The Second Chapter of my Novel for your reading ecstacy.
2
The people of the court settled into the stiff wooden furniture. The court came to order.
“To the charge of assault and battery on the night of the 16th, how does the defendant plead?”
“The defendant pleads guilty your honor.”
“The prosecution recommends jail time in consideration of the defendant’s reoccurring criminal offenses.”
“Thank you, Councilor, I’m fully aware of your well-rehearsed recommendation and I’ll take it under advisement.” The judge looked down at his defendant and slowly shook his frustrated, furrowed scowl. “Mr. Verrity… Eric, you seem like a perfectly nice young man. As such I feel compelled to ask you a question that tends to be redundant of people in your current situation: Mr. Verrity, why do I keep seeing you in my courtroom?”
“Because, I…”
“Don’t answer that, son.”
In the defendant’s chair on the floor beneath the judge’s gavel Eric Verrity sat serenely in his rumpled corduroy suit wearing the same satisfied smile we wore the month previous when he was charged with disturbing the peace and again previous to that when he appeared for assault.
“Mr. Verrity, you appear to be two people. You’re the subject of these charges and reports, a raucous repeat offender who seems to spend every evening on the streets of our city looking for trouble. You’re also the young man who appears before me every few weeks, polite, patient, punctual and even well-dressed. My question is this: which of these are you?”
“I think…”
“…The details of your file make so little sense to me. The victim’s in your assault cases, who all seem to have endless priors of their own, never appear to testify against you. You’ve been apprehended in warehouses and jewelry stores, but you never appear to be stealing, your fingerprints are never found on any evidence or merchandise.”
“Well, I…”
“… Either there is something you’re up to that this entire justice system is missing here, or you just happen to be the unluckiest guy on earth.”
A minuscule rise in Eric’s smile went unnoticed by the judge. “I just… want to help.”
“To help? What does that mean? Look, Mr. Verrity, do yourself and all of us a favor, and stop helping.”
Eric had an inkling that the police officers in his neighborhood resented his interference, though they never acknowledged any such intentions, on his part or theirs. They never advanced when he earned charges and arrest on the streets but they smiled when he sat in the defendant’s chair. He suspected that were they to acknowledge what he was trying to do in the spaces and the shadows they weren’t patrolling, that his contribution would somehow become real.
“Well, you’re not getting away scot-free this time, Mr. Verrity. I’m sentencing you to six months probation and to mandatory psychological consultation. Maybe some therapy will give us some answers. We’ll reconvene to check on your progress in six months. I had better not see you again before that, young man.”
This is no place for heroes. The city is a place where inspiration gets buried and eagerly replaced. The city is a place where life subsists amidst the absence of life. Like a motherless child in an incubator, the inhabitants of the city thrive not from the artificial womb that nurtures them, but in spite of it. In the creation of their city, they marvel at the skyline and bask in the architectural wonder of their will, within a cage of their own design and willing capture.
The curse of technological advancement is that convenience becomes dependence. Those who dwell in the city, who fear it, love it, or hate it; all depend on it. They depend on twenty-four hour retail, gridlocked traffic, flickering streetlights, and the frowned expressions of their fellow inmates. Prisoners often develop a feeling of security, learning to depend on the walls around them in time, needing the protection of their enclosure. This is what the city can render. It can make you need it. It can make you rely on isolation amidst over-crowding, services that no living being requires, and conditions in which no one living was meant to exist. It thrives and it pulsates, it is home.
The city had been Eric’s home for a decade. He had long ago grown accustom to the eyes of strangers, and distant screeches and bursts he couldn’t identify. He found comfort in its unnatural lights, and heat, and actions. The city was his home and he thought it deserved his protection.
Patient Log Entry #1: Dr. Benjamin Maynard. March 12. Introductory interview with patient Eric Verrity.
Eric presents an interesting study. Subject is twenty-eight years old and has no visible abnormalities of any sort. He’s a lot more normal looking than I expected. From the rumors and frustrations floating around the colleagues of mine that have dealt with him and dealt him away, I expected either a disheveled mess or an Adonis figure. Certain memories and facets of his troubled childhood are locked behind his legendary calm. Eric is required to attend therapy as a condition of his probation. He seems quite content with the arrangement.
Dr. Julius Harmon’s files over the nearly ten years of their therapy indicate a developmental disorder. Though he is clearly keen in awareness, elementary concepts such as arithmetic, grammar, and science seem alien to him. He has a very capable level of focus and concentration, but has trouble maintaining a heightened level of conversation. Further sessions will be required to establish a diagnosis and the appropriate therapy method. On a personal note: I find this young man quite personable and intriguing. I look forward to our next meeting.
Eric noticed things about the city on his nightly walks that its other dwellers failed to. He noticed every single smile in the city. He sensed them as though they sent a warm breeze in his direction. He saw every door opened for a stranger and every seat given up in a restaurant. That warmth became almost addictive to him, he sought it out. By the same unfortunate token he felt every sneer, every profanity, and every briskly bumped shoulder like pins and needles on his neck.
Regardless of how the morning sun struck him through his bedroom window, how the first breath of air felt in his lungs, or how good he felt he needed to feel, he would walk. Eric would walk until the day, or the night, felt better. A good day bloomed when Eric found a chance to help somebody.
Eric once counted fifty days that went by without anyone speaking to him. After a while loneliness becomes its own companion. For someone like Eric, living alone is much simpler than co-existing.
The moments that most people tend to treasure, when they found recognition or their place in the spotlight, held a different meaning for him. His fondest memories took place as an observer in relative anonymity. In Eric’s experience, every time he emerged from the background the spotlight singed him. Every time he was noticed it was for being different.
There’s a strange muscular cramp that accompanies being noticed and singled out when you’re the object of alienation instead of appreciation. People hate you in a way you can’t mend when they don’t understand you.
Being different was the first thing Eric was ever certain about. While other children were learning how to tie their shoelaces, Eric was teaching himself to blend in. Before he could walk he taught himself to mimic, in order to keep himself camouflaged. When foster parents or child welfare workers spoke of him they always made the same remarks. They always spoke in that way people do when you’re present but not among them. They always commented and puzzled over his distant stares and oddly subdued behavior. Though he looked like other kids, there was something off-putting about him that people noticed right away.
Eric had a certain vacancy in his expression that was undeniable to new people he encountered. His body was incapable of injury; he could never experience the effects of malnutrition, asphyxiation, or exposure, leaving him lacking certain segments of the normal instinct of a social animal. The human animal has a deeper purpose in seeking out acceptance, favor, and dominance; the pack mentality ensures shelter, reproduction and survival. His instincts inherently ignored those requirements. He could never lie or beg or compete because there was never a single facet of his entire structure that sought such validation. Win or lose he was always going to survive anyway.
Not once in his life did Eric try to join in. He knew he didn’t belong in the pack. He stood quietly and watched, trying not be noticed. He observed while others lived and interacted. He smiled when they looked happy, looked down at his feet when they were sad. He did his best to remain overlooked.
There were few rewards that could motivate him and fewer punishments that affected him. He didn’t care to see how far he could go before being swiped back into line by his keeper. He didn’t challenge for dominance. He always did what he was told. He got up and got dressed every morning at the same time because he was once told it was expected of him. His bed was always made with sheets tucked as tight as a drum and his room was never messy. He said please and thank you with almost every sentence and never spoke until he was spoken to. He made mistakes of etiquette and protocol only once. Programming himself into a robotic reacteur kept him safe and anonymous. An independent motive never entered his head; until he saw someone he could help.
Standing between a victim and danger tends to push you further from the crowd.
People want to forget you when you save them. They want to forget the feeling of helplessness that brought you to their aide. On more than one occasion, eyes that once looked up at him with endless gratitude utterly lost their acknowledgment at a later meeting.
Hero is perhaps the least transcendent word in our language.
* * *
The only time Eric almost belonged to something was when he was eight years old. After a few months at his newest foster home, a real friendship had grown between him and Todd, his foster brother of the same age. Eric was along for anything Todd would suggest, which made him the perfect sidekick.
As the years passed and they approached adolescence, Todd’s social needs were changing. He no longer wanted a playmate. He was beginning to rank the value of his acquaintances based on some superficial half-adult value system. Eric’s witless content and complete ignorance of adolescent social structure made him a liability to Todd.
The only consequence in high school is in popular opinion. The status that Todd’s dashing looks and athletic prowess had quickly garnered him was in potential jeopardy at any moment but made more precarious thanks to his awkward foster brother. People in his new circle of friends could begin to ask the wrong questions and would soon potentially link them in some way that could have been socially damning. He had to distance himself from his foster hindrance and quickly. Todd soon resolved that public humiliation was the only answer.
Eric, Todd and his friends all had lockers at the end of the Math Wing hallway. Despite Eric’s presence it had been established as one of the ‘cool’ group’s hangouts. During the lunch period the teens would strut, parade and rank one another. As Todd and his friends would chuckle and flirt with the girls passing by, Eric would enter periodically to grab his lunch or his books. Each of Eric’s entrances were intolerable to Todd, he constantly feared some form of reprisal from his unmerciful friends. In an inspirational flash of mean-spirited brilliance Todd suddenly had a way to both distance his allegiance from Eric and discourage him from making the frequent visits to his hangout. The grape juice drink box he had was still unopened; if he could soften the cardboard it would likely explode on contact when thrown.
“Oh great, here comes Verrity.” Todd began the scenario by bringing the attention down on Eric himself.
“Isn’t he your foster brother or something, Todd? Go give him a bug hug or something.” Jakob Williamson was always first to chime in with a chance at ridicule.
“Screw off, man. He’s just staying at my house. My mom’s into charity.” After seven years, Eric’ status in the foster home had been assessed as permanent for some time. Todd’s mother would have filed for adoption long before if not for the expensive legal fees. “He’ll be out soon. They’ll probably cart him off to the ‘loser hospital’ soon enough.”
Jakob’s retort was immediate. “Yeah right, Danver. Who will you have to play dolls with? You’ll go to the loser hospital together on a family rate.”
“Oh yeah?” Todd turned up his hand to unveil his softened cardboard juice grenade.
Eric could hear Todd’s whispering comments as he approached his locker. He could feel the disdain as a small shiver that crept up his back. He kept his head down, pretending to be oblivious as he rolled out the combination on his lock. At the locker directly to his right was Amanda Selkirk. She held a similarly nervous stance, as any teenage girl would in front of the popular young boys. Eric could hear the growing chuckles from the boys behind him as Todd plotted his assault.
The shiver in Eric’s spine grew as the moment drew closer. Amanda’s locker had a small magnetic vanity mirror that hung on the door beside him. Through its reflection, he could see Todd’s hand kneading the juice filled grenade. As he raised his arm to throw the juice box, Eric noticed Amanda’s delicate white blouse. Despite Eric’s ignorance of fashion, the shirt looked like something a princess would wear. He could sense how it was important to her, the way new school clothes are vital to teenage girls. He could see in that moment how the grape juice from Todd’s practical joke could ruin the shirt, how the unintentional attack and the humiliation, though fleeting in the long term, would be devastating to her. He knew what was coming. He could easily have prepared to evade the throw, but he wouldn’t. His shiver reached its pitch as Todd’s arm drew back and released the box in Eric’s direction. He had to shield her.
He turned and faced them as the box hurled through the air, his calm expression catching each of the boys off guard. An explosion of purple ruptured across Eric’s chest. Amanda still crouched unassuming as she gathered her books, and then turned with surprise as the group of boys across the hall suddenly bellowed with laughter.
Eric was covered in purple juice. Thanks to his impulse, Todd had achieved a direct hit. The impact occurred directly in the center of his chest, permanently changing the color of his gray sweatshirt. Droplets of grape juice ran down Eric’s face as he turned back to gather the rest of his books. Amanda then realized what had transpired and gasped with relief that she wasn’t the subject. She looked at Eric’s calm expression as laughter raged from behind them. An inkling of what Eric had done for her crept past her eyes, but the storm growing around them was undeniable. The laughter grew in population until it filled the hallway. She stood up, closed her locker, and stepped back into the crowd as the infectious giggle started growing on her face. She soon laughed with a volume that matched the rest of the hallway. Eric shut his locker and turned to see the mass of faces that bounced and beamed with a barrage that now fuelled itself.
It was so loud it was all he could hear. He wiped the droplets off his face with his sleeve and stood in that spot against the wall, uncertain how to react. His eyes remained still as his perplexed expression then found Todd. He could see Todd’s new friends congratulating him with pats on the shoulders as their raucous laughter pulled their torsos forward and backward, like Jack-in-the-boxes rocking on a spring.
As the laughter began to subside and the crowd started to disperse, Eric still stood with his back to his locker, his face straight with confusion. He was left still uncertain how he was expected to react. The bell rang for the next class to commence and Eric watched as Todd and his five friends started off down the hall, still giggling and congratulating one another. “What a loser!” Jakob turned his head back slightly so Eric could hear. Todd’s head then turned back in the same way, looking down on him from the corner of his eye. He looked at Eric the way many had looked at him before, the way strangers look at people they don’t intend to know. Every time he turned a corner that day someone was waiting for him with a chuckling greeting that couldn’t be confused as friendly.
Eric understood their partnership was over on that day. He went back to speaking only when spoken to. He didn’t speak much for the remainder of high school. He was somehow still pleased every time he saw Amanda’s white shirt.
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