The Hook: The Voyeur
Soto writes a book--but chat gets the rough drafts hehe
The Baby is truly a man. His stomach is rounder than an egg; his buttocks have shrunken to the size of shriveled grapes, and he stands with a certain lean to like he is constantly on the verge of tipping backwards. He is preparing for the night. Inside the botanical gourd he calls home; he lathers the dank membrane of his skin with tallow and mutters to himself beneath his thick breath, ladies’ songs and the hymns of marches.
With fingers greased in fat, he pushes his way up from his sitting position with a grunt. The movement almost pushes what’s inside of him, out. Then, smelling like the sweet root rot of his home, he begins forward into the main street, slapping the palms of his feet to the ground with the haste of a snare drum, embracing the chill of the night. Naked, he always stood; It’s with the wind that he begins to harden and shrivel up like the shell of a walnut, darkening to the color of the red dirt he traversed to the hearths of homes alien to his own. See: The Baby had taken the role of voyeur so deep into his soul, that his eyelids have since shrunken behind his bared eyeballs.
The Baby liked best to watch the family come ‘round to dinner. Likes seeing the tired glow of people, come home from work—still moving without respite from the day’s mechanics. He likes it when they eat meat, stewed, or steaked. He likes blondes with curls, only if they tie them up with red ribbon. The Baby, likes to touch himself to domesticity.
And Jon? How goes the mill? I’d heard you-
Shut up bitch. for a second, she had quieted.
He likes, much more, when he can hear their conversations, when the men are harsh. He lives vicariously through them. The Baby tunnels his vision into the fine waters of their testosterone to see what glittery power possesses a true man. He imagines he was them—he imagines having hair on his blued skin, and a fist big enough to hit, and he imagines The Man’s strength was his own instead of what he currently possesses: arms with the barest of muscle, containing only the strength to grip at himself and the brittle flake of window sills.
In all his peeping, The Baby had never been caught. He comes out only at night, though it was truly always nighttime. Night prevailed ever since the sun shied away from its project and turned its back to the world, shining the butt of its moon to offer the last silvery mercy to a world of new gods. Crops have died and become perverted, poisoning themselves into a dried kale of their former selves. The unlucky found their way to jimsonweed in desperation. Quickly the fell into illness—vomiting and shitting out their own hydration, in simultaneous. Dirt ran red; melons grew bulbous and fruitless; nuts hung sentinel, jicama dried. The devil’s trumpet rings over the world beating away the chamomile, violas, and marigolds.
Little Boy, why don’t you tell your Pa what you did today. You found some joy, didn’t you?
Wont you eat? ‘Keep on talkin cause you keep leaving your damn gullet empty
The Bitch continued to talk. She talked over Little Boy as his voice droned gentle and as soft as the changing of winds. He spoke of his day; he spoke of the joy he had found wandering up and down the road of Rhodes; hugging ladies’ legs through their plumed skirts. He offered well wishes and encouragements to all who passed by him in ignorance to take a blessing when a blessing was offered. So, he gathered flowers of the jimsonweed and gained fingertips worn raw by the thorns. He finger painted each petal to make them a bright quivering red to sell his new botanical creation to idiots. ‘Red Vipers’ he had called them, a plant he had found travelling the blind spots around Rhodes, he had told them. He gained 9 cents out of the three who took pity on the barley headed child.
The Bitch continues to talk, The Little Boy’s blood runs from his fingers into the salt of his bone broth soup
She turns in her chair and jostles the table with her knobby knees, still babbling about the gift of staled bread she had come upon. The Man pushes his chair back and stands up. He bears his palms out before him, the face of them towards each other alike holding symbols. Holding the invisible vibration, he claps his hands over The Bitch’s ears. Her eyes roll into her head, and she falls to the floor, wide mouthed and mimicking The Baby.
The Bitch convulses; The Man and The Little Boy do not care.
The Baby reels back from the window with a debaucherous gasp; his hand flies to the bone of his chest, and he stamps the ground in delight. Oh, oh, oh! He cries with a reverance akin to holding sacrament; his head turns two and fro in a staccato before remembering his shame and covering his privates.
He slinks off, back into the stalety of night
