Monster

The kid must’ve been at least sixteen, standing at my door. His red nylon jacket had a name tag on his right breast. “Hello, my name is Charlie Decker” it read. He held out his flat, cloth bag by it’s handles, opening it for me to drop in the Halloween candy. It had a hand painted school book on both sides of a math book-Algebra II. I dropped in a handful of “fun-sized” Snickers and Sweeties and asked “Who is Charlie Decker?” I was lost. The kid sighed. It was obviously not the first time he’d had to answer this inquiry.

“He was the lead character in “Rage”. Stephen King wrote it in high school, but didn’t publish it until 1977. It was about a troubled kid that brought a gun to school. He killed two teachers, then kept a whole class hostage while they talked about stuff kid’s never talk about to each other. They all bonded over the experience, except for a guy named Ted Jones. He thought Charlie was crazy. Charlie basically had the others beat the crap out of Ted before he let the class go. Oh yeah, they almost took Charlie out with a sniper, but it hit his padlock he’d taken off of his locker and put in his shirt pocket.” The kid opened his jacket and took a padlock out of the front pocket of his blue button up shirt. There was what looked like a bullet hole in the pocket, and the lock was even dented to look like it had taken a bullet.

“Wow. I’ve never read that one. Thought I’d read all of his stuff.” I said.

“Well, King had them take it out of print in 1997, after the fifth time a high school shooting was associated with it. It wasn’t the books fault, but King probably felt pretty crappy having a work of his attached to kids killing kids. I guess even the world’s most famous horror writer has moral boundaries.” He shrugged.

“So, Charlie was the monster?” I asked.

“Naw. He was just a kid. Lots of kids like him in the last twenty years. He sure wasn’t a hero, though. If I had to guess, I’d say the real monster was his dad. Not that it was all his fault, but that’s what I got from the story. At least Charlie got some of the kids to get their feelings out in the open. Of course, he did all that with a dead Algebra teacher at his feet. Anyway, I’m not sure I could figure out a costume for Charlie’s dad. Thanks for the candy.” The kid turned and walked away.

I stood there, wide-eyed, watching him stroll down the sidewalk to the next house.

I closed the door and put the candy on the table. I went to my son, Chris’s, room and asked him to pause the video game. I gave him a surprisingly long hug.

“Let’s talk.” I said.