Marylin

A boy suffering from depression brings a gun to a high school graduation party, and the night turns into a violent nightmare.

The gun felt good in his hand, ergonomic. Just like the light-guns in the arcades he visited too often as a kid, only this one was real. He bounced it around in his hand a bit, getting a feel for it. So smooth, so heavy. It made him feel good. He felt the dark cloud dissipating a bit in the corner of his mind, growing thinner. The cloud that had been thicker and more opaque ever since Marilyn had left him, growing every day.

            The house was dark and empty. David walked up to the mirror in his father’s room and pointed the piece at it. He smiled a bit at the corner of his mouth: he looked like an action hero. He positioned the piece next to his face, pointing up, and he turned sideways for the mirror. Then he quickly spun and pointed the gun at his reflection and pulled the trigger. Click. The chamber was empty, of course. Click, click. He wasn’t that stupid, no matter how much his mother had always told him otherwise, until the day she had packed her bags and left in a storm of arguments and insults with his father. He had been six, and he remembered he had cried while looking out the rain-splattered window at her leaving in the taxi, but had never been able to remember why.

            He let his arms fall and stood there looking at himself. Skinny, always had been, with dark brown hair, almost black. Skin pasty, ears too big. He had been teased mercilessly in elementary school and junior high. In high school he had just been ignored. Thank heaven it would be over soon. He had a graduation party to go to tonight, one where everyone was invited, and he was going to have fun. There would be booze and food and dancing. He would celebrate the end of the beginning.

            What would truly make the party for him was his piece. Every time he touched it he felt that dark cloud going away; when he held it he felt less like that skinny anonymous kid that everyone had seen in the halls or in class but no one knew. He felt like somebody; he felt dangerous. Often he would dream that a masked shooter was rampaging around the school, and the shooter would take Marilyn hostage in one arm, still firing with the other. The gunman’s breath would tickle Marilyn’s hair, and he would whisper in her ear, Just hold on, sweet-cheeks. Once I’m done with these a******s, I’ll take care of you. The gunman would lick a tear off Marilyn’s cheek, and then David would come in with his gun firing, and the gunman would be thrown backwards in a comic scream. Marilyn would fall into David’s arms, and they would make passionate love in the storage closet by the boiler room. He had never told anyone about his dream.

            David loaded a clip into the gun just like his father had taught him on his tenth birthday. After the party, his father had let him hold the gun, instructed him on how to use it, then told him never to touch it again; it was only for emergencies. When David first held it, his palms were sweating enough that the gun felt slippery like a wet bar of soap. He was scared he would drop it and his father would yell at him, and he refused to move the gun or loosen his white-knuckled grip until his father finally took it back. Two days later, when he got back home from school, he had found his father’s jacket lying on the couch and had gently taken the gun from his father’s holster and held it in quiet reverence. After savouring the feeling of holding an object of such power, he quietly put it back, and since then he would search through his father’s things ever so often, just to feel that gun one more time.

David put on the leather jacket that he had bought himself weeks ago, using the money he earned from mowing the Scolari’s lawn every week the previous summer. He liked the way he looked in it, and had worn it to school every day since. He put the gun into the inside pocket of the jacket, and patted it bulk through the jacket like he saw people do in the movies. His father wouldn’t mind that he took it, as he was away again, drinking and bowling with his cop friends from the division. He wasn’t supposed to be without his gun, even off-duty, so he must have forgotten it or left it behind because he didn’t trust himself with it while intoxicated.

David’s father would be back like he always was, well into the night, stumbling drunkly through the front door after a few tries to get the key into the lock. He would shuffle clumsily into his room, always trying his hardest to not wake David up even through he invariably had. In the mornings he wouldn’t get out of bed until David had gone to school, so David would pour himself a bowl of cereal and eat it alone.

The gun safely in his pocket, David stepped out into the warm night after checking his hair in the door window. He walked down his road, whistling unrecognizable tunes, and when he heard a loud dog bark, or saw suspicious behaviour by men wearing black down the street, he would run his hand along the contours of his gun through the jacket’s leather and feel comforted. Dangerous.

 

The party was held at the house of someone whose parents probably had many, so he or she wouldn’t mind if one of them was wrecked. Outside the music was audible; inside it was deafening. David pushed past crowds of people into the living room, where it was dark and there were multi-coloured strobe lights dancing and weaving on the walls. He spied an unoccupied couch and sat in it heavily, watching as a pink strobe light floated onto the cushion next to him, then moved on to better places.

The mass of dancers and minglers in the middle of the living room throbbed and waved, and David watched. On the furniture on both sides of him, there were couples kissing passionately, and as David watched, he felt the dark cloud descending on him again, twisting and swirling, gobbling him up. He tore his eyes away, focusing on the drunken kids at the drink table, where one was gulping pink punch from the bowl while others crowded around him, clapping their hands in rhythm and chanting.

“Dave.”

David looked up and saw Sammy standing in front of him with a paper cup of something in his hand. Sammy was in his math class, and they had crossed paths sometimes. He was generally a loner, who would rather spend a night with his calculus than other people. That was what David supposed had attracted him to Sammy.

“May I sit?” Sammy said, pointing to the cushion beside David where the strobe light had been moments before.

“Uh...yeah, sure.”

Sammy sat down, his feet rising in the air for a second as he sank in the leather sofa, shaking some of his drink out of his cup and on his plaid shirt. “Some f*****g party, huh?” he asked David. He had to yell to be heard.

“Yeah. Some party.”

They sat there for some moments, just observing the chaos before them. A bright white spotlight was pointed at one of the couples making out on the couches.

“Woooooo! Benjie!” someone shouted from near the spotlight.

The girl in the glare of the spotlight, who had turned around momentarily, got back on Benjie and continued to kiss. Benjie wrapped his arm around the girl and extended his middle finger to the spotlight people, his hand behind her back. More drunk calls came from the spotlight before it swivelled in another direction.

Sammy turned to David. “I heard about that thing with your girl, Dave. Must’ve been tough.”

“Yeah. It was.”

“Uh-huh. How’re you handling it?”

“Okay.”

Sammy gave him a smile of sympathy and clapped him on the leg, saying nothing more. Then he took a swig out of his cup.

After a while, Sammy said, “Oh! I think I see Tam near the drinks.”

“Who’s Tam?”

Sammy got up with some effort, crumpling his empty cup and depositing it on the end-table near the couch. He swallowed the last bit of drink in his mouth. “Girlfriend.”

“When did you start getting dates, Sammy?”

Sammy only gave him a smile, then walked off towards the drink table.

David felt the dark cloud enveloping him again, and all around him people drank, danced, and kissed. A strobe hit his face, making him blink back tears, then moved away. He felt the piece in his jacket pocket, gripping the handle and putting his index finger against the trigger guard. He imagined someone at the party had brought a knife and was threatening people with it, and David would pull out the gun and make him put it down nice and slow, and he would be the hero that night. People would ask his name, clap him on the back, and would later go home knowing that David Burke had saved their lives. They would sing his praises, and somehow Marilyn would know. Marilyn would know, and she would come back to him. Marilyn would come back to him.

Screams and giggles came from far away past the dancers, and then the fast music stopped and the slow music came on. Some people in the dancing group went to sit down or get drinks, but most stayed. The dancers, instead of one writhing group now, split up into pairs, and rotated on their own little two-person merry-go-rounds. The strobe lights slowed down from their frenetic pace, and what had previously been chaos quieted down into almost serenity. Even the kissers stopped furiously making out to watch. That was when Marilyn walked in.

She wasn’t alone; she had a boy with her, linking arms with her, but not too close, like she was a holy relic that needed to be handled with care. She pointed to one of the empty couches away from where David was. The boy with her said something in her ear, gesturing his head towards the dancers. Don’t you want to go dance?

She shook her head, and said something to him, angling her head so she was talking to his ear. I think I just want to sit for now.

He nodded quickly, and they made their way around the dancers to the empty seat. He sat in it, and she descended gracefully into the small space between him and the armrest of the loveseat, curling her arms around his neck.

On the day that David had first asked her out, he could barely pay attention in class because of how nervous he was. He had decided the night before that he was going to do it, because he couldn’t stand holding it off for any longer. He couldn’t stand staring at her in every class and trying awkwardly to talk to her whenever he passed her. Hi, he usually said, and Hi, she said back, and he couldn’t think of anything else to say, but by then she was already walking away, talking and laughing with her friends. Always, watching her go on with her life without him, he felt the familiar dark cloud sweep over his mind, and he would go home moody and would say little to his father. He spent most evenings writing her long, heartfelt love notes, then immediately ripping them up and tossing them in the trash. He had loved her since tenth grade, and it had been the twelfth when he had told himself that if he didn’t get it over with soon, he would have missed his chance forever. Forever. That was the word that got him moving.

It was April, and he stood across the hall from her locker, watching her talk with Lisa, her best friend. He waited too long, long enough for him to convince himself that it was pointless, she could never like him, and was getting ready to walk away and never come back when he saw her smile. It was the smile that he knew better than his own father’s, than anyone’s. It was that beautiful smile that erased his fears and convinced him to approach her.

When she noticed him she said, “Oh. Hi, David” with perfunctory friendliness, and turned back to Lisa. When David continued to stand there, she looked back at him, a frown on her pretty face.

He blurted, “I love you” before he could stop himself. Then he repeated parts of the love letters he had written, which were all memorized. She stood looking at him while he talked, that frown still creasing her forehead, and when it was all over she said, after a pause and a quick glance at Lisa, “That’s sweet, David.” Only months later, when he replayed that scene in his head over and over in his mind as he was going to sleep, did he realize that she had said that with patronizing sweetness, like she was talking to a child or a puppy. He had just revealed his deepest desire, his most hidden secret, his soul to her, and she talked to him like he was a f*****g puppy. And he was so damn crazy about her that he had never even noticed.

Sammy returned with a girl, both of them carrying drinks. Her hair had read highlights, and she wore glasses: she was pretty in a nerdy sort of way. They sat next to David.

David nodded to the girl. “This her?”

“Yep, this is her. This is her Tam.” Sammy said.

Tam wiggled her fingers in a wave.

David nodded and turned back to the dancers. The slow song had ended and disco music was playing. Sammy and his girlfriend talked and sipped their drinks. Tam laughed about something.

David resumed watching Marilyn. Now she was giggling as her boyfriend grinned and told her something, wrapped around him like morning glory. She nuzzled her face into his neck.

“Want a drink, Dave?”

“Huh?”

Sammy and Tam were looking at him. “A drink. I’m gonna go get another one. Do you want a drink?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

“Cool. What do you want?”

“Uh...whatever you’re having.”

“Dr. Pepper; is that okay? I don’t drink.”

“Yeah, that’s alright.”

Sammy got up from the couch, and said to Tam, “I’ll be watching you two.” He made the I’m watching you gesture and pointed to both of them.

“Very funny, Sam,” she said.

He kissed her on the cheek and walked away.

David looked at Marilyn again, and saw she had stopped talking with her boyfriend and was looking around the room like David had done when he first arrived. He looked down at the ground when her eyes wandered in his direction, hoping she didn’t see him. He unconsciously fingered the bulge in his jacket.

They had gone on two dates, Marilyn and him. Both had been to the movies, and both movies had been her pick: romantic comedies. David hadn’t cared, because he was going to sit next to her—close to her—for almost two hours. Before the first date, he had laid awake all night imagining all that would happen during the film: that she would hold his hand and rest her head on his shoulder, and when he took her home he would kiss her outside her house in the dark street, the porch light casting a warm glow over both of them; she would smile and tell him she loved him.

He had picked her up at her house, almost a half-hour’s walk from his own, but he hadn’t minded. They walked to the local multiplex and he offered to buy both tickets, and she let him, and they went in and sat down. He remembered they didn’t talk much while they waited for the movie to start: he was far too nervous to say anything, and she didn’t seem like she had much to say. When the movie started, they sat and didn’t touch, until David finally summoned the courage to hold out his hand for her when there was a tender moment on the screen between the romantic leads. She looked at it, looked at him, took his hand, and gave it a weak squeeze before putting her hand back in her lap. They didn’t touch for the rest of the movie. Walking home after he had dropped her off at her house with goodbyes and a hug, when the adrenaline began to fade, he began to feel the first hints of the dark cloud since he had talked to her at her locker that day. It grew deeper and darker after he had arrived home and crawled into bed. The house was empty; his father was out.

The second date, a week later, was very much the same. Only this time they shared an armrest.

Two-and-a-half weeks after they became a couple, David was passed a note from Lisa, Marilyn’s best friend, in math class. It told him Marilyn wanted to talk to him after school by her locker. He looked over at Lisa, and she had a bizarre expression of almost sympathy on her face. David couldn’t work for the remainder of the period; he only stared at the clock.

He took a drink on his way to Marilyn’s locker, and there she was beside him as he dipped his head to reach the flowing water. He stood up straight and looked up at her, smiling, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. She wasn’t smiling. And after she told him that she’d been thinking about things—he asked her what about—and she said she’d come to a decision, and asked him if it was okay if they could just be friends from now on, neither was David. He agreed amicably and told her that whatever she wanted was fine with him. And after she had smiled and hugged him, and went off to enjoy her life somewhere without him, he thought bitterly, We were never friends in the first place. The darkness hit him with such tremendous force that he had to lean on the drinking fountain to keep himself up. He had watched her go, and with her his happiness, and around him the dark cloud had swirled and swirled.

In the present, Tam spoke to him, interrupting his thoughts.

“Who is that?”

David turned to her, and realized Sammy hadn’t brought back the drinks yet. Tam was sitting on the cushion next to him and was eyeing him suspiciously. “Who?” he asked.

“The girl you keep staring at.” She nodded her head towards Marilyn. “Her. Who is she?”

“Nobody.”

She smiled. “You sure? Cause the way I see it, she’s somebody to you.”

David guessed Sammy hadn’t told her. “I don’t know her,” he said.

She nodded. “Okay.”

Another slow song was playing, and there were more dancers than ever in the middle of the room, shuffling to the music. David looked at Marilyn again, and saw she seemed to be struggling with her boyfriend. He was grabbing at her, and she was pushing him away, trying to get up from the loveseat. He was smiling and saying something, and she seemed to be almost yelling, by the way her mouthed moved. The music was loud enough that they weren’t audible. David glanced around the room, and saw that no one else had noticed the struggle.

David sat up in the couch, and Tam noticed. She followed his eyes.

“Oh my God,” she said, more calmly than David felt. “Looks like your girl could use some help.”

Across the room, Marilyn’s boyfriend’s mouth moved as he held her in the loveseat. Don’t make a scene, Babe.

“I...” David had sudden flashbacks to his dream where a gunman terrorized Marilyn. “I should help her.”

“Looks like she could use it.”

Tam sounded infuriatingly calm, like she witnessed something like this every day. Maybe she did. She touched a palm to his shoulder. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”

He stood up, and unconsciously his finger strayed to the butt of his gun in his pocket. He walked brave steps over to where Marilyn was, his index finger running a trail across the surface of the gun, feeling the ridges of the handle and the smoothness of the side. The two in the loveseat stopped when they saw him approach.

“Is... There a problem here?” he asked, and he silently cursed his voice for sounding so meek.

“No,” said the guy, a cocky grin on his face. He turned to Marilyn. “Is there a problem here? I don’t see a problem here.”

“David?” she said, squinting in the dark at him. “What the f**k are you doing here?”

David suddenly felt stupid. “I...saw you two fighting. I was going to see if you were okay.”

The guy snickered. “If you were okay. Who the hell are you, Prince Charming? No, there’s no problem. Marilyn and me, we just had a disagreement, is all. Right, sugar?”

Marilyn nodded impatiently. “Scot was being an a*****e. He does that.”

“Um, okay.” David nodded. “Is...there anything you need, Marilyn?”

“No, David. There’s nothing I need from you. So just go away, okay? I ended it between us months ago.”

“You said we could still be friends.” David felt something stick in his throat.

She laughed humourlessly. “Jesus, you still believe that? No, David, I said that just to make it a little easier for you. We were never friends, David. I thought you f*****g knew that. I took a little pity on you one day when you started saying that poetic s**t at my locker. I realized it was a mistake and I ended it, okay?”

“Go fly a kite, buddy,” her boyfriend said.

Marilyn rubbed her forehead, and suddenly she wasn’t so pretty. She never was. “Yeah. Just go f**k off, David. I was having fun here. I don’t want to see you again.”

David turned to walk away, and stopped. The dark cloud rushed in all at once, silently; clouding his mind, his vision. He realized what he was: just some poor b*****d with no friends, no mother, and a father who would rather spend time with his buddies and the girls at the bowling club than with him. He would leave the party and high school with nothing to show for it, and nothing would ever make him happy again. The dark cloud coursed, swirling, thick, until it clouded everything; every rational thought in David’s brain was shut down until he was blind and deaf to everything except his rage. He would never again be happy, he realized, and he had never been happy before—except with Marilyn.

David turned, pulling the gun out of his jacket pocket, and pointed it at Marilyn and her boyfriend.

“What the f**k is that, a watergun?” her boyfriend said, though he had seen David’s face, and deep down knew that it wasn’t, not this time.

David shot him in his chest, and the gun made a loud bang, a metal sound. A red hole appeared in his shirt, spurting blood. He was thrown backwards against the back of the loveseat, an expression of utter surprise on his face.

“Oh my God, David,” Marilyn moaned, and he shot her through her collarbone, and blood flew, coating her jacket. She moaned, still alive, leaking, and he closed his eyes and shot her again in the face. The bullet made a messy hole through her left eye. Then she was still, a flower of blood on the back of the loveseat behind her head, like a halo.

Around him, the partygoers scrambled to get away from him and out one of the doors, and they gave him a wide berth as he made his way out of the house, still holding the gun at his side.

Then he was out into the warm night, and he ran home, paying attention to nothing except the area of sidewalk in front of his feet. He reached his house and collapsed onto his lawn, throwing the gun down beside him onto the ground beside him. He knelt, his face lowered onto the cold earth, and began to cry. Through his sobs he heard sirens in the distance, growing steadily louder.

David cried for a long time, his spit and tears falling to the sweet, summer grass. And as he cried he felt the dark cloud swarming in, billowing in the darkness, swallowing him whole.