Clear Skies (A Short Story)

Note: While the rest of the first short story I posted on here will pop up eventually, I decided to edit and publish another effort that's been stuck in my mind since I wrote it two summers ago and submitted it to a crime story contest on LitReactor, for which it experienced some encouragingly positive reception. It's a story based largely on the murder of 2-year-old James Bulger in 1993 in England at the hands of 10-year-old child killers Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. It's a case that I only learned about several months before writing this piece, and I felt a strange connection to it due to James Bulger's age, as he was only a month younger than me (I was born in February 1990, Bulger in March). The bizarre nature of the murder and the fact that the two abusers and eventual killers were able to freely beat this child throughout a mall in public is as disturbing as the incident itself. I felt compelled to interpret a similar fictional event through the eyes of a child killer who has spent most of his life in prison to reflect on what happened, and explore his own ability to peel back and see the toxicity of both events preceding the murder and the event itself. So, here's my story. If you are easily disturbed, you probably won't want to continue.

Clear Skies

by Benjamin Graves

There isn’t a person without regrets. They’re present in everybody, regardless of a conscience. Even psychos have regrets. My childhood friend Brad Jensen and I share something unusual together. We have regrets about the same incident, but each for different reasons, ones that I believe support my sentiments. I’m unhappy with what we did because somebody had to suffer for our amusement, followed by the suffering of many others, and Brad’s only regret is that we weren’t more careful with how we went about our actions.

Brad has discussed his personal regrets with me many times in letters from his prison, even though I refuse to show any signs of acknowledgement. He gets off on it, I’m sure. He’d love nothing more than to be a vomit-inducing presence, to evoke the kind of disgust only a man like he could, even if he couldn't see it for himself.

“You know, Harvey, we should have looked out for surveillance cameras and kept out of sight,” he’ll tell me in his letters from time to time. “Forget faces, we shouldn't have even showed our goddamn bodies. We shouldn’t have talked to the guard. We should’ve made sure we cleaned up properly. We shouldn't have stuck to Ambrosia Road. We shouldn’t have—“ and I would stop reading, wishing I could seal my eyes, my hate for him boiling up to the point where I could feel my face turn cherry. I never felt any violent urges for anyone beyond him, not since our last day of freedom as kids over ten years ago. He still seems to think we were as smart then as we are now, just more inexperienced, though it wouldn't surprise me if he thought that was true.

The years since have been hell. We died after we were both eleven, I’m convinced of that. We were plucked into an existence on another plane that I wouldn’t wish for anybody, but the law ceases to view you as a kid if you do the worst things a kid can do. For a kid, though, the full scope of even the most horrible actions is unimaginable. Even a child like Brad didn’t understand the gravity of it all, even if he could grasp the morality, just anticipating another beating from his stepdad for not showing up at home directly from school. He got beaten for many reasons, including having done nothing at all. He told me the man once hit him with his red plastic baseball bat square in the stomach because he refused to go outside one day, telling him sternly once he was satisfied with the bruising, “Inaction is the sign of a real pussy. Just think of it as me pounding some hard-earned abs on that little tummy.” The asshole then laughed, pulling Brad up by the hand as he cried in pain. It was simply a fact of life for this kid, and he was too terrified to talk with child protective services, his mother tragically advocating the behavior with passive indifference. Brad even got so twisted that now he too sees humor in his stepdad’s statement.

There was nothing for Brad to look forward to day in and day out, and I think I somehow reveled in his anger; it was a powerful force, and it rubbed off on me. Charisma really can work magic on people, and his was overbearing. The big difference between us was that I didn’t come from an abusive family. I came from an absent one, the remaining second child of work-obsessed parents and the sibling of a brother who had already gone off to the University of Chicago by the time I was seven. I guess sometimes the absence of family can be just as dangerous as a painful one. But I’m not about to use this as a sob-story excuse for what I did, because in all honesty I could have done everything to stop it. I’m not a good man, no matter how you color me, and I also learned that I wasn’t a good kid, even if I didn’t wind up as bad as Brad. Any additional details I give about Brad’s early upbringing (as he revealed to me) won’t make most people see him as any less of a monster, either.

The last day of our lives would be on February 23, 1999. It had been another normal day at school—as normal as it ever got for us, anyway. His idea of fun at school involved stealing pencils from other kids’ lockers, kicking Peter Fremont in the back of the chair during class when the teacher wasn’t looking, and playing rough tetherball with me during recess. We gave each other a couple of bruises on the arms from tossing the ball so hard, as a kind of mutual sadomasochistic play. I don’t need to tell you that were each other’s only friend. I knew Brad was naturally more disturbed than I was then, but I wasn’t about to abandon the only kid who spoke to me. In a world of alienating winners, losers can only find each other to form their own winner’s circle. We thought we were better than everybody else, and we had to in order to keep going.

Nobody bullied us, that’s for sure. I wasn’t a big troublemaker, but the other children associated me with Brad, and everybody but me was terrified of him. He gave me solace in being different, a purpose in being an outcast, and it was an addictive feeling. The two of us were definitely strange, scaring everybody away, but even if we held up the highest red flags they would have remained unseen; we were still two months behind the post-Columbine era of schooling. The only treatment I had for anything mental was ADHD medication. In contrast, Brad got into trouble a lot, once for spitting on a bitchy girl at recess who called him a loser, but he never came close to suspension. His only real punishment and treatment was another beat down from the man who didn’t need any motivation to do it.

When school got out and we walked home together as we always did, navigating the cold, quiet suburban sidewalks of Parsons, Illinois, Brad was suddenly hit with menacing inspiration, though to this day I’m unsure of when exactly it came to him. He began to joke, or so I thought, “Y'know, I always wanted to kidnap a little kid. Like just take him and do something.”

It was an unexpected comment, even coming from him, the kid who once told me that he bashed his pet mouse in with a hammer, turning it into a deep-red puddle that “looked like strawberry jelly.” It didn't even occur to me that he specified the hypothetical victim as a “him.”

I asked him, nerves beginning to spike, “Why do you wanna kidnap a kid?”

“I dunno, mess with him,” he said. “Beat him up a little, but not so that his mom and dad would know. Like a secret beating.” He emitted that weird little laugh I came to know, like the cross between Jack Nicholson's Joker and an innocent childish giggle. It almost sounded like it could've been a perverse version of his stepdad, a monstrous son taking after his monstrous father.

“You don’t really want to do it, do you?” I asked.

He turned to me and grinned. “What if I do? What would you do? You never thought of it?”

I shook my head, trying to hide my slight fear. At the same time, I didn’t want to admit that I found the idea kind of exhilarating. “I don’t know. I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I already felt like I was being pulled into something, something much darker than I could perceive as comfortable.

We passed the old tree we always climbed on the weekends, which looked particularly desolate that afternoon with its bald, thin branches poking the bleak clouds, a condemnation of the winter sky.

“Why is it not a good idea?” Brad asked.

I thought of many reasons, but I couldn’t bring myself to say them. What if we got caught? Everything wrong could happen. Even then I knew that much.

“We wouldn’t really take him anywhere far, just out in front of everybody. We’d look like older brothers. We could just mess with him when nobody’s looking. Like hit him a little.”

“'Mess with him?'” I was still trying to process the idea.

Brad hit me on the shoulder pretty hard with his fist. “I told you, idiot, I want to hit him a little. Just a little. I hate little kids. They don’t know anything. They're pussies and everything.”

We continued walking and I kept a lookout for any small child I could spot. Many of the kindergartners got out in the afternoon, so they could have been playing outside in the two inches of snow that glazed the grass. Walking along the sidewalk by a light-green two-story house, a little boy who looked to be no older than five stood in the snow, making a snowball and leaving small pile of poorly constructed ones beside him.

I didn’t have to point the kid out to Brad.

“I think this one is a good one,” Brad said, that devilish grin ignited. Hands in his coat pockets, he approached the kid, looking up at the windows of the house. I tailed behind him, looking around at the neighbors’ houses. Nobody was around.

No adult peered out from within the home. This little boy was free game for the moment.

Brad knelt in front of the kid so they could be at eye-level, and the boy looked right at Brad, who smiled with a false innocence I never knew he could express. The boy was reciprocal and offered his own honest happiness.

“What’s your name?” Brad asked.

“Henry,” the boy answered, holding the snowball in his gloved hands.

“I’m Brad. What're you makin’?” Brad pointed to the pile on the ground.

“I’m makin’ snowman,” Henry replied, laughing shyly and tossing his ball on the pile.

“How old are you?”

Henry paused, counting on his fingers. “Four.”

“That’s not how you make a snowman, Henry. You can’t make a good one here. I know a better place to make a snowman.” Brad offered his hand, concealed in a maroon glove. “I know a place with a lot more snow and I’ll show you how to make a huge one.”

“I’m not s’posed to leave my house.”

“We’re not going far. It’s down the street.” Brad pointed down Ambrosia Road in the direction that ended perpendicular to Stillwater Street. There was nothing straight ahead there, only slight forest and a fence separating the area from the back of the local mall.

Little Henry seemed to think about it for a moment, big brown eyes darting from side to side, not sure if he could trust a stranger, even if the stranger was another kid who seemed nice. Then he nodded, looking down at the white ground.

“Okay, Henry, let’s go,” Brad said, taking Henry by the hand. The kid looked at me over his shoulder.

“What’s your name?” the little boy asked me.

“My name is Harvey,” I answered, smiling, doing my best to hide my anxiety surrounding Brad’s mysterious plans. That anxiety wasn’t entirely fear, but also a tinge of excitement.

Henry, not seeming to like Brad too much out of spot-on instinct, looked back at me, let go of Brad’s hand, and walked back to me, holding my hand instead. I looked up at Brad; his friendliness was erased. His thick, dark eyebrows were pointed down in anger, and his mischievous grin had flatlined, his lips tucked in slightly. The look actually sparked some fear in me. Henry's grip was tight, to the point where my fingers began to hurt, but I didn't tell him to ease up.

The three of us walked to the end of the street, looked both ways down the empty intersection at Stillwater St., and Brad took Henry by the hand not holding mine. He then jerked the kid away from me, pulled his arm out in front of him while Henry’s little legs tried to keep up on the pavement, and tossed the kid into the middle of the street. Henry instantly began to bawl, a couple of inch-long scrapes welling with dots of blood on his left cheek. Those brown eyes of his filled with tears and he looked up at us in fear, but Brad was quick to manipulate his emotions about what just happened.

Feigning concern, Brad bent down in front of Henry and placed a gentle hand on the kid’s back as he lay on his stomach, still sobbing. “It’s okay,” Brad consoled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I tried to grab you and slipped.” Brad motioned for me to help raise the kid and we picked him up together. Henry wiped his eyes with a gloved hand, and Brad gave me a snide smile, indicating this was simply the start of things to come. I complied, returning my own imitation of his face.

“I want to go home,” Henry said, sniffling and grabbing his cheek.

“No, it’s okay,” Brad insisted. “Stay with us. We’re gonna have a lot of fun today.”

“I want mommy.” Henry looked around, seemingly already confused about where he was, as if he hadn’t been at that intersection before. In truth, he probably hadn’t, or at least didn't recognize it from his limited memory.

“Come on, we’re gonna go to the mall,” Brad said, reaching for Henry’s hand. In response, Henry retracted his arm and went back over to me, placing his tiny trusting hand in mine. He wiped the last of his tears away, settling down, the scrapes on his cheek quickly clotting in the cold air.

“We’ll buy you something,” I said, looking down and offering a modicum of comfort, though I didn't honestly feel anything for this kid.

“Yeah, we’ll buy you something,” Brad confirmed, his aggressive face telling me that anything said in front of this kid would be a friendly lie.

We continued across the street, a single car passing behind us as we made it into the patch of forest. The trees quickly enveloped us in shadow from the heavy sky, and Brad brought the kid deeper into the darkness. Henry made slight whimpering sounds, apparently growing fearful and aware and gripping my hand tighter, but Brad, the angel in disguise, turned around and said innocently, “Here's where we can make a snowman.”

Henry looked around at the ground covered in pine needles and scattered patches of ice, and said, “But there's no snow here.”

“Oh, you're right,” Brad agreed. “But we don't need snow to have fun.”

Henry looked up, a puzzled look in his face. I could tell Brad had vacated all feelings of sympathy, though I felt a brief surge of it. I succumbed to Brad's convictions, but he told the kid something I wish I could erase from memory. He said, “You're not gonna see your mommy for a long time, Henry. You know why? Because we're your brothers now, and you'll follow us for the rest of your life.” That childish tenderness had emptied in his voice, and I knew we were getting into something serious. I still couldn't place what it was, but it wouldn't end with taking Henry home.

Brad grabbed Henry's other arm again and we dragged Henry, who was now kicking and screaming with all of his infantile strength, deeper within the trees. When we got to the four-foot fence, Brad lifted him up and I helped push him over the wall. Henry hadn't prepared for the fall, and when Brad and I hopped the fence, we found that Henry had fallen right on his back, knocking the wind out of him. His face was full of shock, the dark blood on his cheek nearly matching the color of his skin. Brad laughed, and I joined in, suddenly infused with a sense of malevolent pride about what we had just done. There was a self-loathing in that action alone, like Brad and I were beating ourselves up, punishing ourselves for living. Of course, this wasn't anything consciously realized at that time, and Brad and I didn't stop chuckling while picking the helpless kid up again. There was as much self-hatred in our laughs as there was outward deviance.

I went along, grabbing the kid's right hand, which held mine loosely at that point, and Brad held his left. When Henry regained his breath, breathing deeply and crying, we all walked around the back of the mall to the front. It was an incredibly stupid move on our part, bringing him out into the public eye in his state, but the amount of adults who actually dared to intervene was almost null. A few mothers with their own children in the lobby eyed us suspiciously, but returned their attention selfishly to their own kids. Concern was with their families first.

Brad did a good job of appearing sympathetic to Henry while we were in there, and when we arrived at a candy store further in the mall, Henry seemed somehow deceived by the return of the friendly act, sobbing slowed to a slight uncertainty about how to feel. I had become addicted to the sensations ignited by seeing that face in pain, but I didn't dare make it return. Not in that place.

We hid in one of the little aisles, which wasn't difficult to do at our height. Henry's hand stayed in mine while Brad pocketed a few handfuls of Snickers, Twizzlers, Smarties, Warheads, and Ring Pops, along with a few other items I didn't catch, into his heavy red coat. I stood beside him and he handed me a couple of Twix, which I shoved into my own jacket pocket. Brad told me I'd get more from him later.

We left the store and Henry stayed entirely silent, still trusting my hand. He had calmed almost completely. His expression was one of traumatized distance now. He was likely overwhelmed with what was happening, dealing with it in the only way an inexperienced child's mind possibly could. Again, I felt no pity at the time, only an urge to inject something even more unpleasant in that expression. I had become something less than human that afternoon.

The three of us walked around the mall for about another twenty minutes before Brad decided we should leave. I was relieved when he made this decision, as more parents looked in our direction with concern. One woman, who was alone, finally came up to us, asking, “Is this your little brother?”

“Yes,” Brad swiftly answered. “We're just going back to our mom. She's at a clothes store.”

I nodded, and the woman smiled slightly, seeming to dismiss the recent marks on his cheek and his vacant face. “Well, have a good afternoon, boys. If you have trouble finding her, talk to one of the security guards. I'm sure they can help.”

The woman left and we started walking toward the exit at the front of the mall. Right before we stepped through the sliding doors with Henry in-hand, the one guard at the door stopped us with a hand and asked us where our parents were.

I saw a car stopped out in front of the mall, sitting idly. A man sat in the front. I took advantage of his presence and told the guard, “Our dad is waiting outside. In that car out there.” I pointed at the vehicle and the guard turned to look, noticing it, eyeing it for a moment.

“What happened to this poor kid?” he asked me, regarding Henry's scratches.

“He fell—over by the food area,” Brad said, putting on the convincing falsetto of a clueless kid.

“Aw, poor little guy.” The guard flashed a look of sympathy and told us, “You two had better look out for him a little more. Have a good day, guys.”

“Thanks,” Brad replied. I helped him walk Henry out and we pretended to head to the black sedan by the sidewalk.

Brad looked behind us and saw the guard wasn't following us with his eyes, and so we veered away from the vehicle and walked back around the mall to the back side.

Just when we were about to forcefully hoist Henry over the wall, Brad shoved the kid into the wood, causing him to grunt. I liked the sound of it, but not as much as Brad apparently did, as he picked this child up and tossed him against the fence again. His nose was ripped at the bridge, blood seeping down the side, and I experienced a sharp sense of bloodlust for the first time in my life.

“Hold him up, facing me,” Brad told me.

I did.

Brad brought his anger out in full force and brought an arm back, plunging it deep into Henry's stomach. I looked over Henry's shoulder to see his reaction; the child's mouth opened in shock, his face blanketed in tears and colored deep maroon. I actually grinned. Some part of me I had never fully known before had been released from its cage and set free. I let it engulf me, and I kneed Henry's frail body with all of my hatred brought into it—hatred for myself, my life, and even for Brad.

Brad released a full-fisted punch at Henry's head, knocking his neck backward so it slumped over my left shoulder. His eyes were closed, crystal tears flowing between two tired sets of eyelashes. It was in that moment when I realized, in a brief nanosecond of horror, that there was no turning back. We had done too much, gone too far over the edge of humanity. We had submerged ourselves in the deepest darkness and Brad couldn't possibly have cared less.

The demon before me unleashed another furious blow to Henry's limp head, hitting just beneath the chin. I suspected he broke it, and my own feelings of intense anger returned. I let the kid down and stomped on his chest twice and his right arm once, emitting a frustrated series of grunts of my own. Brad actually didn't look content anymore; his eyes were spilling tears of his own—which I had never known he had—all over Henry's soft blue coat as he wailed on his limp body. Henry's head jerked with each punch, and his face was as devoid of emotion as it was of blood. I would never see those big brown eyes again, and I thought about that fact as Brad kept up his tireless pummeling.

I then despised myself for what we had both done—we had killed what last bit of innocence remained within us, swept it away with all of the dirtiness we could. The need for Henry's suffering and death subsided and I backed away from the two. Brad stopped punching, looked up, and in a hoarse voice, face completely soaked, told me, “What's wrong, pussy? I hate this fucking world, and I fucking hate this kid.” He had officially become a creature descended from a boy.

“Let's go,” I said. I began hyperventilating, gazing down at the obvious corpse we had left and then at Brad, who stayed kneeling in silence, warm breath rising in adrenaline-fueled bursts of steam that blended into the harsh sky. I followed that hot air into the clouds and stared up there, wondering what sort of God would come down to finish us, to send us to hell, to rescue this kid from us and give him the comfort that devils like us would never understand, and I understood then that no spirit up there would allow this to happen. He would've sent a parent, an angel in some form, to save this child, but He never did. I merely faced a desolate and objective sky which seemed to mask what we were doing from the rest of the world. We were secure and contained in this dome of evil.

“We have to get rid of the body,” Brad said, wiping his nose and eyes together with both hands. “We have to leave it somewhere where nobody will find it.” It was a child's meek realization of what a crime like this entails, after the fact.

I helped Brad lift the carcass from the cement, and I felt the broken bone in his right arm, one that one of my stomps had evidently caused. His arm bent backward at the forearm and dangled by his side while I lifted his head and Brad carried his feet.

“We should throw him in the dumpster,” Brad suggested, his eyes showing nothing but emptiness now. That weeping boy within him was quickly put away, and it would be the last I would ever see of him.

I walked backward while Brad moved forward toward the green dumpster, but then I thought it all seemed too simple and said, “That's too easy to find him.”

Brad stopped walking, looked straight at me with hollowed eyes. “Where do we put him then?”

I was surprised he asked me what to do. He was so sure of himself throughout this mess, but as soon as the thrill ended he seemed lost.

I told him we should toss the body over the fence and leave him by there, so we did. We threw Henry over the posts and hopped over. We buried his body in some brush against the fence, picking up wet leaves and pine needles and snow, dumping them over the child's body like it was a stash we were trying to hide. I had gone numb, feeling nothing in that moment, and Brad displayed the same demeanor.

Once we felt satisfied with our attempt at concealing our actions, we left the forested area, crossed Stillwater and walked down Ambrosia, all in unbearable and contemplative silence. Our previous lives had left us, and I felt immortalized somehow, but not as a child. Instead, I felt as if we had both forever become something much more horrible than anything we could truly imagine.

There was nothing we could ever do to redeem ourselves, to restore a place as people, and other people—if they ever discovered our transgressions—would only see us as the entities we had devolved into over the course of an afternoon.

It didn't take long for Henry's parents to initiate a search for their missing little boy. The cops covered every millimeter of ground, and after one day of looking they found the mound of a baby-blue coat poorly buried at the edge of the fence by the mall. They unearthed him, identified him as the missing child (there were never any missing adults in Parsons, let alone children) and began to ask witnesses from all over town. Both the woman from the mall and security guard testified they saw two boys with a visibly hurt kid, and security cameras captured our profiles all over the mall, including Brad's shoplifting at the candy store within.

The two of us were identified as the suspected kidnappers and killers based on eyewitness descriptions and CCTV footage, and were surrounded by adults who were shocked that two children could've done something so horrifyingly cold. Our parents had to change their identities and move to opposite ends of the country to escape the harassment, and Brad and I never saw our families until we were put on trial. Even then, we weren't allowed any physical contact, and we were tried and convicted of torture and murder as adults at twelve years old, the youngest in America to have received that dishonor. We were too young to really understand what that meant, but the media ensured that in the public eye we would remain cemented as youthful deviants, soulless demons.

We were placed in a juvenile prison following our sentences of life without parole, and transferred to federal prison at eighteen. I can't begin to tell you how often I've replayed that last day in my mind, attempting to unravel it and piece it together for sequential coherence, but it's been a long, difficult road. All of the emotions, or lack thereof, I experienced that afternoon have been replaced with remorse, something I wasn't sure I could ever feel, but that can never save me from what else remains inside of me.

I can't say the same for Brad. We haven't had a proper conversation, sent to separate prisons, but he's written letters to me, ones which I've refused to return. I've collected twenty-three. On average, he sends two a year, but during a few of those he sent me three. I haven't bothered to keep them; we aren't friends, and he knows this well, only attempting to torture me with his last hopes of being obnoxious in a system that took no mercy on us. His sadism lives on well, and unlike me he still simply views Henry as a small blue coat we got to stop moving. There's something within me that keeps me from looking at Henry as a child as well, but I take no pride in that coldness. However, it does remind me that there is nothing redeemable about me. If there was, it was left in a pile of brush by a fence. I could never fool anybody, and certainly not anybody who winds up reading this. You learned what I let happen, of the lucidity of my actions, and I don't care if the world, this society, was somehow capable of producing us. We are no longer people now; we're bodies waiting to decompose from our murder-suicide as eleven-year-old children.

Believe it or not, even when I first came to prison, I used to have dreams of falling in love, of an untouchable girl mercifully tearing me away from all of the horribleness of being a beaten man in this world, but today I only dream of hatred thrown at me, of being a malformed, anomalous object that needs to be destroyed. I’m not even a man, and the boy I was is long dead. I’m a plague to the human condition; there can be no love for me. The world created me to be a problem, and it will correct that problem eventually, exacting retribution, as it should.

If even a pathetic and broken soul like me can accept that kind of fate, can you accept yours?