EYEHEARTZOMBIES

I’m not the kind of guy that writes stuff down. Usually I just resort to some sort of violence and it all gets worked out in the end. Kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out. I guess this doesn’t really work this time. I have a lot of time to think and nothing much to do, so I guess I’ll use my time wisely and put something down for future generations. Naw, who’m I kidding? I’m doing this for me and me only. Keeps my mind busy.

Anyway, I guess it all started with my dad. So many things did in my childhood. My streak of black eyes; the hungry days when he didn’t have enough money to buy food, just booze; my almost-life-long absence of a mother. I am what the new thinking assholes call a “product of my environment.” Yes, sir, this is all his fault. No, wait, strike that. It all started ’cause of him, but I got myself in the hoosgow and I got myself as far as I was ‘fore I ended up here. Maybe some explanation is in order.

My old man was a right drunk. Never met a drink or a bottle he didn’t like. As far as I know, he was sucking on moonshine in the crib. However it worked out, he and my mom met up in high school, he got her pregnant, then left to fight in the Great War. When he came back, there I was, all of a year old. They stuck it out until I was about 10, then she left with some guy she met at a bar. I don’t hold it against her, but damned if I feel happy for her. Sure, she got out, but I was left with a…well, what’s worse than a drunk? A drunker? Whatever it is, he was drunkest.

I remember the first time I crossed my old man. It was before Ma left, I was maybe six or seven at the time. It was a Saturday morning. He had come home the night before–that morning, really — after a pisser of an evening in the corner bar. At least, that’s where he had started. I think this was about the time he started getting involved in the local crime scene, so he may have ended the night — morning — in an alley or vacant lot somewhere. I got up to eat some cereal and go play with some of the neighborhood kids and I must have made too much noise. He woke up from where he was on the couch and stumbled around. When he saw it was me making the noise, he told me to come to him. Being the good boy that I was, I went and he belted me a good one across the face. I don’t remember much after that from that day, but I remember the jeering I got from kids come Monday morning.

When Ma left, it got a lot worse. He stopped coming home for days on end. When he did come home, he only climbed out of the bottle long enough to swat me around a bit and change his clothes. Once I was old enough to take care of myself, I didn’t really care; kind of enjoyed the freedom, actually. The days before that were hell, though.

The real trouble started, and Pa’s part ended, when I was twelve. He had gotten involved in the Mob in areas he didn’t have a head for. He had worked in construction and machinery for all his life, so he could swing a hammer and press a button, but he had no head for gambling. In over his head, faced with broken bones or worse, he put up the only thing he had left. He sold me to them. For the next 6 years of my life I was to be a lackey, a gopher, an errand boy, just to pay off his hundred-and-fifty dollar debt.

It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Three hots and a cot in exchange for serving drinks, fetching coats and cigars. They didn’t hit me unless I messed up, and then only on the second time. I found out later on, though, that I hadn’t actually been enough to cover the debt. That or he ran up another one. He ended up with two severely fractured knees and a lifelong limp. No, I don’t feel sorry for him. I found that out the last time I saw him. He was sitting just outside of a dirty alley in New York City when I was there for a job. Didn’t recognize him at first, but I guess we always know our own. He called to me for change and while I was digging a quarter out of my pocket, it clicked in my head. I told him who I was and he said he’d thought he recognized me. We passed the time for a bit, shot the breeze. He hadn’t been able to go back to work after his knees healed and, this being before Worker’s Disability and all that crap, he’d had to live off of relatives. Being an asshole of a man has few benefits and many downsides, one of those being that no one wants you around for long. After being passed back and forth between siblings and cousins-once-removed, he ended up on the streets of New York, begging for change. Of course he wasted all the money he got on hooch, but I guess he found enough to buy a heel of bread once in a while. I took him to a diner for a hot meal and then we parted ways. Last I ever saw him.

No, I never found my mother. Can’t say I really want to, either.

While I was living and working for the Mob, I met another man that I can blame all of this on. He wasn’t a man at the time, though. When I met him, Max was just another orphan picked up by the Mob to be a lackey. He had spidery hair that stuck up all over his head and great big bottleglass glasses that made his eyes look huge. Add in the strangely pale skin and the incessant attacks of pneumonia and you have a kid that you wouldn’t think would last long. Max was a fighter, though, and he did everything I did. He was a year or two younger, so he kind of looked up to me. His adoption was a very fashionable act of charity for the gentleman that brought him in.

Now, you wouldn’t think it, but the Mob does right by it’s own. They sent Max and I to public school every day and made sure we did well enough to get into college. I think I’m getting a bit ahead of myself, though. Maybe I should explain about the Mob.

They’re not a bunch of Italian roughnecks who like to break legs, even though they busted up my old man’s pretty well. They’re also not Oriental businessmen who cut off pinkie fingers. They are businessmen, though. They’re the various well-to-do gentlemen in any given city large enough to have crime that slips under the eye of the cops. They grease palms and open doors to get their way in things. They rig elections and erase traffic tickets. They’re into everything they can be into.

Maybe I’ve painted too good of a picture of them, or maybe too bad. They’re not monsters, and they’re definitely not saints, but you’d have any one of the higher-ups sit at your Christmas dinner table and feel proud of having him there. You’d do everything you could not to cross one of the worker ants, if you will, as they are as bad as they come. Needless to say, there are a lot more worker ants than queen ants.

In any case, for the years that Max and I spent there, we were treated very fairly. Max was picked on a bit more than I was by many of the toughs; his glasses and size made him an easy target. I stood up for him until he was old enough to fight for himself, and wise enough not to. We were pretty good pals as kids, too, for what old times are worth.

Our main job, once we were old enough to drive, was to transport booze and cigarettes from one city or country to the next. We’d pick up a car full of illegal substances, drive to the next town or across the border, drop off the car and pick up a new one to drive back. Pretty freakin’ simple, huh? The reason they used us is that a couple of kids aren’t as suspicious as a couple of beefy men with no necks crammed into a sedan. I loved the work, mostly ’cause I got to get out of the city. Max always complained; the distance, the bumpy road, the hard seat, no light to read to (boy was a bookworm if I’ve ever seen one), the danger. That was just his way, I guess. He never changed.

We were mules for a few years, then, when we both graduated high school (I was a couple of years ahead of Max in age, but we were in the same class, on account of me missing so much while my dad was at the bottom of a bottle), the Mob looked into sending us to college. I didn’t really care about going, but Max was beside himself. They pushed and I went, but reluctantly. Max went to some big school, I can never remember the name, and I went to a little junior college. I took basics for my first semester and dropped out for my second. The Mob wasn’t happy about that at all, but they decided to let me make up my own mind. There was an added bonus to that, too. I volunteered to do the more dangerous and dirty jobs, the unglamorous and seedy side of their work. The stuff that kept them in power, if you’ll have the truth of it. They saw I wasn’t one for booklearning and decided to put me on the street, where I was a savant.

Max, though, loved it. He joined a fraternity as soon as he could, worked with several clubs and organizations, and went to classes every day. Some semesters he was so swamped with work, he barely had time to eat or shower. I don’t think he ever spent a night out drinking or parking with a girl. Max wasn’t the dame type, anyway.

He graduated four years later with a degree in Accounting and a minor in English. I’m not sure whose idea it was for him to have an accounting degree, but he didn’t seem to mind at all. After a few months off to get used to life out of school, the Mob put him to work on their books. He also started keeping books and odds for their gambling groups and rings. Secretly he wanted to be a writer, though. He told me so one night while were still kind of friends. I could see the fire in his eyes, but I don’t think he ever really had time to make it work. Besides, the Mob isn’t too fond of people writing stuff down all the time. Makes ‘em paranoid or something.