Authors: Scott Heim
Mysterious Skin (28 page)
The carolers clomped toward the porch, arguing over what carols they still hadn’t sung. “No one’s even home,” one said. “Let’s yell Trick or Treat,” said another. If I were in my regular mood, I’d stand at the door, smile through one or two songs, then hurl a fistful of dimes and nickels at them with all the strength I could muster. As I thought this, I heard a loud “Shhh.” Brian and I froze, waiting. “Someone’s home,” a boy insisted, and when I looked to the window I saw a face peering in at us, a head with a red-balled stocking cap, gaping mouth, spying eyes made blue by the never-ending porch light. I tried to picture the scene he saw: two boys in the dark, sprawled together on the couch, holding hands; one battered and bruised, the other bleeding from the nose.
They began singing “Silent Night,” which had always been my favorite as a little boy. They finished the first line, and Brian sat up from the couch. The blood’s flow was subsiding. He pinched the five-dollar bill in both hands, looked at me, and ripped it in half. Again. He began tearing it then, ripping the halves into more halves, until the bill was torn into hundreds of pieces. He cupped the pieces in his palm and threw them, green shreds of money showering across the floor.
Brian leaned his head back into my lap. “It’s over,” he said.
“Silent Night” paused, and a caroler giggled. I stroked Brian’s hair with my stained fingers. I wanted to tell him not to worry, that everything would be fine, but I couldn’t
speak. I just kept holding him, touching his hair and his face, letting him know I was sorry.
In the middle of that quiet I heard a soft clicking noise. At first the sound puzzled me; then I recognized it as that of a key in a lock. Brian panicked, standing from the couch, pulling me up with him as we attempted to make our break. But it was too late. The house’s door clattered open, and the room’s light flickered on.
A woman gasped. Through the open door I could see a sliver of carolers, some faces peering inside at the scattered tatters of money, some faces turned to the sky and the snow, now beginning to fall. And there, in front of them, in the room with us, stood the family, their outlines barely visible within the weight of the room’s light. It was a light that shone over our faces, our wounds and scars. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn’t, and we weren’t.
SCOTT HEIM
is the author of the novel
In Awe
(1997) as well as a book of poems,
Saved from Drowning
. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in
The Village Voice
, Nerve.com,
The Advocate, Paper
, and many Anthologies. He has previously lived in New York, London, and various towns in his home state of Kansas. He now lives and works in Boston, where he is finishing his third novel,
We Disappear
. For more details visit his official website at www.scottheim.com.
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for
MYSTERIOUS SKIN
“What Mr. Heim seems to want to do here is inhabit the mysterious skin of the anti-heroic and artlessly perverse. He does this less to flout convention and more because he seems hungry to explore extreme forms of experience.”
—
New York Times
“The ending left me with tears in my eyes—which is about the highest praise I can make of a novel.”
—
Philadelphia Inquirer
“He creates scenes of genuine beauty,…and handles his complicated characters and delicate subject matter with calm assurance.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Heim’s real achievement is his artful blend of Dennis Cooper-like ’bad boy’ fiction and the coming-of-age/coming-out story.”
—10 Percent
“[A] quietly affecting first novel…
Mysterious Skin
impresses.”
—
Swing
“Perfectly capturing the essence of the 80s, Heim will take you back ten years and jolt your mind into today, all at the same time.”
—
Pitch Weekly
“This book explores new frontiers of sexuality in unexpected areas—like western Kansas. Insightful and beautifully written.”
—William S. Burroughs, writer, painter, recording artist
“Eerie, precise, emotionally complex, quietly charismatic, and full of grace,
Mysterious Skin
is one of the most accomplished and mysteriously pleasurable first novels I’ve read in years.”
—Dennis Cooper, author of
Try
and
Frisk
“With uncommon poetry and clarity, Scott Heim paints a devastating portrait of a new Lost Generation.
Mysterious Skin
will haunt and enrage you. I am awestruck by Heim’s courage. Read this book.”
—Connie May Fowler, author of
Sugar Cage
and
River of Hidden Dreams
MYSTERIOUS SKIN
. Copyright © 1995 by Scott Heim. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition March 2008 ISBN 9780061737190
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