Alice looked like a
school girl of sixteen. She wore the Catholic issue plaid
skirt and white dress top. Her socks ended at her knees
like they should; shoed with mary janes. She only lacked
the small gold cross around her neck. Her dark hair framed
her pale facial features, pudgy, pinchable cheeks and red
pouty lips.
"How long has he been
strapped in the chair?" The Bloodreader looked past me, or
at least I think she did, her eyelids squinting around
rheumy eyes. The guards behind her didn't answer and she
sighed at their impatience.
"He's cold. You'll have
to massage his arm now. I need a clear drop. A whole drop."
When we were twelve,
Bobby Milton and I rode our bikes to the library to look at
naked pictures in the National Geographic magazines they
kept on the second floor. We would go after school, in the
autumn of our seventh grade year, before the weather turned
too cold for boys on bikes. Bobby’s older brother, Nate,
told us about the pictures of bare-chested native
women.Being dumb and horny and without access to real nudie mags—Bobby’s
dad was a youth pastor at the Baptist church and my dad was
in Hawaii with his secretary—we scurried up the creaking
stairs to the magazine room and spent an hour or so flipping
through the glossy pages.
