Cries in the Night

His foot hit the rearview mirror, knocking it askew. The foot with the sneaker still on, that is to say. The other was attached to the leg which was pinned against the dash board of the old Dodge. A defiant whimper was barely audible over the metallic whine of the old radio blaring 80's rock and roll. Strong arms twisted him, and he cried out as his hip slammed into the steering wheel. His jeans were down around his knees now, and his shirt was half torn off.

His cousin's groping hands were everywhere, touching and feeling lewdly. He had never liked Darren, really. His older cousin had always been a little weird to his eyes, but he had never thought... He cried out as his ribs came down on the parking brake. Darren had picked him up from school, claiming he was doing the family a favor. Instead of home, though, they had wound up here. Out in the woods.

"Stop fussing junior..." Darren growled.

Justin Taylor Argus Jr. jerked away, or tried. "Take me home you queer."

"Just having some fun, junior."

Justin gurgled in disgust when he felt a hot, wet tongue in his ear. At thirteen, he had only just begun to notice girls. Guys were okay, he supposed. Not his side of the shopping cart, maybe, but he was young. Hairy, greasy, beer-gutted, sweaty cousins were not in any supermarket he ever intended to visit, however

He squirmed rather ineffectually in his cousin's grip. A meaty hand ran over his privates and his cousin laughed hot breath onto his neck. "Part of you ain't protesting."

Justin managed to jam a knee into Darren's side, but the more he fought, the more worked up his cousin was getting. Justin's initial fury was gradually melting away into a panic. What if he couldn't get away? How far would his cousin go? Justin swallowed hard, wearily trying to push Darren's arm off. He reached out for the door handle, figuring he could probably outrun his attacker.

Darren's arm went around his throat in a vicious choke hold. Justin gasped and gulped, his air suddenly gone. "Not leaving the party so soon, are ya cous?" Darren belched, tightening his grip.

Justin was seeing spots in his vision. His heart began to pound. Was Darren going to kill him? The boy's hands clawed at the arm cutting off his air. Desperate, frightened, he struck out, punching Darren in the jaw. His cousin growled and cracked his head against the passenger window. Justin yelped, and his protests weakened. He was fading in and out now, his stomach now a churning mass.

He was only barely aware of air at last being allowed into his lungs. Reflexively, he sucked it in, filled though it was with the reek of his cousin's sweat. He felt hot skin rubbing against his back and thighs. Like an animal, his cousin was using him, rubbing his body lustily against him. Justin let out a choked sob, begging Darren to stop. Only Darren had just begun. He could hear his cousin rasping now, reveling in his victory and preparing to take the spoils.

Justin reached for a socket wrench he saw under a brown paper bag.

Darren covered the boy's hand with his own, pinning it on the floorboard.

Drool dribbled on Justin's shaking shoulders.

He wept.

Darren grunted low in his throat.

There was a sharp, hideous, unspeakable pain deep inside of him.

Then the world tore into a billion screaming voices, raining like confetti in the mind that had been Justin Taylor Argus Jr.

For the moment that his innocence was torn away was the moment that the screaming of every child in every family in every country punched its way into his skull. Where he saw and felt the violations of children everywhere.

Helpmepleaseohgoddaddydon'tIdon'twannathathurtspleasestopwon'teveragainyou'rehurtingmeIcan'ttakeanymoreletmegowon'ttellfrighteneddidn'tmeanpleaseI'mscaredits feelsawfuldon' tmakeI'lldoanythingohgodhelpmepleasedon'tnomorestopplease....

In a hundred languages, with a thousand accompanying images, all flooding into his mind in an endless deluge. Every touch, every word, every broken heart was his now. The only witness to the silent crimes.

He let out a scream that nearly deafened Darren. It tore his vocal chords to bloody ribbons, and he kept screaming. Blood sprayed on the windows and upholstery. He felt no pain. Could feel nothing at all, except the pounding of his skull as a million desperate cries surged together in his mind.

******************************************************************

The office was small and stuffed with books and folders dedicated to the study of the human mind. Justin Taylor Argus sr. and his wife sat rigidly in the two old, uncomfortable chairs, listening to the grim report of the chief psychiatrist. The prognosis was not good.

"You don't see any way to help him without hospitalization?" Bonnie Argus asked, touching a soaked tissue to her cheek.

Justin squeezed her other hand tightly. Dr. Hillerty shook his head slowly. "His condition is too fragile. We have to keep him heavily sedated just to keep him from hurting himself."

Mr. Argus nodded slowly. "Is there a specialist we could call? I may not be rich, but he's my boy."

"Mr. Argus, we're not entirely certain what is wrong with your son. It's as I told you, the trauma has set off some kind of cascade reaction in his mind. Justin thinks he's hearing screaming, but its no form of dementia or schizophrenia I've ever seen. I encourage you to get other opinions, but my only recommendation is that he remain here under observation."

Bonnie let out a little sob. Mr. Argus tried to comfort her, feeling his own heart breaking inside of him. "Can we see him? Try to explain to him?" Bonnie asked.

"Of course," Dr. Hillerty agreed.

Very shortly the three of them were looking through the observation window of isolation room 34. Justin sat in the corner, eyes squeezed shut. His short brown hair hung over his brow in an unkempt mess. Bonnie was weeping softly into her husband's shoulder.

"Is the restraining jacket necessary?" Mr. Argus asked in a thick voice.

"It is just a precaution," Dr. Hillerty replied. "Until we are certain the medication is having the proper effect."

"Okay," Justin sr. breathed. "Come on."

Justin jr. looked up as they came into his cell, his red-rimmed eyes bleary and unfocused. "M-mom?" he rasped through his damaged vocal chords.

Bonnie was beside her boy instantly, soothing him, comforting him. "I'm here, Tay. I'm here. Mommy's right here."

"Make the voices stop. Please... " he sobbed into her shoulder.

She stroked his hair. "I can't, sweetie," she told him gently, clutching him tighter. "But these doctors are going to help you. They'll get you better."

"Please... I'll do anything.. Please.. no.. leave her alone. No!" Justin began to thrash more violently.

"The medication is wearing off. I'm afraid you'll have to leave," the doctor told them.

"No! I'm not leaving my baby!" Bonnie wailed, trying to still her writhing child.

"No! ohpleaseohpleaseohplease.... Don't.. touch.... No!" Justin raved.

"Bonnie, please..." Mr. Argus urged.

Orderlies came in and wrestled the patient to the ground, forcibly seperating mother and son. Justin sr. dragged his sobbing wife out of the room. His heart was a broken, lost thing in his chest now. His only son was a raving lunatic, and his wife was rapidly following him over the edge. All because of Darren Tanner.

There was only so much a man could stand.

One week later Mr. Justin Taylor Argus sr. was arrested for the shooting death of Darren Tanner. One year later he was sentenced to twenty-five years to life. Lawyer bills and other creditors swooped in on Bonnie Argus. Though she had not crumbled as her husband had predicted, there was nothing she could do but declare bankruptcy. Justin jr. had been moved to a state facility. In a few months, he was declared fit and released to his mother's care. Working two jobs as she was, Bonnie was unable to watch Justin as she probably should have. Four days after being home, and one week before his fifteenth birthday, Justin disappeared.

* * * * * *

He had no direction or goal. Somewhere in him was the hunger to escape the voices, and that gave birth to the idea that maybe he could go somewhere that was quiet. So he started walking. Whatever part of him that still reasoned was convinced that his mother would understand. She had always understood.

Justin walked for days and days and still found no peace. It was better now, though, than it had been in the hospital. The doctors had believed their drugs made it quiet, but they were wrong. Justin shuddered to think of it. Hours where he could not move, could not rasp out the pitiful scream that was his only vent for the purgatory he had been abandoned to. No, out here, he could move. And though the voices got no quieter, the idea that he was moving gave him an obscure comfort.

After several days, though, he despaired as he saw there was no escape. No place on this earth far enough away from the pain and torture of child abuse that he would not hear its victims' screams. When he came face to face with that truth, there was another right behind it. A dark, unsettling idea that was the only way out he could see.

If he could escape the screams, then he would stop the people causing them.

It was not hard, after so long with his burden, to listen for direction in the vortex of anguish and loss. It was easy from there to determine proximity. The horrifying reality was how many nearby places he was sensing it from. Not caring, not needing to, he chose one and headed for it. The neighborhood was not one that should be visited by lone boys of pale complexion at night, but Justin was beyond being aware of such things.

He approached the old brownstone that was his goal, and was intercepted by a small pack of teenagers. This close to one of the screamers, Justin was almost crippled with the fear and loathing of the crime in progress. The teenagers were saying something to him. He focused his attention on them for a moment and they stopped.

In his eyes they saw all the rage, sorrow, hurt and anguish of the children of the world.

They backed away, disappearing into the murky shadows. Justin mounted the steps and unerringly approached the home of one of the screamers. The door was locked. Only a fool would leave his door unlocked in this neighborhood. Justin could hear sobs now, the loudest of the surge in his mind. He felt her pain. He remembered his own.

**Let me in**

He had never tried talking back before, but it was the only way he saw at this point, short of finding a crow bar. He felt the anguish ebb and thus the connection slip. It was a bitter irony that he only felt the children's pains, never their joys.

**I'm here to help. Let me in.**

Justin was not sure if he was heard. He supposed he could simply wait out here, but his nerves were demanding action. The door opened a crack and a small brown face peered out at him. "Who are you?" she asked.

Justin pushed the door open boldly. "I guess you could say I'm the only person who cares. I heard you tonight."

The girl shrank from him. "You can't come in. My dad don't like cumpny."

Justin did not reply. It was too hard to concentrate on conversation. Instead he focused on the small, run down apartment and the disturbing feeling that he had been here before. He shuddered and went into the kitchen. His temples were throbbing. It was time to end the screams. His hands trembled. I've got to. Before I lose my mind.

"Tika, what is going on in here?" a gruff male voice that was also hauntingly familiar asked harshly. "Who the hell are you?"

Justin turned, a kitchen knife in his hand. He stared into the face of the monster and felt the screams in his mind swell. They consumed him. Drove him into a blind frenzy. The monster died in a storm of blood and death. Hatefully, madly, Justin stabbed and hacked until the man moved no more.

Then he left without a word to the girl. There were other cries to silence. Many others and he could not rest until all the monsters were dead. Only then would he get to know what silence is once again.

******************************************************************

"We interrupt this program with a special announcement," the anchorman said soberly. "I'm Frank Tran with XZLA news. The man suspected of as many as two hundred and fifty murders has been cornered by police in the industrial district of Pittsburgh. Police are in a standoff with the man whose killing spree allegedly began in Arizona. Police negotiators are trying to resolve the confrontation without fatalities. More details coming up at four o'clock..."

********************************************************************

Justin paced back and forth between the crates. No one understood. He had tried to tell them a dozen different ways, but none of them were listening. They were all convinced he was crazy. He could tell it from the tones of their voices. Why could they not see he was not some crazed killer? All he wanted was to end the screaming so that he could know a little peace. Him and all the screamers who cried into their pillows at night.

"Justin? You still hearing me pal?"

It was Hank. He liked Hank, sort of. The negotiator was the only one so far that had not talked to him like he was a complete moron. "Yeah, Hank," he called back. He needed more time. To think things through.

"I've got a pizza out here. Extra pepperoni. Bet you're hungry. Why don't you come out here and share it with me?"

"No anchovies?"

"Hell no."

"Lemme think about it."

Justin wet his lips and tapped the barrel of his stolen pistol against his forehead. He was very tired, and a pizza sounded really good at that moment. Of course, they would also slap the cuffs on him and lock him away forever. Kind of an expensive meal, he decided. He bowed his head, knowing there was really no way out now. But that was not the hardest thing right now. There was another problem chewing on his insides. The reason he had been so distracted and had thus been cornered.

In the last three years of murder and death, the screams in his mind were getting louder, not quieter.

For every pedophile he killed, ten more took their place. He could not win his way, and he had tried their way. Wasn't their anyone who could help him? Justin's shoulders slumped. "Hey Hank, you throw in a Coke and you've got a deal."

A moment of stunned silence. "Got some right here, Justin. Thought you might be thirsty."

"Cool," Justin rasped.

Maybe they've got a new drug. Or maybe they'll just give me the chair and it'll end that way. Justin slowly pushed the warehouse door open and stepped into the night air. Most of the Pittsburgh police department was present, all bearing guns and ill will right at him. Justin raised his hands in surrender and walked out to meet them.

A gray-haired man in a tan trench coat approached him, bearing a soda can in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other. "Why don't you eat before we talk, huh Justin?"

"Thanks," the young man said gratefully, taking the offered food.

Hank looked him up and down while he scarfed down every greasy bite. For all that they were surrounded by dozens of gun-toting sharp shooters, the two stood together like two old friends. "Tell me about these voices you hear," Hank asked finally.

Justin shivered. "It started a few years ago. It's like I can feel it every time a child is sexually violated. I get pictures... images..."

Hank nodded. "Have you ever thought you might be a mutant?"

Justin shrugged. 'I dunno. Don't know much about them." Justin paused, looking Hank up and down. There was something far too familiar about the man, something that made it all to easy to trust him. Justin's eyes went very wide suddenly. "Your daughter?" he gasped.

Hank blinked, going rigid. "What?"

"You... You've molested your daughter..." He could see it now. This man's face in a darkened room. "WHY CAN'T YOU SICKOS LEAVE US KIDS ALONE?!?!?!?!?!?!?" The scream tore open the old wounds in his vocal chords, searing him with blistering pain.

"Justin, calm down!"

But Justin was already moving. His gun was in his hand, the rage and hatred that seemed to be the sum total of his being now suddenly bursting back into flame. He did not hesitate. Hank cried out as three shots went through his chest, sending his blood flying. The older man shuddered and fell back, crumpling to the cold asphalt.

There was thunder. Then the world went white.

Justin was dead before he hit the ground. His final thoughts were ones of immense relief and joy. For as he died he finally heard silence once more in his mind. Justin welcomed that absence of sound like a mother's touch. He exulted in the fact that at long last the screams were silent.

Only Justin was wrong. The screams were still there. It's just that now there was no one to hear them.

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