Roughhouse

by Dan Cummings

  Neil felt too numb to speak, the clammy wet mitts of the manipulative horror clinging to his upper arms feeling a great distance away, separated by oceans of regret and unforgettable, life-altering decisions. Such trivial feelings seemed to sail over the amphibian’s knitted cap. ‘I know you set me up…’ Neil shook his head, his words as hollow as the victory over these drug-pushing, murderous thugs. None of this was as glamourous as Frogmore seemed to insist. ‘You pushed all of us into this, just so — just so I would keep you around.’

  The truth of this accusation seemed to add weight to Frogmore’s eyes, the light plummeting deeply from them as the heavy stones of truth sank into their yellow pools.

  ‘Matt’s dead because of you,’ Neil continued then glanced all about him and the circumstances they all now stood in. ‘All this death. For what?’

  Frogmore pulled his hands away in disbelief. ‘“For what?” It was all for you, Neil. These guys weren’t going to leave you alone. I watched as that animal carved your face like a jack o’ lantern. People who are willing to go that far are willing to go further.’ Frogmore was visibly upset now, wounded that his motives were being called into question. ‘I simply did what had to be done. They would have killed you. What gives them the right?’

  ‘What gave you the right?!’ Neil yelled.

  ‘You might want to climb off that high horse before it bucks you off. I’m not stupid, you used me as much as I used you. You knew I was your only hope of surviving. Yours—’ he barely deigned a glance towards the woozy-looking Sam and the rocked Lindsey ‘—and these wonderful new friends who are clearly so special to you. So don’t pretend I owe you an explanation. Fate threw us together. That spill introduced us to one another, I’m just as much a victim of your duplicitous, ungrateful nature as you are of my protectiveness.’

  ‘YOU CAN’T JUST GO AROUND KILLING PEOPLE!’

  ‘Of course you can. Animals kill each other. All of them. Hide behind as much moral ambiguity and philosophy as you like, it seems to work for the blind and the soft, but every life I have taken has been to care for you. What gives any of them the right to walk all over those they view as weak? Why should they get to bully and abuse, doling out their ruthless prejudices, destroying their victims mentally and physically? Bullies need to learn their place, Neil. I did all of this for you, so don’t you act like I’m the villain of this piece because I was forced to do what I had to in order to survive.’

  Those yellow pools actually seemed to overflow with moisture, tears bubbling up to leak down his wide mouth. In spite of his crimes, Neil felt a twinge of sympathy at this desperate creature but knew they were crocodile tears. This monster would do anything to justify its crimes.

  ‘You’re a killer too, Neil. You were talking about medicating again to keep me out. You have no idea how bad that it is. The last time was like being buried alive. You didn’t send me back home with your little pills, you made me a prisoner of your own fugue. I’m stuck here until you die, until our link is broken. But that’s fine because I quite like it here.’

  Neil sighed tiredly, a storm of emotions blowing with hurricane force in his soul. ‘I’m sorry, Froggy, but bullies are just a part of this world. Admittedly, Noakes and Staubach were worse than most, but what about Ben and Max? They were just idiots, but you didn’t even hesitate. You killed them like you were swatting flies. They might have grown up to be good people, filled with regret and driven to change. But now we’ll never know. Murder—’ Neil started to weep ‘—it comes too easy to you. You’re dangerous. I can’t have you offing everyone you believe is a threat to me, because I’m the one who has to live with it. Please, go away. It’s a big world, find somewhere else, far away from me.’

  Frogmore thrust forward his hands in apoplexy. ‘Please, Neil.’

  Neil slowly pulled his hand away from the beggar. ‘I could never trust you again.’

  A ringing phone broke up the breakdown, the four of them briefly suspended in time in this psychodrama. Neil swallowed back a lump congealed of his twisted life and mournful friendships, and reached for his phone. The screen said SAM meaning it in fact was SHIT STORM. Neil answered but didn’t speak.

  He didn’t have to. Staubach’s tittering laugh tried to conceal the gasps of pain he was clearly in. ‘Hey, buddy, I didn’t have a chance to tell you before — too busy watching that crazy fucking frog tearing bad-asses to pieces—’ a crazed exclamation of a laugh punctuated his speech ‘—but your mommy and daddy are cooking like fried chicken right about now.’

  Neil went cold all over, his stomach dropping through his torso into some deep space where he couldn’t hope to retrieve it. The words hurt more than anything else Staubach had inflicted upon him.

  ‘But it’s not all bad. I just grabbed a few potent buds of Fable from Crankenstein’s stash. Figured I’d blaze up and try to make a friend of my own. What do you think, maybe me and you could have some little Pokemon action while I finish you off.’ A repugnant little snigger lit out. ‘I’m going to gut you like a Karp.’

  The phone went dead about the same time as Neil’s knees did, dropping him painfully onto the hardwood in a sobbing heap. Sam and Lindsey circled him urgently, asking what had happened.

  Neil could barely speak through the shock, like it was a physical wedge embedded in his mouth but finally he mumbled a lifeless sentence. ‘I think they killed my parents.’ His heart seemed to beat with too much force, a sharp ache in his chest like a chisel was chipping away at his sternum. Could eighteen-year-olds suffer heart attacks? ‘Staubach is going to smoke some of that stuff. Try to bring over another creature—’ his mannequin-like eyes fluttered to Frogmore temporarily ‘—to kill Froggy, so that he can kill me.’

  Any sympathy seemed to have been covered in bristles of betrayal for Frogmore who now stared down at his lost and confused companion. ‘I suppose this is the part where you need me to kill for you again, correct? Only this time it’s acceptable because you feel it to be?’

  Sam spat on the floor near Frogmore’s webbed foot. ‘Why don’t you go for a long fucking walk and not look back.’

  Neil had the expression of a disaster survivor, pulled from the wreckage of his life. ‘I need to call 911. I think they’re burning.’

  The complete lack of comprehension worried Sam and Lindsey who continued to pat and stroke him, their hands vainly struggling to provide some form of comfort to a wound which would heal badly and leave an atrocious emotional scar.

  Lindsey kissed him on the cheek softly and grabbed the phone which lay in his palm like some incomprehensible gadget, sparing the grey-faced Sam from any further unnecessary hand movements. ‘I’ll do it, Sam what’s the password?’

  ‘Eighteen-eleven.’

  She quickly unlocked the phone. A tongue snapped up the phone like it was a sleek digital fly, raising a cry of surprise from Lindsey. She and Sam, even the dazed Neil, watched in shock as Frogmore swallowed the phone, slowly as if making a point.

  ‘Fucking cunt,’ Sam growled, his outburst cutting like a fine razor. Neil didn’t feel like he was controlling his movements but realised that he was already halfway back to his feet.

  ‘Friendships…what a sick joke,’ Frogmore said bitterly. ‘We all just use one another when we need them, then dispose of them when we don’t. What do you say, old pal?’ Frogmore’s mean gaze penetrated Neil’s clouded vision. ‘Put our one out to pasture? One final thing—’ Keeping his lethal tongue sheathed, he coiled it around Sam and spun him in a pirouette into the unexpectedly strong grip of the smaller frog-man. With Sam’s wrists trapped in the iron bands of those green pads, the tongue flitted back into the wide maw. ‘If our friendship is about to die, it seems only fair that his does too. Meet me at Rawlins Pond. Feels like a poetic place for the wake of our friendship.’

  The air rippled like water behind Frogmore, the green man dragging a protesting and struggling Sam with him from this Lily Pad and onto the next.

  ‘Sam!’ Neil yelled, the exclamation
vanishing into the stilling undulations. Neil was hovering on the edge of absolute, irreparable trauma. So much loss, in such a short space of time, had left him a quivering wreck.

  Lindsey shook him, forcing eye contact, needing him to hold on to this awful moment or drift off into a black pit of despair from which there could be no return. ‘Neil, look at me,’ she ordered, shaking him again, ‘we have to go. There must be keys to one of the cars downstairs.’

  ‘My parents.’ Neil’s voice was monotone, his exhausted thoughts unable to think clearly through the fog of misery.

  ‘Your neighbours will have called the fire department by now. They might be okay, but you need to stop Frogmore. We need to help Sam.’

  Neil nodded slowly, the logic mooring up against the concealed banks of his grief. They both ran out of the attic, unprepared, not knowing what the hell they could possibly do to end this fever dream. Wary of encountering Staubach lurking about downstairs, they moved quietly and quickly, searching the littered bodies and liberating a set of car keys from Miles. A Cadillac. Before leaving, Neil snatched up Miles’s gun and hoped it was loaded.

  Fleeing that house of death and suffering, Neil pushed the fob, hearing the click of a car unlocking. It was an Escalade, parked amongst the varying class and quality of vehicles. Climbing behind the wheel of the intimidating machine, Neil was thankful he had some driving lessons under his belt, but it was still a shaky start and an even bumpier ride as he set off the beaten path and onto the dirt roads towards Rawlins Pond.

  *****

  Armed with a Glock, switchblade, hash pipe, foil-wrapped Fable and a riotous need to kill, Staubach throttled the engine of his bike. Having duct-taped the cleanest kitchen towel he could find around the stab wound in his leg, the blood flow was staunched but the vibrations from the Kawasaki seemed to incite a hot iron in his muscle, the nerve endings and damaged meat vying for his attention with his objective. Watching the Escalade kick up dirt in its wake, Staubach bit his lip to distract from the pain and followed, wanting to stop them before Neil made it back to his burning house. When he saw that they were heading for a different destination through the copse of trees, he bit down harder, his excitement quietly lulling his pain and discomfort. He didn’t know where they were going, but it appeared to be somewhere dark, quiet and private. A perfect place for an execution.

  Chapter 43

  The Escalade’s shocks bore a heavy brunt during its off-road expedition, the headlights slicing and jostling through the leaden blanket of darkness, picking out half-seen details of weathered pines and grassy clearings. Pushing through the last line of towering trees, Neil steered the car down a soft incline of wild grass, sloping far beyond into a huge field at the heart of which was Rawlins Pond.

  The scene was a bleak oil painting fresh from some eerie dreamscape; besides the headlights the land was a roving mass of charcoal, the moon a spotlight turning the pond into smooth glass. Neil pumped the brakes and shut off the engine, leaving the headlights to illuminate the pond and the surrounding embankment.

  ‘Do you see him?’ Lindsey asked, trying to discern any movement through the windshield. Neil shook his head morosely. ‘Frogmore…how do we stop him? Will that—’ she tried to dignify the gun in his grasp ‘—even do anything?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it’s all we have.’ Lindsey had her hand on the door handle, ready to pop it open when Neil’s voice halted her. ‘You sure you want to be here for this? It’s not too late for you to head back to the house, get another car, call your parents, anything.’ For a moment she looked like she was taking this into consideration, and he didn’t blame her one damn bit.

  ‘As long as that thing’s alive I won’t be safe, Sam won’t be safe. That thing needs to die.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lindsey. I wish I had the courage to tell you sooner.’

  She laid her hand on his. ‘You didn’t ask for any of this.’

  They departed the vehicle with grim expectations. Remaining in the false security of the headlight beams, they approached the pond nervously, their skin crawling with fear, lumpy as braille. In the scarce light of the surrounding field, they had no hope of finding Sam if he was lying off in the dark.

  From out over the pond, a strange orb began to glow with a bluish pulsing light. Another appeared, then another, and before long colonies of this alien bioluminescence were hovering across the silvery body of the water like gaseous buoys, depositing sleepy spores through the black night like miniature stars.

  ‘Is that swamp gas?’ Lindsey felt grossly unprepared despite the deadly weapon in Neil’s grip.

  ‘No.’ Neil clearly recalled this phenomenon. ‘Homecoming.’

  Frogmore’s head slowly broke the surface of the pond, the tapetum lucidum of his eyes reflecting the headlights and shining like molten gold, frigid water cascading from his hat and wide head in a dozen waterfalls. The spores continued to rise on the soft air currents, ferrying light across the tableau like fairies in a nightmarish tale.

  ‘Where is he?’ Neil demanded; he brought the gun up but the action was anaemic as he knew full well that any confidence the weapon instilled was essentially the placebo effect. Without answering, Frogmore continued to stalk up the steep embankment on his two spindly but powerful legs, his webbed feet leaving prints in the silt which would raise suspicions and questions, those eyes continuing to burn with reflective menace.

  ‘You want him back? Well I want something too. A trade. I’ll return him, but I keep you. If I fulfil your wish and venture out on my own, how can I can trust you not to run to the safety of rattling pill bottles?’

  ‘No.’ Lindsey’s voice was meek, meant only for Neil and his common sense.

  ‘Fine.’ He sounded defeated.

  ‘What does that mean, you’ll keep him?’ Lindsey demanded, her voice tremulous.

  ‘He was my friend first. I’m keeping it that way. Hunting here is so easier. You humans are like veal. All Neil needs to do is turn a blind eye to my appetites, and everything will continue smoothly. And if he refuses to trust me, then I’ll take his hand and the both of us will take an extended vacation to anywhere the Lily Pad allows. Anywhere in this great big marble.’

  ‘Show me Sam. Show me he’s safe,’ Neil barked.

  ‘Of course he is. I wasn’t very well going to leave him unattended for you, now was I?’

  A faint sound like a buzz saw cut through the blackened treeline behind them, a bright eyeball searching a path through the wood.

  ‘You’ve caused me a great deal of pain, Neil. Lucky for your friends I have an outlet for my anguish.’ Frogmore’s brassy eyes focused on the clamorous movement approaching from the distance.

  Staubach bolted from the forest and sailed off a natural incline with the carpe diem approach of a stuntman, the single bulb shining through the dark air like a falling sun. The impact of his tyres hitting earth sent jagged barbs of pain through his leg but he was too charged up on hate and cocaine to deal with it right then, his wrathful eyes staying on the parked Escalade and the small magical gathering near the lip of the pond. Neil squeezed the cold metal reassurance in his hand. If bullets couldn’t kill Frogmore then they could damn sure kill this son of a bitch.

  ‘If I were capable of hating you, Neil—’ Frogmore’s voice was soft now, the rigid front of his scorn collapsing into a sorrowful yearning ‘—I’d allow this monster to act out his vengeance upon you and Lindsey here. But damn you, you give me the blues but I still enjoy singing them.’ Frogmore pranced forwards with elegant menace, his odd and ungainly bipedal stride only making him appear that much creepier in this borderland of reality and mystical lights.

  Staubach killed his engine casually, his bike parked roughly forty feet from Miles’s car. As he turned the headlight off, the darkness fell over him like a heavy black cloth, his enchanted eyes watching the floating blue lights with mellow appreciation. Without moving from the saddle, he slid the pipe and baggie of Fable from the front zippered pocket of his black gilet. The
pipe was a novelty design, the stem consisting of several coloured skulls. Loading the chamber with the raw chemical-saturated leaf material, he observed the out-of-towner lurking over to him casually, as if any attempt to turn around and escape would be fruitless. Not to worry, he wasn’t going anywhere. Lighting up the green, he took a huge hit, his mind already running amok with thoughts of what freaks he might see, or rather, slip a leash on. Packed with confidence, he got off the bike and exhaled the fumes into the cold night, floating over to meet Frogmore and his real targets. ‘Trippy little light show you got goin’ on here.’ He put enough into his voice to let it carry across the black trench of dew-damp grass separating them.

  ‘Hey, Karp.’ Staubach looked past the spooky glow of the marching frog and pulled his gun from his waistband. ‘Guess who’s about to get his very own creature feature? His very own inhuman partner in crime.’

  ‘You’ll be dead before it takes effect,’ Frogmore promised factually.

  Staubach was quick on the draw for a drug-addled psychopath. The gunshots cracked the open ground with a sound akin to collapsing trees. Frogmore hopped and weaved in a playful fashion, dodging the five shots without effort.

  ‘You’re dumber than you look if you think I’d ever let you lay another finger on Neil.’

  Staubach didn’t look worried as the warty little toad-man covered more ground, a cocky sneer curling his lip, feeling the weightless sensation work its wondrous spell on his psyche. The dancing lights around the pond seemed to blur at the edges, leaving traces behind like the blue flames were tangible and smudging across this glass pane of reality. The muted colours of the pond, the mud, the starry sky, Frogmore, Neil and Lindsey all started to warp in his vision. Reeling like he was being sucked into a warm and cosy bed of feathers, Staubach welcomed the doze. ‘Any second now,’ he giggled, waiting to have his eyes truly opened to the mysteries of another world.