MR. STICKUM

After school we began to hear. Certain incidents at night in the old mill town on the Delaware River.

Pop-up parties—for (adult) men.

Girls from Eastern Europe, Asia, Central America were available for a fee. Girls between the ages of 10 and 16. Or maybe six and 16. They’d been transported by night. Initially, some of them, in the (fetid) hulls of ocean vessels. Then in the (fetid) hulls of cattle trucks. They did not speak English. Which languages they spoke, the beauty of these languages, the sorrow of these languages, how love was uttered, how grieving was uttered, how loss was uttered in these languages, we did not know. In the (fetid) hulls into which the girls were herded by men who did/did not speak their languages, they must have whispered, shuddered, moaned, wept and sobbed in one another’s arms but in languages we did not know.

Their skin that should have been as soft as ours was rubbed raw. The hair on their heads that should have been lustrous as ours was thick with grease. Lice scurried over their scalps, stung and drew blood. Their eyes—oh, you had to know that their beautiful long-lashed eyes were luminous despite burst capillaries and that they stumbled and groped in daylight like the blind after the long solace of the night.

Informed that they would be tortured—“cut to pieces”—if they did not obey. Their families, whom they would never see again (they knew), would be murdered if they did not obey.

(Were there translators? In our imagining there would have had to be translators.)

(Translation is the most tender of all the arts. Yet, in this case, translation must have been crude, cruel.)

Most of the child sex slaves (as they were called) had come from Eastern Europe, had been shipped west. Sold into bondage by their parents, single mothers, state-run orphanages. There was a contingent of Asian girls, including the very youngest. Other girls were captured at the southern U.S. border, where they were separated from their families by Border Patrol agents, housed in barracks-like camps behind razor-wire fences or, in special cases, delivered into the custody of Homeland Security consultants who arranged for them to be transported in windowless vans to far-flung parts of the U.S.

Sex slaves taken into custody at the southern U.S. border were believed to differ significantly from those from Eastern Europe and Asia because their families had not given them up voluntarily or sold them; indeed, these girls were taken forcibly from their families, who were not likely to forget them, though they had no means, legal or otherwise, of locating them once they were shipped away from the border and into the heartland of the U.S.

Sex trafficking was a lucrative business, we learned. Sizable cash payments were made to local officials who oversaw the border patrols, as well as to the politicians whose decrees made possible the (legal) breakup of families and the subsequent transportation of the girls in a network of “pop-up parties” across North America.

Rumor was, such parties took place only a few miles from us. In the night as we slept in our tidy clean-sheeted beds, child sex slaves our age (and younger) were forced to endure disgusting sex acts in motels on the outskirts of our town on the Delaware River.

Which motels? We thought we knew. On the curving River Road were the 7$ Motel, Rivervue Motor Court, Holiday Cabins. Some of these derelict hovels were no longer open for regular customers but available for short-term (pop-up) rentals.

In the night. We’d been told.

Rumors that made us shudder, and grate our teeth in disgust. Rumors that made us shiver, and hide our faces in our hands. Rumors that made us sob in disgust, and laugh uncontrollably. Rumors that made us scream into our pillows. Rumors that bubbled and smoldered like molten earth underfoot where the soil is poisoned by toxic waste—yet when you search for such a place you can’t exactly find it.

Though with every fiber of your being you know it exists.

• • •

Rumors that stuck like glue in our guts. Rumors that would not be dislodged. Rumors that excited us, made the hairs at the napes of our necks stir.

Out of such stirrings—Mr. Stickum.

At our table in the school cafeteria, leaning our heads close together so that our long rippling hair mingled. Hot wet palms of our hands smacking the sticky table in frustrated fury.

Disgusting! Perverts! Gagging sensations, choking our vehement words.

One of us, not the oldest but the most indignant, the one whose father had not long ago abandoned his family—Dad had another way of expressing it—seized a ballpoint pen, began sketching in a notebook.

Swine! Deserve their throats cut.

Deserve their peckers cut—off.

Laughing wildly, joyously. Earthy braying laughter, not “feminine,” “girly.” Every other table in the cafeteria dimmed, our table in the corner shone with a radiant light, levitated. For we were the hottest girls, and we were the smartest girls, and we did not give a fuck who hated us for being who we were and not who they wanted us to be.

One of us, pen in hand, rapidly sketched the spiral device to be known as Mr. Stickum as the others leaned over, staring in amazement.

Where was Mr. Stickum coming from? Out of the ballpoint pen? Out of our friend’s hand? A small-boned hand, fingernails bitten to the quick. But the deft unerring hand of an artist.

See, here—Mr. Stickum.

• • •

Hours, days of exacting work and coordination required for the ingenious creation.

Deciding upon the material. For girls unaccustomed to making crucial decisions (beyond clothes and shoes we wore to school), this was the great challenge.

What would be most practical for our purposes, we wondered. Not paper, even thick paper. Not cardboard, even thick cardboard. Not wood, even plywood. No. Because the material would have to be resilient, would be required to bend. As the captives struggled, the material would “struggle” with them but must not snap or break. Brittleness must be avoided.

It would have been helpful to ask an older girl for advice. A woman teacher. One of our mothers.…

No! Better not.

The fewer who know about Mr. Stickum the better. Stealthily we rummaged through the basements and attics of our homes where (cast-off, forgotten) things were stored. We did not have enough money among us to make extensive purchases, but we could not find anything quite right for Mr. Stickum as he was imagined in the sketch.

One windy autumn day after school, riding our bicycles to the county landfill three miles away. For much of the trip the headwind slowed us, but the last half-hour was glorious gliding downhill, standing on our pedals like Valkyries with our hair rippling behind us in the wind.

One of you/them might’ve seen us. That is possible. We like to think so!

How distracted you/they were by the sight of seven girls on bicycles pedaling single file on the shoulder of the county highway. Coasting downhill exquisitely balanced on pedals.

So distracted you almost turned your vehicle around to follow us.…

No. Better not. American girls, white girls, girls with families, might be relatives, friends’ children. Can’t touch. Not these.

What a surprise, the county landfill! Acres and acres of discarded trash, furniture, kitchen appliances, garbage bags torn open, spillage that stank even in the open air, yet also clothes that looked still wearable. As we tramped about the landfill holding our noses, scavenger birds fluttered upward on wide beating wings. Turkey vultures—were they? (We shrank from their red eyes, cruel hooked beaks fashioned for tearing flesh.) Also crows, smaller and more animated than vultures, though still large enough to seem dangerous to us, cawing and crying at intruders in the trash.

The angry birds beat us back. Still, in our cautious way(s) we persevered.

That first search defeated by sudden rainfall, wind. Hasty retreat.

The second search took us into dusk. Flashlights were required, but the spirit of Mr. Stickum must’ve smiled upon us: We discovered a fresh mound of debris, including sheets of (scrap) vinyl.

In all, half a dozen sheets of badly discolored vinyl of which not one was entirely whole. But we would need that many at a minimum.

Not easy transporting the clumsy vinyl sheets on our bicycles to a secret place where we could work together—but we managed.

• • •

By this time the original sketch of Mr. Stickum had been enlarged on that thin but tough paper used for architectural drawings (purloined from the home office of one of our fathers). By this time we’d acquired an essential piece of equipment—a powerful staple gun (borrowed from the workshop of one of our fathers who wouldn’t miss it—He hardly goes in the garage these days even if he’s home).

Plan was to create a giant flypaper strip in the shape of—oh, what’s it called?

Möbius.

Mö-bius. When there is no end to it, a loop, a spiral, spinning, infinite.…

But no, Mr. Stickum was not infinite. With the scrap vinyl stapled together, by the time we were finished, and it did take time, Mr. Stickum measured 23 feet from top to bottom. Finite.

Strictly it was not a true Möbius strip we were creating but rather a pseudo-Möbius strip—according to the one of us who knew more math than the rest of us did. For a true Möbius strip is a two-dimensional surface with length and width but no thickness. It has only one side.

The pseudo-Möbius strip to which we gave the appellation Mr. Stickum was identical to a two-dimensional strip—except it existed in three dimensions.

We were anxious that it was supple enough to be given a half twist and that the ends of this (single) strip could be stapled together. Without this crucial feature in the design, Mr. Stickum would not be realized.

Though it sounds easy, it was not easy. Much effort went into the creation of Mr. Stickum in three dimensions.

This was only the start, however. Greater effort came next.

• • •

(We never doubted that Mr. Stickum came somehow out of the night and yet dwelt within us like a luminous spirit. For we were of that age when an appetite for justice is as fierce as an appetite for food when you are starving.)

(Where were our parents, you are wondering. Our parents were where they’d always been: in our lives yet oblivious of us.)

(Were our parents not aware? Not…suspicious?) (Very easy to convince them that we were at one another’s houses doing homework, having supper, sleepovers.)

(Were our parents somehow not real?)

(Fact is, Mr. Stickum was far more real to us than our parents.)

(No one is less real than parents. A “parent” is a sort of full-body mask that presents itself to you as a complete entity when in fact, as common sense will tell you if you take time to think about it, this “parent” is but a parenthesis in the life of an individual who is essentially a stranger, who lived for many years before you were “born”— who had no idea who you would be, or even that you would exist, for virtually all of those years. Then, when you are “born,” this individual employs him-/herself as a “parent” assigned to you for an indeterminate amount of time. The “parent” may be present through all of your life in some cases. Or in some cases the “parent” disappears in time as you become employed as a “parent” yourself, utterly bewildered, perhaps bewitched, but never doubting that you must don your full-body mask in the presence of your child.)

(No, we were not cynical! We were idealists. We never doubted our mission to protect our child sex slave sisters whom we’d never met and would in fact never meet. We never doubted Mr. Stickum, who was hyperreal to us, and always with us, and like a spirit inside us. Like God.)

• • •

In stealth, in secrecy, by night. In the deserted no-man’s-land by the river.

Shuttered factories, mills. Rubble-strewn lots, sites of buildings razed decades ago and their stone foundations open to the night like gaping mouths. Fading signs on tilting fences—NO TRESPASSING, DANGER.

Close by, the rushing river. After a rainfall the water level was high and the hue of mud, bearing with it churning and spinning debris like living things.

Down a weedy incline from the road, hidden from view by underbrush and small trees, broken brick walls. One of the boarded-up mills, decades ago a ladies’ glove factory.… With some effort we forced the door and stepped inside and—here was the space we’d envisioned.

Here, Mr. Stickum was (vertically) established in the shadows of the partially collapsed first floor. Taking care not to plunge through rotted floorboards into the cellar below, we worked with flashlights, for it was dusk and then night. Taking care that our flashlight beams didn’t shift upward toward the broken windows and someone driving past on River Road might glance up and see, and wonder what on earth was going on in a deserted factory.

We were short of breath. We began to perspire inside our jeans and pullovers. Nothing in our lives had prepared us for such a challenge, and such a risk. Securing Mr. Stickum to a substantial rafter overhead so that the Möbius strip might hang straight down into the cellar unencumbered. All of us wearing gloves, taking care to protect ourselves as, awkwardly but conscientiously, we applied glue to Mr. Stickum: the strongest glue we could purchase in a hardware store.

There are ordinary glues, including what is called cement glue, and there is epoxy adhesive—strong enough to bind together plastics, wood, metal, human flesh.

In this way, in a succession of nights, working together as a team, we created Mr. Stickum, in design a gigantic (and ingenious) strip of flypaper.

• • •

Next, we created rumors of pop-up parties on the outskirts of our small town on the Delaware River.

Like wildfire the rumors spread online. A day, and a night. And another day, and now dusk.

Drawn by the promise of a pop-up party. Drawn by the promise of child sex slaves. A customer would enter the passageway between the brick walls and descend hesitantly, stumbling in the rubble yet determined to achieve his goal. Hello? Hello? Hello—— Greeted tantalizingly by glossy cutouts of young girls in short shorts, short skirts, skintight jeans. Younger than we were, 10 to 12 years old with luridly made-up faces, long straight (usually blonde) hair falling past their shoulders.

We mingled with the cutout girls. We wore cat masks with stiff horizontal whiskers. High-heeled boots.

Living girls giggling, tittering. Yes! You have come to the right address, Mister!

The men saw, their eyes glared red. They came individually. They respected one another’s privacy. They did not wish (perhaps) to identify another, that they not be identified themselves. All very careful. Not at all reckless. Discreetly they parked their vehicles as far away as they could. Practiced in this sort of deception and not (yet) been made to pay for their crimes.

We were excited. We trembled in expectation. Behind our silken cat masks we stifled our laughter as the first customer came eager and ardent into the shadows of the derelict old factory and was guided through a doorway, a step down (“Mind the gap, sir”)—a sudden fall, a cry of alarm—and within seconds secured to Mr. Stickum.

Flailing to escape Mr. Stickum, whose gluey surface caught their hair and their struggling hands and bodies. At first incredulous—What is this? What?—trying desperately to pull away, pushing and shoving against Mr. Stickum, who only seized them more securely in his grip.

W-What is this? What can this be? Gigantic strip of flypaper upon which the predator thrashes, beats his arms like flies’ wings beating in desperation only to bind faster, more securely in the glue.

Crying for help. Writhing, convulsing. The first customers were middle-aged males, unfamiliar faces. Then a familiar face—contorted, terrified, yet somehow familiar—someone we believed we’d seen in town, or somewhere, whose name we did not know. But then—on the third night—Mr. Perry! We were shocked. We were stunned. We could not speak at first, for Mr. Perry was one of the teachers at our high school, who taught driver’s education and boys’ gym and coached the girls’ track team.…

But we recovered. We kept our distance, detachment. We were excited, we trembled with dread of what we’d unleashed. We did not take pity on Mr. Perry, who was stuck on Mr. Stickum practically upside-down, a foolish figure, kicking, flailing his forearms, face flushed with blood, eyes virtually popping from his face.

Help me! Help me! But there was no help.

On the following night our first customer was also known to us, and even more shocking—Mr. McCreery.

Oh, this was awful! Ceci’s father, whom some of us thought we’d known very well.

Behind her cat mask Ceci was very still. We could hear her breathing, we could feel the pain of her heartbeat.

Taking no note, not staring after her as Ceci slipped away into the night, mortified with shame.

But it had been too late for Mr. McCreery as soon as he stepped across the threshold and into the pop-up place.

Piteously screaming, begging—Help! Help me! What is this? No!

We laughed in derision. Might’ve been tickled by rough daddy fingers, how we laughed. Howled. Recalling how, in fact, yes, years ago, Mr. McCreery had tickled our ribs and we’d squirmed to escape and never said a word.

The next shock, the next night, a man whose picture was often in the newspaper, a local politician on the town council—Mr. Steinhauer.

He was furious, thrashed so hard, plunged and lunged at us cursing, that he came close to detaching himself from Mr. Stickum by sheer force—but in the end the powerful glue held fast and he was rendered helpless as a fly.

The next shock, Dora’s uncle.

And there would be several other shocks: dads, uncles, cousins. Neighbors. Teachers.

Our town was a small town. We’d had to realize that some of the customers/captives might be known to us, but still you do not truly expect to see the face of a man you know well, a man in your own family.… You do not expect such a man to be a sex pervert.

Behind our masks, hot tears streaked our faces. Tears of sorrow, rage. Tears of humiliation. But no one forced these men to come prowling in the night for child sex slaves.

Ceci returned to us, for Ceci understood. In her household there was a gaping absence. No one knew where Mr. McCreery had gone (except Ceci, who grieved with the others). Mr. McCreery’s car was found in the parking lot of the old train depot a mile from the river, locked.

The train depot was no longer in operation, for trains no longer stopped in our town. But there was a bus stop nearby, and so it came to be believed that Mr. McCreery had taken a bus and in this way vanished—though no one could remember a man of his description boarding the bus at the time he was believed to have departed.

Fascinating to us how each of the customers/captives generated a (plausible) narrative in his wake and in each case it was believed that the man had left of his own volition and not as a consequence of “foul play.”

A sweet sort of knowledge, to know that what others adamantly believe or wish to believe is mistaken and to have not the slightest impulse to correct them.

Having no mercy too was sweet to us.

For always it is expected of girls, as of women, that we will be loving, forgiving, merciful. But Mr. Stickum has taught us that that has been a mistake of our sex.

• • •

We took pictures of the captured perverts on our iPhones. We recorded their howls of rage, pain. Their pleas.

These were just to share with one another. We deleted all evidence within hours. We were not so foolish as to risk being caught.

What we recall most vividly of those fevered nights: the way we moved secure and swaggering in our masks and high-heeled boots along the rafters of the derelict old factory. Sure-footed as actual cats.

Safe behind the masks, gazing down at our pathetic captives strung below us on the vinyl flypaper. Laughing to see how their agitations made the strip turn jerkily, as in a parody of a dance. How certain of the captives were so frantic to escape they tore off swaths of skin, leaving raw flesh oozing and dripping blood, but still they could not fully free themselves from Mr. Stickum’s lethal glue.

The most pitiful, one or two captives who’d managed to free all but their heads and were hanging by their hair, in terrible agony.

Bleating, braying, whimpering, murmuring—Help me! Let me out of here! I will pay you.…

Pleading with us as we passed just out of range of their flailing hands.

One of us said—Someone should put him out of his misery. Another said, mishearing—No mercy! Not for these perverts. Several captives became berserk, their brains boiled, convulsing, frothing at their mouths. Others suffered heart attacks or strokes and hung limp and lifeless like giant flies whose wings have stilled. One comical fellow managed to strangle himself, having twisted his body around like a pretzel in his zeal to escape the embrace of Mr. Stickum.

It goes without saying all the captives soiled themselves. Not the most disgusting thing about the perverts, but yes, disgusting to our sensitive nostrils.

However, we made no effort to clean their messes. In the grimy cellar of the glove factory, more filth did not matter.

• • •

With time we grew more experienced. You might say crueler.

Our capacity for surprise, for shock diminished as each of us had been surprised, shocked more than once by who turned up writhing and whimpering on Mr. Stickum.

One of the perverts called to me, in his distraught state barely able to speak, head downward, limbs askew as in a crucifixion, tears glistening on a pasty-pale face—Help me, I am begging you. I’m not a bad man. I have a family, I have daughters.… I am in such pain! Oh God, please.…

In panic I thought: He knows me! But he never uttered my name. He could see only the cat mask. He could see only the eyes in the cat mask. He could not see me.

I walked away trembling, where I couldn’t hear his pleas. But I walked away.

Soon we lost track of how many were stuck on Mr. Stickum. The pleasure of observing them, counting them, taking pictures on our iPhones and recording their cries of misery began gradually to fade.

Success is like stuffing your belly. Hunger fades to nausea. And so after a few weeks we decided to remove all notices of the pop-up parties from the internet. Our “virtual” identities vanished. Our chat-room friendships came to abrupt ends. Fewer customers were showing up to stumble and fall onto Mr. Stickum, and one night no one came at all. Hard to say if we were relieved or disappointed. Though this was good news—of course.

All the sex perverts in the vicinity are now prisoners of Mr. Stickum and can harm no one else.

We wanted to think this. We didn’t want to think that local perverts had simply become more vigilant and did not wish to take a chance on a pop-up party at a time when a number of men in the area had “vanished.”

We debated what to do with the captives who did not (yet) appear to be dead. At first we’d feared that their howls of rage, fear, distress would draw attention, but the deserted glove factory was far enough from town that no one heard. And the murmurous sound of the nearby rushing river muffled the noise.

We never fed the captives, never gave them so much as a paper cup of water. It was not just that we were heartless—we were cautious, and wise: To come too close to the desperate would be to become trapped in their desperation. Especially we feared the slightest touch of Mr. Stickum—we knew that would be lethal.

If we abandoned the factory, our captives would die—eventually—of thirst and starvation, which seemed to us a (relatively) painless death considering their depravity and the wickedness in their hearts. In time, their befouled bodies would be devoured by scavengers—turkey vultures, rodents, insects. In time, their skeletons would fall into the murky cellar. Their bones would mix together as in a common grave.

On the last evening we returned to the factory it was to discover that every captive was dead! Their bodies hung limp and lifeless from the gigantic flypaper strip, streaked with something dark—blood? In the blackness, slow dull dripping sounds.

Someone had surreptitiously slashed the captives’ throats. One of us, we had to suppose. But which one?

We never knew. At least I never knew.

She’d succumbed to mercy, whichever of us it was. For slashing the throats of perverts was a merciful, kindly act. A gesture that must have involved a good deal of effort from one unaccustomed to wielding a razor-sharp butcher knife, let alone wholesale slaughter.

Hastily we departed from the factory and never returned. We have no photos of Mr. Stickum. We have not even the original plans, sketched in a fever of inspiration in our school cafeteria.

All evidence linking us to Mr. Stickum was destroyed. All of us remained friends—that is, we remain friends. Our bond is Mr. Stickum, though we never utter his name or include it in any e-mail or text message.

We all went away to college. We were good students; in the wake of Mr. Stickum, we were mature and self-reliant students who did not have to be urged by parents or teachers to excel.

Eventually, we suppose, the deserted glove factory will be razed and a mound of skeletons discovered in its cellar—but that has not happened yet. The same old derelict buildings remain on the river behind semi-collapsed wire fences that warn NO TRESPASSING, DANGER.

Most of us return to visit our families several times a year. We were always dutiful daughters and we are scarcely less dutiful now. We lie in bed in the night in our former rooms, with at least one window open. Some of us lie sleepless beside deep-sleeping husbands, awake and alert and suffused with yearning for the time of Mr. Stickum that has faded from our lives. But if we listen closely we can hear faint cries borne on the wind from miles away—Help me! Please help me.…

Nothing sweeter than falling asleep to the beautiful music of sorrow, heartrending pleas in strange languages. The wind, the rippling churning river, the cries of the damned.