Jack & Jill

joke. He was in a really fine mood today. This was such a cool, fucked-up, freaky blast of a head trip. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Best and worst, worst and best, worst and worse?
    He had already selected the spot for the murder. The thicket of spruce trees and evergreens up close to the Southeast Freeway. It was wild and overgrown and nearly perfect.
    The spot was at a ninety-degree angle to a grouping of
delapo,
yellow-brick row houses and a popular bodega on Sixth Street in Southeast. He had already scouted there, scoped the area out, fallen in love with his spot. He could already see kids from the Sojourner Truth Elementary School traipsing in and out of the corner candy store. The little buggers were so cute at that age.
    Man, I hate cute with a passion you wouldn’t believe.
Little fucking robots was what they really were. Mean little parasites, too.
Kidz!
Everything about them was so
kute.
    He scrunched down and climbed under the thick, scratchy bushes and got down to serious business. He began to blow up several latex balloons—red, orange, blue, yellow ones.
    These were big, really colorful suckers that no kids in their wrong mind could resist. Personally, he had always hated balloons intensely. Hated the forced, phony gaiety they seemed to symbolize. But most kids were ya-ya about balloons. Figured, right?
    He tied about a ten-foot length of twine around one balloon. Then he secured the string to a thick tree branch.
    The balloon floated lazily above the old tree. It looked like a pretty, decapitated head.
    He waited in his tree hut.
He hung out with himself,
which he liked to do anyway.
    “Got to waste
some-body
to-day,” he hummed a little non-song to a non-melody. “Got to, got to. Just gotta, gotta, gotta,” he sang and kind of liked the riff.
    He heard something move near his hiding place. Something
cracked
. A branch or something? Somebody come to visit?
    He listened closely. Tree branches were definitely being moved, stepped on, broken. Everything sounded amplified— like
SNAPPP!
    His mind had slipped away and the noise startled the hell out of him, if anybody really wanted to know the truth. His adrenaline was kicking in like crazy. He almost swallowed his Adam’s apple.
    Suddenly, the top half of a face appeared, came into his view. Just the forehead and the whites of someone’s eyes.
    THE WHITES OF HER EYES!
    Peeking through the tree branches at him.
    He saw the face of a tiny black girl. Five or six years old, really cute. She saw him, too.
Fair and square.
    I SEE YOU, HONEYPIE. YES, I DO. I SEE YOU!
    “Hi.” He said it real nice and polite, which he could be when he wanted to. He smiled, and she
almost
smiled back.
    He spoke softly. “You want a big balloon? I’ve got plenty of extra balloons, balloons-a-plenty, balloons galore. Here’s a cherry red balloon with your name on it.”
    The little girl just stared at him. She didn’t speak a syllable. Didn’t move. She was afraid of him—imagine that. Probably confused because he’d said her name was on one of the balloons.
    “Okay, no balloon then. Fine. Forget about the free balloon offer. No balloon for you, little girl. That’s okey-dokey with me. No free balloon today! No sir!”
    “Yessss, please,” she suddenly said. Her brown eyes widened like blossoming flowers. Beautiful little girl, right? Beautiful, chestnut brown eyes.
    “Stop being so shy, girl. Come over here, I’ll give you a big, beautiful balloon. Let’s see, I’ve got stop-sign red, sky blue, Popsicle orange, mellow yellow. Every color in the rainbow and then some.”
    He mimicked
somebody
—maybe it was that nutcase Kevin Bacon in
The River Wild,
which he’d rented a week or so back. Two weeks back? Who knew? Who cared! As he was speaking, his hand tightened on the handle of a miniature baseball bat, which was reinforced with electrical tape. The bat was eighteen and a half inches long, the kind the local gangbangers used to keep law and order in the projects.
    He continued to speak to the little girl in a happy singsong that was actually sarcastic and ironic as hell.
    “Red one,” the girl finally chirped. Of course. She had a
red
ribbon in her hair. Red is the color of my true love’s love.
    She lightly, very tentatively, stepped out into the clearing. He noticed her feet were so tiny. Like a size
minus
three. She reached toward the colorful balloons clutched tightly in his outstretched hand. She didn’t seem to notice