Gloves Off: Atticus Blake

"The Senator" Is a Great Device

Atticus Blake has volunteered a story

To read Goo-Goo’s Basilisk as originally published, please click here.

Note: Where the author had originally placed illustrations, I’ve placed dividing lines. For example:

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Goo-Goo’s Basilisk

In thirty-six years as a pediatric psychologist I’ve seen and heard some shit.

Everything from kids with bumps and bruises to full on fire starters. If ya don’t know what that means I envy you. One time I met a kid who’d killed his dad by flicking the switch on the garbage disposal while the dad’s hand was in it. Dude bled to death on the floor while the boy watched Duck Tales. Kid said he felt nothing when his dad screamed at the top of his lungs squirtin’ blood everywhere. Didn’t even challenge him on it like I’m supposed to. Just nodded and pretended to write something down in my notebook.

My Input: Okay, a couple big abstracts in the first sentence: 36 years and pediatric psychologist. How can you sex-up the opening? Maybe: “Half a lifetime of shrinking kids’ head wears on a person.” As it stands, consider that it’s summary and abstract; it makes too much sense and the tease is too obvious. How might you make it more abstract (“shrinking heads”) or less (“The last patient was my last”)?

How about, “It’s only on account of the Senator I’d see such a kid.” Later, that odd “the Senator” is intuitive gold; you’re really inside the narrator when you fob off the reference, so why not use it throughout?

Can you omit “pretended” because that gives away the game? Or begin by taking regular notes. If you start normally, then the note taking can morph into something else—the cartoons—something that might be outside of the narrator’s control.

Ended up being a doodle of Scrooge MacDuck.

Gotten pretty good at drawing Disney characters. Got a whole book of ‘em that coincide with a long precession of abusive memories I can’t share but through innuendo and pronoun laden conversation. Mickey for that kid whose mother sat him out front his house with a sign around his neck that read, “I’m a fat pig.” Even gave him a fake pig nose to wear. Goofy for that little girl whose overly religious dad blinded her with sodium hydroxide for asking to see a little boy’s wee-wee. Now that Disney’s moved on to owning the world, I draw the superheroes too. Getting so good at it, been selling ‘em online. Got a hundred and twenty dollars for a drawing of Thor launching through the air with lightning bolts all around him. That one, I drew sorting through a mess of little ones found in a basement after the FBI raided a CP ring.

My Input: Careful, we’ve yet to settle into a scene, and you’re already using a montage. It’s not clear what the cartoon characters earn you. Drawing therapy is a classic—the tree, man, house exercise—but I’ll trust that the characters eventually build to something.

Again, if you begin by taking regular notes, then you can escalate/morph to the inexplicable cartoon characters.

Sounds awful sellin’ these memories, these horrors, but it’s my therapy within therapy. You know? Next drawin’s supposed to be Deadpool, blade dramatically through three heads. Even bough a set of Faber Castell 2B through 8B pencils and one hundred pound paper. It absorbs the graphite better than computer paper.

Nothing could’ve prepared me for the day I met a suicidal toddler.

Heard me right the first time.

Not saying it again.

My Input: Again, careful, you name the thing baldly—“suicidal toddler”—before you describe the kid’s actions in such a way that the reader realizes the nature of the kid. Naming a thing = Killing the thing. How can you depict this kid so we make that assessment? Likewise “fire starter” sums up the child before we get a chance to grasp that quality. Instead of a montage, consider how one solid anecdote about a kid setting fire in the office would hook the reader.

Something as simple as scars can suggest suicidal. And if the child does have preternatural powers, it would be spooky to hear the child say, “You’re drawing a Mickey Mouse.” Demonstrate the child being able to see or know something that’s impossible.

Weirdest words to ever come out of ma’ mouth and I once said how French was a language with pretty feet and red painted fingernails. Led my wife to think I’d a foot fetish to this day. Anyways, the toddler, he wasn’t beat up or withdrawn. Just had hyperaware eyes swimmin’ with knowledge. Spoke eloquently. Around my office he went in a suit with his hands clasped behind his back, ignoring the toybox and full game setup with PS5. Took down book after book reading the titles, and even the first page out loud. If that wasn’t enough, he’d asked if he could be honest with me.

My Input: I very much liked “and I once said how French was a language with pretty feet and red painted fingernails.”

As always I’m going to urge you to weed out forms of “is” and “has.” Consider how stickier that line would be as “… the French language walks on pretty feet and paints its fingernails red.” (This also lets you hit a hard-stop on the dentil “D” as opposed to the soft “S” sound.) Nonetheless, your line is intuitive and burnt—both good. You attribute physical qualities to language, and that crossed effect—synesthesia?—hooks me as your reader. Can you unpack your abstracts: Swimming with knowledge, eloquently, ignoring. If you can demonstrate those “thought” verbs through physical actions/verbs, you’ll get us into a recording-angel scene. Show which books—again, you’ve gone to summary and montage—the child takes down. Allow us to hear the child’s voice.

Seriously consider putting the kid’s request into an actual quote. Few things really ground a scene like a quote. You use so few of them that this one quote would land good and hard. By paraphrasing it first, as you’ve done, you steal your own thunder in the upcoming paragraph where you restate the request as a quote.

Never, and I mean never in my forever years doin’ this did a kid under thirteen ask me somethin’ like that.

My Input: To this narrator, what’s a child of thirteen? How this narrator describes a thirteen-year-old will tell us loads about the narrator. And such an insight will build your authority. Is there a more jargon-y descriptor for a <13 kid?

After climbing his way onto my sofa, little Nike’s wagging over the edge, hands poised in his lap, he says, “I’m going to be as honest as possible with you because I know no one would believe you if you told them,” he pauses, says, “and you could lose your job.”

My Input: Okay, you might be doing the Daisy Buchanan trick—saying something twice—but I want to make sure the repetition is intentional. Honest and “honest.”

Again, if you have the narrator doodling something unseen… and the child looks up and says, “You’ve got Miss Piggy’s ears wrong,” then, boom, you’ve created tension. If you name or summarize, you cut yourself off from a physical event that creates more tension. As always, don’t be the stripper who says, “I’ve got genitals inside my clothes.” Demonstrate what’s important with actions.

Story is, kids parents have terminal cancer. Mom’s got it in the tits, and dad’s got it in the brain. Someone called CPS ‘cause they’d been keepin’ him in a cage for months and putting plates through the slot to feed him. Had a litter box for when the kid needed to do his business. Was a nosey neighbor lady who called sayin’ that she hadn’t seen the kid in ages, but the usual diapers disappeared from the garbage and were replaced with bags of sand filled with poop. When even the mom and dad stopped coming outside but at night to ferret away the shit, that’s when the ball started rollin’.

My Input: Careful, we’re out of scene and back in summation. At this point, keep us in this room.

This special case came across my desk courtesy of the Senator, as he’s the grandfather. Been keeping cops, CPS, and such off his son’s back for nearly a year. What wonders a little power can do. Now I’m s’posed to take the kid under my wing and figure him out. Parents even let me be alone with him. Both white as sheets from chemo they brought him in and left without saying a word. Almost like they’re ready to give up on him, but after hearing his story, I get the feeling they were lost and wanted nothing more than to just put the pain on someone else.

Dangerous and cunnin’, the little guy starts by tellin’ me about how ‘members bein’ born. How it was like bein’ ripped from the comfortable void without anyone askin’ if he’d even wanted to be here. That is, I started to contemplate if it was all a joke. Like he had a secret earpiece and someone was tellin’ him what to say. Then he’d proved me wrong by showing me his ears. Even lifted up his shirt. No microphone neither.

My Input: This is a kid who was recently wearing diapers? Careful. But I can see how you’re building to the kid having superpowers.

And I loved “the Senator.” It’s voicy. It carries authority because you don’t explain it. Can you use “the Senator” from early on in the story?

Had a tone, crisp and clean like a judgmental professor readin’ your bad essay on Descartes. Couldn’t get a word in edgewise before he said how it happened. How his mom and dad were pretty well off, and decided refinishin’ their kitchen was a good idea. Not handy at all, the two’d gotten to work tryin’ to do it themselves.

Ordered granite for the countertops.

My Input: Is this the Senator summarizing the situation? Or the child? “Sparse uranium” suggests the Senator. If you inferred that the Senator has told this backstory, I’d buy it. And you’d really reinforce the device of “the Senator.”

Again, “the Senator” is golden.

Somehow, venturin’ all the way from a quarry in Massachusetts, a slab laden with sparse uranium had gotten all the way to their house undetected for the little one to put his mouth on like how we used to worry about lead paint chips. Said how that night he’d become fully aware to who and what he was. How he’d took a long time thinkin’ about how he’d tell his parents about himself. Thing was, right about when he’d decided to talk, that’s when his mother collapsed on the newly laid hardwood floor shakin’, like a leaf and not long after the dad started slurrin’ his words.

My Input: Okay, I can see the “Spider-man” miracle happening. And that resonates with the superhero cartoons. All good. But would it be possible to begin the cartoons only after the radioactive kid begins to speak or enters the room? That could suggest the kid has the ability to influence the narrator’s mind as well. If the narrator suddenly found him/herself drawing unusual subjects—a form of automatic writing such as psychics use—that could be a strong way to escalate the tension and demonstrate the kid’s power.

Watched them waste away, heads wrapped from the cold. Figure watchin’ all that misery from the perspective of an adult mind trapped inside a baby’s body was like knives in his heart all day. Changin’ his own diapers, makin’ his own meals, always bein’ on the lookout for his parents well bein’. What god would put a kid here to live like that is garbage, or at least doesn’t exist. I say the same ‘bout all the abusers, but this boy, he’d tried to drown himself in the tub. Thrown himself down many a stair. Walked into traffic. Tried to choke himself with a battery.

Didn’t think it was a dream, which it wasn’t, until he elaborated that he exists in the future too and could communicate with himself there like a phone through time. Said how while he respected my degree and all, it was too complicated to explain how it worked ‘cept that Kurt Vonnegut’s explanation of a human life extending from one end to the other like a worm connected in 5 dimensions wasn’t too far off from the truth. That it works for the mind too. Repeating on itself when the universe ends and begins again.

My Input: This is all wonderful—but it needs to be demonstrated in scene somehow. Show scars? Demo the choking then and there? How can you stay in this room, on that sofa, and demonstrate the newfound power?

Also, consider how if you didn’t name “Deadpool” it would hold more tension and mystery. Again, by naming something, you kind-of kill it.

I’d stopped at Deadpool’s expressive eyes, mid pose, with ma’ hands all silvery gray to ask what the weather was like on March 18^th, 2085. I chuckled. To which the kid chuckled and looking out the window, he says how his future self, since he exists, is evidence that no matter how many times he tries to kill himself it won’t work. Doesn’t stop him from trying though. Also his future self is the megalomaniacal totalitarian leader of the world. That along with power, money, and unlimited ability to venture through time and space in his own mind, he’s got him multiple lifetimes of education in more subjects than I could shake a stick at. His iron fisted control makes 1984 look like a joke.

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Says how when he always comes back to this time, this day, to my office, he offers me a choice, and I almost never comply, or if I try it ends badly, but it’s always worth it for him to ask. I’ve got my thumb against my 2B drawing pencil so hard it breaks when he says what it is. Right about now, since he’s still a weaklin’, and wouldn’t put up a fight I could, no should, kill him. Strangle the life out of his little body. Throw him out ma six story window. Take the pencil with which he knows I’ve been drawing the now abandoned Wade Wilson and jab him in the jugular to let him bleed out on the floor.

My Input: You mentioned taking notes earlier. Or the obligation to take notes. Consider how this story might be told in those notes, and how the note could devolve into the cartoons. Notes would also give you a context and a specific language for recording/telling the story.

Of all the unholy things I heard, this request was straight from the mouth of the devil himself. And here I was thinkin’ I was evil for selling my drawings online for a little extra cash. Boy’d been leaning over in earnest with the question hanging in the air forever, before I told him that even with everything he’d said and done to prove it, it was morally inconceivable for me to so much as give him a paper cut. Kid says how that’s what I always say most of the time. Hops off the couch and goes to my water cooler and gets himself a glass and downs it and fills another paper cup full and walks around the office one hand behind his back like a gentleman villain.

My Input: Careful, ideally you’d use recording angel to describe the child in ways that would prompt us to decide “devil himself” and “gentleman villian.” For example, if the child were to step to the bar and mix a vodka gimlet. Or even pour a black coffee.

Says how this time he’s cooked up a plan to keep his future self from existing. That I’m part of the plan whether I like it or not. Matter of factly says that it wouldn’t take too much for him to convince the authorities that I’d made him blow me while I put my fingers in him. That’s when my tight fisted grip on the pencil let go and it falls to the floor. The cunnin’ words with the razor sharp smile of baby teeth were enough, I lost all feeling in ‘ma feet and hands. Lips went numb.

My Input: Bravo for going dark here. Yikes. Have you considered an on-the-body beat, describing how the narrator physically felt in the beat just before the pencil dropped? And… since you’ve already mentioned the Senator, in Minimalism you’ve got to keep the element in play. So “convince the authorities” becomes “convince the Senator,” and the language avoids the vague “authorities” and instead builds on an earlier element.

And… if you’ve demonstrated that the kid is somehow controlling the drawing, then this possibility of a takeover of the narrator’s body would land stronger in the next paragraph.

Kid goes to my candy dish and starts taking peppermints, and chocolates the one by one and starts swallowin’ ‘em whole. With each successive lump in his throat, I’m all the more terrified of what I’ll do, and what I won’t do and I’m paused with grief. Boy says, they never get stuck long enough to stop his breathing, it’s that future self’s existence fighting against the end to his reign of power. Talks about billions who died trying to stop him. Says about the mountains high skulls of children that make up his footstool and throne.

Just about then, the egg timer goes off, and the two meanderin’ parental ghosts come in and take him up like the babe he is. They say sorry and they’ll be back next week. All the while kid’s shouting, kickin’, screamin’ at the top of his lungs for me to help him in his quest or serve him then perish in baths of blood. Parents slam the door on their way out and I’s still sittin’ there tryin’ to figure out just what the fuck happened.

My Input: Is this the first mention of the egg timer? If so, no fair. I’ll double check... your “gun” of the egg timer needs to appear early and be forgotten. That way it will seem surprising here, but inevitable at the same time.

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They never returned. Didn’t hear anything on the news, nor did I get raided and nothin’ bad happened to me. But sometimes when I’m sittin’ on my porch next my wife, her pretty soft feet in my lap watchin’ the sunset, I think about that kid. ‘Specially when I’m watchin’ the news and see the Senator and his now orphaned teenage grandson attendin’ parties together in tuxedos and drivin’ fancy cars from place to place. Retired early on the drawin’ money after that. Bought a house in nowhere Alaska away from the world. There was that choice to kill a would-be mega-Stalin and how I froze. Could’ve all been just a big joke. Guess I’ll never know and I don’t wanna know neither. I’ll just keep drinkin’ whiskey off my wife’s feet thank you very much.

My Input: You seem to be ending on an upbeat, a call-back to the line about French, right? Would you consider ending on the narrator putting pencil to paper and still being forced to draw something ridiculous or forbidden?¹ To suggest that even long-distance the kid still has power?

In Summary:

• Addressing the story to “the Senator” or regularly referring to “the Senator” is marvelous. Years back, Tom Spanbauer explained that Dr. Watson appears in the Sherlock Holmes stories so that Holmes isn’t forced to explain himself directly to the reader. (As you’re forced to do here.) Watson becomes the foil for the reader. The Senator might serve that purpose and give the story an extra layer of faux-context.

• The Senator can also be used as an off-screen source for more technical—sparse uranium—details.

• The story could also suggest earlier that the Senator is also under the kid’s power.

• Please reconsider opening with such slight mini-anecdotal references to cases. One or two longer anecdotes, unpacked with bold details, might hook the reader better.

• Also, the device of taking “case history” notes might work as a good nonfiction structure. It would allow quick cuts between elements and help elapse time.

All in all, this is a wonderful idea. Who among us does not love an evil, supervillian child spawned by radioactive granite? Thank you, Atticus, for submitting it.

1. My comics artist friends tell me that fans at conventions often ask them to draw hypersexualized versions of copyrighted characters. This might allow you to escalate the device of drawing under the kid’s power… while not going to full-blown pedo territory. Maybe always avoid going to full-blown pedophilia.