NEMO KLARDIE, DISTRICT NINE

The number one rule about me is that at my most basic level, at the very core of me, therein resides a total and complete idiot.

This is no secret, in fact it is quite well known by most people that I have met or come across in the continuing disaster that happens to belong to me and is labeled 'my life'. In fact, I've pretty much striven to make this be people's first and only opinion of me. Most people work towards a first impression by shining their shoes and practicing phrases in the mirror but I am quite the opposite. My ruffled brown hair has not seen a proper brushing in seven years and most of the time people don't understand a lick of what I'm talking about. Nel, the old granny that lives on my street has told me more than once that I could be the Slum's resident village idiot if it weren't for the fact that I am overqualified.

They're always asking questions, annoying shit like, "Nemo, what you got that weird scarf around yer face for? It beein' the middle of summer n'all." or "Nemo, what you doin in that old quarry all day boy? We's bin hearin' some weird stuff comin' from there, it ain't safe, y'know?" and even "Nemo, how many times you gonna challenge them poshies to fistfights, y'know they're gettin' themselves trained up for games n'all?" The amount of times I have crawled down the street in the middle of the night due to broken bones or bleeding orifices has started up a rumor or two, let me tell you.

I'm sure the same question is coming to your mind as when I first thought this ploy up. 'Why would I want people to think I'm a dumbass?' you wonder. It's because there are many perks to being an idiot. (Obviously)

For one, no one takes you seriously. You can get away with a lot of shit because of that. For example, I have actually admitted at least seven times to seven different people that I am the one that's been bombing the factories at night. On every single occasion they have laughed in my face, told me I'm hilarious, even told me not to make such dumb jokes. Which is great. It means that I don't really need to wear the mask but I prefer it for the traditional aspect of it all, y'know?

I'm probably getting the teeniest bit ahead of myself aren't I? Sometimes it's hard to remember that not everybody can keep up with a guy like me. See, it'll really help you out if you just think of me as an idiot, it's easier on your brain that way. In all actuality, I'm quite smart really. I'm what some refer to as a genius, when I was in school still I skipped my first four years. I then went on to build an exploding device in grade five, which really accelerated my graduation process. In fact, they wanted to be rid of me so badly that they graduated me that very afternoon as I stood in the wreckage of what used to be the school's cafeteria.

It was less of a graduation, more of a expelling.

It's not like anyone got hurt though. I didn't expect it to be such a big explosion either. I thought I had done my calculations well enough just to create a bit of fun in the lunch line, but I forgot to factor in the phosphorous gasses being expelled from Tuesday's lunch often referred to as 'The Tuesday Surprise'. It was called so because no one, not even the lunch ladies I suspect were ever quite certain about what it contained. Anyway, it ended up blowing the roof sky high and consequently, the walls gave out too, falling out, rather than in. The roof ended up coming down pretty quick but luckily for us, the displacement sent it crashing down into the old quarry about a five minute walk away.

Anyway, they gave me the boot after that and I went on my merry way to learn about bugs and stuff by collecting them in jars. I wasn't certain as to why I was to collect them in jars and all, but that's really what everyone did at the time. Besides, I liked the little flappy guys, they're always on a mission, y'know? They know just what they have to be doing, what they have to bee being. (bdm-tss)

Well I was six and a half years old, a proclaimed genius and I had a whole world ahead of me to discover. So I did what most boys who have suddenly attained freedom do, I decided that I was going to be the biggest and the best. (Biggest and the best what I can't say, but I was certain that it was going to be me.) Back then I didn't have any great and staggering goals to obtain, no responsibilities either. I was free as the....as the...leaves in the fall. Yes, there was me, swirling in the wind, not a care in the world, no school to hold me back, nope, not for me. I spent my days doing as I wished while Mom, Dad and Sean were at work. I could play pirates or carve things into trees, or bother old Nel into giving me dangerous chemicals, or play with old Tom the dog who was missing a leg and one eye. The world was my oyster.

I was bored as sin.

Obviously I had to figure something out to fill up my time. I don't think there was anything better for a boy of my particular interests than the old science books that Gary, the angry old drunk that lives on the end of my street has in his tent. The slums in Nine are set up on the banks of the river see, and unlike my mom and dad, Gary can't afford a house so he lives in a tent. Anyway, I could trade him for books by offering him a bottle of old Nel's moonshine. If he was drunk already he'd sometimes give me two.

I learned a lot of stuff from the science books. Gary would laugh at me, tell me I was just some kid and I'd never be able to understand the ideas in the books but the thing about me is not only am I smart, I'm stubborn as all hell. I made myself understand the science books. It wasn't out of boredom either, not with science. Science and I have a relationship. We're kindred spirits, some would call us soulmates. It was the chemistry that had me. I've always been good with chemicals, knowing what you can put with what, and what you shouldn't put with another thing. I've always been good with my hands too.

I call it building, when I make bombs.

I started building around nine or ten years old. I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing completely before I started see. A lot can go wrong when building a bomb, there's been times where I've been building and accidentally set the bomb off nearly in my hands. Once I was building a smoke bomb and I got my lungs so full of it that I was in bed with a bad cough for a whole week.

Of course you get better with age, sort of like cheese I guess. Or Nel's moonshine. Some of that stuff she's had since she was a right old lass in her twenties I reckon. With a bottle of that monstrosity in my hands I don't have to do much. Stuff an old rag in the mouth of the bottle, light it up and toss it and you've got yourself a good old flaming projectile explodey thing. Gary'd cry from the waste of alcohol I bet but what he doesn't know can't hurt him.

My brother passed away in a factory accident when I was eleven. I wouldn't say that we were the happiest of families before then. I was raised in the slums on factory wages, so we never really had much. I didn't really know that though, I wasn't aware yet that other people had it better, or maybe I just didn't care. My Mom and Dad were good an honest people though who worked hard, never thought about breaking a rule at all. The three of them would come home from the factory, bone weary but smiling. I thought that was where I was destined for too y'know? Before Sean died and it all went bad.

There'd always been a strain on my parents to keep us out of the gutter. Sean being old enough to help get money in helped. I don't remember him much. I mean, he was my brother and you know how a little brother idolizes his older one. Ours was a comicbook type of brotherhood. He'd swing me up onto his shoulders and shove his old baseball cap on my head like in stories and we'd go to the park on weekends. We'd toss a battered old ball back and forth and sometimes he'd let me use his mitt even. But he was already fifteen years old when I was born and he had his own life.

So I was sad when he died but sometimes he's foggy in my head, like he was never there at all and just something I dreamed up to make me feel better, to explain things.

After Sean died my parents were angry and they were sad. They stopped going to work and they were quiet and didn't do much of anything. They'd been hurt in the accident as well and had been given grieving leave and time to heal. However, when their time came to go back to work, they didn't. They'd become addicted to the pain killers that they were given to deal with their wounds. It's pretty well known, especially in the slums. It isn't hard to get, but pretty expensive.

I remember that first week, when they ran out of the little pills of morphling, how they got all white and shaky and how angry my dad got, how violent. Sean had been his first son so I could understand his grief. His violence was terrifying, I was less able to understand it. I did know however that when he had it, the morphling I mean, he wasn't scary, just quiet, sightless.

I knew that it was best if my dad just stopped taking morphling, that it would be healthier for him. So that evening, when his friend dropped off a new vial of pills I poured the entire bottle out and crunched them all up in the dirt, underneath my foot. Then I hid the empty bottle in Gary's tent because I knew my Dad would never look there for it.

When I was little and my Dad misplaced his glasses or couldn't remember where he'd put down the house key, he'd just scratch the back of his head and look a little lost before remembering where he'd last put them. He'd been patient once, calm, collected. He never used to yell at me, even when I'd been bad. Sean always said that was because Dad had had all the practice he needed with him. But when Sean died, that was new. My Dad hadn't practiced that one yet.

It's funny, experiencing Dad's anger for the first time that night is still ingrained into my brain. It's hard to remember each other time that my Dad was angry like that but it's been pretty often. I still remember the rage on his face, the pure anger as he saw the white dust mixed in with the dirt of our front yard, how he howled with rage. Mom and I had been in the kitchen ad we'd been drinking a cup of tea to deal with her headache. She said it was because of the pain that she seemed so weary. I know now that it was from the withdrawal.

Her and Dad had relied pretty heavily on the morphling to stay alive after Sean died. Mom said once that they thought it was better to be numb, unfeeling and dreaming away than have to think about a life without him.

Dad was so mad.

He came tearing into the kitchen with this look of hatred on his face, like I'd stepped on all of his playing cards and ruined the castle he'd been building, or like I'd been the one to kill Sean myself. He told me then that I better get my ungrateful ass out there and get them some more morphling or I'd be sorry. He'd said it'd cost a lot and I owed him now for it. I didn't get it. I was just trying to do what I thought was best.

I'm no idiot.

I could see in the way my father was standing that I better get them that morphling and fast. Well I didn't know how to make money, I was too young for the factories. I knew still that money is what you need to purchase drugs. So I did what I did best and I started building. I didn't know what I was going to do when I was done building, and neither did I know exactly what I was building but I knew two things: one being that I am an idiot, two being that I'm a brave idiot. Well I ended up building a handy little hand grenade filled with glass shrapnel which is never fun for anyone involved.

I then proceeded to take myself into the poshest part of town, tying a scarf up tight around my face in order to hide my appearance, and I threatened this woman named Rosalyn (according to the contents of her wallet) with it. She was very happy to comply with my demands when I gave her a quick demonstration of the effects the glass grenade on a nearby trashcan. I got shards of glass embedded in my shins that day but I didn't hurt anyone and I walked away seventy dollars and sixteen cents richer.

The feeling of accomplishment was slightly intoxicating but I don't remember anything more than the well of self-hatred that formed itself somewhere deep down inside of me. I can't ever remember the pained look of that woman when I took her wallet from her, I knew that it was bad, that I shouldn't have done it but I was afraid. My dad had scared the shit out of me to the point where I was ready to do anything to end that fear.

I didn't know where to buy the drug at that point but I learned. In Nine, there are sort of four areas. They aren't marked off or anything but people know the boundaries well enough. On one side of the bridge, you've got the posh area and the middle class. In posh town is where the games square, the cafes and the nightclubs are. We in the slums just refer to those two as the 'poshies' because when you look at it, anything is posher than us. However, we do know how to differentiate see because over the bridge still but on the other side of the tracks there is gang territory. In there is where you find anything that's sordid and dangerous so even though I didn't quite know where I could get morphling, I knew where I had to go.

It took a while but I found a dealer. His name is Charlie and he's missing a foot because when he was young he was arrested for 'a lot of bad shit' in his terms. They took his foot and sent him home instead of taking a hand because they said his ability to run away seemed more important to him, or so he says. Anyway, he cut me a deal on my first purchase of morphling because he said he liked my guts. With the ten dollars that I had in my savings and the seventy dollars, I was able to purchase one needle full of morphling.

Charlie said it would be enough for Mom and Dad but not for long. He said that soon they'd need a needle-full each.

Well I couldn't go around just stealing from people, threatening them with bombs and the like. I was a smart kid, I knew that there was another way to do it. So I delivered the needle home and watched as my parents became glass-eyed animals. Then I went to the quarry and I built.

I designed this bomb belt. It's simple really. I can wear it around my waist and suddenly I'm wearing a shit ton of explosives and I'm a lot more dangerous than I was about two minutes before. Everyone in this place expects to have a gun or a knife waved at them every now and then, but not many people expect a kid promising that he'll blow everyone and himself up if they don't give him what he wants. Maybe that's just as despicable as threatening a person at 'bomb-point' but somehow I didn't see it as bad.

Maybe I was angry about Sean, I don't know. Maybe I just wanted to save my own ass, keep myself from feeling so guilty. Before you think that I just jumped into a criminal life before even trying to make money the honest way, let me tell you a thing. When you're a twelve year old boy from the slums, you might be lucky enough to get a job at a factory but you're going to get paid about two fifty an hour, and the chances of death are very high. No one cares about slum kids. They send us into machines because we're small and underfed. Kids die in those things.

Besides, I sort of hated factories at that point, y'know? I think I had my reasons.

Still, I am an idiot, make no mistake, but not that big of an idiot. Before I could do anything, I had to figure out just how. I had the idea formed in my head but I didn't have all the pieces in place yet. So I had to continue robbing people with my hand grenades. Meanwhile, if I didn't get the drug in time, my dad got really violent. Instead of being spaced out, his fists would come flying. He broke my nose one night and it went all swollen and painful. I had to go see old Nel who fixed me up pretty well. I end up going to see Nel a lot.

One day, I made a good hit off this one old Poshie. He had two hundred dollars in his wallet. I was able to get two needles for the first time and I had a bit extra to pay off some of our living bills. I was happy for that, I was worried we were going to lose our house if I couldn't get enough money. That time, I was happy.

Dad wasn't though. He went insane.

What I know now is this: sometimes, a bad load of morphling comes through. Morphling is a pain reliever drug, but it can also cause slight, pleasant hallucinations. They're normally happy ones which is why I think Mom and Dad loved it so much. Sean's death broke them but they didn't have to believe it with the morphling. Anyway, every now and then a laced batch comes through. The morphling is laced with a couple of drops of jacker venom. The morphling alleviates the pain of the venom, but nothing can stop the intensified as well as nightmare induced hallucinations. I've never been through it myself but Charlie says that it was the worst trip he'd ever been on.

Anyway, one of the first couple of times I bought the drug, it was laced. I was in the kitchen, I remember that clearly. Maybe I was cutting something up or doing the dishes, I don't know. I thought I was safe I guess. My parents should have been in dreamland then, drugged out on the couch and out of my way for another long while, big old mooney eyes staring at the bare wall as if it held everything on it that they ever wanted.

Next thing I knew, my dad came crashing into the kitchen, yelling something incomprehensible. He pulled me away from the counter, smashing me into a kitchen chair. It splintered under me and all I could think about was how I'd have to get the money to pay for a new one because Dad would find a way to blame me.

I figured I'd just chill on the floor until he went away but then he grabbed the knife. I was thirteen years old and malnourished. My father was all wiry muscle and bones but he was six foot five. It wasn't hard for him to hold me there, especially because he seemed to be high out of his mind. He kept calling me Jeffrey. Yeah, well my name's not fucking Jeffrey. I don't know what the fuck Jeffrey did to my dad way back when but it must have been something awful because Dad would have stabbed me right through the eye and into my brain if I hadn't squirmed and turned my head just in time.

The knife had burned ice cold as it entered just underneath my left ear. My dad's unsteady hands caused it to drag down my jawline to meet the corner of my mouth. The blood came then, burning and hot and painful and I think I was screaming but screaming only made the pain worse. My mouth opened far wider than it should have. He tried again and the knife slid along the top of my cheekbone to meet back at my ear. My bone meeting air was the most uncomfortable experience I have ever had to endure. Bone wasn't meant to be feeling air. That's what skin is for, and for holding us all in I guess. I suspect without skin you'd be a sloppy pile of goo.

I was a sloppy pile of goo right then. My blood was pooling in my mouth, on the kitchen floor, it was getting in my hair and it was even on my dad's face. He was raising the knife again and I was somehow sure that he was going to hit his target that time, high out of his mind and all. I was sort of okay with it because the pain was so bad that it made me feel like I was dying anyway.

This is going to sound corny as all hell but you know what, I was going to die right then and all I could think about was Sean and how I wasn't him.

Anyway, I got the hell out of there with some slick moves. Meaning, I kicked my dad in the groin and rolled away and ran my ass all the way to Nel's house, a sobbing wreck that was bleeding all over the street and everything else in my path. I bled extra hard on my mother's dead petunias that she'd stopped caring about. I'd like to say it was an on purpose, heat of the moment kind of thing but it's more like I stumbled and fell as I was running but felt good about it anyway.

Nel had seen me at her place many times before. She didn't even make a sound when she opened her door to me falling in, half-crazed from pain. I wouldn't let her give me any morphling to stop the pain and so she nearly poured a whole bottle of her famous moonshine down my throat in order to numb the pain. Mostly that burned too, a hell of a lot. She said something about it being one hell of a disinfectant.

She brought Gary over and this other neighbor, Old Charlie who was quiet and stuck to himself mostly. They held me down as Nel sewed my face shut. I couldn't feel much then. My face was numb as hell and I was drunk off my ass. I'd never had so much before. Nel sometimes gave me a couple of sips for a broken finger or two, but I was probably going to die of alcohol poisoning that night if it weren't for the retching that came later and then the passing out. God I was a mess. A right travesty really. I felt like shit and probably looked it too.

That took too damn long to heal.

I couldn't really speak until the stitches came out, even then I spoke with a slur seeing as my mouth had suddenly become bigger. Nel was good with a needle and thread but there are some tings you can't save. I lost a bit of cheek there, literally. I was down in the dumps for a bit. Literally. People's trash washes up the river a lot. Anyway, I was pretty depressed I guess. I had to learn how to talk all over again and the effort nearly seemed to be too much. Nel said I was lucky, two centimeters closer to my eye and I might have been blinded. Right then I wasn't feeling too great about myself. There were a couple of times when I felt like stepping into the river and letting it drown me.

The pain was difficult to live with but it wasn't as bad as the initial fear. I forgave my Dad of course. He had a lucid moment, free of violence, free of morphling where he cradled my face in his hands and he cried, begging me to tell him who was responsible. Of course I didn't. He was sorry. So I forgave him. He didn't know what he was doing.

I learned after that that I could not rely on stealing a bit here and there from people, I had to think bigger. I needed to have a constant supply of morphling so I needed more money. Who had money? The fucking factories, that's who. So I got my old bomb belt out and I made a lovely set of explosives capable of blowing me and an entire factory sky high.

My adorably good looks were ruined by my father but as the scar healed I came to like it. I thought it made me look fearsome, but incredibly easy to recognize as well. So I wrapped a scarf around the lower half of my face and pulled a black touque over my scalp for good measure. I dressed in all black too, just to look as suspicious as possible I guess. the bomb belt was worn across my chest like a belt full of ammo and that was that. With nothing more than a couple of grenades clipped to my belt loops for fear factor, I set out to make my fortune.

That first night, I hit a smaller factory on the other side of the river, glad that the 24/7 labour rule was in action. I didn't have to break into the goddamned thing because they never shut down. Maybe there's something despicable about threatening the lives of everyone inside of the building, yourself, and maybe even some outlying regions but I give back to my community too.

That night, I was so afraid that I had to hid my shaking hands behind my back as I made my way into the heart of the factory, years of dicking around coming in handy when I found myself excellent at avoiding the patrolling factory guards. The workers ignored me of course, they weren't paid to stop crooks, just to work until their hands were raw and bloody. Well I really threw a wrench in their jobs that night when I made it into the heart of a large loom and managed to swipe an important cog right out of the machinery, stopping it in it's tracks.

My ultimatum was simple. When the machinery ground to a halt, I told them that they could have their cog back if they gave me money. If they tried to take it by force, I'd activate the bomb belt and we'd all be dead. They took it as a bluff until I threw that first grenade above our heads and it took out three windows and possibly gave a roosting pigeon a near fatal fright.

That night I made two thousand and three hundred dollars.

Like fuck me right?

I didn't know what to do with all that cash and as I made my escape I was certain that someone was gonna come out of that factory and shoot me. I'd never run so fast before. I spent the better part of my morning hiding out underneath the bridge, counting the cash again and again. With money like that I wouldn't have to do it again for a few solid weeks. I'd made it big. I was thinking of all the things I could buy with that money, mainly firewood for the house, a new blanket for my bed because I was getting too tall for my old one, I might even be able to pay for the electric bill and put away the candles for a month.

Then I remembered.

Nel and Charlie and Gary and all of the rest. Those that couldn't work anymore because of the injuries they got in the factories, that that were poor, my neighbors too weak to help themselves.

I gave myself four hundred dollars and I gave the rest of it away, money flowing free and happy out of my pockets and it should have been hard but it wasn't. Not when I saw the faces of my neighbors lighting up in relief, when Mrs. Gardner from down the street burst into tears when I handed her that hundred dollars. Her husband had lost a leg when he was fixing some factory equipment last year and they'd been struggling since. I tried to give Nel some money but she waved me off, said for me to send it on. She had enough toilet paper.

I guess that's what I do now.

That's my job.

I'm that one guy who breaks into factories and is a general nuisance. I've had to get imaginative over the months because they've started trying to find ways to keep me out. Whether it's a dog patrol or barbed wire fences or even land mines I've had to find a way around it. Consequently, I've gotten very good at getting around without the ground having to be involved. A guy like me's got to adapt in order to keep going forward.

As long as I keep my mom and dad placated with a steady supply of morphine they aren't much bother. Sometimes there will be a hiccup or two and I'll walk around town with a black eye or bruised ribs but it comes with the territory. People leave me to it now and I guess they've sort of come to rely on the bit of extra income I can get for them. They've grown protective.

They call me their village idiot for the crazy stunts I pull but I think it's more a nickname built from fondness then anything else. It's pretty handy anyway because when the Peacekeepers come a 'knockin', they don't bother looking at the kid with the messed up face. They don't see a genius criminal with a knack for building bombs. All they see is the ugly dumbass who won't stop puffing his cheeks and making stupid faces at them.

"Oh you don't gotta worry about him," they say, "He's just an idiot, see."