Charlie, with his head to the icy concrete, had hot blood pulling from him onto the freezer floor. That he was alive at all was more or less a miracle simply because dying would have been a mercy. His limbs had become stiff and without feeling, had they been in their sockets or not.
Clinging to blackened bits of flesh and muscle the boy, was a broken doll lying on the frozen, freezer, floor. More than anything Charlie wanted to pull the knot out of his throat, not even bile would form on his frozen tongue, the plastic forced down his throat sealed his windpipe tight, but some how Charlie was alive. Broken to bits, with an empty, frozen, nuggets bag, gagged in his esophagus, Charlie choked for breath.
Blood that had seeped from his near limblessness had frozen on the floor. His fingers were black, he guessed his toes must be to, he couldn't even sum up an average for how long he had been there. His eyes rimmed perfectly in blood, having forced his frozen lids open and tearing away the waterlines of them both.
HACKED! The word snapped in his head. Tod's voice like a snarl and Levi smiled as Jacob wields an old axe. They were cruel more than anything, cruel and selfish, he thought, still unable to move, as his limbs were nearly detached and sprawled around him. The reason sat in a red puddle, a hat, a stupid canvas sun hat, its edges now rimmed in his blood, just like his eyes.
The hat had belonged to his grandfather and before he had died, just that spring, he had given it to Charlie. Charlie was an orphan now, with no relatives left to keep him he was floating around in the system, and had started school again soon after. It had not been a secret that Charlie was an orphan, it had become a game.
Charlie loved his grandfather so much, he wore that hat to school everyday. Teasing was such a minuscule way to put what they did to him, what they did went beyond simple bullying, what they did was selfish. Charlie wondered, what was it about him that had made this a reasonable thing to do to someone?
Finely sirens broke the static, Charlie cried, bloody tears dripping down his face. Was he going to be saved? But Charlie knew the answer, this wasn't safe, grandpa was dead, plastic still clogged his throat, his limbs weren't even fixed to his body any more. The question wasn't if he was safe, he wasn't, never again. The question was, how long would he live? But even that, he thought, wasn't the question, why would he live?
Expectantly Charlie woke, but not to the steady beatings of monitors. His eyes opened but the place he lay was nearly as cold as the place he left. Something annoyingly was wrapped like a string around his toe. The pressure of trash in his throat had not gone, wherever he was was dark and a sheet lay over his bare body. But the nagging at his throat made him sit straight up. Charlie coughed and vomited between his knees, but even then the pressure remained till he yacked so hard he felt the strangest of textures in his mouth.
With trembling, black fingers, Charlie pulled from his throat a piece of plastic. Looking at it he realized someone must have tried to dislodge the thing from his throat only to leave behind a shred of it. Charlie drops it to the table and lets a leg down, pulling the sheet from over his head. That's when he saw his limbs had become a Frankenstein of reattachment.
Thick stitches had pulled the boy’s pieces back together, purple and irritated pink skin partnered the gruesome black wires. Charlie steps, watching his purple foot, stitches around his ankle, but his legs were weak and he hits the tiled floor face first.
A face more like a ghosts reflected back at him from the lock on a table wheal. Though his hair was blonde, now it seemed paler and his skin white, his lips were no exception. His face had become void of color except the red rims of his eyes, where the flesh had been torn away by the freeze. The only color on the boys body that was not the red around his eyes or the bruises around his stitches, were the tips of his fingers, each of which looked like they'd been dipped in oil, frostbitten.
Charlie sat up and leaned against the table he’d fallen from, the itch at his blackened toe demanding his attention. The boy unwinds the tiny label to read it, but he knew what it say, and it did say what he knew it would say. Charlie gulps and that awful feeling in his throat comes back like a flash dream. Sitting under the table in a bin, Charlie’s, blood stained hat waited like a beacon, so Charlie put it on his head. That's when the questions and doubts disappeared and Choking Charlie fled.
It was a rainy day, darkened by clouds, the junior high was silent, like the weather demanded whispers and shadows. He wore a trench coat that was too big, and boots that were too big as well, both had belonged to his dead grandfather. He hid under his grandfathers blood stained hat, he knew the boys would be in their classes.
“Feeling safe.” He thought, with a pale grin, knowing that they felt safe only because his name had been all over the news that morning, FOUND DEAD in broadcast text.
“A boy Charlie Morgan age fourteen was found dead last night in an abandoned warehouse freezer in Troublested. Morgan’s grandfather and only living relative had passed away just this May. The autopsy revealed he had suffocated though his remains had been found brutally dismembered. Reasoning has not yet been released to the public. If anyone has information on the death of Charlie Morgan please contact your nearest office, that number is…” The broadcast had come to his head just like the flash dream of debris in his throat.
It was official, he thought, Charlie Morgan was as dead as a door nail. This only made him grin more, so he stood outside the school he would never have to go to again and he waited for the three boys in the rain. In the place they had waited for him, as most kids usually ran home Charlie stuck around to read in the library, for reading brought him closer to his grandfather. That's when they snatched Charlie up, and had dragged him into the woods, away from Troublested Junior High, and straight to hell.
Tod, Levi and Jacob were stupid kid teenagers. Either that or their curiosity had a morbid twist to it, either way Charlie knew that the cops would write it off as boys being boys. Why else would the three kids wander into the woods where a crime scene more brutal than any in Troublested had been. Outsiders would make their assumptions, but Charlie followed them to the place he had choked for air and bled out everywhere.
Levi’s laughs echoed in his ears, it drove his blood hot, wildly angry at the thought of Levi believing in any way that he owned Charlie. But Charlie was going to show him who was owned and the fee would only cost three undesirable boys their lives. HACKED! Shouted Tod’s voice again, for a moment Charlie thought it was in his head, but the three boys were playing out the sick event all over again. The shout only sent the boil in his veins to broil.
The warehouse hadn't changed, from the moment he was yanked and beaten to the ground to the moment he had bled out everywhere, to now. It was an unchanging sort of thing, the kind that creeped into your bones and made a home, never to leave them, but easily spreading.
Charlie didn't expect Jacob to say anything, he never really did before, and it would put him out of character if he had now. Jacob was the one that hacked Charlie to pieces, and the only reason Charlie remembered he didn't speak at all was because, as Jacob took Charlie apart piece by piece, Charlie pleaded for his life. Only then did Jacob seize wielding his axe to lean in close to Charlie’s ice cold face and say, “Why shouldn't I?”
Jacob had looked into Charlie’s dim eye’s, yanking his head up by his hair. As if his pleading had been irritating, as if he could not bare to hear the sound of the boys whimpers as he hacked his limbs away, part by part. He grabbed out meaninglessly for anything, crumpled it into a fist and socked Charlie so hard in the mouth, Jacob’s first made its way inside. That not having worked so well, Jacob flipped the axe he wielded and stuffed the plastic down Charlie’s throat with the hilt. Remembering made Charlie yack even then, he gasped too hard, afraid the air would not come, like it had before. Jacob hacked away at the remaining bits left of Charlie, but by than Charlie was already dead.
“Didn't put up much a fight.” Says Levi.
“The pussy was a pussy.” Says Tod.
“Meow.” Charlie called and all three boys, switched their gaze from the caution tape to where Charlie stood. Charlie thought, how interesting, their gazes so alike though they were neither shaped or colored the same. Something was equally alive and dead in each of those sets of eye’s, Charlie guessed it was quite the same of his to. One thing was undoubtedly certain, when the three saw him, they may as well have seen a ghost.
“Charlie?” Asks Jacob, but his expression doesn't really change, Charlie leans away from the wall.
“Boo.” The pale boy answers and the three, step back in union.
“Im…”
“Possible.” Charlie finished before Levi could, but Charlie’s advances nearly had the three cowering on the ground.
“Oh no, my dear boys, very possible.” Charlie growls, reaching his blackened fingers towards them in show.
“But I…” Began Jacob and Charlie’s icy gaze switched to him.
“You did.” Charlie assured him then let his grandfathers trench coat fall to the floor, revealing the patch work he had become, a purple and irritated patch work of skin and wire and blacked fingers.
“Make no mistake, boys,” Says Charlie. “I am dead.” Charlie grinned, but it was no longer simply a pale lipped upturned line, but a grin of teeth all the same thickness and all the same length, pointed like arrowheads. The subtle blue of his eyes had filled with blood, his blackened fingers elongated into points, and where stitches held fragile, though broken skin, they now seemed ready to ply apart, red muscle peaking out through black wire and flesh.
“You’ll be just the same.” Charlie reached out for anything that he could grab and the caution tape was the first to go. That's when Tod screamed.
By the aid of the stitches along Charlie’s arms, he had no problem reaching out far, his legs pulled him taller, leaving nothing, but oozing blood and gaps between each stitch. Fist full of yellow caution tape, Charlie dragged Tod to the ground by the hairs of his head. Strength, Charlie never had before ran through his blood and stitches like electricity and the thrum of it was ecstasy, the place where his heart might be became lite, no longer heavy. It was then Charlie knew this was what he was made to do.
Tod pleaded, pitifully, but Charlie only grinned, his hat shadowing his red rimmed eyes.
“Why shouldn't I?” He asked mockingly, Tod's expression went from fear to disbelief and with Charlie’s new fingers he, oh so gently, popped the tape into Tod’s gaping mouth, pushing it in deeper with one long finger, till the plastic had made it to the middle of the boys throat. When Charlie finished he dropped the boy to the ground, and Tod tried, red faced, to pull the tape from his throat, his body convulsed and his face went purple before it went white.
Levi ran when Tod’s body went still, but Charlie was much faster now, his arms stretched grotesquely for the boy and he yanked him back by the collure. Levi yacks at the force brought down on him by his throat. Thrashing and screaming, Levi proved much stronger than Tod, but of little match to Charlie.
“Why shouldn't I?” Charlie said again, now reaching out for anything around him, his long black fingers snatched at the packing saran wrap left in the abandoned warehouse. Charlie yanks out more than the measly bit of caution tape he had jammed down Tod’s throat. Levi’s eyes bulge at the bulk Charlie held in his long fingers, but that's all he had time to do before Charlie had shoved Levi to the wall by his throat and yanked loose his jaw, which would not have allowed all the plastic in if he hadn't.
Just like before, Charlie slowly shoved the wrapper down Levi’s esophagus, till none of the plastic could be seen from his gaping broken mouth. Levi’s face hadn’t gone from red, to purple, to white, but fell simply dead, the peachiness of his flesh fading out like the color running from a picture.
Last was Jacob, the boy had not stuck around to wait his fate, but had only managed to hide himself in the warehouse.
“Where, oh where, could my little lamb be?” Sang Charlie in a voice demonic and two toned, as he shrank back into his boyish pale form, teeth no longer sharp, eye’s a gentle blue.
Old pallets and rotted goods sat about the space sparsely, but there were undoubtedly places to hide a small trembling boy with an axe. There was no mistake leaving Jacob for the last. First Charlie wanted to horrify him, then he wanted him to fear the chase. If Charlie knew anything about this line of work, the best results came during this time. When your victim found a place to settle, if but for a moment, settle and fester at the knowledge that no matter where you ran, how well you hid, something would always be after you. Then Charlie wanted to watch him fail to save his own life, choking for breath he would never take.
Charlie put back on his grandfathers coat, tipped his hat and grinned again, looking out into the dusty, icy warehouse till he spotted it. A flash from a bloody blade, shaking by trembling hands, hidden behind a stack of crumbling pallets, only a stones throw from where Choking Charlie stood.
Fear had made the dumb boy’s legs tremble too great to escape this place. Charlie stood now beside the crates and he aligned perfectly in Jacob’s side view. A not so tall figure clad in brown and blood, Charlie smiled, giving a flash of sharpened teeth. Jacob yanked pallets down trying to scurry away, axe held like a guard over his hammering heart, not enough to save him.
Charlie did not rush the boy, instead he took small strides. Jacob backed himself to a trailer door, the creek of it made him jump out of the way, Charlie’s red rimmed eyes followed him effortlessly. Jacob raised the axe.
Choking Charlie stopped, without a smile, but with a flash of light running through his eyes sending them from blue to red. Charlie tilted his head to the side like a cat in wonder as Jacob asked in a trembling voice so unlike the one Charlie had come to know.
“Why are you doing this?”
Charlie reached with a grotesque arm to take the axe from the boy. Not even Jacob could hold a grip against Charlie’s. The rest of the pale boy had launched closer to Jacob and without warning, without restraint, without hesitation, Charlie took the axe by it’s blade and shoved the hilt through Jacob’s grit teeth, down his throat.
For a moment Charlie stopped, the axe end sticking out from the boys mouth like a pacifier from a babies and he leaned in real close to his pale face and whispered as he shoved the blade into his mouth, inch by inch.
“Why shouldn't I?”
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