FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #6

Almost everyone thought the man and the boy were father and son. Something about the way they interacted; a similarity in gesture, in manner and inflection. And something else – the way the younger of the two seemed to ever so subtly imitate the elder. A laugh shared, but the boy’s laugh just a beat too late, him being either not as quick or as bright to have entirely gotten the joke. The shared, sly grin; though there was something markedly uncertain in the young man’s reciprocating smile. A look of hesitation.

The man referred to the boy as his “protégé”. The boy more deferentially referred to the man as “sir”. They could be seen at odd intervals in the hotel lobby or the dining hall , seated always at a table nearest the elevators, and always faced toward one another. As much as the boy resembled the man in attitude, he also resembled him in dress. They both wore cream-colored cotton suits – suits which appeared stiflingly uncomfortable in the oppressive mid-summer heat – distinguished by bright yellow kerchiefs and polished black work boots.

The man would order the boy’s meals, cut up his steaks, and could even at times be seen to attend the boy to the bathroom. It was a gesture – for they were taken to be father and son – that was considered simply a symptom of healthy, if not somewhat excessive protectiveness.

Though they were residents of the longer-term variety, they shared little or no kinship with their fellow hotel guests. Only the occasional nod of acknowledgment (imitated in kind by the boy) could be expected as greeting. Even this was offered with an air of staid irritation. Ms. Blandish – the eldest, and certainly most senior of the hotel’s long-termers – had made the boldest and most unsurreptitious attempt at interrogation, to no greater result. It was late afternoon of some two weeks previous that the shrill and steel-eyed divorcee (also two-time widow) had approached their table.

“Oh! Isn’t he adorable!” she shrilled, and many instinctively winced at the sound. Its intonation usually precipitated her physical appearance by a good several minutes – and thereby allowed enough time for hasty escape to the safety of one’s hotel room. It caused many great alarm not to have been given the courtesy of such warning. Though none seemed more nonplussed at her unannounced intrusion than the man and boy.

“Pardon?” said the man, his fork poised forgotten between his plate and his mouth.

“That boy!” she proclaimed, louder this time (though none in the large room had misheard her initially). Some coughed in the uncomfortable silence which followed, and went either unheard or unheeded by Ms. Blandish. “Why, that boy there!”

She  bent to study the boy’s face, raising the eyeglasses which hung from her necklace – as though to confirm the assertion she’d just made. The boy, rather than looking at this strange and arthritic, squawking bird at his shoulder, looked to the man. The man glanced at him only briefly, his expression hardening for just that fraction of a second.

“Excuse us.” He said, standing abruptly. The sound of his chair scraping the floor caused everyone in the lobby to start. The sudden silence in the room heightened every noise they made, and though many had politely averted their eyes, all ears were poised to take in the scene.

The man roughly sidestepped in between the woman and the boy, his chin nearly flush with the top of the old lady’s gray head. She bumped the crown of her skull against it as she raised herself upright, and in her surprise made the sound of a startled hen. She backed away from him, cartoonishly rubbing the top of her head and pouting her wizened lips.

“Why, I – are you – I only…” she stammered. The man then had his back to her, wallet in one hand as the other was busy gathering the child out of his seat. The woman looked about, mouth agape, as if expecting someone to protest on her behalf, or perhaps defend her aged honor. Finding that nobody intended to offer such consolation, she then became indignant.

“How dare you! I was only complementing  y–“

As she began haranguing him through bared dentures, she reached for his shoulder. When her fingers came into contact with him, he spun around on his heels, body tensed as though electrocuted. His nose – though he was much taller than the bent old woman – almost touched the tip of hers.

“Listen here, you goddamn old biddy…” he hissed into her mouth, pointing a single finger like a dagger under her throat. “You stay away from that boy.”

With that said, he spun back around toward the child. His body and manner became just as suddenly relaxed, the change seemed not to even have occurred at all. He even smiled and nodded to a few people on the way to the elevator.

This strange exchange had happened weeks ago, but was still the topic of much heated conversation among the hotel guests. The widow Blandish had disappeared for the rest of that day (but had reappeared the next day, chipper and gossipy as ever). No mention of the incident was made in her presence, seemingly an unspoken condition among staff and guests alike.

The man and boy reappeared eventually, though ever since the incident they had taken to sitting nearer the elevators. Though it was hard to perceive at first, their manner had also changed. The man could even be seen to occasionally cast a nervous look over his shoulder, and the boy to immediately duplicate the gesture.

When the police finally arrived, it was the boy that saw them first. He tugged on the man’s sleeve, and to look at him you'd almost say he was terrified. Ms. Blandish was watching nervously from behind a potted fern in the foyer.

The man put up no resistance. The only one who fought was the boy, and fight he did. It took a few officers at least to subdue the kicking, screaming, biting tempest of that child’s fury. The man looked on, handcuffed and sad-eyed, but he didn’t say anything.

By the time the child’s mother came, he had quieted considerably. Ms. Blandish sat next to him on the big velvet sofa in the lobby, stroking his hair and murmuring softly into his ear. The child did not appear to even know she was there. He mutely acknowledged his mother, and then continued to look blankly off into space.

“Oh, darling…” she said, her voice cracking. She began to weep openly, and Ms. Blandish turned her tender, cooing ministrations to the sobbing woman. One policeman remained, and he waited patiently with pencil and pad in hand.

“Can you tell me who he was, son?” the policeman asked, in as tender a voice as he could muster. His ankle was still smarting from where the boy had kicked him repeatedly.

After a long moment, the boy turned to look up at him. His eyes had turned cold and hard as stones, and his voice conveyed little more emotion. There was such a look of resignation, of sorrow beyond feeling, that it made the child appear much, much older. It was enough to send a shiver up the policeman’s back.

"His name was Frank. Like me."

“His name was Frank. Like me.”

“And did you know this man from somewhere? Had you met him before?”

The child seemed to disregard these questions, and began talking very quietly, as if to himself.

“He was like a father…” he said in a whisper. “But not like my dad.”

“What do you mean, son?”

“I guess he was more like a brother.”

“What’s he talking about?” his mother choked, on her knees clutching at the child’s arm. “What did that man do to you?”

“Please, ma’am.” the policeman said. “Son, what did you mean by that? ‘Like a brother’?”

“He was.”

“What did he do to you?”

The child at first appeared confused, as if he didn’t recognize her. Then he narrowed his eyes. He looked as if he wanted to spit in his mother’s face.

“He tried to save me.”

His mother clutched him tighter, by his upper arms. She began to shake him, almost inadvertently. Her expression was lost somewhere between horror and rage.

“He knew what you did to me.”

Her mouth dropped open, and her eyes did not blink.

“He wanted to save me, because he was me. He didn’t want me to go through what he did.”

The boy had loosened his mother’s grip on his arms, and had raised himself up onto the sofa so that he was at eye-level with her. She was sitting back on her heels, clutching at the air in front of him.

“He told me…if I ever saw you again,” the boy said, so quietly now he could hardly be heard to speak at all. “to tell you that he’d be coming home real soon.”

back to Contest #6