When I Was the Red Baron

by Matt Hollingsworth

This story previously appeared in Interzone #299 in May, 2024.

CONTENT ADVISORY for violence, disturbing imagery, domestic abuse, and self-harm.

When I was three, Daddy came home from Vietnam. He smoked all the time and his fish eyes bugged out of his face.

Most days, I hid in my room, in my coloring book, in my daydreams. Snoopy’s black and white. He doesn’t need to be filled in. Why does he make believe he’s fighting the Red Baron? I mean, his doghouse is red. His plane is red. He should be the Red Baron.

BOOM, the sound of a bottle rocket. Daddy’s lighting off fireworks!

The living room was hot and smelled like Roman candles and pee.

Then I saw it—the prettiest red ever. And Daddy.

His head smoked. On the shag carpet, he moaned and acted like a snake monster. I played along and tried to escape, but he didn’t chase me. He got tired, stopped shaking, breathed out a wet sound. I plopped down next to him, rolled my crayon in the pretty red liquid, and made up stories to tell his half-gone head. The crayon glowed. It got so hot I dropped it, then it lay on the floor and whispered scary things to me until Mommy got home. She screamed a lot.

When I was twenty, an incredible, foolish woman accepted me for what she thought I was. She looked at me when I spoke rather than past me, rather than at something more important. I spilled my guts to her—trouble at school, my disastrous relationship with Mom, Dad’s suicide, everything. Everything except all the terrible shit I’d done. All the blood.

We got married and bred, as animals do.

The day my son was born, the nurses offered him to me. Tiny. He fit in my hands. I was afraid I would break him, break his bones. The ridges of his spine showed through the skin and traced a path down his back, so visible. He was so helpless. Not much bigger than a pet I’d once had—a sweet little kitten.

When I was four, I used my magic crayon for the first time, the one I had rolled in the blood coming out of Daddy.

In my sketchbook, I drew our kitty, Linus. When I couldn’t find orange or the normal red crayon, I threw the Crayola box across the room and kicked the wall over and over until I made a hole.

A distant whisper called to me, told me it was lonely, told me it wanted a friend.

We played the hotter-colder game, and the voice led me to where it was—the glowing magic crayon buried at the bottom of my toy box.

I returned to my drawing and colored Linus’s fur with that red. He screamed really loud, then with a tearing, crunching noise, his bones and guts were on the outside of his body. What happened? I dropped the hot crayon, hugged the red lump of noodles that had been my kitty, and cried my head off. The crayon killed him!

Half-naked, Mommy rushed from her room, followed by the man who looked like a toad. She shook me. “What did you do?”

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t spit out words to answer. I loved my kitty. Was smeared with his blood.

My fault. It’s all my fault, same as Daddy killing himself.

I was a disappointment to Daddy. He wouldn’t have abandoned me if he loved me. Before Mommy could do it, I slapped myself over and over.

I’m bad bad bad.

When I was twenty-two, the magic of my family surfaced an alien feeling in me that took a while to recognize—joy.

My son ruled the roost during the day. After his first wobbly steps, he explored the apartment, climbing, opening, breaking things. At night, my wife and I worked toward a second child. Our passion ran hot. We fucked violently and marked each other with bruises and scratches.

When I was five, we sang in kindergarten while Miss Flores strummed her guitar, and I fell in love with her pretty face, pretty voice, pretty red lips. She never hit me, so I knew she didn’t love me back.

I had no friends until Kevin’s first day. He had such pretty red hair. Miss Flores sat him next to me and we drew together. We became “…fast friends. Inseparable,” Miss Flores said.

Then came the day bullies on the playground tore my Snoopy coloring book to pieces and beat me up. Kevin just watched. Ran.

I bit one bully and smashed my plastic lunch pail into another’s face. Broken plastic, broken face.

Good.

That night, I dug around in my closet until I found my sketchbook and the magic red crayon where I’d hidden them after they’d killed my kitty. The wax glowed and pulsed with my heartbeat. Still so pretty, that red.

Bastard. Mommy’s favorite word. Kevin is a redheaded bastard. “A fast friend. Separable,” the crayon said.

The next morning, I brought my art stuff to kindergarten. Time to draw a person—Kevin. The traitor. I sketched him in pencil, then broke out my magic crayon. It burned my hand and hurt so much that I knew it loved me.

In the drawing, I colored Kevin’s hair with that red. Before I finished, he dropped the blocks he’d been playing with and collapsed, his stupid head caved in. Lots and lots of blood.

The other kids screamed and Miss Flores froze, her mouth a big fat zero.

Kevin twitched, then went still.

Good.

I closed the sketchbook before anyone saw my drawing. And didn’t make any more friends. The crayon told me it was the only friend I needed.

When I was twenty-three, life busily wore me down, like an overused pencil being ground to a nub. My job at the art-supply shop didn’t cover our bills, so I started working nights as a waiter. I slept little. Exhaustion reduced me to raw nerves, raw emotion.

One Saturday, instead of my usual triple shift, I only pulled a double, and managed to get home in time for dinner, haggard and reeking of the steakhouse, my hair and skin greasy with the deep fryer’s residue. My wife was curled up on the couch in her pajamas, reading a book, a half-empty glass of wine on the coffee table. In the dining room, the baby squirmed in his highchair and played with his food. There was a plate on the table with chicken bones picked clean of meat. No plate for me.

I collapsed onto the couch next to my wife. “Must be nice.”

“Hmmm?” She peered over the top of her glasses. “Welcome home, mister man.”

“This whole life of leisure must be nice. So relaxing. The American dream come true. Now we’re just missing the picket fence, a dog, a second child.”

“Speaking of which…” She downed the rest of her wine and looked me over. “Ewww. You stink, lover boy. No way am I getting into bed with you. Go take a shower.”

“I’m too tired.”

“Come on. I’m ovulating. Get cleaned up and we’ll give it another go.”

“My sperm’s too tired.”

She opened her blouse and winked at me.

“I work myself to death,” I said, “while you sit on your ass all day.”

She buttoned up her blouse. “The baby doesn’t take care of himself. Looking after him is a full-time job.”

“Sure, between naps. Then I come home from a twelve-hour shift, and I’m supposed to fulfill my duties as a sperm donor while you just lay on your back like a bitch in heat.”

She slapped me, hard.

Maniacal giggles. In his highchair, with spaghetti hanging out of his mouth and red ragu smeared all over his face, my son had the biggest grin. He said, “More more more!”

My wife and I gaped at him. His first laughter ever and it’d been brought on by violence.

When I was six, on a sunny afternoon, Mommy’s friend the Viking man was in the bathroom barfing for a long time.

In the living room, I spaced out on the goldfish Mommy got me for my birthday, their scales glowing red in the sunlight like bloodfire as they followed my hand from one end of the bowl to the other. They looked skinny. I sprinkled food into the water. They were really starving, so I sprinkled more.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Viking Man said, stumbling out of the bathroom. “I told you not to overfeed them!”

He slapped me, then slipped off his belt.

Mommy rushed in and wedged herself between us. He punched her in the nose. She screamed.

I couldn’t let him kill Mommy, so I ran to my room for my sketchbook and magic crayon. Back in the living room, he was still yelling at Mommy and hitting her. She was curled up on the floor, whimpering.

I flipped open my sketchbook, past the unfinished drawing of my kitty, past the drawing that finished Kevin, past all that pretty red, and finally arrived at a blank page. The crayon sang a beautiful song. I reveled in the pain of it burning my hand and drew that bastard Viking all in red.

By time I finished, he was pretty quiet, just a burbly sound as blood bubbled out of his mouth. He stank like poop. Painted with his blood, Mommy screamed forever.

She gave me away, said I was evil. I went to live with foster parents.

When I was twenty-four, I discovered the serenity of forests. Calming.

Once, I brought my family along. We built a fire and roasted marshmallows, read picture books in the tent. Later, as they slept, I watched their veins, blue and pulsing with life, but I knew beneath the skin’s surface there was a pretty red waiting to be released. My magic crayon told me so.

After that, I went to the forest alone to bathe in lush silence. Trees can’t be disappointed with you, can’t abandon you.

Trees don’t bleed.

 When I was fourteen, a therapist tried to get me to open up. Instead, I embraced the love of a razor and lied about the fresh notches on my arm like victory marks painted on the Red Baron’s biplane. I didn’t tell her about the success I felt at my ability to ignore the crayon’s calls, to hurt only myself, didn’t tell her about all the emotions I’d kept in check, all the people I’d resisted killing: my authoritarian PE teacher, the jock who tormented me, my drug addict foster parents. The entire world. Myself.

When I was twenty-five, I woke up alone, my wife’s side of the bed cold and empty, a note on her pillow. In blue ink, the bubbly, round cursive said she was restless, had gone for a walk. Her car wasn’t in the driveway. Some walk. She did that a lot these days.

I cooked pancakes for my son. While we ate, we played with blocks and spelled out words.

His opening salvo was M-0-M, using a zero instead of the letter O. Even I could hardly tell the difference.

I replied with L-I-A-R.

He spelled out C-A-R.

C-H-E-A-T was my next word. At four years old, he still wasn’t sure what that meant. Someday, some woman would teach him.

The next letters—in the lunch I packed for him—were PB&J. I included apple slices and carrot sticks—nutritional food to help him grow into a man. He was already so big, had the same black hair as me, the same freckles stippling his cheeks. His father’s son. My son. Will he grow up to be bad like me?

When I was eighteen, I escaped to art school. I left everything behind but my magic crayon, my only friend. School was brutal, but I resisted killing an entire host of people who deserved it: the almost-girlfriend, who laughed at me and almost became the subject of one of my drawings; the instructor, who forced me to tear up my art in front of everyone to teach me God knows what; the entire class, who delighted in their vicious critiques of my “crude” and “childish” art. The crayon sang to me loudly, but I ignored it. I persisted with cutting and the victory marks on my arm declared proudly to the world that I was an ace. I was the Red Baron.

When I was twenty-six, I landed a gig at a visual effects studio. Only so many hours in a day, and I spent most of them at work. I was reliable, handed in shots on time for dailies, collaborated well with clients. It was nice to use my art skills for something that didn’t result in death.

I slept at work a lot. With my wife constantly going on her “walks” late at night, there seemed little reason to sleep at home. My family was a distant echo of happiness I had never deserved.

One day, after a month of overtime, the coordinator gave us the rest of the week off.

When I arrived home, I found my wife in bed with a hairy man.

They didn’t notice me.

I wandered to my studio. The passion in our bedroom reverberated through the wall—moaning, creaking, banging—and kept time with my heart, ready to explode from my chest, faster, faster. From its place stashed at the bottom of my art box, the magic crayon joined in and sang, louder, louder, until it buried the noise of fucking.

Broken relationship, broken life.

Not good. Not calming.

Like a muse in full song, the crayon summoned my artistic inspiration. I’d draw a portrait of the loving couple.

I retrieved the crayon, grabbed my sketchbook, and riffled through the pages, mostly black-and-white renderings that surfaced memories of suppressed emotions, but a few were accented with that pretty red, powerful feelings that had been allowed to bloom, roses in an otherwise dead garden.

I scrutinized my face in a mirror I used to analyze anatomy and saw a hideous man with unblemished skin. Other than the victory marks etched into my arm, my scars hid on the inside.

A self-portrait would solve more problems than killing my wife and that bastard. I roughed out the drawing with charcoal. Such rosy cheeks on the reflected man—I’d fill him in with the red crayon and finish myself off.

Dad killed a bunch of people in Vietnam, came home, and killed himself.

I am my father’s son.

The crayon sizzled in my hand, blistered my flesh, and raised an inviting aroma of barbecued meat. Excruciating and exquisite, a unique pain I hadn’t experienced in many years—ecstasy.

Before I put crayon to paper, my little man ambled in, rubbing his eyes. I didn’t know he’d stayed home from school. Is he sick? Wifey must’ve gotten him to bed, then decided jumping in the sack was an excellent idea, hairy man and all. My fault. I had driven a wedge into our relationship, become an absent husband, an absent father.

“Daddy?” He held out his Snoopy coloring book. “Will you color with me?”

So innocent, so vulnerable. I could still see the bones beneath his skin, but he was getting so big. He no longer fit in my hands. His entire life awaited him—a life in which I wished to play some minor role.

I am not my father’s son.

I am my son’s father.

The magic crayon cooled. Its paper wrapper had long ago been torn off, the red wax worn down to a nub. With each drawing, it had left part of itself behind, as if its blood and guts had been smeared into the paper, as if it had sacrificed itself during the committal of those murders. Damaged, its scars were all out in the open, and it was still so pretty. But if it had killed only three times—Linus kitty, that bastard Kevin, Viking Man—why was so much of the crayon worn away? Had I sleep drawn? Had I forgotten about killing others?

I pocketed that crayon—my old friend. Next to my desk was my son’s little studio assistant workstation and a giant box of Crayolas. I pulled out the color I wanted.

My drawing hand throbbed, looked like boiled ham. First aid could wait. I switched to my left hand, and my son and I filled in Snoopy’s doghouse—a lush forest green.

When we finished, I showed my son how to carve another victory mark into my arm with the razor. He giggled awkwardly, and my mind raced back in time, to my wife slapping me, to a sharp, stinging pain, to my rage, to the sound of this little man’s very first laughter, to him grinning and wanting more, more, more.

I couldn’t suppress a chuckle. Together we watched my arm bleed, watched the red. So pretty.