ShopDreamUp AI ArtDreamUp
Deviation Actions
Daily Deviation
Daily Deviation
January 17, 2011
The suggester said, "I just love it because he managed to write from the viewpoint of a bastard", and I agree. Secrets by ~bleusman is written from inside the head of a very different kind of "hero".
Featured by nycterent
Suggested by TheSkaBoss
Literature Text
The new neighbors thought they could hide their secret, but there's not many secrets that get past me. One of them was pudgy and scruffy, the other one was thinner than a flagpole and covered with a fake-tan glow, but from the glimmers in their eyes I knew I had a couple of secret gays on my hands. You could call me a secret sleuth, I suppose, because I'm excellent at sniffing out skeletons locked in closets. I remember when I found my father's "other woman." Oh, that confrontation was glorious. He cried, you know, just collapsed into tears. It was kind of pathetic. "Nolan, please, please, just don't tell your mother, okay? Why don't we go to Disney World this year, huh? We can go as a family, all of us together. Just as long as you don't... you don't tell your mother. Okay? Please?" I told my mother anyway. Her tears were just as exciting, and I found a special place on the stairs where I could sit, unseen, and watch the arguments unfold after that. I was nine years old, and I don't think I've had a better moment since. Some people might call me a bastard, if they only knew. But who wants to be lied to? I'm only helping the truth out itself. Everyone hates secrets, right?
My upstairs neighbors were obviously a couple, and it was so cute the way they tried to hide it. One of their mothers came to help them move in. The walls in this apartment are so thin that I could hear everything they said, and if I had a dollar every time the pencil-thin one launched into an unnecessary explanation of the "financial necessity" of the rooming, well, I'd be richer than Don Mulligan.
Don's my boss, who's suspected by the police of being a mafia kingpin. He pays me to teach him how to lay low, and it's silly how easy the job is, but he still gives me gobs of cash anyway. Once he tried to pay me with a cheap street-corner alleyway dwelling hooker but I told him there's no way in hell I'm accepting that kind of payment, and he relented. Don likes to compliment my "guts" when I make demands like that. It's something out of one of those 70s movies: "You got guts to stand up to the Don, kid." But if we're talking in those terms, Don doesn't have any "guts" at all because he caves in every time. And I've seen my share of those 70s movies and I know if he was anything near serious I'd wake up with a horse-head in my bed and a bullet hole through my chest.
Of course, as soon as the family left, I knew my two boys upstairs were lovers. Like I said, the apartments here are cheap and the walls are thin. I hear things, and I can differentiate the sounds of lovers from the sounds of buddies trapped by "financial necessity." But the fun part about secrets isn't finding them out, it's telling them. There's nothing as tasty as a heartbreak. Someday I'm going to knock the Don down a few pegs – I'll slip him some information that will leave a few of his tracks in broad daylight, and then that weak, weak man is gonna hit the floor like my giggling couple upstairs.
There's always a few ways to kick that pillar of secrecy from under someone. There's the plan where you tell them you know their secret, promise it's safe with you, and then betray it to the world. That's fun, and the indignation is hilarious, but the problem is sometimes they don't trust you and then they cover their tracks to the point where revealing the secret is useless. Then there's the short version of that, where you just tell their secret, point blank to someone. But what's most fun, and what produces the best results, is when you just plant a seed of doubt in someone's mind. They go crazy and destroy themselves with wondering then.
So as my upstairs boys brought their family back to the apartment again, I sauntered up to them. That's when I noticed their daughter – a little girl with curly ginger hair, freckles, and teal-speckled eyes. "She's beautiful," some old woman said, probably one of their soon-to-be-regretful mothers. "Royal, even."
Wit, of course, is an excellent tool for lodging an idea in someone's mind. Imagine the kind of epic conflict – years, decades, lifetimes wondering how serious some witty statement was. "Of course she's royal," I said. It's hard to contain my giggling at times like these but I've learned restraint – it takes piles and piles of restraint to be as good at this as I am. "She lives with two princesses." That's when I smiled – just a bit, because too much wouldn't sow the doubt just right – and walked off.
Someday they'll thank me. The world needs more people like me. The government can't keep people honest: you can just look at Don if you want proof. And that family, which might appeal to love – that couldn't even keep them honest. No, we need vigilantes just like me around. It's a shame I've never met anyone else who shares my own secret: but no one else could do it like I do.
My upstairs neighbors were obviously a couple, and it was so cute the way they tried to hide it. One of their mothers came to help them move in. The walls in this apartment are so thin that I could hear everything they said, and if I had a dollar every time the pencil-thin one launched into an unnecessary explanation of the "financial necessity" of the rooming, well, I'd be richer than Don Mulligan.
Don's my boss, who's suspected by the police of being a mafia kingpin. He pays me to teach him how to lay low, and it's silly how easy the job is, but he still gives me gobs of cash anyway. Once he tried to pay me with a cheap street-corner alleyway dwelling hooker but I told him there's no way in hell I'm accepting that kind of payment, and he relented. Don likes to compliment my "guts" when I make demands like that. It's something out of one of those 70s movies: "You got guts to stand up to the Don, kid." But if we're talking in those terms, Don doesn't have any "guts" at all because he caves in every time. And I've seen my share of those 70s movies and I know if he was anything near serious I'd wake up with a horse-head in my bed and a bullet hole through my chest.
Of course, as soon as the family left, I knew my two boys upstairs were lovers. Like I said, the apartments here are cheap and the walls are thin. I hear things, and I can differentiate the sounds of lovers from the sounds of buddies trapped by "financial necessity." But the fun part about secrets isn't finding them out, it's telling them. There's nothing as tasty as a heartbreak. Someday I'm going to knock the Don down a few pegs – I'll slip him some information that will leave a few of his tracks in broad daylight, and then that weak, weak man is gonna hit the floor like my giggling couple upstairs.
There's always a few ways to kick that pillar of secrecy from under someone. There's the plan where you tell them you know their secret, promise it's safe with you, and then betray it to the world. That's fun, and the indignation is hilarious, but the problem is sometimes they don't trust you and then they cover their tracks to the point where revealing the secret is useless. Then there's the short version of that, where you just tell their secret, point blank to someone. But what's most fun, and what produces the best results, is when you just plant a seed of doubt in someone's mind. They go crazy and destroy themselves with wondering then.
So as my upstairs boys brought their family back to the apartment again, I sauntered up to them. That's when I noticed their daughter – a little girl with curly ginger hair, freckles, and teal-speckled eyes. "She's beautiful," some old woman said, probably one of their soon-to-be-regretful mothers. "Royal, even."
Wit, of course, is an excellent tool for lodging an idea in someone's mind. Imagine the kind of epic conflict – years, decades, lifetimes wondering how serious some witty statement was. "Of course she's royal," I said. It's hard to contain my giggling at times like these but I've learned restraint – it takes piles and piles of restraint to be as good at this as I am. "She lives with two princesses." That's when I smiled – just a bit, because too much wouldn't sow the doubt just right – and walked off.
Someday they'll thank me. The world needs more people like me. The government can't keep people honest: you can just look at Don if you want proof. And that family, which might appeal to love – that couldn't even keep them honest. No, we need vigilantes just like me around. It's a shame I've never met anyone else who shares my own secret: but no one else could do it like I do.
Literature
The Great Wall
When papers ask me where I'm from, I write "Seattle," because they don't want to know the real answer. When people ask me where I'm from, I say "downtown," and they take a good look at me and take that to mean "Chinatown."
My parents run one of the zillion dim sum restaurants here. They're what the white kids at school call "fresh off the boat." Most of the people here are. They don't speak English at home, and they try not to at work. They don't watch anything on American TV; they read the local Chinese paper and watch the one Asian channel, pausing to turn off the TV in disgust whenever one of the five daily Korean soap operas comes on. On
Literature
The Synesthete
Red is red.
Firetruck red. P
is purple.
Purple is purple.
Yellow is lemon yellow
& deep blue & plums.
Green is brown.
It's complicated.
Rape is red, & then bruised,
pulsating purple.
Rape feels like a rape. Quandary
tastes like guacamole,
not for any reason,
but she really likes guacamole.
A buzzing in her room burns
in her hand. Like a metal object
taken out of a microwave.
She can't sleep
in her room. No one else
can hear the sound. No one else
is able to feel
the sound she feels.
Literature
annabbelle
(two ays, two enns, two bees, two ells, to ease)
i met a girl who wanted two
of everything, to
reach out for your hand, so she could have another one, too.
Suggested Collections
Featured in Groups
I was thinking of punishing this jerk (probably the jerkiest, least likable character I've ever written) at the end of the story, but then that would turn this piece into a trite morality tale. No, I'd rather this just be unsettling.
© 2010 - 2024 bleusman
Comments115
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
"Your secret's out and the best part is it isn't even a good one." Fall ou boy. That line was was running through my head for most of this vignette. Excellently unsettling.