Page 18 of Freaks
Oh no. No fucking way. Not happening.
I shoved the image out of my head so fast, I left myself reeling.Shewasn’t welcome here. She had been a stupid mistake. A lapse in judgement. A moment of weakness that I was never going to revisit again, not even here, inside my own head, seconds before my death. The woman in the white jacket was trouble with a capital T, and she’d follow me into the damned afterlife if I didn’t keep her out.
Fix clamped the ends of the jumper cables to the lip of the copper tub. He was methodical and intent on what he was doing, a calm resolve settled over him, giving him an eerie sense of peace as he worked. When that was done, he set the car battery down on a wooden stool that he placed at the other end of the tub by the taps, and then he held the other end of the jumper cables in either of his hands, raising them up.
“Try not to shit yourself,” he growled. “You’ve made enough of a mess of today as it is.”
I bared my teeth, snarling at him like a wild dog. I wasn’t going to beg for my life. I wasn’t going to plead, and he was going to show no mercy. Men like us never broke, one way or another.
“Just fucking do it,” I snapped. “Do your fucking worst.”
Determination, grim and lethal, flared in Fix’s too-pale eyes. He connected the other ends of the jumper cables. And when the current hit, the savage roar that ripped from my throat felt like it would be my fucking last.
SEVEN
FIX
At the age of nine, my father spirited me away to church camp during summer break. It had fucking sucked, not only because all my friends from school had gone to baseball camp and I missed out on all the associated fun, but because, on the very last day of said church camp, I nearly fucking died.
Camp clean-up had been well underway. We were all supposed to be preparing for the journey home. My father had told me to get all of my shit together and to help the younger boys pack up their stuff, but it was sweltering and sticky, the air close, almost unbreathable it was so humid, and I’d decided to go swimming instead—one of the very first times I’d dared to actively disobey the great, intimidating and thoroughly imposing Father Marcosa after he’d issued a direct order.
The camp lake was long and thin, the size of four full football fields strung end to end. On our side of the lake: the Sunday meeting house; the kitchen block; eight small cabins which housed the camp attendees; and a store house where the canoes and the other sporting equipment was kept. On the opposite side of the lake: farmland, for as far as the eye could see. Dairy farms, mostly. The stench of manure had hung in the air, a thick cloud of sulphur that refused to budge, no matter how strong the breeze.
A group of boys, a couple of years older than my unimpressive nine years, had decided at the beginning of the break that swimming from one side of the lake to the other without the aid of any floatation devices was the best way to prove you were one of the cool kids. I hadn’t even tried. I fucking hated swimming. Hated the water in general. One by one, though, the other kids had completed the trial, and by the second to last day, I was one of the only camp-goers who hadn’t undertaken the swim.
So.
The day I disobeyed my father, stripped down to my underwear and stepped into the lake, pigeon chested, gangly limbed, knock-kneed, covered in sweat and determined, it had been my last opportunity to prove my worth. I’d paced myself, making sure not to power too hard for the line of the other shore too quickly. I’d known I needed to conserve my energy in case I got tired, so I’d doggedly plowed my arms through the water, daring every three or four strokes to duck my head below the surface into the murky green soup below.
I was fine until I reached the halfway mark, and that’s when I’d begun to wonder: did I have enough energy to go as far as I had already come? My heart was thrumming inside my chest, my blood thundering in my ears. I felt okay, muscles warmed and relaxed, but panic had a way of twisting things. Very quickly, my side was cramping, my chest tight, and my head felt lighter than air. Rush after rush of adrenalin washed through me, urging my body to react, to get itself out of the uncertain situation it found itself in. Before I knew it I was floundering.
I couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t keep myself afloat.
Couldn’t quiet the deafening alarms screaming inside my head.
Couldn’t calm the burning fear that had sunk its claws into my back and was trying to drag me down, down, down.
I’d swallowed half the lake and I was more afraid than I ever had been by the time I dragged myself, coughing and spluttering, out of the water. The exhaustion I’d felt was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. I hurt everywhere, and my lungs burned like they’d been branded from the inside by a hot poker.
Sleep claimed me.
It was dark by the time I woke up and realized to my horror that I was still on the other side of the lake with no means of getting back. And I was in my underwear. I’d heard people say the word ‘fuck’ before, but I’d never uttered it myself before that moment. I said it quite a few times as I trudged along the muddy shore of the lake, trying to avoid the piles of cow shit that had been deposited at the edge of the water. Cutting across the farm land, higher up, along the edge of the grassed fields soon seemed like a preferable option, and so I altered my course.
I tried not to think about what my father was going to say when I finally found my way back to camp—the punishment for this transgression would be severe to say the least—but I couldn’t help it. His wrath wasallI could think about. I wasn’t paying attention, which was why I didn’t notice the fence up ahead. I didn’t notice it until I’d plowed right into it, and—
Fire.
I was on fire.
I was—
I couldn’t—
I—
My brain had wildly shuttered on and off like a light switch being flicked up and down at speed. My thoughts were fractured, broken apart…
