Chapter 1

Act 1 - Book 1

Brian Abell was forty-nine years old, and he had never been kissed. Not in a romantic way, at least. Not with desire. His mother kissed him once when he was a child, but even that felt like an obligation. He had never felt wanted in all his life. He’s never held hands with a female either. Brian Abell lived alone in a rusted trailer just past the edge of nowhere. On the outskirts of a town where dreams came to die. His trailer home sat lopsided. Its metal shell faded and flaking under the relentless desert sun. It was surrounded by brittle tumbleweeds, shattered beer bottles, and a silence so deep it felt ancient.

The mailbox was a dented tin husk barely clinging to its rusted post. The “Welcome” mat had long since surrendered to rot, curling in on itself like it was ashamed to lie in front of his door. The front yard, or what passed for it, looked like the aftermath of a garage sale that never ended. Broken electronics spilled from half collapsed plastic bins. Old VCRs with missing knobs, a dusty box of cracked remote controls, a busted turntable missing its needle. Yellowed milk crates overflowed with tangled extension cords, VHS tapes with warped labels, melted cassette tapes, and brittle computer keyboards from the 1990s.

Bent lawn chairs leaned at odd angles beneath the weight of damaged seat cushions and forgotten fast food wrappers bleached pale by the sun. Parked next to the trailer was a derelict Dodge Neon with a missing hood, a flat tire, and a family of feral cats living in the engine bay. Plastic grocery bags fluttered like prayer flags from the broken side mirror. The porch was little more than two cinderblocks and a warped plywood board. It was surrounded by a sea of discarded beer cans, faded soda bottles, and melted candles. A bleached plastic Santa still stood next to the steps, headless and listing to one side, its red suit now a pinkish ghost of itself.

Piled behind the trailer were deflated bicycle tires, a broken foosball table, a soggy mattress sagging in the middle, and a baby stroller missing both front wheels. Nearby, a mountain of garbage bags sagged under the weight of their contents. Clothes that didn’t fit, food containers, expired medicine bottles, and clumps of dog hair even though Brian didn’t own a dog. The inside was no better.

His living room was a narrow corridor flanked by towers of cardboard boxes. Most of them labeled in black marker, “Stuff I Might Sell,” “Electronics,” “Important?,” none of them organized. Milk crates lined up on the floor. They were full of plastic figurines with missing limbs. Tangled phone chargers. Novelty mugs from shuttered diners and ancient TV guides stacked like holy texts. The couch had collapsed in the middle from years of use and was buried beneath a patchwork of mismatched blankets, pizza boxes, unfolded laundry, and a graveyard of empty energy drink cans.

The walls were bare except for a single warped poster of The Matrix. It was peeling at the edges and stained with nicotine. Fluorescent light flickered from a ceiling fixture that buzzed with a tired, insect hum. In the corner stood a small CRT television perched on a wooden milk crate, flanked by stacks of old PlayStation 2 games and blank DVD spindles. The kitchen sink was piled with dishes crusted in congealed grease and food residue. A partially melted spatula rested in a pan that had not been used. The fridge was covered in grime, with the door sealed shut by a strip of duct tape. Next to it sat a microwave so stained it looked like it had been through a fire.

Raccoons and feral cats came and went as they pleased through gaps in the paneling beneath the floor. They sometimes scuttled up into the walls. He had given up trying to keep them out. The trailer belonged as much to them now as it did to him. It was not that Brian enjoyed living this way. It was that over time, it had become too exhausting to fight it. The trash piled up just like the loneliness did, slowly, quietly, until one day it was everywhere, and there was no longer a difference between a home and a dump. He told himself he would clean it tomorrow, but tomorrow never came.

Brian was not just a loner. He had a presence that made people overlook him while still feeling slightly uneasy. He was the kind of person you might see at a gas station at night. The ugly man that stood by the microwaved burritos and not remember once you left the store. He carried the kind of presence that made children look away instinctively and made women clutch their purses just a little closer.

He stood at an imposing 6’3”, but his height did little to help him. If anything, it made his awkwardness more visible, more difficult to ignore. He was built like a scarecrow stuffed with the wrong kind of weight. His belly sagged heavily over his belt, soft and shapeless like a melting candle. His shoulders sloped as if trying to curl inward despite his height, as though even his posture wanted to apologize for taking up space.

His skin bore the wear and tear of a neglected life. It was oily. It was pocked with deep acne scars, and always slightly red from irritation. Broken capillaries threaded across his cheeks like spider veins. His thinning hair. The color of dried weeds. They hung limp over his forehead in uneven clumps. They were never quite washed and never quite brushed.

When he opened his mouth, the picture only worsened. His teeth were crooked and yellow. They were spaced unevenly like the pickets of a rotting fence. He had never had braces, never even asked. No one ever expected him to smile, and he rarely did. In the few photos that existed of him, old school IDs, the occasional blurry shot from a public event. His lips were closed, his expression serious, eyes partly shut.

In middle school, Brian Abell still believed in the possibility of love. He was not bold, but he tried. He gathered his courage in sweaty palms and approached the girls he liked. The ones who were kind. The girls who smiled in the hallways. The girls who might have said yes to someone else. He did not reach for the stars. Just someone who might see something good in him. He rehearsed his lines at night. He practiced in the cracked mirror above the bathroom sink. He combed his hair. He wore his cleanest shirt. He tried to keep his voice steady. Each time, it ended the same way. The girls Laughed at him merciless. Whispers followed him through the corridors. One girl stared at him like he was a bad smell she could not quite place.

“Why would I ever go out with you?” she asked.

She was loud enough for others to hear. Another smirked.

“No thanks, gremlin.” She said out loud.

He got many rejections throughout the sixth and seventh grade. But the worst came when he worked up the nerve to speak to his dream girl. Her name was Ivy Monroe. She was everything he was not. She was luminous, graceful, and confident. She had freckles like constellations and a laugh that made people lean in just to be near her. Brian thought that if he was a kind person. If he was sincere, maybe she would see everything else past. He was wrong. She stared at him for a long second. She really looked and then let out a disbelieving snort.

“You? You’re the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen.” She said.

She did not even laugh. She said it like a fact. Like a cold diagnosis. Brian never forgot the sound of her voice at that moment. Or how her friends giggled. Their hands covering their mouths. Their eyes wide with pity and glee. He walked away pretending not to care, but something quiet inside him folded that day. After that, he stopped asking.

People had been tormenting Brian since elementary school. It started with whispers and stifled giggles behind his back. However, it didn’t take long for cruelty to sharpen its edges. Kids would stick out a foot as he passed in the hallway, sending him sprawling across the linoleum while laughter echoed off the lockers. They drew crude cartoons of him. The drawings depicted him as bloated, hunched, and with fangs. They labeled them “Brian the Beast,” and taped them to his locker with Scotch tape and scorn. Many times, they would call him “Jabba the Hut.”

He would tear them down, trying not to let his hands shake, pretending it didn’t matter. But the drawings always returned. More detailed. Meaner. Sometimes there were dozens plastered across his locker door like scales on a hideous creature. He stopped using that locker eventually. It was not worth the stares. The laughs. The casual humiliation of peeling himself out of someone else’s punchline.

It happened on the bus, near the end of sixth grade. Brian Abell was sitting alone, as usual, in the cracked vinyl seat near the back of the bus. He was staring out the dust smeared window as the bus rattled down a stretch of dirt road. His backpack lay between his feet. It was half zipped. His math homework poked out like it was trying to escape. The desert wind whistled faintly through a missing pane in the window behind him, ruffling the limp strands of his hair.

He did not notice the whispers at first. He never did. He had grown used to being background noise in his own life. Then came the giggle. Sharp. Mean. Directed. Before he could turn to look, he felt something soft and sticky land in his hair with a wet, stringy thwack. He froze. Laughter erupted instantly. Brian reached up, fingers trembling, and found it: a warm wad of chewed pink gum mashed deep into the crown of his scalp.

“Bullseye!” Someone shouted.

Kelly Drayton’s voice. Bright, cruel, and unmistakably gleeful. She was leaning over the back of her seat three rows up, high-fiving one of her friends.

“Ugh, it stuck right in there! Looks like it found a new home!” She said.

More laughter followed. A few kids turned around to gawk at him. Brian didn’t say anything. He didn’t cry, didn’t shout. He just sat there, hands buried in his scalp, trying to pry the gum loose without making it worse. But it was already matted in. It twisted through his hair like tar, warm from the sun and his own humiliation. No one offered help. The bus driver didn’t notice.

Or didn’t care. When the bus finally wheezed to a stop in front of his trailer park, Brian walked down the narrow aisle with his head low. He avoided every eye. As he passed, he heard someone mutter, “Sticky freak.” At home, he tried everything. Cold water. Paper towels. He even rubbed at it with ice cubes, thinking maybe it would harden and fall out. It didn’t. That’s when he remembered what one kid had said on the ride.

“Peanut butter gets gum out. My sister did it once. Works every time.” he had said with mock sincerity.

Brian found a half-empty jar of generic peanut butter in the back of the pantry. It was crusty around the rim; oil separated at the top and slathered it into his hair. His reflection in the bathroom mirror was ridiculous. Globs of brown paste glinting in his scalp under the overhead light, mixing with the glossy pink of the gum until it looked like something a dog had thrown up. He rubbed it in for twenty minutes. Nothing happened.

The gum was still there. Only now, so was the peanut butter. Soaked into his hair, his pillow, his shirt collar. His scalp itched from the salt and oil, and the smell lingered no matter how many times he rinsed. That weekend, his mother sighed when she saw the damage, clucked her tongue, and shaved his head bald with her old clippers. She did not ask why. She did not need to. He wore a hoodie all through the next week, pulling the hood low, hoping to disappear into it. But the kids noticed. They always noticed. Brian never rode the bus without a hoodie again.

There was one time in the seventh grade when Brian Abell thought, just for a moment, that something good was finally happening. Her name was Lacy Boone. She had freckles across her nose and wore her hair in loose curls that bounced when she laughed. She was not popular exactly, but she floated in the orbit of those who were. Then one day, without warning, she smiled at him. Not mockingly. Not with pity. Just smiled. A few days later, she asked him to the Spring Fling dance.

He was so stunned he could not speak. He Just nodded and his heart pounding. His hands were clammy. He was terrified she would change her mind if he did not agree fast enough. She said she would meet him at the gym door at the school dance. She even winked. For three days, Brian lived in a dream. He borrowed a too large button down from his uncle’s closet. He flattened his hair and bought a bouquet with crumpled bills and coins from his sock drawer. He rehearsed compliments in the mirror. His cheeks flushed with hope.

When night came, he stood at the gym doors fifteen minutes early. He gripped the bouquet with both hands to keep them from shaking. Other kids walked past in clusters, snickering, but he ignored them. Lacy would come. She would smile again. She did come, but not alone. She stepped out of the shadows with a plastic cup in her hand. Her friends trailing behind her like a chorus of anticipation. She walked up to him slowly, too slowly. There was silence. Then she lifted the cup and poured the soda over his head.

The syrupy liquid drenched his hair. It soaked his shirt and splashed onto the flowers. It turned the pink petals into wilted pulps. Lacy laughed at first and then her friends exploded, clapping and shrieking like they had just watched the climax of a comedy show. Brian stood there. He was frozen in place. The sticky soda dripped down his neck, sugar stung his eyes, the bouquet clutched against his chest like a broken offering.

“Did you really think I’d go to a dance with you? A fat, ugly, loser like you?” She said.

Then she walked inside. He did not follow. He did not move for a long time. Just stood outside the gym, soaked and alone, the distant thump of dance music echoing through the doors like it belonged to another world.

By the time Brian reached high school, the cruelty increased with intensity. There were no longer just quiet comments or laughter hidden by hand or false notes placed in his locker. It had grown louder, more brazen, as if years of silent permission had taught them there would be no consequences. During lunch, his classmates threw food at him like he was a garbage can that could flinch. Half eaten sandwiches, greasy and congealed. Apples launched like baseballs. Once, an unopened milk carton struck him square in the chest, exploding on impact and soaking through his hoodie. Laughter erupted, but no one claimed credit. No one had to. The whole cafeteria knew the game.