My Sweet Dollie, You Have to Love Me

1. Ambrose—present day

Ambrose—present day

Y ou’d think people would talk quieter while sneering at the worthless murderer at the next table.

But here we are.

The rowdy breakfast bar is relatively full now, as opposed to ten minutes ago when I tested my luck by coming in and ordering.

Three other places had turned me away this week. No one wants me tainting their businesses, and they aren’t quiet about it.

But a night shift at work and the anticipation of empty cupboards at home had me choosing to risk further embarrassment today.

It’s the pancakes’ fault.

Their tantalizing smell called me in from the cold.

That and the suicidal thoughts I could rid myself of if I just had a little background noise that didn’t involve someone smashing windows and vandalizing my home. It’s happened twice this week alone. And I’m running out of money to pay any guys willing to fix them.

DIY for the win twice this week.

The house, being a relic, makes everything more expensive. So much so that prison life was easier than the release I’d been craving for years.

I slouch in the red chair, and the leather creaks as I let my gaze wander to a couple in the distance, laughing and giggling at something the other said.

Love is for the idiots of the world. And if I’m being truthful, I’d admit I’m one of them.

I don’t have a special person like the guy over there who tucks his partner’s brunette curls behind ears so big only he’d find them adorable.

But I crave it.

Someone to look at me and see through the scars on my face and just see a person.

Something I can’t even do myself.

I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window, and it has me turning away faster as I avert my eyes from the lovey-dovey couple still on my mind, accompanied by a shitty feeling of profound loneliness.

Stupidly, I’d thought someone would be there waiting for me when I returned home.

But she wasn’t. And a month goes by without a single fucking word from her.

The fact that she’d never once written to me, despite the thousands of letters I’d sent to her, should have clearly indicated that we were no longer each other’s support person.

It’s a hard pill to swallow.

The pancakes will taste much better on my tongue. Forcing myself upright on the puffy red bench, I wait for them. Each passing order calls my attention, and my rumbling stomach begs for each of those orders to be mine.

The wooden table takes my weight as I lower my head down, avoiding those with eyes on me.

Four guys I remember from my distant memories of schoolyard games settle in at the table to my left.

They watch my every move, these boys who were once my friends, almost like they expect me to waltz over and start carving them up with the butter knife.

Maybe it’s because I keep looking at it.

But I have no urge to kill. The crooked napkin below the knife grates on my patience far more than they do.

But rather than give them something else to sneer at me for, I ignore the urge to set it perfectly straight.

Stares burn into me, the guys still watching, when my arm twitches beneath my baggy hoodie. They notice. Of course, they notice.

And, of course, I have to straighten the damn napkin.

I do it quickly. It’s still not perfect, and it’s still goading me as I try and fail to ignore multiple things around me.

“Killers shouldn’t be allowed back in the town where they committed murder,” one says with the same arrogance that covers his entire demeanor.

He speaks without fear, as I exhibit nothing more than odd behavior, which he also comments on.

“I wonder how the neat freak ever coped with the blood on his hands.”

“He was always fucking weird,” another confirms. “No one wants that kinda scum here.”

Settling my disagreement with the napkin, I side-eye them, my eyebrow raising in a challenge that these guys don’t back away from.

“Yeah, you, we remember what the fuck you did,” another voices, full of confidence. “And none of us are afraid of you.”

That confidence disintegrates when my attention flicks back to the knife.

Something is still off with the napkin, but I can’t keep staring at it despite the voices in my head threatening cruel deaths for people I hardly care about if I don’t straighten it again.

I shouldn’t acknowledge such thoughts, but unlike what these people think, just as Mom always said, I have a hero complex and a deep-rooted desire to prove I’m a good person and worthy of someone’s love.

I don’t want to be thought of as a monster, and I’m failing terribly.

I allow my eyes to wander to the teen girls on the other side of me. They’re also talking about me between sips from pastel pink smoothies. At least, they have the decency to do it quietly.

“Everyone in this town knows how he took a knife from the kitchen and dragged it across his mother’s throat.”

My baggy hoodie stops anyone from seeing the goosebumps rising on my arms at that remark.

I know these guys are trying to bait me. It’s pack mentality. From elementary school, Lincoln—their ruthless leader—always had to be the top dog.

I won’t give them the advantage of knowing the shit they smear into my ears hurts like fuck.

That it’s awful having to walk into my broken home and not find my parents there.

Not hearing my mother sing as she paints old dressers, reviving them into something new and beautiful, or Dad and his traditional Irish stews warming the house, and their aroma fighting the paint fumes for control of the house.

That I miss the childhood I never got to have.

“Yeah, and I heard he licked off the blood before plunging it into his father. Fucking sicko!”

With wide eyes, all three teenage girls stare at me. I want to tell them that they have nothing to worry about and that the stuff said is bullshit, but talking isn’t something I do.

A narrow smile that may come off creepier than intended is all I offer.

The girls stare around me when Lincoln opens his big mouth again.

“You know the rumor is?—”

He gets cut off from voicing another pile of bullshit when Clara, the waitress who is somewhere in her sixties, drops a plate in front of him.

“Everyone in this town and the surrounding ones know what the rumor is, and it’s just a rumor—gossip created by people like you who like to spread it. I don’t want any trouble here, boys. You let him be.”

“You don’t want trouble, but you accommodate the freak? No one else in town does.”

“He is not a freak, Lincoln.”

“He’s a murderer.”

“And a survivor. I remember what happened in the years before.”

According to Clara, I killed because I survived a maniac clown in childhood. A man in face paint and striped trousers, who caused all my scars, the ones on my skin and the ones inside my mind.

She isn’t wrong to think he broke me.

He did.

And just as I’m about to turn down the dark road, which is memory lane, she talks again.

“Now, swallow down that hate and eat your pancakes.”

My pounding heart slows as I take in my surroundings: the breakfast bar and the comforting smell of pancakes.

More plates line the next table, giving these boys something to fill their mouths with other than the words freak and murderer.

“Here’s yours, hon. Enjoy.” Clara gives me her best customer service smile. She also places the little written note I’d given her with my order in front of me.

Pancakes with a side of butter and a sprinkle of pepper and sugar—odd, I know, but it’s what I like. Underneath the words, thank you, on my note, new words are written.

You’re welcome.

“Don’t you worry, pretty eyes. You’re welcome in my kitchen. Any time. Even with your unusual order.” Her blue eyes roll.

Part of me wonders if she is nice to me because she fears me, but I don’t get that vibe. I’m pleased to see she honored my unusual request, and the pancakes look delicious. More importantly, the plate they sit on is gleaming.

Clara taps me on my shoulder as she leaves, and my whole body twitches as I cringe.

Touch doesn’t work for me as much as I crave a person. And I do truly crave a person. Someone to share pancakes with, like that couple in the distance, so in love that they have no idea I’m here or who I am.

The local monster.

Murderer of his beloved parents.

The list goes on.

There’s only one person whom I’d willingly let touch me in twenty years. And that’s done.

Fucking forget about her. It’s gonna drive you crazy!

I force that thought to bulldoze through my mind because I don’t need the kind of self-pity that Dollie brings out in me.

It almost makes me loathe myself as much as Lincoln does.

He waves his phone in my direction, the screen overtaken by some psycho clown chewing on the limbs of one of his victims. Donny and Michael, also at that table, wave their phones at me as well.

Clowns—the fucking horrible things that they are—fill their screens, too.

Three of the four guys laugh. Nyx, who was once my best friend, sits with no expression, and his phone, I’m assuming, is still in his pocket.

I turn away from them, and more sneers come.

“Ambrose, the freak, afraid of clowns… I guess that happens when one?—”

“Man, don’t. Regardless of what anyone thinks of him, what happened was fucked up,” Nyx finally talks.

“Oh, boo hoo. Don’t use one freak to justify another.”

“Here’s an idea.” Donny laughs. “A little cosplay, and we could get this creep out of town, after all.”

Idiots. I’m going nowhere. This shitty town is home, for now, at least. I’m not nine years old anymore. I hate clowns, but the fear of white faces and big red smiles faded each year as I got older.

They won’t be running me out. I intend to stay here until my probation is over and even after that.

They deserve no more attention. They’ve had their fucking fun and ruined my morning.

Dragging perfectly cut chunks of pancake through the melting butter until breakfast is done, I finish up, leaving half a pancake on the plate because my broken mind won’t let me eat it without casting threats on the nice waitress.

I drop a barely affordable tip on the table for Clara, along with another message.

I appreciate you. A nice person in a town full of clowns.

Getting up to leave, I don’t glance at anyone but those moving around outside the door.

None of those people are looking at me, the lonely guy with his hood up after breakfast alone.

None of them see me use my sleeve on the handle that hundreds of people have touched, but I still feel a guilty stare on me, and I’m almost sure it belongs to someone I once thought of as a friend.