okay, i wrote this over the course of december 2006, making up the story as i went. it was originallyu posted in pieces on my xanga. please tell me what you think, even if you think it sucks. thankyou. "Moxey" by Dillon Walsh he can't play anymore so he sits and sits and sits "He's just a little boy. Just little. They found him nine days ago. He was crying; he was lost-they were unmoved. He was tied and gagged. He was tossed in a car. He was driven to a hospital. He was thrown in a cage. He woke up today with a steel skeleton and legs, and a missing arm. At the points where flesh and metal connected, there were twisted pieces of wire and heavy-duty staples, but there was a gash in his stomach where ragged pieces of nylon were the only thing keeping his guts in-or would have been, had he had guts to lose. If you can't tell what I'm trying to say, the boy was a fucking cyborg. The first of his kind. The last of his kind, too, and you'll see why in just a second. Listen. Just listen. "I still hear their screams. So many screams, so many in one place, so many at one time. I couldn't block them out then, and I can't now. Because they're still screaming, screaming like animals, some of them screaming words, generally only partly coherent. One screamed for his mother. Another for her daughter. Many questioned why it was them who had to die. One laughed, God would save his soul, he was headed for Heaven. Totally, awesome, all that new-wave shit. But let me tell you, there ain't no God. There ain't shit watching out for us, or I'd be a damned poor storyteller. "Picture this: some fuckin' insano douses an apartment building in kerosene. You're a little kid, and you live in that apartment building. The last thing you see before you pass out from smoke inhalation is your mom going up in flames. You wake up over a week later in a cage, your body's features melted away from heat, your flesh torn, with hunks of metal in you. You'd be a little perturbed, wouldn't you? You wouldn't like the people who did that to you, wouldn't you? You'd hate them, right? And, as I certainly know, hate has a way of building. And building. And building. And when that hate built up enough, you'd let it out, somehow. I know you would. I did. Let me tell you a story-come closer, do not be afraid. As strange as I look, I will not harm you. I don't think I can bring myself to harm another person in my lifetime. I've done enough damage. I do believe I will take but one more life, but it shall not be yours. I need someone to carry my story on. To carry on a piece of me. I have no wish to dissapear. And I certainly have no wish for them to remember me as they do. "A building burned in New York in the sixties. It was a little apartment building, a converted house with three floors and four sections for renting. The landlord lived on the bottom floor. There was a drunk who lived on the top floor, adjacent to a single mother and child. One night, in a drunken rage, he beat the child for an imagined offense. The mother complained. The drunk was promptly kicked out. He didn't take too kindly to that. He decided a building of casualties was not too much of a price to pay for revenge on one young woman and one old man. He was never arrested. Why should he have been? A building in a poor part of New York burns. So what? It was probably an accident, damn hippies lit their drapes with a joint, probably. Right? "Put another log on the fire, my child. As much as I have an aversion to the flames, my old bones get cold on these winter nights. How'd you come by this cave, anyway? Really, now? Ran away? How'd you manage to make it to New Hampshire all by yourself, all the way from Brooklyn? Hitchhiked? People sure are kindly these days, ain't they? "If you check the archives of the Times, you're not gonna find it. Seventeen deaths by burning isn't news fit to print, apparently. Especially not in the poor bits of town the polictitcians would rather pretend weren't there, and you know how kindly those journalists treat them policticians. Policticians, it seems, would also have the journalists refrain from telling the public of experiments conducted on a burnt-up little boy, the sole survivor of a non-existent fire. In this great country o' the states, we love to trumpet freedom of the press-but we ain't never said freedom from influence. "In any case, there WAS a story printed about the fire's lone survivor-nine days later. I don't know the details of how he became what he was, he simply woke up with metal bits to him. Metal legs, metal innards, metal eyes and metal teeth-and one arm which stopped at a little bit below the shoulder with a jagged piece of bone, marked with permanent marker. A face with no nose or mouth, only a formless blue lump, stared down at him. The little boy struck him. The lump, nothing but a facemask, caved in and began to show spreading purple stains-the blood issuing from the doctor's nose. The little boy knew nothing of this, he though a lumpy-faced beast was attacking him. He kicked both legs. One hit the lumpy-beastie-thing's chest, the other it's crotch. Metal broke bone and ripped flesh, and red sprayed and dripped onto the scared child screaming on the padded examination table. A door slammed in the distance, and screams and footsteps echoed through the halls. Two more doctors tried to restrain the child. One's head was sheared off by a kick, the other was smart enough to run when the first one fell, but unlucky enough to be being chased by a bionic boy. He hit the ground hard and fractured his skull. He died in the hospital's mental ward sixteen years later, as a patient. "Now, you think I'm going to tell you that the evil cyborg thing went on a rampage, killed everyone, and set the building on fire. Well, he would have, but they somehow managed to barricade that door for eight hours. The boy spent the first four kicking, slapping, and biting the door, and the next four prying the bars off the window. When someone finally went in to check if he was calming down (a worthless intern, of course), he was nowhere to be found. The window's glass was shattered, and the bars lay in twisted shapes on the ground. There were long scratches in the walls, and a hole where he had apparently begun to gnaw throught he plaster (if he had continued, they would have been goners, there was no reinforcement in the room which shared the wall). The bed had been cut cleanly in half, and to this day they don't know how it was done. "Really, you have no need to fear me, I would never, ever even think of hurting a child in distress. You shiver so, come closer, we can share my blanket, although it is a little bit dirty. Of course, that just makes it all the more warm-more layers, you know? I am quite sure that you do trust me. You have not yet run. If you did, I would be very sad to lose the companionship, but I would not chase you. I'm too old to play tag, and I would be afraid of hurting you. You are a friend to me, child. Listen-there is more. "The boy wasn't seen for about a week, and when he was seen, it was by a photographer. The events at the hospital had been covered up, so this was the first time any news had come up about the kid. Two unclear photographs were published in a small Brooklyn tabloid, with a blurb about "The monkey child of New York." Nobody had any idea about what the pictures were really of-how could they? A monkey-boy could be a leftover of evolution, but a cyborg would need to be created, and nobody thought that technology was available, especially outside of area 51. But some weird shit goes on in this world. And just think about this-if you believe me (as I certainly hope), our story takes place in the sixties. Imagine what they've got going now! They never fuckin' learn their lesson, the dicks. The boy meant nothing to them, and he doesn't now. They think he's dead. If they only knew... "Within a month, they had found the first body. It was that of a twenty-three-years-old woman, one arm ripped off (they found it in her backyard, smashed to a pulp.) Her head was in an indentation in the floor of her kitchen, made from a very hard strike. It was severed halfway down the neck. One eye and the tongue were missing, and the much of the head was puffy and bluish-black with bruises. The rest of her body lay in a pool of coagulated blood on the cheap hardwood of her living room floor. The stump of the neck was bent at an odd angle, so that the vertebrae stuck out of the skin like large teeth yet to break out of their gums. Her remaining arm, both legs, and pelvis were shattered. On the remaining hand, the fingers had been cut off at a smart acute angle, so that the stumps' longest edge was to the right. The veins of her wrist had been removed through a very small, almost unnoticeable verticle slit. Likewise were both her Achilles' Tendons missing. "The second body showed up the next day. It was a forty-years-old man, and he was mostly intact. All of the teeth were removed from the mouth. Both eyes were intact, but circles of skin were removed from around them, revealing muscle and bone. All of the fingers and toes were gone, as were most major arteries. The tongue was not in the mouth, but they did find it nailed to the bathroom mirror. And this went on for months, with a body showing up every few days, always with parts of the body removed and missing. There seemed no explanation, and no fingerprints ever appeared. "Things came to a head about eight months after the fire. A passing pedestrian heard screams and banging coming from the house of Miss Amy Fisher, the waitress at the local breakfast diner. He ran for a payphone and called the police. They knew what was going on immediately, and were there in five minutes. They burst down the door and there he was-a freak with skin like melted play-doh and a metal arm. He was naked and covered in blood. Amy Fisher lay dead in the corner. In the little boy's hand was an eye, swining on it's own tendon. The cops opened fire, and the boy turned and ran. They chased him to the world trade center. He was backed up against it, and then began to climb until he was far out of range. He continued to climb as the helicopters came. He didn't stop until he was finally knocked off the side by machineguns. The police closed in on his dead body and shot and clubbed it until there was nothig left. "As for me, I don't touch the bottle much anymore. I have to live with the fact that I killed those people with that fire. I know I said that the little boy wasn't dead, but I meant it figuratively. When you create a child, a piece of you goes on, so to speak. I've been living with my victim's son for some twenty years now, and he's old enough to live on his own now. Oh, how could the littl? Well-I told you about the body parts, didn't I? If Frankenstein could do it, so could he-he was very bright boy. His child is out for firewood now, but he'll be back. He'll find me in a heap on the floor. You see, I never had the heart to tell him this story. But now you'll share it, and the people will know, if they believe you. Goodbye, my friend." As I left the cave, I heard a shotgun report.
