Howard’s Touch

Howard Worthington, that was the sort of name that befit a person of wealth and stature. A person of strength and sobriety. Not a lowlife like the Howard who had owned it. His folks probably had big dreams for him, but they died before he ever got to know them, in the clichéd car wreck that was the first foul dish from a lovingly cruel God always watching above.

It wasn’t the only thing wrong with Howard. He grew up in aunt’s home, a single lady weighing in at a steady 300 and something. What was more, she was a voracious reader, and constantly ignoring Howard. Also, one might casually note, she was a voracious eater, sometimes eating as much as double what she could consume in the literary world—that was a lot.

Howard grew up with a quiet less consumed love for books himself, but after tasting the cruelties of school and their response to “book worms” and “losers” Howard’s quiet love turned into a secret whisper quickly. His thick glasses didn’t help any either, and his lanky body followed behind even that in quick rapport. He was the one all the big snooty kids picked to dish out their own images of God’s cruelty upon. They called him the usual circle of names, dork, dweeb, geek, four eyes, and even (if you can believe a child of such age knew such foul things) Dickhead once or twice.

This is the life that shaped the warped mind of Howard Worthington, the first, and sadly, not the only. As Howard entered puberty, he, like all boys found girls. First in the casual glances of one hot rod magazine or another, then of course, in the real world with all those tight fitting jeans and overly short dresses. God what his mind could conjure, perhaps in another life he would have grown to have been quite the pen master, the writer of worlds that only existed there in the confines of his imagination.

But it would not be so, and as was the same foul fate of his earlier youth, his voracious reading (and eating) aunt met her maker with a cruel clenching of the chest. This is what Howard came home to one day after school. And as before, he was shuffled off to another alien environment forced to start over with just three years left before officially being recognized as a man. Oh how the blackest fates can be so cold and cruel, damn the fates, damn them all. If Howard were more of a Philosopher that might have been what he would have said.

Instead, he met the slow building of jealousy with open arms. Jealousy of a cold and cruel world that was always swishing around him in their overly joyous raptures of this and that. Cruel fuckers, he thought as he watched. It was at fifteen he dished out his own justice, first on a squirrel he found in a rat trap he lovingly left beside his new home’s bird feeder. This, however, was a state home and they would only tolerate so much. They were not family.

But, black fate found this cruel twist of Justice from a developing youth quite entertaining and guarded him with the busy eyes of his new guardians never paying attention to him—as opposed to his aunt’s only occasionally ignoring him in favor of a good book. He was, in other words, invisible and he loved it.

His step brother had a healthy supply of the dirty magazines, which further led him to darker discoveries of things he wanted and couldn’t have. And at sixteen, when he finally conjured enough nerve to try and get a real life girlfriend. He was met with a vicious prank that led him to his next, and more severe twist of judgment upon the evil world he called home.

The Samson family pet was found hanging in a tree three blocks down. It was the product of blind rage, and hadn’t been thought out as clearly as Howard should have. This time, black fate wasn’t amused and didn’t allow the cloak of its guarding invisibility to shroud him, to protect Howard. He was instead hauled off to another home with a psychiatrist paying him weekly visits. The beast inside quieted down on into the coming manhood and even so much until Howard grew into his own man at twenty-three.

 

At Twenty-three the young man Howard was working in the Penningsworth factory. A factory that specialized in a wide variety of feminine care products. Howard’s love of women had taken perhaps its most foul turn yet, and in his own way, he developed a sick joy at touching something that would touch all those women he would himself never have a chance to touch, not there. Ha, turn your noses up at me, Howard would think as he fingered the thousands upon thousands of plastic and cardboard applicators that went through his line.

Howard met Maggie Bastion at the factory. And perhaps by the black fates sudden interest in Howard once again, Howard even managed to make a girlfriend out of her for a long run. She was just invisible enough herself to give in to a man of thick black rimmed glasses and gentle soft hands that had never before touched a woman. Not for real.

She broke up with Howard last week, and Howard wasn’t taking it well. He was, in fact, taking it so poorly, that his boss Victor, had to have Howard moved from inspection’s to packing. This was Howard’s last chance before the pink slip of infamy came floating down to his locker.

Packing was where the devil’s scheme of Midnight Fate had first spun it’s spider like webbing into the deepening purple of Howard’s imagination. He’d pay them all back, every God damned woman that had ever turned their snooty little noses up to him, By God. He’d touch them all right, and sweet Jesus, they’d never fucking forget ole Howard.

While Howard was laughing carelessly to himself, muffled by the whirring of the factories thick sounding machines, his hands were going about a demon’s business. He was thinking of touching those women, and them not forgetting that serpent like touch of his magical fingers. And while he was, his hands were filling one random box after another with five special Applicators he had snuck out over the coarse of the past few days. He had laced them each with a special surprise. Howard’s touch would be there to greet those snobby ladies for sure this time, and in their most intimate of places no less.

A crooked grin grew across Howard’s face. And perhaps if Black fate had a face, it was grinning too.

 

Mandy and her good friend Alice were out shopping. Mandy had went through a bad break up herself recently, and there was only one great cure to a bad breakup (besides getting shitfaced and fucking a total stranger, that didn’t work two days ago and the hangover had still left her feeling a little shaky) and that was shopping.

“Oh my God, check out the ass on that guy!” Alice said pointing at a dark haired man not far from them.

“Alice, shut the hell up, Jeeze we don’t want him to hear us.” Mandy cried in growing embarrassment. The man must have heard, he turned and gave them a half grin and nodded at them.

Alice turned the duo into a little clothing store, one of many in the expansive mall in fact, not their first store of the day, nor their last.

“So, tell me about that dickhead. What was it he said again?”

“Alice, I really don’t want to talk about Joe.”

“Was he even any good in the sack?”

“Alice, for the love of Christ, drop it.”

“Ok, ok, you’re no fun today Mandy. Oh, what about this?” Alice said holding up a bright colored shirt.

Mandy wrinkled her nose and felt the gentle call of her period’s first arrival below. Her alarms went off and her face concealed the displeasing surprise.

“Dammit.” She whispered.

“What is it?”

“My aunt just came to town.”

“You need one? Mine started yesterday…”

“Yeah, if you got one, I’m gonna have to run, this is gonna be a bad one.”

Alice pulled the plastic wrappings of a Tampon from the depths of her purse. The plastic broadcasting just what it was that lay beyond, the foul thing that was required by every woman and despised by most men. Oh how the world could be bent by one little thing.

Mandy grabbed it and headed for the nearest bathroom in a tight legged hurry. She felt the blood beginning to flow a little too easily and was sure her blue panties below were ruined. She knew it was soon to come, which is why she wore these instead of the G-string, but still she hated the thought of losing them.

Oh for Christ’s sake, you’re in a goddamned mall, buy yourself some new ones! Her mind roared back in less than gentle tones.

She rounded the corner and plunged into the bathroom marked for women. She hurried to the third stall, where she saw no feet and received a knowing look from the woman at the sink.

Slamming the stall door behind her, dropping her pants and squatting over the toilette, she did her business. She noticed a quiet little pang as if the plastic applicator had scratched her, but paid it no attention. She just wasn’t bloodied enough to get it in smoothly.

Then looking at her blue panties she saw she was bloody enough but didn’t give a shit. It was in, whatever caused the scratch would have to be worried about later when it came back out. She had shopping to do.

She cleaned herself up where she needed to, pulled her pants and panties back up and returned to her friend. They continued their shopping for an hour and thats when the scratching pains began to thrum in more persistent displeasure.

“You ok?” Alice asked.

“Yeah, where’d you get that damned tampon?”

“Walmart, walgreens, I dunno, why?”

“It scratched me going in and now it feels like there’s something sharp down there cutting me.”

“Cutting you? What? Sure you just weren’t dry or something?”

“No Goddamn it! It’s fucking hurting like hell!”

“Shhh, Jesus Mandy, don’t go causin a scene, here, let’s go back to the bathroom and take it out. I got another one, hell I got like five or six more left myself.”

“Ok, ok, but, Jesus let’s hurry its hurting bad.”

They walked as quickly as the sharp jags of pain would allow Mandy to go. And when they finally made it to the restroom (which was thankfully bare of women) Mandy found she had no strength left to stand on her own. The pain was excruciating now.

“Call 911, something’s wrong, Oh fucking God it hurts, it fucking hurts, call the fucking ambulance Alice. Call them please!” Mandy screamed falling to the floor.

Alice had the cell out in a flash and was dialing the numbers that no American needs to even look for. Mandy was yanking her pants down and when she went to remove the thing that had caused all this pain, she found Howard’s greatest and last trick. The Applicator’s string had been loosened in just such a way that when the panicking victim tried to give it a yank (That even if the string had been left alone they wouldn’t have been able to finish for all the searing pain) the string came pulling away in a vicious little snag leaving the nightmare of pain deeply embedded in the most intimate of places.

Alice screamed a little bird’s scream, and Mandy screamed a long winded scream that went on and on, knowing the thing was lodged in her and couldn’t be fished out until the ambulance arrived. She screamed on into black oblivion, passing out from shock, pain, and utter terror.

She wasn’t awake when the ambulance got there, wasn’t awake when she arrived at the hospital either. She wasn’t awake to hear the quiet confusion of the doctor, or the revolting shriek of the nurse when they finally did get the tampon free from her now badly swollen and mutilated intimate places.

“Holy Shit! That was stuck inside of her?” The doctor asked, knowing it very well had been. He himself had removed it. He was merely asserting, perhaps for no good reason, that he simply did not—could not—believe that such a thing had been inside that poor girl.

The nurse saw, shrieked and nearly fainted dead away. One cautionary hand shot to her own nether region and cupped it without thought. She could imagine the agony of that thing being inside her, and when she found her eyes dancing between it and the unconscious woman on the bed beside her, she found she no longer wanted to.

The tampon the doctor was holding up was covered, besides the obvious blood and gore, with sharp jags of glass, a few small tacks, three warped and rather rusty looking nails (though it was hard to tell through the blood), and for good measure what looked like the broken pieces of tin or maybe even a small razor.

 

Howard sat before his simple looking television with a crooked grin. His chin had grown stubbly, and the inevitable pink slip had found his locker at long last. His thick glasses glinted and reflected the lonely light the TV provided him in the otherwise darkened apartment he’d called home.

He was waiting patiently, waiting to see the women he had touched.

The news finally released a story about one of his long distant victims, and then after that two more followed in rappid hurry. Along with the stories breaking reports, were the breaking decline of sales in the Tampon market. One brand was being recalled, two others were being pulled for inspection, and the police and then the FBI was trying their best to assure the public they were looking into it.

Howard sat there in the heavy smelling lazy boy with his crooked grin. His white underwear stained with ammonia smelling yellows, and the t-shirt he had worn for three days was finally beginning to show it’s wear for the worse. But Howard never noticed any of these. His eyes were glued in sick fascination to the TV, and the thing he had done.

For the first time in all his life, he had changed the world. He had reached out and did something about all the wrongs, and as he sat there two thoughts came racing through. Each the opposite of the other.

Should he go on and hang himself in the hall like he had planned and prepared? His eyes looked over at the thick pipe he had secured across the tall door. It would be slow, no breaking the neck from such a short distance, and likely painful. Asphyxiation was supposed to be rather painful. But he had thought up things for that too.

But now, there was a second thought. A thought perhaps woven by the ecstasies of black fate, or perhaps, merely by the dark imaginings of the man Howard was slowly becoming. Had been becoming all his life you might say.

What if you could do this again Howard? What if you could do this all over, each time differently? Just think of how you’d change the world if you could do it all over again, bigger and better, reaching more? But how Howard, how would you do it this time?

Howard liked this train of thought much better. So much so, he climbed, for the first time in nearly a week, out of his Lazy boy and began to pace. The thoughts came in a ravenous river of thought, one after another. What if he could change the world, more and more with each new surprise? And not just the women, but the men, and the bullies and all those sick bastards who had ever touched him. What if?

 

 

Copyright (c) 2008 by Gregory D. Welch

~ by shadesoftruth on December 1, 2008.