“Where did you go?”

Patches was filled with indignance. All his regrets had been drowned in uncontrollable tears in the night (that, thankfully, nobody had seen) so he was primed to face Val without remorse. “I have to go to school, like anyone else. Just because I said you could come over doesn’t mean I’m going to wait for you all day.”

“You don’t have to go.”

“Why, because you don’t?”

Val swung his feet and chewed some foamy candy that smelled of cheap plastic. “Because you don’t want to. I’ve seen you before, though I didn’t know you lived here. So I know you hate everyone. It's not hard to tell. You don’t just talk about them behind their backs or do things when they aren’t looking. You hurt them but that's not enough, you come back mad even when you won. No, your hate is when you hate them so much you want to kill them, and then kill yourself. So why would you want to go out and see them?”

“I don’t want to, I have to.”

“Why? Who will make you go? The teachers are scared of you. No kid can force you to do anything anymore. And your grandpa...”

“He doesn’t care.”

“If you say so,” Val said. “But you’re right, I don’t think he’s making you go either.”

“He can’t make me do anything.”

Val chewed thoughtfully. Today’s snack went squelch rather than crunch. Like a wet sponge. His teeth sluiced through the pastel foam far more forcefully than needed, gnashing and clicking. Spitting a little. Val noticed Patches's stare of abject disgust. “Do you want any?”

“No, I know that stuff's disgusting.” He had never tried it before.

Insulted, Val cradled his food to him. “You don’t have to hate things that can’t talk back. A food can’t help what it is, it’s someone else’s fault it’s like that, disgusting or whatever you think. A picture that’s already made can’t try to stop smiling no matter how mad you are.” He pointed at the stylized happy face logo on the wrapper. “It’s kind of brave. You should be happy, or at least, not mad.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to do it when it’s you telling me that.”

“Okay. So I can't tell you what to do. That doesn’t make me feel special, though.” When Patches hesitated at this, Val continued jeering. ”Will you have one, then?”

“No. Don’t touch me!” Patches smacked Val’s outstretched hand with all the force of a mousetrap. Val’s hand cracked against the wooden wall and he yelped; a foamy fish-shaped gum flopped down onto the grass.

“Fine, fine!” Val turned to the back of the treehouse and sucked on the joints of his hand sullenly.

The sun moved overhead, rendering the blades of grass blinding, the dark innards of the house past the glass door sunk out of sight. Val sulked and sulked. Patches bit his tongue and waited as long as he could, which wasn’t long at all. “Stop crying. I didn’t break your hand. If you aren’t here to do anything, then you can get out.”

Val took a tentative peek at him then scrunched back in the corner.

Patches was tempted to grasp him by the back of his coat and hurl him out, but heard the light, clicking, chewing noises arise again. He settled slightly. “See, you’re fine.”

“I’ve been hit worse.”

“At home?”

“Lots of times.” Val swiveled and rolled his eyes. He was smirking again. “Like, two days ago.”

“What, by me? Whatever. It was self defense. You threw a mousetrap at me.”

“No, you picked up a mousetrap that I was holding. After you hit me.” Apparently this was no big deal, because Val rolled across the floor and flipped upright, sitting beside Patches at the edge of the entrance. He squinted, looking into the house. The sights confused him.

“Is that a TV?” Val asked. "It's a small one. But what's that all aroun-"

“We have a lot of TVs. They’re all small.”

“Why are they all on at the same time? Is your grandpa home?”

“No. He’s busy. He has to go out sometimes. He has to, or we won't be able to afford anything. And the screens are too annoying to turn off and turn on again if you’re coming back in the same day. They’re old. It’s stupid.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had a TV.”

“You can’t have any of ours.”

“I wasn’t asking for one. Does your grandpa get mad like you?”

“No,” Patches said, grating his nails against the wood. “But don’t let that trick you. He's even worse than me.”

---

Patches’s grandfather had never hit anybody, nor had he done much yelling during his long, long tenure in the town.

Even during his grandson’s rampages, his reputation never really diminished. It might have been more appropriate to say he had no reputation at all. His business was conducted within his house or at his projects somewhere far out of town, with firms from the city. At home, he spoke rarely and only left his home for necessities. Though he towered over all people, the fact that he never moved out of turn, and did not even see fit to punish his grandson, gave the impression he was quite the gentle giant, possibly too dim to do anything. Patches, the only one with a view into that private household, knew otherwise. His grandfather was far more far more strained and watchful, and far more hateful, than his foolish grandson would ever be or have the skills to attempt.

The old man hated the town, he hated the people, or was on the verge of hating them with a force Patches would not understand. He hated people in general, and that was the reason he'd given for moving them out of their accommodation in the city - too many insidious little people. He always suspected them of things crimes beyond what Patches saw with his simple eyes. And that’s why he had the birdhouses, the fake branches, the carved wooden ornaments and wall reliefs hanging outside the house, on the neighboring fences, on the eaves and lawns of the nearby houses that had long been emptied and would not be bought again. He was a skilled woodworker, it was his job, after all. An angel’s eye had to be just simple enough to blend in, but ornate enough to convince passerby they did not need to be removed. Most importantly, enough space to fit a camera.

The grid of nine monitors planted to the living room wall gave the old man a look at every corner of his lawn, the street, and a few angles of the roads nearby. He watched the screens while he worked, marked, carved and sawed at his workbench, and while he ate, and before he slept.

While keeping watch was of supreme importance, Patches was not entirely sure what he was looking for. All he knew was that the eyes didn’t watch out of pure interest, and definitely not out of love or care. Whenever any living soul wandered onscreen, his grandfather would freeze and scrutinize the new suspect. Sometimes he’d mutter to himself. Patches always had the feeling that the wrong move would cause the old man to explode, rip free from that titanic mortal body and go flying through the air in some inhuman form, descending upon the criminal and rip him to shreds. But there hadn’t been a need to, yet.

His grandfather was most admirable when he maintained his power in this way.

As of late, though, the restraint had been less sharp; less taut and focused. He still froze whenever some heathen appeared before him, but was more often broken up by a fit of coughing, or the sudden realization that he needed the bathroom, and he was forced to dash off. It’s all the dust, Patches told him angrily, the air is dirty and you're going to get lung disease - but got not response. Sometimes, his grandfather would soil his pants where he stood. He'd stand stiff as a board while a stain set it and the smell began to rise, over the smell of sawdust, or dinner.

Another reason not to loiter in the house. Patches watched his grandfather at work through a glass panel of his own, the back sliding door, from the door of the treehouse.

Though the old man’s increasingly disgusting mistakes aggravated him, Patches had started to understand his mindset, just a little, and that kept him in a certain level of regard. Hating people - who wouldn’t? When they tore down the innocent birdhouses, stomped through the grass, made faces and hurled insults at doors that weren’t theirs - how could anybody possibly care for anyone else, much less hold back their fists?

Patches’s grandfather never punished him. It wasn’t such a mystery for anyone who lived in the house, but of course that meant there were only two of them who understood.

His grandfather had no reason to punish him for driving people away, backing them into their homes in terror, keeping them off his trimmed lawn and away from the birdhouses. Even if it required a few bloodied mouths and cracked noses. For keeping the filth out of sight, so he was never distracted, never shocked into violent bowel movement and the headaches of suspicion - punishment was never on the table. It was, in fact, exactly what the old man had always wanted. He may even have been proud. Patches never remembered his grandfather speaking more and more kindly than he did at this stage of life.

The old man didn’t take down the cameras, though. His grandson's newfound usefulness did not trump age-old paranoia. Patches wasn’t strong enough yet. In the eyes of the old man he was still human, despite his best efforts just another stupid, tiny person.

---

Over the course of the year, Val proceeded to drop by from time to time. He avoided only two things: thunderstorms and crowds. By luck (not that Patches cared) the weather was mild in the passing months. And crowds were even rarer - the closest thing he could recall was a family of prospective buyers for the house next door. They didn't take it.

Val always toted a different bag of snacks, and sometimes his pockets bulged with some new loot (once he brought in a live squirrel, another time a dead squirrel that he claimed had been alive when he caught it), but he never changed out of the tattered brown coat. He seemed to descend in cloud of trinkets and garbage, but never left anything behind. He also seemed terrified of Patches’s grandfather, which Patches took a sense of pride in, but also a sense of disgust. He had grown to avoid responding to Val's obvious taunts, or starting worthless chatter with him. It wasn't worth the energy, but sometimes - many times - possibly every time they met -he couldn't resist taking a swing.

Still, listening to Val chew and yap inches from his ear was preferable to the alternative.

School was approaching peak unbearability. Patches was to attend examinations, which meant stooping over a table for hours in silence, surrounded by the muffled wheezing and furtive glances of his hated schoolmates.

He wouldn’t know it, but there was far less mumbling, giggling, flying notes and kicking of tables than any other year. The town’s examination grades were to be higher than they ever were, discounting one troubled student who threw his table across the gymnasium during middle Math, declared it all a waste of time, and left with a score of zero.

“Can I have your books then?” Val asked in the treehouse that afternoon.

Patches lobbed the heaviest, sharpest book at him in response and continued to scowl out at the lawn. Val reeled and fumbled, but as always, pulled himself together abrupt as a rubber band and started rifling through the pages as though nothing had happened.

“I didn’t know you could read,” Patches said.

“Of course I can.”

Patches snorted, he didn’t believe Val really knew, or was any good at it. Soon enough Val gave up on Geometry level 2 and crawled up beside Patches, chewing on some new confection. “Do you want to go somewhere today?”

“No, why would I want to do that?”

“I’m bored, and it’s all hot back here. Too many trees, no wind - why are your fences so high?”

“You can just leave if it bothers you.”

“Okay, I will. You can come with me. I mean, maybe you have to watch the screens or something, but I know you need-”

"Need? What do I need?"

"You need... time..." Val said lamely.

"What? You're an idiot," Patches said. He'd intended to end it but more words, more foam and heat, were bubbling up.

"Hey, I've known you for a while now, and-"

“You don’t know me,” Patches said, his voice frantically rising. “Why would I want to go anywhere? And with you? I know what I want, you think I’m here because I can’t help it? This is where I want to be, so don’t start making things up, the only thing wrong here is you. Don’t look away, where are you going? Don’t run away. You think you can get away? I’ll fucking kill you, I’ll kill you, I-”

---

Patches never came even remotely close to killing Val, or even busting him up as he did when he met. Val had become more slippery and keen with each passing day. He slithered from Patches’s grip, ducked out of sight, and accumulated so much grease and grime that it took some considerable determination to even reach out and set a hand on him. He still bolted when Patches started screaming, and it became a game to see if he could be taken by surprise and how dramatic of a reaction could be pulled. He was getting more resilient, but in the end he always ran. Patches screamed and screamed when he left, it tired him out a bit, so he could sleep better. Sometimes he simply went to sleep on the floor of the treehouse. His grandfather didn’t seem to care.

The old man had problems of his own.

His big project seemed to be under fire. The city was being developed to the southwest, massive architectural undertakings for the better of the masses, for the increasing population, easily overshadowed an old man’s arts and crafts. What’s more, his body seemed to be failing him. More often than ever he missed the toilet, or arrived too late, or did not even realize he had to go until it was too late. He spat and vomited dusty gobs of phlegm, something Patches was sure he disdained seeing in others, and it must have been destroying him to find himself unable to control it.

And rather than hurriedly cleaning things up, he often had to go lie down immediately.

Patches watched all this shame from the yard and thought, at least the mind is still there.

And since Patches had to return to the house anyway - to use the bathroom, cruelly enough - he cleaned up the mess as he passed through. His hands smelled of the rubber of gloves and the bleach soaked rags, it was awful. He always did it, though. And he didn’t like a single part of it.

The smell of antiseptic became a warning sign in the school halls, a blessing in extremely pungent disguise. One whiff and you knew to duck into the nearest door and avoid punishment. For Val, it seemed to be a friendly signal.

“I could smell you as soon as I came in.”

“That’s disgusting.”

Val was concerned, or condescending. “Do you want me to help clean things up for you sometimes? You can introduce me to your grandpa. He looks like a...” Val paused. “A busy guy.”

“No.”

“Why not? I could help.”

"I thought you hated him."

"I never said that," Val said. "You were the one who said he wouldn't want to see me."

“He'd hate you. You are exactly the kind of person he'd hate, coming in all the time without asking. And this is my house, you have to do what I say.”

Val considered this. He was compelled to talk back, but he did not want to get hit. “So nobody else knows I’m here. Is that okay?”

“If he caught you, you would be dead, anyway. You’re a secret. You should be thanking me.”

“Your secret. Only you know I'm here?"

It was a bizzarely hopeful tone.

"Yes. Who else would I be talking to? Just me," Patches said.

"Just yours. So I guess that means you are just mi-"

Patches clenched a fist and Val cut that thought short. "A secret, huh? Just us two.” The corners of his mouth twitched. "I get it."

---

The last day of school was a hard one. There were no classes, but plenty of talk, none of it to Patches of course. The classmates all knew better by then, and usually there would be pure silence and avoidance but on this day there was a substantial distraction. A magazine was circulating among the 10th graders, pinched from a father or uncle’s upper shelves and in the light of an empty schedule, the class was enjoying some pleasant pictures and giving their tongues a serious workout.

The magazine's cover sported a slender woman in a few squares of fabric, skin bulging towards the camera. Fingers puttered around the image. Pointing and prodding. The boys all had preferences that Patches automatically found repulsive, he could not even look at them as those spoke.

Long hair, white, yellow, brown like their own, maybe red for the daring. Blue was exotic, mentioned once in passing, but there were no pictures for that. Women had to be tall or small, but not in between. Thick and thin in the right places, intermittently bulbous and needlelike, like a clown’s party balloons, it sounded. No hair on the body - weren’t they like that naturally? No, look at this article… They were most excited to have examples on hand. Parts of this one mixed with parts of this one, in the pictures. If only you could find girls with everything on the list.

Incidentally, their class had no girls.

The monstrous list grew by the hour. Four eyes, four legs, twelve tits, long hair here, no hair there, a vulgar mouth with teeth and red lips the size of candy bars, something along those lines. Patches sat in his corner of the room crushing a can in his hands and fumed against them all. He could have gotten up and left, or hopped up and ripped the paper from their hands and thrown it out the window. Perhaps thrown one of the chuckling boys out too.

Instead, he dim-wittedly allowed himself to be caught in the talk. He didn’t say anything and didn’t approach the group, but thought to himself, I know what want, and it puts you all to shame. What I would do is- he had nothing to point to, but he believed he knew exactly what he wanted.

The class watched a movie that took up the last two periods of the day. He was so consumed with his thoughts he could barely move. By the end of the day he was on the receiving end of a few strange looks. A day without the freaky corner kid going berserk? What a pleasant way to end the semester.

Upon realizing this, and that he had spend all day composing thoughts nobody would ever hear, Patches's blood boiled. His jaw hurt, his hands were sweating. The can was crushed down to a small flat coaster. He had to devise a second plan immediately, or he felt his guts would burst open.

He followed the owner of the magazine home. The kid who’d walked out of the room with it, in any case. Patches was used to spotting things at a distance (and on distant images on distant monitors) and he saw the printed, half-nude brown cover model crumple into a camouflage print bag. The bag was lifted, the boy went home with a friend, chatting excitedly. Patches followed.

It was chilly, but the sun beat down as angrily as ever. Patches stalked his classmates at a distance, and he was either highly effective, or they were very involved in their conversation. The topic of swimwear came up and they were off.

What kind of swimwear would he have liked to see? Patches had only been swimming once, when he was tiny. An irrelevant time. Unlike the imagining of an ordinary person, picturing swimwear required some imagination. Not his wheelhouse. Soon, his classmates and escaped his sight, unharmed. He had no idea where they lived.

"I wouldn't want you to know where I live, either." Val was chewing on a square of pungent white cheese.

"I don't care where you live."

"Good, you wouldn't like it anyway." Val licked melted fragments from his coal-colored fingernails. "Do you want to know where those guys live, though?"

"Who, the guys at school?"

"You followed them. So do you? You wanna see them?"

"No, I hate them all. I'd break their windows, go in and hit them, punch them in their own house, their family, before they managed to even get to the phone, would you want that?"

"I can't change what you want."

Patches snarled at his dismissal, but Val went on.

"If that's what you want, really, I can find out where they live. They won't see me, I'll follow them all the way home. And if you hate them so much, I'll kill them for you. I'll burn their house down and cut them apart and eat them." And he showed his teeth as if that proved it.

"I was going to do that anyway," Patches said quickly. Val seemed doubtful, so he mumbled on, perhaps unwisely. "You know they were talking about swimsuits today. Girls and-"

“Why do you want to talk about swimming when it’s getting cold?” Val protested.

“I didn’t say swimming, I said swimsuits.” Patches wasn't even a little cold. When annoyance took hold he always ended up oppresively hot.

“Swimming suits? That’s just like underwear, right? That’s what it looks like. Here, take a look.” Val started scratching the underside of his coat. Flecks of dirt fell like snow. Patches was prepared to reject another filthy snack but instead, Val drew out a ragged magazine much like the one that had been taken to class. This one featured a close up of a woman the color of butter, staring straight out at the viewer, donning some thin garment that looked like an oil slick, or perhaps it was some dead leaf that had detached from Val’s inner pockets.

Val edged the paper along the floor, as if afraid Patches would send it flying like he tended to do with food. Patches took it, casually.

“You interested in this kind of thing?” Patches snorted.

“Well, I did decide to carry it around. It feels nice. The paper.”

"Yeah, right. I'll show you what you're really looking for." Patches flipped through the glossy pages.

He tried to find what he had imagined in the classroom, but somehow, nothing seemed to fit. The colors were wrong, the sizes were wrong. There was plenty of what the boys in class had put on their monstrous wishlist, but nothing on his list. What had he been thinking of so intently, anyway? He closed the damned thing and tossed it to the corner of the treehouse.

Val shuffled over to retrieve it. “If this isn’t your kind of things, I can bring some others. There’s a lot of books like these, and not all of them are about ladies. Some are about cars and books, and guitars. I've never seen one of those, do you know they make ones that look like violins? And these really complicated computers, like bigger than TVs. Oh, and TVs too, and, well… there’s gotta be something you like.”

“No.”

“I like the pictures of food myself, the paper is better so the cakes look shinier. And they also have ladies that look way, waaay better than-”

“Shut up! I don’t need any of it.”

“You mean you don’t want any books or you don’t like anything? You probably like something, you just don’t know it-”

Patches rounded without warning and slugged Val in the neck. He had been aiming for the head, Val had been aiming to move away, and they caught each other halfway. Val gagged and Patches jumped up. “You see what happens?” Patches screamed, “You see what happens when you think you know what I’m thinking? You don’t! So shut up!”

Since he’d already lost, Val would do no such thing. “Do you feel like you have to hate everyone and everything, because nobody likes you? Is that your problem?”

“Shut up!”

“It’s true. And if you keep saying you hate or you don’t need or you’ll kill them all, it will be true forever. Right now you have me, and your grandpa, but you don't care about us at all!”

“Stop it, you can get out, leave if you don’t like it!”

“Then you’ll be alone!”

“I don’t care.”

“Are you sure? The more I come here the more I think you’re the stupid one. I’ll go and your grandpa will be gone and then you will really be alone.” Val brushed blood off his lip, he’d bitten it when he fell. “You don't know how lucky you are that nothing bad's happened yet. But something will, soon. And when you’re alone, there will be nobody else to hate and nobody else to kill but--”

Without a hint of hesitation Val tapped Patches on the chest.

"And then you'll really want to die."

It was a threat. A definite threat. Who would say die if they didn't really want you to die? And Val had a shitty forced grin on his face, teeth gritted. Patches was so stunned for a second he couldn't move. But as soon as he could he hammered his fist to the wall, harder than ever before.

“What did I say? What did I say? You don’t know what I’m thinking, you barely know me! And you don’t know my grandpa at all. He wouldn’t like you saying these things.”

“Am I going to meet him then? He's scary, but you know, I’d like to see him while I can. He’s been weird lately, you must have noticed if you even-”

Patches jumped at him, he caught the edge of that mud-laden coat and managed a few blows, sending chocolate beads flying to the floor before the old tattered hem ripped. Val hopped free and vanished around the corner.

---

Val meant nothing, he was no more than a fly in the lawn, an ant. There was no reason to care about him, he slipped and fell and bumped, but he was always, unfortunately, fine unharmed and even more offensively stupid. But he had been right about one thing - the old man wasn’t himself. His physical condition did not seem to have worsened, if anything he had become more accustomed to it, and was more likely to make it to the toilet in time. He kept cleaning supplies around the house well stocked, and always made it out to his ever more frequent, increasingly lengthy project meetings. Those may have been the cause.

It came when Patches was not looking in from the treehouse, but early one morning just before sunrise, when he was in bed.

“Patches. Get up. Get dressed.”

Patche curled deeper into his mattress and grimaced. Even when school was in session, his grandfather let him wake on his own. He wasn’t about to budge on a holiday. Nobody else would be getting up, and he didn't deserve to be singled out.

“Don’t you give me that attitude. Not today.”

The old man never gave such direct commands.

And then the door shut. Patches repeated those words to himself and rose. He dressed with quiet venom, and stomped down the stairs with emphatic thumps. Ignoring his scowl, his grandfather directed him straight to the door, where they hopped into the black pickup truck and headed for the highway.

Daybreak moved in softly, the houses fell out of sight and what replaced them were hills and trees. The sky was a haze of violets and blues and whites, an expanse wider than any imaginable space, a sight that was almost alien to him. He was compelled to feel offended, but could not name the reason. The clouds formed an infinitely complex network of silvery lines, with long, immaculately carved ridges like the tips of fingernails. He didn't know it yet but it was a sight that would give him an icepick headache by the age of 20.

At an indistinct point, his grandfather made a sharp turn into the forest. The wheels screeched.

“Have you gone nuts?” Patches shouted, but his grandfather was not listening. He was driving with such serene focus, nothing would get through to him. For once Patches was completely at the mercy of another person, trapped in a machine he could not control and didn’t know how to. He was terrified and upset. He started beating at the walls, at the seat and clawing at the seat belt. “I want to get out! Let me out!”

“Not here.”

“I don’t care! You’re crazy!”

“Settle down. Sit the fuck down." Withered fingers creaked around the steering wheel. "Please.”

Please. It was such a thin and feeble word. And yet in that moment, he was more sure than ever he was going to be hit, right across the face, crushed against the window. Please. It was a word he did not expect to hear, so some other disaster was soon to follow.

Patches clenched his teeth together. He rolled his head over his knees, a single breath locked in his throat, unable to move. There was nothing to do now but shut up and watch the trees go by. As he calmed, he realized there was a path through the forest, trees cleared just wide enough for a medium-sized vehicle. They weren't lost. He raised his head, and there it was, towering overhead.

The pickup parked in a large, empty area that must have been intended as a parking lot. He was ushered inside a small door set in a disproportionately large wall covered in cream colored tarp.

They navigated a maze of hallways, ridged with uncovered supports and scaffolding. The weak sunlight that had penetrated the tarp eventually faded from sight. They walked in darkness, pressed against walls, until they finally reached an open, echoing arena.

It was dark, and massive and hollow. Wood creaked from what sounded like miles away and upward, Patches smelled sawdust and metal. But there wasn’t much to see in the dim light. There appeared to be some circular structure going around the edge of the enclosure, wooden outcroppings with pillars that reached for the ceiling, but the room was so large the beams could only be followed so far before they were sucked into darkness. Patches peered to the left and right. There were stacks of metal supports and wooden panelling stacked that towered over even his grandfather.

“What is this?”

“The project. They canceled it,” his grandfather said. “After all this time.”

“Oh. Assholes.”

“Allegedly, someone in the city had the same idea. They were undoubtedly watching me, waiting to take it all as their own. My ideas. My designs. Me against a committee of fifty, big talkers, billions of dollars. It’s what I always feared. But Patch,” his grandfather said. “I’ve been giving it some thought. And listen to me: I’m not upset. I realized, that having adopted this as their own, it means there is someone in the world who thinks the same as I do. When I first arrived here, I was sure there that was not possible.”

They both yawned.

“I'd hate them. But I don't even know who they are. There are no faces. There are people who crushed me, that I will never see. It’s not worth the thought,” his grandfather said.

Patches kicked the ground. A thin cloud of dust was stirred. “This was the thing you were working on. So all this was a waste.”

“I thought you’d say that.” His grandfather then turned to him. Like the massive wooden beams, he too ascended into shadow. This was not a moment where Patches would match to a face. “So I thought I may as well give it to you.”

“What?”

“It’s yours now. The Ring.”

“I don’t want it. What am I even going to do with it?”

“It’s land. I have the papers. It’ll have worth eventually.”

“Oh.” That made sense. Patches had heard enough from his grandfather in the past to know that owning land was an important aspect of his career.

“Or maybe,” his grandfather said, “You can find someone to share it with. You know the purpose of the Ring, don’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah.” So it wasn’t just raw property handover after all.

“Of course you do. You’ve been listening to me all your life. It might be too late now, but I had to try to get through to you. I thought a big gift was in order, I've not been... watching you as closesly as I should have." The old man swung his massive head, left and right, left and right. Like a huge iron bell. "You are right. It was a waste. All a waste. When it didn’t have to be.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I am naming this place the Ring of Love. It was supposed to be the Ring of Justice but there’s nothing Just about it. It's not a place of righteousness. It was foolish to believe that for so long." The voice became clear. So clear Patches could hear the quivers. "I can’t expect you to change instantly, or at all in your life. Look how I am. But here’s a task - no, a request for you. Between the hatred we live in and the life you should lead - you must do it for me. Use the Ring as it should be used. But make sure the contests mean something to you. The contestants are to be the ones who mean the most. Not your everyday louts. You'll know. Make use of it.”

“Then it’s not really just land for me to sell, or whatever. I have to run it? Run events?”

“Just use your judgment. You have plenty of that. You always had plenty of feeling, though how you direct it is... disappointing.”

Patches was silent.

“Good. I’m proud of you, Patch. And I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

"So sorry." A gargling in the dark. “We need to hurry out. Need the john. Quick.”

They returned home without a word. Patches was calmed, and so was his grandfather, though the truck now reeked of molten diarrhea.

The sky had taken on its ordinary midday sheen. Patches sat in the treehouse, stretching, napping, toying with his homemade weights, while his grandfather sanded down a new carving. As with most days that the old man was home, Val avoided the house. It was a completely unremarkable day. The next time Patches and his grandfather spoke was before bed.

Patches banged - hard - on the bathroom door, towel and t-shirt in hand, irritation mounting. “Hurry up.”

His grandfather emerged, looking somewhat ashamed but not about to apologize. "You got issues, kid.”

And that was the last time they ever spoke.

---

The next day when Patches opened his eyes, the sun had long risen. Laser hot rays directed themselves through the window, firing straight at his face. He was instantly blinded by rage. To make matters worse the noise was tremendous. A clattering and stomping that could not just be one person. There were voices from inside the house. Patches hurtled out of bed and stormed down the stairs.

“What are you doing?”

The window was a open a crack, and he was pissed. The flies would come in, the noise and the exhaust.

There was an ambulance outside, and a police car, still running. There were six uniformed strangers wandering about with their shoes on and voices raised. And there was the old man on the floor, sprawled as though he’d been dropped from several stories up, lying face down with massive limbs scattered as though they had been trying to get away from him. A pool of bile circled his head like a halo, and a lesser stain was splattered around his legs. The corded phone was outstretched out at his side. Overhead, all of the monitors on the wall were dark, all that could be seen in them were nine reflections of the same ugly scene.

"Ready?" asked one of the officers.

“He’s heavy. On the count of three...” said a man wearing a surgical mask and two more grasped the old man by his top and bottom like they were lifting a gym mat. Patches charged down the stairs.

“What did you do? Get out! Get out!”

A policeman blocked his way. “Sorry kid. You need to stay back.”

Patches was barred by a single hand. It was the first time since his revelation that anyone had bothered to try holding him back without bothering to look at him. He was livid.

“It’s my house! Fuck you! Get out! Get out!”

He grabbed at the uniform in front of him, spit ran down his chin. "I'll kill you, I'll cut you up and-"