Goo-Goo's Basilisk

A Short Fiction Story By Atticus Blake

In thirty-six years as a pediatric psychologist I’ve seen and heard some shit.

Everything from kids with bumps and bruises to full on fire starters. If ya don’t know what that means I envy you. One time I met a kid who’d killed his dad by flicking the switch on the garbage disposal while the dad’s hand was in it. Dude bled to death on the floor while the boy watched Duck Tales. Kid said he felt nothing when his dad screamed at the top of his lungs squirtin’ blood everywhere. Didn’t even challenge him on it like I’m supposed to. Just nodded and pretended to write something down in my notebook.

Ended up being a doodle of Scrooge MacDuck.

Gotten pretty good at drawing Disney characters. Got a whole book of ‘em that coincide with a long precession of abusive memories I can’t share but through innuendo and pronoun laden conversation. Mickey for that kid whose mother sat him out front his house with a sign around his neck that read, “I’m a fat pig.” Even gave him a fake pig nose to wear. Goofy for that little girl whose overly religious dad blinded her with sodium hydroxide for asking to see a little boy’s wee-wee. Now that Disney’s moved on to owning the world, I draw the superheroes too. Getting so good at it, been selling ‘em online. Got a hundred and twenty dollars for a drawing of Thor launching through the air with lightning bolts all around him. That one, I drew sorting through a mess of little ones found in a basement after the FBI raided a CP ring.

Sounds awful sellin’ these memories, these horrors, but it’s my therapy within therapy. You know? Next drawin’s supposed to be Deadpool, blade dramatically through three heads. Even bough a set of Faber Castell 2B through 8B pencils and one hundred pound paper. It absorbs the graphite better than computer paper.

Nothing could’ve prepared me for the day I met a suicidal toddler.

Heard me right the first time.

Not saying it again.

Weirdest words to ever come out of ma’ mouth and I once said how French was a language with pretty feet and red painted fingernails. Led my wife to think I’d a foot fetish to this day. Anyways, the toddler, he wasn’t beat up or withdrawn. Just had hyperaware eyes swimmin’ with knowledge. Spoke eloquently. Around my office he went in a suit with his hands clasped behind his back, ignoring the toybox and full game setup with PS5. Took down book after book reading the titles, and even the first page out loud. If that wasn’t enough, he’d asked if he could be honest with me.

Never, and I mean never in my forever years doin’ this did a kid under thirteen ask me somethin’ like that.

After climbing his way onto my sofa, little Nike’s wagging over the edge, hands poised in his lap, he says, “I’m going to be as honest as possible with you because I know no one would believe you if you told them,” he pauses, says, “and you could lose your job.”

Story is, kids parents have terminal cancer. Mom’s got it in the tits, and dad’s got it in the brain. Someone called CPS ‘cause they’d been keepin’ him in a cage for months and putting plates through the slot to feed him. Had a litter box for when the kid needed to do his business. Was a nosey neighbor lady who called sayin’ that she hadn’t seen the kid in ages, but the usual diapers disappeared from the garbage and were replaced with bags of sand filled with poop. When even the mom and dad stopped coming outside but at night to ferret away the shit, that’s when the ball started rollin’.

This special case came across my desk courtesy of the Senator, as he’s the grandfather. Been keeping cops, CPS, and such off his son’s back for nearly a year. What wonders a little power can do. Now I’m s’posed to take the kid under my wing and figure him out. Parents even let me be alone with him. Both white as sheets from chemo they brought him in and left without saying a word. Almost like they’re ready to give up on him, but after hearing his story, I get the feeling they were lost and wanted nothing more than to just put the pain on someone else.

Dangerous and cunnin’, the little guy starts by tellin’ me about how ‘members bein’ born. How it was like bein’ ripped from the comfortable void without anyone askin’ if he’d even wanted to be here. That is, I started to contemplate if it was all a joke. Like he had a secret earpiece and someone was tellin’ him what to say. Then he’d proved me wrong by showing me his ears. Even lifted up his shirt. No microphone neither.

Had a tone, crisp and clean like a judgmental professor readin’ your bad essay on Descartes. Couldn’t get a word in edgewise before he said how it happened. How his mom and dad were pretty well off, and decided refinishin’ their kitchen was a good idea. Not handy at all, the two’d gotten to work tryin’ to do it themselves.

Ordered granite for the countertops.

Somehow, venturin’ all the way from a quarry in Massachusetts, a slab laden with sparse uranium had gotten all the way to their house undetected for the little one to put his mouth on like how we used to worry about lead paint chips. Said how that night he’d become fully aware to who and what he was. How he’d took a long time thinkin’ about how he’d tell his parents about himself. Thing was, right about when he’d decided to talk, that’s when his mother collapsed on the newly laid hardwood floor shakin’, like a leaf and not long after the dad started slurrin’ his words.

Watched them waste away, heads wrapped from the cold. Figure watchin’ all that misery from the perspective of an adult mind trapped inside a baby’s body was like knives in his heart all day. Changin’ his own diapers, makin’ his own meals, always bein’ on the lookout for his parents well bein’. What god would put a kid here to live like that is garbage, or at least doesn’t exist. I say the same ‘bout all the abusers, but this boy, he’d tried to drown himself in the tub. Thrown himself down many a stair. Walked into traffic. Tried to choke himself with a battery.

Didn’t think it was a dream, which it wasn’t, until he elaborated that he exists in the future too and could communicate with himself there like a phone through time. Said how while he respected my degree and all, it was too complicated to explain how it worked ‘cept that Kurt Vonnegut’s explanation of a human life extending from one end to the other like a worm connected in 5 dimensions wasn’t too far off from the truth. That it works for the mind too. Repeating on itself when the universe ends and begins again.

I’d stopped at Deadpool’s expressive eyes, mid pose, with ma’ hands all silvery gray to ask what the weather was like on March 18^th, 2085. I chuckled. To which the kid chuckled and looking out the window, he says how his future self, since he exists, is evidence that no matter how many times he tries to kill himself it won’t work. Doesn’t stop him from trying though. Also his future self is the megalomaniacal totalitarian leader of the world. That along with power, money, and unlimited ability to venture through time and space in his own mind, he’s got him multiple lifetimes of education in more subjects than I could shake a stick at. His iron fisted control makes 1984 look like a joke.

Says how when he always comes back to this time, this day, to my office, he offers me a choice, and I almost never comply, or if I try it ends badly, but it’s always worth it for him to ask. I’ve got my thumb against my 2B drawing pencil so hard it breaks when he says what it is. Right about now, since he’s still a weaklin’, and wouldn’t put up a fight I could, no should, kill him. Strangle the life out of his little body. Throw him out ma six story window. Take the pencil with which he knows I’ve been drawing the now abandoned Wade Wilson and jab him in the jugular to let him bleed out on the floor.

Of all the unholy things I heard, this request was straight from the mouth of the devil himself. And here I was thinkin’ I was evil for selling my drawings online for a little extra cash. Boy’d been leaning over in earnest with the question hanging in the air forever, before I told him that even with everything he’d said and done to prove it, it was morally inconceivable for me to so much as give him a paper cut. Kid says how that’s what I always say most of the time. Hops off the couch and goes to my water cooler and gets himself a glass and downs it and fills another paper cup full and walks around the office one hand behind his back like a gentleman villain.

Says how this time he’s cooked up a plan to keep his future self from existing. That I’m part of the plan whether I like it or not. Matter of factly says that it wouldn’t take too much for him to convince the authorities that I’d made him blow me while I put my fingers in him. That’s when my tight fisted grip on the pencil let go and it falls to the floor. The cunnin’ words with the razor sharp smile of baby teeth were enough, I lost all feeling in ‘ma feet and hands. Lips went numb.

Kid goes to my candy dish and starts taking peppermints, and chocolates the one by one and starts swallowin’ ‘em whole. With each successive lump in his throat, I’m all the more terrified of what I’ll do, and what I won’t do and I’m paused with grief. Boy says, they never get stuck long enough to stop his breathing, it’s that future self’s existence fighting against the end to his reign of power. Talks about billions who died trying to stop him. Says about the mountains high skulls of children that make up his footstool and throne.

Just about then, the egg timer goes off, and the two meanderin’ parental ghosts come in and take him up like the babe he is. They say sorry and they’ll be back next week. All the while kid’s shouting, kickin’, screamin’ at the top of his lungs for me to help him in his quest or serve him then perish in baths of blood. Parents slam the door on their way out and I’s still sittin’ there tryin’ to figure out just what the fuck happened.

They never returned. Didn’t hear anything on the news, nor did I get raided and nothin’ bad happened to me. But sometimes when I’m sittin’ on my porch next my wife, her pretty soft feet in my lap watchin’ the sunset, I think about that kid. ‘Specially when I’m watchin’ the news and see the Senator and his now orphaned teenage grandson attendin’ parties together in tuxedos and drivin’ fancy cars from place to place. Retired early on the drawin’ money after that. Bought a house in nowhere Alaska away from the world. There was that choice to kill a would-be mega-Stalin and how I froze. Could’ve all been just a big joke. Guess I’ll never know and I don’t wanna know neither. I’ll just keep drinkin’ whiskey off my wife’s feet thank you very much.