InsaneJournal

When Giles Babcock was ten years old, a group of older boys used to beat him up after school. So he stopped going to school. Instead, during the day he would hang on in front of the library in that small town, and found himself sharing company with a raccoon. It wasn’t a friendship, exactly, it was more of a shared moment. Every day he and the raccoon would eat in front of the library; Giles would eat whatever he had with him and the raccoon would eat whatever Giles couldn’t finish.

One day, the older boys saw this and began the torment anew. They taunted him and said they would kick the raccoon to death. Giles was horrified, and his nerves became as raw and sharp as piano wire as a result. He was convinced every single day that he would find his raccoon friend, dead, and that would be that. He went to sleep with fear and woke up with dread. To end this, he did the only thing he thought he could do. Babcock killed the raccoon himself. He lured it with food, and quickly broke it’s neck. Essentially, that was what he was doing now. He was taking control of his own pain by telling Kirsty what type of man he really was. The worst kind of man.

She’d managed to cut out of work a little bit early by taking some files home with her and calling in some favors.  She drove her unmarked car to the condo, parked it, and took a deep breath.  She could only imagine what Giles was going to tell her - and that made it worse.  The imagining.

After unlocking the door, she crouched down to take off her motorcycle boots, smiling when Duke came to greet her.  “Where’s your daddy, huh?”  She stood and stretched.  “Giles?  You here?”

“I’m in here,” he called back to her from his seat at the kitchen table. Babcock was hunched over a little, his arms on the table. “Hey. How was your day?”

“Probably better than yours.”  She moved to sit down by him, reaching out to stroke his hair.  “I’d be scared if I were you.  What you’re doing takes balls.  And no.  I didn’t look.”

Giles nodded, and didn’t look directly at her. When he began to speak, if was as if he’d practiced a speech. There were some false states, some shuddering and nerves, as if he were a child at a spelling bee. “I’m gonna leave out the small stuff. Shoplifting, vandalism and weed, you don’t care about that shit,” he said. “But before I was eighteen I was aiming guns at people in drug stores. I almost killed a man behind a bar. Can’t remember why, I just grabbed him, pulled him over the bar and started in.”

Babcock drank the glass of water he’d poured. “I killed someone in prison. I was in there for burglary, assault. I joined up with this group, the Nevada Aryan Brotherhood,” he said, and pulled up one of his sleeves to reveal one of his twisting tribal tattoos. “This used to be different. I had some parts of it blacked in and stuff, made it into something different. I didn’t believe the shit they spouted, the bullshit about whites being superior. I don’t they did either, it was a protection thing. But I was in with them for three years, and in that time, I got given a job to do.”

He finally looked up at her. “I shivved a black guy outside the cafeteria. Not an inmate. A guard. Older fella, mean son of a bitch. He was blackmailing our leader, guy named Richard Sykes. So they told me to kill him. And I did. And I never did get caught.” Giles finished off the water. “You gonna arrest me? Call someone? I won’t stop you. I might run.”

Kirsty listened to Giles, watching his face for any tells that he might be leaving parts out.  She didn’t think so.  Pieces started to fit into place for her.  He’d mentioned lots of foster homes, they both were abused, so of course he’d turned to crime.  She’d have been surprised if he hadn’t.  

When he finished speaking, she swallowed hard before moving to sit on his lap, facing him.  Instead of speaking, she just held his hands and kissed him lightly.  “I’m going to make us dinner, Giles Babcock.  Thank you for telling me, though.”  She knew how shooting someone could wear on the nerves, eat the marrow out of one’s bones.

Even the ones who asked for it.  Even the ones who deserved it.  Sometimes she wondered if Giles felt as exhausted as she did; she supposed after his story, his answer was yes.  “Giles, you did it to survive.  I’ve never been in jail, but if someone like you has to sign on with a gang for protection, I’m guessing they didn’t put you in county.”  She leaned against his shoulder.  “Just … try not to do it again, unless it’s self-defense.  I don’t know many good lawyers for homicide.”

Giles Babcock knew that he wasn’t a stable man. His mind was a jumbled patchwork of experiences and feelings, slotted together almost at random. Babcock didn’t know how he’d wake up in the morning and there were times that his mind seemed to wander away from his body. But when Kirsty Cotton listened to him and then just gently kissed him, he felt exceptionally stable. Babcock felt immovable, as if he were as still and solid and safe as an ancient rock.

It wasn’t even the kiss. It was the hands he felt on his; small hands with thin fingers in his own grasp. Had he been a different type of person, he might have cried. “I spent a long time looking for my parents,” he spilled quickly. “And when I found them, they were…they were no good. Lorena Boylan, that old gold-digging whore…she wanted nothing to do with me. Threatened me, paid me off, called me all manner of things. And my dad was Jonas Harper. You know him, right? From the news? Killed a bunch of boys and girls across the state for a few months before they got him. Executed not too long ago.”

Giles closed his eyes. “Since then, I thought…I was just going to end badly. I was going to be what everyone told me I was: a psycho. A creep. Half a page in the newspaper when the cops put me down. Just a loser,” he said. “And since…since meeting you and knowing you I don’t think I have to be like that anymore. I don’t have to end that way. I can be something better. I love you. I love you so damn much. I never had a reason to love anyone or anything. But I love you. I guess I sound like some big wimp or something but I don’t care. I love you.”

Giles wasn’t the one to cry.  Kirsty beat him to it.  She sniffled a little to herself.  “You’re not psychotic.  You just told the truth, psychotics don’t do that.”  Leaning in to kiss him, she wanted him to know that she believed in him.  If she’d never had her father around, maybe she’d have ended up as bad off as him.  “My mother - she died giving birth to me, so I never met her.  But you’d have liked my father.  He’d have liked you too.  He was a great man.  And it hurts me to know you’ve never had anyone in your life until now to tell you that you’re a great man too.”

Taking what he had, and only murdering one person?  Never succumbing to heroin or running girls or hitting a woman or any of the things she saw on a daily basis - to her it was incredible.  Some people would say that just because he’d been hit or molested didn’t give him the right to murder.  Which no, it really didn’t.  But being hit and molested and ignored and called stupid and never given a home and moving every week and having to repeat the same sick cycle all over again until he barely knew his name and then being in jail and trying not to get raped and beaten and avoiding making eye contact so he wouldn’t get stabbed and hoping the guards would help and finding none and inking hate into his skin with a needle and a ballpoint pen, and being forced to kill someone so he wouldn’t get gang raped and beaten in the shower?

Didn’t make it okay.  Just made it understandable.  And that was all Kirsty required.  People did fucked up things when they were wounded.  She’d taken razors to her own skin, and she’d kept a knife under her pillow for when her uncle came calling.  She’d just never had the balls to use it.  In her own weird way, she admired Giles.

“You’re your own man now.  I’m just lucky you keep me around.”

Babcock looked up at her from his seat. After a moment, he stood and took her into his arms. “Thank you, for...y’know,” he said, resting his chin on her head.

“Being a good chin rest?”  She smiled up at him.  “You don’t have to thank me.  I didn’t fall in love with you out of pity.  I just did.”

He smiled down at her. "I'm good with that."