of them even pissing themselves like I did this one horrible time when Luci started fake rumors in the neighborhood about suspicious men hanging around with bone saws hooked to their belts. It turned out some tree branches just needed to get cut down because of growing too close to the powerlines, but I sure as heck didn't know that when I saw a guy with a chainsaw walking across our lawn and thought he was coming for me. If you hafta know... I did hear a rumor about that Fer family down the road. Don't know much about it myself, obviously, but I did hear a little something...

Turns out the real rumor going around the neighborhood went a bit more like this: Psst, if you want the peacekeepers to leave you alone, just send 'em on down to the Fer house! That's what I did and it worked like a charm. And it really did work. It worked so well that pretty soon the peacekeepers went and rounded up the whole Fer family, charged 'em all with treason, and scheduled a mass hanging on an otherwise lovely autumn day. From what I've been told the whole thing wasn't any better than a witch trial and maybe there really was some witchcraft involved after all. A curse would explain a whole lot about a whole lot of things. Before all this happened nobody ever had a bad thing to say about our family. The Fers were known for being nice and kind and way too meek to know how to fight back against those kinds of accusations. You see, when I tell you they hanged everyone, I'm telling you that they hanged everyone. All of them except for my Great Great Granpoppy Leonardo, who was born only a few days before both his parents were strung up with everybody else. Being a baby and all he never knew anything except for what he was told, but I don't think he grew up so nice. I know I wouldn't have, if my family all got killed like that.

I worry about that a lot. Everyone I love dying, I mean. I even worry about my sister Luci and I hate her, but I guess hating someone still doesn't mean I want them to get hung for treason or devoured by dust imps. It just means sometimes I really wish I could punch her in the face and that I spend too much time daydreaming up elaborate scenarios that result in her weeping for my forgiveness, begging and pleading for me to save her from the hell-pit jaws of monsters that she was so very wrong to spend all these years making fun of me for seeing. She was wrong! A complete and total idiot! A blind moron! She fully acknowledges that I'm amazing and deserve better than to have been tormented by her all this time! Y'know, standard stuff. There would be really dramatic music and everything. It would make a great movie, but like I said... I don't know if it would be worth it because it's not just my monsters and those hangings. After Great Great Granpoppy grew up and had kids of his own that also grew up and started having families, all sorts of stuff happened.

I told you about the axe murders before, so you already know about the forty chippy-chops to the head that each of my great grandparents got. Maybe that's what people get for thinking it's safe to sleep for a whole eight hours a night, but I've never heard of that type of thing just casually happening to anybody else. The Fers, well, at that point they didn't like other people too much, what with everything that happened back with the hangings and all that. They had a bit of a grudge against the whole neighborhood, you know? People say they were downright mean, to tell you the whole truth, and so no one liked them much in return, but even so, being curmudgeony doesn't sound like reason enough to take an axe to somebody's head. I've got a pretty skewed perspective on things like gore and stuff that's so-called normal and even I think axe murder is way far out in the deep end. I sure can't swim that far, but I guess somebody had really been practicing for this one. They had more strength and stamina than a kid wrestling with puberty could ever dream of and so they swung and they swung and they swung and by the time Great Grandpoppy Borden and Nannie Lizzie's daughter came home the next day and found them, even she had a hard time identifying them anymore, if you know what I mean. A head doesn't look much like a head anymore, after a certain point. Whatever was left of them was buried beneath cold dirt and snow and a whole lot of whispers about witchcraft. This time people meant it. One horrible thing is a tragedy, but two horrible things is the beginning of a pattern and plenty of stuff was beginning to feel more than a little out of the ordinary. It was enough to start people calling it a curse.

By the time everyone heard about Aquina and Thomas Fer and how all four of their children were found floating dead in the river, well, no one had much of anything good to say. There had already been plenty of rumors about how he had a whole other family somewhere on the other side of the district. Can you imagine? I can't. As if one family isn't trouble enough, he thought he'd go on out and get himself a second one. I like my parents well enough and all, but they still drive me on out of my mind so often that I certainly don't spend much time wishing I had a backup set. Two is more than enough for any kid, as far as I'm concerned, and one wife and four kids should have been plenty for Thomas too, but I guess not. I'm telling you about that part because rumor had it that Aquina found out. You see, I've got cousins who still live in that old house now and sometimes when we're shooting the shit and start telling each other tall tales to spook each other late at night at a family gathering and all that, they tell me about their bathroom and how it's haunted. If I had any body parts left to bet then I'd make another wager with you right now about how I reckon it's true. Four kids being drowned by their mother in a creepy old bathtub sure as heck makes more sense than the river grabbing all of their ankles at the same time and giving 'em all a real good tug under. Plus, any time I'm over there for a visit and I gotta pee, I get the heebie-jeebies so bad that most of the time nothing comes out. Even if I turn the sink on and run the water to get myself back in the mood, sometimes that still won't do the trick. I get so sure that there's an eyeball looking up at me from the drain hole and that's it, that does it. All of the sudden I'm blocked right on up for the rest of the night. It's one thing to have shadow monsters watching me wherever I go, but the last thing I need are a bunch of ghost kids who don't understand that a locked door means keep out!

All of that should be plenty enough to make you understand just how much has gone wrong in my family, but maybe the worst of it was the thing that happened just a few years ago. I say worst not because it's something even crazier than getting axed in the skull forty times — there isn't much that can top that because there isn't much out there that wants to try. No, I say worst because there are photographs of what happened and more than once or twice I've spent an entire night forcing my eyes to stay open, hardly even blinking and just starring at the ceiling, so I have something to look at besides the memory of what I saw. It was a fire. Capone Fer was an ugly drunk and he smoked. His favorite was to do both those things at the same time and one night he passed out and the curtains caught fire on account of his dropped cigarette. Maybe it was the alcohol fumes filling all the air with the flammable stink of him, but the whole house went right on up in smoke. It happened so fast that no one could be saved and so then I guess the neighbors just stood around taking pictures of it, to show off what horrible people they were and how their surviving neighbors should probably move far, far away.

I don't remember those cousins of mine too well. I was just a little kiddo at the time, but I guess something stuck with me enough that I asked my mom about one of them a few years back. I remembered some play date we had, but it wasn't with Topia or Selly or good ol' Spearey or anybody whose face I can put a name to. After my mom told me about the fire and how everybody died (even though I knew them all and just somehow hadn't ever realized I knew so many dead kids), I got curious and started looking up old newspaper articles at the library downtown because she wouldn't tell me much and just kept acting like my dad when he thinks I'm not old enough to handle the truth. That's how I saw the photograph of the cousin I used to play patty-cake with. He was the youngest of all the kids and in the picture he was wearing his little footie pajamas. I remember those pajamas. I remember the dinosaur pattern on them. Our moms... our moms got us matching pajamas and my cousin he was wearing them that night, only in the photo you can't see the dinosaurs unless you know they're there. There's too much fire to see the dinosaurs. There's just fire and fire and fire and his skin melting off his arms and his face as he collapses in the middle of the street to die.

Sometimes I remember the dinosaurs so well that my brain tricks itself into thinking I must have been there that night. I have this recurring nightmare every once in a while that I was the person with the camera, standing over my cousin and taking his picture one last time, instead of trying to do something to help. I'm the neighbor and then I'm the camera and the film is burning in my belly and the picture is pushing up my throat and out from my mouth like a polaroid. I start retching up photograph after photograph of melting kid flesh and my tongue licks each one until I can taste the char and then I wake up and I keep retching. Usually it's so bad my mom keeps me home from school on those days. I don't tell her why I feel so sick. I don't tell her that, unlike my dad, I trust her when she thinks there are things I'm not ready to know yet. I just let her brush my sweaty hair back and take my temperature. Sometimes I even let her get away with calling me Kinsey-Kins, if I'm too tired to complain, which is most of the time when I get like that. Un-be-lievable, I know. I bet you can't imagine the first thing about what I'm like when I'm not talking. You must think I'm lying again. Go on, then. If I'm a liar then go on down to the library and find the truth out for yourself.

It doesn't really matter if you believe me or not, about this or about anything else. Plenty of things happened back in the days before you or I were ever born and plenty of things keep on happening every day. Even if there hasn't ever really been a Fer who was hanged or drowned or who burned to death in the middle of the street while useless people gawped or flinched away, all of those things have definitely happened to lot of other people over the years. Horrible things happen all the time, you know. Sometimes it makes the newspapers and other times the only record of it is a doodle in the margin of one of my history tests. Horrible things are going to keep on happening the same way they always have and maybe you're like me, maybe you're a little relieved to know what's coming, even if it's a five-headed crocantheraphant that only you can see and so everybody says it's crazy talk. Hangings. Drownings. House fires. A lot of people around here spend a lot of time whispering about what's going to be the death of the Fer family next? And I'm here to tell you: Apocalypse by monsters, obviously. That's what I've been trying to tell you this whole freaking time. Jeez louise. Maybe your ears are ringing too from all your screaming and that's why you've been having such a hard time hearing me out. It's okay. If nothing else, just try to listen when I tell you that it really is okay. Just because I'm aware that I might be brutally murdered at any given moment doesn't mean I'm an unhappy kid.

doctor, doctor, it happened again
i woke up to find myself under the bed
does it mean i'm a monster, oh, does it mean that i'm a monster
or a friend, doc
am I a friend, doc?