Dancing On Daddy's Shoes 3
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Chapter 3
Benjamin Franklin Ackerman
At 7:16 p.m. Ben turned from the door that had just closed in his
face. It was a feeling he was familiar with, but not from the Glass
family. His heart sunk to new depths as he realized the one family,
apart from his own, that cared anything about him, now thought he
was some sort of looser too. He was tempted to knock on the door,
to try to explain what had happened. But even as he tried to
rehearse what he might say, he came to the understanding that the
words would not come. Whatever he had done tonight was going to be
with them tomorrow, possibly longer since the mask now appeared to
be stuck on his friend's face.
As he stood there trying to assess exactly what had happened beyond
Tim's physical appearance, Ben sensed something else had been
altered too, something deeper in the fabric of all reality.
Unexplained dread filled him. Outside the house, here on the porch
he was able to feel the winds of change, even though they had
already blown past their little part of the world. Baker was a
different place. He didn't need to look around to know that they
had done something terrible to their lives.
Ben was the only son of Susan and Abner Ackerman. He was an only
child because Susan had made up her mind, only after it was too
late, not to have another child by her husband who was known as Abs
to the people that loosely called him their friend.
Not that Abs wanted another child. He had not wanted the one he
had.
Susan's pregnancy had been an act of rebellion. Susan Meredith
Silverberg was the youngest daughter of a prominent family of retail
merchants. Willful, Susan had a wild streak and had taken up with a
handsome, charismatic biker to satisfy her sense of danger. When
Ira and Miare had vigorously objected to their daughter's
association with Abs, she decided to have sex with him. Ben had
been conceived on a picnic table in the Smokey Mountain National
Park.
At the time, Abs had been not only a member of the Tennessee Fire
Riders, but its leader. He was also a major player in the Tennessee
drug supply chain. When Ben was three, Abs was removed from his
life. Abs was ambushed by state police at a small road side bar
deep in the mountains after returning from New York City with fifty
pounds of cocaine stashed in the saddle bags of his Harley. In his
attempt to flee, he shot and wounded two officers, one of whom later
died of his injuries.
No one was more grateful than Susan.
It wasn't until later that Ira found out that Abs had threatened
Susan that he would kill the entire Silverberg family if she ever
tried to leave. It wasn't that he loved her or even felt he
possessed her.
Abs had merely seen the opportunity for inheriting part of the
Silverberg legacy to claim as his own. This was the only reason Ben
had lived to the ripe old age of three. Abs had understood that
Susan's relationship with her parents had been wiped away. Ben on
the other hand stood to benefit. Ira and Miare had been engaged in
actively trying to separate their grandson from the Ackerman's.
The Silverberg's would have probably won the case in the end.
Abner's known conviction record, his dealings in large amounts of
narcotics and his association with known felons weighed heavily
against him. But the issue never made it to court. After his
conviction, Susan told all and the family was able to reconcile.
Ben had grown up fatherless, but the alternative would have been
much worse for Ben. Even though Ben knew this about his father, he
had always believed that his father would have come to love him
eventually. Ben's desire to be, 'just like everybody else' consumed
him nearly every day. In the end, he just wanted to be liked. Not
all that unreasonable when you think about it, but you might as well
have asked Ben to jump the Grand Canyon on a Moped.
Now the Glass's were on the other side of the peer fence along with
the rest of the world.
It doesn't matter, he tried to tell himself, you'll have time to
figure out what went wrong tomorrow and get that thing off her in
the morning. What could happen between now and then anyway?
Just the same, disappointment flooded Ben's heart. He was not angry
at Kim, she was just one of the hapless victims in this scam. In a
way, she'd been right in her objections on their way home from the
magic shop that afternoon. It had been a scam! A huge emotional
hoax meant to sucker the stupid geeks.
No, Ben was angry with the wizard. The scheme had sounded so
promising too. Listen to yourself! Magic! No wonder you're such a
fuckin' loser Ackerman.
"It could have worked! Look at what that thing did to her. The
magic of the thing is real!" Ben protested, bordering on obsession
in his argument with himself.
Would you have thought that if the panty, so to speak, was on the
other ass?
Ben thought about Kim's offer to let him have the mask and all her
things, including her tampons, and shivered. No, Ben thought,
conceding to his disappointment, I think we'll just take the mask
back after school. God only knows what it will turn me into. I
think I'd rather have things the way they were.
While it wasn't completely true, Ben did have the good sense to know
the difference between what he'd lost and the value behind what he
might never see anyway. Sex could still happen for him. It wasn't
as if he would turn to stone at 18 if he was still a virgin. The
Glass family were the only people, apart from his mother, that had
made any effort in giving him a normal life. Sex only ran a distant
second to that.
Resolved that the solution to this would have to come tomorrow, at
school, Ben decided it was time to head home. Defeat was, in deed,
a bitter pill to swallow, especially since he had pinned all his
hopes for this year on this one stunt. In the morning, then I'll
let Kirk, or whoever wants to, shove me into the deepest trashcan at
school and I promise, I won't bitch about it. Status quo mother
fucker, once an asshole, always an asshole.
He turned, shoving his hands deep into his pockets to retrieve the
keys to his Mustang. On first examination however, he could not
find them. He looked again, but the keys were not there. "Fuck,"
He muttered, his agitation only building. "They must have fallen
out when I was inside. They're probably lying on Kim's bedroom
floor."
He lived right next door. The house belonged to his grandparents,
when he was younger, they used to rent it out. He and his mother
had lived there since his father had gone to prison. He could just
go next door and get his spare set of keys. Or he could just leave
the car parked out front. It wouldn't be the first time.
Think again jerk-tooth. This is a new world you're living in.
True enough. Ben recognized this was not the same universe or
reality or whatever, he was used to waking up in. Leaving the car
out front might just get it towed away. Hell, he probably didn't
even know half the people living around here any more. Best to move
the car and be done with it.
A thought crossed his mind at that moment. His missing keys just
might be the answer to their prayers. Well, Kim's prayers anyway.
Part of him still wanted a chance to convince Kim to stay as she
was, just long enough to try to get her into bed. He could talk to
her, unlike the other girls at school. Maybe even better, if she
was anything like Tim was, he could probably talk her into almost
anything at some point. All he had to do make it a condition of
going back.
Ben wiped that thought from his mind the way an eraser removes an
equation from a chalk board. It was a horrible idea, for more
reasons than Ben wanted to acknowledge. He focused once more on the
idea that had begun to develop around his missing car keys. If he
could talk Mrs. Glass into letting Kim bring his keys to him while
he waited in the car, they might have enough time to actually get
the mask off. Perhaps it wasn't really stuck. Mrs. Glass had been
only a few steps away when they had last tried to remove it. Maybe
they hadn't been alone enough for the mask to come off.
Ben struggled with the morality of the moment. He had a girl now
that was depended on him for something. In Ben's distorted sense of
the world, he could not see how girls were expected to capitulate to
his desires if he had nothing to make them capitulate. Now he had
one, and his inner self did not want to let that go. Still, Ben's
fear of what might lie out there, mouth open, waiting to gobble him
up in a savage, blood mess frightened him more than his desires
motivated him.
With the sun fading behind him to the west, Ben turned around to
knock on the Glass's front door. He had to try something. The fear
of the unknown was beginning to get the better of him.
The world swam before his eyes. The white, colonial style house
that he had grown up next to wavered like a mirage trapped in heat
ripples rising from the pavement in summer. Ben took a step
backward, afraid that perhaps the mask still on Kim's face was once
more coming to life. No longer inside the protective center where
Kim was, God only knew what would become of him. "Gotta get that
off her now," he muttered.
Ben lurched for the door handle but the door evaporated. Its
molecules flew apart into a thousand microscopic bits of floating
sand. A hole existed in the door where his hand had passed through.
The edges of the hole were loose, wavering like the rest of the
world and beginning to lose their cohesive structure.
"What..." Ben began to ask, and before he could finish, he had his
answer. The world around him began to dissolve. The small flecks
of all things around him, trees, buildings, cars, everything, began
to become detached and drift away. They were carried on some sort
of unfelt solar breeze that moved them away and up into the sky.
Darkness settled around Ben. Stars in the sky mixed with the
millions of particles of matter that were now drifting away out of
reach greeted him. "Whoa..." Ben whispered. With his face upturned
to the starry velvet Tennessee sky he watched. The reality of a
moment he was not supposed to have been a part of drifted away into
the nothing and the everything of the universe.
It had been light only seconds ago, sometime after 7:00 p.m. Now,
all the light was gone from the sky. The sun had set instantly
somehow and he was in a place he felt he should know but didn't want
to. Time had changed in the blink of an eye, he had been put
someplace he was supposed to be at this time of day, on this day, in
Kim's reality! Time or something had compensated for this once he
was no longer in the presence of witnesses.
"Hey, what the fuck are you staring at retard?"
The voice was harsh, lifeless and full of malevolence. That's Turk,
Run!
Ben's legs locked, preparing to run when he realized he didn't know
anyone named Turk. Only that wasn't quite right now was it? He
felt he should know someone named Turk. In fact, it seemed
desperately important, especially at that very moment.
"Didn't you hear me talkin' to you retard? I said, whatcha staring
at up there, some sort of UF-fucking-O?" A crowd of men laughed
hysterically but menacingly. Footsteps clacked on the pavement
somewhere behind him, getting closer. Ben wanted to look but his
head would not obey the commands of his brain. Fear had frozen his
neck in place. Better not to see it coming. If it's fast, maybe I
won't feel it before everything goes black.
"I'm gonna kick the dog snot out of you this time Ackerman. No one
ignores me, especially some stupid fucking retard!"
"Hey Turk, you know who won't like that," one of Turk's unseen
cronies called out from someplace across the street.
"Like I give a shit about that washed up old fuck," Turk replied,
the clacking of his shoes measured the closing distance between
himself and Ben. Now nothing worked on Ben's body, his legs were
frozen popsicle sticks, rigid and useless. His arms trembled
horribly and were sore from the tightness that was increasing by the
second. He wanted to cry. Right then, he wanted to cry. From what
he could see, he was no longer in his neighborhood, yet, this place,
surrounded by beaten down, worn out old clapboard houses and shops
with barred windows and gated doors was familiar.
It's called home moron. Learn it, love it, live it!
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! Ben's mind chanted.
"Come here you mute bastard. Let's make this fast, I have a fat
doobie over there those Bogarts are going to suck down if I don't
make fast fucking meat of you."
"TURK WILLIAMS!" cried an angry female voice from his side of the
road. He knew that voice, and nothing had ever sounded so sweet in
his life.
"Huh?" Ben could hear Turk say in bewilderment from someplace very
close behind him.
"GET THE HELL AWAY FROM MY SON!"
From across the street came cat calls and chortles that brought the
blood of embarrassment to Turks normally tan face. "Ooooooooo",
"Better run Turk, here she comes."
Angrily, Turk bent behind Ben and whispered in his ear, unseen, but
still freezing Ben's blood solid, "Next time you fucking dummy.
Next time they won't find the fucking body let alone come to save
your pussy ass."
"I SAID GET AWAY FROM HIM!" Susan screamed. She bent and picked
something up off the ground and flung it in that direction, barely
missing Ben, but striking Turk in the eye.
"AH," Turk cried stumbling backward, "YOU BITCH! YOU FUCKING PUT MY
EYE OUT."
"I'll put a lot more out than that if I ever see you around him
again," Susan said angrily, closer now and with the threat
diminished some, she no longer needed to scream. The men across the
street now stared in dumfounded fascination. They could not see
Susan in this light or the Louisville Slugger that hung by her right
side.
"I'LL KILL YOU!" Turk growled in abject rage. He raised his hands
above his head to grapple with her, his eye leaking blood but that
was all. Sue could see and was silently grateful that she had not,
in fact, put it out. Turk towered over the two of them, mother and
child, like a great silver screen movie monster when Sue swept the
bat backward and down, like the backswing of a golf club. With all
her might she then swung the pendulum head back, out and upward.
The head of the bat caught Turk square in the crotch of his jeans.
Turk uttered a muffled "Ooooffffff." And collapsed to the street on
his side in a fetal position.
Susan now stood over the prone figure in the street, "I could kill
you, you fucking bastard. I could crush your head right now." She
raised the bat over her head as if to do just that as Turk tracked
the bat with his one visible but bloody eye. Turk shook his head,
grunting for forgiveness, his battered eye wild with fright.
On the other side of the street three of Turk's companions lined up
and prepared to rush the woman with the bat when her eye fell upon
them. "Oh no you are not!" she exclaimed. She bent and scooped up
the bloody projectile she had just hit Turk with and fired it at the
lead rusher. The rock struck a man named Jelly in the side of the
head hard enough to make him yelp and scamper off, followed closely
by everyone else on the corner. With the threat gone, Susan
Ackerman turned her attention back to Turk.
"You listen to me, you're thinking that you're going to come and get
me for this, put me in my place. I've been through a lot more than
you can put me through. You know who I'm married to, don't you?"
Turk nodded miserably and wished that this monster would simply go
away and leave him alone. If you think for a second that miserable
son-of-a-bitch hasn't taken me to school, then you need to come by
for a few fucking lessons."
She turned to Ben and her tone changed completely. Ben was ghost
white, in shock and stunned that his mother had somehow become John
Rambo since this morning. "Are you Okay?" she asked sweetly, with
all the tenderness he could have ever remembered. "Did this bastard
touch you?"
On the ground, Turk, still cupping his groin, a wet spot spreading
on his jeans beneath his hands, shook his head wildly, whimpering,
trying to answer the question himself.
"N... n... no Mom," Ben finally replied. On the ground Turk
practically fainted from relief.
"Let's get you home, come on." Susan slung her arm around Ben's
waist and led him across the street to a broken down hovel of an
apartment building.
"Mom, where's you're car?"
"Around back, Ben, why?"
"Why is it around back?" Ben asked, his "oh fuck, sphincter pucker"
factor rising steadily.
"Where else would I park it? If I try to park it on the street,
someone's going to try to steal it."
Ben tried to sort through the confusion of everything that had just
happened and was still happening. Susan was leading them to a
building that look scary applying the kindest of definitions. "Mom,
where are we going?" Ben didn't want to get any closer to the
building they were approaching. It was a horrible place. The
windows in one of the four units were boarded up with plywood. Even
still, Ben thought he could hear thumping and voices coming from
inside that very unit.
"I don't want to go in there Mom," Ben protested, his memory
beginning to kick in now. Memories that had no root in experience,
and yet, he could see himself in them. His perspective was first
person, he was behind the eyes of the observer in all of them. NO!
This is not happening.
Tell that to your cute little girl friend you left stranded in that
hot little bod.
I'm SORRY, I'm SORRY. I'LL FIX IT, BUT I DON'T WANT TO GO IN THERE.
THERE ARE MONSTERS IN THERE! MONSTERS!
"Ben, what in Christ's name is wrong with you? Have you been
drinking?"
"I want to go home Mom! I just want to go home!" Ben was on the
edge of near panic now, tugging away from the building where they
had lived since Ben was born. Almost as if this place wasn't the
home he was referring to.
"But Ben, this is home," Susan said, "It's Okay, they're gone. Turk
won't bother you again. I promise you that."
Across the yard a man appeared at the door of the apartment where
Ben was suddenly sure his mother was leading him. He wore a white
tank top, dirty jeans and leather strap-side boots. A chain hung
from his belt and vanished into his back left pocket. The huge arms
that were folded over his massive chest were covered with tattoos,
some of the professionally drawn, others, were clearly prison
tattoos. They twisted down the man's arms to the wrists and covered
his chest where exposed. Ben could imagine this man's entire torso
covered with these odd, grotesque objects D'art. The man's face was
weathered and aged from sun, alcohol and drugs. He looked much
older than Ben knew he was. The jaw was covered with a thick graying
beard. Above this, his eyes were set in narrow, intense slits of
distaste.
"Oh no," Ben whispered. "No please... not him. He's in jail."
"Ben, quiet," Susan said between gritted teeth shaking him slightly
to get her point across. "Don't piss him off again, please." Ben
jerked and pulled wildly to escape, but Susan held him fast, still
trying to sooth him. Deep down, Ben had always dreamt that his
father might one day accept him, take him in and be a father. Abs
was, after all the only father he'd ever have. It was natural to
want this.
Ben could see now there was nothing natural about Abs Ackerman. The
man was a freak. Now, he no longer wanted his father to accept him.
He didn't want to give his father a chance to like him. It wasn't
going to happen. Not ever! Ben knew this because Ben now
remembered a very different past, one where his father had been with
them all his life.
"Come here boy!" Abs shouted in his deep, gravelly voice. Ben was
horror stricken. He was not fast enough to outrun this mountain,
nor was he strong enough to fight him off. "I SAID COME HERE!" Abs
bellowed. This time it was Ben's turn to wet his pants.
"Abs, stop it, please."
"Shut the fuck up," Ben's father said meeting them at the street.
He pushed Susan aside, took Ben by the arm and marched him back into
their apartment with Susan hot on their heels, begging for leniency.
The screaming started at 9:17 p.m.
No one in the neighborhood had the courage to call the police.