distantly related

If you’re wondering my name, it’s Paxton Kyros.  It’s greek.  I didn’t choose it.  In fact, I’ve never met another Paxton, or another Kyros.  I’d say that’s about enough of that.
 

Some stories are too graphic and horrible even for the evening news.  Personally, I hate the news.  I don’t really like to watch television, or read newspapers.  I like to get my facts from the most reliable source I know, my own senses.
 

I live with my older sister in downtown D’Starkville, and I’m a senior at the local High School.  Most kids would describe me as strange, but kind of likeable.  But this story isn’t about me, it’s about Thad.
Here is a short description of Thad.  He is about six feet tall, slightly mentally retarded, and has poor hygiene.  He has bushy eyebrows, and his nut-brown eyes are always tremendously open.
 

Thad is not my friend.  He is some kind of a distant cousin, and my father was very close with his father.  Ever since both his parents died in a car wreck, he has been the family ‘hot potato’.  Now that you have some kind of an understanding of the situation, let’s begin.

Three weeks ago was the time when it began.  I walked home from school to find him standing in front of the tanning salon, the business directly under my apartment.  He was wearing a dark green tee shirt with holes in it, and faded black jeans from the eighties.  On his back was a tattered tan backpack, and in his arm he cradled a kitten.  In his passive voice, he spoke:
 

“My, my uncle, he told me to come stay with you.  He said, he said you would let me stay here.”
 

Goddamn it Uncle Lenny.  Why did you have to send him here?  For some reason, Thad had always made me a little uncomfortable, and the prospect of having him stay with me in the apartment alone was not something I really wanted to deal with.  “Thad, wait here for just a minute while I go and make a phone call.”
 

I walked about ten paces and pulled up the list of pre-set numbers in my cell phone.  In three seconds the phone in my parents’ house was ringing.  On the third ring, my mom answered.
 

“Why is Thad standing on my doorstep telling me he's staying here?”
 

She paused.  “We told Lenny that Thad could stay with you for a few days.  Lenny had business in California.  We’d let Thad stay here, but with the remodeling, your dad just doesn’t think it would be a good idea.”
 

“Mom, I can’t baby-sit this guy all week.  I have school and work, and Michelle will be visiting her college friends until next weekend.”
 

“Well honey, sometimes we all have to do things that we don’t want to do.”
 

“Dammit.  Okay.  Fine.  What day is Lenny getting back?”
 

Another pause.  “Next Sunday.”
 

I hung up on her as angrily as I could without smashing it on the concrete. And I walked back to my timid guest.
 

“You can stay here Thad, but only temporarily.  Do you hear that? 
Tem-po-rar-i-ly.”
 

He nodded and followed me up the stairs like a big, meek cow.  I unlocked the door and collapsed into the big leather chair.  I dropped my bag by my feet and watched my new guest for a minute.  He just stood in the doorway, staring at me with those penetrating eyes.
 

“Where did you get the cat?” I asked.
 

“I, I found it.  I found it by the dumpster.  His name is Fuzzy, because he’s fuzzy.”
 

At this point, he dropped the cat accidentally, and it scurried past, making little scratchy noises on the hardwood floor.  Within seconds, it was sharpening its claws on the wooden leg of a kitchen chair.  Goddamn it Lenny.
 

I almost drifted off when my new friend started talking again.  “Do, do you want me to c-cook something for you?”
 

My suspicion was that Thad was hungry and the offer to cook was really a pretext to get into the kitchen.  One look at his dirt-caked hands, and I realized he’d made me an offer I couldn’t accept.  I just shook my head, eyelids heavy with sleep, and dazed for a few minutes.  The silence was broken by a trumpeting fart that came from neither me nor the cat.
 

Disgusted, I headed to my room.  “Try not to destroy anything while I take a nap.”
 

Within minutes, I was having the strangest dream.  I was walking through a forest of trees, with all the branches at right angles to the perfectly straight trunks.  On every branch there were owls.  These were large, horrid creatures with giant heads and sharp beaks.  Their unnatural eyes made them look more like caricatures of owls than actual ones.  The waning twilight made them appear fierce, and as if responding to some invisible signal, they all swooped at me.  Right before I became a sacrificial homage to Hitchcock, I woke up.
 

Thad was standing right next to my bed, a looming and cumbersome figure in the receding sunlight.  His bulging eyes had watery edges, and my nose caught a tinge of a smell I really hoped was coming from a busted sewer pipe outside and not Thad’s hands.
 

“I m-made a m-mess.”

The living room was an atrocity.  Scattered loosely in the area near the bathroom door were little dime-sized puddles of gray feces.  When I opened the door, I saw that the floor and side of the bathtub had dirty tan smears all over the place, as if someone had tried to wipe up diarrhea with a dirty towel.  The outlines of the smears had just a hint of blood, and the smell was almost thick enough to see.  I turned around to see said towel hanging on the door.
 

Goddamn it Lenny.
 

I had every intention of sending him a bill for all the figurative and literal shit I was going through.  I told Thad to take his stumbling kitten for a walk while I dealt with this little situation.
 

And I knelt there, cleaning products in hand, wiping up the gooey, bloody matter and praying that a bus driver would lose control and swerve off the road, only to squash this increasingly distant cousin of mine.
 

Twenty minutes later, when I heard Thad come trouncing up the stairs, I lost my faith in God.  The reverberations from the door flying open and hitting the wall took a few seconds to subside.  Thad tossed the Fuzzy in the air and caught him, as if the small animal were a softball or something.

The next morning, I had to get ready for work.  I made Thad a bowl of cereal and dashed out the door, stepping on the cat on my way to the door.  It gave a shriek and raced towards Thad, jumping into his lap.  It was springy enough to not be hurt.  I shrugged and ran down the stairs to the street, hoping to not be late.  Something stopped me halfway, though.
The kitten gave this kidney-wrenching scream and I walked up a few steps and shouted an inquiry.  “Everything okay in there?”
 

“Yeah, we, we’re just playing.”
 

As I walked to the restaurant where I was a waiter, I had this really uneasy feeling about Thad.  I didn’t want him alone in my home.  I didn’t want him alone with a small and vulnerable living creature.  For a while, I was able to shake this feeling off.
 

About an hour after I got to work, I made two phone calls.  The first one was to my friend Janus.  I asked him if he wouldn’t mind going to my apartment and making sure everything was kosher.  The second call was to my apartment.  I wanted to see if Thad would actually answer my phone.  To my dismay, he did.
 

“H-Hi Paxton.”
 

“Thad.”
 

“I’m depressed Paxton.  Paxton, Fuzzy ran away.”
 

Ran away?  “What do you mean ‘ran away?’”
 

“I opened the door and he ran outside and I couldn’t c-catch him Paxton.”
 

“I’ll be home later, and we’ll talk about it.  I have to go back to work now, bye.”
 

Frankly, I was a little relieved.  The animal probably had a much better chance for survival on its own than in Thad’s capable and crushing hands.
A little while later, my cell phone rang.  It was Janus.
 

“Your cousin is one creepy dude, Pax.”
 

“What do you mean?”
 

“He kept trying to shake my hand and offered like three times to cook for me.  And that staring, sheez…it’s creepy.”
 

“Did you see a cat anywhere?” I asked.
 

“A cat?”
 

“Like when you were walking there, a little orange stray kitten…”
 

“Hmm.  No.  No cats.  Sorry.”

When I finally made it back, Thad was stretched out on the couch playing video games.  I did a quick walk-through of the place to make sure nothing was broken or missing.  To my joy, the only thing I found out-of-place was a sink filled with pots and pans and the residue of cooking failures.
 

I fell into my comfy recliner and stared at the screen as Thad pounded the buttons.  He stopped for a second and spouted a revelation.
 

“Fuzzy’s dead, Paxton.  Paxton, Fuzzy is dead.  He got hit by a car.”
 

This didn’t sit well with me.  I didn’t see any roadkill on my way home, and a patch of bright orange fur on the road would have grabbed my attention.  “Where was he hit?”
 

He seemed to be deep in thought, but eventually heshrugged off my question.  “I think, I think tomorrow we need to get another
c-cat.  A new Fuzzy.”
 

As he said this, I noticed narrow reddish lines on his right forearm.  Thad had dozens of scratch-lines, the sight of which made me wince.  I got up and went to my bedroom window, to see if I could distinguish any fur stuck to the street below.  None.  It suddenly occurred to me that I had to piss.
 

This time, nothing could have prepared me for the horror in my bathroom.  There were speckles of semen and blood on the tile floor and white walls.  It had dried, leaving hardened, crusty flakes.  Near the toilet were more droplets of gray poo.  The inside of the sink was the pink of blood residue, but this was not the worst.  I focused my attention on the wastebasket, and somehow got up the nerve to lift up the handful of soggy, bloody tissues to see a little orange bag of violated fur.  The hazel eyes were bulged open in pain, as if he were squeezed to death.  I won’t even describe what the other end of the cat was like.
 

I fell to my knees and vomited on the floor, the stink of it mixing with the smell of rotting animal and filth.  Thad was in the other room, laughing hysterically at something.
 

Goddamn it Uncle Lenny.  Why did you have to send him here?