Billie Always Says

Billie told me what to do.

Don’t let it heal all the way, he said, cause then you’ll never get out and it’ll be stuck there for the rest of your life. Like a parasite. You don’t want parasites in you, do you, Mike?

I didn’t, so Billie slithered down my body and popped open the switchblade, running it along his tongue as his eyes sparkled and my organs felt like they were jumping around in my stomach at the sight of him down there, his skin splayed all over mine. He ran the blade up my thigh, and I shivered in spite of myself, shivered like a dog left in the rain.

Don’t move now, Billie said quietly, his voice thick and heavy, his breath hot and toxic. Don’t move now, Mike, ‘cause this’ll hurt, this’ll hurt just like Tyler’s kiss, maybe worse, but you have to be still, Mike, be still and be good and you’ll save yourself.

And then Billie stuck the long, shiny, blade into my thigh, and all I could think was you’re anywhere but here.

---

I didn’t know the plan and I don’t think I was supposed to. But I think Billie always knew what was going to happen from the start. Billie always says you have to be ready.

Billie killed Tre.

And he made sure I saw it all. I saw him pull the gun out of his waistband like they did in the western movies my grandpa used to watch at night, the light from the canyons and cowboys dancing over his wrinkled, sagged face. Billie looked just like a cowboy at that moment, tall and threatening, his shadow long and his mouth curled into a Clint Eastwood sneer.

You said you’d get me the money three weeks ago, Billie said, and Tre raised his hands at the sight of the gun.

I was sitting on top of the cracked red Formica table that Billie scrounged from the dump last year. Billie always says the dump was where he would find his fortune. He always believed he’d find his treasure in among all the rats and seagulls and stained mattresses and broken TV’s. He tumbled around the piles of garbage for hours, humming nursery rhymes to himself and keeping his eyes open and searching for the golden shine of his treasure.

I know it’s out there, Mike, he said. I know it’s out there.

It was the sound of the gun going off that took my mind out of the dump. It was Tre falling to the ground with his face half blown off that made me get up from the table, but it was Billie’s directions that made me wrap Tre up in tarp and dump him off the side of the freeway, and it was Billie’s eyes and the promises they held that made me throw the gun into the river.

Late that night, in our bed with no sheets and one pillow, Billie licked up my chest and said they’d never find us, you did a good job, you always do.

But they did find us. They found us and they came to the door with their cars flashing red and blue, red and blue, red blue red blue. I don’t know how they found us.

Before we opened the door the red blue was banging on, Billie pushed me against the wall. Let me do the talking, he said, hissing the words like poison against my ear. I will send them away and you just get upstairs, you get upstairs and take your clothes off and you wait for me, you got that?

I got it.

----

Billie told them I did it. Told them I killed Tre.

There’s gonna be a trial, Billie says. You’re gonna go to prison. But I’m gonna get you out.

He pulled out a switchblade.

And then, Billie told me what to do.

---

And now I’m laying here in the dark in my prison bunk, following Billie’s directions. I don’t know if it’s going to work but I’m going to try.

I think of how Billie would spend hours and hours searching through other people’s trash, looking for his own treasures. I think of how Billie’s eyes said all the promises I never heard from his mouth, and I think of the way Tre’s mouth - or what was left of it - fell open when I rolled him into the tarp, Billie standing over us talking about how life wasn’t a guarantee, how you always had to be ready and Tre just wasn’t ready. Billie always says you have to have constant vigilance.

Life is not a guarantee.

I think of Billie’s hands and Billie’s mouth and I think of how Billie always says that you can never have too many cigarettes, books, or orgasms. I think of when Billie gets angry and he slams his fists into his own legs, bangs his wrists into the walls, hits his head with hammers and wrenches and drinking glasses. I think of how Billie told me exactly what to do once I was in prison and I was laying there my hand down my pants, tracing the spot where his lips had been last.

I think of what Billie always says as my dirty fingers push under the dry, dead skin of the scab. I think of Billie’s promises and lies and threats as I rip the healing skin off my thigh, feeling the warm blood rush and flow from my veins. I think of Billie, just Billie, as my fingers find the switchblade Billie embedded in my skin and I think of what Billie always says as I pull it out of my flesh and push the button in the darkness, and when I hear the soggy click, I think of how proud Billie will be of me.