Steven. Crazy on You

“The Beast Within…”

The soft thud of wood connecting with flesh, human flesh, was immediately dulled by the sharp crack of breaking bones. Blood danced a merry stream down her now shattered face and silenced the imperceptible moans she had involuntarily uttered up unto that point. She’d never had a chance to scream. The sound of gargling and bubbles of bloody froth escaped from her now unrecognizable mouth and nose. Her once bright blue eyes were wide open but no longer capable of sight and the fear they displayed moments before was now clouded over and speckled with her own blood.

She lay on her back in the sandy dunes. Her once white dress

bunched up to her partially exposed breasts. Her underwear

ripped, lay to one side of her youthful tanned hips. The blood that stained her clothing, her body, and the droplets on the bleached white sand up to 10 feet from her still form stood out starkly against their background, almost appearing luminescent and testimony to the force with which she had been struck. And struck not just once or twice, the coroner said later, but at least 30 to 40 times. The stains on the sand faded quickly, in time with her own internal life ardour.

The aroma was oppressive but it did not emanate from her. A face looked down at hers, contorted and grotesque, teeth bared and snarling like a wild animal, yet soundlessly, waiting for more signs of refusal. It squatted over her still body, the mallet handle raised, waiting, waiting. The aroma permeating the air in the immediate area was sickly sweet but it didn’t seem to notice. And she was unable anymore. Still it waited, the mallet handle swaying in time with each breath. One of her unseeing eyes twitched, in death, but still threateningly. The handle rose and fell again, and again, and again…

“Aunt Bec”

“Do you want to come to the beach with us?” The tiny voice was filled with wonder, and a compassion only the young and innocent exude. After a moments hesitation, “Auntie Bec, do you?” she repeated, accompanied this time by tugging on her sleeve.

Auntie Bec looked out over the verandah of her sisters’ home, watching the waves rolling in toward the beach in their inexorable goal of crashing to the shore. It was late summer and still warm. She was dressed in shorts, sandals and a light blouse, one sleeve of which right now was apparently being flapped in the inevitable sea breeze. She had one leg crooked under her body as she sat and the smooth softly tanned skin belied her age, as did the radiant but sad features on her face. Her sadness slipped away like the night.

“Oh, I’m sorry Hon.” She turned to face her young niece and the smile was as bright and genuine as a summer day. “What did you say sweetie?”.

“Mom said we can go down the beach; are you ever gonna come with us?”.

She emphasised the word ‘ever’ with a mock exasperation just like she had seen her Mom and her Aunt do many times before.

Becs’ vivid blue eyes lost their focus and once again, saw a time when she was young and innocent and oblivious to the horrors of the real world. Right now, she wished she could go back to that time and share the wonders of life once again with her youngest niece, in fact, with all of her family. She faced the ocean again, her eyes wide and unseeing, and her niece shrugged her shoulders and walked away.

She had seen her Aunt do this many times before as well and knew, even at the tender age of five (‘nearly six’ she’d have corrected), that it would be useless to try and get her attention away from the sea. What she didn’t understand was why her Aunt could sit out there, look at the beautiful blue ocean and the white sand and not want to actually go and play in it. It was so much fun, except when the waves knocked her over, or if it was really windy and the sand hurt her legs. Maybe Aunt Bec had been on the beach on a really windy day? She almost turned to go back but, one glance at her Aunt sitting there, looking lost, and she grabbed the screen door and ran inside to grab her towel and her body board instead.

“Auntie Bec’s not coming Mom” she yelled.

“You okay Beccy?”

A pretty face framed by the same blonde hair and similar piercing blue eyes looked along the verandah. She was older than Bec by nearly eight years but she looked 20 years older. The family resemblance was marked, they could never be anything other than sisters but the look in their eyes were different. They had been through the same pain, but had dealt with it in their own individual ways, and truth be known, Bec probably had the worst of it ‘coz she’d had nobody to depend on. April had been married when they had all found out the truth, so she, at least, had her husband and three children to help her recover. Dad never got over his daughters loss and passed away a year after it had happened. Mom had died over 9 years ago, so as a family, tragedy looked to be a curse. A curse hopefully over now. But Beccy still took it hardest. After all, it was she that had found out the truth. Accidentally, but almost to her peril as well. So April and her husband had taken Bec into their home, because that’s what families do. As soon as she heard her daughters’ voice booming throughout the house she had poked her head out through the french doors leading from the lounge to the verandah.

“Bec?” No response. “We’re just taking the kids down the beach for awhile. Bec?”

Beccy slowly turned to look down at her sister. Her eyes softened, a trace of wetness and appreciation showing at the same time. She nodded. She watched as they all crossed the road, holding hands, April and her youngest skipping and almost pulling them all off balance, their load of towels and body boards, buckets and spades making them appear like a clown act at the circus. Their laughter rang back at her and she thought she saw April glance back at her guiltily. She stood then, rested one hand on the balustrade, and waved. None of them saw her but she waved again, a solitary tear slipped slowly down her cheek

“Steven”

He was fifteen, not quite had enough of school but damn closeto it. It was boring. It wasted those summer days when the beach beckoned, the swell coming in like they had just rolled across from the other side of the world. Not that he wanted the swells to be big, he was no “weed”. That was the name they used for surfies. All of them blonde. I reckon some of them deliberately bleached their hair as well, he thought, because the sun just wouldn’t do enough of a job on ‘em. But they get the chicks in that’s for sure. Every damn sheila that wanted to be known, that wanted to be a somebody, was a surfie mole. Only the virgins, and probably the really intelligent chicks (one and the same some would say), didn’t have anything to do with the surfies. And you had to like beer as well. He didn’t like beer.

Beer makes ya sick he thought as he gazed absentmindedly out the window at the school yard. A lone magpie waddled and hopped along the newly mowed grass, picking up insects to left and right just like a chicken feeds. Roast magpie he thought and conjured up thoughts of it being served at Sunday lunch with the baked potatoes and pumpkin and the peas and gravy.

“Steven, do you wanta leg?” his mother would say, standing poised over the kitchen table, the carving knife in one hand looking twice as big as the poor magpie sitting in the baking dish. “Steven?” his mother would say again, “Steven?”. Steven Terence Antony Gerald Smith; he was quite proud of his name really, his parents having overloaded him with christian names obviously to make up for the simplicity and commonness of the family name. Still, his initials meant that the other guys called him ‘Staggers’ while his friends (“Do I have any?”) called him Stag. But his mother continued to call him Steven. “Steven, Steven?” God, she was so insistent. He awoke with a start.

“Steven, what are you staring at? I’ve asked you three times for an example and you just sit there ignoring me.”

Her big brown eyes were looking at him pleadingly to help her out. He shook is head, looked slightly down and raised his eyes up at her within the same movement, knowing that the sadness he portrayed to her would melt her little heart.

“I’m really sorry Miss Hartley”. As he spoke he dropped his eyes and his head a little further to feign an even sadder attitude. “A snake got the little ducklings last night at ‘ome and when I saw the maggie outside it just reminded me, that’s all.”

Triumph! She placed a hand on his head and the other on his arm and he felt the sharp heat of her breast at it brushed almost imperceptibly against his shoulder. She softly sighed in his ear.

“I’m really sorry Steven, is there anything I can do for you?”

A quick head job would help he thought. “No, it’s okay, I’m sorry for the interruption Miss Hartley”. He looked straight at her cleavage before raising his eyes to meet hers. He had deep, dark eyes, and ever since he was a toddler he knew he could exert some sort of power over some, no, most women. And ‘though he hated it growing up he learnt to use it to his advantage. “Oh isn’t he just absolutely adorable”, he had heard it many times. It was also easier because of the total opposite look of his older, much older, brother. They doted on him like he was Jesus Christ but they would ignore his brother. Some in fact would recoil at their first sight of him. As he got older he began to appreciate that being adorable sometimes had its benefits. Mrs Harris from next door, a stunning woman in her mid-twentys, used to come over to see his mother and would sweep him up into her arms. When you were 12 years old this wasn’t exactly a cool thing; but he would bury his head into her bosom and more than once he could see down her blouse, or her husbands’ shirt tied at the midriff (why do woman wear their husbands’ clothes he often wondered?) when she wasn’t wearing a bra. He would gaze in wonder at the size of the exposed breast and the way her nipples would almost instantly become erect as he contacted them. Did I say contact he thought? Mashed is more like it, but she was in the main, oblivious to the fact that she was crushing his head to her with one hand while cooing sweet insanities about how gorgeous he was. He didn’t care. He could gaze for an eternity at those breasts. He wasn’t a big boy so Mrs Harris had no trouble lifting him, and she would probably be still doing it if they had not upped and moved away with surprising suddenness.

He recalled hearing some loud arguments between Mrs Harris and her husband a number of days in a row just before they moved. Once, he even snuck over the fence and listened beside one of their windows. He sat shaking like a leaf, frightened only because their volume meant that whatever they were arguing about was deadly serious. He recalled Mr Harris calling his wife a slut and demanding to know how many others there had been, and it was a couple of years before he knew what was meant by that. Mrs Harris cried a lot and Stag thought it was mean of Mr Harris to make her cry. They argued on for a couple more minutes before all of a sudden it seemed to him, they were producing the noises his mother and father did late at night when they thought he and his brother were asleep. Having sex. He believed then that sex was a load of crock perpetrated to undermine the sleep pattern of adults so that they could get up and yell at their kids the next day, just because they were tired. If only he knew then what he knew now, he would have slipped up the tree beside the fence and had a peek through the window. Just to see those magnificent breasts completely exposed, together at the same time instead of catching a peek down her top. These days he knew there was more to the female form than just tits.

He could make out the lace of Miss Hartleys’ bra through her blouse, but maintained his eye contact with her after raising his head. “Can we have a talk about it later, after class?” He asked in the most innocent voice he could muster.

Once again, he had learnt that eyes and appearance weren’t everything. He had learnt a lot in his still very informative young years. If you couldn’t back up the looks with the right combination of words and tone, if your delivery was to brash or the words wrong then you may as well look like Aunt Martha for all it would achieve (Aunt Martha had been dead for about 10 years now). He hit the nail on the head this time, Miss Hartleys’ face turning even sadder as she nodded.

“Of course Steven, but you really should be talking to your parents about these things…”. Her voice trailed off and he automatically responded.

“You know we don’t talk, not the way you can Miss Hartley, you’re much more understanding and anyway, Dad is never home and Mum is always too busy”.

She nodded again in assent.

“Alright, 3 o’clock in the music room, ok? Now please, try to keep your attention inside the classroom. You may be an excellent student (the volume of her voice raised so that most of the class would recognise an admonishment) but that does not mean you are precluded from classroom activities”.

She smiled a quick secret smile at him before turning away so that he would understand that she did not seriously mean what she had said and that it was for the benefit of the rest of the class. He watched as she walked back between the desks, her nice hips and thighs swaying slightly but most of his attention focused on her arse, contained by the firmness of the mid-thigh length skirt she wore. She had one nice posterior, that’s for sure.

Peter Gillespie was an arsehole, and he sat beside Steven in English. One day you and I are going to try and kill each other Steven often thought. Gilly leaned over toward Steven and whispered with a malevolent grin. “Sticky fingers, sticky fingers, Staggers is gonna get sticky fingers”.

“Yeah, and stick your own up ya arse”. Steven didn’t even bother looking at him. He knew the leering voice would be backed up by a leering face.

“Everybody knows Staggers is trying to root Miss Hartley” said the leering voice.

“What, so someone told you? That’s the only way you’d know you moron”. Steven knew there would be no reply. Gilly knew better than to encourage Stevens’ sarcasm and besides, Miss Hartley had reached the front and turned back to face them.

“You’re the moron Staggers. We all heard, ‘you’re much more understanding Miss Hartley” he mimicked.

Steven snuck a glance at Gilly this time, not so much surprised at what he said but that he actually chose to say it when he did. He frowned heavily and glared at him, hoping he would get the point that being a moron didn’t absolve him from having to think. Miss Hartley didn’t like her ‘young adults’ talking in class. Steven liked the way she described and treated them like adults, but attractive as she was and regardless of her manner toward them, when it came to being the teacher she did not like them misbehaving. Her reaction was swift, as Steven knew it would be.

“Mr Gillespie, perhaps you would like to explain your rudeness to Mr Reinfeldt”. Mr Reinfeldt, the deputy principal and one not backwards in using the cane when it was needed.

“It wasn’t me Miss Hartley, it was Stag, er, Steven”.

She looked at Steven, the disappointment in her eyes only just misplaced by her disapproval.

“You should know better Steven”.

He took heart that her voice softened somewhat but the disapproval was still evident. She was nothing if not predictable about her behavioural standards. She wanted to treat them like adults but she also expected them to behave accordingly, which wasn’t always easy when you are fifteen. Steven looked down and knew that he wasn’t about to let Gilly spoil his day.

“Miss Hartley, I’m sorry, I was just asking him what the question was that I had missed before”.

She visibly softened and Steven hoped the rest of the class didn’t see it.

“Onomatopoeia” she spoke so softly “give me some examples of onomatopoeia”.

“Squelch, bang, splash, crash, click, crunch, um…” Steven hated it when he reached the end of a roll.

“Excellent Steven” she smiled.

Steven smiled to himself but then grimaced when he heard Gilly whisper.

“Smartarse!”

The three o’clock bell went as he was making his way across from the math’s block to the music rooms. Kids were streaming out from classrooms, first formers who still enjoyed school, they always seemed to get the fun practical subjects to end their days on before going home to mom and milk and cookies. Out of the corner of his eye he noted that there were some bigger kids coming from his left, well bigger than first formers anyway. He didn’t take much notice, thinking about Miss Hartley and keeping his appointment with her. As always, and much to his chagrin, he noticed that he wasn’t much taller than most of the other kids now milling past him, and then Gillys’ voice cut across their excited, incessant and inane chatter.

“Staggers got sticky fingers”.

Steven stopped, and two or three of the kids ran into him. He turned to look at Gilly, and saw Steve Shaw and Ian Brady fanned out on either side of him. Gilly and Brady were wearing silly lopsided grins as if they knew something he didn’t. Snake looked concerned (that’s Shaws’ nickname because he had this nervous habit with his tongue. He and Snake actually got on quite well mainly because they always seemed to be placed together. They always seemed to do that, as if it was the easiest way, put them in alphabetical order. Whenever they had to form any sort of queue he was always directly behind Snake.) His tongue was doing its bit at a hundred miles an hour, and Steven knew that the speed was relative to the amount of nervousness being experienced by Snake at any given time.

“How ya goin’ Snake?” he ignored the other two.

Snake looked toward Gilly and damn if his tongue didn’t start working at closer to two hundred miles an hour. Now Steven was worried.

“Leth juth go Gilly” said Snake.

As a consequence of his habit Snake lisped and he was now lisping badly. Steven worried a bit more and thought it was premature for Gilly and he to begin killing each other even though he knew it was bound to happen sooner or later. Gilly was just one of these mean kids who for no reason other than he was bigger (and dopier) than most his age, liked to play the bully. What happened next would go down in school history.

Brady would recount to others that he didn’t see Staggers move, but he’d decked Gilly with one punch. Snake would just nod in agreement, happy he wasn’t the only witness probably.

Steven knew that it was all just blind fool luck, that if Gilly intended to bash him, then he didn’t stand a chance especially as Brady and Snake were obviously there to assist. He saw red fury and just stepped forward and struck in the general vicinity of Gillys’ face. It was a punch that Mike Tyson would have been proud of, striking Gilly immediately under the nose and above the top lip. Steven stood there above Gilly, not knowing really how Gilly came to be on the ground at his feet, oblivious to Snake and Brady standing there open mouthed. Even Snakes’ tongue seemed unable to move, also stunned at the speed of the event. Steven held up both arms and formed peace signs.

“Luv ya’s, luv ya’s all.” And then he turned and ran.

He stopped running when he hit the top floor of the music block and then walked slowly toward the open door where he knew Miss Hartley was waiting. He heard voices and knew that she was there probably talking to one of the other of her ‘gifted’ children.

Steven used the time to draw in some deep breaths, check that his shirt was still tucked in, and then he realized that there was blood on his right hand. He was reaching into his pocket for a hanky when he realized that the blood might be his and not from Gilly’s face. He looked closely at his fist and saw a small incision on his middle knuckle, the blood just slowly welling into it. He held the hanky tight on top of it but every time he pulled it away the blood would ooze slowly again. He wrapped the hanky around it tightly and then placed the bulk of it into a ball in the palm of his hand and curled his fingers around it. He hoped it would look normal or at least innocuous.

He stood in the doorway and surveyed the room, chairs in a semicircular pattern with music stands in front of and between each two chairs. Posters of musical instruments and composers adorned the walls. Miss Hartley was across the room kneeling in front of a young female first former explaining something about the recorder to her. He looked past her out of the far windows and heard the noises of the street as kids left for home, in buses, on bikes, in cars with their mums or in groups on foot on their way to the local servo take away. He saw the top of the milk bar across the road, which was out of bounds to school kids until three p.m. on school days, and knew that there would be fifty kids in there by now, buying lollies and milkshakes and whatever else they could afford with what they didn’t spend at tuck shop.

Miss Hartley rose and the girl smiled at her, tucked her recorder and a sheet of music under her arm and jumped up and started walking toward the door. Steven didn’t see her until she was immediately in front of him. He smiled at her, made a mental note that she would be cute one day, and stepped in and to one side to let her pass. She stopped when she reached him and turned back to her teacher.

“Thanks heaps Miss Hartley”.

She didn’t so much say it as chorus it, like she was still in class with 20 other kids saying the same thing all together.

“That’s okay Rebecca – just keep practising.”

Steven closed the door after her. He turned around and was startled as Miss Hartley was only a few feet from and moving toward him, an arm coming up as if she was about to grab him. He was just about to throw his arms around her when she spoke.

“I think that should stay open, school policy you know”. She said it so personally than he didn’t feel offended but he still backed up against the door and said “No”, and held up his hand with the bloody handkerchief. Her eyes opened wide when she saw the blood and he felt powerfully mischievous at her concern. “What have you done?” She was so concerned that she forgot about the door. “What happened”? She reached for his hand now instead of grabbing the door handle and he let her lead him to the closest chair.

“It’s okay, I just scratched a knuckle playing football.”

She unwound the hanky anyway, the bleeding had ceased and the blood welling into the cut had started to congeal, but it still looked worse than what it really was.

“Let’s get you down to the infirmary” she said.

“No, really, it’s okay.”

He felt himself getting excited as she continued to express her concern at his well being. She was standing and leaning forward toward him, her eyes intent on studying the cut. Her blouse could do nothing to defy gravity so he enjoyed the unobstructed view of her white lace bra cupping her small breasts. He felt himself sigh uncontrollably, and she looked quickly at his face, her concern still quite apparent.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”.

“Yes, I’m absolutely on top of the world” he said without a trace of a lie.

“Well, okay then, but you make sure you have your mother look at that when you get home”, he was nodding before she finished. “Now, tell me about your ducklings”.

She stood and moved the chair from beside him so that she was sitting in front of him now. He had no idea why she always did that, but she would sit down directly in front of him. He supposed it was something they train them to do to make it more personal or something, or to make the kid feel more at ease, whatever, it didn’t matter, but since his first ‘counseling’ session with her at the beginning of last year she had always done it. The big difference was he hadn’t noticed any other teacher doing it except Miss Hartley who was young, attractive and always wore skirts. He recalled that first session when she sat down and crossed her legs, he could immediately see straight up her skirt to a pair of pink panties. From that day on he was in love with her. The strangest thing was that she never seem to realize he could see or was even looking up her skirt. It was no problem for him to “arrange” the extra counseling as she was his teacher in English and Music and was always willing to provide assistance.