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Splash and Play

Ben knew he and Tommy could no longer be friends. Things had changed between them. Inexplicable things, but there it was. A gulf of sorts had opened, left them on opposite banks, and suddenly he saw Tommy for what he was: fat, obnoxious, ignorant. How he knew these things now when only a few weeks earlier he'd considered Tommy a font of knowledge was something of a mystery, and yet the change had transpired the first time Benny had ventured into that hole in the earth, the one by the creek.

They'd gone back the day after they'd discovered it, crawled flashlights-in-hand through the mud-rimmed aperture (thought it'd at least hardened after a night free of rain), and followed the tunnel back nearly fifty feet before it narrowed into a passage too small for them to fit through. Its interior was not all earth, which their mothers would've been relieved to know but which they thought nothing of—there was little likelihood of a cave-in, as the thing was carved out of rock, limestone most likely. There were many such hidden sinkholes and caverns worming their way beneath the Midwest; it was unsurprising one had opened up here, but what had interested the boys most was the part they couldn't get through. As all cats when curious, they were sure it led to some deeper, more fascinating place, a place that was glimmering just barely out of their reach. The moment Ben had shone his flashlight into it, watched the illumination bounce off rock only to be swallowed by an utter darkness it couldn't penetrate, something had cracked within, as if some inner fingers had snapped a glow-stick extending across his lungs. There'd been no pain, only a cold seeping, spreading sensation, the permeation of a slime mold, knowing in its primitive senses which exact private bits to touch.

A different pair of boys than had gone into that secret wormhole had backed out of it. Tommy'd been his normal rambling self, but Ben . . .

Well. He wasn't sure how to describe it, but he knew his mother recognized whatever it was that was different. That woman was afraid of him. She'd always been uneasy around him (he'd not known it before, but he knew it now), but that unease had transformed into a genuine aversion. Her concerns weren't entirely unfounded, he thought. He sensed the changes, but he didn't discourage them. There wasn't much point in worrying about that woman, though, except for the fact that she'd begun paying more attention to what he was doing. She'd brought him to the pool, today, nevermind the hundred times he'd been on his own or his lack of interest in going. "I could use the sun, and I'll enjoy some time with you," she'd lied. She wanted neither sun nor time with him; she was worried, and she wanted him to do something normal.

So here they were, she a beautiful, perpetually-frightened, petite woman and he a scrawny twelve-year-old, small for his age, pale and unwilling in his swim trunks, staring out over a sea of shouting, splashing humans enjoying the heat of another late summer afternoon. He could've related to them at one time, not so long ago, but he saw them, now, for what they were; the world was viewed differently through the lens of a void.

"Let me sunscreen you, honey," his mother was saying, and he stood there and allowed her to do what she felt she needed to, making no fuss, lifting his arms and turning when she directed. While she sprayed and rubbed, he watched the colorfully-suited bodies with disdain. Their joy, their fun, their companionship with one another—they were distant from him. Ben had never been an overly social child, but he'd desired to be near other boys his age. Now he didn't want to be near anyone, especially the woman fretting over him. "I'll sit and read, but I'll be right here, okay? Why don't you run and play?"

Ben wanted neither to run nor to play, but to appease the woman and distance himself, he strode into the shallow waters of the wading pool. For some moments, he walked through the lazy river, never fully submerging himself in the irritatingly cold water, averse to wetting his hair and having it drip uncomfortably onto his neck and shoulders. He knew Tommy was coming, as he knew many things without having reason to know them, and he was not necessarily appreciating but bearing his solitude before the inevitable. When others dove past him, chased one another or went to catch balls and splashed, Ben cringed but otherwise did his best to ignore them. Saying something would result only in more frustration, and he knew that his mother was watching him.

She was a sad woman. She'd been that way for a long time; none of that was his fault, though his adoption had seemed to exacerbate her depression. Funny—he'd thought in his innocence that she'd loved him. But he knew her feelings toward him weren't that simple. She herself had been adopted from China when nothing more than an infant. She'd never felt as if she'd fit in with her very-much-white adoptive family, always been told how grateful she should be to have had the opportunity to grow up in the US. She'd been surprised to find a man who'd wanted to marry her, and she'd been devastated to find she couldn't have children of her own, children who might look like her to some degree, because Ben didn't look anything like her. No one would mistake him for her actual son. But Egon hadn't wanted to go international, and he hadn't wanted to go infant, had thought either route would be far too difficult. So here they were: Ben and Joanna, his mother, who had never felt comfortable with him. It hadn't been so noticeable, before, but it was clear as day, now.

Even so, Ben understood that the woman had something else at the core of her unhappiness, something that, in the chronology of her life, far preceded him, preceded Egon. Whatever exactly the catalyst for her misery had been, Ben was uncertain; it was one of the few things he still couldn't see. The change within him was selective, didn't quite want him to know everything. But Ben did know that the root of his mother's insecurity stemmed from something very much related to what had caused the change in him, and for that reason, he continued to feel some degree of sympathy for her.

A figure suddenly jumped into the water right in front of him, off the side of the pool, dousing Ben entirely in the icy water. He fumed as the dark head of Tommy emerged before him, but the newcomer was utterly oblivious to his friend's frigid ire. Somewhere above a whistle blew, the lifeguard. No jumping from the wall into the lazy river! But the scolded didn't hear the scolding.

"Benny! Did I scare you? Did I get you?"

"You did," Ben managed, his nostrils flaring, teeth grinding.

Tommy grinned with all the joy of being eleven and carefree. "This water's hella cold! Deez nuts are freezing off!" He jumped up and down a few times as if to acclimate himself to the temperature, all the while the two allowing the current to push them along toward the attraction's exit into the larger pool.

Ben had never been so full of what he could only call anger, though maybe it was something closer to rage. He hated Tommy.

"You wanna go down the slide?"

"No."

Waving toward the winding orange tube descending from a tower of stairs and platforms, Tommy stood in the shallow water and began sloshing toward the exit. "Come on! Let's go! I see Greg and Miles up there!"

Ben stayed where he was, submerged up to his waist.

Realizing his peer wasn't following him, Tommy turned, splashed back, and grabbed Ben's arm. "Come on, Benny!"

"I said no!" Ben jerked free.

Tommy might have noticed something dark in his friend's reaction, had he been a more perceptive boy, but as it was, he merely shrugged. "All right! See ya on the other side!"

Ben watched Tommy exit the pool and hike up his trunks to cover his rear end as he jogged his meaty body toward the slide entrance. The line would take about five minutes to get through, and Ben didn't intend to be waiting for Tommy when he reached the pool once more. Narrowing his eyes against the bright sun, Ben glanced upward, then waded the opposite direction and walked out of the increasingly shallow waters. He'd go to the bathrooms. Maybe he could hide there for a while, take a hot shower, try to warm the constant chill from his bones. As he hugged his upper body, hastened without running toward the restrooms, Ben was distracted by the splash pad, a soft-pour rubber square with various water-squirting animals and palm trees, a water play station with cascading standing pools that waterfalled into one another. At present, there were a few small children moving about in there, a couple of parents on nearby loungers, conversing with one another and paying little attention to their offspring.

Something was worth his attention, there . . . those children.

Ben currently had no feelings toward babies or toddlers, anyone younger than himself (or anyone at all, really). No feelings except . . . except for maybe . . .

He spent a few moments just walking through the archways spraying mist, stepping on the play geysers, watching one shoot higher when he blocked another, studying the timing of a tall pelican head on a pole whose lower beak filled with water and dumped it at intervals. No one seemed to think anything of his presence. They saw only a boy entertaining himself, wandering about the fountains. So when he meandered toward the play tables, those pools of standing water, he went entirely unacknowledged.

There was a handful of children, there, probably the ages of two or three or four. Ben couldn't guess things like that, being something of a child himself. Their plump, happy little bodies were guarded by the shade of a screen overhead, and they took their open palms and slapped them into the surface of the pools, turned handles that controlled the amount of water that moved from one leveled pool into another, and operated small plastic boats that fell over the miniature waterfalls. How simple they were, these things, happy to stick their hands, even their mouths in chlorinated water. Why, they could've probably stood all day until they fell over tired or hungry. They were stupid. Not innocent, but stupid. They knew nothing, and it was probably better that way, better if they remained insensate creatures ignorant of everything bleak and empty about the world. All they'd do is get older, and with age came free will. And they'd do terrible things, all of them. Humans began in clever packages, didn't they? Adorable, ingenuous. And yet every criminal, every rapist and mutilator and psychopath came in a package as deceptive as all the others. The trick was knowing which would become what, or, Ben thought, making sure none became anything.

Benny had no concern for the victims of any future degenerates, nor did he necessarily desire to harm anyone. But whatever it was that had changed him wanted to test its limits. He sensed this, and he had no other choice but to oblige.

"You see what's in there?" Ben quietly remarked to the little boy at his left. They were standing before a pool that came up about two-and-a-half feet; the other children were distracted with a tussle over a yellow plastic boat.

The boy, a red-cheeked child too shy to say much, glanced at the pool, then back at Ben.

"Down there," Ben coaxed. "See that?" He leaned down so his face nearly touched the surface of the water. "Get real close."

The toddler grinned, showed his front top and bottom bunny teeth, and bent over next to Ben. Quick as a flash, the older boy clamped a hand around the back of the child's neck and pushed his face into the pool, holding it there while the toddler thrashed his arms wildly and bubbles surfaced around his submerged head.

Before Benny could quite indulge himself in this newfound feeling of power, a frantic voice was screaming at him, swearing, and a hand yanked him away so roughly that he fell backward onto the nearby pavement.

"It was just a game!" Ben tried. "He asked me to. We were just playing."

But the woman—presumably the child's mother—would have none of it. As she held and tried to soothe her spluttering, screaming child, she shouted at Ben some more, and then her companion joined in before running off. It was only a matter of time before staff confronted him, before his mother found out, before he was surely banned from the pool for the rest of the summer.

It didn't matter, though. Nothing mattered. He didn't feel anything at all as he got to his feet, straightened his trunks, and strode nonchalantly in the direction of his mother. It didn't matter because Benny knew, now, that he could do things. If there hadn't been anyone else there, he could've easily done it, and that was an important thing to know. When the time came, when he and Tommy were alone, he knew he could do things to his dimwitted friend, too.

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