==================

Excerpt from Mr. Pipecleaners

By

Michael A. Arnzen

==================

Copyright © 2000 Michael A. Arnzen. All rights reserved.

Well, you've found it. Don't worry. I'm not going to punish you. But I want you sit down here while Daddy tells you a little story.

You know, son, there's something about having kids that conjures up all those memories of when you were a kid, too: toys you've long forgotten, games you used to play with the neighborhood gang, candy you once filled your stomach with till it made you sick. And friends. Friends who wanted nothing more than to play with you all day long, just because you happened to live nearby.

I was a shy kid, but I'll never forget one friend I used to have, a skinny little girl named Anna, who was the only kid my age on the block, and therefore my best buddy. We'd often just walk around together, inventing odd games and experiments as they occurred to us: exploring the backyards of our neighbors like agents on a secret mission, hiding in the bushes of the nearby park and making monkey sounds to scare whoever was in the vicinity, climbing trees to dribble White-Out on the passers-below so they'd think a bird had pooped on them, things like that. I remember how she used to smile at me with gapped teeth and a crooked incisor; a really cute innocent smile. And I'd smile back. She was a lot of fun. We were like a pair of Private I's: always investigating the rooftops, dumpsters, bathrooms and broom closets in public buildings downtown. Our lives were a perpetual buddy flick, actors in some strange mental spy movie that never ended. At least not while we were young.

Anna was my best friend then, but once we got to Junior High, we sort of lost touch with each other for a few years. I got interested in girls, and Anna got interested in . . . well, I'm not sure. Things, I suppose. Objects. She stopped talking to people, turned shy and introverted and very protective of her personal space. She would sit alone on the bus to school, and I would sit with the other boys, making sure I kept my back to her. I doubt she noticed -- she always stared at the floor of the bus. I can't pinpoint when all this happened; there was no clean break in our relationship. We sort of just evaporated from each other's lives, turning in different directions and never looking back to see if the other one cared. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she never really returned the friendship I had given her: she always saw me as a buddy of convenience, not a best friend. And maybe I resented her for that a little. But more than that, Anna always had someone else to share her secrets with, someone else to turn to when she had a problem, someone who never talked back and who never ignored her when she acted like a baby. A better friend than me.

His name was Mr. Pipecleaners. She had always carried him around with her, hooking his furry stick figure around a belt loop or perching him along the rim of her breast pocket, a silent coconspirator in all the voyeuristic games we used to play. He was just a couple of pipecleaners, really, bristly barbs of wire twisted together into a cheap imitation of the guy you'd draw for hangman or the guy you'd see on the public rest room door. A nondescript squiggle of dirty white, all faceless and bendy and poky. You wouldn't recognize it as anything special at all if Anna didn't talk to him all the time, craning her neck down to ask the spindly little thing questions like "What do you think, Mr. Pipecleaners?" or "Did you see that, Mister P.?" or "Should I do it, P.C.?" When I was a kid I ignored it -- I always thought of Mr. Pipecleaners as a third wheel, but I had my own share of imaginary friends, too. The only difference was that I didn't play with them in public.

But Junior High changed everything. I was embarrassed to be hanging around with a girl who still played with dolls and talked to herself all the time like that. The other girls made fun of her; all the boys ignored her. So I eventually ditched Anna out of shame. I distinctly recall turning around in my seat one day on the bus and saying "You're an idiot" to her, as matter-of-factly as the bus driver might say "next stop," just to make a public statement and thereby make it an official parting of ways. She didn't respond. And I went on with my adolescence.

But Anna, unfortunately, didn't. An outcast, without any friends at all beside Mr. Pipecleaners, she just got, well . . . bent.

I didn't see much of her until we both entered freshman year of high school. She went through a lot of changes between the days we used to play together and ninth grade -- she grew up and grew odd and so most of what I know about her J-High years are rumors. Mean stories, that only a small part of me wanted to believe. Some kid told me once that he heard a weird sloppy brillo sound in the bus seat behind him, and turned to see Anna French-kissing Mr. Pipecleaners, thrusting her tongue in and out of his little loopy head, drool running down her wrist like sherbet down the side of a push-up stick. One of my first girlfriends jealously told me that Anna was afraid to use a tampon because it reminded her of Mr. P., and so she used to keep a dirty sock in her underpants to mop up her early discharge. Incredibly sick stories for Junior High kids, now that I think about it. What imaginations.

But those were private stories, invented, I think, to reinforce my public shunning of her. Everyone knew that I was her neighbor, and wished I wasn't, and so they made sure that I knew not to hang out with her anymore if I wanted to be cool. But the mean stories about Anna kept circulating, getting progressively worse until they took on the form of urban legend. I even told the one about the dirty sock to my buddies, just to get 'em to laugh. But the storytelling spun out of control, and though I doubt little Anna ever heard any of the nasty rumors, I'm sure people's secret fear and loathing got to her eventually, just the same.

There was one particularly cruel story about a girl who made the mistake of teasing Anna for playing with her pipecleaner doll at such a late age -- "What's the matter? Can't your Mommy afford a real dolly for you, little girl?" -- and then rudely grabbed Mr. Pipecleaners out of Anna's pocket and crumpled him up into a ball before throwing old Mr. P. right out the bus window. Anna just shrugged, acting as if nothing happened, keeping her eyes on her knees the whole way to school. Anna showed up for class the next day with Mr. Pipecleaners in her breast pocket, magically white and straightened, none worse from the murder. But the girl who tried to off Mr. P. didn't come to school for a few days, and when she finally did return, she came in on crutches. That was the beginning of the end, I suppose. Some kids started saying that Anna was a teenage witch who worked voodoo. Others claimed that Mr. Pipecleaners was really a living creature and that anything you did to it, you did to yourself, sort of like one of those "I'm rubber, you're glue" nursery rhymes made flesh. Or bristles. But whatever -- all that talk was just silly, and I was smart enough knew better. I doubted Anna had anything to do with that kid's crutches, but if she did, I preferred to imagine that she might have ambushed the girl one day at the park, springing down on her from one of our old treetop hidey-holes and breaking her legs in the process.

Sure, everyone makes up stories to explain things when they go wrong. And kids stories are some of the meanest ones you'll ever hear. But the story I'm telling you is true, and it's about Anna, and it's not some dumb rumor. And I want you to listen because unlike that girl in the crutches, there was one day when Anna herself left school and never came back. It was a day I'll never forget.

==================

You can continue reading this story for just .25 cents! Plunk your quarter into The Sickolodeon at gorelets.com

"Mr. Pipecleaners." Copyright © 2000 Michael A. Arnzen. All rights reserved.

This electronic version is protected by copyright law. Do not redistribute.

This story brought to you by The Sickolodeon at gorelets.com