Inferno

1/1

The tape stopped playing. 

Wirt pressed the rewind button. He’d been reluctant to do anything other than sit and listen to his father's recorded voice, lately. It had sounded strange, at first, but months later he felt as if it was the only way he’d ever known it: mechanical and accompanied by an ever-present burr . 

The presence of the new man in the house just didn’t sit right with him. He didn't want to do anything with the stranger, no matter how much his mother swore he was “nice” and “witty” and “Terrence is just a real gentleman, Wirt, listen to me”. He wanted the father he barely remembered, the father who had left behind only memories and cassette tapes, the father who he loved and was loved by. 

Except he had left years ago.

He tried voicing his dislike to his mother. Either he’d forgotten how English works for those few minutes, or his mother simply played deaf, because nothing came of it. After a few tries, he gave up. The man kept returning to his home, his mother kept ignoring his silent fuming, and Wirt kept deliberately misplacing the stranger’s shoes whenever he came by. 

The Walkman stuttered and shut down. 

His practised fingers pried open the machine and the used batteries fell into his awaiting palm. They were light, he noted idly. Definitely drained. These were the last ones of the old batch he'd gotten from his mother, and he doubted there were any left in the house. 

He glanced at the open window, then to the shut door. His mother and her boyfriend wouldn’t think of checking up on him for quite a while; they knew he’d be fine on his own in his room.

They thought he’d be fine on his own in his room.

Quick steps carried him to the open window. He grabbed onto the windowsill and, with a fair amount of struggling, pulled himself through. His rather ungraceful fall into the ivy nestled by the walls went unnoticed, despite the surprised “ oof ” he let slip as he landed on the dirty roots.

“Bad idea, bad idea,” he muttered. His hide felt bruised. 

After shuffling around a bit, he managed to leave the front lawn and set off down the street. The cement radiated heat that reminded Wirt of a wide-open oven. He wondered where the ice-cream truck had hidden away.

He recalled seeing batteries in the store a few corners over when he had been there with his mother. Grocery shopping was a curse, but at least he got to look at Things in those long hours; the children’s faces on cartons, the colourful bricks with their little LEGO marks, the weird old grandpa who always stood in front of the wines and would, in a gravelly voice, tell Wirt about his feather collection whether or not Wirt asked.

“Hello, Mister- What if it’s Missis?” He tried addressing the imaginary cashier in his head. In one version of the events, he tripped over his shoelaces and fell. Then he realised he didn’t have shoelaces, he didn’t have shoes to begin with. His bright blue socks caught on the uneven pavement. In another, he knocked over a shelf of tins and got covered by Disco Ball Beans , which were worse than the rest of the beans by a narrow margin, for they were sweet and they painted his nice striped shirt in poo-like blotches. He tried focusing on speech rather than these selected images.

“Excuse me. Sorry. Batteries- I need, batteries. I would like some batteries.”

He found a rock to kick. Its form wasn’t near a sphere, but it rolled on the pavement anyway. However unevenly.

He tried kicking it upwards like he’d seen the bigger kids do, but it only raised maybe five centimetres before it pathetically fell back to the ground. He shot a glance up and down the street to make sure nobody saw his attempt. That’d be embarrassing.