Disintegration: A Memoir

By John Southcross

As a child, Nick Faustini witnesses death, but has no idea he is the cause. As a young man, he realizes he possesses a powerful gift and in the months that follow, good intentions become something else. Circumstances set him on a path that remove him from his home in South Texas and transport him to Washington D.C. and places beyond. Despite a new “job” and financial freedom, Nick still yearns for a normal life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Southcross
• Release date: Dec 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301091256

John Southcross

John Southcross was born and raised in Texas. Still calls Texas home.

Book preview

DISINTEGRATION: A MEMOIR

by John Southcross

Copyright 2012 John Southcross

Published at Smashwords

ISBN: 9781301091256

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

For KT, CC and JD

CHAPTER 1

The first time I saw someone die was when I was seven. It happened in the late 1970s at St. Gertrude’s in San Antonio, Texas. The kid’s name was Kevin Curtis.

He was also seven.

The school was behind the church and made of the same beige brick that was used to build most schools in the fifties and sixties. The classrooms were of adequate size for about fifteen to twenty students each. All of the desks were older hand-me-downs, more than likely from a local junior high or high school judging by what was written and carved onto them. Most of the teachers were actual hand-slapping-with-a-ruler nuns.

There were two classrooms per grade level and it was my bad luck that I was in the same class as Kevin Curtis…again. I’d been in the same class with him since pre-school. It made for long school years.

Kevin was several inches taller than any other kid in second grade. Most of my classmates had come to the conclusion that his sole purpose for being born was to torment us and he did a pretty damn good job of it.

Mrs. Holladay, an older woman who spent most of the day with chalk on her pants, face and shirt, was going over addition problems she’d scribbled in yellow chalk on the blackboard. Math had been easy for me but then again we were only dealing with adding and subtracting, two or three digit numbers max. Already having written out and solved the ten numerical puzzles, I drew a simple two-dimensional picture of Batman on a separate sheet of paper. The way I drew him at the time didn’t make him look very intimidating.

At lunchtime some of us went to the counter where we had our lunchboxes lined up by the window. Most of us took pride in our lunchboxes and none of us had the same one. Jerry’s was Hong Kong Phooey. Marco’s was Star Wars. Roland’s was the Six Million Dollar Man. Mark’s was Adam-12. Mine was the Super Friends. But something was wrong with the usual orderly row of lunchboxes. There was one in the middle of the row that wasn’t quite square-shaped. Approaching slowly, I saw that mine was the one that was distorted, crushed, totally out of place.

As I stood there in shock, Jerry strolled up next to me and in a low, unsure voice said, Sorry, Nick. Kevin stomped on it while you were in the restroom this morning.

I felt this urge to cry as I handled the crippled lunchbox. Batgirl’s face was scuffed and bent. The warped lid opened on its own, like the limp arm of a person that’d just died. When the box’s destroyed contents were revealed, it wasn’t really the destruction of my lunchbox that bothered me. It was seeing what had happened to my sandwich that set me off. The sandwich that my mother had lovingly made for me in the morning was smashed; the ham and cheese, the wheat bread, all broken and deformed. The only thing keeping it together was the plastic sandwich bag it was in.

It was as if Kevin had attacked my mother. I was hurt and embarrassed. All that laughter that sounded far away didn’t help either.

I reluctantly turned toward my classmates, ashamed, but needing to verify who was responsible for this. Even if Jerry hadn’t told me I would’ve figured it was Kevin. He was laughing the hardest, his little entourage patting him on the back.

I felt my face tingle when my eyes locked on the tall, pudgy child. I looked directly into his brown eyes and that’s when it started. Kevin’s laughing slowed, the features of his face changing, his smile fading, turning to a grimace. Everyone else continued with their fits of hilarity, much of their happiness probably just relief in the fact that someone else was the target of Kevin’s cruelty this day.

Despite the pain growing in my head, I couldn’t look away from him.

The children’s glee faded as they saw Kevin begin to shake, watching the larger boy’s eyes beginning to roll back in his head. Even as he stood drenched in sweat, blood beginning to ooze out of his nose and the corners of his eyes, the tormentor would not go down.

A girl screamed.

Mrs. Holladay looked up from her desk, slammed her pen down onto her lesson plan booklet and stormed over to the small mob scene. What is going on here?

She made her way through the group of children. A couple of the girls were pointing at the boy who was convulsing but still standing as if held up by puppet strings. Strange clicking, choking sounds were all the boy could utter, his mouth agape.

Kevin, she screamed, grabbing him by the shoulders. But when blood poured from his mouth all over the front of his Starsky and Hutch t-shirt she stepped away from him too.

Some of the children ran out of the room screaming. Others were frozen, eyes wide. When Kevin fell over backwards crashing into desks and chairs, that was enough to stimulate most of the remaining children into running out of the classroom too.

The pain in my skull was like a steel spike being driven through it. That’s the last thing I remember. I was told later on that I grabbed the sides of my head, screamed, and collapsed.

* * *

When I was fourteen, my father was promoted to manager of the Dunkin Donuts in Falfurrias, Texas. Falfurrias was a small town of about five-thousand people. Two highways, US 281 and Texas 285, intersected in the middle of town. At the intersection was a small movie theatre called the Pioneer that showed one movie a week, Thursdays being the day a new film would rotate in. Within the city limits, Highway 285 was called Rice Street and it was on this road that the town’s grocery stores, HEB and City Food, were located. Along this same road, local business lined the downtown street. Before the local discount MegaMart arrived, Fred’s Fine Furniture, Hawkins Karate Studio, Cosby’s Furniture and Gift Shop and various other mom and pop shops provided everything the town needed. Further East was the small factory that made Falfurrias Butter.

Highlights of the town were Friday night high school football games, the Halloween Carnival, hay rides and church. Aside from local eateries like Ponce’s, Strickland’s and Clancy’s the big franchises were Pizza Hut, Whataburger and Sonic. Although it was nothing like San Antonio and I missed the friends I’d left behind, Fal quickly became home for us.

Daniel and Kara, my brother and sister, were a few years younger than me; Daniel was twelve but a little bigger than me. He had my father’s build, my mother’s eyes and the devil’s temper. Kara was ten and nature had decided that she would be beautiful. Unfortunately nature did not help her develop the ability to ever wake up in a good mood. She wouldn’t become sociable until nine or ten in the morning.

My parents, Nick and Maria Faustini, had found a decent 1950s three bedroom, two bath home on Blutcher Street. It seemed like the perfect home in the perfect neighborhood, at least until the first night we slept there. I soon found out that something next door made the house, particularly my bedroom (that I shared with Daniel) simply inhospitable.

Every deep, successive bark from the dog raised my anger level up a notch. Lying in bed I asked myself how my parents hadn’t noticed the damn dog living next door. Had they noticed and not cared? Why would they? The dog was on my side of the house.

And how the hell could Daniel sleep through all that racket, covered in a blanket with his feet out in the open?

Was the dog barking at a prowler?

I got up and carefully peeked out the window, spreading the thin slats of the blinds with my fingers. My mother being somewhat of a fraidy cat had left the back porch light on but it still wasn’t enough illumination to see anything clearly in the dark yard. But as far as I could tell there wasn’t anything out there. Maybe the stupid mutt was barking at a cat.

I went back to bed and after a while, the quiet between the barks grew and grew until the barking stopped completely.

Hmm, it probably was just a cat.

I pulled the sheets up to my neck and clasped my hands behind my head.

There. Finally. Some peace and quiet.

Bark.

Bark.

Bark.

Fucking dog.

And the barking continued.

Every so often I would glance over at the red numbers of my digital alarm clock.

2:45

3:30

4:20

5:55

The dog would tease me too, ceasing his noise, giving me enough time to get to the edge of falling into dreamland before barking again, cruelly jerking me back to reality. After a couple of hours of harassment I was too pissed off to sleep anyway.

Why did my room have to be on this side of the house?

Light began to seep in through the window. Had I stayed up all night? Thank God it was a Sunday morning. No school to get ready for and we usually went to church in the afternoon.

Bark

The bastard.

Bark

Little bitch.

Bark

I threw the blankets off me and stormed through the house to the back door. Grasping the doorknob I swung the door wide open and marched into the yard.

The cool dew on the grass bathed my feet as I made my way to the enemy.

Shut up you stupid, fucking dog! My words echoed in the quiet neighborhood. I could make out the dog through the slats of the cedar fence dividing our properties. It was a chocolate brown Labrador Retriever chained to a steel spike stuck in the ground. There was no grass anywhere within the radius of the dog’s twelve foot chain. Turds, some fresh, some not so fresh, littered his dirt pad.

The dog stared at me for a moment and then let loose a barrage of barking.

Walking up to the fence was the only way to get a better view of him as the bastard growled, ears back, teeth bared. I returned the stare and wanted nothing more than to kill the damn thing but not knowing how.

Then there was silence. He actually stopped barking.

Somehow I’d influenced it into submission. I guessed all I had to do was confront it, show him I was one not to be toyed with.

My head began to hurt but my rage still hadn’t subsided.

The Retriever took a few steps back, making a couple of whining sounds, turning his head away. I thought it strange how his tail was curled between his legs.

The dog lay down and then rolled over on his side and after a moment, began thrashing in obvious pain.

And I didn’t care. I was happy to see what was happening to the dog, wanting nothing more than silence. The sounds of birds had become noticeable to me now. A car passed down the street in front of the house, its road noise growing and then fading.

Peace and quiet? Finally?

I pinched the bridge of my nose as the pain in my head grew more intense.

The dog stopped thrashing about in the spot where he’d surrendered. Blood had spilled from his mouth onto the dirt floor.

Nick! What’s going on? My mom arrived at the back door just in time to see me collapse on the grass.

* * *

Unlike the last time this happened, I was only out for a few moments. Against my mother’s wishes, I refused to go to the hospital or doctor, instead getting to my feet and standing there reluctantly while my mother felt my forehead for fever, hugged me, checked my limbs, hugged me again. She held my arm and helped me back inside but before I walked in I turned back toward the dog, remembered Kevin and then wondered if this was something I had caused.

* * *

After high school I enrolled at Texas A & I University in Kingsville, attempting to major in Computer Science. One class, Introduction to Computer Systems, was held in a large, modified conference room at the university library. Tables were set together in the shape of a U, desktop computers and monitors sitting on top. At the front of the class a special projector splashed an image of the instructor’s screen on the wall for all of us to see.

There was a certain piece-of-crap IBM, first generation PC that everyone avoided. We’d nicknamed it The Beast and he sat on the table at the far corner of the room, at the sharp bend in the U. It was a finicky machine that always caused much distress to the last person to walk into class. It was the type of machine that would give the user all sorts of problems but when the instructor would check on it, it would work just fine. Some of us thought the professor had rigged it that way just to screw with us.

This day I was the last one to walk into class. When I saw the empty seat behind the Beast, my shoulders drooped and my head sank.

Shit, I whispered to myself.

Approaching the empty seat in front him, it was as if the Beast was sneering at me, its little green eye daring me to give him a try. I inserted my data disk into the drive and, naturally, it kept telling me UNABLE TO READ/DISK ERROR message, displayed menacingly on the screen. It might as well have just said, FUCK YOU.

My best friend Raymond Diaz sat next to me at his work station. He was a tall, husky nineteen year old kid who was also from Falfurrias. He snuck M&Ms out of his backpack that sat next to him, trying to eat as quietly as possible. Maybe your disk is just too floppy, he said.

I was too frustrated to respond. My heart beat faster; my scalp felt itchy.

After several minutes of rebooting and attempting to get the machine to read my disk, I fixed my angry gaze on the box of microchips, the one with the little square IBM PC XT badge on its front. I wanted nothing more than to mash the damn thing, just like Kevin had mashed my lunchbox years before.

After a few seconds, the PC’s little green eye of life dimmed and went dark. There were some faint clicking noises coming from the box but other than that, it just seemed that the computer had lost power.

Still having trouble with your computer? asked Professor Duc. He’d seen me rubbing my forehead, as if my PC was giving me a headache. In fact, it was giving me a headache.

Uh, yes, sir. This thing is screwed up, I said.

Was that a look of satisfaction on his face? No, I had to be imagining it.

As Duc approached I could see the dandruff in his hair and on his collar. His pants rode low, the back of his cuffs chewed by his boot heels. When he’d pick up his pants, they’d immediately slip right back down to where they were hanging before.

He pressed buttons on the computer’s keyboard, tried to reboot it, pressed the power button several times but the little green light wouldn’t turn back on.

He checked the power cord, everything was plugged in. He scratched his head and chewed on his thumbnail for a moment before taking the monitor off the XT and opening the computer’s case.

When we saw the inside of the computer, I think both our mouths dropped open. It was as if the contents of the computer, the microchips, the wires, the components, everything within was made of powder.

What the hell? said Duc. He held his hand carefully above the powdery guts of the computer. It’s not warm. He pinched a bit of the colored sand, rubbing his fingers together, feeling its texture.

I said, Holy shit.

A few of the students had read our expressions and walked over to see what had happened. Between a stray holy shit and a few damns, someone said, The Beast is dead.

Go ahead and, uh, let me go see about getting another computer brought in for you, Duc said.

By the time he returned to the classroom, I was already gone.

* * *

I slipped out of the lab feeling a little foolish, at first anyway, for not having put everything together earlier. The more things became clearer, the more the foolishness turned to nausea. It must have been me who had killed Kevin when we were little kids. It was me who killed the neighbor’s dog when I was fourteen. Why hadn’t I given it any serious thought before? Was it some kind of subconscious effort to deny responsibility? First Kevin, then the dog. After possibly—probably—causing the Beast to shut down permanently, perhaps my conscience couldn’t deny it any longer. It was me who had caused death and destruction.

I had killed Kevin. I had killed a person.

I sprinted to the bathroom and vomited, not caring that someone was sitting in the stall next to me.

When the wave was over, the survival part of my mind began working. I flushed and washed up at the sink, looking at myself in the mirror. True, Kevin was a bully but who knew what kind of person he might’ve grown up to be? Now we’d never know but I was betting on the probability that he would’ve grown up to be a serial killer.

I had to keep telling myself that.

And now that I realized I was responsible for the demise of a boy, a dog and a computer, what was the link other than it sounding like the title of a strange children’s story?

Anger. I was angry at them. Was that it?

But how did I do it? How exactly? I’d been angry before and this had never happened.

Was it rage?

Aside from those three instances, I searched my memories for anything similar but couldn’t come up with anything.

So what was it that made the difference? How had I caused Kevin’s death? Why had the dog dropped dead? Why had the innards of a computer turned to dust?

Walking aimlessly within the library and its rows and rows of books, I found myself staring at a row of hardcovers. One of the book spines caught my eye, although I wasn’t really looking for anything in particular.

Wanting To Succeed by Edward Allen.

That’s what the difference was. I had wanted to succeed.

To succeed at destroying them.

I walked the library searching for something to test my abilities on, hoping that all of this wasn’t just some crazy coincidence. After a few minutes I found my test subject.

When I finally found her, I yanked her from between her two friends, well I assumed they were her friends. I mean how could they not be after spending so many years cheek to cheek, leaving for the occasional date and then returning after a few days for another long stretch of togetherness.

It wasn’t my own copy of Sense and Sensibilities but it would do (I’d been forced to read it earlier in the semester). I hated this book more than anything else I’d been forced to read in literature class. Whoever expected an 18-year-old (with nothing but pussy on his mind) to read and retain this damn thing was crazy.

There were three copies and I had the first one in my hands, looking both ways down the aisle to see if anyone was around. When I saw that it was clear of students, I held the book open as if I was reading or glancing through it. But as much as I hated the book, nothing was happening.

Why not? I knew I hated the