For the Record

 

 

 

 Chapter One

 

“Is that him?”

“Yep. That’s the kid.”

“Wow…” The policeman peered at the eleven-year-old sitting on the bench outside the warden’s office of the juvenile detention facility, and he was unusual. He was a towhead, with downy, platinum blonde hair, pale skin the likes of the Irish—no freckles—and a lanky form of someone who would be rather tall one day. But that wasn’t the weird thing about him.

His eyes were color of carrots, Halloween pumpkins, and that fruit they named a color after. But even that was not the really weird thing.

The kid had a permanent shifty look of someone eternally up to no good—at least that was what the policeman saw. The cop already knew there was more to this kid than that as no one called him up to deal with a kid unless they had a creepy, supernatural sort of connection.

“Do I get to interview him first, or do you want me to just take him away?” Officer Stuben said, mildly irritable as most people just wanted him to clean up and remove things they just could not cope with. He had long become the go-to guy to handle such things. After all, he had connections.

“You interview him if you want,” the warden said with an up-jerk of his chin. “But we don’t need him here.”

“And why is he is here?” Officer Stuben asked.

“To get him off the streets,” the warden muttered bitterly.

Officer Stuben raised his eyebrows. “Doesn’t he have a home to go to?”

“Read the damn file.” The warden poked it. “I won’t waste any more time on that kid.”

Officer Stuben huffed to himself, wondering what this poor kid had done besides be out-of-the-norm and linked to the supernatural. The policeman picked up the file and opened it. He read a few lines, then glanced over at the boy who seemed to be listening to them. Normally Officer Stuben attributed that to the thinness of the walls, but he already had heard this kid had extra senses. The file said he was schizophrenic, but he doubted that. Orange eyes meant only one thing… the kid could see the unseen.

“Ok,” Officer Stuben said. “I want to talk to him first before I take him.”

The warden nodded. “Do whatever. I told you, I don’t want him here.”

 

The boy lifted his orange eyes when the policeman stepped out of the warden’s office, his file in one hand, the man’s hat in the other. Gesturing with his head, the cop said “Come on. We need to chat.”

Heavily sighing, the boy rose from his seat. The policeman noticed the kid had funny, shifting sort of wrinkle on his back, as if the kid were hiding something under his shirt atop his shoulder blades.

Interesting.

Officer Stuben opened a door just down the hall and gestured for the boy to go in.

Petulantly, the boy did—with hunched shoulders and a glower. When he sat in one of the chairs in the bare side-room, not unlike an interrogation room, he sullenly glared at Officer Stuben who quietly opened the file and read silently from it.

And yes, the kid had heard everything—from the warden to the cop, as well as what their imps were shouting at them.

Yes, the boy could see what others could not see, and hear what many could not hear. Mostly, though, he saw imps.

“So…” the policeman finally said as his imps ‘suggested’[1] that he skip all this and just take the kid to ‘The School’ without all this preliminary stuff. “Let me make sure these files are correct. Your name is Thomas Halverson, a.k.a. Tom Brown—”

“No,” the kid interrupted him. “It’s just Tom Brown.”

“The record here says—”

“The record is wrong,” Tom said, sounding much older than eleven years of age. Though his face screamed mischief, his tone was experienced, nearly adult. Fed up, even. “I’ve never been Thomas Halverson. Or Tommy or any of that.”

“But it says here that your mother is Hella Halverson, who ran away from home when she was sixteen.” Officer Stuben raised his eyebrows. “Is this true or false? Do I have the wrong lady?”

The corners of Tom’s mouth dug into a frown. His arms folded tighter across his stomach. But then he closed one eye and said, “So what? She changed it. I was born Tom Brown. My mom is Helene Brown. End of story.”

Officer Stuben nodded and made notes on the file. “Ok.”

Blinking at him, Tom stared at this man. His imps did not do what all other police’s imps did. Usually they screamed to throw the book at him and have him locked up for being a contrary punk. This man’s imps just huffed and sulked, once more telling him to skip all this and go get lunch. Fast food. Apparently he was on a diet. And also, the man believed him.

“Ok… Next part,” the officer scanned the file more. “Birthdate… You were born on July twelfth. You’re eleven this year…. Hmm… and your father is… unrecorded.” He looked up from the file. “Can you tell me anything about your father?”

Shifting up a little in his seat, Tom eyed the imps next to this policeman. They still were just tempting him to get a move on, maybe pick up some doughnuts. He was asking honest questions. And that deserved an honest answer. “I never knew ‘im. Mom and he hooked up on Halloween at a party and… she decided to keep me because of the great time she had.”

Nodding with raised eyebrows, the cop jotted down notes. No change from those imps either.

“Do you know anything else about your dad? Occupation? Race? Name? What he was doing when your mom met him? Or did they meet at the party?”

 Tom stared at him. “Are you for real?”

Officer Stuben gently lowered his pencil. “I think so. Are you?”

Tom laughed cynically. He leaned back in his chair, tipping onto two legs, balancing perfectly.

“You’re gonna fall if you keep sitting that way,” Officer Stuben said, and picked up his pencil again. “Now, anything else?”

Closing one eye, Tom asked, “What if I were to tell you my dad is a little devil?”

The cop stiffened. His imps perked up, but they said to the man… ‘You don’t got those kind of restraints. Just grab and wrestle him down.’ Yet the policeman asked, “How little?”

This was interesting. Tom dropped his chair on all fours with a bang. Normally that made people jump like scared cats, but this man merely reacted to the noise, his expression saying to Tom not to do that again. This man… this man was treating him… like a person.

Leaning forward against the table, Tom showed with his hands the size of a standard pineapple. “This tiny.”

The cop blinked at him. “Ok. What color?”

Tom laughed again. “Olive skinned—my mom says. Flaming red hair too. And horns, with a tail.”

The policeman jotted that down. Tom rose from his seat to peer over to see what the man was writing—and unlike the shrinks he had been forced to see over the years, this cop pushed his notepad across the table so Tom could see it and read it. They were just notes of what he said. No commentary.

So… the guy was not an undercover shrink. Interesting.

But who was he? And why was he there? And what was this about a school?

“Anything else?” the policeman asked.

Tom shrugged. “Oh. Yeah he also has wings. He’s an imp.”

“Ah.” The police officer lifted his pencil from the paper. “You could have just said that.”

Tom’s mouth fell open wide now. “You know about imps?”

Officer Stuben nodded. “I do.”

Looking around, especially up at the security cameras, Tom nearly collapsed with relief. This was the second person in all his life who believed him and knew about them.

And the man proved it. “They’re little invisible devils that feed off of mischief. They’re too fast to catch, unless you are as fast as they are. They are always invisible, except on Halloween when the veil between the unseen world and the mortal world is thin.”

Listening to this, Tom stared harder.

“And on Halloween, they can take full human form to tempt people into real trouble.” The policeman smiled politely at Tom then wrote something down. “So, your dad is an imp. That means you are half imp, then. That explains your orange eyes. But… you didn’t inherit horns.”

Tom pawed the top of his head with a small headshake. “Nope.”

“Tail or no tail?” the policeman asked.

Sighing with relief, Tom said, “No tail. I check every day.”

Officer Stuben chuckled, nodding. “What about wings?”

To that, Tom cringed. “I got em.”

The man peered over as if to look behind Tom’s shoulder, but did not leave his seat. “You cover them, though.”

Tom nodded. “Yeah. Mom says others don’t understand. And when people don’t understand things, they get mean.”

“It sounds like you have a good mom,” Officer Stuben said.

Tears welled in Tom’s eyes. People rarely ever said that about her. They always said stuff like ‘what a slut’ or ‘that tramp?’ or ‘that whore’. And ‘she has no right to be a mother.’ But this cop, hearing his imps suggest he go get some coffee and quit this discussion now, really did mean what he had said.

“Where is your mom?” the officer then asked.

Cringing, Tom sank into his seat again. Here is where it would all change… “Isn’t it in the file?” Tom muttered.

Shrugging, the police officer lifted a few pages, murmuring, “I haven’t read that far…”

“She’s in jail,” Tom muttered, sinking lower in his seat.

“Oh really? Why?”

Still no condemnation, but Tom braced for it. He closed his eyes.

And Officer Stuben found the file in the stack.

Armed robbery. Sentenced ten-to-twenty years. She would not get out until this kid was twenty-one at least.

Officer Stuben sighed as his imps called Tom’s mom a silly woman.

Silly.

Tom winked open one eye. Being called silly wasn’t so bad.

“And it says here, you don’t like foster homes,” Officer Stuben scanned the record. He then chuckled to himself. “I can’t say I blame you. Some of those people just do it for the money….”

Then he read more. Tom could tell he had found Tom’s Juvie record. The man’s imps were making commentary.

‘Oooh, was ‘tagging’ vandalism with street art or, actually breaking stuff?’

‘Nope, walking up wet paint on walls, leaving shoe prints. This kid is fun…’

‘How can you call it pick-pocketing when he gives the wallets back?’

‘With stuff inside,’ another imp cackled.

‘He’s a burglar in training.’

‘Hoodlum. I love it!’

‘Ah, now Breaking and Entering. Good old, B and E’

‘Is it really a crime to run away from foster homes?’

‘Shoplifting? Who cares now-a-days?’

‘You want a burger NOW!’

The cop did not say a thing. He turned a page and kept reading the list. He then lifted his head and asked, “I noticed… you don’t do these naughty things when your mother is around.”

Blinking at him, Tom nodded. “She’d hate it.”

Officer Stuben smirked again. “Good mom.”

Tom stared at him. “She’s in jail.”

The policeman nodded. “Yep.”

Staring more for a full minute, Tom then said, “Everyone else says she is the worst.”

Shrugging, Officer Stuben replied, “What does their opinion matter? What I see here is a mom who is trying to take care of her kid and just made a few bad decisions. Looking at her record, I don’t even think she wanted that gun at the robbery. They probably made her take it, right?”

Tom sniffled, nodding. “Yeah.”

He nodded. “Now… choosing to participate in a robbery, that is a serious misjudgment. But looking at the rest of this record, I’d say she didn’t exactly have the kind of help that you did growing up.”

“What?” Tom wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“Your mom ran away from home,” the cop said. “I bet you know the reason.”

Tom shrank into the seat again. He did not want to talk about this.

Officer Stuben nodded. He thought for a moment as his imps were now suggesting he go get a pizza or a cannoli. He didn’t need to talk anymore with this kid, did he? But the policeman said, “I noticed in this record here that you were taken back to her parents’ home when you were five. Do you want to tell me about it?”

Folding his arms tight, Tom shook his head.

Nodding again, the policeman sighed. He glanced at the paper then asked, “Did your mom ever tell you about her family, you know before you met them?”

Cringing, Tom hesitated, then nodded.

“What’d she say?”

Tom didn’t want to say, but then he murmured, “She… made up stories about them.”

“She didn’t tell the truth?” the cop asked.

Shaking his head, Tom replied, “No. She told the truth. But she made up stories about them. Like… fairy tales. Bedtime stories.”

“Oh…” Officer Stuben nodded.

“Because in fairy stories, the hero always wins,” Tom murmured. “Real life is not that nice.”

The policeman sized Tom up. That was a rather wise thing for a kid to say. Thinking, he asked, “Can you tell me one?”

Gazing askance at him, Tom said, “She always changed it up. But… I guess one story won’t hurt.”

Nodding, the policeman waited for it.

Closing his eyes, Tom sighed then said in a far off voice, “Once upon a time…”

 

[1] Imps don’t suggest quietly. They shout and scream. But humans can only hear them on a subconscious level.

Upon a Time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Two

 

Once upon a time, there was a Wicked King. He lived a palace with a weak and feeble Queen who was always fainting and doing nothing whenever things went bad, except weep. They had a daughter, a beautiful Princess with long white flowing hair. Everyone loved the Princess’s beautiful flowing hair, including the Dragon, the Witch, and the Snake. The King did not really love the princess. Just her hair. And he told her under no circumstance should she dye it or cut it. If she did, he would go to the witch and put a terrible curse on her. The Dragon, who was always smoking, agreed. But the Snake longed to touch her hair. And every time he came around the palace, he would touch her hair. And the stupid Jester always praised her hair and beauty, saying the King was wise to tell her to never cut her hair.

Now the Queen did not like the Snake. She also did not like the Dragon. But she was under the spell of the Witch, and was too afraid to leave the King and run away with her daughter, the Princess, who was very unhappy. And the Jester never listened when the Queen or the Princess said that things were not so good at the palace. He only believed the King. So he was no help.

But one day, the Princess drank a powerful potion, which gave her strength to escape the King’s palace. And with that strength, she braided her long long long, super long white hair up, until she tied it off and ended up with a long rope. Then, with a noble sword, she cut off her hair, and used that rope to climb out over the palace wall and out of the kingdom forever. The Princess was free to do whatever she wanted. And she lived happily ever after.

Tom’s memories went back rather far. His mind was different than that of his peers. But his earliest childhood memories were always intermingled with the fairy stories his mother had told him about her childhood, and the more true-to-life stories she told him about his conception and birth. Tom had always liked his mother’s stories. She started telling them to him since the day he was born. Her voice was that of an angel.

One of his favorite stories was about his birth

Of course, Tom could not remember his birth. But after hearing the different tellings from people who could, and as his own memory went as far back as he was two while learning to use the potty, he had that tale memorized.

 

When you were born, I was living with a friend named Krystal. She was an exotic dancer I used to work with before I was fired when they found out I was pregnant. Krystal was always a good friend, and she helped me get another job so I could pay my half of the rent. But anyway, the day you came I was already having lots of labor pains. Kiddo, it was lucky you were a small baby, because boy you seemed to really want to come out and you were causing Mommy a lot of pain trying to. The nurses were all sweet and nice and all that… until you came out of me and they saw you had wings. Boy oh boy did they freak out. The doctors too, but they weren’t so bad. One of the nurses screamed and held up a cross. But I kinda think it was worse when the doctor said your cute little wings were a malformation. Get it? Malformation, as if it wasn’t cool you got to have wings! I wanna have wings! It was even cooler that they really worked. I mean, you can fly.

But anyway, one of the nurses said you had to be the antichrist. The other told her that was rude and you were just a baby—but she looked all scared for me and I was worried she’d report me or something and get you taken away. I heard the doctors and nurses talking about drug use and thinking I had hurt you when I was pregnant—but I didn’t. The ones saying you were the antichrist…? All they did was push crosses in our faces and pray for us. No biggie. Someone prayin’ isn’t half as bad as someone calling child protective services. Then they never would have let me keep you.

Lucky for me, I wasn’t really on drugs or anything, not since I got pregnant with you. Not even one drop of alcohol. I am really proud of myself. Nine months without a drink was really hard.

But the best part about you being born was how you smiled at me. I knew… I just knew God gave me an angel from heaven.

Tom’s second favorite story had been about when his mom and met his dad and all the fun they had together one Halloween. There were long versions and short versions. He had told Officer Stuben the short version. The longer version was more fun.

 

One amazing, early Halloween morning not too long ago, some really hot guy came up to me when I was leaving party and asked me if I wanted to have some fun. So, I figured, why not? It was one AM, and I had time off from work. And I loved me some fun. And he was super sexy. His costume—or what I thought was a costume at the time—was perfect. Your dad had this tanned, Mediterranean kinda look about him—cool, like Antonio Banderas. His hair was totally punk red. Spiky. He wore studded leather and had hot piercings. And at the time, I thought he was wearing orange contacts. But when you were born, I found out that wasn’t true. His eyes were just like yours. He also had horns, the curly type like sheep, but not so big. They looked so real. And he had a tail—about yay long (she usually showed the length with her hand here in the story). Oh. And, of course, he had wings… just like you do. At the time, I thought they were fake, but now I know they were real.

So anyway, I went off with him—all day. We did all sorts of stuff. I mean, naughty stuff. We broke windows in the warehouse district, threw eggs at people’s cars as they drove by, slashed tires of parked cars on the street. And we totally got wasted together. It was stupid fun.

And then we spent all night together. (She usually winked then).

When I woke up the next morning, he was gone and all I had were the memories… (she sighed here).

But then I found out he left me a party gift. You. (she usually touched Tom’s nose then).

You were the best gift ever. (And she tickled him here).

And so I decided to keep you and always remember that wonderful day. (She would then hug Tom very tight).

Tom’s earliest memories were mostly story hours. Tom loved stories. During one of these story hours, Tom once asked his mother why she had name him Tom.

She had always said, “I named you after one of my favorite actors. You just have to guess which.”

And Tom would guess.

She made that a game. And she never told him the answer.

When he was very little, he mostly guessed Tom the cat, from Tom and Jerry—and she pretended he got it right for two seconds… until she made the loud buzzer sound and told him, “Just kidding! Nope. Try again!”

He guessed Tom Thumb and Tom Cruise—as his mom pointed both out in movies they saw. But not them either. Wrong Toms.

The older Tom Brown got, he searched for all sorts of famous Toms.

Tom Holland. Tom Brady. Tom Hardy. Tom Hanks. Tom Hiddleston. Tom Sellek. Tom Sawyer. Tom Clancy….

And she kept saying “Actor! My boy! Actor!”

He was sure she had lied to him about one of them. He had a feeling he had embarrassed her by guessing too early, and she did not want to give it away now.

The thing was…

Through all her stories, he had learned one singular truth.

His mother loved him.

Most kids took this sort of thing for granted, but Tom didn’t, not even at the age of two. Tom knew early on that he was not what the world would call loveable. He learned this in the most torturous way too—through the screams of imps which surrounded him and cheered when he had been born… and also revealed all the awful things people mentally considered whenever they saw him. No one but he could see or hear these imps, which took him longer to figure out.

Tom learned most language from the imps around him. So he picked up words his mother would never had said in front of him. He picked up ‘adult’ words early. Words ‘grown-ups’ knew. Words like… bizarre, abnormal, unfit, and schizoid. Words like hyperactive, hooligan, demonic, slut, prostitute, punk, and freak.

If anyone saw his mother, the imps would most often say she was ‘unfit to raise a child’. And sometimes they would vocally repeat it. Tom had heard that phrase numerous times. Most people assumed toddler-Tom was too little to understand the words they were saying to his mother about her—and him. But being what he was, that made him a precocious little kid.

He had even overheard their callous reasoning, voiced by their imps but not always by them.

His mom had a dozen or so piercings, three tattoos, and stripes of blue in her long platinum blonde hair. That earned her the title of ‘punk kid’ and ‘hooligan’. Her clothes hardly covered her body, allowing all around her to admire her sexy figure. And she wore stilettos. That earned her the title ‘slut’ and ‘whore’. 

But Tom thought she was an angel and worshipped her.

And imps adored him.

But they also let him know that the world called him trouble and freaky and demon and devil and malformed since the day he was born. The only person who didn’t have imps who said such things was his mother.

Since the day of his birth until the moment he could speak, she delighted in holding and talking to her baby boy. Everyone else flinched. And growing up hearing these screaming imps around all these two-faced people, Tom learned quickly that life was extremely complicated, and the best thing for him was to stick close to his mother and listen to everything she said, as she was kind.

The other thing Tom knew for certain was that his mother liked to embellish the rest of the truth to make life easier for him. She was the quintessential storyteller. For starters, he knew her name was not actually Helene Brown. She never told him her real name. It was a secret. And why not? She was the princess in the story who had escaped the palace of the Wicked King. And that Wicked King was still looking for her, and she did not want to be found.

His mom said, “It is always good to have a secret identity.”

“Do I have one?” two-year-old Tom had asked then.

And his mother, being the wonderful woman that she was, replied, “I need to think on that. We know you’ve got superpowers, just like Superman. But you also are you—good in your own way.”

And she really did think on that, keeping her promise.

It was a few weeks later when she came to Tom with a little pair of pajamas which she ‘made’. She had taken a light blue onesie and added a red cape, which was someone’s red cloth. She had drawn a red T on it the same way Superman had an S. It was even in a shield, which she drew both on with a blue sharpie marker. And she said to him, “Tom. This is your super pajamas.”

Tom loved his super pajamas. The feet were toasty and warm, and slip proof. And she had cut out and hand-hemmed a hole in the back so his wings could stick out comfortably. The zipper was in the front—the best part. Tom hated back zippers and buttons. They chafed his wings.

“Now, you have got to be my little Superman,” she said as she helped him zip up his pajamas for the first time to make sure it fit right.

“I gedda fly?” two-year-old Tom bounced up and down eagerly—as most of the time he was not allowed to fly, considering they were too often around other people. He had been flying since he was born. In fact, she had never told a soul about how sometimes he floated up from his crib while he was dreaming. It only happened when he slept alone. When he slept in her arms, he seemed anchored to the world.

“Only when it is just you and me,” she said in earnest, ignoring the imps around her which told her to tie a rope to his ankle so she could tie him to his crib.

Tom looked to the floor, sad, but knowing why. Everyone who had seen him fly screamed and ran. He did not know how many exorcists had been sent to their home when he was very young. More than his tiny hands could count. His mom’s old roommate, Krystal, had long kicked them out of her apartment when she found out Tom had wings and could fly.

They were currently living in a studio apartment, walk up, above a Kosher deli. The rent took up most of his mom’s paycheck. They mostly ate off of food stamps and cash his mom ‘scrounged’ by casual pick-pocketing.

Sighing, his mother said to him, “Look, Superman has to go around as Clark Kent most of the time.”

Tom nodded. He had seen so many Superman cartoons and coloring books. His mother would bring home Superman stories, books, and comics. And every time she would say, “You’re just like him—a special boy and an all-around good-guy hero. And so cute too!”

But her imps were shouting: ‘He’s just too damn weird.’

And, ‘You should hide your kid in the closet.’

And, ‘They’re gonna come and take him away from you!’

But she never said those things, and she never hid him in the closet. His mom was proud of him, and sometimes imps said stupid things. But Tom also knew she was scared some monsters called Child Protective Services would come and take him from her.

“Put on your Clark Kent for me,” she’d say whenever they left the house together. That meant he had to walk, and they had to hide his wings. He usually did that by wearing hoodies all the time—the hood always down over his back to cover the lump on his back, even if his ears were cold. Superman wore glasses to hide that he had super vision, she had said. It would help him fit in.

“If you have to walk through doors—don’t let anyone see you do it,” was another thing she often said. It was something that had come up when he had accidentally locked himself in the bathroom. After several minutes of his mom and a guy trying to pick the lock, the imps had told him Tom could just walk out through the wood, so he had. It had scared the maintenance guy, and had startled his mother into laughing fits.

 And “Don’t let people see or hear you talking to imps.”

She had seen Tom talk to imps since he was a baby. It had puzzled her at first. He was a talker—many said. But after a while it seemed to others that there was more going on.

At his last clinical visit, the doctors finally said her child probably had neurological problems. Maybe even schizophrenic—if that was possible. He was seeing things that were not there.

Which actually wasn’t true at all, and she could tell. There were days when she would watch Tom talk with and handle something moving about the room which she could not see, but he clearly could. And the reason she believed it, was that things happened as he talked.

 “Oh… dere goes Umby! Umby don’t touch dat!” little Tom once shouted up at the ceiling where something then fell off a high shelf, his orange eyes tracking it.

She only saw the thing fall—yet it felt like cause and effect.

When Tom was three, and she got a job that paid better than working the bar, his babysitter said Tom had a huge imagination and lots of imaginary friends. His sitter never saw him fly or walk through walls, though. For a three-year-old, he was good at keeping promises.

But as his mom watched Tom and what happened around her son, this invisible ‘Umby’ frequently goofed off in their house, bumping things which she used to blame on simple gravity for falling. Tom frequently shouted at Dingus, Hoppy, and Poo-poo Face, whom he could even command to get stuff for him. And the things he wanted would just show up.

 It started with toys and snacks. They would just appear out of nowhere, and in the distance, in another room, his mom would hear something crash or get thrown about. She’d go see what it was, and usually, what it was, was a mess. That’s when she realized these invisible guys Tom saw were trouble.

Tom’s mother noticed that whenever they fetched stuff for her son, they either stole it from someplace outside, or it was done so messily and haphazardly that it left her with the cleanup. Its arrival was like magic. Messy magic.

“Hey,” she once snapped at Tom when he had just ordered Dingus to get him his Hulk toy from his toy box, immediately hearing the crash and clang of plastic and wood fling out in the other room. “Don’t do that! You’re making a mess that I have to clean up!”

Tom ducked down again.

She went into the room and saw that the entire toy box had been upended. All of his toys were everywhere.

“Sorry mommy…” Tom ducked his head down. With a glare, he then told the imps to clean up his room.

Automatically, the cleaning closet burst open. Tom’s mother saw spray bottles fly into the room and dump out the contents onto the carpet and window. The toy box flew back upright, but as it filled with scattered toys, it also filled with water and suds.

“No! NO! NO! No! No! That’s worse!” His mother grabbed the upended and emptied spray bottle. The carpet squished between her toes, smelling richly of ammonia. “Tom! Stop telling your friends to do stuff!”

“I sowwy…” Tom sniffled. He then waggled a finger at the air next to him. “Stop it! Dumb Dingus! Go sit in da corner!”

His mother pulled up all the sopping blankets and sheets, and stared at the carpet. It was going to reek. 

She had to borrow a shop vacuum from the store deli downstairs before the wet could leak through the ceiling. The owner helped bring it up. Tom glared at the imps that came up with him as they shouted other things he did not understand to the shop owner. He also didn’t like how the man looked at his mom.

He stayed to help her clean up the damage, then whispered along her neck to meet him later to pay him back with ‘special favors’ for the help. She had to call in the sitter for Tom. When she left to pay back the shop owner, she told Tom, “Be good while I am gone and don’t try to clean things with those invisible friends of yours again. They only cause trouble.”

Her words hung onto the back of his brain when she left. That day, Tom had learned that imps were naughty.

That entire evening while she was gone, he thought over it. The imps caused Mommy trouble, and made her sad and tired. And now Mommy had to pay for a bigger mess by doing something with the man who had been staring at his mother’s body as if it were meat since the day they moved in. And he knew that made her even more sad.

Tom did not want to cause his mother trouble. And so, for the first time, he learned to tell imps to go away and leave him alone. And Tom cleaned up his own mess with his own hands.

When his mom had come back hours later, bringing some sandwiches for him and the sitter, she noticed his effort and smiled to herself, thinking what a good boy she had.  

 

One day, not long after that incident, Tom’s mother finally asked Tom what Umbly, Dingus, Hoppy, and Poo-poo Face were.

Tom was playing with Legos on the floor at the time—and not the Duplo ones either. She had gotten these, used, at a garage sale for cheap. A parent was punishing their kid for not putting them away when asked for the thousandth time. Tom was currently making a spaceship—or so he said the knobbly thing was.

As he affixed on a red piece to the tip along a long stack of red pieces that had to be fire, Tom cheerily replied, “Dey are widdle guys.”

She had blinked at him, wondering what he meant by widdle. Being three, Tom had a potty-sense of humor at that age. She tried for the more polite version. “Like really small?”

Tom nodded in earnest, and showed with his hands, putting down his masterpiece. “Baby size. Widdle. Wike me. But dey got tails. Eyes wike me! And dey got dese pointy dings on, on, on, on, on dere heads. Dey wike baa-baa bwack sheep on da head.”

“Horns?” Helene tried to picture it as the nursery rhyme book had sheep with curly horns on their heads, and Tom always liked to count them—not the sheep, the horns. Tom started counting horns when he was introduced to dinosaurs and the triceratops. But he still just called them ‘pointy things’.

Three-year-old Tom shrugged, holding his fingers up on his head. “Are dese poky dings horns?”

She nodded at him.

“Aaaaand…” he added dramatically, turning around on the carpet to face her, “Dey have wings wike me! I can fwy wike dem too!”

The visual image all added up in her head. Little orange-eyed guys with horns and wings and a tail. Little devils. Imps. She knew the word. It was something from cartoons. But now she wondered. It was real?

When the doctors had predicted that Tom would grow blind not long after his birth, as they were sure Tom’s orange eyes were a sign that he had a rare form of albinism, she had not believed them. She remembered very well the eyes of the man she had made love with on Halloween—Tom’s father. So, adding up the connection, she asked him, “Has your father ever come by?”

But Tom just held up his kid hands in a shrug and said, “I dunno. I never a see him.”

But it was clear to her (and Tom) that his father was like one of these ‘Widdle guys’—an imp; only his father had been big and super sexy when she had met him. Like Antonio Banderas.

The thing was, Tom had her coloring. In fact, Tom hardly took after his father in looks. At first glance, if no one noticed his eyes, her son had a Tom Felton look[1], from build to coloring—and very similar to his mother. Her platinum blonde hair had long grown out and Tom liked stroking it. He also liked the blue stripe of color in it.

But Tom openly and often wished he had inherited her ice blue eyes. People stared at his orange eyes, so much that his mother started to search for sunglasses in his size. And when she found a pair and gave it to him, she put on some of her own head and made a pose, when she said, “Now you and I can be super-cool together.”

Tom began to understand things more when he was four. Not just about the imps, but also about the world around him.

The world around him was unfair.

His mom took all sorts of jobs to pay the rent. She sometimes dumpster dived to get free food from behind stores, and she even asked him to get his imps to distract any store workers while she could break into them. Sometimes he climbed in through the metal and stinking plastic for her and handed things out to her. She usually decided what was still edible and what wasn’t. They took advantage of every free food opportunity they could.

He also started to understand the big words people called her and him. Tom shuddered to hear them, as he now knew what hooligan meant. The imps made it clear. He long understood bizarre, abnormal, punk and freak. They just meant he was not like other kids, and they did not like him because of that. But words like unfit cast at his mother hurt. And though he could tolerate being called demonic, as it was partly true, Tom clenched his little fists whenever anyone called him a schizoid. Words like hyperactive came out when someone wanted to be nice. But the words that hurt the most were when he overheard imps shouting at his mother what the women and men around her were withholding, yet clearly thinking about her.  

“Mommy, what is a slut?” was the question he did not dare ask.

He had asked her about the rest, as imps did not provide definitions. You could not actually have a long, serious conversation with an imp—as they were hyperactive and had a short train of thought. Besides, when he had asked her what a prostitute was, her face went utterly white, and she had demanded where he had heard the word.

“The imps yell at people to say it…” he ducked his head, “…to you, when when when when you are walking.”

Hearing him, she went even paler. She averted her eyes while her imps told her to lie to him. And she did lie, sort of. “It’s just a mean word. Don’t pay any attention to it.”

He wanted to know what it meant, though. But now he was afraid to ask.

Tom had learned that year that his mom did a lot of ‘not happy’ work that others looked down on. And yet there were men who paid her a lot of money for each job she completed. Tom knew she did dancing for some people at parties. He had seen a couple of her outfits. There was one bunny outfit. And another with a bikini. One was this cute costume she wore on Halloween—a nurse’s outfit.

He didn’t dare ask her what a hooker or a whore was either. The same kinds of imps used those words with those people, and he figured they had the same meaning.

That night, his mother made up a new story for him.

“Once upon a time, back when the princess was still living in the Wicked King’s palace, the princess discovered a dark and evil monster lived in the land.”

“The Dragon?” Tom asked, interrupting her.

Thinking on it, she considered the story a moment then shook her head. “Worse than the Dragon. He was the Dragon’s friend. It was the Snake.”

“Oh, I know about him.” Tom nodded his head vigorously. “He wanted to touch the Princess’s hair.”

“That’s right,” she said, nodding sharply back. “You remembered! You’re so smart. Anyway, what I didn’t tell you was that the Snake did get to touch the Princess’s hair if he ever got her alone when no one was looking. When no one was around.”

Tom’s mouth made a perfect O. It was horrifying.

“But worse than that,” she said, “She found out the Snake wanted to touch her other places too.”

Tom went pale. The Snake was much worse than the Dragon.

“Remember when I told you to never never never let anyone touch you under your pants?”

He nodded in earnest.

“Well, the Snake touched the Princess under her pants. And he did other bad things to her. This is why she had to escape the kingdom.” A tear ran down her face as the imps shouted nasty things, calling her worthless and trash.

Tom jumped up on his little feet and shook his fist at the imps. “She is not! Mom is a angel!”

She smiled at him, pulling Tom into a warm hug as she wiped her eyes. “You are an angel.”

 

[1] Tom had guessed Tom Felton as his namesake after he watched Harry Potter with his mom one Halloween when he finally realized the actor in the film wasn’t actually named Draco Malfoy.

 

Things Seen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Three

 

He tried so hard to be his mom’s Superman. Tom played Clark Kent when among ‘ordinary’ people, but she allowed him to fly around the house as much as he wanted as long as he did not break anything. Sometimes she liked to tie a string to his ankle and pretend he was a balloon. It was her favorite Halloween trick also.

Tom’s mom used to tell him that he was given superpowers to use them for good. He just had to find out what that was.

That was the problem. He didn’t know. Imps shouted only naughty things to do, and he was only five.

Tom’s mom that year got a job—a real one. It wasn’t nine-to-five, but it did go for eight entire hours. It started at four in the morning when the dollar-store was to meet the truck and unload stock. His mother mostly stocked shelves, kept the store clean, and occasionally worked the cash register. It was the slow, morning shift. She got off work at two in the afternoon, which allowed her to spend the rest of the day with her son.

Tom’s current babysitter was Mrs. Pelvig. They got on well enough. She was an elderly spinster—his mother said. Never married, retired, and with a ton of time on her hands. Mrs. Pelvig earned an extra few dollars watching him most mornings—though mostly her job was to make sure Tom did not destroy the apartment when his mother was gone at work.

It was his mom’s little joke, as Tom had long tamed the imps to not meddle, and he only ever used them to drive off the neighbor’s cat. The only mess he ever made was whenever he forgot to put away his toys or spilled milk at breakfast.

Tom made his own breakfast. It was easy. Pre-made waffles went into the toaster, and all he had to do was pushed down the button. He liked peanut butter and jam on his waffles, and it was easy for him to open a jar and stick in a knife. Tom usually watched PBS kids shows on TV during breakfast, and he left the TV on all day—mom’s orders. It was to give strangers the impression that someone was home.

If somebody knocked at the door, Tom did not answer it.

If somebody tried to open the door without the proper key, Tom had permission from his mother to unleash the imps on that person—provided it wasn’t Mrs. Pelvig.

That only happened once. Not to Mrs. Pelvig, but to a stranger.

Some guy thought he could rob the place. When he broke in and saw the little pale five-year-old sitting in the middle of the room watching TV, he almost took a step back. The burglar took a real step back when Tom pointed at him and told the imps to kick him out of the apartment and shut the door.

The imps kicked that man out alright. The burglar tripped down the stairs when they did it. And the imps slammed the door so hard that the building shook, and the kitchen window cracked.

Mrs. Pelvig usually showed up at ten AM, long after Tom had breakfast and had finished watching Sesame Street. She had her own key. Most days when she entered, she eyed over Tom’s mess of toys, then the TV show he was watching, and then went to examine the mess left in the kitchen from his breakfast. She usually brought in something for lunch that she made. Mrs. Pelvig would set it on the counter while muttering under her breath stuff Tom could hear loud and clear from her imps— ‘His mother was a little slut, but this poor disabled kid did not need to suffer for it.’ Tom was not sure he liked being called ‘disabled’, especially when it was not true. But Mrs. Pelvig also muttered things like, “At least she got herself a real job.”

But the last thing Tom heard his sitter mutter that morning was, “Why does she not enroll the boy into kindergarten? It is better than leaving him at home with only the boob-tube for his education.”

Mrs. Pelvig had been a teacher before her retirement. Not of kids, though. Adults. She used to teach ESL classes at the local community college. She said openly that she had no patience for kids.

…Which was true.

She had zero patience with Tom. If he took his time playing or walking or just exploring things, she’d call it ‘lollygagging’. She frequently called him a ‘time waster’ and a ‘dawdler’.

Tom liked hearing new words, but he was tired of hearing new insults.

He had learned the word ‘synonym’ recently. The lady at the library read a book about synonyms during story hour. Sometimes Mrs. Pelvig took him to the library right after lunch where he could sit on story hour and look at books for free in the kids section. She usually did that on Wednesdays when she wanted to go grocery shopping and did not want to bring him along. The last time she had brought him in to the grocery store, Tom had eaten all the free samples at one station and had made an entire display topple—which she had decided was on purpose. She swore the kid simply attracted trouble.

Now, the story about synonyms in the library, though, was about a baker who wanted to make a ‘synonym roll’. The children giggled at the joke, as it sounded like cinnamon. Most of the story was like that—a play on words. But Tom learned a lot of synonyms for Big in that story. Enormous. Gigantic. Large. Huge. Colossal. Immense. Vast. Titanic. Massive. Mammoth. Monstrous. He liked that last one. Monstrous. It was so dynamic. But Prodigious sounded really smart, and he had shared that with his mother when she had picked him up from the library after work. He also liked the word Cosmic, though the imps said that really didn’t mean Big but it was like the universe, which was big.

But that day was not a library day. It wasn’t even a sit-outside day. Tom could tell from Mrs. Pelvig’s imps that it was a ‘sit quietly and play, I have a headache’ day. 

She had a lot of those. Tom figured it was her medication. It was something he noticed about old people and people in general. Those who had medication and used it had imps who acted out of synch. Imps usually got more irritable, excitable, or more depressive near folk on drugs—prescription or otherwise. He noticed the same thing happen when his mother had a beer or two. Her imps were likely to suggest she do really dumb things when she was drunk, if even only mildly. They often had disjointed thoughts.

So, that day as Mrs. Pelvig needed quiet, Tom sat in his bedroom and went over the picture books his mother had scrounged up for him at yard sales and library overstock whenever they replaced old books with new ones. Tom had one all about colors—one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish—which his mother read to him, and he could follow along. He had another all about the ABC’s—several ABC books actually. One of his favorites was the Bernstain Bears’ B book. He had that one and Green Eggs and Ham memorized. He'd recite both whenever in the mood. “Big Brown. Big Brown Bear. Big Brown Bear, Blue Bull…” He had a whole selection of Dr. Seuss books, all dog-eared, and some that had even been chewed by dogs. They were well-loved.

As he turned a page, Tom heard the door open and his mother call out to Mrs. Pelvig, asking about Tom. The house was always clean when she got home, as Mrs. Pelvig detested mess and usually cleaned up the very moment she arrived, often making Tom join her. Tom knew his mom paid Mrs. Pelvig for that also, as his mom really did not like to clean house herself. Mrs. Pelvig even did laundry.

Tom dropped his book immediately and ran to his mother, hugging her legs. He noticed his mom was carrying groceries in their dumpster diving bag—a heavy canvass bag strong enough to hold many cans. In it was a lot of canned and boxed food.

She set the bag down and hugged him back. “Oh, Tom I missed you! I gotta treat for you!”

She pulled out of the bag some expired Cheetos. Tom clapped his hands, cheering. “Yay!” Things like Cheetos did not so much expire as get stale—but not for a long while. But Tom loved Cheetos in all forms anyway. They were a treat.

“Take them into your room and go get your shoes and jacket on. We’re going to the park today. Right now, I need to talk to Mrs. Pelvig for a minute.” She patted Tom on his head and pushed his tush in that direction.

Tom happily skipped off with the bag into his room, and went in search of his shoes. It was always a search, as Tom hated shoes and he often threw them when he took them off. He also had to search for socks, as he knew his mother would not let him wear those shoes without socks—mostly because Mrs. Pelvig wouldn’t.

As he went, he overheard Mrs. Pelvig’s imps shout for the billionth time that she should tender her resignation—whatever that meant. Yet the woman said to his mom, “I brought the form. Isn’t it about time he go to school?”

“I can’t afford it,” his mother replied, her imps screaming for her to take Tom and run away. It was silly, as they were in their home. She could just send Mrs. Pelvig away.

“Public school is free,” Mrs. Pelvig dryly replied. “And you would not have to pay me so much for my services, as all I’d have to do is take him to school, pick him up afterward and feed him lunch. A little tidying up here and there, and it is, as Covey says, a win-win situation.”

Tom heard his mother sigh. “Not what I meant. I don’t have the proper records and all that for him.

“You’ve got a birth certificate, right?”

“Only that.”

Their imps called each other some rather rude words, from ‘nosy witch’ to ‘crackhead’. Tom long learned that neither woman would ever say such things with their own mouths.

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“Mrs. Pelvig, that is my business. Besides, Tom has all the books he needs. And he knows his numbers and colors and ABC’s. And we do reading every evening. He can already read the little words and write his letters.”

“But a child needs to be socialized.”

“That’s why we go to the park,” his mother said, as her imps screams for Mrs. Pelvig to mind her own damn business. “He gets to meet all sorts of kids there—and it’s free.”

“I’ve seen you. You sometimes leave him at the park.” Mrs. Pelvig’s imps screamed that his mom was a neglectful B-word… her imps not even daring to say the bad word aloud, as the woman despised cuss words.

“He’s fine for a couple of hours.”

And the back-and-forth continued, though Tom knew his mom would win out of sheer stubbornness. No one won an argument with her—ever. She never let them.

“But what if some stranger tries to pick him up? It is not the same as you leaving him at home in the morning.”

“Tom already knows what to do when he meets strangers,” His mom snapped. “Besides, Tom is more prepared than most of those kids there.”

“Right… his super powers…” Mrs. Pelvig said even more dryly than usual as her imps called his mother insane now. “The only super power that kid has is for getting into trouble.”

“Well maybe one of his super powers to hide his powers from cynics,” his mother said, her imps calling out, ‘Zinger!’.

Tom learned the word ‘cynic’ early on. A cynic was someone who did not believe in much, often a really unhappy person.

“Your son needs to go to school,” Mrs. Pelvig stubbornly stuck to it.

“Thank you for watching Tom,” his mother said in a final tone. “Here’s your pay.”

That ended it. His mother was done listening. He could hear the old woman’s imps demanding more money for her trouble. And Mrs. Pelvig did mutter something, but she did not say it out loud. Soon the door opened and shut and that was end of it. The imps spat raspberries and called Mrs. Pelvig a few more choice names which his mother might have muttered under her breath.

His mother walked into his room soon after. “Tom! Hurry it up and find your shoes!”

After she helped him look, getting his socks jacket on next, she had him show how well he could tie his own laces. Every time Tom demonstrated a new skill, his mom praised him. But Tom also knew she meant it. Her imps were often shouting for her to brag to fellow mothers at the park that her son was brighter than any of the other dirt-eaters in the place.

Tom really was quite bright for his age.

Yes. He knew all his numbers, colors, ABC’s and he could even add and subtract already, in many ways above that of the average five-year-old. He had dexterous fingers and toes, impeccable balance, and a sense of self that most kids his age just did not have. He even spoke at a level higher than his age group—whenever anyone could get him to talk. His mother had once bragged when they were in the library that he was five years ahead of most kids on the planet. She was proud of him.

The problem was, Helene Brown was not so sure Tom should be in school.

It had everything to do with the imps.

Tom’s mother noticed that her son got more agitated and distracted when among people, most especially when inside buildings and other enclosed spaces. He was always rattled when on public busses and subways. He was skittish and highly distracted in malls and grocery stores. It was why she hated bringing him to the grocery store where she worked. She could not see the imps, but Tom told her they were everywhere, and everyone had at least one tormenting them, if not two. And after a rather rattling trip where Tom grabbed his head and started screaming for everyone to shut up, and be quiet while on a rather subdued subway car, when they got home, she did the math. She counted up that a regular classroom of thirty kids in public school, or even fifteen, would be a room full of noise for her little boy. Even the quiet library was too noisy for him. She could tell when the imps got stirred up and began to scream things only Tom could hear. The kids might not have been talking, but imps always shouted.

Thinking on this, they walked to the park, both of them with their sunglasses on. It was about three blocks away, across two streets—one very busy. Tom was not yet old enough to cross the street alone, but his mom did her best to teach him about looking both ways and never just running into the traffic. He always held her hand, not because he was afraid of the cars or the people, but because he liked being with her.

As they walked together, Tom read off the car license plates to his mother. He could not quite read the longer words on the plates but he loved reciting the simple words he found in them. The vanity plates especially gave him a giggle.

One said, I LUV U.

Another he read 2 L8.

A third said, BEEP X2.

When they got to the park, Tom’s mother crouched down so she was eye-level with him. “Now, I’m going to take a walk and do a little business. There is someone I have to meet. You stay here at this play area and have some fun. Play nice. I’ll be back soon.”

Tom frowned. He did not like it when his mother went off on business while he played. Her imps called her all sorts of mean names which made her feel unhappy. He knew she did these small jobs for a few extra bucks to make rent, and that was simply how it was.

“Now, remember the rules.” She took both of his hands in hers. “You are Clark Kent here. No showing your secret identity.”

Tom nodded. It was what he always had to do.

“If anyone asks, ‘Where’s your mommy?’ say ‘She is using the restroom. I am waiting for her’.” She met his gaze to make sure he understood and did that.

He nodded again. They were lies, but those lies usually worked on adults. They also used this tactic whenever he was alone in the library. Sometimes, if ever a policeman or other adult asked, his mom told him to point to any cluster of women sitting at park benches or talking together. He was never to go with any adult except her or Mrs. Pelvig. It did not matter if they were police or a librarian. Only adults who knew their secret password, which was Kryptonite, was he allowed to go with.

Also, he had his mom’s permission to bite anyone who grabbed him—and that included policemen. And it was ok to sic imps on any dangerous stranger.

Tom’s mother shooed him to the jungle gym and waited for him to go play. Sighing, he did. Tom preferred it when his mother stayed and sat with the other mothers, and he could really point her out. Most of the time, it was that way. But when it got close to rent-paying time… well, she always had to pick up a couple of extra bucks, just in case.

He went the monkey bars and climbed up. Kids who saw him, skirted away from him.

Tom was an exceptional climber for a number of reasons. First, he had no reason to fear gravity. He had learned from the imps that he could weigh as much as he wanted to. And he could fall as slowly as a soap bubble, if he so wished. But secondly, he really did have better motor skills than kids his age. So he was soon up high and happy, playing around and swinging like a little rhesus monkey, enjoying himself utterly.

“Outta da way, ghost!” some kid shouted, shoving him—a seven-year-old, by the looks of him.

Tom could actually guess the age of a kid by their imps. Some of their imps barely had nubs for horns and stubs for tails. Infant imps tended to follow infant people. Little kids had imps that tempted them with mostly silly things, like eating crayons and dirt. Older kids were tempted to be mean. Meanness was an older-person thing. Little kids copied older kids, but did not comprehend the intentional meanness until they passed a certain age, and therefore their imps were still quite innocent. Usually the mean imps showed up when a kid was about seven or eight.

“Yeah, move it, ghost!” shouted another kid, older. Probably a brother.

Tom swung out of the way, tempted to just fly off and watch them scream. But he didn’t. Clark Kent did not fly, even though he was able to.

“Careful!” an overprotective mother jumped in, reaching out for Tom.

But Tom, swung up and around to get on top of the monkey bars. She drew in a gasp and stared at him.

“Hey! Hey! Kiddo. You’re gonna fall,” she called out, following him. “You’re too little to be up this high.”

“No, I’m not,” Tom declared. “I’m a monkey!”

She burst into a nervous laugh, nodding as she watched him climb across, agile as a monkey. “Maybe you are. Where’s your mom?”

Tom pointed haphazardly to the cluster of ladies talking.

“Oh. I see.” She murmured. “She really should watch you more carefully, or you’re going to end up in the ER.”

“What’s the E-R?” Tom sat up on one bar, staring down at this woman whose imps were mostly telling her to grab him and put him on the ground.  

Still laughing nervously, she smiled at him, keeping her hands off, as grabbing someone else’s kid would cause trouble. “The hospital. The Emergency Room, for a broken bone.”

“Emergency Room—E R… OK.” Tom then made a flip and landed deftly on the ground. He grinned up at her from off the sandbox and said, “Thank you.”

The woman stared after him as Tom ran over to the swings. One had been abandoned.

But a girl pushed him to the ground before he could reach that swing, getting into it first. “Get your own!”

“Meanie!” Tom brushed off the sand and stomped his foot.

The girl stuck her tongue out at him, swinging.

But he had learned it did not pay to fight over this sort of thing. If he did, parents would get involved.

Tom trudged away to a near teeter-totter. But instead of climbing onto one seat and hoping for another rider, Tom hopped up onto the middle pole and walked it like a tightrope artist. It was easy for him. He also had perfect balance. And he was thinking, if he were not supposed to be a super hero, he’d have the imps push that girl off that swing for him. It wasn’t fair the way some kids played.

Some kids watched him, calling him a freak. But most kids ignored Tom. A good number had seen Tom at this park most afternoons and knew not to mess with this particular boy. Besides being naturally creepy, one time not too long ago, after a bigger kid called him ghost boy, all the kids in the play area had decided to pretend they could not see him.

Back then Tom had started to cry.

Seeing that, the big kids laughed at him more, calling him a big baby, shoving him around.

But the little boy Tom quickly stopped crying… and got this wicked look on his face instead. The rest, as the cliché goes, was history.

Crazy things started to happen.

Bad things started to happen to all those kids who had picked on him. One of them had sand dumped into his pants by some invisible source. Another had water sprayed onto his pants so it looked like he had peed himself. A girl’s dress got torn down the back, and she had to grab her skirt to hide her panties. And another kid (who had come there in nice new pants that he was supposed to keep clean), tripped and skidded over the damp grass, getting such awful grass and mud stains that his mom whopped his butt hard and dragged him away by his arm. And some other kids tripped and fell into mud. All of them got scolded by their parents.

Tom, of course, was nowhere near them when that happened. But they all saw his dark crooked smile as his tormentors one by one ‘reaped karma’. These days, they gave Tom a wide berth.

Tom was fine with that.

While walking the teeter-totter pole, Tom did his best to ignore all the others in the park, including those weird people-things he could see that other kids just could not. Though he had not known what they were when he first saw these other weirdly shaped people (aside from imps) Tom soon found out what his little orange eyes allowed him to see.

The imps told him some, but mostly he got it out of a library book.

Currently, Tom spied two diminutive elves in the overgrown pine trees which were shedding needles like crazy as they collected pine cones. He only knew they were elves due to their penchant for nature and their pointed ears. Tom also spotted the local, stumpy goblin trudging along the fence line near the bushes, dragging by its tail one dead squirrel it clearly had killed for dinner. They were regulars of that park—and Tom had long learned that as long as he left them alone, they left him alone.

 No one else ever saw them. They simply were not able to see them. Their eyes were not able.

Sometimes, though, Tom had seen what the imps said were demons, and even what looked like angels. Ordinary people could not see those either.

The angels scared Tom the most. They were not like the angels in the kids’ books—at least most of them weren’t. They did not have halos. Practically none wore white or had cherubic faces or blonde curly hair. The angels he saw only had two commonalities—all angels carried a weapon of some kind, and they all had wings. Everything else about them was different.

Currently, in the park, Tom noticed an angel with gray wings and a gray robe. He was carrying a sword and a shield, standing under one of the trees. Many kinds of angels carried swords. Tom preferred them to the ones who carried scythes. His favorite were the ones who had shields, as they were mostly kind. This angel’s eyes met Tom’s and it nodded. It then point toward a little girl talking with a woman and a man. Their imps were shouting things like, ‘Just grab her now and run’ and ‘Hurry it up and get her into the car. Tell her, her mommy is in the car.’

Tom hopped off the teeter-totter bar. He said to the imps near him for them to pinch the man and the woman hard, all over.

The couple jumped immediately as the invisible mini-devils obeyed with glee. No one could see them, but their yelps and screams scared off the little girl who hastily ran back to the play area, calling for her mommy.

The angel in gray watched as the couple ran off to their car, yelping about biting gnats. Tom followed the pair, watching as they sat in their car with the windows rolled up as if it would give them protection.

“They might come back,” said the angel with the sword in a voice that felt as if dust had to be shaken off of it.

“What can I do?” Tom muttered, as this was the first time he actually had spoken to an angel. “I’m five.”

Regarding Tom silently, the angel just stood there, waiting. It was annoying. Elves and goblins were freaky, but they also hurried off and did not want to be seen. It was easy enough to avoid them. Angels, however, did not hide or sneak off. They lingered, and waited. Some skulked. The good thing about angels was that they were rare. Tom mostly ever just saw imps. But this guy looked like he intended to loiter in the park all day.

“Why don’t you do something?” Tom said. “You’re the big guy. You have a sword.”

“I am doing something,” the angel said.

Tom stared at him, wondering what it meant.

Eventually, the couple stepped out of the car again. From their imps, they seemed ready to try for another kid. Their eyes flickered over the crowd, from kid to kid, while looking casual-like. Their initial target was now with a woman. This pair stepped out of their line of sight.

Tom wandered nearer, staring.

That’s when they saw him.

“Hey, little boy,” the woman said. “Are you lost?”

Tom wordlessly shook head, remembering the warnings of his mother to never talk go off with strangers.

“Those are cute sunglasses you got,” the woman said. “They make you look cool.”

Tom just stared. His sunglasses kept most people around him calm. He had long learned that many were unnerved by his orange eyes. And yes, he looked cool.

“Can you speak?” the man asked, skeptical.

“Arf,” Tom said, annoyed.

The man laughed. “Ha. A kid with an adult sense of humor. Cute.”

“Where is your mommy?” the woman asked with considerable softness.

But both of their imps were snickering wickedly, saying, ‘Oh, yeah. Grab him he’ll be real fun.’

Tom pointed to the cluster of ladies, but then decided to tell the truth. He did not know why. “She’s not here. She’s doing work.”

The couple exchanged a look of triumph.

“Hey, do wanna get some milkshakes?” the woman asked.

Tom did want a milkshake, but he knew this couple was up to no good. The angel stood not too far away, watching him intently.

“Tom!”

All three of them turned, especially as his mother marched across the grass toward them. Immediately the couple put on polite faces, but Tom could tell they were disappointed once again. Their imps were cursing, and they were having a hard time not repeating those words.

“Tom! Didn’t I tell you to never talk to strangers?” His mom pulled him away by his arm. “People like that could be kidnappers.”

“They are kidnappers,” Tom declared.

The couple overheard him, immediately hurrying off to their car.

“What?” she popped up her head to stare after them. “How do you know?”

They got in their car once more, hastily.

The angel nodded to Tom, yet did not quite leave. He was so weird.

Tom said to his mother with glare at the angel, “Their imps are telling them to grab kids.”

“So why did you talk to them?” She looked exasperated, inclined to shake her son.

Shrugging, Tom looked down. “They were gonna take a girl. I didn’t want them to.”

“So you were going to have them take you instead?” She now nearly did shake him, holding him by his arms.

He shook his head. “No. I was… I was trying to, um… find a way stop them.”

She stared, blinking at him.  

“But they’ll just come back to the park…” Tom murmured. “Another day.”

The angel nodded.

“Not if we report them,” his mother murmured to herself. She looked to her son. “Did you see their license plate? The numbers and letters on their car?”

He nodded. “A boring plate. BJD 690.”

His mother stared at him. “BJD? Like bend-joint doll?”

He shrugged. “What’s that?”

Sighing, his mother nodded. Rising to her full height, she then thought on it, and looked around for a sign. She found one for the local police, a hotline to report creepers and illicit activities, not far from the curb. When the other side picked up, she said, “Hi. I’m at Fulton Park. My son says he’s seen a creepy couple here who look like they are trying to lure kids away to their car.”

She paused, listening. “Yeah. Um. A Buick. License place BJD 690. Yes. A male and a female.”

After another pause, she said, “Oh, the woman had brown wavy hair. She was wearing a short sleeved pink blouse. The man was in a jean jacket. He had darker, straight brown hair. Both Caucasian.”

His mother’s imps were anxious. They were shouting for her to screech at the police, but she was using her most polite language.

“Yes, I saw them as well.” She then sighed heavily, rubbing Tom’s head, mussing up his white blonde hair. “Yeah. I saw them talking to him. And when I pulled him away, they went and drove off in their car. They’re no longer here.”

Tom wondered at this until the angel nodded and started to drift now toward the jungle gym. The angel gently caught a kid who almost fell on his head. The kid landed on his rump, instead.

“Yeah… I don’t know that. I haven’t really noticed if they come by our park often. Just today.”

Something was said on the other side. His mother nodded and replied, “Helene Brown. And thank you. I just don’t want anything to happen to my son, besides the other kids in the park.”

The call soon ended. She hung up the emergency phone and looked to Tom. “Well, they’ll look into it. You may have saved the day, my little superhero. Let’s go somewhere else. How about a movie?”

Nodding vigorously, Tom grinned.

They had their favorite movie theater. It wasn’t their favorite for the huge screens or surround sound. It wasn’t even their favorite for the popcorn and way too expensive theater food. It was their favorite because one of the back doors had a broken lock, and the building alarms (if there were any) were not connected there. Tom’s mom suspected that one of the employees had rigged it to let in their friends for free. But that just meant they could sneak in for free.

They had a choice between the latest superhero movie, the most recent Pixar release, and a sappy love story with multiple crossing plots going on at the same time. They could have stayed for the most recent horror flick, but Tom’s mom had long decided that it was best not to give the confused kid who saw imps on a daily basis bad ideas.

When they came home that evening and had boxed macaroni and cheese with nutmeg on top, Tom sighed with contentment. His mom said she had earned enough for next month’s rent, and she had gotten a good haul in her last dumpster diving expedition.

“Why can’t I come with you dumpster diving anymore,” Tom whined, eating the last of his cheesy macaroni with his fingers.

She shrugged, licking her own fingers. “Do you really want to be up at four AM? That’s when I do it. When you are asleep.”

“Before work?” he whimpered. He usually woke up at six at the earliest, nine at the latest.

She nodded. But her imps laughed, as clearly, she had lied and did not need them to suggest for her to lie. Tom could always tell when someone lied. Imps loved lies. They often snickered when telling people to lie. He wondered why she was lying to him. But she noticed he could tell.

“Fine.” She sighed. “It’s from work. It all the food with the past-sell-by-date stuff. Instead of putting it into the dumpster, I set it aside and hide it until I have to go home. They don’t need it, and I can use it.”

Tom nodded, but he noticed the imps smirking with pleasure. Whenever they did that, it meant trouble was coming. He asked, “Will you get in trouble?”

His mom rolled her eyes. “Not if they don’t catch me.”

His eyes widened.

“It’s not stealing!” she protested, stabbing the last of her macaroni with her fork. “They want me to get rid of it anyway! I just don’t put it in that stupid garbage dumpster.”

Tom wondered why taking leftover food would get his mother in trouble. They ate dumpster leftovers all the time. Dumpster diving wasn’t so much illegal, as… messy, maybe? Being five, Tom did not understand the logic behind all of it. All he knew was that the imps were enjoying this. And that meant whatever she was doing was in the realm of naughty. And naughty meant trouble.

 

Mrs. Pelvig showed up at ten as usual. She was in an irritable move when she arrived. After one sniff, she snapped at Tom to pick up all the apple cores he had left around the apartment. He was always in the habit of eating part of an apple and leaving the cores and half eaten apples around the house. His job that morning was to fetch them and put them in the garbage.

The sitter took him outside for a walk to get lunch that day. They found a hotdog vendor and got the works. Tom liked his with onions and chili. As they sat on a bus stop bench to eat them, Mrs. Pelvig murmured, “I’m getting too old for this.”

Tom decided not to answer. The woman like to talk to herself most of the time.

“She really should put you in school,” Mrs. Pelvig said.

Bristling, Tom looked up at the sign and pointed to it. “B U S. Bus. S T O P. Stop. Bus Stop.”

Mrs. Pelvig raised her eyebrows. “Oh… so you don’t just stare at the pictures in your books, huh?”

Sharply nodding, Tom said, “Mom teaches me. I don’t need school.”

The woman sighed. “But your mom does not have enough time to home school you for real. Besides, don’t you want friends your age?”

Tom shook his head.

“Not at all?” Mrs. Pelvig gave a pitying shake of her head. “Aren’t you lonely?”

“The big kids call me ‘ghost’,” he muttered. “Kids are mean.”

The woman raised her eyebrows and chuckled on that. She could not argue exactly. She actually agreed. “Ok… but when you grow up, you can’t just sit at home. Not if you want to be healthy. You’ve got to learn how be among people.”

Tom did not like that. But that was the reason he went to the park—to learn how to be among other kids. He muttered under his breath, “But it’s too noisy…”

Sighing, Mrs. Pelvig gave up. He said that in moments when she thought it was quiet. She did not understand that he could hear imps.

She walked Tom home, where they saw a police car out in front of their building, along with another car. The owner of the deli was talking to the cop, his imps shouting loud and clear, ‘And tell him she was the best sex you ever had.’

Tom stiffened, having heard that before, but not sure what it meant.

The deli owner actually said, “No, I don’t know her very well at all. She just lives quietly up there with her rowdy kid. The kid’s a little monster, you know. He should be locked up.”

“So, when do you expect them back?” the policeman asked the dirty man.

Standing beside the policeman was a woman who just loomed. She was thick around the middle, from her ankles all the way up to her neck and cheeks—not what polite people would call obese, but definitely thick. Her eyes flickered over to Tom who was walking closer toward them with Mrs. Pelvig.

The owner of the deli followed the looming woman’s line of sight. He perked up. “There he is.”

Tom froze in his tracks, his sneakers squeaking on the pavement.

“What’s this?” Mrs. Pelvig protectively put Tom behind her, hiding him behind her skirt. “What’s going on?”

“Are your Mrs. Pelvig?” asked the looming woman.

Mrs. Pelvig nodded tersely. Her imps clammed up.

“And that must be Thomas.” The imps of the looming woman eyed Tom with curious delight as she maintained professional politeness.

Mrs. Pelvig shook her head. “Tom.”

The looming woman smiled. “I’m Ms. Broacher from Child Protective Services.”

Hearing her, Tom ‘yeeped’ and hid behind Mrs. Pelvig more, pulling her skirt around him.

The policeman peered at Tom from around Mrs. Pelvig’s ankles as the deli owner nodded and stepped back. “Yeah. Looks like he’d be her kid. What’s with the sunglasses? Is he blind?”

“They’re cool,” Mrs. Pelvig replied loyally. She looked to the looming woman. “What is this about? Tom is being well cared for. I watch him when his mother is gone at work.”

“Ah, that’s the thing…” Ms. Broacher said, her eyes flickering down to Tom, looming nearer.

“Mrs. Pelvig,” the police officer said, “We regret to inform you that Ms. Brown has been arrested and is in the custody of the New York Police.”

Drawing in a quick breath, Mrs. Pelvig quickly glanced to Tom.

“We are here to take the boy into protective custody while his mother undergoes her trial and most likely imprisonment.”

“What is the charge?” Mrs. Pelvig asked, though her imps shouted out for her to ask more explicitly if it was prostitution or selling drugs. Tom could tell she was keeping silent for his sake.

“Theft.”

Stunned, Tom defiantly shook his head and stormed around Mrs. Pelvig to face these two strangers. “No! Mom never stole anything!”

The looming woman crouched down to look him in the face and said in a dumbed-down voice. “I’m sorry Tommy, but your mom was caught taking something from her work that does not belong to her.”

Tom folded his arms and shook his head. “No! No. No. No. She only ever took stuff that was past the sell-by date. It was going into the dumpster anyway! They don’t want it!”

“He knows…” murmured the cop to the social worker with looks.

Mrs. Pelvig cringed.

Ms. Broacher rose to her full height so that Tom was now staring at her knees. “That’s still illegal.”

Tom stomped his little foot and started to cry. “No! No! No! Past sell-by stuff is always thrown away! It just goes to the landfill! And that is not eco-friendly! We’re saving the environment!”

“Wow.” Ms. Broacher smothered a smirk. “Such big words…. Is that what mommy said?”

Spitting his tongue out at Ms. Broacher, Tom shouted, “You’re stupid!”

“Now that’s no way to talk!” The woman from Child Protective Services frowned at him as his sitter, gently attempted to pull Tom back. “Young man, you are coming with us.”

“No, I’m not!” Tom stomped his foot, hands balled into fists. He was ready to sic imps on this woman and cop.

“But I have the magic word,” Ms. Broacher declared.

Tom spat at her again. “Saying ‘please’ will do nothing! You’re a stranger! I don’t know you! I’m not going with you!”

Mrs. Pelvig sighed, folding her arms.

Yet Ms. Broacher softly shook her head, crouched down so she was head level with Tom again, and said, “I can prove I am a friend.”

“Liar.” Tom recoiled from her, pulling near Mrs. Pelvig again.

Ms. Broacher sighed and whispered to him, “Kryptonite.”

Tom shuddered.

Superman and Clark Kent alike caved under Kryptonite. And Tom caved when he heard the secret word. He had to go with this awful woman. His mom would not have told her the secret word if she did not want him leave with her.

Sniffling, Tom looked to Mrs. Pelvig. “I don’t wanna go.”

Yet Mrs. Pelvig sighed with a look to the policeman and said to the woman, “Can we at least pack him an overnight bag? Tom has… a condition. If you look at his eyes, you’ll see.”

“Can you show me your eyes?” asked Ms. Broacher to Tom.

Tom stuck his tongue out at her, but he also lowered his sunglasses.

Ms. Broacher took in a sharp breath and stared at his orange eyes. She then quickly whispered to Mrs. Pelvig, “What kind of condition is that? Is he ok? Does he need medication?”

Shaking her head, Mrs. Pelvig went into whispers. “I’m not sure. Severe ADHD. Hyper imagination. It worries me, actually. His mom never schedules play dates….”

But Tom could hear. He could also hear their imps, which shouted for them to lock him up in some kind of asylum.

“Any medical problems?”

Mrs. Pelvig cringed with a peek to Tom. “You did not get this from me, but… He’s got this weird, I don’t know, lump on his back. I’m not allowed to help him get dressed, so I’ve never seen it. I don’t think it is cancer, but it’s like… like… alive.”

“Ok… we’ll look into that, but I was thinking more like dietary restrictions. Medicine he needs to take.”

“Uh… nope. Nothing. Besides his hyperactivity, his eye color, and that back lump, he’s relatively normal. Actually, he’s bright for his age.”

“I see.” Ms. Broacher said that in a normal voice. “Well then. How about we pack that overnight bag?”

Mrs. Pelvig nodded. The imps groaned as there was nothing they could suggest to either woman that would be fun for them and mischief for everyone else.

And that was it.

Mrs. Pelvig put together the bag for Tom, packing at least his pajamas, a change of clothes, a fuzzy blanket, and some fresh underwear and socks.

Then they loaded him and it into Ms. Broacher’s car. She said she was taking him to the courthouse to meet the judge to handle his case. The looming thick woman was about as bad as it could get for Tom, because she had a voice and presence to match—and she was fast. Tom soon found himself in the backseat of Ms. Broacher’s car—strapped in a car seat. His suitcase had been tossed onto the seat next to him.

Tom had never sat in a car seat before (his mom did not have a car), and he did not like it—at all. He slipped out of the straps and padding as soon as she started driving, and he bounced all over the back seat. Ms. Broacher had to pull the car over several times during their trip to the courthouse and wrangle him back into the car seat. By the time they got to the parking structure, Ms. Broacher’s prim hair and clothes were awry, looking like she had walked through a tornado.

Tom had bitten her—twice.

But Ms. Broacher successfully parked and hauled Tom out of the car, and into the building for processing.

As Tom screamed and cried when she took him into the building, she never once let go of his wrist. He clawed at her hand. But she must have had thick callouses on her thumb and wrist. Or maybe she had long lost all sense of feeling in her hand after the second bite. Or, she had been in the army and could handle the attack. Nothing Tom did changed her grip on him. His little teeth and jaws did not stand a chance. The only thing Tom did not do was call on imps to help him escape. He had promised his mother to never call on imps in front of Child Protective Services—because she said that if he ever did, she might never see him again. They would forever take him away.

Once through processing, Ms. Broacher took Tom to see the judge.

It was a small hearing, simply to assess the situation with the boy.

In the judge’s chambers (a room to his eyes akin to a church chapel with wooden pews and a front stand), Tom saw another angel. This one was different from the one at the park. He only carried a shield. The angel was also unusual in that it was a stumpy sort of guy in an old 40’s zoot suit, with a face like a mole. He had wings, but they were made of stationary supplies—like envelopes, paperclips, stamps and pencils. Many of his feathers were different lengths and kinds of sharpened pencils. Tom shifted away from him, as such angels made him extremely nervous considering they often conflicted with other death angels, usually using their shield to protect people. This angel wordlessly winked at him.

“This is the boy,” Ms. Broacher said, leading Tom up to the judge.

“Take off those glasses, young man,” said the judge who was a middle-aged man, his hair thinning at the top. “It’s not sunny in here, and it is rude.”

Sulking, Tom looked to the ground but then took the sunglasses off. When the judge saw his eyes and took a breath, Tom put them back on again.

“I’m sorry,” judge said in a kinder voice. “Do you need those to protect your eyes?”

Tom shook his head.

“Are you sure?” the judge asked as Tom was five, and lots of five-year-olds clammed up when facing adults.

Tom stuck his tongue out at the man. “I want my mom!”

Sighing, the judge sat back in his tall wooden seat. “You’ll get to see her in a minute. Now tell me about your eyes. Can you see ok?”

Rolling his eyes, Tom snapped, “I can see better than you can.”

“Maybe,” the judge murmured with a look to Ms. Broacher. “I am an old man. And I’ve got glasses. Ok, young man. What’s your name?”

Tom shook his head.

“It is ok to tell him. He is the judge,” Ms. Broacher said.

Tom still shook his head, folding his arms. “He doesn’t know the password.”

“But I do,” she said, “And I say he’s ok.”

“I don’t care,” Tom bit back. “Mom didn’t.”

The judge leaned back. “Wow. That’s a well-trained kid.”

But Ms. Broacher heaved a sigh. “We need to get this sorted out. She has barely any documentation. Her driver’s license is fake. We’ve got his birth certificate, but not hers.”

“What does his birth certificate say?” the judge asked. “Who’s the father?”

With a grim look, Ms. Broacher answered, “That’s the thing. There is no father.”

Her imps were screaming that she should say Tom was a bastard—a word he had run across before but did not quite understand. Apparently, it was not polite.

“His name?”

“It says Tom Brown.”

“Thomas Brown?” the judge asked to clarify, as his imps snapped for him to get a drink of whisky ASAP.

“Tom.” And Tom stomped his little foot. “I am Tom.”

Ms. Broacher nodded. “Just Tom. His sitter even insists—and he does not like being called ‘Tommy’ either. He bit me the second time I called him that.” She showed the judge the bite marks, which had not quite broken her skin.

“Got it.” The judge nodded to her. He said to Tom, “Tom, do you have a grandmother—a grandma or grandpa—we can bring you to?”

Tom shook his head.

“Aunt or uncle?” the judge asked.

Tom shook his head again.

“Do you know your father?”

Frowning, Tom shook his head once more.

“I see… that’s really too bad,” the judge murmured. He then looked to the files on his desk. “She is… a ghost.”

“She’s not a ghost!” Tom snapped, clenching his little fists. “Mommy is an angel.”

Leaning back in his seat, the judge sighed. He took off his glasses and gazed at Tom. “I’m afraid, young man, that your mother made a big mistake. And she is going to have to go to jail for it.”

Tom’s eyes widened.

“The trial is this week,” he explained. “And we need to find a home for you.”

“I go with mommy,” Tom said.

The judge shook his head. “No children are allowed in prison.”

“I go with mommy!” Tom shouted, stomping his foot.

Sympathy was all over the judge’s face. “Kiddo, that is not happing.”

Tom stomped and shouted, “I want my mommy now!”

The imps leaned in, waiting, hoping for Tom to lose it and tell them to get her out of prison. Several imps egged him on. But Tom knew that if the imps were saying it, it would only cause him more trouble. They fed on it. The imps were not his allies. They were merely elements of chaos.

Tom looked to angel with the shield and sniffled. “Can’t you help me?”

The judge and Ms. Broacher looked to where Tom would looking, puzzling over what Tom was doing.

The angel in the suit with the wings made of stationary products, shrugged, his voice resonating down the back of Tom’s head into his scalp and down his spine all the way to his heels and toenails. “Sorry kid. Not my department. But this man here is a good man. Many people are praying for him.”

Wiping away potential tears with the back of his wrist, Tom sniffled more, dry crying. “Is there anyone praying for me?”

Smiling, the angel nodded, his scalp-probing voice echoing in his head. “Your mother.”

Tom nodded.

“The judge means well,” the angel said, then stepped back, taking guard again.

But the angel said it the same way his mother said Mrs. Pelvig means well when she brings over meals with zucchini in it or hands his mom another pamphlet about kindergarten. Tom braced himself for the worst.

The Palace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter Four

 

The trial was speedy and fair. Helene Brown had been accused of trespassing, theft, and other things which Tom did not quite understand. She if convicted, she would be given a year sentence in the state penitentiary, women’s ward.

During the trial, when her store manager found out she had a young child she was trying to feed, he had tried to drop the charges. But corporate had no sense of mercy. Even though she really had only taken food items past the sell-by date and never before, she was still a thief. The food would have all ended up in the trash and then a landfill anyway, and therefore was unsellable, her defense lawyer had argued. So, technically, she was only really guilty of not following company procedure—which was to break open and foul up the containers of food so no one could dumpster dive for it. In a way, her defense lawyer explained to the judge and jury, she was just acting as an environmentalist, reducing the carbon footprint and preventing food waste.

Corporate won. They had better lawyers.

When all was said and done, their argument lost. And Tom’s mother was going to jail for a year.

Tom was allowed some time with his mom before the bailiffs took her away. It was in a conference room, where a guard waited along with Ms. Broacher—both sides prepared for a tearful parting.

“You’ll be Clark Kent for me, right?” his mom said, hugging and kissing Tom. “You

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 24.01.2023
ISBN: 978-3-7554-7912-3

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