WICKED BOY (11) (Patreon)

There's a package in my name, nearly six weeks after my departure from Huxley, delivered to the doorstep of my apartment complex.  My busybody, elderly brand of neighbor, Miss Barnes, brings it upstairs to me along with her groceries. Uninvited. She stays for tea and prompts me to open it.

Nearly in that order.

With an emphasis on uninvited.

"I was just going to make sure that you were eating properly. Then I saw the package." I help her lug her bag of groceries onto my kitchen counter. I try to focus on what she's saying, but I'm irritable, tired, and can't remember the last time that I've eaten something that wasn't from the freezer aisle. "Which you aren't. Eating properly. Are you?"

"Right." I laugh softly. She holds the textbook-sized box to me with a harrumph. "Thank you."

"And you're sure you didn't purchase anything?" The older woman asks this more than once, although the answer doesn't change. Nosiness is undoubtedly the reason she's brought it to me, too, as I don't think I've ever had a package delivered in my two-year stay at Pennbrook Place. Or any friends over, aside from Tamela. A delivery from an actual sender is probably miraculous in Miss Barnes's eyes.

"I never buy anything. I can't imagine who would send me something."

"Well then." she's searching through my drawers now. I just watch her. "How mysterious."

I don't want to agree with her romanticization of a paper box, but I suppose it is... Mysterious. In its own way. Since I don't have the money to online shop, or for internet, or any loving and far-placed familial connections, there's nothing that calls for it. There's no return address, either.

Milan Minett

Just my name, my address, written in harsh, spidery spools across the cardboard. Thanks to this week's latest and greatest depressive episode, I'm still staring at the handwriting, hoping to recognize it somehow, when the kettle shrieks.

"Well, then, enough ogling." Miss Barnes urges, "Open it."

I nod — and, reluctantly, I do. And inside that package, through an absurd amount of packaging tape, is the worn case to an Iron Magnolias DVD. I blink once, then twice, and —

What?

Why?

"Oh, oh, how fun." Miss Barnes is ever-so delighted, and peers from my shoulder as she digs another canister of tea-leaves from her purse. "That's a classic if I've ever seen one." She nods, and with the motion, her floral perfume saturates my senses, "Care to watch it? Do you have the time?"

I nod again, which could be considered strange, but Miss Barnes and I are equally as lonely, and the amount of free time on my hands that comes from having recently been fired is ridiculous, so I can't hold her forced company against her.

"... And you're sure you didn't order that?"

She hands me a cup of tea. I frown and open the case — more out of curiosity than anything.

"I didn't." It's all I can really manage to say in response, because the DVD isn't inside, which Miss Barnes is saddened by. I don't like to see her sad, so I offer to watch Moon over Ohio with her again — faster than my brain can agree to it.

"What sort of tease sends a movie without the actual movie inside?" She tuts, and heaves a canister of cream from her paper bag. "That's just indecent."

I turn the copy over in my lap, take a closer look at the outside, where the film surrounding the DVD is raised ever so slightly. And, like any normal human being with an affinity for crime documentaries, I immediately take a pair of scissors to it.

"Milan, what on earth has gotten into you?" Miss Barnes gasps. I slice through the plastic easily enough, and through two of the leading ladies. Something about it feels laughably sinister.

"Looked like I was supposed to do it." I only shrug, because behind the smiling faces of the women from Iron Magnolias, I find a woven bat — or more precisely, a bat covering Venus slips from where it was sealed beneath the cover.  Miss Barnes is at a loss, opens and closes her mouth several times before she adjusts her glasses.

"I guess you were." She concedes, though her eyebrows nearly reach her hairline. "...What's that?"

"A... Bat?" I flip it over. "It's a bat." Taped to it is a business card, adorned with spindling thin handwriting that says,

little thief. where's my shirt?

I blush — almost instantly. My nearly forgotten drunken confrontation with Ez surges to the forefront of my mind, and suddenly, the package makes sense.

'Are ya' late for a rewatch of Iron Magnolias?'

"Awe, for heavens sakes. You're flushed, dear." Miss Barnes begins giggling past her sun-spotted hand. "Do you have an admirer?"

'I could be your new Lucas.'

I'm burning with embarrassment — don't mean to return her smile, it's only a polite habit that she takes as confirmation.

"Oh, Milan. I knew it. You're too lovely not to."

I don't agree with that. I've always been more bitter than beautiful — and Ez is just well, he's Ez.

I turn the bat over in my hand.

"This is wonderful." She coos. "Since when? You never said. He must send you anonymous packages more often than you say — you knew just what to do. How coy!"

The backside is printed with smudged ink. Through it, I make out —

The Goules

West 67th Street

Huxley

7pm-3am

Something about the implication of meeting with Ez again makes my heart beat a little faster, and with that unexpected reaction, I deposit the destroyed cover into the trash...

Only —

The iron-on bat sits in my jacket pocket, another three weeks later, threaded and straightforward in its beckoning. 

In those following weeks, I spend most of my mornings in a haze that won't lift. 

'For the right price.'

I'm not sure whether I'm confused or disturbed by my desire to follow the unwritten command to return to Huxley. But I don't fool myself like Miss Barnes with romance. I do, instead, find myself a little impressed by Ez and his ability to follow-up with 'prospective clients' so personably.

He would've been a good businessman.

I scoff, eyes rolling at the thought that he was duped into thinking that I have money by one measly and recycled bar-mitzvah outfit. He must have gotten my address from the motel sign-in sheet in the hopes that he was right.

Scratch that. He would've made an incredibly shady businessman.  I smile softly, genuinely at that, and I wonder how I manage to do so when my heart is naturally so heavy. I guess he already is.

— and much later, I realize that I never discarded the gift; instead of doing so, I often reach into my pocket and touch the raise of each thickly threaded area.

Stay away from wicked boys like that, Milan.

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