Desperate, Linus struggled in the last throws of his night terrors, gasping he bolted up drenched in sweat. A deep shuddering breath calmed him as he stroked the fringe of his blanket, his precious security blanket had long since faded into bleached out white, and disintegrated into strings. But his first girlfriend had made him a new blanket with the remnants, shed woven the frayed strings back into a smooth sheet of fabric again, moving the most tattered bits to the edges and sewing them onto a heavy quilt, saving it from the ravages of time.
Blood coursed through his ears pounding again as his brain shed the last wisps of today’s nightmare. Lucy’s callous laughter echoed particularly loudly in October. He shook with rage as he remembered all of the poor gourds she had tortured over the years. She’d convinced their parents that it was “therapy” and even charged him for the privilege of watching her hacking, slashing, and decimating the defenseless and innocent. His young please still haunted him, “You didn’t say you were going to lobotomize it!” as he had been too weak to stop her.
Linus gazed brokenly across his loft, the penthouse level was the 13th floor, a huge open loft with little luxury installed as was his habit. The only thing out of place was the state of the art kitchen and massive selection of free weights, he gave little value to the strict motions isolated by most exercise machines found in gyms nowadays. He’d had to reinforce the floor to this level with poured concrete and rebar just to support his racks of weights. Beneath the windows he had bolted steel racks of dumbbells, the small factory windowpanes were grimy with age but added a nice tint to the light that came in through the wavy glass. Paper thin at the top edges and nearly as thick as his fingernail at the bottom the glass testified to the endurance of the building fighting against water, wind, and sun as time crept slowly between the bricks and into the foundation. Linus gazed absently out across the narrow cracked alley separating the run-down brick factory buildings. The decrepit bricks across the way stood in stark contrast to the glowing edifice he had restored so far of his building. A slight drizzle started pittering against the glass softly as he lifted his first set of weights from their racks. Decades of routine made his sets nearly instinct as he went through the repetitions of his exercise routine, allowing his mind to wander free of its flesh mask joyously even for a scant few minutes.
Sweat finally beaded his brow as he stacked 45 pound weight plates onto the bar for bench pressing, today was his maximum effort day, the day each month where he recorded exactly how much weight he could lift and made sure to add at least a pound, but even an ounce would do, so long as he always increased his max weight each month. He added quickly six 45 lbs plates, two 25 lbs plates, two 15 lbs plates, and two one-pound plates today was his new record 352 pounds. Lucy claimed he would crush himself under all the metal one day with no one there to spot him.
Gritting his teeth he strained against the bar. His elbows shook and it traveled up his arms, the rattle of steel filled the entire floor as he slowly lifted the mass of metal and lowered it to his chest smoothly, he grinned savagely as he fought against gravity for she was a heartless bitch. With a crash he dropped the weights back into their cradle and rolled off the bench panting, he collapsed to the floor on his hands and knees gasping for air as his stomach dry heaved glad that he had yet to break his fast Linus struggled to his knees and just breadth in the moist cold air of fall reveling in the burn of his muscles. Climbing finally to his feet he smiled as he staggered over to his fridge to begin mixing his muscle elixir and vitamins; it took a big man to carry a security blanket to football practice, it took a bigger man to laugh at him, Linus had made sure that there wasn't anyone bigger.
He chugged down his daily allotment of chalky protein powder and carefully swabbed all of his injections sights after his dose of testosterone and human growth hormones before he took his last handful of pills, mostly multivitamins and low dosages of steroids in one gulp with 32 ounces of water. He looked over at his project for the day, bricks stacked carefully fondly reminded him of his first job when he had been 16; construction had saved him after his parents had both gotten sick and quickly died.
“Can you lift those bags?” Cint had demanded at him when he showed up unwelcome at the job site, Linus glanced over at the 100-pound bags of sand and concrete before nodding glad he was big for his age. At 16 years of football practice with chuck had broadened his shoulders to rival most of the men at the construction site, but he'd never had to move weights for hours at a time. Clint gazed at him levelly waiting for a reply; he was a tough man carved from weathered leather, cracked and dried by years of working in the sun.
“Yes, sir,” Linas said hating that his voice cracked slightly betraying his age even though his carefully edited birth certificate and driver's license firmly put him at 18.Clints eyes flared at the sound of his voice and he glanced at his foremen before jerking his head for them to piss off.
“Well boy you're a good liar, but how good of a worker are you? What do your parents think of your after-school activities?” he demanded his eyes knowing full well what Linus was asking him to risk.
“They died this spring, my sister is 18 and just started college, I need to earn something for when she kicks me out once I turn 18,” Linus said quietly not meeting Clint’s eyes. The silence stretched before he could finally look up, he expected pity in Clint’s eyes and was sick to death of seeing it in peoples faces. Instead, a steady understanding was all he saw, and a careful scrutiny weighing his few actions and words so far, Linus could feel the pressure of this moment building sure it was some kind of turning point for his life. It was October, the time of change he prayed silently to the great pumpkin for things to shift.
“Ok, I'll pay you cash boy, each day you work, but the first day you don't show up, don't bother coming back,” Clint said sticking out his hand, Linus shook it wincing at the pressure. After a week he had earned nearly 500$ and hadn't told a soul about it except Charley of course. Lucy was only home on Tuesdays and Chuck covered for him saying he was there helping with homework.
“Well Linus you stuck it out, next week follow Gary he will be showing you what to do with the tonnes of concrete you lugged up those stairs,” Clint said as he unloaded the last of a dump truck load of bricks carefully onto pallets. And so it went, learning concrete, tile work, framing, roofing, carpentry, finish carpentry, painting, all under various contractors and subcontractors, until he finally learned electrical and plumbing under Clint’s watchful eye, he absorbed it all like a sponge, especially the contract negotiations Clint would hold while working at the site. As long as he did not stop moving he could collapse into bed and finally sleep peacefully for the first time in weeks.
Silently he picked up his tool belt and began cleaning bricks before mixing plaster for the fireplace he was installing, it was original and had graced the office of whoever had owned the building in the 1850s, nearly five feet across, whole logs could be thrown into it to heat the impressive space of the penthouse suite. Lucy was due any time now for her monthly “visit” more like a health and welfare check to assuage her practice of any wrongdoing in his “deteriorating” mental state. As though taking a religious vow of silence for a year and working alone to reflect on his life was so outside the norm as to cause concern, he was glad he’d never incorporated his company and started selling its stock like Lucy had told him to. If she'd got her way he would have been removed from the company and replaced with A nice loyal CEO and board of directors to protect their interests of the company no doubt. Ah, the joys of having a psychiatrist as a sister.
Dr. Lucinda Van Pelt, he thought disdainfully ladling mortar onto bricks and tapping them into place around the mantelpiece. Nearly a decade of-of private practice and several clinical studies and she was no closer to her coveted spot among New England’s best and brightest. The Sudden loss of their parents had finally given her full control over his life just like she’d always dreamed of, a hellish two years that still haunted him. But even those two years of unregulated clinical trials as she delved deeper and deeper into Sigmund’s storied and tortured halls, haunted by the pleading of 19th-century men and women desperate for meaning in their lives but meeting only addiction and exploitation as little more than rats in a maze. All for naught, her unregulated techniques had barely help shore up her grades netting her straight C’s. But C’s earn degrees as his Dad had been fond of saying to her after her tantrums about how the teachers had no idea how to deal with her intellect in class as early as the third grade. Lucy had used every cent that their parents had set aside for both their educations; pursuing an ivy league education at Yale. She’d then invested the insurance money that their deaths had generated into starting her own private practice straight out of medical school the ink barely dried on her degree, leaving him nothing but the house they had grown up in. his face stretched into the rictus of a smile as he froze trying to calm himself down.
Absolutely still, he stood frozen, struggling against his rage; pain etched across every fiber of muscle he remained motionless. until finally, the motion lights in his house clicked off plunging him back into the murky gray light, snapping him back to his tasks at hand. He resumed working his thoughts spiraling back into his pain as his body shuddered reflecting his anguish in his muscles. Even their family home she had tried to squander on her career, thankfully his parents will have clearly spelled out that she was obligated to ensure the house was livable and paid for until Linus turned 18. On his birthday he had finally had his first revenge against her tender ministrations, as petty as it was; at exactly 03:03 am he’d changed all of the locks and replaced the doors with steel reinforced fire rated doors. Then he had thoroughly enjoyed hauling all of her personal effects to a storage unit he had rented for her online in her name and dropped her key into the mail with an itemized list of the rest of the family affects left in the house. At 09:00 am he had retained his first lawyer to handle his business affairs and drama Lucy was invariably going to start. By 11:00 am he had withdrawn from high school and taken the high school equivalency examinations he had scheduled weeks before, finally ending his time as an indentured student.
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The sound of tires crunching through his perimeter of gravel around the building broke him from his revere, Lucy’s white mercedes town car was a silver blight on his pristine construction site. He grunted as he went over to the windows to study her as she climbed out of the car scowling up at the rain from under her conservative wide-brimmed hat and dark sunglasses. He scoffed at the facade so carefully crafted, her dove gray pants suit was perfectly tailored and spoke of wealth or at least the impression of class. He knew for a fact that she could barely afford the mortgages on her one-floor practice and an excessively well-located condo near central park. Her imported heels were just feminine enough to be impractical and he could see her cursing him as she stumbled in the unfinished driveway and parking area. A wolfish grin spread across his face enjoying her discomfort, he could have paved both stretches of dirt and carefully leveled gravel months ago, but as long as she persisted in her visits he saw no reason to reward her intrusions.
Lucy sighed at the weather that always seemed to cling to Boston’s suburbs hating the humidity and everything that came with it.
“God damn it! Linus you Blockhead,” she yelled at the building as the persistent drizzle left just enough puddles for her to stumble and stain her handmade Italian shoes she’d gotten on her last lecture tour in Europe. Idiot buying up blocks and blocks of derelict mill buildings, she hated the way the old buildings seemed to capture the scent of poverty. Like sand and catshit with the faint tinge of desperation and alcohol, certain neighborhoods seemed to soak up the smells of those who lived there, it was one of the reasons she never made house calls. This building was the worst one he had acquired, barely within sight of a bus stop which she doubted even ran still, let alone a subway line this far from the city proper. She would never understand what drove the recent clutching at a ridiculous image of the past that had never existed in the first place. The scaffolding that marred the outside of the building just further angered her. She pushed her way through the hanging sheets of plastic she knew that Linus left up just to smudge her clothes, just as he left the gravel to scuff her shoes. She’d be damned if she would give him the satisfaction of changing one bit though.
Thankfully the elevator worked smoothly, what a ridiculous opulence to insist on, exterior elevators with their brass framed windows were nothing but testaments to the idiocy that money could generate overwhelming even the most common of senses. His lairs always hovered at the fringes of cities. As soon as the streetlights began to flicker he would snatch up some dilapidated brick monstrosity and gullible investors would flock to it like moths to a flame. He never even enjoyed his profits she thought grinding her teeth as she waited for the brass and glass exterior elevator to carry her aloft to the 12th floor. Last winter he had flown everyone from their old neighborhood to his most recent project as he completed it, it had been on the river in the Bronx. The mayor of her city had come and given him an award for revitalizing an entire neighborhood when all he had done was fix the plumbing and add some new paint before selling out for millions in profits. She hated the 1880’s columns and buttresses the 1880’s littered all over Boston, a stern tsk slipped from between her expertly painted lips as she inhaled sharply at all of the annoying aspects of her visit. Slowly she counted in her head to control herself. Few people got under her skin as Linus could.
She studied the three vacant lots Linus had left around his building, he was letting them run wild, one was slowly being taken over by a homeless camp the other two looked to be nothing but large patches of pumpkin vines. She would bet good money that Linus had sown those pumpkin seeds himself as soon as he began to haunt his job site. He still held a strong fascination with pumpkins, between his security blanket and his nearly sexual interest in the orange gourds he should have been an excellent case to study. He surrounded himself with them wherever he lived for more than a few weeks she wondered if he was even aware he did it, he had claimed he didn't plant them the last time she had brought the subject up, but he was totally immune to any of her analysis techniques so she had to give up on her analysis. With a chime the elevator stopped one floor below the penthouse suite, the 12th floor was as high as the elevator went to reach the penthouse level you had to run the gauntlet of Linus’s receptionist and past the vacant offices for managing his growing corporation. The empty receptionist desk was bigger than her entire office, like a desert island of polished cherry burl it floated in the polished black and white streaked marble and seemed to glare at her intrusion suspiciously as her heels clicked loudly off the walls. She stalked down the hall to the far stairwell, each antique light blinked to life as the motion detectors sensed her and turned on, a seamless blend of vintage style and modern convenience she had to admit.
Her lip curled remembering the large ridiculous Van Pelt above the receptionist’s desk with its idiotically inspired pumpkin-shaped “A” further highlighting his obsession with Halloween and the Great Pumpkin.
“Linus! Where are you-you blockhead? Idiot brother never easy to find in this mess.” she muttered peering around the penthouse, how could someone as big as her little brother hide in this open concept warehouse-like space? The dim industrial lighting barely banished the gloom into the corners. The faint scrape of metal on brick drew her over to the huge grand fireplace in the middle of the space, aside from the protruding walls for his bathroom the fireplace was the only other wall that divided the floor plan in half, his bedroom was visible through the crackling flames of the fire. Such an odd set up for a fireplace she wondered again at the mind that designed such a living space. Linus was crouched by the bricks of the mantle, a large wheelbarrow full of mortar sat behind him as he carefully set bricks into the chimney section finally finishing up the backsplash.
“There you are little brother, big sister just stopped by to ensure you are still breathing.” Linus snorted at the concern in her voice.
“You know I think this vow of silence has gone quite far enough, it’s getting ridiculous after almost a year. If you had incorporated as I told you too you could have had a CEO to run things while you pursued your foolishness. Instead of draining all of your resources into this place without a scent of profit for the entire year.” Lucy recited her arguments to fill his silence, only the sound of his trowel scraping excess mortar answered her. Sighing she went to check his cupboards and fridge, unknown bottles of injectables labeled mostly in Russian and mandarin where most of the contents of both. The kitchen was spotless, more bottles of pills marched in perfect lines beside a top of the line blender with enough blades in it to pulverize a brick into a smoothy. The steady scraping of metal and brick stopped as she completed her rounds.
“As spartan as ever, I see.” Lucy peered closely at a bottle trying to decipher the Cyrillic script on the side. Carefully Linus took the bottle of creatine that Lucy was about to pick up and inspect more closely and moved it out of her reach. She had never bothered to learn any other languages so the writing may as well have been in ancient Greek for her; he’d picked up four languages so far just from the people who had worked for him over the years, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, and Latin, which had been his high school language focus. A decision he had never regretted as the fundamentals of Latin let him at least struggle his way through most romance languages that were written anyway. His research into the mythos of Halloween would have been impossible without a base of latin for his research.
Lucy blanched as he crossed his impressive arms while looking at her with his flat gray eyes, each of his arms was nearly the size of her thigh and very imposing. He looked down at her without the slightest expression on his face. Deep within his eyes something always seemed to stir when he looked at her as though he was privy to some things that she hid even from herself; no mask she pulled on was able to withstand his solum scrutiny. After a few tense minutes of strained silence Lucy sighed, she was usually able to outlast her client's silence but never with Linus. His silence spoke more loudly than any judgmental tirade he may have gone on.
“Well, I guess I will be seeing you next month, I hope you’re done with the silent treatment by then.” She raised her hand to pat his arm as she walked past but he pivoted smoothly on the balls of his feet, disturbingly nimble for such a large man, he flinched away from her attempted intimacy. One long step put him safely out of her grasp, his scowl darkened as he almost lost seven years of careful conscious living.
The human body replaced its skin cells at a constant rate rendering your body completely new every seven years, at least on the outside. Untouched for the better part of a decade had erased the contamination to his virtue that he theorized was to blame for the failures of his summonings over the years. This year would be different though, as Lucy’s heels clicked away he went over to the window to watch her drive away and enjoy the fresh scents brought out by the rain.
He needed to be untouched by any intimacy, or so his research had concluded. Finally free from all contamination in just a few more days he would begin his last preparations for the Great Pumpkin. He marveled that no one else had ever put the pieces together before for the ritual to summon the ancient spirit of change, the embodiment of change through death, the Great Pumpkin was a force of nature few were willing to investigate thoroughly; it was understandable before the discovery of microbiology and the knowledge of cellular division and replacement that no one had realized that you could purify yourself through dedication.
Studying his handiwork, he carefully smoothed the joists of the bricks with his finger before the mortar set. Perfectly blended new and old bricks stacked together supporting each other beautifully. Deliberately Linus pushed four bricks in order and a loud click echoed in his solitude, sliding the unlocked mantle to the right another click sounded as the huge mahogany heart board sunk slightly into place, most would struggle to even move the massive board even if they knew how to unlock it. With a careful twist of the flume dampener, Linus pivoted the entire fireplace to the side revealing a large hallway built into the wall. Silently he ghosted into the space and closed the hidden door behind himself where it blended perfectly into the other bricks. Smoothly he walked into his command center for the building; monitors covered every wall with live feeds of every single room in the building. Each floor had a border of black and white subway tiles matching the art deco moldings, each black tile was an opportunity to put in a small one-way mirror which hid his cameras perfectly in plain sight but where no one would ever look for it.
* Playlist
mad world: Gary Jules
MAD WORLD - VINTAGE VAUDEVILLE - STYLE COVER FT. PUDDLES PITY PARTY & HALEY REINHART
The sounds of silence: Disturbed
Strawberry Gashes: Jack off Jill
Puttin on the Ritz: Taco
Radioactive: PTX and Lindsey Stirling cover
Heathens: Twenty One Pilots
Seasons in The Sun: Terry Jacks
Sitting at a Bar: Rehab
Inside Out: Eve 6
Paint it Black: Rolling Stones
Chick Habit: April March
Sweet Dreams: Marilyn Manson