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This writing was accepted for publication in the 96 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “Too Many Miles” Down in the Dirt (v130) (the July/Aug. 2015 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

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The Idiot

Jeffrey Penn May

    I am an idiot, but then you don’t have to be smart to get down on yourself, do you? Anybody can do it. Just ask my friend Harold who is just a kid but has an old man’s name and thinks because of his name he should know more than the rest of us. Which of course he doesn’t. And of course I need to tell you about him, otherwise why would I bother with this nonsense, trying to write it down. It’s important. But then why would you bother believing anyone who calls themselves an idiot. Well, okay, I’ll get you there. Look around you now. I’ll bet everyone nearby is an idiot. I’ll bet that if you are alone, you are still in the presence of an idiot.
    So I’m here just trying to write the nonsense about Harold because he is important – maybe the ugliest kid I’ve ever met who doesn’t have a grotesque disfigurement or obvious genetic malformation. Although genetics has something to do with it, I think, because he was, and still is, short, face like a troll, or Smurf, small clubby hands, squinty short legs, hunched back, and like his name, he seemed older than he was. He had just turned fourteen, and he had chin stubble on his double chin and glistening spittle. And his squat body seemed perpetually tense, ready to explode, or snap back like a breaking spring. A tight wire, he was. And here is his important story...
    I was his principal. My job was to help him. I was the idiot in control. But his story overwhelmed me, broke me, chewed me up and spit me out even though I knew he was crazy and I was not.
    Still, looking into my own mirror afterward, I saw a shattered man, a man who had more than enough of the Harolds of the world. And I smashed the mirror and I stared at the blood streaming down my arm.
    Fuck it. Here is Harold’s story, and I’m an idiot. He was a mentally and emotionally challenged kid who wanted, he once told me, among other things, to fuck his mother, but only after he carved his name with a piece of glass into her neck and painted her tits with her blood. I said, So why do you think you feel this way, Harold. And he said, Just kidding. I told him we create our own realities.
    I had only to watch the evening news, as I often did – cable was best – to know that Harold’s story could be or become real. Ratings are important, and so is Harold’s story.
    Why he told me then, I don’t know. Maybe because it was 100 degrees, and the AC was struggling. Even though my office is below street level and, therefore, theoretically cooler, it often felt humid and suffocating. He sat hunched over in a plastic chair, beady black eyes. Never, could I tell you if he was looking at me or listening to me, or even if he had any shred of understanding.
    — Hello Harold.
    — Hello Mr. Maze.
    — Why did you want to see me?
    — Today, Mr. Maze, I need to call you Jerry. Can I do that?
    — No.
    — I need you to be my best friend Jerry. Just today. I promise. Never with the others around.
    — Okay, for now, if that’s what you need.
    — Hey, Jerry, what’s up?
    — Not much, you?
    — No! No! Don’t answer me! Just listen!
    — Okay.
    — Hey, Jerry, what’s up? Nothing you say? Well look, you mother fucker, nothing can’t be only up. Nothing is up, down, and up your ass.
    I suppose I should warn you that I got queasy. This would be a good place to stop, and delete this forever from your mind before it weasels its way in.
    — So Jerry, I have something to tell you because I’m an idiot but you don’t have to be smart to get down on yourself. Anybody can do it, and anybody can do what I’ve done. Do you want to know?
    I nodded, careful of course not to say anything and interrupt his... what? Cognitive dissonance? I’d have to look it up again in the manual... the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders.
    — I’ve had busy nights Jerry; that’s why I’ve been so sleepy lately. It has nothing to do with medication. It’s because I’ve been staying up late every night and I’ve been out all afternoon, and evenings, doing my work.
    I smiled, and he must have thought I smirked.
    — Fuck you! Dickhead. Jerk. So last Wednesday, that’s when I rode away on my banana bike... It’s one of those really cool old ones that you had when you were a kid. My mom was watching TV. I told her bye but she never heard me so I rode and rode on my banana bike all the way to the big gully.
    — The River Des Peres?
    I wanted to give his bizarre setting a basis in reality. It’s a technique I’ve used with some success before.
    Harold nodded, close-lipped smile, and I braced for foul language, but he spoke softly, methodically.
    — I found a cat in the gully. I tied it down with brown radio cord. From a broken clock radio. I tied the cat onto a shopping cart. The cat clawed my arms.
    I remembered Harold coming into school with those marks and initially I thought it a suicide attempt. Then I theorized it was a fake attempt.
    — I wrapped the cord tight around the cat’s hind legs, tying it to the cart. Then I found a paint bucket and filled it with rainwater. I held the cat’s furry little head in the scummy water.
    At this point, I got sick, my stomach bloated nauseous and I was dizzy. Harold sat back and put his stubby hands behind his head. His story is important, but I can’t write it exactly as he told me. He went on of course and told me all about torturing the cat. When he described the cat’s broken legs dangling over the side of the grocery cart, and said how disappointed he was at its death, I thought it was the end of his story. I tried not to, even whispered stop, stop, stop, but I thought about my wife, divorced for five years, and my daughter, twenty-two, who loved her own cat, Boo. I blinked, grit my teeth, and Harold smiled.
    — And then Jerry, I rode my bike home and my mom was asleep. I mean really asleep because I put my sleeping pills in her wine. I spread cat blood on her tiny bare tits too little for me to suck on. I washed her and massaged those little tits and she smiled. I think she was having a good dream, maybe about my dad, but he’s dead now because he got cancer, but really I killed him because ever since I was five I started sprinkling mercury into his oatmeal.
    Harold kept talking, chatty, listing horrible deeds and claiming to have detonated bombs, blaming them on Muslims, raped little boys and blaming it on priests, much of which I knew was not true. The cat and his mom might be true, but this other litany of horrific deeds was the evening news. As I sat stone-faced, Harold frowned and squirmed and leaned forward.
    I said, it’s time. I wanted him to go away. He pouted and folded his stubby arms across his small chest.
    — No, I’m not finished. You will know when we are finished Jerry. You will know.
    — How will I know, Harold?
    — Fuck you! You will know!
    — Okay, Harold, but move it along.
    — Jerry, I have a story you need to hear. It’s important.
    — I thought you’d already told me.
    — No, no, no!
    — So tell me already.
    — Last night I went to your house and fucked your wife.
    Despite the initial revulsion, I knew I had him, caught him in a lie. My wife and I are divorced. She doesn’t live with me anymore. I felt smug about it too.
    — Yes, Jerry, I know. You are divorced. She and I met at your house and we fucked, her long legs wrapped around my head...
    — Okay, that’s enough.
    — Oh, so Jerry, you think I’m ugly, too ugly for your wife? To ugly for my mom? Well, I am. You are right. But listen. I rode my banana bike to your wife’s apartment. I rang her doorbell. I ran inside, right between her long legs, feeling positive feelings about being so fuckin’ short. Then I took out my mom’s butcher knife and stabbed her in the back, then I put her body into a sleeping bag and carried her back to your place and did it there. You ever do a dead person?
    Of course he was lying. My wife had put on a few pounds while we were married and, although she’d lost some of it since the divorce, there was no way Harold could carry her on his bike. Still, I made a note – check for bloodstains.
    — Jerry? You don’t believe me, do you? Well, it’s all true. So is what I did to your daughter.
    Of course, another lie. Of course. My daughter was at least 100 miles away, in politics, the election a month away.
    Why was I still listening to him? My job was to “help” the Harolds. That’s why. Sure, his story was awful. But there were others with awful stories and some I may have helped. Was Harold worse? My job was to listen and help, figure out a way to make Harold a somewhat normal, productive member of society. He could be medicated. It was my job.
    — Jerry, didn’t you know your daughter was visiting your wife? After I took your wife to your place, I came back and spent some quality time with your daughter.
    Harold smiled broadly, teeth slanting outward, spaces between them, nothing appealing about him; he seemed the happiest I’d ever seen him. Ah ha, of course, I thought, he’s like everyone else. He just wants attention. Like all the others. But who had the time to give a kid like Harold “attention”? His mom? And dad was dead, perhaps from Harold’s mercury. And how could Harold ever be “normal”?
    I’m an idiot, I thought, discovering what I already knew, the simplistic “he just wants attention” solution. Giving him attention was no answer.
    — Jerry, your daughter loves me. We’re getting married. Call her now, she’ll tell you. After what I did to her, she is begging me to marry her.
    — Okay Harold, that’s enough, we’re finished with this.
    — My dick is huge and she loves it in her mouth.
    — I said we were finished.
    — She chokes on my juice.
    — Shut up! You little jerk!
    — She begs for it up her ass.
    — Shut the fuck up about my daughter.
    I looked though my office window, but my secretary’s desk was vacant.
    —Calm down Jerry...By the way, your daughter’s new tattoo is nice.
    I gripped the phone.
    — A beautiful blue butterfly. It’s on her right thigh.
    Harold stood, his body squashed and distorted, more than when he came into my office. He twisted the doorknob. I called the police. No way he was going to return to class. No way he’d ever come back to my school. He needed to be hospitalized... immediately.
    When the ambulance came, Harold was grinning ear to ear, slanted spaced teeth, black beady eyes staring at me, his mother hovering over him and screaming foul names at me.
    After I talked to the police, telling them about the possibility of Harold torturing cats and molesting little boys, I called my ex-wife, left a message; my daughter’s cell also went to voicemail.
    I went home and searched for the bloodstains. Watching the news, which I normally enjoy, made me sick. Finally, I spoke with my daughter who was bubbling with pre-election enthusiasm and excitement, and I asked about her tattoo. A beautiful red, white, and blue butterfly, she said, right thigh. It was really cool, she said. Lots of us, she said, are getting them. A show, she said, of support.
    My wife called and we had a terse conversation. She had just come back from the gym.
    I didn’t tell my wife, or my daughter, anything about Harold, although obviously I did ask a few dumb, cryptic questions, and sounded like the idiot that I was and still am.
    When I saw myself in the mirror, I did what all idiots do. I smashed the reflection, blood flowing onto my hands.

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