Styrofoam Throne
Authors: David Bone
STYROFOAM THRONE
by David Bone
JAWBREAKER BOOKS
Copyright © 2013 by David Bone
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover art by Nick Lakiotes
ISBN 978-0-9894152-1-7
Jawbreaker Books
www.DavidBoneBooks.com
To Stephanie
1
It was the last day of high school before the summer of 1984. A total jack-off day, for sure. I slouched in the back of class and hid behind my shaggy, black hair. My legs were out in the aisles because they wouldn’t fit under the desk. But really, nothing about me fit in at school. Surrounded by red-blooded, all-American assholes, I was a horror-obsessed loner. Everyone was buzzing with countdown fever. Their smiles and conspiratorial camaraderie took over the normally somber room. The only thing we did was get our tests back from the day before. The teacher handed each one back with a cookie and a look that projected your grade. I didn’t have anyone to talk to, so I ate mine as slowly as possible.
Looking for something else to pay attention to, I zeroed in on a kid wearing a Castle Dunes T-shirt. It was a seasonal haunted attraction anchored to our town’s pier. The commercials and brochures claimed it to be “the largest haunted walk-through attraction in America!”
Its five stories dominated the coastline and represented the town’s signature landmark. And my obsession.
“I was the first one in yesterday!” the kid with the T-shirt said.
“Whoa, so what’s it like this year?” another asked.
“It’s fucking insane!”
“Ricky! Watch your mouth, young man,” the teacher said, looking up from her romance novel.
“Anyways, I can’t believe I’m alive!”
Our town, Dunes, was about halfway up the California coast. Going to the Castle was really the only thing to do during the summer.
I needed an excuse to get closer to the conversation without crossing the social boundary. I picked up an already sharpened pencil, broke the tip, and walked to the wall-mounted sharpener in front.
“I saw the most fucked-up—sorry, Ms. K—like, satanic slaughter room where there was this evil dude with a pentagram branded on his chest, and he was just stabbing the shit out of this hot chick with green hair.” The kid continued on in a whisper. “She was wearing, like, this white sacrificial robe, but it was all bloody by her tits, so you could totally see nipples.”
“Oh shit! That one in the commercial?” one of them asked.
“No, bigger tits. She’s new, I think.”
The impressed group nodded in silence at this info. But I couldn’t hold back, I had a million questions to ask. I had never been inside.
“Did . . . did you see Dracula?” I asked.
The group turned their heads in synchronicity and shot me a death stare. I cranked my pencil with renewed purpose. Of course I knew it wasn't
the
Dracula, but it was
a
Dracula and that was plenty cool.
“What’re you doing?” the kid said, motioning to my shrinking pencil. “Making a to-scale model of your dick?”
“Ricky!” The teacher sighed and left the room with her coffee cup.
As the door shut, the group erupted in laughter. Everyone was into Castle Dunes but I was really, really into Castle Dunes. Generally, my enthusiasm for things I liked was unparalleled by others and left me feeling alone. In high school, common interests were only a bond if one wasn’t obsessively interested. Unable to relate to simple amusement, I’d slipped up and revealed that something was actually important to me.
“Did, did I see Dracula?! Donovan, you look like you already work there, you fuckin’ weirdo,” Ricky said.
Now the entire class was laughing as I cranked away. If the tone of his remark had been more complimentary, I couldn’t think of higher praise. But it was definitely not praise.
“Prince of Dorkness!” another student said as the laughs kept coming.
If it was anyone but me, I would have been included in the conversation and had my question answered with “Yeah, bro!” But almost everyone hated me after what happened at the freshman talent show.
It was all stupid, normal stuff like football players dressing up like cheerleaders and vice versa. My “talent” ended up being a little too high and wide for the audience though. I dressed up like a magician and pulled a rabbit out of my hat. The crowd couldn’t even pretend to be patient. They had their groans and shouts of “Next!” ready when they first saw me walk out. But that wasn’t the trick. Suddenly, the rabbit turned on me and started attacking my throat. To the audience’s horror, I ripped it apart in defense, sending blood and fur flying everywhere. The crowd screamed bloody murder while the principal hurried on stage to escort me off. No one let me finish the trick. If they had, I could have revealed that the rabbit was fake and that it was a trick within a trick. No one believed me. So from then on, I was the freak who exhibited early serial killer behavior on stage.
But in class, I stuck to the loop of furious sharpening until the metal band holding the eraser hit the sharpener inside with a ripping clank. I left the remains stuck inside and walked back to my desk. Various classmates were still turning around and directing their sputtering chuckles at me. I slouched in my desk as much as possible before sliding under it. Everyone went back to detailing their plans of sun-drenched anarchy. They couldn’t wait to be together this summer. I couldn’t wait to be alone.
I think the girls hated me more than the guys. Of course I wanted to hook up with chicks at school but it was a one-sided interest. I never had the chance to act on any of my feelings, or even the chance to shyly not act on them. One time, a girl at school who wasn’t so much a friend but a person who took pity on me told me that she knew of a “couple girls” who would like me “if you’d only change the way you look.” I’d rather they just hate me. And how come they’d like me if they wanted me to change? It only made me want to hide behind my horror magazines at lunch even more.
I did have one friend, Egon. Maybe we were more like lonely acquaintances. But he was going away all summer to space camp. He was fascinated not by space itself but by the machinery it took to get there. We would sit around at lunch or wander the forests after school and patiently listen to each other’s monologues about shit we liked, then pass the mic. We respected each other’s weird obsessions even if we didn’t share them. But I wouldn’t even have that this summer.
I took the long way home so I could cut through Odd Fellows Cemetery. Around town, it was the closest thing to a park that didn’t have barbecues and basketball courts. No one was ever in it except for the occasional caretaker and me. It felt like I owned the biggest plot of land in town for free and just had to share it with some very quiet, unobtrusive tenants. It was cool to loiter around, imagining creepy things unfolding, but no amount of real corpses beneath my feet could satisfy my longing for fake ones. The Odd Fellows seemed too content to bother spooking their remains. I wanted balls-to-the-Castle-walls horror. No one thought the cemetery was fun, not even me, but I worked with what I had. While other kids were hitting the pavement in convoys of bikes and skateboards, I pondered the dark side of the tomb.
I once saw people fucking in the graveyard and hung around to watch them. My only experience with sex was a couple weathered porno mags I found under the bridge, so I chalked my voyeurism up to educational observation. But I got caught. The girl saw me and sent the guy running after me while he tried pulling up his pants. I got away but they both went to Dunes High and told everyone I jacked off in the cemetery. I wasn’t jacking off. Not like I didn’t memorize the scene for later. But between that and the talent show, I was ruined.
My mom, Janice, and I lived in a one-story, two-bedroom house. Featuring tan stucco and brown trim, it was no Castle. Our lawn never looked green, but it wasn’t all dirt either. Just dry, pale grass that wouldn’t give up. Her orange VW Bug was parked in the driveway, which was strange because she normally waitressed Fridays at The Roost, the local diner.
I walked in the door and saw Janice sitting in her living room chair, waiting. Her long brown hair was permanently and tightly pulled back, showing off tired eyes and the beginning of a sagging face that had long ago lost its ability to smile off the clock. Hers used to be a different story. She had once been a glamorous magician’s assistant with big dreams, until she got knocked up. The magician kept her on until she couldn’t fit in the trap door any longer. That’s when he left her in the middle of the night, pulling one last disappearing act in the Koko Motel parking lot. That’s the only story she ever told me about my father.
“Hey,” I said.
“Where have you been? School got out over two hours ago,” Janice said. I felt like I had walked into the middle of an argument.
“The cemetery.”
Janice rolled her eyes.
“How was school?”
“Glad it’s over.”
“Well, don’t think you’re on Easy Street, mister.”
“I think Easy Street is on the other side of town.”
“Real funny. You’re not gonna get away with staring at your shoes all summer long. You’re sixteen, so that means you can work at The Roost now.”
“What?!” I said. I couldn’t believe it and like most cornered guys, my only defense was “What?!”
“Yep, look in the mirror and say hello to our new dishwasher.”
“What?!?!”
“If you don’t have responsibility, you’re going to get in trouble,” Janice said, “and I don’t want you hanging out with those . . . Castle people,” she sneered.
“But the Castle is cool!”
“It’s the butthole of this town. Starting tonight, you’re on the same schedule as me at The Roost.”
“Fuuuh . . .” I stopped myself half a syllable short.
“Don’t you even. Donovan, you’re too smart for your own good and without a job, you’ll be too bored to do anything smart.”
“I earned the right to be bored! I got good grades. I’d rather go to summer school than wash dishes six double shifts a week with my . . .
Why the hell do I have to work?”
“Okay, mister, okay. I want you to go outside, all the way to the front yard, and walk back in. While you are walking, I want you to total up every single item in this house and tell me how much money it is when you reach the back. Then total up the car, gas, insurance, health bills, phone bills, groceries, clothes—all the rest. Now tell me where this money comes from. But maybe you think I pay with magic beans.”
I knew we were broke because it was the moat of poverty that kept me from the Castle. Once last summer, I decided I was finally going to get inside. All I needed was three dollars and seventy-five cents. An approachable sum to a normal kid, but a lot to someone who didn’t ever have a penny in their pocket.
“I’m not giving you an hour’s pay so you can piss your pants!” Janice would say when I asked for money.
So one day while observing the local bums at the pier, I hatched a plan. Less of a plan and more of a plea, really, but still a way to get a ticket. I squatted in front of the Castle and put up a cardboard sign that said, “Homeless. Please Help.” People gave me more sympathetic glances than change but after a few hours, I was about halfway there. I kept busy by thinking of techniques to master the puppetry of heart strings. While practicing a trembling lip, I heard a familiar voice scream my name.
“Donovan!”
It was the bloodcurdling, wretched shriek of a witch. A voice like this could front a metal band.
“Donovaaaaannnn!”
It was Janice across the street, stopping the car in the middle of traffic and ripping her door open. She stormed across the road, dodging cars with a middle finger, and tore the sign out of my hands.
“Is this who we are?! I don’t work sixty hours a week for you to be a beggar! Do you realize how many people saw you?”
“But—”
“Get in the car!”