A Better Kind of Hate

by Beau Johnson

  Until now that is.

  You understand what it is I’m saying here, Frank?

  You understand why your children, your grandchildren, your girlfriend and wife are sitting here beside you? The tears are helping, as well I bet regret, but what it comes down to is what you wanted just not who you wanted it done to.

  I’m going to open them up, Frank. Just so you know. Then I’m going to stitch together what comes out. Done, it’s on to what I will refer to as patterns. What we in the crotchet business sometimes call blossoms. It will involve back posting, fastening off and an absolute favorite of mine, the invisible decrease. When it’s complete, Frank, when it is, this is when I’m going to tell you the last thing you’ll ever hear: you shouldn’t have poked the bear, Frank.

  Better yet, you should have accepted I’d changed.

  Back to TOC

  Wonder Twin Powers, Activate

  The one in the Hulk mask says, “The way this works is we give you a head start. Makes it more equal than it’d be otherwise.” I look at him through the bars of the cage, through the strings of dark hair that hang before my eyes. Of the three he was the bigger one, dressed in khakis and Nikes which looked impossibly small on a man so tall. His shoes were not what interested me though. What did is what he’d just explained. That things were about to begin. Allowed me to breathe deep for the first time in hours. For the first time in days, really. Done, I continued my part. Added a little quiver to my voice just to be sure. “Does that mean I get some clothes now?”

  I don’t receive a response, just a tilt of the Hulk’s head.

  Yeah, pretty sure I’d do him last.

  Long story short is my sister’d gone missing. Before she does she’s able to text me: In trouble. Happened at the bar. Maddy’s. Two guys I think. Maybe three! Done this before for sure! I’m sorry, Cass. Should have known.

  Shannon was not as stupid as she let on. A little too trusting perhaps, but that was just our mother making herself known. With me it was a different story. All Dad, all business, all the time. Made my life a bit more difficult than I wanted it at times but boo-fucking-hoo, we all have baggage. That right there makes me seem tougher than I actually am. Coping mechanism, maybe? In response to a life devoid of as many hugs as it should have had? I’ll take who-gives-a-fuck for two hundred, Alex. Maybe throw in a chaser of lick-my-clit for good measure.

  Leads me to do what any type of person like me would. I don’t call the cops, don’t pass go and collect two hundred dollars. Instead I haul ass to the little shitburb Shannon ended up, Brantford, and set up shop in a Motel 6 the other side of what they call the Lorne Bridge. Hunk a junk is more like. Covered to the tits in graffiti done by someone wearing what I can only assume was a helmet. Next I’m at the bar, Maddy’s, but I’m going about things slow, asking no questions, just observing. It’s dark, a dive, and full of drowning lives from eleven a.m. until about nine. After that the younger crowd from the university slides in, and here is where I get my first nibble.

  “I’ve seen you here before. Last week, right?” I do my best at being something I’m not.

  “That’s not going to get you very far if you’re trying.”

  “Who said I was?” It did as intended, eliciting a smile I’m sure quite a few women had already seen. From the end of the bar I notice another man, shaggier than white teeth here, and suddenly it’s on, as I feel I’m in their crosshairs. Which was fine, exactly what I wanted, and so I let white teeth go and purchase the remainder of the night’s drinks. His bud, “Roger,” comes over when we’re on our fourth. I say hi to mustache-man, pat his mounded chest, and play the part Shannon has always played so well.

  I should probably back up here and let you know Shannon had a problem. Many, if I’m to be honest. Meth was her bad boy though, the woman for years living on the chip. Some would say it was because our father was a cop and our mother a whore. I say Shannon just liked the easy things in life. I suggest it’s why we’re such opposites, and why Dad seemed to like me best. When I say things like this, I know it doesn’t help the situation, not really, but it is what it is, and me being here now is perhaps my way of atoning. Who knows though, right? I mean, I am on my period.

  Back to it, then.

  Whatever they slip into my drink does the trick and the next thing I know I’m on my stomach, naked, and in a cage with one third of the Avengers staring me down.

  “Hello, beautiful,” They say, each of them in singsong unison. “Time to play.”

  Fuck they were going to burn.

  I learned a lot of things in Afghanistan. Some I have implemented, some I have yet to. I’m about to explain the things I’d yet to. It involves cracks and crevices and devices small enough to slip within such places undetected. I inserted a cherry-colored butt-plug as well, just in case the decision to rape me in the ass came into question once they had me where they wanted me. Couldn’t see them going to the extra trouble if I already had something blocking an entrance. Figured they go for the easiest route possible.

  I needn’t have worried.

  I was naked, sure, but I had yet to be breached.

  “Your dicks must be pretty damn small,” I say and pull myself to my knees. I wanted to stand but the dimensions I’d awakened to would not allow me this wish. The middle one, Spidey, laughed hard at this. I mean really hard. Meant one of two things. I’m sure you can figure out which.

  “We got a live one here, boys!” Iron Man says, and I throw it back just as fast as I can. They don’t appreciate my candor, none of them, but only the Hulk steps forward in an attempt to kick what fingers I had wrapped around the bars.

  “Hulk smash!” I say, and I’m not the only one who laughs.

  The Hulk turns to Iron Man, “What the fuck, man?”

  “What? It was funny.” The Hulk doesn’t move in response to this; just stands and stares at his buddy who is just about as tall as Robert Downey Jr., but you know, minus the lifts. “Let’s just do this then. Wouldn’t want anyone to make you angry.” This gets Spidey going, and suddenly it’s just a laugh riot between the two of them, each of them doubled over. It let me know the Hulk was not the alpha male of the group. It also meant things were looking up.

  “You think we can do this?” Petulant. Hollow. Yep, third in line for sure.

  “Go ahead,” Iron Man says. And the Hulk does. I was to die, I’m told, but I would at least be given a fighting chance. Sporting of them, I said, but was instructed to shut the fuck up for my trouble. They had done this many times before, the Hulk goes on, with no one escaping ever. He repeats ever and I couldn’t help but think how easy this was going to be once they let me out.

  “And you can run as far and fast as you can. We don’t care. We will find you. We will have you. Then we will kill you.”

  “This is your regular spiel?” I couldn’t help myself. I tried. I really did. And if there is anything I would change about myself it would be this: sometimes I am just as arrogant as fuck.

  It’s more or less why I didn’t see the cattle prod and then why I only saw dark.

  And then we are back to where we began, and the Hulk turns from me, the quiver just gone from my voice. He turns back with my bra and the jeans one of them had gone and cut into short-shorts. He throws them at me, my nipples in awe. Cold, really, as the basement was as far from warm as it was from furnished. Drafty, the air came tinged with not only the smell of me but perhaps Shannon as well. Maybe at the start, sure, but I doubt as the days wore on.

  Dressed, the Hulk does what the Hulk does best, and once again I’m “smashed.” When I awake this time I am alone and the cage is open, the game afoot. Not a game, not really, but it might as well have been. Outside the cage I stand and hear my bones applaud. Done, I reach around and remove the butt plug. Deeper in and to the left is where I have stored a different kind of three inches. Extended it turns into nine, and the heft that comes is good.

  I clean it off in the corner, in an old washtub. I relieve myself and drink greedi
ly from the faucet as well. The lights flicker. Flicker again. The caged fluorescents in front of the washtub going out completely as the ones above me finish their dance. A familiar chuckle comes next, followed by all four as they come out from behind the stairs. Shannon leads the way. She is weaponless. The others are not. The Hulk carries his prod but Iron Man and Spidey now hold steel.

  “I knew you’d come,” Shannon says. Yes, she is high. She still looks good though, her color better than I imagined. “You’ve brought a knife to a gun fight though. You remember what Daddy use to say about that?” Have I mentioned my sister hates me? That she always has? I should probably explain the rest of it then, now that we’ve come to the end.

  “You can’t really believe I didn’t know, can you? Shannon, you punctuated every sentence in the text you used to get me here. You think the fear you were trying to project, you think any rational person would afford themselves the time? It reinforces you as the stupid one.” I get Iron Man with this one, a full blown pig snort from beneath his mask. As Spidey and the Hulk turn toward him it gives way to the type of opportunity that usually presents itself. Sometimes you have to nudge things along, sure, but most of the time it’s just pieces falling into place.

  To her credit Shannon sees it coming but her reflexes are nowhere near what a person needs them to be. Her eyes, however, are the opposite of this. Each of them becoming big white Os just about as fast as they can. She takes it under the chin, the blade up and through the soft palette of her mouth, the one which had probably been filled with something other than food as she went and sold me out. I can get her here, I hear her say, someone better for you to hunt. She was in the war, I hear her plead, but then I’m back and I remove the knife and Shannon just falls to the concrete floor with a thud.

  We stand there, this new Fantastic Four, and all we do is breathe and regard each other for what feels like minutes. I decide to take it upon myself. “You guys want to do this proper then? Maybe side with a woman who can get shit done?” They continue to look at me and then at each other. It’s Iron Man who laughs first, a sardonic little thing. Spidey joins and then so does the Hulk. I take it as a sign. I have landed on my feet once again.

  “You do realize how fucked this is?” Spidey this time, as the man goes and lifts up his mask. He is neither “Roger” nor white teeth, but I relieve him of his weapon all the same; before either of them can re-raise theirs. I unload fast, a bullet for each, the Hulk quite nicely proving his own adage wrong. He was not in fact the strongest one there was.

  No, that’d be me.

  Back to TOC

  Of Dream Scenarios and Plans

  Maurice and me, we are men of extremes. Some would suggest different, stating over the top. Either way, the life we’d chosen to lead ensured we pretty much had to be something along these lines. Only when such traits spill over into things they shouldn’t do complications arise for people like us. With this comes thoughts of over-compensation and I can understand why some people defer to this type of thinking. A misconception is what this becomes, as over-compensating and confidence are not much more than distant cousins once you’ve gotten under the hood. This comparison, it’s what I’m attempting to enlighten Maurice to when the snake begins to twitch. Meant his eyes would no longer meet mine, and it’s totally understandable why this occurs. I mean, the size of the thing Milligan hooked me up with is huge, taking three of us just to get it in the glass.

  “You’ve always been big on fear, this we know.” Nothing. Nadda. His concentration beyond me, through the glass and toward a situation which, for the time being, remained asleep. It slept because I’d tranqed the thing six hours prior, tranqing it hard, secretly hoping that today would become the day. “But do you recall telling me your greatest fear?” I know he didn’t, not in the way he should, but this is the thing, the difference between employer and employees. Us guys, the workers, we don’t forget. At least I don’t. And when someone goes and lets you in on such a nugget, you go and squirrel that shit away. Never know when an opportunity may arise or a situation might present itself.

  It’s pragmatic is what it is; that and then some.

  But I was getting ahead of myself. Realizing, I move forward, blocking Maurice’s through-line to the glass. I hold up both my hands, flex what I’d been left with. “What I want you concentrating on is this. No, come on now, I want you to take a good hard look at the shit you set in motion. Used to be eight of these bad boys, right, but now you’d be hard pressed to say I have three. Used to have both ears too, Maurice, and this eye here, it never hung the way it does now. You think any of this is givin’ you a clue as to the reason we are here today?”

  I didn’t require an answer, not really, and I tell the man so. “However, the place I do want to go is how we arrived here, as in our juncture. Translation being you should have maybe sent someone a little more inclined as to how one goes about one’s job I think. Double translation, they should have at least gone and checked for a pulse before they buried me.” Had his boys done that, I never get to show Maurice why I can no longer grow hair. The bullet that rode my skull from one temple to the next destroying the only part of my head I’d been able to comb since before the nineties.

  “And you do realize how this makes you look? Not just for setting in motion what you did, but the reason as to why,” I go on, saying my piece, Maurice looking more like an ugly Daddy Warbucks than ever before. “It looks to me like Janice never would have glanced my way if she were a woman being satisfied.” His eyes expand at this, a little more rage let out of the box. Seems I’d gone and hit a soft spot. He double downs with snot bubbles, great big giant fuckers, which begin to foam above the gag. “You tryin’ to tell me there’s more than scrap metal in yer pants there, boss?” I smile as I say this, and I can only imagine the sight of me. Made me want to laugh and scream at the same fucking time. I mean, of all the things we’d done, all the jobs we’d pulled, that it would come down to a woman, a woman he’d already divorced…

  Eighteen years gone in an instant, poof.

  Laugh or scream. Shit or get off the pot. All told, I sometimes wish the grave had been a little less shallow.

  “But what it comes down to, specifically, is how do you truly destroy a man? You obliterate that which he creates. Your words, Maurice. From your lips. Brings a whole new kind of light as to why I had junior join us here today.” Perfection. All of it. Especially the veins upon his neck, each one now popping like cords. I go one step further and share what Milligan passed along. If I could see my way to rearranging a shoulder or two, my selection, it didn’t much matter; python or anaconda, each would take a man. Done, it’s on to constriction, the application, and how it’s this which would come first. What impressed me more is when I find out how the feet would go last, the anaconda going on like a condom, its meal taken by the head into a digestive system unlike any other. Truth be told, it kind of made me wish Maurice had had other children. Or that his child had children. And I know how this makes me sound. I do. But I also know how I feel.

  “It’s not like I had any kind of choice, Maurice. Not once I realized I was still alive.” His nostrils flare at this, flare again, but I pull him forwards anyway, the legs of his chair screeching every inch of the way. Four feet from the glass, I plant myself beside him, my backside into the very same chair his son had been strapped to not minutes before. As I sit, my dream scenario continues. Maurice unable to do anything but stare, nothing but remorse leaking from his eyes. I acknowledge this by placing an arm around his shoulder and squeezing it with fingers both phantom and real. Twenty minutes on and junior’s eyes flash open, his struggles against his bonds causing an agitation I’d been anticipating since awakening last fall. It brought a different type of panic to the festivities as well, and I respond first by standing, then by cutting the gag from Maurice’s mouth.

  I tell him I do this because I can. Because pragmatic or not, over the top or not, I was confident I was about to like what I heard.

&n
bsp; Back to TOC

  And Now, Back to Our Program

  Until I realized she’d been fucking my husband the only thing my younger sister ever did to really piss me off was become a vegan.

  “Don’t stop on my account. I mean, it hasn’t let you so far.” Cheryl freezes, her naked body instantly tense. Michael’s eyes fly open like blinds snapping to. He wants to say something, he does, and I can see as much, but for the moment he is gob-smacked. Good. I had their attention.

  “You think I’m joking, just continue to stay as you are, Cheryl. I mean what I said: keep going. God knows it takes him long enough.” I can tell she doesn’t want to, not in the least, but I was as far from playing as I had ever been. To make this known I re-grip and inch closer, pushing both barrels harder into the back of her head. It does as I intend and in seconds she’s back to as she was, taking my husband deep into her throat. “That’s it. Show him how much better you are than me.”

  “Babe, please…” I don’t know what made me angrier, that he called me babe or that he had spoken at all.

  “I suggest shutting it, oh love of my life. Just lean back and enjoy the show.” Resigned, he complies and returns to how I found him, his neck propped up by two pillows against the mirrored headboard, his sister-in-law down home in his junk. All he could manage really, as his wrists and ankles could do nothing but remain as they were, each bound to a bedpost by a set of handcuffs I’m more than sure I’d purchased myself. His eyes were open now though, and quite possibly in more ways than one, but the fear I see in them is stuff which causes me to smile.