Return of the Trickster by Eden Robinson (ebook voice reader TXT) 📗

through his eyes, as he stumbled towards David. When you want to obliterate yourself, find someone willing to obliterate you. He wanted to find David and suddenly he could hear him like static, growing louder if he went in the right direction.

Think about everyone you love, Georgina said. Dying.

Was he awake? He was sure he was awake. But he was pretty blitzed. Pretty. Hammered. Out of his head, but not enough. Not nearly enough.

Jared, she said.

Crossing the expanse of a park in East Vancouver. Crossing the mucky green of a waterlogged lawn, hearing the homeless man loudly toasting his friends, the man who’d bought him his giant-ass vodka in return for one for himself. Not old enough to go in the liquor store. Standing outside looking in.

Do you think I’m playing?

Sh-sh-sh-shuffle-ing. Every day. I’m shuf-fle-ing. Pit bull leaping through the air so happy to be free coming to rip off Jared’s face. Face. Off. Nicolas Cage when his mom thought he was hot. Her type. Baby Killer’s sibling getting hit by his mom’s truck. Dirty snow, grey with rock salt and red with fresh blood and bits of dog flesh.

Imagine what mark you could’ve gotten if you’d tried. David cracking his ribs.

I miss Baby Killer, Jared thought.

You only had to bring me back and we could have been okay, Georgina said. I warned you and I warned you and I warned you.

I’ll never have another dog, Jared thought. I’ll never finish school. I’ll never get married.

You brought this on yourself.

All his futures were ending. He was ending all his futures. Static on the line. The TV tuned to a dead channel. Sophia the thrum of the lowest note on an electric guitar. His mom the growl of a motorcycle revving. David the blank hiss of static growing louder as though someone was turning up the volume. Marco. Polo.

David in a truck. David was in the truck he had used to try to run him over. Gravel crunching beneath his feet. Secluded parking lot. David wearing sunglasses, his mouth open as if he was singing solo in a choir, but he was screaming. The closer Jared came, the louder David screamed. Jared saw himself through David’s eyes, saw what David saw in the alley when he was trying to kill him.

A boy with blackness under his skin. The boy who revealed his true self in the flames, a monstrous raven, the black beak emerging from his face and the horrific wings, like something prehistoric. And afterwards, the dead. The dead came for you. The dead whispered to you, wouldn’t let you sleep. They touched you and your skin went numb. The dead. The dead. After you witnessed true evil, you were marked by visions of the dead who never let you rest.

Here was the boy in human form again, opening the door and sliding into the passenger side, offering you an open bottle of vodka. Feathers shining blue-black under the human lie.

“No?” Jared said when David refused the bottle. “More for me.”

Ghosts everywhere. Ghosts in a tight circle. The prickle of their touch as they tried to get as close to David as they could. David’s face and the skull beneath it. Bare bone on one side and rotting flesh on the other. In all the time Jared had known him, he thought David was a normal human, but—surprise!—he was not. David was a freak like him. Some supernatural thing hiding in a human body.

“I see your real face,” Mrs. Jaks had said to you. “Would you like to see what I see, David?”

You backed away from the hatred in her eyes. The venom. Witch.

“Mrs. Jaks was okay,” Jared said. Tried to say. Slurred.

Then he missed her and his dad was dead, and he was sobbing in David’s truck and the man who was supposed to obliterate him finally stopped screaming and flung his driver’s door open and ran.

Bewildered, Jared watched David sprint down the street, batting ineffectively at the ghosts that followed him, some wispy and faint, some as solid-looking as the living, all of them gliding sadly, determined and relentless. Jared blearily thinking, David is not really David. David sees ghosts too.

—

Let’s have some tunes.

Passersby were giving him the side-eye. Day drinking in a truck near a park with children. Tsk-tsk. Jared fell out of the truck, careful to protect his bottle, closing the passenger-side door and using the hood to guide himself around to the driver’s side. Bingo. Keys in the ignition.

He wasn’t sure what his plan was now. He had no future, so he supposed there was no need for a plan. The booze was going to run out. Not soon. Halfway mark. He was a lightweight now. Not used to drinking anymore. He bent over and upchucked on the stick shift, fumigating the cab with soured vodka and bile. He got the radio to turn on.

“Reports of a six-vehicle crash eastbound on the Port Mann Bridge. Expect delays in all directions. Use alternate routes.”

“Kinda disappointed in you, David,” Jared said. “Not living up to your potential for murder.”

Oh, well. He just had to wait. Georgina’s people would find him. He could feel her in his head, staring out of his eyes.

“Run off those extra calories from Thanksgiving dinner and register for this weekend’s ten-kilometre Turkey Trot that winds its way along the False Creek Seawall.”

He couldn’t focus enough to change the channel to something less newsy so had to put up with the constant, dramatic breaking-news blares.

Phil lifting him off the bed after his alarm went off, making his fingers into pretend scissors. “Up and at ’em! Let’s cut the lazy glue off you, Jelly Bean.”

His dad was dead. Jared wanted out, out of his head. He took a long swig, but the pain was still there, underneath the hollow disbelief, like a gash that split you open to the bone.

Now imagine how it feels when some idiot murders your entire family, Georgina thought.

Not all of them, Jared thought.

No, Georgina thought. Not all of them.

Soft,