~
Becoming
The first time I put my army man toy in my mouth, I bit down hard and kept chewing. I felt his little bazooka snap, his little bent kneecap crunch, and his little helmet slide down the back of my throat still attached to his green plastic head. I wasn’t angry at mom or dad, or my country, or my sister—like my counselor, Mr. Cyclops, said. I was just hungry. Hungrier than I’d ever been.
Every night after dinner, I’d go to my room and set my army men up in different attack scenarios and choose one to eat. I realized that at a rate of one-army-man-a-day (with a small infantry already consumed) I still had a three-week supply in my toy box alone. Nobody would ever know, because nobody wondered how many army men you did or didn’t have. People just assumed they were missing in the attic or the backyard, or belly crawling under your bed, or accidentally eaten by the dog. We never had a dog, but it could have been any dog. It doesn’t have to be yours. Any dog can eat army men.
Even after I’d been caught eating other things—mom’s eyelash applicator, dad’s entire collection of old soda bottle caps—they still didn’t know about all those army men. All of them still stuck to my insides, along with all the gum I wasn’t supposed to swallow, and everything I’d eaten since.
“You’re nine years old now, Toby. Don’t you think you’re too old to be eating things you shouldn’t?” Mr. Cyclops asked me.
I shrugged.
I’d already thought about that, but Bobby still ate Elmer’s glue sticks, and Anna had eaten dirt, and Ricky ate raw fish, and Tarah ate erasers, and Michael’s older brother said his dad was too busy eating out their maid to care about his kids, so I knew I wasn’t the only one eating something I shouldn’t be.
That first time, with the bazooka man, it wasn’t planned. It happened while I sat on the floor of my bedroom. I put him in my mouth before I’d even thought about it. And right then, I knew I had to hide him forever. I had to save him from the world somehow. So, I started chewing on his little plastic body. And I realized it was wrong, but not really wrong. Just the kind of wrong that makes your heart beat faster and your scalp tingle like crazy. The type of wrong that makes you really hungry to do it again.
My second army man was the machine gun man, the next day. I crept into the closet with him and closed the door and took my time. I chewed with leisure. And the angles of his shoulders, and his tiny hands, and the flat plastic base that held his feet all scraped against the inside of my mouth and throat. The sensations distracted me from the darkness of the world in my closet, the darkness of the world outside of my closet, and I realized that secrets and plastic were powerful, and distraction was necessary, and that I was becoming stronger.
I wondered if it was possible that I was becoming him (the rifle army man), and he was becoming me, and we (including the bazooka man, and every other figurine) were becoming each other the same way that God and Jesus and The Holy Spirit were all one and three. The way Dad was “My Dad” and “Grandpa’s Son” and “Mom’s Husband” all at once. The way Voltron was one and five. The way the Justice League was one and seven. The way Three Musketeers was one candy bar and three old guys.
Mr. Cyclops said it was ”highly plausible” that I had destroyed and/or devoured my way through more than just my sister’s missing Troll dolls, and two of her My Little Ponies, and Barbie’s little sister (Kim), and the other things mom and dad had said were missing.
And I said, “No. That’s all. There’s no more.” I said, “Honest.”
“Do you want to hurt your family?”
“No.”
“Why eat your mother’s make-up or your father’s car fob?”
I shrugged—mostly because the word “fob” sounded silly and Mr. Cyclops sounded silly saying it, but also because the shrug comes from a place of power, a place of secrets and army men, and everything I’d ever eaten, and everything I ever would.
“I cannot help you, you know,” Mr. Cyclops said, “unless you let me.”
He used his pointer finger to push his thick, black-framed glasses up his nose.
He shook his head. He took the black-framed glasses off his face and laid them on the table next to the chair he sat in. He uncrossed his legs and re-crossed them the opposite way. The crossing and re-crossing of legs was a secret adult power move. But I knew this. I was much older than he thought I was.
I shrugged. I had my own moves.
He crossed and re-crossed his legs again.
I snuck peeks at his black-framed glasses on the table next to him.
I took note that he hadn’t asked about mom’s missing curlers, or dad’s missing combs, or the disappearing of plastic Christmas ornaments from the box in the crawl space under the stairs.
I understood the patterns of his crossed legs. And every G.I. Joe, and He-Man figurine, and painted Shrinky-Dink began to rise up inside me. And I crossed and re-crossed my legs in the chair across from him, to show him my understanding of his ways; because they were now my ways. And his head went kind of sideways in consideration.
He didn’t shrug, but it was close to a shrug. He was trying to take on my actions. He was almost shrugging. We were becoming each other; the way I had become everything I ate. And Mr. Cyclops continued to shrink in his chair as I continued to age in front of him, my veins popping in my neck and forearms, my pants becoming a foot too high-water-ed.
Mr. Cyclops’s black framed glasses were still on the table next to him. They reflected light off the lenses. I wondered how they tasted. If I ate them, I wondered if I’d see everything they had seen; everything he had seen. I wondered if Mr. Cyclops had ever eaten anything he wasn’t supposed to. If he knew that you internally took on the age of the object, the places it’s been, the wisdom of everything that it ever touched.
You could gain so many years from eating your friend’s old Gumby figurine made in China.
You could become infinite by eating a few pieces of grandma’s “good dishes.”
I kept crossing and re-crossing my legs while Mr. Cyclops kept shrugging.
I thought about dumping out the money in the pews, the next Sunday in church, and consuming the collection plate and becoming God. And by then I’d be too big for anyone to stop me. I could be everything, and see everything, by eating everything I wasn’t supposed to. But every bite would have its price; I knew that just by looking at those black framed glasses. I knew that this was the downside of strength. A part of me knew that every army man and toy figurine took me a step closer towards world domination, but also a step closer to sterility and toxicity and senility (words I hadn’t even known before eating the family dictionary days ago).
What if the source of my power was also my kryptonite? What if there was no going back after glimpsing what could be? No stopping once you started.
“What are you thinking right now,” said Mr. Cyclops.
“Nothing.”
“Come on,” he smiled. “You can tell me. What is it?”
“I’m thinking that I’m hungry. That I’ll always be hungry.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“I feel like I don’t know how that makes me any different than you.”
“And what else?”
“I’m thinking you’re going to have to give me those glasses next to you.”
“And what else?”
But there was no more ‘what else’. I’d already accepted ‘what else’. And now Mr. Cyclops was going to have to as well.
~
Jason Arias lives on the Oregon coast. His debut short story collection, Momentary Illumination of Objects In Motion,was published in 2018 by Black Bomb Books. Jason’s stories and essays have appeared in The Nashville Review, Oregon Humanities Magazine, Harpur Palate, Lidia Yuknavitch’s TED Book: The Misfit’s Manifesto,and multiple literary magazines and anthologies. For links to more of his work please visit JasonAriasAuthor.com.