My arm is stinging.

It’s a fairly deep scrape, just below the elbow. Inner arm. Blood trickles down and stains my jeans.

Shit. Ma ain’t gonna like that.

I was in such a good mood today. It made me careless. I ran and lunged into the tree; I didn’t even notice the broken branch until it tore into my skin.

Shit.

Today is Tuesday, October 8th, 2019. It is 18:06. The sky is a bright shade of pink, like the cotton candy you get at the fair. I like this time of year best, when the days are getting shorter, and when the air is cool, clean, and clear. A man like me can really think on a day like today.

I tug my sleeve over my arm, over my wound. It should slow the bleeding. I grit my teeth and savour that sting, allowing the smile to once again stretch across my face. Nothing could ruin my mood today.

That bitch finally got what she deserved.

Every town has a Madison.

A dog-faced whore who thinks she is God’s gift to creation because she spreads her legs to every asshole on the football team.

God-damned whore.

I’ve known Madison since the first grade.

We’ve had a handful of classes together over the years, but nothing too memorable. She can actually be pretty smart, or at least she used to be until she started dating that tool.

Ah, shit—someone is at the bottom of my tree.

A dog, by the looks of it. 

Some snub-nosed little shit.

A dog is no big deal—it’s the owner I’m worried about. People.

People will have you hauled down to the police station and thrown into the drunk tank with the rest of the bums, until Ma gets off work and can spring you loose, while cursing you out, and then giving you the silent treatment the whole ride home.

“I don’t know what to do with that boy anymore,” you’ll hear her whisper later into the phone, when she thinks you’ve gone to sleep. “He’s starting to scare me.”

Good.

She should be scared of me.

People get you branded a pervert. Kids at school start whispering. Pointing and laughing. It ain’t my fault that couple decided to copulate—to fuck—under my tree.

That slut, in her mini skirt pressed between the trunk and the torso of that punk, had her head lolling about like some kind of limp doll. Eyes rolled into the back of her head. Eyes looked up and found mine. While I was perched harmlessly in my tree.

That scream. Dear God, that bitch had a set of lungs in her. Her douchebag boyfriend, with pants around his ankles and frothing at the mouth. His face a most violent shade of maroon. The cords on his neck protruded like a choked dog. And I laughed. I laughed and laughed and laughed. I laughed until the cops came and took me down to the station.

Such epic bullshit.

I didn’t do anything wrong! 

I like my tree. I like my routine.

Every night, after supper, until it gets dark, I walk down the forest path by my house until I get to the park by the lake.

It isn’t a great park.

The playground equipment is pretty old and mostly busted. The bathrooms are covered in graffiti and used condoms and other refuse. Once I even found a doll’s head stuffed up with money, hidden under the toilet tank lid in the women’s bathroom.

Even though it’s a pretty crappy park, it is frequented by a motley crew of regulars (myself included)—horny teens, the kind of parents who don’t mind staring at their phones while their toddlers play on a slide that looks like they might require a tetanus shot when they’re through, robust seniors who bought into the neighbourhood long before it became so rundown, out for their nightly jog, like Mrs. Weixelmayer before she kicked the bucket. 

Madison.

And me.

I’m a people-watcher, see. 

And I like a quiet place to think.

There is something so indescribably wonderful about being unseen; to have a place of your own, so quiet, so safe, from which to view the world beneath your feet. The tree trunk is short, fat, and gnarled so that it leans ever so slightly to the side. The tree reminds me of my uncle, a notorious drunk and womanizer, struggling to keep his balance as he takes a piss. The branches shoot out at every angle, a tangled mass of clawing limbs that make the perfect refuge for someone small and nimble enough, and with the right eye like I have, to see its full potential.

No one ever thinks to look up… Well, not usually, and those branches are arranged in such a way that I can gaze out upon the world and see in every direction while remaining perfectly hidden.

And I almost lost that fortress of solitude, thanks to that horny skank and her ‘roided up boyfriend.

I play the vignette over and over in my head until the memory becomes surreal and distorted. Sometimes that girl is Madison Burchell. Sometimes she is Mrs. Weixelmayer. Sometimes she’s my Ma.

But the one detail I get right, every single god-damned time, is the scream.

***

I’m really not supposed to be here anymore, but who can own a tree? A tree in a public park? I don’t know what that girl thinks she saw… But she’s lying. And I’m not going to give up my tree because of a lie. I have principles.

People lie all the time. Even me. I lie to save my own skin, or to amuse myself from time to time. Everyone does it, and if they tell you that they don’t, then they’re full of shit.

My Ma used to lie to me every time that uncle came over and kicked the shit out of her.

He wasn’t really an uncle, or at least, he wasn’t really my uncle. Ma told me to call him Uncle Don, and so I did. And when I would come sneaking out into the kitchen after hearing the screen door slam again, after more slurred threats, hair pulling, begging, and crying, she would lie to me.

I remember the bag of thawing peas held up against her jaw as she sucked away on a cigarette. She looked at least a hundred years old.

“He didn’t hurt me, baby. It was an accident.”

She would try to smile through her busted lips, snot snaking down her face, dribbling on her chin. 

“Just a game. Just pretend. Mama’s okay.”

And I would help her to bed and let her stroke my hair until she cried herself to sleep. 

Maybe that happened. Maybe that was my Ma and me. Our life.

Maybe it was some shitty movie I saw on TV.

Maybe I’m just telling myself some twisted little story for my own twisted little amusement. How the fuck would you know? How would I? The biggest lies we tell are the ones we tell ourselves because they are the lies that are the easiest to believe.

Maybe it was Madison Burchell pressed up against the tree. 

Maybe it was Mrs. Weixelmayer, out for a sunset jog. An asthma attack, or maybe a stroke. Gasping for breath. Sagging arms outstretched, trying to brace herself against my god-damned tree. 

I tried to help her. I really did.

I think I did.

Her eyes were wide and filled with terror, gasping for breath.

When they found her body, there was no investigation. An old broad out for a jog, at her age? Her poor old heart couldn’t take it. It just gave out.

An accident.

Like what happened to Madison.

We used to play at the park together, you know, before she moved out of the neighbourhood, when we were both still kids. Her, with her pigtails and old-school Sailor Moon backpack. Sometimes we would split her bologna sandwich, or play pirates, or stand on each other’s backs and try to reach the lowest branches of my tree. That makes me laugh now that I think of it. Little Madison Burchell, her cute little face screwed up in concentration, tottering on my back, fingers reaching, us falling together in a tumbled heap. So much has changed since then. Now all it takes is a run and a jump and BOOM. I’m back home.

My arm is really starting to sting now. 

Not arm—arms.

I pull back my ragged sleeves—when did that happen? —and examine the wound again. Not one scrape like I thought, but dozens of tiny little pinprick scratches all up and down my inner arms. My neck. My face. They remind me of claw marks, like the ones you can get from that little dog at the base of my tree.

Shit.

I had forgotten it was there. 

I return my attention to the stupid thing, keeping a keen eye out for any trace of its owner. 

I had gotten so wrapped up in my thoughts again. That happens sometimes too. I get carried away. Ma used to call it my “storyworld”, back when I was young enough that my quirks could still be classified as cute or charming, or at least some semblance of normal. Sometimes I get into my storyworld, in my tree, and it can be well past dark by the time I get back home. No point sneaking around anymore. Not when your Ma is already afraid of you, already thinks you’re deranged, or worse. 

“He’s starting to scare me,” I heard her tell her sister on the phone. Or maybe she said it to an uncle, who isn’t really my uncle, or… Who knows. 

She said I went into my storyworld when I was at the police station too, that any time anyone tried to talk to me I just laughed, with eyes glazed, staring straight ahead. The cops only knew to call my Ma because the dumb bitch had written my name and her phone number on the inside of my backpack like I’m some little kid. 

When I got back home, I cut up that backpack with scissors and threw the tiny pieces away.

The dog isn’t moving now. It’s a shaggy mop of a thing, not much bigger than a rat. It’s wearing a collar and a leash with no owner on the other end. Lying at the bottom of my tree, its great glassy eyes staring, like it knows I’m up here, like it has a bone to pick with me.

I didn’t know Madison Burchell had a dog.

When we were kids, neither of us had pets. We’d take turns pretending to be cats, and dogs, and parakeets, and purple lions, and whatever other bullshit you can think up when you’re little, poor, and smart. ‘Til her parents split up, and she moved away. Not far enough away so that she went to a different school or anything, but far enough that she became part of another world. Far enough that we couldn’t be friends anymore.

Sometimes, she would come back here, always alone, always at night. She would just sit on the picnic table and stare, at what—I could never tell. A storyworld of her own, perhaps. Sometimes she would cry, not performative or gratuitous, like Ma and her snot, and her bag of peas, but kind of dignified. A little sniff, quickly wiping away the tears. I always thought she looked so pretty when she cried. Different from that fake ass smile she used to wear around school, that’s for damn sure. 

And tonight, when I saw her, I wanted to tell her that.

I was tired of watching, and waiting, from the shadows.

I thought of the stories we would make in our minds, as kids. 

I thought of the storyworlds we were making now. 

I was so fucking stupid.

I thought maybe we were… I don’t know, kindred spirits, or some fucking bullshit.

I didn’t mean to scare her.

But the second I jumped down from that tree…

I didn’t even see the stupid dog. She must have had the fucking rat on her lap. And the second my feet touched dirt, the thing started barking its ugly little head off. 

And that’s when Madison started screaming.

And I thought of her pigtails, and her bologna sandwiches, and the fornicators on my tree, the same place where pathetic old Mrs. Weixelmayer took her final breaths and Ma on the phone, and then I went into my storyworld. Then I stopped thinking.

And, at first, I cried. I ain’t proud to say it wasn’t dignified, like Madison Burchell. It wasn’t raw like Ma, either. It was like the wretchings of some disgusting animal. 

And that thought made me laugh.

Like at the police station. 

I laughed until my stomach hurt.

I laughed until I had no more tears left.

That smile, burning, as it stretched across my face.

As I made my way again into my tree.

Maybe that happened. Maybe that was me. My life.

Maybe it was some shitty movie I saw on TV.

Maybe I am just telling myself some twisted little story for my own twisted little amusement. How the fuck would you know? How would I?

The biggest lies we tell are the ones we tell ourselves.

Because they are the lies that are the easiest to believe.